You, Elora cried, in a voice more resonant of Malevoiy than Daikini.
She’d never dreamed a single word could embody such hostility and utter, all-embracing contempt, much less that it could come from her. She didn’t care. These…things that were less than pecks were no fit foe for her, and even less prey. It was an insult to the order of things that they even existed, much less did such damage to her lovelies.
dare!
To her loathing, she added rage and the regret that the Death Dogs would make such short work of them.
“For you,” said Rool, “we dare anything.”
“So, Elora Danan,” noted his companion in a voice so lacking emotion of any kind he might have been discussing the morning weather, “has it come to this?”
The brownies looked gaunt and she realized that was because their bolts of energy were fueled by the essence of their own lives. For each dog they slew, a portion of themselves perished along with it.
She flashed fangs at them and all the dogs who remained followed suit, breaking the darkness now with points of gleaming ivory to go with their bloody eyes.
Again, the image of the Maizan warrior fell before her but this time Elora found herself looking far more closely at the scene than before. There was courage in him, in abundance and without question, for he walked ground that was unknown to even the greatest of Daikini magi. Commitment to a cause and a leader, a determination to win the day. Calculation, in his assessment of Khory’s skill and his own; confidence in his own ability to cope with her. Nothing really that Elora could label Evil, not even as a reflection of his master. That was why Thorn called their foe the Deceiver, for his ability to mask his true nature and purpose and thereby obtain the services of those who would otherwise stand resolutely against him.
The warrior was a proud man, and so young, not that much older than Elora herself. He was full of dreams.
Then, before he even knew what was happening, Khory took them all from him.
The pain was nothing compared to the realization of loss, and failure. There was such confusion as the tension fled from his limbs. He was a Black Rose. He had killed, without hesitation or mercy, in the service of his Castellan. He thought he had accepted the reality of his own death. But the moment itself left him full of pleading and denial. He sought purpose in his sudden sacrifice. He found himself alone, in the dark.
Elora’s head snapped up, her arms as well, and the Death Dogs took the gestures as their cue. Pace by deliberate pace, they flowed outward from her, moving to the side as well to flank their foes. They hoped for flight, hungered for even a brief chase before the kill, but the brownies stood their ground.
Again, Elora burned from the inside out but this time there was a difference. It was as if she’d plunged herself into the molten heart of the world, all trace of physicality cindered in an instant, her only grasp on coherence the primal sense of self. She could think; therefore, she had to exist. From that thought—the instinctive “I am”—came form and a kind of substance. She stretched long and lean, more sleek and sinuous than an eel. She wasn’t alone, either. As she cast her senses wide, habit labeling the myriad and overlapping perceptions as sight and sound and scent and taste and touch though they were in fact none of those, she found that the fire was home to score beyond score of similar creatures, gamboling about with wild delight. They popped in and out of view, winding themselves around and occasionally right through one another in gleeful disregard for all the laws of nature she’d been taught.
I know you, she cried, the words cascading from her in streams of vibrant color and texture against the greater backdrop of eternal fire.
Know you, replied one, and the cry was quickly taken up in a madcap chorus, know you know you know you!
It was worse, and yet more wonderful, than being swarmed by puppies as the firedrakes crowded close around her, overjoyed that she had chosen to join with them at last.
The First Realm is fire, she whispered, meaning to speak to herself and discovering too late that wasn’t possible here.
Fire fire fire, she heard, and then, burn burn burn!
The World burns, she continued, remembering the last time she’d encountered these sweet yet unimaginably deadly creatures, so formidable and uncontrollable that even the most powerful of magi, on either side of the Veil, gave them a wide berth. Very rarely, hubris or desperation would prompt some benighted, hugely ambitious soul to try a Summoning. There existed spells and incantations sufficient to command even creatures as untamed as these—but they allowed no margin for error. The conjuration had to be perfect, and the strength of the sorcerer equal to the task. Elora had seen what little remained of those who’d failed, proud castles reduced to charred stumps of stone, the land around them turned to black glass by the unimaginable heat. She alone was able to call firedrakes to her side and restrain their natural urge to set all Creation ablaze. They had spared her life on one occasion, and she had saved a clutch of theirs on another. She counted them as friends but wasn’t sure if the term truly applied. She suspected nothing that made sense to her carried over to them, and likewise in reverse.
The World burns, she repeated. We burn. All things burn.
When she swam with the firedrakes before, it hadn’t hurt. Now she was conscious of sharp, stabbing pains throughout her body. The ’drakes took no notice of her distress but continued their playtime.
Fire stands at the beginning of things, she said, continuing their catechism, wondering all the while why coherent, structured thoughts continued to come to her in a form that had no use for them. Firedrakes were creatures of random impulse, wherein concept and action were one. Because of that, all their thoughts tended to be simple and active; they moved too quickly for reflection. And at the end…?
Wings exploded from her back, a tail from the base of her spine. Limbs elongated, her neck and skull as well, losing none of the liquid grace of the firedrakes but gaining the majesty of a solid form. She grew tremendously in stature and in the process gathered into herself the fire that surrounded her.
