Dog and Dragon: Chapter Three

    A chemical brine steamed and frothed as it gushed through the new tear in the black road that crossed the shattered ash lands. Something hissed up from a fissure, taking shape into one of the elemental creatures of the smokeless fire. Díleas backed away, barking. So did the travelers. “Back on the carts, men, it’s one of the big Beng!”

    Fionn had spotted what he had been hoping for, deep down. This dolerite dyke had blocked it, and now the creatures of smokeless flame had cracked that. The bells that were ringing from the carts helped to hide the sound he made, as he sat down next to Díleas and scraped rock-sign onto the stone.

    The fire-demon was less easily fooled than the travelers. “What does one of your kind want here in our demesnes?”

    “Yours? I thought you liked places of ash and smoke and flame,” said Fionn mockingly, answering in the creature’s own language. “Not such a place as this is about to become. I am one of the advance surveyors.”

    “Surveyors?” hissed the creature.

    “Yes, that is what they call those who make accurate measurements and determine the boundaries. Those are busy changing,” said Fionn, with exaggerated patience, as if explaining to a simpleton.

    “We changed them, in order to stop this endless incursion into our lands!”

    “You did, did you?” mocked Fionn. “I was of the impression you liked incursions. Devoured their essences or fed them to your pets.”

    “These have protections. We seldom get one. So we have broken their road.”

    “And that has broken your land. You should have guessed that when you got the brine-boil instead of the lava,” said Fionn, with all the confidence in the world.

    “We frequently have fumaroles,” said the creature of smokeless flame.

    “Do they usually get cooler?” asked Fionn, his voice even. He had redirected sufficient heat downward for that to start to happen. All that heat was cracking the dome far below now. When there had been tiny fissures…the water had boiled and picked up minerals on the way up. But, if those fissures grew, more water would flow from the strata below. Water that had been trapped down there for millennia, under increasing pressure. A lot of water. Fionn chuckled to himself. The fire creatures would hate it, but it might help their ashpit world regenerate. They were running out of coal measures, and once, after all, it must have been wet and warm here to grow the forests to make the coal. It would ease the balance of forces here. So good to achieve two things at once. And seeing the look of startlement on the creature of smokeless flame’s features — you couldn’t really say “face” — was a joy.

    Ah, he’d forgotten the pleasure of being the trickster in the last little while. The wider worlds needed him. Aside from rebalance, there was the pure delight in overturning the expected and changing the order of things.

    The creature of smokeless flame left hastily, with no further words, not even of farewell, or of threat. No doubt it had gone to consult with its superiors. They had a habit of doing that, whenever confronted with something different. They were so hierarchical they struggled with independent thought. It was their weakness. Which was just as well, really. They needed some weak points.

    Fionn watched its departure with some satisfaction. And went on talking. He did the fire-creature’s speech part too, while he backed up to the cart, and felt for the catch to their hideaway with his foot. The travelers would be hiding their heads from illusions, most likely. And anyone peering out could see his head and hands. He was just as dexterous with his feet, as with his hands, and he’d a lot of experience with hide-aways. He deserved a fee for this, besides the sheer pleasure of doing it.

    In a way, he thought, he had taught his Scrap of humanity, and she in turn had taught him. He told her that there were many ways of solving a problem. She’d showed him that his ideas were still quite constrained to maintaining the status quo. His purpose was retaining the balance, but it didn’t have to be same balance — just so long as it was balanced.

    A few moments later he was back at the edge of the flowing, fuming stream through the blue-black stone of the causeway. It was running stronger and fuller now, and definitely not as hot. He put his hand on Díleas’s head. “Wait. It will get cooler.”

    So what was it about him, and her, that would have unbalanced Tasmarin, that meant she had had to go back to where she came from?

    It didn’t make much sense to the planomancer.

    There was a need for balance, but why the two of them? In terms of energy all things were different, but not that different that they could not be balanced out.

    The traveler Arvan emerged from the cart. Fionn noticed he had his bow again, arrow on the string. “What were you talking to the Beng about, stranger?”

    Fionn had spoken in the tongue of the creature of smokeless flame. There was no need of course. They were nearly as adept linguists as he was, but it unsettled them to have someone address them in their own tongue. He wondered how the Scrap was coping with a language that would be strange to her…only that dvergar device might just help. She’d learned to read fast enough with its help. He grinned at the traveler, cheered by that thought, and pleased with his bit of work here. Force-lines were realigning already. “I just ruined his day. What did you want me to say to him?”

