Year of Miracles, page 5
part #1 of Collected Stories of the Old Races Series
So too did Ellu, landing atop both of them with her full weight. Jessel was driven downward, on top of Nallu, whose protesting whimper might have been a howl had she any breath left to make one with. Ellu's paws wrapped around Jessel's chest to hold on as her jaws closed at the back of his neck. Thick neck, heavier and stronger than any normal beast she'd ever hunted, but his scream of rage bought Nallu the moment she needed. She flashed back to her jaguar form and struck, opening Jessel's throat and ending his scream. Ellu crunched her jaws tighter, shaking his foul form until the bones cracked, but when she would let go, Nallu hissed a denial and clamped her own jaws onto his shoulder, pulling. They braced themselves against the earth, hauling the monster into pieces, and only when he lay dismembered did Nallu collapse, falling back into her human shape.
A bite leaked at her shoulder, not deep, but unhealed; that should not have happened. Ellu stepped forward to lick it and received a belt across the cheek for her efforts, as strong a blow as any full-grown cat might give, for all that Nallu lay wheezing in human form. "Don't lick it. It's full of his poison."
Ellu shifted, shaking off the blow, and ended speechless, gazing at the wound. Nallu chuckled dryly, low sound that might have come from her other form, then sat up in the muck of mud and blood to roll the damaged shoulder, wincing. "He had me. You saved me. You're not even supposed to be here."
"Did I also fill you with his sickness?"
Nallu shrugged her other shoulder and glanced at the big moon. "If I were human, yes. They can pass it through biting, though almost none of the inflicted survive. But I have magic in me already, and am born to skinchanging. I suppose we'll see in a month. You'll bind me. If I go mad, you'll slay me."
"I'm your mother!"
"And you came after me, so the duty will fall to you." Nallu rose carefully. "I want water to clean this. Salt water, I think. It feels right. We're not more than half a day's walk from the shore." As they walked Nallu told the story of Merro and Adiff, the latter of whom she had slain easily; his sorrow over Merro's death had left him too angry to fight well, and even Jessel had been unable to keep him from running to his death underneath Nallu's claws. "Jessel," she said in a rough and rueful tone, "Jessel was harder. Thank you."
"Thank me if the sickness isn't in you."
"I'll thank you anyway," Nallu said, and they went to the water. Nallu had never seen it before, not the whole of an ocean; Ellu's heart broke to see it, and yet she could do nothing other than laugh when her cat-born daughter curled a lip and touched the rolling surf as though it might be dangerous as a snake. But in time Nallu knelt in it, washing the wound. Ellu helped, and when Nallu retreated to the safety of shore, Ellu struck off into the waves, swimming strongly, in love with the buoyancy and taste of the sea. She returned only reluctantly, when Nallu rose a second time to come into the water herself, scrubbing her shoulder with a mixture of pain and relief. "It hurts, but in a clean way," she said, and Ellu thought that was how returning to the ocean felt to her, too.
The wound had seeped and bled and pulsed unforgivingly as they had walked through the forests toward the sea, but by nightfall the blood seemed clearer, a stronger red, and though Nallu washed it mercilessly several times the next day, and the day after that, it began to show signs of healing. Flesh knit back together, full motion returned, and there came a morning when Nallu groaned and rolled over, stretching once, then shifting to her jaguar form for a more luxurious stretch. Ellu froze, watching her, and after a moment so too did Nallu, before her lips pulled back in a cattish grin. They both looked forward to the filling moon with less fear, the, and on the first night of three no madness rose in Nallu, nor on the second, nor on the third and final night. They waited another month, then a third, before Nallu said, "Jessel believed there were others. He could feel them, he said, in the pull of the moon."
"Others? Other skinchangers?"
"Others who had tried skinchanging and had it go awry. Other skinchanged as well, I imagine; you can't be the only ones who struck out in desperation, looking for another way to survive."
Ellu tilted her head, an ear twitching. "Could we not be? It was so extreme, bordering on madness."
