“Then I’ll guide you there. It’s a long journey, so fear not. Well all rest often, and you shall hunt. And then, after Enj is back home again in Haen Marn, you and I shall fly south, and this time well be hunting Meradan.”
She gaped her mouth and hissed in murderous joy.
With the rope to cling to, Rhodry and Enj learned, after an uncomfortable while, to adapt to the dragon’s flight. Each wing beat thrust her forward in a rolling sort of motion, at times close to a jump, especially when she was gaining height. Sitting on her neck or shoulder felt like standing on the prow of a small boat heading out from shore against the waves. After some hours, though, Rhodry at least found a new balance. He’d been trying to straddle her like a horse, he realized, while he needed to sit forward, steadied by his knees, resting as much on his own heels as her flesh so that he could roll with her wing beats. Bracing himself against them was futile.
When he tried to explain this to Enj, the young dwarf merely rolled his eyes and went on clinging for dear life to rope and crest alike. In the rush of wind and the thwack of the dragon’s wings against air, it was impossible to hold any sort of conversation, anyway. At the most Rhodry could bellow orders to the dragon or yell back a few words to Enj during those intervals when she glided rather than beat the air. For both their sakes he ordered her to fly low. Seeing the ground rush by fast scared them less than seeing it unroll slowly from some great height. He supposed that she must be bitterly amused at their clumsiness and weak stomachs, these pitiful creatures who had nonetheless tracked her down.
By late light they left the fire mountain and the Gods’ Soup Bowl far behind. With each beat of her wings or long glide Arzosah covered as much ground as they could have by running till they were winded. She also soared over those petty obstacles, valleys and crests, rivers and broken ground, that had claimed hours of Rhodry’s and Enj’s effort and sweat. After only an afternoon’s travel, they’d gone long past the outcrop that may or may not have been shaped like a hound’s head. When they camped that first night, Arzosah found them a shallow valley with a stream and set down gently. As soon as they slid off, Enj took a few steps, knelt, and kissed the ground, making Arzosah roll a scornful eye.
“Master?” she said. “May I hunt?”
“You may, as long as you make a fast kill and bring it back here.”
“Will you take these wretched ropes off?”
He could, he supposed, with little effort, but always he was aware of the danger they rode by riding a dragon, this creature of air and darkness, so reluctantly tamed.
“No. You need to get used to them.”
She snarled and thrashed her head, but when he held up the ring, she quieted immediately. Whatever dweomer Evandar had put upon that ring, Rhodry realized, it must have radiated true power to those sensitive to such things.
“Go hunt,” Rhodry said. “But return with your supper.”
With a rustle of wing she flapped and flew, circling off to the north. Enj shook himself all over like a wet dog.
“Ye gods, Rori! Never did I think I would see a dragon and finish my father’s dream for him, much less ride upon one’s back.” Enj grinned broadly. “I think me, though, that Da would have had a better stomach for it than his son.”
“Well, you know what they always say. Be careful what you wish for.”
“Or you may get it. Truly.”
It was just growing dark when Arzosah returned, carrying a dead doe in her front claws as easily as a falcon carries a dove. She flew low, dropped it, then circled to settle next to it.
“Do you wish some of this venison, Rhodry Dragon-master?”
“We have our own kill, my thanks. Enjoy yours, my lady.”
“Ah, I do like a courtly man.”
Although Rhodry and Enj both had been rather dreading watching her eat, she was a courtly feeder herself, ripping off small pieces of flesh with a delicate fang and turning her head away when she needed to gulp. The bones she cracked, laying one paw upon them and pressing till they snapped, then sucking the marrow with the corner of her mouth. Once done, she buried the hide and other remains with a few scrapes of a paw, then went to the stream and bathed her head and chest.
“Right you were to order me back with that,” she remarked. “I’m so sleepy now. A good night to you both.”
Without further ado she curled in a grassy hollow like a cat and fell sound asleep.
“Ye gods,” Enj whispered. “Ye gods! I wish I spoke the elven tongue, to know what she does say.”
