The Well-Favored Man

by Elizabeth Willey

  What, if anything, had I learned in my previous encounters? Did he have weaknesses I could exploit, bad habits on which I could capitalize? I considered him dispassionately. He had a short temper. He liked playing with his prey. He tended to gloat. He did not necessarily pay attention to everything going on around him; Dewar and the Gryphon had both had no trouble surprising him. If I were to harm him badly enough he might retreat to fight again another day, as when I’d half-blinded him. Might. I suspected this was to the death, his or mine.

  He had chosen this place to limit my actions, but he was limited too. It was narrow and high-sided; he’d have difficulty moving laterally up those slippery slopes of sand, even as I would. Could I use Cosmo to distract him? Perhaps.

  The sun baked my shoulders. Talon was heavy. Usually I didn’t notice the weight of my sword; it was just there, hanging off my back or my hip.

  Considering him as a four-legged, winged animal with a long tail, I noted to myself that it took him time to turn around completely although his head could twist through more than 360° on that agile neck. I had no explosives handy to toss down his throat as Duke Nellor Trephayenne had done. Nor was he much for conversation, compared to Uvarkis’ dragons or Ottaviano’s. Either he didn’t think we were worth talking to or he was a punk, an uncultured thug of a lout of a dragon. This was an interesting thought, and I toyed with it, waiting for him to do something besides watch me sidelong and preen. Perhaps Gemnamnon was a relatively young dragon looking for territory. That might account for his persistence. And his taking of things personally, his quickness to find offense, was something I have always thought of as a characteristic of the young and rare among the experienced.

  Cosmo fidgeted and stamped. The dragon took this as a signal and lifted his head, set his haunches and opened his eyes more fully.

  “This time we shall have done, petty sorcerer,” he said, and a gout of green flame followed his words, long and focused, cutting the dry, hot air in an arc toward us.

  Finally! I thought, and Cosmo must have felt much the same way. He stopped acting like a rabbit and got us out of the way of the flame while I repelled it with a reflective shield, bouncing it back toward the dragon. I couldn’t hold the shield long, but I’d surprised him—perhaps he thought I’d be as toothless as in the Border. His left front foot took a bit of a scorch and he cut off the flame abruptly.

  I drew Talon with a short, singing spell, the Golden Bees, and fired them off at him from the sword’s point. Gemnamnon got most of them with a pouf that sent a diffuse cloud of acidic gas out his nostrils and shot a jet of the same foul stuff my way; it splashed short of the mark on the ground, and Cosmo retreated, back stepping quickly and awkwardly. I cast a raw bolt of power as he shot the jet of gas; it missed because of Cosmo’s movement throwing my aim off.

  This was feinting. We were neither of us giving our full effort to our strikes. I decided to throw out something more powerful, and shielded from a counterflame while performing a somewhat longer spell, a variant of Hubble’s Bubble, which put a sphere of vacuum around Gemnamnon. It startled him; he had a sudden nosebleed and jumped away as air rushed into the vacuum with a loud concussive bang. The dragon snarled, shaking his head, and pounced (graceful despite his great size) down closer to me, firing a rapid series of small fireballs from his gullet, then tried to snort another gas but stopped.

  I was busy shielding from the flames, but noticed the beginning of the gas-sneeze movement and noticed that he halted. Good! I snapped off three quick spells from Talon’s point that punched at his head and then I wove a Fishnet, kicking Cosmo so that he carried me forward, in and out, a dancing quick feint, and dropped the Fishnet over his right front foot. It began to constrict, something it would do until it had formed into a ball again. Gemnamnon took a swing at me as I did this, though, and caught my left shoulder a glancing blow. I was knocked halfway over Cosmo’s head, and Cosmo raced past the dragon, leapt his swishing tail three times, and turned to face him again as I regained my seat. My shoulder felt broken; it was numb and my arm unresponsively useless. I put my left hand behind my belt to hold it steady.

  Gemnamnon laughed. I performed a complex, powerful spell of Dewar’s called the Southern Rail which created a shrieking gale wind in a small area; it whammed into Gemnamnon as he blew more flame (still laughing) from his mouth and sent him tumbling head over tail.

