“You may go now. Take the gift of the Goddess, and call my servants.”
By the time that Tren had finished lacing his brigga, she’d fallen asleep, slack-mouthed and snoring. Although he tried to convince himself that he still found the Goddess awe-inspiring, he kept remembering Raena, drooling onto his shoulder.
“Rori! Rori, where are you?”
Garin’s voice drifted up faintly to the tower room. Rhodry went to the window and knelt on the ledge to lean out and see the envoy standing in the bright morning sun at the tower’s base. With him were the master tanner and the master armorer and their apprentices, carrying some large burden.
“The harness!” Garin bellowed. “Come down!”
“I will, then.”
With a yell to Arzosah to fly and meet him on the grass, Rhodry hurried down the long staircase. He’d had a dreamless sleep the past few nights, when he could sleep at all. It seemed that every few minutes he’d wake, thinking he heard the raven shrieking over Lin Serr. In the sunlight, though, with the tanner and armorer bustling about, showing off their shiny handiwork, perilous dreams and shape-changers seemed very far away.
“Let’s try it on, shall we?” Rhodry said to the dragon. “Will you let them work the buckles and suchlike? I’ve no idea how this thing goes together.”
“Very well. But they’d best be careful of my beautiful scales.”
Once it was fitted, Arzosah pronounced herself satisfied with the new harness, an elegant thing of black leather set off with polished bronze buckles and the little gold dragons, inlaid round the martingale, that Otho’s bequest had bought her. Rhodry found it much easier to ride in a proper saddle, though this arrangement of pads and leather loops rode and felt far different than any horse saddle he’d ever used. He still knelt more than sat, but securely so now. As they soared and dipped over Lin Serr, he realized that, at long last, he’d grown used to dragonback.
Now that he wasn’t worrying about falling hundreds of feet to his death, he could try out his various plans for fighting during the battles ahead, but there he was in for a series of grim discoveries. First, he tried using his hunting bow. When he shot in the direction they were traveling, the wind that Arzosah’s forward motion created blew the arrows right back at him, though all lopsided and harmless. When he tried twisting in the saddle to shoot behind, he nearly impaled her wing. Arzosah shrieked like the clash of a hundred swords on shields.
“Oh, do be careful,” she whined. “You almost hurt me, Dragonmaster! Those things are little, but I’ll wager they sting.”
“I’ll wager so, too. Very well. We’ll try fighting with a long spear.”
But unless she flew so low that she was in danger of being stabbed from below, and on her vulnerable belly at that, his spear thrusts would never reach an enemy. Next he tried carrying aloft a pouch of big stones to throw, but again, the wind stirred up by her enormous wings made it just as likely that he’d hit a friend as a foe. Swearing with every silver dagger’s oath he knew, he let her land in the park land for a rest, only to discover they’d gathered an audience of five dwarves, Garin among them. When Rhodry dismounted, sliding down from the dragon’s neck, he told her to go drink at the river, then walked over to join them.
“Things look bad,” Garin pronounced.
“They do, at that. Ye gods, you hear all those bard songs about the glorious heroes of old, fighting from dragonback, but the blasted bards never say exactly how they did it!”
“I don’t think there is any how.” Garin waved a vague hand at the other four dwarves. “I don’t think you’ve met these gentlemen, but they’re weaponmasters, the weaponmasters, if you take my meaning.”
Since Rhodry did, he bowed, a gesture they acknowledged with grave nods. The eldest of the four, all bushy white eyebrows and white beard, stepped forward and spoke to Garin, who translated.
“He says to tend your mount, then come meet with him in the armory. Rori, if he invites you in, the Council can’t say one rotten word against it. This is Varn Avro Krez, the greatest warleader Lin Serr’s ever had.”
As if he knew he was being flattered, the old man snorted in disgust, then turned and stomped off, his confederates trailing after.
“He’s turned command over to Brel,” Garin went on. “But he served as avro for some hundreds of years. They say that once someone shot an arrow at him, but he flicked his great-ax up and knocked it from the air.”
