Authors: James V. Viscosi
"And what did
you
do during the battle?"
"I avoid melee; I stayed back and threw daggers."
"Daggers." T'Sian snorted. She was back in front of him now, but she kept moving, circling him again. The dragonets had done the same thing during the fight: Circling, attacking, circling again. Looking for weaknesses. "Pinpricks."
"Hand to hand combat isn't my strong point."
"No," T'Sian said. "You are the sort who deals in trickery and subterfuge, are you not? Like the wizard. The sort who strikes at an exposed back, a turned head, a sleeping victim."
Adaran said nothing.
"You were once five, but now you are only two." She was behind him again. "I found the one who was killed by my young. What happened to the others?"
This time he did turn to face her, leaning heavily on his makeshift cane. "Dunshandrin's men tried to kill us. Only Orioke and I escaped."
"Ah," she said. "And so you learned that Dunshandrin valued your life as little as you valued the lives of my young."
"I suppose so."
T'Sian looked at him for a little while, then said: "You have told me what I wanted to know, and so your death will be quick. I cannot guarantee it will be painless."
Adaran closed his eyes, waiting for the blow, for the fire; but it did not come, and when he looked again, Diasa had come up to T'Sian and was speaking quietly to her, pointing off to the side. He followed the line of her finger, which led to the oracle. She lay on her side, eyes open but unfocused; if not for the rise and fall of her chest, Adaran would have thought her dead. Ponn knelt beside her, holding her hand by the wrist, pinching lightly.
Diasa was explaining that Tolaria could not be awakened. "Orioke must have done this," she said. "He distracted us so he could strike her down without being noticed, and it worked."
"I can kill this cretin and then deal with the wizard."
"Yes, go ahead, kill Adaran," Ponn said, not looking up from Tolaria. "Show Orioke how well you play his fool. I'm sure he will be pleased."
The dragon hissed in anger and frustration, the sound like a pit of angry snakes. How could such a cacophony issue from a human-looking mouth? Adaran expected her to charge over and rend him to pieces, but instead she turned and vanished into the night. He stood there for a moment, staring after her; then his legs began to tremble and he used the stick to lower himself to the ground.
"Where do you suppose she's going?" Diasa asked.
"Most likely to change shape and look for the wizard," Ponn said. "There will be more fire this night."
Adaran crawled over to join Ponn beside the oracle. She lay unresponsive, unblinking, her eyes reflecting moonlight. "I don't understand," he said. "If Orioke wanted to take away our oracle, why didn't he just kill her?"
"She's more of a burden this way," Diasa said. "He knows we won't abandon her, so not only do we lose her abilities, but we gain something fragile that we have to protect."
"Besides, the twins might still hope to get her back. She won't be of much use if she's dead." Ponn glanced at him. "You are most familiar with the wizard," he said, his tone suggesting that Adaran had gained this knowledge in the manner of one who learned the identity of a murderer by helping him commit his crimes. "Will T'Sian find him?"
"He'll have a glamour to keep himself from being seen," he said. "Orioke is an expert in illusions, tricks of the mind. I don't know how well it will work on a full-grown dragon, but it seemed to keep the young ones from finding him."
Diasa joined them. "What did he do to Tolaria?"
"I don't know. Some sort of false sleep, I suppose. Perhaps the same spell he tried to use on the baby dragons. It didn't work this well on them though."
"Yet another example of human inferiority," Diasa said.
Her transformation complete, T'Sian took to the sky. She swam up through the air with powerful strokes of her wings, the meadow and road and forest spinning away beneath her. She scanned the darkness, her heat-sensitive vision picking out the broad glow of the bonfire, the fading column of its heat rising into the sky. Her companions, arranged near the flames, were lost within the circle of its warmth.
The forest lay to the northwest of their sad little camp, the canopy of leaves concealing what lay beneath. Through gaps in the trees she saw a few small fires; these, she was sure, belonged to villagers who had fled the town during her attack on the castle. The man she sought would not have lit a fire for himself.
This so-called wizard knew tricks no man should know. Fouling the thoughts of her hatchlings so that lesser men could slay them; pulling the fire out of her belly like a gaudy ribbon; striking Tolaria down from hidden cover. He was probably down there right now, hiding behind his magic, looking into the sky and laughing at her.
She hovered hundreds of feet up, scanning the forest. How would this man have gotten here? The mad little oracle had said Orioke was coming to Achengate yesterday; today he was here. He must have flown in on an eagle. Where would such a creature have landed? Not out in the open, certainly, and not in the trees. So he most likely had put down in one of the many clearings that dotted the woodland. She could check them one by one, and see if his tricks could stop her fire this time.
Or she could just burn the entire forest and see what came out.
As the night turned orange, Diasa moved away from the others, heading down the slope toward the road, hoping for a better look at the dragon's activities. T'Sian, a black shape against the fiery glow, wove a curving pattern in the air as she vomited a stream of fire into the trees, igniting wide swaths of the forest. She had evidently decided to burn Orioke out rather than search for him.
Diasa quickly returned to the others. "We need to move," she said. "T'Sian is setting fire to the forest. We're too close to it for my peace of mind."
"She's frustrated," Ponn said.
"Her frustration could burn all of us to death." Diasa hefted Tolaria, slinging the limp oracle over her shoulders. Ponn lifted Prehn, while Adaran used the branch to lever himself to his feet. They slowly retreated from the forest, moving toward the road, joined and passed by villagers fleeing from the burning woodland. Diasa wondered how many fell among the trees, overcome by heat or flame or smoke, reduced to sizzling fat and blackened bones.
