Ymareth, crouched huge and impossible in the broken moonlight a few yards from the Vreijek’s back, watched him even though the man was unaware of such a scrutiny. “He is as one who has looked upon the face of his god,” said the dragon softly, privately, for Gemmel’s ears alone. “Seldom has this form given such joy.” Yellow-white fire danced lazily in fanged jaws, but there was no threat in the gesture; only satisfaction and a great, gentle amusement.
“I did not teach you blasphemy,” returned Gemmel a touch sourly. “And you aren’t a god.”
“I did not say so—that was thy word. But now that thee makes mention of it…”
“Don’t!” It was only after his twitchy, nervous response that Gemmel realized how he was being teased. Almost affectionately so, if the word applied to dragons.
“Thee taught me the appreciation of humor, Maker. So enjoy the jest.”
“I taught thee—you—so that you would better understand humankind. Not to make jokes. Stop it.”
“Not at thy command. Not now.” Ymareth’s mind-heard voice hardened, became severe and almost reproving. “Thou art no longer worthy of such obedience. Not now. In the future… Perhaps. But know: the Dragon-lord is he who refused escape and safety for his honor’s sake. Remember it, Maker-that-was.”
Gemmel ignored all the strata of implication in the dragon’s speech, as much because he was unwilling to consider them just now as for any other reason. But he looked into the dragon’s eyes, as few men might have done, and after several moments smiled. “Then I commend myself to the future,” he said simply. “But what has been done, has been done—and what I must do, I will do. Ymareth Firedrake, I am
lonely
. You know my mind as none other, yet not even you can dream of such loneliness. Always, always alone. And my son the Dragon-lord, with the face of the son of my blood; surely that is a bitter jest of the Darkness.”
“So thou namest now a jest of the Darkness. Of Fate. Of whatever name thy choice desires. But a jest—such as those I am forbidden. Is that justice, Maker?”
There was logic in the dragon’s reasoning.
Do as I say
, thought Gemmel, dredging up a phrase from years past,
not do as I do
. “Your pardon, then,” he said, as he had never thought he would. “For my lost honor’s sake, I commend thee to the Dragon-lord Aldric Talvalin. My fosterling. My son. Guard him. Aid him. Keep him safe.”
“All those and more.” Ymareth spread great, dark wings in a stretch, and yawned like a cat so that for just one instant Gemmel was gazing right down the dragon’s throat. Fire slumbered uneasily within it. “But tonight is an ill night for watching; the heat in yonder city makes confusion against the cold air.”
“What if…” Gemmel began to say. The dragon looked at him—nothing more—but the wizard fell awkwardly and immediately silent.
“There is the Eye of the Dragon,” said Ymareth. “Thus he is at once within my notice—and thine also, if it is thy wish to spend again a little power. That power which the Eye has stolen betimes, these few days past, so that I at least might see.”
Gemmel looked from the Dragonwand to the dragon and remembered the stinging hurts which he had suffered willingly or not; and he might well have become angry had not Dewan’s voice slashed through the chill night air like a razor.
“Now what of the Dragonwand, Ymareth, Lord Firedrake?” Gemmel, listening, would have doubted Dewan ar Korentin capable of such delicate courtesy as the mannered form of Drusalan which he now employed. Rut though he listened, the wizard did no more and passed no comment either then or at any other time. “As if in a dream,” continued Dewan, “I remember that Aldric Talvalin gave his promise that the gift of a talisman of power would be returned to its rightful owner and its rightful place. Yet I see it here. So then, what of the Dragonwand?”
Ymareth’s eerie, terrible, beautiful head turned slowly as if surprised to hear such words from such an unlikely source. So far as black and steel and goldbright scales could hold the expression, there was warm pleasure on the dragon’s face and in its phosphorescent, unwatchable eyes. “It is fine that thee cares for such a matter here and now. But be assured, Dewan ar Korentin,” and hearing his name from such a source made Dewan shiver slightly, as it had made Aldric shiver before him, “that I am in no haste or eagerness; for such is not required. Be at thy ease.
Kailin-eir
Talvalin gave his promise. That is enough. He promised its return when all was accomplished and that time is not yet. Though he knows not yet whose will he does, he knows full well the meaning of what he does. Ykraith Dragonwand is a part of that.”
