by Will Elliott
‘The dragon came here because I called him,’ said a clatter of falling pebbles.
‘Please, help me before I fall.’
‘You have said rites to please Tempest,’ said the spraying dust.
‘I was a child. My parents needed rain. I’m sorry,’ Siel gasped. Despite the amulet’s power her arms were weakening around the stone, for it kept shifting.
‘The groundmen’s work pleases me. They shape stone with care.’
‘I set groundmen slaves free! I helped them – a group of them. They’ve named me a friend!’
‘Your heart has forgotten that friendship, and cast it out for other things,’ said the loud noise of breaking rocks. Hard things pressed into her ribs. They were roughly shaped pillars of stone: the fingers of a huge hand. It lifted her high into the air, higher than the mountain’s highest part. Below, the faces of stoneflesh golems a hundred or more embedded in the mountainside twisted up to peer at her. On the cliff across the ravine, there were more: square faces, some small, some large, all roused from sleep in the stone to watch her.
‘Dyan!’ she called.
The stone hand held her level with a hollow cave dug near the mountain’s peak, whose shape was not unlike an eye examining her. She knew of course this must be Mountain, who was said to be the first of the Spirits, if not their master then the closest thing they had to one. From this height, she could see the god’s individual features spread about the mountain below: arms, hands, legs. Each limb and feature was apart from the others, as if Mountain had divided and distributed himself throughout the valley.
A third great stone hand extended until it was beside her in the air, this one smaller than the others. Its palm was out. ‘That charm you hold,’ said the falling rocks Mountain’s movements had disturbed. ‘Place it on my hand.’
‘No!’
‘I am patient. The most patient. Events now unfold with haste I dislike. So I will shake you if you do not do what I ask.’
‘Shake me, I don’t care. Kill me! But you aren’t getting my charm.’
‘It is not a thing for me to keep,’ said a howl of wind. ‘It is a thing to mend.’ Good to his word, the hand which held her shivered, shaking her till her bones rattled. Something invisible pulled at the charm in her clenched fist. She clung with all her might till in one movement it sailed away from her. She screamed and slapped her hands against the stone holding her as Mountain’s fingers closed about the charm. She swore she heard it breaking like glass as the fist clenched on it. The grinding-glass sound it made said, ‘This thing was made by dragons, designed to change your nature. They should know that is a deed forbidden.’ Dyan wailed and thrashed as Mountain shook him too. ‘One forbidden deed makes another such deed allowed. So I shall change the charm with my own design. Now your nature shall turn back, and this thing will be a thing of use.’
‘Don’t kill Dyan. Please. He is an outcast among the dragons. I need him.’
‘The dragon shall remain with you, and he shall obey you as before.’ The stone fist slowly unclenched. Siel felt the altered charm’s different effects even before taking it off his open palm. There was no stone in the charm any more and its metal had gone from silver to a brilliant clear crystal. It gleamed and flashed as she turned it in her hand with what seemed a small captured red flame twisted like a ribbon within.
Suddenly Siel knew that since slaying Kiown and taking the old charm she had forgotten the true beauty of the crystal lake and its waters. That memory rushed back to her now. She wept with gratitude and looped the altered charm around her neck. ‘How can I thank you?’ she said.
‘Be,’ said all the stones about her, their voice echoing off cliff faces all through the ravine, as if that one word had more meaning than any other. Indeed it must have, for Mountain said no more to her.
42
MEETING AGAIN
They flew again with greater haste. Dyan went higher than the clouds to evade notice: people were becoming a more common sight beneath them. Up there, Invia now and then dipped in and out of cloud blankets as playfully as children diving into water. Dyan grew restless on sight of them, but he seemed more comfortable to be spotted by them than by the humans below.
A group of Invia darted over with a chorus of whistled song. They stared with open mouths, apparently shocked to find a human riding a dragon. Siel stared back, for something was different about these Invia. Something was wrong with their skin. It had gone a strange colour, and even looked in parts to be peeling away. ‘Are you sick?’ Siel asked them. They didn’t answer her – their whistling voices seemed to be directed at Dyan.
