This Veiled Sky

There weren’t always dragons in the valley. There still weren’t, not really—just once a year, and when Malora saw the dragon this time, she knew her son would die.

From her vantage point, the dragon was just a thin tear in the blue somewhere between the distant horizon and now. Had she not been watching for it, she would have missed its faint appearance; as it was, the entire settlement would notice before long. She watched as its wings unfurled against the sky like a banner of war. Malora turned away from the window. It would do no good to stare.

Malora cast about for something to keep her hands busy, landing on the rack of glass vials on the desk at the far end of the room. Grateful for a distraction, she gathered up the vials and reagents and opened one of the old chirurgical tomes; though the spines were all long since worn away, she knew the books by feel as much as anything. Her hands moved with deft, automatic precision as she prepared compounds so familiar she did not truly need the text, but her mind was fixed on the window, her back tensed for the moment when she would first hear the low rumble of the approach.

Instead she heard quiet footsteps on the creaking staircase, a sound she knew well. Her mentor, Theridis, slipped into the room, carefully gathering up the stoppered vials to carry them downstairs. Malora had been making the salves for almost twenty years now, long past the time when a greener student should take her place, but Theridis’s hands had lost much of their dexterity—and she had never taken on another apprentice, not seriously anyhow, after Malora. Besides, the work was calming. She needed that calm now.

Malora dried the equipment and returned the empty rack to its place on the shelf beside the books. Many years ago, Theredis had taught Malora her craft using the ancient illustrations in those volumes, old hands turning brittle pages and tracing the time-browned drawings of muscle and bone. Malora had never learned how to read much of the script accompanying the illustrations, and Theredis had declined to teach her: such knowledge was dangerous. Truly, even possessing these books was dangerous. These small rebellions might have been how they kept any sense of themselves, but they only went so far. Malora had never been sure if she welcomed the protection or not.

Normally, Theridis would leave as silently as she had come; they were long past the point where questions needed to be asked. Malora knew what her task was, and the old healer knew she would do it quickly and well. This time, though, Theridis paused, walked to the window. “It feels like they come earlier and earlier every year.”

“They come around the same time. It just seems that way.” She knew her voice was terse.

“Oh, I know. And yet.” Theridis nodded once, slowly. “We never do get used to the harvest.”

“Please don’t call it that.”

She could feel the realization come over her mentor as Theridis turned to meet Malora’s eyes. “Ah. I’m sorry.”

Malora wanted to look out the window, but stopped herself. It would be better not to watch, for a little while. She would not be spared it soon. “I’ve had this nightmare for so long, Theredis, and now it’s finally here. He’s sixteen. It’s Jaril’s year.”

Theridis knew this, of course, just as Malora knew Theridis had once had sons as well. They would have been older than Malora was now, had they ever returned, had they ever survived. Few were the women of Garrison who had not seen this day. Theridis held Malora’s gaze until the latter could not bear it and turned back to the table. A moment later, Malora heard her mentor’s footfalls as she descended the stairs once again. Both women were healers by trade. They knew that most of the time, in moments like this, words lost their meaning. There was nothing that could be said that would change anything, and so there was nothing to be said.

* * *

A girl atop a mountain, clad in ceremonial white. In one hand, the gilded axe, the other shading her eyes as she stared into the sun. Here at the summit, beside the high table, she could see the dragon and the line of soldiers dark against the scrubland. They would be here, then, and soon. “Here they come,” she whispered, though no one would hear her in this place meant only for the dead. She cast her eyes beyond the dragon and the soldiers, out across the vast, unyielding ground that rolled away from the mountain, hardscrabble fields and stony wilderness relieved only by the occasional boulder thrusting gray out of the pale earth and the thin bands of gnarled trees that hid the banks of the river. Everything stunted here in this place where so little could thrive.

She looked down at the work that awaited her. The body was bound facedown, shoulders hitched high to tie hands and feet together above the arched back. The wasting illness had left him painfully gaunt, almost desiccated, in the harsh light of the sun. In the dead man’s mouth, resting on his tongue, an arrowhead. He had been a hunter, but not one who had been chosen. He had been born in the house of his mother, moved into the longhouses after his harvest year and for the rest of his years. His name had been Ardhan. Would still be Ardhan, even after she gave him to the sky. She would do so soon.

She had a premonition then, a terrible feeling as she stared out at the approaching dragon. They never returned, the boys who left. They would never be raised to the high table to be given back to the sky. Even this last dignity denied.

This year, her brother would be taken.

He would be taken, and there was nothing she could do.

