Dragonfang

by Paul Collins

  ‘You, the serious one, in that body,’ she managed, barely keeping her bubbling voice under control. She walked toward Zimak, her hips swaying from side to side, and ran her fingers through her long, unbound hair. ‘And you – Princess Andrella said you have the lovemaking drive of a rabbit who has been taking swimming lessons in a vat of love potion,’ she said, stopping before Zimak. ‘And now you have the boring one’s absolutely stupendous body. Why did you not tell me you had swapped bodies before I called the guards?’

  ‘He likes surprises,’ suggested Daretor.

  ‘Oh, yes, and I am sure you were very surprised when you found yourself in that particular body,’ she said, batting her eyelashes at Daretor.

  ‘Now then, Daretor. As my most trusted guard, I think you should guard the doors of my inner chamber,’ declared Zimak. ‘From the outside, of course.’

  Daretor glared at them, then lowered the visor of his helmet. He snatched up the clothing that Zimak had removed.

  ‘I shall save my clothes until I have the right body to wear them on,’ he said, coldly. He strode purposefully to the doors, wrenched them open, and then slammed them behind him.

  ‘I do suspect he is not entirely happy with his lot in life,’ said Premiel, as she and Zimak wrapped their arms around each other.

  ‘I don’t suspect it,’ he replied.

  ‘No?’

  ‘Oh, no. I am absolutely certain of it.’ They toppled on to the divan clutching one another.

  Outside the doors, Daretor bundled up his clothes. He stiffened at Premiel’s sudden raucous laughter and the silence that followed.

  ‘You are right, Lady Premiel,’ he said, glancing at the doors. ‘In a way, nothing at all has changed.’

  He drew the sword, executed several parries and a couple of standard slashes, then sheathed it again.

  ‘What is more, I took my martial skills with me to this body,’ he said, glancing stonily at the doors. ‘Lady Fortune seems to have decided to show a little mercy at last, Zimak. I shall be curious to see what she decides to do with you.’

  Chapter 11

  THE LIBRARY OF HAZARIA

  The port of Hazaria had a very unfortunate name. In Old Braven, ‘ha’ meant next, and ‘Zaria’ meant port. Hence Zaria was the port, and Hazaria the next port. On the other hand, Old Braven was a dead language, which meant that Zaria and Hazaria were simply two place names for most people. Jelindel, however, did know a little Old Braven, and smiled to see that they were going to Next Port after Port.

  The Dragonfang docked without incident, and began the business of unloading and soliciting for new cargo. The work was largely done by evening. As expected, the crew went straight to a tavern. The captain went there too, for he was also in the mood for carousing.

  It was past nightfall and the crew of the Dragonfang was in full swing at the tavern. They had feasted on roasted pig that, even now, was turning on a spit over a roaring fire. Captain Porterby was holding forth to a group of Hazarian fishermen who seemed to revel in tales of piracy on the high seas, especially when the proposed victims won out. With each telling of their daring escape, the captain embellished the story with yet another outlandish lie. Jelindel smiled. The captain’s current soliloquy had him in a duel to the death with the privateer’s captain. Having dispatched the pirate after a lengthy duel, he rallied his men around him and together they routed the bloodthirsty pirates.

  A battle ensued, which left six of the eight privateers burning and awash with blood, and the other two floundering. The crew, having lost a mere five stout fellows, then commandeered the pirates’ fastest ship, the infamous Dragonfang, and mercifully spared the privateers, marooning them on a barren island.

  If Captain Porterby’s crew minded his taking credit for their lucky escape, they didn’t show it. In fact, many of them cheered him on, reminding him of further great deeds he had obviously forgotten to relate.

  It wasn’t long before a rough seaman who fancied himself as a bard began a song about the Dark Empress and its crew of bravos. This, in turn, led to the more lewd sea shanties that even managed to bring a blush to Jelindel’s face.

  She swallowed the last of her limewater. Time to go. It was Larachel’s absence that worried her. The man had been coerced by the crew into joining them for a celebratory drink. Earlier, he had been the toast of the crew for his quick wits in thwarting the privateers.

