Menish found his senses as soon as he saw that it was not a skeleton.
“Get down, you idiot!” he bawled, but his call was lost in another bellow from the dragon. The figure stood up and walked towards Menish, the Tor, and the dragon. Menish swore.
Sure enough, the great head of the dragon thrust into view above him, its jaws darting towards the man from the Chasm. The warrior in Menish was stirred. He had drawn his sword instinctively when he had run to the Tor and now he gripped it and searched for a weak spot in the neck of the beast. It was just possible…
But before he could act the dragon let out a gurgling hiss and a torrent of blue flame erupted from its open jaws. The heat stung Menish’s eyes; he threw his hands over his face and retreated into his hiding place. The acrid smell of scorched earth drifted to his nostrils. Shielding his face with one arm he ventured a look to see if the man had somehow escaped.
What he saw he did not believe. The man stood in the flame with his arms raised, facing the dragon. A look of wonder sparkled in his eyes. For a fleeting moment Menish supposed that he, too, would feel wonder if such a thing happened to him. But this simply could not be. He looked again; the heat was intense, especially when followed by the biting cold of Kelerish. It was true. It was impossible, but it was true.
Above the noise of the dragon and the howl from the chasm Menish heard a war cry from his men. They must be attacking the dragon from behind. He wondered how Althak felt about that. The dragons were gods to the Vorthenki.
As quickly as it began the dragon’s fire flickered out, its roar and heat replaced by the shouts of his men and the chill of the wind. The dragon sprang aloft and bellowed again as it beat the air with its huge wings. Menish looked helplessly from the man to the dragon as the latter climbed higher and higher.
The dragon flew on, eastward towards the sea following the Chasm. The high plains of Kelerish spread out below it, blotched and brown with the straggled tussock and lichens that grew there. The jagged line of the Chasm lay black across it.
It flew over the coast close to the roaring mouth of the Chasm where the howling wind blasted out from a great crack in the tall cliffs. Water churned and foamed in and out of the gap, waves ever battling the wind. It was a place men feared and shunned, but today there was a small boat near the Chasm mouth.
Curious, the dragon wheeled to look longer. Its sharp eyes made out a man picking his way over the rocks at the base of the cliffs towards a splash of blue. When the dragon dipped lower the blue shape resolved into clothing on a body.
It was not interesting enough. The dragon was anxious to return home to the Isle of Kishalkuz, which lay far beyond the horizon in the great sea. It wheeled once more then resumed its journey.
Chapter 2: A God Before a King
Menish watched from his hiding place between the boulders of the Tor. His face still stung from the heat of the dragon flame, and the man from the Chasm still stood unscathed by the same fire. He was surrounded by a circle of blackened earth, with his arm raised in a gesture of farewell to the dragon and his face shining with joy.
He looked like a wild man. Menish had heard of children who had been raised by wolves and wondered if this was such a one. He was tall and gaunt with long, unkempt hair and beard. Like the wolf children he was naked, though his body was as hairy as a Vorthenki’s. Even so Menish wondered how he could be so apparently comfortable in this numbing cold.
The sound of horses and men running interrupted his study of the man, and he felt suddenly foolish hiding in a hole now that the dragon had gone. He wriggled out of his refuge and stood up. His men were already approaching and he wondered how much they had seen.
Drinagish reached him first. “Uncle, are you hurt?”
“No, I hid in a hole while you drove it away.”
“We can't take credit for that, M’Lord,” said Althak, who was on Drinagish’s heels. “It flew off while we were still wondering what to do.”
Indeed, thought Menish, he could guess at the source of that hesitation for Althak. But anyone would ponder what to do when confronted with a dragon.
Hrangil was walking towards the man from the Chasm. The others fell silent when they saw Menish watching him. When he reached the man he fell on his knees and kissed his feet. There was a nervous murmur from Drinagish even as Menish realised what Hrangil was doing.
Gilish!
Menish felt suddenly old and tired. Hrangil was his oldest friend. He had been with him at the battle with the Men of Gashan, he had seen the Emperor fall and the Duzral Eye taken, yet he had never lost faith, he had never forgotten the promise that Gilish would some day return.
The King of Anthor sighed; so the man was unscathed by fire, so he came out of the Chasm where Gilish had died a thousand years ago. His much vaunted Duzral Eye had failed Relanor when they stood against Gashan forty years ago. Menish refused to trust magicians, even fireproof ones.
And yet who could not wonder at it? He stepped forward, intending to greet the man from the Chasm in a less extravagant manner. The man gazed about himself as if he had been blind and had just learned to see. He noticed the King of Anthor and their eyes met.
Menish froze.
For several seconds he stood and stared at the man. He felt his face pale at the sight. The man’s eyes, they were her eyes! Vividly he saw the eyeless sockets of the skeleton from the Chasm. This figure wore no tattered court robe, was not even a woman, but his eyes were her strange colour. He felt the wind howling behind him and his skin crawled with sudden sweat in spite of the cold.
Yet this was not Thalissa, this was a wild man from the Chasm. Thalissa was dead and there were no ghosts. This was not a skeleton, this was flesh and blood. Flesh and blood? What flesh and blood could stand in dragon fire and live?
The man seemed to sense his distress, for his elated expression clouded with concern. Menish snapped himself out of his fright and signalled the man to follow him. Conversation was difficult with this howl from the Chasm, and Menish led him behind the Tor where they could speak.
While they walked Menish put his cloak around the man’s shoulders before he froze to death, although he still seemed comfortable in spite of the cold. It made him look a little more civilised anyway.
“Greetings,” said Menish when they were out of the noise. “You must tell us how you learned the trick of standing unharmed in dragon fire. You've deeply impressed my men.” He nodded vaguely at Hrangil but he spoke with a grin; not making too much of the feat, yet not dismissing it. Keeping his options open.
The man smiled, then he laughed. He had good teeth for a wild man, thought Menish, and he wondered if he had chosen the right language to greet him in. He spoke Relanese as his own native tongue and had used that, but the man looked more or less Vorthenki. He was about to try some Vorthenki gabble when the man replied.
“There was no harm in the dragon. He breathed speech into my mouth, sight into my eyes and strength into my limbs. Before the dragon,” he glanced in the direction of the Chasm, “I was numb, but now I am alive!”
His speech was odd. It was Relanese, but he spoke it in a strangely formal way, as if he were reading from the Mish-Tal. This was surely how Gilish would speak, for Gilish himself had written the Mish-Tal.
As for his explanation of the dragon flame, that would have to do for now, odd as it was. To Menish it sounded suspiciously Vorthenki, hardly the sort of thing Gilish would say.
“You are alive,” echoed Menish, still amazed at the fact. “You are speaking with Menish, King of the Anthorians.” He waited for a reaction. In the days of Gilish the Anthorians were enemies of Relanor. But Gilish, if he was Gilish, merely looked at him, smiling. Menish began to find that smile irritating. It made the man seem like an idiot.