Wings of Fire

by Jonathan Strahan; Marianne S. Jablon

  He was shaken like a rat by a rat terrier and flung clear. His wings beat for the safety of altitude, and he found himself about twenty feet off the ground, staring down at the ogre, which grunted a wordless sound and shifted the club to strike upwards. Jim cupped air with his wings, to fling himself backward and avoid the blow. The club whistled through the unfeeling air; and, sweeping forward, Jim ripped at one great blocky shoulder and beat clear. The ogre spun to face him, still grinning. But now blood welled and trickled down where Jim’s teeth had gripped and torn, high on the shoulder.

  —And suddenly, Jim realized something:

  He was no longer afraid. He hung in the air, just out of the ogre’s reach, poised to take advantage of any opening; and a hot sense of excitement was coursing through him. He was discovering the truth about fights—and about most similar things—that it is only the beginning that is bad. Once the chips are down, several million years of instinct take over and there is no time for thought for anything but confronting the enemy. So it was with Jim—and then the ogre moved in on him again; and that was his last specific intellectual thought of the fight, for everything else was drowned in his overwhelming drive to avoid being killed and, if possible, to kill, himself…

  IV

  It was a long, blurred time, about which later Jim had no clear memory. The sun marched up the long arc of the heavens and crossed the nooning point and headed down again. On the torn-up sandy soil of the plain he and the ogre turned and feinted, smashed and tore at each other. Sometimes he was in the air, sometimes on the ground. Once he had the ogre down on one knee, but could not press his advantage. At another time they had fought up the long slope of the hill almost to the Tower and the ogre had him pinned in the cleft between two huge boulders and had hefted its club back for the final blow that would smash Jim’s skull. And then he had wriggled free between the monster’s very legs and the battle was on again.

  Now and then throughout the fight he would catch brief kaleidoscopic glimpses of the combats being waged about him: Nevile-Smythe now wrapped about by the blind body of the Worm, its eye-stalks hacked away—and striving in silence to draw free his sword-arm, which was pinned to his side by the Worm’s encircling body. Or there would roll briefly into Jim’s vision a tangled roaring tumble of flailing leathery wings and serpentine bodies that was Secoh, Anark and old Smrgol. Once or twice he had a momentary view of Carolinus, still standing erect, his staff upright in his hand, his long white beard blowing forward over his blue gown with the cabalistic golden signs upon it, like some old seer in the hour of Armageddon. Then the gross body of the ogre would blot out his vision and he would forget all but the enemy before him.

  The day faded. A dank mist came rolling in from the sea and fled in little wisps and tatters across the plain of battle. Jim’s body ached and slowed, and his wings felt leaden. But the ever-grinning face and sweeping club of the ogre seemed neither to weaken nor to tire. Jim drew back for a moment to catch his breath; and in that second, he heard a voice cry out.

  “Time is short!” it cried, in cracked tones. “We are running out of time. The day is nearly gone!”

  It was the voice of Carolinus. Jim had never heard him raise it before with just such a desperate accent. And even as Jim identified the voice, he realized that it came clearly to his ears—and that for sometime now upon the battlefield, except for the ogre and himself, there had been silence.

  He shook his head to clear it and risked a quick glance about him. He had been driven back almost to the neck of the Causeway itself, where it entered onto the plain. To one side of him, the snapped strands of Clarivaux’s bridle dangled limply where the terrified horse had broken loose from the earth-thrust spear to which Nevile-Smythe had tethered it before advancing against the Worm on foot. A little off from it stood Carolinus, upheld now only by his staff, his old face shrunken and almost mummified in appearance, as if the life had been all but drained from it. There was nowhere else to retreat to; and Jim was alone.

  He turned back his gaze to see the ogre almost upon him. The heavy club swung high, looking gray and enormous in the mist. Jim felt in his limbs and wings a weakness that would not let him dodge in time; and, with all his strength, he gathered himself, and sprang instead, up under the monster’s guard and inside the grasp of those cannon-thick arms.

