3 Kidnapped

  Sara stood and watched the Lady Lord enter the doorway that led back into the castle proper. She turned back, walked to the edge of the parapets to see her kingdom.

  As she looked inside the castle, all the guards on the walls quickly looked away. One guard didn’t, and he captured Sara's attention. He appeared to be around her age. She noticed that the look he gave her wasn’t like the guard outside her room, or the looks of revision or pity she received from the staff or the nobles. Their eyes locked for only a moment, and then an older guard, seeing him staring, smacked him on the shoulder, so he too turned away.

  Sara was alone, but this wasn’t anything new. She had no real friends anymore. The few children of Lords that came by either let her have everything or talked about how great they were going to be. For now, Sara put thoughts of loneliness out of her mind. She was considered all Lady Lord Mashal had said.

  Sara considered what she saw in light of all that was around her. Before the castle, people were moving carts full of merchandise towards the castle and empty ones away. She knew that on the three other sides of the castle was the Ironwood Forest: a wildland that few entered. Her ancestors had faced that danger. They crossed those wildlands to take this new world as their own. To the east, which she looked out on again, there was farmland and the hill country. The hill country which went east and the forest to the north were under the control of Lord Lazzaro, and the plains south of it were under Lady Lord Mashal. These baronies provided the food and provisions for Castle Degal. It was the lands beyond where the real wealth of the country came from. A land that went all the way to the Eastern Sea and would take months to travel across. It was a huge and glorious kingdom.

  “This is all mine.” Sara shouted, “Mine!”

  Sara looked around, but she was alone, but Sara felt powerful. The land was hers. She looked up into the sky and saw a large golden bird flying. In that moment, Sara wanted it too. If it was in her kingdom, it was hers. She nearly commanded the golden bird to come to her when her vision focused more fully on this very large creature.

  As she stared, Sara noticed that the bird was coming toward her as if it were obeying her heart’s desire. She could see it was even bigger than she thought. It took her less than ten seconds to realize that she wasn’t looking at a bird. There was someone riding this creature, and then the lines of the creature became clear, and Sara froze.

  “Dragon,” yelled one of the guards.

  Sara was confused. Dragons were creatures of good, but this creature dived at her as if it were a Pegasus coming to claim the soul of the dammed. The distance was so close that Sara could see that the man on the dragon had to be a giant, and then she turned to run, for it was clear she was the soul they had come to claim.

  A second later, the bells started ringing, voices began yelling, but it was too late. Sara felt the pressure of the wind almost knocking her to the ground as the shadow of the dragon covered her. Before she could react or even fall to the ground from the pressure of the wind, she felt a large hand grab her from behind.

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  No claws were tearing into her skin, so Sara assumed the giant had her. She squirmed to get free. Her feet quickly left the ground, and Sara found she was being lifted higher into the air with every flap of the dragon’s wings.

  “Unless you want to fall to your death,” the giant yelled over the sound of the dragon’s beating wings, “I would stop struggling.”

  Sara looked down and immediately obeyed. She didn’t want to be taken away but escape from the hand of the giant right now was certain death.

  Sara tried to see the castle behind her, but all she could see was the hill country and the sky. She felt the giant lift her and drop her across the dragon in front of where he sat. Sara tried to move, but the giant lay his large arms across her. Other than being able to move her head and the bottom of her legs, Sara was trapped. All she could see was the side of the dragon and an occasional view of the ground. The skies filled with clouds, and Sara quickly lost track of which way she was flying. She started to yell but heard a rumble underneath her coming from the dragon.

  “I would keep quiet if I were you. My friend said that if you start making too much noise, he might decide to eat you.” The giant yelled.

  There was another rumble under Sara, which felt different from the first. Sara decided to keep quiet, afraid that it was the dragon’s empty stomach that made the noise.

  Sara didn’t know how long they had been flying, but it felt like hours. Every time she tried to move, the giant would pat her on her back, or she heard the rumble under her again. She lost the feeling in her legs, and her head was throbbing. As far as she knew, they could be on the other side of the continent, over the ocean, or, to her horror, could have flown over the magical barrier and into the Old World. The last thought that nearly caused her to cry as everyone knew there was no return from that savage continent.

  Besides trying to figure out where they were and where they were going, Sara wanted to know why they had taken her. If another kingdom had a dragon, she was sure she would have heard of it. Besides, the dragons in the stories rarely had anything to do with people. Yes, legends said they were creatures of good. However, there was a story that some were evil, so evil that the creator cast them from the world.

  Bedtime stories her father shared with her spoke of a dragon in Rishona. When it came to books, and Sara had read a lot, thanks to Mistress Carmarthen, she didn’t remember anyone saying there were dragons in Rishona. Sara realized it didn’t really matter what any books or legends said about dragons; she was going to find out personally.

  The giant was a different story. She had read about giants in Adria, the country south of Rishona. They disappeared over a hundred years ago if she remembered correctly.

  The ambassador from Adria spoke of them while trying to dance with her at the royal ball for her fifteenth birthday. The Lords had arranged for her to dance with all the visiting nobles. Somehow the ambassador from Adria was allowed multiple dances, and they were the ones she could never forget. She had repeatedly asked about the legends of giants to keep him from talking about how handsome his thirteen-year-old son was. The giant talk was a far better subject than the arranged marriage he had planned to talk about. Sara was thankful he enjoyed talking about his family’s struggles against the giants more than any royal aspirations he had for his son.

  It was Lord Odom’s son, Hoshea, who had cut in and rescued her. She smiled even now as she thought about him. He wasn’t the kind of man she was interested in, for one, he was several years older, but he was nice. He apologized for stepping on her toes during the dance. He admitted the only reason he stepped in was because his father told him she needed to be rescued, and if he didn’t go, he would. This was before Lord Odom’s wife had died, and Hoshea told her that his mother would have killed his dad if he had danced with another woman, even if it was the princess, so he chose to save her and his dad.

  Thoughts of being rescued fled her mind as she could hear a change in the rhythm of the dragon’s wings. Sara wasn’t sure, as she couldn’t see much, but she was willing to bet they had reached their destination.