The black door, when the mage led her to it, was ajar again. A cold draft came through the crack, redolent of water and stone and, Nemienne thought, the subtle scent of darkness itself. She shivered.
The mage frowned as he studied the door. “Hmm.” He transferred the frown to her. “You didn’t… No,” he answered this question, whatever it had been, himself. Then, leaving this ambiguous negative unexplained, he reached out with one powerful hand to lift a tall lamp, its oil already alight, out of the air. Then he shoved the door wide.
The caverns beneath the mountain lay immediately beyond the black door. Light from the lamp streamed through the doorway to reveal white stone formed by the pressure of time and darkness into graceful draperies and tall pillars and fragile needles.
Mage Ankennes summoned a lamp for Nemienne, too. She took it gratefully and edged after the mage into the caverns. He strode out briskly, with the air of a man who knows his path well.
Nemienne followed with rather less confidence. She knew she should have felt safe in the mage’s presence, and she did, in a way. But in another way, and though she didn’t understand why, she
would almost have preferred to come here again on her own, or with the unpredictable Enkea.
Though she listened carefully, Nemienne could hear nothing now that resembled piping. If Karah’s pipes had been used last time to draw a path into the dark, clearly Mage Ankennes did not need such a tool to make his own path. He continued to walk quickly, his lamp held high, its light pouring out to reveal fantastic structures of stone. Nemienne paused to admire a fragile stone needle, longer than she was tall and yet not half so wide at its widest point as her smallest finger. A drop of water clung, trembling, to its tip.
Feeling her absence at his back, Mage Ankennes glanced around and said, “Nemienne!”
She jumped, and hurried to catch him up. “I’m sorry. It’s beautiful,” she said humbly at his impatient look.
After a moment, the mage’s mouth crooked a little. “It is,” he conceded. He held his lamp a little higher, and the light it cast forth brightened, shoving the dark farther back, and farther still, until they could see the vastness of stone through which they walked. Nemienne stared around with awe.
The mage, watching her, smiled more freely. “I had forgotten what it was like to see this for the first time. More impressive in its way than any of the works of men, is it not? This is a living water that runs here. I believe the water itself is what shapes the stone, through ages unmeasured by our ephemeral kingdoms.”
Nemienne nodded, though she didn’t understand exactly what he meant.
“Listen!” said the mage. “Do you hear? There is the black pool. These caverns are like my house: unpredictable in distance and arrangement. But the dragon’s chamber is not far now.”
They passed between two great pillars and stepped over a sharp-edged ridge of stone laid like a blade across their path. The light of the lamps swung around them, never steady, so that shadows rose and stretched out and subsided again as they moved. Then they turned around the edge of a rippling curtain of stone
and found, at last, the wide black pool before them, with the white dragon curving in and out of the cavern wall behind it. The mage walked to the edge of the pool and paused there, holding his lantern high as he stared across the water.
Nemienne came up beside the mage, looked at him uncertainly, then turned back to gaze at the dragon. It was just as magnificent as she had remembered. Nemienne had known exactly how it would look, and yet she was almost frightened to see the truth of her memory.
“Geriodde Nerenne ken Seriantes is called the Dragon of Lirionne,” commented Mage Ankennes, holding his lamp high and gazing without expression at the stone monster before them. “After his great-grandfather, Taliente Neredde ken Seriantes, who was first given that title by the peoples he conquered.”
Nemienne nodded, her eyes wide.
“This, however, is the true dragon: the Dragon of Lonne. It has slept here beneath Kerre Maraddras for years unto years, curled into the stone, the living stone growing around it. Its breath forms the high clouds that are torn to shreds by the knife-edged peaks, and the mists that creep into Lonne on winter nights. Its heart is cold, and its fire colder. When it shifts in its sleep, the mountains tremble and crack. Its blood is black and powerful.”
“It—it’s not—” Nemienne’s voice shook, and she closed her mouth and swallowed.
Mage Ankennes looked down at her, his expression somber, but not unkind. “It is alive. Merely quiescent.”
