None knew how old the holy man was. Some said he was immortal, or, at least as ancient as the dragons. His gift of prophecy was no hoax — he was aware of many things happening in distant places of the world and could tell the future as easily as Ayaris could locate any dragon. Whenever some important event in the history of the Continent or Archipelago was about to happen, U-Tarch was there, observing, advising.
Is he here because of me? wondered Ayaris.
The Prophet gestured to him to come closer. The Duke knelt on one knee, looking the old man straight in the eyes.
“Have you killed your last dragon, young one?” the old man asked in a quiet, but strong voice.
“The last of the males, Master. There is one more female left, but I will hunt her down soon.”
“Hunt her down, you say… and what will you do when you find her?”
“I don’t understand, Master.”
“Don’t play games with me, young one. What is the promise you have made to the old Count?”
The Duke bowed, but did not answer. He was trying not to think about it. He had promised to take care of Sonnai. He could not kill her without breaking the word given to a dying man, and that would bring the gravest of curses upon his soul.
“Look into your heart, young one. Could you really kill her? Your heart is not a stone — not yet… Although you disregard my teachings, spreading pain and hatred throughout all the known lands, I can still sense a spark of a human in you.”
“If she — ” the Duke started, trying to gather his thoughts under the Prophet’s piercing gaze, “if she has run away to Winter Isles, she’s beyond my hunt.”
“No,” the prophet said sharply, “you must follow. You cannot abandon your destiny so easily. Let your heart and your sword guide you. You must make the choice. Such is the cost of having little faith,” he said, chuckling, “you must make your own decisions. The audience is over.”
The last sentence was added quietly, almost as an afterthought, and it took the Duke a moment to notice U-Tarch was no longer speaking to him. Instead the Prophet was gazing somewhere beyond the Duke, beyond the hall, beyond the world, into the many-threaded depths of Fate.
South-easterly wind filled the sails of the Pride of Astvar, the only ship in Magaror fit enough to undertake the dangerous journey north. The vessel soared smoothly across the usually stormy Ice Sea, as if the Gods wanted it to reach its destination as soon as possible.
“It’s a good wind,” said the Captain with a nervous smile. “It shouldn’t take us more than ten days.”
Ayaris nodded and patted the man on the back. He knew how anxious the Captain of the Pride must be to sail back home. No sane seamen ever ventured so far north, except the Royal Cartographers a few generations ago, or strays, pursued by the storms off the trade routes to Magaror and Kepente.
The Duke stood on the ship’s bow, gazing into the horizon ahead. The Prophet’s words disturbed him — as was their purpose. His heart… It was filled with hatred and vengeance, leaving no space for other emotions, of that he had always been certain. He never cared for anyone else but himself; even in the task of prolonging the name of Madavant, he had ceded to his younger brother so that he could freely dedicate himself to the Hunt.
So why couldn’t he stop thinking about Sonnai? And not as a dragon he was about to slay, but as the golden-haired girl he was supposed to take care of… “I promised the Count,” he tried to convince himself. But he had broken many promises in the past and, surely, all the death and destruction he had sown had already blackened his soul beyond redemption...
He imagined himself driving his blade into the golden-scaled flesh of a female dragon and it felt good, it felt right. But his mind played tricks on him, replacing the beast’s shape with the body of a young woman and he recoiled in disgust. He shook his head and stepped away from the railings. “I have to stop thinking about it,” he decided. “When the time comes, I will do what I feel is right.”
The grey-furred natives dropped to their knees when the Duke climbed out of the boat. The Pride of Astvar stood at anchor out in the open sea, a looming shape, dark in the setting sun — there was no harbour big enough for it anywhere on the Winter Isles.
“Ask them about the dragon,” Ayaris said to the interpreter. He never bothered to learn the tongue of the Evar. “The golden one.”
