Dragon Rigger

by Jeffrey A. Carver

  Windrush gazed out at the web, remembering the vision of FullSky. He could imagine the Enemy's web reaching out, binding this place to similar places in other realms, in other skies. Did this web touch the static realm? he wondered. Did it touch realms that not even an outsider like Jael could imagine? Each strand seemed to pulse like a living fiber, breathing and growing, stretching from the Flowing Spring out into the infinity of the sky. In the outer world, the web seemed not to have touched the waterfall; but here he saw a pale ribbon of light connecting the two, and he could feel the power streaming out through that connection.

  The dragon stared at the joining, wondering if he could interrupt it; but the sorcery-weavings appeared strong there. Moving up and down those nearer strands of the web were figures of light and shadow, so faint he had not noticed them at first—figures that vaguely reminded him of the guardian that had kept FullSky prisoner in the underrealm. Were they keepers of the spell? Whether they were or not, Windrush saw no hope of interfering directly here. If this was the object of the Enemy's invasion of the Deep Caverns, then the battle was over. He could gather his brothers to fight the drahls, but he had none who could stand with him here in the underrealm.

  He knew that he should leave before he was noticed. But something made him delay a moment longer. If this battle were not to have been in vain, he had to understand everything he could about the Enemy's work here. He peered at the web shimmering against the sky. It appeared solid, and yet ethereal; it was hard to see what it was exactly. And yet, as he gazed at it, he began to see more of its larger structure.

  One part of it coiled into the Deep Caverns, binding this place into the web. Another part dwindled into the infinity of the sky—binding this realm, perhaps, with others—though he could not tell how complete that binding was. Still another part seemed to coil around . . . something else in the sky. It was coiled around a strange emptiness. A place without stars, web, or airglow.

  Windrush froze. Emptiness? A hole in the sky? Or in the web?

  With a sudden, unreasoning certainty, he knew that that place around which the web coiled was something far more than nothing. Was it the Dream Mountain, caught up in the Enemy's web? He could not see that it was; and yet something told him yes. His heart nearly broke as he gazed at that empty space. What chance was there of reaching the Dream Mountain, if it was caught in the Enemy's web?

  And yet . . .

  Though there was power flowing from this spot into the underrealm, and though it was under the Enemy's control right now, it still did not belong to the Enemy, any more than the power of the Dream Mountain belonged to him. The web looked ominously strong, and yet he could see that it was not altogether complete. Gaps remained, places where not all the strands had been drawn together. It was not yet finished. If only they could keep it that way! He wondered if that emptiness around which the web coiled wasn't in fact a weakness in the Enemy's plans.

  Still, even as he sat here, power was flowing out of the Deep Caverns, bringing the sorcery closer and closer to completion. The time in which to act was growing short.

  He sensed a movement nearby. It wasn't the guardians from along the web; it was something closer, a shadow. He tried to focus, then realized that he heard a dragon voice calling to him, urgently.

  He wrenched himself out of the underrealm with dizzying abruptness. SearSky was growling furiously: "Come OUT of there, Windrush—come out NOW!"

  Windrush grunted and blinked in the moonlit gloom, and glimpsed a flight of drahls flocking toward them where they were perched at the edge of the cavern. He struggled to react. "I'm here!" he gasped.

  Rocktooth and SearSky sprang away instantly, toward the drahls. Windrush took a sharp breath and commanded his limbs to move. Swaying, he leaped and flew after his companions.

  He wanted to call them back to fly with him out of this place of the Enemy—but the two were already on the attack. He could only leave them, or join them. Wearily, summoning his reserves of strength, he pounded the air until his wings screamed in protest; then he beat harder still, gaining more speed.

  The drahls swept in a great arc to meet them. First SearSky, then Rocktooth bellowed out great tongues of fire. The drahls veered, scattering—but quickly circled back to surround the two dragons. They seemed not to have noticed Windrush following. Windrush let the fire rise hot in his throat as he sped upward. But before he could close the range, SearSky climbed in an abrupt spiral. His maneuver startled the drahls and caused them to turn awkwardly, trying to stay with him. SearSky pitched up sharply, then fell sideways into a spinning dive, his dark scales flashing in the moonlight. At least five drahls fluttered after him, breathing cold blue fire. Windrush crested his climb, above them now. He saw Rocktooth veering in front of a second wave of drahls, drawing them away.

  Windrush pitched down and dove after the drahls chasing the spinning SearSky. His breath blazed out ahead of him, and he raked two drahls with searing flame before the others darted away. SearSky pulled out of his spin in a sweeping turn and glanced back in surprise at the tumbling, burning drahls. "Well done, Windrush," he remarked, eyes aglow.

  Windrush began to reply, but was interrupted by a cry of distress. He looked around for Rocktooth.

  The third dragon had succeeded too well in drawing the other drahls away. "Help, I—!" Rocktooth cried. His words were cut off by the freezing breaths of two drahls, crossing over him from either side.

  "Rocktooth!" Windrush shouted, pounding the air to climb to his aid.

