The fire had gone out by morning. We yawned, had a bite and a drink and gave the horses the same, and started out again.
“We shall go over the pass, there,” I pointed it out to my sister, “and be in the Valley at nightfall.”
“It’s so high!”
I nodded.
“The mountains of Huhanwa are not so high as this, and there are growing things there,” she murmured, looking around at the arid rockscape.
“This is the way it is because the Spring’s influence is almost nonexistent here,” I said, and we followed a path marked with pillars of rough-dressed stone up the grey severe mountainside toward the deep-notched pass.
In the pass, we rested. We had taken longer than I’d expected to reach it, but we had plenty of time to get down to the Valley still. I took out a spyglass I had brought and surveyed the Valley.
“What do you see?” Ulrike asked me, shading her eyes and squinting in that direction also.
“A caravan I think across over there … yes. A goodly one, too. There is a waystation … it’s hard to say how far off, distance doesn’t mean much in here … anyway we shall stop there this night. I daresay they’ll get there first if that’s their destination. Going downhill here is as hard as going up and we must walk the horses.” I closed the glass with a snap and put it back in its case.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” I added.
She looked around at the grey rock of the mountains, the bleached-looking grass, the bone-white, directionless, bright sky, and said, “Um …”
“In its way.”
“I guess so.”
I laughed and got out a water-bottle for a drink. The wind hissed and whistled through the stones. Desolation of the purest, most sterile kind surrounded us, but the air was diamond-sharp and diamond-pure. I looked back, toward Argylle’s Dominion, and ahead, into the Valley, and pulled my cloak around me to keep the cold, dry wind from my neck. Ulrike fidgeted with her saddlebags, had a drink also, and waited for me. Virgil had gone hunting for mice, though he knew as well as I there were none hereabouts.
I took a last look in the direction of Argylle and walked back toward her.
“We’d best—” I began, and Ulrike screamed and pointed, staring up and past me and starting away. Daffodil whinnied and reared and jumped away from her, pelting off down the mountainside, as I whirled to see something I did not want to see at all, now or ever.
Wings widespread, claws ready, Gemnamnon dropped into the pass.
15
DISBELIEF HELD ME PARALYZED FOR ONLY an instant. “Run!” I yelled to Ulrike. “Get out of here!” She was already running, though, and I ran too, out of the dragon’s immediate reach. I stopped at the lip of the pass.
Ulrike didn’t stop to ask questions; slipping and sliding, she raced down toward the Valley. I tried a lightning-bolt spell; it snapped weakly and did nothing. I tried a general-purpose explosive spell I had found handy in the past; it fizzled.
The dragon laughed but did not come closer than his landing-place.
“You are far from home, foolish sorcerer,” he boomed, and casually fired a gout of flame at a rock, which exploded with the heat. I shielded my face with my cloak.
His eyes were healed. I drew my sword with a feeling of futility. I wore my gold-and-black mail over a light gambeson; I had no other body armor. Cosmo, bless his heart, hadn’t run; he nudged me from behind. I jumped about a yard.
Gemnamnon laughed at me again. “Mount, mount, O Fool of Argylle,” he encouraged me. “Perhaps I shall leave you here the nonce, for I know you cannot go far with your pathetic little sorceries, and come back for you when I have picked up that silly girl …” He laughed again, a deafening, numbing sound that filled the pass and bounced off the rocks, and he launched himself, laughing still, into the air. His wings stroked and made a great wind, and then he was airborne and swooping down toward the Valley.
Sick and giddy with fear for my sister, I ran to the edge of the Pass; I could not see Ulrike, but Gemnamnon was circling out and around . .
“Ulrike! Your Keys! Try your Keys!” I screamed, panicking. “Ulrike! Use your Keys!” They might not work, but it was her only chance.
No answer, no sight of her. I shook. Below, Daffodil suddenly bolted into sight along a steep bit of the trail, and the dragon buzzed the horse and sent her, racing blindly in a panic, off the edge of the cliff. The animal’s scream carried up to me.
Where was Ulrike?
