The Dread Wyrm

by Miles Cameron

  Eventually, he must have slept, because he awoke, his eyes feeling as if they were made of parchment and his mouth dry and his head throbbing. He lay, listening to Toby lay things out on the chest at the foot of the bed, and then the scale of his disaster and the throbbing of his right leg coincided, and he rose into the chilly air, his mood already savage.

  He dressed quickly, and Toby kept his head averted. The boy’s fear of him angered him further. He could sense his own failure to modify his temper.

  At some remove, he didn’t care.

  “Where’s Nell?” he asked.

  “Stables, your grace.” Toby was not usually so formal. “Shall I send for her?”

  “No,” the captain said. He sat and stewed. He knew what he had around his ankle, in the aethereal. He knew it was very powerful, and he suspected he knew where it came from.

  Nell came in.

  “Message for you, your grace,” she said.

  Nell brought him a note, and he read it at his own table. His colour heightened and his face went blank.

  “Wine,” he said.

  It was early morning, and Toby frowned.

  “I’m sorry, Toby, is there a problem?” Ser Gabriel asked in his most poisonous voice.

  Toby glanced at Nell, who, having handed over the note, was busy sorting clean laundry in the press. Toby stood up straight. “I have hippocras,” he said, and went to the fire.

  “I asked for wine,” the captain said. “Hippocras has all the spirit boiled out.”

  “May I say—” Toby began with all the dignity a seventeen-year-old can muster.

  Ser Gabriel raised an eyebrow. “No,” he said. “Your opinion is not required.”

  Toby reached for a wine bottle, but Nell reached out and tipped it on the floor.

  It smashed.

  Before the pieces were done moving, the captain was out of his chair and had Nell by the throat. “I asked for wine,” he hissed. “Not adolescent criticism.”

  She looked at him, eyes wide.

  He let her go slowly.

  Nell shook herself and glanced at Toby, who had his hand on his dagger.

  The captain sighed—a long sigh, like the air hissing out of a dead man’s lungs. Without apology, he stepped out into the hall.

  He didn’t slam the door.

  He didn’t get a cup of wine, either.

  Gabriel was almost insensible to the world around him as he stalked along the tower’s outer hall and down the winding stairs, so angry at himself that he could barely breathe. He walked through the great hall without acknowledging anyone, and brushed past his mother without a word.

  She smiled.

  He paid her no heed, but walked out into the muddy yard and collected his riding horse, saddled by a pair of frightened grooms, and mounted. His anger communicated itself instantly to the horse, who began to fidget.

  “Perhaps if you were to hit it very hard,” came a soft voice from the gloom of the stable.

  At the sound of her voice, his rage drained away, leaving him merely—deflated.

  He turned the horse. The yard was almost empty, and his Morean page, Giorgos, was the only one of his own people in the stable.

  “I got your note,” he said.

  “And it lightened your mood?” Amicia said, emerging from the shadows with a palfrey’s reins in her right hand. “Shall we delight your lady mother by riding out into the spring sun?”

  “Only if we come back with our clothes all muddy,” Ser Gabriel said. His breathing was coming short, as if he’d been in a fight. “I’m sorry that she used you for the griffon.” That wasn’t what he’d meant to say.

  Amicia mounted, throwing her leg over the saddle like a man. It was neither ladylike nor elegant, although it did show a fine flash of leg. It reminded Ser Gabriel that Sister Amicia had not been raised a gentle, and was largely self-taught. At everything. Including the casting of complex sorceries.

  “People will talk,” he said, trying to find a light-hearted note. “If we ride without an escort.”

  “Honi soit qui mal y pense,” she said in passable Gallish.

  They rode out into a brisk day, with a hint of old winter in every shadow and a kiss of spring in the bright sunshine. She wore her hood up until they were clear of the gates of the town, and then she threw it back, and her rich brown hair was blown free of her wimple in seconds by the stiff north wind. She caught the wimple before it whipped free, like a flag in a storm, and tucked it into her bosom.

  She smiled. “Do you know how long those things take to sew?” she asked. “I can’t lose one.”

