“Often as not.”
The Gage would not have expected to find the First of Dragons to be so consistently … agreeable. But here she was.
“This particular coincidence concerns you. Well, your name, Kyrlmyrandal.”
She stirred. She rolled onto her back, careful of her sprawl of limbs and long bleached body, and exposed her withered belly and the underside of her tattered wings to the suns. The wing membranes, spread, burned with unexpected color—streaks and striations of red and red-orange, blazed with slashes of darkness that looked charred.
The Gage was so stunned by the brilliance—here in this bone-white city, upon this bone-white beast—that he took one startled step backward.
“That makes it even more likely that someone is meddling. The godheads are surprisingly terrible at finding new pieces for their games of politics, and lazily play their familiar pieces in new patterns.” She rolled again and lay like a lioness, head up and wings outstretched on the ground. “Even when those pieces are chipped and worn. So I came up in conversation?”
“It was I myself who remarked on the word that makes your name. The mark, and the thing that marks, and the art of marking.”
“Well,” said Kyrlmyrandal tidily, “you summoned me into your story, then.”
The Gage, who had been standing at his ease and nearly motionless, froze utterly. “When I named you?”
“What else are names good for?”
“Sorting out sides for kick-bladder, I suppose,” the Gage said tiredly.
“Indubitably,” agreed the dragon. Deadly dust puffed as she flipped her wings in to settle them against her sides. They did not fold neatly, but hung crooked, and the tip of the right one dragged. She gathered herself and—using the wings as crutches—levered herself to her splayed feet. She stood a little creakily, but seemed the better for having basked in the warmth—the searing, sterilizing warmth—of the suns. She stepped forward, her long neck curving down toward the Gage. She was … enormous. Castles, temples. What else was so large?
One hind foot dragged with a hitch, so when she walked she hopped both back feet forward with the sound one a little forward of the other, like an old dog. She had, the Gage thought, an injured or arthritic spine.
He would teach this one how to build a Gage’s body, if she wanted. Though he could imagine little more terrifying to contemplate than an enormous automaton dragon. Could even magic make such a creature fly? Would the very bedrock crack beneath its feet and let the red lava lifeblood run free?
The Gage gathered himself. “I am sorry, most magnificent Kyrlmyrandal. If I had my choice, I would stay and talk with you forever. But I came here seeking help, and there is a war on that I promised to go back to. I must be getting on.”
She sighed, but not angrily. “What do you want? Or more to the point, what does your Wizard want?”
“I was sent to find something called the Carbuncle.”
“Oh,” she said. “I have that. You have to stick it where the sun don’t shine for it to work, though, and—not to be invasive or rude, and begging your pardon—but I think you haven’t got the parts to make that function?”
“It’s not for me. I mean … may I have it?”
The dragon blinked sightless eyes at him. “No.”
“Oh,” he said, surprised to realize that he was surprised by the refusal. One could, it seemed, be entirely lulled into complacency by the agreeableness of dragons. “Well, that was a long walk for nothing.”
“Hasty,” she said, and advanced one wing, shifting her weight onto it. The tip dragged where the Gage feared again that it might foul her talons, but she seemed to manage. “I’m coming with you. I will bring the stone. And I will give you a pen.”
“A pen.”
“Certainly. Dragons have hoards, do we not?”
“You can walk that far?”
Kyrlmyrandal took a limping step and seemed to consider. “You know, that’s an excellent question. But first, let’s get the pen.”
* * *
Kyrlmyrandal did indeed give the Gage a pen. A pen sized for human hands, even, which meant it was much too small for the Gage. It was not a quill or a brush, either, but a piece of technology he had not encountered before: it had a cap which covered a sharp pointed nib with a slit in it made of what seemed to be gold, and its cap and the body were finished in some translucent black-red lacquer with a depth of color the Gage associated with semiprecious jewels.
It was beautiful, and the light of the suns caught inside it as if were an ember.
“It’s named Heartsblood. It is supposed to have the soul of a sword,” said Kyrlmyrandal.
