Eric Van Lustbader - The Pearl Saga 1 - The Ring of Five Dragons

A Tom Doherty Associates Book New York

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are either fictitious or are

used fictitiously.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

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Map by Ellisa Mitchell

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Library of Congress Cataoging-in-Publicaton Data

Lustbader, Eric.

The ring of five dragons / Eric Van Lustbader.—1st ed.

p. cm.—(The pearl saga ; bk. 1) "A Tom Doherty Associates book." ISBN 0-312-87235-6 (acid-free

paper) I. Title.

PS3562.U752 R56 2001 813'.54—dc

First Edition: May

Printed in the United States of America

For Victoria, always and forever

THE

RING of FIVE DRAGONS

PROLOG:

The Lorg

When they were fifteen years old, Giyan and Bartta found a lorg. It was hiding, as lorgs are wont to do,

beneath a large flat rock of a golden hue lying like a wart on the belly of a bone-dry gully. Konara

Mossa, their Ramahan guardian and teacher, had told them to keep a sharp eye out for lorgs, for lorgs

pre-ferred the thin, kuelLo-fir-scented air that drifted along the shoulders of the Djenn Marre. Beware

the lorg, she warned them with a frightening sweep of a gnarled forefinger, for lorgs are evil creatures,

ensnaring the souls of dying infants, hoarding them like grains of milled oat grass. Su-perstitious

nonsense, Giyan thought privately. The lorgs might be ugly to look at, but they seemed harmless enough;

in fact, they were ben-eficial inasmuch as they ate stydil larvae, and everyone knew how de-structive

those insects could be to the oat grass and glennan crops.

It was Lonon, the Fifth Season—that eerie time between High Sum-mer and Autumn when the

gimnopedes swarmed; when, on clear nights, all five moons, pale green as a dove's belly, could be seen

in the vast black bowl of the sky; when The Pearl had been misused; when the V'ornn had come to

Kundala.

Giyan and Bartta, both Ramahan novices, had had the enormous misfortune of being born twins, an evil

omen among the mountain Kundalan, a certain sign of bad luck that their mother tried to rectify by

winding their own umbilicals around their soft pink necks. Their father, entering the birthing chamber, had

cut the cords with his own hunting knife. While they squalled their first breath of new life, he had had to

slit the throat of the scheming midwife, who had whispered goading superstitions in their mother's ear,

egging her on to commit infanticide.

They had learned all this years later from their father, just before he left home for good. Their father and

mother never should have married, that was the truth of it. Their father was a no-nonsense trader who

saw the world in a straightforward manner, while their mother was entan-gled in the dark skein of magic,

superstition, anxiety. They had no basis to form a connection, let alone to fall in love or even to discover

a comfortable tolerance.

Cheated out of her attempt to mend her ill fortune, their mother brought the twins to the Abbey of

Floating White as soon as they were old enough. In a most unseemly manner, she begged Konara Mossa

to train the twins to be Ramahan, praying that their wholesale devotion to the Great Goddess would

spare them the usual fate of twins.

And so they were made fluent in the Old Tongue, they were taught from the scraps of Utmost Source,

The Five Sacred Books of Müna, mem-orized and set down over the decades by successive konara

after it was lost. They were taught the creation myths, the legends of The Pearl, the seventy-seven

festivals of Müna, the importance of Lonon, the Fifth Season, Müna's time, the season of change. They

learned the ways of phytochemistry, of healing with herbs and mushrooms, of divining por-tents, of

seeking with opals, and, most importantly, they were taught the Prophesy of the coming of the Dar

Sala-at, the Chosen One of Müna, who would find The Pearl and use it to free the Kundalan from their

bondage to the V'ornn.

