“Bitch!” Caradoc gasped, struggling to stand and clearly unable to do so. “Damn you black, you whore-hag!” A line of brownish fluid trickled from under the hem of the robes, and Caradoc raised a face that was bloated, discolored, sunken with rot. The eyes remained to him, and the tongue, though it was swollen so that his speech was distorted. The hair that surrounded the horrible visage was brown, what little was left of it, so Jenny knew he'd transferred the talisman moonstone at least once, from the original blond sailor's corpse to another, and who knew how many besides? “You see what you've done?”
“Little enough, given what you deserve,” John remarked, and pulled up a bench—warily—to sit. He still looked a trifle gray around the lips with the shock of whatever pain-spell Caradoc had thrown at him, but he had his sword in hand, and Jenny was willing to bet he could carve the animate corpse to collops before another such spell could be laid.
“What I deserve?” Caradoc's glottal voice was thick with genuine indignation, rage, and self-pity. “For being enslaved by demons—for only trying to preserve my life …?”
“For bein' bone-stupid enough to call on Folcalor in the first place.” John propped his spectacles with the back of one mailed knuckle. “Without which piece of poor judgment we wouldn't none of us be in the fix we're in now. Not to mention what you've tried to do to me son. You all right, Ian?” He raised his voice to a yell.
“I'm fine.” Ian appeared in the doorway, and drew back with a wince at the horror on the floor between his parents.
“Stay back for now,” ordered Jenny. “Watch the front of the house.”
“You can't blame me for trying to save my own life,” repeated Caradoc sulkily.
“But you aren't trying to save your life,” pointed out Jenny, still holding her weapon ready. “Your life is perfectly preserved, within that moonstone. And at least a residuum of your powers. You are trying to steal my son's powers—and to murder him, to take his place in his body.”
“That's preposterous.”
“It's also beside the point,” remarked John. “Because you're not goin' to be able to do it, even if it is why you did all that shadow-show with the dreams an' tryin' to get folk to open the Hold gates an' all. You know it's only a matter of time before Folcalor finds you, or one of the demons workin' for Adromelech, or Aohila for that matter—you know she's out from behind the mirror? I thought not. Or till wolves catch up with you, or a warm spell brings on maggots to finish you off an' you spend the next couple centuries trapped in that moonstone under a dead tree somewhere, tryin' to talk some bandit into killin' a traveler an' haulin' the corpse to where you can use it, which'll be a pretty complicated set of instructions to get across in a dream. Now I have a bargain for you, if you like.”
“Piss on you.”
“Bit cold in here, isn't it, love?” He glanced over at Jenny. “Shall I build a fire here in the stove? Thaw things out a bit?”
And he flinched, as if at the stab of migraine.
“All we have to do is wait, Caradoc,” pointed out Jenny. “Folcalor will find you. Don't tell me you don't believe that he can, or that you're cleverer than he. He can't let you remain free. He wants the talisman jewel that contains your soul, so that he can use it as a weapon against Adromelech: fodder for his spells against the Henge, as I would have been, and Ian. As all those other poor souls have been, that he's been buying from the gnomes.”
“If you know that,” said Caradoc petulantly, “you can't blame me for—”
“You've known that from the start,” Jenny cut him off. “And you can't bargain with him. You know his name, his true name, the inner heart of him. You had him living within your brain. You are the only mage who can trap him.” She took the catch-bottle from her belt, held it up, gleaming in the grayblue morning light from the kitchen door. “In this.”
Caradoc's eyes seemed to bulge at the sight of the bottle; his lips parted and he reached out with one sticky, crumbling hand. “Where did you get that?”
“Do you know it?”
He nodded, making his head lurch sickeningly to one side—he did not appear to be able to straighten it afterward. “He knew it. He was seeking it. The Star-Juggler made it, in the deeps of time. The Arch-Seer, who knew more of demons than any of the rest. Folcalor bade me go to Ernine in search of it, but after he … after I …” He waved a hand dismissively, still not able to admit how he had been tricked and betrayed, and with a twist of his mouth brushed aside the end of the sentence like a cobweb. “In the end, even with the protection of a human body upon him, and that body a mage, he feared to go too near the mirror.”
