The Language of Power

by Rosemary Kirstein

  But the heron was no less dead.

  They ended where they had begun, sitting in the grass at the top of the little hill. Rowan had insisted that they approach with stealth and caution. Willam had acquiesced. Their caution was unnecessary. The dragons ignored them.

  They had brought along one of the jammer-spells; Willam set it down on his right side, away from Rowan, presumably to shield her from its offensive decorations. Rowan found his protectiveness amusing.

  Then the two of them watched, again, to no result whatsoever.

  At last Willam heaved a weary sigh. “Tell me, lady, what’s the difference between a bird and a stone?”

  “A bird is alive; a stone is not. A heron is large, a stone is small. A large bird moves slowly; a tossed stone, quickly. The bird flew directly above; the stone came from only slightly above, and to one side.”

  “Above,” he said thoughtfully. “And slow.” He searched his pockets, coming up with a handkerchief. Inexplicably, he began to tear at it, pulling its four turned edges free.

  Rowan watched in confusion. “What are you doing?”

  “Making a shoot,” he said, continuing to tear; each edge was now attached only at a corner. “It’s nothing magical; I’ve seen little children playing with them in The Crags . . . Or maybe they are magical. . . it’s hard to tell, sometimes.”

  Rowan knew the term shoot only as applying to the hunting method of an Outskirts insect called a trawler. A trawler would construct a parabolic web, which it would fly like a kite above the redgrass tops. Small insects, unable to see the gossamer, would become stuck to the threads. When enough were trapped, the trawler would reel in its dinner.

  Willam’s shoot was a square of cotton with strings trailing from each corner. He searched in the grass for a small stone, rejecting several candidates before finding one that suited him. Then he tied the free ends of the strings to the stone, wadded up cloth and stone together, stood, and tested the weight of the combination in his hand.

  He threw high. The cloth-wrapped stone arced up, and at the top of its trajectory, as it slowed, the handkerchief, predictably, unwrapped.

  The stone drifted, downward, slowly.

  It hung from the handkerchief, which had spread into a parabolic shape that cupped the air beneath it as it fell, pulled down by the stone—

  Like a kite, with the weight of the stone in place of the tether, the stone’s fall in place of the wind—

  In a single, amazed, delightful rush, the steerswoman generated a flurry of equations: mass, gravity, shoot size, speed, all elements interdependent, all interacting, each element requiring the existence of the others, all of them making each one necessary.

  It was lovely; it was clever; it was more than clever: it was elegant.

  Although, Rowan realized with a touch of smugness, for best effect, Willam might have chosen a slightly heavier stone—

  The steerswoman startled when the handkerchief burst into flame.

  The stone dropped. Burned cloth fluttered. Ash floated, and dispersed. “Did you see that?” Willam asked.

  “I . . . I’m afraid I wasn’t paying attention to the dragons for a moment.”

  “They ignored it completely until it was about four meters above.” He sat on the grass once more, arms around knees, thoughtful again.

  Rowan felt a moment’s pang, longing to pursue her equations; then she recovered. “We,” she said, “are much more than four meters away. Possibly they can’t see that far at all.”

  “Or they’re just not interested. But they don’t care about stones flung at them.” He rested his chin on his knees, expression unchanged: intent, focused, calm.

  And as she regarded Willam, it came to the steerswoman suddenly that there was a great deal going on beneath that immense calm, behind those wide copper eyes. As much, perhaps, and as quickly moving, as that interplay of calculations that had so fascinated Rowan a moment ago.

  At this, he became comprehensible to her. He was neither blind nor arrogantly stubborn; he was merely certain, with a confidence born of long and careful thought.

  “That big bird,” he said. “It flew low over the dragons like it hadn’t a care in the world.”

  So it had. “The dragons don’t generally attack birds passing by.” Else, birds would soon learn to avoid dragons entirely.

  “But they attack birds now. So, that’s different. And the only new element is the jammers.”

