by C. K. Rieke
In her stupor from that statement, Fewn didn’t realize that Kera had reached over and pulled Fewn’s dagger from the small leather sheath at her back. Fewn began to reach out for it, but then surprisingly, Kera held out the handle towards her.
Kera’s eyes burned into Fewn’s then. “If you ever cared for me, even a little bit. If you meant anything you said back then when we were with Lilaci— and you’re still taking me to the capital— have the decency to do it, right here, right now.”
Fewn was taken aback, with a baffled and disgusted look on her face. “I— I can’t . . .”
“Yes, you can. You’re a killer. That’s what you are. You’re a traitor, you’re a deserter. You’re a liar. You murdered innocents. What about you can’t kill me? What kind of coward are you that you’d rather send me to the gods to torture me or worse? In my eyes, that makes you just as bad as them, and just as evil.”
Fewn’s eyes darted around at Kera, who stood with wicked intensity, and Fewn’s fingers slowly extended and wrapped around the handle to the dark-colored dagger. Kera dropped to each knee and with her hands behind her back, she lifted her chin up and closed her eyes. “Do it.”
There the two of them stood, out in the middle of the open desert. One, an assassin with the decision that would make her an executioner. The other— a young girl whose only fault in her youth was being born, as all of the Arr was after her for her ‘gift.’ Fewn stood like a statue, as still as stone, as the thoughts of killing or not killing Kera raced through her mind. Then Kera caught what looked like a quiver in her lower lip, she didn’t know if it was from anger, sadness, or just frustration. Whichever it was, Fewn grunted and placed the dagger in its sheath at her back quickly. She grabbed Kera by the elbow and dragged her to her feet.
“Come on,” she said, pulling Kera next to her as they began walking again. “We’ve got to go find water now that you threw it all away.”
“Stop,” Kera resisted. “Fewn, just stop!” She pulled her arm from Fewn’s strong grasp. “I’m serious. Either end it now, or I’m not taking another single step with you. You have to know what’s going to happen to me if you take me to them. You’re not even taking me in the right direction. You know they’re down southeast from here. You don’t know anything about what you’re doing. You don’t want to give me to the Scaethers, and you don’t want to kill me. What is it you want? What is your plan? Tell me . . . Tell me!”
Fewn looked at her sternly, holding a stone-cold glare at Kera, but she feigned, and sighed. Her shoulders slumped slightly, and she looked up at the endless sands on the horizon line.
“You ever hear the story of the golden wizard and the nightbird?” Fewn asked, not looking at Kera.
“No, what does that have to do with anything?”
“It’s a story I remember from my father, who told it to me a long, long time ago. You see, one day the wizard was toiling with his potions and enchantments up in his high tower. He had no friends, yet everyone below in the town asked for his help with their ailments. He worked tirelessly to help those below him, but none of them offered what he needed— someone to talk to— friendship even. Until one evening when he was working on a potion to turn the ordinary fabric to gold, he mismeasured the elements and it exploded, covering him from head to toe in gold. He could not wash it off, he couldn’t even burn it off. Hence he became the golden wizard.”
So now that he was the golden wizard, there were many that wanted to be his friend. They wanted to know the secret of his botched potion, so they could create their own gold. Every day he had visitors, and he quickly began to miss his isolation. One day, after the wizard was weak from sadness, and as his tower was full of people eager for a piece of him, a nightbird the size of a large dog flew to the windowsill and perched there. It’s long black feathers and empty glassy, dark eyes watched the men and women in the room. Now everyone knows that a nightbird is an ominous sign, a symbol of death. That day and night, there was not one soul in the tower, save the golden wizard, who slept better than he had in weeks. The next morning, he awoke to find the nightbird still perched upon his windowsill.
‘What’s your name?’ he asked the bird.
Now this wizard was trained in the ways of bird’s speech, and he heard the nightbird reply that his name was Ezgohe.
‘Thank you for scaring all of those unwanted people,’ he said.
