Dragon Rigger (12 page)

The two dragons furled their wings and surveyed the crafting. They found stout trees glimmering with fire-crystal, and translucent broadleafed bushes, and lantern-trees with slender arching branches tipped with the very first ruby-colored lanterns. Here were tiny spikes of lumenis, and there shrubs made of gossamer, twinkling with starlight. It was indeed a garden, truly garkkondoh, fully dragon, and alive with magic—a perfect place for their hearts to dwell, a place to bring the fledglings soon to hatch in the Dream Mountain. . . .

And so created
A garden of light
A thing of life
A gathering of stars
Against the night . . .

whispered the draconae choir, as the image grew still and garkkondoh, as it etched itself clear and shining in the memory of those who tended the Dream Mountain. Clear-song and FlareTip were long gone from the outer world now—their spirits lofted in death to the soulfires of the Final Dream Mountain—but their song and their creation would never be gone.

Not as long as the draconae sang their creation and kept the memory alive. Not as long as they denied the Enemy what he most wanted: power over their hearts and minds and souls. Not as long as they remained faithful in their wielding of the Dream Mountain, whatever the cost might be, now and forever.

In the spaceport bar, the spectacle of a drunken ex-rigger proclaiming his duel with dragons was watched by a young woman seated as far from the shouting and jeering as one could be in the confines of the tavern. Jael LeBrae rose from her seat—astonished, delighted, dismayed—unable to speak, and scarcely able to breathe. Could she have just heard what she thought she'd heard?

"—hope his
dragons
hold their ale better than he does—" "—think one of your dragons just peed on me—"

She craned her neck to get a better look, but there were too many people standing between her and the speakers at the bar. At her table, the young man she'd been talking to was waving, trying to recapture her attention. She squeezed out from her seat, past two other crowded tables.
Damn,
she thought. She hated these crowded bars; she didn't know why she even came to them.
Don't
let that man get away!

"—you okay?" she heard the young rigger shout after her.

She glanced back. "Excuse me—I have to go!" At that moment a space opened up and she pushed her way through the crowd, determined to reach that drunken man who had just been spouting nonsense to the whole room, nonsense about a world of dragons, a world that he claimed was as real as this one.

The bar crowd seemed to have swallowed him up. By the time she reached the spot where he'd been, he was gone, and the people were laughing and jeering about something else altogether. Only a puddle of beer where the man had fallen remained as evidence of the commotion he had created, and already a janitor was clicking and whirring its way through the crowd, coming to clean up the spill. Jael rose up on her tiptoes and looked around to try to see where he had gone. An elbow caught her in the side and she smacked it away in annoyance. "Scuse
me,
" someone grunted irritably.

Jael started to snap a reply, then shook off the impulse and instead asked a blue-tinted fellow whom she thought she'd seen near the storyteller, "Do you know where that guy went?"

The blue rigger peered at her over the top of his glass. "Who?"

"The guy who was telling the story. Just now."

Blue took a swallow before lowering his glass. "Rangoon? They tossed him out the back door. Why?" He looked her up and down appraisingly.

Jael stretched up on her tiptoes again, trying to see over the crowd. "Where's the back way?" she demanded, ignoring his expression. Blue hooked a thumb over his shoulder, past the end of the bar.

Jael squeezed urgently through the crowd. She passed a doorway to a smoky hallucinogen room, then found the rear exit behind a knotted group of bar patrons. Shoving past them, she stepped outside into the warm night air.

The back door opened onto an alley, which was lit with a shadowy twilight glow. Jael peered left down the alley, then right. She heard someone grumbling, and thought she heard the words, "From that one comes a beginning . . ."

Her heart raced. Where was that voice coming from?

The voice continued, more forcefully, "From that one comes an ending. And you can
bet your ass
the realm will tremble!" Then the voice broke into what sounded like tears.

At last she caught sight of a tall figure picking himself up out of the shadows close to the building. He staggered down the alley away from her. She ran after him, out onto the main street. "Wait! Hey, excuse me—!"

The man turned, peering back at her through half-lidded eyes. "Huh? D'I know you?" His brow was furrowed, and his long hair fell across his eyes. He drew himself upright in an attempt to display some dignity, but the effort failed as he staggered sideways.

