Winterlands 2 - Dragonshadow (29 page)

John came into camp two mornings later, driving a flatbed wagon drawn by ten mules with the first two Urchins. He was accompanied by the little green-haired engineer Jenny had seen in her scrying-stone—Miss Tee was her name among humankind—and by the gnome-witch Taseldwyn, called Miss Mab among men. Gareth’s treasurer, Ector of Sindestray, accompanied them, bearing documents any courier could have delivered, and also a very young warrior of Polycarp’s guard who’d been trained, more or less, to operate an Urchin. From the edges of the woods the warriors of Imperteng watched with suspicion as John and Miss Tee and Elayne the Halnath guard demonstrated the Urchins to Gareth. Probably still believing, Jenny thought, that these things concern them. The horses snorted and pulled at their tethers as the squat, spiked oval whirred and clicked around the parade ground, firing harpoons in all directions: Gareth flinched and ducked down beside Jenny in the shelter of the heavily fortified earthwork, then emerged to touch the tip of the harpoon. It had pierced two layers of target planking, thicker than the length of Jenny’s finger.

“Ingenious, of course,” approved Lord Ector temperately, “but expensive.” He was a small man, stout and dark, and younger than his defeated hairline led one to think at first, and he wore a courtier’s blue and white mantlings even in the camp’s dirt. There was about him, though, none of Gareth’s air of loving display for its own foolish gorgeousness. He was one, thought Jenny, who sought by the courtier’s garb to establish birth and rights beyond all possible questionings of lesser men.

“Cheap at the price, though.” John swung himself out of the Urchin’s hatch and slithered rather gingerly to the ground among the spikes. “Long as we can keep the things wound, we’re fine.” After him came the young Halnath archer. At Polycarp’s suggestion, the Urchins had been made large enough to accommodate a second person, both to fire the harpoons and, if necessary, to crank the engine. “And you can just hike the taxes on the Winter-lands a little higher for ’em, can’t you?” he added maliciously and flicked Ector’s mantlings.

Ector glared.

“We have people working on poisons for the harpoons,” said Gareth rather quickly, nodding back toward the camp. “I’ve sent two messages to Prince Tinán, warning him about an attack by wizards and dragons, and offering a truce in exchange for help, but I’ve heard nothing.” “Stubborn bumpkins,” said Ector.

“Have they been lured into traps before?” John smote the dust from his patched sleeves, and the Thane of Sindestray fanned irritably at the billowing dirt with a circle of stiffened silk. “You have to admit that with garrisons from everyplace in the Realm on the march for here, professions of friendship don’t have much of a true ring.”

“It wasn’t me who went back on the last truce,” blurted Gareth, flushing. “That was—”

“And it wasn’t Tinán, probably, who burned out the farms that got his dad killed,” John pointed out. “In my experience, anyway, that’s how these things work, son. Jen,” he went on, “can you and Mab lay death-spells on that many harpoons?”

Jenny nodded, cringing inside at the thought.

Like Gareth, she thought—like Ian, like John—she, too, was trapped in this jewel of necessity. She drew a deep breath. “This morning when I scried the fords of the Catrack River I saw nothing: fog, broken images, the woods ten miles away. They are close. And she’ll send the dragons ahead.” Ector looked skyward as if expecting to see it filled with fire-spitting foes. “You’d better send for all the Urchins Polycarp has in readiness.”

While Gareth dealt patiently with the council’s messages, Jenny drew circles of power around the Urchins themselves in the parade ground, under the distrustful and disapproving eye of the troops. She summoned what power she could from the earth, and from the pattern of the waters below—from river’s currents and the exact combinations of rocks in the hills—from the turning of the unseen stars. These spells she imbued meticulously in the stubby little machines. Her spells of human and dragon power she braided with the gnomish wyrds of Miss Mab, both on the machines themselves and then on the fierce barbed points of the poisoned harpoons. “I always hate the death-spells,” said Jenny, straightening her aching back and brushing aside the tendrils of her hair. Sunset turned the air to copper around them and the poison smoke burned her nostrils; the anger of the sullen soldiers who brought up wood for that endless boiling muttered at the back of her mind like the pull of an unseen stream. “And it seems like the older I get the more I hate them. And yet”—she gestured wearily at the pile of iron bolts—“and yet here I am working them again.”

