Valdemar 11 - [Owl Mage 03] - Owlknight

by Mercedes Lackey

  “It’s a cold-drake,” Steelmind said flatly. “Thank you, Neta; that was precisely the right thing to have done. You saved us all—except for poor Gacher. I hope his death was a swift one.”

  :It was,: Neta confirmed.

  “I don’t understand. I’ve studied all the weirdlings we were likely to find up here. Cold-drakes are normally dormant in the summer,” Steelmind continued as he wiped his hair back from his face. “I wonder what woke this one up?”

  “What’s a cold-drake?” Keisha wanted to know.

  Kel interrupted the conversation, coming in beside them for a noisy landing, his beak agape with agitation. He swung his head around, counting them silently, and heaved an enormous sigh of relief to see the humans all present. “I sssaw the drrrake!” he said, “But you all rrrran beforrre I completed a ssstoop.”

  “It’s just as well that you didn’t connect with it, Kel,” Darian told him, dismounting and clasping Kel’s neck—even though his own legs were still shaky. “One gryphon is no match for a cold-drake.”

  “Will someone please tell me, what’s a cold-drake?” Keisha repeated insistently. “And why couldn’t I move or think?”

  Darian and Steelmind exchanged a look, and Darian answered. “A cold-drake is a magical construct, like a gryphon; they were created during the Mage-Wars as offensive weapons, but the problem was that they couldn’t be controlled, and turned on their own side as often as not. They’re eating machines.”

  “But they use mind-magic,” Steelmind continued. “They freeze their prey in place, then move in and strike, or dine at their leisure depending upon their mood. That thing caught all of us, every one that could see its eyes. If Neta hadn’t done what she did, we’d be sliding down its throat right now.”

  Karles hung his head, as if he was ashamed that he had not somehow resisted the cold-drake’s gaze. Steelmind noticed, and turned toward the Companion. “No one is immune from a cold-drake,” he said, for Karles’ benefit. “I don’t care who or what you are. When you’re in front of a cold-drake, you belong to the cold-drake.”

  Shandi patted Karles’ neck sympathetically. The Companion didn’t say anything that Darian could hear, but he understood the Companion’s chagrin; he shared it.

  You’d think I would be able to shake that damned thing off.... How had he managed to get so completely under the monster’s power in so short a time?

  I didn’t even get a good look at it before it had me!

  It took one look at Hywel to realize that he did not have the worst of it. Darian was, by comparison, a war-hardened general compared to the young Ghost Cat warrior. In his past he’d been routed, am-bushed, beaten up, surprised, attacked, and scared out of his wits before. It was Hywel’s first time for being totally, utterly helpless, face-to-face with death when there was nothing he could do about it. Hywel looked just as white as the Ghost Cat itself.

  “How are we going to get past that thing?” Hywel stammered, aghast. “Does it ever sleep?”

  “Yes, but they’re like spiders; they sense the vibrations of the ground if anything bigger than a mouse walks on it, and wake up immediately,” Steelmind told him. “I don’t think we could drive it off or lure it away either—they are very, very territorial. If we want to get through that pass, we’re going to have to kill it.”

  “Oh, great,” Darian muttered, as Hywel’s eyes went round. Being magical constructs, cold-drakes were, to some extent, designed to be immune to the effects of magic. “What I don’t understand is why it isn’t dormant—it’s summer.”

  “It’s also cold.” Steelmind looked over his shoulder at the mountain behind him. “With this shadow falling over the pass for most of the day, and being so high up, it doesn’t ever really get warm. That’s probably why there aren’t any animals here—the drake has hunted the place bare, and the animals don’t get a chance to recover their numbers in the summer.”

  “It could be awake because it didn’t get enough to eat to support dormancy,” Wintersky said thoughtfully. “Unless it moves to a new territory, it’s going to starve to death.”

  “Well, we can’t stand around and wait for that to happen,” Darian replied with irritation. “And it just got fed.”

  Kelvren dipped his head toward Neta and intoned solemnly, “I am sssorrry forrr yourrr losss.”

