Quarrah expected Ardor Benn to impose some sort of overwrought introduction, but another voice beat him to it. From somewhere behind the woman, Raek replied in the same flowing language.
Her huge wings folded along her back and she turned to find Raek standing near the cave’s mouth. They exchanged a few more sentences before she stretched out her taloned hand. Her palm was facing up and she stared at it as if studying something there. Suddenly, sparks sizzled across her talons and a small orb of hazy Grit appeared. It hung suspended, the strange woman gazing into it.
“She doesn’t speak our languages,” Raek explained, stepping toward Quarrah and Ard.
“And you?” Ard sputtered. “Since when did you learn to speak… Dragon God?”
“It came with the upgrade to Glassmind,” he answered.
“Then why doesn’t she know Landerian?” Ard asked. “I mean, if she is what we think she is…”
“I am one of the Drothans,” said the winged woman, the ball of Grit drawing back into her hand. She turned to Ard. “When the mind of a simple toogsa like yourself evolves to perfection, it learns the True Speech, while still retaining a perfect remembrance of its former language. In my previous form, I had no method of verbal communication, beyond rudimentary needs.”
Ard stared at her unblinking. “Quick learner,” he finally squeaked out.
“The Sphere has been complete.” She lowered her taloned hand. “Great knowledge can be found within time and space. Perhaps even the answer to existence itself.”
“I didn’t know existence was a question,” said Ard. Was he seriously bantering with a goddess?
“Sooner or later it becomes a question for everyone,” she said. “Even you, Ardor Benn.”
“I knew it,” Ard whispered, taking an anxious step forward. “You know me.”
“I recognize your scent from my son’s shell. You were with the egg at the time of fertilization. But that would have been over two hundred years ago. How are you still alive?”
“I was a Paladin Visitant,” Ard explained. “I hid myself in a cloud of Visitant Grit, and Grotenisk never knew that the egg and I were there. It probably helped that he was blind from the Moonsickness, but nobody actually knew that handy fact.”
The woman nodded. “He was the only dragon to grow Moonsick. But in our degenerate form, we did not understand that he was thus one step closer to transforming back into what we once were.”
“Well, his condition certainly helped,” continued Ard. “Old Grotenisk basically blasted fire across the entire city. He almost couldn’t miss torching that egg.”
“And you returned to the present day after the fertilization?” she said.
He nodded. “The egg and I came back as soon as the Visitant cloud burned out.”
“That would have been the moment I sensed its fertilization,” she said. “You must have stayed by the egg until I came to retrieve it at the palace.”
Ard cast a glance at Quarrah. Hadn’t that been the decision that had driven them apart?
“More or less,” Ard replied. “And I suppose I should thank you for eating King Pethredote that night.”
“He drenched himself in a potent scent that triggered a primal response within my beastly form,” she said.
“The real question is, how did he taste?” asked Ard.
The dragon woman seemed to find no amusement in his statement. “I am not a monster,” she said. “I find no delight in having done all I did in my lesser form.”
“I’m sorry.” Ard took an earnest step toward her, formulating a delicate question in his mind. “You could have killed me that night. I would have been completely helpless against you.” He paused. “So… why didn’t you?”
“I am not a monster,” she said again. “I knew what you had done for that egg. And though I could not voice my gratitude, I expressed it in another way.”
Ard cleared his throat. “You mean… by not eating me?”
A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. “Perhaps the highest level of respect in the wild animal kingdom of Pekal.”
“Thank you…” They’d been referring to her as Vethrey, but Ard wasn’t sure if he should call her that now. “We don’t even know your name.”
Suddenly, a detonation appeared in her hand. At once, Ard saw sparks falling like rain through a forest of blossoming fruit trees. His senses were filled with the rich aroma of damp soil after a storm and he felt a lazy sleepiness overtake him. Then, just when he thought he might drift off to sleep, the sparks began to kiss the soft pink blossoms with the chime of a distant bell, the pale petals instantly transforming into wisps of multicolored light.
