The Dragon Revenant

by Katharine Kerr

  Day after day, night after night, the dweomer-wind blew steadily. In a symphony of creaking ropes and groaning sail the Guaranteed Profit ran as straight and true as a banker chasing a debt as she headed across the Southern Sea toward the port of Surat. After a few days of jesting about luck, both the sailors and the men Nevyn brought from Aberwyn had become unnaturally calm, going about their work without saying more than a few necessary words to their officers, but whispering among themselves when they thought no one could see them. Every now and then Nevyn caught some of them looking his way in a mixture of awe and sheer terror; he would always smile gently in return and ignore the way they made the sign of warding against witchcraft every time he met them head-on. Since the carrack was a small and narrow boat, their fingers must have ached from all the necessary crossing. As for Perryn, he never noticed the peculiar wind at all, merely lay in the hold and groaned between brief spans of sleep.

  Toward the end of the second week Nevyn woke one morning to find seagulls wheeling and crying above the ship and strands of kelp streaming past her sides. Up at the bow Elaeno and the first mate were staring straight ahead and discussing what to do when they hit port. At the sight of Nevyn the first mate snapped to attention and went a bit pale.

  “I imagine this wind is too strong for sailing into harbor,” Nevyn said.

  “She is,” Elaeno said. “No doubt, though, she’ll slack off at the right moment. We’ll be in sight of land in about half a watch, say, and should make port in another half.”

  “I’ll tend to things, then.”

  With a muttered excuse the first mate fled.

  “Are you ever going to be able to sign on a crew again?” Nevyn said. “Once this story gets round, I mean?”

  “Good question. Well, I pay good wages, and I’ve always been known as a fair-minded man, so that should count for somewhat. Now, here, are you sure you want to make land at Surat? It’s one of the busiest ports in the islands, and most likely our enemies will be watching it.”

  “Perhaps, perhaps not. If they were me, they’d sneak ashore at some obscure port, so maybe we’ll fool them by marching right in. It matters naught, truly. They’ll know I’m here soon enough, no matter what I do.”

  By noon Nevyn could see the white cliffs of Surtinna, rising sharp and clear in the brilliant light. He sat down on a crate in the bow, imaged the flaming pentagram, and called upon the Kings of the Air. In a gust and flurry of breeze they came, exuding graciousness, and remarked that he might bind the wind to his purposes once again, if he wished, to bring the Dragon of Aberwyn home to his people. From the bottom of his heart, Nevyn thanked them as one prince to another. In a few moments the wind slacked, and the dark stripe of squall that had followed them for days disappeared. As they turned round a headland and headed in, the wind dropped to an ordinary sea breeze, nicely brisk and blowing exactly as they might have wished, but an ordinary breeze nonetheless. Spread out behind its wide and shallow bay, Surat lay like an emerald on the white gold of a sandy beach. At the sight the sailors began to cheer in heartfelt relief.

  Nevyn got up and started amidships to find Amyr waiting for him. The young warrior was grinning as if his face would split from it.

  “You seem glad to be going ashore, lad,” Nevyn remarked.

  “We all are, my lord, and I don’t mind telling you twice. We’ve got our gear all packed, too. I wanted to ask you, do you want the prisoner brought up from the hold?”

  “The who? Oh, Perryn! I do at that, and my thanks. See if you can get him into a clean shirt, too, will you? I’m going below to change right now myself. Don’t forget: I’m now Lord Galrion, and you and the lads are the honor guard of a very important man. If we’re going to pull Gwerbret Rhodry out of this wretched mess, we all have to learn to lie like thieves.”

  “Done, Lord Galrion.” Amyr made him a passable sweep of a bow. “Shall I send one of your humble servants to take charge of your baggage?”

  “That’s the spirit, lad! And come to think of it, a little help would be welcome. The regent loaded me down with all sorts of fripperies.”

