"Then fly there-if you're able," Heinox baited him spitefully.
Vicia gnashed his teeth and lidded his giant eyes, and dipped into his imagination, seeking a new trick to regain control. This had been the continuing pattern of the last few days. Vicia would find some means of throwing Heinox off balance and would seize command, and would hold it until Heinox thought of a way to distract Vicia. The game was growing more intense with each exchange; once a trick was used, both heads took pains to guard against that particular tactic in the future. The moments of critical importance were those immediately preceding sleep and immediately after waking, for while one head did not sleep unless the other slept as well, each head harbored its own thoughts and responded differently to the sleep experience. This morning, for example, Heinox had awakened with a start, refreshed and rested and ready to go, while Vicia, exhausted from a long day of struggling to maintain control, had difficulty leaving behind his pleasant dreams of less complicated times. Now he suffered for it, and strained to come up with a new ploy. His eyes popped open. He had it.
"Give up?" Heinox sneered.
"I'm too hungry to fight with you, you irresponsible, unreasonable lizard!" Heinox did not reply. He was enjoying himself enormously.
"Drop down a bit, I think I see our dinner," Vicia lied, and Heinox coasted down off of the current he had been riding and hit a pocket of air. Normally air pockets caused the dragon no problem, but this was not a normal time. Vicia still had complete control of his own neck and head, and now he shot himself up at a right angle to the rest of the dragon body and opened his mouth wide. The sudden shift in wind resistance threw Heinox off course, and Vicia shifted back downward, struggling to clutch dominion once again. But Heinox wouldn't yield, and for several seconds the giant body plunged forward and down without effective guidance.
"You're causing us to . . ." Several peasants in a hamlet three-quarters of a mile away were exchanging pleasantries when they heard a loud fluttering, a sound like canvas being torn by the wind, and felt a slight concussion as something big made a heavy impact on the earth. All shielded their eyes against the sun and looked toward the southwest. It seemed a cloud of dust was rising from that quarter.
"Came from over by the monastery," one peasant observed.
"Lot of strange goings-on at that monastery this year," another drawled. Though all were curious, no one said anything more about it. It wasn't smart to get too involved in this religion business. Especially not lately.
". . . crash!" Heinox finally finished his sentence with a growl, tasting the dust caked around his teeth. Vicia reeled a bit, but he had not taken the blow as hard as his companion. While Heinox had warned, Vicia had positioned himself to absorb the shock. Heinox' forehead had made a most convenient cushion. Vicia chuckled as Heinox wobbled up out of the dirt.
"It's fortunate we landed in a plowed field," Vicia said. "If we'd hit a patch of rocks we could have been skinned up rather badly." He was in complete authority over the workings of their body, and felt quite proud of himself. Heinox was understandably cross.
"What's this?" Heinox snarled.
Across the furrowed field came a line of figures, all wrapped in robes of sapphire blue. They came slowly, stepping from one crumbling ridge to the next. Vicia-Heinox was rather pleased, at first. The dragon was unaccustomed to this kind of reception from humans when he went foraging abroad for food. But as the group picked its way closer, Heinox grew anxious.
"What are they doing?" he said. "Can't they see I'm a dragon?" Vicia did not reply. It was indeed puzzling.
The column of blue-clad men and women formed a semicircle before the dragon, and the leader, who appeared to be either a very young man or else a woman, stepped forward to speak.
"We offer ourselves to you. Lord, and count it an honor that you would choose us!" The voice quavered, but the words flowed smoothly. Had the dragon been more acquainted with such things, he would have realized the speech was rehearsed. The robes hid all but the faces of the small group, and these were all chalky white. Fear Vicia-Heinox could understand. It was these words that didn't make sense.
"What are you offering yourselves for?" Vicia asked curiously.
"He speaks," several cultists murmured in awe, and the leader turned to hush them.
"Please excuse the disbelief of my brothers and sisters," said the speaker. It was now clear that she was a woman. Her voice trembled as she bravely answered the dragon's question. "We offer ourselves for any purpose the Lord commands." "What lord?" Heinox asked, rising up and over the gathered group and swiveling around to look at these strange people from behind.
