And round her head swung, then let sail through the air
where they captured the wing of the swift-fleeing beast,
And up! to the heavens the huntress up-bore,
swinging haplessly forward and back in the wind
Of the biting-cold northlands, o’er frozen terrain,
o'er the mountains and vales of Tomeria white
To unchartered snow deserts where none ever trod—
and yet further and further they flew through the north,
Until frozen Alyxia’s hands to the cable became,
and the stars to the morning relinquished their care,
And sleep and delirium coarsed through her veins,
taking turns o’er her consciousness with their decay,
Bringing forth visions of phantoms and dragons
she yet had to hunt, and the face of her life’s love
While he lay dying against the cold stones,
and he whispered those words to his wife, “Only you.”
So then at last in the shade of the mountain,
Kar-Taron, which holds the high heavens to th’ world,
Frozen and bleak, where the fountain of ice
flows in silence from Caimbrand’s old home in the north,
At last at the heart of the north fell Ruthaea,
nor further could fly, nor couldst fight for her life,
And nor couldst Alyxia raise her iced hands,
both so frozen that ice and not blood through them flowed:
But dragon and huntress alike in the snows
lay like petals brought down by an icy spring storm.
Then didst Ruthaea arouse, bound with ice,
with the sword of Alyxia drove through her heart,
Her flames now too cold to come forth and to burn,
and each limb as though severed would not fight for release;
And likewise the maiden enmeshed by the ice—
but now warmth from within comes and wakens her flesh
From some magic unknown to its bride, ushers forth,
from the kind little snowflakes comes forth with a rush—
And she rises and draws forth her sword from its sheath—
yet each motion is slow as the thawing of worlds.
Ruthaea her nemesis spies in her chains,
and enkindled by fear she breaks forth her cold flames.
He claws are unfastened, her feet melting free,
as the huntress approaches and warms in the breeze.
And upward she spreads her scaled wings to arise,
but the sword of Alyxia slashes her wing,
And so topples the princess of dragons again,
with such violence falling that shatters the ice
Where they stand, and the side of Kar-Taron engulfs
both the huntress and hunted as one in its shades.
There, hid in the dark, was the cavern of life:
the dark heart of the world ‘neath the mountain of ice;
And there in the shadows and errant sun rays
as the crystals of snow decorated the air
Lay Alyxia groaning and near to her side
the once-haughty destroyer, Ruthaea, brought low.
And now the great dragon collapsed on the stones
with a cry that rang through the most nether abodes,
And the sword, ‘neath the hand of Kar-Taron was jerked
through the chains of the flesh of Ruthaea’s proud heart.
The sword, shattering, sliced through the cords that held beast
to the spirit pernicious of fire and of death,
And collapsed the fell body, as cold as the grave,
as the spirit fled hapless t’ eternal disgrace.
Thus so banished and never again to the heavens to climb
nor to earth, nor to ocean to rise.
Thus so praise be forever the heavenly Lord
who brings judgment on powers and beings of all—
And so in the light lay Alyxia, lone,
and the glories of heaven before her were shown,
And Caleth with smile as gentle as sunbeams
that warm the cold soul after blizzards have gone,
Surrounded by wonderful souls made as pure
as that light, to Alyxia gave his final embrace.
And then the great banquet of light was begun,
and throughout the wide cavern before her were spread
All the finest of heavenly foods and liquers,
far above those poor shadows of earthly repasts—
There were goblets of pure-refined gold with such wonderful dews
as would heal any wound or disease;
There were fruits that each essence and flesh would repair
and to each would inspire its own special perfections.
Thus so was Alyxia warmed and refreshed;
then outpoured the liquers on her swords and her arms
And gave thanks for her life and her victory late,
giving Caleth’s hot sword to the cavern’s decore
And then, as the lights of Kar-Taron departed,
she hewed from Ruthaea the teeth and the claws
And began her long journey back home,
to her daughter and family far to the south,
And to what adventures and glorious end
only history now can enlighten to all.
Stuart Channethoth strode along the trackless black rock of Caranis, gazing off into the snow-capped mountains rising to the northwest. Xaeland’s mute giant Caelhuin walked along below him at the bottom of the low ridge where Alik’s trail had begun, heading northward. Xaeland walked beside the giant with his hand on his friend’s shoulder, now and then turning to listen to the conversations going on behind him.
“They’re asking whether you’ve had any sign of the trail,” Xaeland told Stuart. The tone in which he said it made it clear he didn’t think he had.
“The earth is restless, troubled,” Stuart answered ambiguously.
“Caranis’ Fire Plains,” Xaeland grunted.
“This is where you come in,” Stuart said. “The rocks have swallowed his footsteps. You, however, understand something of his thoughts and those of the shards.” The ground rumbled as he spoke and a tremor—almost imperceptible—ran under their feet. “I need all your insight: that is all the trail we have right now. And if we come out of Caranis anywhere near a viable trail, it will be by fortune’s grace.”
“There may be more trail than that,” Xaeland answered. Stuart looked at him. The pale man stooped to the ground and waved his hand over the rocks.
“What have you?” Stuart asked, descending. He heard a voice somewhere behind, “Look, they’ve found something.”
