Dragonfly

by Sylvia Kelso

  With a strange tangled-starfish shape at its rim, a sprawl of dun and weathered grey, canvas, weather-canvas, with outliers of a limp hand. A sidelong fallen boot. A hideous gouting hole to mark the redness’ source.

  I looked across it into Therkon’s face.

  It was almost as pallid as the snow. His limbs were rigid, but his lips shook. His hands shook too, and the sword he grasped shook with them, scattering crimson drops down into the steaming red.

  For a moment I could hear my heart beat. Could hear the blood, melting its way toward earth.

  Therkon whispered, “You disappeared.”

  I could only stare.

  “First the knife. Then you. There was nothing. A hole. A no place.” His voice began trembling as well. “Not you. Not the stones. Not the snow. Not the—Nothing. Nothing was left.

  “He,” the sword wavered. Perhaps a gesture, perhaps not. “I could still see him. Fading. Going. I—I—”

  He did move the sword that time. One shaky, travestied intimation of a sweep. But it spoke clearer than the words.

  I did the only thing I could.

  Time seemed to creep over me, slower than half-thawed

  water, slow as it must seem to the stones. Painfully, time seamed together past, present, sections of scene, comprehension. The heap was Rathi’s body. The gory odd-shaped hummock over there, a good eight feet away, was Rathi’s head.

  I had taught Therkon to use Hvestang. Nouip had said, he would have use for it. A mere human, left with a human weapon, human knowledge, in the face of—whatever Sthassamaer did. In a time of more than human need.

  I tried to make my lips move. I could not, yet, bear to look at Rathi—what was left of Rathi—but I was alive. Therkon was alive. He knew what he had done, in both its senses. For me, to me. His was the prior need.

  I drew breath at last, consciously tasting the cold, clean air. Something inside me was starting to tremble, but I could still manage words.

  “You did what you could.”

  The words might have been judgement, indictment, blame. Hatred. I managed to make them understanding. Acknowledgement. Nothing more.

  But he was Therkon. He understood.

  The white-knuckled clench on the sword-hilt eased. The blade stopped quaking. The eyes, far too big, far too dark, began to lose their distended rings of white. His lips steadied. He drew his own first full, careful breath.

  And the eyes, the bronze-dark Quetzistani eyes I knew so well, emptied. No struggle this time. A smooth uncontested transition, from bronze-dark to fathomless black.

  * * * *

  I think my heart stopped. I know I could not breathe. Only vision, comprehension, seared through me, numbing as a lightning strike.

  We had met Sthassamaer at last. And it had made one of my wards kill the second, and the second—I was the only one left. Alone. Alone to face the monster, and the monster’s face . . .

  I looked at Therkon, my dearest friend, my companion, I his troublecrew, he pledged to protect me with his own life. The hope and heart of Dhasdein, as he had become my heart.

  Now I could not even drive the enemy from the world without his death.

  Even if I succeeded, it would only hasten my own end.

  I stared back into the blackness that pinioned me, that was watching, knowing what it had done. Savoring, in this waste of horror, what it would do next.

  Perhaps it was the disbelief of trying to imagine anything that could conceive, let alone do such a thing, that brought the words. Or perhaps it was Two, fettered even beyond terror’s spark, whose deepest, oldest impulse drew them up.

  “Who are you? What are you? How could you ever . . .”

  Neither Two nor I could manage any more. But it was enough. The thing smirked. Even yet, I can hardly bear to confront that memory. That look, on Therkon’s face. Then, prolonging the savor, no doubt, it spoke.

  “So what am I, madam oracle?”

  No doubt it intended a mere fencing point. But the polar ice within me stirred. A feeble movement, action, then Two’s own

  familiar blizzard whirl of white.

  It had asked us a question, using Therkon’s voice, wearing Therkon’s face. The memory of such questions, from such a source, woke our oldest reflexes: to provide an answer. To assemble facts.

