by D. H. Dunn
Nima knew Merin’s words were not for Arix and Lam or for her, but for Kad’s smile in the darkness.
Though she was no closer to finding her own answers, she was inspired that Merin could continue on in the face of so much pressure and sadness, and still find the strength to smile and carry on.
The cold wind whipped down the slopes of Ish Kalum and onto Tanira’s exposed back. The only thing keeping her warm was her anger. Both she and the Thread had been exhausted when they landed, but as she lay on a makeshift cot Reylor had constructed out of their packs, she wanted answers.
“What happened back there?” she demanded.
Lying flat on her stomach while Reylor did what he could with her injury, Tanira’s frustration burst past any walls she might have thrown up against it. That she was angry at a Dragon ten times her size did not matter.
“We were about to finish that Manad Vhan and - agh!”
Fresh agony ran down her left side, like lightning that went to her toes and then back up to her head.
“I am sorry,” Reylor stammered. “My mother was a healer but I do not really - there is a lot of burned skin here. You said to remove the crystal but I-”
“Agh!” Tanira shouted as the man gave another tug on the shard the Yeti had jammed into her back. “Just leave it then! Try to bandage around it.” She did not like the idea of leaving such a foreign object lodged in her body, but there was a good chance she was not going to live much longer anyway.
“I would also like to know what happened,” Reylor said as she heard the man tear another strip from one of the tents to create more bandages
“One disaster at a time,” Tanira said. “I am still waiting to hear from our Dragon.”
“I am not your Dragon. You speak with great risk, End of the Line,” the Thread spoke from his perch, stretched out on a snow-covered rock slightly above them. His tail swished in the snow, while he examined one of his leathery wings with his claws.
“I have what you need,” Tanira said. “The location of the Machine. As long as I have that, I have no risk from you. Now, what happened back there? What is the forebear?”
There was a hiss from above her that sounded like steam escaping. She wished she could stare into the beast’s eyes, but with Reylor’s fumbling attempts to mend her back ongoing, she could only look at the snow beneath her.
“The Forebear,” the Thread said after a long delay. “It was the Caenolan girl-”
“I know it was the Caenolan girl!” she yelled back. “I just came from Sirapothi and saw many of them. They were nothing extraordinary, even more docile than Rakhum.”
All save Valaen, who Tanira remembered learned to be something more.
Until she had ended his life, acting before she could even think, before she could even decide. Another life on the Line.
“This one is not ordinary. She has been given access to a great power at birth. She is now larval, on a path to being a perversion. Becoming what we are, rather than what we should have been.”
Tanira’s mind tried to blot out the pain of Reylor’s ministrations, following the path of the Thread’s vague speech.
“She’s going to become a Dragon? A Dragon like you?”
The Thread’s roar was enough to knock snow from the perch on which he lay, dropping several clumps of it on Reylor and Tanira.
“A perversion! Barren, spawn-less and clutch-less. Like me, like the other thirteen. Sessgrenimath sent her to mock me!”
Clutch-less? She thought back to her brief glimpse of the massive machine she had witnessed in the Hero’s temple, the broken shells of a single egg at its center. The Line had taught her the Machine was of value to the Dragons, that she could bargain with it. They had never explained what it did.
Could it be the Dragons themselves were barren, unable to reproduce? Was the Machine their way around that design? Sessgrenimath’s design?
“Forgive me,” the Thread said. She winced as Reylor brushed some of the snow from her wound. “I lost control, as I did back at the Bridge. Yet I was not the only one, was I? What you witnessed there, it enraged you.”
Tanira thought back to those seconds on the bridge, just as the Thread was diving down. The Manad Vhan man and her father arguing. A flash of flame, and her father was gone.
Gone in that fire was a hundred chances, a thousand answers to questions she was only now finding the courage to ask within herself. One mystery rising above all others.
What was this all for?
