Lords of the Sky

The Dragonmaster chuckled. “Are there not always a few who’ll dare what others will not? Those who choose to take their chances and refuse the common belief?”

He looked us, all four, in the eyes, and said, chuckling, “Like you.” But his words were directed largely at Urt.

I said nothing. I felt this was Urt’s moment: that he stood at the edge of a precipice. The past was the solid ground behind, the future the leap over the rim. He could step back or take flight, as if on dragon’s back. Or plummet ground-ward. I waited on his answer.

He said, “Tell me.”

Bellek said, “They came north. I cannot tell you why, only that they did; and that they were brave. They came out of Ur-Dharbek to live in these mountains. And more came when they understood what Allanyn plans.”

Rwyan said, “How could they know?”

Bellek said, “I cannot tell you. Am I honest, it did not much interest me; not at first. But more came-and settled; and built up the holdings that used to be here. And I’d no quarrel with that; nor my dragons.” He laughed. “I think my dragons grew somewhat lonely by then. However-they settled in the valleys and made this land into some semblance of what it used to be. And I welcomed them: they’re good folk.”

Urt asked, “May I meet them?”

The Dragonmaster chuckled. “Why not? Certainly in time, but bide yours a while, eh?”

I saw that Urt was greatly enthused by this: he smiled with genuine relief and said, “Soon, I hope. It should make me feel more easy.”

Rwyan said, “But how do you know all this, Bellek? You tell us that you live lonely, yet you speak of Allanyn-the Raethe, and events south-that suggests intimate knowledge. Do you tell us how you know?”

Bellek’s smile stretched his lips like skeins of skin across his teeth. I saw that he took enjoyment from his awareness of such mysteries. Like Rwyan, I wondered how he knew.

He said, “My dragons dream and see the world. And sometimes I fly them south to … observe. Mostly, they … feel … what transpires there, or have the knowledge of the elementals.” He must have seen my jaw drop, for he smiled and said, “Men are newcomers to this world, set beside the dragons. They’re an ancient race and closer to natural things. I know not the how of it, but that they commune with the elementals is certain.”

He glanced at Tezdal then, as if the Sky Lord should understand this better, but Tezdal only shrugged and said, “The Attul-ki command the spirits, not we Kho’rabi.”

I asked, “How do you control the dragons?”

And Bellek laughed and told me, “Dragons are not controlled, my friend. Best learn that early! They allow themselves to be ridden-the dams, at least-because they take pleasure in that union.” His leathery face grew serious as he scanned us all. “You ask the dragons; you suggest a course. You do not-ever!-command a dragon. In a little while, when you know your bond-mates better, you’ll understand.”

“When shall that be?” I asked. The excitement of that flight filled me yet.

“Soon enough,” Bellek said, and hid his face behind his goblet.

As wine and food took their toll, I began to feel greatly tired. I think there is a limit to the excitement a body can experience, and that when that limit is reached, it cravesrest, for all the mind would have it otherwise. I yawned; I could not help myself.

Bellek laughed and said, “Aye, doubtless you are all weary. It was a long night, no? So-do I show you to your chambers, and we’ll speak again when you’ve rested.”

There were more questions: too many. I ducked my head. The notion of bed was immediately as tempting as the odor of the meal had been. I looked to Rwyan and saw the lids of her eyes drooped heavy over the blind orbs. She smiled and nodded her agreement. Urt looked as if he’d find some bolt hole to lie in secure until the world resumed a safer course. Only Tezdal seemed untired, but still he shrugged and grunted his agreement.

“Then do you follow me?”

Bellek rose and led us out through a door I’d not noticed, into a corridor that ran through the mountain’s rock. There were no windows, but it was lit. I could not understand how.

Rwyan gestured at the glow. “You’ve the understanding of the crystals then, Bellek. Are you a sorcerer?”

He chuckled and returned her, “I’m a Dragonmaster, lady. Does that make me a sorcerer-then, aye. But not like you.”

She said, “Magic shaped this place, no?”

And he chuckled again and said, “It did. In olden days, when magic was different. When the firstcome Dhar were different. Think you that talent remains always the same? Or that the crystals do not change? I tell you, no. The crystals shift in accord with those who use them; and those who use them shift in accord with the crystals’ shaping.”

He shrugged: a gesture of resignation. Rwyan said, “Whoever built this place commanded a mighty talent.”

Bellek said, “Once, aye. Once the Dragonmasters were supreme. They built this place and all the other castles, where only dragons had nested before. Once, we were the Lords of the Sky. But we outlived our time and folk forgot us. That bleeds out power, forgetting.”

I said, “What happened to the others?”

And he returned me simply, “They died.”

He fell silent after that. It was as if the dull light of this dusty passage leached out his vitality, or his memories of what had once been. I asked him no more questions but only found Rwyan’s hand and walked beside her in silence.

Bellek brought us to chambers along the way. Three, set at intervals down the corridor. Each had a door of black wood banded with golden hinges. Clean and uncorrupted by time: as if held in readiness. He ushered Rwyan and me into the first.

He said, “I trust you’ll be comfortable here. Do you need me, I shall be in the hall. Am I not, I’d suggest you wait for me there-this is a large place, and somewhat mazeish. Also, do you wander outside, beware the bulls.”

We entered the chamber. I was surprised to find it clean. There was no dust on the smooth stone floor, nor any webbing about the arching bands of stone that shaped the roof and walls. Wide windows of unsullied glass looked over the valley, and when I peered down, I saw a veil of distant smoke rising, as from farms or villages. There was a massive bed, set with clean linen, and a vast armoire. Behind a door of polished wood was a cubicle that held a bath and such other offices as I’d seen only in the grandest keeps.

Rwyan said, “There’s magic here.”

I surveyed the room and said, “At least it’s clean.”

She said, “That’s magic at work. Bellek’s more talent than he admits.”

I said, “And yours?”

She closed her eyes, as if in thought, then smiled and told me, “Returned in full. There are no constraints any longer.”

I said, “Save that we’re now his … guests. Or his prisoners?”

She laughed and took my hands, “looking” up into my doubting eyes. “Daviot,” she said, “he saved us. Were it not for him, we’d be dead now. That, or worse.”

I said, “Yes; I’ll not argue that. But now? Must we live here the rest of our lives, whilst all the world falls down in bloodshed? By Ennas Day, Allanyn claimed. I’d not stand idly by to witness that war.”

She kissed me on the cheek. “Think you I forget that date? Or those dreams you spun in Durbrecht? I’ve not, but nor do I forget that now we have a future-thanks to Bellek and the dragons. Think on that.”

I did, murmuring agreement even as my mind raced. I’d spoken then of riding dragons in defense of Dharbek. Might we now, Rwyan and I, make that dream flesh? The dragons had seemed only fancy once, and I the only Trueman who thought of them at all. Now I knew them for creatures of flesh and blood and bone-and more!-and so perhaps that other dream might be made reality. But not now in defense of Dharbek alone; rather, as instruments of peace betwixt my people and Tezdal’s, betwixt Truemen and Changed. Excitement flared: I smiled as old hopes grew new flesh.

To Rwyan, I said, “I’d speak of this to Bellek.”

I’d have found him there and then, but Rwyan held me and said, “Aye, but tomorrow, eh? Likely the dragons destroyed all those skyboats moored in Trebizar, and it must take the Sky Lords time to rebuild that navy. We’ve a breathing space, I think, and now I’m weary. Shall we sleep?”

I ducked my head. I was truly tired: we left our clothes scattered and found the bed.

I woke to an unfamiliar sound: the beat of rain against glass. I rose, careful not to disturb Rwyan, and padded barefoot to the windows. It looked to me that we’d slept the day away, or most of it, but it was hard to tell. We were close to the sky here and a long way north, and the darkness might have been only the clouds that now hid the peaks and hurled their watery burden at the land. The valley was lost in brume, but I stood a long while staring, thinking of such a downpour over the drought-parched fields of Dharbek. I pressed my face against the glass, unanswered questions flooding anew into my head.

Was all this truly the weaving of a pattern? If Rwyan was correct in that, then what might we four do?

I doubted not that we should learn to ride the dragons. But to what end? That Bellek have company in his lonely castle? I was not entirely sure but that we had exchanged one prison for another. Nor was I by any means certain Urt would agree to remain. He held that fear of dragons inherent in his blood under tight control, but could he bring himself, willingly, to ride the creatures? I thought perhaps he’d sooner find a place with those other Changed Bellek had spoken of.

And Tezdal? He had sworn to defend Rwyan-and held true to that vow. But now might he not consider Rwyan safe and look to rejoin his Kho’rabi brothers? Did he become a Dragonmaster, then might he not seek to ally dragons with skyboats, form such an armada as must surely be invincible? If not-likely Bellek could prevent it-then would Tezdal deem Rwyan delivered safe from harm and he freed to take his Way of Honor? That thought I liked not at all: I was vaguely surprised how fond I’d grown of the Sky Lord.

I started as a peal of thunder dinned over mountaintops suddenly revealed by the brilliance of lightning. I wondered if dragons flew in such weather. I wondered … the list was too long, and I turned away to find Rwyan stirring.

She tossed aside the sheets, deliciously immodest, and came to join me. “It’s been so long,” she said, “since I’ve seen rain.”

I nodded and held her as great rolling drumbeats of thunder beat over the castle and lightning flung spearing tongues of pure fulgence at the peaks.

“This is a wild place,” I said.

“A place fit for dragons,” she returned, and laughed, and folded herself against me. “An old world that perhaps shall make a new.”

I said, “I’d find that out. And ere Ennas Day.”

She smiled agreement and cupped her hands about my neck, drawing my face down. Our kiss was fierce: a commitment.

“So,” I declared when at last we tore our lips apart, “do we find Bellek and the others and set this dream to flight?”

But I must curb my impatience a while.

In the days that followed we found Bellek a somewhat furtive host. Oh, he was friendly enough and gave us answers to the questions we hurled at him, like some bombard from those war-engines dead Gahan had ordered built. But there were always things left unexplained, or hints of doubt in answers that seemed honest and clear.

How old he was and how long he’d lived alone, he would not say. He gave us to understand that certain of the female dragons-my lovely Deburah, Kathanria, Anryale, Peliane-had dreamed of us as long as we had dreamed, unwitting, of them. I think he could not explain this clearly, any more than an ordinary man (and Bellek was by no means ordinary, or any longer quite sane) can explain the substance of his night fancies. They, I gathered, rather than Bellek, had been the manufacturers of our rescue-it was they had sensed our presence in Trebizar and the danger we faced. Bellek had followed their instincts, when he brought them to us.

He showed us the lairs-natural caves dug deeper into the stone by the bull dragons-where the broods lived. Each bull lorded a harem of some five or six dams, which he guarded with ferocious jealousy, and each dam guarded her nest with no less enthusiasm.

The caves were warm and filled with the scent of the dragons, which was akin to leather drying in the sun, a hint of raw meat. I came close to soiling myself the first time Bellek led us in, past that same huge bull I’d seen caressing Deburah, his hide all yellow and black mottlings, not unlike the mountain cats that inhabit the forests of the massif.

He sat proud on the ledge before the cave, talons and teeth busy as he preened. He was vast, far larger than the dams, and as we approached, he fixed us with his yellow eyes and spread his wings and opened his jaws in rampant display of sword-blade teeth. He hissed. I felt his suspicion and halted as Bellek raised a warning hand. I heard Rwyan gasp in naked wonder, and from behind me Urt’s small cry. I looked back and saw Tezdal clutch the Changed’s shoulder. The Sky Lord did not flinch, only met the dragon’s stare with his own.

Communication with dragons is not verbal, and their minds do not follow those tracks ours take. Bellek did not speak, but I found my head filled with … emotions, images-I can tell it no better. The Dragonmaster urged the bull to calm; he radiated a plea that we be granted entry to this magnificent place, that we might marvel at the bull’s harem, which was irrevocable proof of his greatness. From the dragon came a sending of pleasure, of pride and agreement: we were allowed entry.

We walked under the shadows of his wings. His breath was hot and meaty. I looked into his eye and shaped a thought of obeisance: it was not difficult. I felt in return strength, permission. I understood his name was Taziel. I walked past and moved away from Rwyan as a spiritual tugging too powerful to ignore governed my steps. Rwyan seemed scarcely to notice: she was moving toward Anryale even as I went to Deburah.

My-almost, I say, love-crouched upon her nest. She turned her head toward me, and I felt beckoned. I climbed the ragged stone that brought me to her perch and saw the egg she coddled. It lay upon a bed of branches and torn hides not unlike the nest of a bird. It was pure white, veined with a tracery of red, and high as my waist. I understood that I was allowed to touch it: I did and smiled as I felt the pulsing heartbeat within. It was slow and steady as a metronome, and I understood from Deburah that it should hatch within the year, and be a bull, and mighty as his father.

I felt awash with love. I touched Deburah’s cheek, and she turned her head against my hand, almost pitching me from the nest. I stumbled against the leg she thrust out to catch me and leaned against her shoulder.

Into my mind came the thought: Shall we fly soon? Shall we hunt?

I answered, Yes. Soon, and got back such pleasure as makes the finest wine nothing. I left the cave dazed. Nor was Rwyan in better state. (That night we made love with a passion that left us both as weary as exhilarated: the communion of dragons and Dragonmasters heightens the senses.)

Bellek took us on to other caves. This mountain-this Dragoncastle!-was riddled with them. Peliane sat an empty nest in the first, and we others stood back as Tezdal went to her, and looked her in the eye, and bowed formally as if he attended some high-born lady in the courts of Ahn-feshang.

Then I saw something that we neither of us ever mentioned. I had never thought to see it, not since he told Rwyan and me of Retze’s death. I saw Tezdal shed tears. They ran ignored down his cheeks, and from Peliane I felt an outpouring of sympathy and compassion. I watched as Tezdal stepped blindly toward her and raised his arms, as if he’d fling them about her neck. She ducked her massive head and swung it close, so that he stood leaning against her, his face pressed to her cheek.

Into my ear, Rwyan whispered, “Tezdal shall be with us, I think.”

I only nodded and held her close. I thought my Sky Lord friend had found some other bond to fill that vacuum in his life. I thought he should put the Way of Honor behind him now. I hoped it should be so.

Of Urt I was far less sure.

I saw the sweat that beaded his face despite the cold that gripped the mountainside between the eaves as we went to where Kathanria built her empty nest. (Dragons mate frequently but are seldom impregnated. Their gestation periods are counted in years, and the production of an egg is a rare and marvelous event. My Deburah was special in this, as in so many other ways.) He shuddered as we entered under the watchful eye of a bull striped bloody red and dark green. He looked about at the dams that studied us from their ledges. I thought he might turn and run, but then he made a sound that came from deep in his chest and stumbled over the bone-littered floor to climb toward Kathanria. He seemed not entirely willing but rather compelled by an emotion that overrode his fear. He seemed to me like some gamblers I’d known in Durbrecht-afraid of the losses their gaming might bring but incapable of resisting the temptation. He seemed almost to fight himself as he climbed the path to the dragon’s nest.

Then Kathanria fixed him with her eye and raised a paw that swept him to her cheek, whether he be willing or not. And I heard Urt moan and saw him lie against her like a puppy finding its dam.

“Urt, too,” I whispered into Rwyan’s ear. “Soon, I think.”

But should it be soon enough? Could we learn so much in time? I saw that fateful Ennas Day loom ever closer, a threatening reef in the sea of my ambition, and I could only curb my impatience and hope it should be in time.

We saw the winter out in the Dragoncastle. We saw such snows fall as I’d not ever seen, or imagined. We learned to saddle our bond-mates-even Urt, though he was slow to overcome his innate terror, for all Kathanria’s sendings of comfort and confidence-and we learned to ask their cooperation. Ever that-to ask; never to command-and that alone was hard enough for folk better accustomed to heeling horses into direction, with use of bridle and bit. I was minded of my gray mare (was she yet hale? I hoped she was) as I learned to request of Deburah that she go where I’d have her fly.

But what glory to sit aback a dragon and vaunt the heavens. To soar above the clouds that dusted the valleys with snow and see the high blue sky, the sun that rode its path from east to west, invisible to those below us.

And to hunt!

Oh, I came to understand the joy of that. To loft the sky on slow-beating wings, alert to those beating hearts below, the warmth of pulsing blood. To swoop over the forests, searching hungry. To find the one chosen and plummet, claws poised to snatch and slay. To fold our wings and drop, the air howling past us. To anticipate the evasions, avoid the crags and trees our quarry sought to hide in, and take it. Swift! A single pounce, and beat our wings to rise again, triumphant. I came to understand the challenge it must be to contest with sorcerers for mastery of the sky. I grew impatient to bring my Deburah south. I found a taste for bloody meat: I changed.

For better or for worse, I’ll not say. I was carried on a flood of belief, of trust in Deburah and the attainment of all my hopes. I know that Urt and Tezdal came to share the dream and joined my loves and I in its shaping. I think we all changed then, that long winter in the Forgotten Country, and was that wrong, I give you Rwyan’s answer: it was the pattern. Did we change, it was not for lust of power-though whatever gods exist know we came to own that commodity in full enough measure-but rather for desire of some calmer order in face of the chaos men bring.

The dragons changed my thinking. They were fleshed creatures and magical both. They ate those crystals that waste Truemen and drive Changed mad, but they suffered no such fate themselves. They held communion with those elemental spirits that the Attul-ki sought to control and master, to bend to their will; but the dragons knew them as cohabitors, as other, equal beings. The dragons are different. I think they are likely wiser than we men, True or Changed, Ahn or Dhar. And we who consort with them are likely made different by such proximity to them and those strange stones that even now I cannot pretend to understand.

We learned to ride the dragons. We explored the Dragoncastle, and that of itself could make a tale.

It was no keep, this place, but rather a town, a city, built into and about the mountain. Only great magic could have shaped those courts and halls and yards, those cleft-spanning bridges, the winding corridors and the multitude of chambers, large and small. I questioned Bellek on this, but he proved evasive and left us mostly to guess the manner of the making and the numbers that must once have inhabited the warren.

Memory of magic lingered still, side by side with ruin and decrepitude. A lightless passage all draped with spiders’ webs and paved with rats’ droppings was likely to emerge onto a plaza large as any in Durbrecht and clean as if new-swept, where neither wind nor rain nor snow gained entry but was held off by the power that still lingered there. Or a square all disrupted by roots and ivy, where birds left reminders of their springtime nesting, would offer us a rotted door beyond which lay pristine, dustless chambers. We found halls as great as that in which we ate and balconies that wound vertiginous along the mountain’s flanks. There were manufactories filled with rusted machinery I did not comprehend; others in which great wheels and cogs turned silently, glistening with oil, untouched by time and entirely inexplicable. We saw armories filled with rusted weapons and antique battle gear; rooms where dust and cobwebs hid the contents, and rooms that might have been only recently vacated. There were salons where tapestries hung rotted and gnawed by mice, alive with insects; and others where the draperies were as bright as if the weaving were but yesterday finished.

I spent much time studying these, but all they told me was that once men had ridden dragons and lived here happy, it seemed. I saw no evidence of any children, but I thought little of that, then.

We investigated Bellek’s kitchens, and Rwyan voiced her disapproval and used her own talent to restore all there to pristine cleanliness. After, she and Urt and I (Tezdal had no knowledge at all of the culinary arts) took over the preparation of our meals.

We met with the Changed who farmed the valleys. We gave them meat that winter and took in return Bellek’s tithe of their produce. It was a fair exchange, and none of them feared the dragons, but rather saw them as fellow inhabitants of this wild land. We spent days amongst them. Urt was first amazed that they showed no fear of our coming, and then entranced by the life they led, under the shadow of the dragons’ wings. They laughed at his doubts and told him they had freedom here, from Truemen and war and Allanyn. He was surprised they recognized her designs, and they no less that he’d not seen them.

Ere long, he came to wholehearted support of our cause.

Tezdal was harder to persuade.

The Sky Lord was come to the same communion with Peliane as I had with Deburah: he loved her. But he was not yet to be convinced he should bring her against his Kho’rabi brethren.

