“I was only looking for a way to be free,” Mordion said. “Although I suppose it kept me sane – as far as I was sane.”
And he was pitched down upon the sharpest bright points of all.
I will be free! he had told himself after Bellie’s death. The Girl Child had supported him eagerly. Of course you’ll get free! Go for it! Mordion had clung to that one small part of his mind where the Girl Child spoke. He made them think he was thoroughly submissive. Although he knew he was submitting to having large parts of his brain closed down, he had let them do it in order to cling to that private corner and the Girl Child’s eagerness and her jokes. He was sure the day would come when he could use this to set Kessalta and himself both free.
And the irony of it was that he had simply ended up knowing how deeply he was enslaved.
Kessalta was next to Mordion in strength and ability. She was always special to him, and now more than ever after Bellie died. And somebody noticed. They were kept apart mostly from then on, marched about like Prisoners, and only allowed to meet during training. Mordion was glad of that small mercy, and not only because it gave him a chance to see Kessalta. They were training with animals by then, small ones first, then graduating to things as big as those wolves. And Kessalta had what was, in a Servant, a fatal flaw. She could not bring herself to kill anything. Whenever they were put to kill animals, Mordion killed his quickly with his eyes on Kessalta. As soon as she had her hands, or her weapon, in roughly the right position, Mordion terminated the animal for her, Reigner fashion, using his mind. He kept anyone from suspecting Kessalta’s failing until they were both fifteen.
Then one day Reigner One turned up to watch their skills. Separately.
After Mordion had passed his own tests, he had an agonised wait in a locked room while Kessalta was tested in her turn. During that time he imagined every dire thing his brain would produce. And the reality was worse.
He was called back after several hours. Kessalta was lying on a table, still screaming faintly, while Reigner One washed the blood off his hands. What Reigner One had done to Kessalta was beyond anything Mordion could have imagined.
“Tell Mordion why you were punished, Kessalta,” Reigner One said.
Kessalta, still just about able to speak, said, “I can’t kill things.”
“But Mordion can,” said Reigner One. “Mordion, this knack of terminating things that you seem to have developed on Kessalta’s behalf would make you an exceedingly accomplished Servant. But you are not obedient and you are not loyal. You have deceived me and you shall be punished too. I’ve made sure Kessalta will live at least a year, as you see her now, and you can be sure I shall not simply leave her alone in that time. You can put her out of her misery now, if you want, but you must do it now. If you don’t, you must think of her living for another year.”
Mordion terminated Kessalta on the spot. The pain he knew she was in hurt more than the sharpest diamond spike of his memory. Then he turned away and tried not to be sick.
“Good,” said Reigner One. “Now remember this. If you fail to terminate any person as soon as you get the Sign, I shall follow and do this to them.”
Mordion had no doubt that Reigner One meant this. He wrestled with two sicknesses, this first one and then the sickness the Helmets gave you for disobeying a Reigner. “You’ve made me into a murderer,” he managed to say.
“Precisely. And what else can you be, my good Mordion, with a face like yours?” Reigner One said, and went away chuckling.
Mordion was alone after that for the final years of his training, and ten years after that, just as he was now, stretched across the spangled universe of himself.
“No. I am here,” said the Bannus. “I conclude you must hate Orm Pender very deeply.”
“That’s the wrong word,” Mordion said. “Hate is too close and hot.” Now he saw what had been done to him, it was not hate he felt, or what mattered. What mattered was that he had been formed, very cruelly, to carry the guilt the Reigners should have carried themselves.
The Bannus had been clever. Even if it had been Mordion who had decided to look after Hume, the Bannus had used Hume very deftly to make Mordion see that he should not train someone up to do his dirty work for him. And if this was wrong for Mordion, it followed that it was equally wrong for Reigner One. What mattered even more was that Reigner One had been doing this to children for generations, and that the next children he would do it to would certainly be Mordion’s.
But there was no way he could move for the blinding pain of his memories.
“I feel sympathy,” said the Bannus. “If you wish, you may attain peace by remaining always in my field. You may form the constellation of the Dragon in my skies.”
