“Where’s your family, boy?” he asked.
“My father was the only family I knew, Master.”
The stranger looked up to the lightning-shattered sky, then back at Ennaki.
“How fast can you run?”
“Quite fast — if I have to.”
The stranger pointed north. “A dog’s bark away, by the big salt pit, is an old hunters’ camp. I will wait there, but not for long. If you start running now, you should just about make it.”
He stabbed the animal’s sides with his heels, and the mount galloped away, raising sparks of snow from under its hooves.
Ennaki looked around him. The tribesmen stared back at him, still not understanding what was happening to them or their land; unsure what to do next. They looked to him for guidance as their world died around them.
“I’m sorry,” he told them. “I cannot help you. I have seen the Gods fight. I will not die here.”
He started running.
He got lost a few times in the icy desert that spread to the north of the camping grounds, in the blizzard that rose with the hot wind. But he kept running, until he ran out of breath, until he felt daggers piercing his heart and clubs hitting his liver. Still he ran through mists, clouds and snow hitting his face. He was certain the stranger would be long gone. But he could not give up.
A gust of blizzard cleared the air before him, revealing the jagged edge of the old salt pit. Across it, he saw a clump of bones, hides, and driftwood sticking out of the snow; the remains of the hunters’ camp. He managed one last spurt of effort to reach it before falling to his knees, exhausted.
He felt a strong hand lifting him off the ground. The stranger’s grey eyes stared at him from under the hood.
Behind them, a dark hole opened in the air, bordered by a crackling halo of light and blue flame. Ennaki peered in and saw countless worlds inside, reflected in thousands of mirrors.
The Grand Master put on the grey cape and clasped it around his neck. The attendants helped him don the dragon helm. He looked down from his balcony onto the floor of the Ceremony Chamber, where a knighthood was being conferred on the stranger.
“Is that the one who slew Rizniel?” he asked the Grand Marshall, who was also observing the ceremony below while struggling with the straps of his armour.
“Yes. I can’t tell if it was a brave or stupid thing to do.”
“It worked, didn’t it? And he even managed to get a heart. You’ll have to admit, that is quite a feat,” said the Grand Master, locking the helm in place.
“A pity about those poor people.”
“Yes, an entire world destroyed so that one Dragon Knight could get his spurs... I do wish we could afford to choose them better.”
“Not with the way the War is heading,” said the Grand Marshall, buckling his sword belt. “We need all the recruits we can get. But I would keep an eye on this one. Slaying a Great One at his age… I sense trouble.”
The Grand Master took one last look over the balustrade. “What’s he doing now?”
“Ah, interesting… I told you he’d be trouble,” replied the Grand Marshall. “He’s refusing to wear the dragon helm.”
The Grand Master scoffed. “There’s always one, isn’t there… believing himself to be the Knight of the Prophecy.” He shook his head. “They kill one dragon and it goes straight to their heads.”
“We must be leaving,” said the Grand Marshall. “The battle is about to begin.”
“Yes, of course. Prepare the door, Marshall. I’m itching for a fight.”
The sandstorm showed no sign of abating.
Ennaki, wrapped from head to toes in dark blue cloth, with just his eyes revealed to the elements, was the only human being standing in the town square. He was leaning against a long-disused, half-ruined fountain.
He didn’t have to wait long. Soon, the shape of a hooded man riding a black horse emerged from the yellow haze. His Master rode slowly, his head bobbed loosely on his shoulders as if he was asleep. Only when the horse stopped next to Ennaki did he straighten himself. He looked down at the boy.
“Are you certain this is the place?” he asked.
“Yes, Master. I saw the lair with my own eyes, deep in the desert. And I’ve learned that this town was called Dihiselam before the War.”
“I see. Where is the Woman?”
“A day’s journey from here. But we should wait until this storm calms down. I mean, I should — ”
There was pleading in his voice. The storm made no impression on the Master. His black hooded cloak was impeccable, unmoved, as if the wind blew around his person. Ennaki, on the other hand, struggled to stay still.
