by NS Dolkart
A murmur went through the crowd. “It’s true, then?” one of the women said. “My daughter thought she’d seen a dragon a few weeks ago.”
“The Ardismen who fought in the south have been saying for weeks that they were attacked by a dragon,” said one of the younger men. “I told you all then, but you wouldn’t believe me!”
“The Dragons’ Prisoner is free, then?” a gray-haired elder asked.
“He is,” Phaedra said. “We freed him from his prison beneath the world of the elves, and he rescued us from the armies of Magor and Mayar. He told Criton he would meet us here.”
It was hard for Bandu to tell whether the Dragon Touched were more excited or more afraid to hear that the dragon would be coming to meet them in this place.
Goodweather made some very upset noises, but those had less to do with Salemis than they did with her wet bottom. Bandu gave her to Criton. She wanted him to remember that he had a real family to worry about.
He knelt on the cave’s floor and began to unbind the baby’s clothes, but was unable to keep his mind on the task at hand. “If you didn’t know Salemis was coming,” he asked, looking up, “why are you all here?”
“I called the meeting,” the elder said. “Even with Bestillos gone, turmoil is dangerous for our people. Who knows who may rise to take his place?”
“You come here to worship too, don’t you?” Phaedra asked her suddenly. “We found a goblet here once…”
The elder nodded. “It is a site holy to God Most High.”
Criton looked up again, though he was still not finished changing Goodweather’s swaddling clothes. “You still worship God Most High,” he breathed. “I – we – we are servants of God Most High too, but we know nothing of his worship. My mother did not teach me of our people’s God.”
Hunter made a noise of sudden understanding. “You’re Dragon Touched,” he said to the crowd.
“Yes,” the elder said, and for a moment she too dropped the disguise. But only for a moment. “Bestillos’ purge was not complete. Some of us managed to hide ourselves. As long as we kept out of the red priest’s sight, no one else could see our true forms. We have been hiding for a generation now – I have been the midwife to every child born in our community. We teach our children to hide their heritage before we let them leave our homes, and we marry them to each other while they are still young so that no outsider can know of us. It has kept us alive so far.”
“How many are there?” Criton asked.
“Each family has sent one person to this meeting,” the midwife answered. “There were only thirty-eight who survived the purge, but we are nearly two hundred now.”
Criton stood up. “Salemis is free, and God Most High has arisen. We should not need to hide any longer.”
There was a murmur of approval from the younger generation of Dragon Touched, but the elder answered coldly, “That is not a decision to be made hastily. If Salemis is indeed alive and free and coming to meet us here, we can decide that together after he arrives. You have risked our lives once already, Criton, son of Galanea. After years of quiet, your appearance drove the red priest half insane searching for the remnants of the Dragon Touched. How many times have the Ardismen nearly discovered us? Now here you are, telling us to openly announce our presence!”
“I’m sorry my being here brought danger upon you,” Criton said, “but I’m not sorry for what I’ve done. I’m not sorry I came here, and I’m not sorry that Salemis is free, and with God Most High protecting us, I’d be glad never to disguise myself again.”
Half the Dragon Touched seemed ready to cheer, but they did not, out of respect for their elder. “I wish I could agree with you,” the woman said, “but I was here during the purge. If the Dragons’ Prisoner himself comes here and tells us to follow your advice, then I will trust that it is the will of God Most High. Until then, you are only a dangerous young man.”
“We can wait,” said Hunter, putting a hand on Criton’s shoulder. “We only came here to meet Salemis.”
“Are you all worshippers of God Most High?” asked the same young man who had spoken before. “Even the… even the rest of you?”
Bandu shook her head, but Phaedra answered for them. “We know little of God Most High,” she said, “but Criton is our countryman, and the Goddess of our homeland has abandoned our people. We hope to find favor in your God’s eyes.”
The crowd nodded along, and even the elder looked pleased. Phaedra always knew how to talk to people.
They waited there together, talking, for more than an hour, and still the dragon did not come. Criton and Phaedra passed the time asking questions and getting acquainted with the Dragon Touched, learning their ways, and telling them about themselves. Bandu knew she should join them – it was important to Criton, and he was bound to want to stay with these people for a long time – but for now she stayed back, holding Goodweather and trying not to panic. There were too many people here, too many eyes looking at her. It was agonizing.
Hunter seemed to feel similarly, but he at least could listen to the others without getting tired of it. Bandu couldn’t bring herself to listen to Phaedra telling their story – her story – to these people, or to join Criton in caring about how the Dragon Touched worshipped their God. She just wanted to go somewhere quiet and hide.
“May I see the baby?” one of the women asked, and Bandu clutched Goodweather closer to her. “What’s his name?”
“She is Goodweather,” Bandu said, and the woman apologized for guessing wrong, as if Bandu cared.
After another hour, the crowd began to grow smaller as people went home to their families, afraid of what might happen if their neighbors noticed them gone for too long. Hour after hour went by, until only the elderly midwife remained with them, standing in the mouth of the cave and looking for Salemis in the darkening sky. Apparently her name was Hessina, and she was the matriarch of a family called the Highservants.