“I—I thought it had been carved—”
The mage’s mouth crooked. “The Dragon of Lonne could never have been made by the hands of men, no matter how masterful their craft. No. It is allied with stone and stone protects it, but it is not a
made
thing.” He turned back to contemplate the dragon again. “I have been trying for years, with all my arts, to destroy it.”
“You—” Nemienne stared at him in terror and amazement, both distraught that he might destroy so splendid a creature and awed by his temerity.
“The darkness of the dragon’s heart has crept into the heart of Lonne.” Passion had entered the mage’s tone; his voice shook with it. “Taliente Seriantes was the first of the kings of Lirionne to find it here. Its power drew him into the dark. He used to come here simply to gaze upon the dragon. It seduced him—the mere awareness of its presence seduced him, and the slow seeping of power from these caverns. It was why he founded a city here, and why he made Lonne the capital of his kingdom. But dragons are creatures of darkness, antithetical to the bright, vigorous world of men. My studies have made it clear to me that the power that flows from them cannot be turned toward the service of any great good.”
Nemienne didn’t understand what he meant. Or she did, she thought, but it didn’t seem to agree with the things she’d been reading. She said tentatively, “But Kelle Iasodde says—”
“Iasodde never understood what he studied,” Mage Ankennes said impatiently. “Or more likely he did not wish to accept it. Men, even mages, even kings, have a great desire to believe what they wish to be true. Especially kings.” His mouth had tightened, and he bit off his words more sharply. “They will not make the hard choices, and they will never turn away from power. No more than Iasodde himself has any Seriantes ever accepted the inherent corruption that flows from the dragon. Not even when the corruption of the Dragon of Lonne crept into their very hearts. Or the hearts of their sons.”
“Corruption?” Nemienne repeated uncertainly and grasped after his meaning. “You mean—you mean, Prince Rette? And before that, Prince Gerenes and Prince Tivodd?”
“That is exactly what I mean.” Mage Ankennes gave a short little nod. “Yes. The ill-considered and inevitable betrayals and treacheries of the elder princes were obviously—and predictably—a consequence of the dragon’s baleful influence, increasing through the generations in the family that most depends upon it.”
Nemienne stared at him. This was awful, and yet something about it seemed wrong to her. At first she did not know why she should feel that way. It wasn’t just what Kelle Iasodde said… Then
she remembered about Karah and Prince Tepres, and realized she didn’t believe her sister could possibly have fallen in love with the prince if he had really been corrupted by the dragon. But she did not know how to say so to Mage Ankennes.
The mage was not looking at her. He went on, but he was now clearly speaking almost to himself. “The Seriantes of Lirionne have been deaf to all warnings I could give them. They will not set aside this dark draught. Anyone not blinded by the love of power and the ordinary shortsightedness of men could see what the consequences of this must be. I have
warned
them. They will not hear me. The entire Seriantes line has become inextricably corrupted.”
Nemienne opened her mouth, but then closed it again without protesting. She did not know what to say. She was afraid to say anything. Mage Ankennes was different here within the mountain: He seemed darker, more gripped by purpose, somehow dangerous.
She stared again at the dragon, trying hard to see the evil that Mage Ankennes said was in its heart. Yet she found she could not make herself view the dragon with horror. She might feel terror of such a magnificent creature, at the thought of it waking and lifting its great head, spreading its splendid wings—but not horror. What she felt was still, despite everything the mage had said, something more akin to awe.
“But even quiescent, the Dragon of Lonne is extraordinarily difficult to destroy,” Mage Ankennes concluded. “I had arranged a method that seemed to hold promise, but unfortunately the necessary sacrifice appears to have failed.” He contemplated this failure, eyes hooded and dark.
“Oh,” Nemienne said faintly.
