Out of the Valley

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley.

There wasn’t always a Valley for the dragons to live in.

I stand before it now, warm mud on my hands, caked around my wrists. A bloody, wartorn field is split in two beneath my feet, the crack in the ground stretched out before me, widening and shaping as the Earth trembles and breaks herself open.

This new Valley stretches wide—nearly half a mile of broken dirt and rock. The river on the far end of the plateau is now split and spilling down the slope, water catching soldiers and dragging them down towards the gaping mouth of the Earth. The ground is shaking itself apart and the sound of landslides to my right overpower the sound of everything else.

I watch, perfectly still as the last of a string of ancient words leave my mouth in an exhale.

The first claw that emerges from the depths of the Earth’s gaping mouth, grasps half the calvary of our enemy and pulls them back into the deep hollows of the ground.

And then another claw digs itself into the earth and out of the newly broken and blood-soaked Valley, a dragon, as black as the sleep of the night, crawls itself into view.

Tall, nearly as big as a hill, large white eyes unblinking in the rays of the sun, the first dragon roars.

The battle, for a brief moment, quiets.

And then the enemy runs. Most do not get very far.

Out of the ground come six more dragons, each with large white eyes, each with a powerful roar. They raze the enemy to the ground. Fire of red and orange and blue scorch the grass, melt the pockets of sand along the river bank to sheets of glass. There is screaming for a long time, and the smell of burnt flesh for even longer. The dragons do not even need to fly, they bound over the ground and crush whole cohorts in two strides. I fall to my knees, the beginning of the Valley under me, a space no wider than my dagger that widens into a crater that falls into darkness. I kneel there, hands in the mud, and watch. All I can do is watch. I am too exhausted to do much else.

It isn’t until the smoke clears and ash rains from the skies, that my sister finds me, kneeling in the mud.

I lift my hands from the dirt and speak the words needed to grant her healing. It is the first spell I learned—how to reconnect skin and push bones into place, how to soften my sister’s bruised knuckles after her fights. I reach out to place the sigil before her, but there is no spark.

Instead of feeling lightning on my fingertips, there is a hollowness. Over my sister’s shoulder a dragon runs to its sibling. There are coals in its mouth and smoke pouring from its nostrils.

I understand, in that moment, that the fire inside me has been exchanged for the fire inside the dragons who stepped out of the ground.

I feel grief hit me like one of the dragons has stepped on my chest—I have not felt this since the loss of my mother. Emptiness fills me from my hands to my shoulders, from my shoulders to my stomach, from my stomach to my hips, from my hips to my knees, from my knees to my toes. I know, all too quickly, all too harshly, from one shaky breath to another, that my magic is gone.

After that, the memory fades to water.

“Nadalin,” I remember her saying, the way her mouth shaped the words, her helmet in one hand, her other palm resting heavy on my shoulder, her dark eyes looking me over for any injury. She finds many. We are both bleeding. Pain is the consequence of war.

“Esha,” I said. I know I said her name, but I don’t remember speaking, I don’t remember sound leaving me. My breath felt like a ghost in my own lungs, and words felt like spiderwebs on my tongue.

“Nadalin,” my sister said, eyes urgent and blood running down the side of her face, “What did you do?”

* * * * *

My brother has always held magic in his veins. My parents said he laughed spells as a baby, changed the color of his eyes each time he blinked.

His magic always reminds me of swords made of gold—weapons made more for decoration than true use, but beautiful and dangerous looking nonetheless. He has a strange fascination with change and what he can bend to his control, to his ideas of bettering the world. He was chosen at twenty-three to become the King’s Mage of the Scepter when he brought the Queen back to health after a poisoning no one could find an antidote to. He is a smart man, a determined healer, and a formidable opponent in battle.

It all came down to this: we were losing.

