Dragon Rigger

by Jeffrey A. Carver

  But he was having trouble focusing his gaze upon Stronghold, and he let out a breath of steam as he gathered his thoughts. "I have some skills in the underrealm," he said, his voice rising in volume. "But never have I claimed mastery of the arts of deception. That is the work of the Enemy. Those who admire such skills should give credit where it belongs—to their Master, the one who destroys! SearSky, you spoke of the Enemy creating life. Well, he might twist life to his purposes, but I do not believe that he can create it. You almost sound as if you believe his lies!"

  His words sent a murmur of displeasure through the assembly. SearSky growled, "I have never believed the lies of the Enemy!"

  Windrush glared back at him, and finally grunted in acknowledgment. It was true, SearSky had never been a servant of Tar-skel. But many of those gathered here, including his own brothers, had once been under the Enemy's sway—until Jael's victory at the Black Peak had freed them. They knew Tar-skel's dark mastery firsthand, but it was not something of which any of them boasted. Nevertheless, Windrush could not deny their right to question him. He had been foolishly unwary, and his encounter with Hodakai had been a minor display of the Enemy's powers.

  Fire burned uselessly in his throat as he regarded the unhappy dragons. He was their leader, and somehow he had to find not just greater wisdom, but greater skill and cunning. At this moment, though, his thoughts were like a slow landslide of stones in his head.

  He heard the low sigh of Farsight, the younger of his two living brothers. Farsight swung his head from side to side as he spoke, his silvery-clear eyes twinkling. "My brother, your scales and your eyes are as dull as a moon behind a storm cloud. When did you last take of lumenis?"

  Windrush exhaled smoke. "Well, I—"

  He felt a gentle shove on his right flank. WingTouch was staring at him with eyes that glowed like lanterns in the sea. Even in the face of defeat, WingTouch never seemed to tire or grow discouraged. "Fly, brother—fly and feed, before you fade away. We need you. Do you hear?"

  A rumble of agreement rose among the others. Windrush realized suddenly how right his brothers were. He had not fed in many days, and he needed the restorative power of lumenis before he could think clearly. "Very well," he murmured. He raised his voice. "All who need lumenis, rise with me and fly!"

  "Fly now!" called Treetooth, a dark green dragon.

  "Fly and feed!" "Fly and feed!" The cry rose quickly, even among those who had questioned him. Most of the dragons present took to the air with a thunder of beating wings.

  The Valley of Fallen Light lay eastward, just over the ridge from the main encampment. It was the largest lumenis reserve in the realm, and so far it had been kept safe from the Enemy. As the dragons passed over the ridge, they encountered the guardian spell, one that would pass only dragons whose inner twists of true being, garkkon-rakh, matched its pattern. The weary Windrush was a beat slow in preparing for it, and it struck him like an invisible sheet of flame. Foe! Foe! it cried, as it wrapped its underweb sinews around him. Stunned by the spell's hot flash, he reached out with dragon thought to trace the grooves and twists of the spell. It required, not great skill, but an aware and true dragon presence. He touched the fire with his thought, and the heat vanished and he passed unharmed.

  Followed by his two brothers and the rest, Windrush flew past the watchful guard dragons who maintained the spell-barriers, and descended into the Valley of Fallen Light. Even in darkness, the place glowed as though alive with fire. It boasted not just lumenis, but plants of all kinds, nourished by the fire of the lumenis. Even from the air, especially at night, the lumenis stems could be seen reaching skyward like silent branches of glittering, fiery ice.

  Windrush dropped a wing and plummeted, murmuring under his breath the ancient words of beckoning: "Living fire, give breath to my wings! To my heart! To my eyes!"

  A heartbeat later, he glimpsed one branch of lumenis that seemed to rise up beckoning to him alone. He felt its touch in the underweb, its energy flowing up to meet him. He reached down with his talons, caught the branch, and swooped back upward, pulling it from the ground. The plant sputtered with light as it broke free. All around him he saw sparkles in the night as other dragons caught up branches. Beating his wings, he climbed back into the sky before lifting the lumenis to his powerful jaws.

  "Strength from fire!" trumpeted a dragon. The vale echoed with the sounds of dragons bellowing.

  Windrush was too famished to celebrate. With a silent thought of gratitude, he crushed the lumenis like glass. The plant erupted between his teeth, melting into pure sunlight. It streamed in all directions; it coursed through his body like an elixir, filling him until he began to feel himself glow from the inside out. All around him, starbursts were exploding, and dragons were pulsing with inner light.

  Fragments of lumenis flew across the sky like exploding embers, droplets of light raining down over the grove. Where they fell onto soaring dragons, the particles vanished with a sparkle into the dragons' scales. But fragments that fell to the ground exploded softly, each explosion the beginning of a new lumenis plant.

  Windrush gladly let droplets of light spill from his mouth, seeding the grove. Energy flowed into his body and his mind together, driving out fatigue and burning the fog from his thoughts. Lumenis flame danced in his brain like an elemental; it had no thought, but it was the energy that fed life, fed all dragon thought and dragon being, all garkkon-rakh. He felt strength flowing into his wings, his eyes, and his claws. He might be unrested, but he no longer felt weary. Anyone who dared to attack him now would be destroyed by claw and flame. He bellowed his fury into the night air, and heard his cry echoed.

