Dragons' Fall_Tales from the Mirror Worlds

by James Calbraith

  He handed it to his father with reverence, along with a small leather bag of magic black powder, and a thick, hollow arrowhead. Birki assembled the harpoon in a hurry, but with great precision. Not a grain of the magic powder slipped his fingers — all of it ended up inside the iron tube. He tied the tether to the copper circle, and slid the shaft of the harpoon into the tube.

  The killer shark was now circling the boat less than a hundred feet away, wary of the two men, but still drawn near to the blood pooling around the bait drifting behind the umiak. Ennaki shook his rope a few times to make the fish seem more alive; his hands petrified in fear. The shark’s fin jumped to the left and right. As it drew closer, the boy got a clear view of the famous scar cut deep by the spear of Old Gaktu; his great-grandfather was the last hunter who camegot close enough to the Orphan Maker to hurt it.

  The fish was even greater than he had imagined. The dorsal fin stood as tall as a grown man, and the distance between it and the tail fin poking out of the waves was longer than their entire boat.

  The legends were true, he thought, it could swallow me whole…

  “Steady now, boy,” said Birki. “Hold on to the sides. This will give us a fair shake.”

  He raised the tube to his eye, grasped the iron hook with two fingers and aimed the weapon at the great fin.

  “Let go,” he ordered.

  Ennaki dropped the rope, and the bait began to drift away from the boat. The shark charged at the dead fish at full speed, its back rising slightly from the water. Birki waited… and waited… and when Ennaki almost thought it was too late, he pulled on the hook.

  The weapon exploded with a deafening blast, louder than an avalanche, and a bright flame spewed out of the open end. The harpoon flew too fast for Ennaki to follow; he only managed to notice the arrowhead hit the thick hide of the shark and bury itself deep into its flesh.

  The Orphan Maker turned, and shot straight towards them. Birki grabbed the line attached to the harpoon and tugged at it frantically. Nothing happened. The shark was just twenty feet away, ten, five…

  Another blast tore a great gawping bloody hole in the side of the fish, where the arrowhead had stuck. The shark swerved to the side, hitting the bow of the umiak with great forcem pushing it up. Ennaki held on to the side, but his father lost his balance, and fell into the icy water.

  The Orphan Maker vanished into the depths, leaving only a cloud of dark blood behind. Ennaki reached to his father, helping him scramble back into the boat. Entangled in the thick furs, Birki struggled to stay afloat, burbling and thrashing. He grabbed his son’s sleeves, but the oiled sealskin coat was slippery.

  He bobbed under the surface, and then reappeared a moment later. He looked shocked, his mouth hung open wide.

  “Father…?”

  Birki vanished again, this time for longer, and then, just as suddenly, popped out on the other side of the boat. The water around him turned dark crimson.

  “Son!” he gurgled, “…away!”

  And with that, he was gone once more. Ennaki grabbed a spear and stared into the Abyss, trying to spot either the Orphan Maker, or his father, but the sea was murky and impenetrable now; the colour of rusting iron.

  All became silent. Ennaki sat down heavily in the boat. His hands were shaking, his eyesight blurred. A part of him knew he had to paddle away as fast as he could, while the beast was devouring his father… but he couldn’t move. He was paralyzed with fear and exhausted from shock. He could only wait his turn in the Orphan Maker’s jaws.

  A lightning bolt struck from the clear sky. He looked up, surprised. Another fork of dazzling light shattered across the blue dome. The sea beneath the boat bubbled and frothed in a manner he had never seen before. The air around him grew even colder.

  A mountain burst from the sea to his left. It rose high into heaven, impossibly tall, snow white and magnificent. It arced and hovered over the boat for a split second, before plunging back into the water on the other side with a mighty, thunderous splash. A great wave pushed the umiak away, but, miraculously, failed to overturn it.

  Ennaki didn’t care about his survival. The only thing filling his mind was the sight he had witnessed for that one split second when the mountain-that-moved hovered above his head. He knew he would not forget that sight for the rest of his life.

