Trial and Error

For penandpaper71. I do not own Fire Emblem or any of its characters.

Written for the fe_exchange comm. The prompt was the Gordon Lightfoot song "Don Quixote," which I used... loosely.

In the reign of King Marius the Good, perhaps around the year 573, a newly-sworn knight of Altea departed the castle grounds for his trial year, his year of exploration. He was not alone in this; several youths received the accolade that season and went a-questing in order to prove themselves, but most of these have vanished from the pages of history. It seems that Sir Ethan met his demise from sunstroke not three months after setting off. Sir Simeon, known more for his pretty face than his prowess with a lance, went chasing slave traders and may have fallen prey to them. And the lady knight Dame Adah fell in love with the dashing young pirate she was seeking to capture and spent the rest of her days as Black Adah, terror of the Galder Coast. Sir Jagen, on the other hand, began his career on a somewhat more auspicious note.

The countenance of this young knight- or, rather, of the great paladin he would become- is now familiar to any schoolchild, and perhaps it seems a curious idea that Sir Jagen of the Iron Bones was ever a youth at all. Be assured that the famed portraits and statues of the man all date from a later time in his life, when care and toil had turned his hair white and his skin to leather, and likewise carved great furrows into his cheeks. In that spring of 573 (or perhaps it was 571), Sir Jagen was as fresh-faced and bright-eyed as they come, and neither he nor anyone else beneath the Altean sun had an inkling of his destiny.

Jagen (unlike poor Sir Simeon) was notable for his great height and exceptional strength rather than for beauty and grace, but was a well-favored young man all the same. He had a strong square jaw and a good straight nose (it had not yet been broken), though he gave the impression of being somewhat forbidding, as he didn't often smile. His red-tinged hair stood in unruly tufts whenever he took off his helm, and his eyes were of some indeterminate shade that looked blue, or gray, or greenish-brown, depending on the light and his general mood. Jagen perhaps looked his best when armored and mounted upon his great gray destrier, for then he gave the impression of a determined young man who was Going Places. Rather a lot of places, as it happened- though again, those adventures were years ahead of him. But he did make enough of an impression on the Altean people that many of them remembered their first sight of Sir Jagen as he went off into the world to serve country and king. Or they imagined that they did, which amounts to the same thing in the end.

Sir Jagen departed his lord's estate with shining dreams of what a lone knight might do in the world- rescuing maidens was high on the list, and the very faint possibility of encountering and felling a dragon was ever in the back of his mind. He stumbled into his first mission within a week of departing the castle. A young lad, aged about twelve years, pleaded with Jagen to rescue him from what the boy described as slavers bent on selling him overseas. Jagen gladly gave the lad aid, only to find that the "slave traders" were the boy's own parents, who had planned to send him to the great school for magic in the Khadein oasis. The boy, afraid of his own powers, had merely wanted to avoid going to school; Jagen left him in the care of his parents and rode westward.

The next quest hardly went better; Jagen was approached by a youth who claimed that his dear sister was menaced by a conniving old man who sought her hand for impure reasons. Jagen, not so easily convinced by a hard-luck tale this time around, was neither pleased nor surprised to learn that the wicked old man was the maiden's uncle and guardian, or that the "loving brother" was a young rogue seeking to elope with the ungrateful niece. He delivered the rogue to the hands of justice, gave the maiden a lecture on morals, and rode off towards the setting sun. Jagen supposed he'd done well, or at least done right, but it was all very unsatisfying to him.

That evening, as he lodged in the barn of a patriotic farmer, Jagen took stock of himself. He knew he was no perfect knight, for time and again his teachers had come down hard upon him for falling short of the virtues embodied by Altea's patron saint. Fortitude came naturally enough to him, and for certain he was trying to uphold justice. Prudence he had in fair measure (he wasn't known for getting into fights he couldn't win), but its sister virtue temperance bedeviled him often enough. Jagen counseled others in patience but was quick to anger, and in this he often missed the ideal set by Anri the Great. The gods could see this, no doubt- they could look into his heart and see that he had fortitude to spare but wasn't quite there on the other counts- and so these hurdles, these humiliations, were going to teach him what his instructors could not.

Sir Jagen was not going to chase down good fortune and glory. He would have to wait for it.