Dyan growled at them, or perhaps spoke harsh words that sounded like a growl to Siel’s ears. ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked him.
‘They ask if they can take you,’ he replied in his more human voice.
‘Take me where?’
Dyan didn’t answer her. The Invia flew alongside them for a while longer but were unable to keep up with Dyan’s bursts of speed.
Every so often Dyan landed in some high place, sniffed the air. ‘The drake has been here,’ he said once, then dived back into the sky.
It was a day or two more of flight before they found Eric in the plains not far from Elvury City, swimming naked in the River Misery while his lazy drake slept some way back from the banks. All across the horizon no other living thing was in sight, human or animal. Nothing but stalks of grass and curls of thorny scrub. The blue mountains loomed over, not filled now as they’d always been before with the city’s spies. This land had been empty of people since the Tormentors came.
‘Shall you slay him now, Beauty?’ said Dyan as they wheeled into their descent.
‘Slay who?’
‘Eric, as you said you would. Once you slay him, what plans have you for the drake?’
‘What? I never said that.’
Dyan was quiet for a moment. ‘Then you have corrected a false perception I somehow acquired. I am grateful, Beauty.’
Dyan set down in the grass. Case woke up at once and bounded over. Dyan arched his neck in an attitude of royalty and went still as a statue while the drake fawned and pawed the ground before him.
Out in the water Eric hadn’t seen them yet. He was in rather deep, amusing himself with dives that kept the soles of his feet poking above the water. Siel stripped off her clothes and stood naked, not caring if the dragon saw her. Eric tilted his head to get water out of his ears, turned and froze upon seeing her. For some reason he looked frantically around upon seeing Dyan. It took her a moment to understand he was checking to see if Kiown were here – he must have known Dyan was recently Kiown’s steed. ‘He’s gone,’ she told him. She picked up a knife from her belongings and showed it to him. ‘This set him free.’
He laughed as if she’d made a joke, but she had meant those words quite sincerely: Set him free. Eric swam to the bank, then stood there dripping and smiling. She pressed her lips into his with too much force, so they toppled back into the mud of the riverbank, laughing, then rolled into the cool clean water. She wrapped her legs around his lower back.
‘I want to take you to the hilltop,’ he said. ‘The place we first met.’
‘Fine,’ she said.
‘Do you know the way there?’
‘Yes, but it’s a long flight. Your drake is slow. He won’t keep up with us.’
‘No hurry,’ he said, slipping himself inside her and laying her back on the soft muddy bank. Eric’s charm was looped by its chain over his neck. When it clinked against hers, both of them saw sparks flash behind their eyes.
Both of them climbed aboard Dyan to give the drake a rest from carrying people around. Dyan flew slowly so Case could keep up and, after many stops along the way, they found the hilltop where Siel had shown him the stoneshaper mages raising pillars of rock, back when Eric was new to this world. The stoneflesh mages had by now completed their work. Not only that, people lived in the new city.
At the other edge of the platform was the plac
e an Invia had torn through a group of castle soldiers, where Kiown and Sharfy had lusted like pirates after Eric’s black scale. Here was where he’d met Anfen, where he’d first laid eyes on the castle in the distance. He stood now upon the same stone – there it was again. His home now, if he chose it to be.
He and Siel spoke for a long time, lying beside each other, naked but for their dragon-made charms. He ran his fingers through her hair when she set it loose from her braids. They had both changed a lot in so little time, just as the world around them had quickly changed. They talked about all they’d seen since he flew away from her at the wizard’s tower. She did not have the words to describe the sights of the South, especially the crystal’s waters which had cured her of any fear of death.
‘Aziel will have me killed if I go back to the castle,’ he said, which somehow struck him as funny. But it was quite true, he was sure.
