Wings of Fire

by Jonathan Strahan

  Peka’s mother Ambris leaned forward. “Why,” she asked curi-ously, “would a miner’s son become a dragon-harrower?” She had a pleasant, craggy face; her dark hair and her slow, musing voice were like Peka’s. Peka saw the Dragon-Harrower ride between two an-swers in his mind. Meeting Ambris’ eyes, he made a choice, and his own eyes strayed to the fire.

  “I left Hoarsbreath when I was twelve. When I was fifteen, I saw a dragon in the mountains east of the city. Until then, I had intended to come back and mine. I began to learn about dragons. The first one I saw burned red and gold under the suns’ fire; it swallowed small hills with its shadow. I wanted to call it, like a hawk. I wanted to fly with it. I kept studying, meeting other people who studied them, seeing other dragons. I saw a night-black dragon in the northern deserts; it scales were dusted with silver, and the flame that came out of it was silver. I saw people die in that flame, and I watched the harrowing of that dragon. It lives now on the underside of the world, in shadow.

  “We keep watch on all known dragons. In the green mid-world belt, rich with rivers and mines, forests and farmland, I saw a whole min-ing town burned to the ground by a dragon so bright I thought at first it was sun-fire arching down to the ground. Someone I loved had the task of tracking that one to its cave, deep beneath the mine-shafts. I watched her die, there. I nearly died. The dragon is sealed into the bottom of the mountain, by stone and by words. That is the dragon which harrowed me.” He paused to sip wormspoor. His eyes lifted, not to Ambris, but to Peka. “Now do you understand what danger you live in? What if one year the dragon sleeps through its mating-time, with the soft heat of the suns making it sluggish from dreaming? You don’t know it’s there, wrapped around your world. It doesn’t know you’re there, stealing its gold. What if you sail your boats full of gold downriver and find the great white bulk of it sprawled like a wall across your passage? Or worse, you find its eye opening like a third, dead sun to see your hands full of its gold? It would slide its length around the mountain, coil upward and crush you all, then breathe over the whole of the island, and turn it dead-white as its heart, and it would never sleep again.”

  There was another silence. Peka felt something play along her spine like the thin, quavering, arthritic fingers of wind. “It’s getting better,” she said, “your tale.” She took a deep swallow of wormspoor and added, “I love sitting in a warm, friendly place listening to tales I don’t have to believe.”

  Kor Flynt shrugged. “It rings true, lass.”

  “It is true,” Ryd said.

  “Maybe so,” she said. “And it may be better if you just let the dragon sleep.”

  “And if it wakes unexpectedly? The winter killed my father. The dragon at the heart of winter could destroy you all.”

  “There are other dangers. Rock falls, sudden floods, freezing winds. A dragon is simply one more danger to live with.”

  He studied her. “I saw a dragon once with wings as softly blue as a spring sky. Have you ever felt spring on Hoarsbreath? It could come.”

  She drank again. “You love them,” she said. “Your voice loves them and hates them, Dragon-Harrower.”

  “I hate them,” he said flatly. “Will you guide me down the moun-tain?”

  “No. I have work to do.”

  He shifted, and the colors rippled from him again, red, gold, sil-ver, spring-blue. She finished the wormspoor, felt it burn in her like liquid gold. “It’s only a tale. All your dragons are just colors in our heads. Let the dragon sleep. If you wake it, you’ll destroy the night.”

  “No,” he said. “You will see the night. That’s what you’re afraid of.”

  Kor Flynt shrugged. “There probably is no dragon, anyway.”

  “Spring, though,” Ambris said; her face had softened. “Sometimes I can smell it from the mainland, and, and I always wonder. Still, after a hard day’s work, sitting beside a roaring fire sipping dragon-spit, you can believe anything. Especially this.” She looked into her glass at the glowering liquid. “Is this some of yours, Peka? What did you put into it?”

  “Gold.” The expression in Ryd’s eyes made her swallow sudden tears of frustration. She refilled her glass. “Fire, stone, dark, wood-smoke, night air smelling like cold tree-bark. You don’t care, Ryd Yarrow.”

  “I do care,” he said imperturbably. “It’s the best wormspoor I’ve ever tasted.”

