The Summer Dragon

“Myth can spring from truths long forgotten,” said Fren, from his knees.

  Mabir nodded. “My knowledge of history goes only as far back as the beginning of our own age, with the fall of Cinvat.” He pointed at the last image, in which the shadow monster towered over the Temple of Asha. “This is far more ancient, and of course the Rasaal doesn’t really want it remembered.”

  Bellua turned a cold eye on him but said nothing.

  Mabir continued. “Given the record we’ve seen already, and adding this testament to their beliefs, I believe this hidden city is the last hiding place of the people of Cinvat, who fell at the end of an age and created this monument to memory. Perhaps they died here. Or perhaps they emerged and became our own ancestors. It’s impossible to say.”

  “That is my guess also,” said Bellua. “But I want to know what these panels mean.”

  Fren stood. “I believe I can explain.”

  Bellua took a step toward him. “Please. It’s why we’re here.”

  Fren took a deep breath. “It is a history. It’s a history of the Avar.”

  Bellua frowned. “How? How is this a history of the Avar?”

  “The oldest scriptures from the Ashaani say that whatever the people hold in highest reverence, they will see in the Avar. Over the ages the Avar have appeared in many forms, for their true form would be incomprehensible to us.”

  Bellua seemed horrified. “How is that possible? That reduces them to little more than”—he hesitated, searched for words—“than reflections of our ignorance.”

  Fren shrugged. “Does it? Or perhaps messengers must appear in an understandable guise. I can’t explain it. I am only a vessel for the old words and the old ways. A man should add no interpretation to something he does not understand. He should only ask questions that may lead him to an answer.”

  He pointed at the friezes and began to recite as if from rote memory. “There was a time of the Bear and the Dark Night. Then of the Mother and the Heavenly Spheres that spanned many ages, when life shed its skin like a serpent to be reborn again and again. Then a time of the Horse, a time of Mountains and God Kings. Then followed the Eagle, the Lamb, and the Lion. A time of Arrows. A time of Exploration and Ships of the Sea, of Machines and Great Cities. A time of Philosophies. A time of Gold and of Great Deceptions. A time of Storms. A time of Deserts and a time of Ice. A time of Stars, of Falling Heavens and a Rain of Death. A time of the Created, the eras of the Dragon Wars. An age of Starvation and Cannibals. A long darkness when there were no stories.” He turned back to us. “This telling ends before the age of Cannibals. Perhaps the people of Cinvat escaped that dark time, for the last panel can only be the Dahak bringing ruin down on their fair city in the first of the Dragon Wars. Always there is War, and the Avar change.”

  We listened to the distant rush of the waterfalls for several moments before Fren continued. “We still live in an age of Dragons. Notice there are no dragons in most of the previous ages. They appear late in the chronicle, at the end of the time of Stars, but they’ve survived many cycles. They are among the ‘Created’ that scripture speaks of. Somehow, in a time of greater science, men made them, bringing together the most useful qualities of many creatures.”

  “That’s impossible,” said Bellua. His eyes were wide, not with anger or conviction but with something else that teetered between fear and madness. “Did men create the Avar, then, too?”

  Fren shook his head. “No, the Avar only manifest as that which we revere most, whether it is beast or machine or even something imagined.”

  “How do you know that’s true?” Bellua asked.

  I cleared my throat. “Father told me once of a mercenary he knew during his time in the Dragonry. The desert he lived in wouldn’t support dragons, and so the Avar appeared to his people as great horses.”

  Bellua looked up again at the panel on which horses drew the odd two-wheeled carts filled with warriors. “But it doesn’t put lie to the teachings of the Rasaal that Korruzon is the Original Flame, the ultimate expression of the First, who pushed the mountains up with his writhing . . .” His words trailed off as he took in the contradiction before him: a vast series of ages in which there were no dragons at all. He fell to his knees, still gazing up at this ancient rebuttal to the beliefs his life was built upon, written in stone by a dead people.

  “The things we hold in reverence reflect our nature,” said Fren. “Warlike people worship jealous gods and build their altars of steel. Those who love wealth build their altars of gold. Content people build their altars of love.”