Below her, the four women clad in white were winding their way up the mountain, their voices raised in song. She waited. The path was well-worn and they knew it as she was coming to know it, knew it as a wanderer would know the way home. The kef they had drunk would leave anyone else stumbling through the haze of otherlives, but their path was unerring. When they reached her, they ceased their keening, lowering their hoods as they came to stand alongside the body. In their wizened faces, pinched and wide and rheumy-eyed and sharp, the girl saw her own future stretching long before her. They stood there, each regarding her, waiting. In the silence, there were only the sounds of the great carrion birds overhead, riding the same currents that brought the dragon nigh. Each was a manner of ending. Only one was right.

This was not a moment to be lost in her own thoughts; her thoughts, in this moment, were not her own. This silence was for remembering the person before her, to fix him in her memory before she delivered him from the earth. As the youngest woman here, it would be her job to set him free. She regarded Ardhan’s attenuated body while the other women waited. After the silence had been observed, she nodded. At her gesture, the four women removed the bindings from the body, then stood aside, each at the four axes of the world.

The girl began.

“Who do I look to, in the final moments?”

“She who saw your first moments.”

“Who will I cry out for with my last breath?”

“She who bore you before you drew breath.”

“Whose voice do I hear as I leave this world?”

“She who brought you into the world.”

“Who will hold my hand as I step forth?”

“She who guided your first steps shall usher your last.”

“And who will greet us after we are gone?”

“All the mothers who came before us.”

After each of the women had spoken, the girl went on. “Who are we?”

“We are the Last Mothers.”

“We are there at the birth.”

“And we are here at the end.”

Now it was the oldest of the women present who spoke the final question. “Who goes forth into the sky?”

“Ardhan, son of Alestrina,” the girl answered. Then she turned to address the body. “You were Ardhan,” she said, her voice steady. It was not her brother’s name; it would never be her brother’s name. She would never stand here at the edge of a long life and speak these words over him. “You are Ardhan. You will be Ardhan, now, and always, though we return you to the sky.”

The carrion birds wheeled overhead, over her head, over the heads of the soldiers marching on her home.

She raised her axe and set about her work.

Soon, her white dress was covered in blood.

She knew nothing would ever be the same again.

* * *

The harvest.

They didn’t call it that, of course. To the Riveni soldiers, it was the Concordance, always described as the exchange they were owed. It didn’t matter that the treaty, if it ever existed, predated anyone alive here, or anywhere.

We are a conquered people living in a hostile land. It was a narrative no one in Garrison ever forgot, and this show of force masquerading as an act of mercy was designed to remind them of that fact year after year.

The script was always the same: When they arrived, their leftenant would land their dragon in the arena, with the company of soldiers marching in behind, and go about their work. They all recognized the show of force and knew the speech that followed, if one could even call it that. It never varied: in return for the continued generosity of the Riveni people, delivered in the form of tons of grain and other simple foodstuffs (they would say as soldiers unloaded sack upon sack of flour in the storerooms; sometimes the bakers would pick weevils like seeds out of the flour, but most of the time there were too many to bother), the refugees had merely to offer up their boy children for the honor of military service. Never mind that not a soul in Garrison had been a refugee in generations. Their sons would serve for the glory of the Empire. Then, as they did every year, a squadron of Riveni military would march into the center of town, take up residence in the barracks built for their annual coming, and begin.

Jaril watched them ride into Garrison from his vantage point at the top of the stands that overlooked the small arena where, soon, he would fight. There weren’t so many of them—a dozen all told—but they looked grand indeed in their double column of horse with banners at the fore, men in hauberks and greathelms and the heraldry of Riven on their surcoats. Above them, already descending, was the leftenant on dragonback; Jaril shaded his eyes against the bright iridescence as the silver-scaled wyrm descended, blotting out the sun like an eclipse. He braced himself against the great beating of wings that threatened to dash him from the stands as it tore the earth up in its landing. It lowered its head as the leftenant descended, stroking the dragon’s face with a hand barely the size of its eyeball. Quiescent, the dragon folded its wings and laid down, fully half the size of the arena. Jaril wondered, not for the first time, where the soldiers came from. Did they have grand cities somewhere in a world they were barred from seeing? How many more of these dragons were there? And how would anyone stand against such might?

The soldiers made their way without preamble past the town square and toward the ring where Jaril stood. They’d be here soon, so he hopped down the benches two at a time. Dropping from the stands into the dusty floor of the arena, Jaril gave the dragon a wide berth, heading to where the other boys were warming up. There were eleven of them this year, and at the end of the day five or six were sure to be chosen. Jaril knew well enough who seemed likely to be taken: Craval, Korre, Adalim, and, reluctantly, him. Craval was eager, practically bouncing on his toes. He’d make the perfect soldier, if “enjoys causing pain” was the prerequisite Jaril expected it to be. The rest were somewhere between nervous and terrified. No one except Craval looked forward to today.

