“You will.”
“Yes.”
Gemmel wondered how sincere that threat might be; Dewan was not an Alban, and owed nothing to the Alban codes of honor. But then—if one was brutal and bore recent events in mind—neither did King Rynert. The wizard found that his mind was tending more and more towards considerations of honor and personal worth; towards how these might be valued; towards how his own honor might be weighed in the balance and found wanting. The thought was an uncomfortable one. If only it was possible to turn back time and undo past events…
For the briefest instant he found himself thinking about the great hold beneath Meneth Taran, and about the things which lay there. Then he dismissed the notion; that way was more dishonorable than to go on and try to recover what had been lost by his own efforts. Gemmel looked down at his own food—good beef and fresh vegetables, inventively blended with herbs and fiery spices—and despite the enticing aroma rising from the redware bowl he felt his hunger fade to no more than a faint emptiness. “So what is going on,
eldheisart
?” His use of Dewan’s old military rank was no accident.
Yet the Vreijek was—or seemed—unruffled by it. “Someone wants Aldric Talvalin. Someone is prepared to pay a very large amount of money for the privilege— witness the presence of the battleram, which we both suspect might have him aboard. Or—or they have the rank to authorise such an action. And I don’t know which would worry me the most.” He drank more wine; not much, just enough to flavor his mouth which, if it was anything like Gemmel’s, had the sour dryness of failure in it. “And
why
would they want him? I should have asked Rynert that much at least.”
“What? The man who tried to have us both killed? What a waste of breath
that
would have been!”
“At least we know that he was taken from here alive.”
“Yes—but how many days ago?”
“Two, three…” Dewan hesitated, a quizzical expression crossing his face. “Would Marek Endain know anything about it?” He threw the demon queller’s name abruptly into the conversation; it had been Gemmel’s idea to send the Cernuan after Aldric, as much to keep an eye on him as to help or protect him, and Dewan had acceded reluctantly to the idea—an idea which had seemed to him more full of risk than of use. But Marek’s last report had been a garbled thing, full of wild surmise, which had ended with the information that he was now— involuntarily—first councillor to the new Overlord of Seghar. And that the Overlord was a woman.
“Marek has his own troubles.” Gemmel had read that last report as well, and had found it mildly amusing. The demon queller had been no more than a casual professional acquaintance, a sharer of scholarly interests, and to think of his rotund silhouette as the power behind any throne—no matter how small—was a notion which provoked a thin smile even whilst Gemmel’s mind was occupied with more serious matters. Matters touching what even the Albans would regard as personal honor…
Dewan stared at him a moment, then shrugged to himself and drained his cup, throwing back his head to let the last fragrant drops flow into his mouth, and to allow the brilliance of the day to wash his face with azure heat. Then he choked.
And dropped the cup.
Its explosive thousand-sharded smash on the table right in front of him snapped Gemmel from his introspection, and he stared at the Vreijek with an expression that was half anger and half a fear that Dewan might have been stricken again with illness. But the big man’s head was still tilted back, his mouth hanging open and stained to the chin with a dribble of red wine that hadn’t quite reached its proper destination. Yet there were none of those signs which Gemmel had so feared: no shock of pain, no clutching at the chest. Only undiluted awe.
The wizard stared skyward in his turn. And remembered:
...
Long, long ago the firedrakes flew
,
And flaming flickered in the sunlit sky.
But firedrakes fly no more within the sight of men
...
Until now…
The sky was blue; pure, pale, late-autumn blue, unblemished by any cloud of black or white or gray. But across it ran a wisp of white, fine as a hair and so straight as to almost be a silver seam in the vaulting firmament. And at its uttermost tip, like the perfect barb of a perfect spear, was a minute black filament of darkness, mo-mentarily flowing from cruciform to no more than a dark scratch against the heavens with a rhythm that was the beating of great wings. No one else had seen it. No one else could have known what it was… except for Gemmel and Dewan. And neither of the two considered for a moment that it could be other than… Ymareth.
