The Stolen Prophecy

There were not always been dragons in the valley. Or, more accurately, they were not always awake. One only had to look at the huge, crumbling holes torn in the valley walls to know that there had been hundreds in the course of human history. Technically it was incorrect to call the valley, a valley. It had not been created by any river or long melted glacier; it was a gouge cut into the earth when the first dragon, Northstar, had fallen from his constellation into the ground. It had taken about one hundred years for the meteoric flesh to sublimate and birth the first rocky giant, but since then, whenever a cluster had appeared, the occasion had always been regarded as portentous.

There were a number of words that Zaphri could think of to describe the magical golem, but as it loomed over her, all possible words escaped her like a flock of terrified birds startled from perches. The triangular head swayed gently atop a neck that was serpentine get disconnected. It was a column of roughly cylindrical rocks floating one atop the other, with the head levitating at the apex. The entire body was comprised of chunks of stone, pocked by the veins of glittering minerals and set in a framework of pale blue magic threads that crackled like trapped lightning. Each surface was carved by fracture planes and rain erosion to somehow capture the frilled reptilian face. And shining out of those sculpted orbits were two bright stars that drank in all there was to know about Zaphri with bottomless curiosity.

Despite how her heart raced, there was no malice in those eyes that Zaphri could see.

Slowly, carefully, Zaphri pushed herself to her feet. She tried to avoid making any motion too quick or resemble a threat. Always she watched the dragon for signs of its intentions, but so far it seemed to have none. It remained still for the most part, and on closer inspection, Zaphri saw that the dragon had lowered itself to its belly. The cluster of rocks glowed brightly from within because each was squeezed so tightly against the others that the light of the magic oozed out over the scree nearby.

Finally, Zaphri allowed herself a breath. She had not been eaten or squashed underfoot - so far, so good. Truthfully, she had not expected that a dragon would behave in such a calm and borderline drowsy way, but it was hard to know what was expected. Some of the legends painted them as fierce serpents, some as loving lapdogs. And then there were the Chronicles, which told different accounts of the same beast and the same sighting. For all that the Draconast had said, there was no simple guide to interfacing with a dragon. A dragon that continued to defy her expectations by pressing its belly to the ground to get a better look at her.

For her part, Zaphri dusted her dress off and glanced around. Her palms stung a little and were red with scuffs from her fall, but at least she was not bleeding. Her dress was less fortunate, and she counted three tears and one sizeable hole just with a cursory glance. The scree on the rockface behind her had settled into stillness, and there was now only silence where the rumbling and crashing had filled the area. Naturally, she looked back up the gravelly slope for her companions, but there was not even a shadow moving among the loose chippings. There was no sign of the boys anywhere on the top of the ridge where they had been when she slipped. She assumed they were finding a route to her that did not involve jumping forty feet to the canyon floor. That left her alone with a dragon: a meeting that would decide a great many gates.

Pressure made her hands quake, but Zaphri refused to let herself succumb to something as human as nerves when faced with a chance to greet a star-child. How many people got to claim this privilege? Wracking her brains for every chronicle she had ever read about just this, Zaphri decided that enough time had passed in silence. She fanned her dusty skirts out as wide as they would go and offered up her best curtsey. It was somewhat spoilt by her discovery in that same moment, that the fall had ruined one of her shoes and cut her foot in some way. Of course, it was only appropriate that she pretended she felt none of that pain. She tried to shift her weight, and her voice remained miraculously even.

"Child of Northstar, scion of skies unbound, welcome to the valley of Old Stars. It is an honour for the People to witness you. And the kings will be delighted to greet you. I implore you, tell me whose destiny you have come to write and I will ensure that you are taken to them. The council of crowns has eagerly anticipated your arrival, and I would be honoured to ensure your meeting with them. It is my pleasure to help a star-child if I can." That sounded like the right level of formality for addressing a dragon. There was, in reality, little she could offer it directly: the duty of transporting it to its destination fell to the group of heralds who should have been the first ones to reach the plodding titan. Zaphri tried to surreptitiously look around the valley for those fool boys, but as before, there was no sign of them. They appeared neither on the rim not the winding floor. She trusted that they had not abandoned her, but she could find no indication of where they were in the moment. She would have to stall a little more.

