by Carol Berg
He stopped no more than twenty paces from the mad dragon and raised his arms in supplication. So tiny, so fragile a being beside the monster. I could not hear if he said anything before he began screaming, for the dragon knocked him instantly to his knees with a bone-shattering bellow and bathed Aidan MacAllister in eye-searing white fire. “Aidan, beloved!” I sobbed. His hair and clothes were burning when I closed my eyes, and covered my head, and sank to the hot, stony earth. I could not weep. All my tears had burned away with my heart.
Chapter 29
Chaos. The red claw shatters wholeness. Rends.
Grinding discord rules.
The hglar—our masters whose stink is unlife,
whose claw is red that scrapes, wrenches, tears—
the hglar torments me ever.
Fly ... fly to seek wholeness,
but the biting red claw will not loose me.
I who once ... what was I? Lost am I.
These noises ... the hglar makes words of remembering:
of flight, of youngling wings so tender, of the upper airs.
Ahhhh ... to remember! To fly!
Yet not. Crushing horror,
Bound to this hard, unyielding plane.
Heaviness. Vileness.
The taste ever in my mouth—
red, warm, stinking human blood and human flesh.
Despised taste.
Bitter taste of wretchedness, yet become an unstoppable
craving.
Take the human blood and flesh the hglar offers,
It numbs pain, silences remembering, and there is
nothing else.
Nothing.
I am become chaos. Chaos ever.
Again come the words of remembering.
I would sear the younglings to bear them up.
Not yet, for the red claw tears and binds.
Captive ever. No joining. No sisters. No brothers. Chaos.
Remember! Ever again come the words.
Burn them, gently burn them
to guide and nurture to eternal wholeness.
Come, my youngling . . . fly!
I will lift thee to the upper airs, to the cold lights,
to the glorious burning of the greatest fire.
Fly with me and thy wings will not falter.
No.
No younglings. Only pain that crushes.
Chaos ever.
But here, what creature comes to join with me?
Hglar? No. This one is clawless. Scaleless.
Is it human flesh ... blood ... sent to ease my vile
cravings?
No. It comes willing.
Is it beast flesh sent to fill my belly?
No. Not beast.
Nor a flying one ... the blank, empty flying ones,
younglings yet unborn, not bound to the cruel hard nest.
They sweeten the passing winds of binding horror with
their singing.
But this not-hglar, not-beast, not-flying one ... a
youngling?
It cannot be.
The creature’s air is storm-driven. Discord.
Human flesh. Human blood.
Smash it. Devour it. Soothe this unwhole craving.
Yet ... hold ... a word it speaks of wholeness.
“Roelan, remember!”
What voice is this?
Wholeness? No.
Another bound with sorrow ... bound to pain.
Younglings know not of pain and horror,
nor do the bleating beasts who sate my hunger.
This one is other.
Release this creature from its cruel nest.
Loose its flight into the airs we know not.
Burn it with unlife to free it from its pain.
Yet again, hear. A voice names this not-youngling, not-beast, not-hglar.
“Aidan, beloved!”
Aidan ... Aidan, beloved ...? Remember ...
Who calls me to remember?
Can it be my own, my lost one?
Burn, my youngling! Transform me.
Soothe my uttermost sorrows.
Burn with all of my life and make me remember!
AIDAN
Chapter 30
What is the shape of time? Humans speak as if time takes the form of those things that occupy it: pleasurable things gone too quickly or dull things that linger long past their welcome. Yet in my years of silence, when life was emptiness, the hours did not collapse upon themselves like empty grain sacks. Every moment had depth, breadth, and length; every hour had its immutable volume and built one upon the other until time’s edifice was tall enough that I could be free. Yet from the moment I gave myself to Roelan in Aberthain Lair, the shape of time was altered, so that I could not say what was a moment or an hour or a day.