  The dragons, if nothing else, seemed to be stupider under the influence of the jammer-spells. “If they don’t usually attack birds, then they must be able to recognize a bird as a bird. But no longer.” She sat beside him.

  “What can they recognize?” he asked, apparently of himself.

  The steerswoman could not help but answer, if only with the obvious. “They recognize each other.”

  “Not really. They don’t have to. They all know the pattern they’re following.”

  He still believed in the pattern.

  He knew magic.

  And his mind, Rowan now understood, moved much as her own did.

  The steerswoman accepted the pattern as fact, and the dragons as supremely simple, and recast the situation in terms of that knowledge. “The heron was not in the pattern they expected.”

  Willam turned to her. “That’s it.” He seemed proud of her finding the solution. “That’s simple, it would need to be something simple. It’s not a decision, it’s just a reaction. The dragons will attack any motion that’s not in the pattern.” He stopped short. His face dropped. “You were right. This won’t work.”

  “Unless we can move as quickly as a thrown rock . . . I don’t suppose you have a spell that would do that? Cause us to move very quickly?” Some folktales of wizardly magic included such spells.

  “No.” He sounded as disappointed as she felt. “It can’t be done. The best we can do is make something else move fast, and sit on it—or in it. But I can’t do that myself.”

  His “we” confused her for a moment, until she realized that he was referring to the wizards. He was including himself among them again, by habit. She decided not to correct him.

  Down below, a cat-sized dragon wandered toward the edge of the group, hesitated, scratched the back of its head with a hind foot, and turned back again. “Willam, I think they’re repeating.”

  He made a disgruntled sound. “For all the good it does us.”

  Something was missing.

  Rowan had been considering the situation very logically; she almost felt that one ought to be able to state it in terms of pure symbolic logic. She could not, quite; but the impression persisted, and along with it, the impression that something was definitely missing.

  It happened sometimes, when one worked through a series of equations, following their progression and alterations to some conclusion, that one would sense, undeniably, that something was wrong. A feeling, perhaps, that completion was not present, that there must be something more. Half a shape, where there ought to be symmetry, awkwardness instead of elegance; the absence of, for lack of a better word, beauty.

  But the matter at hand was not numbers and symbols; it was animals, and motion. Still—something was missing.

  Lists; lists of actions, if not read from writing, then by some means memorized, and enacted by these animals. Like perfect actors, following perfectly a predetermined script. The same evening’s entertainment, repeated endlessly . . . “How often is the program changed?”

  She sensed Will’s sudden attention, although he was a moment speaking. Then: “What did you say?”

  She continued to study the dragons’ movements. “Because it must be changed sometimes. Conditions will alter, and the script must be altered, too, to take that into account.”

  She turned to find the wide copper gaze regarding her, with an expression she was absolutely unable to analyze. From the airy realms of logic she suddenly came to earth, suddenly felt that she was speaking out of utter ignorance, and became embarrassed. “I’m sorry—”
/>   “No . . . he said, slowly, “no, you’re right. The program would need to be changed.”

  She was relieved to find that they were at least using the same analogy. “How long ago was it altered, do you know?”

  He gave this some thought, still watching her closely. “No, I don’t . . . The dragons only enter this routine when they’re completely out of contact with the controller. That’s pretty rare. This may be the only time it’s happened for decades . . .”

  His tone, and his expression, were still odd. Rowan could not help asking: “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” His brows went up. “You’re just surprising me, that’s all.”

  She did not know how to feel about the statement. “Am I actually making sense?”

  “Yes,” he said, definitely. “A lot. Go on.”

  She turned back to the scene below. “Then”—program had communicated her meaning before; she continued to use the word—“the program was decided, and the script written, within the last few years, at the least. Because, as I notice, that small dragon is clambering on top of that rock to avoid being harassed by those two larger ones . . . but previously, the dragons were not in this field at all, were they?”

