They finished the stairs and turned down the hallway. Sarkkhan strode ahead, and Jakkin had to doubletime in order to keep up with the big man’s strides.
“Master Sarkkhan,” he began at the man’s back.
Sarkkhan did not break stride but growled, “I am no longer your master, Jakkin. You are a master now. A master trainer. That dragon will speak only to you, go only on your command. Remember that, and act accordingly.”
Jakkin blinked twice and touched his chest. “But…but my bag is empty. I have no gold to fill it. I have no sponsor for my next fight. I…”
Sarkkhan whirled, and his eyes were fierce. “I am sponsor for your next fight. I thought that much, at least, was clear. And when your bag is full, you will pay me no gold for your bond. Instead, I want pick of the first hatching when the red is bred—to a mate of my choosing. If she is a complete mute, she may breed true, and I mean to have it.”
“Oh, Master Sarkkhan,” Jakkin cried, suddenly realizing that all his dreams were realities, “you may have the pick of the first three hatchings.” He grabbed the man’s hand and tried to shake his thanks into it.
“Fewmets!” the man yelled, startling some of the passersby. He shook the boy’s hand loose. “How can you ever become a bettor if you offer it all up front. You have to disguise your feelings better than that. Offer me the pick of the third hatching. Counter me. Make me work for whatever I get.”
Jakkin said softly, testing, “The pick of the third.”
“First two,” said Sarkkhan, softly back and his smile came slowly. Then he roared. “Or I’ll have you in jail and the red in the stews.”
A crowd began to gather around them, betting on the outcome of the uneven match. Sarkkhan was a popular figure at pit-fights, and the boy was leather-patched—obviously a bonder, an unknown, worm waste.
All at once Jakkin felt as if he were at pitside. He felt the red’s mind flooding into his, a rainbow effect that gave him a rush of courage. It was a game, then, all a game. And he knew how to play. “The second,” said Jakkin, smiling back. “After all, Heart’s Blood is a First Fighter, and a winner. And,” he hissed at Sarkkhan so that only the two of them could hear, “she’s a mute.” Then he stood straight and said loudly, so that it carried to the crowd, “You’ll be lucky to have pick of the second.”
Sarkkhan stood silently, as if considering both the boy and the crowd. He brushed his hair back from his forehead, then nodded. “Done,” he said. “A hard bargain.” Then he reached over and ruffled Jakkin’s hair, and they walked off together.
The crowd, settling their bets, let them through.
“I thought you were a good learner,” Sarkkhan said to the boy. “Second it is. Though,” and he chuckled and said quietly, “you should remember this. There is never anything good in a first hatching. Second is the best by far.”
“I didn’t know,” said Jakkin.
“Why should you?” countered Sarkkhan. “You are not the best breeder on Austar IV. I am. But I like the name you picked. Heart’s Blood out of Heart O’ Mine. It suits.”
They went through the doorway together to register the red and to stuff Jakkin’s bag with hard-earned dragon’s gold.
THE STORM KING
Joan D. Vinge
They said that in those days the lands were cursed that lay in the shadow of the Storm King. The peak thrust up from the gently rolling hills and fertile farmlands like an impossible wave cresting on the open sea, a brooding finger probing the secrets of heaven. Once it had vomited fire and fumes, ash and molten stone had poured from its throat; the distant forerunners of the people who lived beneath it now had died of its wrath. But the Earth had spent Her fury in one final cataclysm, and now the mountain lay quiet, dark, and cold, its mouth choked with congealed stone.
And yet still the people lived in fear. No one among them remembered having seen its summit, which was always crowned by cloud; lightning played in the purple, shrouding robes, and distant thunder filled the dreams of the folk who slept below with the roaring of dragons.
For it was a dragon who had come to dwell among the crags: that elemental focus of all storm and fire carried on the wind, drawn to a place where the Earth’s fire had died, a place still haunted by ancient grief. And sharing the spirit of fire, the dragon knew no law and obeyed no power except its own. By day or night it would rise on furious wings of wind and sweep over the land, inundating the crops with rain, blasting trees with its lightning, battering walls and tearing away rooftops; terrifying rich and poor, man and beast, for the sheer pleasure of destruction, the exaltation of uncontrolled power. The people had prayed to the new gods who had replaced their worship of the Earth to deliver them; but the new gods made Their home in the sky, and seemed to be beyond hearing.
