“Yes,” Araenè said. She felt odd: not angry. More just … uncertain, and yet also desperately relieved that the deception was over. “Can you—you are going to save the little dragon?”
“Among other things. I think there may be a way—I hope there may be; the Islands are greatly in need of dragon fire just now. With fortune and the favor of the Gods, perhaps we may save it.” Master Tnegun set his hand back on her shoulder, drew her to her feet, and directed her attention wordlessly toward a delicate door of pale wood and pearl and bone. “Let us see what wind rider the Gods will put in my hand.”
Under the master’s hand, the pale door swung silently back open upon a clean, sweeping height. Before them, jagged stone reached to the sky; behind them, it fell away to the distant sea. Between sky and sea stood a small white tree, with a perfectly round pool of clear water under the tree.
A tall young man sat beside the pool, staring down into its still water. But he turned when Master Tnegun closed the door behind them. He rose at once and walked quickly to meet them. Araenè did not exactly recognize him, but he looked familiar—he had kajurai eyes, she realized; they caught and refracted the light as he stepped through a shaft of sun.
The young man glanced quickly at Araenè, away—back, with a sudden intensity that made her hesitate. But then Master Tnegun took a step forward, and the young man turned sharply to him and said, with an odd mix of deference and exasperation, “Though I appreciate everyone’s concern, I hardly expect—”
“Prince Ceirfei,” Master Tnegun overrode him, “I find myself in sudden pressing need of a kajurai. Will you assist me?”
Prince Ceirfei? Araenè thought, shocked. This was Prince Ceirfei? Araenè had certainly heard the name, she now recalled she’d even heard he’d auditioned for the kajuraihi, but she certainly hadn’t expected to find any prince waiting on the other side of Master Tnegun’s door.
The young man took a quick, startled moment to reassess the situation. Then he said simply, “Of course. Whatever you require.”
Master Tnegun inclined his head. “The Tolounnese have pressed the living winds far out to sea,” he told Prince Ceirfei. Out here on this craggy peak, this was more obvious than ever. The air hung heavy and still; it seemed to weigh down upon them. It was impossible to imagine any breeze breaking the brooding quiet. Even the leaves of the white tree drooped limp and still in the heat.
Prince Ceirfei gave a little nod, waiting.
“I believe I can free the winds from the control of the Tolounnese mages,” Master Tnegun said then. “The Tolounnese lost some of their strength some time past. I think I can give you … perhaps a quarter-bell.”
The prince tilted his head attentively.
“So. I will free the living winds. You must bring a sky dragon to this place; I have no affinity for the winds, so if you do not know a way to do this, I cannot advise you. The dragon must go to Teraica. There it will find a hatchling fire dragon, quickened by the heat of the Tolounnese furnaces. But though the heat of the furnace was sufficient to quicken the fire dragon’s egg, it is not enough to sustain the young dragon. The fire below the earth must be freed, but it is buried deep there along the Tolounnese coast and the hatchling cannot break the earth above it.”
Araenè blinked. So that was what had gone wrong; she had not known exactly what the trouble was, only that there was trouble. How stupid she had been not to ask Master Tnegun in the first place—she should have asked him about dragon eggs and furnaces—only she hadn’t thought of a discreet enough way to ask, and she’d been so certain she understood what the dying fire dragon had wanted, and then it had been too late.
Master Tnegun did not seem to notice Araenè’s dismay. He continued, still speaking to the prince, “If no adult dragon breaks open the deep rock to let out the fire, the hatchling will die. Do you understand? There is little time, so ask only what questions you must.”
Prince Ceirfei said quietly, “Do I understand correctly: this is a young fire dragon in the furnace? All I can bring you—if any dragon at all will answer me, it will be a wind dragon.”
Master Tnegun gave him a brief nod. “Wind and fire are more closely allied than you perhaps realize, Prince Ceirfei, and we may be glad this is so, as I have no one to summon a fire dragon for me. Think of the storm winds that bear lightning at their heart: so the wind may bear fire.”
“You must call the wind, and the wind must become fire,” quoted Araenè, startled, and then blushed as both prince and mage looked at her. “That’s what the fire dragon said. When it gave me the egg.”