“The Highservants are the priestly line of the Dragon Touched,” Hessina told them. “My father was High Priest before the purge, before the worshippers of Magor tortured him to death and tore the temple down. I thought I would never see it rebuilt, but if Salemis comes to fight for our cause, how can we lose? We may not have believed every rumor that came our way, but there’s no denying that very few soldiers came back from the battle in the south. If Salemis was there, I can see why. What happened exactly?”
Phaedra repeated the story of the battle at Silent Hall, with even more detail than before, and also gave Hessina the leather she had been scratching on all these weeks. “I wrote it all down here,” she said. “Please, keep it.”
Bandu sighed. If these dead animal skins with the words on them were so wonderful, why did Phaedra have to repeat herself too?
Goodweather had fallen asleep in Bandu’s arms, so she laid the baby down on their empty sack of food and stretched her weary muscles. She ought to make Criton do more of the carrying.
By this time they had waited so long that the sun had set. Hessina stood and stretched. “Salemis will not come tonight. We can return tomorrow morning.”
It was an invitation, and Criton looked tempted, but Bandu shook her head. After all this, Goodweather was finally sleeping, and Bandu had no intention of waking her. “We stay tonight,” she said.
Hessina nodded and made to leave them. “May I escort you?” Hunter asked. “It’s almost dark; the climb will be treacherous.”
“I know my way.”
They settled down in the cave and tried to sleep. It was no good, and not because the ground was so hard. Criton kept her awake with excited chatter about how wonderful it was not to be the only Dragon Touched, and how much he looked forward to learning even more about their ways.
“You were not only the one before,” Bandu pointed out, gesturing to Goodweather between them.
“You know what I meant,” Criton said. “I don’t just have a child now; I have a people.”
“You have people before too,”
she answered. “Us.”
Criton growled in frustration and said, “Bandu, stop. You know what I’m saying. Stop misunderstanding me on purpose.”
Bandu did not answer. It was useless. Maybe tomorrow he would realize that he was the one who was doing his best not to understand, ignoring her because he didn’t want to admit that she was right. He didn’t want to talk about the way the search for his ‘real’ family kept him from making one – kept him from giving Bandu and their daughter the attention they deserved.
She slept fitfully, as she so often did now – Goodweather kept waking up wet and hungry, and though the baby soon fell asleep again, it always took Bandu longer than it ought to. The last time Goodweather woke her was around dawn, and Bandu looked around the cave trying to decide whether to rise or to try to squeeze in another hour or two of sleep before her companions awoke. She thought she could hear wing beats in the distance, but she couldn’t quite decide if they were real or if it was her imagination.
Then the ground shook, and she heard the dragon’s claws scraping against the stones outside. Not her imagination, then. Salemis was here.
5
Salemis
It hurt to leave his mate; it always had, and it always would. There was no feeling that could compare with the touch of Eramia’s divine presence in the world above, without a mesh of sky to come between them. What a reward God Most High had prepared for him, to open the heavens at his arrival! To leave now was pain itself.
But he had to leave, at least for a short time. His Dragon Children were waiting for him. If he did not return, who knew what they might think in his absence? What they might do? They needed his leadership, even if only for a moment, to set them on the path that his God intended for them.
So he left his God and his love and returned to the world that had hatched him, the world that now belonged to humanity. He arrived just as dawn was breaking, landing outside his former home for what must surely be the last time. That was all right – he would not miss it here. Now that he had seen his love’s home in the heavens, this mountain struck him as unspeakably dismal.
But it was nice to breathe proper air again, to feel the satisfying way it filled his lungs as he called his descendants to him. His voice rang off the mountains that had once been his enemy Caladoris, echoing in the valley between until he was sure all of Hagardis must have heard him. But his words were intended for his descendants alone, and only they would know what they were hearing.
The islanders who had rescued him, children of Tarphae, stumbled out of the cave that had once been his home, and was now a tomb.
“You’re here!” the dragon child Criton exclaimed.
“I am here,” Salemis agreed.
“Have you come to lead us?”
He had known they would ask this. Of course they would, poor things.
“No,” he said. “I have not come to lead you.”
The boy looked crestfallen. “Do not worry,” Salemis told him. “God Most High is with you. This world is not for me anymore, but that does not mean the heavens have abandoned you. Lead your people well, and our God will watch over you.”
Criton had been nodding sadly until he heard this last piece of encouragement. “What?” he cried. “I can’t lead the Dragon Touched – I only just found out they exist!”
“I understand,” Salemis answered. “You have nonetheless been chosen.”
“But I can’t!”
Salemis dismissed his objection with a hiss. “It is decided,” he said. “God Most High has chosen you to lead His people. Will you defy His wishes?”
Criton’s eyes widened, and he shook his head. “But why me?” he asked.
“I am a prophet,” Salemis told him, “but I am not God Most High. Only He knows why He has chosen you.”
“But why would He keep something like that from us?” Phaedra asked. “Shouldn’t Criton know what’s expected of him?”
