The Voice of Aking

There weren’t always dragons in the valley. Outlandish beasts were something that only others encountered. For almost two centuries past, fears had centred only around famine, drought, cold, the need for shelter – survival. Then, too, at each new birthing, the dread anticipation of the latest stillborn, or the living deformation of another new-born's human form. The before times were long past, but their shadows lingered. All lives were shaped by them still.

The first of the creatures appeared soon after it became clear the Melt was beginning, when the dust clouds began to thin and settle from the skies, and the surface of the planet was being warmed again by the penetrating heat of the Sun. The creatures that came were reptiles, outwardly so at least. Cold-blooded, they needed warmth to survive, had no doubt been drawn to the valley by the heat of its factories, the fires burning in the hearths of its houses. The first to appear, a grey-skinned beast with bright ultramarine eyes, settled on the roof of the foundry. It stayed there for two days, not moving, warily eyeing those who came to witness it. It seemed to wish them no harm.

“The beast is weary. Once rested, it will leave,” Sogar assured the gathered Elders, to allay their concerns about the unexpected arrival of the beast.

Sogar was the wisest in the valley, a man who had seen and experienced many things, and in his many travels had encountered creatures much stranger than this. He had gone deep into the Eastern lands, deeper than any other man cared to go, far beyond the ruins of Vina, Zileb and Wiclaw, even to the Dead Zone where all manner of Mytahts dwelled. Most of those creatures, he had learned, were seeking only to protect their own, to survive on the same degraded planet as the inhabitants of the valley. On his journeys he had always carried with him a Conter, one of the sacred Artefacts; on his return would relate to the others how through it he had heard the echoes of the voices of the millions who had died. His brother, Brig, five years younger, had accompanied him on several of those journeys, but had never possessed the courage, nor been driven by his brother’s thirst for understanding, to venture beyond the ravaged stone and metal carcass of Wiclaw. On his return from his last journey, looking emaciated and sickening, as always, from his travels, Sogar claimed he had seen the remains of the city of Maskil, emerging from the thawing plains of snow and ice. It had spread out, he said, like a plate of cracked and pock-marked molten glass, echoes of its former thoroughfares shadowed on its surface; the river that had once meandered through its heart sealed over, a new course, fuelled by melt water, carving out passages and blind inlets between the slumped cadavers of the remaining buildings in the city’s outer precincts. Even Sogar had been cautious enough not to enter Maskil. The Conter had registered too many voices of the dead.

“It’s a solitary migrant, blown off course by a storm,” Sogar said, to quieten those who urged taking action to deter the dragon from remaining. He was mistaken.

The next day, another beast arrived, coming down to roost on the porch of the weigh-house in the market square, its leathered wings slapping against the shingled roof, dislodging a number of them to the ground. This one was smaller than the first, no more than five feet in height, yet, as many conjectured, large enough still to kill a man. They did not know then if the creatures were dangerous; what fear, if any, they had of men. Unlike the first, which remained unmoving on the foundry roof, the scales on the flanks of the new arrival were mottled brown and yellow, and its eyes were amber, and were filled with hunger. The following day, another two arrived, also small and brown and yellow mottled, and made their perches against the chimney stacks of two ordinary dwellings. They too had hunger in their eyes.

At Sogar’s suggestion, to appease them, to give them food to strengthen and encourage them to continue on their journey, two calves, one blind, the other lame, and a lamb birthed with only its two front legs, were brought, slaughtered and cut open, the butchered pieces scattered on the ground in the market square. The dragon on the weigh-house porch flew down, sniffed around the offerings, its tongue flicking tentatively at the exposed entrails, uttered a cough of distaste, or disappointment, then returned to its roost. Once settled, it exchanged a few barked messages with its companions, sounds incomprehensible to the men below who heard it, then all three settled down to sleep.

“There are no such beasts as dragons,” Oak, the Keeper said coldly, to one who ventured for the consideration of the others an image of the settlement consumed by dragon-exhaled fire. “No creature can breathe fire. It is an anatomical impossibility.”

Hereditary Keeper of the Ancient Artefacts, and of the oracle Aking, Oak had an understanding of these things. As holder of the practical knowledge of the old ways, of the time before, his role was to keep the sacred objects in the valley functioning, and too the more mundane machinery that daily sustained their lives. It was a knowledge passed down to him by his father, and before him, by a succession of generations going back to the times before, and was being passed down now by Oak to his own son. Willow was the boy’s name - a tall, slender youth, bright enough to one day to take up the role of Keeper, yet headstrong, subject to the vagaries of the elements, like the tree that had once borne his name and survived now only in that naming. It was a tradition among the Keepers, to be given the names of once-living things now gone. Male children were assigned the names of trees and plants, female children those of animals, the naming taking place at the end of their seventh year, once the child’s true character could be clearly seen. It was another way of remembering, of honouring the passing of those now absent things. Willow, though, was less than enthusiastic about his inherited calling, his education, now in its tenth year; he did not care for the weight of responsibility that calling entailed. He was young, and impatient; he yearned for adventure. He was a dreamer, not a maker.