  He was not just feeding; he was growing intoxicated with the power of the lumenis. He ground the remaining fragments between his teeth, squeezing the light from them. His spirits soared with every splash of light; he felt as though he could fly the breadth of the realm in the time it would take to shape the thought. He felt an overpowering urge to fly higher than a dragon could fly—to soar to the uppermost limits of the realm, to challenge the emptiness, the winds and the darkness beyond. His wings labored to carry him higher.

  The cries of the others receded below him, an echo in his ears, a fading din. The threads of the underweb began to glow in his thoughts, and he felt an impulse rising in his mind: Why not challenge Tar-skel directly? Why not just reach out through all that was dragon and real and garkkondoh, and challenge the Enemy's magic, and defeat it once and forever? It was a dizzying thought. Enough wisdom remained in him to let it spin harmless into the night air—but the intoxication was still growing. And something else was happening . . .

  A voice, somewhere, was calling out to him. It was a silent voice, and yet it reminded him of a dracona singing to him as of old, singing out a story, a vision of the realm as it was, or as it might be. Someone calling to him . . . but who?

  Even in the euphoric glow, he recognized that something extraordinary was happening. This was not the usual lumenis intoxication. A power was coursing in his veins that he did not understand. Through the dizziness and strangeness, he felt a connection opening in the underrealm, and it was not under his control.

  The realm was changing.

  The darkness of the night grew deeper, and the points of light in the sky gleamed with a strangely cold intensity. They looked very far away. And yet, as he watched them, it seemed that they were being transformed into something different—not warm, distant lights, but rather tiny points of ice. And they were not isolated from each other, but were joined together by a pale, gossamer web that somehow stretched out of the underrealm into the outer world, and encircled the sky.

  Windrush was so astonished that he stilled his wings and glided in the thin, high air, staring at the web. He could still see the dark outline of the mountain range, but the strands of the web were growing brighter, and the mountains were receding. What was this? He felt that he was seeing illusion, and yet not illusion. He smelled the power of an enchantment, but could not di
scern its nature, whether good or evil, nor could he tell its source. Perhaps if he flew higher . . .

  He was far above the other dragons already, but still he beat the air, climbing toward the roof of the sky. The valley, with its popping lumenis, dwindled below. He was in danger of climbing out of the spells of protection; but still he climbed, hoping to make the vision come clear.

  The web grew stark against the night sky. It seemed a peculiarly geometric thing—like the underrealm with its strands and connections, and yet hard and cool; and he thought suddenly that it was a vision of the realm bound together in power, and he felt an electric excitement. Was this a vision of dragon power—of the dragons' final victory, of the realm restored to unity?

  No . . .

  He smelled a tang of steel—and the web suddenly began to shrink, its points of light growing inward like daggers of sharpened ice. He felt his breath hissing, his link with the underrealm being choked off. This was no weaving of beauty; it was a thing of malice, of imprisonment.

  And yet he sensed movement beyond the web. He heard the sound of chimes, the sounds of draconae, the sounds of the dreaming ones. For an instant he thought he glimpsed the Dream Mountain itself, rosy and translucent, and hope sprang into his heart. But it was locked far out of reach, beyond the web of ice.

  Closer, in the web, he saw dragons caught, struggling; and the harder they struggled, the harder the ice became. Some fought with each other, and that made the ice grow thicker. It filled half the sky, closing around him. And now, beyond the web, the sky began to shiver and crack . . . and beyond that he glimpsed a different sky, the sky of another world. The ice crystals stretched, like clawed fingers, out of this realm to take hold in the next.

  He shuddered, circling helplessly in the center of the vision. He glimpsed a new figure, not dragon yet glowing with dragon magic, climbing its way up the web. And he heard words drifting through the air:

  From beyond hope

  will come one . . .

  Innocent of our ways

  will come one . . .

  The sound of the words faded, but not his memory of them. They were the Words of the ancient prophecy, passed on through his father from his mother, the dracona Skytouch.

  As Windrush pondered the Words, the new figure became clearer. He could see its form now: neither dragon nor beast, it was human. Rigger. His breath rushed out in a silent exclamation. Where the rigger touched it, the ice was melting. The glow of the Dream Mountain began to shine through more strongly.

  The human turned her head. It was Jael.

  But in that moment of recognition, she became transparent and disappeared. The Dream Mountain faded, and the icicle prison walled him in on all sides. It stretched out forever, through the fractured sky to the skies beyond.

  Windrush could do nothing except circle angrily. Finally he roared and flew straight toward the wall of ice, his hot breath boiling the air before him. Better to die than to let this terrible work go unchallenged! But when his fiery breath touched the wall, it vanished. The shattered sky vanished, and the web; everything vanished except the night air whispering over his wings. He cried in protest, but his voice faded on the wind.

  He looked down at the other dragons, a swarm of fiery insects in the valley below. He heard his name floating up on the air. Without answering, he searched the night sky one more time, looking for the source of that vision. Finally he gave up and spiraled downward.

