A Cruel Tale

by Alex Sapegin

The torches that were half-way burnt were flung to the ground; they were immediately replaced with new ones. Soon the whole road was strewn with red-hot coals, along which the Arians continued to walk calmly with their bare feet. No one in the procession had shoes.

  The torch procession went to the city, where new rivers of fire met up and merged with it. The road, straight as an arrow, brought the living river to the wide square in front of the portal arch. As soon as the first torch-bearer crossed the invisible barrier, magical lanterns lit up on the poles surrounding the square. A bright light lit up the surrounding area. The blanket of darkness, having been burnt up on the sparks from man-made fireflies, receded. The owl, with an eerie, quiet hoot, flew to the frame of the arch, where it hid in the thick shadows. The human river spread across the square.

  The palanquin, covered with a veil, was met with a roar like thunder. The image quivered. Apparently, the frightened bird wanted to fly away, but the will of the controlling mage held the feathered creature in place.

  Carrying the palanquin onto a high platform in the center of the square, the bearers retrieved long narrow blades from their scabbards and froze like statues.

  The long-bearded old guys ascended to the platform. The main guy stepped forward. Raising his golden staff, he started saying something. It was impossible to tell what he was talking about—the bird’s hearing brought only a creaking sound, the whistle of the wind, and the hum of the crowd to the listeners’ ears.

  The old priest finished his speech and pulled the cloth from the palanquin. The crowd went wild. Obeying some sort of signal or impulse, the right hands of all those crowded onto the square shot up into the air. Every fist contained a long curved knife. Their eyes sparkled with a fanatical gleam. The old guys moved away from the palanquin.

  Miduel jumped up from his chair.

  “It can’t be,” he whispered with his pale lips, looking at the skull and front legs of the dragon, between which lay a thick book and a large medallion with a blood-red stone in the center, shining with a dull yellow gleam. “The Book of the Guardians… The key… It can’t be….”

  Miduel turned and looked at the others. The elf’s eyes were glowing with a crazy gleam. His jaw was quaking.

  “They won’t stop with the orc lands. They’ll go all the way to Kion and Rovinthal in the Rauu Foothill Principality. The Arians won’t make any deals with anyone. Nothing will stop them.”

  “Why?” Gil asked dumbfoundedly.

  “The Arian priests have the Key and the Book of the Guardians.”

  “What?” the King of Tantre asked again not understanding a word.

  “The second guard, he flew north. Two thousand years ago, a large Imperial navy sank him, not the northerners’ mages! He had the Key! The Arians want to open portals between the planets and bring dragons back to Ilanta! And they have everything they need to do this—EVERYTHING! The Treir cemetery, south of Kion, is the central portal. The Rovinthal hill is the first cargo point. The Torin walls are the third. The Arians just need one of them. The true bloods sealed the portals three thousand years ago. The Book of the Guardians contains the passwords, and the Key opens the portal gates.”

  “You’ve always wanted the dragons to return to our world. Why are you so upset now?” Beriem spoke up. No one knew he was there or how he got into the room.

  “The fact that the medicine can be worse than the illness. The true bloods never came back. In three thousand years, they could have somehow gotten in touch, but they never did. The Mellornys on Aria are dying, the northern mages are losing mana and can’t stop the sea from swallowing up the land. It seems like the Arian elite has come to an agreement. The priests decided to break the seals of the inter-world portals, and the powerful would get their profit. War. They’ve been preparing for war for decades now. Only war can hold back their power….”

  Beriem raised one eyebrow skeptically.

  “Oi, weren’t you the one who told me that breaking the seals would require a simply insane amount of mana? Tell me where the Arians will get it.”

  “Pup!” Miduel blew his top. “Don’t you understand anything? Look at those people!”

  Beriem detached himself from the wall and walked over to the illusion. The grandson’s cheeks turned red.

  “Save us, Hel,” Rector Etran was paler than death. She could guess what the curved blades in the Arians’ hands were for. “It’s a pledge! These people—they’re a pledge!”

  Gil the Soft Spoken, Garad and Drang all gasped in unison. The operator mages froze in horrified silence. A pledge: it was a short and terrible word that encompassed the lives of thousands of people, people who are ready to willingly sacrifice themselves or happily lay down on the altar. Thousands of sources of mana. The Arians would break the seals. They would crush them to dust!