  "Windrush, watch out!" rumbled SearSky, climbing past him on the right, belching flame.

  Two more drahls broke off an attack that Windrush had not even seen coming. He caught his breath, looking for other attackers; then frantically tried to locate Rocktooth again. His heart stopped as he saw the young dragon with two drahls on his back, falling. Rocktooth's expression was locked in pain; the light was fading from his eyes. The drahls released him as he turned transparent as glass, and vanished in midair. "You murdering hellspawn!" Windrush cried, blowing fire, but too late to help Rocktooth.

  "How could he be so stupid?" SearSky snarled, circling back. "Let's kill the rest of these—"

  "No!" Windrush cut off SearSky's turn toward the drahls. "Rocktooth may have saved both our lives! Let's go! There are too many!"

  "Too many for you, maybe!" SearSky snapped. But despite his words, he sent a single blast of fire to deflect the nearest drahls, then joined Windrush in speeding toward the cavern's exit.

  They reached the tunnel and shot into it. They were outflying the drahls, but the air behind them was dark with fluttering pursuers. Windrush bellowed out a warning to the other dragons as they reemerged into the Cavern of Clouds Below. "Drahls following!"

  "Windrush is back!" someone shouted over the sounds of battle, and the cry echoed across the cavern. "Windrush!" shouted another. "What did you find?"

  He thundered back, "The Flowing Springs are taken by the Enemy! Withdraw, dragons! There is nothing more to fight for here!"

  His cry reverberated through the cavern, and was answered by shouts of dismay. He repeated the command to retreat, determined not to lose more dragons in a futile battle. The Deep Caverns were lost. "We've learned what we need to know!" he bellowed. "Leave the caverns! This battle is lost, but the war can still be ours!"

  "The war will be ours!" shouted a dragon, and that cry was echoed by others.

  As Windrush swept through the cavern, helping dragons to break free of the enemy, he saw SearSky taking on several more drahls, raking them savagely from the air before continuing on with the rest of the dragons. As they sped out into the night beneath the vast, brooding Amethyst Cliffs, Windrush wondered silently whether he had spoken the truth.

  Had he learned what he needed to know? Did they still have a chance of winning this war? Would Jael ever appear?

  He had to believe that the answer was yes. Nevertheless, he kept his thoughts to himself as, with his flight of weary and wounded dragons, he began the long
climb upward along the face of the Amethyst Cliffs, toward the top of the world and the realm that they knew as home.

  PART FOUR:

  THE BATTLE

  Prologue

  Standing watch over the Forge of Dreams, the draconae crafted their guarding spells ceaselessly, wrapping threads of the underrealm around that one place that was everywhere and nowhere, a part of the realm and yet not a part of it. No fewer than seven draconae watched over the fires at all times, weaving their spells of protection, of creation, of preservation . . . and one other spell, held carefully in reserve.

  The draconae were ever aware of the Enemy's desire to control the dreamfires, the powers from beyond the realm that nourished and sustained life and creation in all the realm. It was the one thing that might grant him final mastery, and it was the one thing that the draconae were utterly determined to deny him. The Enemy might imprison the Mountain, and he might bring an end to all dragon life and all iffling life in the realm; but he could not make the dreamfires do his bidding. Not yet, anyway. Not without the help of the draconae.

  But what if, against all hope, he learned to use the fires himself? They could not forget the haunting Words:

  . . . To tear from its midst

  The fires of being,

  That dragons may die,

  Unknowing, unseeing.

  If Tar-skel seized the dreamfires, did they have any remaining defense? Perhaps just one. They held in reserve a difficult and terrifying spell, woven in the sinews of the underrealm, to be used only in direst of need—a crafting that would release the bindings that held the dreamfires, a catastrophic release of all the bindings and all the power they contained. It would almost certainly destroy the realm—and with it the lives, not just of those in the realm now, but perhaps even those departed, those who lived beyond the realm in the soulfire of the Final Dream Mountain. That spell could sacrifice, not just the realm's future, but its living past, as well.

  But if the alternative was Tar-skel's victory? Better to lose the realm.

  And yet . . .

  A word names the nameless

  And light dawns from dread

  To the heart of the darkness

  Are the fearful ones led . . .

  Even now, the draconae were not without hope. Those working at the Forge of Dreams wrapped their songs and words of protection not just around the fires, but around all the unborn dragons, the unhatched eggs that remained alive, but frozen in time, on the outer slopes of the Dream Mountain . . . just as the once-vibrant groves and streams where the draconae raised their young were now frozen, static, chrysalized in layer upon layer of binding energy. Those eggs, and those groves of life, were as much captive of Tar-skel's sorcery as the draconae on the inside of the mountain.

  Light dawns from dread.

  More than anything, they held hope for a release into life for those unhatched draconae and draconi of the future.