“Well, to tell you the truth, my friend, it’s all rather ordinary. I doubt me if she’s got a large wit, when you come right down to it, or maybe it’s just that her concerns are on the simple side.”
Enj laughed.
“Very well, then, I won’t bother regretting it. I wonder if my sister’s scried us out? A fine sight we must be, riding on a dragon.”
“You’re forgetting about the talisman.” Rhodry laid his hand on his shirt over the stone. “And I don’t dare take it off to allow her a look at us.”
“That’s true. Ye gods, Rori. I keep forgetting the grim truths, don’t I? About your enemies, and the siege down in Cengarn.”
“Well, war or no war, I think me we’ve a right to gloat.” Although both men woke as stiff and sore as if they’d been in battle, on that second day they learned even more about the proper way to fly. By the end of the day’s travel, Rhodry felt nearly as comfortable as he did on a horse—not that he would have wanted to try fighting on dragonback, mind, with all the swoops and tight turns such would have called for. Enj seemed more relaxed as well, sitting upon rather than clinging to Arzosah’s back. When they camped that evening, Arzosah flew out and caught herself another doe, then fell straight asleep again. They were probably tiring her, Rhodry decided, with all this long travel, but soon they would be back at Haen Mam, the place he’d come to think of as home, and the dragon would be able to rest.
“I wonder what she’ll think of the beasts in the lake?” Rhodry said.
“Oh, they’re not half-elegant enough for her, I’m sure.”
They shared a laugh at their own jest. Later, of course, they would wonder how they could have been so at ease, so ignorant, when the dweomer that lay all round them should have at least given them some small hint of danger.
On the third day they left the white peaks behind, swooping lower to fly over the hills that had cost Rhodry and Enj so much time to cross. By Enj’s reckoning they would reach Haen Marn before sunset, but long before then they saw their first evil omen. Arzosah was flying along a grassy valley when Rhodry glanced down and saw a peculiar mark, a gash in the grass that stretched east like a road. Without waiting for a command Arzosah dropped some twenty feet to skim the earth. From this height Rhodry could see clearly enough to call her to land. She circled back and settled gracefully to earth at the spot where the trampling began.
Whatever had passed by had cut a wide swath indeed, some hundred feet of grass become mud, hoofprints and horse droppings, wagon ruts and the abrasions of booted feet. Rhodry slid down from her shoulder and ran, dropping to one knee at the edge of the damage where some of the prints separated themselves out. Enj came trotting after.
“What be this?” Enj said, utterly puzzled. “Never have I seen such a thing in my life.”
“In your lucky and sheltered life, lad. An army’s passed this way, and not long ago at all. Yesterday, I’d say.”
“But where did they come from? The tracks just start out of nowhere.”
“Dweomer,” Arzosah cried in Elvish. “I can smell it!”
Rhodry got up, turning to look at the dragon. She was crouched tense, breathing hard, her great head flung up, her coppery eyes rolling. Her wings trembled as if only sheer will kept her from flying.
“You’re right, no doubt,” he said. “And from the size of these hoofprints, the horses were as big as plow stock. That means the riders had to be Meradan.”
Her claws shot out to dig the eart
h in hatred.
“Let’s go,” Rhodry said to Enj. “And pray that Haen Marn’s dweomer held.”
Once they were settled on her back, with a flap of wings she leapt up to fly the faster, following the track like a road. Rhodry felt as if the season had changed to winter, and he’d swallowed rocks of ice. Toward midafternoon, when by Enj’s reckoning they were close to Haen Marn, the tracks turned south.
“Shall we follow and kill?” Arzosah bellowed.
“Not yet! Keep heading east.”
“I want to kill some.”
“Arzosah, by your name—”
“Oh, I know! East it is!”
A few moments more brought them their second omen of evil. Off to the south a thin plume of smoke rose at the horizon, as if some large thing burned. Rhodry would have thought that someone had fired a dun, if there’d been a dun there to fire. As it was, the smoke lay dead south, the wrong direction for Haen Marn. Since calculating distances from the air lay beyond him, he could only guess that the source of the smoke was a burning farm, down near Lin Serr’s plateau, perhaps. Enj yelled out something incomprehensible, but the fear in his voice spoke as clearly as words. Arzosah put on a burst of speed; she’d seen the smoke as well.
