The Dragon roars again, summoning up his fire, summoning up the Moon’s fallen children. Even now he believes he can make a blaze that will, if not consume, then at least hurt his Enemy.
But the Lumil Eliasul speaks through his flame. “Your greatest evil is not great enough to mar my smallest good. Your evil is bound in the confines of Time. Your workings only exist for a moment. Then they are swallowed up. But my good extends to all Times, all Timelessness, all worlds imagined and unimaginable. Vain, futile creature, for creature you are, created and sustained only at my will. Can you not see how all this fire is swept away and becomes nothing at all?”
The Dragon can see now. He can see it all too well.
But he shuts his eyes.
Then suddenly he is loosed from his Enemy’s grasp. He flies across Time and strikes against something solid, something gold, something that bellows DOOM! for him and him alone. He sees that he has struck the gong that he himself prepared, and the chains which had so recently bound tight the Moon bind him tighter still.
He feels Time closing in around him.
“You will sleep,” the Lumil Eliasul declares. “Now, Death-in-Life, you will sleep for a thousand mortal years. And you will feel those years through your sleep, even as a mortal would. When you wake, you will believe you have forgotten what I have revealed to you. But you will not forget.”
The Gold Gong is caught up then between two hands. The Dragon, chained in place, screams his fury and flames from the very depths of his soul.
Then he is hurled from the Heavens. Down to the Dark Water below.
The heat of his fall melts the gong, twisting its shape beneath him into that of a lumpish golden altar. But the chains hold fast, and he cannot break them. The altar stone strikes the Dark Water. It sinks, and the blackness of oblivion swallows up the Dragon.
So he will sleep for a thousand years.
The sky cracked at the seams. Great fissures opened in the clouds and, beyond the clouds, in the very fabric of the Dream’s eerie reality. Like the molten rock upon the lake’s surface, the sky rent, and beams of deeper darkness shot through and stabbed the wasteland below.
The Dream was crumbling away, swept up in the falling ruins of Hulan’s Garden. Through one of the cracks a fireball sped, and it may have been one of the Dara falling. It smote the ground, shaking the whole of that realm so that Sairu and Jovann both lost their footing and fell, dragging Lady Hariawan down with them.
The young dragon teetered in the air, his wings angling to keep his balance. He stared around at the ruination, and he smelled the stench of the falling stars. Was this then his sought-after vengeance? No. No, that could not be!
Hatred mounted inside him like the rising pressure of a volcano. He tore his gaze away from the horrors of the breaking Dream and focused everything he had upon the small figure of Jovann lying so helpless below.
“This is your fault,” he snarled. “You did this. You led my Father to the Gate.”
The ground continued to shake as more fireballs impacted with tremendous force, and the smoke of their landing filled the air, mingling with the formless mist. Jovann, struggling to regain his footing, put himself before Sairu and Lady Hariawan. He gazed up at the ugly shell of what had been his brother. “Stop this!” he cried. “Stop and return to me. We can still set this right. We can still fix what is broken between us. Please, Sunan.”
“That is no longer my name!” the dragon roared and spat fire in a stream from his throat. Sairu, seeing what was coming before it happened, grabbed Jovann by the back of his shirt and hauled him to one side, so that they narrowly missed incineration.
Briefly the smoke of the blast and the tormented mist shielded them. Sairu, looking up, saw the red heat of the dragon’s eyes burning through the haze.
It was almost a relief. A bizarre, unnerving relief, but a relief nonetheless. For in that moment of physical danger Sairu felt herself come alive, felt her numbed senses awaken. All thoughts of the strange sights and sounds and experiences beyond perception which had nearly overwhelmed her were pushed aside in the immediate need of now.
Now she must fight.
Now she must defend her mistress.
Now she must save Jovann.
The dragon beat the air with wings that seemed small compared to the enormity of his Dark Father’s mass. But they drove powerfully, creating a wind that blew back the smoke of his own fire, revealing the three hiding below. Only there weren’t three. There were only two.