It was a difficult service, at his Master’s side. He had had to endure fierce winds, piercing cold, scorching heat, lashing rains, hostile natives, and days of gruelling marches, sometimes without so much as a piece of bread or drop of water. Often, he was near death. After many such gruelling journeys, he spent months recovering from crippling injuries.
But, in exchange, he got to live the life few mortals experienced. He had seen lands untold; met, talked to, fought, and made love to people and creatures of races beyond human imagination. He had grown, both in years and in stature, and received powers from his Master that enabled him to travel through the void between the worlds, and survive — sometimes barely — in conditions not meant for the human body.
His job was to find dragons for his Master to slay. The first thing he had learned was how elusive those monsters were. Slaying them was not a problem for one as skilled as the Master; it was hunting them down that proved a challenge. The bigger and older they were, Ennaki learned, the harder it was to seek them out. Rizniel herself had only been seen twice in the millennium before her death. The presence of Selamiel, which he had been ordered to seek out on this desert world, had only ever been confirmed in rumours.
But, against the odds, Ennaki had succeeded yet again. He had found the lair, and secured a way to it. He hoped the Master would appreciate his sacrifice.
The Master studied him for a while, then raised his eyes to the rust-muddy sky, and nodded.
“Very well. Find us an inn.”
“I already have,” Ennaki said, grinning with relief.
The native warriors gathered in a half-circle around the open space in the centre of the village. They were all dressed in the long, flowing robes of dark blue cloth that Ennaki had found so comfortable in the arid climate. Their heads were bare as a sign of respect to their guests; their big green eyes, circled with black kohl, stared, unnervingly, at Ennaki and his Master.
The Master stepped forward, and the line of warriors parted, forming a doorway through which entered a woman; bald and dressed in nothing but a thin chain of silver around her waist. She was tall — taller even than the Master — and lithe, with small, but firm breasts and full, shapely hips. Her skin was the colour and lustre of pure copper. There was a fairy-like effortlessness in the way she moved, a silky smoothness in her face, a glint of something more than human in her almond-shaped eyes. Ennaki guessed she had some Elvin blood in her veins.
The villagers called her the Daughter of Sands, and obeyed her every wish. They knew not whence she had come, nor how long she had lived here. All that mattered for Ennaki was that she fitted the Master’s description.
She approached the Master and touched his breastplate with her long, slender fingers. “Why are you here?” she asked.
Her voice, dark and sultry, sounded in Ennaki’s ears as if she stood right next to him.
“You know why,” replied the Master.
“Say it.”
“I want your strength.”
“You want?” she snapped. The Master recoiled, as if from a blow.
“I ask for your strength,” he said.
She stared him down. The smirk slowly vanished from the Master’s face.
“I beg you for it,” he said.
“On your knees, knight.”
The Master knelt down in the
sand, and with his head bowed, he repeated his plea. He then lowered his head even more, and kissed her feet.
Ennaki watched in astonishment. What power could this woman possibly possess to humiliate his Master in this way?
She threw back her head and laughed. “Oh, yes! No Dragon Knight has ever begged me like this. You must really want it!”
“I would not be here otherwise.”
“Very well. Arise, knight,” she lashed him with a mocking voice.
The Master stood up. The woman touched his breastplate again, and this time it vanished in the shimmering flash of sparks. She touched his pauldrons and the gauntlets, the cuisses and the greaves, and when she finished, the Master stood as naked as she was; ivory-pale and brawny where she was copper-red and nimble.
The woman lowered her head and kissed him. The warriors of the village closed them within a circle, hiding the pair from Ennaki’s sight, although he could catch enough of a glimpse between the villagers to see what was happening. The Master and the copper-skinned woman lay down in the dust and made long, passionate love for what seemed like an eternity.
