“I desire to be left in peace with my child and my goddess.” She leaned down to pick the baby up, let it seek her breast.
His inspiration crystallized: “Damn it, I’ll throw my own priests out, I’ll make your goddess the only one and you her high priestess!”
Her eyes brightened, and faded. “A promise easily spoken, and difficult to keep.”
“What do you want, then?” He got to his feet, exasperated.
“You have a boon left with the dragon, I know. Make it leave the mountain. Send it away.”
He ran his hands through his glittering hair. “No. I need it. I came here seeking help for myself, not your people.”
“They’re your people now—they are you. Help them and you help yourself! Is that so impossible for you to see?” Her own anger blazed white, incandescent with frustration.
“If you want to be rid of the dragon so much, why haven’t you sent it away yourself, witch?”
“I would have.” She touched the baby’s tiny hand, its soft black hair. “Long ago. But until the little one no longer suckles my strength away, I lack the power to call the Earth to my purpose.”
“Then you can’t help me, either.” His voice was flat and hopeless.
“I still have the salve that eased your back; but it won’t help you now, it won’t melt away your dragon’s skin…I couldn’t help your real needs, even if I had all my power.”
“What do you mean?” He thrust his face at her. “Are you saying you couldn’t ever undo this scaly hide of mine, that protects me from my people’s hatred—and makes me a monster in their eyes? You think that’s really why I’ve come to you? What makes you think I’d ever want to give up my power, my protection?” He clawed at his arms.
“It’s not a man’s skin that makes him a monster, or a god.” Fallatha said quietly. “It’s what lies beneath the skin, behind the eyes—his actions, not his face. You’ve lost your soul, as I lost mine; and only you know where to find it…But perhaps it would do you good to shed that skin that keeps you safe from hatred; and from love and joy and mercy, all the other feelings that might pass between human beings, between your people and their king.”
“Yes! Yes, I want to be free of it, by the Holy Sun!” His face collapsed under the weight of his despair. “I thought my power would give me everything. But behind this armor I’m still nothing; less than that crippled wretch you took pity on!” He realized at last that he had come here this time to rid himself of the same things he had come to rid himself of—and to find—before. “I have a last boon due me from the dragon. It made me as I am; it can unmake me.” He ran his hands down his chest, feeling the slippery, unyielding scales hidden beneath the rich cloth of his shirt.
“You mean to seek it out again, then?”
He nodded, and his hands made fists.
She carried the baby with her to the shelf above the crooked window, took down a small earthenware pot. She opened it and held it close to the child’s face still buried at her breast; the baby sagged into sleep in the crook of her arm. She turned back to his uncomprehending face. “The little one will sleep now until I wake her. We can take the inner way, as we did before.”
“You’re coming? Why?”
“You didn’t ask me that before. Why ask it now?”
He wasn’t sure whether it was a question or an answer. Feeling as though not only his body but his mind was an empty shell, he only shrugged and kept silent.
They made the nightmare climb into blackness again, worming their way upward through the mountain’s entrails; but this time she did not leave him where the mountain spewed them out, close under the weeping lid of the sky. He rested the night with the mother of his only child, the two of them lying together but apart. At dawn they pushed on, Lassan-din leading now, following the river’s rushing torrent upward into the past.
They came to the dragon’s cave at last, gazed on it for a long while in silence, having no strength left for speech.
“Storm King!” Lassan-din gathered the rags of his voice and his concentration for a shout. “Hear me! I have come for my last request!”
There was an alien stirring inside his mind; the charge in the air and the dim flickering light deep within the cave seemed to intensify.
(So you have returned to plague me.) The voice inside his head cursed him, with the weariness of the ages. He felt the stretch and play of storm-sinews rousing; remembered suddenly, dizzily, the feel of his ride on the whirlwind. (Show yourself to me.)
They followed the winding tunnel as he had done before to an audience in the black hall radiant with the dust of rainbows. The dragon crouched on its scaly bed, its glowering ruby eye fixed on them. Lassan-din stopped, trying to keep a semblance of self-possession. Fallatha drew her robes close together at her throat and murmured something unintelligible.
