Pledged in Blood - Chapter Thirty Four (Patreon)

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Chapter Thirty Four

Stars

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I woke some time later, still enclosed within my own wings, and unsure how long I’d been asleep. I gradually retracted my wings, folding them against my back. I must have cried myself to sleep. Perhaps it was the only way for my mind to escape the pain. Nesh had stayed with me, consoling me all night. Later, the gryphons had returned and offered me a few comforting strokes with their own soft flight feathers. Other than that, they gave me my space, which was appreciated as much as the comfort.

Tears shed just before slumber left my eyes feeling sticky and crusted. I wiped them with the pads of a paw, then gazed around. A single light stone bathed the room in an ethereal glow. Blue Jay and Sparrow lay curled against one another, just in front of the stylized hearth. Glowing embers lit the teeth-like gratings with a faint orange glow. The gryphons must have built a fire without me realizing it. Both of them were fast asleep. I looked towards the human bed, expecting to find Nesh there, but it remained empty. 

Yawning, I pushed myself to my paws. I imagined he’d only slipped outside to empty his bladder, but I would never underestimate Nesh’s capacity to get himself lost. Quietly as I could, I stepped around the sleeping gryphons, and eased the door open. I made my way into the hall, sniffing around. Nesh’s scent lingered, fresher there. I followed it back through the grand chamber with its towering, fluted columns, and out towards the courtyard. 

Nesh sat in the middle of the courtyard, bathed in the silver white glow of moonlight. He’d fetched an old chair from somewhere in the fort, and set it up outside. A heavy blanket, lilac with woven silver stars, enveloped him. It wasn’t the same blanket from the human mattress, so he must have taken it from Melakar’s former bed. Only his head poked out from the top of the blanket, and his booted feet from beneath it. Breath drifted above his head in little clouds, aimlessly floating away before gradually dispersing. 

I didn’t want to startle him, so I made a point to step gently down into a patch of snow, just enough for the crunching sound to disrupt the still night air. He lifted his head, and I lowered my tail to let it drag across flagstone and snow alike to further announce my approach. Nesh twisted around in the chair, smiling when he spotted me. 

“Hello, Ella.” He stretched an arm out of the blanket to give me a beckoning wave. “Join me, if you like.” 

“I should like, yes.” I padded over and settled on my haunches alongside him. “Though I’m going to freeze my ass-scales off out her.”

Nesh chuckled, reaching out to pat my foreleg as I sat near him. “I don’t think that’s how the cold works. Besides, it was colder than this back at Melakar’s lair.” 

I gazed down at him, my frills lifted. “Says the one hiding in a blanket.”

“Fair enough.” Nesh stroked my scales a moment, then withdrew his hand into the sheltering warmth. “How’re you feeling?” He tilted his head back to gaze up at me. His eyes shone in the moonlight, like beacons searching for the depths my buried soul. “I think that’s…about as long as I’ve ever seen you cry.” 

I sighed, looking away. My eyes wandered aimlessly from patches of snow to cold stone walls. “That’s because the last time I felt that way, I tried to go flying, and found myself fired on by cannoneers and attacked by gryphons.” 

“True.” Nesh shifted his blankets. “And I suppose the first night in your lair, when I first saw you crying over Melakar’s portrait, that was a long time too. Didn’t cry yourself to sleep, though.” 

I took a slow breath, searching for anything at all to hold my gaze. “He…he still loved me, Nesh. Even after all that happened between us, he still loved me.” 

Nesh nodded. “As you still loved him, I gather.” 

“But I never told him.” I flexed my forepaws, digging unsheathed claws into the cold stone. “I think I even denied it to myself, for years, to…to acquiesce to my pride. Even…even when he lay dying, I…I never told him I still loved him.” 

“He knew, Ella.” Nesh slipped his arm out to stroke my foreleg again. “He knew.” 

I sighed, swallowing back the lump in my suddenly tight throat. I blinked away the tears that threatened to spill anew down my muzzle, not wanting to break down crying all over again. “I…I sincerely hope you’re right, Nesh.” 

