The Etymology of Fire

1. The Fire that Burns

Copyright © 2004 by Keith D. Jones – all rights reserved
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• 1. The Fire that Burns
• 2. A Long and Winding Road
• 3. The Edge of Forever
• 4. Hunters of the Dark
• 5. Daughter of the Ancients
• 6. The Passing of Strangers
• 7. Secrets of Smoke and Flame
• 8. The Forgotten Road

Also available in ePub & PDF formats.

Wrath had fallen on the small town of Edgewood. Descending out of the wilderness and half-light of dawn, it had come. Its voice pulling at the townsfolk, shattering them with a scream like thunder and despair. The people ran, fleeing from destruction, scattering like leaves before the storm even as the soldiers gathered. Waiting and long suffering, they faced the creature as it ripped at the town. As it fell among splintered wood and broken homes. As the storm was silenced. Wrath was memory made flesh; a sliver of nightmare torn from ancient history and half-forgotten story. Even its name was only a whispered shadow. Nothing more than a fragment of language. Wrath had once possessed a name. Dragon. A dragon had fallen in the town of Edgewood. Its rage silenced by soldiers wielding iron and great hooks that could rend even a monster's wing.

The dragon had fallen among fractured wood and shattered stone. Unable to fly on tattered wings, it had crashed through a ruin of broken houses and homes, snapping at the soldiers even as it fell. Sounding as if it was the death of storms, the dragon had screamed with a roar that pulled at the heart and tore at the soul. It had given one last gurgling cry and then fallen; wood splintering beneath its weight. The soldiers had stood around it, waiting. Not wanting to blink. Not wanting to breathe or hold out hope that the creature was dead. They stood around the body, holding spears and hooks and swords ready to strike. They waited. Watching for sound, listening for movement, they watched and they waited.

A soldier slipped, standing too long on tired feet, and the soldiers roared, surging forward as if the dragon had moved. As if the nightmare monstrosity really was a Wraith out of forgotten time that could not be stopped or killed. Pike and spear struck the dragon, driving into flesh that did not move, binding Wrath to the earth so that it could not rise again. Shouting wordless challenges grown hoarse under the weight of the morning, they struck and burned and stomped and kicked, and finally they stopped, drifting into silence. One by one, they let their weapons grow still, and they stood, watching the dragon, wiping blood and sweat from their eyes.

The soldiers stood around the grotesque and mangled corpse, saying nothing, watching the dragon; blind to the morning sun as it drifted over the town beneath the sky. The soldiers stood as still as guardian statues, and they would not let anyone near the dragon. None were allowed to approach the place where it had died. The people could not search the shattered buildings and broken homes, looking for the injured, searching for the dead. None wanted to. A dragon had devoured the town, desecrating all that it touched, leaving the people nothing.

It became a blank spot in their world that they would not approach. They would not think. They would not touch. As shock and fear faded with the passing of the Wrath, the townspeople tended to those who had been hurt and finished burying the dead. The Wrath was ignored. The Wrath was forgotten. Looking to that blind spot, knowing that such a thing had attacked the town, they would know that other Wraths lived in the mountains. The townsfolk tried to forget or risk looking forever to the sky to see where the next nightmare would fall.

Tahrl could look only to the blind spot, seeing the shapeless monstrosity that was the Wrath, forgetting that it had once possessed a name. Dragons had lived long ago and far away. This thing that had attacked Edgewood was an abomination. It was a shadow. A Wraith of long neglected memory. No dragon lived. A Wrath had attacked the town. Tahrl could find nothing beyond its corpse. There was nothing. He could not look away.

"Morgan? Tahrl Morgan? I thought you were dead."

It was dark. Blinking numb eyes, Tahrl remembered that there had once been light and the warmth of day. He tried to focus on the voice, realizing that someone stood before him demanding his attention.

"I would not have recognized you," the man said. "To think that you, Morgan. Yes, even you should fall so far."

Light played at Tahrl's eyes. There was someone before him; the man who had addressed him, and beyond this stranger was one of the soldiers standing some little way away with a crude lantern. Holding a hand as if the light burned him, Tahrl looked to the man who stood before him blocking his view of the Wrath.

"Hello, Vemarian," Tahrl said surprised to hear his own voice as if words began somewhere in the distant past and required a journey of more than a thousand years before they could pass his lips. "I heard you were at Windvale."

"I was until I learned what happened here. I could not stay away," the man who was Cavan Luc Vemarian said. "This is only the beginning."

"So soon?"

"What do you mean, so soon? Do you jest? Do you mock me? Is it too soon for a beginning? Do you know something I should expect, Morgan? Four days have passed since that abomination attacked. How long before it happens again? How much time do we have?"

"I don't know."

"You were always the expert. Never let anyone forget how much you knew about them. Wraths and Wraiths. Always so smart. As for myself, I only know troglodytes. The paths of the mountains. How to hold those creatures in check. Never expected this. Wraths and Wraiths." Vemarian looked to the dark and the night. Somewhere between the surviving houses and homes of Edgewood, a Wrath had fallen. "Tell me, Morgan, what do you think of your precious Wraiths now?"

"I don't know." Tahrl felt the words like a weight trying to drag him to the ground. "I don't know what to think anymore. The dragons would never- I don't know what that thing is."

"Maybe, it is the truth."

"How can it be?"

"You are blind, Morgan. Unwilling to see with your eyes. You had everything, Morgan. You were an adviser to the King. And, you lost it all because you looked only to the past. Never trust the past. We remember only what people tell us. Never the past, Morgan. Look to that monster and see the future."

"No."

"That is why you are here. Without friends. Without family. Without a future. Why did you do it, Morgan? Why did you say that Wraths and Wraiths were good? Who whispered such words in your ear?"

"The Montmorin."

"Montmorin?"

"Yes, the DiKena legends and the Montmorin. Have you ever heard them? Really listened to the ancient legends of the DiKena?"

"No more than anybody else. Legends say the Wraths slaughtered the DiKena."

Tahrl laughed with a dry rasp of a sound that was little more than a mumbled whisper.

"No," he said. "No, they didn't. Those common stories you quote are from after the Crusade. After we, the Kianan, slaughtered the dragons."

"Really, Morgan, you would lecture me."

"It is true!" Tahrl said, almost choking on the words. "You need only open your ears and listen. My parents lived with the Montmorin because of the trade agreements. I was born there. In the mountains. I heard the legends of the DiKena long before I ever learned these Kianan stories."

"From the Montmorin?"

"It didn't matter. It doesn't make sense. The dragons wanted to protect us. They sought only to help the DiKena and to end the Age of Chaos."

"They failed."

"And, this is how we repay them?"

"No, Morgan, we haven't even begun to repay them." Vemarian looked only to the dark and the night. Somewhere out there, the soldiers were preparing the funeral pyre. With Cavan Luc Vemarian's arrival in Edgewood, the Wrath would be burned. Its body would be consumed by flame, and a black splotch of a hole would remain in the heart of the town forevermore. "I believe what I have seen with mine own eyes, Morgan, and I have seen the future. Open your eyes, Tahrl Morgan, or the past will consume you."

With that, Cavan Luc Vemarian left him, turning, walking into the dark and into the night. When Vemarian reached his soldiers, the fire would be set, and the flames would engulf the world.

Tahrl folded in upon himself, finding the ground beneath his feet, not knowing where he was. He sat and watched the flames take the night. The dragon was burned while the soldiers and the townsfolk watched. It wasn't a dragon. Dragons were protectors. They were defenders of the earth and the sky. The soldiers burned an abomination. They burned vengeance for dragon blood that had been shed almost one thousand years long forgotten. They consumed Wrath.

In the heart of Edgewood, the Wrath had fallen, and in the heart of Edgewood, it had died, contaminating the land. It was said that nothing would grow there. The black spot at the heart of Edgewood was despoiled. Poisoned. Nothing would grow. It would remain forever dark. The heart of Edgewood was corrupted, and the people would never be the same.

Tahrl rose, wandering, not knowing where he was, not caring where he went. It was dark. He looked to the stars. He saw the moon shrouded by clouds looking as next to blood. It was the fire. Dark smoke smeared with flames flickered and filled the sky. It was quiet. As he wandered between the houses and homes that were yet standing, there was no sound. Everybody was watching the pyre. Townsfolk, soldiers and even Cavan Luc Vemarian watched the blaze in silence. Watching the monster be consumed by flames. Leaving a dark and dank stain in their world where nothing could grow. Only the shattered remains of burnt wood and blackened stone. Nothing more than the skeletal ghost of a lost house or home. The rain might wash away the muck and the darkness, but the spot would always remain. Nothing would grow there. None would rebuild on that one spot. It would remain the contamination at the heart of the world.

The forest called to him. Edgewood rested between the forest and the river far from the center of Kianan government to the south where the Ivory Tower rested and the King held court. Far to the north were the Earlinstien Mountains where he had been born. To the west was the forest and the Graystone Mountains, which were home to nothing more than troglodytes and cavern trolls. The dragons were gone.