-x-

He reached the western coast of Altea without much incident. It was lovely there, and peaceful, and Jagen took a moment to watch the sun's light upon the sea before he rode into town. He had just settled himself again upon Rozinante when he heard the high, thin, and unmistakable cry of a maiden in distress. Jagen applied the spurs to his steed and found her within minutes- one small girl, set upon by four men armed with a variety of blades and axes. Jagen took measure of these men, of their foreign clothes and crude tattoos, and judged them for what they were- slave traders without a doubt, come to collect children for the infamous market at Knorda. On the matter of slavers, King Marius had given his knights license to apprehend first and to ask questions after the fact.

Jagen let out a battle cry- rather more heartfelt and convincing than the any he'd screamed in the practice-yard back at Altea Castle- and plunged toward the men. He recognized straightaway that his odds weren't terribly good, but there were no other decent people in sight. At least he might delay the slavers long enough for the girl to hide, or to run into town, or summon more assistance with her cries. Or he could be a little less orthodox and simply scoop the girl up and ride hell-for-leather to safety, leaving the ruffians behind. One of the fiends had already caught the maiden by her sleeve, and Jagen hurled his javelin into this man's back. The fiend fell to his knees, and as Jagen pulled back on the javelin's chain to retrieve his weapon, he realized by sound and feel both that he'd killed a man. He didn't have a great deal of time to contemplate this, though, as the other three ruffians were already upon him.

Jagen didn't panic, but his steed did. This turned out to be to Jagen's advantage, as another of the ruffians fell beneath Rozinante's hooves. That left him facing two, and one of the two had an axe that sliced through the shaft of Jagen's javelin as though the wood were but wax. Jagen reached for his sword, but the final ruffian had already gained the advantage. Armed not with any proper weapon, but with a simple length of cord weighted with stones at both ends, he stood at a distance and twirled the rope above his head. As Jagen plunged his blade at the throat of the axe-wielding slaver, he heard the cord whistling through the air in his direction. The first stone struck with enough force that his sword-arm went numb and the hilt slipped from his nerveless fingers. The pain didn't even have time to register before the second blow sent him spinning into darkness.

-x-

It was warm, and dark, and... fuzzy. And painful. Jagen lay still for a while, trying to determine his surroundings while pretending to yet be unconscious. He was indoors- he thought he could smell both rushes and the scent of cresset lamps. He was lying on something soft, a pallet or perhaps an actual bed. And he felt like he'd been worked over thoroughly on the rack.

"Lady Christabel, he's waking."

So he wasn't very good at feigning sleep. Jagen heard the woman- a servant, from the sound of things- bustling around the room. Her footsteps were joined by the sound of another pair, and then he became aware of someone quite close; he could almost feel their gaze as they watched him. As the game was up anyway, Jagen opened his eyes. The sensation was a strange one- colors seemed muted, and the edges of his vision were black, as though he peered as the world through a spyglass.

Still, he could tell the lady at his side was the young girl he'd tried to rescue from the slave-traders. He recognized her from the multicolored coif set over her head, covering her hair and ears.

"I am sorry I failed you, my lady." His tongue felt like a dry leaf.

"Do not be sorry," she said, and held a cup of water to his lips. "Your valor saved me; though I carried a tome of fire spells on my person, I was taken by surprise by those men and so could not use it. I was able to attack the man who felled you with the bolas. All four are now dead."

"It is justice," Jagen replied. Talking was the most effort he could manage; besides the dulled vision, his head throbbed, and both his sword-arm and his right leg felt as though they'd been crushed and then pieced back together. Which was probably the case. He closed his eyes as the young lady- Christabel, was it?- continued her explanations.

"My servants retrieved your horse; she is safe in my stables..."

"You are kind to this unfortunate one, my lady," he said, as she continued with a catalogue of his injuries and the long weeks of healing that awaited him. So this is what his quest had come to- having his own life and limbs saved by the maiden he'd attempted to rescue. Bitter it was to him, though he had already suspected that this year of trial was designed to school him in virtue. It was well that he had such an inner stock of fortitude. He was going to need it.

