The ideals proclaimed by Narasíben continue to gain supporters. From all across Ghadáreim, men and women inspired by her words have gathered together in the eastern desert. Although High Temple Pétlas and his followers have harshly accused her of treason, there’s no evidence that she or her supporters have anything in mind but the rejuvenation of Ghadáreim. According to a source sympathetic to her cause, Narasíben seeks to free Ghadáreim from the stagnancy it suffers under the rule of the current archon. The growing desert in the east is proof in itself of how urgently change is needed.

This is the account Rosédan gave me of her adventures in the eastern wasteland where the rebels held dominion, or dominion of a sort.

When I saw that vile Dancer touch you with the rod of judgment, I was so angry. That’s the kind of thing that’s done to common criminals, and it makes me ashamed to think of what’s happened to Ghadáreim since I left it. He even threatened me with the rod when I protested. I was angry, but when I saw them carry you away I was heartbroken. I was afraid we might never see each other again.

I thought I was going to be taken all the way to Xarkív by dragon, but instead my guards walked with me down to the first level of the city and out into the fields beyond. We traveled on the road north towards the ocean, and my guards refused to tell me how they meant to reach Xarkív. But near the northern coast I saw a dragon circling above us for a few hours before it landed and its rider dismounted to meet us. It was obvious that the guards didn’t like him much and he didn’t like them, so I wasn’t surprised when he turned out to be one of the rebels.

One of the rebels, I said, and in fact it was Télhreus. He was the one who would take me the rest of the way to Xarkív. I thought at first that it was curious, that Dancer being on good enough terms with the rebels to arrange such a thing, but I soon learned that for all the rebels’ posturing, they aren’t really as opposed to the hierarchy as we thought. But I’ll explain all that later.

Télhreus was very apologetic about the whole thing. I don’t think he entirely agreed with his superiors, and at several points during our conversations I thought he was about to tell me what had happened to Xarkív. But he successfully avoided the topic until we reached our destination, and he pointed out the town to me below.

By this time I certainly had noticed that the land was not how I remembered it. The forests were gone, the streams dried to a trickle or vanished altogether, and all the fields were dry and barren. The great river Kasíli was still there, at least, flowing down from the holy mountain of the north, but its eastern bank was blighted. When Télhreus pointed to the domes that were barely visible above an expanse of sand, I thought that he was playing a joke on me. “It was long ago that your home was swallowed by the desert,” he said. “A long time since it was abandoned.”

“Xarkív wasn’t my home,” I said, but my heart wasn’t in my words. The scene below brought home to me just how different this place and time was, no matter how many dragons filled the sky or magicians the halls, no matter how few the differences between my speech and theirs.

“You see the mockery Dancer Táfir was trying to make of you. It’s his revenge, of course. You’re a living, breathing reminder of the values they’ve forgotten and the traditions they’ve abandoned. They couldn’t stand to see you!”

I told him I didn’t understand what he meant. “What values and traditions are you talking about?” I asked.

He waved his hand rather dismissively. “Do you want us to land? Is there something down there that’ll stir up fond old memories of your school days?”

I could only laugh. “No. Absolutely nothing.”

“Then since I don’t think they’ll want you back in Nusgwéden, I’ll take you to our camp. Unless you had somewhere else you wanted to go first. No? Well, maybe you’ll learn soon what the difference is between us and the hierarchy in Nusgwéden. They call us rebels, but they’re the ones who are revolting against everything we once believed.”

The camp of the rebels, or at least the largest of their camps, was north of Xarkív, atop a butte that had, if my memory doesn’t fail me, once been home to a community of religious ascetics who carved out caves for themselves in the rock. But the ascetics were, it seemed, long gone and the caves were now home to Télhreus’s faction, who spilled out into tents around and on top of the butte. To be more precise, most of the larger caves served as stables for the dragons.

“I wonder if Narasíben is here today,” said Télhreus when we had landed and seen to his dragon. He explained that she was the leader of the rebels, and more than that, a prophetess. “The archon’s wife claimed to see visions in her dreams, but Narasíben obtained her visions by wandering in the desert, in the ancient way.”

