Wings of Fire

by Jonathan Strahan

“Just ‘Ah,’” the dragon answered. “Does every ah have to mean something?”

  Brunhilda sighed impatiently. “How long does this go on? Everybody else who comes up here is wonderful and brave. You just stand around talking about how miserable you are. Why don’t you fight?”

  “Like the others?” asked Bork.

  “They’re so brave,” she said.

  “They’re all dead.”

  “Only a coward would think of that,” she said scornfully.

  “It hardly comes as a surprise to you,” Bork said. “Everyone knows I’m a coward. Why do you think I came? I’m of no use to anyone, except as a machine to kill people at the command of a King I despise.”

  “That’s my father you’re talking about!”

  “I’m nothing, and the world will be better without me in it.”

  “I can’t say I disagree,” Brunhilda said.

  But Bork did not hear her, for he felt the touch of the dragon’s tail on his back, and when he looked at the dragon’s eyes they had stopped glowing so brightly. They were almost back to normal, in fact, and the dragon was beginning to reach out its claws.

  So Bork swung his ax, and the dragon dodged, and the battle was on, just as before.

  And just as before, at sundown Bork stood pinned between tail and claws and teeth.

  “Are you afraid to die?” asked the dragon, as it had before.

  Bork almost answered yes again, because that would keep him alive. But then he remembered that he had come in order to die, and as he looked in his heart he still realized that however much he might fear death, he feared life more.

  “I came here to die,” he said. “I still want to.”

  And the dragon’s eyes leaped bright with light. Bork imagined that the pressure of the claws lessened.

  “Well, then, Sir Bork, I can hardly do you such a favor as to kill you.” And the dragon let him go.

  That was when Bork became angry.

  “You can’t do this to me!” he shouted.

  “Why not?” asked the dragon, who was now trying to ignore Bork and occupied itself by crushing boulders with its claws.

  “Because I insist on my right to die at your hands.”

  “It’s not a right, it’s a privilege,” said the dragon.

  “If you don’t kill me, then I’ll kill you!”

  The dragon sighed in boredom, but Bork would not be put off. He began swinging the ax, and the dragon dodged, and in the pink light of sunset the battle was on again. This time, though, the dragon only fell back and twisted and turned to avoid Bork’s blows. It made no effort to attack. Finally Bork was too tired and frustrated to go on.

  “Why don’t you fight!” he shouted. Then he wheezed from the exhaustion of the chase.

  The dragon was panting, too. “Come on now, little man, why don’t you give it up and go home. I’ll give you a signed certificate testifying that I asked you to go, so that no one thinks you’re a coward. Just leave me alone.”

  The dragon began crushing rocks and dribbling them over its head. It lay down and began to bury itself in gravel.

  “Dragon,” said Bork, “a moment ago you had me in your teeth. You were about to kill me. The old woman told me that truth was my only defense. So I must have lied before, I must have said something false. What was it? Tell me!”

  The dragon looked annoyed. “She had no business telling you that. It’s privileged information.”

  “All I ever said to you was the truth.”

  “Was it?”

  “Did I lie to you? Answer—yes or no!”

  The dragon only looked away, its eyes still bright. It lay on its back and poured gravel over its belly.

  “I did then. I lied. Just the kind of fool I am to tell the truth and still get caught in a lie.”

  Had the dragon’s eyes dimmed? Was there a lie in what he had just said?

  “Dragon,” Bork insisted, “if you don’t kill me or I don’t kill you, then I might as well throw myself from the cliff. There’s no meaning to my life, if I can’t die at your hands!”

  Yes, the dragon’s eyes were dimming, and the dragon rolled over onto its belly, and began to gaze thoughtfully at Bork.

  “Where is the lie in that?”

  “Lie? Who said anything about a lie?” But the dragon’s tail was beginning to creep around so it could get behind Bork.

  And then it occurred to Bork that the dragon might not even know. That the dragon might be as much a prisoner of the fires of truth inside him as Bork was, and that the dragon wasn’t deliberately toying with him at all. Didn’t matter, of course. “Never mind what the lie is, then,” Bork said. “Kill me now, and the world will be a better place!”

