The Fire Dragon by Katharine Kerr
They stood in the last remnant of Evandar's country. Sluggish between deep banks the river flowed brown through dying water reeds. Black trees raised withered arms to the grey sky. Automatically Dallandra clutched at her throat and found the amethyst figurine hanging there. Rhodry himself stood nearby, holding a silver dagger between clasped hands, but he seemed barely conscious, as if he were a child suddenly awakened from deep sleep. He stared this way and that, fingering the dagger hilt for comfort. When she saw the chip on the blade Dallandra realized that it held his life the same way that the figurine held hers.
“Where's Arzosah?” she snapped.
“Over there.” Evandar pointed to the riverbank. “Not even I can bring a dragon through with a snap of my fingers, my love, so she used a dweomer of her own.”
Dallandra could just make out Arzosah's astral form as a shaft of silvery light, cool to look upon, towering up into the mist. When Rhodry walked toward it, the mist reached out tendrils as if to put an arm around his shoulders. Dallandra—they all—felt Arzosah's voice as a touch of mind upon their own, not as spoken words. Though her rage flowed out as pure as fire, in it swirled hope.
You, sorcerer! Will he live if he stays here?
“After a fashion,” Evandar said. “And for a while.”
Then I'll stay with him.
“And welcome you are, for that little while.” He glanced at Dallandra. “You have a bit of time, my love, to reconcile her to the inevitable. That's all I can do. May it be enough to save the innocents in your world from the venting of her grief.”
The dragon had understood. Her roar spread like a flame within the mist.
Heal him!
“I can't. No one can.”
Then I shall fly to the mountain and call up its fire. I will drown this city in fire.
“Hold your tongue!” Rhodry stepped forward, staggering a little, as if even here on the astral he felt his wound. “Ah ye gods, leave the town be!”
I will have vengeance! Hush, Rori! Don't argue with me! I shan't listen if you try.
“All things come to their dark, Wyrm,” Evandar said, “and he has come to his. Soon, too soon, I know, by the way that your kind measures Time, just as that cut would be but a scratch upon a dragon, but—” Evandar paused, staring into the darkening water of the river. All at once he laughed, a berserker howl much like Rhodry's own. “Such a little cut, isn't it? Rhodry, Rhodry, do you still crave death?”
“Not if it means the death of everyone I fought to save.” Rhodry turned to look his way. “If I'd die to save them, wouldn't I live?”
“What I can offer you is life, of a sort.”
“I think I understand you. And it'd be a death of a sort as well, wouldn't it now?”
“And a darkness come upon you, as the time demands.”
“But could you do that? You're the master of changes, I know, but can you bring about such a change as that?”
Only then did Dallandra understand.
“No!” she snapped. “You can't! Evandar, you just can't. It's impious. It would take him away forever from his own kind. Every race has a life that flows like a river in Time. You've got to ride your own river, not someone else's. Think of the consequences. I can't, you can't, no one can or could predict what such a thing would do.”
“A riddle, then, and haven't I always been the master of riddles as well?” Evandar was grinning like a mad thing; indeed at that moment she realized that he'd been mad for years, for all the long years that she'd known him. “Safety for the city, my love. It would buy safety for Cerr Cawnen, and life for all that dwell within, and I do in my heart think it would buy hope for me as well.”
“Evandar, you can't! The price—”
“I'll risk the price.”
“Easy for you to say, safe here on the astral, free and far from the consequence.”
“No longer, my love. A riddle, a riddle for my soul, and I offer it freely. Chains for a riddle, chains for a price. I'll take up the chains and buy his freedom with my slavery.”
“What are you saying?”
“I told you. It's a riddle.”
When he laughed, she grabbed at his shoulders to give him a good shaking, but he caught her wrists and held her a little away.
“Go down, my love, go back to your own country and then return in your body of light. I don't trust my dweomer to keep you safe in this form.”
Before she could protest, he pushed her, tossed her, sent her sailing through the currents of mist. Beyond her power to stop herself she fell, flew, spinning as she soared, down and down, always down, to wake, sick and dizzy, with a ringing in her ears like the sound of iron striking bronze. She was kneeling on the cold stone of Cerr Cawnen's plaza in the deepening twilight.
“Dalla, Dalla!” Someone came running toward her— Niffa, with Jahdo right behind. “Where be they? We did see you all disappear. Where be Rhodry?”
“No time to explain! Guard my body. Let no one near me, no one!”
“Well and good, then.”
Jahdo pulled his own silver dagger that once had belonged to Jill. With Niffa guarding her head and Jahdo kneeling by her feet, Dallandra lay on her back and crossed her arms over her chest. She shut her eyes, shut out the outside world, breathed deep, then summoned her body of light. When she transferred her consciousness over to the flame-shape, the etheric plane sprang into being around her, and the physical earth seemed to drop away.