  Ser Gabriel could not fail to meet her smile. “I see you are learning to embroider,” he said. “La Belle Soeur de Forêt Sauvage. Doesn’t it bore you?”

  “Oh, no!” she said, with delight. “No, I relish it. It is like going to mass. So—calming. Time to think. I have done a great deal of thinking this winter—since I met your mother.”

  Gabriel sighed. “Yes?” he asked. He noted, at some remove, that his hands were shaking.

  She looked at him. “And you?”

  He pursed his lips. “I have thought a great deal,” he said.

  She laughed. “It is easy to plot and devise other people’s lives, is it not? So much easier than working on your own.” She turned her horse at a side road short of the bridge. “Come, Gabriel. We are going to talk about the rest of our lives.”

  Gabriel reined in his horse. “Amicia,” he said. His voice rose in pitch.

  She looked back. “Gabriel. Let us get this done.”

  He sat, his horse unmoving. He was silent for so long that she had to wonder where his head was, and then he said, his voice strained, “I think you should just say it. I don’t need to ride off into the copse of woods to hear it.”

  “On the highway?” she asked.

  “Amicia,” he said, and he paused. He looked away.

  She turned her horse back. “I don’t want to be interrupted,” she said.

  Slowly, as if against his will, his horse followed hers.

  They rode another league, until they came to a small chapel. It was not quite a ruin—the stones were green with moss, the roof of slate was still supported by its ancient wooden beams, but it sagged in the middle. The altar stone was still solid, and there were bunches of snowdrops on it. Inside, it was pleasant enough—brisk, but not wintry, and the odour of incense mixed with a flat mossy smell.

  Gabriel saw to their horses and followed the nun into the chapel. At the door, he paused.

  “I’m gathering that you are not bringing me here to succumb to my worldly advances,” he said.

  “That sounds more like the man I knew at the siege,” she said. She went to the altar and kindled a small fire, lit two candles and placed them on the altar. Almost instantly, the candles made the small space seem dryer and more homey.

  Then she drew a stool from behind the altar and sat. “I come here often,” she said. “The light is good.”

  “And it is full of power,” he said.

  “And God’s light,” she said.

  Their eyes met. Hers were brown, and his were green, and each looked far too long, so that the silence grew uncomfortable, and then stretched to a flinching unease and through it.

  In the aethereal, they stood on her bridge, with the clear waters of the Wild flowing under it and the golden light of the sun pouring down through a clearing in the trees. In her palace, the trees had the full and dusty green leaves of late summer.

  “We didn’t need to ride out of the fortress to do this,” he said.

  Amicia did not wear a robe and gown in the palace, but a tight green kirtle. “I wanted you to have time,” she said. “Everyone has ambushed you this week. I was not going to be one of them.”

  Gabriel was in red; he leaned on her bridge. “I think you have brought me here to break off,” he said. “And I think the ambush is of some duration.”

  She smiled. “Love—love, what break can there be between two sorcerous mortals
who can walk in and out of each other’s minds?”

  Gabriel smiled as if she’d said something very different. “So linked that their ops pass back and forth without volition?” He didn’t look at her. “Why didn’t you come with me, Amicia?”

  “I had other duties. I made a different decision.” Her ambiguity was redoubled in the aethereal.

  “Amicia.” He turned and met her look—in the aethereal. “I’m pretty sure that you agreed to come with me and be my wife.”

  She shrugged. “I did. And I was wrong to, and I wronged you. But in taking my vows, I was true to myself. And I do not regret my vows.” She smiled sadly. “I will never be your wife. Nor your leman. There, it is said. Again.”

  “Did I have to come here to have you say it?” he asked. “Or are you just one of those people who needs to be convinced?”

  He stepped forward, his eyes hungry, and she stopped him. His reaching arms caught nothing.

  “In the real,” she said, “you can overcome both my body and my will. Here, I am your peer.”

  Baulked, his eyes flashed red and his rage was writ plain.

  And then he stepped back and all but hissed.

