Eskar will tell you where I am. You and I spoke of it often enough; I am pursuing the research I proposed. You will remember. I’ve been unexpectedly lucky, but I cannot put my findings here. I only risk writing you (despite Eskar’s admonitions) because I have learned something potentially useful to your queen.
I have reason to think that you and other half-dragons can thread your minds together. “Like beads on a string,” it has been described. In so doing, you will find you can make a barrier in the air, an unseen wall, strong enough to stop a dragon midflight. “Like a bird against a window,” according to my source, who has more flair for description than I. You will be astonished to learn who it is.
The process will require practice. The more ityasaari on your string, the stronger the barrier. The uses should be obvious. I urge haste in finding your fellows before the war comes south. Unless you give up prematurely, your search will bring you here.
All in ard,
O
While I read, Eskar proclaimed herself tired. Glisselda escorted her to the anteroom and roused the dozy page boy, who led Eskar to her quarters. I was hazily aware of this, and of Lucian Kiggs watching me while I read. When I finished the letter, I looked up and met the prince’s dark, questioning eyes.
I tried to smile reassuringly, but the letter had produced such a riot of emotions in me that I felt only the struggle between them. It was bittersweet hearing from Orma, all my love bound up in sorrow for his exile. His proposal, on the other hand, fascinated and horrified me. I had longed to find the others of my kind, but I’d had a frightening experience early on with another half-dragon invading my mind. Just the idea of another mind threaded to mine made me squirm.
“I’ll be interested in what Comonot makes of her plan,” said Queen Glisselda, returning to her seat. “Surely he’s thought of this and rejected it. And there is still a great deal of risk to Goredd if he pleads his case and fails.” Her blue eyes darted back and forth between Kiggs and me. “You’re making strange faces. What did I miss?”
“Orma has had an idea,” I said, handing her the letter. Glisselda held the page, and Kiggs read over her shoulder, their dark and golden heads together.
“What is he researching?” said Kiggs, looking at me over Glisselda’s bowed head.
“Historical references to half-dragons,” I said. “My strangeness, in part, got him obsessed with learning whether there had been others.” I’d told them about my garden of grotesques; they had some idea what I meant by strangeness.
“In part?” asked Kiggs, catching the qualifier at once. He was too sharp by half; I had to look away, or my smile was going to reveal things it shouldn’t.
“Orma also found it irritatingly illogical that there are no records of interbreeding in the dragon archives and no mention in Goreddi literature. The Saints mention ‘abominations,’ and there are laws forbidding cohabitation, but that’s it. He thought surely someone, somewhere, would have tried the experiment and recorded the results.”
Talk of dragon “experimentation” produces an odd facial expression in humans, halfway between amused and appalled. The Queen and prince were no exceptions.
I continued, “The Porphyrians have a word for what I am—ityasaari—and Orma had heard rumors that Porphyrians might be more open to the possibility of …” I trailed off. Even now, when everyone knew about me, it was hard to talk about the practical mechanics of my parentage. “He hoped they might have some useful records.”
“He seems to have been right,” said Glisselda, scanning the letter again. She turned to me and smiled, patting Eskar’s empty chair. I shifted one seat closer to the royal cousins. “What do you make of this ‘unseen wall’ idea?”
I shook my head. “I’ve never heard of such a thing. I can’t picture it.”
“It would be like St. Abaster’s Trap,” said Kiggs. I stared at him incredulously; he smiled, enjoying that. “Am I the only one who reads scripture? St. Abaster could harness the fires of Heaven to make a shining net with which he pulled dragons out of the sky.”
I groaned. “I stopped reading St. Abaster when I got to ‘Women of the South, take not the worm to thy beds, for thusly wilt thou bear thine own damnation.’ ”
Kiggs blinked slowly, as at a dawning realization. “That’s not even the worst thing he says about dragons or … or …”
“And he’s not alone,” I said. “St. Ogdo, St. Vitt. Orma once extracted the worst parts and made me a pamphlet. Reading St. Abaster, in particular, is like being slapped.”
