Memory of Dragons

by Michael G. Munz

  “That’s . . . another problem. I’ve read enough to get some reassurance that Rhyll will probably be okay if Boden’s released on this side. At least for a while. We’ll need to release him, only for a moment, to cleanly break his link to you. Then I’ll rebind him in the crystal again.”

  “Uh, didn’t you say it took a lot to bind him in the first place?”

  “That was when he was a fully embodied dragon; this time he’s just a spirit. Half the work’s already done, aye? Of course my binding will decay faster than the original, but it ought to be enough. I’ll manage.” She didn’t sound confident. “Provided the crystal’s intact. If he gets out some way that shatters it, we’re buggered six ways from Sunday and there’s a rampaging dragon spirit in the British Isles.”

  “Great.”

  “Austin, what’s happening to you makes me think if we don’t rebind him, he’ll get out anyway. But we need to deal with Maeron first. I’ll want controlled conditions to do the binding, and I doubt he’d cooperate.”

  “So I need to hold out until we find Maeron, somehow persuade him to make nice, and get the crystal back. Hey, if that’s what it takes, right? No biggie.”

  Austin tried to slow his breathing again. Hopefully, the guilt in his gut wouldn’t overshadow the useful pain in his chest.

  “Aye, one way or another. And I doubt Maeron will simply hand the crystal over when we meet — if he even intends to meet us at all. He may have hid it. I wouldn’t let me near it if I were him.”

  “Maybe it’s part of what he wants to show you.”

  Corinna snorted.

  “There is the tiny possibility he’s telling the truth,” Austin offered. “If we antagonize him when he’s willing to listen to our side — ”

  “Aye, and that possibility’s dwarfed by the hair on a cricket’s bum, Austin.”

  “Yeah, I know, sub-atomic. Just thinking it through.”

  Corinna looked up from the book. “If Maeron’s got it with him and he wants to chat us up, we demand it back first. He can show us whatever he’d like after that.”

  “And if it’s a trap, or we piss him off enough to attack?”

  “Then it’s two against one, and we’ve got the dragon close enough where I can do magic. But promise me if I tell you to take the crystal and run, you do it. No mucking about, no questions.”

  “If I have to run without you — ”

  “Oh sod it, Austin, just promise.”

  If something happened to her, Austin considered, he was doomed anyway. “Okay.”

  She flashed a wan smile that nonetheless encouraged his heart. “There now, you’re learning.”

  “The lessons suck.”

  “Lived how long and you’re only now realizing that?” Corinna returned her attention to the book. Her smile still lurked. “Sheltered life you’ve had.”

  He didn’t protest. “So, to confirm, we’re not worrying about releasing the dragon with too much magic anymore.”

  “We are, but better he escapes here than in Rhyll. That might even need to be part of what we’ll call the extreme back-up plan. But if you get the chance to wallop Maeron over the head with a shovel, you snatch it up.”

  “Ah.”

  “But that still assumes he’ll have the crystal on him.” She sighed. “We need a better idea. Mayhaps, if I’m right he’s using some sort of battery, and we suss out what it is . . .”

  Boden’s voice boomed between Austin’s ears before he could ask what she meant. “Human!”

  “I’ve got Boden,” Austin shot to Corinna. “Are you still there?”

  “So you are not completely devoid of perception, then. I have been speaking. Have you not heard?”

  “Only the one whisper since you tried to possess me.”

  “We’re drawing closer,” Corinna said. Austin agreed. The throb, at least, remained unchanged.

  “Boden, where are you? Does Maeron have you?”

  “You claimed to need me. I await your apology.”

  “What?”

  “I am waiting. Beg my forgiveness, and I will aid you.”

  Boden’s voice felt pregnant with tendrils that seemed to spill from Austin’s ears and envelop his shoulders in echoes of his earlier control. Austin shivered.

  “I’m . . .” Austin began, and swallowed. It tasted bitter. Yet they needed Boden’s help. An empty apology cost nothing. Except . . .

  “No,” he answered, mind whirring.

