Dragontiarna

by Jonathan Moeller

  Calliande smiled when she saw him. “Good morning. I think I actually slept well.”

  “You work yourself to exhaustion,” said Ridmark. “Of course you sleep well.”

  “Or I collapse, and you carry me to bed,” said Calliande. She finished the bread and dusted the crumbs from her hands. “But you haven’t had to do that for a while.” Her smile faded. “Is something wrong? You look like you’re about to go into a fight.”

  “I don’t know,” said Ridmark. “A feeling, maybe.”

  “Like you’ve had a dream you can’t remember,” said Calliande, grasping his concern at once. She had been down this road with him before.

  “Aye,” said Ridmark.

  “The last few times Morigna appeared to you, you could remember it,” said Calliande. “She appeared to Accolon, as well.”

  “I wonder where Morigna went,” said Ridmark. “Ardrhythain appointed her the Guardian of mankind against dark magic. Well, there’s an entire army led by two wielders of dark soulblades a few days’ march to the northeast. She would be needed here.”

  “I wonder,” murmured Calliande. “My feeling is that she’s trying to stop the Heptarchy somehow. She warned Accolon before the attack on Cintarra.” She shrugged. “Perhaps it is her task to stop the Heptarchy and ours it to defeat Merovech and the Dragon Cult.”

  “Perhaps,” said Ridmark, though he was not certain.

  “Let me look at you,” said Calliande. She stepped closer, put her right hand on his temple, and gazed up at him, her blue eyes going hazy as she drew on the Sight. Her eyes remained on him without blinking for a long moment, and then she shook her head and stepped back.

  “Nothing?” said Ridmark.

  “Nothing unusual,” said Calliande. “I saw your link to Oathshield, and the changes it has made to your aura. I saw your link to Aegisikon, though that’s not nearly as powerful as the bond with a soulblade.” She shrugged. “But there are no signs that anyone else has been speaking in your dreams or has been using magic to touch your mind.”

  Ridmark nodded, thinking it over. “Have you checked on the children already?” Perhaps his unease was nothing more than all the different worries in his mind. Gareth, Joachim, and Rhoanna were safe in Tarlion, far from where the battle would be fought against the Dragon Cult, but he was never quite free of concern for them. Ridmark supposed he would worry about them until the day he died.

  “As soon as I got up,” said Calliande. “They’re fine.” She sighed. “They were sleeping when I looked. But you remember what you always tell the children.”

  “Work is the cure for worry,” said Ridmark. “I suppose I had better get ready for the day.”

  He ducked back in the tent and started donning his armor.

  ###

  Morigna looked over the stern of the longship, her concern growing.

  The crew of her raider had toiled at the oars all through the day and night, and they kept at it, resting in shifts. They had not yet come within sight of land, but Morigna had seen seagulls flying overhead, and she knew the birds did not venture far out over the water. Andomhaim was not far away. Another few hours, she thought. Another few hours, and she could find the High King and warn him about what was to come.

  But she might not have those few hours.

  To the south, she could just see four dark specks on the horizon. They weren’t close enough for her physical eyes to make out any details, but Morigna possessed the Sight. She sent it towards the dark specks and glimpsed arachar orcs, their blood tainted by the power of the urdmordar. Each vessel was loaded with soldiers, and they were following Morigna’s ship.

  That had to be the work of Agravhask. Once he realized that she had escaped, he had dispatched raiders to hunt her down. Had he included priestesses and kyralf battle wizards among them? Morigna wasn’t sure. Though it didn’t matter. Those four longships could carry a hundred and twenty veteran arachar soldiers. Morigna would take a great many of them with her to the grave, but they would overpower her in the end.

  “Priestess?” said the captain.

  Morigna saw the captain walking between the rowers.

  “Captain,” said Morigna, putting all the cold hauteur of a spiderling priestess into her voice. “We have almost reached Andomhaim. Your men have done well.”

  “Thank you, priestess,” said the captain. “Those are our ships behind us.”

