“That’s a relief,” said Gemmel, meaning it. He glanced at the sky: Ymareth had swept away from the Tower and was for the moment invisible through the snow, but the old wizard was quite aware of what was going on. The dragon was lining up for a landing run, and in this filthy flying weather was taking plenty of airspace for it. “Now, since we have a moment, Dewan. Explain this young woman.”
Dewan did, editing where he thought it wise, but even then wasn’t entirely sure what Gemmel thought of it all. The wizard’s jewel-green eyes were fixed on him, and if they blinked once during the telling of the tale, Dewan ar Korentin didn’t see it. Still there was no reaction— favourable, disapproving or even dismissive—and to break the uncomfortable stillness he looked up and asked, “Where’s the dragon?” even though he had noticed it gone before he began to speak.
Gemmel regarded him disdainfully, but forbore to sniff. “Out there”—he pointed downwind—”and coming back.” Then with just the merest touch of vitriol, “Any more questions? Or can we actually do something constructive?”
Same old wizard, thought Dewan. He still hadn’t really come to terms with what he had learned about Gemmel Errekren, but there were occasional flashes of expression or phrase which were comforting in their familiarity. He shrugged, the movement accentuated both by his furs and by the snow which had collected on them. “Whatever you like. Lead on.”
But not even Gemmel was willing to go inside the Red Tower itself. Caution, superstition, a desire not to tempt providence in its present shape of those poised and ominous spiked gates. Or, for Dewan’s and Kyrin’s part at least, the obvious if unadmitted wide-eyed wonder they both showed as Ymareth the dragon came gliding into view through the very teeth of the snowbearing wind, its flight-path cleared in brief, bright swathes of fire. Heat and the smell of steam washed across them as it settled onto the snowbound earth in a rolling cloud of vapor, and its head swung to regard them as it grinned that long fox’s grin, all fangs and tongue and—this time—flames and smoke.
“Many others watched,” Ymareth reported, “from doorways and from windows. But I doubt thee will be troubled by their interest.” Just to add weight to the pronouncement, its great wedge head turned away a moment and unleashed another blast towards the city proper. Somewhere in the distance, beyond the rushing bellow of the flame, a chorus of doors slammed shut.
“Any’s-sign of him yet?” Kyrin managed. Her voice was as steady as she could make it—which meant that it could still be understood. Just about. But then, she wasn’t quite so used to the company of dragons as Dewan had become.
“Nothing yet.” Less inclined to worries than the other two, Gemmel had wandered a good deal nearer to the Tower, and now he returned with a motley collection of things bundled in his arms or draped across the Dragonwand. “Just these.” He was mystified by the discovery; a helmet, a cloak and an overrobe with rank-tabs on it. “The rest of the armor’s back there as well. Looks like somebody wasn’t wearing much when they left.”
“Looks like they didn’t stop to put these on, you mean. And I can’t say I’m surprised.” Dewan reached[* *]out for the helmet, smiling thinly. A diamond over twin bars, all silver.
Hautheisart
. He grunted and dropped it into the snow, then nudged it carelessly with a boot. “I didn’t reach so exalted a rank.” There was a touch of bitterness in his voice. “Because I was born on the wrong side of the border. No other reason, even though they always had several— Aldric!”
The helmet, kicked, rolled sluggishly aside and was forgotten as all three—all four, because Ymareth lowered its head to see inside the Tower as well—looked through the gateway to where Dewan had first heard the patter of approaching footsteps and Aldric’s voice, trying to make some explanation in two directions at once.
“Another thing,” he was saying, “is that one of my companions is, well, different. Don’t be frightened; you won’t be harmed.”
“But how different can he be, if we’re—
Father of Fires
!”
“True enough, I suppose; but I didn’t say ‘he’ at all.”
It was big, strong Chirel who was most upset by her first sight of Ymareth, reclining in the melting snow and gazing at her through those awesome phosphorescent eyes. She screamed and would have fainted on the spot had not someone—Aldric suspected Kyrin—been ready with a generous handful of snow unsympathetically applied. Even afterwards she seemed seldom far from hysterics.
While Marevna was… Marevna. As serene as he had seen her at their first meeting. It was only when he watched closely that he saw how rapidly the white puffs of exhaled breath were pumping from her slack, slightly smiling lips. The calmness, the control, even the smile were all shields to hide behind, just as much as Bruda’s mask had ever been. Something with which to fend off reality. But the reality of the dragon for Princess Marevna was a wild, wavering blend of terror and delight; discovering that at least some of the old stories were true was enough to overwhelm anyone.
