Winterlands 2 - Dragonshadow (25 page)

Yseult sending Bliaud’s sons away, lest they see how their father had changed. Rocklys asking her to stay, demanding that she take an escort.

“So it’s been Rocklys all along.” She folded her plaid around her shoulders and looked up again at the sky. The red star called the Watcher’s Lantern stared back at her. Midnight chimed like cold music on her spine. All doors open at midnight, Nightraven had said to her once, separating her hair with a comb of silver and bone and plaiting the power-shadows called to being by that simple act. All doors open at moments of change: from deepening night to dawning day, from fading winter to the first promises of spring.

All doors open.

“I should have guessed it.” Flames made slabs of fire in John’s spectacles as he turned the log.

Jenny looked up, startled. Sometimes it seemed impossible to her that this man was Nightraven’s son.

“The Realm as it’s constituted drives her mad, you know. Each fief and deme with its own law, most of ’em with their own gods as well, not to speak of measurements. Everybody drivin’ in all sorts of directions and not much of anythin’ gettin’ done, while them at Court make up songs and moon-poems and theological arguments these days, I’m told. Look at the books in Rocklys’ library, the ones she keeps by her: Tenantius. Gurgustus. Caecilius’ The Righteous Monarch. All the Legalists. Of course she’s got no patience with Gar trying to do the right thing by old bargains and old promises. Of course she wants to step in and make it all match at the edges.” “’I only seek to bring order,’ ” Jenny quoted softly, “’to make things as they should be.’ Gareth has to be warned, John. She has the biggest army, probably, in the Realm right now, even including the one he’s taken to Imperteng with him. And whatever he has will be no match against dragons and wizards and demons working in concert.”

“What I’m wondering”—John propped up his spectacles with a bandaged forefinger—“is what in the name of God’s shoe-buckles makes Rocklys think she can control Caradoc? Even given she doesn’t know he’s possessed by a demon, doesn’t this woman read?” “No,” said Jenny. “Probably not. All her life she has wielded her own strength successfully, to her own ends. She is used to the struggle for mastery with Caradoc. If he appears to yield to her, do you think it’s likely to occur to her that it’s a trick? She …”

She raised her head, hearing the whisper of vast silken wings. “Here he comes.”

And then, realizing that at no time had she ever been able to hear Morkeleb’s approach, “The trees!”

At the same instant she hurled a spell of suffocation onto the fire and flung every ounce of strength she had into a great whirling tornado of misdirection and illusion around herself and John as dragons plunged out of the sky.

Lots of dragons.

John shouted, “Fire!” as he grabbed her arm, and claws raked and seared through the canopy of leaves above them. Snakelike heads shot through the branches, mouths snapping; green acid splashed a great charred scar in the pine-mast and Jenny cried out the Word of Fire, hurling it like a weapon at the rustling roof of the trees. The crown of the forest burst into flame, illuminating for a refulgent instant the primitive rainbow colors, glistening scales: pink and green and gold, white and scarlet. One of the dragons screamed as the long scales of its mane caught and the scream was echoed, terribly, from the girl on the other dragon’s back, Yseult with her skirts and her hair on fire. Then the two dragons were gone, and John and Jenny were running down the path to the spring, while all around them smoke billowed, flaming twigs and branches rained, and acid splattered in from above.

John dragged them both down into the water, the heat already blistering on their faces. The spring slanted away southeast to join the Black River two or three miles below Cair Corflyn. Jenny shucked off her wet plaids and heavy skirt, pulled her petticoats up high and began to crawl with the sharp stones digging and cutting at her knees and palms. John was behind her, holding his bow awkwardly over his back. Jenny drew the fire after them, Summoned the smoke to lie in a spreading pall over the whole quarter of the forest; it stung and ripped at her lungs, gritted in her eyes.

“Morkeleb will see the fire,” she gasped.

“If he’s alive.” John slipped on a stone and cursed. The water was freezing cold underneath, though it had begun to steam on top. “If he thinks it’s worth his while to take on four other dragons … Well, three, with the girl out of action …”

“He’ll come.”

Acid splashed into the glaring water in front of them. Through the steam Jenny saw the huge angular shape of a dragon framed in fire, crouched before them in the bed of the stream. John said, “Fester it.”

