Servant of the Dragon

by David Drake

  "That's all right," Bantrus muttered, sounding as though he were deciding the manner of his own execution. He looked at the city and added, "We don't usually travel after dark."

  The comment wasn't inconsequential: the other four barges in the small squadron had landed at a creek mouth to shelter some hours before. The Tailwind's crew had held a brief conclave--excluding Bantrus as well as the strangers--and gone on. Quite obviously they wanted to be shut of their passengers more than they minded the risk of travelling in the dark.

  "If some money would repay the trouble--" Sharina began.

  "No!" cried one of Jem's brothers. "We don't need your money. We have no part of you, nor you of us!"

  "Thank you again," Sharina said. She turned and strode off as quickly as she safely could. Dalar walked behind her for the first few steps, then moved to her side when reflex decided Bantrus and his fellows were no longer a threat.

  Sharina smiled at the thought of Bantrus ever being a threat, but it was a sad smile. Dalar was right: the folk of the Boats deserved better of life than they were likely to receive.

  Klestis had a fine natural harbor, but it lacked the quays and paved frontage of Port Hocc. Fishing boats were drawn up on the shore. In a few of them men sat under hanging lamps and mended nets; their quiet conversations paused when they saw a blond woman and a bird the size of a man, but no one called to the strangers. The community beyond was more than a village, but it fell far short of the glittering metropolis which the legends of Sharina's day said Ansalem would rule in a thousand years.

  "I did not like ships before I was wrecked on one and blown to this land," Dalar said as they neared the first buildings. "Thus far, greater experience has not made me like them more; but perhaps some God is determined to make me more accepting despite myself."

  "I'd like to find a place to sleep," Sharina said. She supposed she should be hungry, but the atmosphere aboard the Tailwind had soured her stomach.

  The houses were single story with roofs of reed thatching. Klestis didn't have real streets, just passages between buildings which weren't necessarily parallel. Dalar stepped in front of Sharina as they entered an alley that narrowed toward the far end.

  "Will your master be able to contact you in this new place?" the bird asked as they picked their way along. He clucked cheerfully. "Not that I would prefer that we'd stayed in Port Hocc, Sharina."

  "I don't know," Sharina said. She felt a surge of bleak despair. What if she had to remain here for the rest of her life? Away from Cashel, away from all her friends; away from the time and place she belonged.

  Sharina didn't doubt that she could survive. The silver in her wallet amounted to a considerable fortune, and she trusted that her wit and willingness to work hard would parlay the capital into support for the rest of her life. She could run an inn, perhaps. But....

  Aloud she said, "I could live if we had to stay here. But I'm not sure I'd really want to."

  "I know what it is to be taken forever from one's home," Dalar said. "But we would go on, as I went on before you hired me."

  Sharina smelled the reptilian odor before she saw the square of light in what had been a blank wall when Dalar passed it. "Wait!" she said to her companion.

  The Dragon gave her a toothy smile from behind his counter. "Greetings, Sharina os-Reise," he said. "You needn't fear that we'll lose touch. One place is much like another to me."

  The lizard-man trilled his laughter. "That was true even when I was alive," he said. "A very long time ago."

  "Still, I'm glad to see a familiar face," Sharina said. She smiled faintly and added, "Greetings, master. What do we do next?"

  "Your travels on my behalf are almost complete," the Dragon said. "In what passes for the central square in Klestis of this day, you'll find a well with a curb to keep out surface water. The curb is built of ballast from ships which arrived here light and left with full cargoes. One of the blocks should by now be familiar to you. Remove it and crawl through the opening."

  Sharina nodded. She glanced to where Dalar waited as silent as the stars. His weights were in his hands.

  "Lord Dragon?" Sharina said. "When--if I succeed in carrying out my duties to you, can you send my bodyguard Dalar back to his home?"

  "When you carry out the last of your duties," the Dragon said, "I will no longer exist."

  He gave his inhuman smile. "Which is as it should be, since I've been dead for so many thousands of years. Did you think to add that as a condition for your service?"

  "Of course not!" Sharina said. "I pledged my honor."

  "And I pledged mine," said the Dragon, "that you and your friends would gain because you served me. All your friends."

  "Ah," said Sharina. The Dragon meant as much by his promises as she--she and her friends--did by theirs. "I'll proceed with the present task, then."

  The Dragon didn't speak; his long jaws smiled as his image faded from view. Dalar's head rotated to stare at Sharina.

  "There's a well in the plaza," Sharina said. "The stone is part of the wall around it. We take it out and go through, as usual."

  The bird strode forward, pausing for Sharina to come to his side when they were past the narrows. Lights from some of the houses set off the ragged open space beyond. It could be used for community meetings, but Sharina suspected that for the most part it pastured flocks driven into Klestis to be sold.

  "Dalar, did you hear our discussion?" Sharina said.

  The bird cocked his head toward her momentarily. "I heard your words, Sharina," he said. "I do not see or hear your master."

  "The Dragon considers it his duty to aid my friends in payment for my service," Sharina explained. "And you're my friend."

  "First, of course," Dalar said in sober whimsy, "we must survive. Though I suppose we could be said to have solved our problems ourselves if we do not survive."