(I see that this time you have the wisdom to bring your true source of power with you…though she has no power in her now. Why have you come to me again? Haven’t I given you all that you asked for?)
“All that and more,” he said heavily. “You’ve doubled the weight of the griefs I brought with me before.”
(I?) The dragon bent its head; its horns raked them with claw-fingered shadows in the sudden, swelling brightness. (I did nothing to you. Whatever consequences you’ve suffered are no concern of mine.)
Lassan-din bit back a stinging retort; said, calmly, “But you remember that you owe me one final boon. You know that I’ve come to collect it.”
(Anything within my power.) The huge cat-face bowed ill-humoredly; Lassan-din felt his skin prickle with the static energy of the moment.
“Then take away these scales you fixed on me, that make me invulnerable to everything human!” He pulled off his drab, dark cloak and the rich royal clothing of red and blue beneath it, so that his body shone like an echo of the dragon’s own.
The dragon’s faceted eyes regarded him without feeling. (I cannot.)
Lassan-din froze as the words out of his blackest nightmares turned him to stone. “What—what do you mean, you cannot? You did this to me—you can undo it!”
(I cannot. I can give you invulnerability, but I cannot take it away from you. I cannot make your scales dissolve and fall away with a breath any more than I can keep the rain from dissolving mine, or causing me exquisite pain. It is in the nature of power that those who wield it must suffer from it, even as their victims suffer. That is power’s price—I tried to warn you. But you didn’t listen…none of them have ever listened.) Lassan-din felt the sting of venom, and the ache of an ageless empathy.
He struggled to grasp the truth, knowing that the dragon could not lie. He swayed, as belief struck him at last like a blow. “Am I…am I to go through the rest of my life like this, then? Like a monster?” He rubbed his hands together, a useless, mindless washing motion.
(I only know that it is not in my power to give you freedom from yourself.) The dragon wagged its head, its face swelling with light, dazzling him. (Go away, then,) the thought struck him fiercely, (and suffer elsewhere!)
Lassan-din turned away, stumbling, like a beaten dog. But Fallatha caught at his glittering, naked shoulder, shook him roughly. “Your boon! It still owes you one—ask it!”
“Ask for what?” he mumbled, barely aware of her. “There’s nothing I want.”
“There is! Something for your people, for your child—even for you. Ask for it! Ask!”
He stared at her, saw her pale, pinched face straining with suppressed urgency and desire. He saw in her eyes the endless sunless days, the ruined crops, the sodden fields—the mud and hunger and misery the Storm King had brought to the lands below for three times her lifetime. And the realization came to him that even now, when he had lost control of his own life, he still had the power to end this land’s misery. Understanding came to him at last that he had been given an opportunity to use his power positively, unselfishly, for the good of the people he ruled…for his own good. That it meant a freer choice, and perha
ps a truer humanity, than anything he had ever done. That his father had lost something many years ago which he had never known was missing from his own life, until now. He turned back into the view of the dragon’s hypnotically swaying head. “My last boon, then, is something else; something I know to be within your power, storm-bringer. I want you to leave this mountain, leave these lands, and never return. I want you to travel seven days on your way before you seek a new settling place, if you ever do. Travel as fast as you can, and as far, without taking retribution from the lands below. That is the final thing I ask of you.”
The dragon spat in blinding fury. He shut his eyes, felt the ground shudder and roll beneath him. (You dare to command me to leave my chosen lands? You dare?)
“I claim my right!” He shouted it, his voice breaking. “Leave these lands alone—take your grief elsewhere and be done with them, and me!”
