The Return of the Dragonhawk

Chapter 20 -- As A Man Takes His Wife

"You need fresh air!" Lili coaxed. "Those musty scrolls will still be here long after we are both dead."

Rhoz looked up from the notes she had been painstakingly collecting and transcribing for the last eleven days, and smiled into her sister's amber eyes, so much like her own. "You are probably right. My head is aching." She ran her finger over the crystal cover of the display case, tracing the outlines of the fading runes. "To think that thirty-two symbols could arrange themselves into so many conundrums! Even when I manage to decipher the words, I cannot comprehend their significance. What do you suppose this means?" She read a couplet of heroic verse out loud from her notes, painfully aware that she was not pronouncing the words of the Ur-Tongue correctly.

"The truly chosen king must bear the sorrow-burden of the nation above his heart -- or perhaps 'to the summit'," Rhoz translated, "and look upon the chasms of -- of his -- I don't know what. And then there are two lines of pure gibberish, nothing I can make sense of at all."

"A ritual of some sort?" Lili suggested. "Or a rune chant?"

"Possibly. If I read it right, the Dragonkeeper must perform this feat in order to be purified by the dragon's breath and become worthy of the Circlet of Flame and the Armour of Righteousness, the emblems of the true ruler who is both king and duidd. But what could this marvel be?"

"I am sure I have no idea," Lili said. "Why trouble yourself with all this?"

"To know why the dragon sleeps, and what must be done to wake him."

"Alyx says the Saga is a fabrication to explain what we cannot know or understand."

"I am not so sure," Rhoz said. "If there is a dragon, and it can be wakened, it may well be the key to saving Dys." Finding time heavy on her hands, she had followed the spring spirit's injunction to study the Saga, hoping that it would shed some light on her dream in the stable on the eve of Alyx' rescue. If it was truly a revelation from a realm beyond her comprehension, rather than a fabrication of her overburdened mind, she would have business with the Azure Dragon at some future time. Or would she? Perhaps what the dream seemed to offer would be nullified if she left Dys. It was not too late to refuse the summons of the Great Council. All she needed was some definite confirmation from the Saga.

The ancient parchments reeked of magic: Rhoz could feel their energy seeping through the crystal each time she visited. By dint of fierce concentration and occasional assistance from a visiting Peregrian archivist, she had made extraordinary headway in acquiring the Ur-tongue, which seemed to lie just below the surface of her conscious mind, waiting for her to claim it.

"Your Gundar -- out with the soldiers, I suppose?" Rhoz asked her sister.

"As always." Lili made a face. "He never knows when to say 'enough'."

"How does he manage without knowing the language?"

"His sword speaks for him."

Since the battle of the Great Crossroads, the moon had waned and was swelling again. Despite all possible ministrations by two healer-mages hastily summoned from Helion, the Vacina Calchis had not yet mended sufficiently for her journey home. Helion and Peregret had posted troops all along the highroad between Dys and the Condor Way drawbridge at the mouth of the Great River, keeping the way open for the messages which passed back and forth by hawk or horseback daily.

Determined not to re-involve herself in the politics of Dys, Rhoz had remained aloof from everyone but Lili. She spent more and more of her day closeted in the library, staring at the ancient scrolls of the Great Saga as if she could extract their buried significance by a sheer act of will. Even Brelathan's implacable loyalty had been unequal to the sheer boredom of sitting in a room full of books written in languages unknown to him. When he saw that he could not dissuade Rhoz from her quest, he left her alone with her studies.