“The Stone of the wizards is a powerful amulet,” Xaeland said in a hushed voice. “It is a doorway into all the powers of the natural world—maybe even into the spiritual. It is deeply connected to the world, and the world is deeply connected to it. My guess is that the shard of the earth has passed over this stretch of earth.”
“If this were not Caranis, and the ground naturally restless, I would tend to agree with you at once,” Stuart answered hesitantly.
“If this were not the path of the shard’s power, this would not be Caranis,” Xaeland speculated. “There are stories about the genesis of Aerisia, how the rocks rose up around the fallen shard. These rocks here: lava, quickly cooled, welled up from the ground.” He closed his hand over one specimen. “Warm, but no longer hot.”
Stuart knelt, analyzing the ground. The rocks were indeed warm, but there could have been any number of reasons for that. He glanced across the restless waste again. In any event, it would be a dangerous crossing. In the distance, between the icy peaks to the east and those to the west, a single peak stood overlooking Caranis from the north like a lighthouse, burning with an almost imperceptible red spark. “The mountain of fire is awakened,” he said.
Xaeland looked up. For a long moment he sai
d nothing.
Caelhuin turned his sightless eyes toward the mountain and stood, fixed, his hand shielding his eyes as though to see something far, far away.
“What is it the blind man sees?” asked Stuart.
But before Xaeland could answer, Caelhuin had taken off at a jog straight toward the fiery beacon, heedless of the dangers of the Fire Plain.
“We must follow,” Xaeland stated grimly.
Stuart stood, troubled, but nodded. Xaeland went after Caelhuin while Stuart turned to the rest of the group. The others gathered around apprehensively, watching Xaeland and Caelhuin descending into the plain. “Friends,” Stuart began, “we have found the trail.” He was not entirely convinced that this was so, but it was all he could say. “It leads directly across the perilous plain from here. East of here on the other side of the plain there lies a pass in yonder snowy mountains that divide us from the White Plains, the domain of Morin. High up within that pass lies the tower of the Guardian Prince, the last haven of the free world. If anyone becomes lost, head for that place. The sign of the Guardian Prince, the sign of the Page Knights, is engraved on a boulder at the foot of the pass.”
“Perhaps our boy has gone that way,” suggested Haleth.
“I wish we could assume that, but it is not known to him and not exactly on his path,” Stuart replied. “Concerning the Fire Plain: while we are within the maw of Caranis, no one of you must drink from any water or even approach too near the edge of any spring. The water is said to be deadly and the earth around it extremely thin. We are near the heart of the earth. Some of you may have heard rumors that a dragon inhabits the plains. Whether this be true or not, I cannot say, but know this: terrible powers are all around at all times when we go down there, so stay close to the path where the earth has been tested, and do not stray.” He looked around. “Above all, let your hearts be brave.”
Heao thought to himself, “Dragon? Brave? Easier said than done, having just fallen out of the sky, with all the world on its knees to the evil empire of the northland, drakes screaming everywhere, and unimaginable monsters at every turn.” The thought of home crept into his mind: home, with its blue waves, breezy trees, peaceful faces. A sudden fear surfaced that the past could never be brought back: that the world would be too scarred by this war to ever return to the innocence it had before. “No,” he told himself, “it can be again: it must be.”
They traveled that day until it was no longer possible to see. Then they circled up and waited while Xaeland scouted the land around them. Finally, he re-emerged from the darkness and gave Stuart a terse nod: safe.
Heao did not sleep well, nonetheless, and he thought neither did the others, for whenever he turned over (he didn’t know how so many rocks found their way under his side), someone else was also awake besides the watchman.
Toward morning, he awoke to find Xaeland on the watch and Haleth attending to Jenna’s wounds. A dragon kept stalking them in his dreams: a fiery, red dragon with one great, steely eye, licking flames. He looked around. A tremor rolled across the rocky campsite. It had not seemed to bother Xaeland, he noticed, and was reassured a bit.
In the distance nearby there came an unearthly call like the ghost of a dragon. The pale watchman turned toward it, his eyes peering into the darkness, searching. He thought he heard a rumbling, cold voice, “Blood!” and an impatient whisper, “Not now!”
He pulled his cloak over his eyes.
Thinking about it, he reproached himself. Still, it took him several minutes to work himself up to going over to Xaeland. At last, creeping, he did.
“Master Xaeland?” he asked.
The pale warrior, made more eerie by the light of the partial moon, only grunted and continued to stare out across the plain. “Master Xaeland?” he asked again, with the same result. He waited for a response, but getting none, he finally asked, “What was it?”
“Not a danger yet,” Xaeland said in a very low voice. “They hunt in pairs.”
“I only heard one,” Heao said.
“That’s why: not a danger yet.”
Heao paused. “Have you ever seen a dragon?” he asked.
“It’s not a dragon,” the man replied.
“But have you seen one?”
Xaeland was silent for a moment, then nodded.
A sort of terrible thrill went through Heao’s heart. “What was it like?”
“It wasn’t,” Xaeland replied enigmatically.
“Do they really breathe fire?” Heao asked.
“That one,” Xaeland nodded.