“You ask too much of me,” he said. “You ask that I gainsay those vows that shaped me. I cannot expect that you understand what it is to be Kho’rabi, but you know that in my language that means ‘the Dedicated,’ and that is what we are-dedicated to the reconquest of our Homeland.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but he raised a hand to halt me, and so dour was his dark face, I held my tongue. I had known him long enough now I might judge his moods, and for some while he had been sunk in melancholy introspection. Indeed, the only time I saw him happy was in company with Peliane. Oh, he remained civil-his manners were ever better than mine-and he acknowledged the debt he felt to Rwyan, the friendship that had grown between us, and between him and Urt. But a worm of doubt had been chewing at his soul since first we came to the Dragoncastle and he deemed Rwyan safe. I had endeavored to speak with him of such matters, and so had Rwyan, but he would not, or could not, and gave us only responses as evasive as Bellek’s. This was the first time he showed any willingness to discuss it openly, and so I sat silent as he continued.

“You cannot understand,” he said. “You Truemen Dhar came down into Kellambek with your magic and your swords, and you made my people slaves-those you did not slay. You brought your one god and mocked the Three-you took away my people’s heritage and ground us down under your heel. But Attul gave us back our hope and showed us the way east, to the islands of Ahn-feshang; and then the Three gave us those gifts I’ve told you of, that we might take back what is rightfully ours. The Attul-ki show us the way now, and we Kho’rabi yearn for the reconquest-what you call the Great Coming.

“No, listen!” This to Rwyan, who had moved to speak but fell silent as I under the bleak intensity of his eyes. “I do not name you enemy. Not you two Dhar; nor you. Urt. But what you ask is too much! You’d have me ride Peliane against my own. You ask me to betray all that I’ve believed in. I am nothing save I be true to my beliefs, but you ask me to fight my brothers, my kin. You ask me to go against the wishes of the Three! You ask me to damn myself for your dream, and I cannot do that.”

He closed his eyes, his head flung back so that his long plait hung down behind his chair. I saw his left hand finger the dagger at his waist and knew what he should likely say next.

I was right: he said, “Already I’ve betrayed my kin in aiding your escape from Trebizar. I could do no less in face of my pledge to you, Rwyan. But this-” He shook his head wearily. “No. Better that I take the Way of Honor now.”

Rwyan said very softly, “Do you truly think that’s the honorable course, Tezdal?”

His eyes sprang open. His head came forward. He stared at her, fierce as a bull dragon. “Yes.”

I said, “I’d not see you open your belly, my friend.”

He laughed. The sound rang wild about the empty hall. It seemed to me brother to the howling of the wind outside. I ached for him. I knew his decision was infinitely difficult.

He reached for the jug. I pushed it toward him, and he filled his cup; drank it off before he spoke again. “Would you deny your god?” he asked, rhetorical. “Would you ask me to deny the Three, all my beliefs, all my life has meant? Forgive me-I intend no disrespect, but you Truemen Dhar lack that honor that shapes us. I am Kho’rabi: my life has been lived for the single purpose. And now you’d ask me to deny it?”

Rwyan began to shape an answer, but to my amazement Urt set a hand upon her arm and motioned her to silence; and it was he who gave Tezdal the response.

“I was born Changed,” he said. “I am the by-blow of Dhar magic: dragons’ prey, a servant. In Dharbek I was nothing-invisible, a creature born of made things, born to serve unseen, unthanked. I was traded like an animal, as you’d no doubt trade a hound or a horse or a cow. I was nothing!

“Do you not think I dreamed of conquest then? Of my people rising to overthrow our masters? I’d not go back to that. No! Not ever! That was why I fled Karysvar and crossed the Slammerkin, to find the wild Changed and live free.

“But what did I find in Ur-Dharbek? That those who promise freedom dream of power! That Allanyn and her cohorts would join with you Kho’rabi to destroy the Truemen, to set themselves up where the Dhar stand now. Not make a better world-only shift the order of the old. I’d have no master, Tezdal, neither Trueman nor Changed. Only be myself, free.

“What think you the Great Coming shall mean? Surely bloodshed, when your battalions come down out of the sky and Allanyn brings my people south over the Slammerkin, and the Changed of Dharbek rise. And after? What then? Shall your Attul-ki and Allanyn parcel out their conquests? Or shall ambition vaunt itself again and Allanyn decide she’d not share with Sky Lords, or your Attul-ki decide to enslave my Changed people? Where shall those Dhar who still survive be then? As you Ahn were-slaves and outlaws, dreaming in their turn of reconquest? I’ve found honesty in Truemen-two sit before you now, exemplars!-and I’ve known cruelty. I’ve found the same in my own kind, and I tell you that we are none of us so different. Daviot saw that years ago and paid the price of his vision. Rwyan saw it, and now she’s here-a Trueman mage, her life dedicated to defense of Dharbek. Until now! When she sees a truer future.”

He broke off. He seemed to me almost embarrassed by his eloquence. He took up his cup and drank. I said nothing; neither Rwyan. I think we both knew Urt had said it all, and we could not put it better. I smiled at my old friend, but he was looking away at Tezdal still. His eyes were locked with the Sky Lord’s, as if he’d burn the import of his belief into Tezdal’s brain.

My Sky Lord friend sat silent a while, his aquiline features impassive, a mask. I had no doubt he hid the turmoil within.

We waited, all of us.

Finally, Tezdal said, “A truer future, Urt? Tell me what that is, eh? Tell me what truth there can be in vows denied.”

Urt still did not look at me, or at Rwyan, but only held Tezdal’s gaze. He said, “A better world, my friend. A world of equals, not servants and their masters. Neither vanquished and oppressed; neither any who dream of conquest or liberation, but only live together in freedom.”

“And how,” Tezdal asked, “would you achieve this Utopia?”

Urt said, “I think it shall not be easy. I think it shall cost us pain, and the payment of it be likely bloody. But I have come to Rwyan’s belief, to Daviot’s dream-I believe we might achieve it.”

Tezdal lowered his eyes to his empty cup. Rwyan rose and filled it. The Sky Lord drank and brought a hand to his mouth, where a droplet of red wine sat upon his lip. He wiped it, fastidious, away. He studied his fingers.

Then he said, “Tell me.”

His tone was carefully measured, his expression controlled. I saw he hid the anguish that consumed him, the pendulum swing betwixt despair and hope that Urt’s justifying argument set in motion. I pitied him. I’d not dare say it aloud-he’d likely have found that an insult to his Kho’rabi honor-but I grieved for him in his torment, knowing that he, more than any of us, was caught in the dilemma of perceived betrayal. I thought, as I watched his bleak face, that if this pattern I’d described to comfort Rwyan, this pattern she now believed in and I almost could see, were true, then it was not unlike those spiders’ webs that had decorated this hall before Rwyan brought her talent to their clearing. It was a great web of many strands, impossible to trace to ends or center, sources or conclusions. It was larger and far more complex than we caught in it could see, and poor Tezdal was like a fly landed there by none of his own design-only caught, the mandibles of decision’s spider moving ever closer as he struggled to find a way, an honorable way, out.

I looked at his face and felt my soul bleed for him as I outlined the stratagem I’d wrought.

TThe wind tapped demanding knuckles at the windows as I spoke. It was yet only midafternoon, but the sky was dark, laden heavy with the promise of snow to come that night. What little light the sun succeeded in thrusting through the clouds fell in long slanting rays over the mountains. I spoke with all the eloquence of my calling; and more, for I was impassioned by conviction. I saw it kindle a fire in the Sky Lord. He was, at first, still doubtful, but then I saw his eyes narrow, and then widen, as the seed Urt had planted took root and grew under the sun of my words. I watched as his expression shifted, swift as those patterns of light and shadow dancing over the snowfields and forests beyond the windows. I saw him come to belief, to trust, and his hope minded me of the sun in springtime, emerging from winter’s gloom.

“Think you it might be done, truly?” he asked, not of me, but of Rwyan.

She nodded and told him, “I believe it might. I believe that to fail its attempting is to betray all our peoples.”

Tezdal looked then at Urt, who lowered his head in solemn, silent agreement.

He turned to me, brows raised in question. I said, “Save we go on as we’ve done, in war unending, I see no other way.”

He asked, “Even at the price you Dhar shall pay?”

“Weighted by the lives lost-those likely saved-that price seems small to me.”

“It seems to me a very great price,” he responded.

I shrugged and said, “We’d change our world, Tezdal. I think that price must always be high. But still worth the paying.”

He hesitated. He filled his cup and drank again. It seemed he offered a toast. He set the goblet down and said, “I’m with you.” And then, much softer, “May the Three forgive me.”

“Hurrah!”

We all of us started as Bellek’s voice came from a doorway. How long he’d stood there, silent and listening, I could only guess. I thought perhaps since first our conversation had begun, for he came to join us with so purposeful an expression, I must assume he knew all we had decided.

He glanced at the jug and took it from the table. “Such weighty decisions demand a weightier wine,” he said, going to the kitchens. Calling back over his shoulder, “And you’ll require my aid in this.”

He came back with the jug replenished and filled all our cups. It was a rich, red vintage, smooth and heavy. I’d tasted nothing so fine.

“I’d wondered how long it should be,” he said, “before you came to this.”

I stared at him. “You knew?”

He chuckled. “I know your dreams,” he said. “The dragons tell me. I was not certain-I could not be-but I suspected that such as you must sooner or later come to some decision. And that decision must go the one way or the other. You choose the course I thought you’d take.”

Rwyan said, “And shall you aid us, Bellek?”

The Dragonmaster fixed her with his pale eyes. On his face I saw emotions chase like shadow and light over the mountains, one overlaying the other so swift, I could not read them clear. I thought I saw hope and confirmation balanced with some indefinable loss. He said, “It shall not be without a price.”

I said, “Name it. Likely we’ll pay.”

Bellek chuckled again, and in the sound I heard the echoes of those mixed emotions that had just decorated his seamed features; also, that hint of madness. I wondered what the price should be.

He said, “That you become, truly, Dragonmasters.”

I sensed behind his words some hidden meaning. I said, “Shall we achieve our aims if we are not?”

He shook his head. “No. Save you be utterly committed, you cannot take the dragons into battle.”

Rwyan said, “Then I accept.”

I found those pale eyes on mine. I glanced an instant at Rwyan, then ducked my head. “I accept.”

“Good.” He looked to Urt, to Tezdal, who both nodded and gave their word.

“Then,” Bellek declared, “let us plan this thing. It shall not be easy, but”-his eyes twinkled as he surveyed us-“I think the dragons shall greatly enjoy it.”

We fell then to talk of stratagems, of distances and objectives.

We each had in our possession information of great value, that should make the task easier; or so I hoped. Rwyan’s was of that magic commanded by the Dhar sorcerers-of the Sentinels and the Border Cities, and what was owned by the mages of Kherbryn and Durbrecht, the other great cities. I could offer knowledge of the keeps of Dharbek, of the war-engines and the warbands, the mood of the people and the aeldors. Urt spoke of Ur-Dharbek-of Trebizar and the magic Allanyn and her followers possessed, the strength of the Changed armies. Tezdal told us of the Kho’rabi and the Attul-ki, of the preparations for the Great Conquest.

It grew late as we talked. The winter darkness outside gave way to that brief twilight the mountains know, and that to night. The wind fell away, seemingly satisfied its task was done. Great banks of moonlit cloud obscured the sky, and from them fell snow that drifted soft and silent, building on the ledges and the parapets of the Dragoncastle. We repaired to the kitchen, still talking as we assembled a hasty meal, continuing as we brought the food to the table, talking still as we ate.

There were no clocks here, neither clepsydras nor sundials (for what good they’d have done in this season) nor any other kind. It was as if time ceased here, and what divisions of the days and hours existed were imposed only by our urgency. I had seen none in Bellek until now; that I now perceived him quickened worried me in a manner I did not properly understand.

You know from this accounting of my life that I’d that teaching of my College that allowed me usually to interpret a body’s language-the hints of eye and intonation, the movements of the hands and shoulders, those little oft-hidden signs that speak as loud as words. Bellek remained a mystery. I believed I sensed excitement in him, but also a multitude of other emotions I could not explain. I trusted him-I had no doubt he should aid us as he promised-but there was something else, something he concealed. It was that that prompted me to follow him when he left us.

I followed Bellek across yards tracked thick with snow and passages where the trickling water froze and rats skidded on the ice. We came out into a night whirlwinded white and slipped and slid our way-he confident, I furtive as a nightcome thief-along the trailing walkways that brought us to the caves where the dragons lived.

It was cold. I wished I’d brought a cloak. I shivered, thinking that my drumming teeth must reveal my presence, but Bellek showed no sign, only paused before the cave, and then went in.

I came after. I halted at the entrance. The bull Taziel was inside the gaping arch, alert. His wings were furled; his fangs were exposed. He looked at me, and I sent out that silent message Bellek had taught us all.

Peace. I mean no harm. You are mighty and magnificent, and I humbly beg to admire your brood.

He granted me permission, and I went after Bellek into the cave.

I could no more ignore the sending I got from Deburah than I could my earlier curiosity. I should have thought of that before; should have known it. But I was then still newcome to that relationship, and like a lover slowly sensing out all those areas allowed and forbidden that lovers delicately find, I knew not how much this monstrous, majestic love of mine would tell.

She bade me welcome. I stroked her glossy cheek, her sinuous neck. I plucked a fragment-a hunk!-of troublesome meat from her teeth. She thanked me; I loved her as well, albeit differently, as I loved Rwyan. I asked her how her egg fared. (I’d know what Bellek did and why he came here so late, but there’s a decorum to dragons as patterned as any formal aeldor’s court. They live long, dragons, and to a slower beat of time: unhurried, save by hunger. There are always prices to be paid in dealing with dragons. It is, I think, a price worth the paying.)

She told me her egg fared well. I set my hand on it and felt the pride of the bull as I gloried in Deburah’s triumph. I could feel the pulsing of the heart within. It required an effort to remind myself why I’d come here. I asked Deburah.

I cringed then, under the sadness I felt. I’d not known what it is to lose a bond-mate.

I looked across the cave and saw that Bellek knelt on a ledge. The relics of a nest lay there, and the shattered fragments of an egg. He touched them reverentially as I touched Deburah’s; but his were in pieces, ours whole and pulsing vigorously with unborn life.

He looked on the past: I looked on the future.

I wondered why no dam sat there.

Deburah told me she’d died.

Of age, she said, ancient even more than Bellek, and even in her age produced an egg. I felt Deburah’s pleasure at my arrival in Tartarus, and understood-albeit only vaguely then-that the laying was somehow linked to the presence of Dragonmasters, that I’d an inexplicable hand in her fecundity. I felt her sending as a comfort against Bellek’s grief, her pride in our egg, though I scarce understand even now how that should be-that the dropping of a dragon’s womb can somehow depend on the belief that a person, Changed or Trueman, gives. I felt a terrible sadness for Bellek’s loss.

Then, I’d barely tasted the bonding of dragon and Dragonmaster, but still I felt Bellek’s pain. It was a blade twisted in my soul. But still I did not understand the entirety of its meaning.

I made a sound. I did not know it until Bellek turned toward me. The width of the brood cave stood between us, but in the radiance of the walls I saw the tears that glistened on his cheeks, his filled eyes, all overrunning. That was such grief as I’d never seen.

For long moments we stared at one another. I knew embarrassment: I knew I intruded on private grief. Then he wiped a sleeve across his face and blew his nose. It was a thin, reedy sound amongst the shufflings and snortings of the dragons, but I heard it clear as scream of pain. I said, “I’m sorry.”

The distance between us was too far he could hear me, the noises the dragons made too loud, but he did. And I heard him say, “No matter,” and knew he referred not to my sympathy for his loss but to my apology for intruding. They were the same thing: he knew it. We spoke in words, but it was the minds of the dragons that carried our voices back and forth. I watched him rise, and sigh, and stretch his shoulders before he clambered down from the ledge and came toward me.

I stood waiting, leaning against Deburah. I felt afraid in a manner I cannot explain, as if I saw through mists my own future, I become Bellek, old and soul-weary, likely crazed. My sweetling told me I was not, and I stroked her cheek in gratitude.

Bellek halted before her ledge. He said, “You know something of it now. I told you there was a price.”

I said, “You did not define it.”

He said, “You did not ask I should. Had I?”

I shrugged. So close to Deburah, enfolded by her thoughts, I could only answer, “No. It should not have mattered.”

He smiled. On Thannos Eve we Dhar don masks and revel for a night in honor of the Pale Friend, death. It’s a festival of which the Church does not entirely approve, for it is redolent of the old ways. The masks depict grinning skulls or a lovely woman’s face, each incarnation representing the Pale Friend counting her harvest. Bellek’s face reminded me of those death’s-heads.

Without preamble he said, “Aiylra was her name. She was beautiful; a queen.”

His voice was low and husky, empty of inflection in that way men have when they contain anguish. Let us not disgrace ourselves with exhibition of weakling’s pain. Or is it only that we cannot handle it in any other way, save that denial of it? I knew he hurt in ways I could not yet imagine: unthinking, I touched his shoulder. As men do, I thought; and turned my hand to hold him. He leaned against me and wept openly. I put my arms around him and felt him shudder. My shirt got wet.

Against my chest he said, brokenly now, “Oh, Daviot, she was so beautiful. She laid Kathanria, which is how I can ride that one. And Deburah; though”-proud laughter came now through his weeping; such as a father accords a beloved child-“though Deburah’s like her dam-proud. She’d have only her one rider. She’d bond with only one master. She’d not let me mount her. Only you. Do you understand?”

I began to grasp it: I felt afraid and proud. I said, “I’m not sure.”

Bellek said, “You love Rwyan, no? Whatever risks we take in the days to come, you’d live out your life with her and none other, no?”

I said, “Yes.” And to Deburah, silently, And you.

“And should you lose her?” he asked me.

I said, “I did. But found her again; I think I should die, did I lose her now.”

He said, “It’s worse.”

I asked, “How?” I could imagine nothing worse than losing Rwyan.

He pushed clear of my arms, rubbing again at his eyes. He looked very old. He looked weary as Tryman, in that tale that tells of how the giant held up the world for his penance. He said, “Dragons live longer than men; and those who dwell with dragons. That was the price. That, and love.”

“What do you tell me?” I asked, half suspecting; fearful.

He said, “That you-all of you-must become true Dragonmasters if you’re to win this war. That to become Dragonmasters you must bond yourselves, soul to soul, with your mounts.”

I said, “I know that. You told us that: we agreed.”

He said, “I did not tell you the whole of it.”

I said, “I guessed as much. But even so, we accept.”

He said, “Had I told you the whole of it, perhaps you’d not have agreed so readily.”

I said, “Perhaps not. But the bargain was struck, and do we turn back now-what? The Great Coming? The rising of the Changed? Blood shed all over Dharbek? Can we but implement Rwyan’s design, then we can change all that. We can build a better world. Surely that must be worth the price?”

He sighed then, and straightened his back, and looked me unblinking in the eye. “To become a Dragonmaster you must accept the curse of long life. Sometimes longer, even, than the dragons’.” He laughed: again that hint of madness. “Does your bond-mate drop an egg, then that may prolong your life. And dragons live a very long time, Daviot; and they’re demanding creatures-they’ll not let you go easily. That’s the bargain we strike, we Dragonmasters.”

I said, “Still, I don’t quite understand.”

And he laughed, so loud the bull on watch outside stirred and turned his baleful eye back. I heard the scrape of claws on stone.

The Dragonmaster said, “Long life. To watch your loves, your friends, your comrades-all of them-die. To live on when they are gone. Glorious, aye; to live with dragons and ride the skies. Such glory! And such pain when it ends. When your bond-mate dies. Like Aiylra! Had she not birthed Kathanria and Deburah I’d have died ere now; or taken that Way of Honor Tezdal thinks of.”

I saw a truth then. It was stark, as truth often is. I asked Bellek, “Is that what happened to the others? Your fellow Dragonmasters?”

He ducked his head and told me, “Aye. Their bond-mates died, in battle or age, and they’d no brood-kin to hold up their hopes. Or”-again he laughed that crazed laugh-“hold them here. Only I! And those threads that bind me to this tiresome life grow thin now. Aiylra’s gone, and I am weary. Kathanria and Deburah held me, but they’ve new bond-mates now.”

I said, “What shall you do?”

Bellek said, “Teach you to ride dragons in battle.”

