Dragon's Rise

by Lou Hoffmann

  They stepped out into the cobbled courtyard and found a groom—a young man this time—already waiting with their saddled horses.

  Before they rode into the street, Thurlock said, “The trick this morning, Luccan, what you want to try to pull off, is to look comfortable in those clothes and dignified, without looking down your nose at people passing by.”

  Lucky tried to adjust his look to match that instruction, but he really had no idea. “How am I doing?” he asked.

  That made Thurlock laugh out loud, which let Lucky know he’d been a little ridiculous, but it was worth it. Because, face it, Lucky. If the wizard’s gloomy, all is not right with the world.

  Thurlock quickly sobered again, though. “So, we’re going to the City Watch headquarters,” he said, “where we’ll be interrogated—”

  “Interrogated!”

  “Or perhaps I should have said interviewed about the ambush and the Hehlios incident. Prepare your mind now. The people who will be asking us questions are the equivalent of a detective in an Earth police force, but they have magic at their disposal instead of technology like lie detectors. I know you wouldn’t think of lying, anyway—neither of us can safely do that, thanks to our damnable Ol’Karrigh ancestors—but don’t dodge questions either. On the other hand, don’t elaborate—just give straightforward answers. If you think someone doesn’t like you, perhaps look elsewhere.”

  “Maybe I could use the Charismata.”

  “No! Absolutely a bad idea. Remember how I said it will wear off? Well, once it does, a person might become resentful, which won’t help anyone, will it? And some of these people have a great deal of power, of one sort or another. But do block your thoughts. The Watch does employ some thought readers, though not very many people have the same degree of skill as Han. Nevertheless, even though you’re telling the truth, you don’t want them in your head.”

  Lucky turned his thoughts inward, trying to get his brain set up for self-defense. Neither he nor Thurlock spoke again as they rode out of the university’s gates, through the suburbs, and into the city. The streets they traveled were almost as busy as those they’d ridden through the night before, but a different kind of activity created the hubbub. It seemed to Lucky that everyone he saw was “all business,” and mostly it was business of the sort that required a brisk walk, firmly set shoulders, and a serious set of the mouth. There were few children about, and the workers sprinkled into the mix carrying this or that, driving carts, or doing other tasks seemed less rushed, more carefully dressed, and more restrained. Lucky now understood why he and Thurlock had dressed the way they did. Apparently, this was business attire, though theirs seemed perhaps a little finer than some. Lucky didn’t like feeling like he was showing off his wealth….

  “Thurlock, are you rich? Am I?”

  “Neither of us will starve. We’re here. Remember what I told you. And don’t worry. It will be all right.”

  Those last two short sentences went a long way to putting Lucky at ease. When Thurlock had told him in the past that it would be all right, it always had been, although sometimes there were some in-between stages that weren’t much fun.

  “Here” was the Nedhra City Watch Headquarters, a complex of three buildings all built of dark brown brick in the same austere style, one on each of three sides of a courtyard of dark paving stones, with the street on the fourth side blocked by a heavy, barred gate that Lucky could swear was made of iron, though he’d seen little of that metal since coming to Ethra. Once they’d been allowed inside, they dismounted and left their horses with reins looped around a wooden hitching rail. They didn’t need to tie them—neither Sherah nor Zef would wander off—but all the other horses were secured, and as Thurlock had said, “When in Nedhra….”

  Three stone steps led up to the small, utilitarian forecourt of the central building—the only one of the three that rose higher than a single story. A guard stood at the door, and he challenged the two people who entered before Thurlock and Lucky. But when it was their turn, the guard bowed slightly and opened the door for them.

  “Thank you,” Lucky said, because he tried to be polite, but he whispered it because he didn’t know if he was supposed to say anything. Thurlock hadn’t.

  The interior of the building was poorly lit, and it had that musty smell buildings get when they’ve been in use for something involving paperwork for a very long time. And, it turned out, paperwork was indeed the first order of business at the Watch Headquarters for Lucky and Thurlock. A young woman in a uniform stiff and ill-fitting enough to look brand-new came out of a door at the far end of the lobby and addressed Thurlock.

