The Dragon of Avalon (19 page)

Cautiously reaching out his tongue, he touched its tip to the ground. He took a tiny fleck of soil. And then swallowed.

I am new as springtime and old as starlight
, said a vibrant, female voice inside his head, as a veil of deep brown colored his vision.
The magic of life, the miracle of birth, the serenity of death . . . they all reside in me. Along with another kind of magic—oh yes! a gift from Merlin himself—that fills me with the seven sacred elements. The essence of breath. The power of creation.
The brown veil deepened, darkened.
For I am mud.

Gradually, Basil's vision cleared. Everything seemed as before—the brown soil surrounding him, the twisted patterns on the ground. Yet now the mud seemed to sparkle with its own inner magic. And in the depths of his mind he heard that voice again:
the magic of life . . . the power of creation.

With a flap of his wings, he flew back up to the mound to have a better look at the patterns. He caught his breath. The patterns, like the mud, looked different now. He could read them! Gazing down at the intricate scrawl, he read aloud, his scratchy voice adopting a strange new cadence.

"All now must praise him, Gabbledar king! Enter his Underlands, worship the darkness. Seek only service, protect all his Gnomes. Kill those who threaten, spare nothing at all."

Swallowing hard, he stopped. Gnomes! So it was they who dug this tunnel. Who marked the mud with this warning. Who built their society on a simple, cruel idea:
Kill those who threaten, spare nothing at all.

So engrossed in thought was he that he didn't notice the hint of movement in the shadowy mouth of the tunnel. Nor the odor, vaguely salty, that entered the air. Nor the keening gusts of wind on high.

All at once, shrieks and howls erupted. Three squat gnomes, wearing armbands and loincloths, burst out of the tunnel. Their jaws, wide with rage, showed jagged, flesh-tearing teeth. Though only half the height of humans, their muscular bodies exuded strength. Burly arms held stone axes and deadly spears.

Screaming wildly, they leaped at Basil. He didn't even have time to open his wings before grimy, three-fingered hands grabbed his body. And squeezed hard.

At that instant the mound beneath him began to quake. Its smooth brown surface rippled and bubbled—then, all at once, expanded. From the size of a tree stump it shot upward, swiftly growing to the size of the gnomes, then double that height, then double again. Four arms sprouted from its sides, each with immensely long fingers. At the top, a head emerged from rounded shoulders. Deep-set eyes, dark brown, appeared above a curving mouth.

The mudmaker roared, scattering the gnomes. With all four arms waving, the enormous creature stepped toward the tunnel, feet squelching in the mud. Dropping Basil, the frightened gnomes plunged back into their hole, their screeches echoing from inside the tunnel.

Gratefully, Basil gazed up at the tall being who had appeared so suddenly. Still panting with fright, he exclaimed, "Aelonnia! It's you."

"Again we meet," she said in her rich, resonant voice. She gracefully bent lower, peering at him with her brown eyes. "No greater in size are you . . . but now, perhaps, greater in wisdom."

Basil shook himself, nose to tail, unable to banish the feeling of muddy hands clutching him. "Not much, I'm afraid." He blinked up at her. "Thank you, Aelonnia. Always a pleasure to see you. Especially since you seem to have a knack for saving my life."

"A life worth saving, I believe it is."

Remembering those words from long ago, he stiffened. "That's what Aylah told me."

"This time, perhaps, you hhhwill believe the hhhwords."

The mudmaker's eyes turned upward. "And here now she is, that same sister of the wind."

"Hohhhw good to be hhhwith you again, Aelonnia," her voice whispered.

"And with yon, my restless friend." Turning back to Basil, the mudmaker warned, "Dally not, little one. The gnomes—come back soon they will, with more warriors and weapons. Leave now, you should, to avoid the danger."

Scowling, he shook his head. "They aren't the real danger. Rhita Gawr is here in Avalon! It's true, Aelonnia. I saw him, disguised as a leech, in Stoneroot."

The mudmaker's entire body stiffened. Only her slender fingers moved, weaving through the air. "Rhita Gawr? Here?"

Basil nodded grimly. "Dagda told me to warn everyone. Especially Merlin."

Her fingers froze. "Here he was, only three days ago."

"Three days!" Basil shivered, snout to tail, with excitement. Looking upward, he asked, "Aylah, can we catch him?"

