by Eileen Wilks
My granddaughter-in-magic, Sam had said.
There are two ways to take another’s power, the Chimei had said. One is voluntary. One is not.
Lily put her palms flat on the cool, white otherness. And pulled.
But this was no Earth-Gifted human witch willfully, insanely burning herself out in an effort to destroy.
This was Power.
Lily’s hands sank inside that whiteness. And power roared up her arms, a crawling horror of it, hot and icy and everything at once—every kind of sensation at once, every kind of magic, stretching into dimensions so alien Lily couldn’t grasp what she touched, what she held . . .
What held her. For the white mass came flowing up out of Isen, flowing up over Lily’s arms. It hung there in front of Lily, trapping her—and it formed a mouth.
That mouth, obscenely female, hissed, “Did you think you could absorb my power, little human? Oh, you surprised me with your trick, but you are no dragon, and the male human who betrayed my Johnny is dead. His heart stopped before you startled me with your trick. Now I will stop your heart, and your lover’s. I will kill you all slowly and eat your fear as you die.”
“You c-can’t. The treaty—”
“Poor, stupid little not-dragon. You broke the treaty. When you tried to take my power without my consent, you broke it.” And she swarmed up Lily’s arms, her shoulders—Lily dragged in a breath and held it as cool white otherness covered her face.
Overhead, Sam began to sing.
Dragonsong is not like any other sound. Rule once compared it to a didgeridoo, a hollow instrument played by Australian aborigines. Lily had listened to recordings of didgeridoos, and it did sound a little like dragonsong . . . and nothing at all like it.
At the same time that something cool and repellently solid flowed into Lily’s nose, flowed down inside her, dragonsong flowed into her, too. In through her ears, and in through some channel that had nothing to do with her ears.
In that song, she heard what she knew. What she was.
How did you know? she asked, even as the world grew gray and hazy to her vision and her lungs filled with unbreathable otherness. How did you know?
Child, he said, and his voice was tender as she had never heard it, gentle and large and intimate, I held you as you died. How could I not know your Name?
And then he gave her another word. This one was cold, colder than any word could be, and it cut into her, cut all the way to the core of her.
Remember.
SHE leaped from the cliff—leaped willingly, but not peacefully, her heart in a riot of love and grief for all she surrendered, her mind blanked by terror of what she did.
THE Chimei shuddered inside Lily. And began to withdraw. Slowly, then more quickly.
LILY fell and fell—as she had in dreams, but this was no dream; this was what had happened, was happening, the air whistling past so fast, burning her eyes. Her body tumbled helplessly.
THE whiteness left her lungs, her throat. Her nose. She dragged in a breath, her chest heaving. No, she said to the Chimei without using any of the precious air—but she said it gently, for she knew. She knew what to do.
Lily—all of Lily, for her soul was no longer sundered, nor any of her memories hidden—wrapped her arms around the whiteness, not letting it escape as she fell to the rocky beach below. Held her, held on to her with the Gift that was hers, the dragon’s gift. She held the Chimei as she died.
“LILY? God, Lily, I can feel you, but if you don’t wake up and answer me, I’ll—I’ll—”
Lily opened her eyes on Rule’s frantic face. “I’m here,” she whispered. She was lying on her back, she noted dimly. On the ground.
Rule’s eyes closed. He shuddered. “Thank God. Oh, God, I thought I’d lost you. Are you hurt?”
“Dizzy,” she murmured. “Help me sit up, okay? Oh, shit—your father—”
“CPR works on lupi as well as humans,” Isen said gruffly. “Once you pulled that creature out of me, Remy got my heart started up.”
Lily turned her head and saw Isen sitting nearby. A tall young man she vaguely recognized kneeled beside him. Remy, she assumed.
“I want to sit up,” she repeated. Rule helped, moving so that his body braced her. That was good. Wonderful. “Was I out long?”
“No, it just seemed like forever. Are you sure you’re all right?” he asked. “The Chimei’s gone,” he added hastily, as if she might not know this. “All at once, she vanished.”
