As Ashley advanced with his vision, he drove the dread Akoniss back.
Ashley sent a giant crack zigzagging through the roof of the cavern past Akoniss. New geysers spurted and spat like a breaking waterpipe under pressure. The dragon issued a high whine and fled with his long neck outstretched, like a swan trying in vain to launch with wet wings.
Ashley followed him, being careful not to step on the shards the dragon had discarded on the floor. He carried his vision out through the mouth of the cavern. Akoniss was airborne, but not yet away. Ashley thought the clouds should darken somewhat. A heavy brooding mass of cloud spread across the sky, driven by an impossible wind. The fringes whipped by like a ragged blanket, the dark base sank until the peaks dragged through the currents of his imagination.
For good measure, he made it rain in the lee of the nearest peaks. Sparkling swarms of cold droplets drove down the slopes. Akoniss became a bolt, fired from the mountains, flying out to the distant sunshine.
He was gone.
Ashley sank down beside the mouth of the cavern and buried his head in a clump of snow. He laughed uncontrollably as the shaking took him. He had saved one dragon, from another. What had he done?
HOW DID YOU DO THAT? asked Sassraline, emerging from the cavern to stand at his side. HOW DID YOU BRING DOWN THE WATER?
She had seen it too. He must have projected his thoughts harder than he’d realised. He’d been desperate to save her, because he’d known if he hadn’t, he would have been next on the dark dragon’s menu.
THE WATER HAS COOLED HIS FIRE IN MY SKIN, Sassraline said.
Ashley didn’t try to explain that it wasn’t real. If her pain had been eased, then let her have that small mercy. For someone as proud as Sassraline, to be assaulted by a ruffian like Akoniss must be deeply humiliating. She stared off into the distance, beneath the clouds that were already evaporating from Ashley’s mind. The sunlight returned to dance on her sinuous green neck, highlighting the high points of her folded wings. She was truly spectacular in the sunlight. The scars of the recent battle did little to mar her beauty.
HE IS AS COMMON AS A CORUNDUM, she said, then turned her great head to look down upon Ashley. YET YOU ARE SOMETHING QUITE SPECIAL. NO ONE HAS EVER STOOD UP FOR ME BEFORE. NO ONE HAS EVER RISKED THEIR LIFE FOR ME.
She contemplated him for a long time with that penetrating gaze, and he sat in the snow, wondering if she was going to change her mind and eat him after all. At last she dropped her head close to him, her eye almost level with his head. She blinked.
WHAT IS YOUR WISH? YOU HAVE EARNED A FAVOUR.
Ashley reeled as he tried to find an answer. She was offering him a wish? She would do something for him? He had finally succeeded in making her think about someone beyond herself, of making her care. He sat for a long time to consider his answer. He thought at once of leaving the frozen heights of the Winterblades, but where would he go? Eyri? That train of thought led at once to Tabitha Serannon and the others. Had they made it across the wastes? What had happened to their beasts? Was she still pressing on with her quest? Were they in danger?
A drab little bird fluttered onto the branch of the dead tree. It sang a bright melody into the crisp dawn: a little song that was ever-changing, yet expressed a secret. And it flew from the branch into the open sky. It flew.
“Take me to my friend,” he replied. “I must find her.”
YOU HAVE A PARTNER?
“No, she is not mine, she is a ... fellow.”
BUT STILL SHE IS THE KIND YOU WOULD SEARCH FOR?
“She already has a man,” Ashley explained.
SHE HAS AN AKONISS IN HER LAIR?
He thought of Garyll Glavenor. “Not an Akoniss, no. Her man is hard to fault.”
AHH. WHY DO YOU SEARCH FOR HER THEN?
When Ashley did not answer, she nudged him, gently, and he was pushed backward through the snow a way. Pale colours adorned her snout. He ran his hand over the polished curves, careful not to touch the acid stains that were drying around her wound.
She eased her head away from him and stood tall again.
I MUST LEAVE THIS LAIR ANYWAY, NOW THAT HE HAS FOUND IT.
She lifted one great foot and extended it toward him. Her toes were flexible, her talons like spear-tips at their ends. Ashley realised she expected him to step into her grasp, and she would lift him.