“But will you attempt this mind-threading?” Queen Glisselda said with barely concealed hope. “If there’s any chance it could spare our city …”
I shuddered, but covered it with exaggerated nodding. “I’ll talk to the others.” Abdo especially had some unique abilities. I’d start with him.
Glisselda took my hand and squeezed it. “Thank you, Seraphina. And not only for this.” Her smile grew shy, or perhaps apologetic. “It’s been a hard winter, with assassins burning down neighborhoods, Comonot being Comonot, and Grandmamma so ill. She never intended me to be Queen at fifteen.”
“She may yet recover,” said Kiggs gently. “And you’re not much younger than she was when she and Comonot authored the peace.”
Glisselda extended her other hand toward him; he took it. “Dear Lucian. Thank you, too.” She took a deep breath, her eyes glittering in the firelight. “You’ve both been so important to me. The Crown consumes me, I sometimes feel, until I am only Queen. I don’t get to be Glisselda except with you, Lucian, or”—she squeezed my hand again—“at my harpsichord lesson. I need that. I’m sorry I don’t practice more.”
“I’m surprised you’ve had time enough for the lessons,” I said.
“I couldn’t give them up!” she cried. “I have few enough chances to take off the mask.”
I said, “If this invisible barrier works—if Abdo, Lars, Dame Okra, and I can thread our minds—then I want to search for the other half-dragons.” Glisselda had proposed such a journey at midwinter, when she’d first learned there were others, but nothing had come of it.
Glisselda blushed furiously. “I’ve been reluctant to lose my music teacher.”
I glanced at Orma’s letter and knew just how she felt.
“Still,” she continued stoutly, “I’ll bear it if I must, for Goredd’s sake.”
I met Kiggs’s eyes over the top of Glisselda’s curly head. He nodded slightly at me and said, “I believe we all feel the same way, Selda. Our duties come first.”
Glisselda laughed lightly and kissed his cheek. Then she kissed mine.
I left shortly thereafter, retrieving Orma’s letter and bidding the cousins good night—or good morning. The sun was just rising. My mind was all abuzz; I might soon go in search of my people, and that eagerness had begun to triumph over every other feeling. Beside the door the page boy dozed, oblivious to all.
I closed the shutters of my suite against the impending dawn. I’d told Viridius, the court composer and my employer, that I might be up till all hours and not to expect me until afternoon. He hadn’t objected. Lars, my fellow ityasaari, lived with Viridius now and was effectively his assistant; I’d been promoted to second court composer, which gave me some autonomy.
I flopped down on my bed, exhausted but certain I wouldn’t sleep. I was thinking of the ityasaari, how I would travel to exotic places to find them, how long it might take. What would I tell them? Hello, friend. I have dreamed of this—
No, that was stupid. Have you felt deeply alone? Have you longed for a family?
I made myself stop; it was too embarrassing. Anyway, I still had to visit my garden of grotesques; I had to settle the denizens before I slept. I would get terrible headaches or even a resumption of visions if I didn’t.
It took some time to slow my breath, and longer to clear my mind, which kept insisting on holding imaginary conversations with Orma. Are you sure this mind-threading is safe? You do remember what Jannoula did to me? I wante
d to ask. And: Is the Porphyrian library as amazing as we always dreamed?
Enough mind chatter. I imagined every thought encapsulated in a bubble; I exhaled them into the world. Gradually the noise ceased, and my mind was dark and still.
A wrought-iron gate appeared before me, the entrance to my other world. I grasped the bars with my imaginary hands and said the ritual words, as Orma had taught me: “This is my mind’s garden. I tend it; I order it. I have nothing to fear.”
The portal opened soundlessly. I crossed the threshold and felt something in me relax. I was home.
The garden had a different layout every time, but it was always familiar. Today I had entered at one of my favorite spots, the origin: Fruit Bat’s grove. It was a stand of Porphyrian fruit trees—lemon, orange, fig, date, and gola nut—where a brown-skinned lad climbed and played and left fruit detritus everywhere.