The forest lived. In the shadow of such mountains, the forest thrived and survived. There was life in the shadow of death. Tahrl went to the forest, thinking of the pyre at the heart of Edgewood, thinking of land where nothing would grow. In the forest, he would find life. In the forest, he would find roots and leaves and seeds and twigs. He would find pine cones and seed pods, and he would take them back to the fire. He would wait for the flames to die down and the smoke to drift away. Then, he would take his branches and twigs and pine cones and seed pods, and he would cast them over the dark.

Tahrl stopped. He stood frozen in place in the forest in the dark. He did not know where he was. Somewhere behind him was the small town of Edgewood. Before him and all around him was the forest. The forest that they never entered because it rested in the shadow of the mountains. They did not hunt in the forest. They took only what little they needed to build and maintain their small town and that only from the edge of the wood.

People did not return from the forest. There were forest trolls, and there were Dryn. Forest trolls could cloud the mind, depriving a person of thought, holding them helpless. It was how they hunted and how they took their prey. The Dryn took children. They stole babies and children and the careless man who wandered into the wood.

Tahrl was in the forest. Edgewood was somewhere lost behind him in the dark. He could not see. The moon and the stars could be so bright that you never needed a light out of doors at night but not in the forest. The branches and the trees blocked the light. Everything was gray and black and white. He could see to the tips of his fingers if he stretched his arm out as far as he could reach but no farther. Everything was a shadow.

He was a fool. The forest had claimed him. In his grief and despair, he had been called into the wood. To gather fruits and nuts. It was stupid. A fool's errand. He turned, looking this way and that, not knowing where he was. He turned, stumbling, looking to a branch, watching a tree, wondering if it had moved. If it was a forest troll. He would not survive; he could not escape. The forest troll would muddle his thoughts, turning him around and around and around in his head. He would not know left from right or up from down.

Tahrl turned, trying to run, stumbling over roots and brush, finding himself on hands and knees. Looking up, he saw that a tree did move. There was no breeze. It was not the wind. Branches turned and twisted, moving slowly toward him. A forest troll did not need to be quick. There was no need for speed. Forest trolls were remnants of the Age of Chaos. They were carnivorous trees, scavengers and carrion eaters. The troll would trap him. It would hold him with roots and smother him with branches. There was no hurry. It would wait until he stopped thrashing and screaming. When he had suffocated, the forest troll would sink roots into his flesh. It would feast on his blood and take the minerals from his skin.

Something touched his leg. He cried out, kicking, but the root only tightened around his ankle until there was nothing but pain. He screamed, fearing the end of the world in the sound. There was light, burning, blinding. He could not see. A scream filled the air, clouding his mind. It was not his own. He clamped his hands to his ears, doing nothing to block the sound. His eyes burned from the light.

There was a woman draped in gray and black shadow standing above him, attacking the tree with an ax. The ax was huge with a great blade like a crescent moon. She struck the forest troll again and again and again. A branch fell. Leaves fluttered all around them. Fragments of bark and broken wood touched him. The scream was everywhere. She didn't care. The ax swung, slicing the air, smashing the trunk. The forest troll fell back, releasing Tahrl's foot. Its scream filled his mind and flooded his body, bypassing his ears.

The woman did not stop. The ax flew, severing a branch, striking the tree, splitting the trunk. She struck again and again, ignoring the scream, smashing the forest troll. Tahrl curled in upon himself, trying to shut out the scream. Numb to everything. The light was gone. If there had ever been one. Shapes swam before his eyes, red and green and gray. He did not know if they were light or sound. The cry of the forest troll faded as it died as the woman reduced it to broken pieces and fragments of wood.

The scream had stopped. In the darkness and in the night, he had not noticed when it had stopped. The forest troll's scream had carried on long after it had been silenced, echoing and reechoing in his mind. The world was pain. The wood was pain, and the forest burned him with each moment that he touched it. He tried to sit up, feeling his whole body ache. He tried to look through gray shadows and the dark to the woman with the ax and the remnants of the forest troll all around her.

He found his nameless protector in the dark with one hand on the ax, which was buried in the fractured stump of the tree. She was leaning against the handle, letting the ax support her for one moment but no more, and then she turned, looking to him. She pulled the ax free, turning toward him. The ax was huge. It may have held many uses, but first among them was not cutting down trees. It was as much bludgeon as blade. A battleax. It was a war ax for slicing enemies in two.

The woman sat on the ground before him, resting the ax next to her, holding it with one hand, and she looked at him. Without any need for light, she studied him. Tahrl felt the wind rush through his chest, sparking a fire that burned and burned. He tried to crawl away. Scuttling backward, he was stopped by a tree, bumping his head against the trunk.

"Dryn," he said before he could think, trying to move, trying to scuttle backward up the tree that he rested against.

The Dryn moved closer, resting almost on top of him, straddling his legs, watching him with eyes that he could not see because of the dark. The Dryn's face was sharp and slender like a knife. It had sleek and muscular shoulders as if it had spent many hours practicing with the ax. It moved like a dancer with alien grace as it drew closer, squatting over him with its hips almost touching his own. Its hair was so short as to be almost non-existent as if it didn't so much cut as shave its head with a knife. The Dryn was so much like a woman he doubted his own senses in the dark.

Tahrl couldn't move. He couldn't breathe. His heart burned, racing so fast he thought it might burst. He didn't know; he couldn't think. A Dryn was hovering over him, almost touching him. It had saved him from the forest troll, but he did not know what it wanted. Dryn stole babies. They took children. Men who wandered into the forest were never seen or heard from again. For all he knew, this Dryn would steal his soul.

The Dryn moved ever closer; their faces almost touching, and it sniffed him. He cried out, biting down on his fear half-voiced, shying away from it, trying to fall through the tree. It raised a hand, touching his hair, brushing the side of his face, and he trembled beneath its touch, trying not to flinch, expecting each fingertip to be death. And, then it licked him. Its tongue dragging over his cheek, feeling rough and slimy against his skin. He cried out in disgust and uncontrollable horror. He pushed at it, forcing his hands against the Dryn, trying to crawl away.

It held him, grasping his hand and holding him still, and it raised his hand to its chest. It wore clothes. The tunic was hard and leathery almost to the point of being armor, but he could still feel it through the garment. He could feel soft flesh so much like a real woman's breast. He could almost believe that this creature was really a Montmorin or Kianan woman and not some monstrous Dryn. Struggling against it, trying to pull his hand away from the Dryn, he fell back and away, slumping to the forest floor.

The Dryn cocked its head almost as if it had heard something, and Tahrl strained his ears, hoping that it was Cavan Luc Vemarian, hoping that the townsfolk had come in search of him. He held his breath and listened, but the forest was quiet. Nobody searched the dark wood for lost souls.

"I'm not supposed to talk to you," the Dryn said, and this shocked Tahrl more than anything else, listening to its voice so much like that of a Kianan or Montmorin woman. There was an edge to it almost like birdsong.

The Dryn released his hand, but he did not move. His fingers lingering almost to the point of touching its skin, and then it pulled back and away, standing, leaving a void that almost dragged him to his feet. His fingers hovering as if they longed for the Dryn's touch or did not realize they no longer graced its skin. The Dryn took the ax, balancing the handle over its shoulder, and looked down at him. Tahrl could not move, looking up at it as if all the strength had left him, and he would never be able to lift another finger for as long as he should live. The Dryn tossed him something, a stone that glowed. It did not yield much light, but it would be more than enough to help him find his way from the forest in the dark.

"Delan only wanted you looked after."

"What?" Tahrl said, standing without knowing where he had found the strength to move. "How do you know that name?"

But there was no answer. The Dryn was gone.

The Wrath burned. It was morning, and the Wrath's funeral pyre was still alive with flame, having lasted throughout the long night. The townsfolk had remained around the fire as if the flickering play of light and shadow held them captive or as if they were feeding the flames with their grief and their rage. The soldiers watched so that the fire would not spread beyond the corpse of the dark monstrosity and take the rest of the town. Tahrl ignored them all, looking away from the Wraith for the first time since it had savaged the town, and he wandered to his own door which had been spared from the attack. It had taken him all the long night to find his way from the depths of the forest, and he wanted only to rest. He didn't think or wonder at the time or know how he had become so completely lost in the forest. He knew only that he was free of the wood and could rest, not even bothering with his shoes as he sank into the confines of his bed, curling tightly among the blankets.