  “Love,” she said. “Do you need my body? Is this a matter of love, or mastery? Is it that my Jesus blocks your mighty will? Why can you not be satisfied with this? How many mighty powers stand in each other’s heads and talk? It is more intimate than any lovemaking.”

  Gabriel leaned back against the railing of the bridge.

  “I wondered if you would allow me into your palace,” he said.

  “Why would I not?” she asked.

  “Because of what you would hide from me,” he said. “It’s obvious here, is it not?” As he spoke, he pointed to his feet.

  A tiny tendril, like a wisp of hair, tailed away from his right heel and fell away into the rushing water below.

  Amicia put a hand to her neck.

  Gabriel nodded. “At least twice, when I should have died—should absolutely, unequivocally have been dead—I have not died. The most recent occasion was so obvious that I had to know the cause.” He smiled. “I knew we were linked by the ring. But the ring merely covers something, doesn’t it?”

  Amicia found it difficult to avoid his eyes. In fact, no matter where she turned, he seemed to be standing with his arms crossed.

  “Why have you ensorcelled me?” he asked.

  Amicia raised her head. “I cannot speak of it. What is done, is done.”

  “There speaks the language of love.” He snorted.

  She coloured.

  He left her for the real.

  “I brought you here,” she said icily, “to tell you some things.”

  He smiled at her. Even in his current state, just to look at her warmed him. But he held up his hand. “I don’t think I want to hear them. Amicia—for whatever reason we are joined—you know me better than many. Or at least, I imagine you know me well. And I have to tell you that just now, I’m at my limit. I don’t need to know any more. I need to deal with my mother, and go to Harndon. In a week, or a month, or a year, if we are both alive, I would ask that we have this conversation again. And that you release me from your spell. But not, I hope, your love.” He smiled. “You needed no spell to hold me.”

  “Hold you? Damn you and your arrogance,” she said. “I have made my vows.”

  “My dear, girls leave convents every day. What kind of God would demand your chastity like a jealous lover? If you wish to commit to your God, be my guest, but don’t hide behind your vows.” He smiled. “There. I, too, have thought and thought. And those are the words I say to you.” He took his gloves out of his belt. “I love you, Amicia. But…” He paused, and bit his lip.

  Amicia shrugged. “My answer will be the same. You should marry the Morean princess.”

  He stopped moving.

  “Irene. We all expected you to marry her. Even your own people expected it. Did she have warts or something? I understand that she’s the most beautiful woman in the world—at least, I’ve heard it said.” Amicia smiled. “I really just want you to be happy.”

  “So you have placed a mighty working on me?” Gabriel said.

  Amicia shrugged.

  “Can you remove it?” he asked. “I tried last night and failed.”

  “Let me set this out for you,” she said like a schoolmistress for a not-very-bright pupil. “You accuse me of casting some praxis that is protecting you from death. And you’d like it removed.” Her arch tone was almost contemptuous.

  His anger flared. “No one else can do this to me,” he spat. “Damn you. But yes. Take it away.”

  “Your mother can do this to you,” Amicia said. “I spent a day with her and you know what? I liked her. I found that we agreed on some surprising things. For example, we both agreed that you needed to be protected.” Amicia took a deep breath. “And for this I’m to be damned?”

  Gabriel paused.

  “You still have a healthy element of small boy in you, shouting I can do it myself. And in many ways you can. But—”

  He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Amicia, but you have no idea what you’re talking about. My mother is not—anyone’s friend. Even her own. She is a Power.”

  Amicia nodded, lips pursed and eyes narrowed almost to slits. “Gabriel Muriens, I am a Power.” She stood. “Just when you begin to woo me successfully—and you do, the mere sight and sound of you, as God is my witness—your overbearing—” She stopped. “You do yourself no favours. I am not a girl. I am not witless. I can, in fact, heal the sick, and make fire rain from the sky.”

