Mystic Dragon

by Jason Denzel

  The axthos fled. Sim sheathed his onkai and continued along the shining path leading to the tower. He found it surprisingly easy to remain calm. The path always led him the right way.

  Kelt Apar’s familiar stone tower stood where it normally did, but overlaid atop it was the larger, more imposing spire with carved runes covering every inch. The only entrance that Sim could see was the normal doorway from Kelt Apar’s tower.

  Tibron sat with his back against the doorframe. Blood covered his face, along with angry red burns. He tried to stand when he saw Sim but grunted in pain and collapsed.

  Sim placed a hand on his shoulder. “Rest,” he said.

  “My sister…” Tibron said in Qina. Blood leaked from his swollen lip. “She’s not herself.”

  Sim gave him the barest of nods and moved toward the doorway. Tibron grabbed Sim’s arm with a bloody hand. “Pomella,” he said. “She’s with her.”

  Sim’s heart raced, but he forced himself to retain a calm demeanor. He didn’t know how Pomella had returned to Kelt Apar, but he didn’t have time to dwell on it.

  Sim looked toward the tower’s summit, then returned his gaze to Tibron. “The silver path leads me here,” he said. He didn’t know if other rangers saw that path, but more and more he was convinced Rochella had seen it. Perhaps Tibron could, and if not now someday. “I don’t know what awaits me,” he finished.

  Sim could see Tibron studying him through his swollen face. They remained there calmly for a long moment as chaos rumbled around them. At last, Tibron spoke.

  “I understand,” he said.

  Living in the highlands for years alone had bred in Sim an instinct to hear what was unspoken, to see what could not be observed. That, perhaps, had been Rochella’s true lesson. Through loneliness, one learns to hear. Now, at the entrance to the tower, Sim could see Tibron was learning that lesson, too.

  “Take care of Pomella,” Sim said.

  Tibron nodded. “I will, brother. What will do you do now?”

  “We are rangers,” Sim said, easily pulling out the familiar words and translating them to Qina. “We do what we always do. We move, and we survive.”

  A chill washed over Sim as he crossed the threshold of the tower, along with a strange feeling of remembrance. It was as though he’d done this before, although he’d never previously stepped foot in the tower. The wide double doors behind him closed with a heavy boom, and the sound echoed upward.

  Nothing stirred within the tower except an odd mixed scent of holly and sandalwood, as bitter as some of his memories. The silver path still shone at his feet, although fainter, despite the foyer’s dim illumination, leading up the narrow spiral staircase that hugged the tower’s rounded wall. Each stone shimmered with silver light, and upon their surface he saw runes scratched in. He traced his fingers over some of these runes but could not read them. They were in an entirely different language than he knew.

  Sim sheathed his onkai into walking sticks, and ascended the stairs. The first landing he came to held a door made of dark wood with the same unknowable runes etched upon it. Three thin slits, about as long as his hand, ran vertically through it at his eye level. Sim peered in and saw a nearly empty room with no window. The lone occupant was a man sitting with his back to the door. A lump formed in Sim’s throat. He recognized him, even from behind.

  The man turned, and Sim looked into the face of his long-dead brother. Sim’s heart thundered. “Dane,” he whispered.

  Dane tried to rise, but Sim now saw he was shackled with thick iron chains to the floor. Dane opened his mouth to speak, then dissolved entirely into silver light, leaving the room empty.

  Sim stumbled back from the door and nearly tripped down the stairs. His heart raced and he tried unsuccessfully to calm himself. Dane had been dead nearly twenty years now.

  He gathered himself and called up the stairs where the path still led, “Do not haunt me!”

  He wondered, not for the first time, who or what he would find at the top of the tower, if anything. He continued up the stairs, and found himself wondering where the silver path came from. Was it from the Myst? From Sitting Mother? Or something else entirely? As he ascended each step, he wondered whether the path’s creator—if there was one—had an agenda for him.

