by Angus Wells
My—almost, I say, love—crouched upon her nest. She turned her head toward me, and I felt beckoned. I climbed the ragged stone that brought me to her perch and saw the egg she coddled. It lay upon a bed of branches and torn hides not unlike the nest of a bird. It was pure white, veined with a tracery of red, and high as my waist. I understood that I was allowed to touch it: I did and smiled as I felt the pulsing heartbeat within. It was slow and steady as a metronome, and I understood from Deburah that it should hatch within the year, and be a bull, and mighty as his father.
I felt awash with love. I touched Deburah’s cheek, and she turned her head against my hand, almost pitching me from the nest. I stumbled against the leg she thrust out to catch me and leaned against her shoulder.
Into my mind came the thought: Shall we fly soon? Shall we hunt?
I answered, Yes. Soon, and got back such pleasure as makes the finest wine nothing. I left the cave dazed. Nor was Rwyan in better state. (That night we made love with a passion that left us both as weary as exhilarated: the communion of dragons and Dragonmasters heightens the senses.)
Bellek took us on to other caves. This mountain—this Dragoncastle!—was riddled with them. Peliane sat an empty nest in the first, and we others stood back as Tezdal went to her, and looked her in the eye, and bowed formally as if he attended some high-born lady in the courts of Ahn-feshang.
Then I saw something that we neither of us ever mentioned. I had never thought to see it, not since he told Rwyan and me of Retze’s death. I saw Tezdal shed tears. They ran ignored down his cheeks, and from Peliane I felt an outpouring of sympathy and compassion. I watched as Tezdal stepped blindly toward her and raised his arms, as if he’d fling them about her neck. She ducked her massive head and swung it close, so that he stood leaning against her, his face pressed to her cheek.
Into my ear, Rwyan whispered, “Tezdal shall be with us, I think.”
I only nodded and held her close. I thought my Sky Lord friend had found some other bond to fill that vacuum in his life. I thought he should put the Way of Honor behind him now. I hoped it should be so.
Of Urt I was far less sure.
I saw the sweat that beaded his face despite the cold that gripped the mountainside between the eaves as we went to where Kathanria built her empty nest. (Dragons mate frequently but are seldom impregnated. Their gestation periods are counted in years, and the production of an egg is a rare and marvelous event. My Deburah was special in this, as in so many other ways.) He shuddered as we entered under the watchful eye of a bull striped bloody red and dark green. He looked about at the dams that studied us from their ledges. I thought he might turn and run, but then he made a sound that came from deep in his chest and stumbled over the bone-littered floor to climb toward Kathanria. He seemed not entirely willing but rather compelled by an emotion that overrode his fear. He seemed to me like some gamblers I’d known in Durbrecht—afraid of the losses their gaming might bring but incapable of resisting the temptation. He seemed almost to fight himself as he climbed the path to the dragon’s nest.
Then Kathanria fixed him with her eye and raised a paw that swept him to her cheek, whether he be willing or not. And I heard Urt moan and saw him lie against her like a puppy finding its dam.
“Urt, too,” I whispered into Rwyan’s ear. “Soon, I think.”
But should it be soon enough? Could we learn so much in time? I saw that fateful Ennas Day loom ever closer, a threatening reef in the sea of my ambition, and I could only curb my impatience and hope it should be in time.
We saw the winter out in the Dragoncastle. We saw such snows fall as I’d not ever seen, or imagined. We learned to saddle our bond-mates—even Urt, though he was slow to overcome his innate terror, for all Kathanria’s sendings of comfort and confidence—and we learned to ask their cooperation. Ever that–to ask; never to command—and that alone was hard enough for folk better accustomed to heeling horses into direction, with use of bridle and bit. I was minded of my gray mare (was she yet hale? I hoped she was) as I learned to request of Deburah that she go where I’d have her fly.
But what glory to sit aback a dragon and vaunt the heavens. To soar above the clouds that dusted the valleys with snow and see the high blue sky, the sun that rode its path from east to west, invisible to those below us.
And to hunt!
