Daughter of Dragons

Chapter 12-3

The world became a waking nightmare for all of mankind. Fields and forests were razed; towns and villages were laid to waste. And those few who escaped the demons fell prey to nonborn and dragons. Soon, humanity teetered on the brink of extinction.

It was then that Jerome The Steadfast appeared. He gathered as many survivors as he could find and led them east to a cave in the mountains which was known as The Dreamer’s Ear. There, they began a great noise-making—not to lull the Sleeping Goddess, but to rouse Her from this most ruinous dream. For sixteen days, they tramped their feet and clapped their hands; blew on whistles, banged on drums; sang, shouted and wailed. They did not stop for food or sleep, and so their din was peppered with the howls of starving children and dogs. Then, halfway through the seventeenth day of their clamorous vigil, a giant horde of demons and dragons appeared in the sky. A similar army began to swarm up the mountain’s side. In the face of such overwhelming might, Jerome and his followers fell silent. The earth trembled then, as if to mock them. Jerome’s people feared this as some new evil of Shadow’s, but Jerome gave a great shout of hope and joy. Then, with the last of his failing strength, he broke into song again. In response, the lesser sun flared to white-hot brightness. No one saw what happened next, for Ar’s sudden brilliance blinded Jerome and his followers, but what they all heard was terrible. There came a scream, then a pause, then a snarl of fast-moving power and a thunderous crash. The air grew thick with the smells of ozone and ash. The snarl struck out again and again and again only to be countered by a concussive boom and more ash.

Mother and Daughter fought for hours without end; and in that time, sight returned to Jerome and his folk. The snarls became bolts of blackest excrescence which sizzled across the sky; the booms became scintillating explosions as The Dreamer reduced the blackness to ashes with Ar’s adamant light. This ash had no ill-effect on the men it touched, but when it fell on Shadow’s fiends, it brought them pain and a melting death. Eventually, Her whole army was destroyed. She tried to flee then, but it was too late. The Dreamer caught Her by the heel and then cast a sphere of light around Her. That sphere flared to a star’s brightness for a moment, then abruptly vanished. With its disappearance, Ar faded and did not shine again.

Thus, The Dreamer’s Daughter was destroyed. And with Her passing, night came to the world and the age of wonders passed…

G

With a hiss, Lathwi slapped the book shut. At the same moment, Liselle shuffled into the room. The sorceress looked tired and ill-used, like a old bone that had been gnawed once too often, but she had enough energy to display her surprise.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“Myths and legends be other words for not-truth,” Lathwi declared, injecting a full measure of rancour into her tone.

“I suppose you could say that,” Liselle conceded. “But that’s a rather extreme definition. Most people regard myths as stories that the old wives made up to explain things they couldn’t understand.”

“People believe these stories?”

“People aren’t so naive nowadays,” Liselle assured her. They know that mythical tales need to be taken with a grain of salt.”

“Salt is for food, not not-truths.”

Weary and disappointed because of her fruitless attempts to locate The Curra-Chewer with magic, Liselle was in no mood to butt heads with Lathwi over colloquialisms right now. But it was obvious that something was bothering the woman, and as the saying went—there was no time like the present. So she gathered up the shards of her patience, then sat herself down on the corner of the bed and tried to clarify herself.

“In this instance,” she said, “salt is another word for skepticism, which is another word for doubt. One regards a myth with doubt because it comes from prehistoric times and has undergone countless changes since its first telling.”

“Changes?” Lathwi did not like the sound of that.

“Yes, changes. As a myth is handed from one generation to the next, those who retell it add, subtract or exaggerate seemingly extraneous details to suit their own fancy. These embellishments are incorporated and compounded throughout the years until someone like our good scribe here finally decides to put the final version down on paper.

“So. While you may find nuggets of truth sprinkled here and there among the pages of this book, most of it is merely a patchwork of mankind’s imagination. If you approach it as such, you will be taking it with a grain of salt.”

The explanation horrified Lathwi. How could humans have been so supercilious with regard to their past? Dragons were experts in the art of exaggerating the impertinent details of everyday life, but when it came time to review the past, only the complete and unadulterated truth sufficed. Because false memories served no useful purpose; and the lessons which they displaced were then lost forever.

“My mother recall the end of EverLight differently,” she said then, determined to set this perverted telling straight. “She say it was dragons who bore the brunt of Galza’s spite.”

“Who’s this Galza?” Liselle asked.

“The one called Shadow. In my memories, she is called Galza—The Dragonbane,” she translated, as an afterthought. “And in my memories, it was dragons who were hunted down and killed by demon-krim; dragons who fled to the mountains; and dragons who finally brought about Galza’s end.”

Instead of looking surprised or troubled or impressed, Liselle flashed Lathwi a triumphant grin. “There! Without realizing it, you’ve just illustrated my point about the way myths work. Your mother taught you one version of the story, my mother taught me another, and our scribe’s mother probably taught him the version that you read today. Yet despite the discrepancies between these versions, it’s obvious that they all share common threads.”

“No,” Lathwi insisted. “Scribe’s version be wicked as well as wrong because it tell people that dragons sided with your Dreamer’s daughter. I tell you truly, Liselle: dragons have two words for enemy. One be krim. The other be Galza.”

