Kings of the North

by Elizabeth Moon

  “I’m sorry,” Arian muttered.

  “It is well,” the man said. “Now, I must follow the fire, for reasons that do not concern you, and I must also find who set it. I would have one of you, just one, as my guide and companion. The rest should ride to warn others, as you were planning.”

  The patrol leader opened his mouth, but the man’s glance silenced him; the man looked at each in turn and then at Arian. “I choose you. Come.” He walked away east down the road. Arian’s horse shuddered, then took a step forward.

  “Arian, you can’t—” the patrol leader started.

  “I must,” she said. She wondered why she was so certain of that, but she had no doubt.

  When they reached the place where the fire had crossed the road, the man paused, knelt, and put his face to the stones that stood blackened out of ashes. Arian, watching closely, thought she saw his tongue emerge, touch the stone, and glow slightly.

  He stood up once more looking north to what had been Riverwash, where a few yellow fires burned to either side. “Fools,” he said. “They have no idea what they have loosed, or what the cost will be.”

  “Do you know what this fire is?” Arian asked.

  “Indeed, yes,” the man said. “But it will do you no good to know; it will only frighten you.”

  “I am frightened now,” Arian said.

  “No,” the man said. “Not truly. Not yet. Tell me what you know of this fire, what the Pargunese king told you.”

  “He said it was a weapon, a gift of the Weaver—the Pargunese think of the demon we call Achrya as their benefactor, for she gave them lands the rockfolk had barred to them.”

  “The rockfolk had reason,” the man said.

  “And there was a hill of some kind … with black rock, I think he said. The rockfolk told them to stay away from it, but Achrya told them they should enter and take what they found.”

  “And what did they find?”

  “The king did not say, other than unquenchable fire.”

  “I wonder if he knew.” The man stopped, turned to look toward the river. Along the fire’s track marched a group of soldiers, pike tips gleaming in the light that the fire still gave. “You should dismount,” he said to Arian. “Your horse will bolt; you might be injured. Take your horse over there—” He pointed some distance away.

  Arian did as she was told, aware of a slight compulsion, but it also seemed sensible. If this were a magelord—she hoped not a renegade Verrakai—magic would certainly terrify her horse.

  When she looked back, she saw no man but a large lump in the road, like a pile of rocks. Her first thought was daskdraudigs, but daskdraudigs did not have faceted sides … glittering …

  Scales, she thought, an instant before the long snout lifted and the great eyes opened. Yellow as fire, bright as fire … the eye on her side of its head lowered a lid for an instant and then focused forward.

  She could feel her horse trembling and laid her hand on its neck. “Be easy … it won’t hurt you.” She hoped. The horse quieted, lowering its nose to nudge her.

  The soldiers marched nearer; she could hear the tramp of their feet, the jingle of their mail. The dragon shed light and heat, not as hot as the flame but steady; Arian could see back down the scathe-fire’s track to the soldiers.

  “Well, now,” the dragon said to them. “I’m afraid you have done me an injury.” Its voice now had no human overtones.

  They halted, congealed into a compact mass, pikes askew. The smell of hot metal grew stronger; it was like being in a forge.

  “What you want?” their leader said, in the same accent Arian had heard from the Pargunese lords. His shiny breastplate gleamed in the dragon’s light, and a plume waved from his pointed helmet. Arian had to admire his courage, if not his sense.

  “Recompense,” the dragon said. “For your discourtesy and your abuse of my hospitality.”

  “What—”

  “You stole my property. You used my property to call attention to me and my kindred, and our special places. Were you not warned away?”

  “No,” the man said. “The Lady Weaver said we could—”

  “Your Lady Weaver,” the dragon said, “is but a morsel to season my feast.” Its snout lowered almost to the ground. “Did not the rockfolk forbid your going beyond the great falls?”

  “Yes, but what of it? They little folk weren’t using that land.”

  “And did they not specifically forbid you to touch any hill with black stone, with a spine in the shape of mine?”

