dragon bard (beta)
Chapter one: the bard
This is a work in progress, meant for newsletter subscribers only! Please keep the link private, and excuse any typos, etc--fully edited book to come fall 2021!
The bard knew the settlement was dead long before he crested the rim.
There was no smoke, and smoke was life on the frozen continent. No smoke, and no steady thump of dragonlull echoing across the ice. Just silence and a growing ache in his chest, knowing what he would find.
The early morning wind was picking up, a moan through the ice dunes as he walked beside his dragon, absently singing the Shanty of Milatam. The moans made mournful accompaniment, but it had always been a mournful song. Funny how he’d sung it a thousand times, and only noticed that undertone after he started finding lost settlements.
“You can sit this one out, if you want,” he said to his dragon, fitting the words into the shanty’s rhythm. It came naturally to him, even after thirty years on the ice. He’d spent nearly as long as a bard in the old world. Now all those songs were good for was lulling dragons.
Ligipag said nothing, her massive feet melting puddles at each step, silver eyes lidded like a kitten held by the back of the neck. She said nothing, but the bard thought she understood. She’d been with him at every dead settlement they’d found. Seventeen calderas frozen solid or melted to slag, nearly a tenth of all the settlements they had on the ice.
A few more, and people would start to question whether this was where they wanted to build a life. Whether the old world and its plague wasn’t better.
The bard repeated the shanty’s refrain as they climbed the caldera slope, a light snow falling, as though hoping the tune would strike a different key. That the colony would be alive inside, despite the signs. That the frost crunching beneath his boots bore no other footprints because the inhabitants had another way out, or just hadn’t left in a while. That the shanty wouldn’t sound so sorrowful once they were out of the wind.
They crested the rim, man and dragon, and his heart seized. The settlement's pool of melt water was frozen into a solid sheet. Frost coated the beaten iron walls of the homes, glazed the open doors of the dragon pens like delicately broken glass, and ran up the individual stalks of the settlement garden, plants still showing green beneath.
Frost coated the bodies too. They did not lay, like the corpses he had known during the war, nor did they curl in the traditional funeral pose—they stood as they were in the very last moments: a man running, broken stick in his hand. A woman further back, arms raised, face frozen in a desperate shout. A child, clinging to her skirts with one chubby fist. Save for the colorless pallor of their cheeks, they were as lifelike as the best marble statues of Her Majesty’s palace.
The dragon pens were empty, of course. But whether that meant that the settlement’s dragonlull had stopped beating, waking the dragons from their docile state, or that feral dragons had come to break their brethren free, he couldn't tell on first sight. And so he must go down.
The bard sighed, adding this new heartache to the pile he carried inside. “Come on then, Ligi,” he said to his dragon, still timing his words to the shanty’s measure. “Let's see whether this was my people's doing, or yours.”
The wind’s moans faded as they descended thick iron stairs into the frozen valley. It was not large, as calderas went, perhaps eighty paces across, and half as many deep. Normally the rocky enclosures were warm, trapping the heat of the magma beneath, but the dragons had frozen this one solid, and the bard’s breath hung in the air as he sang. He pulled his fur suit close. On the far side of the rocky bowl a secondary cone rose, with the colony’s central wind paddle perched on top, turning freely in the wind. Its pulley belt lay in a heap of precious leather next to the shattered spindle, winding fibers uncoiled in a giant tangle.
The bard walked up to cone, windpaddle croaking at its peak like the ravens roosted in the swamps of his home village. He fingered the fibers, finding what he feared—that they were not frozen like the rest of the colony. This break had happened later, a result of the dragons escaping, not the cause. Settlements were lost to failed dragonlulls occasionally, especially small ones like this, where a jammed gear or unwound spindle could go unnoticed long enough that the dragons woke.
It was never certain what the creatures would do in that case—there were survivors who told of the dragons simply fleeing, taking wing without exacting any kind of revenge. There were the early colonies found razed with dragonfire, all remains of civilization melted back into the still-glowing floor. A few had been found frozen like this, too, but settlements like this were a more recent phenomenon, and not the fault of human oversight.
He could imagine it, the feral dragons descending from above, massive wings darkening the skies, calling to their caged brethren, drowning out the dragonlull long enough to get them free. And pulling the heat from the humans they found, maybe as an afterthought, or maybe as a warning.