  The dragon’s eyes dimmed, and a claw made a pass at him, raking the air by his face.

  It was maddening, to know there was a lie in what he was saying and not know what it was. “It’s the perfect ending for my meaningless life,” he said. “I’m so clumsy I even have to stumble into death.”

  He didn’t understand why, but once again he stared into the dragon’s mouth, and the claws pressed gently but sharply against his flesh.

  The dragon asked the question of Bork for the third time. “Are you afraid, little man, to die?”

  This was the moment, Bork knew. If he was to die, he had to lie to the dragon now, for if he told the truth the dragon would set him free again. But to lie, he had to know what the truth was, and now he didn’t know at all. He tried to think of where he had gone astray from the truth, and could not. What had he said? It was that he was clumsy; it was true that he was stumbling into death. What else then?

  He had said his life was meaningless. Was that the lie? He had said his death would make the world a better place. Was that the lie?

  And so he thought of what would happen when he died. What hole would his death make in the world? The only people who might miss him were the villagers. That was the meaning of his life, then—the villagers. So he lied.

  “The villagers won’t miss me if I die. They’ll get along just fine without me.”

  But the dragon’s eyes brightened, and the teeth withdrew, and Bork realized to his grief that his statement had been true after all. The villagers wouldn’t miss him if he died. The thought of it broke his heart, the last betrayal in a long line of betrayals.

  “Dragon, I can’t outguess you! I don’t know what’s true and what isn’t! All I learn from you is that everyone I thought loved me doesn’t. Don’t ask me questions! Just kill me and end my life. Every pleasure I’ve had turns to pain when you tell me the truth.”

  And now, when he had thought he was telling the truth, the claws broke his skin, and the teeth closed over his head, and he screamed. “Dragon! Don’t let me die like this! What is the pleasure that your truth won’t turn to pain? What do I have left?”

  The dragon pulled away, and regarded him carefully. “I told you, little man, that I don’t answer questions. I ask them.”

  “Why are you here?” Bork demanded. “This ground is littered with the bones of men who failed your tests. Why not mine? Why not mine? Why can’t I die? Why did you keep sparing my life? I’m just a man, I’m just alive, I’m just trying to do the best I can in a miserable world and I’m sick of trying to figure out what’s true and what isn’t. End the game, dragon. My life has never been happy, and I want to die.”

  The dragon’s eyes went black, and the jaws opened again, and the teeth approached, and Bork knew he had told his last lie, that this lie would be enough. But with the teeth inches from him Bork finally realized what the lie was, and the realization was enough to change his mind. “No,” he said, and he reached out and seized the teeth, though they cut his fingers. “No,” he said, and he wept. “I have been happy. I have.” And, gripping the sharp teeth, the memories raced through his mind. The many nights of comradeship with the knights in the castle. The pleasures of weariness from working in the forest and the fields. The joy he felt when alone he won a victory from the Duke, the r
ush of warmth when the boy brought him the single fish he had caught; and the solitary pleasures, of waking and going to sleep, of walking and running, of feeling the wind on a hot day and standing near a fire in the deep of winter. They were all good, and they had all happened. What did it matter if later the knights despised him? What did it matter of the villagers’ love was only a fleeting thing, to be forgotten after he died? The reality of the pain did not destroy the reality of the pleasure; grief did not obliterate joy. They each happened in their time, and because some of them were dark it did not mean that none of them were light.

  “I have been happy,” Bork said. “And if you let me live, I’ll be happy again. That’s what my life means, doesn’t it? That’s the truth, isn’t it, dragon? My life matters because I’m alive, joy or pain, whatever comes, I’m alive and that’s meaning enough. It’s true, isn’t it, dragon! I’m not here to fight you. I’m not here for you to kill me. I’m here to make myself alive!”

  But the dragon did not answer. Bork was gently lowered to the ground. The dragon withdrew its talons and tail, pulled its head away, and curled up on the ground, covering its eyes with its claws.