He dreamed of the dragon. Its scream had shattered the sky. People looking up, this way and that. Nobody knowing or understand the sound. Nothing more than a blur to smear the sky, it descended, moving so quickly that none could follow it, smashing rooftops at random. Wood splintering. Fragments flying. People screaming as houses disintegrated. It roared, shattering eardrums, knocking townsfolk to the ground with the violence of the sound. Fingers gripped to ears dripping blood to ward off the violence. Soldiers ran, gathering weapons, shouting to one another. Like a streak of chaos or blind destruction, the Wrath leapt from house to home. In the sky. On the ground. Perched on a rooftop. In its wake, half a person stood in a fine mist of blood. Gripping the edge of a building; wood fractured with a crack that was lost beneath the creature's roar.

Tahrl screamed, sitting up, doubling over, feeling the food that he had not eaten make a run for his mouth. He twisted, curling among the covers, retching on nothing more than air. His body shook, trembling with cold and sweat, and he fell, having slipped too close to the edge of the bed. The floor hit him. Pain took him hard in the shoulder and in the leg. His arm hurt. Tripped and falling, the blankets tumbled over him, smothering him. He tried to move, almost suffocating, finding a path, tasting stale air. The blankets enveloped him, and he tried to breathe with deep ragged breaths to quiet the fire burning in his wounded heart. He did not move, lying curled on the floor, trembling. He had not slept since the Wrath had struck the town; he had only moved, wandering like a shadow among the surviving houses and homes. The impossible had happened. A dragon out of some long lost and forgotten memory had attacked the town. It was the end of belief. Nothing mattered anymore.

Except a Dryn had spoken to him, giving a name that she could not have known. It could have been a dream or demented fantasy. He had only just awoken from a nightmare memory of the Wrath attacking the town. Everything could have been part of that feverish dream. From the first moment he had heard the Wrath scream, the world had twisted sideways as if he had slipped into some kind of twilight delirium. The forest troll and even the Dryn could have been nothing more than aspects of the nightmare from which he had only just awakened. The Wrath had attacked the town; he did not doubt that. Everything since that moment could have been a hallucination.

Except a Dryn had spoken to him, giving him a stone that glowed with a faint but magic light, and there was the stone where he had dropped it in the middle of the room. He had let it fall from his fingers as he had slumped his way across the room. It still glowed with a distant flicker that was almost invisible in the damp and dark of the room. Pulling himself from among the tumbled blankets, he stumbled, crawling to the stone, looking at it, watching it with eyes that suddenly did not want to focus on the light.

It burned, and tears slipped down his cheeks. While the Wrath that had savaged Edgewood was unforgivable, the stone was something new and wholly alien to everything that he knew. The Dryn were a sundered and broken people. Nobody had spoken with them since time out of mind when the DiKena had ruled the world, which was not the right word for it. In the beginning, there had been the DiKena, and they had been the undisputed masters of all the earth and the heavens, the oceans, and the cleansing flames. In the end, the DiKena had been shattered, splintering into three people, the Kianan, Montmorin, and the Dryn. Believing that the dragons were responsible for the fall of the DiKena, the Kianan slaughtered the creatures. When nothing remained of the dragons except their memory and blood, the Kianan had broken all ties with the Montmorin and taken the few surviving Dryn as slaves.

The Dryn had died. One thousand years after the end of the Crusade almost nothing was remembered of them. Dryn stole children. It was said that some Dryn still lived in scattered clumps and odd numbers in the deepest forests and darkest woods as little more than savages and monsters. They kidnapped husbands, farmers and hunters. They stole children. Tahrl touched the stone with one trembling hand, brushing the flickering light with his fingers. Savages and monsters did not know delicate magic. They were not sent to protect people, and they did not know Delan's name.

Tahrl stood, regretting it, almost toppling from his feet and retching on air. In his youth, he had lived among the Montmorin, learning much from them, but he had learned nothing of the Dryn. Breathing deep, he moved without knowing how he managed it. That Dryn had spoken to him, and he could almost believe that she had been a Kianan or Montmorin woman who had protected him from the forest troll. He staggered about his small home, finding water, splashing it against his face and rubbing it into his hair. Tahrl found bread and dry fruit, touching the food to his lips without tasting it. Once upon a time, there had been the DiKena, and their children had been the Kianan, Montmorin and the Dryn. He looked back to the stone, pulsing and flickering quietly to itself where he had left it on the floor.

There was a dagger somewhere in his small house. He used it mostly for slicing the odd piece of bread or hunk of cheese, but it had been a gift. It was one of the few things he had taken with him from the Ivory Tower, and it had once possessed a name for it was magic. He found the dagger, which was named Quicksilver, on the counter where it had last been used for nothing more interesting than the preparation of some long forgotten dinner, and then he took the stone from the floor.

He wavered in the doorway, tasting smoke on his tongue, knowing that it carried the stench of the lost dragon. The sun was about; even though, he did not know how much of the day had passed him in his sleep and fitful dreams. He looked to the wood, touching the dagger that he now carried at his side, and thought turned to action. He entered the forest never looking back and knew that it could be another forest troll calling to him as one had tried to claim him only the night before.

He did not think or wonder for how long or how far he walked only stopping finally with the half-light filtered by the trees falling all around him. There was half a clearing where a great old tree had fallen. Its branches lying twisted and broken, and Tahrl studied it for a long time fascinated by the color, scent and texture of the wood. The trunk had cracked, breaking almost at the base, and the stump with all of its jagged edges and fragments of wood still rested with roots gripping deep into the ground.

He wanted to laugh, pulling away from the tree, turning around and around, trying to look every which way at once. His breath pulled at him, burning his lungs, and he felt his heart like a hammer pounding helplessly at the walls of his chest. There was nothing. Nobody waited for him, not Dryn or even a forest troll. The wood was quiet so he tried to speak, finding gravel in his throat, and he wished he had remembered to bring water.

"Why?" he managed to say and then laughed with a harsh giggle of a sound that degenerated into a cough. The forest did not answer; even though, he listened and waited, holding his breath so that he might not mistake a word for the rustling of the leaves in the wind. "You want to answer me or else you would not have said that you cannot speak. I knew a Delan; though, he never used that name to my face. I knew him as Alexander, and he was much older than he looked." Tahrl stopped, turning about, looking to the forest and the trees, and wondered at the silence and the slip of the wind through the leaves. "He was a wizard. The greatest who ever lived. They called him the Avatar. But, he gave it up. Disappeared. Nobody knew what became of him. Which is why I knew him as Alexander." Tahrl felt a shiver take him, knowing he spoke to the empty air, wanting to stop, and he realized that he could not even as he bit at his teeth to quench the flow of words. "The wizards never called him Delan, of course. They took that name from him. Called him Dalin."

"You talk too much."

Tahrl cried out, spinning around, stumbling backward, almost falling. The Dryn was seated on the fallen trunk of the tree as if she had always been there and his eyes had simply slipped from her whenever he had glanced that way. Fumbling at his belt, he grasped Quicksilver and pointed it toward her with shaky fingers. The Dryn said nothing, only looking at him as if she might find him amusing if he should somehow manage to slip and fall on the blade. Tahrl fought with his voice and breath, trying to hold the dagger with wavering fingers, trying to hold her gaze.

"Why are you working for Alexander?" Tahrl said. "It's not your choice or else you wouldn't have disobeyed him to speak." The Dryn did not answer, watching him as if his wavering hand and unsteady voice were amusing. "Do you work for him? If Alexander knew where I was, why would he not speak to me?"

"Because you were running away. If we had approached you, saying that you had fled the Ivory Tower only to land at our doorstep, you would have kept running."

"You know so much about me, do you?"

The Dryn did not answer, and this made Tahrl's breath run ragged through his skin. Holding the dagger with a death grip, he wanted only to throw it at her and run.

"Why?" he managed to say, but the Dryn did not answer. "How do you know Delan's name?"

"How do you? You said yourself that he never told you."

"He told me what he had been. The name I learned from the magicians. Not from them. They gave me access to the old records of the wizards because I was an adviser to the King and sought answers to the riddle of the dragons. There were private records that the magicians did not think I would be able to read. I learned many things."

"Good for you."

"Good for- what do you want of me?"

"Only to protect you."

"From what? Should I thank you that my home yet stands while all around me is ruined? Why couldn't you protect them?"

"From what?"

"From the Wrath! It is true then. You protected me while letting my neighbors burn."

"You Kianan raped and murdered my grandmother."

Tahrl said nothing, letting his heart race, feeling his skin burn. The Dryn said nothing, watching him from her perch on the back of the broken tree as if daring him to speak so that she could strike him down. After the Crusade and with the dragons gone, the Kianan had taken the mountains, searching for gold, and they had taken the Dryn with them to keep them warm at night.

"You want to kill me," Tahrl finally said. "The rage burns in you that you must protect me. That Alexander has some hold over you. Forcing you to do his bidding." The Dryn said nothing. "The only thing that keeps you going is the knowledge that your captor was once a prisoner himself."