Now, she had not expected to hear words from the dragon, as the great behemoths certainly did not speak Kerran, if they could even speak at all, which had never been confirmed by the Draconast. Slowly, Zaphri lifted her eyes to look at the swaying face again, as if it had answered her and she was simply not sure that she had heard correctly. When she looked up, she realised quickly that the dragon was not looking at her for the moment. Its gaze appeared to be drawn to something beyond the canyon that they were sat in, and its neck was at full extension to peer over the steep cliff. Zaphri assumed it was answering her in a fashion: by looking directly at the person it sought thanks to some divine intuition that a human could never understand. She straightened and cupped one hand to her eyes as she turned to face the same way. Obviously, she could not see through rock, but she was trying to gauge what lay in that direction. “Do you perhaps seek Prince Ericoll? He is in Kampenne, I think. Which is roughly there.” She stuck out one arm almost parallel with the dragon’s face, only to turn back and see that the creature was now staring in exactly the opposite direction.

“Oh, there? Uhm, well actually, the King and the Duke of Sanbasso are at court, which is over there.” Zaphri hated to think that she sounded even remotely like she was correcting this mighty creature, but she felt duty bound to offer it honest information, which was about the only currency she could truly offer up. She pointed with her free hand towards the north-west, where she knew the capital city could be visible at this distance. She angled her head to look up at the dragon for a reaction, but it gave no sign that it had heard her. It considered the south for a long minute, and then turned again to look east. This made the rocks of its neck quiver as they bunched like real sinews, but the creature stared just as it had before. “I… uhm… forgive me, Star-child, but there’s no one over there who has been told to wait for you.”

This time the dragon untwisted its head and looked back down at Zaphri the moment she finished speaking. Its head wobbled slightly atop its neck, then the rocks forming its chest blew outward and resettled in a manner mimicking a sigh. There was as good as no extra information to help Zaphri determine which emotion prompted that sigh – frustration at the difficulty of communicating, perhaps? Annoyance that the fated companion was not already present? Zaphri found herself curtseying again in the hopes that propriety would smooth out these distresses. “My humblest apologies, Star-child, but I do not know who awaits you. The current Draconast did not divine a name, and was too weak to make the journey to greet you in person. I am sure that the heralds will join you soon, and they can help escort you to the court of crowns, where the Draconast will gladly interpret your will. Forgive me my lack of foreknowledge but… I’m sorry, I do not know what you need and… It shouldn’t even really be me who came to you first. Please don’t take that as an insult on the part of anyone here. It was all a silly accident, I mean, you saw that.” Zaphri gestured with both hands at the slope that she had tumbled down, the loose heap of shards and shale that had led to her meeting a dragon by spooking it.

Only when she broke the massive creature’s gaze did she realise that she had devolved into nervous babbling, her lack of knowledge on dragons as a subject, and her total lack of preparedness for the duty which should have fallen on the Draconast, made her nerves get the better of her in that moment. She clamped her jaw as tightly shut as her muscles would permit, and allowed just a few seconds to calm her jumping stomach. This was not how a lady of the Kerran court behaved! She was no doe-eyed child, even if she was mere feet from a celestial beast that no mere citizen ever had the chance to interact with. If she was to be a representative of her people, and of those who were hurrying to take the reins of the affair, then she should be the finest that she could muster. Nerves be damned, she was better than this. Still, she had to swallow the urge to spin about and deliver yet another apology for her behaviour – best not to draw attention to her slips.

Zaphri let go her breath, and turned as neatly as she would in a royal ballroom. She barely held in a yelp of surprise when she saw the carved obsidian head floating at eye-level. It would have taken both her arms fully stretched to each side to touch the edges of its jaw-frills, and a single glittering eye was almost as large as her head. The crackle of raw magic infusing the shifting stones became a constant buzz in her ears as the dragon peered closely at her. It smelled of ozone and petrichor – far from an unpleasant aura. The beast then huffed like a large dog trying to take a measure of her scent and Zaphri flinched before she could catch herself. She had no idea what had prompted this close inspection, or what should make the dragon so interested in her. While she did not doubt that it understood the intent of her words when she spoke, she was puzzled as to why it would pay her much mind when she was so far removed from the royal house and the call of the church that she should have been invisible to the giant.

This was entirely not how the meetings with the dragon prophets were supposed to go. There was no chronicle that explained how to handle this!