“My ladies, my gentlemen,” Aldric courteously pitched his voice loud enough to include Ymareth in the situation, “I would as soon not wait a moment longer here; we’ve already outstayed any welcome Egisburg might offer. Mount up, all; let’s go.” Then more privately to Kyrin, after an embrace that was of necessity both brief and restrained: “I already knew you were beautiful, love; but this goes beyond mere cleverness.” He waved a hand towards the horses. “How did you know to bring exactly the right number?”
Kyrin laughed and laid her head sideways on his shoulder—the nearly-bared one that the chamber door had clipped. “Easy enough: your horse, my horse, the packpony—and everything else in the stable.” That would have been Bruda’s, Tagen’s and Voord’s mounts, of course. “Although somebody’s going to be riding a pack-saddle. I suggest the pretty princess.”
“Jealous already?”
“God, no! She’s lightest, that’s all, and I don’t want the horse overloaded,” Kyrin walked away, a little distance beyond Dewan, then thought a moment and turned back. “But I did see that piece, you had in Tuena-fen. Don’t do it again…”
Ar Korentin, between them, looked with amusement from one to the other. And froze.
“All
stop
!” said Lord Commander Voord.
He stood just at the corner of the Red Tower’s gatehouse, his face pinched and bluing with cold, and the
telek
in his outstretched hand wavered with the shivering that racked his body. “I’ve been waiting for you; listening to you congratulate each other, listening to you feeling so pleased with yourselves! I’ve been waiting a long time.”
Not even the dragon would have seen him, for he was no longer wearing armor, or rank-robe, or cloak. Instead he was dressed in what he must have been wearing under the armor: close-fitting garments of some white material which blended with the snow and made him all but invisible. Too late now, Dewan glanced with all the bright vision of hindsight at the rank-marked
seisac
helmet he had thrown aside. Yet how should he have known?
Other than the white tunic and trews, Voord wore one other thing—itself white now with the sleet and snow which had fallen on it while he crouched in the freezing shadows and waited for his opportunity with that dread-ful hatred-fuelled patience, but a thing more usually black as night. A sleeveless vest. A
coyac
made of wolfskin.
Aldric was the only one to realize what was meant by his wearing of that garment, but the instant he opened his mouth Voord’s
telek
lined up on his face. It still trembled, but not so much that he might miss, “Say it,” the
hautheisart
invited. “Say anything at all and see how far it gets before this rams it back down your throat.”
Nobody spoke. Aloud. But inside his head Aldric heard the dragon’s voice, carried on a whisper of metallic sound that Voord would never recognise as speech. “Thou, Dragon-lord, and all of thy companions block my way—else I would roast him to ash and cinders. Move aside.” Encharmed with understanding, Gemmel and Dewan heard the words as well and where line of sight permitted, knowing eyes met in swift agreement. Then the sorcerer took a step to one side and Dewan to the other.
Voord glanced at both and smiled like a shark. “Back to where you were,” he snarled, “or this one dies!” The
telek
levelled at Kyrin. “Don’t think that I’m here and you’re there and that thing”—a chin-jerk at Ymareth— “is where it is just by accident. Oh, no. Credit me with that much wit at least.”
“W-what do you want?” Marevna an-Sherban was no longer quite so calm as she appeared—unless it was a chillborn shiver that ran the tremor through her voice— but there was still all the dignity of the Imperial line in the way she faced Voord now.
“Want? You, of course, and alive—for the present. And they’ll let me take you with me, because then they’ll think you have a chance. And because they know what I’ll do right now if anybody tries to play the hero!”
“Then do it right now,” Marevna snapped, “and at least spare me the delights of your company!”
Voord almost did; his lean face twisted with rage and had he been just a little closer he would have taken pleasure from knocking her to the ground. But discretion returned to him just in time, and with it the realization that any change of position whatsoever might leave him open to a devastating reprisal. “No, lady,” he said, and now it was undiluted fury rather than cold which was making him shiver, “not until you ask again. Beg. Without that pride of yours. You’ll lose that first, I promise—because I’m due a reward for all my trouble. And then I’ll make a gift of you to—” He stopped short, leaving the uncompleted sentence hanging in the cold air, but his smile remained and that was quite enough.
