by John Tristan
“They are my friends and my kind,” he said slowly. “That’s true enough. Family...family is something else, I think.”
He was thinking of Zoran then, but also of Semon and Karenna—of how they had knit something between them over the course of their lives in Esper. Now that had been torn away, like some essential ligament, and Karenna would have to heal in the way of all halfdead: clumsily, leaving a massive scar.
“Yes,” Caedian agreed. “It is.” He stepped closer and put a hand to Amon’s cheek. “I’ll come. If nothing else it will spare someone the duty of keeping an eye on me.”
“You killed the dragon,” Amon said. “I think they’ll be more likely to offer you a hero’s welcome than lock you in.”
Caedian only shook his head and drew away. “For a human, you understand your own kind very little.”
He snorted. “For an elf, you think you know us very well indeed.”
Chapter Thirty
They came into the square. The braziers were blazing high, all the lamps lit; the gathered faces of the Esperites glowed golden-gray in the light.
They had built a litter for Semon out of dragonbones. He’d been placed on top of it, stripped of armor, wearing nothing save a loose wrap of dark fabric. He had been washed, his head pulled back into alignment, and his wounds stitched as if he was still living; dark lines of needlework trailed from belly to neck. The dragon had almost eviscerated him, but now he looked whole—scarred, but whole.
Emil was sitting by his side, caressing his hair. It came to Amon that he had not considered her feelings on Semon’s death; he’d become so used to her as the calm, capable center around which Esper orbited that it seemed almost perverse to think she had some special favorites. Tears were falling soundlessly from her eyes into her lap; she did not seem to notice, and made no effort to wipe them away.
He could be her son. The ages lined up right, after all. Even if he was not, she had most certainly helped to raise him; who more than Amon knew it did not always matter who gave birth to whom? Karenna had lost a lover or brother, Esper a warrior, but Emil had lost a child.
Adara kneeled beside her and cradled Emil’s face in her rough hands. “Will you lead the prayers, Emil? Great Mother knows that we need it.”
Amon thought it cruel, for a moment—couldn’t someone else take charge, just for this?—but then she nodded and rose to her feet, smiling down at Adara and squeezing her hand, and he saw it had been just the opposite. She was Esper’s beating heart made manifest; letting her remember that stilled her tears and brought her back into her center.
The Esperites made a loose circle around Semon’s dragonbone litter. Amon saw Karenna in the crowd, dirt and soot washed away, hair brushed until it shone. Her posture was brutally upright but her face still blank and masklike. Caedian and he stood at the outer edges of the circle. He crept his hand toward the elf and was not entirely surprised when Caedian took it and squeezed it with almost bruising force.
“We who live in Esper,” Emil began, her voice clear and strong, “know that we do not live under anyone’s grace save our own.”
The last of the little crowd’s whispers had stopped now. Even the children had quieted—the youngest of them, a wide-eyed toddler, bouncing in his father’s arms.
“The price of that is high, but Semon always judged it worth paying. That he died here in Esper, protecting the home and the people that he loved, rather than out under the glare of the sun? That he would judge as a blessing. He was never less than brave, never less than kind, and we will feel his absence for all our own days.”
Someone choked out a sob; Amon did not see who, save that it was not Karenna. A mother, a father, a friend—it could have been anyone. They had all loved him here.
“What more can I say?” Her head drooped a little, the strength of her voice cracking. “I taught him how to use a sword, how to strap on his armor. I was there when he killed his first drakeling. The Great Mother is merciful, and takes all Her children to Her bosom in the end. I have no doubt I will see Semon again in Her light...but, oh, his light will be missed here, in a world so sorely in need of it.”
Caedian moved closer to him, until they were almost embracing, their joined hands locked in between their bodies.
“Semon, I will miss you. We will miss you. Whether the Great Mother allows the children She gathers to Her light to see those they left behind, I do not know. What I do know is that no sorrow can exist where you have gone. So we will miss you for what we have lost, but we will not despair, for we know you are in the light of a better world.”
Karenna’s face was still impassive, but her shoulders had started to shake. She covered her face in her hands then, and Amon looked away—he felt as if he was intruding on her private grief, though she stood shoulder to shoulder with her friends.
“Now we bid you farewell, Semon.” Emil’s voice rang clear again, without tremor or crack. “Let each one who knew and loved Semon Aruna come forward and say their last goodbye.”
The circle broke and became a ragged line. Men and women came and bent over Semon’s body, whispering some private farewell into his unhearing ear, touching his chest, stroking his hair. It was an oddly intimate sight, more like a visit to a sickroom than a memorial for the dead. Amon hung back, still holding Caedian’s hand. He had respected Semon, to be sure, but had not known him or loved him in the way that the Esperites clearly did.
Finally Karenna stumbled her way to the litter. The mask of her face had cracked and her expression was almost savage, eyes wet and dark with her tears. “It should have been me,” she said, and she kissed him hard on his cold forehead. Then she stumbled; Adara was at her side to catch her.
It should have been me. Her voice echoed round and round in Amon’s head, and he squeezed Caedian’s hot, dry hand.
