by Clayton, Jo;
The Nor was staring at them and for a moment he didn’t answer. When he did, he spoke slowly, searching for words to explain what he didn’t understand. “They’re … other. Magic, but nothing She.… or we.… no one can command them. Third force. Do what they want where. Won’t touch us, we can’t touch them. She called, they came. I don’t know why.” He cleared his throat. “Won’t hurt, can’t help. Us or the Biserica.”
Nekaz Kole scowled at the dragons, suppressing anger and scorn. He couldn’t afford to offend the Nor now that the last stage of the battle was being set, but he swore to steer wide of magic and religion the rest of his days. He dropped his eyes from the enigma that still bothered him and watched the flames biting deeper into the stubborn wood of the gates, feeling a small glow of satisfaction. Not long now.
17
Julia leaned against the cold, pitted stone of the tower wall, picking idly at the knot in the rag tied about her arm, working it loose. Any heat from the sun couldn’t reach her through the gusty wind that smelled of ash and ice. The overflow of Serroi’s power had healed everyone they shoved into the tower, had healed the scratch on her arm and the hole the vuurvis had etched into her thigh. The rooms behind her were empty now, the healed were clustering about the tables set up near the rutted road where excited girls were serving bowls of a rich, meaty soup, loaves of fresh-baked bread and cups of hot spiced cha. Now and then a gust of wind brought the aromas to her, reminding her that she was hungry, but she didn’t move away from the wall. She was fit and whole again, even the cold she’d been starting had dried up with her wounds, but she was tired, a weariness of the will as much as of the body. She knew food and hot cha would chase much of that malaise away, temporarily at least, but she hadn’t enough desire left in her to shift her feet.
She pulled the rag off her arm and looked at the skin. No scar but a paler patch not yet tanned to match the rest. A lot of those patches scattered about her hide since she’d come here. Not the sort of thing you expected to happen to a sedentary middle-aged writer from a post-industrial society. Smiling a little, she looked down at Rane.
The ex-meie was sitting with her back against the wall, knees drawn up, arms draped over them, staring out into nothing. She looked as tired, as dead, as Julia felt. Rane yawned, then sighed. A gust of wind lifted dust, dead eaves, other debris and slapped the load against her. She got to her feet, brushed at the folds of tunic and trousers, looked up, caught at Julia’s arm. “Look.”
Long sinuous shapes undulated over the valley, dragons of flexing glass, scales delicately etched on the transparent bodies, pastel colors flowing in waves along the serpentine forms, a silent song in color. No two of the dragonsongs were alike but each complemented the others like chords in a chorale. They drifted eerily into the wind, not with it, creatures not quite of this world. Julia’s heart hurt with their extravagant beauty and their strangeness, a strangeness that brought suddenly home to her the realization that she stood on alien soil, something she’d almost forgotten because of the familiar feel of the dirt and weeds under her feet, the familiar look of the mountains around her, the human faces of the people here. She watched the dragons sing and felt a new homesickness for her own land and people, felt like an exile for the first time since she’d jumped through Magic Man’s Mirror. She wondered what was happening back home and whether she’d run out on her responsibilities by coming here. Maybe Tom Prioc was right, maybe they owed their country the effort to redeem it. But as she continued to watch the dragons, she felt her regrets leaving her. I’ve half my life left. No use looking back.
One of the dragons slipped away from the rest and came drifting to earth a few meters out from the west tower, its delicately sculpted head rising high over Julia’s. The dragon tilted its head and gazed down at her with large glowing golden eyes. Half mesmerized she drifted away from the tower, not noticing that Rane was coming with her. She expected to feel heat from it, but there was neither heat nor cold, only a faint spicy perfume that was pleasant and invigorating.
Rane’s hand tightened again on her arm, dragging her from her dazed contemplation of the dragon’s eyes.
Serroi and Hern had come from the tower. They were standing close together looking at the grounded dragon, the flow of emotion between them so intense Julia felt a touch of embarrassment at watching them.
Serroi moved a few steps away from Hern to stand beside the dragon, one hand on the smooth curve of its side. She smiled at Hern, that wide glowing grin Julia remembered with pleasure. Her voice came to them on a gust of wind. “You’d hate idleness, Dom,” she said. “Keep busy and live long.”
Rane whistled softly. “Maiden bless, Jule,” she whispered. “She’s going to him, going to face him at last.”
Julia said nothing, remembering all too clearly the silent fear in Serroi that night in the Southwall Keep.
“Come on,” Rane said as she started for the nearest table. “I need something to wet my throat. This is the end for us, one way or another.”
The dragon rose with easy languorous grace into the sky, floating slowly toward the great rock face at the west end of the wall.
18
Hern got to his feet, looked down at himself and grinned. “Better fetch me a blanket, love.” He patted the smooth curve of his belly. “If I were as slim and elegant as you, I wouldn’t bother. But there’s a bit too much Hern on view.”
