Bringers of the Fire

There weren’t always dragons in the valley. We had to fight like the devil to bring them here. A necessary darkness coaxed into our home to drive out something far more deadly. More insidious. They didn't solve all our problems – lord knows dragons came with problems of their own – but at least we knew the limits of our demons and how to live alongside them.

I often wondered what my father would have made of it all. To see what this place became in his wake. Death had ruled in our valley since before I was born, but my father’s was different. It was mine. I owned it. And the blood that ran from his throat into the rich soil of our pastures settled on my shoulders like a brand. My mother felt the ache of it as dearly as if her own throat had been cut, and we took upon ourselves to do what no one else would. What they lacked the courage to.

We left.

Each village we passed along our way was filled with people who quaked at even dreaming of seeking out the dragons. To them, The Great Ones were monsters to bolt doors against. Nothing could be more fearful to these villagers, and part of me envied them. That their monsters were something so definitive. How fortunate they were not to have learned that the real monsters, the true devils under the sky, spoke and walked like men.

All legends have a beginning, and this is mine.

***

I would have known the horse anywhere. Tall, thick across the chest and flank, mottled in the morning sun. The habitual lazy canter of pure confidence, as if it drank its soul from the gigantic man piled on its back. The rider’s broad shoulders slouched and swayed with each hoof fall, the portrait of ease and power. Torden of the Sheons, carving his way up the humble path to the little corner of the valley we dared to call our own.

“Good morning, Kelsa,” he called through a gleaming, greedy smile. He raised a hand, waving as though his coming would mean anything other than disquiet.

“Father!” I bolted from the low fence near our gate, careening toward the pasture behind our house. “Father,” I called again, a knot of fear rising in my throat. Coming around the back corner of the cabin, I found my father frozen in action, a shovel in his hands as he turned those steady, grey eyes on me. “Torden is coming!”

He visibly slumped, and spat as he jabbed the shovel deep into the freshly churned soil, leaving it to rest like a spear jutting into the field. Striding toward me, he breathed a thousand tiny curses as he wiped steady hands on the rag he always kept tucked through his belt.

“Get inside,” he muttered as he passed me. “Bolt the door and take your mother into the bedroom.” As if my mother was the kind of woman you could just lead around. The whole valley knew better than that. But, if it was what my father wanted, I was duty bound at least to attempt it.

Bursting through the back door of our cabin, I found my mother on the hearth, just on the point of kindling a low fire. “Mother,” I gasped, but she held up a single finger without even turning to me, arresting my step before I could bleat another word.

“Don’t charge in here like the end of the world. Stop, take a breath, then tell me whatever it is.” It always maddened me when she did that kind of thing. Treating me like I was still a child when I felt like so much more. Pulling my lips into a tight line, I fixed my eyes on the floor and clenched my hands to keep from crying out at the injustice of it. At last, I collected myself enough to dare to offer a word.

“Torden Sheon is here. Father says to bolt the doors and take you…” Her eyes flashed to me with such ferocity that the rest of my orders died in my throat.

“Torden?” The name dropped from her lips, thick with disdain. There wasn’t a trace of the fear that lived in the mouths of other peasants. “That son of a bitch,” she hissed under her breath, pushing on her thighs and rising to her full height – more than common tall for a woman. Her ire shone like a light inside her, and I flushed and looked away at the foreign sound of a curse on her lips.

As she went for the door, I made a half step in her direction. “Father says…”

“For us to go into the back?” Again, the blaze of her look cut my words dead, so the best I could offer was a tiny nod. She snuffed out a tight, rueful laugh, shouldered the broken axe handle we kept beside the door, and stepped out into the morning. In spite of myself, I followed her with ginger steps, willing myself smaller so as to draw as little attention as possible.

Father stood near Torden’s horse, his fists ground into his sides just above his hips. Each man affected a casual indifference, but there was no mistaking the violence lingering just beneath the placid surface of it all. The air between them seemed to shimmer with the full heat of summer rather than the crisp morning breeze at the first of spring.

“You can’t be coming for more, Sheon,” my mother called as she sauntered into the parlay. Both men started, and a keen warning glimmered in my father’s eyes as he turned to her. There was something in his face I had never seen before. If I hadn’t known him to the fiber of his soul, I might very nearly have called it fear.

“Take Kelsa inside, Agatha. We’re just…”

“Agatha,” Torden beamed, trampling over his words. “Always a pleasure to see you looking so fine.” A sly, nasty twinkle hovered on his features, and he nodded to the cudgel slung loosely over her shoulder. “Pounding out the wash?”

