Cascade Point

by Timothy Zahn

  Royd felt his ears prick up. "You learned to control the dragons this way, too? Who did you learn from?"

  Grail ignored the question, nodding instead toward the book on the table. "I see you're reading Iviza. What do you think of his theories?"

  "I don't like them," Royd told him, switching mental gears with somewhat less ease. "He doesn't seem to even allow for the existence of morality in politics. I think he's wrong."

  Smiling slightly, Grail settled himself more comfortably in his chair. "Tell me why," he challenged.

  The two men talked long into the night, discussing politics and related subjects. At times Royd almost forgot who he was talking to; the Dragonmaster's political views—or at least the ones he was admitting to—were much closer to Royd's than the latter would ever have expected. It was a wrench sometimes to remember that this was the man who had sent Royd's father to his death. The man Royd had sworn to kill.

  —

  The days stretched into weeks, and Royd's life settled into a reasonably comfortable routine. He worked several hours daily on the mind-conditioning equipment; ate, slept, and exercised on a rigid schedule; and spent the rest of his time reading. Every few days Grail would stop by, usually in the evenings, to check on Royd's progress and to bring him new books.

  He also kept Royd informed on current events, both general news and the more private details of governmental business and infighting. His candor in speaking about his subordinates was sometimes surprising, and gradually Royd began to see that the Dragonmaster was less an omnipotent ruler than simply a powerful man in the midst of a machine not entirely under his control.

  Almost against his will, Royd frequently found himself in sympathy with the dictators goals, and at such times he had to sharply remind himself to watch for traps, verbal and otherwise. If there were any traps, though, he never spotted them.

  Oddly enough, as Royd's feelings toward Grail began to soften, he noticed his own confinement was being eased. His door was no longer locked, and he was allowed to move freely among the half-dozen rooms of his section of the palace, though he was still forbidden to enter the more public areas where people might see him.

  More than once he considered escaping and rejoining the Rosette Freedom Party's underground, where his new knowledge of Grail, the government, and the dragons could be put to good use. Each time, though, he chose to stay. The more he learned, he told himself, the better their chances of ultimately bringing down the regime—he no longer thought of it in terms of Grail alone—and of restoring freedom to Rosette. It never occurred to him that he might be staying simply because doing otherwise would be betraying Grail's trust.

  But Grail was not the type to let his subordinates have secrets, even from themselves, and eventually he forced the issue in his characteristically blunt way.

  It was in Royd's eighth week of captivity when Grail showed up unexpectedly as the youth was beginning his mind-conditioning work. "Turn that off and get your coat," the Dragonmaster ordered. "We're going on a little trip today."

  Royd blinked his astonishment. "What? Where are we going?"

  "To see dragon pax in action. Come on."

  He led the way to the palace roof, where one of Rosette's three VTOL gunships was waiting for them. The craft was designed to carry up to thirty troops: on this trip, Royd and Grail were its only passengers. They strapped in, and Grail used the intercom to give the pilot his orders.

  "Where exactly are we going?" Royd asked as they lifted silently into the sky.

  "The Rosette-Easterland border," Grail answered. "Louys Pass, about six kilometers southeast of Hagston. Our patrols say that there's a new Easterling base being set up there. I want to walk One past it, just to remind them what they'll have to face on this side of the line."

  One. It was the first time Royd had ever heard Grail refer to any of his dragons by any sort of name. " 'One' is your biggest dragon, I take it?"

  Grail nodded. "One, Two, and Three, in decreasing order of size."

  "Not terribly original."

  The Dragonmaster stared out a window. "I originally called them Alecto, Magaera, and Tisiphone—the three Furies from ancient Earth mythology, who pursued and punished evildoers in terrible ways. But... I suppose after the fracture- bombing of Solfa it seemed to me that I had no business calling the dragons by cute names. They're fearsome, deadly weapons and shouldn't be treated like pets."

  Royd shivered. For the Furies to be considered 'cute names'... "It must have been pretty bad. Solfa, I mean."

