“My Lord!” she cried aloud in despair. “Why?”
A gentle rain began to fall as Satoris walked away from her, his words floating back to reach her. “Whatever stories they tell of me, Cerelinde, they will not say I slew you out of hand. That, at least, I may ensure.”
Left standing alone in the garden, she flinched as the first drops struck her, but it was an ordinary rain. Water, no more and no less, leaving damp spots on her silk robes. It fell like a soft balm on the moon-garden, washing away the stench of sulfur, the dark traces of the Shaper’s blood. In a nearby bed, pale flowers opened like eyes to welcome the clean rain, and the poignant odor of vulnus-blossom wafted in the air.
Their scent evokes memory. Painful memory.
Tanaros’ words.
It was an aroma like nothing else, delicate and haunting. Cerelinde stumbled, backing away from the source, not wishing to see what it had evoked before: Lindanen Dale on her wedding day, Aracus struggling under the deadly onslaught of the Were, her kinsmen and his falling, slaughtered, and Tanaros looming before her on his black horse, reaching for her, blood staining the length of his black blade.
“No,” she whispered.
It didn’t come. Instead, she saw again the dark silhouette of the Shaper; Satoris Banewreaker, Satoris the Sunderer, with the shadow of his extended hand on the dying grass between them.
“I do not understand!” Turning her face to the night sky, Cerelinde let the rain wash away the gathering tears. “Lord-of-Thought,” she pleaded, “I pray you lend me wisdom.”
“Lady.” A bulky figure trudged across the garden toward her, its path marked by the yellow glow of a bobbing lantern. “The Mørkhar said his Lordship had left you. Come on, I’ve not got all night.” Holding the lantern aloft, Vorax sniffed. “Vulnus-blossom,” he said in disgust. “You’re better off avoiding the foul stuff. After a thousand years, I can tell you, some things are best forgotten.”
“Lord Vorax.” Cerelinde laid one hand on his arm. “What do you see?”
He turned his broad face toward her, illuminated by the lantern’s glow. It was a Man’s face, an ordinary Staccian face, plain and unhandsome. For all that, it was not a mortal face; the eyes that regarded her had watched a thousand years pass, and gazed without blinking at all the long anguish contained within the Helm of Shadows.
“You,” he said bluntly. “I see you.”
Ushahin turned his forked stick, rotating the slow-lizard’s gutted carcass.
It was an unlikely breakfast, all the more so for being prepared by virtue of a dragon’s courtesy. The lizard was roasting nicely in the outer verges of the searing flame she provided, held under careful control. Its charred hide was beginning to crackle and split, tasty white flesh bulging in the seams. Ushahin brought it in for inspection and scorched his fingers wedging loose a chunk of flaky meat. It had a sweet and mild flavor, with a smoky undertone. “Very pleasant,” he said, extending the stick. “And done, I think. Will you not share it, Mother?”
The twin-sourced jet of flame winked into nonexistence as Calanthrag the Elder closed the iron-scaled valves of her nostrils, blinking with slow amusement. “My thanksss, little ssson. As I sssaid, I have eaten.”
“Anyone I know?” He picked out another chunk of roasted lizard.
“Perhapssss.” The dragon shifted one submerged claw.
Ushahin paused in the act of raising the piece to his mouth. “Vorax’s Staccians.”
“Perhapssss.”
He chewed and swallowed the bite, conscious of the fact that he owed its delectation to her hospitality. “And yet you spared me.”
“Are you sssorry?”
“No.” He thought about it and shook his head. “Of a surety, I regret their deaths. Yet if you had not devoured them, I do not think I would be sitting here. And you would not have told me such mysteries as stagger the mind.”
The nictitating lids blinked. “Even ssso.”
The morning sun slanted through the mangrove and palodus trees, its warmth dispersing the vapors that rose from the swamp’s waters in the cool hours of night. Insects chirred and whined. Overhead, birds flitted, dining on the prodigious swarms. Here and there the raucous kaugh of a raven punctuated their calls. Filled with a deep sense of contentment, Ushahin Dreamspinner sat in his skiff and ate roasted slow-lizard, until his belly was as full as his thoughts.
When he was finished, he laid his roasting stick carefully in the skiff beside his pole and the makeshift spear with which he had slain the lizard. The restless ravens settled in the trees, watching and waiting. The dragon was watching too, endless patience in her inhuman eyes. Ushahin touched his chest, feeling the scar’s ridges through the fabric of his shirt, remembering the pain and the ecstasy of his branding. The scar throbbed beneath his touch, exerting a westward tug on his flesh. He thought of Lord Satoris, left with only one of his Three at his side, and the urge grew stronger.
Raising his head, he watched the ravens fluff and sidle, catching the tenor of their feathered thoughts. A winding wall encircling a vale, dark towers rearing under an overcast sky, yellow beech leaves and messy nests.
Home, home, home!
Calanthrag’s voice hissed softly. “Do you ssstruggle againsst your dessstiny, Sson of No One?”
“No.” He shook his head. “What you have told me, I will hold close to my heart, Mother, and ponder for many years. But it is Lord Satoris who gave meaning to my existence. I Am his servant. I cannot be otherwise.”
“He is the Sssower. Ssso it mussst be. Ssso it is.”
There was a tinge of sulfur and sorrow in the dragon’s exhalation. Turning away, Ushahin knelt in the skiff and worked at the knot in the rope he had tied around the palodus tree. His crooked fingers were unwontedly nimble. Oh, there was power in this place! It sang in his veins, heating his blood and rendering irrelevant the myriad aches that were his body’s legacy. There was a part of him that was reluctant to leave. He sighed, bowing his head and winding the rope, laying it coiled in the prow. Straightening, he grasped the pole and stood, meeting the dragon’s gaze. “Do you know how my story will end, Mother?”
“No.” Calanthrag did not blink. “Only the Great Ssstory, little ssson.”
Whether or not it was true, Ushahin could not say, for he had learned truth and lies were but two sides to the same fabric for dragonkind, inextricably interwoven. He thought of the things the dragon had shown him in the long night he had passed in the Delta; of the Chain of Being looped and looped and looped again, gathering him in its coils. A mighty consciousness, fragmenting, sighed and consigned itself to its fate. A world was born and died, and dying was born anew. Across the vastness of the stars, in the hidden bones of the earth. Nothing was born but that died; nothing died but was born. Fragmented. Striving, all in ignorance, at cross-purposes and folly. Waiting, all unknowing, for magic to pass from the world, for the deep fires to be extinguished, until there was only the hunger, the memory and wanting.
Such were the things the Eldest knew; the Eldest remembered.
Only then; only then would the cycle have come full circle, and true sentience reemerge, ready to be reborn.