"The survival of a species requires madness." Nallu stood, padding some little distance to stare sightlessly at the sea; she had never, despite Ellu's cajoling, come to love the water the way her mother did. "The pride is safe?" She had asked before; asking now needed no real answer, and neither did she wait for one. "We do not have to go back. Not right now."
"You think we should look for others."
Nallu turned her head. "And hunt the moon-changed. That more than the other, I think. Skinchangers can care for themselves, but the moon-changed are dangerous to both us and the humans."
"They're driving us to extinction, Nallu," Ellu murmured, but the reprimand had a smile in it. "Must you save them?"
"They'll drive us even faster if they're certain we're more than tales," Nallu argued, and rolled her shoulders, bones pointing high before relaxing again. "Forget the humans, then. Tell me that the hunt isn't good."
"The hunt is good." Ellu's smile settled more fully, and she rose to meet her daughter on the shore. "Where do we begin?"
"I don't intend to swim across the ocean," Nallu said with a sniff, and so they turned and walked together, to where the land could take them.
ST GEORGE & THE DRAGONS
At the heart of the River Seine, a dragon. Spoiling waters, fed on sheep, but in thrall to maidens fair. Daughters, never wives; a treasure trove, until the daughter is the daughter of a king, and a kingdom is bereft.
A saint with sword and cross: a princess saved, and a dragon slain. He is Quirinus, he was Perseus, Marduk, Tahrun and Thor; and his dragons Cetus, Tiamat, Illuyankas and Jormungandr. He has slain dragons for a thousand years, and will slay them a thousand more.
"He is a menace!" Outrage, rumbling like thunder through caverns near a shore. Well enough, that: there was little thunder to be had in this land, and the roar of a dragon's fury might at least be mistaken for heavy seas. Or they could be if the seas were heavy at all, but beyond the cavern mouth they lay serene and calm, cerulean skies reflecting on still waters.
"He is a mortal." Insouciance, uncaring; even boredom. Not at all the desired emotions, when the question at hand is the survival of a species. But the water was very blue, a jewel in itself, and there should have been a way to claim it.
"He has murdered one of us!"
"It happens from time to time." Hardly the right answer: new outrage rose from some twenty throats. Janx sighed and turned from the view. Mediterranean blue could neither be equaled nor captured, and the beasts at his back were losing patience. "For the third time, will you not take human form to hold this discussion? How do you think they find us, these dragonslayers? They listen for storms where the sea is calm, they follow stories to cities of gold, they come to where legend claims virgins are sacrificed to mighty wyrms, and there we are, awaiting them in all our ancient, vulnerable glory. Humanity's guise may be distasteful, but it will also save your lives."
He had made the argument countless times over countless years, and it had fallen on countless deaf ears. He, at least, took his own advice: lanky with red hair cropped close to his skull, and a beard too tidy and sharply pointed to meet the approval of Roman matrons. There were, after all, limits: he couldn't bear the thought of his own fine features hidden behind one of the curly monstrosities worn by the wealthy. But details of fashion aside, with his skin warmed to gold by the sun's caressing touch and jade eyes, Janx was by all immediate appearances human. His brethren knew better; they could sense his dragonly mass, shuffled to some unreachable spot until it was needed. That he chose to wear a human shape did nothing to undermine his presence.
But they, all of them, kept to their serpent forms. It had taken months to find caves large enough to hold them when they would not shift, and even so there was sinuous life to the walls as they moved and made minute way for another. They did not, as a whole, bear each other's presences well; dragons were large, and largely solitary because of it.
Large and greedy, and all the more solitary for that. "Virginity," Janx muttered, "is a stupid thing to treasure anyway. It doesn't last, you know."
"Nor do treasure troves." One of the dragons—a young one, no more than twenty or so feet in length, and nearly as blue as the seas outside—shifted the balance in the caves by releasing his dragon form. Two of the much larger, much older dragons slipped into the space the boy had been using, and one gave Janx a baleful look, as though the extra room to stretch was unwelcome.
"Toka." Janx watched the boy come forward, less graceful than he should have been in human form. His beauty distracted from his awkwardness, though: he had hair so black it glimmered blue, and eyes of heated sapphire. Bold child, all things considered: bold to have come at all, when this was tacitly a meeting of elders, and bolder still to side with Janx, who said, "Thank you," with genuine sincerity. "Thank you for seeing sense."
