by Tim Stead
“Once, I might have believed that,” Torgaris said.
“You called me,” Narak replied.
“I did not.”
“I hear the call even now,” Narak replied. He stepped closer, just a few paces. His natural caution was being eroded by the song, it was almost physically dragging him forwards, and the closer to Torgaris he came the clearer it was, and the clearer it was the more he understood it. “Will you permit me to approach?” he asked.
The dragon’s lips drew back, revealing teeth that were shockingly white against the black skin, lips and tongue. They were long and sharp. “It will save me the trouble of chasing you,” it said.
Narak felt no fear. He stepped closer until the dragon’s head loomed over him and the power of the call filled his body with its vibration. It quickened his blood, hummed in his ears, and resolved itself into two things. One of them was a word, and the other was a deed.
“Lower your head,” he told the dragon. Surprisingly the creature obeyed. The great head dipped once more to the floor, and rested just two paces from where Narak stood. The dragon’s eye ridge was a little above the level of his own eye, but the long snout taped down to a height just above his waist. He placed his hand on the snout, squarely in the middle.
The scales were hot, but bearable. He felt power rush into him through the contact, a river of desire. He closed his eyes and spoke the word that came rushing in with it.
“Adelir.”
Torgaris’ head was suddenly gone, snatched away and rearing high above him, his great dark wings spread across the room and claws raking the stone floor.
“What did you say?” the dragon demanded.
“Adelir,” Narak repeated.
“How do you know this name?”
“It is what you call. It is the name you call, and it drew me here.” He gazed up at the dragon towering above him. It was clearly angry, but he saw at once that it had changed. Where he had touched it, at the exact point that he had laid his had one of its scales had turned sky blue, and the eyes, the angry eyes, had brightened so that they had whites, and the pupil, a sickle slash across them, was blue also.
But Narak was awash with magic. It was almost as though he had lost all volition. He was a passenger within his own body, gawping out at the events that were unfolding. He saw his own hand rise, heard words coming from his own mouth.
“It is a promise, Torgaris. I am Adelir. The promise is Adelir. You know this.”
The dragon’s head swept down until it nearly touched his face. The eyes examined him.
And Narak understood. The magic that had seized upon him made itself known, and he knew what Adelir was, what he was, what the promise was.
Dragons were not magical creatures, but they were made of magic, filled up with it, and somehow that power had formed itself into a desire, and the desire had become a prophecy, and the prophecy a spell.
It had been cast upon him. Narak was also Adelir, The Awaited, the instrument of salvation for which the dragons, all of them, had wished for two thousand years, and two thousand years is a lot of magic.
“I cannot believe this,” Torgaris said.
“You are changed already,” Narak said. “The mark of Adelir is upon you, and your eyes can see what they could not.”
Torgaris turned and looked down into a pool of water, there were several in the great room, and stared for a moment at his reflection. He spoke then in a quiet voice as though to himself, but it was still quite loud enough for Narak to hear.
“Can it be true?” he asked. He continued to stare into the water until Narak began to fear that he had simply turned to stone. He could detect no drawing of breath, so movement of the eye, nothing.
“Torgaris?”
Still nothing stirred. Narak’s voice echoed around the chamber, and it seemed somehow profane in the silence of the room with the frozen black dragon so still and all other sound banished. Narak could no longer hear the birds, there was no wind, and apart from the subdued beat of the song that had called him here the world had stopped about him.
He did not speak again. He did not move. He waited.
Time stretched on. Narak could not have said how long it was before Torgaris moved, only that it was a long time. Hours had passed.
The dragon swung his head away from the pool and once more turned his gaze upon Narak. “I believe,” he said.
At once the blue scale upon his snout flared brightly, colour leaping from it. A blaze of blue raced down the dragon’s back, a flash of summer lightning, and when the light was gone Narak saw that Torgaris was no longer unmarked black, but that instead a line of blue, brighter at the head and darker towards the tail, marked out the scales that ran along his spine and the plates and spines that rose from it.
At the same moment the magic released Narak, and he stood and stared at the spectacle before him. He remembered every word he had said, every understanding he had gleaned from the spell, yet he could not quite say what it was that he had promised.
“You will permit me to leave?” he asked.
“I will not prevent you,” Torgaris replied, “but the others will know. The others will come.”
“The others?”
“The dragons, the nine, all except Kirrith, who is bound by his oath.”
“They will come here? All of them?” It was a prospect both exciting and troubling. Nobody except Pelion and Cobran’s seven had ever seen the dragons gathered. Eight of the nine would come, and there would be a gathering of power such as had not been seen for two thousand years. Narak wanted to see that. It worried him because they were coming for him, for Adelir, for promises. The best that could happen was that the magic would seize him again. He would become a puppet to its power. The worst was that it would not.
