The Dragon Lord

by Peter Morwood

  Most people knew something about Albans: their adherence to an outdated Code in a cynical modern world, their tsepan Honour daggers, and the telek spring-gun which had become as typical an Alban weapon as any taiken longsword. If Princess Marhala was murdered with the twin of one still holstered on the saddle of the Alban King’s envoy, no Imperial court of justice would search for any other evidence. They would take steps to punish not only him but the place from which he came. There would be war.

  And the post of Grand Warlord would be secure.

  Aldric wondered when and why and how the plan had been created, and at whose suggestion, and realised that though the message was for Voord alone, he could no longer trust anyone. Now he didn’t dare fling what he had discovered in Bruda’s face, for as Voord’s superior the man was probably a part of it.

  The scheme was also far too convincing. Aldric was sure King Rynert had arranged Emperor Droek’s convenient death, and that he was behind the accident which killed Droek’s elder son and caused such chaos with the succession. Now Marhala’s presence in the Red Tower had forced a pause to the long-drawn strife it had created. While the Imperial armies were at odds Alba was safe from their threat, but with the princess held by one faction as surety for the behaviour of the other, cooler heads might prevail. They could make a case that instead of fighting one another, their combined military forces could be put to better use in bringing the benefits of the Empire to those not yet a part of it. Annoyingly, aggressively independent Alba, for one. But Marhala laid with her ancestors at Kalitzim would be no bargaining counter for either side to use, and the renewed hostility might even grow to full-scale civil war which the Albans could watch from a safe distance.

  Unless the manner of her passing put the blame on them.

  Grand Warlord Etzel stood to gain most, so even if he wasn’t behind this plot he was certainly poised to make best use of its opportunity. A simple appeal to simple emotion would be all he needed. Aldric could already hear the speeches in his head, not the mannered poetry of Osmar’s plays but fiery words to whip up grief and create a common cause. That cause would be revenge, something he knew all about. A thirst for justified vengeance was a thing of frightening intensity, with none better qualified to admit it than himself. He had felt it, seen its blue-white power surge through Ykraith the Dragonwand to incinerate Duergar Vathach, and watched it burn as hot in the eyes of Gueynor Evenou, Overlord of Seghar. Such emotion loosed on a military-minded empire wasn’t a thought to dwell on.

  But another thought drifted, settled and took on solid form. Seghar, said the thought. This has happened already. Made a scapegoat, betrayed by a weapon so obviously yours it could belong to no-one else. The citadel of Seghar was where Crisen Geruath had murdered his own father with Aldric’s tsepan to do the deed. Almost forgotten voices linked Voord’s name with Seghar, and with Crisen; details were long lost in the confusion of later events, but the connection was still there. That was enough, and more than enough.

  Then the farther door slid open, another man came in, and everything went wrong.

  “Serej, has the Lord-Commander—” the man was saying, but he and his voice stopped in the same instant. Aldric didn’t know him, had never seen him before, and it was plain from this newcomer’s expression that he shared the lack of recognition. More words made it plainer yet. “Who in the Fires are you? And what are you doing here?”

  Aldric didn’t have to be watching to know the courier Serej was staring from one to the other with shock-widened eyes, and he needed sharp ears to catch the soft obscenity born of sudden realisation. But what came after the oath was clear enough.

  “Etek, he says he’s Voord!”

  “That’s not Voor—”

  There would be no more talking. Without threat or challenge or even an indrawn breath, Aldric flicked hand to hilt. A protracted fight would attract unwelcome attention, so instead of Isileth he drew his taipan, left-handed for maximum surprise, and it almost worked.

  But only almost. Etek had expected trouble as soon as he saw an unfamiliar face, and avoided the blade by a finger’s thickness. In the same instant Serej the courier began a dash with both hands outstretched for that loaded crossbow. All he had to do was seize it, point it and pull the trigger. But he also had to get beyond Aldric’s reach, and he wasn’t fast enough.

