The Written (21 page)

‘We’ll get to that after you
tell us what you’re doing here, and why you had Farfallen’s
tearbook.’ Svarta snapped.

‘I came here to enlist the
services of the Sirens in battling this common enemy. Whoever stole
the summoning manual wants to use it against all of Emaneska, and
only the memories in the tearbook can tell us where they’ll try and
summon this creature.’ Farden crossed his arms defiantly.

‘Which creature?’ asked the Old
Dragon.

‘One spell in the book spoke of
a massive, apparently unimaginably terrifying monster, the one that
we think they’re after. If the scholars and Jergan were right, then
none of us, not the Arka nor the Sirens, could match it.’ Farden
explained.

The grin that ran across
Svarta’s face was no less than sarcastic. ‘The last I heard, the
Sirens weren’t in favour with your court.’

‘If we are to stop this from
happening we need to fight together. True, there were some in the
council who accused you of being responsible for this chaos, but it
was the ruling of the Arkmages that I was to come here and try and
make peace. Unless, of course, your pride isn’t damaged in doing
so?’ Farden returned the grin. Svarta smouldered, but Farfallen put
a huge claw on her shoulder lightly.

‘We have no objection to peace,
Farden, Svarta is just trying to look out for the best interests of
our people. But if you found a strange foreign man washed up on one
of your beaches with a stolen treasure in his hands what would you
assume?’ the dragon asked, and the mage had to agree with him.
‘Still, I am grateful for the return of my tearbook. Since it was
taken things have been hazy in my mind, not so clear. When I try
and remember something it’s like grasping at a wet fish.
Difficult,’ he said, with more than a hint of wistfulness. ‘Why are
my memories so important to the safety of Emaneska?’

‘The spell needs a well of dark
elf magick, and your memories could point to one that has
survived.’

‘We haven’t found one in years.
Jergan and his team were the last to do so.’ Farfallen said.

‘I know, but it’s the only way
they can summon the creature. If we find the well we find them.’
Farden clenched a fist behind his back. He felt like he was back in
the magick council, but this time there was no Vice to help him. He
tried to convey the urgency of the situation to Farfallen with his
mind.

‘And what if you’re too late?’
Svarta asked. The dragon-rider turned to face the wind again.

‘Then we’ll just have to be
quick then won’t we?’ Farden retorted.

‘He has a point.’ This came
from Farfallen.

‘Well there’s no time to lose
then. We can have the men from the library come look at the
tearbook. If there’s a clue to a dark elf well, they can find it,’
said Svarta. Farden was unsure whether she was being sarcastic or
not. She scowled at him once more and then left the balcony edge.
Farden watched her leave, and turned back to the Old Dragon.

‘You will have to forgive her
blunt remarks.’ Farfallen sighed with a strange reptilian smile.
His horns shook as he turned his head into the wind. ‘The wind
feels good today. The snow keeps us cold you see. I think that
inside we’re all fire and heat, so the north always keeps us cool
and comfortable. And the weather is better here too.’ He chatted
almost conversationally, as if the two were sharing stories and
drinks in a tavern. Farden found himself liking the huge dragon,
and he smiled. ‘Really? I thought Krauslung was bad. But this is
far too cold for me.’ The mage shivered even as he said it.

Farfallen laughed his deep
rumbling chuckle. ‘For flying, that is.’

‘I suppose that‘s true.’ He
nodded and paused. ‘I’m glad that you have your tearbook back. Many
things happen in war that shouldn’t… if you know what I mean,’
Farden shook his head at his lack of eloquence.

‘I agree. I know that my forces
did some terrible things to yours, and vice versa. A king never
wants war on his people. If he does then he is a despot, and not a
king in the first place, just like the one who sits in the throne
of Skölgard. What happened between the Sirens and the Arka is now
long ago, and Emaneska forgets.’

Farden simply nodded, and tried
not to betray any thoughts of Cheska and her father. He quickly
tried to think of a question. ‘What’s it like? Flying I mean?’

Farfallen cocked his spiny head
to one side for a moment. ‘For us it is not about what it is like
to fly, but trying to imagine living without it. Think how natural
picking up a sword is for one such as yourself. You take it for
granted. Now think, without your hand, how much you would miss the
feel of a sword in your palm?