Though Dewan could sense the needle of an insult somewhere, buried deep, he was unsure if the dragon had meant deliberate hurt by it or merely a goad to Gemmel “the Maker”—a title which to Dewan had many facets of significance—who had become, in the phrase which he had overheard, “Maker-that-was.” He turned, slowly, no longer speaking half over his shoulder as he had done when first trying to come to terms with so many enormities, and deep inside himself Dewan—
ex-Eldheisart
of the Bodyguard, king’s confidant, warrior’s friend, wizard’s acquaintance and now most impossible of all, dragon’s rider—felt himself dwindle into insignificance.
“Ymareth,” he said, dropping from the formal mode, “this is near the heart of the Drusalan Empire. Aldric, Gemmel and myself—we are three individuals against a mighty realm. What can
you
do?”
A gush of fire from the dragon’s jaws threw down stark shadows beyond the trees of the small hollow where they had landed: a billow of pale, cool flame that was the dragon’s laughter. “O ar Korentin,” the words forming within his head had an aura of chuckling about them, fluttering like an alcohol flame, “if thou art within a mile of what I
can
do, ask again. If asking is required…” Then the flickering amusement died away, fading like a morning mist in sunshine. “Enough. For all the darkness it is but evening yet, however these Drusalans calculate their hours of night and day. Best therefore that I not remain. From thy words, good ar Korentin, I do not exist within the boundaries of this Empire. That makes me sad. But for all my sadness I would as soon give no priest of this land a conflict of belief. Yet. Later, later they will see, and know, and believe indeed. I go. But remember,” and had the words been spoken rather than heard within the confines of their listeners’ heads, they would have been lost in the sounds as Ymareth prepared to rise once more into the air, “remember that I watch by Dragonwand and Dragon’s Eye. Be aware of aid uncalled-for. Farewell!”
The downward slap of air all but threw Dewan off his feet, for all that he was expecting something of the sort. By the time he had wiped powdered snow from his eyes, the dragon’s lean black silhouette was no more than a scudding disruption of the cloud-occluded stars; but it mattered little to Dewan that he could see no more than a dark razor-slash interrupting the jewelled twinkle of the winter sky. He stood in silence and he stared, his head tipped right back on his shoulders, and he did not move from that position until Gemmel reached out to lightly touch him on the arm.
“So,” the old wizard said, “how much do you know of me now, Dewan?”
The Vreijek’s unwinking gaze shifted from the stars and that which flitted across them to Gemmel’s bearded face, blinked twice and came to focus. Dewan smiled then, very gently. “You are not Dragon-lord. Not Maker. Only Maker-that-was. You must explain those titles to me, Gemmel.”
“Soon. You have said what I am not—what else?”
“A—a wizard. And a scholar. A man wise in many arts: And the foster-father of, of my friend.”
“Then Aldric is your friend… ?”
“Yes. Because he speaks the truth—at least to me— as only a friend can do. Because we talk as equals. And because we can insult each other!” That last was accompanied by a laugh, but Gemmel had been reading between the lines all along and needed no signal to understand. In the Alban culture, and especially among the high clan
cseirin-born
, any men who could swap insults had to be friends. Otherwise one of them would be dead.
“Then tell me,” Gemmel purred, “what has he told you of
en-altrou
Errekren, old Snowbeard his sorcerous foster-father? For he must have told you something, surely?”
“Enough.” Dewan looked at Gemmel with a clear-eyed gaze that even in the darkness suggested much unsaid. “He told me that you lived beneath
Glaselyu Menethen
. I laughed at him then, but he insisted—so is it true:
under
the Blue Mountains?”
Gemmel nodded, and at that starlit acquiescence Dewan swallowed audibly before he dared continue to speak. But when he did, the words began tumbling out with all the excited eagerness of a boy maybe a quarter of the Vreijek’s real age—a boy Dewan might once have been, and a man he might yet have been, before or without the Drusalan Empire and its military service. “Under the mountain—Lord God! Under Thunderpeak.”
Gemmel had not said so—had not used the name at all—and at the back of his mind he began to wonder just how much—knowledge and guesses both—Aldric had told Dewan when they were both just drunk enough to exchange confidences. He knew that the younger man made friends quickly and thoughtlessly, in the way that often led to hurt on both sides. And hurt to third parties as well.
