The Dragon Revenant

by Katharine Kerr

  Near the elves were other statues, one meant to represent Jill—though of course the Old One had no idea of what she looked like—and one of Rhodry, stripped naked and shackled. Close by was a statue of Nevyn, whom he knew entirely too well for his peace of mind. Once Nevyn set foot on Surtinna, his statue would animate and undergo small changes that would enable him to judge the Master of the Aethyr’s plans. Scattered round these main images were other, smaller symbols—statues of Wildfolk, an elven longbow, and various objects that had some emotional meaning for the Old One. Over the past few months, these symbols had indeed registered changes just as he’d hoped. Right before Baruma had first contacted him, for instance, a stone wolf had appeared, lolling in one corner and watching the stairs. Once he’d spoken with Baruma, he could see that it signified a spy and an enemy. Although every now and then he saw another statue—a shadowy thing, but apparently male and elven—standing near Jill’s, so far he’d been unable to study it; whenever he tried, it disappeared.

  That particular evening, when he went to the chamber, he found changes that disturbed him mightily. Rhodry’s shackles were gone. The stone wolf was on its feet, hackles raised, fangs bared. In her arms Jill was cradling a turtledove, as if to protect it from a cat or some such predator. Of all incongruous birds! he thought to himself. Now what can that mean? Yet he gave it little thought because she was, after all, only a woman. With an imaginary shrug of his imaginary shoulders, he walked over to one of the windows on the moonlit side. Looking out the window took a certain amount of courage. At times strange creatures and stranger visions came there, because for all that this tower had started life as a simple mental trick, it had somehow attracted the astral plane—or moved close to it—or sent out a bridge to it—whichever metaphor you’d like for such a peculiar occurrence. Although this link poured power into the dweomer-workings there, it also brought danger.

  When the Old One looked, he saw at first nothing but mist, swirling thick and wet round the tower. He waited, frowning in concentration as he peered out, until at last something seemed to move within the mist, to come closer, rising up like a swimmer from the sea, streaming mist like water as it formed into a recognizable shape, more or less human—but the face shifted like flames in a fire, sometimes swelling, sometimes shrinking. Greenish-brown hair burgeoned round the face like a vast tangle of leaves or long mosses on thick earth, and when it spoke he felt a blast of cold air swirl round him, even though its words sounded only in his mind.

  “You have enkindled more evil than you can know, and someday you too will smoulder in its flames.”

  Then, before he could reply, it was gone. The Old One spun from the window and rushed for the staircase. As he hurried down, he could hear music playing in the chamber, strange discordant notes, as if the wind itself rang upon a harp.

  That evening, as he considered this vision in his comfortable chair in his private study, he concluded that someone had invoked the forces of the Elemental Kings against him. The logical choice for that someone would have been Nevyn. As for Rhodry’s image, it seemed equally obvious that Nevyn must be close to rescuing him—or, again, it would have been obvious, if only the symbolic statue of the old man had changed or shown some sign of life and power. Since it hadn’t changed, he could only assume that some other dweomermaster had invoked the Kings, and equally, he could assume that the dweomermaster in question was one of his many rivals to become head of the guild, maybe the same one who’d sent the wolf after Baruma. The Old One knew his own strength, and he knew his magic: when Nevyn arrived, that statue would reveal his coming as surely as dark clouds announce the coming of the rain. He was certain of it. He refused, in fact, to believe otherwise, and of course, when it came to this one limited thing, he was perfectly correct.

  Later he would realize just how badly those limits had cost him, when, unfortunately, there was still plenty of time to correct his mistake. For the moment, however, he put all his energies into working an elaborate method of scrying in an attempt to ferret out his enemy in the guild.

  When they left Albara, the Great Krysello and his two barbarian servants traveled north toward the mountains. The road there ran along the edge of a wide, shallow arroyo, some twenty feet across and twelve deep, with a trickle of brackish river down the middle. On the second day, however, they woke to find the river clean and flowing and the sky an ominous gray. As they rode out, the tops of the hills disappeared into a thick gray wrap of winter cloud.

