Proem

I am the last of my kind.

I have flown the winds of the World, seeking companions, but all I have encountered have been the humble creatures, the ones that inherited the land and ocean and clouds from us. There are no true speakers left, no people, except myself, and thus my recollection fades of all that I once knew. I fly through mists not just of the World but of my memory.

I have seen the rotting wrecks of what my kind built. They are hunted among by the humble creatures, who know them, if their unformed minds are capable of knowing them at all, as merely rockfalls. They do not see the marks where talons wrought; the humble creatures cannot be brushed by the minds that made these things.

Yet once, I cannot recall how long ago, I was drifting with the clouds when I came across an island of ragged stone and high cliffs, buffeted by hungry waves. Upon that island soared eight mighty towers that were hushed with their own ancientness.

I flew among them and wondered. No humble creatures came here to this island, not even the feathered ones, the false dragons. I felt as if I had come upon a huge cavern that had long been deserted by those who had dwelt there, but that nonetheless they had waited to welcome me to a home I had never seen.

I alighted at last upon one of the towers, whence I could look down upon the landscapes of the clouds, and watch how they reconstructed for scant moments the glories that once our kind had built.

And then the stone tower spoke to me, telling me a tale -- a tale of how things had begun with the breath of the great one for whom I was named. It told me this tale, and then I flew beneath the watchful eye of the sky to the next tower, where again I was told a tale.

Each of the towers had a tale to tell, and each of the towers did I perch upon, until all were done. Then I flew away to a far eyrie to reflect upon what I had learned, to roam within the eight tales until I knew them, their people and their vistas, and was a part of them and they a part for all my life of me. I became the holder of those tales: my wings and bones and flesh and claws were their eggshell.

I flew back, then, to the island -- to my home.

But the waves were naked where it had been. I cast wide and far, wide and far as there ever was or ever could be, but nothing of the island or its towers could I see.

And then it came to me that the place I had visited and its towers had been built not of stone, but of memories, and that this was why I could no longer find them, for the memories had been swirled away by the winds, scattered among the clouds and the seas like smoke made invisible.

One day they will become whole again, if only fleetingly, somewhere in the World, and until that day I will fly the skies in search of them, just as the Memory of the one for whom I am named seeks forever, as the towers told me, the part of him that fled.

The towers were built of memories, and memories are thin and fragile things, easily dispersed.

As am I, for since that day I have been a creature formed from memories, not flesh.

The Two Anyas and the Coming of the Ice Dragons

When the World was young there was most commonly great peace among our forefathers, who were greater than we are as is the forest to the tree. They carved valleys and raised mountains, and all the time they gave birth to populate the World. Once colour had come into the world, and the Girl-Child LoChi had brought also music and laughter, our forefathers used their breath to create great masterpieces of light and sound that were more joyous than any that ever were or ever could be.

Greatest of all these great masterpieces before the raising of Dragonhenge was the Moving Light of the North, which was painted upon the sky by the breath of a young fearless Lesser called Anya.

She looked upon her creation, the Moving Light of the North, and saw that it moved with the same pulse as her own pulse, dancing in the dark sky like spectral dragon wings, pale against even the light of the stars yet more alive than night clouds touched by the shine of the cold Moon. It was a flame made of living ice. And the chill music that it gave was the music of silence.

Anya felt love stir in her for the first time, and knew that the love was for her own creation, the Moving Light of the North. Each night she called to it words of love from her own rocky nest, as if she were a lover wooing an aloof adored one in a high eyrie, but it had no words for her in return. Each night she danced for it across the sky above the shade-filled forests and the black mirror rivers, but it paid her no heed: it just danced on in its own slow and silent way, dancing not for her but for the diamond starlight. She sang to it of the valleys that the Great Ones had carved out of the land and she sang to it of the Mountains-That-Roar and she sang to it of the Dream of Qinmeartha and she sang to it of her own dreams and she sang to it of the first breath of air in the morning as the Sun brings its fingers of warmth to the cold world, but all her songs went seemingly unheard. She let large tears of love form in her eyes, hoping that she could stir the Moving Light of the North into at least pity, but still it ignored her. And then she blew great flames across the land, conjuring wastes and forests alike to blaze so that the World became a beacon, but still the Moving Light of the North had no reply for her.

