by Tim Stead
“It has rules?”
“No. It has stories. Each story is like a rule, in that it shows an error or a correct thing.”
The dragon looked at the book. It was smaller than the smallest scale upon his head. “I do not think I will be able to read it,” Torgaris said with some regret.
“In this light it would be a miracle anyway,” Narak said. “But stay and listen, and I will read it to you.”
Narak could read by moonlight, but there was no moon, so he kindled a flame and lit one of the few candles he had brought with him. The dragon lay silent in the snow, which slowly melted about his hot presence, and Narak reflected that he should have had Torgaris or one of his kin as a companion for the whole journey, and then there would have been no need for fires or Benetheon magic to keep him warm. He opened the book and began to read.
The dragon listened silently, its eyes unblinking and faintly luminous in the dark. Its breath was a warm breeze that blew intermittently across Narak as he read, ruffling the pages, melting the snow around him. At the end of the first tale Narak stopped.
“There are only ten tales,” he said. “We have many nights.”
“Then we shall hear one tale each night,” the dragon agreed. “I would like to think about these words, anyway, before I hear the second, and I am sure that the others will want to hear them too.”
The others. Narak had not really thought about it before, but somewhere in the world seven dragons were flying towards him, great shapes in the night sky. The thought did not fill him with the fear that it ought. He had to admit that he quite liked Torgaris. The giant beast seemed curious, intelligent, and not at all hostile. The last, of course, was subject to change, but there was little he could do but follow the path laid out before him.
He snuffed the candle with his fingers and rolled up in his blankets and furs again. Sleep would be difficult this night. The next day promised much.
* * * *
Narak awoke before dawn, as was his habit. He lay in his bed for as moment and stared at the rock next to which he lay. There was not a flake of snow left on it, just grey stone flecked with tiny white crystals. He felt warm.
He rolled over and looked at the dragon, or where the dragon should have been, but Torgaris was gone. The place where he had been last night was like a piece of baked earth, still radiating warmth. Not long gone, then, Narak assumed.
He stood and made his way over to the sled, pulling out of it his meagre breakfast of dried meat and fruit, stale hard biscuits. He sat down, looked up at the rock beneath which he had slept and nearly fell over backwards.
There was a dragon coiled on the slope above where he had slept, and it was not Torgaris.
He knew at once that it was not Torgaris because this dragon was white, brilliant, clean white with yellow eyes. It was staring at him as only dragons seemed able to stare, unblinking and completely focussed.
“You are smaller than I expected,” it said. Its voice, too, was different from Torgaris. It was smooth as silk, as rich as fine wine, and a good octave higher pitched.
“I am a man,” Narak replied. “Most of us are about this size.”
“You are a god, or so they say,” the dragon said.
“I was a man before that, and the change did not make me any taller.”
The dragon said nothing more, but continued to stare. Narak felt the same song he had experienced in Cobran’s palace, but it was more muted. He could resist it with ease. He began to eat.
“You are scruffier, too,” the dragon said.
“Do you know how ridiculous you sound?” Narak asked. “I have been travelling for many weeks with no particular comfort and a great deal of effort. How do you expect me to look?”
“We were called to see a marvel,” it said. “I do not see one.”
Narak finished his food. It was still quite dark. He looked around but could not see any sign of either Avatar or Torgaris. By this time Avatar was already waiting for him on a usual day. He looked up at the dragon again.
“You are Hesterion,” he said.
“Well, at least you are not entirely unperceptive,” the dragon said.
“I feel you calling me, Hesterion,” he said. “Come down from the rock.”
The dragon did not reply, but it seemed to Narak that the scorn and levity went out of it. It took on a hungry appearance. Hesterion did not leave the rock at once, but uncoiled and raised his great, white head. He seemed to tower above Narak, a pillar of white scales. Slowly, the dragon subsided, and stepped, one foot to the other, the twenty feet down the face of the rock onto the ground, a single step.
Narak did not move, and there was no room for the dragon between him and the rock, so it coiled about him, wrapping him in a small, hot fortress with living walls. Its head came to rest atop the coils, the yellow eyes looking down.
“Closer,” Narak said. He held out a hand, and Hesterion slid his huge head to the ground. He was not as large as Torgaris. Narak found himself eye to eye. The song was stronger now, and he felt the magic begin to flow, to wrap him up in its momentum.
He reached out his hand and placed it on the dragon’s snout, and again felt the rush of power flowing into him, a mighty waterfall of heat and light that smashed against his mind.
“Adelir,” he said. “The word is Adelir. The promise is Adelir. I am Adelir.”
Hesterion did not leap back as Torgaris had, but the scale that he had touched changed from white to silver, and Hesterion’s yellow eyes glowed brightly. They held this pose for a while, man and dragon. Narak understood. It was a question of belief. Hesterion must believe that he was the one they had waited for.
