Dragon Space

by Jeffrey A. Carver

  Are you there? he whispered softly, not wanting to awaken the wrong presence.

  In answer, he heard the sighing of the wind. But the wind seemed to speak. I am here, it whispered. Trying . . . And then the words faded back into a lifeless sigh. Was that all it had been—the sound of the wind? Windrush felt flame tingle in the back of his throat.

  Trying?

  The wind gusted suddenly, and a cloud of dust whirled up from the ravine ahead of him. As the dust spun, the air slowly cleared and in the place of the dust he saw a face—the face of a dragon. He gasped in recognition. It was a male face, but shimmering and near-crystalline, almost like a dracona's. The eyes were dark, like wells of emptiness.

  FullSky? he whispered in shock. FULLSKY?

  It seemed an eternity ago that FullSky had vanished. Windrush's heart trembled at the thought that his brother might still be alive. He rushed forward, sure that the apparition must be unreal.

  Stay! the dragon's dark eyes seemed to warn. Come no closer!

  Is it you—my brother? Windrush asked, barely able to contain his grief and wonder. We thought you were dead.

  The other dragon gazed at him with what seemed an expression of exquisite pain. He shook his glassy head. Not yet, his eyes said. Not yet.

  You're alive! Windrush breathed. But you cannot speak?

  There was no answer, but the eyes agreed. FullSky glanced meaningfully up into the sky.

  Danger near? Windrush drew a sharp breath. Dream Mountain? he whispered. Can you help us find the Dream Mountain? His brother nodded slightly. Windrush felt dizzy with astonishment. But he remembered as if it were yesterday—FullSky's powers of the underrealm were like no other living dragon's. He thought suddenly of the lumenis feeding. The vision! Was that your doing?

  His brother's eyes met his, but were unreadable now, and somehow unutterably distant. With a pang, he realized how much he had missed that annoying trait in his brother. He had never been able to tell what FullSky was thinking. He would give anything to know now. Was it a message from you? he breathed.

  His brother's kuutekka rose large before him, those dark, bottomless eyes seemingly focused in another realm entirely. Yes, they seemed to say, he had had a hand in the creation of the vision. What did Windrush think?

  Windrush remembered suddenly the iffling telling him of one who was trying to help. Had it meant FullSky?

  FullSky's eyes shifted and grew wide with alarm. Go! his gaze cried almost audibly in Windrush's mind. You must seek help from beyond the realm!

  Wait! Windrush protested. We have to find the Dream Mountain; we are lost without it! Can you help? Where are you? How can I find you again!

  His brother's gaze was like the fire of lumenis. Go! it cried. Seek help! Then, without any perceptible change in the underweb, he was gone. The ravine was empty.

  Windrush hissed in dismay. He crept forward, looking for any remaining sign of his brother's presence. But FullSky's kuutekka was gone without a trace. Had he not actually seen FullSky, seen those eyes . . . But Windrush had no doubt he had just seen his brother alive—no more than he'd doubted the lumenis vision.

  Looking skyward, he saw a formation of dark clouds coiling strangely. There was a terrifying sensation in the air now, the underrealm ringing soundlessly, as though a great change were coming, a power moving nearby, approaching from beyond the ravine. Some servant of the Enemy—or perhaps the Enemy himself? Windrush sensed that it was looking for him and knew that he was here, but perhaps did not yet know precisely where. And perhaps it did not yet know his name. FullSky's command echoed in his mind: Go!

  Windrush turned and fled the way he had come, with the speed and silence of thought. Within moments he had left that place behind—and the underrealm as well. Emerging in the outer world, he stared in hissing astonishment at his own cavern, glowing redly about him in the light and silence of the hearth.

  Chapter 8

  Children of the Iffling

  FOR A long time afterward, the dragon lay staring at the draxis burning in his hearth. It seemed that the more he learned, the less he understood. First the demon. Then the vision. Now the strange paths of the underrealm, and his lost brother. FullSky! Still alive! But where was he, and what was he doing, and why? Seek help from beyond. Clearly FullSky was aware of the struggle, and was on the side of his brothers. Had he created those pathways?

  Windrush sensed footsteps nearby. "Iffling," he murmured, shifting his eyes. "Have you observed my efforts since we last spoke?"

  "We know that you moved in the underrealm," the iffling answered. "Did you learn anything helpful?"

  Windrush rumbled thoughtfully. "Helpful? Who can say? I met my brother FullSky, whom I had thought dead! The lumenis vision was his work. He seems to want to help us, but is hindered somehow."

  "Ah," whispered the iffling, dark animal-eyes blinking. "Indeed!"

  "And he said that I must seek help." The dragon hesitated. "From beyond the realm."

  The iffling seemed to tremble.

  "That is what he said," Windrush repeated, suddenly thinking: From beyond life will come one. Jael!

  "Did you learn . . . anything . . . of the Dream Mountain?" the iffling whispered.