The Bannus really seemed to mean this. And it was very tempting.
“No,” Mordion said wretchedly. “I must go and stop Reigner One. It needs to be done. But I’m grateful, Bannus – for that offer and for the chance you gave me to know Vierran.”
Vierran was still the sharpest hurt of all. Mordion knew well enough what her feelings had been in the House of Balance. It had been play, and he had been lonely, and grateful for that much. But now, though Vierran knew she had been Ann, she clearly thought she was just one of La Trey’s ladies in the castle. But she was heir to the House of Guaranty and Mordion was the Servant. The gulf between them was full of blood and impassable.
He was roused by a gentle tapping on one of his horny knuckles. Someone seemed to be patting him there. There were whispers around him in the dark.
“Are you sure he’ll know you in this form?” A man’s whisper.
“Of course he will!” That was Hume’s voice and Vierran’s together, Vierran’s rather hoarse, as if she had been crying. Mordion was sorry about that, but he could not bring himself to stir.
“There’s stuff coming out of his eyes!” A boy’s whisper.
There was silence, while all four whisperers perhaps wondered what might make a dragon weep. Then the patting began again, persuasively. “Mordion! Phase!” said Vierran.
Mordion roused himself enough to say, “What do you want?” He felt them all jump back at his deep dragon’s voice, resonating from his huge head.
“To see if you were alive, for a start,” Hume said.
“I’m alive,” sighed Mordion. “And I know you. You needn’t be afraid.”
“We’re not afraid,” Vierran said indignantly. “But we came to warn you, Mordion. La Trey’s sure you’re still alive and she wants you finished off. She’s been to the king—”
“And I thought you ought to take Vierran and Martin back to their parents,” Hume said. “If you fly away with them over the lake, you’d be safe too.”
Mordion opened his eyes. His night vision was superb. It showed him the four of them clustered round his nose, the boy Martin between Hume and Vierran, and Sir Bedefer bulking behind. He wondered again who Martin was. As Servant, he was well versed in the families of the great Houses, and he knew there were no boys in the House of Guaranty. “I didn’t hurt you sending you to the back of the castle, did I?” he asked Martin.
“No – though I couldn’t think what had happened at first,” Martin said. “Hume came and found me and hid me in your room with your robot. He went on about hocus-pocus.”
“Yam is a bore!” said Hume. “Do you think you can carry two, Mordion?”
Mordion flexed his back and shuffled his wings, testing his strength. “I think so.”
“Then I think you should go now,” said Sir Bedefer, “before I’m commanded to slay you. But before you go – would you mind answering a couple of quick questions?”
“Ask away.” Mordion lowered his body and stretched out a foot. Martin used the foot as a step and slipped nimbly up on to his back.
“These spines are sharp!” he said. “Go carefully, Ann – er – Vierran.”
“Well – urn—” said Sir Bedefer, as Vierran gathered her skirts and started to climb on Mordion too. “Fact is, Vierran he
re tells me that you’re really something called the Reigners’ Servant, and I sort of have glimmerings that way too—”
Vierran knew! Mordion turned his head so quickly to look at Vierran that he almost swept her off his foot.
“Yes, of course I know,” Vierran said, hanging on to the spike above his left ear for balance. “The Bannus may have forgotten I have Reigner blood – or it may not have – anyway, I’ve known all about everything since yesterday. Mordion, did you know that your eyebrow comes down to a wonderful point between your eyes?”
Sir Bedefer coughed. “Could you just tell me what you know about the Reigners’ dealings on Earth? Vierran says you always learn up on anywhere you’re sent. She says you can access the Reigner’s files. Is that so?”
“Yes, that’s true.” It looked, Mordion thought, as if Sir John Bedford was beginning to struggle out of the Bannus’s hold too. “You’re not going to like this,” Mordion told him. “Vierran told you—” Of course Vierran had known he was the Servant! Mordion realised. He could have saved himself much misery remembering what she had said to Sir Bedefer before. But he had been too busy then holding down his memories and his horror to realise. “The flint Earth exports is not for road rubble,” he said. “It’s the most valuable commodity in the galaxy. Earth has been deliberately kept poor and backward so that the House of Balance can get its flint cheaply—”
“Glass beads for gold nuggets from the ignorant natives, I gather,” Sir Bedefer interrupted. “But what I want to know is, how valuable is our flint?”