"My name is Jael," she said breathlessly. "I heard you back there. Your story—"

He pressed his lips together angrily. "Now, what story would that be?"

"About the dragons."

His laugh was harsh and bitter as he rubbed his scraped elbows. "I don' know nothin' about no dragons! Now, leave me alone." He hiccuped and started to turn away.

"Rangoon—wait!" Jael cried.

The man drew himself up with a great effort. "My name," he said, with great deliberation, "is
Kan-Kon.
"

She blushed. "I'm sorry—someone told me—" She cut herself off with a gesture of agitation. "Never mind that. I have to talk to you about the dragons!"

"I told you." Kan-Kon shook his head vigorously. "Don' know nothin' about no dragons."

"That's not what you said back there."

"Ahhhhhh . . ." He snorted, shifting his gaze away. His face was illuminated by the strange twilight from the sky. It was spillover light from an orbiting farm sat, an array of mirrors reflecting sunlight onto some round-the-clock farmlands not far outside the city. He looked back. "That was just storytellin'. You can't go believin' what some old lush says in a bar, girl!"

Jael stared at him. "You said it. And you meant it."

His voice was harsh. "Now, how would you—"

"Because of
this
," she snapped. She mimicked his voice:

" 'From beyond hope will come one. Speaking her name will come one. And the realm shall . . .
tremble.
' " Her voice started to quaver as memories of another time, another world, rushed back to her. She forced herself to continue the familiar words of dragon prophecy. " 'From this one comes a beginning. From this one comes an ending. And surely—' "

"
And surely the realm shall tremble!
" Kan-Kon hissed. He squeezed his eyes shut and mouthed the words again, silently. He opened his eyes slowly and stared at her with an anguished gaze. "How do you know those words?" he whispered. "How do you know them?" He stared at Jael as if he were standing in the presence of a ghost.

How do I know those words?
Jael's heart ached at the memory of those words, ached until she thought it would burst. It was two years since she had heard that prophecy spoken—and not a day had passed that she hadn't thought of the realm, of the dragon Highwing, of his sons. Of the struggle that she had left behind. And just lately, hardly a night had passed without new and disturbing dreams . . .

"
Miss?
" the man whispered. "Talk to me!"

She came back to the present with a start. She had accosted a drunkard. A drunkard who knew dragons. A drunkard who knew the prophecy. Never had she met another human who actually had set eyes upon the dragons, or would believe her if she said that she had. "The words?" she murmured, in a voice so low that the man leaned forward, his beery breath in her face as he cupped his ears to hear. "How do I know the words?" she repeated. She shook her head, full of cobwebs—then suddenly blurted, "What are you doing?
Hey! Stop that! What are you doing?
"

Kan-Kon had dropped to his knees, his head bowed. He was shaking, clutching her leg. As she struggled to pull away, she realized that he was weeping, sobs racking his body. "Oh, miss—
miss
!"

"What? What's wrong?" Her hand went out hesitantly, but she drew it back without touching him. She tried to tug her leg from his grasp.

"Don't be doing this to me!" Kan-Kon moaned. "Don't be lying to me!"

"I'm not lying to you! Stand up, will you? Will you
let go of me?
I'm not lying to you.!
"

With painful slowness, Kan-Kon released her and sat back on his haunches, gazing up at her like a lost dog. Embarrassed for him, she gestured to him to stand up. With great clumsiness, he rose to his feet. His cheeks were streaked with tears, and his lips were trembling. "Have you . . . been there?" he whispered. "Have you? Is that where you . . . heard those words?"

Jael hesitated, then nodded dizzily. She'd told no one of her experience, had talked of it with no one except her Clendornan friend and shipmate Ar. And even Ar, though he'd gone through much of it with her, had put it behind him in a way that she'd found impossible. And now here was someone literally crying to hear her story. Someone who knew.

A drunkard, outside a bar.

No, she reminded herself—a rigger. Former rigger, anyway. He might be a drunkard, as well—but first he was a rigger. And she could well understand how someone who had been with dragons, and been unable to make anyone believe it, might turn to drink.

