Dragon Master by Alan Carr Read Free Book Online Page B

try to find a dragon to kill me. I looked at the wagon, saw how easily I could climb in back and reposition some sacks so that I would be hidden. I didn’t have to stay. I could escape, right now.
    I could quit and become an outsider.
    I thought of my parents, of my perennially sick mother. They’d lived frugally, they probably had enough saved up from my Stone Soul stipends that they would be okay, right? I thought of Boe. I would never see him again. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. He wouldn’t have joined me if I’d begged him to, so maybe it was better like this. Maybe without me around him he’d realize that he didn’t stand a chance against a dragon and then he’d find a way to flee too. So maybe we would see each other again. Outsiders, yes, but alive. Except I knew he wouldn’t run away. I knew that his mother spent every bit of his stipend as quickly as it arrived, and that she’d probably put her family in debt on top of that. Things would be different for Boe’s family than they would be for mine, and Boe wouldn’t do that to them. And what about Daija? She was Boe’s family too. I wouldn’t want Boe to do that to her.
    Why did it all have to be so complicated? Why did we have to be Stone Souls, why did our parents do that to us? Why did we feel any responsibility to them for something we hadn’t even asked for and didn’t even truly want? Except I knew the answer. This really was what Boe wanted. At some point it was what I’d wanted, too. I tried to remember when I first came to the academy, how proud I’d felt. I could vaguely remember those emotions. At the last Stoneflame festival, hadn’t I lorded over my old friends, shown off my skills and bragged about how I would be a Dragon Master? I realized that even if my mother had been well and my family had come to the festival, it was unlikely that any of those old long forgotten friends would have been persuaded to accompany them this time around.
    I couldn’t run away. I’d be disappointing too many people. I’d even be disappointing myself, though I hated to admit it. There was only one thing to do. I had to train harder, get better. I had to make sure that when the time came, I would be as ready as I could be to accept my fate. If I was a Dragon Master, then I’d be ready for the responsibility. If I was going to end up a dead man, it wouldn’t be through any fault of my own. I’d make everyone proud of me, either through my life or through my death.
    I crumpled the prize voucher in my hand and shoved it into a small flap on the waist of my training clothes. I took one last long look up at the tapestry taunting me from high up in the pile of sacks, and then hung my head and began slowly walking back to the Valora’s cottage.
    By the time I arrived, they were already gone.

CHAPTER FIVE

Study Hall
    Two days passed and we started to settle back into the training routine after our glorious month off for the festival. Today was scheduled to be our first study hall day since the festival, and I felt eager to spend time in the great keep. For the first eight years of my training, study hall meant learning about things like reading, writing, Dragonlore, and a bunch of stuff that didn’t seem like it would be very useful to either a Stone Soul or a Dragon Master. But I liked our teacher, Magnilda. She was always very patient with us and would answer any of our questions—except that she did seem to enjoy answering our questions with more questions. A little over a year ago, though, Magnilda’s husband disappeared, probably wandered into the forest and gotten killed by a bandit or wild animal. Our teacher did not take it well. Soon after her husband’s disappearance, she stopped showing up for classes altogether. My class was still required to attend study hall, but this became something of a free period for us. At first, some of us tried to actually pull books off shelves and learn things, but by now nobody really bothered with that