It was over as quickly as it had started.
Ard pawed over his own body, making sure he was still intact and actually present.
“Where was that place?” Quarrah whispered, proving that she’d just experienced the same vision.
The dragon woman smiled. “It is my true name.”
“You are…” Ard stammered. “How exactly do you say that?”
“You don’t,” she answered. “The Drothans communicate on a higher level.”
“How should we address you, then?” asked Ard.
“You call him Raekon Dorrel?” She pointed at their companion. “The same as before his transformation?”
“That’s right,” answered Raek.
“Then you may call me as you did before mine,” she responded.
“Motherwatch,” Ard said.
She rustled her feathers in obvious distaste. “Actually, maybe we could think of something better.”
“Yeah,” replied Ard. “That wasn’t my idea. You actually got named by a teenage girl.”
“Vethrey,” Quarrah blurted out.
“Isn’t that just a translation of the same name?” Ard asked. Although he had to admit it sounded grander in Trothian.
“Vethrey is a Trothian word,” said the woman. “And I see its derivation from the True Speech—Evetherey.”
“And what does that mean?” asked Quarrah.
“One who saves.”
“Evetherey it is, then.” Ard made a sweeping bow, dropping to one knee before her. “We are humbled to be at your service.”
Her glowing eyes dimmed as she gazed across the Pale Tors. “I have awakened, as it were, from a deep slumber. The world is not what it once was, and the race of the Drothans is no more.”
“That’s one way to look at it,” Ard said. “Or we could say that you’re just the first to transform. If we hurry to Pekal, we might—”
“The dragons are dead,” she said. “All of them.”
A detonation flickered in her hand, and Ard felt his heart sink. He saw the mighty corpses of the dragons strewn across the island, the mountainside stained with their black blood. Just when the despair threatened to overtake him, it ended.
“Sparks.” Ard gasped. “How do you do that?”
“Garifus was successful, then?” whispered Quarrah.
“The one you speak of calls himself Centrum,” said Evetherey. “He has set things into motion that cannot be undone.”
“But the Sphere…” Ard said. “We can change things. We already have.”
“Your understanding of the Sphere is sorely limited,” she said.
“Then help us understand.”
Another detonation appeared in Evetherey’s hand, instantly accompanied by a flood of knowledge and understanding directly into Ard’s mind.
The Glassminds suddenly seemed weak, compared to what the dragon goddess could do with Spherical Time. The former could reach sideways through time to draw emotions and thoughts from alternate timelines.
But the Drothans could draw life.
“Is there anything you can do for him?” Quarrah had asked Gloristar as young Shad Agaul lay dying on the throne.
“Not until the Sphere is complete. For now, there is an order to life and a time for death.”
Evetherey’s new vision made Gloristar’s words as clear as thin glas
s. There were an infinite number of Shad Agauls scattered through alternate timelines. They were immaterial. Mere shadows. But a Drothan could scour those shadow timelines to find a version of Shad Agaul that was basically indistinguishable from the one they’d known—same look, same experiences, same memories. Perhaps the only difference might be the size of the mole on the boy’s cheek.
The Glassminds could see this boy, imposing his thoughts and emotions onto people in the real world, but the Drothans could actually bring this replica boy into the Material time. Bring him into reality as a near-identical replacement of the one who was killed.
“Garifus knew about this,” Ard whispered. “He knew what a Drothan could do with the Sphere, and he tempted Gloristar to use it to save the prince.”
“It was not a lie,” she said, the detonation in her hand snuffing out. “The Sphere could have saved the boy—a version of him, at least. But Centrum wouldn’t have been able to bring anyone into the Material Time. A Drothan would have to detonate the Visitant Grit in order to draw a replica person from a shadow timeline. Nor would Centrum have been willing to accept the price.”
“Price?” Quarrah asked.
“The Final Era of Utmost Perfection,” said Evetherey. “It is supposed to be a time when humankind has struck the balance to live in peaceful harmony with the gods.”