  "The entire world was destroyed. I mean that literally; what the bombs themselves didn't get the tectonic upheavals that followed did." Grail's jaw muscles tightened visibly. "Three billion people killed, for the sole purpose of trying to destroy two Dragonmasters. That shows you how much the Emperor fears us."

  Royd digested that. "How'd you escape?"

  "I was already in space when the attack started. My ship took some damage, but I got away. That's when I came here." Grail spoke almost mechanically; from the look in his eyes it was clear his thoughts were still with the slagged surface of Solfa. His breathing seemed to have quickened, and Royd noted with some uneasiness that he was beginning to wheeze.

  "Maybe we'd better stop talking for a while," he said. "You don't want to go into one of your coughing fits."

  "You're right." Grail sank back in his seat and smiled wanly. "It has been getting worse, hasn't it?"

  "Yeah. What are the doctors doing for you?"

  "Not much they can do. My lungs are slowly filling up with scar tissue. It's something I picked up forty years ago out on Agave. Not contagious, by the way."

  "Glad to hear it. Now shut up and get some rest."

  Grail smiled again. "Yes, Doctor," he murmured, closing his eyes.

  The aircraft reached its destination—one of Rosette's border outposts—an hour or so later. Grail, seemingly recovered from his earlier discomfort, obtained two horses, and he and Royd rode off into the low mountains that formed a natural barrier between Rosette and Easterland. No one at the base asked Royd's name or position; Grail did not volunteer that information.

  The mountains were not particularly high, but they were steep and treacherous in places. Clearly, though, Grail had taken this path before, and he led them skillfully up the slope. After perhaps an hour he reined in. "We go on foot from here," he told Royd. "I want to get a little closer before I release One."

  They made their way through the trees and underbrush for half a kilometer to a small clearing where, without warning, the forty-meter dragon appeared. Shifting its bulk with surprising grace, it moved off between the trees. "Glad we found this clearing," Grail grunted. "If you bring One out in the woods you usually knock down a tree or two in the process. Makes a hell of a noise." He looked at Royd. "Did you feel anything when I released it?"

  Royd hadn't even thought to try applying his mind-conditioning work. "Uh—"

  "Forgot to, huh? Never mind; get ready and I'll bring out Three."

  And this time Royd did sense something. A presence of sorts, but cold and faintly menacing.

  Grail nodded when Royd tried to describe it. "That's the dragon, all right. Scared hell out of me when I first contacted it, too. I'm going to put Three through its paces; watch how the feeling changes with each movement." The dragon turned and leaped into the lower branches of the nearest tree. "Shouldn't you stick with one dragon at a time?" Royd asked, glancing in the direction that One had taken.

  "No problem. I can handle all three at once." He smiled crookedly. "And no more than three—which is why there are twelve Dragonmasters instead of just one."

  "Oh?" Royd said with forced casualness. Grail had never given him more than tantalizing hints about how the older man had become a Dragonmaster, and Royd didn't want to scare the story back underground by seeming too eager.

  "Yeah. The man who found the first amulet out at Castor was able to use it to find the other eleven. It had taken him nine years of trial and error to figure ou
t how to call and control his first set of dragons, but he found out that there was simply no way for him to control two amulets at once—I suspect they were deliberately designed that way. So he called in a bunch of his cronies and taught us how to be Dragonmasters. We had it easy; with his knowledge the process only took a few weeks."

  Royd shook his head. "Nine years. The man had a lot of patience."

  "He didn't have much else to do," Grail replied bluntly. "He was in hiding. If he'd stuck his nose out of the Castor system the Imperial Patrols would have shot it off."

  "What do you mean?"

  "He was a pirate. So was I."

  For a moment the two men looked at each other in silence. Then, slowly, Royd shook his head. "I don't believe it."

  "Why not?"

  "You don't talk like a pirate, for one thing. And you're too well educated."

  From the other side of the mountains came the sound of gunfire. "Just the Easterlings shooting at One," Grail explained as Royd, startled, turned to face the sound. "Don't worry; it's not going to kill any of them today. You know, you can't be stupid and be a pirate these days—running a starship takes brains." He sighed. "But you're partly right: I didn't start life as a pirate. For several years I taught microelectrical engineering on Goldstone."

