An abrupt smile took hold of Maeron’s features. “Thank you for your time.” With a single nod of farewell to Austin’s continued glare, he turned and withdrew down the hall.
Austin did not close the door until he was certain Maeron was really gone. He checked the lock, secured the bolt, and took a step back. Corinna stood pressed to the wall, stone motionless and watching him. Minutes passed. Neither spoke.
“I think he’s gone,” Austin whispered once he could let himself believe it.
Corinna nodded. A grin crept across her face. It outshone the worry that nonetheless remained. “What was that you did? When you told him to go.”
“So I did do something, then. It felt strange. Boden told me to say that.”
Her worry gained ground on her grin. “Boden told you.”
“What was it?” Austin asked.
“An additional force of suggestion only, riding on your own voice. Already Maeron proceeded from a position of doubting himself due to your appearance and your own performance, a somewhat unique position that allowed us to coax him down the path of those doubts. I suspect this tactic will not work on him again.”
Austin relayed Boden’s answer to Corinna. “And you did that?” he asked the dragon.
“Indeed. I confess to some uncertainty that such tricks would work at all, yet it felt like an ideal moment to make the attempt. It seems the ‘anchor’ you trouble yourselves about may hold some advantages as well, would you not say?”
“And is there anything else the dragon can do that he’d care to share with the rest of the class?” Corinna demanded.
“No. I would also venture that, having done so, I am now too weak to do so again for some time.”
“Mm.” Corinna seemed to consider this before letting it drop. “In any case, dragon-aided voice or not,” she smirked and patted his chest, “nicely managed.”
Austin smiled, finding himself shaken as the adrenaline faded and hoping he wouldn’t need to do something like that again. “I just figured he must have tracked us here, somehow. So, maybe, make him suspicious you knew what he did and tricked him into following someone else. How well that would’ve worked on its own . . .” He trailed off into uncertainty.
“If we’re lucky, he’s backtracking to Swindon now.”
“So far luck hasn’t been much on our side.”
“Aye, that occurred to you, too, did it?”
“So what do we do? If we run now and he’s watching the building before he leaves to make sure, he’ll see us. If we stay and he’s not convinced at all, we’re no less cornered than we were.”
Corinna watched him in the shadows. Her response was a long time coming.
Two hours later, they slipped out the hotel’s back door to creep through the morning fog. They were no closer to certainty about Maeron’s actions, but no attack had come in the meantime.
They had waited, fully dressed and quietly playing gin with a deck found in the nightstand. Both had focused more on stray sounds and the echo of Maeron’s presence than the game. Unable to wait any longer, Corinna had reluctantly torn down and renewed the mask that should already have hidden their location. Then they had left to search for Tragen’s book.
Though the fog may have helped conceal their movements, Corinna’s imagination placed Maeron just beyond each vaporous swirl. However he had tracked them, it must have had to do with Fefferman’s death. Were that the case, recasting the concealment mask would likely solve the problem.
Were that the case.
Corinna led Austin down a set of stairs to the London Underground, more commonly known as the Tube. How could she feel so weary of running when most memory of the chase was not her own? She still didn’t know what they would do after severing Austin’s connection to the crystal. Even that much assumed the book remained where it was and that it contained a means to do so.
That Boden could use Austin as a focus for any sort of magical feat troubled her more than she hoped she let on. Did magic the dragon worked weaken the crystal’s seal? She didn’t think so, but could easily be wrong. With luck, the book would give insight into that, too. Even if Boden’s magic did not hold the power to weaken his own prison from within, the fact he possessed the ability at all was like a rock in her shoe with every step.
Before Bath, Rhianon had lamented being alone: the last of a nearly doomed exposition, straining under the weight of the responsibility forced on her. Corinna felt it now within her, yet also sympathized with Rhianon. Corinna had been on her own since age fifteen. That familiarity with solitude armed Corinna with a strength Rhianon had not possessed. Yet Corinna had always fled from responsibility. She realized it now in a way she had perhaps been unwilling to admit to herself.