“Won’t it be easier if I climb on top?” he asked.
ON TOP? THAT IS MORE THAN I AM OFFERING!
The prideful creature! She wouldn’t allow him on her back. Yet. He would have to be beneath her, like captured prey, or he would not be flown at all. Ashley probed her thoughts. He could trust her, it seemed, although there were hidden places in the dragon’s mind that he didn’t understand. He stepped into her grasp. The sharp talons closed around him. She held him gently, cupping her foot around him to make a loose basket with her toes. Before Ashley had a moment to consider his precarious position, she leapt into the air, beat her mighty wings, and they were airborne.
37. THE CURSE OF CHAOS
“Like to know what Chaos is like?
Catch a cat after a lightning strike.”—Zarost
Prince Bevn woke, scratching. A cheap scent clung to him. Dirty sheets were tangled around his legs. He sat up abruptly. There was a second depression in the pillow, a hollow in the sheets that was undeniable. His stomach rolled.
The woman was gone, not Gabrielle—someone else, a woman who had seemed to be attractive in the dark, but had turned out to be a nightmare. The memories assaulted him: the hot and smoky pub; the burning feeling of that strange smoke called Bane, as he had inhaled from the shared pipe, again and again; the veiled woman dancing on the table, full of such urgency that no one in the pub could ignore her. At the time, he’d thought it strange that none of the men had taken what she so obviously had to offer. Men had howled and jeered at her instead, and someone had emptied a tankard over her head. Bevn had gulped at the revelation of her swollen wet breasts. She had beckoned to him, yes, and drawn him from that place. By the stars! There had even been a fight to keep her, in the alley outside—a fight to keep her, or someone trying to stop him, he couldn’t remember which. He sucked at his lip, and found it was split. He’d really wanted to discover the forbidden delights of her sex, and yet when he had, it had been too late to stop.
Why oh why had he done it?
He remembered the strangely slack folds of skin in the place where her breasts should have been. They were flaccid in his hands, not at all like the generous curves he’d expected. Those green beady eyes had watched him with a wicked glint. Her bare skin was more like porridge than silk, her body grown soft and pock-marked. Beneath the false colouring on her cheeks, her face was like a paper bag, crumpled by time. She’d growled in his ear like a dangerous dog. She wouldn’t let him go, even when he’d fought against her, even when he’d tried to escape. It had gone on and on. She’d pressed him down with her body, trapped him, her loins like gravel against his traitorously rigid member. She made a hoarse and throaty moan all the time until it was over. Toward the end it had even seemed like she was crying, as if she was doing something that appalled her just as much as it did him.
That had not been the worst of it. Once she had stolen his seed, she had reached out and taken his crown. He remembered the look of delight on her face, and the way her skin had shifted, revealing something almost beautiful for a moment before the hatchet-faced Half-Lûk visage returned. “Our fates are a mystery again,” she whispered to the air then she had touched him on his forehead and a star had burst inside his mind.
Bevn scratched again. He’d never felt so unclean in all his life. He rose from the bed and kicked the sheets to the corner of the room. It was over, he promised himself, over and done with. He would never want a woman again. His head pounded. He put out a hand out to steady himself. His crown was gone, and he didn’t know what to do about it.
Bevn washed himself slowly at the basin. He was tired of the strangeness, of hav
ing sore feet, and of being bullied by Gabrielle or Saladon. His head felt like a swollen melon. He wanted to go home, but there was no point in going home unless he could be king, and without the Kingsrim that wasn’t going to happen. The Sorcerer had promised to give him the power to rule, but Bevn knew that the Kingsrim was a vital part of it.
His crown was gone and it made him feel so sick. It felt as if he’d eaten a bucket of slither-eels, those slippery spotty ones you got in Fendwarrow, down between the reeds. He staggered out to look for Gabrielle, emerging onto a high boarding and following it until he came to a strange open area amid the wreckage of the buildings. Some of the buildings had collapsed into the open space in their middle, but the Slipperfolk had improvised supports and patch-boards. Lûk cable-weavers were running lines to link those levels that had been separated and new ladders joined the levels with those below. It seemed that the people were accustomed to change. Most of the Slipperfolk were clustered in the upper galleries, tense, watching, and there, below him in the circle of scraped bedrock, he saw the wizard and Gabrielle.
