I'm Afraid You've Got Dragons
Prologue
The warning came in the form of a great wind, sudden and cold, sweeping out of the western mountains on a perfectly bland and cloudless summer day. Along with it came the charcoal-burners, the trappers, and the rest of the forest folk—woodcutters, swineherds, herbwives, even the occasional hermit and more occasional outlaw—rushing to seek shelter in the nearby village. The villagers eagerly took them all in, glad of more hands to share in hastily battening down doors, windows, shelves, and cellars, and hanging stones from the eaves and edges of thatched roofs, in hopes of holding their houses together against the rising wind. As they worked, they prayed it might indeed be only wind.
The village’s three Wise Women—a larger town would have had as many as seven—were the only inhabitants bold enough to stand exposed in the fields on the mountain-facing side of the village. Their hair and garments whipped behind them as they watched the forest bend and twist as if wrenched between invisible hands. The air was thick now with dust and twigs and torn leaves, and over the growing howl they could hear tree limbs snap and splinter with a sound like cracking bones.
The Wise Women watched, and worried, and debated.
“This is no storm,” said Uska, youngest of the three, her one good eye searching the oddly clear sky. “The Kings return.”
“Nonsense,” replied Yairi. At sixty-three, she was Uska’s elder by thirty years. She never missed a chance to hint that Uska had attained her place too soon, and with insufficient testing. “The Kings passed before you were born, and none of their progeny could do this. Besides, this wind is cold. I remember the Kings. The wind of their passage was always hot, almost too hot to breathe, as if their wings were made of stolen sun. This fury is another matter altogether. Some faraway shift in the land or sea, perhaps, echoing its way to us across the distance. Watch. It will shake itself out and fade.”
“What great lurch or tide, no matter how distant, moves trees without touching the sky? It is the Kings. We must light the beacons, so we might yet be noticed and avoided. We must prepare the rune arrows, to ask forgiveness and beg them pass us by.”
“You are young and coarse, and lack understanding.” Yairi made no attempt to hide her condescension. “The world has many mysteries. Is that not so, Brugge?”
The oldest of the Wise Women held her bony right hand out flat, wobbling it slightly this way and that: maybe yes, maybe no. Her skin was almost transparent with age. She frowned at her companions and breathed in twice, preparing to speak, but before she could begin, a tangle of crosscurrents stilled the air for a moment. In the sudden hush a new sound came to them from the forest: a low, dark rumble that rose and fell in waves, and seemed to be made of many other noises all blurred and jumbled together. When the wind rose again the sound was dulled, but they could still hear it, growing louder. It was as if all the lightning in the world had been bridled and something now rode it toward their village.
Brugge’s sure stance and undimmed eyes belied the count of her years, which only she remembered. But uncertainty colored her voice, and this change in the fixed star of their hierarchy frightened her listeners more than either could admit in the other’s company.
“Shoot your arrows at will, sister, for whatever you think they are worth. Light your beacons as you choose. And you, Yairi, so quick to dismiss strangeness, so anxious to quell your own troubled thoughts: I do not believe we will be laughing about this tonight, or tomorrow, or at any time to come.”
The gale grew steadily wilder, and for a moment all three women peered keenly back at the village, dreading to see a hearth fire drawn up even one chimney, to leap from housetop to housetop, setting the whole village ablaze. But there was no sign of that disaster, at least.
“The world has turned noisily in its sleep, like some babe disturbed in the cradle, fussing and crying until it forgets the dreams that troubled it. The Kings do not come now to harm us in their vast indifference. Something else is loosed, something that stinks of magic.”
“Aye? And what will he do?”
As venerable as she insisted on being regarded by her companions, it was extremely rare for Yairi ever to challenge Brugge’s authority so directly; she had always been far more likely to snap sideways at her, and then to back away with a quick, inaudible mumble. “When that one comes once again to challenge our supposed wisdom, our legendary power for the very last time… how do you imagine we will face him then, my sister?” The last two words flashed and bit with contempt, as they were precisely meant to do.
The oldest of the three Wise was silent for such a long moment that Yairi began to shrink hard away from her, while trying her best not to show fear. None of the other Wise had ever seen Brugge in a rage; and Yairi suddenly became utterly aware that she did not ever want to be the first. But the older woman’s voice was quite calm when she spoke again, which young Uska thought was quite the most terrible thing of all. Brugge finally shook her white head in distaste. “What we will do,” she said at last, “is what we Wise always do when wisdom fails. We will chant and charm in all the languages we know, using every prayer, every incantation at our disposal, conjuring to make what approaches leave us in peace. And it… it will do whatever it will do. Begin.”
They knelt together, Brugge’s authority still strong enough to bind them. And where else, in truth, could they go? What else, in fact, might they possibly do?
Hours of chanting passed without effect. The sky was still far too clear come nightfall; beneath its dark ceiling the air raged, and the noise from the woods grew harsher and louder than the world might possibly contain. Though the three women screamed their secrets into the onrushing wind, seeking to blunt its fury, they could no longer hear each other or themselves. Their words were torn and scattered as if they had never had form or meaning.
And then there were no words at all.