So, things were not better. Things were not worse. Things were just different. Goodie for her, she told herself. Whoever she was.
“You know, I keep telling myself ‘At least this is exciting!’“ she burst out. They were coming out of a Tube station in sight of the Tower Bridge. It stretched across the Thames with sweeping cables and Gothic spires in a way that reminded her of a simpler bridge near her home in Kish. “Then part of me remembers what’s at stake and feels guilty — but then the first part thinks it adds to the excitement. I can’t tell if I’m frightened or exhilarated.”
“I think I know what you mean,” Austin said. “Not quite in the same way, but finding out that Rhi’s — well, I just think I know what you mean.”
“You know, you’re kind of cute when you’re flustered.”
“I know.”
Austin failed to conceal a smirk, and Corinna barely resisted asking how much she resembled the Rhi he knew. Had Rhi been less serious than Rhianon without the weight of the crystal weighing her down so consciously? The thought returned Corinna to their current situation, and she cast a glance behind them. No one appeared to be following.
Before much longer, rain began to fall. It spattered off their shoulders and ran steadily down brick walls and into gutters by the time they reached the Friar’s Hogshead Pub.
“I had an umbrella at some point,” Austin muttered. He wiped soaked eyebrows. “Super-lightweight, designed for the traveler. Got it just for this trip, even.”
“Only a little longer outside. This way.”
A weathered stone building housed the pub, a structure likely once home to a more somber institution that might have been a monastery or church in its far-distant youth. Carved designs still festooned the eaves, and the structure held a weighty, aged memory of grander days. She bypassed the oaken doors in the front and instead led Austin around the side to an alley bounded by an ancient stone wall.
“This is a piece of the London Wall the Romans built, isn’t it?” Austin asked. “I read about this before coming. Fragments here and there are still left standing. I love that stuff.”
“Could be, Mister Tour Guide.” Her eyes and mind were on the pub’s wall as she tried to recall Tragen’s instructions. “Left of the third column, three stones over, ten stones up. I think.” She pointed in answer to Austin’s questioning glance. “We’re looking for a loose stone.”
“That’s where the book is?”
“Nope.” She counted three left, ten up from the third column. The stone held fast to the surrounding mortar. “Though mayhaps it was ten over, three up?” She found that stone, tried it. It wouldn’t budge.
“So if it isn’t the book, what is it?”
“Something else, obviously.” She winked and turned back to the wall.
“It isn’t really the time to play coy.”
“We’re in a dirty alley trying to find something that may or may not be here, which may or may not help us if we find it, working off a memory that may or may not be accurate. On top of it all, it’s pouring rain, my shoes are soaked through, and I’m hungry. Playing coy keeps my spirits up.” She cast him an apologetic glance and found detailing the situation aloud had sapped her fragile cheer. “It’s the perfect time.”
“Fair enough
.” Austin took her hand before she realized what he was doing, squeezed it, and then let it go to turn toward the pub wall again. “Maybe it’s to the right of the third pillar instead of the left?” He counted to that stone, seized it, and pulled it off the wall. It landed with a splash on the ground. There was nothing but mortar. “Great.”
She patted his back. “Wrong stone. And now you’re a vandal. Hooligan.”
“You’re sure it’s this side of the pub?”
“Very. We’ll find it. Or, we’ll cause a collapse.”
Working on a new idea, she moved down the wall to the second pillar and began counting. “Or . . .” Her fingers pried into the mortar, found the stone loose, and carefully pulled it away. Carved into the mortar behind it lurked a tiny nook, inside of which sat a brass key. She snatched it out and showed it to Austin, grinning. “To the left of the second pillar.”
He matched her grin. “So what now?”
“Where there’s a key, there’s a lock.” She tucked it away and replaced the stone. “And now we get out of the rain. C’mon.”