They lifted the litter then. Adara had left Karenna in Emil’s hands and taken up a place, and three other of the younger Esperites—the dragonhunters—joined her, carrying the dragonbone on their shoulders. Semon was raised up and carried down, and the others followed in a meandering train, with Karenna first stumbling and then taking surer and surer steps, Emil at her side.
Amon and Caedian made up the tail of the train. They were taking the litter down into the depths of Esper, to where the ground became warm and the air was dark and close—they were taking him to the forges.
As they carried the litter down, someone started to sing. It sounded like a woman, or an adolescent boy, voice high and pure. It was a familiar tune, but many of the lyrics were new; still, they were simple enough, and as the song repeated and wove itself in harmonious rounds, Amon found that he had added his own voice to the chorus.
“No dragon can burn all the stars down,
No elf-lord can lock up the sky,
Despair cannot keep us in bondage,
The Great Mother loves us, that’s why.”
Amon did not know whether he believed, or what he believed, though he knew it wasn’t the easy reassurance of the temple-song. At that moment, the song was nonetheless enough: the sound of many joined voices, and the warm and steady feel of Caedian’s hand in his.
The procession reached the forge. The glow of earth-fire pulsed like healthy blood. The carriers put down Semon’s litter, and Taman lifted his stiff form into his arms. The smith was wearing a thick dragon-leather apron, massive gauntlets and a helm of adamant, so he could approach the seething pool of liquid fire. The song was still being sung, though not by everyone at once; it seemed to pass through the group like a living thing, growing softer and louder and softer again. Taman approached the lip of the forge fire, and there was a great collective intake of breath. The song ceased. Almost gently, Taman tipped Semon’s corpse into the flames.
A moment later he was gone, swallowed by the fire. There was nothing left of him, not even a smudge of darkness on the
smooth red pool. Taman stepped back and removed his helm. His face was unreadable. He cleared his throat and sang a single verse of the song in a clear and surprisingly high tenor.
Then it was done. Without ceremony, without an announcement, it was done. The group began to scatter, to break into its component pieces, and those pieces—clinging together—made their way back up into the cooler regions of Esper. Amon and Caedian lingered behind, both watching the oddly beautiful, slow waves of heat rippling over the forge fire.
There was so much Amon wanted to say, and so few words came to him. Their hands had parted; they stood beside each other. The dragonbone litter sat abandoned by the lip of the fire. Caedian ran his fingers over the smooth black bone, then drew away. “It’s warm,” he said.
“Everything here is warm.”
The elf chuckled. “I suppose so.”
“We should—we should go back up.”
“I know.” His eyes flickered upward. “I don’t quite want to meet any of them on the stairs though.”
Amon let a moment’s silence pass. “What happens now?”
“I don’t know.” A shudder went through him, shaking his shoulders. “I don’t belong here, Amon. You have to see that.”
“Why not?” Amon’s voice had gone hoarse again, not just with the dry heat of the air; he was almost shouting. “Why can’t you belong here? Isn’t this better than what you left behind? Great Mother, Caedian, how can you say you don’t belong here? You’re a damned hero here now! And you can be more than that. You can be—”
“Family?” Caedian’s voice was very soft.
Amon looked away. “You could be my family.”
That was what he wanted, after all; that was his heart’s desire, so enormous and impossible he had never articulated it before. He remembered watching Caedian dying under the red sun that first day in the wasteland, and how the fleeting thought had come that the best he could have hoped for was to lie down and die beside him. He could not accept it then, and less so now. What he wanted was to live with him.
Caedian’s throat moved and he licked his lips. In firelit profile the sclera of his eyes looked black and gleaming all at once, like dragonskin. “Amon...”
“Please.” He took Caedian’s wrist in his hand and pulled him away from the fire. “Don’t say anything now. Just come back up with me. I’ll take you back to your room, if you want, but don’t say anything now.”
“You don’t know what you’re asking me.” Now Caedian’s voice was hoarse.
“I do know. But I had to say it. To lay it out for you at last.”
“It is an ultimatum, Amon, then?” His scarred lips curved in a gentle smile. “Stay with you—as what? Your husband, your bonded mate?—and become part of this world, or else remain as Esper’s prisoner?”
Amon looked down at him, uncomprehending, a glassy shard of pain stuck in his throat. “Is that what you really think of me?”
“No,” he said. His head was bowed now. “Nonetheless, that seems to be the choice given to me. They won’t let me leave, will they?”
“Do you want to?”
His gentle smile split into a grimace, and for a moment the rage flickered behind his eyes, as mad and wild as a dragon’s. “Didn’t you see?” he spat out. “Weren’t you here? Didn’t you see how they put Semon to rest, everyone kissing him farewell and singing? And Seoras, my brother, the only person I ever managed to love before I met you...he’s left trapped in a halfdeath far worse than what you’ve put in my veins!”
Amon could only stare at him, arms limp at his side. “Before you met me?” he said at last.
“Great Mother...” Caedian came at him, still snarling—looking almost as if he was going to fight him—and flung his arms hard around Amon’s chest. “Didn’t I tell you that you were a fool, Amon Vraja?”
They stayed there in the glow of the forge fires, unmoving, until the sweat was dripping down the small of Amon’s back and his hair plastered around his face.
