Dragon Ultimate (30 page)

The glossy patina of conquest and dominion was stripped away. All pretensions, all evasions were laid bare, and the horror that he had inflicted on the universe was revealed to him. His hatred of the world had undone him. He who had brought this beauty into existence had failed his duty, which was to undo his own existence in order to end the corruption of magic and let stability rule the universe.

To buttress his position he had gone on, and on, in one effort after another, to establish that he had been right not to sacrifice his life! The universe was great, and he was not only enjoying it, he was adding to its splendor. He had to prove that he was right! No matter what the facts might say.

Now he saw that such things as the splendor of his palace on Haddish, the Heptagon, were rendered trivial beside the evil he had wrought. He had become small in spirit, fearful to everything, and cruel beyond understanding.

At first it had been his contention that conflict was inevitable among the creatures of the worlds of the universe. The Great Game of the Sphereboard of Destiny determined the players and the play. This occasioned war, and war was hell, but sometimes it had to be fought. From that concession to war had come other things, leading in the end to the determination that only when his rule was absolute could he bring his vision to the worlds. His own cities would be bathed in brilliance.

But to get to those brilliant cities he had had to end billions of lives.

And now, everything was annihilated by the withering eye of his own former self. All lies were eradicated, all attempts to avoid the truth were rendered useless. He saw himself with peculiar clarity. He had been consumed by his hatreds, dishonest and deceitful even with himself. There was no escape, no way to pretend that it wasn't true.

Tears formed in his eyes for the first time since Puna's body had fallen to the floor before him in ancient Gelderen, long, long ago. That first murder, strangling the beautiful Puna who had seen through him and denounced him to his face, that was the crime that had set his subsequent decline in motion. Tears ran down his face, and he wept for the horror of what he had become. He, who had once been so noble, so pure, such a shining spirit of creation. Now, he was tarnished and corrupted beyond measure.

His shoulders slumped, his great thews bent, and he sank to his knees there on the dune beside Lessis. Even kneeling, he was taller than the slight figure of the witch. A vast sob racked the huge body.

"I have erred," he said in Intharion, the ancient elf tongue.

Lessis simply watched, astonished at the sight of this mightiest of enemies reduced to this incapacitated misery simply by the gift of insight.

"I only wanted to improve the worlds."

The voice was spiraling, wavering. It was as if it spoke from out of the deep past and had all strength gnawed away by time.

"On Haddish, from the earliest days of my realm there, I tried to make life a paradise for the Glem, the bright and restless Glem of Haddish.

"But they were never satisfied. They warred with each other continuously over strips of ground. I struggled to find some way to change them, to get some sort of use out of them! My creatures farmed them like cattle and drank their blood, but still the Glem were proud. Still they were insolent! So I exterminated them. I ground them out of existence!"

The huge figure sobbed and sucked in air loudly. Then it spoke in a different voice, almost as if from a different being.

"That turned out to be a mistake. Because I was still building the Heptagon, and I needed more labor. The Glem had to be replaced. So I went to Orthond, where the Eleem had bred the remarkable Neild. I brought Neild to Haddish and made them thrive."

He paused. There was something else working in his eyes now, a strange glitter of irrationality.

"But, you see, in the end I had to have Orthond, too. I held off for a long time, because the Eleem world was so perfect in its way."

There was another huge sob and a long silence.

"They had to be exterminated, don't you see?" He was entreating Lessis, begging her to understand why he had been forced to annihilate the peoples of so many worlds.

She made no response. All of the spell's work had to come from within, that was the key requirement.

One possibility the witches had discussed was insanity. Waakzaam the Great had lived far too long and had grown strange and fell in that time. Perhaps his mind, great as it was, would be unable to stand the shock of self-realization.

But Irene and Ribela thought that the most likely course would be suicide. So painful would this self-awareness be that he would at last lay down his stolen life and pass into the fabric of the Sphereboard of Destiny. It would be the only way to end the agony that his existence had become.

The giant figure hunched down, sobbing. The groans and heavy breaths continued while he apologized to Lessis, babbling about the slaughter of Geft and the emptying of Bar Ob. Terrible things had happened on Geft; he had gone too far, altogether too far. But there were simply too many Gimmi. They had carpeted Geft with themselves.

The nightmarish end of the Gimmi seemed to snap something in the sobbing voice. There was a change. There was now a whine of complaint.

"
They
came, they decided to interfere. After all the time of peace between us. Long aeons without their interference had passed. They broke the treaty!"

They were the Sinni, of course. The High Ones, the Golden Elves of the earliest times, when Gelderen had been the golden city of the most high and completely uncorrupted.

The complaint quickly intensified, because once they broke the treaty and began interfering, they raised up insurrections and rebellions. No sooner had he conquered and settled Armalle, then They were at work there. The trouble was endless. For a while the Ixin, the folk of lovely Armalle, came together in a revolutionary army. They threw down the rulers he had set over them and took the field against his own army.

It was Their work. And after he crushed the rebellion he boiled the leaders alive and slew one in ten of the general population before reducing the Ixin to the level of animals. To show them, the golden ones, the children of Los, what would happen if they dared to interfere again.

And it was their fault, therefore, that he was at war! Their fault. If they had just left him alone, he would have solved the problem, and achieved those brilliant cities that he dreamed of. They denied him the opportunity to create his masterpiece! And after all that he had put into it and all the lives that had been sacrificed.

How dare they! How dare they interfere with his work!