I said, “And then?”

He said, “Find peace. Go into the Pale Friend’s arms. I’d welcome that embrace as you shall, in time.”

I asked him then, “Is it so much pain?”

He lowered his head, and I saw fresh tears fall out of his eyes as he answered me, “Aye. Pain beyond your imagining. I think your Sky Lord friend’s the better way. It should be better to put a blade in my belly than suffer this.”

I said, frightened, “Then why don’t you? Why haven’t you?”

He said, “Because I had Deburah and Kathanria. Aiylra’s laying, them; and mine. I’d have followed her into death, save there were no other Dragonmasters then, and I’d not leave my charges solitary. They are my children as much as his.”

I followed the direction of his eyes toward the entrance of the cave, where the bull sat massive on his guardian’s ledge, and understood what Bellek told me.

I felt my mouth go dry. I felt my bowels shrivel. I committed my life here, and Rwyan’s; and carried Urt’s and Tezdal’s with me. I knew that then: I felt small and afraid. Like a boy standing on the beach as the airboat came closer and spread its malign shadow over me. Hoarse, I said, “I understand now.”

Bellek said, “Do you accept it?”

I looked at Deburah and found no choice. I said, “Yes.”

Bellek said, “You cannot tell your friends. Do that-do they disagree-and you’ll fly no dragons against the armies that threaten.”

I looked at him and asked, “Think you they’d disagree?”

He said, “It shall mean your lives here, in no other place; and they shall be very long lives. It shall mean you cannot return to Dharbek, but must take my place in the Dragon-castle.”

I think I knew it even then, but still I must ask him, “Why?”

He said, “Because the dragons will not leave this place, and do you enter fully into the bonding, then nor shall you. You begin to feel those ties e’en now, I think. They shall grow stronger-glorious chains that bind you to the ending of your days.”

I did begin to feel it. Already it was a painful notion to contemplate parting from Deburah. I said, “That, I can accept. I think the others would, too.”

Bellek coughed laughter. “It’s not so easy,” he said. “Shall Tezdal agree to never more walk the earth of Ahn-feshang? Shall Rwyan give up her sorcerous friends? Urt not go back to Ur-Dharbek?”

Doubt clogged my throat, sour. I swallowed. “Why can I not put it to them?”

He turned his face away at that, and when I saw it again, it was composed. “Because they might disagree. Not Rwyan, I think; at least, not so long as you remain. But Urt and Tezdal … ?” He took hold of my hands. I winced at the force of his urgent grip. “You must take my place! You four can bring new life to Tartarus; you can make the dragons great again. But you must pay that price!”

I weighed it in my head. I sensed Deburah waiting for my decision. I wonder, had I not already taken the first strides along that road that binds Dragonmaster to dragon, if I’d have chosen different. But I had, and so I can never be sure. Was it I made that decision? Or was it that I’d see that dream I shared with Rwyan fulfilled? Or was it Deburah made up my mind? I know not; and likely never shall.

I do know that I answered Bellek’s grip then and said, “So be it. I’ll not tell them.”

He said, “Not even Rwyan?”

I shook my head. I felt a dreadful guilt as I told him, “Not even Rwyan.”

I felt such intoxicating pleasure then as makes the headiest wine akin to tepid water. I felt … this is not easy to describe, but a promise of glorious days to come, of long happiness, shared lives, pleasure. I was sent stumbling forward as Deburah craned her great head down to nudge my back. Bellek caught me, else I’d have fallen, and on his face I saw reflected the satisfaction I felt from my lovely dragon.

I said, “My word on it,” and silently, inside my skull, where the deepest and most hidden of our thoughts reside, Forgive me, Rwyan.

There are some bargains as rest heavy on the soul. For each bright shining promise, there exists a dark shadow. Bellek had extracted from me an agreement I was not certain I should have given: I committed my love and my friends to a future in which they had no say. But had I not, then surely our agreed aims could never have been accomplished.

I told myself I had no other choice as I walked with Bellek back along those snow-clad ledges that brought us to the castle.

I had no other choice.

It did not help me much. I thought Rwyan must surely read the guilt I felt inscribed upon my face. My mouth went dry, and when we found the empty hall and stood before the banked fire with snow coming vaporous off our clothes and hair, I found the wine jug and drank deep.

“Remember,” Bellek said, likely not aware he insulted me, “that do you say aught of this, no dragons shall fly.”

I nodded and set down my cup. There are some bargains as sit heavy on the soul.

Rwyan was asleep when I came in. That magic she’d set about the chamber brought gentle light from the walls and ceiling, and perhaps it was that stirred her. Perhaps it was only my presence, the small sounds I made, or her own curiosity. I confess that I’d hoped she would remain asleep, and I be able to slink silent to our bed and not need give answer to questions I’d sooner not now face, but wait for morning and the prevarications of a rested mind.

But I had no other choice: she woke, and raised herself against the pillows, and pushed tumbled hair from her face, and fixed her sleepy, blind eyes on me. I saw them grow alert: I felt afraid. I’d sooner dare the jaws of a bull dragon than this.

She said, “You were long with Bellek.”

Inevitably, a question hung between us. I ducked my head: I’d not then much wish to meet her eyes. In that moment I regretted the promise I’d given the Dragonmaster; I thought of breaking it. I knew I could not, else her dream be damned at its birthing.

I said, “Aye. He had things to speak of.”

She said, “What things?”

I shrugged. “Let me wash first. It was cold out there.” She said, “In the brood cave?”

How much did she know? I said, “Yes,” and hid myself within the alcove, toweling my hair dry, washing: delaying.

At last I must emerge and face her, this woman I loved deeper even than what I felt for Deburah. And likely tell her lies. I think I’ve not felt sorrier than that in all my life.

And in a way she made it no easier for me-love’s fond cruelty-for what she did was fling her magic at the hearth so that the fire flared brighter to warm me better, and hold back the bed’s coverings that I climb in beside her, and then fold her arms around me to warm me with her own body’s heat. And all I could do was crawl guilty in and lie against her, as she told me I was cold and asked if I’d have her warm me ale or wine. And I could only shake my head and ask she keep her arms around me and trust me.

And then the worst: she said, “I do.”

I could only extemporize then.

Or was it prevarication?

I said, “Bellek’s bond-mate died.”

She stiffened. I felt her shudder, knowing she experienced the same shared horror I’d known; that she felt the growth of the bonding no less than I.

She said, low, “That must be …” And shook her head, her sunset hair curtaining my face until she flung it loose and finished: “Poor, poor man. And you were there. You shared his grief.”

Against her breasts I mumbled, “Yes. He wept … He …”

Almost, I told her all of it, but she kissed me then, soft, and said, “Some of that I felt. It was like a dream, but I think Anryale sent it me. I think she’d not lose me. … I think I begin to understand what it is to bond with dragons.”

I asked, “Do you? Truly?”

If she’d told me no then, I’d likely have broken trust with Bellek and told her everything, but she did not. Instead, she kissed me again and said, “There are sometimes things revealed in grief that are private and should not be shared. Did you promise him as much?”

I said, hoarse and hollow against her breasts, “Yes.”

And she said, “Does your promise gainsay our purpose?”

I said, “No. My promise ensures it. But-”

She set her fingers gentle against my lips and told me, “Then I trust your promise. Bellek asked you hold it secret, no?”

I said, “Yes.”

She said, “Then honor your word.”

I said, “But you don’t know what it was. You should.”

She said, “No,” and laughed, rising over me in the bed to straddle me and pin me down with her soft thighs and arms against my shoulders. “Shall I not trust you, Daviot? Shall I not believe the man I love is capable of promises I can trust? What should that make me?”

I said, “I don’t know. But this promise concerns not only you and I but also Urt and Tezdal.”

She lowered her face to mine and kissed me soft and long and said, “Do you tell them, shall it threaten our purpose?”

I said, “Perhaps it should.”

She asked, “Shall it harm them?”

I said against her lips, “I think not.”

“But it might? Or should it turn them away from this new world we’d build?”

I moved my mouth from hers. I pushed her hair away that I might see her face clear. I looked into her green eyes. Blind-aye!-but clear with total purpose, with such certitude as gave me no choice but to nod my head and say, “It might.”

She said, “And should it be a better world if they turn from it? Should we change anything?”

I could only say, “I think not. I think it should be much the same-all war unending.”

“Then honor your promise to Bellek,” she said. “Honor that greater obligation. I’ll not ask what the Dragonmaster told you; say nothing to them.”

I asked, “Is that fair?”

I was startled how well she could mimic my voice. She said, “All war unending,” and it was as if I spoke to myself. She smiled. “Daviot; Daviot. Shall we stand by and watch our world go down in war and blood? Shall we do nothing, save contest with our finer conscience? Spend all our time wondering what’s right and what’s wrong? Shall we take this path, or that? Or shall we-when we see a way-take it? Do you believe that what we plan is wrong?”

I shook my head. It was a pleasant sensation: it brought my lips against her breasts.

She rose, so that I could not any longer, and faced me square, “looking” deep into my eyes. She said, “Then to do other than what we believe is right must be wrong, no?”

I said, “Yes.”

I felt horribly tired, and at the same time lustful. I wanted Rwyan badly, and I wanted sleep no less. I felt guilty, and she persuaded me I was innocent. She held true to her belief; I doubted mine.

I said, as I’d said to Bellek earlier, “I’ll not tell them.”

She said, “Good. I think that shall be for the best. I think we’ll build a better world.”

Then she bent down to kiss me, and sunk me into her, and I lay back as she moved on me, and I almost forgot my weariness. Because I loved her, and loved Deburah, and knew that we, all of us, built fresh eggs, and dragons should once more ride the skies, become again the Lords of the Sky, and the one thing was the other, all mingled, and I was no longer sure whether I lay with Rwyan or Deburah, and cared not which, only that they both loved me, and I them, and we were together.

Winter’s fist still gripped the mountains of Tartarus as we readied to fly south.

Bellek would ride with Urt on Kathanria, and all swathed in furs against the chill, we climbed astride our bonded steeds. I buckled myself in place on Deburah’s back and felt her eagerness. My blood quickened. I felt the lust to hunt. I was no longer entirely myself, but a gestalt creation-dragon and rider bound in such union as only Dragonmasters can ever know. I looked to where Rwyan sat Anryale, and on her face I saw the same excitement I knew must infuse my features. I had not seen so many dragons gathered in one place before. Our castle was augmented by the others, so that there was not a perch or ledge or tower did not seat a dragon, and more beat restless wings against the snow-laden sky, anxious to go south, to the hunting.

Bellek raised an arm, like some ancient general readying his troops.

Before it came down, the bulls were lofting. I felt their battle-hunger, wild in my blood. Then Deburah spread her magnificent wings and hurled us skyward. I shrieked my joy, which small cry was quite lost amid the belling of the dragons.

Up we went, the loftiest peaks as nothing to us; up to where the clouds ended and the sun shone. Up higher than any bird could dare; up and up to the true domain of the dragons, up to the great panoply of unsullied blue that covered all the world. Then south, beating high above the Dragonsteeth Mountains and the empty moorlands of Ur-Dharbek that came after. I saw those hills that ringed Trebizar draw steadily closer as the morning gave way to afternoon.

I grew afraid we came too late: it was already spring here. I told myself it was not yet Ennas Day.

Crops sprouted in the fields below, the cattle grazed on verdant grass. I thought on how that magic the wild Changed commanded could do all this, of what a fruitful land this unknown country was; and then that it must surely be enough for anyone. I thought it likely was for the ordinary Changed who lived their ordinary lives here, and that it was Allanyn and her ilk who’d bring these peaceful folk down over the Slammerkin in war. And then that had we Truemen not treated the Changed so poorly, they’d not go to war.

A memory of Pele and Maerk flashed through my mind: confirmation that understanding was possible, that Changed and Trueman might live together in peace and love.

But not easily. Surely not without this lesson we’d deliver. Surely not without we impose our design on the world. Not for the first time, I wondered if what we did was right. If we looked to overturn some natural order that defined men in strata, master and servant, friend and foe. I pushed the thought aside: I was committed now. There was no turning back: we’d tear down that we might erect a better society from the wreckage of the old.

And Deburah’s enthusiasm filled me. She sensed the magic ahead, and it sharpened her appetite. She’d contest with these upstart creatures for mastery of the skies. As would the bulls: I felt their battle-lust as a heady tide that denied all doubt. They’d only fight now and turn on any who turned back. I gave myself up to it: better that than wonder if what we did was right.

I looked around and saw the sky all filled with dragons, dread squadrons come out of legend to fall upon a younger world.

They were superb! They were incarnate glory. Their wings hid the afternoon sun; their fangs shone bright. They were winged wrath; and I was with them: one with them. I forgot all else as we rose over Trebizar’s footling hills and swept down toward the skyboats.

There were more now. Where a score or so had hung moored beside the shining lake, there were now hundreds. They sat like blood-filled slugs above the land, and spread below them were the pavilions of the Sky Lords, all bright banners in the sun.

Men came out as we approached. They looked like ants swarming from myriad close-packed nests, all gleaming black armor, with useless swords and ineffectual bows raised against us. I saw a handful of the little skyboats climb to meet us and felt the surge of the bulls’ contempt as they-forerunners of our dread army-beat their wings and turned to attack.

The Sky Lords were brave. Let no man ever say different, for those few tiny boats came hard against us, and the Kho’rabi wizards flung their magic at us, and the warriors in the baskets, though they were so few, strung bows and hurled javelins at creatures that must surely have terrified them.

But they were not enough, and the elementals the Kho’rabi wizards held in bondage did no more than their masters forced them to. I heard their joyous laughter as the bulls dove, talons spread wide, jaws all agape. I saw the little skyboats erupt incandescent, like crimson flowers blossoming against the blue of that springtime afternoon. I heard the belling triumph of the bulls and the wild laughter of the elementals as they were freed of occult shackles. I saw more than a few Kho’rabi taken from the air by invisible hands and rent apart. But not so many as the bulls slew.

And then we were closing on the greater skyboats, all of us; all our terrible battalions.

The Kho’rabi boats were moored, grounded. Neither the warriors nor the Kho’rabi wizards were readied for our attack. I doubt it should have been different had they been. Perhaps longer, but not different: they were not accustomed to fighting dragons. How could they be?

We came on.

I gave up all thought, all doubt: I was one with Deburah as she slavered hunger. We chose a skyboat and beat our wings hard, to catch height. The prey lay below us: we furled our wings and dropped. Our limbs thrust out, talons spread wide. Elementals screamed encouragement, howling to be freed. We fell out of the sky. We struck. Our talons burst the skyboat’s skin, and fire gusted around us. Elementals drove the flames away. We fell down through the ruptured canopy and hooked our claws in the basket beneath. There were men there. I supposed they thought to loft the airboat. We lowered our head even as we spread our wings wide to avoid the ground. And ducked our head to pluck the men out. Bite them. Sweet taste of warm blood! And drop them; to select another. Fore and hindlimbs clutching; tearing. Beating wings sending ragged flags of burning hide in tatters around us. Until there was nothing left living there, and we rose to find fresh prey.

From the elementals: gratitude that we set them free.

That part of me that still looked out from behind my own eyes saw a Kho’rabi running below us. He was armored but without his obscuring helmet, so that I saw his face as he looked up. He held a sword that was the sister of Tezdal’s, and he raised it even as Deburah’s talons closed on him. Never doubt the courage of the Kho’rabi: he swung his blade even as he was lifted up and carried to her-to our!-jaws. I did not hear him scream, but I think he did. Surely his mouth sprang wide and his eyes were huge as those fangs closed on him and severed him. I watched the two pieces fall down onto the bloody, burning ground.

I laughed.

We gained height and saw our sister, Kathanria, tearing at a skyboat. We flew to join her. I saw Bellek’s face lit as I’d not seen it before. I wondered if it was vomit that stained Urt’s furs. But no time for that: this was battle, and we’d win it. We sank our talons into the skin of the sky’s usurper and rent it asunder. Men fell out of the basket, and we quested after them in sisterly rivalry. We claimed more. And ours the Kho’rabi wizard: that taste sweeter for the impotent magic he flung against us as our jaws closed on him. Fool! To think his weakling magic should be of use against us, who own the skies!

We went on.

There were no more skyboats left, only burning wreckage, but we could still pluck tents and the little fleeing figures of men. Like tidbits after a feast, taken almost lazily. Not hunger anymore, but only the gratification of sated appetite: to be taken because they were there.

Then Bellek’s call. We rose to meet it, circling the blue sky over Trebizar.

Under us the lake was lit by the flames of the burning skyboats, red upon the blue. Like the darkening of the grass where men’s blood had fallen.

Trebizar? The Council? Allanyn?

His voice was lost under the thunder of the dragons’ wings, the triumphant howling of the bulls. I heard it only through Deburah’s sending. Just as I returned my answer: Aye! Best that we end it swift.

Rwyan’s agreement was immediate, the others’ slower and less certain. From Urt I heard a heartsick plea that we delay; at least avoid such slaughter as we’d wrought on the Kho’rabi, not butcher his Changed kind as we had the Sky Lords.

And from Tezdal … I could not be sure. Sorrow? Commitment? A disgust directed inward? I gave it not much thought: I was filled up with Deburah and knew only triumph and the satisfaction of the hunt. I lusted for more; and better: against harder quarry. Aloud, my inadequate voice carried on Deburah’s sending, I said, “Only Allanyn, and those who’d oppose us. Let none others be slain.”

That, Bellek returned me, shall be difficult. The bulls have the taste now, and shall be hard to control.

I gave him back, Only do your best. And to Urt, It should be better ended here and now, lest Allanyn flee. You need not take part.

What I felt then, from Urt, sent out by Kathanria, was a dreadful mixture of emotions, akin to what I’d felt from Tezdal. Inside my head I heard my old Changed friend say, No. Are we to do this, then I’ve a part I cannot ignore. Allanyn must be mine, lest my people say it was Truemen alone delivered this fury.

Brave Urt! That was courage indeed, and common sense; but still I ached for the pain I heard inside his words.

So be it. This from Bellek, and without further ado we swept across the lake, toward the Council building.

We left the Kho’rabi behind, decimated and confused, a milling mass of warriors unable, I suspected, to properly comprehend what had happened, the nature of the terrible airborne wrath brought against them. Certainly, they made no move to follow but only watched as we descended on the oval of the Council building. I saw some fall to their knees with hands upraised: I wondered if they believed this was some deliverance of Vachyn, some divine expression of disapproval.

Then I had no more time for wondering, but only action: we fell upon that strange white structure, and the harder part began.

The bulls landed first. They came down and set to tearing away the roof and walls. The rage that possessed them as they sensed hostile magic was formidable. As a dog bred solely for combat knows only the lust to destroy when it scents blood, so did the bull dragons react: the afternoon was not much longer aged before the Raethe’s building had no roof, nor many standing walls. As Deburah circled above, I looked down on a complex of halls and chambers and corridors all strewn with rubble, and the little fleeing figures of the Changed councilors.

Some tried to reach the lake shore: they failed.

We descended, Deburah and I, and I loosed my buckles and slid from the saddle, only dimly aware of the others landing and dismounting around me.

Take care.

That from Deburah, her wondrous head ducking down from the jagged ramparts of a wall to nudge me. I rubbed her cheek and drew the ancient sword Bellek had given me and told her, “Yes. I think I’ll not be very long.”

I recognized this hall, for all it was now roofless and littered. It was that chamber where Rwyan and I had first been brought to face Allanyn. I saw the corpse of Geran, ruptured by broken stone. There were other faces I remembered, felled by masonry or the bulls’ rage. Across the now-open area I saw Allanyn.

Her beautiful face was a dreadful sight. It was contorted with a horrid fury that absolutely overcame her inborn fear of dragons. Were the bulls incarnate power, then she was incarnate rage. She stood beneath the shelter of an arch, the way beyond blocked by rubble. She wore a gown of crimson, dusty now and speckled with the blood of the slain. Her lips were peeled back from her white teeth: I saw her gums and could not help but think of a mountain cat brought to bay.

She screamed, “What have you done? Do you think to live after this?”

And as she spoke, her hands formed sigils in the reeking air, shaping magic.

Uselessly, I raised my sword.

Urt shouted, “We’d bring peace to the world. Shall you listen?”

