Dallben
He was old, far too old, ages beyond the natural span of men, so old that he had ceased even to wonder why he still lived but only accepted it; wearily, wistfully, as the bittersweet compensation of a few fateful drops of raw magic soaked straight into his bloodstream from his own foolish, smarting fingers. He could still taste it, sometimes, astringent and exciting and sharp, flavoring the air, the scents around him, the plain, good, wholesome fruits of the earth that had sustained him, without real satisfaction, for almost four hundred years. He had never truly enjoyed food since the potion. Magic changes everything, for good or ill.
He sat at his worn table and gazed out the window with eyes that barely saw the view, which had, after all, not changed substantially in decades. It seemed to him sometimes, more often of late, that the world outside grew dimmer and dimmer. Either his eyes were failing – probable enough after all this time – or his inner vision had been drawing him, in his weariness, more and more into the alongside dreamworld that had so often seemed clearer and sharper to him than the physical realm. Both, perhaps. He wondered what would happen to him if he stayed here, in this land, where magic was now fading into a slow death, melting away, the seed of future legend and myth. Would the power that had sustained him so long draw itself out of him, leaving his empty shell crumbling to the dust it should have been three centuries ago? Or would it engulf him, swallow what remained of his humanity, until his very essence dissolved into oblivion along with it?
Neither scenario bothered him particularly; he felt too old to care what happened to him and oblivion actually sounded rather pleasant and quiet when you came down to it. Pondering on it was moot, at any rate – he was bound, choice or no, for the Summer Country, and the promise it whispered, of peace and rest. Let others look forward to renewed youth and vitality. He would be satisfied with uninterrupted years of silence, of the laying down of burdens.
There was one burden he could not lay down in good conscience, however; one thing he cared about very much, and he picked restlessly at the splintered table with a bony forefinger, absently scratching pentagrams and runes into the soft wood in his agitation. The thing should be decided by now. Time was growing dangerously short; the scales of fate teetered on the brink of one decision, and there was nothing he could do to push them in one direction or the other. And the fate of his homeland, this fair country, torn and bleeding and in need – so much grave need – lay in the balance.
What if he had been wrong?
Dallben coughed once, harshly, the way he might have in response to a particularly foolish question posited by another, before he remembered there was no one else in the room and his own mind had asked the unthinkable. He could not have been wrong. Every cog had fallen into place but one. Every line of the prophecy had been fulfilled…almost. The golden ships would not sail until the sun rose high on the morrow. There was time. There was time.
Time for that foolish…but no, he wasn't that foolish boy anymore. Taran was a man grown, proven many times over and surpassing all his expectations – which, admittedly, had not always been high at various vivid points in the lad's rash youth, days when Dallben had had far more manifest reasons for doubt than he now did. No one now could deny Taran had all the qualities of a leader and a king – perhaps even a great one. Only his own decision remained, and he must make it blindly and in ignorance of its consequences. It seemed an impossible thing…or would have, if one believed in impossibilities. Dallben knew them to be nonexistent. If one could make absolute statements about non-absolutes. Nonexistent impossibility, now there was a contradiction in terms…or two sides of the same shifting reality…or…
His own snore startled him and he shook himself awake. This was not the time for meditation. He supposed, dimly, that he ought to pack any possessions he wished to take with him to the Summer Country, and let his eyes wander over his cluttered shelves without much enthusiasm, seeing nothing that was irreplaceable and much that was impractical or outright unnecessary where he was headed. Perhaps some nostalgic memento, then, some bit of his home – but then, he had never been one to form an emotional attachment to material things. He was about to give it up, when his eye fell on the windowsill, where lay, like a dewdrop, an innocuous white pebble, worn round and smooth, obviously pried from a streambed.
"Wook! Dawben! It'th a dwagon egg."
The boy shoves a grimy fist under his nose, rosy face intense, eager, dramatic, his sea-mist eyes round and big inside their ring of black lashes. "I found it. Aw by mythewf."
"Ah. A dragon's egg, you say?" He takes the proffered pebble in his gnarled thumb and forefinger; holds it up appraisingly. "Why, that is the egg of the Emerald-Scaled Tree-Blazer. A small breed, but fierce. A single one has been known to destroy entire forests."
Black brows furrow and the small pointed chin sinks; the eyes glare at him accusatorily from behind a ferning of dark fringe. "Dawben. It'th actuawy a wock."