“From all you’ve told me about him, he sounds too wise and perceptive not to know.” Nesh tightened the blanket around himself. “I’m sure he had his doubts, from time to time, but so do we all. For my part, I’d like to think that wherever he is now, he’s looking down on you, watching over you. Just…” Nesh stared up at the moon-bathed sky. “Just as I like to think my father still watches over me.” 

“It’s a beautiful thought.” I curled my tail around my paws, and tucked my wings closer to my body to keep them warm. “I…rather like what Blue Jay said his people believed. That…” I scratched a few anxious lines into the frozen flagstones beneath me. “That his spirit…that all their spirits…can visit us in our dreams. And so when I tell him I still love him, he hears it, truly hears it…even if it’s only in my dream.” 

“Funny you should mention that.” Nesh rocked his chair back, balancing it on two legs. “I had a dream not unlike that. That’s part of the reason I ended up out here, in the cold.” 

“When I woke and found you gone, I thought you’d just gone for a piss, and gotten lost.” I laughed and flicked my tail tip. “So what was the dream?” 

“It was about my father, actually.” Nesh slipped a hand free to scratch at the scruffy fur smothering his chin. “Used to dream about him a lot, but…I hadn’t done so in quite some time. He and I were out on a frozen lake, in the middle of the night. Fishing, through a hole in the ice. The way we did in the winters, when I was but a tiny child. And we were…” Nesh worked his jaw in silence for a few moments before he found the right words. “Just talking, I suppose. Felt so important in the dream, but I can’t really remember the conversation, now. Only that right before I woke, he put his hand on his shoulder, and told me he was proud of me.”

“And…” I tilted my head, gazing down at him. “You believe that…this was really your father, visiting you?” 

Nesh scrunched his face. “Not sure I’d go that far. I believe we all have souls, and that there’s life after death, built for us by the gods, but…” He shrugged and pulled his hand back into his blanket shelter, sighing. “I’m not sure that I believe those souls genuinely return to see us.” He chuckled, shrugging. “Then again, I’m not sure they don’t, either. But whatever the case, I woke, and couldn’t get back to sleep. You were asleep, and so were the birds, so I thought I may as well get some fresh air. Took a blanket and a chair, and…came out to enjoy the night sky.”

I turned my attention up to the nightscape above us. The moon was nearly full, bright and silver, yet somehow failed to eclipse the stars all around it. It was as if out here, so far from anything, the stars too shone just as brightly as the moon. “It is a very striking sky.” 

“Isn’t it?” Nesh rocked his chair a few more times. “Reminds me of my childhood. Before I moved to the big city to further my medical studies. When my father was still around, we’d spend a few nights a month fishing. There’s a species of fish, in the lakes back home, that always bites best at night. Especially in winter. And my father…he liked the stars. So he’d bundle me, and walk with me out onto the ice, cut some holes…and we’d just spend the night talking. Bring some fish home for mother to cook the next day. Back then it seemed almost…magical, staying up all night, out in the middle of the wilderness with just my father, and the stars above.”

I smiled at that mental image. Trying to catch fish through holes in the ice seemed like a very strange way to spend a night, but I could not deny the appeal of the rest of it. “My father used to take me flying, before I was old enough to fly on my own. Usually, we’d be home well before nightfall, but for nights of celebration, we’d stay out late with the rest of the clan. Sometimes I would dare him to fly me all the way to the stars.” 

Nesh brushed my scales with part of his blanket. “That sounds lovely, too.” 

“It was.” I licked my nose, smiling at the memory. “Then sometimes, he would drop me.” 

“What?” He bolted upright, gasping. “That’s horrible! Were you injured?” 

“Of course not.” I snorted, tossing my head. “I still had wings, Nesh, I could glide! It was delightful fun.” 

“Oh.” Nesh leaned back into his chair, huffing. “You could have made that a bit clearer.” 

“Perhaps so.” I flared out my wings a little bit, their red edges shining like wet blood in the moonlight. “Father was always right behind me, anyway. If I were ever to falter, he’d snatch me back up long before I was in danger.” I glanced back down at Nesh again, grinning. “Though I did once return home, and loudly announce to my mother that father had dropped me out of the sky, and let me fall all the way down. I meant glide, of course, but that wasn’t what I said.” 

“Oh, lord.” Nesh shook his head. “That can’t have gone over well.” 

