“Do I what?” Xian snorted.
“Play games, Master Xian,” Dwynwyn continued. “Games are symbols of greater truths. They teach us things that we might not have previously supposed. They teach us of the mysteries.”
“The mysteries?” Xian hesitated in the doorway. “I’m listening.”
Dwynwyn spoke quickly. “There are many mysteries between us, Master Xian. I am your prisoner here and I do not understand why. That is a mystery to me, would you not agree?”
Xian chuckled. “I know why you are my prisoner. What I do not understand is why you came here in the first place.”
“Of course not,” Dwynwyn said more earnestly. “That is a mystery to you. We both of us have our mysteries, Master Xian. But, in my experience, the patterns and rhythms of a game often provide an opportunity for two beings to come to an understanding—a place where each may share their mysteries.”
“You want to play a game?” Xian chuckled.
“Yes, Master Xian.”
He stepped back in the room, the heavy door closing and quickly locking behind him.
“What do I win?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Is answering a question with a question part of this game?” Xian asked. “I mean, if I win this game, what do I get out of it?”
Dwynwyn blinked. “Well, you get the knowledge of the patterns and strategies that prove successful during the course of the game. Of course, it will also provide us with time to address the mysteries between us as we converse.”
Xian shook his head. “Not enough. I want higher stakes.”
Dwynwyn chewed at her lower lip. “What do you propose?”
“If I win,” Xian said, pointing his long, narrow fingers at the Seeker, “then you will teach me how to perform that trick from last night.”
Dwynwyn considered for a moment. When she spoke, it was with deliberation. “It is impossible to teach you because I do not understand it myself. But if you are willing to play this little game with me, perhaps we can get to a place where we will both understand each other better.”
“Not enough.” Xian shrugged and turned back to the door.
Dwynwyn glanced at Aislynn and saw the terror in her eyes. “If you win,” Dwynwyn said desperately, “I will answer one of your questions.”
Xian spun around to face her, his narrow eyes keen. “Any question I like?”
“Yes!”
He took a step toward her. He looked like a predator. “And you will answer it fully and completely to my satisfaction?”
Dwynwyn hesitated. Xian had apparently dealt with faeries before. It was dangerous, but she had questions of her own that had to be answered.
“Yes,” she said, “but if I win, you will grant me the same boon.”
“Done!” Xian chuckled. “What is to prevent me from cheating?”
“Nothing. I fully expect you to cheat, but I will be watching to correct you when you do.”
“And how do I know that you will not cheat?”
“Because faeries cannot deny the truth.”
“You truly do amuse me, Dwynwyn!” Xian laughed. “Very well, what is this game of yours?”
“Sylan-sil, Master Xian. Your servants will find it among the things in our cloudship.”
“Is it a game of war?”
“Yes,” Dwynwyn answered honestly, for she knew no other way. “I believe it could be.”
He smiled. “Then let’s have them bring your game to me!”
Galen managed somehow to open his eyes, only to shut them once more. The sight that filled them terrified him and burned into his memory.
The wind roared through their ironreed cage. Vasska’s huge wings scooped through the air in long, slow beats. They flew through the dark of the early morning, their cage clutched in the dragon’s talons. Now, as the cheerless dawn was breaking, they had left Hrunard far behind. They were deep in Enlund, of that he was sure. S’shnickt had told him it was the land of the enemy. Now they had taken his sword from him and they were in the land of war and death.
“By the Claw,” Rhea shouted. “Look at that!”
Involuntarily, Galen looked. They were lower now and the sight caught by his tearing eyes made him hold his breath in wonder.
Through the woven cage he saw it: a great undulating plain. The long streams of torusk caravans split into veins as they ran between the hills, eventually emptying their cargo of the Elect onto the edge of a great hollow many miles across among the hills. There, thousands of the Chosen stood, prodded from their cages out onto the field, their weapons in hand. They formed roughly into ranks, their backs to the Pir monks, who herded them with their dragonstaffs. The Elect of Vasska were an army carpeting the edge of the great open space before them.
He had seen this place before, had been in this place. He remembered the dead lying across these same hills as though cut down by a scythe. It was the place from his dream. He remembered walking these same hills with Maddoc and Tragget and finding Rhea on the hilltop.
He glanced at Rhea next to him. Her face was pressed close to the woven strands of their cage, searching the land that passed below them.
He remembered her dead.
“Over there!” Rhea shouted over the wind, her arm pointing into the distance.
From their great height, they could see other armies now, each being arrayed at the other sides of the wide hollow, each at the foot of a tall hill. Enormous creatures moved atop each of the hills.
“Who are they?” Galen shouted.
Maddoc lolled back in the cage, uninterested, yet answered the question anyway. “Satinka and Panas, I believe. Dragonkings of the Forsaken Mountains and Enlund, although I should think that Dragonqueen would be a better title for Satinka. She’s the cause of all this, you know.”
“What?” Galen asked, but the cage bounced suddenly as Vasska soared over a rise, wheeling over the battlefield. Galen shuddered and closed his eyes once more. To him, the dragons far below looked like deadly, terrible toys.
The toy monsters were giving Mimic trouble.