  Although it rained all day, it was only a sullen sort of drizzle. By shaking the water from their oily wool cloaks at regular intervals, they stayed reasonably dry. Yet the river beside the road rose, spreading out at about the speed of a walking horse until it filled the arroyo from side to side, then deepening, until by noon it was swirling with white water, churning down from the distant mountains. Around mid-afternoon Jill saw an entire tree trunk rush past and part of what appeared to be a wooden fence as well. When she pointed them out to Salamander, he turned solemn.

  “I think we’d best camp a good ways back from the road tonight. The winter floods are upon us good and proper, my turtledove, and I have no desire to wake up swimming.”

  “If you woke up in time at all,” Rhodry said. “I heard a good bit about these wretched floods, and I don’t like the idea of traveling in them, I tell you.”

  “No more do I, dear brother, but alas, we have no choice. Our one consolation is that we’ll have the roads to ourselves for a couple of weeks until things reach some kind of equilibrium.” Salamander looked utterly dismal. “Until then, we shall be riding wet, dirty, cold, and generally as miserable as one can get outside of outright illness. Alas, alack, well-a-day, and so forth and so on.”

  “I suppose we could lay up in a town for a few days,” Jill said.

  “There aren’t any more towns between here and the central plateau, not ones big enough to have an inn, anyway. Besides, we’ve got to keep moving. Somewhat’s wrong—I can feel it in my ill-starred soul.”

  “And how do you know that we’re not riding straight into trouble?”

  “There, my petite partridge, you have a very good point indeed. We’d best set up some kind of guard when we make camp tonight. Doubdess we won’t be able to sleep much in this blasted muck, anyway.”

  Just before sunset the drizzle thickened to a sort of vertical fog, not quite a rain but too wet for mist, and the clouds seemed to hover a mere arm’s reach above the road. Leaving the brown, swollen river, they led their stock up a hill to the cold and windswept grassy crest.

  “This won’t do,” Salamander moaned. “We could all die of a congestion of the chest and spare our enemies the trouble of catching us.”

  “Well, there’s some boulders and shrubs down over there,” Jill said, pointing. “We can tether the horses in the grass and then try to find some dryish spots down in the rocks.”

  “Try, indeed. I like your choice of words.”

  Even though she was a road-hardened silver dagger, that night Jill was almost as uncomfortable as Salamander. Enormous pale hunks of sandstone, the boulders poked through the hillside and clustered on a small natural terrace about thirty feet down from the crest. Along with the prickly shrubs and tall weeds that grew in between them, these rocks did indeed provide shelter from the wind, but the level spaces between and around them were narrow, and the ground so wet that the damp soaked right through the blankets. Eventually they all decided that the only way to sleep was sitting up with blankets wrapped around them like cloaks. Although Jill wanted to do her share and stand a watch, Rhodry pointed out that while he and Salamander could see in the dark, she’d be blind as a mole on this starless night.

  “Get what rest you can, beloved,” he said. “I’ll wake you just before dawn. We’ll get an early start. If naught else, it’ll be warmer once we’re moving.”

  Once the last of the sunset faded, Jill realized that, indeed, standing a watch would be a waste of her time. In the swirling mist-rain she could barely find the
horizon, much less see anything in the broken country around them. Perhaps, if she were lucky and happened to be staring right at it, she might have seen a large animal or a man moving, if it were some light color and noisy to boot. Wrapped in two blankets and her cloak, with her sword in its scabbard right beside her, she wedged herself under a slight overhang between two boulders and wondered if she’d ever fall asleep. A few feet away she could see Rhodry poking around, looking for another dry spot, but only as a gray shape moving against a blackness.

  “Salamander’s on watch?” she said.

  “He is, up near the crest so he can keep an eye on the horses.”