It stood just beyond the ending of the trees, where the spring ran into a marshy meadow. Wings folded close it bent down, darting its head under the fiery canopy. The flames gilded its scales, blue on blue, an iridescent wonder of lapis, lobelia, peacock; outlined the small shape on its shoulders, among the spines. It opened its mouth to spit again and John, knee-deep in the steaming water, already had his arrow nocked and drawn when Jenny saw the rider’s face. She screamed “No!” as John loosed the shaft. “It’s Ian!” She flung a spell after the arrow, but it was an arrow she had witched herself, months ago. Ian rocked back as the bolt hit him; caught at the spikes around him and slowly crumpled. The dragon backed into the darkness. “Now!” John grabbed her wrist, dragging her. “There’s caves along the river.” “Morkeleb …”

“What? You don’t think I can take on two dragons by myself?” And Jenny heard it, the dark dream-voice calling her name.

They stumbled from the burning woods and saw him, a whirl of sliced firelight edging blackness in the air, tearing, snapping, swooping at the gaudy barbaric shapes of the red and white dragon and a sun-yellow splendor that Jenny thought must surely be the dragon Enismirdal. Morkeleb was faster and larger than either, but as the other two rose toward him, fire and darkness seemed to swirl up with them, splintering image and illusion into threes and fours. Jenny narrowed her mind, focused it to a blade of light, and flung that blade toward Morkeleb in spells of perception, of ward.

She saw, for a flashing instant, through his eyes. Saw the other dragons fragment and scatter now into five or six discrete attacking shapes, now into rainbows of horrific color—maddening, camouflaging—and shot through with splinters of a ghastly and wicked greenish flame. Jenny redoubled her concentration, drawing power from the unchecked rage of the fire, from the granite and dolomite deep beneath the stream’s bed. Through the dragon’s eyes she saw the shape of an attacker come clear, and Morkeleb struck, black lightning, raking and tearing.

Then the image splintered again, and Jenny gasped at the sudden cold terror that took her, as if a silver worm had suddenly broken through her flesh, creeping and reaching for her heart and her brain. She called on all her power, guarding herself, guarding Morkeleb, but it was as if something within her were bleeding, and the power bleeding away with it. The discipline that Caerdinn had beaten into her took over, systematically calling on the other powers alive in the earth—moonlight, water, the glittering stars—and her eyes seemed to clear. Morkeleb had gotten in another few telling rakes with claws and teeth, driving them back. Blood rained down onto Jenny’s face, and droplets of searing acid. The silver hemorrhage within her did not stop. Morkeleb plunged down, black claws extended. She felt herself seized, ripped up from the earth. Her head snapped back with the shock of the parabola as he swept skyward again, a razoring cloud of wings. Around them both Jenny flung the holed nets of her guardian-spells and felt as her magic locked and melded with his that his power, too, had been drained and drunk away. They were flying east, flying fast, and she was aware of wings storming behind them, of a madness of pursuing color and rage. Rain clouds draped the high bleak shoulders of the Skepping Hills.

Into these Morkeleb drove, and Jenny reached out with her mind, Summoning the lightning and drawing around them the wardingspells to prevent their pursuers from doing the same. In the event there was nothing to it: Caught between conflicting powers, the lightning only flickered, sullen glares illuminating the cottony blackness around them.

In time the dragon gyred cautiously to earth.

“John?” Jenny rolled over, wet bodice and petticoat sticking to her limbs. The cave the dragon had brought them to was so low-roofed that only Jenny could have stood upright in it, and narrowed as it ran back into the hill. Rain poured bleakly, steadily down on the slope outside. She could hear the purling of what had to be Clayboggin Beck somewhere close and almost subconsciously identified where they were, and how far they had flown.

Witchlight blinked on glass as John turned his head. She marveled that in the midst of the chaos of fire, blood, and magic, Morkeleb had managed to seize them both.

“I’m sorry about Ian, love.”

She drew in a deep breath. “Did you know when you shot?”

“Aye.” He sat up cautiously. The tiniest blue threads of light showed her the glint of old metal plated onto his doublet. Behind him, flattened unbelievably, like a bug in a crevice, Morkeleb lay at the back of the cave, a glitter of diamond eyes and spines. “I knew he would be riding Nymr, see.”

Jenny turned her face away. The knowledge that Ian was alive, and could be brought back, burned in her: rage, resentment, horror at what John had done.

