Lords of the Sky

by Angus Wells

  Rwyan held me at arm’s length then, her face turned up as if she could see me clear. She said, “I’m not a fool, Daviot. No matter how kind they treat us, still we’re in ther power, and neither you nor I can do aught about it.”

  I was chastened. “I’m sorry. Are you afraid?”

  She laughed then, soft, and said, “Of course I am. I’d be a fool otherwise. But I’ll not let my fear overcome my sense.”

  Oh, my lovely, brave Rwyan! I could only hold her then and ask that God I doubted that she be kept safe, unharmed, her talent returned. And holding her, desire stirred, pent long weeks in shipboard chastity. I raised her face and kissed her.

  The morning found us entwined in limbs and rumpled sheets. I was grateful that Ayl knocked upon the door without entering, as might some less discreet jailer, and bade us prepare to leave.

  Tezdal, Rwyan, and I broke our fast and were once more locked in the wattle cage. Thyr nodded grave farewell as the wagon lumbered away. I held Rwyan’s hand. I could not help but feel happy, for all our future remained a mystery.

  It was early yet, the sun barely a handbreadth over the horizon, and the air held a slight chill. The moon still lingered in the west, but the sky was soon blued and scudded with white cloud. Birds sang loud, and for a while two dogs paced the wagon. Few folk were abroad, and they paused only briefly in their tasks to watch us go by. I thought that a prison cage traversing the roads of Dharbek should have attracted far greater attention.

  We left the little town behind, and soon the paved road became again a track, running through farmland. Through the wattles I could see ahead the looming shadow of highlands. The road appeared to lead that way, and from the position of the sun I calculated that we traveled in a northwesterly direction. I supposed Trebizar must lie in the heart of Ur-Dharbek, likely in those hills.

  That afternoon we rode through orchards, the trees heavy with apples and pears, and Glyn sprang down to pick handfuls of the fruit which he shared with us. I saw few buildings, but those were neat and well ordered, with wells and windmills and guardian hounds that came out baying warning of our approach. That night we slept in a farm, the three of us together in one small room beneath the thatched roof. There was one window, tiny and shuttered because it held no glass.

  Tezdal examined the roof and said, “We might dig through that easily.”

  I said, “Remember, Rwyan’s blind.”

  She said, “It should be useless anyway. Even could we reach the Slammerkin, we’d face the magic of the Border Cities.”

  I thought of what Rekyn had told me then, and of Ayl’s words, and repeated them back: “‘The magic of the Border Cities shall deny you return no less than we.’ Is that truly so?”

  Rwyan nodded. The room was dim, and I could barely make out the movement of her head, but her voice came clear enough. “Those cities guard the Slammerkin shore. Their magic is shaped to ward the north, to hold back any Changed who might seek to return; or dragons, do they still exist.”

  I said, “But we’re neither Changed nor dragons.”

  She said, “No matter. The magic of those cities is not so particular. Anything coming south over the Slammerkin should be destroyed.”

  Tezdal said, “Even you? You’re a sorcerer.”

  Her laugh was soft in the gloom, and self-mocking. “Not now,” she said. “Not whilst I wear this necklace. I’d be consumed with you.”

  Tezdal cursed and punched the roof, releasing a downfall of dust and straw.

  Rwyan said, “We can do nothing, save go on.”

  “And hope,” I said, finding her in the dark.

  She leaned against me, her head on my shoulder. “Aye,” she murmured. “And hope.”

  We went on, past farms and hamlets, sometimes towns. None were walled; I saw no keeps nor any sign of warbands. We slept under a roof when such comfort was available, under the stars when it was not. The nights held a chill now, and Ayl obtained us all blankets, and as we progressed farther inland, he allowed us more often out of our cage. Those nights we slept beside the road, we sat around a fire, and that was oddly merry, as if we were all companions on some journey of discovery.

  I ventured to ask Ayl if he was not afraid we might flee, for there were no constraints set on us, and even those nights we slept in beds, the doors were no longer locked.

  He chuckled and asked me in turn, “Where should you flee, Daviot?”

