“Only Death can liberate you.”
“I have scorned his servants, those pretty knights. I wrote ballads about their failures, putting on display their forlorn efforts to all who would listen! But despite my best work, what good did it do? Akilun himself betrays me by his devotion to his Master even when all things were stripped from him. How boldly he marched to his own destruction for the love of a brother who betrayed him. Curse him!” Eanrin squeezed his eyes shut, though the darkness around him poured into his mind even so. “That constancy in the face of disaster . . . it wounds me to the heart! His faith in his Master makes a mockery of my mockery. Those knights, they are traitors to their own nature in their trueness to their Lord!”
“But you, immortal bard, will be true to your nature. You will not give in to selfless love. You will not give up mastery.”
The Hound approached.
Eanrin screamed to drown the sound of pounding feet, though he knew that when his voice gave out, he would hear it again, only closer. His scream became agonized words.
“How can I give up what I know? I want it all, not just the best but the second best, the moderate, even the squalid. How can I give up everything I have for love?”
“In the end, it’s nothing but a pretty story,” said the stranger. A warmth like encircling wings enfolded the poet, deepening the darkness. “Love like that means only one thing: sacrifice. Is that a burden you were meant to bear?”
The poet felt the heat, the close pressure of those wings. “How empty it all is,” he breathed, his lungs inhaling scalding fumes.
“To love is to empty one’s Self,” said the Dragon. “To love is to surrender. To love is to lose.”
“I can’t,” Eanrin moaned. “I can’t.”
The drum of feet, the steady approach, and the Hound drew nearer still. Through the thick shelter of the wings came a glow. But Eanrin could not see it, even as the light increased and revealed the awful contours of those wings, the cruel scales, the hideous leather folds. He could not see, though his eyes were wide open.
“He has driven you to this place of darkness,” hissed the stranger. “Your only hope is Death! He will take you otherwise. Is that what you want?”
“I—”
“You are master of your own world! Do not permit him to take this from you.”
“But my world . . . my world was so silent.” Eanrin thought of the tiny voices shouting out to the darkness but forever alone.
“And yet it was yours! Will you give up your rule for slavery?” The great wing pushed the poet from behind. “Enter the Dark Water,” the stranger said. “You are at its banks. Enter the Dark Water and sink. He will not pursue you there. It is the last haven you can know!”
Eanrin rose. He took a step. He felt the water lapping at his feet, and he trembled.
“Only this way can you be free,” said the Dragon. “Go! Swiftly! He is even now upon you!”
The light pierced the shade of the Dragon’s wings. It pierced into the gloom of Eanrin’s spirit and struck like daggers upon his eyes. Scales fell in a steady stream from his face. They hurt as they fell, and he screamed at the pain, his hands catching at the cascade. Sharp edges cut his hands in ribbons of blood.
But his vision cleared.
He looked up. He saw the Dragon. He saw the face of Death-in-Life, a face that had been his close and constant friend through all the lonely generations of his existence. He saw and was astonished by the ghastly visage, the sordid destruction of beauty, of dreams.
And Eanrin saw that he stood on the edge of the Dark Water. A single step, and he would make the plunge.
But the light was all around them, striking through every sense, and with it a Voice, which was also light, more brilliant than the voices of the sun or the moon, for it was the Voice that had taught them to sing. It sang now and drove the Dragon to furious wailing. Eanrin could hear no words, for the cacophony of the Dragon’s screams muddled his ears. He shut his eyes, but the light was still there. He fell to his knees on the edge of the water, curling into a ball, but still the torrential battle of sounds and words and voices calling his name battered him on all sides.