  “Think on your foolishness! Your time is short. You need me.”

  “And I think you need me just as much. Maybe more. No matter what you’ve lied to me about, you never wanted me to give you to Maeron. I don’t know why, but you don’t want to go back to Rhyll; you only want out of the crystal.”

  “A development that would aid both of — ”

  Austin didn’t let him finish. “Maeron’s not about let you do that. So here’s what’s going to happen: I’m not begging for forgiveness. You’re going to beg for mine, and then maybe I’ll see about accepting your help.” Austin finished with a glance at Corinna, who returned his look with an arched eyebrow and an uncertain smile of her own.

  “Insolence! You shall get no such contrition from me, human.”

  Austin said nothing. He glanced again at Corinna to bolster his strength and held his breath.

  “Still you persist! Or can you no longer hear me at all?”

  “I hear you. I’m just waiting.” He could almost feel the dragon breathing down his neck. The throb in his chest seemed to tingle.

  “I beg of no one,” he grumbled finally. “Yet I set aside my demand, if that will cure this selfish blindness to our shared objectives. Maeron’s success breeds disaster for us both.”

  Austin wondered if Boden really expected him to believe his goodwill or if it was just an attempt to save face. “Fine. Except Maeron’s claimed his goals have changed. Where is he? Can you tell what he’s doing?”

  “Maeron leads you into a trap. He means to kill you.”

  “Yeah, that’s what we figured.” He relayed Boden’s warning to Corinna.

  “If anything,” she muttered, “the dragon saying it makes me less certain.”

  “He has created a rift to Rhyll. This thread that binds us, this connection you now regard as a violation, is the only thing preventing the crystal from passing through. He will kill you to sever the link. First, you must first close the rift. Then we must deal with Maeron.”

  “You don’t get to say what we ‘must’ do anymore, Boden.”

  The dragon snarled. “Do not sabotage this with your petty issues!”

  Austin let it go. “How do we close the rift? Where is it?”

  “Dinas Emrys. In a cave.”

  Austin had to laugh. “You want me to believe that’s a coincidence?”

  “The confrontation that ended the dragon whose bones there rest also weakened the membrane between the worlds! There is cause for him to create a rift there! Ask Rhianon, she will tell you the same. This is no trick.”

  Austin relayed to Corinna.

  “Not my area,” she answered. “But I’ve no reason to doubt him. Aside from his being a treacherous dragon who’s tried to lead us astray three hundred seven times so far. You know, except for that.”

  Austin scowled. The site of Dinas Emrys lay just outside the town of Beddgelert where Maeron wanted to rendezvous. It did, at least, fit. A dump truck merged onto the highway ahead of them. He pulled to the right and went around it.

  “So where is Maeron now?”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Maeron’s Beddgelert rendezvous spot was a modest, picnic table-studded park on the riverside. The park was quiet today, with nary a visitor save for a German shepherd puppy and his barely teenaged boy. Fifty paces from the park’s eastern edge, there stretched a quaint stone bridge. The sun had risen high enough to cast shadows beneath much of the bridge itself, and there, amid the shore vegetation, Corinna was hidden.

  The deepest shadows lay on a narrow patch of u
neven ground between the flowing water and the wall of a bridge support. Wobbling there, she spared a glance from the park to her shoes in an effort to keep her feet dry. They had five minutes before Maeron’s demanded meeting.

  She had to give Austin credit; he had driven in a controlled panic on unfamiliar roads and got them there with time to enact their plan . . . such as it was.

  For the second time in as many minutes she tried Austin on his stolen mobile. Spotty coverage had blocked her first attempt. This time he answered.

  “Any luck?” she asked.

  “ — getting there. This isn’t exactly — following a map.”

  “You’re cutting out, Austin.”

  “Sorry, bad signal. — sign of Maeron?”

  “Not yet, but it’s still a few minutes before ten. He ought to be closer to me than you at any rate.” She glanced up the river behind her. “Unless he’s here already and had the same idea to hide as I did. I’m under the bridge.”

