35 The Human Part of a Soldier

"Your Name is Michael."

I'd been anticipating that voice, telling me the trap had been sprung. But to hear it speaking that Name sent a jolt of sheer terror through my armored frame. I spun around in an instant, rapidly zooming to giant full size as my fangs bared themselves for the attack. But it was already too late. A twisted ribbon of power, glowing an all-too familiar sullen crimson hue, came darting out of the darkened jungle, the leading end striking like a rattlesnake. Before I could move, it had plunged itself deeply into my chest, brushed past all defenses and with talons of ice seized hold of something within me.

It was neither pain nor agony that sent slivers of utter cold spider-webbing throughout my massive frame, but something so far beyond those things that it could only be called damnation. My entire body locked, my head thrown back, every muscle spasming at the presence of the annihilation that seethed within me. Breath came in tiny, ragged gasps. I could not even scream.

It was at the corner of one blurred, streaming eye that I saw the air at the edge of the clearing seem to ripple and split apart, revealing an ancient dragoness with scales very nearly as dark and scored as Ksstha's. Her pale blue eyes studied me impassively, almost coldly, her forepaws carefully cradled a swirling globe of red-orange magefire from which issued the leash that held me.

"And so it has come to this." The horrible grip upon me eased slightly, enough for me to turn my head the barest amount needed for me to see the speaker. Ksstha's burning eyes once again held that grim sadness as he stood there regarding me, both dragons' bodies seeming to shimmer from the strength of the shields they held against me in spite of the tether that held me fast. "I prayed to the Ancestors that this would not be necessary, young one, but you gave me no choice, and you are far too powerful, far too dangerous an adversary to be dealt with in any honorable manner."

I ached to spit in his face, to tell him just what I thought of his precious regrets. I'd known Ksstha was aware of this place, and had deliberately come here, as we'd both known I would, to bring his assault to a time and place of my choosing. All about me I could see the dimly glowing filigree of my combat spells, the deadliest patterns in my armory all within easy reach, but the hellish thing which had snared my innermost self held me immobile. Within me, the darkness at the bottom of my soul seethed with rage, reviling me for the altruism that had brought me out here alone.

The tether flared and my muscles spasmed in response, forcing me into a parody of a bow of submission before the dark dragon. He gazed down at me somberly. "Your momentary rebellion is finished, young one. You will come with us now, and bow to me before the Council. Then you will swear fealty to me, denouncing Dithra and her ways, and declare eternal enmity toward the humans. With your words Dithra will be destroyed, and Ahnkar undermined. He will be forced to bow to me, and the way will be clear for me to resume my place as Eldest of the Council."

Anger and shame tore at me as my traitorous body held me in that humiliating posture. I couldn't tap the sky. Even the ability to shift back to human form was blocked. Within me, the darkness swirled like some murderous stygian storm, battering at the barriers that contained it.

Somehow Ksstha divined the rage within my frozen frame. "Your anger is useless, young one, and soon will not matter. For once I have finished with the Council and our adversaries, I will use your Name to reach into your mind. I will purge you of your memories of the past, and replace them with memories of the childhood you would have had, had we been more vigilant. Your misguided loyalties will be expunged, and replaced with the ones you must have if our people are to survive. In the end, you will follow me willingly, even joyfully, as we use your power to crush the humans at last."

Terror flooded through my heart. Within me something cracked, then collapsed, releasing a torrent of blackness to claw its way upwards, reaching. . . .

Ksstha's eye's slid away from me, to rest upon the vile ribbon that bound me. "I apologized to you once, young one, but I feel compelled to beg your forgiveness once again. What I do here. . . . " His head sagged with shame. "My honor is dust upon the wind. But I will sacrifice even that, if it means our kind will live--"

"How touching."

Both Ksstha and the magus started at the words, spoken in a quiet, mocking voice seething with hatred. They stared at me with alarm, and for a moment I felt confusion.

Then I realized that it had been I who had spoken.