Allanyn’s answer was a bolt of power. I’d never seen such occult strength. Save perhaps when I’d witnessed the magic of the Sentinels, which I knew was a thing combined of many sorcerers, drawing on the power of a crystal. I thought to die then, at the beginning. But Rwyan raised her hands and met the blast with a countering gramarye that deflected Allanyn’s magic and sent it, like flood water held by a barrage, around us.

She gestured again, and Allanyn was flung back, a ragdoll thrown against the fallen stone behind her. Disheveled, faced with the inherent terror of our dragons, still the gifted Changed was defiant. She said, “So. This communion with dragons appears to make you strong; but I’ll contest you to the end.”

Urt raised a commanding hand. “We’d not fight you, Allanyn, save you force us to it. But you shall hear us out!” His voice was clear and loud; it held a plea and a promise.

Allanyn’s response was no less impressive.

She picked herself up from the rubble and smoothed her gown. She looked up, eyes casting slowly around the ravaged walls where our dragons perched. All fear seemed drained out of her now: she surveyed those terrifying faces with only contempt.

Greater still was the contempt she turned on Urt. “Tell me then, traitor.” Her voice was a challenge. “Tell me how you shall bring peace when all you offer is fear. Shall we bow our heads to you now? Swear fealty to your dragons?”

Urt ignored the disdain in her voice. “We’d end this dream of war that can only bring suffering to all our people. Must we use the dragons, then so be it, for we’ve no better answer. But better that fear a while than what you’d bring. We’d make a lasting peace-a new world, without Truemen masters or Changed servants, neither Sky Lords in lust of conquest or Dhar in fear of invasion. We’d build a new order, in which all have a place and a part. And when that’s wrought, the dragons shall return to Tartarus. So-shall you join us in that? Shall you seek not to shed your people’s blood but only aid them?”

Allanyn brushed red hair from her face. “So you find your true calling, Urt. A lapdog to these Truemen! Think you you can win? Shall you turn over so many lifetimes of suffering? Shall your dragons make the Changed forget the oppression of Truemen? Shall you persuade the Ahn to forget that the Dhar drove them from their Homeland?”

Urt said, “No. Those things are writ in blood; they were done-right or wrong-and cannot be forgotten. But what you intend is no different. Only a new oppression. What we’d build is a new world.”

Allanyn laughed at that.

Urt gestured at we who stood silent beside him. “I am Changed,” he said. “Rwyan is a sorcerer of Dharbek. You know Daviot for a Storyman. Tezdal is Kho’rabi. We-all of us-are joined in this purpose. Can you not take that as pledge of union and join us? It should be better so.”

Allanyn snarled and flung fresh magic at us. Rwyan dismissed it with a gesture that was almost casual.

She did not this time throw the Changed mage down, but rather seemed to bind her with occult chains that leached out Allanyn’s own power. Allanyn stood a moment shaken, an expression of disbelief on her lovely, ugly face. Then she drew a dagger from the folds of her gown and sprang, cat-quick, at Rwyan.

I leaped forward, but Tezdal was far swifter: his was the sword that struck the blow aside. Allanyn’s blade went spinning up, striking the broken stones of the wall, then tumbling bright in the sun down to the stained marble of the hall’s floor. It lay there like a defeated dream.

Tezdal held back the downstroke of his blade. He turned to Urt and said, “‘Lest my people say it was Truemen alone delivered this fury’?”

Urt closed his eyes and nodded. I knew he’d no taste for this: of all of us, I think he was the gentlest. But still he drew his sword-I’d not then noticed he’d left it sheathed-and brought it up high above his head.

He said, “I’d sooner it not be this way.”

Allanyn spat and returned him. “Traitor! Trueman’s lap-dog!”

He was not expert: he’d no training in swordwork. His blow did not take off Allanyn’s head as he’d intended, but only drove an awful cut between her slim shoulder and her slender neck.

Allanyn screamed and fell down. Blood rose in a ghastly fountain that sprayed us all. Urt cut again, and she was silent. I felt a dreadful calm and hoped I was not become inured to bloodshed. I looked to my friend and saw him stoop, mouth wide as he spewed.

It was Tezdal who held him then, and took the antique sword from his hands, and told him, “It was a thing needing to be done. You’d no other choice.”

I heard Urt groan, “No? Are you sure?”

It was Rwyan who answered. She stood speckled with Allanyn’s blood, her hair blown wild. She was, I thought, like some goddess of war or justice, come out of the past like the dragons that watched our drama. She said, “Allanyn would have made a worse world, Urt. What you did was for all the Changed who’d live free.”

Leaning back within the compass of Tezdal’s arms, he turned to face her. He wiped vomit from his mouth. “Are you sure?”

And she said, “Yes. Allanyn owned your Raethe, and she’d lead your people into a war that none of us, neither Changed nor Dhar nor Ahn, could ever win.”

I started as I heard hands clapping slow (and mocking?) applause, but it was only Bellek. He said, “That Council exists no longer. Those not slain here were taken by the dragons. I think there are not many Changed left with that power.”

Urt said, “What of the town? Are the folk there safe?” Bellek said, “Aye. Some flee, but the dragons have not attacked them.” Then he laughed and added, “Yet, at least.”

We mounted and crossed the lake, bringing utter panic.

The streets of the town were filled with terrified Changed, those not hiding inside the houses cowering beneath the beating of our wings as we came down to land. I felt disgusted by the pride I felt as I strode down the wide avenues, Deburah strutting behind me, her wings brushing the verandas, her talons gouging ruts from the streets. I felt like some god then, potent in my ability to dispense death or life, knowing that I need only give my lovely mate a word to see all around me destroyed.

Power corrupts. It’s a heady brew that is hard to resist: I pride myself that I did, for it was a difficult temptation as I watched them cower and felt Deburah’s contempt. But resist it I did, and we found Ayl and a few brave others. They held swords, and I think they’d have fought us had Urt not been with us. Certainly, their expressions were grim-they looked to me like men readying to die.

As it was, our former jailer saw my Changed comrade come marching down that fear-struck street with a dragon in tow and stared wide-eyed and gape-mouthed, until Urt called out, “Ayl! I need a sound man here.”

Then Ayl dropped his sword and fell to his knees and asked what Urt would have him do.

He was terrified. He would not look at the dragons, and he shuddered and trembled as Urt spoke to him.

I waited in the street as Urt told him, “Allanyn’s dead; and most of the sorcerers-there shall be no more thought of war. The Sky Lords’ airboats are destroyed, and all of Allanyn’s dreams. Tell the people that, Ayl. Tell them we open the gates of a new world. Tell them to forget the war.” He gestured at the dragons at his back, those circling overhead. “Tell them no harm shall come from these creatures, save the war goes on. Tell them that any attempt to cross the Slammerkin shall be met by these.”

Kathanria sensed his mood and raised her head supportive. Her jaws gaped wide, displaying those terrible fangs, and she loosed a ferocious cry. I saw folk dart back through doorways. But Ayl, for all he was shuddering with fear, remained.

Urt said, “There’s a new order coming, Ayl. A new and better world. We Changed shall be no longer servants; neither subject to the gifted. We shall be free and deal as equals with the Truemen and the Sky Lords. This I promise you. Tell the people this.”

Ayl nodded. I could not help but wonder if it should be so easy. Not even when Rwyan brought Anryale up alongside Deburah, and found my hand, and told me, “It begins now, Daviot. That peace we dreamed of.”

Even then, that first battle won, that first step so forcibly taken, I wondered if it could be so.

We had denied Allanyn’s dream of conquest, aye. But what of the rest? What of Jareth’s dreams? What of the Sky Lords’, Tezdal’s kin? Could we truly force peace on the world?

I was not sure, but I knew I was committed to that road. I knew that I could not turn back; not now, not with bloodied hands. I knew that only success could cleanse that stain.

We had provisions of the frightened town and took flight. There was nothing more we could immediately do in Trebizar, nor in Ur-Dharbek, save trust that Allanyn’s bellicose dream was dead with her, and that such good souls as Ayl should bring some order to the chaos we left behind. Later we could return, but now-now we’d new battles to fight, fresh conquests awaiting us. And those to be won before the Sky Lords launched their armada, before Ennas Day. I hoped we came timely, that what we left behind, all we had wrought in Trebizar, not be for nothing.

As the sun went down and the fires of our coming lit the sky, we flew to those hills that ringed the valley. Our dragons roosted there, calling amongst themselves as we five made camp and laid our plans for the morrow.

Neither Urt nor Tezdal offered much comment but remained largely silent. They had both seen their own kind slain this day: I wondered how I should feel when we brought our dragons against my own people. I thought that night, as I held Rwyan in my arms and tried to sleep, that I should find out soon enough. It was not a pleasant anticipation. It was made worse by Tezdal’s lonely figure, not sleeping but only sitting staring into the flames.

The dragons belled in the dawn. They took pleasure of this warmer weather, and I felt their eagerness to fly again, to drive southward to the combat promised there. Their lust enthused me, so that I forgot my doubts (or a part of me forgot them) and I found myself suddenly as eager. I saddled Deburah and mounted with alacrity, lifting her skyward even as the forerunner bulls beat their massive wings and climbed toward the rising sun. We circled once in dread reminder over Trebizar, and then turned away in the direction of the Slammerkin.

We reached that strait by noon.

I had never seen the Slammerkin, nor the Border Cities, and I was startled by the size of both. The dividing waterway was vast, far wider than the Treppanek, and I wondered how any Changed succeeded the crossing. I supposed only the most determined-like Urt-could hope to bridge that great expanse. And the Border Cities-they were each of them near large as Durbrecht, like vast fortresses spread all along the southern shore. I felt a pang of alarm then, thinking of the sorcerers in those sunlit towers and the magicks they could throw at us.

From Deburah, then, I got a sense of calm, of tremendous confidence, an absolute certainty that we should cross this barrier unscathed. That no mortal magic could harm me so long as I sat her back. I hoped she was right: I had no choice but to trust her.

I watched the cities come rapidly closer. Even had they not already sensed our approach, they must surely see us now-we filled the sky. Squadrons of dragons spread to either side, and more behind. The land and then the water below us was shadowed under our passing.

They did see us, but no occult blasts were sent against us: as Rwyan had promised, we took them by surprise, and our passing was so swift, the sorcerers there had no time to link and draw on the crystals’ power. We were come and gone fleet as the shadow of a wind-driven cloud on a summer afternoon. We left the Border Cities behind us, our destination Kherbryn.

That was another proposition entirely: Kherbryn was a citadel, fortified even stronger than Durbrecht; and warned of our approach.

We were met with magic and, as we closed, those bolts Gahan’s war-engines threw. I saw a bull-a magnificent silver-skinned creature-turned from his path by occult power. It spun him in the bright afternoon light, holding him like a cork tossed on contrary tides, even as he beat his wings and fought to free himself. Before he could, he was struck by a gleaming shaft. His wing was pierced, close to the shoulder. Through Deburah I heard him shriek, less in pain than in rage and wounded pride. I had not seen dragon’s blood be fore: it is red, like yours and mine. It spread along his ribs as he attempted to gain height, but then a second shaft took him full in the chest and killed him. I felt that as I’d never felt a death before. I knew what it was to see a friend die; I knew what it was to put a sword in a man and feel his life spent. But this … I’d not felt this, ever: I shared the outrage of the dragons.

And even as the great body tumbled from the sky, the horror began.

The bulls came down like those demons the Church threatens. Even as Deburah-as we, for there was no longer, not then, any difference between us-followed them, I saw two bulls plummet like stooping falcons on the engine that had flung the bolt. One caught it in his hindpaws and lifted it, the soldier-mechanics falling from it like insects shed from a raised carcass. He beat his wings and carried the engine high above the walls. I saw a luckless soldier clinging to the machine, and then falling down as the bull loosed his hold and let the engine drop into the streets below. The other, meanwhile, was landed on the ramparts-I had seen this before, in a dream; but then it had been Kho’rabi knights the dragon snatched and tore and chewed, not Dhar warriors, not soldiers of the Lord Protector’s warband.

Then I was too close to observe anything more than what Deburah did. What we, locked in our gestalt identity of dragon and Dragonmaster, did. And that was terrible enough: a bull was slain-our wrath must be delivered in full measure, these upstart creatures taught a lesson.

We swooped low over the ramparts of Kherbryn, slaying as we went. Not pausing but driving on, talons and jaws slashing and snapping, our tail a sweep that dashed men down, screaming, to the stones below. We left only ravaged bodies in our wake. The war-engines were too heavy for us-we left those to the bulls, who left them wrecked. We took the men; like a fox in a chicken coop. We knew only the venting of our fury, and when there were no more left on the walls, we swooped over the city, all of us. Rwyan was there, and one with the dragons’ anger; and Tezdal, and Urt, with Bellek fearsome on Kathanria.

And when it was done, when Deburah sat in the yard before the Lord Protector’s great palace, and dragons sat like the God’s judgment upon the walls and more hung in the sky above, I climbed from the saddle and became, a little, myself again. Enough that I looked around, and felt my stomach churn, and fell to my knees, and emptied my belly, as Urt had done in Trebizar. And when I rose, telling Deburah that I could not properly explain why the slaughter should upset me so, I saw Rwyan’s leathers all discolored with vomit, and her face so pale, I thought she must faint.

She leaned against Anryale, who radiated the same satisfaction as Deburah, and wiped her mouth, and said, albeit thickly, “We did not think it should be easy, eh?”

I shook my head, and spat, and answered her, “No. But neither like this.”

Tezdal said, “This is war. In whatever cause, it is still war, and war is a bloody thing. When we go east, it shall likely be worse.”

I thought there might be some measure of pride in his voice, or even satisfaction, but I offered him no response, because just then I caught sight of a bull across the yard. He was digging claws between his teeth to dislodge something caught there, and when it came loose, I saw that it was the head of a man, trapped between the fangs by the column of the spine the bull had torn from the body. There was a helmet still locked in place, and from it hung that slender length of linked bones. It fell loose and rolled across the flagstones. I had thought my belly quite emptied, but I managed to vomit again at that.

It was Urt who helped me up, and his face was drawn as Rwyan’s. He said soft in my ear, “This is not easy, Daviot.”

I said, “No,” and heard my voice come thick. “I never thought …”

“Nor I,” he said. “But we can do it. We must, now. Now more than ever. Or it means nothing, any of it.”

I felt his hand firm on my shoulder and remembered the touch, from Durbrecht. I spat again and ducked my head and told him, “Yes. For all the world.”

He smiled, and it was not dissimilar to that expression I’d seen on Bellek’s face when he told me of Aiylra’s demise. It was not dissimilar to the smile of the Pale Friend.

I said, “Then let us do it. But I think it must be hard to fight our way down those long corridors. The palace must be filled with warriors intent on defending Taerl and Jareth both. We could scarce dare hope to win through. Not without terrible carnage.”

Bellek said, “It should not take long to destroy it-the bulls would welcome it. Or we could send the dragons out to scour the streets until our quarry comes to us.”

I said, “I’d see no more blood spilled, can we avoid it.”

Bellek looked, I thought, disappointed. His pale eyes glistened in the afternoon sun, and there was an excitement expressed in his stance; like the restless flexing of the bulls. I wondered then, even when my blood knew it, how close Dragonmaster grew to dragon, and how much humanity was left after that bonding was complete.

I said, “Do we send heralds in and ask that the Lord Protector and the regent attend us?”

And Bellek laughed and called a bull forward who-before any of us had opportunity to disagree-rose on his hindlimbs and tore the door that barred our passage from its hinges.

Wood lay in splinters before us as a Changed servant came out, the yellow rag of submission waving on a pole that trembled in his shaking hands. In the hallway behind him I saw a squad of crossbow men.

Rwyan moved to speak, but I sprang before her: I’d not see my love slain now.

I shouted, “We’d speak with the Lord Protector, Taerl; and with the regent, Jareth. There need not be more bloodshed.”

The frightened Changed sprang back, and a moment later a commur appeared. His plaid was immaculate, his armor polished. He’d not seen battle yet, but still his sword was steady in his hand, and his voice was firm as the steel. At his back the archers held their crossbows leveled on my chest. I felt a great desire to be elsewhere.

The commur demanded, “Who are you to ask this?”

I could not see his face behind his helmet, only his eyes, but they were indignant. I studied him a moment and saw that his plaid was not Kherbryn’s but that of Mardbrecht: Jareth’s man.

I heard Bellek say, “Let the dragons have him.”

And Rwyan, “No! We come to parley, not to slay.”

I said again, “We’d speak with the Lord Protector.”

The commur eyed me past the bars of his helm. I saw his gaze move on to the awful beasts surrounding me, to those upon the walls and those in the sky above. It is difficult to read the body language of an armored man, but under his pauldrons I thought I saw his shoulders droop a fraction. I said, “We need fight no more. But do you choose it, then these dragons will tear Kherbryn apart. Do you doubt they can do that?”

His eyes gave me answer first, and then his voice: “No. Do you wait here?”

I said, “A while.”

He ducked his head and turned away. The archers remained. I could see their faces clear. I could see the terror there. I applauded their courage, for none ran or lowered their weapons.

We waited in that yard baked hot by the magic of the Attul-ki, and I had time to see what that had wrought. I saw dead plants and dried fountains, wilted vines and withered trees. There was an aura of despair, of sun-dried hope; flagstones were cracked, weeds climbing up, even they yellow and enervated. The dragons luxuriated in the heat. I shed my furs and still felt sweat mask my body.

Then horns sounded and a herald appeared. His hair was lank, and droplets of perspiration trickled down his face. His tabard was stained, but his voice was loud: “The regent Jareth grants you audience. Do you follow me?”

I said-it seemed I was for the moment appointed spokesman-“No. Do you bring the Lord Protector Taerl and the regent here.”

I did not envy him. He swallowed hard and stared harder at the dragons, then ducked his head and said, “I shall convey your message.”

I said, “Do that. And also, that if they fail to appear before”-I glanced up and found a bull perched atop the wreckage of a pergola-“before the sun touches that dragon’s head, I shall send him and all his kin to find them.”

Power corrupts: I enjoyed the paling of the herald’s face. I heard Bellek chuckling as the luckless fellow went scuttling away. I was still aware of the crossbows aimed at my chest. I did my best not to stare at them.

Then Taerl and Jareth appeared.

The Lord Protector, for all he was not that much younger than I, seemed an innocent child. He wore a soldier’s armor, but not easily. He seemed, clumsy in the steel, and the sword belted on his waist seemed somehow an embarrassment, awkward and more likely to trip him than be drawn. He carried his helm under his arm, so I could see his face clear. It was a young bland face, unlined for all it was creased in worry. His hair was fair and long, as I’d heard Gahan’s was, and his eyes were large and blue, opening in naked wonder as he surveyed the dragons. I liked that: that he showed not terror, but wonder.

Jareth was a different matter. He was tall and thin, wide-shouldered under armor more resplendent than the Lord Protector’s, all gleaming silver plate and gold-etched rococo. He wore such a helm as aeldors wear, but grander: crested with a rolling comb and decorations at the temples in resemblance of eagles’ wings. It had a visor shaped in facsimile of a lion’s snarling face, lifted up so that I could see his own arrogant visage. That held no wonder but only spiteful anger, as if he found our dragonish intrusion tiresome. His nose was thin, the nostrils flaring as he scented the air-which, I must admit, was noisome with the stench of spilled blood and dragons’ breath (and be I honest, the emptying of their bowels). But still I thought he had no right to assume that arrogance. I looked at his eyes and found them cold and dismissive. I liked him not at all.

From Deburah I felt a surge of anger: she felt my distaste and sent it back, augmented by her own. I felt a great desire to draw my blade and cut this strutting charlatan down.

Rwyan said (aware of that unspoken conversation betwixt dragons and Dragonmasters), “Easy, Daviot! No more bloodshed, eh?”

I said silently, knowing it should be sent back to her, No; save he force us to it.

I looked at his arrogant face and almost I hoped he should.

He said, “I am Jareth, regent of Dharbek. What do you ask of me?”

I said, “Nothing. I’d speak with the Lord Protector of Dharbek.”

