Ashe smiled at his great-grandmother. “Wise words—and we will cherish our child, whatever he or she is like. I just hope you are willing to help instruct this child in the use of dragon lore; no one did that for me, and I think it would have been useful to help understand this second nature, this nonhuman side.”
The great beast snorted.
Dragon nature is straightforward, Pretty’s Husband, she said with an injured air. It is human blood that makes wyrmkin inconsistent.
Dragons are protective of their land, because they must be. We are the last guardians of the primordial earth; its lore is extant within us as it is within no other creature. We alone understand the stakes of death, the finality of ending, because we do not have souls as other creatures do. No dragon would ever consider killing another dragon, no matter how much he hated the beast, because we understand the need for our race to remain intact. This is a lore that is older than me, is older than all of us. But whether wyrmkin have the sense of it, I do not know. I suspect that Anwyn’s sons had it—they never took the initiative to kill each other, or their mother, when they could have, particularly Llauron. But Anwyn—I do not know if she would have held to the dragon ways if they did not suit her purposes. The dragon eyed Ashe, causing prismatic flashes of light to dance over the coins scattered throughout the cave. And the books of history are not written about you yet, either. We will have to see if you remain faithful to the draconic code, or if the mix in your blood leads you elsewhere.
“I have blood on my hands, it’s true,” Ashe said, his voice melancholy. “As far as I know, I have never killed one of my own kind. But had I been given the chance to take my grandmother from the sky as she strafed the Cymrian Council in dragon form, or when she took my wife into the sky with her, I would have ripped her heart out without a second thought. Blessedly, Rhapsody did it for me, but I cannot say that I mourn her passing. She was a bitter, vicious, bloodthirsty woman, and her death was a good thing for everyone involved.”
Untimely death is never a good thing, said the dragon sadly. You say that because you have not truly come to understand it. I had not either, until Merithyn died. I had never before felt death, tasted its foul burning in my teeth. The creatures I had consumed—stags, harts, and the like—had experienced death in my maw, but with their passing had come life, sustenance, and so it did not have the same bitter taste. But Merithyn’s death was an ending so complete that it took part of my life with it as well.
Rhapsody reached out from the hammock and caressed the dragon’s massive shoulder.
“Merithyn gave his life saving his ship, and much of the First Fleet. Out of his death came life as well, Elynsynos. It was a great sacrifice, for him and for you, but a nation lived because of it. Perhaps it is one of the greatest sacrifices in history.”
The dragon shook her head violently.
No, Pretty. I will tell you of the greatest sacrifice. It is important that you both know it, because it is the heritage of your child, the legacy of his dragon blood. I will tell you of the Ending.
You know the stories of the Before-Time, of the great battles between the five Firstborn races, when the children of air, earth, water, and ether, the Kith, dragons, Mythlin, and Seren, banded together to force the destructive fifth race, the F’dor fire demons, into the center of the world where they could no longer wreak havoc upon the earth. And you doubtless know that the part dragons played was the contribution of the Living Stone to make the Vault in which the F’dor were imprisoned, yes?
“Yes,” said Ashe.
But what you do not know, my great-grandson, Pretty’s Husband, is that the Vault, as it was built, with the vast majority of our treasure of Living Stone, was still not enough to completely contain the F’dor. The Progenitor of all dragons, the first of our race, could see that the cage of Living Stone would not hold them. So he made the greatest sacrifice in history. That sacrifice is known to all dragons as the Ending.
A dragon’s decision to die, to give up its life, is undertaken with the understanding that for us there is no Afterlife, at least not a conscious one. Most often that decision comes at the end of an extremely long life. The dragon is too tired to continue to live; it is in pain and exhausted, and so it merely ceases to try and stay alive. And it ends. That kind of ending leaves some of the dragon’s lore behind—the blood that ran in the beast’s veins turns to gold. And some of what was the dragon remains with it—the avarice, the possessiveness. Why are men so hungry for a soft yellow metal that does nothing to further their ends? They cannot sate their hunger with it, or heal themselves when they are ill or injured. They cannot even forge it into a weapon. And yet they fight wars over it, commit all sorts of atrocities, even lose their souls to it. Much like a dragon would.
“I had never considered that,” Rhapsody said. She was taking notes in her journal.
The Progenitor saw that the F’dor might well escape from the Vault. And after all the death, all the destruction, and all that had been sacrificed in the fight to contain them, he understood the incalculable cost of that happening. So just as the lock of the Vault was being sundered, the Progenitor wrapped his body, more vast than can even be imagined, around the Vault, subsuming it. He had been in an ethereal state; once he had enveloped the Vault with his own being, he slowly let go of each of his elemental lores—the ether, the earth, the water, the air, and the fire. His body dried and hardened to a vast shell that surrounded the Vault inside it, preventing the escape of the F’dor. He just Ended. That is his legacy—and it’s the legacy of your child. Each dragon has the power to End, but none, to my knowledge, ever have done so since, because it is the most complete and final form of death. Not even your lore remains behind in gold or gems that can one day adorn the empty heads of kings, or the breasts of vain women. Dragons have more of a stake in the Earth that shelters all beings, because we have sacrificed more to guard it.
The Lord and Lady Cymrian looked at each other in silence.
So, Elynsynos concluded, her multitoned voice lightening, that is the tale. Now, Pretty’s Husband, eat something, so that you will be sustained on your journey home, and will come back often to visit.
A plate of rolls and jars of jam appeared on the cave floor.
Ashe laughed. “All right, I know a hint when I see one. Very well, Great-grandmother, I will eat and be on my way so that you may begin your visit with my wife. I know when I’m not wanted—and I surely don’t want to get breathed on, so I will comply.”
Don’t be ridiculous, said the wyrm. A dragon has to be solid in order to breathe on someone else. I do not do solid.
Now have some jam! Then be on your way.
After Ashe had left, Rhapsody sat down to examine the documents Achmed had left her, as she promised to do.
“One important thing I forgot to tell you, Elynsynos,” she said, sifting carefully through the papers and graphing the musical code in which the manuscript was written. “At Thaw I have asked my friend Achmed to come to this place.”
The dragon inhaled slowly.
Did you tell him where it was?
“No,” Rhapsody said quickly, “I would never do that without your permission. I told him to go to the Tar’afel, and I would sing him to the place I wanted to meet him. He can follow the sound of his namesong wherever I chant it. But I just wanted to warn you that Achmed and I can argue fairly harshly; it is just our way, not a sign that he is going to harm me. So if we do argue when he comes, please don’t intervene. I would hate to see him roasting on a spit over his own campfire.”