  I shrugged and gestured vaguely to the south. I was not serious, and he knew it: this was become a kind of game between us, a slow gleaning of information. He said, “That’s a long way, and even did you succeed in stealing a boat, your sorcerers deal unkindly with vessels coming south out of this land.”

  “You brought the Sprite north,” I said.

  “Aye, north,” he returned me, “and far out to sea. The attention of the Border Cities is not much directed that way.”

  “They only pen you here?” I asked.

  He nodded gravely. “It’s deemed senseless to hold a Changed who’d flee to this land,” he said. “We who choose to cross the Slammerkin are thought dangerous—Dharbek well rid of us.”

  I said, “You seem not very dangerous to me, Ayl.”

  He laughed at that. “But I’m a terrible freebooter. I stole the Sprite, no? And took three Truemen prisoner.”

  Those events I had pushed to the back of my mind marched forward, and I perceived an ambiguity in his good humor. I thought to test the mettle of our relationship then: I said, “Aye, that you did. And put the captain overboard.”

  Firelight played on his massy face as he nodded soberly. “I did,” he said. “But Tyron was also thrown a float; and that was a greater kindness than he’d show me. Did fortune favor him, he made the shore.”

  I said, “That should be a long swim, even with a float.”

  He asked, “Think you he deserved better?”

  I made a noncommittal gesture. Rwyan said, “Did he drown, shall his death not weight your conscience?”

  Ayl turned toward her, and on his face I saw an expression I could not interpret. Still looking at her, he said to me, “Do you describe what I show you, Daviot.”

  I frowned and ducked my head. He unlaced his shirt and rose, tugging off the garment and turning his back. I gasped: his skin was dark and across the swarthy surface, from the width of his huge shoulders to the narrowing of his waist, there was a pattern of pale scars, ridged welts that could have only one source.

  In a voice frightening for its calm, he said, “I was tiller-man then. A storm was rising, and I argued Tyron’s command that we sail. He ordered me whipped. Two of my fellows were lost in that storm. So—no, lady, my conscience shall not be troubled.”

  I heard Rwyan suck in a sharp breath, her face creased in expression of pity.

  Softly, Tezdal said, “Did any mark me thus, I’d kill him.”

  Ayl drew on his shirt and sat again. “I think I dealt him kind,” he said.

  I nodded.

  And then a thought struck me: that Ayl knew much of this land he could not, was all he told me true, have visited. Did the Border Cities make so effective a barrier, there could be no commerce between Ur-Dharbek and Dharbek, for all traffic must go in but the single direction and none come back. How then could he know of Trebizar, of this Council—of this road, even?

  I asked him that straight out and saw a mask fall over his face. He said, “Perhaps the Raethe shall explain,” and went to where the horses grazed.

  I recognized dismissal and pressed no more. Perhaps in mysterious Trebizar I should find the answer.

  The next day we entered a forest where the air hung misty blue, scented sweet with sap, and birds chorused our passing. The trail was wide and rutted with wagon tracks as if much used. Ayl told me it was the main highway to Trebizar, and around noon we came on a caravan halted for the midday meal. A merchant led the party, but there seemed scant difference between him and the nine drovers tending the wide-horned oxen. I thought that were we in Dharbek, they shou
ld all have been Changed and he a True-man.

  They bade Ayl and Glyn welcome and offered to share their food. I was surprised that we were released from the cage and given platters of a vegetable stew, with hunks of hard bread and even a mug apiece of ale. They watched us surreptitiously, as if we were marvelous creatures they could not quite bring themselves to approach. I was not entirely comfortable under such scrutiny, but still I did not feel much like a prisoner. From their conversation I gathered they were outward bound from Trebizar, carrying manufactured goods to the settlements along the way, intending to return with salted fish and other such goods as should be found on the coast. In Dharbek a caravan like this would have gone armed, but these Changed carried only such knives as they’d need daily, and goads to prod the oxen. Not even the merchant wore a sword.

  I ventured to inquire after such lack of weaponry; and found my question met with shocked stares.

  “What need?” asked the merchant, whose name was Ylin. “Who’d harm us?”

  I said, “Outlaws; robbers,” and he gazed at me as if I were crazed.

