“If I have no right of Convocation,” Hasai said, “what is the whole of Dragonkind doing here in the first place? Dismiss them, if you can.”Dithra lifted up her head. “Tteid’i’rae-huw!” she sang, one long angry note in the future certain: you shall all depart! But it was untrue, and choked itself off; and the Dragons looked at one another, distressed.
“As for the other matter,” Hasai said, gazing calmly at Dithra’s furious ehhath and no whit troubled by it, “the issue we shall argue here, and decide, is greater than any other since the hr’nn’s’raihle called when our people decided to leave the Homeworld. We had a choice too, then, to live or die as a species. That is the issue again today. The Sign has come which M’athwinn spoke of, the day when the cast skin is put on again. Look at me!”
They looked. He was real. Even lately, even at his most corporeal, to Segnbora Hasai had seemed to lack something—not necessarily a physical solidity, but something inner. It was there now: his voice rang with it, and his song, in a richness and complexity of chording that Segnbora had only heard hinted at before. “I was mdahaih. But that is all over. The Draconid Name has passed to me; changed, as we have been changed, by the new world we live in. It was given me through my old sdaha. But she is my sdaha no longer.” A pang went right through Segnbora as he said it, but she held her peace: that feeling of trembling on the edge of something tremendous was with her again. “And I have no mdeihei any longer. I am not sdahaih, nor mdahaih, nor rdahaih either. New words will be needed. But hr’sdahaih, as in M’athwinn’s old rede, will do. I have been freed: pushed past the point where one must cohabit with the dead to be alive… or with the living, once dead.”
The rustling of uncertainty that went through the Dragons was like the first wind of a storm as it begins to rush through a forest. “Have you forgotten the old songs so completely?” Hasai cried, singing almost in anguish. “How they sang on the Homeworld of the times in the most ancient past when the living lived in their own minds, in freedom, and chose their own actions unadvised except by others of the living, and by Mn’Stihw?” Every neck bent, all wings bowed, at the Immanence’s rarely-sung Name. “But our world began to die untimely,” Hasai said, his song going sorrowful: “and here, as in other times and places, the Immanence saw Its making marred by the old Shadow of Its light. But It was not to be foiled so easily that It would let the death of our home kill us too. It conceived a plan.”
The rustle of unsettled wings was getting louder. “It saw our coming here,” Hasai said. “The circumstances, and the troubles that would befall. It knew that many, many of us would die in the Crossing. And indeed that happened—but not as many died, as it turns out, as might have. To spare that needless death, the Immanence invented mda’had. The dead began to pass in-mind to the living, and were sheltered there, safe from the cold of the night between worlds… so that when they had been led at last to the place appointed, they could be released.” His song was anguished, but joyful as well. “This is the place appointed: this is the day of your release! The wandering, the fear, the imprisonment of the untimely dead, are truly over at last. All this had to wait till a human was one with us in mind, to remind us from inside of what a single soul feels like… the way one note heard will bring the whole song back to mind. Many unwitting attempts we have made, living and talking with our human Marchwarders over centuries, sensing obscurely that they had something we needed. But none of these attempts came to fruit, until a woman in the wrong place at the wrong time became sdahaih to a Dragon. Even that was not quite enough: it was still required that great need should force the bond apart, and love dissolve it willingly. But all conditions are now fulfilled.”
He looked over at Segnbora. “I said I have no sdaha,” he said. “I had one, but in her wisdom, or her Goddess’s, she freed me. And now neither of us have mdeihei. But look what we have instead!” All eyes turned to the crowd gathered around Segnbora: some three hundred Dragons who had long since “cast the last skin” and become physically unreal. They were real enough now.
