by David Drake
"What?" said Neyral in amazement. "Are you out of your mind? I don't know who this Mastyn is, but without Vonculo we might as well stay here on this mudbank. Unless you know how to navigate a ship, mistress."
Ilna went cold. Her hand reached into her sleeve, but she didn't bring out her bunch of cords. That wouldn't help; and the kind of satisfaction she'd take in--watching Neyral strip off his clothes and hop like a toad out of the tent, say--would be one more matter for regret when she next wakened before dawn.
"Let me have some of that wine, Tadai," the captain said. "It's the least you can do, dragging me out of my tent for this nonsense."
"Lieutenant Roubos?" Tadai asked calmly. "What's your opinion of the matter?"
"I don't know what a bunch of rowers are going to do," the Blood Eagle said. "They don't have weapons beyond belt knives and I suppose clubs. I can keep my men in full gear, if you like, and transfer the rest of them over to your ship. But even the six of us aboard now could cut through fifty sailors about as quick as we'd butcher sheep."
"You'll have to row yourself if you do," Neyral said, looking up from the wine that he'd started to pour. "Look, I don't see why we're talking about something so silly. The men won't mutiny--they get paid at the end of the voyage!"
Ilna looked at the 'captain' who didn't recognize the name of his own ship's bosun. "Mastyn tells them he'll take them to a place where gold lies in the streets," she said, controlling the angry tremble in her voice. "He has--"
He has a music box that makes people see visions? As Ilna's mind formed the words, she knew better than to speak them. "He's very persuasive," she concluded lamely.
Neyral chuckled and winked at Tadai over the cup he'd just filled.
"Pardon me, mistress," the younger aide said, his voice just on the side of politeness. "You say you heard the men plotting. This was in a dream vision?"
"No, I got up and went outside to sleep," Ilna said. "I don't have visions."
"Perhaps you dreamed you walked outside, mistress?" the aide pressed. Tadai and Roubos exchanged a glance; knowing and very possibly pitying. "No doubt the voyage is a great strain on you. Leaving your friends behind, that is."
"I'm telling you what I heard, not what I imagined!" Ilna snapped. The children wailing underfoot were goading her into a fury. She had to get off these accursed rugs!
"Well, we'll take precautions," Lord Tadai said in a soothing voice. "Roubos, you'll see to it?"
"Yes, milord," the soldier said. "We'll be especially alert. We're here to guard you with our lives."
Ilna opened her mouth, then closed it. She wanted to blast them all screaming to Hell--and she could do that, she really had that power. She wouldn't, though, because that sort of action would take her to Hell along with her victims, and she'd already spent all the time there she wanted to in this lifetime.
Ilna turned and walked out of the tent, blind with anger. Behind she heard a voice calling, "Mistress Ilna, please sit with us for a moment," and another voice saying, "Is she drunk? She'd leave us without a navigator or a crew!"
The sea breeze filled her tunic. The atmosphere inside the tent had been stifling. The servants wore garlands of silk flowers with perfumed ointment as they sat drinking, but Ilna knew that wasn't what she was reacting to.
There was a rustle beside her. "Mistress Ilna?" Merota whispered.
Ilna put an arm around the girl fiercely and walked away from the tent and the fools inside it. When they were ten paces out in the darkness she demanded, "What are you doing here?"
"I slipped under the side of my tent when you were talking to my uncle," Merota said. "Mistress Kaline was asleep. She snores."
Ilna looked at the girl. Merota was wrapped in a black shawl much too big for her. Ilna touched the garment and let the wool tell her of an aging, stiff-necked, poor woman whose secret pride was that she believed her real father was a noble and not her mother's saddle-maker husband. She was quite wrong about that.
"This is your tutor's shawl," Ilna said.
Merota nodded agreement. "I wore it because it was black and I could get close to the tent to hear what you were telling my uncle," she said. "The guard was listening too."
