Lords of the Sky

I asked him that straight out and saw a mask fall over his face. He said, “Perhaps the Raethe shall explain,” and went to where the horses grazed.

I recognized dismissal and pressed no more. Perhaps in mysterious Trebizar I should find the answer.

The next day we entered a forest where the air hung misty blue, scented sweet with sap, and birds chorused our passing. The trail was wide and rutted with wagon tracks as if much used. Ayl told me it was the main highway to Trebizar, and around noon we came on a caravan halted for the midday meal. A merchant led the party, but there seemed scant difference between him and the nine drovers tending the wide-horned oxen. I thought that were we in Dharbek, they should all have been Changed and he a True-man.

They bade Ayl and Glyn welcome and offered to share their food. I was surprised that we were released from the cage and given platters of a vegetable stew, with hunks of hard bread and even a mug apiece of ale. They watched us surreptitiously, as if we were marvelous creatures they could not quite bring themselves to approach. I was not entirely comfortable under such scrutiny, but still I did not feel much like a prisoner. From their conversation I gathered they were outward bound from Trebizar, carrying manufactured goods to the settlements along the way, intending to return with salted fish and other such goods as should be found on the coast. In Dharbek a caravan like this would have gone armed, but these Changed carried only such knives as they’d need daily, and goads to prod the oxen. Not even the merchant wore a sword.

I ventured to inquire after such lack of weaponry; and found my question met with shocked stares.

“What need?” asked the merchant, whose name was Ylin. “Who’d harm us?”

I said, “Outlaws; robbers,” and he gazed at me as if I were crazed.

Ayl said, “Dharbek’s a different land, Ylin.”

“Indeed it must be.” Ylin shook his head as if the notion of footpads or bandits were hard of digestion. “That an honest merchant cannot travel the roads safe without weapons? Now that’s a thing, eh?”

His drovers nodded agreement, and I realized their eyes were on us now as if we were barbarians. That was a very odd feeling. I suppose I began to feel something of what the Changed underwent in my homeland.

When we parted, Ylin called after us, “Beware those robbers, Ayl,” as if it were a great joke.

We traversed the forest all that day and as twilight came down made camp beside a spring that welled up from a rocky mound. Unasked, unthinking, Tezdal and I set to gathering wood for our fire while Ayl and Glyn tended the horses. We built a blaze and water was set to boiling. An owl hooted soft amongst the timber, and far off a wolf howled, answered from a distance.

I passed Rwyan a mug of tea that she cupped between her hands for warmth. I thought that summer ended; that I caught autumn’s advent on the breeze. I draped my blanket about her shoulders, and she murmured thanks that warmed me better than the tea.

Ayl said, “Those clothes are thin. I’ll get us stouter gear when next we find a town.”

I said, “Ylin was surprised when I spoke of outlaws. Are there truly none here?”

The Changed shook his head absently. It seemed to me he took that absence for granted.

“We do not live like Truemen,” he said. “Just as we’ve no aeldors or the like, so we’ve no outlaws.”

“No criminals at all?” I asked.

He made a movement of his shoulders, not quite a shrug, and said, “Sometimes folk argue … sometimes there’s a fight … but such matters are settled amongst neighbors. There are no malefactors as you describe.”

Bluntly, I asked him, “How so? You’ve no aeldors, you say, nor any authority save this Raethe, it seems. What’s to stop some malcontent from becoming a thief, a bandit?”

He thought awhile before answering. Then he said, “We are Changed, Daviot. We do not think or act like Truemen.”

“Yet,” I said, “there seems no longer very much difference between your kind and mine.”

“In some ways there’s not.” He hesitated, frowning as if he pondered an unfamiliar thought; one alien and consequently difficult of definition or expression. “I suppose our birthing renders us somewhat different. You Truemen made us to be prey for the dragons, and then to be your slaves. That gives us common cause, I think; so we’ve not such rivalries as you know. We’d sooner help one another than steal. Think on it-there have been Changed in Ur-Dharbek since Truemen quit the land, and they must survive the dragons. Did they not work together, they’d have died. And now? Now those newcome are fugitives, fleeing slavery-another common cause. Did we prey on one another, then I think none should survive.”

This seemed to me idyllic. Indeed, it seemed to me almost incredible. Yet I’d seen Ylin’s unfeigned surprise and the startled expressions of his drovers: I could scarce doubt the truth of it.

And I’d another matter to pursue. I said, “You speak of dragons. Are there dragons still?”

Ayl’s great hands spread to shape a gesture of ignorance. “I’d not know,” he said. “I’m newcome here. In Trebizar they’ll likely know.”

It seemed to me this Trebizar must prove a cornucopia of answers: I looked forward to reaching the place. Then I thought of what it might well mean for Rwyan and somewhat revised my thought.

The forest saw us through another day of travel and then ended on heathland. Its edge was boundaried by the town Ayl had promised, and that was the largest place I had seen here. Again I was struck by the absence of walls; and by the size of the buildings, which rose three and four stories, all higgledy-piggledy, as if levels were added at random whim. The streets were mostly dirt, only those immediately adjacent to the center paved, but clean, and busy with such traffic as is common to any crossroads town.

In the morning we broke our fast with fruit and cheese and bread, and then Ayl left us in Glyn’s care as he went out to obtain us warmer clothing.

He returned with gear that fit us well enough-shirts of heavy cotton and jerkins of stout leather, breeks of the same material, boots for Rwyan, cloaks for her and Tezdal. I wondered what climate lay ahead: for all the Sky Lords’ magic was not brought against this land, still it was hard now to imagine anything other than endless summer.

But as we trundled out across the heath, I felt a wind blow cool from the north, and when I looked that way, I saw great banks of darkened cloud patrol the horizon. I thought there was even rain falling over the distant line of hills.

We rode toward those uplands, through stands of gorse and bright yellow broom. Birches and pines grew in scattered stands, and the day was loud with birdsong. I saw raptors ride the sky and thought again of dragons. Indeed, when we slept that night within a hurst of lonely pine trees, I dreamed again but not as before. It seemed my reveries took on a different tenor.

I stood not in the oak wood but on some craggy highland. A wind blew strong out of a storm-dark sky, and far away I saw lightning whip the land. I looked about, but I was alone … and then not alone, though I could not make out what stood so close. I saw only vast yellow eyes, solemn and stately, observing me in silence. They seemed to me ancient, those eyes, and I thought they must hold all time’s secrets locked within their orbit.

I said, “What do you want of me?” but got no answer. I felt that they judged me.

Then … to say I heard is wrong, for there was no voice save inside my mind, as if these observers spoke directly to the channels of my nerves, to the innate substance of my being. Nor were there words, but rather only feeling, an emotion. … So then into my mind came a summons, a calling. It was as if they bade me join them, come to them.

Then silence and darkness.

I woke filled with a terrible yearning, as if I should be somewhere I was not, and could not go swift enough to satisfy the oneiric demand still lingering, a resonance in the conduits of my blood. I shivered and felt Rwyan wake within the compass of my arms. She made a small, almost tearful sound and clutched me. I stroked her hair, murmuring, thinking she’d suffered a nightmare.

Against my chest she said, “I dreamed,” and repeated back exactly what I’d dreamed, identical in every specific.

I frowned and told her I’d had the same, and then, suspicious, I looked around our camp.

The fire was burned down to embers, but the night was bright with moon and starlight. Ayl and Glyn slept on. I saw Tezdal sitting up, and on his swarthy face such an expression as gave me answer to my question even before I voiced it. Still, I whispered my inquiry, and he nodded, wide-eyed, peering about as if he anticipated the momentary appearance of those great eyes.

“What does it mean?” he asked.