Dithra was hissing with rage. “How can you be so sure of yourself?” she sang. “This world has its own creatures, and its own deity: have you asked them whether it approves these plans? And even were all this wild conjecture true, why should we change? Why give up what certainty we have for we know not what madness, an empty aloneness in one’s mind, with no other presence to counsel it against foolhardiness—”
Segnbora laughed, then, and stepped out from among the former mdeihei, for this was the moment for which Hiriedh had named her rahiw’sheh, and her advocacy was upon her. “The old argument!” she said. “Listen now! Your coming freed our world from the Dark that lay over it, all those years ago. You’re welcome guests. But you must act to accept the hospitality, or die out of the world, as you’ve begun to do already. Where are the Dragonets? You are so careful of this world, so nervous about it, that you haven’t even managed to breed in it! You’re treating it as if it were flawed somehow, or broken—a dying place, like the Homeworld! The way you’re managing matters at present, one by one you’ll slip away and go mdahaih, until there’s no one to go mdahaih to any more. You’ll go rdahaih, the whole species of you together! The Immanence Itself will speak the Draconid Name, and there will be no answer…. ”
Wings unfolded and furled again all over the Howe, a mass Dracon shudder. “Yes,” Segnbora said, “and that’s exactly what the Shadow wants. We the humans invite you now: come be with us, and of us: come fight on our side!—for there’s no other way we can save you from the fate awaiting you. Let us return the favor you did us, and even the balance!”
Dithra arched her neck at Segnbora in scorn. “What right have you to speak for all humankind—”
Segnbora held out Skádhwë. Outside the core of its darkness, it blazed like a star with her certainty. “Oh, I do more than just that. I speak for the Goddess, Who made this world, and who speaks through me as through all humans, for She has no simpler way. Are you going to demand that She come Herself to make Her case? Why should She, when she has done? Wasn’t the Messenger enough, to make it plain to you that this was to be your world? How can a people with such eyes be so blind?!”
“Lhhw’Hreiha,” Hasai said, in a long low chord that deepened and broadened and built like the wind rising before a storm, “make your choice: and abide it.”
From under the shadow of his wings, Dithra looked up at Hasai from her crouch, her wings rising slowly, the barbs cocked toward him, her jaw dropping. “I will have things as they are,” she sang softly. “With one exception.”
The Dragons began to clear hurriedly out of the way to give them room.
Segnbora moved back too, but not too far. Her eyes were on Hasai: she could feel his uncertainty. Sithesssch, she thought, the price of Assemblage is always the DragonChief’s life.
I know, he said. He was watching Dithra move down into the center of the space left open for them, watching the way she moved: her ehhath was surprisingly calm, all of a sudden, the manner of a Dragon who knows she is superior in fight—or remembers-ahead that she has already won. Either way, one of us is clearly going to die. But your business, sdaha, is to make sure that you remember how you managed it last time—
Segnbora stared at him, confused. But Hasai had already turned away, moving down after Dithra.
She leapt at him, and a great dissonance of shock and distress went up from the Dragons who watched, as Dithra ignored the protocols of proper nn’s’raihle—no dance, no statement in ehhath of her own case, just this bald, rude attack. But Hasai flung himself back, a quick back-raking of wings and a spring of the haunches, and Dithra missed and came down short. Hasai flowed swiftly off to one side, his jaw dropping in a smile, or in preparation of Dragonfire, it was hard to say which. “Au uuzh’aave’, ha-nnha’mdadahé, ou ylihhaih’errhuw,” Hasai sang as he circled her in courteous reminder of the dance she had discarded: and one wing was raised over her as he closed in, to prevent her taking to the air. All his ehhath w
as tense and ready, but nonetheless full of cheer, the tail wreathed in amusement and excitement at something that was finally happening. A bad beginning, Dweller; no matter, it will end well—
All Dithra’s body went tense with rage as Hasai sang in the predictive mode, future definite, and the song was true and did not choke itself. She flung herself at him again, but sidewise this time, fang-sheaths retracted and every topaz fang showing, the great curve of her tail whipping around to pinion Hasai’s tail harmless. They closed, and tangled. Hasai whipped his neck back out of the way of her fangs closing in it: but at the same time Segnbora saw the fire build abruptly behind Dithra’s eyes, knew that a blast of Dragonfire was coming, and lifted Skádhwë.
NO, Hasai cried into her mind, do not! Use it now and it will be useless for the most important part— He lunged with his head like a striking snake, his jaws open, and clamped them down hard around Dithra’s, so that she struggled, impotent to flame at him. From behind, what was left free of her tail came flailing around, the terrible spear-long spine ready to strike. Hasai’s tail writhed itself free and twined with hers, straining against it. The two fell together, rolling over and over on the stones.
