The Dragonswarm

by Aaron Pogue

  Do not confuse one insight with understanding, he said. He pushed arrogance at me, condescending with all his might, but I could feel his fear behind it. I smiled in sympathy.

  "I became your brood," I said. "Not your conquest. Not your prey. Still your enemy, but now a part of you. You could no more easily kill me than I could cut off my own hand."

  It can be done, he said. Easily enough, at that.

  "And you tried your best," I thought. "But would you have, if you had understood? Would you have tried to destroy me, or would you have tried to overwhelm me?"

  I braced myself. Three measured breaths and every ounce of concentration while I erected defenses in my mind. It took a heartbeat longer than I'd expected, but then he lashed out at me. He struck at my mind with as much force as I'd ever felt from him, and it was enough to blur my vision and drop me to my knees, but I did not give up.

  And then it passed. It ebbed away, leaving me gasping and my head throbbing, but still entirely myself. I could feel the echoes of my own pain from him as well, and I nodded slowly.

  "You should have tried back then," I thought. "You could have done it, then. When I was senseless on the rocks outside the cave. I've learned to shield my mind from you, and from Pazyarev's harsh attacks. I could not have held you off back then."

  Perhaps, he said. He sounded tired.

  "I used to think it was an exchange," I thought. "I used to think you gave me dragon power, and I gave you man power. Whatever that might be. But I think it was not so much like that at all. I think I just became like a dragon. I became part of that...that...."

  Power, the dragon said. We are living power.

  "I can't imagine what I gave you in return."

  Pain. And fear. And weakness. Loneliness.

  "Humanity," I thought, and my mouth twisted in a bitter smile.

  He chuckled in my mind. You gave me more than that, he said at last. You gave me light.

  "What light?" I asked.

  Freedom. Hope. He shifted his great bulk, and turned his head away. You have forgotten I belonged to Pazyarev.

  "I haven't," I thought in answer. "I just hadn't gotten to that yet."

  He chuckled again. He conquered me during another swarm. Some other time now lost to time. But just at the end, as the fires were waning. I'd gained a broodmate and a clutch of my own. I'd gained much wealth and power. And then Pazyarev turned his eyes on me. He snuffed me out, but not before he tore my clutch to shreds.

  I felt a stab of sympathy, hot like ice in the pit of my stomach. "I'm sorry—"

  It does not matter. Dead or slaves to Pazyarev's will, it makes no difference. He growled and closed his eyes. And then I fell into darkness. Then I belonged to him, and I know nothing of the years between. I know he must have slept—we must have slept—because this world is new and different and not yet burned.

  He trailed off, and in the corner of my mind I felt an unsettling anticipation of the destruction still to come. I shook my head and tried to catch his attention. "What happened next? How did you break free?"

  Did I? he asked, repeating me. He snorted. I know nothing but the nothingness while under his control. And then I woke upon a strange mountainside, in a strange world, with a strange little man all stained with blood and stretched out like a corpse beneath my nose.

  "I set you free?"

  Somehow, he said. I do not know. It never has been done. There's never been a man with power like yours. There's never been a broodling set free from his broodlord. We did not know it could be done.

  "So Pazyarev is hunting you."

  And you, he said. He'll know it now. He thought you were some pet I'd found, some toy. Perhaps a friend. Vechernyvetr laughed at that. But he has seen you carve his dragons from the sky. He has seen you thrum with borrowed Chaos like a broodlord on the wing. He won't forget you now.

  "That wasn't me," I thought. "I...borrowed Chaos? That's what that was?" I remembered the thrill of it. The white-hot power, the intoxicating control. I remembered too the rabid madness that had seized the reins. And the pain that had come after.

  Vechernyvetr hissed his displeasure. I showed you how, he said. But you have much to learn to control it.

  "I can control that?" I thought, disbelieving. "It made me bloodthirsty. Some kind of monster."

  I felt a flash of confusion. That is Chaos power, he said. That is the point. You'll learn to fear it enough that you do not borrow quite so much. You'll learn to control your own hunger, so you do not pay for days and days. But no, you cannot control the power itself. It is violence and blood. It's destruction and dominion. There's nothing else.