By now the people had made Their names into curses, as they pried their oxcarts from the mud or looked out over fields of broken grain and felt their bellies and their children’s bellies tighten with hunger. And they would look toward the distant peak and curse the Storm King, naming the peak and the dragon both; but always in whispers and mutters, for fear the wind would hear them, and bring the dark storm sweeping down on them again.
The storm-wracked town of Wyddon and its people looked up only briefly in their sullen shaking-off and shoveling-out of mud as a stranger picked his way among them. He wore the woven leather of a common soldier, his cloak and leggings were coarse and ragged, and he walked the planks laid down in the stinking street as though determination alone kept him on his feet. A woman picking through baskets of stunted leeks in the marketplace saw with vague surprise that he had entered the tiny village temple; a man putting fresh thatch on a torn-open roof saw him come out again, propelled by the indignant, orange-robed priest.
“If you want witchery, find yourself a witch! This is a holy place; the gods don’t meddle in vulgar magic!”
“I can see that,” the stranger muttered, staggering in ankle-deep mud. He climbed back onto the boards with some difficulty and obvious disgust. “Maybe if they did you’d have streets and not rivers of muck in this town.” He turned away in anger, almost stumbled over a mud-colored girl blocking his forward progress on the boardwalk.
“You priests should bow down to the Storm King!” the girl postured insolently, looking toward the priest. “The dragon can change all our lives more in one night than your gods have done in a lifetime.”
“Slut!” The priest shook his carven staff at her; its necklace of golden bells chimed like absurd laughter. “There’s a witch for you, beggar. If you think she can teach you to tame the dragon, then go with her!” He turned away, disappearing into the temple. The stranger’s body jerked, as though it strained against his control, wanting to strike at the priest’s retreating back.
“You’re a witch?” The stranger turned and glared down at the bony figure standing in his way, found her studying him back with obvious skepticism. He imagined what she saw—a foreigner, his straight black hair whacked off like a serf’s, his clothes crawling with filth, his face grimed and gaunt and set in a bitter grimace. He frowned more deeply.
The girl shook her head. “No. I’m just bound to her. You have business to take up with her, I see—about the Storm King.” She smirked, expecting him to believe she was privy to secret knowledge.
“As you doubtless overheard, yes.” He shifted his weight from one leg to the other, trying fruitlessly to ease the pain in his back.
She shrugged, pushing her own tangled brown hair back from her face. “Well, you’d better be able to pay for it, or you’ve come a long way from Kwansai for nothing.”
He started, before he realized that his coloring and his eyes gave that much away. “I can pay.” He drew his dagger from its hidden sheath, the only weapon he had left, and the only thing of value. He let her glimpse the jeweled hilt before he pushed it back out of sight.
Her gray eyes widened briefly. “What do I call you, Prince of Thieves?” with another glance at his rags.
“Call me
Your Highness,” not lying, and not quite joking.
She looked up into his face again, and away. “Call me Nothing, Your Highness. Because I am nothing.” She twitched a shoulder at him. “And follow me.”
They passed the last houses of the village without further speech, and followed the mucky track on into the dark, dripping forest that lay at the mountain’s feet. The girl stepped off the road and into the trees without warning; he followed her recklessly, half angry and half afraid that she was abandoning him. But she danced ahead of him through the pines, staying always in sight, although she was plainly impatient with his lagging pace. The dank chill of the sunless wood gnawed his aching back and swarms of stinging gnats feasted on his exposed skin; the bare-armed girl seemed as oblivious to the insects as she was to the cold.
He pushed on grimly, as he had pushed on until now, having no choice but to keep on or die. And at last his persistence was rewarded; he saw the forest rise ahead, and buried in the flank of the hillside among the trees was a mossy hut linteled by immense stones.
