by D. H. Dunn
Fire struck the beast from the direction of the bridge, a direct shot into the Dragon’s eyes that left Terminus shaking its head in pain.
Nima turned along with the rest of the crowd to see Kater standing on the shattered remains of the stone structure, launching a second arc of fire.
“You!” Terminus said, voice booming from the uninjured head as it turned away from Nima and Lhamu and twisted back toward the bridge. “I thought I ended you, Manad Vhan!”
“I am not ended so easily!” Kater yelled back. Nima could hear the breaks in his voice, could see the trembling in his form. The old man’s will had gotten Kater up out of that building, put him back on the bridge to face the Dragon again. Kater looked too weak to stand, yet he summoned more fire from his hands all the same.
Terminus was nearly upon the bridge, now moving even faster than he had charged against Nima. Flames licked from wounds along its neck and chest, there were burn and scorch marks all over the beast, yet it kept coming.
Kater ceased his fire, throwing both his hands in the air as he raised his crimson energy around him. Terminus brought both of his huge clawed talons down against the shield, roaring as it shattered. The old man stumbled and shuddered from the impact.
Nima watched as Terminus’ remaining good head swooped down, jaws open wide. Kater turned to run, but was engulfed by the massive maw and swallowed in a single action.
“Kater!” Nima yelled. She was standing now, though she did not recall getting up.
There was a low rumbling, laughter coming from the heads of both Dragons, a deep mirthful sound that vibrated in Nima’s bones. Terminus then turned from the bridge, heading back to them, eyes again fixed on Lhamu and Nima. Merin and Trillip stood beside them. Behind her, she could hear the Rakhum running, fleeing for whatever safety they could find.
“He is no more!” Terminus said, pushing through the water and placing one enormous foot onto the shore of the river. “He is no more, just as you will be no more, girl. Insignificant, all of you. Rakhum, Manad Vhan, Caenolan, Yeti. It matters not who stands against me. I am Terminus and I am. . .”
Nima and Lhamu stared back at Terminus, who had frozen mid-word. The long neck of the remaining functional head swung lower, the creature taking a second slow step out of the water. The head’s mouth opened, and a glob of gelatinous blood fell out, maintaining a round shape until it landed with a splat on the grass by the river.
There was a tearing sound, the front of Terminus’ torso beginning to split. Nima gasped as she saw the Dragon’s scales and skin expand and separate, red shimmering energy visible inside the widening crack. The great Dragon’s mouth opened again, releasing a gasp of air that sounded like a growing whistle.
Instincts taking over she blocked her eyes with her arms as the front half of Terminus expanded, then exploded with a titanic thunder. Nima was knocked off her feet by the force of the Dragon shattering, landing on the grass with a grunt next to Merin and Lhamu.
Shaking her dazed head, she looked up to see the front torso of Terminus had been completely split apart, the necks laying limp on the ground, one head completely separated from the body.
Merin was on her feet in an instant, shouting. Nima was still shaking her head, every bone in her body rattled by the force of the detonation. Her mind struggled to accept the grisly sight in front of her.
Was it over? How? What had happened?
“Anyone who can! Get over there, grab a section of that thing and get it as far from here as possible! Keep all the pieces separate!”
She was glad Merin was knowledgeable enough to know what to do, to keep the horrible beast from reforming.
Nima was focused on movement she saw in the thick river grasses just in front of the Dragon. The tall green strands moved back and forth for a moment, and then a figure emerged.
Kater managed to get to one knee and with one trembling hand pulled the Helm from his head, tossing it weakly to the ground.
Nima ran forward and gasped, recoiling at the sight. His face was horribly injured, he looked to Nima like a melted candle. One arm was gone, the other was just a tangle of flesh. His mouth moved wordlessly, his remaining eye staring back at her. He pointed at Nima with his one good hand, then collapsed back onto the grass.
Around her she could hear Merin and Trillip still collecting whatever Rakhum were brave enough to gather tools, preparing to tear the great Dragon apart.