  “Most likely,” said Morigna. “I do not presume to know the mind of the High Priestesses or of the Warlord. Likely they have their own task. We have ours.”

  She thought the pursuing longships were gaining. If they got close enough to signal, they could tell the captain that Morigna was on board, that “Priestess Masrivia” was an illusion. Morigna could probably fight off the soldiers…but she couldn’t row the ship to shore by herself.

  Unless she thought of something clever right now, she might not escape.

  “Leave me,” said Morigna. “I must concentrate on my tasks for the goddesses. Urge your men to greater speed.”

  The captain gave her an odd look but recovered himself. “As you wish, priestess.”

  He walked back up the aisle between the benches, telling the orcs to put their backs into it.

  Morigna took a deep breath, cleared her mind, and reached for the Sight.

  Unless she missed her guess, her longship was going to put to shore a few miles east of Cintarra, somewhere along the coast road. Was there someone in Cintarra she could call upon for aid? Or should she try to contact Ridmark and Calliande? With the power of Oathshield, Ridmark could transport himself to Cintarra in a blink of an eye, though he might be unable to come.

  There was only one way to find out.

  Morigna sent the Sight spinning towards Cintarra.

  ###

  Moriah Rhosmor walked through the gardens of the Prince’s Palace, intent on finding her bed.

  It had been a busy night. The deaths of Zimri Talvus, his household knights, and his allies had sent a shock through the city. Zimri’s friends would have protested, but the evidence against him was overwhelming. Zimri had been taken in the act of attempting to kidnap the Prince of Cintarra, and he had been in a company of a knight of the Dragon Cult. His crimes had been witnessed by no less than the Archbishop of Cintarra himself and over a score of his soldiers.

  Moriah felt absolutely no guilt or regret over Zimri’s fate, but it still unsettled her. During the years she had been a thief, she could have been cornered and killed. If she and Delwen and Gunther had been a little slower or made the wrong decision, they might have died as Zimri Talvus had.

  And Gunther and Delwen had been killed that way.

  Moriah supposed such a fate still might befall her if Merovech Valdraxis took the city, proclaimed himself its new Prince, and executed all his opponents. Though Moriah would probably have been killed in the fighting long before that happened.

  She couldn’t decide if that was a comforting thought or not.

  Zimri had been bold enough to attempt to kidnap the Prince, but there were still nobles embittered by the loss of their enclosed pasturelands, nobles who would be susceptible to the bribes of the Dragon Cult. Moriah had spied on a few of them overnight, but while she had overhead a lot of angry muttering, there had been no obvious plots. With the High King’s army massing to the north and the Dragon Cult preparing to meet him, perhaps Merovech had decided to abandon subterfuge in favor of violence, or maybe he just didn’t have the men to spare to send spies into the city.

  Moriah’s jaw cracked in a massive yawn. What she wanted right now was her bed. Perhaps she was tired enough to have a dreamless rest for once. Tomorrow night she would speak with Helmut and see if he had learned anything new. The owner of the Loyal Man had been pleased by the fall of Zimri Talvus, likely because in the chaos after Zimri’s arrest, his thieves had carried off everything that wasn’t nailed down. Whoever wound up inheriting Zimri’s domus would find most of its riches missing.

  She took another step, and
the world froze around her.

  All the color drained away, and the courtyard turned to shades of gray. Moriah froze, bewildered. Her first thought was that a blood vessel had burst inside her brain, and she was about to keel over dead. She knew people who had died of strokes, usually older men. But she had been pushing herself so hard that perhaps she had worn herself out and was about to fall over. Maybe Caelmark would think she had been poisoned.

  “Moriah Rhosmor.”

  Moriah turned, reaching for her sword hilt, and saw the elven woman.

  She stood a few paces away, wearing elaborate golden armor much like the armor that Moriah had seen the Keeper wear in battle. Her face had the alien beauty of the elves, her ears pointed, with enormous green eyes and red hair that had been bound back in a braid. Much like Moriah’s own, some distant part of her mind noted. In her right hand, the woman carried a black staff carved with sigils, some of them flickering with white light.

