The Faithful Traitor (Wizard & Dragon Book 2)

by Robert Don Hughes

  He hadn’t been home in a long time, but things never changed quickly in the Western District. The city tower looked exactly as it had on his very first day of school. Not a single merchant along the main street had painted a shop since the day Seagryn left for the capital. Bourne. He’d directed the dragon to burn Bourne.

  “No! Not here! Not here!” he shouted — he wailed it, really — but the wind tore his words away and they never reached the dragon’s ears. He guessed that probably wouldn’t matter anyway. Vicia-Heinox was hungry, and right below them a crowd of dumbstruck farmers stared upward at them in shock — easy pickings for a monster with an appetite. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Vicia licking his chops …

  Beside the tower was the village green, a tree-lined park that belonged to every Bournean citizen. Children raced across it during the daytime, and in the night it was the meeting place of youthful lovers. But activity on the greensward reached its peak in the late afternoon, as farmers who’d finished their daily tasks met to lounge along its grassy banks and lie to one another. The sun had burned hot in Bourne today, driving the lads from the fields a little earlier than usual, and the crowd that gathered under the shade trees seemed larger than any Seagryn could remember. It diminished quickly, however, as the dragon swooped low over the village. Certain of the merchants who had drifted out to join their customers for a cool drink suddenly found reason to dive back inside their shops. Mothers grabbed children and raced away, horses spooked and galloped down the avenues with their riderless wagons still attached. But the farmers, the heart of Bourne, the stalwart, faithful believers that made up the backbone of Lamathian society, just stood staring up at the dragon with open mouths, reminding Seagryn of the moosers they had left behind in the fields. And that gave him an idea.

  The dragon glided around and came in toward the tower across the field. It flew low and more slowly. Suddenly the ride became very bumpy and Seagryn realized the beast was no longer flying, but running. Then it stopped and raised its two heads high above the slack-jawed watchers until Seagryn realized he sat at the level of the city tower’s spire. He looked down — and saw that every eye now stared at him.

  What a curious feeling. Seagryn had dreamed years ago of arriving home in spectacular triumph, but he’d thought more along the lines of a parade when he finally became a Ruling Elder. This was certainly more dramatic — and tragic, too, if he didn’t do something about it soon! He looked down at these faces, adult versions of the boyish laces he’d once known, and shouted, “Don’t talk to it! It won’t eat you if you won’t talk!”

  Much of the crowd had had the good sense to disappear while they had the opportunity’, but a group of men stayed clustered together beneath him for reasons Seagryn knew too well. Put simply, they didn’t believe this was happening. Dragons had never just dropped down out of the sky onto the Green of Bourne, and they had no reason to expect that such a thing could happen today. They were practiced skeptics, these men. They required demonstration before they would believe a new thing to be true, and they hadn’t seen anything demonstrated yet. Besides — wasn’t that Seagryn up there on top of one of those heads?

  “Seagryn?” a broad-faced peasant called up to him. “Is that you?”

  “That’s him,” Vicia said warmly. Then he ate the peasant.

  Now this was a demonstration a man could believe in. The farmers all screamed and scattered.

  Seagryn covered his face and shook his head. Then he shouted again, “Didn’t I tell you not to talk to it?”

  Heinox rolled his eyes up to look at him. “Why are you telling them that?”

  “Because I don’t want you to eat them,” Seagryn said flatly as he watched Vicia gobble up a bald-headed fellow who stood there pleading for him not to.

  “Why not?” Heinox asked.

  “They’re my friends,” Seagryn said as Vicia plucked a poor unfortunate out of the tree he was trying to climb and tossed him high into the air. The man never hit the ground. “Were my friends,” Seagryn corrected himself.

  “What’s a friend?” Heinox asked, and somehow the question prodded Seagryn into action. The dragon’s ears were as big as he was — huge, leaflike things — and now he grabbed one of Heinox’ ears and began to shout into it.