“Smarter than I thought,” remarked John.
“Now that you have it, he will do anything, pay you anything.”
“The trap's been sprung,” said Jenny. “And it must be set again. Not for Aohila this time, but for Folcalor. You understand why Folcalor can not, will not permit you to live.”
“Botched it up, eh?” The dead eyes glittered nastily. “Trust a woman to fumble a simple act like getting the cork out of a bottle and then back in again. Or did the bitch talk you into letting her go?”
Jenny said nothing, but John folded his arms and commented, “Well, we all know how good demons are at talkin' even perfectly intelligent wizards into doin' daft things, don't we?”
“He didn't talk me into anything,” insisted Caradoc petulantly. “He took me at a disadvantage, unfairly … and what's in it for me, if I help you? And don't spew me bilgewater about the holy peacefulness of death. There's not much I can do to prevent you from smashing the talisman jewel once I've given you what you want, is there? And it isn't likely you'll hand your son over to me. I'm sure there's some nice fresh corpses around, but do you know, my dear, I'm a little tired of surviving this way. So what can you offer me, really?”
John leaned back against the stone wall and crossed his ankles. “A body that'll stay fresh and won't rot,” he said.
The bulging, discolored eyes swiveled his way. Studied him, while the fluids trickled from whatever had burst or ruptured under those ragged robes when he fell. “Go on.”
“Back in the days when I was first learnin' how gears an' pulleys worked, I made a lot of metal limbs that worked by 'em. Even made a metal hand, with all these little joints an' wheels an' cables. Me dad wore me out with a strap, when he found what I'd been sneakin' off to the forge to do, instead of gettin' on with learnin' to ride an' shoot an' kill people. Now, I saw in this movie …”
He paused, clearly trying to rearrange an explanation of what a movie was—he'd told Jenny, who had been fascinated, and the two of them had spent hours discussing how moving pictures such as he had seen in the Otherworld might have been brought about.
He amended, “I heard a tale of a bloke who made a man out of bits of metal like this, an' brought it to life, an' it walked about an' did all sorts of things. Talked, too, I think. But if you can make dead muscle an' dead cartilage pull an' twist an' balance, why not wire an' wheels?” He pushed his spectacles up onto the bridge of his nose again. “Beats hidin' in the woods waitin' for a thaw, anyway.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Do you trust this wizard? asked Morkeleb, three days later when Jenny rode out again to Frost Fell in the clear cold westering light. The wind that had set over from the sea on the morning of Ian's visit to the stone house on the Fell had blown, chill but steady, driving back the storms from the North: Last night Jenny had guessed what it meant. In dreams she'd seen them, beautiful shapes like silk and bones, skimming over the beryl ocean, and in her mind she'd heard the music that was their names.
Centhwevir Blue-and-Golden, had said the old list, which had made no sense at the time, and with the list, the gay brilliant threnody of a tune; Nymr is blue, violet-crowned …
Other music, which she'd learned in her days of possession, in her days of union with the demons that had ridden these creatures, these star-drakes, these magical wanderers through space and time. The curious bass sonorities of
the true name of Yrsgendl White-and-Scarlet, the minor twirls and twists of pink-and-green Hagginarshildim, the beautiful soaring dance of Mellyn. When she had saved these creatures, these souls, from the grasp of the demons, she had seen what no one in all John's lore or all the tales of the Line of Herne had ever spoken of: how all these airs blended together, into a single entity a thousand thousand years long and more.
And they were coming here.
An hour after noon she saddled Moon Horse, and rode out to the Fell alone.
And there she saw them, winging down from the pale cloud-streaked sky, like a V of butterflies but flying fast, a bright-colored arrow whose tip was silver and black. They broke formation and hovered, flowers floating on the clear air. Their voices reached down to her, unearthly music in her mind. Dragonfriend … dragonfriend … silver bells and falling water and blue crystal chimes deep as night.
