Alemandus looked at the girl, lying so still on the steps, and thought of the grandson he never knew. Raising his eyes he met the unflinching gaze of his daughter. He would win her, or lose her forever with his choice.
"Very well. Let no man say that Alemandus is a coward. I will join you, as will my men."
Gwydion inclined his head in solemn acknowledgement, and led the way to the sanctuary deep within his castle.
Hours later the great hall looked like a war zone. Exhausted men sat or sprawled throughout its length, drained from the healing they had aided. Drudges moved among them offering food or mead. Gwydion slumped in his great wooden chair, forehead resting on one hand. He had not moved since they had left the sanctuary.
Cedric himself sat wearily on the rush-covered floor, too tired to even find an empty bench, his back braced against the stone wall. For all he could tell, the ritual had been a success. Of course it would be a matter of time before anything was certain. Gratefully he took a cup of mead from the drudge who offered it. He noticed that the mage took nothing. But the baron was drinking his third glass.
Finishing his mead, the baron stood and approached Gwydion's chair. The mage slowly raised his head to regard him warily.
"I cannot forgive you for who and what you are, and I will never understand you . . ." the baron began.
Gwydion's eyes narrowed.
". . . but even I must give honor where it is due. What you wrought this eve," he gestured towards the sanctuary doors, "was well done! I have gained honor in the sharing of it." Alemandus held out his hand.
For a moment, Gwydion just stared at him. Then, slowly, he raised his own hand to clasp the Baron's.
"I would also like," the Baron continued, "to propose a treaty that I think will be mutually agreeable. I would grant you the Veldtar forest, in fief for me, of course, to protect and preserve. With the understanding that the people of the barony be allowed to pass through it unmolested. In return, you will cease your war upon the barony. You will also confine any sorcery and magical solicitations to the forest, and avoid troubling my people with your heathen practices."
A flash of anger lit Gwydion's eyes at the last, but he quelled it. "This will not end what is between us, but for now, it is enough."
The moment was interrupted as Giselle entered the room. "She is awake."
Cedric spilled his mead in his haste to get to the sanctuary. He entered to see Aurora, eyes closed, lying on a pile of sleeping furs in the center of the a great circle, surrounded by guttering candles. He knelt by her side, frightened by how fragile she looked. Her eyes opened. As she saw him she smiled and reached out for him. Suddenly nothing else mattered.
THE STUFF OF LEGENDS
by Jody Lynn Nye
". . . Then Verrol and Liaya challenged the Dark Queen herself," old Mikal said, drawing light from the hearthfire into pictures to illustrate his tale. Minute figures in jewel colors sprang into being, moving and reacting as if they were true beings. "Armed with the sacred Spear they could not fail, but they were sore afeared. On the battlefield, Red Nachriia turned her three faces toward them, ail eyes glittering. They moved together. . . ."
Out of the corner of his eye, Duffy noticed something else glittering, something that looked familiar, in the hands of the Wanderer female who'd been sitting beside him when the old mage began his storytelling. He felt the sheath on his belt. His dagger was gone. The wretched creature had stolen it!
"Give that back," Duffy said, standing over the Wanderer with his hands on his hips. The rest of the folks in the tavern stopped to watch. Mikal fell silent.
"I was only just looking at it," the Wanderer said, blinking up at him winsomely. She held out the dragon's-head dagger she had taken off his belt. He hadn't felt a thing, which was part of what was making him furious. Teeth bared, he snatched the dagger back and put it securely into his belt. "Pretty, isn't it? I saw one like it these fifty years back, oh, where was it?"
"We don't like thieves in our town," Perog, the landlord, said, coming up to add his bulk. The child-sized creature nearly disappeared in the shadows cast by the two big men.
"Oh, I didn't steal it. I just picked it up," said the Wanderer, imperturbably. All wanderers were unflappable.
"And I suppose it wouldn't have gone into the pack with this collection of junk?" Perog said, picking up the Wanderer's knapsack and shaking it. It clattered noisily, and the landlord looked inside. "Them's my wife's candlesticks! Put her out, boy," he growled.
