Read Online Dragon's Mage (An Advent Mage Novel), The - Raconteur, Honor by Honor Raconteur - Free Book Online Page B

without a problem. Right, left, and forward were fairly standard. But you couldn’t tell a dragon to fly backwards, like you could reverse a horse. And I had to figure out a way to tell her that I wanted to fly at a particular height. I’d been in the air all of twice when these problems cropped up, and I had no instant solution to them.
    Seriously. Where was a Life Mage when I needed one?
    The only expert that I had on hand that understood flying was Kaya herself. I spent a full day teaching her the words she would need to know so that I could talk to her about this. After a day of flying and training and learning, we were both beyond tired, so I saved the actual conversation for the next day.
    Then, after she came back from hunting her breakfast, we went to the outskirts of town and sat down, facing each other. Kaya lowered her head to where she was more on my level. I sat cross-legged comfortably on the stubby grass and thought about how to start this.
    “Kaya. Do dragons fly together?”
    She bobbed her head. “Fly together. Most.”
    Most of the time, eh? “So how do you know how high to fly? Do you just watch each other?”
    Cocking her head slightly, she thought about it for a moment. “Some. One calls out too.”
    My forehead wrinkled slightly as I tried to sort that one. “Someone in the group calls out the height?”
    “Yes,” she confirmed. In demonstration, she lifted her head and let out a long, sonorous sound that reminded me of wind careening through a cavern. It sounded eerily beautiful.
    “Hoooo.” I rubbed at my chin, turning this over in my mind. “I can’t make a sound like that, though. But you see that we need a way for me to tell you which height I want you to fly at?”
    She blinked at me, giving me this look that said of course .
    All right, that last had been a stupid question. I admit that. “How do you measure height?” Judging by that blank expression, I’d lost her. I put my palm flat on the ground, the other drawing a line in illustration. “We measure by hand’s length. See? One hand wide. Or one hand tall.”
    Kaya let out a slow breath through her nose, the air warming up considerably for a second. She did that sometimes, when I asked her a question that she had to think about answering. “One flap,” she finally said, nodding in satisfaction of her own answer.
    A flap? I hadn’t been in the air long enough to know exactly how much height that meant, but she did seem to be able to gain altitude quickly that way. “So if I say, two flaps, you know how high to go?”
    “Do,” she assured me, ears perked.
    “So can I tap you on the shoulder? Say, if I want to go up three flaps, I tap your shoulder three times?”
    Her tail started thumping in excitement. Finally, we were on the same page. “Tap good,” she answered with keen interest. “Tap understand.”
    “So how should I tell you when I want to go down a flap?” I couldn’t very well use the same signal for both.
    She looked briefly frustrated, as if searching for a word. Finally she put her claws out and pawed the ground. “This.”
    “Stroke,” I supplied.
    “Yes. Good. Stroke flap.”
    Seemed simple enough to me. In theory at least. “You will remember this?”
    I got that of course look again, the one that made me feel like an idiot for even asking. “Right, of course.” We spent another hour or so going through various possibilities and situations, working out signals for them, and so on. I did jot all of them down, too, afraid I wouldn’t remember them all otherwise. But when I couldn’t think of anything else to plan out, I climbed to my feet.
    “Shall we try?”
    She stayed very still until as I climbed on and strapped into place. Then, using the same caution she had for the past few takeoffs, she launched slowly into the air. I directed her with just the bar and reigns at first, nonverbally reminding her of the earlier lessons, and only then did I implement the new part of signaling elevation.