“Sightseeing,” he said. “And to have a look at the moon, if the sky’s clear enough.” He sank the last barb with unsubtle malice, sure of the Seghar connection now and almost regretting he didn’t have the wolfskin coyac any more. “I’m tired. But you know what they say: a change is as good as a rest.”
“Be back by the Hour of the Cat,” said Bruda. Aldric turned so the Prokrator could see his face and gave the man an enigmatic smile.
“You mean by eight of the clock, of course. Midnight could be more suitable.”
“The Hour of the Wolf? Far too late! Why do you—?”
“Voord might tell you. But I doubt it.” Aldric smiled again, the smile of one who knows a secret, and left.
*
Because of clouds and darkness there was little sensation of flight, but there was every sensation of great speed and Dewan’s face and hands were numbed by hours of icy wind scything past them. Only his legs were warm, where they forked the dragon’s armoured neck. But for all the discomfort, and all the – he wouldn’t give the word more than an instant’s consideration, though he knew it was correct – all the terror, Dewan ar Korentin wouldn’t have missed this experience for half the gold in Warlord Etzel’s coffers.
No, not for all the gold, because once in a while the silver-grey blanket around them parted and he could see the fires of countless stars mirrored by the lanterns of humanity far, far below. It was impossible to guess the speed of Ymareth’s flight, but the thinness of the cold air and the difficulty he had in breathing it told him he was at least as high off the ground as a mountain-peak he had climbed for a wager long ago. Why the air should grow weak, Dewan didn’t know, but if the only similarities between how he felt then and now were altitude and cold, then one or other was the cause. He had been just as cold sitting on a horse, so perhaps the good air stayed near the ground where there were more living things to breathe it.
“Egisburg,” said Ymareth, and with that word the dragon tilted onto one wing and began a lazy, spiralling descent.
Dewan’s ears popped as the thick lower air flooded into them and he swallowed to relieve the pressure, but he was no longer thinking vague scholarly thoughts about the strength of air at different heights. Instead he gaped like the simplest backwoods peasant at the sight which came drifting up as he sank through the clouds towards it, knowing he was gaping and not caring any more.
Egisburg, Ymareth had said. The single word, the name, didn’t do justice to the bright specks strewn below like jewels scattered across a sable cloak. Dewan knew what they were, and the reason for each colour. Yellow meant the lanterns of the city, bright and steady for oil-fed lanterns, dull and flickering for live-flame torches. Others were house-lamps glazed in coloured glass: sapphires, emeralds, rubies. Further away, slipping beyond sight as they glided down, he glimpsed Egisburg’s source of wealth, the amber glow of furnaces near the silver ribbons that were the city’s two rivers. Now and again there was a harsh glare as an ironmaster worked late into the night, and the cold wind brought a faint reek of smoke edged with the acrid bite of hot metal.
It smelt of dragons.
The dragon beneath him banked away from the myriad glitters of the city, and Egisburg slipped smoothly out of sight under Ymareth’s wing and body as it turned toward the darkness beyond the city boundaries in a search for somewhere safe to land. How can even a dragon see in this? The unvoiced question got its answer an instant later, when a flame as hot and white and brilliant as a lightning-flash transformed the ground speeding past below them into a sharp-edged relief map of shadows and reflected light. Arrogant, Dewan thought, but not careless. Who would be out on a night like this? Who would believe what they saw if they saw this? And who would believe them? Not that they’d be stupid enough to mention anything so linked to sorcery within the borders of the Empire…
He felt the shift of muscles as they adjusted the set of the dragon’s wings, then felt those same muscles flex to drive the wings forward in the final landing sweep he had watched earlier this same extraordinary day. The dragon’s spine kicked up at Dewan’s, a sensation like clearing a fence on an unsaddled horse, then settled beneath him. Movement ceased.
And they were down.
Dewan climbed from Ymareth’s neck – ‘dismount’ was no adequate description for such a height from the ground – and walked away as stiffly as an old man, legs locking at the knees with every stride. By rights he should still be frightened, or shocked, or at the least startled, but if asked, the only thing he felt, apart from aches and pains, was wonder.
*
Crouched huge and impossible in the broken moonlight, Ymareth watched him even though the man was unaware of such a scrutiny.