  The sight of tears in Bellua’s eyes shocked me. “Then what are the Avar really?” he asked.

  The very question I’d asked Father an age ago. The thought of him filled me with worry.

  Fren answered with measured deference to Bellua’s pain. “If the Ashaani knew, they left no record of it, which only suggests that it’s among the questions they couldn’t answer.”

  I shivered in the cold air, looking across those many panels, the very last of which showed an event older than the statue in our ruins, the Dahak destroying Cinvat. It seemed impossible, yet here was silent testimony, chipped out of the heart of a mountain and overlaid with stone, surrounded by a tomb-like city.

  “The world is older than you can imagine,” said Fren.

  Cairek signaled Taben to his feet. “We need to go. We’ve been gone too long.”

  “I need more time!” Tulo knelt with several parchments spread out in a fan before him, his hands skipping like stones across the surfaces with chalk and pencil—now scribing, now rubbing tone out of the chalk dust, now punching in darks that might define a shadow or edge.

  Bellua remained on his knees. “I’ve been a fool.”

  Mabir gripped his shoulder. “No, good Bellua. It’s not so simple as that.”

  “I thought I might find some way of arguing leniency for Maia and the rest of you. But if the Rasaal learns of this place, they will bury it. It puts lie to everything they expect us to believe.”

  “Not everything,” said Mabir. “Surely if Addai sees it too he would—”

  “His job is to defend the Rasaal, not to question its teachings.” Bellua stood and turned to me. “You don’t realize, Maia, that it’s not me or even Addai, but the entire structure of the Temple that stands against you. I knew in the beginning that I should silence the story of Getig until I could tease truth out of it. But I thought it would be Korruzon’s truth. Addai’s orders instructed me to discredit you entirely or, failing that, to kill you and have your dragon destroyed.”

  The distant rumble of waterfalls combined with the throbbing of blood in my ears. “Why?”

  “Because you threaten the order of things. You represent a heresy that cannot be allowed to return—that Korruzon and His temple are temporary things. There is too much to lose. The Rasaal will never forgive you, never acknowledge you. You are poison to them. You must be eliminated. For the Rasaal, there is no other choice. They will hunt you until you die.”

  My heart thudded in my chest. “Then what kind of Avar is Korruzon?”

  Bellua shook his head slowly.

  “If the Avar are but reflections of our faith, then what is the Edimmu?” I could only whisper the name of the shadow creature for fear of awakening it. “What is its nature? What does it reflect? And what of the Utukku?” I looked to Fren and Mabir for some sort of answer, but they stood mute. “And what is that?” I pointed to the carving of the Dahak. “It also looks like a dragon, but is it?” No one answered me.

  From far above us came a crack and a hiss. We turned in time to see a chunk of ice from the distant ceiling hit the still lake in an explosion of water. Its echoes boomed around us as shards of ice fell like snow, glittering in the wintery light.

  “Addai has surely discovered our absence by now,” said Cairek. “We need to go.”

  “Let the boy draw!” urg
ed Mabir. “As long as he possibly can. Nothing now is more important than this record.”

  “There is one hope.” Bellua’s face was a frozen mask. “That Korruzon uses this incident to clean His Temple, to drive out the iniquitous forces within it. Perhaps the viewing of these relics was the ultimate aim of His appearance in the guise of Getig.”

  Fren and Mabir exchanged a look.

  “That is possible,” said Mabir. “Or perhaps you seek a rationalization that allows you to cling to your belief.”

  Bellua pressed the heels of his hands over his eyes. “I don’t know what to do, or what to believe.”

  “You must make your case,” said Mabir. “Either this was Korruzon’s will, and it will come to good, or it was not. And then you will have your answer. For good or ill, the Truth of this cave must be shared.”

  Bellua stared long at Mabir, his eyes full of sorrow and anger, until the old dhalla stepped closer and gripped his shoulders. “Don’t lose all faith, Bellua. You’ve embraced Truth, even though you’re unsure what Truth is. That’s faith of a higher sort. Your better nature comes forth, even in the face of uncertainty.” Bellua gripped the dhalla’s forearm as if he might fall otherwise, but it was my face he sought.

