Draped listlessly by the pool, half in and half out of the water, was an unusually large draykon. When I say unusually large, please understand that the draykoni are by no means small, even at their most diminutive. This one was probably not much smaller than my house. Or, well, if that’s an exaggeration… you get the idea. He was all sinuous lines and impressive bulk, and his scales were deep, solid black.
He was also the very picture of boredom. He lay totally inert and did not move, not even when the several of us trooped up to stand right by his head.
‘Hello, Ny!’ said Llandry brightly.
His eyelids moved in a slow blink.
‘I’ve brought people,’ she persevered. ‘You don’t know Eva or Tren, do you?’
This was productive of nothing whatsoever, for Nyden still declined to react. Only his tail moved, in a lethargic swish which sent a tiny spray of water up into the air.
‘You may not,’ I said grimly, ‘but we know you.’ At Llandry I directed a rather displeased look, for this couldn’t possibly do!
Nyden featured prominently in Llandry’s journal. He has much to recommend him, undeniably: he is indeed an Elder, which means he’s the most ancient of the ancients, one of the very first draykoni ever to exist. He uses their peculiar arts with an insouciance, a confidence, an aptitude which far outstrips most of the rest. He is also supremely unconcerned with notions of limitations and breezily oblivious to such obstructions as entrenched conventions or expected manifestations of power. What Nyden wants to do, Nyden does.
That is probably of use to me. There are one or two problems, though, the main one being that Nyden, for all his fine qualities, is…
…quirky, shall I say? Quirky in ways that lead me to suspect he would prove to be insubordinate, difficult, slow to take instruction, let alone orders, and a liability in several exciting ways it probably wouldn’t enter my head to consider.
When he’s fully involved in something that interests him, and about which he cares (as far as he’s able), I can well believe that his talents, his bright mind and even his attitude can be of great use and benefit. But if he is bored, having him around is probably more like having your own personal plague to hand.
Which is no doubt why Llandry was so eager to get rid of him.
Llandry crouched down by Nyden’s head, and smiled at him. ‘I know you have been bored. I am sorry. I thought it would interest you, what we’re doing here, but I can see I was wrong.’
Nyden’s tail lashed again, harder this time. ‘I,’ he said, slowly and deliberately, ‘hate growing things.’
‘Well, yes. So we have learned, and I apologise.’
‘It is so dull,’ he continued. ‘What do you even do? You take some tiny grain of a thing you can’t even see and shove it in the ground. Then, you expend a ton of effort — tons of it, Llandry — and after all that sweating and straining you get—’
‘I know,’ Llandry said hastily, shooting a look at me. She patted his face in a vain attempt to soothe him.
‘—you get,’ Nyden continued, flatly refusing to be hushed, ‘a… a leaf!’ He wailed the latter word in anguish. ‘And it’s not even a whole leaf! Just a miserable, sproutish, potential leaf that might, if you’re very lucky, become a tree. Someday. In about a thousand years.’
Llandry sighed. ‘Yes, well, we’ve been through all that. I have something else for you to do.’
Nyden’s tail stilled. ‘You do?’
‘Eva does.’ Llandry indicated me.
Nyden finally found it possible to acknowledge my existence, though not by way of anything so polite as a greeting. He squinted at me, sucking upon one protruding fang in a manner that struck me as thoughtful.
‘Awfully human-looking, isn’t she?’ he decided. ‘Draykony bits in there somewhere but not strong, Llandry. Not strong at all.’
‘She’s actually one of the better summoners in the Seven,’ Llandry said quickly, and I was touched by her eagerness to defend my prowess, though I did not feel at all dismayed by Nyden’s lack of approval.
‘One of the better what?’ Nyden lifted his head to peer at me, as though Llandry had said I was unusually well-supplied with heads, or limbs.
‘Summoners. It means she uses our magics in some specific ways, and she’s good at it. She talks to animals and she works with them and—’
‘Eh.’ Nyden fell back into his listless heap. ‘No idea what you mean.’
