Robert Hughes - The Power and the Prophet

“What?” one head thundered.

“You dare to answer me with impertinence?” the other roared.

“Please don’t anger it!” Tahli-Damen begged. “I know this dragon! We’ll be eaten!”

“I very much doubt that,” Pelmen muttered. “Stay close to me,” he told Tahli-Damen, but his words were drowned by the dragon’s bellow.

“I always learn the names of those I swallow! It adds piquancy to the flavor!”

The other head seemed suddenly puzzled, perhaps even annoyed. “Pardon,” it mumbled, “but I think I recall that I am to swallow the next morsel!”

“But of course I am!” the first head snapped. “I always get the next morsel!”

“Why are you haunting this pass?” Pelmen shouted. “Begone!” He noticed then that the blind bluefaither was crawling away on his hands and knees.

“Haunting the pass?” one head sniffed.

“Begone?” the other snarled.

“I live here!” the first trumpeted.

“You don’t live anywhere. You don’t live at all. You’re dead, Vicia-Heinox, and I want you to stop pretending otherwise!”

“I am dead?’ the two heads chorused in unison.

In that moment something happened to Pelmen that both frightened and elated him. He was seized from within by that which he knew as the Power. All shaper abilities drained from him, replaced by that incredible sense of being shaped. Guided from without, he reached down to grab Tahli-Damen by the collar and hoisted him to his feet while calling aloud, “Yes! You’re dead!” Quickly he bent to whisper in Tahli-Damen’s ear. “Stand up, spread your legs and throw your arms out wide. When I say fall, fall backward.”

“That’s the most ridiculous statement I’ve ever heard!” the head named Vicia howled.

“And I’ve heard all the ridiculous notions of a thousand years of men!” Heinox added noisily.

“Nevertheless, it’s true. You were divided by Pelmen the player, and slain by Pelmen Dragonsbane!”

“Pelmen!” both heads screamed with deadly malice and they struck.

“Fall,” Pelmen ordered, but he needn’t have, since Tahli-Damen was already falling backward in a dead faint. There was a sudden rush of wind off the plain behind them, and the two bluefaithers were suddenly sky-born.

“Pelmen!” the heads howled again, this time from a hundred feet below them. But the dragon didn’t give chase. Pelmen thought he knew why.

“Wake up. We need to be moving.”

Tahli-Damen opened his eyes to face the eternal blue fog. He had no idea where he was, the time of day, or who was speaking. He could feel a brisk breeze on his face, but that told him little. His sense of smell was dominated by the aroma of meat roasting over a fire. A warm, dripping chunk of it was thrust into his hand, and he brought it to his mouth without a thought. He was hungry, and it smelled delicious.

The taste did not disappoint him. He swallowed with a gulp and grunted, “Where are we?” His mind had cleared enough to remember the stranger and his assistance through Dragonsgate. Suddenly the memory of that shocking encounter in the pass flooded his thoughts, and he trembled as the man answered his question.

“We’re several miles within Lamath, at the edge of the Tellera Desert.”

“The dragon! What about the dragon!” Tahli-Damen shouted.

“What dragon?” the other man replied calmly.

“Vicia-Heinox! If it spots us from the sky—”

“The dragon is dead.”

“But—but we talked to it!”

“We talked to something. Or someone. But I have it on good authority that the particular beast you mention is very dead. There are more important things to worry about than being spotted by a dead dragon.”

“How did we get past it?” Tahli-Damen quailed. His terror didn’t prevent him from gobbling the chunk of meat. As soon as the last of it disappeared into his mouth, another slab was shoved into his hand.

“Do you believe in miracles?” the relaxed stranger asked him.

“I… guess I could,” Tahli-Damen admitted.

“Then that settles it. There’s plenty of that meat here for you. Eat all you can—we’ve got a long walk ahead of us.”

“The desert,” Tahli-Damen mumbled as he chewed.

“A seven-day walk, at least. Or seven nights. Even in autumn I prefer to take the desert when the sun’s gone elsewhere.”

Tahli-Damen nodded grimly and swallowed. Crossing the desert had loomed as a far greater obstacle than had Dragonsgate. But then, he hadn’t been expecting a dragon.

“Of course, we could make it in two and a half days on horseback.”

Tahli-Damen was shocked. “A bluefaither? Riding?”

“I don’t recall the prophet forbidding it,” his companion said breezily.

“I’ve.. .just never thought of that before,” Tahli-Damen admitted.

The stranger laughed. “Then think of it, by all means!”

“But where can we—”

“You mentioned your House and your cautious kin. I know you say you’ve lost honor there, but surely not so much that they would deny you a pair of ponies. Your Lamathian way-castle isn’t far—why not go ask?”

The idea made splendid sense. Tahli-Damen didn’t really want to walk across the desert. “Lead me to it.”

They found the castle within the hour, and Tahli-Damen walked inside the gates alone. His relatives suggested that he at least stay the night, then tried to constrain him when he refused, but at last they let him go, along with a couple of horses. In fact, they were relieved when he left. His blindness made them uncomfortable. After all, he’d lost his sight by meddling with sorcerers, and merchants took a dim view of that sort of thing. Besides, he was crazy. His ridiculous blue garment proved it.

“Ah,” the stranger greeted him pleasantly as he led the horses out the gate. “I told you we could be of some mutual benefit.”

“I hardly see why you need a horse,” Tahli-Damen said, a bit suspiciously. “Why not just ride the wind?”

“You know, that’s the trouble with miracles. They’re great when they happen, but you just can’t depend on them.” He helped Tahli-Damen climb astride his steed.

The blind merchant grunted. “I had thought it more magic than miracle.”

“You take me for a powershaper?”

“I don’t know what to take you for—except a friend. You’ve proved yourself to be that. But should you be a powershaper, I’d rather not travel with you. My experiences with shapers have not been good.”

“I see,” the other man said as he climbed onto his horse.

“I don’t,” Tahli-Damen said pointedly, “and powershapers are the reason. That one you mentioned, Pelmen, for all his heroics, has proved himself nothing but a menace!”

“You’d be surprised how many times I’ve heard those very words,” the other man muttered as he took Tahli-Damen’s reins and gently nudged the flanks of his own mount.

“He’s the man who caused my blindness!” the merchant called as they cantered forward, then broke into a gallop.

“Perhaps he would change that if he could,” his partner called back.

Tahli-Damen clung to the saddle horn and gazed ahead into the blue. He didn’t respond for a while. At last he shouted, “I’m not sure, now, if I’d like my sight back. I learned so much by losing it.”

“Well, as I said before: You can’t count on them, but there are miracles.”

The desert breeze, raised to a wind by their riding in the face of it, chapped Tahli-Damen’s lips and watered his sky blue eyes He closed them and clung more tightly to the saddle.

He said no more, and his companion offered no further conversation. He imagined the nighttime sky above them as their mounts carried them deeper into the Tellera Desert.

There was something reassuring about the emptiness of this place. He’d remarked on it every time he’d crossed it and he’d made many trips in his years as a captain of caravans. He liked the desert’s brooding silence and the way the flatness of the distant horizon added stature to the horse and rider. He found a peculiar grandness in being the tallest object visible between the earth and the open sky. While he couldn’t see the horizon, he knew it was there, stretching out before him like a sandy ocean, as flat, as empty as—