Gabrial gulped back a smoke plug. “Will he come here?”
“No, Gabrial. He won’t come here. Shall I tell you where he is?”
The drake’s soft blue eyes grew large and round, losing their slanted aspect for a moment.
“Look again at Cantorus,” his father whispered.
Gabrial turned his head and peered at the still, imperious moon.
“Some pers say that if you look hard enough, the blackness around Cantorus will form itself into the shape of Graven. They call him by another name then: Tywyll, a word from the old tongue meaning ‘the darkness.’ So there he is, Gabrial. There’s your black dragon. Flying close to his moon—where he’ll stay. And that, my brave son, is the end of your story. Rest your weary head now, and know that in the morning the darkness will be gone.”
And with that Garon curled his tail around the drake and hugged him into a deep and dreamless sleep.
The Kaal settlement, out beyond the scorch line, present day
“I hail from a distant land,” said the stranger, “too far from these mountains to warrant description. I look as you do but I am not of Kaal blood, and the sound of my name will fall harsh on your tongue. I will say it once—Tywyll—so you have heard it true, but you may call me ‘Ty’ and this will do me no dishonor.”
“‘Ty’ what?” asked a young man, Rolan Woodknot. Nearly half the Kaal tribe had gathered around a fire to greet this wanderer in their midst. The women, in particular, were curious about him, for Ty was a handsome, dark-haired man and he dressed unlike any man of the tribe. The Kaal wore single robes to the knee, made of roughly woven thread. The stranger was dressed in a shorter robe and full leg coverings, all of it fashioned from a finer cloth than anyone from the mountains had ever seen.
Rolan picked up a twig and flicked it at the embers of a dying fire. “Each of us here is described by our work or our father’s work, or some mark we carry.” He opened the neck of his robe to show a bloodred stain on the skin that had grown with him since the day of his birth.
“My name describes my … bearing,” said Ty, taking a strand of his hair between his fingers and twisting it as if it were new to him. “It needs no attachment. But if it pleases you to raise one, I do not object.”
“It would please me, stranger, to know about that.” A voice laden with the juice of many berries rose loudly above the rest. Cob Wheeler scratched his coarse gray beard and pointed to a pure white whinney tied to a post behind the stone on which the stranger sat. “What manner of magicks saw the beast so abused that a horn was left growing from its head?”
Ty pressed his fingertips together. “It appears to you unsightly?”
“It appears to me unnatural. A mutt would not piss near it, and nor will I.”
A few around the fire chose to laugh at this remark. Cob was pleased to hear it. He was one of only a handful of men who had survived a clash with the fire-breathing skalers, a horror that had left the wisest Kaal dead and the youngest ones visited by night terrors. With Oleg Widefoot half blinded by skaler fire and Rolan too young to assume command, the Kaal had looked to Cob to lead the tribe. The arrival of this man who dressed in dark clothing and rode a strange whinney and spoke in words melodious to women was shaking Cob’s authority with every breath.
The stranger’s hand came up slowly.
The laughter stopped.
“Where I come from, such a beast would be prized.”
Cob burped and wiped an arm across his mouth. “For what? Their ability to poke at scratchers?”
More laughter. Someone clapped Cob’s shoulder, spilling his drink. He broke wind loudly and called for more juice. Rolan was pleased to see some merriment after so much recent pain. But not everyone was joining in. One of the quieter women had noticed Ty’s eyes. They had turned the color of a pale red sunset and lay sharp on Cob Wheeler’s loud, bowed mouth. Wanting no more woe among the tribe, she threw back her head and spoke up loudly. “I like the beast. I find it pleasing. What name do you give it?”
“I call it Shade,” said Ty after a moment’s thought. He moved a tress of hair off the woman’s shoulder. The redness had faded and his eyes were now brown. “You may ride it, if you wish.” He clicked his tongue. The beast whinnied, and shook its thick, white mane.