  The man laughed. “The shape of yours? Do you think I don’t know you’re a bunch of men in a dragon puppet, like those at winter fairs that come to scare the children? There are no dragons, not in these days. They died out ages ago, before the magelords came north.” He turned to his men. “Come, now: this is no true dragon. Once we stick those pikes in it, you’ll see it’s naught but painted wood and canvas, lit from within by lamps—it will burn like their towns and trees—” He drew his sword and marched forward, followed by his troop.

  The dragon did not move; the great eyes closed, its light flickered.

  “And don’t think you can escape by running out the tail,” the officer yelled. The men moved more quickly, encouraged … ran up and rammed their pikes into its snout. And clanged on the scales without effect.

  “You made a mistake,” the dragon said, opening its eyes again. “Not for the first time.” Tilting back its head, lower jaw still on the ground, the dragon let out a single spurt of flame, white as that burning in the forest, and the men—all of them—were gone in an instant. It tilted its head toward Arian. “I do not like cruelty,” it said, “but I will not tolerate discourtesy, and I am not fond of stupidity.”

  Arian did not move.

  “And are you truly frightened now, Half-Song? Or have you will to move and wit to speak?”

  “Do you blame all for one’s error?” she asked.

  The dragon turned its head completely toward her, and both eyes blinked. “I perceive you are not frightened, for that question is indeed one of wit, from a creature of mixed blood. It would indeed be unjust to blame all for one’s error, but these men came from a city burnt to ash by fire they raised—all its life turned to naught. So would you defend them?”

  “For their invasion of this land, no. For their destruction of Riverwash and its people, no. For their intent to burn and destroy, no. But only one was discourteous.”

  “Ah. And you thought it was that alone to which I responded?” Without waiting for an answer, the dragon went on. “I admit the possibility of confusion, but discourtesy was not all for which they were judged. Would you, then, save your land of forests? And that king I perceive you love?”

  “I would,” Arian said.

  “At what cost?”

  “At any cost,” Arian said. “Life for life, if need be, though—as you dislike stupidity—I would prefer to spend it only to advantage.”

  The dragon’s tongue lolled out, steam rising from it. “Come, then,” said the dragon. “I know you to be valiant, Half-Song: touch your tongue to mine.”

  “My horse,” Arian said.

  “Quiet him with your taig,” the dragon said.

  Arian held her horse’s head and murmured the foal chant; the horse relaxed, its head drooping, its lower lip sagging. Arian looked back at the dragon. “Whatever you do to me, do no harm to the horse.”

  One eye opened wider. “Valiant, indeed, to give orders to a dragon.”

  “The horse did you no harm,” Arian said. “Let it be.”

  “Then remove your things from its body,” the dragon said. “Then should … something … happen, it will have no hindrance in its flight.”

  Arian wanted to ask if something would happen but instead untacked the borrowed horse and stacked her gear neatly as if she were camping for the night.

  The dragon waited, silent and motionless, its light almost withdrawn, only the tongue laid out on the ground glowing dull red, steaming.

 
The nearer she came, the hotter it felt; the tongue, close up, glowed like red iron. She looked up; the dragon’s eyes stared beside its snout, straight into her face.

  Then she bent and forced herself to put out her tongue and touch the dragon’s, against all instinct and reason.

  It felt cold and tasted of mint.

  Startled, Arian pulled back; the dragon reeled in its tongue and said nothing for a moment. Then it sighed, a warm gusty breath that smelled less of hot metal and somewhat of summer.

  “Half-Song, you have surprised me, and I am not often surprised. You have done well and you please me, but there is work to do. Will the horse I promised not to harm live if turned loose here?”

  “Maybe,” Arian said. “But it is winter; it needs shelter and feed, and the place I planned to spend the night is no more.”

  The dragon sighed again. “I do not break promises; the horse must be taken where it can live. And yet I need you, Half-Song. Can it live here through a day?”

  “Yes, but not many days.”

  “I do not need many days. Pick up that bow and quiver, and stand on my tongue.”