"I am not sure, little hhhwanderer. A hhhwizard can move as fast as the hhhwind. But I hhhwill surely try."

"Searching, he was," said Aelonnia. Her long fingers moved again, making mysterious patterns, as if tying invisible threads together. "For a terrible—"

"Kreelix," finished the lizard. "I can't believe he was just here!"

The mudmaker's fingers pulled an invisible knot. "Missed him just barely, you did."

"Did he say where he was going?"

"No, speak of that he did not."

Basil growled from deep in his throat—a small sound, but full of intensity. "I will find him."

Swaying from side to side, Aelonnia promised, "Spread the word, I shall! From the plains of Isenwy to the jungles of Africqua. Know will the people of this realm that Rhita Gawr has arrived! All must beware."

Gazing down at him, she added in a gentle tone, "Seen many large things, have you, for someone so small. Wonder, I do, whether you are really—"

A chorus of wrathful shrieks came out from the tunnel, cutting her off. "Go now we must!" declared Aelonnia. Instantly, she strode off, her enormous feet squelching noisily.

"Wait!" Basil called. "Can't you finish . . ." But his words were lost in the powerful wind that swept across the ground, lifting him into the air.

21:
S
TARLIGHT

What is starlight, anyway ? Its birthplace is the stars, to be sure. But its home, its dwelling place, is far away—across the great reaches of the sky, in the eyes of every person who gazes, in wonder, at the stars.

Basil rose into the sky, riding the wind once more. His thoughts, though, remained in Mudroot. What had Aelonnia started to say? Was he, like the mud of that realm, harboring some secret down inside? How would he ever find out?

He shook himself, so hard his wings slapped the wind.
Right now, you've got more pressing things to think about.
Merlin was near! Yet the wizard, pursuing his foe, was completely unaware of the much greater foe who wanted to destroy him—and conquer Avalon.

"Starset hhhwill come soon, little hhhwanderer."

Aylah's soothing voice brought him back to the present. He turned his gaze skyward. Through the tracery of brown-tinted clouds, he could almost make out the first few stars, harbingers of night. Now he waited, as he'd done so many evenings before on the rocky ridges of Stoneroot, to see the flash of golden light that would mark the day's end.

There! Golden light burst across the sky, illuminating thousands of stars—an explosion of radiance that made Basil feel as if his whole world lay within an enormous crystal cave. An instant later, all those stars grew suddenly dimmer—and instantly more visible. For in Avalon, where the stars illuminated the sky all day, it was only at night, after they had dimmed, that their individual positions became clear.

Why did the stars dim at the end of every day? And why did they grow bright once again every morning? These were questions that had, since the very birth of this world, filled many a stargazer's mind—and many a bard's ballad. But such questions really boiled down to one basic puzzle: What was the true nature of Avalon's stars?

Basil worked his slim jaw. "Aylah, I may never know much about the stars, but I do know this. They're beautiful—more beautiful than anything I've ever seen."

"Come, little hhhwanderer. I hhhwill shohhhw you more." She carried him higher, rising upward in a spiraling swell. He glanced down at Mudroot, far below. From this altitude, he could see the whole eastern coastline, all the way to the knife-edge ridge that bards called the Cliffs Perilous.

Gazing upward again, he traced the outlines of his favorite constellations. There was the straight row of seven exceptionally bright stars that people had started to call the Wizard's Staff. And there, the Twisted Tree, whose curling branches stretched halfway across the sky. Now he could see the perfect circle of stars that lay within a larger circle, the constellation that Elen herself had named the Mysteries.

The wind sister stopped spiraling upward and leveled out. With a whoosh of air that ruffled Basil's wings, she started to soar eastward again across the muddy plains. But her passenger barely noticed the change. He'd turned his full attention to a remarkable new sight, something he had never been high enough to see before.

"Look there, Aylah! A line of light that cuts across the sky."

"Hhhwell done," she breathed in his ear. "You have found something that very fehhhw mortals have seen. That is the River of Time."

"It's a river?" He studied the luminous line that sliced through dozens of constellations. "It looks more like . . . well, a kind of seam in the sky."

Aylah chuckled, bouncing him on bursts of wind. "The Talihhhwonn people, fabric hhhweavers who live high up in the branches, have thought the same. They call the River
the seam in the tent of the sky
."