All the denizens of my garden were half-dragons, although I’d only learned that a few months ago when three of them walked into my life. Fruit Bat was really a skinny twelve-year-old named Abdo. He claimed the sound of my flute had called him from afar; he’d sensed the connection between us and come looking for me. He and his dance troupe had arrived at midwinter and were still here in Lavondaville, waiting for the roads to thaw so they could travel again.
Fruit Bat was freer than some of my garden denizens, able to leave his designated area, perhaps because Abdo had unusual mental abilities of his own. He could talk to other ityasaari with his mind, for instance. Today Fruit Bat was in his grove, curled like a kitten in a nest of furry fig leaves, sound asleep. I smiled down at him, made a blanket appear, and tucked it around him. It wasn’t a real blanket, and this wasn’t really Abdo, but the symbol meant something to me. He was my favorite.
I moved on. Loud Lad’s ravine opened up before me, and I yodeled down it. Loud Lad, blond and burly, yodeled back from below, where he seemed to be building a boat with wings. I waved; that was all the settling he ever required.
Loud Lad was Lars, the Samsamese bagpiper who now lived with Viridius; he had appeared at midwinter just like Abdo. I had envisioned each grotesque to look like the person I’d seen in my visions. Beyond that, each avatar had developed quirks, traits I hadn’t consciously given them but that corresponded to their real-life counterparts. It was as if my mind had intuited these qualities and given an analogous trait to their avatars. Loud Lad was a noisy putterer; real-world Lars designed and built strange instruments and machines.
I wondered whether this would hold true for the ones I hadn’t met yet, if the oddities they displayed in my garden would translate into life. The fat, bald Librarian, for example, sat in a shale quarry, squinting at fossil ferns through square spectacles and then tracing the same shape in the air with his finger. The fern lingered in the air, drawn in smoke. Glimmerghost, pale and ethereal, folded butterflies out of paper, and they fluttered in huge flocks around her garden. Bluey, her red hair standing straight up like a hedge, waded in a stream, eddies of green and purple swirling in her wake. How would these characteristics translate into real life?
I chatted soothingly to each one, squeezed shoulders, kissed foreheads. I had never met them but felt we were old friends. They were as familiar as family.
I reached the sundial lawn, ringed by a rose garden, where Miss Fusspots presided. She was the third and final half-dragon I’d met so far, the Ninysh ambassadress to Goredd, Dame Okra Carmine. In my garden, her double crawled on hands and knees between the roses, digging up weeds before they had a chance to sprout. In life, Dame Okra had an idiosyncratic talent for premonition.
In life, she could also be a cranky, unpleasant person. That would be a potential hazard of gathering everyone together, I supposed. Some were surely difficult people, or had been hurt just struggling to survive. I passed the golden nest of Finch, an old man with a beaked face; he must have been stared at, scorned, threatened with harm. Would he be bitter? Would he be relieved to find a safe place at long last, a place where half-dragons could support each other and be free from fear?
I passed several Porphyrians in a row—the dark, slender, athletic twins, Nag and Nagini, who raced each other over three sand dunes; dignified, elderly Pelican Man, who I was convinced was a philosopher or an astronomer; winged Miserere, circling in the sky. Abdo had hinted that in Porphyry, ityasaari were considered children of Chakhon, a god, and were revered. Maybe the Porphyrians wouldn’t want to come?
Some of them might not, but I had a hunch some would. Abdo did not seem keen on the reverence, wrinkling his nose when he spoke of it, and I had firsthand knowledge that Master Smasher had not always had it easy.
I was approaching Master Smasher’s statuary meadow now, where eighty-four marble statues jutted out of the grass like crooked teeth. Most were missing parts—arms, heads, toes. Master Smasher, tall and statuesque himself, picked through the weeds, collecting broken pieces and reassembling them. He’d made a woman out of hands and a bull entirely of ears.
“That finger-swan is new, isn’t it?” I said, picking my way toward him. He didn’t answer; I’d have been alarmed if he had. Just being this close to him brought it back, though, the memory of the terrible day I’d first seen him, when I had still been seized by involuntary visions, before I’d built this garden and gotten them under control.