Ard shook his head. “You really think such an era could exist? There will always be someone who won’t follow the rules.” He shared a subtle glance with Raek.
“That is the sole purpose of the Glassminds,” she said. “If such a rabble-rouser is creating trouble, he should swiftly be transformed into an Othian.”
“Oh, good,” Ard muttered sarcastically. “Give the troublemakers more power.”
“Once evolved,” continued Evetherey, “the gods could see the true intent of their glass minds. If there was evil therein, the individual could be sent into the Sphere in exchange for a more compliant version of themselves from an alternate timeline.”
“So the price to bring someone out of the Sphere is the life of a Glassmind,” Quarrah summarized.
Would the gods just keep shuffling people around until they had their perfect civilization? Ardor Benn shuddered. Was that any better than what Garifus was doing? “Doesn’t sound like Perfection to me.”
“It is the very purpose of existence,” explained Evetherey. “The gods intended to create Spherical Time to usher in the Final Era of Utmost Perfection. Garifus initiated it prematurely, likely to assure his existence as an Othian. Now time cannot be changed or reset. It can be nudged toward this end, but if anything in the linear past were to change what has happened, all of time and space would collapse upon itself. It would literally be the end of everything.”
People kept saying that, but what did it really mean? Something would surely live on. And in the end, Ard couldn’t decide which was preferable—Garifus’s utopia, or utter nonexistence. There had to be a third option. Why wasn’t Ard seeing it?
“I can see Centrum’s mind,” said Evetherey. “He is honest in his beliefs.”
“Sparks,” Ard swore. “Can he see yours?”
Evetherey turned to him, eyes flaring in indignation. “I am their god! My mind is not open to the perusal of my inferiors.”
“Great.” Ard clapped his hands together. “Then they don’t know you’re here?”
“To their knowledge, they have slain the last of the dragons.” Her voice was soft. “Even my son…”
“Cochorin,” whispered Ard.
“Cochorin?” Evetherey questioned.
“Your son,” said Ard. “The new bull. The girl that named you called him Cochorin.”
The dragon goddess smiled. “A Trothian word meaning Big Hope. I had not seen him for many centuries.”
“Your son?” Ard clarified. “You’d seen him before?”
“When one of my kind dies, we are not gone forever,” explained Evetherey. “Eventually, we are born again. Born of our ancestors who are our progeny.”
“Bet that makes for a tumbleweed of a family tree,” Raek muttered.
“There are a fixed number of Drothans.” She pressed on, ignoring the interruption. “Before we brought your kind into existence, all of the gods existed together and Time was Spherical.”
Without warning, Evetherey ignited another detonation in her hand. Ard was suddenly far above the world, but it wasn’t covered in nearly as much water as the one they lived on. Like before, he understood exactly what he was seeing. Evetherey’s rich voice resonated clearly in his mind.
“We drew our power from the Red Moon, but it was not always so potent. When we founded this world, the orbit of our moon was in perfect alignment with the planet.”
Ard saw the world spinning, the Red Moon always hanging on the far side of their world, never cycling past.
“We lived far below,” Evetherey’s narration continued, “on what you now know as the bed of the InterIsland Waters.”
“We heard a little about this.” Ard spoke aloud, pleased to discover that it didn’t disrupt the vision. “We discovered a spire of red glass down there. It told us the history of the Glassminds.”
“The Othians have no history other than this one,” said Evetherey.
Then it unfolded before Ard’s eyes. It was complex and involved, yet he seemed to perceive it all in the space of a few moments.
The gods—the Drothans—ruled over mankind in benevolence, using powers drawn from the Red Moon to ease the lives of the mortals. Humans could bring raw materials before the Drothans, who could alter them with a simple exhalation. The gods breathed power into the materials, which could then be ground to powder and detonated as Grit.
That’s certainly a lot more hygienic than the way we’ve been doing it, Ard thought.
