Chapter 8: The First Dragon

Driven away from Diahl by the political climate, Skinner leads a band of refugees to the Isle of Anandamere.

 

Chapter 8: The First Dragon

Sixteen years passed in a blur. Skinner earned his degrees and was invited to be Danalaka’s associate professor and assistant researcher of Infusion. With so much left to learn, Skinner accepted eagerly. The star pupil, Skinner outpaced everyone in his research. His invention of the arcameter, a sort of nine-point compass with a distinct sequence of precious stone points and a needle made of two silver strands braided with a gold strand and then hammered flat, had enabled them to find numerous artifacts and manuscripts thought lost or previously unhinted in any history.

Skinner became a key figure in the Academy. While resisting the political intrigues as best he could, Skinner kept himself busy with learning, teaching, and forays into field work. Any time the politics became too distaste for him, he took sabbatical to research ancient legends and often spending years or decades away. Meantime, he spent a great deal of time learning warfare and martial arts from the best instructors he could find, not so much to be a warrior as such, but to calcify his own iron self-discipline.

Wars came and went. He was called to serve and did his best to use it to benefit the Academy. Ignoring the politics of the particular regime, he leveraged concessions on behalf of the Academy and his own interests in its programs. This strategy demanded that he be highly in demand as both a champion warrior and strategic consultant.

The political games wearied him no end. He fought his own bitterness as he dealt with all discomfort, he threw himself fully into research, intellectual debates, and constant practice of his broad range of skills. If existing skills were insufficient, he took on new ones that interested him. Some he learned quickly and well, others he failed at numerous times before gaining competence to some level.

His career was already the stuff of legends by the time he found the legend of the Grove. Legend had it as an orchard of Staff Trees, trees of a special wood ideally suited to use in arcane artifacts. It was the limbs of these trees from which all the great magical staffs had been fashioned.

With Danalaka’s permission, Skinner organized an expedition to investigate the legends.

“To the islands, then,” he smiled at his top teaching assistant, a short sorcerer from the forests of the Dark Tribes. They packed for the excavation on an island in the south most commonly called Isle of the Maiden. Skinner was more skeptical than usual about what to expect as far as artifacts, but he was eager to finally see a real live griffon, which he felt must be more than legend given the documented sightings and their prevalence in the histories.

“Is it true there’s a grove of staff trees?” Gharland asked. He had no staff and was determined to be the first at the Academy to infuse one.

“Perhaps,” Skinner shrugged. “But we don’t have a complete process for staff infusion. Besides, the Bethel scroll speaks of a guardian. Since that is our best lead, we need to be vigilant and expect something formidable enough to keep away the inept.”

“I know how to infuse a staff,” Gharland smiled. “You’re not the only genius around here, you know.”

“Never claimed to be a genius,” Skinner shrugged. “Just a scholar.”

They met a courier at the Diahlar gates who explained that “Luminary Master Danalaka has been given an important mission by the Urgatha,” and was unable to join their excursion.

“Just the two of us, then,” Skinner nodded, suddenly ill at ease with the journey. “Peculiar.”

“Still set on going?” Gharland asked, the mischievous gleam in his eye hinting secret knowledge.

“You know something I don’t?” Despite Skinner’s distaste for politics and court intrigue, he had become conscious that there was a great deal of change in the air.

Every passing term it became harder to convince the council to allocate adequate resources to programs Skinner favored. Each term he was forced to spend more time, lobby more energetically on behalf of the Academy. It was something he resigned himself to, something he was leaving to avoid, actually.

It had become a losing battle when Gaylosha retired and Urialla ascended as the new Urgatha. Unlike her predecessor, Urialla placed an almost fanatic emphasis on religion. While Skinner found this generally tolerable, he was alarmed and disgusted to find that her agenda was polar—she believed that her pet religious doctrine was incompatible with lore and education, at odds with intellect.

“Urialla Diahl has made another of her decrees,” Gharland shrugged. “There are to be no new classes nor recruits to the academy of esoterics. Only clergy. She’s trying to phase us out.”

“I suppose that’s not altogether unexpected,” Skinner shrugged. He had seen it happen more than once before. He resolved to make the best of it though, as he always did. “Good time for us to maintain a low profile and spend a few years as traveling scholars—don’t you think?”