  Windrush shook his heavy head. He dug with a foreclaw at the stone floor of his cavern. He knew now whose help he must seek. But he didn't know how. The iffling swayed, waiting for him to speak. Windrush drew a breath. "I cannot tell you how terribly I miss my friend Jael—how often I have wished that she could return to aid us, as she aided my father!" Windrush's breath whistled in and out as he jabbed at the unyielding stone with his talon. "And now the vision, the Words, FullSky—everything says to me that she must return, if we are to have any hope. Perhaps she can find the draconae, where we cannot. Perhaps she could appeal to the rigger-spirit, Hodakai, to share his knowledge with us. Perhaps," and his voice became husky, "she could unite us, as we cannot seem to unite ourselves."

  When he looked at the iffling, he was surprised to see its dark, oversized eyes moist as though with grief. It was blinking slowly and repeatedly, in apparent distress. "Dragon Windrush . . . what you seek may be possible. But we dared not try . . . without knowing."

  Windrush cocked one eye down at the creature. How much rakhandroh could he experience in one night? "Iffling! You know a way to reach Jael? Why haven't you said this before?"

  The iffling craned its neck to peer back up at him. "Dragon, please—we seek the Dream Mountain as much as you do."

  "That is not what I asked."

  The iffling trembled. "It is far from sure. There are grave risks. I cannot say for certain. I cannot say."

  "Do not toy with me!" the dragon roared.

  The iffling flickered, losing its solidity for a moment. Windrush flared his nostrils angrily. The iffling seemed to regain its strength. "There is one way that we might be able to reach out to her world. But it could cost us dearly, dragon—more than you can know. I must return to speak with the others."

  Windrush squinted. "What is this cost that you speak of?"

  The creature became transparent, then a thin flame dancing in the air. "That," it whispered, "must be our concern alone. Dragon, what we can do, we will. But do not abandon your search! It may yet be the thing that will save the realm!"

  "But—" The flame was gone, before Windrush could complete his question. He stared at the spot where the iffling had stood. Rakhandroh! But as exasperating as the ifflings were, he knew he would hate not to have them as allies.

  At last he vented steam from his nostrils. I hope the cost is not too great, he thought. Farewell, iffling.

  The draxis-fire was burning low. This night had drawn on long already. He closed his eyes, thinking of the underrealm windows that awaited him. Before the thought was finished in his mind, he had drifted into an unquiet sleep.

  * * *

  The ifflings spoke softly but urgently together, their thoughts murmuring in the flickeringly luminous place that was their home in exile. There was a
great disturbance among them. Whatever they decided, there must be no delay.

  The path to the Dream Mountain must be found, or it would not be just the dragons who faced the choice of dwindling and dying, or being transformed by the Enemy into something ungarkkondoh. The ifflings too would fade from existence if the Mountain were not found, if they did not rejoin the heartfires from which they had sprung. But even if they succeeded, even if they brought the One of the prophecies back to the realm, the sacrifice required could threaten their own survival. They had so little strength left before their own fires were exhausted!

  And yet, if they refused, the future seemed clear. The dragons were foundering in the struggle. The dragons' strength, already failing, would die as their deeper vision and wisdom grew clouded, as the prophecies were lost. Too many of the draconi had already forgotten their history and their knowledge of why the draconae were important, beyond reproduction of their kind. And even for that last, many had already lost their concern. They cared now only for some hollow notion of victory, as their numbers dwindled and lumenis was destroyed by the Enemy. The draconae were their wisdom; without the draconae, they were missing the heart of what made them dragon, garkkondoh. Even the ifflings missed the songs and tales of the draconae!

  Nor was it just the dragons and ifflings who were endangered. From the tiny cavern sweepers to the trees and shadow-cats and flyers of the forests, to the distant denizens of the seas, all creatures of the realm were falling under the shadow of the Nail—and not just the creatures, but the realm itself. It could survive without ifflings, maybe, but never without the dragons to defend it. And if the realm fell, the Enemy would gain complete control of the underrealm—and more than that. The ifflings had glimpsed the vast web of power that the Enemy was spinning, a web that could reach across the twists and layers and folds of reality into entirely different realms, perhaps even the static realm of Jael and her people. That was what the ifflings had seen in Windrush's vision—FullSky's vision. Not until this night had they truly understood the Enemy's avarice, or the reach of his claw. It seemed that more of creation than they had imagined might be threatened by the one who called himself Tar-skel, the Nail of Strength.

  Therefore, they must do what they must. They might even die as a result—but if they did not die now, what would life under Tar-skel be, if not a living death? Should they not therefore act as they could, in keeping with the Words, to bring life to the ancient prophecies?

