Gron

Gron died on the thirteenth day after the door, in the afternoon, in the sun, with a goat.

He had not planned it that way. Nobody does. But he had been failing since the morning of the Return, a slow gray ebbing that Solaia had refused to see: the dullness in his scales that deepened day by day, the stiffness in his joints, the way he had begun to lie down in the middle of a sentence. She had told herself it was the cold. She had told herself it was the strangeness of the air, after so long in the Void. She had fed him, and rubbed his aching shoulders with Ashborn liniment, and sat up at night with her head against his flank, and told herself that tomorrow he would be better.

He had never complained once.

On the thirteenth morning, he asked her to take him out into the sun.

…

They went to the high terrace behind the Hall, the one that faced south over the plateau. It was an old paved court with a low wall round it, where the Ashborn dried their washing in summer, and it caught the light from dawn to dusk. A breeze came off the snowfields, cold and clean. The sky was a pale hard blue. There was no cloud.

Gron went to the middle of the paving and lowered himself, a joint at a time, with a long creaking sigh. He lay with his legs folded under him and his neck stretched along the stone, like a cat on a hearth. She sat down beside him, with her back against his shoulder.

Mother, he said. This is a good place.

"It's a lovely place."

I shall like it here. A rumble. There is a goat.

There was. A small spotted nanny had wandered up from the yards and was standing at the edge of the terrace, chewing, regarding the dragon with the bland, incurious eye of her kind. Gron looked back at her. She went on chewing. It seemed to Solaia that something passed between them: a grave, wordless courtesy, the fellow-feeling of two old creatures at the end of a long day.

"I'll fetch you a whole one."

Later.

"You haven't eaten."

I have eaten a great deal. I am quite full. A pause. I think I should like to be quiet, now. Will you sit with me?

"Of course."

Good.

…

The boy came at noon.

He climbed the stair two steps at a time and burst out onto the terrace in a flurry of wings, flushed and breathless, with a bundle of something clutched to his chest. He had been out with the Ashborn boys, learning to throw nets. He stopped short at the sight of the dragon, and the bundle slipped from his arms.

"Gron."

Hello, small one.

"You're— what's wrong? Are you ill?" His voice rose. "Mama, what's wrong with him?"

"Come and sit."

"But—"

"Veyran." She patted the stone beside her. "Please."

He came. He folded down beside her with his wings tucked under him and his eyes on the great gray head, and she saw in his face the dawn of a fear he did not yet have the word for. He reached out a hand and laid it on the dragon's neck, and the scales rippled under his fingers. Gron closed his eyes and gave a long, slow, contented sigh.

You have a good hand, he said. Your father has the same.

Veyran went still.

"You knew him," he said.

For eleven years.

"What was he like?"

I have wondered how I should answer that. The great chest rose and fell. I have thought of it a great deal, in the dark. I think the truest thing I can say is that he was lonely. He was very, very lonely. He did not know it, and he was clever, so he arranged his life so as not to notice. He gave orders. He read reports. He kept the world in order and called it duty. But in the evenings, when the Citadel was quiet, he would come down to the stables.

"To see you?"

To sit. A faint rumble. He did not speak. He would take a stool, in the straw, and sit with his back against my foreleg, and look at nothing. Sometimes he brought a honey-cake. He thought I did not know that he had stolen it from the kitchens. The golden eye opened. I did not tell him.

The boy laughed. It cracked, a little, in the middle.

He was not kind, said Gron, in the way that your mother is kind. He did not know how. But he loved the things that were small. He loved the dog that lived in the yard. He would feed it from his plate. And when she came, your mother... The eye turned to Solaia. I have never seen a man change so quickly. It was like watching a house in winter, when someone lights the first fire.

"Gron," said Solaia. Her throat was tight.

I know, Mother. I will not say too much.

"You mustn't—"

I am saying it for him. Quietly. Someone should. He cannot say it for himself.

…

The sun moved across the sky.

She did not know how long they sat there. The light slid across the paving, golden, long-shadowed, and the wind dropped, and the goat lay down. Somewhere below, in the yards, the Ashborn were singing a work-song in a low rhythmic chant. A smell of woodsmoke drifted up. Veyran had fallen asleep with his head against the dragon's flank, one hand curled in the rough scales, and she sat very still, with her arm about him, and watched the light turn the gray hide to bronze.

