Winterlands 4 - Dragonstar (11 page)

In the evenings, when Corvin returned from his flights, John would tell him, “The demons will come. The Dragonstar hasn't got that long to stay in the sky—accordin' to my calculations it'll be gone by the Moon of Winds. If Adrom-elech's had his goons out workin' to stir up whatever powersourcin' they can for this long, you can bet he's not gonna sit back an' say, Oh, too tough, well, let's just stay here for another thousand years.…”

But Corvin, lying among his gold, only blinked sleepily at him and spoke in that whispery voice in his mind: They will not come. They cannot. The Henge was formed and sourced in the deaths of the ten greatest mages of that time, and there are traps in the city that make it perilous for them to linger here. They cannot find their way through the Maze before it destroys them. They will not come.

And John learned that it was foolish, to try to speak to the silver dragon when he lay dreaming among the music that he called from the gold, even as he'd learned early never to argue with his father when Lord Aver sat late over his wine. He could only return to his chamber and lie awake, watching his painted friends march in their eternal procession, listening for the first sound of trouble and wondering what the hell he could do about it when it came.

On a night of wind he dreamed of the Demon Queen. He saw the Burning Mirror in its chamber beneath the ruins of Ernine, the black enamel that covered it cracked, light and smoke streaming forth. The Demon Queen stepped out through those cracks as if through a door, and as she stepped, fire blasted all the chamber's rock to splinters. When she walked each step took her miles. She flew with her dark hair a tangled wrack in the night; she lifted from the ground, spread out her arms into the wind, and laughed. Wind and fire surged around her, the air a maelstrom of heat and carnage, and in it John heard a queer, musical zinging, a sigh and whisper, far-off silver chimes. Flying things moved in it, some formed of dust and others of fire; formed, and blended away to dust again.

But fire flickered in the dust.

And the Demon Queen quickened her stride to outrun the fire.

John woke to the metallic whining, and the smell of dust in the wind.

He slipped his makeshift spectacles on, and wrapped around him the cloak that he used as a blanket as well; he slept in his boots. From beneath the bracken he pulled the ancient sword he'd hidden there, and the dagger, hung on a sash of braided rags, though he knew the arms would do him no good against the things he'd sensed in his dreams. He strode down the passageway with the choke of dust in his nose and lungs, and the firelight glowing behind him in the painted chamber showed him the air filled with glittering black specks like blowing sand.

When they struck his face they cut heavier than sand.

Beyond the doorway the night was like falling into a bag of soot. Far off in the darkness he could see flecks of what looked like silver fire, and in the direction that he knew the Henge would lie, a single, tiny greenish flame. Wind lashed and tumbled the air, the grains that blew in it cutting his skin like tiny knives. When John retreated back into the passageway and touched his cheek with his fingers, he brought them away smudged with blood.

Metal? he thought.

And then, Dear gods.

He bolted back to his own chamber, unearthed a torch, and lit it, strode for the Treasury as fast as he could go without killing the wavering flame. As a Dragonsbane, he knew that when you attacked a dragon in its lair, you had to reach him fast, reach him before he got clear of the covered place so that he could not rise in the air above you, either to attack or to get away. He shouted as he ran, “Corvin!” but knew he wouldn't be heard.

Corvin would be dreaming, breathing his dreams of past joys into the ocean of gold and drinking back the beauty of them a thousandfold, magnified by the gold's music.

The flying specks of sand in the air were gold.

John knew it instinctively, guessed it. It was what he would do if he could, to trap a dragon and render it too drunk and confused to escape. No dragon could think clearly around large amounts of refined gold—Morkeleb was the only one he knew who had renounced gold completely.

He knew, as Aohila knew, that a dragon's heart would follow gold, even unto doom.

Dust and particles of sand—gold—hazed the air, even in the Treasury. Not being mageborn himself—or any more sensitive than an old boot, John would have added—he could not feel, as Jenny could, the sweet-singing emanations of the magic blended through and magnified by the gold. All he saw was the great black and silver shape curled on its bed of coin and gems and statuary, glittering in the lamplight like an extension of the treasure itself. Even the bobs of light that would flick and move on the ends of the dragon's antennae in normal sleep were dimmed, hanging like the grimed raindrops of the other world in which Corvin had hidden so long. The room was thick with the hot, faintly metallic smell of the dragon, and in sleep the hooked silver claws tightened spasmodically, reflexively, around the coins.