The Dryn screamed with a roar that shook Tahrl almost dropping him from his feet. The Dryn's eyes burned; its mouth gaped wide as great as a yawn except it was a roar showing lots of teeth, and Tahrl saw a creature sitting on the fallen tree as alien as anything he had ever seen. Its passing fancy to a Kianan or Montmorin woman slipping away, and Tahrl saw a wild thing pulling at its chains, smashing its fits at the bars of its cage, wanting to be free.

He did not run. Tahrl stepped backward and away from the Dryn, never taking his eyes off the thing, and he stepped backward over brush and between trees until they blocked his sight of her. He turned, walking quickly, never looking back and trying to trace his way through the forest for Edgewood and home. He held the dagger Quicksilver so tightly in his fist that his fingers burned. The blade had done him no good even for a magic dagger; the Dryn had not given it a second thought. The dagger could protect him almost with a will of its own, sensing danger, and it could fly through the air, striking targets with but a thought. He had seen it demonstrated. Alexander had shown him. The dagger could protect him but had done nothing against the Dryn.

Tahrl slackened his pace; the forest forgotten. The dagger had done nothing. He had not been in danger. The Dryn had protected, wielding a great ax to save him from a forest troll. The Dryn had spoken to him. She had tempted him with words that had pulled him back into the forest, and he had come, seeking her. The Dryn had been cautious if not kind, and he had abused her, accusing her of being a slave. Tahrl stood still, feeling his thoughts burn, trying to touch the edge of his breath. He had run. The Dryn was right. He had fled the Ivory Tower. If Alexander or this Dryn had approached him, he would have run away again. He had to stop. Using the Dryn, Alexander was trying to regain contact with him. The Dryn wanted only to help him; tell him something.

Tahrl turned; began to walk back toward the clearing. She blocked his path. Appearing out of the wilderness, the Dryn was in his face as if she had been following him. He tried to raise Quicksilver. The Dryn pushed him, grabbing him, shoving him against a tree. Towering over him, she thrust her face a mere breath away from his own, holding him hard against the tree, and he cried at the pain of fingers pressed into his skin.

"You are lost," she whispered the words with such anger that he thought she was hissing them into his eyes. "Your faith broken by the dragon's attack on Edgewood." He held his eyes closed as hard as he could; face turned away from the creature's breath. "Let me say words that might help you find the path once more. The dragons are not evil. That one was forced to attack your home. I have been in the mountains. If you had ever seen a dragon there, you would know that they do not rage."

She released him, and he fell, tumbling to the earth and the dust. Tahrl scrambled to his hands and knees, looking at the wood and the deep forest green, but he could not bring his eyes to gaze at her. He tried to speak, finding nothing, not words, not breath, not even thought.

"I remember Quicksilver," she said, and Tahrl realized that the Dryn was holding his dagger. "It was a gift to you from my mother."

Quicksilver struck the dirt before his eyes; flung so hard the blade was buried almost to the hilt. He could not touch it. Tahrl shivered, folding around his hands and knees, and found that he could not move or look to where the Dryn had been standing. She was gone, leaving him to words that ripped at his mind. A dragon had attacked Edgewood, destroying all his dreams. They could not be as she described them. It defied the knowledge of his eyes. The forest burned at his mind. He found strength in numb fingers at last to reach for Quicksilver and tried not to wonder what it could mean if the Dryn had spoken true.

The dragon roared. It had attacked Edgewood, falling upon the town and slaughtering the people who had called the place home. The townsfolk had not even known its name, calling it Wrath or Wraith. It had destroyed the town but not by ravaging the buildings. The dragon had savaged their souls, driving the life from them, and making the survivors look forever to the sky. He had watched it from the edge of the forest, hiding behind branches and trees. Tahrl had watched the monstrous creature devour the town. The creature had ripped at everything he had known and believed. The dragons had once been the protectors. The thing that had struck Edgewood was not a protector. It had attacked. It had ravaged. It had raged. The soldiers had barely been strong enough to stop it. They could not have summoned it or wished it to attack the town. The Dryn could not have spoken true. The dragon's cries still echoed and reverberated in the depths and confines of his mind.

"Tahrl?"

The word pulled at him, and he looked, finding nobody and then a figure. Tahrl sighed deep in his heart, feeling the weight of all creation sink slowly down through his skin like drops of frozen rain slipping from his shoulders. Rubbing at his eyes and saying nothing, he looked, expecting one of Cavan Luc Vemarian's men, and found only Aaron.

"Are you well?" Aaron said. "You have been so distant. So quiet. Nobody knows you."

"I am a shadow," he replied, picking at the words, finding them between his toes. "Nobody knows? I have been hiding. Befuddled by contradiction. My eyes lie to me, did you know?"

"I meant that nobody knows where you are. At any given time, I look and ask around. Nobody knows where to find you. We worry."

"Don't. I am lost."

"We are all lost. In this place. Look about you. What has been left to us? You are with us. One of us. Do not cast us out."

"No, you are not one of- I mean that I am not one- You would not like my thoughts."

"Could they be any worse than what I have heard? The soldiers speak of you. The Lord Vemarian knows you. I saw him speak with you. How could he know you? The soldiers say many things. We listen. We can do nothing else."

Tahrl said nothing, breathing slowly and feeling the air like frost in his lungs.

"Is it true?"

Tahrl found nothing, looking to where the fire had burned and the dragon had died.

"What they say? Is it true?" Aaron said as if brandishing the question like a club would force the answer to be what he wished of it.

"Is what true?"

"You were once a great man. Adviser to the King. Stood at the foot of the Ivory Tower."

"It is cold," Tahrl said, raising his hand, touching memory. "The Ivory Tower is cool to the touch and feels like. Like glass."

"You touched it?" Aaron looked to the south; he could not help himself. Against the far horizon and almost invisible to the eye was a single strand of white thread reaching forever into the sky. "How could you touch it? How? How could you say those things about the Wraiths?"

"I was not alone, Aaron," Tahrl said, and his hand drifted back to his side, touching the dagger Quicksilver. "I had support. Did the soldiers mention that? The Lady Amalthea defended my research. Gave me a gift."

"For defending the Wraiths?"

"For speaking for the dead? Yes. For defending those who could no longer defend themselves. No dragon lives who could give voice to his family. I always wondered at the Lady Amalthea. I understood she was related to the Lady Amalthea Li Dirae who lived before the time of the Crusade. I figured our Lady Amalthea was trying to lay claim to her ancestor's lands. That includes where we are standing. All these lands before the mountains and for as far as the eye can see once belonged to Amalthea Li Dirae. I intended to look for her."

"What?"

"When I left- when I fled the Ivory Tower. I was going to search for a familiar face. Descendant of Amalthea Li Dirae. I never found her. They must have found her. For supporting me. All I have left is her gift. Without it, she could have been nothing more than a dream."

"Look around you, Tahrl. I hope they burned your lady's house to the ground. How could you speak for the Wraiths?"

"Because nobody remembers the legends."

"Legend says the Wraiths attacked the Kianan. We stopped them, crying never again. Remember the Crusade."

"Memories are short, and we remember only what the man with the biggest stick tells us is true. The stories you quote are from after the Crusade. Remember the old stories and ancient legends. Remember the DiKena."

"The DiKena made the earth and the Kianan to rule it. The Montmorin to serve us and the Dryn to give us sport. The Dryn seduced the Montmorin, giving birth to evil."

"Enough! I will not stomach lies spoken of the Montmorin!"

"Lies?"

"Yes, lies! Do you know nothing? Do you care at all for the affairs of the world? I am Tahrl Morgan ap Morin, and I will not hear you speak so of family!"

"Morgan ap Morin? You lied to me! Lied to my face! Denied that you were Morgan ap Morin. It means friend of the Montmorin, does it not?"

"Close enough."

"Your family- family Morgan- Morgan ap Morin. Renewed our ties with the Montmorin. Reopened the trade routes that had been closed since the Dryn seduced them."

"You know nothing!"

"I know nothing," Aaron said, faltering, falling away from him. "I don't know you. I don't know your lies, and I won't listen to your insanity. When you remember that you are Kianan, you will find us here." With that, Aaron turned and all but ran from Tahrl's sight, looking back once or twice, slipping between broken houses and burned homes before he finally disappeared.

Tahrl could not find the fallen tree in the long neglected clearing. There were no paths through the wood. There was no way to tell which direction he had taken the last time he had wandered the forest so he only walked until he was tired and knew that he would not find the one tree among all of the others where he had spoken with the Dryn. He chose a tree and rested upon its exposed roots, taking Quicksilver from his side and admiring the blade. It was a magical dagger, and he let it float in the air before his eyes, allowing it to turn slowly one way and then another.

"I remember when the Lady Amalthea gave this to me," he said, knowing without really thinking about it that his strange companion of the wood had joined him beside the tree. "It was presented to me in the court. Before the King. Alexander was there. I was still- if not respected- at least I was still accepted in the court."

"I was there," the Dryn said. "Don't try to remember me, but I was there."

Tahrl reached for Quicksilver.