Jareth’s nostrils flared afresh at that, and I saw clear the outrage burning in his eyes. I held his gaze and prayed he’d not be so foolish as to order his archers open fire, not unleash the slaughter that should inevitably follow. Taerl seemed embarrassed. He shifted inside his armor and dragged his gaze from the dragons to me. I looked past him and saw that the archers were now augmented with sorcerers. There were nine of them.

Inside my head Rwyan told me, They are Adepts, Daviot I doubt I can defeat them all

I gave her back, All well, you’ll not need to. But ward yourself.

And you, she asked. Shall you survive?

I looked at the sorcerers and the archers and wondered if I should. But I had no choice anymore; no other way to go than forward. So I looked the Lord Protector in the eye and told him, “I’d speak with you, Lord Taerl; with you alone. About the future.”

Jareth said, “I speak for the Lord Protector. Have you demands, put them to me.”

I sent a message to Deburah then, and she came strutting forward across the yard, letting her wings loft idly and her jaws drop wide. She halted at my back, looking over my head. She spread her wings, and the regent sprang back.

Power corrupts, but its usage can be most enjoyable. Certainly, I enjoyed the sight of Jareth sprawling, armored buttocks over head, across the flags as I took Taerl’s arm-I think that had I not, he would have stood marveling at the dragons until we quit Kherbryn-and took him a little way aside.

I heard someone shout an order then, and Taerl turned and raised a placatory hand and called, “No harm! Hold your fire!”

That was the moment I decided he might be a suitable successor to his father.

I decided!

And who was I to pick and choose from the nobility of Dharbek who should rule and who should not? But then again, why should I not? I thought Jareth was not fit, and I knew from all my wanderings that I was not alone in that notion. I knew that good decent folk-aeldors like Sarun, and more besides-shared that feeling. So why should I not express it?

Especially when I had dragons to enforce my opinion.

I told the Lord Protector of our design; all of it. All we planned and all we’d do. Rwyan came to join me and then Urt and Tezdal. Bellek stayed back, more accustomed now to communion with the dragons than with Truemen. And as well he did, for Jareth must have sensed the drift of our talk and looked to protect his own interests.

I cannot be sure.

All I know for sure is that I heard Bellek shout and Deburah shrill a warning, and I looked back in time to see crossbow bolts glitter in the sun as they hurtled toward us.

I had no thought for Taerl then: only for Rwyan-I threw myself at her bodily, driving her down onto the flagstones of the yard. She screamed, and as we fell I smelled the vomit that discolored her leathers. I had no thought but that bolts might hit her, and I could protect her with my body.

I did not see Tezdal fling the Lord Protector down, nor Urt cover Taerl’s body with his own.

I did see Deburah and Kathanria snarl and take Jareth between their jaws. And then Anryale and Peliane contest the prey. I did see the archers loose useless bolts that only bounced off the hard hides of the dragons. I did see Jareth’s ravaged body torn in pieces, and the archers die under the talons and the fangs of the vengeful dragons. I did hear Bellek laugh.

Then it was over. There was only a horrid smearing of blood and mangled flesh strewn across the palace yard, sad relics of ambitious men. None others looked to oppose us further, but only stood, awed.

Urt and Tezdal helped the Lord Protector Taerl to his feet. He was shaken. His face was white as he surveyed the yard. He said, “What would you have me do?”

I said, “Build a new world. It’s begun in Ur-Dharbek now, and soon we shall carry it to Ahn-feshang.”

Taerl said, “Tell me.”

And through all the slaughter, I found hope.

Taerl offered no resistance to our suggestions; indeed, he offered some of his own, which told me two things about him. That he could adapt so swiftly to such dramatically changed circumstances told me he was his father’s son; that he accepted so readily told me he was not overly happy with his position. He seemed to welcome our suggestion (which, in light of the creatures stalking Kherbryn’s walls, was not really a suggestion at all) that from henceforth the Lord Protector should govern under advisement of a Council of Aeldors, together with the chosen representatives of the sorcerers and the Mnemonikos. He was somewhat taken aback by our suggestion (our demand!) that the Changed of Dharbek be no longer indentured servants but enjoy the rights and privileges of free Truemen. But as that long night paled toward dawn and we told him what we knew and all we’d learned-and what might be the outcome did he refuse-he agreed those bonds should be struck away. His advisers were less ready to accept, but the word of the Lord Protector and the unspoken threat of dragonish retribution brought them around, to lip service at the least. I knew there must be factions within Taerl’s court, those who’d argue our design in the cities and the holds, but such dissent was not an immediate concern. For now it was enough that Taerl heeded us and smoothed our way. I knew there should be difficulties later as surely as I knew my mouth was dry from talking and my belly began to rumble; but it was begun. There should be much work for we new Dragonmasters in the days to come, but the first steps were taken and our world shoved in a new direction. For now we could do no more-save that one last thing that should likely prove the hardest of all.

That we discussed as food was brought, and we fell on it like the dragons on prey. There was no thought of etiquette: there was no time for such niceties.

Taerl perhaps lacked the stern fiber of his sire and surely the ambition, but he had all Gahan’s wisdom. He it was broached that final matter. He said, “Do we instigate all we’ve agreed, then well and good-I think it shall likely make Dharbek a happier land. But what of the Sky Lords?”

The sun was risen now, though it had no right to climb so high so early in the year. The chamber was already hot, even with opened windows, through which we heard the calling of the dragons. I feared they might grow hungry and set to hunting the streets.

Bellek had the same thought, for he wiped a careless hand across his mouth and pushed back his chair. “We know what we shall do,” he said, rising, “and these are details you discuss. I’ll leave you to them and take the flock ahunting.”

I nodded my grateful agreement, but it was to Urt the silver-haired Dragonmaster turned and asked, “May I ride Kathanria?”

Urt (who was already somewhat uncomfortable in this assembly) was taken aback. “You ask my permission?” he said.

Bellek nodded gravely and returned him, “She’s yours now, my friend. I can ride her only by your leave.”

Urt frowned and said, “You have it.”

I thought he’d sooner go with Bellek, but he made no move, and I watched the ancient Dragonmaster offer him a formal bow and walk away. I could not interpret Bellek’s expression, but I thought it strange.

As he left, Rwyan called, “You’ll choose your hunting ground with care, eh, Bellek?”

He laughed and told her, “Aye, lady. I’d not tear down what you’ve built. Not now.”

His laughter seemed to hang in the hot room. But I’d no time to muse on that: Taerl had asked a most pertinent question.

I glanced at Tezdal, who sat silent and somber, and said, “When we Dhar first came down into Kellambek, we slew the Ahn or made them slaves. That was wrong.”

Taerl nodded. “Hindsight would suggest it so. But are we guilty of our fathers’ sins?”

I said, “Do we not right them, yes.”

Taerl nodded again and allowed me the point: “So what do you … suggest?”

I said, “We drove the Ahn from their homeland, and it was that began the Comings. Save we make reparation, the Comings shall continue.”

From amongst the dignitaries assembled along the table, a man said, “With such allies as your dragons, we can defeat the Sky Lords.” I noticed he wore Mardbrecht’s colors.

I saw Tezdal stiffen, and Rwyan’s hand drop to his wrist, where his own gripped his swordhilt. Quickly, I said, “With our dragons we could ravage all Dharbek. But we’d sooner not. We’d sooner see peace-an end to the Comings; an end to war.”

Taerl raised a hand before the man could speak again. “I’d put my seal on that,” he said. And then demonstrated a fine quickness of wit. “Should that not be a great monument to us all, my lords? That we be the architects of such a peace? Think on it! The Great Coming defeat-” He bit back the word, giving Tezdal an apologetic smile. “No longer a threat; neither any Comings. Daviot’s College should mark our names for that, I think, and tell such tales of us as must live on down the years.”

I smiled. I could not, because the sun was bright, be certain, but I thought the Lord Protector winked at me then. He said, “So tell us how this peace shall be won.”

I said, “We must give back the Sky Lords’ homeland.”

I had expected outrage at that, and it came. Voices rose in dissent, screaming that we Dhar had bought that land with blood; that to return it to the Ahn should betray our forefathers. I feared Tezdal would take offense and draw his sword.

Taerl impressed me again then. He took his wine cup and hammered it so hard against the table, the gold was bent. I saw a gem fall loose, unnoticed as the wine that stained the Lord Protector’s sleeve. When he had silence, he said, “We shall hear Daviot out. Do you stay silent, and only listen. Or would you contest the argument with his dragons?”

He’d not the voice of an orator. Rather it was somewhat soft, but he affected so imperious a manner that he stilled them.

I murmured thanks and said, “Blood has been spilled down longer ages than any here can count. Ahn blood was spilled first, when we Dhar took the land. Then our fathers gave their lives against the Sky Lords, against the Comings. The right and the wrong of it both lie in the past-the future is ours to decide. Shall we perpetuate ancient wrongs? Or look to set them right? I think there is only one way to achieve that aim; and save we do, the Comings shall not end, but go on and on and on.”

The same dissenter muttered, “Save you take your dragons and destroy them. As any true Dhar would.”

It was Rwyan who answered, putting in plain words what I began to know, and (I think, then) feared: “We are no longer true Dhar, neither Daviot nor I. Nor is Urt any longer only a Changed servant gone wild. Nor Tezdal now only a Sky Lord. We are Dragonmasters now, and not like you. We are become different-we see this world through the eyes of our dragons, and they do not look out through the eyes of Truemen or Changed or Sky Lords. They see it different, and so do we. And we shall make it different! And you shall not prevent us! You cannot!”

She had not moved from her seat. Neither had she bathed nor changed her soiled clothing. She had run fingers carelessly through her hair, but no more than that. Her cheeks were dirty; blood dried brown on her shirt, and speckles clung to her cheeks. Her tan was paled by the weeks passed in the winter-bound Dragoncastle. Her blind eyes blazed fierce as emeralds held to fire, but the fire there came from within. I felt my love for her blaze even higher. I saw that Taerl watched her with awestruck eyes. That did not surprise me: she was magnificent, impressive. I was surprised by the expression on Tezdal’s face: it was one of pure devotion.

Someone said, “Do you threaten us, lady?”

And Rwyan smiled like some messenger sent by the Pale Friend and lowered her head once, a single gesture of confirmation that required no words to drive home its import.

Someone else said. “This is too much.”

I thought then we perhaps went too far. This was a delicate path we trod and better not sown with anger’s dissent but weeded clean from the start. So I asked, “Too much?” And pointed to the windows. “Is this heat too much? How are Kherbryn’s granaries? Or Durbrecht’s? Or those anywhere in Dharbek now? Are they filled? Are the cisterns and the reservoirs filled? Or do the streams run dry and the cattle die in the fields? Are the people hungry or fed well? Listen-I’m a fisherman’s son”-someone muttered, “I’m not surprised,” but I ignored so cheap a sally-“and some time ago I went home. The catches were poor then-how are they now? Does Dharbek prosper, or suffer famine? And drought?”

A voice I recognized now said, “You could end that.”

It belonged to a plump-cheeked man of middling years. His hair sat lank with sweat about a round visage that suggested he suffered no great deprivation. I fixed him with my eyes and saw his drop as I said, “Yes, we could. We could likely take our dragons east to Ahn-feshang and destroy the skyboats readying for the Great Coming as easily as we destroyed those moored in Ur-Dharbek. Likely we could tear down the holds and cities of the Sky Lords as easily as we could Kherbryn. But we will not! Can you not understand this? We will not! It’s as my lady Rwyan says-we are Dragonmasters. We shall not perpetuate old hatreds, but deliver a new order. Do you accept it or not, still it shall come.”

Silence then, heavy and hot. The voice that broke it was Taerl’s: “How shall you do this?”

I said, “We shall go to the islands of Ahn-feshang and present to the Attul-ki the same terms-that they lift this gramarye destroying Dharbek and give up their dream of conquest.”

Taerl spun his dented goblet between his hands and said, “And in return they have back Kellambek?”

I shook my head. I said, “No. In return, they have the right to settle in Kellambek. To live and work alongside those Dhar and those Changed who live here now. Just as any Dhar or any Changed shall have the right to live in Ahn-feshang, do they wish.”

“That,” Taerl said, “shall not be easy, I think.”

I said, “No, it shall not be. Old hatreds fester like poisoned wounds and sully new flesh. But it might be done. And there shall be dragons in the skies above all the lands, to hold the peace.”

Taerl said, “Hold it? Or enforce it?”

I shrugged. “It must depend on men,” I said, “in the end. But must we Dragonmasters enforce it, then we shall. Think you that shall be worse than the cycles of war?”

The Lord Protector looked me in the eye. Then turned to Rwyan; and then to Tezdal. To the Sky Lord he said, “Can this be done? Would your people accept it?”

Tezdal said, “As well as yours. There will be some who … argue … but do you give us back our Homeland, then-yes, I believe we might win this peace.”

Taerl studied him for long moments and then laughed, shaking his head. “By the God,” he said, “my father would not believe this! Look at me!” He rose, kicking back his chair to turn, arms spread wide to encompass us all. I thought he was perhaps a little drunk, or tired by the long night’s talking. “The Lord Protector of Dharbek in earnest discussion of peace with the Sky Lords and the wild Changed. I heed a Sky Lord! And a Changed servant gone from his master across the Slammerkin. I listen to the words of a Storyman. And”-this with a not-entirely-steady bow in Rwyan’s direction-“a rebel mage. Is this not a wonder, my lords?”

I heard a voice then mutter, “Not from you, boy,” but when I looked down the table, I could not find the speaker. I thought it was likely that fat noble in Mardbrecht’s plaid, but I could not be sure. I watched as Taerl crossed to the windows and looked out over the ravaged yards of his palace. He set his elbows on the sill and said wonderingly, “They are all gone. Just as your friend-Bellek?-promised.”

The voice that had muttered before said, louder now, “Then we might slay them. All of them! Why not, Lord Taerl? Cut off the dragon’s head now, and when the other comes back-slay him, or buy him off.”

I saw the speaker now: it was indeed that plump supporter of Jareth. He rose from his chair in his enthusiasm. I saw that his belly was fleshed round as his cheeks. I saw also that Rwyan could no longer hold Tezdal back. I saw rage suffuse the Sky Lord’s face. I still could not believe anyone could draw a blade so swift.

It rose, lit bright by the sun that now spanned the room, glittering as Tezdal strode down the length of that long table. The nobility of Kherbryn cowered before him. Not one moved to halt him. The fat man shrieked: I was minded of pigs at gelding time. He raised both arms above his head and went tumbling over his turned chair as he sought to flee.

“Halt!”

This, to my surprise, came from Taerl.

To my much greater surprise, Tezdal did halt. He stood over the quivering figure with lifted sword and naked rage in his eyes. I saw a pool of urine spread out from between the fat man’s thighs. It stank.

Taerl said, “I’d offer my apologies to you, Tezdal Kashijan, for the insult Gaerth of Mardbrecht gave.” He turned to we others and said, “I offer my apologies to you all.”

I watched as Gaerth scrabbled back. Tezdal let him go. He left a wet trail behind. I smelled feces. I wondered what the Lord Protector would do next.

He called the commur who stood guarding the doors forward and said, “Execute this traitor.”

I saw that the commur wore Kherbryn’s plaid; but still he hesitated.

Taerl said, “Do you take my order, or do you join him?”

There was a long silence.

This was akin to bonding with dragons: it was an instant of decision, in which future power becomes decided. I applauded Taerl: he saw the way and took it.

But I was not sure he should succeed until the commur sank his blade into Gaerth’s heart and the fat man died.

Then I truly thought we might succeed.

We lingered seven days in Kherbryn, but I saw no more of the place than I’d already seen from astride Deburah. We were cloistered in Taerl’s palace, locked in discussion, evolving stratagems, composing messages. Sorcerers came and went, deferring to Rwyan as if she were now mistress of their College, their magic sending word of all that had passed and ail that was to be down that occult web that connected the holds and keeps. Mnemonikos came, recorders of what we did, and eyed me as if I were some strangeling marvel. I knew some of them from Durbrecht, but it was as if lifetimes stood between us now, and they were strangers. Or-more correctly, I suppose-I was, for I could no longer pretend I was not different. It was as Rwyan had said: communion with the dragons made us something other than Truemen.

Urt spoke with his Changed fellows and through them sent word in addition to what his kind would hear as aeldors spoke and faceless servitors stood silent by. That should not be for much longer, I thought, for as the word was spread, it must become common knowledge that the Changed were more, and better, than Truemen took them for, and did all go well as we intended, they should find a place beside Truemen in Dharbek. We made it plain that no harm should come them, no retribution, on pain of transgressors answering to our dragons. I suggested that our new-found council grant a place to the Changed-Lan, I said, would likely make a sound representative.

And there were other suggestions-that aeldors such as Sarun and Yanydd have seats; I mentioned Cleton’s name.

In all of this Taerl proved himself far more than the ninny of popular suspicion. I thought he’d likely lived too long beneath the umbra of his father’s reputation, for he constantly demonstrated a quickness of wit, a ready grasp of this fluid situation, that impressed me. I thought that we should leave Dharbek in good hands when we quit our tenure. I had no doubt that we should, eventually. I was altered, I saw the world through different eyes: I missed Deburah when she hunted with Bellek as fervently as I knew I’d miss Rwyan, were we parted again; could I not “speak” with her, I felt an absence in my life, and when she returned, I felt a happiness I’d known before only with Rwyan. I knew we could not remain in Dharbek, not even after our intended journey across the ocean. I knew we must go back to the Dragoncastle and live there, for that was the natural abode of the dragons, and they’d not be happy elsewhere. I felt this as a wordless pressure in my blood, a soul-deep certainty that I could understand no better than I could deny it: it was a given fact and irrevocable. I began, albeit vaguely, to understand why Bellek had remained in that lonely place so long.

But I still did not know how long he’d been there; nor would he say, but only smile and change the subject when I tried to probe him.

But then that was the least of my concerns: we’d a future to build, a new world to fashion, and that occupied the larger part of my days and nights. It is no small thing to make a revolution.

Provisioned by the Lord Protector and clad in the fresh clothing he supplied us, we set out for Ahn-feshang on the morning of the eighth day.

It was early in the morning and the year, barely past dawn and barely Ennas Day, but the sun stood hot and heavy in a sky devoid of cloud, its blue silvered by the implacable heat. The weight of the Sky Lords’ magic lay hard on Kherbryn and all Of Dharbek, and as I mounted Deburah, I was aware of the hope we carried with us and the terrible burden of responsibility we gave ourselves. We had dictated terms-now we must make good our promises or be forever cursed.

But as I locked myself to the saddle of my beautiful, wondrous sky-riding steed, I felt only heady excitement. I lusted to fly again, to be adragonback. I’d been too long grounded, and as I turned to wave at my companions, I saw they, too, felt that urgency. Even Urt was smiling and answered my wave with a reckless hand. I caught Rwyan’s eye and saw her teeth flash white in the sun. Bellek was beaming as if his dreams came true. Tezdal nodded and grinned, but I thought him far less elated than we others. I said, knowing Deburah would communicate it past the thunder of the wings, “We make peace, my friend. We do this for all the people of our world, yours and mine and Urt’s. All of them!”

I heard back, Yes, but nothing more; and I was too eager to be gone that I felt the need to question him further or wonder at his reticence.

Then, I knew only the thunder of myriad dragons’ wings rising to beat the sky. To climb above Kherbryn as folk stared in naked wonder at the impossible squadrons that circled over the city. I wondered if the Ahn had felt such wonder as I saw on the rapidly disappearing faces of those Dhar, when Attul led them eastward into their exodus.

But that was a brief thought: those faces were too soon gone as Deburah spread her magnificent wings and climbed toward the sun. And Kherbryn was left behind in moments, and we were winging east over parched farmlands to the coast.

Sea under us then, which was disconcerting-to find no secure land beneath, but only the argent blue of the Fend; ahead, the Sentinels.

No contest from them: Taerl had sent firm word we should not be interrupted in our passing, and we crossed them without disturbance. We were high enough I could not discern individual faces, but I saw-for the first time-the great white towers that held the crystals. And I felt their magic like a prickling against my skin. It was akin to what I’d felt in Trebizar: a sense of terrible power, not unlike that dread the Sky Lords’ airboats delivered.

