Диана Дуэйн - The Door Into Shadow

Hasai lashed free of her tail, began to rise slowly from his crouch, wings lifting, the diamond sabers of the forefingers coming around to threaten her.
Segnbora gazing up, unmoved. "I am you, sitkesmh," she said. Beloved.
Hasai moved not a muscle. As the momentary anger slowly ran out of him, his eyes changed. They were no less afraid, but now there appeared in them room for something else.
"Now," Segnbora whispered. "Quickly." The fluid, black-glittering splendor of him made itself into a curve, a pounce, a terrible striking downward, a living knife. Stone sliced open like parting flesh, the blood was memory, it leaped—
Their Sun ate their world. They saw it happen. They had had warning — both ahead-memory of the actual incident, and years of wild starstorms, during which the Sun's light was too intense to drink without dying, and every Dragon had to leave the Homeworld for a time, and wait far out in the cold for the Sun's fire to die down.
Shell-parents grew infertile, and eggs that should have hatched roasted in the stone instead. At last came the final storm they had dreaded. In haste, all of Dragonkind streamed off their red-brown world and hung helpless in space, watch-ing their star swell to a hundred times its size and devour their Homeworld.
They were orphans.
But they weren't homeless.. Wisely, ihe older Dragons had looked to the youngest Dragoncels to see what they ahead-remembered of their own going mdahaih. What they had found was the place they'd know as mdeihei — an odd, cool little world, greener than theirs, covered with a strangeness called water and inhabited by life of bizarre and fascinating kinds,
One Dragoncel, however, remembered more than the oth-ers. He knew the way, and would die upon reaching their goal. His name was Dahiric, The Dragons gave him. another name: Worldfinder. They put him at their head and he led. them out into the Great Dark. How long they travelled there, none of the Dragons were
ever sure. Many died along the way — starved for Sunfire in the empty wastes — but Dahiric, a doomed and purposeful green-golden glimmer at the head of ten thousand others, never veered from the memory he followed. Born only to die, and to make this journey, he was determined to succeed. Finally, after what might have been ages as humans reckon time, they found the place. It was all that the mdeihei— to-be had seen: strange-colored, but alive; a home at last; stone to sink their claws into. They dropped down toward it — and found what Dahiric, and many more, were to die of. From the dark side of the world, where it had been hiding, a black foul air came boiling out toward them. It was blacker than the space in which they hung, and it was alive. It hated thought and light and any kind of life but its own. It was also vast enough to swallow the bright little planet whole: a project on which it had been working for eons. It didn't relish the Dragons' interruption.
Dahiric knew his duty. Gripping a double wingful of the little planet's field of forces, he dove down into the roiling blackness, flaming. The Dark drew back, and the Dragons saw Dahiric drive a long tunnel down into it. At the tunnel's bot-tom his light blazed like a falling star. But Dahiric was young. His fire was limited by his immaturity. His flame went out, and the Dark closed behind him. After a little while he came float-ing out of the boiling blackness, dead.
Had there been air to carry the baltlecry the Dragons raised, stone would have shattered across the world. Ten thousand strong, they dove at the Dark from every angle, flaming as best they could. Their fire was in short supply, however, since they had been out in the night so long, and ten thousand Dragons were not enough. The Dark opened before them, swallowed them, spat back the dead. Soon there were nine thousand, seven thousand, fewer. Many had no offspring yet and went rdahaih in a second, without time to make their peace with the Universe from which they were departing. Some went, mad from the strain of having so many relatives become mdahaih in them in so short a time. Others so afflicted flung themselves into the Dark and. were lost too.
THE DOOR INTO SHADOW
A. few simply fled, and lived.
One of these was the youngest of the Homeworld's Dragon-eels. He had never been quite normal. When he had become fully sdahaih at last, and his shell-parents and relatives had asked him when and where he would go mdahaih, his answer frightened them all. What he foresaw was darkness and cold and terrible pain; and then the odd, crippled body of an alien. . one who was certain she would go rdahaih and take with her all the mdeihei. It was a terrifying vision, and all rejected it.
He grew, and yet the vision did not change. Therefore, he slowly became resigned to being a curiosity among his own kind. As befitted a Dragon, he came to make light of the difference, submerging it in placidity. But he did not realize that the way he did this — by learning to stand a little aloof, even from his mdeihei — also encouraged other Dragons to stand aloof from him as well.
Hasai became estranged from his own kind. He took no mate. He held his peace. He flew alone. And when he finally found himself facing that same awful blackness that in min-utes had killed half his race, Hasai failed. With no comrade who would admit to fear, and so support him toward courage, he became nearly blind with terror. He fled.
The rest of Dragonkind, fortunately, had not exhausted their options. There in empty space they convened in body and mind, and held Assemblage — the last full Assemblage that would be held for a generation or two, until the Advo-cate summoned them again two thousand years later. They paid the price of Assemblage — the lives of the DragonChief and the Eldest — and then all those left alive turned their hearts inward and gave their will and power over to the Im-manence.
Few of them saw where the Messenger came from. She was a Dragon in shape, but even the webs of Her wings burned intolerably bright. Her every scale was a star, a point of power so terrible it could be felt through Dragonhide. The Messen-ger wheeled and dropped through the massed Dragons, scat-tering them — then halted above the raging, boiling immensity of the Dark. Through their othersenses, the Dragons could feel the Dark's alarm as it reached up to snuff out this trouble-some intruder. Likewise, they heard its silent scream of pain
as the Messenger flamed, letting loose a torrent of Dragonfire as potent as a star's breathing.
The Dark writhed convulsively, ripped away from the world with a jerk and a soundless howl of rage. It streamed toward the Messenger to engulf Her utterly, but the Messenger only spread wings and claws and seized it. Working at the forces in space with fiery wings, She drew the Dark away from the world, screaming and struggling. Together they dwindled, drawing farther away from the little blue world, until all that could be seen of them was a light like a dwindling star. Those who dared to follow came back and reported that the Messen-ger had plunged, together with the Dark, into the heart of the nearby yellow Sun. Neither came out again.
Later, the survivors found Dahiric's body among those of the slain. The others they burned in Dragonfire, as was the custom on the old Homeworld, but Dahiric they bore down to the surface of the new world. There they found a fair place at the endpoint of a great spur of land, where water washed it. They uprooted a mountain, as had been done on the Homeworld for Phyiril and Saen and others of the Parents, and they laid it over him, melted it around him, and made a dwelling there for the new DragonChief. Thereafter, the Dragons settled into their new young world, and watched humankind come slowly out of the caves into which the bale-ful influence of the Dark had driven them. . . and behind the rest of the Dragons, a silver-and-black Dragoncel drifted to earth like the last leaf of autumn. His shame at his cowardice gripped him like the pain of giving-up-the-body, and would not leave. True, no other Drago'n ac-cused him of fear, but no one comforted him, either. He was alone, as always. Alone with a new shame, and with the old hidden terror of the day he would go mdahaih in a human. All these burdens he buried under layers of Dracon placid-rty. The centuries went by. He maintained his dignity, flew alone, and kept silent. Then finally his life became reduced to waiting for the stars to assume the proper configurations. This they did. At last, his luster dimming, Hasai spiraled down to the Morrowfane by night and crept into a cave there, to wait for the seizures, and to wait for the one who would