“I suppose,” Gharland replied, another glint in his eyes. “Is that why we’re going afoot?”

“Can’t stand horses, actually,” Skinner replied, shrugging and smiling sheepishly. “Besides, walking is good for your health.”

W          W          W

By the time they set up camp that night, Skinner had grumpily acquiesced to taking on far more baggage and company than he cared to. Late into the afternoon they were joined by a train of refugees claiming to have been exiled from Diahlar that morning. Further inquiry led the scholars, as they had taken to calling themselves, to understand that their absence had been felt already; Urialla had waited for Skinner’s absence before purging the city of dissidents.

Skinner huffed even more than usual over the night’s campfire, muttering derisive lineages for political figures with a penchant for political purging and socio-ethnic cleansing.

By morning the caravan had become a roving village. Over a dozen families in wagons joined them. Skinner had calmed over night, and studied the situation with deep curiosity. It surprised him to find that many of the artisans who had been affiliated closely with the academy were exiled as well. Numerous serving class workers from the academy had chosen to leave with the artisans and other exiles. The greatest curiosity was a small faction from the college of theology that had been dubbed blasphemers and exiled with threat of death.

The bloated caravan moved south through the eastern grasslands bordering the Black Forest. They stopped every three hours for an hour-long rest; Skinner used these as opportunities to hunt and bring game back for food. Gharland, being a far better botanist and more familiar with the flora of the eastern Vale, took responsibility for harvesting all the vegetable nutrition they could on the way. Both scholars took more time than necessary so that they could take assiduous notes and record everything they did and found.

It took the caravan more than nine weeks to reach the shore of the lake marked on Gharland’s map as Anandamere. They edged the lake for several days before finding an area good for building a port, or at least launching boats capable of transporting large numbers of people. The artisans gathered to discuss the project of boatbuilding while the scholars taught some of the youngsters how to fish and harvest muscles in a nearby shallows.

 

W          W          W

 

Restless and impatient with the progress of their endeavor, Skinner roamed and studied the shoreline intensely through the end of summer, through autumn and winter, and into the spring. He and Gharland catalogued and illustrated over a thousand species of plant and animal throughout the area before word came that they were ready to sail.

Their water voyage disagreed with him, and Skinner took several weeks to recover once they fashioned a colony on the Island of the Maiden. This eastern shore of the island boasted a beach of fine, light sand that stretched to the horizon north and south. They had beached the boats beside a deep lagoon cradled in towering stone walls.

Even overwhelming curiosity was insufficient to move Skinner from his beach hut. He went three weeks without food, dropping a great deal of weight and leaving him with an emaciated appearance. When he finally began to eat, he chose to eat only the foods gained from the depths of the lagoon.

His curiosity and sense of discovery eventually pulled him away from the beach. Over the tumult of tides, Skinner heard a keening from somewhere to the southwest. It struck him as the song of some exotic bird, and he found himself longing more and more to find and sketch it.

“You’re not to go alone,” Gharland told him when Skinner emerged from his hut fully dressed for the first time.

“Who’s in charge here, anyway?” Skinner muttered gruffly. “I’m an independent,” he grumbled. “Go wherever I please if I please.”

“Unarmed?” Gharland teased.

“Got my wits,” Skinner said crossly. “That’s more than the rest of you together.”

“Actually,” a tall, stoutly built man about Skinner’s age interrupted. “I believe you are the most learned among us. Which makes you the most valuable. As former captain of the Urgatha’s guard, I recommend an escort.”

“Didn’t beastly ask you,” Skinner grumped, trudging through the sand toward the keening.

Skinner ignored the man, who motioned to others and followed close beside. Skinner followed the keening with the single-minded focus of a hound trailing a hare. Something familiar hinted recognition, teased his mind with impossible curiosity. He marched into the jungle, finding his way unconsciously along game trails and through close growing vegetation of myriad species he had never before seen. He ignored even the serpents and primates that seemed to recognize him, the serpents slithering in close and the primates tossing fruits or nuts in his direction and filling the wet, heavy air with their chattering and crooning. It was all irrelevant, indistinguishable background for the keening song, for song he decided it was.

