Veyran's First Fire

On the morning of his tenth birthday, as the Hollow Sky counted birthdays, Veyran set the lake on fire.

It was not meant to be a dramatic occasion. Solaia had planned it for weeks. The dragons had gathered cakes of honey and sun-dried berries, and the Hollowkin had woven him a cloak of pale gray thread, and the old bronze female had promised that on this day, as was the custom for the young of the Sky, he would stand on the shore at dawn and call his first fire. It was a gentle rite. The dragons did it with their children as humans teach theirs to swim: a quiet word, a hand on the shoulder, a spark no bigger than a candle flame, coaxed into the cold air to catch and wink and fade.

She stood beside him in the pearl light, with her hand on his shoulder. He was tall for ten. He had his father's length of bone and none of his father's ease; he stood rigid, with his fists clenched at his sides and his wings pressed so tight against his spine that they trembled. His violet eyes were fixed on the water. Behind them, in a half-circle on the stones, forty dragons waited in utter silence.

"Breathe," she said softly.

"I am."

"Slower. In the Tongue. The way I showed you."

"I know the way." He swallowed. "I just don't want it to hurt anyone."

"It won't."

"What if it does?"

"Then I'll be here," said Solaia, "and I'll fix it."

He shut his eyes. His lips moved. She heard the first syllables of the old words go out of him, low and shaking, the call of the White Fire that she had taught him word by word, evening after evening, for six years: the summoning, the welcome, the little courtesy one pays to a flame before asking it to come. She felt it answer. A spark kindled in the air above the water, pale and quivering, a drop of light.

"Good," she breathed. "Good. That's it. Now let it—"

Something else woke.

She felt it before she saw it. A cold. A deep, stirring chill in the air beside her, as if a door had been opened in a wall she had not known was there. The spark above the lake shivered. It darkened at the heart. A thread of black wound through the white, slow and curling, as ink winds through milk.

"Veyran. Stop."

"I can't—"

"Close your hand! Close it!"

"I can't!"

His eyes flew open.

They were no longer violet. They were black, and gold, and white, three colors running through each other like oil on water, and the pupils had gone to hairlines. His wings snapped out to their full width. A sound came from him that she had never heard, high and thin and wild, and the spark above the lake went off like a star.

…

It was purple.

That was what she saw, in the first instant, blind with the flash. A vast column of violet-black fire, roaring up out of the water with a shriek that split the dawn. It did not burn as the White Fire burned. It did not warm. It drank. It tore the lake open to its bed, boiling, in a single heartbeat, and the steam went up in a cloud that blotted out the sky. She was thrown flat. She hit the stones on her back with the breath knocked out of her and rolled, shrieking his name, her arms over her head.

"Veyran! Veyran!"

The fire swept over her. She felt it pass, a cold hand through her hair. It did not touch her. It went on, out over the shingle, over the waiting ranks of the dragons. She heard them cry out. She heard the thunder of wings as they scattered, and a roar, and a scream.

And then, very suddenly, it was over.

The column fell in on itself. The steam parted. In the silence, in the thin drifting mist, she lifted her head from the stones and saw her son standing at the edge of the empty lakebed with his hands hanging at his sides, and his face blank with shock, and ten paces from him a pile of ash.

It was large. It was the size of a barn. It was the shape, still, of a creature lying on its side, with the long curve of a neck and the stump of a horn, and a milky eye that gazed up at the sky.

"No," said Solaia.

She was on her feet. She did not remember rising. She crossed the stones in six strides and went down on her knees in the ash and put her hands on the great soft gray drift of it, which was still warm. It was fine as flour. It ran through her fingers. It smelled of honey and old leaves.

"Oh, no," she said. "No. Not her. Please, not her."

The old bronze dragon had been standing in the front of the circle. She had been at the lake's edge since before dawn. She had bowed to the boy when he came, she had murmured the blessing of the Sky, and she had been closer to him than any of the others, close enough to put a gentle wing around him if the fire went wrong.

Mother, said a voice, from far away.

It was a small thin whisper. It came from the heart of the ash. For an instant Solaia saw her: a flicker of bronze in the gray, the shape of a dragon curled on her side, one milky eye turned toward the sky.

Child, said the dying dragon. Do not... be afraid. It is not... his...

"Don't speak. Don't. I can—"

He is... so young.