Somebody shook Ennaki awake. He opened his eyes to see the Master standing above him.
“We’re done here,” he said.
The boy looked around. The village was empty, and seemed long abandoned, with the huts half-crumbled into sand. The warriors had disappeared, and there was no trace of the copper-skinned beauty.
“What happened?” he asked. “Where is everybody?”
“They were never really here,” said the Master, and that was all the explanation Ennaki ever received.
“Your armour…” Ennaki pointed at the Master’s torso. He was wearing the dark blue robe of the natives underneath the hooded cloak.
“I will not need it where we’re going. It would only hinder me.”
Still in a half-daze, Ennaki stood up. He had seen many strange things during his service under the Master, but the disappearing village shook him more than he’d expected. He had visited the place several times before bringing the Master here, he had danced with the warriors, ate their food, drank their wine, played with their children… Was it all just an illusion? Was the copper-skinned woman a dream?
“Was she a part of the spell, too…?”
“Oh, no!” the Master laughed. “No spell could create her. But her destiny has been fulfilled, and there’s nothing else for us to do here. Come, boy. Lead me to the lair.”
Step, step, drag, slog.
Ennaki stumbled and fell face-first into the sand. It had the consistency of a fine powder, almost liquid, trembling at their every step. It was getting into his nose, ears, mouth, under his eyelids.
The boy stood up, coughing and spitting, and adjusted the scarf of what once was a dark blue robe, now stained with dust and sand into a mess of grey. The Master’s horse stopped and waited for him to catch up before restarting its slow, heavy slog across the desert.
They climbed to the top of a wind-swept dune, and began a long descent down the other side into a broad, bowl-shaped valley. The desert here was a patchwork of colours and textures. Splotches of pink, white, and grey festooned the dirt-yellow canvas. Purple-veined rubble of some ancient weathered rock was strewn among green pea-sized gravel, brought here by the incessant movement of the sand waves from far-away mountains.
Half-way down the slope, Ennaki fell again, and this time he found no more strength to stand up. He felt himself raised by the Master’s hand, effortlessly, and thrown on the horse’s back behind the saddle.
“Water…” he whispered.
“We have none,” was the reply. “You drank the last two hours ago.”
Will he let me die here? the boy wondered.
“We’re almost there. Look,” said the Master, pointing in the distance.
Ennaki squinted in the direction indicated and saw the sheer triangular peak of gleaming, dazzling, white stone. He had seen it before, and knew what it was.
“The lair…” he croaked.
A splash of deliciously cold water woke up Ennaki.
He was sitting in the shadow of a half-broken marble column. Bits of it were strewn all around him in the sand. Further away, a few other remnants of stone pillars and rubble formed a faint trace of a colonnade; a memory of a corridor.
The Master pressed a waterskin to his mouth and Ennaki emptied it eagerly. It was brackish and stale, but to him it tasted divine. He rose, leaning against the column, shielding his eyes from the sun. All around him spread the remains of a fallen city. Broken columns and crumbled arches, shattered statues and cracked pediments, cornerstones without corners, lintels without roofs, and portals without hallways. Once a magnificent place, sprawling far and wide in all directions, a city of temples, palaces, and basilicas, now lost to the ravenous maw of the desert.
In what had once been the centre of the city, quarter of a mile to the south, stood the white stone pyramid, still as gleaming and flawless as it must have been in the glory days of the city. Only the triangular wall facing him was shattered at the base; a gawping black hole leading inside.
Ennaki stepped forward and stumbled upon something. He looked down — it was a bone, a shattered rib. He now noticed more bones among the ruins, big bones, old and blackened. Ogre ribcages, dragon vertebrae, femurs of some immense beasts sticking out like burned-out tree trunks.
“Are you fit to walk?” the Master asked.
Ennaki nodded.
“Then follow me.”
They reached the pyramid shortly. The Master dismounted and left the horse tied to a giant’s humerus, stuck into a pile of marble gravel, before carefully entering the dark jagged hole in the pyramid’s wall.
