“How can this have happened?” Iubdan demanded for perhaps the tenth time. The councilmen cast one another accusing glances, as though any one of their neighbors must be at fault and why not confess now and let everyone else go back to sleep? By the king’s black beard, it was going on noon already, and all of them should be properly tucked away in bed!
Glomar stood like a lump to the king’s right, arms crossed and his brow more badger-like than ever, offering not one useful word. “We’ve got to fetch her back!” was all he said, as though no one else was capable of coming to this conclusion. Eanrin, from his hiding place (poets are never officially invited to secret council meetings), sneered at the man and his fellows.
“We’ve got to fetch her back!” Glomar stated again after another interminable silence crept by. “Immediately! I’ll set out now and track them down.”
“Track the Black Dogs?” one of the councilmen said.
“I’ll do it!” Glomar roared.
Eanrin watched as the councilmen exchanged glances. Even those dunces, less blinded by love than the captain, knew how foolish such a venture would be.
“You’ll end up on the road to Death’s realm,” said Iubdan, thumping his fist on the arm of his chair. “That’s where you’ll go, and that’s no help to anyone. No one is setting out that way unless we’ve a good plan for how to venture both in and out. Ugh! I little like the notion of stepping into the Netherworld again! Poor cousin! Taken by such fiends . . . she must be well on her way to that dark place herself. Where else would the Black Dogs carry her?”
“Etalpalli.”
All eyes in the chamber, including the covert pair in the gallery, turned to Queen Bebo. She sat apart from the table of councilmen, on a humble chair of twisted roots growing up from the mountain floor. Her green sleeves, delicately picked out in spider webs of exquisite work, draped over the arms, and her silver veil still covered her hair, though she had long since removed the goblin crown. She sat apart and scarcely raised her eyes from her hands as the menfolk talked and argued and forgot her presence. But when she spoke, they all remembered and turned to her as schoolchildren might turn to a benevolent teacher for advice. For Queen Bebo was older than they, older than the mountain. And she heard the voices of the sun and the moon.
“What’s that you say, my dear?” asked her husband the king, raising his great bush of an eyebrow. “You spoke a name, I think, but one with which I am unfamiliar.”
“Etalpalli,” she repeated in her gossamer voice. “The City of Wings.”
Something in the way she spoke sent a burning dart through Eanrin’s heart. For a moment, his breath steamed the air before his face. He shook himself and hunched his shoulders, leaning out of hiding to better see her face. The councilmen gave one another uncomfortable looks.
Iubdan, however, leaned back in his seat, his face thoughtful. “Ah yes,” he said. “I remember. Once upon a time, we journeyed beyond the Cozamaloti Gate into the City of Wings, did we not?”
“For the coronation of the new queen, yes,” said Bebo. “Two thousand years ago, if you count the hours as mortals do.”
Iubdan rubbed his mustache. Rarely did the Merry People see their king’s face so solemn. “A bright little girl she was,” he said, musing with remembrance. “Newly crowned and so pretty on her great throne, with those wings of hers still overlarge for her wee frame.”
To Eanrin’s horror, the king bent his head and hid his face in his hand. The poet stared, wondering if his own eyes deceived him. Did Iubdan weep?
“Her name is forgotten,” said Queen Bebo, her soft white lashes closing over her softer blue eyes. A single look at her face, and Eanrin knew that one person at least remembered the young Queen of Etalpalli’s name. But he also knew that Bebo would not speak it. Instead, she swallowed, and the sight of his queen forcing back tears was enough to make the poet want to hurl himself from the gallery and burst into some manic song. Anything to make her laugh! The Merry Folk were not intended for tears, especially not their queen.
There was a catch in Bebo’s voice when she raised her eyes and again addressed the assembly. “Her name was forgotten long ages ago. When she gave up her heart and succumbed to the voice of him we call Death-in-Life. When his kiss sealed her, her name was lost. And she became the firstborn of all dragons.”
The councilmen drew their robes and nightshirts close; several wiped sweat from their brows.
“She abandoned her people in the passion of her first burning,” Bebo continued quietly. “But she did not forget them long. A hundred years ago, she returned to her own demesne and burned it beyond recall. The City of Wings is no more. Its empty ruins rise to an emptier sky.”