In the silver-blue glow she could see lives teeming, swarming, flashing, and pouring round her, a horde of elemental spirits like the foam and swirl of rapids on a deep river. Never had she seen so many all at once. In the midst of this outpouring of masks and voices she flew, calling Evandar's name like an invocation, until she saw him at last, a frozen flame of gold, a spear against the blue. Before him stood the dragon, more or less in her true form, though made of some golden stuff that billowed or shrank like clouds. Under the shape of a huge wing Rhodry stood, the silver dagger still in his hand. To either side, dull grey, pitiful, stretched the dead meadows by the shrunken river.
“Rhodry!” Dallandra called out. “Don't! Don't do this.”
For an answer he tossed back his head and howled, a berserk peal of laughter.
“Dalla, my Lady Death spurned me too long and once too often. She'll have to wait, though she'll have me in the end, for I've found another hire.”
“What do you mean—”
“I've always been the king's man, heart and soul. I shall stand guard for him on the border.”
“And do you love the king enough to throw your human soul away? That's what you'll be doing.”
“Human soul? And when have I ever had one?”
“Forever, Rhodry, maybe forever. That's what you don't understand. I think me you don't understand any of this.”
“Oh, but I think I do—well enough.” Rhodry flung the dagger into the blue flux of the etheric light. “I'll take the gamble.”
Spinning and tumbling it flew straight up, flashed at the top of its arc, then disappeared. As if at a signal Evandar flung both his arms out to the side and screamed a wordless command. Mist, meadow, river, rock—every scrap and remnant of his lands began to break and swirl, began to spin, to flow, turned to a vast and silvery vortex, centered upon Rhodry, the raw etheric stuff to build his new form. Round and round him it spun, but instead of catching him up and whirling him away it shrank, grew thick as water, poured into him, solidified as it shrank, so that for one moment he seemed trapped at the apex of a vast cone of quicksilver, as if he stood upon a sea and a waterspout towered over him.
Light flashed, blinding. Dallandra heard berserker laughter, then mad demon laughter, or so it sounded to her, but she knew the voice was Evandar's. The light died away. The Lands were gone. Riding serene on the billowing blue light hovered a pair of dragons. One had a tiny cut, a mere nick, on his flank under one wing.
“Naught but a scratch,” Evandar said, laughing. “To a dragon.”
In a roar of
“Evandar, Evandar!” Dallandra felt half-sick with grief. “What have you done?”
“Time will answer that riddle, for I cannot.”
His voice was so spent and broken that she turned fast to look at him. Instead of his solid elven shape he seemed only a flicker of pale light, a boy, really, slender and frail, his arms still flung out from his sides, as if imploring the gods as he hung upon a shaft of silver light.
“I've spent it all, Dalla, all my power, all my strength. Don't you see? I'm going to be born. I'm going to follow my people down, because at last I can. I'm empty and weak and spent, and I shall have the life you promised me.”
The silver brightened into white. The current flexed and rolled. Walking on its brilliant wave came a figure, an old man with dark skin, who was carrying an apple in one hand. Even though his astral form looked nothing like the man she once had loved, she recognized him instantly.
“Aderyn!”
“I am. You were right and I was wrong, my love, all those years ago. The Guardians were always part of my Wyrd.”
He threw back his head and laughed, then held out his free hand to the child Evandar had become. The child reached out and clasped it just as a flash of golden light broke over them and swept them away. For a moment Dalla saw or thought she saw figures, great beings made of light who were coming to meet the child and the old man in a pouring of the Light that seemed to flow from the very heart of the universe. On one last ripple of laughter they all vanished, though the Light remained.
“It is over!” Dallandra cried out. “It is beginning!”
In answer came three great knocks, solemn, slow, pounding and rolling over her like waves, tossing her, tumbling her, sending her swooping down and down.
She woke to find herself stiff and aching, still lying on the plaza with Niffa still at her post nearby, though dawn was rising in the east. Jahdo was pacing back and forth nearby.
“Did you see them?” Dalla's voice croaked from a parched throat. “The dragons?”
Niffa nodded in silent amazement.
“The black and the silver?” Jahdo sheathed the knife, then knelt beside her. “I did. Where be Rhodry?”
“You saw him.”
Niffa stared, then began to shake her head from side to side in a no, over and over. Dalla grabbed her apprentice's arm and hauled herself up to a sitting position.
“He did it to save the town. There was no saying him nay.”
Niffa shuddered profoundly.
“It do be a hard thing to believe,” Jahdo said. “It—ye gods, what am I, what are we all to think?”
“Think of him as dead. In a way it's true. The Rhodry you knew is dead, and his long melancholy's all over at last, just as he wanted.”
“And what of Evandar? The same?”
She hesitated for a long moment, thinking, then smiled though her eyes brimmed tears.
“He's not. In fact, I'd say that for the first time in his long ages of existing, he's truly alive. Now help me up. I've got to have some water, and I've got to have it now.”
EPILOGUE
SUMMER 1118
The North Country
The dweomermaster who would call forth a mighty flood had best be sure he knows how to swim.
—The Secret Book of Cadwallon the Druid
Dallandra refused to leave Cerr Cawnen until she knew that Verrarc would mend. Even more than her death, Raena's treachery had sucked the life out of him. He slept late of a morning and went early to bed, his servants told Dallandra. When he left the house, it was only to walk to the ruined temple and sit by the door, as if he expected Raena to come out to rejoin him. He would stay until the middle of the night, then creep back when the servants were asleep.