Those around her saw her dancing and heard her singing, and some of them mocked her for her hopeless love while others sighed for her pain, knowing that the love for the one who cannot be attained is the greatest love there ever has been or ever could be. All told her that she should forget the masterpiece she had made, the Moving Light of the North, and turn her eyes from the high skies to the low ones. But all she did in response to their kind or cruel words was spit fire or hiss fury.

A secret dream was born within the breast of Anya, as great a dream for her as the Dream of Qinmeartha was for the World. If her cold lover would not see her while she stayed in the low skies, then she must fly high to him, to where he could not fail to see her because of her closeness. Others had flown as high as or higher than this before her, she knew, for did not everyone know of Joli's flight beyond even the Sun, yet still her heart near ceased its beating even as she thought of such a venture. The more she thought of it and the more her heart flinched, the more she knew she must not think of it; until, on the longest night of winter, still not thinking of what she desired to do, she took air on wings whose leather shook with her great fear, and she circled once and she circled twice above a great lake of frozen moonlight, then climbed towards the skies and her loved one.

Clouds gathered from all around the World to form a wall to halt her upward flight, but she beat through their barrier with angry flames. Many of the Stars-That-Flare flew by her, whispering all their doubts to her, but she refused to let their doubts become her own doubts. A Star-That-Grows-A-Crest, its feathery tail spread across the heavens, spoke to her in its gruff voice, urging her to turn back, but, although she spoke back to it politely, she disobeyed its hoarse exhortations. Three young male Lessers who knew her well and admired her for her beauty and her strength of purpose followed her some small way and tried to lure her back to the low skies, but she rejected their pleadings and, one after the other, they fell away below her until she was alone in the sea of darkness that is the high night.

There she breathed fire to give light to herself and to give warmth to herself. She knew that the breath of a dragon is made up of countless tiny dragons, each breathing fiery breaths that are themselves made up of even tinier dragons, and so on forever; so her breath gave her not just light and warmth but as many companions for the journey as she could ever have hoped for. She spoke to them as she flew higher and higher, knowing they replied even though their voices were too tiny for her to hear each one. All together, though, their voices were a roar that made the stars tremble in their courses, and she took comfort from this.

When the World was a coloured swirl beneath her, she ended her circling and her climbing, and drove for the far North, where dwelt the Living Light in the dreaming dance that she had given it. Over black seas she flew, pocked by the sailing ice islands, until there was no sea any more but just the glassy ice. And then she came to a place where the darkness was utter save for the stars, and here it was that the Living Light dwelt, for now it was large in her vision and the silence of its music and its dancing large in her ears.

She came hovering before it and knew that it was vaster than she had ever known while she was creating it, for it seemed to stretch down to the World below her and up to the furthest rims of the Void above her, and from side to side she could see no edges to it. No longer did it seem to her as the ghosts of dragon wings; rather, it was to her as if it were a waterfall of dreams that shielded this World from another where thoughts were real as rocks in which music and light were bright streaks of ore.

'I have come to be with you,' she said to the Living Light of the North in a voice tamed by awe. 'It is something I have known forever, that we two are one, that we are destined to be together, the light of our love shining down upon all the World so that all may know of it.'

The Living Light of the North danced on, moving in steady, unerring time to the silent music that it made.

'I offer you as my love-gift all the greens and greys of the dawn of the day,' said Anya. 'I offer you the conversation of the leaves and the rivers' heartbeat. I offer you the loneliness of winter mists and the chatter of clouds' skidding shadows. I offer you the rages of lightning and the calm of sunshine on moist mosses. I offer you the length of a summer day and the scents of rain-creased nighttime. I offer you the glitter of split stone and the sombreness of a condor's flight. I offer you the eternal disputation that is life. All of these things I offer you as my love-gift, asking from you nothing in return but your love.'

Did the Living Light of the North pause for a moment in its stately dance? She could not tell, but she thought not. It had a heart steelier than any preying dragon there ever had been or ever could be.

'And I offer you myself,' she said. 'For that is the greatest thing I have to offer as my love-gift.'

And this time the Living Light of the North did pause, for by offering herself she was offering it everything there was, and all her other gifts were made nothing.

Its voice pressed against her scales.

'Who are you to believe I have love to give you in return?' said the Living Light of the North.

'I am the one who created you with my own breath,' responded Anya, 'because my love for you was great enough.'

'Then, through loving me, you gave me love to give to you,' said the Living Light of the North in its voice that she could not hear but only feel pushing against her body. 'Yet, since I am only a tapestry of light created by your breath and not a truly living being, I have no passion, and so my love cannot last forever, as yours, but only for the rest of this long night.'