"Why does the Lord ask who he is-" a young man whispered, but the leader quickly cut him off, her impatience heightened by her own terror.
"He's testing us, don't you see? The heart of the creed, together now, recite!" The entire group fell to its knees in unison, and all struck the same pose. Both hands were formed into the shape of the letter C, as a child would when making shadow animals in the candlelight. Both arms were raised above the head and then crossed, hands opening outward. Heinox looked ,at Vicia inquiringly.
"What are they doing?" With a hint of a dragon smile, Vicia replied quietly, "I think they are doing an imitation of us!" "I believe in the Dragon," they all began together. "May he preserve us. May he hold the stars and earth together in tension. May he hold good and evil together in tension. May he hold my interests and his interests together in tension, until such a time as I shall pass over or be chosen. May the Dragon live forever. So be it." The rhythm was unnatural. The words had been repeated so many times throughout the centuries that they had really lost their meaning.
Heinox snorted, and a number of the quaking monastics twisted around to squint up at him. Never in any imaginative vision of their god had they pictured just how large and pointed his teeth really were. Though the dragon's size had been greatly exaggerated down through the ages, the paintings and statues of him never captured this feeling of threatening immediacy. This was no terra-cotta figure, this was a real live dragon! Not only did his teeth glisten and his eyes flash, but he had remarkably bad breath. Could anyone blame the two cultists who fainted into the furrow? "You believe in the dragon, do you?" Heinox snarled. His Jaw was aching where he had slammed into the dirt, and he seized this opportunity to ventilate his frustration.
"Oh, yes, yes, we do!" a dozen devotees cried out as they turned, still on their knees, to face him.
"I say, that's rather rude, to turn your backs on your own god," Vicia said huffily, and now the entire group swiveled back around to face him, still kneeling.
"One moment, please!" said Heinox. "I also happen to be a part of this dragon, and I deserve an equal share of the attention!" The cultists were in a quandary. They huddled together for a moment, and the leader turned to address the dragon once again, doing her best to make eye contact with both heads at once.
"Lord, do you think it might be possible for both of your heads to stay on one side? I mean, it is very difficult for us and we're getting our robes all dirty-" "What sort of priestess are you, anyway?" Heinox teased, angling down into the girl's face. "First you say you offer yourself to me, then you try to tell me what to do!" The girl was petrified. She stared for a moment into those great, faceted eyes, and gave the only response she knew to give.
"I believe in the Dragon, may he preserve us, may he hold-" She was back in the crossed-arm posture, eyes shut, quoting the remembered scripture as loudly and earnestly as she could. The others quickly joined her.
Heinox pulled away, and glided back across the heads of the feverishly muttering monastics to counsel together with Vicia. "My jaw hurts." "Mine does, too," Vicia replied.
"How could it, you didn't hit yours!" Heinox groused.
"No, but you were clumsy enough to hit yours, and your jaw is my jaw too, remember?" "But it doesn't hurt you as much as it hurts me!" "Would you stop worrying about our jaw? I'm trying to listen." "Listen to what?" "To what my worshippe
rs are saying about me." Heinox stared hard at Vicia, then snorted. "I knew it." "Knew what?" "I knew as soon as these curious humans started calling us a god that it would go straight to your head." "Why not be a god?" Vicia asked, preening there shared body proudly. "Who else in the world would qualify?" "Oh no," Heinox groaned, and he laid himself backward into the dirt. "Not this. Anything but this." "Tell me," Vicia began loudly, and the chattering was silenced. All eyes were fixed on him. Vicia arched his neck vainly and asked, "How long have you been worshipping me?" The question seemed simple enough to Vicia, but the monastics appeared thunderstruck, and there were several minutes of serious theological debate before an acceptable answer was formulated.
"We have been faithful before you!" the leader replied piously.
"That hardly answers my question," Vicia sniffed, touching off another debate that went on even longer than the first.