It was curious how two sisters—twins at that—could absorb the same lessons and arrive at different

conclusions. One saw the vessel half-full, the other saw it half-empty. For Giyan, life at the abbey had

brought alive the rich history of her people, where sorcerous beings like Dragons and narbuck and

Rappa and perwillon mingled freely with the Kundalan, males and females sharing equally in every facet

of life, where those with the Gift were trained to use Osoru sorcery well and wisely, where each festival

was an excuse for music, dancing, singing, the fervent excitement of being alive. Now, it was said, only

the fearful perwillon remained, slumbering deep in their caves. For Bartta, the history lessons told another

story—of what had been taken from them by the V'ornn, of the diminishing of Ramahan power and

influence, of the rise of the new Goddess-less religion, Kara, of the violence of the male Ramahan and the

betrayal of the Rappa, of a need to break with the old sorcerous ways—known only to those born with

the Gift—that had come back to haunt the Ramahan, of the Kundalan being aban-doned by their Great

Goddess, who had quailed at the coming of the V'ornn, had been rendered irrelevant by the aliens'

superior techno-mancy. Of the failure of the past, of Osoru, of those with the Gift, of Müna's teachings as

they had been originally set forth to protect Kun-dala against invasion.

The twins were hiking north of their home in Stone Border, on the steep and narrow path that led to the

Ice Caves. On either side, the brittle sepia-colored land fell away from them, pitching downward to the

green-and-blue fields that carpeted the broad, fertile valley far be-low. Brown kuello-fir needles

crunched beneath their cor-hide sandals. Forever after, this soft, dry, intimate sound, so like the rustling

of wicked blackcrows' wings, would send a tiny thrill through them, for it was forbidden for anyone but

Ramahan priestesses, like themselves, who dwelled in the nearby Abbey of Floating White, to tread this

dan-gerous path.

Giyan paused on the path to stare upward at the immense, jagged, ice-crusted pinnacles of the Djenn

Marre. And as she paused, so did Bartta. Giyan was the twin blessed with height, beauty, a slender

figure. Even worse, from Bartta's point of view, she had the Gift and could be trained in Osoru sorcery.

What did Bartta have save her fierce desire to lead the Ramahan?

"To think," Giyan said, "that no one knows what lies beyond those mountains."

"Just like you," Bartta said sourly, "to be thinking of questions that cannot be answered. Your foolish

diversions are why I will be promoted to shima, to priestess, next year while you will no doubt stay a

leyna, a novice."

"I am Müna's servant just as you are," Giyan said softly. "We each serve the Great Goddess in our own

way."

Bartta grunted. "Well, I'll tell you something. It has become embar-rassing to be your sister. Your…

perverse views are the talk of the abbey."

"Perverse, sister?" Giyan's whistleflower-blue eyes reflected the sting of the rebuke.

Bartta nodded emphatically, happy to have scored a point. "Our world is a simple one. We are good, the

V'ornn are evil. How you can distort such an obvious black-and-white truth is beyond me."

"You misunderstand me," Giyan said. "I do not question the evil of the V'ornn's deeds; I merely question

this so-called truth of Good and Evil. Nothing in this life is so black-and-white. When it comes to the

V'ornn we know them not at all. I sense there is a mystery there we cannot yet fathom."

"Oh, yes. You sense. Your accursed Gift has spoken to you, I sup-pose."

Giyan turned away, her gaze lost in the snowcapped mountain peaks. She was remembering the hideous

vision she had had three years ago. It had coincided with the onset of puberty, on a brilliant summer

af-ternoon in a courtyard of the abbey. One moment, she had been plant- ing herbs and the next the

world, around her had disappeared. At first, she thought she had gone blind. She found herself enclosed

in dark-ness—not the darkness of night or even a cave, but utter blackness. Voices rustled like the wings

of birds, but she could not make out what they were saying. She was terrified; even more so as the vision

took shape. With breathtaking clarity, she saw herself from above. She was dressed oddly, in the pure

white of mourning. She was standing on the wishbone of a narbuck, the two prongs in front of her. At the

end of the right prong stood a Ramahan in the persimmon-colored robes of a member of the Dea Cretan.

At the end of the left prong was a fierce-looking V'ornn in battle armor. She saw herself walking to the

base of the prongs, knew there was a dreadful choice to be made, a fork in the path of her life. The

V'ornn raised his arms and in them she saw a shining star, which she knew was the Dar Sala-at, the

prophesied savior of her people. In her vision, she watched herself walk to the left, toward the Dar

Sala-at, toward the V'ornn… What did it mean? She could not know, and yet she could not forget the

power, the sheer force of the vision. She had never dared share it with anyone, not even Bartta. But it

had haunted her ever since, and was surely at the core of her unique, conflicted feelings about the aliens

she knew she should loathe.

