Chris Wraight - Master of Dragons

‘The flower I gave you,’ he said.

Yethanial’s hands flew to her head, searching for what remained of it. ‘It was lovely. I cherished it. But, somehow-’

‘Somehow, during the day, you forgot it was there,’ smiled Imladrik, taking her hands back and pressing them gently into his own. ‘Your work consumed you. What are you doing? May I see it?’

Yethanial looked apologetic. ‘Not finished, of course.’

She led him to the desk. A battered leather-bound book rested, clamped open, on the left-hand edge. Next to it was a pinned leaf of heavy vellum, fresh-scraped and as white as bone. She had been working on it, transcribing text from the flaking pages of the book. Only a part of one page had been completed, but Imladrik could see the emerging pattern of it. She had traced out runes carefully, leaving spaces where gold leaf and coloured inks would be applied. The text had been painstakingly drawn in black ink, and several discarded quills littered the floor around the writing desk.

‘These books were not well-made,’ she said, glancing at the open volume. ‘But their contents are precious. When I am done I will take this to Hoeth to be bound. They can create books that will last for as long as the world endures.’

Imladrik looked at the script. It wasn’t in Eltharin, even though the characters were familiar. ‘I cannot read it,’ he said.

‘Few can. It was written before the time of Aenarion — we only have copies of copies. The speech is called Filuan . These are poems. I find them beautiful.’

Imladrik tried to decipher something of them, but made no progress. He was not a gifted loremaster — only the language of swords and of dragons had ever come easily to him. ‘What do they speak of?’ he asked.

‘The same things our poets speak of,’ she said, running a finger lightly down the edge of the vellum. ‘Love, fear, the shape of the world. They must have been very like us. I would hate their words to be lost forever.’

Imladrik considered asking her to translate some for him, but decided against it. He would pretend to appreciate it, she would see through him, and a small cloud of irritation would come between them. He had long ago resigned himself to their fundamental differences.

‘I wish I could understand it as you do,’ he said softly, pulling her close again. ‘I feel like a barbarian out of the colonies.’

‘You are a barbarian out of the colonies.’

‘I miss you, when alone up there.’

‘Then stay,’ said Yethanial. ‘We can dwell wherever you wish — Kor Evril, Tor Caled, an empty barn in the mountains.’

‘Anywhere but Elthin Arvan.’

‘What is there in Elthin Arvan?’

Imladrik almost replied. He could have said: freedom, open lands as wild as at the dawn of creation, dark woods that stretched from horizon to horizon, untouched by the hand of civilisation and rich in both peril and majesty. Then there was Oeragor, the city he had founded but not seen for over twenty years, a half-finished sanctuary he had hoped to turn into a desert jewel for the two of them to grow old in together.

But he said nothing. They had covered this ground before and he knew when to retreat from a hopeless cause.

‘I am back now,’ was all he said. ‘My duties are here.’

Yethanial rested her head in the crook of his shoulder. It was an almost childlike movement; one of trust, of contentment.

‘That gladdens me,’ she said.

Dawn brought rain, hard and slanted from the east. It drummed against Tor Vael’s lead roofs and gurgled down its granite walls.

Imladrik awoke before Yethanial. He slipped soundlessly from the sheets and opened the shutters of her bedchamber. The view from the window was dove-grey and rain-blurred. In the east he could make out the smudge of the ocean. Nowhere in Cothique was far from the sea.

He breathed deeply, inhaling the salt-tang. He felt rested. He stretched, feeling long-clenched sinews in his back and shoulders unfurl.

‘My lord,’ said Yethanial, sleepily.

Imladrik smiled, turning. ‘My lady.’

She sat amid a pile of linen, looking flushed with slumber. He went over to her, embraced her, kissed her, smoothed her grey-blonde hair from her brow.

‘Hungry?’ he asked.

‘As if starved for a year.’

Imladrik sent for food. In the time it took the servants to prepare it, the two of them rose and dressed. They broke their fast in an east-facing chamber of the old tower. The rain lashed against the glass of the windows and the wind sighed around the walls as they ate, making the fire in the grate gutter and spit.

Imladrik leaned back in his chair. The kitchens at Tor Vael cooked food the way he liked it: plain. He swallowed the last of a round oatcake and reached for a goblet of watered-down wine.

Yethanial had been as good as her word; she ate ravenously, like a scrawny mountain wolf at the end of winter.

‘It troubles me,’ said Imladrik.

‘What troubles you?’

‘That you do not look after yourself when I am away.’

Yethanial shrugged. ‘Too much to do.’

‘You have servants here.’

‘Yes, and I have been cooped up with them for too long. Tell me of the real world.’

Imladrik took a cautious sip of wine. ‘What do you wish to know?’

‘Everything.’ Yethanial crossed her arms, waiting.

‘Well, then. My brother heads back to Ulthuan and Lothern runs with rumour. They tell me he has won his war in the colonies, that the stunted folk are defeated, and that we can at last turn our attentions to ridding the world of druchii.’

‘The stunted folk are defeated? Should I believe that?’

Imladrik leaned forward, his elbows on the table. ‘Have you ever met a dwarf?’

‘I have read accounts.’

‘Scrolls do not tell the truth of it.’ Imladrik felt his mind roving back over the past, the years he had spent in the wilds. ‘Imagine, somehow, if rock were to come to life, growing limbs and a heart. Imagine that every virtue of rock — durability, endurance, hardness — were somehow condensed into a living thing.’

Yethanial smiled affectionately. ‘Language is not your gift, my lord.’

‘It is not. But think of it: a race of stone, as resolute as granite, as unyielding as bedrock. That is the dawi.’

‘Dawi?’

‘What they call themselves.’ Imladrik shook his head. ‘And they are not defeated. Menlaeth has killed one of their princes, but dozens more remain under the mountains. I have seen those places. I have seen halls of stone larger than our greatest palaces. I have seen their warriors gathered around the light of ritual fires, each one wearing a mask of iron and carrying an axe of steel.’

Imladrik looked down at his hands. Speaking of such things took him back. ‘They can never be defeated,’ he said. ‘Not there, not in their own realm. I tried to tell my brother that.’

Yethanial listened carefully. ‘I am sure he took account of that.’

Imladrik’s lip twitched in a wry smile. ‘I met the dwarf prince he is said to have killed. Halfhand, they called him. A brave warrior, though headstrong. The dawi will hold a thousand grudges against us now, and they will never stop.’

‘But they will have to relent soon, no? They cannot fight us forever.’

Imladrik’s smile remained on his lips. ‘Relent? No, I do not think they have a word for that.’ He took another swig of wine. ‘I read the tidings from Elthin Arvan. They tell me that Tor Alessi will soon be attacked again. There are dozens of dawi thanes, all with their own armies. Athel Maraya is exposed too. It is only arrogance that makes us believe these places are invulnerable.’

‘But here we are told-’

‘Here you are told that the war will be over in a year, the colonies will expand and the dawi will soon be suing for peace on their knees.’ Imladrik looked into his goblet sourly. ‘It is lunacy. At Athel Numiel even the infants were butchered, so they say. Menlaeth has set the fire running; I hope he understands the inferno that will come of it.’