The community historian won this one, and now he spoke up, his voice cracking nervously. "We have been faithful to the true belief for over three hundred years, Lord! This order has stood firm on the issue of your coherence, and has staunchly denied any Divisionist heresies!" The little speaker scrambled backward after his speech, hiding himself in the group.
Vicia was perplexed. Heinox cackled, rolling himself in the brown earth, gently massaging his jaw into the soil.
"Three hundred years!" Vicia marveled. Then he slipped over to Heinox and asked, "How much is three hundred years?" "You know I can't count." "We're going to have to learn how to do that. It seems to be very important." "I thought you were hungry." "I am!" "Then let's cut out this nonsense and eat these people!" "Would you please have a little patience? I've never been a god before." "You aren't one now." "How do you know?" "We are a dragon, Vicia. Dragons are not gods." "Am I a god?" Vicia asked the crowd.
"I believe in the Dragon, may he preserve us, may he hold-" they all began in unison, and Vicia looked smugly at his twin as the litany was repeated.
"They are people! Are you going to believe their word over that of your very own other head?" Heinox asked.
"My very own other head has been nothing but a nuisance lately!" Vicia snarled back.
"Very well then, be a god," Heinox snorted, "but I intend to remain as fully dragon as it is possible for me to be-under the circumstances. Would you be quiet!" he roared at the droning devotees, and they stopped their recitation and looked up at him. "If you must do that, do it to yourselves. It's getting on my nerves!" "The-the creed displeases our Lord Vicia-Heinox-?" "I am not your Lord, nor anyone's Lord. I am not a god in any form, though I seem to be having difficulty convincing the other half of me of that." The assembled monastics reeled in disbelief. One finally managed to stammer, "Then-the Divisionists are right?" This unleashed a flurry of loud discussion. "Heresy! Heresy!" the historian shouted. "You blaspheme the Dragon!" "But he said himself-" "The Dragon is testing us," the leader cried, her own voice tinged with uncertainty.
"We must not let the Divisionists know he's said this!" another shouted. "You know what kind of interpretation they would put on it!" "I shouldn't think the Divisionists will hear any of this conversation," Heinox began, "whatever Divisionists are-" The dragon was interrupted by a chorus of amens and sighs of relief, but managed finally to finish, "-for I intend to eat you all." A sudden hush fell on the cultists.
"Come now, is it fair to devour all of them?" Vicia asked his bodymate. "They have been most entertaining." "But I am most hungry," Heinox replied, Vicia dropped down to eye level with the leader, whose face was once again very pale. "Just between us . . . are there many who worship me in Lamath?" She curtseyed slightly and murmured, "The Lord Dragon knows that all of Lamath worships him." Her eyes were glazed, an expression of mixed fear and ecstasy playing across her features as she anticipated the joy of total union with her god.
Vicia rose high into the air and turned to Heinox. "It seems," he said, "that if all of Lamath worships me- these few surely won't be missed." "Is he sick?" Bronwynn whispered to Rosha, watching Pelman sway to and fro in the saddle some twenty feet beyond them. Rosha shook his head and smiled to reassure the girl, but in fact his fears had all returned. The brief, glorious explosion of action experienced in the cave had given way once more to the hushed, cautious plodding of horses through yellowing .mulch, and the sparkling-eyed sorcerer appeared again to be a broken, tired fugitive. His mind seemed ever to be elsewhere, and Rosha bit his tongue to keep from crying out in protest. Why? Why did they continue to journey into Lamath, if this was to be the outcome? Was this what Lamath did to a man? Bronwynn felt much the same. An hour after their rescue, the excitement began fading; three hours later it was all but forgotten. They retraced their steps until back on the right path, but she really didn't notice. The thick trunks and the branches above had grown so monotonously common that she told Rosha she hoped never to see another tree as long as she lived. Depression settled on the band, enveloping even the horses. They no longer reacted to one another or to their riders, choosing to plod wearily forward as if shielded by blinders from the sight of anything save the dry ground ahead.
"Some magic forest!" Bronwynn spat, and Rosha grinned wryly.
