by Jim Galford
“True,” he admitted, shrugging. “I thought of that centuries ago. I’m guessing the man who foretold my death knew that was a possibility as well, since he told me three endings to my life. By avoiding the war that is to come, my kind will be the last creatures to face the destruction the war causes, but it will find us in time and starve us all. In that possible end, my people watch helplessly as the world dies around them.
“By staying here to fight, there is the chance of the other endings coming to pass. Should I find the Turessian who resists—you—and you join with the other Turessians, then I and all my people will be hunted down and killed. Your choice to continue resisting them means I could still die before you, but if not, then I may have some chance of saving myself. My people are predicted to die, whether you die first or I do. Turess saw no different ending for my kind.”
Ilarra nearly let his words pass, but the one leapt out at her. “Turess?” she demanded, leaning toward him. “The one who started these people on this path?”
“Not even remotely. Turess was a good man, Ilarra. He was one of the few mortals I have felt a respect for all these years. He chose his fate willingly and faced an ending I forced on him with a poise I have not seen since. If I must die, I would want to go with the acceptance he did. For all his faults, none of what these people are doing can be laid at his feet.”
Ilarra slid over to Nenophar and looked over his face, clearly making him uncomfortable in the process. She studied the features that were so nondescript she could barely attempt to describe them if he were not sitting in front of her. More importantly, she stared at him in an attempt to see through his illusions as she had nearly done back by the fields.
“I saw you when the Turessian was there,” she explained. “Your image blurred…I’ve seen that a couple times. I’m not stupid, Nenophar. I know you’re hiding yourself from me. We need to trust each other if we’re going to stand up against the Turessians together.”
“Ilarra…”
“Show me.”
“This is unwise. We have hidden for centuries…”
“Nenophar, convince me I chose the right side in this. I need to know who I’m protecting and who I’m trusting in to protect me. Liris was very reasonable…make me believe I chose the right side in this.”
“Are you sure you wish to see this? I cannot undo memories.” His eyes pleaded with her to reconsider. He got up and walked a short distance into the cavern, turning to face Ilarra.
“I don’t know if I want to,” she admitted, “but I think I need to. I can’t trust my choice otherwise. For all I know, you’re like me. You could even be working for Dorralt and Altis. I just can’t know until you stop using the illusions.”
Nodding grimly, Nenophar looked down at the glowing ball of light on the floor in front of her. He walked until he had gotten about twenty feet from the edge of the room and the very limit of the light.
“Promise me you won’t scream,” he asked Ilarra. “The echo would be unpleasant, and I think having you showing terror would undermine our working together. Actually, maybe we should do this another time…”
“Nenophar, please just show me.”
He said nothing, but something about him began to change immediately. Within seconds, Ilarra could tell his body had become bulkier and taller than she remembered. In the dim light she could not be certain, as is his illusion was still making it hard for her to see what was different. The change accelerated, and Nenophar soon towered over her, even hunkered down onto hands and knees. His face contorted and lengthened as he became something entirely inhuman with long horns and fangs longer than Ilarra’s arm.
Nenophar filled the cavern rapidly, his long neck causing him to look down on Ilarra while his tail circled past her and trapped her near him. Giant, four-fingered clawed hands carried weight that caused the loose stones beneath him to crackle and shatter. Even his skin had changed to a dense mesh of tiny scales that ran in patterns of light and dark greens up to the lizard-like head. He stared at her with slitted eyes that reflected the light in the room.
The dragon lowered his head and rested it on the floor to stare Ilarra in the face without looking down at her. Despite his breaths hitting Ilarra like a strong wind, he maintained an expression she could tell was meant to be unthreatening, though it felt out of place on the enormous scaled face.
“I…won’t…scream,” Ilarra managed to eke out, though the smile she tried to give him felt more like a trembling of her face. “Nenophar?”
One of many names I have answered to across the centuries, he answered in her mind without any movement of his mouth. I will speak to you like this, as my mouth was not built for your language.
Ilarra mentally pried her feet from their position and forced herself to walk until she could have reached out and touched the tip of his nose at her head’s level. That, she could not quite bring herself to do, so she walked around his head and studied the sharp fangs poking out from the edges of his mouth. Moving farther away from his mouth, she glanced up at the yellow eye that swiveled to watch her, and then she continued back past his pointed ears and long white horns.
When she reached his neck, she had finally built her courage enough to lift her arm and brush the scales glittering in the cavern’s faint light. The scales were smooth in the direction she brushed, each large enough it could barely fit in the palm of her hand. They were cool and dry, more like a desert lizard than a snake, which had been her first thought of when she saw them.
On a whim, Ilarra slid her hand the other direction, then screamed and pulled her hand away as the scales sliced through her flesh. Blood poured out of three separate inch-wide tears in her hand.
The moment blood had begun to drop from Ilarra’s hand, Nenophar let out a roar that caused rocks to fall all around the cavern and streams of dirt to come down in several places. He coiled sharply around her, blocking any movement of more than a few steps, curling until his head hovered over her. He growled deep in his chest, shaking the room again, and then opened his mouth to attack her, the kindness in his eyes gone.