Ducking into the carved-out space below the floor level, Jaril slid amongst the others and shrugged into the padded vest hung on a peg beside practice blade. He kept his distance from Craval out of habit; the bigger boy had first started hectoring him when Jaril, shorter and skinnier than most of the other boys, had needed a smaller sword with which to practice. The torment had only grown worse when Jaril bested him time and again in the arena.

It seemed distance was no obstacle to Craval, who sidled up to Jaril. “You know we’re both going to get picked,” he said, his voice low.

“What of it?” Jaril asked warily, looking over his shoulder.

“Well, it just means we’re going to be spending a lot of time together, that’s all.”

Jaril knew better than to assume this was some kind of overture. “Maybe it’ll be nice having other people from home around after we leave?”

“What makes you think I’ll want to be reminded of this place?” Craval asked in a tone that made it clear it wasn’t really a question. “Once we’re out there, I don’t think you’ll last long anyway. I’ve seen you with a pike. Or I guess I should say I’ve never seen you with a pike, which is the actual problem.”

Jaril winced at the truth of it. That was the thing about Craval: he wasn’t an idiot. Still, he’d learned it was best to spar verbally as well. “And I’ve seen you with a sword, Craval. Mostly when I’m knocking it out of your hand.” Jaril turned to walk out into the arena without another word. A crowd was beginning to gather in the dragon’s wake. Inside the ring, eleven large circles had been drawn in white against the hard-packed sand; it was there that the combatants would meet, facing off one-on-one against veteran soldiers with their blunted practice blades. The goal wasn’t necessarily to best their opponents; it was sufficient to perform well enough. The best of the lot were taken, along with any who appeared to throw the match; the latter, Jaril figured, ended up being in the first wave on the actual field of battle.

Feeling at his waist for a sword that wasn’t there yet, Jaril headed for one of the circles to await his quarry. One by one, the other boys followed Jaril out. Craval was the last one out in the arena; maybe he was feeling some nerves after all.

A few moments after the boys had silently taken their positions, the soldiers marched into the dusty ring and immediately split into two columns. One detachment headed for the barracks; they were less comfortable than the longhouses where the men of Garrison lived, but the soldiers always gave the latter a wide berth. The remainder oversaw the laborers finishing their task of parceling out the sacks of grain. The harvest might be momentous for the denizens of Garrison, but for these soldiers, it seemed like this was an ordinary—perhaps even boring—day. Jaril couldn’t even imagine what it would be like to be on that side. Would he ever be so cavalier if he rode into a town such as this, ready to break it year after year?

“And now it is time for the subjects of Garrison to uphold your end of the Concordance,” the leftenant announced, launching into The Speech. Jaril knew the broad strokes of the history they mangled; not just the oral histories any child gleans over years of listening to town elders, but what he had actually read in real books as well. About how the ancestors of Garrison had fled over the border into enemy territory amid the war, fleeing something even worse—treachery and betrayal—in their homeland. About how Orium had lost the war, and their entire ruling family besides, and Riven had marched westward, seizing the Estmarch and corralling the refugees deep in the inhospitable center of Riven. They were lucky to have been allowed to survive, they were told.

So as his teacher handed everyone their sheathed practice blades, Jaril knew what part he had to play in all of this, the part every boy played. Once, when Jaril was younger, his father had trapped a fox that had been stealing eggs from the henhouse. He’d gone with his father to see the beast in the trap, its leg caught in a vise, eyes wide and mouth wet with froth and blood, squalling and lashing out with teeth and claw. Now he understood that fox’s fear as his heart thudded in his chest so hard it was almost painful. “Remember, a cornered creature will hurt you more than one that thinks it’s free,” Father had said later. That also made sense now. He suddenly regretted skipping pike; Craval was right, but it was boring work, all rote drills with no finesse and no freedom to do anything other than keep up with your fellows and hope for the best. Well, it was too late for those warnings now too.

Though there were eleven circles, the boys fought one at a time, randomly determined; Jaril was the second circle in, so he was forced to wait, trying not to fidget or rock back and forth on his toes. Don’t let them see your fear, he told himself.