Oh, I came to understand the joy of that. To loft the sky on slow-beating wings, alert to those beating hearts below, the warmth of pulsing blood. To swoop over the forests, searching hungry. To find the one chosen and plummet, claws poised to snatch and slay. To fold our wings and drop, the air howling past us. To anticipate the evasions, avoid the crags and trees our quarry sought to hide in, and take it. Swift! A single pounce, and beat our wings to rise again, triumphant. I came to understand the challenge it must be to contest with sorcerers for mastery of the sky. I grew impatient to bring my Deburah south. I found a taste for bloody meat: I changed.
For better or for worse, I’ll not say. I was carried on a flood of belief, of trust in Deburah and the attainment of all my hopes. I know that Urt and Tezdal came to share the dream and joined my loves and I in its shaping. I think we all changed then, that long winter in the Forgotten Country, and was that wrong, I give you Rwyan’s answer: it was the pattern. Did we change, it was not for lust of power—though whatever gods exist know we came to own that commodity in full enough measure—but rather for desire of some calmer order in face of the chaos men bring.
The dragons changed my thinking. They were fleshed creatures and magical both. They ate those crystals that waste Truemen and drive Changed mad, but they suffered no such fate themselves. They held communion with those elemental spirits that the Attul-ki sought to control and master, to bend to their will; but the dragons knew them as cohabitors, as other, equal beings. The dragons are different. I think they are likely wiser than we men, True or Changed, Ahn or Dhar. And we who consort with them are likely made different by such proximity to them and those strange stones that even now I cannot pretend to understand.
We learned to ride the dragons. We explored the Dragoncastle, and that of itself could make a tale.
It was no keep, this place, but rather a town, a city, built into and about the mountain. Only great magic could have shaped those courts and halls and yards, those cleft-spanning bridges, the winding corridors and the multitude of chambers, large and small. I questioned Bellek on this, but he proved evasive and left us mostly to guess the manner of the making and the numbers that must once have inhabited the warren.
Memory of magic lingered still, side by side with ruin and decrepitude. A lightless passage all draped with spiders’ webs and paved with rats’ droppings was likely to emerge onto a plaza large as any in Durbrecht and clean as if new-swept, where neither wind nor rain nor snow gained entry but was held off by the power that still lingered there. Or a square all disrupted by roots and ivy, where birds left reminders of their springtime nesting, would offer us a rotted door beyond which lay pristine, dustless chambers. We found halls as great as that in which we ate and balconies that wound vertiginous along the mountain’s flanks. There were manufactories filled with rusted machinery I did not comprehend; others in which great wheels and cogs turned silently, glistening with oil, untouched by time and entirely inexplicable. We saw armories filled with rusted weapons and antique battle gear; rooms where dust and cobwebs hid the contents, and rooms that might have been only recently vacated. There were salons where tapestries hung rotted and gnawed by mice, alive with insects; and others where the draperies were as bright as if the weaving were but yesterday finished.
I spent much time studying these, but all they told me was that once men had ridden dragons and lived here happy, it seemed. I saw no evidence of any children, but I thought little of that, then.
We investigated Bellek’s kitchens, and Rwyan voiced her disapproval and used her own talent to restore all there to pristine cleanliness. After, she and Urt and I (Tezdal had no knowledge at all of the
culinary arts) took over the preparation of our meals.
We met with the Changed who farmed the valleys. We gave them meat that winter and took in return Bellek’s tithe of their produce. It was a fair exchange, and none of them feared the dragons, but rather saw them as fellow inhabitants of this wild land. We spent days amongst them. Urt was first amazed that they showed no fear of our coming, and then entranced by the life they led, under the shadow of the dragons’ wings. They laughed at his doubts and told him they had freedom here, from Truemen and war and Allanyn. He was surprised they recognized her designs, and they no less that he’d not seen them.
Ere long, he came to wholehearted support of our cause.
Tezdal was harder to persuade.
The Sky Lord was come to the same communion with Peliane as I had with Deburah: he loved her. But he was not yet to be convinced he should bring her against his Kho’rabi brethren.