  The moment they had docked, Larachel had set off to notify his clients that their orders had arrived. By mid-afternoon the derricks had removed the Zarian merchandise, so that the crew had the night free. This made Larachel quite a hero with the tired and thirsty men.

  The Dragonfang was due to leave on the first tide at the seventh hour.

  Larachel seemed to vanish and reappear very easily, and people like that worried Jelindel. She felt that she was the only person on the ship who had a right to be sneaky. But she was reasonably sure that Larachel had no interest in her, so if he wanted to be sneaky, that was none of her business. Even so …

  Larachel would have to wait, Jelindel decided. She slipped out of the tavern in the middle of a song led by the captain himself. For the first time the crew had a very fast ship, quite a lot of money and, more to the point, a reputation for fighting prowess. In a sense, the reputation was justified. They had taken on a privateer fleet with a fearsome reputation, annihilated a swag of privateers, and stolen the flagship itself.

  Captain Porterby’s outlandish tales notwithstanding, the story was that they had taken on the entire privateer fleet and sunk most of it in a battle that saw the Dark Empress floundering, but which had ended with the capture of the Dragonfang. Of course, anyone expecting to sail through the Tanglesea Islands and find no privateers was in for a shock. But anyone who believed what a tavern full of drunken sailors told them probably deserved to have their vessel plundered.

  Hargav was still in the tavern, drinking with the others and learning their songs. He would be safe enough, even if he was liable to be very sick the next morning.

  Jelindel had business of a very different nature in the port, and she did not want an audience. She glanced around to ensure no one was following. The streets were almost empty, for it was the hour of supper, and comfortingly dark. Dogs yipped and barked as she passed, but nobody paid her any attention. She did not look drunk, so the town’s roughnecks left her alone, and the watchmen had no interest in a sober sailor.

  The Hazarian Order of the Penitents’ Library was a stone building left over from a much earlier, more prosperous, time. It was to this building that Jelindel headed. The port had been burned on eleven separate occasions in the past few hundred years, but the library had survived every time. It was housed in an ancient castle around which Hazaria had spread. Raiders and rioters found the houses and shops easy enough to loot and burn, but the library required serious fighting. And the fact that it housed only books made it hardly worth the effort to the uneducated. Jelindel had heard of the library through Kelricka, who had spoken highly of the collection. Tonight she had a reference question she could not put to a librarian during business hours. She wanted to know more about the pentacle gem stones.

  Jelindel admired the ancient bluestone walls for a moment. Before her was probably one of the oldest collections of books in the world, and since nobody was working late she would have it all to herself. The library’s steep shingled roof and spires, its turrets and gables and stained glass windows crowded the night sky.

  Many architectural examples of this era had long since perished in the dark days that saw houses of learning destroyed. Few of the great library collections survived for more than a century or two. Wars and sieges tended to see them looted and burned, but due to the diligence of the custodians many books survived. The librarians hid the rare and valuable books until more enlightened times. But when the librarians died unexpectedly, something common in wartime, the hidden collections tended to remain hidden indefinitely.

  A mood of melancholy settled over Jelindel
. It was her dream to discover such a collection and donate it to the Temple of Verity.

  The wrought iron gates were locked, rather than guarded. That meant that there would probably be no guard nearby. She climbed the rough stone wall, finding handholds where weathering had stripped mortar from the joints. Once over the wall and walkway, she picked the padlock that secured the bolt on the inside of the gates, but left it hanging.

  Jelindel kept to the shadows and skirted the base of the towering walls. Above, the belfry of the chapel cast a singular block of shadow across the lit square. The full argent Reculemoon was not ideal for Jelindel’s purposes, but it did provide a clear view of the grounds. She saw a column of hooded penitents snaking along a path toward a distant hall. Somewhere close, another group was singing a psalm. The library was locked for the night, which was good. All she had to do was get in, and she would be alone.