I had lost many friends—family—over the course of the battle that day, and all the bloodied ones before it. And then, amidst the mournful sound of war, there was an earthquake and the ground opened—dirt sinking into a pitch-black hole. I know my brother’s magic when I see it. I know the golden sword he carries, invisible weaponry held in his hands. I saw the hole my brother had carved open and dragons crawled out of it, winning the war for us in the blink of an eye—color changing from red ground to grey ash. I will remember, forever, the image of black scales in front of blue flame.

I found my brother kneeling, dark hair a mess, dark eyes tired, tan skin bruised in deep reds. He was missing half his armor when I found him, and I barely had time to speak to him before he collapsed atop the split in the ground.

Nadalin did not wake up for seven days.

In that time the enemy armies had left, and most of the soldiers were sent back home. The dragons, despite all expectations, did not take to the skies with their wings, and instead stayed in the Valley. I set up a guard around the new mountain peaks of the Valley, and worked through my paperwork beside Nadalin’s bedside, waiting for him to wake up.

He awoke the eighth day with anger in his eyes and when he blinked away the tears in his eyes, the color of his irises did not change.

I know my brother. I know his magic. And I know he awoke with the golden sword ripped from his hands the moment he looked at me and did not speak to heal my bruises.

And I also know that it was not Nadalin who awoke from that long sleep, but a shell of him, a shadow as dark as the ones held in the bottom of the Valley. We are both familiar with grief, and I know when he dons his mourning cloak, the same hour he wakes, that the pain of this has hollowed him out.

* * * * *

The ninth day since the enemy has been defeated, the Morningstar puts me on night guard for the dragons.

“Morningstar,” I say, pointing to the ridge where three guards stand watch as the sun set, “I’m the second in command, not a simple footsoldier. Why would you put me up there? I am better suited for far more than nightwatch.”

“I need you there, Solaris,” she says, and her eyes have been tired before, but when she meets my eyes, there is an exhaustion I have never seen on her face before.

“Esha, are you alright?” I ask, and she nods, waves and salutes to a group of soldiers moving out of camp and back home.

“I’m alright. Nadalin is awake, which is a blessing.” Nadalin Andrey, the mage who called forth dragons from the ground. There will be songs about him for centuries to come.

“I’m glad to hear that.”

“Yes,” Morningstar Esha Andrey says, looking up at the skies where no dragons are flying. The Earth quakes as the sound of a dragon roar echoes from over the crest to the east, the Valley a cradle for playing dragons. “Yes.”

The sky is dark and filled with stars, nighttime laid over the Valley, Emak’La Herself has tucked us in for sleep. Below me, lit in bright moonlight, lies the Valley, wide and expansive, seven dragons curled around each other in sleep near the cracked glass walls that frame the broken river that spills to the middle of the wound in the ground. Behind me lies an encampment of soldiers not yet allowed home, not yet willing to go home. It is not every day one spends their days protecting dragons.

Watching the dragons emerge from the ground had been one of the holiest sights I’d ever seen. I had been locked in battle with a soldier when the ground had shaken itself open to my left. Rocks had fallen as the Earth shifted herself to open a gate. The soldier I had been fighting had fallen to their knees, and one of my feet had gotten stuck in moving mud as a river changed its flow to fall with gravity. One minute I was standing upright, the next I was caught in a mudslide at an angle, a gaping hole into the depths of the Earth opened up half a mile from me.

The first dragon, with its black scales and white eyes, had seemed like a nightmare come to life. I thought myself dead. Fire is heavy when it is all around you, and blue flame reflected in the eyes of the soldiers around me. But after a while, I noticed the dragons moved to the enemy, loomed over our oppressors with flame on their tongues. They ignored us, lept over our horses and medics as though in a dance we did not know. Victory in the shape of scaled creatures shaken from the ground. It can only be described as a miracle.