"N-n-not happy, m-my Lady?" "I'm not happy and I'm not your lady." Bronwynn snarled, and he drew back, his face hardening, his soft expression of boyish curiosity giving way before her bitter mood. She kicked her pony savagely, impatient with its sluggish response. Quite suddenly Minaliss wheeled before them, and Pelman, sitting straight in his saddle, stared at the two of them. Their horses slowed to a distinterested stop, unaware of their riders' shock.
Bronwynn felt as if she really saw Pelman now for the first time. As they watched, the transformation that had been taking place so gradually over the past few days raced to completion. They were eyewitnesses to the change.
What color had he been wearing? Bronwynn struggled to remember, but the memory got lost in the gentle drapes of a fish-satin robe of sky blue. It was the color of the cloudless horizon at noon on a hot summer's day-it was dazzlingly blue. His face was gaunt. Had she never noticed that graying at his temples? The thick brownish hair that fell in waves -to his neck? Had she never before noticed eyes so blue they cut? His cheekbones were so high and hollow as to suggest twin cliffs, from which those blue beacons beamed out a message to all that saw them. And that strangely compelling message in his eyes seemed to say, "Trust me, for I know." And Bronwynn trusted.
No longer the laughing magician-still less the mocking performer-Pelman the Prophet regarded these two bickering children quietly. He said nothing for a long time. Then he smiled gravely.
"It is a magic forest, Bronwynn. But magic is not always pleasurable. It can wrap you in dark folds of gloom as easily as in colored light. It will steal from you as much as it gives, my Lady. The powers always balance." He looked away, gazing toward the north and frowning slightly.
Bronwynn and Rosha glanced at one another, and she at last gave breath to the question they both were asking. "What-has happened?" Pelman looked back at her, his gaze steady and clear. For days his eyes had nicked from one point to another, settling on nothing, always in flight. Now he was at rest-and Bronwynn drew on that reservoir of calm, dispelling doubts and fears she didn't realize until that moment she had harbored. He smiled again. "The Power has come," he said.
"It has-taken you?" "It has been given." "Do you-control it?" she asked fearfully. He was too different, this new Pelman. She found herself trembling. She had been rescued from the dragon by this man . . . been tumbled from her horse by a thunderclap he had summoned . . . had chased him around a cave believing him to be her pet bird . . . and all that was manageable, somehow, for she had sensed in every instance that Pelman was in control. Now she wondered.
"You have spent too much of your life close to political power, my Lady. You think too highly of control." "Then you don't control it," she said firmly, not questioning but demanding. He gazed at her in mute reply, and the hush between them was broken only by a telltale st
irring in the trees above. "Then you are a slave to it," she finally said tonelessly, feeling the dread like a cloak draping itself around her shoulders once again.
Pelman glanced up at the wind in the trees, then back to the girl. "There are many kinds of slavery, my Lady. In most cases, one is free to choose what he will be in bondage to. A storm is coming from the north, and we must be in our tent before it strikes us." He looked at Rosha. "Here we will camp." "B-b-but-the horses. They n-need water, and there is no stream-" Pelman did not look away from the boy, but held his right hand out to his side, palm down. A shifting wind touched the mass of pine needles below it. Strangely, the wind scooped some aside, and beneath the organic cover a bald patch of stone appeared. A wet stain began spreading across the slab of rock, and then-a trickle. Pelman's eyes had not left the face of his youthful companion.
"You do control it!" Bronwynn cried out with glee. "You are still the same Pelman!" His eyes flicked back to her, and her excitement subsided into an awkward silence. "I do not control it, my Lady. I mediate it. And as to my being Pelman-was that ever in doubt?" A smile twitched on her Ups, and she shrugged childishly, robbed of any reply. But as he swung himself to the ground, blue folds whispering, and as the horses bent to lick the growing stream of water that now nibbled at the dry mulch, she reflected on his question. And yes, she had to answer, there had been doubt in her mind. What's more, that doubt remained, for this was another, different Pelman, the third she had met. How could she ever come to know a man who constantly shifted character? Of one fact she was sure, however. She knew she would follow him.
The Prophet Of Lamath Page 18