  He looked away. “I am not the only arrogant fool here,” he said. He went to the doorway. “I thought we’d go for a ride. And perhaps kiss. And maybe you’d tell me why you’ve placed a working on me. And I’d forgive you.” He shook his head. “Instead, I have to at least consider that you and my mother are working together on whatever fool scheme she’s devised for my future as the messiah of the Wild. I find that hard to credit, but if it is the case—”

  “Forgive me?” she asked. Despite her best efforts, tears burst from her eyes. “You would forgive me for saving your life?” She looked at him, shaking her head. “And you think I’m plotting with the Wild?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “You idiot,” she said.

  He took a trembling breath and stepped forward.

  She straight-armed his advance. “Go,” she said.

  She heard him mount his horse. And she heard him say, “Fuck,” quite loudly and distinctly, and then he rode away, and she gave vent to a year’s worth of frustrated tears.

  Ser Gabriel appeared in the great hall just before noon. He was a trifle muddy and more reserved than usual, and Ser John beat him at chess so easily he felt the other man must be distracted.

  “I’m not myself,” the Red Knight said, although the acerbity with which he said it made him seem very much himself. “I intend to take my household and depart in the morning.”

  Ser John started. “By God, Ser Gabriel,” he said. “I had counted on you for the rest of the council.”

  Ser Gabriel shook his head. “I need to get to Harndon. The tournament is what—nineteen days away? I’d like to have a rest and a chance to do a little politicking before I cross lances with anyone. You can plan the logistics of the mobile force as well as I—better for knowing the suppliers. I need to be anywhere but here.”

  Ser John raised both eyebrows. “I am sorry. Has my hospitality gone awry?”

  Ser Gabriel managed a good smile. “Nothing of the sort. You are a fine host. I brought my own black mood with me.” He frowned. “I still need to discuss the agreement with the duchess.”

  He sent young Giorgos, who went and returned.

  In his flawless High Archaic, the young man said, “The despoina is closeted with the good sister,” he said. “The duchess is no doubt making her confession.”

  “No doubt,” the Red Knight said. He rose, bowed and went out into the yard.

/>   Bad Tom was cutting at a pell.

  Ser Gabriel sent Giorgos for his war sword and went to the next pell, displacing a dozen other men who, in one look, decided to do their training elsewhere. He attacked the pell ferociously, and then, with a poleaxe, more pragmatically, raising splinters and then cutting them away.

  Tom redoubled his efforts for a while, perfectly willing to compete at pell destruction.

  But wood chips were not particularly satisfying, and Bad Tom grinned. “Care for a dust-up?” he asked.

  The Red Knight tossed his weapon to Giorgos. Without further words, he stripped his doublet, opening the lacings as fast as his fingers would go.

  Ser Michael came out of the back of the stables.

  “Cap’n’s going to wrestle with Bad Tom,” Cully said. “Household’s marching tomorrow.” He raised an eyebrow. “His leg still hurt?”

  Ser Michael nodded. “Not all that’s hurting, by all accounts,” he said. “We can’t leave tomorrow,” he said.

  Out on the sand, Tom and Gabriel, naked to the waist, were circling.

  They came together. The captain took one of Tom’s arms, and Tom wrapped him in a tight embrace and held him tenderly.

  “You good?” he asked. He hadn’t even bothered to throw the smaller man.

  Ser Gabriel leaped away. Then he attacked.

  He landed a fist, and Bad Tom bent lower, and the expression of mild pleasure on his face changed to one of joyous ferocity.

  “Uh-oh,” Ser Michael said to Toby.

  Toby, who was packing armour, sighed.

  Tom threw the captain, face first. Ser Gabriel rolled, but Tom was atop him, and caught an arm and forced him to the ground. “Yield,” Tom said.

  But he was a second too soon. Ser Gabriel turned inside the grab and spun under Tom’s arm, avoiding the dislocation of his shoulder.

  Tom locked his arms around the captain’s head and rocked him back and forth gently. He took a step back. “Yield,” he said again.

  Ser Gabriel swung his feet forward in a way that made his friends wince for his neck, got a purchase, and tried to free his head.

  Tom let him go.

  Quick as a viper, the captain got an arm under Tom’s left arm, passed his head through, and went for the throw.