To Live In Darkness

'There weren't always dragons in the Valley. They came with the Votahn, hundreds of years ago. They kept dragons as mounts and beasts of war; however, it wasn't long before some escaped to live in the wilds,' intoned Maeve. She stitched as she spoke, repairing an old glove, more by feel than sight. The children, clustered around the small fire in the smoky roundhouse, leaned in as Maeve continued, her voice cracked with age. 'The dragons love our cloudy, wet climate, and our rivers and swamps. And they adore eating our sheep. And our children. This is why we must never travel alone – and if we must travel, we travel in the day, when it is bright and dry.'

'But Maeve, we aren't used to the sun. We always sleep when it's light,' complained one of the youngest children. 'Why must we always sleep during the day?'

Maeve's face grew stern. 'To better serve our masters – they are awake at night, and so, so must we be.'

Gher snorted. The oldest in the group, and the tallest by far, her brown hair was cut short, against the lice, and her worn tunic and leggings ran short on her frame. Maeve fixed an iron-hard glare on Gher's sullen face.

'Something to add, Gheran?'

'Nothing Maeve...it's just...I wish we had lived before they came. To be free to rise when we would – to live in the sun, if we so chose'

Now it was Maeve who snorted.

'You know nothing, child. Before the Votahn came, we lived as animals, grubbing in the dirt. We saw the sun but we did not understand our place in the world. No history, no writing. Our history, our real story, started when they came. If you like, you can wish for a sun-lit past that never was, but, the reality is this: the Votahn look after us well. They heal us when we are sick and their power helps our crops. More importantly, they keep us safe from the wild dragons. Their powers keep the monsters at bay, beyond our low walls. Child, if you wish to see the noon sun, work hard at your studies, and harder at the stable, and you can be a courier someday. But until then: we sleep when the Votahn do, we wake when they do, and when they ask for our help we give it. Without complaint.'

Gher settled back, silently fuming, knowing it was futile to argue. She had heard these words from Maeve often enough that she could repeat them without thought. Gher gazed up at the brightening sky through the small hole at the apex of the roundhouse. Maeve followed her gaze.

'Morning is coming. That's enough for tonight: go and sleep,' instructed Maeve. She fixed Gher with an admonishing stare. 'And pray that the Votahn and their mighty dragons continue to watch over us.'

Gher bit back another snort. It was no surprise that old Maeve spoke so highly of the Votahn and their beasts. As an elder, and a seamstress, she didn't have to deal with them. It was the servants and stablehands who had to face the Votahn each night.

The younger children filed obediently out of the roundhouse. Gher followed them, ducking through the low entrance. She emerged on a hillside, in a small, open area at the centre of a cluster of a wooden dwellings. The largest, the roundhouse, served as a meeting place and – when most adults were at work – as a place where children were taught skills or told stories by whichever elder was free and so inclined. Generally, the villagers lived in smaller buildings downhill of the roundhouse.

Gher watched the other children as they scattered across the muddy slope towards their respective families' shelters. Lanterns hung outside the huts of the more favoured families; their light flung crazed shadows against wooden walls as the children passed. Beyond the village, Gher could just make out the line of darkness that marked the wall that separated their clearing from the limitless forest that surrounded it. She moved slowly towards her parents' hut, cutting across the hillside. Seeing no light within, she moved a few paces past it, angling slightly uphill, towards the villa of the Votahn.

Hundreds of paces long, and taller than the roundhouse despite its stone construction, the villa dominated the hillside. The Votahn rarely emerged – and why would they? Inside were feasting halls, meeting rooms, and lavish accommodations, all built to match the grand stature of its inhabitants. A stream ran through the building, feeding fountains, baths and steam rooms. Passages ran deep into the hillside, leading to hidden chambers and echoing halls of worship.

As Gher's eyes followed the haphazard collection of angled rooves that formed the silhouette of the structure, her gaze was drawn to its highest point: the stables. Its high wooden roof speared into the sky. Carved by Votahn craftstmen, the long, spiked apex evoked the jagged backbones of the beasts it housed. Dragons. Gher suppressed a shudder. Of all her duties, she most despised cleaning the stables. She ground her teeth. She knew that tomorrow it was once again her turn to clean the stables from end to hateful end.

The first sliver of the rising sun emerged above the distant eastern hills, casting stark shadows across the treetops and a golden glow over the hillside. A clear day. No clouds. Gher gazed at the waxing sun regretfully for some time. Eventually, stifling a yawn, she wandered back to the shelter she shared with her parents. The sun was beautiful, but the days were short this time of year. Sleep was important, and it would be altogether too soon before she would have to be up to attend early evening duties in the stables, before the Votahn themselves awoke.

