"There are two, Masster, and I do not know which guardss the prey. Which would you hear of for your price?"
"Bom, creature, or you shall serve me a year for each drop of blood I have paid you."
It hissed and struggled to free itself, but it knew that I had the right to make the demand and the power to enforce it. Finally it stood on all of its legs and peered past my shoulder, several of its eyes staring intently at nothing. "The firsst liess in the high hills north of here, a sstrangeness in the high passess that reeks of drragon, that iss and isss not Kantris-shakrim. The ssecond is in the far north and west, between the great River and the Sea but ssouth of the wood and the hillss. Sssmaller than the firssst but sstronger, and iss and iss not Kantrisshakrim. More I cannot tell you, for more I do not know." A shiver passed along its body and I knew I would learn no more. "The pact iss concluded, all iss done, live in pain and die alone," it hissed as it disappeared, leaving only a stench of rotten eggs.
Not the information I wanted, but news indeed. I divested myself of my Summoning robes as I pondered it. Two Great Dragons in Kolmar! I had never imagined there could even be one without news of it spreading far and wide. And one protecting Marik's daughter, whom I desperately require.
It will not be a simple task to destroy one of the Great Dragons, though my apprentice Caderan managed it on the Dragon Isle itself before he was killed, and Marik may well have done as much using the Ring of Seven Circles, a powerful device I had prepared for him. I would have to make certain that this time I did not fail. If one was watching so closely over the girl—but it was nonsense! They are huge creatures, hardly to be kept hidden even in the depths of the great forest of the Trollingwood or amid the high stone teeth of the East Mountains! Still, the Rikti was bound and spoke truth as far as its limited understanding went. There was something that kept the Rikti from finding her. I must learn what it was.
Lanen
The next morning Varien and I wandered to the kitchen to break our fast, delightful as it had been to linger in bed. We found Jamie warming himself before the cooking fire. "Good morning, you two," he said with a grin. "Or is it afternoon?"
"Nay, not yet, Master Jameth," said Varien, holding me close to his side. "Not while my dearling shines so bright in my eyes. Surely it is always morning where she is?"
Jamie snorted. "New-wedded idiot! Lady give me patience." He turned to me. "Or is he always like this?"
"I'll let you know," I replied, turning in Varien's arm until we faced one another. I could not get enough of the sight of him, or of the feel of him against me. "Are you always like this?"
He stroked my cheek with his palm, infinitely soft, and despite his human form I felt still the effect of immense strength under control. "As long as we live, my dearest Lanen Kaelar, I am thine and thou art the light of my days. But perhaps it is not fitting so to display our love before Jameth? For all his love of thee, he hath no mate to share his life."
My love for him burned fiercely then, growing even when I had thought it full-blown, and I kissed him lightly as I stepped away from him. "Quite right, my heart. Bless you for thinking of it. I am far too selfish." Aloud I said, "Hmm. Yes, Jamie, I suspect he is. We'll try to keep ourselves under control when we're in public."
"Just as well. There should be laws about such things," he said, shaking his head. Under his words his voice was rich with laughter. "I guessed you'd both be hungry, so I've had I ,ise come in from the village this morning to bring bread. She's been very kind about it since you left," he said, shooting me a wicked grin, "though her bread's nothing like yours."
I laughed. "Just as well! Honestly, Jamie, don't get Varien's hopes up, you know the bread I make can drive nails."
"True enoughs—though I tell you, Varien, I'd give a week's wages in silver for a goose roasted by the girl. It's the best thing she does. She's a good enough cook, even if she can't do something as simple as bake bread."
I looked around me, contented. Desperate as I had been to leave Hadronsstead the autumn before, it was home, and had been for all of my twenty-four years. In the winter morning a hundred memories came back to me, centred on the kitchen and on Jamie. "Are there any of me geese left that were destined for the pot this winter?"
Jamie smiled in earnest then. "A brace, on my word, none too young but not ancient either. Ah, Lanen, your kind heart has not deserted you! You'll make this old man happy yet."
I laughed at him, as he had intended. "You may hand over that week's wages in silver this evening when they're done," I declared, looking about me for an apron. "If I thought there were a chance of it, I'd get you to pluck them for me too."
