Wings of Fire

by Jonathan Strahan

  His servants found Iyadur Atani in the great hall of his castle.

  “My lord,” they said, “a stranger stands at the front gate, who will not give his name. He says, The fisherman has come for his catch.”

  “I know who it is,” their lord replied. He walked to the gate of his castle. The sorcerer stood there, leaning on his serpent-headed staff, entirely at ease.

  “Good day,” he said cheerfully. “Are you ready to travel?”

  And so Iyadur Atani left his children and his kingdom to serve Viksa the wizard. I do not know—no one ever asked her, not even their sons—what Iyadur Atani and his wife said to one another that day. Avahir Atani, who at twelve was already full-grown, as changeling children are wont to be, inherited the lordship of Atani Castle. Like his father, he gained the reputation of being fierce, but just.

  Jon Atani married a granddaughter of Rudolf diMako, and went to live in that city.

  Joanna Atani remained in Dragon Keep. As time passed, and Iyadur Atani did not return, her sisters and her brother, even her sons, urged her to remarry. She told them all not to be fools; she was wife to the Silver Dragon. Her husband was alive, and might return at any time, and how would he feel to find another man warming her bed? She became her son’s chief minister, and in that capacity could often be found riding across Dragon’s country, and elsewhere in Ippa, to Derrenhold and Mirrinhold and Ragnar, and even to far Voiana, where the Red Hawk sisters, one in particular, always welcomed her. She would not go to Serrenhold.

  But always she returned to Dragon Keep.

  As for Iyadur Atani: he traveled with the wizard throughout Ryoka, carrying his bags, preparing his oatcakes and his bath water, scraping mud from his boots. Viksa’s boots were often muddy, for he was a great traveler, who walked, rather than rode, to his many destinations. In the morning, when Iyadur Atani brought the sorcerer his breakfast, Viksa would say, “Today we go to Rotsa”—or Ruggio, or Rowena. “They have need of magic.” He never said how he knew this. And off they would go to Vipurri or Rotsa or Talvela, to Sorvino, Ruggio or Rowena.

  Sometimes the need to which he was responding had to do directly with magic, as when a curse needed to be lifted. Often it had to do with common disasters. A river had swollen in its banks and needed to be restrained. A landslide had fallen on a house or barn. Sometimes the one who needed them was noble, or rich. Sometimes not. It did not matter to Viksa. He could enchant a cornerstone, so that the wall it anchored would rise straight and true; he could spell a field, so that its crop would thrust from the soil no matter what the rainfall.

  His greatest skill was with water. Some sorcerers draw a portion of their power from an element: wind, water, fire or stone. Viksa could coax a spring out of earth that had known only drought for a hundred years. He could turn stagnant water sweet. He knew the names of every river, stream, brook and waterfall in Issho.

  In the first years of his servitude Iyadur Atani thought often of his sons, and especially Avahir, and of Joanna, but after a while his anxiety for them faded. After a longer while, he found he did not think of them so often—rarely at all, in fact. He even forgot their names. He had already relinquished his own. Iyadur is too grand a name for a servant, the sorcerer had remarked. You need a different name.

  And so the tall, fair-haired man became known as Shadow. He carried the sorcerer’s pack, and cooked his food. He rarely spoke.

  “Why is he so silent?” women, bolder and more curious than their men, asked the sorcerer.

  Sometimes the sorcerer answered, “No reason. It’s his nature.” And sometimes he told a tale, a long, elaborate fantasy of spells and dragons and sorcerers, a gallant tale in which Shadow had been the hero, but from which he had emerged changed—broken. Shadow, listening, wondered if perhaps this tale was true. It might have been. It explained why his memory was so erratic, and so vague.

  His dreams, by contrast, were vivid and intense. He dreamed often of a dark-walled castle flanked by white-capped mountains. Sometimes he dreamed that he was a bird, flying over the castle. The most adventurous of the women, attracted by Shadow’s looks, and, sometimes, by his silence, tried to talk with him. But their smiles and allusive glances only made him shy. He thought that he had had a wife, once. Maybe she had left him. He thought perhaps she had. But maybe not. Maybe she had died.

