Siegyrd helped Silas pack up his things into his smaller satchel. The boy’s face drooped in the morning twilight. Aerendir was already packed up and stepped away from the camp back up toward the cliff that overlooked the lake. Mareth fed Alexei and ran through another iteration of training as Siegyrd had done throughout their travels. The lion moved lazily, but obeyed.
Absentmindedly Mareth said to Siegyrd, “If you two are really dragons, why in the world did we walk all this way?”
Silas eyes went wide at the statement, “Dragons!?”
Siegyrd smiled at the boy as he tightened a strap and wiped a bit of grime from the boy’s cheek, “Don’t worry about him, Silas. Just a game.”
“I thought lies weren’t becoming, Siegyrd.” Mareth said, as he fed the lion another strip of meat from the deer.
“No lies there. He oughtn’t worry about you, and everything is a game of sorts.” Siegyrd said.
“A fine line when speaking to a child to whom nuance might as well be invisible, but you aren’t dodging this question. I am thankful for the fitness, but why didn’t we fly all this way? Or was it only to maintain your poorly kept secret?” Mareth stood and moved to roll up his bag and prepare to move.
Silas took up Mareth’s refrain, “I want to fly!” He threw his hands up in the air and looked up at the sky and closed his eyes with a serene sense of rapture.
“See, the boy agrees, Siegyrd.”
Siegyrd sighed and gave a sideways glance toward the wizard but spoke to Silas, “Aerendir and I must take a different path than you. It is dangerous. You will go with the mighty wizard Mareth over there. He’ll keep you safe.”
Silas, “I want to go with Uncle Seegard.”
Mareth walked up and placed his hand on Siegyrd’s shoulder speaking to the boy, “I want to go with them too, young man, but there is wisdom in measuring one’s strength.”
Siegyrd nodded and looked into the boy’s piercing blue eyes. “I pray to Apeiron we will see one another again, but in case we do not. Please give me your blade.”
Silas furrowed his brow, and Siegyrd laughed, “I will give it back.”
The boy handed the knife and sheathe to Siegyrd who drew it and placed it on the ground between the roots. He knelt down and rubbed his hands together and sang softly. A low hum accompanied him and then another higher pitch flew in, and eventually what sounded like multiple voices singing at once came together around he and the boy and the wizard. Siegyrd’s hands glowed with a shifting light that moved between shades of green and blue and gray. Siegyrd took his left hand and pulled all his fingers together then touched the palm of his right hand. All the glow transferred to his right hand and brightened into a solid sphere. Then he touched just above his heart with his left hand and drew what appeared to be a silver strand as thin as a spider’s web from his chest. He wrapped it around the light on his right hand and it melded into the sphere and began to spin and twist in complex overlaid patterns.
Silas watched with eyes bright, mouth wide in a smile full of awe as Siegyrd took the spinning spiraling mass of colorful magic with the silver thread and pressed it into the blade of the dagger. The blade first burned white hot in the light then began to hungrily drink in the magical elements. The forces flowed for longer than the size of the sphere should have allowed, but then at last the silver spiderthread touched the blade and where it lay it shaped itself into a flowing script in a tongue the boy did not know. It etched the metal with that script, sinking into the steel with another bright flash that forced the boy to look away. A sound like the cracking of a rock followed by the hiss of steam reached his ears as he opened his eyes.
The blade was its plain dull gray, but the script pulsed low in glowing blow lines which faded into the ghosted remains of where they once were. Siegyrd smiled as he held the blade up, showing it to Silas, “There is now within the blade a small part of me, and you may reach me through it. The script is my name in the ancient tongue. Use it wisely. So long as I am in this world, you can reach me, and,” and he took the blade and set it on a flat space nearby horizontal between them. “Speak my name.”
Silas smiled and said, “Seegard!” The blade spun in a flash and snapped into place pointing straight at Siegyrd. Silas jumped at the movement then laughed.
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“It will point you to me as well. While we have to leave now, you can always find me again. For now, Mareth will take care of you. You are Silas of the Troupe Triumphant, and we’re proud to have had you among us.”
The wizard nodded at this and stepped closer to the boy. Silas looked up at him and smiled then scrunched his face.
Aerendir stepped back into the camp and spoke, “You should come, quietly.”
#
They all moved slowly to the edge of the cliff overlooking the lake. Aerendir guided them in stealth. Down below the two brothers could see the figure very clearly though Mareth and Silas saw only the speck in the distance. The tall raven-haired man from the day before wore robes of scarlet and gold fastened to a breastplate of bone-white armour. He stood in a boat made of dark glass, and steam spread around him. He held a crystalline flute in one hand and a spear taller than he and tipped with a masterly crafted falchian blade that appeared to swallow the light around it.
At the front of the boat was a small flat space that appeared to be an altar. The man set the flute on it and then wielded his polearm and swung it down atop the flute.
Just before it struck, there was a flash of brilliant rainbow radiance and the sound of a keening like steel against steel or tuning forks made of crystal, high pitched and piercing. The dark blade swallowed some of the radiance but was repelled. The boat did not shake in the water, as if it were anchored to solid ground by some force unseen. Again the man raised the polearm and again he brought it down with a massive force which sent a booming ripple through the water all around him which built into small waves that broke in every corner of the lake far from him. Again the radiance flashed, and the flute was untouched.
From atop the cliff the sounds were clear and the movement of the water and the boat (or lack thereof) shook the watchers. They heard the copper-skinned dragonman roar so loudly that they had to cover their ears and their bones shook within them as he rose for a third strike and brought the blade down, but then stopped just before the blow landed. The man shook his head and looked at his hand and then dropped the blade like it was something hot and scrambled over to grab the flute. He gripped it to his chest, hugging it and closing his eyes. It almost sounded as though he sang to it, though Siegyrd could not be sure.
Aerendir looked at Siegyrd who looked at Mareth and nodded, “You must go.”
Mareth understood but tarried, “Why do we not fly? All of us.”
“You know why, masni. Take care of Silas.” Siegyrd shuffled nearer the boy and another roar echoed behind them. Siegyrd glanced back but then grabbed the boy’s cheeks and looked into his eyes, “Grow strong and courageous, faithful and upright. Speak truth, love justice, and walk in the dust of the Master’s feet.”
Silas started to cry as another roar echoed through the valley, and Mareth swept him up and down the hill away from the dragonman. Alexei peeked out of the nearby brush and followed Mareth away, glad to make distance between himself and the monster behind.
Aerendir and Siegyrd looked at each other again and then looked back at the man who now held the flute over the water in one hand, his face turned away. He cursed himself in the ancient tongue, savagely, and the words carried to the brothers in a sibilant hiss.
“Let it go, coward! Mad sovereign! Fool, weak, beautiful, ugly one. DROP IT! ” Almost out of his own accord, his hand dropped the flute into the water, and the water reached up like a living thing to pull it under quickly in a flash of crystalline light. The man rushed to the edge of the boat and looked over his head scanning the waters. Behind Aerendir and Siegyrd a loud crash as of someone falling echoed through the forest. The dragonman’s head snapped backward as he looked toward the ridge. Both the brothers felt cold fear.
He turned slowly in the boat and faced his whole body toward the cliff, crouched low and then leaped skyward rocketing up over fifty feet before spinning into a whirling expansion and exploding into his gargantuan dragon form. He flapped his wings once and shot toward the crest on which the brothers sat.