“Unprocessed, it will be about treble the price of diamonds,” Mordion said. “Processed, it’s often ten times that, depending on the type of the flint and the current market.”
Sir Bedefer, very slowly, seemed to stiffen and enlarge.
“The Reigners hold a complete monopoly in raw flint,” Vierran told him from her spiky perch on Mordion’s back.
“I see,” said Sir Bedefer. “At two pence a tonne they surely do make a pretty profit on it. And what about this weapons dealing you talked of?”
“They deal in drugs too,” said Mordion. “Rayner Hexwood has hidden subsidiaries in Brazil, Egypt and Africa that deal in both weapons and drugs. And half the top-secret installations in Europe are making weapons to use against other subject worlds. I take it you don’t know about those?”
“I do not!” said Sir Bedefer, becoming almost entirely Sir John Bedford again. “Be sure they wouldn’t exist if I had known! Thank you, sir. And where do I find these – these Reigners?” He took hold of the sword at his waist as he asked.
“They’re all here,” Vierran said. At this, Sir Bedefer half-drew his sword.
“Even Reigner One?” Mordion asked. He swung his head back and saw Vierran nod from where she sat, just below his neck. “Where was he when you last saw him?” he asked her urgently.
“On the corner of Wood Street,” said Vierran.
This meant that Reigner One was inside the Bannus field too. That altered everything. Mordion weighed up Sir John’s obvious intention of trying to kill Reigners with his pitiful steel sword, Vierran’s safety, Hume’s desires and Martin’s needs. Vierran, it seemed to him, would be safest in the one place he knew definitely Reigner One was not. Sir John would be safest where Vierran could not tell him who the Reigners were. Earth had been kept so ignorant that Sir John clearly had no idea what a Reigner could do to him if he tried to threaten one. Martin needed to be out of here. Hume would be safest in the castle where he wanted to be.
Hard as it was, Mordion changed his plans. Or perhaps made his own plans for a change. “Get down, Vierran,” he said. “You stay with Hume in the castle until I come back for you. Get Yam to guard you and keep well out of La Trey’s way. I’m going to take Sir John to the outlaw camp with Martin. I think that’s where he needs to be.”
“I agree with you,” said Sir John. “Is that all right?” he asked Vierran.
Vierran climbed down from Mordion without a word. She was determined not to cry, but this meant she could not speak. He’s going after Reigner One! she thought. I know he is. And he may not come back.
Mordion relaxed a little as he felt Sir John climb heavily up in Vierran’s place. He thought he could trust Yam to look after Vierran. And Earth was going to need Sir John when this was over. He did not expect Vierran to scramble round his face and kiss him on his nose. It made him start backwards.
“Oh don’t!” said Vierran. “I mean that.” Then, having spoken, she was crying. Hume had to take her arm and guide her back inside the castle through the small postern door.
“I’ll see you, Mordion,” Hume said softly, before he shut the door.
The double load was heavy. Mordion had to use the sloping turf as a runway in order to get airborne, and when he first spread his wings into the breeze over the lake, he was only a few feet off the water. Fortunately, the breeze was a stiff one. With a flap and a tilt of his wings, Mordion lifted into it, superbly, and sailed high over the wood.
As soon as he had passed out of sight, Orm stole out from among the trees and glided across the lake to the castle. He had been very patient. Now, as he had hoped, the young black dragon had departed carrying its prey, and the way to Orm’s enemy was clear. He settled down on the turf to wait for him.
Ambitas looked anxiously round the candlelit hall. There were very few people there, despite his urgent command. And now the people he had sent looking for Sir Bedefer had just come back to say Sir Bedefer could not be found. “There is a dragon at our gates,” he said. “One of my Champions must kill this dragon. Sir Bors, I command you to undertake the adventure of this beast.”