  Among these fripperies were some beautifully made pieces of clothing and badges of rank: a shirt embroidered with the Dragons of Aberwyn, a pair of brigga in the rhan’s plaid, a new solid blue cloak with a jeweled ring-brooch decorated with dragons to clasp it shut. In a pair of graved silver message tubes he carried letters from the regent, and in a velvet-lined leather pouch all the coin that Lovyan could scrounge up on such short notice. There were also two small wooden caskets, containing respectively Aberwyn’s second-best set of silver goblets and the absolutely best silver-gilt soup tureen, pressed into hasty service as gifts for archons. Nevyn put on the clothes, hung the pouch of coin round his neck, and consigned the rest, along with his regular clothes and his mule packs full of herbs and medicines, to the man Amyr detailed for the job.

  When he came back out on deck, Elaeno made a great show out of pretending not to recognize him, and all the sailors stared openmouthed at the captain for daring to tease a man who could command the wind.

  “Lord Galrion, is it?” Elaeno said, bowing. “Well, my lord, we’re almost to land. Your honor guard and your tame stoat are already assembled in the stern.”

  “My thanks, captain.” Nevyn was grinning. “Where do we go through customs? It’s been a long time since I’ve been in Surat.”

  “Well, actually, I think customs are coming to us. Look out there. Isn’t that a packet boat?”

  It was indeed, a slim little galley with its sail shipped and rowers at the oars. At the prow sat a gray-haired man with coppery skin and the two red triangles of Surat painted on one cheek to mark his official status. When they came alongside, Elaeno’s men threw down lines, and after a few precarious moments, the galley was safely lashed to the merchantman’s side. In spite of his gray hair, the official was an agile man; he judged his distance and leapt from one deck to the other with the grace of someone who’s spent his entire life on boats. Elaeno bowed; Nevyn bowed; the official bowed all round.

  “I see by your pennant that you hail from Aberwyn, good sirs. How, by the Holy Stars themselves, did you ever manage the run across?”

  “Luck,” Elaeno said. “And pressing need in the gwerbret’s service. May we berth?”

  “By all means.” The official was squinting up at the mast head, where the silver and blue dragon flag was curling in the breeze. “I thought my eyes had given out on me when I saw that blazon, I really did. Well, captain, you’ll be able to dine out on this little tale all winter long.”

  Since, by the time the ship was safely docked and the harbor dudes paid, it was too late to make a state visit to the archon, Nevyn, Perryn, and the honor guard all spent the night in a splendid inn as the official guests of the city of Surat. As soon as he wobbled off the gangplank onto the solid pier Perryn began to revive; by the time they reached the inn and were being shown to an enormous suite, he was positively cheerful. On his own initiative he took over the role of Nevyn’s valet, grabbing the councillor’s luggage from the more-than-willing warband and stowing it away after the innkeep, in a frenzy of pantomime and a flurry of his twenty Deverrian words, showed him the bedchamber and the wardrobe chests.

  “Your poor servant seems to have been very seasick,” the innkeep remarked in Bardekian to Nevyn.

  “Very. The seas are terrible this time of year.”

  “Yes, they certainly are.” The man hesitated, practically squirming with curiosity, but he was too skilled at his host-craft to pry. “I shall send pitchers of wine, Lord Galrion. Uh, about your guards? Will the wine go right to their heads?”

  “I shall make sure your property is safe in every respect, good sir.”

  The innkeep bowed so low that he could have touched his toes, then scurried off.

  At the evening meal not only did the other guests in the common room crowd round to ask polite yet eager questions about their marvelous ocean voyage, but some of the local merchants came in special
ly as well. To a town that lived by trading on the sea, their journey smacked of legend, the exploit of a hero, perhaps, from their own Dawntime. Fortunately, Nevyn could draw upon his sincere ignorance of things maritime to put them off.

  “When we hired this captain, we were told he was the best in Orystinna, and apparently he is. There were times when I honestly thought we were doomed, but he always pulled us through. It’s him you should be buying drinks for, gentlemen, and asking your questions.”

  He had no doubt that on the morrow, when Elaeno came on land, they’d be doing just that. He was also sure that the ship’s master could lie well enough to convince them that the voyage was as normal as a terrible crossing could be.

  When Nevyn returned to his chamber, he found Perryn sitting on the edge of the usual dais in the reception chamber. In the light of the oil lamps the lord’s red hair gleamed, newly washed and coppery.

