Roger Parkinson: Summon Your Dragons

When Azkun saw the fire he reacted much as he had done the previous evening. He sat beside it and stared into it, seemingly oblivious to all else.

“Well, it seems Azkun is not interested in hunting,” remarked Menish. “I'll not be left entirely on my own.” He looked at Azkun, feeling more pity for him now than anything else. The man was simple, he needed care.

“I'm staying with you, M’Lord.”

“No, Althak, you enjoy a hunt. Let us old men stay here and rest.” Hrangil sat on the log beside Menish and loosened his coat.

“As you wish.”

The four younger men decided on the most profitable direction to take and set off on foot. Azkun did not even turn his head. The fire held all his attention. It was different in daylight, but it was still fire. The heat warmed his face.

He was vaguely uneasy about something, but he did not know what. There was something in the thoughts of Althak and the others that he did not recognise. But the fire claimed most of his attention. They were gone now anyway. Menish and Hrangil were talking, but he was not interested in them.

This morning the whispers from the minds of his companions were faint and fuzzy. He could control the horse well enough, although he was starting to use the harness sometimes. Yesterday he had caught snatches of thought from Menish and Hrangil, but today all he could sense was the pain in Menish’s leg. It echoed as a dull throb in his own leg.

It was Grath who had made the fire. Or, at least, he was the one who had held his hands in the bracken and flame leapt from it. Perhaps he had breathed fire into the bracken like a dragon. But Grath did not like dragons, he had felt that yesterday.

Menish and Hrangil’s conversation became more animated and he looked up from the fire. They were talking about him.

“… and I say he's a victim of the Vorthenki, thrown into the Chasm. You know how they treat invalids. He's clearly simple-”

“Sire, he stood unharmed in dragon flame!”

“Yes… yes, that's true. But it proves nothing. Telish was supposed to able to do the same thing, but he died in the fire of Gashan. I have my doubts that Gilish could do anything of the kind. The fact that this wild man did does not make him Gilish.”

“Sire! Remember we may be sitting before Gilish himself! Is it right to speak so?”

“If he takes offence let him speak,” replied Menish, looking at Azkun with cold defiance in his voice. But Azkun merely looked back at him with mild interest. Menish shrugged.

“If he is Gilish he's content for us not to know it.”

“But the sign. ‘Some will know me for my name is written in the fire.’ Whenever he opens his mouth he quotes something from the Mish-Tal, or sounds as though he is.”

“Yes, he speaks old Relanese. Grath’s phrasing is sometimes archaic. We are in the north, after all, though not very near Grath’s country.

“Azkun.”

He looked up from the fire again. “Yes?”

“We need to know who you are and where you come from. I've asked you before but you were, perhaps, not quite yourself at the time.” He paused, waiting for Azkun to speak, but he could think of nothing to say. Speech was still new to him and he could feel something strange in the forest around him.

“If there is some… danger in telling us be assured we can protect you from any enemies you may have made. You need have no fear.”

“No… no I am in no danger. I was in the Chasm, but you know that.”

“Yes, but where were you before that?” asked Menish with forced patience.

“I only know the Chasm. There is nothing else.”

“Did you ever see a belt, a golden belt, in the Chasm?” asked Hrangil.

“A belt?” Azkun looked back in his memory of dark mists and terror and shuddered. “No. I have never seen such a belt. Is there one in the Chasm?”

“There may be, I suppose it is still there.”

“Hrangil, it's only a story,” said Menish wearily.

“It is in the Mish-Tal!”

“It was not written there by Gilish, then.”

“Of course it was.”

“How could he write of his own death?”

“It was prophecy at the time.”

“Little use is prophecy if a man knows his own death and cannot prevent it.”

At that Hrangil glared at him.

The strangeness of the forest was growing more acute to Azkun. It was like being watched. He felt uncomfortable and shifted his position.

“Are you saying you were born there?” Menish pursued his line of questioning.

“I do not remember my birth.” Azkun glanced over his shoulder. A tremor of fear ran through him.

“I expect not,” replied Menish sarcastically, “but you must have had kin folk who did.”

“I have told you that I have none.” Again he felt the fear, as if something lurked in the trees, something evil.

“Then what became of them? Are they dead? Were you cast out from them?”

“I… I remember nothing but the Chasm. You were the first person I saw when I left it.” The evil was moving closer. He looked about, but there was nothing.

“What about your mother? You must have had one.”

Azkun suddenly realised that it was not his own fear he felt, but that of something else. It was neither Menish nor Hrangil. Something not very far away was afraid and he did not know what it was, nor why. Menish and Hrangil did not show any sign of being aware of it.

He turned his thoughts back to Menish.

“I do not know. Must I have?” ‘Mother’ was a word like many words he knew, his mind had a vague meaning for it but his understanding was fuzzy. Besides, he was distracted.

Menish muttered something and turned back to Hrangil.

“What is it?” asked Azkun, meaning the fear he felt.

“What is what?”

But he could not explain. He did not have the words. Instead he felt out the fear of the thing. Trying to find its source.

Suddenly a blaze of clarity struck him. He felt the blood lust of Grath, Drinagish, Althak and Bolythak as they fell on their prey. Felt it, and recognised the minds from which it came.

Yet, far more acutely, he felt the terror of the pig. His body whirled and jerked, echoing the animal’s frenzied attempts to escape. A stab of pain raced down his side, another across his throat. Pain, searing pain, blackness and death. A dark chasm opened and shut, taking the pig into oblivion. He screamed and slumped to the ground.

But he was not dead. Heart pounding, he stood up and backed away from Hrangil, who was reaching towards him with concern on his face. He was not deceived. These were not servants of the dragons, they did that to the pig.

“Azkun? What's wrong?”

“You… you…” but he could not say it. The horror of that dark chasm welled up inside him and he screamed again. Hrangil tried to catch hold of his arm, but he span out of reach, glaring wildly about him.

“He's gone mad-” even as he spoke Menish caught his breath, for Gilish had been mad.

Azkun panted, still backing away from Hrangil. They would kill him too. They would send him into the blackness he had seen. Terror gripped his heart. He flung himself into the trees, up a bank and ran for all he was worth.

Azkun ran blindly. He clutched desperately at the pain across his throat as if he expected his lifeblood to gush from it. Shouts from Menish and Hrangil only added to his desperation. They were ghouls on his heels. The pig's pain was his own and the oblivion beyond filled his mind with the darkness of the Chasm. That alone would have driven him to run from the horror, but there was more.

He had seen the lust of his friends, even Althak, to inflict pain and darkness. Such ferocity appalled him.

Yet the evil he had seen was somehow consistent. He understood part of it. The weapons they carried, the way they controlled the horses, their deference to Menish, it began to make sense. Their whole lives were but re-enactments of the murder of the pig.