Serroi laughed and went away. He watched her go, for that moment content with himself and the world. He hadn’t forgotten the war, but he was refusing to think about it. Like Serroi, he was taking a rest from the urgencies of the moment and the pressures of his responsibilities. Smiling, eyes half-closed, he listened to the soft scrape of her feet on the stone, heard the sounds fade. When these were gone, he moved cautiously across the ashy, pitted floor and looked out a windowslit, being careful not to touch the stone. He raised his brows at the fires leaping from the vuurvis barrels, at the black sprawl of the dead Nor. The raiders were still busy behind the army, Maiden bless them, and making their efforts count. He watched Nekaz Kole send messengers to stop the catapults along the wall, all but the two in the center that were pounding at the gate. His throat tightened as he remembered the burning and the pain and knew that even with Serroi at his side he couldn’t face that again. Mind or body, neither could endure that … that … he couldn’t find a word for the experience; pain, agony, torment, they were all inadequate for the totality he remembered. He frowned at Nekaz Kole. Bad luck for us you weren’t in your tent. He watched the catapults fling two more clay melons then crossed to the side slit that looked down on the gates, watching the skin of flame eating at them. Yael-mri had warned him about vuurvis, that the Shawar could slow its action but couldn’t quench it. At the rate it was consuming the wood, it’d burn through sometime before dawn. And once the gates were down, the army would come flooding over them.
“Hern?”
He turned. Serroi held out a thin gray blanket. As he wrapped it about himself, he scanned her anxiously, not liking what he saw. The eyespot pulsed through the curls that fell forward over her brow, its green turned almost black. Her flesh glowed, very faintly but visibly in the dim light that filled the blackened room. It seemed to him that if he looked too hard at her she would melt away altogether, dissipating like fog on a warming day. He tied two corners over his shoulder so the blanket hung in folds about his body. “How many did the vuurvis get?”
“Three to five dead at each place the catapults hit.” Seeing him almost trip over the dangling blanket, she handed him a short length of rope. “Better hitch up your skirts, Dom. I don’t know how many were burned and lived. Julia had a brainstorm, packed all of them into the rooms below. Apparently there was a lot of overflow while I was pulling you back, love, seems I sucked in power from everywhere and this tower was pulsing like a mothsprite in heat. Everyone she got here walked out again a while ago, they’re getting food now, which reminds me, my love, I’m hollow from head to toe.” Her strained cheerful
ness melted suddenly. She came into his arms, leaned against him, trembling. “So much pain.” Her voice broke and she pressed her face into his shoulder, shaking as if with ague. “So much waste. Lives, time, materials. Gone. And for what? Nothing.” She was afraid, more than that, terrified, and he knew what frightened her and he too was afraid.
“No,” he said. His throat tensed; she was going back to Ser Noris. “No.” He wanted to say more but he couldn’t—no words, no voice, no way to fight against the necessity that gripped both of them. He held her until her shuddering eased.
Serroi sighed. “The waste won’t stop until he’s stopped.”
“How?” It was a challenge, a demand that she justify throwing her life away. He was angry and afraid and wanted her to know it.
“I don’t know,” she said, shaking the hair off her brow. “I only know I have to face him and let what comes come.”
“Serroi, I need you.”
“I know. I wish.…” She didn’t finish.
He could feel her withdrawing from him though she didn’t move away. “Serroi.…”
“You didn’t have to come back here, Dom.”
He started to say it wasn’t the same, but in the end only shook his head, then held her without words until the noises from outside grew so intrusive they could no longer ignore them. He let her go and hitched the blanket up, tied the rope about his middle. Serroi patted the charred rags of her robe into a semblance of order, held out her hand. “Well, come on.”
They saw the glass dragons as soon as they stepped from the emptied tower. Hern put his arm about her and together they watched the dragonsong, working as one mind for a short time as they had on the plateau, sharing that remembered beauty, that remembered closeness.
Then one of the dragons separated from the others, flushed with waves of green and gold, and came curling down to land near the tower, huge and wonderful and more than a little frightening. Hern felt shock ripple through Serroi, echoing his shock of recognition and denial. She pulled away from him and began walking toward the dragon.
No, he thought, not so soon. How can you go so easily, bow can you go without a word?
As if she’d heard that, she turned. He waited.
She looked at him a moment but said nothing, then walked on. When she reached the dragon, she put her hand on the cool flesh, flinched as it collapsed into something like steps, turned once more to face him. “You’d hate idleness, Dom,” she said, her voice not quite steady. “Keep busy and live long.”
He wanted to say something, but the only words that came to him were the empty banalities of idle chat. She smiled, that sudden joyous urchin’s grin that had enchanted him from the moment he first saw it, though she wasn’t smiling for him then. She climbed up to settle herself in the saddle the dragon shaped for her. Waves of iridescence shimmered along the serpentine body then the dragon drifted upward and began undulating toward the stone face rising a thousand feet above the wall.
19
Ser Noris waited.
Reiki janja looked down at large hands closed into fists about the pieces she planned to set on the board.
“Play,” he said gruffly.
She opened her right hand. A small greenish figure dressed in charred white rags lay on her palm.
“No,” he said. He reached to take the figure from her, drew back when a flash of pain shot through his withered hand.
Reiki smiled. “You said once I’ll teach the child; after that, try and take the woman.” There was a patina of sweat on her lined face, but her eyes were calm. She was solid janja except for hints in those dark-water eyes. “Do you have her, my Noris?”
