Authors: Angus Wells
Tezdal nodded. His face was expressionless; I wondered if he truly felt no fear or only hid it well. I was suddenly torn between a desire to stay and take my chances on firm ground, and the knowledge that to do so was to hand myself to Allanyn. I told myself that Rwyan evinced no trepidation at this incredible venture, and so nor should I. It was not easy.
Peliane was black as Kho’rabi armor, save for streaks of dull yellow about her wide jaws and along her wings. Tezdal mounted her smoothly as he did a horse. I watched, favoring my hurting leg, as Bellek showed him where the straps fit, to hold him in the saddle.
Then it was my turn.
The crispness of advancing autumn chilled the night air, but I felt hot. My mouth felt very dry, and my stomach recalled its last meal. I told myself all this was foolishness; that were harm meant us, these beasts could easily have devoured us. I knew they meant us no harm. I knew they were our only hope—not only of escape, but of far more. Hope of fulfilled dreams; of what I’d dreamed so long ago in Durbrecht. Still I felt afraid.
Bellek said, “This is Deburah, Daviot. After Kathanria, she’s the sweetest, swiftest lady in the castle.”
I looked at Deburah. She met my gaze with a placid topaz eye. Her hide was blue as the moonlit ocean and sleek as a sea-washed pebble. It came to me that she was beautiful, in a terrible, awesome manner. I felt her pleasure at that thought. I was far too confused, too frightened, to wonder how either she or I could know that.
It was not easy to climb her leg—my own hurt as it had not done before—but I found the saddle and sat there as Bellek strapped me in. Belts passed over my shoulders and belly, holding me firm in the saddle; more held my legs; my
feet rested in the buckets of the stirrups. The saddle was cut with handholds in the front: I locked my fingers there.
Bellek said, “Only sit firm, and leave all to Deburah. Trust her.”
I nodded and forced out a gasping “Yes.”
He laughed and slapped my thigh, which made me wince. Then he was gone, trotting back to Kathanria.
I clutched the saddle. I realized the dragon’s—no!
Deburah’s
—back was ridged, as if the spine sat high above the ribs, the belly. It was a comfortable seat. I was mounted just forward of the wings, which now lay flattened back against Deburah’s flanks. I realized I could look forward past the neck and head and see where we should go, what lay below us. I felt suddenly calm: it was as though she spoke to me; not in words, but in emotion. I felt my fear dissipate, like poison bleeding from an infected wound. I felt suddenly happy: I smiled.
Then stared in naked wonder as she unfurled her wings.
Those great sails had looked large enough when I watched them from the ground. Now, as I felt her lungs inflate, her ribs lift me, the vast membranous canopies seemed impossibly huge. They spread proud across the sky. They covered the moon and the stars. They were angled, sharp and jagged, but nonetheless beautiful, worked by a musculature alien to my knowledge. It came back to me again that I was witness to sights many in my College would have sold their souls to see. I clutched the saddle tighter as I felt her legs rise and bunch, and into my mind came that almost-understood voice, and I knew we were about to fly.
From all around came a belling, anticipatory. I looked across to where my comrades sat their incredible mounts. I saw Rwyan astride Anryäle, her head tossed back as wild and eager as the dragon’s. I saw Tezdal, on Peliane, grim. I saw Bellek raise an arm and level a finger at the heavens.
Deburah lifted her head. Her neck drew in and then thrust forward, upward. Her hindquarters straightened, propelling her into the sky as her wings beat down, smoother than any galley’s oars; cleaner, so that jump and wingbeat carried us aloft.
Displaced air drummed thunder through the night. Dust rose in thick clouds below. We sprang toward the stars, the moon. My breath was snatched from my mouth. I felt my
back rammed hard against the saddle. The binding straps dug against my belly and chest and thighs. I entirely forgot my hurt leg. How could I feel pain when I rode the sky? When I experienced such wonder?
We climbed.
Her wings were a constant windrush at my back; steady as her heart’s beat: as sure. My face chilled; my hair blew wild. I yelled in pure joy. Fear and marvel became a single thing; and trust: I rode the sky.
