Grandmother had been Sam’s apprentice? Lily could not resist asking, “Was she, um . . . was she a human apprentice? Or is that when . . .”
“Oh, yes, she was human, and quite young to our way of thinking—only seventeen—when she ran off to Sam. I gather it was not unheard of for a dragon to accept a human apprentice, but it was most unusual.”
Rule spoke. “I’m curious about why Sam would leave it to hope and chance and a young human woman to defeat this Chimei. It seems he could have dealt with her himself.”
This time the puff of air smelled more of metal and ash than cinnamon. You know very little, man who is wolf.
“Then tell me more. Tell us.”
Silence, both physical and mental. Then . . . You have stories, Rule Turner, that speak of the Great War. My people, too, fought in that war—and in its aftermath. The Chimei are like lupi in that they were created by an Old One involved in that conflict. Unlike lupi, they were not originally intended to be warriors. What do you know of the reasons for the Great War?
“Very little,” Rule admitted. “I know many players and peoples were involved. I don’t know most of their names, natures, or goals. I do know why my Lady fought. She fought for the right of the younger races to determine their own destinies.”
You refer to the younger races as “they.” Lupi are a very young race.
Rule shrugged. “Lupi belong to the Lady. We were created to fight for her goals, and our destiny lies in her hands and ours, jointly. I suppose I see us as different from other races that way.”
Lily looked at Rule, taken aback. Didn’t he think lupi deserved to determine their own fate?
Sam, too, seemed to find his statement curious. You do not find a contradiction in this? Did not the nature of your creation rob you of the very choice your Lady cherishes?
“The human part of me understands your question. The wolf considers it silly. The contradiction you see exists only in words. I could hunt more words in an attempt to explain, but they would be imprecise and, I suspect, unhelpful. Dragons are by nature supreme individualists. A dragon might have difficulty perceiving the truth of a race founded in both individuality and mutuality.”
Humans are such a race, also.
“Humans are more conflicted about it.”
Lily tried to grasp what Rule meant. The conflict between the needs of the many and the needs of the one—that, she knew about. People had been searching for the right balance there since they came out of caves, and maybe before. But she sensed there was more to what he said.
I am intrigued, Sam said after a brief pause. If you survive, I would speak more with you about this, but current troubles require the tabling of such digressions.
Your Lady has conveyed to you the essence of the conflict. The Great War was fought by many peoples for many reasons, but it was the deep dispute among some Old Ones which sparked it and made it so terrible. They disagreed over . . . We might say, over the amount of meddling they would allow themselves. Some attempted to hasten the maturation of the younger races through judicious meddling. Some opposed any interference. And some vigorously strove to shape the younger races.
The Chimei are the product of such reasoning. They were made by conjoining the patterns of multiple species, both sentient and nonsentient, physical and nonphysical. Their creator made them largely nonphysical so that if their physical portion was destroyed, they would not die, and could eventually reconstitute their physicality. He considered fear of death an evil force.
Had he stopped there, his children might have persisted more or less as he intended them, but he went on to remove fear from them entirely, believing it lies at the root of warped and dangerous choices.
He erred. Perhaps fear is an essential component of sentience, for the Chimei, unable to experience it themselves, crave fear. In the vast carnage of the Great War they mutated, becoming a species that actively feeds on fear. In the War’s aftermath, they developed another skill. They already had mindspeech; they learned how to touch other minds to cause them to create waking nightmares.
“Like giant snakes,” Lily burst out. “Or murderous yeti, or whatever someone fears. It’s the Chimei who’s doing that. She’s making people see what they fear.”
Yes.
She shoved to her feet, furious. “Why didn’t you tell us? Warn us, let us know what we were up against. This Chimei had something to do with the attack on Cullen, didn’t she? If you’d told us instead of making bets about when we’d show up—”
Quiet.
The single word arrived with such force that, involuntarily, Lily took a step back.
I balance the fate of your world in what I say to you, when I say it, what I imply, what I leave for you to learn elsewhere or not at all.
Lily sucked in a breath. He meant it. He’d spoken as he always did, with inhuman precision—no rhetorical flourishes, no dramatic exaggeration. “The world. The entire world.”
I said that my people battled in the War’s aftermath. We are uniquely suited to fighting the Chimei, and there were many Chimei in realms outside their own, so the fighting continued for some time. The cost to us was great. It was decided there was need for a treaty to stop the killing. Almost all Chimei agreed to return to their home realm, where certain alterations rendered them less dangerous. They are not allowed to leave. Some Chimei, such as this one, refused to return. The treaty binds such Chimei in other ways—and, unlike treaties made by humans, it binds in an absolute sense. Chimei and dragons are unable to kill each other—unable to act directly against each other.
“Directly,” Lily repeated. She knew a loophole when she heard one. “You can’t just pounce on this Chimei, but indirectly you can do something?”
Operating against her indirectly is possible, but difficult. Small actions, intent, words—all may have cumulative power. Applied at the wrong time, in the wrong way, this power could break the treaty. If dragons break the treaty, two things may happen. Any Chimei still outside their own realm would be free to travel here. And any Chimei here would be able to breed.
“This treaty prevents their breeding?”
It does. This Chimei is still in attenuated form. She is extremely powerful, but without physicality to anchor her, she is unable to use her power effectively. If she succeeds in manifesting herself fully, San Diego and much of this coast will be lost. If she breeds, or if other Chimei travel here and manifest themselves physically, they will send your world spiraling into chaos and madness.
“Chaos and madness. The world. You’re speaking literally.”
Sam didn’t deign to answer. Probably he figured he’d said it once, and that should be enough.
Lily’s heart was pounding. Possible disasters spun through her head—or was it all one enormous tragedy, on a scale she couldn’t conceive? And couldn’t stop trying to imagine.
She looked at Rule. She wasn’t sure what she wanted from him. He couldn’t have any answers, either. He met her gaze, his eyes dark and troubled. And reached for her hand.
Oh, yeah. That’s what she’d wanted. The reminder that they were in this together . . . whatever the hell “this” was. She turned back to Sam. “Can’t the Old Ones who drew up this treaty—I’m guessing that’s who was behind it—do something?”
They have bound themselves to not interfere. It is an imperfect situation.