A strong pair of arms took me prisoner from behind and turned me around. Varien looked deep into my eyes. "Dear-ling, before you begin this work that will occupy you until the evening, you must eat and so must I. Swiftly. Before I get a craving for man-flesh." His eyes flashed at me as he lifted my hand to his lips and kissed it, then kissed my wrist, then drew back my sleeve and made as if to gnaw on my arm.
I batted him away. "Jamie, would you show this poor starveling creature where the bread and cheese are kept, or the oats if he wants porridge—oh, and is there anything left of that last batch of preserves I made?" I ducked into the little cold pantry off the kitchen. Plenty of onions, bunches of rosemary hanging from the rafters and sage still bravely silver-green in the garden, a little of the chopped pork from the pig butchered for the wedding feast—and for the moment I was content.
Make no mistake: had I thought that such a life was all that lay before me, I'd have left before dawn with Varien and been as many leagues hence as the fastest horse could carry me. I knew well, though, that this could be only a brief respite, and I even enjoyed washing the vegetables in the freezing well water. It was a familiar feeling, safe and cozy, and I knew it would not last long.
I had not forgotten the attempt on Rella's life, indeed I still didn't know if she was alive or dead, but from what Rella had told me while we were on the Dragon Isle together and what I had overheard of a conversation between Marik and his demon caller Caderan, I knew Marik had allied himself with a true demon master. I had heard the name, heard Caderan say it a few times, but I was thinking then of other things and couldn't remember it now. Caderan was dead, thank the Lady, but his unknown master lived and I did not wish to bring the wrath of demons down on Hadronsstead and those I loved. The last words Rella spoke before she collapsed in my arms charged me to find my mother, Maran Vena. I knew of only one place to look: the little town where she grew up, away north and east, a place near the Trollingwood called Beskin. On our way here, Varien and I had decided that as soon as we were rested we would go and seek her out.
Meanwhile, there was stuffing to be made and a brace of geese to be cooked. Looking back, I am delighted that I enjoyed it as I did at the time. Life runs by so quickly and it is so easy to be always looking to the morrow. The best times I have ever had in my life were when I was neither fearing the future nor fretting over the past, but simply enjoying where I was and what I was doing, be it as lowly a task as cooking food for those I loved. Life itself is change, and you never know when such pleasures will be taken from you without warning and without hope of recovery.
The three of us sat round the fire in the kitchen that night for a quiet cup of spiced wine after supper. I was proud of my cooking for once, for if I say it myself the geese had been roasted to perfection. Varien had enjoyed it nearly as much as Jamie.
The two youngest stableboys, Rab and Jon, had just finished washing the crockery through in the scullery while all the rest went about feeding and closing in the beasts for the night. There was a frost in the clear night air, bitter cold in the nose and threatening.
Jamie had spent the short daylight hours showing Varien around the stead. "Varien tells me he has never seen a stead before," said Jamie, bemused. "Though if all you say is true," he added wryly, "he'd have had little enough reason to do so."
"And still you doubt, Master Ja
meth," said Varien quietly. He seemed a little amused. "How shall I convince you, beyond my word and that of your own heart's daughter Lanen?"
Jamie held Varien's glance as long as he could, but had to look away. "You'll never convince me with words," he answered, somewhat subdued. Varien's eyes were the strongest argument he had. "It'll just take time. But I'll know truth when I see it." One corner of his mouth lifted in a half-smile as he looked at Varien again. "You can't say you expected me to believe you right off? You have to admit, it's a little unlikely. You're a good man, Varien, on that I'd stake my life, even if your eyes are peculiar. You could be anything, I suppose—but come, tell me, have you anything left of your old people in you to prove it?"
"Beyond the memory of my life with my Kindred, I do not yet know," Varien replied. He seemed to be taking this all very calmly. "I have been in this body so short a time, only three moons, I believe." He grinned then, all sadness forgotten as he reached over to take my hand in his. "I have not been paying overmuch attention to the passage of time, or to what this new body can yet do that I could do before. So different, so wondrous—in truth I have been far more intrigued by the differences." He let go of my hand then and held up his own two hands, palms towards him, staring at them, then passed the fingers of one hand over the other. "These Gedri hands are so soft, so delicate, they can feel the passage even j of air. Yet withal they are so deft, so capable and strong, you can thread a needle one moment and haul on a rope the next." He was lost in thought, gazing at his hands. "These were the things I truly envied you, those long years when the ferrinshadik held me and I dreamed of such a moment."
