The Lord and Lady Cymrian looked at each other in silence.
So, Elynsynos concluded, her multitoned voice lightening, that is the tale. Now, Pretty’s Husband, eat something, so that you will be sustained on your journey home, and will come back often to visit.
A plate of rolls and jars of jam appeared on the cave floor.
Ashe laughed. “All right, I know a hint when I see one. Very well, Great-grandmother, I will eat and be on my way so that you may begin your visit with my wife. I know when I’m not wanted—and I surely don’t want to get breathed on, so I will comply.”
Don’t be ridiculous, said the wyrm. A dragon has to be solid in order to breathe on someone else. I do not do solid.
Now have some jam! Then be on your way.
After Ashe had left, Rhapsody sat down to examine the documents Achmed had left her, as she promised to do.
“One important thing I forgot to tell you, Elynsynos,” she said, sifting carefully through the papers and graphing the musical code in which the manuscript was written. “At Thaw I have asked my friend Achmed to come to this place.”
The dragon inhaled slowly.
Did you tell him where it was?
“No,” Rhapsody said quickly, “I would never do that without your permission. I told him to go to the Tar’afel, and I would sing him to the place I wanted to meet him. He can follow the sound of his namesong wherever I chant it. But I just wanted to warn you that Achmed and I can argue fairly harshly; it is just our way, not a sign that he is going to harm me. So if we do argue when he comes, please don’t intervene. I would hate to see him roasting on a spit over his own campfire.”
Very well, said the dragon, but she did not sound impressed.
And there they remained in pleasant company, the dragon reveling in her treasure, the Lady Cymrian translating the documents, until she began to tremble with the understanding of what was in them. With shaking hands, she put the manuscript back in the metal box and closed it quickly. The inclination to vomit came over her, but it was not one generated by her pregnancy.
“Oh, sweet One-God,” she whispered.
26
FOREST OF GWYNWOOD, SOUTH OF
THE TAR’ AFEL RIVER
As Ashe neared the far side of the crystalline lake beyond which the lair of the dragon Elynsynos lay, he felt an unwelcome static tingle run the length of his spine, radiating out over his skin to his fingertips. Then, a heartbeat later, it was gone.
He stopped in the crusty snow and turned angrily around, recognizing the vibration and looking for the source, but there was nothing visible in the ancient forest. The deep, rich hues of the evergreen boughs stood in marked contrast to the bare trunks and branches of the deciduous trees, silvery-bare or clothed in a remnant of ragged, dead leaves of brown and russet, waiting to be swept away by stronger winter winds. The breeze that blew through the glade was sharp and cold.
“Where are you, Llauron?” the Lord Cymrian demanded of the air around him.
There was no answer but that of the wind, and the ripples that disturbed the surface of the lake.
Angrily Ashe seized hold of the hilt of his sword and drew it quickly forth from its sheath. Kirsdarke, the blade of elemental water, roared to life in his hand, appearing like the foaming waves of the sea, gleaming with liquid anger matching Ashe’s own. He held it up to his eyes and looked through it.
The world beyond the rippling waves appeared dull and flat, like an old grave marker whose inscription had been worn flatter by time. Like water on such a stone, the rivulets running into the crevasses and depressions, making them visible again, the vision Ashe had through the blade sharpened around the elemental form that was hovering, invisible to the human eye, beyond the treeline of the clearing.
A great draconic shape floated in the air just above the ground, gray and silver as the branches of the maple trees.
“I can see you, Father,” Ashe said, annoyed. “You may as well show yourself.”
A disappointed sigh whistled forth like the breeze. “You never were any fun to play hide-and-seek with,” a sonorous baritone, light and melodious, said. “Your dragon sense was sharp, even as a child. If it took you more than a few seconds to find me, we both knew that you were merely humoring me.”
“I am well past playing games with you,” Ashe said bitterly, returning Kirsdarke to its sheath with a savage snap. “I told you three years ago to stay away from my wife and family. And yet, of all places in the world you could be, hanging about in the ether, communing with the elements, the ability to do so what you chose over that family, here you are outside Elynsynos’s lair. What a coincidence. What do you want?”
