The Dragon of Time: Gods and Dragons (15 page)

The interior was also tidy. Two cots and two
hammocks were set up as though the general’s men had known that
Scar and Labolas were to join them.

“I’m so tired,” the archer said.

“Take a cot,” Hachi advised. “It is more
comfortable than the hammock.”

“This one will have no choice. I think the
hammock would break,” Maranjo added. Labolas and Scar chuckled, but
the others didn’t. “It is not a joke,” the Malababwen added.

His deep voice turned
th
sounds into
d
sounds and he rolled his r’s. Yet his thick accent was
unlike the Dracos or the Gyosh, but perhaps a mixture of Zmajan and
Gyosh, a hard, stilted way of speaking.

“Sounded like a joke to me,” Labolas fired
back, crashed onto the cot, and went out like a light.

Scar was unconcerned and also fell asleep as
soon as his head hit the soft pelts.

Chapter Eleven- Dreams of mystery

Lost in thought, Scar’s mind played over
recent events. Flashes of memories moved through his being as if
they were the events themselves relived. First, he saw clearly the
Dracos advancing on him over the hard packed road in Satrone.
Before the Dracos closed the distance, he was staring at Zoltek,
the robed figure with a voice like rustling leaves. Hate washed
over the mercenary, and he made a supreme effort to tackle the
Zmajan leader, but before his muscles responded, he was slicing
through Kulshedrans in the outpost. He wanted to stop himself. His
exertions were in vein, his body already in motion. As his inner
dialogue screamed orders to cease, he then saw himself in the black
world, the one without light. He waited for a moment in
anticipation. Scar expected something to happen or for that world
to vanish and become another memory, but it did not.

“Sarkany, you have returned,” the rumbling
voice stated.

It was then that Scar realized he was no
longer recalling. His eyes grew wide and darted around. The
vortices of blackness swirled above him. Winds whooshed over rocky
plateaus. He grit his teeth trying to comprehend.

“Where am I?” he yelled.

“The edge of the world, Sarkany,” the
disembodied voiced reverberated through the entire scape like
thunder.

“Stop toying with me. Are you a God? A
Dragon? Who are you? Show yourself!”

Only the whispers of wind replied. His anger
and fear mounted with a remarkable speed. Scar was on the verge of
getting ill. His body vibrated and something outside himself, yet
intimately attached, felt the pressure of that odd place. “Answer
me!”

“Peace,” the voice said. “I am not a God. We
are Eternus.”

That statement was too cryptic. Scar laughed
like an idiot. The preposterousness of the situation made him
realize he was only dreaming.

“Wake up, Brandt,” he said to himself. “Wake
up.”

“Yes,” the voice interrupted. “You are
dreaming, but this is no dream.”

“What are you saying?” he asked
skeptically.

“You forget yourself, Sarkany. It is
understandable. The pressure of the world forces you into an
alignment of awareness, one which leaves nothing but the awareness
of daily affairs. You must struggle to recall your purpose, but I
will reiterate,” the voice explained in its terrible, guttural
drone. “I have fashioned you from the clay of the edge of the world
and breathed life into you so that you may deliver men from their
own chains.”

Scar was in total disbelief.
Alignment?
Awareness? I’m made from clay? This is ludicrous.
He then
noticed that if he grew introspective, the world around him nearly
vanished leaving only darkness, but if he made an effort to
scrutinize his environment, and was successful, his thoughts
diminished.

“Do you see it?” the voice asked. “This is
eternity. Singularity is cancelled out here. You are not yourself
the way you have convinced yourself you are.”

“Enough riddles, beast,” he growled.
“Explain!”

There was an interminable pause of silence.
Scar stomped the flat rock on which he stood. He perceived the
immense expanse of blackness all around him and the other flat tops
of gray-brown stone.

“We are Eternus, the Dragon of Time.”

“I knew it! You
are
a Dragon! They are
real, and they have tricked men!”

“Yes, and no, Sarkany. The ones of which you
speak are not the same as I. They were created very long ago in
worlds upon worlds.”

