Golden Daughter (55 page)

Lady Hariawan turned then from the Dragon. She cradled her poisoned hand to her heart, and black blood filled her palm and spilled down her wrist. She turned and approached the gong. Sairu, straining to look once more, suddenly saw a figure bound to one of the pillars. Jovann!

He recoiled at the approach of the beautiful lady stained with blood, her face full of poison. Though Sairu could not hear him, she could feel him in her heart, making his whispered, desperate plea.

“Please, Umeer’s daughter,” he said. “Please don’t do this thing. Don’t give in to the venom.”

Lady Hariawan stood so close to him now that scarcely a breeze could move between them. She gazed into his eyes, and he saw, beneath the lovely contours of her face, the withered hag he had glimpsed before.

“Death. Life,” said she. “What is the difference, Juong-Khla Jovann? Can you tell me this? Can you tell me the secret?”

“No mortal can tell you that,” Jovann said. “It is not for us to know.”

“I would have it for myself,” said Lady Hariawan. “The knowledge of Good. The knowledge of Evil. The knowledge of Life and Death.”

With this, she bent toward him and planted a kiss upon his mouth. Her mouth was wide and insistent, forcing his open to receive hers. And the Dragon’s poison inside her flowed into him. He screamed. She fell against him, clutching his shoulders, his arms, and she too screamed, and their joint pain shattered the worlds around them.

“Now,” said the Dragon. “Now you will strike.”

Lady Hariawan’s hands moved like two dying birds, struggling. But they undid the bindings that held Jovann to the pillar. He staggered forward, and for a moment braced himself as though to run.

“Now,” said the Dragon.

And the poison in Jovann’s veins responded to the word. He took Lady Hariawan by the hand, and the two of them turned to the gong.

A hammer, very small compared to the gong itself, but still so great that it would take the strength of two to lift it, hung suspended from the carved dragon-mouth of the other pillar. Together, Lady Hariawan and Jovann reached up and took hold of it. Together, they lifted it.

“
Now,
” said the Dragon once more.

They struck. And the voice of the Gold Gong sounded throughout that realm:

DOOM.

Sairu, clinging like a tiny insect to the wall of the chasm, saw the cracks run through the stones of Hulan’s Gate. She saw them break. She saw spears of light shooting through the stones, and these spears grew and spread. She saw the Gate crumble.

And then it fell in a pile of dust, and nothing remained to separate the Dream from the vast spreading vaults of Hulan’s Garden. The thunder of the stars’ singing overcame all, falling upon the Dream in an avalanche of disaster. Sairu’s body quaked down to the very marrow of her bones. She felt her hands resist then freeze.

She let go. Even as the Dragon spread his massive wings and flew roaring up into the heavens, she fell.

The young dragon staggered back, his hand flying to his throat. Blood gushed from his wound, spilled over his hand, and burbled in his mouth, choking. His eyes widened and turned with something between fury and fear to the figure crouching before him, her sword still upraised from her stroke.

Princess Safiya, moving with liquid grace, rose and turned her sword again. She took a single step and lashed out. Her second stroke should have severed his head from his shoulders.

But the blade connected instead with dragon scales and sprang back, blunted and useless. The young dragon, taking on his true form, reared up before her, flame darting from his eyes. He opened his mouth and, without taking care of his aim, let out a blast of fire that would have incinerated Princess Safiya on the spot.

But she was already in motion, and he missed. His long neck twisting, he turned to follow her, still blasting fire from his gut. The stones of the emperor’s throne room blackened and melted beneath that heat, but Princess Safiya eluded him. She sprang around behind him, leaping over his swiping tail. A spike from that tail caught her robe, however, and brought her crashing down. She was up in an instant, pulling her robe free with a long, shredding gash. Before the dragon could turn, she had sprung upon his back, between his beating wings.

The young dragon roared, this time shooting his flame to the high ceiling above. Tapestries lining the walls blazed, and the throne room was now as bright with light as it had before been shadow-shrouded. The dragon reared back on his haunches, and his wings fanned the flames around him. He felt her climbing his scales, though the heat of his body must have burned her. He could feel her now at the back of his head.

Then her sword pierced through a soft place between scales, down into his head.

The dragon shrieked, and his voice was very like a man’s in that moment. He fell, toppling across the burned floor, and lay still.

Princess Safiya, her flesh scarred red with horrible burns, leapt down from the dragon’s neck and stepped back. Her sword remained embedded beneath the scales. Breathing hard but certain of her victory, she navigated out of the coils of his long body and turned her gaze up to the throne where the emperor had been. He had fled, as she had bidden him, in the midst of the battle. She must follow him and continue to assure his—

Fire struck her from behind.

Princess Safiya flew through the air and crashed upon the steps, halfway to the throne. She felt the life fading from her, rising up like smoke from her flesh. With more strength than she knew she possessed, she turned and looked down at the young dragon, who was pulling himself upright, his claws tearing into the floor.

“You cannot kill me with your mortal weaponry!” he snarled. “You cannot kill me, woman!”

His jaw opened, and fire swelled inside. In another moment he would have flamed her into oblivion.

But just then the skies above tore and the voice of the Moon shattered across all the worlds. Every beating heart in every universe—mortal, immortal, sentient, insentient—every heart quailed at the sound, and every pair of eyes upturned to the sky.

And they saw the stars falling. Red, burning, falling.

The young dragon swallowed his flame and stared out the great windows of the throne room at fire streaking from the sky. Then, with a shudder and another roar, he burst through that window and streaked out into the night. Princess Safiya lay upon the steps below the throne, struggling to breathe, and watched the heavens burn.