Ennaki followed, illuminating his way with his own hovering light — one of the first spells the Master had taught him. The crevice, leading to the centre of the pyramid, was cut through several levels of corridors and a maze of shattered staircases. The walls of the corridor they walked through, avoiding heaps of rubble, were decorated with long strips of hieroglyphics and pictograms. Ennaki leaned closer. The people on the pictograms had elongated bodies, bald heads, and were painted with ochre red pigment. They seemed familiar to him.
“But these are…!” he gasped.
The Master turned to the wall.
“Yes,” he said, nodding, “the Children of the Sand. This city belonged to them, once.”
“What happened here?”
“A shard of the War, a long time ago…” The Master shrugged. “It has nothing to do with us. The dragon must have settled here centuries after the city was reduced to rubble.”
After a winding climb up the broken balusters and ruined stairways, they entered an enormous hall in what must have been the central chamber of the entire pyramid. The air here was dry, filled with the smell of rotting eggs, stale urine — and death. But it was empty.
“We’re too late,” said Ennaki.
“No. She’s here. I can sense her.”
Ennaki looked about the chamber. Instinctively, he retreated under the shadow of the corridor.
“Another illusion, Master?”
The Master walked up to the wall and studied the hieroglyphs.
“Can you read those?” asked Ennaki.
“Look here,” the Master said, pointing at a ribbon of markings separating two strips of pictograms.
“Some kind of runes.”
“Old Tongue. The first language of humanity. And a very old dialect, too, barely legible. But it tells me all I need to know.”
He moved along the wall, deciphering the long line of runes. “Ah. You were wrong, Ennaki. And so was I.”
He stepped back.
“This is not a lair. And Selamiel did not settle here after the city’s downfall… she was the downfall!”
When he started reading the runes aloud, the words glowed red and the walls around Ennaki began to tremble and crumble along scale-shaped cracks.
Sun rays pierced the chamber. The pyramid started to unravel fr
om the top, each angular marble coil rotating away from another. The air began to shimmer, revealing the preposterous truth behind the illusion.
“The pyramid is the dragon!” the Master shouted over the rumble, confirming what Ennaki still could not quite believe. “It has been all along!”
The dragon’s head rose high into the sky, which suddenly darkened by its vast wings, while the coils of its tail remained firmly on the ground around the two men. It was far bigger than even Rizniel; the greatest monster Ennaki had seen. A sense of dread and doubt grasped his heart. How could the Master even dream of defeating it?
The final coil was lifted from the ground. Ennaki saw his chance. There was no point in staying within the dragon’s target. He darted in the direction of the black horse, standing calmly outside, and hid behind the pile of rubble.
The dragon lowered its head towards the Master and spewed a river of flame that poured like molten iron from its wide open jaw. The knight covered his eyes with his arm, but stood firm, withstanding the onslaught without flinching. When the flame stopped, he was still there, his clothes were burned off, but he was otherwise unharmed.
He drew the sword and with one tremendous leap reached nearly a third-way up the dragon’s anguine torso. Using the weapon as a pick, he climbed higher and, holding on to the scales and horns of the beast, thrust in the blade up to the hilt. A trickle of blood spewed from the beast, golden and thick like mud. He tried again, and again the effect of the attack was negligible. The dragon shook its neck and threw the Master off. He twisted in the air and landed on all fours, next to Ennaki.
“No good,” he said, “it’s time for the Gift of the Sands.”
He pushed Ennaki forward from behind the rubble hideout. “Get on Sleipnir and distract her.”
“Distract…?”
Ennaki never questioned his orders — if he hesitated, it was only for a moment. He leapt on the black horse and quickly spurred it to a fierce gallop. Right on time, too — a spit of dragon-flame hit the earth where the horse had stood just a moment earlier.
Dragons' Fall_Tales from the Mirror Worlds Page 13