Ilarra only had a second to react before his head snapped down toward her like a snake striking. She used that moment to form magic into a solid wall over her head. The dragon’s mouth slammed into the barrier and stopped, his teeth scraping loudly against it as he tried to get at her.
Looking down at her still-bleeding hand, Ilarra tried to think through why Nenophar would ever try to kill her. Her thoughts went to the animals that sometimes attacked Hyeth when she was younger. They had blindly rushed after anything wounded even if they had to go past elves they normally would have feared or avoided. At the edge of her vision, she could see his head rising far above the wall she had created. A faint light formed in his mouth and the cavern began to warm.
Willing herself to ignore the pain and cuts, Ilarra forced the wounds to close. In her exhaustion, the healing was slow, but in a second, the cuts had stopped bleeding and were closing again.
She raised her hand toward Nenophar, screaming, “Stop! Nenophar, I’m fine! Don’t do this!”
Smoke and flame licked at the partially open mouth of the dragon, then slowly began to dissipate. The dragon lowered his head toward her, turning sideways to study her with one massive eye.
“What happens to you if you eat me?” Ilarra demanded, letting the wall overhead disappear. “I’m guessing your life ends a lot sooner than later. That falls into the ending where I die first.”
Growling, Nenophar uncoiled and got up on his legs, moving quickly away from Ilarra toward the far end of the cavern. There he curled up into a giant scaled ball, resting his head on the base of his tail to watch her.
“What just happened to you?” she asked, following him slowly. He bared his teeth briefly, then calmed and allowed her to approach further. “That wasn’t like you, Nenophar.”
Your people are food, no different than a cow or sheep. His voice was angry and barely controlled. The scent of blood makes that more difficu
lt to ignore, and screams…they encourage my people. Between the scents and the sounds, I wanted to tear you apart, no matter who you might be.
“And if you did?”
I would face the fate I most fear and would not be able to change it, even with all the might of the dragons.
“Then we need to work on your self-control, while you keep teaching me to fight Dorralt.”
Ilarra stood still in the dark chamber, letting Nenophar calm himself. She waited until his breathing had slowed and the tension had faded from his eyes.
Agreed, Nenophar said.
Ilarra waited a short distance from Nenophar until he had calmed enough that she felt safer approaching him. When she did, his eyes watched her hungrily, following her every movement.
“What is our plan?” she asked, sitting down in front of Nenophar’s claws and trying to make herself look calm near him. “Do we flee? Do we fight?”
We must fight Turessi’s forces or there will be nothing that can stop them. Events will transpire that change the course of the world’s future, and without our powers, any others who could stop it will be too late.
“Then where does this start?”
Nenophar snorted and finally looked at her like a person and not a slab of meat. Lantonne is the start of the events Turess predicted, he explained, bringing his long snout down so that he could look straight at her with both eyes. Something happens there that sets much of this in motion. We must defend the city if we wish to slow the Turessians.
“Do you know when?”
Soon, he answered curtly, then winced. Time is difficult for my kind, Ilarra. Soon to me might be today or it might be within a decade. The events are beginning and may already be underway. I cannot help but wonder if Therec’s presence in Lantonne is part of that or simply a distraction. Turess was quite specific in his requests that Lantonne be left out of all of his writings to keep some of his more dangerous items away from people like Dorralt.
“Items?” Ilarra asked, sitting up. “Turess left things in Lantonne?”
Lantonne, Altis, and a dozen other cities around his empire. They were never meant to be found. If Dorralt finds them, I can assure you the war will lean in his favor. That was part of my deal with Turess: I gave him the power to see how to save his people and then I did what was necessary to carry through on what he saw. Keeping those items safe until the right time was part of that.
“Then what happens if I go back to Lantonne and find the item for you? Would Dorralt even have a reason to march on the city if it’s gone?”
The dragon’s eyes narrowed. No, he would not. This would put you or whoever is near that item at great risk though.
“Get me back there and I’ll find it,” she insisted. “Tell me everything you remember about the item. Once I have it, you’ll take me as far from here as you can and we’ll make Dorralt chase us halfway around Eldvar if he wants his war.”
From what I saw on the plains, the undead will reach Lantonne before the end of summer. There is too little time to find the staff and flee the area, Ilarra. If you wish to spare that city entirely, you have less than a week.
“Then you stall the undead as long as you can. I’ll find it. Buy me time.”
Nenophar snorted again, this time blasting Ilarra’s hair back. Without me present, Dorralt will control you inside of a month. Either your brother or I must be near you, or the Turessian influence will grow.
Ilarra stood and walked to Nenophar’s nose, resting a hand on it if only to show him she was no longer afraid.
“Give me as long as you can,” she told him. “You’ve taught me to resist and I’ll keep doing that. If I take too long, whether I’m controlled or not won’t matter much when the undead come marching up on Lantonne. You say your fate is sealed by what happens there…let’s do everything we can to ruin this prophecy.”
The dragon’s head lifted slightly and bared row upon row of teeth. At first, Ilarra took a step back in fear that Nenophar had chosen to attack her again for some reason, then realized he was trying to smile. She dearly wanted to tell him never to do it again, but chose to smile back instead.
