Memory of Dragons

by Michael G. Munz

  “Look, just — just drive for a while, okay?”

  “Alright.”

  She was taking him further from the hotel and most of his luggage. It ought to have unsettled him, he thought. He ought to be demanding answers. Instead, he watched the road. The sun set to his right; they were heading south. Soon the sky in the east grew purple, and there was only the sound of his breathing and the road beneath them.

  “Austin,” he grumbled finally.

  “Here I was looking forward to calling you ‘Yank’ the whole time.” She flashed a grin that softened after a moment in a somehow familiar way before she returned her attention to the road. “I’m sorry for what happened, Austin. I’m going to drive us a little farther, and then we rather do need to chat about some things.”

  He said nothing, sinking instead into the car seat, his mind going silent. Corinna’s driving became less reckless. He started to relax.

  After a time, she began to hum, so softly he almost didn’t hear her at first. It was a peaceful melody: quiet, yet with a strength to it that grew as the melody progressed. The song lulled him further into relaxation, and then he recognized the tune. Confused, he turned to Corinna and watched her face glow in the transient light of passing cars’ headlights.

  “What’s that you’re humming?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “Something from home. Does it bother you?”

  “No.” Austin swallowed, uncertain. Her accent was Irish. The tune was not. “I’ve just never heard it before.”

  It was a lie. He knew the tune, although not its name. Neither had Rhi when he once asked her about it, nor had Rhi recognized it when he reproduced it — not even when he told her she often hummed it in her sleep.

  Austin waited in silence as Corinna steered them off the highway. They drove through narrow roads bounded by houses and stone walls, and then farther into a treed area that might have been a park. She brought the car to a stop in a gravel parking lot bordering a lake whose still waters reflected the sliver of the rising moon. The engine ceased. Austin saw no one else around, though the light was poor. Corinna cast about to assure herself of the same before turning in her seat to face him. It was a few moments before she spoke.

  “I’m sorry again about stealing the pendant. I shouldn’t have done that.”

  “So why did you?”

  “For the thrill, mostly.” Her smile was apologetic. “Maybe you think that makes me a bad person.”

  “The thought occurred. I want it back.” It wasn’t his most pressing issue at the moment, but Austin decided he should repeat it anyway. “Along with a lot of answers.”

  She turned forward again, pressed back in her seat and looking skyward. “I know. But I need answers from you, too. Will you please tell me where you got it?”

  What? “What difference does that make?”

  “It’s important.”

  “Important? How about you tell me who you are and why you’re following me? What the hell did you do back there? Do you know that guy? What is going on?” He caught a breath. “I don’t trust you, you know.”

  “Oh, really? I would have never guessed.”

  Austin ignored the quip. “I mean, yeah, thanks for the rescue, but you say you need answers? Me first.”

  He waited as she studied him.

  “Tell me how you knew Rhianon,” she said after a few pensive moments, “and how you got the pendant. Then, I promise to tell you all you want to know.”

  He let her wait. Her promise carried no weight with him. He should refuse to answer on principle alone, yet the questions seemed innocuous enough. Then again, so had the thin man at first, and Maeron. He took the risk to break the stalemate.

  “Rhi was my girlfriend. We dated for a year and a half, and I don’t ever remember her being without the pendant. I lost her in a car accident a year ago, so as you can imagine you stole something a little bit special to me.”

  Corinna paled, swallowed, and turned away. “Dead?” She folded her arms and covered her face with one hand, body curling inward. Her grief seemed so genuine, Austin had to fight the urge to reach out. He only nodded, waiting.

  “I’m sorry,” she said finally. “I suspected, but . . .” Corinna shook her head. Her eyes glistened with restrained tears. “You loved her?”

  “What kind of question’s that? Yes, I loved her.”

  “Did she ever tell you why she kept the pendant?”

  “No.”

  “Did she remember her childhood?”

  “No. She didn’t.”

  “Did she tell you to go find the crystal?”