This new Manad Vhan had acted just as her father had taught her they would, burning the mortals around him like so much chaff. Like Kater and Upala before him.
That they were evil was beyond questioning, and consistently proved.
Yet Nima’s presence was a stain on the white cloth of her belief. A good person, as decent and selfless a person as she had ever met.
One who would never turn on a friend, leaving them to bleed and die in the snow.
Nima was on one side, and she on the other. But where was the truth?
“There, you are as bandaged as I can manage,” Reylor said, tossing the remaining bandages down in the snow. “Now tell me what you saw back at Rogek Shad! I am part of this too, I have a right to know.”
Tanira sat up, wincing as she did so. There was a stab of pain behind her left shoulder whenever she moved it, but she could move it. She pulled a cloak around her, cinching it as tightly as she could. Walking a few steps away from Reylor, she sat on a stone near the edge of the landing they had camped on. The drop below was dizzying, even if there was far more mountain above them.
She ignored Reylor’s question, knowing the Thread would answer it if she waited long enough. Instead she pulled the Helm out of her pack, cradling its plain, metal surface between her hands. All that had happened, for this small piece of metal.
“We witnessed the fall of the Line,” the Thread said. “A man I suspect was the head of your order was slain by a Manad Vhan. They took the city back from the Line’s control.”
“That is impossible,” Reylor scoffed.
Tanira looked out over the vast landscape in front of her. Dozens of other mountains, none as high as Ish Kalum, but many impressive and snow-covered. The glaciers ran around them like vast snakes, intertwining and connecting them.
What had gone wrong, Father? What happened to the plan of the Line? You were right, we were right. How could you lose?
“There were too many people there, Reylor.” She heard her voice, yet it sounded more to her like the Line’s voice. As impassive and cold as the view in front of her. “They tried to reunify Rogek Shad and Nalam Wast, I do not know why. It was too soon, they did not have enough people. Perhaps the additional Manad Vhan pushed them into making changes to the plan.”
Maybe Father thought he knew better than the Line.
“The Line cannot fall,” Reylor sounded lost, his voice quaking. “My brothers, their deaths cannot mean nothing. The Line cannot be over.”
“Perhaps it is.” The Thread’s low rumble of a voice took on an encouraging quality. “It was only the small plans of Rakhum after all. Perhaps it would be best to give me the location of the Machine and be done with the affair. Lead the lives that you can, while you can.”
Tanira looked down at the helm, her face reflected back in the facets of the crystal in the center. She could toss the Helm right now, send Kater’s creation down into the depths of the mountain below where it would likely never be found.
If I am not the End of the Line, who am I? Where can I go, that the ghosts of the Line will not find me?
Rogek Shad and Nalam Wast would be filled with the families of the men and women she had killed in the Line’s name. Killed for this very Helm. How could they forgive her?
Could I return to Nima? Could Nima take me to another world, back to that time in Sirapothi where we had run and laughed with Valaen? When we had been . . . friends?
She gripped the Helm tighter in her hands. There was no forgiveness, but the d
eaths were still behind her. They had to mean something. She had to make them mean something.
Tanira stood, feeling the snow compress underneath her boots. She still affected the world, she still mattered. She would not panic as her father had. In the end he had not trusted the Line, but she was bound to it.
She turned, both Reylor and the Thread watched her. Whether they liked it or not, she knew the decision was hers.
“The Line is not dead,” she said, looking up the vast slopes of Ish Kalum. “Not while we live. We have a Vault to open.”
Above them, obscured by clouds and distance, the Voice waited for them.
17
Drew’s world came back to him in stages, like waves washing up on a beach. The first several waves were composed of nothing but pain, a pain that ran through his body with an agonizing totality.
Over time it localized in his side and chest. Concentration made it worse, even as it receded from his extremities. When he began to notice sounds again, the first he heard were his own groans. In time he began to hear voices, but they were not voices he knew. They were not Upala or Nima, nor were they Artie or his parents.
