Lords of the Sky

by Angus Wells

  He asked, “Even at the price you Dhar shall pay?”

  “Weighted by the lives lost—those likely saved—that price seems small to me.”

  “It seems to me a very great price,” he responded.

  I shrugged and said, “We’d change our world, Tezdal. I think that price must always be high. But still worth the paying.”

  He hesitated. He filled his cup and drank again. It seemed he offered a toast. He set the goblet down and said, “I’m with you.” And then, much softer, “May the Three forgive me.”

  “Hurrah!”

  We all of us started as Bellek’s voice came from a doorway. How long he’d stood there, silent and listening, I could only guess. I thought perhaps since first our conversation had begun, for he came to join us with so purposeful an expression, I must assume he knew all we had decided.

  He glanced at the jug and took it from the table. “Such weighty decisions demand a weightier wine,” he said, going to the kitchens. Calling back over his shoulder, “And you’ll require my aid in this.”

  He came back with the jug replenished and filled all our cups. It was a rich, red vintage, smooth and heavy. I’d tasted nothing so fine.

  “I’d wondered how long it should be,” he said, “before you came to this.”

  I stared at him. “You knew?”

  He chuckled. “I know your dreams,” he said. “The dragons tell me. I was not certain—I could not be—but I suspected that such as you must sooner or later come to some decision. And that decision must go the one way or the other. You choose the course I thought you’d take.”

  Rwyan said, “And shall you aid us, Bellek?”

  The Dragonmaster fixed her with his pale eyes. On his face I saw emotions chase like shadow and light over the mountains, one overlaying the other so swift, I could not read them clear. I thought I saw hope and confirmation balanced with some indefinable loss. He said, “It shall not be without a price.”

  I said, “Name it. Likely we’ll pay.”

  Bellek chuckled again, and in the sound I heard the echoes of those mixed emotions that had just decorated his seamed features; also, that hint of madness. I wondered what the price should be.

  He said, “That you become, truly, Dragonmasters.”

  I sensed behind his words some hidden meaning. I said, “Shall we achieve our aims if we are not?”

  He shook his head. “No. Save you be utterly committed, you cannot take the dragons into battle.”

  Rwyan said, “Then I accept.”

  I found those pale eyes on mine. I glanced an instant at Rwyan, then ducked my head. “I accept.”

  “Good.” He looked to Urt, to Tezdal, who both nodded and gave their word.

  “Then,” Bellek declared, “let us plan this thing. It shall not be easy, but”—his eyes twinkled as he surveyed us—“I think the dragons shall greatly enjoy it.”

  We fell then to talk of stratagems, of distances and objectives.

  We each had in our possession information of great value, that should make the task easier; or so I hoped. Rwyan’s was of that magic commanded by the Dhar sorcerers—of the Sentinels and the Border Cities, and what was owned by the mages of Kherbryn and Durbrecht, the other great cities. I could offer knowledge of the keeps of Dharbek, of the war-engines and the warbands, the mood of the people and the aeldors. Urt spoke of Ur-Dharbek—of Trebizar and the magic Allanyn and her followers possessed, the strength of the Changed armies. Tezdal told us of the Kho’rabi and the Attul-ki, of the preparations for the Great Conquest.

  It grew late as we talked. The winter darkness outside gave way to that brief twilight the mountains know, and that to night. The wind fell away, seemingly satisfied its task was done. Great banks of moonlit cloud obscured the sky, and from them fell snow that drifted soft and silent, building on the ledges and the parapets of the Dragoncastle. We repaired to the kitchen, still talking as we assembled a hasty meal, continuing as we brought the food to the table, talking still as we ate.

  There were no clocks here, neither clepsydras nor sundials (for what good they’d have done in this season) nor any other kind. It was as if time ceased here, and what divisions of the days and hours existed were imposed only by our urgency. I had seen none in Bellek until now; that I now perceived him quickened worried me in a manner I did not properly understand.

  You know from this accounting of my life that I’d that teaching of my College that allowed me usually to interpret a body’s language—the hints of eye and intonation, the movements of the hands and shoulders, those little oft-hidden signs that speak as loud as words. Bellek remained a mystery. I believed I sensed excitement in him, but also a multitude of other emotions I could not explain. I trusted him—I had no doubt he should aid us as he promised—but there was something else, something he concealed. It was that that prompted me to follow him when he left us.