He would have to tell Avatar.
Thirty Seven – Cain
They made camp six miles east of bas Erinor. The sky was beginning to darken, and if they had ridden hard for the city they would have made it at about nightfall, but Cain decided to give his men a rest instead. He reasoned that they would fight better when rested, and that the Seth Yarra force, if it had not already taken the city gates by nightfall, would not move again until dawn. Nothing would be lost by refreshing his men.
He chose an open meadow for their camp, posted the usual sentries and sent a couple of Tilian’s men west to see what they would make of the Seth Yarra positions in the dark. Tilian himself he kept in the camp.
It was a cool night, and they were far enough away from the city and shielded by woods on all sides, so he permitted fires. He had driven his men as hard as he dared, and they had done well. He could not afford to drop many. For all he knew he would be facing an equal force of Seth Yarra and, even if they were still without the walls, they may well have prepared their position. He needed all the men, and he needed them fighting fit.
Strangely they seemed in a good mood. The atmosphere about the camp was almost a carnival one. Some men sang, others talked in cheerful voices, told each other tales appropriate to the hour. More than once as he moved among them he heard the tale of Fal Verdan, though none of these men had been there.
He shared a hot cup with several fires that night, and at each he was greeted warmly, and with the nervous enthusiasm that men often show before a battle that they fully expect to win. He was glad of it. It meant that many of them would sleep, though of course there would still be those who worried their way through the dark hours until dawn. Cain would be one of them.
He made his way back to his own tent and found Sheyani sitting outside by a roaring fire. She seemed deep in thought, and she did not hear him approach until he sat down beside her.
“Are you worried about tomorrow?” he asked.
She smiled. It was a little forced. “No,” she said. “Not tomorrow. You will do well.”
“Something else, then?”
“It is Passerina.”
“You were surprised that it was her.”
“Yes. As you know I
expected it to be Narak. Passerina has always been apart from the Benetheon. She has not been as… accepted by the occult court.”
“You mean they had sneered at her and now they will be afraid that they will be repaid in kind?”
She grinned. “You have the gift of clarity, Sheshay.”
“They won’t try to do anything stupid, will they?”
“Against a god mage? It would be unthinkable. Of all the kingdoms Durandar is the one that has best kept their memory alive. We know what they are capable of.”
“Then why do you fret?”
“Hammerdan will be scared. He is not popular. He has estranged the Wolf, and now if he learns that Passerina is Pelion’s heir he will not have a clear path. He may act against his own court to secure his position, for there are many who would gladly see him fall.”
“Then we shall not tell him.”
“I still count some of them as my friends, Sheshay. If I could tell them before Hammerdan learns the truth it would be a great help to them.”
“Can you do that?”
“Not without Hammerdan knowing. He will sense the link. He will assume that whoever I speak to has betrayed him.”
“Perhaps someone at Wolfguard can help.”
“Indeed so, but Wolfguard is months away, I fear.”
“Well, we shall do our best,” Cain said. “There is no more that we can do.”
Sheyani stared at the fire. “Yet if I could think as you do, Sheshay, I am sure that I could see a way to achieve my ends. There are open doors in your mind where mine are closed. I know magic well enough, but I see only those things that others see.”
“You flatter me, Sheyani,” Cain said. “A few tricks and you think that I am clever.”
“It like telling the swallow he is swift when he only looks at other swallows,” she said. “You never see how the rest of us stumble along behind you.”
“It is experience,” Cain insisted. “Nothing more…”
His words were interrupted by the massed cries of birds, and a moment later the camp was full of them, flying and calling, rushing to the east as though pursued by an army of hawks. He heard men cry out in surprise all over the camp, for it was quite dark, and none of these should be flying at all, let alone rushing through a crowd of men.
Sheyani leaped to her feet and looked upwards. She searched the sky for a moment, and then pointed.
“Look!”
Cain followed the line of her arm, and saw movement. It was a clear night, and the winter stars blazed in unashamed glory above the meadow. Something was occluding the stars. It took a moment for his mind to adjust to what he was seeing. The he saw.
“Gods and demons!”
It was huge. Something quite vast was flying above them, slightly to the west. He could hear nothing for the noise of the birds and the surprised shouts of his men, but he watched as great wings rowed the shadow across the sky, and felt the wind and a faint scent that marked its passing.
Sheyani had covered her mouth with her hands.
“Was that…?”
“A dragon,” she said. “A dragon is the sky.”
“But they are a myth,” Cain said. “There are no dragons.”