    “Nothing. They’re tricky, those ones. You know his language, though.” That was outright suspicion.

    Fionn shrugged. “Rather a case of he knows mine. They have the gift of tongues, those ones. All the better to lie to you with. So I told him a truth, and made him very unhappy.”

    “And what was that? You have a spell against them?”

    “I wish. But they have a dislike for water. The merrows could sell you a few charms, if you had goods they were interested in. I’ve a protection I bought from them for a song and some entertainment. The Beng tried me, and the merrow spell has brought a counter to the demon. I pointed out to the creature that water is wet. Wet, and cooling down, and spreading out. It didn’t like that and has probably gone to consult with its master. We’d best be away before the master comes here too. They can put powerful compulsions on people, and the bigger they are, the stronger they are. We’ll have to contrive a bridge of some kind, but we’ll be able to cross it. The dog and I can swim it if need be. By now it’ll be like a very hot bath.”

    Díleas growled and shook himself. Looked suspiciously at the water.

    “He doesn’t like baths,” said Fionn, grinning.

    The traveler burst out laughing. “Same as most dogs. Usually when the Beng find us here, they torment us. Send their creatures to attack us. We’ve got the bells and other protections on the carts, but the best we can do is to stay in them and keep moving until we get out of the local lordling’s territory. Never seen anyone chase one off before.”

    “I wish I could chase them off. It was just the merrow spell doing it, and a lucky happenstance. But the chances are next time I won’t be near a lot of hidden water, and the merrow spells need water. You don’t happen to have a plank about those carts of yours? And maybe a rope? I could get you a start on a way across the water. It’s cooling, but I wouldn’t swim it for a while.”

    “Plank?” asked one of the other travelers, curiously.

    “Yes,” said Fionn, pointing. “There is a rock there, see. I could put the plank out to it, and then another — or maybe a long jump and I’ll be over. I can take a rope over and tie it off for you. There is some rock on the other side you might make something of a bridge with. Or you could take a cart apart and make one. But you probably don’t want to hang about here too long. The Beng will come back.”

 

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    In a place where time ran slowly enough to at least sustain the illusion of immortality, where even free energy danced slow minuets, and the beings called the First dwelled, occupied by and large with passions of immortality, beyond most mortal ken. The First were not a matter for easy understanding. The dragon Fionn was one of the few beings that actually remembered them, which was…less than desirable. They had become distant and disconnected observers of their immeasurably vast creation.

    It had taken a human glimpse within their roil of energy, interconnected as all energy was, to let them know that after millennia there might be a problem that they had not foreseen. That they had taken no steps to prevent. That a group mind made of the descendants of fractions of themselves could exist briefly. That something rather like their own power could be exerted by it — temporarily, it was true.

    They didn’t like that.

    But there was a worse possibility. And they always looked at possible futures.

    The situation could become permanent.

    Food did not interbreed with its predator. They had designed it like that for that precise reason.

    Paradoxically, the very powers they had built into Fionn made him quite immune to their manipulations, and near invisible to them as a result. The same could not be said of the dog.

    But if they destroyed the dog, they would be blind to Fionn’s doings and movement.

    The dragon would not be easy to destroy, and the human had taken a part of them into herself. That made her difficult to deal with. The energy that flowed into her had been supposed to take control, not become a slave itself.

    It would have to destroy all of them, by proxy.

    Fortunately it had an almost infinite supply of proxies.

    Unfortunately, the planomancer would be able to detect and counter their movements. They would need to be subtle.

 

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    “Right,” said Fionn, looking at the rocking plank he’d set up. “Come, Díleas. I’ll have to carry you.”

    “You’re out of your mind, gleeman,” said Arvan.

    Privately, Fionn agreed with him. But he knew humans too well. When they stopped to think about it, they’d start getting even more suspicious about his dealings with the fire creature. And they had weapons that could hurt the dog. He could kill them if they tried, of course. Had he been any other dragon, he would have been free to devour them anyway. Had he been any other dragon he might have desired to do so. But he was Fionn: the last of those who were made first, to see intelligent life flourished. Best to get on the narrow board and away. The water running through the gap would not kill him. Not now. The acids and toxins were already much diluted. But it might still be too hot for the dog. He’d have to throw Díleas if he fell. “Ach. I was something of an acrobat in a traveling show once.” He looked at the plank. It was twelve cubits long and none too wide, or thick. It came from under the canvas of the cart, from the arch where it helped to spread the load. Now it stretched to a rock in the middle of the flow. “Let’s put it on edge, and jam it. It’ll be narrower, but stronger.”