“Something like that.” The flat strength in her tone drew a slight flicker over Torden’s leer. Whatever people might have said behind her back down in the heart of the valley, there was more than a thread of respect for Agatha Wryan.

“Collect that brat of yours and get back inside,” a wheezing voice crackled from the saddle behind Torden. “The men are talking.” I tiptoed in a wide arc until I could see Greavis, Torden’s serving Snivet curdled up like a monstrous toad atop the saddlebags.

“Mind how you talk of my family, Greavis. I won’t have it.” For the first time, my father offered an overt threat.

“Won’t you?” Torden let out a peal of broad, mocking laughter as Greavis twisted and muttered behind him. Torden’s demeanor shifted with a sudden, feral snap, and he leaned over the neck of his mount, his tone low and deadly as a snake. “Be careful of the way you speak, farmer. You’re in the presence of royalty.”

“That thing isn’t royal,” my father spat, stabbing a finger at the still grumbling Snivet.

“I wasn’t talking about him.” The Sheon's eyes sat cold and steady under bushy brows. That row of steely teeth gleamed through the thicket of his beard, as if he might pounce from his horse and sink them into my father’s cheek. I wouldn’t have put it past him. A smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth, daring my father to rise to the bait. “If you can’t control your women, Wryan, then maybe the two of us should step aside and talk.”

With that, he tossed his rein to my mother, who caught it uneasily with her free hand. Sliding to the ground with a generous thump, Torden advanced on her a step, appraising her with a look that withered my young stomach. Every muscle in my father's body tensed, the whole of him leaning in until the space between them felt destined to burst into flames. The massive warrior turned to regard him with raised, incredulous eyebrows.

“Shall we talk?”

For a single perilous moment, the whole morning promised to dissolve into blood. If my father surrendered to the desire to cast a single strike, the whole of the Sheon clan would descend upon us in a torrent. Our farm would be burnt, and salt plowed into the earth until nothing could grow for a hundred years. My breath came in tiny sips, and my heart thumped against the back of my breastbone until my ears rang.

All at once my father slackened, nodded, and Torden clapped an immense hand on his shoulder. “Ever sensible, Wryan. Whatever they say.” With that, he steered my father away with deliberately casual steps, leading him around the side of the house and out of sight. A chill fretted under my skin, and I looked up to see my mother following their departure with an unreadable expression.

“What brings your master here, Greavis,” my mother asked without so much as looking at the little creature still sitting astride the horse.

“He’s not my master,” Greavis rumbled in protest. My mother looked at him at last, eyebrow raised.

“Isn’t he?” The Snivet scowled at this, but didn’t offer anything more than a queasy grunt. My mother stood firm. “What brings him here? I won’t ask again.”

“That’s between them,” he sniped, ears twitching as he drew up into a haughty pout.

“Horse shit,” my mother cracked back. “There are no secrets between Beal and I. We’re not like the rest of the peasants your precious Sheons push around. Now say why you’ve come, or I’ll crack your skull and pitch you into the ditch.” She tossed me the reins, which I caught with startled hands, and she stepped to face Greavis squarely. The haft of the axe glided off her shoulder, and fell into her waiting palm with overt significance.

“You wouldn’t dare,” Greavis squirmed.

“Wouldn’t I?” She was deadly serious, and a jagged lump rose into my throat. I scarcely breathed, watching the Snivet calculate his odds from his little roost on the saddle bags. However much he may have wished to wear the mask of inscrutability, his outsized features betrayed every thought flashing through the serpent of his brain.

“Horun and his men are returning from the campaign,” he said at last, rich smugness bubbling out of him as he added, “Victorious, of course.”

Horun. The eldest of the sons of Sheon.

At the mention of his name, my mother gripped her bludgeon so hard her knuckles went white. I hadn’t heard news of Horun in so long, I assumed he had died. If their gruesome crusade had been unsuccessful, the rest of his clan would never speak of him again, and the glory of his departure would vanish into legend. But now he came riding back, and the thought of his return settled like venom into my bones. With more Sheons in the valley, the spine of our people would surely break.

“What’s that to us,” my mother asked. “Whatever Horun has won, we take no part of it. Neither the glory, nor the cost.”

“Oh, you think so?” For the first time, a true smile spread across Greavis’ face, puckering his features into a hateful sharpness.

“I know it. There’s no chance of sharing in whatever spoils he’s filched from the poor souls he’s killed. Wealth only runs one way, Greavis, and that’s up. You know this.”

“You’re wise for your kind, woman.” He shifted in his seat until he could rest his palms on the saddle and lean that leering face closer. “To fete a returning hero is expensive. Naturally, we need to raise a proper sum.”