  Before Etek could regain his balance or grab for his own makher, Aldric half-turned and lashed out with the taipan. Its blade rang as it sheared bone, and Serej stumbled. His legs collapsed under him and he slammed against the floor without a word. Momentum skidded him close enough for his outstretched right hand to reach the waiting bow, but he no longer had any use for it. Or any back to his head.

  Etek lunged forward, makher outstretched for a ripping upward thrust, but he was a second and a lifetime too later. Aldric’s right hand had already closed on Isileth’s long grip, and the taiken leaped from its scabbard with eager speed. Instead of block or parry there was a sidestep as swift as the beat of a falcon’s wing, and a single cut from a blade with a foot more reach. The fight was over before it had begun.

  Aldric felt the jolt of impact up his arm as Widowmaker made another, and saw a gout of blood burst from the Drusalan’s chest like wine from a new-tapped cask. It was the same deep crimson as a rose he had once seen, and it spattered against the floor with a sound like rain, a colour like rubies, and a smell like a slaughteryard.

  Etek tried to say something, whether witty or angry, a curse or a protest, that might be remembered for a little while. It came out only as a bubbling exhalation of breath. Then his knees buckled, and he dropped.

  Aldric held that last accusing stare long after it lost focus, telling himself that he had only done what he had to, that these men were enemies, that the responsibility for their death wasn’t his, and that he didn’t care. But he did. Otherwise he would have as little conscience as the weapon he held, for in someone else’s hand Widowmaker would end his life as readily as any other. There was an obligation to killing, and that obligation was remembrance. He stood with the coppery stench of warm blood in his nostrils, looking down at the dead men, fixing them in his mind.

  Not yet twenty-four, and how many corpses now?

  He knew the number, and several names as well. It was a list to remind him of the long-trained skill that meant he lived while others died. It also reminded him that other swordsmen could have equal skill or greater, enough that one of them might some day stand looking down at him. But until that day there was self-defence, and there was expedience, and there was necessity. Three words that were all a killer needed.

  They left a taste like vinegar and ashes on his tongue.

  *

  Ayan the storymaker finished, smiled acknowledgement of her applause, nodded to her audience as they left and sipped a little more cold beer to soothe her throat. The story had been one of her own and no effort to tell, linking like a chain – or a mesh of mail, for it might lead off in several directions at once – with other tales she told with characters as well-known as her family and friends.

  Ayan’s smile broadened at that, for often enough those characters were her family and friends, their quirks observed and embellished. It was a fault of hers. No, not a fault, a privilege which those who wove tales from the joint webs of imagination and experience could exercise. She had met several such potentials in the past few days: a scholarly man with a collector’s enthusiasm for every new topic he discovered; a woman with a string of riding-horses for sale – Ayan had bought one already, with an option on two more – and a string of anecdotes to go with them.

  Then there was the twitchy young hanalth with the firedrake fixation…

  Something, some thing made her look up towards a winter sky half-dark and flecked with stars, half-grey with another band of snow-laden cloud. At any other time she would have seen nothing, for Tower Square was a dark place after sunset. But now, tonight, on this holiday, it was lit as brightly as anywhere in the Drusalan Empire, and the glow r
eflected from those lowering clouds so they formed a pale backdrop to anything below them.

  Two things were visible tonight. One was the Tower, a stark outline that drew a shudder from Ayan’s imaginative mind. There was a brooding look to that fortress, enough to make her glad that tomorrow, when the festival was over, she and her new horse or horses would leave this city and return home before winter closed in.

  But the other thing was higher than the Tower, and darker than the Tower, lean as hunger and as black as a rent in the clouds, with wide wings that drove it across the night sky as fast as a bat hunting moths.

  Ayan stared until small glowing motes swam before her eyes, and then she stared some more. She was sure she knew what she was seeing, yet didn’t dare to speak the word aloud. ‘Say the name, summon the named’ might be an old line in older stories, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t true. The winged creature passed beyond the grey clouds and across the starlit heavens, but she could still follow it when the cold distant specks of starfire flickered as it sliced between them and the world.

