Crown of Horns

by Alex Sapegin

“And we do not know even more,” Asha said cautiously, catching a ghostly threat.

  “If I had known what I learned during the communication between our minds, I would have strangled you before I crossed the threshold of this office.” Andy wiped the blood that was coming out of his nose with his palm. “You knew well about the danger of a merger between us.”

  “I did, but I decided to risk it, and I do not regret it a bit. Why did you not strangle me?” Asha’s eyes and pupils narrowed at the same time. The thin strips were visible between the half-closed lids.

  “For the simple reason that you too got it in full! For the same reason you are not strangling me now.”

  “Do you judge me?”

  “How did you guess? What were you thinking when you projected emotions and your feelings towards your daughters and other Miurs on me??”

  Listening to the wrathful tirade, she was silent and involuntarily jerked the tip of the tail, which gave away her anxiety.

  “Fine, nothing to say! You had better tell me then, what should I call you and your girls.”

  In some ways, Kerr was right. She did not expect such an effect from direct contact. The experience of dozens of generations did not imply emotional diffusion. Her love for Illusht and Ashlat lay on fertile soil. In the dragon’s mind, the image of the daughters was transformed into an image of kids, chicks in his nest. All her sincere feelings were absorbed by him completely.

  In turn, she also got a load of emotions from his draconian bounty. His one longing to return to the sky, the pain in his heart due to genuine solitude…. The worry about his relatives and friends on Ilanta and in the elf village swept over her in hot waves. His paranoid distrust towards all those around him who hadn’t entered into his inner circle grated her nerves. They shared a strong desire to protect their native clans and families. Duty and responsibility were the indestructible pillars in the galaxy of vivid feelings. All the diversity of the young dragon’s inner world covered her, finding its place in her soul and worldview. He was right—neither he nor she could strangle the other now…. It’s not so easy to raise a hand against a being that has become a member of the pride, and they, since the experience of many generations of Great Mothers turned out to be useless, had become family, a pride.

  “Call us sisters.”

  The dragon frowned and suddenly laughed.

  “Did I say something funny?” Asha tried to get up, but he carefully held her by the shoulder.

  “Lay down. And funny? I just imagined being asked who I was and replying—a Miur. I do not look like a roihe-male. There is no pouch on my stomach. Or like a rasht. That leaves only a female.”

  “You are wrong.”

  “Why?”

  “You are a dragon! A real dragon!”

  “By your efforts, I will soon begin to meow, although I was born a human.”

  “It does not matter who you were born as. The main thing is who you became. Hazgar was born a dragon, and he became…. And you are a true blood.”

  “What does that give me?”

  “Without that, you could not have come here.” Asha pushed her “brother” aside and stood up from the ottoman.

  Andy paid attention to the caveat his “sister” or “aunt” was referring to:

  “I would like to know the meaning of the phrase ‘true blood.’ I have heard it so many times and not known what they are talking about. It gets tiring. Enlighten a ‘brother,’ please!” Asha stopped in the middle of her step. He caught her hand and stubbornly pulled her back: “Do not make up excuses about fatigue or some other time. You know me perfectly, well, you have found out. I will not leave it alone. I think that I deserve a little reward for refusing to break into the dark and blocked zones in your beautiful head.” In fully automatic mode, Andy made a gesture inherent in Miur culture that said he would not take “no” for an answer.

  The merger went a little deeper than usual; gestures and motor skills are not simply transmitted like that, he thought, noticing his own strange new behavior. The Great Mother noticed it too.

  “Alright,” Asha said, yielding to the pressure. “Tell me, have you ever wondered where your weight and flesh go when you change from dragon hypostasis to human? Four di7 as opposed to two hundred or three hundred?”

  “I thought about it, but what does the change of appearance have to do with the true bloods?”

  “Everything. Let me explain.” Asha pulled her tail under her, wrapped her arms around the pillow and looked at the short polished claws released from her fingertips. “All dragons are energomorphs. The difference between were-dragons and ordinary dragons is the latency of the energomorphism in ordinary dragons. All dragons take and pump mana from the astral; that does not depend on whether you are a latent energomorph or not. Now we return to my question. During the change, the residual weight, which is the difference of the masses between the hypostases, turns into pure energy that is inextricably linked with the dragon’s aura. It passes beyond the edge of the world: to the reverse side. As for what happens to the energy on the reverse side, I do not know. Sages have not yet found out. No Miur has ever been there, and the dragons turned into pure energy do not return. Maybe there were such cases, but I have never heard of one.”

  “Interesting….”

  “Do not interrupt!”

  “I am silent! You go on”

  “As I was saying….” The Miur caught herself in atypical behavior and hissed angrily. Andy stretched his lips into a grin. The Great Mother reminded him most of all of Irina at that moment. Indeed—his older sister.

  The cat-woman smoothed the fur on her tail, closed her eyes, and took a few deep breaths. As a result of the exercise designed to calm nerves, her large elastic breasts went up and down, and Andy noticed the circles on the nipples. Two concentric circles around the nipples meant she had suckled two kittens. She fed her daughters herself, not giving them over to a roihe-male’s pouch.