  “They have splendid bathhouses here, Nevyn. A servant showed me where it was, and it felt ever so good to wash off the stink of that cursed ship.” He fixed the dweomermaster with a reproachful stare. “But, er, well, you might have told me we were coming all the blasted way to Bardek.”

  “Did I forget? Well, I suppose I did, at that. My apologies, lad. There’s a good bit on my mind these days.”

  “Er, well, at least Cullyn can’t get at me here, and that’s all that matters to me.” He sighed, staring vacantly at the blue-and-white tiled fountain playing in the middle of the chamber. “Jill’s off to the east and north.”

  “You’re certain of that?”

  “I am. It’s like an … well, er, ah, like an itch, truly.” He got up and turned slowly, like a bit of lodestone searching out the south. “When I stand like this, it’s like scratching the itch, and Amyr told me that the direction I’m facing is east and north.”

  “So it is. Splendid, lad! You spoke of restitution back in Aberwyn, and truly, this is a grand way to pay it. If we can find Jill without my having to scry, it’ll confuse our enemies no end.”

  “Enemies?”

  “Oh, well, I seem to have forgotten to mention that, too. I must be growing old or suchlike. You see, I’m afraid that men with evil magic are trying to find Jill and Rhodry before we do. We’ve got to stop them, because they’re vicious killers.”

  Perryn looked at him, started to speak, then fainted dead away. With a sigh Nevyn reminded himself to watch his tongue from now on, then went to fetch Amyr to help put Perryn to bed.

  Some hours after midnight, when the change in the astral tides had settled down, the Old One went to his temple of time and found what he’d been anticipating for so long: Nevyn’s statue was alive. The cold gray image of stone had transformed itself into an image of warm flesh, and the piercing blue eyes seemed to turn his way as he walked into the chamber.

  “Very good, enemy mine,” the Old One said in his thoughts. “Soon we’ll have our last battle, you and I.”

  First, though, he had something else to attend to. Over the past few days the Old One had been using various devices and rituals to scry, ranging from geomancy on the one hand to actual astral travel on the other, in an attempt to discover just who his enemies in the Dark Council might have been. He had found nothing. Since he was far more skilled at extracting information than any individual member of the Brotherhood was at hiding it, he could only surmise that several had joined forces against him. He had also lost Baruma; every time he tried to contact his student, he received only the dimmest impression of his mind, trapped and bound under a powerful ensorcelment. Although he could probably break through that ensorcelment to scry him out, he preferred to know his enemy before he tried.

  In the dead time of that night, when all the astral forces ebb and grow still under the presidency of Earth of Earth, the Old One worked a ritual in a secret chamber deep within his villa. He roused one of his house slaves and had the frightened boy bring him two fat rabbits, trussed up but still alive, from the cages out in the stable, then sent him back to bed. Carrying the rabbits in one hand and a lantern in the other, he waddled and puffed up a small stairway, worked the mechanism for a secret door, and went into the pitch-black room. Walls, ceiling, floor—all were painted black, as was the altar that stood on the north side below a tapestry of the inverted pentagram.

  When he flopped the rabbits onto the altar, they struggled and squealed, driven to a pitch of terror by the very feel of that room, but he picked up the long-bladed ritual knife, reversed it, and knocked them on the head with the heavy jeweled hilt until they lay still. Later they would die; now he needed silence to concentrate. As he went round the room widdershins to light the black candles in the wall sconces, he began chanting under his breath, an evil song older than the Dawntime, a remnant of a craft known and despised long before the ancestors of the Bardekians and the Deverry folk had left the mysterious Homelands. Although the strangely mixed origin of the name had been long lost, the Old One called upon Set the Horned One to open the gates of the Otherlands and release the spirit with whom he wished to speak. Using that name for such a purpose was a blasphemy in itself.

  Once the candles were lit, the Old One blew out the lantern. Its smoke mingled with that of the candles—the room was windowless, though some clean air came in round the door—and thickened to a smokey haze. Still chanting, the Old One approached the altar again, picked up the knife, and began to summon a hundred evil things and forces and symbols to his mind and to that accursed room. At last he fell still, then raised the knife high and plunged it down. As he slit the rabbits’ throats and slashed open their bellies, he let their blood pour across the altar and drip to the floor. With his trained sight he saw the bleeding as the release of magnetism, the gush and rising mist of pure life-force, the goal and only reason for this cruelty.