  He had no interest in the women they met, though as far as he could tell, his body still worked as it should. He was a powerful man, well-formed. Shadow wondered sometimes what his life had been before he had come to serve the wizard. He had skills: he could hunt and shoot a bow, and use a sword. Perhaps he had served in some noble’s war band. He bore a knife now, a good one, with a bone hilt, but no sword. He did not need a sword. Viksa’s reputation, and his magic, shielded them both.

  Every night, before they slept, wherever they were, in a language Shadow did not know, the sorcerer wove spells of protection about them and their dwelling. The spells were very powerful, and the chant made Shadow’s ears hurt. Once, early in their association, he asked the sorcerer what the spell was for.

  “Protection,” Viksa replied. Shadow had been surprised. He had not realized Viksa had enemies.

  But now, having traveled with the sorcerer as long as he had, he knew that even the lightest magic can have consequences, and Viksa’s magic was not always light. He could make rain, but he could also make drought. He could lift curses or lay them. He was a man of power, and he had his vanity. He enjoyed being obeyed. Sometimes he enjoyed being feared.

  Through spring, summer, and autumn, the wizard traveled wherever he was called to go. But in winter they returned to Lake Urai. He had a house beside the lake, a simple place, furnished with simple things: a pallet, a table, a chair, a shelf for books. But Viksa rarely looked at the books; it seemed he had no real love for study. Indeed, he seemed to have no passion for anything, save sorcery itself—and fishing. All through the Issho winter, despite the bitter winds, he took his little coracle out upon the lake, and sat there with a pole. Sometimes he caught a fish, or two, or half a dozen. Sometimes he caught none.

  “Enchant them,” Shadow said to him one grey afternoon, when he returned to the house empty-handed. “Call them to your hook with magic.”

  The wizard shook his head. “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I was one of them once.” Shadow looked at him, uncertain. “Before I was a sorcerer, I was a fish.”

  It was impossible to tell if he was joking or serious. It might have been true. It explained, at least, his affinity for water.

  While he fished, Shadow hunted. The country around the lake was rich with game; despite the winter, they did not lack for meat. Shadow hunted deer and badger and beaver. He saw wolves, but did not kill them. Nor would he kill birds, though birds there were; even in winter, geese came often to the lake. Their presence woke in him a wild, formless longing.

  One day he saw a white bird, with wings as wide as he was tall, circling over the lake. It had a beak like a raptor. It called to him, an eerie sound. Something about it made his heart beat faster. When Viksa returned from his sojourn at the lake, Shadow described the stranger bird to him, and asked what it was.

  “A condor,” the wizard said.

  “Where does it come from?”

  “From the north,” the wizard said, frowning.

  “It called to me. It looked—noble.”

  “It is not. It is scavenger, not predator.” He continued to frown. That night he spent a long time over his nightly spells.

  In spring, the kingfishers and guillemots returned to the lake. And one April morning, when Shadow laid breakfast upon the table, Viksa said, “Today we go to Dale.”

  “Where is that?”

  “In the White Mountains, in Kameni, far to the north.” And so they went to Dale, where a petty lordling needed Viksa’s help in deciphering the terms and conditions of an ancient prophecy, for within it lay the future of his kingdom.

  From Dale they traveled to Se
cca, where a youthful hedge-witch, hoping to shatter a boulder, had used a spell too complex for her powers, and had managed to summon a stone demon, which promptly ate her. It was an old, powerful demon. It took a day, a night, and another whole day until Viksa, using the strongest spells he knew, was able to send it back into the Void.

  They rested that night at a roadside inn, south of Secca. Viksa, exhausted from his battle with the demon, went to bed right after his meal, so worn that he fell asleep without taking the time to make his customary incantations.

  Shadow considered waking him to remind him of it, and decided not to. Instead, he, too, slept.

  And there, in an inn south of Secca, Iyadur Atani woke.

  He was not, he realized, in his bed, or even in his bedroom. He lay on the floor. The coverlet around his shoulders was rough wool, not the soft quilt he was used to. Also, he was wearing his boots.

  He said, “Joanna?” No one answered. A candle sat on a plate at his elbow. He lit it without touching it.

  Sitting up soundlessly, he gazed about the chamber, at the bed and its snoring occupant, at the packs he had packed himself, the birchwood staff athwart the doorway… Memory flooded through him. The staff was Viksa’s. The man sleeping in the bed was Viksa. And he—he was Iyadur Atani, lord of Dragon Keep.

