The Dragon Revenant

by Katharine Kerr

  “Rhodry.”

  He said the name aloud, and he was awake, lying on a blanket in the shade of a tree at the edge of the caravan camp. By the sun’s position he could tell that it was nearly noon. Although he was so dry that his tongue felt glued to the roof of his mouth, and his scratch from the night before still stung, he felt perfectly well and steady-headed, not at all like a man who’d taken a poisoned wound. When he spoke the name again, Zandar noticed that he was awake and came over with a waterskin.

  “So you’re alive, are you? Good.”

  “I’ve remembered my real name.” Dry mouth or not, he felt his news so urgently it was like an ache. “It’s Rhodry.”

  “Well, by the gods and all their little piglets! Good, good for you. Here. Drink first; then we’ll talk.”

  Taliaesyn drank as much as he could hold, waited a few moments, then found he could drink some more. Zandar hunkered down next to him and watched with a commercial sort of compassion.

  “There was some kind of poison on that blade,” the trader said. “The village herbwoman was sure of that, but it couldn’t have been very strong.”

  “I don’t think it was poison. How about a simple drug, to knock me out and make me easy prey?”

  “If so, it failed badly. The man you had in your hands is dead.”

  All at once Rhodry went cold all over, remembering that he was a slave.

  “And will I die for that?”

  “No. He attacked you, and the village headman is a friend of mine. What we all want to know is why he attacked you.” Zandar gave him a grim smile. “Or let me guess: you can’t remember if you have any enemies who want you dead.”

  “I can’t, master. I’m sorry. I wish I could.”

  “Of course you do. Well, the headman’s going to have the other thief executed, and that will be an end to that. Think you can ride today?”

  “Oh yes. I feel fine. That’s why I think it was a drug, not a poison.”

  “Oh.” Zandar considered this for a moment, then shrugged. “Well, let’s get out of this place and on the road, then. Maybe that will throw these mysterious enemies off your trail. I paid too much for you to have you slaughtered in front of me.” Yet he paused for a moment, mouthing syllables. “Rhodry, huh?” He said the name strangely, with no puff of breath and barely any trill on the rh. “Tell the others, will you? At least it’s shorter.”

  Some five days later, the Great Krysello and his beautiful barbarian maidservant found themselves a suite of chambers in one of the most expensive inns in Myleton. Since the innkeep had plenty of experience with traveling showmen, he demanded payment in advance, but once Salamander gave him a generous handful of silver coins, he turned servile, showing them up to the suite personally, bowing often, and muttering words that Jill interpreted as being “Hope my humble quarters are suitable” and other such pleasantries. The innkeep’s boy carried up their traveling gear and laid it down on top of a low chest, then retired with an awestruck look for the pale hair and eyes of his guests, rarities enough in Bardek to be a show in themselves. Although Salamander announced that he was pleased, especially with the piles of cushions and the purple divan, Jill found the squareness of the room uncomfortable, and the echoing tile floor and stark white walls amplified every sound they made. Near the ceiling ran a painted dado of fruit and flowers, so realistically done that she would have sworn you could have plucked them off the wall. When her gnome appeared, it sniffed round the corners like a dog.

  “Now Jill, listen,” Salamander said. “When we go to the marketplace today, you’ll have to peace-bind that sword with a thong or suchlike, or the archon’s men will confiscate it.”

  “What? The bloody gall! What kind of a place is this, anyway? What if some thief attacks us?”

  “They don’t have that kind of thief here, thanks to those very same archon’s men. If you get your pocket picked, you see, you lodge a complaint, and the archon’s men hunt down the thief for you and arrest him.”

  “Sounds like a waste of public funds to me, when I’m quite capable of slitting the dishonest bastard’s throat for him.”

  “I fear me you’re going to find Bardek a great trial, and doubtless Bardek will find you one in return.”

  “Let them. Do you think Rhodry’s here in Myleton?”

