Dave Smeds - The Schemes of Dragons

She kicked the floor like a cast-off toddler and walked stiffly away. Behind her, the door shot open. To her horror, Toren came charging down the tile after her. She whimpered, ducked down, and buried her head under her arms. No. What had she done to deserve this?

He ignored her, barreling past as if she did not exist. He sprinted out of the archway, through marble columns, and plunged into the dense shrubbery of the garden.

Deena flopped back on her rump, panting. Her weeping gradually dissipated. As her pride recovered from the shock, she fretted anew for Toren. What were his ancestors doing to him?

Toren crawled to the base of a tree and hugged it. His breathing slowed until, at last, he no longer had to inhale through his mouth. The bark against his cheek eased the storms in his head. Though the tree's size compared poorly to those of the Wood, it and the foliage around him blocked off all view of the temple. Dirt lay under his body, not strange, flat stones or impossibly colored fabric. His ancestors ceased clamoring to be released from the square walls of the room where they had reawakened. His own mind fought its way to the top, and began to function.

Deena. That had been Deena in the room, and in the corridor, cowering from him. Deena, his friend.

No, his great-great-grandfather's specter rumbled. A woman cannot be your friend. A modhiv makes friends among his fellow scouts; he has no time for females, save to beget sons on them. If a modhiv fails to return from a foray, his comrades will understand; a woman will not. And that one was a foreigner. A Fhali should not even speak to females of other tribes.

Nearby a flower bloomed. His ancestors could not name it, but Toren had encountered it in the mountains the day before. "Liris," he said, repeating the name Deena had taught him. "It means Beauty."

No, his forebears protested. Flowers have names like shadebloom, whiteroot, blossom-that-opens-in-autumn. Beauty is a name for a pet animal.

Toren shook and curled into a fetal huddle. One after the other, his ancestors condemned him. Why have you left the Wood? Why have you eaten sacrilegious food? What is this talent springing from you, that should belong only to a shaman? The sun lies nearly overhead, when it should ride the sky to the north.

It's not my fault, Toren cried.

Where are we? Why are we here? If not your fault, whose is it?

He explained with imagined images of a dragon and armies marching over battlefields. He gave them firsthand memories of the frog god and a wizard whose blood smoked and dissolved steel. But all these things-even the steel-stunned them with queerness, sent them cringing away to things familiar and secure. Finding none, they accused him again of betrayal.

I had no choice, he moaned. They took you away from me, sealed you in a talisman.

His ancestors recoiled. You let them strip you of your totem? Cheli! Non-human!

I am a cheli no longer, Toren protested. You are restored. But the revelation had overwhelmed them. Dizzy with their silent yells, Toren crawled over to a tiny pool and dunked his head in and out. The shock of cold water on his face gave him back his wind, kept him from retching. A cloud of fish darted away from the impact point.

The activity caught his eye. Desperate to occupy his mind with anything but his ancestors' voices, he counted the number of species in the pool. There were four. At the bottom, a few scumsuckers browsed. Tiny minnows clung to the protection of roots and water lilies. A broad, puffy type dominated the open water, challenged only by a long, streamlined, rainbow-hued sort.

His ancestors recognized none of them, which gave them all the more reason to wail. Toren gritted his teeth and kept his glance on a specimen of the fourth species. A memory struggled to coalesce, battered by the hurricane within him.

The day before, in the mountains, he, Geim, and Deena caught five such fish in an alpine stream, and roasted them for dinner. A good meal. The pure white flesh tasted light and flavorful.

"Aumeris," he murmured. That was the name Geim had used. It meant streaker. "Aumeris."

He barely heard himself. Twenty-five generations insisted that they knew all the fishes of the Wood. There was no need to know the names of fishes elsewhere. What if their meat was poisonous?

His ancestors did not know this world, did not want to know this world. Then let them keep theirs, and leave him to deal with the one he was living in.

The voice that shouted most loudly was that of his great-great-grandfather, who had also been a modhiv. He called for his descendant to remember the code of a warrior, to hold to the ways that had served the tribe generation after generation, to purge himself of foreign tongues, ideas, and loyalties.

Toren reoriented a small connection in his mind. His great-great-grandfather's voice vanished from the din. Toren choked back a sob. Quickly he searched, and found that every part of that ancestor's experiences remained, accessible to his call. But now, the information came only if he called it. The dead man's spirit lived on, but was bound, forbidden to speak without permission.

What had Geim said? "Things change when one has no ancestors to tell the living how things should be." For Toren, at that time and in that place, things needed to change. He stilled his father's voice, and his grandfather's. He wept, but the pain of separation was less excruciating than the condemnation, confusion, and disquiet of the active totem. He had heard legends of Vanihr who had silenced the speakers within, but he had judged the tales to be myth. That they might be authentic occurrences had been inconceivable.

He repeated the adjustment until he had muzzled every ancestor. "Forgive me," he whispered as he shut out the founder of the Fhali nation.

All at once, the tiny grove into which he had fled seemed disturbingly vacant. A small frog splashed noisily into the pool, startling him. Birds fluttered in the upper reaches of the trees, suddenly very loud. He accessed the recollections of his father, just to be sure he could. His sire, a stern believer in the value of tradition, chastised him because he had let his hair come loose. The manner in which it was fastened was one of the ways Fhali denoted their tribal identity. Toren cut off the admonishment.

He rose unsteadily to his feet. Like most of his ancestors, his father had been angry that Toren had been abused, livid that the totem had been violated. Strangely, Toren could not summon one breath of rage.

He stumbled out of the grove, uncertain of his destination. The Soft Room did not beckon, nor did he wish to see Struth or the high priestess. He did not wish to see anyone. In time he would seek out Deena, at the very least to apologize, but not yet. He turned away from the wing of hospitality rooms, discovered a path through the garden, and headed for the front of the temple complex.

No one challenged him, though he passed a pair of priestesses, and sentries gazed down at him from their posts on the outer walls. The drelb, to his surprise, courteously opened the exit for him. He meandered into the amphitheater via the main entrance, tucked himself into a corner, and observed the petitioners at the Oracle of the Frog God.

The supplicants cast their offerings and uttered their questions. Struth declined to answer. As the afternoon wore on, Toren huddled farther and farther back toward the wall. Though the people at the dais represented many nationalities, none spoke Mirienese, and certainly none used Vanihr. Toren ached for the turn of a familiar phrase. He caught barely a word here and there, trivial terms whose meaning he had picked up listening to Geim and Deena converse during the journey.

He missed his ancestors. He needed them. He clenched his fists. Why could they not have whispered? Why did they have to shout?