  Stoked by the candle smoke and the wisps of magnetism that the burning released, the pure etheric stuff gathered and thickened above the altar. Drawn like hungry dogs to meat came spirits of all sorts, clustering round, snatching at the food, whimpering and mewling as the Old One drove them off with mighty curses and the flash of the consecrated knife. At last a face formed above the mist, a thin face with narrow eyes glittering under peaked brows, and a cruel mouth contorted into a snarl.

  “Let me drink, Tondalo,” he whispered.

  “Oh, gladly, master.” The Old One grinned at him, a parody of a servile simper. “Aren’t you glad you taught me the black arts so well?”

  The spirit snarled at him and darted at the mist, only to be driven back by the knife blade.

  “Promise me you’ll answer my questions, and then you drink.”

  “I promise, you ingrate hell-spawn.”

  The Old One snatched back the knife and let the spirit feed and batten on the life-force. As the mist thinned, the shape thickened, until it seemed his old teacher of unclean things stood on the altar and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand at the end of his meal.

  “Now,” the Old One said. “I have an enemy.”

  “Do you? What a surprise!”

  “Someone is working against me. Do you remember the matter about which I consulted you? The death of the Master of the Aethyr?”

  “I remember nothing but pain.”

  “It’s of no matter. Someone is working against me. Someone is blocking all my attempts to scry him out. He must be drawing force from the places where you dwell. Who is he?”

  “There isn’t anyone working against you in the Dark of Darkness, not in the miserable fetid corner where you’ve trapped me, at any rate.”

  “You He!”

  “I cannot lie.”

  It was, of course, perfectly true—within its limits.

  “No, but you can bend the truth. You’ve seen someone working somewhere else, haven’t you? Who is he, and where?”

  The spirit drew back its lips in a soundless snarl.

  “I don’t recognize him,” it said at last. “He must have come to power after my time on earth. The way he works marks him for a Hawkmaste
r, but I have no way of knowing what guild. As for where he works, why not look in the usual places instead of the paths of mastery? You’re still an overly subtle fool at times, Tondalo.”

  “My dearest master, I have to admit that I deserve the rebuke. Now begone!”

  When he threw up his arms in a ritual gesture and brandished the knife, the spirit fled, whimpering and cursing, back to its trap of torment in the Dark of Darkness that abuts the evil places of the world.

  The Old One banished the various forces and released the various spirits inadvertently caught by his invocations, then picked up the dead rabbits and tossed them outside the chamber for a slave to dispose of later. As he put out the candles, he realized that he could most likely identify this treacherous Hawkmaster. The only hireling—or so the masters of the dark dweomer considered the Hawks—who could know that he had some important work in hand would be the master he’d hired the year before from the Valanth guild. Now that he knew his enemy was no more formidable than the head of an assassins’ guild, it would be a relatively simple matter to scry in the usual way and see if his guess were right. Probably the Hawkmaster held Baruma, too, he decided as he thought about it. The question was whether the little fool was even worth rescuing.

  In the morning, when the time came to visit the archon, Nevyn took four men of the warband along for an honor guard and Perryn as well, to act the part of manservant and carry the box of Aberwyn’s second-best goblets. The municipal palace was up on the highest point of the city, a flat hill that served for the law courts, temple centers, and training grounds for the militia as well as the site of the civic leader’s residence. The archon, Klemiko, received them in an echoing reception chamber, tiled in blue and pale green. At one end was a dais spread with enough cushions for twenty men, and at the other, four purple-tiled fountains splashing in front of a wall painting that depicted Dalae-oh-contremo in albatross form. Like an endless tide a bustle of slaves came and went, bringing food and wine, while Nevyn and the archon chatted in Bardekian about the marvelously lucky sea voyage. At length, after the lemon-scented finger bowls and damp towels had been brought and taken away again, Klemiko dismissed the slaves with a clap of his hands.