Mother.

"Yes."

I have been thinking about the Void.

"Don't. Rest."

I want to tell you. The voice was faint. I was afraid, in the Void. I did not say. I thought it would be unfair. But I was afraid every day. I was afraid that I would forget.

"Forget what?"

That I had chosen you. The great head lowered. It was the hardest thing I have ever done. I had a rider, and I loved him, and I was bound to him by the old law. And I looked at him, on the Ridge, in the ash, and he was reaching for me. And I knew that if I turned my back, he would be alone. A pause. I knew it. And I turned.

She put her hand on his cheek.

I have wondered if it was right, said Gron. For nine hundred years. I have turned it over and over. And I think... A long breath. I think I chose the one who could carry the fire. I think that is what I was for. It was not that I loved her less. It was that I loved her more.

"Him, you mean."

Him. A rumble, almost a laugh. You see. I am old. I have the pronouns tangled.

"You're not old."

I am the oldest dragon in the north. A faint pride. Except for the grandmother. And she is very rude.

She laughed. It came out wet.

Mother.

"I'm here."

When you see him, said Gron, tell him I did not go because I stopped.

"Stopped—"

Stopped loving him. Tell him it was only that I could not bear to watch him fall. The golden eye held hers, vast and tender. And tell him that the honey-cake was very good.

Her vision blurred. "I will."

And love him anyway.

"Gron—"

That is what she said, you know. A flicker of the old humor. Obsyra. In the cave. I heard it. 'Love him anyway.' I think it is rather good advice.

"It's terrible advice."

Yes, agreed Gron, with immense gentleness. The best always is.

…

He died at sunset.

She had known it would come, and when it came, it was so quiet that she did not at first understand. The light had turned to rose. The sky was the color of a dove's breast. She had been telling him a story, an old one, about a girl and a beggar and a pot of soup, and in the middle of it she realized that she was talking to herself.

His breathing had stopped.

She sat quite still.

The great gray body lay in the dying light, huge and silent and warm. The eye was still open, but there was no one behind it. She put her hand on the cheek, and it was still warm, and she kept it there, and it began, very slowly, to cool. A last breath of wind stirred the fringe of a rag on the terrace wall. The goat got up, stretched, and walked away.

"Mama?"

Veyran was awake.

He lifted his head from the dragon's flank, blinking, and looked at her. Then he looked at the great gray face. And she saw it come into his eyes, slowly, as the light comes into a room: the understanding. He did not make a sound. He sat there with his mouth a little open and his face emptying of color, and then he put out his hand and laid it, very gently, flat on the cold scales above the dragon's brow.

"He's gone," he said.

"Yes."

"I didn't say goodbye."

"I don't think he minded." Her voice was a thread. "I think he knew."

"I wanted to tell him thank you."

"He knew that, too."

He bowed his head.

For a long time neither of them spoke. The first stars came out. A bell rang in the Hall, a low sweet note, and another answered it, and another, until all the bells of Kessavar were ringing together in the lamplit dusk, a slow tolling, solemn and grave and kind. They were for him. The Ashborn knew. They had come up the stair behind her without a sound, and stood now along the edge of the terrace in the dusk, two hundred of them, three hundred, with their heads bowed and their hands folded and their breath smoking in the cold.

A woman started to sing.

It was a thin old voice, rough as bark. It rose among the bells in a long plain melody, in the old language of the Ashborn, and others took it up, one by one, a low humming undertone. She knew the tune. It was the lullaby. Under the sky, a throne. Under the throne, a flame. They had kept it, all these years, among the songs of their dead.

She put her face down against the gray scales, and wept.

"Mama," whispered Veyran. He had moved close, and put his arm round her shoulders. "Mama. It's all right."

"It isn't."

"I know." His voice was shaking. "But he said to love him anyway."

She raised her head.

"My father," said the boy, slowly. "He said it was good advice. He said it was terrible, and it was good." He wiped his face with the back of his hand. "Mama. I think I know what I'm going to do."

"What?"

His eyes, violet and gray, caught the lamplight.

"I'm going to go and meet him," said Veyran. "And I'm going to tell him that Gron said the honey-cake was very good."