What Dragons Are

The Emperor came down the long passage between the stalls like a winter storm walking.

He was alone. No guards, no Crane, no cloak of courtiers. Only that tall black figure in a plain coat, hair unbound, his boots striking the iron grating in a slow, even rhythm that sent the dragons shrinking back into their pens. Every head dropped as he passed. Even the old male with the white-rimmed eyes, who had been bold enough to stare at her a moment before, put his snout in the straw.

Kieran stopped ten paces from them.

He looked at Brannoch, who had gone the color of tallow. He looked at Berylla, who did not so much as blink. And then, finally, with the slow and deliberate attention of a man opening a letter he suspects will be bad news, he looked at Solaia.

"I gave you the palace," he said.

"The Aerie is part of the palace."

"It is at the extreme northern edge of the palace, and it is crawling with the Church's inspectors. I should think the distinction is clear."

"I didn't see any inspectors."

"They arrive in the morning. As I am told you are aware." His gaze dropped, very slightly, to her collar. "What have you got in your scarf, Solaia?"

She considered lying. She considered it for approximately one second.

The scarf sneezed.

A small gray snout poked out of the neck of her gown, blinking sleepily, and let out a cloud of smoke about the size of a thimble. Kieran's expression did not change. But Brannoch, beside him, made a sound like a man swallowing a bone.

"It has a cold," Solaia said.

"I see."

"It's a lapdog."

"It is the Black Mother's runt, which the Church has marked for the cull." The ash-gray eyes did not move from her face. "Dragonwarden. Is that what I'm looking at?"

Brannoch's mouth opened. Shut. Worked.

"No, Majesty," said the old soldier, with enormous dignity. "That one died of fever in the night."

A long pause.

"How tragic," said Kieran.

"Aye, Majesty. Very sad."

"I trust you'll bury it in the yard."

"At once, Majesty."

"Good." The Emperor turned back to her. There was something in his face she could not read, a dry, tired, helpless thing, rather like the expression of a man who has just lost a game of chess to a child and is deciding whether to be offended. "It will not leave your rooms. If it bites a courtier, you will pay for the courtier. And if it sets fire to my palace, I shall have it made into a hat."

"It can't set fire to anything. It doesn't breathe fire."

"Then you have gotten the single most useless dragon in the realm." He shifted his gaze to the hatchling, which was now attempting to eat the corner of her sleeve. "Congratulations."

She grinned. She could not help it. And for an instant, impossibly, something in his shoulders eased, and the corner of his mouth moved in answer, and the old gray cavern seemed to hold its breath.

Then he looked away, and the moment was gone.

"Walk with me," said Kieran. "Dragonwarden, you will tell the lady what she wants to know. I should like to hear how much the Church has taught you to say."

…

They went down through the tiers together, and the old man talked.

He did it carefully. She understood that quickly. Every sentence came wrapped in the Church's own phrases, a so the Blessed Order teaches here, a the Plague-Years record there, like a man carrying something fragile through a room full of watchers. But behind the careful words was something else, a flicker of fierce, stubborn affection that he could not quite hide, and under the cold eye of the Emperor, he seemed to talk faster and faster, as if the story had been waiting thirty years for someone to ask.

"The Blood-Reds are the war-breed, my lady. They're the largest the Church allows. Bred for the fire, the weight, the temper. They live fifty years, sixty. A hundred if they're lucky and no one gets them killed." He pointed with his hook. "Down there, the Frost Wyrms. Wingless. Wild. They come out of the northern ice, and no collar will hold them, so we don't try. And over there, the little ones, the storm-drakes. Fast, and mean, and good for scouting."

"And the big ones? The ones in the mural?"

"The Sky Dragons." He glanced, once, at the Emperor. Kieran did not react. "The Church says they never existed, my lady. A story. A fiction of the Plague-Years to frighten children."

"But?"

"But the old border-folk will tell you different." The words came out very low. "They say there were three kinds, once. Three bloodlines, each with three hearts, so large a man could walk into the mouth of one and not touch its teeth. They say they lived a thousand years, five thousand. And they say, my lady, that there were seven of them. Seven Sky Thrones, in the old world. Seven kingdoms of dragons and the people who rode them."

Seven. The word echoed.

"Which was the greatest?" she heard herself ask.

He did not answer at once.

"Vraelyra," said Brannoch Hale, at last, the way a man says the name of a dead child. "The first. The oldest. They say it stood at the roof of the world, and its Queen could speak to every dragon alive."

Kieran stopped walking.

It was a small thing. A hitch, a half-beat. But the Dragonwarden heard it too, and the color drained out of his face.

"Go on," said the Emperor, very softly.

"I only mean, Majesty, it's a tale. A tavern story. I don't—"

"Go on."

"They say they chose," said the old man hoarsely. "That's all. Before the collars. A dragon didn't carry a rider because it was told to. It chose one, out of all the world, and the two of them were bound for life. They say it was the only true love there ever was in the world, and the only kind that never turned." His voice cracked. "That's what a collar is, Majesty. It's a lie about that. It's a way of making the thing without the choosing."

There was a long, terrible silence.

Kieran's face was perfectly calm. But Solaia, standing close enough to feel the faint chill coming off him, saw the pulse jump in his throat, once, and then very slowly settle.

"That," said the Emperor, "is the most dangerous thing I have heard anyone say in this palace in years."

Brannoch bowed his head.

"Fortunately," said Kieran, "I was not listening."

