"Be calm," he said. "You are wakeful, though not entirely well. You dream I think. Morning is nearly upon us." His free hand went to a ceramic pitcher that was rounded and sized for easy handling by Jurin and Alv alike. He poured the contents into a glass.
She used both hands to drink from the large glass. "It is the dream, always the same. It haunts--"
"It does not matter. Karthold is behind us, as I promised you."
She shifted her legs, leaned toward him. "All is set in motion then?"
"It is, Dierá."
She felt the color return to her face. "And he--"
G'rkyr knelt at her side. "I have forsaken everything for you, yet he is all you can think of. Is it enough? Will it ever be enough? Will I ever be enough?"
Like dew turned to frost, her expression hardened. "How dare you!" she screamed. "I forswore all that is sacred. I have lain with you, and it disgusts me to think of your pleasure soaking me. A thousand, thousand deaths for me if any others should ever know. I am a queen of my people. A queen of queens…"
He tried to speak. She cut him off with the ice in her eyes. He touched her gently, enveloping the whole of her back with his hand. She recoiled from his touch. It revolted her. Surely, any others watching would only see the monstrousness of this thing between them.
He raised a finger to her cheek, gave it a delicate stroking. She quietly seethed, closing her eyes against the gentleness that only she knew.
Loathing was there as ever, but that loathing was directed inward. His gentle touch overwhelmed her sensibility. It revolted her and yet attracted her. He was a monster of fire and stone, incapable of feeling by his own admission, and yet he felt and loved, just as she felt and loved.
White-hot tears in her eyes were followed by her fists in his chest. "The impossibility of it all. Jurin and Alv. That I love you! That I hate you! That I am saved. That I am damned. The absurdity…The absurdity of it all…"
She embraced him, her outstretched arms barely reaching across his abdomen. Her love for him was real but she knew not to succumb to the illusion. Focus, find resolve, she told herself, but she could not. Her heart raced. Her thoughts ran wild. She had pursued glimmers and ghosts, grasped air and dream, sold herself and her soul for whispers.
None of that would matter if the rumors were true. Finally, she would be in the right place at the right time. Then there would be no more searching, no more scheming, no more despair of all hope being lost. The search would be at an end. Hope would be restored to her people, but what of herself would remain?
She dared not think or say his name lest dream and hope collapse upon the crush of reality. Yet she had dared hope before and had dared his name before, only to have it all taken away. "Set in motion. Are you sure?" she asked, her eyes pleading, her voice scarcely a whisper.
G'rkyr nodded. "Steel yourself, Dierá. Dry the tears. Find the resolve you always search for." He shrouded his body in living flame. Fire hid all trace of emotion. She sucked in air that seemed suddenly stifling, collected herself by wiping tears from her eyes, straightening her dress, and smoothing back her hair. "Bring him," he commanded.
It took three pair of the yellow-skinned, bug-eyed luvens to open the great glass doors. Behind them, Nostik, Keeper of the House, ushered in Zanük and a squad of Fedwëorgs clad in field regalia. Towed and chained in their midst was one of the ageless. Size alone told Dierá this Drakón was special. The great curved horns ringed from base to tip were an unexpected extra. They told her this one was of the line.
"He is Takhbarre Battikh, Prince of Praxix," Zanük told her in Jurin.
Dierá dismissed Zanük and the others, turned herself so her full figure showed in profile. Behind her, the rising yellow suns told of morning's arrival. "Takhbarre, we can begin our discussion in shadow or light," she said. There was no hint of apprehension in her voice but she knew her scent betrayed her. The language she chose was Cikathian. It was the language of slaves.
Focus, find resolve, she told herself. Hiding emotions from her scent was proving difficult, but she was confident she would be able to master this now that she knew scent was why Drakón always saw her true intentions.
Pulling G'rkyr's strength over her, she thrust herself and the Drakón into shadow. The domain she created was a hollow large enough to grant herself free movement yet small enough to deny the Drakón his wings. Beyond the hollow was darkness that made the silver glow from her gray eyes seem like lamp fire.