  “And I put a dragon’s heart into it.” She saw him start slightly; ice and hoar-frost shimmered from him. “If that’s what Hoarsbreath is.” A dragon beat into her mind, its wings of rime, its breath smoldering with ice, the guardian of winter. She drew breath, feeling the vast bulk of it looped around them all, dreaming its private dreams. Her bones seemed suddenly fragile as kindling, and the gold wormspoor in her hands a guilty secret. “I don’t believe it,” she said, lifting her glass. “It’s a tale.”

  “Oh, go with him, lass,” her mother said tolerantly. “There may be no dragon, but we can’t have him swallowed up in the ice like his father. Besides, it may be a chance for spring.”

  “Spring is for flatlanders. There are things that shouldn’t be wak-ened. I know.”

  “How?” Ryd asked.

  She groped, wishing for the first time for a flatlander’s skill with words. She said finally, “I feel it,” and he smiled. She sat back in her chair, irritated and vaguely frightened. “Oh, all right, Ryd Yarrow, since you’ll go with or without me. I’ll lead you down to the shores in the morning. Maybe by then you’ll listen to me.”

  “You can’t see beyond your snow-world,” he said implacably. “It is morning.”

  They followed one of the deepest mine-shafts, and clambered out of it to stand in the snow half-way down the mountain. The sky was lead grey; across the mists ringing the island’s shores, they could see the ocean, a swirl of white, motionless ice. The mainland harbor was locked. Peka wondered if the ships were stuck like birds in the ice. The world looked empty and somber.

  “At least in the dark mountain there is fire and gold. Here, there isn’t even a sun.” She took out a skin of wormspoor, sipped it to warm her bones. She held it out to Ryd, but he shook his head.

  “I need all my wits. So do you, or we’ll both end up preserved in ice at the bottom of a crevice.”

  “I know. I’ll keep you safe.” She corked the skin and added, “In case you were wondering.”

  But he looked at her, startled out of his remoteness. “I wasn’t. Do you feel that strongly?”

  “Yes.”

  “So did I, when I was your age. Now I feel very little.” He moved again. She stared after him, wondering how he kept her smoldering and on edge. She said abruptly, catching up with him,

  “Ryd Yarrow.”

  “Yes.”

  “You have two names. Ryd Yarrow, and Dragon-Harrower. One is a plain name this mountain gave you. The other you got from the world, the name that gives you color. One name I can talk to, the other is the tale at the bottom of a bottle of wormspoor. Maybe you could understand me if you hadn’t brought your past back to Hoars-breath.”

  “I do understand you,” he said absently. “You want to sit in the dark all your life and drink wormspoor.”

  She drew breath and held it. “You talk but you don’t listen,” she said finally. “Just like all the other flatlanders.” He didn’t answer. They walked in silence awhile, following the empty bed of an old river. The world looked dead, but she could tell by the air, which was not even freezing spangles of breath on her hood-fur, that the winter was drawing to an end. “Suns-crossing must be only two months away,” she commented surprisedly.

  “Besides, I’m not a flatlander,” he said abruptly, surprising her again. “I do care about the miners, about Hoarsbreath. It’s because I care that I want to challenge that ice-dragon with all the skill I possess. Is it better to let you live surrounded by danger, in bitter cold, carving half-lives out of snow and stone, so that you can come fully alive for one month of the year?”

  “You could have aske
d us.”

  “I did ask you.”

  She sighed. “Where will it live, if you drive it away from Hoars-breath?”

  He didn’t answer for a few paces. In the still day, he loosed no colors, though Peka thought she saw shadows of them around his pack. His head was bowed; his eyes were burning back at a memory. “It will find some strange, remote places where there is no gold, only rock; it can ring itself around emptiness and dream of its past. I came across an ice-dragon unexpectedly once, in a land of ice. The bones of its wings seemed almost translucent. I could have sworn it cast a white shadow.”

  “Did you want to kill it?”

  “No. I loved it.”

  “Then why do you—” But he turned at her suddenly, almost an-grily, waking out of a dream.

  “I came here because you’ve built your lives on top of a terrible danger, and I asked for a guide, not a gad-fly.”

  “You wanted me,” she said flatly. “And you don’t care about Hoarsbreath. All you want is that dragon. Your voice is full of it. What’s a gad-fly?”

  “Go ask a cow. Or a horse. Or anything else that can’t live on this forsaken, frostbitten lump of ice.”

  “Why should you care, anyway? You’ve got the whole great world to roam in. Why do you care about one dragon wrapped around the tiny island on the top of nowhere?”

