The Dragon Lord

by Peter Morwood

  The Dragon Lord

  Peter Morwood

  The Book of Years Series, Part Three

  © Peter Morwood copyright 1986, 2017

  Peter Morwood has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in the UK in 1986 by Arrow Books, an imprint of Century Hutchinson Ltd.

  This revised edition published in 2017 by Venture Press, an imprint of Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  PREFACE

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

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  PREFACE

  “…by the style and tytle of an Empyre, and as soche held Domination over all those landes for nygh an hundred yeares.

  Men full wys in War and Politickes do make assured declaration that, by enbuilden of great Shipes and ye subtleties and Wickednesse of ye Necromancer Duergar Vathach (ysenden hither by ye War-Lorde Etzell to make mischief), this Empyre did desyre and make essay to take enseizen of this lande of ALBA.

  Yet by HEAVENES intervention are all preserved from soche sore Distress, for in Spring-tyme of this yeare did Droek Emperor of Drusul go unto his Ancestores, and since that his first-born sonne is dead before him and ye Succession thus ymaden doubtfull, ye Empyre now is rent by great Confusion whereas its Lordes do stryve each against ye other to have power and Mastery— for they are men of no Honour and shew not that Respect which all retainers owe by Duty unto their Lordes and which obligation demandes from those same Lordes unto their vassals…

  Now it was yknowen unto all what reasones were en-given that LORDE ALDRIC of ye clan TALVALIN did journey to this Empyre: being full of Sorrow. Yet there are men whose wordes are recognised as Truth in all thinges, who do Declare that this LORDE did but execute a very certain Strategem commanded unto him by RYNERT-KING, and that small Honour if at all was done him by soche a Taske…”

  Ylver Vlethanek an-Caerdur

  The Book of Years, Cerdor

  PROLOGUE

  Night and fog lay heavily on Tuenafen, and heaviest of all in the narrow streets of the port’s Old Quarter. Nothing moved there save errant skeins of mist. Most of the houses were in darkness, their doorway lanterns shattered in the riots of the past few weeks. The few lamps which remained served only to emphasise the depth of the shadows their light couldn’t illuminate.

  The horseman emerged from a silent swirl of fog that drew back like the curtain of an ill-lit stage: a black-clad man astride a coal-black horse. Both were featureless silhouettes against the slow shift of grey, sable outlines lustrous with a sheen of condensed moisture.

  The horse moved. Its hooves struck hollowly against damp-slick paving slabs, muted echoes slapping up and down the street between the blankly shuttered houses. Three paces only. Three heavy clanks of iron on stone, a blacksmith sound impossible to ignore. Then silence once more as reins were twitched and the black horse stopped.

  Its rider rose a little in his stirrups, turning warily from side to side. There was a tension in him, in the angle of his head and the set of his shoulders. For all his ominous appearance he seemed as nervous as a cat.

  Somewhere close, a clock began to strike the hour and startled his horse into sudden, stamping movement. The sound of its shoes against the ground mingled with a crackle of invective as the rider’s hands jerked back on shortened reins. Doubly betraying after those three unconsidered steps of half-a-hundred racing heartbeats past, the noises made by man and horse rang all too clearly in the muffled quiet.

  Boots clattered at his back and a voice yelled harsh words of command. The rider’s heels kicked home and his mount plunged forward, away from the wan fog-filtered light and into the dark maw of a nearby alley.

  There was an impact, the sound of something falling heavily to the ground and a muttering of satisfaction.

  Then nothing but the noiseless movement of the mist…

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Hall of Kings in Cerdor was an awesome place, a vast echoing emptiness lined with carved stone pillars to support the magnificence of its vaulted ceiling. Autumn sunshine slanted through windows of painted glass to splash the tinctures of Alba’s high-clan crests across a floor of tessellated marble. Flames danced and flickered in nine great hearths, trying to drive chill from the air, but all their heat couldn’t thaw the icy edge of Gemmel Errekren’s voice.

  “Do you know what you’ve done?” The old enchanter was furious, and the energies summoned up by high emotion swirled in lambent coils about his hands and the black, dragon-patterned staff they held. A lesser man might well have flinched from such rage, and with good reason, but Rynert the King remained at least outwardly unruffled, sitting straight-backed and aloof in his great chair.

  “I do what must be done,” he said calmly, “for the good of the state.”

  Portentous yet vague, such a statement might have sounded good to the ears of a councillor but it didn’t satisfy Gemmel. His teeth clenched until cords of muscle stood out on his face, and the pulsing nimbus of wrath around the Dragonwand grew more visible.

  “For the good of the state,” he echoed in a flat sneer. “You give my son to the Drusalans and you say it’s for the good of the state…?”

  “Only your foster-son, wizard. But my vass—”

  “Enough!” The spellstave in Gemmel’s hands struck once against the floor with a sharp, percussive noise, and glowing shreds of power fluttered free like incandescent moths. “Don’t quibble with me. Your ‘reason’ is no reason at all, King, and well you know it. It’s no excuse either, for all it can excuse so much…”

  Rynert shot a glance towards the only other occupant of the hall, hoping for support, but Dewan ar Korentin’s face was as stony as the wall at his back. There would be no approval from that source and the king’s gaze returned to Gemmel.

