Dragon Weather

by Lawrence Watt-Evans

  The village square was deserted when he awoke the next morning—apparently even the most determined gawkers had eventually grown bored— but it filled quickly as the sun climbed the eastern sky, and he and Meriei had an audience of dozens when the wagon finally rolled southward, out another iron gate onto the road to Theyani.

  The entire length of that road was lined with iron posts—not an actual fence, but isolated posts, one every hundred feet or so, each one the height of a man and as thick as Arlian’s forearm. Each shaft was plain, but the top of each post was wrought into fantastical shapes—bizarre faces, wings, talons, or blossoms, seemingly at random. Arlian pointed one out to Meriei and asked, “What are those?”

  “Ditiae,” Meriei replied. “They keep away evil magic.”

  Arlian looked around at the surrounding countryside. The air overhead rippled with strange colors; to either side of the highway shadows moved in impossible ways. Orange trees bent and twisted in various directions, as if they were struggling beasts. He could hear whisperings and rustlings that did not sound like wind blowing through leaves or grass, no matter how much he wished they would, and strange smells, like hot metal one moment and heavy perfume the next, reached his nose. This land wasn’t as fierce or wild as what he had seen in the mountains, but it was still a hostile, unnatural place.

  Keeping away magic seemed like a very good idea, and the iron posts seemed to work. The bare yellow dirt of the road stayed in place, retained its natural color, and produced no sounds except the occasional crunch of hooves or wheels on pebbles.

  He tried to converse with Meriei after that, to pass the time and to distract them both from their eerie surroundings, but every attempt to discuss anything more complex than the weather quickly broke down in confusion. Eventually Arlian gave up, and they rode in silence.

  At each human habitation they passed people stopped what they were doing and stared at the strange wagon and its foreign driver. It was quite obvious that regardless of what the House of Slihar might claim, no one had traded with the north for some time—or at least, Arlian corrected himself, no foreigners had come to Arithei; Aritheians might have ventured into the outside world.

  Arlian had expected the journey from Ilusali to Theyani to take several days; accustomed to his vastly more spacious homeland, he had badly misjudged the size of the crowded little land of Arithei. They arrived at the ornately worked gates of the capital while the sun was still high in the west.

  These gates were iron, of course, and part of a black iron wall surrounding the city. At a shout from Meriei the gates swung open, and Arlian’s oxen plodded unhindered onto the pavement beyond.

  The city was tiny compared to Manfort, but still larger than any other town Arlian had seen, with several large, fine buildings, most of them constructed of white or yellow stone with black iron fittings—iron gutters, iron shutters, and so on. Long streaks of rust stained most of the walls. The streets were of brown brick, but so covered in yellow dust as to almost appear unpaved. The entire place smelled of heat and dust.

  Arlian had no idea where to go once they were inside the walls, and looked to Meriei for guidance.

  “That way,” the interpreter directed, pointing across a broad plaza to a white stone building.

  A few moments later, while the oxen waited placidly outside, Arlian found himself standing more or less ignored in a large, elegant room while a dozen Aritheians argued with Meriei and each other. Every so often another person would enter the room, take one long, surprised look at Arlian, and then plunge into the ongoing discussion.

  Arlian admired the room—it was largely open on two sides, with broad blue awnings providing shade while admitting every breeze, and the rich scent of a garden wafted in from somewhere. The furnishings were suitable for a dining hall or conference chamber, built all of thick dark wood, simple but not in the least primitive. The brown tile floor had half a dozen small, brightly colored rugs scattered across it, giving it a festive touch to counter the heavy appearance of the massive wooded table and chairs. The whole place was unlike anything Arlian had ever seen before, but it seemed practical and comfortable.

  Every so often as he stood there looking about Arlian heard the name “Hathet” spoken by one of the Aritheians. Other than that he could understand nothing at all of what was said, and could do nothing but wait.

  Finally one tall old man stepped out of the crowd, and the others fell silent.

