Moth and Spark

by Anne Leonard

  The blood flowed steadily from Hadon’s arm. His posture had changed too, perhaps he had pulled a muscle somewhere. Tam knew that he would not yield. Corin would have to slay him even if they were in exhausted crawls. She realized she had made her hands into fists again and once more forced them to loosen. Why could it not be over?

  Sparks seemed to fly from the swords. Corin slashed, but Hadon countered perfectly every time. The Emperor raised and lowered his sword with a precision that might have belonged to a machine. Yet his face was paling.

  There were only a few spots of greenfire left, but the smell of smoke was getting stronger. Corin started driving Hadon toward the slope again. They were drawing near to the crevice. Thin black tendrils of smoke were coming from it. Tam saw Corin realize it. He was limping now, and he made an off-balance swing. Kelvan’s hand came over Tam’s mouth, holding in her scream before she could even draw breath for it.

  Hadon’s sword struck Corin’s. Tam watched in horror as the blade waved and he nearly lost his grip. He turned the blow back somehow and let his blade slide down the edge of Hadon’s to the hilt. They jarred loudly and Corin forced Hadon’s sword down. Blood ran down Hadon’s blade. She thought it was his own.

  The light changed. It darkened as though the sun had gone behind a cloud. But there were no clouds. Instinctively Tam looked upward. The blue of the sky was tinged with purple. She wanted to cower in a huddle behind Kelvan but could not move.

  She made herself look again at the fight in time to see Corin pull his sword back and Hadon’s momentum carry him forward. Corin swung in a graceful backstroke. The sword went flying from Hadon’s hand.

  Corin pushed the point of his own sword against Hadon’s neck and said in a hoarse voice that Tam could barely hear, “On your knees.”

  Hadon grinned at him and said, “Kill me.”

  It threw Tam into vision. A room, magnificent with carved and colored stone. Pillars, statues, tile. It was a long hall that blazed with light. There were patterns on the floor wrought with gold and silver. At the end was a dais, and on the dais a throne, gilt and elaborate and glittery with gems. Dragons were carved on its arms. A dark-haired man, thin and cruel-looking, sat on it.

  A man approached, struggling under the weight of the silver box he carried. He knelt, spread a cloth on the floor, opened the box. He removed a large shimmering egg and laid it on the cloth.

  The Seeing jerked, reshaped. The room was dim. The king stood on the lowest step of the dais. Facing him stood a man whose eyes flashed silver. A nimbus of light flickered around them both. The man held a glass vial with a dark red liquid in it. Slowly the liquid lightened and changed color, until it was the color of pale yellow wine. The king drank. He convulsed, twisted, almost fell. Then he recovered. The shadow of a dragon loomed behind him and danced like fire.

  The man’s eyes had changed from silver to black stone. The king said something, and he knelt. The king dropped the vial, which shattered on the stone floor. He placed his hands on the man’s shoulders. It seemed a blessing.

  Then he raised one hand and gestured, and the light flickered, and the man fell over with an arrow in his back.

  Tam surged into awareness, breathing hard. Evil, she thought, evil. But now she knew what had happened. That was the hold, that was the spell. Father to son, in the blood.

  Hadon’s words were a taunt. That was why he had come, to bait Corin into killing him. His madness was the dragons’ way to freedom. If he died now the bonds would snap closed again. Corin had to know that, had to hold back.

  “Don’t!” she shouted. Wind gusted, and he did not hear.

  A knife of dragonpain stabbed her mind. It reached to her belly before it stopped. She gasped. The air on her arms went abruptly icy. She started shivering as the cold settled into her. She smelled dust and ash. Her body realized what was happening and broke away from Kelvan before her mind did. She drew her knife and slid and climbed frantically down back to the level surface. She ran toward Corin, strands of her hair blowing into her open mouth.

  A dragon shrieked. Hadon’s face changed and he fell. Blood poured out of his ear.

  “Corin!” He had to get away, get down, fly off the mountain, anything.

