Lords of the Sky

by Angus Wells

  So I did what he asked of me. I raised his sword and brought it down against his neck. I’d never held so fine a blade before, nor one so sharp: it took off his head in one clean cut.

  I fell to my knees, weeping as his skull went bouncing over the bloodstained flags.

  I knew only pain until I felt hands touch my face and looked up into Rwyan’s blind eyes. I saw grief there, and then more on Urt’s face, and Lysra’s. And then I was aware of dragons perched all around. I could not speak; only clutch at Rwyan’s knees and weep.

  She asked me, “Did he demand this of you?”

  I nodded against her gown, and she knelt beside me and put her arms about me and held me close and said, “Oh, Daviot! My poor, poor Daviot. How he must have trusted you.”

  I said, “That I’d slay him?”

  She said, “That he trusted you with his honor. That he’d have you perform this awful service.”

  I said, “I killed him, Rwyan.”

  She said, “He slew himself, my love. Because it was the only way for him. What you did was friendship’s duty, and I think there’s likely no greater love than that.”

  We wrapped Tezdal in his cloak, and Urt brought a canvas that we might sew the sundered parts safe together, and we saddled our dragons and fastened Tezdal’s body to Peliane, and flew to the valley of the dead, and spilled him down there. Down where Bellek and all the other Dragonmasters lay, and all the centuries-long-dead dragons.

  Ours keened their mourning, and Peliane’s was loudest of all. I felt that like a knife in my heart, sharp as that swift blade Tezdal had sunk into his belly. I think it hurt me not much worse than what he’d had me do or what I felt for his loss. I had lost a beloved friend: she had lost her bond-mate. I could, in a way, comprehend why he chose that course: she could not. For nine days she battered the Dragoncastle with her keening, and I believe she might have flown out looking herself to die had Deburah’s egg not hatched.

  Death and life run in cycles, no? One dies, one is born: life continues, and pain abates. Mine did, albeit slower than Peliane’s. She found a new reason to live.

  Dragons are proud and magnificent and, in their own way, loving, but they do not love as Truemen or Changed. An egg is a triumph for all the brood, and its tending shared between them all. Sometimes the mother will have nothing to do with the hatchling—it is the laying that’s important—and so Deburah was perfectly content to leave the tending of the bull she bore to Peliane. She was proud, yes; and so was I, for I could not help but feel that the mewling babe that cracked his shell with such force, it shattered all at once and he came out screaming to be fed, was mine as much as hers or the bull’s that had seeded her. But she let Peliane attend the infant, and even I, when I went to stroke his glossy blue head and admire his needle-sharp baby’s teeth (carefully, for young dragons are not overly particular whom they bite), must first pass Peliane’s inspection. And admire his growing wings under her watchful eyes, and not come close until she allowed.

  Thus was Peliane saved from her grief.

  And Rwyan saved me from mine in long conversations that at last convinced me I’d not done wrong but only service to a friend who’d have it no other way.

  I accepted that, but I tell you—I still cannot properly understand that code by which the Kho’rabi lived, nor much respect so harsh a servitude. I accept that it was Tezdal’s way and that I did no less than duty by him, but I was forced to that just as he was forced to our duty by that vow he gave to Rwyan. And I still wonder if we were, any of us, right.

  We had none of us fully realized the weight of time that burdened Bellek. I had suspected it, but that was only guessing, for he’d never set it out clear. I am convinced he meant it so, in care of his charges, and for fear we should reject that inheritance, did we see it in all its long entirety.

  Dragons live longer than men: ages longer. And Dragonmasters share that longevity. Even now, as newcome masters find their bonding and the halls of the Dragoncastle fill up again with life, we do not understand it: only that it is, and that it is a choice a Dragonmaster must make. We did not, not truly, but I think that we’d still have chosen that road had Bellek pointed us toward its invisible, timeless ending. Could we have denied that love?