Black Saladon was contained in a net of pale golden threads of light. He was tilted back as if he had been frozen in a moment of combat—his body almost horizontal and his arms thrown back. The wizards had got him.
The mob parted nervously as Bevn drew near. He guessed they recognised Bevn as part of Saladon’s crew—so much for remaining hidden in Slipper. They feared him because of who he was associated with. It was a kind of power, dependant on their fear of magic and wildfire strikes. He realised with sickening dread that he had no protection any more. The Kingsrim had protected him, before. He looked nervously to the sky. It seemed clear of the tell-tale cracks of Chaos. Or were there fine filaments of disturbance returning?
His hands shook on the way down the rickety ladder, and he almost threw up, but he managed to make it down to ground level without slipping. He waited for the pounding in his head to subside before shuffling over to Gabrielle and the wizard.
“Gabrielle—” he began.
She didn’t turn. She was concentrating. Flies buzzed around her, tumbling in the breeze, and Bevn swatted one away. It was icy cold. Motes! She was using magic, but she was trying to hide it from the Slipperfolk. She was trying to pry Black Saladon loose from his confinement, but where Gabrielle’s flies struck the golden restraints, the motes hissed and disappeared with a puff. Her magic wasn’t strong enough.
He glanced nervously at the sky again. What if she couldn’t get Saladon free in time? They needed Saladon—they were totally dependant on him.
“Gabrielle—” he repeated.
“Not now, I’m busy!”
“Gabrielle, they’ve stolen the crown,” he said.
“What!” She whirled. “When? I hardly left you! I checked in on you moments ago. When did they steal it?”
“Um, last night?”
“You had it just now!”
“No… I didn’t.”
“Yes you did! I sat with you all through last night. You were fast asleep with the crown on your head. You know that!”
Gabrielle had been with him? The last he’d seen of her was… Leaving the first alehouse, he remembered. She’d wanted to escort him to the toilets… And then? There was a fuzzy place in his memory, then the other alehouse, the one with the smoke and the dancing woman and the terrible acts.
It was a dream? It couldn’t be. There was no crown on his head and she could see that.
“You weren’t with me last night,” he corrected her. “I wasn’t in our normal room.”
She gripped him by the shoulders and shook him hard. “Stop jacking around, Bevn, this is no time for jokes! We’re in serious trouble here!”
“I’m not lying to you! I wasn’t in our room. I was with—another—woman. I’ve just come from—up there,” he ended, pointing to the high boardwalk. There had been something very strange about that half-Lûk hag. Gabrielle followed his gaze.
“She took it and then put me to sleep,” Bevn wailed. “There was nothing I could do!”
“Damn it! How could this happen? What did the thief look like? Oh forget it, it doesn’t matter. Saladon showed me a way to trace the crown, but I can’t believe it. I saw it not half an hour past! I was in your room with you, and I can see the door from here.”
If that were true then something had happened Bevn couldn’t explain. He was certain he’d just walked down from the higher boardwalk, and he’d woken in that room with the dirty sheets and washbasin. Whoever Gabrielle had watched in their rooms hadn’t been him.
“I’ll search faster alone,” Gabrielle said tersely. “Wait here and watch him. Don’t let any of these hotheads do anything to him while he’s vulnerable like this. Tell them he will break free soon enough, because he will, and he’ll be angry with anyone who threatens him. I’ve bust some of the threads, but there’re still too many holding him, and he seems unconscious.”
Bevn nodded. He felt so stupid letting Gabrielle go to find his crown, as if he were a child who had lost his toy bear in the hayfield. At least she had a chance, with her magic. He didn’t know where to look. The hag could be anywhere.
He waited beside Saladon and tried picking at the wizard’s restraints with his dagger, but the magic made the blade hot and stung his hand. Nobody approached him and, after a time, the Slipperfolk went on about their business. Black Saladon hung in suspended animation, a moment short of falling on his back.
Bevn hated him. Even with his eyes closed, the wizard had an arrogant air, as if he thought himself superior to the other lowly mortals. Bevn sneered. Saladon was clever and he may have learnt a lot, but he didn’t have the blood of kings. He was just an underling. The Sorcerer Ametheus was the real ruler, and it was Saladon’s fault he had lost his crown—the wizard should have protected him.
