SkyWard

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley,

Where text blacker than time writ on dark stone

Keeps whispered words t’ward a sung finale

When bright crescendos in the storm are thrown.

Count you, Soldier of Night, a careful space

With notes to summon a blossoming might

From Her smoky slumber of sinful chase

Nigh on those verdant hills when she seeks flight.

Dragons now sing; these creatures wrought from fire

And mist make malcontent with their red breath,

Though She that sleeps should tame the tempest’s ire

None will sing for Her; Dawn drowns in Her death.

Valley, dark and burning still, renew thine

Life; Be that would revive the fertile Shrine.

These were not the words of a great High Priest or Prophet. These were not words granted to angry masses, spewed from the mouth of a sovereign to soothe a riled ardor. These were phrases of an old song, a forgotten shard of literature from a time not remembered, an age lost from the texts. No one knew the words now, but they were laced into the fabric of the world. The dragons in the Valley now sang black songs, smothering the voices of the people who still returned to worship in the smoldering basin.

This Valley of fire had once, before time remembered, been an oasis blossoming with effervescent Spring. Now the roiling lakes dribbled acidic sludge into molten rock where in ages past had bubbled bright streams. There were no trees; no flora or fauna grew in the blazing shadows. Life belonged to the beasts, the scaled creatures that soared through the sky, blocking the sun with the ash and the smoke.

They had come with ample warning. This infernal age had been sung in millenia-old psalms. But these passages went unheeded. Soon they faded from the texts. And then they were forgotten. Only the earth beneath the fire remembered their words.

So when the Dragons began their slow, burning dirge, the vibrant Valley was set ablaze. Fire raced through the lively trees like a flood broken free from a dam.

The inhabitants of the Valley became ash on the ground. Only Dragons lived there, warming their scales in the bleeding crags. They fought their own wars on the earth and in the skies, just as the humans before them. The great beasts sent tremors through the earth with their cries, sung in the primordial tongues of old, chaotic gods.

The darkness in the Valley crept through the mountains. It bled into the caves and crevasses, breeding corruption, plague, and death. The Dragons brought the Deep Dark, the Blood Fire. The centuries that followed the arrival of the Dragons and their Fire were thunderous and silent; bright as the flames but darker than a moonless night. Kingdoms crumbled, civilization collapsed. The struggle for survival, the escape of the Blood Fire, became all that was left of human life. Refuge was found beneath the earth, where people huddled like prey from the soaring predators.

And the songs were forgotten.

*****************************

It was that dream again.

The dream of blue and white fire in a menacing darkness.

And her. She was there. She was always there, lurking as a shadow that danced and flickered like the wild flames.

Why was the darkness so dangerous? He didn’t know, couldn’t remember, only that he couldn’t step forward or backward. The inky void swirled around him. But how he could know that? Everything was black, empty, except for the spot of blue flames and her.

He wasn’t sure if he could call her a woman. Maybe she was, maybe she was a spirit or one of the Dreambanes that the Elders spoke of. He knew that she was She, that she called to him not with her voice but with her presence. He wanted to go to her. More than anything he wanted to be near her. Her call was a warm hearth in a cold winter, inviting him to come closer. But the darkness threatened to swallow him whole should he step further.

So She came to him. She flew through blackness with the sparkling blue flames. They seemed part of her. She came close to him, and the fire engulfed his body. But the flames were kind and soft, like blissful puffs of warm air touching his skin. She whispered his name, but there was no sound. Elias. Elias.

Her face was close to his. He could see through her and around her but she was at the same time solid and real.

Then she kissed him.

Now the fire burned. Flames danced around his legs, licking at his clothes, eating their contents. Pain shot through his veins like a streaking bolt of white-hot lightning. He pulled away from her, but his body would not move. A scream burst from his chest, but the sound was locked in his throat. He was rooted to the spot of light in the dark.

Her hand was on his face. She stroked his cheek. Her touch was fire, a glowing, hot poker branding his skin. Then she grasped his throat. And she squeezed.

Elias.

He could smell his own crackling flesh.

Elias.

His lungs begged for air.

ELIAS.

The inferno swallowed him.

He burned.

Elias shot up in his bed with a start. The cool evening air licked his sweat-damp skin. His arms prickled with pimply flesh.

The details began to fade from his mind. He tried to catch them, lock them away, but they were smoke in the air, slipping through his memory into nothing. In an hour or two all he would remember would be the flames burning through his flesh and the darkness that drew him near.

He took a deep breath, the familiar smell of damp, dark earth filling his lungs. The thundering heartbeat in his chest began to subside.

It was only a dream.

It was only a dream.

He exhaled a sigh.

He could already hear Matron Marjorie scoffing at him.

“Only a dream, boy?” She would chide in her rattling tone. “You know the kinds of magic dreams can hold.” Marjorie was one of the few people who still believed in things like magic.