"The King protected me. It was a long time before I realized how much. There were threats. Attempts at poisoning. Those were to be expected simply because of my position in the court. But worse because I stood and said the Crusade had been wrong. We slaughtered innocence."

"I remember."

"There were threats and open challenges. Beatings in the dark. And then my family. They had to do what they did. I understand that. They had to protect their trade standing and protect the Montmorin. Then I realized that the King might fall if he continued to support me. Why did I do it?"

The Dryn said nothing.

"Why did I stand and say that the dragons had only sought to protect us?" He stabbed the tree, feeling Quicksilver bite bark and wood. "All too recently, I have been reminded how much the Kianan hate. The Dryn for example. I can't help but wonder what came first. Did we hate you so much that we abused you? Or did we abuse you and hide that abuse with hate?"

"Fear came first and then hate."

"You think so?" With effort, he freed Quicksilver from the root and held the blade before his eyes, watching the play of light and shadow down its length. At last, he put the dagger away. "Why are you spoon-feeding me information?"

"Would you have heard me all at once?"

"No, I don't know. I thought you weren't supposed to talk to me."

"I will not hide."

"I wasn't running away. I realized that too. I was looking for you."

"No, you were running. If you had been looking, you would have gone to the Montmorin, but you did not."

"I could not endanger them."

"They do not fear the Kianan."

"What are you suggesting? That I was ashamed?"

"I have said nothing. You accuse others of suggesting that which you think for yourself. It was felt best to let you be."

"Where is Alexander?"

"To the north looking for answers. We don't know enough."

"Why the dragons rage?"

"It is poison or magic or something wholly unique. I do not know. Only that the Kianan Vemarian is responsible. Delan says Vemarian continues to play upon the Kianan King's weakness for having supported you."

"No."

"I fear for my family."

"Tell me about them."

"No, I'm not supposed to talk."

"Really? Have I been imagining your voice?"

There was no answer. Tahrl turned, looking, but could find no trace of the Dryn as if he really had been talking to the empty air. He tried to laugh, choking on the sound as it stuck in his throat. He looked and looked, wandering all about the tree, finding no trace of his mysterious companion of the forsaken wood.

"I cannot go back," he finally said. "Who am I talking to? I know you haven't gone far. Dryn. Amalthea's daughter. I know you are listening. The soldiers are talking about me. Spreading stories. The people have started looking at me. They- they accepted me. Once upon a time. Asking no questions of someone who sought only to find a new path. Now? I expect to wake up dead. My home burned to the ground."

"Sure, you can," the Dryn said, but he could not find her.

"Why do you mock me?"

There was silence in the wood. Tahrl turning this way and that. Looking for one face among the trees, he slipped, almost falling, catching himself on a branch and fighting for breath that would not sooth his heart or quench the fires that beat at the inside of his breast.

"Because you play the part of the fool so well," the Dryn finally said, and there she was, standing among branches and under leaves. Their eyes met, and then she moved sideways, disappearing between trees. "Go home, Kianan. Your family will not burn you in your sleep."

"So I am dismissed? But you have not yet tempted me. Given me cause to return to the wood and continue our musings." He looked, seeing nothing, feeling the erratic beat of his own heart. "Dryn steal children."

"That is true," she said, standing before him, leaning against a tree. "I cannot dispute that."

"Why?"

"I do not like to answer questions."

"That is true. You're not supposed to talk to me. Yet, you do. You do not agree that I should be kept in the dark."

"We are going to need your help."

"My help?"

"Eventually. What good does keeping you ignorant do?"

"I was not ready for the truth. You said yourself." Tahrl froze, watching the Dryn watching him with patient eyes, feeling the hair rise on the back of his neck and tears prick the back of his eyes. "That question wasn't for me, was it?"

"We have to protect ourselves. There is some disagreement over what is to become of you. Eventually, we shall have need of you to confront this Vemarian for us. If you should fail, how much should you know of us?"

He knew nothing of the Dryn. They were scattered and broken, living in small and shattered groups. Such small circles and clusters would not care what he learned. There was something more than disassociated groups in the forest. He wanted to run. Let his feet carry him to the secret home of the Dryn.

"What does Alexander say?"

"When Delan traveled north, you were not ready. You needed to be hit over the head. The dragon or something like that."

"He's your father."

The Dryn laughed with a sharp bark of a sound that made him flinch raising one hand to protect his face. When he looked back to her, the Dryn had not moved, resting against the tree as if nothing had happened.

"We don't speak of such things," she said and was gone, leaving Tahrl alone in the forest with nothing to keep him company but the rustling of the leaves in the tall branches of the trees.

The townsfolk were watching him. Tahrl could feel their gaze like sandpaper on his back, making his skin crawl. He would turn, looking, searching them out, and they would falter unable to stand before his eye. There were whispers. The soldiers talked, and word spread like a shadow cast across the town blocking the sun. Tahrl took to his home so the others would not have to look away when he caught them watching him. The forest forgotten; he had explored the wood, waiting for the Dryn, talking to the trees in the hopes of yielding a response, which never came.

The dragons filled too much of his time, pushing at the walls and ceiling of his little home; he was surprised that the place did not explode or catch fire from a flash of misplaced anger. He had seen only the one creature as it had attacked Edgewood, and he could not see them at peace. They were monstrous, and they were wild. Records of the gentle protectors were so old and neglected that the magicians and Montmorin were the only people who remembered that such things existed. The magicians gave no notice to records that had been kept by the wizards they had replaced, and the Montmorin said nothing, fearing the wrath of the Kianan more than the loss of truth.

Confronting the Kianan would be dangerous. It would be foolhardy. Tahrl knew it would not be enough to stand before the Kianan King and accuse Cavan Luc Vemarian of butchery. The people would never admit their own complicity in the slaughter of the dragons; never admit they were wrong. If Tahrl held proof, the people would rise up to squash it, shouting so they need not listen, screaming so that words would not sink in. The truth would have to be big enough and great enough to cowl the Kianan into submission.

Rae was there, closing the door, standing just inside the single room that was his home. Tahrl said nothing, watching her, feeling his trail of thought pulled from between his fingers, and he could not remember the last time he had seen her. Time being more often still a jumbled blur than not.

"What are they saying about you?" Rae said, whispering as if such a voice made the words less real, and he could not answer, struggling with threads and fragments of thoughts and sound.

"I don't know," he finally said with a voice that ached for silence. "They haven't been talking to me. I think it's true. Without having heard what is said. I don't know why they need speak lies."

"No."

"With only the truth of mine eyes to contradict me, I can say that the Wraths and Wraiths are not evil. Misguided. Misdirected. Controlled. I do not know which. They may in fact be seeking justice for what we did to them. I cannot neglect that possibility. But, they are not evil."

"How can you say- do not joke- how can you think such things?"

"I wish I could laugh."

"They say we harbor a monster. Nobody can find you. They say you have gone into the forest."

"Yes, more than once."

"Do not joke about such things." She stepped into the room, leaving the shadow of the door behind her, holding her arms to her chest, facing him. "The forest is dangerous. It will corrupt you. They say there are Dryn."

"May the Dryn feast on my soul. No, I wish I could laugh. Do not look at me so. I am lost. Confused. Deluded. Torn. Call it what you will. The dragons are not what we see. I am starting to believe."

"Do not say such things. Fight it. Do not believe. If the others."

"Yes, I hear their voices. I know the danger. I faced it once before at the Ivory Tower. Did the soldiers tell you that? I stood before the King and his court and said that the dragons were not monsters, Wrath or Wraith."

"It's true."

"There will be anger and threats. There will be violence."

"Save yourself! Leave this place. I've always wanted to see the Montmorin. They would protect us, wouldn't they?"

"Us?"

"Away from this place. The stink and smell of death. It's everywhere. There's nothing left. The Montmorin are cleaver. They say you have family there. The Montmorin tampered with you. It's why you can say that black is white. But, anything would be better than this place."

"No, I cannot. I do not wish to run. Besides, I am waiting for an old friend."

"Who?"

"The greatest wizard to ever walk the earth."

"What?"

"Nothing."

He tried to smile as if this might somehow remake the world and leave them without monsters of fear and hate. Rae moved, standing still, as if she might reach for him, dragging him from this place to find safety among the Montmorin she must have imagined behind her eyes. Watching her, he did not move. He could not move, but he did. From that day and until the end of time, Tahrl would never understand why he took Rae in his arms. She was so young; just old enough to be married but too young to have children, and he wondered who her father had promised her to before the dragon had killed him. She returned his embrace, wrapping her arms around him so tight that he feared she would never let go.

"I wish I could send you to Earlinstien," he finally said. "Urtha Malor would take you in if I asked. What is one more daughter, she would say. The Montmorin are like that. They really are." He loosened his hold, taking her by the shoulders and looking into her eyes. "You do not hate me?"

"How could I?"

"You must hate me. If they think otherwise, they will hurt you. Believe what they say. You do not know me anymore."