“I believe it. You can see his mastery, somehow, in his eyes.”
After he’d removed the harness and stowed it to the armorer’s satisfaction, Rhodry rubbed Arzosah down. He knew that a true weaponmaster would expect to wait while he cared for his mount properly. Once she was resting in her beloved sun, he and Garin hurried across the lawns and zigzagged up the stairs to the main entrance of the city. At the double doors, the guards acknowledged them both, nodding pleasantly at Rhodry as they strode through. They crossed the main hall, avoiding the maze, then hesitated at the alcove containing the main staircase down. The guard stepped forward and made some remark to Garin, who grinned.
“He says that old Varn’s already put the fear of the gods into him, and so you can pass by.”
The massive stone stairs led down straight and steep to a narrow landing below. To either side of the marble floor, tunnels branched off, while ahead, another flight of stairs plummeted down like a waterfall of white stone into a river of gloom.
“We turn to the right,” Garin said. “To tell you the truth, it gladdens my heart that we’re not going all the way down to the deep city this time. The climbing back up again gets to a man’s knees.”
“So it does.”
They walked briskly down the wide tunnel, lit by baskets of silver-glowing fungi in carved niches. Rhodry would have preferred to linger. Although the walls themselves were plain, made of highly polished white marble, each alcove sported carvings, and each different. One piece of stonework would seem to be woven of salamanders, all writhing round, biting each other’s tails, carved from green and black marble so that you would have sworn they were alive; the next might be roses, so delicately carved of pink that you might have smelled their perfume. Each door that they passed was inlaid in different colors of polished stone to produce pictures so cunningly drawn that it seemed you could reach right into them, as through a window. Once they passed a young dwarf pushing a wooden handcart filled with fresh fungi mounded up so that it seemed he carried the moon. In that brighter light, Rhodry got a good look at one door and saw a garden, blooming with as many different flowers as the colors of stone would allow.
The door to the armory was, predictably enough, inlaid with a battle scene. Dwarves were storming the ramparts of a mountain town while strange warty creatures strove to push them and their ladders down.
“Trolls,” Garin said, pointing. “Well, or so the old saga calls them, not that I’ve the slightest idea what they mean by it. But see that fellow there with the gold great-ax? That’s one of the gods, though I can’t tell his name to a stranger.”
The god in question was just gaining the top of the wall and splitting a particularly ugly troll in half while he was about it. Rhodry decided that the dwarven gods were a bit more to his taste than Alshandra and her lot. When Garin pushed the door open and ushered him inside, Rhodry found the armory itself disappointing. Except for the polished stone walls, it looked much like any other armory he’d ever seen, a long narrow room filled with wooden rack after rack of weapons, all oiled and ready, while shields lay neatly stacked in the corners. At the far end a small door stood half-open.
“Ah,” Garin said. “He must be in there.”
As they walked down between the long rows of axes and swords, Garin snagged one of the glowing baskets and carried it like a lantern. They stepped through the door and found themselves in a small square room, where broken shafts and blades lay piled on what seemed to be a workbench. Rhodry could make out another door on the far side.
“Odd,” Garin said. “I kn
ow he said he’d meet us in the armory.”
“Well, maybe he’s gone on a little further.”
That door proved to open onto a landing, from which a narrow flight of stairs plunged down into darkness.
“Surely not!” Garin whispered. “He wouldn’t have gone—well, I don’t know where else he’d be. Rori, he must have somewhat truly important to tell you, that’s all I can say. I’d best go first, since I’m carrying the light and all.”
A voice floated up from below. Garin called back, the voice answered, the envoy turned incredulous. For a moment he argued; then he shrugged, turning to Rhodry and speaking in Deverrian.
“Varn’s down there, all right. He says that if you dare, you should pick up the mock sword he left for you on the worktable and go down after him. He wants to see the stuff you’re made of. I’ll follow in a bit.”
Rhodry laughed in a long chime of berserker mirth, echoing down the stairs. He found the sword, a proper hilt fitted with a wooden blade, lying in the clutter on the bench, and hefted it, a good length for his own height and reach. When Garin offered him the basket of light, he waved it away, then sat down and pulled off his boots.
