by Angus Wells
Do you who listen to my tale remember that first time you fell in love? That moment of absolute certainty, when you understood, not knowing how or why, that your life was irrevocably bound to another’s? That moment when it became impossible to imagine a future without your partner? When you knew that to separate from this being must diminish you, lessen your existence?
It was like that. In that breathy instant I knew myself bonded with Deburah. I’d have given my life for her; and knew that she would do the same—had already taken that chance, in the skies above Trebizar. I opened my mouth and shouted my joy into the wind.
That was the moment I became a Dragonmaster.
We rose, our wingbeats proud thunder in the night sky. We chased the stars. The air grew thin, and we grew heady, intoxicated with the pure joy of effort, of surmounting obstacles impossible to lesser creatures. Slow crawling men might find a way through those mountains, but only hard—through the passes, climbing up and halting, resting to climb again. We flew above them. They mattered nothing to us: the sky was ours to command. We were the Lords of the Sky. We looked the moon in its face and flaunted our wings at its cold observation. We spread our wings wide to catch the currents of air the land gave gifting off. We found the skystreams and rode them as fishermen do the slower tides of the ocean, glorious. We sailed the heavens. The mountains thrust up snow-tipped peaks to catch us; the moon loomed above. We soared over such crags as seemed to me like teeth designed to enfold the world. We saw the snow give way to bare rock, like blood bled off of dragons’ fangs. Forests clung black and green to the farther sides, and then faltered against the climb that must bring them up to those hills that ran on and on as far we could see.
I thought there could not be so many mountains in all the world. We were come to those crags I knew from Durbrecht’s teachings were called the Dragonsteeth, and that this was the Forgotten Country: Tartarus.
Home.
She spoke into my mind. I no longer wondered how.
She beat her wings and turned us eastward, then west, circling after Kathanria, who led our flight. I looked to Rwyan and to Tezdal. They sat their spiraling mounts like children set high and insecure on plowhorses. As I had long ago ridden Robus’s old gelding, as excited as I was afraid. I wondered if they clutched their saddles hard as I did.
The sun teased the eastern sky: we’d flown the night away. It hinted red across the Fend. Was it still the Fend here? Where neither Ur-Dharbek nor Dharbek held sway, but only dragons: Did they name it different? I thought then that I’d gone into the past; or the future. I was wild with exhilaration. I looked about and saw riderless dragons winging high above, as if they’d be sure of our safe homecoming—why did I think of it as that?—before they landed.
Ahead, I saw peaks high enough that dawn was not yet come to the western slopes. That way the sky was still dark, stars lingering there, the moon reluctant to set. I looked down on rocky fangs that bit the sky, and Deburah swooped down after Kathanria.
Trust.
“I do,” I replied.
We spread our wings and glided in to land. We lowered our legs as the wind swung up to hold our wings.
We beat our wings to master the updraft.
We hooked our claws on the rock and settled.
We folded our wings and plucked a moment at a particularly irritating fragment of flesh or fabric that had earlier lodged between our teeth. It had been an interesting skirmish; better than hunting: more challenge. We hoped there should be more.
I sat awhile bemused, as Deburah picked at her teeth. I felt … I could scarcely define what I felt.
Amazed: yes, that’s easy. Bewildered: that, too.
What else?
Exultant. Proud. In love. (Not, I hasten to add, as with Rwyan, but in a different way that I cannot properly describe, though a Dragonmaster would understand.)
I unbuckled the straps that held me to the saddle and clambered down the leg she extended. I set a hand against that vast blue cheek. It was dry and warm. I said, “My thanks,” and Deburah favored me with a sidelong glance of her tawny eye and went back to the picking of her teeth.
I limped across a yard that disgraced Durbrecht’s courts—that should surely have made Kherbryn’s small—to where Rwyan stood.
Her hair was blown out wild; but that was nothing to the excitement in her eyes. I could not then think of her as blind: it was as though the dragons gave her sight beyond her occult vision, to something more and greater. I took her hand.
She said, “Daviot,” and shook her head, laughing.
I said, “Yes. I understand. I felt it too.”
Tezdal joined us. He said, “Do we fetch Urt?”