Nima knelt down next to him, Kater’s wheezing voice just barely audible over the river.
“Nima?” His lone eye twisted toward her. “Drag. Dra?” He couldn’t finish the word, a mixture of vomit and blood leaking out from between his lips.
“You did it Kater,” she said. “Terminus is dead. You beat it.” She felt strange, looking down at this burned and shredded husk, a body barely recognizable as the man who had brought her and her friends so much pain. This wasn’t like Val or Tanira or even Ama. There was a feeling building inside Nima, but she did not know what to call.
A small, weak smile formed around his wiry beard. His trembling hand reached to find hers, squeezing with feeble strength. He looked at her with his one eye, jaw setting.
“Make sure,” he wheezed. “Important, make sure.” He coughed again, spittle flying into the air.
“I know,” Nima replied. “Merin is separating the Dragon. We’ll make sure. We won’t let Terminus form again.”
With an effort, he exhaled a frustrated sigh and shook his head. His skin had gone bone white.
“No,” he said staring up at her. Blood trickled from his mouth. His words came between deep, heaving gasps, his will forcing each syllable from his body.
“Fool girl. Tell people. Make sure to tell people. Make sure they all know. It was me.”
Kater’s eye lost its focus on her, and slowly rolled back in his head. Introduced to her first by Wanda as an explorer, later revealed to her as an immortal tyrant by Kaditula. Now after thousands of years he was gone.
Now Nima would be writing the end of his story. Like her mother, like Tanira and Val and Kad, he had reached the end and left Nima to go on. How many deaths would it take? How many more people would she see die?
She stayed transfixed on his dying expression, even as next to her Lhamu cried and pointed to the sky. Even as she heard the leathery sound of Dragon wings and three new dark shadows passed over her.
Even as everyone else began to scream.
31
Drew thought he had gotten used to travel with the Speaker, but as he materialized in the center of Rogek Shad, he immediately doubled over, gasping for breath. Every limb and muscle in his body felt dead, even being exhausted seemed exhausting. Hands on his knees, he forced his head up to look around the square.
Nima ran over to him, Lhamu following her along with Merin. The Thread and the other Dragons continued to circle the area, the long, blue form of the Thread sweeping down in low arcs over the city, as if it were looking for something.
He glanced at Upala, who knelt beside him. He and the Speaker had taken the time to bandage her, but she did not look well. After her time under the snow, the last thing he had wanted her to do was teleport with him and the Speaker, but she had insisted. Now her face carried a bluish tint to it as she gulped air into her lungs.
Near the entrance to the bridge, Drew was shocked to see the huge body of Terminus, again dismembered and separated. Rakhum were pulling the various components of the beast apart, working under Trillip’s instruction.
Like in the fields, there were bodies everywhere. Rakhum men and women, farmers, traders and soldiers. Their unmoving forms littered the ground, corpses strewn like leaves in the fall.
Or lifejackets, floating empty and useless in the water of the Indian Ocean. Just as then, there was no victory possible here. The cost was too high.
On its side near the bridge, he saw Kater’s helm, discarded and forgotten. Not far from it he caught sight of a grisly pile of flesh, a few scraps of the old man’s red cloak intermixe
d.
“Son of a bitch. You did it,” he muttered. Drew was surprised to feel a twinge of regret at Kater’s death. Kater had much to answer for, but there was much he could have done if differently minded.
He accepted Nima’s embrace, trying not to laugh at the impossibility of her still being alive. Her hug was a little too tight around his injury, but he endured it. It was good just to have her here. Nima moved on to Upala, while Merin came alongside him. She looked like she hadn’t slept in days, but Drew supposed he couldn’t recall when he had last either.
“Drew,” Merin said. “It is good you are well.” She cast her eyes upward at the Thread and the other Dragons, which were circling at ever-lower altitudes. “Though I wonder how long any of us will be.”