As Gher reached for the heavy curtain that covered the doorway, she caught an echo of dragon wings. Gher straightened and stilled, listening. The next beat was louder. She ran back up the slope someway, and looked back over the rooves towards the forest, eyes searching, feeling suddenly apprehensive. A dragon flying in the day was unheard of. The Votahn abhor bright light – but for the dragons, without eyelids to cover their huge, sensitive eyes, full sunlight was torture. The wingbeats were rapid. Frantic, even. She scanned the trail that lead to Circens, the City of Ten-thousand Souls. This was the closest settlement and almost all traffic to the villa came from there. Nevertheless, she saw nothing.

As the noise grew, she finally spotted the dragon – flying hard from the south. Gher was shocked. Nothing ever came from the south. To the south lay leagues of impenetrable forest, before land gave way to ocean. She knew that the Votahn came from a great city on the mainland to the south, months of travel away, but she had never heard of someone crossing the southern sea by dragon – mainland crossings took place at the narrow straits to the east, coming to the villa via Circens.

The dragon tore through the sky towards the hilltop. Sinuous, pale, and shining; its long body writhed with each beat of its colossal wings, like an eel swimming through silt. Gher had never seen anything move so fast. A Votahn rider clung to the dragon's back, atop a lightweight saddle. The riding mask and white garb the Votahn wore were unfamiliar.

The dragon tore through the sky over Gher's head, with a thunderous roar and a wave of rotten-flesh stench that almost forced her to her knees. She caught a glimpse of the dragon's cluster of soulless eyes, black as pitch and large as plates. It landed out of sight atop the hill on the far side of the villa and screamed again.

She wondered which unlucky villager was on duty in the stables. And as the sunlight grew brighter, and the enraged shrieks of the furious dragon grew louder, with a pulse of nausea, she realised: it was her. Gher took off up the steep hill, aiming for the small back door the villagers used to access the stable block. Of course it was her. Her friend Kareb would have finished her duty shift at sun-up and collapsed into her own shelter, one of the closest to the villa. Gher would have ordinarily reported at sun-down to start mucking out – but the dragon arriving now was her responsibility. Stupid, stupid. She should have started running the second she heard the first wing beat, instead of gazing like a daft calf at the approaching spectacle.

Gher stumbled, legs burning as she raced up the hillside. She ripped through the back door of the stable block and into the stinking gloom. Blind in the darkness, she tore across the echoing space, bare feet slapping the worn flagstones. Hisses and disturbed rumbles emanated from the colossal beasts crouched in the stalls that lined the huge space. Gher slowed as she approached the main doors. It was so artfully built that only the barest suggestion of sunlight showed around its edges. The dragon outside howled pitiably and thumped against the doors. Gher felt for the locking bars and threw them back. She began to pull the door open but was immediately slammed aside as the stampeding dragon forced the double doors wide open. The beast hurtled into the welcoming darkness, mad with pain and rage. Gher crashed face-first against the flagstones and lay dazed while sunlight streamed into the room.

A deafening chorus of outraged, other-worldly cries sprang up, each dragon in the stable echoing the pain of the recently-arrived messenger beast. Gher gathered herself up and threw herself at the heavy door. It swung smoothly, but slowly home. She darted across, meaning to grab the other, but was shoved aside – the Votahn rider was there pushing the door closed itself. Gher stared agape at one of the masters performing such a menial task. Gher backed away, bowing. The door swung closed, plunging the stables into darkness. The Votahn turned to Gher, its furious breath hissing through its mask.

Gher froze, indecisive. To flee, and to thereby not offer service to the message rider, was to die; either in the forest, or at the hands of the Votahn household for neglect of duty. To stay and face the enraged Votahn messenger was also, probably, to die. With sudden clarity, Gher realised that by facing the messenger, her family would probably be spared. Votahn punishments for perceived disobedience were severe, and usually visited on the offender's next of kin. Better to be punished alone for incompetence than as a family for disobedience. Gher dropped to her knees, rested her head on the flagstones, and waited.

Gher heard the rider wrestle its writhing charge into the nearest stall and chain it. She heard the Votahn stalk towards her, before a savage kick sent her spinning sideways into the wall by the gate. Blows rained down like thunder. The Votahn bellowed one command at her in its horrid tongue: stay. The Votahn then swept out of the stables towards the main house, slamming the ornate internal door behind it.

Gher waited where she lay. Her face was bruised. The impacts had left her head ringing, the pain building until it felt fit to split her skull. She squeezed her eyes shut, furious at her mistreatment. She silently cursed all Votahn, all dragons, and even her gods-forsaken elders; those traitors who trained Gher and her friends to accept the orders and abuse of these horrible, alien people. She wept silently, with clenched teeth, until she could weep no more. And then, as commanded, she waited.