As though this whisper made him suddenly recall her presence, the mage turned his head to look down at Nemienne. “Well,” he said after a moment, his tone once again ordinary and kind, “that is a heavy load to set on small shoulders. Never mind, Nemienne. The dragon and its effluence is a puzzle and a problem for me, not for you. We shall go back to the light and warmth, yes? And you shall tell me again of your night. I should particularly like to hear
in more detail your description of the music you believe you heard.” He lowered his lamp, shadows swinging around them in disturbing confusion, and turned back the way they had come.
Nemienne flung a glance back over her shoulder at the supine form of the Dragon of Lonne stretching back and back along the cavern wall. She could not imagine any work of men, even mages, that could destroy such a… creature.
But what she truly found beyond her to imagine, despite all Mage Ankennes had told her, was that anyone, even a mage,
ought
to destroy it. Such an act seemed somehow… somehow beyond the right ambition of men. “Mage Ankennes understands these great things,” Nemienne whispered to herself, trying to find this thought comforting, and hurried to keep up.
“Tell me again about this music,” Mage Ankennes asked Nemienne, for the sixth time. They were in the mage’s workroom, facing each other across the enormous cluttered table. Mage Ankennes lounged in a large ornate chair of wood and leather. He no longer seemed strange or frightening. Nemienne perched on a high stool that was exactly the right height to let her prop her elbows on the table and tried not to think of how he had seemed while in the dragon’s cavern. She tried instead to think of new ways to describe the piping she’d heard under the mountain. She had no idea why the first five times she had described it hadn’t been adequate; she’d even tried to hum the melody she remembered, though it escaped her best efforts. Now she dredged through her memory for details she might have missed previously.
Mage Ankennes frowned even after she had done her best, but only thoughtfully, not as though he was angry or disappointed. “A low line and a high one,” he mused, but more as though he spoke to himself than to her. “And the pipes you saw at Cloisonné House were twin pipes, of ivory and gold. Pipes that the heir had given her, or so you were told. But broken.”
“Not… broken, exactly,” Nemienne corrected hesitantly, glad to move on at last to a different part of the story. “I mean, they were still a set—you could see they were twin pipes and not, you know,
torn off a larger set of hand pipes or anything. But ruined. The ivory was cracked, and the wire twisted.”
“Yes,” said Mage Ankennes, seeming unsurprised by this description. “You were fortunate—your sister was very fortunate—that you heard that piping and had the ability to go after her. Or she might have followed that music to its end.”
It took a moment for Nemienne to understand what he meant. Her hands moved across the table convulsively; she knocked a set of geometer’s brass compasses to the floor and exclaimed in dismay at the clatter they made when they fell.
A twitch of the mage’s hand made the compasses jump back to the table. He said kindly, “Your sister was never anyone’s target, Nemienne. I’m sure the pipes came into her keeping by chance. She’s in no danger now.”
Nemienne nodded jerkily, then sat up straight. “But it was—it was
Prince Tepres
who gave her those pipes!” she cried. For a moment, dizzily, she wondered why the prince should want to murder Karah and thought he must be evil after all. Then she realized that of course the prince
hadn’t
meant to do anything of the kind, how stupid she’d been to think that even for an instant—no, somebody else—a foreign lord, hadn’t Leilis said so?—had given the pipes to the prince, and he’d given them in turn to Karah.
So that foreign lord had tried to murder the
prince
. Wait, wait, had the foreigner
succeeded
? She asked with trepidation, “Was… was
Prince Tepres
the… the other person I thought was there, at first—there in the dark? The one who went on after I stopped Karah?”
“Regrettably, no,” Mage Ankennes said absently. He appeared lost in thought, gazing out the four large windows that lined the opposite wall. The windows looked out today over blowing clouds, a view so high that only the merest glimpses of mountain peaks could be seen far below. Nemienne kept catching elusive glimpses of insubstantial dragons in the movements of the clouds: The slow uncoiling of a white streamer around an ominous bank of clouds looked to her like the sinuous body and long tail of a white dragon swimming through the high currents of the air, and the flat sweep of white barely visible
on the other side of the cloud tower looked like a vast reaching wing. Nemienne had often seen dragons in the movements of clouds and mist, but now such visions seemed so much more… fraught.