  “The stone in the center of the Key is glowing,” Beriem glanced at his grandfather.

  “I noticed,” the High Prince said. “Someone’s charged it with mana. Eh, if only we could find the second Key.”

  “The time for thinking things over is up,” His Highness Gil II the Soft Spoken pronounced decidedly, standing up from his chair. Chancellor Garad followed as if he’d been doused with boiling water, then the head of the secret chancellery Drang and all the others followed suit. “Garad, starting tomorrow morning there will be a dictatorship in this country. Universal mobilization shall be declared. Take care of the newspapers, copy the crystals, and show on the central squares of all major cities outtakes from the landing of the second wave and portions from the Kanyr massacre. Marshall Olmar, prepare camps for the mobilized; you have two months maximum to train them. Drang, increase security measures. You’re responsible for the rations program. Etran, our plans are canceled. The prince is being transferred to Kion; you’re taking up your post henceforth. The Royal Council will convene in an hour in the large reception hall. The representatives of the United Rauu Principalities are invited to the meeting. Your Highness, who is your delegate?” he asked the High Prince.

  “I’ll be there myself,” Miduel creaked.

  “Excellent. I’ll expect you in one hour.” His Majesty turned around sharply and left the operator’s room.

  “Grandson,” Miduel said to Beriem.

  “Yes?”

  “Give the order for three air regiments to scour the mountains. Find our boy. I need to talk to him. Be careful and extremely cautious in all you do. Don’t go looking for trouble.”

  “Why do you need the were-dragon?”

  “The boy has to decide whose side he’s on.”

  The Marble Mountains. Andy…

  His right wing ached. The old dragon, driven completely mad, almost tore him to pieces. The poor old dragon. Andy turned away from the messy cave. This was the second dragon he’d killed.

  The seven dragons he’d gathered did not judge him. Dragons understood very well. Perhaps they’d done the same thing before, but he judged himself. Seven samurai, and he was the eighth. They were few and far between.

  “Where will you go now?” Gray lowered himself down onto the mouth of the cave, flapping his wings loudly. He was an ancient dragon of a black color, like daddy Karegar, with scales that had turned whitish with age, and crests on his back.

  “Home! I’ll go home now.”

  “Don’t think about anything. You couldn’t have helped him.”

  “I’m not thinking about anything,” Andy twitched his wing. “It’s just I feel lousy. I can’t wrap my head around it—what have you done to yourselves? How did it come to this?”

  Gray, creaking like an old man, laid down on the warm sun-lit stones. Now he really reminded Andy of the boa constrictor Kaa from the story about Mowgli. His Adam’s apple, covered with thick plates, jerked on his powerful neck. The red-hot embers of his eyes hid under a translucent film, his bushy eyebrows froze motionlessly. Even the thick whiskers, twisted from vibrissae, ceased to move in time with his breath at the tip of his muzzle.

  “It’s sad to realize it, b
ut you’re right, we’re the ones who’ve done this to ourselves,” the dragon let a bluish cloud of smoke from his nostrils. His brows shot sharply upward; his red eyes flashed violently. “What did you feel when the old crazy dragon threw himself at you?”

  Andy tried to remember the emotions that overtook him at the moment of the short attack.

  “Rage. An all-consuming rage.”

  The fire in his friend’s eyes slowly went out. Gray looked at their six companions bathing in the lake.

  “Rage, rage…. Imagine a V-formation of hundreds of dragons, overcome with hatred and thirst for wood-elves’ blood. What was their rage like? It was such a rage, controlling us, that many of us began to go into a state of combative insanity. It’s a terrible thing once it takes over empaths who’ve lost touch with reality. They were the first to lose it; the empathic wave destroyed the rest. Some of them experienced a weakened control over their minds, went mad. We didn’t want to burn the forest. Those still in control of themselves put up a fight, but…,” Gray fell silent. The memories stirred up the thousand-year-old pain in his soul. “Kerr, it’s horrible: to see your loved ones sacrificing themselves to a spell cast by one of the insane ones. The fireball pumped with the force of the dragons was brighter than a thousand suns. The flame wiped the ancient Mellornys out like toothpicks. The ‘latch spell’ stripped the Mellorny forests of any fruits. We doomed the Woodies to a slow death.”