There was a curious dislocation, as if I were now watching events from just above and behind my own left shoulders, and then my body began to rise from its humiliating crouch, a low, hateful chuckle rolling from my mouth. Instantly the magus' forepaws moved and a wave of white agony went sleeting through me like a wave of icy daggers, but the laughter merely grew louder. Eyes streaming, spittle dripping from my jaws, I felt quivering muscles straighten my limbs, then bend them again into a different, far more lethal posture.

His eyes wide with disbelief, shaking his head as if to clear it from some foul illusion, Ksstha took a step back. He risked a glance at his magus, to find her panting with effort, the ribbon flaring like a bonfire. It was obvious that something had gone seriously wrong. "This is not possible," he muttered distractedly. He stared at me, something that could almost have been fear seeping into his eyes.

That hard, hateful laughter rang in my ears as my right hand shot out to entangle itself within a nearby pattern and began to twist and warp. The complex web of arcane energy flared into actinic life, then slid sideways to place itself between me and the magus who held the end of my tether. Her eyes widened with alarm, but before she could react my flame was spearing forth, flowing through the pattern, changing from its customary azure to a smoky orange-black as it went, the purely physical attack passing effortlessly through her shields to splash liquidly against her, clinging to her, burning her.

Napalm.

The magus howled, the tether fraying into nothingness as her concentration failed and she thrashed, shrieking in agony as the hellish substance began to devour the flesh from her bones. But the ribbon had flared one last time before parting, the result leaving us screaming in unison. The entire left side of my body went numb, sending me crashing to the ground. Only Ksstha remained standing, and he stared at our two writhing forms in utter astonishment. An instant's indecision, then he sprang upon the stricken magus, beating at the hungry flames with paws that flared with blue-green power. The flames flickered and died, but not before doing grave damage to the dragoness.

With an utterly mad giggle trickling from my jaws, the blackness dragged me to my feet. Feeling was slowly coming back to my left side, but there was little strength. My left eye saw nothing but darkness. I tottered there for a moment as I fought for balance, then slowly swung my head toward Ksstha, the pattern moving smoothly with me. "And now, 'O Eldest,' it is time for you."

The dark dragon stared down at the whimpering form of his badly burned magus, then looked at me, his eyes slitted with revulsion. "We know your Name. No dragon, no matter how powerful, can defy his own Name! This is not possible!"

"Ah, but have you forgotten?" That vicious voice purred "I am only part dragon, 'O Eldest.' Did it not occur to you, fool, that the other part might have its own Name? A Name known only by the One?"

The laughter, if possible, grew louder as the dark dragon's eyes widened in horror and I was rocked with revelation, Ksstha's own words to me only a day earlier showing the way.

. . . .had we studied them more closely, we would have learned of their malice. Have you not felt it, young one? It reverberates in the outraged wails of their young in the moment that they first draw breath and realize how cruelly they have been molded by this uncaring world, and echoes throughout their lives as they then seek revenge against the land that gave them their pathetic forms. . . .

I had lived with this blackness, this nihilistic rage at the bottom of my heart for all of my life. I did not know from where it sprang, and there had been many times that I had feared that it would someday devour me entirely. I thought it was the dragon portion of my soul.

I was wrong.

It was the human part.

The darkness that was a part of me waited patiently, savoring the shudder that rippled across Ksstha's frame as the implications of my words sank home. I chuckled, my head tilting in a mockery of a draconic gesture. "Hunter of Death, you have found your prey at last. Time to die, Ksstha."

And with that the blackness arched my neck, gaped my jaws, and flamed. But there was something in my way. Something that smothered my flame and battered at me with vast feathered wings. Wings of opalescent green.

I yowled in both horror and longing, the blackness, suddenly cowed, diving back to the bottom of my soul, leaving me to face that endless green alone. I flinched aside, and as quickly as it had appeared, the apparition vanished.