"Sense? Sense to claim treasure doesn't last?" Biru, as large as Janx himself—perhaps larger—and white as snowfields, with shadows gone to glacier blue beneath his scales—spoke for those who had no intention of seeing Janx's point. He had named Quirinus the dragonslayer a menace, and would gladly flatten the foolish child who dared disagree with him.
Coltish in human form or not, Toka was confident enough to face a dragon at least six times his elder with a shrug nearly as insouciant as Janx might offer. "Scrolls burn, gold melts, virgins die, shells shatter, stones crack. Treasures don't last, dragonlord. But we might be able to if we're careful."
Biru thrust his head forward, dwarfing the boy. White whiskers danced on thin streams of smoke, Toka half-immersed by them, but although he would make no more than a mouthful for the older dragon, he stood his ground. Janx lingered on the idea a moment, wondering what would happen if a dragon in dragon form ate a dragon in human form. Reversion, he expected: all the Old Races reverted to their true forms on dying, and a mouthful of brave infant would be a bellyful not even Biru could digest.
The same thought, perhaps, occurred to Biru. He snapped his attention to Janx, pale blue gaze cold enough to take warmth from the Mediterranean air. "Will you let children argue your cause now?"
"It's possible I should have begun with the children." Janx sat, wrapped arms around a drawn-up knee, and knew Biru loathed his casual air as much as the political stance he'd taken. "They might be more adventuresome and less hidebound. But there are so few of them." The last words were soft, so soft that only one of his own kind might have overheard it. Toka, at only a few centuries old, was a rarity, even for a race that bred slowly. There were a dozen or so more his age, but none younger, and that was unusual again, even for a race that bred slowly. Janx beckoned the boy over, letting Toka sit in his shadow before he addressed the ancient white dragon. "How would you have us win, Biru? Things are different now. There are millions of humans, and some may still worship us as gods or divine creatures, but they have the tools now to kill us."
"Not easily."
Exasperated, Janx curled his lip. "Nothing kills the Old Races easily, but we can die. And there are not so many of us—none of us, not just we dragons, but the Old Races as a whole—that we can afford to lose ourselves to idiotic confrontations with mortals. There are reasons we agreed to the laws that govern all of us, or have you forgotten, Biru?"
There was fire in those icy blue depths after all: anger flared in Biru's gleaming eyes, and beside Janx, Toka took a soft breath. He was too young by far—by eons—to remember the council that had convened to decide the fate of the Old Races.
There had been so many of them, then. So many wonderful beings, from the female-dominated harpy tribes to the dragons' sea-serpent cousins. Siryns and gargoyles, djinns and dragons, the slow-shuffling yeti and the shore-dwelling selkie. Even the vampires had come to the table. Of course they had, because Janx was there, and Daisani would never stand for him to have a hand in the shaping of a future when Daisani himself did not. They had met at the southern tip of Africa, peoples from all over the land and seas, in what was to be their last great gathering. No one had quite known that then, but neither had they not known it: otherwise the shyer and less populous races would never have come. It had taken weeks simply to decide who would sit at the table and speak for each race.
Janx had not been chosen.
It would have rankled, had it been a surprise. But even then—even, as if he had not been old, venerable, ancient, by then—even then he was too independent, too unpredictable. Too close with the vampire called Daisani, for all that their relationship was known to be a rivalry. Daisani had been chosen, despite all those things. But then, Daisani called himself the master of his kind, and Janx had never known anyone to dispute that, not in all the years they had been together.
Biru, of course, had been chosen in Janx's place. Stauncher, more conservative, perhaps older, but certainly more ferocious in declaiming human strength and extolling dragonly survival. He had agreed to two laws: no war amongst the Old Races, no telling humans what they really were. But he had put forth the third, and argued for it passionately.
No interbreeding. Not with other Old Races—a dangerous prospect at best, as the half-breed children were new creatures entirely rather than half of one parent and half of the other—and not, most especially, with humans. Purity at all costs.