“You ask too much of me,” he said. “You ask that I gainsay those vows that shaped me. I cannot expect that you understand what it is to be Kho’rabi, but you know that in my language that means ‘the Dedicated,’ and that is what we are—dedicated to the reconquest of our Homeland.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but he raised a hand to halt me, and so dour was his dark face, I held my tongue. I had known him long enough now I might judge his moods, and for some while he had been sunk in melancholy introspection. Indeed, the only time I saw him happy was in company with Peliane. Oh, he remained civil—his manners were ever better than mine—and he acknowledged the debt he felt to Rwyan, the friendship that had grown between us, and between him and Urt. But a worm of doubt had been chewing at his soul since first we came to the Dragoncastle and he deemed Rwyan safe. I had endeavored to speak with him of such matters, and so had Rwyan, but he would not, or could not, and gave us only responses as evasive as Bellek’s. This was the first time he showed any willingness to discuss it openly, and so I sat silent as he continued.
“You cannot understand,” he said. “You Truemen Dhar came down into Kellambek with your magic and your swords, and you made my people slaves—those you did not slay. You brought your one god and mocked the Three—you took away my people’s heritage and ground us down under your heel. But Attul gave us back our hope and showed us the way east, to the islands of Ahn-feshang; and then the Three gave us those gifts I’ve told you of, that we might take back what is rightfully ours. The Attul-ki show us the way now, and we Kho’rabi yearn for the reconquest—what you call the Great Coming.
“No, listen!” This to Rwyan, who had moved to speak but fell silent as I under the bleak intensity of his eyes. “I do not name you enemy. Not you two Dhar; nor you. Urt. But what you ask is too much! You’d have me ride Peliane against my own. You ask me to betray all that I’ve believed in. I am nothing save I be true to my beliefs, but you ask me to fight my brothers, my kin. You ask me to go against the wishes of the Three! You ask me to damn myself for your dream, and I cannot do that.”
He closed his eyes, his head flung back so that his long plait hung down behind his chair. I saw his left hand finger the dagger at his waist and knew what he should likely say next.
I was right: he said, “Already I’ve betrayed my kin in aiding your escape from Trebizar. I could do no less in face of my pledge to you, Rwyan. But this—” He shook his head wearily. “No. Better that I take the Way of Honor now.”
Rwyan said very softly, “Do you truly think that’s the honorable course, Tezdal?”
His eyes sprang open. His head came forward. He stared at her, fierce as a bull dragon. “Yes.”
I said, “I’d not see you open your belly, my friend.”
He laughed. The sound rang wild about the empty hall. It seemed to me brother to the howling of the wind outside. I ached for him. I knew his decision was infinitely difficult.
He reached for the jug. I pushed it toward him, and he filled his cup; drank it off before he spoke again. “Would you deny your god?” he asked, rhetorical. “Would you ask me to deny the Three, all my beliefs, all my life has meant? Forgive me—I intend no disrespect, but you Truemen Dhar lack that honor that shapes us. I am Kho’rabi: my life has been lived for the single purpose. And now you’d ask me to deny it?”
Rwyan began to shape an answer, but to my amazement Urt set a hand upon her arm and motioned her to silence; and it was he who gave Tezdal the response.
“I was born Changed,” he said. “I am the by-blow of Dhar magic: dragons’ prey, a servant. In Dharbek I was nothing—invisible, a creature born of made things, born to serve unseen, unthanked. I was traded like an animal, as you’d no doubt trade a hound or a horse or a cow. I was nothing!
“Do you not think I dreamed of conquest then? Of my people rising to overthrow our masters? I’d not go back to that. No! Not ever! That was why I fled Karysvar and crossed the Slammerkin, to find the wild Changed and live free.
“But what did I find in Ur-Dharbek? That those who promise freedom dream of power! That Allanyn and her cohorts would join with you Kho’rabi to destroy the Truemen, to set themselves up where the Dhar stand now. Not make a better world—only shift the order of the old. I’d have no master, Tezdal, neither Trueman nor Changed. Only be myself, free.