Something struck him in the eye. It wasn’t sharp, but it was exact, and momentarily it hurt and blinded him. He snarled, gnashing great teeth, and whirled about, seeking the missile and its source. A shoe fell to the ground, landing near to Sairu, who brandished her knife at him.
She smiled.
“Puppy-puppy-puppy!” she cried, her voice a manic child’s jeering. “Little lizard-puppy! Not even a Chhayan dog-boy, are you? You’re just a little pup with a little puny flame!”
In the face of such a smile even lifelong hatred of his brother must be forgotten. Suddenly nothing in all the worlds was more important to the dragon than blasting that smile into oblivion. He opened wide his jaw.
Sairu leapt just in time, darting into the mist even as the spurting fire chased after her. The roar of it was so loud, she could not even hear Jovann’s shouts. She could do nothing but run, trusting that eventually even a dragon must pause for breath. Her hair and heels were singed by the heat of the blaze so close, but she kept ahead of it, if only by a step or two.
The dragon stopped, gathering himself for another burst. The putrid poison of his fumes was almost enough in itself to kill her. She hid her face in her sleeve, coughing but trying to stifle the cough. Her only safety now lay in the veiling of smoke and dust and ash.
“Monster!” she whispered, choking on the word. “Monster, are you here?”
Another shooting fireball struck, this one nearer than the others, and knocked her headlong. She shook herself, pushed up onto her elbows, and found that she was face to face with the cat. “Can you help me?” she gasped.
“Of course,” said the cat.
Then he was a man, shining and bright, and he dragged her to her feet. “This way,” he said, taking her by the hand, and she ran with the cat-man through the mist. She found before her feet a stairway of stone which had not been there a moment before, and she knew somehow that the cat-man led her back onto the Path she had lost.
She fled with him up the stairs, which spiraled high to nowhere without a guardrail on either side. She came to the top, many stories above the ground below, and looked down upon the dragon’s back.
He turned this way and that, searching for her, searching for Jovann. The world around them shivered again as another fireball struck, and a wall of heat and energy rippled through the air and nearly knocked the dragon from his flight. Recovering his balance, he hovered just below her.
“Are you sure about this?” the cat-man cried.
Sairu did not answer. She was already leaping.
In dreams a fall is either slow enough to seem like hours or instantaneously quick and heart-lurching. This fall was the latter. She had scarcely sprung from the high spiral stair when she found herself landing hard upon that scale-covered neck, so hot that she burned her hands and her face and felt her garments searing away. She screamed in agony then in anger when she saw something she recognized.
Princess Safiya’s sword.
Suddenly she wanted the dragon dead. Not stopped, not thwarted. He must die! He must suffer! He must be sent to the same burning hell where she had sent Chakra, Idrus, and the rest!
Dragon poison filled her lungs, filled her veins, seemed to take charge of her muscles. She brandished her knife and struck down into the same small gap Princess Safiya’s sword had found. She thrust in the knife, the hilt, her hand, all the way to the elbow, between his scales into the soft place at the base of his skull. She felt the burn of dragon’s blood spurting up to her shoulder.
But he couldn’t die. Not like this. Not by that blade.
He plummeted to the ground and struck with an impact like a faint echo of the stars falling all around them. When he rose up again, he bore the form of a man, but a man covered in ugly ash-black scales. Brilliant, fire-rimmed eyes burned away the mist as he turned, seeking the one who had caused him such hurt.
He found her. She lay stunned beneath his gaze. As he drew nearer, she coughed violently, her body convulsing as she struggled to regain mastery of her own limbs. She grimaced in ghastly facsimile of her grin and stared up at the approaching figure, so appalling in its near-humanity. The sky above him was black and streaked with the flaming tails of falling stars. Every step he made seemed to shake the earth, though he had not that power. She saw her death in his eyes.
