Long before Ymareth glided into view, more bright gouts of fire were announcing its approach through the flurries of snow. The last one, right overhead, sent a gust of heat down at them, and the sky filled with an armoured belly that looked like the hull of an Imperial battleram but moved faster than any bolt shot from its catapults.
Kyrin said something sharp and shrill in her own language and then to her credit she paid more attention to the horses, where only the influence of Lyard as herd-leader was keeping them from panic. The black Andarran, a breed consigned to history a century before, was as much a wizard’s creation as any dragon, yet he reassured the other beasts despite the presence of a creature they had never met before in all their lives.
Huge wings cupped the air as they brought headlong flight first to near-standstill then to a landing amid the smell of steam and hot metal. The impact of that armoured length against the ground was ponderous enough for all to feel it through the soles of their feet. The wings beat again, clogging the air with melting snow, and arched back as Ymareth took several raking steps forward across the square. Its head swung around as the firedrake studied them all, and Gemmel could sense unhuman amusement at their various responses. Then it grinned that long foxy grin, all fangs and lolling tongue, but this time fringed with fire and a drift of smoke.
“Others also watch,” said Ymareth’s voice in all their minds. “It is easy to dissuade them.” Another swirl of fire licked out across the square and a rattle of closing doors was audible above the rushing sound of flames. There was even the sound of more broken glass as violently slammed windows burst free of their leading. The firedrake released a shuddering hiss of laughter and settled to the ground, wings folded and head posed at the end of its arched neck like a gigantic swan armoured in blued steel scales.
“Is there any sign of Aldric yet?” asked Kyrin, and her voice was steady enough that Gemmel paid her courage another silent compliment.
“Nothing yet.” Despite his own misgivings he was still more at ease with Ymareth than his companions and had moved a good deal nearer to the Tower. Now he returned with a motley collection of things bundled in his arms or draped across the Dragonwand. “Just these: a helmet, a cloak and an overrobe with rank-tabs on it. The rest of the armour’s back there in the courtyard. Someone wasn’t wearing much when they left.”
“Or threw them off to run faster,” said Dewan. “I can’t say I’m surprised.” He reached out for the helmet and examined its markings, a diamond over twin bars, all in silver. “Hautheisart. I didn’t reach such an exalted rank.” There was a touch of bitterness in his voice. “They had plenty of reasons why not, though the real one was because Vreijeks weren’t Imperial enough—”
There was a sudden patter of approaching footsteps and an Elthanek-accented voice explaining matters in two directions at once. Dewan dropped the helmet into the snow and it rolled aside, forgotten. There were more important things to think about, like making his excuses all over again to the man they had harmed most.
A man with a hungry sword…
*
“Another thing I should warn you about,” Aldric said as he led the Princess and her serving-woman towards the Square, “is that one of my companions is… Well, different. Don’t worry; you won’t be harmed.”
“But how different can he be?”
“I, er, I didn’t say ‘he’, so be ready for a surpr—”
“Holy Father of Fires!”
It was big strong Chirel who was most upset by her first sight of Ymareth reclining in the melting snow and gazing at her through those phosphorescent eyes. She screamed and would have fainted on the spot had not someone – Aldric suspected Kyrin – been ready with a generous handful of snow.
Marhala remained Marhala, as controlled and serene as he had seen her at their first meeting. It was only when he watched that he saw how fast the puffs of exhaled breath came from between her smiling lips. The calmness, the control, even the smile were all part of the mask she hid behind, as solid as Prokrator Bruda’s mask of metal. It was something with which to fend off reality, but the reality of the dragon was the same wild blend of terror and delight as he had experienced in the Cavern of Firedrakes.
By then Aldric had survived the bronze monstrosity calling itself Esel, and the winged horror sent after his ship to bring him back to Dunrath for an unknown, unpleasant fate. A creature as… As ordinary as a dragon, a firedrake from the old stories, was somehow reassuring. Until it became a living dragon, and the marvels of those old stories were edged with the realisation of what their marvellous creatures could do. It had overwhelmed him then, as it overwhelmed Princess Marhala now.
