catalyst

The wind blew chill and strong atop the stony hill, making up for the slight blessing of sunlight. If one moved to get out of the wind, then, too, one would move out of the light of the sun, and to do that was to chance frostbite.
The lack of snow made it all somehow unreal, and the trees shivered and clutched at the warmth. The bushes seemed alive as well, especially to the bare-armed figure that stumbled and cursed all the way up the hill’s steep side. Her feet were protected only with sandals, and the short-sleeved tunic and frayed breeches of light cotton she wore could not have kept her warm. Her cheeks were waxen pale, under the chapped color of windburn, and the slender braids of frost-colored hair were almost horizontal, whipping at her face and back.
The woman’s eyes were half-closed against the gusts, but she seemed to crash into more things than was plausible, even with poor sight. The iris was as gold as a smelter’s furnace, and the greeny-black pupil was slitted, like a cat’s. They had a glazed, far-off look, off-kilter, but the power in the emaciated frame, the cords of muscle beneath her pale skin, showed she was no layabout dreamer. That ice-colored complexion was latticed with scars, startlingly gold against the rest of her. There seemed not to be an inch of skin left unblemished on her. She was limping badly, and she cradled one arm close to her chest. On her hands, flashing like out-of-place lightning, were odd webs of real gold, links that gleamed strangely in the light of the wan sun.
Over the hill was a tiny town, barely more than a village. Had the woman been able to see it, she would have been deeply surprised. Watchfires burned, and there were too many people in the simple dirt streets, too many strong young men in uniform.
As she reached the summit of the hill, the odd woman cupped her hands to her ears, their pointed tips gold with her blood. She was no mere mortal human, but one of the Panther elves, certainly either a veteran of some horrible shrapnel war or a survivor of torture from the scars that marked her so startlingly.
Shivering, the elf put her slender hands before her, cupped them outwards toward the bottom of the hill with a wince for her wounded arm. Shaking her hair back from her face, she whispered a few syllables, liquid and unintelligible. A topaz mist, pale as the winter sun, settled over her a moment, while the wind whisked cruelly over everything.
The links of gold on her hands seared molten hot, the wards within them activated by the elf’s use of magic. With a cry, she threw the mist of power away from her, holding her hands to the chill ministrations of the wind. The scrying spell dissipated, but the brief glimpse it had given her of the hill’s slope was enough. Mind clenched with a desperate grip on that one clear picture, she traversed cautiously, inch by painful inch, down the hill toward the village.
She managed to make it to the crossroad sign in front of the foremost house before she put too much weight on her weak leg and collapsed. Too quickly, a young man, a Cougar elf by his bronze skin, brassy hair and the wrought-iron black of his eyes, stumbled upon her. He was one of the ones in uniform, scarlet and malachite green.
He bellowed an alarm, and brought the rest of his mixed Cougar/Lynx company in at a run. With the twenty-three others was a man entirely in the dark malachite, who bore the same white hair and skin, the same golden eyes as the woman the first soldier had found.
The newcomer stirred and moaned, twitching in pain as Nynevair, who was supporting her, attempted to move her arm.
“Leave that,” the Panther ordered, voice studiously neutral.
“As you wish, Lord Menylhieros.” The boy saluted awkwardly and stepped away, avoiding looking at his lord’s victim.
“Menylhieros,” whispered the woman, eyes straining toward him, scarred face filled with despair. “Why must you track me? Find someone else to be your whipping boy. I have borne enough at your hands.”
The elven lord’s golden eyes glittered sharply, cruel as the frost that creeps on the crops and slays them with a merciless hand. "But Kalanada, my dear lordling’s daughter, I could not let you go. You make Briyon’s Keep feel so guilty. They know you, helped you when you were a child. You are beloved, Kalanada, and for that I shall keep you until the end of time.”
She shook her head, weakly. “I am Kalanada no more, Menylhieros. The only name I have now is Darkness Without End. Darkness that you keep over me with a hand of iron.” Her good arm came up, and she brushed at her slanting eyes, bitterly. Real gold flashed against the puffy topaz of her hand, burns that were as livid as brands upon her palm.
Menylhieros’ sharp eyes caught the raw new marks on her hands, and he sighed. “Magicking again, lordling’s daughter? Still fighting, after five years of this? It is no fault of mine that you are blind, Kalanada. Isavikele wrought it, trying to get away. Your own dragon brought you that fate.”