  Neta returned the gesture, and her gaze went from buck to buck. :It is a risk Gacher knew he was taking by volunteering for this journey. He knew before coming that such things could happen to him. It is easy to be brave from a safe distance.:

  Darian could only nod, even though he knew Neta was speaking to the bucks and not to him. As much as he had questioned the human morality of Neta’s powers, those same powers had just unquestionably saved their lives.

  Darian’s mind was soon preoccupied, thinking on the ways to get around the drake. Wintersky went from one dyheli to another, checking them for injuries and making a mental inventory of what gear was lost when they fled. We’re so close—

  “We could go back,” Shandi pointed out.

  Dead silence dropped over them all; Darian looked at each of his party in turn. Shandi wouldn’t look him in the eyes. Hywel looked solemn and frightened; Wintersky thoughtful. Steelmind just shrugged. Only Keisha met his eyes completely, and looked just as determined as he was to continue.

  “We can’t stop now,” Keisha said firmly, and cast a withering glance at her sister. “That would be giving up.”

  Shandi shrugged off the criticism. “It’s no shame to give up under the right circumstances.”

  Keisha didn’t even dignify the comment with an answer; instead, she turned to Steelmind. “Do you have any idea what we can use against this creature?”

  “Not at the moment,” the Tayledras replied, with a look of admonition at Shandi. “But we’d better think of something other than bows and arrows.”

  “Heat,” Darian muttered, after half a candlemark of debate. “That’s the key, I think. They thrive in cold, and even magically generate it. It might not be directly vulnerable to magic, but if we can weaken and confuse it with heat, we can kill it.”

  “You think,” Shandi put in.

  Darian was getting more than a little irritated with Keisha’s sister. Every time someone suggested something, she had a quelling remark. “Look,” he said finally. “You wanted to come along on this journey. I didn’t ask you for your help, but you, and Anda, and your Companions decided you needed to be with us, so you came. We’ve established a safe route back through the tribes, so why don’t you just go home? You’ve been helpful, but you aren’t doing anything that we can’t afford to lose.”

  Shandi sat straight up, offended; Keisha, on the other hand, moved slightly closer to Darian. Steelmind raised an eyebrow, and licked his lips. “Is there a problem, Shandi?” he asked carefully. “Why are you trying to discourage us from going on?”

  “I—” She looked around uneasily. “We already have so much information about the Northerners—and we know that Wolverine poses a danger to us back home if they continue to expand. Don’t you think we have a duty to get back with that information?”

  “Don’t you think we have a duty to help our friend find his parents?” Steelmind countered. “That was why we came here.”

  “Yes, but—” Shandi looked confused.

  “You could go back by yourself, if you want to,” Steelmind continued. “But it seems to me that you would be going back on the agreement you made with Darian if you did that, and I suspect that you feel the same way. Is that why you’re being so negative, trying to get us all into agreement to give up and go home so that you won’t have conflicting duties?”

  Shandi flushed, and had a hard time meeting his eyes. She couldn’t meet Darian’s either. Something in what Steelmind had said had hit home.

  “All right, then; you’ve tried and failed, so give it a rest,” Steelmind said decisively. “Either be helpful toward our objective, or be silent.”

  Shandi flushed again and bit her
lip; she obviously wanted to make a retort, and didn’t want to do so in front of the others. Darian exchanged a knowing glance with Keisha, feeling conspiratorial. The first lovers’ quarrel? Could be. And I think he’s going to hear about it from her when there isn’t an audience. He couldn’t blame her for wanting to give up at this point—but he and Steelmind had faced other monsters in the past, and he wasn’t going to let a mere monster stand between him and finding his family. They’d encountered spirit manifestations before, but this cold-drake was, for all of its fearsome power, still flesh and bone.

  “What else can we do?” he asked. “Can Kel and the birds confuse and distract him without getting into range of his eyes or teeth?”

  “We could drrrop thingsss on him,” Kel said meditatively. ’Sssimple but effective grrryphon tactic. Rocksss. Trrreesss. Perhapsss, if my luck isss good, I could drrrop sssomething over hisss head?”