  More doors greeted him at each landing, and each one contained slits by which he could’ve peered through. But he ignored them, not wanting to find more dead loved ones. It would be too easy to see them again, too tempting and wonderful to gaze on their faces for just another moment. He willed himself forward, toward the uppermost chamber, leaving his past behind, unseen.

  At last he came to the final door at the top of the staircase. A twisted dragon, tangled upon itself like a Mothic knot, was carved into the wood in place of the open slits contained by the previous doors.

  Sim placed his hand on the door handle but paused. After a moment of reflection, he drew one of his onkai, then entered the room.

  The door closed behind him. There was no handle on the inside. The room itself would normally be cramped, except that a portion of the wall and roof had been destroyed.

  Sitting cross-legged in the center of the room, with her short hair trembling in the wind and her back facing Sim, was a woman Sim recognized.

  “Sitting Mother,” he whispered.

  She turned, and Sim beheld an attractive woman in her late thirties. Her hair was red, with a dusting of freckles upon her pale skin. Had he met her anywhere else, he would have thought she was just another woman from Moth.

  “You came at last to me,” she said.

  “Who are you?” he said. “Truly.”

  The woman faced forward again and stared out the gaping hole in the tower. “I asked that very question to the Nameless Saint once. I was unable to hear her reply, for she was old beyond aging, and, quite possibly, beyond names.”

  Sim walked in a slow circle around her, coming close to the open portion of the wall. Outside, he saw a mountainous landscape and a wide valley in which hundreds of humans and fay ran and fought.

  “But you have a name,” he said.

  “Yes,” said the woman. “I have had many. Two of them, you know, one of which you’ve already spoken.”

  “Saint Brigid,” he said, naming the other.

  The woman smiled but kept her attention on the landscape beyond the tower. “Yes.”

  “Shevia wreaks devastation in your name,” Sim said, coming right to it. “People are dying. Come out of the tower, and bring peace.”

  “Have you forgotten the stories, Sim? You and your sister sang them every Springrise. By the reckoning of your world, I’ve been trapped in this tower for nine hundred years. I cannot escape.”

  Sim glanced at the shattered wall. A feeling of dread crept through him. “Until now.”

  “Shevia has allowed me to escape the tower. But I cannot physically leave. Not yet, anyway.”

  He heard something in her tone, and suddenly knew the truth. “I’m to be your replacement.”

  The woman finally faced him. Her eyes were the same color as his.

  “Yes,” she said.

  * * *

  An explosion of memories and emotions assaulted Pomella as she tumbled through Shevia’s mind. Previously, when she’d descended through Lal’s mind, it had been like strolling through the Mystwood on a clear morning. Lal had barely been alive at the time when Pomella had merged with him, and that, along with his lifetime of calm thinking, as well as his bond with her, had allowed her to travel through his mind with ease. But Pomella had none of those benefits with Shevia, so it was like falling through the thorn-filled branches of a hundred trees.

  Memories from Shevia’s life rained down on her. She struggled to find something, anything, she could cling to in order to find stability.

  As each memory touched Pomella, it became part of her as if it had been her own. In a moment that lasted a lifetime, Pomella lived experience after experience. She was a little girl, just nine years old, peering over the le
dge toward the Obai entourage arriving at her parents’ estate in Qin. She felt her eldest brother’s slap streak across her cheek. The wetness of her tears upon her pillow soaked onto her face. Her skin bled beneath the barbs of the Thornwood. The bitter scent of sandalwood and holly washed over her, bringing visions that foretold the futures of kings and queens, Mystics and commoners.

  A thousand memories, all filled with pain.

  She tasted poison hidden in a wine goblet, and felt the fear and pain of Bhairatonix breaking her. She saw herself through Shevia’s eyes, and experienced the longing for her freedom.

  Within a single heartbeat Pomella lived all of Shevia’s life, and with those experiences came something she hadn’t expected to find.

  Understanding. Empathy. Unity.

  And within every memory, Pomella found Shevia’s friend, this entity she called Sitting Mother. Lagnaraste. Brigid. She lurked there, in the shadows or on her shoulders, waiting and watching and whispering. Slowly, over the course of a decade, she breathed power into Shevia, lifting her up when necessary, or nudging her forward.