“It did not.” I shook myself, laughing. “I believe my mother threatened to break off his horns and beat him to death with them if I was hurt.” 

Nesh cringed, sharing my smile. “I hope things were cleared up quickly, at least.” 

“Relatively so.” I flexed my wings, bumping one of them against his enclosing blanket. “Mother amended her death threat into one in which she’d simply beat some sense into him, instead.” 

“So you take after your mother, then.” Mischief clung to Nesh’s voice like sticky sap. 

I snorted, thumping my tail against the cold flagstones. “In some ways, yes. Though when Melakar and I had our child, I was always the one first letting him glide under his own power, and Melakar was the one chastising me.” 

“That sounds right, somehow.” Nesh nudged me with the toe of his boot, and turned his gaze back to the sky. “Do you ever dream about them? Your parents, I mean.” 

“Not often.” I took a slow breath, and let it out in a deep sigh. “I don’t think about them all that often, anymore. Just…pleasant memories, or things I’d wished they’d seen. And when I do see them in my dreams, it’s…” I gestured with a paw. “Not like with Melakar. They’re just part of the dream. But with Melakar…It’s almost like he’s bringing the dream with him, trying to speak to me, or…or warn me. I know, realistically, it’s my own mind trying to warn, or…or sort out all the tangled and worried knots that occupy my thoughts. But inside the dream, in the moment, it’s like he’s there, talking to me.” I shivered at the memory of the great, catastrophic wave sweeping the dreamscape. “But I rarely get the chance to talk back.” 

“The dreams with the wave, washing away your valley, right?” Nesh drew his mouth into a thin line. “Maybe now that you’ve recognized that, it’ll change. Maybe your mind thinks he’s trying to warn you, like you said. Maybe…maybe he is trying to warn you, if you believe the way Blue Jay believes.” 

“What do you believe?” I curled my neck a little to gaze down at Nesh, genuinely curious. There was no barbed reply waiting for him, no sarcasm and no teasing. I was not certainly not about to adopt his beliefs, but in that moment, I was at the very least more open to them than ever before. “You said you like to think your father watches over you. Would your gods allow such a thing? A…a visit, from someone departed?” 

Nesh reached out of the blanket to scratch his head fur. “It’s not totally unheard of, but…it’s not generally part of our overall belief system, the way it seems to be for Blue Jay’s people. But…” He waved his hand. “We do believe that all beings have souls, and that those souls persist even beyond death. Not…unlike you dragons, and your…your Sheltering Sky, was it?” 

“Sky That Shelters, is the closer translation. More formal. But…close enough.” I eased down onto my belly, and draped my head across his blanket-covered lap. “Go on.” 

Nesh rubbed my muzzle, chuckling. “You’re like an oversized dog, all of a sudden.” He gently scratched one of my ears, then stroked the large frill that ran between my horns and down the top half of my neck. “So, as I was saying. If we believe that these souls persist, and I do, then it stands to reason they can watch over us. And, from time to time, the gods may allow one to come visit a loved one in times of need. When they’re troubled. Maybe…maybe they are sending him back, to try and guide you, or warn you.” 

“Maybe.” I flattened my ears back, closing my eyes to savor Nesh’s touch. “If nothing else, it is a pleasant fantasy.” I remained quiet for a little while, then eased my eyes open to slits. “Tell me of your gods? I will not tease you, but nor am I looking for spiritual guidance.” I swatted my tail tip against the ground. “I am only curious. You speak often of them, but rarely in detail.” 

Nesh’s hand stilled across my neck. “Well…” He idly toyed with one of the semi-mobile spines that gave my frills structure. It was an odd feeling, and left me tingling ever so slightly in ways I decided against telling him. “I suppose in a way, my religion is a bit private to me.” 

“Didn’t stop you from accusing me every blasphemy you could think of, when first we met.” An amused smirk parted my muzzle. 

“That’s different.” Nesh went back to petting my head, and my frills. “But, since you asked, in this day and age, my people have three main gods. In ages past, we had many more, and some branches, and some places still worship many more.”

“If I remember, the other day you mentioned a mother, a father, and a child?” I leaned my head into his touch.

