Wardragon

by Paul Collins

  Daretor pursed his lips. ‘Very well. You want to know how I managed it?’ Zimak nodded vigorously. ‘I managed it because I used to be like you.’

  ‘What? Handsome, clever, and a magnet for the ladies?’

  ‘A street thief.’

  Zimak blinked. ‘I think there’s something wrong with my ears. I thought you just said you’d been a street thief.’

  ‘You heard right. I’d forgotten my rotten ways but thinking like you brought them all back.’

  Zimak stared. ‘You? A thief?’

  Daretor’s face seemed to darken. ‘A thief, a liar, and a sneak. Just like you. It was a long time ago, Zimak,’ he said, uncomfortably. ‘I’ve never told anyone except Jelindel.’ His throat constricted at her name but he kept going. ‘My parents died at the hands of pirates. My uncle, wretch that he was, soon gave up on me and threw me out onto the streets. I was an orphan, penniless, without title, so I joined a gang of street thieves. They called themselves the Princes of the Pathways. I became a pickpocket. I knew no honour other than that between thieves, and not much of that either. Then one day I robbed a rich nobleman and I was caught by one of his bodyguards. The punishment in that place at that time was to have the hand that picked the pocket chopped off, so I fought.’

  ‘You fought the bodyguard?’

  ‘I fought two bodyguards and the nobleman, kicking shins, punching testicles, and twisting out of their grip whenever they got hold of me. Then I ran. I thought I had escaped, but I was caught again.’

  Zimak was sceptical. ‘I can’t help but notice that you still have your hands.’

  ‘I was caught by a mercenary warrior who had watched me fight. He said that any boy who had the spirit and reflexes to prevail against odds like that could be trained to be a true warrior. He adopted me, and I was raised on the road, trained in the way of weapons and warfare, given lessons in integrity and honour. He became my master, and he was the wisest man I have ever known. He taught me everything.’

  ‘Including how to be infuriating.’

  Daretor smiled again. ‘Including that. Perhaps I was a bit enthusiastic sometimes.’

  ‘Sometimes?’

  ‘I’d lived so long on the streets, always hungry, always scared. I hated it. So when Pyrus came along … I suppose I renounced everything to do with my past. I did not even let myself think about it for a long time, in case it might somehow reinfect me. I think I feared that I might one day get sucked back into that life.’

  ‘So you walked around like you had a broomstick up your arse, and never got roaring drunk, and never told a lie …’

  ‘I wanted to blot out my childhood altogether – and everything that was associated with it.’

  ‘Oh, you were good at it. A prince among prigs. What happened after that?’

  ‘I grew strong and deadly as Pyrus declined with age. We made a good team, and he lived longer than he might have without me minding his back. Then I met you and Jelindel. End of story.’

  ‘What happened to your mentor, this Pyrus?’

  ‘We were ambushed soon after Lokribar’s Hamarian campaign. We were in Tol after I had won the marathon-fighting carnival. I have little memory of the event, but Pyrus was killed and I was imprisoned on charges of sedition. I’ve long since suspected the Preceptor had a hand in the affair. I was pardoned to accompany Jabez Thull on a mission to steal a chainmail link. You know the rest of the story.’ Daretor’s melancholy deepened, as he realised that that story was still unfolding.

  ‘Gah, Daretor. My past was no featherbed either. My father was a drunk who fell off a bridge and drowned, and my mother was a fishwife whose language was more foul than her fish. I soon learned that I could only get a better life by stealing it. When I chanced upon a dragonlink ring, I gained powers of fighting that even a champion would envy.’

  ‘You used another man’s skills,’ said Daretor, but there was no accusation in his voice. What once would have infuriated him merely made him shake his head.

  ‘That I did, and it saved me from a life as a sewer thief and pickpocket. I became a champion at market tournaments, I won prizes, I earned money as a guard. Girls smiled at me, men envied me. Was that so very bad?’

  Daretor said quietly, ‘No, that wasn’t so very bad.’

  Zimak rose to his feet. ‘I have to get back to the War Council.’ He paused before leaving. ‘Is this why you gave me such a hard time all these years?’

  Daretor looked up. ‘I saw myself in you – the self I would have been if Pyrus hadn’t rescued me. I know it makes no sense, but I … I feared that …’

  Zimak said, ‘The past isn’t a form of leprosy, Daretor. You can’t catch it.’