He was abandoned on this beach of agony, strangers tending to him. The pain in his side began to separate, splitting into three distinct ribbons of sensation. There was a smell too; an odd combination that reminded him of molded bread and the sea. The air was filled with a gritty particulate that pushed into his nostrils, irritating them.
Drew sneezed violently and painfully, his eyes finally opening. A new agony gripped him from his side as he did so, two figures moving in the low light. A large blur of white hovered over him, moving slowly. It was accompanied by a smaller blur of blue.
“I can’t really see.” His voice, throaty and broken, was a gift to hear. It was his and it was real.
“An effect of the poultice, Altered,” the white blur said. “It should pass. It has never been used on your kind before.”
The voice was familiar, but more recent. Altered? Someone called me that before. His mind worked to catch up to where he was. Everest? The Under? No, those had happened already.
“There are other effects,” the deep voice continued.
The blue blur came by, passing behind him. He felt a cool cloth on his forehead, the minor relief still a blessing.
“Thought may be clouded for a time, yet your death has been avoided.”
He blinked again, his vision becoming no clearer but a few of the clouds in his mind giving way. Behind the clouds was his own anger, fiery rage and guilt. Then there was a flash of purple, sharp claws and an explosion of pain.
The Dragon!
He tried to sit up, the action lasting only a second before a massive force from the white blur pushed him back to the bed. His mind finally made the connection. The Yeti? The Speaker is tending to me?
“You must lay still!” the Yeti said. “The poultice is setting.”
“I need to know what happened,” Drew croaked, his heart pounding as faces and visions pounded into his brain. Are they all right? What did I do? Nima and Merin? Trillip? Had he killed Garantika?
“Everyone is safe now.”
Another voice, female and young. Lhamu, the Caenolan girl that Nima had brought with her. Everyone is safe? He felt the tide of relief trying to come ashore, but he was afraid to believe in it. His need to know outweighed everything, even his own pain.
“Details!” he said through clenched teeth, the Speaker’s paw still holding him down gently, but firmly.
“Nima is unhurt, I am unhurt,” Lhamu began reciting the status of everyone, like a child giving the answers in class. “Merin is with her children. The Speaker is here. Trillip is badly injured but will live. Garantika is dead. Upala and Kater are not back. The people are no longer fighting here.”
Drew allowed the breath he held to leak out in a hiss, awakening new soreness from his side. Why hadn’t he healed?
His answer came in the memory of a purple-scaled beast diving out of the sky, a flash of claws and teeth.
Dragon injury. Right, okay.
At least the fighting was over, though he wished Upala was there.
“And the Dragon?”
“The beast took an aggressive interest in the Foretold,” the Speaker said. Drew felt the pressure release from his chest as the Yeti removed his paw. “I attacked the rider, and the Dragon retrieved her and flew off.”
Drew’s relief vanished, a fresh layer of tension and worry filling him. Confirmation Tanira had at least one Dragon, and they still had no real idea what she was up to, not in any detail. The fact the Yeti was able to drive her off was a welcome surprise, even if Tanira survived it.
“Where is Nima, why are you two here?”
“Nima wanted to be here,” Lhamu said, apologetically. “The Speaker did not want anyone intruding on his work.”
“His work?” Drew looked over at the white blur, a few more details becoming present. The creature’s dark eyes looked back at him, revealing nothing. “Why would you try to heal me? I thought all you cared about was her?” What was the word they used? “Your rocha.”
“The Foretold is my rocha. I would prefer her in safer environs. But she refused to leave your presence, and only would agree to do so eventually if I attempted to heal you.”
“Nice of you to think of me, Speaker.”
A small cough escaped Drew and he winced as the pain increasing in his left side.
He looked over at Lhamu, trying to smile and show his appreciation. “Thank you, Lhamu.”
She nodded and smiled back.