‘I’ll take him,’ I said.
Everyone looked at me funny. Tren looked quizzical, Ori dismayed, Pensould bemused. Llandry’s face was such a comical mixture of shock and elation that I was tempted to laugh.
‘No really, I will. Did you hear that? He has no idea what we’re talking about. Any of us. Sorcery? Summoning? It’s all nonsense to him, and that’s exactly what we need.’
‘Um, Eva?’ said Ori, eyeing Nyden with undisguised scepticism. ‘May I talk to you for a second?’
I graciously consented to this and we moved a little apart from the others. Ori lowered his voice. ‘Are you sure about this?’
‘Yes!’
‘Really? Because he can be, um, difficult…’
‘I know. But I hope to keep him interested, and I think as long as we can do that he’ll be great.’
Ori cast a doubtful look Nyden’s way. ‘Do you think that will work?’
Privately, I highly doubted it, but I considered it worth the attempt. ‘If it doesn’t, we’ll send him back.’
Ori grunted, though whether the sound was intended to express agreement with the suggestion, or a lack of conviction either way, I could not tell. ‘He will drive Avane nuts, too.’
I had forgotten that. His interest in Avane was entirely unreciprocated, but she was too soft-hearted to successfully repel him. ‘If he irritates her too much, we will send him back,’ I repeated.
Ori rolled his eyes. ‘Llandry!’ he called. ‘Do you have any other Elders up here right now?’
‘None I can spare,’ she called back firmly.
‘No ancients? It doesn’t have to be an Elder, does it?’
‘No! I need them all. They’re vital. You’re already taking Avane!’ In other words, they were putting themselves to use in Orlind, unlike Nyden whose idea of productive activity was to lie in the pool. Half in the pool. He couldn’t even be bothered to immerse himself properly.
Was I making a huge mistake? Maybe. But my choices were few.
There was a desperate, beseeching quality to Llandry’s gaze which worked powerfully upon me, too. Yes, she wanted to help us, but Nyden was clearly driving her crazy.
‘We’re taking him,’ I said, and hauled Ori back to the pool.
Nyden grinned at both of us, his fangs prominently protruding. ‘We’re going to be the best of friends,’ he promised us.
Ori sighed, and ran his fingers through his hair. ‘I can’t wait.’
When patient, good-natured Ori is so rude as to express his doubts about another person out loud, and to their face, one would do well to pay attention. And I did. Nyden was clearly going to need some management.
The question of who best to appoint to the task occupied me for some time. Avane would have been the obvious choice, if I hadn’t felt that I would be condemning her to weeks or moons of cruel and unusual torment in the process. Ori obviously was not disposed to be landed with the job, and neither Tren nor I would have the time to be always at hand.
I needed a perfect candidate: someone who would know exactly how to deal with Nyden, who would have the patience (or something like it) to manage him without going mad, and who had a good chance of keeping him interested.
Lacking such a perfect specimen, I gave him to Adonia instead.
This may seem like an odd choice, but let me explain. Adonia is just the kind of oddity to appeal to a mind like Nyden’s, or so I believe. She has quirkiness enough to match his, with some to spare. And she is probably as much in need of a challenge as Nyden, considering that she, too, tends to exist in a fog of
palpable boredom enlivened only by an occasional gossip magazine.
When I got home, I said: ‘Adonia, I have brought the most charming but also the most annoying man alive back with me and I need you to keep him in line.’
Her eyes lit up at once, and when she saw Nyden, she practically purred. ‘Yes, boss,’ she said, and I knew I had done well.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Having agreed upon the matter of Nyden and secured Avane’s consent to the business (what a sweet and obliging woman is Avane! I like her so much), we made preparations to leave.
I wanted to linger a great deal longer, of course, but I could not justify it at the time. We stayed only long enough to hear Llandry’s news — of which there was not much, yet, though she declared herself cautiously optimistic about the future of Orlind — and then we left. Tren rode with Ori on the way home, and I accepted Avane’s invitation to travel with her. I found the return journey more peaceful, though whether that was because of Avane’s presence or because I had got my grouches out of my system on the way over, I cannot say.