Guilt then, that I could so easily overlook my good true comrade: I nodded, and we went to Kathanria, where Bellek was already loosing Urt from his fastenings.
He was not yet quite conscious. I was not certain whether from my grip on his nerves, or desire to refuse his situation. I helped him down and held him as he tottered, eyes peering slowly about, at first hooded, but then opening wide in naked wonder. I felt him shudder and held him tighter. He said, “Where are we?”
I looked to Bellek for the answer I thought I knew.
Bellek said, “In Tartarus. In the last Dragoncastle.”
I stared about, amazed, on sights so antique they were forgotten by even the greatest Mnemonikos. For all that had transpired this wild, incredible night, still I could scarce believe the evidence of my own eyes. It was as though that flight had carried me back in time, to a past long lost.
We stood atop a mountain. Not the highest—vaster summits loomed all about—but still so great, it seemed we stood atop the world itself, the valley below dwindling insignificant, like a child’s gouging from this wild landscape. As I’ve said, the yard was vast, in keeping with the size of the dragons that perched on the ledges raised up all around—and those not so large as the beasts that came down now. Their calling filled the morning. It sounded to me like the shouting of soldiers after battle, boasting of victory.
Bellek said, “Those are the bulls. They’ll not be ridden, but they fight hard for their broods.” He looked at us, his pale eyes intense, and added, “Steer clear of them until you know this place and your mounts better. The males are jealous of their status, and not always predictable.”
Rwyan laughed. “Much as with men, eh?”
I looked to where the males landed. They were twice the size of the females and colored brighter, all reds and yellows, greens and blues, and though they were fewer in number than the females, they dominated with their sheer bulk. I saw one enormous creature come striding down the ram-parts to where Deburah perched. He craned out his neck, rubbing his cheek against hers, and she ceased her preening to rub back. I felt a stab of jealousy.
And then found his enormous eyes locked on mine, lips drawing back from fangs that might have skewered me as he hissed.
Quite unthinking, I ducked my head in apology and said aloud, “Forgive me.”
The lips closed slowly over the teeth and he returned his attention to Deburah. I felt dismissed; and very small.
Rwyan laughed and took my hand, and asked me, “Have I a rival?”
I shook my head and forced a nervous chuckle. “You understand?”
She gave me back, “How could I not? By the God, I felt”—she turned her face about, encompassing our surroundings, the vast shapes that stood there—“like a god.”
Bellek smiled. “You bond. Your feet are on the road. Soon you’ll be Dragonmasters.”
In a small voice, Urt said, “I? A Dragonmaster?”
And Bellek clapped him on the shoulder with a force that belied the silver of his hair and the wrinkles on his face, and said, “Aye, my friend. You, too. The dreams don’t lie.”
I said, “Shall you tell us of these dreams? Shall you tell us how”—I gestured around—“all this? Why you saved us?”
“Of course.” Bellek’s teeth shone white in the early sun. “All of it, in time.
There’s no great mystery to it.”
No great mystery? I stared at him; my jaw hung open, my eyes gaped wide. He laughed at me, and beckoned that we follow him across the yard.
Squadrons of cavalry might have exercised there, with room along the ramparts for archers and war engines. They were lit now by the rising sun, and I saw better than before that they were built on a monumental scale. It seemed to me we traversed a melding of natural stone and man-built structure, the two contiguous. I’d have remained, marveling, had Rwyan not tugged me after our rescuer host.
We passed beneath an arch clad thick in moss, into a wide corridor that dripped moisture from its roof to run along the edges and pool, in places, over the floor. I felt suddenly cold and grew aware how thin the air tasted. I shivered. I heard Rwyan’s teeth begin to chatter.
Over his shoulder, Bellek called back, “Away from the dragons, you’ll feel the cold. But there’s a fire lit, and food.”
I asked, “How’s that? How can the dragons warm us?”
The Dragonmaster only laughed. “In time, Storyman. All in time.”
We went on. What illumination there was came from slits cut deep through the rock, slanting the dawn light in narrow bands across our way, so that we walked from light to shadow and back again. Water splashed under my boots. I saw rats scurry in advance of our passage; the tunnel smelled of mold and decay and age.