  “This is a waste of your time! I know these people, and there aren’t enough interesting conversationalists here to make more than a between-meal snack!” This was, to be sure, true. The farmers normally didn’t say much to one another. Even their best stories they told slowly and with an economy of word choices that had once threatened to drive Seagryn mad. Now he felt grateful for it. It could prove their salvation. But he had to get this monster back into the sky and away! “Let me take you instead to a city — a vast city, with thousands upon thousands of people, many of whom talk for a living! Come on, Vicia-Heinox! Get up! Get up from here!”

  Vicia still slithered up and around and underneath his body, pursuing fleeing peasants. But apparently the people of Bourne had finally gotten the idea. No one was saying anything, and Vicia was understandably furious. When he tried to slalom down a row of trees after a particularly nimble farm boy, he found himself in a predicament that only added fuel to his fury. The only way to untangle his neck from the line of trunks was to back out, and Vicia didn’t back out of anything. It was trapped, and somewhere in the vestiges of its shared memory Vicia-Heinox remembered being trapped somewhere in a cave and a wicked little power-shaper hurting it … In panic, Heinox launched the massive body skyward, and Vicia was forced to come free — not, however, before smacking alternating ears against the entangling tree trunks. He flapped out the way he’d gone in.

  The dragon was furious. And it had the means to give vent to its rage: With that ability that Seagryn attributed to Sheth’s original dragonmaking spell, the two heads locked their vision onto the city tower, and it immediately burst into flames. Vicia-Heinox scorched the green, then the offending trees, and finally set fire to the whole block of thatch-roofed, double-storied shops before winging its way up into the clouds. All this time it was shouting at Seagryn, calling him the most awful names it could remember. Fortunately, Vicia-Heinox’ memory was short — and in response to Seagryn’s shouted directions, it turned to fly south at high speed.

  *

  Once the dragon was gone, the people of Bourne burst into activity. The whole town was aflame. Racing to find buckets, they formed a line down to the stream and began passing water from man to man up to the main avenue. Twilight came, and soon they found their best illumination for the task in the very fire they fought to douse. Some pitched water up at it. others pulled the contents of the shops out into the streets before the flames could crawl down to get them, but every able-bodied citizen of the village did his or her best to lessen the fire’s impact.

  All except one man. Yammerlid stood at the south end of the greensward, staring up into the sky. He had followed the flight of the horrible beast until it became less than a dot in the purpling night, but still didn’t move from his spot. “Seagryn,” he grunted. To him, the word was a curse.

  Yammerlid had known Seagryn all his life. Boyhood slights left unresolved had festered into an adolescent rivalry. Yammerlid had played a part in the events that had driven Seagryn from Bourne, and in the aftermath his childish feelings had ripened into a grown man’s hatred. Yammerlid was convinced that Seagryn had ruined his life. He’d waited impatiently through the years for Seagryn’s return, carefully planning his vengeance.

  But now Seagryn had come and gone again, leaving even more ruin in his wake! On a dragon he’d come, just to heap more humiliation upon Yammerlid! The man howled at the sky in frustration.

  Far behind him, across a field now gone black under a moonless night, his own boyhood home was burning. Yammerlid didn’t watch it. Let it burn. He’d be leaving this place first thing in the morning, for he now understood his destiny. He’d heard tales of cadres forming all across the land with the sole purpose of carving the heart out of
the dragonmaker. He’d heard rumors that the traitor was Seagryn, but he’d never really believed them. Now that he knew for certain, he couldn’t wait to join one!

  “Seagryn,” he whispered up at the darkness, “Yammerlid’s going to kill you — and when I do, you and the whole world will know it was me.”

  Chapter Three: GROOM’S NIGHTMARE

  NEBALATH had visited the Paumer House palace in Pleclypsa many times in his life. He was old, after all, and he’d had a long — if not always warm — relationship with Paumer the Shrewd. So when he received a secret plea from the merchant’s daughter, Uda, to visit her in Pleclypsa, he knew exactly the spire upon which he would appear.

