by Dave Freer
Meb and Neve stared at the perfect, doll-like little woman. Her skin was porcelain white and her hair long and dark and intricately braided. There were little sparkling lights set in it. “My subjects are very worried about me being aboveground,” she said in a piping little voice. “But I wished to thank you for the gift, Land Queen.” She admired the comb, delight written on tiny features. “You did not have to do that.”
“It seemed only polite to say thank you for breakfast,” said Meb. “Fionn said that only a fool takes without giving something in exchange. Even if it is only his gratitude making the giver feel good.”
“That is wisdom. We struggle to fashion metals. And the knockyan work is not so fine as this. They are miners, not artificers. Thank you,” said the muryan queen.
“It is our pleasure. We appreciate breakfast.”
The queen nodded regally. “My workers want to know if you can spare them an ember on a stick. They struggle to kindle fire, and it has been damp and cold and we lost ours.”
“Nothing easier,” said Meb, taking a smouldering stick from the fire. Was Lyonesse full of such obliging fay? It was very different from Tasmarin, then. “All of the non-human people here seem so . . . helpful. Generous. Thank you.”
“It is our duty to serve. We have waited a long time for you,” said the queen muryan.
Meb blinked. What? Then it struck her. It must be this prophecy. She did not want to be their “Defender.” Although, she admitted to herself, it was easier to have to defend the knockers, spriggans, muryans and even the annoying piskies than the nobles of Dun Tagoll. “I don’t know what I am supposed to do,” she admitted.
The muryan queen toyed with the comb. “The Land knows. And you do it in a better fashion than the last one. He took it as his right. Never gave anything or thanked anyone for anything.”
One of the soldier muryans clicked his mandibles.
The queen nodded. “He says there are large birds coming. I must go back to my palace.”
The bearers literally whisked her away just as she was finishing speaking, carrying her back down into the mound.
“Large birds?” said Meb looking around. They were under a tree, and the un-farmed countryside was returning to woodland. A bird, she supposed, especially a bird of prey, could be a grave danger to the muryans, to their queen.
“You can see them over there,” said Neve in an odd voice, pointing. “I think we need to hide, m’lady.”
They gleamed golden as they caught the sun. It was a reflection off metal, but they flew and tumbled through the sky like a murder of crows. Even from here you could hear their harsh cawing cry.
“Aberinn’s crow.” She’d seen it, in his tower, in the gilded cage.
“Yes, m’lady. One is the same as many. And what they sees, he sees,” said Neve, fearfully.
“Let’s put that fire out, and think hidden thoughts,” said Meb.
So they did, sitting tight, staying under the tree and cracking nuts.
The golden birds scattered across the sky. Hunting.
On the ground the piskies could maze and mislead, and the spriggans could give warning. Meb had a feeling that up close the muryan could deal with any attacker, just by sheer numbers. But the metallic crows stayed above, in the sky, and Meb honestly could not think what to do about them, except to wait them out.
They had to sit for a good hour, as the day grew warmer, before they could start walking again. It had given Meb a chance to think about what the various fay had said, and she’d perhaps not really understood. She had no desire to be some kind of savior. She’d just wanted . . . well, she knew what she’d just wanted, but as she couldn’t have that, she’d just wanted somewhere quiet to be relatively miserable and peaceful about it all. Then she’d said she would help . . . and found that she’d promised a spy. Vivien had been kind to her. She’d been grateful. The castle’s “little people” had been good to her. The non-human denizens of Lyonesse had been helpful . . . and in their ways, generous. Well, the piskies had helped rather than just generating mayhem, their most frequent habit. The spriggans had as much said they thought the whole process was using her. If it had to be that way, and she wasn’t sure why it should, she’d shape it to her, not the other way around. And why her? Neve said only those of Lyonesse’s noble ruling house had magic—but that just meant one of her parents had to have been. And she was a realist enough to know that could have been on the wrong side of wedlock. She was no lost princess: the last king had been dead more than fifty years, and the queen nearly sixty years. No one else at Dun Tagoll had been leaping up and claiming a child lost eighteen years ago. Or no one who was willing to admit to it, which put her as likely to be the love child of a servant. It would have been some small consolation for losing Fionn and Díleas to have loving parents waiting for her. She had never had a father. Hallgerd had at least been a kind of mother.
