A Crown of Flames

by Pauline Creeden

  She called the dragons together. Purify, purify with fire, she called. The other dragons moved back. A line of dragons stood in front of the blood.

  Blaze, she cried.

  They breathed out fire over the blood, a quick, hot flame. Dyrfinna shielded her eyes from the intense heat. The other dragons in the back sang.

  Fire heat and bright flame --

  Bring the impurity to a boil,

  Burn it from the holy rocks

  Burn it from the sepulcher.

  We honor our forebearers

  We bear up our dear ones,

  We purify our dead

  These valiant hearts.

  They roared, a sound that struck fear into Dyrfinna. They roared again, and then a third time.

  The flames stopped and the dragons stepped back. Some of the stones before the hallow glowed from the heat. Though the fire was out, the heat that rose from that place was intense.

  Let it stand, said the ancient one over the glowing rocks. Let it stand for now.

  Then she sang something in a language Dyrfinna couldn’t understand. The music and the words were thrilling, and the rocks glowed a little brighter, as if a breeze had kindled them.

  The ancient dragon turned away from the hallowed dead.

  Come, she said. Come away from this holy place given over to the dead. Gather by the roses, for we are now here to talk about what concerns the living.

  The dragons gathered, many of them sitting next to the roses and basking in the heat of their flames.

  These roses are beautiful, the old dragon said. Long life to those who put them here.

  How came they here? asked one dragon.

  Dyrfinna turned a gaze to the emberdragon.

  This human chicklet knows, the emberdragon said.

  To her surprise, the other dragons bowed to her.

  Dyrfinna bowed deeply in return, her heart jumping a little in nervousness. “Your Majesty. The humans Gefjun and King Varinn grew these roses to protect their army against Nauma, when she came here to desecrate this holy place. Nauma brought the humans here to kill their army and raise the holy dead who slept here. The humans sang up this rose to protect their people from Nauma’s sword. Nauma could not kill them, so she turned her sword on her own army instead.”

  Dyrfinna stepped back with a deep bow to the ancient dragon.

  Well spoken, the ancient dragon said. She raised her head at the dragons who had gathered with her. They stood unafraid, their hearts all fire, all courage, gleaming like jewels in the light from the roses.

  We have done the unthinkable, said the dragon. We have all – most all of us, she added with a nod at the free dragons that stood next to the wild emberdragon – have built our lives about our bond with our humans. We care for our humans, protect their cities, fight for them in their wars, and work with them during their disasters and train with them in times of peace. We have bonded with many humans, who we love deeply, who love us just as deeply.

  For the first time in remembered history, we have violated those bonds, she said quietly. We are called together to fight against the one who has violated our sacred dead. We stand on this mountaintop, the sacred place of our clan, preparing for the first offensive in a great war against her. We will return to our people, but only after this threat is vanquished.

  That is where we stand now, said the dragon. We, as dragons, don’t have rivalries or wars outside of the humans ones. Our old aeries are gone. As we have wedded ourselves to humans, we have started to die off. Some of our people want to determine their own fates, and they should be given that chance to act on their own. We are thinking creatures, are we not? With our own pains and fears and loves. Yet many of us work in subservience to men.

  Wherever our loyalties lie, we have a great war to be fought. We are about to embark upon a great mission, and it will take time to sweep ignorance off the face of the earth.

  “Or try to,” Dyrfinna thought.

  The dragons spoke all day, because this was indeed a council of war. Dyrfinna was a student of warfare, so she listened intently, because many of the dragons were far, far older than she was, and their understanding of air warfare was extraordinary, built upon decades of battle. Each dragon had fought against more enemies than Dyrfinna had ever faced. The dragons spoke for most of the day about where to fight, and how they needed to face the enemies that Nauma had under her command.

  Finally the dragons adjourned for the day and to eat and drink and rest.

  Before we go, we must finish the purification process, said the ancient dragon.

  They gathered one more time around the barrow of the dragons.