  Nebalath could appear anywhere he chose. As the foremost wizard in the old One Land, he had the ability to cast himself to distant places, arriving instantaneously — and often quite dramatically as well. He alone of all wizards had perfected this ability! Well, Sheth could do it, too, of course, but Nebalath had given Sheth the idea. It was necessary’, however, that he know exactly where he was going. Nebalath had never cast himself into a well or a wall before, but he imagined such an experience would be horrible. Let others experiment with the possibilities of casting themselves blindly: He’d not become an old wizard by being an idiot. He would play it safe.

  The secretive messenger had told him Uda’s plea was urgent but knew nothing else about it. Why would the girl call him? They had met, certainly. He had, in fact, nominated her to take his seat on the ridiculously named Grand Council for Reunification. Grand Council indeed! It was a conspiracy of the powerful, nothing more, and Nebalath’s suggestion that a mere slip of a girl replace him upon it had been an insult calculated to show Paumer his disgust for the entire idea. He’d known nothing about her, save that she was just a child. He knew little more about her now.

  But he did know that young Miss Uda had snared as her swain a friend Nebalath held very dear. Dark the prophet was no more a man than Uda was a woman, but no other prophet of this age could equal his gift for foresight. Whatever Dark said would happen, happened. Nebalath had personally witnessed that truth a hundred times over. Though widely separated by age, the unique gifts of the two men had bound them together as fast friends. And Dark had confided to Nebalath months ago that he was destined to marry Uda — whether he liked the idea or not. Nebalath jumped to conclusions in the same way that he cast himself — only when he was reasonably certain that he knew exactly where he would land. This morning he felt it safe to assume that Uda’s plea for help involved young Dark in some way.

  Nebalath stood on the top of the Imperial House of Haranamous and announced that he was traveling to Pleclypsa. He recognized that anyone watching would think he was crazy, but anyone watching probably wouldn’t be able to hear the castle’s reply, either.

  — This House has never been there.

  “That’s rather obvious, isn’t it? You’ve never been anywhere but right here.”

  — Feeling a bit testy this morning, are we?

  “I don’t like being awakened in the middle of the night.”

  — You don’t like being awakened at all, the Imperial House corrected.

  “When you get older, you find it’s much more difficult to get back to sleep when you’ve been routed out of bed before the sun comes up!”

  — This House is much older than you are.

  “Yes, yes,” Nebalath grumbled, “but that just proves my point. Old Nobalog woke you up centuries ago and you’ve not been able to get back to sleep since!” Nobalog had been a wizard who’d lived in this castle long before the One Land splintered into Fragments. He’d been a very capable powershaper — Nebalath had never heard of any other who’d actually brought a structure to life.

  — This House considers sleep an utter waste of time.

  “You think I don’t know that?” Nebalath groused. “Since you’re the one who’s constantly waking me up at all hours?”

  — The courier from Pleclypsa told the gateman his message was urgent. This House assumed you would want to know that.

  “Yes, well. We shall see how urgent it really is,” the old wizard said as he wrapped his cloak about him and began to visualize that particular spire of Paumer’s palace where he planned to appear.

  — Are you certain where you are going? the House inquired. Because it is the understanding of this House that the mistress of that palace is particularly given to —

  Nebalath disappeared from the rooftop of the Imperial House with an audible snap.

  — remodeling …

  *

  “Help!” Nebalath yelled as he clung desperately to a trellis thirty feet below the point in the air where he had materialized. “Help!” he repeated as he saw servants clad in Paumer’s distinctive red and blue livery scurrying about below him but not doing anything. In fact, it appeared to him all they were interested in was getting out from under him! “Get me some help!” the wizard demanded, which only added to the speed with which they scurried — not to their efficiency. A moment later, a recognizable face showed itself below him — they had gone to fetch Kerily, Paumer’s socially active wife — the mistress of the manor. All things considered, Nebalath would have preferred a ladder.

