Silence

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. Then again, 300 years ago, it wasn’t a valley.

The man trod cautiously across the uncertain ground, eyes trained on a point in the distance yet unseen, ears open and soaking in the world around him. Screeches and shrill chirps sounded to his right, near but not near enough for concern. To his left, resonating over the dense treetops, a thunderous rush of wings heralded a more sinister foe.

But 'foe' was not right. These creatures, though drawn to this place – to any place struck by calamity such as the Valley had once been – were not, themselves, the cause. It was too simple to call a thing evil because its nature drew it to places of such pain. The earth itself had been shaped by the atrocities committed here. As the man now guarded the small bundle he bore, step by aching step, toward its destination, perhaps these beings guarded the Valley like a wound in the Great Mother which could bear no more injury.

Or perhaps they, too, were waiting. Perhaps the otherworldly dirges sung over the blanketed canopy of this wood mourned more than the earth, more than the blood which had been spilled upon its ground. Perhaps they, too, mourned her.

Pain calls to pain, the elders had said. Her pain, their people’s pain, had called them. From where, perhaps only she had ever known. Centuries later, those eerie melodies were the only ones permitted to be sung for her – even the Lifeless didn’t dare to try to silence them, although it was a lesson hard-learned.

The screeches trilled again, further away this time. The man resisted the urge to loosen his grip on the bundle in his arms. Despite the stiff ache in his muscles, he could not afford a mistake now. Not when so much had already been lost.

He could not touch the kai like his mother had, faint though her abilities had been, but as he descended further into the shadows of the valley, it was almost as if he could feel it drawing him further and further into the depths through the bundle that was pressed to his chest.

“We will know when you reach it,” the elder had said. She had not said what “it” was, and he had not asked. He did not need to know. The elder, white and withered, had placed the small bundle in his arms, and he had not set it down since. He would not. Not yet.

The man did not know how far he had walked or for how long, but the lengthening shadows told him daylight had begun its slow retreat over the jagged crags behind him. Ahead, faint mist curled around the bases of the gnarled trees, beckoning him through the thickening underbrush.

The pull of the bundle did not strengthen, but remained a slow, insistent draw. Even so, the man quickened his steps. Moving quickly while maintaining silence was far from easy, but he had been sworn long ago and understood the ways of silence. He knew little of the elders’ plan except that he must reach his destination, and to reach his destination he must be able to see where to place his feet. Even were a full moon to shine tonight – and it would not – the light would not penetrate the Valley.

The man froze, crouching low, as chirps erupted in the foliage before him. They continued in their odd, hiccupping fashion, the leaves unmoving. It could be younglings, or it could be a lure – from what the man knew of dragons, they were as variable as humans in both their wits and their brutality. He began to inch his way around it, skirting as wide a berth as he could without veering too far off course.

As he did so, the sounds changed, morphing into a low, soft gurgle that stopped him short. The bundle in his arms seemed to grow heavier. A tiny, bright-eyed face flashed across his mind’s eye, toothless smile wrapped in plump pink cheeks. His focus, honed to a keen edge over the years, hazed over. Little hands, little feet, little mouth - all so small, except for those eyes. The elders only had to look into those eyes one time to know that she could See.

As had the Lifeless.

The gurgling noises still had not moved, and he turned to flee from the sounds of his greatest agony echoed quietly back at him. The man, though sworn many years before in the arts of a Silent One, missed the stone nestled into the shadow of the hillside. As his heel jarred it loose from the ancient earth, he had time only for one quick intake of breath before the world around him blurred into whirling, tumbling chaos.

Pain wrapped him in a thick blanket of stings and strikes as the forest around him spun into madness, but he pulled his arms into his chest, clutching the bundle as tightly as he was able, until just as suddenly as it had begun, the shadowy world of the Valley lurched to a sickening stop.

They had surely heard him fall, and they were surely coming. For the space of four heartbeats, the man remained as still as the stone that had catapulted him here, waiting to feel the breath return to his lungs once more. Pain settled and pooled in his left side, a fiery blade digging deep as the numbness of shock faded. The forest around him had fallen utterly quiet, but it was not the silence of tranquility which filled the air.

It was hunger.

The man struggled to his feet, pausing only long enough to ensure that the bundle had not come undone, and then quickly took his bearings before lurching forward into the dense trees. The silence around him erupted, clicks and chirps and rumbles forming a lethal cicada-like symphony.

A short way into the brush, the ground leveled. He must be close to the Heart of the Valley. He must be. He pushed harder, grasping the bundle close in one arm while warding away blurry hazards before him with the other. Little light remained now; the prospect of sudden drops concerned him little, having now reached the Heart, but low-hanging branches and tangled vines still groped for him in the falling darkness.

Strangely, the calls of the dragons had quieted, and it sounded for all the world as if the creatures had fallen behind; but as the man felt the sticky heat of blood trickling down his left leg, he knew they only waited. The elders had never said he would return alive from this task, and at no point had he ever truly expected to. In truth, he didn’t want to.

Fighting through a web of vines, he stumbled into an unexpectedly open space. Whether it was the failing light or his failing vision, the man could not see the far end of the clearing, nor could he make out the tall, curved shapes stabbing vertically into the sky; nonetheless, he followed the bundle’s inextricable pull until he stood, swaying, before them. The pull stopped, replaced by a quiet hum which sank into his bones like a caress, filling him with a feeling he had not known since before the Lifeless had come and ripped his laughing, loving, Seeing girl from his arms.

Peace.

He stepped into the shadows of those great arches, beneath the spine on which the Mother of their people had sat, and sank to his knees on the ground where the great beast’s heart had ceased to beat. Tenderly, he lowered the bundle to the earth. The peace in his heart faltered as he reached to untie the bundle, pulling apart the rough fabric to expose the contents to the evening air.

Distantly, he became aware that the dragons had ceased their waiting. Their prey now far easier game to catch, the flutters of wings and rakes of claws in earth stalked closer. The last of the fabric fell away from the bundle, and as the man bowed his head over the tiny bones and wept, he prayed. He prayed for his mother, his beloved, his lost child. He prayed for his people, that they would know the vengeance and the peace they deserved.

In silence he prayed, and in silence he died. And as blood again soaked the earth at the Heart of the Valley, the strange hum too sank into the soil and the stone beneath. This time, it did not bring peace.