  I followed Bellek across yards tracked thick with snow and passages where the trickling water froze and rats skidded on the ice. We came out into a night whirlwinded white and slipped and slid our way—he confident, I furtive as a nightcome thief—along the trailing walkways that brought us to the caves where the dragons lived.

  It was cold. I wished I’d brought a cloak. I shivered, thinking that my drumming teeth must reveal my presence, but Bellek showed no sign, only paused before the cave, and then went in.

  I came after. I halted at the entrance. The bull Taziel was inside the gaping arch, alert. His wings were furled; his fangs were exposed. He looked at me, and I sent out that silent message Bellek had taught us all.

  Peace. I mean no harm. You are mighty and magnificent, and I humbly beg to admire your brood.

  He granted me permission, and I went after Bellek into the cave.

  I could no more ignore the sending I got from Deburah than I could my earlier curiosity. I should have thought of that before; should have known it. But I was then still newcome to that relationship, and like a lover slowly sensing out all those areas allowed and forbidden that lovers delicately find, I knew not how much this monstrous, majestic love of mine would tell.

  She bade me welcome. I stroked her glossy cheek, her sinuous neck. I plucked a fragment—a hunk!—of troublesome meat from her teeth. She thanked me; I loved her as well, albeit differently, as I loved Rwyan. I asked her how her egg fared. (I’d know what Bellek did and why he came here so late, but there’s a decorum to dragons as patterned as any formal aeldor’s court. They live long, dragons, and to a slower beat of time: unhurried, save by hunger. There are always prices to be paid in dealing with dragons. It is, I think, a price worth the paying.)

  She told me her egg fared well. I set my hand on it and felt the pride of the bull as I gloried in Deburah’s triumph. I could feel the pulsing of the heart within. It required an effort to remind myself why I’d come here. I asked Deburah.

  I cringed then, under the sadness I felt. I’d not known what it is to lose a bond-mate.

  I looked across the cave and saw that Bellek knelt on a ledge. The relics of a nest lay there, and the shattered fragments of an egg. He touched them reverentially as I touched Deburah’s; but his were in pieces, ours whole and pulsing vigorously with unborn life.

  He looked on the past: I looked on the future.

  I wondered why no dam sat there.

  Deburah told me she’d died.

  Of age, she said, ancient even more than Bellek, and even in her age produced an egg. I felt Deburah’s pleasure at my arrival in Tartarus, and understood—albeit only vaguely then—that the laying was somehow linked to the presence of Dragonmasters, that I’d an inexplicable hand in her fecundity. I felt her sending as a comfort against Bellek’s grief, her pride in our egg, though I scarce understand even now how that should be—that the dropping of a dragon’s womb can somehow depend on the belief that a person, Changed or Trueman, gives. I felt a terrible sadness for Bellek’s loss.

  Then, I’d barely tasted the bonding of dragon and Dragonmaster, but still I felt Bellek
’s pain. It was a blade twisted in my soul. But still I did not understand the entirety of its meaning.

  I made a sound. I did not know it until Bellek turned toward me. The width of the brood cave stood between us, but in the radiance of the walls I saw the tears that glistened on his cheeks, his filled eyes, all overrunning. That was such grief as I’d never seen.

  For long moments we stared at one another. I knew embarrassment: I knew I intruded on private grief. Then he wiped a sleeve across his face and blew his nose. It was a thin, reedy sound amongst the shufflings and snortings of the dragons, but I heard it clear as scream of pain. I said, “I’m sorry.”

  The distance between us was too far he could hear me, the noises the dragons made too loud, but he did. And I heard him say, “No matter,” and knew he referred not to my sympathy for his loss but to my apology for intruding. They were the same thing: he knew it. We spoke in words, but it was the minds of the dragons that carried our voices back and forth. I watched him rise, and sigh, and stretch his shoulders before he clambered down from the ledge and came toward me.

