It was cold. I wished I’d brought a cloak. I shivered, thinking that my drumming teeth must reveal my presence, but Bellek showed no sign, only paused before the cave, and then went in.
I came after. I halted at the entrance. The bull Taziel was inside the gaping arch, alert. His wings were furled; his fangs were exposed. He looked at me, and I sent out that silent message Bellek had taught us all.
Peace. I mean no harm. You are mighty and magnificent, and I humbly beg to admire your brood.
He granted me permission, and I went after Bellek into the cave.
I could no more ignore the sending I got from Deburah than I could my earlier curiosity. I should have thought of that before; should have known it. But I was then still newcome to that relationship, and like a lover slowly sensing out all those areas allowed and forbidden that lovers delicately find, I knew not how much this monstrous, majestic love of mine would tell.
She bade me welcome. I stroked her glossy cheek, her sinuous neck. I plucked a fragment-a hunk!-of troublesome meat from her teeth. She thanked me; I loved her as well, albeit differently, as I loved Rwyan. I asked her how her egg fared. (I’d know what Bellek did and why he came here so late, but there’s a decorum to dragons as patterned as any formal aeldor’s court. They live long, dragons, and to a slower beat of time: unhurried, save by hunger. There are always prices to be paid in dealing with dragons. It is, I think, a price worth the paying.)
She told me her egg fared well. I set my hand on it and felt the pride of the bull as I gloried in Deburah’s triumph. I could feel the pulsing of the heart within. It required an effort to remind myself why I’d come here. I asked Deburah.
I cringed then, under the sadness I felt. I’d not known what it is to lose a bond-mate.
I looked across the cave and saw that Bellek knelt on a ledge. The relics of a nest lay there, and the shattered fragments of an egg. He touched them reverentially as I touched Deburah’s; but his were in pieces, ours whole and pulsing vigorously with unborn life.
He looked on the past: I looked on the future.
I wondered why no dam sat there.
Deburah told me she’d died.
Of age, she said, ancient even more than Bellek, and even in her age produced an egg. I felt Deburah’s pleasure at my arrival in Tartarus, and understood-albeit only vaguely then-that the laying was somehow linked to the presence of Dragonmasters, that I’d an inexplicable hand in her fecundity. I felt her sending as a comfort against Bellek’s grief, her pride in our egg, though I scarce understand even now how that should be-that the dropping of a dragon’s womb can somehow depend on the belief that a person, Changed or Trueman, gives. I felt a terrible sadness for Bellek’s loss.
Then, I’d barely tasted the bonding of dragon and Dragonmaster, but still I felt Bellek’s pain. It was a blade twisted in my soul. But still I did not understand the entirety of its meaning.
I made a sound. I did not know it until Bellek turned toward me. The width of the brood cave stood between us, but in the radiance of the walls I saw the tears that glistened on his cheeks, his filled eyes, all overrunning. That was such grief as I’d never seen.
For long moments we stared at one another. I knew embarrassment: I knew I intruded on private grief. Then he wiped a sleeve across his face and blew his nose. It was a thin, reedy sound amongst the shufflings and snortings of the dragons, but I heard it clear as scream of pain. I said, “I’m sorry.”
The distance between us was too far he could hear me, the noises the dragons made too loud, but he did. And I heard him say, “No matter,” and knew he referred not to my sympathy for his loss but to my apology for intruding. They were the same thing: he knew it. We spoke in words, but it was the minds of the dragons that carried our voices back and forth. I watched him rise, and sigh, and stretch his shoulders before he clambered down from the ledge and came toward me.
I stood waiting, leaning against Deburah. I felt afraid in a manner I cannot explain, as if I saw through mists my own future, I become Bellek, old and soul-weary, likely crazed. My sweetling told me I was not, and I stroked her cheek in gratitude.
Bellek halted before her ledge. He said, “You know something of it now. I told you there was a price.”
I said, “You did not define it.”
He said, “You did not ask I should. Had I?”
I shrugged. So close to Deburah, enfolded by her thoughts, I could only answer, “No. It should not have mattered.”
