by Diane Duane
She opened her eyes again, pushed cautiously away from the wall and looked up, trying to find the shaft-hole in the ceiling. After a moment she located it, though the shaft was distinguishable from the rest of the ceiling only by two or three faint stars that shone through. Strange. It’s never been this dark in here before… She turned and looked around, trying to get herself oriented. The faint rumble of the Sea bounced all around her, difficult to localize, but at last she thought she detected a slight difference in sound right across from her, a deadness that might mean the cave’s opening onto the beach. She stepped cautiously away from the wall, then started to walk.
She touched something. It wasn’t the wall. It was smooth, and dry, and hot. In her shock she stumbled forward instead of jerking back, and the something clamped down on her outstretched right hand, hard. The shock of violation, of being attacked by something that had no business being here in the first place, made her cry out in rage.
Before she even had time to struggle, from right in front of her, a huge, slow, deep bass viol of a voice spoke. “It seems excessive to put your hand in the Dragon’s mouth,” it said, “and then scream before you even know whether you’ve been injured.”
Whatever had been holding her hand released it. Segnbora backed away and stood there rubbing the hand, which had been held tightly but not hurt. She was furious at herself for having shown fear. “What the Dark are you doing in here?” she yelled.
“We were invited,” said the voice, puzzled. “But your accent is poor. Perhaps for now you should speak more slowly.”
“Accent—” She stopped and realized that she hadn’t been speaking Darthene, or any human language, but the odd and terrible one that the voices in the darkness had been using. “Never mind that! You can’t be in here, this is me!”
“‘Me?’” the voice said. “‘We,’ surely. But may we ask why you’re keeping it so dark in here? Unless it’s because the place where we met was dark.”
“I can remedy that,” Segnbora said, annoyed. She lifted a hand, called up a memory of noon sunlight pouring in through the shaft—
—and nothing happened.
“You are leaving us out of the reckoning,” said the deep slow voice.
“Perhaps you’d assist me, then,” Segnbora said, uneasy, but annoyed enough to be intent on not showing it. She concentrated again. “Sunlight…”
This time the light came, streaming down through the shaft from a sky that seemed bluer and deeper than usual. Segnbora looked down and away from the blinding light—and was blinded instead by the intruder.
The rough dark textures of the face she had touched in the Fane were dark no longer. The sunlight spilling down from above shattered and rainbowed from scales like black sapphires, every one with its shifting star. The Dragon blazed and glittered like a queen’s ransom, his every breath and movement creating a shower of dazzle around him.
Now, Segnbora thought in wonder, I begin to understand that old story about Dragons spending their time lying on piles of jewels….
His head hung above and before her, no longer an inert, half-perceived shape as it had been in the Morrowfane cave. It was an elongated head under the upper faceplate, and slender like a snake’s, though heavier-jawed. Its mouth ended in a beak like that of a snapping turtle’s; the point of the beak, the very end of the immense serrated jaw, was what had closed on her hand.
Segnbora’s gaze traveled upward. From the beak to the place where the jaw met the neck was twenty feet at least. The eyes were great pupilless globes filled with liquid fire, blazing brilliant white even in the full sunlight. In the iron braziers of the nostrils the same light glowed, though nowhere near so brightly.
The Dragon was watching her with no less interest. “Casting one’s skin for the last time is always a nuisance,” it said, “but it’s still one of the more pleasant things about going mdahaih. You like this body better than the one you saw in the cave?”
“No!” Segnbora started to say, but the thought snagged on the new language living in her throat, and wouldn’t move. The Dracon tongue, she realized then, put a great emphasis on accuracy of expression, and the one, bald, angry word was apparently insufficient.
“You look absolutely beautiful,” she said at last, “and I wish to the Dark you’d go away.”
“It wasn’t my idea to become mdahaih in a human, believe me,” the Dragon said. “Nor that of the rest of the mdeihei. They’ve been making endless noise about it.” Though Segnbora had never heard the words before, she understood them instantly. Mdahaih: indwelling within a host body and mind. Mdeihei: the indwellers, the souls of linear ancestors, the thousand-voiced consensus, the eternal companions.
