Dragon Rigger (36 page)

Abruptly, the clouds fell away and the thread streaked upward into a new layer of clear sky. FullSky paused, with a sudden fearful feeling that this was too risky; he was too likely to be seen. He caught sight of a branching path, winding off sideways along the top of the cloud layer from which he had just emerged. Hesitating for only an instant, he took the detour. It looked as though it might later twist back up toward the same destination as the main thread; but it was the difference between a fine, clear mountain passage and a thin, perilous, twisty one bound in fog. He hoped he could find his way through the fog.

He had scarcely made the detour when he heard voices behind him, harsh crackling voices. A blanket of cloud caught him, then flashed away again, leaving him exposed. The larger silvery thread was still visible behind him, climbing into the sky. Two figures of jagged, pulsating fire—watchers, perhaps—were streaking up the thread that he had just abandoned. He continued his own movement without changing rhythm, hoping to be less conspicuous in steady motion than he might be if he stopped and tried to hide.

The two watchers vanished, flickering, up the thread. How many more of those would there be? he wondered, his relief mixed with worry. Would he find the Dream Mountain guarded by them? If so, how could he hope to get through?

No matter; he was committed. He flew through the patchwork of fog, following the side trail, peering through every opening in the shroud for a glimpse of the ultimate direction of this path. He prayed that he had not been misled in following it, that the mist would not part to reveal guardians in his path.

The clouds began to darken and grow turbulent. Looking up through breaks in the cover, he saw layers of storm cloud overhead, in fast motion against the sky. Something in the movement was dizzying, and it took him a moment to realize that it was a circular motion. Before he could think more about it, the thread bent abruptly upward—and he flew from the concealing layers straight up into a great, storming whirlwind.

As he clung to the thread, he found to his relief that it passed into the relatively calm center of the maelstrom. But he was astounded by the power and momentum carried by those clouds, now racing in a vast circle around him and above him. Lightning flashed within the cloud walls, and the layers churned as they spun around, as though each wisp of cloud were vying for the inside position. The sheer power was terrifying enough; but more than that, he had the impression that there was a purposefulness in the movements within the cloud wall, as though there were a strength and intelligence there, not just in the crafting behind the storm, but dwelling in the storm's power itself.

Almost as though . . . it were alive . . .

As though . . . it were not just a
creation
of Tar-skel, but an actual coiling of the Enemy's own personality through the underweb. And if that was true . . .

FullSky had a sudden, terrible feeling that the Enemy himself might be breathing within those clouds, and looking out through them. FullSky had never actually met the Enemy face-to-face; but this dark, endlessly spinning mass was making him quake with fear.

He slowed, but did not stop. He tried to draw his kuutekka close about him, making his presence as small as it could be. Around him, the great walls of cloud were turning, racing in the sky. The pale thread continued upward through the eye, but edged frighteningly close to the cloud wall.

Something new began to happen now. A great fist of cloud erupted from the far side of the storm, pushing out into the stillness in the center, then turning upward, moving with agonizing slowness—and yet, for a cloud, with shocking speed. FullSky felt faint at the power he sensed in that fist . . . or was it a
Nail? . . .
pushing into the sky. He shivered, and fought to keep his fear from shining out through his kuutekka. There was an overwhelming presence inside that cloud; it was a presence he had contested once, and lost to, and did not want to battle again. FullSky felt a tremendously oppressive dread in his heart; he was sure now that it was Tar-skel he was seeing, the Enemy's kuutekka manifest in the underrealm, the Enemy looking out upon the face of the realm that he was claiming for his own.

A current of air was rising beneath FullSky, carrying him upward, closer and closer to that great, swelling fist. He could not turn back now if he wanted to, not without battling the current, not without drawing attention to himself. How small could he make himself? he wondered desperately. As surely as if he were physically here, he felt himself holding his breath, riding the updraft as a fleck of dust or a droplet of water, riding it wherever the winds would take him, spiraling and spinning about the path-thread, but drawn inexorably toward the eruption of the Nail's presence.