"I can fix it!" She was sobbing. She dug her hands into the ash. "I can fix it. I've done it before. I brought Kieran back in the snow. I can—"

She stopped.

She had said the name. She had said it without thinking, in the heat of her despair, out loud in the Void, and the Void took it. She felt it go. She felt it leave her like breath, and the white flame that had been rising in her palms flickered, and the warm sweet knowledge went out of her heart with a soft sigh. It was a face. A voice. A man with gray eyes, in snow.

She did not know who she had been talking about.

Little one, whispered the bronze dragon. It is... all right.

The ash settled.

The warmth went out of it, slowly, as it went out of a hearth. A last pale curl of smoke rose from the heap, and drifted up into the blue, and was gone. There was no sound. There was only the faint far crying of a young dragon somewhere on the cliffs and the soft drip of water from the stones.

She knelt in the remains of her friend with her hands in the ash, and her mind, for a long moment, entirely white.

…

"Mama."

His voice was very small.

She did not turn. She could not. She heard his bare feet on the stones, uncertain, slow. She heard them stop behind her.

"Mama. I didn't mean to."

"I know."

"I didn't. I didn't. It just— it came." His voice cracked. "I said the words. I said them right. It was the white one. I swear it was. And then it went all dark and I couldn't make it stop and I could feel it eating, Mama, I could feel it eating her, and it felt..."

He stopped.

She turned.

He was standing with his arms wrapped around himself, shaking from head to foot, his wings drooping behind him like a wet cloak. His face was gray. There were tear-tracks in the soot on his cheeks. But it was the look in his eyes that stopped her: a bright, horrified, dazed expression, the look of a child who has woken in the night to find that he has done something unforgivable and cannot stop being glad.

"It felt good," he whispered.

She went to him.

She did not know what else to do. She took him in her arms, ash and all, and held him as hard as she could, and he clung to her with his face in her shoulder and shuddered. The other dragons had drawn back. They stood at a distance, silent, vast, with their heads bowed. Not one of them spoke. Not one of them looked at the child with anything but a terrible pity.

"It's all right," she said.

"It isn't."

"It will be."

"You're lying."

"I know I am." She pressed her cheek to his hair. "I'm going to make it true."

"How?"

"I don't know yet."

He pulled back. He looked up at her, and his face was so young, and so exactly the face of a man she could not name, that her heart turned over in her chest. The gray in his pupils had spread. It swam in the violet like smoke.

"Mama," he said. "Am I the child of a killer?"

Her breath stopped.

"What?"

"The gray people say it. Not to me. I heard them, last winter, in the dark." His voice was perfectly steady now, perfectly flat. "They said the Emperor in the north is a monster. They said he burns cities. They said he cannot die. And they said I have his eyes."

"They shouldn't have—"

"It's true, isn't it?"

She opened her mouth to lie.

It would have been so easy. It was the thing she had done before. She could say no, and never, and those are only stories, and she could hold him and rock him and tell him he was hers alone. She could feel the words, round and smooth, ready on her tongue.

You must tell him, said the old bronze dragon, in her memory, the part that is true.

She looked at the ash on her hands. She looked at the empty lakebed, and the thin gray drift, and the small bare feet in it.

"Yes," said Solaia. "It's true."

"Is he my father?"

"Yes."

"Is he a killer?"

"I don't know," she said. "I don't remember. But he is the man who loved me, once. I think he loved me more than he knew how to say. And I think he did a terrible thing, and then a brave one, and then he was left alone with what was in him." She drew a shaky breath. "And I left him there. And I have never forgiven myself."

Veyran stared at her.

"Then it isn't true," he said slowly. "What you told me. That he was dead."

"No."

"You lied."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because I was afraid you'd look at me like that," said Solaia, and found that she was crying, "when you knew."

He did not answer.

He stood in the lakebed in the pearl light, with his small hands slowly unclenching, and his wings sinking, one inch at a time, until they lay folded at his back. Then, to her surprise, he stepped forward and put his arms round her waist and laid his head against her ribs.

"I'm not looking at you like that," he said into her dress.

"No."

"I'm looking at you like you're my mother."

She wept into his hair.

They stayed there for a long time. And the dragons watched, and the ash drifted, and the water, from somewhere deep under the earth, began slowly to seep back into the lake.