“Correct!” Nesh sounded quite pleased that I remembered such a detail. “They have names, but we aren’t really supposed to speak them lightly.” Nesh ticked off a few fingers. “So we usually just refer them as the Mother, the Father, and the Child, though…” He glanced down at my face. “Some people believe they were sort of, forced into a family unit, to make them more relatable, and that they’re not really a family, at all. But getting into the specifics of all that would be to detail the differences between one branch of my religion’s beliefs versus another, and I can tell you, that gets over so tiresome. It’s hard to believe people fought wars over something so foolish.” 

I smiled to myself, and let Nesh ramble a while. I was happy enough just to be with him, and to let his voice soothe me, and distract me from my own troubled thoughts. When he circled back to the topic at hand, I swiveled my ears towards him, paying attention once more. 

“So, anyway.” He patted my nose. “They’re alternately referred to as the Mother of Light, or Mother of Life, and Father of Darkness, or Father of Death. As you can imagine, over the many generations they’ve been worshiped, they’ve been simplified into personifying good, and evil. But, at heart, the teachings state that it’s not quite so black and white. The Mother created the idea of light, and life, and the Father simply created the balance for it. If nothing died, the world would be overpopulated in a hurry, after all. They’re not so much opposed, as they are, balanced. The Father doesn’t rule over the domain of evil, no matter how people may twist the teachings. Evil exists, of course, the Father didn’t specifically create it, no more than the mother specifically created good.” Nesh sighed and shook his head. “Nonetheless, far too many people simply look at it as good versus evil, without looking deeper.” 

“Nesh,” I said, my voice soft. “You can’t have balanced deities, that’s simply too much common sense. People need something to fight over.” 

Nesh gave a bitter chuckle. “Far too true, I’m afraid. Hell, even I was taught the simple version, growing up. Now, don’t get me wrong…” He held up a single finger over my muzzle. “I do believe that there are forces of good and evil in the world, that there are agents of chaos and destruction, and of benevolence and kindness. We’re also taught that…to maintain their own balance, The Mother and Father created lesser deities for other spheres of influence, and they in turn begat…well, for lack of a better word, angels and demons. Beings who lived in the flesh, as we do, who would help us, or betray us, guide us or tempt us, support or destroy us, if we let them.”

“And that’s what you thought dragons were?” I lifted my head from his lap for a moment, just long enough to smile at him. “Demons, put forth in the flesh, to tempt and destroy you?” 

“Well…” Nesh scratched his head fur again. “Gray area. Admittedly I was taught that dragons were the spawn of demons, yes, but…I should like it noted that I have long since learned the error of those particular teachings.” 

“Aww…” I let mock disappointment swell my voice. “So you’re saying I don’t tempt you?” I lay my head back down upon him. “What a shame.” 

“Yes, you’re heartbroken, I’m sure.” Nesh laughed, teasing at one of my frill spines once more. “Anyway, are you following along so far?” 

“Not exactly.” I flicked my tongue across my nose. “Your religion is seems very convoluted.” 

“Most of them are,” Nesh said, shifting his enrobing blanket. “You’ve probably got the gist of it. The Mother of Light and Father of Darkness are two of our highest deities, and if you were to ask me to be very specific, I’d say that I worship the Mother, and the Child. Saying you worship the father implies something darker, to many people. There’s cults and such devoted to him, and I’d rather not be associated with those.” 

“So you don’t want to start a death cult?” I clicked my teeth. “That’s a shame, because that sounds like something a dragon could really get behind.” 

Nesh poked my nose. “According to some of the old tales, that’s exactly what some dragons used to do.” 

“They probably just wanted the worshippers.” I stretched my wings in a grand gesture. Or at least, the grandest gesture I could manage without actually rising to my feet. “We dragons do appreciate being worshipped.” 

“I hadn’t noticed,” Nesh said, his voice dry as desert sands. 

Ignoring his sarcasm, I folded my wings back in place. “So, tell me of this child.” 

“We call him, The Creator Child. Although…” Nesh rubbed his chin. “It can’t be definitively proven that he’s male. Suppose it doesn’t matter. It’s believed that the Child is the one who actually created the world itself. That while the Mother and Father were those who created concepts like light and dark, life and death, it was the Creator Child who actually manifested the physical plane, our actual world. He built the earth and the sky, and everything in between. He made the plants grow, and thought up the animals, and the people, and so on. He’s said to be just as cosmically powerful as the Mother and Father, but where they were stoic, and orderly, he’s curious, imaginative, and playful, even chaotic. He’s an eternal child, basically. And only through the combination of their creations…stricter rules about life and death, light and darkness…and all the strange and wonderful things to spring from a god-child’s imagination, did we get the planet we call home.” 