Not vanished, Sam said. She is dead.
“What?” Rule looked up.
Sam was coming in for a landing again—this one much slower than the last. He still held Johnny, but the sorcerer was limp—unconscious, maybe? Or had losing his lover killed him? It is the only way to kill a Chimei. Created to not-know death, they cannot die until someone shares a death with them.
“Shares a death?” Rule repeated blankly.
Dragons are the only ones who can do this—or we were, until tonight. In Dis, Lily died. That she also lived does not make her death less real. She shared that death with the Chimei.
“I broke the treaty,” Lily said dully.
No. Small actions accumulate. As an agent of order, you tried to stop the Chimei without killing her. She thought your attempt to drain her power broke the treaty, but her thinking was badly warped, or she would have sensed it still in place—strained, stretched, yet still intact. When she tried to kill you— that broke the treaty.
Rule looked at her, questions in his eyes.
“If you’re trying to ask how I did all that, well . . . I lack words.” That’s what he’d said to her often enough. “Rule, I remembered. Because of Sam, I remembered everything. The part of me that was with you in Dis—she’s here now, all the way here. I mean I’m here now. I’m not . . . I’m all of me.”
He wrapped his arms around her and held her gently, pressing a kiss to her hair. She smiled and let her eyes close again. I love you.
He jolted. “Lily?”
“What?”
“You didn’t say that out loud.”
That startled her eyes open. “Shit.”
Grandmother arrived at the same time as half a dozen lupi—some clothed and two-legged, some naked and two-legged, a couple still on four feet. She was propping up a wobbly Cullen. Cullen’s face was strained, his eyes frantic. “Cynna?” he said hoarsely.
“She’s all right,” Lily said quickly. “She’s fine, and so is the baby. The gnomes got her out.”
His eyes closed. “Okay,” he said simply—and slid to the ground.
After a few frantic seconds, they confirmed that he’d passed out, not died. His heart still beat.
He is well enough, Sam said, sending dust flying as he settled to the ground several dozen feet away. He set the sorcerer’s body aside. This one is not.
Lily looked at Grandmother, standing unnaturally quiet in the midst of the lupi, her face tender and sad and happy all at once. “You arrested her. The Chimei.”
“You heard.” Delight rang through Grandmother’s voice. “I did. It is important to follow the forms of such things.”
“I have a few questions,” Lily began—and broke off, frowning.
For some reason everyone—well, everyone but Cullen, who was unconscious—seemed to find that terribly funny.
FORTY
ON August eleventh at shortly after one in the morning, Pacific Daylight Time, in cities around the world—in Seattle, Chicago, Washington, D.C., Tokyo, and Beijing, and twenty more—dragons flew. As they flew, they sang. In every city in the world that had a dragon, people for the first time heard dragonsong.
Not everyone heard it, of course. Those who did stopped their cars or their feet, stopped whatever they were doing, and listened. Just listened. Many of them wept, but later couldn’t say why.
No one recorded it. No one who heard it even thought of trying. They didn’t know the why of that, either.
In the U.S. the TV talking heads speculated madly about the
reason for this unprecedented behavior—of dragons and people both. Oprah had three of those who’d heard it on her show. In China and Canada, the governments politely inquired of their dragons what was up. In Hollywood, agents tried frantically to contact the dragons to offer contracts.
The dragons didn’t care to discuss it. Neither did those few humans—and lupi—who knew why the dragons sang.
The most innately sovereign species in existence was free of a binding that had been passed down, through blood and magic, for more than three thousand years. The last of the un-surrendered Chimei was dead. The treaty was no more.
August 13th at 10:09 P.M.
RULE knelt in front of his Rho and shuddered with relief.
Nokolai’s mantle—the heir’s portion—rested in him once more. He looked at his brother, kneeling beside him. “Benedict,” he began . . . and ran out of words.
Benedict’s mouth kicked up at one corner. “Still can’t quite believe I’m happier without it, can you?”
