She was still draped across him, head cuddled against his shoulder so that he felt the warmth of each tiny, purring breath, their limbs all tangled with each other and the sheets. Moving one hand up the smoothness of her back, Aldric twisted to kiss her gently on the cheek. “Mmm… ?” Kyrin ventured drowsily, and the young
eijo
felt her eyelashes flutter against his throat. She stirred a little in the crook of his left arm, almost awake now.
“I love you, Kyrin,” he whispered, touching her face with his lips. They were words he knew she did not want to hear, but equally he felt they had to be said. The girl breathed in deeply, raised her head and opened her eyes wide, then she thought better of it and half-closed them again. Aldric realised she had not heard him—and with that heavy-lidded sapphire gaze resting on him, he lacked the courage to repeat himself. Coward, he thought.
Or over-gentle gentleman… ? “I think we’ve reached our destination,” the Alban ventured in a louder voice. “Is it morning, or could you put that light out?”
“Morning. Sorry, but I can’t do anything about it.” Wriggling experimentally, Kyrin succeeded in working her feet free of the knot of bedclothes and sat up. “You could pull the shutters over,” she suggested.
“I could,” yawned Aldric, making no attempt to do so. “But since you’re now closer to them…” Kyrin considered this; then she hit him with a pillow.
Somewhat later, as they dozed in a cooling breeze from the still-unshuttered port, ar Korentin rapped loudly on the door. Being an officer and a gentleman— and no fool—he did not open it, but called, “Breakfast, if you want any,” through the timbers. Aldric was fairly sure he heard a muted chuckle as the Vreijek walked away, and tried to calculate just what time it really was. Indecently late even for lovers, he guessed, and with a wry grin swung his feet to the floor.
Thanks to the weather they were able to eat on deck under an awning, though Aldric seemed disinterested in his food for once; he spent much of his time leaning over the stern-rail with an untouched cup of something cradled in one hand, staring at the green bulk of Techaur Island. It was certainly worth staring at, especially for someone who had never seen anything bigger than a lake-eyot before. Quite apart from the other things he knew about Techaur, about the Dragonwand… and about the dragon.
Most of the island reared sheer out of the water, and there surf crashed ruinously against rocks which jutted from the sea like menacing teeth; but the cove in which the galion lay was protected by cliffs on one side and a sloping headland on the other, with a sweep of gravel beach between. Even so,
En Sohra
tugged now and again at her cable when a current drew oily curves across the surface of the little bay, a shift in the prevailing wind would turn this natural harbour into a scoop for waves which would hurl anything—whether weed, driftwood or ship—in ruin on the fanged rocks. Many of the so-called Thousand Islands earned their title only at low tide, spending the rest of their time awash; covered by an impenetrable shroud of green from the beach to the slopes of its single small peak, Techaur was not one of them. But a visible, tree-clad island could rip the bottom from a ship as easily as any crusted with barnacles and hidden by the sea.
Aldric had watched his destination since starting his meagre breakfast, and liked it no more at the beginning than when he had finished. “Lower a boat, shipmaster,” he heard Dewan say behind him, “and tell off some sailors to come with us.”
“I will not,” the captain answered. Aldric glanced round, half-expecting something of the sort and the captain saw him turn. “No man of mine would go with you to—to that place,” he said, as much to Aldric as to Dewan. “Not for all the gold we carry. It is accursed, a haunt of demons. Ask that one”—his finger jabbed at the
eijo
—”if he feels the evil in the air. Ask him! He knows.”
Though he could indeed sense something, probably more than the shipmaster would have believed, he had no intention of admitting it. Not after the isghun. Instead he smiled, appearing cool and unconcerned. “Why then did you bring us here, if Techaur is—” Aldric purred the word viciously, knowing how it would sound, “—haunted?”
The sailor’s swarthy features darkened at any imputation of cowardice on his part. “I pilot this ship for your king!” he snapped. “He says, bring these three to Techaur Island. He does
not
say, land there yourself. So we will stay on board.”
“Then get someone to row us in,” Aldric grated, “and we’ll wade ashore. That should keep your crew content.” The young Alban was unused to having his orders questioned, especially twice by the same man. He began to lose his temper, and the shipmaster made no attempt to help him keep it.
“We stay on board
En Sohra
,” he repeated flatly.
Aldric drew in breath and took a step towards the Elherran with one fist clenched; then Kyrin caught her lover’s half-raised arm and smiled a little when he turned on her.
