The Dragon Revenant

by Katharine Kerr

  He stood at night on a strangely familiar hilltop and looked out over a misty valley. A full moon hung overhead, but it was bloated to an enormous size and burned with an eye-slashing silver glare. The moon was watching him. He was sure of it, suddenly, that it had turned into a single malignant eye. His terror made his flash of loathing at the Dark of Darkness seem like a child’s pleasurable shudder over a ghost tale. He was doomed. Nevyn had anticipated him, gone to meet him, trapped him, and now turned him back into the world where there was no escape from the Great Ones. He would have no endless life of working evil as he crept through the dark. He would have no life at all.

  In a spasm of screaming panic he wrenched himself around and saw, looming nearby, his magical Temple of Time, but now everything lay in moonlight, not half in sun. He ran or rather flew toward the white tower, and as he swooped into the open door he saw all his symbolic figures lying smashed and broken. He rushed for the staircase, raced up and up, pausing at each floor only to see the same chaos, his work smashed and reduced to strewn rubble. At the top floor he had his greatest shock, because it was empty—not so much as a splinter left—except for the statue of Nevyn, gazing out the window where he’d left it. The Old One stood at the top of the staircase and tried to steady himself, because in his mind he still had a body of sorts, while he wondered about the significance of this one last symbol. When Nevyn turned from the window and smiled at him, he screamed.

  “I’ve been waiting for you. Ask for mercy, and you shall have it.”

  With another scream the Old One flung himself down the stairs, tumbling and swooping out the tower door just as the temple collapsed with a silent—utterly silent—shimmer of destruction. He rushed down the hill and staggered into the mists, but although he tried to run, he merely drifted this way and that. He realized then just how far gone in dying he was. With one last spasm of strength, he seemed to rise up and catch a draught or current in the light, and slowly it bore him up and away. It seemed to him that he was a boy again, a young slave in training for the clerkship. Ahead of him stood the school, built round a pleasant stucco scriptorium in the midst of gardens. He’d been happy there, well-fed and well-treated for the first time in his life, good at the work, praised by his master, courted by the other boys. He saw, then, the scriptorium, the arched doorway leading into the long, white room, all glowing with little oil lamps.

  In the slender form of an adolescent boy, the Old One skipped toward the doors. He could feel his sandals slapping on the tiles and smell the scented oil. Once he reached those doors, he would be safe. Master Kinna would never let anyone harm his best pupil. He faded through the doors and out into the long room, where plain little writing desks stood in tidy rows and oil lamps flickered golden against the rising dark. Up on the dais someone was standing at the lectern and contemplating a draped scroll.

  “Master Kinna! It’s Tondalo. I’m back.”

  The figure raised his head and pushed back the hood of its robe: Nevyn. The scriptorium vanished. They stood face-to-face in the white mist.

  “Tired of running?” The sculpted face of Nevyn’s thought-form wore no expression at all, not a snarl, not a smile, nothing. “Go where you will, but every road will lead back here to me.”

  The Old One felt as if he still had a body and was slowly sinking to his knees. The room spun in a swimmy blur, a whirlpool, a murky vortex of gold-shot white light.

  “You have one last chance.” Nevyn’s voice spun round the vortex to reach him. “Forswear the Dark and submit to the Light.”

  “Curse you! Curse you and all your wretched kin!”

  Nevyn vanished. The Old One knew only movement, felt himself to be one tiny point of consciousness that was swirling, rising, caught now in the whirlpool, choking, spinning, fading, always spinning—

  Then nothing at all.

  “You want to know what happened to the Old One?” Nevyn said. “Where does a candle flame go when you blow it out?”

  When he realized that he understood, Salamander shuddered in his very heart. By then the flames were swarming and swirling over the entire villa and the compound around it, the greasy smoke spreading through the sky and staining the light into a hellish parody of sunset. Yawning and sighing like any old man waking from a nap, Nevyn sat up, stretched his arms over his head, then clambered to his feet.

  “Let’s find the others and get on the road. When those slaves reach town, the archon will send men out to investigate. I’m in no mood to be arrested just yet.”

  “Quite so, oh exalted master. Ye gods, you gave me a turn in there! I honestly thought you were going to die to save our miserable and unworthy lives.”

