“One step more, and I will destroy the child – and damage you greatly.” Manon’s voice shook with offended anger.
Ferros straightened and met his brother’s gaze. “Destroy their child, and they will kill you.”
“They need not know.”
“I suspect that the Laish will know the moment that their child no longer lives, but if not, I will inform them myself.”
“This is not your affair.”
“You released the Laish,” Ferros answered softly, but his mild tone was underlain with brittle hardness. “The presence of these creatures on the skin of this world endangers all life upon it. You have made it everyone’s affair.”
“As long as the child is in my care, I control them, and they will serve me.”
Ferros bent his gaze once more upon the egg. “I believe that this child nears the moment of its birth. What will you do then, I wonder?”
Manon looked sharply at the young dragon, breathing and moving within the egg sack, trying to discern if any appreciable changes had occurred in the time that had passed since he last examined it. In fact, he knew very little about the gestation period of the Laish, other than the fact that it was unquestionably long. This egg had been produced nearly six years earlier. If the child within were ready to burst from its shelter any time soon, then Ferros’ question was more than pertinent, it was troubling. What would he do?
“I will contain it,” he answered.
“In this cavern?”
“Yes.”
Ferros treated his brother to a cold, disdainful smile. “And what will you feed it?”
Another question to which Manon had no answer, but he set his face in lines of decision, refusing to allow Ferros to witness uncertainty.
“I will provide what it needs.”
“How?” Ferros waved his hand at the bright entrance. “Your servants lie dead outside, slain rather easily by the man you propose to bring to ruin.”
Manon ignored that, having no good answer, and studied the god of the underearth for a long moment. “Are you aware of that which this man has in his possession?”
“I care not what he possesses or does not possess.”
“Oh, I think you will care about this.”
Ferros watched him but gave no answer.
“He has in his possession a thing of great power,” Manon continued, “in which is posited the combined strength of our enemies. With it, we might escape the constraints of place and work our will wherever and however we desire.”
“Our enemies?” Ferros emitted a short, harsh laugh. “Do not include me in your madness. I am under no constraint, and I work my will in that which is entrusted to me.”
Ignoring the intended offense, Manon said quietly. “I had nurtured a hope that you might join me.”
“I serve the Maker.”
It was Manon’s turn to laugh. “So you still hold to the old ideals? Have you never wondered why he is the Maker? Do you never trouble yourself with any thought higher than that of service and duty to a false deity? Tell me – have you never looked backward at the beginning of all things and wondered at what might be found there, if sought out and examined?”
Ferros stepped back from the young dragon and looked at his brother closely. “From whence do such words arise? Do you envy those greater than yourself? For I do not. The Maker is greater than I; He made our kind in the deeps of time. Therefore I serve Him at His pleasure.”
“How do you know that he made us?” Manon sneered as he uttered the words. “Did you observe him at his work? It is time to put away childish beliefs and consider that our kind might have arisen from quite another source – and that he might not be so very different from us, after all.”
Ferros had gone very still, watching his brother. “What new information do you possess that might cause me to reconsider that which you name my ‘childish beliefs’?”
Manon’s posture in that unguarded moment exuded a mixture of frustrated hatred and malicious envy that seemed to drip from his words. “Will you tell me that you never considered the possibility that we came forth together – he and us – as a result of processes no one can understand, that we are all equal, but that, by sheer accident, he awoke first, and used his primacy to advantage?”
“So,” Ferros answered softly. “You know nothing, but you suspect much; and upon these suspicions you form opinion.” He moved forward, walking around the dragon’s egg, and came near and examined his brother closely. “Do you intend to rebel against the Maker?”
“I intend to work my own will.”
“He will destroy you.”
Having recovered his composure, Manon laughed softly. “I may destroy him.”
“No.” Ferros shook his head. “Madness lies in harboring such thoughts. The Maker is the Father of us all, and powerful beyond any imagining. If you do not comprehend this, you are indeed mad.” He swept one robed arm backward, indicating the dragon. “It was his servants that imprisoned the Laish, after the rest of us had tried and failed.”
“Oh, I know about his servants,” Manon said quietly. “There were two of them here just a moment ago.”
This genuinely surprised Ferros. “You saw them? The Astra were with the man?”
“Two of them, as I said.”
“They are more powerful than we, brother. As I said, the Astra subdued the Laish.”
“And yet I set them free again.”
“It is far easier to free a monster from its prison, than it is to subdue it and force it into a cage. This is madness, my brother.” Ferros’ voice took on an edge of genuine concern. “Forgo your folly, and I will help you clean up this mess.”
“Join me.”
Ferros shook his head. “I will not. Even if I wished to resist the will of the Maker – which I do not – His power is too great. Forgo this before He destroys you.”
“If he can do this that you suggest – destroy me – why has he not already done so?”
Ferros considered this in silence for a moment. “I cannot answer that. Perhaps He thinks you will repent of the evil you have done – you are His child, after all.” Quickly, he held up one hand, preventing Manon’s retort. “I would ask a thing, if I may?”