The jungle began to give way to plains rising higher into the west. Occasionally, but still unconscious of it, Skinner paused long enough to drink water that presented itself puddled in leaves or streaming from the thick vines climbing tall trees hundreds of feet toward the sky. At intervals, his hands chanced to pluck palm-sized fruits textured like peaches but tasting like salted, honey-soaked apple.

The climb became rougher and more demanding. The sun dropped far into the western slant of sky. His strength failed. He dropped to his knees, struggling toward the keening. Without the constant pounding of the tide, the song was stronger and more beautiful. He was certain his heart would break if he did not find its source.

Silence fell over him. The keening ceased. He fell unconscious into the void sleep of total exhaustion.

The keening resumed with first light. He arose and walked. His companions, nearly as exhausted as he, tried to detain him, but Skinner simply walked beyond them as though he were impossible to hold. He marched stiffly toward the tune.

By afternoon, the song began to paint his inner vision with beautiful streaks of color like the aurora borealis. He followed in a trance until the keening ceased again when the sun was at its zenith. As though he had no control over his own body, it fell in limp exhaustion and again he was in a void of comalike sleep.

He choked, awaking to the feel of something foreign in his mouth. Mechanically, he swallowed to keep from choking. A taste like smoked mutton recalled itself on his tongue. Opening his eyes, he saw the stout man from the beach holding a spoon out toward him in invitation. The man’s eyes were hollowed from strain and filled with fierce worry.

“Thanks,” Skinner said gruffly, taking hold of the spoon and feeding himself. To his surprise, he felt famished. With the revelation of hunger, though, came the wracking torment of muscles forced beyond normal endurance. Having eaten, he stretched ritualistically for half an hour before seating himself and dropping into meditation.

Within the redoubt of his meditative state, Skinner bolstered his psychic defenses. He determined to follow the keening, to find its source. But it would be his choice now, and not by edict of the song itself. Curiosity motivated him most, but there was also a timbre of incalculable loneliness in that keening in which Skinner found an instant companionship, a familiar spirit.

He opened his eyes at sunset. The keening sounded for another hour, but he refused its call. His companions were driven to their limits. They all needed rest. He rose and scanned their immediate surroundings with his eyes and other senses.

“Skinner?” the leader of his companions seemed concerned that Skinner might be possessed by the keening again.

“Yes,” Skinner said. “I have attained myself once more.

“Thank you for joining me. It may not have been the most judicious course, but . . . What is your name; your companions’?”

“I am Surtain,” replied the short, stocky warrior. “These are soldiers of . . . They are our soldiers now.”

“Surtain?” Skinner tilted his head curiously. “Seems I should know that name. Be that as it may, I need to forage. This place is quite fertile; we should fare well for the rest of our little adventure.”

“I take it you don’t care to go back?” Surtain asked.

“I have not yet attained my goal,” Skinner shrugged.

“What goal?”

“I seek the singer,” Skinner said flatly.

Surtain shook his head the way people do when getting an irrational answer and taking it as a sign that the person answering is ‘a peak short of the Skyteeth,’ as Valliants put it. He grabbed a short spear and followed. Surtain could not discern a path and assumed that Skinner followed something other than tracks; he refrained from questioning the sorcerer so that they could maintain their silent hunt.

A few hundred paces from the camp, Skinner waved Surtain off to the right, pointing out a faint but fresh game trail. He followed another path alone, trusting Surtain to find his own way from here. He picked his way carefully, slipping useful plant parts into a game bag he had borrowed from one of the soldiers. There were no marlbuttons here, but he happened upon a mushroom very reminiscent of morels and coaxed a few into the burgeoning hide sack.

Sniffing the air, his eyes squeezed to slits, Skinner tried to put a name to the spoor he was tracking. There was a familiar undercurrent of stench to it, but he was overall unsure of it. He closed his eyes and flavored the thick miasma of aromas: diverse trees, tree blooms, flowers bitter as marigolds to sweet as hyacinth, grasses, vines, vermin . . .

