Llandry (Ebook)

Lady Draykon.

This is my title. It was bestowed upon me by the Elders of Glinnery themselves, and in front of a hall full of witnesses.

Two long moons later, I can still scarcely believe it.

I am Llandry Sanfaer. You may have heard my name. I am a citizen of Glinnery, one of the Seven Realms, even if I no longer live there. I am of the winged folk. I am a jeweller. I am shy, to my despair — probably more so than anybody you have ever met.

And I am a draykon. Shapeshifter, sorcerer, nightmare of the skies. Until recently, we of the Seven had forgotten the draykoni entirely, their absence from our world so extended that we no longer believed that they had ever existed.

It was me that brought them back. I did not know, then, what I was doing. I Changed… and the world changed with me. It is too late, now, to reverse those events, or to return the draykoni to their former dormancy. Some wish, fervently, that it were not so. We bring magic and wonder and life to the Seven — and we have also brought chaos, fear and war. There are those who will always condemn us.

I am not always certain that they are wrong.

Other pens have recorded the events of which I speak. Accounts have been written and re-written, by scholars almost as authoritative upon such points as I. I have given my side of those stories, over and over again. It is not the purpose of this journal to repeat that tale.

This endeavour is about the future. It was suggested to me by Lady Evastany Glostrum, a friend of mine since those confusing days. She is far better versed in the arts of politics and a public life than I; she has been submerged in both ever since she was born.

Llan. The coming years will be difficult for us all, but for you more than anyone. The return of the draykoni is, by and large, laid at your door, and not everyone is delighted with this development. Now the draykoni tribes and the people of the Seven must find a way to co-exist. It will not be easy. It falls to you, to Ori and to Avane to bring about peace, if you can.

There will be those who will question you, blame you, even curse you. When that day comes, it will be well for you to have a record to hand; an account, if you like, of everything you have done, and everything that you have attempted.

I have no doubt that she is right. Part of me wishes that she had not warned me, thereby stripping me of the bliss that ignorance can sometimes be. It is harder than ever to take up this duty, knowing that blame and accusation are likely to be part of my reward. But she is right.

Besides that, dear Llan, these are momentous times! Someday a little further in the future, scholars will look back on the events of our lives, and wonder. If they do not have first-hand, authoritative accounts upon which to draw, then history will remember us falsely. I undertake to commit my perspective to paper, and I urge you to do the same.

She has promised that I may read her account, when she chooses to declare it finished. I have promised that she may read mine.

Here, then, is my record of events following the draykon war upon the city of my birth, Waeverleyne. I swear that it is a true and faithful record, to the best of my knowledge and information.

This account begins in the year 1913, on the eighth day of the seventh moon. I cannot yet say where it will end.

* * *

Not even half a year has passed since I discovered my secret heritage. Perhaps I ought more rightly to say, since my heritage discovered me. My first Change came upon me without warning, and I was defenceless against it.

Prior to that change, the draykoni had receded so far from public memory that we had recast them as mere legend. Absent from our realms for hundreds of years, with all records of their history expunged from our libraries, they had dwindled into tales. We told each other stories of creatures bigger than houses, with wings like sails and scales of every imaginable hue. They could breathe fire, we said. They could swallow a human child whole, and frequently did.

I was the first person to suffer the Change. I say suffer because it was by far the most painful experience of my life. Try to imagine, if you will, that every inch of your skin tries to turn itself inside out; your organs expand too quickly for your beleaguered body to hold; your bones splinter and break themselves in their haste to reform, and then mend in the blink of an eye. Your heart pounds about a thousand beats a minute and you sweat away most of your body’s water under the appalling pressure of it.

And then, when the searing pain is finished and all is quiet once more, you are… other. Everything around you has inexplicably shrunk, for it takes a little while to realise that it is you that has grown. Your face feels strange, because where there was once a mouth there is now a protuberance which can only be described as a snout. Wings you may be used to, if you are Glinnish like me, but not like these. These are indeed the size of sails, and they weigh differently upon your lengthened back. And I cannot even begin to describe how differently scales feel to skin.

When you look down and discover your arms to be more aptly described as forelegs, and that you are sporting wicked claws a few inches long upon what used to be your hands… I would like to think that panic would be a normal reaction.

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