For the most part, we are a reserved people, as befits those who can speak from mind to mind. I was staggered, and honoured beyond words.
He stepped back and stroked my faceplate with his soft Gedri hand, just once. “And so, Hadreshikrar,” he said, smiling upon me, and his smile like his eyes was a thousand years old. “Let the Black Dragon shake that. I dare it.”
“What Black Dragon?” I replied, my soul rising on wings of joy. “Akhor—I—”
“It is well, my friend,” he said, smiling. “You have always known it in any case.”
“Yes,” I said, blinking at him in the firelight. “But sometimes it is well to be reminded. May the Winds bear you wherever you—I mean—”
He started laughing. “If the Winds bear me wherever I wish to fare, I hope you will be there to catch me when they let go!”
It was the fire of my laughter that guided the others to us.
Vilkas
Aral didn’t so much sit down on the ground beside me as plop. Then she threw herself full onto her back with a great sigh and gazed up at the stars in a clear sky. I too looked up from our roaring fire into the deeps of the night. The brighter stars shone like candles on a distant hillside, beckoning weary travellers to warmth and rest. The fainter ones were little children, peeping shyly into the night sky, as if making sure that all was safe ere they came out to dance.
Astoundingly, Gyrentikh and Idai had found Shikrar and the others and we were told that Alikírikh was near. We were camped beside a good-sized river with a rocky shore and a little wood on the near side. Idai had gone upstream to look for fish or whatever else might appear. Gyrentikh, who had borne Jamie and me, had started a separate fire for us before disappearing into the wood, declaring that he sought “something larger than fish.” I hoped he would be willing to share whatever he found. I was ravenous.
However, both Aral and I needed sleep even more than food and the others were likely to be awake for some time, so we stayed by this smaller fire. I was still thinking, stupidly, of offering to help Gyrentikh when I realised that he and Idai were already gone. To be honest, despite being so hungry, I wasn’t exaggerating. I needed rest desperately. I felt like I hadn’t stopped running for a fortnight. When I thought about it, Aral and I really had done an insane amount of work in the last few days. Healing Shikrar’s wing, then a mere few hours later treating that terrible demon gash, and Goddess help us all, rescuing Rathen nearly killed me. Going but a little further back, I realise that mere days before we first helped Shikrar we had been up all night sealing the Lesser Kindred’s soulgems; a few nights before that, I had done something that I still could not fully believe. I had changed a woman’s blood, Lanen’s blood, to match that of the babes beneath her heart. Half human, half dragon.
Goddess preserve us, I thought. In the mad rush I had almost forgotten. What in all the wide world is going to come of that?
And what kind of power dwells within me that I could do such a thing?
I had been running from my own power most of my life, for a very good reason. Since I first manifested as a Healer, very early, I have had recurring dreams. In them I—I fight my way to the top of a mountain and I can touch the sky. Really touch the sky, reach out and feel the soft blueness of it. I am the ruler of the world.
After that, the dream can go one of two ways. In some I become a kind of Sky God, or a Sun God, like the one ‘tis said is worshipped by the tribes of the Far South. In these dreams I use my power to its fullest extent, the land is blessed and I help make the world a glorious place.
In the other dream I also use my full power, but I become the Death of the World. I am fighting a demon, and when it stabs me I do not die—instead I become a demon myself, a thousand times worse than the one I fought. I destroy it with a flick of my power, for I am grown strong as worlds, and then—I kill every living thing, joyfully, and at the last I reach out and crush the sun in my hand, and the world ends.
And I laugh. Every time. Sky God or Death of the World, I laugh. Because either way it feels wonderful. The use of my full power is the ultimate release, complete fulfillment and complete self-indulgence—and it is my fate, inexorable as night following day. And I have been running from that fate ever since I was come to manhood. The single exception was that night when I saved Lanen. It was change her blood or let her die, and Aral challenged me, and I—well, it was hard, yes, but once I had started, I—I felt as if I had entered my dream. It was so obvious what had to be done. I did not think about it, I simply did it. My memories of that night are very strange and blurred, almost as if I were drunk at the time.