‘Golden wizard,’ the nightbird said, ‘aren’t you afraid of me?’
‘Why, no, Ezgohe, should I be?”
‘I’ve heard of your accident from afar, and as you are blessed with skin of gold, I have come because it is seeping into your skin and veins, and you will soon die from it. I am here to eat your body when you are gone.’
The wizard thought a few moments.
‘Well, if I’m to die, would you make a bargain with me?’ the wizards asked, and the bird cocked his large head. ‘I’ve been told that the nightbird not only is a cursed sign, but also they know of things of alchemy.’
The bird nodded.
‘If you teach me a way to reverse this cursed golden prison I live in, I’ll give you anything you wish.’
‘What could you give me that I cannot get myself?’ the bird asked. ‘And why would I want to save you from your curse? I am here to consume your golden carcass.’
‘I know the one thing that the nightbird cannot do . . . You nightbirds cannot bear offspring, from a curse put on your line long ago.’
The nightbird spread its wings out far and it cawed so loudly the old wizard fell to the ground.
‘This curse has plagued me and mine long. How could you lift the curse? Tell me now!’
The wizard slowly rose back to his feet, aching from the weight of the gold.
‘Tell me!’ the bird roared in furious anger.
‘That is the bargain, great nightbird,’ the wizard said. ‘You can either heal me, kill me now, or wait for this poison to finish me, and you’ll never know the cure for your curse.’
‘It is not my place to make that bargain, wizard. The golden curse you bear was brought on by yourself. It’s not my place to change the winds of fate.’
‘But you have changed its course by flying to my windowsill. You are here with a choice, just like anyone and anything else. Fate comes, yet fate can change, just with one little shift of the wind.’
The bird thought long and hard.
‘I understand,’ the bird said. ‘You believe that if I cure you, and you help me then your fate will be changed?’
‘That is what I believe.’
‘Then that is what we will do,’ the bird said.
The nightbird cured the wizard of his golden skin by teaching him a new potion, and the wizard helped the nightbird to lift the curse of infertility in their family with a spell of his own. Weeks later, after the two had returned to their normal lives full of hope and joy, the blackbird returned to the wizard’s windowsill, to find the wizard covered in gold from head to toe once again. This time his room was full of soldiers in armor, who fled quickly at the sight of the bird.
‘You’ve come again, thank the gods,’ the golden wizard cried. ‘They made me do it, they told me I had to replicate what I’d done, and I’ve repeated my mismeasurement. You’ve come to help me.’
‘No, wizard. I’ve come to watch you die, and then consume your golden carcass.’
‘What do you mean, bird? I helped you.’
‘No. You made it so that we can lay eggs once again yes, but the birds that hatch are not our own. There are white and pale with no feathers. You’ve replaced our curse with one of your own.’
‘I did no such thing. I lifted the curse!’
‘You see, I was right,’ the nightbird said. ‘You can’t change the winds of fate. Here you are, standing in shining gold, and here I am, unable to have young.’
‘I do see your point, but we can try again,’ the wizard said.
‘No. This all is going to end the same way, no matter how hard you fight time. Fate will c
ome in the end, we were all born with our own destinies. You will be gold again, over and over until the end comes. I will not save you this time, wizard, your fate is in your own hands now.’
Over the next few days, the nightbird watched the wizard scramble frantically trying to replicate the potion the bird had helped him to create, but eventually as the bird had said, the wizard died in the night. The bird picked the meat from his bones and flew back out the window back to his nest, full of little wingless birds.
“That’s a sad ending,” Kera said.
“These are sad lands,” Fewn said.
“So, you’re trying to tell me that I can’t be saved?” Kera asked.
“I just told you a story is all,” Fewn said. “We can’t stop fate.”
“So, my fate is to die at the hand of the gods?”
“I don’t know that,” Fewn said, her expression somber and bleak. “But it looks that way.”
“What’s your fate then?” Kera yelled at her. “Tell me. What’s your fate?”