  His eyes searched mine, as if I knew anything about anything. Too many points of view collided in my head. Uncertainties. The teachings of the Rasaal. Mabir’s turmoil. The puzzles Fren tossed at me. Bellua’s machinations. Addai’s blatant, unyielding belief. Father’s doubts. Even Mother’s curse, lurking still, so deeply rooted that I half expected the Edimmu’s voice to evoke it again. Gods! I thought I’d silenced the curse.

  Finally, the only word I could summon, the only thing that made any sense at all. “Truth,” I said aloud, to Bellua. To myself.

  Fren nodded. “Asha has known many names, among them Obedience, Love, and Submission. But Truth above all.”

  Bellua stared at me, and he nodded.

  “Maia,” whispered Keirr. I realized that all our dragons were utterly silent, listening with breaths held. Another loud crack came from far above, and again we turned in time to see a chunk of ice crash into the lake in a geyser of white spray.

  “Are you sure that roof is stable?” Cairek said to Bellua.

  “It’s held for thousands of years—”

  “Listen!” I said, and we all fell silent.

  The last echoes of the splash continued to resound, until I was certain we heard new sounds, not echoes, not the waterfalls. The echoing beat of many wings far overhead. I saw shadowbeams—flitting columns of shadow like the boles of manic trees dancing in a forest of light. I walked toward the edge of the amphitheater, into the light, so I could hazard a peek at the ceiling.

  “Avar, help us,” I whispered.

  Dozens of dark, tattered shapes massed inside the skylight, swarming against the glacial haze, thick as bats in a twilight sky.

  Horrors.

  FORTY-SEVEN

  “DO YOU THINK they saw us?” Cairek whispered.

  “No, I don’t. They’re tearing at the ceiling.”

  “Why? What are they after?”

  A tremor passed through me. “They want out.”

  “How can they not know the way out already? Why now?”

  “They’re mindless without something to direct them. They’ve been out of food. Dormant. But now something has awakened them, and I don’t think it was us.”

  Cairek backed away into shadow. “Like what?”

  I turned to see his eyes wide and glittering with fear. I couldn’t bring myself to say Edimmu.

  “Mount up,” Cairek whispered again, but with all the force of a command. He scrambled onto Taben. His Dragonry had been in their saddles and ready all along. I climbed onto Keirr, looked to see Cairek helping Fren into the saddle.

  “Dhalla. Merihem,” said Cairek. “Quickly, please.”

  Mabir and Bellua hovered over Tulo, urging him to haste as he frantically rolled up his drawings, scooped up his tools, and thrust them into the quiver. Jhem hauled him up and harnessed him in behind her. Bellua and Tauman assisted Mabir into place, then Tauman ran to Rannu and leapt up the step rungs.

  Cairek scanned the company. “Full retreat. Reverse order, back the way we came. Quietly as possible.”

  Marad was first to gallop up the ranked seats of stone and launch into the air. His men followed in order. “Those drawings are important,” I said to Cairek. “Tulo should be in the center of the formation.” He nodded and waved me ahead of Jhem and Tulo.

  The insistent beat of wings from above grew more pronounced. Suddenly there came a stupendous crack and rumbling from the top of the vault. Chunks of ice so large they seemed to fall slowly crushed the structures below. Others hit the lake in a sluggish geyser that doused us with spray. Thunderous booms followed, rebounding back and forth across the chasms. I cried out, my voice lost in the din.

  Ice and snow drifted down as the wingsnap and screech of the Horrors grew louder. They continued their assault on the ceiling. Tore at the metal struts and clawed into the glacier above.

  “They’ll bring down the ceiling,” I shouted, scarcely able to hear myself.

  Ansin barked something to his men. He stayed close to the wall as he led us toward the city. We passed over the lake, out from beneath the skylight of ice and groaning steel, into the cave proper. Climbed toward the ledge beside the waterfalls, where the passage would take us back through the long darkness to a barred metal door. Sweet Avar, we’d be hours getting out.

  Marad landed on the ledge and started toward the passage, but halted abruptly when he spied the sickly green lights within.