  Ayl said, “Dharbek’s a different land, Ylin.”

  “Indeed it must be.” Ylin shook his head as if the notion of footpads or bandits were hard of digestion. “That an honest merchant cannot travel the roads safe without weapons? Now that’s a thing, eh?”

  His drovers nodded agreement, and I realized their eyes were on us now as if we were barbarians. That was a very odd feeling. I suppose I began to feel something of what the Changed underwent in my homeland.

  When we parted, Ylin called after us, “Beware those robbers, Ayl,” as if it were a great joke.

  We traversed the forest all that day and as twilight came down made camp beside a spring that welled up from a rocky mound. Unasked, unthinking, Tezdal and I set to gathering wood for our fire while Ayl and Glyn tended the horses. We built a blaze and water was set to boiling. An owl hooted soft amongst the timber, and far off a wolf howled, answered from a distance.

  I passed Rwyan a mug of tea that she cupped between her hands for warmth. I thought that summer ended; that I caught autumn’s advent on the breeze. I draped my blanket about her shoulders, and she murmured thanks that warmed me better than the tea.

  Ayl said, “Those clothes are thin. I’ll get us stouter gear when next we find a town.”

  I said, “Ylin was surprised when I spoke of outlaws. Are there truly none here?”

  The Changed shook his head absently. It seemed to me he took that absence for granted.

  “We do not live like Truemen,” he said. “Just as we’ve no aeldors or the like, so we’ve no outlaws.”

  “No criminals at all?” I asked.

  He made a movement of his shoulders, not quite a shrug, and said, “Sometimes folk argue … sometimes there’s a fight … but such matters are settled amongst neighbors. There are no malefactors as you describe.”

  Bluntly, I asked him, “How so? You’ve no aeldors, you say, nor any authority save this Raethe, it seems. What’s to stop some malcontent from becoming a thief, a bandit?”

  He thought awhile before answering. Then he said, “We are Changed, Daviot. We do not think or act like Truemen.”

  “Yet,” I said, “there seems no longer very much difference between your kind and mine.”

  “In some ways there’s not.” He hesitated, frowning as if he pondered an unfamiliar thought; one alien and consequently difficult of definition or expression. “I suppose our birthing renders us somewhat different. You Truemen made us to be prey for the dragons, and then to be your slaves. That gives us common cause, I think; so we’ve not such rivalries as you know. We’d sooner help one another than steal. Think on it—there have been Changed in Ur-Dharbek since Truemen quit the land, and they must survive the dragons. Did they not work together, they’d have died. And now? Now those newcome are fugitives, fleeing slavery—another common cause. Did we prey on one another, then I think none should survive.”

  This seemed to me idyllic. Indeed, it seemed to me almost incredible. Yet I’d seen Ylin’s unfeigned surprise and the startled expressions of his drovers: I could scarce doubt the truth of it.

  And I’d another matter to pursue. I said, “You speak of dragons. Are there dragons still?”

  Ayl’s great hands spread to shape a gesture of ignorance. “I’d not know,” he said. “I’m newcome here. In Trebizar they’ll likely know.”

  It seemed to me this Trebizar must prove a cornucopia of answers: I looked forward to reaching the place. Then I thought of what it might well mean for Rwyan and somewhat revised my thought.

  The forest saw us through another day of travel and then ended on heathland. Its edge was boundaried by the town Ayl had promised, and that was the largest place I had seen here. Again I was struck by the absence of walls; and by the size of the buildings, which rose three and four stories, all higgledy-piggledy, as if levels were added at random whim. The streets were mostly dirt, only those immediately adjacent to the center paved, but clean, and busy with such traffic as is common to any crossroads town.

  In the morning we broke our fast with fruit and cheese and bread, and then Ayl left us in Glyn’s care as he went out to obtain us warmer clothing.

  He returned with gear that fit us well enough—shirts of heavy cotton and jerkins of stout leather, breeks of the same material, boots for Rwyan, cloaks for her and Tezdal. I wondered what climate lay ahead: for all the Sky Lords’ magic was not brought against this land, still it was hard now to imagine anything other than endless summer.