  Arian picked up bow and quiver, and stepped onto the tongue: it felt solid as stone beneath her even as she realized she was being drawn into the dragon’s mouth, past teeth more than half her height.

  “Do not be surprised at anything,” the dragon said. She realized it was not speaking with its mouth, but in her mind. “There will be strangeness, for one of your nature.”

  Then the dragon gulped, and Arian felt herself sliding, sliding … and landed in something soft and springy. So, she thought, I’ve been swallowed. She felt around—whatever the space, it was warm, dry, and surprisingly comfortable. She settled down, her back against a lump soft as a pillow, and laid her bow across her knees. She dozed off, waking some unguessable time later when the dragon spoke to her again.

  “Stand up, and hold your bow close to your body.”

  She did so, and in the next moment the softness under her feet hardened; the sides of the container—stomach?—closed in, and she was back in the dragon’s mouth, peering out between the teeth. Ahead was a fast-moving shape of white flame, but the dragon was faster.

  “String your bow.”

  Arian strung it. Questions raced through her mind, but she said nothing. The dragon, she hoped, knew what it was doing and questions might distract it.

  “Take out five arrows; put them point down in my tongue.”

  In the tongue? Arian took out the arrows and set them point down; they sank a little into the tongue that felt so solid under her feet. As she looked, the steel points changed, glowing first red, then white, without losing any of their elegant deadly shape.

  “That fire below is my child. I cannot consume it; it is against all law. And your arrows alone would not touch it, but now they are tipped with dragon fire. Aim where I tell you.”

  In another instant, she was standing on the ground, with the raging flames coming toward her, their heat beating in her face, and beside her stood the man-shape she had seen before, the flames reflected in his eyes. He held out a handful of her arrows.

  “Right in the middle—see the purplish ones?”

  Arian set an arrow to the string and drew; the blackwood bent as sweetly as ever, and she sent that arrow straight and true into the purple-white flames. At once, those flames died, leaving a black hole in the wall of fire.

  “There next!” He handed her another arrow. Arian shot again, and again the flames died; the others sank a little. He handed her another, and directed the next shot and the next. Each time the remaining flames lowered, and with the last shot, they all sank to nothing. The yellow fires to either side also wavered and died by themselves. The wind softened to nothing.

  “Like daskin arrows for a daskdraudigs,” Arian said.

  The man murmured something she could not understand and then sighed. “Yes,” he said finally. “And also no. For a daskdraudigs pierced by daskin arrows returns to its true self, which is stone, freed of the evil that animated it. Dragonfire arrows kill the young and destroy their true nature.”

  “That was … a young dragon?”

  “Our young are perilous, even for their fathers,” the man said. “What they are, we all have been, but those of us suffered to live grow old and understand the consequences of actions, ours and others.”

  “Why do you call me Half-Song?” Arian asked. “Because I am half-Sinyi?”

  “It might have been that, but no. You are half a song this land wants to sing. The other half of the song approaches, but the time is not yet.”

  “Kieri?”

  “Your names have no meaning for me. Sorrow-King, I name him.”

  “He’s coming here?”

  The man looked at her, his eyes now glittering fire though the other fires were out. “And we must go.”

  “No! I must see him; I must tell him—”

  The man’s shape vanished; the dragon returned, bulking huge in the darkness; only its eyes were alight. “This is not over; more fire will come before I find all my foolish sons. One who should be here is not; we must learn why, and fetch her hence.”

  “The Lady …” Arian breathed. “But she hates me.”

  The dragon’s eyelids lifted. “What matter, when her realm is imperiled? I must have you, for the strength of your bow, and the land must have her, to command the taig—you cannot do that, can you?”

  “No,” Arian said. “I can sense it, and help it, but not command it.”

  “Then once more, come. There is no time to waste; by dark tomorrow we must have that immortal back, who should never have left.”