“No harm, I assure you,” said the voice, a testy undertone in it. “And there’s no need to be so harsh. I am your father, Gwydion, or at least I was in my human lifetime.”
“Which you happily sacrificed for a hollow immortality,” Ashe said, pulling at his lambskin gloves. “And at the expense of my wife’s peace of mind; she still occasionally has nightmares about burning you to ‘death’ in your false pyre with a blast of starfire from her sword at your insistence. I told you then, and I will tell you again now, I want you to stay away from Rhapsody. She has paid dearly for your elemental wyrmdom, and I mean to make certain she is done with that.”
“Your wife forgave me those wrongs long ago, Gwydion,” said the voice. The air within the trees shifted, gaining shape and heft, thickening until it took the form of an enormous serpent, vaporous, with iridescent scales the color of ashes from a spent fire, flashing with intermittent glitters of silver and gold. Its vast wings were folded next to its sides, minimizing its breadth, leaving only the wyrmlike length of it visible, well over one hundred feet from nostrils to terminal tail spike. “It’s a pity you haven’t learned to follow her example.”
“I care more about her well-being than she does,” Ashe replied tersely, staring at the enormous ethereal dragon in the nearest multifaceted eye scored by a vertical pupil. It was a gaze that few men could hold without being lost to the beast’s will, but Ashe, his own dragon blood strong, returned it without blinking. “And to that end I mean to see her kept free from annoyance, harassment, or manipulation, all of which you have committed against her at one time or another. So be on your way. You have no business here.”
The wind raced through the snowy clearing, lifting the granular blanket of snow from the surface and spinning the crystals into fluttery bands that danced and twisted, then fell to the ground again, skittering along the crust.
Finally the dragon spoke, and its voice held unmistakable sadness, deep as the sea.
“You would keep me from my own grandchild, then?”
Ashe exhaled sharply. “So that’s it, is it? You are looking for the baby. Why? What possible interest could you have in a child? You had one once, if I recall correctly, and it was little more to you than a tool to accomplish your goals. What goals do you still have, Llauron? I thought those things would fall away with the ashes of the mortal human body that you left behind in the coal bed of your pyre when you convinced my wife to transform you, without her knowledge, into your elemental self. Don’t you have better things to do, now that you are wind itself, fire itself, earth itself, water itself, ether itself, and, of course, sheer gall itself?”
“It seems you believe I have always been the last of those,” Llauron said, unfolding his filmy wings and stretching them lazily. They passed without resistance through the tree limbs and bracken of the forest, like mist. “And I suppose I can’t really dispute that. But is it really so hard for you to imagine, Gwydion, that in my old age I might want the same joy that every other grandfather-to-be has—taking delight in his offspring?”
The ugly sound that issued forth from Ashe’s throat was both a gargle and a cough.
“Yes, it is,” he said flatly. “You? You want to be a grandfather?”
“Indeed.” The beast beat the air with its wings, causing many of the last dry leaves to fall. “Grandchild
ren are a second chance at happiness we might have missed the first time around, Gwydion. Don’t dismiss my desire to come to know the descendants of my blood. If you know anything about our race, you know that there is little, if anything, a dragon prizes above its progeny.”
“Yes, I am well aware of that,” Ashe said, positioning himself closer to the ethereal beast and interposing himself between it and the path back to Elynsynos’s lair. “And as I prize mine above all else, I will do whatever is necessary to keep her or him from ever experiencing the sheer delight of being manipulated mercilessly by a family member, to the point of feeling useless, good for nothing, or damned. Those are feelings I know well, thanks to the tenderness of my upbringing. I have no desire for my son or daughter to ever feel that way. Ever. And I know Rhapsody agrees. So be gone from this place. I do not accept that your protestations are genuine. Like everything else you have ever wanted, I am certain there is an ulterior motive at play here, a hidden reason that benefits you first, at the expense of the others involved. But since those others are my wife and child, I will not brook it. Because, being part dragon myself, there is nothing more important to me. So go away.”