-x-

Time was nothing. Long hours of grey dullness were brightened by the presence of Christabel. The colors of her coif, the amber brightness of her eyes, were clear enough to him despite the gray haze lurking at the edge of his vision. Her voice was sweet, and her touch most gentle, even when she prodded at his shattered leg to see its response. When he was again able to sit upright without feeling lightheaded, she sat with him in the garden on fair days, in the library when it was chill or raining. She had a fine collection of books and liked to read aloud to him; he repaid her by reciting cantos of The Anri Saga from memory. Christabel also proved herself a skilled player of chess, and it wasn't often that Jagen found someone close to his own age with that level of ability. The level of calculation in her eyes as she contemplated her next move seemed out of place- as though her eyes belonged to a soul much older than her smooth young face would indicate.

All considered, the situation was bearable. He knew that by all rights he never should have risen again after the fall from Rozinante, and certainly time spent with Christabel was preferable than being shoveled into a pauper's grave at the western edge of the kingdom. But Christabel did seem to take care to make everything as pleasant as possible for him.

On one afternoon, he sat in the shade of her garden, wriggling the toes of his right foot and marveling over how such a simple movement could be so wonderful. She hovered behind him, her touch upon his arm as light as a butterfly's.

"By the summer's end, you should be able to ride once more."

He looked up into her face and saw, he thought, a trace of sorrow there.

Through the height of summer they walked often in the garden- first slowly, with he leaning upon her as she bore his weight with surprising grace. Then he walked with growing confidence, and finally he was taking Rozinante for brief rides while Christabel watched over them. She had never learned to ride, she said, which struck him as odd given her obvious wealth and social standing. He had pieced together a bit about Lady Christabel; she was not Altean, and the furnishings of her home came from all across the continent, as did the plants in her garden, but there were a few things that indicated to him that her forebears were among those nobles of Grust who fled that kingdom in mid-century, after the death of King Ordwin. She took her coffee with dark rock sugar instead of white, for instance, and served salads cold instead of warm.

Then, too, that a noble lady should be schooled in fire magic (though Christabel claimed her ability was poor) was an odd thing in Altea. Her foreign heritage explained also why Christabel's manor seemed so isolated from the town not far distant. Her home and gardens seemed a world apart, a world self-sufficient, and the existence of another world beyond its walls seemed harder and harder to believe as the weeks slipped by.

But that world was there, and Jagen must return to it as soon as he was able. Even if he had no tale of valor to bring back to his liege, Jagen could not say the year had been a wasted one. He'd learned a great deal of the Four Virtues whilst attempting to get those toes on his right foot to obey his will. Or while trying to practice simple sword exercises that a few months before had been effortless. Or, to put it bluntly, while trying to maintain a decorous amount of distance between himself and Lady Christabel. Particularly since the fair maiden was not making much of an effort to disguise that she rather liked the young knight who'd literally fallen into her life.

They walked together in the garden one final time, in the golden light of late summer. Jagen knew that it would be disloyal for him to remain at Christabel's any longer, and Christabel seemed to know it too. As they reached the most distant part of the gardens, from which the towers of her mansion were just glimpsed over the hedges, she placed her fingertips on the back of his hand.

"Will you not return to me?"

"How could I do anything else?" He didn't know how Christabel would fare at court after so many years of solitude, but surely her intellect and gifts would win her friends.

"Would you kiss me goodbye?" She asked it so shyly, so sweetly, that Jagen could not find it in him to protest.

He placed his thumb beneath her pointed chin and tilted her head back, then touched his lips lightly to hers. And, in truth, let them remain their for quite some time. His other hand found a nice place around Christabel's waist, and before long he'd slipped off her coif and felt for the first time the long waves of her hair. It was quite a wonderful feeling, and Jagen would have liked to remain so for the rest of the afternoon, except that Christabel's lips seemed... warm. Too warm, scorching his skin with more fire than the hottest chiles the earth could produce. He broke off the kiss.

The air around Christabel shimmered, as when heat rises from the stone floor of desert. Her rippled like waves of liquid stone or metal. The red stone of her necklace was glowing, and as Jagen took in the full sight- the pointed ears, the shining eyes, the impression of wings forming at her shoulders- he did what no knight of Altea ought to do in the presence of a dragon.

He froze.

Christabel sank to her knees.

"It didn't work! It didn't work! Dear gods, why did it not work?"

"What are you speaking of, lady?" By that time he'd recovered himself and had his sword hovering over her bowed neck. Christabel seemed unaware of the peril she was in as she looked up at him with tears in her eyes.