I lifted my head again, flaring my frills. “So you believe that some…child deity is responsible for most of the world’s creation?” I had a sudden image in my head of some hatchling with ink-dipped claws scribbling out drawings on parchment, only for misshapen creatures to emerge from the earth all around them. “I suppose that would explain why so many things in life make so little sense.” 

That earned a belly laugh from Nesh I hadn’t expected. “So it would, Ella. So it would.” He sighed, and patted my neck. “That’s the basics of the gods I believe in, anyway. Unless you’d like to hear the fine details, or a history of all the various deities we’ve worshipped over the centuries, I think I’m going to try and get back to sleep.” 

I eased back from Nesh to give him room to rise. “I think such an explanation would put me to sleep.” 

Nesh rose from his chair, hooking an arm through a hole in its back. “I thought as much. But…” He paused long enough to offer me a smile. “I’m glad you asked, just the same. And…I’m gladder still you’re feeling better.” He walked around my tail, dragging the chair behind him. “Don’t stay up too late. I’m sure we’ll be leaving early in the morning.” 

“Yes, Mother.” I playfully snapped my jaws at him as he vanished through the door. 

I pushed up onto my haunches once Nesh was gone. Every part of me was getting cold, especially the parts in contact with the frozen flagstone. But I was not yet ready to retire for the evening. I’d already slept at least a few hours, and judging by the moon’s position, I had time yet for several hours more, at the least. For now, I wished to be alone with my thoughts, and with the stars. 

Once again I turned my attention towards the skies. The moon was bright and beautiful, and yet the stars continued to try and outshine it. I wondered if the stars were always this bright out here. I did not remember them being so unusually vibrant, but then again, all my previous visits to this place, I was far more interested in Melakar himself to notice the way the stars might shine. Besides that, while I knew the constellations well enough, I had learned them for navigation. They never held a particularly spiritual meaning to me, not the way they did for Melakar, or for our old Singers of the Stars. 

“Suppose I’m our Singer of the Stars now,” I said, murmuring to myself. 

I’d declared myself as such, during Melakar’s pyre, but as the days that followed bled into weeks, and I found myself embroiled in something larger with Nesh and the gryphons, I’d put little additional thought into the idea. Though now that I thought about it, if Melakar wanted me to be Queen, that likely would have made him my Singer of the Stars. No wonder he’d taken to studying them, and carving the strange old singers’ diagrams. 

Maybe that was why he came out here so often, in his last days. To get the best view of the stars he hoped would one day sing to him. Did he hope they’d offer him song and guidance, he could one day offer me? It would certainly help explain the carvings. But he’d mentioned in his note that he had heard them singing, at least in his dreams. I stretched a wing forward to scratch at my neck with a wingtip talon. Surely, they were only dreams. Right? I licked my muzzle. He hadn’t actually heard the stars singing…had he? 

“Perhaps if he’d found some old mushrooms in fort’s dark corners.” I rumbled amusement at my own joke. There were certainly old rumors that said the Singers of the Stars in ages past were known to imbibe too much drink, or to eat just enough Serpent’s Bane as to alter their minds, for a little while. Still…I sought to imagine it. 

I closed my eyes, and envisioned Melakar out here, seated in this old courtyard, his bronze and blue scales bathed in silvery starlight. Listening to an ancient song that only he could hear, then singing it back to them, his sonorous voice cascading out over the lake beyond the fortress island. 

It was a beautiful thought. 

Opening my eyes, I gazed up at the stars. “Alright, stars. Now’s your chance to prove it. Prove the legends are true. Prove Melakar was right to believe in you. Sing to me. Sing to me, here and now, and I promise to devote myself to your wisdom.” 

I stared at the nightscape. The stars flickered and shone, glowed and ebbed, and glowed again, but they did not sing. I flexed my forepaws, digging claws into the flagstone. I wanted them to sing. I willed them to sing. For countless moments I gazed upon them, demanding they sing to me, even begging for their song. But there was nothing. Only wind, and the distant crunching of ice against the shore. 