“I have shown him the Light of Heaven,” said the dragon for Gemmel’s ears alone as yellow-white fire danced lazily in its fanged jaws, bright enough to throw long shadows.
“I didn’t teach you blasphemy,” Gemmel replied sourly.
“I did not speak such. That was thy choice. But now thee makes mention of it…”
“Don’t!” It was only after his twitchy, nervous response that Gemmel realised how he was being teased. Almost affectionately, if the word applied to dragons.
“Thee taught me humour and appreciation of it, Maker. So enjoy the jest.”
“I taught thee – you – to better understand humankind. Not to make jokes. Stop it.”
“Not at thy command. Not now.” Ymareth’s mind-heard voice hardened to disapproval. “Thee is no longer worthy of obedience. In the future, perhaps. The Dragon-lord I recognise is one who rejected safety for his honour’s sake.” Gemmel ignored all the implications in the dragon’s speech, but he looked into the dragon’s eyes as few might have done, and after several moments he even smiled.
“Then I commend myself to the future,” he said simply. “What was done has been done. And what I must do, I will do. Ymareth Firedrake, I’m lonely. You know my mind as none other, yet not even you can dream of such loneliness. Always, always alone. And my son the Dragon-lord, with the face of the son of my blood? That’s a bitter jest of the Darkness.”
“So now a jest of the Darkness. Of Fate. Of whatever name thy choice desires. But a jest regardless, as I am forbidden. Is that justice?”
Do as I say, thought Gemmel, dredging up a phrase from years past, not do as I do. “Your pardon,” he said, as he had never thought he would. “For my lost honour’s sake, I commend thee to the Dragon-lord Aldric Talvalin. My fosterling. My son. Guard him. Aid him. Keep him safe.”
“All those and more.” Ymareth stretched out its great dark wings and yawned with an enormous gape, so for just one instant Gemmel was looking right down the dragon’s throat and the fire that slumbered uneasily within it. The yawn ended with a snap like a fortress door slammed shut. “But it is an ill night for watching. The heat in yonder city makes confusion in the cold air.”
“What if—?” Gemmel began, but the dragon looked at him and the wizard fell silent.
“There is the Eye of the Dragon,” said Ymareth. “The Echainon stone. With it he is within my gaze again, and thine also if it is thy intent to restore what power the Eye has lost in these past days.”
Gemmel looked from the empty eyesocket of the Dragonwand to the glowing eyes of the dragon and drew breath to make excuses, or utter protests, or say something unforgiveable. It was just as well that Dewan, unaware, interrupted the words before they left his mouth.
“Ymareth-anak, what of the Dragonwand?” the Vreijek asked, using court Alban rather than any other language. “I recall, as if in a dream, that Aldric-eir Talvalin pledged his Word to return that talisman of power to its rightful place on Techaur Island. Yet I see it here. So then, what of the Dragonwand?”
*
Ymareth turned, as if surprised to hear such words from such an unlikely source. As far as scales like burnished metal could hold expression there was pleasure on the dragon’s face.
“It is fine thee cares for such a matter here and now
. But be assured, Dewan ar Korentin—” hearing his name from such a source made Dewan shiver, as it had made Aldric shiver before him, “—that I am in no haste or eagerness. Such is not required. Be at thy ease. Kailin-eir Talvalin gave his Word. He pledged its return when all is accomplished, and that time is not yet. He knows what he does, for all he knows not whose will he does. Ykraith Dragonwand is a part of that.”
In his time Dewan had been eldheisart of the Bodyguard, king’s confidant, warrior’s friend, wizard’s acquaintance and most impossible of all, dragon’s rider. Now he dropped his formal speech and addressed that dragon as an equal.
“Ymareth,” he said, “this is the heart of the Drusalan Empire, with Aldric, Gemmel and myself just three against a mighty realm. What can you do?”
“Ar Korentin, if thou art within a mile of what I do, ask again. If asking is required.” A gush of fire threw sharp-edged shadows beyond the trees of the small hollow where they had landed, the billow of pale, cool flame that was Ymareth’s laughter. Even the words within his head had an aura of humour about them, fluttering like an alcohol flame. Then the flickering amusement faded like morning mist in sunshine. “Enough. Best I not remain. Be aware I watch by Dragonwand and Dragon’s Eye, and expect aid uncalled-for. Farewell!”