  As he rejoined the windmilling flight, he saw that the flush of the lumenis seemed to be wearing off most of the other dragons. "Did you see what I saw?" he rumbled.

  "We saw you trying to fly to the summit of the world," answered Farsight. "What else was there to see?"

  "A vision," Windrush murmured. "I'd hoped you might have seen it, too."

  "A vision," crowed SearSky, flying up from behind. "Another work of your trickster friend?"

  Windrush waited until the other dragon came alongside. "Whose work it was, I cannot say," he answered. "It could have been a taunt from the Enemy—but I think not. I believe it may have come from the Dream Mountain. It had a smell of prophecy about it."

  As his words carried on the wind, a murmur passed through the flight of dragons. But SearSky was unimpressed. His eyes blazed like coals of fire beneath his knobby brow. "How can you judge it a work of the Dream Mountain, if you cannot tell a false vision from a true one?"

  Windrush snorted sparks, not dignifying the insult with an answer. He peered around at all of the dragons. "What I saw was a great web encircling the world! A web of ice—ice as hard as stone, a trap of the Enemy. It stank of despair. I saw the Dream Mountain beyond it, out of reach. And then . . ."

  He described what he had seen: the small human figure climbing and melting the web. And the Words. His voice became husky, rasping his own words into the air. "It was Jael!" he said, breathing a soft, billowing flame. "Jael, friend of Highwing, friend of the realm. She was undoing the work of the Enemy, which the rest of us were powerless to fight."

  His words hung on the night air for a dozen heartbeats, before he admitted that Jael had vanished before winning against the ice and darkness.

  "We heard your outcry," Farsight whispered, his diamond eyes flashing.

  "My rage broke the vision. But it could not break what was in the vision. It was a power greater than our own." He let loose an angry flame and veered off into silence.

  The others began to debate what he had told them, but Windrush stayed outside the circle. The air was soon filled with questions, not just about the vision, but about the past, about the truth of the Words, about Jael. "Do you doubt," Farsight said caustically to one questioner, "that Jael broke the Enemy's sorcery against Highwing? And against us?"

  "So we have heard," came a rumbling reply. "We know that the enchantment was broken. But by whom? Who can say?"

  Farsight snorted in disgust.

  And on it went. Windrush had come to expect it. He had observed that few dragons seemed to remember sacrifices made on their behalf, unless they were direct witnesses to the acts. There were many here whose spirits had been freed from the Enemy's influence—but perhaps not so completely as they would have liked. Despair and discord were powerful weapons of the Enemy, and they were present in good measure here.

  Windrush circled silently, until he heard SearSky again question the source of the vision. SearSky was one who worried him. A formidable warrior, SearSky commanded considerable respect among the dragons; but not all of his followers were clear thinkers, in Windrush's view. It would be unwise, he thought, to let SearSky's words go unanswered. He veered back into the circle. "Whatever the source," he snapped, "the vision was real. And surely it had a meaning, which we must try to understand."

  "And what, Windrush, do you take its meaning to be?" asked Longtail, cutting off a rejoinder from SearSky.

  Windrush answered soberly. "I do not know for certain. Perhaps it was intended to frighten, or perhaps to warn. But its roots lie deep in the underrealm, that I know." He sighed and was suddenly aware of a great need for solitude, and for rest. "My brothers, I am weary—and so must many of you be. We will speak more of this later. But I will say this: What I have seen, I believe to be a thing of prophecy. I believe it bears upon the meaning of the Words."

  He could hear the unspoken questions hanging in the air. Despite the terrible war with Tar-skel, few among the dragons spoke openly of the Words of the draconae—perhaps because the prophecy was so frighteningly ambiguous about the outcome of the struggle.

  "And why should Windrush son of Highwing be granted a prophecy?" SearSky asked.

  "Perhaps because I am also Windrush friend of Jael the rigger," Windrush retorted, punctuating his words with a blast of fire. "If you forgotten who broke the power of the Black Peak, I have not. If I have received a prophecy, it is not because I asked for it. Nevertheless, it was given; and if there is any wisdom left in this realm, we will consider it well." He exhaled a long, steamy sigh. "My brothers, I must take my leave. A
re the night patrols ready?"

  WingTouch flew close, bobbing in the air. "They are ready."

  "Then farewell until the light of day."

  Windrush soared away, departing the vale for the mountains to the north. His thoughts were deeply troubled as he flew, and he had the feeling that they would grow no quieter before this night was over.

  Chapter 6: Battle And Betrayal

  Once his older brother was gone, WingTouch departed also—to the west, back to the main encampment. These days, this was the most populous part of the realm. The air seemed full of dragons flying in one direction or another, and yet the realm was far from normal. The war had so overshadowed life that it was hard to remember what it had been like to fly freely in the night, seeking fast winds and adventure without wondering if the eye of the Enemy would fall upon you, or the wings of his drahls. The jumbled slopes were a windswept remnant of a land that had once borne countless varieties of flora and fauna—life that had mattered, not because it was of any particular use to the dragons, but because it was a gift from the fires of the Dream Mountain. Now, most of the life that had not been stolen or transformed by the Enemy was stunted or destroyed.