Dithra changed her tactic, now not trying to get free, but pulling Hasai closer to her, to savage him with her hind talons. Dragons had few internal organs any more, but if ripped open from keel to vent, a Dracon body would die soon enough, simply from the damage to the tissue-network that carried its energy through it. And Dragons had vulnerable points: the spine, the master-junction behind the head where Dragonfire was spawned, the brain. Disrupt those, and death would be certain, though not swift—Dragons were too tough to die quickly.
They were still rolling, and Hasai was just holding Dithra away from him: she was mostly kicking air, and her song was reduced to a choked hissing thunder of rage and fear. Scraps of star-emerald and black sapphire and diamond lay about the stones—lost scales, torn bits of hide: some of those kicks were beginning to reach their target. Hasai planted his hind legs hard in Dithra’s gut and pushed her away, all the time holding on, holding like grim death to her jaws, still clamped in his own. Now, sdaha, he said in Segnbora’s mind, very shortly now—
Segnbora still had no idea what he wanted from her, and was rather shocked as well by the tone of his mind, all merriment and anticipation. He had no answer for her, though, and no time to answer. They rolled again, almost to her feet, and Segnbora backed up hurriedly to avoid one of Dithra’s wing-barbs coming down on top of her: it split a boulder, flailed away again.
Now, Hasai thought again; and then he lost his grip on Dithra’s jaws. They opened, and Dragonfire burst out with awful force, real as’rien such as Hasai had used on the ice elemental; the air exploded out of its path, thunder followed it. The stream of it went over Hasai’s shoulder, moving as they still rolled, and Dragons scattered so as not to be caught in the traveling stream of it.
Then Hasai caught Dithra’s head again, with a coil of his tail, and began pulling it slowly back and back, away from him. He was on the bottom of the tangle at the moment, his talons well dug into the stones, Dithra abruptly upside-down on top of him. Segnbora’s breath went out of her in a rush as she saw the awful dead-white scorch where Dithra’s Dragonfire had caught him under the breast and at the wing-root, and Hasai’s ehhath was pained now, but the cheer was still there, and his looped tail threw another loop around Dithra’s neck and pulled her head down and down as if on a rope. Fire came raging out of her again and again, in that terrible destroying stream, but it hit nothing but air, or the stones, both of which burned away to nothing.
Then Hasai snaked his head around behind Dithra’s. A final flare of terror in the eyes, a final wild struggle, all her body writhing now, Dragonfire spewing out with desperate violence: but to no effect. Hasai’s jaws clamped down with great accuracy, just behind the spine of her face-shield, and bit her in the brain.
Her body started to go limp: her thrashing began to slow. Sdaha! Hasai said.
Segnbora came forward slowly, looking at the twitching body, but mostly at the eyes, dimming now, the fire going out from behind them: and that, at least, she found quite familiar. She put Skádhwë away. Now she understood Hasai’s fear, earlier. It was not himself he had been afraid for.
Segnbora remembered how it had been, that first time. The outrage, the violation of having a crowd of Dragons poured into one’s head. She had gotten used to it. But could she get used to this—the whole species sharing soul-space with her? Could she bear it and not go mad? More—could she survive it?
She looked up at Hasai as she stood by Dithra’s huge head. He looked down at her, and said nothing, just waited, while the light in Dithra’s eyes pulsed feebly, dimmer with every pulse.
Well, rahiw’sheh, he said finally. He did not say the rest of it: let us see how far your Advocacy goes.
She nodded and reached down to touch Dithra, stroking the head-shield. “DragonChief,” she said, “you have no one to go mdahaih to. No one but me.”
Those eyes dwelt on her, fading. Rage was still in them, and now grief as well, and the wounded pride they had seen earlier. Dithra tried to open her mouth, but there was no song left in her, and thought as well was fading fast.
You can be right, Segnbora said to her, stroking her still. You can win. And kill all Dragonkind doing it. Or lose. Au, Dweller, for the Immanence’s sake if not theirs! —
A long pause. The last twitches of the limbs became still. Dithra’s eyes grew dark.