  “Dragon, did you hear me?”

  The dragon said nothing.

  “Dragon, look at me!”

  The dragon sighed. “Man, I cannot look at you.”

  “Why not?”

  “I am blind,” the dragon answered. It pulled its claws away from its eyes. Bork covered his face with his hands. The dragon’s eyes were brighter than the sun.

  “I feared you, Bork,” the dragon whispered. “From the day you told me you were afraid, I feared you. I knew you would be back. And I knew this moment would come.”

  “What moment?” Bork asked.

  “The moment of my death.”

  “Are you dying?”

  “No,” said the dragon. “Not yet. You must kill me.”

  As Bork looked at the dragon lying before him, he felt no desire for blood. “I don’t want you to die.”

  “Don’t you know that a dragon cannot live when it has met a truly honest man? It’s the only way we ever die, and most dragons live forever.”

  But Bork refused to kill him.

  The dragon cried out in anguish. “I am filled with all the truth that was discarded by men when they chose their lies and died for them. I am in constant pain, and now that I have met a man who does not add to my treasury of falsehood, you are the cruelest of them all.”

  And the dragon wept, and its eyes flashed and sparkled in every hot tear that fell, and finally Bork could not bear it. He took his ax and hacked off the dragon’s head, and the light in its eyes went out. The eyes shriveled in their sockets until they turned into small, bright diamonds with a thousand facets each. Bork took the diamonds and put them in his pocket.

  “You killed him,” Brunhilda said wonderingly.

  Bork did not answer. He just untied her, and looked away while she finally fastened her gown. Then he shouldered the dragon’s head and carried it back to the castle, Brunhilda running to keep up with him. He only stopped to rest at night because she begged him to. And when she tried to thank him for freeing her, he only turned away and refused to hear. He had killed the dragon because it wanted to die. Not for Brunhilda. Never for her.

  At the castle they were received with rejoicing, but Bork would not go in. He only laid the dragon’s head beside the moat and went to his hut, fingering the diamonds in his pocket, holding them in front of him in the pitch blackness of his hut to see that they shone with their own light, and did not need the sun or any other fire but themselves.

  The King and Winkle and Brunhilda and a dozen knights came to Bork’s hut. “I have come to thank you,” the King said, his cheeks wet with tears of joy.

  “You’re welcome,” Bork said. He said it as if to dismiss them.

  “Bork,” the King said. “Slaying the dragon was ten times as brave as the bravest thing any man has done before. You can have my daughter’s hand in marriage.”

  Bork looked up in surprise.

  “I thought you never meant to keep your promise, Your Majesty.”

  The King looked down, then at Winkle, then back at Bork. “Occasionally,” he said, “I keep my word. So here she is, and thank you.”

  But Bork only smiled, fingering the diamonds in his pocket. “It’s enough that you offered, Your Majesty. I don’t want her. Marry her to a man she loves.”

  The King was puzzled. Brunhilda’s beauty had not waned in her years of captivity. She had the sort of beauty that started wars. “Don’t you want any reward?” asked the King.

  Bork thought for a moment. “Yes,” he said. “I want to be given a plot of ground far away from here. I don’t want there to be any count, or any duke, or any king over me. And any man or woman or child who comes to me will be free, and no one can pursue them. And I will never see you again, and you will never see me again.”

  “That’s all you want?”

  “That’s all.”

  “Then you shall have it,” the King said.

  Bork lived all the rest of his life on his little plot of ground. People did come to him. Not many, but five or ten a year all his life, and a village grew up where no one came to take a king’s tithe or a duke’s fifth or a count’s fourth. Children grew up who knew nothing of the art of war and never saw a knight or a battle or the terrible fear on the face of a man who knows his wounds are too deep to heal. It was everything Bork could have wanted, and he was happy all his years there.