“Splendour of God,” breathed Dewan ar Korentin, and there was much more than just an oath born of disbelief in his reverent voice. He was now as Gemmel had been then—years ago; lives ago.
As any man would be, possessed of an ounce of imagination or an ounce of romance in a soul no matter how prosaic. Any man, any woman, any child would want to see this wonder above all wonders of the world: a beast, a creature, a being from the depths of legend of many people, alive and magnificent in the clear cold air that was scored by the vapor-trail of heat pouring from its own mouth, glinting dark and glorious against the azure arch of Heaven. Fifteen thousand vertical feet separated it from its stunned audience of two, so that details were indistinguishable through a haze of distance and the glare of the noonday sun; Gemmel did not subject it to the indignity of close scrutiny through his long-glass. All of those who mattered knew already—that this was a firedrake. A dragon.
The
dragon.
Ymareth.
And it was scything northward on the track of the battleram which they had seen that morning, flitting out of Tuenafen on the wings of urgency across the sea of hammered steel. Not knowing that greater, darker wings were driving in its wake.
“Innkeeper!” bellowed Dewan, “bring me the best wine that you have left, and drinking vessels worthy of it if you still have any!” The man did, and had, and brought them all: tall, slender goblets of rock crystal and burnished silver, stemmed so that they stood a foot above the table’s surface. The wine was golden Hau-verne,
matherneil
, bottled in green glass; but Dewan cracked the battle open on the table’s edge with a single snap of his wrist that sent both cork and bottleneck flying off to somewhere at his right-hand-side—then countered such brusque soldierly impatience with a mannerly flourish worthy of a courtier as he filled first Gemmel’s glass and then his own with the rich rare vintage. His grin, all white teeth and curling mustache as he lifted the goblet and stared at Gemmel across its rim, was filled with such pure, happy mischief that it stripped ten years from his weathered face.
“Drink hail and health,
purcanyath
sorcerer. To Aldric. And to aid unsuspected by all. Including, I think, the lad himself.
Hail
!”
Gemmel drank: once, twice and then to drain the cup. He began to laugh so hard that tears streamed from his crinkled emerald eyes. Or was the laughter only to conceal those tears which would have flowed in any case?
Gemmel didn’t know.
Aldric’s eyes opened sluggishly; there was a throbbing in and behind them, and he knew both instinctively and from bitter experience that if too much light startled that throbbing, he would be very, very sick. There was an acrid, vinegary sensation in his mouth and nostrils: the taste and chemical smell of whatever had put him to sleep—yet again!—and it occurred to him through a spasm of mild irritation which had nothing to do with trie peril that he might be in, that he had spent the greater part of the past few days either drunk, or drugged, or knocked unconscious.
It was… undignified.
Aldric Talvalin was not a religious man; he had ceased to believe in the so-called benevolence of Heaven on the day his father died, and since that day—whether through an ostentatious grudge against deity or a private reluctance to be hypocritical—he had refused to cross the threshold of any holy house. But there were times, and this was one of them, when he had the distinct feeling that Someone was trying to make some sort of point.
Just now his whole sensory world seemed to be moving in a dozen quite illogical directions at once. Then things fell into focus—more or less—and sounds which had meant nothing bare seconds ago enhanced his realization of reality. His world—or at least his immediate surroundings—
was
moving. He could see the rolling of reflected light across a ceiling that was far, far too close, far closer than it had any right to be, and in his ears was a constant liquid rushing, blended with the multiple notes of half-a-hundred different creaks from wood and cordage. And he knew at once where he was. Or at least, he knew as soon as the narcotic clouds had cleared sufficiently from the dazed organ which did duty as his brain.
He was on board a ship.
With that conclusion, someone at the back of his mind broke into ironic applause. But it was true enough; he was aboard ship, and a ship not only under way but—if the sensations transmitted through his spine were any judge—moving at considerable speed. Flank speed, the Imperial Fleet called it, and Aldric thought to himself that Imperial terms of reference were all of a sudden highly appropriate, because the only vessel he knew of within several leagues of coast that was capable of such immediately apparent speed would be one or other of those he had seen in Tuenafen harbor.