Zaphri swallowed and forced herself to speak. “Might I offer you something, Star-child?” she asked. Her politeness was still in full force but her volume had dropped significantly. Having the large head so close to her made her very conscious of her volume. Surely the heralds, wherever they had gotten to, had heard her as she called up to the beast before. But now, shouting felt like the rudest thing she could do.

That particular thought was interrupted as Zaphri tried to stand straight and neaten herself up a little while not revealing that she was doing so. As she shifted her steps, some of the loose chippings skidded underfoot and she placed her injured foot awkwardly. It was nothing serious, and she only reacted with a slight hiss through her teeth, but it seemed that the dragon noticed. It flinched from her in turn, freezing momentarily as if waiting for a sign of what was wrong. The lightning bolt eyes seemed to dance with greater energy, and the large head inched forward slowly. A jaw that Zaphri had not noticed before, creaked low in a parody of a mouth, but no sound came out. The woman remained frozen in fascination as that serpentine carving slithered along mere inches above the ground, and towards her knees. It was as if the creature was using its whole head to point at the injury it suspected had caused her pain. But that left Zaphri unsure whether it was prudent to bother a mighty dragon with something as trivial as a slight bleed, or whether lying to it in any capacity would be punishable.

Her hesitance allowed the dragon to draw in close to her. Zaphri could feel her skirts stirring in a phantasmal wind, as if the stones that comprised the huge body were breathing. The dragon seemed to have vague ideas about how living things operated, but its stony recreations were without need, merely as dressings familiar to those it met. Perhaps its intention in that moment was to understand how mortal beings worked and behaved, but there was no way to know that. A hot jet of air that smelled of metal or perhaps tar, rolled over Zaphri in a wave, and there was an odd sensation of numbness about her foot where she knew she had seen blood. Reflexively, the woman looked down and shifted her hems out of the way. With her own eyes she saw the torn line across the top of her foot, meld back together. It remained angry and pink, but the blood stopped clotting where the skin fused, and the pain altogether lessened. In moments it resembled an injury from days ago rather than an accident less than an hour old.

Zaphri looked from her injury to the dragon, whose head was still suspended in front of her like a child waiting for an adult’s praise. The unwinking eyes flickered but there was no other sign that it wanted anything. Zaphri bunched her skirts together and smiled awkwardly. “Thank you. Thank you, that’s so very kind. But please, there’s no need. I… am flattered but I’m not-”

The dragon huffed again. It opened its rocky jaws and let out another puff of hot, hazy air. It sounded like a chuckle or some other pleased noise. Zaphri hoped that she was interpreting that correctly, even though she did not precisely know how to respond to a dragon’s charity.

“Please, would you let me help you in return? If you can tell me anything about who you seek, I can relay it to the heralds, and you can be on your journey that much sooner. It would be an honour.”

She smiled when the dragon shifted. It became animated when it heard her reply this time, and waddled to its feet. The motion was undignified but Zaphri made a silent promise to never admit as much aloud to anyone else. The beast lifted its neck in a gentle arch, so that its head could remain nearer Zaphri’s eye level. It seemed to think that this was a polite way of conducting discourse, and Zaphri could not deny that she felt elated to be treated with that extra dose of care. Truly, this beast was amazing for learning all these things after being born only days ago.

Unsure why she did it beyond the tug of awe and curiosity, Zaphri slowly unfurled one hand from her skirts and reached her palm towards the jagged snout. At the same moment, seemingly pleased by the silent offer, the dragon moved its head closer until its nose nudged at her palm. Zaphri was astounded at how the rocky protrusion filled her hand. She could never have lifted that one rock of the head even with both arms. It felt oddly smooth, no doubt the work of years of rainfall brushing away all sharp edges. It was still very obviously stone, and if she moved her hand along the planes of the piece, Zaphri could still feel the texture expected of stone. It felt worked more than natural, but the grit and pocks and inherent roughness of stone were all present. Quite simply, any person could be forgiven for assuming that the rocks themselves had sprung to life in the valley.

But that was not all that the dragon had to share with her. While she was marvelling at its nature, the dragon was concerned with something else. It breathed deeply, making the intertwined stones of its body rumble and shift. The dragon then puffed out another of those false breaths, but this one fizzed and crackled like lightning, like the magic binding it together. Zaphri had no time to react or to pull away, as the light moved with uncanny speed. A bolt of blue whizzed across the carved planes of the dragon’s face, and touched Zaphri’s hand. It arced down her wrist, and then her arm, jittering and buzzing so loudly that it was like a living creature in its own right. She expected to feel burns engulf her skin, and while it was true that she felt pain of a sort, it was nothing like what her eyes told her to expect.