“The thing is,” Dallandra told Niffa, “he has a certain knack for the dweomer. When Raena was working her spells, he could sense their evil, but blindly. Deep down he knew somewhat was wrong, even if he didn't understand what he was perceiving.”
“And what was that?” Niffa said.
“She was draining his life-stuff to get power for her workings.”
“Ai!” Niffa laid a hand at her throat. “That be an evil way to treat him who loved her so much.”
“It was, though not the worst of her evils. Although, I don't know whether to lay the evils she brought to Dun Cengarn at her door or not, frankly. Alshandra stood behind them all.”
They were sitting on the flank of Citadel, taking the sun on a wooden bench beside the path. From their perch Dallandra could see over grey rooftops to the lake and the town below, then beyond the walls to the water meadows, lush and green, laced with sparkling lines of water.
“There be one thing I have no understanding of still,” Niffa said. “Why the Horsekin did steal Raena's corpse.”
“I don't know either,” Dallandra said, “but I wouldn't fret about it.”
“What if they should find some way to bring her back to life?”
“They can't. When I scryed I found no trace of her etheric double. She must have shattered it deliberately when she realized she was dead. Don't forget, she was expecting Alshandra to come and take her to some marvelous country.”
“For that I almost pity her.”
“Me too. Almost.”
Dallandra found the solution to this riddle when she went to the Gel da'Thae camp to bid farewell to Zatcheka. Her men were laughing and talking as they loaded up the mules with big canvas packs and saddled the riding horses. The two women walked down to the lakeshore and stood watching the sun dance on slow waves, while they talked of this and that.
“You know,” Dallandra said finally, “mayhap you could answer a question for me. In all the confusion after Rhodry broke Raena's neck, Kral and his men took her body and fled with it. Is there some rite that Horsekin work over their dead?”
“You might call it that.” Zatcheka smiled with a flash of pointed teeth. “They do eat them.”
“They what?”
“They do believe that by eating the dead person's flesh, they keep that person with them always. Otherwise, they say, the dead person will wander alone and lost.”
“It makes a certain sense, truly. Do they cook them first?”
“They do, and the preparation of that meal and its serving are solemn things, taking a good three days to perform. I do know this because once, many hundreds of years ago, my people did the same. Now we bury our dead.”
“And what made you change?”
“Ranadar's curse.” Zatcheka looked away, troubled. “If you mind not that I speak of such things.”
“Not in the least. Truly, I'm hoping that one day a bard of my people will be able to talk with one of yours. If they could put together what they know of the Great Burning, maybe we could at last understand it. I know Carra would love to—” Dallandra stopped, caught by a sudden thought. “Oh ye gods. If one person died of that plague, and then the others ate—oh by the Dark Sun herself!”
“That be exactly what I did mean.” Zatcheka shuddered, as if she were suddenly cold. “It were a horrible contagion, or so the old tales tell us.”
“No doubt!”
“But I do admire your thought, that our bards should meet. Now that we have allied ourselves, Cerr Cawnen would be a grand site for that meeting, I should think.”
“So it is. And I hope that we shall meet again as well, you and I.”<
“You do have my word on that.” Zatcheka smiled briefly. “One way or other, we will meet again.”
That evening, when Dallandra and Niffa visited her family, they found Verrarc sitting at Dera's table. His face was waxy pale, and his hands shook, but he was eating a thick chunk of bread, the first solid food he'd taken in days. Dera smiled over him as proudly as if he'd been a fractious baby newly calmed.
“And a good eve to you,” Verrarc said to them. “I did come here tonight to see if Jahdo were willing to become my apprentice.”
“Well, that would be a grand opportunity.” Dallandra glanced at Dera. “What do you think of it?”
“It would ache my heart to have our Jahdo gone again so soon,” Dera said. “But it would ache even worse watching a bright lad like him spend his life in killing rats.”
“So I thought, too,” Verrarc said. “I do hope that Lael agrees.”
“He will,” Niffa put in. “He be not the sort of man who hogs his children's lives.”
At that, Verrarc actually smiled. Good, Dallandra thought. He'll recover.
On the morrow Prince Daralanteriel led his followers out of Cerr Cawnen on the south-running road. Soon they left the water meadows behind and travelled through fields as lush as velvet with the burgeoning grain. Although Carra rode beside her husband at first, toward midmorning she turned her horse out of line and fell in between Dallandra and Niffa. Elessario slept comfortably, bound to her back with a new kind of leather sling, an invention of Jahdo's aunt, Sirri.
“I'm confused about somewhat,” Carra said. “We're going to Cannobaen, right? The lady of the dun there, Rhodda. You said she was Rhodry's kin?”
“His daughter, in fact.”
“That means Rhodry must have been noble-born.”
“He was that. And I'll ask you to help me keep a secret. His kin think he died many a year ago.”
Carra considered this for a long moment. “Let me guess,” she said finally. “Many years ago Gwerbret Aberwyn got himself killed hunting, but they never found his body. And his name was Rhodry Maelwaedd.”