The Tale of the Five Omnibus

  SIXTEEN

  Some gifts are so great that the only way the recipient can express his gratitude is to immediately give the gift to someone else. A dangerous business, this, among fickle humankind, who often see such generosity as indicative of a thoughtless heart. But in such a matter, do as your heart directs you. In the last reckoning, She is both giver and receiver, acting both parts to increase the joy of both – and if humankind doesn’t understand, She does.

  (Charestics, 118)

  They leaned on the broad stone wall and looked down into the dark streets of Darthis. No light burned anywhere—not so much as a hearthfire or candle or lamp. Below them the city dreamed in a silver pallor of moonlight, though there was a shifting and stirring in the Square under the walls of the Black Palace.

  A few thousand people stood down there, quiet or murmuring, waiting for the Queen to strike the first sparks of the Midsummer needfire and distribute it among them. Most of those waiting were only concerned with their part in the festival—lighting the candles and lamps they carried from the new fire and racing through the city with it, spreading luck and laughter. But a few looked up toward the palace walls and stared fascinated at something strange.

  Blue Fire flickered there, dancing about a long slender shape that seemed to be too dark to be a Rod. And there was other light there from a pair of silver-blue globes that looked uncannily like eyes staring downward. The more perceptive in the crowd had even noticed that the moonlight wasn’t falling on them—blocked away from the crowd by a huge winged shape that seemed there when one looked away from it, and not there when one looked at it straight.

  Whatever they saw, no one seemed particularly bothered by any of these peculiarities. This was, after all, Midsummer’s Eve, when magic was loose in the world.

  Down in the square, flint struck steel, and a spark nested in tinder and began to grow into flames. The cheering began. Viols and trumpets and kettledrums struck up a jubilant music that echoed off the walls, effectively drowning out a deeper music several stories up. “Hn ‘aa ‘se sithesssch mnek-kej-sta untühe au ‘lhhw’t’dae,” the music said, a voice like a trio of bass instruments playing a lazy, cheerful processional.

  “Ae, mdaha’esssch,” sang a softer voice, in a raspy alto. “We may as well enjoy the rest while we can …“

  “There won’t be much of it,” Hasai said, unfolding and folding his wings in resignation. He spoke in precognitive tense, but with good humor; the melody woven about his words said plainly that he preferred action to peace and quiet. “Arlen will be astir like thunderstorm air for months. If Cillmod doesn’t already know who was responsible for what happened at Bluepeak, he will very shortly. The war with Darthen will soon open.”

  “And the Queen forges her new crown tomorrow.” Segnbora groaned: a formal occasion first thing in the morning was the last thing she needed. “All I want is to sleep late.”

  “You may, if you please. I will teach you how, now that you have a sdaha’s proper timesense. Will a month or so be enough, sithesssch?”

  The footsteps now approaching them on the battlement came as no surprise. Two hours ago Segnbora had remembered hearing them, and she had been waiting for them ever since. “If he did know,” the shorter of the two approaching men said on reaching the top of the stairs, “it explains why he made the bastard Chancellor of the Exchequer.”

  “To keep an eye on him?”

  “Sounds like something my father might have done. This also explains how he managed to get the backing of the High Houses. But even if he can go into Lionhall, he doesn’t know the Ritual, he’s no Initiate—or if he is, he’s botching it. Arlen is ready for me now.”

  Freelorn and Herewiss looked strange out of surcoats and mail. They leaned on the wall, one on either side of Segnbora, in softboots and britches and light-colored shirts. Herewiss looked up at the dark shape that blocked-but-didn’t-block the Moon away. “How much are you there, lhhw’Hasai?”

  “As much as my sdaha needs me to be. Or as I need to be. Since we’re one, there’s little difference…”

  “Where were you an hour or so ago?” Herewiss said to Segnbora. “Eftgan was looking for you. Wanted your help with the needfire, or something.”

  “I was flying,” Segnbora said, nodding at the sky.

