The Fall of Dragons

  Gabriel walked in, and found himself instantly in a paneled room with a fire in the grate. Mortirmir sat in spotless black velvet. He held a skull on his lap, and in it was the imprisoned soul of Harald Derkensun.

  “He was my friend,” Mortirmir said. “And now he’s dead. But I will bring him back.” He looked at Gabriel. “I know you’ll try to stop me. But you can’t. I can do this. I have the power.”

  Gabriel sighed, and noted that his right hand burned a bright gold. An almost unbearably bright gold, and he lit Mortirmir’s palace like a lamp. As he did, a number of realizations struck him, all together.

  “I have the power to stop you,” Gabriel said. “Let him go, Morgon.”

  “It’s my fault!” Mortirmir said. “You all think it’s my fault, and it is! But I told you there wasn’t enough potentia! And you fought anyway!”

  Gabriel sighed. “It’s really all my fault,” he said. “I brought you all here. On a short timeline, with no choices but to conquer or die. Morgon, I need you. Let Harald go. He’s in a limbo of undeath. We are not the Odine. We are not the dragons.”

  “We could be,” Mortirmir said. His voice was at the hermetical edge of sounding … sly. “We could be anything. I think you cannot face the reality of war, Gabriel. War kills. We will kill to win. The means do not matter. Do they?”

  Gabriel was looking at the burning, hermetical gold of his hand in the darkness of Mortirmir’s mind.

  “I think the colours are a distraction,” Morgon insisted. “Power is power.”

  “I think you are being turned,” Gabriel said. “I think that you have been tempted to evil. So have I. And I have fallen, many times. So I know all about climbing back out, Morgon. Evil is a choice. So is good. I think the powers have colours to teach us something; the way poison berries are bright red.”

  Morgon’s avatar set its jaw.

  “Be a knight,” Gabriel said. “Think of all the times you failed; at the pell, at the quintain …”

  “… in class,” Mortirmir admitted.

  “Failure is not all that painful,” Gabriel said. “And I have discovered I learn nothing unless I admit that I have failed. I have met swordsmen who delude themselves into believing themselves great; I have met housewives who delude themselves into believing that their houses are clean and their cooking good.”

  “I could bring him back,” Morgon said. “I have the power. You have no idea how much power I have, Gabriel.”

  Gabriel chose not to say, I just watched you murder two thousand sentient beings.

  Instead, he shrugged. “I know you have great power,” he said.

  “You could not stop me,” Mortirmir said.

  “I am stopping you right now,” Gabriel said. He rose to his feet, and the gold fell off him like rain. “I am not commanding an army right now. Michael is doing that. I am sitting with you. Can I tell you something, Morgon? I have about two days. Then I’m dead. I almost died today. In fact, at the rate I’m turning to gold, I might not even last until we pass the last gate. You may have to face Ash without me, Morgon. And I carry the weight of responsibility. Every death. Every fight, every wrong decision, every battlefield error, every horse dead of poison grass. I even get to enjoy the adulation of the people I lead to die. If ever there was a poison pill … a black power, it is that. Listen to me, Morgon. Let Harald go. Let them all go. Let it all go. Admit your failure …”

  “I did it for you!” Mortirmir said.

  Gabriel shook his head. “Yes, and no. I don’t know if we’d have held the hilltop without you. But by God, Morgon Mortirmir, we will not defeat Ash without you, and I could lose you right here. And you did it, at least in part, because you wanted to do it. To see how powerful you really are.”

  “I am like a god,” Mortirmir said.

  “Not even a little bit,” Gabriel said. He reached down and plucked the grim black skull from Mortirmir’s hands.

  Mortirmir didn’t move.

  “May I?” Gabriel asked.

  Mortirmir was weeping. “I want to do it,” he said.

  “Good,” Gabriel said.

  He stood silently while Mortirmir released the soul.

  He awoke to the feeling of Blanche’s shoulder against his chest. His pavilion was dark. He listened to her breathe for a long time.

  He rose in darkness, when Master Nicodemus woke him. Blanche was already awake and gone, and Hamwise appeared and began to dress him. He glowed like a lantern, and his new page made no comment.