  “Hah!” I exclaimed, pleased with the unexpectedly good results—I’d expected that one just to pause him, not to actually move him.

  He roared as he rolled to his feet, the spell howling away down the valley disharmoniously. I was getting the hang of this, though; the kinds of spells I thought of as fatal weren’t always the same ones that actually bothered the dragon. I had an idea. As he leapt, wings partly opened, and fell on me, I made Cosmo run right past the flames which were terrifyingly hot despite my shielding, and threw a Stone spell up into his face, aiming for his manytoothed, tendril-adorned mouth.

  Gemnamnon screamed and came after me, and a split second later I was unmounted, rolling, and Cosmo was galloping riderless back the way we’d come into this ambush. Life being what it is, I landed on my left shoulder, and I screamed as I rolled onto my knees. Tears of pain ran down my cheeks as I invoked a heavy-duty shielding spell because the dragon was taking another swing, the flat, open movement I’d use to squash a fly on a book. The force of the blow came through the spell to me; I gave way to it and let it knock me back, although that hurt like hell again, and used the movement to get to my feet, shielding again and calling up Block of Ice. His right foot was looking bad, scored by the Fishnet; I pointed Talon and Block of Ice at his left foot, which was swinging at me again.

  It worked, again, and he snapped at me. My Stone spell had evidently paralyzed important bits of dragon oral apparatus, because if I were he and he were I, I’d have toasted me and eaten me by now, and he hadn’t flamed lately. I ignored the pain in my shoulder and side and reinforced my shielding spell as I ran from him. He pursued clumsily on his damaged front feet. Gemnamnon’s jaws closed on the air behind me with a low-frequency thud due to the shield.

  I had to swerve up the slope to one side, slipping and fumbling in the sandy ground. I was looking desperately for cover; there was none to be seen. Cosmo was nowhere to be seen either. It was just as well. He could do nothing now, here.

  Gemnamnon launched himself into the air and slammed down up the slope from me, setting off a small landslide. I lost my footing, struggling for balance. He roared triumphantly, pushing more dirt down with a sweep of his tail; I fell and rolled down the slope again, trying to protect my head with my right arm and failing. A rock bashed into my head, or maybe my head hit the rock, on the right side. My mouth tasted of blood. Managing to stop by braking with my feet, I spat and felt a tooth go. My right eye was hazed with red.

  I swore and spat blood again. Talon was gone. Where had I dropped my sword? Didn’t matter. Gemnamnon was lolloping down toward me, from side to side, and I threw up a shield, drew a bead on him with my bloody right forefinger, and mumbled the words to a spell I hadn’t wanted to use, my mouth filling with blood again as I spoke.

  Power rushed through me, a river of power from the Spring. I had trouble finishing what I was saying; my vision became hazy and I knew I would pass out, but I gasped painfully and finished the spell as the dragon reached me and swung his right foot to grab me. His foot and all the world around streaked out into distant places.

  I was floating. That was the first thing I thought. It was not a pleasant floating. I vomited, which was not pleasant either. If you have never vomited in free-fall, I wholeheartedly recommend that you forgo the experience. I had done it before, so I knew how to avoid pushing my face in the mess I had created. It and I went off on different trajectories. It was a curious skill to have acquired while studying economics and accounting in that wretched sterile Eddy along the Road, but invaluable when needed—as now.

  I hurt all over. It hurt to breathe, to move, a
nd especially to puke. My face felt half gone. I seemed to be alive. I drew my legs up so that I was curled in a fetal ball as I floated, to present a smaller surface to whatever was here.

  I could not distinguish shapes or colors where I was. It was unsolid, unformed, undefined—nothing stayed the same, if there was anything there at all, which there may not have been. It was easier not to look. I closed my eyes and groped for the feeling of the Spring, strained my senses to perceive a Road or Ley in my vicinity. I’d been right by the Road when I passed out. I could not find it.

