Becoming the Dragon

by Alex Sapegin

“Karegar, you see, his aura hasn’t changed. The shape and color are like that of a pureblood dragon. I need to think.”

  Fine, let her think. Happy to be left alone, Andy made a beeline for his corner by the fireplace and collapsed onto his stone bench in a fog of exhaustion. His eyelids slammed shut.

  He dreamed of his father, with his arm around his mother, sobbing over a small granite slab in the city cemetery. There was nothing written on the black slab, not a name, not a portrait, but he knew that they had buried him under this slab. Papa barely managed to take Momma away from the grave and drive her home. Andy was riding in a long black car with his parents, trying to tell them, yelling that there was no one in the grave, but they couldn’t see or hear him.

  Olga and Irina met him at home with red eyes swollen from crying. Bon came in, claws clattering on the parquet. Andy let out a happy growl; his sisters suddenly noticed him and squealed like frightened piglets. Momma and Papa ran from the room, and he, with a dragon’s face, tore the howling Bon to pieces.

  “You’re not my son!” Momma said. “My son died.”

  Then he woke up. Both his hearts were beating frantically, the claws on his front paws were stabbed into the stone of his bed. A muffled growl came from his chest.

  “What is it?” Karegar’s eyes glowed in the dark.

  “I have to send them a message…”

  There was no need to explain further.

  ***

  Earlier on, before he changed form for the first time, it was easier. He divided his life into several stages: before he was struck by lightning, from the lightning to when he landed on Ilanta, from the time he came to Ilanta to the time he underwent incarnation, and from incarnation to his first flight. He had made his peace with and gotten used to his new appearance, stopped thinking of himself as a human and understood that his birth family would never believe in a winged beast. Andy openly called Karegar his father, and Karegar likewise publicly pronounced him his son. A fun holiday celebration had been arranged in the village to honor the new Master, although no one called him that; Kerr was more than enough. There was a last name attached to the name Karegar: Gurd of the High Nest. That meant something, but they never explained it to him.

  He supposed he was entering a new stage in his life, starting from the fire and the change in hypostasis, which turned his well-established way of life upside down. Where will these new abilities take me, and what will they lead to? Already they had resurrected his long-gone desire to get back home, or at the very least send some news. He thought about that idea for the rest of the night. Was it worth venturing to search for information about building gates to his home world? It was possible his desire to see his family would result in his ending up in some top-secret research center on Earth, where they would… Well, what wouldn’t they do to me there? Probably bake me. Is this idea worth risking my life or freedom for? Is it worth risking Jaga or Karegar? Polana…? She had captured his heart in one day. It was a hard decision, but he had to decide.

  Andy’s adoptive parents met his request to go traveling in search of information on inter-world gates with hostility. They said he wasn’t ready. They said he didn’t know the customs, ways of life, the religion practiced there. They began counting on their fingers, listing everything he needed to know and to be able to do. How could they not understand! I need to find a way to get news to my family! Or else I’ll never get rid of the nightmare that woke me up last night.

  All Jaga and Karegar’s objections shattered at the look in his eyes. He was staring in one direction, silently declaring that he would do this with or without them, whether they helped him or not. Jaga grew tired, slowly sat down on a block of wood and folded her hands in her lap.

  “It’s you he takes after,” she said to Daddy.

  “And I thought it was you! You’re just as stubborn,” the dragon retorted. “Have a chat with the Hermit. He might be able to help.”

  “I will.” The elf stood up and walked over to Andy. “Perhaps you’ll change your mind?” Andy said nothing. “I see it’s useless to try to talk you out of it. You’re a real dragon. What are you just standing there for? Let’s fly!”

  “Where to?” the stubborn dragon asked in surprise.

  “To the Hermit!”