  “Why?”

  “Buying you time. I make him wait as long as I can. When it looks like he’s given up, I pop out for a how-do-you-do.” She had hoped spying on the park from afar might gain her a bit of intelligence as well, in case Maeron meant to prepare any traps before they arrived. But if he had, he had done so long before now. “If we’re lucky, he’ll wait for me as long as it takes.”

  “Just be careful.”

  “Oh, grand idea, Austin. Hadn’t thought of that.”

  They hung up. Corinna resumed her vigil, going over her plan again and trying to decide how long to wait before venturing to the park herself; she couldn’t be sure Maeron didn’t lurk in his own hiding spot. If Boden told the truth, the crystal remained on its own in a cave. So while Austin searched for it, her task would be to test her theory about Maeron using some form of magical battery.

  If she was extremely lucky, he might accept handing over the battery as a condition of her listening to whatever he wished to say. If not, she hoped to at least identify it and create the opportunity to steal it while she listened — if he did, in fact, mean to talk.

  She fully expected he would simply try to kill her.

  It was another reason they had decided Austin would not attend the meeting. Still watching the park, she rehearsed the conversation in her head:

  “I know you need Austin,” she would say, if it came to it. “There’s no other reason to lure us up here. He’s not showing up until I say.”

  “And why should I not just take his whereabouts from your mind?”

  “I’ve learned a few things. Internal magic is still possible. I can’t do a thing to you out here, but you try to get into my memory and I’ll put up more shields than you can take apart.”

  It would be a partial bluff. Even knowing she could do magic within the confines of her own mind, even with her own skill at mnemonicraft, defeating Maeron’s abilities might be beyond her. He would surely call the bluff for what it was, but behind it would be another:

  “Even if I can’t block you, I’ll delay you long enough for me to wipe it from my memory before you can get to it.”

  That, too, would be a bluff. Such a thing took preparation she hadn’t done, and precision she wasn’t sure she could manage. Yet the very possibility might give him pause. She would play that uncertainty for all it was worth, buying time to steal the battery or for Austin to find the crystal. Or both.

  At five minutes past ten, the boy and his dog left the park. She saw Maeron nowhere. Unwilling to risk waiting further, she crept from her hiding spot.

  A grey shrike, perched on the bridge’s edge, took flight and followed her.

  In the ivy-covered forest some distance from the town, above a dry streambed leading toward the cave where Mister Emrys had met his fate, Maeron waited. He had no intention of meeting Corinna and Austin within Beddgelert. There were far too many witnesses there, too many ways they might elude him. Besides, he doubted Corinna foolish enough to trust his invitation; she would plan for treachery. So why give her a location around which to construct those plans?

  The shrike would have made contact by now, Maeron estimated. Catching the bird had been trivial. Filling its mind with enough of his own memories to ensure its obedience without instantly killing it proved more difficult, but he had judged the transfer successful. It would not be the same as the wolfhound sent after Rhianon. The shrike’s mind was far more limited, only capable of holding a fraction of Maeron’s psyche. Yet it would be enough to let the bird recognize Corinna and Austin, to know what it must do, and — insomuch as its avian mind could comprehend — a modicum of why it must do it.

  He would not trust everything to such a servant, of course. Maeron closed his eyes to concentrate on the unique mnemonic flavor of the mote he had buried in Austin’s mind during their encounter on the Tube. A subtle bit of magic, as temporary as it was fragile, it served as a means to track Austin.

  Yet it only worked when Maeron expended a bit of magic to find it each time. Creating the rift had cost him the majority of his stored surplus. The need to conserve the remainder for direct confrontations weighed on him; he could not work in the crystal’s aura any more than he suspected Corinna wished to.

  Austin was right — the dragon was close to breaking free.

  When Maeron last checked, half an hour ago, Austin was on the road approaching the town; likely in a car with Corinna given his speed. Now, he walked through the forest toward Maeron’s position. Except . . .

  Maeron scowled. Austin was not approaching from the expected direction.