  By the rustling he was making Rhodry seemed to be scraping small stones and sticks out of his chosen spot. Finally he settled down, leaning back against a rock and sitting so still that she could barely make out where he was. Tented in her blankets and out of the wind, she began to warm up at last, and she managed to ignore the slight cramps in her legs enough to drowse off. Once she half-roused to find Rhodry leaving, creeping quietly uphill for his watch; distantly she heard what might have been Salamander whispering to him. She also realized that the drizzle had slacked off. By shifting around she got herself halfway comfortable before she fell asleep again.

  Only to wake to a tug on her hair and the feel of a little paw tapping her face. With a cold ripple of danger down her back Jill was alert, unwinding herself from the blankets even as she was still recognizing the dim form of her gray gnome silhouetted against the night.

  “Is somewhat wrong?” she whispered.

  It seemed that the little creature was nodding a yes. Jill threw the blankets back and got to her knees, feeling for the hilt of her sword. Her fingers had just closed on it when she heard a rustle and a scrape off downhill. With one last pull on her hair the gnome vanished. She grabbed the hilt in one hand, the scabbard in the other, and slid the sword half-free. All at once, up at the crest of the hill, she heard a whicker, then the neigh of a frightened horse.

  “Rhodry! Ware!”

  With her yell Jill was on her feet, the sword drawn. As she started to pick her way clear of the boulders, she saw a trace of movement out of the corner of her eye and whirled round toward it. Dimly she could make out a head-shaped darkness against the dark sky, then another movement. Up on the hill horses were whinnying and plunging. Something hissed by her face like an angry insect. As she took a step forward, sword raised, something pricked her cheek, no worse than a bee sting. She dodged, raised her free hand to brush the annoyance away, and realized that her legs were giving out under her. In a rushy hiss the black world vanished into a gauzy gray silence.

  His weeks in a comfortable house had softened Rhodry enough that sleeping wedged in between cold rocks was impossible. Although he drowsed for a few minutes here and there, he finally gave it up as a bad job and left the imperfect shelter of the boulders to join Salamander at the crest of the hill. In this dark a night his elven vision could no longer distinguish color or detail, but he could see outlines and shapes well enough to move with confidence. He found his brother sitting cross-legged and sneezing in the long grass and watching the horses and the mule, who stood heads down and weary, nose to tail in the drizzling damp.

  “You can go and try to sleep if you want,” Rhodry said. “I’m wide awake.”

  “So am I. Awake—and miserable. And forlorn, dejected, pathetic, dismal, bleak of heart. Ah, how I long for our father’s tent, its warm fire, its soft cushions, and above all, its waterproof roof and sides! I wouldn’t mind being surrounded by several hundred elven archers, either, come to think of it.”

  “Nor more would I. Do you think we should turn back to Albara on the morrow?”

  “I’m tempted, truly. I wonder if I—here, what’s that?”

  They went silent, sitting as stone-still as only elves can. Very faintly, some distance away, Rhodry heard a noise, too muddled with the wind and drizzle for him to identify it. All at once the horses tossed up their heads and whickered. Rhodry and Salamander were on their feet, and Rhodry had his new sword drawn before he even realized he’d reached for it.

  “Rhodry! Ware!”

  It was Jill’s voice, coming from among the rocks. Cursing under his breath Rhodry started toward her, just as the horses and the mule went mad. All at once they were bucking, yanking at their tethers and pawing at the air with their fore hooves. As dim shadows Rhodry could see what the animals saw: horrible, deformed Wildfolk, with huge fangs and red, gleaming eyes, leaping and dashing straight for the stock.

  “Ware!” Salamander screamed.

  The tethers snapped, and the horses came plunging straight for them. With a yell Rhodry knocked Salamander to the ground and rolled with him downhill and to the side just barely in time. He saw hooves flash by and felt mud spatter his face as the galloping horses parted around them and plunged off into the darkness, heading back toward the road.

  “May the Lord of Hell eat their intestines and their balls both,” Salamander gasped with the breath half knocked out of him. “Not the horses, I mean. Whoever did this.”