Her hands trembled as she spoke. She had returned twice in the last hour to the sanded flat behind Gareth’s dugout to remake her own circles of power and draw into herself, and into her spells, more of the strength and magic she needed. Mab had worked her magic all afternoon without pause. Jenny couldn’t imagine how she was doing it.

The gnome-witch, seated on a firkin, tilted her head a little, looking up at the woman with one round hand shading her pale-blue eyes. “It is because thou lovest,” she said simply. Her hand was smaller even than Jenny’s, smaller than Adric’s, but thick and heavy as a miner’s. Both women had shed all jewelry, braided up their long hair, and changed for the work into coarse linsey-woolsey shifts that could afterward be burned. Beneath the hem the gnome-woman’s bare dangling feet were like lumps of muscled rock.

“The more years thou see, the greater grows thy love: for this John, for thy children, for Gareth; for thy sister and her family and for all the world. And as thy love grows, so grows it for every woman and man, for gnomes and whales and mice and even for the dragons.” Miss Mab set aside the harpoon she had held on her knees and reached for another. They were stacked all around the two women like corn, tips and edges black with the sludge of the poison dip. Jenny’s voice was unsteady, remembering John between walls of fire, the black horn bow steady in his hands. Aiming at their son. “Is there another way?”

Mab’s wide mouth flexed in what might have been a smile. “Child, there is,” she said. “But not for a woman of bare five-and-forty, standing at this crossroad. Time is long,” she said. “Love is long.” And looking up, she smiled and waved as John strode across the sanded death-field in his shirtsleeves, a clay pot of lemonade in his hands.

The dragons dropped from the sky in the dead of the night.

Knowing that mages and dragons both could see in darkness, Gareth kept the men standing to in shifts through the night. Bending sweat-soaked over the reeking harpoons, Jenny heard in the dark of her mind Morkeleb’s voice: Wizard-woman, they come, and a moment later saw the black soaring shape of him against the stars.

“They’re coming,” she said, her tone perfectly calm. Miss Mab looked up. Jenny was already turning to the nearest wood-bearer. “They’re coming. The dragons. Now. Tell His Highness to alert the camp.”

The boy stared at her, openmouthed. “What?” “Tell His Highness—now. I’m going up.”

“What?” Then he swung around, fist to his mouth in shock and horror, “Beard of Grond!”

Morkeleb hung, a nightmare of firelit bones, above the smoke-wreaths.

“Uwanë!” The young soldier snatched at the nearest harpoon— Mab yanked it impatiently out of his hand.

“Not that dragon!”

“Get His Highness!” repeated Jenny and gave the youth a shove. “Now! Run!”

Wordlessly Mab gave her the harpoon and caught up two others in a leather sling. Men were already running about, crying and snatching up weapons; the cry of “Dragons! Dragons!” and “Uwanë!” fractured the black air. At least, thought Jenny, Morkeleb’s appearance would rouse the camp.

Then the dark claw reached from the darkness, closed around her waist.

See, to the northeast, said Morkeleb as they rose, and the hot circle of smoke and fire around the cauldrons shrank to the red heart of a burning flower, ringed with circles of tinier lights. Along the rim of the Wall.

And Jenny saw.

There were seven of them, seven dragons, hugging close to the shape of the mountains, taking advantage of shadows. With the far clear sight of the dragons she saw them, even in darkness knowing their colors and the music of their names: Centhwevir blue and golden, Nymr blue upon blue, Enismirdal yellow as buttercups, Hagginarshildim green and pink. The other three were too young to have their names in the lists, but she recognized the white and crimson jere-drake Bliaud had ridden to attack the camp in the Wyrwoods. The other two, younger still, were marked by gorgeous rainbow hues, not yet having begun to shape and alter the colors of their scales to chime with the inner music of their hearts. It seemed to her, even miles away, that she could see their eyes, and their eyes were dark, like filmed and broken glass. Ian was riding Nymr. The knowledge went through her heart like a spear. Do not think the boy on the Blue One’s back is your son, Wizard-woman, said Morkeleb. It is only a demon that wears his flesh.

If the house is burned, said Jenny, with her harpoon resting upright on her thigh and the other two heavy on her shoulder, the traveler will have no home to return to.

There was no time for further words or further thought. She locked her mind and heart together with the dragon’s, fusing the iron and the gold of their joined powers, and so fused, they attacked.