The stars sing together, and their voices are light and air and substance both tangible and intangible. They sing in complex harmonies, and these harmonies reach out to one another, linking, spinning, splitting, and binding again. Ever-moving, ever-changing, and yet always true, the Song binds the worlds together, supporting their existence according to the patterns of the Song Giver.

There is night, there is day. There is sky and sea. There is life and death and love and blood, and spirits made to soar through all the vastness of Space and Time. There is silence that resonates with as much beauty as sound. There are height and depth and horizons forever-stretching. There is the thunder of the Final Water falling in cascades, and there are the resounding echoes of the Highlands. There is the Boundless, and the stars sing across the Boundless. And their Song is one of joy, for they are beings of joy, created to sing. They glory in the fulfillment of their purpose, bound together in a union such as mortals may never know.

But a mortal may feel the faint echoes of it. A husband pressing his wife to his heart may dream of such a union. A mother feeling the swell of her child in her womb may sense the oneness of the stars. A brother clasping hands with a sister as they gaze up into the night may know, for an instant, the joy of the Moon’s own children.

They sing together, and their voices blend with those of their luminous Mother, the Lady Moon, and their glorious Father, the Lordly Sun. For the Sun sings the Melody, and the Moon the first Harmony, and all their children spin threads of sound through these. And so it goes, without beginning, without end, forever and beyond.

Until a new thread emerges.

A darkness. A dissonance winding through the other voices.

You need not be bound to one another. You need not be enslaved.

There is no Time here. The whisper of dissonance emerges in a moment, but then extends forever, winding back and forward and throughout the heavens.

You can be one. You need not be many.

The beauty of One.

The beauty of Solitude over Solidarity.

A star stops. High in the heavens, the shining nimbus dims as the blue star, curious, turns to the voice.

No more harmony.

Sing your own song.

The blue star, who has ever moved in the pace of the Great Dance, who has ever sung the threads of the intricately woven harmony, closes its mouth. It stands perfectly still, intent upon the decision suddenly before it. The Song goes on around it, the Dance continues to move and turn and whirl. But it stands still in the midst of all, one foot upraised.

Be one. Be alone.

The star takes a step outside the pattern. A single step. The Dance is broken.

The overwhelming onslaught of isolation rolls across the star. And beneath its feet the Heavens break and the devouring void opens to the Dark Water below. With a scream the blue star rears up, thrashing against the pull of that pit. Then it plunges headfirst and streaks down forever, bursting into roaring red flame.

The Lady Moon upon her throne turns to see the first star fall. She sings out, “Cé Imral! My child!”

The Heavenly Gardens arched above Jovann even as they had before when he, pursued by phantoms, passed through the Gate. But now there was no Gate. There was no boundary. The Heavens spilled over into the Dream, and the two meshed in madness. The Endless Waters flooded over the burning lake, and water caught fire, and fire burned water. Above him, the stars whirled and danced in their eternal Song.

But it was not the same Song Jovann had heard that first time when he stood upon the shore and gazed up into the blossoming lights. Now, as all the vastness of the Dara’s heaven spilled over him, he heard that it was marred with a strange, unholy discord. A line of non-music that grew, swelling, taking in more and more of the Dara.

He could not see this. He could not with his mortal perceptions comprehend that which took place above him. It seemed to him that the sky itself whirled into a hurricane of utter monstrosities, spinning stars, flaming eyes, enormous blossoms of fire flowers blooming and dying and rotting. Pulsations of flame and lightning that were the Dragon’s voice, the voice of mounting discord among the many-layered harmony.

It was too much. His mind could not contain it. So, even as it had before, it shifted the visions, the sounds, the sensations, and made them appear to Jovann in forms he could understand, or at least come closer to understanding.

He saw the unicorns. All the lovely, mighty host, the shining stars, galloping across the sky, their tails streaming like comets behind them. At their heels sped the Dragon, more enormous than Jovann had believed possible. Gone was the tall, skeletal figure like a man, swallowed up in a vastness of armored, flaming horror with wings like great continents pounding at the air, his mouth open to reveal the very furnaces of hell burning inside him. He chased the Dara across the sky, and they fled before him. One by one, their joint voices ceased to sing.

As each unicorn fell into silence, so it fell from the sky.

Jovann watched as they plummeted in white, red, gold, and blue fire, streaking down to the swallowing water that lashed at his feet and lashed at the great Gold Gong. As each star landed, the brightness of it descended into the depths and could be seen for leagues beneath the surface of the water. Soon the endless ocean itself was more brilliantly lit than the sky above.

Then the surface of the water began to boil.

Rising up from the deeps, the stars returned. Only now their flaming had changed. They burned with rage. The rage of isolation, the rage of loneliness made complete. They burned with the rage of what they believed to be freedom, and it was a consuming, powerful, life-ending rage. So they died and revived in forms like living creatures, dead, yet alive in their death.

They burst from the ocean, hundreds upon thousands of them. No longer brothers and sisters united in song; now each was the enemy of the other and each the enemy of its own self.

The remaining Dara in flight screamed at the sight of these creatures that had been as much a part of themselves as their own hearts. They screamed and turned to flee, but the Dragon was at their backs. Jovann watched the poor stars rearing up in terror and saw many more stumble and fall to the Dark Water, only to boil up again as terrible as the first wave of monsters. And the fallen attacked their brethren with flaming teeth and knife-sharp hooves.

Where was Hulan? Desperately hauling himself up, feeling the handle of the gong’s hammer beneath his hand, Jovann turned. He saw burning, ravening, hideous brutality, and the Dragon over all, laughing with mad pleasure that was very like pain. But where was Hulan? Where was the Lady Moon? Even now, with these terrible visions before his eyes, he remembered her, the shining Mother, as he had seen her before, seated upon her throne. Surely she would not let such horror be worked upon her beloved children! Surely she would intercede!