Utterly exhausted by puzzles, Scar was on the
verge of raging. He took note of his own mood. It was not something
of him proper, but like an external reaction. He knew then beyond
doubt that he was not truly upset, but rather felt an oppressing
tinge of impotence. Instead of arguing, or even believing, he
simply took a deep breath and waited for elucidation.

“Excellent. You do understand whether or not
you recall,” the voice stated. “Now, you must recollect that you
were fashioned in order to slay the Dragons.”

“I recollect no such thing. I am Brandt of
Alduheim,” he breathed.

“You are Sarkany fashioned from the clay at
the edge of the world. I created you because one of the worlds
needs intervention. I like humans. I like Dragons, too, but in one
of my worlds there is great discord and I have chosen to
intercede.”

Following another long pause from the
omnipresent voice came a verbose, if tortuous, account. Scar
impatiently listened.

“In many of the other worlds I have allowed
the course of events to unfold in a particular fashion or another.
In one world, the Dragons were never defeated. There are no Gods
there, and men are but slaves. In another world, there are no men,
and the Dragons have only themselves and their creations to pit
against one another. In yet another world, men exterminated the
Dragons and live happily praying to the Gods, but in none of my
worlds am I present. I am the onlooker, the perceiver, the
forgotten.

“It pains me, and yet I know that there is no
way for my presence to be understood. Such is the way of the
world.”

Scar shook his head involuntarily. Those
enigmatic words were utterly incomprehensible. He bit his lower lip
and tried to formulate a question. It was to no avail, he was not
sure of what he wanted to know. He did recall that in his last
meeting, the beast had claimed that Scar retrieve souls.

“Sarkany,” the voice started.

Scar interrupted, “Why? I just want to know
why.”

“There is no way of knowing that. I create
awareness and I devour awareness. It is all I can do. Awareness is
experience, and experience goes back into the void from which it
reemerges only to renew itself, but that is not a matter for your
existence, not yet.

“For now, you must recall that you have been
fashioned to assist men in driving back the Dragons. You are a new
element, and your experience will serve the world.”

“Dammit, beast,” Scar called out. “I am not
your plaything!”

“I am not playing. This is existence,” the
voice replied. “Understand, everything has been created from me,
because that is all I can do. After millennia of a lone existence,
I fashioned the thirteen ideologies from which the Dragons were
born, but they are not principles that men may comprehend. I
created the light and the darkness, life and death, ice, water,
wind, fire, the sun, truth, destruction, speech, and finally a
realm where one can exist in physicality.

“That bore the age of Dragons, and they were
formed in a fashion, which was to govern itself. For an eternity,
and as is still the case in other realms of awareness, it is a
proper form. The Dragons, too, have the influence to create, and
each has created beings associated with their guiding ideology, but
the Dragons are bitter creatures because of their permanence.”

“If they are permanent how can they have ever
been killed?” Scar interjected.

“Time dissolves everything, and yet it renews
everything. They have died and been reborn countless times.”

“What does this mean to me?”

“Peace, Sarkany, in time, it will be clear,”
the voice sighed. “After allowing the Dragons to create their own
realms, and providing them a place for a neutral meeting, I founded
eight other principles, and from those I fashioned men. Love and
hate. Madness and sobriety. Tolerance and severity. Sloth and
perseverance.”

“Why not create another world for men, one
separate from Dragons?”

“But I have, and there are many such worlds.
They do not pertain to you,” the voice explained. “In one
particular world, men and Dragons coexisted. The Dragons, with
their immense knowledge could have guided men, and in some
instances it had, but in one, the Dragons were domineering, and the
humans were weak. The Dragons enslaved them. In some worlds, that
was sufficient. In your world the humans eventually rebelled. They
prayed to the incommensurable eternity, and their own guiding
principles replied; they replied in personification. Men created
their own Gods.

“In some worlds, those men defeated the
Dragons, not killed, but sealed them away by forgetting that they
ever existed. In your world the humans forgot about both the Gods,
and the Dragons. Both Gods and Dragons fought desperately to
remain, and now you have the case of trickery.”

“I don’t understand,” Scar complained.

“You will.”