Or as if I had called at last on the power that lies within me, churning, roiling like Hellsfire, that it takes all my control to restrain. Every moment of every day.
I did manage to control it that one time I used it, because Aral was there to keep me in line. I don’t know if I can restrain it without her. She keeps urging me to accept my power, even though I have told her the risk. She believes in me utterly. That is very … seductive.
I often feel guilty about Aral. She is dearer to me than anyone, now that my family is gone, but I know she wants more. Damn it.
She is in love with me. I’ve seen it in her eyes. I’ve never done a thing to encourage that, but Hells, I don’t know much about women, maybe she has just misunderstood. Of course I love her, if you want to use the word that way. But I am not in love with her. I value her friendship beyond words, beyond understanding, but it’s friendship rather than anything else. I feel no unrequited longing, as I fear—as I know—she does.
Sometimes I think I should say something. In fact, before all of this madness broke out, I was on the point of telling her—but life has been moving at a dead run since we and Will barely escaped from Verfaren with our lives, and I really don’t think she needs to hear this now. And to be honest, I don’t think I want to deal with it right now either.
Mind you, there is a lot I don’t want to deal with right now.
“Blessed Lady,” said Aral eventually, still gazing at the night sky. “Did you ever, in your wildest dreams, think that you’d fly like that?”
“In my dreams, I fly all the time,” I replied truthfully. “But no,” I said, to her quiet ha! “No, I never imagined I would do it in real life. It was—”
“It was bloody terrifying, that’s what it was,” she interrupted, earnestly. “And horribly uncomfortable. And cold. And I’ve never been so scared as I was in those first few minutes.”
“Right enough,” I said, smiling. “No argument there. But the rest of it was more exhilarating than anything I have ever done, waking or sleeping—and that, my girl, is saying something.” I held my hands before the fire, rubbing them together, in the earnest hope that I would soon be able to feel my fingers again. “I wish they had warned us how bloody freezing it was going to be up there,” I added.
“Idai did warn us,” she said, surprised. “Didn’t Gy—Gywhat’s -his-name tell you?”
“Gyrentikh, and no, I just told you he didn’t.”
“Mmm, sorry,” she said, not really paying attention. “Anyway, it wouldn’t have made much difference. All we could do was keep our hands under our cloaks. Idai was really nice about it, though, she held us right up against her chest, when she thought of it. It was a lot warmer that way.”
“Who were you with?” I asked. “It was all such a scramble when we left, I didn’t even notice.”
“Lanen’s mother, Maran,” she replied.
“Did you get a chance to talk?”
“Not really. We tried yelling back and forth a few times, but the wind was so loud it wasn’t worth it. We ended up pointing a lot.” She gave a grunt and heaved herself with a great effort back into a sitting position. “Besides,” she said rather more quietly, “I’m not the one she wanted to talk to.” She nodded in the direction of the riverbank, where two dark figures, some distance away, stood together in the moonlight.
I glanced at Aral. “I’m surprised you�
�re not trying to hear that,” I said quietly. “I know you’re working on learning more about how people think and feel. I’d have thought that would be a master class, one way and another.”
She gazed at me across her shoulder. The firelight flashed in her eyes. “You forget, Vil. You’re the one with the good shields.” She dropped her face into her hands for a moment, mumbling, “I don’t need to hear what they’re saying. I can feel it from here, Shia save us all.” She inched nearer the fire, pulled up her hood, and wrapped her cloak more closely about her.
“Aral?” I asked. “Are you alright?”
“Oh, Vil,” she whispered, her voice catching in her throat. “Oh, Goddess. I can’t bear it. Talk to me, please, now, about anything. Quick.”
“You never could shield worth a tin ferthing,” I sneered. “Honestly, all the time Magister Rikard spent with you, he might just as well have been teaching the desk.”