  “Just before we’re ready to go for the final kill—even if you don’t get the thing over its head, you’ll distract it. A shot at the eyes themselves is not likely except from directly in front of it, and we all know what the danger is there.” Steelmind fingered the hilt of one of his watersteel knives, thinking. “The main thing is to keep it from freezing any of us again.”

  “Could we just sneak by it?” Keisha asked diffidently. “Wouldn’t that be better? If you use any magic at all, Darian, you’ll show the Wolverine Shaman where you are. He can’t ignore the presence of a Master mage so near to them.”

  Darian grimaced. “I know—but we can’t do this without magic, and no, I don’t think we can just sneak by it. You heard what Steelmind said about how it’s sensitive to footsteps.” He stood up. “If we’re going to get over the pass before nightfall, we have to do this now. It isn’t going to get any easier as the air gets colder, and if we camp, it may come after us.”

  They took out bows and arrows from their baggage, even Shandi. Kel and the birds took to the air. In this instance, being mounted would not be any advantage, so the dyheli and Karles were to stay out of the creature’s range, and only come in to rescue them if they fell under its spell again.

  Darian alone was unarmed, as he would need to keep all of his attention on his magic. Carefully, watching the ravine with every step they took, they approached the clearing. Darian’s heart was in his mouth with every step; his breath sounded very loud, and he had to control a start at every unexpected noise. When they were at the periphery, the birds went into action.

  Diving and shrieking, they showed where the monster was hiding and teased it up into the open. Their talons could not harm the creature, but they annoyed it, and it lunged upward the full length of its neck as it snapped at them in irritation.

  Oh, gods ... it’s huge. How are we ever going to defeat this thing?

  Now Kel joined them, sweeping in from the west, dropping clawfuls of stones and branches on the cold-drake. He was aiming for the head, but the drake was too agile for any of the weapons to hit the skull; most of them fell short, or bounced off the armored hide of the shoulders without touching anything. What Kel did accomplish, was to distract it from Darian down below, who tapped into the nearest ley-line and began the simplest of all magics—creating heat.

  His heart pounded in his ears, but he couldn’t allow himself to be distracted. With energy from the ley-line, he could pour heat into the ravine, warming the very stone around the drake. He concentrated on raising the temperature of the area surrounding the drake, though there was no perceptible effect for some time. They didn’t have arrows to waste; the only time that any shots were taken were when they were sure ones—clear shots at the creature’s eyes or nostrils, the only two vulnerable places on it.

  None of those shots hit the mark; the cold-drake evaded the arrows even as it evaded the missiles dropped on its head—but it was angry, and getting angrier by the moment. If Darian had allowed himself to feel it, he knew he would have been terrified. The drake towered over them, its bone-white plates glinting with the sheen of ice. Its head was the size of a dyheli, the fanged mouth looked large enough to take in any of them whole, but they all fought against instinct to keep from looking it in the eyes. It hissed and snarled, snapping at the birds, threatening the humans around it with upraised talons. They had to keep it irritated and off-balance, but not get it angry enough to charge.

  Darian shut his ears to the screams of the birds and of Kel, and to the battle sounds of the drake, which sounded like the tearing of canvas. Heat. That was all he dared think of.

  The others came forward for a cautious shot or two, hoping for that lucky moment—being able to hit the eye and strike the brain. Kel must have given up on his idea of blinding the thing with a dropped tent-cloth, because he hadn’t come back for one. The drake particularly wanted a piece of Kel; every time he came by, the creature clawed the sky in his direction and gave one of those harsh battle cries. Kelvren pressed that advantage, at great cost to his endurance, engaging the cold-drake in a duel of feint-and-trick while staying airborne. A dive from the left would turn into a slip to the right in an instant, drawing the cold-drake up onto his hindquarters. That would be followed in an eyeblink by a blinding twist in midair, and the attack would be mirrored as the drake dropped back down to all fours again. Showers of ice crystals sprayed from the beast’s shoulders when Kel did get a solid contact in, but not even gryphon talons got a single blood mark on the drake. A well-aimed wounding strike was out of the question—Kelvren was using all of his skill just to stay alive and engaged.