“More taxes?” Rage rattled through my mother’s body until I could see the ropes of her arms tightening for attack.

“You misunderstand,” Greavis leaned back, a gleam of pure wickedness flirting in the corner of his eye. “Who said anything about taxes? We’ve come for an honorarium.” The unfamiliar word wormed into my ear, and my mouth was open before I could catch my question in my teeth.

“What’s that?”

Greavis cut his yellow eyes to me, and I twisted the rein uneasily in my fingers under the unexpected weight of his gaze. “An honorarium, my dear? Oh, you know…” He shrugged with a wry twist to his lip, keeping his reptilian gaze trained on mine. “Money.”

“There is no more money,” my mother snapped, drawing that terrible attention back to her. As soon as I was free of it, my whole body slackened, and I staggered to keep from crumpling where I stood.

“You’ll have to find some then, won’t you?”

Before anyone could speak, Torden came striding back around the side of our cabin, running a rag along the edge of his blade before stuffing it back into its sheath. “We’re leaving,” he barked. He snatched the reins out of my hands, replacing them with the rag he held.

“Just like that?” My mother tried to get between him and the saddle. “I haven’t finished with your dog yet.” Greavis balked, but Torden reached out a palm to put her aside. She resisted, and he reeled back to slap her. To avoid seeing the strike I winced away, my focus fleeting to the rag in my hands. Even as I heard the terrible smack, and the little grunt my mother made in taking it, I realized just what it was I was holding.

It was the rag from my father’s belt. Stained with red.

I started to shake so hard, I nearly dropped it. My knees buckled as I spun around to find my mother in the dirt, her eyes still glazed with the force of the blow. Scrambling on senseless legs, I clambered over to her, collapsing at her side. My mouth fell open, but there were no words. Only a harsh, garbled, incoherent sound pouring up from the base of my stomach. I shoved the rag into her face, and she blinked at it, unable to register what she was seeing.

Then, her backbone snapped rigid, and her mouth opened as she heaved an empty stomach at the ground. She retched out a croak, and my own clutching breath answered her.

In a flash, she was on her feet, roaring like a lioness. Torden’s back was to us, one foot already in the stirrup. She swung her cudgel with a ferocity of which I would never have imagined my mother capable, catching him directly between the shoulder blades. He let out a squawk, lurching away from his horse. Before he could right himself, my mother swung again, raining down blows, howling out her misery in long, breathless wails.

Greavis sat barking out warnings or orders from his seat, but I couldn’t make out the words. The whole world threatened to splinter and fall into itself. The storm inside me swirled with such force, I felt like I might blow away with it. Simply shatter to pieces and vanish with the wind, scattering my limitless sorrow so broadly that little pieces of it would hang in the trees and turn their color.

My vision blurred and slued, and I found myself sprinting along the limits of our cabin, bracing myself along the house as I ran. The planks raked rough and splintery under my fingertips, and I was almost grateful for the physical pain of it. Anything to battle whatever malignant thing was swelling in my chest. Breaking around to see the pasture at last, I searched for my father. Needing him to be standing as he always had before, tall and solid as a pillar holding up the sky.

He wasn’t there. At least, not like that.

Just ahead, I could see the shovel lying among the soil, the handle split in half. Beside it, a bundle of old clothes lay rumpled on the ground as if someone had dragged them out and cast them there to rot. Something about them seemed wrong, and I blinked hard to make sense of the jumbled heap. A tiny voice in the core of my heart kept telling me an ugly thing that I knew could never be true.

To prove it to myself, I walked over and looked down on this ugly knot of clothes. They were dark and wet, as was the ground around them. I shook my head and rubbed my eyes in a vain attempt to see better. There was something among the rags that I fought to bring into focus. A patch not quite so course as the roughly woven fabric. Under all the slick red, I made out stubble. The crest of my father’s cheekbone. His grey eye fixed on the middle distance, pupil a mere pinprick in the center. I sat and placed a hand on his shoulder. My fingers soaked up the deep, awful red, but it barely mattered. He felt so unlike himself. Dense and still, more like a deer slung in a wagon than the man who cradled me as a child. Whatever hum of vitality lived inside the meat of him was gone.

I looked up at the sky and the buzzing in my ears ebbed just a little. Until that moment, it had blessedly stopped out the horrid sounds pouring from the front of the cabin. My mother. Animal cries and sobs cracking the sky, echoing down the valley so that everyone we knew would have to bolt their shutters. The back of my tongue went acid tight, my stomach threatening to buck again.

I had abandoned her. The shame of it seeped into the dark places between my ribs, but, in truth, what could I have done? Not yet twelve, my poor tangle of limbs incapable of fending off even a dung beetle like Greavis. What hope did I have against a malicious mountain like Torden of the Sheon?