  “Explain,” he said.

  “Must I?” The enchanter was openly scornful, but Rynert ignored the lack of courtesy.

  “Yes, you must. I’m curious.”

  “I wonder that you need be. Your reason has birthed too much misery down the years for any right mind to accept it without question.” Gemmel’s voice was lower now, introspective, as if speaking to himself, and Rynert could see the brooding shadow on his face even at ten paces distance. “Lies, betrayals, and many, many deaths. Deaths by fire and steel, Lord King, and by the gold which pays for both.” The enchanter’s green eyes bored into Rynert’s translucent hazel as if reading secrets buried behind them in the hidden places of the king’s mind, and Rynert dared not be first to break contact for fear he would betray himself. “Yours is a reason I’ve heard already. But the language I heard then wasn’t Alban.”

  The whispered words were just a thread of sound, quiet as the metallic exhalation of a drawing sword, but they seemed to flay Gemmel with the lash of a reawakened shameful memory. Something other ears were not meant to overhear. But Rynert heard it.

  “Once there was a village. Small. Ordinary. An Imperial village. And its people, small, ordinary people, had committed an infraction of the Empire’s laws. They were being punished for it. I could have helped them, but instead I merely asked why the soldiers were… Doing what was being done. Their Serjeant told me
it was for the good of the state and none of my affair. So I did nothing, even though it would have cost me little effort to strike them all asleep until the villagers had fled. But my son tried, and it cost his life. I lost more than a son that day. More than your mind can grasp, King Rynert. Much more. I lost the ability to go ho—” Gemmel hesitated, as a man will when he realises he has almost said too much. “I lost everything. So don’t use that excuse to me again.”

  Rynert drew in a ragged breath. He had never been a sturdy man, and now the heart within his chest was jerking like the legs of a snared rabbit, so hard that it took all his small store of physical strength just to conceal the fact. Anger, outrage and affronted dignity blended with a pain that went deeper than his own frail flesh. Gemmel’s story troubled him, touching a guilt his own conscience had failed to rouse. It reflected endlessly to and fro in his mind like a candle poised between two mirrors, guilt begetting shame, and shame begetting still more guilt…

  “I am King, just as you say.” The words snapped out, a verbal whiplash laid across the white-bearded face before him, righteous anger that a man could hide behind. “I must make such decisions whether I will or not. The way of kingship is a narrow path that must be walked alone.”

  Once more the studied, courtly phrases didn’t impress. It was clear Gemmel’s first impulse was to spit his distaste onto the stones at Rynert’s feet, but he was a man conscious of his own dignity, regardless of how he treated that of others. Instead he gazed for a few seconds at the slight, crook-shouldered king, then turned his back and stalked in silence from the hall.

  Dewan ar Korentin broke that silence. Straightening from the wall where he had leaned and watched and said nothing, he padded forward on soft-shod feet to where Ykraith the Dragonwand had notched the marble floor.

  “Statecraft,” he muttered, looking at the damage. “Be careful, Rynert. It might be the death of you.”

  “Indeed? And what is your word on this?”

  “You know it already. I warned you about Aldric Talvalin, and my protest is on record. Again I warn you, and again I want it recorded. Don’t play with him as you do with your other diplomatic game-pieces. He’s different. He’s… Strange. And his notions of honour are strange. Archaic, sometimes, especially in the matters of duty and obligation.”

  “Misgivings, old friend?” The smile which curved Rynert’s thin lips didn’t quite fit. “I hadn’t expected scruples from you.” Dewan’s nostrils flared at that and he didn’t even try to mirror the smile.

  “Neither misgivings nor scruples, just caution. And simple decency. You commanded him to do a foul deed for one of his rank.”

  “A killing, foul? For him? He does for me what he did many times for himself! I remind you, Dewan, that he’s my vassal.”

  “Vassal perhaps, but he deserves better. Much better. I can speak as an outsider here, and I say deceit may have its place but not in matters of Alban honour. It cuts two ways, Rynert. He owes you duty, but you owe him respect, and right now the situation seems one-sided. May I remind you, with first-hand authority, that his reputation is well earned. Maybe he’ll understand why you betrayed him,” he raised one hand to forestall Rynert’s protest, “because I assure you, betrayal is how he’ll see it.”

  “For his own safety’s sake!”

  “For reasons of state. That was what you just said. Well… Perhaps he’ll accept it. Or perhaps not. But if not, Rynert, I wouldn’t want to wear your collar. Not if you were king of all the world.” Dewan ar Korentin no longer used the formal mode of the Alban language, and many at court regarded his addressing of the king that way as an insult. Rynert wasn’t one of them.

  “It no longer matters, even if it once did,” he said dismissively. “The piece has moved, and now I need to observe how it affects the play.”

  “Publicly. You must be seen to support your own decisions. But in private, as secretly as you sent Talvalin, why not send me after him?”