Kalanada curled her lip back in a snarl. The golden thing, something euphemistically called a ‘handflower, was ensorcelled against its wearing using magic. It was a slave-band, made to stay forever around her wrist and fingers. She hated it, if possible, even more than “She was trying to find a Healer, tyrant, and she was never mine. True dragons belong to no one but themselves. Akellon died because you shot Isavikele. I felt her die, heard her screaming her life out inside my head. She was like a sister to me, you bastard. She had a brain of her own. You had no reason to steal my sight away, no more than you had to murder her.” She paused a moment, and said venemously, “And I do fight. I will fight until I die.” But the desolate look in her unseeing eyes was a silent yearning for the release of death, the escape that even Menylhieros could not stop. The only thing that kept her from death-wishing herself into oblivion was the knowledge that someone else would take her place, would suffer as she suffered, and she could not let that happen. No matter that every scar and wound to her body was caused by the townsfolk defying Menylhieros’ laws, knowing that she would bear their punishment, Kalanada could not condemn another to endure what she had known for more than a third of her life.
Menylhieros knew it. “It was my law, Briyon’s daughter. You will live for a very, very long time, and I shall see if you truly will fight until you die.” He turned from her, brusquely, gesturing to one of the sly-faced Lynx elves. “Eloliaf, can Mhasaal carry two?”
The elf spoke quietly to the great beast and then nodded, narrow hazel eyes considering. “Mhas says yes. Will she need a special harness?” she queried, odd eyebrows tilting.
“Wait.” called another of the Lynxes, this one with dark, buckeye-brown skin and brown-black hair, tinged with the dark malachite of his uniform. His voice was a strong young tenor, as liquid as his deep brown eyes. “Aeveid is a bit larger, and he’s constantly complaining that he’ll never gain stamina, just carrying me. Mhasaal already carries packs. Let me take the girl—Aev can find out just how much he likes taking extra weight.”
Menylhieros eyed him a moment, and then nodded. “Very well, Tierellion. She’ll need the riding straps—with the limp she has now, she’d never make it, staying on a Hill dragon’s back.”
Tierellion nodded, and slid his arms around the battered woman, like a human bridegroom carrying his new wife over the threshold. He was startled as he lifted her easily, her slender frame like a fledgling heron’s in his arms. She was at least five inches taller than he was, but so light and thin he could lift her without risking a sore back later.
His dragon moved in the ground-devouring lope he excelled at to Tierel’s side. {{Who is this, Tierel?}} Aeveid inquired softly in a mind-voice, long, narrow head tilting at a ridiculous angle, half-flaring his equally long and narrow wings.
Menylhieros’ troops dissipated, each finding their own dragon to saddle and mount. With a cautious look around him, Tierel murmured in a quiet mind-voice, {{This is Kalanada, the daughter of kstasfa Briyon. It is she who is punished when those who were Briyon’s people err against Commander Menylhieros’s laws.}} With a heave, he balanced the Panther elf on Aev’s withers, fastening leather straps around her knees and waist that attached to the dragon saddle. He wound her fingers, short compared to his own, in Aev’s mane, and she clutched the silk-fine hair as if it were a lifeline.
{{But that is not right!}} Aev protested, and added, concerned, {{She is so light. She is lighter than you are, and she’s a Panther. And she is hurt.}}
Teirel patted Aeveid’s dappled brown flank. {{It is not. She is almost always hurt, Aev. Those of Briyon’s city cannot help but break some of the laws, and she is the one to suffer. I cannot help but wonder why she still clings to life.}} He reached for the dragon’s back, and sighed. {{Kneel a bit, will you? You’re too dratted tall.}}
{{I cling to life because I want no one else to go through what I do,}} a lighter voice, raspy, came into both dragon and Lynx elf’s head. {{Someone else would have to suffer, because I could not hold on.}} It was faint and grey-dark, like a shadow just before noon.
Aeveid knelt, his humanlike round-pupilled eyes growing wider in surprise. {{What?}}
There was a puzzling sensation of darkness and pain, but no words.
Tierel blinked as he swung his leg over his dragon’s back. Theoretically, he and Aeveid had something special. There were very few dragons with any ability at all, telepathically. In elves, it was doubly rare.
The images vanished as Kalanada’s form went limp, and he had to lean her back against him. Very odd.
Aeveid flattened his pointed ears, the tufts of sorrel fur on their ends and edges mixing with the chestnut of his head. Tierel had to admit, Aev had one of the prettiest pelts he’d ever seen on a dragon, far more beautiful then the stark blue-white of Lord Menylhieros’ Ankaedron. {{Where do we take her?}}
{{Briyon’s Keep. Or rather, Briyon’s Despair.}}