His memory caught up to his senses a split second from too late. His eyes snapped open. He dropped to his belly in the sparse undergrowth and rolled several times to his left as though someone were unwinding him from a coil of twine. Grabbing the narrow trunk of an ironwood, he pulled himself bodily around it. As he rose, his eyes brought his attacker’s form to focus. It swung an enormous, malicious claw and raked clean through the trunk of the small tree.

A maniacal grin sprung onto Skinner’s face as he realized his situation. He danced and wove between trunks, ducking and leaping to avoid the lethal claws. Skinner’s thin stiletto blade struck like a fang time and again. The beast rended more trees, shredding them with claw and maw. Skinner backpedaled, dodged, tumbled, and sprinted to avoid the same fate, striking with the dagger without knowing he did. In the detached study of his mind, he noted the leopard patterned hide, the obscene humanlike face, bearlike claws at the end of arms proportioned like a gorilla’s, and the overgrown, predatory canines.

Without knowing why, Skinner whistled shrilly. It was as deeply ingrained a habit as any he had, but a dozen years of living away from the wilderness had sheltered him from his old habits. They took over with the first rush of adrenaline, as habit, or perhaps instinct, always does. He gambled, taking a closer step in to draw the creature into over-reaching. The beast lurched in, trying to throw its whole weight onto its prey and crush it for a good meal. Skinner danced to the side in a fluid motion like a bullfighter and punched his stiletto three times into the thing. The first jab went to the hilt in the thing’s ear, the second pierced its throat, and the third jabbed through the hide of its shoulder and plowed a deep furrow there.

“Poot!” Skinner cursed loudly. The hulking beast turned incredibly fast in reaction, backhanding him into a tree. Skinner knew how to fall; he had done enough of it that it came naturally to simply relax into the fall. His head throbbed, vision blurred and tunneled.

A howl erupted from a path to the northwest. Skinner laughed hysterically, recognizing the howl and knowing that it could not be real. But his attacker heard it too, and paused in confusion. Skinner scrambled to his feet, pushing the clouds of darkness from the sky of his consciousness. He whistled a shrill, long note and the monster turned back on him. His grin took on a sharper edge, blood from his scalp running down into the corner of his mouth. He stayed ready for defense, praying for the chance to clear his head.

A calico streak shot from the forest. The beast, Skinner decided it was a troll, turned and lashed out with its tree-rending claw and slapped Socrates out of the air, midleap. Skinner screamed, sprang onto the troll’s shoulders, and stabbed time and again into its temple. Screaming his rage, he continued raining blows into that horrid skull until the thin blade stuck in bone. He struck then with his flat palm, striking to shatter its eardrum. It fell forward.

“Skinner!” Surtain snapped.

“Wha—?” His eyes came into focus again. He took in the scene. The troll lay dead beneath him; he knelt with his knees on either side of the bastion that served to separate its shoulders from its skull. Blood ran freely from several holes, dotted from its brow back to its ear. A spear was lodged under its shoulder. Socrates stood panting and smiling in his canine fashion. Surtain stood half a stone’s throw from him staring aghast at Skinner and the carnage.

“I think you finished it,” Surtain said grimly. His tone held an accusatory note that curled Skinner’s lip in a snarling leer.

“Bloody beast!” Skinner wrenched his stiletto free to find that three fingers of its length had snapped off at some point.

“What is—was—that thing?” Surtain was making a civilized effort to engage Skinner in conversation. It was obviously a struggle.

“You are offended by my savagery?” Skinner got stiffly to his feet, looking the warrior in the eye. He would have been appalled himself to witness, he thought. But he understood himself, understood that it welled up from his love of Socrates and the fear that he had been hurt or worse by the horrid beast. It looked and felt like bloodlust, but Skinner was secure in the knowledge that it was benign loyalty more than malice.

“That is not the term I would use,” Surtain shrugged. He stepped up to yank the spear haft free and cursed to find the head snapped off.

“What term would you use?” Skinner studied him now, half conscious of his left hand stroking the dense fur of the wolf he had not seen since going to Diahlar.

“I would say that I am wary of your . . . exuberance,” Surtain answered.

“Nice quibble,” Skinner smiled his genuine smile. His heartbeat returned to normal, his blood cooled from the urgency of survival. He was suddenly aware of the horrid stench of the troll.