  Meanwhile, Darian kept concentrating, raising the temperature around the drake bit by bit. He could feel the difference in the air now, and by its behavior, so could the drake.

  It was uncomfortable; it tried to move farther back in the ravine where the rock hadn’t been heated, but Kel wouldn’t let it, dropping quickly retrieved branches on it, stooping at it, hovering in the air just out of reach and screaming at it. For one fleeting moment, Darian wondered if he ought to call Kel off and let it retreat—but it was too late to change their plans now.

  Darian kept pouring heat into the small space containing the cold-drake, and the beast began to react to the heat as a human would react to the cold; the swipes of its talons became less sure, it snapped its jaws on empty air, and its eyes took on an odd glaze. It was fighting off torpor, and they all moved nearer.

  Then Steelmind let fly a shot that hit the mark—one in the nostril. The cold-drake screamed, but in a far different way than the battle snarls and cries from the combat with Kelvren:

  The sound went right through Darian’s head like a white-hot lance. He dropped to his knees, involuntarily clapping his hands to his ears.

  Then Darian lost control of his magic; the birds shot away up into the sky, and Kel floundered out of harm’s way, landing heavily onto his side, behind their lines. The dyheli fled, though Karles stood his ground; all the humans cupped their hands over their ears; the scream went on and on, a sound that ripped through the head and stabbed into the brain.

  We hadn’t—counted on—this! Darian thought with difficulty, his eyes watering with pain. The cold-drake clawed desperately at its nose, and finally dislodged the arrow; the screaming stopped, replaced by a whimper, as the monster dropped its head down on the ground and rubbed its wounded nostril against the earth. Steam curled up around the drake, and its body plates dripped with melted ice.

  “That’s enough!” Keisha shouted in anguish. She stood up and staggered, unsure of each step, but seemed to have a purpose. She half-screamed again, “That is enough!” and marched toward the drake, her hands curled into fists. Darian stumbled to his feet and ran after her, but she paid no attention to him. She concentrated on the cold-drake, and the cold-drake was so preoccupied with its wounded nose that it ignored this small and insignificant morsel of prey marching toward it. But suddenly its head jerked up, and it stared at Keisha with eyes blank and widened. Bright red blood smeared down its snout, and ran freely from the wound in the nostril. The drake
raised one claw, then curled it under its chest, staring at Keisha, yet somehow unable to focus upon her.

  Darian felt a growing illness in his belly, adding queasiness to fatigue and the pounding headache. Ahead of him, Keisha was within easy striking distance of the cold-drake, and from his point of view, her small body was entirely framed by the red-spattered white mass of the cold-drake. Her feet were ankle-deep in the water runoff, both from the drake’s newly lost ice layer and the nearby landscape. Darian’s limbs seemed to move far too slowly, as he tried to gain on her, and the terror rose up inside him—was he about to see his Keisha die? But Keisha wasn’t affected by the eyes the way they all had been the last time. Could it be that Keisha was doing something to the drake?

  “Yes!” Shandi shouted from behind him, and ran to join her sister, shoving Darian aside. The two women came to within striking range of the drake and stood there, staring at it. They were too close for Darian to dare shooting at the thing—especially with its ... head down?

  Then it not only blankly stared at the duo, it raised its head to the fullest extent, and its eyes were widened and completely dilated. If Darian had not seen the cold-drake’s next move with his own eyes, he would never have believed it. It reared up and back—but not as if to strike. It bobbed its head and seemed to be cowering away from them, as if they were the most dangerous and threatening things it had ever seen. Its whimpers changed to a whine, and it slowly backed away from them, scrabbling backward across the rocks, claws slipping on the smooth, slick surface, without ever taking its eyes off them, moving up and out of the ravine and then down past the openly stunned Steelmind, and more rapidly down to the edge of the clearing.

  It reached the edge of the forest, still walking awkwardly backwards, its tail actually between its legs at one point. Its own bulk made the progress painfully slow. Then, just as a large branch it had pushed aside snapped back into place, obscuring for a moment its sight of the two young women, it turned and ran—ran off into the forest, crashing through brush and briar and making an incredible amount of noise.