  This time he looked toward her. Several riders screamed. A dragon let out a cry of pure terror that made Tam think her heart might burst on hearing it. Corin’s sword fell from limp hands.

  Black smoke was rising out of the fissure in the stone, black smoke and heat and sulfur, and as it rose it gathered in the shape of a vast dragon. Lightning played along its flanks. Fire poured from its mouth. Its claws were iron. Blood and fire had called it forth. Tam had watched it come out of the chasm in the cave once, and whether that was memory or prophecy she did not know, but this was the same. The smoke dragon was a shadow, yet it was real, with claws and teeth that could kill, breathing fire that could burn.

  Corin was staring at it, motionless. Tam knew that Corin would be the sacrifice, not Hadon. He would stand there and submit.

  She looked at the blood pooling under Hadon’s head. His link to the dragons was not gone yet, and when he died the door would shut. Corin’s death must come first to feed the dragon shaping itself into being. Other- wise it would dissipate back into the place where the Myceneans had kept it trapped for centuries and Kynos would become the dragonlord. She could save Corin’s life with a knife slash to Hadon’s throat.

  The dragon was entirely airbound now, unspeakably huge. It made the other dragons look like its young. Perhaps they were.

  Tam reached Corin’s side. He looked exhausted. Smoke still curled up from the crack, and there was a faint reddish glow very far down.

  “It’s not done,” he said.

  She remembered trance, remembered snow and rock. She knew what she had to do. They had chosen her too, after all. She was their messenger. “It’s not. But your part is. Go join the riders.”

  “Tam—”

  “Don’t, Corin,” she said. “I love you. It’s my turn. Go.” She planted her feet. Yards away from her one of the patches of greenfire flared and went out. She glanced over her shoulder. “Go!” she said, feeling that she might breathe fire herself, and he finally moved.

  She lifted her knife and pointed it at the sky as Joce had shown her. Power surged through her, locking her feet and arms in place. It crackled on her back and flowed from her knife blade. She was drenched in radiance.

  The dragon saw her and ripped through the air until it was almost directly above her. It avoided the path her body made between sky and earth. It stank of death and sulfur and smoke and stone. Its eyes were cruel and knowing. It wanted life again, and she stood between it and its prey.

  Not so different from Hadon, are you, she thought. But it was. It was not human. It did not know compassion, nor did it know evil or selfishness. It had neither loyalty nor blame. She stood in its shadow and watched the sparks flicker along its body. It was terrifying and beautiful, and she could speak to it.

  You don’t need blood. You need life. They aren’t the same.

  It fixed its flickering golden gaze on her. Slowly, carefully, she began to give it back its past. All the images the dragons had shown her, moon and snow and tree. Whirlwinds of sand on a tray. A twisting fire-cast dragon shadow on stone and a man falling in a puff of ash. The rock and cinders of the Dragon Valleys. The swirling infinite cold her hands had felt. And the touch of it, the air currents catching the membrane of dragon’s wing, the silkiness of scale. Pain. Moths fluttering out of Cade’s mouth. Shadows of wolves in the moonlight. Sun on a slow river.

  I am the repository, she thought. She looked up and met its eye. The gold was steady now, mortal. The liquid darkness of the pupil spread around her like silk, warm, inviting. She let it take her.

  Light, everywhere was light. Steam passed across her face like a veil. The sweat on her arm refracted back hundreds of tiny rainb
ows. Her memories drained from her. She watched them go with a small, mournful wave, and as they went the light got brighter and deeper, until she was standing at the white center of the flame. She spread her arms out wide and watched the sparks flicker away from her. The roar of fire was like the sea or the wind. Here, she thought.

  Agony brought her back into her body. The dragon had scratched her on the chest. It burned and stung. Blood was blossoming on the ruins of her shirt. She felt her face contort with pain.

  That’s all you need, she thought fiercely, fighting back tears. Just a little blood. You have my memories, you have the dragons’ past. You have smoke, and a mountain, and wings.

  It stared back at her. Muscles moved under its hide as it hovered.

