The Silver Mage

by Katharine Kerr

  The two leaders joined Rori in the grass to hear his detailed report. A few at a time, other members of the alar gathered around as well, squatting down in the golden sunlight of late afternoon. When Rori described the old cities of the Far West, everyone sighed. A few of the men brushed tears from their eyes.

  “So much for the splendor of the past,” was Dar’s only comment. Rori’s report on the new Horsekin fortress, however, brought more of a response from the prince.

  “Very well,” Dar said. “If they’re putting so much work into that fortress, they won’t be raiding our borders, I suspect.”

  “Not this summer, maybe,” Cal said. “Once they get their safe haven built, that’s when they’ll be coming south.”

  Among the listeners a few whispered, a few swore in a soft breath of sound, quickly squelched when Dar began to speak again.

  “Eventually we’ll have to deal with them, but for now, let’s continue on our way west,” the prince said. “I want Dallandra to send messages ahead of us to Cerr Cawnen. They’re our allies, and we need to consult with them. The Horsekin are closer to them than they are to us.”

  Everyone turned to look at the dragon, lounging in the grass nearby. Rori nodded his massive head.“Cerr Cawnen needs to go on alert.”

  When Dar got to his feet, the other members of the alar rose, too, and silently followed him. Dallandra felt danger like smoke in the air, choking her. Momentarily she saw smoke, spreading out like a vast fan into the air.

  “Are you ill?” Rori said.

  “No, just an omen.”

  “Just.” The dragon rolled his oddly human eyes.

  “Well, we already know how dangerous the wretched Horsekin are. I’m surprised that I’m receiving omens about it. Usually one gets them about unknown things.” She stood up, suddenly irritable. “I’m going back to—no, wait! Here comes Neb.”

  With greetings all round, Neb strode up. Sylphs clustered around him in the air, and gnomes pushed their way through the thick grass at his feet. Rori flopped over on his side to allow him to examine the gash, a stubborn pink stripe on his silvery body.

  Neb ran a cautious hand over the scales just above the wound. “Does that hurt?”

  “Not truly,” Rori said, “though I can feel it. My hide’s thin about there.”

  Neb made a thoughtful grunting sound, then ran his hand under the wound, back and forth several times. He muttered something too low to comprehend, then stepped back a pace. From the vague look in his eyes, Dallandra could tell that he’d opened his sight. He shook his head, then turned to speak with her. His eyes appeared normal again.

  “Dalla, this is most peculiar,” Neb said. “It almost looks like he’s got a splinter under his skin, a big one, but at root just like a carpenter might get in his finger.”

  Dallandra gaped at him.

  “It’s not somewhat natural,” Neb went on. “I can see a dark mark in the aura, a straight flat line, though it’s thicker at one end. It’s like the splinter is somehow sucking the life force into itself.”

  “If somewhat’s draining energy from his aura,” Dallandra said, “it’s no wonder the gash won’t close. I—” She hesitated, letting elusive memories rise. “Oh, by the Black Sun! The silver dagger!”

  “What?” Neb and the dragon spoke together.

  “Rhodry, I mean, Rori, your silver dagger! I never found it among your clothes after the transformation. Evandar was using it as a kind of focus for the dweomer that was building you a new astral body.”

  “Ye gods!” The dragon lifted his enormous head to look at her. “I can remember that, though not very clearly. It’s like trying to remember a dream, but I was holding the dagger. I threw it into the air, and then—” He growled, baffled. “That’s all I can remember. I woke, and I was a dragon.”

  “Indeed you were.” Dallandra laid her hand where Neb’s had been and pressed, making the dragon grunt in pain. She could feel something hard under the scaly hide. “It’s about the right size for a silver dagger. Neb, I’ve long thought that the daggers glow when one of the People touch them because they’re absorbing force from our aura.”

  “That makes sense, truly,” Neb said.

  “If we held one long enough, it might well kill us, or at least, leave us gravely ill. Rhodry was only half an elf, of course, and besides, a dragon has a tremendous amount of life force. Doubtless, a silver dagger would only irritate a wound rather than cause worse harm.”

  “Why would Evandar have let it be incorporated?” Neb said. “I suppose it could be a physical component for the dweomer spell.”

