The draconae! There were dozens of them surrounding him: creatures of glowing jewel and glass, with wings that seemed made of crystallized air, their eyes flashing like shards of erupting lumenis. Some of the draconae were shimmeringly reflective, others glowing and transparent, some round and smooth, and others all angles and probing facets. Each dracona presented him with a different face of mystery as he peered into one gaze, then another. Their kuutekkas were faces of spirit and song: they seemed to dance and waver, as though he were seeing them through rising thermals, or a pool of water.
Am I seeing your outer-world appearances? he whispered in wonderment.
You see us as we are, as nearly as your underrealm vision will allow, murmured a faceted emerald dracona, her voice like wind piping through hollowed stone. We had to see you clearly, though perhaps too abruptly for your comfort. But our needs were great.
I understand.
But now we wish to answer your questions. And to help, if we can.
Yes. He hesitated. All of his deeper questions had fled from his mind, driven out by astonishment. But . . . who are you? What are your names?
There was a sound of laughter, a chuckling stream. There was a sadness that reverberated in the sound like distant waves.
I am Deeplife, said the first, the emerald-glass dracona.
Gentlesong, said a creature of smoothly polished curves.
Lavafire, rang a resonant voice, from a dracona who glowed within like fiery embers.
Cooltouch, said another, with mirrored scales.
Starchime, sang one who made him see blazing, impossibly concentric circles of fire.
Seatouch, whispered a voice like water hissing on sand . . .
And the names continued, one after another, dizzyingly, until he could scarcely keep the names and the draconae straight. But he rejoiced to meet them all, knowing that these draconae held the prophecies in their hearts, and held the knowledge of how the realm might be saved. So many questions rose in his mind that he could not even begin to sort them out.
You want to know, chimed the emerald Deeplife, whose eyes were unfathomable gems, whether the One has returned.
Jael, he said, and heard a murmur of agreement. And—?
Several draconae fluttered their wings. We had hoped you would know, answered . . . Starchime, was it? The ifflings sent their last children to her. But whether they can bring her safely here, we do not know. Nor do we know exactly what she is to do here—or whether sufficient time remains. The Enemy's power grows steadily stronger.
But, murmured Cooltouch, the Words seem to promise that no victory can be won without her—
We cannot be certain, said another, and there was a quick, rippling discussion before Deeplife called for silence.
FullSky reached for words. How can you know . . . so much of what is happening in the realm? Are you not trapped here by the Enemy?
Indeed, but the Enemy—
In his confidence—
His arrogance!
—permits us to see many things, finished Deeplife, hushing the others. He wishes to persuade us of his invincibility. He wishes us to despair, to surrender our Mountain to him.
But . . . he already controls the Mountain, FullSky thought.
His words, though not spoken, were heard. Deeplife replied firmly. He has imprisoned the Mountain. But he does not control it—or us, though he may hold the power of life and death over us.
He can destroy you. He can destroy all of us.
Deeplife nodded, glittering. But he cannot command us. He needs us yet, to control the Forge of Dreams. He needs the despair of the dragons to strengthen his sorcery. But in time, if his web grows strong enough, he may find his own way to control the powers that emanate from this Mountain.
FullSky listened carefully, gazing at the fragile beings who surrounded him. He remembered Highwing's story of how Skytouch, his own mother, had died at the hands of fledgling dragons whose hearts had been ruined by Tar-skel. And he thought: How easily these draconae could be destroyed, in the same way!
You think truly, FullSky. If the Enemy no longer believes he needs us, he will destroy us.
And when—FullSky hesitated—when might he no longer need you? How strong must he become?
The draconae stirred. There was a long pause before Deeplife said, Who knows what Tar-skel, in his pride, will believe—or when? But the Words say that an ending will come, and a new beginning, when the One falls in battle.
Hearing those words, FullSky brooded silently.
Another dracona—the glowing Lavafire—spoke up, in a resonant voice. On that last matter, there is disagreement, even among us.
You mean . . . as to whether it's true?
No, we are certain it is true. The Words came, after all, from the dream forge itself, through an opening in time, we believe. An opening into the future—a future that in our age has become the present. But whether the ending that is foretold will favor the Enemy, or the realm, no one truly—
Before she could finish her thought, she was interrupted by a sudden disturbance. Several of the draconae turned away, rustling and murmuring in agitation. Lavafire queried in rumbling tones, then announced, We have seen something in the Dark Vale. Please wait.
FullSky waited—terrified that the Enemy had discovered his connection with the draconae. He felt a movement, not in the outer reality of the Mountain, but in the underrealm. The light around him faded, and he realized that the draconae were flanking him in an underrealm window, a place of near-darkness.
A vision was coming into focus: a vision of dark, winged creatures taking flight against a deepening evening sky. The sight made him shiver; it was a legion of the Enemy, both drahls and Tar-skel dragons, gathering in the air. Gathering for battle.
The strength of Tar-skel rises, murmured a dracona who evidently had been among the first to see the vision. I heard their leaders speaking. They are bound for the Deep Caverns.
That set off a great commotion. The Deep Caverns are scarcely protected, one of them said. Windrush strengthens the defense elsewhere, said another.
