The lights on the shield changed colour, and the ornament added by Ennaki began to rotate. The Master’s triumphant smile changed into a grimace of horror as he realized something was going terribly wrong.
“This can’t be!” he cried. “My calculations… there was no mistake!”
His veins began to glow, throb red, amber and white. The Master screamed in pain as the veins burst; the blood inside was turned into magma, all the tissue in his body was fossilizing at a rapid pace. He tried to break free, but couldn’t — the iron spike was embedded too deep into the solid rock of a dead heart.
“The dwarves…” he began, but then turned his head to find Ennaki hiding in the rubble. “No — it was you! You tra — ”
His mouth turned to stone, and his eyes, filled with vengeful wrath and eternal scorn, turned into gleaming jewels, before all this, too, was covered in lava.
Tap, tap. Clink, tap. Clunk. Crack.
The tapping of hammers and pickaxes was growing louder with every passing… day? Week? Year? He didn’t know. He couldn’t know. Time did not pass under the lava dome.
How he had not gone insane in the stone prison, he wasn’t sure. Or maybe he had? Maybe the tapping was just an hallucination. He hadn’t heard, seen, or felt anything since his body turned to rock — nothing except the mysterious ripples of energy he had felt coming through his body once, an unknowable amount of time ago — and a deep sigh accompanying it.
A crack appeared over his left eye. A ray of light pierced the eternal darkness, and its dimming and lightening gave him the first glimpse of time.
Many days later, the pickaxes revealed his other eye, and he could now look freely upon his saviours. He recognized dwarves, but they looked different from what he remembered — smaller, weaker, shy of movement, dressed in simple, drab clothes of tattered leather. Their tools were simple, too — primitive stone hammers and pig-iron pick-axes that had seen better days — which explained why their work was so slow.
He counted the days, not having anything better to do. It took them forty sunsets to reveal his entire body from under the frozen magma, and thirty more to chisel it all out, separating carefully fossilized limbs from the rock which encased them.
That was all he needed. With a spell he’d had an entire eternity to prepare, he shattered his bonds and was released from the curse of the Earth Dragon. He waited another day until his tissues regenerated, and blood — true, liquid blood — started flowing again in his veins.
He gasped a lung-full of air. His chest ached, his muscles were on fire. He stirred to life, frightening the dwarves who surrounded him in reverent silence.
“Sword…” he croaked.
Somebody put the weapon in his hand. The cold hilt felt right in his grasp.
“How long…” he ventured a question.
The dwarves looked at each other in confusion. “We… we don’t know, Master.”
Master. Yes, I was called that once.
“We weren’t even sure you’d be here. You’re a legend among us. An ancient legend.”
He raised himself on one elbow and looked at their faces; sullen, tired, void of all hope.
“Why did you release me?”
One of them stepped forward. His leather apron was the least tattered.
“We hoped you would help us get rid of the Queen.”
“The Queen?”
“The Eternal One… She who does not die…”
He sat up, still dizzy. He did not care for the dwarves or their problems — all that mattered was that he was still alive, and could once again embark on his quest. It wasn’t yet finished… He hadn’t gained Ymriel’s heart — his skin was still silver — but he was sure he was still strong enough to reach the end, even without it.
But for now he was weak and tired, and his magic had not yet fully returned to him, so he played for time.
“Tell me about this… Queen of yours.”
The chief of the dwarves twirled the ends of his thin, shaggy beard and began a long-winded story. What the Master understood from the tale was that the dwarves had been ruled since time immemorial by an Elven Queen; how an elf came to govern the home world of the dwarven race, was left unclear by the tale, though most of what he said involved a dragon who had eaten all the heirs of the old royal family.
The Queen, though wise and kind at first, had soon grown bitter with unrequited vengeance: the object of her revenge — some said, a scorned lover, others — a traitor of her people — had died before she could reach him. The vengeance began to eat her from inside and she had turned into a mad tyrant, enslaving the dwarf race for millennia. The tiny group standing before the Master was the last cell of the resistance.
He listened to the tale with feigned interest, focusing more on bringing his body to full recovery than the meaning of the dwarf’s words. One thing about the story did however strike him: the dwarves had not mentioned the War, not once. Not a single mention of the Abyss, or the Dragon Knights. Surely at some point the front line must have passed through, or near, Niðavellir? Prince Regin and his courtiers had been keen followers of the news from the front; the dwarves were an important contingent in the forces fighting the Shadow. Were they now so absorbed in their own predicaments that they had ignored, or forgotten, the conflict?
“What about the War?” he asked, when the dwarf finished. “Who’s winning? Where are the campaigns?”
“The War, Master…? What do you mean?”
“The Abyss, man! The war between the worlds! The Dragon Knights must still be based on Alfheimr, surely?”
The dwarves looked downhearted.
“We know nothing of these things…” said one.
“There are other worlds?” asked the other, a young one, with eyes still sparkling with faint hope.
“Don’t be a fool,” the first one scolded him. “It’s just a myth.”
The Dragon Knight felt a shiver. Was he too late? Had the Abyss won while he was asleep, and enslaved the worlds in a lonely darkness?
