Trenni lay down and turned on her side to hide her face against the improvised pillow. Branna thought at first that she was weeping, but she’d fallen sleep without another word.
Adranna came up soon after and released Branna from guard duty, as Branna was thinking of it. Since the night had turned stifling, Branna took one of the lanterns up to the flat roof of the main broch tower. Clouds, coming up from the south, covered half the stars, and a soft wind blew some of the day’s heat away. From the western quarter of the sky she heard what at first sounded like thunder, but instead of dying away, it strengthened into a regular drumlike sound, growing louder and closer. Arzosah, she assumed, and she looked up in hopes of seeing the great wyrm as she flew by.
While Branna did see a dragon flying from the west, the wyrm shone as silver and bright as a full moon against the gathering clouds. She could guess that it was Arzosah’s mate, Rori, surrounded by Wildfolk of Aethyr. He flew hard and steadily, heading straight north, most likely to join the battle for Honelg’s dun. She was reminded once again of her wretched stepmother, mocking her for thinking she’d seen a dragon, insisting it had only been a silver owl. I’m well out of that dun! she thought. May the gods bless Aunt Galla forever!
The greatest blessing that she could imagine now would be the safe return of young Matyc, but whether such could ever happen lay in the laps of the gods indeed.
Inside Dallandra’s tent the air, stifling from the coming storm, weighed on Salamander like a wool cloak, but by staying inside they could talk about dweomer, or even work it, away from Deverry men with the exception, of course, of Neb. Dallandra had made a silver dweomer light to hang near the smoke hole. Gnats and moths swarmed around it, and a trio of sprites were amusing themselves by trying to catch the insects with their tiny fingers.
“I keep thinking about that dark dweomerman,” Dallandra said. “My worst fear is that he’s somehow or other gotten himself inside Honelg’s dun.”
“Now, that I doubt very much, O princess of powers perilous,” Salamander said. “He certainly wasn’t there when I was.”
“That’s some reassurance, at least. Have you scried the dun out lately?”
“I have. No sign of him there.”
“There’s been none at the temple either. No one’s ever rebuilt that astral construct, whatever it was. The priests seem to be devoting all their time and energy to keep the cattle safe from Arzosah. They’ve started bringing them into the temple grounds at night.”
“Which must be a great disappointment to our wyrm.”
“I suppose, but that’s not my point. If they have time to worry about their precious cows, they’re not likely to be working dark dweomer against us. Besides, that many animals give off a tremendous cloud of etheric magnetism. I’ll have to be very careful if I go there again—go in the body of light, I mean.”
“I hadn’t thought of that, but you’re quite right. A cloud of magnetic force like that could make a working very tricky.”
“Have you seen anything suspicious at Zakh Gral?”
“I’ve not. I scry them out every time I think of them, but they keep a-building as if they don’t have a care in the world. There’s been no sign of the raven mazrak either.”
“I hope he’s not flying west to warn the fortress.”
“He can’t, O mistress of mighty magicks. They’d kill him on the spot. Rocca made it abundantly clear that Alshandra abhors mazrakir above all other kinds of dweomer.”
“Well and good, then. I wonder about Zaklof, though. You told me that his prophecy about Cadryc’s son was genuine.”
“It was, truly, but they see all and every sign of dweomer as a gift from their goddess. If Zaklof were here, no doubt he’d tell us solemnly that he’d only lent Alshandra his voice for a moment. A mazrak, however, couldn’t claim any such thing.”
For Neb’s sake, they were speaking in Deverrian, because Neb and Meranaldar were working with wax tablets directly under the dweomer light. Neb was teaching his fellow scribe how to write in Deverrian. Although both their voices were pleasant enough, Salamander found himself growing profoundly irritated with what they were saying, tedious details such as “you’ve got to make the tail on this letter a little longer” or “try to make a true circle when you do that one.”
“Ye gods,” Salamander said. “I feel positively overwrought tonight. I keep brooding over Adranna’s remark about bearing the last witness. You know, Gerran keeps saying that Honelg is daft, and I begin to think he’s right. There’s something oddly unclean about Alshandra’s worship.”