“Well,” the Gage said carefully. “They do say the pen is mightier.”
“Don’t patronize me,” said the pen.
The Gage nearly dropped it. But, when he paused to think about it, was a talking pen any more weird than a dragon with a hoard of pens?
“I don’t know what else I’m supposed to do with you.”
“Take me to somebody who is worthy of me.” Obviously.
“Aren’t you full of the dragon poison?”
“Oh, probably,” said the pen. “Most pens are venomous when used correctly.”
“You will poison them, too.”
A sense of a shrug. “Well. That’s the nature of things. Besides, they’ll have a few good years in using me before their fingers rot and their eyes go white. Maybe as many as fifteen! Or ten.”
Ceremoniously, the Gage opened a hidden, leather-lined compartment in his body and laid the pen within. It nestled there, and when he closed the drawer again, there was nothing to indicate its existence.
“Is there anything you need before we leave, if you are coming with me?”
“I shouldn’t think so,” Kyrlmyrandal said. “Are you ready to go right now?”
In answer, the Gage turned, and began to walk back the way he had come. She fell in beside him, taking one slow step each for his many quick ones.
He said, “You said you were the First of Dragons. And also the Mother.”
“Of course.”
“Does ‘First’ in this case mean ‘Leader’ or ‘Progenitor’?”
“Some of both,” she said. “Are you asking about the origin of dragons?”
Something in the phrase tickled his memory. “Is the origin of dragons anything like the Origin of Storms?”
“Well,” the old dragon said, wheezing with laughter, “we’re both what you get when you put energy into a system. Dragons and storms are alike in that way. And we’re both an activity rather than an object. Is there some reason you ask?”
“I was told to seek the Origin of Storms,” he admitted. “You used the phrase, and—well, it’s an unusual phrase. So what is the origin of dragons?”
“We came from a long way away,” Kyrlmyrandal said. “Across the empty sky. We fell. And some of our old sky fell with us.” She tilted her head up, indicating the terrifying suns. “We have still a lot of letting go to manage. My children have all forgotten me. They have forgotten where we came from. They think we have a right to be in this place, rather than a lack of options, even when our very bodies poison it. But we have not always been here.”
“Where is this place, a long way away, that you came from?”
“We fell through the divided sky,” Kyrlmyrandal said. “I cannot tell you where the other side is. But the reason I am coming with you is that we owe this land a debt, and a stewardship. It is not ours. And we ruined a great many things when we came here. We poison what we touch. Our flesh is poison. And yet we have nowhere else to go.”
“And how did you come to—well, to this? Is it just age?” Then he coughed—not a real cough, of course. But an embarrassed simulacrum. “I’m sorry. That was a very personal question.”
“You have answered my similar question,” she said. “And as for me—I have been blind for a long time, metal man. It no longer really troubles me. Being alone troubles me far more.” She sighed, a vast and bi
llowing noise. “I was injured long ago. And injured more when my people fought their last war. The walking city brought you through the battlefield?”
“Yes,” he said.
“There are a few of us left. But as I said, the ones who remain are forgetful, and scattered. But though I am old … I am still Kyrlmyrandal.”
“Oh,” said a mocking voice from the left of them. “Is that what you are?”
The Gage had not seen anyone there a moment before. Now, however, he caught a glimpse of the sorcerer Ravana, hopping down off a high wall and landing easily. If the Gage never met another illusionist, it would be entirely too soon.
The sorcerer strolled over to them, leaving the Gage wondering if his wolf-lined coat was an illusion, also. He couldn’t imagine any creature of flesh being comfortable in that in weather like this. But Ravana was not sweating. His perfect insouciance was no less infuriating this time than the last.
“I thought you were a pile of old bones and leather,” the sorcerer said to the dragon. “Or maybe a haystack that walks.”
“Ignore that,” the dragon said to the Gage, who had taken one firm step toward the sorcerer.
“I’m really tired of this guy,” the Gage protested.
