“And then came the time of the Great Burning. Stars fell from the sky, causing a night to fall over all the lands of this world which lasted for a year and a day. The plants froze, withered, and died. The mountains shook. The stars that had fallen continued to burn their way through the bones of the land, sending up waves of fire, smoke, black ash!”
I shuddered, as a sudden image of that nightmare time blossomed in my mind. When it wasn’t freezing, with no food, it was horizons full of fire, racing towards you—
“We dragons congregated to the sacred mountains, the places that were still warm and sheltered from the long night…” Fargal said, her tone lightening, almost becoming singsong as she voiced her memories of that tragedy. “And the humans came to us, entreating to us for help, offering to hunt and gather for us if we could help protect them…” Fargal’s clear blue eye looked up, over my shoulder and away from Ymmen as if she could see that distant time clearly. “Perhaps it was always meant to be thus. Perhaps our two tribes were always destined to be intertwined…”
I could not speak on the threads or songs of destiny that wove through the world, and so I remained silent.
“We agreed. That was the Compact. Dragon and humankind started to bond closer and closer, we realized that there was a place in our hearts where we became one. Where we were ALL children of the wind and the sun…” Fargal continued to speak in her faraway voice, until her tone changed like a fast-moving Plains storm, becoming heavy and clashing with the grind of teeth.
“That is, until Delia came,” the Eldest Sister said caustically. “She offered the First Brood access to the greatest of the Sacred Mountains – a place where one of the stars themselves had fallen to earth.”
“Mount Hammal, of Torvald,” I muttered, and the Eldest Sister’s eyelids flickered in agreement.
“She offered us the mined fragments of the stars themselves to eat – what you see in the walls beyond the confines of my home here—”
Earth Lights, I thought. They had once been stars!
“And my fool of a brother, Zaxx, agreed. He was the younger, and he was always an idiot!” Fargal said. Had I not heard from Ymmen how appalling and evil that this Zaxx the Golden had been – I would have laughed at her sisterly contempt.
“But this Queen Delia always had a plan, and it was to use the Stone Crown to command all dragons. She took the natural bond – the Compact that our peoples had built together – and she turned it into an iron loop about our necks!” Fargal hissed, and her curled-up tail suddenly whipped to one side at the back of the cave, making a great booming sound, dislodging rocks and setting up dust.
But I knew servitude, didn’t I? As soon as the eldest dragon had said those words, I remembered the many nights where I had been forced to stumble, with chains holding my legs, after some make-believe slight. Or I remembered the way that Inyene’s overseer, Dagan Mar, would drag me before the others by my hair, throwing me to the cruel stones of the Masaka Mountains before kicking and stamping at my legs for any small infringement of his rules. I remembered the burning agony of each brand on my forearm. And, before I even knew what I was doing, I had drawn forth my forearm in front of Fargal, showing her the four blackened welts clear there across my flesh, inscribed there forever.
“Eldest Sister,” I said in a clear voice, looking up at the blue eye unflinchingly. “Look into my mind, if you can – you will see that I have, too, suffered because of another’s pride and arrogance. I was a slave, before I freed myself.”
There was a sudden sensation against my mind as of a new and brilliant dawn, rising fast and boiling-hot. I could feel the power of Fargal’s mind as I struggled to hold myself quiet and open towards her. I have no name for what it was that I did, only that I tried to do the thing that I did naturally with Ymmen. Perhaps, ironically, it was the Stone Crown itself that helped—
“Hmm.” Like a curtain falling over my mind, the sun winked out as Fargal withdrew. “You have no idea what it is that we dragons face, little sister,” Fargal said – but although her words sounded angry, there was no malice that I felt from them at all. “But I see that you know of slavery. You know what it is to have teeth held to your neck.”
I nodded. “I do,” I whispered.
“That Stone Crown upon your head is an abomination, and as long as it exists, it represents a threat to all dragon-kind—” Fargal said.
“To us all,” I whispered under my breath.
“Yes. To all life. But do you know what tragedy is even worse than that, little sister?” Fargal asked. “It is the tragedy of the dragon-song which is locked inside of that baleful stone. Even Delia was not such a powerful witch as to create a binding on all of dragons herself. She had to use the songs of the dragons in order to bind us. She sacrificed countless numbers of dragons, using our very souls to power that thing upon your head. It is the same reason why it is attuned to my people – because, in some hideous way – that abomination IS of my people…” Fargal revealed to me, and my stomach suddenly turned over in disgust.
“When a dragon dies, their essence – their hearts and minds and Song – is released back into that place where all dragons are one. You feel it when you connect with Ymmen,” Fargal explained, and I could feel the rightness of her words – that sense of some larger, more expansive realm between my mind and Ymmen where we were no longer two separate animals, but a part of something much greater indeed…
“But, those dragon souls that were trapped and used to power the Stone Crown? Their songs are lost to us. We have lost centuries of knowledge, tales, and memories that could help us remember –forward. That could remind us who we are and where we came from, and where the Western Track takes us….” Fargal stated, all trace of her anger slowly dissipating as she mourned.
“The Cycle of Becoming?” I whispered, flickering a look at Ymmen, who nodded silently. This was why Ymmen couldn’t quite understand the First Brood, as well – there were many dragon ‘songs’ – memories and experiences and perhaps even souls – that no dragon had access to.
“How do we destroy it?” I asked, the fear I had felt before this powerful being turning to the cold and certain fury of a hunting wolf. What Fargal was telling me was a crime against an entire species, over thousands of years. It was a sickness that had spread down through time, to me.
But I might be able to do something about it, perhaps.
“Destroy it? YOU?” the Eldest Sister coughed a gobbet of black smoke. “Impossible. It would take dragons. And only if I guide them in the effort. We will have to wrestle our songs and our ancestors’ stories from the Crown itself – and it will take more than just me.”
“Ymmen?” I turned to ask, earning another snort of fire-laced black smoke from Fargal before me.
“It will take more than just me and the Black. More than us and the Greens and Blues above that I scent, too,” Fargal said. “I am talking the greatest ever convocation of dragon-kind that the world has seen for many a generations.”