“Honestly, Mimic.” Gynik sighed. “I wish you would put those things away for a while and pay attention to me!”
Gynik lay on the cushioned bench. Her breasts and stomach both sagged over the side seductively. It had never failed to arrest any other goblin cold in his tracks, but for some reason Mimic was so absorbed in his little devices that he wasn’t affected by her charms, which troubled Gynik immensely.
They were in the main room of Mimic’s apartments, but she barely recognized the place. Mimic had pulled up part of the floor grating last night and since then had been pulling out cogs, gears, wheels, rods, springs, screws, plates, and anything else he could find and sticking them together. Now the floor was covered with an amazing array of little mechanisms. The smallest of them looked like little goblins made of metal. These were quite charming, Gynik thought, and seemed to work remarkably well. It was the larger ones that seemed to be giving Mimic so much trouble, and were taking his attention away from more important things—namely, Gynik.
“Can’t stop,” Mimic muttered, connecting a second spring to one of the long brass sheets on the wing. “No time! I’ve an audience this afternoon with the Dong to show him this army.”
“This afternoon!” Gynik cried as she sat upright on the bench. “But I haven’t got a thing to wear!”
“Actually, my dear,” Mimic sputtered as he tightened down a screw, “I think the king would prefer you that way.”
“Well, I wouldn’t give the old fool the satisfaction,” Gynik sniffed. “Why did you have to make this appointment so soon?”
“I saw it all in my dream,” Mimic replied with a grunt as he gave the screw a final twist. “I saw this entire mechanical army below me as though I were standing on a high tree or maybe a mountain. Not just these little men but these winged monsters as well. I saw the king, too, and he was standing in the middle of the armies, towering over them. He was laughing and clappi
ng as they moved about him. Then I saw him handing me a great treasure—although I couldn’t see it very clearly. Anyway, I don’t know why, but I’ve just got to show these devices to him and it has got to be this afternoon.”
“Oh, Mimi,” Gynik pouted. It was not a great nickname but it was the best she had come up with. Gynik regularly changed her allegiances to suit the situation, but things had been moving along a little fast even for her these last few days. “I don’t think the Dong expected you to build him Titans immediately!” She picked up one of the little miniature metal goblins that had wandered clicking and whirring over to her and looked at it. “Besides, I rather think he wanted Titans that were a bit bigger than this.”
Mimic smiled as he continued to work, sweat pouring down his brow. “Goblins are little creatures, Gynik. I think that the Titans overlooked us and that’s why they fell. You would be surprised at how big a little thing can be!”
43
True Blades
Vasska wheeled over the Enlund Plain. The warriors on the field below scattered in his wake, fear of the creature clutching at their souls with icy claws. The dragon shifted in the air. The leathery wings pressed hard against his path of flight, slowing the enormous monster as he neared the ground. He gripped a small cage with the talons of his powerful rear legs, holding it forward. Plumes of dirt roiled into the air under the beating of his wings and warriors of the Election tumbled out of the way. In moments, however, he was airborne once again, his burden left behind on the plain.
Tragget watched everything numbly as he lay next to Edana in the Talker’s pouch behind the dragon’s head. Vasska needed his Dragon-Talker to communicate with humans when he traveled beyond the confines of his lair. The pouch provided a means by which the Dragon-Talker could ride with the dragon wherever he went. When Vasska permitted it, the Aboth would strap on the leather assembly just behind the crest plates at the rear of the dragon’s head, far out on the neck. This had the advantage of allowing the Talker to communicate with the dragon while they were in the air. The disadvantage was that dragons were constantly craning their heads in flight, thus making the ride in the pouch a wild and dangerous one. Worse, the dragons all hated the pouch. It struck them as demeaning and they occasionally made their displeasure known to the occupant by shaking their heads violently.
The leather pouch was designed to make rider and dragon as comfortable as possible under the circumstances. The back of the pouch was, indeed, a pouch—a hard leather sack whose interior was lined with padding for the warmth and protection of the Dragon-Talker. In the front, handles with long leather thongs were fitted just behind the high ridge that ran across the pouch’s front as a windbreak. Talkers could grip the handles and then wrap the straps around their wrists and forearms for some measure of safety. By pulling themselves up to rest on their elbows, they could look forward over the ridge past the dragon’s head, but few bothered. The view on the open sides was frightening enough.
“It is a historic day, my son!” Edana said loudly to Tragget, the excitement evident in her voice. She lay next to the Inquisitor, the air roaring over them both as the pouch bucked and swayed beneath them. “Today we begin the true battle for the Pir!”
Tragget did not move. He no longer cared.
“You’ll look back on this day, my son,” Edana continued, her enthusiasm unchecked. “We both will! We’ll look back on this day and mark it as the first day of a great new order in the world!”
Vasska circled the hilltop once and then wheeled sharply toward it. His wings beat back from the approaching ground, slowing him quickly, billowing the dust up out of the tall grasses beneath him, and obscuring his passengers’ vision for a moment. He settled down on the top of the hill, his neck craned high over the field of battle arrayed below him. This left the pouch nearly vertical. Edana spoke to the dragon with a few clacking sounds. Reluctantly, Vasska lowered his head to the ground.