“I was raised in Sorock to be a weapon of the gods.”
“That’s not what I asked,” Kera said. “That’s what you were forced to become, can’t you choose what you will become?”
“Like the nightbird said, you can’t change the winds of fate,” Fewn said. “We could fight the inevitable, but for how long? How much torment would we endure? Soon, there will be armies out searching for us. The gods will not give up their search for you. They’re going to find you.”
“You could choose to fight!”
Fewn laughed. “Fight the gods? That’s your plan? Tell me then, how are you going to bring back the dragons? They’re all dead. How long does it take to bring back the dragons? One year? A hundred years? And you are going to hide from them that long?”
Kera’s silver eyes flickered in the sun’s light, and her hair drifted from a small gust of wind that blew in. “I just discovered something, recently— something that can change the winds. I have the power to nullify the magic of the gods. I’ve seen it. I’ve felt it. If they come after me, they’ll only have the strength of a normal man or woman. I don’t know if they know this yet. But if they come, you would have a chance of fighting any one of them just like they were any other soldier.”
Fewn was taken aback by that. “How do you know that? If you’ve never been around them?”
“I felt it when I was around Lilaci,” she said. “I could feel their magic dissolve when we were together. That is how I know.”
“That’s a lot to think about,” Fewn said. She looked up at the hot sun above. “Anyways, we’ve still got to find water, because you tossed it all away. Let’s get going.”
“Which direction?” Kera asked.
“North. Let’s just continue north for a while.”
Chapter Four
Roren followed Lilaci’s footsteps up the long dune, his feet sinking into the soft, hot sand. He had his thin, tan tunic across his shoulders, and he clasped his hood tightly to his bald head. He took long strides to match Lilaci’s. He wasn’t used to walking the sands like she was. He’d been in that cave waiting for her for longer than he cared to remember, but he did it for her. He did it for Kera.
As Lilaci reached the highest tip of the dune, she watched as the sands rolled down both sides like a shimmer of water on the endless sea. She scanned the horizon on all sides. Roren caught up breathing heavily and reaching down to lift his leathery watersack from his side, he removed the cork with a pop, and took small, quick sips of the warm water.
“What do you see?” he asked. “Anything? Any sign of them?”
Lilaci continued her scan. She looked like a tiger hunting an elk. Her pale face was covered with a thin layer of sand. Her hair, long and black, although tied back and under her hood, was thick with sand. She was used to it, as she’d been on the sands ever since being let out of Voru at the will of the gods. Her time training with the commander Veranor in the cleanliness of her old quarters was a distant memory. She didn’t even think of the servitude and torment she was forced to endure at the commander’s will. She was a slave to him, a gift he gave her with the help of a group of mages Lilaci despised. She held all of that pain and anguish in her gut, but now her heart was pumping with fire and brimstone to keep her moving her feet, pressing forward.
“To the east,” she said. “The city of Voru. I can’t see it, it’s still hundreds of miles out, but I can sense it. I know that place all too well. That’s where I was taken . . . When my family was killed.” A sharp pain like a hot dagger shot into her mind then, as the spell of the mages kept her from remembering her past. Kera was the only relief from their spell.
“They must be going that way then,” he said, looking to the sun behind them, hanging over the horizon just as it began to slip down past the endless sands behind them. “Should we get down off this dune and light a fire tonight? I sense it's going to be a chilly one tonight. I sense the seasons changing. Sonna will be coming to an end in the next couple of moons, and aturum will bring the cool winds and the coloring of plants. We will need to acquire thicker clothes if we are to stay on the sands.”
“Aturum?” she said quietly. “How long have I been back out in the deserts? I feel like I’ve been looking for her for a lifetime now.”
“Do you think we could catch them before they make it to Voru?” he asked.
“Yes,” she replied firmly. “But—”
“But?” he asked with an upturned eyebrow.
“I— There’s just this feeling inside of me, telling me they’re not heading that way. I can’t describe it. It’s like . . . A ghost whispering inside of me.”
