The Coronal rose, left his cabin, went out on deck. It was late afternoon; the swollen bronze sun hung low in the west, and one of the moons was just rising to the north. The sky was stained with colors: auburn, turquoise, violet, amber, gold. A band of clouds lay thick on the horizon. He stood alone by the rail for a time, drawing the salt air deep into his lungs. All would be well in time, Valentine told himself once again. But imperceptibly he felt himself slipping back into uneasiness and distress. There seemed no escaping that mood for long. Never in his life had he been plunged so often into gloom and despair. He did not recognize the Valentine that he had become, that morbid man forever on the edge of sadness. He was a stranger to himself.
“Valentine?”
It was Carabella. He forced himself to thrust aside his forebodings, and smiled, and offered her his hand.
“What a beautiful sunset,” she said.
“Magnificent. One of the best in history. Although they say there was a better one in the reign of Lord Confalume, on the fourteenth day of—”
“This is the best one, Valentine. Because this is the one we have tonight.” She slipped her arm through his, and stood beside him in silence. He found it hard, just then, to understand why he had been so profoundly grim-spirited such a short while ago. All would be well. All would be well.
Then Carbella said, “Is that a sea dragon out there?”
“Sea dragons never enter these waters, love.”
“Then I’m hallucinating. But it’s a very convincing one. You don’t see it?”
“Where am I supposed to look?”
“There. Do you see over there, where there’s a track of color reflected on the ocean, all purple and gold? Now go just to the left. There. There.”
Valentine narrowed his eyes and peered intently out to sea. At first he saw nothing; then he thought it might be some huge log, drifting on the waves; and then a last shaft of sunlight cutting through the clouds lit up the sea, and he saw it clearly: a sea dragon, yes, unquestionably a dragon, swimming slowly northward by itself.
He felt a chill, and huddled his arms against his breast.
Sea dragons, he knew, moved only in herds; and they traveled a predictable path about the world, always in southern waters, going from west to east along the bottom of Zimroel, up the Gihorna coast to Piliplok, then eastward below the Isle of Sleep and along the torrid southern coast of Alhanroel until they were safely out into the uncharted reaches of the Great Sea. Yet here was a dragon, by itself, heading north. And as Valentine stared, the great creature brought its black enormous wings up into the air, and beat them against the water in a slow, determined way, slap and slap and slap and slap, as though it meant to do the impossible and lift itself from the sea, and fly off like some titanic bird toward the mist-shrouded polar reaches.
“How strange,” Carabella murmured. “Have you ever seen one do anything like that?”
“Never. Never.” Valentine shivered. “Omen upon omen, Carabella. What am I being told by all this?”
“Come. Let’s go in, and have a warm mug of wine.”
“No. Not yet.”
He stood as if chained to the deck, straining his eyes to make out that dark figure against the darkness of the sea in the gathering dimness of the evening. Again and again the huge wings flailed the sea, until at last the dragon furled them in, and raised its long neck high and threw back its heavy three-cornered head and let out a booming mournful cry that resounded like a foghorn cutting through the dusk. Then it slipped below the surface and was lost entirely to his sight.
4
Whenever it rained, and at this time of the year in Prestimion Vale it rained all the time, the sour odor of charred vegetation rose from the burned fields and infiltrated everything. As Aximaan Threysz shuffled into the municipal meeting-hall in the center of town, her daughter Heynok guiding her carefully with a hand to her elbow, she could smell the scent of it even here, miles from the nearest of the torched plantations.
There was no escaping it. It lay upon the land like floodwaters. The acrid reek found its way through every door and every window. It penetrated to the cellars where the wine was stored, and tainted the sealed flasks. The meat on the table stank of it. It clung to one’s clothes and could not be rinsed away. It seeped through every pore and into one’s body, and fouled one’s flesh. It even entered the soul, Aximaan Threysz was beginning to believe. When the time came for her to return to the Source, if ever she was permitted to quit this interminable life, Aximaan Threysz was sure that the guardians of the bridge would halt her and coldly turn her back, saying with disdain, “We want no smell of vile ashes here, old woman. Take up your body again and go away.”
“Would you like to sit here, mother?” Heyrok asked.
“I don’t care. Anywhere.”
“These are good seats. You’ll be able to hear well from here.”
There was a little commotion in the row as people shifted about, making room for her. Everyone treated her like a doddering old woman now. Well, of course she was old, monstrously old, a survivor out of Ossier’s time, so old that she remembered when Lord Tyeveras had been young, but there was nothing new about her being old, so why were they all suddenly so patronizing? She had no need of special treatment. She still could walk; she still could see well enough; she still could go out into the fields at harvest time and gather the pods—and gather—go out into—the fields— and—gather—
Aximaan Threysz, faltering just a little, fumbling about, took her seat. She heard murmurs of greeting, and acknowledged them in a remote way, for she was having trouble now in matching names and faces. When the Vale folk spoke with her these days it was always with condolence in their voices, as though there had been a death in her family. In a way, that was so. But not the death she was looking for, the death that was denied her, which was her own.
Perhaps that day would never come. It seemed to her that she was condemned to go on and on forever in this world of ruination and despair, tasting that pungent stench with every breath she drew.
She sat quietly, staring at nothing in particular.
Heynok said, “He’s very courageous, I think.”
“Who is?”
“Sempeturn. The man who’s going to speak tonight. They tried to stop him in Mazadone, saying that he preaches treason. But he spoke anyway, and now he’s traveling through all the farming provinces, trying to explain to us why the crops have been ruined. Everyone in the Vale is here tonight. It’s a very important event.”
“A very important event, yes,” said Aximaan Threysz, nodding. “Yes. A very important event.”
She felt a certain discomfort over the presence of so many people around her. It was months since she had last been in town. She rarely left the house any longer, but spent nearly all her days sitting in her bedroom with her back to the window, never once looking toward the plantation. But tonight Heynok had insisted. A very important event, she kept saying.
“Look! There he is, mother!”
Aximaan Threysz was vaguely aware that a human had stepped out on the platform, a short red-faced one with thick ugly black hair like the fur of an animal. That was strange, she thought, the way she had come in recent months to despise the look of humans, their soft flabby bodies, their pasty sweaty skins, their repellent hair, their weak watery eyes. He waved his arms about and began to speak in an ugly rasping voice.