The Worm of the Ages and Other Tails: Six Short Fantasies by Tom Simon

The Worm of the Ages
    A legend of ancient days in Färinor, taken from The Tower of Vargon.
    Readers of The Eye of the Maker will recognize the name of Vargon, Lord of the Dead. This is the tale of his beginning in Färinor, the former world in which a great many things had their origins. The Tower of Vargon itself tells (or will tell, if I am spared long enough to finish it, among many other books) how Vargon became discontented with his domain and tried to extend his rule over the living as well.
    Avel, Mazuj, and Kataki are three mortal children who have escaped from the shadow of Vargon, a thick dark mirk which his tower belches forth to blot out the lights of heaven from the lands that pay him tribute. Beneath that shadow, all light and life must be bought with blood. In the twilit realm on the border of Vargon’s domain, they have met the Loring, a strange little old man who tells stories, and gives the impression that there is more about him than meets the eye. 
    The Loring poked the fire vigorously with a stick, making the flames leap on high and sparks climb dizzily into the night. His bald head seemed to glow in the sudden light, and his dark eyes glittered sorcerously. ‘Has nobody got a story to tell us?’
    ‘Old or new?’ asked Kataki.
    ‘Old, to be sure,’ said the Loring. ‘Tales and apples are bitter when picked unripe.’
    Mazuj sighed. ‘My grandmother used to tell stories, but I don’t remember them well enough. Avel?’
    ‘I don’t remember my grandmother at all. I was too young when the reapers took her.’
    ‘Then it falls to me,’ said the Loring. ‘I never had a grandmother, but I can tell you a tale as old as I am, if that will do.’
    Kataki laughed. ‘Were there tales so long ago?’ she asked archly.
    ‘There were deeds,’ the Loring answered; ‘they were made into tales later.’
    Avel looked so eager that he almost seemed to smile. ‘Is it a true tale, Master Loring?’
    ‘As true as words will allow, child. It will not go easily into your speech, but I shall do the best I can.’ The old man stretched his limbs one by one, then sat cross-legged with his hands on his knees, facing the three children across the fire. ‘Hear and heed,’ he intoned, ‘while I tell of the Worm of the Ages.’
    ‘I don’t like worms,’ Kataki complained.
    ‘He means a dragon,’ said Mazuj.
    The Loring raised a cautioning finger. ‘Not a worm: the Worm, forebear and fountainhead of dragonkind, whose heartbeats were the days, whose breaths were the seasons, even from the beginning of measured time. In the bitter North it made its lair, and there it slept for years untold amid the eternal snows, hard by the Walls of the Void at the limits of the world. It wrapped itself round the pillar of clear rock that is called Telménedh, making a circle of its long body, with its tail in its mouth—’
    ‘Why ever did it do that?’ Kataki asked.
    ‘To keep it from interrupting,’ Mazuj suggested.
    ‘To keep warm, of course,’ said the Loring mildly. ‘There is no cold like the cold of that place; and though the Ancient Fire was in the belly of the Worm, hotter than any fire that has been kindled since, its tail was far from that heat; and so it caught its tail in its mouth, and warmed it with its breath. The cold would have woken it else, and then its dreams would have ended, and with the waking of the Worm the measure of days and seasons would cease. It was a dire danger, and the powers of the world were not unmindful of it.
    ‘Now on a time the Worm became restless in its sleep—’
    ‘Did it yawn, and its tail fell out?’
    ‘Be quiet, Kat,’ Mazuj growled.
    ‘—for the spirit whose name is not spoken, the Destroyer of Worlds, whispered to it from the Void in poisoned words, to trouble its dreams and chill its fire. Then the stars faltered in their courses, and the rhythm was broken of the days that were the Worm’s heartbeats, and the seasons that were its breaths—’
    ‘You told