Dragon's Teeth (14 page)

The ring of stones began to glow, glowing as if they were stealing the last of the sun’s fire and allowing it to run upon their surfaces. The color of the fire began to lighten, turning from deep red to scarlet to a fiery orange. Then the auras surrounding each Gate-stone extended; reaching for, then touching, the auras beside it, until the circle became one pulsating ring of golden-orange light.

Martis felt the proper moment approaching, and signed to Lyran to hand her back her reins. She waited, weighing, judging—then suddenly spurred her mount into one of the gaps between the stones, with Lyran’s gelding practically on top of her horse’s tail.

They emerged into a forest clearing beneath a moon already high, exactly five leagues from the next Gate.

“Gods, I wish I had Tosspot under me,” Martis muttered, facing the second Gate under a bright noontide sun. This one stood in the heart of the forest, and the stones were dwarfed by the stand of enormous pine trees that towered all about them. The sorceress was feeling depleted, and she had not been able to recuperate the energy she’d spent on the last spell.

“We could wait,” Lyran suggested. “We could rest here, and continue on in the morning.”

Martis shook her head with regret. “I only wish we could. But it isn’t healthy to camp near a Gate—look at the way the magic’s twisted those bushes over there, the ones growing up against the stones! And besides, we need to come as close to surprising our hosts as we can.”

She coughed; there was a tickle in the back of her throat that threatened to turn into a cold. Lyran noted that cough, too, and tightened his mouth in unvoiced disapproval, but made no further objections. Martis handed him her reins, and began the second spell— But they emerged, not into a sunlit clearing as she’d expected, but into the teeth of the worst storm she’d ever seen.

Rain, cold as the rains of winter, lashed at them, soaking them to the skin in moments. It would have been too dark to see, except that lightning struck so often that the road was clearly lit most of the time. Lyran spurred his horse up beside the sorceress as she gasped for breath beneath the onslaught of the icy water. He’d pulled his cloak loose from the lashings that held it to his saddle and was throwing it over her shoulders before she even had recovered the wit to
think
about the fact that she needed it. The cloak was sodden in seconds, but it was wool—warm enough, even though wet. She stopped shivering a little, but the shock of chill coming on top of the strain of the spells had unbalanced her a little. She fumbled after her reins, but her mind wouldn’t quite work; she couldn’t seem to think where they should be going.

Lyran put his hand under her chin, and turned her face toward his. She blinked at him, at his searching expression as revealed by the flickers of lightning. Some rational little bit of her that hadn’t been stunned hoped idly that he remembered what she’d told him once, about how mages sometimes went into spell-shock when they were low on energy and hit with unexpected physical conditions. This happened most frequently when they were ungrounded and uncentered—and the Gate-spell demanded that she be both when taking them in transit.

Evidently he did, for he took the reins out of her unresisting fingers and nudged his gelding into a nervy, shuddering walk, leaving her to cling to the saddle as best she could while he led her mount.

It was impossible to hear or be heard over the nearly continuous roar of the thunder, so she didn’t even try to speak to him. She just closed her eyes and concentrated on getting herself centered and grounded again. So it was that she never noticed when the road approached the brink of a river—once peaceful, now swollen and angry with flood water. She knew that there
was
such a road, and such a river—she knew that they were to cross it before reaching Lyosten. She knew that there was a narrow, aged bridge that was still nonetheless sound, but she was too deeply sunk within herself to see it, as Lyran urged the horses onto its span.

But she
felt
the lightning-strike, so close it scorched the wood of the bridge not ten paces in front of them.

And as her eyes snapped open, she saw Lyran’s horse rearing above her in complete panic—a darkly writhing shape that reared and thrashed—and toppled over onto
hers.
She had no time to react; she felt herself go numb and open-mouthed in fear, and then pain as all of them, horses, humans, and mule, crashed through the railing of the bridge to plunge into the churning water below. She flailed wildly with unfocused energy trying to form up something to catch them—and lost spell and all in the shock of hitting the raging water.