  They began beating their wings and singing. A whirlwind of soot gusted up from between the rocks – the impurities that had been burned away, all burned into ashes and dust.

  Dyrfinna closed her eyes and covered her face and hands as a hurricane of winds shook and smote her, and the dust of Nauma’s army was whirled free into the air.

  The winds gusted as the wings beat.

  One by one, the dragons closed their wings and the winds died down. Dyrfinna opened her eyes, carefully shielding them as dust still filtered down through the air. But the blood that had been burned to ash was gone. And the dragons had sung the blood and ashes away, and the winds from their great wings had cleaned the rocks.

  Now the ground before the great hallow was clean, the impurities removed.

  Dyrfinna returned to the rosebush, tired in body and soul. She’d been very much engaged in the discussion between the dragons and found that she’d worn herself out. She was ready to relax and eat a nice meal.

  Well. Relaxing and having a nice meal never worked out the way she wanted it to, because when she got back to the rest of the group there was Rjupa, Skeggi, and Ibn wanting to talk over plans.

  “Can we talk about those plans over dinner?” she asked weakly.

  She heard those words come out of her mouth and winced. What was the matter with her?

  “Sure,” said Skeggi, much to her relief. Rjupa sat down next to Dyrfinna with some bread and cheese and a small cup of mead, which was very much welcome.

  “The dragons will be flying out tomorrow,” Skeggi said, sitting next to Rjupa. “Which means we all need to come to a decision where we are going to go.”

  “I’m going with our dragon, with Fluffy,” said Rjupa. “I’m going to cast my lot where she goes. I’m grateful to the city of Skala for taking me in when I was in need. But we have a greater obligation to protect the wider population, especially if they have nobody to protect them.”

  Skeggi nodded. “Rjupa and I talked it over for a long time. Fluffy said that she thinks the queen is under an enchantment, that she saw it on her. The queen is definitely not acting right. Fluffy doesn’t know what happened or where the enchantment is from, but she just recognized it on her.”

  “That swayed our decision,” Rjupa said.

  “But one thing at a time,” said Skeggi. “Fluffy said she wants to fly wild for a while and see her friends. I think that’s fair. She has served for a long time, and she absolutely should be allowed to fly where she wants to, visit old friends, and do what she likes with herself.”

  Dyrfinna was eating her bread. The puffin stood next to her on the ground on its tiptoes, staring at her bread. Then it hopped up on her knee and stared intently. Dyrfinna tried her best not to look the puffin in the eye while guiltily eating the bread.

  Just then, one of Varinn's onyx dragons came flying in. Nauma has set the undead dragons upon our city, she said. She herself is nowhere to be seen.

  “Of course,” Dyrfinna grumbled.

  And the undead still attack the walls of our city, said Queen Saehildr's dragon.

  And others of you need to return to your holds and defend against the invasions, said the ancient dragon. Those of you who are not facing this threat of the undead will need to join your brethren in staving it off.

  But the humans keep causing this nonsense, one of the free dra
gons grumbled. Why does it fall to us to clean up the wretched mistakes they inflicted on us?

  Because the undead also attack and devour the animals we eat as food, the ancient dragon said mildly. Aside from that, it is our dead that this human was desecrating. We must stop her and make sure no one does this ever again.

  Though it was very late in the day, the dragons all prepared to leave for their homes, or to assist in places like Skala and King Varinn’s keep, where the undead shamblers lurked.

  Go cautiously, Rjupa's dragon said. Beware of undead dragons flying at night.

  Ibn joined her by the fire where she sat watching the dragons fly out. The emberdragon joined her, stretching out her wings. Get your things so we can fly to King Varinn’s and help them, the emberdragon said.

  Dyrfinna slid off her rock and carried the fleece she was sitting on over to the emberdragon. “I am so glad that we will finally move against Nauma,” she said.

  The next instant, she found herself in a strange city—in someone else’s mind.

  20

  Strange Visions

  Everything was burning. Houses crackled and whooshed and threw out sparks.

  She was kneeling in the deserted street, pulling a pair of boots off a dead man.