  His heart thundered. His skin coursed with heat. The ring on his hand glowed, but he could not feel the burning. Fire coursed beneath his skin. He rose.

  How long had Viksa’s magic kept him in thrall—five years? Ten years? More?

  He took a step toward the bed. The serpent in the wizard’s staff opened its eyes. Raising its carved head, it hissed at him.

  The sound woke Viksa. Gazing up from his bed at the bright shimmering shape looming over him, he knew immediately what had happened. He had made a mistake. Fool, he thought, O you fool.

  It was too late now.

  The guards on the walls of Secca saw a pillar of fire rise into the night. Out of it—so they swore, with such fervor that even the most skeptical did not doubt them—flew a silver dragon. It circled the flames, bellowing with such power and ferocity that all who heard it trembled.

  Then it beat the air with its great wings, and leaped north.

  In Dragon Keep, a light powdery snow covered the garden. It did not deter the rhubarb shoots breaking through the soil, or the fireweed, or the buds on the birches. A sparrow swung in the birch branches, singing. The clouds that had brought the snow had dissipated; the day was bright and fair, the shadows sharp as the angle of the sparrow’s wing against the light.

  Joanna Atani walked along the garden path. Her face was lined, and her hair, though still lustrous and thick, was streaked with silver. Her vision, once clear, was cloudy. But her step was vigorous, and her eyes as bright as they had been when first she came to Atani Castle, over thirty years before.

  Bending close to the blossoms, she brushed a snowdrop free of snow. A clatter of pans arose in the kitchen. A voice, imperious and young, called from within. It was Hikaru, Avahir’s first-born and heir. He was only two, but had the height and grace of a lad twice that age. A woman answered him, her voice soft and firm. That was Geneva Tuolinnen, Hikaru’s mother. She was an excellent mother, calm and unexcitable. She was a good seamstress, too, and a superb manager; far better at running the castle than Joanna had ever been. She could scarcely handle a bow, though, and thought swordplay was entirely man’s work.

  She and Joanna were as friendly as two strong-willed women can be.

  Claws scrabbled on stone. A black, floppy-eared puppy bounded across Joanna’s feet, nearly knocking her down. Rup the dog-boy scampered after it. They tore through the garden and raced past the kitchen door into the yard. Hikaru called again. A man walked into the garden. Joanna squinted. For a moment she thought it was Avahir, but Avahir was miles away, in Kameni. He was tall. Gabbio the head gardener was short.

  The man walked toward her.

  “Joanna?” he said.

  She knew that voice. For a moment she ceased to breathe. He came to her side. He looked much as he had the morning he had left with the wizard, sixteen years before. His eyes were the same, and his scent, and the heat of his body against hers. She slid her palms beneath his shirt. His skin was warm. Their lips met.

  I do not know exactly what Iyadur Atani and his wife first said to one another in the garden that day. Surely there were questions, and answers. Surely there were tears, of sorrow, and of joy.

  Later, after those first breathless words of wonder, they sat together on a bench beneath a persimmon tree. He told her of his travels, of his captivity, and of his freedom. She told him of their sons, and particularly of his heir, Avahir, lord of Dragon’s Country.

  “He is a good lord, respected throughout Ryoka. His people fear him and love him. He is called the Azure Dragon. He married a girl from Issho, a cousin to the Talvela; we are at peace with them, and with the Nyo. Their first-born, Hikaru, is a dragon-child. Jon, too, is wed. He and his wife live in Mako. They have three children, two boys and a girl. You are a grandfather, my love.”

  He smiled at that. Then he said, “Where is Avahir now?”

  “In Kameni, at a council called by Rowan Imorin, the king’s war leader, who wishes to lead an army against the Chuyo pirates.” She stroked his face. It was not true, as she first thought, that he was unchanged. Still, he looked astonishingly young. She wondered if she seemed old to him.

  “Never leave me again,” she said.

  He lifted her hands to his lips and kissed them, front and back. Then he said, “My love, I would not. But I must. I cannot stay here.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Avahir is lord of this land now. You know the dragon-nature. We are jealous of power, we dragons. It would go ill were I to stay.”