  I stood waiting, leaning against Deburah. I felt afraid in a manner I cannot explain, as if I saw through mists my own future, I become Bellek, old and soul-weary, likely crazed. My sweetling told me I was not, and I stroked her cheek in gratitude.

  Bellek halted before her ledge. He said, “You know something of it now. I told you there was a price.”

  I said, “You did not define it.”

  He said, “You did not ask I should. Had I?”

  I shrugged. So close to Deburah, enfolded by her thoughts, I could only answer, “No. It should not have mattered.”

  He smiled. On Thannos Eve we Dhar don masks and revel for a night in honor of the Pale Friend, death. It’s a festival of which the Church does not entirely approve, for it is redolent of the old ways. The masks depict grinning skulls or a lovely woman’s face, each incarnation representing the Pale Friend counting her harvest. Bellek’s face reminded me of those death’s-heads.

  Without preamble he said, “Aiylra was her name. She was beautiful; a queen.”

  His voice was low and husky, empty of inflection in that way men have when they contain anguish. Let us not disgrace ourselves with exhibition of weakling’s pain. Or is it only that we cannot handle it in any other way, save that denial of it? I knew he hurt in ways I could not yet imagine: unthinking, I touched his shoulder. As men do, I thought; and turned my hand to hold him. He leaned against me and wept openly. I put my arms around him and felt him shudder. My shirt got wet.

  Against my chest he said, brokenly now, “Oh, Daviot, she was so beautiful. She laid Kathanria, which is how I can ride that one. And Deburah; though”—proud laughter came now through his weeping; such as a father accords a beloved child—“though Deburah’s like her dam—proud. She’d have only her one rider. She’d bond with only one master. She’d not let me mount her. Only you. Do you understand?”

  I began to grasp it: I felt afraid and proud. I said, “I’m not sure.”

  Bellek said, “You love Rwyan, no? Whatever risks we take in the days to come, you’d live out your life with her and none other, no?”

  I said, “Yes.” And to Deburah, silently, And you.

  “And should you lose her?” he asked me.

  I said, “I did. But found her again; I think I should die, did I lose her now.”

  He said, “It’s worse.”

  I asked, “How?” I could imagine nothing worse than losing Rwyan.

  He pushed clear of my arms, rubbing again at his eyes. He looked very old. He looked weary as Tryman, in that tale that tells of how the giant held up the world for his penance. He said, “Dragons live longer than men; and those who dwell with dragons. That was the price. That, and love.”

  “What do you tell me?” I asked, half suspecting; fearful.

  He said, “That you—all of you—must become true Dragonmasters if you’re to win this war. That to become Dragonmasters you must bond yourselves, soul to soul, with your mounts.”

  I said, “I know that. You told us that: we agreed.”

  He said, “I did not tell you the whole of it.”

  I said, “I guessed as much. But even so, we accept.”

  He said, “Had I told you the whole of it, perhaps you’d not have agreed so readily.”

  I said, “Perhaps not. But the bargain was struck, and do we turn back now—what? The Great Coming? The rising of the Changed? Blood shed all over Dharbek? Can we but implement Rwyan’s design, then we can change all that. We can build a better world. Surely that must be worth the price?”

  He sighed then, and straightened his back, and looked me unblinking in the eye. “To become a Dragonmaster you must accept the curse of long life. Sometimes longer, even, than the dragons’.” He laughed: again that hint of madness. “Does your bond-mate drop an egg, then that may prolong your life. And dragons live a very long time, Daviot; and they’re demanding creatures—they’ll not let you go easily. That’s the bargain we strike, we Dragonmasters.”

  I said, “Still, I don’t quite understand.”

  And he laughed, so loud the bull on watch outside stirred and turned his baleful eye back. I heard the scrape of claws on stone.

  The Dragonmaster said, “Long life. To watch your loves, your friends, your comrades—all of them—die. To live on when they are gone. Glorious, aye; to live with dragons and ride the skies. Such glory! And such pain when it ends. When your bond-mate dies. Like Aiylra! Had she not birthed Kathanria and Deburah I’d have died ere now; or taken that Way of Honor Tezdal thinks of.”

  I saw a truth then. It was stark, as truth often is. I asked Bellek, “Is that what happened to the others? Your fellow Dragonmasters?”