“Ha, O Great Mage Vilkas,” she shot back, rising to the challenge and desperately cheerful. “And you’re just the same in the other direction.” She did a decent imitation of Magister Rikard’s slightly nasal voice. “No, Vilkas, you must feel the power, not just use it. Let it touch you as it passes through. That’s what makes us hyooo-mn!”
We both managed a bit of a laugh, though it was fairly pathetic. “At least Rikard is still alive,” she said.
“Thanks for reminding me,” I said, feigning a snarl. “Have you any more gloom? I’ll have it as well, as long as you’re passing it around.”
“Oh, Hells, Vil, I’m sorry,” she said, instantly contrite. “I know. I can’t bear to think about it, not in detail.” To my astonishment she snorted. “But Stone Mik, of all people, to get out in one piece!”
I had to laugh. “Aye. Chalmik, indeed! Never heard his formal name. Poor bastard.”
Aral grinned. “That and all. Can you believe it? And everybody who didn’t call him Mik called him Stoneface. Some folk just can’t enjoy themselves. I always thought he had a terrible time dealing with real people. I have to admit, I was amazed this morning. He handled that poor woman so well.”
We fell silent again, just for a moment, then Aral piped up, “Did you see that town at the bend in the Kai? It was a long way down, but it looked huge! Was it Kaibar, do you think?”
“Must have been. It certainly looked like there was another river joining just there, and the Arlen meets the Kai at Kaibar, doesn’t it?”
We spoke frantically about our trip, about flying—anything that would keep us from dwelling on the thought of our friends and colleagues, dead at the demon’s hands—but we could not sustain it for long. Silence fell again, and for a while neither of us could think of a way to lift it. Trust Aral, though, when she spoke she found a subject that would get me as rattled as she was.
“So, Great Mage Vilkas,” she said, lightly mocking, “what are you going to do when the moment comes?”
“What moment?” I asked, because that was one of the chief things I didn’t want to think about.
“Vil, I know they’re following that bloody great black thing, but the truth is that these dragons are taking us as fast as they can fly towards Berys. He’s a demon-master. Hells, he’s probably the next best thing to the Demonlord himself, now. Whom he seems to have summoned, Goddess help us all, in the form of a Black Dragon, and don’t you want to know how he did that.”
“Not really, no,” I replied sharply.
“Vil, you know what I mean,” she said gently. “I know you fear demons …”
“I don’t damn well fear them,” I snarled. Unfeigned this time.
“Eh?” she said, astounded. “But you can’t fight them. I know you can’t. I thought you said …”
“I don’t fear them, Aral. I hate them,” I replied fervently, rising swiftly to my feet. “Being anywhere near any of them makes my skin crawl and my eyes itch.” I was breathing hard, and my heart hammered in my chest as I spoke out the real truth at last. “I told you I feared them because the truth is so much worse. I hate them so hard it makes my gorge rise up and my throat close. I want to kill them all, Aral,” I purred evilly, kneeling right beside her and dropping my voice to whisper the dark truth, finally to her startled face. “Every one of them. Slowly. Squeezing, choking, crushing, making sure it suffers agonies before I grant it the mercy of death.”
Aral used a word I didn’t know she knew and stared up at me wide-eyed. “Damnation, Vilkas,” she said at last, her voice shaking. “That’s sick.”
“I know,” I snarled, rising and turning away. “Why do you think I hold back? If I kill one I’d feel the need to kill them all, and by Shia’s toenails, I probably could.”
Goddess. My own words were making my stomach chum.
“That doesn’t change the fact that we’re going to be facing them soon,” she said flatly, getting to her feet and brushing off her clothes. “Day after tomorrow, if Shikrar is right.”
“Damn it, Aral, don’t you think I know that!” I shouted at the top of my voice.