Well with you … well.…
She held up her hands to them: Blessing, she said. Blessing.
They settled to the ground. Seven of them she knew, even the rainbow-colored youngling whose name had only begun to form—Byrs, she thought it was—he had had no name in the days of the demons, though that was only six months ago. The eighth, black and silver with eyes like green opal, settled a little apart, and she said to him, Corvin NinetyfiveFifty? And heard in her mind the light voice, human-sounding like Morkeleb's was.
This was the name I was called, in the Otherworld. And you will be the Lady Jenny, Lord Aversin's wife.
Yes, said Jenny. I am John's wife. Thank you beyond what I can say, for saving his life.
She had known Morkeleb was among them, invisible, when she first saw them flying, and indeed he melted into being, like a razor-armored snake wrought of shadows: he touched her mind and smiled.
Do you trust this wizard? he asked.
He has no reason to lie, she said, and hoped that Caradoc, lying in a guarded tower frozen now in buckets of snow, could not cast his mind this far, to hear their words. Betraying us would put him back into the hands of those who would use his soul for kindling-wood, if nothing worse. She must ask Centhwevir, she thought, if his mind was linked with Caradoc's still in dreams. Ask Yrsgendl whether Bliaud had ever tried to speak to him with the remnants of the demon-forged link. Their answers might tell her how much danger Corvin stood in, of being retaken by Aohila.
Mellyn, who had been her own dragon, reached out a shy thought to her, like a cat bumping her nape from the back of a chair. The young jere-drake—a female who had not yet taken on the characteristics of a bearing matron—did not form her thoughts into human words, having not been in the practice of taking human form, but their music made Jenny want to dance.
He knows what Folcalor would do with him, with the moonstone that holds his soul, should he gain possession of it. He knows that his only hope is to trap Folcalor, and work for his defeat. Beyond that, no.
And she shivered, drawing her plaid close about her, thinking about the stench of Caradoc's current corpse as Bill and Muffle had dragged it by sledge from Frost Fell to the Hold. About the way those sticky, bulging eyes had followed her, when she'd drawn the protective circle around it in the disused dungeon beneath the southeast tower. John and the others had hauled in buckets of snow for three days now to dump over the corpse, in the unheated stone chamber (“There was this vid I saw in the Otherworld, about this creature that they kept frozen in ice like this, till some chap threw a magic blanket over it and it all melted.…”).
I trust your son is nowhere within those walls.
My son sleeps in the house of my sister in the village; his brother and sister with him. It had cost John and Jenny both a good deal of uneasiness, deciding whether to keep their children where they themselves could defend them—but where Caradoc would almost certainly know their whereabouts—or to conceal them at a distance, trusting in Ian's skill of dealing with emergencies. Jenny guessed that in the ghoul-mage's weakened condition he could not spread out his awareness to the village, but she wasn't sure. Every villager and every inhabitant of the Hold had been instructed not to speak the children's true names (“Have everyone call me Alkmar Thunderhand,” requested Adric breathlessly); Jenny hoped that this would serve.
At least I trust Adric is still there, she added drily. Though he begged to see this thing that John and Muffle are creating, this “robot” as John speaks of it. This had been not the least of the reasons for the final decision.
Robot, sniffed Corvin, the dark ripple of his scorn slapping like a little wave against her mind. Pah.
As for Caradoc, I think he still believes himself smarter than either Folcalor or Adromelech, capable of double tricking them, of playing off one against another to his own ends. This vanity above all else makes him a perilous ally; this arrogant belief that he understands all things about the situation, and is more clever than everyone else involved.
They are amazing creatures, humans. The black dragon shifted his weight on his haunches, and all his bristling scales sparkled with the fading afternoon light. How much greater is their variety than among dragons; how astonishing the beliefs they convince themselves are true. CAN he summon the Hellspawn, in the state that he is in?