The expression of sadness dissipated in the beast’s prismatic eyes into something more studied; it was a look Ashe recognized, though until now he had only seen it in his father’s human face. Llauron was regrouping, switching from the emotional, an area of admitted weakness, to the logical, which was his strength.
“So you are keeping me away from your child for his benefit?”
The headache behind Ashe’s eyes stabbed sharply, and he rubbed his eyes with his knuckles, trying to fight it off.
“And Rhapsody’s,” he said, wincing.
The dragon nodded thoughtfully. “And in your mind, it is better for your child to grow up never knowing his grandfather?”
“Sadly, yes.”
“How shortsighted of you.” The great gray dragon stretched his wings slightly, causing the ice crystals on the snow’s surface to whip into the air, the soft sting of the breeze blowing them into Ashe’s eyes. “Had it occurred to you that your child, conceived when your dragon’s blood is at the peak of its strength in you, will be more draconic than you were? He will have few of the race that is very much a part of his makeup to reach out to, to learn from; dragons as a race are rare enough. But those to whom the child will be related are few and far between—”
“He or she can learn from Elynsynos,” Ashe said tersely, annoyed to still be carrying on the conversation. “She is his great-great-grandmother, a pure wyrm, not wyrmkin like you and I. No one knows as well as she what it is like to be a dragon. I’m sure she will be delighted to tutor my child in draconic ways and elemental lore. And, above all else, she has never betrayed Rhapsody or me. So thank you for your—kind offer, but I believe we have that aspect of the child’s education covered.”
“My grandmother has not walked the world as a human being,” Llauron said smoothly, the silver scales in his hide winking in the dusty light of the glen. “She only took a human form—or, more accurately, a Seren one—to attract the notice of Merithyn. She may have knowledge of the ancient times that I did not have in human form, but since I have come to join the elements, I have learned those stories, too, Gwydion. And I do have much to impart—sure you cannot dismiss all that you learned of the world from me.”
Ashe inhaled sharply, taking the freezing air of the forest into his lungs, where it weighed heavily inside him. His wife’s words, spoken with a Namer’s truth at the council where they were chosen to rule over the Cymrian people, rang in his ears.
If I have one message for you it is this: the Past is gone. Learn from it and let it go. We must forgive each other. We must forgive ourselves. Only then will there be a true peace.
He let his eyes wander over the face of the ethereal beast hanging before him in the air, and on his every word. The dragon’s eyes twinkled with intelligence, but there was something more in them; Ashe could not be certain what it was, but for a moment it looked like longing, or something akin to it.
Involuntarily he thought back to his childhood, the earliest days he could remember, before a piece of Seren had been sewed into his chest, before his draconic nature had emerged, the days of innocence, when he was just a boy alone in the world with a father who loved to walk the forests with him, pointing out every sort of tree and plant, singing him sea chanteys and ancient folksongs, teaching him to sail and swim in the ocean that later in life became a part of him. To his shock, those good memories were still there, not obliterated as he had believed them to be by Llauron’s later selfishness and manipulation, his willingness to use his son, and, worse, Rhapsody, to his ends, however noble his intentions.
“I believe you sincerely want to be part of your grandchild’s life and upbringing, Father,” he said finally, wincing at the hope he could see taking root in the wyrm’s gray-blue eyes. “But, as valuable as the history lessons might be, there are other sorts of lessons that you tend to teach that are very much more dangerous and scarring. I wish things could be different—I’m sorry.”
He turned quickly and made his way through the forest, leaving Llauron’s misty form behind him.
The beast watched him go; Llauron’s dragon sense followed him for more than five miles, making note of the quickness of his son’s step, the flush of blood to his face, the tightness of his throat. Then, when Ashe was finally beyond his reach and his senses, he faded slowly into the wind again and disappeared, leaving only on the dry leaves of the forest the traces of gold that can be seen where dragon tears fall.