And then her type of magic was simply so different from the way they seemed to do things here. Did it really mark her as from their royal house at all? They knew precisely what and how they were doing what they were doing, and followed precise methods, but were quite weak in their degree of success. She had no real idea how she did what she did, had no real clear method, except that of a clear image and real desire or need, and a sort of daydreaming focus seemed to help. But she was far more successful than most, she gathered, excluding the likes of Aberinn.
She was still deep in thought as they began their walk. Eventually she asked Neve, “What would fix Lyonesse? If you could, I mean, just could . . . wave your hand and it happened.”
Neve blinked. Meb had decided a while back that it wasn’t that Neve was stupid. She just hadn’t ever done much thinking and wasn’t too eager to start. Meb understood that too. In a village, being smart or daydreaming weren’t things that helped you to fit in, and it was easier to fit in than not to. “I’d stop the fighting. Stop the armies coming along the Ways. Never mind the Changes. Just leave us alone.”
“But Vivien said it was needed to keep magic going in Lyonesse.”
“Aye. It is,” agreed Neve. “But no good that’s been to burned villages and burned fishing boats, and killed people.”
Meb suspected that the nobility of Lyonesse, whose power rested on that magic, would not see it that way. Well, she had no reason to care how they felt. But she did have reason to care for the spriggans and knockers, and the muryans and even the piskies. They needed magic. They were “wakening” because of the magic . . . then it dawned on her. They were wakening because the flows of magical energy had been restored because of the reintegration of Tasmarin, not because of the device in the tower. “So all we need is a bit of peace.”
Neve nodded. “Mind you, stopping fighting usually takes some fighting.” She swallowed. “I had . . . two little brothers. Only way to stop them fighting was to spank both of them, my mother said.”
Meb suddenly felt overwhelmingly guilty. She’d never really found out much about Neve’s family, beyond stories of her grandmother. “What happened to your family? Your village? Could I take you back there?”
“It isn’t there anymore. No one along the coast near Dun Tagoll after the Vanar’s last raids. M’mother and the boys . . . they were killed. Later, in Dun Telas, my Gamma . . . Well, she had money and my uncles, they moved to Dun Telas. I am not going back there.” There was a terseness in her voice that said “don’t ask me any more.”
But Meb wouldn’t have anyway, because just then a javelin spiked the trail in front of them.
Chapter 19
“So, Finn. How far do you travel with us?” asked Avram, as the carts made their way along the track. Fionn was sitting up on the box with him, and Díleas was fast asleep just behind him. He’d growled at Mitzi a little earlier, and she was still bright-eyed and eyeing him with interest. Fionn had been keeping an eye on Díleas for an entirely different reason. He was aware of gold, and had known just where in the dog’s digestive tract the bespelled gold coin was. The spell pro
bably wouldn’t survive stomach acid, but the coin might do Díleas some harm, Fionn feared. He was relieved to know the coin wasn’t in the dog anymore, but had been deposited somewhere. Díleas had obviously made sure it was a long way from Fionn, and that was one piece of gold Fionn had no interest in finding.
“Until the dog tells me it’s time to go elsewhere. And right now he’s too tired and his mind seems elsewhere.”
“You’re following the dog?” said Avram, incredulously.
Fionn nodded. “I told you he was smarter than you realized. He’s following his mistress. He’s taken me straight across four planes and back across a fifth. He takes me to these Tolmen Ways of yours, which are shorter, straighter, and less dangerous than the planar intersections that I know. Right now I believe you’re going in the right direction.”
“What are you seeking?” asked Avram.
“I said: the dog’s mistress. She is very important and special to me.”
Avram nodded. “She is a very desirable dragon, then?”