  I’ve told them, the newcome Dragonmasters, and they accept it. Taerl’s son chose it; and the daughter of Ahn-feshang’s last Khe’anjiwha chose it. Cleton’s grandson came north when he had the dream and shrugged acceptance when I warned him. The dreams of dragons are hard to deny. They choose it, and laugh when I warn them of the years, and tell me they can bear the weight.

  I think they will: the world is changed now, and they no longer fear the dragons; not even the Changed, whose children come to laugh and sport amongst the claws and take their knocks with the hatchlings.

  The love of dragons is a heady seduction.

  I think it is a better world now.

  I hope it is, for otherwise my life was all wasted.

  But I cannot believe that so, even as I think on the blood that paints my hands. Were it so, then Rwyan was wrong, and that I’ll not believe.

  No!

  But I ramble somewhat. So:

  We set Tezdal to rest in the valley of bones and mourned him. Peliane tended Deburah’s hatchling—and now Kaja is the mightiest bull in all the Dragoncastles, a splendid creature, and a seeder of numerous dams. There are more dragons now; it is as if a balance were restored.

  Urt and Lysra bred seven children, all of them hale and decent as their parents. Two chose to go south and found places in the Raethe of Ur-Dharbek. The others remained here, and their descendants tend me now with a respect I find ofttimes embarrassing. One is a Dragonmaster.

  My Changed comrade is dead, and I shall talk of that no more than I’ll speak of Rwyan’s passing. That’s too much pain to set in words. I outlived them all, and I wish I’d not. I’d sooner have gone with them.

  But …

  … It was not unhappy. We all of us lived long past our natural span, and I was happy with Rwyan.

  I was happy as I’d not believed could be possible.

  Good years, those; all of them. A gift, I suppose, for we had more time than ordinary folk are granted to be together. But still, in time she died, and some time after Anryäle followed her. Kathanria is dead, but Peliane lives on, and Deburah, though both are old now and fly less often. I’ve lived on because Rwyan set that duty on me, no less than Tezdal bound me to his strange honor, and I’d not betray my loved ones again.

  We changed our world, but we could not change the accretion of the years, when bones grow brittle and blood flows slower down the veins. I think that perhaps that’s the only god: time. The ager who takes us all.

  But I had long years with the woman I loved, and did we have no children, still there are Urt’s offspring; and I’ve known friends and rode the skies on dragon’s back, and known the love of dragons.

  And that is something of a life, no?

  I’ll not complain.

  I’ll accept my guilt and let the Pale Friend take me and judge me. And do I face the One God or the Three, then I shall tell them that what I did was done in honest belief of trust and friendship and the chasing of a dream. And if they should tell me that it was a dream I sowed in Rwyan’s soul and she was wrong, then I shall spit in their faces and deny them. For I’ll not deny her; ever!

  And I think that Deburah would join me then, and Anryäle, and all the others. And must it be so, then we’ll deny the gods as we denied the men who’d know only strife, and fly against them as we flew against the Sky Lords and the ignorance of Truemen.

  But that is yet to come.

  First, I must meet with the Pale Friend.

  Does she permit it, I’ll saddle Deburah one last time and fly her to that valley where the bones are, and does the Pale Friend meet me there, I’ll take her hand and go with her. That shall be a great journey, no?

  AN ACKNOWLEDGMENT

  Lords of the Sky is not entirely my own work.
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  Originally, the book was a lot more words (wordier?), but my editor got to work and suggested where I might cut the manuscript, to tighten it up and keep the narrative flowing without excess verbiage. No less, she pointed out where the psychology of my characters went astray and how to bring them back in line. I believe she made the book better, and for that I owe her.

  So—thank you, Janna E. Silverstein; long may you edit.

  ANGUS WELLS

  Nottingham, 1993.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Angus Wells was born in a small village in Kent, England. He has worked as a publicist and as a science fiction and fantasy editor. He now writes full-time, and is the author of The Books of the Kingdoms (Wrath of Ashar, The Usurper, The Way Beneath) and The Godwars (Forbidden Magic, Dark Magic, Wild Magic), Lords of the Sky, his first stand-alone novel, debuted in trade paperback in October of 1994, and was followed by the two-book Exiles Saga: Exile’s Children and Exile’s Challenge. He lives in Nottingham with his two dogs, Elmore and Sam.