  “I only wish life would smile upon us so warmly, my little eaglet. I’m willing to wager that he came through here, though, because this town is the center of the slave trade. Anyone with an expensive property like our Rhodry would be insane to sell it somewhere else. I’m just hoping he went at government auction. They keep careful records of every sale, and for a few coppers we’ll … that is, I’ll be allowed to read them.”

  “One of these days I suppose I should learn letters. It seems like such a wretched bore, puzzling them out.”

  “Not once you learn, and truly, you should. Let me just see if I can pick up our Rhodry’s trail now that we’re back on land.”

  In a corner of the room stood a rectangular charcoal brazier, made of cast iron, on a solid-looking bronze stand, with a layer of kindling and charcoal all ready for a fire. Salamander lit the fuel with a wave of his hand, then stared steadily into the pale and tiny flames. Jill felt a cold trembling of fear. For all they knew, Rhodry had never been sold at all, but still suffered at the hands of the Hawks of the Brotherhood. When the gerthddyn groaned dramatically, she leapt to her feet, thinking he’d seen Rhodry dead or maimed.

  “He’s been sold, sure enough, to some kind of caravan leader,” Salamander said. “It certainly looks like he’s being well-treated.”

  “Oh ye gods, you chattering elf!” She felt tears misting her eyes and took refuge in anger. “Then why did you have to make such mournful noises?”

  “Because they’re traveling on a road through the grasslands, heading toward the undistinguished, unremarkable, and boringly bland mountains that cover half this island and a good chunk of the next, too. I have absolutely no idea where they may be.”

  Jill muttered several foul things under her breath.

  “Fortunately,” Salamander went on, “We can draw upon resources other than dweomer. We can check the aforementioned government records, and we can ask questions of the private traders, too. An expensive barbarian like our Rhodry will have been remembered.”

  “Good. Let’s get on our way.”

  “We might as well, O Gilyan of the hot blood. Besides, we have to go to the market to buy supplies and to get a permit. Tonight we put on our first show.”

  In spite of the constant anxiety that underlay her mind like the sound of the waves in a harbor, Jill found Myleton splendid with its longhouses and painted garden walls scattered through the forest of flowering trees. When they came to the market, she was doubly impressed. The vast plaza was a sea of brightly colored sunshades, rippling in the wind over the hundreds of booths spread out around the public fountains. Here and there was a small stage where performers struggled to get the crowd’s attention. Salamander told her that at noon the market would shut down while everyone slept the hot afternoon away, then reopen at twilight. They wandered around, eating cakes sticky with a white, sweet powder while they looked over heaps of silverwork and brass-ware, oil lamps, silks, perfumes, jewelry, strangely shaped knives, and decorative leatherwork. Salamander pawed through all the gaudiest merchandise and made his purchases; they ended up burdened with two brass braziers, packets of charcoal and resin incenses, yards and yards of red cloth, a long drape of cloth-of-gold, a tunic stiff with floral embroidery for her, and a brocaded robe of many colors for the mighty wizard to wear on stage. While he shopped he kept chattering away, but Jill noticed just how much information he managed to extract as he did so, from the best place to buy horses to the current political temper of the city and, most important of all, the names of several private slave traders along with the news that at the last public auction, at least, no barbarians had been offered for sale.

  The first trader they visited informed them sadly t
hat he’d seen no barbarians in over a year, but he did direct them to a man named Brindemo, who spoke the barbarian tongue well and was thus the private trader of choice for someone who had a barbarian for sale. After a quick stop at their inn to unburden themselves of their packages, they followed the convoluted directions and managed to find, at last, Brindemo’s shabby compound. When they knocked on the door, it was opened by a slender man, too young to grow a beard, whose dark eyes darted this way and that as he greeted them. Salamander bowed to him and spoke in Deverrian.

  “Where is Brindemo?”

  “Very ill, my lord. I am his son. I will serve you in his stead.”

  “Ill? Is there a fever in your compound?”

  “Not at all, not at all.” He paused to run his tongue over his lips. “It was strange. Spoiled food, mayhap.”