  Go, she said. It’s over. You’re free. The Dragon Valleys wait. There is fire moving again beneath the rock. You live.

  It flapped its wings. She coughed and choked with the odor. It held out its claws. Her blood darkened the tip of one.

  Take it. It’s enough. Go.

  It ascended in a shower of cinder and ash. Its scales were red and gold and hinted at the blue of flame. The colors rippled along it as it moved. Its huge shadow covered the granite.

  It swooped suddenly, and Tam dropped the knife and recoiled, throwing her arms over her head. It glided over the last of the burning greenfire and inhaled it, drawing it upward in ribbons of incandescent green. It turned and began flying north and east.

  Then Corin was holding her, seated on the granite. She had no recall of him coming to her or of sitting down. She had lost time. Fainted, probably. The light had changed back to ordinary daylight. Her clothing was smoke stained and burned in places, and the back of her left hand was red and shiny and already blistering. Blood continued to soak her shirt. It had been cut open to her stomach, as neatly as if with shears. The shadow dragon, the living dragon, was nowhere to be seen.

  She looked past Corin to Hadon. There was still life in his face, and pain, and sanity.

  You can die now, she thought. You’re free too.

  She would never know if he heard her thought, or came to it himself, or if it was simply chance, but she watched his eyes go slowly dim. She could tell when his heart stopped.

  “Tam,” Corin said.

  “Water,” she tried to say. Her swollen lips cracked with the effort, and she tasted blood. He made some sort of gesture with his hand. Kelvan stood in front of her with a waterskin. It was far too fast, even for a dragonrider, and she realized she must have briefly fainted again.

  Corin dripped the water into her mouth, splashed it over her face. She swallowed greedily. Her throat was raw and sharp. It hurt. But she drank as much as he would let her have. Then she gave in and let herself weep with the pain in her chest.

  He unwrapped the scarf from around her neck and lowered her down. He cut the rest of her shirt and looked at the wound. He poured water on it, and she jerked with hurt. “Steady, love,” he said. He pressed the scarf hard against it. Her eyes wanted to close, and she let them.

  When she opened them again, Corin was still sitting beside her. Blood was sticky on her breasts and stomach, but the pain had subsided. She looked at herself. He raised the scarf. It was a long slash down her breastbone, neck to stomach. The dragon could have ripped her open. The blood was clotting.

  He said, “There’s some burn around the edges, you’ll have a scar. I think we can wait to clean it until we get medicine, though, instead of opening it again here. I’ll find you something to wear.”

  She clutched his hand. “Your leg,” she whispered.

  “I’ll get it tended to. It’s shallow, nothing to worry about.” He bent to kiss her, then raised his head. He said, sounding awed, “Look.”

  Holding her shirt closed with one hand, Tam struggled up and looked. The dragons were dancing.

  They circled and dove and matched formation more gracefully than dancers at any ball. Fire came from their mouths in perfect spheres of red that slowly faded. Their tails twined, their wings flicked to catch refulgent sun, they looped around one another. They swirled like leaves caught in wind, ashes carried upward by heat. Their colors glittered against the blue sky and the white stone.

  Tam leaned into Corin and watched. His arms came around her, carefully, avoiding the slash. She smelled smoke on his skin and clothing too. She let her eyes follow the dragons, round and round. She wondered if they would ever speak to her again.

  After some measureless time, dragontime, no time, had passed, a dragon left the circle and returned to a crag where it sat, alert, watching. Slowly, one by one, the other dragons left the dance until there were only two left. They faced each other as though doing battle. They breathed fire at each other.

  The flame rushed upward, a moving column of light and color, and fountained off in sprays of red and gold that faded into sparks. It cast its color on the dragons, on the rock. The dragons fanned it with their wings and swirled around it, then let the fire go out. They soared and crossed and returned and breathed fire again.

  Two more times the dragons danced around a pillar of flame. After the third one, they circled, then parted and flew back to the mountainside.