  She shimmied up a terracotta drainpipe and tried a dormer window. She wasn’t surprised to find it locked. Heretics, vandals and common thieves were forever breaking into libraries. There was no shortage of collectors, Adepts and rival libraries that paid handsomely for rare books.

  These thoughts reminded her of something. She slowed her breathing and emptied her mind. There were charms against entry, which she easily re-routed. Few thieves knew much magic. With her dirk she slipped the bolt and quickly slid over the sill and into the dormer. She quickly scanned the grounds for interlopers but saw none. Shutting the leadlight window, she stepped into the room. It was not the room that housed the collection, but some sort of cataloguing office. There were other intruder charms on the way to the reading room, but they were easily neutralised.

  Jelindel lit a tallow candle stub from the dying embers in a grate and set herself up at a desk. She took a deep breath and savoured the scent of ancient books. She had been at sea too long, and faced too many dangers to fully immerse herself in her favourite pursuit – that of learning.

  The collection was well maintained, judging by the absence of dust. Jelindel ran a finger along the ribbed spines and selected a heavy tome called Magic Rites of the Tanglesea Islands. With time so short, Jelindel would not have normally chosen such a parochial title, but this might be a one-off chance to assess such a book. Collections such as this were closely guarded and only accredited scholars were allowed access. If only accredited scholars could view the books, how was one to become a scholar without access to the great works?

  Mostly skimming her choices, Jelindel made sure to return each book to its allotted spot. An out-of-place book could cause alarm, and the last thing she wanted was for the colleges to tighten their security. There would be future occasions on which she would want to break in again and study.

  The next few hours passed quickly. Jelindel only allowed herself to skim-read a first chapter before committing a half-hour to reading the book. She had no quill or parchment so did not take notes – the latter would have slowed her down, in any case. She was seeking very general overviews, along with some highly specific data.

  It wasn’t till the college bells chimed the third hour past midnight that Jelindel closed The Book of Alchemorum, and sighed with contentment. She could easily sit here until the following year and perhaps the rest of her life, but fate had chosen another path for her. She ran her fingers lovingly over the book. It had to be one of the oldest in existence – its pages of cured human skin had browned with time, and its bronze casing was becoming tarnished, yet it was otherwise in pristine condition. Was this the original, or a copy? Providing D’rudar’s words had been copied verbatim, she supposed it didn’t really matter.

  The laws governing the magic of Se’lest D’rudar had been painstakingly laid out – itself an unusual break from practice. Most black-art practitioners took an apprentice who continued their work should they meet with an unfortunate accident. Although Jelindel hadn’t been able to decipher some of the text, she knew it to be among the most advanced supernatural learnings that she had ever held.

  On impulse, Jelindel returned to a chapter she had had difficulty with. Chapter ten discussed the pentacle gems. Jelindel squirmed with frustration. How could these pentacle gems be so powerful? According to D’rudar’s biographer, he had in his time challenged and defeated every High Adept that he could locate. With each death he acquired that Adept’s powerful slave spirits. Jelindel had had some experience with the former, and knew they were paraplane entities that enhanced a mage’s power. When a mage is killed the entities exit the dead body and may enter that of the victor. Instead of becoming their master, as was his right by conquest, D’rudar had bound the entities to rare gems by means of ancient bloodletting rituals. Thus invested with mortal and immortal blood, the Master Adept named the gems ‘the pentacles’. These were, in turn, used to power a machine that could – Jelindel struggled to translate the ancient language – open gates to ‘nameless paraworlds with wondrous accuracy’, and bring forth ‘unimaginable beings in great quantities’.

  Had D’rudar succeeded in breaching the fabric between worlds? Certainly Q’zar had once been inhabited by numerous beasts, not least of which were the infamous dragons of the Algon Mountains. Was D’rudar responsible for unleashing the myriad beasts chronicled in The History of Q’zar?

  Jelindel sat back and pondered. Any really skilled Adept could journey to at least some of the paraworlds. In fact, she had done so herself with the aid of the off-world mailshirt.