  Willam considered. “The pattern takes the rock into account. The program has to date at least from when the dragons were moved to this location. What are you getting at?”

  “I’m not sure yet.” Actors, following a script of explicit stage direction; or dancers, with the dance predetermined, step by step.

  Something was missing.

  “Oh,” Rowan said, in a small voice. She found she had risen, was staring down at the dragons, fascinated; watching not each individual movement, but the whole of it, the sum of the motions, the completeness that should, but would not be present.

  Will was beside her. She did not turn. “What do you see?” he asked.

  “. . . Nothing, yet. . .”

  “What are you looking for?”

  “. . . A hole . . .” He did not ask further, and she was glad of it; this took a great deal of concentration. But then, he understood what that was like.

  “Ah?” An involuntary noise from the steerswoman, very quiet. She said, half to herself, “I think . . . that dog-sized dragon—it was acting oddly for a moment . . .” It had hissed, twisted, emitted a whistling whine of displeasure, backed off— from nothing.

  Nearby, a smaller dragon suddenly startled, and scampered away—from nothing. “Willam—” Suddenly excited, she clutched his arm, pointed—“Those two pony-dragons, with the very brown heads, ten meters in from the edge.”

  “I see them . . .”

  She released his arm. “Watch.”

  The pair were side by side, one desultorily scraping at the earth with a forefoot, the other watching the first with interest.

  Simultaneously, both looked over their shoulders, hesitated, then separated, one to each side, leaving a wide empty gap between.

  Willam said, in a voice of perplexity, “. . . What?”

  Just beyond, a clutch of six little creatures the size of rats were writhing and weaving among each other.

  They froze. They scattered. They did so in two stages: half a meter away, a pause, then another full meter. Rowan could not help but cry out: “Oh, lovely!” She could almost see the heavy footsteps from which they fled.

  She turned to Willam. He was regarding her, drop-jawed. Rowan said: “Two of Jannik’s dragons are dead.”

  Realization dawned, and he closed his mouth, slowly. “There’s a hole!”

  She was grinning. “Two holes. Two places in the pattern where a dragon is expected, but does not exist. Willam—do they really only know each other by their places in the pattern?”

  They tested the limits of the problem. They sacrificed Rowan’s spare shirt to make more shoots. One they tossed toward the edge of the dragon herd, incrementally closer and closer, to determine the exact range at which the dragons would continue to ignore it. Retrieving it repeatedly became increasingly more harrowing, until, at a distance of four meters from the edge of the herd, three dragons noticed and flamed the shoot to ashes.

  Rowan found it rather more difficult to maintain a properly objective state of mind when the dragons actually spit fire; Willam seemed not to have this problem. But the steerswoman no longer doubted his calm, and she found his steadiness steadying.

  They scratched a line in the earth, a large curve below their hill, marking the limit of the dragons’ interest. They attempted to drop another shoot directly into the hole in the pattern, but this proved impossible, due to the unpredictable movements of heated air above the dragons.

  And through all their tests and observations, and preparations, the hole continued to move: an emptiness that wandered, paused, advanced and retreated. They knew it by the creatures around it, with every other dragon it neared behaving exactly as if the absence were a presence. A ghost-dragon, invisible.

  The hole corresponding to the second missing dragon was much harder to track. It moved less steadily, it turned unexpectedly, it seemed sometimes to vanish entirely. Willam soon identified the difficulty: the second dragon was smaller than the first. Other dragons were less likely to clear a path for it. Furthermore, it seemed more aggressive than its size warranted, and confrontations were more common, with the outcome less predictable. The watchers decided to concentrate on the larger hole.

  Stand just outside the perimeter. Wait for the hole to approach the edge. Run to the hole, and enter it. As quickly as possible, snatch the nearest small dragon, pull it into the hole, cover its eyes, pick it up—and run, before the hole moved back into the herd.