‘I once knew an unfortunate
dragon who had sadly lost one of his wings during a terrible battle
along ago. I forget his name now, but he said living without wings
was like seeing without colours, a wash of grey landscapes and
charcoal sunsets.’ Farfallen solemnly bowed his head, and Farden
felt a deep sadness. ‘What happened to him?’ he asked.

‘If memory serves I think he
ended up dying from a broken heart. It doesn’t happen often to a
dragon, but it can. The same happens when we lose a rider we’ve
bonded with. Dragons are born in the air and we die in the air, so
without the rush of the wind beneath our wings we feel useless.
Like birds, in a way.’

‘The flying part sounds
intriguing.’ Farden squinted at the mountainside and the grey
clouds and wondered where the colour was in the first place.

‘Ask Svarta, or one of the
other riders about it.’ It was Farfallen’s turn to pause, and he
looked at the mage beside him. ‘What is it like?’

Farden looked confused.
‘What?’

‘Being a Written.’

Farden was surprised that the
Old Dragon would want to know about him and his kind. He tried to
put the feeling into words, and realised he had never had to
explain it before. Even Durnus had never asked him. ‘It’s
difficult,’ he said. ‘You can feel the power burning on your back
when you cast a spell, or the sensation of the magick rushing
through your veins. But then at other times it’s intangible. You
can’t grab at it or hold it, like a dim star you can only see when
you look to the side of it. Sometimes we wake up at night with a
dizzy feeling when it rushes through your head. But it’s dangerous,
and some say that it’s more of a curse than a blessing, but we’re
sworn to strict rules to keep others safe.’

‘What are they?’ asked the
dragon, and Farden absently clicked his knuckles as he stared at
the landscape. ‘Not to breed, especially with another Written. Not
to let anyone read the tattoo.’ There was an awkward moment, and
the mage looked up at Farfallen. ‘And for that I apologise,’ he
said. But the Old Dragon shook his head slowly. ‘It was his own
doing. I saw that, as did Svarta. She might not admit it, but there
is a lot of blame to be shared between our countries. Please go
on.’

Farden shrugged. ‘Whichever way
you look at it we’re sworn to a life of service to the Arka, one
that either ends in death or madness.’ The dragon kept staring at
him, taking in all the mage had to say. Farden looked into his
giant eyes. He suddenly found himself talking openly to the dragon,
as if they were old friends. Farfallen seemed to be a golden rock
of common sense, and for some reason he felt like he could tell
this giant dragon anything. His lips kept moving. ‘My uncle was one
of the unfortunate ones. After thirty-three years fighting for the
Arka, his mind started to slip and the magick started making him
see things and hear noises. It kept him awake for days on end and
he ended up going mad. He convinced himself that there were things
in the darkness trying to kidnap him, and he told everyone that
there was a daemon trying to control him. So, one day he went out
into the streets of Krauslung and killed a man for no reason.
Ripped him apart and painted the walls with his blood. It was
chaos. Later that morning they caught him trying to scale the city
walls with a rope. He was stark naked, and had bitten the tips of
his fingers off and scratched words into his arms. The last time I
saw him he was being hauled away to the prisons in shackles,
shouting and spitting, biting at the guards who carried him.’
Farden stared at the snow.

‘What happened to him?’ The
dragon asked quietly.

‘He was cast out of the city,
banished from the Arka, and sent out into the wilderness with a
blanket and a gold coin.’ Farfallen looked confused, so Farden
explained. ‘It’s not the first time one of the Written has lost
their minds, so when a mage gets to a certain age the council
starts to watch them closely to see if they act strange or
different. It only happens to about one in every three Written, so
it’s a risk we all take when we go through the Ritual. And if you
are one of the unlucky ones, like my uncle was, then you’re exiled.
Tradition states that you’re given a blanket for the cold, and a
gold coin to use however you see fit. If an exile tries to get back
into the city, then it’s an instant death sentence. It’s been like
that for centuries… that’s just the way it is for us. So we fight,
and we fight hard and fearlessly, and hope that death comes to us
quicker than the madness does,’ said the mage. He closed his eyes
to feel the wind on his skin.

‘It seems like a heavy weight
to bear, Farden.’