  “Dewan, you’re overwrought. Go away. Return when you feel calm again. And convey my compliments to your lady wife.” Ar Korentin stiffened, bowing acknowledgement of his dismissal with marionette rigidity, and strode towards the great double doors with disapproval plain in the arrogant straightness of his back. Rynert’s voice followed him up the hall. “But until you come back, please regard your time and business as your own affair…”

  Dewan halted for perhaps two seconds then turned to face the king. Rynert had that suppressed brightness around the eyes and mouth which accompanied a concealed smile. Dewan watched it fade and felt uneasy, even as he snapped through the punctilious movements of an Imperial parade salute. He bowed and took his leave, knowing there was an ugly wrongness about this whole affair, but able to fathom no more than that.

  Not yet…

  *

  Gemmel was waiting for him, and Dewan would have been more surprised if the enchanter hadn’t been there.

  “Wizard,” he said quietly.

  “Eldheisart ar Korentin.” If hearing his old Imperial rank spoken aloud took Dewan off guard, he gave no sign of it. “Now do you believe?” the enchanter continued. “Was I so wrong?”

  “Not wrong, but not entirely right.”

  “How so? I lost one son to the Empire many years ago. I won’t stand by and lose another for… For the good of the state.”

  “We should walk,” said Dewan, with a sidelong glance at the sentries flanking the doorway of the Hall of Kings. None were obviously listening, and in the presence of their captain they stood to attention, staring straight to their front. But whatever they heard, they could as easily repeat. Gemmel nodded once and walked. “Now hear me,” ar Korentin began again, once he judged them a safe distance away. “Rynert has—”

  “Forfeited what little allegiance Aldric or I might have owed him!”

  Dewan ar Korentin was a patient man and slow to anger, but his patience was wearing thin. Both hands came up to grip Gemmel’s shoulders and if necessary shake him back to coherence, but something in the old man’s expression warned that violence would be countered tenfold. Dewan hesitated with hands in air, then contented himself with a spread-armed shrug.

  “Just once, wizard, try listening to someone besides yourself!” he snapped. Gemmel’s teeth shut with a click and his indrawn breath was an audible hiss, but Dewan pressed home his advantage in the relative silence. “Because if you listen to me, you might learn something.” The sarcasm was too heavy, and Gemmel lifted a disdainful eyebrow.

  “Well? I’m listening. What might I learn?”

  “Mathern-an Rynert has given me permission to go after Aldric. Into the Empire.”

  “Tacit permission, of course. Nothing direct, and certainly nothing written down.”

  “Certainly not!” Dewan’s sense of propriety was outraged by the suggestion. “This is a delicate matter.”

  “And potentially dirty,” the enchanter’s voice was flat and nasty. “Enough that your worthy lord might need to wash his hands of it at short notice.” Dewan nodded. He need only consider how Aldric had been manipulated to know Gemmel wasn’t making idle criticism.

  “Will you come with me? After all, Talvalin is your… Your son.”

  “Foster-son,” Gemmel corrected, “As I keep being reminded. What you really mean is, will I come and help pull Rynert’s political fat out of the Imperial fire before it flares up too far to extinguish. ‘An unfortunate incident’ wouldn’t begin to cover it.” The stare of his cold emerald eyes transfixed Dewan like needles. “I won’t.” The shock of that refusal couldn’t be hidden, and ar Korentin floundered for several seconds before he was able to say anything sensible.

  “So what do I do? Go alone?”

  “No. But you could come with me.” With each emphasis the enchanter’s long finger poked Dewan in the chest.

  “What’s the difference?”

  “Between black and white. My way, you know and I know. His way, who knows who knows?” Gemmel was recovering what passed for his sense of humour. />
  “All right,” Dewan conceded. “Where do we go?”

  “First, to the coast.”

  “And afterwards?”

  “Restore all the marks of rank to that Imperial armour of yours.” Gemmel showed his teeth in a swift, vulpine grin. “No, more than all. Exaggerate. Promote yourself. It may be more useful than you think. But as for afterwards…” The grin flickered again. “Leave afterwards to me.”

  *

  “How did it get in? This place is supposed to be secure!”

  The harsh voice and the man who used it seemed out of place in this room of graceful furnishings and delicately muted colours. He was burly, florid and middle-aged, with a spade-shaped iron-grey beard, and he was encased to the neck in scarlet armour brilliant with the precious-metal geometric shapes of lofty rank. A sharp reek of oily metal hung about him, cutting discordantly through fragrant incense smouldering in a burner by the door, and leather creaked when he moved, leaning forward to smooth an already-flat sheet of paper with blunt fingers. It creaked again when he twisted to stare at a tall, lean figure outlined by sunlight at the window.

  “Bruda, I asked you a question.”

  The man he called Bruda seemed undisturbed by such brusqueness, although the glare at his back and the deep cowl on his head meant no expression was visible on his shadowed features.

  “I thought you were being rhetorical again, Goth.” he replied mildly, his voice muted and metallic. “It happens so often. Set aside its delivery for now. Is it genuine?”

  “It might be,” said Goth, turning the paper this way and that as if closer scrutiny might reveal a stamp of authenticity. “When it was found were the codes correct and the seals unbroken?”

  “Yes.”

  “And this translation,” he slapped at it with the back of one hand, “is it accurate?”