  “It could.” Dallandra felt suddenly weary. “It could also be a simple mistake. Evandar never much cared about consequences and details, you see. He could be very—well, the truth is—he was careless.” She sighed briefly. “And reckless. If an action matched one of his omens, if he thought he’d foreseen a thing, I mean, he’d do that thing without worrying about the outcome.”

  Neb started to speak, then bit it back. Dallandra felt like screaming at him. I know what you’re thinking. He was awful and crazed and a spirit, and it was absolutely perverted of me to go off with him! That’s what everyone thinks, isn’t it? Aloud, she said, “Well, the real question is, what are we going to do about it now?”

  “Have it out, I’d say,” Neb said.

  “That’s my thought, too, though if it is a component—well, I suppose that doesn’t matter, since we’re trying to reverse the working.” She caught Rori’s gaze and gave him a grim stare. “Aren’t we?”

  The dragon looked away. “Eventually,” he said. “I suppose.”

  “Try supposing this,” Dallandra went on. “If we take the dagger out, if indeed that’s what it is, we stand a grand chance of getting your wound to finally heal. Is that worth the risk to you?”

  With a long sigh the dragon rolled back to a sitting position, with his hind legs off to one side and his front legs extended in front of him.

  “Besides,” Neb put in, “if we don’t heal the wound first, and you do decide to be transformed back, the wound will kill you.”

  Rori contemplated his front paws then finally spoke. “If I didn’t want to return to Angmar, I’d die gladly once I was back in my old skin. My Lady Death might—”

  “Oh, don’t start that again!” Dallandra felt like slapping him on the nose, dragon or not. “It’s so daft!”

  “Very well.” Rori laughed in a long low rumble. “If there’s somewhat stuck under my hide, then I want it out, whether I’m a dragon or a man, so do your worst, chirurgeons.”

  “I’m hoping we can do our best,” Neb said. “We have one problem left to solve. I don’t want to be slain by a pain-crazed dragon when I’m in the midst of slicing open that abscess. Truly, Rori, I don’t know if there are enough herbs in the grasslands to ease the pain for you. I do know for certain that there’s no one strong enough to hold you down.”

  “Ah, but there are,” Rori said. “Arzosah and Medea between them, Medea to sit on my tail, and Arzosah to tend to the head. I’ll let you bind my mouth with rope, too, to make sure I can’t bite.”

  “You sound positively cheerful about this,” Dallandra said.

  “I’ve had this cursed wound itching and smarting for over forty years now. By the black hairy arse of the Lord of Hell, cursed right I’m cheerful! It’ll be worth a day or two of pain, let me assure you. Can we do it now?”

  Dallandra glanced at the sky, where the sun sat just above the horizon. “Is there enough light, Neb?”

  “Just, but I’d rather wait till morning. That will give me time to brew up an herbal wash to clean the wound once we’ve gotten the dagger out.”

  “And it will give me time to explain the procedure to Arzosah,” Dallandra said. “She’ll need to be careful where she puts her weight.”

  That night, Dallandra lay awake in her blankets. Finally she rose and left the tent before her tossing and turning woke Cal and the baby both. The warm night air soothed her as she picked he
r way through the sleeping camp, as did the sight of the river of stars hanging close above. At the edge of the tents she paused and looked out across the grass, much beaten down by the day’s comings and goings, to the place where Rori and Arzosah were sleeping, curled into tidy bundles. Medea lay sprawled nearby. As Dallandra watched, the young dragon flopped over onto her back, legs akimbo in the air.

  In the starlight Rori’s skin gleamed with silver highlights, much like his dagger from the old days, which he’d always kept polished to a high sheen. Dallandra searched her memories of the dweomer that had turned Rhodry into a dragon. She was trying to pin down the moment of Evandar’s mistake, if such it was, with the silver dagger. At last the memory came clear. Rhodry had tossed the dagger away, thrown it high into the air, there in Evandar’s country. She had seen it spin up high and give off a flash of light before it disappeared.

