The man turned, peering back at her through half-lidded eyes. "Huh? D'I know you?" His brow was furrowed, and his long hair fell across his eyes. He drew himself upright in an attempt to display some dignity, but the effort failed as he staggered sideways.
"My name is Jael," she said breathlessly. "I heard you back there. Your story—"
He pressed his lips together angrily. "Now, what story would that be?"
"About the dragons."
His laugh was harsh and bitter as he rubbed his scraped elbows. "I don' know nothin' about no dragons! Now, leave me alone." He hiccuped and started to turn away.
"Rangoon—wait!" Jael cried.
The man drew himself up with a great effort. "My name," he said, with great deliberation, "is Kan-Kon."
She blushed. "I'm sorry—someone told me—" She cut herself off with a gesture of agitation. "Never mind that. I have to talk to you about the dragons!"
"I told you." Kan-Kon shook his head vigorously. "Don' know nothin' about no dragons."
"That's not what you said back there."
"Ahhhhhh . . ." He snorted, shifting his gaze away. His face was illuminated by the strange twilight from the sky. It was spillover light from an orbiting farm sat, an array of mirrors reflecting sunlight onto some round-the-clock farmlands not far outside the city. He looked back. "That was just storytellin'. You can't go believin' what some old lush says in a bar, girl!"
Jael stared at him. "You said it. And you meant it."
His voice was harsh. "Now, how would you—"
"Because of this," she snapped. She mimicked his voice:
" 'From beyond hope will come one. Speaking her name will come one. And the realm shall . . . tremble.' " Her voice started to quaver as memories of another time, another world, rushed back to her. She forced herself to continue the familiar words of dragon prophecy. " 'From this one comes a beginning. From this one comes an ending. And surely—' "
"And surely the realm shall tremble!" Kan-Kon hissed. He squeezed his eyes shut and mouthed the words again, silently. He opened his eyes slowly and stared at her with an anguished gaze. "How do you know those words?" he whispered. "How do you know them?" He stared at Jael as if he were standing in the presence of a ghost.
How do I know those words? Jael's heart ached at the memory of those words, ached until she thought it would burst. It was two years since she had heard that prophecy spoken—and not a day had passed that she hadn't thought of the realm, of the dragon Highwing, of his sons. Of the struggle that she had left behind. And just lately, hardly a night had passed without new and disturbing dreams . . .
"Miss?" the man whispered. "Talk to me!"
She came back to the present with a start. She had accosted a drunkard. A drunkard who knew dragons. A drunkard who knew the prophecy. Never had she met another human who actually had set eyes upon the dragons, or would believe her if she said that she had. "The words?" she murmured, in a voice so low that the man leaned forward, his beery breath in her face as he cupped his ears to hear. "How do I know the words?" she repeated. She shook her head, full of cobwebs—then suddenly blurted, "What are you doing? Hey! Stop that! What are you doing?"
Kan-Kon had dropped to his knees, his head bowed. He was shaking, clutching her leg. As she struggled to pull away, she realized that he was weeping, sobs racking his body. "Oh, miss—miss!"
"What? What's wrong?" Her hand went out hesitantly, but she drew it back without touching him. She tried to tug her leg from his grasp.
"Don't be doing this to me!" Kan-Kon moaned. "Don't be lying to me!"
"I'm not lying to you! Stand up, will you? Will you let go of me? I'm not lying to you.!"
With painful slowness, Kan-Kon released her and sat back on his haunches, gazing up at her like a lost dog. Embarrassed for him, she gestured to him to stand up. With great clumsiness, he rose to his feet. His cheeks were streaked with tears, and his lips were trembling. "Have you . . . been there?" he whispered. "Have you? Is that where you . . . heard those words?"
Jael hesitated, then nodded dizzily. She'd told no one of her experience, had talked of it with no one except her Clendornan friend and shipmate Ar. And even Ar, though he'd gone through much of it with her, had put it behind him in a way that she'd found impossible. And now here was someone literally crying to hear her story. Someone who knew.
A drunkard, outside a bar.
No, she reminded herself—a rigger. Former rigger, anyway. He might be a drunkard, as well—but first he was a rigger. And she could well understand how someone who had been with dragons, and been unable to make anyone believe it, might turn to drink.
He was still waiting, his eyes imploring her to speak. "I—" she began, and choked on the words that would have followed. She didn't know what to say. Several people, walking by in the night, stared at them oddly. She couldn't just spill out the whole story in public. But as she hesitated, she could see the hope fading from Kan-Kon's eyes. She had to tell him. "I—I was there," she stammered, her voice rasping. "Twice. I know . . . the realm. I know what you heard. I made friends with a—with a—" With Highwing! Highwing, why did you have to die? She gulped. "With a dragon."
The man's eyes widened. "Made friends?" he croaked. "Made friends? They tried to kill me, they did! Tried to kill me! But the iff—the iff—" His voice caught, as he struggled to shape the word.
"Iffling," she sighed.