“She’s a human,” said Fionn.
Avram nearly dropped the reins. “There are some very fair young women among our people,” he said cautiously.
“She’s rather special, and to be honest with you, given all the time rates out here, I am not too sure if she’ll be a young woman by the time I find her. The planes are extensive, although her magic use tends to make her stand out like a bonfire on a dark night,” said Fionn.
“She’s a mage?”
“Of sorts, yes,” replied Fionn, smiling, thinking about it. “More like an accidental mage with more innate power than most dedicated and trained practitioners.”
“Has she enchanted you, Dragon?” asked Avram. “We’ve got a few back home who are good at undoing those things . . .”
Fionn shook his head, knowing it wasn’t entirely true, but preferring matters the way they were. “In theory, anyway, it is very hard for one human to use magic on our type of dragon. We are mostly proofed against magic for good reason. I think I love her in the same way and for the same reason the dog does. Because she is what she is, and she loves us.”
“So . . . how did you lose her?” asked Avram, in the fashion of someone who knows this a bad question to ask, but is going to ask it anyway.
Fionn shrugged. “She used her power to go, and we don’t know exactly where. I believe she was misled by . . . by something. And I intend to find out, and I intend to find out why.”
“We have a saying that if there is one thing more determined than a man led by his testicles, it’s one led by his emotions.”
“It’s true of dogs and dragons too,” admitted Fionn.
Now that he was accepted as a dragon, there were no major secrets, and Fionn had built up something of a picture of the travelers. Their base was on the Blessed Isles, and there were ten carts in this venture, making it a small one. There had been eleven but one had had to be cannibalized to make a bridge. Twenty-two men, no women or children this trip; Annvn was considered too dangerous, as were the shifting gateways or Tolmen. There were several that the travelers never quite knew where they would come out. Some outcomes, like Brocéliande and Finvarra’s kingdom, were merely dangerous, and places they visited in the normal course of business anyway. But Annvn, despite being profitable, was so full of regulation—and corruption—that travelers had had major problems, entire parties being sold into slavery, and needing expensive rescues.
“We’re officially going to the assembly point to the way to Lyonesse, with supplies for the army,” explained Avram. “Actually, in two days we slip off the pike road for a mile or two and there’s a Tolmen Way to Alba, and then about two weeks’ travel and back to the Blessed Isles. Alba’s none too bad. We’re not going to Lyonesse. Not with or without an army. It’s a bad spot, even if it didn’t have the habit of raiding its neighbors. The land is unfriendly.”
They showed Fionn several maps, indicating the Tolmen Ways, which he faithfully copied. He was pleased to add some extra points to their maps, too, with notes. Díleas had taken him places they either didn’t know or didn’t go to. Some could be awkward with a cart. Horses probably wouldn’t enjoy being driven over a cliff.
He was still musing ways to get around this when they came to one of the inevitable checkpoints. Mind you, Fionn thought, this one was in more chaos than check. The soldiers were busy dismantling their camp. Avram waved his papers at them.
“Oh hell, check them,” said one of the sergeants busy packing his kit. “You, soldier.”
So the soldier came over and looked. Snorted. “You might want to turn back. They’ll probably not pay you,” he said as he returned them and took Fionn’s papers.
“Not pay us?” said Avram, looking suitably horrified.
“We’re not even sure if they’ll pay us.” He looked at Fionn’s papers and began laughing. “You’re out of a job, scumbag. They hung Maric last night.”
“I can’t tell you how pleased I am,” said Fionn, beaming at him. “Finally. Tell me what happened.”
The soldier, who, in Fionn’s judgement, had been about to haul off and punch the supposed agent in the mouth, paused. “What?”
“I bought the papers from a pickpocket,” said Fionn cheerfully. “Do I look like an agent? What happened to Maric? I can go home now!”
“I’ll have to arrest you . . .”
“For what and for who?” asked Fionn, grinning and slapping his back. “If Maric’s dead, who is paying you and who is giving you orders? So who is the new prince going to be?”