And she saw something else which even in that dire moment drew her surprised gaze: the cluster of opal stones which Jovann had placed into her keeping. The stones she had been compelled to give her Lady Hariawan. The blossom from Hulan’s Garden, the light of her own secret desires shining in a setting of gold upon the monster’s hand.
“My brother was wrong,” the dragon said. “He told me that I would be defeated. By a maiden with a long knife.” His blackened lips curled back, revealing sharp teeth behind which a new flame grew. “I am no longer slave to any fate. I am my own master. I am—”
He roared, and his flame went wide as he jolted to one side, wrapped in his brother’s arms. He and Jovann fell hard and rolled, each desperate to gain the upper hand. The young dragon smoldered even in this human shape, but Jovann was strong. He pounded the fiend’s face and chest, any part of him he could reach, no matter how the scales cut his hands and made his knuckles bleed.
The dragon, pinned beneath his brother’s weight, stared up into that face—that face so like his had been—and saw there everything he hated most in his life. Jovann, panting and bleeding, beheld the fire in his brother’s eyes, the lava bursting at his lips. Even then, with his death about to strike, Jovann did not fear, for he was too angry and too determined. He raised his fist to strike one last blow.
But suddenly the fire in the young dragon’s mouth dulled and died. A trickle of smoke issued from his lips, and a faint, trembling word.
“Angel?”
At the sound of his brother’s voice—not the dragon’s growl, but truly the voice of Sunan—Jovann stayed his fists, and his heart caught in his throat. Still tensed, still prepared for death, he turned slowly and looked back over his shoulder.
Lady Hariawan stood above them, behind Jovann. Her leper’s rags were torn and blackened, and her hair was burned away, revealing her scalp in places. The ugly mark of the Dragon’s hand glowed red in the light of the falling stars.
Yet she was so beautiful, so dreadful, and so dire.
“Angel?” the young dragon said. Then a sound like a sob tore through his teeth. “Do not look at me! I am not worthy.” She took a step nearer, and he put out a protesting hand, the same hand upon which the ring of opals glowed.
Suddenly that hand was caught and slammed to the ground. The dragon screeched as a blade cut down, hacking at his scale-clad fingers. Three times Sairu struck, but still she could not sever the ring free. The dragon roared and flung Jovann from him, wrenching his arm from Sairu’s grasp and clutching his maimed hand and the ring close to his chest. He spun about wildly, ready to destroy them all.
But found himself standing eye-to-eye with Lady Hariawan. His angel.
“Sunan,” said she. “The Good Word.”
He shuddered at her voice, whimpering like a dog and cowering into himself. He tried to back away, but for every step back he took, she took another forward.
“You promised to love me,” she said.
“I cannot love!” he growled, tormented. “I have no heart, not anymore!”
“You have my gift,” said Lady Hariawan, and her eyes fell upon the ring on his half-severed finger. “You have my gift of the heart. And you will obey me.”
The dragon panted, heaving smoke from his lungs with every breath. Then he gasped, “Command me, mistress.”
Lady Hariawan drew herself up to her full height, and here in the Dream it was a greater height than in her own world. She seemed to transform, becoming once more the force she had been before her encounter in the Dream and the veil of lunacy that followed. She recalled, if only briefly, that she was the selected daughter of the Hari Tribe and the Awan Clan, that her father slew fifty men in a single day, that the name of Umeer was honored among the people. That she was the strongest, the brightest, the most powerful Dream Walker the priests of the Crown of the Moon had ever encountered. She became herself, and yet in her eyes there swirled the life-draining darkness of the Dragon’s venom. When she spoke, it was with great power:
“Leave us. Do not return. I never want to see your face again.”
Sairu and Jovann, drawing close to each other in horror of the sight playing out before them, watched the young dragon. The banishment Lady Hariawan commanded was a force more wounding than any hewing blade.
For a moment his scales fell away and they saw the young man. The son of the Tiger. The elegant scholar. The sorrowing orphan bereft of his mother. Jovann opened his mouth and began to speak, reaching out a hand as though to offer aid. But Sairu caught him and drew him back, shaking her head when he looked at her.