There was a sensation of needling in her flesh that made Zaphri cry out, but somehow she could not pull her hand free of the stony face immediately. It had to be only a handful of seconds, but the dancing magic sparks seemed to fill her vision as she stared at them. When they faded, the purple after images were burned into her eyes and she could barely see anything for a moment. Reacting purely on instinct, Zaphri wrenched at her sleeve. She did not care that in her hurry to pull it away and reveal her skin, she ripped what had once been quite expensive. The fact that she was not dressed for this outing had long since ceased to be relevant, and now she desperately needed to know what mark had just been made on her.

She let out a second cry, this one more strangled, when she exposed her arm to the air. Her pale skin was now crisscrossed by a pattern that resembled lightning. Somehow, channels had been marked into her skin and rendered even more pale than she already was – had it not been for the smoothness and lack of pain, it could have been taken to be scar tissue. Instead, it looked like the veins running through a block of marble – pale skin and pearlescent magic. It formed a web, a map, a constellation, something. It spanned the entire circumference of her wrist, a full inch wide, and every shift of her muscles made the light wink off of it.

Words, even breath, escaped Zaphri in that moment. This was impossible – a dragon suddenly waking in the valley despite the star signs was entirely mundane compared to this unwanted gift. By all laws of logic she should not even be able to wear it, let alone be given it in the first place. A frustrated tear slowly burned its way down one cheek. This was impossible.

As if called by a divine trickster, that was the moment in which the heralds made themselves known. Several trumpets all blasted at the same moment in a well-rehearsed harmony, the stamp of feet and the clamour of voices providing an odd accompaniment. Zaphri turned to stare, and she felt the dragon shift too. It moved with that unexpected swiftness, turning on skittering claws to see this new arrival. But then, in the next moment, it was gone.

Both Zaphri and the approaching heralds had to shield their faces from the sudden roar of wind that swept through the valley, and more than one of the men demanded to know, very uncouthly, what this newest happenstance could be. The answer was not one that Zaphri could explain nor truly wanted to hear. When she lowered her hands to see what the dragon had done, she jumped back and nearly fell again. Rather than looking at a huge reptile composed of loose boulders suspended in a net of magic, she was greeted instead by a mockery of herself. Chunks of stone lay scattered about the vicinity like a shed skin, and the remaining pieces had woven even more tightly together to make a smaller creature than the giant mass that it had started with. The living sculpture was alarmingly precise: it bore the same thick curled tresses, the same sweeping dress, even the pointed nose and tilted eyes. It was like someone had seen fit to chisel a statue of Zaphri in that canyon’s stone, and it had come to life of its own accord. The same pools of swirling lightning stared out of the new face, and fixed Zaphri with a concerned look. She had no response to offer.

The troop of men staggered to a stop, with much grumbling and whispering about the strange sight they were faced with. Several who were quicker on the uptake than their peers, correctly pointed out that one of the figures they had met was made of stone, and ought to have been a dragon rather than a person. None could think up an explanation, and instead they all just began staring at Zaphri in a mixture of disbelief, disgust, and discomfort.

One of the commanders pushed to the front of the group and shook his mail helm as he prepared to speak to what he thought was a giant awaiting his address. His mouth froze comically before even the first word had come to him, and he looked from Zaphri, to the former dragon, and back. His brows lowered and his hands casually – too casually – folded across his chest in a sign of vexation. “Lady Vashirana,” he began in a lecturing tone, “I am pleased to see you unharmed, but I feel something significant has transpired.”

“General, please, I can explain!”

“Oh, I do hope so.” The reply was curt, yet devoid of any sarcasm. No doubt the man, trained more in army tactics than magical business, recognised the fragility of what he was seeing just as Zaphri did.

Unfortunately for them both, Zaphri could not even begin to guess what the dragon intended by shapeshifting to look like her, which had never been recorded in any text as a power these unfathomable creatures possessed. But worse, she would have to find a way to decipher and then unravel its magic – a feat that eluded every Draconast to date – before she returned to the capital. She was certain to face a harsh penalty if anyone discovered that she now had a King’s Prophecy inscribed in her flesh.