  The words ‘great quantities’ were the problem. Travel between paraworlds was like swimming. You could do it yourself if you knew how, but doing it while loaded down with more than one other person was near impossible. This ‘machine’ that D’rudar had engineered could definitely open up some very serious issues, along with paraworlds. And then why would anyone wish to open the gates to horrific creatures unless they had complete power to command them? The words ‘nameless paraworlds with wondrous accuracy’ were also contentious. It was not easy to navigate between paraworlds with any accuracy unless you had the truename of the world.

  Puzzled, Jelindel replaced the book. Her candle had long since died, and she had been reading by Reculemoon’s silvery beams through the leadlight window. Chiming bells marked the fourth hour. She lingered by the book. She should really take it. Hazarian scholars probably didn’t even know what they had in their collection. Jelindel reached up for the book, but somehow her hand couldn’t quite touch it again.

  She pulled back her hand and cocked her head quizzically. Was there a security charm in place that detected intent and had remained undetected? Or was it her conscience telling her to leave the book alone? Ever one to rely on her good sense and instinct, she decided not to try again. She would have to burn an offering to White Quell in gratitude for his guidance.

  Jelindel looked about to make sure everything else was as she had found it. Satisfied, she headed for the door, but approaching footsteps forced her to detour down an aisle and hide behind a bookshelf. She heard the door latch lift and fall. Nothing happened for a moment, and then the door swung open. She crouched down and peered between the books. A man was standing in the doorway. He was short and plump, and wore voluminous scholar’s robes. His face held at first surprise, and then wariness.

  His demeanour confirmed Jelindel’s earlier suspicion. Entry to the library had been too easy. She wove a measured cloaking spell. Not a moment too soon, as it happened. The scholar had already sent out a questing spell. When it found no living being, he seemed to relax. Nonetheless, he moved as quietly as he could toward the table that Jelindel had occupied. With no need for secrecy, he lit an oil lamp.

  Woven in haste, Jelindel’s cloaking spell collapsed with a loud pop. The noise resonated in the quiet of the night. The scholar jumped in surprise, then ran to the back of the library. Jelindel rushed for the door. Already the thief-bell was ringing stridently. Somewhere behind her, Jelindel heard tinkling glass, then someone’s voice yelling, ‘Stop! Thief!’

  So. She hadn’t been alone after all.

>   Footsteps and cries of alarm seemed to come from everywhere, and in a way this was to Jelindel’s advantage. Amid the commotion, her own footsteps went unnoticed. She took the stairs four at a time. Although she stumbled twice, and nearly twisted her ankle, she swung into the room with the dormer, bolted the door, and made for the window with all speed. She slid a few feet down the drainpipe, then jumped the rest of the way, her fall cushioned by a flowerbed.

  ‘He’s over there!’ a guard cried.

  Then another, full of insensate rage: ‘He’s still in here, you fools.’

  A glance up told her someone was sliding down the drainpipe. She pushed off. The library was part of a temple complex, and the complex had guards. Generally the guards existed to keep the less disciplined members of the order inside. Searching for intruders was not their specialty. The gatehouse was still unattended as she approached, but a guard was checking the padlock.

  He held aloft a flaring rushlight. ‘It’s not locked,’ he called to someone on the wall.

  ‘Someone’s about, then,’ responded the wall guard.

  To Jelindel’s surprise, the guard ran off in search of the intruder. She hurried to the gate, slid the bolt back, and dashed through. Whoever had been on the wall began to shout that the thief was escaping. He flung his spear, but Jelindel was already in the shadows, and the spear disappeared into the night.

  Late revellers had dashed for cover at the first sound of the temple’s thief-bell. The town’s night watch was known to arrest everyone in sight during a pursuit, hoping to capture their quarry by chance. On the other hand, this meant that there was nobody around to notice one small sailor in a hurry. Jelindel did not run headlong, but kept to the shadows and slunk along.

  Back at the Dragonfang, the lone officer on duty gave her an intense stare by the light of his lantern. The thief-bell was a distant clangour. ‘Fleeing a night watchman?’ he asked.