  “Sir, um….” She looked down at a clipboard. “Master Thurlock Ol’Karrigh? Sir?”

  “Oh, calm down, young lady,” Thurlock started, but he must have seen Lucky’s shocked look. After quickly catching Lucky’s eye, he briefly closed his eyes and began again. “Forgive me. Yes, I’m Thurlock, of course. Here with Luccan about the Hehlios matter.”

  “Uh, yes. The chief investigator, Captain Kharry, has asked for written statements before the interview. Um… if you’ll come with me, sir? And Mister… um….”

  “Just call me Luccan, that’s fine, Sehlia,” Lucky said, having read her name tag.

  Something—maybe being called by her name—seemed to put her at ease. “Yes, Luccan. You’ll need to write out your statement too. If you’ll both come with me, please.”

  She led them down a narrow hall with a barred door at the back, but stopped well before that. She opened a door of age-darkened wood on the right. “Luccan, I’ll set you up in here.” She placed a quill and parchment on the small, scarred table and asked, “Is the light from the window enough, or will you need a lamp?”

  The window probably measured less than a foot in width or height, but its light shone directly onto the table. It would be adequate, and Lucky told her so. He didn’t mention that what he suspected wouldn’t be adequate was his command of rune-writing. He swallowed in dread of the task before him as she led Thurlock on, presumably to a nearby room.

  Lucky labored at his writing, striving to at least make his runes legible and use the right ones in the right place. He wished rune-writing was as easy as using the English alphabet back in Earth, but it was more complicated. The runes used in Ethra did, sometimes, indicate a certain sound or syllable, but other times they meant whole words, and it wasn’t always true that the same rune meant the same word. It all depended on what was around it. When he’d done the best he could, he put the quill down, and before he had a chance to wonder if he should go out and tell Sehlia he was done, she knocked quietly on the door and opened it.

  “Finished, sir?”

  Lucky assured her he was and handed her the parchment. He was about to tell her not to call him sir, but he suddenly got a vibe that addressing him formally in this way made it easier for her, so he simply smiled.

  Thurlock had also finished, of course, and when Lucky followed Sehlia back out to the lobby, he discovered the wizard waiting in a chair near the window. He stood as they came near, and the young officer led them this time to a narrow set of stairs.

  “The team will be waiting for you,” she said, and left them to ascend to the second floor on their own. The wooden stair treads were narrow, not exactly creaky but clearly old, and designed to be practical rather than beautiful. The room they emerged into at the top of the stairs smelled of old, damp wood, sweat, and sorrow—which Lucky thought was an odd idea to have had. Two tables sat squarely facing each other, a distance of five feet or so separating them. The one farthest from the door had four chairs behind it, each with its own grim-faced, uniformed occupant. None of the four—three men and one woman—actually scowled, though. Not hostile, Luccan sensed, regretful.

  A quiet step alerted him that someone approached, so he didn’t jump when a young man—also in uniform—appeared at his side and indicated he should sit in one of the two chairs at the closer table. When their eyes met for an instant, the officer gave
him a tight-lipped smile as if he wanted to apologize, and Lucky thought he might be a little frightened. As Lucky took his seat, he flashed a smile to set him at ease, but he wasn’t sure the young man saw it before he stepped away.

  One of the four people sitting at the opposite table—whom Lucky had decided to think of as inquisitors—squinted at the parchment before him. Lucky could see the smears and blocky writing, and he knew the parchment was the statement he’d labored over. The man looked up at Lucky with a slight frown, seeming puzzled rather than unhappy. Maybe the man—whose name plate on the table said Lt. E. Lassahr—wondered why Thurlock held so much store in Lucky’s future, if he couldn’t even write. Likely, he thought Lucky was nothing more than an unknown, uneducated, mostly unmagical teenager.

  As soon as Thurlock was seated in the other chair, the officer next to Lassahr—Capt. J. L. Kharry—cleared her throat, and everyone looked her way. Lucky had every expectation that this interview would be confrontational and unpleasant, but when Captain Kharry spoke, he found out he was wrong. Her voice was pleasant, and her tone matter-of-fact but personable.