‘Sometimes it is. Sometimes I
don’t even think of it at all. The way I see it, I was born to
fight for the Arka, and so fight I will. It’s just hard when you
have people who care about you and worry what you do.’ The mage
flexed his fingers and looked at the dirt under his nails, finding
Durnus’s words coming out of his mouth. He hoped the dragon could
not feel the anger under his skin, the rage that burned there. He
thought of Beinnh, and the people he had killed. There was silence
for a moment.

‘There is one that cares about
you more than the others I take it? A female?’ Farfallen squinted.
Farden didn’t say anything, and kept his eyes straight ahead. ‘I
don’t mean to pry, Farden, and your secrets are safe, but I can
feel it burning inside you,’ said the dragon.

Farden didn’t speak for a
moment, and then nodded. ‘Any sort of romance, however brief, is
against the law for us. So we keep it secret, and hope that one
day, if we both live that long, we can find a way around it.’

‘A fire burns more intensely
when it is covered up, mage,’ said Farfallen, and the simple truth
of his words made Farden think. But the Old Dragon quickly changed
the subject. ‘It is strange how different our two peoples are. The
way you treat magic for example. To the Arka magick is something
you can learn through reading a book or a spell, something you can
carve into skin. But for the Sirens it’s more natural, a hereditary
gift rather than a skill. They all have some magick in them, but it
is an innate magick that leaks from the dragons. Have you ever
wondered about why Sirens have scales like us?’ asked Farfallen.
The mage shook his head. ‘It is the dragons. Living too close to us
for too long can change a person in odd ways.’

Farden nodded, abruptly
realising that was why every rider had the same colour scales as
their partner. ‘I could feel it as soon as I walked into the
hall.’

‘Not everyone does, but anyone
that spends a long time in the company of dragons will feel it
eventually, and by the time they realise it, they’ve already been
changed.’

Farden thought about it. ‘Maybe
that’s why our people have been fighting so long.’

‘Perhaps. I have always been
curious at the way you treat magick like a secret art, a power that
must be controlled and carefully guarded from others by your
council, like it’s a treasure to be locked away. But I suppose on a
level many Siren wizards envy the ease with which you Arka can
control and bend the magick to your will,’ said Farfallen with a
sniff.

‘I don’t think I’ve ever
thought about it like that,’ the mage admitted. ‘Some say we caught
the magick at sea, while the Arka were just a race of fishermen,
others say it came from our goddess Evernia, or the Scribe, but
either way, you have a point.’ He stretched and yawned. Tiredness
seeped into the spaces behind his eyes and even though evening was
swiftly approaching, he found himself blinking and squinting in the
snowy light. He wondered how it was still so bright when he
couldn’t even see the sun.

‘Down there, to your left, is a
small room that our old servant used to occupy. Its warm, and I
hear the bed isn’t that uncomfortable.’ The dragon flashed his
weird reptilian smile again, bearing a few knife-like teeth. ‘Rest
for now, and by tonight I think it will be time for me to see it.’
He held the mage’s gaze a few more seconds before turning back to
face the wafting waves of cold wind on his gold face. ‘Oh and
something else survived the shipwreck besides you. It’s in your
room,’ the dragon said without looking at him.

Farden nodded, slightly
confused, said his thanks, and headed towards the little door
hiding between the rock and the edge of the big balcony. It was
unlocked, and as he pushed it forward he heard a little mewing
noise, and saw a black shape trotting across the floor towards him.
It was Lazy, the ship’s cat. Farden was speechless, but even so he
crouched down and let the little cat nibble at his fingers and rub
itself against him, watching her intently. The cat must be as lucky
as he was, he thought, and shook his head in disbelief. She rumbled
with a happy purring, and watched him remove his cloak and tunic.
The mage collapsed weakly onto the small bed and into a tangled
mess of deep thoughts and cold pillows. Lazy settled down somewhere
near him and fell asleep instantly.

Farden thought of dragons in
the sky and dragons on the ground, and then he thought of flying,
wondering whether dragons slept at all, or how they would never
need a flint or tinder to light a fire for their rider, and what it
must feel like to snort and breath fire as if it were just simple
air, not forgetting of course how beautiful it was to watch them
fly, how they made picking up a fork look harder than merely
jumping into the air, and how these were the true dragons, not just
simple worms of the wilderness hunting magick. It was like what
Durnus had said years ago, about dragons living for hundreds and
hundreds of years, that they just keep going and going and going
and going like the snowfall outside that small circular window near
the door, grey and drifting like dust on his pillow…