Half a minute, Lara had told me. Half a minute from the time she would raise her left hand until the dragon would let loose its fire that could melt stone. And I would need half of that to ensure I stood directly in its path. Mad fool. How did I ever expect to deliver the message I had worked on so painstakingly in the past weeks, the words so carefully chosen from my memories of joy?
It was not that I was unwilling. My intent was clear. My resolution firm. Whatever were Narim’s secrets—and I had come to the conclusion that his secrets were monumental—I believed they were beyond my purpose. I had to reach for truth. But I had not counted on being half-crazed with Lara. Mazadine had presented no torment so refined as had these last two days with her, playing at the intimacy I desired above all things, forbidden by her spoken hatred from making it real, yet tantalized with words and deeds that lured me into thinking she cared what happened to me. And I had not counted on my rage at learning that Narim had sent me to the netherworld to keep me “safe,” because he believed no human capable of faith. Yet even from that horrific revelation had sprung a hope to feed my love-struck lunacy. Lara must have thought her revelation would make me despise her, but all I could see was that she refused to leave untruth between us. And even as I wrestled with all of this, the dragon threatened to crack my head with its trumpeting madness.
What rational words can form themselves from such chaos in a quarter of a minute? What instant’s communication can penetrate the awesome, terrifying, majestic horror of a dragon in wildest frenzy?
So when the time came and I ran to embrace the world’s worst nightmare, all I could come out with was “Roelan, remember!” And it was clearly not enough. The red-slimed nostrils flared and the monstrous head dipped toward me; then came the ear-shattering bellow and blinding holocaust that knocked me to my knees. One fleeting instant of grief for Lara, for music, for dragons, and for glorious, decadent, holy life, and I was consumed by pain so horrific it made everything I had ever experienced a mere pinprick.
Across my mind skittered the word hurry, which was odd in itself because I was expecting death to be quick at least. But time had begun to play its unsettling tricks, and the pain and the earth-splitting noise did not end. Somewhere amidst the cacophony of raging white flames and dragon’s madness, I heard my own screaming, and thought, “Why isn’t that miserable soul dead? Why doesn’t he shut up?”
Remember ...
Was it my own word echoing in my dying ears?
“Aidan, beloved!” From outside the fire came Lara’s cry ... so dear, so poignant, penetrating my agony with sweet revelation and piercing regret.
Then from somewhere so remote as to be beyond the moon and stars, drifted the same call, so faint that the flutter of a moth’s wing would mute it, or the whisper of a cloud’s passing, or the landing of a snowflake on a knee-high drift. Not words, for the speaker could no longer shape words, not even the subtle vocalizations Keldar had used. An image. A questioning image. Aidan . . . Aidan, beloved?
In the formless, shapeless moment that I heard it, I resolved to postpone death. I could not ignore the voice that had been the foundation of my life, but chaos, pain, and horror deafened me to his faint call. I had to s
eek some inner quiet where I could hear him and make answer. To find that place I made a journey beset with visions, pushed through all those things that crowded into my mind, demanding to stand as my last grief or my last pleasure. Beyond the fire and present anguish floated the image of Lara, not dancing with the grace and beauty she denied, but dressed in leather and pride, bending terror to her will. More images: a laughing Davyn slapping me on the shoulder, a wine-soaked kiss from Callia, a hurt and angry Alfrigg bleeding with my betrayal. I forced them all to give way: Goryx and Garn MacEachern and their whips and chains and despair, the charred bitterness of Iskendar, the enigma that was Narim. I delved deeper and grieved again for Gerald and Alys and Gwaithir, and I heard my father’s mindless wailing and my mother’s loving laughter. As I had learned in Mazadine, I left them all behind. And somehow in the midst of chaos, I reached the silent darkness, the cool and quiet ocean of my soul’s peace.
“Remember,” I said with blistering tongue and cracking lips. “It is thy servant ... thy brother ... Aidan come to set you free.” Then I settled myself to wait and listen for as long as time might let me live.
Aidan, beloved ... The image came so much clearer.
“I am here,” I answered.