  What had happened? I supposed I had been too close to Gemnamnon when I blew him away. The spell I had riffed out of my mental deck of cards was the Disconnector. I had, in effect, dissolved Gemnamnon and a piece of the world around him—these things are hard to control. Fortunately it had stopped before I’d dissolved myself.

  I whimpered. Home. I had to get out of here and home. I was sick and I hurt a lot. What else was there about Disconnector? Would I hit the edge of the discombobulated area eventually, like washing up on a beach?

  What was it Dewar had said that day we had looked at the place he’d destroyed with that spell … something about finitude, something about definition … Yes. It was possible to redefine the world inside the area one had, in essence, undefined, but it required such a drain from the Spring that he didn’t think it was worth it. The Spring itself would slowly reconstruct the area over time.

  I reached again for the Spring, but it wasn’t available. I had cancelled its influence here, but if I was alive, there was Spring-force. Wasn’t there?

  It was hard to think. I struggled with my stomach, which wanted to empty itself again. I frowned and withdrew my thoughts into an unpaired part of my mind. Dewar and I had stood on the edge. He threw a rock in. We watched it slow and drift and disappear into the souplike swirls. There had been a cliff at our feet. We had kicked a few rocks down; they bounced into the deconstruction also. One had bounced out, slowed, but come back and fallen against the cliff again, rolling down to a ledge. Dewar explained that the unbound matter slowly accreted to the still-solid. He pointed to a rock that had not been there on his last visit and before we left placed another ahead of it, at the very edge of the cliff, a marker.

  So there must be an edge. I wondered how large an area I’d destroyed.

  I stretched out my legs, and, eyes still closed, tried a sort of swimming. One-armed, it didn’t work very well; I got no feeling of movement. I curled up again, pulling my scorched and torn cloak around me, and panted. Moving had made my body hurt more, much more than it had, and I tried to hold still. This I managed, not thinking about anything but my breaths, for a long time. I was unconscious or asleep for part of that time.

  The jar that went through me woke me, or perhaps my own screaming did. I had fetched up against a wall of rock, and I grabbed and clutched at it frantically. It crumbled under my fingers; I scrabbled for a purchase and finally found it. It was sandy, gritty soil, like the soil in the place I’d destroyed. I lay my body against it and pulled myself together, then began crawling. I thought any direction would do.

  I crawled for a while, stopped and rested, crawled again. I was stuck to the sandy wall now; as long as I kept myself close-pressed against it, I showed no inclination to drift away. I crawled intermittently for what seemed an hour.

  Exhausted by this, I stopped for a long time and lay huddled. A thought crept out while I rested so and nuzzled my aching head. It whispered: You fool, Gwydion. Try a Way now. This is concrete world here, so there must be a bit of the Spring to it.

  Fumbling and clumsy, I pulled my Keys from my tattered, blood-stained shirt. If I could open a Way to the Keystone in the Citadel, I’d be home free. Fire. The spell needed fire. I unclasped my cloak and pulled it into a pile—another good cloak gone. In agonizing slow motion I got my pouch of sorcerous tools from the left side of my belt and found the concentrated emergency flammables. I got a candle lit. I got the Key ready. I began whispering the spell, my diction furry and unclear, and mumbled it so badly that it didn’t work. I tried again, the candle flame before my eyes where I sprawled on the red dirt.

  This time I went slowly, concentrated, and enunciated everything no matter how it hurt my mouth. Blood moistened my tongue. The spell’s construction sucked strength from me, but the flame burned brighter even as I again saw my vision darkening at the edges. The candle went up, wax and wick consumed by the Way’s demand for fire, and the cloak ignited, and I looked through the flames into the Citadel, at the corridor where the Keystone is, or rather at the vine-carved stone baseboard. I lifted myself on my right arm and crawled forward.

  I fell down, blacked out again.

  The lute music was delightful: cool and precise plucking, a witty and graceful melody. I listened to it while I figured out how I was. The music stopped before I finished, and a door opened and closed. I heard movement, footsteps coming near.

  “How is he?” A whisper.

  “Still.” Another.

  Someone touched my wrist, which startled me so that I jumped and my eyes flew open. I shut them at once because it was so damn bright I was blinded.