He smothers a laugh in his own beard. "A rock. Are you sure? It makes a very convincing dragon egg. I feel certain it is a Tree-Blazer." The boy is leaning against his knee now, unconsciously, all trusting familiarity, his head bent studiously over the pebble.
"A Twee-Bwather?" Warm breath whispers fluttering on the old man's paper-skinned hand. "I wiww put it thomewhere warm untiw it hatcheth. Then I will twain it, and wide it, and be the onwy dwagon-tamer in Pwydain!" The eyes rise again, twinkling comprehension; shared mischief from behind the black lashes. And he realizes that the child, for the first time, possesses the capacity to understand the world behind words, this game of real and not-real and how both can be true at once.
A pang of pride and somehow, regret, pierces through his heart like an arrow, and for a brief instant he remembers running and shouting in youthful vigor, asking endless questions and sleeping deeply and dreaming wonderingly in a world unencumbered by the crushing load of Too Much Knowledge. There are doors, once opened, that can never be closed, and although wonders lie beyond, you must lay down something precious to cross the threshold.
"I shall keep it for you," he offers. "But it takes many years, you know, for a dragon's egg to hatch. You must be patient."
The grimy fingers linger over his wrinkled hand. "Don't woose it, Dawben."
He had promised, in that rare moment of playfulness, and so now he picked up the pebble, rolled it in his palm, and pocketed it in his robe.
It had been a strange thing, raising a child. The Book of Three, which waxed eloquent on how Life pulsed and burst forth, expanding its vessels like sails in the wind before wearing them out, was mute on the subjects of mountainous piles of soiled clothing, middle-of-the-night attacks of croup, or ear-splitting, interminable tantrums over insignificant minutiae. But then, neither had it mentioned the warmth of small arms clasped around one's neck, the homely beauty of a child's gap-toothed smile, or the warm flush of pride at a first step, a first word, a first glimmer of new understanding.
He did not deceive himself that he loved Taran as a father loved a son. He was too distant, too removed; more of the eccentric great-uncle or the crusty old tutor so popular in stories, one whose devotion ran strong and true, but buried deep, like a subterranean river. Perhaps it was because he could never forget the greater purpose he suspected – he could not let himself love the boy more than he loved the Kingdom; could not ask Taran to lay himself upon that golden altar when the time came had he done so.
Coll had been the father – affectionate, conversant, patient. Dallben had sometimes envied the camaraderie between the two of them, wished he had the capacity to join in their banter, their unspoken codes and secret languages, though he'd never been tempted toward the wrestling and tussling and general tomfoolery that had often accompanied their interactions. He was what he was; his mind, when it could be wrested into the present, physical world at all, wafted along on a different plane than those of his makeshift family; he had found it impossible to focus on their fireside discussions of hay and harvest and hoof-rot.
Taran's boyhood thirst for adventure tales was hardly more palatable; the boy's craving for battle heroics grieved him, and he'd been glad when, upon the company's return from the affair of the Black Crochan, there had been no more requests for any stories involving bloodletting. In fact, if Dallben could put a finger on any point that marked a permanent bend in his young sapling's growth, in the twist that began a new pattern in the tapestry, it was the thread of the son of Taliesin, a precious talisman lost, and something infinitely more valuable, yet hardly won, left in its place.
Then there was the girl, of course. Her threads were inextricably tangled up in Taran's since the moment she had first appeared in the weave, a thing he had forseen, vaguely, and made marginal preparations for. Certainly her addition to the household had added complications, but he could not regret it. She had entered that masculine domain like a drop of sunshine – even for all that lunar sorcery hanging so thick around her that sometimes he could barely see her through it – casting her rays into every drab corner. And he had not been wholly unsympathetic to the affection between them, creaky old bachelor that he was, his knowledge of the intricate dance of opposites concocted from the explanations of the Book of Three and his observation of everything in the natural world – only to its prematurity. It had pained him to send her away. He loved her as he loved Taran – fondly, distantly, compassionately, wishing only the best for her – for both of them – and grieving that no matter which way the scales fell, there would be heartbreak. He had an impression that the two of them had gone off together upon leaving the cottage. Well, let them enjoy whatever unfettered joy remained to them. It could not, for much longer. Not much longer.
Unless he had been wrong. And he could not wish he had been wrong.
Even if he wanted to.