Ilna laughed bitterly. "Nobody was listening," she said. "They made that quite clear, though some of them more politely than others."
They'd reached an outcrop of porous stone standing above the tideline. Coral, perhaps? Ilna knew little about rocks and cared less. She sat down, spreading the lower edge of her cloak to make a seat for the girl beside her. The shawl's loose weave was no protection from the damp ground.
"The men think you were Prince Garric's mistress," Merota said as she seated herself daintily, crossing her legs at the ankles. "They think he's getting rid of you because he has Lady Liane now and you're just raving because you're so angry. But that's not true."
"No," said Ilna, holding her hands very still because she was afraid of what she might otherwise do with them. "That's not true. But it explains the way they treated me tonight. There's always a reason for why things happen the way they do."
Her hands didn't move, but she couldn't prevent the images forming in her mind. She could lead them all into the sea after her: the plotters, the foresworn sailors, the soldiers smug in their armed strength and the nobles with their entourage smirking at the little peasant girl who thought she could be more than a bit of slap-and-tickle for a prince.... They would walk off the beach in line, each one holding the hand of the victim in front of him, and they would drown in terror, unable to struggle against their doom.
And Ilna os-Kenset would drown first of all, never again to be troubled by fools and by lies!
"Are you really going to do that, Ilna?" Merota asked in a small voice.
Another group of sailors was dancing, this time to a beat shaken out on a tambourine and a pair of castanets. Stringed instruments wouldn't last long at sea.
"I spoke aloud?" Ilna said.
"Yes, Ilna," Merota said. The shawl covered all the girl's face but the white band in which her eyes were gleaming pools.
"Well, I'm not going to do that," Ilna said with a sigh. "It wouldn't help anything. Not that I can see what I could do that would help."
"I'm glad," Merota said. She was shivering.
Ilna put an arm around the girl again and hugged her in embarrassment. "This isn't a world for people like me, Merota," she said as she stared at the mild surf. "Other people don't react to things the way I do. They don't care, or anyway they don't care the same way I do."
She felt tears forming at the corners of her eyes. She couldn't stop them any more than she could stop her heart beating. Merota's arm wove under Ilna's so that she could hug the older woman also as they sat side by side.
"It's their world, you see, Merota," Ilna said, "so it's me that has to be wrong. And I suppose I could be wrong about the sailors' fantasies too. What Mastyn promises can't possibly be true. Anybody can see that once they think it through."
"I hope so, Ilna," the girl said in a soft voice.
Ilna grimaced. "Come," she said. "We'll find softer ground and get some sleep. My cloak will cover two."
Maybe if she slept she could manage to forget Chalcus saying how it was easy to get people to believe in what anybody should have known was too good to be true. And also forget Chalcus' knowing smile.
"Where am I?" Sharina asked. She started back instinctively, though she felt embarrassed at once. The long jaws would look the same whether the creature were smiling or leaping to tear her throat out.
"You're on an island that doesn't have a name as yet, Sharina," the creature said. "In your day--in the age from which you come--it will be called Cordin."
If she turned her head even slightly she could no longer see him; he was a blur of smoke and faint light visible from only one angle. His voice rang in her head as if someone played the words on tiny metal strings instead of speaking them through a normal throat.
Sharina forced herself to breathe slowly, but
she couldn't help the way her heart hammered. She wondered if she was really listening to a reptile man or if this was a hallucination from the stress of the past---hours? How long had it been since the great bird snatched her away from her friends?
"You can put your knife away," the creature said. "I mean you no harm. And besides, it's no threat to me. Even in this age, I've been dead for longer than you can imagine."
He made a trilling sound in her head like the call of a leopard frog. Sharina supposed it was laughter; and it did relax her, for no reason she could have explained.
She slid the knife home in its sheath, closing the tongue of sealskin around the hilt and into the socket on the other side. "Who are you?" she asked. "You already know my name."
