The Dragon's Back Trilogy

by Robert Dennis Wilson

  “The very one!” said Virgil the Weaver. “The very one!”

  THE SIBLING

  PROPHECY

  From The Lore of the Dragonmen

  I.

  Long ago the words were spoken,

  And their message can't be broken:

  Two shall bear the Dragon's token;

  Two who share a dam and sire

  Will be marked by Dragon's fire;

  Two fulfill the world's desire.

  Tragic depths they're lifted from,

  Mighty warriors to become:

  Together greater than their sum.

  It is ordained and will not wait:

  One is the Key and one the Gate:

  To open or to seal our fate.

  Each will listen to a call,

  So they will mark the rise or fall

  Of all who on the Dragon call.

  II.

  If those two turn to left or right

  (To darkened cave or burning light),

  Their choices will cause day or night

  To flourish in the world of men:

  Dragon’s blessing will rise again

  Or on that day forever end.

  They’re carved in stone for you to view,

  Or sung in song if words you knew,

  Guard yourselves that fateful two.

  The ancient words you cannot break,

  When together a stand they make:

  The Dragon's future is at stake.

  Long ago two words were spoken

  And their message will be the token:

  Of Dragon raised or Dragon broken.

  III.

  Though divided, if they bind,

  One plus one will be one mind

  To sum the fate of dragonkind.

  Apart, the boat will never sail;

  Apart, the prophecy will fail;

  A part of them cannot prevail.

  Together, they can never lose;

  Together, they'll their foes confuse;

  But to arrive they'll have to choose.

  Chosen siblings making choices:

  Crushed beneath chaotic noises

  Yet when they choose to raise their voices…

  Long ago their words were spoken

  And their message won't be broken:

  Those two shall bare the Dragon's token.

  RENEWAGE

  The two bards made their slow and painful way up the western trail on the face of the Dragon. Jason, recalling an earlier conversation, asked his friend, “Back in Sinsinatti, before we were attacked, you told me that the forces of the Dragon wanted to stop me. It sounded, from what you said, as though they were singling me out for some reason. What did you mean by that? Why me and what do they want to stop me from doing?”

  The Swimmers from the Capital City, after rescuing Nathan and tending his wound, had urged both of the bards to leave Sinsinatti as soon as possible. The blackrobes, those Swimmers informed them, were turning the city upside down to find their elusive prey. Not even the Believers' secure underground refuge where they rested would remain so for very long. Secretly, using hidden ways, Jason and Nathan had been escorted out of town. Nathan’s weakness from his recent loss of blood allowed the two bards only a very slow retreat from danger. At the suggestion of Nathan’s friends, they planned to travel north to the region of Lake LaCou. There, in relative obscurity, Nathan would finally be able to rest and recover.

  “Jason, I’ve been doing quite a bit of reflecting on that very subject lately,” Nathan responded to his question. “During my stop at home, the Gryphon confirmed to me what I had been suspecting for some time. The dragonmen have an ancient prophecy about two anointed brothers who, united together, would seal their rise or fall on Dragonsback. It is my belief that they (right or wrong) think you and Kaleb are those brothers!”

  “Is that why we were stolen away as children and placed in that awful Island Orphanage, to keep us prisoners until they could control us or deal with us? Is that why they have been hounding you and me continuously since we joined together? Then the dragonsbreath that nearly sunk the Flying Eagle was deliberate! The attacks in the Heartland and in the city all were all planned? They've been trying to kill us all along?”

  “That is what I now believe. The words to that so-called ‘Sibling Prophecy’ are very cryptic at best and could indicate two people working for or against the Dragon. I’ll sing it for you and let you make up your own opinion.” With that, Nathan sang the hauntingly eerie melody for his student and friend.

  While he listened intently to his mentor, Jason felt chill bumps form on the back of his neck and then spread over his entire body. His mind filled the silence that followed the song with multiplied unanswerable questions. Could this actually be about Kaleb and me? Did we have some role in the future of all of Dragonsback? How could this be true, they were only two ordinary brothers? What if it were true? Great Gryphon, he silently pleaded, guide me to Your will and make me able to follow Your tracks!

