Jovann immediately let go his hold on the young dragon’s armored throat. “Don’t hurt her!” he cried. And the young dragon’s voice spoke in exact echo of his own, “Don’t hurt her!”
The Dragon smiled and did not loosen his grip. “Come here, Dream Walker,” he said to Jovann. “Come here and stand before me.”
Jovann obeyed. His form had lost its strength of substance, and flowed up the stairs, small and weak before the Greater Dark. “Please,” he whispered again, “don’t hurt her.”
The Dragon ignored him. He addressed himself to his child, the young dragon panting on the lower steps. “The time has come, Sunan-Khla,” he said. “The time has come for you to take the revenge your people crave. Lead the Khla men. Lead all the Chhayan tribes. Set upon the gates of your usurper’s palace with fire, and let no Kitar life be spared.”
As though their tongues had been released from some wicked spell, the formations of Khla warriors set up a shout that drowned out the chanting voices of their priests. The young dragon did not shout with them. He stared at the girl held in the grip of such foul evil, his own Dark Father. He could not speak. He could not shout. He could not even issue a command.
He spun about, his sinuous dragon form coiling like an enormous snake, and took to the air. He flew from Ay-Ibunda, and all the Tiger army followed after him, marching through the temple gate and onto paths too dreadful for mortal minds to fathom.
The Dragon smiled to watch them go. Then he turned that smile upon Lady Hariawan and Jovann. “Come,” he said. “We must attend to business of our own.”
Sairu heard the first screech followed by a thunderous rumble so distantly that at first she did not recognize it for what it was. She stood on the edge of the braziers’ light, her gaze fixed upon the figure standing in the center, and she had no thought for anything but him, for somehow making her voice, her spirit, reach out to him, calling him back from whatever strange realm he wandered.
But the gathered priests heard the sound. Those outside the circle shifted and looked at one another, then each turned his gaze to the Besur, as a child turns to its father. The Besur himself, however, after casting an unsettled glance back over his shoulder, focused again on the center of the circle.
Another screech. Another rumble. Now even some of the ten priests forming the chant stumbled over their words. It was only a brief falter, but it was enough. Like a crack in a pane of glass the break spread, shattering the controlled meditation. “No!” the Besur growled. “No, don’t stop!”
It was no use. One by one the priests shook their heads and bowed back, stepping into the darkness behind the braziers. Now Jovann stood alone. He could not maintain the dream-walk without the support of the brothers. He would return. At any moment his spirit would rush back to his body.
“Jovann!” Sairu did not realize how loud her voice was, not even when the priests on either side of her jumped and cried out in alarm. She leapt forward, springing between two of the braziers, and flew to Jovann’s side. He stood upright, his face raised to the sky high above, his mouth moving in steady rhythm to a chant she could not hear.
But his body was fading. She could see right through his upraised hands, right through his shoulders, his neck.
“Monster!” she cried, turning about and searching for the cat in the shadows. “Monster, what is happening?”
The cat trotted into the circle, sniffing at Jovann’s boots, which were also fading now, whirling away like smoke on the wind. “He’s leaving this world,” the cat said. “I’ve never seen anything like this. His body is fading from the Near World. He’s being taken away by some . . . some force . . . I—” The cat cursed then, his lips drawn back in a hiss. “The Dragon!”
“I don’t believe in dragons,” Sairu whispered, staring into Jovann’s face, which she could scarcely see now. She put out her hand, tried to reach him, tried to touch his cheek.
But he was gone.
The air ripped with another screech, and the thunder this time was much nearer. She heard it this time, recognizing the same sound she had heard as prelude to the destruction in Lembu Rana. She realized then that the assault had begun. Without warning, without preamble, the Long Fire was being flung at the walls of Manusbau and the Crown of the Moon.