  One of those sparks became a long bright streak that flared and died away again, and Ayan released a breath she hadn’t known she was holding. Anyone else might have dismissed the quick bright scratch as the track of a falling star, but not after what she had already seen.

  “Did you know about that, Commander Dirac?” muttered Ayan ker Trahan. “Now I understand what you were about…” A dragon was something she had always wanted to see, ever since the first tale she made about them. But having seen this one, she didn’t want to stay for more. Dragons in tales behaved as their role in those tales required: they were frightening and fierce or gentle and funny, wicked and cruel or wise and helpful. This wasn’t one of those dragons. It was real, and a real one would be what it was, not what a storymaker wanted it to be. The conclusion of ‘Farmer Kolvin and the Dragon’ could wait for another festival which didn’t have a dragon in the air above it.

  Another long and more straightforward talk with Hanalth Dirac could prove enlightening, even educational, but Ayan had no wish to wait in Egisburg either for him or the answers he had hoped to learn. It wasn’t fear; as a mother and daughter of soldiers Ayan was less prone to that than most. But it was caution, for now she recalled little oddities about him and the most important was his accent. It wasn’t from Drusul, Tergoves or even Vlech, and if he wasn’t from the Imperial heartlands he was a provincial. If he was a provincial, he couldn’t wear a hanalth’s bars and diamonds. Her own sons had been in the Empire’s army, the younger just released from service, and that rigid capping of promotion was something she had heard about at endless length.

  So why and how was he wearing that insignia? Ayan didn’t want to know. She had been speaking to him, and enough people in this busy place had seen her speaking to him. Now, more than ever, she wanted away from Egisburg before whatever he was cooking boiled up and over. The doings of the great, the not-so-great and the downright infamous had a way of hurting all around them, and innocent bystanders most of all.

  *

  Aldric walked along the street, and along his own shadow as the leaping flames behind him flung it forward. He cleared his throat and spat the taste of soot and lamp-oil into the gutter. Off in the distance someone was beating an alarm gong, but that didn’t matter. The fire he had set would never be under control before it cleared all trace of what had happened, and though there might be questions, there would be no answers.

  Serej the courier had known what instructions were contained in his message and accepted all of them, including whatever protracted execution was inflicted on murderers of Imperial royalty. He had gone for a weapon, and anyone who did that when Widowmaker was in play had only themselves to blame. Etek was Voord’s henchman, so he deserved everything as well. Aldric grimaced; if he worked at it long enough he might convince himself. But it hadn’t happened yet.

  What to do? Stay or run? His mind darted from one side of the problem to the other like a mouse choosing between primed trap or poisoned bait, even though what he was – and what he tried to be – meant there was only one thing he could do. There was no point in running anyway, because somewhere in this city, in Voord’s or Tagen’s or even Bruda’s hands, was a telek to match the one holstered at his saddle. It was an unusual weapon for an Imperial hanalth, noticed and remembered by far too many people. Princess Marhala would die whether he was there to take the blame or not and, if he fled, that would only confirm his guilt. Running couldn’t save him, and it wouldn’t save her.

  There was nobody he could turn to but himself. In this Imperial city everyone had become a potential enemy, a potential informer willing to betray him for no reason other than what he was: inyen-hlensyarl. To a Drusalan ‘foreigner’, ‘spy’ and ‘assassin’ were interchangeable, and this foreigner wore a stolen uniform and rank. That was what Voord and Bruda would claim, as they had probably intended from the start.

  It brought Aldric back to the conclusion he had reached at the beginning, when Serej first outlined this dirty little plot. He still had to rescue the Princess. It remained a storymaker’s cliché, if no longer one to smile at, but this rescue would be of his own devising. At least he had a slight advantage, forewarned of treachery and expecting it, while those behind the treachery remained unaware he knew. At least he hoped so.

  One day, Talvalin, all this will get you killed. It was like something Dewan ar Korentin would say. He might think Aldric wanted to avoid the sneers and sidelong looks which mocked a duty done so well it cost an innocent woman her life. But that had never been the reason. It was a simpler one, without influences from anyone else.