“Of course there is! She wasn’t a goddess at all. Her cult’s making their people die for a handful of lies and kill for a shabby handful more.”
“Now that is a splendid way of putting it. Most tidy, pertinent, and apt.”
From outside they heard men talking in Elvish. Calonderiel swept open the tent flap and stuck his head in. “The dragon wants to speak with you, beloved,” he said in Elvish. “She says she’s come up with an idea.”
“About what?”
“She wouldn’t tell me.” Cal paused for a scowl. “I’m only a mere banadar, after all.”
“She is temperamental, isn’t she?” Dallandra rolled her eyes heavenward. “Where is she?”
“Down by that rivulet in the pasture. Follow your nose. The scent of rotting beef will guide you.”
Mostly to get out of the stuffy tent, Salamander volunteered to escort her. With the rain clouds moving up from the south, the night had turned dark even for elven eyes. Once they were safely away from the main camp, Dallandra made another silver ball, a small one, this time, supplying just enough light for them to negotiate the rocky path down to Arzosah’s temporary lair. They found her chewing thoughtfully on a white oxtail, hair and all, but she obligingly spat it out when they arrived.
“The banadar told me you wanted to speak with me,” Dallandra said.
“Is that what he is, the actual banadar?” Arzosah said. “I might have been nicer to him if I’d known that, but then, he was awfully rude to me.”
“He tends to lack tact, yes,” Dalla said. “Not that you have a long supply of it yourself.”
“I’m a dragon. I don’t need tact. But be that as it may, I’ve had an idea about those archers. I was sitting here thinking that it looks like rain, and how much I hate being out in the rain. I wish, I was thinking, that we dragons could make our own weather. That’s when the idea came to me.”
“Um?” Dallandra said. “I don’t quite follow—”
“That’s because I’m not finished yet,” Arzosah said. “Now, tell me something. The arrows, are they heavy? They look very slender and light.”
“They have wooden shafts, yes. What makes them deadly is the force created by the snap of the bowstring and the bend of the bow.”
“Good! That’s what I thought, but I needed to make sure.” Arzosah crossed her front paws and considered something for a moment. “Now, long ago, during the siege of Cengarn, when Rori was still Rhodry, he told me that he couldn’t shoot arrows from my back because the wind stirred up by my wings knocked them off-course. I remember him trying to throw javelins from my back as well, and again, he couldn’t, because of the wind.”
Salamander laughed, one sharp crow of triumph.
“I think you follow my drift, as it were,” Arzosah said. “Now, suppose I flew around above the dun walls, flapping madly. How many arrows do you think would reach their targets?”
“Very few.” Dallandra broke into a grin. “What a splendid idea!”
“So I thought.” Arzosah rumbled briefly. “The plan does have one difficulty, though, namely, there’s only one of me, and to make turns I have to swing wide.”
“So while you’re on the one side of the broch, the arrows on the other will fly true,” Salamander joined in. “If Rori would only get himself here!”
“There’s no sign of him?” Arzosah said.
“I don’t know if there is or not,” Salamander said. “Ev
ery time I scry him out, he’s in some wild place. It’s hard for me to tell one wilderness from another.”
Arzosah drew back her head in sincere surprise. “I suppose that’s because you don’t hunt for your dinner,” she said at last. “Well, Dalla, I know you did your best to summon him, and your best effort has powerful dweomer behind it, so we can hope he’ll come soon.”
The rain arrived in the middle of the night, a swift downpour that hammered on the tent roof and woke Salamander. All around him the archers of Calonderiel’s warband slept, as silent and motionless as only those raised in the close quarters of a Westfolk alar’s tents could be. For some while Salamander lay awake, worrying about his brother, the coming battle, and worst of all, the hypothetical dark dweomermaster who might or might not be close by. He considered scrying, but the etheric disturbance given off by the falling rain made it impossible. Finally he fell back asleep to wake suddenly at dawn.