  "But what of wisdom and restraint?" I asked, remembering long hours in crowded lecture halls. "What of clarity and understanding?"

  They are but ways to live with weakness, Vechernyvetr answered. They are meaningless when you have access to true power.

  "Some might say they are all that give the power meaning," I suggested. "They may guide how we use the power—"

  He raised his head so I could see his yawn, then rolled one huge eye to look back at me. There is no meaning in this conversation, he said. There is no choice. Chaos power does not answer your discretion. And no other power will survive the days to come.

  I felt the finality in his words, but I could not let it end there. "That's not enough," I thought. "That's not enough for me. I'm not a monster. I do not want to be a monster."

  Then perhaps you should have died the first time you faced me. He yawned again, then tucked his head beneath a wing. It matters not. You'll have opportunities enough.

  After that, he would not answer me. Moments later I felt the shift in the back of my mind, and shortly after that he began to snore. I left him there and went back to watch the rest of the sunrise over the lands of men.

  I was cold. Even this far south, the winter had its grip upon the mountains. But there was a chill deeper than anything the weather could offer. I'd suspected it before, in the broodlord's lair. I'd been considering it for days now, but it chilled me to the bone to know Vechernyvetr could have subsumed me. If he'd acted in the right time, in the right way, I might be nothing more than a vessel for his wrath.

  But that was past. That chance was gone from him. The elder legend, though...he'd been able to touch my mind as well. He'd crushed me more than once. Was it my bond with Vechernyvetr that made me vulnerable to Pazyarev, too? Could he have subsumed me? Or was I safe from all but Vechernyvetr? I had to hope that was true or pray the elder legend never found me alive.

  I shivered in the cold and felt very, very small.

  And yet...I'd lived. Pazyarev had held me in his lair, and I'd escaped alive. I thought back on what Vechernyvetr had told me, and I reached out with my will. I'd tried before to work magic with idle air and it had done nothing for me, but now I remembered the gust of wind I'd summoned to cloak me in the broodlord's cooling pool. I remembered bolts of earth wrought from nothing but my will. Vechernyvetr had called it borrowing Chaos.

  I focused my attention and took on my wizard's sight. I instinctively scanned the land beneath me, the skies above, but I saw nothing more with my that second sight than I would have expected: the weight of the earth, the play of the wind, the slow, quiet throb of life in the forested hillside.

  But beneath it all was a quiet thrum, an ancient, inky darkness that stretched forever. I remembered a time when the intricate lines of reality's energies and power had seemed enormous and complex, but now they looked no more substantial than a gossamer film draped over the Chaos. All the world, all of reality, as thin as a spider's web. And beneath it was the power that had freed me from the broodlord's clutches.

  I remembered the madness. I remembered my own objections, just moments ago, and I had no intention to become a part of that Chaos power. But perhaps I could borrow. Just a bit. Just enough to survive. I could see the way of it. I stretched out my will—not to the real world around me, but to that steel-hard spot of darkness deep inside my own heart. I touche
d it, and I felt the shuddering turbulence of that power.

  Another shiver shook me, and the idea sprang clear into my mind. I thought of fire warm on the baron's hearthstone. I thought of the sharp red shape of its underlying energy. I stretched out a hand to the stone ledge outside the dragon's lair, and touched the vivid darkness in my heart.

  Fire, perfect fire, came to my call. I half expected another avalanche of maddening power, an explosion of flame to drive me from my feet. Instead I felt only a quiet hum, a nervous thrill of excitement, and a well-tamed hearthfire glowed on barren earth.

  And it was real. I felt its warmth. I sank down beside it and extended both hands, and soon the winter's chill fell away. I sat before my fire and remembered the monster that had tortured me and knew I could survive. I had power.

  I was two miles away and a quarter of a mile up when Vechernyvetr woke. I felt his awareness more strongly than I had before. Confusion turned to surprise to fear. He poured his attention toward me and I felt that through the bond. I almost laughed at the intense heat of his anxiety.