  At the time she’d thought it had fallen back onto the physical plane when Evandar destroyed his etheric constructions. When she hadn’t found it, she’d assumed that it had somehow dissolved. Silver, especially enchanted silver, can be profoundly unstable during dweomerworkings. But it wasn’t pure silver, she reminded herself. The daggers are made of some sort of alloy.

  She gave up trying to solve the puzzle. If Neb’s chirurgery retrieved the dagger from Rori’s side, she would have her answer then and not before.

  Just after dawn on the morrow, a strange group of chirurgeons assembled out in the grasslands near camp: Neb with his implements, Dallandra with her supplies, and two dragons with their great strength and weight. After Dallandra bound Rori’s mouth with rope, he lay down on his side. Medea pinned her stepfather’s tail under her forelegs, while Arzosah arranged herself across his shoulders. Neb stepped up to the wound. He’d found a large boning knife, of the sort a hunter would use to draw and disjoint a deer, and sharpened it to a scalpel’s edge.

  “Very well, Rori,” Neb said. “Brace yourself.”

  When she’d known Rhodry in human form, Dallandra had always been impressed by just how indifferent to pain he could be. Apparently, the dragon shared this trait. Neb felt the splinter one more time with his left hand, then slashed the hide just under the wound. Rori never moved nor made so much as a grunt or mutter, though his wings, folded tight along his back, did tremble. Blood trickled out of the slash along with a gray thick ooze that stank worse than any excrement.

  “It did form a cyst,” Neb said. “I thought so. I’m making a second cut.”

  This time Rori’s tail tried to lash out. Medea threw her weight forward and held it still as Neb cut vertically up from the original slash at each end, as if he were shaping a flap out of leather for a pouch. Rori allowed himself a low moan, quickly stifled. More blood spurted out of the new wounds, and green pus followed. Neb made a gagging sound deep in his throat from the stench, but his hands were steady as he used the point of the boning knife to pry something free.

  In a wad of foul matter a dagger-shaped object fell to the ground. Slime oozed into the grass.

  “Got it!” Neb called out. “Dalla—”

  Dallandra stepped forward with her kettle of warm herbwater and ladle. Neb picked up the disgusting object with a pair of tongs and carried it out of her way. While she washed the wound clean—and it took the entire large kettleful to get all the pus out—Rori sighed several times, perhaps in relief. Medea had to lie across his tail, however, to hold it down. Once Dallandra had cleansed the cuts, she packed them with clean linen strips, soaked in an astringent, to stop the bleeding.

  Neb returned with a handful of thin gold wires. “The prince gave me an old Deverry brooch made out of woven wires,” he said. “He got it in trade, I think, but anyway, I unwound it. Thread isn’t going to hold this cut closed. Rori, my apologies, but I’m going to have to cause you more pain. I need to make holes and lace you up like a bit of leather work.”

  Rori mumbled something which sounded, with his bound mouth, much like “Very well then.” He rumbled briefly, as if he’d made a jest. Medea shifted her hold on his tail to secure it, and once again Arzosah leaned over his shoulders.

  “I must say,” Arzosah said, “that it gladdens my heart to have that awful stink gone.”

  “Me, too,” Neb said. “Very well, here we go.”

  Once again Rori’s self-control held him rigid and still. Dallandra pulled out the linen strips, then stepped back out of Neb’s way. With an awl Neb made holes in his hide, inserted the gold wires, and laced both the new cuts and the old shut. With the cyst opened and the irritant gone, Dallandra could hope that the wound would heal up properly at last.

  “Dragons heal quickly,” Arzosah said. “But he’d best not fly for a few days.”

  Rori muttered some inarticulate curse.

  “Neb,” Dallandra said, “you can untie his mouth now. Medea, you can let the tail go. My humble thanks for your aid! Arzosah, you were both splendid.”

  She rumbled, then carefully slid off her prostrate mate. Medea let go the tail, stood up and stretched, then backed away. Neb began to uncoil the rope from around Rori’s mouth.

  “And my thanks to you and Neb,” Arzosah said. “To think that nasty thing’s been in there all this time! It’s been a trial for all of us, living with him so on edge.”

  “It must have been hardest on him,” Neb said.

  “Oh, of course.” Arzosah paused to lick Rori’s face, as if to comfort him. “But you know what the old proverb says, when a dragon farts, the whole mountain stinks.”

