The Dragon Revenant

by Katharine Kerr

  “What’s wrong, my love?” she said.

  “Is somewhat wrong?” He turned to Salamander. “What were you doing out there anyway?”

  “Keeping watch, like we agreed.”

  Rhodry started to speak, then merely shrugged and fell into step beside them. I’ll talk to him later, she thought, I’m just so tired. Back at the camp, Gwin was rolling up bedrolls and generally collecting the gear for the day’s ride. Rhodry went off to help him without a word more.

  “I’ll start saddling the horses,” Salamander said.

  “I’ll help.”

  “Don’t. Get some rest, will you?”

  Obediently she followed Rhodry into camp. When she sat down on the ground by her saddlebags, he stopped work and looked at her for a moment, merely looked with a hard assessment in his eyes.

  “I’m all right now, truly I am. Just a bit tired.”

  “How long were you out there with my brother?”

  “What? Not very.”

  “Good.” Abruptly he looked away. “Well, you need your rest, you know.”

  “I do know.” She stifled a yawn barely in time. “We’ll reach Pastedion today. By the Goddess herself, I want a hot bath and a soft bed.”

  “I hope we reach it, anyway.” It was Gwin, strolling over. “If the Hawks know where we are, and after last night it looks like they do, they’re not going to wish us godspeed on our journey and leave it at that.”

  “Is there a guild in Pastedion?” Rhodry said.

  “Not that I know of, but then, I wouldn’t, would I?” Gwin smiled, a brief twitch of his mouth. “They never tell a journeyman one thing more than he needs to know.”

  Jill shut her eyes and considered the problem. She could feel Wildfolk clustering round her, feel the rushy exhalation of their energy and a cool wind of some kind, blowing over her, blowing round her picking her up suddenly to fly up high in a cloud of overjoyed Wildfolk, beautiful and crystalline forms, glinting with light and color here on their proper plane. Her own gray gnome came to her as a quivering nexus of olive and citrine crystalline lines, shot through with russet sparks, that swelled and retracted again as they flew together high above the rusty-red earth. In the silver fountain of force pouring up from the circular lake, blue and silver beings danced and soared in greeting, and the sylphs, pure light and shimmering and little else, darted here and there round them like an honor guard.

  Far below them she saw what seemed to be a pile of charcoal hunks or ingots of black iron, piled this way and that at the edge of the water. Among them crawled tiny points of light, vaguely egg-shaped, in many different colors. She swooped down lower, saw the pattern of straight streets and square corners laid among them, and realized that she was seeing Pastedion and its houses of dead wood and stone. In a burst of revulsion she swept upward again, the gnome close behind her, and headed back over the valley. Down below the ar-chons’ road ran straight, a gash of ugly black through the reddish aura of the grass, throbbing with new life from the winter rains. Never in her life had she felt so free, so happy, as she swooped and fluttered through the dawn-swept sky.

  All at once the Wildfolk disappeared, winking out with an exhalation of warning. Coming straight toward her was a silver flame, swelling and towering as it burned in the blue light. Out of sheer instinct she dropped straight down, heading for the safety of the earth; then Salamander’s mind reached hers.

  “You misbegotten thick-headed jenny-mule! What are you doing out here? Don’t you realize how vulnerable you are? Get back! Get back now!”

  She felt a tug at her midriff and looked to see the silver cord, tightening, shrinking, pulling her back to her body. The moment she remembered that she had a body, she felt its pull like an irresistible lust, grabbing her, yanking her from the sky, down and down and with a sound like the slap of a hand on wood she was awake, lying on the ground and aching all over with what seemed to be a thousand bruises. When she tried to sit up, she groaned aloud. Salamander was kneeling beside her, and over his shoulder she could see Rhodry’s fear-struck face.

  “Apologies,” she mumbled. “I never used to make a habit of fainting like a court lady. It must be the bad company I’m keeping.”

  “No doubt it is,” Salamander said with a long sigh of relief. “And you have my apologies, because you’re going to be as sore as a demon with emrods for a while. I had to drive you back into your body and fast.”