The dragons felt it: stronger even than we who rode them, and I “heard” the calling of the bulls, that they be allowed to go down and rend the towers, pluck out the crystals and all who used them. Bellek, echoed by us all, bade them no, that this was not suitable prey. At least, not yet. I told Deburah we’d a greater duty, and reluctant as the rest, she winged onward, so that soon the Sentinels were lost behind us.

We flew above the Kheryn-Veyhn now.

We Dhar had no name for the sea other than “the eastern ocean,” for we’d no use for any name: our world extended no farther. This was the sea the Sky Lords crossed to bring the fylie of the Kho’rabi against us; it was unknown. Tezdal had crossed it in that skyboat that Rwyan’s magic had brought down, but that (so he had told us) had been a hard journey, even with the Kho’rabi wizards whipping the elementals onward in service of their vessels. For us, it was easy, up where the air is thin, and only dragons can fly, and the sad worldly magic of humble men has no power.

I saw elementals then, like fleeting visions glimpsed from the corners of my eyes. I could not quite believe them, but Deburah told me they were there and helped us on our way, because she and all her kin were closer to them than human folk, who looked only to govern them and control them, not live with them in equality.

Except, I was gratified to “hear,” for Dragonmasters.

I did not properly understand, but I wanted to learn and accepted for now that explanation. More urgently, I wanted to reach Ahn-feshang and set in place the final part of our design.

For which I must wait: not even dragons can fly that ocean without halt. The elementals can, but they are not entirely of this world-they live in the spaces between, while dragons, for all their innate magic, are entirely physical beings: they must rest.

Which they did, to my consternation.

The sun was setting behind us. The sky there was red and burnished gold, like the dying flames of a forge. Ahead was a blue darkness pricked by stars and the indifferent face of the newly filled moon. The air, despite that aura of warmth Deburah afforded me and the fur-lined leathers Taerl had given me, was chill enough I began to feel it needling my skin. I heard Bellek call that we should go down and rest for the night; and wondered where and how. Deburah showed me as we swooped seaward.

I had not known dragons can swim: I found out then.

They’ve not much liking for it, but they can-are they forced to it-sail the waves as readily as they command the sky.

We came down onto a darkly moonwashed sea filled with rolling billows. It was not a very great swell-I’d ridden far greater waves in my father’s boat-but even through Deburah’s calm and confident sendings, I felt afraid as we settled on that ocean. I had never been so far from shore.

She spread her wings as we landed, just as she did when we swooped on prey, and broke our fall gently, so that only a little salt water splashed my boots. Then she furled her wings and began to paddle, and it was a fond memory of nights afloat in my father’s boat, rocked by the Fend’s currents. No fear, Daviot, she told me. Only a while resting. And I trusted her-how could I not? She was my Deburah, and I knew she’d give her life for mine, and I the same-and looked about to find the others paddling toward me.

A strange alfresco dinner, that. Deburah and Anryale and Peliane and Kathanria swam, gently dozing, as we riders passed food and ale between us. The other dragons floated easy on the swell, most with heads tucked under wings like sleeping swans, and only the outrider bulls alert. Cold food, yes; but warm in its wonder-that we could eat in such manner, like drowsy fishermen riding such boats as only legend knew.

Had I a regret, it was that I could not hold Rwyan but only remain apart from her, buckled to my saddle even as I slept. But that slumber was in the cradle of the sea, and I was not unfamiliar with that: I slept very well.

And woke startled to the beat of dragons’ wings as Bellek shouted us awake and we took flight.

It was not yet, dawn. The sky was opalescent: that thin gray that presages the sun’s rising. On land there should have been birds chorusing the new morning. Here there was only a brightness in the east and the gray roll of waves against Deburah’s flanks. I gasped and clutched the saddle as she rose.

In moments we were in the sky again, climbing up to meet the rising sun, winging onward toward Ahn-feshang.

Night was come before we reached the islands.

I saw them first as jagged outlines lit by the moon. They minded me of the Dragonsteeth, but sea-washed. They seemed all sharp and rugged, without smooth places where men might live, limned by the breaking surf that bathed the shores, and inland all obdurate peaks and wooded valleys that must surely defy habitation or farming. Each island was dominated by vast peaks that painted the night sky with a faint red glow, as if the earth gusted hot breath against the night.

Then I heard Bellek call, asking where we should best descend to deliver our message.

And Tezdal answer, “Ahn-khem, where the High Ones of the Attul-ki build their dozijan.”

I asked, “Shall it be safe?”

And got back negative laughter as Tezdal advised me, “I doubt any of this enterprise shall be safe, my friend. Think you we’ll find a better welcome here than in Kherbryn?”

Rwyan said, “Perhaps we should wait.”

“For what?” Tezdal demanded, and even though it was Peliane sent me his voice and Deburah translated the words, still I heard an echo of wild desperation. “To give my people time to gather? To oppose us harder, that more die? No! We do this now or not at all.”

There was a terrible finality to his tone, as if he reached a decision and would not grant himself time to think on it, but implement it before dissuasion gain a hold. Nor did he allow us time, but drove Peliane on in a furious beating of her sable wings, so that even the bulls were outpaced and we could only follow after.

Over wave-washed beaches we swept, a vast red-mouthed mountain rising deadly magnificent above us. Across tilled fields and wooded valleys; I saw the lights of scattered villages, and rivers tumbling down steep slopes to find the sea. And then I cried aloud in unalloyed wonder as I saw the skyboats hung about the mountain. They drifted on mooring lines all down the slopes. They seemed to me like piglets clamoring for the sow’s teats. There were hundreds; or when I thought of all those red-lipped crags, likely thousands.

I had not believed so many could exist. I had not thought so many hides could be found and sewn together. I thought that so much wicker and wood as made the baskets beneath must denude the slopes of all these hills. I marveled, and Deburah sent that unspoken message to Peliane, so that Tezdal gave back answer.

“The skyboats take in the breath of Byr and ride Vachyn’s winds. These you see are readying to fly.”

I’d no more faith in Byr or Vachyn or Dach than I felt in the One God. I thought, from all Tezdal had told me, that what I saw was a magnificent human construction. A vast enterprise that satisfied an entirely human dream, fueled by priestly ambition. But I could not help but marvel at that ambition and the labor of its construction.

Then I must marvel anew at the entirely physical prowess of the dragons.

As the squadrons fell, Deburah’s lust to join her kin swept heady through me. I gave her her will, and we dropped down to where the skyboats hung and joined in the ravaging.

It was a liberation. I was a fisherman’s son from White-fish village, and the skyboats were the nightmares of my childhood: it was that child’s triumph to see them rent by the claws and fangs of my dragon. No less, I felt-through Deburah-the desire for freedom of the elementals bound to service of those boats. And as we ripped the bloodred cylinders apart and rode the gaseous blasts escaping them, so we freed the aerial spirits from their bondage. They laughed as they flew clear, and I felt ethereal hands brush my face in gratitude. Some, like soft silken figures spun out of moon’s light, coldly kissed my lips or darted thankful, insubstantial fingers through my hair. Mostly I felt Deburah’s pleasure in the destruction of malign magic.

Then guilt as we winged skyward, no prey left any longer below, only wreckage that lit the flanks of the red-mouthed mountain with a brighter, more immediate glow. I saw Tezdal riding Peliane, who had not descended, held aloft by the Sky Lord’s will and torn for that between her desire to please him and the lust she shared with the other dragons. I felt her sadness and his, and his was a soul-deep wound of hope and confusion.

I brought Deburah higher, to join Peliane, and sent out: I think it could not be otherwise, my friend. I doubt we could have stopped the bulls.

No, he answered me, likely not.

We end a war, I said, and build a peace. And there were not many of your folk slain.

He gave me back, No. Only their dream.

Which we’ll make good, I said. The Ahn shall find a place in Kellambek again, and all men live equal.

He answered me, Likely so, and closed his mind, so that I knew only Peliane’s concern for the awful sadness in him. I thought on how I’d felt when we descended on Kherbryn and had no answer for that, but only pity.

Then Rwyan came up on Anryale and told me Bellek took the squadrons to Ahn-zel and Ahn-wa-wherever the hot-breathed mountains fed life into the skyboats, to destroy them on the ground, before they had a chance to fly-and suggested we go down to the dozijan to give our terms to the Attul-ki.

It was a little after dawn; long enough after that the sun struck bright lances of golden light around the edges of the red-lipped mountain, like rays of hope flung against the fading night. The peak blushed, no longer entirely from its summit, but now also from the fires burning down its slopes, that glowing matched by all those other places where the armada of the Sky Lords was destroyed.

The dozijan was built upon a ledge of the mountain. It was a splendid and forbidding structure, standing high above the town below, the two connected by a winding road. Both town and temple were lit well with lanterns-none there could have ignored the clamor of our coming, or what we did-but the bulk of their structures stood still in shadow. I saw that the dozijan was a place of wood and stone, the walls and bases all dark granite, the upper levels swooping curves of timber and outflung balconies, with overhanging roofs and narrow windows. There was a high stone wall set with a massive gate that we ignored.

We landed in the pebbled courtyard, Rwyan and Tezdal and I. Those dragons Bellek had left with us settled where they could-on towers and spires and walls-so that all the dozijan was ringed with grim dragonish shapes.

And the Attul-ki came out to meet us.

They were dressed in robes of crimson and black, decorated with arcane sigils in gold and silver weavings. They bore no arms, and if the dragons awed them, they hid it well. They faced us as if we were what we were-intruders, invaders of their holy place. There were perhaps fifty of them, likely as similar of visage to me as any Dhar would seem to them, save for the obvious leader. He was taller, and his hair was a silver that glittered in the morning’s sun as it came up over the buildings behind. I wondered if he’d planned it so: I could not imagine any folk so self-possessed they would wait indoors whilst dragons landed all around and glowered down, their breath a susurration that drowned the birds’ song and filled the yard with the memory of digested meat. But these did and only stood in silent ranks as that impressive figure strode out in front.

His tilted eyes dismissed me with contempt, lingered an instant on Rwyan, and fixed on Tezdal.

Tezdal bowed deep. I saw his face lorn then. He would not meet that gaze but only said, “Dhazi, forgive me.”

He had tutored us enough in the language of the Ahn that past winter that I was able to somewhat follow what they said. The emotions in their words, the dragons gave me, and the rest Tezdal told me later. Then, I watched as the Dhazi studied him, as I’d long ago seen tutors in Durbrecht study some biological specimen. I was reminded of Ardyon: almost, I bent my knee.

The Dhazi said, “Do you betray your people and your gods, gijan? Do you renege those vows you made, that you come here with these land-stealers to defeat the Conquest? Do you forget that you are Kho’rabi?”

Tezdal fell to his knees. He lowered his head to the pebbles of the yard and wailed a heart-forsaken cry.

“Traitor, you,” the Dhazi said. “Blooded Kho’rabi, you. But you come with Dhar to break the dream of the people and gainsay the dictate of the Three. Apostate for that-damned by the Three and all the Kho’rabi. Were you fit, I’d tell you take the Way of Honor; but you’re not! Better you live out your miserable life in remembrance of disgrace and die outcast and alone. The Three be praised the lady Retze does not see this.”

I did not understand all he said, but I found its import in the ice-cold tone and the steel-hard glimmer of his unforgiving eyes; and I saw what I’d not ever thought to witness: Tezdal groveling in guilt and self-abasement. I was embarrassed for my friend, and terribly angry. I hated that hard priest as I’d not found it in myself to hate anyone, save Allanyn, so fierce before. I thought him bound to a view he would not change. I felt in him a surety of belief that allowed no other opinion. I heard the dragons stir as they received the tide of my dislike. Their wings rose like banners in the morning sun, and their displeasure filled the yard with a threatening whisper that was further emphasized by the irritated gnashing of their fangs and the scrape of their talons on stone and wood. I watched Tezdal bow his head-that hard, proud man bow his head! My friend, who should not need to subjugate himself thus!

In carefully rehearsed Ahn I said, “We come to talk of peace. The Ahn come back to Kellambek.”

I heard the Dhazi say, “We shall come back. Oh, yes! We shall come back! We shall come back with your flayed skins for sails; and the bones of this sad traitor set afront our skyboats in all his disgrace.”

That was too much: Tezdal was my friend and looked, like us, to build a better world. I drew my sword in warning. A foolish move that, to threaten with plain steel such sorcerers as these. I heard Rwyan shout and saw the Dhazi smile dismissively as he raised a casual hand. I was flung back, as if a giant fist came hard against my chest. My head spun, aching, and I think that had Rwyan not sent her own magic to my aid, I should have died there. As it was, I tumbled down beside Tezdal, fighting for my breath. Through eyes awash with tears of pain, I saw the Dhazi level a condemnatory finger. I moaned in rage and agony and knew I could not avoid his cantrip.

But the dragons were swifter and, perhaps, angrier.

It was Peliane who took him and clutched him a moment in her talons. Not long; but I heard him scream as he saw her jaws gape wide, and the fangs there, before they closed and cut him asunder like butchered meat, and he fell down all bloody and in pieces. And then the others fell on the Attulki and slew them, so that soon there was nothing left in the yard of the dozijan except bloody wreckage strewn across the pebbles, and Tezdal weeping, and the dragons gone wild to tear up the roofs and the walls and leave only devastation behind.

And all the while Tezdal kneeling and wailing, as if his life were stolen and all his hope gone.

There were no soldiers in the dozijan, no Kho’rabi knights to oppose us and give their lives to the slaughter-the Attul-ki were too confident of their power that they should guard themselves with warriors. What need, in a land that saw them as gifted by the Three, themselves like gods, omnipotent? But there were Kho’rabi in the town below, and they were coming fast in defense of the priests. “The Dedicated,” they named themselves, and that they were, for they evinced no fear at the sight of what sat atop the walls of the dozijan, and flew above the place, and tore it apart. They only advanced, perhaps seven fylie, black-armored and hurrying, intent only on joining in battle with such invaders as they could never have seen and likely never even dreamed. But still they came determinedly on.

I stood aghast in the yard, my spirit divided between nausea and the savage triumph of the dragons. Rwyan stood beside me, and we both had a hand to Tezdal’s shoulders as he crouched and wept, the both of us knowing it should do no good, not now, to speak with him. There were no words that fit.

It was Deburah told me the Kho’rabi came, just as Anryale warned Rwyan and Peliane Tezdal. He paid his dragon no heed, but Rwyan and I bent close then and spoke into his ears, and then he raised a face all run with tears and said, “As you love me, let there be no more killing.”

Rwyan said, “That was never our intention; only peace.”

Tezdal said, “Then let it end! I cannot bear this guilt!”

I thought it should be hard to halt the dragons and certain that they would fall on the Kho’rabi were we threatened. I looked for Deburah and found her lifting up a section of roof, the timbers spilling like splinters from her rending claws. I called her down, not sure she’d respond, and felt surprise that she came so swift to my summons.

Peliane and Anryale landed with her, and I felt their concern for Tezdal like a surge of heady anger. They’d rise up and fall on the advancing column-they’d swoop all the skies of Ahn-feshang in bloody destruction-but Rwyan bade them be calm and take us away and bring the others with us, and-reluctant-they agreed.

We lifted Tezdal to his feet and helped him mount Peliane. I buckled him in place. He sat slumped, his eyes tight-closed, though tears came trickling out from under the shut lids. I mounted Deburah, and Rwyan climbed astride Anryale. We winged into the brightness of the morning before the Kho’rabi reached the gates of the dozijan, and I was bemused that all the dragons followed us; as if we took Bellek’s place as leaders.

We gained height, and for the first time I saw the magic that filled the Sky Lords’ dread airboats. It gusted from those mountains like pus from an opened boil, as if the earth blew poison into the air. They were raw caverns, those hills, the stone of their peaks melted off into the savage fires below, great gaping maws all filled with flame and molten stuff that spewed out in great liquid bubbles and wafts of noxious gas. I felt about them as I did about the crystals that empowered Dhar magic-they had their own life and corrupted men.

The dragons, no less, were unhappy around those holes, and so we took them away to find Bellek and Urt and decide our next move.

Which we could not until Tezdal woke from his stupor.

He sat Peliane’s saddle like a tranced man. His eyes were closed and he gave her no commands, only slumped, swaying with the motion of her wingbeats as we went north. She followed Deburah and Anryale, her sendings a wash of concern for her bond-mate. They were no smaller than my own.

We found Bellek winging back to join us, glorying in the destruction he’d wrought. His seamed face was lit with joy, as if he’d found some climax to his life and should not find better. I felt the message he sent: All’s done! There are no more skyboats-the armada is destroyed! There shall be no more Comings.

I felt a measure of relief at that, but also a sadness, for I thought some part of his humanity was gone away; and I feared some part of mine must follow, for I had known that glorious sharing in the naked power of the dragons and wondered if I should go down that same path.

I “heard” Rwyan ask, What of Tezdal?

And Bellek answer, He’ll do his duty. Wait.

I could not be certain what followed then-a transportation of messages between the dragons that I’d not yet the subtlety of control to properly understand. I knew only that Bellek communicated with the dragons and Tezdal woke as if from drunken sleep.

He raised his head and wiped his eyes, and Peliane’s proud head rose higher, and he said, The dozijan of Ahn-khem is not the only stronghold.

Bellek said, No. But the others shall not oppose us.

Tezdal said, Then the Attul-ki are gone?

Bellek said, Many of them. Some live still, but there shall be no great magicks sent against us. Neither the Great Coming sent against Dharbek. That dream is ended.

There was a long silence as we circled over Ahn-khem. It was a sorry silence, for all we’d done what we planned to do; or most of it. I wondered why I felt no sense of success or triumph, but only empty, a chagrin that scattered ashes on my soul.

Then Tezdal said, The Khe’anjiwha resides in his citadel, at Khejimar. Best we go there to present our terms.

His voice was brittle, like a wire drawn too tight.

Rwyan said, Then do we go there, and settle this matter?

And as he’d done before, as we approached his homeland and his honor’s heart, Tezdal drove Peliane onward in a great rush of wingbeats, as if he’d outfly his destiny. Or hurry to meet it. I knew not which, only that I must ride Deburah after him and be with him, for I think I loved him no less than she, or Rwyan, or Urt. I surely know that I felt afraid of what I heard in his voice and saw in his eyes.

We came to Khejimar as the sun sank westward. It was Kherbryn built in wood, only the walls that surrounded the city and the Khe’anjiwha’s palace showing any stone. It was a vast sprawling place, the half spread up the sides of a precipitous valley, the rest layering down in wide terraces to the banks of the river that gushed through floodgates and mill-races to the broad stream below. It was all stone-walled, intricate lines of blue and red bricks rising in complex folds about the wooden houses inside to meet the dark gray granite of the palace. That stood aloof over the city, all towers and curving arches. I saw gardens and wide streets, fountains fed by the spilling river water. Mostly I saw wide eyes and gaping mouths as we swept in, adragonback, out of the sun.

There were archers on the ramparts, and they loosed shafts at us. Dragons fell upon the bowmen. Deburah laughed at them, and I laughed at them. How could arrows hurt us? We were the Lords of the Sky: we imposed our will on pain of death.

Power corrupts: I must remember that. What we did, we did in honest desire for peace; or so I hoped. But I could not deny that feeling: it was too wild, too exciting. It was too powerful as we came down over the ramparts of Khejimar, the taste of the slain Attul-ki yet strong in our mouths, to deliver our terms to the Khe’anjiwha.

They came out to meet us: the Great Lord of all Ahn-feshang, with his retinue behind him. He seemed of Tezdal’s age and wore armor, so that I could not properly read his eyes or face, and around him stood several hundred Kho’rabi knights with swords drawn ready and axes lifted. Behind them were a score of the black-robed sorcerers of the Attul-ki; and behind them, pike-bearers and archers. More along the battlements-those the dragons had not taken in revenge of the shafts fired.

It was not so large a yard as Bellek’s Dragoncastle, which was to our advantage, for it meant that the dragons settling all about dominated the beetle-armored Kho’rabi. And there were riven bodies strewn in bloody pieces about the ramparts that made our point to horrid excess. But still I thought that these were folk not easily given to defeat, but more likely to fight unto death, in honor of their dream. In honor only.

I must admire such courage: our dragons stood all around us, and likely word had come of what we’d done to the Attul-ki and the dozijan, but still the Khe’anjiwha faced us in full battle armor, with his palace guard behind, and seemed entirely prepared to defy us.