  Kerily frowned at first, but this brightened to a smile when she recognized him. “Why, Nebalath! I must say, this is quite a surprise.”

  “I’m rather surprised myself,” the magician called down through gritted teeth. The trellis was quivering, and he had no alternative but to quiver along with it. “I thought there was a tower here!”

  “Oh!” Kerily laughed, and her laughter was a trilling, delightful thing — or would have been to anyone not in danger of plunging to his death. “That’s why you’re up there! Well, of course, you’re exactly right, there was a tower there! But we had to have it removed, you see, for the wedding. We needed a canopy right here — we’ll cover it in pink and pale blue, incidentally, which I expect will set the gowns off nicely. And of course, the trellis will arch over the canopy, decorated with flowers to match, imported from the spice islands. That is, if the trellis is still standing,” she added, just a hint of criticism in her voice. The structure had just given a loud snap, and Nebalath felt himself drop at least a foot before it caught again. “You don’t think you could get off of it, do you?” Kerily asked, adding brightly, “I don’t believe it was constructed to support the weight of a wizard …”

  Nebalath was prepared to make a very rude remark when it suddenly struck him that if he could cast himself up here from a hundred miles to the north, he certainly could cast himself the mere sixty feet down to the courtyard beside her. Quietly berating himself for being an old fool, Nebalath disappeared with the same distinctive snap with which he’d departed the Imperial House — and reappeared beside Paumer’s wife in the marble courtyard below. She whirled in surprise to face him, then smiled. It had been some time since he’d last seen her, and there was something different about her — Oh. The hair.

  This week Kerily’s hair was copper colored and curly. No one could quite remember what it had been last week, least of all Kerily herself. What did it matter, anyway — that was last week. And next week? Why, that mattered even less, at the moment. It would match the color of the dress she wore to the gallery gala, of course — but she hadn’t yet decided what color that would be. Kerily said she couldn’t remember what color her hair had originally been. “I was bald, of course,” she liked to joke. “Aren’t most babies bald?” She did wish sometimes she could change the color of her eyes, too. Then again, she thought it might be a trifle disconcerting to peer into a mirror and see something other than blue gazing back at her. Kerily’s blue eyes were legendary — Pleclypsan poets had written odes to them, and painters had struggled to match their hue on canvas. And to be honest, they were really the only eyes Kerily trusted. When she gazed at herself in the mirror, she believed she saw her only true friend. Nebalath had been around her enough to realize this. He wasn’t surprised by the suspicion in her voice wh
en she trilled, “The wizard Nebalath! So happy you could drop in.”

  “I’m rather happy I thought of it myself,” he grumbled, “since there appears to be a shortage of ladders about.”

  “Oh, but there are ladders simply everywhere around this house — ladders, scaffolding — Why there’s even a scaffold in the kitchen, especially constructed for the chef to decorate the cakes — we expect to need fifteen of them, monstrous things, but plans seem be changing daily, so it’s a bit difficult to say. The guest list is unbelievable! I never knew I had so many friends until I started to write them all down, and, of course, we had to invite all my husband’s business associates, which, as I’m sure you know, includes just about the whole world. But I have a plan,” she added brightly, tapping the side of her head, “and the way I have it worked out, the cream of artistic Pleclypsan society will not have to spend a single moment listening to that boring business talk. May I ask you something?”

  “Hmm?” Nebalath said, suddenly realizing he had faded out somewhere in the midst of the wedding cakes. “Yes?”

  “Why are you here?”

  “Oh! Yes. Well, I was sent for.”

  She frowned prettily. “Did — I send for you?”

  “I believe it was your daughter who did that.”

  “Oh,” she said meaningfully, raising her eyebrows and dropping her voice in disapproval. “May I guess? Does it have something to do with that boy of hers?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She leaned forward and half whispered, “Did you know he sleeps all the time?”

  “No,” Nebalath said.

  She straightened back up and nodded her head. “He sleeps all the time.”