“Will you tell me you do not know?” the Shaper asked.
“My Lord.” Cerelinde spread her hands. “I do not.”
“Senseless.” Reaching down, Lord Satoris wrenched a handful of sorrow-bells from the earth. Throttling them in his grip, he regarded the thin, trailing roots twitching below. The fragile petals drooped against his dark flesh, still emitting a faint peal. “How so?” he asked the shuddering blossoms. “I Shaped you and gave you existence. Why do you sound for their deaths? Senseless? How so, when they seek to use the Water of Life to extinguish the marrow-fire? How so, when they seek to destroy me?”
Hope leapt in Cerelinde’s breast, warring with unease. “Haomane’s Prophecy,” she breathed.
“Haomane’s Prophecy” He echoed the words with derision, tossing the wilting plants at her feet. “My Elder Brother’s Prophecy is the framework of his will, nothing more, and you are the tools with which he builds it. Do not be so quick to hope, Lady. I have a will of my own, and tools at my disposal.”
Root tendrils writhed over the toes of her slippers and the dying bells’ ringing faded to a whimper, while those left in the bed keened anew in mourning. The Sunderer was in a strange mood, untrustworthy and fey. The copper-sweet tang of his blood mingled with the lingering odor of sulfur. If he were willing to turn upon Darkhaven itself, what hope was there for her? Cerelinde repressed a shudder, mortally tired of living on the knife-edge of fear.
“Why not end it?” she asked, feeling weary and defeated. “If it’s the Prophecy you fear, why not simply take my life? Your Vorax would be glad enough to do it.”
“No,” he said simply. “I will not.”
“Why? Is it because there is another?” Her pulse beat faster, remembering what he had told her before, the words she had been certain were lies. It would be easier to accept death if they were not. “Is it true? That Elterrion’s line continues elsewhere?”
“No, Lady.” The Shaper gave a bitter laugh. “Oh yes, that part was true. There are others. There will be others. Other heroes, other heroines. Other prophecies to fulfill, other adversaries to despise. There will be stories told and forgotten, and reinvented anew until one day, perhaps, the oldest are remembered, and the beginning may end, and the ending begin. Ah, Uru-Alat!” He sighed. “Until the sorrow-bells fall silent forever, there will be others.”
“I do not understand,” she said, confused.
“What if I asked you to stay?” His mood shifted, and the red light of malice glinted in his eyes. “You might temper this madness that comes too soon upon me, this anger. There would be no need for war were you to choose it willingly. You have seen, Daughter of Erilonde; there is beauty in this place. There would be more, did you choose to dwell here.” He extended a hand to her. “What would you say if I asked it?”
What if they were not lies?
Moonlight cast the shadow of his mighty hand stark on the dead and dying grass. Cerelinde thought of the years of uneasy truce her acquiescence might bring, and measured it against the hope, the eternal hope, of the Rivenlost. Of Urulat, of all the world; but most of all, of her people. It was the ancient dream, the hope bred into their ageless flesh ever since the world was Sundered, of the Souma restored, the land made whole. It was nearer now than ever it had been, and she was willing to die to make it so. She could not allow herself to believe otherwise.
“I would say no,” she said softly.
“So.” He let his reaching hand fall back to his side. “It is no less than I expected, Lady. No less, and no more.”
“Why did you refuse?” The words sprang impulsively from her lips, and Cerelinde wished them unsaid the moment she uttered them. But having been uttered, they could not be taken back. She forged onward. “This … rift, the Shapers’War. Haomane First-Born asked you three times to withdraw your Gift from Arahila’s Children. Why did you refuse?”
“Why?” Thunder rumbled in the distance and clouds began to gather above the Vale of Gorgantum, obscuring the stars. Lifting his head, the Shaper watched as scudding wisps occluded the sundered disk of the silvery moon. In the dim light that remained his throat was an obsidian column, his breast a shield of night and the slow tide of seeping blood that glimmered on his thigh and trickled down one leg was oily and black. Something in his stance, in his presence, reminded her that he was one of the Seven Shapers; reminded her of the unbearable torment glimpsed when he had donned the Helm of Shadows. “Ask my Elder Brother, Lady. It is him you worship.”
“He is not here to ask,” Cerelinde said humbly, clasping her hands together.