'Then the rest of this long night shall be our forever,' said Anya.

So for a quarter of a year, which was also forever, they embraced, dancing a new dance that had never been seen before and has never been seen since, and the light of their love did indeed shine down upon all the World so that all saw it, and to the heart of every dragon that there was came wonder and fear, for it had not been a part of the Dream of Qinmeartha that any dragon should find a union thus. Until the reluctant summer of those far northern places arrived were they together, and then the shard of love that was all the Living Light of the North possessed waned, as it had promised, just as the dim sunlight crept across the oceans of ice below them.

Knowing herself no longer loved, Anya fluttered from the sky to land upon a crag of ice that stood proud above the rest. There she sculpted for herself a nest, melting the ice with tears of flame, for she could hear the crackle of new life within her. And so it was that she laid a clutch of a dozen eggs, and warmed them with her belly for the nightless summer long until the Sun began to be eaten by the horizon and she felt the eggs begin to split. Then and only then did she leave her children and fly upwards, ever upwards, to seek out the Living Light of the North in hopes of rekindling their love. Whether she ever did so is something no one knows nor can ever know, for from that day to this she has not been seen again.

Her children, left behind, were like dragons and yet they were not like dragons. They had scales and wings and thorny tails, and they had eyes that shone like angry rubies, but they were as white as the icy wastes around them and that had seen them born, and the fire of their breath was the fire of cold, not the fire of the Sun. There were a dozen of them, and six were male and six were female, and they fought and squabbled and loved as young dragons all do before wisdom falls like slow rain upon them. They did not see mountainsides as they grew, nor trees, nor rivers, nor seas, nor the Mountains-That-Roar, nor valleys, but always the ice that is harder than rock and the Sun that is there for half a year and then flees for the other half-year, and the snow that the sorrowing sky weeps. For food they had only ice, which is why their breath burnt only with cold. The ice it was that gave them strength, and also their hatred for everything that was not them; for they knew nothing but themselves and hated all that they believed did not exist and could not be.

In their solitude and their hatred, they bred, and many generations passed by until there were uncounted multitudes of the ice dragons dwelling under the cold Sun and colder darkness of the lands that are the northern wastes. Then it was that one day one of their number, a proud and savage warrior called Garndon, saw flitting across the pale disc of the northern Sun the dark silhouettes of a flight of dragons that resembled his kin and yet resembled them not, and all the hatred that had grown through all the long generations did rise up in him, and he called out in a mighty voice for his fellows to gather round him, and he told them of what he had seen.

'They are abominations,' he said, sparking echoes from the ice shards that rose up all about them, 'and they must die, for their being desecrates the World.'

His fellows breathed icy assent that froze in the air to form statues of slaughter: here a dragon flayed of his scales while still alive, there a dragon spitted by a spear of ice and still writhing her agony upon it.

So did Garndon gather a host about him of the ice dragons, and they equipped themselves with daggers and swords and lances of ice, which they hardened to diamond with their breath, and they assembled upon a plain of ice that stretched as far as the eye could see and could ever have seen. Their shouting and their shrieks of hatred startled hail from the heavens above, and the lowering Sun shone red like blood upon their frost-gilt scales and their bitterly eager teeth. With a shrug of his wings that was louder than a command, Garndon lofted himself into the air, and in their thousands upon untold thousands they followed him until they covered the sky from one horizon to the other, so that the Sun could no longer see the World.

And south they headed. Over the glassy ice they flew, and then over the black seas pocked by the sailing ice islands, until they came to lands greened by trees and grasses. Wherever they came upon us, in our ones and twos and hundreds, they fell upon us and rent us to pieces with their claws and teeth, or froze us with their breath, or hewed us with their diamond swords and lances and daggers. Many of us they devoured, feasting for the first time that they ever knew upon meat that was not ice. And they left only the limbs and lights of our forefathers, those that they had not devoured entire, scattered across the mountainsides and valleys for the small animals and the birds to pick. Alongside the rivers and lakes of water there became rivers and lakes of dragon blood, which slowly hardened in the glare of the Sun to become the red rocks that are all the memorial there is for those who died. Even our eggs did the ice dragons shatter, sucking up their yolks as a great delicacy and minding not that each egg so destroyed was an unborn spirit deprived of its sojourn upon the World and its chance to fulfil the Dream of Qinmeartha. Foul and cruel were their crimes, such as none had seen before and none have ever seen since.