  ***

  The Hermit had moved to the valley twenty years before. No one knew where he came from, and he had immediately gone to Jaga’s house. How he managed to get by the security periphery and the traps unnoticed would forever remain a secret. But after a long conversation with the elf, the valley’s population grew by one. No one knew his real name, and everyone just called him what he asked them to—the Hermit. The old man settled down in an out-of-the-way place, far from the others. On the slope of the Broken Mountain, he built himself a wooden frame house and hired a couple of guys from the village to help him bring his belongings from Gornbuld, ninety percent of which were books and ancient tomes. There were manuscripts and scrolls in three chests, protected from decay by a preservation spell.

  The Hermit agreed to help Andy. The little man had snow-white hair, a long white beard, and fuzzy caterpillar eyebrows over wise eyes. Through his potato-like nose, he informed them that he would turn this good-for-nothing into a real human.

  Andy now had lessons with the Hermit in addition to his lessons with Jaga. There were dozens of disciplines in his “young nobleman class, from ethics to riding tricks on hassback. There were only three horses in the valley, none of which was available for teaching purposes. The one thing the old man did not allow him was sword fighting, talking his way out of it by saying that he had been occupied with other things since childhood and he had simply missed learning to use this weapon. Andy returned to the cave around the time Nelita rose and fell like a dead man onto his bench. The old man had squeezed the very last energy out of him.

  The little old man underscored all his words and actions with reminders of the sacred circle and the switch, which had “kissed” Andy more than once while he underwent his lessons in human hypostasis. The hardest thing was rehearsing the various dances a nobleman must know. Not able to think of anything fancy, the Hermit invited several young women from the village, assessing their abilities with doubt and rolling his eyes, taking the One God’s name in vain. He shook his head and taught Andy the dances, along with his partners, who constantly blushed and pressed up against him at every chance. Andy blushed no less than the girls. Through willpower and settage, he managed to decrease the flow of blood to his crotch and wished that the tradesmen would arrive in the valley as soon as possible; Polana was set to arrive with them.

  In his time not taken up by lessons, he gutted the old man’s library and practiced his “will shields,” which covered and masked his aura. He got pretty good at them. When he had somehow put up a shield, he asked Jaga to reverse the effect. The elf scrupulously examined his work with true vision and remained satisfied, noting that when he put up shields, his pupils disappeared completely. It was too bad Jaga couldn’t apply cloaks with a subtle, point-specific interweave. Hiding his non-human eyes was a very attractive idea. A simple magical masking didn’t last long on them.

  In a short time, the Hermit helped him to know all the manners and customs of all the different branches of elves, Forest Elves, the “Dawn-bringers,” and the Rauu, and of the humans, gnomes, and orcs that populated Alatar. During one visit by Jaga, the old man said, coughing, that only religion was left; Andy had bled him dry on all other subjects. He had never had such a capable student. If it weren’t for a couple of hairy circumstances getting in Andy’s way, he might achieve great success in the field of serving the One God and, who knows, even sit on the Patron’s throne.

  Today, the old man didn’t have his switch handy. The Hermit swayed from toe to heel, stared at Andy with his white, faded eyes and ran his hand over his gray beard.

  “The Gods should be closer to you than they are to anyone, but you continue to deny the divine beings. No matter what happens, today, we’re going
to talk about religion. Jagirra asked me to educate you in a manner that is complete and comprehensive. I intend to honor her request as best I can. But on the question of faith, I’ll deviate from my principles for the first time and just give you the bare bones. Surprisingly, I have standing in front of me a dragon who doesn’t believe in the Twins. On the other hand, you don’t believe in the One God, either. Pity.”

  Andy set aside a fat tome with a description of the historical events of 400 years ago on the siege of Orten, the second-largest kingdom of Tantre, by a horde of green orcs. He heaved a sigh. The Hermit is in his element; let him have some room to work. He won’t give his sermons a rest until I’ve heard him.

  As Andy suspected, his mentor had previously been a religious servant of the One God, and pretty high up in the ranks. He could sense in the Hermit an unbending streak of stubbornness and a strong will. The breadth of his views was astounding, as was brilliant mind. The Hermit could speak of any subject from various perspectives and then would immediately analyze his speech and show the listener where, in his view, he was right, and where there was work to do and further clarification necessary.