Up and up; fast, until I was heady with the speed of it. Deburah’s body was warm under me, so that I minded not at all the cooling of the air. It seemed her heat filled me, wrapped me comforting against the cold. I shouted out in joy and looked about, forward and back and down: dimensions shifted here. I saw the others group around. Bellek flew ahead; Rwyan flew to my right; Tezdal was on my left. I looked back and down and saw the plain
of
Trebizar grow smaller. I saw the Council building dwindle into insignificance. If riders chased us, I could not see them; nor they, now, hold hope of catching us. I saw the lake painted silver by the moon that seemed so close, I might reach out to touch it. I saw the city like some child’s toy laid out by a puddle. I saw the shapes of the Kho’rabi skyboats lurking red beside the water. I saw the fleet darting shapes of the little scoutships that came after us, and then the winged shapes that opposed them.
They attacked singly, as if it were a matter of pride: only one dragon falling on one skyboat. They attacked and slew and howled their triumph into the night so that the valley filled up with their belling and the rocky walls threw back the echoes.
And when they had sent all the pursuing boats down in tatters of burning red, they wheeled, a terrible night-come squadron, and swept back to rend the larger air vessels.
I saw vast fire-flowers bloom, reflecting off the lake so that silver moonlight was replaced with bloody red. The Kho’rabi encampment lit with fire as burning gases and flaming fabric fell down over the tents and the men. Some drifted free over the town, and I saw fires start there. We were too far away that I might hear the screaming, and I was glad of that. But I heard the yammering of the elementals as they were liberated.
I thought it was not such a different sound to the howling of these other dragons: a sound of bloodthirsty triumph. I wondered if the dragons and the elementals were so different; or both creatures of an older world, forgotten by Truemen and now come again. And angered by the forgetting.
Then Trebizar was lost behind, and the mountains that ringed the valley rose ahead. I felt Deburah beat her magnificent wings stronger, climbing up the sky to crest the buttress and loft, wondrous, over.
I saw mountains that would take men on horseback days to climb rise before us. The peaks were craggy, sharper and higher than the southern compass. Snow shone white there. Cloud hung there, gray and forbidding.
And Deburah beat her wings and rose above it all: the mountains became foothills, insignificant. The air grew winter-cold, and it did not matter. I was somehow cocooned, as if her body warmed me. I looked down on daunting peaks and felt only confident. The sky grew gray and wet; I could see neither moon nor stars. I felt no fear, only trust in my steed, my sky-flier—my wondrous beautiful dragon. I
knew
she would loft above these heights and bring me safely down: such is the communication between dragons and their riders.
And then the peaks were gone and the air was clear again, all bright with moon’s light and the twinkling of the stars that sparkled on my mount’s hide like gleaming jewels.
I looked down onto a landscape I’d seen before, in dreams. High plains drifted below, spreading out across all the country north of Trebizar. Wild, they were, and empty of habitation: no little twinkling lights from farms or villages, but only a moonlit desolation of heathered heath and grassy moorland. I saw rivers silvered by the night, and ridged hills that ran all wild and withershins. Then great stands of timber that stretched out black to east and west, and northward ran toward such mountains as I had never seen or thought could be. Those hills that ringed Trebizar, the heights of Kellambek—they were mounds compared with these. These reached up from ground to sky like a granite curtain. The forests ran out against their lower slopes as if the trees lacked the strength to climb such ramparts. They shone as
blue-black as Deburah’s hide where the naked stone defied attempt to climb. Where they melded with the sky, I saw the gleaming white of permanent snow. I thought we could not cross them, that nothing could fly so high.
And into my mind there came a—I must use words such as I know, that you shall understand; so—a
voice.
It told me I need not fear, that this was only a little barrier to my mount, that we should ride above this petty thing to the wondrous land beyond.
It was as a dream, when words are unnecessary: understood in terms of emotion. I felt it in my soul. My disbelief evaporated. I felt no longer any doubt, nor any fear; only an absolute confidence, an utter trust. And as if in return, measure for measure, I felt Deburah’s pleasure in my belief. I felt a melding, a union I had known only once before: when I knew I loved Rwyan.
Do you who listen to my tale remember that first time you fell in love? That moment of absolute certainty, when you understood, not knowing how or why, that your life was irrevocably bound to another’s? That moment when it became impossible to imagine a future without your partner? When you
knew
that to separate from this being must diminish you, lessen your existence?