I looked to Deburah, standing at my back, and knew her readiness to fight. From Kathanria I felt Bellek’s eagerness: End it now! Slay them!

From Urt: No! Save we must

From Rwyan: We came to speak of peace. Shall we not do that? Hold back, until we’ve no other choice.

From Tezdal only dismay and horror.

Aloud, I said to him, “You must act the spokesman, my friend, for we’ve not such command of your language.”

He nodded. His face was a mask held in place by effort of will. A pulse throbbed on his temple. He fell to his knees, bowing until his forehead touched the flags. For long moments he remained thus, then the Khe’anjiwha barked an order, for all the world as if it was he who commanded here and not we Dragonmasters. Tezdal rose.

The Khe’anjiwha spoke again, and a man came forward to unlatch his helm, remove the casque, and step back. I had surmised correctly: he was no older than Tezdal, perhaps even a little younger. His face was handsome in the Ahnish way, all planes and angles, with black eyes that studied Tezdal and we others with a mixture of interest and annoyance. Certainly there was no fear there. His hair was oiled and bound back from his face, and there seemed no softness about him. I feared this should prove harder bargaining than with Taerl.

He said, in a voice no softer than his expression, “So those rumors were true-you did not die.”

Tezdal swallowed and would have fallen again to his knees had the Khe’anjiwha not motioned he remain standing. He shook his head and said, “No, Great Lord, my boat was destroyed, but this woman”-he gestured at Rwyan-“saved me.”

The Khe’anjiwha favored Rwyan with a lingering inspection. “The Dhar mage,” he said, “yes. And this is the one named Daviot?”

I met his gaze and answered him as best I could in his own language, “I am Daviot, Great Lord.”

I had the pleasure of seeing his eyes narrow at that. He said, “You speak the tongue of Ahn-feshang?”

I ducked my head and told him, “Tezdal has tutored me, Great Lord. Are we to build a new world, I think we must all learn new languages.”

He said, “Your accent is atrocious. But it intrigues me that you’d understand our tongue. Are you not come to impose yours on us?”

I shook my head. “No, Great Lord. We do not come to conquer-no more than we’ve conquered Dharbek or Ur-Dharbek. We come to speak of peace.”

He laughed then, and I realized that I understood these people hardly at all. There was genuine amusement in his laughter, and the hardness quit his face a moment as he threw back his head, guffawing like any common soldier. Behind him, his retinue sent back polite echoes.

He swept a gauntleted hand in the direction of the dragons and said, “You come astride these creatures across the Kheryn-veyhn to ravage my armada, to sunder the dozijan of the Attul-ki and slaughter my priests, and you tell me you come peaceful?”

I found it hard to understand all this, and Tezdal must interpret for me. When he had, I said, “Great Lord, forgive me, but your language is not yet easy to my tongue. Might Tezdal speak for us? He is one of our number, and one with our enterprise.”

The Khe’anjiwha studied me in silence. Then he looked at Tezdal again, and his eyes grew again cold. He said, “Tezdal Kashijan does not exist. Tezdal Kashijan died when his skyboat fell. His death led his wife down the Way of Honor. More-when word came from our allies that a Kho’rabi knight chose to live as friend to the Dhar, Tezdal Kashijan’s father took the Way, and his mother, for they could neither live with such dishonor.”

I heard Tezdal wail then, and when I turned, he was on his knees, his hands locked about his head. Urt went to him and knelt beside him, holding him. I saw the dragons stir restless and felt their growing anger. I feared new slaughter should commence, and all our dreams fall down in bloody ruin. I went to Tezdal’s side and bent my knee that I might speak soft and urgent in his ear.

I said. “Tezdal, listen to me! I am sorry, but set your grief aside for now. You must! Lest the dragons take offense, and the Khe’anjiwha be slain, and all we’ve planned collapse. You must play your part, or none of this has any meaning.”

He said, “You do not understand.”

I said, “No, but I’d learn. I’d learn about you Ahn and know you well as I do my own people. What else has this been for? Do you fail us now, then all the lives spent are wasted and we are only traitors to our dream. Shall you let that happen?”

He said again, “You do not understand. I am a traitor.”

Rwyan drew closer then and dropped to her knees before Tezdal and set her hands upon his cheeks, lifting his fallen face so that she “looked” directly into his eyes as she said, “Tezdal, I’ll not hear you name yourself thus. Do you heed me, for this hangs on a knife’s edge now. Do we not understand one another, then it shall surely come to fighting. The dragons will attack, and your people will fight. And those Attul-ki will look to destroy me first, for we are all sorcerers, and I shall be the first target of their power.”

He shook his head and answered, “No,” and it was a cry from the depths of a lost soul.

Rwyan said, “Then make this Great Lord of yours understand what we intend, that there be no further bloodshed.”

Tezdal closed his eyes and groaned. Rwyan bent closer, touching her lips to his, and whispered something I could not hear, nor ever asked what. I saw Tezdal sigh, and wipe his moistened cheeks, and climb wearily to his feet. In faltering Ahn (she’d never my facility with language) Rwyan said, “Great Lord, as Daviot tells you-we’ve not such understanding of your tongue that we are able to clearly explain-we need Tezdal as spokesman. Shall you allow that?”

The Khe’anjiwha met her blind green gaze and then let his own travel past to survey the dragons. A fatalistic smile played upon his thin lips. “Have I a choice?”

Rwyan said, “Yes, Great Lord. Do you refuse to listen, then we shall go away.”

Now those proud features displayed surprise, that rapidly swallowed by disbelief. “What do you tell me, lady? That you’d come here to wreck my people’s dream and go away? That you’d defeat all the might of Ahn-feshang and not take the spoils? You’d go away? No more than that? No tribute paid, no lands taken? Only go away?”

Tezdal translated this, and I answered for us all, “Yes. We do not come to conquer; only to speak of peace.”

The Khe’anjiwha frowned, for the first time disconcerted. Then he said slowly, “This is not easy.”

I said, “No. Peace is always harder than war. War is simple: slay your enemy. It is much harder to name him friend and learn to live with him. But it may be done.”

The Khe’anjiwha stroked his shaven chin. His skin was very smooth. I was minded of my stubble and my doubtlessly unkempt appearance. Also, my stomach began to complain: we had not eaten in a long time.

The Khe’anjiwha granted me a small smile and turned to confer with his retinue. Then he said, “Tezdal Kashijan is dead, but I shall allow this gijan to speak on your behalf.”

I did not know what that term meant, but it was redolent of contempt. Tezdal shuddered like a hound cowed by a ferocious master. The dragons, in subtler ways than mine, understood, and began to shift angrily, readying to attack.

I looked to Bellek and said, “Hold them back!”

And Bellek chuckled and answered me, “They’re yours now, Daviot. Yours and Rwyan’s, and Urt’s and Tezdal’s. You hold them back.”

And we did. We bade them be still, for we spoke with men, who lacked the knowledge of dragons and saw only their own desires, not the greater concerns of the world and the places between, and could not think as dragons do. And somewhat to my surprise, they obeyed us and settled. So that we might-through the gijan, Tezdal-deliver our terms to the Khe’anjiwha and tell him what we’d do, and how the new world should be ordered under the wing shadows of the new Lords of the Sky.

We spoke with the Great Lord of Ahn-feshang, the Khe’anjiwha, in that courtyard with our dragons perched all around like harbingers of dreadful retribution, and he listened to us.

We told him-through Tezdal-what we’d done in Ur-Dharbek and in Dharbek. He was not easy of convincing, but the dragons stood emblems of our power, and he was pragmatic in defeat. We sat in his Council chamber, with dragons menacing on the balconies outside, their great-jawed, fanged faces peering in to remind him of our wrath. And he listened. I suppose he had little other choice, save the reaving of his land; and already that dream he’d shared with Tezdal was gone: the skyboats and the braver of the Attul-ki were gone, and so he’d not much more hope of the Conquest.

So perhaps only because of that, he listened, and we told him of our peace, and of the consequences did he argue it. As we did, the dragons filled the paneled chamber with their meaty breath and watched, alert, for sign of danger. And the Khe’anjiwha knew that, and knew that we could slay him, and all his armies, surely as the Lord Protector Taerl had known that irrevocable fact.

We slew his dream; but we gave him another in its place. Just as we’d slain Allanyn’s dream and given Urt’s people another. Just as we’d slain Jareth and shown Taerl a new vision.

And he listened-for which I was thankful, for I’d had enough of bloodshed and would not see more could I avoid it.

So …

We quit the islands of Ahn-feshang in hope, winging back to Dharbek with promises. Though our own were paramount: that there should be no more war, but only our demands met. All of these forced true by the dragons, lest we bring them again against those who’d oppose we newcome Dragonmasters.

None argued with us.

How could they?

We owned the skies: neither Dhar magic nor Ahn’s could defeat us. We could rend the Sky Lords’ boats from the air and loose their enslaved elementals. We could tear apart the Sentinels and, after, ravage every city and keep in Dharbek: we dictated our terms.

Was I corrupted by power? Were we all?

I think Rwyan was not. I think she only pursued our dream in honest belief. I think that Urt was not, for he’d only see a better world made for his Changed kind. Tezdal was not, I am sure.

Bellek?

Perhaps he was. Or gone so long into Dragonmastery that he no longer cared. Nor did he any longer see the world through human eyes, but only from that different view. It no longer matters, nor did much then, for we were only bent on the achievement of our goal and had no time for fine philosophical musings. Those should come later, when the Great Peace was secured.

For now, we’d much to do. As I’d feared, there were some few amongst the aeldors of Dharbek and the Kho’rabi of Ahn-feshang who would not accept, and we brought the dragons against them. I had hoped the bloodshed ended with our coming, but we spilled more as we destroyed those rebels. And when that last fighting was done, we must travel the land a while in reminder, so that any who still harbored notions of conquest or vengeance might look to the skies and know their thoughts were better left unspoken.

We were the watchmen of the skies, and ambassadors betwixt the three lands. We even carried Taerl to Ur-Dharbek and to Ahn-feshang. The Lord Protector was besotted with the dragons as I’d once heard he loved horses. I think that had he not that greater duty, he’d have asked us to take him with us and he endeavor to become a Dragonmaster, but he must satisfy himself with those rides we allowed. How young he looked as he climbed astride Deburah, his face all lit with wonder as she spread her wings and launched herself into the heavens! He had no fear at all but whooped with glee as we flew.

Certainly it impressed the Khe’anjiwha that the Lord Protector of Dharbek should come to him and promise him a welcome in Kellambek. They got on well together, those two; like warriors met in the aftermath of battle, respectful of one another. Or like two young men lonely in their power, each finding in the other an equal with whom he might share a little of that solitude. It did our cause no little good that they were able to meet as friends.

In Ur-Dharbek, too, Taerl acquitted himself admirably. He met with the new-formed Raethe, and they spoke lengthily together, and I began to hope that we should not much longer need to patrol the skies but leave the world to run itself again. Though that should not be quite yet, for our plan was grand whilst the arguments and envies and rivalries of men are mostly petty and require much debating ere agreement is reached. We’d brought the world to peace and held it there, but it were better we leave the folk who should live in it after us to settle their differences than entirely force them to our will.

“Let them firm out the details of it,” Rwyan said, “so that they can, after, believe it was as much their doing as ours and not resent what we impose.”

That was wisdom, and it largely worked, and I felt happy. Rwyan, too; and Urt. Tezdal and Bellek, however, became increasingly withdrawn, as if they felt their roles in this drama were played out and would exeunt, like mummers whose parts are ended.

In those busy months I was too occupied with all those affairs of state to notice much how reserved they grew. Or when I did, to speak with them as I should have done: another charge laid against me.

Also, as that first year of peace aged to a second, I felt the growing difference in me. I must more and more force myself to patience as I sat with Taerl and the Khe’anjiwha, with the Changed Councilfolk, the priests of the Attul-ki and those of my own land. I found it ever harder to spend-to waste!-so much time on the ground but would mount Deburah and taste the heady joy of dragonflight again. I realized I missed those fierce mountains that bordered Tartarus as I’d not missed any place before, not even my home. And with that realization came the knowledge that I had no longer any home but that Dragoncastle; that I’d return there-where Deburah’s egg lay. And even did she tell me it was safe and I’d no need for concern, still I’d know for myself. Touch it and be sure: I felt it was as much mine as hers or the bull’s that seeded her.

The bonding of Dragonmaster and dragon is a powerful thing, seductive. It gets inside your blood and holds you firmer than any chains men have ever forged.

I knew that, or sensed it, and consequently should have known better what Bellek felt and likely might do.

I remember walking with Rwyan, that second year, in those fabulous gardens of Trebizar. The Council building lay in ruins behind us, and Taerl was with Urt and Tezdal in the town, deep in discussion with the Changed and those Kho’rabi stranded in Ur-Dharbek by our destruction of their skyboats. It was Taerl’s intention (and his idea, not ours) to offer them ships, that they might go south to Kellambek or home across the ocean. Bellek had taken the dragons off hunting. It was a hot summer’s day, and it was a comforting feeling to know that ordinary summer now held sway in Dharbek and that the magic of the Attul-ki should no longer stifle the land. I heard birds singing. Rwyan leaned close against me. The sun was warm on our faces, and she’d tied a scarf about her hair, so that she minded me of a beautiful fisherwoman.

I thought on how different this place now seemed and how it was no longer tainted with Allanyn’s crystal-born madness. I asked, “Should we hunt out the crystals? Destroy them all?”

Rwyan laughed and shook her head, which sent tendrils of sun-bleached red against my face because I was trying to kiss her neck as she spoke. I sneezed. Her hair had tickled my nostrils, and the air was heavy with pollen.

She said, “I doubt we could. The crystals are part of this land, like those fire mountains of Ahn-feshang. Could we stopper them? And if we did, what should it do to those islands?”

I frowned. I thought such a task impossible; and that were it possible, it should seal up that molten breath like a brewer bunging his casks too early-to see them explode as the sealed-in fermentation grew too powerful for its confines. I thought those islands must explode: I said as much.

And Rwyan nodded and said, “No more can we destroy the crystals. Would you tear up all Tartarus, all of Ur-Dharbek, to find them?”

I said, “But might it happen again-that seduction-should we not seek to find them and destroy them?”

Rwyan said, “Can you halt hate, Daviot? Can you excise envy from men’s minds? Can you end greed?”

I said, “No.”

She said, “No more, nor better, can you find all the crystals. Nor perhaps should you. We’ve done what we’ve done. By the God, we’ve ended a war that not even you, Mnemonikos, can trace down all its years. Is that not enough? I think we’ve done our part, only to bring that about.”

I said, “But the crystals-”

And was silenced by her finger on my lips. She said, “Are power. Lessened somewhat, now; and perhaps a lesson learned. We’ve taught the world a different way; let those who come after us learn to use the crystals better. But let them make their own decisions!”

I said, “But we decided. We found our power and forced our will on the world. And spilled blood in the forcing.”

She said, “Because we followed that dream. We only chased what we thought right. Perhaps, after we are gone, there shall be others with a different dream; and they’ll pursue it no less fierce than we.”

I said, “But is that right?”

And Rwyan smiled and turned her face to me, so that I was met by her blind gaze; and then she took my face in her hands. “I think it so. I’ve done what I’ve done because I saw no other way, and I do not feel guilty. I regret the blood we shed, aye. But-do I remember this aright?-‘you cannot cook a fish without gutting it first, lest after you fall sick.’ That’s what we’ve done, Daviot: we’ve gutted the world’s fish and presented it for the eating. Would you have it otherwise?”

I looked at her and shook my head: “No.”

She said, “Good,” and kissed me again, harder.

We were walking hand in hand when the dragons came, like thunder out of the northern sky.

We both stopped silent in our tracks, a tocsin ringing loud in our souls. My grip on Rwyan’s hand tightened, and hers no less on mine. We turned to the north and saw them coming fast and low from the hills. I felt a fear of what message they brought.

And then it was delivered.

Deburah and Anryale landed before us in a great skirling of dust from the sun-dried ground. Kathanria winged restless overhead. I felt their emotions, but they were so flustered I could not immediately comprehend what they told us: only that they were mightily disturbed and brought bad news. I felt a leaden weight descend on my soul and was utterly confused.

Rwyan interpreted better. She went to Anryale and stroked the mottled cheeks of her dragon. I felt Deburah nudge me, and staggered, and turned to find her lustrous eyes fixed hard on mine. I swear, could dragons cry, she’d have been weeping then.

I said, “What’s amiss?”

And Rwyan answered me, “Bellek! He’s gone.”

I said, “What? How mean you, gone? Gone where? Lost?”

Rwyan and Deburah both answered me, and from above, Kathanria: No, not lost Gone: dead.

I was astride Deburah’s saddle before I knew it: sometimes action runs faster than thought. Rwyan was not much slower, and we climbed into the sky as if the hounds of all the gods I could not believe in were snapping at our heels.

We winged furiously north. To where Bellek had taken the dragons to hunt. And then farther north still, over those southern foothills of the Dragonsteeth Mountains to the Dragoncastle.

The ramparts were filled with dragons. I think all the broods were there, and all filling the sky with their belling. My head rang with it. It echoed off the mountain walls and drove me to cover my ears for the promise it sounded. It was a sad sound, and as Deburah landed in the yard. I felt a new weight of dread fill my soul.

Her emotions were a turmoil I could not properly understand: only that Bellek was dead.

He had told us nothing of that valley. Perhaps because he knew he would go there, once he was confident his dragons had new masters, and was, perhaps, afraid that it should deter us from that inheritance. I think it would not have: I think that bonding is too strong.

It was high amongst the peaks to the north and west, where crags fell down in jagged lines like dragons’ fangs on a line that let in the morning sun and saw its eventide setting. No trees grew there, nor any water ran, and the topmost hills were yet blanched with snow. It was a still place, the only sound the keening of the wind. It was filled with bones, more bones than I’d ever seen, all white and stark, no flesh on them. Or not on most of them: amongst the tangles of ribs and wingbones and skulls lay a little fragment that wore Bellek’s gear.

I saw that clear as we landed, because Deburah showed it me and I felt her grief.

I sat her back-this was so precipitous a place, I had no hope of climbing down there, and I knew she’d not descend. At least, not until it was her time; and that I’d no sooner think on than Rwyan’s demise. This was the last resting place of all the world’s dragons, and none felt happy to be here before their time. So I sat astride my saddle and heard all the dragons bell their mourning at the falling sun and, when they were done, asked Deburah what had happened.

She told me: We came north to hunt. Bellek was on Kathanria, but he sent us off alone after we came here. He told us he’d spend a while with Aiylra, in remembrance. We hunted. Then we felt him die and came here, and he was gone.

I told her: He wanted it so. He chose his way.

And then, because I felt her fear, that I’d never thought to feel from any dragon: He left us behind. We’ll not forsake you.

Her pleasure overcame remorse at Bellek’s chosen death. I looked down at the broken pieces of that strange man and surmised he’d flung himself off the heights to join his lost Aiylra in the bones below.

I think he’s happy now, I told my Deburah.

And she asked me: And you’ll not leave?

Aloud, I said, “No!” And heard my exclamation echoed by Rwyan.

I felt the happiness of the dragons then, and it filled me, replacing what sadness I felt for Bellek. Which, am I honest, was not much: I thought he’d lived out his span and picked his end, and that I should deny no man.

That second year became a third, and the world’s ways shifted. The Changed of Dharbek were proclaimed free citizens. Those Attul-ki not slain by the dragons reversed their magic, so that Dharbek blossomed. Under escort of our dragons, skyboats crossed the Fend for the first time in peace, to deliver Ahn back to the shores of Kellambek. Those Changed who would cross the Slammerkin went over free, knowing they might return if they would. The Khe’anjiwha ceded lands in Ahn-feshang to those few (very few!) brave Dhar or Changed who’d find a new country.

Of course there were disputes, but when the sorcerers sent word, we came with our dragons, and none would argue with them.

We saw the Changed freed and Ahn find homes in Kellambek. Taerl presided over a Council similar to that governing Ur-Dharbek. In Ahn-feshang the Khe’anjiwha and the Attul-ki now held less power and spoke with the Dhar about the future, as if that were now a thing shared between equals. Our world seemed set fair on the course we’d given it.