Salemis looked down at them with sympathy. “Our God created the elves’ world Himself,” he said. “More than that – He watched the elves explore the world He had made for them; He taught them to sing and to pray and to write poetry; He guided their growth and gave them their castles as gifts. But still they wanted to live in the heavens, to join the Lower Gods or to replace Them, and when He told them they could not, they threatened to rebel. He and the Lower Gods had to create a new world to protect those creations that were salvageable. The first dragons were among these.
“God Most High no longer guides His creations as closely as He once did. Even when He intervenes on your behalf, He will not speak to you of it. It was partly His attentions that drove the elves to madness.”
The islanders looked sullenly at each other, but he knew they understood. They had seen the madness of the elves first hand, and would not deny that the younger world was better without the risk of succumbing to it.
Salemis gazed down upon the valley, where groups of his descendants were now streaming toward the mountain, a few of them already beginning to climb it.
“It is almost time,” he said. “Soon I will give the Dragon Children my message, and then I shall return to the heavens, possibly forever.”
“Please,” Phaedra said, “tell us about the heavens before you go.”
Salemis had to turn his head away lest he laugh too hard and incinerate them all. “The heavens are indescribable. I would not know where to start.”
“Then just tell me, was the sage Katinaras right about the Gods? Are They genderless? Do They have no families? Are They all equally ageless?”
“These are too many questions to answer at once,” Salemis told her. “The Gods are genderless if They choose to be so; They have no bodies that we would recognize, and do not reproduce the same way that we animals do. They sometimes take on masculine or feminine aspects, but that is entirely by choice, and is not immutable. They are not ruled by physicality, which makes Them very flexible. Those that tie Themselves to your world can be greatly affected by the actions that Their followers take. Even God Most High has changed since I last flew these skies.”
The islanders gasped. “How?” Criton asked.
“He has grown more forgiving.”
The Dragon Children had gathered sufficiently by then, so Salemis turned to face them, raising his voice so that all could hear. “I am Salemis,” he said. “I am the one you have known as the Dragons’ Prisoner, the prophet of God Most High. I have returned to you for a time so that you will know the words of the God Above All. Listen to these words, for the age of petty gods is coming to an end.
“God Most High has told me that the Dragon Touched will rise to become a great people, but I will not be leading you. My place is in the heavens now. Our God knows that you have followed His ways even in hiding, and has told me to elevate His servant Hessina as His High Priestess. Heed her in all matters of ritual and worship, as it will please your God.
“As for your leadership in matters of war and peace, God Most High has sent His servant Criton, the son of Galanea and a son of Tarphae, to lead your army and show you your path. Respect him, and you respect your God.
“My time here is at an end. Trust in God Most High and follow His path, and you cannot fail.”
With that, Salemis leapt from the mountain, gliding for a time on the warm summer air before beating his wings and rising up toward the heavens. If he missed anything, he thought it would be the good, fragrant air of this world. Perhaps if his God allowed him to, he would return sometimes, just to feel it in his lungs. But then, he didn’t want to weaken the mesh by visiting too frequently.
Besides, his love awaited him. Why should he ever leave again?
6
Narky
The Graceful Servant led him through streets and alleys, twisting and turning through Ardis until she finally unlocked the door to a small house and let him in. It was dark inside, dark enough that Narky stood helplessly for a minute while he waited for his eye to adjust. It was a long wait.
“Most of
the Ardismen do not know what I look like,” the Graceful Servant said.
“You do sort of blend in,” Narky said. Besides her distinctly Laarnese coloration, her features were not particularly memorable. In the dark, Narky found that he was already forgetting them.
“I have been spreading my teachings carefully,” she said. “Those who would learn more come here, where none can see each other. If one or more is captured, they will not be able to identify each other.”
“Fair enough,” Narky said, “but won’t they be able to lead people here?”
“Could you?”
“No, but I don’t live here. If I’d lived in Ardis all my life–”
“–then you would find your memories escaping you even as I led you here.” The Oracle’s voice was almost smug. “There is nothing to fear. We will not be found until we are ready, and besides, we will be ready very soon.”
That sounded pretty ominous. “Ready for what?”
“Ready for the open. Ready to convert thousands to the worship of Ravennis, Keeper of Fates and God of the Underworld.”
“God of the Underworld?” Narky repeated. “I thought there was no God of the Underworld.”
Laughter in the darkness. “You were right, but things have changed. There were too many Gods in the heavens, and nobody to watch the dead. The Keeper of Fates decided to seize that role, for all fates must end in death. You helped Him, you know, by burying my sisters at the foot of His temple. That is why He brought you to Laarna: not to prevent the city’s destruction, but to witness it.”
Narky felt sick. A city full of people. A city that Ravennis had essentially sacrificed to Himself. Narky hoped its citizens were being rewarded in the afterlife. It was the least their God could do.
“What was your part in this maneuver?” he asked.
“Just like yours, mine was to stay alive; to keep a thread of His power tied to this world while He established His kingdom in the world below. But that is nearly done. Soon He will require us to join Him, to sacrifice ourselves in His name and cement His place not only in the underworld, but in this world as well.”