“Mell Whitehair mourns for her man,” said Cob, with just enough chill in his rugged voice to turn a droplet of rain to ice. He tightened a burly fist that had been charred by a burst of skaler fire—his own souvenir of the battles. Mell was a prize he had set himself on winning. Her man, Ned, had lost his life in the conflicts. Likewise, her only son, Ren, was missing beyond the scorch line in skaler territory. Cob had promised himself that after a suitable period of grieving, there would be no challenge on his right to court Mell—not least from anyone new in their midst.
“I would ride the whinney,” a young voice said.
The laughter now came sprinkled with scorn.
Rolan said, in a manner not unkindly, “That would be a reckless venture, Pine. The whinney has feet more nimble than the wind. Look at it. It dances on clouds. I fear it would throw you before three steps.”
“Aye,” said Cob, “and what man would ever love you, girl, if you broke that fine tooth in your head?”
The girl—Pine Onetooth was her name—stood fast and soaked up their cruel humor. She was a strange young thing: a carefree orphan who floated through her days like a restless feather. Her mother lay dead in the ground from a fever, her father crushed by a falling skaler. Washing was a thing unknown to her. Her face was dirty and her hands the same. Her hair hung down in twisted spikes like fat set hard on a cooking pot. Despite this, her spirits were always lively. She swung her hips and smiled at the stranger (as best her single tooth would allow). In return for this small kindness, he said, “Shade will not throw you, girl—not unless I command it. You may untie her.”
Pine tossed aside the flower she’d been plucking and ran to the post where the whinney was tethered.
“Why do you call it Shade,” asked Mell, “when it more resembles a fall of snow?”
Ty smiled. He clicked his tongue again. Shade walked toward the fire with Pine on her back. “Girl, turn a circle,” he said.
Pine kicked gently. The whinney turned.
Immediately, rider and beast disappeared.
A clamor of fear took hold of the gathering. Cob Wheeler, who’d been near to the whinney when it faded, jumped to his feet and staggered backward. Panting, he snatched up a half-burned log. He wielded it close to Ty without seeming to know what he wished to do with it. “Bring her back … or you die!”
Ty seemed not to feel the heat. Nor was he disposed to count the beats of his life. He simply said, “Girl, turn the other way.”
And back came Pine and the whinney, met by gasps of disbelief.
“What are you?” growled Cob. “How caused you this?”
Ty closed his hand around the glowing log, quenching it. Again, Cob Wheeler staggered back. Many looking on clasped their robes in fear. “I have learned many tricks on my journeys,” said Ty. He turned his face and looked at the mountains, which rose like a silent menace in the distance. “I have come among the Kaal to hunt down skalers. I will give you back your lands and more if you are with me. Any who agree, I bid you say ‘Aye.’”
“Aye!” said Pine, as cheery as a shiny seed fresh from its pod.
And she was just the first. The voices came slowly, but come they did.
Aye. Aye. Aye.
Until Cob Wheeler sat down once more and accepted the course he knew he must take. He threw the log back into the fire. “I know not what manner of man you are, but I will fight skalers till my dying breath.” He laid a fist across his heart. “I too say ‘aye.’”
But how are we to do this? they asked of Ty. How will we win back what is ours when we cannot defend ourselves against their fire?
Ty said, “I will show you how to tame them and take their powers. But it may not be this day or the next day or
the next. We must wait for a moment most apt to strike. First, I must find a companion who is prepared to ride with me deep into their territory.”
“On what manner of quest?” asked Rolan.
Ty stroked his chin. He looked keenly at Rolan, as if here was a man well suited to his needs. “We go among them to steal the heart of a skaler.”
The people of the Kaal poured scorn on these words. Many quickly lost faith in Ty and drifted away to continue the work of rebuilding their shelters, damaged or burned in the skaler conflicts. Oleg turned his one good eye on the stranger and said Ty must think himself asleep and dreaming. Cob Wheeler, likewise, had anger in his spit. He put aside his jar of juice and made ready to revoke his pact there and then. Rolan stayed Cob’s departure, saying, “Ty, this is surely a jest? Only a fool would ride among the beasts. Fortune once laid a dying skaler in our path, but in all other aspects we are helpless against them.”
