Marie Brennan - Within the Sanctuary of Wings

Dawn had come to the summit of Anshakkar, that central peak. Though most of the Sanctuary yet lay in shadow, the mountain burned like a flame with the light of the rising sun. Looking on it, I was reminded of the dawn when I stood atop the col with Tom, gazing into the west; and I understood why humans have been known to worship mountains. Anshakkar’s beauty was of a divine sort, sharp and untouchable, as far distant from my own concerns as I was from the concerns of an ant. Pencil and paper, had I possessed either at that moment, could not possibly have captured the effect, and I have never had much skill with oils… but never in my life have I wished so strongly to render a moment on canvas, even if I knew my effort would fall short. It seemed to me in that frozen moment, caught between the remnants of sleep and the wakefulness of an icy dawn, that no one could hope to understand my time in the Sanctuary unless they saw that mountain, ablaze with morning’s light.

The feeling passed—but the idea it had planted in my mind did not.

Prior to the discovery of the Cataract Stone and subsequent breakthrough regarding their language, we had two sources for our fragmentary, erroneous knowledge of Draconean civilization. The first was folklore: memories preserved in Scripture and humble tales, mutated by time until they were scarcely recognizable. The second was the material remains of their age, the buildings and artefacts and, above all, the images—the painted murals and carved reliefs that had once adorned their world. We had misinterpreted so much of that, but it was still the one means by which the ancients could speak to the modern human, transcending the barrier of language.

Could I not communicate in the same way?

I had no proper supplies for the purpose, just a few scraps of paper that had been tucked into the pocket of my coat; my pencil had gone astray during the avalanche or my wanderings afterward, never to be seen again. But humans made art long before we had paper or pencils, and I would not let that lack hinder me.

The interior wall of the yak barn, plastered with white lime, was my primary canvas. By the time the sisters roused to feed the beasts and muck out their enclosures, I had laid out my tale in charcoal, doing my best to mimic the style of ancient Draconean art: Thu, finding the remnants of a Draconean in the valley; Thu again, meeting with myself and Tom and Suhail; then five of us climbing up to the col, where we found the second carcass; then the avalanche. As a coda, myself on one side of the mountains, my companions on the other, in postures of sorrow.

(I was fortunate that the barn, inhabited as it was by so many yaks, was warm enough that my tears did not freeze. My nose ran dreadfully, though, and I had only one handkerchief with which to address that issue, which I had already worn to a rag. Yak-wool scraps make abysmal tools for the purpose.)

The sisters were already upset when they came in, I think because they woke to find me gone from the house, and had to follow my brushed-over tracks to locate me. The simple existence of my picture was enough to deepen their consternation, long before I had a chance to show them its details. Zam in particular was angry: although the charcoal would wash off quite easily, or could at least be smudged into illegibility if the need should arise, I had left a blatant sign of my presence in a relatively public building.

But in time they calmed, and then Ruzt and Kahhe studied my pictures. I exercised my vocabulary, pointing to each bit like a teacher: Draconean, Zabel, mountain. Then, once Ruzt understood, I drew a final image. This one depicted myself and the others together again, in the posture from ancient art that we believed to indicate rejoicing.

Ruzt understood me, I am sure, when I turned to her with a pleading, hopeful expression. But she stared at the wall, neither meeting my gaze nor responding.

Kahhe asked her a question, in a tone I recognized as dubious, and jerked her head in the direction of the mountain Anshakkar.

This set Zam off like a firecracker. Whatever Kahhe had just suggested, Zam was adamantly against it. Ruzt silenced them both with a snap of her wings. I lifted a bucket of water, and she nodded; I began to wash my images from the wall.

What was at the mountain? I had my suspicions, but could not be certain. And I was not ready to pursue them just yet, not when it might lose me some valuable goodwill—or simply kill me outright.

But in the meanwhile, we had a new mode of communication, which aided me in expanding my vocabulary. I essayed some experiments with Draconean writing as well, hoping to establish for certain the pronunciation of the different glyphs, but made scant progress; Kahhe and Zam were clearly illiterate, and while Ruzt understood a little, she was very reluctant to help. Suspecting some kind of religious control of writing, I desisted. For my purposes, writing was of little use anyway, as it could only set down the words I heard. Images were better for eliciting new words entirely.

Ruzt and Kahhe seemed very respectful of my newly revealed skill. Their wooden tools and their pots were decorated, but only with abstract designs; as with people in many cold climates, they passed much of their leisure time in carving. Nowhere, though, had I seen any figurative art. The part of me that, despite evidence to the contrary, persisted in thinking of them as particularly clever dragons had taken this as only natural—but of course they were more than that; they were people, albeit only partially human, and their ancestors had been quite capable of both drawing and sculpture. Modern Draconeans did still have representative art, only not in casual use. And it is fortunate they did, for had they possessed no concept of artistic representation, they would not so easily have understood my pictures.

In time I came to understand that figurative artists form a special class in Draconean society, one that is much admired. Without realizing it, I had, by demonstrating my skill, made myself a good deal safer among them.

In the history of scientific discovery, it is my opinion that insufficient credit has been given to the behaviour of the humble yak.

Oh, I could say that what happened next was due to a fire in the yak barn. This would be true as far as it goes; without the fire, the beasts would not have panicked, and nothing of interest would have occurred. But had it been a fire only, with no ensuing complications from the yaks, I believe I would have remained in that village for the whole winter, and what ensued thereafter would have proceeded entirely according to the plans of my hostesses. Instead I departed from Imsali, learned things the sisters did not intend, and made a great deal of progress I had not anticipated in the least.

The carelessness which began the fire was not my own. The interior of the barn was exceedingly dim, even with the doors thrown wide; we often set butter lamps in strategic locations, the better to see what we were doing. Ordinarily we exercised some caution in where we placed the lamps, but errors happened—and on that transformative day, Kahhe made a mistake.

One of the yaks, wandering about its enclosure, jostled the beam on which the lamp lay.

Had either of us been right there, we would have seen the lamp fall, and could likely have extinguished the fire before it grew too large. But I was outside the barn when the trouble began, and Kahhe had gone to fetch a new basket in which to carry away the yak manure; the first one she found was torn, and by the time she replaced it with a usable one, the fire had well and truly taken hold.