“He said that you travelled as well, great distances to many countries, before you came to Alba—”
“Came
back
to Alba, Dewan,” the wizard interrupted softly. It was enough to put a slight hesitation in the flood of words, and a thoughtfulness as well.
“You had a son. He… died.”
“Yes. Long ago.”
“You told Rynert the King, that day in Cerdor when you found out about… how Aldric had been given to the Empire.”
“I told him that my son died. But not how he died; nor who killed him; nor anything about the consequences of that killing. I told him only what you heard yourself. That I had lost a son—and much more than a son.” Gemmel shivered. He looked around him and fixed his attention on a tree stump left by some woodcutter earlier in the year. “I’m cold, Dewan,” he said. “Cold… and I’m beginning to hate the dark. We’d both be better for some heat and light.”
Without waiting for agreement—or disagreement, or warning, or anything else—he raised one hand and pronounced the Invocation of Fire. A pulse of force gathered around and then sprang from his fingertips, pale as a dying candle, so weak that daylight would have made it no more than a half-sensed haze in the air; but for all that, the snow beneath its track flashed from white solid to white steam with no intervening stage as liquid. Then it hit the stump: a core of unseasoned wood trapped in spongy, sodden rot and topped off with more snow. There was a sound like the crack of the world’s biggest whip… and the stump burned as hot and clean as holly dried for kindling.
“Better,” said Gemmel, and scooped up a little snow to ease the blisters rising on his hand. That small discomfort was well worth it. Heedless of lingering dampness, he dropped his small pack to the ground in the lee of a clump of bushes and sat down on it, stretching chilled feet gratefully towards the blaze.
Dewan looked at him and drew breath as if to say something; then thought better of it and sat down in his turn. “Now. Tell me. And tell me first of all: who killed your son?”
“I… I never knew his name. But he was the uncle of the now
-Woydach
.”
“Etzel’s uncle?” Dewan stared at the fire, not understanding at first; then, still staring at the fire and remembering how it had been created, understanding all too well. “Oh God.
That
one! The one who was—”
“Burned. Roasted alive where he sat on his horse and laughed at my dead son. Killed by magic, Dewan. Killed by me.”
“Then
you
—you’re behind the Empire’s edict on sorcery!”
“The Grand Warlord’s edict—but yes, I am. I, and the thing I did.”
“Fifty years ago,” Dewan muttered, thinking aloud and not meaning to; then he considered his own words and turned abruptly to face the wizard—literally, for now he was staring carefully full at Gemmel’s face. It was white-bearded and careworn, but Dewan was giving it more than the casual glance that was usually already colored by preconceived assumptions concerning wizards— and those who called themselves wizards. It was an old face only until Dewan tried to set a value in years on “old”; and then it wasn’t quite so venerable after all.
A man in his fit and healthy middle sixties. Too fit and healthy for such an age. Old enough—and yet not old enough. Aldric had said how much like himself Gemmel’s son must have looked; but when they had first met, the Alban was already twenty years of age and probably seeming older through the fright and grief he had experienced. Either Gemmel had been a father in his teens—not impossible, but unlikely given how strait-laced his morals could occasionally be. Or Dewan’s arithmetic was at fault—which was equally unlikely in this case of simple addition.
Or something was not what it seemed.
“Gemmel?” There was a damnable tremor in his voice when he spoke, but the wizard gave no sign of having heard it. “Gemmel, how… how old are you?”
“Older than I was yesterday. But not so old as I’ll be tomorrow.” That there was no smile with the words chilled Dewan more than the snow-melt soaking into his clothes. “It’s all a matter of time. And time is something I always had plenty of. Except now. Now I have far too much!”
Dewan felt his skin start to crawl beneath his furs, his armor and his damp clothing, because he had a feeling— no, he
knew
—that he was about to hear things he didn’t want to, yet equally didn’t want to miss. He wished Aldric were here, with that healthy streak of cynical humor which was just what Dewan needed right now. Because Dewan,
ex-eldheisart
, ex-bodyguard, ex- all the rest, knew something else with absolute certainty.
He was terrified.
But not so terrified as to get up and walk away. Gemmel was gazing at the star-shot sky as though searching for something—the return of Ymareth, perhaps; or perhaps not. It was more as if he searched for that something beyond the sky that neither of them could see, a something that only he might hope for.