"With pleasure," Duffy said. He picked up the offender by the ragged collar at the nape of her neck in one hand and the sack in the other.
"I've done no harm! Put me down!"
Duffy paid no attention to her protests. He'd been interrupted in the middle of hearing his favorite legend—just as they were getting to the battle. The pleasant rapture of imagination was broken, as thoroughly as if he'd had a bucket of water dashed in his face. At the very least, Duffy wanted the source of his discomfiture out and gone. One of the other patrons of the pub opened the door for them, and he carried the kicking Wanderer out into the moonlit night.
"The road's that way," Duffy started to say. "The r—"
He swallowed and tried again.
"The r—"
"That's a dragon, isn't it?" the Wanderer asked brightly, swinging from his right hand. "My, a well-grown specimen it is too. Its tail goes clear around the building and comes back again. I didn't know dragons slept like that, did you? Oof!"
Duffy dropped the gnome-creature on the ground and scrambled back into the pub.
"There's a dragon out there!" he bawled. The pub's twelve patrons crowded around the single small window, and the publican, with the greatest of care and a broomstick, urged the casement open. Moonlight shone into the smoky room.
"There's nothing outside but that dratted Wanderer," Perog said, shaking his head.
"I tell you, I saw it," Duffy said, goggling. "Big, shiny dragon, curled around your pub like a cat on a hearth."
"No more for you tonight," Perog said, grinning and shaking his head. "Go on home, Duffy. Sleep it off."
"I'll start again for you on the evening," Mikal promised, with a wink and a finger laid aside his nose. "See you tomorrow, lad."
The others, relieved to find out the alarm was a false one, called out their good nights and went back to their pints and jokes. Duffy, disgusted, slammed out into the warm night.
"I saw it, I did," he said.
"We saw it," the Wanderer corrected him, falling into step. "And then it was just gone—blink! Like that." She flicked her dainty fingers outward.
"Get lost," Duffy said, opening his stride. The small woman, barely waist high to him, hurried to catch up.
"Can't," she said cheerfully. "I've been about everywhere. This town used to be bigger once. I know it. Back along, oh, thirty years it was. Is this your house? What a fine place!"
Duffy growled a little under his breath. He didn't need the sympathy of gnomelings. He knew what the great house looked like, with the burnt husk of one wing indifferently cleared away, and holes in the wall patched with white plaster because the man who'd made the original blue wash had been killed by the last raid of Voern's Minions passing through here. If he'd been more than a fourteen-year-old stripling back then, he'd have shown those misbegotten, overgrown lizardfolk what he thought of their destroying his home. But, he thought with a sigh, his strength lay in the future, and his family's glory was fast receding into the past. Like everyone else, the gentry needed to work to survive.
A single candle in the upper storey showed his mother must still be awake, then he realized it wasn't even moonset yet. The Dragon's eggs be blessed, but why did a vision of one of Her offspring have to interrupt a nice evening's drinking and tale-swapping? He unlocked the latch with his key, and glanced over his shoulder. The Wanderer hung back on the path, gazing up at him hopefully. He realized she probably had nowhere to go, might even have been thinking of staying at the pub, until she was
caught stealing.
"You can sleep in the barn," Duffy said, pointing past the shell of the west wing. "There's straw, and a horse blanket or two. But don't talk my cows' ears off, will you?"
"Not a word," she promised, beaming, clutching her small hands over the strap of her carryall. "Thank you most kindly for your hospitality. Good night. Sleep well—"
Duffy fled inside and shut the door on her chatter.
"There's a lizard outside," Gillea, Duffy's six-year-old sister, said from the doorway. "I went to let out the cows, and it looked at me."
Duffy lifted his head out of the pillow, his eyes only half focusing. The sun was no more than a red streak at the horizon. "Oh, aye?"
"The cows won't go out. And there's a Wanderer in the barn. She's only as little as me, fancy!" The girl's blue eyes were round as eggs.
Duffy sat up, fully awake, the events of the night before registering. "So it's not a dream," he said, pulling on his tunic.
