by James Maxey
"Why?" Graxen asked. "Why obstruct Shandrazel's reforms?"
"The matriarchy has an interest in maintaining the status quo. Zorasta will not permit radical changes to the world order."
"How strange," said Graxen. "All my life, I've craved change. I honestly don't care what the consequences will be if Shandrazel succeeds in creating a new form of government. I simply welcome a tomorrow that I know will be different than today. I welcome a world where nothing can be truly thought of as permanent."
Nadala flapped her wings and hopped to the same wall Graxen stood on, though still keeping her distance. "Would you truly embrace that?" she asked. "A world where nothing is permanent?"
"Some things must be permanent, I suppose," he said. "The sun will continue to rise and fall for all eternity; the moon will forever wax and wane among the stars. Ten thousand years from now, the ocean waves will still beat against the sand, and crickets will still chirp through summer nights. But I won't be here to see these things, and all the books of the biologians will have long since crumbled to dust. We already live in a world in which we're not permanent; to believe otherwise seems to require the willing embrace of an obvious untruth."
"Ah," said Nadala. "You have a flair for poetry after all. These are the sorts of words you should put in your letters."
"Wouldn't reflections on our impermanence be a depressing topic for a love letter?" asked Graxen.
"Oh," she said, with a coy tilt of her head. "Are they love letters now?"
Graxen was too tired to be flustered. The word had slipped out; there was no point in pretending otherwise.
"From the moment I saw you, it's been love," he said, looking at her directly.
"You're lying," she said, hopping closer. "The first moment you saw me you wondered if I was going to kill you."
"True," he said, still meeting her gaze. His exhaustion and her presence had left him feeling slightly drunk. Words that he couldn't have imagined uttering earlier now spilled out of him. "But I felt love from the moment you chased after me to return my satchel. Your kindness was more than I expected or deserved. The grace of your act made the world a more hopeful place."
"It's a lucky thing I missed when I tried to skewer you, then."
"If you had killed me, you would only have been doing your duty."
"If my sisters discovered me here with you, they would kill us both. Would you still be so forgiving in the name of duty?"
"I know you're taking a risk in coming here," he said. "Yet, you did come. Why?"
"Because I too crave change," she said, looking down into the tangled darkness in the tower's interior. "What you said about impermanence, about how we won't be here in ten thousand years… these words resonate with me. What does a valkyrie's pledge to duty matter when the years will eventually wash away even her memory? The only slim thread of immortality in this world is to produce offspring, and hope that they will produce offspring. Perhaps some small echo of the self will endure through the ages."
"I'll never produce offspring," said Graxen. "Perhaps this is why I've come to my views on impermanence."
Nadala flapped her wings once more, hopping directly beside him. She was close enough he could smell her, a soapy scent, sandlewood and rosewater. She'd apparently had the opportunity to bathe after her return to the Nest. Graxen suddenly felt unclean, his skin sticky and musky.
She leaned her head close to his, her nostrils wide as she breathed in his scent.
"I like the way you smell," she said, closing her eyes, her voice sounding dreamy. "There's something primitive about it. Bestial. Beneath the veneer of culture, we are, in truth, only animals."
"There's nothing bestial about the way you smell," Graxen said, his nostrils hovering over her scales. "It's the scent of a civilized being, a smell like architecture and music."
"Oh, that must definitely go in your letter."
She opened her eyes and their gazes locked. Their nostrils were so close together they were breathing each other's breath. They stood facing for a long silent moment, he inhaling as she exhaled, she reciprocating an instant later. The air passing between them was hot and humid. They were sharing the very essence of life itself.
She leaned her snout against his and pushed. Their cheeks rubbed against each other with a slow, firm pressure. Her smooth scales were the perfect surface for his own scales to rub against, the most satisfying thing that had ever touched his hide. She continued to slide along him, her cheek slipping along his neck, until their shoulders met and each had their head nestled against the other's spine. Her aroma left him dizzy; the warmth of her skin and the firm yet yielding texture of her muscles beneath caused a thousand tiny storms to erupt within him. He felt full of lightning-energized, but also on the verge of being torn apart.
