Wardragon (25 page)

That evening their wrist shackles alone were removed and they were given a meal. They were also informed they would be publicly executed early the next morning. Ras was taken away for questioning and did not return.

‘You hardly touched your food,’ Jelindel pointed out as they sat on opposite sides of the cell. She spoke slowly, as Fa’red’s spell enforced a kind of censorship on her utterances.

‘Trying to lose weight,’ replied Daretor.

‘This is becoming farcical,’ muttered Jelindel, straining to open her mouth. ‘Q’zar is about to be destroyed and all Fa’red can think about is revenge. The dolt! Does he think the Wardragon will sit down and parley with him?’

Daretor yawned. ‘He might. If Taggar is successful in destroying the flying fleet on Golgora, then he may feel in need of a new ally.’

‘There’s some truth in that, but how stupid would Fa’red be to trust the Wardragon? This is a battle between magic and cold science. Does he think the Wardragon will destroy all else and permit one mage – Fa’red – to go on his merry way?’

Daretor raised a single eyebrow, then smiled enigmatically. ‘Others look for strengths and weaknesses in their enemies, but I look for patterns. Take any battle, and Fa’red will be there, waiting on the sidelines, waiting for someone to win, waiting to swoop in and annihilate the weary victor. He’s really a very simple man. Clever, learned, and powerful, to be sure, but at heart quite simple. He wants wealth and power, and he tries to get it by stealing victories from victors. We must have forces in reserve for when he appears, so that we can strike him down forever.’

Jelindel thought about his words, at first frowning with disbelief, then slowly, almost reluctantly, nodding.

Now it came home to Daretor what was at stake here. Like most Q’zarans, he had grown up with magic, had taken it for granted perhaps. Even when he had hated and distrusted it, he still could not imagine life without it; it was one of those great ‘givens’, like breathing and sleeping. Indeed, in some ways, it was like the darkness that came every night: always there, always scary, yet oddly comforting in the rhythms of its return, in the sweet sleep it brought with it, and in the resurrection of each new day.

As he thought about what the loss of magic would mean, and remembered the sight of the great human machine with its conveyor belt mentality, he shivered.

‘Cold science naturally displaces magic, just as heat pushes out cold, or disbelief holds sway over belief. They cannot live together,’ Jelindel said.

‘Yet they do so within the Wardragon,’ said Daretor.

Jelindel stared at him. ‘Yes, they do,’ Jelindel agreed. ‘That’s the Wardragon’s strength, its secret weapon. But now I wonder. Perhaps that is also its weakness.’

‘If it has a weakness.’

‘When I met it in the fortress on Golgora, I sensed something. I’m not sure what. When it saw me it seemed … confused. Is that possible? Could a machine feel that? Could it
feel
at all?’

‘Why did it want you?’ Daretor asked.

‘I wondered at that, too,’ said Jelindel. ‘I think it wanted revenge. But then … well, Taggar thinks it let me go. He never said why.’

Daretor snorted. ‘If it let you go, then it did so for its own purposes.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Jelindel, more mystified than ever. ‘But what can we know of its purposes?’

‘Nothing. And I for one don’t want to know. I am more concerned about what is going to happen here. To us. And to magic.’ He paused. ‘Could magic truly be destroyed?’

Jelindel told him about her foretelling with Cimone, then said, ‘Other worlds that once were magical, now are riddled by cold science. We’ve seen them.’

‘Farvane?’

‘Yes. The Farvenu are agents, witting or otherwise, of this manic force that detests and fears magic, the inheritance of the God-king Chiron, according to Taggar. It seems to me a disease that spreads, a cancer, that eats away the healthy flesh. Taggar says that as more and more cold science is introduced, magic gradually stops working. People stop believing. After a while, they can no longer even imagine magic. And thus magic dies. If that happens here –’

‘Then your prophecy will come true.’

‘Yes. My prophecy of a thousand years of darkness. It will be a thousand years unrelieved by magic. The people will be more defenceless than I had guessed possible. There will be no magical cures, no knowledge spread by magic, no power to defend themselves and their communities. All the things that can stave off tyranny will be gone; the plane of shadows itself that connects all people and makes them greater than they are alone, will fragment and fall into the darkness I saw. Only the evils of cold science – sickness, madness, and injustice – will remain.’

‘But we too have some of these things.’