  She sat down on the ground, next to where his head had been bashed in, kicked the pair of blood-drenched boots off her feet, and put the man’s boots on. Too big, of course. She shook her head, frustrated, wriggling her toes inside of them. At least these boots were warm and comfortable, better than her boots, which had gone squishy with blood again. She’d wear these boots until something better came her way.

  Then she rifled through the dead man’s pockets. Found a small, beautifully-drawn picture of a sad-eyed lady. She flicked the portrait to the breeze. Some silver and gold coins in his pockets. She pocketed these. A few rings on his swollen fingers. She shrugged and pulled out a knife. “I don’t really need these, but ….”

  Just then, a groan came from her right.

  She glanced up, and one of the undead approached, limping.

  “Fine,” she said. “You can have him.” She stepped back from the dead man and put her knife away, watching the shambler lurching toward her. “You take this man, the one down here on the ground. He’s still fresh.”

  The undead grunted, fixing his remaining eye on her.

  “No, no. I don’t taste good,” she told it. They were rather simple-minded. You had to explain everything to them two or three times, or more, to get anything through their dead brains. It was exasperating.

  She watched coldly as the undead reached out its hand, two fingers missing, then jerked forward and grabbed her arm in a grip like a steel band. No human hand could have ever gripped so tightly.

  Before the undead could yank her toward him, she pulled her sword and cut its hand off and shoved the undead back hard. It fell. As it tried to get to its feet, she shoved it again, and then a third time, not letting it get up.

  The undead groaned and tried to grab for her with its stump of an arm, as if forgetting it had lost a hand. The hand that gripped her arm would not let go. It simply hung there like a disgusting arm ornament. Also, it stank like rotten flesh. She swore.

  The undead pushed toward her, still trying to grab at her. Those things had supernatural strength. Such a nuisance. But she didn’t have time to mess with it.

  She reached into the earth, pulled power up from the Gorm into her hands, and blasted the undead with a bolt of lightning.

  A blinding flash of light, red through her eyelids. She had her eyes shut for it, but even then, when she opened her eyes, she still couldn’t quite see for a moment.

  Sight slowly returned. There was the undead laying on the ground, blown to bits.

  The exploded corpse smelled about the way you’d expect something dead and exploded to smell. Only worse.

  “I’m beginning to hate these things,” she muttered, turning back to the dead man, because she really did want those rings.

  “… Finna? Finna?”

  Dyrfinna shook her head. Suddenly, Ibn was standing directly in front of her. She was back in the rose bramble, and compared to what she’d just been smelling, what a relief that sweet smell of roses was to her. Dyrfinna breathed in deeply.

  But where had she been? “What happened to me just now?” she demanded of Ibn, gripping his arm.

  “I’m not clear on that myself,” he said slowly, staring at Dyrfinna as if trying to work out what he’d just seen. “We were talking just now with your emberdragon, and suddenly you got up and just stood there, staring at nothing. We called your name, poked you, and a puffin sat on your head, but you just kept staring at nothing as if we weren’t there.”

  Dyrfinna glanced over at Skeggi and Rjupa, and they nodded. The puffin stood nearby, looking as innocent as possible.

  “I don’t know where I was,” Dyrfinna said slowly. “I was seeing through the eyes of somebody robbing a corpse. And then she shot lightning at an oncoming shambler,” Dyrfinna said, suddenly aghast and amazed at the fact. “I had to have been dreaming that. There’s no way I could have pulled up lightning like that, from the ground, no less, and blasted somebody with it. I didn’t even break a sweat when I did it.”

  Ibn looked puzzled. “How do you get lighting from the ground, anyway? That’s not even where you reach when you need it. Everybody grabs it from the sky.”

  “She got her power from something that she called the Gorm. Have any of you heard of the Gorm?” Dyrfinna demanded. “They’re in the earth. That’s where she pulled the power up from.”

  Skeggi and Rjupa looked at each other, and Rjupa shook her head. “I haven’t heard of it.”