“It flew over the village when the moon was young,’ the man replied after a brief exchange with the natives. He was half-human, specks of grey dotting his pale face; his accent was strong, jarring, and his disgust towards the locals badly hidden. “Into the mountains.”
“The mountains?” Ayaris said with a frown, studying the horizon. “You mean those low hills with white tops?”
“Yes, Your Highness. The villagers call them the Mountains of Remembering.”
“I don’t care what they call them. Can we get there tonight?”
“If you take one of them as a guide, yes.”
The Duke shrugged. He knew many of his countrymen would loathe spending more than a few minutes in the presence of a native, but he had learned the importance of relying on the hardened locals a long time ago.
“I’ll take a guide and as many strong men as they can spare — I need porters. I pay gold; do they know gold here?”
The interpreter discussed something briefly with the natives.
“They would prefer iron, Your Highness.”
The Duke smiled. “Well said! After all, what good is gold if you have no iron to defend it?”
A thick ice cap covered the tops of the “Mountains of Remembering’, its white tongues spilling out down the crags and gullies onto the rugged plain below. Following the guide, the Duke and his men climbed the ice, looking for traces of the dragon. It proved an easy task; whole swathes of ice had been melted by the heat of the beast as it flew further north. The trail was fresh and obvious. Before long, Ayaris saw clearly where it was leading: a tall, sheer cliff-side, dotted with black holes of the cave entrances. The natives whispered among themselves in awe.
“The Rock of Monsters,” explained the interpreter, “that’s what this place is called.”
“Oh? And what monsters live here?”
“All manner, Your Highness. But those are just old legends, fairy stories.”
“Let’s see if that’s all they are. Tell them to stay here and prepare the camp. I’m going in — alone.”
The caves were a maze of dark tunnels and cold, wet passages, carved into the rock by millennia of melting ice. Any other man would easily lose his way in the labyrinth, but the Duke’s hunting skill and instinct led him straight on. Soon he smelled smoke and that typical, warm, sickly sweet scent of a dragon’s lair.
She was sitting under the wall of a large chamber, her arms wrapped around her knees, her long hair falling to the floor. The dragonbone chest lay beside her. She did not stir when he came in.
“I come to kill you,” he said.
He knelt and touched her hair. She didn’t react. He lifted her face by the chin and looked into her eyes. She had been crying; her face seemed different than before.
“You’ve remembered,” he guessed.
She shook her head.
“Not all of it… but it makes no difference. Go on, Dragon Slayer. Kill me — if you can.”
He sat beside her under the wall and they waited in silence. Time passed outside the caves, but here it seemed frozen like the ice covering the hills. At last, Ayaris spoke.
“Why don’t you tell me how much you remember.”
“What does it matter? It won’t change anything.”
“Perhaps. But it’s worth a try.”
THE CHEST OF SONNAI OF TARRENTE
This is my second Forgetting. I know, it’s rare, but sometimes it happens. I only remember my life since the first one. Whatever I did before will, I’m afraid, forever remain a mystery.
They found me looking the same way as I do now; a young, golden-haired girl wandering in the fields, clutching
the small chest of dragonbone… It was here, on Winter Isles. The natives assumed outright I had been sent by the Gods, or a Goddess myself — no boat had brought me to the islands, I must have come from the Heavens or the Depths.
They taught me their tongue and their way of life in this frozen wasteland, but it was all they could do to help me. I liked them, their little huts and their funny boats, but I longed to learn from where I had come.
A few years later a merchant ship drifted off course and arrived at the Isles. The Captain saw me among the natives and fell for me at first sight. He took me with him, back to the lands of what later you humans would call “The League’… He paid for a treatment in one of the Sanctuaries. But human science did not work on a dragon’s mind. At last, the Sanctuary Keeper decided they were powerless to help me. “Take care of her,” he told my Captain, “teach her everything she needs to know.”
The Captain asked to marry me. I said yes, of course; what else could I say? I was a newborn child in need of a caretaker. At the time, I wasn’t even sure what “marriage” meant.