  And now Brigid ensnared Shevia, turning her into a wivan. The Saint’s presence surrounded Pomella as well as Shevia, pressing her down. Pomella tried in vain to push back the unseen force, but the Saint was too powerful.

  “It did not have to be this way, Pomella,” said Brigid’s sad voice from the darkness. “You could have been my apprentice and, eventually, my successor. Shevia served her purpose, but she is too fragile, too broken. And she killed my Janid. But now, by coming here, into her mind, I cannot save you. You will break with her.”

  “Help me,” Pomella whispered, hoping Shevia could listen to her. She tumbled through memories without an anchor, unable to find solid ground. She reached for the Myst, but it slipped away from her as she scrabbled. She called to Lal, and her past masters, but either they did not respond or she could not hear through the chaos of imagery and sound that assaulted her.

  “Please, Shevia,” Pomella said, desperately trying to find something they could use together to press back against Brigid’s overwhelming will.

  Like the clouds parting, she realized what she needed. Who she needed. A memory, fresh in Shevia’s experience, rose up, of her standing beside the waterfall that led to Fayün. A man stood there, with matching walking sticks and scraggly blond hair.

  Sim.

  His face was as fresh and clear as ever. As soon as Pomella saw him, her awareness within Shevia’s mind stabilized. The tumbling stopped and she found herself floating in a sea of life and experiences.

  “He is beyond you,” Brigid said. “He is mine, too.”

  Without thinking, Pomella reached out to the formless voice that was Brigid, and merged with her as well. Another rainfall of memories roared by, but she clung to the image of Sim. Three lives—her own, Shevia’s, and Brigid’s—stormed through her. She could no longer see individual memories, but as long as she held on to Sim she maintained herself.

  One memory from Brigid crashed into Pomella with such force that Pomella almost lost her grip on sanity. It was a fresh memory, in which Sim stood beside Brigid as she knelt in the upper chamber of a tower. So vivid that it wasn’t a memory at all. It was happening at that very moment.

  Pomella whispered a single word to Sim.

  * * *

  “We could leave together,” Sim said to Brigid.

  The Saint shook her head. “The Tower must always be occupied.”

  “Why?”

  She replied, but Sim did not listen to her words. At that moment, a voiceless word filled his mind. He didn’t know where it came from, or how it arrived, but in an instant he knew with certainty who the voice belonged to.

  Sitting Mother. Not the woman before him in this moment. Sim didn’t understand how, but the certainty that washed over him was deeper than any truth he’d ever known. The true Sitting Mother—the gentle voice of patient love that had called to him for years in the wilderness, the voice that had guided him back to life—was not Brigid. It was another that echoed perfectly with his heart.

  It was Pomella.

  The word she’d spoken echoed in his mind.

  Strike.

  Brigid was still speaking. “Crow Tallin is ending, but soon—”

  Memory and Remorse flashed in Sim’s hands, crossing each other, as he decapitated the Saint.

  * * *

  Untold torrents of power surged into Shevia. A heartbeat ago, she’d been falling deeper into a sea of darkness, with the only light she could see fading away. Pomella had been there, with Brigid, but Shevia had not been able to speak, or make herself heard in any way.

  Her whole life had been that way. When she made noise that bothered her brothers’ ears, she was slapped. When she’d voiced her interests to her mother, she’d been banished to her room. When she’d ask for instruction or for her Mystic name, Bhairatonix had beaten her to silence. And even now, when Sitting Mother had finally revealed herself to her completely, when Shevia accomplished all that she asked, her mind had been pushed back into the recesses of darkness, and taken over by the woman Pomella and other High Mystics had referred to as Saint Brigid.

  But now, for reasons Shevia didn’t understand, that woman’s presence suddenly vanished, leaving her power behind. It flooded into Shevia, filling her with the might of ten thousand Mystics. The Myst itself became her world. Every life that ever existed, and ever would, was a thread in her fingers that would dance to her callings. They would all listen to her noise now, whether they wanted to hear or not.

