by Dave Freer
***
Earl Alois had been relieved to see the moon full, hoping the Changer would bring some respite. Perhaps he’d been wrong about that girl being the Defender. But no. He’d seen it with his own eyes. It had been grim fighting the Fomoire, but the earl and his men had dealt them some doughty blows. More by luck than judgement, some of them. A sheep carcass landing in one of the chariots of the evil-eye men had been one such. It had caused a fight among them. There had only been nine by the time they got ashore. And the men of Carfon had laid traps that didn’t involve looking, had the archers drop shots in a valley, had fired from ambush once the chariots had passed. The evil eye was terrifying, but there were few of them, and they had to look at you for a good few moments.
If Dun Tagoll and the North had held them off too, and there were no more coming south…they’d won.
And of course…if there was no next army. But there would be, and a next. And a next.
CHAPTER 17
Fionn was both worried by this placard, and seriously quite put out by it. So he was a spy from Lyonesse, now. How had this human mage—they were fairly inept generally—found out this quickly and not only found out but also got more posters out?
And the dead or alive part was…interesting.
It was quite a generous sum. In gold, too.
That had to be very tempting.
“I think you’re going to get your fur dyed, and I am going to have to change yet again,” he said to Díleas. “This is getting tiresome.”
A little work and he and Díleas had different appearances and, according to the documents he carried, Fionn was an agent of Prince Maric, the local panjandrum. He and his agents plainly commanded a great deal of respect and fear, by the way that they passed through the checkpoints. Fionn was able to glean a fair bit of information about himself in the process. He’d been seen in an amazing number of places. Fionn could imagine there were any number of very upset shepherds. Well, as the city of Goteng seemed to lie directly in their path, Fionn thought he’d do some reparation. Fionn and Díleas made their way through the streets peacefully, with a brief contretemps with some butcher’s dogs who thought they owned the streets of Goteng, and not this black upstart who was passing through. The smell of dragon gave them pause, and Díleas delusions of grandeur.
Mage Spathos lived in a sumptuous tower within the grounds of the Military barracks—where even the parade ground was now full of tents.
It was near evening anyway, so Fionn found a tavern, fed himself and Díleas, avoided trouble with some bored conscripts on a pass out of their camp, before he went to the military barracks. As was usual with taverns near military camps, this one was something of a freelance brothel too—except that the women were very wary. Spathos’s guards had apparently taken to collecting fresh meat for him every night, and payment was not part of his equation. Fionn decided that the man was due a call. Besides putting a price on the head of a dragon, such conduct deserved it.
As with most military establishments of the kind, the barracks were designed, really, to keep bored soldiers in, rather than determined dragons out. Seeing as dogs did not climb as well as dragons, they used the forged documents to enter the barracks and Spathos’s tower, and to pass all the guards, except for the last two. With those ones he used the documents to distract, before cracking their heads together with calculated force—calculated not to kill, but to stun. After which he tied and gagged them and put them into a storeroom.
He did lock and bar the mage’s door for them, but it was probable that they had been supposed to do this…with him on the outside.
He then stopped and examined the passage quite carefully. It was likely that any self-respecting magic worker would have a few other defenses, besides guards. Fionn’s vision helped him to spot such disturbances of natural energy. He was not disappointed. They were there.
They were also inept rent-from-a-grimoire-I-don’t-understand-properly spells. Spells written into that grimoire in the first place by someone who barely understood effects and had no real grasp of the causes. Not quite what he’d expected after the wanted posters. He was able to erase a little of the pattern and proceed to the wizard’s workshop, where Mage Spathos was hard at work…eating supper. Most of the paraphernalia, Fionn judged at a glance, had no purpose and had not actually been used. It looked good though.
“I thought that I had given orders I was not to be disturbed. Or have you brought the girl here early? Take her to my bedroom. It had better be a younger one this time.”
“I am so sorry to disturb your meal,” said Fionn, who had taken the liberty of changing his appearance in the antechamber. He was blond and bearded now.
“Not as sorry as you will be,” said Spathos.
Díleas growled and that finally got the man’s attention. “I’ve come to claim the reward,” said Fionn.
Spathos’s face would really have looked far more entertaining on those posters, decided Fionn. It was an interesting shade of white almost tinged with green. “The food obviously hasn’t agreed with you,” said Fionn with mock sympathy. “Now you promised fifty golden pound, or twelve thousand silver pennies for me, dead or alive. I am here, alive. I want the reward. And the gold will be easier to carry.”
His dragonish senses said that there was in fact a considerable amount of gold in the desk at which Spathos now quivered. “And it’s not much use calling your guards as they will not be able to help. And screams from your tower are what the soldiers regard as quite normal, I gather.”
Spathos opened the upper drawer and reached inside. Something about the way he did it cried warning to Fionn. “Slowly,” said Fionn. “Very slowly bring your hand out. Otherwise you may…regret it. Or worse, not live to regret it. I am not planning to kill you, you know. But I could change my mind.”