The bard sighed, dropping the frayed kashana rope. They had lost fewer colonies in the last decade, through technology and better education for settlers fresh from the old world. None of that would help this. And if he wanted to stop it, if he wanted to protect this world that in so many ways he had made, this one gift he’d managed to give the world, he needed first to understand the problem.
The Bart switched to the Half Moon jig, a playful piece he had written to please a woman in another lifetime, whistling it in lips untouched by the cold and absently tapping out the counter rhythm on the worked iron buttons of his fursuit. Ligipin looked at him, an almost inquisitive look in her molten silver eyes. She always noticed when he changed songs.
He returned the look. “What do you know, my love?” he asked to the rhythm, the bright melody feeling incongruous, echoing from the dead settlement’s walls. “Why are they doing this?”
Like her namesake, Ligipag didn't deign to answer. She never did, although she returned his gaze for another few moments, heat shimmering from her body, tail lashing the air. He wished he could command her to burn this place, to unleash the heat all dragons held inside, and erase this frozen scene of desperate mother and terrified child.
Instead, he pulled his pack from her back, the contents uncomfortably warm. Ligipag was of the dragons found near the coast, a reddish orange that the old word scholars theorized had more to do with the rock she consumed than any kind of parentage, and her scales were oblong teardrops with dainty points. It was part of what led him to choose her at the Portown market, and name her as he did—the scales reminded him of the sword-and-teardrop sigil of his lover’s house. A sigil that had reigned over six years of blood and terror. That had ultimately driven him here, in desperation.
Now he only saw in it the mystery of the creatures that had made civilization on this continent possible. The fires that kept their forges roaring, the docile beasts of strength that pulled their ore to market and ran their mills when the winds died, and the source of the very blood they used to keep the cold from stealing fingers and toes. Their bones were also the only known cure for the Blackness sweeping across the old world, the only hope for a vast empire in the grip of a terrible plague.
A hope that would fade if they did not fix this.
He could swear Ligipag looked up at the thought, but then again, when a man spent most of his time alone save for the company of a beast, he would begin swearing a lot of things.
“Come on, girl,” he said, pulling a pickaxe from his pack. “Let's give these people a proper burial.”
There was no smoke, and smoke was life on the frozen continent. No smoke, and no steady thump of dragonlull echoing across the ice. Just silence and a growing ache in his chest, knowing what he would find.
The early morning wind was picking up, a moan through the ice dunes as he walked beside his dragon, absently singing the Shanty of Milatam. The moans made mournful accompaniment, but it had always been a mournful song. Funny how he’d sung it a thousand times, and only noticed that undertone after he started finding lost settlements.
“You can sit this one out, if you want,” he said to his dragon, fitting the words into the shanty’s rhythm. It came naturally to him, even after thirty years on the ice. He’d spent nearly as long as a bard in the old world. Now all those songs were good for was lulling dragons.
Ligipag said nothing, her massive feet melting puddles at each step, silver eyes lidded like a kitten held by the back of the neck. She said nothing, but the bard thought she understood. She’d been with him at every dead settlement they’d found. Seventeen calderas frozen solid or melted to slag, nearly a tenth of all the settlements they had on the ice.
A few more, and people would start to question whether this was where they wanted to build a life. Whether the old world and its plague wasn’t better.
The bard repeated the shanty’s refrain as they climbed the caldera slope, a light snow falling, as though hoping the tune would strike a different key. That the colony would be alive inside, despite the signs. That the frost crunching beneath his boots bore no other footprints because the inhabitants had another way out, or just hadn’t left in a while. That the shanty wouldn’t sound so sorrowful once they were out of the wind.
They crested the rim, man and dragon, and his heart seized. The settlement's pool of melt water was frozen into a solid sheet. Frost coated the beaten iron walls of the homes, glazed the open doors of the dragon pens like delicately broken glass, and ran up the individual stalks of the settlement garden, plants still showing green beneath.
Frost coated the bodies too. They did not lay, like the corpses he had known during the war, nor did they curl in the traditional funeral pose—they stood as they were in the very last moments: a man running, broken stick in his hand. A woman further back, arms raised, face frozen in a desperate shout. A child, clinging to her skirts with one chubby fist. Save for the colorless pallor of their cheeks, they were as lifelike as the best marble statues of Her Majesty’s palace.