Even if that cost was extinction.
No wonder, Janx thought sourly. No wonder Biru was so fond of virgins. Purity at all costs. And tender meat, perhaps, but cattle were more filling and didn't scream or argue against their fate. "There have never been enough of us to rival them," he said on a sigh. "There are fewer of us now. We can't win. Playing at being them is our only choice for survival."
"There is sleep." Rabn, another ancient, whose scales seemed dyed by the very spices she treasured. It was said she slept in a bed of saffron, and that she had done so since the last great meeting of dragons. It seemed likely.
And sleep was an option, was always an option, but Janx's nose wrinkled with distaste. Still, he liked Rabn more than he liked Biru—he liked swimming more than he liked Biru, for that matter—and so he tempered his response with politeness. "Even if a council decided we should all sleep, there would be no way to enforce it."
Biru sneered, expression all in his voice; dragonly faces were not meant for such displays. "Nor is there any way to enforce us keeping to a guise of humanity."
"Tell that to Quirinus."
Toka, ill-advisedly, laughed. Biru snapped forward, snake-like strike to assuage his dignity.
There was never, Janx reflected later, any real danger. Not to an infant. Not from Biru, who, for all the poor choices he had made, was truly determined to see his race survive. Not, in truth, from any one dragon to another, because as a whole they took the laws of their kind seriously. No war amongst the Old Races: it was engraved in the gargoyle memories, written in stone as literally as could be.
In the moment, though, there was no consideration for Toka's realistic fate. In the moment, if Janx was to be completely honest—which, to be fair, he rarely was—in the moment, Toka's safety was of monumentally little importance to him. It was the challenge that he responded to: the boy had taken Janx's side, and deserved protection for that bravery. Even that, though, was posturing. Janx had disliked Biru for longer than either of them could remember, and that, that was why he broke his own habitual rule, and transformed.
Toka no doubt took more damage from Janx's transformation than he would have suffered at Biru's whim. Sitting so close to Janx, he was knocked aside by the concussion of mass returning, by the sudden excess of spitting red dragon face to face, nose to nose, flame to flame, with a white behemoth every bit as large as he. The blast of transformation knocked Toka a visible distance across the caves, until his slim human form crashed into Rabn and fell to the ground.
Extraordinarily, every other dragon in the cave slammed into human form, giving the two ancient dragonlords room to fight. Winding, writhing, hissing, they circled one another in the space allowed. Tight circles, red yang and white yin, because even with the others in mortal form, the caves lacked the size necessary for freedom of movement. That was just as well: transforming had been foolish, had thrown down a challenge, and there was no real way to win. They would never fight to the death, and fighting to defeat would humiliate Biru—because Janx never supposed he might lose—and humiliation would be more costly than death. Biru might, through slow patient persuasion, come to see sense, but not if he fought Janx and lost. It would make him not just a rival, but an enemy, for all time.
And time was very long indeed, for dragons. Janx bared his teeth, smoke huffing between them, then grim with self-denial, forced himself back to mortal shape.
Biru went still, a river of frozen ice at the heart of a cave. A solitary dragon winding around a tall red-haired man, and surrounded on all sides by dragons who could hardly be distinguished from humanity. Hardly: like Janx, their colors were saturated, Rabn's hair as orange as her hide, and her skin silt brown. Each of them met Biru's angry gaze, but none of them returned to their dragonly mass. It was not a vote for Janx's path in the way Toka's transformation had been. Instead it was a demand for speech instead of sparring, and Biru, recognizing that, snarled aggravation and finally transformed.
He was startling, in human form. Not an albino; his pale eyes remained blue, not tinted pink, but the whiteness of him was unrelenting. Snowy hair, not so much worn long as unbothered with, and wrinkled skin that might have been Nordic mountains, all white peaks and valleys. Hawked nose, cragged cheeks, long fingers with no suggestion of warm blood running beneath the nails. His skinny frame should have looked fragile and instead warned of a terrible, unrelenting strength. Men made kings of those like Biru, and once, they had made gods of him.