“You know this wolf?” Surtain studied Socrates intently.

“We go way back, Soxy and me,” Skinner replied.

“Fine animal,” Surtain looked around. “But he seems quite out of place.”

“That’s an understatement,” Skinner grumbled mildly. He grabbed the troll by the shoulder and heaved it over onto its back. It was grossly misshapen, covered in warts and boils that gave it nearly the appearance of a giant man covered in fur and afflicted with leprosy.

“Troll,” he looked up at Surtain. “First one I’ve seen outside the Western Skyteeth. We’ll call it a leopard troll.”

“It smells like a butcher’s cistern.”

“Yeah,” Skinner looked it over. At least twice his own height, the troll outweighed him by a factor of three. Its head was twice the size of his own, its bulging amber eyes recessed under a sloped bulwark forehead. Huge nostrils gashed its large nose, which was shaped something like a cross between human and feline. Thin lips drew over a mouth sporting an extended version of human dental work, but with protuberant canine teeth reeking of rotted flesh.

Using the remaining stub of his stiletto, Skinner surgically removed Surtain’s spearpoint and tossed it to him. Then he dissected the troll’s abdomen and studied the internal organ structure, careful not to pierce any other organs—its stench was cloying and powerful enough without perforating the bowel. Fascinated though he was, he found nothing to surprise him in the beast’s anatomy. He finished with it by deftly stripping the hide from waist to nape, happy to find that the leopard like skin was short-haired and worthy of working into just about anything good hide could be worked into.

“When did you toss the spear?”

“About the same time you leapt on its back,” Surtain shrugged.

“You get the kill, then,” Skinner announced. “Your point lodged in the dorsal rib after wrecking the right lung and complete dissection of the pulmonary artery.”

“Pretend I’m a professional soldier,” Surtain growled, his posture hinting at offended pride.

“Sorry,” Skinner shrugged. “You killed the beast. Your spear collapsed its lung and cut clean through the main blood vessel into its heart.”

“I see,” Surtain nodded. “And all those little holes in its head . . .”

“Would have taken awhile,” Skinner shrugged.

Skinner assured himself that Socrates was merely bruised; the wolf was not bleeding, having leapt in too close to be raked by deadly claws. Skinner sent him to hunt, trusting him to find their camp, then proceeded back himself.

 

W          W          W

 

Skinner stared, mesmerized. The golden light of dawn revealed the source of the keening as a beast straight out of mythology—a Chinese dragon. Wingless, long, serpentine, and as beautiful as a mound of burnished gold. Its eyes shone jade green, its four stubby legs precisely like those of a komodo dragon. But its scales were dazzling bronze, capturing and reflecting light in a way that suggested a supernatural aura.

A course he had taken at the Diahlarium had covered drastynlore throughout the Vale. Skinner recalled no mention of wingless species. Drastyns, he recalled, are native to the Vale. Sylsche, related to drastyns in much the way crocodiles are related to alligators, supposedly came from some other world. No one had details on their origin. The histories dropped off abruptly into a Dark Age around three-hundred years ago. Sources disagreed on everything from diet to habit, threat to benefit, and factual to mythical existence. Skinner had yet to meet anyone who had personally encountered either drastyn or sylsche.

Someone nudged his elbow. Skinner turned to find Surtain, somewhat blanched, motioning him back into the shelter of the high rocks they had scaled to get here. Skinner nodded and followed. They remained silent until well out of sight of the dragon.

“This is ill,” Surtain said sullenly.

“What?” Skinner tilted him a quizzical look.

“That beast.”

“What of it?” Skinner felt as though such things should be commonplace here. There was something manifestly natural about the dragon’s presence.

“Unwinged drastyn are creatures of terrible evil,” Surtain shivered. “Sylsche avoid them, true drastyn avoid them . . .”

“We cannot avoid them,” Skinner said with quiet force. “Not this one, anyway.”

“Why?”

“Did you not see beyond it?” Skinner rummaged through packs, pulling together ingredients for a poison he had learned of long ago in Kandor’s Locker. He took a short, heavy spear from one of the warriors.

“See what?” Surtain was puzzled.

“The grove,” Skinner turned to the spear’s owner. “What kind of spearpoint?”