  Then a new idea broke through his confusion like a beacon piercing the night, “But wait!” he exclaimed to his friend. “Doesn’t that mean that Kaleb has to join me in the fight against the Dragon? Since I obviously can’t undo what the Gryphon has done to me, the only other possibility – that would allow the two of us to work together – is for Kaleb to become a Swimmer like me! That’s great news!”

  “Whoa there! Don’t jump to conclusions. Just because the dragonmen think something is true doesn’t necessarily mean that it is! And that song leaves plenty of possibilities that whoever it’s talking about might not join together to form a team. Yet, since the dragonmen appear to think that it is about you two and since they now know that you have been ‘turned’ from any possible use for them, then the only way they have of preventing the prophecy from hurting them is to permanently hurt one of you!"

  "Master Nathan, one part of their song intrigues me. I think you sang, 'They're carved in stone for you to view, or sung in song if words you knew.' That really could describe my brother and me: the carver and the bard! "

  "I had reached the same conclusion," replied the bard, shaking his head sadly, "and so it appears have they! From now on, son, we must live under the assumption that you are under constant physical danger from this enemy. I say this but I don’t know what the future holds. This only has the Gryphon revealed to me: that if you, son, are to find what you seek, it will cost you greatly. Are you ready to face your greatest fears to see your brother won?”

  “The Gryphon knows that I would give up life itself if it meant that Kaleb would eventually join me on the other side of the Bridge!”

  “Remember this pledge that you have made, the Gryphon may well hold you to it before the battle is won!”

  As they climbed the trail in somber silence, Jason pondered this new revelation and the strange path the Gryphon’s paws had marked for him to take—and possibly for his brother as well. That Kaleb might be part of the Gryphon's special plan, that his brother would become a Swimmer, like him: these things were almost more than he could hope for. He tasted the dream and needed no imagemaker to fill his mind with sweet possibilities!

  At last, after crossing the top of Dragonshead, they stopped to rest on a stone bench. They were near the upper end of the eastern Road above Mann’s Pointe. With the Broken and Standing Columns at their back, Jason again recognized this as the place that had haunted his childhood nightmares and as the same spot where Thaddeus the carver had bid them farewell before he walked the Bridge of Air to the Gryphon’s Land.

  From this wind-swept vantage point, they looked down on the Bay, the half-bridge, and the Islands of the Tail. Gazing further north along the shore, Jason noticed a group of tiny specks that could only be a large crowd of people out on the water.

  "Oh, look at all those Swimmers out on the Bay!"

  The bard, however, shook his head in negation and replied emphatically, "From their location and the size of the party, I'd have to disagree. Those aren't Swi
mmers, but 'floaters'. They float the open waters in the channel between Dragonsback and the Islands of the Tail. They’re from a school called the ‘Awareness Center’ located on the coast just north of Mann’s Pointe. The school specializes in teaching floating techniques. The false-Swimmers from there build flimsy devices of thorns and moss: then, after deliberately emptying their minds, suck so much moss that they put themselves into trances. They are then guided on their journey of oblivion out into the Channel by some unseen force until they reach one of the islands."

  "But if they are using thorns and moss, aren't they attracting dragons?"

  "That's all that's keeping these 'Channelers', as they call themselves, afloat! The unseen dragons are their guides, appearing in their moss-induced comas as great, benevolent beings of wondrous beauty, full of ancient wisdom and mighty power."

  "But if the dragons want to destroy mankind, why would they be helping these deceived people swim and guiding them around while they do it?" asked Jason, perplexed by his mentor’s strange explanation.

  "Jason, they are not swimming! Can’t you see from what I said that what they are doing is only false swimming! Think, son. Answer your own question, you already know the 'why'."

  Inwardly the student marveled, Even when he’s injured and almost too weak to walk, still, something in this man compels him to teach! Outwardly he responded, "Well, I suppose that if they're not Swimmers, then they haven't had their burdens removed, so they would sink like a rock if they didn't have the help of those dragons."