And we Dragonmasters hungered for our castle and the high, wild mountains of Tartarus. Our dragons were bored; sated with battles and eager to go home.

I shared that feeling. I could no longer deny it: Dharbek was no longer my home, but only those tall mountains where the dragons lived, and I (was I cursed by Bellek? Were we all?) felt at ease.

I spoke of it with Rwyan, and she agreed; and so we went back.

Tezdal and Urt came with us. They felt the call no less than we, and like us felt separated from the worlds of men now. Urt had been offered a seat in the Raethe; begged to take it when he refused, and still refused.

“It would not feel right,” he told me one bright and windy autumn day as we walked the ramparts and watched the wind chase clouds across the sky. “I am a Dragonmaster now, and did I sit in Council and argue and folk agree with me, how should I know them honest and not merely afraid of Kathanria?”

I nodded. I’d the same feeling and had given Taerl similar answer when he asked much the same of me.

“Nor,” Urt went on, “are my people even now entirely at ease with dragons.”

“Blood’s memory dies hard,” I said.

“And so they are neither at ease with me,” he murmured. Then laughed, “Nor I with them. I am different, Daviot.”

I said, “We all of us are. This is our home now, I think.”

“Yes.” He crossed to a crenellation, leaning out to stare down the vertiginous mountainside into the valley. The Changed village was a cluster of minuscule buildings, like tiny pebbles dropped beside the slender thread of the river. It had grown now, as more of Urt’s people ventured north-those whose blood did not hold such innate fear of the dragons. Absently, he said, “We should hunt soon and lay them up meat for the winter. Also, their ale is near ready for drinking.”

I moved to join him, setting a hand companionable on his shoulder as I leaned past him. “And Lysra should have that blanket finished, eh?” I murmured.

For all they are long distanced from their animal progenitors, still the Changed own some of their ancestors’ characteristics. They do not blush, for instance; but did they, I think Urt should have then. Lysra was the daughter of Prym and Valla, who supplied our ale. South of our mountains she’d have been married, for she was a comely woman. But there were not so many men here, and she had so far rejected those suitors who contested her hand. For Urt, however, she found only smiles and on learning of our return had set to weaving such a blanket as decorates a marriage bed. It was a hint he could hardly ignore. Also, it was obvious to all of us save Urt that she loved him.

He said. “She is very beautiful, no?”

I said, “Yes, she is lovely.”

He said, “Do you think I should …”

I waited, but he was suddenly embarrassed, so that I could only laugh and slap his shoulder and tell him, “I think you should. She waits for you, and it should be good company for Rwyan to have another woman about this place.”

He nodded solemnly, his eyes fixed firm on the village. “I shall,” he said. “Tomorrow I shall go down there and ask her.”

“She’ll tell you yes,” I said. “And when you’ve set the date, I’ll go south to beg some good Kellambek wine off Taerl, that we may celebrate in suitable manner. Doubtless he’ll want to attend the feasting. Or even volunteer you his palace for the ceremony. Likely he’ll invite the Khe’anjiwha, and all the-”

“Enough!” Urt stepped back, his face so paled I began to chuckle. “It shall be no more than the village and we Dragonmasters. No pomp, Daviot, I beg you.”

I forced my face to gravity. “The Lord Protector will likely be most disappointed. Insulted, even.”

Urt frowned. “Well, perhaps Taerl might attend.”

“And the Raethe,” I said. “It should not be diplomatic to leave them out.”

Urt’s frown grew deeper. “Think you so?” he asked.

I nodded, stifling laughter. “Nor-does he wish it-the Khe’anjiwha. Or, of course, the Church. And the Mnemonics. And the-”

Urt’s fist caught me lightly on the ear, and I could no longer stifle my mirth. I said, “It shall be no more, nor any less, than you wish, my friend.”

“Simple, then,” he said, his relief expressed in a broad smile. “I’ve enough of pomp and ceremony to last me all my days.”

I said, “May they be long and happy. Now-do we go break this momentous news to Rwyan and Tezdal? And begin our celebrating?”

“Modestly,” he said. “I’ve not your Storyman’s capacity for drink, and I’d not go to Lysra in my cups.”

“Modestly then,” I agreed. “But go to her I think you should. Else I’ve a feeling that when that blanket’s done, she’ll climb the mountain to deliver it.”

Laughing together, we went inside.

But Tezdal … he’d lost more than any of us. What had we lost that was not outweighed by what we gained? I’d my two loves and the dream I’d so long ago shared with Rwyan come true. She’d Anryale and me and the satisfaction of a world at peace. Urt had Lysra, and Kathanria. But Tezdal-he’d only Peliane and cold, old wounds that poisoned from within. His wife was dead, and his parents, and for those deaths he held himself accountable. In the eyes of his people he was still gijan-outcast. None of us could properly understand that, or the dreadful burden it laid on his soul.

I tried. I swear I did my best, but it was a thing beyond my comprehension. I remember the day we spoke of it.

It was a wild windswept day, when stormclouds built above the eastern peaks and threatened snow, the sky sullen as a poisoned wound overhead. There was cloud in the valley below thick enough that the village was hidden and the dragons had retreated to their caverns. Deburah’s egg was not far off hatching. Urt was wed. (Taerl did attend, but-somewhat to the alarm of the new-formed conclave of advisers-alone. Indeed, had he not taken Urt’s hands and begged to be a guest, he’d not have come. But the Lord Protector snatched at every chance he could grasp to ride adragonback, and his entreaties were so fervent, Urt could only smile and laugh and agree. And thanks to Taerl we’d barrels of fine wine and sweetmeats, and the new-wed couple such marriage gifts as should make an aeldor blush for envy.) Ayl and Lan and a few others had been granted (reluctantly on Urt’s part, but Lysra was delighted) permission to attend and overcame their terror to ride the skies. We had celebrated the wedding, and Lysra moved into the Dragoncastle. We had returned Taerl to his duties and settled back to our own. They were not so many now.

Throughout the celebrations Tezdal had smiled and laughed and drunk his fill or more. I had sensed a desperation behind his revelry: he was by nature a sober man and lately had been taciturn, even solitary. So when all was quiet again and I noticed him donning a fur-lined cloak, I took my own and followed him. Much as I’d once followed Bellek.

He climbed to the highest reaches of the Dragoncastle, where the ramparts stood tall and the view ran out all around as if it should never end. The wind battered my face as I joined him, and I wished I’d thought to don gloves. He stood looking to the east. He doubtless heard my approach-I think that brave Kho’rabi did not miss such things-but he did not turn until I touched his shoulder. Then, I could not be sure whether it was the wind or grief that watered his eyes.

I said, “Shall you tell me?”

I saw his lips curve in a smile, but it held no humor.

“Tell you what?” he asked.

I must bend closer to catch the words, lest the wind carry them away. I said, “What ails you, friend.”

“What ails me?” His smile was rictal. “Life ails me, Daviot. I’d give it up.”

I set my hand firmer on his shoulder, for fear he might fling himself away into the emptiness beneath us. I said, “Is it so hard?”

He turned his face away a moment. When he looked at me again, his eyes burned. “I am gijan. You cannot know what that means.”

I shook my head. I moved to embrace him, but he waved me off, and I could only stand and hear him out. We must both shout over the wailing of the wind.

He said, “I have no name.”

I said, “You are Tezdal Kashijan. You are a Dragonmaster; and my true friend.”

He said, “I am a Dragonmaster, yes. You call me Tezdal, but I no longer own that name. I am gijan. I have no right to friendship.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but he put his hand there, silencing me. “Only listen, eh?”

I nodded, and he unclamped his fingers.

He said, “You will not understand this: you cannot. You are Dhar, and though we are friends, we are still different. Different as we Dragonmasters are become to-” He waved a desperate hand, encompassing all the land below us, all the world around. “I was born and raised Kho’rabi. I took vows-you know this. And that I betrayed those vows.”

I said, ignoring his plea for silence, “In service of another. In service of this peace we’ve won.”

I wondered then how any man could smile so; or how a voice be so bereft of life.

“Yes. Is it not strange? As if the Three use me for their dice. But heed me. Daviot. I was born Kho’rabi-Dedicated-and all my life lived to that end.”

I think I sensed then where this conversation led, and again I ignored his imperative to say, “And have you not achieved that end? The Ahn come back to Kellambek now; and that was your doing, as much as mine or Rwyan’s.”

Perhaps I should not have spoken her name. Certainly I saw pain flood his face at the mention.

He said, “Retze slew herself for my disgrace; and then my parents. Now I am gijan-the clan Kashijan exists no longer because of me.” He saw my incomprehension and barked his awful laugh again. “No,” he said, and I heard the terrible weariness in his voice. “You do not understand. How should you? Only we Ahn understand that. Listen! I offer you a choice-Rwyan or Deburah. One you must forgo. Which?”

I said, “I’d not make that choice. I do not think I could.” He said, “I did.”

I saw the direction he took and gave him back, “But you’d lost your memory. You were dying; Rwyan saved you.”

He said, “And then I got back my memory and knew who I was and what I had been.”

I said, “I saw Sky Lords speak with Changed and said nothing of it. I learned the Changed communicated. I think I guessed they planned rebellion, but I said nothing. Are you steeped deeper in guilt than I?”

He said, “Are your parents alive? Is Rwyan dead?”

I had no answer for that.

He said, “It is different for me, Daviot. I knew what I was when I came to that grove in Trebizar and slew Allanyn’s people. I knew I betrayed my own people when I brought you horses and set you free. When I came with you.”

I said-No! I shrieked-“Because you’d given your word to Rwyan! Because you are an honorable man.”

“Yes.” He ducked his head. “And now my honor shows me only one way to efface my shame.”

I said, “You’ve no shame, Tezdal.”

He said, “Were I Dhar or Changed, likely I’d agree. But I am not! I was Kho’rabi, and now I am gijan. All those I loved are dead because of what I did. The clan Kashijan is disbanded for what I did.”

I said, helplessly now, “You forged peace. You gave your people back their homeland.”

I watched his lips stretch over his teeth. Inside his cloak he shrugged. “Perhaps for that the Three will forgive me. But I cannot.”

I said, “What of the future? What of us?”

He said, “I think the future’s settled now. And you?” He turned away, resting his hands on the battlements, his head lowered. “Urt’s his Lysra now; and you, Rwyan. Are you not happy?”

I said, “Yes. Save you-Tezdal!” I hunted, desperate, for such words as might dissuade him from the course I knew he took. “Might you not find another wife?”

He shook his head. He said, “In all my life I’ve loved only two women. One was Retze; the other is … not mine to have.”

I should have known it!

But I had not, and so I said, lowly, “Rwyan?”

His laughter disputed the wind’s howling. “Could you not see it?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“She does,” he said. “She knows it and loves you. And she’ll not leave you.”

I had no words for this. Only a numbing dread of what might follow. I had been as blind as any man in love; and as much stupid.

“So.” Tezdal turned from his contemplation of the ramparts’ stone to face me. “Shall we fight for her? Shall you slay me, or I slay you? Might that secure me her love?”

I said, “Tezdal, I’d not fight you.”

He said, “Nor I you. Nor should it win me more than her hate. So …”

I said, “What of Peliane?”

He said, “Dragons live after their masters. How else are we here? Bellek’s gone, no? She’ll mourn me a while, but she’s you and Rwyan and Urt now. And likely there shall be other Dragonmasters found ere long, now that we’ve forged our Great Peace. Do I betray her, Daviot? If so, then it’s only one more betrayal to my account. And I cannot live longer with this pain! I tell you true-I cannot.”

He shed his cloak then, and I saw what he wore beneath: the blades of a Kho’rabi knight. The kachen and the dagger, and I knew with a ghastly surety what he intended and what he’d ask of me. I staggered back, shaking my head.

He said, “I’d take the Way of Honor, Daviot. Even though I am gijan and so undeserving. Did you know the Khe’anjiwha favored me? Gijan-we few!-are usually crucified. Upside down, Daviot. Had you not needed me to interpret, I’d long ago have hung head down on a tree, with all who passed spitting on my face. Or worse. Listen to me!” This because I backed away, and shook my head, and pushed out my hands to reject the duty he gave me. “Listen to me! I shall die. Like Bellek, do you not prove your friendship. But I should sooner do this with what honor’s left me. As if I were still Kho’rabi. Perhaps that shall placate the Three, and they grant my soul peace.”

“No!”

I did not recognize my own voice. It sounded like the wind’s wailing. It sounded like the mourning of the dragons. I did not know it came out from between my lips. Inside my head I felt the dragons stir; and Rwyan and Urt.

I staggered back until cold stone denied me further retreat. But Tezdal advanced still, and still his hands held out the burden of friendship’s duty.

He said, “As you love me, friend.”

His eyes allowed no other choice: I took the blade and asked him, “What must I do?”

He said, “This should be done with Attul-ki attending. Or at least Kho’rabi knights. But … you wait until I’ve opened the Way, and then use the sword on my neck.”

I said, “Is there truly no other way?”

And he shook his head. “No. Neither would I ask this of any other. Only of my truest friend.”

He clasped my hand, and there was such longing in his eyes, I could only nod through my tears and slide the sword from its sheath as he knelt and loosed the fastenings of his tunic and shirt and slipped the garments off, so that his torso was bared to the wind and the cold. And his neck to the sword I held. It shone in the failing light. It rested heavy in my hands: heavy as the weight on my soul.

I said, “I am not sure I can do this, Tezdal.”

He said, “As you love me, you can.”

And then, before I might argue further or throw down the sword and run away, he drew his dagger and sank the blade deep into his belly. He made no sound as he cut, but I saw the agony on his face as his lips contorted in denial of the pain. And in his eyes a terrible relief as he found his Way of Honor.

So I did what he asked of me. I raised his sword and brought it down against his neck. I’d never held so fine a blade before, nor one so sharp: it took off his head in one clean cut.

I fell to my knees, weeping as his skull went bouncing over the bloodstained flags.

I knew only pain until I felt hands touch my face and looked up into Rwyan’s blind eyes. I saw grief there, and then more on Urt’s face, and Lysra’s. And then I was aware of dragons perched all around. I could not speak; only clutch at Rwyan’s knees and weep.

She asked me, “Did he demand this of you?”

I nodded against her gown, and she knelt beside me and put her arms about me and held me close and said, “Oh, Daviot! My poor, poor Daviot. How he must have trusted you.”

I said, “That I’d slay him?”

She said, “That he trusted you with his honor. That he’d have you perform this awful service.”

I said, “I killed him, Rwyan.”

She said, “He slew himself, my love. Because it was the only way for him. What you did was friendship’s duty, and I think there’s likely no greater love than that.”

We wrapped Tezdal in his cloak, and Urt brought a canvas that we might sew the sundered parts safe together, and we saddled our dragons and fastened Tezdal’s body to Peliane, and flew to the valley of the dead, and spilled him down there. Down where Bellek and all the other Dragonmasters lay, and all the centuries-long-dead dragons.

Ours keened their mourning, and Peliane’s was loudest of all. I felt that like a knife in my heart, sharp as that swift blade Tezdal had sunk into his belly. I think it hurt me not much worse than what he’d had me do or what I felt for his loss. I had lost a beloved friend: she had lost her bond-mate. I could, in a way, comprehend why he chose that course: she could not. For nine days she battered the Dragoncastle with her keening, and I believe she might have flown out looking herself to die had Deburah’s egg not hatched.

Death and life run in cycles, no? One dies, one is born: life continues, and pain abates. Mine did, albeit slower than Peliane’s. She found a new reason to live.

Dragons are proud and magnificent and, in their own way, loving, but they do not love as Truemen or Changed. An egg is a triumph for all the brood, and its tending shared between them all. Sometimes the mother will have nothing to do with the hatchling-it is the laying that’s important-and so Deburah was perfectly content to leave the tending of the bull she bore to Peliane. She was proud, yes; and so was I, for I could not help but feel that the mewling babe that cracked his shell with such force, it shattered all at once and he came out screaming to be fed, was mine as much as hers or the bull’s that had seeded her. But she let Peliane attend the infant, and even I, when I went to stroke his glossy blue head and admire his needle-sharp baby’s teeth (carefully, for young dragons are not overly particular whom they bite), must first pass Peliane’s inspection. And admire his growing wings under her watchful eyes, and not come close until she allowed.

Thus was Peliane saved from her grief.

And Rwyan saved me from mine in long conversations that at last convinced me I’d not done wrong but only service to a friend who’d have it no other way.

I accepted that, but I tell you-I still cannot properly understand that code by which the Kho’rabi lived, nor much respect so harsh a servitude. I accept that it was Tezdal’s way and that I did no less than duty by him, but I was forced to that just as he was forced to our duty by that vow he gave to Rwyan. And I still wonder if we were, any of us, right.

We had none of us fully realized the weight of time that burdened Bellek. I had suspected it, but that was only guessing, for he’d never set it out clear. I am convinced he meant it so, in care of his charges, and for fear we should reject that inheritance, did we see it in all its long entirety.

Dragons live longer than men: ages longer. And Dragonmasters share that longevity. Even now, as newcome masters find their bonding and the halls of the Dragoncastle fill up again with life, we do not understand it: only that it is, and that it is a choice a Dragonmaster must make. We did not, not truly, but I think that we’d still have chosen that road had Bellek pointed us toward its invisible, timeless ending. Could we have denied that love?

I’ve told them, the newcome Dragonmasters, and they accept it. Taerl’s son chose it; and the daughter of Ahn-feshang’s last Khe’anjiwha chose it. Cleton’s grandson came north when he had the dream and shrugged acceptance when I warned him. The dreams of dragons are hard to deny. They choose it, and laugh when I warn them of the years, and tell me they can bear the weight.

I think they will: the world is changed now, and they no longer fear the dragons; not even the Changed, whose children come to laugh and sport amongst the claws and take their knocks with the hatchlings.

The love of dragons is a heady seduction.

I think it is a better world now.

I hope it is, for otherwise my life was all wasted.

But I cannot believe that so, even as I think on the blood that paints my hands. Were it so, then Rwyan was wrong, and that I’ll not believe.

No!

But I ramble somewhat. So:

We set Tezdal to rest in the valley of bones and mourned him. Peliane tended Deburah’s hatchling-and now Kaja is the mightiest bull in all the Dragoncastles, a splendid creature, and a seeder of numerous dams. There are more dragons now; it is as if a balance were restored.

Urt and Lysra bred seven children, all of them hale and decent as their parents. Two chose to go south and found places in the Raethe of Ur-Dharbek. The others remained here, and their descendants tend me now with a respect I find ofttimes embarrassing. One is a Dragonmaster.

My Changed comrade is dead, and I shall talk of that no more than I’ll speak of Rwyan’s passing. That’s too much pain to set in words. I outlived them all, and I wish I’d not. I’d sooner have gone with them.

But …

… It was not unhappy. We all of us lived long past our natural span, and I was happy with Rwyan.

I was happy as I’d not believed could be possible.

Good years, those; all of them. A gift, I suppose, for we had more time than ordinary folk are granted to be together. But still, in time she died, and some time after Anryale followed her. Kathanria is dead, but Peliane lives on, and Deburah, though both are old now and fly less often. I’ve lived on because Rwyan set that duty on me, no less than Tezdal bound me to his strange honor, and I’d not betray my loved ones again.

We changed our world, but we could not change the accretion of the years, when bones grow brittle and blood flows slower down the veins. I think that perhaps that’s the only god: time. The ager who takes us all.

But I had long years with the woman I loved, and did we have no children, still there are Urt’s offspring; and I’ve known friends and rode the skies on dragon’s back, and known the love of dragons.

And that is something of a life, no?

I’ll not complain.

I’ll accept my guilt and let the Pale Friend take me and judge me. And do I face the One God or the Three, then I shall tell them that what I did was done in honest belief of trust and friendship and the chasing of a dream. And if they should tell me that it was a dream I sowed in Rwyan’s soul and she was wrong, then I shall spit in their faces and deny them. For I’ll not deny her; ever!

And I think that Deburah would join me then, and Anryale, and all the others. And must it be so, then we’ll deny the gods as we denied the men who’d know only strife, and fly against them as we flew against the Sky Lords and the ignorance of Truemen.

But that is yet to come.

First, I must meet with the Pale Friend.