  “I’d like to begin with Alatar’s ancient faith,” the old man began. “The Twins symbolize Life and Death, Order and Chaos, and are the symbol of the struggle and unity of two universal opposites. Faith in the Twins came about long before the Empire of Alatar. I’m inclined to believe the ancient legends, which state that dragons brought this faith to the world. Your existence supports that version, but anyway, back to religion. The symbol of the Twins is a circle of light and darkness”.

  “The Twins do not symbolize good and evil. They are higher than that, neutral, and maintain a sacred balance in the world. Sometimes, life is so unbearable that a person will gladly take on death and search for peace in Hel’s embrace. One could call the goddesses a symbol of balance and harmony. There is a belief that the souls of the dead go to Hel’s judgment. She’ll weigh a person’s life and deeds on a scale of black and white stones and decide where to send him after death. If the cup of white stones is heavier or the scales are even, the soul will have a light afterlife and may be reincarnated a hundred years later as a different person. If there are more dark stones, horrible torture awaits the soul, because dark stones in a human soul are evil and throw off the world’s balance. Dark souls will be sent to eternal suffering and oblivion. Currently, this ancient belief has been preserved in the north of Alatar in all the branches of elves.

  “The coastal orcs serve goddesses. The Twins are revered in Tantre, Rimm, Meriya, the dukedom of Taiir and the principality of Mesaniya. The Norsemen or Vikings revere their own gods, the principal of which is Odin the one-eyed, but dwelling alongside the Dawn-bringers and the free barons made its mark on them. Most of the northerners believe in Hel and Nel, which does not prevent them from slaughtering a chicken on an altar as a sacrifice to their gods or sacrificing a slave. The gray orcs, who were strongly influenced by the northerners, believe in Odin, the Twins, and in Khirud, their god of the sky with arms of lightning, along with an entire pantheon of pagan orc gods.

  “The gnomes are an exception from all the others with their belief in Gorn the Fiery, ancestor of all gnomes, who gave them fire of the soul, which is why their hair glows. Besides Gorn, the gnomes have a few other gods. Grom is the god of earth and metals, who gave his people the ability to see iron in earth. Nirada is the goddess of beauty and fertility, but in essence is their version of Nel. Targ is similar to the Vikings’ god Loki, the god of deception. Targ gives trash instead of minerals, floods mines, and mocks the foothill tribes in all kinds of ways. To recall Targ’s name as something unpleasant, to think of him as bringing misfortune, spread from the gnomes to all the peoples of Alatar. Rad is the god of honor and military prowess, an incorruptible judge, equivalent to Gorn, a witness to vows, and a great warrior with a heavenly flaming sword, and there are a few more lesser gods.

  “Let’s go back to the topic of the Twins. Over thousands of years, people distorted their understanding of the harmony and balance of the goddesses. Dark cults of Hel appeared, the priests of which drew their strength from wicked human passions and made sacrifices to Death. By their efforts, the fair goddess was slowly transformed into a cruel monster that requires human blood and death. The Servants of Death are acting illegally in all nations. In the empire, they’re executed without trial. The One God, through the hands of his servants, is battling the darkness.”

  The old man fell silent, scooped some water out of a bucket with a carved wooden ladle, slowly drank it, and turned a couple pages in his tome. A new image unfolded before Andy’s eyes. It was a symbol similar to that for the Twins.

  The Hermit went on. “The One God. Briefly, and based on the knowledge that came about with the dawn of the empire, the world around us was created by a Great Intellect that unites all the elements and beginnings of the universe. The pagan gods Hel and Nel are the essence of one Creator-God’s manifestation. This God unites the entire universe unto himself. Everything begins with him and returns to him. The Creator doesn’t have a name, he is One—the God that unites all names, Light and Dark, Order and Chaos, Good and Evil. The black and white circle in the center of the sacred circle is a person created by the One God in his image and likeness. Not in his external appearance, as you might think, but in the likeness of his soul, which contains dark and light sides. The light and dark halves of the One God struggle with one another for human souls. If the dark half wins, and the human circle becomes dark, the world will come to eternal chaos. If the light half can win, and people’s souls become light, then a golden age will come, an era of complete prosperity. The faults and virtues built into humans cannot be in balance. People are weak, and doing dark deeds comes easier to them essentially than rejecting dark deeds. Their faults will soon master them. The Holy Church is called to help the light side of the One God and send people down the path of truth.”

