And, of course – Fargal was right, I thought, as I stuttered and stammered my apologies. “I am sorry, Fargal the Eldest.” I heard my voice, small in the grand space. “I did come here to talk to you – and if that disturbs you, then I guess I will have to admit that,” I took a gulp of nervous air, “but I had truly no intention to upset you,” I said, as strongly as I could (which wasn’t very much, to my own ears).
“I do not talk of you flying here, foolish child!” Fargal scolded me strongly. “I talk of your incessant prattling, all cycles of the stars and the moon and the sun, for days on end!”
Now that was a new thing to me. “What?” I said in shocked surprise, before I could even stop my lack of courtesy.
“Ah. So you really ARE a very foolish child who really DOESN’T understand what deep songs you have become wrapped inside!” Fargal’s voice crowed, as if she was congratulating herself for being right about something that she had yet to share with me.
“Now, we come to the second reason why I can taste you so clearly – and it is the same reason why I heard you clamoring and crying all through my dreams!” Fargal said, with a trace of heat to her voice in my mind. Ymmen hissed just a little, in a muted way as he too must have been wondering where this was going to go.
“I have been feeling the arrival of a very old and evil thing, almost as old as I am myself!” Fargal said, and I knew immediately what it was that she was referring to.
“The Stone Crown of High Queen Delia,” I whispered under my breath, to suddenly hear a loud rasping sound as many scales moved – and now the ancient dragon had lifted its head from the nest of its body, moving it around until it could look down at me with the edges of two glaring eyes.
It was a discomforting thing to be glared at by any dragon, but by this one it made me feel as though all time had stopped.
“You dare speak her name here? To me?” Fargal’s voice said, and her voice was low and sibilant, hissing and full of menace. The limbs of my body shook of their own accord, even without the emotion of panic – as if the earth of my body was seeking to flee, leaving my mind and my soul to deal with the consequences—
“I…” I opened my mouth to speak, not even knowing where to begin, but it was Ymmen who came to my vocal rescue.
“We dare, Eldest Sister,” he said, and even though his voice was strong and there was smoke and heat coming from his body behind and above me – I could feel no anger or rage, just that steady, uncompromising certainty that predators had when they had made up their mind about something. I knew that, in this moment, right now, if Fargal lifted a claw or snapped her jaw at me – then Ymmen would willingly give his life to save me.
“We dare speak the name of the Accursed Queen Delia, and her abomination, the Stone Crown.” Ymmen’s words strangled and twisted as he mouthed the names that even he had felt such great disgust in voicing. “We dare because the days are dark, and the nights are drawing darker still,” he said.
I felt a surge of pride and strength well up in me at my dragon’s courage, and it gave me the confidence I needed to continue. “Yes, great Eldest Fargal.” I bowed my head once more, before looking up at the irate multicolored dragon that towered before us. “There is one out there in the world, who is called Inyene D’Lia, who will stop at nothing to get her hands on the Stone Crown. She has already managed to create an army of mechanical metal dragons with which she threatens every land, every living being – human or dragon, and she has access to many powerful magics…” I was saying, as the hissed words of Fargal cut through me like the first blast of a winter gale.
“After all you have heard me say – do you think that I do not already know of the Metal Queen?” she hissed indignantly at the pair of us, me and my dragon, Ymmen. “I have many dreams which tell me of the world beyond this well, that tell me true things that happen in the lives of my kin!” Fargal said.
I had no idea that dragons could dream-see, as occasionally the Imanus did when they took certain herbs and mushrooms and roots, and took themselves to secretive caves to dream for three days straight, sometimes coming out with the perfect recipes for healing draughts, or news of what the weather and the herds were to do in the coming season…
But I wasn’t surprised that Fargal, the Eldest of dragons from the First Brood itself, could do such strange things, seemingly at will…
“I care nothing for the Metal Queen!” Fargal snapped, her mighty jaws making a sound like a sudden rockfall. “She is just another of those foolish and arrogant humans that arise every hundred years or so – is it any wonder the dragons are taking the Western Track?” Fargal demanded of me, and I had no answer. Of course, it was no wonder that dragon-kind was tired of humanity – given what Inyene was doing with their hides.
“But, Eldest Sister…” I heard Ymmen say in a low voice that was almost a growl, “the Compact that was made…”
The Compact? I thought. What compact?
“The bonding of our two peoples, human and dragon-kind, has been broken a very long time!” Fargal roared, lifting her head as fire dribbled out from between her great fangs. “By the one who forged that Stone Crown. By your High Queen Delia herself!” Fargal turned her head to fix me with one of those shockingly cold blue eyes.
Something in me sparked. I was terrified, but I was no subject of this western queen, and my people never had been. “Delia has never been my queen.” I heard myself say, with the sound of the Soussa winds rising in my heart. “I am Daza. I am Souda. My people lived free on the Plains, under the Western Wind. We never wanted anything to do with these queens and crowns and thrones!” I said fiercely.
There was a slow clucking and rasping sort of a sound, and I realized that it was coming from the tongue of Fargal as she considered my response. I could feel the heat of her mind against mine and Ymmen’s and somehow that heat had changed. It had diminished, and I realized that she was pleased.
“Then, at last, you have shown wisdom. In this hating of queens and crowns we can agree,” the Eldest Sister intoned, as the flames stopped dripping from her mouth, turning instead to steam. She turned her head once more to regard me with her other eye.
“There was once something we call the Compact – an agreement between humans and dragons, at the time of the Great Burning. You DO know of the Great Burning, don’t you, child?”
I shook my head, turning to Ymmen, who blinked at me quixotically. I wondered if even he knew all the twists and turns of this tale of the eldest.
“There was a time at the dawn of the world when dragons ruled all things. The skies. The lands. The seas and the high places. We could go anywhere, hunt any meat we chose!” She said the last with a sudden flick of a shockingly red forked tongue, as if tasting whether I would make a suitable meal.
“But we were always at war with the humans. They would seek to trap us, to drive us from their lands. They would creep into our brood-nests and destroy our eggs!” She said the words with evident disgust.