Warm air greeted them inside the pub. Golden light from the rafters scattered across the building’s internal stone walls. Tables, chairs, and benches of age-polished wood stood about the place, holding customers at the early hour. The aroma of bacon wafting from the kitchen added a further reminder that they had yet to eat.
She answered a wave of welcome from the man behind the bar and tugged Austin close. “We’re looking for a booth in the back, almost tucked around behind the corner. With a stained-glass window.”
Austin pointed to where the pub continued around the bar beyond a bluish stone wall. They made for that.
“And then, perhaps some breakfast,” Corinna added. “Though I expect we ought not linger long enough to get it here.”
They found the booth. “Almost tucked” behind the corner turned out to be an understatement. The renovation the space had undergone in its transformation into a pub had resulted in an isolated nook. An undersized booth sat crammed into a corner beside a slim hall that apparently led to the loo. On the wall above the table was a stained-glass window, hinged on one side, with a lock and keyhole on the other.
Corinna took a seat on the bench on one side of the window and slid in close. Austin did the same opposite her.
“I think this is it. Tragen said it used to go to another room. It got bricked up on the other side a long time ago, except for a little alcove that’s the perfect size for a book.”
She fished in her pocket for the key as Austin looked dubious. “How’d he know that? How did he get a key?”
“The key,” she corrected. “And he talked to the proprietor, I think. Tragen — well, he had a pretty good way with people. No magic required.”
“Did he tell the proprietor what he was putting in there?”
“Not if he had the choice. Less chance of Maeron finding out. And anyway, what would he have said, ‘I’m stashing a book about magically bound dragons in the back of your pub?’“
After ensuring no one was nearby, she slid the key home. It turned, and the window swung open.
The alcove was empty.
EIGHTEEN
It was a few heartbeats before either could bring themselves to take a second look in the alcove. It was no more than twenty centimeters deep. The book, had it rested there, would have fit only standing up. Now there was only empty space, a hole in the stone wall behind it, and a scattering of rubble littering the bottom of the alcove.
Austin leaned closer. “Any chance it’s in that hole?”
Corinna stood to examine it better. Only a fraction of the meager light filtering back to their booth lit the alcove. The hole beyond held only shadow. “God, I hope so. But I doubt it.”
“What’s back there?”
“Bloody darkness. Part of the old building that didn’t get used, I think.”
Hopeful, she passed her hand through the hole. It formed a tunnel in the stone half the length of her forearm that led to open space beyond. She could feel the wall around the hole on the other side, empty air, and no book.
“Hate to say this, Austin, but we have a new problem.”
“Maybe the proprietor took it out? We should ask.”
Fighting off thoughts of spiders, she traced her fingertips along the wall’s interior side. Long gashes in the stone ran toward the hole. “Someone dug through from the other end and pulled it out. I doubt it was the proprietor.” She reached through up to her shoulder, grasping at hope in the darkness.
“It can’t hurt to ask, can it?”
“That’s what we thought about Feffer — ” She shouted and yanked her arm out of the hole. “Something touched me.”
Austin blinked. “What something?”
The whisper came from the hole before she could answer. “Hand reaches in,” it mewled. “Who is hand attached to, I wonders? Nnnnn?” The voice, to whomever it belonged, rang shrill and high with a whine that obscured any guesses at its gender.
Corinna ducked back from the hole and pressed against the wall to conceal herself from the view of whomever was inside. Austin, to her relief, did the same and watched her for guidance.
“I knows you are there, nnn? Do not be afraid. I not mean harm! What is answer?”
Corinna rubbed the back of her hand where she had felt the touch: two thin scratches. Their fading tactile echo called to mind needles rather than fingernails. That nothing had yet followed out of the hole eased her immediate alarm. She gave a cautious shrug and addressed the voice.
“Who’s there?”
“Handed one hides, and speaks! Do not worry. Welcome! I am friend!”