  Herewiss nodded soberly. She shared a gentle look with him, understanding now from her own experience how complete his underhearing must be, reaching even to others’ most private thoughts. “I have to thank you,” she said.

  “You don’t have to anything. You did it yourself.”

  “So I did. And you mediated some of that doing with me, saw me into the situations I’d need to get where I am.” She gave him a dry look. “You had little reason to give me such a gift, either. I tried to move in between you and your loved, a while back… and surely you noticed.”

  Herewiss nodded, looking grave. But not too much so. “These days, I don’t let old reasons interfere with what I want to do. And maybe, even when I was angriest at you, maybe I saw something…”

  “Who I was?” she said.

  “Yes. A liaison. There’s a whole race sharing the Kingdoms with us that not even the human Marchwarders understand properly—they have the language, but not the body that forms it. But there was more. You were a catalyst. And will continue to be. Things will be happening that need me— things I couldn’t do without you and your Dragons. Likewise there are things you couldn’t manage without me. I’m part of a solution. And more…”

  She fell silent, nodding, already having hints of what the “more” was. This was a small problem. Sometimes the ahead-memories came too fast, and she had trouble deciding what to share, what to keep to herself.

  Segnbora shrugged. The future was merely another kind of present to a Dragon, malleable as the past, part of the game. What mattered was what the player intended to be.

  In one word, her newfound Name, she told them.

  “We’ll keep your secret,” Freelorn said just above a whisper.

  Segnbora smiled at them, knowing that the One she meant to hear her Name had heard it through them; then waved good night, and headed for the stairs.

  Along the upper parapet, Hasai lazily put out a single forefoot—all he needed to do to keep up with her. “No more words?” he said.

  “What should I say?”

  Hasai lowered his head to gaze back down the parapet. Segnbora followed his glance, seeing Freelorn take back from Herewiss the lovers’ cup she had left them, drain it—and find it still full.

  “That,” Hasai said. “Forever.”

  Lost between laughter and tears of joy, Segnbora nodded, reached out to her mdaha, and led him off into their future, and to bed.

  Appendix 1: On Time, Calendars, and Related Subjects

  The motions of the Middle Kingdoms’ world around its Sun match those of Earth around Sol (except for negligible variations, such as those caused by sister planets missing in their solar system and present in ours). Their year is therefore the same length as ours—365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, 48-odd seconds. Though in Segnbora’s time clocks still have only hour hands, the astronomers of the Kingdoms have evolved their own methods of handling the year, and the little pieces of it that tend to pile up as time passes and throw calendars out of alignment with the seasons.

  Both Arlen and Darthen use a 360-day year of four 90-day “seasons” that correspond to our winter, spring, summer, and fall. Days are counted straight through each season, and spoken of as “the fifth of Winter,” “the thirty-eighth of Summer,” and so forth. In addition, the First of each season is always a major holiday, tied to solstice or equinox—Opening Night for Winter (the only one of the holidays that doesn’t fall directly on solstice or equinox), Maiden’s Day for Spring, Midyear’s Day for Summer, and the Harvest Festival (either Lion’s Day or Eagle’s Day) for Fall. The five remaining days are intercalated and belong to no season: they are placed between the end of Fall and the beginning of Winter, and during these cold
days at the bottom of the year, the Dreadnights as they’re called, no enterprise is begun, no childnaming or marriage celebrated. They are the Shadow’s nights, and unlucky. Every fourth year a sixth intercalary day (in Arlen Endethne, “Lady’s Day,” in Darthen Aerrudej, “the Goddess’s Joke”) is added between the Dreadnights and Opening Night, to deal with the need for a leap-year day.

