Dragons of a Fallen Sun

by Margaret Weis

  Goldmoon’s steps slowed. She halted about three beds away from that of the sick child, put out a hand to steady herself upon the wooden bedpost.

  The figure was not a healer. The figure was not a student. The figure was not alive. A ghost hovered over the child, the ghost of a young woman.

  “If you will excuse me, First Master,” said the healer, “I will go see what I can do for this sick child.”

  The healer walked over to the child. The healer laid her hands upon the baby, but at the same instant, the fleshless hands of the ghost intervened. The ghost grasped the healer’s hands.

  “Give me the blessed power,” the ghost whispered. “I must have it, or I will be cast into oblivion!”

  The baby’s coughing grew worse. The mother hung over him worriedly. The healer, shaking her head, removed her hands. Her healing touch had failed the baby. The ghost had stolen the energy for herself.

  “He should breathe in this steam,” the healer said, sounding tired and defeated. “The steam will help keep his lungs clear.”

  The ghost of the woman drifted away. More insubstantial figures took her place, crowding around the sick baby, their burning eyes staring avidly at the healer. When the healer moved to another bed, they followed her, clinging to her like trailing cobweb. When she put out her hands to try to heal another patient, the dead grasped hold of her, crying and moaning.

  “Mine! Mine! Give the power to me!”

  Goldmoon staggered. If she had not been holding onto the bedpost, she would have fallen. She closed her eyes tightly shut, hoping the fearful apparitions would disappear. She opened her eyes to see more ghosts. Legions of the dead crowded and jostled each other as each sought to steal for his own the blessed life-giving power that flowed from the healers. Restless, the dead were in constant motion. They passed by Goldmoon like a vast and turbulent river, all flowing in the same direction—north. Those who gathered around the healers were not permitted to linger long. Some unheard voice ordered them away, some unseen hand pulled them back into the water.

  The river of dead shifted course, swept around Goldmoon. The dead reached out to touch her, begged her to bless them in their hollow whisperings.

  “No! Leave me alone!” she cried, cringing away. “I cannot help you!”

  Some of the dead flowed past her, wailing in disappointment. Other ghosts pressed near her. Their breath was cold, their eyes burned. Their words were smoke, their touch like ashes falling on her skin.

  Startled faces surrounded her. Faces of the living.

  “Healer!” someone was calling. “Come quickly! The First Master!”

  The healer was in a flutter. Had she done something to offend the First Master? She had not meant to.

  Goldmoon recoiled from the healer in horror. The dead were all around her, pulling on her arm, tugging at her robes. Ghosts surged forward, rushing at her, trying to seize hold of her hands.

  “Give us …” they pleaded in their terrible whisperings. “Give us what we crave … what we must have …”

  “First Master!” Lady Camilla’s voice boomed through the sibiliant hissings of the dead. She sounded panicked. “Please let us help you! Tell us what is wrong!”

  “Can’t you see them?” Goldmoon cried. “The dead!” She pointed. “There, with the baby! There, with the healer. Here, in front of me! The dead are draining us, stealing our power. Can’t you see them?”

  Voices clamored around Goldmoon, voices of the living. She could not understand them, they made no sense. Her own voice failed her. She felt herself falling and could do nothing to halt her fall.

  She was lying in a bed in the hospital. The voices still clamored. Opening her eyes, she saw the faces of the dead surrounding her.

  28

  The Dragon’s Edict

  eneral Medan rarely visited his own headquarters in Qualinost. Constructed by humans, the fortress was ugly, purposefully ugly. Squat, square, made of gray sandstone, with barred windows and heavy, iron-bound doors, the fortress was intended to be ugly, intended as an insult to the elves, to impress upon them who was master. No elf would come near it of his own free will, though many had seen the inside of it, particularly the room located far below ground, the room to which they were taken when the order was given to “put them to the question.”

  Marshal Medan had developed an extreme dislike for this building, a dislike almost as great as that of the elves. He preferred to conduct most of his business from his home where his work area was a shady bower dappled with sunlight. He preferred listening to the song of the lark rather than to the sounds of screams of the tortured, preferred the scent of his roses to that of blood.