“Keep your dreams safe, rinehart,” she always told him, “they are what make the world anew.”

‘Rinehart’, the old Vollyan word for ‘dear’ or ‘sweetling’. Few remembered or spoke the language anymore, but Marjorie would pull out a few phrases now and again. Most of the Elders did.

The bells outside tolled an early morning hour, possibly sunrise—not that anyone in the city truly knew. Bellmanes kept the time, but a lot of it was guess-work. Most people had gone an entire lifetime without seeing the sun. In the ancient Vollyan religions The Sun was revered as a diety: the great Goddess, the life-blood of all creation. Records chiseled on rough stone spoke of bright days, green fields, and blue waters all warmed in Hartfinn’s light. Now she and the world of the blue skies were a myth. Even those that saw her only caught a glimpse, a glinting through the ash-hewn skies. They would return and tell stories of how their eyes burned and their flesh warmed, of how a fleeting ray had passed over them, blessing their meager lives. But now even these stories were only legends. No one saw the sun, and no one believed in gods.

Elias shuffled out of his bed, his feet landing on cold stones. Garrit would have a few words to say to him after last night’s debacle. Elias knew it was his own damn fault. He hadn’t been watching.

“Always in yer fuckin’ ‘ead,” Garrit had scolded, spittle glinting in the lantern light, “ ‘stead of watchin’ the fuckin' Nightbanes. They should send ye skyward, dragonbait. At least then ye’d be useful.”

The harsh words were well-deserved, but that didn’t make the sting any less palpable.

Elias’s mouth tasted haggard, stale. His head pulsed. He had tried drinking a fair amount of heichtshwine in an attempt to forget his failures. It hadn’t worked. All the flagon of bad liquor had earned him was a churning gut and a thrumming headache. The slightly older and wiser version of him cursed the previous night’s existential imposter.

As he staggered across the floor towards the clothes discarded on an elaborately upholstered chair, his foot caught the side of the flagon he had left near the end of his bed. The clay decanter toppled and shattered across the stones, bleeding amber liquid.

“Caiman’s cunt,” he swore in a cracked voice full of night-born phlegm.

Marjorie would have swatted him for that one.

He snatched the rough spun blanket from his bed, mopping away at the bright liquor. The acrid smell made his stomach flip and brought bile to the back of his mouth. He was sure he would vomit.

The broken clay pieces clinked musically along the floor as he crushed the blanket into a ball then shoved it underneath his bed. Someone could deal with it later. He was going to be late.

Unsteady on his feet, Elias moved down the long corridor, keeping near to the walls in case he needed to brace his steps. A low, mournful flute echoed a dirge through the halls. The origins of the music were distant, from high in the White Keep. The sounds were guided through thin metal pipes, giving the music a resonance that skipped along the stones. There was no melody; only thick, reedy tones.

These sounds were eternal, unending. There was no light to keep the time, so the Bellmanes did it with song. Different tones and instrumentations indicated hours in the day. The earth-bound denizens barely heard the music anymore. Given the option, most of them would lose track of time entirely.

So, each morning, at the presumed rising of the would-be sun, the Bellmanes would begin their ethereal not-melodies.

Today, as nearly every day, Elias sneered at the sounds. He wanted quiet. His brain felt too big for his skull and his muscles didn’t want to work any more. And he kept thinking about the fire, about Her. He needed his mind to focus, but he was awash in the flickering feeling of carnivorous flames.

He finally stepped into the antechamber. Only a dark, dusty curtain separated him from the great hall. He could hear the crowd muttering. No distinct words, just the drone of many voices thinking theirs is the most important in the room. Elias drew in a long breath, trying to quell the fistful of thunder in his chest that echoed in his head. His stomach was certainly going to evict the meager breakfast he had snagged from the kitchens. He rubbed at his eyebrows, swallowed down the nausea, and stepped through the thick curtains.

Kryshniht Hall was a circular, mostly empty stone auditorium. A central dais hosted an elaborate podium carved from gleaming limestone. It was rare to see limestone here. The material was not local to Banneth’s caverns. It had to be imported from the northern deltas, a task assigned to either the bravest or the least fortunate. Sometimes both.

From the central dais there radiated stepped stone terraces, at least 20 in number, which ran up to the great curving walls that rose into an arched dome over the dais. The only decorative feature was a trickling stream of water that gurgled pleasantly through a thin canal carved in the floor. The stream ran from the far end of the room to the door through which Elias entered, bisecting the Kryshniht. To the right of this stream was the Dreischect, Banneth’s judicial body, all seated neatly on the terraced steps. They wore tidy grey robes, nearly blending in with the stones upon which they sat.

