Dragon Stones (33 page)

"But if I lose control of my visions, if they start to arise unbidden …"  She trailed off, thinking of the warnings she had received while at Flaurent, and of mad little Wert, who spent his days wandering the campus spouting prophecies and nonsense in equal measure, unable to tell what was real and what was fiction.

"You just need time to recover from what they've done to you, that's all," Talbrett said.

"I wish I could believe that," she said.  Then, noticing him wince and touch the back of his neck:  "Are
you
all right?"

"The pain is bad this evening," he said, not looking up.  "It feels like sharp rocks inside my head."

"Have you been to a healer?"

"A healer?  Yes, I've been to healers.  They've rubbed shredded leaves on the back of my head, so that I smell like an herb garden.  They've made me drink potions that would make a dog howl.  They've put one hand on my growth and the other in my pocket."  Talbrett snorted.  "Don't speak to me of healers."

"I've some little experience with healing," Tolaria said.  "Perhaps I could—"

"Thank you, Tolaria," Talbrett said, "but my time is nearly over.  No charm or drug will change that."

"It saddens me to see you dying.  You seem a good man, and there are few enough of those."

Talbrett smiled faintly.  "You have not seen me at my worst.  The prospect of impending death can be a powerful influence."

"Yes," Tolaria said, "but it is not always a good one."

Jalla led Ponn through the devastated streets of Astilan.  It was easy to see where the destructive devices had fallen:  There would be a crater in the earth, or a building that had been splintered and blown outward into the street.  Nearby structures would be lopsided, partially demolished by the force of the blast; those beyond the inner ring of destruction would be gutted by fire, or not, depending on their susceptibility to burning and the vagaries of the wind.  Some neighborhoods were almost untouched by the attack, but as they neared Varmot's castle and King's Square, it became obvious that the attackers had concentrated on this part of the city.  The castle stood in ruins, largely reduced to jumbled black stone and smoldering timbers.  A row of battered soldiers stood before the wreckage as if daring looters to break through their ranks to get inside; no one took up the challenge.

A number of people had already gathered in the square, their voices a quiet babble as they waited for the king.  Ponn and Jalla moved off to one side, where there was some open space, and waited with the others.  Ponn continually scanned the sky for some sign of the dragon, or of a renewed attack, but neither materialized from out of the darkness.  At length, a single, sad trumpet played a fanfare, announcing the arrival of the king; but it was not Varmot who came to greet the crowd, which had now fallen silent.

"Who's that?" Ponn whispered, as a boy who scarcely looked old enough to grow whiskers climbed up on a dais made of rubble, holding his arms wide as if to encompass the entire crowd.

"That is Prince Laquin," Jalla said.  "But why is he wearing his father's crown?"

Ponn thought the answer fairly obvious, but said nothing, figuring it was better for Jalla to hear from her new king what had become of the old.  "People of Astilan!" Laquin cried, his voice reedy with youth.  "Tonight, we have been the victims of a most cowardly attack!"  A murmur swept the crowd; perhaps they had expected Laquin to announce that Varmot would be along momentarily.  Ponn glanced at Jalla; she stared, open-mouthed, at the boy as he continued.  "My father, the great King Varmot, lies buried in his castle, murdered as foully as by an assassin in the night!  His mantle has fallen to me, and I swear this:  My father, and all of your dead and wounded, shall be avenged!"

Brave words, Ponn thought; but Astilan would be in disarray for days if not weeks, and he doubted that the enemy would give Laquin the time he needed to organize a defense against them.  And indeed, what sort of defense could there be from men who hurled fire from the night sky, laying waste to entire neighborhoods?

The boy-king asked the survivors gathered there to speak of what they'd witnessed, to give him some clue as to the nature of their attackers.  There was a period of quiet murmuring as the people summoned the courage to speak; then someone near the front of the crowd cried:  "It was a dragon!  I saw it with my own eyes!"

"I saw a dragon too!"