Sairu spun on heel and ran out, passing between the shivering priests. The cat hastened at her heels, and they burst through the doors of Hulan’s Throne and looked out across the temple grounds. She saw fire. She saw shooting flame whirling up through the night sky. She smelled, even from that distance, the rotting-eggs odor. Men were shouting, screaming, and by the light of fires ignited by those small explosions she saw the shadows of armored men running to defense.
“Monster,” she said, turning to the cat, “I know how to find my Lady Hariawan. I know how to reach her. Will you follow me?”
The cat, his eyes like two bright moons on his face, stared up at her. He did not know what she had in mind, could not guess at the workings of her brain. Fear of the Dragon was in his heart. But he answered, “I will follow you. I will protect you.”
“Then come,” said Sairu, and she sprang down the steps and into the darkness of the temple grounds. More shrieks tore the air, like the ghosts of the dead returned for retribution.
The Moon in her gardens above the worlds sits upon her throne and watches the coming of fire. She feels her children all around her, and they sing on, oblivious, even as their voices form the very prophecies of their doom. She sings as well, but there is a new thread to her intricately woven song, a new counterpoint added to the pattern of the whole.
She sings a song of sorrow closing in. And her children turn to her in surprise. One child, Cé Imral, who dances near to her, steps forward. “Mother,” he asks, “what is this new Song? I do not know it.” And he shivers as he speaks, for he does not like the sound of his Mother’s voice forming the strange harmonies.
The Moon turns to him sadly and touches his face, all the love of her being in that touch. “My child,” she says, “it is not a Song for you to sing. This is my Song for you.”
Then she looks again out through her Gate, out into the worlds. Into the Dream. And she sees that which approaches.
A procession of phantoms marched, chanting as they went. Over their shoulders were great chains attached to an enormous rolling dray. It was six meters long and two meters wide, supported on massive wheels that were each twice as tall as a grown man. It was built of neither wood nor stone, nor of metal, nor of any other material to be found in the mortal realm. No indeed, for it was built of the dreams of those who pulled it. Their dreams had grown strong and dreadful over the years. They themselves had lost much of their substance and become little more than shadows, save for their ongoing chants. But they were strong in their dreams. And so they did not struggle to create this massive vehicle.
But they struggled to pull it. For while the dray itself was built of their dreams, that which it contained was more solid, more real, than any one of them.
It is rumored among mortals and immortals alike that hidden in the Netherworld, down below the deepest layers of the Dream, the Dragon has buried a mighty hoard. Poets and tellers of tales have spun many a legend depicting the gleaming, stolen riches of this hoard: king’s crowns still worn upon severed heads, magic rings bitten from hands, rubies formed from the spilled blood of maidens, sapphires formed from widows’ tears. These and many more are said to mound in disorderly grandeur, heaping from chests, spilling from alabaster jars, littered here and there with the charred bones of heroes who have attempted to reclaim their kingdoms’ treasures.
But none of these things are spoken of with as much awe as the treasure which was the very first in the Dragon’s collection. This, it was said, was a heart of shining gold. Not gold formed into a heart, which is a different thing entirely. No, but a heart that was itself gold, the purest, most valuable element. This heart was cradled safely in an ebony box lined with blood-red satin. Some have said that it was the heart of
a Faerie queen who was taken by the Dragon’s kiss and formed into the first of his ugly brood. The story says that he took her beating heart in his hand and pulled it from her breast, filling the opening left behind with his flame so that she took on dragon-shape.
But this story is false. The Dragon’s hoard was begun long before he formed children in his likeness. So the heart, hidden away in its caverns many ages before, must have belonged to someone else.
Long ago a wise man, Akilun by name, taught that this same heart once beat in the Dragon’s own breast; that before Time began there was an age when the Dragon was not fire-filled but full of love and song. But if this story is true, it is a truth so long forgotten as to be little different from a falsehood.
However it was, the Dragon took the golden heart—his oldest and most glorious treasure—from its box and, without a thought or a care, melted it down along with hundreds of other treasures. Then, plunging his hands into the melted gold, which seared up his arms and gave him awful pleasure, he shaped it. He molded it. He formed the Gold Gong, pounding with brutal hammers until its surface was smooth and shining like the face of Lumé himself. And when this was done, he scored that gleaming surface with his claws, scratching words in a language of fire and destruction.