"What does that mean—ferrin—whatever you said?" said Jamie.
"Ferrinshadik—it is a word in our tongue for the longing that touches many of us, to speak with another race, to hear the thoughts of another people who can speak and reason," said Varien, thoughtfully. "Some are spared, but many of us feel it as a longing to speak with the Gedrishakrim—with humans, whom we call in our language the Silent People. To some poor souls it is a deep and lasting sorrow for the passing of the Trelli, who in refusing the Powers of order and chaos sowed the seeds of their own ending."
Jamie looked at him, shaking his head. "Varien, your pardon, but what are you talking about? What powers?" he asked.
"Jamie!" I exclaimed. "Don't you know the Tale of Beginnings? Sweet Lady, even I know that!"
Jamie shrugged. "Never spent much time listening to bards."
Varien smiled at me and shifted slightly in his seat, sitting up straighter and facing both Jamie and me equally as best he could. I grinned back. "So—this is the human version of the Kantri Attitude of Teaching, is it?"
"It is indeed," he replied. "If you do not know the Tale of HeginningSi Jameth, it is time you learned. It speaks very well of your own people." He moved his neck slightly, brought his chin a little down—and I knew that he was in-stinctively moving Kantri muscles to arch his neck and face his students more directly. He spoke surely but slowly. I later learned that he was having to translate an old tale of the Kantri into human language even as he spoke.
"When Kolmar was young, there were four shakrim, four peoples, who lived here: the Trelli, the Rakshi, the Kantri and the Gedri. All possessed speech and reason when the Powers of order and chaos were revealed to them, and all four learned at the same time that in the life of all races there is a time when a choice must be made. Each chose differently.
The Kantri, the eldest of the four peoples, believed that al-though chaos is the beginning and the end of all dungs, it is order that decrees this, and thus they chose to serve order. For this they were granted long lives and a way to remember all that had gone before.
The Trelli, the troll-people, chose not to choose. They did not wish to accept either and denied both. In mat decision was the seed of their own ending, for to deny me Powers is to deny life itself.
The Rakshi were already of two kinds, me Rakshasa and . the smaller Rikti. Both chose chaos and thus balanced the Kantri—but pure chaos cannot exist in a world of order without the two destroying mat world between them. The Rakshi for their choice received length of days to rival me Kantri, and a world within me world for their own, with which they were never content.
The Gedri discovered after much debate mat they could not agree among memselves, but unlike me Trelli they did make a choice. Indeed, they chose Choice itself, that each soul might have the power to decide which to serve in its own time. Thus they acquired me ability to reach out to either Power and bend it to their own wishes, and almough both the Kantri and the Rakshi were creatures of greater strengm, it is the Gedri who have me world as their own."
Varien smiled, his recitation over. "Come, Jameth, do you ' tell me you have never heard this tale? Surely your bards remember it?"
I looked to Jamie, who said, "If they do, I have never heard mem sing it." His voice sounded strange, and I looked more closely at him. His expression was very peculiar. "Though I think, now, mat I heard something of the kind from my grandfather when I was very, very young." He looked up, and his voice took on a tinge of wonder. "How old are you, Varien?"
Varien ignored him for the moment, which I suspect was just as well. He had raised his hands as if to massage a stiff neck, but he looked terribly awkward; he had turned his J palms out and was trying to use me backs of his hands when 1 he stopped, looked up at me, and slowly turned his hands over. I gasped as I realised—no claws. He had been accustomed his life long to turn his great foot-long talons away from his own scales lest he injure himself. The smile that had lit his face turned to a grin as he used his fingertips to release the tight muscles in his neck, that had tried to hold up a man's head as a dragon would have. He laughed then and I with him. "Name of the Winds!" he cried, leaping to his feet, delight in his eyes and his voice deep with his joy.