  Joanna’s blood chilled. She did know. The history of the dragon-folk is filled with tales of rage and rivalry: sons strive against fathers, brothers against brothers, mothers against their children. They are bloody tales. For this reason, among others, the dragon-kindred do not live very long.

  She said steadily, “You cannot hurt your son.”

  “I would not,” said Iyadur Atani. “Therefore I must leave.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “I don’t know. Will you come with me?”

  She locked her fingers through his huge ones, and smiled through tears. “I will go wherever you wish. Only give me time to kiss my grandchild.”

  And so, Iyadur Atani and Joanna Torneo Atani left Atani Castle. They went quietly, without fuss, accompanied by neither man nor maidservant. They went first to Mako, where Iyadur Atani greeted his younger son, and met his son’s wife, and their children.

  From there they went to Derrenhold, and from Derrenhold, west, to Voiana, the home of the Red Hawk sisters. And in Voiana, Joanna wrote a letter to Avahir Atani, assuring him, and that she was with her husband, the Silver Dragon, who had returned, and that she was happy and well.

  Avahir Atani, who truly loved his mother, flew to Voiana. But he arrived to find them gone. “Where are they?” he asked Jamis Delamico, who was still matriarch of the Red Hawk clan. For the Red Hawk sisters live long.

  “They left.”

  “Where did they go?”

  Jamis Delamico shrugged. “They did not tell me where they were going, and I did not ask.”

  There were no more letters. Over time, word trickled back to Dragon Keep that they had been seen in Rowena, or Sorvino, or Secca, or the mountains north of Dale.

  “Where were they going?” Avahir Atani asked, when his servants came to him to tell him these stories. But no one could tell him that.

  Time passed; Ippa prospered. In Dragon Keep, a daughter was born to Avanir and Geneva Tuolinnen Atani. They named her Lucia. She was small and dark-haired and feisty. In Derrenhold, and Mako and Mirrinhold, memories of conflict faded. In the windswept west, the folk of Serrenhold rebuilt their lord’s tower. In the east, Rowan Imorin, the war leader of Kameni, summoned
the lords of all the provinces to unite against the Chuyo pirates. The lords of Ippa, instead of quarreling with each other, joined the lords of Nakase and Kameni. They fought many battles. They gained many victories.

  But in one battle, not the greatest, an arrow shot by a Chuyo archer sliced into the throat of Avanir Atani, and killed him. Grimly, his mourning soldiers made a pyre, and burned his body. For the dragon-kindred do not lie in earth.

  Hikaru, the Shining Dragon, became lord of Dragon Keep. Like his father and his grandfather before him, he was feared and respected throughout Ippa.

  One foggy autumn, a stranger arrived at the gates of Dragon Keep, requesting to see the lord. He was an old man, with silver hair. His back was stooped, but they could see that he had once been powerful. He bore no sword, but only a knife with a bone hilt.

  “Who are you?” the servants asked him.

  “My name doesn’t matter,” he answered. “Tell the Shining Dragon that I have a gift for him.”

  They brought him to Hikaru. Hikaru said, “Old man, I am told you have a gift for me.”

  “It is so,” the old man said. He extended his palm. On it sat a golden brooch, fashioned in the shape of a rose. “It is an heirloom of your house, given by your grandfather, Iyadur, to his wife Joanna, on their wedding night. She is dead now, and so it comes to you. You should give it to your wife, when you wed.”

  Hikaru said, “How do you come by this thing? Who are you? Are you a sorcerer?”

  “I am no one,” the old man replied; “a shadow.”

  “That is not an answer,” Hikaru said, and he signaled to his soldiers to seize the stranger.

  But the men who stepped forward to hold the old man found their hands passing through empty air. They hunted through the castle for him, but he was gone. They decided that he was a sorcerer, or perhaps the sending of a sorcerer. Eventually they forgot him. When the shadow of the dragon first appeared in Atani Castle, rising like smoke out of the castle walls, few thought of the old man who had vanished into shadow one autumnal morning. Those who did kept it to themselves. But Hikaru Atani remembered. He kept the brooch, and gave it to his wife upon their wedding night. And he told his soldiers to honor the shadow-dragon when it came, and not to speak disrespectfully of it: “For clearly,” he said, “it belongs here.”