Once more, she found herself returned to the dark place where the Death Dogs dwelled and recognized it now as a corner of her own soul. The pack was closing inexorably on the brownies, who stood back-to-back with weapons raised and ready, determined to sell their lives as dearly as they were able.
She wanted to fly but knew it was too soon for that. Instead, Elora let loose a great and terrible cry to announce her presence. She knew the Death Dogs would turn on her, to try to reassert the dominion of that part of her which was bound to them. She also suspected, in that kind of knockdown-drag-out knife fight, she might not prevail. So she didn’t give them the chance.
She opened her mouth and hosed the ebon space before her with the fire she’d brought with her from the heart of the firedrakes’ world. She was a dragon now, and this was one of the things they did best.
There were no eyes facing her when she was done, no gleam of fangs. Nor, sadly, any sign of her brownie friends. She had won a measure of freedom. She was alone.
The fire faded, within her as without.
The dragon became a young woman, huddled on a patch of icy flagstone in the tattered remnants of a dancing costume whose scarlet color matched the blood that covered much of what cloth and leather did not. She reached for her bear, desperate for comfort and companionship, but her hand found only emptiness within her traveling pouch. Belatedly, she remembered where she’d left it and why and cursed herself for such a foolish gesture. She wanted to sob but the effort was too great and she hurt too much.
She’d never felt so cold, she couldn’t stop shaking—which was strange because as far back as she could remember the extremes of weather and environment touched her as lightly as spells were meant to.
Darkness loomed, crashed down on her like a rogue wave at the seashore. She was caught in its fierce undertow, jounced and bounced so hard
that awareness fragmented worse than any shattered mirror, and before she knew what was happening all those broken pieces were swept beyond her reach.
In desperation she grabbed for one…
…and heard the sound of panting, mistook it at first for some poor puppy after a hard run.
She flailed for another…
…and worked her tongue past teeth that seemed to have grown fur to touch faintly lips gone so dry they felt dusted with shards of stone.
Her eyelids fluttered but didn’t open—that took more strength than she had available. The panting, she realized, was her, and it took all her effort. She was too tired to turn to InSight and meld her consciousness with another’s; even considering the idea exhausted her. She had a sense of something flickering off to the side, a sensation of warmth along that side of her body, concluded there was a hearth blazing away across the room. The fire did her little good, though, she was as cold here as in her dream. She wondered how she looked and thought, with her gleaming, argent skin, she’d probably be mistaken for a true statue.
She wasn’t naked, she felt the presence of a long nightgown, loose at the collar and sleeves but rucked snug around her legs where she’d moved and twisted in her sleep. The weight she felt across her body was a thick down comforter. There were additional points of pressure on an upper arm, one side, across her belly, that she concluded were dressings of some kind. She remembered the battle, much as she didn’t want to, it wasn’t hard to catalog her hurts.
She twitched her lips as something cool and damp pressed down on her forehead, sucked fiercely on the cloth as it was placed within her mouth.
“Not so much, child,” she heard Thorn say, her lips pursing hungrily as the cloth was removed. Her needs were as simple, her wants as direct, as a nursing baby’s. There was a sprinkling fall of water as he dipped the cloth in a handy bowl, squeezed off the excess, and returned it to her.
“I’m afraid you can’t handle a proper drink,” he went on. “We have to feed you a bit at a time, no more than that.”
She grunted in disgust and tried once more to crease an eye open. She had a multitude of questions.
“As you may, or may not, have surmised,” Thorn related, while continuing to bathe her face, the column of her throat, gently pulling aside the top of her gown to bare her shoulders to the collarbone, “Khory won the day. We emerged from the Gate atop a highland tor in the Shados, beyond the Cascadel.” The Shados were the mountain range that filled the horizon below the city of Sandeni, and the Cascadel the greatest river of the western half of the continent. From headwaters amidst these comparatively young peaks, it made its way west better than a thousand leagues to Angwyn Bay and the Sunset Ocean beyond. What made it invaluable to traders and travelers was the fact that it was navigable for almost its entire length, allowing quick and easy passage from the coast to the heartland of the continent and back again.
The same applied east of the Wall as well, with rivers running downhill from Sandeni to the Tascara Sea and from there through Chengwei to the ocean. Chief among them was the Quangzhua, the Mother of Waters, a river so mighty it was believed by the Chengwei to be the source of all the water in all the oceans of the world. The fact that the river was fresh water and the oceans salt was considered of no consequence. To the south, for the whole of the Quangzhua’s length, rose the greatest mountain range in the world, the Stairs to Heaven, with peaks so high it was said that a body could stand at their summit and touch the stars themselves. Many had tried to scale those heights, to learn if that were so, only to discover—some at the cost of their lives—that the mountains rose beyond the point where there was air to breathe, to a place where the cold was unendurable and nothing living could be found, on either side of the Veil.
Splitting the continent from crown to midriff at a point roughly two-thirds the way across from Angwyn to Chengwei was the Wall, a tremendous plateau that stretched from the Shados to the top of the world. To behold it was to wonder if at some point in the distant, unrecorded past when giants walked the earth, some titanic force had somehow lifted one side higher than the other, thereby forming a line of cliffs that stood better than a thousand feet high.