At the thought of being torn apart, he pictured Nadala's fate if they were discovered by other valkyries.
"We can't do this," he whispered. "I don't care if your sisters rip me to shreds; if they harmed even a scale on you I couldn't live with myself."
"We can't do this," she whispered back. "But not because I fear death. I don't. I've always been willing to die for a cause. Now I'm willing to die for you."
"Oh," he said, feeling the storms within him raging even stronger. "Then I guess we can do this."
"No," she said, pulling back, stepping away from him. The sudden absence of her warmth left him shivering. "We can't do this because I don't know how."
Graxen was confused. "You don't know how to love?"
"No," she said. "I mean, yes, I believe I know how to love. Perhaps. I don't know what love is; it's more the domain of poets than warriors. I only know that I want you more than I've ever wanted anything."
Graxen was now even more confused. "Then, what, exactly, is it that you don't know how to do?"
Nadala looked away demurely. She said, in a low voice. "I mean, I haven't had training. In reproduction."
"Oh," he said.
"Those initiated in the process are under strict vows of secrecy," she explained. "But perhaps the biologians…?"
"No," Graxen sighed. "I've heard… whispers. But I've never received an education in these matters either."
"Then we're shackled by our ignorance," she said, sounding bitter. "That veneer of culture I mentioned has separated us from our animal natures.
Graxen nodded. "Perhaps we could simply proceed and let our instincts guide us?"
Nadala shook her head. "It may be just stories meant to frighten us, but I've been told that mating without the proper training can lead to injury. I want you, Graxen. I just don't know what to do with you."
"I, um, am very good at research," Graxen said, thinking of the Grand Library back at the palace. Certainly some biologian had recorded the technical details of reproduction among those countless tomes. "I'll return once I learn the details."
"How long will this take?" she said.
"A few days, perhaps?" he said. "That should be time enough…"
"I don't know if I can wait that long," she said. "I feel as if I'm going to be torn apart by the desires within me."
"I understand better than you think," he said, though the storms within him were fading now that he had put his mind to the thought of research. "I promise to read as quickly as I can."
She wrapped her wings around him, still facing him. It wasn't a correct fitting somehow; their bodies felt pleasant pressed against one another, but somehow mismatched. Whatever the actual reproductive act entailed, Graxen suspected they wouldn't be facing one another.
Wordlessly, she pulled away. Her eyes glistened as she studied him for a long moment, then leapt, straight up, climbing toward the sky.
He thought of the beaded belt in his satchel; the gift could wait for another time. A moment later, a small leather pouch fell from the stars. He caught it in his fore-talon. The satchel smelled like she smelled. He opened it to find a neatly folded square of translucent paper, the black outlines of letters visible through the surface. He didn't open it. H
e felt so full of Nadala's presence that he wasn't yet prepared to replace the words she'd spoken with the words she'd written. The melody of her voice was still fresh; he would hold onto it as long as he could.
Soon, her dark form vanished into the night. He watched the stars for a long time before spreading his wings and drifting off into the sky, light as hope.
Chapter Fifteen:
Broken Sky
Jandra kept a soft, even glow around them as they traveled. They rode in silence through long and twisting tunnels of black rock. Bitterwood sat astride the long-wyrm behind Adam, while Jandra rode Hex. The journey had taken place so far in an uncomfortable silence. Bitterwood and Adam had barely spoken. Jandra was herself an orphan; if she ever met a surviving family member, she couldn't imagine remaining silent. Vendevorex had informed her that her parents had died in a fire while she was an infant, conveniently leaving out for fifteen years the detail that he had been the one who ignited the blaze. Beyond this, she knew nothing of her family. She didn't even know if Jandra was a name she'd been given by her parents or a name Vendevorex had chosen for her. He had told her that the name meant "God is gracious" in some old human tongue, which hinted that he hadn't chosen it. Vendevorex didn't believe in gods. Indeed, he was openly scornful of religions and the supernatural in general.