At that moment a rumbling came from the sky, though the weather was clear without any hint of a storm. Lightstone hail fell about them on the rocky platform. Something struck Siel on the hand. It just nicked her, but it was enough to make her cry out. They ran to crouch by one of the stone shelves. But the stones kept falling, and it was not protection enough. ‘Where’re Dyan and Case?’ he said.
‘I told them to fly away for a while. They shouldn’t be far.’ They ran for shelter in the same cave Anfen had hidden in when the Invia had attacked him – the place Sharfy and Kiown had carried Eric through when he’d collapsed after the claustrophobic nightmare march through groundman tunnels. Outside the cave, pearl-white stones kept raining down on the platform. They faintly glowed.
The lightstone kept falling in scattered bursts between intervals of quiet. Now and then larger pieces dropped with lethal force. Siel, still naked, drew close to him for warmth. He rubbed her goose-pimpled arms.
Night began to fall. They watched the lightstone about the platform dimming its light in synch with the dimming sky. In the last minutes of daylight a voice cried out in distress, the sound carrying up to them from the stoneshapers’ new city. There was a commotion as if a fight had broken out. Eric and Siel went back down the path, tripping over the lightstone pebbles and larger stones now littering the platforms. When the voice cried out again it seemed to come from the sky. Sure enough, an Invia flew off with someone in its arms.
A second Invia flew after it carrying a man bigger than herself, his legs kicking like an insect picked up. Down in the new city, two other Invia flew away from a gathered mob of people. The crowd threw stones after them but the Invia were quickly away from their reach. Each of them carried a crying child in her arms.
By the time Case and Dyan returned, it was too late to pursue the Invia. Dyan answered no questions about why Invia would be carrying people away. He looked at them with big jewel eyes as if he were saddened, but he kept silent, no matter what threats or pleas they made.
They slept in the cave’s mouth, not troubled by the whispering sounds which seemed to waft from the depths now and then (each time so faint they could not be sure they heard anything at all). Eric half woke in the night and reached to put an arm around Siel, but she wasn’t beside him. He sat up, rubbed his eyes. The lightstone pieces spread thickly over the rocky platform outside were just faintly glowing, enough to cast a full moon’s light just outside the cave.
He rubbed his eyes again: Siel was out there, naked, and not alone. A group of four haiyens stood around her. One pair of eyes luminous as a cat’s peered Eric’s way.
He went out there, somehow sure they were not a danger. Neither Case nor Dyan stirred; the dragon rarely slept, but Siel had explained that when people slept he went into a deeply meditative state in which he’d cast his thoughts to faraway places, still aware of what went on around him, but less so. Dyan was in such a state now, his eyes closed and faint light gleaming through their slits.
Lightstone pebbles skipped and skidded away from Eric’s footsteps. ‘One must love them,’ he heard one of the haiyens whisper. ‘One must hold no fear. Whatever happens, whatever they do. Teach your people. It is the only true way.’
‘My people won’t listen to that advice,’ said Siel.
They looked at her sadly, only their faces didn’t change – sadness seemed to issue from them in a way Eric could feel, like cold curls of mist.
All four turned to him, seeming to expect him to speak. ‘I am Shadow,’ he said. ‘The new lord of these lands. That doesn’t mean I have any control over the people of these lands. I welcome you, but advise you to use caution when dealing with the people here. Does our dragon know you are here?’
‘He does not know we are here. He does not see us,’ said one of the haiyens. And they melted from Eric’s sight too, gone in a few seconds as if they’d never been there at all.
In the morning, Eric asked Siel what the haiyens had spoken with her about. She said she had no memory of them coming, other than in a dream she’d had.
43
THE DESCENT
On the day the dragons descended, Sharfy had gone to the city of Athlent, where Vous was said to have been born. Lining the roads to the city were smashed statues with Vous’s likeness. Once, such deeds were seen as an act of war. Entire families had been butchered for treachery for as little as a joke at Vous’s expense, or a joke about the Strategists or any other castle authority. It had been the same in all Aligned cities.