Edana quickly unwound the leather straps from her wrists. Seeing that Tragget was making no move to do likewise, she reached over and untied him, speaking all the while. “There is a destiny in all this, Tragget; your destiny and mine. Many of the things that are demanded of us are hard and distasteful. We may not like doing them. They may not even seem right at the time. In the end, however, they are justified by the knowledge that we purchase contentment and progress for the Pir and for humanity itself. You’ll see. It may seem wrong now but, in the end, you’ll know I’m right.”
Tragget slid to the ground. He gazed out over the field below him. Five thousand warriors of the Pir stood below him, prepared for battle. “Is that why we fight this war, Mother; to purchase contentment and progress for the Pir and humanity? Is that why the dragons have fought for four hundred years?”
Edana stood next to her son, chuckling. “No, of course not!”
“Then why are the dragons at war?” Tragget asked.
“To settle their bets,” Edana said easily.
“What?”
“I guess it really is the clearest way to put it,” Edana returned. “You see, dragons just don’t think the way we do, their minds work differently. What is important to them may seem trivial to us. You’re the Grand Inquisitor. You’ve dealt exclusively with the problems of maintaining order within the Pir itself. It’s time you learned something of the true nature of the larger world. Defend, conquer, glory, and spirit, eh? Those are human ideas, my son; the dragons only care about themselves. They have an honor, to be sure, but it is their own. We are little more than a way of keeping score for them and a ready source of meat. That is why the dragons fight these wars: to settle their petty arguments. Now—thanks in no small part to you—we know another reason: it is also the dragons’ way of keeping any of us with a talent for this magic power safely and conveniently dead.”
Edana sat down on the hillside, gazing down over the great field below. “On the other hand, we have been forced to allow this senseless river of blood each year to purchase peace for all the rest of the Pir. What are a few madmen sacrificed to the whims of our flawed and unfathomable gods, if their deaths purchase everyone else’s peace for a season? That, at least, is what we have told ourselves each night so that we might sleep. Now, it seems that we have been killing the very means of hope, bleeding it from our bodies year after year until we are weak and frail before our dragon tyrants. But all of that is about to change: the wheel of destiny turns and on it we are ascending.”
Tragget gazed down at the army below. He could make out Galen’s open and empty cage. The man and his companions were now out among the sea of yelling warriors and Tragget could not find them. “So what of them, Mother? What of the Elect? They have the magic that threatens the dragons, too. Why do they die today?”
“Because that is their destiny.” Edana sighed. “If this power of magic threatens the dragons, then it must be powerful indeed. The Pir is more than just some nonsense about worshiping a Dragonking. Such power should only be in the hands of those who are capable of understanding it, harnessing it, and directing it toward the greater good.”
“Better our greater good than theirs?” Tragget said coldly.
“We don’t need rivals,” Edana replied. “Power is strongest when it is wielded by only one side in a conflict.”
“The rest of the Pentach doesn’t know about the magic, do they?” Tragget said with fearful astonishment.
Edana smiled. “I’ve told them you haven’t found anything yet and, I suspect, you never will.”
At distant other points around the field, Tragget could make out the other dragons perched atop their own hilltops.
“Look there, my son!” Edana said, gesturing out over the battle plain. “The prophecy will be fulfilled. The fool who taught you will die, the magic will be yours alone, and you will claim our destiny! I have done it all for you, my son!”
“I’ve done it all for you, my Dong!” Mimic said nervously. “I beg . . . er, hope . . . I mean, I desire that . . .”
Dong Mahaj-Megong
leaned forward on his throne so far that his feet almost touched the floor. Sihir was affecting a studied lack of interest, but the Dong was wide-eyed in wonder at the display on the floor. “Relax, Mimic! Don’t be so formal . . . we’ve been friends for, what?”
“Since three days ago, Your Dong-ness,” Mimic said.
“Exactly!” The Dong never let reason get in the way when making a political point. “In all those years you should have learned that I only expect ceremony out of toadies, lackeys, and regular subjects—not from wealthy and important people like us. What have you brought for me today?”
“Well, er, I have brought something that may interest you a great deal,” Mimic said. He had practiced this speech since early this morning, but was still too nervous to deliver it properly. “It has long been a question in the minds of the technicians as to what destroyed the Titans in the Last War. I have brought before you today a representation of that war which may answer that question decisively.”
He stepped back to the side, gesturing with his hand grandly over the floor of the throne room. On the floor, arrayed in a circle, were a collection of the most magnificent small mechanisms anyone had ever seen. They were little metallic goblins, each only a foot high, organized in three groups. Their metal was polished and oiled, reflecting brightly the light in the room.
Behind each of these groups sat three larger metallic creatures the likes of which neither the Dong nor anyone else in all the goblin realms had ever seen. Each looked like some sort of bird, with long wings made of metal sheets. The creatures’ necks were far too long for their bodies, and each sported a long barbed tail. Moreover, they had arms as well as feet, all of which were fitted with long, sharp claws. The heads were sharp and covered with spikes. Each of the three looked slightly different but all of them had a terrible aspect.
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