The fist seemed to be closing around the thread-path, as though to clutch it. FullSky was flying headlong into its grip. He felt a rushing despair as he rose, helplessly, ever closer to the impossibly dense cloud. He became aware of tiny, churning microstorms on its surface, and imagined that those tiny disturbances were eyes, peering out into the sky.
Peering
 . . .He was certain that that was Tar-skel's gaze shifting to and fro, taking in the sight of his underrealm. How could that gaze miss the kuutekka of a dragon rising alongside it? As he struggled to reduce himself to an invisible speck, he thought of his physical body, captive in the dungeons of the Dark Vale; and he knew that if Tar-skel recognized him, no matter what evasions he might try here in the underrealm, his body could be destroyed within a moment of the Nail's command. The only mountain he would reach then would be the Final Dream Mountain, the soulfire of death.

Lightning seared the air around him; and as the thunder rumbled, he saw not just the lightning glowing against the clouds, but the Nail's web of power, as well—a fine woven outline visible through the clouds. The lightning flashed, illuminating the fist of Tar-skel with great jumping sheets of light and shadow; and the web seemed to burn brighter. It was not finished—there were strands incomplete and missing—but it was strong, and growing stronger.

FullSky, spun by the winds, streaked ever faster upward toward a grey ceiling of sky that loomed overhead. He was level with the fist of cloud, practically surrounded by its massive bulk, still mushrooming outward. It was impossible that he would not be seen! Each flash of lightning illuminated more to the Enemy's gaze, and surely that gaze was circling around toward
him.
FullSky's fear and hope were knotted tightly in his heart. His fear must be blazing out like a beacon in the night!

And yet, perhaps not. As he watched, the stormy eyes seemed to slide past him. With each flash brighter than the one before, he felt the power in the Enemy's gaze drawn outward toward the vastness of the web. The Nail was admiring his own handiwork, and missing altogether the puny presence of a dragon's kuutekka rising through its center. FullSky heard a rumbling voice, a voice of anger and satisfaction, of arrogant pride; and he knew that the voice was reveling in the lightning and thunder, in the dreadful structure beyond. And though FullSky could practically have reached out and touched the surface of Tar-skel's fist, he remained absolutely still and shot upward and away from it in terror, a scrap of leaf on the wind.

A heartbeat later, he was above the storm, untouched. He felt as small as a grain of sand; he could hardly remember what it was like to fly as a dragon. He caught his breath, and tearing his gaze from the Enemy's terrible presence, gazed upward again. Directly overhead was a thinning in the cloud ceiling, and a frail thread-path twisting up through that opening. Far off to the side, almost lost in the wall of the great storm below, FullSky glimpsed the larger main thread that he had left earlier, and saw that it turned away from where he wanted to go. He had chosen correctly, in leaving that path.

From above, Tar-skel's fist looked a little less dark now, a little less ominous. He was not by any means out of range of the Enemy's sight, but he began to feel hope again. The roiling of the Enemy's presence seemed turned away from him, and he was rising faster and faster away from it. The grey ceiling overhead was dropping upon him like a blanket. It was wispy thin, right here in this one place above the Enemy's gaze, but before he could even think about it, the fog whipped closed around him and cut off the sight of Tar-skel's storm.

A few seconds later, the fog layer fell away below. Looking up, FullSky trembled in wonder. There were twists and turns in the path yet, but above him as he rose was the astonishing sight of a vast, magnificent, translucent mountain.

* * *

Dream Mountain: a sharp-featured peak of glass, glowing from within. FullSky, after the first heart-stopping moment, recovered his concentration and reached out his presence toward it.

There were no further barriers of the Enemy. Apparently Tar-skel was so confident of his grand sorcery that he did not trouble to station any of his lesser servants here. FullSky followed the thread-path without difficulty to the base of the Mountain, and there he felt familiar draconic spells of entry; and with a shudder of pleasure, he tugged at those threads and found himself inside the Mountain.