  “Draw those curtains!” Prospero ordered Walter, who rushed to do so. I had just glimpsed them at the edge of my dazzling vision of my bedroom ceiling. “Gwydion,” he added, “forgive me for so rudely starting you from sleep. I knew not you lay near waking.”

  I tried to talk and found I couldn’t. “Rnghf!”

  “Your jaw’s a mess. You look as though Fortuna herself rolled her Wheel over you,” Walter said. “You’ll not speak for a while, brother.”

  “Rrr,” I managed, an impatient growl.

  “Which shall be to us great hardship,” Prospero said, “for ignorance as to what, in all the worlds beneath the winds, has passed with you leaves us groping and baffled …” I heard him pulling the bed hangings. “There, do you try your eyes again,” he suggested.

  I did. It was dimmer now, and my pupils happily adjusted without pain to show me Walter hovering behind Prospero, who was sitting in a chair beside the bed. Walter smiled at me, an enormous grin of relief. Reflexively I tried to smile back and stopped myself. It felt like a bad thing to do.

  Prospero smiled also. “Now then. A guard found you by the Keystone at dawn, a bloody dirty mess,” he said. “Shall we play Twenty Questions?”

  I tried moving my eyebrows, which didn’t hurt too much but still pulled my skin. “Ungh.”

  “Yes is another grunt,” Walter said, “and No is silence. Twenty Questions?”

  “Ungh.”

  “Great.” He smiled again.

  “Did this happen in Pheyarcet?” Prospero asked.

  I closed my eyes.

  “No,” murmured Walter.

  “In the Border …? In Argylle’s Dominion …?”

  “Ungh.” I looked at them again. Walter and Prospero glanced at one another.

  “Did you have an accident, a fall or some such mishap?” Walter asked.

  The last word in accidents, I wanted to say, but made no response. That wasn’t what they meant.

  “Were you attacked?” asked Prospero.

  “Ungh.”

  “By a person …? By an animal, or a pack of animals?”

  “Ungh.”

  “Gemnamnon,” whispered Walter.

  “Ungh.”

  “Hellfire and hot coals!” exclaimed Prospero, and jumped up to pace.

  “Was it near here?” Walter asked softly. “No? Far away?”

  “Ungh.”

  “Very far away?”

  I thought. Not very far, but not near …

  “Somewhat far. Say, not at the Border but close.”

  “Ungh.”

  “Is he coming again to Argylle?”

  I realized I did not know. I had no proof that I had destroyed him. He was, after all, an Elemental being. I might only have inconvenienced him.

  “How could he know if the damned monster be coming or going?” snapped Prosper
o.

  “True,” Walter said. “Sorry. Ambiguous question.”

  I twitched my right hand. It was working, though clumsy. Slowly I moved it beneath the covers.

  “You want to try writing?” asked my brother.

  “Ungh.”

  “I’ll fetch you things for writing, Gwydion. It would be faster, that’s true.”

  “Ungh.”

  He went into my sitting room and I heard him go out. Prospero waited until the door closed and then came back to the bed.

  “Found you Gaston?”

  “Ungh.”

  “Good man.” He gripped my right shoulder briefly. “Dewar reports,” he went on in a quick undertone, “she seems to be there, in the body. They have sought for signs of her survival, but those are few yet; she lies shocked, stunned by the alteration. He’s been told this is not unusual, nor cause for misgiving, for ’twill take time to unite incorporeal soul with earthly body. How long ’t may be he knows not.”

  We regarded one another.

  Walter came back in. He and Prospero propped me up and balanced a lap-desk under my right hand with paper and pencils ready. I wrote, Walter, may I have wine please?

  “Son of Argylle!” he laughed, reading it. “Yes. I’ll bring you wine, but watered.”

  Fair enough.

  He went out again.

  Miracle, I wrote quickly on another piece of paper and shoved it at Prospero.

  He read it and nodded slowly. “I’ll not believe till mine eyes, my hands, mine ear have all confirmed ’tis no dream but real,” he said, “and I misdoubt still the wisdom oft. But ’tis wrought, for good or ill, and not to be undone.”

  Heard from G?