"You will show me how to touch The Abundance. You will tell me of him, the Undying One, and more," she said. Her voice though calm carried an implied threat. For his part, the Prince of Praxix curled his spiked tail around his folded wings. The position seemed to speak of his submission to her strength, but she knew one could never be certain with a Drakón. They were a breed apart, and every bit of their being was designed to rule over all things. It was this need to dominate that she would need to weed out. It was what the long struggle would be all about.
Predictably, the Prince of Praxix made his move in the moments that followed, testing the bounds of the hollow and her resolve to hold its balance. She fought back, a hard scrabble to keep the fabric of the hollow intact. Raw magic raged from her outstretched fingers, her eyes, and her gaping mouth, crackling and sparkling with the blue-white intensity of the hottest flame.
She felt her strength ebb and flow. Her reserves spent and certain unconsciousness was coming, she reached out beyond shadow to G'rkyr. His eum centers were wellsprings, and he opened himself to her. The raw energy flowed in great waves from him to her. Only this connection to G'rkyr kept her strength.
The tocks of the toll flowed. Tolls flowed into night. Night became day.
After a while, it seemed the swells and falls were all Dierá had ever known. Great upsurges followed by brief ebbs. Agony followed by numbness. The endless and the fleeting.
When Takhbarre finally submitted, Dierá was left gasping, shocked, and awed. Free thought returned first, followed by feelings beyond pain and numbness. She fought to keep her feet but failed.
The world suddenly was dulled. There was a great absence, a void. She needed to fill this void. Her link to G'rkyr was severed. She was alone.
Desperately, she reached out beyond shadow, found only emptiness. Panic followed. Her mind raced. She had never before drawn so much.
Her resolve faltered. "G'rkyr, G'rkyr?" she called out across the link.
She felt the shadow world fall away, clung to it. Her concern turned into anger, her anger into rage.
Takhbarre raised his front quarters, brought his long neck around his folded his wings. "What you ask I cannot do. You cannot understand this thing you seek. It would consume you. No matter how many times we dance in shadow the answer will be the same."
It was a lie. The lie gnawed at her. Rage gave her renewed resolve and strength. If G'rkyr was dead, she had nothing to lose. "We dance in shadow as many times as it takes. If it means your end, if it means my end, that's what it means."
Focus, find resolve, she told herself. Just knowing the struggle of the long cycles could be at an end should be enough. "Tell me," she commanded in the language of the ageless. As she spoke, she folded light into shadow and returned to the waking world. There she found G'rkyr and hope.
"Whispers, whispers," the great Drakón replied. This brought G'rkyr's full fury as he himself took up the binding chains. He shouted, "Tell her what you told me or I'll end you."
The Drakón fought to throw off his chains, but G'rkyr contained him. "I am ageless," the Drakón hissed, "You are not Scarabaeid. You are Werrsweord." As he said this, the Drakón shifted to shadow. His surprise at finding Dierá waiting for him was palpable. It was her domain he came to, and not the one he had sought to reach.
3
Dierá glared at the enormous Drakón. She dared not think or say the name on her lips, lest dream and hope collapse upon the crush of reality. Yet she had dared hope before and had dared his true name before, only to have it al
l taken away. "The Undying One?" she demanded, collapsing the shadow space inward, forcing a withdrawal from shadow.
"Cyvair," hissed the Drakón, eyeing Dierá furtively.
If he lives, my people live--and as she thought this, she again became the queen of queens that she was breed to be. "Among the ageless there are whispers?"
"Whispers within whispers."
"And they love him?"
"Adulation of the mob is not love." As Dierá pulled G'rkyr into shadow with her, the Drakón's demeanor changed. He curled his tail and lowered his wings. "It is said he has died a thousand deaths and yet lives."
"How?" she demanded. It was one word, and a simple one at that, but it carried the weight of the long struggle.
"Unknown," the other hissed in reply. "It is not the rebirthing. Only the Drakón can be reborn. Perhaps, rusecraft. If so, as dark and vile as ever there was. Makhatar calls him the Soulless One."