“How so?” Mell Whitehair spoke up bravely. She pointed to a woman called Evon Treader, widow of the farmer Waylen Treader. “The husband of this fair woman put an arrow through a skaler’s eye before he died.”
“That is a feat indeed,” said Ty. He looked carefully at Evon. She was clamping her knees and hiding behind the fall of her hair. She had been rocking gently since the meeting began, all the while talking quietly to herself or whatever spirits surrounded her.
“A feat unproven,” Cob Wheeler sneered.
This did him no favors with Mell. “My Ned was a man of plain words. He would not speak false on the fate of friends.” She turned to Ty. “My husband, Ned, who now rests with the Fathers, led two men to a distant cave hoping to raise a dark-eyed fiend against the skalers. He returned alone, but with a grim tale of vengeance. He told how Waylen had struck a blow against a skaler they drew down from the skies, before that skaler in turn struck Waylen and left him rotting in the cave.”
“A hunter’s babble,” Cob Wheeler argued, juice spilling down the front of his robe. “This came from the mouth of a man who claimed his son spoke in the skaler tongue!”
That caused much muttering among those present. Ty made no comment, but he looked around the circle at all who spoke.
Rolan raised a hand to quiet the voices. “We know there was truth in Ned’s words, Cob.”
“Pah!” went Cob. He broke wind again, an act that drove away all but those in the conversation. But Evon Treader also stayed by the fire.
Rolan wafted the odor aside. “Many witnessed the magicks the boy performed.”
“Magicks?” said Ty. His eyes began to glimmer with interest.
“Aye,” said Rolan. “A trick to rival your whinney’s, I fancy.”
“What shape did this trickery take?”
So Rolan told how Mell’s boy, Ren, could not only disappear in the blink of an eye, but could also make fire from a skaler horn held strong in his fist.
Ty picked up a twig and began to scratch a shape in the dirt between his feet. “Where is the boy now?”
Mell hugged herself against the cold. She shook the first spots of rain from her hair. “Truly, I do not know. But not a day passes that I don’t pray to the Fathers to let me see him again.” She kissed her hands in hope.
Cob Wheeler held a different opinion. “Why do you float in your dreams, woman? We all know where the boy has gone.” He jutted his chin at the mountains. “He plots against us among his skaler masters.”
“That rumor is as foul as your odor,” Mell snapped.
“If it is nought but rumor,” Cob growled, “why does he not return to us?”
Mell rose and threw a handful of dirt his way. “Why do you sit slaking your belly with juice when you could be out riding, looking for him?” She turned to the others, her pale hair flying. “I say as I’ve said before: Ren was false accused of all wrongdoing. If he is in skaler territory, how do we know he is not held by them against his will? And I would say this to you, Cob Wheeler: If the loss of my boy cannot entice you onto your whinney, why do you tarry over Evon’s suffering? If there was grit in your soul, you would go to this cave and bring home Waylen’s broken body, so that Evon might send him to the Fathers in glory.”
Evon, on hearing this, hurried away, her face as pale as a winter’s moon.
“Forgive me, I must go to her,” Mell said to Ty. “She is grieving, and I have made her sorrow worse.” She spat at Cob Wheeler’s feet as she went.
Cob growled and wafted a hand of good riddance.
“A passionate speech,” Ty said, when Mell was gone. He scratched again at the dirt by his feet. He was drawing a slanted eye, Rolan noticed, its center made up of many parts.
“Mell too is grieving,” Rolan said. He was about to add more when Cob thundered by his ear: “Girl, stop your pitiful whining!”
Pine was off Shade’s back by now, stroking the whinney and singing to it.
“Girl, retie her,” Ty said quietly.
While she did, Rolan picked up the thread of Ty’s challenge. In all the bluster and argument, the business of hunting down skalers seemed to have been forgotten. Rolan asked, “This quest you speak of. I see no aim in it. What use is a skaler heart to us?”