FullSky listened with alarm. Why the Deep Caverns? Were they more important than the dragons had realized?
Has anyone felt the contact of an iffling? Deeplife asked the others urgently. Can we send warning that way?
The ifflings are failing, whispered the hushed voice of Seatouch. Their strength is nearly gone. They cannot reach us now.
Deeplife spoke to FullSky. Have you any way to reach Windrush, quickly?
Not now, FullSky whispered, with a breath of steam.
Then we can only watch.
That is why we are being allowed to see this, Deeplife said softly. So that we might watch, and despair.
FullSky hissed quietly to himself, but said nothing. He knew that despair was the Enemy's greatest weapon, and if the draconae succumbed, there would be little hope indeed.
The drahls and dragons gathered, rising over the harsh twilit peaks of the Enemy's territory. Instead of taking flight to the east, however, they flew in formation in a great, spinning circle. Gradually they closed their orbits inward until they were turning dizzyingly fast, like the storm clouds FullSky had braved in reaching the Dream Mountain. He sensed that threads of the underrealm were being stretched and altered, even as he watched. The empty air in the center of the formation shimmered and opened somehow, and the drahls banked and fell inward through the distorted air, and vanished.
FullSky blinked, feeling a disturbance in the underrealm. The Enemy, he knew, had just released a potent sorcery, sending his legions through some astonishing shortcut to their target. FullSky stared at the image of empty sky over the Dark Vale and felt more helpless than ever.
* * *
Leaving the darkened window, three of the draconae—Deeplife, Starchime, and Gentlesong—remained close to FullSky in the underrealm, but drew him to a place where they could speak quietly. They all knew that the dragons, back in the held land, must even now be fighting f
or their lives. But there was nothing any of them could do about it, and they had agreed that FullSky should learn all he could while he was among them, in hopes that he might take some useful knowledge back through the underrealm with him.
They seemed to be perched on a ledge overlooking a place of silent but intense draconae activity. They were granting him a glimpse of the Forge of Dreams, a place where draconae skilled in the powers of the Mountain labored to maintain the defense of the dreamfires, and through them the integrity of the entire realm and the underrealm, and everything that lived there. From where FullSky sat, the view seemed to shimmer between a darkened cavern with draconae gathered around a glowing hearth—and a breathtaking and impossible-to-grasp view of an all-enveloping darkness full of stars, and a blazing source of light and heat that seemed to be everywhere and nowhere in that darkness, all at once. The underrealm itself seemed to pulse and breathe around the power that flowed from that source.
There are not many to whom we would show this, Deeplife said. But even now, we must keep from you any greater knowledge of the dreamfire. Though it saddens us, you may be vulnerable to the Enemy.
FullSky nodded. He was grateful to be seeing this much.
You took a great risk, venturing past the Enemy to come here. Your presence encourages us, murmured Gentlesong. In the underrealm, she presented a kuutekka of graceful arcs of light, somehow coming together in the shape of a dragon.
My risk increases, the longer I remain. There is so much that I would like to know!
We will share with you—
But, said FullSky, I hardly know where to begin! I wonder what can help us to prevail!
Deeplife spread her wings. They flared with multiple colors, as though sunlight were passing through them. Her eyes seemed infinitely deep, one facet leading into another, and another . . .She sang softly:
A word names the nameless
And light dawns from dread
To the heart of darkness
Are the fearful ones led.
And she was echoed by the other two, who sang, like repeating chimes:
And the realm shall tremble . . .
Raising her voice slightly, Deeplife sang:
Challenging darkness
will come one
Speaking her name
will come one
From that one
comes a beginning
From that one
comes an ending
From that one
all paths diverge.
And the other two echoed:
And surely the realm shall tremble.
FullSky was silent.
Those, said Deeplife, are the Words that have been foremost in our hearts lately. They sustain us in both our hope and our fear.
Words, FullSky thought. He feared them, and longed to know their secrets. But could words defeat the Enemy?
The Enemy knows those Words as well as we do, Deeplife said. And make no mistake—he fears them.
FullSky gazed at her in puzzlement.
Starchime coruscated with radiating circles of light. He fears them because he does not understand them. He knows there will be an ending, and a new beginning. But he does not know what kind of ending, or beginning. Nor do we.
FullSky admitted, I hardly know, myself, whether to draw hope from them, or fear.
The draconae made chiming sounds of assent. That is their nature. But we choose to draw hope.
Hope, FullSky thought. How difficult it was to feel hope when the Enemy was so powerful, and so . . . unknowable. For all of his encounters with the Nail of Strength, he still scarcely knew what or who Tar-skel was.
None of us knows for sure, whispered Gentlesong. But much has been handed down in wisdom from of old.
Legends, he whispered back.
More than legends. Told through legends sometimes, but real nonetheless. Open your thoughts to us, FullSky, and learn of our foe.
FullSky stared at the dracona, and at last met her gaze. He felt her thoughts slipping deep into his . . .