Chirel, though she had stopped squealing, was so far beyond overwhelmed that he ignored her.
“Ladies, gentlemen,” Aldric pitched his voice loud enough to include Ymareth-anak and whatever gender the firedrake cared to use, “we’ve already outstayed any welcome Egisburg might offer. Mount up and let’s go.” He caught Kyrin in an embrace that in the circumstances had to be too brief and restrained. “I already knew you were beautiful, loved, but this goes beyond mere cleverness.” He waved a hand towards the horses. “How did you know to bring the right number?” Kyrin laughed and laid her head sideways on his shoulder, the bared one that Marhala’s chamber door had clipped.
“Easy enough: I took your horse, my horse, the pack-pony, and everything else in the stable.” Those would have belonged to Bruda, Voord and Tagen. “Although someone will be riding a pack-saddle. I suggest the princess.”
“I didn’t expect jealousy so soon…”
“Light of Heaven, nothing of the sort! She’s lightest, that’s all, and I don’t want the horse overloaded,” Kyrin walked a little distance beyond Dewan, then thought a moment and turned back with a mischievous smile. “But if you want jealousy, remember I saw your friend Kathur in Tuenafen. Even though she wasn’t at her best, she was still very—”
“All stop!” snapped Lord-Commander Voord. “Stay right where you are!”
He had been out of sight and out of reach at the corner of the Red Tower’s main gatehouse, and now he moved forward just enough for the threat of the telek in his hand to become obvious. Voord’s face was blue with cold and his teeth chattered as he spoke, but the weapon remained all too steady.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” he said. “I could hear you congratulate each other, listen to you feel so pleased with yourselves. Not so pleased now, eh?”
Not even Ymareth’s eyes could have seen him. Besides being sheltered by the massive gatehouse wall, he no longer had a helmet, or armour, or a rank-robe. Instead he wore what had been underneath: tunic and trews of off-white fabric that blended with the snowy air and made him almost invisible. Dewan glanced with the sharpness of hindsight at the rank-marked gear he had examined and thrown aside, and swore under his breath, but it was too late for regret. Voord laughed harshly.
“I hadn’t time to hide them, so when your friend brought them out I thought it was all over. But you people only look. You don’t see…”
Aldric was looking now, and seeing all too well. Voord wore only one other garment, and that too was almost white, caked with snow which had fallen while he crouched in the shadows and waited for a chance to finish what he had begun. It was more usually black as night, for it was the wolfskin coyac jacket that Aldric had abandoned with such relief in Tuenafen. Now here it was again, worn by a man who used magic without compunction and – the recollection hardened to certainty with the painful shock of a hot coal under ashes – had been in Seghar when Crisen Geruath cursed Evthan the hunter with that damned changeling-charm. Was it Voord who put the suggestion into Crisen’s twisted mind, to see what happened before he tried it for himself?
Something must have shown in Aldric’s widening eyes, because before he could open his mouth for a warning, the telek was pointing at his face. A quick cold-birthed shiver made it tremble, but not enough that the shot might miss.
“Make one sound out of
place,” said Voord, “and see how far it gets.” Nobody spoke aloud, but inside his head Aldric heard Ymareth’s voice borne on a whisper of metallic sound that Voord would never recognise as speech.
“Dragon-lord, once thee and thy companions move aside, he is cinders in an instant.”
Gemmel and Dewan heard it as well and their knowing eyes met in swift agreement before the sorcerer took a step to one side and Dewan to the other. Voord smiled like a shark.
“Stay in your places,” he snarled, “or…” The telek levelled at Princess Marhala and held steady until they moved back to where they had been. “Don’t think I’m here and you’re there and that thing—” he jerked his chin at the firedrake, “—is where it is by accident. I know about protective cover. Credit me with that much sense at least.”
“What do you want?” Marhala an-Sherban was no longer quite as calm as she appeared, unless it was the chilly night that ran a tremor through her voice, but there was still all the dignity of the Imperial family in the way she faced Voord.
“Want? I want you, alive. And because of that they’ll let me take you, because then you’ll have a chance. And because they know what I’ll do right now if anybody tries to play the hero!”