Manon acquiesced to this without speaking.
“Why do you trouble with the humans? They are a small, weak race, incapable of greatness. Indeed, they were once given into your hand, so that you might, in your wisdom, aid them in attaining something more. Why do you now despise them and seek their destruction?”
“It is not their destruction that I seek,” Manon answered, “but subjugation to my will, that they might be put to better use.”
“I suspect that you lie. Even so, they are the Maker’s affair – not yours or mine.”
Manon’s dark eyes narrowed and his voice dripped contempt. “You do fear him, don’t you, brother?”
Ferros stiffened, and his eyes in turn blazed coldly bronze. “You should understand that I fear Him alone – and no other.”
“You should, perhaps, fear me.”
Ferros did not answer.
After a moment, Manon leaned forward and stated softly. “I have become more powerful than you can imagine.”
His bronze eyes still fierce and cold, Ferros nodded slightly. “I see the germ of truth in this statement. You are, in fact, more powerful than I am, or could hope to be; indeed you have become greater than any of the Brethren. By what dark means you have accomplished this, I do not know, nor do I wish to know. But this I will say – as great as you have become, you are yet much less than He.”
At this, Manon straightened up and moved back from the ring. Abruptly, his hard demeanor softened. “You are most like me, Ferros, and my favorite. When all this is done, and he that names himself the Maker is subdued, his servants in my thrall and the universe at my disposal, I will forgive you your unbelief.”
Ferros gazed back at him in silence, and then, without answering, turned and disappeared into the inner darkness of th
e cavern, leaving behind a red mist that dissipated slowly.
39
Manon went back across the many miles, into his first body. He must now forever keep his eyes at least partially open in that distant, dark place, for his servants were gone from there now, slain by the hand of his troublesome young enemy. It would be a bother, even a distraction, but his interests there were vital, and that particular second self was quite powerful, and would be alert, even when the god’s attention was centered elsewhere.
He was mildly disappointed in the conversation with Ferros, but was not otherwise troubled by it. He didn’t need Ferros, but he did sometimes feel very alone in his great pursuit; and he had spoken truly – of all the Brethren, Ferros was the most tolerable, because he seldom consorted with the others.
Deep in the bowels of his tower, he finished the preparation of another second self, and readied it to go into the northern mountains to speak with the Laish. When his work was done, he left the chamber and ascended into the upper reaches of the tower, to a private compartment where he could recline and rest, while the second self did its work. There, he sat and leaned back, closed his eyes, and reopened them in the dungeons far below.
As Manon’s second self exited the doors and went up the long ramp to ground level, scattered groups of first children bowed their heads and covered their faces with large clawed hands, remaining motionless until the image of the Great Father had passed by. The image was tenuous, ghostly, for there was not enough of Manon’s life force in it to render it potent enough to use as what others named a “fellring”. It was simply a device for making conversation with those creatures whose disposition, lately, had begun to render him wary.
After exiting the ramp and coming out onto the broad avenue that led southward, Manon turned to the east, onto the innermost of the many circular thoroughfares that surrounded the tower, and made his way around to the north. Here, a rather narrow avenue led out of the city – which was smallest on this side of the tower– and toward the rugged mountains to the north of the valley.
Gliding northward along the road, Manon thought about that which Ferros had intimated about the birth of the young Laish. Would its parents know if he destroyed it? If he decided that this indeed were true, and if the child was born before his plans came to fruition; how would he care for it? Indeed – a thing far more troubling was this – could he control the young Laish? For it would not be subject to the same sanctions as its parents; being young and inexperienced, it might simply try to escape, attacking all that stood in its way. Probably, he would have to kill it, and then attempt to hide the deed.
As he approached the mountains, he could feel the mental disruption caused by the minds of the dragons, and he turned his thoughts upon them. How, he wondered for perhaps the thousandth time, had they come to be? Certainly, they were alien to this world, or to any other world with which he was familiar. Aberanezagoth, it was claimed – indeed by Aberanezagoth himself – had conjured them long ago, in some distant, exotic, dark corner of the universe. But Manon no longer believed this to be true. Having met the exiled god, Manon knew him to be incapable of such a feat.
Nor were they a creation of the Maker. Even if Manon believed the one calling himself the Maker capable of producing life – an idea he had abandoned long ago – there was no reason for anyone to invent things as alien, macabre, and as ultimately ungovernable as were these creatures.
So Manon fell back, once again, upon that principal which had become his prime foundational belief – that in a particularly strange and malevolent moment; without thought or foresight, the mindless universe had spit them forth.
Leaving the plain where it rose into the fastness of the mountains, and entering a narrow, rough, icy canyon with nearly vertical sides that cleaved the mountains as if by the violent act of a behemoth’s hand, he struggled to maintain the order of his thoughts against the rising cacophony of those of the Laish. He knew them to be at least somewhat intelligent, perhaps dangerously so – indeed, they had learned a rudimentary use of his language when it had become clear that he could not master theirs.
