by Tim Stead
“You conspired with your son,” Narak said. “I know that. But what I don’t know is who helped you. Who among the Lords of Avilian and who in the king’s kitchens?”
Again, she said nothing. Narak could see her jaw set, her eyes growing harder. She was prepared to die before she spoke.
“By all the gods,” Whitedale hissed. “You’ll tell the Wolf what you know and beg for mercy or I’ll kill you myself.” His hand went to his blade, half drew it.
“Geldan,” the boy blurted out. “It was Geldan in the kitchens.”
True again. There had to be somebody. The boy wouldn’t have come to the kitchens with black root unless he’d known there would be a chance to use it, and it made sense. Geldan would have known the routine with the wine, knew to distance himself by putting Ashia in charge of preparing it.
“And who else?” Narak demanded. “Who among the lords?” The boy shrugged. Perhaps he didn’t know. There’d be no point holding back now.
“You fool,” Whitedale was talking to his wife. “You’ve done this. You’ve condemned my son and heir with your stupidity. Tell him what he wants to know!” The blade leaped free of its sheath and for a moment Narak thought he would strike his own wife down. But this wasn’t really the triumph of loyalty over love. It was the pain of betrayal. But even Narak was surprised at the woman’s courage. She was loyal to something.
“Does she have a brother?” he asked. “A lover?”
Whitedale snorted. “A lover? Your guess is as good as mine, apparently,” he said. “And she has no brother, but a cousin, yes.” A light dawned in his eye. “It’s bloody Alwain, isn’t it?”
Lady Whitedale’s head dipped a little lower. So that was it. She’d had her instructions from Duke Alwain. But it wasn’t enough. There would be others in Golt disposed to this cause. The woman was Alwain’s cousin, and so a conduit through which his messages could flow, but Narak was certain there would be others.
“Sooner or later you will speak,” Narak said. “The king’s men will see to it.” And they would. Everybody talked in the end, and Narak would have to witness it all so that he would know which words were true and which were lies. “Why not speak now and save yourself the pain?”
She looked at him, meeting his eyes for the first time. There was a hardness there that surprised him. She was prepared to suffer to protect her allies, her cousin’s friends. If she was taken, they would know and they would have time to flee. She was ready to die a terrible death to give them that chance. It was admirable in its own way. Narak sighed. This would not do at all.
“I am prepared to be merciful,” he said. “Your son is an idiot who has committed a crime for which the only possible penalty is death. But I will let him live because young fools may grow into wise men and that is still possible. He must leave the city today. But your wife…” he shook his head. “I will give you five minutes alone with her, Lord Whitedale. You have a blade. After that I will take her to Golt Castle to be put to the question. Do you understand?”
Whitedale nodded, his face grim. He understood completely. If his wife was tortured she would talk, and in talking she would implicate her son and they would both die. His only choice was to execute his own wife. It would work for Narak, too. She would die. The boy would be exiled and Narak could hunt the traitors a different way. Geldan would be watched. He could set Ashia’s sharp eyes to that task, to watch him, to see who he spoke with.
He left them, stepping out into the street. It was full morning now. Clouds were following the sun from the east and there was a hint of rain. Narak did not feel guilt. He was too old for that, but he still knew sorrow, and what he had just done made him sad. He had smashed Lord Whitedale’s family as surely as a hammer smashes glass. There would be grief, hatred and resentment for generations. The boy would have to be watched.
Perhaps Pascha was right. Perhaps he should never have come.
2 A Dragon
Francis Gayne pushed the boat out into the dark waters of the harbour a little after midnight. The watch men on the few ships at dock would pay no attention to a lone man in a small boat, and other, more interested eyes would be blinded by drink or closed in sleep at this hour. Besides, he’d made sure he wasn’t followed.
It was a calm night, a light offshore breeze helping him as he rowed towards the breakwater. There was no moon, and the only light came from the fiery beacons that illuminated the harbour entrance, two paths of red ripples marking the safe water passage for vessels bold enough to ship out before dawn.
He pulled hard, working up a sweat as he rounded the harbour wall and began to make his way shoreward again, rowing past the lights of South and East Wards. He’d considered leaving the city by the northern gate, but he didn’t want people to know where he was going, and the proximity of the combined Dukes’ army had the city regiments on high alert.
It took the best part of an hour to get back to shore outside the city and Gayne pulled his small vessel up a sandy beach and tied the painter to a stunted tree.
He walked north.
To his left the city walls ruled a false horizon against the stars, but he was far enough away not to be seen, and he walked carefully, without light.
It wasn’t long before his destination, the dragon’s pavilion, rose against the sky ahead of him.
It was many things, but Gayne had never seen it so close, and it struck him first as very large. A faint light limned the swooping walls, polished the tent-like roof. It was hardly a building in the usual sense, the walls and the roof being unconnected so that air, cold or hot, was free to pass through all its huge chambers.
It was, in its own way, a court house. Dragons were the arbiters of truth, immune to threats or bribes, though he’d heard that exotic food or music could buy you favour here. He brought neither. This was also a place where men were unmasked, and that was something he was keen to avoid.
