Fortress Draconis (9 page)

Will shivered.

Resolute looked down at him and nodded grimly. “You did better than I expected.”

The youth’s stomach heaved, spewing out what little remained of their last road meal.

The Vorquelf grabbed the back of Will’s tunic and hauled him up by one hand. “Wipe your face, take a deep breath.”

Crow held up a hand. “Take it easy with him. That wasn’t what any of us expected.”

Will wiped his mouth off on his sleeve. “Was that really a Dark Lancer? Is he dead?”

The older man dropped into a crouch at the edge of the bowl, resting his bow across his knees. “It was part of him, a part he was able to project here.”

“A part of him we summoned here.” Oracle came over and stared blindly down at Will. “Forgive me for putting you in such danger, Wilburforce. In using the goat as part of the link, we thought we would be able to sever the link by killing the goat. It is not a common magick, but one that has worked for ages; though it did not work here.”

Resolute set Will down at the edge of the pit. Will forced himself to look at Oracle and away from the remains of the goat. “Why didn’t it work?”

The Vorquelf mage shook her head. “Chytrine is an able sorceress herself, so she may have unraveled the spell and found a way to change it. Clearly she has made Nefrai-laysh very strong. We will be more careful in the future.”

“More careful? More careful?” Will blinked with disbelief. “If Chytrine can createsullanciri like that, with powers like that… I mean, some of them are supposed to already be dead, right? And they can do magick.”

The man held his hands up. “Easy, Will. Thesullanciri are indeed powerful. They were once our champions, yes, but they are not invincible.”

Resolute nodded solemnly. “They’re not impossibly powerful, either. They can be killed, and killing them hurts Chytrine. You hurt Nefrai-laysh here, sticking him the way you did. Chytrine knows she has to be careful, too.”

The youth nodded slowly. It seemed the appropriate response, though he really understood very little. “What did it mean, his coming here? Was that good or bad? I mean, obviously bad, but if he’s dead …”

Crow sighed. “He’s not dead, though this might have hurt him a bit. He will be tired. And this ability to change himself into other things, it’s fitting, since he could be whomever he needed to be when he needed it. He’ll be very dangerous.”

Resolute snorted. “Save that he can’t change who he is at the core, and that is where we will kill him.”

The Vorquelf sorceress stroked Will’s hair softly. “As for his coming here, this is good. It means you are the one we’re looking for, or are linked very strongly to him.”

“Quick lesson for you, boy.” Resolute hauled the creature he’d killed into the depression and tossed it at Will’s feet. “This is a gibberer or gibberkin. Chytrine uses them for soldiers. Somewhat strong, not terribly smart, but mind those jaws. That muzzle can bite clean through an arm. They die, but they die hard.”

Will blinked. “But you and Crow handled them so easily.”

Resolute lowered his face to Will’s. “We lost Vorquellyn a long time ago. I have been killing gibberers ever since. I am well schooled in killing them, and ply that trade at every opportunity.”

“I think they were a bit disoriented as they came through.” Crow shrugged easily. “The thing you killed was a vylaen. Smaller, smarter, almost like a child in a bear costume at festival, but capable of using magicks. Chytrine uses them to lead forces around. This wasn’t a planned attack, clearly, or more would have come through; many more.”

“I don’t like the idea of that.” Will shook his head. “I want to go home and forget all of this. Let me go, please.”

Oracle knelt and wiped his face with the sleeve of her robe, leaving it stained with blood. “There is no forgetting, Wilburforce, no running, no hiding. This is a time of destiny, and your part in it has just begun to unfold. And while this may seem to be a disaster to warn of more disasters, there is good here, too.”

The youth shivered again, and choked down more vomit.

When he slept that evening, Will slept shallowly and woke easily. Bad dreams did not haunt him, but the worry that he might succumb to them did slow his returning to sleep. He knew he had nothing to fear immediately, for Crow stood watch at the mouth of the cave and Resolute slept within the Vorquellyn chamber. He’d been allowed to unroll his blanket in the alcove Oracle called home, but after supper and a short nap, she was nowhere to be seen.