That I do not know, for I do not know how much magic remains to him in the decaying flesh of a non-mage's corpse. Yet I do not doubt Folcalor listens for him, and also whatever demon agents Adromelech commands who walk this world. And as she spoke the warring demons' names, she felt the whisper of uneasiness among the dragons, handing the shared memories of their possessions back and forth among them, a deadly sound in Jenny's mind, like the hissing of tide over rocks. Perhaps we should ask, can he conceal himself from them, and for how long? Did you see the Demon Queen near the Skerries of Light?
The dragon Corvin bristled at her name, and in the music of his anger Jenny heard, despite himself, the winding threnody of fear.
I saw a thing that hung above the waters like blue mist shot with lightning, said Morkeleb. Yet when I turned my eyes upon it, it dissolved and fled away. Birds fled from certain of the isles, where we later found a stench and the marks of strange tracks, and some among us heard the whispering of her voice in dreams. He glanced sidelong at the black-and-silver dragon, who lashed his tail uneasily.
Jenny guessed that Corvin had discovered what John had learned: that once the Demon Queen marked a man—or a dragon—with her silvery signs, she had access to his dreams wherever he fled.
We must travel on, said Morkeleb. The winds of the winter are strong. We cannot hold them at bay forever, and we have far to go. Have you read through your Dreamweaver's notes, concerning all he has learned of the demons? For these are things that we must know, if we are to escape their notice and their power.
I have read through what he has written, said Jenny, and indeed, for three days, while John and Muffle worked at putting the “robot” together and testing its cables and joints, she had done little else. The notes were made on every kind of paper imaginable, on scraps of vellum purchased from Father Hiero in the village and the papyrus-reed paper brought north by the last trader to the King's garrison at Caer Corflyn two years ago, and sheet after sheet of something John called plast, which he'd acquired in the Otherworld, and all of it in John's cramped tiny bookhand, which fortunately Jenny had learned, too, from the same sour old hedge-wizard who had taught John.
The notes spoke of marvels, of Hells and worlds unimaginable; of gates and traps and monsters. Sketch after sketch in John's cockeyed scribble: carry-beasts and demonettes and things like wheels of fire. Doorways in rock, wells hidden in canyons of stone; runes and sigils and the tracks of nameless beasts. Things that had to be computers, and long lines of the symbols in which they spoke. Charts of ether-crystal relays. Facts about not only the Dragonstar, but other stars of Heaven as well.
Sketches of faces—the friends who had looked after him in that alien Otherworld. An old man with a mole on his nose. A fat, bearded man with something that looked like spectacles wrap
ped around his face. A rangy, slightly potbellied woman with kindly eyes, combing her long hair.
Jenny felt Morkeleb's mind enter hers, touching and drinking all that she had read, in one great brilliant draught. Thus it was, she understood, that dragons passed lore on to one another, like great single pictures or tapestries, to be recalled and told over in detail later, over the course of months or years. And in his taking from her, she glimpsed the endless, bottomless, starless wells of the old dragon's lore, roads going back and back into time beyond the world, tales learned and never forgotten, spells mastered and compared and put aside. Visions and dreams and fragments of memory clear as jewels emerging from that darkness, so that all John's journeyings, all John's notes, were swallowed up in the dragon's greater journeyings like a drop in the sea.
She stared, wonderingly, into that vista of dark treasurerooms, and from its midst Morkeleb looked back at her, as if from the threshold he held out his hand.
It was beyond human comprehension.
Turning away from dragon form, she had turned away from this.
And for a moment they regarded each other, in understanding and regret.
Then Morkeleb said, Thank you, Wizard-woman. What you have given me is something I do not think a dragon would have seen or understood. As for the rest, there will be time for us to trade lore, you and I.
I am what I am, thought Jenny, watching as the dragons lifted from the Fell and circled like brilliant birds in the evening light. I could not choose other than what I chose. Yet she felt the regret, a little, as she raised her hand to them, understanding that in her short human span she could not absorb a hundredth of Morkeleb's lore, not even if she lived to deep old age.
But we all are what we are.
She returned to the stable of the little stone house, where she had left Moon Horse in her usual stall. The west wind had failed, and the storm clouds were scudding gray from the north by the time Jenny reached the Hold again.
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