Dierá stood as tall and as regally as any queen ever had or ever would. "If soulless, I will ensoul him. I will do this for my people."
"Your people are no more," the Drakón sneered.
"He is my people," Dierá replied, and then she turned to G'rkyr, saying, "End him now."
"When I am reborn I will find you, Athania Dierá Steorra. Time and distance will not hide you from me."
"From shadow there can be no rebirth," Dierá said. In shadow, she gave G'rkyr the signal to continue. The gargant obeyed, pulling taught the chains around the Drakón's neck.
The Drakón flailed and fought. His will to live was no surprise to Dierá. When her point was made, she stayed G'rkyr's wrath with a raised hand.
The Drakón gasped, "I am Prince of Praxix, a ruler of the Hundred Worlds. I am better alive than dead, a better friend than foe. Kill me and you will never have the thing you seek. Let me live and there is chance."
"You would betray us."
"Likely, and given opportunity, a certainty. This I will not deny, but you need me more than you know. All the armies of the Hundred Worlds could not breach the defenses of Cyvair. It is our homeworld, and we defend it until the last of us falls still."
"Of this, I'm certain," Dierá said, her upturned eyes never leaving the Drakón's. "Tell us then how we breach defenses that cannot be breached."
"I cannot."
"Show me The Abundance!"
"I cannot."
Dierá clenched her hands into fists as her face flushed red with all the rage she was feeling. At times she felt she was Empyrjurin, and this was one of those times. "End him, G'rkyr, or so help me--"
The Praxixian Prince lowered his front quarters while raising his neck in a rare show of supplication. "This is something that I can show, but not tell. Drakón can do what is required. Others cannot."
"We'll see about that," Dierá countered, pulling herself and the others out of shadow.
Clearly taken aback by the ease with which she moved from and to shadow, the Drakón said, "You, Athania Dierá Steorra, are full of surprises. You master shadow in ways only Drakón can. Perhaps you are right about the Soulless One. Perhaps, you can ensoul him. I shall want to live to see this, if no more. Return my endowments and I will gladly dance with you in shadow."
"You live only if Dierá says you live," grunted G'rkyr. "Here she is god, and you are but mortal."
"You need me," cautioned the prince. His great eyes locked on Dierá's. "He is Jurin Werrsweord. You need more than the Scarabaeid and Slaedwa at his command for this thing you plan."
Feeling the presence, Dierá's thoughts spun and she called out without words. You are stronger than I dared hope.
The prince responded in kind. Is that how it works? You command and he searches the worlds for you?
It is as it is. Dierá returned.
The son is not the father. He can never be what you hope for. Why do you think you are remanded to the farthest edge of the Hundred Worlds? You are kept as far from the true power as possible. The Jurins will never trust you but we can--
Dierá thrust the Drakón out of her thoughts, said aloud, "It is as it is."
The prince hurled his will back into Dierá's mind, found only the walls she constructed for him. Feeling more secure, Dierá sat on the edge of the sunlounger with her back straight and her eyes uplifted to the Drakón's. "Tell me why you should be allowed to live?"
"I am here to offer the thing you seek."
"You are here, because you are the thing I sought."
The prince's sudden laughter shook the floor. "None command the ageless, least of all an Alv and a Jurin."
G'rkyr leapt upon the Drakón. His great hands with their long, thick fingers wrapped about the Drakón's throat. "You are commanded to submit and cease speaking."
If only it were so easy, the Drakón whispered in thought to Dierá.
"Enough," Dierá said, sending G'rkyr back with a wave of her hand.
G'rkyr glowered a double stride away, his eyes never leaving the prince's form even when Nostik entered to announce the squads of Fedwëorgs who were just returning from the battlefields through the waygates. Dierá took in the bloodied commanders, the laden chests, the faithful who bent their knee heedless of their wounds. A great victory was the thing their bearing spoke of. Though they remained silent, Zanük's presence in the hall shadows confirmed a conquest.
G'rkyr was their commander, but it was Dierá they looked to. She stood, walked among them. Though the Fedwëorgs continued to kneel, they reached out to her as she went by. She touched those whose need was greatest, pulling the gravest of their wounds from them and into her.
