Dennis McKiernan - Once upon a dreadful time

“Those words have sent something skittering about in my mind, yet I cannot catch hold of it.”

Borel glanced at Celeste and she turned up a hand and shrugged. Then she said, “Urd’s rede to my Roel is the most mysterious of all, I think:

“Yet can ye but touch the deadly arcane, The least shall set ye free.

“I wonder just what that might mean.”

None had an answer for Celeste.

“You know the most dreadful things said by the three Fates?” asked Liaze. “It was their parting words.”

Liaze turned to Borel and he looked at the message he held.

“Skuld said to Laurent, ‘If you do not give this message to the one for whom it is intended, then all will be lost forever.’ ” Liaze then looked at Alain and he peered at his missive.

“Verdandi told Blaise, ‘Heed my rede, all of it, and make certain you do not send word prematurely, else the world will be fallen to ruin.’ ”

Liaze then looked at Celeste, and she glanced at her message. “Urd said, ‘If you do not solve this rede, Roel, then all as we now know it to be will come to a horrible end.’ ”

“Oh my,” said Simone, and she peered ’round the table from face to face to see nought but grim visages looking back.

In the light of a waxing crescent moon, Ziv popped from icicle to frozen pond to ice-clad limb to-

What’s this?

The Ice Sprite sensed in the distance afar a great frozen mass, more than he had ever felt before.

’Tis a long jump, but-

Of a sudden he was there. How far he had flashed, he had no notion, and he found himself in a vast conglomeration of ice. Ah, a glacier. He cast about with his Ice-Sprite perception.

Its mass was nearly beyond his comprehension. Oh, my, we’ve none this size in the Winterwood. Ziv peered out through the frozen surface; there were mountains all ’round.

Ziv was far from his home and well into his mission of spreading the warning to all who could understand his unspoken language: the shaman of the snow-dwellers; the sages of the reindeer herders; the wise women of the seal- and whale-hunters; the ice-talkers of the high-mountain dwellers; others.

Too, he looked for Raseri, for Rondalo, for Lady Chemine. Yet he thought they wouldn’t be found in the icy reaches where Sprites of his kind travelled.

But even as he rejected his chances, he saw a great winged shape slide across the arc of the sinking moon and toward one of the peaks. Could it be the Drake he sought? Dark and ruddy it seemed, with splashes of ebon blackness glittering here and there among its deep crimson scales. Its vast leathery wings were stretched out wide as it turned through the air as if to come to a landing on that particular mountain crest.

Ziv threw his senses toward the apex, seeking ice thereon.

. .

“Ha!” roared Raseri as he glided toward the rocky pinnacle.

“That was a pleasure, eh?”

Rondalo lifted an eyebrow. “Pleasure? My friend, your ideas of pleasure are somewhat strange. Exciting, oui, but pleasure?” He shifted his spear onto his back by its sling. “Methinks in the future, should we encounter another Giant, ’twould be best not to set his hair on fire.”

The Dragon laughed. “Did you see how clumsily he cast boulders at us?”

“Had he better aim,” said the Elf, “we would now be in his cook pot.”

“Where is your sense of adventure, Rondalo?”

“Adventure is one thing; foolhardiness another.”

“Pah,” snorted Raseri as he spiralled down toward the snowy crag. “What about the time you set an entire aerie of Great Eagles ’pon us? I suppose that was adventure and not folly.”

“But you yourself agreed we needed a tail feather.”

“Oui, but I was going to politely ask, rather than jerk one out and run.”

Both Rondalo and Raseri roared in laughter, and the Drake came to a landing atop the crest, where the Elf dismounted.

From the worst of enemies to the best of friends these two had come, thanks to Camille some five years past.

Tall and lean and fair-haired, Rondalo cast back his cloak and unlaced the front of his breeks. As he relieved himself he said, “I think we ought to be on hand when Vicomte Chevell sails. We can help him rid Faery of the corsairs of Brados.”

“Hmph!” snorted Raseri. “You and I alone could rid the seas of that menace.”

“Oui, but taking the fortress-either by stealth or with siege engines-is a straightforward though perilous task for many men afoot, a more suitable job for Chevell’s marines than one Dragon and a lone lancer.”

“Forget not your bow, Rondalo.” Raseri then raised a forefoot and flexed its dark, saberlike claws. “I think I could gut that bastion of theirs.”

Rondalo began relacing his leathers. “Mayhap you could, though they say the stone is two or three strides thick. Still, here is my thought: we can destroy more corsairs at sea much quicker than Chevell’s entire fleet, and that, my friend, is a better charge for you and me to take on.” Yet flexing his claws, Raseri growled, but said nought.

Rondalo adjusted his cloak and said, “I think it’s time we were- Ho, what’s this?”

Within a patch of clear ice wedged in a crevice a tiny figure gestured wildly.

“An Ice Sprite,” said Rondalo. “Raseri, can you speak his tongue?”

“Elf, I am a Dragon,” replied Raseri as he slithered ’round to peer into the crevice. “I have the gift of all tongues.” Raseri made a gesture.

The Sprite replied.

Raseri made more gestures.

Again the Sprite responded, this time with a long series of gesticulations.

Raseri bellowed in rage, flame shooting out. The Sprite quailed at this blast of fire, but remained in the icy crevice.

“What is it?” asked Rondalo.

“Ready your bow, Rondalo, we must go, and now,” spat the Dragon. As the Elf strung the weapon, Raseri made another series of motions to the Sprite, and it replied with a single gesture and vanished.

Using the elbow of Raseri’s right foreleg as a mounting block, Rondalo leapt to his perch at the base of the Drake’s neck. A double row of great barbels, soft and flexible, ran from Raseri’s head to his shoulders. Rondalo grasped the pair before him and said, “Ready.”

With a roar, the Dragon sprang into the air.

Aloft, Rondalo called out, “What said the Sprite?” Raseri growled and said, “The witch Hradian has obtained a key to the Castle of Shadows, and even now might be on her way to the Black Wall of the World. King Valeray asks us to intercept her ere she can set Orbane free. That’s where we are headed.”

High across Faery did the Dragon soar, over the glacier and icy bleak mountains below and beyond a shadowlight border to come into a realm of lush jungle, with widely scattered clusters of leaf-thatched huts in clearings virtually the only thing to break the endless sea of green. Across this verdant ocean he flew to pass through another twilight marge.

O’er a land of rivers he passed, dotted here and there with lakes, to come to another tenebrous bound.

Cultivated fields passed beneath, and both Rondalo and Raseri travelled in grim silence, but for the beat of the Dragon’s tireless wings. Villages they sped over and tiny campfires, these latter seemingly nought but sparks, so high were the Drake and Elf.

The crescent moon sank below the horizon, yet onward they flew, now under stars alone. They passed a marge to come into a storm-laden sky, and Raseri soared up and up until he was above the rage, and lightning flashed below, the roar of thunder to follow.

Through looming walls of twilight they flew, Faery borders, eight, nine, more.

Yet Raseri’s wings never seemed to slow. .