  It was an entire Apocalypse on a single, separate plot of land. Andy’s imagination drew a picture of an atomic bomb—that’s how closely Gray’s descriptions aligned with a “nuclear” bombardment. It became painfully clear why the dragons couldn’t unite after the war.

  No one came back to the nests destroyed by the Woodies. The growing young (there were isolated cases) hidden in the mountains were left unattended. Not everyone was lucky, Lanirra for example. Most of the Lords of the Sky were mad and attacked the others at the slightest sign of aggression or any action at all that might be mistaken for aggression. Sometimes, even without any provocation, the insane ones would try to destroy everyone in sight, which they could do. There were attempts to unite them, but they all fell apart due to the young dragons’ inability to comprehend and the mad dragons’ wrath. It’s difficult to reason effectively when your audience is spitting fire at you and casting spells. The young left unattended by their parents degenerated into half-wit predators who brought no less trouble than the hunting parties. A unique situation resulted when the Rauu, united with their former enemies, were forced to kill the insane individuals…. The concoction that spilled out of the pot of war when it boiled over scalded everyone—those involved and those not involved. And somewhere far away, beyond the horizon, the shadow of the creator of the slaughterhouse loomed.

  Gray spoke for a long time. The old dragon was stating his version of events. In many places the narrative converged with what his adopted parents had once told him; sometimes it was different; in some places, it did not correspond to the initial version. The ending interested Andy most of all. Pouring out his soul, veiling the story’s action, Gray stopped at the forest elves’ conspiracy. It just wasn’t possible that the children of the Forest had arranged their trap in a castle! If that were the case, what prompted them, and who planned the massacre? Then Gray was quiet for a long time. Apparently, it was hard for him to share his view of things. Andy, folding his wings, laid down next to the ancient dragon.

  “The slaughterhouse was set up by one of the true bloods. He was the one who led the elves to the nesting grounds,” the ancient dragon said, or rather, spit, and in one adroit motion flew off.

  ***

  Gray’s cave was the fourth he’d visited, following the little x’s and detailed descriptions on the parchment paper. At the first, Fate once again decided to test Andy’s strength and endurance, tossing him an unpleasant surprise in the form of wild dragons unwilling to have civil conversations. The dragons from the first nest met him with all the kindness of their toothy, fire-breathing souls. A bit more and the entire effort would have been cut short, a total fiasco.

  He found the large nest marked on the helrats’ map at the place where the Servants of Death brought him. Making a sharp turn, Andy began to descend in circles to a rocky ledge convenient for landing. He was saved by the fact that the attackers hadn’t considered the position of the sun, and the victim was warned by the sight of two fractured shadows on the cliff wall overtaking a third—his. He was able to avoid coming under the fiery ejaculations thanks to a sharp transition from smooth soaring to a steep dive. The burning bursts singed only the fork of his tail. The attackers synchronously turned around and sent a few orange balls at the crystal dragon, who was booking it to the ground. The unwelcome stranger didn’t go splat on the ground—he opened his wings at one hundred yards from the surface and cast a speed spell. These allowed him to come out of the dive and avoid meeting the orange balls with fatal force. There was a thunderous crash. The magical shield covering his posterior hemisphere saved the young yo-yo from fragments of shrapnel. If it weren’t for the defense, his wings would probably have been torn to shreds. Andy somehow realized immediately that they weren’t happy to see him, and no one was planning on talking to him. After the warm welcome perpetrated by the hosting party, he began to share their lack of desire for discussion. He decided it was necessary to high-tail it out of there.

  And as luck would have it, the hosts decided to accompany him to the door. The kindhearted pair, with the tenacity of a jackhammer, chased him up until the cultivated peasant fields. The game of “catch me if you can, fireball” was very exhausting. In order to answer the angry hosts in a worthy manner, he had to stop, but he certainly couldn’t do that, which was why he would just have to beat his wings as fast as he could and put up his shields. Attempts to increase altitude were immediately thwarted by direct machine-gun fire: his chasers were not stupid. They weren’t planning on giving their prey the high ground by letting him ascend. Andy flew in zig-zags and cursed daddy Karegar something fierce for skipping the subject of air combat basics in his young dragon’s school.