“Then do it right now.” Marhala’s voice was flat, quiet and somehow more insulting that way. “Spare me the delights of your company.”
Voord almost did. The telek jerked as a muscle-spasm ran down his arm almost to the fingers crooked around its trigger-bar. His lean face twisted with rage and if he had been a little closer he would have knocked her to the ground. But good sense returned just in time, along with the realisation that any movement without a hostage in hand would open him to devastating reprisal.
“No, lady,” he said, and now it was fury rather than cold making him shiver, “not until you ask again. Beg. With none of your Firecursed pride. And then I’ll make a gift of you…” He left the sentence hanging incomplete in the cold air, but his smile remained and that was more than enough.
Kyrin, Dewan and Gemmel had all seen what Voord had done to Kathur the Vixen. Aldric hadn’t, but could guess at the unspoken details from time spent in the man’s company, listening to him and despising him. As slowly as the pouring of chilled honey his hand began an imperceptible climb to his weaponbelt and the other telek pushed through it. But not slowly enough.
“Never mind that, hlensyarl. You’d never reach it.” Voord leered at him and then, as if prompted by an unheard voice, discarded elaborate ideas in favour of something more intimate. “You’ve been a thorn in my flesh for long enough.” The telek held steady for a heartbeat, then it twitched away from Aldric just as he squeezed the trigger.
In the fraction of a second between Voord’s threat and the metallic snap that made it a reality, Dewan ar Korentin flung himself sideways. It was a convulsion of muscles, nothing as dignified or structured as a leap, but it got his fur-bulked body between the telek and its target. That target wasn’t Aldric, or even the princess. A mind like Voord’s would want to cause a longer, deeper hurt than the mere physical pain of a wound.
He had aimed at Kyrin.
Aldric saw everything and could do nothing. He saw Voord’s fingers flex, saw the telek jolt as a dart sped from it, saw the missile’s metal glint as it flew. And he saw Dewan flinch in mid-air the way a running rabbit tumbles when the arrow hits it square, saw him flop loose-limbed against Kyrin, and saw them both fall into snow already marked with a vivid spatter of blood.
For the first time his line of attack was clear, without risk to others, and he used it. His hand finished its slow crawl in a blur, not to his own telek but Isileth Widowmaker’s hilt. The longsword seemed to leap into his grip in the instant he touched it, clearing the scabbard in a glinting grey arc. Even so he wasn’t quick enough.
Evthan’s moon-driven transformation in the Jevaiden woods had taken mere seconds from man to Beast, yet it had been a perceptible change. Voord’s shape shifted between one eye-blink and the next.
He went from upright man to wolf on all fours so fast that the cut meant to take his head flashed over it instead. Sparks flew from the wall of the Red Tower’s gatehouse as starsteel sheared an inch-deep gash in its red-glazed granite, and the blade made a high, shrill chiming that in any other sword might have signalled breakage. With this taiken it sounded like frustrated rage.
The Beast that crouched in Voord’s place was pure white except for the black saddle-mark across its shoulders as if it wore a jacket. It was lame, with a twisted, crippled left front paw, but that didn’t hinder the unnatural speed with which it turned and ran.
A wash of energy as blue as alcohol flame seared the ground where it had been as Gemmel unleashed the power of the Dragonwand, but the white wolf was already out of sight. Ymareth bellowed and went airborne with a single bound and a thunderous clap of wings, passing low above their heads with fanged mouth already agape and flaring. The firedrake lashed the pavements of Tower Square from one side to the other with a lance of white fire, exploding snow into superheated steam as the ornamental grass and hedgerows beneath its white shroud went to ash. Even the topsoil baked to sterile dust.
It took long seconds before the violet-pink afterglow of dazzle faded from everyone’s eyes, yet when at last they could see again, there was nothing to see except crawling trails of sparks.
All that open space was empty, without a trace of any wolf alive or dead.
*
When Aldric returned from a fruitless examination of the charred square Marhala and Chirel had moved away into the shelter of the Red Tower’s gate, as if aware the next little while was none of their affair. They huddled close together for comfort more than warmth, and Chirel didn’t stir even when Ymareth landed and stalked forward with that grave, graceful stride to spread the vast canopy of its wings above them all.