News of this slaughter flew south faster than even the ice dragons could fly, and it reached the ears of the dragons of the hotter lands, who fell prey to fear and turned in upon themselves and their nests, hoping that the vile plague of death would never come their way.

But among them was a young Lesser called Anya for her fearlessness. Though she could not have been of the lineage of the first Anya, who had given birth only to those who became the ice dragons now slaying all who lay in their dire path and leaving only misery and destruction in their wake, yet there were many about her who felt that her spirit was the same as that of the long-before Anya, for there shimmered in her eyes the light that shows there is nothing the dragon cannot attain. And, as Garndon had before her, she called out in a great voice and gathered about her a host of wrathful warrior dragons, Lessers and Greaters alike answering her summons.

'Are we just to wait here to be butchered?' she said into the warm wind that swirled. 'Will we betray all the dreams of those who have gone before us, even the dream of Qinmeartha himself? And are we to betray those who should come after us? Will we bow our heads meekly to Evil and die in a blaze of shame?'

Though none had heard the word Evil before, all knew its meaning, and they shouted angrily to the heavens that they would follow her in defence of all that was good even to the highest eyrie of all, the eyrie that is Death. Better by far to go to the eyrie of Death for the cause of Good than to be conveyed there by the wings of Evil.

'Remember she who flew all the way to the skies, even though they said she could not!' cried this new Anya. 'Remember she who even though long gone from the World gave me her spirit to have as my own! Take as you need of her strength from me, my friends, for we shall fly north to meet this cursed horde.'

And they did indeed drink of her strength, or of the strength that she had been given, and still Anya herself was no less strong, but was the first of them to take to the air. And in their thousands upon untold thousands they followed her until they covered the sky from one horizon to the other, so that the Sun could no longer see the World.

To the north they headed, drawing ever more of our forefathers to join them until the sky was filled a hundred layers thick with beating wings. They bore with them swords and daggers and lances they had fashioned from the branches of the forests and fire-hardened with their breath, or from stones they had split apart with smites of their claws. And still more joined them, until the sky was filled a thousand layers thick with beating wings.

At last Anya came upon Garndon on a coast where the greatest ocean there is or ever could be beat against the sides of mountains so tall they ripped open the clouds' bellies. These two hosts, neither greater than the other -- the heart-chilling white hordes that cackled behind Garndon, their jaws dripping with the blood and yolk of the innocents they had slaughtered, and the many-coloured hordes that trumpeted their fiery defiance behind Anya -- faced each other while the waves churned beneath them.

Anya cried out her defiance in a voice that shook deluges of snow free from the mountain pinnacles to crash like thunder into the valleys beneath, and these were the words she said.

'The Dream of Qinmeartha is that all dragons shall live in peace and fellowship, and in return shall be given the waters of the World to drink and the humble creatures to eat and the air to breathe, so that we may work to bring his Dream to ever greater fulfilment. This is Qinmeartha's law. All who disobey it, all who seek to destroy, will be cast away from their lives in the World.'

'We obey no dragon's dreaming,' cried Garndon in a voice that drew up the waves until they were near as tall as the mountains and that made spinning winds dance along the shore, tearing sand and rocks away into their dance. 'The true home of all true dragons is the icy waste, as it has always been and always will be, and all who claim to be dragons yet populate the despised realms of the warm are shams and mockeries and abominations that must be destroyed if the World is to be clean.'

With that the vile leader of the ice dragons plucked up some of the greatest of the mountains in his clawed fists and hurled them at the Moon, which was watching far above. And the mountains struck the face of the Moon, as we can all still see today, so that it no longer had the unblemished beauty of the Sun.

In response to his gesture of hatred the dragons behind Anya turned their faces to the heavens and blew flames that set fire to the clouds and brought a million new stars into being.

Anya took the first of her lances, which was a tall pine tree torn from the ground and made harder than stone by the fire of her breath, and hurled it at Garndon's chest. He swung easily in the air and the weapon flew past his chest to impale one of his warriors, who fell on the backs of those beneath him, so dense were the hordes in the sky.

And all at once the dragons of the warm lands fell upon those of the north, and all the World was filled with cries of savagery and wrath and agony and fear. For the ice dragons, whatever their Evil, were not weak and were not cowards, and fought back as hard and as bravely as any could have asked. Many died in that first wave of attack, and their spirits rose to the highest eyrie of all, the eyrie that is Death, until the eyrie could hold no more.