  Royd looked at the dictator's lined face. "What happened?"

  Grail shrugged awkwardly. "I'm not really sure. Academic life was just too frustrating, I suppose. There were many improvements that needed to be made in the university, but no one would listen to my ideas. As low man in the pecking order I couldn't accomplish anything except irritating those in charge. "When they finally tossed me out, I drifted around industry for a while—no other college would hire me—and when Damrosch offered me a job on one of his ships, I took it. I didn't know then that he was a pirate, and when I found out... I don't know; I suppose I've always been a better follower than a leader. That's probably why he gave me one of the amulets—he figured I could be trusted to back him up."

  "Did you?"

  "More or less. Even when most of the other Dragonmasters deserted him during the Great War to try and set up their own kingdoms, I stayed with him. His plan was to capture one planet, build it up over a period of several years, and then use it as a base of operations to take over the whole Empire."

  "Is that when you left him?"

  "Soon afterward. The planet he chose was Solfa."

  "Oh." Royd was silent for a moment. "For a born follower you sure picked up the trade of dictator pretty fast."

  Grail took a step toward him, face contorted with sudden anger. "I had no choice, damn it!" he shouted. "This place was coming apart at the seams. Can't you get that through your head? I was the only one who could hold it together." He broke off in a fit of coughing, clutching his sides and sinking to his knees in the brush. "My inhaler," he managed to get out. "It's with the horse."

  Royd glanced at Three as the dragon crouched motionless, temporarily bereft of guidance. "The dragon would be faster," he said.

  "Scares the horses," Grail gasped, shaking his head. "You go. Hurry."

  Royd sprinted the half kilometer back to where they had tied the animals. There was a pouch tied to one of the pommels; opening it, he found a small gas cylinder with an attached mouthpiece. He had it in his hand, and had actually taken the first few steps back toward Grail, when the realization of what he was doing crashed in on him and brought him to an abrupt halt.

  Grail was the Dragonmaster, the ruthless dictator Royd had sworn to kill... and Royd was about to try and save his life.

  For a brief moment he wavered; but the proper course was unfortunately clear. No end could ever be divorced from its means, and to allow an old, sick man to choke to death would be to sink to Marwitz's level. A government that gained power in that way would have proved itself merely a successor, not an alternative, to the Dragonmaster's—how then could it ask for the people's trust? And besides, Grail had asked him for help. To betray that trust would be the act of a Judas... and Royd did not wish such a bloodstain on his conscience.

  The coughing had stopped, but Grail was still wheezing badly when Royd reached him. His hands trembling, the old man took the cylinder, turned a valve, and held it to his mouth. Within a few seconds his breathing had eased.

  "You okay?" Royd asked, himself still somewhat out of breath from the return sprint.

  Grail nodded and got carefully to his feet. His eyes swept across Royd's face, a strangely knowing expression in them... and Royd felt his face reddening.

  "You bastard!" he exploded. "That was a test, wasn't it? Damn it—and you knew I'd come back, didn't you?"

  Grail held up a hand. "I really did need the inhaler," he said. "And no, I wasn't sure you would return. But I thought it likely."

  "Does that thing let you read minds, too?" Royd asked bitterly, nodding at the amulet.

  "No, not at all. But the state of mind you've been learning gives you a sort of sense for danger." His eyes looked deep into Royd's. "You still want to kill me, don't you?"

  Royd returned the gaze. "Yes," he said harshly. "And someday I'll find a way to do it."

  "I'm sure you will. But wait until you learn to control the dragons." Grail glanced toward Three, and the dragon vanished. "Come, it's time to return to the outpost. We'll take a short air tour of the border and be back at the palace by nightfall. I've called One back; I think we've given the Easterlings enough to think about for a while. I trust a short tour is all right with you?"

  "Whatever you want," Royd said curtly. "You're the boss here."

  "Yes," Grail agreed. "I am. Shall we go?"