  Daretor nodded miserably.

  ‘So I reminded you of you?’ said Zimak, smiling. ‘Must have been pretty tough when you actually ended up as me – I mean, in my body.’

  ‘You have no idea.’

  Zimak rested a hand on his shoulder. ‘You should get some sleep,’ he said. He looked one last time at Jelindel’s body. ‘What I don’t get is who ordered Jelindel’s death. I thought Jelindel said Fa’red wanted us at our best so we’d be an even match for the Wardragon.’

  Daretor shook his head. ‘Jelindel couldn’t work it out. And she didn’t reckon on Fa’red needing a bargaining chip. He can now go to the Wardragon’s table bloated with his little victory.’

  ‘He’ll pay for it,’ Zimak said and left quietly. Daretor felt the weight of Jelindel’s death settle back on him, only it seemed heavier now, and darker.

  Daretor woke to a knocking on the door. He got to his feet slowly, his limbs stiff and cold, aware of who the visitors would be. Thankfully, the howlers had dispersed to lament someone else’s ill-fortune. However, as he feared, they were replaced by members of the Undertakers’ Guild, into whose hands fell the job of conducting the Ritual of Passing. The man in charge nodded once to Daretor, peering in past him at Jelindel, who was still on the bed.

  ‘It’s time,’ he said.

  His voice was neither gruff nor gentle, just matter-of-fact, as if this were a day like any other, and business as usual. Daretor folded his arms.

  ‘I’m not ready,’ he said. ‘It’s too soon.’

  His voice caught in his throat and the man on his doorstep bobbed his head, though whether in sympathy or impatience, Daretor couldn’t tell.

  ‘It’s time,’ he said again, in the same tone of voice, neither hurried nor demanding. ‘It’s time.’

  The word time echoed inside Daretor’s skull, giving him a mild headache. He found he did not have the will to argue with this man. He had been raised all his life to believe as firmly in the rituals of death as in those for birth and battle. All he could do now was put up a token and temporary defence.

  ‘I will bring her myself. When is the hour?’

  ‘The tenth hour of the clock. Bring her to the House of Reckoning an hour before.’ Thwarted, the man’s voice finally betrayed something. Distaste. This was not how things were done.

  Daretor closed the door in his stony-eyed face and collapsed against it, all his strength suddenly gone. And just as suddenly he was pounding the door, and bellowing in rage and grief, as hot tears streamed down his cheeks. Finally empty, he was left with his face pressed to the cold wood, his breath coming in short jagged pants.

  Presently he stumbled back to Jelindel’s side, clasping her hand.

  ‘What am I to do?’ he asked. ‘This is not how it’s meant to be …’

  In the distance he heard the hammer of blacksmiths and the rote calls of the militia. A pang of guilt shot through him. His job was out there, protecting the city, readying a force to battle the Wardragon.

  Yet he could barely move, and part of him no longer cared.

  His gaze fell on one of Jelindel’s books, the one she had been carrying in a sling bag when the assassin’s dart had struck.

  A sudden thought sent him hurrying across the room to a shelf of her most prized tomes. He found the book he wanted, an anc
ient volume that spoke of death and healing. He carried it back to the chair and spread it on his lap, finding a silk marker. He studied the page Jelindel had last looked at, who knew how many months ago, and gasped softly. The page outlined an ancient and powerful spell that summoned the spirit globes, those strange beings that could augment a mage’s power, and which some mages like Fa’red enslaved for their own benefit. Jelindel had freed many of these ‘entities’ and they had promised to help her in time of need. They had fulfilled this promise in a great battle against the Preceptor.

  Daretor’s mind raced. Maybe the spirit globes would help again.

  Despite, or because of, his grief and desperation, he knew he had to try this, and he had to try it now. He didn’t know if the spirit globes could resuscitate someone already dead for hours, but time was running out. It was already the seventh hour. He had two hours before he was to deliver Jelindel to the House of Reckoning, then another before they lit the flame that would take her from him forever.

  Daretor sent runners and errand boys hurrying in search of people and equipment, and tried to recall everything that Jelindel had ever taught him about magic. It seemed, in this moment, precious little.