“No.” Slowly, Lord Satoris lowered his head to regard her, and his eyes glowed as red as blood, or dying embers. “He is not, is he?”
The clamitus atroxis shivered in resonant grief as the Shaper turned away, head held low, the dark bulwark of his shoulders rising like the swell of a wave. Cerelinde struggled against a sense of loss. A loss, but of what? Of a moment lost, an opportunity passing. Something slipped away, slipped between her slender fingers and through the gaps in her keen Ellylon mind as He who had Sundered the world trudged across the garden, leaving droplets of dark blood on the dying grass in his wake.
“My Lord!” she cried aloud in despair. “Why?”
A gentle rain began to fall as Satoris walked away from her, his words floating back to reach her. “Whatever stories they tell of me, Cerelinde, they will not say I slew you out of hand. That, at least, I may ensure.”
Left standing alone in the garden, she flinched as the first drops struck her, but it was an ordinary rain. Water, no more and no less, leaving damp spots on her silk robes. It fell like a soft balm on the moon-garden, washing away the stench of sulfur, the dark traces of the Shaper’s blood. In a nearby bed, pale flowers opened like eyes to welcome the clean rain, and the poignant odor of vulnus-blossom wafted in the air.
Their scent evokes memory. Painful memory.
Tanaros’ words.
It was an aroma like nothing else, delicate and haunting. Cerelinde stumbled, backing away from the source, not wishing to see what it had evoked before: Lindanen Dale on her wedding day, Aracus struggling under the deadly onslaught of the Were, her kinsmen and his falling, slaughtered, and Tanaros looming before her on his black horse, reaching for her, blood staining the length of his black blade.
“No,” she whispered.
It didn’t come. Instead, she saw again the dark silhouette of the Shaper; Satoris Banewreaker, Satoris the Sunderer, with the shadow of his extended hand on the dying grass between them.
“I do not understand!” Turning her face to the night sky, Cerelinde let the rain wash away the gathering tears. “Lord-of-Thought,” she pleaded, “I pray you lend me wisdom.”
“Lady.” A bulky figure trudged across the garden toward her, its path marked by the yellow glow of a bobbing lantern. “The Mørkhar said his Lordship had left you. Come on, I’ve not got all night.” Holding the lantern aloft, Vorax sniffed. “Vulnus-blossom,” he said in disgust. “You’re better off avoiding the foul stuff. After a thousand years, I can tell you, some things are best forgotten.”
“Lord Vorax.” Cerelinde laid one hand on his arm. “What do you see?”
He turned his broad face toward her, illuminated by the lantern’s glow. It was a Man’s face, an ordinary Staccian face, plain and unhandsome. For all that, it was not a mortal face; the eyes that regarded her had watched a thousand years pass, and gazed without blinking at all the long anguish contained within the Helm of Shadows.
“You,” he said bluntly. “I see you.”
USHAHIN TURNED HIS FORKED STICK, rotating the slow-lizard’s gutted carcass.
It was an unlikely breakfast, all the more so for being prepared by virtue of a dragon’s courtesy. The lizard was roasting nicely in the outer verges of the searing flame she provided, held under careful control. Its charred hide was beginning to crackle and split, tasty white flesh bulging in the seams. Ushahin brought it in for inspection and scorched his fingers wedging lo
ose a chunk of flaky meat. It had a sweet and mild flavor, with a smoky undertone. “Very pleasant,” he said, extending the stick. “And done, I think. Will you not share it, Mother?”
The twin-sourced jet of flame winked into nonexistence as Calanthrag the Elder closed the iron-scaled valves of her nostrils, blinking with slow amusement. “My thanksss, little ssson. As I sssaid, I have eaten.”
“Anyone I know?” He picked out another chunk of roasted lizard.
“Perhapssss.” The dragon shifted one submerged claw.
Ushahin paused in the act of raising the piece to his mouth. “Vorax’s Staccians.”
“Perhapssss.”
He chewed and swallowed the bite, conscious of the fact that he owed its delectation to her hospitality. “And yet you spared me.”
“Are you sssorry?”
“No.” He thought about it and shook his head. “Of a surety, I regret their deaths. Yet if you had not devoured them, I do not think I would be sitting here. And you would not have told me such mysteries as stagger the mind.”
The nictitating lids blinked. “Even ssso.”