Will sat in the darkness and thought about what had happened in the lower chamber. The images of war and death and dying sent a chill down his spine, though not because of their gruesome nature. Blood and gore were nothing new to Will. The Dimandowns saw violence every day, whether in a street brawl, or a cart smashing some child, or to the entertainments offered in dingy playhouses. Murder, assault, rape, cannibalism; these were all things he knew of—and most of them from dark faery tales whispered in the night.

But something about the murals in the lower chamber had more substance than night-whispers, an actor convulsing on a stage, or even blood trickling through the gutter. The painting oozed hatred. Each stab stung him, each thrust opened a hollow in him. He didn’t so much feel the pain of the wounds as much as he felt the loss of the lives.

Every one of those people will die because someone else hates.

He threw back his blankets and stalked quietly through the Vorquellyn chamber. He expected an immediate and hostile challenge from Resolute, but silence marked his passage. Deep in the chamber, in the shadow of a picture that turned a stone into a forested hill, the Vorquelf slept soundly, with a blanket of gibberer pelts covering him.

On down to the lower chamber Will went and found Oracle there, painting away. He paused in the entrance, not willing to disturb her, but from the way she moved, he knew that was unlikely. She worked quickly, dabbing paint here and there, spreading individual dashes of color all over a wall, then she would shift to another paint-pot and splash another hue in places. She let the color define what she wanted to display, with the images slowly coming into focus as more and more of the stone disappeared.

One part of her mural had been completely finished and it shocked Will. Where there had only been a silhouette before he now looked at himself. He wore a stony expression and subtle shading worked details of the rock below into him. It almost seemed as if he were walking out from the rock or, worse, that he’d been trapped in it. As horrible as that might seem, however, it did not make him shiver.

The mural she still worked on, though, did tighten his flesh. As yet unpainted towers stood limned with red and gold fire. A dragon, in silhouette only, hovered in the sky above the tallest tower, breathing a stream of fire at it. On the ground and battlements of the walls surrounding the towers, armies clashed. Wizards cast spells and gibberers stood in ranks shouldering odd weapons that spit fire. Men opposing those gibberers fell back, as if struck with invisible arrows.

Swords and pikes, bows and arrows, armored warriors with lances charging atop massive horses, these things still played a part in battle. Creatures with split skulls littered the ground. Oracle returned to them, anointing them with scarlet paint. More than once a curl of red erased a previously painted head, or opened a rent in pristine armor. It almost seemed as if Oracle were somehow watching the battle’s progression and changing details as people lived or died.

As that thought occurred to Will, Oracle stooped to get more paint and revealed images of himself and Crow and Resolute. Resolute was magnificent and defiant, with gibberer bodies piled high around him. Even so, a pike had been thrust into his back, and a gibberer was raising him from the ground. And Crow, he bled from the poxy sort of wounds the gibberkin weapon created. His arrows had wrought havoc with their line, but Will could see Crow would die before the last of the Aurolani troops.

Of himself he saw little, for the space surrounding him remained bare stone. He didn’t understand why that was, or what it might mean. He took a step into the chamber to get a better angle on a flurry of work Oracle had begun near his image.

She whirled, the pot of yellow paint flying from her left hand. The pigment streaked out, like the tail on a shooting star. Will started forward, reaching a hand out to catch it, but the pot slowed in its trajectory and hung there, mocking his effort to save it.

Oracle stared at him, her brows furrowed, but a smile beginning to grow on her face. “You see it, you see it, so everything changes.” She stepped forward, plucked the pot out of the air, then scooped the spilled paint back into it. The few drops she missed fell to stain the stone floor.

A heavy hand landed on Will’s shoulder. The youth spun and found Resolute standing there, wearing an expression he’d not seen on the Vorquelf’s face before. “Come with me, Will. You’ve seen enough for tonight.”

Will blinked, wondering if thesullanciri Nefrai-laysh had somehow been able to take over the Vorquelf’s body. “But, what she’s painting …”

The Vorquelf turned Will around and gave him a gentle shove back into the passage to the upper chamber. “Ever since her eyes … Oracle always was a seer. Now what she sees are snips and tittles of the future.”