He kicked the wizard on his shins, but the big man didn’t react at all. He was comatose, locked in stasis by the spell placed upon him. Bevn sulked. He couldn’t do anything but wait. He was bursting for a pee.
Gabrielle was still gone. He had a sudden idea. He slipped his willy out surreptitiously, and wizzed away merrily on Saladon’s leg. The brute would never know who had done it. He’d come around and find his boot wet. Bevn chuckled to himself. Served him right for bullying him, and for leading him to this forsaken crumbling city where the women were ugly, mean and dirty. It was all Saladon’s fault.
“You should be careful who you insult,” he told the wizard.
Bevn was just shaking the tip when two things happened at once.
He saw Gabrielle fighting against a burly man who forced her into the open area on his left. Her hands were at her throat. Beside her, a man paced toward him, a face Bevn recognised instantly—Garyll Glavenor, the retired Swordmaster of Eyri. He had caught them.
At the same time, on his right, Black Saladon’s eye jerked open, the nearest one, looking right at Bevn.
“Eek!” exclaimed Bevn and wet his own foot. He ran.
Something whistled through the air. He was hit and pain exploded in his head.
He tumbled to the ground. The Swordmaster had downed him with something. He couldn’t run, his legs wouldn’t work. Bevn began to wail.
Glavenor came up behind him, gripping his collar. “Not another step, Bevn Mellar. You are under arrest.” Glavenor dragged him upright then pulled him backward past Saladon. His single eye was still open, fixed, staring. Had he seen what Bevn had done? The wizard’s right hand moved. Three fingers flexed and came together. One of his restraints snaked away and struck the ground then the essence recoiled and flew at the man who held Gabrielle. It wrapped around his head in a single band. It didn’t seem to have any effect on the man, but then Bevn felt a horrible surge pass underfoot and the dust stood up in little ridges. He knew what that meant even as he looked up at the sky and saw the gathering of charge.
“It’s back,” he said, feeling suddenly very small. He had no protection. None of them did.
Glavenor halted.
“Mulrano!” he cried out. “Run! Above you!”
Gabrielle’s captor looked up, saw the approaching wildfire, and loosened his grip in a moment of indecision. It was enough for Gabrielle—she twisted, swung her elbow hard against his head then dived away, free. She came past Bevn and Glavenor.
“Let him run, or you’re both done for!” she shouted at Glavenor. He hesitated then turned and pushed Bevn roughly ahead of him. They ran, but they hadn’t covered more than a few steps before the small hairs on his arms stood on end. Bevn knew an awful moment of premonition.
A bright flash came from above as if the morning sky had ignited. With a whining shriek, the wildfire fell upon Slipper. One tail of lightning burned fiercely in a roof. The whole building hissed and shook. The roof-panels crackled. A second fork of silver lightning as thin as blade-grass snaked down upon the marked man. “Mulrano! No!” Glavenor cried out, but it was too late for him.
The wildfire grounded itself and he disappeared in a cloud of sparkling dust.
All around the open area, people were shouting, pushing and wailing. Things were toppling. A stampede had begun, to get away from the Chaos. A stuttering light came out of the dust-cloud, and Bevn saw the horror. The Eyrian man was lit from within like a paper lantern. Random shafts of brilliance escaped through rents in his clothes and breaks in his skin, around which the flesh boiled, smoked and turned black. His eyes were wide white orbs. He toppled forward onto his outstretched hands, hitting the ground with a shattering like a breaking plate. His arms were crushed then his head disintegrated across the stone, leaving a scattered pile of jagged pieces. Elements of the man’s body lay amid shredded remnants of his clothes. His blood looked as dry as dust, red crystals mixed with darker reds and pinks. White bones like crisp chalk. Brown and blue stones cracked and popped with heat. The black stones marking a broad perimeter smoked gently.
Glavenor had slowed, his attention lingering on the oblong scattering of coloured grit, where two round white pebbles were all that was left of the eyes which had once looked out of Mulrano’s face.
Second Sight: Second Tale of the Lifesong Page 63