  But as we trundled out across the heath, I felt a wind blow cool from the north, and when I looked that way, I saw great banks of darkened cloud patrol the horizon. I thought there was even rain falling over the distant line of hills.

  We rode toward those uplands, through stands of gorse and bright yellow broom. Birches and pines grew in scattered stands, and the day was loud with birdsong. I saw raptors ride the sky and thought again of dragons. Indeed, when we slept that night within a hurst of lonely pine trees, I dreamed again but not as before. It seemed my reveries took on a different tenor.

  I stood not in the oak wood but on some craggy highland. A wind blew strong out of a storm-dark sky, and far away I saw lightning whip the land. I looked about, but I was alone … and then not alone, though I could not make out what stood so close. I saw only vast yellow eyes, solemn and stately, observing me in silence. They seemed to me ancient, those eyes, and I thought they must hold all time’s secrets locked within their orbit.

  I said, “What do you want of me?” but got no answer. I felt that they judged me.

  Then … to say I heard is wrong, for there was no voice save inside my mind, as if these observers spoke directly to the channels of my nerves, to the innate substance of my being. Nor were there words, but rather only feeling, an emotion. … So then into my mind came a summons, a calling. It was as if they bade me join them, come to them.

  Then silence and darkness.

  I woke filled with a terrible yearning, as if I should be somewhere I was not, and could not go swift enough to satisfy the oneiric demand still lingering, a resonance in the conduits of my blood. I shivered and felt Rwyan wake within the compass of my arms. She made a small, almost tearful sound and clutched me. I stroked her hair, murmuring, thinking she’d suffered a nightmare.

  Against my chest she said, “I dreamed,” and repeated back exactly what I’d dreamed, identical in every specific.

  I frowned and told her I’d had the same, and then, suspicious, I looked around our camp.

  The fire was burned down to embers, but the night was bright with moon and starlight. Ayl and Glyn slept on. I saw Tezdal sitting up, and on his swarthy face such an expression as gave me answer to my question even before I voiced it. Still, I whispered my inquiry, and he nodded, wide-eyed, peering about as if he anticipated the momentary appearance of those great eyes.

  “What does it mean?” he asked.

  Rwyan said, “It was like a cal
l. As if something would draw us to it.”

  “Or to them,” I said.

  “What them?” asked Tezdal.

  I said, “The dragons.” I could think of nothing else.

  “Can they live still?” Rwyan asked.

  I said, “I don’t know.”

  “And do they,” she said, “how could they know of us?” I said again, “I don’t know. But is it not very strange that we all three had the same dream?”

  She said, “Yes.”

  I thought her frightened and held her tighter, stroking her hair. I found as much comfort there as she: this new aspect of the dream disturbed me in ways I could not properly define.

  When dawn came, I ventured to ask Ayl and Glyn if they had been troubled with dreams, but they only shook their heads and told me no, and I left it. I was not sure why, only that I felt this was a thing private to we three and best not revealed to the Changed.

  Most nights afterward the dream came back, though not on those we found shelter in farm or village. It was as though it were a thing of the wild places, and surely in it there was a wildness, a sense of absolute freedom. I felt less and less troubled, though I perceived in that silent observation an element of danger, as if I stood under judgment. I felt in equal measure that did I fail, I should suffer, and that I should not fail. But I could not say how I might fail or know why I was judged; nor what might be the outcome, whichever way the scales tipped.

  All this I discussed with Rwyan and Tezdal, whenever we found occasion, and they shared my feelings.

  Then, when the rising land we crossed became the foot-hills of the mountains, the dreams came less and less frequently. I felt an odd sense of loss, for the yearning I’d known from the first remained still and shaped a vacuum in my soul, as if some great prize almost within my grasp were snatched away.

  I have said before that Ur-Dharbek was a land of surprises: its capital did not disappoint.

  We crested the mountains through a pass loomed all around with great peaks, the sky no longer the pristine blue of the lowlands but a steely color, as much gray as blue. Dull cloud streamed overhead, and there was a constant wind, often fierce so that it sang amongst the stones. For a full day, from dawn to dusk, we traversed the pass, and then pure wonder was revealed.