“Hitting him won’t solve anything.” Kyrlmyrandal took one more of her ponderous steps, again using her massive wing as a crutch to swing herself forward. “He’s not really there. Just a projection.”
“A projection with a really big mouth,” the Gage said, turning away again.
Ravana spat in the dust by Kyrlmyrandal’s giant claw. The spittle looked real enough. “Your empire is a poison, built on poisoned land.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” the dragon muttered, striding on.
Ravana reached out and rapped his knuckles on the Gage’s shoulder. It rang. “I wasn’t talking to the dragon that time, metal man. Are you sure you can’t hit me?”
“If I had an empire I might be concerned about that,” the Gage admitted. He kept walking, too, hurrying now to keep up with the dragon. To Kyrlmyrandal, he muttered, “Are you sure he’s an illusion?”
She reached over the Gage’s head with a wing and, without breaking stride, swatted at the sorcerer. Her wing passed right through.
“The Lotus Empire does not command your loyalty at all?”
“Even if it did, the Lotus Empire does not exist. And if it existed, what would you expect me to do about it?” the Gage asked. “I’m not a Wizard, and I’m not a warlord. It is not mine.”
“You’re a thing,” Ravana said, and gestured at himself. So flawless. So false. His flawlessness might have filled the Gage with fury, if the Gage hadn’t long ago given up on being furious at things as likely to give him ulcers. Then he remembered that he couldn’t get ulcers anymore, and conceded that he might be just the tiniest bit enraged after all.
“And you are a beast that feeds on war,” said Kyrlmyrandal. “And not even a very big beast. A small one. Doing the bidding of others, I imagine. Who are your masters, little beast?”
The Gage, walking as he was beside Ravana, was surprised to see the sorcerer taken aback. Just the flash of consternation across the illusionary face. He did not answer, and Kyrlmyrandal hung her great, heavy head over the Gage and said, “I hope you are very unhappy for a very long time, Ravana. And I hope you don’t even learn anything from it. That is the curse I curse you with. Also, you are in my house, and my house is my power. Go now, and do not come to this place again.”
Whatever the Gage expected, it was not for Ravana to freeze where he was, mouth open, and then blow away on a swirl of windswept grains as if he were two-dimensional and painted in sand. The Gage contemplated the absence where the sorcerer’s image had been for a moment.
Then he asked Kyrlmyrandal, “Did you kill him?”
“Alas,” said Kyrlmyrandal. “Just sent his illusion home. Come along now, metal man. Your vulture friend is waiting for you. Have you tried feeding him a bone?”
“Dragonbones are poison,” the Gage protested. “And how did you know about Vara?”
“Poison is a funny thing,” the dragon said. “In another dose, we call it medicine.”
“Mrithuri will not thank me if I poison her pet.”
“This Mrithuri is your ruler?”
The Gage rattled a shrug. “The birds answer to her. So, for the time being, do I.”
“Maybe you should try a bone, then.”
“I don’t eat,” the Gage said. “I especially don’t eat sentients.”
“Oh, of course,” Kyrlmyrandal responded. “Sometimes I forget that not everybody is a dragon.”
* * *
They walked a while longer down the spirals, and came to a place where a high arch—dragon-sized, and three times the Gage’s height above the processional—that the Gage had not noticed before led aside, to something like a courtyard. There was a small door next to it, at ground level. The door was closed and had no seeming means of entry. It was all the color of bleached bone: arch, door, doorframe, and the wall it stood within.
“I will walk through this arch,” Kyrlmyrandal said. “You should not. You must meet me on the other side.”
“Why must I not?”
She smiled a dragonish smile. “Because you do not wish at this time to be human.”
She stepped up and away from him, painfully raising and folding herself into and through the empty space above. Her wings creaked tight against her sides. She lifted one back foot into the aperture and then the other, like a cat creeping into a tunnel. Then her long, scarred tail slid within. The Gage watched until it all vanished.