  The club glanced off Jim’s spine. He felt the arms go around him, the double triad of bone-thick fingers searching for his neck. He was caught, but his rush had knocked the ogre off his feet. Together they went over and rolled on the sandy earth, the ogre gnawing with his jagged teeth at Jim’s chest and striving to break a spine or twist a neck, while Jim’s tail lashed futilely about.

  They rolled against the spear and snapped it in half. The ogre found its hold and Jim felt his neck begin to be slowly twisted, as if it were a chicken’s neck being wrung in slow motion. A wild despair flooded through him. He had been warned by Smrgol never to let the ogre get him pinned. He had disregarded that advice and now he was lost, the battle was lost. Stay away, Smrgol had warned, use your brains…

  The hope of a wild chance sprang suddenly to life in him. His head was twisted back over his shoulder. He could see only the gray mist above him, but he stopped fighting the ogre and groped about with both forelimbs. For a slow moment of eternity, he felt nothing, and then something hard nudged against his right foreclaw, a glint of bright metal flashed for a second before his eyes. He changed his grip on what he held, clamping down on it as firmly as his clumsy foreclaws would allow—

  —and with every ounce of strength that was left to him, he drove the fore-part of the broken spear deep into the middle of the ogre that sprawled above him.

  The great body bucked and shuddered. A wild scream burst from the idiot mouth alongside Jim’s ear. The ogre let go, staggered back and up, tottering to its feet, looming like the Tower itself above him. Again, the ogre screamed, staggering about like a drunken man, fumbling at the shaft of the spear sticking from him. It jerked at the shaft, screamed again, and, lowering its unnatural head, bit at the wood like a wounded animal. The tough ash splintered between its teeth. It screamed once more and fell to its knees. Then slowly, like a bad actor in an old-fashioned movie, it went over on its side, and drew up its legs like a man with the cramp. A final scream was drowned in bubbling. Black blood trickled from its mouth and it lay still.

  Jim crawled slowly to his feet and looked about him.

  The mists were drawing back from the plain and the first thin light of late afternoon stretching long across the slope. In its rusty illumination, Jim made out what was to be seen there.

  The Worm was dead, literally hacked in two. Nevile-Smythe, in bloody, dinted armor, leaned wearily on a twisted sword not more than a few feet off from Carolinus. A little farther off, Secoh raised a torn neck and head above the intertwined, locked-together bodies of Anark and Smrgol. He stared dazedly at Jim. Jim moved slowly, painfully over to the mere-dragon.

  Jim came up and looked down at the two big dragons. Smrgol lay with his eyes closed and his jaws locked in Anark’s throat. The neck of the younger dragon had been broken like the stem of a weed.

  “Smrgol…” croaked Jim.

  “No—” gasped Secoh. “No good. He’s gone… I led the other one to him. He got his grip—and then he never let go…” The mere-dragon choked and lowered his head.

  “He fought well,” creaked a strange harsh voice which Jim did not at first recognize. He turned and saw the Knight standing at his shoulder. Nevile-Smythe’s face was white as sea-foam inside his helmet and the flesh of it seemed fallen in to the bones, like an old man’s. He swayed as he stood.

  “We have won,” said Carolinus, solemnly, coming up with the aid of his staff. “Not again in our lifetimes will evil gather enough strength in this spot to break out.” He looked at Jim. “And now,” he said, “the balance of Chance and History inclines in your favor. It’s time to send you back.”

  “Back?” said Nevile-Smythe.

&nb
sp; “Back to his own land, Knight,” replied the magician. “Fear not, the dragon left in this body of his will remember all that happened and be your friend.”

  “Fear!” said Nevile-Smythe, somehow digging up a final spark of energy to expend on hauteur. “I fear no dragon, dammit. Besides, in respect to the old boy here”—he nodded at the dead Smrgol—“I’m going to see what can be done about this dragon-alliance business.”

  “He was great!” burst out Secoh, suddenly, almost with a sob. “He—he made me strong again. Whatever he wanted, I’ll do it.” And the mere-dragon bowed his head.

  “You come along with me then, to vouch for the dragon end of it,” said Nevile-Smythe. “Well,” he turned to Jim, “it’s goodby, I suppose, Sir James.”