He walked round the walls until he came to a gate. It stood open, and Gayne walked in. He paused for a moment trying to make out the source of the light, and he heard voices. Thunder and bells, he thought. The thunder was the dragon Torgaris, he was certain. The bells, a woman, and she was laughing. It was the last sound he had expected to hear.
He pressed on, crossing a courtyard, walking down an avenue of pillars that reached up to the distant roof. At the end he turned left, and he saw them.
Gayne had seen dragons before. Everybody had. They came and went about their business, and a winged silhouette in the sky hardly drew attention these days, but he had never been so close. Now, from a mere fifty feet, he was struck by the size, the sense of power and majesty that emanated from the beast.
They stood close together, the woman and the dragon, close to a fire that burned low, providing the only light. The woman looked young and was dressed in travelling clothes. She looked more rich than poor.
The dragon’s head turned and its eyes captured him.
“A visitor,” it said. “Why are you here?”
Again, he was forced to a novel realisation. This was no beast. The eyes and the voice married wisdom with humour. The woman looked at him, too. She was slightly built, but radiated confidence.
“I am Francis Gayne of Dock Ward,” he told them. “I have come to petition the Dragon Torgaris.”
“Truth or lies,” the dragon rumbled. “I don’t do politics.”
The woman reached out and touched the dragon on the claw, a gesture of affection. “I’ll leave you to discuss business, Lord Torgaris,” she said. She looked once more in Gayne’s direction, turned, and walked away into the pavilion’s labyrinth.
Gayne was impressed. The woman was clearly the dragon’s friend. He didn’t know they had friends, or even that they could.
“Truth and lies are all I seek, Mighty Torgaris,” he said, moving closer.
“Then bring the case before me,” Torgaris said. “I will adjudicate.”
This was the delicate bit.
“I have heard that dragons can go where they
are not,” Gayne said. “That they can send out a smaller part of themselves to see other places.”
“An avatar, yes,” the dragon confirmed. “But that is not widely known. How did you hear of this?”
“Someone spoke of it,” Gayne said.
“And you do not wish to divulge the name.” Torgaris shifted his bulk and swung his head closer to the man. “That is your right,” he said. “But it will colour my perception.”
That couldn’t be helped. He could hardly tell the dragon that he had the tale from Mordo Tregaris, or that Col Boran’s most wanted fugitive had been staying with him in Dock Ward.
“I want you to attend a meeting of the city council,” Gayne said. “I want to know who is honest and who is not.”
“Why?”
Gayne sat down on a stone beside the fire. “I am concerned that some in the council are corrupt, that they do not serve the people that chose them, but instead answer to private interests and take money for their services.”
“You will ask them this?”
“I will have all of them swear an oath to serve the people.”
“If they see me, they will refuse. They may refuse anyway.”
“You will be concealed,” Gayne said.
Torgaris sighed, his breath driving a shower of sparks from the fire. “Dragons do not play such games,” he said. “If you suspect them charge them and bring them here.”
“I do not have the authority.”
The dragon shook its massive head. “Then it seems that you have a problem, but I do not understand why this is so important. Men and women are always salted with a little corruption. It is everywhere.”
Gayne pulled a few creased pages from inside his jacket. “This is why,” he said. “Will you read it?”
“Put it on the ground,” Torgaris said. Gayne did as he was told and the dragon raised its head and looked down at the paper. He was silent for as moment, his eyes flickering across the pages. He seemed to finish reading them very quickly and sat back again, regarding Gayne with renewed interest.
“You are going to try to do this?” the dragon asked.
“Yes.”
“And you believe that it is possible?”
“Perhaps. I have to try.”
“You are honest, I can say that much. But you must give me time to think. When is your meeting?”
“Three days’ time. We meet in what used to be Falini’s ballroom.”
“Return here tomorrow and I will give you my answer.”
Gayne picked the papers up and tucked them back inside his jacket. He had hoped for more – a definite yes – but at least the dragon had not said no.
“Until tomorrow, Lord Torgaris,” he said. The dragon did not reply, so Gayne turned and walked away, back into the starlit night, back to the beach, back to the city.
*
Callista Dalini watched him leave. When the man had vanished into the night she stepped out into the firelight once more.
“You seem intrigued,” she said.
“I am,” the dragon confessed.
“He was the one you were telling me about,” she said.
“Yes. It is rumoured that he killed the entire Falini family, that he walks through walls, that he is a demon.”
“And is he?”
“No. Just a man.”
“What was in the paper?”
The dragon shifted, the movement rippling down the length of his body. He roused his wings and closed his eyes for a moment.
“It is fascinating,” Torgaris said. “He means to change the world, and it will be entertaining to see if he succeeds.”
“All that in a sheet of paper?”
“Indeed. I will tell you what it said.”
The dragon recited, word for word what had been on Gayne’s paper and Callista listened. When the dragon had finished, she shook her head.
“It is a political philosophy,” she said. “I do not see how it can be made to work.”