The other side of the Kryshniht was occupied by some of the Dragon Guard and the Sworn Swords. The Dragon Guard was established by First Empress Caiman over a thousand years ago, when Banneth was still a damp hole in the ground. They served only the Empress, now Callamne the Third, carrying out her orders and acting as her personal bodyguards and assassins. The Sworn Swords were Banneth’s high-ranking militia, individuals that kept order in the city streets. Both groups sat in orderly rows on the stone steps, Sworn Swords in dark red and the Dragon Guard bedeck in blue and grey uniforms. Cloth masks hid the lower half of their faces. Identity was not for the Dragon Guard. Names were thrown aside, any distinguishing features such as tattoos or piercings removed (which could be an excruciating process). Hair was shorn off, and the masks wrapped around to cover their bald heads.

Elias stepped down into the thin canal of water. It was just wide enough for one person, and the cool waters washed his bare feet of the debris that had collected on them. The water running between his toes was considered sacred to the Bannethians. The only access to this stream was through the Kryshniht. There were other water sources in the city, but this one, the one they called Kryshnale, was thought to be the purest. An individual had to be clean of body and clean of soul to participate in the Kryshniht happenings, so Elias walked down the stream, letting the water carry away the dirt from the outside world.

No one acknowledged him as he walked down the center of the hall. Everyone was too busy muttering amongst themselves about this and that gossip. He stepped out of the stream onto a soft woven rug, where his feet were dried by a linen-clad servant boy. Elias took his place on the lowest tier, beside his gracefully aging mother and his siblings.

Empress Callamne smiled at her youngest son but kept her eyes forward to the dais.

“Glad to see you could join us,” she said, her tone belying a sarcasm not shown on her face.

“I was delayed,” Elias replied, stifling an acidic belch. Maybe he should vomit in the Kryshnale. That would certainly get him out of this meeting.

There was an accepting pause. Mother never asked him about what he did in his spare time. She didn’t need to know. With a broadening territory to rule and six other children to make her proud, his goings-on barely concerned her.

“Garrit wore a sour disposition this morning,” she finally said.

“I think that’s just his face,” Elias said. His eyes darted toward the tiers of Sworn Swords. Garrit would be amongst them.

“Dear heart,” Callamne sounded tired, “He only wants the best for you. You can still learn much from his teaching.”

Elias bristled. “If what’s best for me is a rusty sword in the ass, then yes, I suppose he does.” He regretted his words as soon as they were airborne.

There was no chide from Callamne, she merely straightened her neck and pursed her lips. That was worse. She was finished speaking with him.

His thoughts drifted again to his dreams: darkness, fire, spirit, death. None of it meant anything. Dreams didn’t mean anything.

If that were true, why did it all feel so important? And why could he never remember any of it? He could recall a need, a burning. There was dangerous darkness but no sounds. But the more doors he tried to unlock, the more he found sealed shut.

Matron Marjorie, one of the eldest Drieschect and Elias’s life-long tutor, ascended the steps of the dias and placed her hands on either side of the intricate limestone podium. All of the chattering subsided as attention fell on this central figure.

“Noble Bannethians,” she addressed the gathered soldiers, politicians, and royal figureheads in a strong voice for a woman who appeared frail. The curving walls of the Kryshniht allowed her voice to echo without effort. “This day is always difficult. Today we honor those heroic individuals who will be braving the surface world to bring us our harvests for the next year.”

She paused, letting the soft bubbling of the Kryshnale and the gentle morning music fill the silence.

“We cherish these guardians,” Marjorie continued, “the true protectors of our realm. Many will not return to us, but their sacrifice ensures the continuation of our livelihood. These valiant peoples are the reason we have established a home here in the earth, the reason we continue to thrive. They are warriors for their empire.”

Another Drieschect member approached the dias and presented Marjorie with a comically large scroll. The aged woman almost couldn’t hold it, but she managed to lay it down on the podium.

The names laid out on that scroll would be the people sent to the surface, the Skyland, that endless place where the Dragons ruled and humans were prey. The names would have been drawn at random, but all would be soldiers, either members of the Dragon Guard or the Sworn Swords. Elias briefly wondered if his name had been in the drawing, as he was a leader amongst the Sworn Swords. But he was also a member of the royal household. His mother would never allow it.

Marjorie opened the scroll and began reading the names.

As she did, the Dragon Guard and Sworn Sword members stepped forward, walking with resolve to form a line in front of the podium, facing the Empress, facing Elias. He watched their faces (well, half of them in the case of the Dragon Guard), watched them mask their terror behind squared jaws and stiff necks. Marjorie called over a hundred names. And finally. . .

“Elias—”

What?

“—of the family Sydengard—“

NO! HOW?

“—Princeling of the Greater Mavelian Territory and Second Lieutenant of the Eighth Sworn Sword Battalion.”

Elias froze, breath leaving his body.

Then he lost his breakfast onto the feet of the nearest Dragon Guard.