  —

  Back in his room again, Royd slumped into a chair and glared at the mind- conditioning equipment, his stomach still churning with anger and shame. Wait until he could control the dragons, indeed: Sound advice—and an obvious trap, for Grail had made it a point to keep himself familiar with Royd's progress. He would know exactly when Royd had the necessary skill. And when that point was reached... what? Royd still didn't know what the old dictators ultimate plan for him was.

  But that was almost irrelevant. A swift, unexpected attack was the only way to kill the Dragonmaster. Royd had had that chance and had blown it. His sense of justice and honor had played him false, he realized; there was no honorable way to commit murder. The next time, he told himself firmly, he would ignore the prickings of conscience... if there was a next time. Across the room, the door opened. Royd looked up, expecting to see Grail; but it wasn't the Dragonmaster who entered the room.

  It was Civil Affairs Director Marwitz. And two of his uniformed bullies.

  Marwitz stopped abruptly; clearly, he hadn't expected the room to be occupied. "Who are you? What are you doing here?"

  Royd opened his mouth, then closed it again. There was no reason he should tell Marwitz anything, "Who are you, and what gives you the right to disturb my privacy?" he countered.

  Marwitz murmured something, then walked farther into the room. The guards followed, closing the door behind them. Their guns were drawn; their expressions were not pleasant.

  Royd felt sweat breaking out on his forehead. "I warn you, Dragonmaster Grail will be furious when he hears you've disturbed me."

  "Will he, now." Recognition flickered across the Director's face. "And why would he be upset for me to find a failed assassin in his own palace?" The voice hardened. "What's going on?"

  Royd remained silent. "Waverly!" Marwitz snapped.

  One of the guards stepped forward, yanked Royd to his feet, and backhanded him hard across the mouth. Knocked off balance, Royd tripped over his chair and fell heavily to the floor. "What's going on?" Marwitz repeated. "I warn you— tonight of all nights I have no time to waste on false valor. Talk fast or I guarantee you'll soon wish you had."

  Royd wiped blood from the corner of his mouth, shook his head. "The Dragonmaster will roast you over one of your own fires for this," he said with as much bravado as he could muster.

  "Svoda
." Marwitz turned to the other guard. "Go call Quebbe and tell him to set up his equipment; I'm sending him a new test subject. You'll be leaving by the south service road; pull all but one guard off the gate there, and make sure he's one of mine. Then quietly collect four or five other men you can trust and bring them back here."

  The guard saluted and left. Marwitz turned back to Royd. "It will be a few minutes before you'll be leaving. You have just that long to change your mind." He pulled out one of the chairs and sat down, the guard Waverly standing by his side.

  Royd felt the first prickings of panic inside his throat. He'd heard rumors of Marwitz's torturers, stories that had made his blood turn to ice water. And unless he could somehow alert Grail as to what was happening, he was going to find out firsthand if the rumors were true. He had to escape before the other guard returned. But how? He was still sprawled on the floor, his every twitch the object of close scrutiny. And he had no weapons at all... or did he?

  It was his only chance. Carefully taking a deep breath, he began to concentrate.

  The first few steps were easy: convolutions of the mind that he had already mastered. But his training was not yet complete, and he found himself in the position of a thief who knows all but the last two numbers of a combination lock. Desperately, he visualized the wave patterns he had seen so many times before; brought back the sensations he'd felt near Louys Pass that morning; tried to remember how the amulet itself had felt... and suddenly it all seemed to click. Opening his eyes—he hadn't remembered closing them—he focused on a spot a few meters behind Marwitz and Waverly....

  And the small dragon was there.

  The two men spun around, Waverly with his gun raised. There were many ways for Three to attack, but Royd knew instinctively that he didn't have enough control yet to order them. Instead, he tried a simple command, visualizing both the words and the action: Pivot around quickly on your hind legs.

  Three whipped around in a one-hundred-eighty-degree turn—and its tail lashed Waverly and Marwitz, slamming them hard into the edge of the rock-ebony table. They crumpled to the floor and stayed there.