SINGED
Chapter 19

I do not remember leaving the inn. I regained myself in the street, as I walked aimlessly, as if drunk. Sal was gone. He had been taken from me. I had no one again. My inner dragon laughed derisively at me, but I was human right now and my heart was broken. Gone, just like that. For all my strength and will I could not hold him. He slipped right through my fingers.

I couldn’t bear this anymore. How do human beings endure love? I now saw what a horror hope could be. It was the worst lie. In the end, everyone dies. Everything ends. There was no reason to invest in others. No point in relationships at all. I reeled, searching for something to end the pain, and my dragon rose from its slumber.

I was not human. It was just a disguise. These emotions just allowed me to understand enough of the human mind to walk among them. But I was a dragon. I need no one, nothing. I began to push away from human pain, human weakness. It was folly. I had been duped.

I was near the docks and the scent of the sea washed over me, reminding me of the island and of Miranda.

This was the third time I’d been seduced by the intoxicating emotions of the human condition. I had been fooled by love and friendship. The first time was when I had been fooled by the human thoughts that awakened me, teaching me of human relationships and loyalties. I’d unconsciously trusted, counting on the support of my siblings, who had comforted me as I lay slumbering in the dark. The greatest treachery was to trust another dragon. Of course, they abandoned me. I was probably lucky she had not chosen to sate her hunger on me as I lay vulnerable and unaware in my egg. The truth was, no one could be trusted. I had always been alone.

I stopped, smelling the air, the salty, fishy scent, mixed with human sweat and animal dung. Rotten cabbage and rat feces. The city stunk. It did not disgust me, in fact, I had felt it comforting, the smell of my human hosts, but now it only served to remind me of the pain the human life had caused me. Memories seemed to cling to smells like smells do to other things, lingering together married for better or worse. I did not want to remember.

Standing on a peer, I looked out into the gloom. At the farthest horizon, I could see the lightening, the first hint of dawn. I prayed to be accosted by some unfortunate cut purse. I was no longer the naïve infant that had been shanghaied upon Miranda’s cursed vessel. Any attempt to attack me from behind would be detected if the assailant was mortal and if they weren’t I still yearned for the distraction. Anything, anything at all.

But did I need to wait for a victim to vent my rage? I had Alister and Cayn. A mirthless smile touched my lips. Yes, it was past due. Cayn for Sal; Alister for Miranda. Then I would replace a way to change into my true form permanently. I knew in my dark dragon heart that would solve everything. I would be at peace.

Tears came unbidden to my eyes but for once I let them fall silently without wiping them away. These tears were for Miranda and Sal, then I would never cry again.

There was a shuffling sound somewhere behind me. It wasn’t furtive not threatening. It was awkward, hesitant. I stopped crying, frowned. The shuffling stopped as well so I turned slightly. There at the end of the peer, was a human child, no more than five or six harvests old. His hair was grimy and matted, his clothes were filthy rags. His eyes, though, were a startling blue. I could see that even in the near darkness, twinkling like sapphires from a dragon horde. I turned more fully, blinking. Something about the child was familiar. There were countless children like this one in Lindor, homeless, living on the streets, begging for scraps. I had taken no notice of them, but this child held my attention, even with my recent resolve to reject all things human, I could not look away.

He returned my gaze. For some reason, I could not read his thoughts, more and more curious. What’s more I had the distinct feeling that he was staring through me. I felt a chill run up my spine. This was no human child.

“What are you?” I murmured.

As if startled out of a trance, he blinked, stepped back and he was gone, swallowed up in the gloom. I couldn’t make out any sounds of retreat. He had simply vanished. Had I dreamt him? I shook my head as if to clear it, then with some effort I chose to forget him.

Then I was running through the streets. The cold pale light of dawn filtered between building and tower but for now the high walls of Lindor still shielded much of the city and shadows lingered. The house that hid the tunnel to the Dragonking’s lair was abandoned when I got there. The heavy oak door to the basement was locked and barred. I considered forcing the door, but I was not sure I was ready to face the ancient dragon again.

After some deliberation, I left. I wished passionately now that I had just slain Cayn even if it meant the knight died too. One last desperate human impulse cried out illogically to Miranda.