She tried to kiss him, awkwardly, like a child, catching him on the cheek. It was a strange moment lost to time as if a variation of the world where there was peace had replaced their own, and then he was escorting her to the door without another word having passed between them. He had known too many such displaced moments since Wrath had fallen on the town of Edgewood. Something would give soon enough and the whole of the world would fall apart. Closing the door, leaning against it, listening to Rae walk away, feeling warm tears burn his cheek, he wondered if he would wake one morning to smoke and flame before there was an answer to satisfy the dragons.

Alexander found him.

"You are in danger. We must go."

"What?" Tahrl said, losing his voice to the dark, looking at his friend who he had not seen since before he had fled the Ivory Tower.

"Vemarian has sent soldiers south from Windvale to take you. I am sorry. They will be here soon. We must go."

"So quickly. He only just left for Windvale himself. I thought I had more time. Why did he not take me then if he wants the pleasure of my company again?"

"I doubt he wants to see you. In spite of everything, your family would be most displeased if Vemarian were connected too closely to your disappearance." The world left Tahrl, trailing after the distant whispers of Alexander's voice, and he found that he could not move as if Alexander's words had bound him to the door even as his friend tried pushing past him to gain access to the house. "Really, we must hurry. Only what we can carry. Do you have a pack or a bag or something? Tahrl? I am sorry. I wish things had happened differently. That I had made better plans for contacting you. But, we must hurry. Tahrl!"

"What? Yes, I am sorry." He came free of the door. "I keep half a bag prepared. Things being what they are. I never expected to get far if I needed to run."

He found the bag, clothing, food, his dagger Quicksilver. There was nothing else. His home was small, being little more than a lopsided rectangle, and he remembered repairing it when he had first come to Edgewood. The cottage had required much work, having been left empty and abandoned for years prior to his arrival. The townspeople had helped him rebuild, never speaking of the previous owner, never asking why he had chosen Edgewood. They had simply accepted him as another of the displaced and unwanted who found their way to the small town at the edge of the cursed wood.

"We will go south in case anyone is watching," Alexander said, and then they left Tahrl's home, walking through the town in silence.

Tahrl stopped once, looking back with the morning sun in his eyes; everything bathed in light. Edgewood was so far away; nothing more than a spec of dust to rub against the side of the forest. He turned to Alexander, saying nothing and trying to feel the breath that should have been burning in his heart and the hunger that should have been gnawing at his stomach.

"The soldiers will be on horseback," Alexander said, walking again. "We'll be able to stop soon enough."

"You never told me you had a daughter."

"Yeah, I know."

"Why?"

For the longest time, there was silence as they followed the road with Edgewood always at their backs, and Tahrl lifted his gaze from the dirt and sparse grass that made up the road that could take them all the way to the Ivory Tower.

"I don't know," Alexander finally said. "For the same reason I don't tell people I used to be a wizard, I guess."

"You told me."

"Yes, that- that surprised even me. It was everything happening at the Ivory Tower, I guess. You were conflicted- being torn apart. I couldn't do nothing. I wanted you to know what I had been through. Hoping that it would help. Give you strength."

"It did if you can call running away from everything strength."

"You were protecting your family."

"They can take care of themselves."

"Don't underestimate your own actions. You'll tear yourself apart. I could give you more of my own life. Why I fled from the wizards. Why only magicians remain. But, I won't. No, it is my life no more."

"Things still tear at your heart, I take it? Gives me great confidence for my own conscience," he said, expecting no answer from Alexander, hearing nothing from him, and Tahrl looked once more back toward Edgewood. "I thought you said they would be on horseback?"

"Yes, they are," Alexander said. "We will leave the path soon enough."

"Why are we even on the road? They'll be able to follow us."

"We are laying a false trail. Have patience."

He looked once more to the friend he had not seen in years. Alexander was short, and he would have been stocky if he had not spent more years than Tahrl could count on the road. He walked with a simple grace and light touch of foot to earth as if he was both gentle as the playful breeze and as devastating as the hurricane. Tahrl tried to imagine his friend in robes of white gold and spider silk with a beard and long hair the color of the sky past midnight and holding a carved staff of dark wood instead of a silver flute that shimmered like the moon beneath the stars.

"You could have told me you had a daughter," Tahrl finally said. "You travel to the ends of the earth, playing that flute for your supper. It would not have surprised me to learn that you were a father. I often imagined it."

Alexander stopped, turning, looking to Tahrl.

"Alexander is a wandering minstrel without title, name or family," he said. "That is important. Beholden to none. It is the only way he can travel the world so freely. Do you think everyone yields to the Kianan King?"

"You said that almost as if Alexander was someone else," Tahrl said. "Or a mask. Or a disguise. Or a lie."

"Not a lie. Nor even a mask. I am Alexander, but Alexander is not all of me. I am- you look at me betrayed, Tahrl. Do not think so of me. Remember that I am a wizard."

"You were a wizard. You told me that you renounced your power."

Alexander tried to laugh, sounding as next to tears.

"If only things were that simple, Tahrl. There is so much I have not told you. For your own safety and sanity, there is so much that you do not know. I am a wizard, Tahrl. It's kind of like being a dam in a river. I leak. If the pressure builds, I will burst, and you would not want to be in the path of that flood."

Tahrl said nothing, looking to his friend, seeing a drowning man clinging desperately to a raft.

"I am sorry, Alex," he said. "I am distracted. Distraught. Overwhelmed. So much has happened under this moon."

"I know."

"So can you do anything wondrous?"

"What?"

"Forgive me if I offend, but I understood that you had surrendered all of your power."

"A belief I fostered in you. Well, I can live for a very long time without the years piling up on me."

"I noticed that right off."

"I raced horses to Edgewood and got there first."

"I actually noticed that one, too, but I figured sleeping horses had more to do with it."

"We left Windvale yesterday. No, I am not going to tell you how. Let us just say that I can fly like the wind when I have need to. Speaking of horses," Alexander said, looking north. "It will soon be time to leave this road behind."

They turned once more to the south and walked for a short while before turning for the forest that had been forever to their right; entering the wood. The warm air turning cool as they passed under branches and between trees, and a hush of lost silence falling over them as if they had crossed from one world and entered into another. They traveled for a time beneath a canopy of leaves and tall branches that filtered the light and cast everything in shades of twilight, and then they rested for the first time since Alexander had pulled Tahrl from sleep and home, drinking water and eating liarscake that Alexander took from his pack. Tahrl looked through the wood and between trees, seeking sign of anything familiar, looking for paths he had followed while searching for the Dryn, recognizing nothing. Somewhere was the edge of the forest and the small town of Edgewood. The soldiers would come, looking for him, asking the others what had become of him. They would find nothing, and Tahrl felt cold take him to think how the townsfolk would help with the search.

"Where are we going?"

"Greenhaven," Alexander said with his mouth full, chewing, swallowing. "You will be safe there. It is a Dryn city. The only one."

Tahrl remembered the Dryn standing over him in the forest in the dark with the giant red ax in her hands, and he tried to picture many such Dryn in a city among the trees. He remembered the touch of her tongue as she licked him. He remembered the rage as she screamed. He remembered how she had slipped between the trees. Behind his eyes, he saw hundreds of angular faces framed with red hair flitting silently through the forest like mist.

"A city," he whispered, knowing that they kidnapped children. "I had not imagined such a thing."

"It is unique in all the world. To the best of my knowledge, anyway, and I have searched for others. Oh, it is true that in the long forgotten past there were many such cities. They were gone even before the Crusade. I do not know what happened. They do not remember."

"A broken people. Like the DiKena? I do not recall anything in the legends."

"I can only imagine that the Kianan dislike for the Dryn predates even the Crusade."

"Fear came first," Tahrl said. "It's what your daughter said. Like the dragons, fear turned to hate. Hate turned to rage. She didn't say that about the dragons. Those are my musings."

"My daughter," Alexander said, looking to the forest and the dark green of the leaves, letting his voice trail away.

"She said she wasn't supposed to talk to me. That you told her to say nothing."

"Must have been Armada."

"What? You say that as if there is more than one."

"There are four- did she tell you she was my daughter?"

"I guessed. It shocked her so badly that I knew it had to be true. Four? Really, Alex, when were you going to tell me?"

"I don't know. I had not thought that far. Not about this. There is so much I must hide from the world. What would happen if the Kianan knew a Dryn city thrived in these woods?"

"They would burn it."

"Oh, I know they believe that Dryn live here infesting the wood. So they fear the forest. Shun it. Edgewood could be a thriving city providing rich lumber for both the Montmorin and the Kianan. If only they did not fear the Dryn. If they learned of Greenhaven, anger would overcome fear. Greenhaven would be lost."

"Your daughter- Armada? Armada said there was some debate as to what was to become of me."