Aeveid rose on his long, powerful hind legs, and Tierel leaned forward to help balance the dragon as Aev’s knees switched directions with a pop, now facing backwards. The dragon’s tasseled bronze-copper tail coiled and switched, and his odd hands clenched, three four-jointed fingers and the three triple-jointed thumbs, a thumb on either side of his hand and one on the back.
{{We go!}} cried the Hill dragon exultantly, and he leapt into the air, snapping his lengthy narrow wings open at the zenith of his flight. The snap of other wings catching wind echoed his as the sky filled with dragons of earth-hues, ore-hues and rock-hues, the pale strangled blue of Ankaedron dipping and wheeling already, like a frostbitten eagle.
Kalanada slid bonelessly sideways a good three inches before Teirel caught her, his long slim hands drawing her back up and leaning her rangy frame back against his own spare one, her scarred cheek resting on his shoulder.
{{Her mind is…very open. Very raw, and deeper than most. Too deep to fathom, without knowing her,}} Aeveid commented. Each powerful wingbeat shifted hard muscle beneath rich velvet-furred sienna hide, and the Lynx fell into the rhythm of the dragon’s movement in only a few minutes.
{{She was a dragon friend once, or so Eloliaf tells me. Dragon named Isavikele, died going for a Healer. A young elf was apparently shot in the leg during the attack, and Menylhieros was letting him bleed to death. One of our army, or so the rumor goes. Indigenous dragons were interdicted, but Isavikele wouldn’t stop trying, until finally she took wing in hopes to find someone, quickly. All she found were archers’ arrows.}}
This bought silence for the rest of the trip, only the rustle of three hundred pairs of wings shivering the sky. They touched down in the trampled clearing beside the Keep walls, and Aeveid swiftly reversed his knees so he could lope easily to the huge, airy structure that housed the dragon population of Briyon’s Despair.
{{Tierel, should I meander over to the Keep balcony, or can you carry her to her room?}} the dragon’s mercurial baritone whispered softly in his mind.
{{Meander. I’ll surely cause her pain, should I drag her all the way there.}} Tierel replied.
Aeveid’s long-legged gait was smooth and fast, more comfortable than any horse’s. He picked his sienna way through the subdued bustle of the courtyard, eeling around supports and winding sinuously through the maze of stalls. At last, the Hill dragon reached the low balcony that Menylhieros enjoyed orating from, and he stretched up on his hind legs so that his narrow shoulders were parallel to the stone balustrade.
{{Tour ends. Everybody off.}} Aev murmured, as Tierel’s fingers fought with the knots on the straps around Kalanada’s limp form.
When the reluctant leather was finally cowed, Tierellion scooped up the awkward package of Panther elf, and walked up to his partner’s withers. With commendable grace, he leapt gently down to the roughened marble floor, and grinned triumphantly at Aeveid. “There you are, old winged bear. Go on; I’ll come back and tend to your tired old bones in a bit.”
“Do that,” the dragon grumbled, and stalked with feigned ire toward the comfort of his lodging.
With a cautious step, Tierel advanced to Kalanada’s pitiful chambers, staggering a bit as her unwieldy form slid from his grip. Readjusting his hold on her, he hefted her farther toward his shoulder as he fumbled with the door.
She stirred and opened her unseeing amber eyes. “Where?” she murmured, her voice as harsh as a raven’s. “I can stand on my own, really.”
“Sure you can, m’lady,” Tierel said, not unkindly. “You’re barely conscious. It won’t hurt you to be carried for a bit.”
“I can--" she began to protest, and then swayed. “Ah. I suppose it won’t.”
He grinned, not that she could see it. “We’re right outside your room, m’lady. And as soon as the lock cooperates, you can sit up and be sociable. I’d like to talk to you, if you don’t mind.” Tierel gave a surreptitious kick to the obstinate door, which, unlocked at last, creaked reluctantly open.
“If you wish.” Kalanada said dully, sitting blessedly still in the Lynx’s tired arms as he strode to the cot brought to bay against one of the walls.
Gently, he set the lady elf down, gazing sadly at her pale face, strewn so cruelly with yellow scars. Her ice-white hair spread across flax-hued pillows, a tangled halo around the shale-fracture planes of her face.
“So, Tierel, what did you wish to talk to me about?” Kalanada inquired, somewhat huskily. “We’d best converse before Menylhieros decides that he has need of me again.” Dread haunted the useless golden eyes.
He sighed, dropped cross-legged to the floor. “If there was a way, kstasfala, to release you without another filling your station, would you take it?”
Hope, astonishing on the battered face, blazed from her eyes, and crackled in her contralto. “If there was such a way,” she breathed, “if there was only such a way.”
Tierel winced away from the frightening yearning that stretched damaged muscles beneath the girl’s scarred skin. “I must go, m’lady,” he said, more harshly than he should have. “I must tend to Aeveid. Take care, Kalanada, fare as well as you may.” He slid to his feet, padding out the door with unusual briskness.