It was like that. In that breathy instant I knew myself bonded with Deburah. I’d have given my life for her; and knew that she would do the same—had already taken that chance, in the skies above Trebizar. I opened my mouth and shouted my joy into the wind.
That was the moment I became a Dragonmaster.
We rose, our wingbeats proud thunder in the night sky. We chased the stars. The air grew thin, and we grew heady, intoxicated with the pure joy of effort, of surmounting obstacles impossible to lesser creatures. Slow crawling men might find a way through those mountains, but only hard—through the passes, climbing up and halting, resting to climb again. We flew above them. They mattered nothing to us: the sky was ours to command. We were the Lords of the Sky. We looked the moon in its face and flaunted our wings at its cold observation. We spread our wings wide to catch the currents of air the land gave gifting off. We found the skystreams and rode them as fishermen do the slower tides of the ocean,
glorious. We sailed the heavens. The mountains thrust up snow-tipped peaks to catch us; the moon loomed above. We soared over such crags as seemed to me like teeth designed to enfold the world. We saw the snow give way to bare rock, like blood bled off of dragons’ fangs. Forests clung black and green to the farther sides, and then faltered against the climb that must bring them up to those hills that ran on and on as far we could see.
I thought there could not be so many mountains in all the world. We were come to those crags I knew from Durbrecht’s teachings were called the Dragonsteeth, and that this was the Forgotten Country: Tartarus.
Home.
She spoke into my mind. I no longer wondered how.
She beat her wings and turned us eastward, then west, circling after Kathanria, who led our flight. I looked to Rwyan and to Tezdal. They sat their spiraling mounts like children set high and insecure on plowhorses. As I had long ago ridden Robus’s old gelding, as excited as I was afraid. I wondered if they clutched their saddles hard as I did.
The sun teased the eastern sky: we’d flown the night away. It hinted red across the Fend. Was it still the Fend here? Where neither Ur-Dharbek nor Dharbek held sway, but only dragons: Did they name it different? I thought then that I’d gone into the past; or the future. I was wild with exhilaration. I looked about and saw riderless dragons winging high above, as if they’d be sure of our safe homecoming—why did I think of it as that?—before they landed.
Ahead, I saw peaks high enough that dawn was not yet come to the western slopes. That way the sky was still dark, stars lingering there, the moon reluctant to set. I looked down on rocky fangs that bit the sky, and Deburah swooped down after Kathanria.
Trust.
“
I
do,” I replied.
We spread our wings and glided in to land. We lowered our legs as the wind swung up to hold our wings.
We beat our wings to master the updraft.
We hooked our claws on the rock and settled.
We folded our wings and plucked a moment at a particularly irritating fragment of flesh or fabric that had earlier
lodged between our teeth. It had been an interesting skirmish; better than hunting: more challenge. We hoped there should be more.
I sat awhile bemused, as Deburah picked at her teeth. I felt … I could scarcely define what I felt.
Amazed: yes, that’s easy. Bewildered: that, too.
What else?
Exultant. Proud. In love. (Not, I hasten to add, as with Rwyan, but in a different way that I cannot properly describe, though a Dragonmaster would understand.)
I unbuckled the straps that held me to the saddle and clambered down the leg she extended. I set a hand against that vast blue cheek. It was dry and warm. I said, “My thanks,” and Deburah favored me with a sidelong glance of her tawny eye and went back to the picking of her teeth.
I limped across a yard that disgraced Durbrecht’s courts—that should surely have made Kherbryn’s small—to where Rwyan stood.
Her hair was blown out wild; but that was nothing to the excitement in her eyes. I could not then think of her as blind: it was as though the dragons gave her sight beyond her occult vision, to something more and greater. I took her hand.
She said, “Daviot,” and shook her head, laughing.
I said, “Yes. I understand. I felt it too.”
Tezdal joined us. He said, “Do we fetch Urt?”
Guilt then, that I could so easily overlook my good true comrade: I nodded, and we went to Kathanria, where Bellek was already loosing Urt from his fastenings.
He was not yet quite conscious. I was not certain whether from my grip on his nerves, or desire to refuse his situation. I helped him down and held him as he tottered, eyes peering slowly about, at first hooded, but then opening wide in naked wonder. I felt him shudder and held him tighter. He said, “Where are we?”