Very well, said the dragon, but she did not sound impressed.
And there they remained in pleasant company, the dragon reveling in her treasure, the Lady Cymrian translating the documents, until she began to tremble with the understanding of what was in them. With shaking hands, she put the manuscript back in the metal box and closed it quickly. The inclination to vomit came over her, but it was not one generated by her pregnancy.
“Oh, sweet One-God,” she whispered.
26
As Ashe neared the far side of the crystalline lake beyond which the lair of the dragon Elynsynos lay, he felt an unwelcome static tingle run the length of his spine, radiating out over his skin to his fingertips. Then, a heartbeat later, it was gone.
He stopped in the crusty snow and turned angrily around, recognizing the vibration and looking for the source, but there was nothing visible in the ancient forest. The deep, rich hues of the evergreen boughs stood in marked contrast to the bare trunks and branches of the deciduous trees, silvery-bare or clothed in a remnant of ragged, dead leaves of brown and russet, waiting to be swept away by stronger winter winds. The breeze that blew through the glade was sharp and cold.
“Where are you, Llauron?” the Lord Cymrian demanded of the air around him.
There was no answer but that of the wind, and the ripples that disturbed the surface of the lake.
Angrily Ashe seized hold of the hilt of his sword and drew it quickly forth from its sheath. Kirsdarke, the blade of elemental water, roared to life in his hand, appearing like the foaming waves of the sea, gleaming with liquid anger matching Ashe’s own. He held it up to his eyes and looked through it.
The world beyond the rippling waves appeared dull and flat, like an old grave marker whose inscription had been worn flatter by time. Like water on such a stone, the rivulets running into the crevasses and depressions, making them visible again, the vision Ashe had through the blade sharpened around the elemental form that was hovering, invisible to the human eye, beyond the treeline of the clearing.
A great draconic shape floated in the air just above the ground, gray and silver as the branches of the maple trees.
“I can see you, Father,” Ashe said, annoyed. “You may as well show yourself.”
A disappointed sigh whistled forth like the breeze. “You never were any fun to play hide-and-seek with,” a sonorous baritone, light and melodious, said. “Your dragon sense was sharp, even as a child. If it took you more than a few seconds to find me, we both knew that you were merely humoring me.”
“I am well past playing games with you,” Ashe said bitterly, returning Kirsdarke to its sheath with a savage snap. “I told you three years ago to stay away from my wife and family. And yet, of all places in the world you could be, hanging about in the ether, communing with the elements, the ability to do so what you chose over that family, here you are outside Elynsynos’s lair. What a coincidence. What do you want?”
“No harm, I assure you,” said the voice, a testy undertone in it. “And there’s no need to be so harsh. I am your father, Gwydion, or at least I was in my human lifetime.”
“Which you happily sacrificed for a hollow immortality,” Ashe said, pulling at his lambskin gloves. “And at the expense of my wife’s peace of mind; she still occasionally has nightmares about burning you to ‘death’ in your false pyre with a blast of starfire from her sword at your insistence. I told you then, and I will tell you again now, I want you to stay away from Rhapsody. She has paid dearly for your elemental wyrmdom, and I mean to make certain she is done with that.”
“Your wife forgave me those wrongs long ago, Gwydion,” said the voice. The air within the trees shifted, gaining shape and heft, thickening until it took the form of an enormous serpent, vaporous, with iridescent scales the color of ashes from a spent fire, flashing with intermittent glitters of silver and gold. Its vast wings were folded next to its sides, minimizing its breadth, leaving only the wyrmlike length of it visible, well over one hundred feet from nostrils to terminal tail spike. “It’s a pity you haven’t learned to follow her example.”
“I care more about her well-being than she does,” Ashe replied tersely, staring at the enormous ethereal dragon in the nearest multifaceted eye scored by a vertical pupil. It was a gaze that few men could hold without being lost to the beast’s will, but Ashe, his own dragon blood strong, returned it without blinking. “And to that end I mean to see her kept free from annoyance, harassment, or manipulation, all of which you have committed against her at one time or another. So be on your way. You have no business here.”
The wind raced through the snowy clearing, lifting the granular blanket of snow from the surface and spinning the crystals into fluttery bands that danced and twisted, then fell to the ground again, skittering along the crust.
Finally the dragon spoke, and its voice held unmistakable sadness, deep as the sea.
“You would keep me from my own grandchild, then?”
Ashe exhaled sharply. “So that’s it, is it? You are looking for the baby. Why? What possible interest could you have in a child? You had one once, if I recall correctly, and it was little more to you than a tool to accomplish your goals. What goals do you still have, Llauron? I thought those things would fall away with the ashes of the mortal human body that you left behind in the coal bed of your pyre when you convinced my wife to transform you, without her knowledge, into your elemental self. Don’t you have better things to do, now that you are wind itself, fire itself, earth itself, water itself, ether itself, and, of course, sheer gall itself?”
“It seems you believe I have always been the last of those,” Llauron said, unfolding his filmy wings and stretching them lazily. They passed without resistance through the tree limbs and bracken of the forest, like mist. “And I suppose I can’t really dispute that. But is it really so hard for you to imagine, Gwydion, that in my old age I might want the same joy that every other grandfather-to-be has—taking delight in his offspring?”
The ugly sound that issued forth from Ashe’s throat was both a gargle and a cough.
“Yes, it is,” he said flatly. “You? You want to be a grandfather?”
“Indeed.” The beast beat the air with its wings, causing many of the last dry leaves to fall. “Grandchildren are a second chance at happiness we might have missed the first time around, Gwydion. Don’t dismiss my desire to come to know the descendants of my blood. If you know anything about our race, you know that there is little, if anything, a dragon prizes above its progeny.”
“Yes, I am well aware of that,” Ashe said, positioning himself closer to the ethereal beast and interposing himself between it and the path back to Elynsynos’s lair. “And as I prize mine above all else, I will do whatever is necessary to keep her or him from ever experiencing the sheer delight of being manipulated mercilessly by a family member, to the point of feeling useless, good for nothing, or damned. Those are feelings I know well, thanks to the tenderness of my upbringing. I have no desire for my son or daughter to ever feel that way. Ever. And I know Rhapsody agrees. So be gone from this place. I do not accept that your protestations are genuine. Like everything else you have ever wanted, I am certain there is an ulterior motive at play here, a hidden reason that benefits you first, at the expense of the others involved. But since those others are my wife and child, I will not brook it. Because, being part dragon myself, there is nothing more important to me. So go away.”