This task complete, the Dragon stepped back and surveyed his handiwork. “May you ring out loud and long, O brilliant heart of mine,” he said. “And may your voice herald the fire I bring!”
And now the gong stood in the bed of the giant dream-wrought dray, suspended between two pillars, swaying and humming gently in the motion of its passage. The phantom priests strained with all their might, progressing one achingly slow footstep at a time. But Time did not matter here. Behind them came the Greater Dark, and his shadow, like a lashing scourge, drove them before him.
The Dragon laughed to watch the phantoms struggle. Then he looked down upon the mortals on either side of him, one held by each of his man-shaped hands. Both walked with their heads bowed, their shoulders bent, their eyes downcast. But while in the lady he felt nothing but submission and compliance, in the man he felt resistance.
“You needn’t try to fight me,” the Dragon said. “No one will blame you, not even your worst enemies. Mortals who fight me never fare well. And who knows? If you obey without complaint, I might even let you go. What do you think of that?”
Jovann said nothing. The hum of the gong seemed to waft back over him, filling his ears with its heavy tonality. That hum seemed to call up words in his mind; words which had planted themselves in his memory and, no matter how hard he tried to repress them, continued to haunt him, night and day. He heard them now, droning in the voice of the gong:
I see them running, running, stumbling,
Running, as the heavens
Break and yawn, tear beneath their feet,
Devouring, hungry Death!
Perhaps the Dragon heard them as well, for he smiled again, and his grip on Jovann’s shoulder tightened. “It will come to pass, mortal man. I myself etched the writing in gold, and it is a true prophecy, for I shall make it so.”
He stopped suddenly, and the procession ahead of him ground to a halt as well. Jovann gasped as he was flung to the mist-churning ground at the Dragon’s feet, but pushed himself up immediately, his eyes blazing with rebellion.
“Don’t think you can thwart me,” the Dragon said, drawing Lady Hariawan before him so that he held her once more with a hand on each shoulder. Her robes were stained red-brown with her blood, and her face was deathly white save for the crimson scar. The Dragon gazed down at the top of her head and considered her.
“She is strong,” he said. “She walks the Dream with more confidence than I had ever seen in a mortal. And I require a mortal, for they alone can find the Gate I seek. Immortals have sought it all in vain, but mortals have seen it in their dreams. And the Dreams Walkers have drawn near to it in the past. I heard rumor that a new Dream Walker had been discovered with the power to find the Moon’s Garden, and I began my search. Fool that I was to trust mortal instruments for such a work! But for all their incompetence, they found her at last, as you well know—this powerful Dream Walker who has walked in the Gardens of Hymlumé and brought back blossoms from those gardens into the Near World. So I believed my task complete, my victory near.
“But,”—and the Dragon leaned over Lady Hariawan, his inordinately long neck stretched across her head so that he might look Jovann in the eye—“she is not the one I seek, is she, little man-beast? For she can only walk the outer crust of the Dream, this dusty wasteland where mortal minds form strange sights, where nothing is true, nothing is real. Such a Walker is incapable of finding something so vital as Hymlumé’s Gate! She is useless. She is nothing.
“You, however . . . I saw you in the Deeper Dream. Down beneath all this surface layer, down beneath the reach of Time. I saw you walking where mortals cannot go, and yet you walked and you lived.”
Jovann wanted more than anything in that moment to take a backward step. Just one. He did not even think to turn, to run, to try to escape. Only one step back, one desperate attempt to create a little space, such a little space, between himself and those burning eyes.
He held his ground.
“You are the Dream Walker I need,” the Dragon said. “Your father knew it. He tried to protect you, tried to send you away and keep you from me. But he could not. Not in the end. Nothing I desire is kept from me.”