  However, this still leaves a significant fraction of time out of the reckoning. The addition of the leap-day to compensate for the 5h-48m-48s leftover at year’s end is in fact an overcompensation. If left uncorrected, each year will be 11.2 minutes short. This may not sound like much, but in our world in the past has led to awful of the calendar year with the seasons—the first day of spring falling in December, for example. But this backward drift of dates is preventable by any number of methods. The astronomers of the Kingdoms found that the eleven-minute deficit will amount to a full day’s error in 128y-208d-13h-38m-21.125s. Therefore, once every 128 years, that 208th day (which by our calendar would be July 19th) is dropped from the year entirely, or rather converted to July 20th. That date in turn becomes the 29th of Summer rather than the 28th, and is called the Festival of the Lost Day. (The festival is devoted to pranks, pratfalls, drinking sprees, and attempts to lose things, usually unwanted ones. There are also lying contests, often with prizes for the best explanation of where the Lost Day went.) This system of adjustment runs independently of that for leap-year days. Though it would probably be more efficient to combine the adjustment systems, as our culture does, the Kingdoms’ astronomers are quick to point out that this would mean one less holiday.

  It is quite true that even this adjustment is not totally sufficient to keep the calendar in line with the seasons and the Sun. There is still an unadjusted error that makes the year too long by 0.0003 day, which will pile up to three days in each 10,000 years. However, in the words of Talia d’ Calath, the Grand RoyalAstronomer to King Berad of Darthen, “it is possible to worry too much, too far in advance.” The Dragons have promised to remind human beings to insert another one-day intercalary day every 3300 years—though there is still disagreement over why they laughed so hard when they promised.

  There are of course many minor local holidays not mentioned here. But neither Arlene nor Darthene calendars include anything like weeks or months. One may indicate a given day by season and number: or say “four days ago,” or “six days from now, “or “a month and three days,” etc. “Months”(actually the word is isten in both languages, very like the ancient Greek , which we translate as “lichtgang” or “Moonreturn”) are sometimes broken down to 29 days for counting purposes, but this is rare. Mostly a month is reckoned from a phase of the Moon to its next occurrence, most frequently full to full. This might be expected in a largely agrarian culture, where the times of planting are important. But to the people of the Kingdoms, the Moon is the living sigil of the Goddess, mirroring Her changes in its own as it slides from Maiden’s slim crescent to Bride’s and Mother’s white full to Crone’s waning sickle to Moondark perilous and hidden; and for the most part people have a fondness for the Moon and enjoy reckoning by it, without resource to numbers.

  Astronomers—and, of course, sorcerers and people with the blue Fire—are cognizant of such lunar functions as node crossings and regression of nodes, apogee and perigee and advance of the perigee point, librations and nutations, and eclipses both lunar and solar, such being important to their work. But (and very sensibly) no one has ever particularly cared about what the lunar calendar does in relation to the solar one. The only real notice taken of alignment between the two is in mention of Nineteen-Years’ Night, when the Moon is full on Opening Night and wreaking with sorcery or Fire is particularly potent.

  There is a tendency for Moon cycles to be referred to by name, the names differing from area to area. For example, the first full Moon of Spring, and the days following it from waning to dark to new crescent to full again, is usually called the “Song Moon” in Arlen, while some Darthenes call it the “Unicorn’s Moon,” and some others, the “Maiden’s Moon” or the “Mad Moon.” Special note is taken of the Harvest Moon in most places, both because of the shortening of its rising time and in memory of the bloody harvest cut at Bluepeak during one of its risings an age ago; the full Moon that follows the Harvest Moon is always the Lion’s or Eagle’s Moon, in Earn’s and Héalhra’s memory.

  Since the memory of the times before the Catastrophe has largely been lost, years are counted from the coming of the Dragons and the destruction of the Dark, and noted by number and the abbreviation for pai Ajnedäre derüwin, “after the Arrival.” An example: Segnbora’s birthday is Spring the 57th, 2098 p.a.d.

  Appendix 2: On Dracon Anatomy and Physiology

  The Dragons are perhaps purposely vague about their very beginnings. “Thinking about a time before their own consciousness,” d’Welcaen reports, “makes them nervous.” But the earliest Dracon memories recall a time when the Homeworld was populated by plant-analogs and other life forms. There was a food chain, and Dragons had use for the internal organs which now exist only in extremely debased vestigial forms.