I sailed with him everywhere. I grew used to the sea and to commanding people… Our life was peaceful and easy; as much as life on sea can be. In the end, I grew to love this dry, simple man. Only one thing marred our happiness: I could not bear a child. The poor Captain blamed himself. I told him it may have been due to something that had happened in my previous life. We never got around to seeing the healer.
Years passed and we both noticed something was wrong. The Captain grew old and wrinkled, but I was still the same smooth-skinned, golden-haired girl from the Winter Isles. He never tried to resolve the mystery; he seemed happy to have me with him, always young, always beautiful. When he died, I took command of the ship and sailed to Hollo Academy to ask about myself. It took the first mage I met one look to tell me the truth.
“You’re a dragon in human disguise.”
I protested, of course, but without much conviction. It explained so much… The mage wanted me to stay at the Academy — such a rare specimen like myself no doubt would have been useful for their research… But I wanted to go back to my ship. I did not feel like a dragon at all.
Not many humans know how long a dragon really lives. You do, I’m sure — you know so much about our kind… My poor Captain died more than three hundred years ago. It’s a long time — even a dragon can get bored of doing the same thing for so long. In the end I sold the ship and settled as far away from civilization as I could — in the marshes of Tarrente. I lived alone, on the outskirts of some fishing village. Most of the time I was wandering about the nearby hills, or climbing the mountains. I longed for the wind in my hair. It was the beast waking, though I did not know it yet. At last, one winter night, a storm tore through the village, killing everyone and destroying all houses, including my own. When I woke up, I was a dragon again.
There is little to tell after that. A dragon’s life passes at a different pace; decades passed like days. The local shepherds knew me as the Golden Wyrm of Kepente, and feared my coming, although I only ever took their livestock — never their lives, still fondly remembering the days I had spent among their kind. I knew what humans thought of the dragons, but I could hardly blame them. We are predators. Monsters. Nature created us this way, like the wolves and sharks. And we used to rule this world before your kind came about; the Evarites remember what it was like to serve the dragons.
You appear near the end of my story, but not at the manor of Count Tarrente. No, I had known you long before that — known about you. The news spread like lightning. A young red male visited me in my cave on the way farther north and told me your story. It was terrifying; the Slaughter of Red Kerru, all those other horrible things you’ve done… Humans sang glorious songs about your deeds, but the dragons wept and lamented. And fled.
Would you like to know where they were fleeing? Most of them passed through Kepente, it was their last stop before the long flight north… We have our myths, too. A myth of the Eden, a great city of white crystal in the far corner of the Dragon North. A city where we are still masters, as we had once been in the human lands, where we live undisturbed, singing songs and dancing in the light of the setting sun. Everyone was trying to get there, to hide from the Dragon Slayer. I hesitated… the road was difficult, the seas were dark, cold and stormy, and the destination uncertain. I was still fond of humans, not willing to abandon their company forever.
At last, I made a decision. But before the journey, I wanted to see the humans one last time. I took the dragonbone chest with me and climbed down into the marsh plains of Tarrente. I never came back. The Forgetting so rarely comes twice in one’s lifetime, but when this lifetime spans three centuries…
When I saw you at the old Count’s home… I could not understand my feelings. I was fascinated, of course — I knew you were a great hero, a Dragon Slayer, and me — I was just a young girl from some remote marshland. But there was something else, something disturbing, deep inside me. As a human, I loved you; as a dragon, I hated you. But as a girl who Forgot how heart and flesh work, I was confused.
And then I saw you slay that last male… I Remembered everything. I did not know what to do. All I could think of was to run away before you decided to kill me like you had killed everyone else. I fled, and I kept flying until I got here and I could not fly anymore.
“Do you still want to reach that Eden of yours?” the Duke asked after a long pause.
“I don’t know. If you let me live… What choice do I have?”
“I will let you live — if you take me with you.”