The young dragon who had been Sunan turned away from his angel. Holding her gift close to that place where his heart had once beat, he took three paces then, his body no longer able to contain the truth inside, burst into wings and supple tail and sinuous body. With a roar of flame he soared up into the darkness, higher and higher until he was merely a speck of fire streaking toward one of the cracks in the sky.
Then he was through the crack and gone.
Lady Hariawan, her face upraised to watch the dragon’s ascent, quivered suddenly and almost fell. Sairu was at her side in an instant, catching and supporting her, all the rage of dragon poison vanished in tenderness. “My mistress?” she gasped. “My mistress, are you unharmed?”
“No,” said Lady Hariawan, turning eyes that were almost, but not quite, empty upon her handmaiden. “No, I am not unharmed. I am very harmed indeed.”
The world groaned around them. The ground shook yet again, and the mist rushed over them so that Sairu was afraid she would lose both her lady and Jovann. But she held tight to Lady Hariawan’s arm and felt Jovann’s hand on her shoulder. “Hurry,” he said into her ear. “This world is coming all undone. We must find a way out.”
But when they turned together, every way they looked, every step they took, there was only more darkness, more smoke, and the streaking lights of the stars. “Where is the Path?” Sairu cried, and for the first time in her life felt panic welling up inside her. “Where is the Path? Monster! Monster, where is the Path?”
The cat was nowhere to be seen.
The piercing shriek of rock scraping rock at high speed shot white daggers through her head, and Sairu let go of her mistress to clap both hands over her ears. She felt the ground move beneath her even as it had done before. She felt part of it rise and the rest of it fall, and suddenly she was at the top of a deep crevice, staring down into a trench below her. It was so deep that the mist did not yet fill it.
And in the red glare of the stars, Sairu saw Lady Hariawan lying far below.
“Mistress!” she screamed. In another instant she would have hurled herself over the edge of that drop, heedless of all danger.
Someone caught her from behind, and she heard Jovann’s voice in her ear once more. “Sairu! No, you’ll be lost as well!”
“Mistress! Wait for me!” Sairu screamed. She felt Jovann’s hand restraining her. Every instinct
burst into play. She caught him by the wrist and the fleshy part of his arm, which she pinched down to the bone. She twisted both his arm and her body and sent him hurtling onto his back, slamming into the ground at her feet. The wind knocked out of him, he lay stunned. By the time he reached for her again, she was already over the edge, climbing down the crack in the world. “Mistress, wait!” Sairu called again to her lady down below.
Lady Hariawan, deep in the crevice, stirred. She stood, swaying uneasily on her feet, and saw the sheer walls rising before and behind her. The mist, like running water, poured over the high edges and crept down the walls, its long, white, finger-like tendrils grasping the rock that was not really rock, for there was nothing real in the realm. How well Lady Hariawan knew this. How well she knew that the white mist was neither more nor less than what her subconscious made of it.
And what she made of it was madness. Final madness descending upon her in slow, soundless flood. She stood at the bottom of the crevice, staring up, and it seemed to her that the mist was a living entity bent on devouring her.
She heard Sairu’s voice shouting high above, and she saw her handmaiden’s torn scarlet robes flashing so bright, even at that distance, even through the murk of the swarming Dream. Lady Hariawan blinked up at her, saw her trying to scramble down the rock face, and knew that she would never outmatch the mist. The Golden Daughter had failed. Even now, before the last note was sounded, the song of failure rang in Lady Hariawan’s ears. She would be lost; the mist would claim her. She would never again escape the Dream.
Lady Hariawan drew a deep breath and breathed the first curlings of mist into her lungs. “Return to your world, Sairu,” she called. “I am through with you.” Her thin voice struggled to climb up that height, but it bore neither bitterness nor forgiveness, nor even regret. Only resignation.
Golden Daughter Page 54