“She’s gone!” I cried to Gemnamnon, and I prayed it was true.
His laughter went on. He dropped to the mountainside again and began tearing at some rocks, tossing boulders as I might toss a football, and suddenly his mighty clawed foot paused in midair and then reached down more slowly and carefully.
I screamed “No!” as he picked Ulrike up. She was limp. Fainted, I hoped.
Gemnamnon laughed still as he went into the air again and flew up, up, around.
I could barely breathe. I wept with rage and frustration. There was nothing I could do to get her from him. My sorcery was no good, and my sword wasn’t going to be much good either, and if Dewar were going to rescue us he would have done it already. I recognized that I was going to die, and a curiously calming clarity came with the thought; it would happen now, rather than later. I was glad that I had put things in a tidy state before leaving Argylle.
My horse nudged me again; I grabbed his bridle and said, “Get yourself out of here. You know the way home,” and let go and slapped his rump. “Go!” I ordered him, and slapped him again. Cosmo took off without looking back, stones flying from beneath his hooves as he raced back through the pass toward Argylle. Relieved, probably. If he made it back to the Citadel, at least they would know there that something had happened to us.
The dragon finished his lazy victory rolls and plummeted into the pass again, making a neat three-point landing, still holding Ulrike carefully in one mighty set of claws. He hadn’t crushed her. She wasn’t moving, though.
Gemnamnon laughed at me still.
“You see, Fool of Argylle, how useless it is to oppose such as me. I am older than your Spring, and stronger than your sorcery, and I shall exist and persist long after you are dust and your realm has faded away into the Void. And that first shall be sooner, not later.” He laughed again. He set Ulrike down before him and reared back, glaring down at me.
“Let her go,” I said, shaking.
“You are a greater fool than you seemed,” he sneered. “Let her go? As soon let you go.”
“Release her! Or you shall have Gaston the Fireduke himself on your slot, lizard, and I think his reputation might have reached even your cotton-filled ears!”
“Gaston! The Duke is hardly a threat to make me shake,” he laughed, and flamed and blew up another rock.
The noise of this apparently woke Ulrike. She jerked upright and then screamed and bolted, trying to get away. Gemnamnon plopped a clawed foot in front of her; she pulled up short and shrieked “Gwydion!”
“I … Let her go!” I screamed in impotent rage.
“For what?” he laughed. “For what, Fool of Argylle? For what?”
I had nothing to bargain with. Tears of impotent frustration stung my eyes.
“For your life,” gravelled something as loudly as the dragon’s laughter, off to my right.
My head moved so fast I nearly broke my neck. My breath went in and stopped halfway through my throat.
Gemnamnon’s laugh rumbled to a halt.
Hunched, tense, and as big as Gemnamnon, golden and oozing power and confidence, wings half-spread, a Gryphon was perched on the top of the cliff that formed one side of the notched pass, and its eyes burned like two suns, and its beak and the claws on its massive feathered forelegs looked like bronze, glittering in the white light of the Border. The claws tightened slightly. Stone crumbled in them and rattled down, the only sound.
“These are mine,” rasped the Gryphon, and sat back on its haunches, which were covered in sulphur-
colored downy feathers or fur. Its wings extended more fully, twitching, and its tail flicked from side to side.
The two beasts stared at one another, rigid and silent for a few dozen of my racing heartbeats.
I had seen gryphons before. This one was ten times the size of even the largest female. I forgot to breathe, looking at it.
Showing miraculous presence of mind, Ulrike suddenly darted around the dragon’s claws. He snatched at her, but she leapt aside, and he swatted at her again and again as she sprinted, faster than I’d seen even Belphoebe move, toward me and past me. I turned and followed her.
“Begone, children of Argylle!” cried the Gryphon. Gemnamnon answered with a thunderous noise that sent more rocks falling from precarious places. We heard the Gryphon scream and the dragon roar, and we did not linger to watch or place bets on the outcome.