By the time they reached the riverbank, the entire forest seemed to be alight. Embers wafted into the sky, drifting eastward on a light breeze that carried them toward the village. If they didn't set it ablaze by nestling in thatched roofs or exposed haylofts, Diasa thought, T'Sian would surely be along shortly to take care of that job herself.
Suddenly she spotted a dark shape rising from the forest, winged like the dragon, but much smaller. An eagle. Was there a rider? Diasa couldn't tell. The thing fluttered madly, panicked and disoriented by the fire and smoke. As the great bird rose above the flames, T'Sian dove toward it, snatching it out of the sky with a massive talon; when it fell to earth a few moments later, it was a crushed wad of bones and feathers.
Diasa was still not sure if there had been a rider on the eagle. She suspected not; would Orioke be so rash as to take to the air while the dragon prowled above the forest? He had surprised her in Astilan, and, with Deliban's help, bested her there; he might have thought to do the same again. On the other hand, he might have sent his mount up as a diversion, if T'Sian had come close enough to him to force him to sacrifice his transportation.
But if the dragon killed him, what would happen to Tolaria?
Adaran stared at the huge clouds of choking smoke that the burning forest sent into the night sky. Bits of ash and glowing embers drifted along the hillside, falling into the grass and mud, most of them snuffed out as they touched the damp ground. Some reached the village, starting a few small fires here and there.
The dragon banked to her left, away from the woods, heading toward the town. She intended to burn it now, he realized. The villagers had done nothing to earn her wrath, but she was in a fury, and anything that belonged to Dunshandrin would suffer her vengeance.
When she was done, she would come back for him.
Did he really want to wait for her to come back and incinerate him as well? His moment of courage, when he had told Ponn to stand aside, was long past. Ponn and Diasa had stopped paying any attention to him; they both stood, staring at the village, watching the spectacle as the dragon burned it down to its foundations. Even Prehn, awake now in her father's arms, stared raptly at the dancing flames. It was the perfect opportunity. After all, Diasa was right, wasn't she? He was a thief, he was a scoundrel. His specialty was slinking away from trouble.
He crawled away, toward the tall reeds, and the river.
Tolaria understood that her surroundings were not, could not be, real. Surely Orioke did not have the power to tear her away from Dunshandrin and hurl her hundreds of miles, back to Yttribia, to the back alleys and seedy avenues of chill Torbinton, the city where she had grown up. No, he must have reached into her mind, thrust his greedy fingers deep into her memories, and conjured up images from her past. He had created a little world to keep her mind occupied, giving her winding streets to wander as if in a maze. But rather than spend her energies in fruitless exploration, she remained here, where she had awakened, and thought.
She knew little of wizards and their secrets, but it stood to reason that it took some small amount of effort for Orioke to keep her locked up this way. Some minor portion of his power had been allocated to her, in the same way that some went toward keeping Deliban leashed. If she pushed in the correct way, perhaps she could free herself. The headmistress had said that Tolaria was the most gifted oracle to come through Flaurent in a generation; surely that must count for something against the wizard's trickery.
She leaned back, feeling the cold brick wall, firm against her back. It didn't really exist, but it felt as solid as any other surface, as solid as the walls of her prison in Dunshandrin's castle. She closed her eyes, modulated her breathing to be slow and deep, the way she had been taught to do it when inhaling the vapors that induced a trance. She had no herbs, no powders, no potions; but as this place was imaginary, she could merely pretend that the things she needed were present: A cushion at her back, a bowl in her lap, fragrant mist rising into her nose.
After concentrating for a few minutes, she actually began to
feel a stone crock resting on her legs, rough and heavy, just like the one she had left behind when she escaped from the castle. If she opened her eyes, would she see it there? Would
she be surrounded by thin smoke, like incense? Perhaps; perhaps not. She felt no need to check, to see with her gaze.
She knew the vapors were present, and that was what mattered.
But instead of seeking knowledge of the future, she bent her thoughts toward the present, and the wizard.
When the town was satisfactorily aflame, T'Sian landed in the square near the inn where they had spent the night. Fires burned all around her; under other circumstances she might have curled up here and slept for a while, letting the soothing heat soak into her body, breathing deep the pleasing smell of smoke and ashes. But now she could only pause for a little while; pause, and reflect, and give the burning pain in her chest some time to cool.
When she had spotted the eagle, her first thought had been that she would find the wizard on its back; but no, he had not been astride his mount. She'd realized at once that the giant bird's flight had been a diversion. The crafty man had perhaps cut partway through its tether and then fled, so that when the creature broke free it would attract her attention. That the ploy had worked made her even angrier than she had been before. Three times now, he had tricked and humiliated her.
She would kill him. She would burn his flesh to ashes; she would chew on his cracked and blackened bones.
But first she had to catch him.
She spread her wings and took to the air, rising on the thermals from the burning buildings. She tilted forward and, with several great beats, sped toward where she had left the others. The firelight formed a patchwork of light and shadow on the ground as it swept by beneath her.
She stopped outside of town, holding steady, looking for her companions. She spotted them near the river. They had withdrawn from the forest, driven back by the flames. She set down nearby and lumbered toward them. Diasa, of course, was the first to notice her approach. "Well, this is certainly an impressive forest fire that you've started," she said.
"
It will burn itself out
," T'Sian said. "
The forest thins to the west and south.
"
"And you've made good on your threat to destroy the town."
"
I was provoked.
"
"As we all were," Diasa said. "And the wizard?"
T'Sian said nothing.
"He escaped?" Diasa did not seem surprised. "The eagle was a diversion?"