  At the end of the great white mountain he had seen a jaw the size of an ice-cave, filled with teeth as long as spears. And impaled on those terrible teeth, writhing hopelessly like a herring at the end of a harpoon, and just as tiny, was the great killer shark, the Orphan Maker. Bloody bits of his father, Birki of the Tooth, hung from its surprised mouth.

  He had come from the North.

  Nobody ever came from there, except the returning huntsmen. To the north of the tribe’s camping grounds lay an empty, frozen wasteland, reaching all the way to the Wall of Gods; a mountain range separating it from the stormy waters of the Outer Ocean. It was common knowledge that Ennaki’s tribe lived the farthest of all the tribes settled around the Maw.

  He rode a strange animal, some kind of antler-less reindeer, but much more massive, with big round hooves that struck deep into the snow, and a long, strong head. It was all black, like the hooded cloak of woven cloth the stranger wrapped himself in. The gloves on his hands were made of silvery iron, and at his side hung a long, broad knife — almost as long as his leg — with a hilt carved in the shape of a beast’s head, with red jewels for eyes.

  His face was the colour of old walrus tusk, darker than that of the men of the tribe, and his eyes, wide and grey, changed colour with the light… not that anyone could look into those eyes for long. He was unlike any traveller. He had no wagon of supplies with him, no curious children followed in his wake. His mount slogged down the middle of the camp heavily, in dreadful silence, until at last he reached the hut of the Birkason.

  Ennaki raised himself from the furs slowly, tiredly. There was a stranger in his house. He didn’t want to speak to anyone, but the rules of courtesy obliged him to serve the guest some seaweed broth. He reached for the pot, but the stranger stopped him.

  “You are Ennaki, son of Birka?”

  His voice, dark and silky, made Ennaki shiver.

  “What… what if I am?” he stuttered.

  “Tell me of the day your father died.”

  There was no resisting the command in that voice. Ennaki sat down and told everything, as clearly as he could remember — and, suddenly, he could remember a lot more than he had previously. He was certain that all he’d seen was the monster’s gaping jaw, but it turned out that he could answer all the detailed questions the stranger posed him. It was as if his voice probed into the deepest, darkest recesses of his mind and pulled out images and remembrances he didn’t know he had.

  “And what about wings? Have you seen them?” the stranger prodded.

  “Yes,” Ennaki answered, surprising himself. “Silver, folded along the body, small, like fins of the flying fish.”

  The stranger nodded, thoughtful.

  “You will take me there,” he said. It wasn’t a question, not even an order, just a statement of fact. Ennaki wanted to protest, but he couldn’t find the words.

  They rowed out into the sea as near the site of Birka’s final hunt as Ennaki could remember. The water looked the same in every direction; the only landmark in sight, glimmering on the eastern horizon, was the peak of Dihirizniel, the lofty, lonely mountain from which the tribe had taken its name.

  The stranger leaned over the side of the umiak, sniffed the air and tasted the water, as if he was a tracker on the prowl and the sea was a layer of snow disturbed by fresh footprints.

  “That way,” he said, pointing north-west.

  “That’s near the Maw,” said Ennaki fearfully. “There’s nothing there but the open ocean.”

  “That way,” the stranger repeated, and Ennaki had no choice but to obey.

  He rowed until the sun touched the horizon, resigned to his fate. He knew they were already
doomed — in the darkness he had no chance to find the way back home, and there was no way they would survive the night out in the sea.

  “There,” said the stranger.

  An island Ennaki had never noticed before was rising from the ocean; a tall mountain, of rock and snow, surrounded by a flat plain of thick, cracked ice. A whirl of dark clouds circled above the mountain, and a wreath of lightning adorned the mountaintop like a crown.

  He helped the stranger slide the boat onto the ice and sat down inside it, covering himself with furs to keep warm through the night.

  “You’re coming with me,” the stranger announced.

  “What for?” he asked, guessing the answer, and knowing there was nothing he could do about his fate.

  “Bait,” the stranger replied with a smirk.

  They traversed the ice by the light of a magical torch hovering above the stranger’s shoulder, and when they reached the foot of the mountain, the stranger started climbing the icy face, without looking back.