  "Go on!"

  "If they think they can swim the dark waters aided only by (what appears to them) their own power, then they don't need the Gryphon or His Son to help them swim!"

  "Exactly! They worship instead their own ability to float, saying, 'We are in the Gryphon and the Gryphon is in us. We are Gryphons!' Or some of them worship a made-up goddess they call the 'Mother dragon, she who is the layer of the eggs'."

  "It sounds to me like they're the ones who are laying the eggs. Rotten ones!"

  "Wait, son. Remember your mission! They are only trying to fulfill the desire to swim that the Gryphon put in all of us. It's just that the dragons have deceived them into thinking that this self-centered way is the right one. They will pay a steep price for their folly. The dragons that guide them extract a high toll, feeding on their life force and often guiding them further and further astray until, at last, they are so far out to sea, that their malevolent guides can finally reveal their true nature. The helpless victim is then forced to either ride the dragon back to shore (where they become its slave) or be drowned in the sea. The dragons don't easily give up their prey.

  “Rescuing floaters is one of the hardest battles for a Swimmer-soldier, for these victims are so blinded by the dragons that engulf them, that they couldn't see the truth, even if the wind blew it up to them and bumped them in the head with it. It requires much reflecting of the Light to shine through their darkness. It also sometimes requires an actual sword battle with their dragon hosts. The host would rather destroy the captured victim then let him go free. The liberty of those who are bound this way is much, much harder to be won than can be done by simply pulling thorns, and you know how hard that can be!"

  "Ouch! Don't remind me." Jason paused and pondered the words he has heard, while he sadly watched the multitude floating off to destruction. "Nathan, is that what happened to my parents? Did the dragons kill them 'cause they wanted to escape?"

  "I'm afraid so, son. I am always practicing to be a better swordsman, but that is one battle I lost in spite of my best efforts. I still wake up nights remembering their drowning. For a long time I blamed myself..."

  “But" interrupted Jason, given sudden insight, "wouldn't that mean that you had taken up a thorn against yourself?!"

  "You’re right, son, I had, and it was one that I kept hidden for a very long time. But the Gryphon, in His love, revealed it to me while I was reflecting one day. (That thorn had always been there in the corner of the shellbowl image; I had just gotten so used to it floating there on the side, that I deceived myself into thinking it was a natural part of the picture.) Well, the Gryphon had mercy on my stubbornness and finally was able to show me that I was not to blame! The dragons caused the death of every other person on that boat for the sole reason that two of the passengers had just become Swimmers. Your parents were too inexperienced to fight an invisible foe. I was only one man against an army that no one else in the boat could even see! Yes, the Gryphon removed my personal thorn, and its scar is finally almost gone. Your getting rid of the thorn you carried in my name was a big part of that healing."

  “He might have gotten rid of his thorn, bard,” the startling shouted words rang out suddenly and explosively from just behind the two bards, “but I have a thorn big enough for the both of us! Try healing from this!”

  They spun around to find blackrobes Kaleb and Raven rushing at them with thorns and sharpened swords in hand. Kaleb had given the shouted threat.

  Before Nathan could even draw his sword to defend himself, Jason’s brother leaped at him and drove the gigantic black thorn he held deep into the bard’s unprotected chest.

  “No!” shouted the younger bard. “Kaleb, stop! Nathan is innocent!”

  “Move, it’s my turn, now!” shouted Raven, using his considerable strength to roughly shove Kaleb out of his way, so that he fell directly on top of his brother.

  “Nathan!” screamed Jason as he struggled to rise to his friend’s defense. Somehow, in spite of the human obstacle in his way, the younger bard managed to gain his feet and struggled with all his strength to help his twice-injured friend.

  But then Kaleb took an active part in resisting his brother, gripping him securely with both arms, as tight as if he were trying to prevent his sibling from falling over the edge only a short distance away.