She wasn’t wrong. Drew didn’t think the whole of them could take on even one more Dragon, let alone three.
“Merin,” Drew whispered. “Start getting everyone out of here. I don’t think the Thread is here for you, for the Rakhum.”
“And after you fall?” Merin asked with a wry smile.
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” he said with a chuckle. In this crazy journey, he had met no one else who shared his taste for gallows humor. It was easy to see what Kad had loved in her. “Do what you can.”
Merin ran off, just as Lhamu cried out. Her head crystal blazed brightly as she pointed to the smoke-filled sky. There was a gasp from the crowd as the Thread landed with a flourish on the bridge. It placed one of its lavender-scaled talons on either side of the structure, barring the path to Nalam Wast. It stared at them past the remains of Terminus.
The other two Dragons descended slowly and took their places behind him. One was long and thin, similar to the Thread, but seemed to be made of a dark mist. It was like looking at a shadow, a shadow made of liquid smoke and given a Dragon’s form. Next to it, the other beast was more standard looking, more what Drew would have thought a Dragon would look like. It had a large, wide body with red scales and long wings, the claws at the end of each of the Dragon’s feet were enormous, outsized in proportion to the rest of its body and looked capable of doing a lot of damage.
Drew was about to ask Upala if she knew whom these newcomers were when the Thread spoke.
“I trusted the Manad Vhan!” the Thread’s voice boomed through the buildings and tents.
He stared at the group of them. Drew, Nima, Upala, Lhamu, and the Speaker were exposed and alone in the city’s courtyard. He was glad Merin and Trillip had succeeded in dispersing the crowd.
The Thread peered down at Upala, its eyes narrowing.
“I believed Orami and Feram when they told me this was the best path. Where, in the end has it led us, Manad Vhan? To our deaths. Terminus, the Voice, the Weight. The Worm now lost, possibly dying. Losses that cannot be replaced.”
Upala walked forward. Heavily bandaged and limping, she still projected confidence as she strode in front of the rest of them. Her voice was clear, with the hint of music Drew found so enchanting.
“There is no need for violence,” she said. “There is an opportunity here for-”
“There is no more opportunity!” The Thread’s thundered as he interrupted her, his voice carrying much more anger than it displayed in the Vault of Terminus. “If my brothers and sisters cannot be replaced, they can be avenged. Terminus was right! It was my mistake, my weakness that allowed all this to happen. Manad Vhan, Rakhum - a pestilence both! My tolerance and empathy for them a disease! No more, I will allow no more of my kind to fall! I see now, that you all are nothing but a threat to us!”
Drew’s heart lurched as the Thread took a menacing step forward, his eyes blazing with anger and loss.
“No! No more killing!” Nima shouted as she ran toward the bridge.
Drew cursed himself for being caught off-guard, he should have been ready for this. He was a few steps behind when he saw her scoop up Kater’s Helm, still moving as she held it over her head. He caught up with her just in time to grab her arm.
“Let go!” she said. “I cannot let this happen. I will use this thing to fix everything.”
“Nima, using the Helm killed Tanira. I can’t let you do this!”
“Then trust me, and do it with me.” She looked at him.
It was only for the blink of an eye, the beat of a heart, but he saw that look in her eye. The look he had seen when she first fished him out of the crevasse, the one he saw many times in the Khumbu.
The one he trusted, with all of his being.
He let go of her arm, and simply held her hand.
“I’m on your rope, little sister.”
He watched as she pulled the Helm over her head with her free hand as the Thread charged at them. Whatever might happen next, if Nima was willing to jump into the abyss, he’d jump with her.
The world seemed to freeze as Nima put on the hat. For a moment, she looked through its eye slots, noticing how hot and odd-smelling the inside of it was. Outside she could see the Thread’s wings stopped in mid-flap, the great beast still standing astride the bridge, with the city of Nalam Wast behind it.