  “You said you’d answer my questions, not ask more of your own.” Austin scowled but, in the face of her obvious concern, he couldn’t cut her off completely. “But no, she didn’t. It was just chance. She liked to visit the place where I found it.”

  Corinna watched him. Was she was sizing him up or trying to decide what to say next? It felt like both. Abruptly, she sighed and sat back again, wiping her eyes with a rueful chuckle. “I have had a hell of a day.”

  “I know the feeling.”

  “Oh, I’m not sure you do.” She took a breath. “It’s difficult to choose where to begin. Alright. I would say a lot of this is going to sound barmy, but now that you’ve seen what Maeron can do, I expect you’ll have an easier time.

  “I was born in Ireland. My father’s Irish Catholic, my mum just alcoholic. She ran off when I was fourteen. I did the same at eighteen. That was six years ago, and I’ve been bouncing around England ever since. I play violin and piano, occasionally even getting paid for it. I work in a coffee shop to fill in the cracks, and, for fun, sometimes, I steal from tourists.”

  “That part I knew.”

  She smiled, appearing bashful. “You didn’t ask for my life story, but that’s who I am ‘in a nutshell,’ as they say. When I nicked the pendant, that was pure chance. I didn’t know anything about you, or Maeron, or the crystal, or — or anything I’m about to tell you.”

  Austin resisted asking how she learned, not wanting to interrupt the flow of information before she could continue. Numerous hypotheses sprang to mind.

  She went on. “Ever dropped acid? Don’t answer that. Rhetorical. And before you ask, I’ve been clean for years. But there’s this moment where your perceptions are blown wide open in a single instant. That’s — that’s nothing compared to this. Absolutely nothing.”

  “You’re about to say, ‘thousands of years ago,’ or something like that, aren’t you?”

  “No. Well, yes. But it’s more than that. There’s a world out there, beyond ours. And I don’t mean that metaphorically, either. I couldn’t tell you exactly how — well, there are theories — but it’s connected to ours.”

  “Another world. You’re serious.”

  “Is that so much more remarkable than what’s already happened to you today?”

  Though arguable, he begrudged the point. “So Maeron’s from there? He said something about being able to go back.”

  “He is. So — ” She stopped, seeming to rephrase. “So was Rhianon.”

  At first Austin could only stare. “No, that’s — ” The implications rolled over him too quickly to grasp, assuming it was even true: the magnitude of what Rhi lost, that he had known a woman from another world . . .

  “How’d they get here?” he tried. “Did he come after her from — wherever?”

  “It’s called Rhyll, and please let me get all this out first.” After a moment’s consideration, during which Austin fought back further questions, she went on. “It’s not as developed there as here. Not in some ways, anyway. And, I think, it’s smaller. But they have nations, same as here. And they have magic.”

  “I’d say there’s fairly convincing evidence we’ve got it here, too.”

  “It’s not the same. A bit over a century ago, the nation of Treger found something near their capital city: a small torrent of energy, fixed in mid-air in a cave opened after an earthquake. It responded to no stimulation. No
manner of force, physical or arcane, could move it. It drew into itself anything that touched it, irrevocably.

  “The best minds came to study it. Was it a threat? A natural phenomenon? Would it get larger in time, or shrink to nothing? Treger kept it secret at first, but word spread eventually, and as they found no reason to think it dangerous — or able to be stolen — effort to keep the secret lapsed.

  “At first it was thought to annihilate the things it drew into it, but it wasn’t long before they discovered it took those things somewhere. The torrent — a rift, really — formed a passage between Rhyll and a wholly separate realm: by all accounts a formless oblivion, devoid of light and magic. But they couldn’t move the rift, couldn’t harness it as an energy source. For a time, it was only a cosmological curiosity — like a geyser but, you know, different. Then they hit on the idea to make it a form of punishment.

  “At best, passing into the rift was a death sentence. At worst, endless exile to a timeless limbo. It made for a good deterrent, plus some political flair. What leader would merely execute a hated criminal when the populace found it so much more satisfying for them to be ‘consigned to the rift?’ And there are things in Rhyll difficult to kill in normal ways, some which can’t be killed at all. So spectacle or need ensured the torrent saw regular — if not quite constant — use over the centuries.