27
THE HOLY CITY - STATE OF SEPULVARTA
The outer ring of the city was a maze of white and gray marble buildings set into the foothills of the mountains that eventually became the guardian hills of Sorbold to the south. Those buildings—houses, meeting halls, and museums—shone in the light of morning from a great distance, making the entire city seem to glow from the radiance.
If that were not enough to lend a holy, almost magical patina to the landscape, in the center of the city stood an enormous structure known as the Spire, the pinnacle of Lianta’ar, the great basilica of the Star, the most sacred of all the elemental basilicas. A feat of almost magical engineering, the base of the structure spanned the width of a city block, tapering upward a thousand feet in the air to the pinnacle, which was crowned with a glowing silver star. The shining summit was rumored to contain a piece of ether from the star Melita, the entity known in Cymrian lore as the Sleeping Child, which had fallen to Earth in the First Age of history. Its impact swamped the Island, leaving it half its previous size. Thereafter, the burning star had lain beneath the waves for four millennia, boiling the ocean above it, until at last it had risen and claimed the rest of the Island. But a piece of it had traveled with the Cymrian exodus, or so the legends insisted, and now lighted the top of the Spire, which gleamed day and night, visible from a hundred leagues away.
Lasarys and the two acolytes who had escaped the purge in the square of Jierna Tal had followed that light like a beacon. Knowing that if they were recognized on their way out of Sorbold they would have been returned to Talquist, who believed them dead and would make certain of that belief if he knew otherwise, they had traveled slowly and circumspectly, joining a foot caravan of pilgrims on their way to the holy city. The pilgrims had embraced them, having similarly anonymous travelers in their midst, and allowed them to remain in their company until the Spire came into view. Then the former priests set out on their own, looking to find the Blesser of Sorbold, their nation’s benison, Nielash Mousa, and tell him all that they had seen.
Now they stood at the city gates, the towering Spire casting a deep shadow over them. The priests, swathed in the robes of pilgrims, stood in silence, allowing the majesty of their holy city and its Spire to wash over them along with the crystals of ice that danced on the wind. The Spire was seen as the Patriarch’s direct link with the Creator, and so looking upon it was a bit lik
e looking at the threshold of the Afterlife.
Lester was the first to gain his voice.
“How do we find the Blesser, Father?” he asked Lasarys nervously, watching the river of human traffic, most of it composed of acolytes and priests of the Patrician religion, streaming into the city gates along with merchants and tradesmen and beggars seeking alms. “None of us has ever been here before; in asking the way, we will doubtless be recognized, as the others here all seem to be of Orlandan blood.”
The elderly sexton shook his head. “Keep your eyes to the ground, my sons, and pray to the All-God to sustain us.”
Dominicus tucked his hands nervously into the sleeves of his robe and fell into place behind Lasarys with Lester. Together the three men approached the city gate.
“What’s your business here?” demanded the guard rotely.
Lasarys bowed deferentially. “Linen makers from Sorbold, sir,” he said meekly. “Here to clean His Holiness’s robes and scutch the flax for his new set.”
The guard snorted, then stepped aside, his eyes glassy with boredom.
Quickly the three priests hurried through the crowded streets, making their way to the manse where the Patriarch lived. It was not difficult to locate; the rectory was a beautiful marble building with immense doors bound in brass, attached to the basilica itself, at the opposite end of the city from the Spire, but still directly beneath the light of the star at its summit. It was guarded by two soldiers with spears.
“What do you want?” the first guard demanded as the three men approached the doors.
“We’re priests of Sorbold, here to see Nielash Mousa,” said Lasarys in a low voice, again averting his eyes modestly. “We beg his immediate audience; it’s very important.”
The first soldier regarded him with narrowed eyes, then muttered a few words to his companion, who nodded. The guard opened one of the huge brass-bound doors and disappeared into the manse. Many long moments later he returned, looking smug.