The great face raised itself slowly from abasement. Lessis found herself staring into perfectly golden eyes, all blue extinguished. The face was slack, the elfin beauty cold and unstirring. With slow crawling skin, Lessis felt the madness that now governed the creature before her.

The powerful blow that knocked her to her knees took her by surprise, still.

"Witch! I will have you…"

North of the foreland, hidden in the gully, Lagdalen and the others were suddenly shaken by a great blast of green light that lit up the south. A clap of thunder shook the sky.

Giles, the sensitive, suddenly gave a gasp and put out a hand to steady himself.

"What is it?" said Mirk.

"The Lady did not speak of this," whispered Lagdalen, her face turned ashen.

Giles felt the hot eyes of the Lord searching for them. "He lives! He has taken her."

The moon rose late, yellow and huge, low along the horizon. It threw its light across the dismal swamp to create stark shadows. The lone pine and clump of aspen, the fallen tree and bank of rushes, all were etched silver in the moon's light.

On the rampart at the Angle, Bazil and the Purple Green were keeping watch. Relkin and Manuel were standing together out of earshot, discussing the Purple Green's uncertain temper. The great wild dragon was still out of sorts following the unfortunate conversation concerning High Wings and Bazil's mating, years back.

So far, Bazil had refrained from mentioning any of this. The fighting at the beach had been intense enough to put everything else out of mind. Afterward they had barely had time to put the edge back on his sword before the order came down to move out. On the march, though, the Purple Green of Hook Mountain had been a withdrawn, moody presence, radiating ill will. Everyone had grown silent, even Alsebra, who usually refused to be cowed by the Purple Green. They were all depressed by the time they reached the Angle and took up bunks in the row of available spots behind the line.

Bazil had received his posting with the Purple Green for watch duty with resignation. Then again, perhaps it would offer an opportunity to broach the subject and get this over with.

Out in the swamp coyotes called. From farther away came a long sobbing cry from a night bittern. Bazil sneaked a glance in the Purple Green's direction. The huge wild dragon was sunk in on himself, his neck tucked over and his head almost resting on the breastbone. He was staring out into the dark, lost in gloom.

"You are still angry."

The Purple Green hissed, but made no reply.

"It is foolish to be still so angry. Whatever happened then, we have passed beyond it since, many times over."

"Foolish?"

"Yes."

"Foolish!"

"Yes. What is the point? High Wings hunts in the northlands. I not see her again, ever. I see you all the time."

"I had never been defeated until then."

"I had dragonsword, and you did not. How could you have defeated me?"

The Purple Green knew this truth, but at some level he could not accept it. Just as in some deepest part of him he remained wild, forever at odds with Legion discipline, social rules, and order.

"That was the beginning of the end of my life."

"The end of that life. Now you have another life. This life is not too bad."

"I went to heal up on the mountain and those damned filthy imps came."

The horror of imprisonment returned to the huge dragon. His eyes began to glow with sheer hatred. "They destroyed my wings."

"You and I, we met again in the place of death. They try to make us kill each other, but we refused. We fought back-to-back then, and ever since."

"You are groundbound; you cannot conceive of wild dragon life."

"We swim," said Bazil defensively, proud of the wyvern dragon's adaptation to the coastal life. "It is not the same as flight, but we not groundbound as you like to say."

"It is not same."

"Even so it helps me understand your loss."

The Purple Green muttered to himself, then took a new tack. "You break their rules. You swim in ocean."

"You don't have to bring that up all the time. They not supposed to know."

"You hate rules, like me."

"I have always known these rules. I am not wild dragon like you."

The wild one had slipped back to his global gloom. "You cannot understand."

"Yes, you right. I was lucky, the witch could fix my tail. But your wings were too damaged for their magic."

"Too damaged. Filthy imps…"

"Think of this, though. You have plenty of opportunity for revenge in this new life. And you eat well, too."

"Food is bland."

"But always there. Don't go hungry very often."

The Purple Green had to accept the truth of Bazil's words. Unlike the wild life with its all-too-frequent hungry spells, the life in the Legion was a settled, well-fed one. He cast around for something to complain about.

"You call that tail fixed?" he said.

They both looked at Bazil's odd tail, with the last few feet crooked and a bit too small. The leatherback flexed it—it worked well enough. It had never been beautiful.

"It better than not having a tail. I can wield tail mace."

"You have tail. Wings too badly damaged. I useless now."

"You have learned to wield sword. You have fought in many battles, killed many, many imp—trolls, too. You not useless."

"Useless. Cannot fly."

"Not useless. You kill enemy, get revenge. This dragon impressed by what you have done. This dragon learn to wield sword as a sprat. It easier to learn when dragon is young."

The huge head had risen well off the breastbone now. "Yesssssssss," it hissed like some enormous snake.

Bazil heaved a quiet sigh of relief. That was an improvement. This happened every so often, and eventually the Purple Green exhausted the tunnel of sulking and bounced back. It was always like this with him, the long sulk, the grief at his bitter loss, then something would break him out of it, sometimes days later.

"Yessss!" the wild dragon said again even more loudly. Then he switched to dragonspeech in an accent so thick that Bazil could barely follow him. "We take revenge on the brasska*, cut their filthy heads from their filthy shoulders."

*brasska—less than edible enemy, not worthy of eating.

Relkin and Manuel heard the sudden excited hiss from the Purple Green and looked up.

"He's back," said Relkin.

"No doubt of it." Manuel sounded relieved. He had come to take enormous pride in caring for the great wild dragon. The witches of the Insight regularly took depositions from him for the library of dragon lore. But the wild one could be very trying at times.