*
They rested in the cavern for several days, giving Nenophar and Ilarra a chance to finish recovering from fighting the Turessian. Both of them slept a long time, and then they went to the entrance of the cave network. For far from the first time, Ilarra was glad for Nenophar’s help learning to use her abilities…she no longer needed to eat or drink and time was so easy to let slip past.
About fifty feet below the absolute top of the mountain, Ilarra stood on the very lip of the rocky outcropping with the cave at her back. She felt more alive than she had in months, looking out over miles of mountains, foothills, and the plains beyond both. From comments Nenophar had made before, he could actually see groups of undead moving in the foothills miles away, but Ilarra could only enjoy the scenic location for what it was.
After waiting for nearly half an hour for Nenophar to make his way through the mountains without being seen, Ilarra smiled as a roar echoed off the mountains. She turned to see him emerging from a crack in a mountainside one peak over from where she stood. He crawled out onto the steep rocky side of the mountain, his massive claws allowing him to dig into the stone and hang, despite his weight.
Nenophar slowly spread his wings, blotting out the light that would have reached the lands below the mountain. His green leathery wings were half again as wide as he was from nose to tip of tail, making him look far larger than he already did.
After testing his wings with a cautious flap, Nenophar let go of the mountain and dropped away in a sharp dive. He caught the wind almost immediately and hooked back into the sky, rising far above Ilarra’s vantage point. Circling the mountains twice, he came back and headed straight for her.
Just before he would have collided with the mountain, Nenophar flicked his tail and tucked his wings to slam his body against the mountainside, crashing into the rock surface hard enough to knock Ilarra to her knees. From there, he climbed up until his head came up over the ledge where she was and offered her the base of his neck. There, the tall spines that ran down his back provided something to grab onto, and a spot between his wings was just flat enough Ilarra believed she might be able to stay on him—as long as he did nothing crazy mid-flight.
Are you sure you wish to this? he asked even as he offered the perch. The races of man have not seen a dragon in these parts of the world for more than a thousand years. It may be better for them to believe we are gone.
Ilarra shook her head and then realized Nenophar could not see her with his head pressed against the ledge to give her an easier time climbing up. Instead, she shouted, “I want Dorralt to know you’re back. It might make him rethink things. It’ll buy us time. Even if he doesn’t slow his march, I want the city to start thinking about dragons. If they will work with you, I need them to know you aren’t a figment of my imagination.”
As you wish. I have voiced my concerns, Ilarra. The results of this are on you.
“Besides,” she added quickly, realizing she was stalling in executing her own plan after seeing how very far down the ground was, “you already told me how badly it saps your strength to move us between here and the plains with magic. You need everything you’ve got. You need to go like this.”
Nenophar gave her a scolding look—he clearly knew she was stalling and had no desire to wait around for her, immortal or not.
Gingerly, Ilarra crept to the edge of the stones where a foot-wide gap separated her from Nenophar’s slick, scaled skin. That small opening allowed her to see past his legs to the sheer drop several hundred feet to a copse of pines surrounded by misty air and flying birds. It was the birds that made Ilarra’s heart skip a beat, seeing a creature she had always associated with being above her now so far below.
“Maybe there is another way,” she said, backing away from the edge. “You already said this was a bad idea.”
Do not make me eat you, warned Nenoph
ar. You made the plan, now abide by it.
Silently cursing at herself, Ilarra forced herself to stand and walked as close as she dared to the drop-off. She reached out and leaned to get her hands onto Nenophar’s back. With that support, she felt a little more confident and shuffled her feet nearer the edge. After jockeying herself to the lip of the stones, she finally managed to reach the bone spines on Nenophar’s back, grabbing one of the smaller ones to pull herself up off of the ledge.
With effort, Ilarra scrambled onto Nenophar, snagging and tearing her skirt twice in the process. The sharp scales raked her skin, but she managed to keep from cutting herself deeply enough that she bled. It was slow going as she got her boots under herself and managed to walk back to the spot between Nenophar’s wings, clinging to the spines the whole way and very nearly crawling on her belly to get there.
Ilarra sat down slowly, making absolutely sure not to look anywhere but the gleaming green scales and boney portions of Nenophar’s back. She took some time situating herself until she was confident that any way he moved she would neither be tossed nor crushed. A pair of spines about as high as Ilarra’s waist gave her solid grips she could hug during flight. The plan was idiotic, but she had done all she could to protect herself from her own stupidity.
“Fly gently,” she asked, latching onto the spines. “I’m ready.”
The only warning Nenophar gave was the spreading of his wings before he pushed off of the mountainside, hurling himself backwards into the open sky. They fell for several seconds, Ilarra screaming into her arm as she clung to the bone spines as tightly as she could. Then Nenophar caught the wind with his wings and leveled off, driving Ilarra down hard against his back.
Soon the rough beginning of the flight was left far behind and Nenophar coasted on the winds for a while, giving Ilarra time to relax as much as she guessed she ever would. She peeked around her arm and was amazed at the amount of wind pushing back against her face. Squinting against it, she saw the ground far below them, miles of countryside blurring from the speed.