"The V'ornn have enslaved us, maimed us, tortured us," Bartta was saying now. "They kill us at their

whim in games of sport. Though the resistance exists and continues to fight back, it is no match for the

V'ornn. The aliens have driven us from our cities, forced us to find shelter in the hillsides and mountains

until we have become strangers in our own land. They have slaughtered thousands of Ramahan. Our own

abbey is the only one left intact. You know this as well as I do."

Giyan turned back from the peaks of the Djenn Marre, from the latent image of her vision. Her thick

copper-colored hair flew in the wind. She put her hand tenderly on her sister's shoulder. "I hear the pain

and fear in your voice. We have prayed to Müna for eighty-five long, terrible years without hearing a

response."

Bartta shook herself away. "I feel no pain or fear."

"But you do," Giyan said even more softly. "It is your deep and abid-ing fear that in Her wrath Müna has

left us in the hands of the V'ornn forever. You told me so yourself."

"A moment of weakness, of illness, of disorientation," Bartta said curtly. "I am surprised you even

remember."

"Why wouldn't I remember, sister? I love you deeply."

Bartta, trembling a little, whispered. "If only it were so."

Giyan took her in her arms. "Have you any real doubts?"

Bartta allowed her head to briefly rest on her sister's shoulder. She sighed. "This is what I do not

understand," she said. "Even the konara, our elders, have no answer for Müna's strange silence."

Giyan took Bartta's head in her hands, looked her in the eye. "The answer is clear, sister. It lies in our

recent history. The Goddess is silent because we ignored Her warnings and misused The Pearl."

"Then it's true. Müna has abandoned us," Bartta whispered. There were sudden, stinging tears in her

eyes.

"No, sister, She is merely waiting."

Bartta wiped her eyes, deeply ashamed that she had showed such weakness. "Waiting for what?"

"For the Dar Sala-at. The One who will find The Pearl and end our bondage to the V'ornn."

Bartta's expression changed, hardening slightly "Is this true faith, or is it your Gift talking?"

"I have been taught by Konara Mossa to turn away from the Gift, just as we have been taught to shun the

Rappa because they were responsible for Mother's death the day The Pearl was lost, the day we were

invaded by the V'ornn."

"The Rappa had the Gift, and it led to our downfall." Having spotted a chink in her sister's armor, Bartta's

eyes were alight. Spite, the twin of her envy, overrode her inner terror. "And yet, you defy Konara

Mossa, you use the Gift."

"Sometimes I cannot help it," Giyan said softly, sadly, "the Gift is too strong."

"Sometimes you deliberately use it," Bartta hissed. "You are being trained in secret, aren't you?"

"What if I am?" Giyan looked down at her feet. "Sometimes I ques-tion whether this thing inside me—this

Gift—is evil." Her voice dropped to a whisper borne by the wind. "Sometimes, late at night, when I lie

awake, I feel the breadth and scope of the Cosmos breathing all around me, and I know—I know,

sister, in my heart, in my very soul—that what we see and hear and smell and taste—the world we touch

is but a fraction of the Whole that exists elsewhere. A beauty beyond comprehension. And with every

fiber of my being I long to reach out and know that vast place. And it is then that I think, How could such

a feeling be evil?"

Bartta was looking at her sister with profound jealousy What you know, what you long for, she

thought. As if I do not long for the same thing, and know it will never be mine. She was about to say

something clever and cutting, but the sight of the tail stayed her tongue. The lorg's ing herbs and the next

the world around her had disappeared. At first, she thought she had gone blind. She found herself

enclosed in dark-ness—not the darkness of night or even a cave, but utter blackness-Voices rustled like

the wings of birds, but she could not make out what they were saying. She was terrified; even more so as

the vision took shape. With breathtaking clarity, she saw herself from above. She was dressed oddly, in

the pure white of mourning. She was standing on the wishbone of a narbuck, the two prongs in front of

her. At the end of the right prong stood a Ramahan in the persimmon-colored robes of a member of the

Dea Cretan. At the end of the left prong was a fierce-looking V'ornn in battle armor. She saw herself

walking to the base of the prongs, knew there was a dreadful choice to be made, a fork in the path of her

life, The V'ornn raised his arms and in them she saw a shining star, which she knew was the Dar Sala-at,

the prophesied savior of her people. In her vision, she watched herself walk to the left, toward the Dar