  The infamous room was not much in use these days. Elves thought to be rebels or in league with the rebels vanished like shadows when the sun hides beneath a cloud before the Neraka Knights could arrest them. Medan knew very well that the elves were being spirited away somehow, probably through underground tunnels. In the old days, when he had first taken on the governing of an occupied land, he would have turned Qualinost upside down and inside out, excavated, probed, brought in Thorn Knights to look for magic, tortured hundreds. He did none of these things. He was just as glad that his Knights arrested so few. He had come to loathe the torturing, the death, as he had come to love Qualinesti.

  Medan loved the land. He loved the beauty of the land, loved the peaceful serenity that meandered through Qualinesti as the stream wound its sparkling way through his garden. Alexius Medan did not love the elven people. Elves were beyond his ken, his understanding. He might as well have said that he loved the sun or the stars or the moon. He admired them, as he admired the beauty of an orchid, but he could not love them. He sometimes envied them their long life span and sometimes pitied them for it.

  Medan did not love Laurana as a woman, Gerard had come to realize. He loved her as the embodiment of all that was beautiful in his adopted homeland.

  Gerard was amazed, entranced, and astounded upon his first entrance into Marshal Medan’s dwelling. His amazement increased when the marshal told him, proudly, that he had supervised the design of the house and had laid out the garden entirely to his own liking.

  Elves would not have lived happily in the marshal’s house, which was too ordered and structured for their tastes. He disliked the elven practice of using living trees as walls and trailing vines for curtains, nor did he want green grasses for his roof. Elves enjoy the murmur and whispers of living walls around them in the night. Medan preferred his walls to allow him to sleep. His house was built of rough-hewn stone. He took care not to cut living trees, an act the elves considered a grievous crime.

  Ivy and morning glories clung to the surfaces of the rock walls. The house itself was practically hidden by a profusion of flowers. Gerard could not believe that such beauty could live in the soul of this man, an avowed follower of the precepts of darkness.

  Gerard had moved into the house yesterday afternoon. Acting on Medan’s orders, the healers of the Nereka Knights had pooled their dwindling energies to restore the Solamnic to almost complete health. His wounds had knit with astonishing rapidity. Gerard smiled to himself, imagining their ire if they knew they were expending their limited energies to heal the enemy.

  He occupied one wing, a wing that had been vacant until now, for the marshal had not permitted his aides to live in his dwelling, ever since the last man Medan had retained had been discovered urinating in the fish pond. Medan had transferred the man to the very farthest outpost on the elven border, an outpost built on the edge of the desolate wasteland known as the Plains of Dust. He hoped the man’s brain exploded from the heat.

  Gerard’s quarters were comfortable, if small. His duties thus far—after two days on the job—had been light. Marshal Medan was an early riser. He took his breakfast in the garden on sunny days, dined on the porch that overlooked the garden on days when it rained. Gerard was on hand to stand behind the marshal’s chair, pour the marshal’s tea, and commiserate with the marshal’s concerns
over those he considered his most implacable foes: aphids, spider mites, and bagworms. He handled Medan’s correspondence, introduced and screened visitors and carried orders from the marshal’s dwelling to the detested headquarters building. Here he was looked upon with envy and jealousy by the other knights, who had made crude remarks about the “upstart,” the “toady,” the “ass-licker.”

  Gerard was ill-at-ease and tense, at first. So much had happened so suddenly. Five days ago, he had been a guest in Laurana’s house. Now he was a prisoner of the Knights of Neraka, permitted to remain alive so long as Medan considered Gerard might be useful to him.

  Gerard resolved to stay with the marshal only as long as it took to find out the identity of the person who was spying on the queen mother. When this was accomplished, he would pass the information on to Laurana and attempt to escape. After he had made this decision, he relaxed and felt better.