The transformation was instantaneous. He was in a place bathed with sunshine, so bright he could see nothing else, and he heard the voices before he saw their source. They were like chimes ringing in a shifting breeze, like glass singing in a fire, like a stream chortling in a carved channel. They were surely the voices of the draconae, and FullSky for a moment could not move or breathe or utter a sound to make his presence known. Nor did he have to.

You
who have entered,
said a voice floating toward him.
You
are different from those who have tried before.

Indeed,
FullSky whispered.
I am a friend. I
cannot
see you. But if you are the draconae, the dreaming, the singing ones—

We are—

Then—
and he paused, barely glimpsing the presence of the others, fluttering in the Dream Mountain's underrealm—
then know that I am FullSky, son of Highwing and Skytouch, and I am reaching out to you in desperate hope, from the dungeons of the Dark Vale.

There was a sound of rushing wind, and another change, not quite instantaneous, more like an eyeblink. He was wafted into a darkness, but a warm darkness—and he felt something stirring near him, the flutter of fragile wings. He felt a breath close, and he glimpsed the movement of pale luminous figures, almost too dim to be seen.
Wait
, he heard.

The swirling snow was finally abating, the air clearing to reveal a landscape that took Jael's breath away, even through the distortion of the fractured rigger-net. The mountain trail was winding down out of the barren heights toward a glen of some sort; she glimpsed trees rising from the shadows. In the distance an oblate red sun shone over a majestic range of mountains, peaks gleaming with ice and snow, the lower flanks jutting angles of maroon and brown rock. As she descended, ship on her back, she saw clusters of trees below, with burnished purple and gold leaves. She glimpsed a stream tumbling down from a cliff face. Ahead of her, floating down into the glen, was the hazy and ethereal iffling, in the shape of a dragon.

Jael felt her spirits lifting. This looked like the sort of place where dragons might gather, and perhaps share word with her of the struggle. But as more of the glen drew into sight, she searched in vain for any sign of dragons, or any animate life other than the iffling. Her spirits sank again.

She felt terribly lonely. Ed had not returned from his search for Ar. Once, she thought she had actually heard Ar's voice, calling out—not to her, but to Ed—but only once, and then the voice was lost again in the cottony interstices of the damaged net. Jael knew she had to forget Ar and Ed and put the most urgent tasks before her, and not give in to fear. But her heart ached for the company of her friends. She was terrified that she had damaged the net irreparably, and that this was where they would all die, uselessly. Words had come back to her from a conversation with Kan-Kon, words she'd not paid much attention to at the time, distracted as she'd been by other thoughts. "
From that one's death . . . will the ending be wrought . . ."—
words that he seemed not to have understood particularly, but which now made her sick with fear. She longed for Windrush. He could make sense of all this. She desperately wanted to believe that he had heard her call, or somehow sensed her presence.

The trail twisted to the left, dropped steeply for a few steps, then bent back the other way and sloped more gently down into the glen. The iffling, ahead of her, was pulsing. It seemed to want her to hurry.

She wondered again if she really ought to trust it. But what choice did she have? There had been a time, long ago it seemed now, when she had decided to trust a dragon. She hadn't known him well, either. But she had decided to trust him; and in the end, that decision had led her not only to a friendship with Highwing and his sons, but also to a deeper healing in her own heart. Did wisdom call, then, for her to trust this being, as she had once trusted Highwing?

The iffling floated back toward her, a glimmering dragon of light.
We will stop here, for now.
You have many questions. In this place, we may find some answers.

Jael blinked, wondering if the iffling had read her thoughts.
What is this place?
she asked.
Is it a place of dragon magic?
She remembered Highwing's garden of powers, which he had shown her during her first visit to the realm, and she wondered if this would be something similar.
Will we meet dragons here? Can we call to Windrush?

The iffling dimmed, flickering as though with uncertainty. Then it brightened again.
It
is indeed a place of powers—though not, precisely, of dragon magic. The Pool of Visions, this place is called. It is possible to
see
 . . .
much . . . and learn much, here. And perhaps
 . . .
to call out to Windrush. Much will depend upon how much you trust . . . me. For here we must seal . . . our trust.