  Image-snips flew past: Therkon in the Iskarda council room, speaking of storms and refugees. The woman in the Sea-fort bed, giving us a name. Whale road, swan’s way. Carsia. Therkon on Evvamoor beach, saying, A child hearing sagas on a corner could think of it. Nouip by her fireside saying, Black water. Giving Therkon the sword, the cloak. Saying, with her Sight, You will have use for this.

  Another clot of recollections then, the Grithsperry shipper saying, Sea-sark, saying, Where He comes ashore after the winter’s storms, Skatir bellowing, They think you’re Winter’s King! Veenn talking of Hondeland, inundated, Fiskri of gales and lost fishing fleets. Rathi himself—the threads almost snapped—speaking of Rangar, of Hondeland, of the edges of ruin. The images in the White Grebe’s tap-room, dark with candle-wax and smoke. Skatir shouting, He’s of the Isles! Veenn saying, there’s the Mither, and the one who fights her, the Mither’s opposite. The Winter Man.

  Myself wearing Nouip’s cloak, bearing Hvestang into a hall on Eithay, up a hill on Skall.

  Therkon in the Winter Man’s cloak, carrying the sword.

  Then at last, as Nouip had once predicted, the streams of data merged. Two and I looked at the enemy together, and for the first time, we Saw.

  We said, “Tiran.”

  It blinked. Then it raised Therkon’s brows. I had one stabbing moment to recall how he would have looked, hearing, with the joy of the philosopher, this riddle finally read.

  It said, “Very good.”

  My heart might have broken then. But the Sight endured: and in its grasp the patterns began to coalesce, images balancing, connections meshing, projections dovetailing, the great mass of knowledge crystallizing from that heart-point out and out about us, making sense of everything.

  Black water, rising. Darkness. Winter’s fall.

  Summer’s ascent, dawn over Phaerea. The world opening to the sun.

  A story pattern, a belief pattern, a world pattern. A pattern found and framed by storytellers, but not to please the imagination. Framed because it spoke humankind’s understanding, human remembrance of the truth. The greatest pattern of all.

  “You are the Winter dark. The Mother’s foe. In autumn, the one who prevails.”

  It raised Therkon’s eyebrows, and looked obscenely pleased.

  “So you have brought winter. Not once, not in season, not in its rightful place, but out of time, beyond the Isles, over the world’s bounds. You have not stopped with ice and snow. You have wrecked, and overthrown, and inundated, and destroyed.”

  It was preening. There is no other word. It did not shift the sword, it did not move Therkon’s body. But the eyes glistened, and the ambient air conveyed it. The thing preened.

  “You have been bringing winter, out of season, these five years.”

  It nodded. Gravely, judicially, as Therkon might at a sensible, approved council proposal. And then I understood what Two and I were doing.

  Our words were not flattery, not outrage. Not seeking to

  manipulate, nor recapitulation, either. We were laying down an indictment. Bringing it to judgement. Reciting its offence.

  And it was accepting the guilt.

  “Why did you do this?”

  The way it gazed back at me wrung my heart. Because, so like Therkon, so heart-breakingly like Therkon, it looked, for a moment, slightly bemused.

  Then it said, “I am winter. I can prevail.”

  It sounded exactly like Therkon too. Alone, I would have had to bite my tongue on pleas and protests and screams of, Don’t, don’t do this, come back to
me, come back!

  But Two and I were one, and as one we spoke.

  “This is spring.”

  It glanced around the snow, and smiled.

  “Your place now is to retreat. To yield, and wait for

  autumn. To go.”

  It looked at me in amusement and let that say, I am here, in the ascendant, and you have no way to alter that. All your talking may delay. It cannot change your fate.

  But Two and I knew a way to do that too, and given time to rally, we had the power. I turned our vision inward upon one memory. A wall in Cataract, my mother’s hands on a lighted,

  blazing, burning statuette.

  Make, I said to Two, light.

  I saw it on the snow first. The coalescing shadow, running outward from my feet. The distorted shape of my own body thrown in all directions round me, as light encircles the glowing lamp.