“Wake up!” yelled John, walking over and kicking the dragon's nose. (Bet THAT's one the heroes of legend never got round to.) “Wake up, damn it, they're coming!”

And how long's it going to take them to get round to me, after they've got Corvin all secure?

He thought of the Demon Queen and went cold with panic. Even if the demons moving in the dust were not her minions but those of Folcalor, he'd seen demons turn aside from their intended task in order to disembowel bystanders simply for the immediate gratification of hearing them scream.

Demons were dangerous, but they were sloppy hunters. Being deathless, they knew there was always time to go after escaped prey another day. They would not forgo the pleasure of another's pain, even for their own ultimate benefit.

He'd met people like that as well, of course.

He picked up a silver statue, whacked Corvin on the side of the face, on the blank dark purple-tinted eyelids, with all the strength in his arm. “Wake up, you brainless worm! Demons!”

Still nothing. To the dragon the whole atmosphere must be a drowsy glory of happiness, drowning in gold, forgetting all other things.

“Damn it,” John muttered, picked up the biggest and gaudiest piece of gold he could see—a lamp stand nearly his own height, wrought like a tree with crystal fruit—and, staggering under its weight, started to carry it to the door.

And dropped it, ducking a cat-paw swat from the dragon's clawed forefoot that would have broken his bones against the wall if it had landed. “Demons!” he yelled, rolling out of the way of Corvin's slashing teeth. “Demons, coming here!” And fetched up, gasping for breath, against the jeweled back of a golden chair, sword in hand for all the good that was likely to do him.

Corvin stared at him, blank with shock.

“They're forming up from the dust, they've got gold dust in the air for miles! Damn it!” he added, looking down, for a trickle of dust was flowing into the room now, thin and swift as water pouring down the stair.

Corvin seemed to shrink and elongate in size, slithering like a snake up the stairway that was the Treasury's only entry, moving with a dragon's terrible speed. John pulled the strip of rag he'd been using for a scarf up over his nose and mouth and followed, throwing aside the torch when the wind snuffed its flame, and ran up blind in the dragon's wake, one hand on either wall and praying nothing more solid than dust was waiting for him between the Treasury and the top.

There wasn't, but the wind struck him as he emerged from the stairway onto the top of the foundation, taking him by surprise and spinning him around before throwing him to his knees. The night was utterly black, but above the howl of the wind he could hear a voice calling his name: Gareth's, he thought.

What the hell was Gareth doing here?

Orange light, like a wind-torn torch. Gareth's voice shouting again, with a desperate note of panic. “John? John! ” And something about Jenny.

The white dragon that was Jenny's onetime dragon-shape could have brought him here.

Or the demons could be toying with him, eating up the surging throb of his heart at the thought of rescue and waiting for him to run toward the phantom torch and pitch off the edge of the foundation. The cream of the jest would be that the fall wouldn't kill him. It would amost certainly break his legs, though, and he'd be weeks dying of thirst at the bottom.

John crawled forward on his hands and knees, feeling the stone before him. Sure enough, the edge dropped off about two feet away, invisible in the gritty darkness. But having reached the edge he was able to grope his way along it, knowing there'd be a stairway eventually—there was one on each of the foundation's four sides. From there he'd be able to feel his way along the wall.…

Aye, he thought, at the glimpse of a flash and flicker of silver-green. Could the demons counterfeit the silvery glow that rushed up from the pool in the heart of the Henge?

He didn't know, but the wind and dust were hammering him harder, and if he stayed in the open he'd be blinded in no very long time and suffocated soon after that. If nothing else the air within the Maze would be still.

The fourth gate that he'd found—the one that could be opened at midnight—had been in the palace itself, and stood just on the edge of the foundation platform not far from the northeast corner.