We emerged into an atrium that had once been very grand. Now ivy and the roots of hardy trees wound around the colonnades. Creepers and boughs filled the space above, patterning the air as if we traversed a bower. Across the floor, stone was disrupted, divided and broken by the roots that drove down remorseless between the flags. Birds had nested here: I saw their droppings white on the floor, and the remnants of ancient nests overhead. I looked up and saw the circle where the sky should have shown clear all filled with entwining limbs, a tracery against the burgeoning blue. I looked at Rwyan, and she frowned her lack of understanding. I watched Bellek pause at a doorway and wondered if I understood better.
There had been doors hung here once. Magnificent doors, to judge by the remnants that lay scattered and rotting across the floor. From the jambs there still protruded hinges of long-blackened metal, distorted by the weight they had once supported, even as it fell down, decaying.
I suppose Bellek saw my expression, because he smiled, and shrugged, and said, “It was finer, once. A long time ago.”
Beyond that rotten doorway, steps descended. They were worn away in smooth curves that spoke of many feet, much use. What light there was—there were no windows, not even those narrow embrasures I’d seen above—came from the moss and fungi that grew in fulgent clumps down the walls and roof. The air was damp and tasted of decay; more rats scurried away, at sound of our footsteps. Which were not loud, given the coating of the floor. I saw large beetles scuttle before us; and more crawling overhead. I wondered at the decrepitude of this Dragoncastle.
The stairs ended at another arch, beyond it another court, where rotten wood and winding roots wove a foot-tricking maze across the stone. This place seemed to occupy the mountain, but I could not imagine what hands had carved it out. A corridor then, brighter for the embrasures that let in the sun; worse for what the light revealed. Then a last descent down time-worn stairs to doors.
I found myself surprised to see them: I had begun to assume that no wood existed any longer in this decaying place, save what nature wound into the stone. But these were firm and black, banded with solid hinges of dark metal. And Bellek flung them open like some proud aeldor inviting guests into his sanctum.
Which I suppose he was and we were.
I could not help but gape: after what we’d passed through, this was magnificent.
It was a hall such as I’d not seen. Not in any place I’d been, not even Durbrecht. I thought not even Gahan—now his son and the ill-met regent—in Kherbryn could boast such a hall. As the yard where the dragons landed had been great, so was this chamber; and more.
It was vaulted high, with beams of stone like the ribs of some creature even larger than the dragons. My feet tapped out small steps on the floorstones, lost in the fading echoes of the far walls, which rose up tall as those beeches in Trebizar’s gardens, as high and wide and overwhelming. The floor was marble, pure white under the thick dust. My boots left tracks there. The walls were black as darkest night, save for where the rising ribs of floor lofted white beneath their layering of cobwebs, as if all this chamber were fashioned of a single thing, mingling. It was as though we stepped into the belly of a beast entrapped in the stone of the mountain. High windows like dragons’ eyes cut through on three sides, and as the sun rose higher, so light spread brilliant through the chamber, sparkling off the dust that filled the air. I went to one of those windows and looked out (what kept the glass so clean?) and gasped at what I saw. This chamber was cut from within some bulge of stone, jutting out over the panorama below so that I felt I hung suspended in the morning. I moved back to join the others, who followed Bellek across this wondrous hall.
I saw hearths filled with dead and ancient wood; and tables of carved oak set around with high-backed chairs of intricate design. Spiders’ webs strung their backs, and dust lay thick over the surfaces of the tables. From the vaulted roof hung chandeliers that were likely gold beneath the verdigris that dulled their luster. It was not easy to tell, for webs spun them around, and fat spiders dangled, horrid in the light.
I felt Rwyan tighten her grip on my hand. I saw Tezdal frown, disgust naked on his face. Only Urt seemed undisturbed, and I thought that was likely because he felt himself safe underground, away from the dragons.
Bellek followed an old trail through the dust to the far side of the chamber.
He’d not lied about the fire: it burned in the hearth there. Smoldering down now into sparking embers, but lit up quick enough when he tossed on fresh logs from the stack beside. There was a table there, before the hearth, of some dark wood; round and set with five chairs, as if we were expected. Bellek ushered Rwyan to a somewhat dusty seat, and I helped Tezdal lower Urt to another. We took places either side. Only Rwyan seemed at ease.