  The Matawaye may have found a new land, one of peace and beauty. The dreaded Breakers may be worlds away, abandoned in Ket-Ta-Witko. Chakthi and his followers may have been exiled from Ket-Ta-Thanne. Davyd, Flysse, and Arcole may have found refuge behind the mountains.

  But it is all very far from over….

  Don’t miss the riveting conclusion

  to

  The Exiles Saga:

  EXILE’S CHALLENGE

  1: Another Time,

  Another Place

  THE savage roaring of the Breakers’ weirdling beasts echoed like frustrated thunder off the hills surrounding the Meeting Ground. Through that chorus, and rising higher-pitched above it, the dread riders sang their own blighted hymn, an ululation of thwarted bloodlust. From the trees surrounding the great expanse of meadow, birds frightened by the horrid threnody took flight, adding their own alarm-songs to the cacophony, and in the farther hills wolves howled, and coyotes. The night filled up with noise, rang in horrid lamentation, as the Breakers vented their disappointment on the bodies of the slain, mutilating the corpses of fallen warriors, or gifting them to their mounts like playthings to huge and vicious kittens.

  It seemed, in that time the Breakers came down onto the grass of the Meeting Ground and found the People gone, that in all Ket-Ta-Witko only the Maker’s holy mountain and the full moon of the Turning Year stood serene, allied in their defiance of the invaders. The moon silvered the grass—where it was not stained dark with blood—and the holy mountain towered white and dispassionate over all. Where the great arch of light had stood, the Maker-given gateway through which the last of the People had escaped, there was now only trampled ground. Of the people, and their horses and their dogs and their lodges, of the Grannach and all their possessions, nothing remained: they had gone away to another place, another time. Morrhyn’s promise was fulfilled.

  And the Breakers shrieked in dismay and frustration, their own promise of conquest and destruction denied them, their lust beaten like floodwater washed against immutable stone. Some, maddened by defeat, struck at one another; some turned their blades on themselves, drawing the blood they craved from their own bodies. They were not accustomed to defeat, these reivers of worlds; their habit was annihilation unthinking, massacre, and the overturning of everything stable; anything that was not them.

  Then a clarion sounded, cutting like a knife through the tumult, and even before the echoes came back from the hills, silence fell. Riders fought their strange mounts to stillness; blades were sheathed, and the self-mutilators wiped at their wounds and sat their beasts and waited.

  From the northern perimeter, where the Commacht had held the cliffs and the fighting had been fiercest, a figure armored magnificently in gold rode down. Curved spikes thrust like defiant talons from the armor, the gauntlets ended in vicious claws, and sharp-edged wings extended batlike from the helmet that concealed the rider’s face. A great sword hung on chains from the waist, its bloodred scabbard rattling against the skulls that decorated the saddle, which in turn sat upon a mount no human creature had ever ridden. It was unlike the other Breakers’ beasts, for it wore the delineaments of a horse, only larger, and with a hide of midnight blue. Horns sprouted from its red-eyed skull and about its flaring nostrils, and its snarling mouth exposed fangs no mortal horse had ever owned. Its muscular form was somewhat disguised by the plates—gold, like its rider’s armor—that decorated the chest and neck and cruppers, and as its clawed hooves pranced across the grass, they seemed to leave imprints of flame that matched the exhalations of its breath. It was not so large as the lion-mounts, but as it drew near they pawed the ravaged ground and bowed their heads and mewled acknowledgment of this beast’s superiority.

  Nor less their riders of the golden-armored figure. They parted silently, shaping a pathway down which the two came as if in bitter triumph to where the arch of light had stood. None spoke as the rider halted the obscene, horned horse and the helmeted head bowed in slow contemplation of the ground, all tracked and trampled on one side and on the other nothing, save where Breakers had been.