  I could feel the direction of him, too. I had never done that before. I looked down and down through empty air, and watched with my wizard's sight as the midnight blot of his presence stained reality. He launched himself from the ledge and soared out and around. Down. Away from me. I laughed out loud.

  Where are you? he screamed, his rage battering at the back of my mind. I can feel you. I can find you.

  "Can you?" I asked. "Then why are you so afraid?"

  Because Pazyarev can find you, too. Far below he finished a low sweep over the foothills. I felt the first hint of a suspicion from him, and then he was sweeping up. Any of his dragons might find you, he said, and they would find me. You should not have left the lair.

  I frowned at that. "Am I your prisoner then? As I was his?"

  He bent his trajectory more directly toward me, but it was still off. That surprised me. He was certainly coming upward now, and he should have seen me hanging there....

  Is a child a prisoner in its mother's house? he asked. His irritation tasted sour in the back of my mind. Is your hand the prisoner of your arm? I only mean to protect you. To teach you.

  I forced a sudden tension from my shoulders, from my jaw. I spun slowly in place, keeping him in sight while he spiraled up and up, closer and closer, but never directly toward me.

  "I will not be your broodling," I thought. "You missed the chance for that."

  No. But you will share my lair. You cannot make one of your own. Powerful as you are, you cannot survive without me—

  He drifted by close enough that I could have stretched out a hand and touched his wingtip, but he kept on looking. I laughed out loud, and that long neck spun fast as a striking snake. He looked right at me, and yet still the eyes were not quite focused. They did not stop moving.

  I touched the borrowed Chaos and the web of air around me and lifted myself lightly up, another four paces. Then I drifted to the left, watching his eyes, but the beast's furious gaze didn't move. I left him staring at empty air.

  This is not a game, he raged within my head. He bellowed, and the sound of it split the still air, but I held my construct and waited for the echoes to die away.

  "You can't see me," I said, and I felt a flash of feral fury from him. I moved a little farther away. "Why?"

  Before he replied, understanding blossomed within him. It washed over his anger like cold water, but did nothing to improve his attitude. He snorted a little puff of flame, then banked and fell back away toward the cave.

  Ah, he said. I see. You are toying with your magic.

  "I am practicing, as you advised me. I am doing things you taught me to do."

  Foolish to do it where you might be seen. Ordinary human foolishness.

  For a moment more I hung in place, suspended three hundred paces above the bare stone peaks and staring out over all the world. I lay within a cocoon of imaginary air softer than a feather bed and wrapped in the quiet euphoria of the utterly extraordinary.

  But curiosity won out. I let myself fall after the dragon, guiding my descent with glances, and I called out in my mind, "Why can't you see me? Is it the air? It blinds you?"

  Not air, he said at last, grudgingly. Order. Human reality.

  "This is not reality," I thought. "This is borrowed Chaos. Like you described."

  Not like I described, he said. Dragons do not spend our power on constructs. We do not play such games.

  "Perhaps you should," I thought. I stepped out of air and onto the ledge as easily as climbing out of bed. I followed the dragon back into the darkness of its lair, and summoned living flame to hover like a torch over my hand. "There's power in it. A whole new kind of power in shaping reality—"

  He snorted, and condescension stabbed through at me. The games wizards play. What have you done with your power?

  I thought of my afternoon, playing with fire, scaling impossible cliffs, and soaring in the sky. I felt him sniffing at my memories. All the power of your vast imagination, and you do nothing more than a dragon does on its own. I do not need your tricks to fly or make a fire. I do not need your fashioned blade when I have teeth and talons.

  For a long moment I said nothing. Then I nodded slowly. "I do," I thought. "I have no talons. I have no wings. And I will not be a prisoner."

  Ah. So you can fly and grow a fang, and now you think you can conquer Pazyarev?

  "No," I thought. "I do not want to conquer him. I do not want to rule the world or burn it down, Vechernyvetr. I am not a dragon."