He turned to Jamie, his eyes bright, his whole soul in his gaze. "This second life is a wonder beyond words, Master Jameth. Would that I could tell you how it feels! I stop a hundred times in a day simply to breathe, to feel the swift beat of my heart and the passage of air through my chest. I tell you, it is a dream I never dared admit even to myself, this deep longing for human form, for the hands of the Gedri children. This and walking on two legs!" And suddenly he laughed. "You have no idea how convenient it is, Jameth, not to have to carry wood in your mouth. It tastes terrible, believe me."
I was grinning, for I had seen him do just that, and spit fire afterwards to char away the splinters. This was all purest Akor, if Jamie could but know it.
"I tried for years to walk upright," said Varien, "but our legs simply are not shaped for it. My joints ached for days every time I tried, and I finally gave it up." He had calmed down a little and stood now before the fire, warming his hands.
"How old were you then?" I asked, teasing him. "You told me you had practiced landing on two feet, but you never said I word about this."
He paused a moment, smiling at old folly. "I was past my majority, but not long past, when I first tried. I was in my sixth kell that first time, and just over a hundred years from my ceat when I admitted defeat." He turned and smiled at inc. "It was hard to surrender such a desire, my heart, but I was nearly my full size by then and hard-pressed to explain to Shikrar why I found it so difficult to walk for a month. It hurt terribly, I was an idiot to try."
"What's a ceat?" I asked.
"For that matter, what's a kell?" asked Jamie.
"A kell is a hundred winters," said Varien, gazing now at the flames, his voice calm and peaceful in the firelit darkness, "and a ceat is the halfway point in the lives of the Kantri, when we have lived twice the time of our majority and half the full span of our lives. It is a time for celebration, for noting the prime of one's life and rejoicing in it. A ceat is ten kells, a thousand winters. My own ceat passed just twelve—no, thirteen winters gone now."
Jamie swore vigorously, and though the firelight obscured his face I heard the strange note in his voice as he spoke. "Are you
seriously trying to tell me you're more than a thousand years old?" I couldn't tell if it was fear or disbelief or anger, or some mixture of the three.
Varien, unmoved, said, "I speak only the truth in this, Jameth of Arinoc. I have seen a thousand and thirteen winters, and were I still of the Kantri I should hope to see yet a thousand more. We are a very long-lived people; if nothing hurries it, many of us can hope to see the turn of our second ceat ere death comes to claim us."
"Damnation!" cried Jamie. He could sit no longer; he sprang from his chair and began to pace the room—away from the fire and Varien—then all in a moment turned and , came straight to me, ignoring Varien altogether. He stood before me, his face to my amazement a mask of hurt. "La-nen, damn it, what has come over you? Why are you two doing this? You know there is nothing I would condemn, nothing I could ever deny you. Why invent so mad a tale? Do you not trust me to love you after all these years?" His voice thickened. "Have you gone so far from me, lass, in so short a time?"
I stood to face him, put my hands on his shoulders and looked him straight in the eye. Well, looked down. I have been taller than Jamie since I was twelve, but suddenly he seemed small and fragile. That came as a shock.
"Jamie, my hand on my heart and my soul to the Lady, I swear, I give you my solemn oath this is not a tale. It is the exact truth," I said. The look of doubt and betrayal in his eyes was terrible to bear. "Do you think I don't know it sounds insane?" I said angrily. "I haven't gone mad, and you know me too well for me to ever try to lie to you. It's all true, Jamie. All of it. If I hadn't been there I wouldn't believe it either, but I swear on my soul it's true. I first met Varien when he was Akor, the Lord of the Kantri, the True Dragons. I loved him even then, knowing that nothing could ever come of such a love. I saw him fight a demon master and I saw the terrible wounds that tore him apart. Sweet Lady, I saw bone through one of them." I shuddered and passed my hand over my face, trying to dismiss the vision of Akor so horribly wounded by my own father, Marik. "Shikrar, Kedra and Idai carried him to his chambers, and there he—well, we thought he died, and with his friends I mourned him. I myself found Varien, as he is now, mere hours after the death of my beloved Akor, naked as a newborn and lying on the ashes of the dragon he had been. His soul is the same, his heart, his mind, his memories—it is only his body that has changed." Jamie stared at me, still hurt, still unbelieving. I turned away and sighed, then realised I couldn't help the half-grin that crossed my face as I sat down again with a thump. "Hell's teem, Jamie. I can't blame you. If I'd only heard the story, I'd think I was mad as well, or lying."