Those things which he had managed to learn of them astonished him, and on some level, even frightened him. They did not understand the concept of natural death, so either they were immortal, like the gods, or they simply couldn’t grasp the idea when expressed in any language other than their own. Nor did they seem to grasp the concept of a “Maker”, something that fed into Manon’s own beliefs. They could breed only at great intervals of time, every few millennia or so, and each pair could reproduce but one child, rendering that single offspring precious indeed. Despite this, it was nonetheless their overriding, overwhelming desire to produce a child and nurture it into maturity.
When he learned this, and had found that the couple that was waiting for him up the canyon was ready to conceive, it had given him the secret advantage he needed. So, he had set them free from their deep prison, and had shown them the perfect place to rear a child. Then, when the egg was produced, and the parents gone abroad to feed, Manon had got into position, exposing his true intentions to them upon their return. At first, they didn’t believe that he could endanger the child, but when he called their bluff by threatening to step beyond the ring, fear for their offspring won out. So now, for the moment at least, they were his.
He turned a sharp blind corner in the canyon and came to a sort of amphitheatre where the fissure of the mountain ended in sheer walls. The rocky floor was strewn with charred and broken bones of various large animals, and even of men. Manon sometimes suspected that there were bones of missing First Children among them as well, but he never looked, or mentioned the possibility to his captives. There were larger issues.
The Laish clung to the sheer walls by virtue of long, sharply vicious claws at the ends of each of their four legs, which they drove deep into the very stone. Indeed, the rock was fairly riddled with punctures. On this evening, they were positioned head to tail halfway up the left side of the amphitheatre. Nearly drowning in the noise of their sudden perturbation at seeing him – he had discovered that they were unable to sense the approach of a tenuous second self, and so were often surprised – he examined them as he had so many times.
The bodies were massive, but appeared slender by virtue of the fact that they were so fantastically long, with huge gnarled and horned heads, and tails that ended in triangulated spikes, almost like the head of an arrow. If a dragon opened its mouth wide, a very tall First Child could stand easily inside the cavity and still avoid the curving fangs, unless of course, the Laish decided to eat, and then the unlucky lasher would be but a bite.
Beginning behind the protruding shoulders and covering nearly the whole length of each dragon’s body, there were voluminous, filmy wings which, at first glance, appeared far too flimsy to lift one of the great creatures and propel it into and through the air. But this perception was deceptive. It was not the substance of the billowing wings that served the creatures, Manon had discovered, but an unknown power that was contained within them. Manon had tried several times to discern the nature of the mysterious power, but had failed. In the end, he had asked outright, but was rebuffed.
A harsh, alien voice broke through his mental barriers. “Why come?”
Manon knew that this meant, “What do you want of us?”
He ignored them for a moment, savoring his mastery of them, pondering the question that often came into his mind, namely; how could he extend his hold over these terrifying creatures once the issue of the child was resolved? Was it possible, or must he ultimately sacrifice what would undoubtedly be a sizeable portion of his own energy to destroy them, in order to save his expected gains?
“Why come?” The harsh voice was more insistent now.
Watching them, observing their agitated writhing, Manon discerned that the question came from the one hanging upside down on the wall, the female.
“Not long now,” he answered. “Not long, and you may go to your child, and take it – w
herever it is that your kind goes.”
“We want child.”
“Yes, I know – not long now.”
“You lie.”
Despite himself, Manon flushed angrily. “I tell you the truth, always. But I am your master whether you like it or not, and I will decide what is true and what is not.”
“You lie.”
“I have your child’s life in my hands.”
“Hurt the child – we kill.”
Though he was not entirely certain that this threat could not be carried through, Manon brushed it aside, maintaining the bluff. “Oh, I think not. Besides, there is but one thing more that I require of you, and then you are released.”
At this, their disjointed thoughts erupted into bedlam. Manon cringed as the dragons’ mental agitation and anguish for their offspring roared through his mind. He held out his hands. “Stop this!”
After a moment, the tumult caused by their perturbation abated and the harsh voice came again. “What thing?”
“The thing I require?”
“What thing?”
“I may need you to kill and eat something.”
“Good. Tell us what kill. We go now.” The filmy wings began to hum with growing power and the enormous bodies pulled away from the wall. “What kill?”
Holding both arms up, palms outward, Manon shook his head and fairly shouted above the rising din. “No! Not yet. The time is not yet.”
Gradually, the thrumming of the dragons’ wings subsided and reluctantly they settled back into their perches.
“Again, you lie.”
“Believe what you will.” Manon lowered his arms. “When everything is in its place, you will go and kill the one I designate, and then you will be free.”
“We tire of lies.”
Manon turned to go but looked up once more. “One kill and you are free.”
Turning his back on them, closing his mind against the racket, Manon guided the second self back down the canyon, out of the mountains, and across the dark plain to the tower. Once there, he walked it up the stairs and into his private compartment, where he brought it to himself, reached out and drove one hand into its tenuous outline, reabsorbing the precious life force.
Kelven's Riddle Book Three Page 41