“What am I supposed to do? I’m just a man
without a past. Who am I? Please, Dragon, tell me! It is my only
concern.”

“You are Sarkany, the Dragon Slayer. You do
not have a past, because I did not give you one. You have but one
purpose. Slay the Dragons. Retrieve their souls.”

“Monster! Why should I?”

Another pause erupted like a hole in the
darkness. Scar felt it as omnipotent eyes rooting around in search
of something ineffable. That voice, that presence calling itself
Eternus was inside him.

“Ah, you have become more human than I
anticipated, and here we have the crux of awareness. Even I cannot
foresee the outcome, but I do not want to. Experience itself is
always a surprise. You may yet find your own reason. You have
already grown fond of men. I have seen you helping them.”

“I have killed them, too,” Scar retorted.
“And there are many that I hate.”

“Love and hate, Sarkany. I fashioned you as a
man and not a Dragon, because that is your purpose. You will find
your own reason to kill the Dragons.”

Scar pondered the significance of the
information provided. He still thought it was a preposterous dream,
but another part of his mind told him quite the opposite. It was a
strange, untapped portion of himself that he was unable to
pinpoint. When he tried to focus on that aspect, his mind grew
jumbled, and his internal dialogue focused on everything else.

“Peace. You cannot hope to unravel such
mysteries…our time is over, now. Wake.”

“Wait!”

****

Scar opened his eyes wide and took a deep
inhalation. The shadowed walls of the wooden shack slowly came into
view. He sat up in the cot, rubbed his eyes then turned to put his
feet on the ground. A strange voice like distant thunder played in
his memory, but it was too fleeting.
Did I dream again?
A
vague feeling of some unspeakable yet pressing matter grew into
melancholy. He stood up, lightly kicked Labolas in the hip and
waited for his friend to wake.

“Brehf,” Labolas murmured. “Time to rise
already, eh?”

The archer sat up and stretched. Maranjo and
Hachi rolled from their hammocks and came to their feet as well,
apparently fully awake. In a matter of seconds they had retied
their pouches to their belts, snatched some satchels off the
ground, which they slung over their shoulders, and started out of
the shack. Labolas followed suit slothishly, and everyone gathered
outdoors. The night was crisp and clear.

Scar rolled his shoulders to loosen his neck.
Labolas made inappropriate comments about missing breakfast, but
Scar was overly concerned with his own mood to laugh. His friend
chalked Scar’s sullen behavior up to fatigue, yet laughed at his
own comment, whatever it had been. The new men simply waited
patiently.

“We have our mounts?” Scar asked.

“General Sulas has made arrangements,” Hachi
stated.

“Horses should be waiting at the stables,”
Maranjo added with his thick accent.

As they all took off toward the west side of
town. Scar noticed that only he and Labolas made sounds as they
marched. The other two men walked in complete silence. Their
movements were extraordinarily lithe.

After passing by two, wooden posts supporting
lanterns on the hard packed streets of Eresh, they came upon a
guard on camel back doing her rounds. She nodded to them, but aimed
a watchful eye at Scar. He paid her no mind as he was busy looking
at the lodgings stationed on the way to the stables. A row of
longhouses each with several windows revealed cots and hammocks
inside. The glow from the lanterns on nightstands adjacent the
windows provided enough light to peek inside, and Scar’s stature
was sufficient to see directly into the longhouses.

Moments later, they made it to the stables;
several wooden stalls neatly walled in on three sides. The scent of
horses was on the wind. Under the thatched roof, a Kulshedran guard
greeted them, led everyone in, and provided four stout horses. They
were large, brown horses, bigger even than the ones, which had
pulled Relthys’s cart. The young man made outlandish claims of
Satronian breeds versus Nabalhian.

“I’m just glad they’re horses,” Labolas
joked.

“What else would they be?” Hachi asked as he
climbed onto the saddle.

“Those ugly camels, I guess,” Scar
answered.

Labolas chuckled, but the other two didn’t
seem to have a sense of humor. Maranjo climbed his saddle and rode
out onto the streets with Hachi right behind him. Labolas looked
Scar in the eye.