Martis pulled herself up onto the muddy bank, scraping herself across the rocks and tree-roots protruding from it, and dragging Lyran with her by the shoulder-fabric of his tunic. She collapsed, half-in, half-out of the water, too spent to go any farther. The swordsman pulled himself, coughing, up onto the bank beside her. A child of open plains,
he
couldn’t swim.

Fortunately for both of them, Martis could. And equally fortunately, he’d had the wit to go limp when he felt her grabbing his tunic. The storm—now that the damage was done—was slackening.

“Are you all right?” she panted, turning her head and raising herself on her arms enough to be able to see him, while her teeth chattered like temple rattles.

Lyran had dragged himself up into a sitting position, and was clutching a sapling as if it were a lover. His eyes were bruised and swollen, one of them almost shut, and there was a nasty welt along the side of his face. He coughed, swallowed, nodded. “I think—yes.”

“Good.” She fell back onto the bank, cheek pressed into the mud, trying to keep from coughing herself. If she did—it felt as if she might well cough her aching lungs out. She fought the cough with closed eyes, the rain plastering hair and clothing flat to her skin.

This is witched weather; the power is everywhere, wild, undisciplined. How could that Lyosten mage have let himself get so out of control?
But that was just a passing thought, unimportant. The important thing was the cold, the aching weariness. She was so cold now that she had gone beyond feeling it—

“Martis—”

She was drifting, drifting away, being carried off to somewhere where there was sun and warmth. In fact, she was actually beginning to feel warm, not cold. She felt Lyran shake her shoulder, and didn’t care. All she wanted to do was sleep. She’d never realized how soft mud could be.

“Martis!”
It was the sharp-edged fear in his voice as much as the stinging slap he gave her that woke her. She got her eyes open with difficulty.

“What?” she asked stupidly, unable to think.

“Beloved,
thena,
you are afire with fever,” he said, pulling her into his arms and chafing her limbs to get the blood flowing. “I cannot heal disease, only wounds. Fight this—you must fight this, or you will surely die!”

“Ah—” she groaned, and tried to pummel the fog that clouded her mind away. But it was a battle doomed to be lost; she felt the fog take her, and drifted away again.

Lyran half-carried, half-dragged the mage up the last few feet of the road to the gates of Lyosten. The horses were gone, and the mule, and with them everything except what they had carried on their persons that had not been ripped away by the flood waters. His two swords were gone; he had only his knife, his clothing, and the money belt beneath his tunic. Martis had only her robes; no implements of magic or healing, no cloak to keep her warm—

At least she had not succumbed to shock or the cold-death; she was intermittently conscious, if not coherent. But she was ill—very ill, and like to become worse.

The last few furlongs of road had been a waking nightmare; the rain stopped as if it had been shut off, but the breeze that had sprung up had chilled them even as it had dried their clothing. Once past the thin screen of trees lining the river, there had been nothing to buffer it. It hadn’t helped that Lyran could see the bulk of Lyosten looming in the distance, dark gray against a lighter gray sky. He’d forced himself and Martis into motion, but more often than not he was supporting her; sheer exhaustion made them stagger along the muddy road like a pair of drunks, getting mired to the knees in the process. It was nearly sunset when they reached the gates of the city.

He left Martis leaning against the wood of the wall and went to pound on the closed gates themselves, while she slid slowly down to crouch in a miserable huddle, fruitlessly seeking shelter from the wind.

A man-sized door opened in the greater gate, and a surly, bearded fighter blocked it.

“What’s the ruckus?” he growled.

Lyran drew himself up and tried not to shiver. “This one is guard to Martis, Master Sorceress and envoy of the Mage Guild,” he replied, his voice hoarse, his throat rasping. “There has been an accident—”

“Sure, tell me another one,” the guard jeered, looking from Lyran, to the bedraggled huddle that was Martis, and back again. He started to close the portal. “You think I’ve never heard
that
one before? Go around to th’ Beggar’s Gate.”

“Wait!” Lyran blocked the door with his foot, but before he could get another word out, the guard unexpectedly lashed out with the butt of his pike, catching him with a painful blow to the stomach. It knocked the wind out of him and caused him to land on his rump in the mud of the road. The door in the gate slammed shut.

