“The Dragon Eden,” said Sonnai. “That must be it. This city is just a shadow of the real thing, still hidden even deeper in the mountains.”
“We will take the path,” said Ayaris. “What do we have to lose? I will order my men to wait for me on the other side of the cliffs, by the dead dragons.”
The Speaker shook his head.
“I could have stopped you, a few days ago… but according to our new laws, I must allow you to do whatever you want. I will assist you in any way I can, but I must ask you — do not take any of our people with you.”
“Of course,” the Duke nodded, “I understand — you need all hands to rebuild the city.”
He turned to Sonnai. “I’m sorry, I didn’t ask your opinion yet…”
She shrugged. “Isn’t this what we both came here for? To discover the truth — or die?”
“And what about you?” he asked the man from the forest.
“I still have the Running Disease,” Berec replied. “And there is nowhere else left to run to.”
The path turned out to be a long, dark tunnel carved deep into the mountainside. Its entrance was hidden in the basement of the Edenfort town hall. Ayaris, Sonnai and Berec were led there at night, hidden from any prying eyes. There was nothing but darkness and cold inside.
Ayaris strapped on the backpack filled with enough supplies to last them for a few days and lit a copper lantern the First Speaker had given them. He entered first. The tunnel wound up and down, left and right, but all the time it was just one, easy to follow, serpentine passageway.
“We’re moving up,” said Sonnai after a few hours.
“How do you know?” the Duke asked. To him the tunnel was a riddle. They might as well have been going in circles.
Sonnai scoffed. “It’s nothing more than a big lair. My dragon blood wakens; I can sense my land, my brethren. I don’t need your light,” she said and moved in front, into the shadows, leaving Ayaris and Berec behind.
“It is not my land,” said the forest man. “I never felt good in holes.”
An hour or so later, the Duke saw another light in the distance. The light of day. The tunnel ended in a narrow shelf, overlooking a sheer cliff. The path led nowhere. The mountainside spanned on both sides without end; the bottom of the cliff could not even be seen.
“Here,” Ayaris pointed at the rocks to his left, “I think these used to be stairs.”
Neither of them had any experience in climbing. They were moving slowly down, stopping often for breath. It was madness.
We should have just gone back, he thought. And where is Sonnai? Is she dead, like the others? Did she fall down this precipice?
Suddenly a piece of rock dropped from under Berec’s feet and he started falling. Ayaris grabbed his hand; for a second he thought they would both perish, but somehow he managed to pull the forest man up.
“You help me, I help you,” recited Berec, breathing heavily.
“What’s that?”
“One of the laws of Taiga.”
The Duke waved his hand. “We are no longer in the Taiga. Just be more careful. Who knows how far down we have yet to climb…”
A great roar shook the mountainside. Ayaris looked up: in the light of the setting sun, the golden scales and wings glinted with fire.
Sonnai descended towards him and hovered in the air, looking at him with contempt. She let them climb on her back and carried them both up. She soared above the mountaintops; Ayaris could hardly breathe and even the thick furs he was wearing did not prevent him from shivering with cold.
“Look down!” the dragon roared. Reluctantly, struggling against the whistling wind, Ayaris did as she commanded. He could clearly see the entire mountain range, all the way to the sea. The mountains resembled a silver ring with an emerald stone: the wall of rock encircled a perfectly round green valley not unlike that of the Eden, but smaller.
This was all he managed to see before Sonnai roared in triumph and swooped down towards the valley, folding her wings like a hawk. He could sense her joy and exhilaration; at last, she had found what she had been looking for. Like the forest man sitting behind Ayaris, she too discovered her Eden.
The speed was overwhelming. He was holding on to whatever protrusions on Sonnai’s body he could find. He could not breathe, and saw nothing through teary eyes except grey and blue blurs.
“…kill us,” he heard Berec through the wind.
“What?”
“She will kill us!”
The dragon jolted, as if hitting a solid barrier; the Duke barely managed to hold on. For a moment, she hovered in the air and then she fell down to the ground like a stone.
He woke up on the moist, soft grass. Some tremendous weight was crushing the lower half of his body.
I can’t feel my legs, he thought in panic. His back and chest radiated pain. Paralysis was one of his greatest fears; he wanted to die in battle, not in bed. He managed to raise his head a little to see what was going on.
Sonnai lay on top of him, still in her dragon form, her neck twisted at an unnatural angle, her wings torn and broken.
He spotted a movement to his side. The forest man was still alive.
He may not have been used to flying, but he knew how to take a fall. In the split second before the dragon had shattered against the ground, he leapt softly like a cat, rolling and bouncing. The fall was still too high for him to come out of it unharmed — he could feel his left leg give way — but at least he could try to crawl away to safety.
If there was any safety… he could see nothing around but the emerald-green grass, and clumps of flowers. Some trees grew on a hillside nearby, but too far to reach in his current state. The air in the valley was warm, warmer than the inside of a house. As he lay, he began to spot more details around him; insects crawling in the grass, butterflies fluttering over the flowers, birds high in the air. A mouse hurrying somewhere, not paying him any attention.