“If I carry the light, he’ll see me coming, while I’ll be blind.”
Garin swore with such passion that Rhodry was just as glad he didn’t understand.
“You’ll be killed if you fall,” Garin said at last.
“Well, you know, I’ve got some of the elven feel for dweomer in my veins, and somehow or other I know that if I fail this test, there’s not much use in my being alive.”
Each step was narrow, and the risers seemed of different heights, too, so that Rhodry had to feel his way with a bare foot, one step at a time. As he moved past the pool of glow from the top of the stairs, his eyes began to adjust and find a different kind of light, oozing up from below, this more blue than silver. He felt as if he were easing into water, and about halfway down he heard water, too, the roar and thunder of a river, plunging over some precipice lost in the dark. He felt himself grinning; he’d never be able to hear Varn over that noise, but then, the weaponmaster wouldn’t be able to hear him, either. He paused and peered down. From this height, he could just distinguish a cavern floor, broken by mounds of rock and stalagmites, silhouetted in the eerie blue. Nothing moved among them.
In a few more steps, the stairs turned damp underfoot. His riding boots would have meant his death, had he been wearing them. Down ten steps more, another five, and the stairway suddenly disappeared from dead ahead of him. Moving fast would have meant his death as well. The stairway spiraled in a half-turn for some ten steps more and brought him to a new view. Through towering pillars of rock, he could place the source of light. The entire underground river churned with phosphorescence, a seethe of silver and blue that streaked across the darkness of the enormous cavern through which it flowed. Down another five steps, two more—he gained the rough floor of the cavern to find it scattered with stones.
Some of them bit into his bare feet, too, but not enough to draw blood. If he stepped just wrong, they would roll and rattle to give Varn the alarm. And where would the old man be hiding? The entire cavern was a maze of broken pillars and natural stalagmites, any one of which could hide a dwarf. Suddenly, Rhodry grinned and spun round, his sword up and ready for a parry, to find Varn waiting, right there at the end of the stairs. Rhodry might have searched for hours out in the cavern while the old man watched, enjoying his jest.
Varn nodded, then grunted out a single word. He carried a wooden great-ax, balanced with his left hand at the end of the shaft for a fulcrum and his right, partway down for the guide, because he was holding it with the blade well down, almost to the floor. As the dwarf stood and waited, his ax seemingly at rest, Rhodry found himself remembering Cullyn of Cerrmor, who stood the same way at the beginning of a duel or mock combat, the point of his broadsword trailing on the ground, so that no matter what attack his opponent might make, he’d come from below their stroke to flick it aside.
When Rhodry lowered his blade to the same position, Varn laughed, grinning approval in the pale light. From behind them, Rhodry heard muttering and grumbles as Garin made his slow way down the stairs, yet he never looked away from Varn, who merely smiled and never looked away from him.
“Hola!” Garin called out. “There you are. Eh, what’s this? I gather naught’s happened.”
“That’s not for me to say,” Rhodry said.
The puzzled envoy repeated his question in Dwarvish. Varn laughed and relaxed his stance, speaking a few quick words.
“He says that everything’s happened,” Garin translated. “You’ll have to explain this to me later, Rori.”
“And so I will, but please, tell him that I’ve never received higher praise, not once in my life.”
When Garin translated this last, Varn nodded, well-pleased. As usual, when they spoke, Garin translated back and forth between them.
“You’ve proved somewhat to me here,” Varn began. “I think you might be warrior enough to understand what I have to say. We, too, have tales of heroes fighting from dragonback, but I see now that they’re naught but a tale-singer’s fine words, all empty air. Perhaps with enough time we could find weapons to match your mount, but there is no time, Rori Dragonmaster. You had best consider yourself a scout for this battle and naught more.”
“Never! How could I ever hold my head up again if I rode to war only to hang back? It’s the honor of the thing! Here, I can just ride the dragon to battle, then take a horse and fight like other men.”