The morning sun slanted through the mangrove and palodus trees, its warmth dispersing the vapors that rose from the swamp’s waters in the cool hours of night. Insects chirred and whined. Overhead, birds flitted, dining on the prodigious swarms. Here and there the raucous kaugh of a raven punctuated their calls. Filled with a deep sense of contentment, Ushahin Dreamspinner sat in his skiff and ate roasted slow-lizard, until his belly was as full as his thoughts.
When he was finished, he laid his roasting stick carefully in the skiff beside his pole and the makeshift spear with which he had slain the lizard. The restless ravens settled in the trees, watching and waiting. The dragon was watching too, endless patience in her inhuman eyes. Ushahin touched his chest, feeling the scar’s ridges through the fabric of his shirt, remembering the pain and the ecstasy of his branding. The scar throbbed beneath his touch, exerting a westward tug on his flesh. He thought of Lord Satoris, left with only one of his Three at his side, and the urge grew stronger.
Raising his head, he watched the ravens fluff and sidle, catching the tenor of their feathered thoughts. A winding wall encircling a vale, dark towers rearing under an overcast sky, yellow beech leaves and messy nests.
Home, home, home!
Calanthrag’s voice hissed softly. “Do you ssstruggle againsst your dessstiny, Sson of No One?”
“No.” He shook his head. “What you have told me, I will hold close to my heart, Mother, and ponder for many years. But it is Lord Satoris who gave meaning to my existence. I Am his servant. I cannot be otherwise.”
“He is the Sssower. Ssso it mussst be. Ssso it is.”
There was a tinge of sulfur and sorrow in the dragon’s exhalation. Turning away, Ushahin knelt in the skiff and worked at the knot in the rope he had tied around the palodus tree. His crooked fingers were unwontedly nimble. Oh, there was power in this place! It sang in his veins, heating his blood and rendering irrelevant the myriad aches that were his body’s legacy. There was a part of him that was reluctant to leave. He sighed, bowing his head and winding the rope, laying it coiled in the prow. Straightening, he grasped the pole and stood, meeting the dragon’s gaze. “Do you know how my story will end, Mother?”
“No.” Calanthrag did not blink. “Only the Great Ssstory, little ssson.”
Whether or not it was true, Ushahin could not say, for he had learned truth and lies were but two sides to the same fabric for dragonkind, inextricably interwoven. He thought of the things the dragon had shown him in the long night he had passed in the Delta; of the Chain of Being looped and looped and looped again, gathering him in its coils. A mighty consciousness, fragmenting, sighed and consigned itself to its fate. A world was born and died, and dying was born anew. Across the vastness of the stars, in the hidden bones of the earth. Nothing was born but that died; nothing died but was born. Fragmented. Striving, all in ignorance, at cross-purposes and folly. Waiting, all unknowing, for magic to pass from the world, for the deep fires to be extinguished, until there was only the hunger, the memory and wanting.
Such were the things the Eldest knew; the Eldest remembered.
Only then; only then would the cycle have come full circle, and true sentience reemerge, ready to be reborn.
Ushahin’s hands tightened on the pole. “Will it truly come to pass, Mother?”
The dragon’s jaws parted in a laugh, a true laugh, punctuated with jets of smoke. “Yesss,” Calanthrag the Elder said. “Oh, yesss. Sssome day. Without usss, it shall not passs. Yet may it come later than sssooner for ssuch as I and you.”
“So.” Ushahin nodded. “I will play such a role as I may.”
Plumes of smoke rolled and roiled, dark and oily, coiling around the branches of the palodus tree and obscuring its spatulate leaves. Ushahin coughed and the ravens of Darkhaven rose in a ruckus into the cleaner air above, chattering with annoyance.
When the smoke cleared, the dragon regarded him. “Go, little Ellyl-Man,” she said. “It is time. Go, and remember.” She moved one foreleg, then another; legs like columns, churning the mire. The vast hummock shuddered, moving. Murky water surged as Calanthrag’s plated breast emerged from the swamp, mossy and dripping. Along the dragon’s sides, vaned pinions stirred, revealing their sharp angles, hinting at their folded spans. The thick, snaking column of her neck arched, spines jutting erect as her head reared into the sky to brush the uppermost branches of the tall palodus tree. Gilt-green eyes glowed from on high and the massive jaws parted, revealing rows of jagged teeth, darkened with the Delta’s corrosion. A forked tongue, red as heart’s blood, flickered between them. “Remember the plasse of the Sssower’s birth,” Calanthrag hissed. Behind those terrible jaws, the opening of the dragon’s iron-grey gullet glowed like the glory-hole of a kiln. “Remember I am here!”