He stood up and summoned what he could gather of his magic. The air before him shimmered with purple lightning.
He could still open portals. The barrier between the worlds was not impassable. Then what was going on?
“Take me to that Queen of yours,” he ordered.
“Queen Espe,” he said. “What happened?”
The walls and floor of the palace around them were oddly soft and springy: they had been woven out of her black hair, which never stopped growing, and which she had ordered never to be cut. Her face was unchanged; mature and wise, but her eyes were empty, blank orbs.
She raised a shaking finger at him. “Stop haunting me,” she croaked. “I know you’re just a spirit.”
“I’m real enough. It is you who looks like a wraith.”
“Vanish, nightmare.”
“Was it you who betrayed me?” he asked. “You and Ennaki…? Still…” He waved his hand. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“Ennaki — ” Her eyes lit up with a momentary recognition. “He’s…”
“Yes? Where is he?”
She slumped again. “He’s gone home. Could not stand… me.”
Home? “You mean to Dihirizniel? That place still exists?”
But there would be no more answers from Queen Espe. She covered her eyes and wept, noiselessly. The knight stepped up to the throne and cut her head off with a clean slice.
“This should last you enough to elect a new ruler,” he said to the dwarves huddling in the corridor. “She is truly immortal, like me — nothing will ever kill her for good. Find her a good home when she revives. Somewhere far from here.”
This world had many names in the various tongues of the scattered native tribes, but to those travelling freely through time and space it had only one name: the Water.
Between the two small polar ice caps no trace of land blemished the surface of the ocean; no lagoon, no coral atoll, no reef peeking from above the waves. And yet, people managed to l
ive even here.
They dwelt on giant island-rafts, built out of whatever they could find. Here in the North, they used trunks of the flying Chuakk trees and bones of the great garfish, tied with seaweed ropes, propelled against the currents by the giant living sails of Ryakan Bladderbirds; further South, they lived on the corpses of water-wyrms, always floating, never rotting. Around the Equator, they glued the islands out of chunks of dying brown coral, brought up to the surface by brave dive-miners.
He wandered the Chuakk tree city, pondering. Where had they all come from? Why did they choose to live here, in this watery desert, with such an abundance of more hospitable worlds to choose?
The barriers between the worlds were wide open. The War was over — that much he had learned along the way. He assumed the Abyss had been defeated, though how and where, he did not yet know. Everyone was free to go wherever they pleased, if only they could muster enough power to open a portal, or hire somebody to do so.
But it seemed that, on the Water, this choice was not given. Or if it was, nobody desired to use it. It was as if they liked it here… Or perhaps were forced to stay, like the hapless dwarves of Niðavellir? There was another race of humanoids on the Water, but few had seen them up close. The winged Angels lived high above the clouds, in their floating palaces, rarely descending to meet their… subjects? Subordinates? Slaves…?
He could not yet fully grasp the intricacies of the Water society. It took all his strength simply to survive. The trans-world ship he had hired to get here — a slender white frigate, graceful under the crimson sails — and the entire crew of hardy Sea Elves, including the four mages tasked with sustaining a portal large enough for a tall ship to get through, perished in a storm which engulfed them the moment they arrived. A storm, as great as could only happen on the Water; a hellish hurricane of unnatural proportions. For days he struggled to stay afloat, repeatedly drowning, reviving and coming back up to surface, only to drown again. At long last, the clouds cleared, and the waves washed him out onto the artificial shores of the floating city.
The natives spoke a gibberish dialect he could not understand, but he knew enough to say “Garoud” and point upwards for them to accept him as a guest. They gave him food and clothes, and led him to a long building built specially for visitors like him. From the gestures and grunts he understood the city was floating in the direction a gathering of sorts — a market, perhaps — where he had greater chances of finding somebody who could understand him… and connect him with Garoud’s servants.
It was no accident; he knew that much. Neither the storm, nor the deaths of the whole crew; not even his appearance in this particular harbour. Nothing ever happened by accident on the Water, nothing was left to chance in a world overseen by Garoud.
The shadow spread from horizon to horizon, like an oncoming thunderstorm. He dared not even try to assess its size. Garoud floated in the wind, immeasurable like the clouds beneath him.
How could a living thing grow to such greatness? No, he corrected himself, Garoud had not grown — he was. He was truly eternal — not only without end, but without beginning. Many beings on many worlds were seen as Gods by lesser beings — he himself had often been called one — but Garoud was the first and only creature who truly deserved the name.
As the dragon-shaped shadow approached, he noticed a cloud buzzing around the head, like a swarm of flies. Remembering the scale of what he saw, he realized these were dragons — regular-sized, adult beasts; white, silver and blue, surrounding their God in joyful worship.
There were birds, too, great sea eagles and albatrosses, gannets and skuas; they wove their nests on Garoud, and travelled along wherever the currents took him, adding to the vast cloud of flying creatures surrounding the divine body. And somewhere, high above, soared the white-winged Angels, playful, like dolphins of the sky, drawing twirls and loops in the air, laughing, singing, asking endless questions. Where does the wind come from, Garoud? Why does the sun shine, Garoud? When will the world end, Garoud?