Heao soaked that in and was temporarily inundated by a waterfall of thoughts. Xaeland asked nothing but continued to stare out into the darkness.
“How do you fight them?” Heao suddenly piped up.
Xaeland eyed him carefully. “Purity,” he replied.
Heao was taken aback. What was that supposed to mean, and how did it help? Not to mention, how did one know one was pure?
“Go back to sleep,” Xaeland said. “And…if you dream of dragons, try to take note of the surroundings. Something by which to locate them.”
Heao looked up quickly. Xaeland was still eyeing him like an examiner. The picture of the dragon from his dreams flashed back before his eyes again. He nodded to Xaeland and slunk back to his bed.
The morning was cold, with frost lining everyone with its hoary blanket and chilling them to the core. Xaeland was cooking breakfast over a small fire, but he looked up to watch Heao as the boy wandered down beyond the edge of the camp to poke around amongst the greenish and dull grey rocks. The glow of the mountain in the distance was shrouded in a haze of charcoal-colored clouds. He went back to his cooking.
“How’d ye sleep, dear?” Piachras’ voice came from the camp.
“In bits and pieces,” came Sianna’s answer. “The ground kept shaking so, and vile reptiles stalking in the night.”
“Aye,” said Piachras. “I saw one of those during my watch, wandering hither and thither in the waste. Like a reptilian humanoid with stunted wings, as much as like anything else. The strangest thing.”
“Mal-angal,” identified Xaeland. “That’s what the desert folk call them.”
“What are they?” Piachras asked.
Xaeland eyed him eerily. “They say their souls wander from their bodies so that they cannot be killed unawares, and that they return to the body to attack some victim and feed. They say they are the spawn of the mind of a mortally wounded dragon.”
The others—all had gathered by then—stared at him.
“Breakfast?” he offered.
Sianna could not help but ask, “What is it?”
Xaeland half-smiled, “Tastes like field hen.”
So with a very brief respite for breakfast, the company set out once again. The trail, if it was indeed a trail, started out heading straight towards the mountain of fire, then gradually curved to the north as the day progressed. It wove along down an embankment of loose gravel, sometimes greenish, sometimes reddish, sometimes grayish, here and there broken and covered over by a nauseating steam. They met nothing living all day long except, around noon, a sapphire-blue dragonfly hovering over a musty pool on a squarish stone pillar. The dragonfly flitted away as they approached. Xaeland leaned over to whisper to Stuart as they passed, “Say what you may about the path, that was the Marker of Caleth, the great ancestor of the boy, from the Tomerian and Ristorian etchings on either side: and is it by chance he passed this way?”
Stuart did not know and he did not respond, but the thought stayed with him all the day long and until late after they had set up camp beneath the blowing ash of the mountain of fire; until long into the night when the snatches of visions of bards singing the Dragon Hunter’s Song rolled him into deep but troubled sleep.
Xaeland found Heao early in the morning, before any had awoken, and shook him awake. Heao sat up fearfully. “You dreamed of the dragon?” Xaeland asked him. It was more of a statement than a question. Heao stared at him, now wide awake. “Did you r
emember what I told you?”
Heao nodded. “But everything was misty: there was nothing visible around it.”
Xaeland didn’t seem to be satisfied. “Beyond the mist: you have to look beyond the mist,” he said.
But Heao only shook his head. “There was only the mist. That was all I could see. I’m sorry.”
Xaeland gave up. For a moment he sat there, and he almost seemed ready to touch the boy, to brush his hair back in reassurance and pat him on the back. But instead he sighed, pushed off, and went back to the brewing campfire.
After a short breakfast, they were off again.
The field sloped downward as they walked and the vapors rose up on either side of them, thickening as they continued as though they were climbing down into a giant’s frying pan. With the dying wind came a smell of rotten eggs and abandoned saltboxes. Caelhuin plunged on, oblivious, toward the doomful mountain rising above out of the thick smoke. And the group followed.
The basin into which they traveled, like the mountain, was shrouded in a low-lying carpet of steam and vapors. The ground was warm, the rocks streaked with yellow and orange and white. Sianna became dizzy, claiming that she felt the ground rising and falling, though no one else could feel it. “Why would he come this way?” she asked.
“Perhaps he did not know,” said Stuart. “Perhaps he felt driven: holding the shard of the earth power in his hands, he flies to the heart of the earth. Perhaps he wished to destroy the shards, or to test whether that were possible. Or perhaps he was pursued and was trying to escape. Perhaps he sensed the presence of one of the other shards in this direction. Or perhaps it was simply fate.”
“Or perhaps all of those things, and none,” said Jevan. “Perhaps he did not know himself.”
The mist of the basin enveloped them as they descended. “Ugh! The smell is even worse!” exclaimed Heao. The group tightened so that all would remain in sight. A bluish pool appeared on their left barely twenty feet off amidst the crumbled rocks of the basin floor. Steam from the pool eddied around them in ghostly forms.
“The eyes of the earth!” gasped Sianna. She stopped, staring for a few moments, then produced a vial.
“Be careful,” said Stuart.
“The ground near the pools is treacherous,” Xaeland warned.
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