“And what are you going to do when Berys summons a Lord of Hell, or we have to deal with the Demonlord?” she asked, her voice now harsh and unrelenting. “I don’t care how loud you yell, Vilkas ta-Geryn. It’s not going to go away. Tomorrow or the day after we’re going to have to deal with Berys, and he’s going to have emptied half the Hells to protect his precious skin. We need to think what to do. You need to think what to do.”
I started to shake and swiftly crossed my arms to hide it.
She must have been weary, rattled, for she saw me tremble and against all sense she reached out to me as if to take me in her arms for comfort. I shrank from her proffered embrace as from hot iron. At that moment it would have been as welcome.
She closed arms and heart and mind and all, in the instant, for which I was profoundly grateful. “Just remember, Vil,” she said, her voice calm and reassuringly normal. “Dreams are just dreams, no matter how powerful. They’re not predictions.”
I did not reply. I could not, I was still shaking, and it would have shown in my voice.
She reached up and laid a hand on my arm. That was bearable, though revealing. I could feel her shaking too. “I know you. I’ve watched you for two years, I’ve worked with you at a depth even you are hardly aware of.” I looked at her then, and saw in the dim firelight that she was smiling, albeit rather crookedly. “Sweet Shia, I’ve opened my spirit-self to you more times than I can count. I know you can be trusted.” In a moment of wild daring, in spite of the rejection I had thrown at her only moments before, she raised her fingertips swiftly to her lips, kissed them, and touched my cheek softly as a butterfly. “Maybe it’s time you learned to trust yourself.”
I could hear her voice shaking with emotion. I had told her long ago that I didn’t like to be touched casually. Even putting her hand on my arm was greatly daring. Planting a once-removed kiss on my cheek was practically an invitation to share her bed.
I knew perfectly well that now would be a good time to take her in my arms for comfort’s sake, to give her what she needed because I knew she needed it. We might both be dead soon, and dear Goddess, who was I to refuse her?
She didn’t give me the chance. She felt me flinch from her hand on my face and turned away, to put a few more sticks on the fire and sit close to it, her arms about her knees. No matter what her heart was shouting at her, she was too good a friend to blame me for her own feelings. She had offered what I could not accept, and she knew it, and she closed in once again.
In the silence we could still hear the soft murmur of the voices by the river. Jamie and Maran.
“Damnation,” sighed Aral from the heart, resting her head on her knees. “Idai, Lady be quick, I beg you. I’m bloody starving and bloody exhausted and those two are breaking my heart.”
Jamie
I’d just started filling my waterskin at the river’s edge when I heard someone on the shore behind me. Old habits die hard, don’t they? I had my belt knife ready to throw when
she spoke.
“It’s just me, Jamie.”
I put the knife away, but to be honest I wasn’t any the less shaken. Worse, if anything. I knew what to do with a foe.
“Maran,” I said, by way of greeting.
It was getting dark, but I could see her grin. “Aye, well, at least you remember my name.”
I said nothing, and she sighed. “I see. You remember other things as well. So do I.” When I didn’t reply, she sighed again. “Ay me, here we go. Yes, it was my fault. No, I never sent word to you or to Lanen. And I never—” She stopped herself, and after a moment went on, more gently, “By all the leaves of spring, Jamie, did you ever in all your days think we’d meet again like this?”
“I never thought we’d meet again at all,” I said. I hadn’t meant my voice to be that harsh. I’d forgotten that rogue vein of poetry in her. It came out at the damnedest times, and it summoned our past together as nothing else could have done.
I heard the faintest grunt, as though she were in pain. “Aye, well, that’s fair. Neither did I,” she said. “I’ve had the easier part. I’ve been able to watch you both over the years. I wish the damned thing had sound as well as sight, I’d have given a lot to have heard some of those arguments,” she said, a hint of lightness in her voice. It went warm and gentle again when she added, “I saw you teach her to use a sword, Jamie, in the middle of the night when Hadron couldn’t see. I watched you when you held her as she cried. I saw the look in her eyes when she was learning how to ride and went over her first jump—and it wasn’t Hadron she looked to with all the pride of her soul, it was you.”
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