While I hated to leave my father alone in the dust, something in my core told me to move. To go inside and start heating water to fill the large washtub. Mother would need it when the hooves finally receded down the path away from us. That much I knew, and if it was the only help I could render, then that’s what I would do.

***

The remnants of the fire offered only the barest glow to the center of our cabin. The light of day had long since faded, not that it could have penetrated our windows, locked up against the world. I hugged up next to the tub where my mother lay, letting the cool of it kiss my cheek.

“But this was far away.”

My mother spoke at barely a whisper, the prow of her story carving quiet passage into the dim. It flowed out of her in a long, thin stream, more sound than sense. She’d spoken it from my earliest days, and even on the edges of her ragged voice, it worked like a familiar balm. I clung to it, desperate to disappear into an old tale and escape the misery waiting just beyond the firelight.

“How far?” This was my place. Little questions, ventured almost by rote. So often asked, they became part of the story itself.

“Oh, far, my girl. Far. Where towers keep damsels out of reach, and knights shine under the sun, all silver and steel.” Even in my near trance-like state, the word ‘steel’ made me shudder. I’d had enough of steel to last the whole of my life. The mention of knights called Horun of the Sheons to mind, reminding me not all knights glittered in fine armor.

“But at the center of everything,” she went on, “The Great Ones dwell with plated bellies and breath of fire. They are the terror and the peace in equal measure. They burn the good and the bad alike, but it mustn’t always be that that way. Not if one is bold enough and brave enough to meet them, not with sword in hand, but with truth in their heart.”

“What then?”

“Oh, then? Such a person, such a one made wholly out of courage and sincerity might become their leader. Not a killer of monsters, but a leader of dragons. Of all the dragons, king.”

“Or queen.” I’d said it countless times, but the words tasted different on my tongue, thick with a new tang.

“Or queen,” my mother said, still caught in the rhythm of a long rehearsed tale.

“How far?”

This wasn’t part of our ritual, and my new, genuine question seemed to snap in the air. The spell broken, my mother blinked a few times, then tilted her head against the ridge of the tub to look at me.

“What?”

“How far? How far are the dragons?”

She shifted slightly, the gentle ripples lapping at the edges of the tub. Curling my fingers down, I felt that the water had gone from tepid to chilled, but that wasn't why fresh goosebumps rode up over her shoulders. Even in the deep shadows, I could read something furtive in her face.

“Far.” It was an evasion, but I couldn’t let it sit.

“Have you ever been?” A long silence hung between us.

“Oh, yes.”

Not even a whisper, this naked confession ignited inside me, and I cautioned myself not to push too hard. I couldn’t risk letting the moment slip away.

“When?” I waited, and my mother lay searching amidst the ashes as though the answer to something larger than my childish question lay among them.

“When I was a girl.” At last, her eyes found mine, a mystery hanging behind them. “Your age.” She took a breath, then said at last, “It’s where I come from.”

The revelation hit like a thunderbolt, releasing a thousand moths to flutter and struggle within the cage of my ribs. For a brief instant, the dark ache of my father faltered, and a glint of something else opened like a door in my soul.

“Did my father…” I lurched a bit at invoking his loss into our shrouded vigil, and my mother closed her eyes at it. Still, I had to know. “Did he rescue you?”

She pulled her lips tight, squeezed her eyes shut so tightly her whole face constricted around them, tears pooling up in the creases. She shook her head slowly, letting the lip of the tub cradle her again.

“It wasn’t like that there. He came, and we went.”

“And the dragons? Were they worse than…?” I didn’t need to finish. It would have been sacrilege to speak the name of Sheon under our roof.

“Nothing is worse.”

“Not even a dragon?”

“A dragon would be…” She heaved in a breath her collarbone rising slightly above the line of cooling water. “A blessing.”

It was the last thing I would have ever expected to hear, and the truth of it felt like a blow to the chest. I settled back on my heels, listening to the pops of the dying fire, and the slippery splashing of the water as my mother moved beneath its surface. What I would give to have that kind of power? To rear up taller than our house, and blister Torden Sheon with all the breath I could muster. To pour all of my hatred into one blissfully fiery line and leave him lifeless on the scorched earth. As lifeless as -

A call thrummed deep inside my chest, as clearly as the bell in the church tower down in the valley rings on Sunday morning.

“Then let’s go bring them.”

After a moment, My mother’s eyes opened. She lifted her head and looked steadily into my face.

“Say that again.”

I couldn’t hide the faint smile playing at the corners of my mouth.

“Let’s go bring the dragons.”