“I do not know what happens know,” Caedian whispered. “I cannot see a future for me, Amon. But I will stay with you tonight, and every night, until...until I can’t. That’s all I can give you. I know it’s not enough.”
To that, Amon could reply with nothing save the truth. He bent his head and nuzzled Caedian’s sweat-sticky hair. “It’s more than I ever dared to hope for.”
Chapter Thirty-One
“Lift your arm if you will, please—not that high! All right, hold still, let me see if this fits.”
Amon was standing in the strangely glaring light of Taman’s workshop, still as a statue until the old smith commanded him to move. He did his forge work down in the depths of liquid flame, but for the more delicate parts of his inventions he moved into a kind of round and low-ceilinged chamber, where a scintillant roundel of mirrors on the ceiling captured reflected sunlight and focused it into a deep red gleam. It colored everything red, even Amon’s skin, but during a clear day it was bright enough that Taman could do even the most finicky work without resorting to lamplight.
A clear day. That was an odd thought. Amon had not seen the sky since they had come down into Esper, but by the light of the mirrors they could still tell whether the sky was bright or dim. When the mirrors turned dark, they relied on Esper’s scouts to tell them whether the shadow above them was storm clouds or the mass of a passing elder dragon.
“Down again now,” Taman said, and Amon lowered his arm. There was a slight rattle as he did it, and Taman made a face. “Still not tight enough. You don’t want to be making this kind of noise out on patrol.”
“If I’m ever taken out on patrol.”
“Come on, Amon, be patient. You’ve been here what—a few months? Young hunters are trained down in Esper for years before they’re allowed out under the sun.”
“I don’t particularly want to go out under the sun,” he said. Taman bent close and made an adjustment on the straps of dragonleather holding his new armor in place. It was a piecemeal affair—not the smooth adamantine plate that the other dragonhunters wore, but a hybrid of leather, adamantine and dragonbone, forged to fit around his barrel chest and big shoulders. “I miss the stars though.”
Taman paused in his adjustments. “Yes,” he said, “I do as well, sometimes. But the climb up is a bit hard on me now, and if I’m caught out by some sniffing drakeling I’m afraid I won’t acquit myself very well...so I stay down here.” He grinned up at Amon. “You’ll have to tell me after you’ve been out if they still look the same.”
“I don’t think the stars ever change.”
He snorted. “Everything changes, sprat. You don’t have to live as long as an elf-lord to know that.” He took a file from his table of tools and thinned out a leather piece connecting a curve of dragonbone to an adamantine joint. “Try moving your elbow now.”
Amon flexed his arm and turned it in a loose circle. The armor moved smoothly, light and soundless, and Taman’s face was smug with his accomplishment.
“There you are!” he crowed. “That’s your upper half all covered now—that dragonbone shoulder cup suits very well, don’t you think? As for your legs, I think trousers of dragonleather, splinted with adamantine strips?”
Amon shrugged. It felt a little odd, doing it with what seemed like two sets of shoulders. “Zoran always just called it ‘armor’ to me.”
He snorted again. “Of course he did. We all did. No one had made dragonhunter armor for long generations by the time we came to wearing it—it was all relics, carefully preserved. We’ve had to reinvent everything!”
“Were you a dragonhunter in the City?”
Taman nodded slowly. “Yes. An apprentice.”
Amon frowned; Taman might have looked the far end of fifty, but in dragonblooded years that wasn’t much older than him. “You must have been barely more than
a child.”
“Heh. Old enough to fight dragons, according to the elves. Old enough to die too. I could have stayed in the City for years more, but...” He shrugged. “I followed my family. I followed the ones I loved. Better to die with them than be left alone.”
“That, I can understand,” Amon said softly.
Taman gave him a sharp look, then glanced away and ran his hand over the dragonbone that covered Amon’s shoulder. It could not be reshaped, that bone, only sawed into ever-smaller pieces and filed with adamantine until it was fit for purpose; this piece might once have been a drakeling’s scapula. “Our ancestors probably had their own names for all of this—all these pieces. We only know what the elves have told us.”
“It isn’t their fault,” Amon said. “Not entirely. Without the dragons—”
“Without the dragons, this would be a different world. I’m not arguing with that. But we have shown here in Esper that we can live without paying tribute to the elf-lords in the Tree, haven’t we?”
“Yes.” Amon breathed out. “All fortysomething of you. Could you feed the thousands and thousands in the Last City, without the Verdancy? Could you protect the Verdancy from the dragons without the Tree?”
Taman stepped backward and gave Amon a considering look. “Who are you asking, sprat? I don’t have the answers. Maybe you should ask your mate.”
A quick and half-pleasant flutter of feeling went through his belly at that word. “If it were up to Caedian, he’d burn the Tree down.”
“Because they exiled you?”
Amon made a noncommittal noise; he had never told the Esperites the exact tale of why they had fled the Last City—none except Emil, in any case, and she had honored his privacy. The story of Seoras was Caedian’s story to tell, and if he did not want to spread it, then Amon would not do it for him. What Taman thought he knew was that the elves had sent them both into exile, expecting them to the die in the dragonlands.