“What did she see?” I asked.

“You’ll have to ask her yourself,” Télhreus told me. “If she’s here and not visiting one of the other camps.”

But as it turned out, Narasíben was there. We found her standing near one of the larger tents atop the butte, looking out eastward across the landscape. And it really was a dreadful landscape. It was like the sun had been brought so close to the earth that it had dried it all up, scorching it with a vengeful heat. As far as I could see the land was dead, and I asked without thinking, “What did we do to make Heaven punish us like this?”

Narasíben was a remarkable woman. She was taller even than you, I think, and when she spoke it was as stirring as the blast of a trumpet. But her eyes were always elsewhere, almost as if she was thinking about, was always looking at or hearing, something different. It was only when I spoke that she turned around to face us. “Heaven?” she said. “Heaven has nothing to do with it. This is the revelation of what the world always was. But you are Rosédan, the lost girl who has returned.”

“You know me,” I said. I wasn’t really surprised: of course she would have sympathies and contacts in Nusgwéden.

“I heard the news as soon as you came through the door in the sky. A thing like that can hardly go unnoticed, even as far as we are from the holy mountain. Besides, I know the name of every dragon in Ghadáreim, but yours was an enigma to me. I’m glad you’ve come to me, though I could wish you brought your dragon.”

Narasíben was remarkable, true, but I’m convinced that she was also insane. She reminded me of Raumuréh in that both described themselves in grandiose terms: the greatest magician of Ghadáreim, the prophet who would transform the world, but also that both of them constantly spoke of hearing things that I could not. Delusions, maybe, or maybe not. We’ve both seen a lot of strange things in this world, haven’t we?

I don’t know whether I should describe the rebels or their beliefs first. Maybe I’ll start by saying that by no means did all the rebels believe the same thing. They were united by their opposition to the archon and the hierarchy under him, but I got the impression that Télhreus, for example, believed something very different than Narasíben, despite what he said about her visions and how he admired her. But you know what Télhreus believes. Narasíben was altogether different.

They were gathered together from all over Ghadáreim, northerners and Sotlací alike, and surprisingly even a few Zamara from the western coast and dark-skinned Gwūr like Lugwin and his family. Narasíben’s message certainly had been a successful one. She was perfectly frank about the reason she had been wandering in the desert to begin with. She had been exiled for sedition against the archon, which by itself would suggest that she was simply up to her old tricks, but according to her story she had undergone a transformation.

You see, according to her, while in the desert alone, she had come to the realization, which she described as an awakening, that the things of this world were obstacles in the way of achieving something greater. She was vague on the point of what this greater thing was: Télhreus and some of the others I asked thought that it was union with Heaven, but others said that it was altogether new, a society of freedom and equality like nothing ever seen before, or even a new mode of being beyond being.

In practice this meant that there were no ranks among the rebels, except that Narasíben was in charge and she had her favorites. It meant that there was no hoarding of possessions, except that Narasíben decided who would have what. It meant that there were no husbands or wives, except that it was obvious to everyone who belonged to whom.

“Nusgwéden is bound in chains,” Narasíben said in one of her sermons. “Even when the archon’s away, the priests of his hierarchy continue to divide all things and thereby sustain this broken world. But I tell you that the basilisks are coming to tear them down so that we can inhabit a new realm. There will be no bodies in that realm, no walls of flesh separating us from one another. There will be no priests or magicians and certainly no great families.

“The basilisks remember when there were no divisions, only the unity beyond Heaven. They remember the crimes that tore that unity. I ask you all to call upon the basilisks and invite their watching eyes. They will tear down this rotten building if we allow them, tear it down with all its rotten injustices and deliver us into the bliss that was lost at creation.”

This was the sort of thing Narasíben said, and even though it sounds fanciful when I say it, she really did imbue it with a passion that made it half convincing. And you have to remember, Kësil, that I was feeling extremely despondent without you. I was plunged back into the despair of being without a home and without friends, deeper than I had ever known it before. So when Narasíben described the foulness of the world, I was almost tempted to believe her.