Nearly flying ourselves, jumping from rock to rock and down the slope, we skidded and rolled and plunged while the howls and snarls of the monstrous fight filled our ears. We had gone about a quarter of a mile in maybe a quarter of a minute when I hurtled and stumbled and caught up to Ulrike as a rock moved under her foot and threw her aside. She steadied herself on my arm and started off again, dragging me.
“Keys,” I gasped, my lungs aching, wanting to vomit from the fear, and pulled mine out. If they worked, we could get out of here, really out—
“The dragon!” she shrieked, distraught with fright, and I yanked her back and down and looked up just as a fountain of rocks and dirt blew up in the pass and the Gryphon and Gemnamnon took to the air both at once. Small stones, pebbles, and dust rained down on us. I shielded my head with my arm, crouching over her.
“We have a minute, and that’s all we need,” I said, keeping a death-tight grip on her arm lest she bolt and taking out my flint-and-steel. “Hold onto my arm!” I glanced up and saw that Gemnamnon had taken a long scoring down his side and that the Gryphon, though singed, appeared to be unharmed. Gemnamnon spotted us and started toward us, but the Gryphon intercepted him, raking a wing with its glittering fore-claws. Praying that we were in one of the Border’s “hot spots” where lesser sorceries at least worked, I gibbered the spell to make contact with Alexander, whose Key was the one I’d grabbed first. For the fire I tore off my cloak and lit it, which caught and smoldered while I rattled off the Way-opening spell faster than I’d ever said anything. The time-consuming double spell was necessary to find Alexander and then to open a Way between us. I drew upon Ulrike’s and my Keys and the spell was complete; the cloth burst into flames as sorcerous energy poured into the fire.
“Gwydion?” Alexander said, sounding startled, as the spell strengthened around us. He appeared, golden-tinted, in the flames. “Whatever are you—”
“Let us come to you!” I screamed, hearing the screams of the Gryphon doppling nearer, as Ulrike tried to bolt again and hauled me off balance. Bodies passed overhead, shadowing us; I didn’t dare look up. A blast of heat; foul-smelling gas—the flames flattened down—
“Come then! Come!’ our brother said, and he spoke the words easing the passage at his end, and I lifted and shoved the flailing Ulrike at him through the fire and followed her, falling into Alexander.
Water sloshed over me and steam hissed. I lost my footing and went down with a mighty splash, hearing Ulrike beginning to sob and howl with terror. A fountain had been Alexander’s focus for the sending; we were in some garden. The fire, in the brief moment of connection, had made the steam. I thrashed to my feet, barking my knuckles.
Without saying anything, Alexander grabbed my arm and helped me out and half-dragged me over a white gravel path to a white bench supported by smirking white limestone putti. He had Ulrike encircled in his other arm, and she clung to him as a drowning man must hold onto a spar, making muffled, irrational noises in his shoulder. I was shaking now too, almost limp with fear and the delayed reaction. Alexander shoved me down onto the bench, staring at me and her alternately, and sat down with her and held her and shushed her, gripping my shoulder for a moment as I hauled myself back under control.
“What happened?” he asked after perhaps twenty minutes had passed and I had slumped back, eyes closed, still trembling.
“Dragon,” I whispered.
Ulrike whimpered incoherently and Alexander patted her back and hushed her again.
“The dragon,” he guessed.
“Gemnamnon.”
“Where?”
“Border. Argylle side. In a pass.”
He snorted softly and quieted Ulrike, who was starting to sob again.
“You’re all right though,” he said after a moment.
“Tell you … tell you … later …”
“You need a drink,” Alexander said. “Can you walk?” He rose, picking Ulrike up. She put her arms around his neck and held on tightly, with her face still buried in his shoulder.
“Guess so.” Still shaking, I got to my feet and followed him as he carried our sister through the garden, which was formally kept, across a wide lawn and through a conservatory and into a house I now recalled from other visits. The conservatory was new.
About four ounces of whisky later, Ulrike was calm enough to be put to bed. We did just that, pulling off her boots and outer clothing. Alexander assigned a maid to sit with her. I poured another stiff drink for myself, putting some water in this time.
“So what happened? You’re not hurt, she’s not hurt, you’re both scared shitless,” he observed, lifting his eyebrows.