  “You’re not the only one who can put on a good show for the marketplace. Look—there’s Gwin and the warband riding for us. No doubt they’ve been a bit worried. But—oh by the Goddess herself! Where are Jill and Rhodry?”

  Salamander swore and went cold all over again as he counted up the riders and realized that his brother and his pupil were nowhere among them. Without even thinking he began running toward the black and flaming ruins of the villa. Cursing a steady stream under his breath, Nevyn followed.

  When Jill and Rhodry rushed out of the house into the garden, they found the wooden ancestor statues already burning, licked with leaping flame like huge logs in some giant’s hearth. Smoke poured around them and billowed down from the blazing shake roof in a swirl of darkness while the heat parched and trembled the living trees and flowers. Through the crackle and roar of burning Jill could hear men screaming, trapped in the upper rooms of the villa. Choking and coughing she dashed for the gates in the outer wall only to realize that she’d lost Rhodry. She spun around to see him turning round the corner of the house and racing down the narrow passage between it and the outer wall on his right.

  “Rhoddo! Stop! Come back!”

  “He went this way!” Rhodry kept running. “I heard his chain clanking.”

  For the briefest of moments she stood crippled with fear. With the roar of a thousand demons a plume of fire burst free from the roof and towered in a spew of golden sparks.

  “Rhodry!”

  Cursing him in her mind Jill ran after him. Dodging sparks, choking on smoke, stumbling at times and leaping over a clot of burning debris at others she raced down the passage and burst free just barely in time into the clutter of sheds behind the house. Already roofs were smoking and charring as the Wildfolk swept among them in an orgy of ruin. Through the smoke she could just make out Rhodry, hesitating by the back wall.

  “Come on!” she screamed at him. “Out the back gates!”

  “Won’t. He can’t be far.” Rhodry suddenly burst out laughing, his old berserker’s howl of harrowing delight. “Baruma! Remember my promise!”

  Wailing in joy he took off again, racing round a shed and heading away from the back gates and safety. In an unthinking rage Jill dashed after. Behind her the empty stables collapsed with a rush of fire and spewed embers out across the yard. A shed caught in a shriek of dweomer-wind. Blackness shot with burning filled the yard. Still Rhodry ran on, with Jill right behind him, screaming curses and begging him to come back. Finally, as she put on a last burst of speed, she saw Baruma up ahead, panting and blowing as he tried to run with his heavy chain. With a banshee howl Rhodry took out after him just as Baruma ducked through a little gate. Although Rhodry plunged right after him, Jill hesitated and looked back. The plastered walls on the far side of the compound were collapsing in a pour of smoke as their supporting timbers caught from the sheer heat in the yard.

  “Rhodry! Come back!”

  Her only answer was a swirl of smoke and fire as the roof of the house fell in. She turned and ran after him, batting at the drift of sparks with both hands as she charged into a walled garden. Already fire crept through the parched flowers that edged it, and in the far corner a tree blazed like a torch. Heat danced and shimmered along the soot-stained walls; she could feel heat grabbing her face like a clawing animal. Ahead in the smoke
Baruma crouched at bay, his only weapon the heavy chain that he swung in both hands, back and forth in a desperate arc to keep Rhodry and his sword out of reach. There was no time to let Rhodry wear him down with fancy footwork. Jill drew her silver dagger, caught it by the point, aimed, and threw. As straight as an elven arrow it sailed home and bit into Baruma’s right eye. Screaming and blind he dropped the chain and staggered back as Rhodry pounced and struck, slashing his throat open in a howl of laughter.

  “Rhodry, come on! Now!”

  He pulled her dagger free and swung around just as the wooden gate behind them went up in a blaze of flame. They were trapped. She could sec the berserker fit leave his eyes as he realized it.

  “Oh ye gods! My love, I’m sorry!”

  The dagger in his hand was blazing with dweomer-light as its spell responded to his elven blood. She had one maddened thought that at least they’d die together; then her newfound strength welled to the surface of her mind. With a howl of her own she flung both arms over her head.

  “Lords of Fire! In the name of the Light, attend me!” She felt as much as she saw them, vast and towering shapes of light in the flames, a steady presence when all else around them was leaping and flickering, a rush of power and majesty like a cool wind billowing out of the smoke.