First up was Craval, who stood with blade already drawn, shifting from foot to foot in an eager stance. Jaril didn’t see Craval’s mother in the stands, but perhaps he’d overlooked her; he hadn’t bothered searching too hard. Jaril knew Craval was right that his being chosen was a foregone conclusion. He was a good fighter, and his rapid series of parries and confident advance on the unseasoned young soldier he’d drawn was more than enough no matter how his bout ended. But Craval wouldn’t be content merely to prove himself, Jaril knew, and he was proven correct not a moment later; in a clever riposte, Craval had his opponent disarmed on the ground, practice blade at his throat. No one in the crowd made a sound despite such a definitive conclusion. In the silence, Craval turned and stared straight at Jaril, smirking widely, as if to say your move.

Steady, steady, he told himself. He looked into the small crowd of hand-wringing, nervous onlookers and saw his mother had arrived. Her fingers were intertwined with his father’s in an open display rare among the crowd. It didn’t require much intuition to figure out what outcome she wanted; he just didn’t think he could do it. Jaril wasn’t stupid—far from it; he knew exactly what it meant to be conscripted. None of the boys ever came back, and he was under no illusions that it was because they found fame and fortune elsewhere and couldn’t be bothered to ever return home. But he knew, despite his shortcomings, that he was uncommonly good, and stood a chance not only of surviving whatever they threw at him, but perhaps even finding a different pathway than what waited for him here if he stayed.

And, he admitted only to himself when the future kept him awake at night, even if he failed somewhere out there, it was better than the longhouses, better than a life of dreary couplings like consolation prizes, each encounter shot through with regret. Never knowing who your children were, so that you would not love them when they were torn from you. Given the choice between two terrible conscriptions, Jaril knew which one he could potentially survive.

So he sized up his opponent as he unsheathed his practice blade. He wasn’t young, the soldier, and Jaril was surprised to realize in the way he unsheathed his sword and stood at the ready that he wasn’t likely to be even as good as his teachers here. And almost like an augury he suddenly understood something he hadn’t before: what sort of soldiers would you send to a backwater town of frightened refugees? Certainly not your best. And as he shifted forward to attack, Jaril knew with total certainty that, for what it mattered, he would win.

* * *

It wasn’t that Malora couldn’t watch. She was a healer; injury and even death were no strangers. It was that she knew her son’s entire life rode on the point of his sword, and she couldn’t see a way for him to come out of it unscathed. Later, she would count it a small blessing that the fight was at least over with quickly.

On the contrary, she was riveted as her son lunged forward. In that moment, of course, she didn’t see a fighter—just a boy who was still small for his age and so very vulnerable, even against a blunted practice blade. She couldn’t lose him to the world; she would have no choice. Malora fixed these last moments in her mind, clinging tightly to the coiling fear. She’d seen enough dull and shuffling mothers to know that one day the sharpness of this feeling would be almost welcome against the long ache of loss she imagined lay ahead of her.

So she felt a twin frisson of pride and terror when Jaril lunged forward, struck out, rebounded from the parry and slashed again, high and fast against the soldier’s collar. His blade cut along the width of the soldier’s gambeson, a blow that, at full strength and with a sharpened blade, would leave a grievous wound indeed. She knew from years of watching that it would be more than enough to end the bout.

Then she realized something was terribly wrong. As her son retreated back for a counterattack, blade up, she saw that the soldier’s gambeson had in fact split open, and she gasped aloud at the sudden sight of a blossoming red across his chest. The soldier cried out as he dropped his blade, clutching at his improbable wound as blood spurted forth into the sand. She locked wide eyes with her son as he too dropped his blade, kicking it away from him as if to disavow it. “I didn’t—” she heard him say as soldiers rushed the arena.

Malora charged forward, Nolan right behind her, leaping down the stands and into the arena, pushing into the crowd of soldiers. She was relieved to see Tad, Jaril’s sword instructor, yelling at the two soldiers who had her son grappled. “You saw me give him his sword!” Tad was saying. “It was an accident!”

Her son thrashed ineffectually against the two men holding him, his feet tractionless in the sand. “Mother!” he cried out, and she couldn’t control herself—she and Nolan rushed in and, damn the consequences, tugged him free from the soldiers. She clutched at him. “I didn’t do it!” he said, his voice muffled against her chest. “I swear I didn’t mean to do it!”

“It’s okay, Jaril, it’s okay,” she heard Nolan say to him, kneeling and running a hand through his hair. “We’ll make sure it’s okay.”

Make it okay. Everything would be fine as long as the soldier lived, Malora told herself, even though in all her years of watching the harvest, this had never happened. “Keep him safe,” she told Nolan, who nodded. She turned to the knot of soldiers surrounding the wounded man, who was sitting heavily on the ground. “I’m a healer. Hold still so I can take a look at this.”