  It matters not what you want. Pazyarev wants you dead now. He will come for you.

  "And I can hide from him. I know that now."

  All your life? You will wrap yourself in air and never let it go? No. Human patience does not stretch so far.

  "I would rather try that fate than spend the rest of my life in this cave."

  Ah. I cannot blame you for that, he said. But we will not be long in this cave. Not with the power you have. Not with the power you bring me. There is a green dame two valleys over. We will go and subsume her, and whatever we can capture of her clutch.

  I felt a queasy sickness at the sensations I felt through his bond. I caught flashes of image, of anticipation, and it reeked with the scent of blood and brimstone. Worse still, I recognized the feeling of elation he felt as he imagined it.

  We will take her lair and take her hoard, he went on, oblivious to my disgust. And that will be just the beginning.

  I could imagine. In my mind's eye I saw a flight of dragons a thousand strong, and Vechernyvetr's black shape at its head. I could see myself standing tall on his shoulders, wind and flame draped around me like a robe, and death within my hand. It was the dragon's daydream, destruction all around us, and it tasted like ash in my mouth.

  "I do not want a brood," I thought. "I do not want an army. I do not want a lair. I only want a home among my people. I want to go back to them."

  He brought his head down close to me and met my eyes. I am sorry, Daven, but you cannot have what you want. The dragonswarm is here. Pazyarev is here. I offer you a chance—

  "But I am not a dragon."

  You can be, he said. Or you can die.

  I took a slow step back and held his gaze. "Is that a threat?" I asked.

  It is wisdom and understanding. He turned away, looking bored. Get some rest. Heal. Your mind is overtaxed.

  I heard the words he fed to me, and still I felt his emotions, too. I felt his secret thoughts. I felt the glory of that dragonflight, and the thrill of victory. I felt the hunger for violence and blood. I felt the certain knowledge that all mankind's silly civilizations would crumble, and the burning animal need to gain as much personal power out of that turmoil as my body would allow.

  And deep in my heart, in that tiny of core of darkness that had wrapped me in wind and flame, I felt that it was right. There was power to be had. There was victory in fire.

  I tried to fight it. I tried to deny it. But
I remembered Pazyarev upon his mountain of gold. I remembered a thousand dragons on the wing, chasing me through the sky. I remembered my weakness and my pathetic, toothless fury. Power was the answer. I needed power.

  The dragon was in my mind. I could feel it, but I couldn't fight it. I practiced my old exercises and struggled to raise my defenses against Vechernyvetr's assault. But he was not there. He was biding quietly in his corner. The bloodlust screaming in my mind was all my own.

  I needed power. I needed power to survive. I needed victory and death.

  But first, Vechernyvetr said, you need some rest. I moved to his side entirely of my own accord. And there is still so very much for you to learn. I curled up upon the stone beside his warmth. A little while more, and we'll be strong. I took some comfort in those words and went to sleep.

  7. Flight

  After that the days and nights passed like running water, and the world went on without us. I learned to forget what the world was like outside, what human company had been like. Most of the time I even forgot that there were those who communicated out loud. When I remembered, it sometimes struck me as terribly lonely how much time I spent in the silence.

  But I did not often remember. I lived within the quiet thrum of borrowed Chaos. I wrapped myself in air and summoned bursts of flame. We went to capture the green dame's clutch, but a vicious frenzy fell over me, and I tore three of the seven drakes to shreds before I bound their mother to the floor. Then Vechernyvetr crushed her mind beneath his own. And we grew strong.

  We took her lair and added his hoard to hers so that our territory covered two and a half mountainsides. Some time later we found another lair just on the border of Vechernyvetr's new territory and subsumed a blue barely old enough to fly.

  That one had no hoard to speak of, but it gave us another pair of wings, and we would send it searching every night for some new fight. It found villages and farms, but nothing rich enough to run the risk of facing men. It found a pair of drakes on different days, but by their markings they seemed to come from the same clutch. Vechernyvetr sent it searching farther and farther along the mountains, but it never found the dame.