  “What’s more, on rare occasions they pitched into to the rift objects judged too dangerous to exist, either by virtue of the objects themselves, or the object’s value. At least twice, unique but beneficial things were taken to the torrent in great diplomatic ceremonies as a peacekeeping measure, so no one would war to possess them.”

  “Sounds like a pretty lousy solution,” he couldn’t help but say.

  “Well nobody asked you, did they?” She smirked. “Here’s where it gets important. Very recently, someone sussed out that those first ones to study it made a mistake. They had sent spells and devices through the rift designed to explore and return images, but those devices were powered by magic. Magic works differently on the rift’s other side, Austin, when it works at all. So the spells told them nothing. The devices failed near instantly when they arrived, and what little they did manage to do led to the wrong conclusions.”

  She leaned closer. The tale’s gravity couldn’t mask her unmistakable delight in sharing its culmination. “You’ve guessed by now what I’m about to say next, haven’t you?”

  “It leads here,” he said.

  “Smart Yank.”

  “So some other world used us as a dump for criminals and toxic waste? That Rhi was — ? Wouldn’t we notice?”

  “Rhianon wasn’t a criminal,” Corinna assured him. “Neither was Maeron, for that matter — or not so judged when he came, anyway. But time works differently here than in Rhyll. Or transit through the rift stretches it out somehow, I don’t really know. The reason you haven’t seen a bunch of strange creatures flooding in is, from this world’s perspective, things have come through at a slower rate, beginning over thousands of years in the past.

  “The rift’s physical exit point isn’t fixed on this side, either. It shifts. One month it might be in Norway, another in America, another in some dingy coffee shop in Bristol where a potbellied bloke named Max undervalues his employees — probably not, but I’d love to see the look on the sod’s face. But do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Time dilation? Something to do with the Uncertainty Principle?”

  She looked at him as if he had coughed up a live trout. “I’m saying that our legends: vampires, banshees, sea monsters . . . That thing in Mexico, what’s it called: chupacabra? They’re real things from Rhyll, banished through the rift. Tales of some are exaggerated over the years, but they’re based on actual beings. The ones with unlimited life spans or other ways of breeding may still exist! Isn’t that a kick in the bum?”

  “Dragons?” Austin asked.

  Corinna sobered, frowning on a bitter chuckle. “Very definitely.”

  “So, assuming I believe you at all, why’d Rhi come here?” He guessed it had something to do with freeing Boden, but kept silent about that to compare what he knew with Corinna’s story.

  “That crystal you found: how much do you know about it?”

  “I know Maeron wants it. Obviously it’s important, and he wants to take it back with him, but beyond that?” He shrugged.

  “And Rhianon’s connection to it, did he say?”

  Austin hesitated. “Nothing I think I can trust. Don’t you know? You seem to know everything else somehow. Why is that?”

  “The pendant — ” she began, then stopped. Her eyes held his, searching perhaps his thoughts as much as for what to say. “I have Rhianon’s memories,” she blurted.

  Austin gaped. Corinna went on before he could find any words.

  “Everything she lost before she met you, I — she — put into that pendant, inert. When you found the crystal, it triggered the pendant to shatter, just like she designed it to. Every memory Rhianon ever had poured right into me.”

  Austin flushed. “You — ? And that’s how you know me? You remember everything that she and I — ?” No, that didn’t track, or she would have known his name. But she had hummed Rhi’s tune. The look in her eyes, her manner — there were aspects he recognized. He swam against the questions flooding to mind, unable to pick any.

  “I don’t know you, Austin. I don’t remember anything she knew after she put her memories into the pendant. Everything she knew and experienced after that point is lost.” She laid a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry.”

  Corinna said nothing, perhaps waiting for him to sort through things. Yet there was too much to manage at once. The moon’s thin crescent rose higher over the lake.