He was still waiting, his eyes imploring her to speak. "I—" she began, and choked on the words that would have followed. She didn't know what to say. Several people, walking by in the night, stared at them oddly. She couldn't just spill out the whole story in public. But as she hesitated, she could see the hope fading from Kan-Kon's eyes. She
had
to tell him. "I—I was there," she stammered, her voice rasping. "Twice. I know . . . the realm. I know what you heard. I made friends with a—with a—" With Highwing!
Highwing, why did you have to die?
She gulped. "With a dragon."

The man's eyes widened. "Made friends?" he croaked. "Made
friends?
They tried to kill me, they did! Tried to kill me! But the iff—the iff—" His voice caught, as he struggled to shape the word.

"Iffling," she sighed.

"
Yes
! Yes, the
iffling!.
That's what saved me. Talked 'em out of it. One of them, anyway. Said I wasn't 'the one.' " He gulped, as though remembering his relief. "Did you . . . did you meet . . . an iffling, too?"

Jael was dizzy with memories. "Yes," she whispered. It was an iffling who in the darkest hour of the night in Windrush's cavern had told her to go to Highwing, had told her of his impending sentence of exile, had urged her to try to save him. And even before that, when she'd first met Highwing, it was an iffling who had appeared to Highwing and urged him to accept her, and not to kill her.

"Oh jeez . . . oh jeez!" Kan-Kon wept again. It took him a few moments, gasping, to compose himself enough to say anything more. Finally he caught her arm and gazed straight at her and said, "Please, you must tell me of these things. You must come with me and tell me!" He began to propel her down the street.

"Wait!" she protested.

"No, please—you must!" His strength was astonishing, considering how much trouble he had in just standing. He would have none of her protests, and she wondered frantically if she would have to scream to avoid being forcibly abducted.

But he apparently had no such thing in mind. He steered her to a bench on the edge of a small park, set back a little from pedestrian traffic on the street. He begged her to sit with him. She hesitated—but the park was well-enough lit by farmsat light spilling down through the trees, and his only interest seemed to be in hearing her story.

"Well, I—" She sighed, and thought of her agreement with Ar that they would not discuss the dragons with outsiders. This was different, she thought. They hadn't imagined actually meeting someone else who had encountered the dragons. She tried again. "I first flew into dragon space against the wishes of my ship's captain. But that's really . . . another story." A terrifying story: of an abusive shipowner who had tried to enslave her psychologically, and failing that, to physically dominate and rape her. She had killed him in self-defense—ejected him from an airlock into the Flux of interstellar space.

"Yes, yes," Kan-Kon urged. "When did you go there?"

"Two years ago, standard."

"Ah!" His eyes burned. "It was seven years ago for me. But my God, it seems like yesterday! I can't get it out of my mind! What an astonishing, terrifying place! And dragons now make friends of riggers!" he whispered in disbelief.

"Yes." Jael cleared her throat. "Or some do, I should say. It is a realm at war. Or was, when I left."

Kan-Kon shook his head. "War. Dragon against dragon?" Jael nodded. "Then not all dragons are . . ." His expression darkened.

"There are dragons of greater kindness and honor than you would believe," Jael said, guessing at his thoughts.

The ex-rigger stared at her. "The ones I met damn near killed me. They—they
did
kill my shipmate." He swallowed, clearly struggling to control old emotions.

Jael shuddered. "How did they—do that?" Heaven knew she had seen enough dragons that had wanted to kill
her.

Kan-Kon's breath went out, and something seemed to release, and he said, "They reached right into the net. Did something with his eyes—something
terrible.
Took his spirit, they said." Kan-Kon stopped and laboriously cleared his throat. "But they just plain killed him, as far as I'm concerned. Right through the net. There was his, his b-body in the r-rigger-station, and—" Kan-Kon began trembling, and turned to gaze across the park. This was a part of his story that he did not tell in the bars, apparently. "They—they were going to do the same to me, too. But this other thing came along and stopped them. The iff'ing—"

"Iffling," Jael corrected.

"Iffling, right. It came and, and, and—"