“He has a reputation for doing the impossible,” Torgaris said. “If anyone can do such a thing, he may be the one.”
“You said that he was dangerous.”
“He is, but not to us, Eran Callista.”
“Then perhaps I will spend some time here. I am not known and my suit against my uncle can wait. I will attend their council meeting. Do you think you will do as he asks?”
“Probably,” the dragon replied. “But there is something about him that I find unsettling. I think he may be gifted, but I do not know it.”
Callista shared the dragon gift of knowing – the certainty that a thing was so even when she had no way of explaining why. It felt different from believing something, or even being commonly certain. She, too, had no such knowledge of Gayne. He had just seemed a man.
“You will be careful?”
“I am here to watch and report back to Col Boran,” Callista said. “I am not here to act.”
3 Alwain’s Camp
Alwain, former duke of Bas Erinor, sat in his tent and raged silently. He had been tricked – not once, but twice. Not only had he been drawn away from the city by the posturing of the Berashi army on the border, but the northern regiments had slipped away home before he had the news of what the traitorous King Degoran had done. His brother was dead, his seat usurped, and he would have revenge.
The tricks did not matter. He still had twelve thousand men, and that was more than enough to retake Bas Erinor. But Alwain worried. Publicly he was all confidence, but he concealed an abiding suspicion that he wasn’t up to the job, that he was a lesser man than his illustrious ancestors. This doubt manifested itself as a ferocious certainty. He dared show no weakness, and now he was up against one of the legendary figures of the second Great War, Cain Arbak, the innkeeper general. If he won this, and there was no reason why he should fail, then he would know that he was truly a great commander. He could finally dispel those nagging doubts.
Someone slapped the flap of his tent.
“Enter!”
Colonel Haliman, the nominal commander of Alwain’s own regiment, poked his head and shoulders through the entrance.
“They’re ready for you,” he said.
“Right.” Alwain pulled on a jacket heavily decorated with gold braid and silver thread. He belted on his sword, checked his look in a mirror, and followed Haliman outside. “How do you read their mood?” he asked.
“Apprehensive,” Haliman replied. “But they support you. Most have had missives from their lords backing your stand. The rest will follow.”
“Of course they will.”
The two of them walked to the mess tent nearby. It was many times the size of Alwain’s own tent and lay at the centre of the encampment. Haliman hung back to let Alwain enter first and followed him. The tent was not full. Only the seven colonels and their aides stood waiting for him. The duke strode confidently to the table at the centre of the room. There was a map on it showing the whole of Avilian, its borders and its cities, roads and rivers. He took his place at the base of the map. He pointed at the city of Bas Erinor, stabbing at the paper with a finger.
“Here,” he said. “We will march on Bas Erinor without delay and retake the city that has been stolen from me.”
“My Lord, what of Cain Arbak?” It was Colonel Backling, one of those who had not yet received his own lord’s instructions. Alwain didn’t like the man much. He was softly spoken and cautious – hardly a soldier at all.
“Arbak has a thousand men. I don’t care how old he is or how many battles he’s won. He can’t hold the city with that.”
“For a while, perhaps,” Backling ventured. “Long enough for the northern regiments to march south and relieve him.”
Alwain glared at the man. “The northern regiments will not march south,” he said. “And if they do, we will destroy them. They can muster four thousand at most. They are no match for us.”
“They say the Wolf is with the king,” Backling said.
Alwain grinned. “Don’t w
orry about the king,” he said. “When he is dead the Wolf will run back to Col Boran.”
That seemed to stir them a bit. They hadn’t been aware that he planned to kill the king, but Alwain had greater ambitions than simply to reclaim his Dukedom. He thought it high time that the Duke of Bas Erinor and the King were one and the same. He meant to take the kingdom. It seemed obvious to him. How could he let Degoran survive?
It was Colonel Nelis who spoke first.
“You’re going to kill the king?”
“Of course,” Alwain said. “He’s the cause of all this.”
Colonel Pomeroy banged his fist on the table, turning all heads.
“Of course the king must die,” he said. “The sooner the better. If he degrades Bas Erinor what will he do to the rest of us? It’s him or us now. This is war.”
“You’d face the Wolf?” Backling asked.
“With my regiment? Of course! Any man can be killed.”
“Many have tried,” Backling said.
“And the Wolf has always had an army to back him. Our spies tell us that Degoran has sent half his regiment away. He barely has enough men to man the city walls.”
Backling licked his lips. “I am glad that you have volunteered for the task,” he said.
“It will not be necessary,” Alwain said. “Golt is full of assassins and they all have my gold in their pockets. But I thank you, Colonel Pomeroy, for your inspiring words.” He liked Pomeroy. The man was cut from the same fabric as the duke himself – bold and decisive. He looked down at the map. “We will take the coastal road,” he said. He traced the thin, red line with his finger. It seemed so short, so straight, but he knew it was two weeks on foot, and he needed his foot soldiers. “There are plenty of towns along the line of march to re-supply us. We will invest the city. It is to our advantage. They cannot last more than a few weeks with the population trapped in there and we can range where we will. It will be over in sixty days.”