“Oedandus was once the most powerful, save Natra. Of course, he has been bent and broken, tortured and diminished such that he barely has any wits left. But his vast power was still there when Medophae destroyed Dervon. It might be enough.”
“Might be?”
“Just how much does Oedandus have left to give? If Avakketh pushes with all his strength, would Oedandus even have enough strength to brunt such an attack? No one can possibly know. I do know that Dervon died because he was overconfident and didn’t think for a second that Medophae could kill him.” She shook her head. “Avakketh won’t make that mistake. If Avakketh comes prepared to fight, he will have the advantage. Avakketh is a full god at the height of his powers. Oedandus is broken, insane, and must squeeze himself through a mortal to affect anything.”
Mershayn turned away, trying to assimilate all of this. Just when he thought he understood the gravity of the situation, Bands added a new level.
“So we can’t fight him,” he murmured.
“Medophae must.”
Mershayn threw his hands up and looked at her. “But Medophae is gone.”
“A secret that we must carefully guard,” she said.
“You’re missing my point,” Mershayn said. “We don’t have Medophae. Whether Avakketh knows or not, eventually he’s going to come. And when he comes, we die. What is the point of trying to find a way to fight his dragons, then?”
“Because we have to play for time.”
“To what end?”
“Medophae will return.”
“Oh? Well, good,” Mershayn said sarcastically. “Why didn’t you say so? When?” He frowned at her.
“Soon.”
“How do you know?”
“Because I know Zilok. And I know Medophae.”
“Then where is he?”
“Leave Medophae to me. That will be my part of this battle. The reason I spent so much time with you is to make sure you can handle your part.”
“By the gods...” Mershayn shook his head. “My part. You mean the part where I convince a kingdom that mostly hates me to mobilize so we can fight invincible dragons we can’t reach with enchanted weapons we don’t have?”
She smiled. “Just imagine the stories that will be written when you succeed.”
“We’re going to die,” he murmured. “It’s impossible.”
“Impossible,” she said, and her gaze became thoughtful. A small smile crept across her beautiful face. “I’ve seen mortals do the impossible over and over. Every time they do, it’s because they look at the dark wall of impossibility for one small crack that shows light. I’ve watched Medophae do it time and again. Mirolah has done it at least twice that I know of. When almost all options vanish, we choose the one thing we can choose. Then, step by unlikely step, we achieve the impossible. That’s the only way it’s ever been done. I suspect that’s the only way it ever can be done.”
“That’s...that’s no comfort at all.”
“It’s joyous, actually.”
“How?”
“Your back is against the wall, Mershayn. What will you do?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do. If I was Avakketh, and I attacked you right now, grabbed your throat, and put you up against he wall, what would you do?”
“Fight,” he said. “And die.”
“Well, let’s start with the first one. There’s plenty of time for dying later.”
“You really think we can win?”
“We will win,” she said.
He laughed darkly, invigorated by her optimism despite himself.
“Hold strong, Mershayn. As long as we have a chance, we will take that chance, one unlikely step at a time.”
He bowed his head. “Okay.” He wrapped his mind around this bizarre dueling field and forced himself to commit to it. Their foe was superior, and the only way to defeat a superior foe was take the big risk every time, just like Captain Lo’gan had said. Every strike could be their last, so every strike had to be desperate. “Okay,” he repeated. He put his fears behind a thick door in his mind and locked it. “Step by step.”
“Step by step.” She nodded her approval as though she could see his thoughts.
“As always, I will follow your advice. I’ve had no cause to regret it. But I want something.”
“If I can give it, I will,” she said.
“We’re being attacked by dragons. I want to see one. As king, I should know what we’re dealing with. I want to see one up close.”
Her chin lifted slightly as she realized what he was asking. “Ah...”
“I want to see what you look like.”
She looked around the room, as if sizing it up. “If you wish." She stepped away from the table. “It will be cramped. Stand on the table.”
“On the table?” He glanced around. The room was more than fifty feet long.
She gestured at the desk. It floated gracefully away from her, stopping when it butted up against the south wall beneath the coat of arms.
“If you please. On the table. And don’t move until the transformation is complete.”
“Of-of course.” He climbed onto the table.
She went to her place by the window, gave one more critical look at the oval room, then spoke a few words Mershayn could not understand.
The air around her shimmered as though a great heat had been released. Translucent waves rippled in front of her. She fell onto all fours, and her head shot upward on a scaly neck, widening and thickening. Scales appeared, overlapping each other as they rippled across her growing body like a wave. Her shoulders expanded, growing wider than Mershayn was tall. Claws burst from the tips of her fingers as her knuckles curled and widened. Her long body curved around the table, filling the room. Her front legs thickened, supporting the swelling, massive chest. Huge, thin wings sprouted from her back and tucked against her emerald body. The last to appear was her tail, probably as long as the rest of her whole body. It followed the contour of the oval walls, poised in the air.
She was bent like a wheel, nose to haunches, encircling the entire room, which suddenly seemed tiny. Mershayn felt like a mouse. Her wide, flat head ducked below a coil of her light-green banded neck, and faced him. Her head lowered and rested gently on the table, nearly as tall as he was. Her lips peeled back, showing a fortress of pearly white teeth as long as swords.