“You disappoint me after all.”
Rhodry felt it like the slice of a knife. He took a few steps away, the wooden sword dangling from one hand. Through the maze of stone, he could see the cold burn and seethe of the silver river. When Varn spoke, the authority in his voice called him back even before Garin translated.
“What did you just show me, here at the bottom of the stairs?” Varn said. “I thought you understood the thing you need to understand, if we’re to win this war.”
Rhodry considered, then forced himself to voice the bitter truth.
“There are times when doing naught is all a man can do.”
“Just so! Very good, lad. There’s hope for you after all, eh? When you and the dragon first came here, Garin told me about this strange creature Evandar and his meddling. If he can truly read the future, and everyone seems to think he can, then he must have some use for this wyrm.”
“Not that he ever told me or any dweomermaster, either. He saw an omen, he said. He didn’t know himself what it meant.”
“Even so, an omen is a powerful thing. If you leave her behind in order to satisfy your vanity, you might well be leaving the victory stabled with her.”
“Vanity?” For a moment Rhodry was too enraged to speak.
Varn snapped a few sentences out. Garin winced and gave what Rhodry could guess was an edited translation.
“He says to tell you that you blasted well know exactly what he means.”
“So I do, and truly, he’s right. But you can’t know how deep this cuts. I want blood and vengeance. I’m no dweomerworker, to sit about idly wondering how to fulfill some wretched omen or other! It gripes my soul.”
Garin translated again.
“No doubt,” Varn answered. “If it hadn’t griped your soul, I would have been disappointed in you. But do it anyway.”
The old man turned and walked off, disappearing among the towering stones into shadow. Rhodry didn’t need Garin to tell him that the audience was over.
“Well, might as well start the climb back up,” Garin said.
“Just so. Huh. Last time I came to Lin Serr, I was taken blind down to the women’s quarters, and this time I get to find my own way here in the dark. If I come back again, will you have any other secrets to show me?”
“Oh, not truly. The Halls of the Dead, maybe.”
Rhodry felt a touch of ice run down his spine, just from the way Garin’s words seemed to hang
in the damp air.
“Will you do me a favor?” Rhodry said at last. “If I should die near here someday, and if it’s at all possible, will you see that I’m buried in Lin Serr?”
“Providing I’m still alive myself, like. I’ll promise you that if you’ll do the same for me.”
“Done, then.”
They shook hands on it with the silver river for a witness.
On the morrow, late in the afternoon, Brel Avro and the burial party finally returned. One look at their hard-set and grim faces told Rhodry all he needed to know. They’d seen what he’d seen, up at the farms, and like him, they were ready for war.
Through the silver world of Elemental Air, Evandar’s army rode in utter silence. Their horses’ hooves made no sound; the men were too frightened to speak. All round, cumulus clouds drifted by, towering over them, casting vast shadows. Every now and then, two clouds would part to reveal a sudden long view of a white sea—a fog below, spreading out to the horizon, gleaming under a sun that had never shone in an earthly sky. During the ride, Evandar noticed his brother growing more and more restless, turning in the saddle, looking round him with wild eyes, tossing up his head, laying his free hand on the hilt of his sword. At last, Shaetano could stand the silence no longer.
“This is useless! We could be lost here forever. Even if they are here, we’ll never find them.”
“Indeed?” Evandar said. “Look there.”
Out across the sea of fog, an island lay in view, rising dark gray and craggy. Round it thunderheads piled and darkened, while lightning flashed like scythe blades. Evandar raised his horn and blew, collecting his drifting army.
“To the isle! To the isle!”
With a whoop, he kicked his horse to a gallop and plunged off the road into the sea—or upon it, because the horses traveled on its surface like a road. Clattering and shouting, the army swept across the gray—then suddenly slowed to a walk that grew slower yet, as their horses suddenly staggered. Under them, the cloud-road billowed and swelled as if it were a linen sheet, shaken out by a servant over a bed. For a moment they hung suspended in midair, trapped by the moving ground.
Days of Air and Darkness Page 26