The rain had stopped, but when he looked at the little patch of sky visible through the smokehole, he could see swirling clouds. Still, the air was dry enough for him to try scrying. This time he got a dim impression of the silver wyrm, flying over the temple of Bel, before the vision turned murky and disappeared into etheric water-mist. Salamander put on his boots and got up, slipping out of the tent without waking anyone else. He walked over to Dallandra’s tent, where the tent flap hung open, a sign that he’d not be interrupting some intimate moment.
“Dalla?” he said softly. “Are you awake?”
He could hear blankets rustling; then Dallandra pulled back the flap and ducked out.
“I was just about to come out,” she said softly. “Cal’s still asleep, though. What is it?”
“Rori’s on his way.”
“A thousand thanks to the Star Goddesses! Here, wait for me. I’m going to wake Cal up and tell him.”
Uphill, the human army was waking as well; Salamander could see servants trying to start fires with damp wood, and men standing around yawning or talking in small groups. Something touched his mind, a feeling too weak to be an omen, but too strong for a mere guess. He looked up, studying the cloudy sky. Sure enough, off to the south he could see some creature flying, a very large creature, coming fast with a flash of silver wings.
“Dalla!” Salamander called out. “He’s here!”
Dallandra shoved back the tent flap and hurried out to watch with him. Salamander was expecting Rori to land down in Arzosah’s pasture. Even though they stood a good quarter mile from her, everyone in camp could still hear her distant roar of greeting. As Salamander turned toward the sound, he saw the black dragon leap into the air and join Rori. Wingtip to wingtip, they flew off to the east, then spiraled down to land out of sight behind a distant copse.
“They must want a private word,” Dallandra said. “Before they join us, I mean.”
“Most likely,” Salamander said.
But in only a little space of time Arzosah returned alone. She flew low over the Westfolk camp and shouted to Dallandra as she passed by, “Meet me in my lair.”
“Oh, ye gods!” Salamander said. “I hope he’s willing to join the battle.”
“And when did Rhodry ever spurn a fight?”
“True spoken.” Salamander’s spirits rose again. “Let us go hear what her ladyship has to tell us.”
Calonderiel came with them as they ran down to join Arzosah. She glanced his way, curled her upper lip in scorn, and spoke only to Dallandra.
“He’s looking forward to joining the battle,” Arzosah said. “And he thinks my plan a good one. He suggests that you tell that banadar person to go call a council of war, so all the men who are going to attack the dun will know what we plan to do about those arrows.”
Calonderiel growled quite audibly. Arzosah pretended not to notice.
“Why won’t he come talk to us?” Dallandra said.
“He feels too shamed,” Arzosah said. “He was an honor-bound man before Evandar worked his dweomer, wasn’t he? And a dragon after, and our pride matches that of the honor-bound, so there we are.”
“I still don’t understand. Shamed?” Salamander asked. “Why?”
“I don’t know.” Arzosah lifted her furled wings slightly in her equivalent of a shrug. “I see nothing shameful about being a dragon, and so I don’t see why he should.”
“Well, you were hatched a dragon,” Dallandra said, “but he wasn’t. I’d like to think that he wishes he’d listened to me, but somehow that doesn’t seem like Rhodry.”
“As stubborn as a lord should be,” Arzosah said. “Isn’t that the Deverry ideal for their wretched nobles? Stubborn in all things, harsh to their equals, but generous to those below them, and then nasty and vicious, or some such thing.”
“Some such thing, yes.” Dallandra turned to Calonderiel. “Well, banadar person, I think that calling a council of war seems like a good idea. Do you?”
“Very much so.” Calonderiel shot the dragon a dark glance. “Even fools speak the truth now and then.”
Arzosah opened her mouth to reply, but Dallandra shouted and stepped in between them. “Enough! Both of you! We’d better get back to the camp.”
“That’s true,” Calonderiel said. “It’s going to take all day for the princes and the gwerbret to hammer out a plan of attack. We’d better get started.”