My own. My lost one. I remember thee ... broken, sorrowing, alone.
“No longer sorrowing,” I said. “No longer alone. Thy voice is my comfort and my delight.”
He was with me. The voice I perceived—hearing is not at all an accurate description of what I did—was indeed the voice I had called a god. I’d had no other name for such a being. As in our first days together when I was a child, he was buried so deep in wildness that I could scarcely comprehend the images he poured into me—only their undying beauty, and the love and joy with which he created them.
I could have drunk in his wild visions forever, but the darkness began to waver before my eyes, and my lungs labored as if bands of molten steel were tightening around my chest. I was burning ... dying.... “Roelan, remember! Fly free and live with joy!” The strange interval of peace that time had granted me was past, and I opened my eyes to see my outstretched arms ablaze. My clothes charred to ash and fell away, yet to my wonder, my flesh did not. The hair on my arms and body flared into glowing cinders, and the blood in my veins surged boiling against my skin, but I knelt on blackened earth and did not die. And at some boundary just short of madness, pain was transformed into near-unbearable ecstasy.
Burn with all of my life, beloved. Make me remember.
For a moment or an hour or a day I was consumed by dragon’s fire. Like a youngling dragon my childish scales were burned away, and I was joined with my elder, each of us giving freely of the gifts the gods had left us. So simple an answer. The song set him free. The words Lara had spoken, perverted for so long by the will-destroying bloodstones, now returned to purity and grace. The music we made together. Roelan was my third wing, lifting me out of mortal existence for those few moments, teaching me of life and wonder, now I had reminded him of his soul.
The fire faded and was gone. The dragon straightened its neck and trumpeted in triumph and exhilaration, showering me with a fountain of cold blue sparks that fell with the blessedness of drought-relieving rain. Limp, spent, incapable of thought, I raised my arms and laughed mindlessly with him, for my every sense, every pore, every bone understood that Roelan was free. I could have been deaf—perhaps I was—yet I could have heard the joy in his cry. I could have been blind—that might yet come from the brilliance of his flames—yet through his eyes I could see the world changed, as if a charred gray curtain had been torn away. The stars shone like shattered diamonds on the velvet sky; the summer lightning sparked pink and orange over snow-tinged pinnacles to the south. As the sun unveils its splendor in the coming of the dawn, so did Roelan unfurl his wings of luminous red-gold and green and, in a hurricane of glory, soar into the night sky, splitting the heavens with a rainbow arc of flame as he disappeared beyond the horizon. Tears scalded my cheeks as I huddled, naked and alone, to the black, unyielding earth.
For the moment or hour that it took me to regain some semblance of reason, I was not yet able to consider my position or my future or even whether there was anyone to observe the oddity of my continued life. I could think only of Roelan. Was he gone to wreak vengeance on the Riders or King Renald and his soldiers? Was he already winging his way to the lake of fire? I craved knowledge of his purpose and what the result of our night’s mystery might be. While I had burned in his fire I had felt my heart reborn, sensing a stirring of words and harmonies long dead. But as time creaked slowly on its way and I gazed upon the empty sky, the darkness came creeping back, and my bones that had felt young and whole in his warmth began to ache again.
I glanced over my scarred shoulders uneasily. There was no one about. The Rider’s hut stood empty, the rocky slope devoid of life. The wilderness of the lair spread out before me was dark and silent. I supposed they all believed me dead, and I began to wonder about it myself. Perhaps I was rooted to the spot, a naked phantom to haunt the lair of Aberthain. Where did ghosts find their filmy draperies? I could use one, I thought, as the dawn wind blew cool on my raw bare skin.
I struggled to my feet, and while I tried to decide what in the name of the Seven to do with myself, the petty, prideful insignificance of Narim’s plans left me laughing weakly. The thought that any human or Elhim could foresee what a dragon would do when freed from five hundred years of torment was as ludicrous as a naked, hairless man wandering a dragon lair in the hour before sunrise. Somehow I had accomplished what I’d come to do, but the aftermath was not at all as predicted.