"I thought that... I'd heard that... if a manakete did truly love a human, then they could leave their dragon form behind forever and live among men as a mortal."

"Then you are a fire dragon."

"Yes. I... I am Lamia, of the Salamander tribe."

As Jagen saw her tears, which flowed like liquid amber, he wondered how he ever had seen her as a mortal woman. The fall from Rozinante must have addled his senses. But his mind was clear now, and his hand upon the blade was steady.

"I cannot take the life of one who took me in and gave me shelter," he said. "But as a knight of Altea, I cannot allow one of His Majesty's enemies to live."

"I swear to you I will never transform and go wild... I have not in ages, not even in the times of the Great Darkness..." She seemed such a broken little thing, on her knees before him, her hands scrabbling at the ground in entreaty. But he wasn't fooled; he'd seen enough of her true self, of the great talons concealed within her small fingers.

"And yet, this time, you did lose control of yourself. It is not enough." Both the revulsion and the pity in his heart were overcome, and there remained only his duty. "Lady, surrender your dragonstone to me."

She did so without a word, and as she pressed the stone into the palm of his hand, he felt its radiant heat.

"So this is it." Only a blind man could mistake it for an ordinary carbuncle, for fires lurked in its center. He truly must have been blind himself all these months. "I have heard of travelers in far-away lands who purchased stones like these from unscrupulous merchants, stones that felt warm to the touch and left the holder feeling uneasy..."

He thrust it deep into his pocket and looked down at Christabel... no, Lamia... still on her knees at his feet.

"I must take something else, some proof that I encountered a dragon and did not seek to simply buy myself a place among heroes." A lock of her hair, perhaps? It did not quite look like a human's hair as it fell in flame-hued waves over her ears. Her pointed ears. "Lady, your ear..."

No one then would doubt him. She understood, and she plucked at both of her ears as though she might tear them off herself.

"Take them both! Take them both, so they may never betray me again."

It was done, and the fire running through her veins served to cauterize the wounds, and the grim trophies were set away along with the firestone. And she, confined to a form that was so nearly human, yet not, looked up at him and spoke.

"If you were to pass this way a hundred years hence, I would then be just as I am now. I can never be as one with humans... it would be kinder for you to kill me."

"Lady, I cannot," he said, and it was neither a boast or a consolation. "You are too dangerous to spare, yet not guilty enough to slay. I don't know what is to become of you... I only know that I cannot be the one..."

He was thinking of death, and of justice, and yet as he spoke he remembered what Christabel had truly wanted from him.

"I cannot free you," he said, and Jagen cursed himself as his own tears gave him away. He turned from her, then, and did not give her another look, though often on his journey he did close his hand around her dragonstone, feeling its heat, until the ill feeling that emanated from it overcame him and he had to stow it once more.

And the lady Lamia, formerly called Christabel, vanished into her estates and was seen no more in the countryside. Years later, when a resurgence of the dragonkin oppressed the people of Altea, it was said that a young lady of means gave aid and refuge to the humans of the western coast, but of this, nothing can be proven. As for Sir Jagen, he returned to Altea Castle with his trophies and his tales of defeating bandits and encountering a fire dragon. He was received with great warmth by King Marius and all of the court, and in particular by the young Prince Cornelius, with whom Jagen developed a great bond of trust and affection. The king received the firestone, which he placed among the gems in the pommel of his sword, the holy Falchion.

Jagen remained in service to the Altean crown the rest of his days, in times of peace and war, in prosperity and sorrow. Two generations of knights trained under him and his name and deeds became legend even while he lived. Service seemed the whole of his life, for he never did marry, and some of the junior knights looked on this with approval, as a model to follow- "See, there is a man dedicated to his sovereign, heart and soul!"

They had no way of knowing that Jagen's solitude was born of something more than duty- that in his youth, his heart had been touched by true fire.

The End

A/N: I always figured Jagen got up to some really epic stuff in his youth, hence his reputation by the time he reached his fifties. He may be a fail paladin, but he's a BAMF tactician, and I wanted both the hot-blooded and cold-blooded sides of his nature to be shown here. As for Lamia/Christabel, the implication here is that she was living happily in Grust under King Ordwin when he put out the welcome mat for manakates, but fled to Altea after King Cartas ruined Ordwin's little paradise.