by Tim Stead
“Shouldn’t we tell the city regiments?” Francis asked. It was the whole point of having the prince.
“Not yet. This is a matter of strategy,” the general said. “Rubel is a card we must play at the right time. You will let me choose the hour?”
“Of course.” Whether he did or not remained to be seen. He still didn’t trust the general, and suspected that the general was using him as much as he was using the general, but he did not know yet what it was that the old man hoped to achieve.
“Good. Now go. Look after him. This is good news.”
As usual there was no offer of wine or tea, no sense of comradeship. The general went back to pretending to read his book, but Francis wasn’t fooled.
He left the house with the growing suspicion that he had misjudged General Delarsi almost as badly as he had misjudged Duke Falini. It was a worrying thought.
30 Golt Castle
Degoran ate in his own chambers. He was more than a little frightened. He had doubled his guard since Brash had vanished a day ago, working on the principle that one of his guards could be suborned, but probably not two, and now he had four outside his door.
With Brash to guard him he had felt quite confident, but if they could get to a Farheim then he was probably not safe anywhere. He had just this afternoon dispatched his wife the queen to one of his country estates with an escort of a hundred soldiers. She would be safer there.
He planned to confine himself to the castle for a few days, to keep men with him at all times. It seemed prudent.
Degoran didn’t consider himself a coward. If it came to a straight fight he would wager his blade against most, but the idea that people were creeping around his house, his forest, his castle, all set on striking him from behind, made his shoulder blades itch.
He finished his meal and drained his glass. He had limited himself to two glasses of wine because he wanted to stay clear headed. He called for a servant, and it was cleared away.
His business for the day was complete. The endless stream of nobles and ambassadors, petitioners and representatives had ceased. This was his private time, the hours he normally devoted to his wife, or to reading, or more rarely to music, but today he was restless. His mind would not alight on any subject long enough for him to think productively. He stood by the window that looked down on the city, the empire of lights. Five tons of oil a night, his steward had told him, burned in those lamps. Sanisse was full of such random facts – he was a scholar of numbers, a master of useless statistics.
Someone knocked on the door of his chamber.
“What is it?” he called.
The door opened a small way and one of his guards stepped in.
“A messenger, Lord King.”
“From whom?”
“He will not say.”
“And the message?”
“He says he will speak only to you.”
Degoran raised an eyebrow. An assassin? It didn’t seem likely.
“How does he look to you?”
“Berashi, Lord King.”
Perhaps this was the man he had been waiting for. “Search him for weapons and then show him in.”
It didn’t take long to search a man, and in a few moments the messenger was ushered in. He was a big man, broad shouldered, bearded, and below his sleeve Degoran could see the tail of a dragon tattoo. The man was a Dragon Guard, past or present. The king signalled his own guard to leave them alone.
“So, who do you come from?” he asked.
“I am Count Tragil’s man,” the messenger said.
Degoran felt a thrill of anticipation. The matter they had discussed weeks ago had been delicate, desperate and necessary.
“And the message?”
“All is prepared,” the man said. “It begins.”
That was it. There was no more to the message than those few words. No more was needed. Degoran dismissed the man and called for Sanisse. When the steward arrived he made sure they were not overheard.
“We will be leaving Golt within the month,” he said. “Make preparations but be discreet. Nobody but you must know I am going. I will take half the regiment with me.”
“And where are we going, Lord King?” Sanisse asked.
Degoran smiled. “I will tell you nearer the time, Sanisse. For now that knowledge must stay with me alone. It will be a pleasant surprise.”
Sanisse would have said something more, but at that moment there was a commotion beyond the door and the door opened. A guard’s head appeared around the jamb.
“Lord King…”
He was pushed aside and Brash stepped into the room. More than anything Degoran felt himself awash with relief. The Farheim had not been dealt with after all.
“In the name of all the gods, where have you been?” the king demanded.
“Chasing assassins,” Brash replied, shrugging off the attentions of the door guards. “And in that endeavour I have had considerable success.”
“Truly?”
“Aye, I don’t think there’s a one left in Golt.”
“Well, that is fine news indeed,” Degoran said, and he meant it. His plans were bearing fruit and the imminent danger to his own life seemed to have been removed. With Brash to guard him he felt safe again. Now all he had to do was wait, and it would not be long.
31 Dragon Gift
Callista wanted to be alone. She had a lot to think about. She had enjoyed her evening with Sheyani, but the question, and the answer that she had divined within her had disturbed her mightily. If she took Pascha’s test she would pass it. She knew. It was a gift that she did not doubt, but she had never heard of it before: simply knowing things with no evidence or reason.
She had woken early the next day and taken an early breakfast on her own, then set out to walk. There was a trail that led out of Col Boran and climbed one of the lesser foothills of the Dragon’s Back. Someone had taken the trouble to put a stone seat on its summit, and sitting there gave you a good view back towards the palace and its acolyte buildings.