The downward slap of air all but threw Dewan off his feet despite expecting something of the sort, and by the time he wiped powdered snow from his eyes the dragon’s lean black shape was only a flicker of darkness across the jewelled twinkle of the winter sky. He stood in silence, staring until it was lost to view, and didn’t move until Gemmel reached out to touch him on the arm.
“How much do you know of me now, Dewan?”
“That you’re not Dragon-lord or Maker any more. Only Maker-that-was. You need to explain those titles, Gemmel.”
“Soon. You’ve said what I’m not. So what am I?”
“A wizard. And a scholar. A man wise in many arts. And the foster-father of my friend.”
“So Aldric still is your friend?”
“Of sorts. Because he speaks the truth as only a friend can do. We talk as equals and we insult each other without involving blades.” He laughed as he said it, but Dewan could tell Gemmel was aware of what he meant. In Alba, and especially among the high clan cseirin-born, men who could swap insults had to be friends. Otherwise one of them would be dead.
“Then what has he told you of en-altrou Errekren, old Snowbeard his sorcerous foster-father? He must have told you something.”
“He told me enough,” said Dewan, with a long stare at Gemmel that wondered, without asking, how little ‘enough’ had been. “He told me you lived under one of the Blue Mountains, and I laughed at him. But he insisted. So… Is it true? Under the mountain?” Gemmel nodded, and it was his lack of quibbling that made Dewan clear his throat before he dared say more. But when he did, the words tumbled out with the excited eagerness of a boy a quarter his real age, the boy Dewan might once have been, and a man he might yet have been, without the Drusalan Empire and its military service.
“Under the mountain! Lord God! Beneath Thunderpeak! Then it was just as true when he said you travelled great distances to many countries before you came to Alba—?”
“Came back to Alba, Dewan,” the wizard interrupted. “I was done with travel.” It put a hesitation in the flood of words.
“You had a son. He… He died.”
“Long ago.”
“You told Rynert the King about it, that day in Cerdor when you found out about how Aldric had been… Given to the Empire.”
“I told him my son died. Not how he died, nor who killed him, nor the consequences afterwards. I told him only what you heard yourself. That I lost a son, and more than a son.” Gemmel shivered. He looked around him and fixed his attention on a tree-stump left from earlier in the year. “I’m cold, Dewan,” he said. “I’m cold, and I’m beginning to hate the dark. We’d be better off with heat and light.”
Without waiting for agreement or disagreement or even warning, he raised one hand and pronounced the Invocation of Fire. A pulse of force sprang from his fingertips, pale as a dying candle, so weak that daylight would have reduced it to a half-seen haze in the air. The snow beneath its track flashed from white solid to white steam with no intervening stage as liquid. Then it hit the stump, a core of unseasoned wood trapped in spongy, sodden rot and topped off with more snow, useless fuel that might choke an ordinary fire. There was a sound like the crack of the world’s biggest whip, and the stump as burned hot and clean as holly dried for kindling.
“Better,” said Gemmel, and scooped up a little snow to ease the blisters rising on his hand. He dropped his small pack on the ground in the lee of a clump of bushes and sat down, stretching chilled feet gratefully towards the blaze. Dewan looked at him and drew breath as if to say something, then thought better of it and sat down in his turn.
“Now. Tell me first, who killed your son?”
“Ernol. My son’s name was Ernol. The man who murdered him was Warlord Etzel’s uncle.” Dewan stared into the fire, not understanding at first, then understanding all too well.
“Oh God. That one! The one who was—”
“Burned. Roasted alive while he sat on his horse and smiled at what he had done. Killed by magic, Dewan. Killed by me. Killed…” Gemmel nodded towards the burning stump. “Like that.”
“Then you’re behind the Empire’s edict against sorcery?”
“It’s the Grand Warlord’s edict but yes, I am.”
