Dragon Rigger (20 page)

Then the hills were gone behind them, and a flat plain opened up below. A powerful downdraft swept them down to the plain, and they sped along just above its surface, all three of them gasping, their momentum carrying them with astonishing speed toward a region of murkiness ahead.

* * *

Jarvorus knew they were drawing closer to the home-web, to the realm that had spawned him. He could not say how he knew, but there was a feeling deep in his being, a feeling that bore the name "home." He knew, as well, that the time for completing his mission was growing short. The human was returning to the realm, as foretold. But to whose influence would she return? His task was to take her to Rent, and ultimately to the Nail, to the one who had created him, who had taken a mere cavern sprite and transformed it into Jarvorus the warrior. He did not intend to fail in his task.

He kept his watch on the remaining iffling, and knew that it was watching him just as carefully for any sign of weakness or inattention. But Jarvorus had the advantage. He had only to draw the human just a little astray, to keep her clear of the dragons and lead her instead to his Master. There she would serve the prophecies, but not in the way the enemy expected. She would die, yes, and the realm would tremble, yes—but with the victory of the True One, the True Power, the Nail of Strength.

Jarvorus had only a dim knowledge of the prophecies and the lines of battle ahead. But he trusted and believed his Masters; he could feel the coming victory already. There was a change coming up in the underreality, and Jarvorus thought he sensed the power of the True One in that change. He was glad of that; he would not be fighting alone much longer.

* * *

The murk turned into darkness, and soon they were underwater again, but this time moving like catfish, feeling their way through an almost impenetrable gloom. It was apparently a boundary layer of some sort, and if they could just get through it, Jael hoped that they would emerge into a faster-moving layer, one that would transport them quickly toward the mountain realm.

She had her hands outstretched, moving over the bottom. It was stony and slick, the current slow but steady. It was almost too steady, and that made her nervous. There ought to be at least a little turbulence. It was almost as if some outside force were bracing the current, like a muddy river in a channel. It was only a feeling, but she had learned long ago to trust her intuition in the Flux. Should she trouble the others with her feeling? she wondered.

She was just on the verge of voicing her unease when the murkiness vanished, like a curtain being torn away. They were floating in clear, midnight-blue space, but the space was half filled by something that took her breath away. It was an enormous, transparent . . . creature? . . . or structure? It filled much of their view with a tracery of luminous webbing, like an enormous spiderweb. Beads of light moved in and out along its radial strands, like liquid drops, and waves of light and shadow flickered along the arcs of the webbing. It appeared hundreds of times the size of their ship, and they were moving directly toward it.

Ar?

I don't know what it is, either, Jael.

Ed fluttered up and down, and from one side of the net to the other.
Rawk!
Too big! Too big!
Make it small! Hurry! Make it small!

We can't
,
Ed
, Jael said urgently.
Please settle down and help us try to understand it
. She stared at the thing, and shivered suddenly.
I
feel
a
 . . .
presence . . . here
,
Ar. As if it's alive
,
and it
knows we're here.
I
feel
a
 . . . She hesitated.
I
feel danger. I don't know why, or what kind.
She glanced back and could see Ar's eyes glowing in the darkness, and the faintest outline of his face.
Do you feel it?

Ar looked disturbed, but didn't answer.

The ship seemed to be moving inexorably toward the thing. Whether her premonition of danger was correct or not, there was little they could do about it. The current was growing stronger, and it flowed directly toward the web. It occurred to Jael that if indeed it was alive, this might be how it fed itself, by seining whatever came along, like a whale filtering plankton with its baleen. The idea was alarming.

Ed perched between the two humans and tried to make himself small. He trembled with fear, and made clucking sounds under his breath.

Can we steer through the gaps?
Ar murmured.
I don't see any other way.

Jael nodded silently. She saw no alternative, either. But there remained that internal voice, warning of danger.

The thing grew visibly larger as they approached. It stretched far to their right, and to their left, and above and below them, creating the illusion that it was wrapping itself slowly around them. Or was it an illusion? The threads of the web were close enough to see more clearly now; they looked like soft glass tubes, with liquid light streaking along their lengths. The threads flexed slowly, and several strands were bending inward toward them, as though to entrap the ship in its mesh.

Ar,
look out!
she cried.
Aim for the center—if we can
maneuver at all!

Ar joined her in steering away from the strands. The shape of the webbing became foreshortened like a halo around them as they sped toward its center. The current was irresistible, and she felt a mounting sense of danger, a feeling that something malevolent was peering at them through this web. Oddly, her fear of being trapped dwindled; instead, she began to feel that they were about to be flung onward—but in what direction? They would have only an instant in which to determine their course. The tiniest error could mean light-years of difference.

She was sure that this thing was alive.
We're not your enemy!
she cried out in desperation, in the instant before they flew into the plane of the web.

What happened next occurred in an eyeblink, yet seemed to take forever.

The ship flashed into the darkness of the gap.

It was like a circuit closing. The rigger-net came alive with electricity. Jael glimpsed Ed and Ar alight with fire, becoming transparent like the web; she glimpsed their thoughts and memories streaming out into the webbing like wildfire. She knew she was as transparent as they; she felt her own thoughts pouring out, her hopes, dreams, fears—most of all, her fears about failing her dragon friends—and glimpsed them being drawn into the web.

What if you fail to reach the realm! What if you're destroyed here and now?
The fears seemed to rise up from the Flux itself. She heard Ar calling out to her, but he sounded light-years away.