  The mountain lake visible in a narrow valley was met by a grateful prayer. Practically backed into a corner by his pursuers, hugging the ground as he flew, the dragon folded his wings and dove into the water. A naked man ran out of the lake and onto the shore, covered by thick trees, and instantly disappeared among the foliage. The dense tree crowns gave the naked boy a few instants, which he needed so very badly just then, to hide himself under every possible curtain. The two angry beasts, who differed from the “diver” only in the color of their scales and their slightly smaller dimensions, circled the narrow valley for thirty minutes and then went home.

  Andy, arms open wide, lay on the moist earth, overgrown with dense low-leafed grass. Unite-shmunite. Got pummeled, didn’t you? Did you think they’d meet you with open arms and a nice fresh piece of meat? They met you alright—and you escaped by the skin of your teeth. Oh, my hands are shaking so bad. Interesting, why are my arms and legs trembling when I was hammering my wings. It’s a mystery of nature. The main thing is, I’m still alive. What conclusions can I make after a performance like that?

  First: relax! Second: it’d be worth having a few interweaves I keep ready for activation and three, no, better four, passive shields. As experience has shown, no one’s going to give me time to weave anything fantastic. Third: don’t just approach nests indiscriminately. Better do some recon first. Fourth: no sense in going back there. They’re not happy to see me. The idea of a united flock of dragons will not be met with understanding by the local beau monde. Fifth, and most important: I suck at air combat. What’s to be done? Which leads us to the sixth conclusion: I have to study dragon’s arts. But that begs the question: where can I find a teacher for a short term, just during the planned operation?

  If I get a chance, I should find out who these dragons were and why they attacked without warning. Behavior like that seems more appropriate for… predators def
ending their territory. The guess was an unpleasant new entry in his mind, a bitter and disappointing idea. That would mean his plan was futile, doomed to failure before it began. Andy punched the ground. No, not yet, I won’t turn off this path!

  Changing hypostasis, he dove into the cold water of the mountain lake….

  ***

  As Gray later told him, he knew Natigar, owner of the second cave he visited. The emerald dragon, in the prime of his life, survived the destruction of the Forest, but it was better to keep away from him. The young dragon had suffered mentally. He kept enough of his will to leave the attacking V-formation, but that’s all. Luck left him after that. No one knew what would come into his head at any moment….

  The emerald dragon was saved from the hunting parties by the sheer cliffs and a fifty-year nap. He carried on for three thousand years in this manner. He slept, woke up for five years or so, and again fell into unconscious oblivion for another three or four. This existence could have gone on for the Twins know how long, if it hadn’t been interrupted by the self-declared benefactor. The meeting of the two dragons ended in the death of the master of the cave. If it hadn’t been for the security measures taken by the guest, he could have lost his head. The emerald dragon was the first and, Andy hoped, the last dragon he would have to kill.

  For a long time, Andy studied the approaches to the cave and outlined retreat routes. Who knew what to expect? Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…. Dozens of automatic guard modules reoriented towards collecting information, circled around the mountains with the nests.

  The master of the cave was home. The large dragon, with scales of a bright emerald color, was cleaning dirt and bones from the cave. The waste and bones were caught up in little tornadoes and taken out by the whirlwinds to a rushing river a league from the nest, where they were chucked into the water. Not a bad way to clean away the traces of one’s stay.

  Andy thought for a long time. What approach should he take? It turned out he was totally clueless about the winged tribe’s mentalities. Karegar didn’t get hung up on things like that. Jagirra taught him magic, but she didn’t pay much mind to the toothy beasts’ psychology either. Which meant that, in fact, he was equating dragon behavior to human behavior, projecting features of humans’ character onto the winged race. Just how far off he was became frightfully clear when the above-mentioned crystal dragon, out of pure ignorance and good will, almost became the husband of a certain scaly beauty. What was natural as air to them remained a well-kept secret for him, a mystery beyond all telling. He had no idea how to go about approaching his emerald-colored tribesman. Maybe there were certain rituals that need to be performed? Targ only knows!