  “Don’t you dare help that accursed bard!” demanded Kaleb, shouting in his brother’s ear. “He killed our parents! He deserves to die!”

  “No, he didn’t! The dragons killed them!” responded Jason. “Nathan!”

  Suddenly, painfully, something large and very powerful forcefully snatched at Jason’s sword arm, preventing him from drawing the weapon. Invisible claws, dropping down out of the sky, pierced the flesh of his arms and shoulders and wrenched him violently out of his older brother’s grasp.

  Startled, wounded, and dizzy from the shock of his sudden intense pain, Jason nevertheless recognized two indisputable facts. First, Nathan and Raven were locked in a mortal struggle dangerously close to the very edge of the Dragon! And, second, his worst and darkest nightmare had suddenly and horribly turned into a living reality!

  ~ ~ ~

  Astounded beyond either words or actions, Kaleb could not begin to comprehend what had just happened. Jason had been suddenly snatched from his tightest hold as though the teenage blackrobe had no more strength than an infant. Now, screaming and writhing as if he were being tortured, his brother hung there above him – suspended on nothing! Bright red blood stained his brother’s shoulders where wounds with no visible cause had been afflicted!

  A different scream sounded from behind him, competing with the first. Confused, he snapped around to look over his left shoulder. There, on the very edge of the Dragon’s Head, Raven and the bard tottered on the edge of extinction. Locked in each other’s deadly embrace, in but another instant they must surely fall! Raven screamed once again as an unexpected outsider, gravity, became the silent victor in their conflict. Like a snared beast, the huge blackrobe raged against the irony that had already sealed his fate.

  Kaleb watched in horror as the wounded bard, with his back to the edge, carried the giant blackrobe with him to certain death. As they toppled into the abyss, that accursed man who had killed his parents (and now his best friend) dared to shout, “I shall not die!” and then both combatants disappeared from view.

  “Raven!” shouted Kaleb in anguish.

  But in the same instant, he heard Jason despe
rately scream out the name of the bard.

  What is happening? Why? his silent thoughts shrieked at his bewildered mind. What is going on?!

  He turned to find his still struggling brother further away than before. Whatever had hold of him swiftly propelled their airborne captive down the slope leading to the Dragon’s Muzzle!

  Anger at this unknown menace, coupled with his long-practiced role as his younger brother’s protector, freed at last his feet from the chains of lethargy. No longer bound in place, Kaleb the rescuer leaped to his brother’s defense!

  Forsaking the longer winding path to his left, he chose instead to follow his brother down the steep, rock-strewn slope. As he attempted the running descent, the loose stone moved under his feet and then so did the entire face of the mountain! Rolling and tumbling amid the treacherous rockslide, he, at last, crashed, battered and bruised, into the solid, unmoving ground at the bottom of the long moving slope.

  Furiously Kaleb threw off the rocks that sought to pin him down. Ignoring his own pain and discomfort, he rapidly scrambled to his feet in search of his brother.

  “Jason! Where are you?” he shouted, still disorientated from his spinning fall down the entire slope of the mountainside. Then, realizing he had ended up facing back toward the slope, he spun around with all of his strength, drawing his scaline sword as he did.

  Jason was there! Suspended in the air over the meadow that separated the base of the slope from the tree line, the young bard remained stationary, held spread-eagle above Kaleb’s head. Kaleb still could not see what unknown force imprisoned his brother there!

  Behind him, the whole facade of the mountain continued to rumble and move. Concerned for their safety, the older brother turned back to face the way he had come. Only then did he notice for the first time that the rocks were still moving because the supposedly solid scaline face beneath them also moved! Beyond all reason, beyond all human logic, that wall of rock moved slowly upward!

  While he watched in spellbound fear, an opening, a horizontal slit as long as a city and two, then ten manheights high, formed in the solid rock where the base of the slope had been! Looking in through that opening, Kaleb saw a mixture of shiny bright colors: white, fiery red, burning yellow, and in then, to his left for as far as he could see, infinitely dark, midnight black.