  Winkle, too, achieved everything he wanted. He married Brunhilda, and soon enough the King’s sons had accidents and died, and the King died after dinner one night, and Winkle became King. He was at war all his life, and never went to sleep at night without fear of an assassin coming upon him in the darkness. He governed ruthlessly and thoroughly and was hated all his life; later generations, however, remembered him as a great King. But he was dead then, and didn’t know it.

  Later generations never heard of Bork.

  He had only been out on his little plot of ground for a few months when the old wife came to him. “Your hut is much bigger than you need,” she said. “Move over.”

  So Bork moved over, and she moved in.

  She did not magically turn into a beautiful princess. She was foul-mouthed and nagged Bork unmercifully. But he was devoted to her, and when she died a few years later he realized that she had given him more happiness than pain, and he missed her. But the grief of her dying did not taint any of the joys of his memory of her; he just fingered the diamonds, and remembered that grief and joy were not weighed in the same scale, one making the other seem less substantial.

  And at last he realized that Death was near; that Death was reaping him like wheat, eating him like bread. He imagined Death to be a dragon, devouring him bit by bit, and one night in a dream he asked Death, “Is my flavor sweet?”

  Death, the old dragon, looked at him with bright and understanding eyes, and said, “Salty and sour, bitter and sweet. You sting and you soothe.”

  “Ah,” Bork said, and was satisfied.

  Death poised itself to take the last bite. “Thank you,” it said.

  “You’re welcome,” Bork answered, and he meant it.

  Concerto Accademico

  Barry N. Malzberg

  Barry N. Malzberg started his career as an agent for the Scott Meredith Literary Agency in New York in 1965, and he has seen the field from many angles, as reader, writer, editor, agent, and critic. He began publishing short stories in 1967, novels in 1970, and became known as a prolific writer of fiction that took a sardonic view of the meaning—or lack thereof—in individuals’ lives and undertakings, to the point of occasionally being labeled anti-SF in his outlook. Notable novels include Beyond Apollo, winner of the first John W. Campbell Award; Herovit’s World; Guernica Night; Galaxies; and The Remaking of Sigmund Freud. His eleven short story collections include The Passage of the Light: The Recursive Science Fiction of Barry N. Malzberg and In t
he Stone House. His collection of critical essays The Engines of the Night won a Locus Award. An expansion of that book, Breakfast in the Ruins, won the Locus Award again in 2007, and was nominated for the Hugo Award the same year. Malzberg lives with his wife Joyce in Teaneck, New Jersey.

  The first dragon entered orchestra hall and moved gracelessly, a three ton package, toward the podium just as the Tarrytown Symphony was beginning the third movement of the Vaughan Williams Ninth Symphony. Glassop, in the third chair of the seconds, on the outside thanks to the oldstyle antiphonal seating that gave the seconds their own arch opposite the firsts, was among the first to see it but he kept very calm, bowing only slightly disturbed by the entrance of the green beast, slithering now down the aisle. Fulkes, the conductor was, of course, unaware of the dragon at this point and Glassop did not see fit to enlighten him. In the dim light the auditorium, no artificial illumination being turned on for a day rehearsal; the beast looked like a floating, cleaned-up crocodile. Glassop had seen pictures in the children’s books, knew at least what he was looking at. He was no dummy. The beast was definitely a dragon and it looked most determined, as if it had a mission. Glassop hit the pizzicatos, listening to the theme crawling from the bassoons, tried to concentrate upon the notes. You had to stay calm in this business, if you got caught up in the moment by moment stuff, you could be destroyed like Nikisch throwing the baton on his toe and dying of septicemia in the days before antibiotics. And Toscanini, of course, taking out a violist’s eye with a flung baton. “Excuse me,” Schmitt, his seatmate said, “but is that a reptile coming down the aisle?” Schmitt had played in the Oslo Philharmonic, second stand firsts he had com-plained to Glassop, before he had decided to join his daughter and spend his pension in America. He was a dour Scandinavian and not such a good violinist, but Glassop knew that he was observant.

  “It’s a dragon,” Glassop said. “Like in the forest or maybe with the queen.”

  “I know what it is, dummy,” Schmitt said. “But where does it come from?”