He made an impatient dismissing gesture. “Play.”
She set the green figure on the board, straightened and opened her other hand. A dark-robed figure with chiseled pale features lay on her palm.
Ser Noris sucked in a breath, slapped at the hand but before he touched her was stopped by an intangible barrier. While he struggled to maintain his control, she set his simulacrum on the board beside the other figure. “This decides it all.”
“The army.…”
“How long will the Ogogehians stay, with the paymaster gone?”
Again he brushed the question away and sat staring at the black-robed figure. He knew his power and did not doubt he would prevail; what chilled him were the implications woven about that figure. Until this moment he’d been games-master, not a pawn in the game. He lifted his head. “What am I?”
“In what game?”
He hesitated, looked at the finger-high black figure. “I am not less than you.” He pronounced each word with great care, flatly.
“Which I?”
A brush of his hand, a hiss of disgust. “Don’t play with me, janja.”
“You withdraw?”
“No. You know what I’m saying.”
“Say it.”
“No.”
Reiki smiled.
He looked down at the greenglass figure glowing on the board. “I shaped her.” The janja made a sound. Without taking his eyes from the figure, he said, “We shaped her.” He reached out, didn’t quite touch the sculpted red curls. “We shaped her.…” His voice trailed into memory.
He reclined on black velvet before a crackling fire, lifted onto his elbow as Serroi hesitated in the doorway. Aware of her loneliness and uncertainty, he wanted to reassure her, but he was uneasy with her, he didn’t know how to talk to her. After a few breaths he called to her, “Come here, Serroi.” That was easy enough. She grinned suddenly and came rushing in, her confidence growing with each step she took. They talked quietly for a while, she full of eager questions, he responding to her warmth as he would to a fire on a cold day. After a while his hand dropped beside her head. He stroked her hair, began pulling soft curls through his fingers. The fire was no warmer than the quiet happiness between them.
“And she shaped me,” he murmured, then was furious that he’d exposed a part of himself. He got to his feet and walked to the edge of the cliff where he stood looking down at the wall.
The war subsided for the moment. Nekaz Kole was waiting for the vuurvis to burn through the gates; there was a skeleton force of defenders keeping watch at the embrasures but most of them seemed to be gathered about long tables heavy with hot food and drink. Farther down the valley, Sleykynin were spread in a wide arc, creeping secretly toward the Shawar. Small bands of hunters hunted them and were hunted in their turn, a game of blindfold chess where the pieces were pointed weapons.
And over it all the enigmatic dragons wove their color songs.
One of the dragons sank gracefully to the earth inside the wall. Serroi came from the blackened tower with the man she’d fought him to save. Hern. He glared at the pudgy gray figure. If he’d had enough power after his attack on the Shawar, he would have expended it all on the obliteration of that man. He watched and suffered as he felt the intensity of shared emotion radiated from the pair. And cursed himself for thinking so long that the little man could be safely ignored. A year ago he could have squashed Hern easily. Even on the Changer’s mountain he could have erased him from existence. But he didn’t know then how deeply Hern had insinuated himself into Serroi’s life, usurping what Ser Noris considered his. Rutting beast, he howled inside his head, his mouth clamped shut to keep that beastcry from the janja. Debauching her.… He choked off that interior rant, frightened by his loss of control. His withered hand twitched, the chalky fingers scraping across the fine black cloth of his robe, a loathesome reminder of the last time he’d let emotion rule him, that aborted confrontation with Serroi on the Changer’s mountain.
The dragon came drifting up, moving toward him with undulant languorous grace, the tiny figure on its back almost as translucent as it was.
20
Serroi stepped from the dragon’s side onto the granite. Lines were worn smooth where Ser Noris had paced the years away gazing down on what he could not possess, only destroy. She saw the janja sitting with massive sil
ence beside a gameboard that was a sudden eruption of color in all the muted grays and browns of the mountainside. Acknowledging the old woman with a small, sketchy gesture, she turned to face Ser Noris.
He was thinner than she remembered, his face worn and tired. The ruby was gone; she missed that bit of flamboyance, a tiny weakness that made him somehow more human, more approachable; with it had gone most of the color and vigor in his face. His black eyes were opaque, he was arming himself against her. “Ser Noris,” she said.
“Serroi.”
“Is anything worth all that?” She indicated the valley, the wall, the army, and ended with a flick of the hand that included the Plain beyond the mountains. “All that death?” She hit the last word hard, brought her hand around as if she would touch him but dared not. “Or what it’s done to you? Do you know how you’ve changed, my father, my teacher?” She seemed resigned to no answer. “The waste, teacher, the waste.”
His face stony, he said, “Is a leaf wasted because it falls from a tree?”
“People aren’t leaves.”
He brushed that aside. “We can’t talk. We don’t speak the same language anymore.”
“We never did.” She’d forgotten how impervious he had always been, how little he’d listened to her, how cut off from every other source of life he was.
“Why are you here, daughter?”
“To stop you, father.”
“How?”
The cold wind whipped at her face. “Hern asked me that.”