  Ennaki tried his best to keep up, but he was no climber, and the hovering light was moving away at some speed. He was just about to give up, when the end of a rope hit him in the face.

  “Hurry,” he heard the stranger’s voice, somehow sounding as if he was just above him.

  When Ennaki reached the end of the rope, the stranger was waiting for him on a rock shelf above a narrow, pitch black crevice. He dropped the rope down the hole and nodded at the boy.

  “Now go down.”

  “Me? No — ” he finally managed to find strength to protest. “This is too much!”

  The stranger leaned forward. His eyes were deep like ice fishing holes.

  “Disobey me, and you will have no home to return to, boy.”

  Ennaki gulped. This was a new threat. He had resigned to die here, alone, but he hadn’t thought the stranger could pose a danger to his tribe.

  He grabbed the rope and slid down the crevice. In the pitch darkness he could only sense the air flowing around him, and it told him that the bottom of the hole was much greater and more open than the top. His feet searched for a stable surface to stand on, and found a large flat stone. Somewhere nearby he heard water lapping gently against some quiet shoreline.

  “I’m here,” he shouted. “What now?”

  “Fart,” came the answer. “Sweat. Piss. Stink. Or just stand still. She may be old and deaf, but she’s still got a keen nose.”

  She?

  Ennaki didn’t know how exactly to obey the order, so he simply stood there, hoping the smell of his fear would be enough to waken whoever, or whatever, lived in the hole.

  The earth rumbled under his feet, and the air around him swirled, filling his nostrils with bad fumes; the odour of rotting flesh and foul smoke. A light appeared — a faint, blue haze coming from the vast pool which, he now saw, stretched across the floor of the crevice . The water bubbled up in the same way as the sea on that fateful day. His legs gave way and he dropped to his knees. He propped up against one of many thick pillars of ice adorning the vast cave.

  A bolt of lightning struck from high above, and in its brief flash he saw that the entire mountain was hollowed out around an underground lake with an opening at the top, through which the bolt had come. Great piles of whale and walrus bones lay sprawled around the bottom of the crevice. Before he had time to gather in all of this information, the bubbling water burst open, and the silver monster leapt out, flying straight up, and through the top of the mountain, to the outside world. This time Ennaki managed to get a good look at it. The monster resembled a giant silver eel; all neck and tail, covered in coarse scales, surrounded by a halo of lightning bolts.

  The mountain shook violently. The water sizzled and steamed up, and Ennaki began to feel hot under all his furs. I’m going to boil here. Thethought flashed through his mind. He looked up — the rope was still there, dangling just within reach.

  He scrambled outside, exhausted, and dropped flat on the ledge. Below him, on the packed ice, the silver monster and the hooded stranger were locked in a titanic struggle of lightning, flame and light. The man ran, leapt and rolled, over and under the beast, trying to find an opening for his long knife to penetrate the scales, while the monster coiled and twisted itself in an effort to reach the minnow-quick — and minnow-sized — opponent.

  Ennaki understood he was witnessing a duel of the Gods. The earth trembled under his feet from the inhuman power of exchanged blows; his eyes and ears hurt from the flashes and blasts the man and the beast cast at each other.

  I bet they can see it all the way at the camp, he thought, cowering in their huts.

  Somehow, the thought encouraged him. If he managed to come back to the tribe and tell them what he had seen, he would become a hero — his name would be repeated in legends for generations. Like that of Old Gaktu’s. Like that of Birka’s. He would make his father’s spirit proud.

  He scuttled down the mountainside and followed the fight at what he thought was a safe distance. The opponents moved to and fro around the packed ice, seemingly at random. The stranger was now dodging and ducking more than attacking, almost as if he had finally grown tired from the long fight. But there was a method to his madness, and soon Ennaki spotted the pattern: the stranger was slowly leading the monster in a certain direction, towards an outcrop of sharp rocks in the shape of twin horns.