  The next part Andy only half listened to, although the Hermit was singing like a nightingale. Andy relaxed and started to doze with his eyes open, then the Hermit switched to the structure of the church, and that was serious. Spiritual authority was a powerful tool of political influence on the continent.

  “The Sacred Church is headed by the Patron, the anointed sovereign of the One God in Ilanta. The Patron’s throne is located in the center of the Great Temple, built 2,500 years ago in the small city of Pat, which became the capital of the Second Empire 1,500 years later as a result.

  “The church is divided into eparchies, each governing a certain territory, headed by Patras, who are chosen at the Patron’s conclave. The church stands on three pillars. The first is the pillar of Light. It’s made up of white or light clergy who bring the light of true faith to the people. The second pillar is the pillar of Knowledge. All the spiritual schools and seminaries are subject to the pillar. The Great Master rules according to the pillar. Besides schools, all the book and newspaper printers of the Church are under the control of this pillar. The third pillar is the Pillar of Purity, called to keep the thoughts and deeds of the clergy and the parishioners clean. It is designed to root out heresy.”

  Andy frowned. An inquisition, of course.

  “The pillar of Purity is the most serious and dangerous for the enemies of the Church structure. It entails not only an investigatory division but knightly orders. There is the Order of the Sword, the Order of the Purity of Light, and the Order of the Sacred Circle.

  “The Great Masters of the orders are elected at their General Chapter and confirmed to the positions by the Patron.” The Hermit went on to describe the structure of the knightly orders, the “Circlers,” the common name for the Order of the Sacred Circle that served as internal guards, the Sword-swingers, as they were called, engaged in joint military tasks, and then there were the pure ones,” the punishers in service of the Sacred Church.

  “What relationship does the Patron have to the Government?” Andy asked during one of the many paus
es in the Hermit’s monologue. “I can’t imagine the Emperor of Pat simply tolerating the presence of the Church’s armed forces on his territory.”

  The old man was silent. The white hairy caterpillars over his eyes did an intricate dance. He tugged his beard a couple of times. “The Patron occupies the position of being the Emperor’s first advisor,” he said, finally.

  “So the Sacred Church fused with the state apparatus of Pat, and for the most part, supports imperial politics or implements its goals, and in return receives tax breaks and some state perks. The knightly orders can be viewed as extra army reserves, only they’ve been brainwashed by priests into killing for a lofty cause in order to create a small circle in the center of a big white one. The Church itself allows for centralization of power in the emperor’s hands. Excuse me, Hermit, but I have one more question. Is the Patron chosen at the conclave, or by direct order of the Emperor himself?”

  “Jaga told me I’d have to watch my words with you,” the old man sat down on a bench and looked at Andy anew. He twitched and moved his eyebrows for a long time and muttered under his breath. “What do you think?” he asked, instead of answering.

  “Class dismissed.”

  ***

  A surprise awaited him at the cave. Flying up to his home, he saw two female figures arranging bundles of herbs. His hearts beat joyfully. Polana has arrived!

  “Land over there, to the side,” Jaga called to him. “You’re going to put all the herbs away for us!”

  He flew over to the platform near the ravine he had plucked a ram out of, landed, changed hypostasis, quickly got dressed, and ran back up. He stopped for a second right before the platform, caught his breath and casually stepped out into the open, raising his will shields just in case. If Polana looked at him with true vision, he wouldn’t want her to see him glowing unevenly toward her.

  He helped sort wild herbs and wrap them up in bundles until dusk. His conversation with Polana went awry; he didn’t know what to talk about with the girl and constantly got embarrassed. Where was that loquacious little Dara when you needed her?