The Speaker took a few steps forward, his huge form blotting out Lhamu’s and filling Drew’s vision. The intensity left the creature’s eyes, replaced by something Drew had not seen before.
Kindness?
“My rocha has been challenged. Your actions on the bridge were difficult to process,” the Speaker said. “You, the Foretold, the Arrived. None of you are Rakhum. You were willing to sacrifice yourself for them, you even attempted to avoid violence against those who wished violence on you. After your injury, the Foretold was . . . insistent that I attempt to help you.”
“If someone is going to be hurt,” Lhamu’s voice came from behind the wall of white fur in front of Drew. “You do what you can to help them. That’s what good people do. That’s what Nima says.”
“Yes,” the Speaker said. “I have been pondering this. It is possible that our rocha may be modified to account for this. Perhaps there is a benefit to the Yeti in this rocha we had not considered.”
“Now that Drew is all better, I’m going to go get Nima! She will be so happy!” Lhamu’s voice fading as she ran out the exit, Drew finally recognizing the large tent he and Upala had spoken in during the last time they were in Rogek Shad.
Drew looked up at the Speaker, who had moved a few feet away, his face returning to its usual implacable state.
“Is that true? Am I ‘all better’?” He already knew the answer, his body was telling him. All the Speaker could do was give him more information.
“No, Altered. The healing that you displayed earlier is not asserting itself on the wounds. As you are now Manad Vhan and your injuries are Dragon sourced, this is expected.”
Drew thought about peeking under the blankets to get a look at what the Dragon had done to him, but decided against it.
“And this poultice of yours? What should I expect?”
“Intended for my own kind. I cannot say with certainty, but it has stabilized your injury, halted the loss of blood. I recommend I apply a significant bandage to keep the area clean. You will have to heal using your normal processes, whatever is possible for a denizen of your original world.”
Drew frowned. If Dragon injuries wouldn’t heal like the others, he would have to make do. He shifted to his right under the blanket, testing the pain. It was present, awful even, but he would have to push through it. He’d have to do what a denizen of his world would do, and just block it out.
“Spea
ker, I do appreciate what you have done, for whatever reason you did it.”
The Yeti said nothing, leaving Drew to stare at the ceiling of the tent above him. My world. What does that even mean anymore? Is this my world now?
“Back in your cave, Speaker, you told me this world was different. That this world is not real. Will you tell me what you meant by that?”
The Speaker narrowed his dark eyes as if he were performing some kind of test on Drew with his mind. He then turned away.
“There is nothing in our rocha which would look upon the sharing of that information favorably, Altered. Knowledge is the most delicate of treasures, and it is the position of the Yeti to safeguard much that is known only to us.”
“But?” Drew gazed back up at the Speaker. “You said yourself that our actions challenge your rocha. Can’t you give me something?
In front of him, the large, furry back of the Yeti expanded as the beast drew in a great breath. Drew watched as the light in the crystals embedded in its shoulder dimmed until they were almost dark.
The Speaker turned, his voice dropping into a low whisper. His stare down at Drew softened, as if the answering of the question was a relief.
“Aroha Darad is a construct, Altered. A creation of Sessgrenimath. A place in which to place his Dragons, and allow his study of them to run its course. It is modeled after the worlds you know, but does not contain the same stabilities.”
“A construct?” Drew tried to sit up, failing as the pain ran through his back. “Do the Manad Vhan know that? Do the Dragons?”
“Uncertain,” the Speaker said. “The yeti are not aware of what information Sessgrenimath has shared with his unwanted, cast off creations. We have no knowledge of his intentions or motivations, only that he opposes she who created the Yeti. Thus, she has placed us on all worlds, as guardians against his intent.”
She who created the Yeti?
Drew opened his mouth to speak, watching as the crystals on the Yeti’s shoulders grew illuminated again. A cold look crept back into the Speaker’s eyes.
“I have more questions,” Drew said. “But you aren’t going to answer them, are you.”