“Fifty years ago,” Dewan muttered, thinking aloud; then he considered his own words and shifted enough to stare full at Gemmel’s face. It was white-bearded and careworn, but Dewan was giving it more than the casual glance coloured by assumptions about wizards. It was an old face only until Dewan tried to see the years on it. By all appearances this was a man in his fit and healthy middle sixties, and that wasn’t old enough at all. Aldric had said how much like himself Gemmel’s son must have looked. Yet when they first met the Alban was already twenty, and looking older from the strain of grief and loss and fear. Gemmel as he looked now could never have lost a son of twenty only fifty years ago. Something wasn’t what it seemed.
“Gemmel?” There was a tremor in his voice when he spoke, but the wizard gave no sign of having heard it. “Gemmel, what… What age are you?”
“A day older than I was yesterday. A day younger than I’ll be tomorrow.” There was no smile with the words, and that chilled Dewan more than the snow-melt soaking into his clothes. “It’s all a matter of time. And I’ve always had plenty of time. Except now. Now I’ve got far too much.”
Dewan felt his skin crawl beneath his furs, his armour and his damp clothing. He was about to hear things he didn’t want to, yet didn’t want to miss. He wished Aldric were here with his healthy streak of cynical humour, because Dewan, ex-eldheisart, ex-bodyguard, ex-all the rest, knew with absolute certainty that he was scared, just not scared enough to get up and walk away. Gemmel was gazing at the star-shot sky as though searching for something, the return of Ymareth perhaps, or perhaps not. It was more as if he searched for something beyond the sky which neither of them could see, something only he might hope for.
“I should have spared him,” the wizard said at last, “because by then his death was needless. Too late to save Ernol, too late to bring him back. But I killed him anyway, in rage and grief and vengeance. Because I had the power to do it, there and then, at once. And because I wanted to.”
“There’s nothing wrong with vengeance, Gemmel. Look at Aldric. Look at what he did with your help.”
“Oh yes, with my help. And with what motive? Why did I do all this?” There was bitterness in Gemmel’s voice, a shame and self-loathing which to Dewan had no business there. “I had my reasons. I always have my reasons, long planted and long in growing. But now they’re coming to full flower and the price of harvest might be too high. I’m afraid I’ll lose my son again.” Gemmel took a deep breath, held it as if considering the words it
might carry, then released it through teeth bared by an expression halfway between grin and grimace.
“There’s everything wrong with vengeance, Dewan. At least for me. It can be forgiven if it’s right, if it’s expected, if it’s the proper thing to do. The Alban High Speech has seven different words for ‘revenge’, did you know that? Seven words, each with its own proper circumstance for use. Vengeance for wrongs suffered is an Alban’s heritage, but it isn’t mine and never has been. I was wrong to do it. It cost me my honour. Ymareth knows that.”
“Ymareth? Was that why—?”
“Why it treats me with amused contempt? Yes. For being less than what I was and should have been. You heard it. I’m no longer Dragon-lord. Ymareth respects only honour, a fragile, intangible thing which can’t be bought or forced, but earned and held no matter the cost of its holding. I lost mine fifty years ago. I haven’t regained it yet.”
“What about ‘Maker’?”
“Another title. Concise, descriptive and true.”
“True?” said Dewan in a small voice and stared at him. Suspecting something, no, being almost certain of it, still wasn’t the same as having it confirmed by a flat, emotionless statement. “Then you made…?”
“I did.”
“Father, Mother, Maiden, be between myself and harm, now and always. Avert.” The steadiness of his voice surprised even himself. Dewan had made a private promise to do nothing foolish that would compromise the dignity which gave him a screen to hide behind, so he didn’t spring to his feet or shout or swear. But slowly, in keeping with that dignity, his right hand moved in the old Teshirin blessing of two fingertips touched to eyes then mouth then heart. “But why…” He cleared his throat again. “Why make a dragon?”
“It was appropriate.”
“Appropriate?” Dewan spoke as a man might walk when the solid ground beneath his feet had turned to blown glass and wishful thinking.
“There are worlds… There are places where the way to protect a treasure is with armed guards, and places where that protection is high walls. There are places for fences of steel wire with thorns like roses, and for wires with lightning running through them. And there are places for threads of light hotter than the sun in summer, which can cut and kill. But here, in this place… Here I wanted a dragon. Not just to guard gold. You’ve seen the Cavern of Firedrakes?”
The Dragon Lord Page 22