“Sharp,” the soldier smiled gleefully.

“How strong a haft?” Skinner glowered.

“Half-tang,” the man shrugged. “Kota Hoku steel. Your arm’ll come off before that point gives. The haft is Dahlish ironwood.”

“Excellent,” Skinner rubbed the long blade of the spearpoint into his deadly mix.

“You really intend to play poke the lizard with that thing?” The spearman was awed by the audacity implicit in Skinner’s intention.

“Have to start somewhere,” Skinner shrugged.

“You don’t have to end where you begin,” Surtain glared at him.

“I’ll tell you what,” Skinner smiled his eerily maniacal grin. “I’ll bait him, and you can sneak up and lance him—smear your blade with that stuff.”

“Poison?” Surtain spat. “Better to die with honor than live in infamy.”

“Suit yourself,” Skinner shrugged. “You think a man with a 2-Pale prod is a fair match for that thing? It’s 20 Pale if it’s one. Poison isn’t even cheat enough to make it fair.”

“What of your sorcery?” Surtain pierced him with a crystal blue stare.

“What of it?” Skinner shrugged again. He changed his usual riding robe for close-fitting pants and a jacket he had fashioned himself from padded guweg-hide.

“Can you not avoid it to achieve your goal?” Surtain asked.

“I’ll try,” Skinner conceded, fixing the last bone peg through its loop to secure his jacket. He slapped the shoulders and chest piece where he had coaxed in hardened leather reinforcement to assure himself of their integrity.

“Here’s the plan,” Skinner dropped into a conspiratorial tone and posture. “I’m going to use my best concealment spell to try to get around him. To you, it will appear that I’m walking right past, but he should see only the most mundane and uninteresting thing. If he’s not fooled, I figure he’ll attack.”

“Then what?”

“If he attacks,” Skinner smiled broadly. “I do hope you’ll lend a hand—to me, not the dragon . . . drastyn.”

The others laughed tensely. Skinner wove the spell around himself, took the spear in hand, and moved straight at the dragon. Thirty steps from the rocks, the rolling hills flattened to an emerald carpeted plain. Still somewhat dazzled by the dragon, Skinner had to force himself to gaze beyond it and into the grove that was his target. Several legends he had studied told of the staff trees, but none mentioned fifty-foot dragons as guardians. The trees were easy to recognize; their limbs grew contrary to nature, reaching in straight lines to draw arcane energies instead of reaching toward the sun as common trees do.

Skinner dropped to one knee. A flash of brazen scales shot toward him, almost washing over him as the dragon rolled, eel-like, to avoid the point of Skinner’s upthrust spear. Its tail curled, thick as a tall oak and sinewy as a serpent’s, and slapped him across the grassy plain. He rolled into the tumble and came back to one knee to jab his spear hard into the roiling tail. But the point scudded off coppery scales to no effect.

With incredible agility, the dragon doubled back on itself in a motion so much that of a sea monster that Skinner felt his stomach flop just from watching it. Its fluid grace touched him deeply, but such that it would only register if he lived to remember the encounter. It swam through the air at him, maw wide enough to capture a goat. He stepped left, pivoted, and jammed the butt of his spear into the bone directly behind its open maw, shoving to add to its momentum so that the dragon was stopped from turning toward him again.

Skinner felt something rake his leg, felt a far away searing and the hot splash of blood as the dragon washed over him again. He ran toward it now, ramming the spear between its shoulders and using the spear to vault over the dragon. Sprinting when he hit the ground, Skinner was hidden back over the ledge and among the rocks almost before he realized he was deciding to run.

“Nasty, wicked scratch you got there,” the spearman said. Skinner glared at the man as though it were his fault that the spear failed to perform as Skinner had wanted.

“Go kiss the dragon,” he grumbled, head bent to study his wound. Three furrows ran the length of his left thigh, buttock to knee, twisting from back to front.

“Ruined my best pair of pants,” he murmured. He went back to the flat rock on which he had ground the parts for his poison, cursing himself for adding the final two ingredients that turned the whole batch from tonic to toxic.

“I have a small urn of Ebrani panacea,” one of the soldiers offered.

