“We listened to them bellowing and trumpeting and shaping sounds of great variety, but for centuries we did not understand them. Only gradually did we come to think that there were meanings in their songs as truly as in our own. When they sang, we felt the power of their emotions reflected in our minds: their joy in their young, their pride in the wisdom of their clans, the beauties of earth and sea and fire, the hardships of hunger and death, and only a passing interest in those who shared the earth with them. But they knew we were not beasts and never did they harm us.
“We grew curious, of course, as the years passed and we found no other creatures who sang so clearly of life. We began to suspect that their sounds were words, and that the emotions and images we saw in our minds were theirs. Exploring deeper into the Carag Huim, we found the caves where they slept and the valleys where they played. We studied their sounds and tried to imitate them, but that was not possible. Their bones and muscles are so different. We did better when we used their images to form our own words. And when we shaped our words into formal patterns of speech similar to their own, the dragons understood us without study or practice. Early in the year after their spring waking, we would speak with them, interpreting their answers through both words and images they placed in our minds. But as the days faded toward winter, they were no longer able to communicate, as if they had grown wild again.
“But we learned how they hatched their younglings, and how they hunted. And we learned what they disliked—cold and snow—and we learned what they feared—the red gems we called bloodstones and the sour herb called jenica or dragonsbane. The gems were found deep under the mountains in a hole called Nien’hak—the pit of blood—and the dragons said the stones took away their will. Jenica grows high on the tundra, and we learned that if they ate it, it would make them groggy and sick and unable to fly. And after many years of observation we learned the secret of their speaking—the lake they called Cir Nakai.
“Every spring when emerging from their caves, the dragons flocked to a lake that was fed by a deep, cold spring, drinking their fill of the clear water as the sun set. They did not return to the lake until winter, so its effects wore away and they gradually grew wilder until their fall mating and long sleep. It would be so to this day if it were not for the abomination the Elhim wrought upon them.”
Fifty or more of the Elhim had gathered around the small fire with us, listening in solemn and sad attention. Their posture spoke of hope that this time the story might end a different way, while their faces displayed the knowing sadness that it would not. Wine was passed, a cup placed in my hand, but I could not drink it.
“There came to the world twenty years of terrible drought,” Tarwyl continued. “Mighty rivers became roadways of caked mud. The Carag Huim were bare of ice and snow. The herds of elk and deer grew scant. The Elhim had grown increasingly fond of some new lands across the Carag Huim—what you now call northern Elyria, especially this region of Catania—as they were so much easier to tame than the lands of Yr. In those days, no one else had settled so far north. In the drought years, life here in the northlands was abundant compared to the southern and eastern climes. It was said that in the fifteenth year of the drought nothing at all grew in the lands south of what is now Vallior, and that to the east by the Sea of Arron, people were driven mad by drinking seawater when no fresh could be had. Plagues arose, and the barbarians began their raiding. And so came Senai from the south and Udema from the east, looking for fertile lands and good hunting, water and safety.
“We went out to welcome them and succor them in their need, but were dismissed as no more than children. Our houses were taken by Senai, our fields were tilled by Udema, and we were barred from our own hunting grounds. Any who resisted were slain. These other races were so large and so obsessed with their male/female duality that we didn’t understand them at all. But two things we saw quite quickly. If we didn’t do something to prove ourselves worth noting, we would be exterminated. And when the newcomers caught their first sight of the dragons, they were terrified.”
I wanted to cover my ears. The Elhim’s words were like a bleached skeleton sprawled on the desert with a rusty knife blade lying between two ribs. Truth. Uncompromising. Unavoidable.
“We spoke to the dragons and asked for their help, not to harm but only to frighten the humans away. But they could not understand our need. Even common words cannot always transmit common thought, and dragons had no concept of territory or greed, deception or conspiracy. They could not understand the kind of danger we faced. They would not help us, and every sevenday another of our villages fell to the newcomers. And so the Elhim gathered together and devised a plan—a terrible, unholy plan that even in our direst need we knew was wrong. We sent our kinsmen into the mountains to gather jenica—every sprig or leaf that could be found. We sent diggers into Nien’hak to dig up the bloodstones—every pocket, every vein, that we could see. And when winter came and the dragons went to sleep, we threw the jenica into the lake—poisoned it—and cut the bloodstones so that there was one for every dragon.”
Several of the listeners had closed their eyes and crossed their arms upon their breasts.
“When came the spring awakening, we watched from the crags. As the dragons drank their fill of the lake at sunset, they fell still and sick, and they cried out in pain and fear, ‘Oh, children of fire and wind, what ill has befallen us?’ And when they grew quiet, we crept near. In horror we saw that while the older dragons were only groggy and unmoving, every youngling lay dead. A few of us faltered at this grievous outcome and wanted to halt the plan. But others prevailed, saying it was too late. Who knew what the dragons would do to us in their wrath?
“When the dragons revived from their sickness, an Elhim holding a bloodstone stood beside each one. We thought the bloodstones would keep them docile, but instead the beasts went mad. We tried to calm their fury by singing the songs we had learned from them—the songs they sang to their own younglings when the little ones were frightened. Five hundred Elhim died in the dragons’ waking, scorched to ash and bone, but the others, those who held the bloodstones, though bathed in the white fire of the dragons’ uttermost rage, did not burn. Whoever had carried the stone into that dragon’s fire became its master, able to control the beast with his will and his voice, the Elhim, the stone, and the dragon inextricably bound together from that day.
We wept for our dead kinsmen, and we wept for the glorious dragons who were sent forth at our command and terrorized our enemies with fiery death. Not until we left our refuge in the mountains to see for ourselves did we know how terrible was the plague we had unleashed. We had made of the countryside a wasteland. No spring came to Catania that year, only the fires of the dragon summer.
“But the tally of our sins was not yet complete. Once our struggle was won, we fully intended to let the dragons go free, but we did not know how. When we tried destroying one of the stones, the dragon went on a rampage, uncontrollable by any means at all. We had to bring other dragons around to kill it. We used our dragon lore, tried every method we could think of, every holy rite we knew, to no avail. The burden of the dragons was so terrible and so wrong that we eventually went to the humans for help, hoping that they had some skill or insight or god-magic that would show us how to set the beasts free.
“Only twelve Senai and Udema families yet lived in Catania—yes, you begin to see how it goes. We begged their forgiveness and told them all we knew of dragons, pleading for their help. But to our horror they did not free the dragons either. Instead they took the stones for themselves and said that only they would control the beasts. They would not believe that the dragons were sentient beings who could speak if allowed to drink the water of Cir Nakai. They had never known the glory, only the terror of their destruction. They believed that the wordless power in their minds—the images of joy and love, fire and earth, water and wisdom that sang in their hearts when first they came to our lands—were visions from gods, not the speech of dragons. We told them the names of the seven eldest dragons: Tjasse and Vellya and Vanir, Keldar and Audun, Roelan and Jodar, but they believed in magic as children do and took those names for their gods. How was it they still felt the presence of the gods, they asked, when the dragons were bound by the bloodstones? But that, too, would fade as time and madness and killing took their toll. As the dragons grew wild, the gods fell silent, and only the Elhim knew why.”