Then Anya took the second of her lances, which was a needle of rock scraped in a single strike of a Greater's claw from the side of the tallest mountain in the World, and hurled it at Garndon. But again the warlord of the ice dragons swerved easily in the air so that the weapon flew past his loins to impale one of his warriors, who fell on the backs of those beneath him, so dense were the hordes in the sky.

And now the ice dragons flew to the attack, falling upon the dragons of the warm lands and enacting upon them a dreadful though evil vengeance for what had gone before. Yet the dragons of the warm lands were no less full-hearted than those from the northern wastes, and, while they perished in their thousands, as many of the ice dragons died with them. And the spirits of all that were slain rose up towards the highest eyrie of all, the eyrie that is Death. But that eyrie could hold no more, for it was full of the spirits of those who had died before them in the battle for the World, the greatest battle there ever was or ever could be, and so these new spirits were turned away to wander among the stars, where they added themselves to the number of the Stars-That-Grow-Crests, which can accordingly be either good or evil or merely passing wayfarers, as they are to this day.

The hosts of Good and Evil retreated from each other. So many had died in the two onslaughts that now the sky was not filled a thousand layers thick with beating wings, nor even a hundred, but only a dozen, and in places the Sun pierced through to glisten upon the seas and the lands of the World.

Then Anya took the third and last of her lances. This was neither a tree torn from the ground nor a needle of stone ripped from a mountain's flank, but instead it was a lance she had fashioned herself from her breath and her vision and her fearlessness, from the light reflected off a still lake, from the cries of new-hatched dragons, from the serene music that is made by the Moon, from the peace of the rainbow, and from the joy that fills the spirit at the first sight of a green-fringed valley between sprawling hills. It was a lance too bright for any dragon's eye to look upon save that of its maker, so that, this time when she hurled it at the hated figure of the leading ice dragon, Garndon, he saw nothing coming towards him except a shard of sunlight, and he failed to move aside. The lance struck him through his heart, which was made not of flesh but of ice and hatred, and he screamed a scream that could be heard all around the World, and by the Sun and the Moon and the stars, a scream that can still be heard in the howl of the destroying wind as it lashes the waves into fury.

But even as Garndon died, so did the third and final lance of Anya, the lance that she had fashioned from her own essence, strike at the hearts of those around him. Many thousands of them perished in that moment, but still there were many thousands left, and these, knowing that there was nothing awaiting them but Death unless they could somehow prevail, swarmed with hideous cries towards the hordes of Anya, who had grown slovenly in their own defence now that they thought the battle was ended. The dragons of the warm lands swiftly rallied, but not so swiftly that thousands of them did not die before the last of the ice dragons of the northern lands was cast down from the air to perish upon that bloodied coast.

The spirits of all who had died in the greatest battle there ever was or ever could be ascended to the highest eyrie of them all, the eyrie that is Death, but they found it full to bursting with the spirits of those who had died before them, and they found that the sky too was full to bursting with new Stars-That-Grow-Crests so that it could accept no more of them. And so these last of the spirits of the warriors fell back towards the World, coming to ground in many places all around it. There those spirits even today lie where they fell, and we can see and hear them. The spirits of the dragons of the warm lands become new, young Mountains-That-Roar, and still can be heard as they spit their lusty, life-filled defiance of Evil to the skies. And the spirits of the ice dragons became the rivers of ice that squat among high mountains and by the chillest seas, and which also roar, in a long, low grumble that makes the heart cold, of the Evil that they sought to bring about; or they went deep within the ground, where still they roar and heave the land with their hatred, causing great destruction.

Few were the dragons that Anya led back to their homes in the warm places, and all of them were sorely wounded, their wings torn to tatters and their throats and bellies dripping blood, yet they bore their wounds with pride for did they not know that they had saved the World from the hordes of Evil, and that they had saved the lives of all who had remained behind and all the dragons who were as yet unborn?

So it seemed to them, at least, but Evil, once engendered, is not so easily extirpated, and it still lurks in the World and in the hearts of all too many dragons, as we do know. Thus Anya, while victorious over the forces that Garndon had mustered, knew even herself that his dead spirit had gained a minor triumph over her: while the ice dragons had been driven from the face of the World, the Evil they had brought with them -- the Evil that is blind and unreasoning hatred -- could never be.

So Anya, while she never lost her fearlessness, ever after carried also humility within her. It is these two entwined that she, many generations later, will express through the greatest masterpiece there ever was or ever could be.

Her creation, Dragonhenge.