“Friend of who?”
“Friend! Friend of you!”
“I’m a friend, too,” she tried. Her brief hope that the voice had known Tragen when it called itself a friend faded as rapidly as it came when it failed to mention his name. “What’s on the other side there?”
“We’re sorry about reaching into your, er, hole,” Austin added.
The voice whined piteously. “Other side! Other side is world of wonder and magic and smells of home! Misses, misses! Misses Rhyll!” The whimpers that followed became a sniffing. “Why does hand reach in?”
Corinna decided not to clarify her “other side” question. Whatever it was clearly knew of Rhyll. Had it made the area behind the wall its home, or was it another servant of Maeron, tracking them? Her gut told her the former, but her gut was not infallible.
“I was looking for something,” she tried. “It used to be here, on my side of that hole.”
“Something?” Another whimper. “What is something?”
“Did you find anything there? Have you been there long?”
“Found, yes. Found a piece of Rhyll, yes. Did you smell it?”
“If the piece of Rhyll is a leather-wrapped book, then we didn’t smell it, we put it there. Do you still have it?”
“Nnn? Still have it. It is here.”
“In that case, thank you for holding our book for us,” Corinna told the voice. “We would like it back now.”
Austin nodded. “We’re in your debt for keeping it safe.”
Corinna glared at him and mouthed, “Don’t. Say. Debt!”
“Mmmm?” came the voice. “You will come inside for book? Visit, yes? Then we discuss and be friends.”
She didn’t like the sound of that. “We can’t really fit through there. But we owe you our thanks, so: thank you very much. Can you pass the book back out through the hole instead, please?”
“Discuss! Come inside and discuss! There is other way in. Down through drainage hole, outside, by wall. Follow rain!”
“We really don’t — ”
“Follow! Rain!” The whine had sharpened to an edge. “Come!” Its owner moved back from the hole with a scraping shuffle that swiftly faded and left Austin and Corinna blinking at each other. Corinna risked a glimpse into the hole after it. Seeing nothing but darkness, she closed and locked the window
.
Austin swallowed. “Sorry.”
Her scowl softened quickly. “You couldn’t know. Of course, some blokes at least know to keep their mouth shut when dealing with things they don’t know about.” She smiled nonetheless, but only a little.
“So you know what that thing is? My only guess is it isn’t human.”
“Not entirely, no, but mentioning debt is never a good idea when encountering things you don’t know. Especially in Rhyll. And as it lives in a dark hole and mentioned Rhyll . . .” She trailed off meaningfully.
“So now we’re going down a drainage gutter to talk to it.”
“Aye, and get our book back.” She slid out of the booth and readied an LED lantern keychain, bought in a bus station shop the previous night after the dark of Fefferman’s tunnel. “Unless you’ve got a better idea. I’m hardly chuffed about it either.”
Austin didn’t.
A minute later, they stood watching rainwater spill through a grating into a bleak stone shaft between the old Roman wall and the back of the pub. Years of drainage had eroded and widened one part of the shaft. At the far end of the gloom below, Austin could just make out a stone overhang jutting out from the pub-side wall. He crouched, took hold of the wet iron grate, and tugged it open along a rough hinge on one side.
“I’ll go first,” he said.
“Why?”
“I — because?” He swallowed.
Corinna regarded him a moment. Rain streamed down her face. “Aye, good enough. You just want to get out of the rain first, I’ll bet.”
He chuckled as she handed the keychain to him. “Guilty.”
Austin climbed down a ladder cut into the shaft wall. Twice he almost slipped on the soaked stone before splashing safely into a mud puddle that flooded his shoes. Inching away from the ladder to make room for Corinna, he found that the overhang sheltered a narrow passage leading into darkness beneath the pub. Though rainwater streamed into the passage, the light from Corinna’s lantern didn’t penetrate more than a few feet.
Memory of Dragons Page 17