She reeled in surprise.
“Are you serious? You — go to the Eden? They will kill you! Tear you to pieces! Even you couldn’t possibly dream of standing against so many dragons at once. Do you have any idea how many of my brethren flew to the North?”
Ayaris smiled.
“You think I didn’t know about the Dragon Eden before? I’ve been hearing the story for years. I used to dream of reaching it and dying in glorious battle, taking as many of the beasts with me as I could. But I always thought it was just a legend.”
“I’d rather die than let you fulfil such a sick dream.”
“I don’t want to die there anymore. Or kill. I just want to get there. I don’t know why. See the City of Dragons at least once.”
“I don’t believe you.”
The Duke shrugged.
“I promised the old Count to take care of you,” he said.
“You’re mad.”
“So I’ve been told.”
He stood up. “I’m going back to the harbour. Join me on my ship if you trust me. With you or without you, I set sail tomorrow — to the Dragon North.”
THE TALE GATHERER
He runs. Naked, rough-skinned feet beat on the frozen dirt, clumps of old grass, dried heath. He does not think; it would only slow him down. His lidless eyes transfer the image of surroundings straight to his limbs, bypassing the brain. A hole — a tree trunk — a scrub — a ditch — a boulder — a thick branch. Duck, duck, jump, dodge, turn, run, jump, trip — regain balance in a blink of an eye. He falls into a thorny bush, a second’s delay. He reaches out, grabs a branch, and leaps over the stream.
A bear roars in the distance — a real one or just a signal? A hairy chin-chin jumps from under his feet. A bright spot — an open meadow, slippery with wet cranberry leaves and mud.
He never looks back. He’s certain they are still after him. He killed one of them in an argument over a reindeer’s carcass, but that’s not why they chase him. In Taiga, nobody cares about the dead. It’s the way he did the killing.
They saw him use the iron dagger. A treasure of treasures. They guess he must have more of the precious metal. Nobody carries just a dagger.
A moose calls back to the bear from the other side. They start to surround him; they are faster, know this part of the forest better. He can’t outrun them — he must outthink them.
A gnarled tree on his path — a
rarity in this wood of straight pines and spruces. A gift. He leaps mid-run and climbs to the top in a few jumps. The canopy is thick, the leaves are grey like his skin; it’s his only chance.
The first of the hunters runs under the tree without stopping, then another. The third one is more careful. He passes the tree and then stops. He notices the tracks have ended. He moves close to the gnarled tree…
Berec grabs the dagger in a sweaty hand and jumps down, trying not to make a sound. The hunter turns to face him and it’s the last thing he sees. A dagger to the throat silences his cry.
Berec runs back the other way to where the hunters had come from. After a while he stops to listen; did his plan work? He can’t hear the bear roars or moose calls anymore. He starts running again, but suddenly a man with a small crossbow steps in front of him. They must have left him to guard the track.
A bolt flies and grazes him in the shoulder. “You’ve missed!” Berec cries and tries to strike the enemy with his dagger but the forest swirls around him and then turns dark.
“You can stop pretending. I know you’re awake.”
The voice was soft, quiet, colourless. Berec moved his hands; they were free, untied. He opened his eyes slowly.
He was in a large wooden shack, lying on a bed of bearskin. He smelled incense, a thick, pungent scent. He spotted his dagger and other treasures laid out on a cloth beside the entrance.
An old man was sitting beside him, stirring something in a clay pot. When Berec moved, the man turned to him immediately.
“Don’t worry, you will get your things back as soon as you can walk again.”
Berec wasn’t sure if he understood the old man correctly.
“My men got the band chasing after you. The one with the stun-bow was the last. I slew him myself. You should be ready to stand soon — the poison did not penetrate deep.”
He tried to speak, but his tongue was still tied.
“Will you… will you let me go?”
The man laughed.
Dragons' Fall_Tales from the Mirror Worlds Page 3