“Thanks,” Skinner took the proffered urn and sniffed the contents. He frowned deeply, unable to identify its constituent parts. The secret of the potent elixir was closely guarded, but Skinner had long hoped to find a sample and break it down to get the formula. Unfortunately, he was situationally challenged at the moment.

“Serbus,” Surtain tossed another spear to the spearman. “Let’s go get your spear back.”

“I’m not sure—” Serbus blanched, adam’s apple bobbing as he tried to swallow.

“Didn’t Galya gift that spear to you?” Surtain’s lips curled upward at the corners.

“Oh,” Serbus’s eyes grew wide. “Yeah. She’s not . . . Quite right. Must have spear . . . or not go home . . .”

“Hold on,” Skinner limped after them.

“Sit and rest yourself,” Surtain pointed to a rock worthy of chair duty.

“Bite me,” Skinner stared him in the eye. “That beastie’s got my blood on him; unconscionable that I, able still to stand, permit others to avenge myself without aiding them.”

“Then wait here and pray!” Surtain snapped.

Skinner shrugged and called his staff to hand. When the other two walked toward the plain, he followed. Serbus drifted to their left before they crested the rise to the plain, Surtain took point, and Skinner ranged right a few dozen yards. Skinner stopped, scenting the air as though he were canine. The wind whispered rain. It blew steadily harder as they approached. He gazed up surreptitiously to the gathering clouds and began to chant, holding his staff out before him as he approached the dragon for a second encounter.

The dragon was nowhere to be seen. Skinner gaped in astonishment. Their path to the grove was clear. Was it possible his first encounter had somehow succeeded? How? He puzzled it over, still chanting, still gathering arcane and ambient energies. Surtain was a few yards from where the dragon had first stood. Serbus was ten yards or so from Surtain, moving toward him. Skinner moved to join his fellows, but then stopped dead in his tracks. Something was amiss.

“Melltennu!” Skinner bellowed. Lighting erupted from the clouds, searing down in a massive strike directly in front of Surtain. The ground exploded, sending clumps of turf several feet in every direction. Surtain was thrown a dozen paces backward, landing numb from the concussion. Serbus was flattened. And a streak of coppery scales shot from the burning ground toward Skinner.

Melltennu! Melltennu! Melltennu!

Smaller bolts shot down, drawn into the dragon by the spearhead wedged between scales just back of its neck. The dragon roared frustration, its emerald eyes flashing from pain as well. Skinner dodged, rolled, and scrambled with his utmost agility. The tip of the dragon’s tail whipped out and struck a stinging blow to his left shoulder blade.

Skinner rolled and sprang back to his feet. The dragon faced him squarely. Hatred seared through its eyes so fiercely Skinner could feel it, like infection in the blood. It crept toward him now, no longer the agile, graceful dancer but the stalking predator. Skinner squared his shoulders, held his staff ready.

Something shot past Skinner’s shoulder with an angry hiss and suddenly there was a spear embedded in one emerald eye. The dragon howled and thrashed, flicking its tail again. This time the tail coiled around Skinner and dragged him toward the creature’s maw. His mind went blank. He stared into the wreckage of the dragon’s face, and all he could feel was a crushing sense of pity and a worlds-distant anticipation of anger at the loss of beauty—he longed madly for the song that had drawn him here.

Then he was in the dragon’s mind. Or he was the dragon. Or it was him. One way or another, he lost himself in the emerald blaze of the uninjured eye. Images and emotions washed through him like a psychic tidal wave. He clung to his own identity, horrified and overwhelmed at his own insignificance. He loathed himself for ending the beauty, for violating the sanctity of this holy, savage orchard.

Impossible shades of color washed him away into himself. He floated helpless in the expanse of knowledge and memory. His memories playing out as well as the dragon’s. Those memories melded with him, became him. I am Tang Jan Dun.

No! I am Skinner of . . .

I AM TANG JAN DUN.

“No,” Skinner spoke aloud, reaching for the strength of physical need to draw him up from this mire of thought. “I am Skinner. I am a scholar of the Academy of Diahlar.”

I AM . . .

The wash of memory and thought shattered, sending shards of psychic shrapnel into Skinner’s panicked consciousness.

Immitigable blackness swallowed him.