There was a high place looking down on Athlent, crested with a pleasant wood the city’s ruling strongmen had used in recent years for hunting and other pleasures, which explained why it was still so preserved and full of game: starving citizens had been kept out by fences now destroyed, and by guards with pikes. There was no sign of those guards now. Sharfy would have felt safe to bet that one or two fragments of wood lying about the edge of the woods were pieces of those same pikes.
When Sharfy entered those woods, his scars and the weapons he carried frightened the group of young people who’d already gathered there, presumably to play around with magic or each other’s body parts. They moved deeper into the woods to get away from him. Fine by him. He set his back against a tree, unearthed a flask of liquor from his pockets and took a pull.
He gazed at the city beneath as the people went about the new business of freedom. It was not yet a scene of celebration. It looked like hard work. They were cleaning the streets, repairing buildings. It was hard to see who was in charge – everyone acted in spontaneous cohesion, giving the impression the city was a big organic body healing itself through these people, its instruments. The air was filled with the thock, thock, thock of hammers or axes at work.
Fields beyond the city walls had been deliberately ruined so the castle could control the food supply. People were out on those scorched bare fields now, laying new dirt across them and picking out the pieces of fallen lightstone. Great stacks of the stuff were piled off to the side. The sight of all that light-stone still got Sharfy’s heart beating, though surely lightstone was all but worthless these days.
Something about watching all this while his legs rested gave Sharfy a sense of peace, even contentment. A sense that all the wars and fighting had somehow been worth it. He understood it now: the war no one ever thought would end was now in fact over. A new war would start in time, sure enough. But that was someone else’s story. His own had ended and that ending was peaceful. He could die right here and be glad about it. Maybe he would, right at this spot. No hurry.
A food train arrived from the castle as Sharfy watched. The people lined up before it, patient and orderly. That alone was a sight to behold. Once in this city, and in many others, the sight of a food train would have caused a riot. Sharfy swigged from the flask of burning liquor. It was strong, brought tears to his eyes, but he knew that some of the tears were of happiness at what he witnessed below.
He sensed that he was not alone. He didn’t need to turn around to know it was Shadow come to pester him some more. There was no getting rid of this ghost. At least he’d listen to a bat
tle tale and keep his mouth shut with no sarcastic remarks. ‘The traps are pulling at me stronger,’ said Shadow.
‘Go away.’ Sharfy glanced over to the group of young people. As he’d suspected, they sat in a circle, which meant they were trying to cast something. Wouldn’t work, no magic right near cities. ‘If those kids see you they’ll be a lot more scared of you than they are of me.’
‘Where should I go?’ said Shadow.
‘Anywhere.’
‘Anywhere could mean here. Couldn’t it?’
‘Clever, eh? All right. Then go find out if Loup’s still following me. Go look for Loup. Go on. Do that and I’ll teach you some more stuff.’ To his surprise, Shadow went. Sharfy grunted in satisfaction. So, that was how to deal with him: send him on stupid errands.
He drank some more from the flask and had dozed off when the huge splitting sound woke him. It was like the cracking of a whip bigger than all the world, the sound somehow far away and near all at once. A ripple went through the ground; Sharfy felt it pass beneath his own rump. He’d not have been able to say what it was that made him look up at that moment … but he did look up, just as the great slab of grey skystone dropped through the lower layers of cloud.
The slab fell upon the city. It could not have been better aimed had someone above intended to destroy Athlent. The noise of it was terrible, more terrible than anything he’d ever heard. The ground heaved more than it had heaved at World’s End when the stoneflesh giants began walking around. An enormous cloud of smoke, bricks, wood and people flew high into the air. Wood and bricks rained down near where Sharfy sat and all through the fields outside the city walls. Sharfy crouched low, covering his head with his hands.
A second piece of skystone fell some distance from the city. Not quite so large as the first, perhaps; but again the ground quivered and rolled as if for a brief time it had turned partly liquid. Another great dust cloud rose up. The distant booming sounds he thought at first were echoes from the two falling slabs, until he realised more pieces of skystone were falling elsewhere.