  After Medan’s supper, Gerard was dispatched to headquarters again to receive the daily reports and the prisoner list—the record of those who had escaped and who were now wanted criminals. Gerard would also be given any dispatches that had arrived for the marshal from other parts of the continent. Usually, few came, Medan told him. The marshal had no interest in other parts of the continent and those parts had very little interest in him. This evening there was a dispatch, carried in the clawed hands of Beryl’s draconian messenger.

  Gerard had heard of the draconians—the spawn born years ago of the magically corrupted eggs of good dragons. He had never seen one, however. He decided, on viewing this one—a large Baaz—that he could have gone all his life without seeing one and never missed it.

  The draconian stood on two legs like a man, but his body was covered with scales. His hands were large, scaly, the fingers ending in sharp claws. His face was that of a lizard or a snake, with sharp fangs that he revealed in a gaping grin, and a long, lolling tongue. His short, stubby wings, sprouting from his back, were constantly in gentle motion, fanning the air around him.

  The draconian was waiting for Gerard inside the headquarters building. Gerard saw this creature the moment he entered, and for the life of him he could not help hesitating, pausing in the doorway, overcome by revulsion. The other Knights, lounging around the room, watched him with knowing smirks that broadened to smug grins when they saw his discomfiture.

  Angry with himself, Gerard entered the headquarters building with firm strides. He marched past the draconian, who had risen to his feet with a scrape of his claws on the floor.

  The officer in charge handed over the daily reports. Gerard took them and started to leave. The officer stopped him.

  “That’s for the marshal, too.” He jerked a thumb at the draconian, who lifted his head with a leer. “Groul, here, has a dispatch for the marshal.”

  Gerard steeled himself. With an air of nonchalance, which he hoped didn’t look as phony as it felt, he approached the foul creature.

  “I am the marshal’s aide. Give me the letter.”

  Groul snapped his teeth together with a disconcerting click and held up the scroll case but did not relinquish it to Gerard.

  “My orders are to deliver it to the marshal in person,” Groul stated.

  Gerard had expected the reptile to be barely sentient, to speak gibberish or, at the best, a corrupt form of Common. He had not expected to find the creature so articulate and, therefore, intelligent. Gerard was forced to readjust his thinking about how to deal with the creature.

  “I will give the dispatch to the marshal,” Gerard replied. “There have been several attempts on the marshal’s life. As a consequence, he does not permit strangers to enter his presence. You have my word of honor that I will deliver it directly into his hands.”

  “Honor! This is what I think of your honor.” Groul’s tongue slid out of his mouth, then slurped back, splashing Gerard with saliva. The draconian moved closer to Gerard, clawed feet scraping across the floor. “Listen, Knight,” he hissed, “I am sent by the exalted Beryllinthranox. She has ordered me to hand this dispatch to Marshal Medan and to wait for his reply. The matter is one of utmost urgency. I will do as I am ordered. Take me to the marshal.”

  Gerard could have done as the draconian demanded and saved himself what was probably going to be a world of trouble. He had two reasons for not doing so. First, he fully intended to read the dispatch from the dragon before handing it over to Medan, and that would be difficult to manage with the dispatch clutched firmly in the draconian’s claws. The second reason was more subtle. Gerard found this reason incomprehensible, but he felt oddly guided by it. He did not like the thought of the loathsome creature entering the marshal’s beautiful house, his clawed feet ripping holes in the ground, tearing up the flower beds, trampling the plants, smashing furniture with his tail, leering and poking, sneering and slavering.

  Groul held the scroll in his right hand. The creature wore his sword on his left hip. That meant the draco was right-handed, or so Gerard hoped, though there was always the possibility the creatures were ambidextrous. Resolving to himself that if he lived through this, he would take up a study of the draconian race, Gerard drew his sword with an overdone flourish and jumped at the draconian.

  Startled, Groul reacted instinctively, dropping the scroll case to the floor and reaching with his right hand for his sword. Gerard pivoted, stooped down to the floor and snatched up the scroll case. Rising, he drove his shoulder and elbow, with the full weight of his armor, into the midriff of the draconian. Groul went down with a clatter of sword and sheath, his wings flapping wildly, his hands waving as he lost the struggle to retain his balance. He crashed into a bench, smashing it.