“Then we may indeed hope that fire and wind are close allied,” said Master Tnegun. “We shall hope that from the first, our fire dragon intended—or guessed—or hoped—that a wind dragon would favor this call.” He turned gravely back to the prince. “Nevertheless, though my knowledge of wind dragons is limited, I believe it must be a great thing to ask the wind to yield to fire, yet this is precisely what you must persuade the dragon to do.”
“Very well,” the prince said slowly. “Give me a living wind, then, and I shall try to call a dragon down out of the sky.”
Master Tnegun turned at once to Araenè. “I will use your strength to do what I must,” he told her. “An experienced adjuvant would be better. But all the adjuvants have spent their strength.” He paused, then added, “You will inevitably fight me, Araenè—fight what I must do. I cannot support the effort I must make if I must battle you as well as our opponents.”
“I won’t fight you,” Araenè said. She wanted to sound matter-of-fact and assured, like the prince. But to her own ears, though her words were brave, she sounded weak and frightened. She was immediately furious—with herself, but anger of any kind was much better than fear. She jerked her shoulders back and looked Master Tnegun in the face.
The Yngulin mage gave her an approving nod, but he said, “You will. You will not know how to yield your strength to me. I will show you the technique by which you may do this. It is too advanced a technique for you. You must endure it.”
Araenè lifted her chin and said fiercely, trying to reassure herself as well as the master, “I will.”
Master Tnegun nodded once more. Then he knelt and drew a large sphere of blackish red pyrargyrite out of the air. Pyrargyrite, if Araenè remembered correctly, was closely allied to fire, to vision, and to magics of unmaking. Indeed, at the moment, that sphere seemed to be filled with dark embers and leaping flames. It tasted of cloves and also something harsher, something violent, something that belonged to the darkness and not to the living fire.
Master Tnegun handled this sphere gingerly, as though it actually was hot to the touch. He set it on the stone and beckoned to Araenè.
Now that it came to this moment, Araenè found she was not afraid. Master Tnegun looked so calm and assured and … not indifferent … detached. Araenè found she had no doubt that he knew exactly what to do and that he would do it. This surety gave her the courage to kneel down as he directed, the sphere in front of her. Prince Ceirfei stood attentively near at hand, watching everything but saying nothing.
“Araenè, I must go into your mind,” Master Tnegun told Araenè. “You will find you have recovered your shield; I will break it quickly and teach you the structures I need you to hold. Are you ready?”
Araenè clenched her jaw, but she nodded.
His mind touched hers, and as he had warned, her shield snapped forcefully into place between them. And shattered, under the relentless power of the master’s intrusion. Iron, Araenè thought: Master Tnegun’s mind was smooth and hard and remorseless as iron. Fight him? She could find no way even to begin to fight him … and then she did: an echo of what he had inadvertently shown her himself. Her mind hardened to match his, only her mind was something hotter than iron: something molten that burned and flowed and closed around his. She realized, dimly, that she was fighting him and that she shouldn’t, but she did not know how to stop.
Master Tnegun caught her attack with ruthless dis
patch, crushing it as he had broken her protective shield. Stunned and momentarily helpless, Araenè spiraled toward darkness. But Master Tnegun caught her before the darkness could drown her: he forced her mind into a … kind of shape, a structure that she had never imagined. It was a strange and desperately uncomfortable shape: she felt as though he had handed her a complicated edifice made entirely of sharp knife blades; there was no way to hold it that would not cut her. But she saw at once that this pattern was actually a way of holding herself: it flattened her own defenses and left the reserves of her strength open.
Once Master Tnegun had forced her to understand this structure, he let her go. Drawing freely on her strength, he cast his own awareness out of her mind and elsewhere.… She could not follow what he did; it was too complicated and strange. But she knew that if she let her mind unfold from the pattern he had shown her, he would lose all access to her strength.
She thought of Tichorei, of Sayai, of Kanii, of little Cesei. Of Trei. Of spheres filled with fire and shattering with fine webs of cracks. And though the hot strength poured out of her like blood from a wound, she held the structure Master Tnegun had shown her with rigid determination.