Until they were well away from the smell of dragon and dead cow both, Salamander followed Dallandra and Calonderiel, then let them go on ahead. When he used the wind-torn clouds to scry, he saw Lord Honelg, pacing back and forth in front of the honor hearth as usual. This time, however, his sworn men, his archers from the village, and the servants had all left him alone in his hall. Out in the ward the men milled around. A few stood in little groups and talked furiously. Some of them wept; others kneeled on the wet cobbles and lifted their arms in prayer.
Panic! Salamander thought. Understandable, but why wait till now? Eventually he noticed that every now and then, someone would point to the sky and the rest all fall silent to look up. The dragons, of course, the two evil minions of our supposed dark lord Vandar! One of the guards atop the dun wall must have seen Rori fly over and Arzosah join him. Salamander couldn’t quite remember if their appearance meant that the end of the world was near or merely that Vandar himself was taking a hand in Honelg’s destruction. Either way, those trapped inside the dun doubtless felt that their last hour had come.
“And they’re right enough about that,” Salamander said aloud. “I sincerely hope that the Great Ones have got hold of dear Alshandra. I want her to see just how much evil she’s worked.”
Salamander took a couple of strides in the direction of the encampment, but all at once he felt such grief overwhelm him that he sank to his knees. For a long time he knelt in the wet grass, struggling with both pity and guilt for those souls he’d helped doom, until at last Dallandra came looking for him.
“What’s so wrong?” she said.
“I hardly know.” Salamander scrambled to his feet. “Except I wish I’d never ridden Honelg’s way.”
“What? We had to find out about Zakh Gral.”
“Oh, of course. I just wish I’d done my spying some other way.”
Visibly puzzled, Dallandra was watching him as if waiting for him to do or say something more. Salamander thought of trying to explain further, but he knew it would be futile. Her work for her own kind had come to rule Dallandra’s life, and she hated any who were their enemies, no matter how piteous.
“Come have some breakfast,” she said at last. “You’re going to need your strength.”
With two dragons as allies, Gerran allowed himself a thin slice of optimism, which took the form of his thinking ahead to the problem of reaching Zakh Gral once they’d disposed of the current siege. The men in the army had their doubts. Rumors ran through the entire encampment, in fact, that the dragons were only pretending to support Ridvar’s cause and in truth were spies for the Horsekin, that they weren’t dragons at all but dweomer illusions or ev
il human sorcerers, and that they would demand human flesh as payment for their aid. Since the noble-born spent the day in Prince Voran’s tent, wrangling over various plans for taking the dun, Gerran and Salamander were left with the job of calming everyone’s nerves.
“Ye gods,” Salamander said, “if I had a silver coin for every time I’ve said ‘that’s not true’ today, I’d be as rich as Prince Voran.”
“True spoken,” Gerran said. “We’ve shoveled a lot of horseshit.”
It was just at sunset, and they were taking a well-deserved rest by the fire in the Red Wolf camp. A couple of servants were frying chopped salt pork and big handfuls of sliced onions in an iron pan while a kettle of barley porridge simmered nearby, dangling from a tripod. Clae and Coryn were taking turns stirring the porridge, which, judging from the effort it took to move the wooden paddle, seemed to be thickening up nicely.
“I suppose,” Salamander said, “that eventually those cooks are going to dump the one pan into the other and call it the warband’s dinner.”
“Most likely,” Gerran said. “You’re welcome to join us if you’d like.”
“Oh, I wasn’t fishing for an invitation, I assure you!” Salamander looked faintly ill. “Just an idle wondering.”
“What I’m wondering about is that council of war. You’d think it’d be over by now.” Gerran stood and peered uphill through the twilight toward Ridvar’s white pavilion. As he watched, men began leaving, a few at a time. “Huh! And it is.”
Tieryn Cadryc was one of the first out. He came striding up to the fire and paused to sniff the greasy air. “Smells good, lads,” he said. “There’s nothing like the smell of frying onions when you’re hungry.”
Salamander opened his mouth as if to speak, then shut it again and merely smiled.
“Gerran!” Cadryc went on. “There you are, eh? Doubtless you want to know how the council went. Well, the plan comes down to letting the dragons counter the archers while we get our men through to the gates with the ram.”
The Gold Falcon Page 48