Ty paused with the twig. “When a skaler dies, its spark of life passes from its heart to its eye, where it is shed in the form of a tear. But if the death should be unnatural or sudden …” He stabbed the twig into the eye and twisted it. A chill wind blew across the site. “… the heart hardens around the fire and the skaler’s spirit cannot be freed. The skalers fear this. They see it as a slight against their Creator. They will not break the heart, even if they could, for fear it will raise a demon against them. Sometimes they will bury it deep in the ground. Most often, they hide it away and protect it.”
“And you would have us steal such a thing?”
“I would.”
“And then?”
“We break it open and … drink the tear.”
Rolan exchanged a glance with Cob. The older man was growing weary-eyed, but not too tired to snort in disbelief. “Drink a tear of fire?” He thought back to those moments just passed when Ty had put his hand around a glowing log. “Answer me this, magician: How is it any man can play with fire and not see skin peeling off his bones?” He looked at his raw-knuckled hand. There were welts on his face and neck as well, still healing from exposure to that accursed skaler heat.
Ty showed his palms. “Riding grease. Not all things are achieved by magick.”
Rolan laughed and clapped his hands together. “I counsel you, Cob. Do not stake wagers against this man. He is as clever as a caarker and twice as dark.” He glanced at a small company of caarkers who were squabbling over a discarded bone and generally keeping the mutts at bay. He looked Ty full in the face. “Your tongue is as sharp as the first wind of winter, but you leave many snowflakes scattered on the ground. Even if your enchanted whinney could veil us from the eyes of the skalers, why would we risk a journey to the mountains when we do not know if such a heart exists?”
“I know,” said Ty. “I have eyes in the mountains.” And by way of explanation he let out a rasping cry that brought one of the caarkers to land close by.
Rolan narrowed his eyes. The wind left its cold mark on his neck as he watched the caarker strut back and forth, seemingly awaiting its next instruction.
“Girl, put out your arm,” said Ty.
Pine stepped forward and did as she was bidden.
Ty rasped again.
The caarker extended its lazy wings and flapped to Pine’s arm, where it settled.
Cob spat halfheartedly, leaving dribble on the front of his robe.
Rolan could find no words to say.
“There is a heart and it will be ours,” said Ty. And as the rain began to fall in sudden earnest, he called the caarker to his own strong hand. He stroked its glistening feathers, saying, “Go again. Watch. Return. Bring me news of any boy you see.” He raised his hand high. In a few short wingbeats the caarker had disappeared under the mask of broo
ding cloud. “If the boy lives, we will soon enough know it.”
Rolan nodded in silence, still not sure what to make of what he’d witnessed. “The shelters,” he muttered, drawing up the hood of his robe. “No talk was ever aided by a head of wet hair.” He helped Cob to his feet. The older man was lurching toward a deep sleep, the juice beginning to wear at his joints.
Ty, however, did not move. “I find the rain refreshing. I will sit awhile longer.”
“As you please,” said Rolan, sweeping a strand of hair from his eyes. He put his strength behind Cob and helped him away.
The moment they were gone, Pine skipped across the puddles and sat on the nearest stone to Ty. She bathed her face in the rain, but said nought.
Ty stroked his fingers one by one. “I need an ally, girl. Someone who can be my ears and eyes when I am elsewhere and the caarkers are about their skaler business. Will you be that thing? I can reward you well.”
“What will you give?” asked Pine. She picked a flower to hold against her heart.
“What would you like?” said he.
Pine looked at the drawing of the eye in the dirt, slowly beginning to dissolve in the rain. She quickly fell to her knees and redrew it, making the eye resemble a mouth. Into the mouth she drew that which she most desired in the world.
“So be it,” said Ty. “One tooth for every deed or message you bring me.”
“Where shall I listen first?” Pine asked.
Ty cast his gaze toward the shelters. “The home of Evon Treader,” he said.
And there Pine went, despite the rain. Waylen Treader had built his shelter close to the fields he had farmed while alive. It was one of the few that had not been blazed or pounded to dust when skalers and darkeyes had warred above the settlement. Pine leaned against a mudstone wall at the rear and let her ears be party to the conversation drifting out of the window. This is what she heard first: the sound of Evon weeping. And then Mell Whitehair saying, “Evon, speak your woes to me. Whatever ails you is better shared.”