  “Indeed,” Rori said. “Ye gods, that remedy stung almost as bad as the wound! Still, the worst is over, isn’t it?”

  “It should be.” Dallandra patted his massive jaw. “Neb, when you finish coiling that rope, you can wash that lump off, and we’ll see what’s inside it.”

  “I’m going to boil it,” Neb said. “It’s crawling with live things, Dalla, just like Hound’s bandages were. I can see the auras as a very faint reddish glow.”

  “Fascinating!” Dallandra turned to look at the lump, held in Neb’s tongs. When she opened her Sight, she could see the reddish, pulsating glow. “It’s truly remarkable, seeing it for myself. Not that I didn’t believe you, mind. Ah, now the aura’s fading. It’s curdling, actually, like souring milk.”

  “There must be a lot of tiny lives in an infection,” Neb said. “Not a few larger ones. Gods, it stinks!” But he was grinning in the sheer pleasure of having solved the puzzle.

  Once Neb had finished removing all the matter crusted upon it, both living things and dead pus, Rhodry’s silver dagger did indeed appear. Although the leather binding around the hilt had long since dissolved into the gray matter in the wound, the semi-magical metal itself cleaned up to its former shine. Mic came to watch as Neb polished it with an old rag. When he handed it over to the dwarven jeweler, Mic traced out the falcon device that once had belonged to Cullyn of Cerrmor, graved on the blade.

  “Otho himself made this dagger,” Mic said. “He told me the secret of the metal, you see, when we were off in Alban. He tried to tell me how to place the two dweomers upon a piece, too, but I never could work them properly.”

  “Two dweomers?” Dallandra said. “I thought there was only one.”

  “One to attune the metal to the elven aura and one to bind the dagger to its true owner.” Mic began to say more, paused for a long moment, then laughed in an oddly tense and high-pitched way. “It stuck close to poor old Rhodry, all right, didn’t it?”

  Neb laughed at the black jest, and Dallandra joined in, but she was laughing in relief. Not Evandar’s fault, then, she thought. That’s one thing no one can blame him for. She was tempted to tell Valandario, just to defend Evandar further, but she wondered why she’d bother. Why do I get so angry? she thought. I suppose because Val’s right.

  One thing, however, she did tell Valandario and Grallezar as well. “The silver dagger was a component of sorts,” she told them. “I’m thinking that removing it could be the start of his giving up the dragon form. W
hat do you think?”

  Both of them agreed. “If somewhat be wound,” Grallezar said, “then the unwinding does start with but a few inches of thread.”

  For the next few days, Rori stayed on the ground near the alar’s camp. Arzosah brought him venison, and from time to time he would waddle down to the stream to drink. By the time the flocks and herds had grazed down the fodder around the camp, he was well enough to walk after the alar when it moved farther west, a trip of a mere five miles. Dallandra relied on Arzosah’s opinions about his condition; she herself had no idea when a dragon might have recovered enough to fly. Finally, on the fourth day after the surgery, Arzosah announced that he might take to the air for short distances.

  “Those gold wires were a very fine trick, indeed,” she told Neb and Dallandra. “If you can leave them in, I think me he can fly again.”

  “Oh, I intend to leave them in,” Neb said. “Fear not! I want those cuts well healed before I do anything more to them. Rori, can you get up? I want to make sure the wires will hold when you extend your wings.”

  “Good idea,” Rori said. “I’d best try flapping them, too. Here, let’s get a good ways away from the others.”

  Chirurgeon and dragon ambled off together. Neb clasped his hands behind his back and bent forward slightly as he walked to keep an eye on the wound.

  “This looks very promising,” Dallandra said.

  “It does, indeed,” Arzosah said. “I was truly worried, you know, that the wound would eventually poison him to death. You and Neb both have my thanks for this healing.”

  “You’re most welcome.” Dallandra was as surprised as she was pleased by this expression of gratitude. “You know, while we’re here, there’s somewhat I’ve been meaning to ask you. It’s about your daughters. When Rori found you and brought you to Cengarn, where were they? No one even knew that you had young hatchlings. I’m sure Jill and I would have made some provision for them if we’d known.”