  “Think what we’re going to save in candle wax,” the emperor said.

  His page made no comment.

  Blanche came in. She smiled when she saw him; he treasured that.

  “Anne said you were awake,” she said. “Ser Robert held the gate. The Council of Three Hundred has agreed to capitulate. Michael has made a great many decisions with me and George … I hope—”

  Gabriel waved a hand. “Good,” he said. “Kiss me, Blanche.”

  She came and kissed him.

  His page, embarrassed, turned away.

  His hands roved over her back.

  And then he sighed. “Let’s go.”

  “Snow and ice,” Long Paw said. “And … irks. Slaves. I saw ’em.”

  Ser Vizirt, the highest-ranking irk in the army, sat with Long Paw. He shook his head, his face deadly serious.

  “We have no legend to cover this …” he said.

  Gabriel looked at Morgon. The young man was silent. He sat holding the hand of his wife, Tancreda. She shook her head.

  But then he raised his head. “This whole world was a giant city,” he said. “And now they are all dead.” He looked at Gabriel. Then he looked at Bin Maymum. “How long will the gates remain open?” he asked.

  Bin Maymum looked at his companion and they both made a nearly identical face.

  Bin Maymum rose, bowed, and scratched his head. “A hundred years?” he asked.

  Every man and woman at the table gasped.

  Mortirmir nodded slowly.

  Gabriel felt his heart sink within him. “Oh God,” he said.

  Mortirmir looked at his emperor and nodded. “So the waves come, on and on, fighting for the gates. Someone built the gates because they thought all the sentient races would live in harmony—”

  “Or maybe some bastard just liked fightin’,” Tom Lachlan said. “Tar’s tits, friends. We can hold all the gates if’n we must.”

  Blanche said, “There’ll be nothing left of our civilization. No art, no song, no dance. Only war.”

  Gabriel sat back. “Let’s take this one crisis at a time, shall we?” he asked.

  Mortirmir steepled his fingers against his lips, looked over them, and nodded. “Ser Robert, these were the same creatures that you fought in Etrusca?”

  “The same,” Long Paw said.

  Morgon looked away. “So,” he said. “These were the rebel’s allies; and the soldiers of shadow.”

  “And now we hold a gate to one of their spheres,” Long Paw said. “That’s my understanding, Cap’n.”

  Gabriel shook his head. “Too complicated. Our goal is the same. These two gates should be quite close …”

  “Aye.” Michael nodded. “It’s waiting for us. I’m sorry, Gabriel. I ordered the march to commence. I reversed the order of march; that’s the only reason we’re still sitting here. You said you would do it at the last gate. The casa is exhausted. So are the Galles and the scarecrows.”

  “Well done,” Gabriel said. “Company?”

  “In front, with Milus and Sauce and the Etruscans.” Michael smiled his wry smile.

  “The salamanders just opened their gates?” Gabriel asked.

  Michael shrugged. “They surrendered. They are in what I can only describe as a state of shock. The messenger here tells us that they do not have a king, but a council; that their council is the leading three hundred creatures of their entire … Imperium. And that we seem to have captured them entire.”

  “There’s always someone cockier t
han you are yourself,” Gabriel said. He sat up. “Tell me about the irk slaves.”

  “You went and had a battle without me,” Sauce said. She smiled. “Look at that.”

  There was a valley between enormous mountains; they rose into the snow and vanished into the grey clouds, and high above them there were roads, and snow-covered roofs, and fur-bundled irks came down to the roadside to stare at them; but anytime a knight looked at them, they would cast their eyes down like bashful maidens, or … slaves.

  The irks with the company and the casa were traumatized. The abject, craven behaviour frightened them, and they were even more angered by the failure of any of the irks to respond to any spoken words in their language, which sounded like song to humans. Tangwaeri was virtually unknown among men.

  None of the slaves spoke a word of it.

  At least, not at first.