  ‘Some magic,’ she had once said, ‘can be done by anyone. It’s independent of the person doing it, almost like having a key that opens a door. Anybody can turn the key. Other types of magic require magical muscles. Strength.’

  Was this one of the kinds that anybody could work? Daretor wondered. He could not tell from reading the spell. It was too complicated and probably left out things that were so obvious to an adept that nobody had thought to write them down.

  By the time he had all the necessary ingredients in front of him, he had boiled some water, and had studied a recipe. Soon, he was carefully preparing a potion that looked and smelled toxic. When drunk, it apparently induced a mild trance and gave nonmages a kind of mage-like concentration, a minimal requirement for working any kind of serious magic. While the potion brewed and bubbled in its glass beaker, Daretor studied the spell, memorising the incantations, practising the special movements of the hands, and hoping that the speed and emphasis with which it should be delivered were not too critical. He swallowed the potion. It looked like scribe’s ink and, as expected, tasted like pig droppings boiled in vinegar.

  The potion induced its trance almost immediately. He felt a great sense of wellbeing suffuse his body, as if matters of the ordinary world were unimportant now. He had a task. A single task that burned like a beacon fire in the darkness. Nothing else was really visible, nothing else had any importance. In this state he felt the spell rather than read it; the words floated in the air in glowing letters as he spoke them, before vanishing.

  A mist congealed out of the air above Jelindel, and enveloped her whole body. Inside the mist, things moved and something serpentine coiled and uncoiled with an unsettling sinuosity, as if it were trying to push its way out into this world. Daretor kept chanting the spell, letting the deep resonant syllables hang on the air; he was becoming part of the spell or it of him … one word, dommmmmmm, reverberated deep in his chest, like a basso profundo note played on a church organ.

  The sound, or its vibrations, reached every part of his being, crackled along his limbs, and expanded into the air, filling the room with resonances.

  But nothing more happened.

  The echoes of Daretor’s chanting died away, and a profound stillness pervaded the room. He knew, without opening his eyes, that the spell had not worked. He had failed. He felt this deep within his soul.

  Jelindel had slipped too far away.

  ‘Daretor?’ The voice was so soft it was almost inaudible. Daretor looked up. Zimak had his head in the doorway.

  ‘What do you want?’ asked the exhausted Daretor.

  ‘They’re insisting on collecting the body. They want to take her. It’s time.’

  ‘Dammit, Zimak, if old Harrin the Ratter died in a corner of the marketplace they would not bother with his body until the smell became a problem to the stallholders. Why all the hurry now?’

  ‘Jelindel was – is important.’

  Daretor did not have the strength to resist. He stood slowly and moved back, away from the bed. Zimak ushered in the undertakers, and they quickly wrapped Jelindel’s body in silk cloth and bore her away. Daretor dimly heard the creak of a wagon as it started into motion. It hit him with a vengeance that they were taking Jelindel away forever.

  He hurried from the house, with Zimak in his wake, and followed the wagon through the crowded streets. Daretor was not aware of doing or saying anything at all, but presently he found himself in a crowd gathered in the great stone chamber constructed at the centre of the Undertakers’ Guildhall. The centre of the roof had been slid open; the funeral pyre was the size of a house, the wood soaked in oil. Daretor was to be forever reminded of that moment every time he ate in a tavern.

  The ritual prayers and chants were performed. Lines of black-robed death priests filled the room. Incense and candles burned. Dignitaries from all over the city and some from further afield came and filed past the pyre to pay their respects. Prince Augustus was also there, surrounded by his entourage. Jelindel dek Mediesar was famous, and not just in D’loom.

  The final Ritual of Passing was chanted, then the torchbearers appeared from an archway at the end of the hall. They came out silently, gliding as if there were no feet beneath their robes, and surrounded the pyre. A priest walked to each of them in turn, chanting something that sounded vaguely magical to Daretor. At this, each torch burst into flame.

  As the torches were lit, a low keening in the crowd swelled into a storm of noise. Some, brought to hysteria, were comforted, their wails muffled against the shoulders of loved ones. Daretor’s stomach churned. He had seen and caused much death, but the death of someone he cared about so much was new to him. Recent memories of Pyrus only served to heighten his grief. He fought down a wave of giddiness, then noticed Zimak nearby. It was the first time Daretor had seen Zimak looking desperate and fearful without the youth’s own life being in danger.