  When the two got near enough to the outcrop, the stranger executed a series of lightning-fast attacks on the underside of the beast, and then hid himself under some sort of invisible shield protecting him from the fierce counter-attack. This only served to infuriate the monster. It rose up high, launching itself briefly into the air, flapping the vestigial wings to keep it aloft for one brief second. It plunged down, falling like a harpoon at the shielded stranger.

  It was just what he wanted. He leapt backwards, drawing the monster after him, straight at the rocks. A powerful roar of agony and anger shattered the ice around him and his eardrums, Ennaki felt, as the silver beast was wedged between the horns, impaled on the sharp stone edges.

  It wasn’t enough to kill it. The monster wreathed and coiled like an eel on a spear, bleeding silver blood and howling in pain. Ennaki drew in closer to get a better look. The stranger, ignoring this cacophony, leaping and climbing, reached the row of sharp spines at the beast’s back. He pierced the scaly skin with his long knife and, holding onto the hilt, slid down, cutting it straight from top to bottom.

  Something was gleaming inside, shining, like a sun made of ice, beaming rhythmically; an organ, almost as big as the man was tall — the monster’s heart. The stranger pierced it with the knife, and the silvery-blue blood gushed forth from the wound in several fierce spurts, almost drowning him, but he held out until the heart stopped beating and the monster stopped writhing in its deathly throes.

  The stranger, bathed in the blue liquid, with his skin turning the shade of a clear sky, approached Ennaki, slowly, swaying, supporting himself on the long knife. The boy dropped to his knees, face down. He was trembling in fear and excitement, kneeling before a living God.

  “Stand up, boy,” a tired voice spoke. “The sun is almost up. Time to go home.”

  As he rowed away from the mountain island, he heard a loud rumble. He looked behind in fright and saw the mountain crumble down in a halo of lightning and ice dust.

  A gust of wind and a sudden wave propelled the boat away from the collapsing island. The boat climbed the crest and dropped on the other side, bow-first; sea spray drenched Ennaki from head to toe.

  “It has begun,” the stranger said, grimly. He was sitting in the prow of the umiak, wrapped in his hooded cloak. His face and hands glowed a sickly blue.

  “What has? What was that thing, Master?”

  The stranger smirked. Now that the monster was defeated, it seemed as if a weight was taken from his shoulders. He grew more talkative.

  “I’m not your Master. That thing, boy, was Rizniel, the Broodmother.”

  “Rizniel…? As
in — ”

  “The name of the mountain, yes. Dihi, or dragon’s lair, in the Old Tongue. You know what a dragon is?”

  “I’ve heard the word in my father’s tales… tales from the south. But our legends are all about the fish and the whales and the seals…”

  “Rizniel was not an ordinary dragon. She was a Broodmother. A lord among dragons.”

  “I see. I don’t really know — ”

  “Your world is dead,” the stranger said.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Rizniel was holding this world in eternal ice with her magic. It will all melt in a few weeks. You will all perish under the sea.”

  Ennaki stopped rowing, almost dropping the paddle into the water.

  “You may wish to row faster if you want to spend more time with your tribe,” the stranger said.

  The camp seemed exactly the same as it had the day before.

  Ennaki’s tribesmen welcomed them both back with fear and uneasiness. They had heard and seen the battle on the horizon, and they knew it had something to do with them.

  As Ennaki was led before the chief, the sky was covered in a web of lightning, thunder roared, ripping the clouds apart. A strong, hot wind picked up from the sea — the kind of wind that had never before visited their shores. The Dihirizniel Mountain began to tremble at its roots. It seemed the stranger was right — the world was about to fall apart at the seams.

  He was told to tell his tale to the gathering of the Elders. When he described the divine struggle they nodded and shook their heads, and in the end they all departed into the Innermost Tent to debate the news.

  The world around them crumbled. Ennaki stood outside with a small crowd of other tribesmen, watching the ice shake, the water foaming at the shore, the lightning cover the sky with a dense web, the waterspouts rising from the sea in their dozens. The stranger had already mounted the black creature and was slowly heading North, back where he’d come from. Nobody dared stop him, but he bade the mount halt next to Ennaki.