Kyrin, Dewan and Gemmel had all seen Kathur the Vixen and all knew exactly what he meant. So did Aldric—not because of what he had seen, but because of what he had been told by Voord himself. Those threats. That “persuasion.” He could guess well enough what the future might hold for Princess Marevna, and as slowly as the pouring of chilled honey his hand began an imperceptible climb up and across to where his own
telek
was pushed through his belt.
“If I think rightly,
hlensyarl
,” Voord continued, staring malevolently at Aldric now, “if I remember things that I’ve been told, you’ve been a thorn in my flesh for a long time. If I’m due a reward, then so are you. Something suitable.” His
telek
steadied as he braced it over the crook of his left arm and squinted down the weapon’s polished, moisture-spotted cylinder. “Enjoy it!”
He squeezed the trigger.
In that instant which joined word to action, Dewan ar Korentin spasmed sideways from where he stood between Aldric and Kyrin. It wasn’t a leap—nothing so dignified—but a convulsion of muscles, moving his fur-bulky body from where it had been—
—To where Kyrin was. Because he knew the way a mind like Voord’s would work. And he was right.
Aldric saw it all: saw, and could do nothing. He saw Voord’s finger flex and the
telek
jolt as a dart sped from it; saw the missile’s metal glint as it flew; and saw Dewan wrenched out of line in midair the way a running rabbit jerks and tumbles when the arrow hits it square, saw him flop against Kyrin and bring her down into the snow. And saw the brilliant spattering of blood that stained it.
“No…!”
His hand blurred the last few inches to the waiting maple-wood stock and tugged his own
telek
free, jabbing the safety-slide with one thumb while the weapon was still rising, and snap-shot in the flicker that it came on line. The dart, his dart, hit Voord underneath the chin and hammered deep into the soft pale flesh.
And then fell free again, unstained. The Vlechan’s outline blurred, altered, contracted in a shape-shift far, far faster than Aldric had expected would be possible— and fast or slow, none of the others had expected it at all.
Between one eye-blink and the next, man became Beast. A huge wolf stood in Voord’s place now, its pelt pure white save for the black saddle-mark across its shoulders—as if it wore a jacket. A wolf which, as it turned to flee, ran slightly lame on a twisted, crippled left front paw.
Ravening energies splashed across the ground where it had been as Aldric and Gemmel both unleashed the power contained in Dragonwand and spellstone—but the wolf was already gone. Behind them, Ymareth went for the sky in a single bound and a thunderous clap of wings, passing low above their heads with a huge hot rush from a fanged mouth already agape and flaring. Fire scoured the ground—and snow became superheated steam, the grass and shrubs it shrouded turned to ash and the very topsoil baked to sterile dust from the Red Tower’s base to its perimeter wall. But in all that open space, there was no wolf either alive or dead.
“Don’t die, Dewan. Oh please, don’t die!” On her knees in the snow, Kyrin held one slack-fingered hand in both of hers as if the grip might somehow help; but she had already seen the look in Gemmel’s eyes as the old man straightened and she knew her words were worthless. Just air.
Marevna and Chirel stood off to one side, knowing that this was none of their affair right now. Their arms were about one another, for comfort more than warmth, and Chirel did not stir even when Ymareth landed and stalked forward with that grave, pacing grace to spread the vast canopy of its wings above them all.
Dewan’s eyes opened and gazed at the three around him. He looked at Gemmel, found a sort of smile some-where and offered it wanly to the sorcerer. “I thought my heart might let me down,” he said quite clearly. “So did you- But not like this.” His eyes closed again briefly, a little fluttering movement like a drawing-down of blinds, and could not open quite so wide next time. “You didn’t tell them how I died, that time on the beach. He brought me back, then. Now?”
Gemmel said nothing. Could say nothing. He only shook his head.
“Oh . . .” Again that smile, but fraying fast. “Just as well. Man in—in my position could get earless without the fear of… It. But… hurts, old wizard, old friend.
Hurts
!” This time his eyes were squeezed shut and the lips half-hidden by his snow-caked mustache compressed to a thin line. “
I-I
wish it wouldn’t do that,” he said again, shakily. “Kyrin, lady?” He forced the hand she cradled to close a little, enough to squeeze her own fingers with a gentle, reassuring pressure. “Just for me: tell L-Lyseun I did love her. Really. But tell her, b-because I never did. I’m cold. I hurt. I…