  And then the second long blackness growing outward behind Therkon, the dark shapes coalescing, sharpening, behind the central menhir, behind the flanking stones. The air brightened round me as the light crescendoed, not merely clear but brilliant, dazzling, whiter, brighter, fiercer and more implacable than the heart of the midday sun.

  Therkon’s throat made a weird cawing noise. His hands dropped the sword hilt and tried to fly upward but the light pinned them and he almost screamed, cringing, clawing air, squeezing his eyes shut, trying to shrink and back away and run, mindless in the light’s glare, unable to think beyond escape.

  “Be still.”

  The flight stopped. Therkon—it—the creature tried to crouch and huddle, and when it could not do that it first screamed and then, helplessly, it wept.

  And we stared at it, now seeing only Sthassamaer. Knowing beyond doubt that we could expel it, not merely from Therkon’s body but from the living world.

  We could excise Tiran as well. In the world that opened before us, there would be spring, and summer, and autumn. But there need never be winter again.

  It was no longer any form of retribution, let alone revenge. We knew, as a god would know, that the world would be infinitely better, happier, kinder, without winter. Good was a simple choice.

  Perpetual day. Perpetual light.

  It dazzled and battered round us, fiery as summer, fiercer than a cloudless noon, pure, overwhelming light. The circle and the outlier stones were bathed in it, we could make it pour out to evaporate the clouds, melt the snow, revive the town, restore an azure summer sea.

  Across that blinding vista ran a wisp of memory: my fathers, somewhere in a night I had never shared, talking about gods.

  My father Alkhes, his black hair and troublecrew gear a shadow and voice in the darkness, saying, “Gods above—no, that’s not right, is it? If there’re no gods, is there an Above at all?”

  After a moment my father Sarth replied. I could see his classic profile above some building’s level, held in that familiar pause for thought.

  He said, “There may be no gods as we think of them. And no Above, as we think of it. But there are patterns. Whoever or whatever made them, in everything, the patterns are there.”

  Black water, rising. Darkness. Winter’s fall.

  Spring’s ascent, dawn over Phaerea. The world opening to the sun.

  But that was not the pattern’s end.

  Summer was its consummation, yes: grainfields ripening,

  maturing fruit. But then came harvest. Apples falling. Leaves falling. The world closing, as the sun changed, so it could sleep.

  Because it had to sleep.

  Because alone, light was not enough.

  The brilliance of our own light eased as we understood. It was possible to erase Sthassamaer, but we could not expunge Tiran. Veenn had said it, we ourselves had said it. In the autumn, he prevailed. This was spring.

  And every spring was bedded in time, as we were, as Therkon was, as Rathi had been, as Tiran had been. As Tiran must be again.

  “You have broken the pattern,” we said. “You and the Mother are the two sides of the balance. You both have your part, but you must keep the whole. Winter rises.

  Winter must also fall.”

  It was all so obvious, so clear beyond contention, that we were not surprised when, as the light subsided, Therkon’s body began, gingerly, to uncoil from its cringe. To lower its hands, and relax its face, and dare to look at us with its eyes again.

  To pick up the sword, that had fallen into the blood and snow at its feet.

  Even then, the solution was so clear and perfect and right as a puzzle piece finally fitted, that we did not heed his movement. Did not invoke the councils of Azo. Did not think on the human, or even on the sagas’ plane, at all.

  Until Tiran smiled at us, and lifted the sword to guard, and purred, “But for the proper pattern, there must be a battle first.”

  * * * *

  The light died. It was bleak midwinter noon, and we were trapped there, mute and paralyzed as a flesh and blood menhir, amid the bloodied but undispelled snow. Only the calamity had changed.

  Its lips smiled, Therkon’s less familiar winner’s smile, and it moved the sword a little. The blade no longer dripped, but over its knuckles, where it had retrieved the fallen hilt, everything was smeared with red.

  Battle, it had said. A proper part of the pattern, it claimed. And it was true. The pattern was the story, and the story said, Fight. Not merely transition, but struggle and supersession, a

  balance of opposing triumphs. Opposing defeats.