The creature shrugged. "The colonists call me the Dragon," he said. His long jaw swung and dipped, indicating the direction from which Sharina had entered this chamber. "The people like you, that is. My people are long dead."
"Why do they want to kill me?" Sharina said. "What have you done to them to make them so afraid?"
"They have no more reason to fear me than I, who am dead, have to fear them!" the Dragon said. His mouth shut so sharply on the last syllable that Sharina heard the clop that the jaws would have made if they were real. "They're barbarians who know no response but fear or violence."
He bent forward slightly--though Sharina noticed that he never took his four-fingered hands from the table nor leaned beyond its ghostly edge. "Nor have you, Sharina. If you wish, you can walk away from here without let or hindrance. But if you do--"
Sharina touched her index finger to the black horn hilt of her knife. She knew it was useless as a weapon, but the smooth coolness of it helped her retain her calm.
"--you should realize that you will never see your home again. Alternatively, you can choose to serve me. If you do so, you and your friends will gain by it."
Sharina put her hands to her side and stood straight. "I won't serve evil," she said in a clear voice.
The Dragon responded with more trilling laughter. "I am not evil, Sharina os-Kenset," he said. "Or good either, if it comes to that. If you enter my service, you will serve me. But I promise that if you serve me well, you will find me a good master."
She realized that the real oddity of the creature's voice was not how she heard it, but rather that she heard it without echoes. Her words waked their own chorus whenever she spoke.
Sharina chuckled. What was the choice, after all? To go back to the settlement? The only question there seemed to be whether they would simply kill her or instead would kill her with refinements.
The Dragon's jaws opened in a toothy grin. His voice in her mind said, "They aren't a very refined group, I'm afraid. Though perhaps they'd make an exception for you."
He hears what I think!
Sharina interlaced her fingers and stretched them. "But of course you would, wouldn't you?" she said, deliberately speaking aloud.
"If you enter my service, you will have far to travel," the Dragon said, continuing the previous thread of conversation with an ophidian determination. "Though the path will be toward your home, you will find the way hard. I will give you guidance on the way, but I cannot protect you."
He didn't blink the way a human does, but as he spoke membrane flicked sideways across eyes, the right one and then the left. The effect was disconcerting; but then, everything about Sharina's situation was.
She bent and began to massage the soreness from her calf muscles with both hands. "If I served you, what would you have me do?" she asked without looking up from her task.
Abduction and being chased through the forest had taken a lot out of Sharina. She'd have liked to sit, but there was no chair or bench and sitting on the floor would have put her at the Dragon's feet. Did his toes have claws? His fingers looked normal enough by human standards, though fine scales covered them in place of bare skin.
Instead of answering immediately, the creature stood deliberately and set his right foot on the table before him. His jaws smiled. His high buskins were of gilded leather. If the foot within the boot's pointed toe had claws, they were small ones.
"I will direct you to a place," the Dragon said. "You will find an object there. You must destroy the object, an undertaking even more dangerous than the journey itself."
Sharina stood straight again. Even wearing the thick-soled footgear, the Dragon was shorter than she was. He sat again as he waited for her reply.
"What sort of object?" she asked, though in a way it really didn't matter.
"A mummified body," said the Dragon. "The mummy of my own body, as a matter of fact."
The Dragon's laughter shrilled again in Sharina's mind. His fingers splayed and closed on the shimmering table in what Sharina guessed was a meaningful gesture to the creature's own race.
"I was a great wizard, you see," he explained. Hints of merriment continued as an undertone to his words. "My flesh retains certain authority over the powers I controlled when it clothed me. Those who are using that flesh for their own ends should have remembered that--"
The humor vanished. The reptilian cheekbones didn't have muscle over them and therefore lacked a mammal's range of facial expression, but Sharina suddenly knew what a snake looks like to a rabbit in its last moments of life.
"--by doing so they may call up the spirit which once wore the flesh."