In the lightened hours of the days that followed, dark forms appeared increasingly in the sky, passing singly at first, or in small groups, then in large flocks, sometimes hundreds in number - animate, ever-shifting clouds that shaded out the newly penetrating sunlight, all heading to the north-east. From time to time, lone individuals swooped down and circled lazily to inspect the settlements in the valley before continuing their journey. Some remained.

Oak, though, had seen it correctly. These ‘dragons’ were not the dragons of myth and old lore. Other than their scaled skin, their slender, streamlined bodies, the leathery membranes that when resting hung in folds between the undersides of their arms and along the sides of their chests and abdomens down to the middle of their thighs, and another finer membrane spanning the space between their legs, they had the limbs and hands and feet, the heads and faces of men. These dragon-men had mouths much like human mouths, with articulating lips and tongues. Oak wondered why they had not yet spoken.

Sogar is in the Tabernacle; he has come to consult the Aking. He hopes the oracle’s words will guide him to the course he should take. In its form, the Tabernacle is true to the ancient origins of its name - a tent of canvas sheets spread over a wooden framework, at its centre a roughly hewn drum cut from the trunk of a tree, a lowly altar on which the Aking sits. A designated sacred place, the Tabernacle is a space that only Oak, Sogar and others of The Sanctified may enter freely. The space inside the tent is golden, lit by lamps whose flames cast melting shadows on the walls as Sogar prepares himself for the divination, centring his thoughts, stilling his breathing, quietening his body’s internal motions. A young boy, Sogar’s apprentice, turns the crank on the device that creates the power that - by some magic the boy does not understand - animates the oracle. The boy is in his early teen years, not yet bearded. His name is Grith. A willing worker, and eager to learn, unlike his indolent friend Willow, but Sogar does not know what he is meant to teach him. His own wisdom, such as it is, unlike the knowledge possessed by Oak, was never taught to him, never formalised or passed down. His mind, its acuities, whatever they may be, seem always to have been with him, setting him apart from others - a precocious child having knowledge of things those others could never imagine or comprehend.

“A little faster,” he says quietly to the boy. “More power is required.” The boy nods, applies himself more earnestly to the crank, pearls of sweat gathering on his brow.

Sogar presses down with the thickened single finger on his left hand on one of the levers set into the top of the small grey box that is the oracle. A click; a red eye of light embedded in its cover blinking intermittently; sounds of mechanical elements articulating against each other within. Through the clear window in the cover of the box, he watches the thin brown ribbon spool from one side of the aperture to the other, accumulating around one of the spoked wheels on which it is wound, diminishing on the other. He presses a second lever; the light goes out; all sounds and movements stop.

He never knows at what point he should press the levers. It is not a conscious decision. It is part of the ritual, the process of divination. A random moment, possibly divinely directed, though Sogar no longer has much faith in the divine. He prefers to believe he makes his choice by intuition, trusting the arcane knowledge he possesses to inform him. He does not know how the choice is made; he cannot explain it. So far, the divinations have mostly served him well, and if not, have always proved to be of little consequence. Even he, at times, has doubted the guidance of the Aking, its relevance and efficacy. Or perhaps, he concedes to himself, on those occasions when no viable guidance has ensued, it has been he who has simply failed to understand its message. He presses a third lever. A green eye flashes in the cover, and a metallic simulacrum of a human voice emanates from the box, uttering a stream of heavily punctuated syllables.

“Earth…is…a…sphere.”

“It…does…not…have…an…edge.”

“Look…ing…for…one…is…a…fut…ile...ex …er…cise.”

There does not seem to be any relevance in this to the question Sogar needs to have answered. No mention of dragons, or mutant dragon-men; no obvious path to follow. Just a spotlight cast on a seeming paradox - what you see is not necessarily what is there. This much he already understands, having seen many things on his travels that defy all comprehension. He knows he must wait, sometimes for days, weeks for its meaning to be revealed, though this time he feels the need is more pressing. He turns to the boy, signals to him that he may stop. He needs to be alone now, free of all distractions, to create a contemplative inner space where the true meaning of the oracle may be found. He already senses though that soon he will be leaving, heading north-east, following the passage of the dragons. He senses too that this will be his final journey, that this time he will not return. His body is failing, much faster than he could have expected from thirty-four years of life. His organs have been damaged by the things his travels have repeatedly exposed him to - elemental forces whose effects cannot be immediately seen or sensed, but that are there, operating on the human body nonetheless, an invisible, corrosive presence.

Inside this awareness of imminent departure, decay and closure, he sees another possibility; the potential answer to another, entirely different question.

“Grith,” he says to the boy, who he knows is an orphan, independence being a condition of his role as Sogar’s apprentice. The boy has no kin, no ties to the valley beyond familiarity and habit, the relative security the valley offers.

“You and I are going on a journey.”