The pain of this exchange, this taking of death and giving of life, brought her to her knees many times. At these times, the wounds she took in were her own and she wore them openly, but she maintained her walk among the squads until she reached the farthest ranks. Here it was G'rkyr's will and G'rkyr's will alone that allowed her to keep her feet and walk with steady determination back to the sunlounger. Through it all, she took of G'rkyr's strength as much as she dared. By the time she sat and resumed her scrutiny of the Prince of Praxix, she was again herself. G'rkyr, on the other hand, could hardly keep his feet, but he hid his weariness well.
"Indeed, full of surprises," the prince said. "Your mastery of light is as strong as your mastery of shadow. Both things you wanted me to know."
Dierá's gaze focused on the prince alone even as G'rkyr dismissed the squads and Nostik showed the warriors the way out. "These are the deepest of my gifts, and I lay them bare so that you may know me as I will come to know you."
She waited until certain there was clear understanding between herself and the prince, then she told G'rkyr, "Remove him. Send in Nostik." To Nostik, she said, "Fetch the young ones."
Exhausted as she was, she felt like celebrating this victory. The young ones she referred to were her musicians. Her discovery of the luven's aptitude for music pleased her immensely. Theirs was a natural talent. She put it to use playing the romantic operas her father so loved.
The luvens' glass and wind instruments helped her recreate the most haunting theme imaginable--that of Veden's 50th Summer, which drew together the romantic ideas of love and death and played on the contact between the natural world and the worlds beyond. The power of storm was in that music as was the strength of earth.
Her favorite instrument was the glass organ with its pedals and spinning bowls. The luvens secreted a sweet fluid from their hands; they used this to keep their fingers wet while they played the spinning bowls. When stroked just right, the sounds that sprang forth evoked images of wind blowing across fields, down rivers, and through forests. It was transcendent, sublime.
Dierá had not heard music played so beautifully since her mother lived. Her mother played the concert harp in ways that moved listeners to tears; luvens achieved as much with their simple winds and odd glass. She fell asleep even before the luvens finished the first movement.
Chapter 3
1
Yarr heard a faint shiftin
g and slipped his eyes open a touch, reluctant to leave the drau world where Dierá called to him. He saw the white bone first, sharpened and made into a blade. The hand that held it next. The new ones are a danger to themselves, he thought to himself. "To slit my throat, you'll need to move quieter, Arger," he said in the Rweng language, making no move to defend himself.
The other replied in the same blunt tongue. "Scaet, if I wanted you dead you'd be. I want you afeared is all."
Yarr sat up. "I'm sure wat not as it may."
"Mock, scaet, while you've wind to dwy it."
In one swift, fluid movement, Yarr reached out, gripped the other's wrist, and turned the blade back to its owner's neck. "I told you. I did what the masters wished. Nothing more. Twinnit?"
The fire in Arger's eyes increased. "Uog was as brother to me. Slit my throat if you must for I will slit yours when I've a chance."
Yarr dropped the sharpened bone to the floor, leaned back with an arm behind his head. "Let me go to my dreams. I will kill you soon enough. Then you can join Uog."
"Death, is it so easy to your hand?"
"It is."
"More's the pity. Auy. I will see Rwe again. I will walk its paths. Erland is my homeland. Wat where I will die."
Yarr responded by closing his eyes. He heard the tall Erlander pick up the bone knife and tuck it into the back of his pants. Then the other retreated to the opposite corner of the cell. Go, he told the other in his thoughts. I have no need of you.
He had pledged to stop trying to befriend those the ageless put in the cells with him. It was easier to kill them when the time came if he did not know them, and the time for death always came. He had no control over it. He had no control over anything or anyone.
Only thoughts of Dierá kept him. She was the whisper, the thought, the dream that staved off madness. Often he wondered if she was real and not a thing conjured of a need. He conjured his mother and father of a need. They spoke to him from the blessed land. At times he even walked with them in Élvemere--the place that was also whisper, thought, dream.
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