An Imperial battleram!
The exhalation of breath which hissed out between his teeth was also a sigh of resigned defeat. So they had him after all—whoever
they
were. Kathur had won. Had the pleasures of her company been worth this and what was doubtless to follow? Aldric doubted it.
He had no need to move overmuch, or even to look around, to know that he was completely unarmed; completely helpless. That memory was clear enough, beyond the soporific fog: the hands which had stripped him of every blade which he carried, and which had sought out and removed the belts and laces from his clothing for fear they might become nooses or garottes.
Whether they feared that he would use such makeshift weapons against them or on himself had either not been clear or had been forgotten. Certainly if he was being carried to a lengthy and unpleasant death, then suicide whether in the form of
tsepanak’ulleth
, or something less formal but just as final, would be a preferred solution to be sought without delay. Certainly if he was
kailin-eir o
f the old school, then they would have good reason to fear that he might kill himself and thus cheat them.
But he was not.
Aldric stared at the ceiling and admitted a fact which he had secretly known this long, long time: he would sooner live than die. No matter that it might well be true of most men, it was not true of Albans and especially high-clan Albans,
cseirin-born
, like himself. And yet unlike himself. “Where there’s life, there’s hope,” Gemmel Errekren had told him once. Then, he had snorted in derision. Then, it had been the accepted and expected reaction. Then even then, it had been only a mask to the way he truly felt. Had he truly followed the beautiful, savage, bloody Honor Code of the
kailin
, how many times should he now have been dead by his own hand?
Too many. He remained alive through his own choice alone, and that was not cowardice no matter what might be said, or what had been said—though grant the truth, Ho man had yet been so in love with death to say it in his hearing. No. Cowardice was running away—not tactical Withdrawal, but turning tail in flight whether that flight ted to the woods or the hills.
Or the dark lands beyond the stab of a
tsepan’s
blade.
Courage was standing fast, setting to rights, taking the hard path. Courage gained and justified trust from friends and from companions—and from self. Aldric stared at the ceiling and grinned momentarily.
I
must remember not to trust you near complaisant, pretty women
, he told himself sternly.
A most lamentable failing
.
Except where one is concerned.
But—his thoughts came back to present reality with a jolt—who commands all this? He could think of none among his possible enemies with such power and wealth and resource as had been so arrogantly displayed here. And there were not so many enemies, at that: the enemies of Aldric Talvalin showed a tendency to get themselves killed. But even so, a courtesan of the first rank as bait, the firing of an expensive tavern to close the trap, and the use of both a squad of
tulathin
and at least one battleram complete with crew and marine contingent! That bespoke either a disgusting private wealth, a stranglehold on someone with power and privilege—or Power and privilege itself.
Power that involved politics, rank, status and an inde-pendently controlled unit of the Imperial military. Power that suggested the Emperor himself…
Or the Grand Warlord.
Woydach
Etzel was one of the very few who fulfilled all the present criteria. He had access to a quite obscene amount of money—for which he had no need to account; he had the rank to discourage idle questioners; and he had the power necessary to maneuver warships like pieces on a gaming board.
So this was what a pawn felt like when a crown piece was hammered down on it and it was flung back into the box until next time. Except that carven bone and ivory felt no pain when the end came, whereas Aldric doubted he would be so lucky.
The cabin door rattled, then clicked, betraying the presence of a lock on the outside. It slid open and the young man who came in was wearing a marine’s half-armor flashed with the single rank-bar of an officer-cadet—
en tau-kortagor
, in the Empire’s cumbersome system of named ranks. Improbably enough, the young man was smiling. “Ah, good—you’re awake.” More improbably still, he was speaking in good—well, passable Alban. “No ill-effects, I trust?” Most improbably of all, he seemed genuinely concerned. Solicitude from such a source was so improbable… no dammit, so totally unlikely that Aldric thought his ears were playing him tricks, and he stared blankly at the pleasant-faced
tau-kortagor
until the question was repeated. Then, and only then, did he blink and shake himself back to some sort of sense.