Then—she could not have said whether a quarter of a bell had passed or a day—the terrible draining weakness ceased. Master Tnegun’s mind recoiled from unknown distances, striking hers so that she staggered and lost her hold on the pattern to which she had clung; at once a wild, rolling surge of half-controlled power struck against him. This time, his mind did not meet or counter her defense, only gave way and fled—gone, out—Araenè’s head jerked up and she would have fallen except she was already sitting. She fought for breath in gasps that were nearly sobs.
Master Tnegun still knelt across from her, darker than ever against the white gravel. He was not looking at her. His eyes were hooded and his head bowed. The light was harsh on his face; it showed lines of exhaustion and pain around his eyes and mouth. He looked older than she had ever guessed, much older than her father. Older than anyone she’d ever known.
Before Araenè, the pyrargyrite sphere had shattered into a pile of delicate, fine shards.
A breeze slid across the mountain, ruffled through Araenè’s short hair, scattered shards of black crystal, rippled capriciously along the edges of Master Tnegun’s robe. Died away. Returned.
“Did it work?” Araenè whispered.
The Yngulin mage shifted his hands across the stone, braced himself. Lifted his head. Looked up.
Araenè followed his searching glance.
Prince Ceirfei stood near the white tree and its pool. He was speaking, but Araenè could not see the creature to which he spoke.
“… for which we may pray to the Gods,” he was saying, quickly and forcefully. “And is not all our attention bent to that very end? Let come what will, though the city drown in molten fire and iron and the very stone be broken against the sea.” He paused, evidently listening to some response. Then he said sharply, “Well, I am a prince of the Floating Islands, and I give you my word before the Silent God and the Young God and the Great God himself that this is my will and the will of the king, my uncle.”
Araenè stared up at Master Tnegun. The mage was studying the prince … no, she thought. He was studying the creature to which the prince spoke. He glanced down at her, however, as though her unspoken bewilderment had drawn his attention. He touched her hand, then reached to draw a fingertip across her eyelids … ginger and anise tingled across her tongue and the palms of her hand, and when Master Tnegun lifted his hand, she could … see.
It was as though layers of cloud and glass spiraled through the air: that was her first thought. A half-glimpsed wing, indistinct as mist, shifted across her vision. Once she discovered the wing, as though the immense size and odd shape of it taught her to understand the rest of what she saw, she made out the outlines of a long, graceful head, transparent as glass, and the elegant curve of the neck that arched higher than the head. Light slid, gleaming, through an opalescent eye larger than Araenè’s whole head.
And Prince Ceirfei was speaking to that creature. To Araenè, it seemed that he might as well have argued with the wind itself: there was nothing she could find in the great half-seen dragon to which a man might speak. But the prince seemed to have no such doubts. She whispered to Master Tnegun, “Can you hear it?”
The mage’s face was tight with weariness. “A word here and there, no more than that,” he answered softly. “Here, Cassameirin would do better than I. Even were I not …”
He meant were he not tired almost to death. Araenè nodded.
“You will find that magery such as you and I wield is very little like the natural magic the dragons share with their kajuraihi. You and I work out the mathematical framework of the world and form our spells with stylus and ink as well as natural power; we set our spellwork in stone or metal or glass because we must keep our working contained and, hmm, separate from ourselves. Dragon magic is not akin to magery: it is a magic of being, not of knowing. Your cousin would assure you that the kajuraihi do not fly by understanding flight, but simply by flying.” Master Tnegun paused, then glanced over and up at the vast crystalline dragon that had come down out of the sky to speak with Prince Ceirfei. The master added wryly, “Though I have dwelled here in the Islands for many years, I know little of your dragons of wind and sky.”
The dragon spoke: its voice was not at all like a normal voice. It was more like the ringing of chimes, or the notes of a flute. As she saw the dragon only in glimpses, so Araenè heard only scattered notes when it spoke. She could not understand it at all.
But the prince clearly could. He was saying now, “And thus all the winds above the Islands are at peril, yet still it is the fire that must be released in order to free the winds. Is that not so?”