Jenny flung about them both the spells of concealment, of remaining unnoticed and unseen. But Centhwevir and the others split and fell upon Morkeleb from all directions, clearly able to see. The young fry hung back—Jenny wondered what wizard Rocklys had found to give to Caradoc as the seventh rider— letting the larger and stronger drakes, Centhwevir, Nymr, and Enismirdal, take on Morkeleb. Centhwevir was larger than the black dragon, but Morkeleb much the swifter and more agile. Morkeleb spat fire at the riders, forcing the star-drakes to back and veer to protect them, himself looping and diving to rip and tear at their underbellies, where no spikes protected the shining scales.

Clinging among the spikes herself with her feet hooked through the leather cable, burned by the acid of the other dragons, Jenny watched and waited, drawing power around herself and trying to use it as a shield and a blind. But every spell of evasion and concealment she used slid away like water, as if she only threw handfuls of leaves and dirt at the other dragons. Through Morkeleb’s eyes she saw the dragons fragment into whirling flames of color, arcs of burning motion that were now here, now there, impossible to see. With Jenny concentrating, drawing on all her power, she resolved them now and then into their true shapes, allowing Morkeleb to attack, but he was only fending them off and falling back.

Behind them, below them, the camp was arming. Men’s voices cried out, tiny as insects’ on the walls. How long had it been? And how long would they need? Time dissolved and fractured, whirled like the attacking dragons.

And she felt in her mind, gripping and scratching, the strange wailing strength of the sea-wights, drawing at her, tearing at her thoughts. Wanting her. Knowing her.

And the worst of it was that in the depths of her bones, she knew them, too.

She called on her power, summoning it from her heart and marrowbones. But the magic only seemed to feed that need, and the demon songs grew all the sweeter, waves of sleepy strength. Brilliant wings sheared out of the blackness, claws raked down. Once she saw a pink dripping mouth snatching at her and thrust a harpoon into it with all her strength, but as if a veil dropped over her head she did not see whether she wounded the dragon or not. She only knew she was still alive afterward, and the harpoon gone from her hand.

The camp was under them. Fire and men shouting, arrows flying up, falling back spent. Her mind burned with the effort of calling up power, drawing on her own strength, on Morkeleb’s strength, all the magic of their joined souls a wall of holed and acid-eaten bronze. The world swung sickeningly, and she clutched tight at the cable. Wheeling stars, smoke and the reek of death-spells biting at her lungs. She glimpsed the Urchins below, saw their harpoons slam upward as the dragons descended on the camp—saw by the way the harpoons went that the men inside the machines struggled too against demon-glamors and spells of ruin. Blue on blue, drenched and dyed with firelight, firelight reflected in dead golden eyes. Wings hammering, claws descending, then the still white face, black hair like her own flying, blue dead eyes in which a single frantic spark remained.

His heart was locked in the dragon’s heart, his mind in the dragon’s mind. And with her dragon mind Jenny called out to him, Ian! Desperately willing that he hear. Ian!

And like hooks in her mind she felt the demons catch her. Through all her wardings, through all her defenses, as if they had not been there. Like nothing she had expected, nothing she had prepared for even in her craziest dreams, a power sourced from something she did not understand. Like nothing she had ever heard spoken of.

As love had been.

That was what they never told you about demons. In her flesh.

In her mind. Drinking her magic and Morkeleb’s magic like maniac glutting swine. Without pain. No one had ever told her, no account had ever hinted, how deep the pleasure of it went. How utterly right it felt.

Somewhere she heard Morkeleb cry, Let go! Jenny, let go!

And she felt his magic vanish. It dissolved and dispersed like smoke, leaving him defenseless—Without my magic, he had asked, what am I? As the magic swirled away it was as if he turned first to smoke and glass, and then winked utterly from sight.

She cried out again, Ian! Reached with all her magic, all her strength, all her will. Trying to grasp and hold the boy’s mind and drag it to her, to safety.

And the demons inhaled her strength like smoke, swallowing it away. The last thing she heard with her own thoughts was their laughter.

Pretty Lady, he said. I am Amayon. And he possessed her, in spite of herself, for there was nothing that she could touch or thrust from her. Those who saw her later described the rips and scratches where she had tried to gouge and dig the thing she felt spreading through her flesh, but of course she could not. She could no more excise it thus than she could have picked one drop of her blood away from another drop. It was a heat devouring her. All she knew was that flame overwhelmed her body as if she burned with fever, and when the flame reached a certain hotness, silvery explosions of what she could not identify as either pleasure or pain: the intensity of sensation on that borderline where the two fuse. And Amayon, like the odor of brimstone and lilies.