Under them the hills sped by, a dusty green carpet of forest where here and there a stream winked silver. The dragon began to labor, slowing now and then or catching a current in the air to glide and rest. Finally they flew over the last hill to the valley that should have held Haen Marn. Rhodry saw nothing but more hills, stretching green and placid, on either side of the river, the recognizable river that once had sprung from Haen Marn’s lake. Now it ran through a narrow valley, not a broad one, and the land was dotted with pines, not oaks.
Behind him Enj howled in grief and rage both.
“Land!” Rhodry called out. “Down by the water, so you can drink.”
With a long glide and flap the panting dragon settled to earth. Rhodry slid off, then helped Enj down. For a moment neither of them could speak.
“Are you sure I didn’t guide Arzosah wrong?” Rhodry said at last.
Enj merely shook his head no and strode off, heading for a familiar-looking pile of boulders by the riverbank. Rhodry followed and helped him lift the rocks, shoving them out of the way, rummaging round in a kind of desperate hope that they’d find nothing. He was aware of the dragon crouching behind him on the riverbank, her sides heaving in the hot sun. All at once Enj keened, just one wail, bitten off fast. He held up a black and twisted thing, all flattened, tarnished, and torn as if by the passage of a thousand years—the remains of the silver horn that once had summoned the dwarven longboat.
“It’s been withdrawn,” Enj choked out. “Haen Marn.”
“Withdrawn? What do you mean?”
“To its own world. It doesn’t truly belong in ours. In times of trouble, it can withdraw. That’s the dweomer I was speaking of, when you’d worry and such.”
“Speaking of? A bare hint, lad, a bare hint.” Rhodry wondered what was wrong with him, that he’d feel so calm, feel nothing, truly, but a strange and distant curiosity.
“You don’t dare speak plainly! What if it heard? Or they heard? The spirits, I mean. Whatever guards the place. You could find yourself gone in an eye blink.”
“And when, then, will it return? When the danger’s past?”
Enj shook his head. His eyes glistened tears.
“I don’t know. Maybe never,” he whispered. “My grandmother, my father’s mother, the Lady of Haen Marn, the true lady, the one Avain should have replaced if she’d not been born a mooncalf—she told me always, when I was a lad, that we ran that risk, living in Haen Marn, that someday it would withdraw, and there we’d be in its true world, whether we wanted to bide there or no.”
It be a baleful thing, the hefting of this shield. Pray, Rori, pray that never it be needful.
The thought sounded so loud in his mind that Rhodry turned, thinking Angmar stood behind him, started to ask her a question, in fact, and found he couldn’t speak. No one stood there. Only wind sighed in grass. He took a few steps north, toward the spot where the river had once poured from a crack in the cliffs. He was thinking that he really should say something comforting to Enj, seeing as the lad had just lost his mother, when suddenly the view blurred and began to dance in front of him. He dropped to his knees, but he never quite wept, fought himself cold, rather, beside the fast-flowing river, while Arzosah turned her enormous head his way and watched unblinking,
“They slew my mate,” she said at last. “And now they’ve driven yours away. We shall kill many Meradan together, Rhodry Dragonmaster.”
“So we will.” He smiled, felt that smile burn itself into his face. “Together, so we will.”