The girl disappeared into the hut as he entered the clearing before it. He slowed, looking around him at the clusters of carven images pushing up like unnatural growths from the spongy ground, or dangling from tree limbs. Most of the images were subtly or blatantly obscene. He averted his eyes and limped between them to the hut’s entrance.
He stepped through the doorway without waiting for an invitation, to find the girl crouched by the hearth in the cramped interior, wearing the secret smile of a cat. Beside her an incredibly wrinkled, ancient woman sat on a three-legged stool. The legs were carved into shapes that made him look away again, back at the wrinkled face and the black, buried eyes that regarded him with flinty bemusement. He noticed abruptly that there was no wall behind her: the far side of the hut melted into the black volcanic stone, a natural fissure opening into the mountain’s side.
“So, Your Highness, you’ve come all the way from Kwansai seeking the Storm King, and a way to tame its power?”
He wrapped his cloak closely about him and grimaced, the nearest thing to a smile of scorn that he could manage. “Your girl has a quick tongue. But I’ve come to the wrong place, it seems, for real power.”
“Don’t be so sure!” The old woman leaned toward him, shrill and spiteful. “You can’t afford to be too sure of anything, Lassan-din. You were prince of Kwansai, you should have been king there when your father died, and overlord of these lands as well. And now you’re nobody and you have no home, no friends, barely even your life. Nothing is what it seems to be…it never is.”
Lassan-din’s mouth went slack; he closed it, speechless at last. Nothing is what it seems. The girl called Nothing grinned up at him from the floor. He took a deep breath, shifting to ease his back again. “Then you know what I’ve come for, if you already know that much, witch.”
The hag half-rose from her obscene stool; he glimpsed a flash of color, a brighter, finer garment hidden beneath the drab outer robe she wore—the way the inner woman still burned fiercely bright in her eyes, showing through the wasted flesh of her ancient body. “Call me no names, you prince of beggars! I am the Earth’s Own. Your puny Kwansai priests, who call my sisterhood ‘witch,’ who destroyed our holy places and drove us into hiding, know nothing of power. They’re fools, they don’t believe in power and they are powerless, charlatans. You know it or you wouldn’t be here!” She settled back, wheezing. “Yes, I could tell you what you want; but suppose you tell me.”
“I want what’s mine! I want my kingdom.” He paced restlessly, two steps and then back. “I know of elementals, all the old legends. My people say that dragons are stormbringers, born from a joining of Fire and Water and Air, three of the four Primes of Existence. Nothing but the Earth can defy their fury. And I know that if I can hold a dragon in its lair with the right spells, it must give me what I want, like the heroes of the Golden Time. I want to use its power to take back my lands.”
“You don’t want much, do you?” The old woman rose from her seat and turned her back on him, throwing a surreptitious handful of something into the fire, making it flare up balefully. She stirred the pot that hung from a hook above it; spitting five times into the noxious brew as she stirred. Lassan-din felt his empty stomach turn over. “If you want to challenge the Storm King, you should be out there climbing, not here holding your hand out to me.”
“Damn you!” His exasperation broke loose, and his hand wrenched her around to face him. “I need some spell, some magic, some way to pen a dragon up. I can’t do it with my bare hands!”
She shook her head, unintimidated, and leered toothlessly at him. “My power comes to me through my body, up from the Earth Our Mother. She won’t listen to a man—especially one who would destroy her worship. Ask your priests who worship the air to teach you their empty prayers.”
He saw the hatred rising in her, and felt it answered: The dagger was out of its hidden sheath and in his hand before he knew it, pressing the soft folds of her neck. “I don’t believe you, witch. See this dagger—” quietly, deadly. “If you give me what I want, you’ll have the jewels in its hilt. If you don’t, you’ll feel its blade cut your throat.”
“All right, all right!” She strained back as the blade’s tip began to bite. He let her go. She felt her neck; the girl sat perfectly still at their feet, watching. “I can give you something, a spell. I can’t guarantee She’ll listen. But you have enough hatred in you for ten men—and maybe that will make your man’s voice loud enough to penetrate Her skin. This mountain is sacred to Her, She still listens through its ears, even if She no longer breathes here.”