"Yes, that is true. The Dryn are fiercely independent. There is leadership. They have a governess but not like the Kianan King or a Montmorin Matriarch. Greenhaven is fragile. If the Dryn should ever doubt the city's value, they will simply leave."

"What is to become of me?"

"It is possible that you will not be allowed to leave."

"What?"

"I am sorry."

"Why?"

"Kianan men are a most precious and rare commodity."

"And, yet, you move freely. If the Dryn are wary of rules and law as you say, they will not stop me."

"Because the Dryn are wary, you must first prove that you will not betray them to the Kianan."

"That's not what you said. Precious and rare. You- four daughters? Was that the price of freedom?"

"Oh, don't be a fool. I proved my worth. When I met them, I was still the wizard's avatar."

"Why are you doing this to me?" Tahrl stood, stumbling to his feet, almost falling on his face. His arms and fingers spread wide.

"Because I want you safe," Alexander said, watching him, "and I am going to need your help."

"My help?"

"Yes."

Tahrl said nothing, wanting to stand yet already on his feet, facing the friend he had not seen since before he had fled the Ivory Tower.

"Cavan Luc Vemarian is enraging the dragons," Alexander said. "I do not know how, and I do not know why. It is a most dangerous game he is playing. What I do know is that it is only a matter of time before his soldiers discover Greenhaven. That cannot happen." Alexander said nothing more as if he had to bite down on the next words he might speak so that they would not come screaming out of his throat. He tried to smile, saying nothing, and seemed to catch his breath. "So we must stop him. It was why the Dryn were eager to back you in the first place. In the hope that someday they could be more like the Montmorin. Accepted by the Kianan."

"And my family has strong ties to the Montmorin."

"That is true. It was your family who reunited the Kianan and the Montmorin. It is your family who stands the best chance of gaining acceptance for the Dryn. They need- we need you, Tahrl. Your connections."

"You don't need me."

"Yes, we do."

"I am not my connections."

"You misunderstand. You are the only one who has spoken for the dragons in time out of mind. Yes, the dragons. If you sponsor the dragons- get your family and the Montmorin to listen- we can turn the Kianan. Stop Vemarian."

"I tried once before."

"That is why it must be you. Listen to me. We are not looking to convert the Kianan. There are many who still speak with venom about the Montmorin. We only need to stop Vemarian. We will not move until we have proof of his actions. His crimes."

"What proof? You know how well my research and findings were taken. What proof will turn the Kianan? For that matter, why do you deny the truth of your eyes? Edgewood was attacked. So let us assume that everything I know is wrong. Why do you believe the dragons are innocent?"

"Because I have seen them."

"Seen who?"

"Dragons. In the mountains. The deep mountains. They are there. Flying far overhead. I have never been close to them. Never spoken with them. But they are there. Ignoring us. Allowing us passage. They do not harm us. Do not attack. Do not rage. In the deep mountains, the dragons are peaceful."

"In the mountains," Tahrl whispered the words, sliding to the forest floor, leaning against a tree, watching his friend. There was a smile both timid and blissful touching the edge of Alexander's lips, and there was a spark of sunshine and starlight in his dark eyes as if he had seen the forest at the end of time. Tahrl saw the mountains, imagining the forest was not all around them, looking all the way to the deep mountains past Dryn and troglodytes and cavern trolls. He imagined birds only believing that they were not. They were too big, looking as small as feathered stones because of the distance. He saw dragons flying gracefully between clouds and over tall peaks behind his eyes.

"I don't know why they rage," Alexander said quiet as a whisper. "Vemarian is responsible. Somehow. It is poison or charm or magic. I do not know. Locked in the tip of an arrow. Of that, I am almost certain, but I need more."

"The Dryn said you were seeking answers in Windvale."

"The Dryn? You must mean Armada."

"Yes, if that is her name. She never bothered me with such trivial details. You could not find such an arrow? Take such a one as keeper of the arrows?"

"No, they are well hidden. I am not certain of their existence. They are very well protected."

"That is a problem. What is to be done then?"

"That is why you are here."

"I see," Tahrl said, having to bite down on his lip so that the blood would not gush from his mouth. He tried to breathe, feeling the flames in his throat, and he heard the memory and echo of laughter following him through the halls of the Ivory Tower. He remembered the touch of the cold past midnight as he had followed a path that few knew that took him to the edge of the castle and then he had been out beneath the stars, walking through the dark, listening to the passage of his feet over stone streets.

"Tahrl, you know more than anyone about the dragons. You can help me. We must understand them. Approach them. Reach them. Turn the Kianan."

"Reach them? Who? The Kianan will not listen. My family will be destroyed if they stand against Vemarian, saying that the dragons do not rage. Everything we have gained from the Montmorin gone."

"There is a way."

"Except you don't know what it is."

"I have an idea. The beginnings of a way." Alexander leaned away from the tree, talking with his fingers, moving as if he knew that he was crazy. "To reach the Kianan, we must first reach the dragons."

"Are you mad!" Tahrl was standing without knowing how he had reached his feet, standing before Alexander who did not flinch away from him, matching his eyes. He felt dizzy, wanting to sit, but he could not move as words and ideas turned and swirled before his eyes desperate to avoid capture or be pinned down. "After we contact the dragons, you want to bring more members of my family into the mountains. My family and the Montmorin to meet our dragons. Let the rumors of an alliance spread." Tahrl tried to laugh as the words refused to take shape on his tongue, and he felt the wind shake and toss him through the sky. Alexander said nothing. "Such an insane idea might work if only we had the time. If only Vemarian's soldiers did not patrol the mountains, infecting dragons with rage. If only there were no troglodytes or cavern trolls. Yes, it might work. What am I saying? It would never work."

"The dragons themselves may be the only proof we have."

"The dragons themselves are the only proof we can never use. If we can discredit Vemarian, we might delay the Crusade. We will not change any minds."

"I am not hoping to change minds. I want only time. Give me time enough and I will change the world."

"So," Tahrl said, trying to laugh, choking on the sound even as it tried to escape from between his lips, feeling the world rush beneath his feet and the storm take the forest in a fury of smoke and flame. He sat back before his friend, feeling his legs quake, leaning against the tree so that he would not fall. "This is too much." It had only been that morning that a sound at his door had pulled him from sleep and he had found Alexander standing there. It had only been that morning that he had left what little remained of the world he knew behind. "What are we waiting for? The mountains will grow bored and leave us before nightfall."

"You are right, Tahrl, it is so much to take in all at once. For that I am sorry. To leave you naked before the ravaging dragon, I am sorry. I did not plan for this. Did not expect Vemarian's play. We are waiting for the others to join us. Speaking of which. How long were you going to hang back and listen? You may as well join us, Armada."

Tahrl stood, backing away from Alexander, looking all about the forest and dark trees, and found two Dryn standing there, walking toward them, appearing from between trees as if they had not been hidden. He recognized the one Dryn from their encounters in the wood and the red ax she held once more. The other was a mystery, standing much taller than Alexander's daughter, and Tahrl had thought Armada to be tall. The stranger was a giant with red hair to match Alexander's daughter, but they did not have the look of sisters. They were infinitely quiet as they came to stand beside Alexander, disturbing the forest and the trees not at all as they passed.

"We did not wish to intrude," Alexander's daughter said, lowering the ax, touching it to the earth and resting her hands upon it. "I know you have not seen this Kianan in years."

"Your words are thoughtfully said," Alexander replied. "I might even believe them if I did not know that you had been listening this whole time. Privacy indeed." She said nothing. Alexander took his time, climbing to his feet, standing so small before his daughter. "I understand that you have already introduced yourself."

"I did nothing of the kind."

"Of course, you only spoke with Tahrl. Did not say who you were. How thoughtless of me. Armada," he said this last to Tahrl, touching his hand to his daughter's shoulder. "And Juliana. Chrystal would be in the mountains if I remember correctly."

Tahrl said nothing, taking another slow step away from the Dryn, feeling his heart race, watching the two tall women look his way as if he were a child. He remembered the shadow of the Dryn pressing over him in the dark of the wood with the faint echoes of the forest troll's screams fading from his mind, and he remembered how lush the wood had smelled as she had touched him, sniffing his face, brushing against him. He raised a hand to his cheek, feeling it tingle from the memory of her tongue, and he could not move, trying to step away. The Dryn only watched him, saying nothing as Alexander moved between them as if he would continue the trek to Greenhaven without looking back to see if he was followed.

"Do not worry, Tahrl," Alexander said, turning, walking back to his side. "They are next to harmless as long as you are with me."

He looked to Alexander, watching him hard as if he were seeing his friend for the first time.

"You said they might not let me leave."

"That is a possibility. No, it will not come to that. I see I am disturbing you. You are among friends, Tahrl. We need you. Nothing bad will happen to you."

"How can you," he tried to say, losing his breath on the last word.

"I warned you," Alexander's daughter said.