He looked dubiously at the entry beside the arch, and discovered that it had opened. The featureless door that had stood within the frame was gone, and through it he could see … a different landscape. A dry, hilly landscape of scrub and colored clay and strange round rocks that seemed the slightest bit familiar.
The Gage shook his head and walked through.
What he found on the other side was … a landscape of the Lotus Kingdoms. Not the fertile reaches around Sarathai-tia, but the harsh hills of the north. Among it stood a woman, all in tattered white, with her long white hair braided loosely into a trailing cloud. She leaned on a stick as tall as she was, and she was quite tall.
The door behind the Gage had vanished. He could detect no sign of the arch. But he recognized Kyrlmyrandal at once, though he found her in a different place, a different body.
She raised her face to the Cauled Sun. Eyes white with cataracts, she looked unblinking at its coronaed edge, bathing her face in the warmth. She sighed quite comfortably.
“You’re joining us like that?” the Gage said.
The dragon snorted. It didn’t sound very different in her human nose than her dragonish one. Smaller, maybe. But equally resonant. “Well, I’m not going to let that one have all the fun.”
“Ravana is not human either, I take it?”
She did not deign to answer. She set out walking at a good pace across the uneven terrain, swinging her long stick before her. The Gage moved to keep pace.
“Sing out if I’m about to walk into something,” she said. “Or off of something, for that matter.”
“You seem to know where you’re going.”
“Of course I do. So now, Gage, you are a visitor in every land you enter,” Kyrlmyrandal said. “What is the history of this world that you would like to write, as a foreigner everywhere?”
The Gage hesitated. How did you answer a question like that? “I was born here. In this world, I mean.”
“You were made,” Kyrlmyrandal said. “You chose to be made.”
“I am what I wanted to be.”
“That is why Ravana speaks to you with such hatred.” Her stick bounced off a boulder with a clatter. She sidestepped around it, slowing as she navigated her way through a maze of scrubby bushes. “Am I getting myself in hopeless trouble here?”
“No,” the Gage said. “There is a road down a little.”
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“Ah,” said Kyrlmyrandal. “Well, a road will move a little in a thousand years or so.”
“Feeling hate is safer than feeling pain,” the Gage said, still thinking of her comment about Ravana.
“And not feeling anything is safest of all.” Kyrlmyrandal reached out without turning her head and rapped lightly on Gage’s carapace with her knuckles. He rang like a flat-toned bell.
She would take liberties, he decided. On the other hand, who was going to argue with a geriatric dragon? “Are we going to walk all the way to Sarathai-tia from here?”
“Chandranath is closer,” she said.
As they walked down the hill, a wide-winged shape fell out of the sky. Lower it dropped, and lower, until the Gage threw up his fist and felt the weight of his old friend Vara stroke it. The vulture settled its red-stained wings with an irritable flip, and croaked grumpily at the Gage.
The Gage inspected it. It seemed hearty and hale, for having come such a long way. No doubt the world was full of carrion.
He wondered how it had known where to meet him, or if it had taken a shortcut too. “Sarathai-tia is where my friends are under siege. Chandranath is the enemy.”
The dragon smiled her toothless smile. “Then that’s where we’ll find your sorcerer friend.” She licked her lips. “In the flesh and in the bone.”
23
Mrithuri handed a hairpin to the Dead Man. He was, it turned out, surprisingly adept at braiding hair. Hnarisha stood beside them, assisting, because Lady Golbahar had been spirited away with the cloistered sisters.
But it was the Dead Man who smoothed her coif and said calmly to her, “Don’t get too invested in your narrative of having been betrayed. It won’t be kind to you in the long run.”
“Look who’s talking, Dead Man.”
She felt him shake his head. “I could promise to punish her for you.”
Mrithuri laughed bitterly. The gold pins for her hair rang on the stone countertop, single sharp pings punctuated by the scatter of several tossed at once.
“Rajni.” Hnarisha reproachfully straightened the pins and laid them parallel in a shallow gilded tray. “You will shatter the opals.”
The Red-Stained Wings--The Lotus Kingdoms, Book Two Page 39