She shook her head. “And you think we might be on the wrong side of the argument from the start....”
Hasai sighed, a long single note of uncertainty and concern. “We will not be able to tell until we start having it,” he said, “and by that time, it will be too late. But the signs don’t seem good.”
They flew in silence for a while. Segnbora cast an eye down on the fields, now shading from the green of late-planted barley and oats to stands of yellower corn as they began to come out of the wetter lowlands of southern Arlen into the drier country to the north. “Do you think it would be wiser to stay out of the argument entirely?” Segnbora said. “Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”
“I think perhaps we are in the argument already,” Hasai said. “Already a Dragon has interfered in human affairs... as you pointed out.” He sounded rueful. “Anyone
sdahaih
to me has only to live in my memories to discover that.”
“Such as the Dweller.”
Hasai shrugged his wings in agreement. “Word will have come to her by now, from other sources. Sd’hirrin and Lhhaess, the MarchWarders at Aired, keep a close eye on the doings in Prydon since things changed seven years ago; and they are close in the counsels of the Dweller because of it. Also, they are related. They come of Dahiric’s line, as does she.”
Segnbora sang a low note that was as close as a Dragon came to a sigh. The Worldwinner’s line were not directly descended from Dahiric, of course, since he had died at the end of the Crossing, scarcely more than a dragonet. The line was collateral, descended from other children of his parents, most of whom had borne the same livery of green scales and golden underbelly. And an oddly high percentage of Dwellers had been of his line—
Then Segnbora shut her jaws with a snap, and looked over at Hasai. He was looking at her with an odd expression somewhere between amusement and unease. “Yes,” he said. “I was going to ask you why you had chosen that particular livery to embody in when you flew. Some might call it impertinence. Especially Dithra.”
Segnbora shook her head, a totally human gesture which the
mdeihei
derided good-naturedly in the background. “It seemed natural,” she said. “I don’t know. It happened accidentally, the first time—”
Fire rose in her throat, the closest Dracon equivalent to blushing. “When you first became truly one of us,” Hasai said, “and got me with child. Yes.” He looked sidelong at her, tilted sideways, and abruptly dropped beneath her, doing the first quarter of a most precise hesitation roll, so that they briefly flew belly-to-belly in what for Dragons was a slightly naughty gesture. “Well, we shall assume that the Immanence had a hand in it, and say no more. And let those who say ‘hybrid’ look to their own liveries, none of them so noble as mine, or yours. As for the rest of it—” He righted himself and sang the same sighing notes Segnbora had. “We shall make ourselves known to Sd’hirrin and Lhhaess as best we can, and answer their questions. Sooner or later they will discuss us with the Dweller. We cannot just fly up to the Eorlhowe and melt our way in, after all. We will be sent for. And then—”
“We try to survive, and get help for Lorn,” Segnbora said. Suddenly it sounded less likely than it had in Blackcastle.
“Yes,” Hasai said, gazing ahead of them. Another thunderstorm reared up there in their path, towering upward in piles of blinding white until it flattened out into a tattering anvil of gray a thousand yards higher. “And meanwhile,” he said, grasping force and folding his wings back for better airspeed, “we
live.”
And he shot straight ahead into the storm, vanishing into the threatening whiteness as if through a wall.
The cloud flickered abruptly from inside—a hotter white within the chill dead-white of the mist—with the crash of provoked thunder following a second later. Segnbora’s jaw dropped in a smile; she folded her wings, sank the claws of them into the forces of the world, and like a second arrow fired from the same bow, followed him in.
*
She already knew what Aired Marchward looked like, for various of her
mdeihei
had been there on business, or socially. The Arlid this far north was an old gentled-down river like the Darst, slow and oxbowed, bending on itself again and again in loop after loop, detouring around many small hills. One bend of the river held a particularly high hill in it, tall and conical, grassy-sloped, with a cracked stony head where even the grass gave out in a slope of gray granite and scree. Down at the hill’s foot, above the river, was a great dark vertical rift in the hillside, some ten or twenty ells wide. Water trickled down to the river from it from some spring inside the mountain, and growing things made a green tongue trailing down the watercourse from the hill’s open mouth.