Lyran lowered Martis down onto the pallet, and knelt beside her. He covered her with every scrap of ragged blanket or quilt that he could find. She was half out of her mind with fever now, and coughing almost constantly. The cheap lamp of rock-oil gave off almost as much smoke as light, which probably didn’t help the coughing any.

“Martis?” he whispered, hoping against hope for a sane response.

This time he finally got one. Her eyes opened, and there was sense in them. “Lyr—” she went into a coughing fit. He helped her to sit up, and held a mug of water to her mouth. She drank, her hand pressed against his, and the hand was so hot it frightened him.
“Thena,”
he said urgently. “You are ill, very ill. I cannot heal sickness, only hurts. Tell me what I must do.”

“Take me—to the Citymaster—” He shook his head. “I tried; they will not let me near. I cannot prove that I am what I say—”

“Gods. And I can’t—magic to prove it.”

“You haven’t even been answering me.” He put the cup on the floor and wedged himself in behind her, supporting her. She closed her eyes as if even the dim light of the lamp hurt them. Her skin was hot and dry, and tight-feeling, as he stroked her forehead. “The storm—witched.”

“You said as much in raving, so I guessed it better to avoid looking for the city wizard. Tell me what I must do!”

“Is there—money—?”

“A little. A very little.”

“Get—trevaine-root. Make tea.”

He started. “And poison you? Gods and demons—!”

“Not poison.” She coughed again. “It’ll put me—where I can trance. Heal myself. Only way.”

“But—”

“Only way I know,” she repeated, and closed her eyes. Within moments the slackness of her muscles told him she’d drifted off into delirium again.

He lowered her back down to the pallet, and levered himself to his feet. The bed and the lamp were all the furnishings this hole of a room had; Martis had bigger closets back at High Ridings. And he’d been lucky to find the room in the first place. The old woman who rented it to him had been the first person he’d accosted that had “felt” honest.

He blew out the lamp and made his way down to the street. Getting directions from his hostess, he headed for the marketplace. The ragged and threadbare folk who jostled him roused his anxiety to a fever-pitch. He sensed that many of them would willingly knife him from behind for little or no reason. He withdrew into himself, shivering mentally, and put on an icy shell of outward calm.

The streets were crowded; Lyran moved carefully within the flow of traffic, being cautious to draw no attention to himself. He was wearing a threadbare tunic and breeches nearly identical to a dozen others around him; his own mage-hireling silk was currently adorning Martis’ limbs beneath her mage-robes. The silk was one more layer of covering against the chill—and he didn’t like the notion of appearing in even stained mage-hireling red in public; not around here. He closed his mind to the babble and his nose to the stench of unwashed bodies, uncleaned privies, and garbage that thickened the air about him. But these people worried him; he had only his knife for defense. What if some of this street-scum should learn about Martis, and decide she was worth killing and robbing? If he had his swords, or even just a single sword of the right reach and weight, he could hold off an army—but he didn’t, nor could he afford one. The only blades he’d seen yet within his scanty resources were not much better than cheap metal clubs.

Finally he reached the marketplace. Trevaine-root was easy enough to find, being a common rat-poison. He chose a stall whose owner “felt” reasonably honest and whose wares looked properly preserved, and began haggling.

A few moments later he slid his hand inside his tunic to extract the single coin he required from the heart-breakingly light money-belt, separating it from the others by feel. The herbalist handed over the scrap of root bound up in a bit of old paper without a second glance; Lyran hadn’t bought enough to seem suspicious. But then, it didn’t take much to make a single cup of strong tea.

Lyran turned, and narrowly avoided colliding with a scarred man, a man who walked with the air of a tiger, and whose eyes were more than a little mad. Lyran ducked his head, and willed himself invisible with all his strength. If only he had a
sword
! The need was beginning to be more than an itch—it was becoming an ache.

Lyran was heading out of the market and back to the boarding-house when he felt an unmistakable mental “pull,” not unlike the calling he had felt when he first was moved to take up the Way of the sword, the pull he had felt when he had chosen his Teacher. It did not “feel” wrong, or unbalanced. Rather, it was as if Something was sensing the need in him for a means to protect Martis, and was answering that need.