Garoud, Garoud! The dragon’s name sounded in the calling of the sea birds, the howling of the wind, the rustle of the waves, the roaring of his white, silver, and blue children.
It came like clouds, and was made of the clouds; his wings were translucent, his body made of mist and steam. Sun shone through them, as the great shadow floated over the rafts of the Congregation. The Dragon Knight noticed real clouds gathering in the nooks and crannies of Garoud’s body, beneath the wings, under the neck horns. Garoud carried with him all the rains of this world.
He was so enthralled by all of this splendour that he barely noticed a shining white dot falling down towards the sea like a shooting star.
The Angel approached him through the corridor of kneeling natives, and raised a shining, pointing finger. His face, surrounded by a mane of silver and golden hair, was fairer than that of any elf, and yet somehow familiar.
“Garoud will answer your Question.”
“Question? I don’t have a question.”
I came here to kill him.
The Angel’s lips raised in a mocking smile. “Nobody comes here without a Question. The only way to speak to Garoud is to ask him the Question. These are the rules of the Water. How can you be here and not know that?”
“Nonetheless, I —”
The Angel turned on his heel, sweeping the ground with the tips of his wings. “Stay here and learn from these people,” he said, walking off. “I gave you the power to understand their language. When you’re done, we will send for you.”
“How will you know?”
The Angel stopped and gave him a scornful look over the shoulder.
“We will know.”
Garoud knew everything about everyone here on the Water. In his vast mind, the paths of every living being that ever set foot on the planet traced a bright line, interlocking with all others in an intricate, infinite tapestry.
It was the Dragon alone who decided whose Question was worth answering, and when. If he so wished, a pilgrim could spend all his life on the Water, waiting for the call, whether he was a King, Emperor or a High Priest of his people; a peasant could gain the answer in a day. It was whatever suited the invisible pattern in Garoud’s mind.
The Dragon Knight had learned all this during the long months spent with the sea tribes, but none of that brought him closer to the answer — or rather, the Question — he was looking for.
Try as he might, his mind was coming up blank. There was simply nothing he wanted to know, or to learn; his life had been nearly fulfilled: all he needed was to slay one more dragon — that dragon — and his quest would be over. And then — what…? He wasn’t sure. He tried to form that problem as a Question, but it didn’t work. No Angel came to take him away from the raft city.
From bits and pieces of tales told by other travellers he finally discovered how the War had ended. He learned of the young new general of the Abyss, who broke through all the defences, straight to the Old Earth, to grasp at the heart of all magic; of the Ice Siege, which lasted ten thousand years and laid waste to the home world of all men; of the final, futile stand in which all the Great Dragons from all the planets perished; and, finally, he learned how the secret council of the Dragon Knights, the Grey Guardians and the Archmages of Kyr, made a grave decision to seal Old Earth from other worlds beyond an impassable barrier, to hide its magic and to keep at least the surviving Mirror Worlds safe from the ripples of the terrible battle — ripples which, he realized, he had felt going through his body when encased in the stone tomb…
All this was ancient history for those with whom he spoke. Nobody knew what happened to the forces of the Abyss beneath the barrier, or the people of Old Earth trapped along with them. And after the millennia that had passed, nobody cared. Some things were certain, though, and he was finding it difficult to believe them at first.
“So all the dragons are gone?” he asked an ancient monk, incredulously.
The old man nodded sagely. He seemed to be t
he most knowledgeable pilgrim yet. “All the Great ones, at least. The talking ones. The dumb ones, the animals, endure – you can see them flocking around Garoud… and of course, Garoud himself. The Last One.”
“And what of the Dragon Knights?”
The monk raised his eyes to the sky, as if remembering. “Yes, I remember that name… But, without the dragons, how can there be Dragon Knights? Most died in the War, others retired, disappeared among the countless worlds, without power, without purpose…”
“You sound as if you knew some of them.”
The monk smiled. “I was a Grand Marshall once, you know.” His eyes lit up. “At the time of the Last Council, I fought side-by-side with He Who Does Not Bear the Helmet.”
The Dragon Knight wanted to ask more, but a white shape fluttered from the sky, interrupting their conversation.
“You, monk,” the Angel pointed. “You shall have the Answer.” He grabbed the old man’s arm.
“What about me?” the Master rose in protest. The Angel looked at him with slightly less scorn than usual.
“You’re close,” he said. “I will come for you next.”
He knew. At long last. A Question burned in his mind stronger than the passion for slaying dragons. He had to know, and to know, he could even refrain from killing Garoud. Knowing the answer was now more important to him than any quest.
Or maybe it was the quest that had grown unimportant? After all, the Abyss had been defeated. His reason for slaying all those dragons was no more. And it was like the monk had said — what use was a dragon slayer in the world without dragons…?
He felt the Angel’s hand on his shoulder.
“You did well,” the silver voice spoke. “Prepare yourself.”
“Prepare — for what?”
An excruciating pain in his shoulder blades was the answer. He curled up on the floor in agony, as a terrible force tore open his impregnable skin and the muscles on his back. He was sprouting Angel wings.
“Why…?” He uttered through trembling lips. None of the other pilgrims had to go through such an ordeal.
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