The thought made her hair stand up. Segnbora realized then that the sound she had been hearing in the background wasn’t the Sea, but a chorus of other voices, all like that of the Dragon. It’s a pleasant enough sound, she thought. A single Dragon sounded like a bass viol talking to itself, a deep breathy voice full of hisses and rumbles and vocal bow-scrapes. But Dragons in a group seemed to prefer speaking together, and had been doing just that ever since she walked back into her cavern. The result was a constant quiet murmur and mutter of seemingly sourceless voices: scores of them, maybe hundreds, coiling together words and meaning-melodies in decorous, dissonant musics.
And they were growing louder. They didn’t approve of Segnbora, of her clumsy gropings and her rudeness to them in the darkness into which they had been thrust. Nor did they approve of the abnormal singleness of her mind, and they were saying so, in a dark-hued melody that sounded like a consort of bass instruments upbraiding its audience.
“I don’t much care whose idea this whole thing was,” Segnbora said. “But won’t you creatures please—” She fumbled for the right word, but there was no word for undoing the mdahaih relationship. “Won’t you just go away?” she said finally, feeling uneasy about the vagueness of the term.
“Where?” the Dragon said, puzzled.
“Out of us!” Then she hissed with annoyance at the choice of pronoun. But in this language there seemed to be no true singular pronouns: even what she had been using for first person singular was a plural, me-and-the-rest-of-me, that implied the mdeihei. The only genuine singular forms in the language were either for inanimate objects, or human beings and other such crippled, single-minded entities.
“That’s impossible,” the Dragon said, lowering its voice into its deepest register, the one used for addressing the very young. “You’re sdahaih, and will be until you die.” The word it used was res‘uw: lose-the-old-body-and-move- into-a-new-one. Segnbora rubbed her aching head in bewilderment.
“If you were one of us,” the Dragon said, “you’d bring about hatchlings in time, and the soulbond between you and them would be established once they broke shell. The bond would grow stronger in them as they grew, and weaker in you as you became old. Finally, when you left your body, you would be drawn into them: become mdahaih. And so it would be with their hatchlings, on through the generations, forever…”
“Forever,” Segnbora whispered, feeling weak. “But all those voices—they can’t all be your ancestors…we wouldn’t be able to hear for the noise!”
“The ones furthest back are hardest to hear. They fade out in time—which may be for the best. The mdeihei are for advice, among other things; and advice from someone gone mdahaih fifty generations ago may not much benefit the sdaha, the out-dweller. At any rate, the strongest voices are the newest, the first four generations or so.”
Segnbora sat down on the floor, miserable. The great head inclined slightly to watch her, causing another brief storm of rainbows.
“What happens,” she said eventually, “if I die, and there are no children, and no one is close by to accept the linkage, the soulbond, as I seem to have done for you?”
She could see no change of expression in the iron-and-diamond face, but the Dragon’s tone went grave. “A few have died and gone rdahaih,” he said: not “indwelling” or �
�out-dwelling,” but “undwelling.” “They are lost. They and their mdeihei vanished completely, and from the mdeihei of every Dragon everywhere. They cease to be…”
Segnbora shuddered.
The Dragon’s wings rustled in its own unease. “Your people have a word,” he said. “A Marchwarder taught it to us: ‘immortality.’ He said that humans desire it the way we desire doing-and-being. We have ‘immortality’ already; only rarely do we lose it. Had you not come to the Fane, we would have gone rdahaih. Mercifully the Immanance at the heart of what was-and-is saw to it that you were there.”
No children for me, then, Segnbora thought, heavy-hearted. And no marriage. Humans had a responsibility to reproduce themselves at least once, and until that Responsibility was fulfilled she was not free to marry any man or woman or group. Worse, it was now going to be hard to die without knowing whether she’d ever go on, in the normal human way, to see the final Shore—
“O sdaha,” the Dragon said quietly, “since we’re going to be together for a long time—regardless of your plans for hatchlings—perhaps we might know your name?”