  Aldric’s reason was his Honour. Princess Marhala an-Sherban was Drusalan, from a country which might soon make war on his own, yet after his Word to the king he was honour-bound to help her. Honour-bound… Now that was a term used too often and too lightly. His tsepan, though it hung on slings in the Drusalan military manner rather than correctly in the loops of his weaponbelt, was a constant reminder of an oath taken at his Eskorrethen ceremony when he was twenty years old and his family were still alive. He might appear to lay it aside, as he laid aside the black dirk, but he could never forget either oath or blade while the white scars remained on his left hand’s palm.

  Aldric looked down at that hand and its fingers clenched into a fist at what he saw on the wrist above its cuff. The thread of blue within the spellstone had expanded like the pupil of a watchful cat’s eye.

  Or the Eye of the Dragon.

  Aldric’s head tilted on his shoulders to stare up at the night sky, just as Ayan the storymaker was doing in Tower Square. He saw what she saw without hesitation or disbelief, and drew himself up straight to offer the shadow in the sky a quick salute. Ymareth the firedrake had granted him far more aid than Rynert of Alba had ever done, and shown him far more courtesy and kindness. Perhaps it saw his courteous gesture, for the distant outline unleashed a lance of white fire, brief and brilliant as a sunspark struck from Heaven’s Forge. Response or not, it was a reminder that in this city full of enemies he wasn’t completely alone.

  And after all was done, when the princess was free – oh, such confidence! – and he had discharged his obligation to the man he had called ‘King’ and ‘Lord’, what would he do then?

  Aldric didn’t know.

  *

  “There, up in the sky! Did you see that, Gemmel? Did you see it?”

  “So you’re talking again.”

  Soldier and sorcerer stood together on a low ridge near the road which crossed the river-plain to Egisburg’s great gated walls. Ymareth had set them down about two miles from the city, a negligible distance in fine weather and daylight if they could use the roads. But it was not, and they could not, and slogging in darkness through snowdrifts like frozen ocean waves had taken more than an hour. Except for the occasional heartfelt oath Dewan had said nothing after his mouth closed at Gemmel’s final revelation. He hadn’t spoken to the old man since, no longer sure that ‘man
’ was a proper term of reference.

  “I… All right, yes I am,” he said at last. “I must. I’ve known you long enough before, before—”

  “Before I gave you honest answers and you didn’t like the sound of truth?”

  “I… I found it hard to digest.”

  “Said the man who ate the cart-horse,” Gemmel said, and grinned. It was the old grin and the old Gemmel, and Dewan felt a deal more easy in his mind to see it. “You mean the flare in the sky? A falling star.”

  “That was no star, falling or otherwise.”

  “Good. We can agree on something. Would you also agree that we abandon this excessive caution and use the damned road?”

  Dewan looked to either side in both directions as far as he could see, not far at night but enough to be sure there was no one else in the area. Using the road so close to the city didn’t concern him now, but emerging from concealment after not using it might prompt the question why?

  “All right,” he said. “All clear. Come on.” He floundered through another drift, noting irritably how once again Gemmel let him go first before following over the broken ground. “I must remember, Gemmel, wizard, friend, to let you take your turn in front now and again.”

  “As you wish,” said Gemmel as he reached the road. This close to Egisburg it was paved and kept free of all but the most recent snow. “Then I’ll lead from here, shall I?”

  Dewan watched him walk away for a few seconds. With plenty of loose snow in easy reach he fought a noble struggle that balanced his dignity, the risk of what he was considering and the satisfaction a well-hurled snowball would bring.

  It took several seconds, but at last Dewan dropped his handful of snow and set off after Gemmel without another word.

  *

  Aldric returned to the inn without detours. He avoided Tower Square with its risk of watchful eyes, so didn’t see how one of the storymakers was gathering her gear before hurried departure from a city which had lost all its attraction. He was in a hurry too, wanting to get behind a locked door before someone saw the drying blood which spattered him. The swordplay had left its traces as it always did, even on the victor.