Margaret Weis - Dragon Wing

“No, Your Highness. I will lose. I will die.”

Bane was startled, perplexed. Obviously this was one move that had never occurred to him. “But you can’t! You’re a Sartan!”

“We are not immortal—something I think we forgot.” It was the despair that had killed them. The despair he was feeling now; a great and overwhelming sadness. They had dared to think and act as gods and had ceased to listen to the true gods. Things had begun to go wrong—as the Sartan saw it—and they had taken it upon themselves to decide what was best for the world and act accordingly. But then something else went wrong and they had to step in and fix it, and every time they fixed one thing, it caused something else to break. And soon the task became too large; there were too few of them. And they had realized, finally, that they had tampered with what should have been left undisturbed. But by then it was too late.

“I will die,” repeated Alfred.

The dog rose to its feet, came over to him, and laid its head on his knee. Slowly, hesitantly, he reached out his hand to touch it, and felt its warmth, the well-shaped bones of the head hard beneath the silky fur. And what is your master doing now? What is Haplo thinking, knowing that his ancient enemy is within his grasp? I can’t begin to guess. It all depends, I suppose, on what Haplo is doing in this world in the first place. The chamberlain smiled, much to Bane’s frustration and ire. Alfred was wondering what Sinistrad would do if he knew he had two demigods under his roof.

“You might be ready to die, Alfred!” said Bane with sudden sly cunning. “But what about our friends—the Geg and Hugh and Haplo?”

At the sound of its master’s name, the dog’s plumy tail brushed slowly from side to side.

Bane came forward to stand at the chamberlain’s side, the child’s small hands clasped earnestly on his servant’s shoulder. “When I tell father who you are and when I prove to him how I know who you are, he’ll realize—like I do now—that we won’t need any of these others. We won’t need the elves or their ship, because your magic can take us where we want to go. We won’t need Limbeck because you can talk to the Gegs and convince them to go to war. We don’t need Haplo—we never did need Haplo. I’ll take care of his dog. We don’t need Hugh. Father won’t kill you, Alfred. He’ll control you by threatening to kill them! So you can’t die!”

What he says is true. And Sinistrad would certainly realize it. Expendable. I make them all expendable. But what can I do to save them, except kill?

“The truly wonderful part,” said Bane, giggling, “is that at the end of it all, we won’t even need father!”

It is the old curse of the Sartan, coming back to me at last. If I had allowed the child to die, as, perhaps, he was meant to, then none of this would have happened. But I had to meddle. I had to play god. I believed that there was good in the child, that he would change—because of me! I believed that I could save him! I, I, I! All we Sartan ever thought about was ourselves. We wanted to mold the world in our image. But perhaps that wasn’t what was intended.

Slowly, gently thrusting aside the dog, Alfred rose to his feet. Walking to the center of the room, he lifted his arms into the air and began to move in a solemn and strangely graceful—for his ungainly body-dance.

“Alfred, what the hell are you doing?”

“I am leaving, Your Highness,” said Alfred.

The air around him began to shimmer as his dancing continued. He was tracing the runes in the air with his hands and drawing them on the floor with his feet.

Bane’s mouth gaped open. “You can’t!” he gasped. Running forward, he tried to grab hold of the Sartan, but the magical wall Alfred had built around himself was now too powerful. There was a crackle when Bane’s hand touched it, and the child, wailing, snatched back burned fingers.

“You can’t leave me! No one can leave me unless I want them to!”

“Your enchantment doesn’t work on me, Bane.” Alfred spoke almost sadly, his body beginning to fade away. “It never did.”

A large furry shape plummeted past Bane. The dog bounded through the shimmering shell and landed lightly at Alfred’s side. Leaping, teeth snapping, the dog caught the chamberlain’s ankle in its mouth and held on tightly. A startled expression crossed Alfred’s now-ghostlike face. Frantically he kicked his leg, trying to jerk it from the dog’s mouth.

The dog, grinning, seemed to consider this a great game. It held on more tightly and began to growl playfully and tug back. Alfred pulled harder. His body had ceased to fade and was now gradually starting to regain its solidity. Going round and round in a circle, the chamberlain begged and pleaded, threatened and scolded the dog to let go. The dog followed him around and around, feet skidding as it sought to get a grip on the stone floor with its claws, its jaws clamped firmly around Alfred’s leg.

The door to the room slammed open. The dog, looking over, wagged its tail furiously, but continued to keep its grip on Alfred.

“So you’re leaving us behind, are you, Sartan?” inquired Haplo. “Just like the old days, huh?”

In a room down the corridor, Limbeck finally put his pen to paper.

“My people . . .” he began.

Haplo had long imagined meeting a Sartan, meeting someone who had sealed his people in that hellish place. He imagined himself angry, but now even he could not believe his fury. He stared at this man, this Alfred, this Sartan, and he saw the chaodyn attacking him, he saw the dog’s body lying broken, bleeding. He saw his parents dead. It was suddenly hard to breathe. He was suffocating. Veins, red against fiery yellow, webbed his vision, and he had to close his eyes and fight to catch his breath.

“Leaving again!” He gasped for air. “Just like you jailers left us to die in that prison!”

Haplo forced the last word out between gritted teeth. Bandaged hands raised like striking talons, he stood quite close to Alfred and stared into the face of the Sartan that seemed surrounded by a halo of flame. If this Alfred smiled, if his lips so much as twitched, Haplo would kill him. His lord, his purpose, his instructions—he couldn’t hear any of them for the pounding waves of rage in his head.

But Alfred didn’t smile. He didn’t blench in fright or draw back or even move to defend himself. The lines of the aged, careworn face deepened, the mild eyes were shadowed and red-rimmed, shimmering with sorrow.

“The jailer didn’t leave,” he said. “The jailer died.” Haplo felt the dog’s head press against his knee, and reaching down, he caught hold of the soft fur and gripped it tightly. The dog gazed up with worried eyes and pressed closer, whimpering. Haplo’s breathing came easier, clear sight returned to his eyes, clear thought to his mind.

“I’m all right,” said Haplo, drawing a shivering breath. “I’m all right.”

“Does this mean,” asked Bane, “that Alfred’s not leaving?”

“No, he’s not leaving,” said Haplo. “Not now, at least. Not until I’m ready.” Master of himself once more, the Patryn faced the Sartan. Haplo’s face was calm, his smile quiet. His hands rubbed slowly, one against the other, displacing slightly the bandages that covered the skin. “The jailer died? I don’t believe that.”

Alfred hesitated, licked his lips. “Your people have been . . . trapped in that place all this time?”

“Yes, but you knew that already, didn’t you? That was your intent!” Limbeck, hearing nothing of what was happening two doors down from him, continued writing;

“My people, I have been in the realms above. I have visited the realms our legends tell us are heaven. And they are. And they aren’t. They are beautiful. They are rich—rich beyond belief. The sun shines on them throughout the day. The firmament sparkles in their sky. The rain falls gently, without malice. The shadows of the Lords of Night soothe them to sleep. They live in houses, not in cast-off parts of a machine or in a building the Kicksey-Winsey decided it didn’t need at the moment. They have winged ships that fly through the air. They have tamed winged beasts to take them anywhere they want. And all of this they have because of us.