“Have you ever rowed a boat?” she enquired pleasantly, refusing to be disturbed by what she saw in Al-dric’s eyes. The
eijo
shook his head, slowly, clearing the heat from his brain as much as answering her question.
“Well, I have. So come on.” They dragged the little rowboat up the beach and for safety’s sake made its painter fast around a boulder before setting off into the undergrowth. Within half a dozen strides the sea was lost to sight and almost inaudible through the rustling of leaf-heavy branches and the crackle of dead wood underfoot. Birds were calling somewhere.
“Dewan, is this common on islands?” Aldric wanted to know.
“Depends on the size. I’d say this place is big enough to weather most storms without being drenched in salt water, but even so, I see what you mean.”
“It’s uncanny, that’s what you’re saying,” Kyrin put in. “Look at those trees; they shouldn’t be half that size and you know it.”
Dewan made no reply; there was really nothing more to say, because all three were fully aware of the strangeness of this island, made eerie by being subtly half-hidden until they looked for it and then appearing to be all around them.
Once they startled—and were startled by—a sounder of wild pigs, not boar but smaller, patterned with brown-and-buff streaks not altogether unlike common farmyard swine. Dewan saw a pair of goats which he swore had ram’s horns, and there Kyrin found the tracks of some animal’s feet in soft mud near a stream: feet with paws, not hoofs, which Aldric recognised at once as the pad-marks of a
kourgath
, the same wild lynx-cat which he wore as a crest. Except that this
kourgath
was twice as big as it should have been, easily able to prey now on pigs, goats—or indeed, any human unwary enough to let it get too close. It made them realise that when Aldric had insisted that all three wear armour, he had not done so as a joke. Though the hot, still air made them sweat just as much inside their battle harness, its weight no longer seemed an unnecessary burden.
Abruptly the trees thinned out, revealing a sheer crag which peaked almost a hundred feet above them, naked rock as seamed and fissured as pine bark, impossible to climb and, by the flaky look of it, dangerous to stand near.
“Where now?” Dewan asked, leaning back to see where the wall of stone went and then glancing at Aldric for an answer. “Up, down or around?”
“Around,” the
eijo
said confidently. “There’s a way up somewhere, so we’ll go… this way.” As he walked off, Kyrin looked at Dewan. They both had a fair notion that the young Alban was bluffing, though neither was quite sure to what extent.
“Better get after him,” said Kyrin after a moment’s pause. “He might—just might—know what he’s talking about.”
“Care to put some money on that?” grinned Dewan. “Say twenty in gold?”
The Valhollan hesitated, listening to Aldric whistling through his teeth, thought for a moment and then nodded. “Make it in silver,” she amended carefully.
“Done! But I’d have thought you more confident than that, my dear.”
“I am confident—just not
that
confident, or that wealthy even if I was. And I’m not your dear.”
Then, quite suddenly, Aldric’s whistling stopped.
When they reached the spot, swords drawn, there was no sign of him at all. No blood, no crushed grass, no trace of a struggle—not even somewhere he might have gone “You don’t think—” Kyrin began, then jumped backwards with a cry of fright as something black and gleaming heaved out of the turf almost at her feet. Dewan lunged forward and his heavy sword came down with all the Vreijek’s muscle behind the cut. It crashed into Aldric’s helmet hard enough to cause a shower of sparks, and the
eijo
vanished again without a sound. Kyrin dropped onto hands and knees and peered into the dark hole from which he had appeared and into which he had abruptly been returned. There was a small, anguished groan from deep inside.
“Aldric… are you all right?” The Alban’s steel-sheathed fingers reappeared and gripped her wrist less gently than she would have liked. Aldric’s face was pale under his dented helmet when it came back into view, and he glared at Dewan in a way the Valhollan girl hoped she would never experience. But then, he had good reason to be angry.
“No, my lady,” Aldric said between clenched teeth, “I am not all right. I hurt at both ends, thanks to this bloody overeager fool.”
“I nearly split your skull!” barked ar Korentin, hiding his relief with irritation. Aldric stared up at him bale-fully.
“Must you always state the painfully obvious?” the
eijo
snapped.
“Shut up, the pair of you—this is no place for bickering over accidents.” Kyrin’s voice cut through their argument and silenced them more through surprise than anything else. “Better!” she said. “Now, what is that hole in the ground anyway?”