  Everyone expected so much of her. The thought further saddened him, for he knew he was among those who had leached her.

  Everyone made her do more and more because she was so powerful. And perhaps everyone – including himself – had come to rely on themselves less and less because they knew she was there.

  Zimak joined him. ‘They’ll not mourn us like this when we go.’

  Daretor ignored him.

  Part of the pyre settled suddenly, and Jelindel’s head turned, and her eyes seemed to gaze straight at him. He gasped. In that moment, she seemed not only alive to him, but both child and woman: there was an ancient youthfulness in her face that made his heart beat painfully against his chest.

  ‘Jelindel,’ he cried. ‘I failed you …’

  Zimak steadied him.

  A hush fell on the huge chamber, then, as one, the torchbearers stepped forward and thrust their flaming torches into the oil-drenched pyre. The flames sizzled and crackled, climbing eagerly up through the wood with a startling whoosh. Within a dozen heartbeats the entire pyre was a raging inferno, in the midst of which lay the small white-shrouded form of Jelindel.

  Daretor closed his eyes, feeling the awful heat on his face. By all the Odd Gods, he would make Fa’red and the Wardragon pay for this!

  Chapter 19

  The Funeral Pyre

  The Wardragon looked up from its desk. Outside the tent, the first of its forces was coming through an enormous paraworld gate. Meanwhile, in here, another matter must be dealt with, another move made in the great game that was unfolding.

  >FA’RED. HOW GRACIOUS OF YOU TO JOIN ME<<<

  It was indeed the archmage, looking somewhat fretful but nevertheless striving to appear in command of himself. Behind him stood Ras.

  >AND YOU, RAS? YOU HAVE RETURNED TO ME?<<<

  Ras nodded.

  Fa’red stepped forward, bowing slightly. ‘M’lord,’ he said,
‘the trappings of war suit you.’ He forbore to say the Preceptor’s face had aged twenty years since he had last seen him. ‘As for your lieutenant, my apologies. He was detained at my convenience.’

  >YOU LOOK HARRIED, FA’RED. DO YOUR ENEMIES GNAW AT YOU, DO THEY SEEK TO STRIKE YOU FROM BEHIND?<<<

  Fa’red peered closely at the man before him. He could not read the face of his old ally, the Preceptor. Nor could he divine the meaning beneath the Wardragon’s words. Indeed, it was like trying to read a brick wall. ‘Jelindel dek Mediesar,’ said Fa’red airily, ‘certainly was a great annoyance.’

  The Wardragon went still. >>>WAS?<<<

  ‘The past is such an interesting tense, do you not agree?’

  >SHE IS DEAD?<<<

  ‘I greatly fear that the Countess has fallen into a coma from which she shall never awaken. It seems a nasty poison has found its way into her veins. Soon they will burn her, as the Rituals of Passing demand.’

  The Wardragon felt his confusion return. Should he rejoice at Jelindel’s death? What was this strange and awful regret that filled his soul? He realised Fa’red was waiting for some response. He must give it. He must hold things together, even as he felt himself falling apart. >>>SOMETIMES THE SIMPLEST METHODS ARE BEST, ARCHMAGE<<<

  ‘My thoughts exactly.’

  >OUR TASK HERE IS NOW MADE EASIER. YOU HAVE DONE WELL. I AM IN THE MOOD TO GRANT YOUR REQUEST. AN ALLIANCE IT IS. WHAT FORCES DO YOU BRING?<<<

  Fa’red listed his allies. The Wardragon nodded.

  >IF AS YOU SAY THE WITCH IS DEAD, WE HAVE THE ADVANTAGE. HOWEVER, I CANNOT DENY THAT MY RESOURCES HAVE NOT BEEN DIMINISHED. LESS THAN A FIFTH OF MY FORCES SURVIVED THE COUNTESS’S WELL-PLANNED ATTACK ON GOLGORA. I WILL NEED TIME TO REBUILD. AN ALLIANCE WILL GIVE ME THAT TIME<<<

  Fa’red bowed again. He was under no illusion that the Wardragon would not do away with him the moment his usefulness had ended. He would of course do the same. The art of war was really in the timing. When to strike and destroy the mailshirt? Too soon, and Fa’red’s own forces might not be strong enough to prevail; too late, and Fa’red would not be around to enjoy his just deserts.