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And these things were never so precious

Listen to the bird in its cage as it speaks

In a dying man’s voice; when he is gone

The voice lives to greet and give empty

Assurances with random poignancy

I do not know if I could live with that

If I could armour myself as the inhuman beak

Opens to a dead man’s reminder, head cocked

As if channelling the ghost of the one

Who imagines an absence of sense, a vacuum awaiting

The cage is barred and nightly falls the shroud

To silence the commentary of impossible apostles

Spirit godlings and spanning abyss, impenetrable cloud

Between the living and the dead, the here and the gone

Where no bridge can smooth the passage of pain

And these things were never so precious

Listening to the bird as it speaks and it speaks

And it speaks, the one who has faded away

The father departed knowing the unknown

And it speaks and it speaks and it speaks

In my father’s voice

– Caged Bird, Fisher kel That

There was no breath to speak of. Rather, what awoke him was the smell of death, dry, an echo of pungent decay that might belong to the carcass of a beast left in the high grasses, desiccated yet holding its reek about itself, close and suffocating as a cloak. Opening his eyes, Kallor found him-self staring up at the enormous, rotted head of a dragon, its massive fangs and shredded gums almost within reach.

The morning light was blotted out and it seemed the shade cast by the dragon roiled with all its centuries of forgotten breath. As the savage thunder of Kallor’s heartbeat eased, he slowly edged to one side i-the dragon’s viper head tilting to track his movement-and carefully stood, keeping his hands well away from the scabharded sword lying on the ground beside his bedroll. ‘I did not,’ he said, scowling, ‘ask for company.’

The dragon withdrew its head in a crackling of dried scales along the length of its serpent neck; settled back between the twin cowls of its folded wings.

He could see runnels of dirt trickling down from creases and joins on the creature’s body. One gaunt forelimb bore the tracery of fine roots in a colourless mockery of blood vessels. From the shadowed pits beneath the gnarled brow ridges there was the hint of withered eyes, a mottling of grey and black that could hold no display of desire or intent; and yet Kallor felt that regard raw as sharkskin against his own eyes as he stared up at the undead dragon.

‘You have come,’ he said, ‘a long way, I suspect. But I am not for you. I can give you nothing, assuming I wanted to, which I do not. And do not imagine,’ he added, ‘that I will bargain with you, whatever hungers you may still possess.’

He looked about his makeshift camp, saw that the modest hearth with its fistful of coals still smouldered from the previous night’s fire. ‘I am hungry, and thirsty,’ he said. ‘You can leave whenever it pleases you.’

The dragon’s sibilant voice spoke in Kallor’s skull. ‘You cannot know my pain.’

He grunted. ‘You cannot feel pain. You’re dead, and you have the look of having been buried. For a long time.’

‘The soul writhes. There is anguish. I am broken.’

He fed a few clumps of dried bhederin dung on to the coals, and then glanced over. ‘I can do nothing about that.’

‘I have dreamt of a throne.’

Kallor’s attention sharpened with speculation. ‘You would choose a master? That is unlike your kind.’ He shook his head. ‘I scarcely believe it.’

‘Because you do not understand. None of you understand. So much is beyond you. You think to make yourself the King in Chains. Do not mock my seeking a master, High King Kallor.’

‘The Crippled God’s days are numbered, Eleint,’ said Kallor. ‘Yet the throne shall remain, long after the chains have rusted to dust.’

There was silence between them then, for a time. The morning sky was clear, tinted faintly red with the pollen and dust that seemed to seethe up from this land. Kallor watched the hearth finally lick into flames, arid he reached for the small, battered, blackened pot. Poured the last of his water into it and set the pot on the tripod perched above the fire. Swarms of suicidal insects darted into the flames, igniting in sparks, and Kallor wondered at this penchant for seeking death, as if the lure for an end was irresistible. Not a trait he shared, however.

I remember my death,’ the dragon said.

‘And that’s worth remembering?’

‘The Jaghut were a stubborn people. So many saw naught but the coldness in their hearts-’

‘Misunderstood, were they?’”They mocked your empire, High King. They answered you with scorn. It seems the wounds have not healed.’

‘A recent reminder, that’s all,’ Kallor replied, watching the water slowly awaken. He tossed in a handful of herbs. ‘Very well, tell me your tale. I welcome the amusement.’

The dragon lifted its head and seemed to study the eastern horizon.

‘Never wise to stare into the sun,’ Kallor observed. ‘You might burn your eyes.’

‘It was brighter then-do you recall!’

‘Perturbations of orbit, or so believed the K’Chain Che’Malle.’

‘So too the Jaghut, who were most diligent in their observations of the world. Tell me, High King, did you know they broke peace only once! In all their existence-no, not the T’lan Imass-that war belonged to those savages and the Jaghut were a most reluctant foe.’

‘They should have turned on the Imass,’ Kallor said. ‘They should have annihilated the vermin.’

‘Perhaps, but I was speaking of an earlier war-the war that destroyed the Jaghut long before the coming of the T’lan Imass. The war that shattered their unity, that made of their lives a moribund flight from an implacable enemy-yes, long before and long after the T’lan Imass.’

Kallor considered that for a moment, and then he grunted and said, ‘I am not well versed in Jaghut history. What war was this? The K’Chain Che’Malle? The Forkrul Assail?’ He squinted at the dragon. ‘Or, perhaps, you Eleint?’

There was sorrow in its tone as the dragon replied, ‘No. There were some among us who chose to join in this war, to fight alongside the Jaghut armies-’

‘Armies? Jaghut armies?’

‘Yes, an entire people gathered, a host of singular will. Legions uncountable. Their standard was rage, their clarion call injustice. When they marched, swords beating on shields, time itself found measure, a hundred million hearts of edged iron. Not even you, High King, could imagine such a sight-your empire was less than a squall to that terrible storm.’

For once, Kallor had nothing to say. No snide comment to voice, no scoffing refutation. In his mind he saw the scene the dragon had described, and was struck mute. To have witnessed such a thing!

The dragon seemed to comprehend his awe. ‘Yes again, High King. When you forged your empire, it was on the dust of that time, that grand contest, that most bold assault. We fought. We refused to retreat. We failed. We fell. So many of us fell-should we have believed otherwise! Should we have held to our faith in the righteousness of our cause, even as we came to believe that we were doomed?’

Kallor stared across at the dragon, the tea in the pot steaming away. He could almost hear the echoes of tens of millions, hundreds of millions, dying on a plain so vast even the horizons could not close it in. He saw flames, rivers of blood, a sky solid with ash. In creating this image, he had only to draw upon his own fury of destruction, then multiply it a thousand fold. The notion took his breath, snatched it from his lungs, and his chest filled with pain. ‘What,’ he managed, ‘who? What enemy could vanquish such a force?’Grieve for the Jaghut, High King, when at last you sit on that throne, Grieve for the, chains that hind all life, that yon can never break, Weep, for me and my fallen kin-who did not hesitate to join a war that could not be won. Know, for ever in your soul, Kallor Eidorann, that the Jaghut fought the war no other has dared to fight.’