The youth tried to twist back to point at the mural, but Resolute blocked his line of sight and kept him moving. “So you’ll be speared on a pike, and Crow will be killed?”

“The future is not easy to unravel. Think of your life as a single thread. Mine, too, and Crow’s. Stretch that thread out from here to the horizon. How far along it can you see?” Will shrugged. “A bit, I guess.”

“Well, that siege she’s painting, that’s a point where many threads will come together. Think of it as a knot of threads. Some will end there, some will continue on. Seeing a knot of lives tangled in the future is easy for Oracle. Seeing where each thread will enter and leave, that is more difficult.”

“So you’re saying that from that mural I should assume there will be a siege of towers? That much we know, but what happens we don’t know?”

“That is my read of things, yes.” They emerged into the Vorquellyn chamber. “I will not worry too much, but I will sharpen my blades. You, I think, should go and get some sleep.”

The youth frowned and turned to look at Resolute as the Vorquelf settled himself down on a blanket. “You have always yelled at me, called me boy. What’s going on? Is it because I am the person you were looking for you’re being nice to me?”

Resolute’s silver eyes half shut. “No, not that; nor will you find me nice to you in the future. My job is to keep you alive, and to help you become the person we need to save the world from Chytrine, I guess, from the perspective of the steel, the blacksmith is very cruel; but there is only one way to forge a sword.

“As for my being nice to you, well…” The Vorquelf opened his arms. “For the first time in over a century I sleep in a place where I can look out at a vista I knew from my youth. Just for a bit, a tiny bit, I know the peace I knew then. It won’t last long.”

Will nodded. “I’m sorry.‘:

Resolute’s head came up and he regarded Will openly. “So am I, but I won’t let myself be seduced by this peace. My life is dedicated to restoring Vorquellyn, so others can know this, too.”

The edged growl returned to his voice. “And you, boy, are the sword that will win me what I want. So until you are perfect, you will be worked.”

“And if I don’t want to be worked?”

Resolute’s silver eyes tightened. “Understand one thing, boy, I need your bloodline more than I need you. If I have to get you on a dozen women so I have your children to train, I will do it. That future Oracle is painting down there is one I would like to change. That goal is more important than you. You will help, or like every other obstacle in my path for the last century, you will be swept aside.”

Will found the return of the nasty Resolute something of a comfort, but hardly something that induced easy sleep. He tossed and turned for a long time, his thoughts racing. Part of him thought that being asked to get children on a dozen women would be fun—and certainly in keeping with aspects of the Will the Nimble saga he had envisioned. Still, he realized that Resolute would choose the women and was pretty certain the Vorquelf’s process would drain all the fun from the enterprise.

Supervision wasn’t something Will figured he wanted in the midst of such intimacies.

Eventually he did fall asleep, and all too soon found Crow shaking him awake. Their horses had been saddled and prepared for a ride while Will had been allowed to sleep. He came to awareness slowly and gathered his stuff together. The rumbling of his stomach reminded him of the fact that his last meal had not made it all the way through his system. When he recalled why, however, his appetite died.

Will tossed his bedroll behind his saddle and looked up at Crow. “I guess all that’s left is for me to say good-bye to Oracle.”

“Resolute will do that for you.”

The young thief frowned. “Why can’t I? I mean, she isn’t angry that I saw her working last night, is she?”

Crow shook his head. “No, not angry, just exhausted. There are prophecies that involve you or someone of your blood, which makes you very important to the future. Right here, right now, you’re akin to a pebble dropped into the pond of the future. This close to Oracle, all she sees are the initial splashings. The further you ride away, the more perspective she will get. She’ll need that, and we’ll need that perspective.”

Will nodded for a half second, then his eyes narrowed. “That’s not the only reason, is it?”

“What do you mean?”

He pointed back toward the cavern. “If I go down there and look at what she has painted, I might see things I don’t like. I might do things to make sure those futures do not come about, right? That would ruin everything.”

“That’s an interesting insight. I don’t let what I see in there concern me, though. Oracle sees events, but not outcomes. Resolute and I talked about the tower under siege. We’re fairly certain that is Fortress Draconis, so we’re going to head there. How things turn out, well, that will depend upon what we do when we get there.”