The walk took her an hour. The sun was up when she left Sithmaree’s house, but there was no heat in it. Still, the exercise warmed her, and by the time she reached the low summit she had opened the neck of her shirt and was feeling quite warm. She sat on the seat and looked back.
It was a difficult decision. Many people, she knew, lusted after the sort of power that a god mage possessed, but to Callista it was not attractive. She liked the idea of a life more ordinary, a marriage, children, the gentle passage of time. It was what she had always wanted, but that dream had been torn away by her uncle, and one day she would like to see him before a dragon so that she would know the truth about her father’s death, and her mother’s.
As a god mage she would be different. How could she wed a normal man? Most men she had known would run a mile at the thought. And her children – would they, too, be special? Would they fail Pascha’s test and die? She could not bear that. The thought uppermost in her mind was that she did not want to live like Pascha did, regretting almost every day, keeping herself apart from the course of history, not using that awesome power.
But what was the alternative?
If she denied her gift, refused to take the test, she could stay in Col Boran for a year, wait out the time until her eighteenth birthday and then go back to claim her birthright. It would not be the same. She would be alone, without her family, and the house would be a reminder of her mother and father, her loss, and the bitter days she had spent there with her uncle and cousins.
She could stay here, but sooner or later she would wear out her welcome. She could hardly stay in Col Boran as a sort of parasite for year after year. She would have to find work, or at least a role that was useful.
There was, quite naturally, no more useful role she could play than as another god mage, a help to Pascha, an ally.
There was yet another path. She could reclaim her father’s estate, sell it, and go elsewhere – perhaps to Berash. She had heard that there we
re pretty towns in the south where the sea was warm and the folk friendly. She could live out her life there, make new friends, build a new story.
A vast shadow passed overhead, startling her from her thoughts. She looked up and saw that a dragon had just flown over her head. As she watched the huge beast turned in a great graceful arc and glided back towards her. She froze, terrified. The thing was coming right for her.
Callista had only seen a dragon once before, high in the sky above Col Boran, and she had no real desire for a closer acquaintance. It beat once with its vast wings and seized the hilltop with powerful talons, settling only a few yards to her right. She stared at it, and the dragon returned the stare with warm yellow eyes.
“You are Callista Dalini,” it said in perfect Afalel.
She nodded, but could not find words to reply.
“I am called Bane,” the dragon said.
Callista found her voice. “I am honoured to meet you, mighty Bane,” she said.
The dragon blinked at her. It looked away, scanning the plains as though looking for prey, or perhaps for danger.
“There is a tale going around Col Boran,” Bane said. “It is an unlikely tale, and because I have only heard it second, third or fourth hand I cannot determine its veracity.”
“Oh?”
“It is a tale of a girl and a god who met a shadow.”
“Oh.”
“Is it true?”
“It is true, as far as I know. I met something, and Sithmaree called it Shadow.”
“It spoke to you?”
“Yes. Again, all I can say for sure is that it spoke. It did not name me, and I could not say where it looked, or even if it knew that I was there.”
“You are startlingly honest, Callista Dalini. You believe it spoke to you?”
“So it seemed.”
“And what did it say?”
“We were going to walk away from it. Sithmaree had given it a deer carcase and it said ‘wait’. We waited. Then it said ‘I see her’. Nothing more.”
“That is very interesting,” Bane said, and returned to watching the plain with his yellow eyes.
“Do you know what it means?” Callista asked.
Bane turned his gaze on her once more, and she felt the warmth of it, as though great fires burned within the dragon’s head, which might be true, she supposed. She knew almost nothing about dragons, only that you could not lie to them.
“No,” Bane said. “But it is important.”
Callista studied the dragon. They were all different, she had been told, different colours, shapes, sizes. Bane looked sleek and dangerous. There was not a piece of him that did not look designed for practical purposes, and she shivered to think what those purposes had been.
“Why did you want to know what Shadow said?” she asked.
“It is an intelligent question,” Bane said. “So I will do you the courtesy of an honest answer. Dragons have a gift other than truth telling. It is the gift of knowing. Sometimes when we hear things, or see things, or become aware of them in some other way, we know about them. It is not a simple thing, and what we know may be incomplete or not fully understood. I had hoped that Shadow’s words would reveal some portion of their mystery, but it is not the case. I know nothing now that I did not know before.”
Callista continued to stare at the dragon. He had just described exactly her own experience, the way the door within her opened and knowledge came through it. She had often wondered where that certainty came from, if it could be a talent like truth telling, and here was the answer.
“Do many people have this gift?” she asked. “It seems most erratic.”
“Erratic indeed,” Bane said. “But no. It is only dragons that have it. Again I do not know why…” He stopped in mid sentence, and it seemed to Callista that the heat behind his eyes grew more intense. The stare went on and on, and then, as if awakening from a dream Bane shook his head. “You have it,” he said. “You have the dragon gift. Perhaps this is what the shadow saw.”
“But you said that no man possessed it,” Callista said.