Liselle was stunned. This was the first time that she’d ever heard Lathwi speak so passionately, and at such length. And the subject that the big woman had chosen to champion was intriguing to an extreme.

“But how do you know your mother’s account is accurate?” she asked. “You weren’t there to see what did or didn’t take place. Neither was she.”

“Mother not there,” Lathwi conceded, “but her mother’s mother’s mother’s mother was. Bryllia fought krim and fled from them. She roared with fury when Galza’s malice claimed her mate. She watched the Stone Oma rise from the mountain’s side and seize lesser sun in her jaws. She witnessed Galza’s final defeat and the world’s first dawn. These memories and more Bryllia gave to her young, who gave them to their young and they to their young in turn. So the present recalls the past exactly as it occurred.”

“Exactly?” Liselle scoffed. “Word for word? That’s a pretty remarkable feat.”

Lathwi deflected the other woman’s scorn with a haughty look. “The language of dragons be composed of thoughts and images, not meaningless words. It be beautiful as well as exact.”

Sure that she was being teased, Liselle adopted a more playful tone. “Oh? And how did you and your family happen to acquire the dragon tongue? Was that something that you inherited from your mother’s mother’s mother’s mother, too?”

For one incredulous moment, Lathwi could only gape at the sorceress and wonder if she was being mocked. Then her astonishment sloughed away and a shiny new skin of awareness took its place: as impossible as it seemed, Liselle honestly had no idea as to who or what Lathwi really was.

“My family speaks the language of dragons because they are dragons,” she said. Then, just in case Liselle failed to grasp the significance of that statement, she added, “I am a dragon, too.”

Now it was Liselle’s turn to stare and wonder if she was being mocked. But while she was extremely tempted to dismiss Lathwi’s claim as nonsense, she could not quite bring herself to do so. Indeed, the more she thought about it, the more it explained: her fearless nature and copious scars; her strange garment and fondness for raw meat; even the blood-oath promise she had made. Pieter had said she’d been outcast as a child. And children almost never survived that cruel sentence unless someone found and fostered them somewhere along the way. Who was to say that that someone could not be a dragon?

The implications were staggering. Like the rest of the human race, Liselle had always regarded dragons as beasts—great, majestic beasts, but beasts all the same. But if what Lathwi was saying was true (and she had never heard her utter an outright lie), then dragons were not only more intelligent than anyone had ever suspected, they were also self-aware and cultured to boot. Oh, the questions she wanted to ask! How, when, why? But to her consternation, the most absurd thought in her head wriggled out of her mouth first.

“Do dragons really eat people?”

Lathwi shrugged. “Sometimes.”

“Have you ever eaten anybody?” she went on, compelled by morbid curiosity.

“I never been that hungry,” Lathwi replied.

A host of other questions crowded into Liselle’s mouth then, but before she could voice any of them, Lathwi pushed herself into a sitting position and asked, “You finish your work in the laboratory?”

“Yes, I’m done for the day.”

“Good,” she began to haul herself out of bed. “I go practice magic now.”

A protest swelled within Liselle. She wanted Lathwi to stay right where she was and tell her more about dragons and their ways! But even as she opened her mouth to say so, she realized that it was pointless. Lathwi was still Lathwi; and she would come and go according to her own whims and desires. The only thing that had changed was Liselle’s perceptions.

Suddenly, the exhaustion that her excitement had been staving off reasserted itself. So as Lathwi hobbled her way toward the laboratory, Liselle went in search of her own bed.

G

Another day passed. Lathwi’s disdain for human myths and legends did not. She spent the better half of a rainy afternoon trying to read another of the tales, but finally lost her patience and tossed the book aside. She turned to Liselle then. The sorceress was sitting in a chair by the bed. As usual, her nose was buried in a book. A real book, Lathwi thought covetously. A book about sorcery and power.

“I not move my lips when I read today,” she announced.

“Good for you,” Liselle replied, as she turned a page. “You give me new book to read.”

“Not today, Lathwi. I’ve got too much research to do. If you need something to occupy your thoughts, feel free to go to the laboratory and practice your lessons.”

Lathwi wanted to argue, but decided not to. That would only irritate Liselle, and that would diminish if not defeat her chances of seeing a real book anytime in the near future. So she slithered out of bed and onto her crutch, then hobbled her way to the laboratory. There, she set her receding aches and pains aside, and then gathered her Will. That most basic act of sorcery was now as natural to her as clenching a fist. And the exercises which she performed next seemed easier than ever before.

She made a vase fly around the room—up and over, down and back. When that got tedious, she Willed another urn into the air, then another and more. Separately, they bobbed like ducks in a pond. Together, they rippled like the ridges on a dragon’s back. When that became boring, she Willed them back to their places all at once.

Now for the new lesson, she thought, regaining a speck of enthusiasm. Liselle called it translocation: the ability to move an object from one place to another without dragging it through real space. It was supposed to be a complicated procedure, one that required memory and imagination as well as power and desire. Lathwi thought it was fun.

She summoned an image of the not-claw. When its details were as clear as crystal, she envisioned it at the far end of a pitch-black cave and then sent her Will streaking after it. A heartbeat later, a faint psychic tremor told her that she’d made contact. She folded her ethereal grip around the image, then quickly withdrew. The tunnel collapsed behind her.