One other thing happened before our departure. You might have noticed that I referred to Nyden as a man, a few paragraphs back. That I introduced him to Adonia as such, and failed to mention that he was anything other than human.
Well, I could hardly take Nyden back with me as he was, could I? Apart from anything, there is no way he would fit into our classrooms.
So we had a talk, he and I, after the others had drifted back to Llandry’s house. Nyden might have been offered the reprieve he was desperate for and had new and exciting prospects laid out before him, but he still did not appear to consider this reason enough to move. He lay inert as ever, still partially submerged, though the fog of deep gloom had lifted a little. I even thought I saw a faint, fangy smile hovering about his mouth.
‘Nyden,’ I said with my nicest, most conciliating attitude.
His smile vanished at once. ‘Yes?’
‘I am going to need you to change your shape.’
‘No.’
‘It is not negotiable.’
‘I never shift!’
‘You do! I have read of it. You Changed yourself into something small, so that Llandry could carry you out of the Library before it blew up.’
Nyden sniffed. ‘That was different.’
‘It was not.’
‘It was an emergency!’
‘It still counts.’
‘Why do I have to Change? Am I not perfect as I am?’
He was indeed a perfect specimen of draykoni…dom. Draykonhood? Let’s go with that one. A perfect specimen of draykonhood. But that was entirely beside the point, so I didn’t make the mistake of agreeing with him.
‘You are too big,’ I informed him. ‘Far too big. You will be associating with human-sized and human-shaped people in human dwellings, and I need you to fit in.’
He grinned at me and purred, ‘Then make the dwellings bigger.’
‘I can’t do that.’
‘I do not see why not.’
‘Because the houses are not flexible, but you are.’
He crooned a tune under his breath, keeping time with his tail. ‘That is your problem, Eva, not mine.’ The wretched creature sang the words along with his mad little melody, and ended with a few whistled bars.
I folded my arms. ‘Insubordination will not be brooked!’ I declared, losing patience with him. ‘You cannot have this assignment if you will not comply with these terms. It is physically impossible for you to perform the role in your current shape.’
Nyden looked at me out of one eye. He looked calm, thoughtful, not at all like he was about to mount a rebellion, and I relaxed a bit. He was probably more reasonable than we all expected, he just liked to make a show of—
I had to abandon the thought because Nyden streeeetched luxuriously and then… he began to shrink. He contracted in size until, from the tip of his nose to the tip of his tail, he was about as long as I was tall. ‘Will that do?’
As I was struggling to control my temper, a voice spoke from behind me, so suddenly and unexpectedly that I jumped. ‘What you have to do,’ said Pensould, ‘is… well, I will show you.’ He walked past me, went straight up to Nyden, and kicked him in the ribs.
‘Ow,’ Nyden observed.
Pensould kicked him again, much harder.
‘Ow. I said ow already!’
‘Saying ow does not mean that the thrashing will stop,’ said Pensould. ‘It stops when you cease doing whatever it is that earned you the thrashing.’
‘I wouldn’t be human,’ Nyden said sulkily.
‘Why not?’
Nyden squirmed. ‘Because it’s so untidy, that’s why. Look at you, with your bits flapping around everywhere. Isn’t it uncomfortable?’
Pensould blinked, and looked down at himself. He was looking neat and tidy in simple trousers and a shirt, boots, a good coat. Nothing messy about him. ‘What bits?’
Nyden opened his mouth, but — most uncharacteristically for him — he withheld whatever it was that he was planning to say. ‘Never mind.’
Pensould nudged Nyden with his toe. ‘Do it.’
‘It’s so demeaning.’
Pense’s eyes narrowed. ‘You’re going to get kicked again.’
‘Fine.’ Nyden sat up and Changed, so fast that I had not even had time to register that he had capitulated.