“Give me some light and I’ll tell you,” retorted Aldric, still annoyed and sore. Dewan lit one of the ship’s lanterns they had brought, then lowered it into the pit. After only a few minutes Aldric’s head reappeared; there was a smile of sorts inside his war-mask. “We go down from here on,” he said quietly.
The other lamps were lit, and all three descended out of sight. Nothing moved in the clearing for a while after they had gone, until a small bird landed and began to peck through the soil turned up near the tunnel mouth. Then it looked up, twittered nervously and flew away just as one of the nearby branches rustled, very slightly. Then the branch was slowly pulled aside.
Dewan and Kyrin speculated quietly as to who might have made the steps down which they walked. There was no reason to speak in hushed voices, but like a religious house or a funeral crypt, this place discouraged loud talking.
By the sound of ar Korentin’s voice, he was feeling uncomfortable, almost frightened, though he concealed it well. Aldric smiled mirthlessly into the darkness; even champions have their weak points, he reflected, not thinking any less of Dewan for proving human after all. Having spent the past three years in just such a subterranean complex, the young
eijo
was more at home than his two companions; even so, after having the sky and sea around him he felt cramped and uneasy, though the passage was unnaturally spacious and dry.
Then he hesitated as a movement of the air stroked his face; it was warm, spicily scented and totally unexpected in a tunnel. Light and shadow danced across the walls as he raised his lantern high. It revealed nothing, but from somewhere impossibly distant he could hear a tinkling like windblown crystal bells, mingled with the sweet chattering clash of finger-cymbals.
“Can you hear it?” whispered Kyrin. Metal scraped as the two men nodded armoured heads. Remote sounds as of flute and strings formed unbidden inside the girl’s head, a tenuous thread of melody bringing visions of seductive elegance, of sinuous grace. There was a vague suggestion of amber light rising from far below, growing more clearly defined with every downward step.
“Douse your lanterns,” Aldric hissed. As they did so the ruddy glow swelled and brightened much more than the fading lamplight seemed to justify, and they shrank back against the wall, each with a mental image of something searching for them with luminescent fingers. There was a creak of leather and a slithery sound as Aldric released the crossbelt supporting Isileth Widowmaker across his back, letting the
taiken
drop into place on his left hip before moving on down the steps. Though he reached out with every sense, stretching them to their limits, he could detect nothing alarming or hostile; only a barely perceptible feeling of… awareness.
Hand on hilt, he eased carefully to the stairway bottom and loosened Widowmaker in her scabbard. The steel-scrape was harsh and jarring against the background of soft musical tones—a stark, unequivocally brutal noise which did much to relieve the curious lassitude which he only noticed as it left him. Then he looked out of the tunnel.
Bales of rich fabric, fine garments, precious metals both raw and exquisitely worked, jewels and crystalline bottles; all were littered carelessly along the walls and around the pillars of a great vaulted hall. Piles of coins formed tempting snowdrifts wherever there was room for them—and there was certainly plenty of room. The whole vast chamber was lit by live flames which spilled from the mouths of dragons carved around each pillar, and by a great orange-red glow which pulsed and shifted at the farther end of the hall. Aldric caught his breath at the unimaginable riches piled here, and at the monstrous magnificence of it all. It was… glorious.
“What is this place?” Dewan’s voice was gruff and he tried hard to keep it matter-of-fact as befitted a man of his rank and station. Aldric could have told him that rank was no defence against the arrogant splendour of a sorcerous hold like this one, but he could tell just by looking at the Vreijek’s face that Dewan had already realised as much.
“This,” Aldric said quietly, “is the Cavern of Fire-drakes, the lair of Ykraith, the abode of the dragon.” Dewan stared at the younger man, then unaccountably felt himself shiver.
Sight, hearing and smell were all dazed in that hall: by the dance of flame on gold; by thin, eerie chords of music; by rare and costly fragrances. Touch and taste begged to be indulged by an insidious compulsion to run fingers through the precious things, to broach the crystal jars which doubtless each held wines of noble vintage… This was not mere avarice, something which might have been expected, but a headier sensuality which amounted almost to a lust. Hands were already reaching out as Aldric remembered the half-forgotten words he had been sifting for at the back of his mind. Gemmel’s words, then just one instruction among many but possessed now with a terrible significance: “... remember, don’t touch anything but the Dragonwand, no matter how tempting…”