  “I am Hirofa, of the House of Slihar,” the old man said in flawless, almost unaccented speech far better than Meriei’s command of Arlian’s tongue. “Whom do I have the honor of addressing?”

  “I am Lord Ari of Manfort,” Arlian said, bowing.

  Hirofa bowed in acknowledgment. “And why have you come to Arithei?”

  “I have come to pay a debt to a man named Hathet, who befriended me when I was a child,” Arlian replied.

  “Hathet is a name from the House of Deri,” Hirofa said. “The House of Deri does not trade with Manfort. How did you come to meet this man?”

  Arlian hesitated. He had had some time to think, and had remembered that Hathet had claimed his enslavement was the work of his political enemies.

  The House of Slihar might well be those enemies. To tell the whole truth might be unwise.

  “I nursed him when he was dying of fever,” Arlian said. “He wanted his family to know that he would not return. He was too ill to tell me their names, or how he came to be in Deep Delving, where I met him, but I promised to find them, and to tell them how he died.”

  “He told you no names?”

  “None,” Arlian said.

  Actually, Hathet might have named names, but if so, none of the other miners had paid any attention, and Arlian didn’t remember them.

  Hirofa turned away and conferred briefly with the others, then turned back to Arlian.

  “To refuse a deathbed promise would dishonor our House,” he said. “I will tell Hathet’s family of his death.”

  Arlian frowned. “I promised I would tell them myself,” he said.

  “You do not speak Aritheian.”

  “I will need an interpreter,” Arlian agreed, “but I want to see them with my own eyes, and hold their hands to share their grief.”

  “Very well,” Hirofa said. “I will take you to the House of Deri.”

  Several of the others protested—apparently others besides Meriei and Hirofa knew Man’s Tongue. Hirofa turned and spoke a single sharp sentence, and the protests stopped. Then he beckoned to Arlian.

  “Come,” he said.

  Arlian obeyed, and the two men made their way back out onto the plaza. Hirofa started to lead the way down a nearby street, but Arlian stopped by his wagon.

  “You can leave that where it is,” Hirofa said.

  Arlian shook his head. “No,” he said. “I am a stranger here, and you must forgive me my customs. I will bring my wagon with me.”

  Hirofa obviously didn’t like the decision, but made no further objection as Arlian led the oxen alongside.

  By the time they reached the rust-streaked golden palace Hirofa indicated as the House of Deri a crowd of curiosity-seekers was following them, staring at every motion Arlian and his oxen made.

  Hirofa led Arlian up to a central archway and turned a handle set in the red-and-gold-enameled door; somewhere inside a bell rang, barely audible.

  A moment later the doors swung open, and an Aritheian in an all-red gown stepped out. He and Hirofa exchanged a few words—but Arlian did not hear the name “Hathet.”

  “I’m here about Hathet,” he called.

  The man in red glanced at him, startled.

  “Hathet,” Arlian repeated.

  Hirofa turned and glowered at him briefly, but said nothing.

  The man in red glanced back and forth between Arlian and Hirofa, then at the crowd of onlookers. He said something, beckoning to Arlian—Arlian didn’t understand the words, but the message was clear enough.

  Arlian pointed at his wagon.
“Can someone guard this?”

  The man in red understood the question, even if he didn’t recognize the words; he held up a hand to indicate that Arlian should wait, then turned and shouted, to someone inside.

  A moment later three men emerged, clad not in the customary short robes of ordinary Aritheians, but in brown leather with strips of black iron across their chests—armor, of a sort. They had no swords, but carried wooden staves, each almost six feet long. They took up positions around the wagon and oxen.

  Satisfied, Arlian turned and looked questioningly at the man in red, who beckoned him inside.

  He followed.

  Hirofa also started to follow, and the red-clad steward, if that was what he was, looked questioningly at Arlian.

  Arlian shrugged, and the steward held up a hand to prevent Hirofa’s entrance.

  Hirofa protested, and the two men argued loudly for several minutes before Hirofa turned away in disgust.