  The sudden movement and attack on the draconian tore open several of Gerard’s wounds. Sucking in his breath against the pain, he glared a moment at the creature floundering on the floor, then turned and, resisting the impulse to see how badly he’d injured himself, started to leave.

  Hearing clawed feet scrabbling and a vicious cursing, Gerard wheeled, sword in hand, intending to finish the fight if the creature pursued it. To Gerard’s astonishment, three of the Knights of Neraka had drawn their swords and now blocked the draconian’s path.

  “The marshal’s aide is right,” said one, an older man, who had served in Qualinesti many years and had even taken an elven wife. “We’ve heard stories of you, Groul. Perhaps you carry a dispatch from Beryl as you say. Or perhaps the dragon has given orders that you are to ‘dispatch’ our marshal. I advise you to sit down on what you’ve left of our bench and wait. If the marshal wants to see you, he’ll come himself.”

  Groul hesitated, eyeing the Knights balefully. Two of the guards drew their swords and joined their officers. The draconian cursed, and, with a snarl, sheathed his sword. Muttering something about needing fresh air, he stalked over to the window and stood staring out of it.

  “Go along,” said the Knight to Gerard. “We’ll keep an eye on him.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  The Knight grunted and returned to his duties.

  Gerard left the headquarters with haste. The street on which the building stood was empty. The elves never came anywhere near it voluntarily. Most of the soldiers were either on duty or had just come off duty and were now asleep.

  Leaving the street on which the headquarters building was located, Gerard entered the city proper, or rather the city’s outskirts. He walked among the city’s inhabitants now, and he faced another danger. Medan had advised him to wear his breastplate and helm, make his trip to headquarters before darkness fell. He was conscious of beautiful faces, of almond eyes either staring at him with open, avowed hatred, or purposefully averting their gaze, so as not to disturb the loveliness of the midsummer’s twilight by adding his ugly human visage to it.

  Gerard was likewise conscious of his strangeness. His body seemed thick and clumsy in comparison to the slender, delicate elven frames; his straw-colored hair, a color not usually seen among elves, was probably regarded as freakish. His scarred a
nd lumpish features, considered ugly by human standards, must be looked upon as hideous by the elves.

  Gerard could understand why some humans had come to hate the elves. He felt himself inferior to them in every way—in appearance, in culture, in wisdom, in manner. The only way in which some humans could feel superior to elves was to conquer them, subjugate them, torture and kill them.

  Gerard turned onto the road leading to Medan’s house. Part of him sighed when he left the streets where the elves lived and worked behind, as if he had awakened from a lovely dream to dreary reality. Part of him was relieved. He did not keep looking constantly over his shoulder to see if someone was sneaking up on him with a knife.

  He had a walk of about a mile to reach the marshal’s secluded house. The path wound among shimmering aspens, poplars, and rustling willows, whose arms overstretched a bubbling brook. The day was fine, the temperature unusually cool for this time of year, bringing with it the hint of an early fall. Reaching the halfway point, Gerard looked carefully up the path and down the path. He listened intently for the sound of other footfalls. Hearing nothing, seeing nobody, he stepped off the trail and walked to the brook. He squatted down on his haunches as if to drink and examined the scroll case.

  It was sealed with wax, but that was easily managed. Removing his knife, he laid the blade upon a flat rock still hot from the afternoon sun. When the metal had heated, Gerard edged the knife blade carefully beneath the wax seal. He removed the seal intact, placed it on a bit of bark to keep it safe. Gerard eyed the scroll case, started to open it, hesitated.

  He was about to read a dispatch intended for his commander. True, Medan was the enemy, he was not really Gerard’s commander, but the dispatch was private, meant for Medan only. No honorable man would read another’s correspondence. Certainly no Solamnic Knight would stoop so low. The Measure did not countenance the use of spies upon the enemy, deeming them “dishonorable, treacherous.” He recalled one paragraph in particular.