  “Thurlock, Luccan, thank you for coming. Officially, this is an interview relating to the investigation of a possible crime involving the death of the Wizard Hehlios Ol’Karrigh, which occurred twelve miles west of Nedhra City and therefore falls within the Watch’s jurisdiction. To that end, we’ll get some formalities out of the way, but before we begin, I want you both to know we do not expect to bring charges. You are not our first witnesses in the matter. To start things off correctly, though—” She looked at the officer to her left. “—Mihkel?”

  Mihkel—Sergeant M. C. Hahltig—was a balding man with a jowly face and a red nose that Lucky guessed might mean he liked his wine a little more than was good for him. Still, he spoke clearly as he summarized the purpose of the investigation and the rights and responsibilities of Watch personnel as well as the two being questioned. The speech was memorized and formal, but not hostile. When he finished, he turned expectantly back to Captain Kharry.

  “I’ve read over your statements,” she said, then paused and looked at Lucky pointedly before continuing, “as much as is possible.” She asked a few questions—specifically, when it came to Lucky, things like, “What is this word?” And, “Is this rune a Thurisaz or a Raidho?” The things she asked Thurlock were a bit more incisive, but the questioning overall took only a few minutes. “What’s in your statements and what you’ve said here, the two of you, agrees with what we’ve already heard. I’m calling the investigation closed, for now. We’ll have to make a report to City Judicial Service, but we’ll recommend a finding that Hehlios was the aggressor and your actions, Thurlock, were in defense of life.”

  Thurlock said, “Yes, thank you, Captain.”

  Lucky heard an odd note in Thurlock’s voice, and was reminded that for Thurlock, the taking of Hehlios’s life remained painful, regardless of legalities.

  Captain Kahrry stood, signaling the inquiry was over, and the other Watch officers rose as well. Aware of a cold prickle at the back of his neck, Lucky turned in time to the one officer who hadn’t spoken at all—Sergeant A. L. Dohrmahn, according to his tag—staring at him with ice in his gaze. He schooled the expression immediately, but Lucky took note, and planned to tell Thurlock as soon as they were out of the building.

  That would be delayed, though. Captain Kharry lagged as the other officers made their way out of the room, and she must have signaled to Thurlock to do likewise, because as soon as they were gone, the old man turned to her with a curious expression.

  “What is it, Janlea?”

  Thurlock’s question let Lucky know Thurlock already knew this officer. As annoyed as he’d seemed about having to come here to report, he’d probably known all along there would be no danger. Lucky wondered if the C.O.W.W. inquiry would be the same.

  “Thurlock, we had an active investigation of Hehlios. Just before this incident, our officer found a connection between him and a wizard from the Sisterhold—Mahros. You know of him?”

  “I do,” Thurlock said. “And if Mahros is here in the city, I’d like to know where. He has some answering to do.”

  “As I suspected. We don’t know where he is, but we do know some of what he’s done here. He’s set up some kind of smuggling operation. We haven’t got to the bottom of it, but it looks to involve live animals, species and purpose unknown. He’s also spent time in the streets stirring people up—almost hypnotizing them, or what’s that word people of Earth use? Brainwashing? They become convinced of what he’s telling them, even though his lies are ridiculous.”

  “What is it?” Lucky asked before his brain interfered with the impulse. Red-faced, he elaborated. “What is he making them believe?”

  The captain looked surprised, almost as if she’d forgotten he was there, but she answered. “That Thurlock and everyone allied with him—including you—are evil, are the cause of all sorts of misery from starvation in far-flung places to the high price of salt in the city’s markets to the threat of war. It’s Thurlock, he tells them, and the reverence for Behlishan, who has caused all the problems, because as long as Behlishan is held in high esteem, the other gods—the truly powerful ones—are not appeased and wreak vengeance on the people.”

  Thurlock blanched and swallowed heavily. “He blames not only me, but Behlishan? And he’s suggesting we appease other gods? Which other gods?”

  “Ahmadou seems to be his main focus. And it’s… a bloody kind of worship he leads, from the evidence we’ve found.”