"Yes, thank you, Armada," Alexander said, turning to look at her. "I remember your thoughts on the subject. It could not be helped. We shall muddle along as best we can. We should go, Tahrl, and continue our journey to Greenhaven."

"Where I will be left behind." He remembered how Armada had touched him; sitting astride him with her hips resting against his in the dark. "What is to become of me while you are off chasing dragons?"

"You will be safe."

"Until you have need of me."

"It's not like that. I don't use people. Out among the Kianan, they will begin to remember what you said about the dragons. They will blame you for the attack on Edgewood. Maybe if they kill you, there will be no more violence."

"What reason do I have to believe that I will be safe?"

"Enough of this," Armada said. "Listen to me, Kianan. Who said you have a choice?"

"Armada," Alexander said but quietly.

"You entered the forest, knowing there was danger, knowing there were Dryn. You entered my forest. You are mine."

Dryn took children; it was the only thing he knew, and this one, Armada, had confirmed it, standing before him without a trace of guilt or regret in her voice. Anyone who entered the forest was their prey, and speaking to him, she had seemed almost proud of the grief she had caused for the wives who no longer had husbands and the children who would never more see their fathers. The Dryn probably did not see it that way. There was no way to know what they thought or know what was done with the lost men and children. They were made slaves, as the Dryn had once been slaves.

After the end of the Crusade against the dragons, the Kianan had entered the forest and the mountains beyond. These heroes of the Crusade took the Dryn as their prize and reward. The Kianan had raised camps and towers so that they might search for precious metals and gold in the far hills and deep mountains, and they discovered other creatures that had been kept in check by the fallen protectors of the Kianan. Troglodytes and cavern trolls grew bold, harassing the Kianan, taking the camps slowly and toppling the towers. The mountains were lost. The last Kianan surrendered the mountains with nothing more than the ragged clothes on their backs, and the abandoned Dryn found their way back to the forest.

Kianan soldiers held to the edge of the mountains, watching for monsters, troglodytes, graths and cavern trolls. The dragons forgotten until a fragment of nightmare had fallen from the sky, and the town of Edgewood had been ravaged and all but destroyed. The soldiers watched. The townsfolk cowered, and then they learned what Tahrl had once been.

Reaching Edgewood, the soldiers would ask for him, wanting him as Vemarian had ordered them to take him, and the townsfolk would search. They would hunt, and they would look for him. They would go to his small house at the very edge of the forest, and they would search, savaging his home as the town had been savaged, knowing he was guilty because he had once spoken kind words of the Wraths and Wraiths.

"What choice do I have?" Tahrl said, feeling the Kianan take him, feeling the rope cut and his wrists burn, and finding peace, as the land grew dark and the world died.

"There, you see?" Armada said, turning, walking, lifting the red axe once more to her shoulder. "We should begin."

Alexander said nothing, watching Tahrl, stretching out fingers as if he might touch him or rest a comforting hand on his shoulder. There was no pain. There was no touch of cords to bind his wrists or feet; blade to touch his skin or lash to scar his back. There was nothing. He followed Alexander when his friend turned and began to walk through the wood. The leaves and branches reached for him, touching him, but he did not feel them.

They stopped at last, preparing to camp when the forest grew dark, and the Dryn Armada created a fire, which cast its red and flickering light all about them and teased them with its edge of shadow. Armada and Juliana produced smoked featherhare and hearth bread from their packs, and sour apples were heated before the flames.

Putting aside food at last, Alexander took his flute from his pack, pulling it from among its wrappings and coverings, and the flute flashed silver as the moon or soft stars in Alexander's hands, returning the glow of the flames. The Dryn grew still; food forgotten, and Tahrl had eyes only for the silver flute as Alexander raised it to his lips. The song was bittersweet as Alexander began to play, touching at the heart with mournful melodies that graced the wind and turned long fingers that reached achingly for the glittering stars in the soft sky.

It had been some three years since he had last heard such music, and he remembered the long hall of the Ivory Tower, standing at the far back half hidden by a curtain. The time had long since passed that he could have stood openly in that hall even with the King's protection. He remembered gentle music that soared to his ear as if no distance separated him from the music maker, and he remembered how all trouble and care had been lifted from his shoulders as long as that sound should last. Alexander had found him later; the last strands and echoes still whispered through the halls as if Alexander had only just lowered the flute from his lips. They had talked so long into the night that it could almost be called morning, and Alexander had been much concerned that Tahrl no longer had a place at the King's ear. Alexander had told him that he was much older than he looked, and Tahrl had remembered the first time he had heard his friend perform.

Tahrl remembered the feasting halls of the Montmorin when he had been little more than a child sitting with his parents. He remembered a musician accompanying the Montmorin music makers and playing a flute all of silver instead of wood. It had fascinated him how the flute had sparkled and glowed so much like a star in the musician's hands. The music had been quick and fast, pulling the Montmorin from their tables and benches so that they would spin and dance, and the music had been full of life and love and hope. Sitting with Alexander in the Ivory Tower, he had remembered that long ago hall with the Montmorin, and he had remembered the silver flute as if it had been tucked away in some special corner of his memory from which it could be savored without fear of being stolen.

In the secret halls of the Ivory Tower long after the concert had drifted into the dark, Alexander had told him how he had once fled from the halls of the great wizards. They had found Alexander's words and ideas no longer to their liking, and they had wanted him to conform to their ways and to behave in a manner befitting his wizardly stature. Alexander had left him then with the morning growing all around them, and Tahrl had not seen him again until he had found the minstrel standing at his door in the small town of Edgewood. It had been some three years since he had last heard such music as Alexander could coax from the sliver of starlight in his hands, and he felt the swirl of soft echoes take him, pulling at him with their melancholy mystery.

Tahrl was on his feet, having stood so quickly that he had forgotten to breath, and the chill night air burned, flashing through his chest. There was silence; the music falling away all at once as if the last surprised and half-finished note had been sliced from the root of the sky. He stood with the fire at his back, and then he was walking, moving through the wood and the dark as if his only purpose in life was to leave the light and warmth of the silver music far behind him. He stumbled, seeing nothing in the dark, hearing the whispers of soft music echo behind his ears and heart and mind. He stumbled again and fell, feeling the world lurch, feeling the forest pull at him, and then he was on his knees with the breath locked in his throat. Holding his arms to his chest as if he had been split down the middle and he was struggling desperately to prevent the blood from spilling upon the forest's floor, he shivered, and then he tried to scream. No words fled from his mouth to leap from tree to tree until they had escaped the forest to find refuge beneath the stars. He tried to bite through words that would not form but only flood his mouth as if they hoped to drown him with their stubbornness and refusal to yield voice or sound.

He could not move, shivering in the dark with his arms wrapped to his chest, resting against the forest's floor, and he remembered leaving the music behind. There was a touch to his shoulder in the forest in the dark, and he did not need to look to know that Alexander was beside him. He could not find the strength to raise his face from his hands and look through the dark for the friend he had not seen in some three years and maybe never known.

"Armada would say that I waited too long," Alexander said. "That I should have approached you as soon as you found your way to Edgewood. I disagree. I think that I did not wait long enough or give you time enough to grieve. It is a point that my daughter and I could argue from here until the end of time never divining the right answer."

Tahrl felt the breath explode from his chest as if his heart had been ripped from him, and he was surprised that blood did not flow freely between his fingers or warm his hands.

"When I fled from the wizards, renouncing my power, I did not know what I was forsaking. Everything was gone. Everything was left behind. All that I had ever been and all that I had ever known were gone. I didn't even know it. I mean I knew that I had abandoned my past. I did not realize what that meant. It took a very long time to accept what I had done, striking in both odd and little ways. The students would laugh. I would sit in the autumn and listen to the students laugh. Nevermore. It was strange; waking one morning looking forward to autumn laughter and realizing that there was only silence."

Tahrl felt his arms uncurl, and he tried to sit back, finding Alexander resting against a tree before him with his eyes closed as if he walked through the distant past.

"I came here. When I fled from the wizards, I did not know where to go so I came here. Teresa found me. You will remember her as Amalthea. She is the governess of Greenhaven. She found me wandering lost in the wood. I was afraid to face her, you see. I told her what I had done, and she said it was enough for a beginning. She did not laugh. I didn't think it was funny so I was glad that she did not laugh."

"And then what?" Tahrl said, feeling the words crack and burn in his throat even as they passed his lips.

"I learned of the world that existed beyond the doors of wizardry and magic. Oh, not all at once. There was much that needed healing, and there were many false starts. I couldn't tell you when I first took up this flute. I couldn't tell you when Teresa and I- when we found- when friendship became more than simple friendship. I could not tell you. Do not ask."

"I will not be a prisoner."

"No, you will not be. I want you safe. If I could, I would send you to Hath Malor and the Earlinstien Mountains, but there is not the time or the means to get you there. Teresa will keep an eye on you. You will speak with dragons."

"That is a thought which renders all grief bearable."

"Good."