“What think you the Great Coming shall mean? Surely bloodshed, when your battalions come down out of the sky and Allanyn brings my people south over the Slammerkin, and the Changed of Dharbek rise. And after? What then? Shall your Attul-ki and Allanyn parcel out their conquests? Or shall ambition vaunt itself again and Allanyn decide she’d not share with Sky Lords, or your Attul-ki decide to enslave my Changed people? Where shall those Dhar who still survive be then? As you Ahn were—slaves and outlaws, dreaming in their turn of reconquest? I’ve found honesty in Truemen—two sit before you now, exemplars!—and I’ve known cruelty. I’ve found the same in my own kind, and I tell you that we are none of us so different. Daviot saw that years ago and paid the price of his vision. Rwyan saw it, and now she’s here—a Trueman mage, her life dedicated to defense of Dharbek. Until now! When she sees a truer future.”
He broke off. He seemed to me almost embarrassed by his eloquence. He took up his cup and drank. I said nothing; neither Rwyan. I think we both knew Urt had said it all, and we could not put it better. I smiled at my old friend, but he was looking away at Tezdal still. His eyes were locked with the Sky Lord’s, as if he’d burn the import of his belief into Tezdal’s brain.
My Sky Lord friend sat silent a while, his aquiline features impassive, a mask. I had no doubt he hid the turmoil within.
We waited, all of us.
Finally, Tezdal said, “A truer future, Urt? Tell me what that is, eh? Tell me what truth there can be in vows denied.”
Urt still did not look at me, or at Rwyan, but only held Tezdal’s gaze. He said, “A better world, my friend. A world of equals, not servants and their masters. Neither vanquished and oppressed; neither any who dream of conquest or liberation, but only live together in freedom.”
“And how,” Tezdal asked, “would you achieve this Utopia?”
Urt said, “I think it shall not be easy. I think it shall cost us pain, and the payment of it be likely bloody. But I have come to Rwyan’s belief, to Daviot’s dream—I believe we might achieve it.”
Tezdal lowered his eyes to his empty cup. Rwyan rose and filled it. The Sky Lord drank and brought a hand to his mouth, where a droplet of red wine sat upon his lip. He wiped it, fastidious, away. He studied his fingers.
Then he said, “Tell me.”
His tone was carefully measured, his expression controlled. I saw he hid the anguish that consumed him, the pendulum swing betwixt despair and hope that Urt’s justifying argument set in motion. I pitied him. I’d not dare say it aloud—he’d likely have found that an insult to his Kho’rabi honor—but I grieved for him in his torment, knowing that he, more than any of us, was caught in the dilemma of perceived betrayal. I thought, as I watched his bleak face, that if this pattern I’d described to comfort
Rwyan, this pattern she now believed in and I almost could see, were true, then it was not unlike those spiders’ webs that had decorated this hall before Rwyan brought her talent to their clearing. It was a great web of many strands, impossible to trace to ends or center, sources or conclusions. It was larger and far more complex than we caught in it could see, and poor Tezdal was like a fly landed there by none of his own design—only caught, the mandibles of decision’s spider moving ever closer as he struggled to find a way, an honorable way, out.
I looked at his face and felt my soul bleed for him as I outlined the stratagem I’d wrought.
TThe wind tapped demanding knuckles at the windows as I spoke. It was yet only midafternoon, but the sky was dark, laden heavy with the promise of snow to come that night. What little light the sun succeeded in thrusting through the clouds fell in long slanting rays over the mountains. I spoke with all the eloquence of my calling; and more, for I was impassioned by conviction. I saw it kindle a fire in the Sky Lord. He was, at first, still doubtful, but then I saw his eyes narrow, and then widen, as the seed Urt had planted took root and grew under the sun of my words. I watched as his expression shifted, swift as those patterns of light and shadow dancing over the snowfields and forests beyond the windows. I saw him come to belief, to trust, and his hope minded me of the sun in springtime, emerging from winter’s gloom.
“Think you it might be done, truly?” he asked, not of me, but of Rwyan.
She nodded and told him, “I believe it might. I believe that to fail its attempting is to betray all our peoples.”
Tezdal looked then at Urt, who lowered his head in solemn, silent agreement.
He turned to me, brows raised in question. I said, “Save we go on as we’ve done, in war unending, I see no other way.”
