There it was not the child-hole. I was he twelve-league runner. The savior of lives. The lookout on the frontier. Everyone had heard about my little adventure, which in the eyes of the big city turned out to be quite a feat. Twelve leagues. Through the mountains. At night. Barefoot. To save as many villages and lives as possible.

On the second day, Dien Phu, the rider who had taken me there, explained that we would dine with the Khaz Dolu. There is no greater honor for a young villager than to set foot in the golden palace. And I not only set foot in it, but walked its halls for several days, gawking at every nook and cranny, every speck of golden dust, every ivory statuette.

The building oozed an opulence that for me, a humble village boy, was unimaginable. The reality surpassed any of my wildest dreams. The floor was marble on all five floors, carpeted with elegant colors and intricate geometric shapes. Doorways of sublime wood carved by the finest cabinetmakers; the ceilings were supported by a myriad of Tiberian arches that separated hundreds of spaces in which the finest painters had left their mark with exquisite taste.

But the paintings that most claimed my attention were those in the large dining room. On one side, the long wall was lined with portraits. The wall of millenary glory, the wall where the most illustrious dragon riders are portrayed, for the infinite parade of centuries and the collective memory of a whole country.

I discovered it that night, during dinner with the Khaz Dolu. The dining table was enormous. It looked as if the biggest tree in the world had been cut down to make a smooth, varnished wooden disk. To top it off, it was full of food. So full that it could have fed a village like Ha Gian for at least a week. And there were only six of us.

Dien Phu spoke bluntly. First, he recounted the counterattack the rider led against Dareniel’s enemy hordes, and how they managed to drive them off with iron and fire. Then he explained how a thirteen-year-old boy had been made homeless as a patriot. I didn’t feel the need to point out that, in fact, it was more because of a sudden and unprecedented panic attack.

“Certainly. I’ve gotten the same story from many mouths already. It is quite a feat. Twelve leagues, from Ha Gian to the Mo Tang guard post. Of course, if he had taken a map with him, he might have been able to save ten leagues and warn the nearest post, the one at Mua Hin...”

Everyone laughed. Indeed, I ran up the mountain trying to get as far away from the invaders as possible. I had not the slightest idea where the guard posts were, for that was the task of the two village guards, who died during the Dareni aggression.

“But then the feat would not have been so great!” exclaimed Dun Gar, raising the cup of sweet wine to his mouth.

Dun Gar was the master of fire. He was the one who decided who was fit to try his luck with a dragon. He decided which dragons would be used for riding, and which would be used in the mines and forges. He was a tall, stocky man, with hair bleached by the years and a grayish goatee that he would stroke at all hours.

“The boy is at the age of miracles. Remember the races we used to have at that age, Dun?”

The one who had just spoken was Sim Rep, the master of military strategy, who advised on all matters concerning the defense of the mountain range.

I shared a table with the most important people in the Tiber, so it was no wonder that my hands trembled with every hook I put in my mouth, and my voice slipped away like a measly drop of water before evaporating and rendering me mute. I had barely managed to stammer out a ‘thank you’ or two in the face of the undeserved compliments I was getting from the diners.

“Ha! And do you remember when I snatched the scale medal from you on the Onopurna climb? That was quite a race!” Dun Gar continued to reminisce.

“Oh yes, I remember the look on Bin Tu’s face, poor guy thought he had it won. You were lucky I twisted my ankle in that damn hole under the snow cover, though.”

“And how much snow! We don’t get snowfalls like those winters...”

“Come on... Sim Rep, running the ascent of the Oropurna?” Dien Phu interjected, incredulous, “But he can hardly walk without his walking stick!”

“We haven’t always been these wrinkled old geezers, boy,” replied the alluded one, in good humor. Then he drank the rice liquor as if it were water. “Those were good times. The Darenis hardly dared to come near us. How many dragons did we have? Fifty? Sixty?”

“You should stop living in the memory and look to the future. That’s where our present problems come from,” commented Shio Min, the master of the secret.

Needless to say, I never knew much about the nature of his work. It was said that from time to time he would snatch a newborn baby from its mother’s arms to take it to his caves. Shio Min was the oldest of them all, with a hunched back and a cadaverous face. His brown eyes, which stood out more because of the absence of eyebrows, looked everywhere with suspicion.

“Yes, indeed. So let’s talk about what really concerns us. Dien Phu, you are the first to bring someone to us,” continued the Khaz Dolu. “Are you sure of your choice?”

“Certainly, Your Excellency.”

“We should explain to the boy what this is all about,” said a female voice.

Mao Rin. Her voice was pleasantly gravelly but you could sense the authority in it. She had been in charge of developing the country with its mines and trade for decades. And she had not done badly at all.

“Allow me,” began Dun Gar, master of fire. He finished chewing the black cherry cheesecake and drank the remaining wine in his glass. An Long, I suppose you are wondering what you are doing here. In the capital of the Tiber. In the golden palace, dining with Khaz Dolu himself. That’s easy. We’re having trouble finding young men worthy of dragon riding. Last year, none of the four chosen managed to be accepted by one of them. And no wonder. Dragons don’t choose their riders for their skills, they see everything we hide in our hearts. They see our dreams and ambitions, our pains and sorrows, our greed, our hatred, our selfishness. Luckily for all of us, dragons are kind creatures. They fight in the name of good. That’s why a dragon will never choose a rider he suspects might use the power of fire to do evil.

“You’re going off the deep end Dun,” Sim Rep warned.

“Yeah, I see. The thing is, seeing that we are finding it harder and harder to find pure-hearted young men, we have for the first time asked the riders to choose the students. We think that, having been chosen by a dragon, they are in a good position to judge the apprentices. Dien Phu trusts that you have a pure heart, and that, if you pass the tests, you can be chosen by a dragon.”

I was petrified - a dragon! I was being offered the chance to become a living legend. A dragon rider. To defend my country alongside the most powerful animal ever tamed. To take to the skies and guard the lands in the name of good.

“It will be hard,” Dien Phu suddenly warned. “There are many who quit, exhausted, fed up, broken. The training is fierce, but necessary. Both physically and mentally. We dragon riders have to face much worse things than the Darenis and their shoddy raids. That is why it is crucial that we are well prepared. We are the elite of our army, but not only that. We represent the dream of thousands of children. We are the hope of our people. The security of our mothers. The peace of mind of our elders. The guardians of peace.”

“That’s right, Dien Phu. And we have fewer and fewer guardians,” commented the firebender.

“And we have less and less peace,” said Shio Min in a gloomy tone.

The interventions of the master of secrets were always disturbing, and his sepulchral voice did not help to remedy that at all.

“If you say no,” Dien Phu wanted to reassure him, “you will have a place in Do Shoi. Since your village was razed to the ground, we won’t leave you stranded, whatever you choose. You will live in my house and you will be able to learn whatever trade you wish, for which you will be assigned a competent tutor. But if you say yes, then we will take you to the highest peaks of the Tiber, where the training takes place. Where the dragons hide.”

“An Long,” it was the first time the Khaz Dolu addressed me directly, “the choice is yours alone. Either way you will help the country, either as a rider or as a herdsman. But only one way you will help the world.”

Help the world. The world that had taken my father from me before I could remember him. The world that had taken my friends from me in an accident that had cost me a gaping hole in my face. The world that had mocked me for my monstrous appearance. The world that had made my mother sick, to the point of killing her. The world that had left me without a home, without a village. The world that had taken almost everything from me. But I still had one thing left: a dream. And the world was giving me the chance to fulfill it.

What else could I do but take it?