***************************************************************

Aeveid was practically purring like a cat when Tierellion came back, and one of his wingmates was sulking nearby.
“Aeveid Irestol, what vile tricks did you just debase Moreldn with?”
“I?” the Hill dragon murmured, his draconic accent thick with feigned innocence, “Would I debase my dear friend Moreldn?”
“You would, you could and you did, partner mine. Up and at ‘em, Veid. We’re going to do some reconnaissance. “
“Not reck-onnaissance? Truly, Tierel?” Aeveid trilled in supercilious doubt, sidling away from the hearty thump on his shoulder the elf gave him.
“Yes, mad one, truly,” Tierel assured as he sprang up onto the dragon’s back. “Onward and upward, my brave one!”
With a lurching spring, as if he were pouncing upon the wind, Aeveid was aloft, wingbeats keeping steady time as he rowed toward the high wisps of clouds.

Tierellion volunteered for every bit of sentry and scout duty he could, wincing when his grateful comrades clapped him on the back. He felt guilty about this, terribly guilty, but he had not signed into Menylheiros’ army to do what he had done thus far. If he could end the wrong that he had helped to begin, perhaps he would feel more…peaceful. There was no way to get out of Service now but the path he was taking.
He was just beginning to despair of ever finding an opportunity to help the girl when there was a flickering on the dusky horizon that was no star. Aeveid raised his head quietly, his eyes narrowing as he strove to sight upon the anomaly.
{{What is it?}}
{{Let me check it out.}}
Tierel frowned. {{We’re a team. We go together.}}
{{It will be dangerous, perhaps.}}
{{So’s my life, perhaps,}} the elf rejoined tartly. Aeveid shrugged and made no further protest when his partner went to mount. The Hill dragon took them up so high that even in his winter gear, Tierel was shivering. The air here cut like a knife in his lungs, and there didn’t seem to be enough of it.
{{Now look,}} the dragon commanded.
From this vantage point, it was difficult to make out any detail, especially with the wind in his eyes, but he could see enough. {{An army,}} he breathed. {{A big one.}}
{{Not ours,}} said Aeveid with satisfaction. {{Have you seen enough?}}
Mentally tallying the throng bivouacked below, Tierellion could only nod.