  While Salamander considered him, the boy squirmed, his eyes looking everywhere but at the gerthddyn.

  “Well,” Salamander said at last. “Tender my humble apologies to your esteemed father, but I insist on seeing him. I know many a strange thing, you see. Perhaps I could recommend a remedy.” He paused for effect. “I am the Great Krysello, Barbarian Wizard of the North.”

  The young man moaned and squirmed the more, but he threw the door wide open and let them into the grassy yard, where a couple of young women sat together near the well in a dull-eyed slump of despair. When Jill realized that she was seeing human merchandise, her stomach clenched, and she looked away.

  “I must see if my father is awake.”

  “We’ll come with you while you do,” Salamander said.

  With a groan of honest terror the boy led him round the longhouse to a side door which, it turned out, opened directly into his parents’ bedchamber. Lying amidst a heap of striped cushions on a low divan, Brindemo raised his head drunkenly and stared at them with rheumy eyes, his dark skin ashy-gray from fear and fever. Her hands clasped over her mouth, his stout wife stood frozen in the corner. Brindemo looked at her and barked out one word; she ran from the room. Salamander stalked over to the bedside.

  “Look at my pale hair. You know I’m from Deverry. You had a barbarian man here for sale, didn’t you?”

  “I did, truly.” The fat trader’s voice was a harsh whisper from a poison-burned throat. “I told your men already. I sold him. A spice merchant, Zandar of Danmara.” He paused to cough horribly. “Have you come to kill me now?”

  “Naught of the sort. I can smell the poison in your sweat, and I know what it is. Swallow spoonfuls of honey mixed with butter or some kind of fat. It will soothe the pains and sop the dregs up. Since the ben-marono plant kills quickly, and you aren’t dead already, we may conclude that they gave you a less than fatal dose.”

  “My thanks. Ai! Baruma is one of your northern demons, I swear it.”

  “The son of one, at least.”

  With great effort Brindemo raised his head to stare into Salamander’s eyes.

  “You!” he hissed. “You’re not one of them, are you?”

  “One of whom?”

  He fell back, panting from his exertion, and looked away. Salamander smiled gently.

  “I won’t force any truths out of you, my friend. If you mean what I suspect you mean, they’d kill you for certain. But in return, I shan’t tell you one word about myself, so they won’t be able to pry it out of you.”

  “A fair bargain.” For a moment Brindemo lay still, gathering his strength to speak further. “Ease a sick man’s curiosity, good sir, if you can. The barbarian lad, the one they called Taliaesyn, who was he truly?”

  “He didn’t tell you?”

  “He didn’t know. His memory was gone, completely gone.”

  Jill muttered a foul and involuntary oath.

  “I see.” Salamander turned grim. “Well, my friend, you had the honor of feeding a very important man. He was Rhodry Maelwaedd, Gwerbret Aberwyn, kidnapped and sold by his enemies.”

  Brindemo made a deep gurgling sound, choked, and coughed in spasms of sweating.

  “Calm yourself,” Salamander said. “You didn’t know the truth, so no doubt no further harm will befall you. I take it you know where Aberwyn is.”

  “I don’t.” Brindemo could barely choke out the words. “Doesn’t matter. Know what a gwerbret is. Ai ai ai.”

  At that his son stepped into the chamber, a big kitchen knife clutched in one hand and his face set in hard determination. When Brindemo muttered a few Bardekian words, he blushed in embarrassment and set the knife down on the windowsill.

  “This Baruma?” Jill said to him. “Tell me what he looked like. Your father can’t keep talking. He needs to rest.”

  “He was a fat man, you would say porklike, I believe, in your tongue. Very very strange skin, very smooth, and his black hair and beard are always shiny and oiled down. He wore a silver beard-clip, too, and his eyes were like a snake’s, very narrow and glittery and nasty.”

  “What do you remember about the slave called Taliaesyn?” Salamander turned to the boy. “Everything you know.”