  There were eddies of irks, but there were few salamanders about; those they saw were in thickly curtained palanquins, heated with coal stoves and borne by twenty irks. But around midday, as they passed the two huge cairns in the center of the valley, some ancient demarcation or graves perhaps, an ancient Irkish woman came down the mountain, brought on the shoulders of a dozen young Irkish men. And she spoke no words to Elaran, but she wept when he spoke to her, wept and clutched his hand. He dismounted by her on the snow-swept road as the army marched by, and he sang to her a little song that sounded very sad to Sauce.

  Syr Vizirt, another irk, could not stop himself from weeping.

  Gabriel watched. “What does he sing?”

  “Once there was a great queen, and she had done evil, and she was barred from ever returning to her home. She laments, and she wonders if, in truth, only her own sense of wickedness keeps her from her home.” Vizirt shrugged. “It is nothing, told like that, man. In our tongue, it is the song of exile.”

  The old irk was weeping uncontrollably, great racking sobs.

  “Ask her how old she is,” Mortirmir said.

  “You seem like yourself again,” Gabriel said.

  Morgon looked at him, and their eyes locked a moment. “Isn’t it terrible?” Morgon asked. “How quickly the feeling of failure wanders off?”

  Blanche laughed. “No,” she said. “If it didn’t, we’d never dare do anything.”

  Mortirmir smiled at her. “Now, there’s a truth,” he said.

  “Just like childbirth, then,” muttered Kaitlin.

  Sauce leaned forward; she put a hand on Syr Vizirt’s shoulder, and he smiled at her through his own tears, and then he spoke in a low voice, and the irk answered, and the messenger translated, because the words were in a language none of the rest of them spoke.

  “Nine hundred years,” she said to the emperor. “As best she remembers.”

  “Was she born here?” Gabriel asked gently, and the chain of translation passed his words along.

  “Her parents were brought here.” The messenger frowned. “Are they from … home?”

  Morgon looked at Gabriel and then at his wife, and shrugged.

  “We don’t know,” he said for all of them.

  “We don’t know anything,” Gabriel said. “March on.”

  “Makes me feel like I should cut a Christmas tree,” Tippit said.

  “You ha’e wood between yer ears,” muttered Smoke.

  “Nah,” No Head said. They had a small fire; they had volunteered to watch the next gate while the army got a hot meal and marched in the snow. “Nah. We’ve looked at they crawlies, and we fought the salamanders. And this is just bleedin’ snow.”

  “So far, it’s all a lot like fewkin’ hell,” muttered Half Arse.

  “Don’ you worry, mate,” Smoke said. “It’ll get worse before it gets better.”

  “Mark my words,” they all said in unison.

  Sauce took direct command of the green banda, allowing Long Paw to get some sleep. She waited, her warhorse blowing steam like smoke from its great slit nostrils.

  Gabriel was looking at the gold plate on the pedestal. It wasn’t actually gold; it was golden stone, or glass—very hard, and very beautiful in the purity of its form.

  “It has five settings,” Gabriel said in a low voice. “But Al Rashidi said four.”

  Sauce shuddered.

  Perhaps the most disconcerting thing about the plaque was that it had been defaced. There was a flaw, like a hammer stroke, across the face of it, and one of the stations, sometimes, but not always, marked by a cabuchoned jewel, was black, the stone ripped away.

  Gabriel turned and looked back down the cave; another vast cave quickly filling with battle-ready troops. The company was already drawn up across the gate. But the gate was dark, and the light coming from it was barely perceptible.

  “Bring me the translation team, and a representative of the Quazitsh,” Gabriel said. He was tired; the weight of fatigue was there, behind his eyes and in his hips and shoulders. And he was entering the very stuff of his nightmares—that Al Rashidi’s map of the gates was inaccurate.

  The messenger, whom Blanche had coaxed into revealing her name was Maria, appeared, leading Brown and Lucca and three salamanders as tall as Brown.

  The messenger took a knee. Gabriel drew his sword. “Stay kneeling,” he said. Before she could resist, he had knighted her; Sauce provided a pair of spurs.

  “The duty of a messenger is to speak accurately and be selfless,” she said, her head high. “I was taught to strive that no one would even remember I was there.”