  Chapter 30: The Voice Stone

  Rent strode through the chasms of the Dark Vale with a pride that would have been beyond him just days ago. But everything that had happened in that time had been so perfect—just as his own body was perfect now, and his very existence. Around him the hardened shapes of a blasted land spoke eloquently of the power of his master, the Nail of Strength. Around him flickered the shadowy, and sometimes iridescent, shapes of the drahls as they moved about their master's business. Around him murmured the dragons who had entered the service of the Nail. Around him rose the groans of the captives, embedded in the stone prisons where the Nail's magic had sealed them—a magic that Rent himself had often wielded in the name of Tar-skel.

  Rent felt a deep satisfaction in the knowledge that everything was now falling into place for the final victory, the victory of Tar-skel, and of a rigger-spirit named Rent, who had helped make the triumph possible. There was a confident power in his stride as he walked the sculpted paths of the Dark Vale, a power that he had never dreamed of as a mere human. If there was pleasure in walking in a human body, how much better it was to walk in a body shaped by Tar-skel, a body formed in a crucible of underrealm magic, a body that could be donned like a cloak or set aside at the pleasure of its owner! It was a body that could shape magic as no human being ever could. What man wouldn't give up his feeble, ordinary form, in exchange for such power?

  Rent paused, resting one foot on a sharp volcanic outcropping, and surveyed the wondrous desolation of the Vale. He had had no small part in the forming of this place, with its maze of ravines and caverns, and the wondrous girding of underrealm spells that kept it intact. Life, he thought, was full of things to be proud of.

  It had not always been so for Brenton Maskill, human rigger, human in another life. A past life—one from another time, another universe. It was a life of hatred and misery that he had left behind: hatred for a mother who had unwittingly exposed her child to an incurable and crippling alien disease—hatred for the other children, who had teased him, then pitied him, and finally shunned him—and hatred for his fellow adult riggers, whom he had utterly reviled, not giving them the chance to revile him first. He remembered being a rigger, and a skilled one. But what was the artistry of rigging, compared to this?

  In that miserable life, rigging had provided the only outlet for a brilliant mind held captive in a ruined body. The time inevitably had come when stealing a ship seemed a more appealing prospect than working for shipowners who pitied and despised him. Killing his riggermates and his ship's master had been easier than he'd dreamed, and more satisfying. And once in possession of a ship, he had set out for the reputed dragon route, questing—with the insolence of blind and angry conceit—for a fight worthy of his skills.

  Never had he imagined that the dragons would prove to be real, living inhabitants of the Flux. Never had he imagined how easily they would defeat him in battle, stripping him of his life and his form. And never had he dreamed that a silent, hidden power with a name like Tar-skel would witness the event and raise him up to a spirit-existence in the realm—and not only that, but would restore him to human form, a perfect human form, so that he could walk as he never had walked as an adult human. He not only walked, he strutted and worked his own mastery over the very dragons who had defeated him—a defeat that was to be his last.

  Rent thought of Hodakai and laughed, shaking his head. Hodakai lusted for what Rent had. But they could not have been more unlike, either as human riggers or as spirits in the realm. Hodakai was simply unwilling to make the sacrifices that were required to become a favored one of Tar-skel. It was pitiable, but it was Hodakai's loss, not Rent's. Hodakai was one of those thoughtless riggers—not very bright, just bright enough to get himself into trouble. He was pathetically easy to manipulate; he'd not even questioned Rent's casual lie to him that his shipmate had been destroyed by the dragons. It was absurdly easy to maneuver Hodakai into doing what was needed; he was a perfect illustration of the price of weakness.

  No such weakness for Rent. For him, and for the Nail of Strength, there was no longer any possibility of failure. There was only the long savoring, the anticipation of victory. With the conquest of the Deep Caverns, and the tapping of the power that had lain buried there, Tar-skel had brought almost to full strength the web of magic that was binding this realm to his will. It was true that the ultimate fulcrum of his power, the control of the singularity within the Dream Mountain, was not yet in his grasp; but that too was drawing closer with each passing day.

  The dragons were enfeebled with despair, and yet the one thing they still did not comprehend was how perfectly their despair fitted into the Nail's sorcery. Tar-skel wielded despair, letting the dragons watch as their realm crumbled, piece by piece. Despair was his yeast, worked through his plan with infinite care, causing it to live and grow. Tar-skel thrived on the dragons' despair, and he was using it to create a work of such power, such sorcery, such magnificence and artistry, that Rent practically wept at the thought of it—and the thought of his own participation in it.

  One
day Rent would walk with his Master in bodily form on the world-surfaces of other realms, other universes. Perhaps he would even assist in the rule of the universe he had once called home.

  * Rent. *

  He blinked, his reverie interrupted. He thought he had heard a voice, deep in his mind. He wasn't certain; but it would not do to take chances. Turning from the view, he started up the long ascending path that zigzagged up one wall of the vale, toward the Voice Stone. He moved expeditiously, but without betraying haste. The land below him was broken and sectored like a great, shattered moon, where a blast of sorcery had fragmented the crust into the chasms that provided quarters for the servants of the Nail, and for the captives. He glimpsed a few of the latter stirring at his passage, and he smiled.