Then her vision went white, phasing away in stages, as if someone was erasing the world in front of her. In its place a new scene appeared, one that made no sense to her, yet she immediately recognized.
The world became Everest.
The mountain was more than in front of her, it seemed to be all around her. She saw it not with her eyes, but with her mind, she felt she could hear and taste the great peak as much as see it. It was unmistakably the mountain she had climbed, not any alternate version like the ones here or on Sirapothi.
Yet this mountain differed as well, as all of its sides and features were made of clear crystal, like a mountain of glass looking back at her and reflecting all of her thoughts into images on its sides. The others were here too, she could sense them. Drew and the Thread were part of the crystal, a great peak of gems with thousands of facets and cracks. A fractured Everest.
She had not known what she hoped to do with the hat. Tanira had used it to control, but Nima did not want that. She could see how it would work, but the pressures of the Helm were already setting in. It felt like heavy rocks on all sides of her head, pushing lightly. Kater’s creation might be a way to control, but as she saw her own thoughts and worries reflected on the side of the mountain, she could sense another way she might use it.
The other Dragons were not here, but she still sensed Drew and the Thread. They might be frozen in body, but they were here all the same. She knew why the Thread was here, and she knew there was a chance he might listen. More than the others, he was like her. She wondered if the paths to his pain had been similar to her own.
I know you are here.
She sensed its recognition. The Thread heard her, understood her. She did not detect a response, so she continued.
I do not wish for any more killing, any more loss. I don’t think you do either. I want to understand you, so I will show you me. I will show you my pain.
The sides of the crystal shifted, a rainbow of hues and tints coming into the clear surfaces. They swirled and moved, focusing on the many cracked gems that formed the Khumbu glacier on the lower mountain. The colors formed into a scene, showing a little girl running through the night toward a small stone house.
This is my pain. This is what is behind me.
The girl scales the wall in the back of the house, hoping to sneak into her bed without being seen. Her mother is waiting for her, arms crossed. She points at the girl’s ripped clothes, the result of the tree she had climbed. The muddied shoes, still bearing dirt from the river. The skinned elbows from the rock face down by the old forest.
The girl looks up at her mother’s eyes and knows she does not understand her need to explore, her drive to see what was over the next hill. It did not matter that the girl had done her chores, she always did them. She could mend her clothes herself, she could clean her shoes and bandage her arm.
What she could never do was erase t
hat look in her Ama’s eyes. The look of a woman who wanted something else in life than what she got, and never seemed to see the child in front of her.
To Ama I was not a daughter, but a problem.
Maybe there might have come a time when Ama might have been able to understand her, or she might have come to understand her mother. But life did not include that in its plan, and Ama had died leaving Nima with questions, but no answers. Pain that had no salve.
This is where I began, this pain is where my path starts.
“Show me” she beckoned the Thread. “Show me where you began. Let me see.”
She sensed the Thread’s resistance even as she allowed the images that had covered the Khumbu to dissolve and fade. It was listening, and that was a start. The mountain rippled before her, Nima registering Drew’s influence on the images in the crystal.
An scene formed on the western side of Everest, greens and grays covering the South Col. Nima watched as she saw a young Drew appear, an older man next to him. They stood in front of twin stone markers in a green field, rain pouring down upon them.
Both wore dark, drenched suits and severe expressions.
The image grew closer, more distinct and Nima could read the names on the stones. Margaret Adley. Arthur Adley.
The older man was Drew’s father. His hands were clenched, water dripping off his shaking fists. He looked at Drew once, looking with eyes that could have been Ama’s.
“You took them from me,” the man said in a voice of ashes and anger. He then turned and began to walk away.
“Dad,” Drew pleaded to the man in the suit, now only a shadow moving into the rain. “Dad, I’m your son too. I lost them too.”
Nima could just make out the shaking of the man’s head as he walked away, Nima knowing the truth of Drew’s heart. Drew’s father did not see him as his child, as someone who had lost the same loved ones. As someone who needed his love, his support.