“Alexander, I …” I controlled my temper and my voice. “You’d have crapped yourself, buddy,” I said after a moment. “The dragon dropped down on us like a hawk on a rabbit in a pass on the Argylle side of the Border Range. I told Ulrike to run. She ran. My spells … I threw a couple at him; they fizzled. You know it’s hard to use sorcery there. Gemnamnon laughed at me and went chasing after Ulrike after a few taunts to me. He hauled apart the mountainside to pull her out of a cave or cleft she’d run into below and picked her up and flew around with her. I think she was unconscious. I couldn’t do a damn thing. Nothing. He landed and boasted some more. I said that if he didn’t let her go Gaston would be hunting for him, and he sneered at that. Ulrike came to and tried to run; he blocked her … it was like a cat with a mouse, Alex … I couldn’t do anything, nothing, I had my sword and that’s all and I couldn’t—couldn’t— I screamed at him to let her go, and he asked, laughing, what for—and this … a Gryphon answered him, for his life.”
I stopped and had a gulp of whisky. “A Gryphon, Alex, as big as the dragon, or bigger, and … and … nothing like the Jagged Mountains’ ones … bigger … brighter … It was hanging onto the cliff side of the pass. It said that … we were Argylle’s … and told us to get out of there … we ran and they … fought.”
“Now that is something I would like to see,” said Alexander.
I snorted a laugh, perhaps a bit high-pitched. “The hell you would! I’ll send you over and you can watch if you please, and you can tell me about it from beyond the grave. Gemnamnon was trying to buzz and torch us as we called you. The Gryphon was interfering.”
“Hm.” Alexander frowned a little and slouched in his chair. “Whence did the gryphon come? I have never heard of them in the Border.”
“It was no ordinary one. I know that much. It was—it was like—” I shook my head. “Like looking into the sun,” I concluded.
My brother tipped his head back and considered me, and I regarded him, and we didn’t say anything while I finished the whisky.
“I am glad you made it,” he said finally.
“Me too. I shall have to go after that cursed creature now. We cannot have him in the Border.”
“Where did you banish him to before?”
“Away, far away,” I lied. “Not the Border. A wasteland.”
Alexander’s mouth twitched. “Evidently he found it not to his taste.”
“Yes.”
“Why did you not kill him?”
“What?
Just now?” I stared at him.
“When you had him on Longview.”
“I couldn’t. I was barely able to do what I did.” I wanted to steer the conversation in some other direction. That great ugly lie, as ugly as the dragon, made me just as uncomfortable. I was not a facile liar, lacking any practice, and the more I talked about that duel with Gemnamnon, the more I feared slipping up and being exposed by my lie. Although, if worse came to worst, it was no obvious harm to tell people the truth, still I had no way of knowing what Dewar was up to and I wanted to find that out for myself before trumpeting that I’d seen him. An archetypal sorcerer, with a sorcerer’s ingrained secrecy, he wouldn’t thank me for letting people know that he was using Ariel, or even that he was keeping himself well-informed on local affairs. “This is near Montgard, isn’t it?” I asked.
“Yes, it is,” he said.
“I thought I remembered the house. Isn’t that a new conservatory? It looks handsomely done.”
“Thank you. I had it built a couple years ago when I found I must spend more time here in the winters. It’s very pleasant. Heated. Come, I’ll show it to you,” he said, rising, and I rose too.
“I think I’d like to put on dry clothes first, if I may,” I said. I’d stripped off the wettest outer layer and my mail, but I was still clammy and warm.
“Of course. How unobservant of me. You frightened the carp out of a year’s growth, I’m sure,” Alex remarked, and he led me to a guest room and got me dry clothing.
I changed and did a Lesser Summoning of Walter. Amazingly, I hadn’t lost my bag of tricks.
“Hullo there,” he said cheerily, reaching forward and lighting a couple more candles. The image in my mirror grew correspondingly in size and resolution. He was in one of the Citadel music rooms; I recognized the pianoforte at which he sat. “All’s well, Gwydion.”
The Well-Favored Man Page 26