The magic, though, was undeniable.
“How did you come by this word?” Hesterion asked. His voice was calm, but the whole of his vast body was rigid.
“It is part of you, part of Torgaris.”
“He told you?”
“No, but I heard it just the same.”
Hesterion sighed, a gust of hot wind faintly reminiscent of cinnamon. “I believe,” he said. On the words the silver scale flashed and the colour ran in a streak down the dragon’s spine, just as it had with Torgaris.
Hesterion uncoiled, creating a passage through which Narak could walk back to his sled. He put away the few things he had taken out for breakfast and tied the furs and blankets back on.
A shadow flickered overhead, drawing their gazes up, and Torgaris landed nearby in the snow. He looked at Hesterion. “Two,” he said, with some apparent satisfaction.
“All nine are needed,” Hesterion replied.
“But two is better than one. Two is not a delusion. Two is shared.”
Narak finished packing his sled and hooked the straps over his shoulders. He began to walk. It was apparent that Avatar was gone. He had been a piece of Hesterion, and now that the white dragon was here in person there was no need for an avatar. He would be walking alone from now on. It made the day seem less enjoyable. Avatar had lacked a great deal as a travelling companion. He had been almost relentlessly silent, but his footsteps, breaking the snow in a steady rhythm beside Narak’s own had been company of sorts. Even silent companionship was better than none.
He walked steadily, his steps eating up the bleak miles, and above him the two dragons decorated the sky with an exuberant display of flight, enough to make a hawk jealous.
Forty Two – Cain
They left by the river gate at dawn. It was a small company, just Cain and Sheyani and Jerac Fane with ten men at their back. Cain had not wanted to take more, though they had been offered a hundred. He no longer felt the need of men to protect him. He put his faith in what they were, the unkillable Farheim of ancient legend. Though he knew, as one who had read ancient legends, that Farheim had been killed often enough, though mostly by each other and latterly by dragons.
He did not expect to run into any of either on their journey to Wolfguard.
They rode up the scarp road behind the city, and Jerac Fane asked to be a
llowed to stop at the edge of the forest. There were broken wagons here, pushed off the road, one of them still bearing a few arrow shafts in the seat. Fane looked at them for a while, riding around them, prodding them. He got down from his horse and inspected them more closely.
“Why the interest?” Cain asked.
Fane explained it to him, told him the tale of the man who had come to the gate with news of murder on the road.
“I believe it was a ruse, colonel,” he said. “The Seth Yarra took the wagons and the horses and rode with them so that the Eagle would think them ordinary folk if seen from on high. Nobody else would have shot the horses.”
Cain considered this. If it was so, then it was a new sort of cunning. The trick at the fort with the men passing through had been different, too. It was as though a more subtle hand had taken command, and grew in confidence in its handling of the Seth Yarra and their book.
“You are right, lieutenant,” he said. “I agree with you. This was a Seth Yarra trick, and a clever one by their standards.”
Fane seemed to swell at the compliment. It was hard to believe that this was the old Alos Stebbar remade. He seemed in so many ways to be a young man. But then perhaps Alos had never been young. Some men are born old, peeled of all daring and bravado, salted through with caution and common sense. Such people were unnatural, old men in boy’s bodies. Cain himself had been a wild one, always looked for when something went astray.
It pleased him to think that Alos had discovered how to be young when he was reborn as Jerac Fane.
They rode at a good pace, following the king’s road north, keeping west of the river. Cain intended to take them by the quickest route to Fal Verdan, and there cross the Dragon’s Back and so head north through Telas. It would not be an easy road, but there was a good chance that a small party, especially one with three Farheim and a Durander mage, could pass unhindered. He did not imagine that even Farheim could face several thousand Seth Yarra and emerge unscathed, so stealth was his plan.
They made their first night’s camp still deep in Avilian, and while nowhere was really safe at least this was familiar ground, and the trees and grass seemed welcoming, even stripped of their summer finery. He posted guards, even here.
Cain invited Fane to sit with them and eat, and the lieutenant accepted. He was quiet though, answering questions that were put to him, but otherwise not volunteering much. A few cups of wine seemed to ease him as the night wore on, and he began to ask questions of his own.
“How is it,” he asked. “That we have not won the war?”
Cain shrugged. “The enemy is undefeated,” he replied.
“But he is,” Fane protested. “Every battle he fights, he loses.”
“It does not matter.”
“Why?”
“Have you ever seen a big man fight a small one?”
“I saw the Wolf beat a man once,” Fane said.
“Aye, I’ve heard that tale. You were there?”
“I was.”
“You must tell us the tale while we are on the road,” Cain said. “But it is beside the point: a big man and a small man. The big man is usually strong and slow, while the small man is weaker, but faster. Such fights always begin the same way. The small man avoids the blows of his opponent, and strikes many of his own, but the big man is slow to tire, and all he needs is to land one good shot to win the fight. That is the contest that we are in. One blow from Seth Yarra would be enough to finish us. We must win every battle if we are to prevail.”