  With that settled, Arlian followed the steward through an elegant antechamber, down a long stone passage, and into a lushly appointed room.

  There a woman in a blue-and-green robe was sprawled comfortably on a rattan settee. She looked up at Arlian’s arrival and sat up straight.

  The steward spoke to her for a moment, while Arlian waited; then the woman rose and addressed the foreigner directly, in his own tongue. Her speech was clear, if not as free of accent as Hirofa’s.

  “You are from the Lands of Man?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Arlian said.

  “You have news of Hathet?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you must see Grandmother. I am to prepare you.”

  “Good,” Arlian said.

  26

  The House of Deri

  A dais at one end of the reception chamber held three chairs, all of them occupied; a handful of other people, all of them well fed and handsome, stood to either side.

  This room was larger than the one where he had met Hirofa, and only open on one side, but similar in design. The awnings were green instead of blue, and the chairs were all pushed back against one wall, but the floor tiles were the same shade of brown, and the furniture made in the same style. Presumably this was the norm for Arithei—or at least for the headquarters of the great Houses.

  As instructed, when he had crossed the room Arlian knelt before the three people on the dais—two women, one young and one old, and an old man—and made the gesture of respect the interpreter had taught him—hands pressed together palm-to-palm before his face, head tilted back.

  The old man spoke, in Aritheian.

  “They welcome you to the House of Deri,” the interpreter explained.

  “Please tell them that I am Lord Ari of Manfort, and I am honored to be here,” Arlian said.

  The interpreter relayed the message, heard the reply, and told Arlian, “They ask your business here.”

  Arlian looked up at the old couple. He asked, “You are the family of Hathet, who was sent as ambassador to Manfort many years ago?”

  His interpreter quickly translated the question into Aritheian, and the tall, white-haired woman replied with a few brief words.

  “They acknowledge the relationship,” the interpreter said. She gestured at the tall woman. “Grandmother Iriol was Hathet’s sister.”

  “Then I regret to say I bring sad news,” Arlian said. “Lady Iriol, your brother Hathet is dead. I was present when he died, and held him in my arms.”

  The interpreter relayed this, and received another question from the tall woman in response while the half dozen others in the room whispered excitedly to one another.

  “How did he die?” she asked.

  “Of a fever,” Arlian said. “I tended him in his illness, and did all I could for him—he had been kind to me.”

  When the interpreter had translated this several of the Aritheians spoke at once, though the tall woman remained thoughtfully silent; the interpreter looked lost as she tried to decide whom to listen to.

  “What are they saying?” Arlian asked her.

  “They want to know where it happened, whether you are a northern physician or perhaps a sorcerer, when this happened … everything.”

  Arlian waved for the family’s attention, then began his story, pausing after each sentence so that the interpreter could do her job.

  “As a boy, I was captured by slavers,” he said. “I was sold and sent to a mine in Deep Delving, and I met Hathet there. He befriended me, protected me and taught me. He said that he had been sent from Arithei as your ambassador, but no one believed him, not even I. He said he had been waylaid by bandits on the journey north—he had made it safely into the Lands of Man, but was taken captive in the Desolation, the wasteland between the Borderlands and Manfort. He believed this capture was the doing of his political enemies, because he was not held for ransom, as he expected, but was instead sold as a slave and taken to the mine where I met him.”

  Several people muttered as this was translated. Arlian hesitated, then admitted, “We did not believe this story—we had never heard of Arithei, and we could not see why bandits would neither kill nor ransom him. At any rate, he lived out the rest of his days working in the mine; he caught the fever there, weakened, and in time died.” He reached into the waistband of his breeches and pulled out the crude little pouch he had carried for so long. “He had collected these in the mine— in the Lands of Man they’re worthless, nothing but pretty stones, but he said they were precious here. When he died I took them to remember him by, not knowing I would ever find Arithei, but now that I am here I believe you should have them.” He opened the pouch, still kneeling, then poured the purple stones out onto the dais.