She took a special interest in me, too. “You’re a woman out of her own time,” she told me. “I envy you for that. You’re like the basilisks in a way. You can see the world as it truly is, without being blinded by the fog of division and hierarchy.”

“There was plenty of division and hierarchy in my own time,” I said.

“Oh, I don’t have any doubt there was. I said you were like the basilisks, not that you were one of them yourself. But maybe if you listen closely you will hear them. Contemplate the wilderness, Rosédan, and you will begin to understand what they’re saying.”

I did contemplate the wilderness, though I don’t think I ever found much pleasure in it. Dragons were constantly coming and going in the western and southern sky, I assume on errands to the other camps and other parts of Ghadáreim. But one day a dragon came out of the west with Brän as its rider.

Oh, but there is one interesting journey I took before Brän arrived. We went deeper into the desert, Télhreus and I. He wouldn’t tell me at first where we were going, only that it would help me understand Narasíben’s teaching better.

We landed in a rocky area where the air was so still and the sun so harsh that it seemed we had come to the end of the world. It was the kind of place where it seemed that nothing had ever happened and nothing ever would. But Télhreus seemed to know where he was going. In the shadow of one of the tallest rocks was a simple canvas shelter and a man sitting beneath it. He was hairy and stank, and was clad only in a thin cloak, but there was something about his eyes that made me want to pay attention to him.

“They took it,” he said in a surprisingly firm voice. There were no greetings or introductions; he simply began talking. “I saw the unity behind the diversity of the world and I tried to speak of it, but they took it and disguised it in snakeskin. It was never meant to destroy. Destruction and creation are one, but woe to the destroyer. Woe to her!”

On our flight back to the camp, I had occasion to reflect on many things, Kësil. For all these years, understand, I had kept loneliness at bay by holding fast to my memories of my home, but that was in ruins now, swallowed by the desert. It’s embarrassing to say, but now I found that the only thing I had to hold onto in such a strange world was you, and that the thought of you filled me with all the warmth I needed in the cold desert nights.

But back to Brän’s arrival. I didn’t know that there was anything out of the ordinary until a woman came and whispered something in Télhreus’s ear. He, I, and a few others had been listening to one of Narasíben’s sermons, but suddenly he stood up and walked away. Narasíben finished her sentence and then, without pausing, said in her loud voice, “The archon has sent an emissary to us, one of his foremost dragon riders. Brän is her name. I hope each of you will treat her with the respect she deserves. The basilisks tell me that she will be a valuable part of our coming victory.”

I followed after Télhreus, since my curiosity had been aroused by Narasíben’s words. He was standing several yards away from Brän, his arms crossed over his chest, and the two of them were in the middle of what sounded to me like a cold conversation. It was obvious that they knew each other and equally as obvious that their parting hadn’t been a happy one. I won’t tell you exactly what I heard, since I don’t want to embarrass them, and besides, I suspect by now you know their history together.

But I was embarrassed at the time by what I heard, and I was preparing to leave quietly when Télhreus saw me and called my name. At this Brän looked up and said my name too.

“Yes?” I replied, feeling extremely self-conscious. I wished I still had one of my rings of invisibility. Not seriously, of course!

“I’m here to take you to the archon, and to Kësil,” Brän said. At these words I confess my heart sang in my breast. In an instant all my gloomy thoughts about the injustice of the world disappeared and I could only think about you. Please don’t write this part down in your account!

“Then you’ve wasted a trip,” said Télhreus. “Hasn’t she, Rosédan?”

“I should thank you for your hospitality, you and Narasíben and all the rest,” I said. “But there’s nothing I want more than to rejoin Kësil.”

Télhreus seemed troubled when I said this. “I’m afraid not,” he said. “Neither you or Brän will be returning to Mexesnód soon.