  Somewhere along the line—possibly due to changes in the Homeworld’s orbit, or in its star’s characteristics – the planet’s seas began to evaporate, and its atmosphere to strip off. The Dragons report this as having taken many thousands of their lifetimes. Converting this time to human standards is difficult, and gives answers ranging from one to six million years. This may seem like quite a while, but it isn’t really, for an organism whose average generation is from four to six thousand years. The Dragons had to adapt in a hurry to the changes in their environment.

  Exactly how they did it so quickly is another question for which there is no clear answer; no mdeihei native to such ancient times remain extant in the Dragons’ minds. Rodmistresses and other Fire-using adepts who have been working with Dragons since the events following the Advocate’s intervention in 2927 p.a.d. have determined that the species possesses its own variant of Power, of which Dragonflame occasionally becomes an embodiment. Given this, they say, and given time enough and intention, the changes themselves are no mystery, though the details will always remain a matter of interest. Yet when the DragonChief was asked about the instrumentality involved in the change, the only answer to come back was straightforward (and to the Dracon mind, obvious): “The Immanence did it.” To the Dragons, miracle, as in the cultures of the Middle Kingdoms, is seen as part of the natural order—a tool occasionally used without prejudice by a God who has better things to do than be otiose.

  Already silicon-boron based—and what their ancient atmosphere and “seas” consisted of is still a matter for conjecture—the Dragons’ evolution went or was taken in the most efficient possible direction. Their anatomy began adjusting toward extreme lightness, for maximum efficiency in soaring in search of food. As food got scarcer due to increased irradiation, mutations became common—including possibly the most successful one of all, the alteration of silane rings in the black wing-membranes to effectively turn them into giant solar cells, using already-existing neural pathways for conduction of generated bioelectricity. Dragons born with this mutation needed no food in the old sense. They thrived and multiplied, soaring further and further sunward for nourishment. The increased irradiation seems to have induced more gene changes and mutations in brain physiology, so that the “highflyers” became increasingly able to manipulate “force”—magnetic fields, gravitational fields, and other instrumentalities less classifiable to humans. Organs used for digestion, respiration, and elimination slowly went vestigial until finally the Dragon as we now know it was complete—an efficient, flying energy-storage machine, spaceworthy, tolerant of extreme high and low temperatures (as had become commonplace on the Homeworld), and able to express that energy as Dragonfire and use it as tool and weapon.

  The reasons for that particular manifestation are debatable, but d’Welcaen suggests that Dragons feel about their
mouths as humans feel about their hands. Dracon psychology says that language is the primary means of effective survival: which perhaps explains why, even after their version of telepathy developed, the Dragons never gave up communication by way of vocal speech. Even their tongues still work after all these centuries—though they’re not necessary: Dracon sound generation long ago went over to non-acoustic mechanisms like those of whales. Fluid-filled or stressed-solid-filled cavities stimulated by “muscle” contraction, or catalytic chemical reactions, or neural/membrane synergies, or all three, allow Dragons to communicate with precision and stunning variation in almost any medium except empty space, and also permit the super-prolonged hisses, three- to eighteen-tone chords, and choral-verbal speech for which they’re best known.

  Dragonfire, according to d’Welcaen, is a phenomenon originally closely allied to “manipulation of force”, a matter no more complicated for a Dragon than breathing – a Dragoncel can flame before it can talk. In the very beginning, this would have been a survival skill: but a Dragon’s ability to melt several tons of lead-bearing stone over itself to protect it from a starstorm – or blast out of the covering again – is not a necessity in the Dragons’ new homeworld. (Indeed, the Dracon name for the Sun that shines on the Middle Kingdoms is hh-Aass’te’re, “the Shallows” – a warm, cozy little star, tame and safe compared to the mad fire of the Homestar in its last days.) These days, Dragonfire is for show, for building, for nn’s’raihle, and – when words fail at last – for mating fights and the most serious disagreements, when the hottest fire decides who will win the discussion or reproduce, and who will go very suddenly mdahaih.

  THE TALE OF THE FIVE, PART 3:

  THE DOOR INTO SUNSET