“The little bastard done killed me!” the soldier yelled as blood gushed from the wound.

She heard her son behind her: “I didn’t—someone switched my sword—”

Malora felt Theridis’s hand on her arm—she had come; Malora felt a rush of gratitude for that—as the old healer stepped in front of her. “It’s a minor enough wound, for all the blood,” she said matter-of-factly. “It looks worse than it is.”

The leftenant turned from the wounded soldier. “Are you both healers, then?” he asked, his voice hard.

“Yes, sir,” Theridis said.

“Well, then keep him from bleeding out all over this shit little town, if you like having your heads!”

“We’ll need to get him back to our chirurgery,” Malora heard herself say.

Theridis held out a thick wad of bandages. “Press this against his chest. Let’s get him into a cart.” She directed the soldiers, who lifted up their wounded comrade. “Head out the way you came,” she told them. “We’ll be right behind you.”

The leftenant grabbed Theridis’s frail arm. “You best patch him up good, you hear, or it’s on your head.”

“I know my craft, sir.” Theridis pried his hand off of her with a look of thinly veiled disgust and glanced over at Malora. “Let me handle the commander here,” she said. “I’ll make sure Jaril’s fine. You go patch up this one. He’ll require your steady hands.”

Malora ran off to follow the cart. When they arrived at Theridis’s apothecary, the soldier was already losing consciousness along with his blood. Theridis had definitely undersold the seriousness of the injury, Malora thought, but for her son’s sake she was glad of it nonetheless. “Be quick about it,” she commanded as she led the soldiers back into the chirurgery room, where they helped lay the wounded man on the stone table. “Hold him down,” she said curtly as she reached for one of her tinctures, this one filled with poppy, wolfsbane, and a little of the kef Theredis was allowed to keep in order to prepare the tea for the Last Mothers. “Peel off his garments. Cut them off him if you have to.” The soldiers quickly undressed him from the waist up. She tipped his head back. “Drink this,” she told him, and, mercifully, he complied. A few moments later, he was quiescent, his head lolling back against the table.

“What do we do now?” one of the soldiers, a lad with sandy hair and a dash of freckles across his wide Riveni face, asked. She realized he was only a few years older than Jaril. She hoped he would live that long.

“Leave me with him. You’ll just be in the way. Head back to the arena if you wish.”

“Will he be fine?” Absent their commander and standing before their wounded comrade, all their bravado had melted away.

“Yes, unless we stand here until all the blood runs out of his veins,” she snapped. They took their cue and left.

Alone with the semiconscious soldier, she reached for her needle and thread and a pitcher of water to clean the wound. Her hands shook, though they hadn’t in years. There was no ostensible reason for it; his injury was shallow enough that she knew he would, if she moved quickly enough, survive his wound, even fight again. She had handled worse during the plowing season, had stitched back together an entire—

“ . . . kill . . . little whelp,” he murmured in his kef-drugged half-state, “ . . . with that fucking . . . bodkin.”

Malora looked down at him, splayed on the slab, the red stark against his pale flank. Then she lowered her hands upon his chest.

Some mothers, when they had a boy child, would take him up to the high place, past the averted eyes of the Last Mothers (they understood; how could they not) and leave them for the sky. When Malora gave birth to Jaril, in a small bedchamber here that would be her own when Theredis was gone, his birth squalls filled the room almost literally, a new presence pushing all other sounds out with its insistence, its power. How much quieter he would have sounded in the high place—more insistent, but so vulnerable, lost to the blue. Even before she met him, it was a choice she knew she never had.

But she also understood. When they had courted, Nolan had taken her on a tour of the smithy, in a whisper pointing out a barrel of naphtha. Desperate to impress her, he’d lifted out a thimbleful and taken it outside, where he’d lit it on fire. In the light from the sudden blaze, he told her that they had to keep the barrel where they did because if even a spark of flame touched it, the explosion would destroy the entire building.

It had not been long after that that Malora had decided to make him the father of her children, and at the moment when her son came into the world she knew that a child too was a barrel of naphtha buried deeply in her heart, and if it ever went off, her body would not contain the damage. It would fly out of her the way it did out of the mothers whose boys were chosen and carted off to war, never to return. Somehow, despite everything, they had never mastered the process of pulling away, of learning to love less.

And so, she told herself much later, she had had no real control over her actions when the soldier spoke. Had had no real control when the power pulsed out of her and into his frame, no real control when his chest stopped rising and falling, when she pushed the life out of his body and into the earth.