“That’s what I thought.” I sighed, strangely disappointed by their lack of song. I pushed myself up to all fours, ready to return to warmth, and slumber. 

When I turned around, Melakar stood before me, so close our muzzles nearly brushed. Silver starlight glittered in his eyes. He reached to me, cupping my cheek with a bronze forepaw. His touch was warm, gentle, and achingly real. My heart leapt at the sight of him, the feel of his pads against me. And then everything inside me crumpled into cold darkness, because I knew it was not real. It was a dream, at best. And yet…There was a part of me that never wanted to wake. 

I opened my muzzle to speak, to profess to him my love while I had the chance, but I could not force words across my tongue. 

“You cannot demand the song.” Melakar settled on his haunches before me, cradling my head between both front paws. “You can only hear it.” 

I stared into his eyes. With every passing moment, the glimmering stars inside them grew and grew. And with every heartbeat, I wanted to melt more and more into the warmth of his touch. Again, I tried to speak, but when I opened my muzzle, silence poured out, like a smothering, physical thing, stifling all sound. The winds faded. The crunching ice died away. 

Melakar opened his mouth, and where I spoke only silence, Melakar sang. 

Music filled me. Impossible music, achingly familiar yet somehow alien. The melody thrummed in my bones, and rippled through my blood, bittersweet. There was happiness in it, and tragedy, sorrow and joy, all rising and falling, tumbling over one another into a single, all-encompassing song. A thousand voices, all singing at once, a thousand stars, shining in Melakar’s eyes. 

Sing it. It was Melakar’s voice, in my head. 

“I…I can’t.” My words were overwhelmed by the ever-present. “There’s…too much.” 

Find the melody. Find your melody. 

Melakar’s song grew and grew, till I could feel it dissolving me, bit by bit. Till I was becoming part of the music. I focused on it, trying to do as he asked. Beyond the veil of voices, there was a single melody. There was something deep, and sorrowful about it, but also something hopeful. It was snow falling on frozen stone, but so too was it rain falling on a long-parched desert. 

It was life built anew. 

It was hope amidst hardship, love amidst tragedy. 

That was my melody. I seized it, and I sang it back to Melakar. 

My voice rose and rose, first joining with his, and soon, overwhelming it. His song trailed off, but mine continued, louder and louder until the stars themselves could hear it. And when the stars heard it, they sang it back to me. The entire sky pulsed with life, with hope, and their star-song shaped a new world all around me. 

All at once, it was summer, and I stood in the midst of a great city. Dragons filled the skies. Great buildings of stone and steel rose around me. Floating ships drifted across the horizon. Gryphons swooped amidst them. Humans and other bipedal species walked the paved streets before me. In the distance, stood a strange, silvery tower. A great palace loomed behind me. An empire built, for dragons, and all those who called us friend. Melakar stood on one side of me, and Nesh on the other. Both smiled, and bowed their heads. All the while, I sang. 

Melakar lifted his voice once more, his song joining mine. His melody was a happier counterpoint to my somber but hopeful tune. Together, our songs grew, and grew, and the stars took them up. As the sounds reverberated, the whole world glimmered in time to our tune. The silver glow returned to Melakar’s eyes, and this time, it strengthened, growing brighter and brighter until it was all I could see. And the Melakar dissolved into starlight, and the world dissolved with him. Then, there were only stars, and song. And when the song faded, there was only silence. 

I found myself lying on frozen stone. A suffocating haze of disorientation clung to me. Where the hell had just happened, and where the hell was I? It took me a few moments to realize I was still in the plaza, of the old fort. I’d never even made it back to my bed. I must have fallen asleep there, on the stone, and…had I dreamed it all? 

I shook my head as if to clear the fog. I could still hear Melakar’s voice, in my head, singing to me. His song was simpler now, a gentle, soothing melody, with a bittersweet edge. For a moment, I wrapped myself in the comforting illusion that it truly was Melakar in my dreams. But if it was, what was he trying to tell me now? 

As I padded back towards a warm room and a warmer bed, I hummed Melakar’s song to myself, and thought about the stars.