The miniaturised, black-scaled draykon disappeared. In his place stood a tall, elegant man in a dark suit, his skin darker still. He had night-black hair swept back from a widow’s peak, and inky-black eyes. He caught my eye and smiled a smug, smirking smile, smoothing back his hair with one immaculately-manicured hand.
‘Better,’ said Pense.
Nyden looked at me, clearly waiting for me to be impressed.
I narrowed my eyes. ‘Nyden,’ I said.
‘Yes?’
‘You have done that before.’
‘Never.’
‘You have. You must have. So polished a vision of masculine urbanity does not spring from nowhere.’
Nyden frowned in annoyance, and licked the tip of one fang. I noted his incisors were still rather longer than they should have been. ‘I do not know what you are talking about.’
‘Mhmm. There’s just one thing.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Your skin. It’s too black.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
‘I am serious. Many humans there are with gorgeous black skin, but it’s… not like that.’
See, Nyden was proving himself a little too attached to his blacker-than-black scales. He had given himself black skin like onyx, solid black, like he was carved from marble. He would have made an exquisite statue, but that wasn’t quite the effect we were going for.
Nyden thought about my comments for a moment, and then said: ‘Is that better?’
‘No,’ I replied, having failed to discern the slightest alteration in his appearance.
He sighed deeply. ‘Humans,’ he growled. ‘So limited.’ But he adjusted again. His skin didn’t lighten exactly, but he altered and blended the depth of the colour until it looked more real.
‘Lovely,’ I assured him.
Nyden admired the back of one of his own hands, and gave a satisfied smile. ‘I know.’
5 V
I did remember to ask Llandry about that mystery draykon out at Sulayn Phay.
‘I haven’t heard anything about that,’ she said, but she looked troubled, and I wondered whether the possibility had sparked off something in her mind. But she would not be drawn further on the subject, merely adjured me to consult her if anything else about it came to light.
By the time I reached Glour City, the matter had largely faded from my mind. We returned to find that our two Lokant tutors, Tynara and Dan, had arrived and were kicking their heels at HQ with Adonia. Neither of them were delighted about this. They had brought our students with them, and Fostiger had arrived as well, so we had nine partial Lokants to hou
se and five tutors to settle in. It made for a busy week, I can tell you.
Within a few days, though, we had everybody comfortable, lessons were underway, and our little school was officially functional. And all right, there were some problems. Tynara and Dan found us unsophisticated, poorly organised and risibly ignorant, and they made no secret of the fact. Some of the students apparently concurred with their opinions, and were not best pleased to be relocated to Glour City when they could have stayed at Sulayn Phay (and how is that for ingratitude! Rescued from the clutches of their vile kidnappers and they saw us as the oppressors!) Nyden clearly had no idea how to behave like a responsible human (sort of) being and had to be guided (if not pushed) through every part of his day.
Avane and Adonia between them made fairly short work of Nyden, however; the students mostly settled in; and I found it possible to ignore Tynara and Dan. And lo, we did all exist in peace and harmony for…
… a day or two. After which point it began to occur to Ori and I that there was still no sign of Gio, and that this seemed like a bad sign. Ori began to look meaningfully at my arm — the wrong one, but I could hardly expect him to remember which bit of me his boyfriend had carved a hole in — and murmur about “going to check on him”.
At first I felt only that Gio’s continued absence was inconvenient, considering that we were deprived of his services, and all the diligent lesson planning he had done with Ori was going to waste. But as the days passed I became concerned, too.
‘He’s probably just, um… busy?’ I tried.
Ori looked sceptical, to say the least. ‘Busy doing what?’
‘Being indispensable to Ylona?’
‘And he hasn’t come back even once, to catch us up? To make sure we know he’s okay? I find that hard to believe.’ We were in my office at HQ and Ori couldn’t sit still. He had occupied my visitor’s chair for about five seconds and then got up and paced about. He was still pacing.
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