  The discussion seemed to go on for a very long time, flame mingling with flame, the glow flickering around them, brighter and dimmer. As might have been measured by any others, the debate took hardly any time at all. The voices whispered:

  —to touch the static realm with our thought—

  —to be heard there—

  —we must send the children—

  —the last!—

  —but only born into that place can they seek out and speak to the One, where she dwells—

  —and if they fail, there will be no others, none to seek out the Dream Mountain—

  —and without its fires, there can never be others—

  —-no other children—

  —but if we do not send them, the Nail will triumph. Shall we save them, only to be the last to search and struggle in vain?—

  —they must go—

  —but first let us reach out with our thought to listen, to find the One!—

  —we have listened—

  —we sense her dreams and her longings for this place—

  —then let us begin—

  —without fear—

  —to prepare the children far their perilous path—

  —to send them out alone—

  —if only there were a way to go with them, to protect and guide—

  —there is none—

  —we must teach them in their very conception, and then trust them—

  —there is no other way—

  And in the end, they began the process, as they had feared all along that they would, turning inward the last of their strength toward the one great task still within their power . . . the creation of the last children who could ever be spawned, the last new ifflings—until the day came, if it ever did, when their life energy could be regenerated in the dreamfires of the Mountain.

  The creation of the children was a thing of mystery, only partially under their control. The forces of space and time responded to their urgings, twisting and curling and knitting together in new and sometimes unexpected ways, piercing through the layers and boundaries that separated realm from realm, underrealm from underrealm. Only in this creation-act were the realms brought so close to one another, made so intimate, one to another. As the iffling-children took shape in that ephemeral boundary-realm, they were blessed—or burdened—by a gift of knowledge from their elders, an awareness and a terrible need impressed upon the very core of their being.

  In the final moments of creation and birth, the ifflings, in an agonizing act of will, turned their children out—dispatching them not to a place of security where they might safely grow to fullness, but rather across a fleeting opening into the static realm, into the strange cold universe where the rigger Jael lived. . . .

  * * *

  They were born like winks of light in a universe to which they were strangers, even in the deep memory of their heritage. They were five in number, dancing and twinkling in the darkness of the void. For a time there was no understanding among them: life came first, and then sight and hearing and thought, and only gradually memory and dawning consciousness, and finally an uncertain kind of understanding.

  They grew and matured, floating in the darkness, drinking the radiance of the nearby (distant!) sun. There was a cooler world close by, and in time they were drawn toward it as though toward home. There was one they must find and meet there, one to whom they must speak, though they did not yet comprehend exactly what it was they would say.

  They skated on space and time like water-skimmers over a pond. They would find their way, and deliver their message.

  Their message was crucial. Nothing must stop them, nothing living or dead.

  * * *

  * Accursed ifflings. *

  Far across the realm and the underrealm, another felt the stirrings in the space-time boundaries, felt the sudden emergence of new life in the iffling-children, felt the ripples of their breakthrough into the static realm. This one's heart and being were as closely tied to the fabric of the underrealm as the ifflings', and it knew instantly that it had just felt a shift in power, a shift that it recognized as the genesis of a profoundly important event. It felt the stirring and rippling of the iffling-births as a movement toward the long-awaited, long-dreaded fulfillment of the prophecies:

  From that one

  comes a beginning

  From that one

  comes an ending

  And most surely the realm shall tremble.

  No one knew better the Words as they had been born, ages ago, in a vision from the Dream Mountain. No one had pondered more deeply upon their truth and ambiguity.

  The one will fall

  as the battle is fought

  Upon her death

  is the ending wrought.

  No one had thought harder, with more fear or more hateful hope, upon the reappearance of the One from beyond the realm. That reappearance was to be the crisis point about which the ending, for better or worse, would turn. In no way did the Nail intend to leave the summoning and the arrival of the One in the care of iffling-children.

  * Rent! I require you! *

  There were ways to take control of a situation even when it had passed out of the realm itself. The ifflings were not the only creatures who could, at need, project their presence into the static realm.

  As dragonlings had been twisted into drahls, so could other beings be transmuted to suit the needs of the one called the Nail. It was time that the near-ifflings, the cavern sprites, be put to use in the life to which they had been born. Rent could perf
orm the actual work, under the Nail's supervision. The sprites would be altered, strengthened, made shrewder and more cunning and ferocious. They would be reborn into a life of long journey—a journey of pursuit, and deception, and if need be, destruction. They would become false-ifflings, warriors of fire—transformed in the turbulence of the underrealm, molded by the one who would soon control not just the underrealm, but all of the realms.

  They would follow the iffling-children, and the result would be most satisfying. The demon Jael would come, yes. But not to the fulfillment of the Words as the dragons clung to them.

  The Dream Mountain would be kept safe from the dragons and the ifflings. And the realms would be his.

  * Rent, I require your assistance NOW. *

  * * *

  In the cold darkness of the void, the warriors of fire took form and grew quickly to the fullness of their strength. Led by one called Jarvorus, the strongest and shrewdest of them, the false-ifflings shone like icy diamonds in the dark as they drew their given memories from hidden places within, and searched for their direction in this strange realm into which they had been born. They sensed somehow that they were different from their forebears, that their heritage had been changed for them; they were special creations under the command of one who was never to be challenged. This was good and proper and right. It was the destiny for which they had been born.

  Casting their senses outward, they soon discovered the nearby others, the ones they were instructed to defeat. They did not move against these others yet, but observed them, biding their time. Like the iffling-children, the warriors would search for their quarry, the one about whom victory and defeat would soon dance like a spirit in a jar.