"A huge, scaly beast!  Its head was bigger than a horse and it was spitting fire!"

"It wasn't the dragon!" Ponn shouted.  "It was men, riding giant eagles!  They dropped things that exploded and burned!"

This provoked more chatter, as some in the crowd affirmed that they, too, had caught glimpses of men astride monstrous birds, only to be shouted down by others who had seen the dragon.  It began to seem as if they would split into two groups, one blaming the dragon, the other blaming men, until Laquin's heralds silenced the crowd with a series of trumpet blasts.  "Friends," Laquin said, "tell me:  Who is our enemy?  Is it men who ride upon birds, or a dragon, or both?"

"I saw a dragon!"

"Men on birds!"

"Both, both!"

"No!" Ponn shouted.  "The dragon fought the men!"

Laquin oriented on him, motioning for silence.  The babble of the crowd gradually died down.  "Tell me this, friend who knows so much:  If the dragon fought these men, where is it now?"

"I … don't know," Ponn said.  "She hasn't come back yet."

"
She
?
"  Laquin picked up the implication immediately.  "You speak as if you know this beast."

"We were traveling together," Ponn said after a moment.

Laquin said:  "This creature was your
companion
?"

"It's not as simple as that, but … yes, she was."

A gasp rose from the crowd.  The king nodded to a few of the guards, who began clearing a path through the throng, heading toward Ponn.  Meanwhile, Jalla goggled at him.  "That woman you were with," she whispered.  "She was a
dragon
?"

"Yes."

"You brought a
dragon
into my inn?  Are you mad?"

"She didn't do you any harm, did she?" he said, irritated.  Then the guards arrived, separating Ponn and Jalla from the rest of the crowd, bearing them to the foot of Varmot's ruined castle.  Laquin perched on the edge of the blistered stonework, as if he had climbed up there on a lark and was now enjoying the view.  When they arrived he jumped off the wall and stood nearby, eyeing first Ponn, then Jalla, then Ponn again.  Up close, surrounded by a ring of heavily armed guards, it became somewhat easier to look at this teenager and see a king.

Laquin walked a circle around them, inspecting them from every side.  Ponn stood motionless, waiting to be addressed; and at length, Laquin said:  "You're Enshennean."

Ponn thought that must have become obvious some time ago.  "Yes, sire."

"What is your name?"

"Pyodor Ponn."

"So tell me, Pyodor Ponn … how came you to be in the company of a dragon?"

And so Ponn found himself explaining his entire situation to the boy-king, telling him about his daughter's kidnapping, his voyage to the archipelago, his abandonment on the island, his rescue by T'Sian.  He strategically omitted his arrest by agents of Laquin's father.  The boy listened, evidently fascinated, and when Ponn had finished he clapped his hands and cried, "What an amazing story!  How much of it is true, I wonder?"

"All of it, sire."

"And how much have you left out?"

Ponn, startled by the question and the boy's canny gaze, said:  "I'm sure, sire, that any bit of my adventure that escaped the retelling is a detail without significance."

Laquin seemed amused by this response.  "Yes, no doubt."  He gestured to the guards.  "Bring him inside.  The woman, too."

Jalla choked back an alarmed squeak; nervous now, Ponn said:  "I hope I have not offended my lord king through a lack of courtly manners."

"
Lack of courtly manners?"  Laquin laughed, though his eyes remained grave.  "On the contrary, you would do very well at court.  Very well indeed.  No, I would
talk with you and the innkeeper at length about your friend the dragon."  He jumped back onto the wall, balancing precariously on the edge, looking down at Ponn with bright blue eyes.  All the humor was gone from his face.  "This morning I was mainly concerned with which serving girls were prettiest.  Now I have a kingdom to run and, evidently, an invasion to repel.  If you truly know a dragon, then you, my Enshennean friend, have just become the most interesting man in the city."