  A hybrid Horror croaked and stepped out of the shadows. The head and upper torso of a creature once human, stitched to the shoulders of a juvenile dragon less than half Keirr’s size. The dragon’s mouth snapped from where the human’s belly should have been. Another Horror followed: two men sewn together, sharing legs woven into the harness and flesh of their dragon. Green light spilled through the haphazard seam binding their three torsos. Another Horror emerged beyond them, and another, little more than flickers in a confused abstract of moving shadows. Our way out was blocked. They cried out with one voice and charged.

  Marad launched off the ledge again. Ansin, Teff, and I aborted our landings. More Horrors squeezed through the passage. The ledge swarmed with them.

  Keirr cried out in fear, turned, bolted out of formation. “No, baby—calm.” But I gave her her head to catch up to Cairek as he began to turn.

  “There’s another way out!” I called to him. “There has to be. We know that.”

  Upward and to the east. Three Horrors used it once before, while the Edimmu crouched on a ledge outside. Why didn’t they use it again? Or now? Was it blocked somehow?

  “How will we find it?” he shouted.

  “Keirr, find me a small tunnel, baby. A small cave, up high. Tictictic! HAI.”

  She clicked twice and listened, climbed a beat higher and did it again. Clicked twice more, then cocked her head at me.

  “Hurry. They’re coming,” said Cairek.

  “A tunnel,” I said to Keirr. How in the world would she draw a sound-picture of a tunnel? What would a space that was small but also long sound like? Close echoes but also distant ones? “Tictictic . . . Tic . . . Tic,” I said, hoping that might be a tunnel in her ears. She cocked her head at me again. Rose higher, with a purpose.

  “Ttttic . . . tttc . . . ttc . . . ttc . . .” she said. It almost sounded right.

  I patted her on the neck, then turned back to Cairek. “Follow us!”

  He pulled Taben into a hover and waved everyone past him with a windmilling arm.

  I laid forward in the saddle, legs tight against the laces. Keirr’s muscles bunched and stretched beneath me. She rowed hard, clicking and listening. Tried several ledges, clicking into shadows. Launched
again.

  I glanced back. The Horrors below climbed after us slowly. Cairek covered our retreat with his topbow; Taben rearming it with his elbows, Cairek cranking hard to reload. He paused once to discard an empty cartridge, pull another one from his gear and slap it into place. I heard the thump of other bows.

  Out over the city, shadowbeams danced in the light of the glacier, to the music of screeching metal and cracking ice. Several of the shafts peeled out of the climbing spiral. The monsters atop them descended into view. At least three of them headed toward us, beneath the stone ceiling at this end of the cave. Behind them, a sudden ripple in the column of light. It flashed downward, as wide as the shaft of the lava tube, at lightning speed. A titanic boom sounded from above. The vaulted ceiling of Zurvaan failed all at once and the glacier poured in. Air displaced from below surged upward, pushing us higher on a whirlwind. It smashed the Horrors approaching us into the ceiling. Darkness swallowed us briefly. I clung tightly to Keirr’s saddle grips, waiting for an impact that didn’t come. Light returned in all the colors of afternoon to reveal the plummeting mass of the glacier. It swept Horrors down with it, cascading into the lake and burying the lost city with an impact that shook the very atmosphere. An avalanche of glass and ice and stone covered the city. I ducked as rocks chattered down around me, as the cleanest light to fall through that shaft in an epoch glittered off the spume of ice and snow. Beneath it was ruin. The lake, the city, and the amphitheater were buried in a mountain of ice. I screamed at the loss.

  Horrors milled about or clung to perches until, few by few, they peeled off the walls or rose out of the fog to seek the top of the mountain once more. They curled upward in a twisted column. The shaft was filled with Horrors. There’d be no escape that way.

  Keirr clicked twice and resumed searching. Found a ledge canting back toward a manmade arch above an inky black hole. “Ttttic . . . tttc . . . ttc . . . ttc . . . Yes!” she said.

  “Here! This way!” I shouted.

  Marad and Teff landed first. As they turned to take up a defensive stance, Cairek arrived too. “Marad—into the tunnel. Keep moving. Reverse order. Go!”