“Caradoc won’t let him die, you know,” John went on. “There’s too few mages in the world, and he had to pull both of ’em, Nymr and Ian—all three, I should say, if you count whatever goblin’s riding ’em—out of the fight, as he pulled Yseult.”

“And if your arrow had killed him on the spot?” Her voice was shaky. “We can bring him back, John, but not from the dead.”

“If we’d died then,” said John softly, “d’you think Ian would ever have been anything but a slave to goblins, a prisoner helpless in that jewel, for as long as his heart kept beating and his lungs kept drawing air? Watchin’ what they did, while they lived on his pain? Sometimes an arrow to the heart can be a gift, given in love.”

Jenny looked away. He was right, but she hurt so deeply that she had no words for it. John took off his doublet and lay down, pillowing his head on a soggy wad of plaids. His shirt steamed faintly in the heat-spells Morkeleb called to dry their clothing. There was only the sound of breathing in the cave, while the gray light struggled outside. In time Jenny got up and went over to lie beside him, holding his hand.

Given the rugged and heavily wooded terrain of the Fells of Imperteng, and the possibility of rebel guerrillas there, neither John nor Jenny considered it safe to be put down in the dark several miles from the camp of the King’s men. Moreover, as John pointed out, there was no telling whether one of the dragons had followed them, waiting to pick him and Jenny up the moment Morkeleb was out of sight.

Thus the dragon flew straight to the camp below the walls of Jotham and circled down from the evening sky on the second day after their escape. Jenny spread out around them a great umbrella of Lousy Aim to deal with the consequences.

It was necessary. Men came running, shouting, from all corners of the camp—camps, for it was clear from above that each of the King’s vassals pitched his tents apart, and there was no intermingling of the striped tents of Halnath with the cream-white if grubby shelters of the Men of Hythe. Jenny saw them clearly, as a dragon sees, the cut and color of their clothing as diverse as the variety and size of their bivouacs. Their voices rose to her, along with the wild neighing from the horses and the frantic bleat of sheep, racing in wild circles in their pens. Arrows soared in a futile cloud. Then spears, brushed aside by Jenny’s spells. Then men ran away in all directions as they had run in, pointing and crying out as they saw that the dragon clutched a human being in either claw.

John, being John, waved and blew kisses.

Balancing on his great wings, Morkeleb extended his long hind-legs to earth, then folded himself down to a crouch. By that time two men stood on the edge of the drill-ground where he settled, tall thin young men, the red-haired wearing a black scholar’s robe, the fair one’s spectacles a note of incongruity against the red military tunic, red breeches, and elaborately stamped and tassled red boots.

It was this bespectacled crimson figure who cried, “Lord John! Lady Jenny!” and strode forward, holding out his hands.

There was a time, Jenny remembered, when he would have run.

She made to curtsy in her ragged petticoat and John’s grimy plaids, but he caught her in his arms, bending down his ridiculous height. Then he turned and embraced John, breathless with amazement and pleasure, while Morkeleb folded himself a little more comfortably and regarded the scene with chilly sardonic un-human eyes. Forty feet seemed to be his true size, larger than which he could not go, but it was difficult for Jenny now to be sure.

“What are you doing here?” demanded Gareth of Magloshaldon, son of—and Regent for—his father the King. Even as he spoke, Uriens of the House of Uwanë appeared, a tall man who in his youth must have looked like the statues of Sarmendes the Sun-God: inlaid golden armor, crimson cloak, his great jeweled sword hurling spangles of light. “It’s all right, Father,” Gareth said quickly, going to him as the King, seeing Morkeleb, raised his weapon and began to advance.

“Lo, it is the Dragon of Nast Wall!”

“It’s all right,” Gareth repeated, catching his arm. “He’s been conquered. He’s here as a … a prisoner.”

Morkeleb opened his mouth and hissed, but if he said anything Jenny did not perceive it, and Gareth gave no sign.

“He’s a dragon.” The King frowned, as if there were something there that he could not comprehend. His servants and batmen hurried up around him, tactfully taking him by the arms. “Dragons must be slain. ’Tis the duty of a King …”

“No,” said Gareth. “Lord Aversin—you remember Lord Aversin?—and Mistress Waynest have taken this dragon prisoner. I’ll sing you the song of it tonight, or … or the night after.” He turned back to John, frowning as he saw the burns and blisters of acid-seared flesh. “What happened?” He looked, too, at Morkeleb, as if knowing that only direst emergency would bring them to the camp.