A pause, sprinkled with delicate chiming notes.
“I am aware,” said the prince. And then, “If fire is the cost, we must pray you are willing to pay it. Is not the gain commensurate?”
Beside Araenè, Master Tnegun shifted. She looked up and found that his face had gone tight—with pain and exhaustion, she thought at first, but then she saw that it was more than pain; it was a tension born of indecision, maybe, or maybe simply an awareness of peril. His mouth firmed. He shook his head a little. Araenè thought he looked like he was settling himself for renewed effort. He gave her shoulder a little pat—Stay here—climbed painfully to his feet, and walked toward the white tree. Araenè dutifully stayed where she was. She was not at all sure she could get to her feet if she tried.
Once he was at the prince’s side, Master Tnegun bent to murmur to him. Araenè could not hear him, but she was almost sure he was saying something like, There is no time left; get this done now. Whatever he said, Prince Ceirfei listened attentively. His mouth tightened. Turning to the half-visible dragon, he said with flat decision, “For my part, I am not bargaining. Only tell me plainly what you would require. I swear before the Gods, we shall not protest to pay what cost we must.”
Delicate chiming.
“Even so,” said the prince. And then, after a momentary pause, he inclined his head and said in a tone of finality, “So it is all before the Gods, then, and I will pray for your success in all your endeavors.”
The dragon frayed into crystalline music and glittering winds and was gone. Araenè was not perfectly certain at first that it was gone: she looked for traceries of feathers against the sky, for the shimmer of light along a transparent neck or within a lucent eye. But the winds seemed to have carried it away.
And only barely in time, for just as Araenè reached this tentative conclusion, the wind—all fragile movements of the air, all life and quickness—was pressed out of the air by a huge, heavy, smothering pressure. The Tolounnese mages had at last discovered what Master Tnegun had done, or had finally found the time or the inclination to undo it. Gathering her remaining strength, Araenè came to join the others, looking nervously at her master: Is this all right?
&nbs
p; “Yes,” the Yngulin mage said quietly. “We were in time; the dragon was well away. What it will do—that I cannot say, but it is free to act.”
“It will do exactly as you wished,” Prince Ceirfei said wearily. He looked almost as tired as Araenè felt. “Or so I believe. Little though I understand how you arranged for a young fire dragon to quicken in the Teraica furnaces.” He glanced at Araenè as he added this last.
Master Tnegun glanced at her, too. “I suspect the hands of men provided merely the agency, not the intention, that led to this event,” he said, a little drily. “Many wind dragons ride the winds above the Islands, but a fire dragon has long dwelled at their heart. You did not know this? Well, kajurai attention is always directed outward, I suppose, toward the winds and the sky. But as our fire dragon grew old and its fire dimmed, it seems to have sought—and found—an unusual method by which it might yet quicken its last egg. A method not without risks, but one that may yet prove fruitful: Gods grant we shall not merely save this hatchling, but also claim its strength for the Islands! But at what cost did you persuade the dragon to go to Teraica? If I may ask?”
“You may not,” the prince said decisively. Straightening his shoulders, he patted the stones beside the pool. “You are worn beyond endurance, Master Tnegun, if you will permit me to say so. Sit before you fall, and tell me what we have wrought.”
There was a little silence. Master Tnegun looked taken aback but also, Araenè thought, in a way he looked pleased. She did not understand why. She would have thought even a prince’s flat defiance would have angered the mage, but Ceirfei’s did not seem to. Indeed, Master Tnegun simply lowered himself to the stones as Prince Ceirfei had bidden him, leaning back against the smooth trunk of the white tree. He looked into the pool for a moment, then passed a hand slowly above the water. A crease appeared between his eyes—pain, or at least effort.
She could get up, after all, when she tried. Araenè made her way forward, gave Prince Ceirfei a cautious nod, and let herself down again beside Master Tnegun. The prince returned her nod. His gaze slid aside from hers, and after a moment she realized Master Tnegun had used her real name in his hearing: he knew she was a girl. She flinched from this realization, but after a moment the prince met her eyes with a directness that surprised her. Blushing, she looked down.
The Floating Islands Page 25