  She blinked, and found herself standing at the infinitely thin border of two worlds. In one moment she found herself standing in the middle of Kelt Apar, near the central tower. The grass was on fire around her. Rioting humans, panicked axthos, struggling Mystics, and even terrified goats ran in every direction. A heartbeat later the world refocused and she saw a mountainous landscape with the same human and fay world denizens running about. High in the sky, watching calmly over it all, hung a bloodred moon.

  She held a staff in either hand. They had both been Bhairatonix’s, although only one had been his actual Mystic staff. With a sneer, she used the barest fraction of her power, and incinerated his wooden staff. She clutched his backbone—her staff—tighter in her fist.

  Back and forth the worlds cycled, and with every moment that passed more power surged into her.

  A huge presence loomed behind her. Shevia turned and saw the massive fay dragon gaze down at her with dead eyes. As a test, she moved her hand slightly, and the creature shifted in reply. She controlled its every action. It was an extension of her power, like another Mystic staff.

  A groan sounded from near her feet.

  Pomella pushed herself slowly to her feet, holding a hand her to head. She still gripped her Mystic staff, which had somehow changed form since they’d last seen each other. Shevia remembered how Pomella had touched her mind, and lived her memories. It was like waking from a dream now, but a part of Pomella’s experiences had come to her as well.

  Pomella looked from Shevia to the fay dragon and back.

  “Brigid?” she asked.

  “Gone. I have inherited her power.” There was nothing more Shevia could say. Even though she stood there, wearing robes and flesh, she could not find words in any language she knew to fully express the magnitude of power that coursed through her. She had become a living Saint. With this power she could do anything.

  Pomella used a trembling hand to tuck a tangle of her hair behind an ear. “What will you do?”

  For all her seemingly endless power, Shevia could not find an immediate answer to that question.

  “People are frightened,” Pomella urged. “Dying. You can help them.”

  “I want nothing to do with it,” Shevia said. “I will not be used by you or anybody else again.”

  Pomella stepped toward her, and Shevia readied to destroy her. It would be as easy as breathing. But she held herself back when she saw the look of understanding on Pomel
la’s face.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve lived your memories, Shevia. Use your power. Set yourself free. You don’t need Sitting Mother. Be yourself.”

  “Be myself?” she said, her anger rising. “I am fire. I am death. I am Lagnaraste. Even now, I’m enslaved to my own nature.”

  “Then change your nature,” Pomella said. “My master once gave up his power. He stepped aside for something greater. I believed Brigid had done that, too, but I was wrong. Like you, she had power, but not freedom. And ultimately, the Myst is about freeing yourself, not about gaining power.”

  An unexpected tear welled in Shevia’s eye but burned away from the heat radiating from her skin.

  “I don’t know how,” she confessed.

  Pomella took her hand. Shevia flinched but let her.

  “I will help you. Just ask,” said Pomella.

  Shevia nodded. “Yes,” she managed. “Help me be free.”

  “Then I declare you Unclaimed,” Pomella said. “I withdraw all names you’ve ever held, and by the waters of this world and Fayün, may you be washed anew.”

  There was no discernible change, or shifting of the Myst, to accompany Pomella’s words. The torrent of power still raged in Shevia. But she understood the point, and like a sword of indestructible metal it severed Shevia’s fears, and eased her heart.

  Pomella leaned closer to her and whispered in Shevia’s ear, “If you would accept it, I offer you a new name. Lorraina, after my grandmhathir. She, too, gave up the life of a Mystic for something greater, something honest. She chose love and a simple life, and lived happily until her last days.”

  The name shone on to Shevia like the sun, and she basked in it. She stared at Pomella, and for a moment all the chaos and confusion of Crow Tallin slipped away. The woman before her became timeless, as though she stood at the central hub of a wagon wheel that ground to a halt. The past and future that she’d previously seen for this woman fell away, leaving her only to stand in the moment. Shevia might be the one holding all of Lagnaraste’s might, but it was this other woman would who truly determine all of their fates.