The gods knew that the Moon’s rays would be too intense for mortal life-forms, so they imposed boundaries. Half of the planet was available to their subjects, but some people wanted more. Eventually, a portion of the humans ignored the rules and broke past the perimeter where the gods stood watch. Those humans exposed themselves to the red rays, but the Moon’s distance meant that the sickness didn’t set in for many weeks. Before the madness took them, they were able to kill one of the Drothans and transform themselves with their teeth.
“Hold on,” Ard interrupted again. “I thought the Transformation Grit was derived from the teeth of a dragon.”
“Gods and dragons…” Evetherey’s speech resumed in his mind. “The two words have always been synonymous.”
Ard’s vision continued. He saw the changed Glassminds wage war against the gods, demanding that all humankind undergo the process and join their collective mind. It was just like Garifus. Did power always do this to people?
The gods lamented all this death and devised a plan to save the humans while sparing the rebellious Othians. With unfathomably Compounded detonations of Grit—Drift, Gather, Void, Weight—they pulled great amounts of soil and rock together, piling them miles high during the night to create five towers of safety for the surviving humans.
Pekal and the Greater Chain.
Before sunrise, the Drothans lifted the humans to the tops of the towers in long clouds of Drift Grit. With concentrated detonations of Heat Grit, the gods melted the great caps of ice that bookended the planet, drowning the world in a mighty flood.
This wasn’t a merciless execution, and a way was prepared for the Othians to live forever in massive pockets of air on the seabed. The gods used Barrier Grit, Prolonged to such an extent that the detonation would hold back the water for centuries.
And while the Othians could have easily absorbed the detonation, they must have realized that the rush of water through the collapsing Barrier could have crushed their glass skulls. So they waited below, their enhanced forms needing no light to see, and no food or water to sustain them. Their race could bear no offspring, but they could live forever in the depths.
But far above, Ard saw that something had changed. With a
sudden rearrangement of so much mass, the planet was thrown from its regular orbit. In turn, the Moon was sent into a counterorbit, no longer hidden safely on the dark side.
That first Moon Passing took everyone by surprise. And the Moon’s proximity gave it a much more potent effect on the unsuspecting humans. Many fell sick, reaching the brink of violent insanity within a short week. The gods absorbed as much of the Moon rays as possible, but their efforts were sorely insufficient. There simply weren’t enough Drothans to make an effective shield. Something had to be done before the next Passing.
“We altered ourselves.” Evetherey’s voice rang into Ard’s mind. “With a detonation of Visitant Grit, we accessed the Sphere, scouring alternate timelines until we found a version of ourselves that was more effective in absorbing the dangerous Moon rays.”
A new vision flashed before Ard’s eyes, and he understood what Evetherey was talking about. He saw the dragons—alternate versions of the Drothans, trading elegant feathers for leathery wings, smooth glistening flesh for coarse scales. Keen minds for bestial instincts. They lumbered on four legs, and instead of their gentle breath that imbued materials with power, they breathed fire and vaporous heat. Their ability to spontaneously create Grit was lost, the process degenerating to the point that the dragons were required to ingest source materials. The dragons would dither away in this depraved existence, only vaguely aware that they had once been something greater.
Ard saw the Drothans enter the Sphere, exchanging themselves for these new creatures in a selfless sacrifice. In so doing, Spherical Time collapsed, the Material Time becoming wholly linear, unless reset with a detonation of Visitant Grit.
But there were three who were afraid to make the sacrifice.
The god-brothers, afraid to give up their power. Afraid to change. Afraid that time would make the humans forget that these hulking beasts were once their gods, who had sacrificed themselves to shield the world from the dangerous Moon. The god-brothers were afraid that the humans would treat them like a base resource, mining their bodies for valuable materials until they drove the dragons to extinction.
They weren’t wrong, Ard thought. He knew the disposition of the common citizen toward the dragons. The beasts, and their powerful by-products, existed solely for the taking.
The Last Lies of Ardor Benn Page 54