  “Then you have failed,” Gabriel said. “I know you are Maria Dariush of Thrake; I know what your language scores at the Academy were. And I know that you are incredibly brave.” He smiled. “The war we are fighting cannot be won with weapons, but it can be won with information. If anyone ever writes a history of this war, an honourable historian will say that E.34 won us Arles; a mere messenger bird whose heart and skill got through the Darkness when we knew nothing. I take hope from that. And from you.”

  Other knights gave her a belt, and a collar; she was virtually bedecked in gold, and the three tall Quazitsh watched without comprehension. The middle one, who wore a torque of jade, bowed and spoke carefully in the stentorian tones of Qwethnethog, the language of Mogon and many creatures of the Wild.

  “He asks if I am made a king. He understands that men like to be kings, even though they are naturally slaves.” She smiled hesitantly. “He doesn’t mean an insult. He’s not in that modality and his head inclination is polite. He has no experience of men as … anything but beasts of burden.”

  “Fascinating,” said Tancreda.

  “Later, you may explain chivalry to him. Right now, please tell him you have been rewarded for courage and intelligence and careful study.”

  Ser Maria turned a delicate rose-pink, and a great many men among the company felt their hearts race to look at her, tall and slim and dark, her skin like old mahogany, her cheekbones like razors.

  Maria spoke briefly, her eyes elsewhere.

  The Quazitsh all made odd bows, twitching their prominent tail stumps and moving their hips.

  She turned even pinker. “They honour me as well.”

  Gabriel nodded. “Since we’re all getting along,” he drawled, “perhaps our … hosts … could explain the state of this plaque, and the nature of the gate.”

  Tancreda’s eyes were so bright, they might have started fires in the snow. “Ask them …” she interrupted. “Sire, I need to know. I think I understand …”

  Gabriel’s temptation to snap at her, to slap her down, was enormous. I just want to get this over with.

  He made himself refocus. “Speak, Tancreda,” he said.

  She bowed, conscious of her error. Mortirmir was looking away, amused and embarrassed.

  I’m so glad there’s someone who can interrupt Mortirmir the way he interrupts me, Gabriel thought.

  “Ask them what they call the two gates,” Tancreda said.

  Maria spoke.

  All three salamanders answered—one at length,
and then the torque wearer, more briefly.

  Maria shrugged. “We came through the Gate of Danger, and we will leave through the Gate of Dragons,” she said. “There is an inference …”

  “Yes?” asked Tancreda, her eagerness causing her to step past the emperor.

  “That all … inbound traffic …” Maria turned and asked a question in Qwethnethog.

  “All inbound traffic enters through that gate, and all outbound goes through this one,” Tancreda said triumphantly. “Listen; it’s not luck these gates are so close …”

  Gabriel had passed through irritation and annoyance to amusement, but now his attention was fixed. “Brilliant,” he said to Tancreda.

  Mortirmir looked at his wife with something very like adoration. “I didn’t think of that,” he said.

  “I did,” Tancreda snapped. “So any army coming through—”

  “Comes in behind us,” Gabriel said.

  The Quazitsh were all talking, their lightly taloned hands flashing at increasing speeds.

  “Gate of Dragons?” Sauce spat.

  “Once, long ago, dragons came through this gate. They say it should not be possible. But it happened. They fought a great battle with Odine. No one here remembers it.” Maria shrugged. “He says it was a Qwethnethog legend; that the Quazitsh took this place from the Qwethnethog so long ago that the weather has changed. He’s telling me some legend. I cannot understand one word in three.”

  Gabriel’s mind raced. But after a moment, he shrugged. “We know nothing,” he said. “We have a plan, and we will stay with it. Ask him why one of the jewels is broken.”

  Animated conversation.

  “He is trying to tell me another legend. Sire, this is like someone asking me to explain the Bible.” She looked frustrated.

  “Try,” Gabriel said.

  “He describes the leftmost setting as the least of places, a tiny outpost of his people. Not worth our time.” She was keeping her face serene, but he caught her meaning.

  “His home perhaps?” Gabriel asked.

  “He is very anxious to dissuade us from going there,” she said.

  Gabriel nodded, looking at the three creatures and trying to read them.