“Are you okay?” Her voice emanated from those great jaws. Her breath was hot and smelled like the bakery at the bottom of the castle.
“By the gods...” he murmured. He tried to imagine jumping on something like this and trying to kill it. It would be like trying to kill a mountain.
“Have you seen what you needed to see?” she asked. Her lips moved against those teeth, and her voice sounded precisely as it did when she was a woman. How could that be?
“Can I... Can I touch you? Your, um, your tail?”
She laughed, and it was an enchanting thing. He did not know what he expected, a booming roar or an unearthly shriek? But her laughter was like chimes in the wind: subtle, delicate and compelling.
“Of course you may.”
His fingers trembled as he reached down. Her scales were cool, but as he held his hand there, he felt warmth rise underneath, as though she was burning deep inside.
“And you...breathe fire?”
“Not in here.”
“I have no idea how we are going to defeat creatures like you...”
“One step at a time. We go as far as we can go. We go until we can’t go anymore.”
Numbly, he nodded.
The air shimmered again, and her transformation reversed itself. In a moment, Bands stood by the window as she had before: a tall and slender human with muscled arms and a brilliant emerald gown hugging feminine curves. She pushed a lock of blond hair back from her eyes.
“So what next?” he asked.
“You prepare your people for war,” she said.
“And you?”
“I am going o
n a journey to talk with ghosts.”
19
Mershayn
Mershayn left his guards in the hall and closed his bedroom door. He let out a breath and leaned back against it. His felt the oak, rough beneath his fingers. Solid, real.
His mind wandered away to one year ago. One short year. He, Collus, and their father, Lord Bendeller, had visited Buravar. It was a beautiful city, old and full of history, one of the few cities still around that had stood during the Age of Ascendance. He and Collus had treated it like their own personal playing field. They would steal away to Gretienna’s House, start the night there with a snifter of brandy and a bawdy story or two. What cares did a Teni’sian lord and his bastard half-brother have? The only worry was if they would run out of wine or willing women. The nights seemed to last forever.
And the days were full of diligence, sweat, and hard work. While Collus spent time at court, Mershayn had spent time with local swordmasters expanding his one talent. Mershayn had wanted to ensure that—though he would never have pure blood—he could at least best any pureblood with a blade. He had resented the station of the purebloods because they could achieve what would always be denied him.
And now he was king. He had thought the pleasures would be endless with such a high station, but it wasn’t that way at all. There was no snifter of brandy awaiting him. No careless nights and bawdy stories to set his blood racing. Now his blood raced for unpleasant reasons, like Teni’sia burning by dragon fire.
He leaned his head back against the door and closed his eyes. The events of the past week had split him into two men. One man tried hard to be a king. That man directed nobles to prepare for invasion. That man stood unflinching as a woman turned into a mythical monster.
But the other man wanted to run. He was a selfish rogue. When he saw something dangerous like a dragon, he wanted to get himself out of harm’s way, not put himself there to protect another, let alone an entire kingdom of others.
He glanced at his table where an array of liquors sat side-by-side, and he laughed to himself.
He thought of Bands’s advice: one step at a time.
He thought of Silasa’s advice: a king sleeps.
Perhaps this was a moment to think like the Mershayn of old. He had no companions, but he could still drink. There was no clever minstrel to tell him a bawdy story, but he had his imagination. He crossed to the table and poured himself a brandy. He would sit and think of things that a king should not have time for. Perhaps he would dream a little dream of Mirolah, of what this kingdom would look like if he’d never become king, and she’d arrived in this city alone. A girl from the country, come to sample the excitement of a city.
Mershayn closed his eyes and pictured it. He downed the entire glass of brandy one measured gulp at a time. Mirolah’s open smile, her brown eyes. In his imagination, he reached out to take her hand and she let him. They ran up the cobblestone street of the Barnacles, laughing—
A dog yawned loudly.
Mershayn jumped, sitting up and opening his eyes.
Mirolah stood within the shadows of the far corner of the room. Her dark hair tumbled down to her shoulders, framing her face, and her swirling eyes sent colored lights on the wall and floor. Sniff panted, then sat down next to her, his bony butt thumping on the floor. He opened his jagged mouth and yawned again, ending in a little yowl, then laid down on the stones.
Mershayn stood up. “My lady,” he said. “It’s... I’ll make a fire.” He started for the hearth.
Suddenly, he wasn’t cold at all. It was as though he was standing in the summer sun. He looked at her sharply.
“The cold bothers you,” she murmured. “I did not want you to be bothered.”
His heart beat faster. “Well...don’t do that.”
“Why?”
“Mirolah...” he began. “If you want me to feel comfortable, don’t threadweave so much around me.”
“You don’t like the way I am,” she said.
He held up a finger. “That’s not it. I like you. I like you a lot. But this...the threadweaving. That’s not why I like you.”
She cocked her head.
He turned to the fire. Someone had already prepared it, and all he had to do was light a stick from the wall lantern and touch it to the tinder.
“There is no difference,” she said. “Between the threadweaving and me. I am the threadweaving.”