They circled the hill several times, knowing they were watched, letting themselves be well seen. There was nothing in the world that was big enough to be a threat to a Dragon, of course, but all the same old traditions established on the Homeworld had to be observed. For creatures who might live some thousands of years before dwindling away into the final silence of the oldest
mdeihei
, courtesy was all-important; and for a species that had come so close to extinction, survival was more important even than courtesy.
Segnbora gazed down at Aired with interest. For some reason, those of her
mdeihei
who had visited there had done so in winter—perhaps to avoid too many humans seeing them. All their memories of that part of the Arlid valley were of a river frozen and buried under snow, a mere curving hint that water lay underneath, mostly traceable by where plants and trees were not, and by the faint dark scratch-lines of frozen reeds upthrust through the snow. But now birds perched and sang in those reeds, and the water glittered, and warm sun and cool shade slid over the hillside as the quick clouds went by on the wind.
“I think we’re seen enough,” Hasai said. “Let us go down.”
Segnbora tilted her head in agreement. Together they planed down, matching movements without effort, being
sdaha
and
mdaha
after all, but still with some care, with the turns of wing and limb that said they were on joint business, and in agreement with one another. This was another of the matters of being Dracon that Segnbora was still handling with some care: movement, and its many complex meanings. She might talk lightly to Lorn of
nn’s’raihle
being dance and argument and legislation all in one, but there was a bit more to it than that. Dragons had not always had speech. In their earliest days, there had been only movement as sign of intention or desire. Sung language might have been invented since, and then later yet the speech of the mind discovered—but the older mode of communication had never been supplanted by them, only augmented.
Nn’s’raihle
itself came originally of that oldest tongue, the speech-by-dance,
ehhath
; the acts of love were conducted in it, and the acts of death. Segnbora was new to it, despite all her
mdeihei
, and consciously kept her motions and positions in
ehhath
’s older and more classical modes, just for safety’s sake. They landed with little fuss—a quick flare of wing to keep it elegant, a proper moment of preening and then a leisurely fold of the webbing to say that their business was important, but not instantly so—at least not by Dracon standards. Segnbora looked over at Hasai; his spines were all roused forward, an indication of general good humor. She wasn’t nearly so certain herself, but she roused spines back at him regardless.
He dropped his jaw, then turned away and sang greeting at the cave-opening, a long low simple chord, nothing too complex about it. Then they waited together. Segnbora did her best not to rustle.
There was movement inside the cave, and then a head put itself out the opening, scattering rainbows in the sunshine from scales of the deepest blood-ruby Segnbora had ever seen. Eyes the same color as the stars in the sapphire upper scales, a fierce glowing crimson, looked at them both with some interest.
Hasai shrugged wings and bowed his head in the greeting-mode that matched what he had sung; casual respect. Segnbora did likewise.
The other Dragon returned the gesture with an interested flick of wing added. “Be greeted,” she said, the song winding around her words speaking of a bored host glad of visitors. “Come in, if you will.”
“Gladly,” Segnbora said. The other Dragon—Lhhaess, she knew from her
mdeihei
—gave her a considering look as she turned back toward the cave, having noticed the “thumb” spine to Segnbora’s right wing, the “false primary”. It was a black too deep for any normal coloration, and doubtless looked odd with the rest of her green-and-gold livery. Segnbora merely tilted her head a bit to one side, to acknowledge the look, and followed their hostess in.
The inside of the hill was not as dark as it might have been. There were crevasses high up in the hillside, which had been quite effectively hollowed out and reinforced by melting the remaining stone into place, and long shafts of light came down to strike on the bare smooth floor. The other Marchwarder, Sd’hirrin, lay curled there in one shaft of light, and rose courteously to greet them; a Dragon of unusual size, almost a quarter again as big as Hasai, and liveried in star-amethyst and onyx, with violet-burning eyes.
“Sd’hirrin,” Hasai said, “well met again.”
Sd’hirrin looked at Hasai mildly. “Surely we have not met,” he said. “Perhaps our
mdeihei
have.”
“Oh, no,” Hasai said. “I came here last some ninety rounds of the sun ago. Surely you remember; it was after Dithra took office.”
