by Dave Luckett
They gained the moonshadow at the base of the front wall. There was a carriage-drive up to a grand entrance, a pair of double doors opening off a covered portico, flanked by columns. Gerd had no intention of using it.
He closed his eyes and searched.
Again, it was like watching a picture slowly emerging from darkness or fog. Strange landscapes grew out of the obscurity: dreams, odd fragments of wandering thought. Sleeping minds. He pushed further along, reaching out.
Sharper sensations... coloured, vibrant. He went towards them, touched. Recoiled rapidly. He opened his eyes with a snap like a breaking cord. Nela, who had been following him, was watching him. She, too, was staring in surprise.
Then her lips quirked. "Well, there's no risk there. The underhousemaid and the head footman wouldn't notice an earthquake. Or if they did, they might think they'd caused it."
Gerd shook his head in impatience. He concentrated again. Again the pattern of small minds in the grass and the vague wash of light that was the life around him slowly grew in his consciousness. Then the sharper, coloured minds within. One by one, comparing, discarding. Even in sleep they knew who they were. One by one, sorting them. And....
There he was. Gerd realised, with a shock like plunging into cold water, that he should have known this before. The mind was shielded, and the shield was glass-hard, as tight as any he'd ever known before. Tighter. That was a trained mind, a powerful one. A mage's mind. Of course, of course. He had wondered how Barra had gotten word of their escape so fast. Now he knew.
Gerd looked and saw Nela's face, the utter shock and bewilderment. Then the tightening of the lips, the fury. Her eyes, when she focussed them on Gerd, held only outrage.
"He ... must have been trying me. Investigating me! Seeing if I should be recruited!" It was half a murmur, half directed thought. A moment of staring, and then her face crumpled. "And I wasn't ..."
"No. It wasn't because of your power. It was because you didn't approve of him evicting an entire village to build a folly. You showed you weren't the right sort. His sort. Hold hard."
He slipped an arm about her shoulders. She was gasping with shock and shaking with anger. He felt the hot, bright flame of it, and looked away, into the surrounding darkness.
There was the hard, bright ball of mind. There. He opened his eyes again. It was there. The room at the end, on the ground floor, at the furthest end of the house. He frowned.
"I'm all right," gasped Nela. She wasn't, of course, but there was no time. He moved, and she followed.
This was the window here. It was shuttered, but the blade of Alissa's dagger was thin enough to fit through the gap and lift the latch. The window was diamond-glazed, and shut. Heavy curtains hung within. Good. Opening the shutter would not increase the light inside. The moon was well up, now.
He eased it open, and then felt for a way to deal with the window. Again, it was only latched, and again a blade could be pushed through to lift the tongue from the outside. Overconfidence, thought Gerd. He must think that nothing can hurt him.
A soft click. The latch released. He held the window closed, then worked the point of the blade into the wooden frame. A gentle pull, and the window opened. He took his time.
When it was wide, he motioned for Nela to hold it. She would stay here while he did the business. Or so they'd planned. But she shook her head, suddenly and decisively, and he could hear her decision. This was a mage, and his crimes were her personal concern. She motioned him ahead, but now she would follow.
This was no time for an argument. He glared, but she glared back at him, defiance on her face. Now that she approved this, she would see it done. Nothing less would be acceptable.
He stepped up to the sill. The window was tall enough for him to stand in it, crouched. He waited, and there was no sound from within. He stepped down to the inner floor, still hidden by the curtain.
Something - echoes, perhaps - was telling him that the space beyond was large. He opened the curtain a crack, blocking it with his body, and stepped through. Then he waited for his eyes to adjust. It wasn't quite dark, though. Involuntarily he looked up, and his mouth opened. This was no ordinary bedroom.
It occupied the whole of the height of the wing. The room was two storeys tall. More. It went clear to the roof-beams, far above. He could tell, because there was an upper window, the same size as this one and vertically above it, but the upper one was uncurtained. Moonlight was streaming through it.
Nela was standing on the sill now. He hadn't heard her. He took a silent step forward.
The room was vast, occupying half the wing. It might have been a ballroom with an unusually high roof, for it was marble-floored. And yet there was little in the way of furniture in it: only the canopied bed in the middle of the floor. And there was only one person here. Barra must like his space.
The dagger, Alissa's dagger, was still in Gerd's hand. It would be quick, quiet. He moved silently, but it was twenty paces at least to the bed.
And the shape in the bed sat up.
And up. And up. There was a shimmer like the dancing air of a summer horizon, but it became solid, real. Then the huge head reared up to the roof beams, far above Gerd's head, and the bed splintered and smashed under its weight. The eyes snapped open, and were pools of molten flame, and the moonlight, suddenly fiery, played on the scarlet and gold of its scales. Its jewelled length solidified into shape, its legs lengthened and became struts that held it elegantly poised, its great weight a trifle now. If its mighty wings had no space to spread, it had more than the reach it needed to tear him asunder with one casual swipe of its sickled talons.
Seeming, he thought, but then he knew. He had always known. He didn't know how, but he had known. He should have been cast rigid on the spot, unable to move. But he saw its crimson-lined gorge open, and he heard the bellows-roar of its indraught, and he knew this was no seeming, no wizard's illusion. It was get aside, or die as a cinder. Aside? No. Useless. Only one way.
His head went down. Two running paces, and he flung himself instantly forward, a flat-out dive. The dagger went skimming away across the floor. He slid between the great forefeet, and the fiery breath gushed out, scorching the floor just behind him. The very stone turned rough and chalky, losing its lustre.
He scrabbled for the hilt of the Penrose sword. He was still sliding face-down. He tried to turn to get his feet forward, just as a cat turns to land upright. One foot slammed into a stone-hard talon, and he rolled. The sword was pinned between him and the floor, and he rolled again, desperately, trying to avoid the strike.