“You’re not.”
She came to him and stood uncomfortably close. “I want to know,” she whispered. “Who was I? I want to remember.”
“I want that, too,” he said.
“The nobles look at me and see a monster. Bands looks at me and sees disaster and opportunity. Stavark looks at me and sees a horrible vision of himself, a mortal debt that must be paid. But you look at me like you want to kiss me. In them, I see fear, duplicity, self-involvement. From you, I feel...passion.”
Mershayn cleared his throat. “Yes, well. It’s one of two things I have in plenty.” He picked up another snifter from the table and filled it with brandy. He pressed it into her hand. “Here.”
“What is this?” she asked.
“Poison that kills your better sense,” he said.
“Poison?”
“It is good for those who think to much or who are too serious.” He raised his glass. She watched the movement, but didn’t join him. “You raise your glass,” he clarified. “It’s a toast.”
“Ah.” She raised her glass, and he clinked his against hers.
“Now we drink.”
He downed his in one gulp. She did the same, then frowned. “It hurts,” she said in a raspy tone.
“At first. It feels better later.”
She set the glass down, and Mershayn kept thinking about his recent thoughts. There wasn’t any time to equivocate.
“Let’s get your memory back,” he said.
“Yes. How?”
“We’re going to talk. All night if we need to. We’re going to go through everything you recall and everything I recall. We’ll put your memories back one at a time if we have to.” He held out his hand.
She took it, holding it on top of the table.
“I’m going to just start talking about myself,” he said. “You’re going to listen, and when you feel like speaking, you interrupt me and tell your story.”
“Okay.”
“I’m a bastard,” he said. “I was born to Lord Bendeller, who owns lands far to the south of Teni’sia. My mother was a prostitute who died giving birth to me. My father was a good man who cared for me when he could have left me on the street. He raised me with his pureblood heir, Collus, whose mother also died giving birth to him. While my father treated me decently, none of his peers did. In their eyes, I wasn’t the son of a lord. I was the son of a whore.”
Mirolah’s eyes began to change. The rainbow colors retreated, sliding back to the edges of her brown eyes. Mershayn took that as a good sign. It seemed that whenever the Mirolah he knew came to the forefront of Mirolah’s personality, her eyes returned to normal.
“That’s sad, isn’t it?” she asked.
“Yes.” He waited for more, but she didn’t continue. “It was for me, but my sadness didn’t last long. I changed it to anger, I suppose. But luckily for me, my brother didn’t care about my parentage. He always saw me as his brother, despite how others saw me. He wasn’t swayed by my mother’s low station or the opinions of his peers. He often fought with the other pure-born children to defend me. So from a young age, the only things I cared about were my father, my brother, and learning how to beat the pureblood nobles, to prove to them they weren’t better than me. They seemed to prize swordplay and other tests of arms highly, so I took that from them first. My father let me train, even paid for a master to tutor me, and I worked myself to exhaustion until I was better than every single one of those snotty jackasses.”
“What do you mean you ‘took it away from them’?”
“Country folk don’t use swords. It’s a
way for the nobles to lord their superiority over everyone else. If they tell you that they’re better than you, and you stand up to them, they stick you with a sword. Then it seems like they’re right, because who is going to argue with them? But when they try to stick you with a sword, if you parry and stick them instead, well... They learn to respect you, even if they hate you. So yes, I took that advantage away from them and looked for any other advantage I could steal. I learned to out-fence them, then I learned to out-talk them. Then I learned how to take away their women...” He trailed off.
“What did you do?”
“I don’t usually talk about this with...well...other women.” He scratched the back of his head. “In fact, I never talk about this with anyone except Collus.”
“You’re embarrassed,” she said.
“Well, let’s just say I learned a lot about what idle noblewomen dream about. I got very good at spotting the types who not only dreamed about some handsome rogue sneaking into their room, but those who might...actually enjoy it if they got the chance. I became that rogue. I gave that adventure to them. And it allowed me to take something else from the nobles.”
“You took their women?”
“I took the attention of their women. I could never actually steal a pureborn lady, because no matter what happened behind closed doors, when the sun rose, I was still a bastard. No lands. No station. None of them would ever run away with me,” he said, and he couldn’t help thinking—with a pang of regret—that Ari’cyiane had offered to run away with him. Ari’cyiane, who now hated him with more passion than any of the nobles he’d originally tried to steal from. “But yes, I stole the attention of the women they were courting. In some cases, the women they were married to.”
He felt the blush in his cheeks, poured himself another glass of brandy, and downed half of it, telling himself the flush was from the liquor. He expected Mirolah to give him a sneer of derision, but she spoke in the same emotionless tone.
“Did it make you less sad?” she asked. “Stealing these things from the nobles?"
“Well...” He held his hands up. “Yes and no. It felt good, knowing I could do it. It felt better, knowing that they knew I could do it. But it didn’t really change anything. I was still a bastard to them. I still wasn’t going to inherit any lands or hold any high stations within the kingdom of Teni’sia. Then my father died, and Collus asked me to help run the Bendeller estate.”
Threads of Amarion Page 15