Throughout most of known history, the Wall had been precisely what its name described, a barrier blocking all travel from east to west. True, there were passes and trails through the Shados, but only the most enterprising of traders would follow them and then only at the height of summer, for those few scant weeks between last snowmelt and first snowfall. Daikini, being inventive by nature and fiercely stubborn by temperament, took that as a challenge and found another way.
Sandeni was where both river systems—the Cascadel and the Quangzhua—had their source. The beauty of water was that a merchant only had to deal with one race of the Veil Folk. Naiads ruled lesser tributaries but their influence varied in direct proportion to the size of the stream; the great rivers were the province of the freshwater Wyrrn, as the oceans were of their seafaring cousins. By contrast, anyone making their way cross-country on land found themselves forced to deal with a whole host of the Veil Folk, each tribe of which had its own price and terms for allowing unobstructed passage. What suited one might prove wholly unacceptable to the next, and all seemed to take inordinate pleasure in vexing strangers no end, especially Daikini.
More than once, Elora likened it to the notion of a huge, ostensibly comfortable mansion, wherein dwelled a multitude of folk, each in a separate room, most of whom wanted nothing to do with their neighbors. Few would acknowledge in the slightest that they shared a common cause and responsibility. So long as their individual room was maintained, they cared nothing for the rest.
The problem now was that, thanks to the Deceiver, the house was in danger of collapse. And while attitudes had begun to change, hands finally held out and grasped in friendship, Elora desperately feared this rapprochement had come too little, too late.
“Where…?” she began, amazed to find that speaking that single word left her breathless and borderline exhausted.
“Fort Tregare.”
Her first sight of it, she remembered, had been through the eyes of one of her eagles. A natural meadow stood on a promontory at a crooked bend in the upper reaches of the Cascadel, at possibly the last place where the fast-flowing river was fordable. It was a natural stronghold, dominating both the river and the valley through which it passed, the best and most direct route through the Shados to Sandeni. Forest had been cleared in a great fan shape to provide better than a half mile of open ground, and the timbers used to construct the fort itself. The stockade rose twenty feet above a stone-and-earthen redoubt that itself stood ten feet high. Its basic shape was of a pentagon, with blockhouses at each of the five joints. Within was an open square twice the dimensions of a jousting yard, ringed by a host of structures: barracks for troops, quarters for families, storehouses, barns, an armory. Dominating the enclosure was a broad, multistoried building that functioned both as the fort’s inner keep and a hostelry for travelers.
When last she’d seen the fort, there’d been a scattering of individual homesteads, as stoutly designed and constructed as the citadel itself, off by the tree line where additional land had been cleared for crops. As she replayed her own memory of the scene, she found it accompanied by an addendum from Thorn’s. The farms were gone, reduced to charred and smoldering timbers.
The outside corners of her eyes began to burn and she chose to blame it on a wayward wisp of smoke from the hearth as Thorn dabbed the tears away. She’d tried that for herself, only to discover her arms were as weak and useless as her voice.
“Don’t talk,” Thorn cautioned.
“As if,” she husked, “I could.” All her efforts for a couple of minutes after that were devoted to recapturing her breath. There were blank spots in her awareness, grace notes marking the passage of time, telling Elora that she’d fallen asleep without even noticing, sometimes right in the
middle of a thought.
“Let that be a lesson to you, child,” Thorn said quietly. “You’re hurt.” His tone told her what the bland words did not, that her condition was grave beyond description.
“You need rest,” he continued in that same parental, professorial tone. “You need to recover your strength.”
“Because, let’s face it,” Elora couldn’t help herself as her face brightened at the sound of this new, yet familiar voice, “you are of no use to anyone as you are.”
She tried to see Rool but the brownie had positioned himself (deliberately, no doubt, rot him) beyond the track of her eyes. Moving her head, she discovered, was out of the question. Even the smallest attempt set the bed to swaying worse than a hammock in a hurricane and left her afraid she’d be desperately sick.
“So you say,” offered Franjean in a suave riposte from the opposite direction. “Myself, I’m thinking she’ll look quite stylish on a dais in a gallery. ‘Sacred Princess, reclining, au naturel, in silver’?”
She wanted to hit him but all she could manage was a rude squeak.
“Someone leave a kettle on the boil?” asked Rool in all innocence.
“More like a mouse, daring us to the hunt.”
“We are slayers of Death Dogs,” Rool pronounced. “We do not hunt mice.”
“That’s enough, the pair of you,” chided Thorn. “Look at Elora, you’ll do her an injury with your japes, making the poor girl laugh so. Have a little mercy.”
Suddenly, Rool was standing by her collarbone, peering down intently at her face. She’d misplaced her memory of how quickly the brownies could move, more proof of her infirmity because usually she could spot them when they did.
“Laughter, you say?” He scoffed, assuming a dollop of Franjean’s manner. “Don’t appear so to me, though I’ll concede the barest ghost of a grin twitching the tip of her mouth.”
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