  A sudden hush fell; the whispering that had gone on while he spoke ceased completely, and it seemed the Aritheians had even stopped breathing as they stared.

  “Amethystoi,” someone said at last.

  “Amethysts,” Arlian agreed, looking around at the stunned observers. Obviously, Hathet had not exaggerated the value of his prizes.

  The interpreter had been staring at the jewels as intently as anyone; now she looked up at Arlian. “I begin to understand how you got here,” she said.

  Arlian made no attempt to hide his puzzlement. “What?”

  “The dreams have been strong lately, and the wizards careless; no one had dared cross the Dreaming Mountains for years, not even those of the House of Slihar, until you arrived. When we saw you we all wondered how you managed to reach Arithei alive—some of us suspected you were a wizard, or a demon, or a homunculus, rather than a true human.” She gestured at the dais. “Now I see.”

  “See what?”

  “The amethysts—don’t you know why they’re precious?”

  “No,” Arlian said. “Hathet said they could be used for some sort of protective magic, and I thought they were prized for their rarity and beauty, but that’s all I know.”

  The interpreter made a curious jerk of the head that Arlian was beginning to realize indicated denial in Arithei. “They are not merely used in magic,” she said. “They are magic, in themselves. An amethyst placed in a cup and a simple spoken word will cure drunkenness. They resist madness of any kind, and they keep bad dreams away.” She gestured toward the direction whence Arlian had come. “In the mountains, bad dreams can kill. These kept you safe.”

  “Those, and my own sword, perhaps,” Arlian said. “I encountered certain difficulties on the way.”

  “Yes, your sword,” the interpreter agreed. “Cold iron. We use iron for protection here.” She looked at the hilt on Arlian’s belt and added, “And silver?”

  Arlian looked down at the silver filigree of his sword’s pommel. “Silver and steel, yes,” he said.

  “The creatures of darkness fear silver,” the interpreter said. “The creatures of air cannot abide cold iron. And the creatures of dream cannot pass near amethyst. You are protected as few ever are.”

  Arlian thought back to the things he had seen and fought on the road a
cross the mountains, to what had remained of his fourth ox, and shuddered—if that was what it was like when he carried magical protection, what would have happened had he been without such defenses?

  Obviously, he would have died. No wonder so little traffic passed between Arithei and the Lands of Man! And no wonder the Aritheians had placed iron fences around every town, and those strange posts along their roads.

  And he had just given away all his amethysts; the journey back north might well be his last. He could scarcely reclaim them now, though …

  The tall woman spoke.

  “She’s asking if this is all Hathet gave you,” the interpreter reported.

  “Yes,” Arlian said. “That’s all.”

  The tall woman then stooped and chose the largest of the purple stones, one as large as the top joint of Arlian’s thumb. “Then keep this,” she said, speaking slowly in Arlian’s own tongue. “For nursing my brother in his illness.”

  Arlian hesitated, trying to decide whether he should argue or not, but the memory of those things in the mountains decided him. “Thank you,” he said, accepting the stone.

  “Wear it around your throat,” she said. “More effective that way.”

  Arlian bowed in acknowledgment of this advice.

  The tall woman then addressed the interpreter in Aritheian.

  The interpreter listened carefully and asked questions before finally turning back to Arlian.

  “She says you have the protection of the House of Deri any time you may need it, and she wishes to know whether Hathet ever mentioned any names, anyone he thought might have been involved in the plotting against him.”

  “No,” Arlian said. “He never mentioned any names.”

  “Then she wishes me to tell you that nonetheless, from events after Hathet’s departure, and the events surrounding your arrival, she has a fairly strong suspicion of who was involved, and how. Your arrival has brought not merely news, but wealth…” She gestured at the gem-strewn dais. “… and the prospect of vengeance and a restoration of the former prominence of the House of Deri. You managed to bring this to us, to Hathet’s House, despite the interference of those you first encountered. You came here even though you had met others who surely did not wish you to. For this, the House is greatly in your debt.”