“A ghost?” he asked, taken aback by that comment.
“I know it sounds strange,” she said.
“No, not to me,” he said. “To the Order of the Drakon, a ghost presence is a sign. It is a symbol from the other side, the voices of those forces from the light of passing. They’re the ones who gave us the knowledge to find Kera. They’re the ones heralding the new age, an age without the gods pounding their fists on these lands. Lilaci . . .” He walked over next to her and stared deeply into her eyes. She saw a light in him she’d never seen. Framed by his dark skin and sand-worn wrinkles, his eyes were lit a brilliant blue from the light of the setting sun. “What does the whisper say?”
Staring back into his eyes, she searched her mind, even trying to use the Sanzoral to feel out into the sand, like dipping fingers into a handful of it. She closed her eyes and listened. She listened to everything and felt out deeper into the mountain of sand beneath her. “I see . . .”
Roren leaned in, listening intently.
“I see, a mountain. Not one of sand, but one of stone, reaching high up to the heavens. I’ve seen it before, with Fewn. Its high peak reaches up to the heavens like the finger of a god. Its sharp, dark rock winds up to a point where man cannot reach. It’s where only winged beasts could linger. That’s what I see.”
“Duen Utülm Drakon,” he said, his voice was soft, as though he couldn’t believe what she’d said. “Dune of that last dragon. That place is sacred to us, that was the home of Kôrran, the greatest— and last— dragon. You’ve seen it? You’ve been there? Do you think they are heading for that mountain?”
“I don’t know,” she said, unsure. “That doesn’t even make sense why they wouldn’t just head out straight for the city, and to King Serinaas.”
“Maybe, she’s had a change of heart.”
“I doubt that is the case,” Lilaci said. “You don’t know Fewn like I do. She’s spiteful, and temperamental. But she’s also fearful. She’s thinking of preservation. She knows the fate of anyone helping the Dragon’s Breath, Kera.
“So why would they go there?”
“I think there’s probably still some doubt in her mind. Fewn can be rotten, but she’s not stupid. She knows what will happen to Kera if she hands them over to the gods. The Witch Queen Gorlen would torture her body and soul, giving her essence to the other
gods. Dânoz the king of the gods would enjoy every second of her torment.”
“So again, why would they go to the great mountain?”
“I don’t know, and like I said, it’s just an image in my mind. It might not mean anything. If I’m wrong, we would be heading in a completely wrong direction, with no way of getting to her in time, if they’re heading for the castle.”
“No, you’re right. Visions like that—” he said, “—with the sensation you described to me, is a sign. Those from the afterlife are telling us where to go. There is no question, this is our destination.”
She sighed. “I hope you’re right. That would be good news: it would buy us time.”
“We will head northeast in the morning,” he said, as a chill wind bit at them as the sun just slipped behind the desert sands. The moon’s crescent arc glimmered from high above, and the light of the stars began to shine.
If we’re not heading in the right direction, and Fewn’s actually traveling back down to the kingdom as we speak, I’ll never forgive myself. Kera would arrive there in only the next couple of days, to what end I can’t bear to imagine. Roren seems convinced enough, but Fewn is unpredictable. If I find that girl, she’s going to wish she’d never crossed me, and betrayed Kera’s trust. I’m going to cut her throat from ear to ear for this.
“How far do you wager it’ll take?” Roren asked, the following morning after they’d made their start back out onto the sands. “Until we reach the mountain? I’ve never seen it.”
“I think we’re at least five hundred miles out,” she said, her hood draped in front of her eyes.
“That’s a ways,” he replied. “We should find someplace to rest a night and gather supplies if the chance arises. I could use not sleeping on cold sand, just if even for one single night.”
Lilaci thought about that statement, and the last time she’d slept in a bed. It was while she was still the apprentice/captee of Commander Veranor. She seemed to think she preferred sleeping on the sands. It reminded her of her freedom, even if she was a traitor to the god’s will, and soon to be hunted— surely.