Here the Dragon drew back his head, his long neck vanishing into his shoulders so that his proportions were once more near to a man’s. His grin, however, was all dragon. “Take me to the Moon’s Gate, boy.”
“I cannot,” said Jovann.
“Cannot? Or will not?”
“Cannot. I am not the Dream Walker.”
The Dragon’s grin vanished. Fire flared up behind his teeth. “You are. I saw you in the Deeper Dream.”
“I was led there,” Jovann said. “I did not dream-walk on my own.”
The Dragon made no move save for the wavering flame on his tongue. Then he lifted one hand, slowly extending one finger so that the full length of his talon might gleam for a moment beneath Jovann’s nose. He rested this talon across Lady Hariawan’s throat. He said: “I will not beg. I will not barter. I will not even ask. I will command one last time. And you will obey me.” He applied pressure, and a thin line of blood ran in delicate trickle down the pale skin of the lady’s neck.
Lady Hariawan raised her gaze. She fixed Jovann with her deep eyes, so lovely and so sad. The Dragon holding her formed the words with his lips, but it was she who spoke. In a voice low and rough, perhaps with fear, she said, “Take me to the Moon’s Gate, Juong-Khla Jovann.”
She spoke his name. The name he had given her so freely. So foolishly.
Jovann turned and marched past the massive dray, the humming gong, and the long line of chain-linked phantoms, all of whom watched him through hollow pits where their eyes had once been. Chhayans, he knew, for only a Chhayan would be willing to suffer such agony for the sake of revenge. He shuddered as he passed them, his own people, his kin, and wondered if he knew the names of the men they had once been. He marched to the front of the procession, and there he stood alone.
He felt his physical body containing him like a prison. How helpless he was in this form! In spirit he might fly away, might even assume a different shape. But in his body he was weak, and he could not resist both the Dragon and the lady.
“Please,” he whispered, gazing out upon the emptiness around him. He did not know to whom he spoke, but he felt the need and whispered with all his heart. “Please help me.”
Across the Boundless, the wood thrush replied: “Follow me, Jovann.”
Jovann took a step. He took a second.
As he took the third, he saw Hulan’s Gate appear before him. He knew then, beyond any doubt, that whatever doom the Dragon intended would surely come to pass. And he recalled the first words Hulan had said to him when he, an unworthy mortal, had s
tood in her mighty presence:
“I have dreaded and longed for your coming. It is for me the foretelling of sorrow.”
“Forgive me, Hulan,” he whispered as the Gate grew upon the horizon. “Forgive me.”
The Path of Nightmares is beyond mortal tongues to tell. For to each traveler it wears a different aspect, making itself individually dreadful according to individual dread. It is a long Path, a winding way through shadows and fires and images indescribable, but the Khla men marched it with grim, determined strides. They had suffered for too long, for too many generations, to back down now.
The young dragon led them. He wore a man’s shape once more, but there was a dragon in his eyes. For him the Path took on the most dreadful nature, revealing frightful, hellish images, spilling emotions and sensations down upon his head that would have slain a mere mortal. But he was a dragon now. It seemed to him that all the horror rolled off his shoulders like water. This was not in fact the truth. Instead the horror soaked down beneath his armor plating, beneath his skin, sinking into that place where his heart once beat but where now there was only fire. And there the fire consumed it and mounted in rage, poison, and intensity. So while his soul slowly filled up to the brim with terror of the Dragon’s Path through the winding Between, he believed it was courage that rose inside him, readying him for the task to come.
They traveled swiftly according to mortal perception of Time, which is not a governing force in the Between. And they gathered more warriors in their wake. Men of each Chhayan clan felt the summoning of the Greater Dark. And they rose up from whatever work they had been about, took up their weapons, and stepped into the Between. Their vengeance was at hand. The blood of their forefathers would be avenged and then surpassed in the blood of the Kitar usurpers. They passed out of the Near World of mortals into the winding darkness of the Dragon’s Path, adding their number to that of their brethren.