“But they have lost two armies.”
“…which they can afford to lose. There are already tens of thousand of Seth Yarra in Telas, and more will come. The Wolf burnt their ships, but they just came with more.”
“Then we cannot win.”
“And yet here we are. We continue to land punches on the big man, and perhaps he is beginning to tire. The alternative to war is surrender.”
“What would that mean?” Fane asked.
Cain was taken aback for a moment. The thought had never entered his mind. He did not know what surrender might mean, had never given it a moment’s consideration. He was a soldier, after all. He was used to orders, and orders were always plain enough.
“We would have to worship their god, obey their book, if they let us live, and there is some doubt as to that, after what they did in the south. There would be no horses.” No more came to mind, but he saw Fane glance back at his own mount.
“No horses?” he asked.
“Aye, the Seth Yarra have no use for them.”
“And the Wolf?”
“The Wolf is their chief demon,” Cain said. “They call him the god slayer. They would not rest until he was dead.”
Fane looked at the fire for a while without speaking. Cain waited. He understood that this was a particular moment for Fane. It was pivotal in his new life. There had been such a moment for Cain when the Wolf had taken his hand, and even more when he had known himself and all his failings for the first time. When he had known that he loved Sheyani. He waited.
“Then it is war,” Fane said. “Until the end.”
It was odd, Cain reflected, what determined the actions of men. For Fane it was a horse that he had been gifted and a god who had touched him – nothing more than that. The idea of Avilian, the concept of kingdom, the notion of the king and the lords of the land meant nothing to him, even though he had been transparently awed in their presence. It was Narak and the horse that captured his loyalty.
Cain had his own reasons. Sheyani was the greatest of these. She was a mage, and from what he understood of the Seth Yarra book her kind would not be tolerated by the conquerors. It was enough for him. The Wolf, too, had his loyalty, and the city. Cain loved Bas Erinor, especially the low city, all its smells and markets, the narrow streets, the broad highways, the Seventh Friend, the irreverent, blasphemous, god cursed mass of the people. He would not see it changed for all the peace in the world.
Cain admired Duke Quinnial. The young lord was a good man. He loved his wife, his city and his people, probably in that order. He seemed just. He took his role as head of the army of Avilian seriously. He was clever. But Cain wasn’t drawn to him as he was drawn to the Wolf. Quinnial didn’t inspire faith in the same way. Cain had thought a lot about dying in this war. He’d come close a few times. He was beginning to wonder what it was he was dying for. He had so much to lose now. His life was full of things he had never had – money, prestige, love. It was a good life, and he would need a good reason to give it up.
Sheyani, for certain. He would die to save her, but he’d rather not. He did not feel duty to be the pillar of his life as he once had. It was important. In a way it defined him, but strip it away and he was still a happy man – a happier man, perhaps, and that was a big change.
The second night they camped half way to the Berashi border, having covered the best part of fifty miles. The roads had been empty. They had passed only four wagons and a couple of men on horseback in the whole day.
This night they again sat apart with Fane for their evening meal, and Sheyani did her best to explain to him what it was he had become, and what it meant.
“So I cannot be killed, and I will live forever?” Fane asked after her first attempt.
“Neither is true,” she said. “If your body is destroyed you will die. If your head is cut off you will die. Eventually you will die of old age, but it will be many years beyond a normal human span.”
“And the Wolf did this to me? Why?”
“We believe that it happened through the Wolf, but it was not his doing. It seems to have happened to all that were in his favour, but not by his hand.”
“So who?”
“It was Passerina, the Sparrow,” Sheyani said. “She is the one.”
“But she does not know me,” Fane protested. “I have never seen her. Why would she do such a thing?”
Sheyani looked across at Cain. It was a despairing look. “We do not know,” she said. “All we do k
now is that there was an attack by Seth Yarra on Wolfguard itself, and that Narak returned to fight there. We guess that Passerina also returned. The change came upon us a day later, no more, and on you at the same time.”
“And so you are going to Wolfguard to find out what happened,” Fane suggested.
“We are going because our Eran asked us to go, to bear a message.”
“But you said that Narak was in the north, in the frozen lands…”
“Yes. But there is a calling ring at Wolfguard, and by that means we may speak to Narak.”
“I think I have it now,” Fane said.
Sheyani didn’t ask him to articulate his understanding again, and Cain was sure it was because she did not want to have to correct him yet again. Fane had no history. He did not know about the god mages, the god wars, Pelion, the dragons, the Farheim. It was all new to him. As a carpenter and a poor man in his youth his education had been good. He had learned to read and write and do his sums, probably taught by his father or mother. As a carpenter he had learned only what he needed to know.