  “Because it’s beautiful and deadly and wrapped around my heart-land. And I don’t know—I don’t know at the end of things which of us will be left on Hoarsbreath.” She stared at him. He met her eyes fully. “I’m very skilled. But that is one very powerful dragon.”

  She whirled, fanning snow. “I’m going back. Find your own way to your harrowing. I hope it swallows you.”

  His voice stopped her. “You’ll always wonder. You’ll sit in the dark, drinking wormspoor twelve months out of thirteen, wondering what happened to me. What an ice-dragon looks like, on a winter’s day, in full flight.”

  She hovered between two steps. Then, furiously, she followed him. They climbed deeper into mist, and then into darkness. They camped at night, ate dried meat and drank wormspoor beside a fire in the snow. The night-sky was sullen and starless as the day. They woke to grey mists and travelled on. The cold breathed up around them; walls of ice, yellow as old ivory, loomed over them. They smelled the chill, sweaty smell of the sea. The dead riverbed came to an end over an impassible cliff. They shifted ground, followed a frozen stream downward. The ice-walls broke up into great jewels of ice, blue, green, gold, massed about them like a giant’s treasure hoard. Peka stopped to stare at them. Ryd said with soft, bitter satisfaction,

  “Wormspoor.”

  She drew breath. “Wormspoor.” Her voice sounded small, ab-sorbed by cold. “Ice-jewels, fallen stars. Down here you could tell me anything and I might believe it. I feel very strange.” She uncorked the wormspoor and took a healthy swig. Ryd reached for it, but he only rinsed his mouth and spat. His face was pale; his eyes red-rimmed, tired.

  “How far down do you think we are?”

  “Close. There’s no dragon. Just mist.” She shuddered suddenly at the soundlessness. “The air is dead. Like stone. We should reach the ocean soon.”

  “We’ll reach the dragon first.”

  They descended hillocks of frozen jewels. The stream they fol-lowed fanned into a wide, skeletal filigree of ice and rock. The mist poured around them, so painfully cold it burned their lungs. Peka pushed fur over her mouth, breathed through it. The mist or wormspoor she had drunk was forming shadows around her, flickerings of faces and enormous wings. Her heart felt heavy; her feet dragged like boulders when she lifted them. Ryd was coughing mist; he moved doggedly, as if into a hard wind. The stream fanned again, going very wide before it met the sea. They stumbled down into a bone-searing flow of mist. Ryd disappeared; Peka found him again, bumping into him, for he had stopped. The threads of mist untangled above them, and she saw a strange black sun, hooded with a silvery web. As she blinked at it, puzzled, the web rolled up. The dark sun gazed back at her. She became aware then of her own heartbeat, of a rhythm in the mists, of a faint, echoing pulse all around her: the icy heartbeat of Hoarsbreath.

  She drew a hiccup of a breath, stunned. There was a mountain-cave ahead of them, from which the mists breathed and eddied. Icicles dropped like bars between its grainy-white surfaces. Within it rose stones or teeth as milky white as quartz. A wall of white stretched beyond the mists, vast, earthworm round, solid as stone. She couldn’t tell in the blur and welter of mist, where winter ended and the dragon began.

  She made a sound. The vast, silvery eyelid drooped like a parch-ment unrolled, then lifted again. From the depths of the cave came a faint, rumbling, a vague, drowsy waking question: Who?

  She heard Ryd’s breath finally. “Look at the scar under its eye,” he said softly. She saw a jagged track beneath the black sun. “I can name the Harrower who put that there three hundred years ago. And the broken eyetooth. It razed a marble fortress with its wings and jaws; I know the word that shattered that tooth, then. Look at its wing-scales. Rimed with silver. It’s old. Old as the world.” He turned finally, to look at her. His white hair, slick with mists, made him seem old as winter. “You can go back now. You won’t be safe here.”

  “I won’t be safe up there, either,” she whispered. “Let’s both go back. Listen to its heart.”

  “Its blood is gold. Only one Harrower ever saw that and lived.”

  “Please.” She tugged at him, at his pack. Colors shivered into the air: sulphur, malachite, opal. The deep rumble came again; a shadow quickened in the dragon’s eye. Ryd moved quickly, caught her hands. “Let it sleep. It belongs here on Hoarsbreath. Why can’t you see that? Why can’t you see? It’s a thing made of gold, snow, dark-ness—” But he wasn’t seeing her; his eyes, remote and alien as the black sun, were full of memories and calculations. Behind him, a single curved claw lay like a crescent moon half-buried in the snow.