  He ducked his head and told me, “Aye. Their bond-mates died, in battle or age, and they’d no brood-kin to hold up their hopes. Or”—again he laughed that crazed laugh—“hold them here. Only I! And those threads that bind me to this tiresome life grow thin now. Aiylra’s gone, and I am weary. Kathanria and Deburah held me, but they’ve new bond-mates now.”

  I said, “What shall you do?”

  Bellek said, “Teach you to ride dragons in battle.”

  I said, “And then?”

  He said, “Find peace. Go into the Pale Friend’s arms. I’d welcome that embrace as you shall, in time.”

  I asked him then, “Is it so much pain?”

  He lowered his head, and I saw fresh tears fall out of his eyes as he answered me, “Aye. Pain beyond your imagining. I think your Sky Lord friend’s the better way. It should be better to put a blade in my belly than suffer this.”

  I said, frightened, “Then why don’t you? Why haven’t you?”

  He said, “Because I had Deburah and Kathanria. Aiylra’s laying, them; and mine. I’d have followed her into death, save there were no other Dragonmasters then, and I’d not leave my charges solitary. They are my children as much as his.”

  I followed the direction of his eyes toward the entrance of the cave, where the bull sat massive on his guardian’s ledge, and understood what Bellek told me.

  I felt my mouth go dry. I felt my bowels shrivel. I committed my life here, and Rwyan’s; and carried Urt’s and Tezdal’s with me. I knew that then: I felt small and afraid. Like a boy standing on the beach as the airboat came closer and spread its malign shadow over me. Hoarse, I said, “I understand now.”

  Bellek said, “Do you accept it?”

  I looked at Deburah and found no choice. I said, “Yes.”

  Bellek said, “You cannot tell your friends. Do that—do they disagree—and you’ll fly no dragons against the armies that threaten.”

  I looked at him and asked, “Think you they’d disagree?”

  He said, “It shall mean your lives here, in no other place; and they shall be very long lives. It shall mean you cannot return to Dharbek, but must take my place in the Dragon-castle.”

  I think I knew it even then, but still I must ask him, “Why?”
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  He said, “Because the dragons will not leave this place, and do you enter fully into the bonding, then nor shall you. You begin to feel those ties e’en now, I think. They shall grow stronger—glorious chains that bind you to the ending of your days.”

  I did begin to feel it. Already it was a painful notion to contemplate parting from Deburah. I said, “That, I can accept. I think the others would, too.”

  Bellek coughed laughter. “It’s not so easy,” he said. “Shall Tezdal agree to never more walk the earth of Ahn-feshang? Shall Rwyan give up her sorcerous friends? Urt not go back to Ur-Dharbek?”

  Doubt clogged my throat, sour. I swallowed. “Why can I not put it to them?”

  He turned his face away at that, and when I saw it again, it was composed. “Because they might disagree. Not Rwyan, I think; at least, not so long as you remain. But Urt and Tezdal … ?” He took hold of my hands. I winced at the force of his urgent grip. “You must take my place! You four can bring new life to Tartarus; you can make the dragons great again. But you must pay that price!”

  I weighed it in my head. I sensed Deburah waiting for my decision. I wonder, had I not already taken the first strides along that road that binds Dragonmaster to dragon, if I’d have chosen different. But I had, and so I can never be sure. Was it I made that decision? Or was it that I’d see that dream I shared with Rwyan fulfilled? Or was it Deburah made up my mind? I know not; and likely never shall.

  I do know that I answered Bellek’s grip then and said, “So be it. I’ll not tell them.”

  He said, “Not even Rwyan?”

  I shook my head. I felt a dreadful guilt as I told him, “Not even Rwyan.”

  I felt such intoxicating pleasure then as makes the headiest wine akin to tepid water. I felt … this is not easy to describe, but a promise of glorious days to come, of long happiness, shared lives, pleasure. I was sent stumbling forward as Deburah craned her great head down to nudge my back. Bellek caught me, else I’d have fallen, and on his face I saw reflected the satisfaction I felt from my lovely dragon.

  I said, “My word on it,” and silently, inside my skull, where the deepest and most hidden of our thoughts reside, Forgive me, Rwyan.