  The elven woman looked exhausted. Without the staff, she might have fallen over.

  “Who the devil are you?” said Moriah, baffled. If she was about to die, this was a strange thing to hallucinate.

  “I am the Guardian Morigna,” said the elven woman.

  “Morigna?” said Moriah. After the death of Cyprian and the Heptarchy attack on the harbor, Accolon had told her that someone named Morigna had appeared to him in a vision and warned him of the invaders, which had kept them from taking the city unawares. “You’re the one who told Accolon about the Heptarchy.”

  “Yes,” said Morigna. “I need your aid. I have hidden aboard a Heptarchy raider, and it will make landfall about three miles east of the city. The Heptarchy’s army is coming, Moriah, and I have knowledge of their invasion plans. But they know I have been spying on them, and they will try to kill me before I can reach the High King.”

  Moriah made her decision at once. It was strange to accept the word of a woman she had never met. For all she knew, this was a hallucination. But Accolon had trusted Morigna, and Moriah trusted the Crown Prince’s judgment. And perhaps this was the thing that Moriah had always dreaded.

  Perhaps the Heptarchy was about to return in greater force than before.

  “I will come,” said Moriah.

  The last word had just left her lips when Morigna shuddered and grimaced, as if in pain.

  She vanished, and the world exploded back into color and motion.

  Moriah staggered, looking around in surprise. Morigna had vanished without a trace. The gardens of the Prince’s Palace had returned to normal, quiet and pleasant in the dawn cool. Had Moriah imagined the entire thing?

  No, she didn’t think so. If Moriah was going to hallucinate, she suspected it would be something she had seen before, some horror constructed out of her nightmares, and she had never seen anyone like Morigna before. And Accolon’s vision had come true. Why not Moriah’s?

  She considered running to the barracks and getting help but decided against it. For one thing, she didn’t have the authority to command soldiers. For another, she might not even be able to convince them to help her. Most of the soldiers thought she was Accolon’s mistress, and if she ran into the barracks raving about visions, they would assume she had gone mad.

  And if the soldiers of the Heptarchy were indeed pursuing Morigna, perhaps the Guardian needed Moriah’s help to escape. With her wraithcloak, she had snatched Sir Rufinius out from under the noses of the Drakocenti. Perhaps she could do the same for this mysterious Guardian.

  Her mind made up, Moriah turned and ran for the stables.

  ###

  Calliande finished adjusting her armor and stepped out of the tent.

  “Is everything all right, my lady?” said Rhiain, coming to her side.

  “Well enough,” said Calliande, rolling her shoulders. She never liked wearing armor, though if she did not, she knew Ridmark would guilt her into it. And he was right – the kobold raiders had been prowling around the edges of the camps, and one arrow through the heart would leave her children orphaned. In truth, the golden armor she had taken from the ruins of Cathair Selenias was far lighter and stronger than the chain mail hauberks she had sometimes worn during the Frostborn war.

  But she still never liked wearing armor. It always felt like it was pinching her chest, though Calliande could not describe herself as voluptuous. Some of the weight she had lost after Joanna’s death had never come back, even when she was pregnant with Rhoanna, and the padded gambeson Ridmark had found for her bore the armor’s weight well.

  She still didn’t like it, though she knew her dislike was irrational. But if the discomfort was the only pain she had to endure today, then she was fortunate.

  “My lady looks very striking in the armor,” said Rhiain.

  Calliande gave her a look. “You and Ridmark are conspiring together on this, aren’t you?”

  Rhiain managed to look innocent. “The Lord Ridmark only wants what is best for my lady.”

  Well, that was certainly true.

  “We ought to be ready to move out soon,” said Calliande. “I think…”

  “Calliande!”

  The voice rushed through her head.

  Calliande blinked in surprise and turned. No one stood nearby, but the voice was inside her skull.

  “My lady?” said Rhiain.

  “Calliande!” came the voice again.