  Peka stepped back from the Harrower, envisioning a bloody moon through his heart, and the dragon roused to fury, coiling upward around Hoarsbreath, crushing the life out of it. “Ryd Yarrow,” she whispered. “Ryd Yarrow. Please.” But he did not hear his name.

  He began to speak, startling echoes against the solid ice around them. “Dragon of Hoarsbreath, whose wings are of hoarfrost, whose blood is gold—” The backbone of the hoar-dragon rippled slightly, shaking away snow. “I have followed your path of destruction from your beginnings in a land without time and without seasons. You have slept one night too long on this island. Hoarsbreath is not your dragon’s dream; it belongs to the living, and I, trained and titled Dragon-Harrower, challenge you for its freedom.” More snow shook away from the dragon, baring a rippling of scale, and the glistening of its nostrils. The rhythm of its mist was changing. “I know you,” Ryd continued, his voice growing husky, strained against the silence. “You were the white death of the fishing-island Klonos, of ten Har-rowers in Ynyme, of the winter palace of the ancient lord of Zuirsh. I have harried nine ice-dragons—perhaps your children—out of the known world. I have been searching for you many years, and I came back to the place where I was born to find you here. I stand before you armed with knowledge, experience, and the dark wisdom of necessity. Leave Hoarsbreath, go back to your birthplace forever, or I will harry you down to the frozen shadow of the world.”

  The dragon gazed at him motionlessly, an immeasurable ring of ice looped about him. The mist out of its mouth was for a moment suspended. Then its jaws crashed together, spitting splinters of ice. It shuddered, wrenched itself loose from the ice. Its white head reared high, higher, ice booming and cracking around it. Twin black suns stared down at Ryd from the grey mist of the sky. Before it roared, Peka moved.

  She found herself on a ledge above Ryd’s head, without remem-bering how she got there. Ryd vanished in a flood of mist. The mist turned fiery; Ryd loomed out of them like a red shadow, dispersing them. Seven crescents lifted out of the snow, slashed down at him scarring the air. A
strange voice shouted Ryd’s name. He flung back his head and cried a word. Somehow the claw missed him, wedged deep into the ice.

  Peka sat back. She was clutching the skin of wormspoor against her heart; she could feel her heartbeat shaking it. Her throat felt raw; the strange voice had been hers. She uncorked the skin, took a deep swallow, and another. Fire licked down her veins. A cloud of ice billowed at Ryd. He said something else, and suddenly he was ten feet away from it, watching a rock where he had stood freeze and snap into pieces.

  Peka crouched closer to the wall of ice behind her. From her high point she could see the briny, frozen snarl of the sea. It flickered green, then an eerie orange. Bands of color pinioned the dragon briefly like a rainbow, arching across its wings. A scale caught fire; a small bone the size of Ryd’s forearm snapped. Then the cold wind of the dragon’s breath froze and shattered the rainbow. A claw slapped at Ryd; he moved a fraction of a moment too slowly. The tip of a talon caught his pack. It burst open with an explosion of glittering colors. The dragon hooded its eyes; Peka hid hers under her hands.

  She heard Ryd cry out in pain. Then he was beside her instead of in several pieces, prying the wormspoor out of her hands.

  He uncorked it, his hands shaking. One of them was seared silver.

  “What are they?” she breathed. He poured wormspoor on his burned hand, then thrust it into the snow. The colors were beginning to die down.

  “Flame,” he panted. “Dragon-flame. I wasn’t prepared to handle it.”

  “You carry it in your pack?”

  “Caught in crystals, in fire-leaves. It will be more difficult than I anticipated.”

  Peka felt language she had never used before clamor in her throat. “It’s all right,” she said dourly. “I’ll wait.”

  For a moment, as he looked at her, there was a memory of fear in his eyes. “You can walk across the ice to the mainland from here.”

  “You can walk to the mainland,” she retorted. “This is my home. I have to live with or without that dragon. Right now, there’s no living with it. You woke it out of its sleep. You burnt its wing. You broke its bone. You told it there are people on its island. You are going to destroy Hoarsbreath.”