  “I suppose so,” said Jim. “Goodby to you, too. I—” Suddenly he remembered.

  “Angie!” he cried out, spinning around. “I’ve got to go get Angie out of that Tower!”

  Carolinus put his staff out to halt Jim.

  “Wait,” he said. “Listen…”

  “Listen?” echoed Jim. But just at that moment, he heard it, a woman’s voice calling, high and clear, from the mists that still hid the Tower.

  “Jim! Jim, where are you?”

  A slight figure emerged from the mist, running down the slope toward them.

  “Here I am!” bellowed Jim. And for once he was glad of the capabilities of his dragon-voice. “Here I am, Angie—”

  —but Carolinus was chanting in a strange, singing voice, words without meaning, but which seemed to shake the very air about them. The mist swirled, the world rocked and swung. Jim and Angie were caught up, were swirled about, were spun away and away down an echoing corridor of nothingness…

  . . . and then they were back in the Grille, seated together on one side of the table in the booth. Hanson, across from them, was goggling like a bewildered accident victim.

  “Where—where am I?” he stammered. His eyes suddenly focused on them across the table and he gave a startled croak. “Help!” he cried, huddling away from them. “Humans!”

  “What did you expect?” snapped Jim. “Dragons?”

  “No!” shrieked Hanson. “Watch-beetles—like me!” And, turning about, he tried desperately to burrow his way through the wood seat of the booth to safety.

  V

  It was the next day after that Jim and Angie stood in the third floor corridor of Chumley Hall, outside the door leading to the office of the English Department.

  “Well, are you going in or aren’t you?” demanded Angie.

  “In a second, in a second,” said Jim, adjusting his tie with nervous fingers. “Just don’t rush me.”

  “Do you suppose he’s heard about Grottwold?” Angie asked.

  “I doubt it,” said Jim. The Student Health Service says Hanson’s already starting to come out of it—except that he’ll probably always have a touch of amnesia about the whole afternoon. Angie!” said Jim, turning on her. “Do you suppose, all the time we were there, Hanson was actually being a watch-beetle underground?”

  “I don’t know, and it doesn’t matter,” interrupted Angie, firmly. “Honestly, Jim, now you’ve finally promised to get an answer out of Dr. Howells about a job, I’d think you’d want to get it over and done with, instead of hesitating like this. I just can’t understand a man who can go about consorting with dragons and fighting ogres and then—”

  “—still not want to put his boss on the spot for a yes-or-no answer,” said Jim. “Hah! Let me tell you something.” He waggled a finger in front of her nose. “Do you know what all this dragon-ogre business actually taught me? It wasn’t not to be scared, either.”

  “All right,” said Angie, with a sigh. “What was it then?”

  “I’ll tell you,” said Jim. “What I found out…” He paused. “What I found out was not, not to be scared. It was that scared or not doesn’t matter; because you just go ahead, anyway.”

  Angie blinked at him.

  “And that,” concluded Jim, “is why I agreed to have it out with Howells, after all. Now you know.”

  He yanked Angie to him, kissed her grimly upon her startled lips, and, letting go of her, turned about. Giving a final jerk to his tie, he turned the knob of the office door, opened it, and strode valiantly within.

  The Silver Dragon

  Elizabeth A. Lynn

  Elizabeth A. Lynn was born in New York in 1946. She published her first story, “We All Have to Go,” in 1976. It was followed by a handful of other stories, including World Fantasy Award winner “The Woman Who Loved the Moon,” most of which appear in her two short story collections, The Woman Who Loved the Moon and Other Stories and Tales from a Vanished Country. Lynn’s first novel, A Different Light, was published in 1978 and her second, fantasy Watchtower, was published in 1979. It was the opening volume in her best known work, “The Chronicles of Tornor”, and won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel. It was followed by The Dancers of Arun and The Northern Girl. Lynn wrote a second SF novel, The Sardonyx Net, in 1981 and young adult fantasy The Silver Horse in 1984, before stopping writing for a lengthy period. Her first novel in thirteen years, Dragon’s Winter, was published in 1998. Her latest novel is Dragon’s Treasure. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area, teaches martial arts, and is at work on a new novel.

