realized that it was a person, a man seated in a sort of saddle. Hanner blinked again, and shouted, “Hai!” He waved his arms over his head.
The dragon wheeled and turned upward, craning its long neck to look down at Hanner; it looked around, and found clear ground nearby — all the other former warlocks in that area who were capable of it had fled, leaving a space large enough for the beast to land without stepping on anyone. It settled gracefully to the ground, and the wind of its arrival forced Hanner back two or three steps. It folded its wings, then swung its immense head around to look at Hanner with slit-pupiled golden eyes the size of cartwheels.
The man riding on its back leaned over to look at Hanner, as well, and Hanner looked back, seeing a handsome, black-haired young man dressed in fine leathers.
But it was the dragon, and not the rider, who spoke.
“Our compliments, sirrah, and are you, perchance, in a position to speak for all, and to explain your presence here?”
Its voice was deep and rumbling, as if a thunderstorm had spoken, and on top of that it spoke Ethsharitic with a curious accent, a little like one Hanner had occasionally heard from very old people when he was a boy in the overlord’s palace. It took a moment for Hanner to make sense of its words.
His comprehension was not aided by the constant awareness that he was standing a few feet away from a mouth that could swallow him in a single gulp. Hanner’s instinctive terror was tempered by the realization that the creature seemed more interested in talking to him than in eating him, but he was still terrified.
It did not help that he realized he could smell the dragon; he was that close to the great beast. Its odor was not quite like anything he had ever smelled before, but reminded him of dust, blood, and hot metal.
“As much as anyone is, yes,” he said at last.
“Pray you, then, speak, and expound to us how you come to be standing untroubled not a hundred yards from the Warlock Stone — if indeed, the Stone remains.”
The stone the dragon spoke of could only be the source of the Calling. “It doesn’t,” Hanner said. “It’s gone, back where it came from.”
“And was that then the great disturbance that we saw from afar a few hours gone, in the depths of night?”
Hanner had reached his limit in making sense of the creature’s questions. “I…what?”
“May I, Aldagon?” the man in the saddle called.
“And you would,” the dragon replied, turning to look at its passenger.
The black-haired young man smiled, and slid from his place on the monster’s back. He dropped a few yards to the ground, but managed to stay on his feet, and came walking up to Hanner, hand extended.
They shook, and the young man in leather said, “I’m Dumery of the Dragon, and this is Aldagon, She Who Is Great Among Dragons. Aldagmor is named for her.”
This seemed to Hanner to be an extravagant and unlikely claim, but he was hardly in a position to argue about it, and after all, these were unlikely circumstances. “I’m Hanner,” he said. “Formerly Hanner the Warlock, formerly Chairman of the Council of Warlocks.”
Dumery nodded thoughtfully, and looked around. “Formerly a warlock,” he said. “I didn’t know that was possible. Interesting. I saw hundreds of other people here before they all hid from Aldagon; were they all warlocks?”
“Yes,” Hanner said. “They used to be.”
“So the Warlock Stone is gone, and…what? It released you? You had all been Called?”
That was close enough to what had actually happened that Hanner just nodded. “Yes,” he said again.
“There were a lot of you.”
“Yes,” Hanner said, and this time he thought a little more explanation was called for. “It was everyone who was ever Called, ever since the Night of Madness. We were caught in the…the Warlock Stone’s protective spells.”
Dumery let out a low whistle. “All of you? But there must have been thousands!”
“Yes,” Hanner said again, hoping he didn’t sound stupid, saying the same thing over and over.
“What will you all eat?”
“That’s a very good question,” Hanner said. “We have some theurgists, and they were able to summon Piskor the Generous. She gave us those bundles — see?” He gestured toward the one at his feet, and then at the hundreds that had been dropped by people fleeing Aldagon’s approach.
“That doesn’t look like enough to last very long,” Dumery said.
Hanner turned up an empty palm. “Three days, the goddess said.”
“Then what?”
“We were hoping we could reach civilization by then.”
“’Twould be a vigorous walk, to reach a city so soon,” Aldagon rumbled.
Hanner started, and looked from Dumery to the dragon, then back. “How… You were riding it.”
“Her,” Dumery corrected him. “Yes, I was.”
Hanner gave the dragon a sidelong glance, not wanting to say anything that could possibly offend it — or rather, her. “Have you… Is she…”
“Is she tame?” Dumery grinned. “No. Far from it. But we’re business partners.”
“Partners?” He looked back and forth from the dragon to the man, but could read nothing from either’s expression. “Is that…is that sort of thing common? I was caught in that spell for seventeen years, so I don’t know what the World is like now, but — partners?”
Dumery smiled. “No, it’s not common. I think Aldagon and I are the only such partnership since the Great War. We’ve been working together for about ten years now.” He turned his smile toward Aldagon. “I think we’ve both been pleased with how it’s worked out,” he said.
“Aye, I am not displeased,” Aldagon said. “Though certes, I am kept from my repose more than e’er I was these four centuries past. Dumery would work me to skin and bone, did I allow.”
“Oh, you were bored silly until we met, and you know it,” Dumery said, reaching up to slap Aldagon’s jaw — the only part of the dragon he could reach from where he stood.
“Said I not, I am not displeased?”
Hanner closed his eyes for a moment to gather his wits.
As far as he was concerned, a day or two ago he had been trying to fight off the Calling while Arvagan finished up the Transporting Tapestry he had ordered. He had been home in Ethshar of the Spices, living with his wife and children in his late uncle’s mansion on High Street, and everything had been fairly normal.
Now he was standing in the mud of Aldagmor, a hundred yards from the pit where the Calling had originated, talking to a dragon. He had seen and heard a goddess. He had seen and heard the Response that had carried the Warlock Stone back into the sky. He was seventeen years in the future.
That was all a little difficult to absorb.
“But see you, friend Hanner,” Aldagon said, interrupting his thoughts, “while I would do you no harm, you and your compatriots are in lands that have known no human habitation in many a year, and lands that I and mine had thought our own. I had thought these lands to be forbidden to your kind, and like to remain so. My home lies not far hence, chosen that none should trouble me there, and likewise I should trouble none with my presence, yet here you are, in your thousands. Do you, then, intend to dwell in this place henceforth?”
“What?” Hanner looked up, startled. “Oh, no, we aren’t staying — at least, most of us aren’t. I told you, we want to get back to civilization.” He looked around, and saw several people