Brän was thunderstruck. “What? What right do you have to keep either Rosédan or me here? Do I have to remind you that I’m an ambassador, sent by the archon personally? And for you of all people to say that!”

“What do you mean, me of all people?”

“I just thought you’d be the first person to respect the rights of an ambassador.”

Télhreus’s face darkened and he replied to this with various arguments of a private nature. But Brän’s first response had wounded him, I could tell. I was about to turn around and leave them, but at that moment Narasíben joined us.

“My comrade Télhreus is quite right,” she said sternly. “We can’t permit anyone to spy on us and being word back to the archon.”

“You mean that you can’t permit it,” said Brän.

“We welcome everyone who comes to us. There are no divisions or authority here. But that doesn’t mean we open our arms to spies. You’ve seen the layout of our camps and all our preparations. No, Brän, you won’t be going back to Mexesnód. Follow me: I have many questions for you.”

I saw Télhreus shake his head slightly, and a moment later Brän whistled and raised a hand into the air. I heard shouts from the entrance of the nearest cave below us before a tall-crested head emerged, just visible over the ledge near which we stood. “Kantálhin!” Brän shouted, running towards it. The dragon cried out in response and with loud flaps of its wings it rose up to the ledge. But before Brän could reach it, Narasíben had run ahead of her to stand in front of Kantálhin’s head. She held out both her hands, putting herself in danger of a bite from Kantálhin, and whispered some words I didn’t hear. It is generally true, of course, that a dragon will only heed its master (you recall I tamed Enikkhe Konahu’s Halgh, but he was half-wild and poorly trained in the first place), and yet Kantálhin listened to whatever Narasíben was saying, tilting his head.

“Kantálhin!” Brän said again. “Come, let’s go!”

But Kantálhin was entranced by Narasíben. She nodded, and Kantálhin nodded along with her. “Do you see?” Narasíben asked us, her voice quiet and enticing. “This wilderness is the home of truth, it is the home of the basilisks, it is the home of the dragons. There is no dragon in Ghadáreim that does not recognize my awakening and see in me its true mistress. I call the spirits from the cliffs and the brambles and I breathe them into the dragons. Here, Kantálhin. It’s a good name, and you are a good dragon. But I will give you a new name and set my mark upon you.”

To form a judgment of a man or a woman based on the acquaintance of five minutes or even five days is a foolish thing to do. Indeed, I would be cautious even in judging myself, and that is an acquaintanceship of twenty-seven years. I know you’ve encouraged me to recount my impressions of the people I met, and Heaven knows I have my personal opinions, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable portraying them as fact. But since I think it’s necessary to explain how we were reunited, I should tell you what I thought of Brän and Télhreus, including what Brän told me about their past.

They had been dragon riders together in the service of the archon, and in fact that is where they had met, in a romantic adventure fighting Zamara pirates. Even once the initial thrill of swooping down on ships and evading arrows was gone, the two of them had been enthralled by one another (or so said Brän), and were making preparations for their wedding when difficulties arose between them. It was at this time that the rebels were beginning to multiply in strength, so that many of the dragon riders were sent to observe them and to harass them. Télhreus had been troubled by some of the things he had been asked to do, though Brän wouldn’t give details and I would be uncomfortable asking Télhreus himself.

Matters came to a head, and Télhreus left the order of dragon riders. When he asked Brän to come with him, she refused. It was unfair of him, she said, to force her to abandon all their companions. It was foolish of him, she said, to listen to the propaganda of the rebels. It was selfish of him, she said, to leave her alone. But despite everything she said, Télhreus abandoned her and the archon and vanished into the wilderness.

And yet, if it isn’t clear from what I’ve said so far, she still loved him and hoped for their reunion, as foolish as the idea often seemed. I was able to tell her about Télhreus’s disillusionment with Narasíben and the rebels, which gave her some comfort.

You might ask me what I thought about the rebels. I said before that I was tempted at my lowest moments to see their doctrine as a relief from the injustice of the world, and yet I trusted Brän and Télhreus. When they expressed their doubts about her teaching, I paid attention. Anyway, she had stolen Brän’s dragon, which was not an act that endeared her to me.