She stared upward, angry again in the midst of her pain. “I don’t remember asking you to listen to me think!”
“Among sda’tdae, there’s no use asking for permission or refusing it,” the Dragon said. “One hears. You’ll find there’s little I can hide from you, or would. Nor do I understand why so many of your memories lie here sealed in stone, though doubtless answers will become plain in time.”
The pattern of notes the Dragon wove around them said plainly that he considered her something of a disappointment. Still, there was compassion in the song behind the words, and amusement mixed with wry distaste at the situation he found himself in.
Segnbora rose slowly. She was finding it difficult to be angry for long with someone who was so relentlessly polite while also being so large. She was also starting to get the feeling that all the courtesy and precision built into the Dracon language might well be there to control a potential for terrible savagery. “Segnbora d’Welcaen tai-Enraesi,” she said, giving the Dragon the eyes-up half bow due a social equal.
“Hasai s’Vheress d’Naen s’Dithe d’Rr’nojh d’Karalh mes’en-Dhaa’lhhw’ae,” the Dragon said, giving his name only to the nearest five generations. The named ancestors sang quiet acknowledgment from the shadows beyond the sunlight as Hasai lowered his head almost to the floor and raised his wings in greeting, spreading them fully upward and outward in an awesome double canopy. Membranes like polished onyx stretched between batlike finger-struts, and the sunlight was blocked suddenly away.
Segnbora’s breath went out of her again in sheer amazement. “Oh, my,” she said, awed, “you are big. May I look at you?”
“Certainly.”
She walked around to her left, putting some fifteen yards between herself and Hasai so she could see more of him at once. Fifty feet of jeweled neck led down to two immense double shoulders, from which sprang both the backward-bent forelimbs, now folded underneath Hasai, and the first “upper arm” strut of the wings. Each of these struts ended at the first bend of the wing in a curved crystalline spur, as sharp as the diamond talons on each forelimb’s four claws, but much longer.
Segnbora walked the length of the Dragon, out of the shadow of his wings, past the great corded hindlimbs, which were taloned as the forelimbs were. Slowly she walked along the crystal-spined tail, scaled in sapphires above, crusted in diamond below—and walked, and walked, and walked. Finally she came to the end of it, where the sapphires were small enough to be set in an arm-ring, and the last crystalline barb, curved and sharp as a sword, lanced out ten feet or so from the foot-thick tailtip.
She looked back up the length of the body between the wings. It was like looking at a hill wrought of gems and black metal. Even supine on the stony floor, the slenderest part of Hasai’s body, his abdomen, was at least fifteen feet high and perhaps forty around. His upper shoulders were at least thirty feet across. There was just too much of him. “I can’t understand how you fly,” Segnbora said, starting back up the other side.
“The proper frame of mind,” Hasai said, arching his head backwards to watch her. “And our people aren’t built like the flying things you have here. We’re light.” And without warning, Hasai lifted up the last ten feet of his tail and dropped it on her.
Certain she was about to be crushed, Segnbora reflexively threw her arms up to ward the tail away—and found herself supporting it on her hands. It was heavy enough, but not at all the great weight she had expected.
“See?” Hasai said, flicking the tail away to lie at rest again. Segnbora shook her head in wonder. The rough undercrusting looked like diamond, the scales looked like sapphire— “What are you made of?” she said, starting to walk again.
“Flesh, bone, hide. And you?”
Segnbora blinked. “About the same…”
“You’re not quite as tough, however,” the Dragon said, sounding mildly rueful. “I remember the beast you will be riding, biting you there—” The glittering tail snaked up at Segnbora again, the terminal spine prodding her delicately in the chest. “You’ll be bleeding, and wishing for hide more like mine, that the beast would have broken its teeth on—”
As politely as she could, Segnbora undid the tailspine from her surcoat’s embroidery, where it had snagged. She’d noticed before, while fumbling for words, that in Dragon language there seemed to be several extra tenses for verbs. Now uneasily she realized that these were precognitive tenses— future possible, future probable, future definite. Dragons could apparently remember ahead as well as back.