Where are you? I cried. Why did you leave me? Come back if my humanity means anything to you! Did you ever exist at all?

I did not wait for an answer. There was no way she could. She was gone, and so was my humanity.

As soon as I could arrange it. Where was Cayn anyway? He was late for his funeral. A mournful cry rent the breeze high above me. I squinted up into the morning sky where a shadow spiraled. Again the cry and my breath caught at the familiar sound. A hawk, a sea hawk.

“No!” I cried. “Please go away. You torment me. Go away if you won’t stay.”

The hawk wheeled behind the tower, then swung below so I could make out its bright yellow eyes, sunlight glittered on the creamy feathers of its throat. Suddenly it veered wildly as a shower feathers shivered down. A last heart rendering cry and the bird careened in a dangerous arc over the city wall, just missing a deadly impact before it vanished.

My own anguished cry echoed after it. Then I spun, searching as familiar laugh echoed in the stillness after my scream. This time I did not hesitate. I was rushing down an alley, leaping up stone wall, across rooftops. The shadow ran before me, as nimble as my own at first.

I would never give upthis time. I would run to the corners of earth, to the surface of the two moons, to the bottom of the deepest trench in Starfall Deep. I caught up with him in the crypts outside the city walls. The shadowy cloaked figure finally halted, laughing breathlessly and turned, and of course it was Cayn, but he had changed. His eyes glowed with an unholy light gleaming with madness. He was drunk on power, and I could see it pumping in his blood, at his temples.

“Why?” I asked calmly, though a tempest raged within me.

He laughed hysterically, bending at the waist, leaning forward to touch the earth at an unnatural angle. His eyes never left me though. He was just displaying externally what I held within. We were twins, brothers in chaos.

“You do not deserve this,” he spat. “This power which I have sacrificed everything for and will give still more, you were given by fate for nothing!”

I remembered the Storm Hag’s last words, so much like these. Such bitterness and envy. Despite myself I felt a twinge of pity. It was not like it seemed to him. I was no less empty than he. I would give it all up to have Miranda and Sal back. Then like iron softened in a forge then doused in water to temper it, my heart hardened again harder than before. He had taken them from me, both. He knew. Nothing could have hurt me more.

I was surging forward like a comet, a falling star, rushing at him before I even knew what I had made the choice to do so. I watched his eyes grow wide in surprise, then something else. Eagerness? Fear? It did not matter. Nothing mattered. Then we were locked arm to arm like we had been in the arch battling for the fate of the night. He meant nothing to me now.

Cayn was stronger fueled by his madness, his fathomless jealousy. What had caused it? Fed him this lie?

My arms shook with the effort of resisting him, his breath rasped eagerly, his teeth barred and bared. I managed to throw him off balance and taking advantage of his momentary weakness, heaved him savagely into the air as far as I could, high over the crypts and cairns.

Scowling, I watched as he fluidly maneuvered his trajectory to land silent and catlike atop a stone monument to a long dead prince. He smiled back at me and I realized my error just-in-time. He was preparing to flee again so he could continue to plague me, torture me by destroying what I loved. I was his obsession.

Well there wasn’t anything left. Didn’t he know that? Maybe he did. Maybe that is why he ran. To withhold the only other thing that meant anything to me at all. His own death.

Again, I was a blur; a bending of light. My claws were about him once more. He was laughing as he struck me. He wore hand razors, made of steel, since he could not have claws, but they were the finest steel and I sensed a cruel enchantment bound into them. They cut deep into my arms and chest like nothing had before.

Searing pain shuddered through me. I roared and lashed back at him. He shied away, blocked my claws with his false ones. Sparks showered about us with each blow. I struck again and again my rage only increasing. He faltered. His laughter was gone. His eyes glared back at me as hard as flint. I lashed out trying to rip out his eyes. He staggered back, hard-pressed now to deflect my onslaught.

“Don’t,” he gasped, “you still have Alister to appease your vengeance.”

“I have plenty to spare,” I snarled.

“Curse you,” he hissed. “Curse your pride, your stolen strength, your selfish, self-serving will! You don’t deserve to have the blood of Dragon running through your veins. You have done nothing to earn it. You are nothing but a little worm, feeding on the scraps from the Dragonking’s table!”