    “You’re definitely mad. Leave the dog here. He’s a good, valuable dog,” said Arvan.

    Díleas growled at him, as if to prove he might be valuable, but he wasn’t good, and danced onto his hind feet. Fionn reached down a hand, and said “up” and Díleas jumped up, putting his front feet over one shoulder. He really still was a pup with more fur than body.

    “It’s like he understands every word you say!”

    “You wouldn’t say that if you knew how long it took me to teach him that trick,” said Fionn, sticking out a hand for balance and stepping out onto the narrow plank. And falling off it. He was still above the rock so no harm was done.

    “Give up, gleeman,” said the caravan leader, shaking his head.

    “I have hardly begun to try and you want me to give up!” said Fionn. “No. I can do it, I’ll wager.”

    One of the younger travelers snorted. “How much?”

    “Well,” said Fionn. “I haven’t got much.” He stuck his free hand into his pouch, felt about, past the nine golden coins he’d removed from their hidden trove. They had plenty more. Never pluck a peacock bare naked, and he’d give you plenty of tail feathers over time, was Fionn’s feeling. He fished out some coppers. Counted them with great show. “Nine. I’ll give you nine coppers if I fall in. What do you dare wager? A silver for my copper?”

    “Huh. Gold, I reckon,” said the traveler. It was Dravko, one of the men who had been discussing what price he’d fetch as a slave in Annvn. “But what’s the point? You fall in there and you’re not coming back, you fool.”

    “I’ll set the coins on the rock here,” said Fionn, suiting the deed to the word. “Then you get them if I lose. Give me a coil of rope, and I’ll tie it off and toss the two ends back, and you can tie them onto your cart. With one line for my hands and one for my feet I can walk across easily.”

    “And then we lose a coil of rope when you fall in,” said Dravko scathingly, but looking at the coins.

    Fionn shrugged. “No entertainment for nothing.”

    “A coil of rope is worth nine coppers,” said Arvan. “Give him one, Nikos.”

    So Nikos did. It was a finely braided rope, and worth, Fionn reckoned, at least eight coppers.

    Fionn took a few dozen steps back and measured it all carefully with his eye…and sprinted at the plank. It was only three long strides to the rock, with a bit of a wobble in the middle, and he was on the midstream rock. The tricky part had not been crossing, but stopping in time to avoid landing in the water beyond — or dropping the twisting dog, who squirmed loose and bounded around on the lump of rock. Fionn leaned out and levered up the plank — a feat of strength most humans could not have managed, and swung it over. The other bank was not as far off — a mere nine cubits or so. Fionn laid the plank on the widest edge, with a good overlap.

    As Fionn inspected it, Díleas ran over it, nearly but not quite falling in. He stood on the far side, and barked at Fionn. Fionn shrugged. Walked along it. It bent quite alarmingly, but did not break.

    On the far side, Fionn, not quite off the plank, did an artistic stumble and jumped for the rock, kicking the plank off its rest and into the water, but gaining the far side, rolling. It was pure showmanship, but the fool dog was not proof against arrows. Someone could still decide they were demons. He stood up and dusted himself off. “Now I just need somewhere to tie the rope to, and I can come back and fetch my coins, and my winnings. Come, dog.”

    They walked off. They must have been a good seventy yards further along the causeway when one of the travelers said: “I don’t think he is coming back.” Fionn had keen enough ears, even at this range, to hear them, just as he’d heard the quiet talk on the price that he might fetch as a slave.

    Fionn whistled cheerfully and lengthened his stride. “I’d run ahead, dog,” he said quietly. “They might not have gone through with selling us, but soon someone is going to work out that I didn’t leave nine copper coins for no reason. They didn’t cheat me too badly for the price of a rope though. It might be useful. And you nearly fell in, you fool dog.”

    Díleas looked at the red, dragon-hide boots as if to say “they have poor grip” and then bounded away along the hexagonal stones. Fionn walked still faster. He did hear distant yells, but there were no arrows.

    And it was comforting to have a little gold about him again. It always made a dragon feel good, in a way that coppers did not.

    The causeway was an interesting thing. He’d never run across it in his many earlier wanderings across the multidimensional ring before, and yet it apparently led to places he once used to visit, and visit quite often.

    Had the structure changed? And what would reintegration of Tasmarin do to it all?

    If Fionn had not had to walk the worlds looking for his Scrap of humanity, he’d have been dead keen to find out. He rather liked changes, after millennia of the same.