The Emperor of All Things - By Paul Witcover Page 0,156
I seemed to see movement there, smoky and serpentine. It called to me, that alluring movement, tugged at me with a strength I couldn’t resist, and I took a step forward, and then another before Corinna hauled me back.
‘I told you not to look,’ she hissed, passing her hand before my eyes; it was as if a razor had cut whatever bound me to the dragon’s greedy gaze. I gasped and looked away, yet I did not close my eyes as I had before. Instead, I let them roam over the dragon’s body, trying to trace the sinuous, scaled, knotted immensity of it, as if it were a riddle I might solve. It was in constant motion, rippling like the surface of a river, which moves and yet stays still. Locked within its looping coils I saw the shadowy figures of men and women writhing as though in torment. The air shimmered with heat; I felt I stood on the very border of hell.
Meanwhile, Corinna addressed the monster. ‘I would not fight you, faithful Hesta,’ she said, and I started at that, not just because she had called the dragon by the name of the dog but because, when she did so, I perceived that they were one and the same, or, rather, aspects of each other, like two shadows cast by a single object; I could see the shadows, but the object itself remained hidden to me. But that was not the whole of the riddle.
At the sound of its name, the dragon growled low in its throat, and a smell of hot metal and oil gusted over me. It was an automaton. Another of Wachter’s incredible, impossible machines, or so I surmised. It opened its jaws, and I cringed, fearing its breath, for I could see a fiery glow deep in its gullet. But instead the creature spoke in a voice as sinuous as its body, as mesmerizing as its eyes. The voice of a woman, I would have said, an empress … had I not seen the source of it.
‘Go, faithless daughter,’ the dragon said. ‘I cannot harm you, nor will I impede you. But know this. Leave now and the way back will be for ever barred to you. You will never look upon Märchen again.’
‘There are other gates,’ Corinna replied. ‘I will be back. And I will not be alone.’
‘Others have said as much. Where are they now?’
‘I shall find them,’ Corinna said.
‘Then you will die with them,’ the dragon said, and there was sadness in its voice, but also resolution. ‘And what of you, human?’ it asked then, addressing me. ‘Will you share this rebel’s fate? You may stay with us if you wish. There is a place for you here. She cannot compel you to go, whatever she may have told you.’
‘Do not answer,’ Corinna warned.
Too late. ‘I did not ask to be brought here,’ I said, careful to avoid the dragon’s eye. ‘I merely wish to go home.’
At which the creature laughed, a low, thunderous rumble. ‘You sought us out. You found us. You may leave, but you will never go home again.’
‘She lies,’ Corinna told me. ‘Do not listen to her, Michael. I will bring you home, I swear it.’
‘You will be hunted,’ the dragon promised. ‘Both of you.’
Corinna raised her hand again, displaying what she held clenched in her fist; thin beams of blue-white light streamed between her fingers, and the dragon hissed and shied away as if from a weapon it feared to so much as gaze upon. ‘I will be waiting, Hesta,’ Corinna said, a promise of her own. Then she took hold of my hand again and stepped forward, advancing towards the dragon. The creature drew back with each step, flattening itself against the façade of the tower. By the time we reached the base, there was only the elaborate wooden carving that had always been there, of a dragon whose coils seemed to encompass hell itself.
Corinna placed her hand against the carving, and a door appeared, summoned by her touch. ‘Open it,’ she told me. I heard a strain in her voice I hadn’t heard before; glancing at her, I saw that she appeared once more as a young woman, her face pale and drawn, as if she were nearing the end of her strength. She had never looked so beautiful to me, and I felt my heart go out to her, wanting to protect her, to sustain her with my own strength, paltry as it