“You mistake me for yourself,” I growled, “you and Alister.”

He smiled thinly, coolly.

“No, not like you and not like Alister. Neither of you are worthy of Dragon. You are both greedy, or were. I lied about Alister. I have stolen your vengeance of him. Alister is no more. He got what he deserved, withholding treasures from the Dragonking. I could not allow it. I told Lord Cyndr and he snapped Alister up. He was barely a morsel for my Lord.”

I was taken aback, hesitating as I searched Cayn’s face. Was it true? Yes, I could see it in his crazed eyes. He was incapable of guile right now, his madness acting as a truth serum. He rattled on eagerly, proud of his betrayal, professing loyalty to the Dragonking but it was also a confession.

I sensed that his betrayal of Alister had been a shock to Cayn as well. The memory of it still fresh in his mind. He had planned it, but it had still stunned him when he did it, as both he and Alister knelt at the feet of ancient Great Wurm.

“I offer you everything I have, great lord,” he murmured, voice trembling, unable to look up into the face of death itself, “but Alister has not.”

He had heard the sharp intake of air from Alister, hurried on before he lost his nerve. He had come to rely on Alister. He was as close to a friend as Cayn had. He betrayed even his friends to gain the power of Dragon. Just as he had Sal. Just as he had me. No one was spared. Sacrifices had to be made.

“I cannot bear to keep anything from you, Lord,” he continued. “He has kept the most precious jewel of all for himself.”

He had been stunned by the swiftness of his master’s response.

As Alister began to stammer his excuse, Cyndr hissed.

“I know.”

And that was it. His judgment was instantaneous, striking like an asp, he had snatched Alister up. He had time for a single terrified scream and then he was gone, save for a few drops of blood that fell onto Cayn’s face as he stared up into the face of death.

“He rewarded me,” Cayn screamed, “with his blood, more precious than any jewel, to better serve him. He said to strike down his enemies, those that would steal from him like Alister. Like you. You have come to steal from the Master, just as you did on the island. That treasure was for the Dragonking, and I returned it to him, every piece. Now I will deliver you to him as well, after I have taken everyone you care about. After I’ve taken everything from you!”

He was unsettling me. In his rage, he was emanating waves of madness, strong as any curse from the Storm Hag. The air was shivering with them, like waves of heat, disorienting me.

“I have seen her in your thoughts!” he screamed. “You thought to hide her from me, but I can see her in your mind, your sister!”

I did not have time to respond, to laugh at his error. He was erratic, irrational. Screaming, he seized me with one hand, stabbing wildly at my face, my throat with the other hand razor. I stumbled back, shielding my face with my arms, feeling the bite of the steel as it rent my flesh. He had severed a nerve, I could no longer feel my left hand.

“I cannot wait!” he roared. “You must die but know that she will follow you in death. I will replace her. She will be my next sacrifice to the Dragonlord!”

I was going into shock. Spots swam before my eyes and I was in real danger of passing out. I knew if I did I would never wait. A surge of fear washed over me. It was the fear of the thing in the dark from my slumber before I hatched. It was the Dragonking, acting through Cayn as a puppeteer moves his marionettes. I knew in that instant that the Dragonking would be my death unless I joined him.

“But, Cayn, don’t you know,” I said, sounding calmer than I felt. “All dragons are Dragon. Your sacrifice to me today will serve the Dragonlord tomorrow. I hope this pleases you. It is all I can offer you.”

As I spoke my flesh was changing, my survival instincts, moving to augment my human deficiencies. I heard Cayn scream in frustration as my skin became a suit of scaly armor that is hard razors could not pierce. They rang as they bounced off like they were striking metal.

I grabbed him, pulled him towards me. He seemed to have shrunken. Beating against me now futilely like a furious child having a temper tantrum. Almost gently I drew him to my mouth. His flailing became a convulsive vibration then he relaxed, his body became limp and heavy in my arms.

I carried his corpse into a familiar crevice. It was the same hole from which I had crawled the day that I was reborn as a human. Now I returned to change back into the monster I truly was.