"It is very hard to make a compulsion work against your basic nature, Vorlian," said Finn. "You did want to preserve this place. That's why they didn't use you for their dirty work. The likes of Myrcupa and Brennarn had it come naturally to them—they were pushed in a direction they were willing to go. You're not a bad fellow for a dragon. A bit pompous, but it goes with having bad breath."
Vorlian swallowed. Realized he was being mocked—as usual. "Fionn. Can I make a public apology for being . . . pompous. I've been humbled, and I've learned. My breath is much like yours." He smiled, and bowed his head respectfully. "I think I have learned that only the truly powerful can afford to mock themselves."
"Good thinking, for a dragon," said Finn. "Now what did you want to say? Or was that too long ago to remember? Big dragons tend to become dim-witted."
Vorlian cleared his throat. "I wanted to make a plea for dragonkind. If the plane is going to break up, and the safety of the other species is assured by their treasures . . . I'd like that of the dragons to be returned to them. And . . . I feel responsible for this. I would give my hoard in exchange for it. And it would seem that the cauldron of humans must be in the sprites' possession. I think that they too should give it up."
"Lyr concurs," said one of the forest of sprites around the new tree. "Gladly!"
Finn looked slyly at Motsognir, and put a dragon-wing over Meb, who had returned to having an arm around his neck. "I think," he said, "that the gold of the dragons will best stay where it is. You'd all better get used to treating humans a little better, because you owe a lot of your wellbeing to my Scrap of humanity. The rest is in the fabric of Tasmarin itself. It goes with you and you will scatter with it. Across the ring of worlds there will be dragons again. Being nice to humans, just in case."
A dragon circled in. "There are ships full of centaurs attempting to land. What do you want us to do, Vorlian?"
Ixion shook himself. "I will go and tell them all is well! Ah, the tale! And I was the one to hear it. I will tell it to the herds!" He shook himself again. "It is immortality of a kind. Will you wait until I return?" he pleaded.
"If you agree to tell it to a few other people beside centaurs," said Meb, going over and hugging him. "I could get to like you. Although you really need to learn about baths."
He bowed. "The matter of baths will be debated." And he left at a gallop.
Vorlian turned to the other dragon. "Fly up there, tell the others to settle. And whatever they do, not to eat any humans."
"They disagree with me anyway," said the smaller female dragon. "Hello, Fionn. Have you got yourself a pet human now?"
"I think she has me, Tessara," said Finn. "Now all that remains to be done is to settle matters with the creatures of smokeless flame. Unfortunately, I am supposed to keep you alive."
"Wait for the centaurs," said Motsognir. "They hate missing any part of the story."
So they did. The creatures of smokeless flame had gathered together in the meanwhile, standing a little apart from the rest. Finn looked at them, and looked at the tree-women adoring the fast growing sapling. "Well done there, little one," he said quietly. "They'll breed now."
"Won't that be worse?" said Meb, doubtfully.
"Some will be. Some will be better. At the moment they're all the same. But the offspring won't be."
A group of panting centaurs came galloping back, with Ixion at their head.
"So glad you could make it," said Finn.
"So are we," said the centaurs, entirely missing the sardonic tone.
"Well," said Fionn. "It's going to be an anticlimax for you. We've given the rest back. Anghared will call the hell-flame here, smokeless flames. Maybe. If you ask her nicely. And remember that the dragons know where you live, and can fry you."
"Indeed," rumbled Vorlian. "Although, I am in favor of frying Belet as an example. And I am not happy with them compelling dragons."
"I think we will put a stop to that, yes," said Finn. "The rest of us can put a compulsion on them that will be hard to over-ride. We have representatives of all the intelligent species here—although I am reluctant to use Rennalinn . . ."
Meb didn't even know she was doing it. Leilin and her sister suddenly appeared next to Groblek and the Sea. Leilin's sister had a silver harp in her hand.
Finn looked at the two of them. Looked at Meb. "Whatever you do," he said quietly. "Don't let her play that thing with 'Brys. We don't want the world to end just yet."
One of the fire-beings spoke. "We do not like this. But we accept it because we have no choice. We have used what power we have to confirm that we do not have the hell-flame. So: we beg. Belet will be no more. There will be new kings, and a re-ordering of energies."
The situation was rapidly explained to the two startled-looking alvar.
"How do I do this?" Meb asked Finn quietly, still holding on to him.
"The little bauble on the end of your chain and on Díleas's collar has a fragment of the life-energy of their treasure in it. Concentrate on it and call the rest—over there, somewhere."
So she stared at the bauble. And the tiny glowing heart of it explained itself to her mind. And when she understood it, she understood the creatures of smokeless flame better. She didn't have to like them better.
It was a hot and nasty feeling.
While this was happening the others worked a slow steady chant, led by the centaurs around them. Meb walked closer with Finn, and of course Díleas to join in. Together, all the intelligent creatures leashed the creatures of smokeless flame. Meb felt strange intangible spiderwebs of demon magic snapping as they did so.
It was done, and it would be a slightly sweeter world. So she called their fire-ball to them.
But at the last minute she held it away. Kept it floating high above them. She'd learned a great deal, looking into it.
She hadn't realized that you could read things as well as books, and that energy was everything.
She had seen the destruction and scattering of all the parts that were Tasmarin.
She saw the fall of the next tower and the effect that would have on the remainder. It had taken Fionn fifty years to break the first. That had weakened the whole structure so that it would be mere months before the second one fell. The cascade of extra energies onto the next would make it fall in months, and then the next in days.