Rule looked at him helplessly. “It’s not that I doubt your word.”
Benedict regarded him a moment. “When you were seven or so, you found a puppy. Brought it home. Cute little thing, about half grown. A basset, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.” Rule’s smile started as he saw where this was going.
“You didn’t know about collars and tags. You thought you could keep it, so you were sad for a full week after Dad found the owners and they took him home. If you’d known about collars and tags, you wouldn’t have counted on keeping that little dog. You’d have had a good time with it while it was there, and been fine when it left.”
Now Rule’s smile was easy. “You understand about tags and collars.”
Benedict nodded. “I do. The mantle itself—yeah, that felt good. But I don’t want the stuff that goes with it, so while we had a good time together, I’m glad to let it go back to its owner.”
He rose, gave their father a nod and a smile, then said to Rule, “I’m still not talking to you.”
With that, he left.
Rule stood, too, watching his big brother leave. “Sometimes I don’t understand him at all.”
“Just because he loves you doesn’t mean he wants to talk to you.”
Isen’s eyes were twinkling in his uncannily naked face. With his beard burned half off, he’d had to shave the other half—and complained about that way more than he had the burns on his arms and chest. But then, the burned skin would heal a lot faster than he could regrow his beard. Hair growth wasn’t affected by healing.
Rule thought he knew what his father meant. Benedict did love him, hadn’t wanted Rule to worry about him, and hadn’t gotten over his anger at Rule’s decision to marry. But he sighed. “Sometimes I get tired of my family’s ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy.”
Isen’s eyebrows climbed. “Now I’m mystified.”
“We don’t say things straight out.” Or ask things straight out, and why not? Why not just ask? “What are you planning to do about my marriage?”
“Ah.” Isen started to rub his beard, found bare face, and scowled. “All right. Straight out, then. You remember what I told you to do when you’re Rho and you’ve got a messy situation and you don’t have a clue what to do about it?”
Everything clicked in place. “Look mysterious and knowing and stall until I figure something out.”
“That’s right. I’ll tell you that I personally think it’s a mistake, you marrying. Any of us marrying. But you’ve said you think the Lady wants change.” He shrugged. “I don’t know. She hasn’t whispered in my ear—that’s for damned sure. But it’s possible. So I’m waiting to see how things shake out.”
Rule was suddenly awash with emotion. For a little while, he’d thought his father was dead. Isen’s heart had stopped for so long . . . but it had started again. “I’d like to take my father to dinner,” he said. “But he hardly ever leaves his place.”
Isen’s eyes twinkled. “Bit of a stick-in-the mud, is he? Maybe an agora—what’s that word? Agoraphobic.”
Rule nodded solemnly. “Something like that. If you should happen to see him—”
Isen hooted with laughter and grabbed Rule, hugging hard.
Rule hugged back, his eyes damp. “I love you, Dad.”
“Love you back.” And Isen slapped him on the back to prove it.
LILY’S mother had graciously granted a two-day reprieve on their lunch, but Wednesday rolled around—as it has a habit of doing—right on schedule. Resigned, Lily sat at a red-draped table in her uncle Chen’s restaurant with a menu, a glass of water, and—to the waiter’s clear disapproval—a cup of coffee.
It was five minutes after noon. Her mother was late. Her mother was never late. The atomic clock could be set by Julia Yu’s punctuality. Lily couldn’t decide whether to be worried or annoyed.
Maybe she’d had trouble finding parking. The place was packed. If . . . Oh, my.
A slim, upright figure escorted by a deferential hostess was making her way through the crowded tables toward Lily. She wore pristine white silk trousers and a tunic with a Mandarin collar. The tunic was the color-soaked red a 1940s movie star might have worn on her lips and nails. “I am joining you,” Grandmother announced as the hostess held the chair for her. “Your mother is delayed. She will be here soon.”
A dozen impulses and questions whirled through Lily. Did her mother even know Grandmother was joining them? Or was her mother late because Grandmother told her to be? Or had Grandmother persuaded her the actual time was twelve thirty, or . . . .