  Calliande reached for the voice in her thoughts. It was like the mindspeech spell the Magistri used to converse over long distances, except it was using the Sight. Calliande reached for her own Sight,. A sudden vision flickered before her eyes. She saw a spiderling priestess in a black robe standing at the rail of a small ship, the skirts of her robe rippling in the wind. But the Sight showed Calliande that the image of the priestess was only an illusion wrapped around an elven woman in golden armor, a gray cloak streaming from her shoulders, and a black staff in her hand…

  “Morigna?” said Calliande, surprised. For her to see Morigna after discussing her with Ridmark seemed like too much of a coincidence.

  “I must ask for your help,” said Morigna. “I am aboard a Heptarchy raider heading towards the coast road about three miles east of Cintarra. The Warlord of the Heptarchy realized that I have been spying upon him, and he has dispatched soldiers to kill me.”

  A dozen different questions blazed through Calliande’s mind. For one, how the devil had Morigna gotten aboard a Heptarchy warship? How had she managed to spy on the Warlord, whoever that was?

  But all those questions faded beneath the force of the most urgent one.

  “How many are after you?” said Calliande.

  “Four more longships. They hold least a hundred arachar orcs, likely closer to a hundred and twenty,” said Morigna. “They may have wizards among them, I do not know.” The image wavered in Calliande’s mind. “I am not as powerful as you, I cannot maintain this spell for long. Please…”

  The vision snapped out of existence.

  Calliande let out a long breath, waiting for her head to stop spinning. Conversations conducted telepathically through magic were always exhausting.

  “My lady?” said Rhiain, peering at her with concern. Likely she thought Calliande was about to faint.

  “I need to talk to Ridmark right now,” said Calliande.

  “He went to talk with Sir Rufinius and Niall,” said Rhiain. “At the western end of the camp.”

  “Tell the men-at-arms to get our horses ready,” said Calliande. “We’re going to have move quickly.”

  To her credit, Rhiain asked no further questions. She whirled and ran off, skirts gathered in one hand. Calliande hoped she was still that quick when she reached Rhiain’s age. Though if she included the time she had spent sleeping under the Tower of Vigilance, Calliande was old enough to be Rhiain’s many-times over grandmother.

  She ran through the camp, some of the soldiers shooting her alarmed looks, and found Ridmark. As Rhiain had said, he stood talking with Sir Niall and Sir Rufinius. All three men turned to look
as she approached, and Ridmark’s hand dropped to his sword hilt in alarm.

  “What’s wrong?” said Ridmark.

  “Morigna just spoke to me through the Sight,” said Calliande. “She’s on a Heptarchy warship about three miles from Cintarra.”

  “The Heptarchy?” said Niall, his eyes widening. “They’re about to attack Cintarra?”

  “Not yet,” said Calliande, though if Morigna had disguised herself and commandeered a longship, the Heptarchy’s fleet had to be close. “Morigna said she was spying on them. They must have discovered who she was and sent soldiers to bring her back. Ridmark, I think we have to rescue her. Not just because she’s a friend. If she has been spying on the Heptarchy…”

  “Then she can tell us everything we need to know about the Heptarchy,” said Ridmark. “Let’s move.”

  ***

  Chapter 13: Reunions

  The camp exploded into motion.

  Niall ran after Lord Ridmark as the Shield Knight shouted commands. Some of the men would be left behind to guard the camp and the baggage. Two others had been dispatched in haste to Rhudlan to tell the Crown Prince and the High King what was happening. Nearly two hundred men would accompany the Shield Knight and the Keeper as they hastened to Cintarra to rescue this mysterious Guardian.

  “How?” grated Ricatus.

  Niall glanced at him. “What?”

  “How the devil are we going to get to Cintarra?” said Ricatus. “It’s three days’ forced march from here. And we’d have to cross back to the eastern bank first, or it would be through hostile territory.”

  Niall wanted to say something angry, but Ricatus’s scorn had vanished. The older knight usually put aside his contempt and his anger in a crisis, becoming a cool, competent soldier and killer. Niall still didn’t like him, but at least Ricatus was a good man to have at your side in a fight.