Cotillion swung round again and observed the three dragons opposite them, each at the base of a standing stone, although their massive chains reached down into the rough soil, rather than into the weathered rock. Shackled at the neck and at the four limbs, with another chain wrapped taut behind the shoulders and wings of each dragon. Every chain drawn so tight as to prevent any movement, not even a lifting of the head. 'This,' Cotillion said in a murmur, 'is as you said, Edgewalker. An unpleasant place. I'd forgotten.'
'You forget every time,' Edgewalker said. 'Overcome by your fascination. Such is the residual power in this circle.'
Cotillion shot him a quick look. 'I am ensorcelled?'
The gaunt creature shrugged in a faint clatter of bones. 'It is a magic without purpose beyond what it achieves. Fascination… and forgetfulness.'
'I have trouble accepting that. All sorcery has a desired goal.'
Another shrug. 'They are hungry, yet unable to feed.'
After a moment, Cotillion nodded. 'The sorcery belongs to the dragons, then. Well, I can accept that. Yet, what of the circle itself? Has its power died? If so, why are these dragons still bound?'
'Not dead, simply not acting in any manner upon you, Cotillion. You are not its intent.'
'Well enough.' He turned as Baran padded into view, swinging wide to avoid Edgewalker's reach, then fixing its attention on the dragons.
Cotillion saw its hackles stiffen. 'Can you answer me this,' he said to Edgewalker, 'why will they not speak with me?'
'Perhaps you have yet to say anything worth a reply.'
'Possibly. What do you think the response will be, then, if I speak of freedom?'
'I am here,' said Edgewalker, 'to discover that for myself.'
'You can read my thoughts?' Cotillion asked in a low voice.
Baran's huge head slowly swung round to regard Edgewalker. The Hound took a single step closer to the creature.
'I possess no such omniscience,' Edgewalker calmly replied, seeming to take no notice of Baran's attention. 'Although to one such as you, it might appear so. But I have existed ages beyond your reckoning, Cotillion. All patterns are known to me, for they have been played out countless times before. Given what approaches us all, it was not hard to predict. Especially given your uncanny prescience.' The dead pits that were Edgewalker's eyes seemed to study Cotillion. 'You suspect, do you not, that dragons are at the heart of all that will come?'
Cotillion gestured at the chains. 'They reach through to the overworld presumably? And that warren is what?'
'What do you think?' Edgewalker countered.
'Try reading my mind.'
'I cannot.'
'So, you are here because you are desperate to know what I know, or even what I suspect.'
Edgewalker's silence was answer enough to that question. Cotillion smiled. 'I think I will make no effort to communicate with these dragons after all.'
'But you will, eventually,' Edgewalker replied. 'And when you do, I will be here. Thus, what does it avail you to remain silent now?'
'Well, in order to irritate you, I suppose.'
'I have existed ages beyond your-'
'So you have been irritated before, yes, I know. And will be again, without question.'
'Make your effort, Cotillion. Soon if not now. If you wish to survive what is to come.'
'All right. Provided you tell me the names of these dragons.'
A clearly grudging reply: 'As you wish-'
'And why they have been imprisoned here, and by whom.'
'That I cannot do.'
They studied each other, then Edgewalker cocked its head, and observed, 'It seems we are at an impasse, Cotillion. What is your decision?'
'Very well. I will take what I can get.'
Edgewalker faced the three dragons. 'These are of the pure blood.
Eleint. Ampelas, Kalse and Eloth. Their crime was… ambition. It is a common enough crime.' The creature turned back to Cotillion. 'Perhaps endemic'
In answer to that veiled judgement, Cotillion shrugged. He walked closer to the imprisoned beasts. 'I shall assume you can hear me,' he said in a low voice. 'A war is coming. Only a few years away. And it will, I suspect, draw into its fray virtually every ascendant from all the realms. I need to know, should you be freed, upon which side shall you fight.'
There was silence for a half-dozen heartbeats, then a voice rasped in Cotillion's mind. 'You come here, Usurper, in a quest for allies.'
A second voice cut through, this one distinctly female, 'Bound by gratitude for freeing us. Were I to bargain from your position, I would be foolish to hope for loyalty, for trust.'
'I agree,' said Cotillion, 'that that is a problem. Presumably, you will suggest I free you before we bargain.'
'It is only fair,' the first voice said.
'Alas, I am not that interested in being fair.'
'You fear we will devour you?'
'In the interest of brevity,' Cotillion said, 'and I understand that your kind delight in brevity.'
The third dragon spoke then, a heavy, deep voice: 'Freeing us first would indeed spare us the effort of then negotiating. Besides, we are hungry.'
'What brought you to this realm?' Cotillion asked.
There was no reply.
Cotillion sighed. 'I shall be more inclined to free you – assuming I am able – if I have reason to believe your imprisonment was unjust.'
The female dragon asked, 'And you presume to make that decision?'
'This hardly seems the right moment to be cantankerous,' he replied in exasperation. 'The last person who made that judgement clearly did not find in favour of you, and was able to do something about it. I would have thought that all these centuries in chains might have led you three to reevaluate your motivations. But it seems your only regret is that you were unequal to the last entity that presumed to judge you.'
'Yes,' she said, 'that is a regret. But it is not our only one.'
'All right. Let's hear some of the others.'
'That the Tiste Andii who invaded this realm were so thorough in their destruction,' the third dragon said, 'and so absolute in their insistence that the throne remain unclaimed.'
Cotillion drew a slow, long breath. He glanced back at Edgewalker, but the apparition said nothing. 'And what,' he asked the dragons, 'so spurred their zeal?'
'Vengeance, of course. And Anomandaris.'
'Ah, I think I can now assume I know who imprisoned the three of you.'
'He very nearly killed us,' said the female dragon. 'An over-reaction on his part. After all, better Eleint on the Throne of Shadow than another Tiste Edur, or worse, a usurper.'
'And how would Eleint not be usurpers?'
'Your pedantry does not impress us.'
'Was all this before or after the Sundering of the Realm?'
'Such distinctions are meaningless. The Sundering continues to this day, and as for the forces that conspired to trigger the dread event, those were many and varied. Like a pack of enkar'al closing on a wounded drypthara. What is vulnerable attracts… feeders.'
'Thus,' said Cotillion, 'if freed, you would once again seek the Shadow Throne. Only this time, someone occupies that throne.'
'The veracity of that claim is subject to debate,' the female dragon said.
'A matter,' added the first dragon, 'of semantics. Shadows cast by shadows.'
'You believe that Ammanas is sitting on the wrong Shadow Throne.'