…

The great stall lay at the very end of the cavern, behind a pair of iron doors twenty feet high.

They opened on a chamber of raw rock, carved into the cliff face so that one whole wall stood open to the sky, barred with thick black chains. A cold white light fell through the bars. In the middle of the stone floor, on a bed of straw the size of a barn, lay Gron.

He had not eaten in three days. She could see it in the hollows behind the great ribs and the dullness of the scarlet hide. A thick silver collar circled his neck, its red glow throbbing. Chains ran from it to the walls, from his wings to the floor, from his four huge ankles to rings sunk deep in the stone. His head lay on his forelegs. But when the doors opened, the great golden eyes lifted, and fixed on her, and the vast body began, very slowly, to rise.

"Gron," said Kieran. "Down."

The collar flared.

It was an ugly sound. A groan, deep and wounded, that came from the bottom of the beast's chest and shook the floor. The great head twisted away from her, toward the chain, and the scarlet wings thrashed, and a link as thick as a man's thigh groaned against its ring. But the eyes did not leave her. They were wide, and gold, and wet, and in them was a longing so naked and unashamed that she felt it like a hand around her throat.

Go to her. Go to her. Please.

"I said down."

Kieran pressed his palm flat against the air, and the Dark Magic went out of him like a whip. The collar blazed. Gron screamed. It was a sound she would remember until she died, high and raw and thin, a sound no creature that size should have been able to make, and the whole stall rattled with the thrashing of the great body.

"Stop it," said Solaia.

"He is disobedient."

"Stop it."

"It is the only language he understands." The Emperor's voice was perfectly level. But there was a muscle jumping in his jaw, and his hand, held out in front of him, was trembling very slightly, and she understood with a flash of terrible clarity that the pain was running both ways. That every time the collar burned the dragon, some thin echo of it burned the man who held the other end. "He has been refusing food since the Tower. He pulls at the chains. If he breaks them, he will kill people. This is not cruelty, Solaia. It is arithmetic."

"It's pain."

"It is the same thing."

"It isn't." She was already moving. She did not remember deciding. She stepped between the Emperor and the dragon, her back to the great golden eyes, and faced him with her hands at her sides. "He's not disobeying you because he's wild. He's disobeying you because he hurts, and every time you make it worse, he hurts more, and he's trying to tell you."

"A dragon cannot tell anyone anything."

"Then you're deaf."

Kieran stared at her.

She did not look away. Her heart was going like a hammer. The little gray hatchling had gone rigid against her neck. But her voice, when it came, was steady, and low, and so cold that she scarcely recognized it as her own.

"Take your hand off it."

For one frozen heartbeat, nothing moved.

Then he lowered his arm.

The red light in the collar died down to a sullen glow. Gron collapsed on the straw with a long, shuddering moan and lay panting, ribs heaving, tongue lolling between his teeth. Solaia turned. She went to him, up the heap of straw, across the great trembling flank, and knelt in front of the enormous head.

It was larger than a carriage. The scales were rough and warm as sunbaked brick, and a hot, sour breath rolled over her face. The golden eye, a single gleaming wet pool as wide as her torso, rolled toward her.

You came, said the dragon, without any words.

"I'm here," she whispered. And then, in the low, strange tongue that was not hers, the language that came up out of her like water out of a spring: I'm here. I'm here. Rest.

Gron closed his eyes.

She laid her hand against his jaw, just above the silver collar. And her palm began to glow.

It was not a great light. A thin pale shimmer, no brighter than moonlight on ice, that trickled out of her skin and slid across the scarlet scales and ran, like water finding a crack, along the edge of the silver band. The metal hissed. The sullen red glow flickered. Died.

For three long heartbeats, the Soul-Chain around the Blood-Red Dragon's throat was cold.

Behind her, Berylla drew a sharp breath. Brannoch fell to his knees.

And Gron, the most feared beast in the Ice Kingdom, the scourge of the border and the terror of three provinces, let out a long, long sigh, and shed a single tear the size of a man's fist, which rolled down the great scaled cheek and hissed on the stone.

"Solaia," said Kieran.

His voice was strange. She did not turn.

"Take your hand away."

"He's not in pain."

"I know. I can feel that he isn't." It was very quiet. "Take your hand away. Now."

There was something in his tone that made her obey.

The pale light faded. The red returned, a dull thread, and the collar's faint glow crept back to life. Gron did not stir. But the golden eye opened a slit and fixed on her, once, and in it was something so profound and so humbled that she had to look away.

When she slid down from the great flank, the Emperor was waiting at the foot of it.

He was very pale. The black lines on the backs of his hands had not returned, but his face was drawn, and his eyes had a bright, harried look she had not seen before. He took her by the elbow, hard. Not painfully. But hard.

"You will not do that again."

"Why not?"

"Because the collars are not only iron, Solaia." He spoke low and fast, his mouth almost at her ear. "They are forged with the Church's holy fire. Every one of them is tied, by a thread, to the Cathedral. A mage in the high tower feels every flicker. Every time a dragon dies, every time a bond is broken, they know. Do you understand what I am telling you?"

Her blood went cold.

"They felt it," she said.

"They will have felt it."

High in the wall of the stall, above the iron chains, a thin silver line had appeared in the rock. It was no thicker than a hair. It ran up the stone like a crack in glass, up and up, toward the barred sky, and she could see a faint white light moving along it, bright as a drawn wire, rushing south toward the distant spires of the Cathedral at a speed no living thing could match.

Somewhere very far away, something had just opened its eyes.