The place she called home was going to shred and scatter.
In her mind's eye she captured the view across Yenfar. The city beneath the waves . . . the pool of the centaurs amid the ruins.
And where they would go. And what would happen.
She pulled herself up straight and decided that it would not be so.
In the glare of a ball of fire that hung in the air above them Meb stepped forward and raised her voice.
"My master has let many of you put yourselves in my debt. I have used my magic to help you. Now I am calling the debt I am owed due." She turned to Groblek and the Sea. "I am calling on the mountains and I call on the sea." She looked to the centaurs, and then as she called them, each of the other species. "I call to the wind and water, the earth, and metals under the earth, the light, the things that grow. Even the fire."
They all looked at her. Ixion, and another centaur that looked almost identical to him, put their heads back and nodded. They blew at her, and she felt the strength of that small magical gift, and continued. "I have given all of you your own. I have brought you together. Now, I remind you of what my Master has said to me: 'There is always another way.' Tasmarin does not have to be destroyed."
Finn shook his head. "It is a wondrous place, Anghared. But it must go. The towers are its anchors. They hold back the energies that hold Tasmarin together and isolate it. Those are energies that are needed in the greater ring of worlds."
She turned to Finn, using what she'd just learned. "You used to balance the great ring of worlds. You explained to me that the problem was that they cannot be isolated. That magic and many other energies are trapped here. Yet . . . the energy flowed between them when they were not isolated and they did not collapse. Can't we break down the towers, but keep Tasmarin? It is only the isolation that we cannot have."
Finn stood silent, calculating. Then he began to scratch formulae in the dirt.
"You will need to insert the iterative function there," said Groblek helpfully. "But it can be done. Just as neither the mountains nor the sea are limited to this place, but here you can talk to us. This plane too does not have to confined to any one place. It can be the linkage to many. Part of them and part of itself."
Finn snorted. "You tempt me to make you calculate it. It's do-able . . . but Tasmarin will lose a little in the balancing. Gain a little too, of course. It won't be isolated. It won't be a place of dragons. It would be a way between the many planes of existence."
Vorlian cleared his throat. "Compared to the alternative, where we would have been destroyed, or even, Fionn, if you succeed—and there is nothing to stop you right now—scattered across the ring of planes from whence our ancestors came, that's a good option. We can stand together by choice too."
Fionn looked thoughtfully at him. "It'll need a lot more gold."
"Lots of gold always flows through a cross-roads. You'll recoup," said Motsognir. "We like the idea."
"It is what was foretold. The clouded mage with the black dragon, and nothing is certain. Every other path leads to destruction," said the centaur next to Ixion. "But this one is uncertain."
"It's a cheerful bunch you are," said 'Brys. "Uncertain is best!"
The fire-being who had spoken earlier asked. "Will we be able to return at will to the plane we were taken from?"
Finn nodded. "This place will be a transition between many planes."
"Then we will lend it our powers. We are tired of being cold."
The others reached agreement easily enough too.
Meb tugged at Fionn's wing. "Can we talk a little? Away from everyone?"
He smiled. "Of course. I am always yours. Although I am not sure Díleas is willing to let you out of his sight."
They walked off a little way to where they could look out over the ocean toward the tower.
"I looked too deep into the flame," said Meb. "It . . . showed me the breaking of everything . . . and the past and some pieces of future. It's . . . not all very nice."
"Could-be future," said Fionn. "It is energy and all things are that . . . the form the creatures of smokeless flame have taken, and aspects of the nature of the First, are not very attractive. But they are a part of all things too. I like the way you have solved it, though. Groblek says that it will work."
She put her arms around his neck. Squeezed exceptionally hard for a small human. "Finn. Always remember I love you." Then she bent down and cuddled Díleas so that he would not see her tears. But he did anyway. "Now let us do this thing," she said gruffly.
He wondered what was wrong. "I love you too, Anghared. I am not used to this. I have . . . distanced myself from it. And dragons do not mate for life."
"You are not 'a dragon.' You're Finn. And I am Scrap. Your Scrap. Not Anghared."
As was often the case with great and powerful magics, it was deceptively simple. It did involve the redistribution of a lot of dragon gold. And a willing binding of all of them into something that as a collective organism was not unlike the First, but more powerful, with the sharing of the power of the sea and the mountains too.
The towers, great, and near impregnable, crumbled . . . with the roaring of trumpets and the shivering of light . . . And a dance, carefully choreographed, of energy and gold leaped across the vast distances, which were also nothing at all.
And the shimmering dust of the towers reformed into bridges. Bridges of adamantine stone reaching out into elsewhere.
And when it was done . . .
Fionn felt the great flow of energies rushing back and flowing in. He looked at where the tower had stood, at the bridge from the island of Arcady to the distant forests, elsewhere. To rolling hills and limitless dusty plains, and towering mountains and seas that ranged from limpid blue to surging gray, and to dark places that rumbled with fire. To the great ring of worlds, plane linked to plane and linked to this magical place.
And then he realized that he was no longer holding her hand in his.
Groblek and the Sea stood next to him. There was sadness and understanding in their eyes.
"Where is she?" he demanded.
"She's been drawn back to where she came from, Fionn," said Groblek. "She was the one thing that was not of this place. She unbalanced it. She knew that would happen. And she knew the cost of her not going back."