“Never mind the superstitious drivel. Just tell me how I can keep the dragon in without it striking me dead with its lightning. How I can fight fire with fire—”
“You don’t fight fire with fire. You fight fire with water.”
He stared at her; at the obviousness of it, and the absurdity—“The dragon is the creator of storm. How can mere water—?”
“A dragon is anathema. Remember that, prince who would be king. It is chaos, power uncontrolled; and power always has a price. That’s the key to everything. I can teach you the spell for controlling the waters of the Earth; but you’re the one who must use it.”
He stayed with the women through the day, and learned as the hours passed to believe in the mysteries of the Earth. The crone spoke words that brought water fountaining up from the well outside her door while he looked on in amazement, his weariness and pain forgotten. As he watched she made a brook flow upstream; made crystal droplets beading the forest pines join in a diadem to crown his head, and then with a word released them to run cold and helpless as tears into the collar of his ragged tunic.
She seized the fury that rose up in him at her insolence, and challenged him to do the same. He repeated the ungainly, ancient spell-words defiantly, arrogantly—and nothing happened. She scoffed, his anger grew; she jeered and it grew stronger. He repeated the spell again, and again, and again…until at last he felt the terrifying presence of an alien power rise in his body, answering the call of his blood. The droplets on the trees began to shiver and commingle; he watched an eddy form in the swift clear water of the stream—. The Earth had answered him.
His anger failed him at the unbelievable sight of his success…and the power failed him too. Dazed and strengthless, at last he knew his anger for the only emotion with the depth or urgency to move the body of the Earth, or even his own. But he had done the impossible—made the Earth move to a man’s bidding. He had proved his right to be a king, proved that he could force the dragon to serve him as well. He laughed out loud. The old woman moaned and spat, twisting her hands that were like gnarled roots, mumbling curses. She shuffled away toward the woods as though she were in a trance; turned back abruptly as she reached the trees, pointing past him at the girl standing like a ghost in the hut’s doorway. “You think you’ve known the Earth; that you own Her, now. You think you can take anything and make it yours
. But you’re as empty as that one, and as powerless!” And she was gone.
Night had fallen through the dreary wood without his realizing it. The girl Nothing led him back into the hut, shared a bowl of thick, strangely herbed soup and a piece of stale bread with him. He ate gratefully but numbly, the first warm meal he had eaten in weeks; his mind drifted into waking dreams of banqueting until dawn in royal halls.
When he had eaten his share, wiping the bowl shamelessly with a crust, he stood and walked the few paces to the hut’s furthest corner. He lay down on the hard stone by the cave mouth, wrapping his cloak around him, and closed his eyes. Sleep’s darker cloak settled over him.
And then, dimly, he became aware that the girl had followed him, stood above him looking down. He opened his eyes unwillingly, to see her unbelt her tunic and pull it off, kneel down naked at his side. A piece of rock crystal, perfectly transparent, perfectly formed, hung glittering coldly against her chest. He kept his eyes open, saying nothing.
“The Old One won’t be back until you’re gone; the sight of a man calling on the Earth was too strong for her.” Her hand moved insinuatingly along his thigh.
He rolled away from her, choking on a curse as his back hurt him sharply. “I’m tired. Let me sleep.”
“I can help you. She could have told you more. I’ll help you tomorrow…if you lie with me tonight.”
He looked up at her, suddenly despairing. “Take my body, then; but it won’t give you much pleasure.” He pulled up the back of his tunic, baring the livid scar low on his spine. “My uncle didn’t make a cripple of me—but he might as well have.” When he even thought of a woman there was only pain, only rage…only that.
She put her hand on the scar with surprising gentleness. “I can help that too…for tonight.” She went away, returned with a small jar of ointment and rubbed the salve slowly into his scarred back. A strange, cold heat sank through him; a sensuous tingling swept away the grinding ache that had been his only companion through these long months of exile. He let his breath out in an astonished sigh, and the girl lay down beside him, pulling at his clothes.
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