"Yes! Yes, the iffling!. That's what saved me. Talked 'em out of it. One of them, anyway. Said I wasn't 'the one.' " He gulped, as though remembering his relief. "Did you . . . did you meet . . . an iffling, too?"
Jael was dizzy with memories. "Yes," she whispered. It was an iffling who in the darkest hour of the night in Windrush's cavern had told her to go to Highwing, had told her of his impending sentence of exile, had urged her to try to save him. And even before that, when she'd first met Highwing, it was an iffling who had appeared to Highwing and urged him to accept her, and not to kill her.
"Oh jeez . . . oh jeez!" Kan-Kon wept again. It took him a few moments, gasping, to compose himself enough to say anything more. Finally he caught her arm and gazed straight at her and said, "Please, you must tell me of these things. You must come with me and tell me!" He began to propel her down the street.
"Wait!" she protested.
"No, please—you must!" His strength was astonishing, considering how much trouble he had in just standing. He would have none of her protests, and she wondered frantically if she would have to scream to avoid being forcibly abducted.
But he apparently had no such thing in mind. He steered her to a bench on the edge of a small park, set back a little from pedestrian traffic on the street. He begged her to sit with him. She hesitated—but the park was well-enough lit by farmsat light spilling down through the trees, and his only interest seemed to be in hearing her story.
"Well, I—" She sighed, and thought of her agreement with Ar that they would not discuss the dragons with outsiders. This was different, she thought. They hadn't imagined actually meeting someone else who had encountered the dragons. She tried again. "I first flew into dragon space against the wishes of my ship's captain. But that's really . . . another story." A terrifying story: of an abusive shipowner who had tried to enslave her psychologically, and failing that, to physically dominate and rape her. She had killed him in self-defense—ejected him from an airlock into the Flux of interstellar space.
"Yes, yes," Kan-Kon urged. "When did you go there?"
"Two years ago, standard."
"Ah!" His eyes burned. "It was seven years ago for me. But my God, it seems like yesterday! I can't get it out of my mind! What an astonishing, terrifying place! And dragons now make friends of riggers!" he whispered in disbelief.
"Yes." Jael cleared her throat. "Or some do, I should say. It is a realm at war. Or was, when I left."
Kan-Kon shook his head. "War. Dragon against dragon?" Jael nodded. "Then not all dragons are . . ." His expression darkened.
"There are
dragons of greater kindness and honor than you would believe," Jael said, guessing at his thoughts.
The ex-rigger stared at her. "The ones I met damn near killed me. They—they did kill my shipmate." He swallowed, clearly struggling to control old emotions.
Jael shuddered. "How did they—do that?" Heaven knew she had seen enough dragons that had wanted to kill her.
Kan-Kon's breath went out, and something seemed to release, and he said, "They reached right into the net. Did something with his eyes—something terrible. Took his spirit, they said." Kan-Kon stopped and laboriously cleared his throat. "But they just plain killed him, as far as I'm concerned. Right through the net. There was his, his b-body in the r-rigger-station, and—" Kan-Kon began trembling, and turned to gaze across the park. This was a part of his story that he did not tell in the bars, apparently. "They—they were going to do the same to me, too. But this other thing came along and stopped them. The iff'ing—"
"Iffling," Jael corrected.
"Iffling, right. It came and, and, and—"
Jael touched his sleeve gently. "What did it do?"
"It—it talked to them. Didn't like what they were doing. Said they shouldn't mess with beings from outside the . . . realm. Because of that prophecy. The one I told you—the one you know. Except that no one believes me."
"I do."
He coughed and nodded, his chest rattling. "Anyway, that seemed to scare them somehow—spooked 'em good. So they let me go. Told me never to come dueling again, or the next time they would kill me. And I didn't—never went there again. Quit rigging pretty soon after that, too." He took a deep, shuddering breath. "Damn those dragons. But I just can't . . . It was such a beautiful place, it . . . haunts me. And the iff, the iffling—it looked like—a flame, or an angel, or something. It was just . . . wonderful . . . like some kind of miracle."
Jael nodded. "I know," she said huskily, remembering the shimmering being that had appeared, urging her to go to Highwing's aid. It had spoken to her one last time—after she had saved Highwing from burning to death in a sun, only to see him die in the Flux—reassuring her that she had not failed. A shiver went up her spine. She knew that her dragon-friend had died well, and she felt that his spirit lived on even now in some way she didn't understand; and yet she could not stop mourning his death.
"You met them, the ifflings," Kan-Kon said.
Jael nodded and took a breath, and told him the whole story—how she had met the dragon, and instead of dueling him, had given him her name. And how, in the end, he had befriended her and taken her to secret places and shown her things about herself that she had never known. And how she had returned later, with her new rigger-friend Ar and their parrot, Ed, only to find the realm a changed place, and Highwing a condemned dragon for what he had done. Kan-Kon sat silent and astounded beside her, as she described how she had saved Highwing from exile, then lost him again, gaining in the process the friendship of his sons.