The foot lifted, then it fell, but the rake was blind, missing him, scoring deep grooves in the stone. Now a glance upward. He was actually under its great belly, looking up at scales that glittered like gems. His hilt was still in his hand, and the sword answered this time, sliding out with a low whisper of steel against leather, somehow comforting.
Light flared, a stroke of red lightning, almost blinding him. Now the dragon jerked upright again, its head rising in challenge. Another dragon was rearing, not so huge, with not such brilliant colours, but a dragon nonetheless. A challenge much greater than the human's. The greater dragon breathed in again to unleash his terrible fire, and the mighty chest rose to take it in, the scales expanding, moving apart, just a crack.
Gerd stabbed upwards. The point of the Penrose sword slid off an impenetrable rib-scale and lodged in the join between that and the next.
The dragon breathed and flame gushed. The curtains took fire instantly, a roaring whoof of sudden hot light, and the lesser dragon as instantly melted. Another human, smaller, below the direct line of the fire, staggering, falling. Easy prey. The dragon crouched to leap on it, like a cat on a mouse.
Crouched. Its huge weight came down on Gerd, crushing him. And it came down on the point of the Penrose sword, lodged in a gap between its scales.
It screamed, a sound that silenced all sounds that Gerd had ever heard - save one. It raised itself again, too late, an
d black boiling blood cascaded down. Gerd heard nothing, saw nothing, but still he rose with the hilt of the sword in both fists. He gathered his feet under himself and heaved upwards on the sword with the full power of his loins and thighs.
Strong he had always been, but this strength was summoned from sources he did not understand, directed by a will that seemed to come from beyond him. The angle of the thrust seemed to select itself, and the blade plunged on until its crossguard slammed home against diamond-hard scales.
The sword was wrenched from his hand. The dragon reared until its head reached the roof, far above. It cried again, but Gerd heard it only as a wheezing whisper, deafened as he was. Its head thrashed in its agony, and chips of stone flew as its far harder spiked ruff smashed into the walls. It was nothing to him, what it did. He had other concerns.
He raced forward and gathered her up from where she had fallen. Her hair was scorched and smelled of smoke and burning. Blisters already showed on her face. She had escaped the direct blast, but the very air turns to flame when a dragon breathes. He carried her away from the flaring curtains. The casement and shutters were beginning to crackle, too.
Her eyes fluttered. He laid a hand on her brow, gently, gently, and the sloughed skin and patches of dead flesh stirred and remade themselves. He fed fluids back into the ruined places between the layers of muscle and bone, smoothing, repairing. His power was not bottomless, but he would spend every scruple of it to do this. Pattern after pattern he found and restored. She moaned, and fell back into darkness, but it was the darkness of shock, not of death.
Sometime during this, the dragon had fallen. It was still quivering and twitching, but it lay full-length. He cast Nela over one shoulder, blessing her slight frame, and he stepped the ten paces to where the beast had fallen, the sword still hilt-deep in its chest. He bent, pulled, pulled again. The Penrose sword released slowly. He hauled it out. Here was a piece of the dragon's silken bedclothes. Gerd wiped blade and hilt, and the silk blackened and stiffened. Even the adamantine steel was tarnished.
Here was the dragon's head, sidelong on the floor. Its eyes were still glowing, and they showed pain. Gerd remembered butchering a hog. Even a hog is killed cleanly, if you can. He plunged the sword's point through the right eye, deep into the brain. The dragon quivered once more, and was still.
Someone was standing outside the only door, but nobody had opened it. Apparently it was locked. Good reason for that. Good stout door, too, no doubt. And now came a timid, careful knock. Clearly, Master Barra had left standing orders not to be disturbed. Absolute orders. Well, if I were one of Barra's servants, I'd be a bit chary about bothering him, too.
He could not think properly now. It was as though will and knowledge had been stripped from him. The woodwork - the window, the frame, the shutters - were brightly aflame. There was no way out there. The fire might not reach the roof timbers. It didn't matter. There was another window in the wall exactly opposite. He opened it - no need to smash it, and it would only leave glass daggers to slash him - and stepped through into the darkness of the night. This step was less. The building faced into the slope, that way.
It was still only a minute or two since the dragon had roared. Lights were showing. In another minute someone would surely see the fire. He padded directly away from the house, up the slope.
By the time he reached the woods, there were people running about outside the house. Someone was calling for buckets. Gerd flicked a single glance back over his unencumbered shoulder, and moved away into the trees, breaking into a trot, then starting the wide circle to the left that would bring him back to the shore and the little beach.
He hoped that the ship's master would keep his promise. Hope was all Gerd had, in that department; but the master had seemed to be a man of his word.
*
Nela opened her eyes. Gerd had been hoping, and his heart leaped. The eyes tracked, found his face. Saw it. Recognised it. He breathed out a long, unsteady breath. She hadn't been blinded. He had feared she might be.
The ship had run only to goose-grease for burns. He had used it lavishly, and had continued to work on her, as power trickled back in. The scars wouldn't be so very bad. The puckering at the top of the brow would be covered by her hair, once it grew again. Some redness, probably fading to brown over time, not much more than a suntan.
She swallowed harshly, and he grabbed the beaker of water from the hanging table, supported her head, and held it to her lips. She drank.
"Finished?" he asked.
She nodded. "How long?" Her voice was husky, rasping. Damaged. He tried not to let his face show anything.
"Only two days. We're well on our way, now."
"To the Outer Isles."
"Yes. Another six or seven days to Westrand, the master says. Wind's been kind, bar one day contrary. We can winter there. Maybe the war will be over by then."
"Or maybe not."
"No. In fact if the dragons get their way, I think it'll go on for much longer." Gerd sat back. "I don't think we should allow that, do you?"