Then, of course, came the summoning. We were just as surprised by it as I’m sure you were. Even Télhreus, whom I had thought to be fairly close to Narasíben, had no idea what she was planning to do, until the cry went up from what sounded like the earth itself. I myself had been sound asleep until I was awakened by the notes of Narasíben’s song. It really is impossible for me to describe what it sounded like, only to say that it was one of the most beautiful songs I have ever heard and that it could have come from no human throat. Who knows what the dragons heard in it that was beyond our hearing? We do know that wherever they were, the dragons cried out in answer and flew towards the high place where Narasíben stood. Riders who were still mounted on their dragons were carried along with them, unable to command their companions any longer.

Not that we knew this at the time, not until the night when the great flock from Nusgwéden and the neighboring regions finally reached our camp. They all came to Narasíben, circling in rings around rings in the sky over our heads, the moonlight glinting off their skin. There were enough of them to block out the stars, coming in a stream from the west. Some of the oldest and largest landed and scraped their beaks in the dirt before her to signal their submission.

None of us were brave enough to approach her as she stood in their midst. If she spoke to them, no one else heard it. But she mounted one of the dragons nearest to her and took it up into the air. She spoke, and her voice was amplified by magic. “Awake! Awake, you who are asleep. This is the hour of our victory! Hear me, new-eyed people, souls that are unmarred by the world’s knife! The world’s defenses have failed. The archon has fled to the ocean because he is terrified by us. The priests gather on the mountain that they call holy, trusting in their dragons to protect them, but the basilisks of the desert have always been the masters of the dragons, and they fill me like water fills a jar. We will come to Nusgwéden and we will be the storm that tears it down in all its artificiality. It cannot be otherwise. The basilisks claim everything in the end, and this is the end! This is our time and there shall be no other when we are finished. We will pull Heaven down to earth.”

Not all the dragons chose to land near Narasíben. Others descended in the midst of the crowd that had gathered, though they kept their eyes fixed on the woman who commanded them. I confess that I didn’t notice the dragon that landed some yards behind me until it crawled up close to me and croaked softly. “Halgh,” I said. “It’s good to see you again. And you, you still know me, don’t you?”

I can’t explain it entirely, but it may be because Halgh was, like us, out of his proper time and so resistant to Narasíben’s call. I thought at first that it could be because Halgh was still half-wild, but there were wild dragons out of the mountains that had been summoned. In any case, it was clear that Halgh had spent a long time in the wilderness since we parted—it gives me some pleasure to think that the keepers in Nusgwéden hadn’t been able to hold him in their stables.

I decided that Halgh’s return was a sign from Heaven. It was the hour of Narasíben’s victory, maybe, but it was also time for me to leave, to go west and to find you. But I didn’t want to leave Brän and Télhreus here either, so I whispered to Halgh, telling him to wait there for me.

By good fortune, or rather I should say by the grave of Heaven, I found the two of them fairly quickly. They were holding hands as they stood listening to Narasíben’s triumphant sermon. I put my hand on Brän’s elbow and said, “I’m leaving.”

She looked at me with despair painted on her face. “But how? None of us thought she could do something like this. She’s right: it’s the end of the world.”

“I have a dragon,” I whispered. “But we need to leave now, before she can notice and send her servants to chase us.”

“Télhreus,” Brän said, and he turned his head to listen. “Will you come with us? Please.”

He nodded without saying anything at first. Then he said haltingly, “None of this was what I wanted. But I can’t go back either. The archon may be a good man. You say he is. But the priests and the dragon riders—”

“There are no more dragon riders,” said Brän, and after a moment Télhreus nodded.

“Then take us to your dragon, Rosédan. Three might be a close squeeze, but we’ll make it.”

I remember, and the image is burned into my mind’s eye, how as we left Narasíben and cliffs and rebels all behind, I turned back and saw the dragons still gathering like a great thundercloud. And Kësil, I’m afraid that the storm will break over us very soon.