  If Two and I were to bind it to the pattern, we must also bind ourselves.

  So we must fight the same, the endless battle.

  But was it expecting, this time, to win?

  Horror choked my throat. I had one knife left. Therkon had the sword. How would the world fare, if the ultimate story went awry? If spring came, and Tiran won?

  I shut my eyes and my soul cringed. Oh, my mind said numbly. Oh, Mother, what am I to do?

  Silence came then, within me as without. The silence of the circle, of the standing stones, whose place had been defiled by death and violence, but could not be destroyed.

  Where, a still small voice said into that quiet, do you think the Mother is?

  My heart labored as if my blood had thickened. Dryness filled my throat. I could not have said it, but too, too clearly, I understood.

  If this was the climactic battle, and we its human actants, who could, who must, Two and I be, if Therkon was Winter’s King?

  My hair crisped with more than awe. And then crisped again as Two formed the inevitable corollaries.

  If we are the Mother, then somehow, however impossibly, story dictates that we must win.

  But if Tiran wore Therkon’s body, how could we inflict that defeat on him?

  I opened my eyes and it smiled at me. It had Therkon’s wits along with his flesh and blood. It had worked out the strategy and the inevitable conclusions. Whether the Mother won or not, Two and I could only lose.

  “Why?” we said. We did not consciously plan delay, but there would only be so much time to ask our own questions. And now they were driven by rage, by the bursting denial of grief. “How long?”

  We expected it to understand, and it did. Why had it sought me in particular, once I came within its ken, and how far back had that knowledge, that seeking run? To the squall that pushed Aspis from the River, to the wreck of the survivor’s ship, to the expulsion of its crew from Kaastria, to the fall of Hondeland?

  To the fall of Hringstenn, or further? Right back to the beginning? Even to my beginning? Had knowledge of me, yet greater disaster, first driven Tiran to break the pattern at all?

  “How long?”

  It shrugged a little. Not with indifference, or denial. This, we understood, in such leaps of thought as Tiran itself made, was a pattern beyond human understanding. And Two’s as well.

  �
��But why? Why?”

  Why me, why us, I wanted to scream at it: what was so important that you, whatever you are, would overturn whole nations to get possession of a single, human girl?

  Two’s own logic answered. Because I was not simply human. Because I was Two, as well.

  “Because of us?”

  It narrowed its eyes and stared at me. It was not an expression of Therkon’s. I had one fleeting wild impression that I had pushed it beyond Therkon’s mental and physical repertoire. Now, in this unfamiliar body, Tiran, or Sthassamaer, was acting for itself.

  The lids dropped over inhuman black. It looked down into the snow, and answered so softly I could barely hear.

  “For the light.”

  And as if light had struck to the depths of my own heart’s cavern, I understood.

  It lived in, moved with, was itself darkness. It could pursue summer, and overthrow autumn, and best the Mother, for a season. But even if it ran wild, spreading its dominion over the year’s length, what it worsted and hunted could never be held for good.

  But Two and I, however anomalous, were merely part of the Mother’s world. We bore, we could kindle light. And we, at least, might be engulfed, assimilated. Possessed.

  But if we were not the Mother? Fresh vision of that struck like a literal spear of light.

  In this battle, we stood for Her, but we did not become Her. So if we must fight in Her place, we could use our own weapons. We need not accept the adversary’s challenge with a sword. Or even with a knife.

  I took a step back as the vision blossomed in my mind like another qherrique statuette. I looked at Tiran, at Therkon, at the sword in his hand, and the Sight melded past and present and I knew what to do.

  I stretched my right hand out, empty, not needing any other focus than the will. And I told Two: Fire.

  At the gesture Therkon-Tiran blinked. Took in my weaponless hand, and smiled.

  It stepped forward. I stepped backward. It raised Langlieve’s sword.

  I pointed and Two passed fire through my fingers so I never felt a flush of heat. The blaze streamed out between us without touching Therkon either, and its white spear struck just below Hvestang’s hilt.