I was surrounded by smoke as the day grew late and the enemies were fewer and far between. Moving through heavy smoke and ashes, cloth wrapped around the nose to help my breathing, I made my way to a ridge. On the edges of my vision, through the dark grey, I kept seeing scales. Black speckled with white. Deep green. A light blue that matched the colors of our flag. Just before I began to climb upwards for a vantage point, I stumbled over something I at first thought was a fallen soldier, but when I glanced down, I saw light grey scales to match the ash in the air. A tail.

I had looked up into the two milky white eyes of a dragon and felt the heat of its breath on my face.

It is late, and it is cold, but even now, I can feel the heat on my face from the dragon’s breath. I am thinking of removing the scarf around my neck when I hear a rock shift in the ground to the right of me followed by a low cursing.

“Show yourself,” I say to the night, hand on the hilt of my sword. It remains quiet below me.

After a long moment of silence, I speak again, eyes searching the hillside.

“If it’s not me who kills you, it’ll be the dragons. Don’t be foolish.”

There. A shape moves and I see a figure stand from behind a blackened bush.

“Foolish? Me?” I know the voice all too well, but the tone is harder to place.

It does not take me long in the full moonlight to recognize Nadalin Andrey, brother to Morningstar Esha, and a respected mage who called forth the dragons that sleep in the nest carved by his own hands, his own magic. Few magic users are as powerful as him, and to my knowledge, no one has done anything to this scale in many, many centuries. He is not the King’s favored mage for nothing.

His sister had carried him into camp with tears down her face. He’s leaving tomorrow for the castle, the King asked for him immediately upon waking. He probably shouldn’t be out of bed this late.

“Respectfully, Andrey,” I say, “There are few people in this world who are more foolish than you are.”

“I can’t believe my sister likes you enough to put you second in command,” he says. The words aren’t new, but Andrey sounds like he’s been crying. I do not ask him about the way his voice sounds like it might break if he says the wrong words.

“I am a skilled warrior,” I tell him, “Your sister admires my talent and I am an asset on the battlefield.”

“An asset,” Nadalin says, as if the words are a joke. He approaches to stand beside me, looks down into the Valley where the dragons are sleeping. I turn to match his gaze. The Valley is so dark you almost might not see where the dragons sleep, save for the coals they burned for their comfort before curling around each other.

“You know my achievements,” I say.

“Hm,” is all he responds with. He has not looked away from the dragons. I am familiar enough with the feeling to know the downturned eyebrows, the frown, the way his shoulders are not tall in the way they usually are. He wears a mourning cloak over his shoulders, but that is not what speaks to me the most of his hurt—his face is filled, almost overflowing, with grief.

“Andrey,” I begin to say, “If–”

“Dragons,” he says, and does not apologize for the interruption, “You’re guarding them as if they are easy to kill when they took out a whole army.”

“I guard under direction of the Morningstar. You want to know why I’m here? Ask your sister.”

“You’ve been watching them for a while?” He says, eyes blinking away what might have been tears.

I nod.

“Do you think they are easy to kill? That you stand here for good reason with a hand on your blade?”

I think about how to answer the question he has asked. It is something I have already thought about many times. How vulnerable a beast like this might be? How dangerous would it be to try and attack one individually versus with a whole cohort? How best could one take down this beast? I have thought through as many scenarios as I could to know how best to protect these dragons, and so I answer as honestly as I can.

“These dragons that crawled from out of the ground,” I say, “Are dangerous and beautiful. Awesome in many things.”

“And?”

“And I will do my best, I will stick to the Oath I have made, but I will do my best to keep your dragons from all harm as directed by the Morningstar.”

“They aren’t mine,” Andrey says, and there is poison in the words. He inhales sharply, as if he, too, is surprised at the words he spoke aloud.

“Understood,” I say, because I do not know what else to say, “I only thought, because you were the one to bring them here—”

“Bring them here,” he says.

“You are echoing everything I speak tonight,” I say to him. It is not like him. I think, not for the first time, how grief changes people.