"Your dragon's back," the Wanderer said happily. She sat on a stone in the sun, sorting the contents of her bag. There were bits of colored stone and glass, a short length of bright chain, and a few interesting twists of metal. Duffy heard the distressed mooing and shuffling hoofsteps of his herd inside the barn.
"It's not mine," he said heatedly. "You brought it, didn't you?"
"I?" The Wanderer wasn't interested. "Oh, no. If I had a dragon I'd talk to it myself. It's yours."
"This way. It's back here now." Gillea tugged on Duffy's tunic hem, and guided him around the side of the building.
They peeped around the corner. Beyond should have been the fields, with the hundred or so head of cattle that belonged to the village grazing placidly. Instead, the green was empty, but for one dragon. Not even birds sang in the trees. A few farmers huddled on the common concealed from sight of the thing talking in low voices.
Duffy eyed the great beast. No doubt about it, it was the dragon he'd seen the night before, silvery white and immense. The creature had to be a good fifty feet long. It opened its eyes and looked directly at Duffy. Then it disappeared.
The village elders at once called a meeting to discuss the dragon. By virtue of his family's position, and his late father's office as a knight of the Dallen, Duffy was titular headman of Greenton, but the seniors talked over his head, oblivious of the blow to his seventeen-year-old feelings.
"Just poof, vanished!" Farmer Orack declared, raising his hands to witness the truth of his statement. "But my cows are scared that witless they still won't go out. I'm having to feed them in the very barn!"
"Mine dropped a calf early out of fear," Farmer Eise said. "Praise be to Her on high, and to Mikal's skill," he nodded to the old hedge-magician, "that we could save it."
"What's it doing here?" Miller Varney, the tallest man in the village, asked. He didn't mean the calf.
No one had a clue.
"This daughter of the Silver One has to go," the blacksmith declared, folding his massive arms. Sandor was short and dark, not unlike the dwarfish mountain folk.
"Why? It's giving no offense," Mikal said mildly.
Orack stared at him. "The milk turned—none of my cows escaped it. I've got vats of sour milk—what are you going to do about that?"
"It looked at him," Eise said, pointing at Duffy.
"Then you're responsible for it," Varney said. The elders, as one, turned toward Duffy. The youth stared at them.
"Aye, Duffy," the others agreed.
"What am I supposed to do about a dragon?" he asked, incredulously.
"You're the headman, right?" Orack only remembered that when it was convenient, or when there was an unpleasant job to do, as now. "Kill it?"
"Kill a daughter of the Protector Liaya?" Varney sputtered. "Do you want to bring the wrath of the elder gods down on us? Send it away,"
"Find out what it wants," Mikal suggested.
After an hour's bickering, the group still couldn't come to a consensus on what they wanted done with the dragon, but they all agreed it was Duffy's responsibility to do it. After another hour's persuasion, Duffy agreed to try and find out why there was a silver dragon in Greenton.
The dragon turned up only where and when it had wanted to. Duffy decided that the logical thing to do was start out where it had last been seen. Feeling like a fool, he walked around and around the empty common. Gillea and the Wanderer went out with him.
"Should I call it?" he asked, pausing in mid-stride after pacing out the circumference three times. "What do you do to attract a dragon's attention?"
"Let's sit down," the Wanderer said, grabbing his hand. "Not for me, you understand, I could walk forever, but this lass is about to fall over. She's only about as tall as your legs, and there's two of them."
Gillea was trailing behind them. She wore a game expression, trying to show she was tough enough to keep up, but her strength was flagging. Duffy walked back and scooped her up. "Sorry, gillyflower, I'm not thinking too well."
"I'm all right," Gillea said, but she wound her arms around his neck.
With the Wanderer running alongside chattering soothing talk at the child, he carried her over to a big flat stone on the edge of the field that lay against the boles of a semicircle of oak trees that had grown up around it. It was a favorite place for children to sit on hot days. Gillea pried herself loose and claimed the coolest hollow at the rear of the stone. Duffy sat at the fore with his feet dangling off the edge. The Wanderer sat companionably beside him.
"How do I find out what a dragon wants with us?"
"With you," the Wanderer corrected him. "Why not talk to it?"