Sd’hirrin and Lhhaess looked at each other, then back at Hasai again. “That was Hasai ehs’Pheress,” Lhhaess sang, surprised. “Doubtless you are of collateral line, but—”
“There was no collateral line,” Hasai said, and dropped his jaw. “You know that. My dam and sire hatched no other egg after me, and I never mated. At least, not before casting the last skin.”
The two Marchwarders looked at Hasai most dubiously. He had used one of the more casual idioms for physical death.
“Hasai ehs’Pheress went
mdahaih
,” Sd’hirrin sang, with overtones that said he thought perhaps some game was being played with him, and he didn’t care for it. “I have
mdeihei
in common with his line, and word spread from his
mdeihei
to mine—”
“So it should have. And I did go
mdahaih
. Indeed, I almost went
rdahaih
instead; it was a close thing. But I found a
sdaha
at last. Or she found me.”
The Marchwarders looked at Segnbora, now. Sd’hirrin’s look was suspicious, as well it might have been, as he looked at a Dragon he had never seen before—and almost all Dragons knew almost all other Dragons on sight, there being few enough of them in the world, with most of their
mdeihei
related as well. But then his look, and Lhhaess’s, went back to Hasai in bewilderment.
“You are too much here to be
mdahaih
!” Lhhaess said, sounding slightly indignant as well as confused. “You are physical!” The word she used was
dav’w’hnesshih
, there-enough-to-bite, one of the words used only of Dragons or other living beings still in their original bodies. And indeed, standing there in the downpouring noon-light from the cracks in the hilltop, Hasai was quite physical enough to cast a shadow, which no
mdaha
should have been able to do, no matter how vigorously he was manifesting.
“
Auhé
,” Hasai said, shrugging one wing, “it’s my
sdaha
’s fault, I suppose. She has never been one for following tradition; some days I despair of her.”
Segnbora caught the sidelong look in Hasai’s eye. She stretched her wings up and bent her head down somewhat lower than Hasai had, the properly respectful gesture of a younger Dragon among elder ones—but with a slightly insouciant sidewise tilt to her head which indicated, youth aside, that her and the others’ relative ranks would have to be worked out later. “Segnbora d’Welcaen,” she said to them. And then when she saw Sd’hirrin opening his mouth to say that that hardly sounded like a Dracon name, Segnbora shrugged out of the Dracon form as if out of a cloak, letting go the Firework that had been holding it in place, and stood in her own shape again. Skádhwë was in her hand, flaming blue: she sheathed it, watching with satisfaction as the Dragons gazed at her in astonishment.
“The Goddess’s greeting to you, Lhhaess, Sd’hirrin,” she said; “and my own with it.”
They stared at her, and then their heads swung as one to Hasai.
“You have gone
mdahaih
to a
human
?” Sd’hirrin said.
“It cannot be done,” Lhhaess said. But she was looking at Segnbora with less shock, now, and more curiosity.
“I took what life the Immanence sent me,” Hasai said mildly. “It does not seem to have served me so badly.”
“I thought it couldn’t be done, either,” Segnbora said, “at least not and leave me sane. But it’s been done, all right. I found Hasai going
rdahaih
, but he passed to me instead, and all his
mdeihei
with him. Which is going to eventually raise some questions for the
Lhhw’hei
.”
Sd’hirrin folded his wings right down, the gesture of a Dragon trying to show no outer reaction while it consolidated its thoughts. But Lhhaess said to Segnbora, “We’d always thought that only a Dragon of one’s own line could accept another as
mdaha
that way... if not an egg-child, at least a collateral relative....”
“We may be more alike than any of us thought,” Segnbora said.
“That can’t be so—!” Sd’hirrin began to say, standing suddenly and spreading his wings right up to full extension in discomfort. But Lhhaess turned to him and said, “Whether it can or not, what’s come of our hospitality? For shame.” To Segnbora she said, “Have you eaten and drunk? We have none of the kinds of things humans use, but we could find something in a short time, I think—”
“I took sun with Hasai on the way here, thank you,” Segnbora said, and smiled a bit at Sd’hirrin’s nonplused expression. Dragons lived off light, which they drank through the webs of their wings: it fueled their Dragonfire and helped them fly... and no mere sorcerer, no matter how talented, could change his or her body to such an extent as to eat sunshine. It would be one more thing for Sd’hirrin to think about. “Perhaps we might go out and bask later. But business first.”