“You say it as if it was gentle, as if I sought them out, traveled miles over dangerous territory and gathered them up in my arms, an imitation of a mother and her child. It sounds as if I was the one to keep their fires always lit, flames around small snouts and the pale color of new, young dragon scales. It sounds as if the dragons’ entrance from this Valley was soft and warm, just small siblings with pale wings curled around each other in a basket on a steady cart on a well worn dirt road.”

He is silent for a moment before he laughs, and it is not his usual laughter. It is dry, tugging at his hoarse throat.

“Gentle,” he says, “It was anything but.”

“Perhaps,” I say, “But it was a miracle nonetheless.”

“I am no mouthpiece for Emak’La, Solaris. Do not mistake an ancient spell that makes the Earth spit out the children she swallowed, for the voice of your Holy Mother.”

“Not every miracle comes from one of faith,” I say, and I notice Andrey is moving towards the decline into the Valley, inch by inch, eyes not having moved from where the dragons sleep.

“Perhaps,” he says, but his voice is distant.

“Andrey,” I tell him, “Careful with where you step.”

“You called them mine,” he says, and he stills in his movement, uses the silence of the night to turn to look at me, and his eyes are wide with questions, “But you will take me down if I go to see them?”

“Foolish men do foolish things,” I say, “I will not let your sister lose you when she has only just gotten you back.”

He breaks eye contact at that, glances back towards the dragons once more before he turns to head back to the camp.

“If I didn’t know better, Solaris,” he says as he walks away, “I’d think you care about me, even just a little bit.”

“I care for my job,” I call after him, “My Oath is not easily broken.”

Andrey says something else, but he says it too quietly and far enough away that I cannot make it out.

The dragons sleep on, well after the sun has risen, and when they wake, they take to the skies for the first time. It is the most beautiful sight I have ever seen, and I go to sleep when my shift is done with tears on my cheeks, the memory of the heat of a dragon on my face.

* * * * *

My sister isn’t able to come back to the castle with me, her duties at the Valley more pressing, so I ride a horse alongside two of her soldiers she chose specifically to accompany me. It is a two day journey at a slow pace with a full army. The castle and King expect the three of us just after nightfall today.

It is quiet as we ride, and there is comfort in the sound of the horses’ hooves against the dirt road. The emptiness of the absence of my magic consumes everything else.

I do not need a mirror to know that there is sweat pouring down my face, that there are tears on my cheeks. I know how to grieve the loss of friends, the loss of family. I do not know how to grieve a part of myself.

I try to think of other things.

I am considering how to tell the King that I cannot be Mage of the Scepter any longer, when a shadow passes over the road in front of us. The horses rear up and it takes them a moment to calm. When I look above us, silhouetted against blue sky, a black dragon circles twice, three times, four, before it turns and flies back the way we came, towards the Valley. The emptiness in my chest where my magic used to sit, if filled, suddenly, with unbridled rage.

The two others with me, Lizbet and Dayo, are looking at me, horses stopped in the road.

“They’re calling you the Dragon King,” Lizbet says, “The soldiers.”

“Liz!” Dayo says, “Watch your tongue.”

“It might be half treason, but it’s also half truth,” Lizbet says, “It won’t be long before the citizens know, especially if the dragons are flying now.”

“Then let us hurry to get there before the stories are too twisted,” Dayo says, urging her horse forward, “Mage? Are you following?”

“Of course,” I say, and it is not an hour before we see the castle way off on the horizon as the sun moves to hide itself behind the mountains.

All I can think, as the hooves of my horse pound into the road, is that those dragons stole my magic.

When I enter the King’s throne room that night, I will discard my mourning cloak, dress in my armor. I have already spent too much of my life grieving, and I have won every battle I have fought in. I will do what is necessary to get my magic back.

The soldiers call me the Dragon King? Believe me to hold power over these dragons, believe me able to command them? So be it.

I will command my magic back, will pull my flame from their mouths and back into my lungs, will crown myself with ashes if I need to.

There wasn’t always a Valley.

There weren’t always dragons.

And magic can always be undone.