  The helmet rose, turning in the direction of the Maker’s Mountain. The same moon that lit the great peak bathed the armor in its bright light, but the golden plates appeared to absorb that radiance and dull it and change it, so that the armor, instead of shining, seemed to throb with a fiery life, as if its wearer stood before a blaze, or the metal ran with blood beneath its surface. It was as if the figure defied all natural laws, defied even the Maker.

  Slowly, the wickedly clawed gauntlets lifted to the helmet’s latchings and raised the pot. The rider shook his head, flinging loose a great spill of long, darkly golden hair. It seemed to glow redly, as if fire danced about the handsome face. And was it fire, then it was matched and met by the glow of his eyes, which burned bright and savage as his steed’s, as if blasphemous furnaces burned inside his skull, fueled by the blood of all his slaughtered victims. He cradled the helm against his armored thigh and tugged the horned horse’s reins so that the creature danced and snorted.

  “They have denied us our prize.”

  His voice was deep, a musical bass that carried over the Meeting Ground almost as if he sang the words. In the hills, the wolves ceased their howling; the coyotes ended their calling; all the birds fell still. It was as if his voice imposed some dreadful and obscene order.

  Into that silence he said, “They have escaped us.”

  He spun his mount around, clawed hooves scratching up great sprays of dirt, the beast snarling.

  “None have escaped us before. None!”

  He slowed his mount’s circling, lowered his head a moment, then raised it up to fix the waiting horde with a smoldering gaze that only a few dared meet.

  “This is not the way. We are the Breakers, we are the un-makers of worlds. We are the dark side of light, the shadows that haunt men’s dreams when they think of betrayal and dishonour. We are created to punish sin: we destroy. But …” He shook his head and it seemed that tears the color of blood escaped his eyes. “We have failed our duty here. These cringing things escaped us. How could that be?”

  Armor rattled, paws scraped; all nervously: no answer came.

  “Will none answer me?”

  He turned his awful horse around its slowly prancing circle again, red eyes like torches on the horde.

  And one replied: “They owned magic, Akratil. Great magic.”

  “Ah!” He halted the horned horse, facing the speaker, wide mouth parting in a smile. “Bemnida alone has the courage to say it. Come forward, Bemnida.”

  The speaker hesitated and Akratil nodded encouragingly, beckoning, still smiling. A lionbeast pushed from the throng. Its rider wore armor the colour of a summer sky, her hair the pale gold of the summer sun. Her lovely face was delicately beautiful, marred only by the cuts she had carved across her cheeks and nose. Blood still oozed from those, and her pale grey eyes were stormy with frustration. She halted her mount before Akratil and urged
the beast to kneel, her own head bowed.

  Akratil said, “Rise up, Bemnida. It seems that only you of all my followers have the courage to speak the truth.”

  Bemnida raised her head and obeyed, urging her mount on until it stood alongside his.

  “So, Bemnida,” he said gently, “tell me of this magic.”

  Bemnida looked a moment confused. Akratil smiled at her, and motioned that she speak.

  She licked a thread of blood from her lips and said, “It was as if they knew of our coming and rallied against us.” Then paused, nervous under that red-eyed contemplation. “As if they owned such magic as warned them. And showed them how to escape.” She gestured at where the gate had stood.

  “Some did know of us. Those who’d hear us and take our way, whose ambition chooses the dark path.” Akratil’s smile was feral, like a wolverine savoring a kill. “Some I … spoke with.”

  “Yes.” Bemnida ducked her head in agreement. “But the others, those we fought here … They knew. Why else did they gather here?”

  “Perhaps those little dwarvish folk warned them.”

  “How?” she asked. “What few we left alive were surely trapped in their tunnels, in the hills. How could they have brought word? They used no riding animals and this is a wide world—how could they have traveled so far in time?”

  Akratil nodded. “Indeed. So, how did the others know? Save they do own some scrying.”

  Bemnida, encouraged, said, “And more. Such magic as enabled them to fashion that gate and flee our wrath.”

  “And that,” Akratil said. “Which was surely great magic.”

  Bemnida nodded.

  “Great as mine?” asked Akratil.