  “I know she hid the crystal,” Austin started. “I guess it stands to reason she blanked her memory to keep Maeron from pulling it out of her mind like he tried with me. But if she could do magic, why not fight him? Why . . . mutilate herself?”

  “Because it wasn’t that simple.” She paused to glance across the lake. “There’s a field of magic based on memory. She was good — very good, actually — but Maeron is especially practiced at it. In all this world, no one alive but Rhianon and Maeron himself knew about both Rhyll and the secret of the crystal. That’s a unique set of memories — like its own scent, you could say — and he used that to track her. She had to get rid of everything, all I knew about Rhyll, growing up there, learning magic. Even if she had the skill to remove memories selectively, to keep any of it was too great a risk. It was the hardest thing she ever had to do, Austin. Believe me, I know. I can still feel it like I did it yesterday, because, in a way, I did.”

  She kept slipping in and out of perspective, Austin noted, talking as if she were Rhi. How much was Corinna still the woman who stole Rhi’s pendant and how much was she Rhi herself? He couldn’t bring himself to ask.

  “That doesn’t explain why she couldn’t fight him,” he said. “I saw what you did to him back there. You knew how to do that because Rhi did, right? So she had some power to defend herself.”

  “I told you, magic works differently here.”

  “Differently?” Austin burst out. “She wiped her memory into a pendant! Maeron tossed me to the ground and held me there! You set the guy on fire, for crying out loud!”

  “And it didn’t bloody do more than slow him down, did it?” she shot back. “I know it’s a lot to take in, but you need to calm down. I’m the one who’s got all this in me; think how I feel.”

  “I don’t know how you feel! Are you Rhi? Are you a thief who got turned into a friend of hers? I can see her in your eyes, but I don’t know who you are!” He glared at her just long enough to catch a hint of how Rhi used to steel herself in a fight, and then turned away. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to yell.”

  She chuckled. “Oh, I figure you did. I’ve had far worse in my life, believe me.”

  Which life? He kept the question to himself.

  “Look, I can e
xplain it better, but we’ve already sat in one place too long. Give me a moment.”

  Without further explanation, she closed her eyes and intoned some quiet words he couldn’t decipher. The air took on a barely perceptible thickness. For a moment it seemed as if her voice came to him across a great distance, nearly lost in the space between, until finally, with a popping of his ears, it stopped.

  “What did you just do?”

  “Made it so Maeron can’t track us, to put it simply. For the time being. You’ve seen the crystal. It’s not as distinct a memory as Rhianon’s, but it’s got a certain range. And if he thinks to check again for Rhianon’s memory . . .” She tapped a fingertip to her temple.

  “So why couldn’t Rhi have done that?”

  Corinna started the car again, steering them back to the road. “It’s dangerous to use magic around the crystal. I’m taking a risk doing this much, but for now it’s our only option. Let’s get away a little further and I’ll tell you more.”

  “Do you truly believe she holds Rhianon’s memories?” Boden asked in his mind. “Do not reveal my presence. Answer ‘okay’ to her question for yes to mine.”

  Austin hesitated. With no time to think it out, he went with his gut. “Okay. I think.”

  “I have heard what she has said. I can confirm or deny none of it. I can only tell you to watch for lies couched in the truth, and to say nothing of my speaking to you. I helped defend your mind against Maeron’s assault, did you notice? I can do the same against hers, should she try anything. She may not be the enemy I thought, but she yet may. We cannot know for certain.”

  Austin wanted to ask more, of both of them. Instead, he watched the road pass away and listened again as Corinna hummed Rhi’s tune.

  TEN

  Corinna watched Austin from where she sat on a bed in the motel they had found.

  “For you to fully understand,” she said, “you need to know about Rhyll’s history.”

  He sat facing her on the edge of the second bed, looking pensive and chewing on one of the burgers they had bought from a take-away place down the street. Her own lay untouched on a wrapper next to her. She folded one leg up under herself, let the other dangle, and, as the bloke gave no indication of interrupting her, decided to begin at the beginning.