Time passed. The light creeping under the door brightened. After some time, Votahn began entering the stables, first a few, then dozens. Small candles at the entrances to the stalls were lit. Surprisingly, the Votahn began fetching tack from the side-rooms and saddling up the beasts. Eventually, it seemed that every Votahn in the villa was awake and busy around in the stables. They paid no heed to Gher, who shrank back into the corner, hoping to avoid further notice.

Several Votahn staggered out of the stores, carrying a huge harness between them. Only one dragon was large enough to carry that, thought Gher: the aged leviathan that resided in the echoing vault beneath the stables. Hugely ancient, with a proportionately slow gut, it ate perhaps twice per year and spent months asleep below ground. Very occasionally, it would emerge for a flight, plunging southwards and returning some days later, smelling of the ocean. It was Gher's favourite dragon, in a way. It always slept, and it had always done its leavings while on its intermittent visits to the sea, meaning it made almost no work for the stable hands.

It seemed like every dragon was being saddled. Occasionally, Gher saw other villagers, clearly confused at being roused from sleep at this time of day, drag luggage into the stables from the Votahn accommodations. Heavy chests that clinked. Huge rolls of fine cloth. It dawned on Gher: the Votahn were leaving. They were fleeing and taking their treasures with them.

Hours passed, and still the Votahn bustled around the stables. Eventually, the preparations slowed, with some Votahn stopping to eat and rest. A few folded themselves up on their queerly jointed hind legs and went very still. Sleeping, Gher supposed. She had never seen them sleep before. In a slightly detached way, Gher realised, that with the Votahn gone, then there would be nothing to stop the dragons from the forest invading the village. The dragons you saw from time to time, perched in the highest trees at dusk, peering at the villagers from a few hundred paces away. Gher passed into a troubled sleep, and dreamt of hungry clusters of eyes.

* * *

A Votahn bellowed at Gher, slamming her awake: the door, the door. The stables were dark again, and no light crept above the door frame. Feeling her way to the double doors, she pulled them open. Gher fled outside through the huge opening and into the starlit courtyard. The buildings of the villa flanked the courtyard on three sides. Opposite to the stable doors, the yard was open to the top of the hill. Gher sank down to the cobblestones against the wall on one side, as dragon after dragon tumbled out of the stables and snaked along the open ground towards the peak of the hill. Each dragon was heavily laden, with luggage strapped to their flanks and Votahn clinging to their backs like burn-tics. The beasts gathered speed as they reached the apex of the mount. Although the ground sloped gently up the hill from the villa's side, the far side of the peak had been carved away by a previous generation of villagers. From this artificial cliff, the dragons launched themselves into the warm evening air, catching updraughts with great thumps of their wings and banking away to the east.

Eventually, the stream of dragons slowed. Finally, the largest dragon lumbered out, its glistening bulk barely squeezing through the door frame. From where she sat, Gher could feel the cold rolling off the creature. Strapped high on its back was the huge saddle she had seen, packed with tremendously obese Votahn. Gher had never seen these individuals before but she knew them to be the Magai, powerful spiritual leaders of the Votahn. The monster spread its great wings as it approached the summit and drew a breath so deep it stirred Gher's hair from hundreds of paces away. The first beat of its wings threw Gher to the side and ripped tiles from the roof of the villa. Gher saw trees flattened beneath its power. As the deafening storm of its wingbeats subsided, she became aware of plaintive wailing from the other side of the hilltop; the other villagers, realising the Votahn were abandoning them.

Gher sat for a time, watching the flight of dragons until she could see them no more. She eventually became aware that the mournful wails of the villagers were being replaced with horror-struck cries, intermingled with screeches of wild dragons. She lurched back into the stables, barred the main doors, and stumbled through the darkness. Reaching the small door that lead to the village, she cracked it open. Her gaze met a scene of desolation. Wild dragons, smallish, with dried, cracked skin, boiled over her small settlement. They rippled over rooftops and swept in and out of curtained doorways, their mouthparts dripping. Gher could not see her parent's hut from here. She looked towards the hut of her friend, Kareb, but saw no movement. A dragon swooped by, close enough for Gher to count its eyes in the gloom. Too close. She silently closed the door and waited, listening. Hoping to hear a villager knocking, or a whispered voice asking her to open the door. Gher's heartbeat thundered in her ears. Distantly, she heard screams and the unmistakable sounds of feeding dragons.

As Gher waited, ears straining, she became aware of hissing and rustling. Dragon noises. Not outside the stables, though. Inside the stable. With her.