He then saw something else; at first he thought he was hallucinating from pain and shock. A giant silver sphere hovered high over the forested hill. It was made of what looked like a spider’s web.
He did not try to comprehend its origin or purpose. All he knew was that he had reached the end of his journey at last. This was it, the true Eden. Peaceful, green, lush, empty valley. A place where he could finally rest. What a shame he had so little time left to enjoy it. Unless…
He raised himself up on his arms. It wasn’t so bad. Two hands and one leg were enough to crawl at a quick pace, for as long as he could muster enough strength and ignore the pain. He began to move slowly towards the forest and the strange sphere, when he heard a moan to his right.
The Duke. Berec had almost forgotten about him. The pink man was lying under the golden carcass of his dragon-lover, reaching out towards Berec with a pained expression. What did he want? To save him or to kill him? Berec had no strength to spare for either. His chances to reach the top of the hill were already minimal.
The young were-drake ignored the Duke and crawled on towards something only he could see. All Ayaris saw was the green grass under him and the golden body of the dragon over him. It smelled of blood and that unmistakable odour of a dying dragon he knew so well.
He closed his eyes; blood and life seeped out from his wounds. Why hadn’t she been more careful? What happened that made her abandon all caution and fly straight into the trap, like so many of her brethren before her? Something the dragons had sensed in this valley made them all push on blindly, disregarding their safety. The Duke would never learn what it was. In the end, he would die without knowing any answers.
The weight on his body lessened. He screamed as his relieved bones exploded with pain, and opened his eyes. A girl in golden robes lay beside him, clutching the dragonbone chest in her hands. Just like he saw her the first time. Sonnai’s body twitched and then fell silent forever.
He turned away, facing the grey sky. He was cold.
Having made it to the shadows of the trees, Bere
c felt he had reached his limit. He looked back at the long, bloodied trail his crawling body had left in the grass.
Has this been a test of some kind? Did they do something wrong? Maybe they were too confident, too proud… the proud were always punished in fairy-tales. Was this also a fairy-tale? If so, it was a badly told one. Everything happened so fast, as if the storyteller was in a hurry and needed a quick ending.
He sank his face in the wet moss and pine needles, breathing in the aroma of the forest for the last time.
He woke up inside the silver sphere. Up close, the walls seemed even more like a spider’s web, woven of liquid metal. There were several oval windows through which he could see the valley and the sky — it was already twilight — but other than that, all around the walls hung countless shelves filled with small ivory chests.
He was sitting in a chair of dark wood, solid and straight. His hands rested on his lap. He could move them but… didn’t feel like it.
The dragon girl was sitting on an identical chair to his right, and the pink-skinned Duke on his left. Sonnai was holding a box which looked very similar to those on the walls. They both had their heads bowed and eyes closed, as if in a dream.
Berec noticed only now that there was a man standing before him, an old man with a long beard, in a robe of silvery grey, like the walls of the sphere. His eyes were ancient and wise.
The man came up to Sonnai; he laid old, wrinkly hands on hers and guided her fingers along the edge of the chest. Something clicked and the lid popped open. A cloud of golden sparks blew around the girl’s head and disappeared. The old man took the empty chest gently.
“Thank you, that will be the last one,” he said and put the chest on one of the shelves, filling the final gap in a long row. Sonnai raised her head and looked around with the awe of a newborn child.
“I remember,” she whispered, “I remember everything.”
“Yes, my child,” said the old man, “you found your memories. All your life you had them right there with you.”
He turned to the Duke and laid a hand on his head. The Duke also opened his eyes and smiled bitterly.
“I understand,” he said, “I understand everything.”
“And you, Duke Ayaris of Madavant, have found here what you have been looking for all your life. Not in a battle, not in single combat, but together with the one you loved.”
The old man looked at last at Berec.
“Descendant of men and dragons, young Red Fox! I see you don’t need any help from me. You know where you are: this is the real Eden. The one you’ve been searching for. You can rest here, forever safe.”
“Who are you,” said the Duke. It wasn’t a question. His voice was monotone; it was as if he was reciting something he should say at this time, in this place.
“What is this place,” said Berec in the same manner.
“What’s going on,” Sonnai finished the incantation.
The old man smiled knowingly, sat down on the floor in front of them and began his story.
THE CHEST OF THE CHEST MASTER
Who am I? I am the Chest Master. That is, I take care of this place — the Chest Library — waiting for the guests. You are the last ones.
I am a Great Dragon. Your people once called us Gods. I’m the only one left in this world. All my brothers and sisters have flown away.
The chests… Even we Gods do not know what causes the Forgetting. But we’ve learned to fight it. This is what these boxes are for: they store the entire life of a person. After the Forgetting, all you have to do is open one and everything comes back in an instant…
We gave the chests to the dragons; humans had found their own ways and our magic did not work as well on them. We did not consider one thing: one who Forgets, forgets also how to open the chest. This was never a problem in the old days. There was always somebody around to help.