  “It is because of the dragon’s energy transfer that people experience infernal pain during the ritual. Not everyone can endure the reorganization of the body and its connection to external energy channels. A person changes not only his blood and body; his connection with the world also changes. The solution to the fact that dragons do not eat much for their great weight lies in this. They replenish their supplies from within, not by taking on external energy through food. They unconsciously transform energy into a familiar form and send it to maintain their personal needs. Now the differences begin.” The Miur again calmed her shattered nerves, weakened by the merger. “As I said, all dragons draw mana from the astral, but true bloods can enter the world of energy consciously and conduct it through themselves, acting as a channel from a river to an arid region. The stronger and more developed the system of energy channels in the body, the more mana you can pump through yourself. Also, true bloods can freely wield all the elements. To operate with elemental magic, they do not need to cast spells or build rune patterns, but this must be learned. There are uncontrolled splashes; they do not usually lead to anything good.” Andy remembered a small lake of boiling magma at the school grounds. He hadn’t read any incantations. Asha lifted the veil of secrecy from the nature of the phenomena. “True bloods can unite all the primary elements; other mages not more than two; some unique ones even three. And there is one more nuance. If a simple were-dragon, in human hypostasis, consumes all his stored mana, then he cannot immediately fill his stores again. A true blood, while not entering the astral, can scoop up energy from the part that has gone beyond the border.”

  “Hold on,” Andy made a “stop” gesture. He feverishly meditated, digesting the information received. The part about him not being able to travel to another world if he were not a true blood took on meaning. Making up the rune scheme, he did not think about entering the astral. “So what you’re saying is, I stole energy from myself? That is why I lost my second hypostasis?”

  “Yes, you got it right. During the transfer, you u
sed energy from the reverse side and took out almost all of it.”

  Andy said something in his native Russian….

  “Just over half of you was left. Your unsuccessful attempt to take on your second form clearly demonstrates my correctness. The disappearance of magic is due to the fact that all mana went towards restoring the energetic forces on the reverse side. Your body has cured itself. The elven mages were surprised by your peculiarities and came up with different hypotheses as to why a non-mage absorbed so much energy and where it was spent.”

  “The elves do not know about this characteristic of true bloods?”

  “No; studies were conducted ten thousand years ago; records of them were preserved only in the archives of the Miur keepers. The dragons themselves are not very eager to share the secrets, but we pretend that we do not remember our brothers and sisters who helped them. Your ability to create magic began to return after the restoration or regeneration of most of what you lost. Do not forget, you keep the key. Its accumulator also took a piece of the pie.”

  “The key, that Targ’s knickknack, so that is how I got taken for a ride….”

  “The key and your god are not directly related to the activation of the transition.”

  “What? My what?” Andy was taken aback, bewildered by the Great Mother’s words.

  “I returned several times to your memories and came to the conclusion that there was an invisible assistant who supplied the seventh rune, indicating the start point. The key worked after that. Someone, a true blood, rendered you a disservice….”

  “There are no more true bloods on Ilanta!”

  “I do not know anything about that. You have no evidence to the contrary. When you get back, you will be thorough, but for now, get rid of your hysteria and stop wringing your hands. Your valley is on another planet, and I do not intend to carry water in a leaky bucket. The images and memories in your brain prompted me to make an unambiguous conclusion: you were helped, someone intervened in the spell.”

  “Harder and harder with each passing hour…,” whispered Andy, white as a sheet, continuing to pierce Asha with a thoughtful gaze. He did not intend to break out into hysterics; it’s just the news was very out of the ordinary. Some scumbag had made him a puppet. A scumbag so experienced and strong magically that the thought of it made his skin crawl. Only an archmage among archmages can butt in to someone else’s rune interweave, and he didn’t remember any such characters. Based on Asha’s logic, he was a puppet in the hands of an experienced puppeteer. Targ! He punched the marble floor with all his might; some lightning flashed from his fingers; a deep melted pothole formed in the solid stone.

  The Miur’s whiskers twitched. The fur on her back stood on end from the electric discharges running through it.

  “Stop it!”

  “What?” Take a deep breath, once again, arms at your sides, calm down.

  “Stop it,” repeated the Miur. “Nobody controlled you, calm down. With the true bloods, this is simply impossible. Any impact on the psyche, no matter how subtle, leaves long-lasting marks, you do not have them.”

  Andy shook his head sadly. On Earth, without any magic at all, they’d learned to influence people through various methods, and here they had an instrument like that readily accessible.

  “Believe me, the fusion of minds allows the outside observer to identify any influence at any level. In your case, we have a point, a single, one-time intervention in the course of events. Someone was watching you that day and was very happy with the misdeed of the inexperienced dragon who sent himself here.” Asha held out her hand and touched him on the shoulder consolingly. “Even an energetic being can not constantly watch you. There is a reason why worlds are separated from each other by a border. Crossing it requires expenditure of mana on both sides. It is entirely possible that from there it is much more difficult to get into the materialized world, because here most of the energy has a strict fixed form and is subject to other laws.”