‘It will be much, much worse under cold science. And remember, magic is still new to Q’zar, for all that it is five thousand years old. It is yet to come into its own, to fully mature. Now that would be something to see! But perhaps that is not to be.’ She paused. ‘If the Wardragon wins, then magic will become a myth. Even the dragons will be gone.’

‘Is that so bad?’

‘How can you say that, you, who have ridden on dragons?’

‘Don’t get me wrong, I value the dragons greatly, but at least cold science vessels don’t eat their passengers.’

‘Name a dragon that ever tried to eat you.’

‘I can’t, but how do I know they are not wondering how I would taste toasted?’

‘Zimak, dragons are the very stuff of magic. The first and oldest magic …’ She stopped and tapped her head. ‘Silly me. You’re having a lend of me.’

‘You’ve become very serious of late.’

Jelindel heaved a sigh. ‘I know. Do you think Daretor managed to enlist the Sacred One’s help?’

Daretor had almost forgotten his – now Zimak’s – mission to the Tower Inviolate. But he did not like to think about it. There was no chance that a petty street thief like Zimak, who possessed as much honour as a Nerrissian sewer rat, could have obtained the help of the Sacred One. But he did not say so. Hope was as much an endangered species right now as magic. ‘Perhaps he did,’ he said, reminding her that the dragons might yet come. Jelindel saw that he was not convinced, but nodded anyway.

‘Let’s hope Daretor’s been successful,’ Jelindel said, though there was an odd note to her voice that Daretor could not quite interpret.

A short time later a guard came by and removed not only their used dinner implements but the lamp as well. He told them, ‘Better get some shut-eye. It’ll be your last.’ He thought this to be hysterically funny, and walked off cackling to himself.

They lay together in the darkness on the joined single beds and Jelindel put her arms around Daretor. He hardly noticed it anymore. He supposed that people who were about to die had a right to some kind of intimacy. Nobody wanted to die alone.

Jelindel leaned across and kissed him on the lips. Daretor was not sure whether he was annoyed or confused, or both. Was Jelindel showing affection to him, Daretor, or to Zimak? As far as she was concerned, she had kissed Zimak in Daretor’s body. Did that mean he had been half-betrayed? Had she always fancied Zimak? Did she now want to consummate a long-stifled passion?

‘Zimak?’

‘Hmm?’

‘None of this is easy for me, either.’ Jelindel waited for Daretor to say something. When he didn’t, she continued. ‘I’ve lived as a battle-hardened adult these past five years. I should have been playing in the walled garden with my friends, and longing to grow up and be taken seriously. While I was riding in the wilderness, fighting for my life and casting spells, normal girls were having fun, learning to do tatting, to sew, and how to supervise cooks and servants. I was never taught how to dance properly. All girls are taught to dance, but not me. I just picked up a few steps here and there.’ A slight rasp entered her voice. ‘Instead I am as you see me, hero, wizard, adventurer, but neither normal nor a girl.’

‘Of course you’re a girl.’

‘I’m female, not a girl. Soon I shall be female, but not a woman. I’ll certainly not be a lady nor noblewoman.’

‘You’re alive. That must count for something.’

‘I wonder. I just want to be who and what I should be, not what circumstances have made me.’

‘All right, you have my leave to dress in frills and lace, and be a countess,’ Daretor mumbled, half-wishing she would stop talking.

‘Sometimes I wonder what my life would have been like if my family had … lived.’ She turned over. He heard a single choked sob in the darkness and dearly wanted to put his arms around her, but was afraid she would let him.

Angry at himself Daretor dozed and dreamed he was standing at one end of a corridor while Zimak was at the other. Running between them, utterly bewildered, was Jelindel. Zimak kept swapping faces with him, and so swiftly that Daretor couldn’t tell who Jelindel was actually trying to reach. Finally, exhausted, she stopped equidistant from them and sank to her knees. She started scratching at the corridor wall, as if she could dig her way out with her fingernails.

The scratching irritated Daretor and he asked her to stop but she kept right on doing it.

He woke and sat bolt upright. The scratching was real and came from the barred window set high in the far wall. Daretor climbed to his feet and shuffled warily over, the manacles on his ankles restricting his movements. The window was too high to peer out of so he dragged over the crate they had used as a table the night before and climbed up on it, gripping the bars of the window.

‘Is somebody there?’ he hissed.