The chests had one more spell on them: when the owner of one died, the box was transported here, to the Library. This sphere contains lives of all dragons that ever lived. Yes, they are all dead now. You were the last one, young female.
This valley… it is more than just a place to store the dead. It used to be full of life. This sphere was one of hundreds floating around. The Great Dragons lived here in peace, accompanied by their lesser brethren and other humanoid races. And it wasn’t as long ago as you might think.
This place used to be the capital city of the Dragon North. Thousands of years ago we ruled the world from here. A golden age, when you didn’t have to believe in Gods — all you had to do was look to the sky, where the Great Dragons soared like clouds, hiding the Sun with their wings. Then disaster struck. The were-drakes could not stand against the enemy on their own, no matter how bravely they fought. The power thrown against them was beyond their comprehension.
It was a war like no other, a war between worlds, between universes. The Abyss threatened to engulf all the Mirror Worlds. In a war of such scale, accident plays a great part. It was an accident of fate that here, on our world, was briefly the main strategic point of resistance in the struggle against the Darkness.
The attack was so sudden and so thorough it had caught even us unawares. With one terrifying spell, an entire continent was wiped off the face of the world. All that was left was a hole; not in the bottom of the sea, as your sailors think, but a hole in the dimension, through which seeped not only water, but the magic and life force of the planet.
All we could do was to help the survivors. The Abyss moved on, fortunately, allowing us to recover. Years later came news of its defeat and truce, but we knew one day it would come back. And we had to prepare ourselves for it.
We transported most of the castaways to Maichaev’ Edrai in the West. They are still there, leading normal lives, much like the humans do in the East. But a chosen few moved here, to the Eden.
You know the rules of the Taiga they claim to have invented? We gave them those laws. Survival of the fittest was our idea. We wanted to breed an ultimate race of warriors. Some had proposed we start from scratch and create the warriors with magic — we could have done that if we wanted to. But that would have left no space for accident and Fate. And if we have learned anything in the war with the Abyss it is the importance of Fate.
Yes, it was all an experiment on a huge scale. But it worked. What you’ve seen as the Eden was just the final stop before the real target. Those who lived there were never the intended pinnacle of evolution. It was those who had taken the path from Edenfort that we needed. They were the best of the best. Once they got here, we trained them in the use of our weapons and magic, stored their souls in vaults similar to this Library, and waited.
Five years ago came the signal we had been expecting for thousands of years. A call to arms. A great battle was being fought somewhere far away on a remote, forgotten world. We took the souls of our soldiers — new, better bodies awaited at their destination — and went to war. I mean, they went to war. I was left here, to take care of the Library.
I never heard from them again. There was no news of the war. Perhaps the battle still rages, or perhaps we lost and they are all dead. A few days ago I felt a tremor — I know you did, too. I don’t know what it meant, but I fear the worst…
We are no longer the masters of this world. We hadn’t been since the disaster. There is another force at work, a force that caused you, Duke, to become the Doom of the Dragons, to force them to flee here to their deaths.
They died because of a misunderstanding. You see, a long time ago we had surrounded the sky around this valley with a barrier, a first layer of defence in case the enemy from beyond the world ever returned. All you had to do to cross it safely was to say the password. Everyone knew the password.
In times of peace, however, the barrier served another purpose. Whenever an otherwise immortal Great Dragon got tired of life, all he had to do was to fly through the barrier without mentioning the secret word. The barrier killed quietly, without pain, and the soul was transported into one
of the dragonbone chests in the library, to rest in peace forever. In your legends, this simple mechanism transformed into a myth of a blessed, joyful land where you could find solace from fear and suffering.
When my people disappeared from this world five years ago, they did not remove the barrier. They wanted it protected from any intruders until the time came for them to return; besides, they did not think anyone would want to reach this abandoned, remote place. I certainly couldn’t do anything about it — I am just an old librarian… I could only watch as the dragons died one after another, as the chests on my shelves shut themselves quietly. In the end, there was only one left. I waited for you, young female, but I hoped you would never come.
You brought the Duke with you. The one who caused all this death found his own way here as well. It was a fitting end to his story.
And you, Berec, the last descendant of dragons and humans to find his way to Eden. I’m afraid I have nothing to offer you except eternal rest. Bringing quiet death is my only remaining power.
The two of you, the human and the were-drake, will die truly. Your souls will vanish in the warm air of this valley. The world will not gain anything with your death and in time, all will forget you have ever existed.
Me… I will finally be able to fly in search of my brothers and sisters. The last of the Great Dragons, the last of the Gods will leave this unhappy world, leaving humans and were-drakes — and the poor, enslaved evarites — alone with their problems.
The old man stood up, raised a hand and whispered a word. The three figures sitting before him dissolved into dust, the dust changed into smoke, the smoke wafted away in the wind.
The silver spider web sphere began to rise into the air.
The Captain of the Pride of Astvar saw a great beam of blue light shooting above the mountains and disappearing into the clouds. He felt sad, though he knew not why.
Dragons' Fall_Tales from the Mirror Worlds Page 9