  “Evidence?”

  “Well, sacrifice of some sort is involved, but we only find the traces after the fact. He and his disciples don’t stay in one place, and although we suspect he has some hidden base, we’ve not found it. Now, honestly, we think he’s left the city, and we have no idea where he might have gone.”

  Chapter Ten: The Inquisition at C.O.W.W.

  “CONTACT YOUR uncle for me, would you, Luccan?”

  Thurlock’s request came unexpectedly out of a brooding silence that had lasted from the moment they mounted their horses, through a longish ride across the city and up a path that wound them from the floor of the valley in which the city sprawled to the pointed, sandstone-and-marble, round tower that capped a cone-shaped hill. At the bottom of the hill, they’d ridden under an arch that announced the name of the solitary rise as Council Peak (which made perfect sense), but the tower at the top had a sign over the door announcing it as Trehfentohr (which made no sense), and the sandwiches they bought from a vendor in the park outside the tower were called Last Meal (which only made sense in a scary way).

  The sandwiches were good, though, with a very tasty kind of grilled sausage, sweet grilled onions, and a crusty toasted bread, and that’s what Lucky had been thinking about when Thurlock spoke—sounding rather intense—for the first time since they’d ridden away from the City Watch headquarters.

  He tried to answer immediately, but his mouth was full, and consequently his pardon? came out sounding like a cough and a “pahn?”

  Thurlock sighed and didn’t even try to hide his eye-roll. “You can mind-speak with Han. I can’t. Please contact him. Tell him what we heard from Captain Kharry about Mahros. Stress the part about Ahmadou.”

  Lucky tried to do as Thurlock asked, but Han’s mind seemed to be in a very unusual state. At first it scared Lucky, but then he thought perhaps he recognized what was going on.

  “I think he’s the Dragon right now, sir.”

  “Oh! Well, then.”

  Thurlock said nothing more, leading Lucky to believe he was surprised but not upset about it. The old man simply went back to munching his sandwich and chips—which had apparently now spread to Nedhra City, making Cook famous. So Lucky did the same, until finally one of the questions that had been smoldering in his remote thoughts for more than an hour surfaced.

  “Thurlock, what—or who—is Ahmadou?” He’d been vaguely aware that gods besides Behl and Mahl existed, or were be
lieved in, in Ethra. But this was the first time he’d heard one given a name.

  “Very good question, my boy. I… don’t really know, though I’ve run across the name in my studies from time to time.” Thurlock stopped to chew the last of his sandwich, then took the thin waxed-paper wrapper to the trash bin. When he returned, he scratched at his beard, dislodging crumbs, before continuing. “Most, though not all, writers have referred to Ahmadou with the masculine pronoun, which is nonsense for all the gods, except that we don’t have better words. I hope that whole ‘masculine words, feminine words’ thing—which I believe we inherited from Earth at some point—resolves itself so we can speak more accurately about all the different kinds of beings—”

  “But Thurlock, Ahmadou?”

  “Oh yes, sorry.” Thurlock made a wry face, and then grinned at Lucky. “Seems I’m off the point again, aren’t I? Would you like another sandwich?”

  “No, but thank you. And about Ahmadou?”

  “Yes. Most scholars who’ve looked into Ahmadou consider him to be an aspect of Mahl—in fact they refer to him as Mahl-Ahmadou. Ahmadou seems, for those who have encountered him, to share Mahl’s always-hungry, all-consuming nature, and is certainly not a being who inspires love, joy, and goodness. But unlike Mahl, who seems a personification of Naught itself, Ahmadou is a positive energy. Fire, specifically, and that’s reflected in the glyph used as his name—a red, six-rayed sun.”

  Lucky had been taking a long drink from his waterskin to wash down the last of his chips, but when he heard “six-rayed sun,” he choked.

  “Goodness, young man. Are you all right?” Thurlock started pounding his back, which didn’t help at all.

  Lucky vigorously nodded yes even though he was still coughing—he needed for Thurlock to stop pounding. Finally, he forced down a cough long enough to ask, “Six-rayed sun? Like the City of Suns?”