That was a lie, but Fionn could lie quite cheerfully. It was just often more entertaining to tell the truth in ways that would not be believed. He couldn’t intentionally kill.
The hand came out with a single gold coin. “Here!” shrieked Spathos, and flung it at Fionn.
Dragons will instinctively catch gold. Even bespelled gold.
Unless of course a sheepdog jumps up and catches the coin…and deliberately swallows it.
Díleas had seen that trap used before. It wasn’t going to happen again.
Fionn had Spathos by the throat and hauled across his dinner before Díleas even burped. “This will need some very good explanation,” he said in a quiet hiss. That act implied that the man had known that Fionn was a dragon merely passing as a man. And that in turn carried many other implications, none of which Fionn liked. And all of which he intended to get answers to. “Just what was on that coin? If the dog suffers any ill effects, I’ll sit you on your own flagpole. After I sharpen it.”
“A spell…just a spell. He said it would knock you out. I swear nothing else. I made him hold it in case it was poisoned. He said…he said I should have it ready. In case you came. He said it was the kind of thing you might well do.”
So whoever this foe was, he not only knew enough to try what seemed likely to be dragon-trapping magic, but also knew enough about Fionn to predict the course he might follow. “So who is this ‘he’?” asked Fionn.
“I don’t know! Truly I don’t. I thought he came from the witch of the Shadow Hall.”
Fionn was very good at detecting the change of inflection in human speech. It was not infallible, but it did help to split the liars out. This “mage” was little more than a hedge-magician. But it appeared that Annvn had very little magic or practitioners of the art, these days. It had once been quite a rich place for the magical arts. Fionn had had to come and fix things here. Not as often as Brocéliande, or some of the others, but often enough.
Before the eyes of the horrified “mage” he changed into his dragon form. He went on asking questions…now there was such naked fear in Spathos’s voice, that Fionn was fairly sure he was getting straight answers. He learned of the hedge-magi
cian’s source of information on Lyonesse—a crone in a house that moved.
“You won’t find it unless she wishes you to,” the terrified Spathos assured him.
Fionn was not some hedge-wizard, so he doubted that. However, it soon became apparent that Spathos’s power had been built on the drip feed of information about Lyonesse raids from this source. And it told him when the next “Way” would open to that land, and where.
Yet he earnestly believed that the order—and money—to kill Fionn had not come from her, but from someone else. He’d lied when he thought he’d had just a man to deal with.
The questioning was interrupted by a pounding on the outer door. “Doubtless your entertainment for the evening arriving,” said Fionn.
For a moment hope bloomed in Spathos’s cheeks. Then he looked at the dragon and it died.
“Yes,” said Fionn. “You guessed right. It won’t help to save you from a dragon. And I wouldn’t call to them because that could be worse right now.” He wrapped Spathos in his tail. It wouldn’t kill to be that constricted, but Spathos would not scream much either. He rifled the desk where his senses said that there was a substantial amount of gold. There was quite a lot. Quite a lot of silver too. Too much to carry…along with this Spathos. It would take the soldiery some time to brave breaking in here, depending on how soon someone got to asking about whether the agent who had come in had left. It was a good, solid, iron-reinforced door, too. Fionn gave Spathos the sort of squeeze that would probably crack a rib or two and certainly render him malleable. It would not be wise to leave him here. He knew too much and, what was more, dragons—including Fionn—had no tolerance for those who could bespell dragons, or even knew it was possible. At the very least, a salutatory lesson was called for.
Fionn stripped him, tied him up thoroughly. Blindfolded him and gagged him with his own clothing. Fionn then took fifty pieces of gold, and a handful of silver, and added it to his pouch. The dragon then moved himself, the victim and the remaining four bags—two of gold and two large ones of silver—onto the balcony. Tied them onto the other end of the rope. “Watch him. I’ll be back in a few minutes,” he said to Díleas. Because it was easier, he used human form to haul himself up onto the roof. Pulled up the bags of loot. He poured gold in a nice flat layer into the gutter, enjoying touching the gold, however briefly. He picked up the silver bags. Selected his targets—a handsome statue of one of the local robber barons in the town square two hundred yards away, neatly lit by two oil lamps; and a harder one, a flagpole on the parade ground a mere eight-five yards off. They were also some five stories down. The tower doubtless gave the so-called mage status, as well as giving Fionn good throwing practice. He pitched at the flagpole first. It snapped, but not before the bag ripped and showered coins onto the tents of the conscripts.
Fionn tossed the other at the statue. The stone copy of the local robber baron was so excited by the money, that he completely lost his head, and coins sprayed far and wide, splattering against building and even in through windows.
By the sounds of it, the conscripts had discovered their pay had come from above, thought Fionn, as he dropped onto the balcony.
The guards were trying to pound down the door. He wondered how long it would take before the mayhem in camp got to them, but thought it might be fun to watch…“Time to fly, Díleas.”
Díleas climbed into his basket. Fionn carefully put the blankets around him, took a firm hold of the basket and the end of the rope, cut the blindfold and gag away with a talon, and launched into the night sky. The weight of the screaming mage strained his wing muscles and they dropped before the dragon began to gain height.