  The bird landed on the table in front of Corinna, jumped to one side, and twittered with a tilt of its head. It jumped again, fluttered about her in what seemed a meaningful fashion, then alighted beside a gap in the low stone wall dividing the park from the road. The bird blinked at her, as if waiting.

  Corinna scrutinized the area for any sign of Maeron. Seeing none, she crept closer to the bird. It was about twenty-five centimeters and colored a pearly gray, with black markings and a white breast: a great grey shrike, if she recalled correctly. A black, mask-like stripe ran across its head, from behind which it regarded her with a distinctly unnatural look. Suspecting more about its eyes, Corinna approached closer to confirm it: they were shot with blood.

  “Oh, wee birdy. What did the wretched man do to you?”

  It warbled urgently in response and fluttered first across the street, then back to the park, and across the street again. There, it warbled further, and waited.

  Corinna took her eyes off the bird, surveying the area instead as she dialed Austin. Thankfully, he answered.

  “Maeron’s sent a bird in his place, Austin. It wants me to follow it.”

  “To him?”

  “I don’t know. But I don’t guess he plans to make the rendezvous here in any case.”

  Austin paused. She could just hear the crunch of fallen twigs under his feet. “I don’t like this.”

  “Aye. But I’m going to follow. Keep moving.”

  Maeron continued to focus. If led by the shrike, Austin should have come from Beddgelert. Instead, he approached from the opposite direction. The shrike might have delivered its message quicker than expected. They might have guessed at where it meant to lead them. Did they intend to flank him, with Corinna approaching from the townward side? He lacked the means to see through the shrike’s eyes to confirm his suspicion. The place in which Maeron waited, to which the shrike would guide them, formed a bottleneck between the rest of the forest and the rift cave. They could not pass without Maeron seeing. Yet their separate approaches hinted at some attempted cleverness.

  Whatever their plan, he would not allow them the chance to realize it. He opened his eyes and crept through the trees to intercept Austin.

  Grasping the base of a sapling oak, Austin pulled himself out of the gully and searched the forest in front of him for the best path. Boden lay somewhere in the hills ahead. The tug had grown stronger. It guided him on, like a hook caught in a half-dulled nerve.
/>
  “See anything familiar yet?”

  “I will tell you.” Boden claimed to see through Austin’s senses once again. “You are getting closer.”

  Austin dusted his hands and pulled the stolen phone back out of his pocket. The signal strength still sucked. “Back.”

  “Aye,” Corinna acknowledged.

  “You’re not walking too fast, are you?”

  “Stalling — much as I dare. — bird’s a touch impatient.”

  They continued their separate paths in silence, both watching for Maeron. Austin quickened his pace, eyes also peeled for the cave in which Boden claimed to be.

  He would recover the crystal, then bring it back near Corinna to keep in reserve should they need it. The thought of her facing Maeron alone tugged at him more fiercely than Boden’s palpable anchor. Yet he could only join her with the crystal if all else failed, and to use the magic it granted meant risking the Boden’s escape.

  So went their plan, at least. Bringing the crystal to bear would mean a full-on magical confrontation. Maeron had killed the rest of Rhianon’s group. If it came to a fight, what chance did she stand against him?

  “How’s — pain?” she whispered.

  “Painful.” Austin touched a hand to his chest before realizing he had done so. He adjusted course slightly. “But still useful.”

  “We’re going — fix it.”

  Austin only nodded, uncertain any audible response would get through anyway.

  A bolt of energy from the bushes ahead blasted the phone from his grasp. It shattered to pieces against a tree before he could think to react. Maeron rose from behind the same bush. His hands slipped behind his back as he strode closer, smiling.

  “You follow directions poorly, Mister Blanchard.”

  Corinna checked her mobile. Disconnected again.

  The shrike regarded her from the branches ahead. Its waning patience each time it stopped stretched the distance between them. She tried ringing Austin twice more as she followed, failing both times. Although they were both in a bad signal area, she couldn’t accept that as an explanation for the disconnection any more than she could conjure an idea for what to do about it.