* * *
The images stirred melancholy memories. As a youngling he had been taught much that he had since lost to the dimness of time. Like most draconi, FullSky had not really wanted to remember such things, not when he was a youthful dragon, eager and invincible. These were dark memories, the memories of Tar-skel.
(Indeed,) whispered Gentlesong. (But the time has come to face them, and to learn.)
The Enemy entered the realm in a time before even the draconae's memory (Gentlesong murmured). His life before that was known only through his boastings, recalled and passed on by his servants and foes alike. He came from another realm altogether, where he had been an influential being in a race of immortals or near-immortals. There he had been an artist of some sort, a shaper-crafter of wondrous powers and great renown—but not, it seemed, renown enough. His pride grew with his work; and with that pride came a darkening of his spirit, as his fellows granted him too little praise, too little understanding, too little bowing to his wisdom and his power.
(Was he driven by jealousy?) FullSky asked wonderingly.
(By jealousy, pride . . . and in the end, madness,) answered Gentlesong.
The seeds of madness, perhaps, were present from the beginning. But the rise in fame of another shaper, whose work overshadowed his, brought about a final eruption of envy, and a lust for mastery and revenge. What truly happened then, no one except Tar-skel himself could say now. But somehow he found the power to destroy that realm and all who lived in it, and he fled with his own life. And as he did so, he called himself Nail of Strength, his anger and pride burning hot as a sun.
Over the eons, his anger cooled somewhat, but never went out. After unknown wanderings, he came in time to the dragon realm. He arrived quietly, and studied the realm carefully, before gathering his power here.
(Was he known to the dragons then?) FullSky wondered, trying to recall his own earliest times of learning.
(They knew of his presence, but not yet his nature,) murmured Gentlesong. (Our ancestors were not as wise as they might have been. Many followed him without knowing that they did so.)
(Then little has changed,) FullSky noted, and Gentlesong could only agree, as she continued conveying the images to him.
Tar-skel's sorceries in the underrealm were unparalleled, but that explained only a part of his success. He drew a growing following of dragons under his sway, through appeals to greed, to power-lust, and to fear. He seduced many with promises of great magics, and he offered overproud dragons a chance to rule over others who were more fearful, weak, or timid. These were the early times of dragon civilization, and the dragons had little tradition of history and order. Even the draconae were only just learning the powers of memory and word, and the quiet taming of the dreamfires. But they knew enough, even then, to guard control of the Forge of Dreams from this one.
Across the ages, numerous wars erupted between those who served him and those who hated the turmoil he had brought to the realm. Dragons died in those wars, but Tar-skel did not.
(And yet he was defeated,) FullSky recalled.
(Yes, in the greatest of those wars, he lost most of his followers, and his sorceries were broken,) said Gentlesong. (Some thought that he was dead. But in fact, he only slept, leaving the realm untroubled for a time.)
As Tar-skel slept, stories and legend grew up around his name, keeping his true nature from burning too deeply into the dragon conscience, sparing dragonkind the pain of remembering its own failures. He was portrayed as a spirit that punished wicked dragonlings, or draconi whose courage failed. He became a tragic figure, a dragon whose ambitions outstretched his abilities—a character whose story revealed the price of becoming powerful, but not powerful enough. Many said that he never lived at all, that his was just a name given to an ill wind that blew in the hearts of some dragons—a name given to an impersonal evil, to render it less terrifying.
Thus the true history diminished in dragon memory. The reasons f
or past wars vanished in a murk of discarded guilt and shame. As the draconi forgot their own misdeeds, the fictions became so entangled with reality that even by the draconae, the truths were sometimes misremembered. And so the Enemy was reduced to a fable who had no true life, no true name, no true power.
But though silent for many generations of dragons, Tar-skel indeed had life, had a name, had power.
FullSky, remembering his recent brush with the Enemy, knew well that one's power. Gentlesong paused, sensing his unease, but FullSky urged her to continue sharing . . .
Quietly, while the draconi were forgetting that he had ever lived, the Nail of Strength gathered his resources, his forces, his legions of twisted and altered beings. If from time to time a young fledgling vanished from the slopes of the Dream Mountain, the draconi preferred to believe that accidents were to blame, fledglings who tried to fly before they were ready, or caretaking draconae who were inattentive to their charges. But the singing ones knew, and perhaps even a few of the male dragons suspected: the invisible one was stealing fledglings, stealing them and twisting them into something terrible and deadly, and calling them drahls, servants of the Nail. But of the draconi who flew and dueled and maintained (or so they believed) the strength of the realm, most refused to recognize the truth.
Once again, Tar-skel grew strong, cloaked in silence and invisibility. His darkest works were performed in secrecy; his influences were whispers in the darkness to those who did not even know whose voice they were hearing. If he did speak audibly, it was in a voice of unworldly beauty. Some, like FullSky, were drawn in to challenge his magics, and were captured. His presence was concealed by senseless disputes among the draconi, by brooding distrust of outsiders, by a growing belief that anyone or anything not-dragon—such as a rigger, or even an iffling—must be demon. And this time, his silence lasted . . . until one such outsider was befriended by a dragon, mirroring the ancient prophecy . . . until his sorcery, to his fury, was defeated by that same rigger.
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