  She went cold, sat up slowly, studying him all the while in the hopes of finding that he was jesting, but she’d never seen him so serious.

  “What do you mean?” she whispered.

  “You know what I mean. We’ll discuss it later. I’m sorry, my petite partridge, but we’ve got to be on the road. You may curse me as you ride.”

  Curse him she did, too, because those bruises turned out to be not some magical illusion but the very real result of her etheric double slamming into her physical body. Staying on horseback was painful in the extreme. After a few miles of riding she had no energy for anything but shifting her weight in the saddle in a vain attempt to ease her aching muscles and sore joints or to prevent the worst of the jolts when her horse made a particularly hard step or stumbled a little. Although both Salamander and Rhodry tried to talk with her, she snarled at them impartially until they gave it up as a bad job. She was barely aware of their surroundings, except to notice in a general way that they were passing through cultivated farmlands, a good sign that the city lay nearby.

  After what seemed like weeks of agony, they reached Pastedion about an hour after noon. To her normal eyes the town was lovely, built mostly of pale tan stone and studded with lavish gardens. As they herded their horses down the cobbled streets, they heard a symphony of bells ringing softly in the warm and flower-scented air: the rolling boom of temple bells, and a soprano jingle from the tasseled harnesses of the little gray donkeys that many of the passersby were leading along.

  “We should get one of those,” Salamander announced.

  “What in the names of all the gods do we need a wretched donkey for?” Jill snarled. “That’s all I want—another blasted four-hoofed worry following me round.”

  “My dear turtledove! How nasty you’ve become! If you wouldn’t go flying all over the landscape against your teacher’s wishes, you wouldn’t get bruised like that.”

  “If my teacher wouldn’t babble so much, he might live to see the summer come.”

  As they walked on, they began to attract a crowd of loiterers, children, and women with market baskets. Every now and then someone would call out, in the friendliest possible way, and tell them that they were weeks too late for the big horse market. In the middle of town they found a large public square, cobbled and sporting two fountains. On one side was the archon’s residence, or so Salamander said, and on the other was the temple of Dalae-oh-contremo. Behind a stucco wall, painted with pictures of what seemed to be gods sailing boats through the night sky, rose the curving roofs of a cluster of longhouses and the tops of a row of ancestor statues. In the center of this wall was a wooden door with a pair of crossed oars over the lintel. Salamander pounded on it with all the strength he could muster.

  “I hope they let us in,” Rhodry muttered. “We look like the scum of the earth, truly.”

  If the temple turned them down, there would be no sanctuary elsewhere. Jill was suddenly aware of just how filthy and road-stained they were, with Rhodry and Gwin as unshaven and sullen as highwaymen, though Salamander never seemed to grow either beard nor bad temper. Laden with filthy gear their horses were shaggy and muddy, standing all spraddle-legged and head-down from exhaustion. When the door opened she went tense at the sight of a young priest, tall and slender in a spotless dark blue robe, his thick curly hair bound round with a fillet of solid gold.

  “Well, well, the tide washes many a strange thing up on shore, does it?” he said in Bardekian, and he was smiling at Salamander as if at long-lost kin. “Here’s a pleasant surprise! Come in, come in! His holiness will be so glad
to see you.” Then he hesitated, peering over Salamander’s head at the others. “But I don’t know if we’ve got room for all these horses.”

  “Later we’ll take them to a public stables or something,” Salamander said, also in Bardekian. “But let us in right now, Brother Meranno, because if you don’t give us your sanctuary, we’ll all be murdered on the street.”

  At that Merrano raised a shout, and other young men in blue robes came running to help lead the horses into the compound while keeping them away from the floral borders and the appetizing lawn. Although Salamander and Rhodry plunged into the middle of the confusion, grabbing halters and yelling at balky stock, Jill made her way clear and stood just inside the gates out of the way. She was so tired that she felt that all her muscles had turned to water, sloshing inside her skin, and she yawned, leaning back against the wall for support. Until, that is, she saw Gwin. He was leading in the last few horses, or rather, trying to, because every time he approached the threshold, he would suddenly stop, hesitate, then back up to try again. From the look on his face he was near tears, like a tiny child who, summoning all his will, tries to turn a somersault as deftly as his older brother but falls every time.