APPENDICES
HISTORICAL NOTES
Many readers and reviewers have assumed that the Deverry books take place in some sort of alternate Britain or that the people of Deverry came originally from Britain — In fact, they emigrated from northern Gaul, as a couple of obscure clues in the text tell the compulsively careful reader who also knows an awful lot about Celtic history. Since only a few people fall into that rather strange category, myself being one of them, allow me to explain further. For one thing, the great heroes mentioned throughout the series, Vercingetorix and Vindex, are real, historical Gauls. For another, the various gods, such as Bel (Belinus) and particularly Epona are primarily Gaulish gods, though their worship was known throughout the Celtic realms. More to the point, those “vergobretes” who became in Deverry “gwerbrets” are mentioned in Julius Caesar’s Gallic Wars as magistrates among the Gauls, though, he says, the Britons have no such kind of leader, relying instead upon “kings.” The Gaulish king, it seems, was more what we’d term a “warleader,” the “cadvridoc” of Deverry, than the ruler of an organized state. Even in Britain, however, the Celts elected their kings more often than they accepted them by inheritance, a pan-Celtic political tradition that lies behind the instability of the Deverry kingship.
The language of Deverry also derives from that of Gaul, but Gaulish was not, as far as scholars can tell, very much different from the Old British that evolved into the language we know today as Cymraeg or Welsh. Thus the Deverrian language, which we might well call Neo-Gaulish, looks and sounds much like Welsh, but anyone who knows this modern language will see immediately that it differs in a great many respects, as it does from Cornish and Breton, the other members of the sub-family of languages known as P-Celtic.
PRONUNCIATION NOTES
Vowels are divided by Deverry scribes into two classes: noble and common. Nobles have two pronunciations; commons, one.
A as in father when long; a shorter version of the same sound, as in far, when short.
O as in bone when long; as in pot when short.
W as the oo in spook when long; as in roof when short.
Y as the i in machine when long; as the e in butter when short.
E as in pen.
I as in pin.
U as in pun.
Vowels are generally long in stressed syllables; short in unstressed. Y is the primary exception to this rule. When it appears as the last letter of a word, it is always long whether that syllable is stressed or not.
Diphthongs generally have one consistent pronunciation.
AE as the a in mane.
AI as in aisle.
AU as the ow in how.
EO as a combination of eh and oh.
EW as in Welsh, a combination of eh and oo.
IE as in pier.
OE as the oy in boy,
UI as the North Welsh wy, a combination of oo and ee.
Note that OI is never a diphthong, but is two distinct sounds, as in carnoic (KAR-noh-ik).
Consonants are mostly the same as in English, with these exceptions:
C is always hard as in cat.
G is always hard as in get.
DD is the voiced th as in thin or breathe, but the voicing is more pronounced than in Englis
h. It is opposed to TH, the unvoiced sound as in th or breath. (This is the sound that the Greeks called the Celtic tau.)
R is heavily rolled.
RH is a voiceless R, approximately pronounced as if it were spelled hr in Deverry proper. In Eldidd, the sound is fast becoming indistinguishable from R.
DW, GW, and TW are single sounds, as in Gwendolen or twit.
Y is never a consonant.
I before a vowel at the beginning of a word is consonantal, as it is in the plural ending -ion, pronounced yawn.
Doubled consonants are both sounded clearly, unlike in English. Note, however, that DD is a single letter, not a doubled consonant.
Accent is generally on the penultimate syllable, but compound words and place names are often an exception to this rule.
I have used this system of transcription for the Bardekian and Elvish alphabets as well as the Deverrian, which is, of course, based on the Greek rather than the Roman model On the whole, it works quite well for the Bardekian, at least. As for Elvish, in a work of this sort it would be ridiculous to resort to the elaborate apparatus by which scholars attempt to transcribe that most subtle and nuanced of tongues.
As those who have been following the earlier works in this series know, a certain Elvish professor of Elvish has chosen to waste his supposedly valuable time by disputing this obvious point. Since the man refuses to see reason and stop his scurrilous attacks upon us, my publishers and I have been forced to sue for redress in the malover of the gwerbrets of Aberwyn, much as it distresses us to waste the clearly valuable time of this court. Although the case has yet to be accepted for deliberation, readers will be kept apprised of future developments, never fear.
GLOSSARY
ABER (Deverrian) A river mouth, an estuary.
ALAR (Elvish) A group of elves, who may or may not be blood kin, who choose to travel together for some indefinite period of time.
ALARDAN (Elv.) The meeting of several alarli, usually the occasion for a drunken party.
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