  Tam let her breath out. It made her cough. Corin handed her the waterskin.

  She drank deeply. She said, “I’ll live. Now go attend to the riders, there’s still the war to win.”

  He kissed her forehead. Then he lifted Hadon’s body and limped away.

  Evening. Kelvan had left the cottage to them for the night. Corin’s wound was more serious than he had thought, and the village healer had commanded him to keep weight off it for a few days. He lay on the pallet in front of the fire. Tam sat beside him with her legs crossed. She had been treated too, and aside from some tenderness in the burned hand she felt perfectly fine. The healer thought the scar on her chest would be nearly invisible to anyone who didn’t have Sight.

  She was very tired. She said, “You would think we had had enough of fire.”

  “Humans can never have enough of fire,” Corin said. His hand touched her cheek.

  She knew there would not be many more such quiet moments. As soon as his leg started to heal he would be agitating to leave, to go back to Caithenor, to get about his business. It had to be safe, of course, but the accounts they were already getting from the riders was that the Mycenean soldiers were following the riders’ orders. Hadon’s body had been taken back to Mycene. Tam wondered what the tale of his death would be, and what would be told of her. Probably very little of the latter; the riders would not want to describe anything that had happened.

  Corin said, surprising her, “Do you want to go to Dalrinia, Tam? Kelvan could take you tomorrow.”

  “How long have you been waiting to ask that?”

  “A while. I thought I would take you myself, of course. But there’s no reason for you to suffer out my convalescence here.”

  “No reason except that I married you.”

  “You know what I’m saying.” There was a bit of sharpness to his tone that made her think the wound was starting to hurt more. He said, “I don’t want you coming back to Caithenor until it’s stable, and that might be a while. We have no idea what Hadon’s sons might do with him gone. I don’t know if they’ll blame me or thank me for his death, but they will certainly be furious about the dragons.”

  “I’ll go to Dalrinia, but not with Kelvan, with you. I’ll wait.” Worry she thought she was past surged suddenly. “What am I to tell them? Especially about you?”

  “Love, they will be so relieved to see you they won’t care whom you married. And I am hardly going to hang about expecting to be entertained like a gentleman of leisure. Once you’re settled I may not even stay there. I’ll have a great deal to do.”

  “I’m not going to laze about either.”

  “Of course not. It will resolve itself, Tam, don’t fret over it now.�
�� He touched her again. “You were so brave today. How did you know what to do?”

  She had turned that over in her head more times than she could count. “I couldn’t let it kill you,” she said. “The dragons wanted something from me too, I knew that much. All I could think of to do was give it back what they had given me. There was nothing else I had. So I did.”

  “And it worked.”

  “It worked. What are the dragons going to do now, Corin, once the Sarians and Myceneans are gone?”

  That made him sit up. “I don’t know,” he said. “They won’t be coming back to me, it’s getting distant already. They’ll go to the Dragon Valleys, but I don’t know that they’ll stay there. I think many may choose to stay with their riders. It’s upset the balance of the Empire rather nicely. We’ll have to keep other countries from trying to steal them again.”

  He was in that world already. “I love you,” she said.

  He stroked her hair. They sat in silence for a while. Then Tam said, “What happens to me when we go back?” She certainly was not going to stay at her parents’ home longer than she needed to, but in Caithenor there might not be much to do besides let Corin storm and pace his angers out in her presence. There would be plenty of that.

  “You’re going to hate it,” he said cheerfully. “We have to cram years’ worth of royal schooling into you as fast as possible. You’ll read. And read and read. History and law, mostly. It gets dull much faster than you think it will. And you’ll sit in councils and hearings and court sessions. You’ll have to have dinner with the Lord Justice, who is very loud, and host dinners of your own, and help my mother plan the Midwinter festivities.” He sobered suddenly. “Such as they are. I expect there will be scarcities. That will be hard for you, love. You’ll have to listen to courtiers complain about a shortage of Liddean oranges and smile sympathetically when you know there are people in the city who haven’t had enough to eat for days.”