From the top of the castle wall, Adaran saw a high drop to a narrow ledge, and beyond that, a rushing river.  But the alternative was to return to the courtyard and undoubtedly be caught by Dunshandrin's guards.  He tensed, then jumped.  For a giddy moment he seemed to fly out into the darkness; then he began to curve downward, falling.  He cleared the ledge, but the cliff below struck him a glancing blow, sending him into a spin just before he plunged into the current.

He twisted his body as he entered the icy water, hoping to avoid a damaging encounter with the river bed should it be rocky and shallow; but it turned out to be deeper than it looked and his concern swiftly turned from breaking a limb to drowning.  By the time he reached the surface, gasping for air and shivering with the cold, the current had already swept him some distance downstream, toward the bridge that led into town.  A lot of debris had piled up against the supports, and being slammed into them was unlikely to prove pleasant.  Adaran began to swim hard, reaching the far shore before coming to the span.  He hauled himself up among the broken rocks and tiny, gnarled trees that lined the bank, hoping to find cover in the largely nonexistent nooks and shadows.

His assassination of Lord Dunshandrin would provoke a swift response from the castle.  There would be patrols out on foot and horseback, possibly even on eagles, by first light; and even now, in the darkness, soldiers would come out with torches and scour the area around the castle.

What kind of fool was he, to have killed Lord Dunshandrin instead of quietly escaping?  Why hadn't he just stolen a few jewel-encrusted weapons and slunk away?  For that matter, how had he even managed to penetrate the royal wing of the castle?  The corridors had been well lit by torches; he hadn't confined himself to the shadows or crept along behind wall hangings.  He had brazenly walked along the hallways, and unless he had become completely deranged, he recalled that at one point, he had even started singing.  And yet, no one had been able to see him or hear him.  
There must have been a glamour on him, masking him from those he passed.  And who would have woven such a spell around him?

Orioke, of course.

It was the only explanation.  Orioke had brought him back from Flaurent and laid some sort of geis on him to make him kill Lord Dunshandrin.  To ensure he succeeded, the mage had given him the ability to pass unnoticed through the halls of the castle.  Once he had carried out the mission, the spells were broken; his free will was restored, and the guards could see him again.

Why would Orioke agree to work for Dunshandrin, and then contrive to kill him?  Revenge?  Or did he have some other plot brewing in his tricky head?

Well, at this point, the reason why was moot.  The deed was done, and now Adaran needed to find a spot where he could hide from the inevitable search.  But along the rocky slopes surrounding Dunshandrin's castle, there was little in the way of vegetation, no bushes to shelter in, no thickets, no meadows, no caverns.  And even if there were, Dunshandrin's castellan would already know all the hiding places within half a mile of the castle, unless he was completely incompetent.  To further complicate matters, dawn was already on its way, the sky lightening with the approaching sun; it was too late to get down the hill without being seen.  He cast a glance back at the castle.  Sentries stood along the parapet that he had only recently darted across, scanning the countryside, looking for him.  They would scarcely fail to notice a man fleeing across this barren, rocky slope.  His only option was to stay where he was, and find what cover he could among the boulders and bracken.

Feeling ill-used and exhausted, Adaran crawled slowly up the bank, looking for somewhere to hide.

Laquin's men brought Ponn and Jalla to an interior chamber of the castle, in a wing that had remained more or less intact despite the destruction that had been visited upon the structure.  Along the way they passed a number of spots where workers were shoring up the walls and hallways with wooden stanchions in an effort, probably futile, to keep the entire place from collapsing around them.  Ponn wished them all good luck, but thought the more sensible thing would be to abandon the building.  Perhaps Laquin had remained in his father's devastated castle in order to boost the morale of his people; they were frightened now, but Ponn could imagine their despondence if the king were to be turned out into the street.

Ponn and Jalla were deposited in an anteroom adjacent to what had once been a great hall.  Through an archway choked with debris, Ponn could see the twisted columns of the next room, fallen now, shattered like crushed reeds.  The ceiling had come down with them, burying whatever had been in there beneath layers of rock and timber.