  “What is it?” Jill called out.

  “I don’t know. Ah horseshit, I do know. They’ve got wards against the likes of me. I’d have been better off slitting my throat, Jill, back at that cursed farm where you found me.”

  “What do you mean?” She pried herself off the wall in a sudden rush of energy. “Is someone waiting for you inside?”

  “Oh, never that. The men I’m afraid of won’t be going into a place like this. It’s just that I can’t either.”

  As she hurried out the gates, her gray gnome appeared, pointing with one skinny finger at the air above the outer wall. When Jill looked up, she saw nothing at first, but if she squinted she could discern what might have been a shimmering distortion, as if she looked through glass. His mouth slack, Gwin was staring at the same empty spot. Jill suddenly realized that she could use this excuse to get rid of him, send him off with the horses to an inn or stable, perhaps, where—where what? she asked herself. Where he’ll be easy prey for his old guild?

  “Salamander!” she yelled. “Somewhat’s wrong!”

  Accompanied by a flurry of priests Salamander came trotting out, saw Gwin, looked up, and cursed in a most irreligious way under his breath. Brother Merrano apparently shared his understanding of the problem if not his taste in language.

  “By the oars of the Wave-father! Now I wonder what’s causing the trouble? Is this a slave of yours?”

  “No, a freedman. He’s been marked by—well, let us say some bad company of his youth, or so I’d guess.” Salamander was giving Merrano a look of intense significance. “He’s reformed. I’ll swear it to you on the altar if you’d like.”

  “That won’t be necessary. The question is how we’re going to get him inside.”

  Gwin turned sharply away, and although his face betrayed nothing, Jill could guess that he was fighting back tears.

  “We can hardly do a ceremony right out here in the public street,” Merrano went on.

  “Why not?” All at once Salamander grinned. “We shall dispense with the billowing incense, the chanting, the fine linen robes, and the booming gongs, but a ceremony we shall have none the less. Come here, turtledove, and take my right hand. Good. Now put your left on Gwin’s shoulder, just casual like, as if you were going to tell him somewhat private. Now I put my other hand on his other arm, likewise and in a corresponding manner, and there we are!”

  As soon as Salamander closed the circle by touching Gwin, Jill felt a rush of power flow round and round the three of them. The hairs on her arms and the back of her neck rose and prickled; Wildfolk swarmed into manifestation and dove into the current of force like swimmers in a river; Gwin tossed his head back and caught his breath with an audible gasp. This time, when she glanced up, Jill could see the ward, a glowing sphere of force capping the temple compound, all marked with strange sigils and flaming pentagrams.

  “Aha, there’s the trouble,” Salamander murmured. “The rotten bastards have scarred his aura!”

  When Jill considered Gwin again, she could see an inverted pentagram floating in the air above his head. There was something so sour and crabbed about that blackish, murky mark that she could have sworn she could smell it as a foulness in the air. All at once it caught fire and burned, shriveling away with a singed curl and a wisp of mucky smoke.

  “There,” Salamander pronounced. “Well and good, Gwin. See what happens now.”

  The moment Jill let go his hand and stepped back, the wards disappeared from her sight, and the Wildfolk all scattered in disappointment. Gwin picked up the reins of the horses, led them toward the gate, took one deep breath, and walked on through. Brother Merrano allowed himself a small cheer. For a moment Gwin nearly did weep, but he wiped his eyes vigorously on the back of his hand instead.

  “My thanks,” he said to Salamander. “I’ll be your man for life.”

  “I’d rather you were your own man, actually, but you’re welcome for the favor. Brother Merrano, now that we’re all here, perhaps we’d best shut these gates. I have a most peculiar, exotic, eerie, and generally bizarre tale to tell to your superior.”

  “Your tales generally run along those lines, yes,” Merrano said, grinning. “That’s why we’re all so glad to see you again.”