Dust-devils tore him, wind raking his face and his stubbled scalp. Sometimes he thought gritty hands pawed him, seized him, hands wrought of silver fire and dust. He slashed once with his sword, barely able to see, and of course the great looming things in the darkness simply dissolved, to re-form instants later, green phosphor glimmering in their eyes. Once he thought he saw Corvin, or what would have been Corvin, illuminated by the ocherous flare of the burning slime that the dragon spit. Saw a writhing shape high in the air, muffled in a cloud of blackness—dust in his eyes, in his nostrils, the singing hum of the gold confusing his senses, demon-voices ripping through his brain to his heart.

Waiting for him to use magic, so they could seize him through it.

Then darkness again, and John saw no more. But the wind grew stronger, driving him to his knees on the broken stone of the platform. If Corvin had any sense—if he could break free of the demons at all—he'd rise straight up over the dust storm like a balloon and head away fast toward the North. He'd done his duty, fulfilled the geas that binds dragons to their saviors.…

Blinded, John lost sight of the Henge, then saw it again, mercifully in the same place and at the same distance, which unless the demons were being clever with him probably meant it was actually the Henge he saw.…

He fell again, groping at the stone underfoot—the gate was almost exactly at the edge of the platform and you stepped through it as if you were stepping off into thin air. The first time he'd tried it, the night before last, he'd had a braided rope around his waist, which had impeded him severely when he'd stepped through onto the solid ground of an orchard of savagely animate thorned trees. It had been midnight there, too, and if he hadn't had a torch with him he'd have been cut to pieces before he saw the path away from the gate.

But better that than this, he thought now. In any case, he knew the path ran away to the right and the thorned trees could be dodged, to get to the next gate into the Maze. Monstrous shapes loomed and dissolved in the whirling dark around him, reached ephemeral hands for him, and smiled with malicious, glittering eyes. And why not smile? he thought. From being a prisoner in all the city of Prokep he was now a prisoner on the foundation, and if Adromelech in fact guessed that he knew the way through the Maze, it wouldn't be long at all before they'd be on him.

Quicker, if they could run him off the edge of the foundation and break his legs for him. After about a week of lying at the bottom he'd probably be pretty happy to talk about which door to choose and where it lay.

Jenny's voice cried to him, trapped in the hammering storm. Crying his name, crying “I forgive you …,” in a voice that tore his heart. “Please—John, please …!”

He groped along the edge of the platform, sighting on the blurred silver fire of the Henge, wondering how long it would be till midnight or if it was already past. He didn't think so, but there was no way to tell, and he didn't think he'd make it until dawn even if he could get down to where the other gate was. Dust smothered him, trapping him in a vortex of winds that circled him like a dust-devil, sucking the air from his lungs. Flecks of flying metal tore his face, and he staggered, feeling hands catching at him, claws cutting his flesh.

The wind changed notes. Lightning split the darkness, the crack of thunder like an ax cleaving the bellow of the wind, and a cold, hard blast of rain struck John in the face. Wind drove the rain, wind straight out of the north, shattering the circling column around him, and lightning struck again, spearing from clouds to earth. Its purple glare showed him the rain, hammering the dust back into the ground; the darkness afterward was like being struck blind.

The next flash showed John the wet shining black and silver shape of the dragon plunging down from the pouring heavens through the rain. He stepped to the edge of the platform and held up his arms; all the demon-light within the Henge had died. The dragon's claws snatched him hard around the ribs in the darkness, and the ground jerked away beneath his feet. Lightning rimmed Prokep one last time, a skeleton city in blackness.

Then they were flying west under the streaming rain.

For close to a thousand years—according to John's copy of the third volume of Juronal, admittedly incomplete—the Realm of Ernine had dominated the meadowlands along the River Gelspring and the prairies that stretched east to the sunrise. In those days the city of Bel had been a fishing village, subservient to the vassal kings of the Seven Islands, whose true wealth lay in trade from the south. Through Ernine, amid its luxuriant hinterland of crops and cattle, had flowed the gnomes' silver from the Deep at Droon, and the furs of the northern forests; the Kings had raised palaces there pillared in the golden sandstone of the eastern deserts, and the priests worshiped unremembered gods in marble temples open to the sky. Long after Ernine had fallen to raiders from the steppe, a second city was built on the low knees and foothills above the Gelspring: Its foundations stood on the more ancient stone, but few recalled what it had been named or how it had met its end.