And the last thought came, faint.
For theirs, then—
The crack in her mind opened, was shouldered wide. Segnbora knew it of old, knew the pain that would follow, and braced herself. It was useless. Compared to pains she had felt earlier, this new one was like the pain the Goddess felt in giving birth to the worlds, though reversed: inexpressible masses of something living that came thrusting inward, not out. The pain was as much to be resisted or prepared for as one might resist an avalanche or a landslide with one’s bare hands. Minds and minds and minds came crowding into Segnbora’s. Not merely Dithra’s, not just those of her mdeihei, but also the minds of every Dragon alive, which were part of Dithra’s as well—the concrete reality of which the Draconid Name itself was only an abbreviation. All the Dragons’ lives, thoughts, emotions, desires, fears, and the business of all their bodies, hunger and weariness and age: all those poured down into Segnbora’s self, and she could not even scream for the pain of it. All she could do was make room for them inside her, and she did that, and did it, and did it, for ever and ever, it seemed….
Eventually the pouring stopped. Sight came back to her slowly. Hasai’s head hung over her; she half-knelt, half- slumped against the body of a dead Dragon, dull now, the life gone out of the gems of the hide, the eyes mere clouded yellow stones. The clamor in the back of her mind was frightening. She felt near dying herself: her Fire was going out, pressed down and away from her use by the presence and weight of so many other souls in one body.
She knew she had little time. Even Dragons had died of this malady, of having too many others become mdahaih to them too suddenly, when the Dark attacked them at the end of the Crossing. Segnbora reached up and clutched at Hasai’s face for help in getting up. He pulled her carefully to her feet. All around them, Dragons looked on, frozen in fear and wonder. Segnbora’s shadow stretched out long and black from her in the late afternoon sunshine. She lifted an arm, and watched the dark shape of a Dragon’s wing reach out across the stones in response. Her shadow was a Dragon’s, now, and much bigger than it had been before.
“Yes,” she said. And she drew Skádhwë, and lifted it carefully, for her aim was wobbly, and she cut the shadow free.
Then she collapsed to her knees again, feeling the pressure from within her suddenly ebb, and her Fire begin to spring up and recover, like a light that has had a glass removed from over it. A great silence came, filled with nothing but the breathing of the Sea against the shore; and a shadow came bet
ween Segnbora and the sun. She looked up. It was not Hasai. It was Dithra, in her green and gold, unstained, younger, her ehhath astonished as she looked down on her old body—the “cast skin” that suddenly she wore again. At the sight of her, the something in Segnbora that had been holding its breath all this while—that feeling of something tremendous about to happen if only, against all hope, things went right—let itself go at last, and the joy of it flooded her. She scrambled to her feet and looked down the mountainside.
Her old shadow was flowing down the slope like a live thing, and spreading, swallowing every Dragon’s shadow up in itself: a carpet of darkness, but darkness with movement hidden in it, like the Eorlhowe Gate. Perhaps the same movement—for shapes began to rear up out of it, cloaked in the shadow’s dimness, and then shook it off them like dark water in the low reddening light of the sun. They flung wings out that had not felt air since the Homeworld lost its own, reared up glittering in liveries that had not seen light since their wearers were lost two hundred centuries before, in the empty places between the stars. Hundreds of them reared up, thousands, shaking off the darkness, mdahaih no longer, but their own Dragons, and alive; the air filled and darkened with them, the shore and the inland hills rustled with them, and the song of their speech went up in a mighty concord like all the horns and viols of a world gathered in one place—a music with its confusions and dissonances, but oh, what music—
Segnbora looked up at Hasai. He and Dithra were gazing at one another with an odd sort of understanding. “So that is what hr’sdahhad is like,” Dithra said.
Hasai dropped his jaw in agreement. “Au, Dweller.”
She wreathed her tail in negation. “I am not,” she said. “That title has passed now to you—or you and your hr’sdaha, however you like—for to hold so many in-mind would kill me, and I am not suicidal. There must be five times as many of them as there were—”