"The world thinks we are supernatural beings wielding powers drawn from some invisible world," Vendevorex had said when he had first given her the tiara ten years ago and began training her in his art. "In truth, there is nothing supernatural about our abilities. The invisible world we manipulate is the very foundation of what is natural. It is a world of magnetism and light. All matter as an assemblage of infinitesimal building blocks. In time, I'll teach you to manipulate these blocks with the assistance of equally small machines." As he'd spoken these words she'd placed the tiara on her head and her world had changed. She became aware of a fine silver haze that coated every inch of her skin-the residue of Vendevorex's powers. Vendevorex had opened her hand and allowed a trickle of shimmering powder to drift from his fore-talon into her palm.
He'd told her, "I will show you wonder in a handful of dust."
She pulled herself from her reverie as the tunnel they traveled through joined with a larger shaft. The shaft was almost perfectly rectangular. She could see from the gouges in the rock that this tunnel had been carved by some machine wielding massive steel teeth. She could still see traces of the iron scraped into the rock, now turned to rust by the ages.
Adam broke the silence. "I've been told this was all carved by men, long ago," he said. "The world wasn't always ruled by dragons."
"The very rocks that surround us disprove you, Adam," Hex said. "The libraries of the biologians are filled with fossils of the giant reptiles that eventually became the dragon races. We inherited the world from these ancestors. The evidence is clear that humans are merely apes who've gained the ability to speak only recently, from a geological perspective. I say that with no malice; it's simply a truth written into stones. A few radical biologians argue that the ruins of the world show evidence of a once dominant human culture. But if your kind was ever more technologically advanced, it must surely have been under the guidance of dragons. If humans were as advanced as some argue, how did they possibly lose control?"
Adam shrugged. "The goddess judged the time of human dominance to be at an end."
"The goddess?" the elder Bitterwood scoffed, his voice low and firm. "We worshipped Ashera in the village of my birth. I was later shown that she was nothing but a block of polished wood. The carving was destroyed and the world carried on. The seasons still changed, the rains still fell, the sun continued to rise. Everything we were taught about her power was demonstrated to be a lie."
Adam didn't look angry at his father's words. He answered in a patient voice, "You saw only an idol of the goddess. The true goddess is the living embodiment of the earth. She's the model for all the statues that have been carved of her, but that is all they are-statues."
Jandra found herself intrigued. Her upbringing had left her certain, despite Adam's eye-witness testimony, that they weren't truly being led to a goddess. Jandra couldn't help but wonder: Were they being led to a woman who wielded power similar to her own? Invisibility, command of elements, a healing touch-it wouldn't be too difficult to convince some people that these were the powers of a god.
Vendevorex said he'd stolen the helmet. What if he'd stolen it from her parents? Could it be that this so-called goddess might be related to her? Jandra tried to suppress the thought, knowing it was absurd. And yet… she hadn't simply sprung from dust. She had parents. She had to be related to someone in this world. If she were to ever meet a brother or sister, would she recognize them?
Would she be any less tongue-tied than Bitterwood and Adam?
They walked on in silence once more. Hex slowed his pace slightly. Jandra, astride his shoulders, wondered why he was creating the additional distance between them and the Bitterwoods. Hex twisted his serpentine neck back toward her and said, softly, "I notice you've had little to so say to me since I killed that long-wyrm rider."
She was surprised he'd interpreted her silence so effectively. Vendevorex had never known what to make of her quiet moments; Bitterwood and Pet hadn't displayed much skill at it either.
"I don't think it was the killing that bothered me," she whispered back. "It was the way you swallowed him, and then announced that he tasted good. I know that Albekizan used to hunt humans for sport. Did you?"
"Of course," said Hex. "It was part of my upbringing."
"Did you always eat the men you killed?"
"It would have been wasteful not to," he said.