  “Lords of Fire! In the name of the Master of the Aethyr, save us! I beg you as a servant of the Light.”

  The presences swelled with the leap of flame, and for a moment she thought they would refuse her. Then came a wind, hissing and gliding as it parted the flames like the prow of a ship parts the sea. The foaming wake turned gold and red as the burning chunks and embers of what once had been the gate boiled to either side and a smoking path appeared between.

  “Rhodry, follow me. Don’t stop and don’t look back. Lords of Fire! Your hands hold our lives.”

  Jill took a deep breath of air turned suddenly pure and ran, knowing instinctively that the safe path could only hold for a few brief moments no matter how much the Lords wished otherwise. Over the roar and crackle of the blazing house she could hear nothing, had no way of knowing if Rhodry were behind her or not, but she could spare not a second to look back and see. The world had shrunk to a tunnel that opened in the solid blackness of smoke. She burst out of the walled garden, dodged through the burning sheds, raced for the fire-free breach that suddenly appeared in the crumbling outer walls while around and above her the sparks and floating chunks of burning flew back as if invisible hands knocked them away. Her lungs were seared from heat, and the air was poisonous again, but in one last burst of will she leapt free and stumbled, staggering up and careening like a drunken woman across the grassy ground outside.

  Something caught her hand, and she looked down to see her gray gnome, dancing in glee and pulling her onward. Through a waft of smoke shapes appeared ahead: more gnomes, all sooty and triumphant.

  “Rhodry!” she gasped out. “Are you …”

  “Right here.” He was choking and hacking. “Right here and safe.”

  The gnomes clustered round and grabbed his hands to drag him forward. In a crowd of Wildfolk they staggered up to the crest of a hill and flopped down, coughing and gasping for breath. When Jill looked back, she saw the compound walls collapsing inward in a rush of greasy black smoke. Even though the tall grass grew all round, and sparks and great slabs of burning debris blew through the air, not one blade of the green ever caught, nor did the fire reach them. She turned to Rhodry and burst into hysterical laughter, because even in the midst of all these vast dweomer-workings, these mighty magicks drawn from the soul of the universe, her dagger still faithfully glowed to warn her that an unreliable elf was close at hand.

  “Oh, I wish Otho could see this!” She was choking and laughing and sobbing all at once. “Never trust an elf, he told me. They’ll get you into trouble for sure, he said. Ye gods, he was right! He was right!”

  Rhodry stabbed the dagger into the ground to douse it and threw his arms around her. Alternately choking and laughing they clung together until Nevyn and Salamander came pounding up the hill.

  “Are you hurt?” Nevyn said.

  “We’re not. Singed, no doubt.”

  “You don’t have any eyebrows that I can see. And as sooty as the inside of a charcoal brazier, both of you.” Nevyn’s voice shook so badly that it was hard to tell if he were close to tears or hysterical laughter. “Can you ride? We’d best get out of here.”

  Rhodry scrambled up, then caught her hand to pull her after him. When she stumbled and nearly fell, she realized just how exhausted she was, and not in any normal way. Only then did she realize something else as well, that there in the burning garden she’d worked dweomer, not done an exercise or accidental trick, but performed an act of magic, and a mighty one.

  Late that afternoon Rhodry led his ragged line of frightened men and spooked horses up to the grassy crest of a low hill. Down below he saw a sheltered valley where a stream ran over clean rock, and holm oaks grew in a scattered grove. Although it was a perfect place to camp, when he turned in the saddle he could still see the smoke of the burning villa, a black though distant streak on the sky. Nevyn rode up next to him.

  “It’s time to camp for the night.”

  “We can’t stop here. We’re still in danger.”

  “Well, so we are.” Nevyn’s voice seemed to trail away in exhaustion after every phrase. “The rest of the Hawks are bound to discover what’s happened sooner or later.”

  “That’s not what I meant, my lord. Those slaves you drove off? They must have reached a town or another villa by now. The authorities will round up the local militia. The smoke from that fire’s like a beacon, and once they get to the villa, they’d have to be blind to miss our tracks.”