My vision-eye had opened upon a craggy mountaintop, high above the city of Porphyry, where a man pulled an oxcart loaded with crates up a stony track too steep for any sensible ox. His wiry shoulders strained, but he was stronger than he looked. Dust frosted his knotted hair; sweat soaked through his embroidered tunic. Through brush and bramble, around brutal lumps of rock, he labored up the rutted path. When the wagon would budge no further, he lifted the crates and carried them to the ruins of an ancient tower that ringed the summit like a crown. It took three trips to move six large crates; he balanced them upon the crumbling wall.
He wrenched each crate open with his bare hands and hurled them, one by one, into the open sky. The boxes tumbled end over end through the emptiness, shedding straw and glassware into the sunlight. I heard the gritty crush of glass, the sickening crack of shattering wood, and this handsome young man, behind it all, shouting in a language I didn’t know, with a rage and despair I knew too well.
When he’d finished breaking everything he’d brought, he stood upon the low wall and looked out over the city toward the horizon, where the sky kissed the violet sea. His lips moved, as if he were reciting a prayer. He stood unsteadily, lashed by the wind, and stared down the sheer mountain face at the glass shards winking invitingly in the sun.
In that instant, impossibly, I knew what he was thinking. He would throw himself down the mountain. His despair washed over me and led to desperation on my part. I was a floating vision-eye; he didn’t know I was there; I had no way to reach him; it couldn’t be done.
I tried because I had to. I reached toward him—with what?—and touched his face and said, Please live. Please.
He blinked like one waking from a dream and stepped back from the edge. He ran his hands over his hair, staggered to a corner of the old fort, and vomited. Then, his shoulders bent like an old man’s, he stumbled back down the mountain toward his cart.
Master Smasher looked so serene now, reconfiguring statues in my garden. I could have taken both his hands and induced a vision, peered down upon whatever he was up to in the real world, but I didn’t like to do it. It felt like spying.
I had never understood what had happened that day, how I’d been able to reach out, and it had never happened again. I could use my garden connection to speak to ityasaari I’d met in the real world, but not to the ones I hadn’t. I could only peer at them, as through a spyglass.
Weariness hit me. I hurried on, ready to get to the end and go to bed. I tended short-limbed, elderly Newt, who rolled contentedly in his muddy wallow among the bluebells; I said good night to widemouthed, shark-toothed Gargoyella, who sat by the Faceless Lady fountain, gargling the waters. I paused
at the swamp to shake my head bemusedly at Pandowdy, the most monstrous of all, an armless, legless silver-scaled slug, big as a standing stone, who lurked under the muddy waters.
Pandowdy was one I wasn’t sure I wanted to find. How would I bring him back if I did? Roll him up a ramp onto a cart? Did he have eyes or ears so we could communicate? It had been hard enough to create this avatar in the garden; I’d had to wade right into the filthy water and lay my hands on his scaly skin, in lieu of taking his nonexistent hands. He’d been ice-cold, and pulsed horribly.
Maybe I didn’t have to gather every one to make the invisible barricade strong enough. I hoped so, because I had no plans to find Jannoula, either. Her Wee Cottage was next, abutting the wetland; its surrounding yard, once full of herbs and flowers, was all gone to nettles and bramble. I picked my way gingerly toward the cottage door, my heart full of mixed emotions—pity, regret, some lingering bitterness. I tugged at the padlock on the door; it felt reassuringly heavy in my hand, cold iron, unrusted, immovable. Relief entered the mix.
Jannoula’s avatar had been different from the very beginning, not passive and benign like the others. She’d been actively aware of this place—of me—and had eventually moved her entire consciousness into my head in an attempt to take me over. I had freed myself only by tricking her into entering this cottage and locking her inside.
I dreaded that happening again, not least because I wasn’t sure how it had happened, why she was different. Abdo was different, too, but that active connection had grown slowly, over time, and he seemed disinclined to move in and stay.
This was my primary worry about Orma’s plan. What did this mind-threading really involve? Was it the kind of link I’d experienced with Jannoula, or something shallower? What if we couldn’t untangle our … our mind-stuff, whatever it was, afterward? What if we hurt each other? As much could go wrong as could go right.
Shadow Scale Page 3