I looked about wildly. Ksstha had disappeared as well, using the momentary distraction to gather his magus and beat a hasty retreat, but the dark dragon was far from my thoughts as my armored head whipped about, eyes frantically searching the surrounding forest and sky and finding no trace.

No.

A broken whining began somewhere deep within my breast as, pain and weakness forgotten, I spun to claw my way up that heap of ancient stone, searching, finding all undisturbed but still searching. Somehow I found myself at the top of the cairn, staring blindly at the nearly-full moon, the sound in my breast surging upwards and out into a throat-tearing howl of loss as the tears cascaded down my face.

No! Come back! Where are you? I can't find you, please don't leave please don't leave me don't leave me. . . .

. . . .Again. . . .

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I fumbled with the armrest controls, finally managed to get the music piped through the cheap plastic headphones cranked up loud enough to drown out the frivolous chatter of the other passengers. I then turned my face toward the smudged little window and stared blindly outwards, seeking solitude for myself and my fractured thoughts.

I wondered where my children were. Was their mother with them? Were they well? Did they still search for me, or have they accepted . . . I ground my teeth until I thought they would splinter, my fist pounding, gripping, tearing at the armrest in both grief and impotent rage.

Ksstha's assault had left me damaged. My left side, though feeling had more-or-less returned, was still very weak, and there was something else wrong. Something not physical. It felt as if something utterly irreplaceable had been torn out of me in that last instant before I broke the magus' hold. Now, sleep came hard. Concentration was difficult, my thoughts scattering in every direction, and in the center of my heart there was a numbness, a dead zone into which no feeling, no emotion could intrude. I wondered if I would ever recover. I felt so cold.

No one had come to see me off at the little Air Force terminal, but that was understandable. More tasking had come down the previous evening, and everyone was far too busy on far more important things than to come watch some worn-out has-been climb into a civilian aircraft and out of their lives forever.

I came to this place alone and in silence, and now I left the same way. It is the way it has always been. It is the way it shall forever be. I should be used to it by now.

But it still hurts.

So many things still hurt.

I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the window's slightly-chill surface until the stinging beneath my eyelids faded away. Where did you go, baby? Why did you leave me alone again, now, when I need you most? Oh God, Ancestors, how I miss you. . . .

I listened for a while to the roar of the engines, then with a sigh slowly looked up to gaze at my dim reflection in the scratched plastic. So much grey in my hair. Where had it come from? It seems like only yesterday that I'd been a young man with a fistful of silly little dreams, looking out upon a world brimming with the promise of adventure.

Adventures there had been. On that much the world had not lied. But each one experienced had exacted its price in pain. Sorrow. Friends left behind. And now I found myself sitting in a chartered airliner that was bearing me ever further from the only thing I'd ever been good at, toward a murky future while I stared at the grey in my hair.

And Ksstha was still out there.

Needing me.

Fearing me.

Stalking me.

. . . .Why was I so cold?

Why didn't you let me kill him, baby? At least that part of the torment, both mine and Ksstha's, would have been over. Does he have some sort of hold on you? Or is it that you, like Dithra, simply cannot bear to see dragon killing dragon? Whatever the reason, I will abide by your wishes. I will not kill Ksstha for his crimes.

I think he would welcome death, anyway.

But there will be a reckoning, and that mad Elder will know pain, for if my life has taught me nothing else, it has shown me that there are things worse than death.

Far worse.

Dusk was gathering outside, and in the gathering gloom I saw my now-clearer image's lips curve upwards into a cold, cruel smile.

No, Ksstha, I'm not going to kill you.

I'm going to kill your dream.

I'm going to murder your stinking war.

The cheap set of headphones were playing one of Jethro Tull's old works. That cold smile broadened a bit as I finally let myself relax into my seat, and I eventually drifted off into welcome sleep, listening to the lyrics.

-I'll be coming again

-Like an old dog in pain

-Blown through the eye of a hurricane

-Down to the stones

-Where old ghosts play. . . .