“Who knows? Sounds like there is a civil war going on. Slaves broke out, half the town in flames, looting, rebellion . . .”
“I think,” said Avram, “that we’ll keep going a bit, and let it all settle down.”
He flicked his whip and the horses began to trot. They didn’t stop and the soldiers didn’t bother to try and stop them.
They slowed up about a mile further on. “That, Finn, could have been ugly,” said Avram.
“The law of unintended consequences,” said Fionn, “and how all things are interconnected and balanced always amazes me. I tossed a spark in there, I suppose. Didn’t expect a wildfire. Yet, I couldn’t have made as big a one if I tried.”
“Still, it makes getting ourselves and our goods on the trail to Alba ever more important. Civil wars are bad for trade and bad for travelers. I’ll be glad to get there.”
“I’ll be glad to be going with you if I am,” said Fionn. “Let’s see what Díleas says.”
Díleas informed Fionn by leaping off the cart—and away from Mitzi—that he was going straight on, on foot toward the staging post of the army, not on by cart towards a stone arch—a Tolmen which opened a Way to Alba—but to one which intermittently led to Lyonesse. There were a couple of other possibilities beyond that, but that was the closest. And what could be more likely than that his Scrap of humanity would be in the middle of a war, in a place which everyone seemed to detest?
* * *
The countryside became hillier and intermittently wooded as they walked on. Fionn had rather expected it to be full of troops heading back to their homes or to the city, but it wasn’t. In fact the road was deserted, as were most of the farms. He did see smoke coming from the two chimneys of an odd, shadowy, angular building on a hilltop that had some magic-use problems which he would have gone to deal with normally, but that was the only sign of human life he saw. There were signs of devastation, though. Reading the map, late that afternoon, Fionn decided they had barely a mile or two to go, and was about to press on, when he realized they were being approached. By a tall, graceful tree-woman.
“Fionn. The black dragon?” She asked as if she were some messenger, checking she had the right person.
“Yes,” said Fionn. There seemed little point in denying it.
“You move fast and far. My sisters have sent me news for you,” she said. “The trees pass word slowly from tree to tree, plant to plant, growing thing to growing thing. The plane
s are not a divider to them, because they do not understand them or comprehend them, and thus are not limited by them. They bring us word, in time. The woman you seek,” said the tall tree-sprite, “is in the land humans know as Lyonesse. She walks among the new-leaf oaks there. And at her side and following behind her are the myriads.”
Fionn took a deep breath. He’d found her, and his secret, never-voiced fear had not been realized. The wilder worlds out there had not killed his precious Scrap of humanity. “I owe you . . . your kind . . . a debt. And I never forget,” he said, his voice thick. “Hear that, Díleas? We know where we’re going now. It sounds like she has a big army.”
“It is not a big army. Just very numerous,” said the sprite. “Or that is how the trees see it.”
She gave him a swaying bow, and turned away. Fionn knew her kind better than to waste his time running after her and asking for clarification.
At least he knew she was alive and where she was.
“Come on, Díleas. Let’s go.”
So they went.
But their way was blocked by an army that was both numerous and big. And which had rather effectively blocked the gate, even for a dragon in a hurry.
The gate looked rather like a castle gatehouse, and was—unlike the ancient triliths—an obviously recent construction . . . so much so that there were still construction materials piled near them. It was quite different too in that it smelled of oil and human magic to Fionn’s senses. Quite unlike the other Ways.
The gatehouse still looked imposing. Complete with solid gates, and a portcullis. And an army camped outside, and a formation of pikemen at the ready.
“The Annvn invasion force might not be going through at the moment,” said Fionn to Díleas, inspecting it from a nearby hill with a convenient forested gully for cover, “but nothing is coming out, either.” Fortunately, it appeared that the army was looking for trouble not from within Annvn but from elsewhere.
He inspected the gate as carefully as he could at this distance. Breaking into places was, after all, very much his stock in trade.