  This is a story of Iyadur Atani, who was master of Dragon Keep and lord of Dragon’s Country a long, long time ago.

  At this time, Ryoka was both the same and different than it is today. In Issho, in the west, there was peace, for the mages of Ryoka had built the great wall, the Wizards’ Wall, and defended it with spells. Though the wizards were long gone, the power of their magic lingered in the towers and ramparts of the wall. The Isojai feared it, and would not storm it.

  In the east, there was no peace. Chuyo was not part of Ryoka, but a separate country. The Chuyokai lords were masters of the sea. They sailed the eastern seas in black-sailed ships, landing to plunder and loot and carry off the young boys and girls to make them slaves. All along the coast of Kameni, men feared the Chuyokai pirates.

  In the north, the lords of Ippa prospered. Yet, having no enemies from beyond their borders to fight, they grew bored, and impatient, and quarrelsome. They quarreled with the lords of Issho, with the Talvelai, and the Nyo, and they fought among themselves. Most quarrelsome among them was Martun Hal, lord of Serrenhold. Serrenhold, as all men know, is the smallest and most isolated of the domains of Ippa. For nothing is it praised: not for its tasty beer or its excellence of horseflesh, nor for the beauty of its women, nor the prowess of its men. Indeed, Serrenhold is notable for only one thing: its inhospitable climate. Bitter as the winds of Serrenhold, the folk of Ippa say.

  No one knew what made Martun Hal so contentious. Perhaps it was the wind, or the will of the gods, or perhaps it was just his nature. In the ten years since he had inherited the lordship from his father Owen, he had killed one brother, exiled another, and picked fights with all his neighbors.

  His greatest enmity was reserved for Roderico diCorsini of Derrenhold. There had not always been enmity between them. Indeed, he had once asked Olivia diCorsini, daughter of Roderico diCorsini, lord of Derrenhold, to marry him. But Olivia diCorsini turned him down.

  “He is old. Besides, I do not love him,” she told her father. “I will not wed a man I do not love.”

  “Love? What does love have to do with marriage?” Roderico glared at his child. She glared back. They were very alike: stubborn, and proud of it. “Pah. I suppose you love someone else.”

  “I do,” said Olivia.

  “And who might that be, missy?”

  “Jon Torneo of Galva.”

  “Jon Torneo?” Roderico scowled a formidable scowl. “Jon Torneo? He’s a shepherd’s son! He smells of sheep fat and hay!” This, as it happened, was not true. Jon Torneo’s father, Federico Torneo of Galva, did own sheep. But he could hardly be called a shepherd: he was a wool merchant, and one of the wealthiest men in the domain, who had oft
en come to Derrenhold as Roderico diCorsini’s guest.

  “I don’t care. I love him,” Olivia said.

  And the very next night she ran away from her father’s house, and rode east across the countryside to Galva. To tell you what happened then would be a whole other story. But since the wedding of Olivia diCorsini and Jon Torneo, while of great import to them, is a small part of this story, suffice it to say that Olivia married Jon Torneo, and went to live with him in Galva. Do I need to tell you they were happy? They were. They had four children. The eldest—a boy, called Federico after his grandfather—was a friendly, sturdy, biddable lad. The next two were girls. They were also charming and biddable children, like their brother.

  The fourth was Joanna. She was very lovely, having inherited her mother’s olive skin and black, thick hair. But she was in no way biddable. She fought with her nurses, and bullied her brother. She preferred trousers to skirts, archery to sewing, and hunting dogs to dolls.

  “I want to ride. I want to fight,” she said.

  “Women do not fight,” her sisters said.

  “I do,” said Joanna.

  And her mother, recognizing in her youngest daughter the indomitable stubbornness of her own nature, said, “Let her do as she will.”

  So Joanna learned to ride, and shoot, and wield a sword. By fourteen she could ride as well as any horseman in her grandfather’s army. By fifteen she could outshoot all but his best archers.

  “She has not the weight to make a swordsman,” her father’s arms-master said, “but she’ll best anyone her own size in a fair fight.”