  Ibn frowned and ran a hand over his turban. “I’ve heard a few things, though this might not all be correct. They live under the earth, like dwarves,” he said. “They’re insidious, but more spirits than flesh. The Gorm are quite rare, so not a lot of people have heard of them. More of a witch’s friend, I think. But I always had the impression that they were more of a minor fiend, something that did mischief.”

  “Would mischief include exploding an undead corpse with lightning?” Skeggi asked.

  “True. It isn’t as if she was blowing up a castle. Ibn, do you know how to contact a gorm?” Dyrfinna asked.

  “No. Even if I did, I still wouldn’t just run out there willy nilly and call them up. Not a good idea.”

  Dyrfinna was still half in her own world, going back through what she had seen through the strange set of eyes again, for they were very much somebody else’s eyes.

  Dyrfinna looked through the odd vision for any clue of where she’d been. She didn’t recognize that particular burning city, nor did she recognize the shambler, or the dead man. Looking through it again, she had no clue to why she might have experienced it. It seemed to be a little particle of somebody else’s life as they robbed a dead man and made the undead leave her alone.

  But the lightning power gave her pause. This was no normal person, to use lightning in such a cavalier way.

  But there was no time to talk about it with her friends. “We will return to Queen Saehildr,” Rjupa said, “and protect our city against the shamblers. We will join you later, if we can.”

  “We still want to stay loyal to Skala, even if the queen seems to be compromised,” Skeggi said. They all embraced, and Dyrfinna watched as they flew away, sad and lonely.

  No time for moony sighing, the emberdragon urged, opening her wings. Let’s go! We have a long way to travel before we sleep.

  Dyrfinna grumbled to herself and then shook it off with a sigh.

  “Ibn,” she said, carrying a set of straps to the emberdragon, who snorted and put her ears back when she saw them. “Will you ride to King Varinn’s hold with me?”

  Ibn’s face went just about as white as his turban.

  “No, no,” he said weakly. “I should much prefer to take a ship.”

  Dyrfinna looked at Ibn in some amazement. “You know that the ships ha
ve all left long ago. You’re not afraid of heights, are you?”

  “I am not afraid of heights,” he sputtered, drawing himself up. “No. What I am afraid of is falling.”

  “Fair enough,” she said. “All the same, we can’t leave you behind.”

  He grimaced, looking at the emberdragon, and swallowed. “If I could ride a wide, slow dragon about as wide as a ship,” he said. “That would be far better.”

  The emberdragon’s ears went back and her eyes narrowed. A slow dragon? Pah!

  “Oh,” Ibn said. “Well then.” He tried to look brave. “I’m ready to die now.”

  Dyrfinna swiftly sewed extra straps for Ibn to keep him securely on the emberdragon’s back in hopes that he wouldn’t feel like he was going to fall off.

  “Even if I’m secure, it still won’t work,” he moaned. “Even if I have my eyes shut on the dragon, I still have irrational ideas that I’m going to tumble off for no reason whatsoever.”

  “I’m sorry to put you through this,” Dyrfinna said, tying the straps on securely, “But we really must go.”

  Ibn didn’t reply. He climbed on, and as soon as the emberdragon leapt into the air, he curled up in front of Dyrfinna with his forehead pressed against the dragon’s back and long shudders passing over him every time her wings moved.

  “How long have you been working for King Varinn?” Dyrfinna asked, trying to make conversation to keep his mind off the flying.

  Ibn made a sad moan.

  So I take it that the flying experience is not to your specifications, said the emberdragon.

  “Stop,” Dyrfinna said. “The poor man is in misery.”

  They finally landed on an island, as it was very late at night. Once they were on solid ground, Ibn slid off the dragon and lay on the ground for a little while. Dyrfinna’s heart went out to him.

  “I am very sorry,” Ibn said, shamefaced.

  “I should be the one who is sorry,” Dyrfinna said, sitting cross-legged on the ground beside him to keep him company. “You can’t help it. I wish there were a better way for you to travel.”