Sir Bors stood forward. “My lord, I beg to be excused. I am weak with fasting and praying to the Great Balance in heaven that it may be restored to hang evenly. Let me instead assist your chosen Champion with my prayers.”
Sir Bors did look frail, Ambitas thought, looking at him closely. Foolish business, this fasting. But it did look as if that dragon out there would finish Sir Bors in one bite. “Very well, I excuse you. I command Sir Harrisoun to go against the dragon in your stead.”
“Oh no!” Sir Harrisoun stood up from the centre of the hall. “Oh no – no way! You saw the size of that dragon. There is no way you are going to get me out there trying to fight that thing!” Then, as far as everyone else in the hall could see, Sir Harrisoun appeared to go mad. He shook his fist at the ceiling.
“You there!” he shouted. “Yes, you! You just stop this! All I did was ask you for a role-playing game. You never warned me I’d be pitched into it for real! And I asked you for hobbits on a Grail quest, and not one hobbit have I seen! Do you hear me?” He stared at the ceiling for a while. When nothing happened, he shook both fist upwards. “I ORDER you to stop!” he yelled. His voice cracked high, almost into a scream. The sound seemed to bring Sir Harrisoun to his senses a little. He glared round the hall. “And you’re all figments!” he said. “My figments. You can just carry on playing by yourselves. I’ve had enough!”
Everyone stared after Sir Harrisoun as he stalked out of the hall. “The young man’s wit has turned,” Sir Bors said sorrowfully.
Very true, and rather embarrassing, Ambitas thought, and it did nothing to solve the problem. “Is there any knight here,” he asked without hope, surveying the few frightened faces under the candlelight, “who might wish to gain honour by slaying this dragon?”
There was no answer. No one stirred. Ambitas considered. He could offer a reward, but it was hard to think of anything tempting enough. Ah! Wait a moment. He could offer them Morgan La Trey’s hand in marriage. No. Better not. On second thoughts, that could get difficult. But, on third thoughts, the lady had ladies. He could offer one of those. That beautiful one, the blonde. What was her name, now? Oh yes. “If any offer to come forward as my Champion against this dragon,” he said, “I will, once the dragon is slain, give him the hand of the Lady Sylvia in marriage.”
This caused a tempted sort of stir. But it subside
d. Most of the noise anyway seemed to have been from a latecomer entering the hall and asking what was going on. Ambitas thought he might as well give up and get them to carry him to bed. Give it one more try. “Will anyone here slay this dragon in return for the hand of the beauteous Lady Sylvia?” he said.
The latecomer surged to his feet, so eagerly that a bench fell over behind him with a clap that made everyone jump. He was a young squire whom Ambitas did not know. “I’ll fight the dragon for you,” he said. He was grinning broadly.
“Then come up here and we’ll both swear to it,” Ambitas said, quickly before the youth could change his mind. “What is your name?” he asked, as the youngster approached.
“Hume, Your Majesty.” The young man seemed to be fighting giggles. Ambitas could not see anything to laugh at. Hume puzzled him by continuing to look unnaturally cheerful, even while he was swearing upon the Key of Sir Bors that he would tomorrow attempt to kill the dragon.
Outside the castle, Orm pricked his spiky ears. There were faint sounds from the rear, carrying clearly over the water. Orm spread his wings and, dark in the darkness, glided round the walls of the castle to investigate. There was a fellow there loading large clinking bundles into a small boat, with every sign of being about to make a hasty getaway. It was not Orm’s enemy, which was disappointing, but the fellow did have the taint of Reigner blood to his scent, and that was enough. Orm stooped lazily. As the fellow looked up in horror at the vast dark spread of wings above him, Orm slit his stretched throat with one languid claw. Because he was not very hungry yet, he carried Sir Harrisoun’s body back to the front of the castle and laid it on the turf in the corner beside the main gate to wait for breakfast. Then he settled down to wait again.
Mordion, like Orm before him, smelt the corpse in the river.
“What’s up?” Sir John asked as Mordion glided lower to investigate.
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