  “There was little to know, sir. We thought he was noble-born because he moved like a knife-fighter, and all your lords are soldiers. He remembered he was a thing called a silver dagger, but naught else about himself.” He glanced at his father, who whispered out Zandar’s name. “Oh truly, the caravan. It was going south. That was ten days ago. Zandar works his way through all the villages and so on to the south coast. He sells spices to the cooks.” He thought for a moment, apparently struggling with the not very familiar language. “The name of the drug in your tongue, it is … um, opium, that’s it! Baruma was giving him opium. Taliaesyn was very thin when we bought him, too.”

  “Baruma is going to pay for all this,” Jill said quietly. “He is going to pay and pay and pay until he whines and screams and begs me to kill him and put an end to it.”

  “Jill!” Salamander gasped in honest shock.

  Brindemo laughed, a tormented mutter.

  “My blessing to you, lass,” he whispered. “My humble but honest blessing.”

  Salamander started for the door, then paused, looking back at Brindemo.

  “One last thing. Why did Baruma do this to you?”

  “I disobeyed him. He said to sell Taliaesyn to the mines or the galleys. I sold him instead to the decent master.”

  “I see. Well, that act of mercy’s cost you dear, but you have my thanks for it.”

  All the way back to their inn Jill burned with rage, and that burning translated itself to her vision, until it truly seemed that pillars of flame danced ahead of them through the streets. Although he kept giving her worried looks, Salamander said nothing until they were back in their chamber and the door safely barred behind them. Then he grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her.

  “Stop it! I don’t even know what you’re doing, but stop it right now! I can feel power pouring out of you.”

  “I was just … well, seeing things again. I don’t know how to stop it.”

  Yet the shaking and his very real fear had already snapped her mind back to a more normal state. The flames were gone, although the edges of everything in the room still shimmered with silver energy.

  “Then don’t start it in the first place.” Salamander let her go. “Jill, you get to brooding on things, though I can’t truly say I blame you, mind. But, well, how can I explain it? When you brood, you summon power, because you have a dweomer mind, deny it all you want. When most people brood over things they see pictures in their mind or hear the voice that they consider their self talking, but it all stays in the mind where it belongs. When you’ve got this raw power pouring into you, you begin to see the pictures and so on outside of your mind, don’t you?”

  “I do.” She made the admission reluctantly. “I saw fire running before us down the street.”

  “Well, that’s cursed dangerous. Dweomerfolk see images, too, and work with them, but we’ve learned how to control them. If you go on blundering around this way, you could go stark raving ma
d. Images and voices will come and go around you of their own free will, and you won’t be able to stop them.”

  Since she could barely control them even then, she went cold all over at the prospect. With a dramatic sigh Salamander sprawled onto the cushioned divan.

  “Food,” he said abruptly. “Eating somewhat generally helps shut things down. It’s tediously difficult to work any dweomer on a full stomach. Drink dulls the mind right down, too. But I doubt me if that’s going to be enough. I’ve no right to do anything of the sort, but I’m going to have to teach you some apprentice tricks of the exalted trade.”

  “And what makes you think I want to learn them?”

  “Your basic desire to stay sane and alive, that’s what. Don’t be a dolt, Jill! You’re like a wounded man who’s afraid to have the chirurgeon stop his bleeding because pressing on the wound might hurt.” He paused, and he seemed to be studying the air all around her. “Well, you’re too worked up now to try a lesson. How about food, indeed? The Great Krysello is famished. If you wouldn’t mind assuming your guise of beauteous barbarian handmaiden, go down and ask the innkeep to send up a tray of meats and fruits. And a flagon of wine, too.”

  “I’m hungry myself.” She managed to smile. “Oh mighty master of mysterious arts.”

  Salamander was certainly right about the effects of food on her visionary state of mind. As soon as she’d eaten a couple of pieces of meat and some cracker-bread, she felt a definite change, the dulling, as he’d called it, which she needed so badly. Although the colors in the room seemed unusually intense, the constant shimmerings disappeared. A couple of glasses of sweet white wine finished her involuntary dweomer-working completely.