In the end, Lily smiled helplessly. “It’s good to see you, Grandmother. You look fantastic.”
“Red is a good color for me.” Grandmother waved the hostess away. “We will not order yet. You may bring me some tea. You are drinking coffee,” she informed Lily.
“Yes, I am.”
“Hmph. Li Qin sends her love. She is very glad to be home again. She wonders why you have not yet been to see her.”
Lily’s eyebrows rose. “She wonders that, Grandmother?”
“I assume she does. I do not wonder. I know. You feel shy with me.”
Lily’s mouth opened to deny that—and closed again. Because suddenly, unaccountably, she did feel shy, or something very like that.
Grandmother patted her hand and spoke softly. “You have just woken to your name. You do not understand it, but you know it. I am the only one you might ask, but you do not know what to ask.”
Wordless, Lily nodded.
The server set a small china pot on the table. Grandmother inspected it, sniffing the steam. “You have prepared it correctly, I think. Loose tea, no bags? Yes. Thank you. I will let it steep.”
Grandmother folded her hands on the table as the slightly flustered server departed. “I will tell you the secret of true names. We know them when we understand the secret about death—which is, of course, the secret about life. Which is not a secret at all.”
“But I—I don’t understand death. I remember it happening. I don’t understand it.”
“You mean you do not understand what comes after death. No more do I. This does not matter. A baby reaching for her mother’s breast does not know what comes after not-baby. She sees not-baby around her, but she does not truly see until she becomes not-baby herself.”
“You mean that death is a transition.”
“Silly word, transition. All words are silly when we speak of this, so mostly we do not, or we let silly people do the speaking. I like the Buddhists, who do not mind being silly. They speak of the fallacy of duality, the confusion of either-or thinking. These words are as close as any to what you and I know.”
Lily shook her head. “They aren’t my words. They don’t . . . they don’t touch what I know.”
“Lily. You know now that having been, you can never not-be. Just as I, having been dragon, can never not-be dragon. And while I was wholly dragon, I was also human, for I could not undo having been human. Living does not undo life. Death does
not, either. Life and death are not either-or.”
Words that would have been gibberish to her last week unlocked everything now. “You mean it’s all real. It’s all true. Cullen said a true name comes from the part of us that doesn’t change, but he was wrong. Mostly wrong, anyway, because it’s all change, and it’s all true.”
“Yes. Now, stop carving up what you know with words. The pieces left from that carving do not make sense.” She took a moment to pour her tea. She inhaled, frowned faintly, and sipped anyway. “Sandra learns, but she does not yet have the art.”
Lily grinned suddenly, thinking of a limousine. Black, not white, because Grandmother disliked the white ones. “And having been a child, we can’t not-be a child.”
Grandmother’s eyes twinkled. “I do not know what you mean.” She took a sip of tea, shook her head, and set the cup down.
Love and amusement mingled in Lily, making her next words softer than she wanted, more tentative. “I have some questions about things that can be chopped up into words.”
Grandmother snorted. “You wish to know about myself and Sam. Very well. You may ask. It is good for children to acquaint themselves with their ancestors.”
And that was the kernel, wasn’t it? “Most people don’t have an ancestor around to ask! I mean . . .” Lily gestured vaguely. “Over three hundred years, Grandmother! That’s . . . How is that possible?”
“I have been dragon. I cannot not-be dragon. Dragons live much longer than humans.” She shrugged. “I do not share in their longevity fully. My life will be longer than most, but not as long as a dragon’s. More than that I do not know.”
Lily’s heart beat faster. “Will my father live longer than most, too?”
“Ah.” Sadness clouded the old woman’s eyes. “I do not know, but . . . the magic did not go to him, did it? There is a property of my lineage, passed to me by my mother from her mother and back for many generations: our magic wakes only in the females of our line. It can be passed along through a son, but the son cannot touch it. The magic I passed down was not my original magic, of course, yet it still wakes only in the female, not the male.”