(As you wish, then—) The Storm King swelled above them until it filled the cave-space, its eyes a garish hellshine fading into the night-blackness of storm. Lightning sheeted the closing walls, thunder rumbled through the rock, a screaming whirlwind battered them down against the cavern floor. Rain poured over them until there was no breathing space, and the Storm King roared its agony inside their skulls as it suffered for its own revenge. Lassan-din felt his senses leaving him, with the knowledge that the storm would be the last thing he ever knew, the end of the world…
But he woke again, to silence. He stirred sluggishly on the wet stone floor, filling his lungs again and again with clear air, filling his empty mind with the awareness that all was quiet now, that no storm raged for his destruction. He heard a moan, not his own, and coughing echoed hollowly in the silence. He raised his head, reached out in the darkness, groping, until he found her arm. “Fallatha—?”
“Alive…praise the Earth.”
He felt her move, sitting up, dragging herself toward him. The Earth, the cave in which they lay, had endured the storm’s rage with sublime indifference. They helped each other up, stumbled along the wall to the entrance tunnel, made their way out through the blackness onto the mountainside.
They stood together, clinging to each other for support and reassurance, blinking painfully in the glaring light of early evening. It took him long moments to realize that there was more light than he remembered, not less.
“Look!” Fallatha raised her arm, pointing. Water dripped in a silver line from the sleeve of her robe. “The sky! The sky—” She laughed, a sound that was almost a sob.
He looked up into the aching glare, saw patches that he took at first for blackness, until his eyes knew them finally for blue. It was still raining lightly, but the clouds were parting, the tyranny of gray was broken at last. For a moment he felt her joy as his own, a fleeting, wild triumph—until looking down, he saw his hands again, and his shimmering body still scaled, monstrous, untransformed…“Oh, gods—!” His fists clenched at the sound of his own curse, a useless plea to useless deities.
Fallatha turned to him, her arm still around his shoulder, her face sharing his despair. “Lassan-din. I always knew that you were a good man, even though you have done evil things…You have reclaimed your soul today—remember that, and remember that my people will love you for your sacrifice. The world exists beyond yourself, and you will see that how you make your way through it matters.” She touched his scaled cheek hesitantly, a promise.
“But all they’ll ever see is how I look! And no matter what I do from now on, when they see the mark of damnation on me, they’ll only remember why they hated me.” He caught her arms in a bruising grip. “Fallatha, help me, please—I’ll give you anything you ask!”
She shook her head, biting her lips, “I can’t, Lassan-din. No more than the dragon could. You must help yourself, change yourself—I can’t do that for you.”
“How? How can I rid myself of this skin, if all the magic of Earth and Sky can’t do it?” He sank to his knees, feeling the rain strike the opalescent scales and trickle down—feeling it dimly, barely, as though the rain fell on someone else. Remorse and regret filled him now, as rage had filled him on this spot once before. Tears welled in his eyes and spilled over, in answer to the calling-spell of grief; ran down his face, mingling with the rain. He put up his hands, sobbing uncontrollably, unselfconsciously, as though he were the last man alive in the world, and alone forever.
And as he wept he felt a change begin in the flesh that met there, face against hands. A tingling and burning, the feel of skin sleep-deadened coming alive again. He lowered his hands wonderingly, saw the scales that covered them dissolving, the skin beneath them his own olive-brown, supple and smooth. He shouted in amazement, and wept harder, pain and joy intermingled, like the tears and rain that melted the cursed scales from his body and washed them away.
He went on weeping until he had cleansed himself in body and spirit, freed himself from the prison of his own making. And then, exhausted and uncertain, he climbed to his feet again, meeting the calm, gray gaze of the Earth’s gratitude in Fallatha’s eyes. He smiled and she smiled; the unexpectedness of the expression, and the sight of it, resonated in him.
Sunlight was spreading across the patchwork land far below, dressing the mountain slope in royal greens, although the rain still fell around them. He looked up almost unthinkingly, searching—found what he had not realized he sought. Fallatha followed his glance and found it with him. Her smile widened at the arching band of colors, the rainbow; not a curse any longer, or a mark of pain, but once again a promise of better days to come.
THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE DRAGON
Patricia A. McKillip
A great cry rose throughout the land: Queen Celandine had lost her harper. She summoned north, south, east, west; we rode for days through mud and rain to meet, the five of us, at Trillium; from there we rode to Carnelaine. The world had come to her great court, for though we lived too far from her to hear her fabled harper play, we heard the rumor that at each full moon she gave him gloves of cloth of gold and filled his mouth with jewels. As we stood in the hall among her shining company, listening to her pleas for help, Justin, who is the riddler among us, whispered, “What is invisible but everywhere, swift as wind but has no feet, and has as many tongues that speak but never has a face?”
“Easy,” I breathed. “Rumor.”
“Rumor, that shy beast, says she valued his hands far more than his harping, and she filled his mouth with more than jewels.”
I was hardly surprised. Celandine is as beautiful close as she is at a distance; she has been so for years, with the aid of a streak of sorcery she inherited through a bit of murkiness, an imprecise history on the distaff side, and she is not one to waste her gifts. She had married honorably, loved faithfully, raised her heirs well. When her husband died a decade ago, she mourned him with the good-hearted efficiency she had brought to marriage and throne. Her hair showed which way the wind was blowing, and the way that silver, ash and gold worked among the court was magical. But when we grew close enough to kneel before her, I saw that the harper was no idle indulgence, but had sung his way into her blood.
“You five,” she said softly, “I trust more than all my court. I rely on you.” Her eyes, green as her name, were grim; I saw the tiny lines of fear and temper beside her mouth. “There are some in this hall who—because I have not been entirely wise or tactful—would sooner see the harper dead than rescue him.”
“Do you know where he is?”
She lowered her voice; I could scarcely hear her, though the jealous knights behind me must have stilled their hearts to catch her answer. “I looked in water, in crystal, in mirror: every image is the same. Black Tremptor has him.”
“Oh, fine.”
She bent to kiss me: we are cousins, though sometimes I have been more a wayward daughter, and more often, she a wayward mother. “Find him, Anne,” she said. We five rose as one and left the court.
“What did she say?” Danica asked as we mounted. “Did she say Black Tremptor?”
“Sh!”
“That’s a mountain,” Fleur said.
“It’s a bloody dragon,” Danica said sharply, and I bellowed in a whisper, “Can you refrain from announcing our destination to the entire world?”
Danica wheeled her mount crossly; peacocks, with more haste than grace, swept their fine trains out of her way. Justin looked intrigued by the problem. Christabel, who was nursing a cold, said stoically, “Could be worse.” What could be worse than being reduced to a cinder by an irritated dragon, she didn’t mention. Fleur, who loved good harping, was moved.
“Then we must hurry. Poor man.” She pulled herself up, cantered after Danica. Riding more sedately through the crowded yard, we found them outside the gate, gazing east and west across the gray, billowing sky as if it had streamed out of a dragon’s nostrils.
“Which way?” Fleur asked. Justin, who knew such things, pointed. Christabel blew her nose. We rode.
Of course we circled back through the city and lost the knights who had been following us. We watched them through a tavern window as they galloped purposefully down the wrong crossroad. Danica, whose moods swung between sun and shadow like an autumn day, was being enchanted by Fleur’s description of the object of our quest.
“He is a magnificent harper, and we should spare no pains to rescue him, for there is no one like him in all the world, and Queen Celandine might reward us with gold and honor, but he will reward us forever in a song.”
Christabel waved the fumes of hot spiced wine at her nose. “Does anyone know this harper’s name?”
“Kestral,” I said. “Kestral Hunt. He came to court a year ago, at old Thurlow’s death.”
“And where,” Christabel asked sensibly, “is Black Tremptor?”
We all looked at Justin, who for once looked uncomfortable. “North,” she said. She is a slender, dark-haired, quiet-voiced woman with eyes like the storm outside. She could lay out facts like an open road, or mortar them into a brick wall. Which she was building for us now, I wasn’t sure.
A Dragon-Lover's Treasury of the Fantastic Page 13