Incredulous, Basil asked, "There are people up there? On the branches?"

"Hhhwondrous people," she replied, flying faster than ever. "And the River of Time really is a sort of seam. For it divides the halves of time, past and future, hhhwhile alhhhways flohhhwing in the present."

Though Basil didn't understand her words, he could feel her awe at the wonders above. Awe that he shared. For the first time in his life, he realized that the stars weren't really objects outside of his world. They were
connected
to his world, and to everyone in it. Including himself.

Gazing up at the boundless blanket of stars, he realized something else. They made him feel small—not in the way he'd felt his whole life, from the moment he first crawled out of his egg, but in a more profound way. He felt small, not just in size, but in importance. Humbled. And yet, at the same time, he felt large. Bigger than he'd ever thought possible. For as tiny as he was, he was still connected to the stars, still touched by their light.

How could he feel both incredibly small and amazingly large—at once? He couldn't explain it. He could only . . . feel it.

So this is the gift of the stars
, he thought. To feel humbled by the vastness of creation—and also enlarged by his living connection to it.

"The nehhhwest realm is near," announced Aylah. Her breathy voice called Basil out of his reverie. He turned to look at the strange new vista as she started to descend, carrying him downward like a falling star.

22:
A
EOLIAN
H
ARPS

Illusions, though completely unreal, can still be annoying. Maybe even a little troublesome. Especially when they try to kill, maim, or devour you.

Riding the wind, Basil flew downward. Air rushed past him, fluttering his ears, whistling a windblown chorus. Lightning itself, he felt, couldn't fly any faster.

He gazed at the strikingly different scene below. Mudroot had receded, now just a dark brown smudge on the western horizon. Another realm approached rapidly. Even in the dimmer light of this starlit evening, he could tell that he was about to encounter an entirely new landscape.

Truth is
, he thought as the wind whistled past his face,
it's not a landscape at all. It's a cloudscape.

Below him stretched Airroot, homeland of the sylphs, who were themselves essentially clouds that had come alive. He recalled again the one he'd seen floating above Merlin's wedding. And he remembered that the sylphs' name for this realm, Y Swylarna, meant
mist haven.

What name could fit this place better
? he mused. Clouds of every size and shape drifted nearby or massed in the misty distance, forming broad plains, rumpled hills, or towering peaks that gleamed in the starlight. Crisscrossing the plains lay broad avenues, paved with pure white clouds that looked as solid as marble. Cloudcake! He'd heard about it years ago (without believing a word, since it seemed so unlikely) from a bard who explained that cloudcake came from the very bottom of the Air Falls of Silmannon, where centuries of pounding had smashed the clouds into something as hard as rock. And now . . . there it was, right before his eyes: a web of streets made entirely from clouds.

"Look!" he cried, suddenly noticing some thin, glistening strands that stretched between two clouds. He pointed his wing. "That looks like—like a bridge."

"And so it is, little hhhwanderer. Sylphs don't alhhhways fly upon the hhhwind, you knohhhw. Sometimes they prefer to roll across the clouds, hhhwrapping themselves in fresh, nehhhwly made mist. So they make bridges, hhhwoven from strands of cloudthread."

Basil watched the ethereal bridge pass beneath them. Then he spied a massive, undulating cloud whose misty slopes held thousands of spiky pinnacles that resembled trees. Each of them glittered with the light of stars, turning the whole cloud into a vast, vaporous constellation. "What's—"

"The great Forest Afloat," answered the wind sister, anticipating his question. "Those are eonia-lalo trees, hhhwhose hhhwood is lighter than air."

Shifting direction with a sudden gust, Aylah swung southward, so that Basil now faced an enormous, many-layered cloud that was streaked with bright colors. So many colors radiated from the cloud, with such intensity, that even at night it seemed to be wrapped in rainbows. Eerie blues, incandescent yellows, amber oranges, vibrant greens, haunting purples—all these and more shone from this misty palette.

"The cloud gardens," explained Aylah with a sigh of admiration. "Tended by thousands of hhhwhite mist faeries, since the very first days of Avalon. Their hhhwings are alhhhways a blur, and their heads are alhhhways adorned hhhwith silver bells."