In this frozen instant, she
knew
that the web was alive, toying with them. And now something was erupting from it—a face in their path, an enormous face outlined with the same light that rippled through the webbing. It was a bearded, rheumy-eyed face, a face she knew and hated with all other being.
Mogurn! You
can't be alive!
she whispered. Was it possible? Could this webbing have caught her old captain's life energy from the Flux and preserved it, preserved him in all his evil?

No, no, no, no . . . !

Another voice was crying frantically that it was not real, she was being deceived. But Mogurn's presence was overwhelming: the malevolence that poured from him toward the one who had denied him, who had killed him.

Mogurn
,
damn you forever! Get out of my way!
she cried. She kicked the ship hard and slewed past him, and the face exploded into streams of light that ran back up into the web.

In the same instant the net blazed white around her, and all sound and thought were obliterated by the roar. It was too much for the net to handle. She was suddenly certain they were going to die; they
were
dying, she felt death moving through the net as synapses burned and evaporated. She felt no panic, only regret. She had no awareness at all now of her fellow riggers, and the thought flashed that she hoped she would know them beyond death.
Windrush, I'm sorry!
she whispered.

She felt a searing pain as the brightness became unbearable. Then it was gone and everything was lost to blackness.

In the luminous spaces of the Dream Mountain, the choir of voices was soft but unceasing, even as individual draconae joined and left the choir, where the retelling of the words kept the memories alive in the heart of the Mountain. Among them was a memory passed down through uncounted generations, from a time just after the dark one's earlier defeat in a terrible battle with dragonkind. This memory was treasured above all. This memory was of the time when the prophetic visions had appeared. . . .

* * *

In those days, reverberations of the first war with Tar-skel had not yet died down; but so weary were the draconae, and so preoccupied with tending the hatchlings and fledglings, that the watch on the dreamfires had, for a time, diminished. Just one aging dracona named Sunfire was tending the Forge of Dreams at the heart of the Mountain, when the fire blinked—dimmed—and to her astonishment, produced a dark opening in its blazing light, where figures appeared to move and cry out. Sunfire, half lost in her own dreams, came to alertness in fear and bewilderment. At first she thought it an astounding glimpse of the Final Dream Mountain, where departed souls dwelled in the warmth and light of the fires. But some inner sense told her that this was something different, something extraordinary; it was a glimpse into another world . . . or another time. She heard a voice whispering to her . . .

Before she could make sense of any of it, Sunfire fell into a trance, visions pouring into her mind like tongues of fire from the dream forge. How long she lay that way, she didn't know; but she knew she was not wholly alone, she felt another there with her, a being of shadow and stealth, a being neither of the Mountain nor of the fire. When she awoke, it was to the rustling of glassy wings, the cries of other draconae coming to her aid. Were they the ones she had felt? No—she recalled a sharp movement and a glimpse of the shadow darting away, down into the underrealm from which it had come. Her cry of warning was too late; the servant of the Enemy was already gone, or hidden. But perhaps it made no difference: the Enemy had already been defeated. What harm could its servants do now?

As she opened her mouth to explain to the others, utterly different words rose unbidden in her throat. Unable to stop or control them, she heard herself crying:

The dark one returns
Its spells to weave
That those who forget
Lose all they believe.

The realm will quake
But little know
The power that yet
Remains to grow.

To tear from its midst
The fires of being,
That dragons may die,
Unknowing, unseeing.

Sunfire gasped for breath, nearly overcome by astonishment at her own words. She knew that they came not from her, but from the vision in the fire. The draconae murmured and rustled, repeating her words as she spoke them. Her voice deepened as she sang:

From beyond life
will come one

From beyond hope
will come one

Without friend
will come one

And the realm shall tremble.

Innocent of our ways
will come one

Challenging darkness
will come one

Speaking her name
will come one

And the realm shall tremble.

The words poured from her throat in great waves, filling her with dread and wonder. The old dracona nearly fainted as she sang, and finally groaned:

The one will fall
as the battle is fought

Upon her death
is the ending wrought.

From that one
comes a beginning

From that one
comes an ending

From that one
all paths diverge

And surely the realm shall tremble.

As she gasped for weary breath, she glimpsed the shadow-thing again, fleeing through the underrealm, out of the Mountain—and she knew that it had heard it all, heard all that the other draconae were chorusing and repeating, committing to memory. The others seemed to understand already what Sunfire was only hazily beginning to see, that these words were for the heart and soul of dragonkind. They were not for the present but for the future, for the ages to come.

Windrush blinked his eyes open. He glimpsed several sweepers scurrying out of sight, carrying his night scales and puffs of dust toward their dens. Was that what had awakened him? He forced his thoughts up into the glare of true wakefulness. He sensed that it was very early, scarcely dawn on the outside. He had hardly found sleep at all, and what he had found had been restless and unsatisfying. It was not the sweepers but his own thoughts that had awakened him.

He thought of yesterday: the iffling, the demon, the vision. And FullSky. There was so much to think about, so much to be understood. He vented a breath of steam. He could not remember when he had felt so tired. But he sensed that sleep was beyond him now; what he should do is fly to the camp and share his knowledge with those he could trust. And Farsight and WingTouch needed to know that their brother FullSky still lived.

Crouching, he let his thoughts drift down into the under-web of his cavern's protective spells. He leaped, tugging at the exit spell as he spread his wings and beat downward. The cavern vanished from around him, and he was airborne over the mountains under a rose-and-violet dawn. He flew south toward the main encampment.