The fighting and looting and destruction happening in the army encampment was briefly stilled by a near miss of the tent canvas by a hurtling, screaming wizard.
Fionn flapped on, having checked that Díleas was secure. The gold revived him a great deal, and his target was near enough. The slave vessels berthed on the river just outside the city opened their hold lids to allow a little air to their pitiful cargo.
Fionn considered the possibilities of dropping the man into the hole from the air…but decided that he might hurt Díleas, with yards and spars and ropes to crash into. So he landed on the quayside. Spathos got a little dragged and bounced, but he was beyond complaining and screaming, and merely at the whimpering stage. The slaver vessel was showing signs of readying itself for sea, with men on the foredeck. Fionn could quite see why the city appeared to be in something of an uproar.
The only watch on the hold was looking at the city. Fionn dropped him—and Spathos—into the hold, before jumping ashore. Once he and Díleas were back in the shadows, Fionn yelled. “There’s a rebellion! They’re coming to free the slaves!” and the two of them walked off into the night.
A little later they took to wing again. From the air Fionn could see that there were several fires in the city of Goteng, and there appeared to be some burning vessels on the river. Tch. Humans did get carried away. He hoped that Spathos’s tower survived. He had gold to collect from that gutter. It was too heavy and flat to easily wash out.
In the meanwhile, traveling by day, as a man and a dog on their own, could become difficult, no matter just what the man or dog looked like.
Fionn looked for an alternative. And found it in a small group of carts, going in more or less the right direction. Travelers. Mostly they had a very poor relationship with authority. It could be worth looking into.
***
The ancient energy beings pondered the situation. Annvn had seemed an ideal trap. The planomancer dragons were incredibly rare, and had been constructed far more robustly than the messenger-errand-beast kind. They were neither easily nor lightly killed. Merely putting him into some form of suspended animation in a slower time plane would have been preferable, but Annvn had good pawns and he was there…and now, it was likely he would deduce the role of a conspirator of greater reach than mere local humans. Possibly realize that it stretched as far as the Tasmarin pseudoplane. Possibly even deduce the existence of their hand in this.
That was most undesirable.
Worse than letting him interbreed with their creations. Those were—at least in major forms—not interfertile. Quite a lot of them simply physically could not do it, and even those that could tended to produce offspring that were either less fertile or sterile mules.
But shape-shifting dragons…
***
Fionn studied the carts from a safe distance. He was almost sure that they were the same brightly colored ones he’d encountered back in the lands of the creatures of smokeless fire.
There was a chance they’d be less than pleased with him, he had to admit. But on the other hand he knew things about them that might make life awkward with the local authorities. If they had papers of any sort, they were almost certainly forgeries or bought for a backhanded payment.
And, in a pinch, he could pay them. That, of course, would be a last resort. He had a feeling that if he was ever going to get to the bottom of these pathways between worlds that he had known nothing about, he was going to have to get the information out of the travelers, as Díleas was limited to yes-and-no barks. Besides, he had a feeling that Díleas did not know where, or understand how, the Ways between worked; he just was following his mistress, by the shortest possible route.
“I think,” said Fionn, “that I’ll have to alter my appearance and yours a little, my dog. I can change shape, but the best I can do for you now is to hide that flame bauble of yours. We’re less likely to meet creatures of smokeless flame here than in Tasmarin, but protection is still a good idea. They don’t have to be seen to work though.”
He sat and fashioned a tube of cloth and put it around the collar of silver and crystal. Funny, people assumed it was a cheap chain with a bauble on it. People saw what they wanted to see. The chain was of alvar manufacture and probably valuable. And the glowing little crystal bead, probably priceless. The creatures of smokeless flame would certainly
give their entire stock of gold for it, rather than have it in the possession of another.
He walked closer to the carts. The travelers were lighting a fire and busying themselves with morning chores. It was indeed the same group of travelers, but somewhat less wary in Annvn than they had been traversing the flame-creature lands of Gylve.
Their dogs let them know he was coming. Díleas ran straight up to the cart of their leader and was wagging his tail very fast at Avram’s Mitzi. She wasn’t barking at him…
“Better call him off, mister,” said Avram. “I don’t want puppies this trip.”
“Here, dog.” He should have arranged a pseudonym for Díleas. He slapped his leg and whistled.
Díleas paid absolutely no attention.
Fionn hauled him off by the hair. “Sit! Or else!” and he took ahold of the collar.
The traveler laughed. “I reckon you’ll have to tie him up. Our lot are. What do you want, stranger?”
“A place to hide,” said Fionn. “To be something other than a single man and a dog. The authorities are looking for one of those.”
Avram’s eyes narrowed slightly. “We’ve seen the poster. Didn’t look much like you.” There was definite suspicion in his voice.
“Fortunately, yes. But they’re still giving men on their own trouble. I’ve got some good papers and a little silver to pay for being one of the band for a few days. I’m going the same way as you are.”