“There are nine,” Sheyani corrected him. “And may the gods help all of us if they are free again.”
Thirty Eight – Pascha
Pelion was furious. She could not doubt it. He had disappeared after the incident with the Farheim, and she had not seen him for two days. Even for Pelion this was highly unusual. She had spent the time wandering the small gardens of Pelion’s mind and thinking. She had been trying to add to the gardens as well, but with only mixed success. There were no edges to add on to because Pelion had made the place a perfect circle, there being no beginning or end but a very limited size.
Pascha had adopted the rationale of her insight. Instead of trying to create a new thing she had chosen some fragment of the garden and begun to embellish it. What had once been a small copse of trees had become a wood, admittedly of modest proportions. She had changed the trees from birches to oaks. She liked oaks.
The wood was satisfying, but she considered it incomplete. A wood should have a brook running through it, a little water to give it life and motion and a sound that was not just the sound of trees. She had always thought a brook gave a wood direction, too. Wherever you were you could strain to hear its song, and by that know your way.
She spent a morning creating the brook. It was difficult. With the wood there had been a lot to work with. The birch trees had been almost willing to become oaks, and quite happy to multiply. They had broadened and spread, reaching up for Pelion’s eternal sun, roots burrowing down into the soil. Trees she understood because they leant themselves to understanding.
The brook did not want to flow. She made a meandering gully, a depression that danced prettily through the trees, and she added water. Nothing. It seemed that no matter how much water she created it simply sank away into the earth.
Pascha went back to Pelion’s stream and examined it. It was a fake. It was more akin to the fountains at Bas Erinor than it was to the rills and rivers that flowed in the forest around Wolfguard. Pelion had simply lined the channel with clay.
She was not sure is this was a sign of inability, or perhaps a practical solution to a problem that, when all was said and done, existed only in Pelion’s head. Whatever the cause, she chose not to emulate it. It quite put her off the idea of creating a stream.
She decided to grow the wooded area instead, to make it into a forest. Her brief stay at Wolfguard – not yet over in reality – had reacquainted her with the pleasures of the forest, and so she set about building a forest that had, if not the scope, then at least the character of the land around Narak’s home.
She was getting good at multiplying oak trees. The problem was to expand the wood in such a way that it didn’t distort the rest of Pelion’s reality. Not only would it be uncomfortable, but Pelion would be even angrier that he already was. Still, she had it all pretty much under control, so she was surprised when Pelion appeared without warning.
“Stop doing that,” he said.
Pascha ignored him. If Pelion wanted a contest of wills she thought she was ready for him. She felt as strong as she had ever been.
“Do not be childish,” he said.
She turned to him. “Childish? It is not I who has been sulking for two days.”
Pelion flapped his hands in irritation, an old man’s gesture. “No,” he said. “There is not much time. I must teach you again.”
“Teach me?”
“Dragons. You must know about dragons.”
“Truly?” She felt the thrill of forbidden knowledge. At least she was going to learn about them. But Pelion had said it was the last thing he would teach her. It meant that her studentship was coming to an end.
“Yes, truly.”
“Then our time together is nearly over,” she said. She could not keep a hint of sadness from her voice. For all his tempers and pomposity she had grown fond of the old man. More significantly, it meant that her only direct source of mage lore was to be taken away from her. But Pascha had spent her time well. No master had ever had a more diligent student. Her knowledge had blossomed, grown almost as rapidly as her oak trees, though she was still deeply aware of the gulf that separated her from Pelion.
“The end is close,” Pelion confirmed. “Closer than I would have liked, but events have forced my hand.”
“Something has happened.” It was not a question.
“Indeed it has. Dragons move again across the face of the world, and we must act quickly if a disaster is to be averted.”
Pascha felt a moment of panic. This had something to do with Narak. Narak had been on his way to meet with a dragon called Kirrith, according to Pelion. Now this. It must be connected in some manner.
“Is Narak unharmed?” she asked.
“So far as I can tell he as well as ever, perhaps better,” Pelion said.
&nb
sp; “Will you tell me what has happened?”
“I will…”
“And in a plain way so that I may understand it fully?”
“I will. This is too important for you to fail to grasp it.” It was almost impossible, Pascha decided, for Pelion to open his mouth without some trace of condescension coming out of it.
Pelion sat by the side of one of her trees and gathered himself. He laid his hands carefully in his lap.
“You know that dragons were created by Cobran and the seven, made without conscience or empathy, nothing at all to restrain their lust for mayhem and destruction. You know that I created the Pity Stone, the thing that gave them what they lacked and buried them in shame and guilt for what they had done.”