The skiff rocked under the dragon’s shadow. Ushahin Dreamspinner rode it out, legs braced, holding tight to his pole and craning his neck, caught between awe and terror. “I will not forget, Mother!” he shouted. “I will not!”
“Go!” the Eldest roared in a gout of fire.
Ushahin crouched, jamming the pole into the submerged roots of the palodus and shoving hard, launching his skiff into the waterways. A blue-white ball of flame passed low over his head, singeing his pale hair. Above, the ravens gathered in a flock launched themselves like an arrow in a southern trajectory, heading for the outskirts of the Delta.
“GO!”
He went, hard and fast, arms a blur planting and moving the pole. Dip and push; dip and push. The pain that wracked his ill-set bones was never more forgotten. Dip and push; dip and push. The skiff hummed over the waters, Darkhaven’s ravens fanned out before it in a flying wedge. They found a path; he followed. How far was far enough? Mangrove and palodus ignited in their wake, bursting into flame in this unlikely, water-sodden place. In moments they had left the heart of the Delta behind them. Ushahin poled the skiff without thinking, winding his way through the narrow waterways, his gaze fixed on the flying wedge before him; small figures, darkly iridescent in the sunlight, beating frantically, tilting the knife-edges of their wings to catch and ride the wind.
He followed.
Stand upon stand of mangrove passed uncounted, measuring the distance they traveled. Two, four, eight … how far was far enough? Whatever the distance, they traversed it. Gouts of fire gave way to tendrils of smoke, until its reaching fingers crumbled, fading into nothingness in the bright air.
The glade, with its tall palodus tree and its strange hummock, was behind them.
Stillness settled over the Delta.
Ushahin leaned upon his pole, panting. After a moment, he laughed softly.
Amid the quiet hum of insects, the ravens settled around him, closer than they had dared in the dragon’s presence. One spread its wings and dropped, landing neatly on the top of his pole, fine talons clutching the raw wood. He cocked his head, eyeing the half-breed;
an effect rendered comical by an irregular tuft of feathers.
“Greetings, Fetch.” Ushahin smiled. “I thought it was you I saw among the flock. Have you learned something of the uncertain nature of dragons? So have I, little brother; so have I.” He dragged his sleeve across his forehead, smearing the residue of unwonted sweat. “I thank you for guiding me to that place, and I thank you for guiding me out of it. I am glad to leave it alive.”
The raven squawked and wiped its beak on the pole, quick and nervous.
“Tanaros?” Ushahin’s brows rose. “He travels the Unknown Desert, or so his Lordship says. Would you seek him, Fetch? There is no water there.”
The raven bobbed its head, sidling from foot to foot.
“Very well.” He shrugged, too weary to argue the matter. “Go, if you will. I have companions enough to guide me home, and much to contemplate along the way.”
Fetch squawked once more and launched himself in a flurry of feathers, dark wings beating. Ushahin Dreamspinner watched him go, bemused. “Why?” he asked aloud. “Is it love? What a strange conceit, little brother!” There was no answer, only the stares of the other ravens, hunched and waiting, the sheen of their feathers purple in the swampfiltered sunlight. Ushahin sighed, planting his pole. “Home,” he said to them, giving a strong shove. “Home, it is. Onward, brethren!”
The remaining ravens took wing, arrowing for the fringes of the Delta. Somewhere ahead, where the mangrove thinned and the swamp turned to marshy plains, there was a mount awaiting; a steed of Darkhaven, with arched neck and preternatural intelligence in its eyes. Ushahin poled his skiff and followed, navigating the waterways.
Only once did he pause and gaze behind him,
The Great Story that encompassed the world was vaster than he had reckoned; than any had reckoned. Even Lord Satoris, who had listened to the counsel of dragons, could not hold the whole of it in his sight, enwrapped as he was in his Elder Brother’s enmity. It was older than time, and it would outlive the Shapers’ War, and perhaps Ushahin’s role in it had only begun.
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