Not something I ever plan on doing! “We’re not built to remember everything that happens to us,” Segnbora said. “Not consciously, anyway. Yes, I can feel the mdeihei back there remembering everything that ever happened to them, every sunset and conversation and breath of wind! But my kind doesn’t do that.”
“Perhaps it makes sense that you don’t desire ahead-memory,” Hasai said. “The Marchwarders have told us that your kind even has trouble dealing with what is. But to reject our past-memories as well—”
Segnbora shrugged. “What good are fifty generations of Dragon memories to a human?”
“But you’re not human,” Hasai said calmly. “Not totally. Not any more.” He looked away from her, a Dragon shrug, matching hers. “Sooner or later you’ll look and see what’s available to you. Not soon, I suspect.”
Segnbora went narrow-eyed with anger at the note of humorous disdain in the Dragon’s song. “Is that so,” she said.
Hasai bent his head down beside her and dropped his jaw slightly in an expression of mild amusement. The action gave Segnbora too clear a view of diamond fangs as long and sharp as scythes, and of the three-forked smelling-tongue in its recess beneath the blunt one used for speech—all lit by the fulminous magma-glow of the back of the throat, where Dragonfire seethed. “Well,” Hasai said, calm as some sleepy volcano, “will you put your hand in the Dragon’s mouth willingly this time?”
“Why not,” Segnbora said, nervous, and irritated for being so. “Here, take the whole arm—”
Without giving herself time to hesitate, she went over to his great toothy table of a lower jaw and thrust her arm up to the shoulder between two huge forefangs, resting the forearm on the dry hot tongue. Slowly and carefully Hasai closed his mouth, holding Segnbora’s arm immobile but not hurting it.
(Comfortable?) he said wordlessly, his inner voice sounding, if possible, bigger than his outer one.
“Yes, thank you.”
(Well, then…)
Without warning, Segnbora found that her body felt wonderful. Her eyes could suddenly see colors she had been missing: the black reds, the white violets. She felt for the first time the curves and planes of the energy flows that were as much a Dragon’s medium as the currents and flows of atmosphere. Her muscles slid lithe and warm beneath gemmed skin. Her eyes held light within them as well as beholding it without. An old, y
et delightful burning banished the cold from her throat and insides. Power was there, and strength—the dangerous grace of limb and talon and tail. She felt reborn. She also felt hungry.
(Let’s eat,) one of her selves suggested. Agreeing, she crouched and coiled her way over to the door of the cavern, folded her wings carefully and slipped out.
(Wait a moment—that door’s only a few feet wide!)
(That was your memory,) said one of the mdeihei, a strong voice, fairly recently alive. (This is mine.)
Out they went into the brilliant light of noon at Onolí. (This isn’t my beach, either!)
(No, my old one. But just taste that sun!) And immediately she spread her wings right out to their fullest, feeling the sunfire soak into the hungry membranes and run through her like white-hot wine. She basked, drinking her fill of the light, lazing while the strange-familiar thoughts of a Dragon’s day-to-day life flowed through her in a slow rush of song and imagery—in this case, that mdaha’s memory of watching some other Dragon in flight, turning and twisting against the sunset sky, seemingly dancing with the air. A graceful statement of a frightening thesis. But there’s plenty of time before a decision’s required…
Other mdeihei rumbled lazy assent, a placid rush of low voices blending with the sound of the waves, themselves considering flight. Not willing to wait for a long discussion of the pros and cons, Segnbora got up and raised her wings, feeling with them the flows of all the forces that Dragons manipulated and took for granted, as fish accept water or birds the air. It was an old delight: the chief joy of the Dragonkind, dearer even than speech. (But what else are we for?) some one of them said.
The wings were hands. She grasped the currents she felt moving about her, pulled herself upward, sprang and flew.