‘Zimak?’ came a small voice.

It took Daretor a moment to realise the speaker meant him. ‘Yes, it’s me. Who’s this?’

‘It’s Davit.’

‘Davit?’ Daretor gathered his wits. ‘Yes, Davit. What are you doing here?’

‘I saw them arrest you yesterday. I’m here to get you out.’

Daretor had no idea who this Davit was, but he was not about to ignore an offer of help, even from a friend of Zimak’s.

‘What is your plan?’ Daretor asked.

‘I’ve stolen two of my father’s chisels. We can try to dig out one of the bars.’

A small hand holding a chisel came through the window. Daretor took the tool and together they got to work on one of the bars. Behind Daretor, Jelindel woke. When she found out what they were doing she went to the cell door and stayed there with her ear pressed against the wood, listening for any sounds of approaching guards.

The bars were set deep in large stone slabs and the mortar was like old rock itself. They chiselled away for hours, their noise muffled by distant banging, which Jelindel suggested was a gallows in the making. By dawn they had only succeeded in loosening the base of one bar.

As the light increased, Daretor got a good look at his helper. Davit was a small boy of about nine or ten, slight of build, with a mop of untidy, dark hair and a squint in one eye that he accentuated by tilting his head to one side.

Finally, Daretor stopped. His fingers were rubbed raw and blood had mixed with the chips of mortar. ‘It’s no use,’ he said. ‘I thank you for your help, Davit, but you must go now, before it gets too light.’

‘No! I want to get you out of there.’ There were tears in the boy’s eyes.

Daretor put his hand on Davit’s.

‘There’s nothing more you can do. And if you’re found here, you will end up joining us on the scaffold.’ He pushed the chisel back through the window and watched as the boy took it morosely and shoved it in his canvas bag.

‘Go,’ Daretor said again. ‘While you still can.’

‘I’ll think of something else,’ the boy promised as he turned and melted away into the greying shadows.

They were given a generous breakfast. If there was one law that was observed on almost every world that Jelindel had ever visited or heard of, it was the right of the condemned prisoner to a lavish last meal. They had porridge with raisins in it, fresh goat’s milk and clotted cream, as well as strawberries. Then came fresh-baked bread, butter, and a haunch of ham so perfectly cured it literally made Daretor’s mouth water. There was also a variety of other cold meats: chicken, lamb, duck, and some smoked fish. Finishing it up was a platter of cheeses with a pot of spiced coffee.

Jelindel smiled. ‘I really think he means to kill us this time,’ she said, surveying the feast.

‘Is that why he supposedly let us go all the other times? He forgot to feed us?’ said Daretor, taking a chunk out of a succulent drumstick. ‘Is this some kind of archmage etiquette that I ought to know about?’

‘No, I was thinking that this is more a Farvenu style of execution. Don’t you think?’

‘Gah, don’t mention them.’

By all the Odd Gods, I am sounding more like Zimak every day, thought Daretor. Living as Zimak was bad enough. Dying as him would be downright humiliating.

They finished breakfast and sat side by side. Jelindel pressed herself against him. Well, here I am, thought Daretor, facing death while betraying myself to the woman I love, who thinks I am someone else. What does that make me? Is there a word for it? Probably not. Not much call for body-swapping betrayal words.

Presently the jailor came, accompanied by guards. The prisoners’ wrists were shackled again, and as an added precaution, Jelindel was gagged. Then they were led out to the town square where the gallows had been erected during the night. Jelindel tried once again to summon some magic, but Fa’red’s spell combined with the simple burlap gag effectively stopped any incantations.

They were led up onto the scaffold, around which a crowd of Argentian town folk had been gathered. None heckled them, in fact no one looked at all happy about the proceedings. Daretor wondered if the townsfolk saw them as enemies or friends. Not that it would make any difference. As they placed the noose around his neck, Daretor spotted the boy Davit in the crowd. He tried to signal him with his eyes, ordering him to leave. This was no sight for a child.

Fa’red stepped out of the crowd and mounted the steps, stopping in front of them. Despite all of his precautions, he stayed out of arm’s reach. Daretor looked down and realised they were standing on a trapdoor. No doubt the drop was perfectly calculated to snap their necks. In all his days of journeying, he had seen many hangings, but these were always from branches, with horses beneath, which were then whipped out from under the condemned.