I was pleased to see the table clean and that the chandelier above was empty of spiders. (I’ve no liking for spiders.) So I watched as Bellek filled five golden goblets from a decanter of matching gold and wondered if the tarnish would taint the taste.
He said, “Drink, and welcome to the Dragoncastle. I’ll find you food.”
He went out through a door beside the hearth, and I looked at my companions. They looked at me: none of us had answers to the questions our eyes asked. I sipped the wine and said, “It’s good.”
Tezdal said, “What is this place?”
Rwyan said, “A Dragoncastle, as Bellek told us.”
I said, “It’s old. I never thought to see a place so old as this.”
Urt only sat silent and still, his body rigid; as if locked to the dusty chair. I should have comforted him or tried to, but I was caught up in such wonder at all I saw that I am ashamed to say I overlooked his predicament.
Bellek came back, laden with a platter of meat that he set down before us. He smiled and went away, returning with vegetables and bread; then brought us plates and knives. “Eat,” he said. Suddenly I found myself mightily hungry.
The meat was venison, spit-roasted, so that the outer flesh was charred, the inner bloody. The vegetables were barely cooked, and the bread was coarse. I cared not at all: I set to with a will.
“You must forgive me.” I looked up and saw that Bellek addressed himself to Rwyan. “I’m not much of a cook.”
She licked a droplet of blood from her lips and asked him, “Are you alone here, then?”
For an instant his eyes grew bleak. Then he smiled and shrugged and ducked his head. “Save for the dragons, aye. And have been for a while—hence this disorder.”
I said, “What of the other Dragoncastles?”
He answered me, “Empty of Dragonmasters.”<
br />
I said, “You’re truly the last?”
He only nodded in reply; there was a terrible sadness in the simple gesture.
I looked around and saw time’s hand all about me. I felt the weight of ages in the stone. I saw it in his eyes. I asked, “How long?”
He looked at me and smiled, and once again I wondered if I saw the glint of madness there. He said, “I’m no Mnemonikos, Daviot. I lose track of the days, the years; but … a long time.”
I said, “In Dharbek they believe the dragons dead and the Dragonmasters with them.”
He said, “As you’ve seen, they are wrong,” and laughed and filled our tarnished cups.
I asked him where the wine came from, the food.
He said, “Meat’s easy—the dragons do my hunting. The rest?” He paused, grinning mischievously. “I’ve some few friends. Such as may reassure Urt.”
I frowned, chastened by that reminder. I looked to Urt, who ate disconsolately, his head lowered toward his plate. He looked up at that, and I had seldom known his expression so easily read: it was one of hope and disbelief; and fear his hope should prove unfounded.
Bellek said, “There are Changed here, Urt. They’ve no fear of the dragons; no need to fear them.”
Urt said, “Where?” His voice was strident with hope.
Bellek said, “In the valleys. They’ve farms there; they gift me a tithe of their produce.”
Urt looked at him with wondering eyes. My own, I suspect, were wide with curiosity. I said, “How?”
The Dragonmaster laughed. I believe he enjoyed himself, spinning out all these tidbits of knowledge held so long to himself; now to be shared—but slowly—like long-hoarded treasures. He was more than a little crazed. Or saw the turnings of the world from a different vantage point from ours.
He said, “When the Truemen sorcerers created the Changed and left them behind in Ur-Dharbek, there were always some few who lived north of Trebizar. They learned early what I suspect that Raethe of yours knows now—that the dragons hunt men not as food, but for sport. Think on it! You’ve ridden dragons, you’ve seen them hunt.” He gestured at the meat cooling on our platters. “Deer are nothing to them. By the Three, they take a deer easy as a terrier a rat. They take the aurochs—and few men would face such a beast! No, they hunted the men who came here because they enjoyed the sport, and because men challenged their supremacy. And for a while they hunted the Changed of Ur-Dharbek for the same reason. But the Changed—forgive me, Urt—proved poorer sport than Truemen. I think it was likely that Truemen commanded magic earlier, and there’s a … taste … to that; one the dragons enjoy.”