  “Just so. That’s one reason I set the wretched fire in the first place. Gwiri’s got you thinking like a Hawk, Rhodry lad. Once we’re under arrest, we’ll be safe.” The old man patted the leather bags that hung from his saddle’s peak. “I have letters from the archon of Pastedion to show around as we need them. Come to think of it, I’ve got some from the archon of Surat, too.”

  For a moment Rhodry wanted to yell at the old man. It was a physical thing, sharp and bitter—he wanted to snarl at Nevyn and announce that he was in charge here and that they’d blasted well camp when he wanted to and not a moment before.

  “Jill’s got to rest,” Nevyn went on. “She’s so utterly spent that she can’t even stay in the saddle much longer.”

  Hearing the old man mention her name infuriated him further, especially since he hadn’t thought to check on her himself.

  “Very well,” Rhodry said. “I’ll call a halt.”

  Rhodry jerked his horse’s head around and rode back along the line, shouting orders as he went, until he reached Jill, who was riding next to Salamander. For a moment Rhodry felt so jealous of his brother that he wanted to slap him across the face; then he realized that it wasn’t Salamander who was making him suspicious, but Nevyn. He nearly laughed aloud. Don’t be a dolt! he told himself. Why, the old man must be eighty if he’s a day! Yet later that evening, when he saw Nevyn and Jill sitting at a campfire and talking in whispers, their heads bent together and the Wildfolk all around them, his jealousy bit as deep as if she’d been flirting with the handsomest man in all Deverry. He went over, sat down next to her, and took her hand in his. Nevyn smiled at him so warmly and openly that he suddenly felt like a fool, especially when Jill moved close to him and leaned her head on his shoulder with the ease of a long intimacy. Of course I’m the one she loves, he reminded himself, and he wondered all over again why he had to keep doing that reminding.

  “Is somewhat wrong?” the old man said. “Or truly, that was a stupid question, after everything we’ve been through!”

  “All this magic gets on a man’s nerves, sure enough,” Rhodry said. “Though I don’t know why I’m surprised anymore at one single thing you do.”

  “It does take some getting used to.” Nevyn sounded comforta
bly smug, like a house-proud wife. “Even for a man who’s traveled the kingdom the way you have.”

  All at once Rhodry remembered something that had been obscurely nagging at his mind all day, waiting for him to have the leisure to attend to it.

  “Oh by the hells! My silver dagger!”

  “What of it?” Jill raised her head and looked at him.

  “I never found it, and here it was your father’s. I swore I’d get it back.”

  “Well, my love, if it was in that house, it’s naught but a puddle of silver by now.”

  Rhodry swore so foully that most of the Wildfolk vanished.

  “Don’t ache your heart,” Nevyn said. “Cullyn wouldn’t care. To him it was only a mark of shame.”

  “Mayhap, but I swore a vow I’d get it back.”

  Nevyn glanced at Jill’s gray gnome.

  “Do you know where it is?”

  The gnome shrugged a no and began scratching its armpit. “Did it melt?” Jill said. “Wait, I can see you don’t understand that. Did the silver turn into water and spill?”

  This time the no was definite.

  “Then what, by the hells and horseshit, did they do with it?” Rhodry growled.

  The gnome shrugged, then disappeared.

  “Do you think he’s gone to look for it?” Rhodry said.

  “I doubt it, my love. I don’t think he has the wits.” Jill considered, thinking hard. “If you’re meant to have it back, it’ll find its way home.”

  “And what is that supposed to mean?”

  “I don’t know. Just what I said, I suppose.” She yawned with a little shudder. “I’ve got to lie down. Right now. I’ve never been so tired in my life.”

  All that night Jill had strange dreams. Although she could never remember them clearly afterwards, she did recall walking down jeweled corridors into enormous rooms that blazed with colored light as palpable as gems, while she talked with splendid beings, clothed with gold and wreathed with silver fire, who may have been either spirits or men and women—she was never sure which, just as she could never consciously recall the amazing secrets they told her. She would always remember, however, waking up suddenly to find the sun shining in her eyes and a soldier squatting beside her, a tall black man, wearing a cuirbolli breastplate and leather skirts over his tunic and dangling a plumed helmet in one hand. With the other he was steadying himself by leaning on a long spear whose businesslike steel point winked in the sun. When she bit back a scream, he grinned at her.