  As soon as he walked into the temple compound, Rhodry felt his black mood lift as palpably as if someone had stripped a wet cloak from his shoulders. Even when he glanced back to see Jill holding Salamander’s hand and talking privately with Gwin, he thought nothing more than that they were trying to decide what to do with the twenty-odd extra horses that his brother had insisted on keeping with them—and which were turning out to be a nuisance that he, for one, could have well done without. When the circle broke up, he called to Salamander.

  “We’ve got them all tethered and tied. It should do for now.”

  Salamander waved to him and, talking with Gwin, came strolling back inside with Jill following. Rhodry was alarmed at how tired she looked, with dark circles under her eyes and a stagger to her walk. A young priest who introduced himself as Brother Kwintanno had noticed her condition as well.

  “The woman with you? Is she ill?”

  “Just very tired. We’ve had a terrible long ride of it, getting here through the mountains.”

  “Let’s get her to the guesthouse where you’ll all be staying, then, so she can get some sleep. Evan can talk enough for everybody, and he probably will.”

  It took Rhodry a moment to realize that by Evan he meant Salamander. He also thought, and with some irritation, that he really should have remembered his brother’s actual name before this.

  Although Jill tried to claim that she was perfectly well and not in the least tired, she kept her protests short and let Rhodry put his arm round her for support as they followed the priest through the maze of buildings and huts in the enormous compound. The guesthouse turned out to be a pleasant wooden building, whitewashed inside and out, with three rooms and a number of cots, chairs, and low tables scattered through them. In the central room there was even a shelf with some ten scrolls and a lectern nearby for reading them.

  “You’ll have the place to yourself, this time of year,” Kwintanno said. “During the summer we have many guests, here on legal matters, mostly.” He went to a chest and began burrowing through its contents. “Yes, there are plenty of clean blankets. Take what you want. Later you can all visit our bathhouse if you so wish.”

  “I do wish, and with all my heart,” Rhodry said. “Jill, you’d better sleep first.”

  “Am I arguing with you, my love?” She sat down on the edge of a cot and yawned, rubbing her face with both hands. “One blanket will be plenty, my thanks.”

  Kwintanno led Rhodry to one of the big longhouses he’d seen from the street and into a typical Bardekian reception room, its walls painted wi
th scenes of godlike beings founding cities and handing over scrolls of laws to groveling humans. Up on the red-and-blue tiled dais, Salamander and Gwin were sitting cross-legged and talking—or rather, Salamander was talking—to an elderly man dressed in a long red robe. He was very old, his dark face lined and pouched, his curly hair pure white, but he sat straight and his black eyes were full of power.

  “His Holiness, Takiton,” Kwintanno whispered. “Bow when you approach.”

  Rhodry gladly made the head priest the lowest bow that he could manage and was rewarded with a smile and the wave of a wrinkled hand summoning him to the dais. He sat down a little behind Salamander and next to Gwin, who had the tight-lipped look of a man determined not to show his terror.

  “Ah, Rhodry,” Takiton said, “your brother’s been telling me your sad tale.”

  “Indeed, Your Holiness?” Since he and Salamander had discussed this story during the journey, he knew what he was supposed to say. “I humbly hope you find it in your heart to forgive me for breaking the holy laws of your islands.”

  “Nicely spoken, but you weren’t the first and doubtless won’t be the last young man to gamble his freedom away. What bothers me is this forged bill of sale.” Takiton held up the by-now much crumpled bit of bark-paper to the light that came in the high windows. “Evan, you and I shall speak of this privately later. But we can start the legal procedure for freeing your brother from your ownership this very afternoon.”

  “My thanks, Your Holiness,” Salamander said. “How long do you think everything will take?”

  “Oh, some days, most probably. The archon has his way of doing things, and there are several public festivals in the offing, too, that must be properly attended to.”

  When Rhodry looked Salamander’s way he saw him nod agreement with a bland smile, but Gwin went tenser than before, his hands knuckling white in his lap. Rhodry himself felt a cold stab of fear: their enemies were close behind them, and there they were, forced to sit in this temple and wait for them to catch up.