  “I am calm,” he said and put a mask of indifference on his face. The light sparks in his aura, once again under control, disappeared. Let his “sister” say whatever she likes in an attempt to console him. Maybe she’s right. It wasn’t possible to put control nodes on a true blood, except for marriage nodes. But it was very possible to influence the other people around them. A man does not live in a vacuum. Any actions or steps he takes are created under the influence of other beings and the circumstances imposed by them. Everything would be fine; he would return home, find the cur, and cut off his head. Just give him time.

  “Then answer me this: why can I still not take on my true form?” Andy returned to the initial topic of the conversation.

  “The answer lies in you, here,” the cat touched his forehead. “An internal ban, a taboo, fear of the astral. You are wary of being noticed. Our minds work in such a way that we put up insurmountable barriers for ourselves and we tear them down ourselves. This condition depends on will and belief.”

  “And desire?”

  “Desire, yes,” Asha replied complaisantly. “You can overcome yourself. You will do it again.”

  “What a nice conversation we are having, especially for me. I got much more than I bargained for.”

  “And yet we have both gained invaluable experience,” Asha concluded tactfully.

  “Oh, well….” Andy sneered skeptically. “Besides experience, you have gained a real trump in terms of politics. You will beat all the emperor’s and princes’ aces.”

  “Politics.” The miur sighed. Her whiskers drooped. “Targ take politics. It is because of politics that we have become hostages of ancient vows and have been driven into the mountains. The miur are on the brink; our population is growing, but where can we live? The cities under the mountains are getting crowded. Soon the forests of Lidar will not be able to feed all the hungry mouths.”

  Aha! While remaining outwardly indifferent, Andy pricked up his ears. The ruler would not have been a ruler, had she not conceived a move that would trigger some bargaining. A ruler without politics is like borsch without sour cream. I’ve had it, to Targ with it! He lay down on the couch and stared at the ceiling.

  “Asha, please, do not skirt around the matter. I do not want to play these games. I am quite fed up. Let us skip the Targ-loving manipulation. And really, after a merger like that, what manipulation can there be between us? Let us decide once and for all. If I can help, then I will help; if not, then I will tell you so directly, and you should not expect help from me. I am tired of politics and politicians. I want normal relations even in a narrow family circle. Since you allowed me to call you sister, let us act like it.” Having finished his tirade, Andy suddenly moved to the edge of the ottoman and looked Asha in the eyes. The miur shuddered involuntarily at the sight of the yellow vertical pupils that erupted in Andy’s blue eyes. Through the human face, the dragon was looking at her. “Tell me, how did this happen?”

  “It was a magical vow given carelessly by the Great Mother Irrshart to Rastigar. There were not many Miur then, and she was not taking a risk to swear that we would live where there are villages and cities of our people. Rastigar wanted to separate the races from one another and thereby prevent inter-racial wars. We had a lot of land. The Scarlet Mountains were all ours.”

  “What is so bad about an ancient vow? The conditions have changed, and Great Mother Irrshart is long gone.”

  “She is gone, but I am here, and her memory, which contains the blood oath, is transferred through the generations. I cannot break the vow, even though I did not make it. Apparently, Rastigar knew of the secret of the Great Mothers, or he guessed, and deliberately caught us in a trap. The old dragon was worried that we would become the strongest race, and he took forward-thinking measures to prevent the growth of the powerful Miur.”

  “The war Hazgar started took the Scarlet Mountains and the foothill regions from you. He destroyed all settlements, and the vow does not allow you to return. The Miur did not li
ve there anymore, so going back would be ‘resettling.’ Think about what you are saying! And undoing the vow? A magical vow can be removed by a direct descendant of the one to whom it was made. Can I rid you of this burden?”

  “It is not that simple. According to all the laws, you are a direct descendant, but you do not wear the crown. Only Jagirra, the real empress, can do that. That is why Hazgar is a pretender. No one conferred the magical crown to him. He has no connection to the throne.”

  Interesting situation. I completely understand Asha, and I really do sympathize. The Great Mother has had to do an insane balancing act so as not to pull the Miur into some conflict and to try to keep a lid on their population.

  The caste system and raising of the rulers to the rank of goddesses (for many thousand years the Great Mothers had the opportunity to adjust the social order to suit themselves) kept the people from unrest, but how long would the slopes of Mount Lidar contain the demographic growth? The number of Miurs was steadily increasing, and the demographic problem had come to the fore. Universal worship, of course, is good, but no more bread would come from it. When people are full, they make fewer demands.

  Andy got up and walked around the room. For some time now, he’d noticed that it was easier to think on his feet. Asha did not interfere. The cat felt the direction of the dragon’s mental flow and hoped for a positive result of their brainstorming. Grabbing the pillow and pulling her knees up to her, she watched the two-legged pendulum pace back and forth.

  With his hands behind his back, he measured the room with wide strides. The task was before him. If you think about it, Asha wants to offer me help in returning Jagirra to Nelita, but I’m against it with all my heart. She no longer belongs on the dragons’ native planet. What can I suggest as a way out and how can we solve this puzzle? Or maybe... you wanted to play your own game. Why not make the first move right now? Judging by the Miur’s reaction, she hadn’t guessed his thoughts about resettling their race to Ilanta, so….