He smiled. On Thannos Eve we Dhar don masks and revel for a night in honor of the Pale Friend, death. It’s a festival of which the Church does not entirely approve, for it is redolent of the old ways. The masks depict grinning skulls or a lovely woman’s face, each incarnation representing the Pale Friend counting her harvest. Bellek’s face reminded me of those death’s-heads.
Without preamble he said, “Aiylra was her name. She was beautiful; a queen.”
His voice was low and husky, empty of inflection in that way men have when they contain anguish. Let us not disgrace ourselves with exhibition of weakling’s pain. Or is it only that we cannot handle it in any other way, save that denial of it? I knew he hurt in ways I could not yet imagine: unthinking, I touched his shoulder. As men do, I thought; and turned my hand to hold him. He leaned against me and wept openly. I put my arms around him and felt him shudder. My shirt got wet.
Against my chest he said, brokenly now, “Oh, Daviot, she was so beautiful. She laid Kathanria, which is how I can ride that one. And Deburah; though”-proud laughter came now through his weeping; such as a father accords a beloved child-“though Deburah’s like her dam-proud. She’d have only her one rider. She’d bond with only one master. She’d not let me mount her. Only you. Do you understand?”
I began to grasp it: I felt afraid and proud. I said, “I’m not sure.”
Bellek said, “You love Rwyan, no? Whatever risks we take in the days to come, you’d live out your life with her and none other, no?”
I said, “Yes.” And to Deburah, silently, And you.
“And should you lose her?” he asked me.
I said, “I did. But found her again; I think I should die, did I lose her now.”
He said, “It’s worse.”
I asked, “How?” I could imagine nothing worse than losing Rwyan.
He pushed clear of my arms, rubbing again at his eyes. He looked very old. He looked weary as Tryman, in that tale that tells of how the giant held up the world for his penance. He said, “Dragons live longer than men; and those who dwell with dragons. That was the price. That, and love.”
“What do you tell me?” I asked, half suspecting; fearful.
He said, “That you-all of you-must become true Dragonmasters if you’re to win this war. That to become Dragonmasters you must bond yourselves, soul to soul, with your mounts.”
I said, “I know that. You told us that: we agreed.”
He said, “I did not tell you the whole of it.”
I said, “I guessed as much. But even so, we accept.”
He said, “Had I told you the whole of it, perhaps you’d not have agreed so readily.”
I said, “Perhaps not. But the bargain was struck, and do we turn back now-what? The Great Coming? The rising of the Changed? Blood shed all over Dharbek? Can we but implement Rwyan’s design, then we can change all that. We can build a better world. Surely that must be worth the price?”
He sighed then, and straightened his back, and looked me unblinking in the eye. “To become a Dragonmaster you must accept the curse of long life. Sometimes longer, even, than the dragons’.” He laughed: again that hint of madness. “Does your bond-mate drop an egg, then that may prolong your life. And dragons live a very long time, Daviot; and they’re demanding creatures-they’ll not let you go easily. That’s the bargain we strike, we Dragonmasters.”
I said, “Still, I don’t quite understand.”
And he laughed, so loud the bull on watch outside stirred and turned his baleful eye back. I heard the scrape of claws on stone.
The Dragonmaster said, “Long life. To watch your loves, your friends, your comrades-all of them-die. To live on when they are gone. Glorious, aye; to live with dragons and ride the skies. Such glory! And such pain when it ends. When your bond-mate dies. Like Aiylra! Had she not birthed Kathanria and Deburah I’d have died ere now; or taken that Way of Honor Tezdal thinks of.”
I saw a truth then. It was stark, as truth often is. I asked Bellek, “Is that what happened to the others? Your fellow Dragonmasters?”
He ducked his head and told me, “Aye. Their bond-mates died, in battle or age, and they’d no brood-kin to hold up their hopes. Or”-again he laughed that crazed laugh-“hold them here. Only I! And those threads that bind me to this tiresome life grow thin now. Aiylra’s gone, and I am weary. Kathanria and Deburah held me, but they’ve new bond-mates now.”
I said, “What shall you do?”
Bellek said, “Teach you to ride dragons in battle.”