He had been dying to tell Kalanada the news, but he was forced to wait until the evening of the following day. And when he saw her, he didn’t know why she was even conscious.
The dressing over her ribs rose and fell haltingly as she stirred on her narrow pallet. Her magically-blinded eyes turned toward him, her face drained of its golden tone so much that her flesh was as white as ivory. “Tierel?” she said faintly. “What news?”
“We must work quickly,” he said softly. “Opportunity will come knocking in a day or two.” It was painful to see her face light up like that, to watch her breath catch on broken ribs. “I’ve got to get you away before they get here…there will be no route out, once they have this place surrounded. They have many bowmen. Can you be ready?”
Her face clouded over. “If I leave, and we don’t win…”
“You must go,” he said earnestly, picking up one of her cold hands with care and squeezing it firmly. “We will win. There is always rebellion in the air. If I take you away, and tell the people…well, the army shall beat us all the more easily.”
She sighed and turned her face away from him, her brows knit. Within minutes, Kalanada was asleep.

It was not difficult to rouse the people of Briyon’s Despair. Indeed, it was most difficult to make them wait for the day…

Kalanada was safe at last, though still bound by Menylheiros’ mage-bonds and blinding sorcery. The army was very close now, if they weren’t already there. Aeveid had flown far and worked hard; his wingbeats were coming slower now, and he flew with less care. Tierel hated to work the dragon so hard, but Aeveid had a mind of his own, and he refused to take a breather. The elf hoped that the girl’s disappearance wouldn’t be noticed until there were more important things on Menylheiros’ mind. Otherwise…well, whomever the great lord discovered was likely to be placed in that empty post.
{{Whoa! Wrong time!}}
Aeveid snapped his head up and roared astonishment as something popped out of thin air in front of him. He dove to avoid the big red-and-gold thing, snarling. Tierel was almost dislodged, and he clung to his dragon’s pelt with the strength of desperation.
Below them, sun glinted off many archers’ helms.
The Hill dragon screamed as he was suddenly transfixed, multiple bolts burying themselves in his great chest. Tierel screamed too, and kept screaming as giant red claws buried themselves in his shoulders and yanked him away from his falling partner. Inexplicably, no more arrows followed, only a descent into the Void.

“…and so Corvethis messed up on the time, thanks to Lao Daemia’s weird relationship with other places,” the dark-skinned human boy finished, smiling wryly. “That’s how we got there.”
Tierellion just shook his head in numb disbelief. Of all the freakish mischances… He’d already had to ask so many questions. The boy, Sahen, talked as if he didn’t know them too well yet himself.
Sahen sighed, patting his dragon’s neck unhappily. “We…feel responsible for the death of your bond, Veth and I,” he began awkwardly.
“Partner,” Tierel corrected. Bond was…different, as far as he understood it.
“—and we would like to help you get established here. Since we don’t know where and when we were, we can’t exactly take you back there yet. It looked pretty bad there, too.” The boy was watching his face with far more compassion than Tierel felt capable of absorbing at the moment. “I’ve…been in wars before. So we’d like to offer you the chance to find a new partner here. You don’t have to integrate…we’d just like you to try it. Veth says you have, er, good vibes.”
The elf shrugged glumly. He didn’t really care what they did with him. He didn’t know where he would have gone before they’d come. To his death, probably, as one of the enemy or as a traitor. “Do what me with you will,” he said shortly. “Whatever I need to make it here.”
The dragon, whatever weird sort of dragon it was, smirked. “Oh, good. We were hoping you would say that.”
Sahen whacked it affectionately on the flank. “Ryslen?”
“Ryslen Flurry,” the red-gold countered smugly. “Ae-es-ae-pee.”

Saga:
The Catalyst

This is the first chapter of the Saga. The Saga and its characters are (c) 2000-2003 Marika Wojciechowski. This background set is also my intellectual property. If you would like to use a character from the Saga, play in the setting, or use this background, please e-mail me at telyn@uga.edu .

Follow Kalanada

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Stats

Ryslen Flurry