Dewan was still lying where he had fallen. Kyrin was on her knees by his side, holding one of his hands between both of hers as if that might somehow help, but Gemmel’s expression showed that the time for help was past.
Kyrin’s face was harder to read, yet Aldric managed well enough because of how it matched the way he felt. Any companion suffering a fatal wound was tragic, even if that companion wasn’t a close friend, but what Dewan had done without question at King Rynert’s bidding blunted the sharpest edge of sorrow. Taking the shot meant for Kyrin won him redemption of a sort, but if he had shown as much courage six months ago, none of this might have happened.
The end of the steel telek-dart protruded from his chest like a small bright brooch, and the few remaining gatehouse lights twinkled from its polished surface in time with the beat of his pulse. If it had gone deeper, he would have died in seconds. If anyone pulled it out, he would die in seconds. Leaving it in place meant he would die in minutes. Whatever was done or not done, Dewan ar Korentin would die.
“I thought my heart…would let me down,” he said to Kyrin. His voice was clearer and more steady than it had any right to be, but he measured out speech and breath as if aware he had a limited store of each. “It did once…on a beach in Alba. The wizard will tell you…more about it…than he ever told me. Can you do now…what you did then?” Gemmel said nothing; the single shake of his head was enough.
“Ah. So much. For optimis—” The bravado faltered in a hiss and a click of teeth, and for a few seconds there was only hoarse, irregular breathing. Dewan’s eyes closed briefly, a little fluttering movement like a blind drawn down, and couldn’t open so wide next time. Then he looked at Aldric. “Tell Lyseun. Tell her…what happened.”
He got a bleak stare in return. That entreaty was one Aldric had anticipated since meeting Dewan’s wife during the Spring Festival at Erdhaven. She had detested him at once for this very reason: that one day he, or another of Dewan’s armoured associates, would come back alone from a duty like this one to tell her she was a widow. It had made him uneasy then. It made him angry now. Let King Rynert do it. Let him make the excuses, let him explain what had gone
wrong with his intrigues and manipulations, let him list the names and lives it had affected or cut short. Yet Aldric couldn’t tell that to a dying man.
“First I need to survive this poisoned stew you and your king have cooked and flung me in,” he said.
“Your king too.” There was no denial of the poison.
“Not any more. Not after this. I defy him, and renounce my faith and fealty, freely given and freely taken. Take that to the darkness with you.”
Aldric had killed often enough in his eventful life, but most had died from the sudden reflex action of self-defence. A few had received longer consideration: Duergar Vathach, the necromancer who had engineered the deaths of his entire family; Lord Geruath of Seghar and his son Crisen; and now Lord-Commander Voord Ebanesh, the only one not yet dead. But Aldric had never thought of killing a king. He was thinking of it now.
“I won’t ask. Forgiveness. So you don’t. Have to refuse.” Dewan fought past his pain and tried to smile. It didn’t work. “But I ask this. It hurts. Make an end. And after—” He shuddered, and Aldric heard his teeth grinding together. “No more Empire. Not even a hole. In its ground. Do what you did. For Lord Santon. Fire is clean. And I’m tired…of being…so…cold…”
The words came out on a long grey plume of breath, and after them there were no more words or breath.
“An-diu k’noeth-ei, Dewan ar Korentin.” Aldric spoke the farewell and signed the blessing faster than was proper, but at least he said and made it, when minutes earlier he might not have done even that. He didn’t ask for help to move Dewan’s body indoors, a big body like a bear in all its furs and leather, a bear whose hunting days were done. Yet when Kyrin came forward he didn’t refuse. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears, though perhaps only because of the chill wind. Any display of grief would have been out of place. Instead she simply helped to lift and carry, with her thoughts kept to herself. Staggering a little until they found balance, they brought Dewan into the Red Tower, and when they emerged a few minutes later Aldric’s empty hands were hanging by his sides. He was still weighed down with something harder to see.
The Dragon Lord Page 29