  Speed was needed, and precision. But it was all so very logical.

  “It looks like it might reach the edge over there, on the right.”

  “If you say so,” Willam said.

  She turned to him. “You can’t see it?”

  “Sometimes. I lose it every now and again.”

  “It takes looking at all the dragons around the hole.” She turned back, and was a moment finding it again. But there: two large dragons, heads cocked, as if tracking the passage of an invisible third. Admittedly, the signs were sometimes subtle. “Very well. I’ll do it.”

  Willam stepped directly in front of her. “You will not.”

  “But—” He stood before her, appalled and unmovable. “But,” Rowan said, “if I’m the one who can see the gap more clearly—”

  “No. I’ll do it.”

  “Give me one good reason why.”

  He needed to think, but did so quickly. “Dragons are heavier than they look, and I’m stronger.”

  “I’m not weak, and I’m fast, and I have a very good idea of exactly what I’ll be doing.”

  He crossed his arms, regarded her with narrowed gaze. “Then I won’t go in until you pass on to me that very good idea of what exactly I’ll be doing.”

  “Willam, I’m the better choice, and you know it.”

  He hesitated. “Yes, you are the better choice. But”—he became stubborn again—“it’s my idea, and my decision, and my responsibility. We’re here because of me. If something goes wrong, and someone gets burned, it’s going to be me, and not you. Because all this is my doing.”

  It was true; and were their positions reversed, Rowan would be exactly as insistent, and exactly as right in her claim.

  A steerswoman could not deny fact. “Very well.” He relaxed, relieved.

  They cut a section of cloth from Willam’s bedroll, to cover their victim’s eyes. They discussed the moves, planned, rehearsed. Throughout this, Willam was very intent, with an edge of nervousness that worried the steerswoman. But finally, and rather abruptly, Will became perfectly calm, utterly composed. The steerswoman recognized this as the exact moment when Willam understood, completely, what he would do. No more discussion was needed.

  They watched the hole, and waited.

  Twice it moved toward the edge of the herd; twice it turned back, with Willam already in p
osition, left behind at the perimeter. Once it seemed to march confidently to the very edge, and paused there for a long moment; but also at the edge a waist-high dragon and another as tall as Rowan’s shoulder stood on either side of the hole, one eye of each pointed toward the perimeter. They would not fail to catch the moment of out-of-pattern motion when Willam dashed to the hole.

  Rowan and Willam sidled along, just outside the limit of the dragons’ interest, alert for another opportunity. They both saw it coming, and wordlessly moved into position.

  Rowan intended to signal Willam with a slap on the shoulder when the moment arrived; she slapped air. He was already moving.

  Three long steps and he was in the hole.

  Willam stepped to the far end of the gap. Three smaller dragons were near, walking away, not quickly; Willam was quick. He grabbed one by the tail, pulled back mightily. The dragon slid back, claws scoring the earth. A flicker of attention from dragons farther in, but now all motion was only within the limits of the hole.

  Willam’s dragon writhed, twisted its head, but Will had it by the neck with both hands, pointing its snout away from him. He straddled the creature and forced it to the ground.

  He leaned on the neck, hard. The dragon flamed, and Will turned his face from the heat, freed one hand, pulled the scrap of blanket from his belt. When the fire stopped, Willam pushed the cloth over the creature’s face, held it in place—and the dragon went limp.

  All of this took place in mere instants.

  But in those same instants, other events occurred.

  To the right, deep in the herd, sudden movement: two dragons, backing away from something. They neared the edge; they reached it; they could go no farther. They hissed, flailed their tails, and parted, one to each side, continuing along the edge, still retreating.

  From nothing.

  It was the second hole, the vicious smaller ghost, chasing these others. The one on the left was scrambling, backing, toward Willam.

  He did not see it. He would not see it in time. It would cut off his escape. Rowan thought to shout warning, but they had not tested shouting, she did not know what shouting would cause.