The dragon pens were empty, of course. But whether that meant that the settlement’s dragonlull had stopped beating, waking the dragons from their docile state, or that feral dragons had come to break their brethren free, he couldn't tell on first sight. And so he must go down.
The bard sighed, adding this new heartache to the pile he carried inside. “Come on then, Ligi,” he said to his dragon, still timing his words to the shanty’s measure. “Let's see whether this was my people's doing, or yours.”
The wind’s moans faded as they descended thick iron stairs into the frozen valley. It was not large, as calderas went, perhaps eighty paces across, and half as many deep. Normally the rocky enclosures were warm, trapping the heat of the magma beneath, but the dragons had frozen this one solid, and the bard’s breath hung in the air as he sang. He pulled his fur suit close. On the far side of the rocky bowl a secondary cone rose, with the colony’s central wind paddle perched on top, turning freely in the wind. Its pulley belt lay in a heap of precious leather next to the shattered spindle, winding fibers uncoiled in a giant tangle.
The bard walked up to cone, windpaddle croaking at its peak like the ravens roosted in the swamps of his home village. He fingered the fibers, finding what he feared—that they were not frozen like the rest of the colony. This break had happened later, a result of the dragons escaping, not the cause. Settlements were lost to failed dragonlulls occasionally, especially small ones like this, where a jammed gear or unwound spindle could go unnoticed long enough that the dragons woke.
It was never certain what the creatures would do in that case—there were survivors who told of the dragons simply fleeing, taking wing without exacting any kind of revenge. There were the early colonies found razed with dragonfire, all remains of civilization melted back into the still-glowing floor. A few had been found frozen like this, too, but settlements like this were a more recent phenomenon, and not the fault of human oversight.
He could imagine it, the feral dragons descending from above, massive wings darkening the skies, calling to their caged brethren, drowning out the dragonlull long enough to get them free. And pulling the heat from the humans they found, maybe as an afterthought, or maybe as a warning.
The bard sighed, dropping the frayed kashana rope. They had lost fewer colonies in the last decade, through technology and better education for settlers fresh from the old world. None of that would help this. And if he wanted to stop it, if he wanted to protect this world that in so many ways he had made, this one gift he’d managed to give the world, he needed first to understand the problem.
The Bart switched to the Half Moon jig, a playful piece he had written to please a woman in another lifetime, whistling it in lips untouched by the cold and absently tapping out the counter rhythm on the worked iron buttons of his fursuit. Ligipin looked at him, an almost inquisitive look in her molten silver eyes. She always noticed when he changed songs.
He returned the look. “What do you know, my love?” he asked to the rhythm, the bright melody feeling incongruous, echoing from the dead settlement’s walls. “Why are they doing this?”
Like her namesake, Ligipag didn't deign to answer. She never did, although she returned his gaze for another few moments, heat shimmering from her body, tail lashing the air. He wished he could command her to burn this place, to unleash the heat all dragons held inside, and erase this frozen scene of desperate mother and terrified child.
Instead, he pulled his pack from her back, the contents uncomfortably warm. Ligipag was of the dragons found near the coast, a reddish orange that the old word scholars theorized had more to do with the rock she consumed than any kind of parentage, and her scales were oblong teardrops with dainty points. It was part of what led him to choose her at the Portown market, and name her as he did—the scales reminded him of the sword-and-teardrop sigil of his lover’s house. A sigil that had reigned over six years of blood and terror. That had ultimately driven him here, in desperation.
Now he only saw in it the mystery of the creatures that had made civilization on this continent possible. The fires that kept their forges roaring, the docile beasts of strength that pulled their ore to market and ran their mills when the winds died, and the source of the very blood they used to keep the cold from stealing fingers and toes. Their bones were also the only known cure for the Blackness sweeping across the old world, the only hope for a vast empire in the grip of a terrible plague.
A hope that would fade if they did not fix this.
He could swear Ligipag looked up at the thought, but then again, when a man spent most of his time alone save for the company of a beast, he would begin swearing a lot of things.
“Come on, girl,” he said, pulling a pickaxe from his pack. “Let's give these people a proper burial.”