“I was wrong, it seems. I do not know what it means, but this is important, like the words the shadow spoke, but again the meaning is hidden from me.”
Callista was partly relieved that someone else knew and understood, even if it was a dragon, but she did not want the fact that she had a talent, any talent, to become common knowledge.
“Will you tell Eran Pascha?” she asked.
“The god mage? Why would I tell her? This is dragon business. I will tell Kirrith. Sometimes he has insights that are denied to the rest of us. He will most certainly wish to speak with you.”
She was not sure how happy she was to become a person of interest for the dragons. They still frightened her. They were so huge, so powerful, so very alien.
“I see,” she said.
“You will remain at Col Boran?” Bane asked.
“I have nowhere else to go,” she replied.
“That is good. You will be safe here. I must tell you, Callista Dalini, that this gift buys you kinship of a kind with us, and we will watch over you because we do not yet know if you are for good or otherwise. We will speak again soon.” He stopped for a moment and cocked his great head on one side. “He is coming,” the dragon said.
“He?”
“Kirrith. He knows. He has left Telas Alt and at this moment is flying towards us. He will be here tomorrow.”
With that the dragon opened his wings and beat himself up into the sky, the downdraft from his flight raising dust from the hilltop and forcing Callista to shield her eyes. When she could look again he was no more that an irregular shape against the blue sky.
32 Abadon
Drammen brought a message in the night. Narak didn’t sleep much, and he was awake, reading a book that he had purloined from the king’s library. A knock sounded on the door of his room, which was conveniently in the same corridor as the king’s.
“Come.”
The door opened and a guard stepped in.
“There is a messenger for you, my lord,” he said.
“A messenger?”
“He says his name is Drammen, but given the hour…”
“Let him come in,” Narak said. The only reason that Drammen would be here was that their letter had borne fruit. Drammen was shown in. He produced a piece of paper and handed it to Narak. It was the name of a tavern and a time of day.
“How did you receive this?” Narak asked.
“It was on my bed when I got home.”
Apparently Drammen was keeping hours as wild as Narak’s. He read the note again. A meeting was set, and it was for the following night, at about the hour when such taverns began to empty.
“Do you know the White Drum?” Narak asked.
“I know where it is. I’ve never been inside.”
“Not your usual meeting place, then?”
“It’s always somewhere different.”
That made sense. Such a pattern would limit the chance of an ambush. There would be little time to prepare the ground, but it also told Narak that this false wolf was afraid. Narak would have welcomed his enemies finding him.
“Then I will see you tonight,” he said. “We will meet at the Green Hill and go on from there. Don’t come to the palace again. If this one is what I believe him to be he may have seen you come here. We must hope otherwise.”
After that he slept.
The next day was empty, and full of waiting. The king went about his usual business with greater cheer than it seemed to warrant, and Narak went with him, eyes still on every corner, every horizon. But there was no threat. He had not been overly boastful when he said he had rid the city of assassins. All those he knew of that remained now worked for him in one capacity or another. There might be others, too, but none that had directly threatened the king.
It was obvious to Narak that Degoran had some scheme in play, but he would have been disappointed if it had been otherwise. He was guarding
the king for exactly that reason. His own interpretation of his promise to Pascha simply meant that he would not himself start any trouble or indulge in any plotting.
He saw preparations for a journey. They were small signs, and discreet, but they were there for all to see. He wondered where they would be going, but did not ask.
Evening came with a glorious red and gold sky, and Narak excused himself from his personal duty to the king and left the palace, walking through Golt towards the Green Hill. He found it a strange city. There were no beggars on the streets and the streets were clean. There were no smells like the low city of Bas Erinor. It was as though the streets had been polished and perfumed, and it seemed unnatural. He was not certain that he liked it.
At the Green Hill Drammen was waiting for him. The man was nursing an ale and watching the door. Narak joined him at his table and called for an ale of his own.
“We have time,” he told Drammen. “And I have not yet eaten. I hear they have a notable sausage pie here.”
So they ate, and Narak took his time, enjoying the food, but he noticed that Drammen seemed on edge. He did not suspect treachery. He knew that the Berashi was his, but some men get edgy before battle. Being close to death makes them so. Narak himself had no fear of death, mostly because he believed that death was unlikely to trouble so faithful a servant, but there was something else. After sixteen centuries life was not so dear. There was an emptiness inside him that he knew could never be filled. It was a place where his old comrades dwelled – Paradin, Havil, Beloff, Remard, Perlaine, Narala and all the rest. They were gone and could never return, and each year the hollowness grew a little. He did not think it would ever go away.
The meal finished, they sat for a while until the appointed hour came around, then walked slowly west until they came to the White Drum, which stood half way down one of Golt’s poorer streets. It was not a place Narak would have chosen to visit. It looked as though it had not seen a paint brush for a decade, and the odour as they approached was one of stale beer.
“He’s not fussy, is he?” Narak commented.