"Talk to it? A dragon?"
"I do speak," a voice said behind them. Duffy jumped. A dragon head the size of his whole body poked through the tree trunks. For a moment he couldn't see Gillea.
"Where's my sister?" he demanded.
"Here," said a very small, scared voice. The child scrambled out on hands and knees from under the great neck, and hid her head in Duffy's lap. The great head turned, and one huge, jewel-like eye studied him.
"You have questions, ask." The voice came from within the dragon, not from its mouth and tongue.
"Ask," the Wanderer said, eagerly. "Ask her. Shall I ask her for you? I think I've seen this lady before. Now, when did I see her? Fine and beautiful, but that's all silver dragons. But I'm sure this is the same lady."
"Shush! Uh, honored dragon person. . . ." His voice died in an embarrassing squeak. Duffy's mouth kept moving, but no sound came out.
"I have a name," the dragon interrupted. "Shortened for use by you humans, it is Soraya."
"I'm Fernli," the Wanderer said. "I'm pleased to meet you. Or is it re-encounter? I don't remember if we were introduced, back along."
Duffy realized he hadn't ever thought to ask the Wanderer's name. "What are you doing in our village, er, Soraya?" he asked, pitching his voice over the Wanderer's incessant chatter. "A silver dragon, well, I'd think you'd be in one of the great cities, or out in the mountains of the south. It's small, I mean our town."
The vibrations of the great voice made his chest throb. "I am here to fulfill a pledge made to Sir Karal Zovali. He marched under my banner in the last war. That is his symbol, is it not?" The head tilted toward the silvertopped dagger in Duffy's belt.
"Uh, yes," Duffy said, wiggling his bottom as close to the edge of the rock as he could. If the dragon made a wrong move, he was going to grab Gillea and run for his life. "It belonged to my grandfather, then it passed to my father. One of his companions brought it home to us over a year ago."
The dragon inclined her great head. "Then you are the one I seek. Karal saved my life, and in so doing, lost his. His last wish to me was that I protect his son and see that he receives teaching to become a knight. His efforts were in vain—I perished later on that same day—but I honor his bravery, and my word." Its pupil opened up to consume most of the glittering iris, and Duffy was drawn toward it. He saw a man lying braced in the curve of a huge silver cl
aw, gasping for breath. A great wound split the armor covering his chest. Duffy caught a horrific glance of sundered bone and flesh through the welling blood. He swallowed, and the vision faded. The dragon's eye returned to normal.
"You say you perished later?" Duffy asked, glancing down the great neck. It was sticking through the tree boles, not between them. Through. "That makes you a g—a gh—"
"A ghost?" the Wanderer finished for him, now intent on the shiny scales of the dragon. She appeared to be counting them.
"But a ghost of a servant of Good. A vow of honor supersedes even death. As a knight of the sword your father understood that." The dragon looked into the distance as if seeing visions of the past. "He would have been raised to the Order of the Heart, had he lived. He had similar hopes for you."
Duffy was awed.
"But my father died three years ago. Why are you here now?"
"It was not necessary to protect you before this," the dragon said simply.
"You mean I'm in danger?" Duffy asked.
"Ooh," Gillea said, picking her head up and staring wide-eyed at the dragon. "What's going to happen to Duffy?"
"I am but a dragon, not an oracle," Soraya said, baring her huge, pointed teeth. "It is time for you to become the leader your father knew you could be. You need to muster your village. Time is short."
"Muster? For what?" Varney asked. He grunted as he bent to pick up a sack of grain half his own size,
"An attack!" Duffy said, following the miller up the stone steps to the storeroom. "Soraya didn't say what, but she knows it's coming soon! You can't ignore the warning of a ghost, and a dragon ghost at that, now can you?"
Varney dumped the sack on the floor and blew chaff out of his graying mustache. "I suppose not, but what if she is an illusion sent by the evil ones? What they couldn't do with armies, they'll do by frightening us into tearing our own village apart?" He shook his head heavily. "Save them the effort. No, if there's trouble, we may as well surrender or flee. There's nothing left in this place but children, women, and old men."
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