"When I first met you, you denounced the oppression of the weak by the strong. How can you justify eating humans if you truly believe the things you say?"
"I haven't hunted men for sport in thirty years," said Hex. "I didn't hunt that long-wyrm rider; he attacked you, and I acted in your defense. I wasn't making a political statement by eating him. I had meat in my mouth; I swallowed. Pure instinct. I'm sorry that this disturbed you. I'll be more careful in the future."
Jandra again found herself surprised by his words. Dragging an apology out of any other male she'd ever known had been almost impossible.
"I'm not angry with you," she said, realizing that, in truth, she wasn't. "I suppose I've just been having an identity crisis. I grew up among dragons. I've come to think of dragons as my family. It's always a shock when I'm confronted with the reality that I'm human, and that dragons aren't my family, but are, quite possibly, my mortal enemies."
"I'm not your enemy," he said.
"I know," she sighed.
"As long as we're on the subject of enemies, however," Hex said, "is your friend the true Bitterwood? Is he the man that killed my brother and father?"
"Yes," she said.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"I worried you'd kill him when we met him."
"Would he not deserve it?"
"No," said Jandra. "You yourself said your father deserved his fate. Bitterwood has given me his vow he won't harm you. I don't want you seeking revenge against him."
"Unlike my father, I haven't a vengeful bone in my body," said Hex. "Endless cycles of revenge poison all our cultures, both dragon and human. I do, however, have a strong sense of self-preservation. If your friend so much at looks at me with evil intentions, I won't suffer the least remorse when I bite his head off. However, I will promise not to swallow."
Hex's words sounded loud to her in the relative quiet of the mine shaft. By now, Trisky was several hundred feet ahead of them. Could the Bitterwoods hear their conversation?
Bitterwood, astride the long-wyrm behind his long dead son, listened closely to the whispered voices behind him. Were the sun-dragon's words a ruse? Perhaps Hex was attempting to lull him into lowering his defenses. He sensed that this dragon was craftier than others he'd tangled with over the years.
Bitterwood welc
omed this threat so near his back. He'd grown used to the life of the hunt. He'd become accustomed to the daily risk; the knowledge that the next dragon he faced might be the one to spot him at the last second and lunge, faster than he could react. What did it mean that he only felt alive when he faced such danger? When he'd killed Bodiel, he could have put an arrow into his brain on the first shot. Instead, he'd targeted his arrows into non-lethal spots, crippling the giant dragon, leaving him struggling in the mud, slowly bleeding to death. He'd taken his time, savoring Bodiel's anguish. Was he courting death by indulging in such sadism? Was he, in truth, as much a monster as his prey?
The close presence of a potentially hostile dragon gave Bitterwood a welcome distraction from the obvious question of why his son was alive, in service of the goddess, and dwelling beneath the earth.
Adam, perhaps growing tired of waiting for questions that never came, began to answer them.
"I was too young to remember, of course, but I'm told I was discovered by Hezekiah. He found me in the well in Christdale and gave me to the angel Gabriel, who brought me here to the goddess."
Bitterwood's guts twisted at the mention of Hezekiah. "Hezekiah disdained the goddess. And Gabriel isn't associated with the goddess myth at all. You've gotten your religions confused. Gabriel is the Biblical angel who informs Zechariah that his son will be John the Baptist."
"The Bible is a false document. Hezekiah is a false prophet. The goddess created him to play the role of deceiver; she said Eden wouldn't be paradise without a serpent."
Bitterwood saw no point in arguing his son's fractured theology. Adam's tone was that of a true believer. Had Adam inherited this gullibility from him? He'd been deceived by Hezekiah. Adam was correct, at least, in calling Hezekiah a false prophet.
Adam continued, "The goddess told me you were still alive. She said that the fabled Bitterwood that dragons feared so greatly was, in truth, my father. I asked permission to find you. She said I wasn't ready. Now I see that she planned to guide you here all along."
"No one guided me here," said Bitterwood. "No supernatural force, at least."