  Rhodry could guess who that someone had to be and the kind of danger they represented.

  “Jill!”

  He scrambled to his feet and ran for the boulders with a swearing Salamander following. Something grabbed at his ankle—one of the evil Wildfolk, he assumed—and he went down, rolling smoothly and bounding up in the same motion.

  “Jill!”

  There was no answer, no sound at all, truly, except the far distant hiss and chuckle of the floodtide river. Even the horses, apparently, were far out of earshot. Panting a little, Salamander joined him at the edge of the rock-strewn terrace, where nothing moved.

  “Do you think they’ve got an archer or suchlike with them?” Salamander whispered. “I can make a light if it won’t make us a target.”

  “A light in this damp? Are you daft? No one could—oh, of course, my apologies. Well, if they were going to stick us like pigs, they would have done it by now.” Rhodry tipped his head back and called as loudly as he could. “Jill!”

  A pale yellow light blossomed in the air above them to reveal a gleam of metal beside a heap of crumpled blankets. Rhodry raced over, stumbling a little, and picked up her sword, graved with the device of a striking falcon and running only with water now, not blood. His eyes burned tears.

  “They’ve taken her.” He could barely speak. “I don’t know why, but the bastards have taken her.”

  “I wonder, too, younger brother, but let us not despair. You forget that we have a vast if not truly mighty army at our command.”

  “What? You’ve gone daft!”

  Salamander whistled once under his breath and snapped his fingers. All around them in the golden light Wildfolk appeared, gnome and sprite and sylph, each one tiny, true enough, but there were hundreds of them crowding round, gray and brown, mottled and purplish-black, with their thin lips bared to reveal needle-sharp teeth, their eyes, yellow and red and green, gleaming with rage and indignation as they shook tiny clawed fists in the air. Although they were eerily silent, from the distant river Rhodry heard voices calling out to urge them on.

  Jill woke suddenly to dim daylight and a hard floor. The side of her face stung like fire, every muscle in her body ached, and she was so cold that she was shaking, lying huddled in a corner on some kind of packed earth tiles. When she tried to stretch out, she realized that her hands were tied behind her back and her ankles lashed together. By moving very carefully and very slowly she managed to haul herself up to a sitting position and prop herself against the corner of the tiny bare room. The walls were whitewashed, and where one of them joined the ceiling was a small slit of a window. Since she could see earth through it as well as sky, she decided that she had to be in some sort of cellar, and from the smell as well as the burlap sacks lying around, she could guess it was a root cellar. Whispering so quietly that she was thinking more than speaking, Jill called her gnome. He appeared straightaway, bringing with him two la
rge black-and-purple warty fellows with sharp teeth and big ears.

  “Can you untie my hands?”

  The bigger gnomes shook their heads in a mournful no, then proceeded to chew through the rope. Once she was free, rubbing her painful wrists with numb hands, her gnome and his friends disappeared again, leaving her to untie her ankles herself. For a long while she worked on her aching and complaining hands and legs, rubbing, stretching, shaking until at last she could stand up, cursing and stamping as the blood flowed back with fiery prickles. Outside the window something scuffled and scraped. She looked up to see a pack of purplish-black gnomes pushing a small bundle through the opening, something that dropped to the floor with a clatter. She pounced on it: her silver dagger in its leather sheath.

  “My thanks, my friends. May your gods or whomever you serve bless you for this!”

  When outside the door she heard sudden voices, she slipped the dagger out of sight into her shirt. There was a clang, and a curse or two as someone struggled with a lock; then the door opened and two men stepped in, one of them carrying a saddlebag; the other, a drawn sword. Since the fellow with his sword at the ready was a typical Bardekian, well over six feet tall with huge hands, and since the other man had a sword at his side too, she merely retreated to the far wall. The one who looked much like a Deverry man with his pale skin and straight black hair stared at her openmouthed. When he finally spoke, it was in Bardekian.