  Arian found the experience as strange as the first time and more disquieting. The Lady had laid glamour on her once—what if she did it again? What if the Lady bespelled her into thinking she did not love Kieri? Could she resist all the Lady’s magery? If the Lady was so angry with Arian that she had stayed away, let the forest be burned—but that was a violation of the taig. The Lady could be wrong; the Lady could be selfish …

  But when the dragon once more let her see out, it was another fiery scene, and once more she thrust arrow tips into the dragon’s tongue and took them out tipped with the dragon’s fire … and once more the arrows stopped the scathefire. This time, others were close enough to hear: the shouts of terror as the flames towered over the trees, the shouts of relief when the flames fell.

  They left quickly, and the next thing Arian saw out the dragon’s mouth was a small, beautiful vale surrounded by mountains. She had no idea where it was, physically, but she knew what it was: the elfane taig, the holy center of the Ladysforest. Had the Lady come here to calm herself? Or sulk?

  “It is a complicated matter,” the dragon said. It had not changed back to a human form this time. “The history between us—the Sinyi and dragonkind—reflects certain fundamental differences in our natures. We are more comfortable, for the most part, with rockfolk, and of the rockfolk, with the kapristi, who are of the Law.”

  Arian had no idea how this bore on the problem of scathefire or her relationship to Kieri.

  “I am very old,” the dragon said. “And it is the nature of dragons to grow more wise as they age. It is not so for all.” It rubbed its chin on the knuckles of one foot. “Sinyi … the Sinyi have beauty and wit and grace and share with the First Singer and Adyan the gift of making beauty. What they do not have is the clarity and logic of elder dragons: they are unable to think out the long consequences, and thus they make foolish mistakes.”

  “Are you saying … the Lady makes mistakes?”

  “Flessinathlin Orienchayllin Belaforthsalth,” the dragon said, drawing out the names. “If she were a dragon, and not Sinyi, the world would be different.” One eye blinked. “I do not say perfect, but the problems would not be the same. And she would have been a most difficult dragonlet to bring to wise maturity, not only because of her sex.”

  “Female dragons are less wise?”

  A huff of hot air a
nswered that. “You have no need to know more of us, Half-Song, than pertains to the moment. I lay the foundation of your understanding where it is needed, and on it you must build a sound structure of your own.” Arian said nothing; the dragon gave a short nod and went on. “The Lady of whom we speak is hasty for a Sinyi, and for a Sinyi more apt to risk conflict, though in both far less than humanfolk. It was her choice to center the elfane taig not only here, in a valley apt for such by its shape—a chalice to hold wonder—but to construct underground, in the rock, the physical center. She purchased stone-right of a dwarf king; she hired kapristi, gnomes, to carve the stone, though elven artists decorated it.

  “You know what happened,” the dragon went on. “Evil came—partly by other actions she took—and it became the banast taig, cursed. She had the courage to cut away that part of her power trapped there, accept diminishment, and she had the strength to still rule the Ladysforest. But when the evil was destroyed—and I have heard only that a paladin accomplished that—she yearned to rebuild the elfane taig as it had been, warding it more closely, and for that she sought once more the help of rockfolk.”

  “She’s never liked rockfolk,” Arian said, before she could stop the words.

  “It is wise, when asking help of those one does not like, to consider well all consequences and treat one another with great care,” the dragon said. “Words had been said, when the Lady first departed, words of blame to the kapristi as if the banastir were their fault, as if the evil entered through some flaw in the construction, which was not true. Perhaps the Lady had forgotten those words, but kapristi do not forget. The kapristi never thought stone-right should have been sold; that quarrel smoldered between kapristi and hakkenen through times that would be long for you. And the dwarves, while always claiming their right to sell their own stone-mass if they wished, resented the Lady’s decision to ask for kapristi workmen—not just once, but twice.”

  “She probably thought it would balance her favor to buy from dwarves but hire gnomes in the first place, and would be an insult to gnomes not to hire them the second time.”

  “A failure of foresight,” the dragon said, “or understanding of the nature of the rockbrethren. As she failed to anticipate the results of her actions before.”