"I guess," she said, "a lot was changing in the realm. I don't know that much about those prophecies, but it seemed as if they were starting to come true. All those beautiful places, wrecked by this . . . Tar-skel." Her voice trembled with that name, the name of the one who had killed Highwing. "And when we left, there was going to be a terrible war—between those who were like Highwing and those who served . . . that other one. I've . . . been dreaming about it lately. At night, I mean."
Kan-Kon opened his mouth. He seemed to be staring at the trees across from the bench. The light from the farmsat made his forehead glisten beneath the strands of sweaty hair.
Jael peered up through the treetops at the dazzling satellite that turned this port city's night into twilight. Fifty kilometers to the west was the farm sector that was being lit almost as bright as day. "I hate those things," she muttered. "Why can't they let night be night? That's how the world's supposed to be. I don't see why they have to go and not let any of us have night here, just so they can grow a little more feed."
Kan-Kon squinted. "Their all-night tribarley makes good ale," he said.
Jael frowned back at him—seeing him again for the pitiful mess of a human being that he was. "Is that what made you . . . drink like this? You couldn't forget the dragons, so you just—"
He interrupted her with a fit of coughing. "Don't you—" cough "—don't you go—" cough "—lecturin' me about drinkin', young lady!" He sounded more drunk than ever before. "You try leavin' a dead shipmate in th' Flux, then losin' your whole damn career!" Cough. "You jus' try it an' see how good your life is!"
Jael sat back, suddenly ashamed of herself. Who was she to judge? "I'm sorry," she whispered. "Was he a good friend, your shipmate?" Kan-Kon grunted. "What was his name?"
Kan-Kon grunted again. "Hoddy."
"Hoddy," Jael repeated.
Kan-Kon nodded, "I sometimes wonder if he really . . . could still be alive there. Somewhere. I know it's crazy, but I can't help it."
Jael stared at him, then shrugged helplessly.
Kan-Kon sighed. "You were the one, then," he murmured.
"What?"
"The One. You were the one the prophecy talked about." Kan-Kon's gaze suddenly seemed very sober, probing her face. "You were, weren't you?"
Jael stared at him, unable to answer.
He pushed his cheek out with his tongue, nodding slowly. "That's all right. You don't have to say it. It's plain obvious. You and that dragon and everything you just told me." He sat back, crossing his arms. "Well, I'll be damned. I'll be damned."
They sat without talking for a while. The crowd was dispersing noisily from the Green Tap, where chance had brought Jael and the ex-rigger together. Finally Jael murmured that it was time for her to return to her quarters. Kan-Kon raised his hand in farewell. "Where do you stay?" she asked.
Kan-Kon shrugged. "Here and there. Around."
She frowned. "Well, where can I find you?"
He grinned, showing teeth. "Why, right here," he said, hooking a thumb over his shoulder. "At the Tap. If you don't see me, just ask!"
Jael tried not to let her wince show. She tried to smile as she said, "Good night, then. I'll look for you here. Take care, Kan-Kon."
"Likewise, little lady." The former rigger gave a showy wave and walked away, stumbling only a little, in the opposite direction.
Jael breathed deeply and hurried through the late, eternal twilight back to the rigger dorms.
Chapter 10: Iffling Dreams
For the iffling-children, the knowledge of their purpose emerged gradually, filtering up through their consciousness like deep memories in time, memories far older than their own being. As they stretched out their undersenses to search the world that curved away before them, they knew, with an instinctive certainty, who it was they were searching for and what they were to say. They were to find the One, a human named Jael, and they were to call her to return with them. Their purpose in life, and the totality of their being, were dedicated to that task. If anything came between it and them, their own existence was secondary.
As they swept downward into the misty atmosphere of their destination, they noted other beings bobbing and darting in space just like them, moving as they moved, perhaps even following in their wake. But the iffling-children gave no thought to whether the beings might be friend or foe; the distinction never occurred to them. They focused all of their thought upon the faint but brightening glow before them, the underglow that stood out from all the spirit-presences on this world, the glow of the one called Jael. As they drew closer, the urgency of their mission buzzed ever louder in their souls, drowning out all else.
Dropping across space-time toward Jael, they were nearly close enough to call out. And that was when the beings that so resembled them abruptly reappeared, speeding into their paths like blazing sparks of fire. They had no time to think.
—Veer away!—
—But they are like us—
—No!—
The new beings swerved and flew at the iffling-children with a flaming fury
that sent the ifflings reeling in shock and confusion.
What was happening?
—Flee!—
—Find safety!—
They flashed outward in retreat, circling to reunite. But one of them was slow—and it was taken from behind by something that swooped and hissed and collided with the iffling with a blaze of orange fire. As the two separated, the iffling-child cried out, once, then flickered and vanished into darkness. The others called out:
—Come back!—
—Do not—
—leave us!—
But it was gone. Stunned, the ifflings fled from their attackers, from the ones that looked like ifflings but were not. There were only four true-ifflings now. Bewildered, they flickered with sorrow and fear and mourning. They peered back at their goal, blocked from them by the cluster of false-ones.
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