"Who's using your mummy?" Sharina asked. Her mind flashed through the implications of what she was being told, vivid images of danger framed by the greater blackness of the unknown.
"Wizards," the Dragon said. His long thumbs tapped the table together; soundlessly, because neither they nor the furniture had material existence. "Fools."
He smiled broadly. "No friends to you and yours, Sharina. You have my oath on that."
The Dragon leaned toward her again. "But I will have your oath too, Sharina os-Kenset. If you enter my service, you bind yourself by your honor and your soul that you will keep on until you have accomplished the task I have set you."
The black, bulging eyes watched her. The creature was still and silent.
"If you keep faith with me," Sharina said, slowly and distinctly, "then I will keep faith with you. I swear this by the Lady, the Queen of Heaven."
"My art has shown me many things," the Dragon said, "but I have never seen the God my own people worshipped. Nor your Gods either, human."
Sharina let her lip curl. She said nothing.
"Perhaps I look with the wrong eyes," the Dragon said at last. She thought she heard--felt?--an undertone of approval. "I accept your oath, Sharina os-Kenset. If you survive, you will be glad of our bargain."
Sharina felt a rush of relief. She'd been taken away from everyone and everything she knew. She hoped that the Dragon would return her to those she loved; but whether he did or not, she had a place again in the cosmos. She'd stopped being a chip adrift on the seas of time and space.
Sharina grinned. She'd never expected to be the servant of a pre-human wizard, but she hadn't expected to be a princess surrounded by servants and sycophants, either. Aloud she said, "I've had jobs I liked less."
"To business, then," the Dragon said. "You will leave this building and walk toward the arch at the end of the avenue--opposite the gate by which you entered. Slide off the seat of the throne that faces the arch. In the hollow base it you will find a snakeskin and a gold plaque."
The Dragon's image had a wavering insubstantiality like that of the creatures which appeared in Valles at the site of the bridge; but the giant bird, at least, had proved itself quite real. Sharina massaged her left shoulder where the talon's grip had bruised her.
"Carry the snakeskin with you," the Dragon continued. His lipless mouth moved in synchrony with the words in Sharina's head, but she doubted that those reptilian jaws could have made the sounds she could hear with her ears. "You will want it when you reach your destination. The plaque you will sell for money to keep you while on your journey."
"Sell it in the set
tlement here?" Sharina said in cautious concern.
The Dragon laughed. "To those folk, trade is what you do when the other party has as many spears as you do," he said. "Besides, they wouldn't understand what you meant by coinage. But their descendents will have progressed to a degree, at least; you will sell the plaque at the next station on your way."
Sharina nodded but said nothing. Her interruptions had slowed the transfer of information, so she bit back the further question she'd started to ask.
The Dragon gave a soft hiss of approval. "When you have the skin and the plaque," his cold, inhuman voice continued, "stand under the arch and wait for the moon to reach zenith. When that occurs, you will be transported to the next stage."
Sharina thought of where the moon had been when she slid to safety in this building. Frowning she said, "That won't be long."
"You are correct," the Dragon said. "Occupy yourself in the place to which the arch has sent you until I contact you with further instructions."
"How long will that take?" Sharina asked.
"However long it takes," said the Dragon. "Go now and deal with my affairs, Sharina."
The alcove of light and illusion faded into a haze of discrete dots, then vanished entirely. Had it been in Sharina's mind, as the voice certainly was? When she turned, her eyes were as well adapted to the dark as if no light had impinged on them for the past half hour. She could see the interior doorway, a rectangle of moonlight which had seeped the length of the building from the hole by which she had entered.
That was the only exit, also. Sharina started back, wondering how long it would take her to find the arch. No more than minutes, she hoped, because the moon was already near zenith.
When she passed the statue in the central room; the odor she'd noticed earlier was gone.
Sharina's subconscious had identified it, by now. She'd smelled somemthing similar the year a storm in early spring had toppled a great oak. The roots had pulled open the den of vipers wintering beneath them.