Narim had been sure I would control Roelan after it, that I would ride him across the sky to free the rest of the dragons and lead them all to the lake of fire to regain their minds and voices. But Roelan was no more my slave than I was his. Someday he might answer my need as I had chosen to answer his, but then again he might not. I had offered him my service, but could expect nothing in return. And I would never ride him. He was not a beast.
Lara was not going to like that. Lara ... Slowly I began to remember how all this had come about. There had been Riders ... grabbing Lara as she raised her hand to send me into the fire. Vanir’s fires! What would they do to her when they realized Roelan was free?
Throwing off my weakness, willing my shaking legs to hold me up, I climbed up the rocky slope to the place I’d last seen her. The angular boulders where she had stood so proudly were splashed with blood, as was her dagger that I found wedged in a crevice in the rocks. The blood was dark and dried and cold. Her dragon whip was tangled in the rocks. I had to find her.
Clothes. The Elhim had sent a change of clothes for me; I just hadn’t had time to get them on before Lara began the rite. If the Riders had not found the niche where we had made ready ...
They hadn’t. I crawled back over the boulders and found breeches, shirt, tunic, and boots spilled out of Lara’s bag. I pulled on my discarded cloak over all, trying to quiet my incessant shivering. Narim’s journal lay open in the dirt where I had thrown it, its pages fluttering idly in the breeze. I snatched it up and thrust it in the pocket of my cloak. I would learn more of Narim’s plot after I found Lara.
Behind me exploded a mighty bellowing from the far reaches of the lair. I flattened myself against the sheltering rocks. When I dared peer out again, I could not help smiling. A hot, white glow suffused the lower sky. For a moment it looked as though the sun were rising on the western boundary of the lair. But from the fire rose, not the sun, but one, then two, then three wing-spread dragons. Their massive bodies wheeled and reeled about each other like playful children, their cries rattled my bones like joyous thunder, and in my heart I felt the whispered torrent of their gratitude. The deluge of their speaking was so monumental that it was a struggle to keep breathing or maintain the beating of my heart. Only after they disappeared beyond the horizon could I summon wit enough to answer. “It was my pleasure,” I said.
They
seemed to hear me, for I felt and heard them trumpet their delight. Roelan could free the others. Lara and I had given him the words. The music was their own.
Shouts of dismay, curses, and barking of orders from every side sent me diving back into my rocky niche. It seemed the clan had at last begun to glimpse their undoing.
“Gruesin? Is that you? I saw your—”
“Damn and blast, what’s happening here? Who dares command my kai? The beast was screeching over its kill half the night, but now someone’s sent it up. Where’s the captain?” The Rider bellowed at a pitch worthy of a dragon.
“Didn’t you hear? It’s the singer, the black-tongued bastard—”
“He’s dead. I saw it. I heard his death song and never have screams been so sweet.”
“Maybe he did something before he died. You know ... like he’s done ...”
“He never did nothing. Never! The turncoat female had a stolen kai’cet. She was trying to save the singer with it, but I watched the kai roast him. This is something else.”
“But then who’s sent it up, Gruesin? All three of them are flying. Are Dyker and Jag giving chase?”
“All three?” The Rider was near strangling on his words. “But that’s Dyker and Jag running this way.”
“Blast and thunder! All three! We’d best get to the commander!”
“I’ll flay the traitorous bitch myself!”
Boots pounded and harsh cries and curses echoed through the lair as the other two Riders joined Gruesin and his friend. As soon as they moved away and a cautious glance assured me that the way was clear, I hurried after them. Lara would be taken to MacEachern. Whatever these Riders said, the high commander would allow no one else to wreak the clan’s vengeance on her. I prayed he would try to learn what had happened before he did so, for I needed time to save her. Otherwise, she had done the unpardonable, and she would die for it ... slowly, painfully, as only the Ridemark could manage it.