  "I don't consider our deaths to be the result of choice," Sharina said with equal gravity. "But of course, I'm merely a servant and cannot be expected to understand greater truths."

  They laughed together in their different fashions. When I pray to the Lady tonight, Sharina thought, one of the things I'll mention is how grateful I am for a companion with a sense of humor.

  The moon had risen above the roofs, giving Sharina a real view of the plaza. The waist-high well curb and stone bases where temporary wooden stands could be erected were the only signs of public construction. A few people sat on benches in front of their homes, watching the strangers silently. Sharina didn't see an inn or even a tavern.

  She bent to examine the curb. Klestis must have no quarries of its own if the citizens mortared together pieces of rough stone ballast for their constructions. That made the wonderful city Ansalem ruled--according to legend and the journey Garric had made in dream--even more amazing.

  A pale granite slab stood out from its darker neighbors in the moonlight: the other half of the block built into the cistern of Port Hocc. It was part of the curb's base course. "Here--" Sharina said.

  "Who comes toward my master?" Dalar demanded in a ringing voice. His weights began to spin, building to a hum that now had lethal significance in Sharina's mind.

  "Sharina?" a man called. Bantrus, following us after all. "It's me, Bantrus. Look, I couldn't let you go away like that. Come back with us and--"

  Dalar caught his weights, slapping loudly into his palms. He must have calluses like a blacksmith.

  "Master Bantrus, we have to go," Sharina said. "Your friend was right: we have nothing to do with one another, your folk and mine. Go back to your friends."

  "But--" Bantrus said. He tried to come closer.

  Dalar hopped in front of Bantrus, then moved the youth back simply by taking small steps toward him. Sharina frowned, then realized that Dalar was providing vivid proof of what she'd meant by her words. Bantrus was heavier than the lightly-built bird, but he obviously didn't consider holding his ground.

  "Go to your friends," Dalar said in tones as gentle as his beak coul
d make them. "Make your peace with Prince Mykon, young human; all of you, make peace. For helping us escape, I offer you the only advice that may save your lives. But go."

  Dalar spun on his clawed heels, hanging his weights from a loop of harness to free his hands. "Let us move the block and leave this place, Sharina," he said.

  They knelt. Sharina wriggled the slab with her fingers. As before in Valhocca, they had only its weight to contend with: the stone moved slickly.

  "But...?" Bantrus said.

  "Toward you first," Sharina said, pushing the block outward with her fingertips. She gained a finger's breadth.

  "Toward you," Dalar repeated, pushing in turn as Sharina braced her side. Rather than pause when the block started to move, they kept it moving outward by shifting one hand at a time.

  "We have gained a skill, master," Dalar said. "We will be able to support ourselves in later life."

  Flickers like stars or distant firelight showed through the gap where the block had been. Bantrus stared in amazement at the play of ghostly colors where he'd expected only shadow. "Are you Gods?" he said. "Was it really true that...?"

  Dalar cocked his head, fixing the youth with eyes as hard as an eagle's to silence him. "I will follow you, I think, master," he said.

  "Yes, all right," said Sharina. She slid feet-first through the opening. For the first time she felt they were moving toward closure instead of merely escaping an unpleasant present.

  The present was pretty unpleasant. In a way, the doom facing the Boats disturbed Sharina more than physical danger from ghouls in the ruins of ancient Valhocca had. The Boats were too gentle to exist in a world that was becoming civilized.

  The moonlit square spun like water going down a spout. Dalar and Bantrus, motionless in their present, danced to the rhythm of the cosmos; then they vanished. Sharina was climbing through the side of the well curb into the center of a transformed Klestis.

  A new canopy covered the well, built as protection for an ancient monument. The plaza was paved with smooth slabs interrupted by planters and fountains to provide shade and comfort.

  The structure before Sharina was a palace. All the surrounding buildings were magnificent, tall and clad in shining metal. Their surfaces now gleamed beneath a dome of red wizardlight where the sky should be.

  Thousands of people stood in the plaza, though there was room for many more. Their eyes were fixed on the palace. None of those nearby seemed to notice Sharina's arrival, nor Dalar moments later squirming backward from the well.

  The bird looked up at the sky, a haze shot with occasional angry flashes. The air itself hummed. The red light muddied the spectators' vivid garments into hues that were more in keeping with the present atmosphere.

  "Sir?" Sharina asked the man closest to her. He was middle-aged; beside him stood a younger woman and a line of six children down to an infant in the arms of her nurse.

  He turned and stared at her. He's terrified. They're all terrified. "What?" he said. "Did you speak, mistress?"

  Sharina knew enough about wizardry to expect they were right to be terrified.

  "My friend and I are strangers here," Sharina said. She found she had to raise her voice to be heard clearly over the hum. "Can you tell us what--"

  She grimaced, because she didn't want to speak directly about the sound or the light closing the sky of Klestis.

  "--is happening here today?"

  The citizen's eyes brushed over Dalar. He didn't have enough energy to look surprised at a man-sized bird. The whole sky flashed scarlet, then dimmed to its usual sullen hue.

  The man winced, but he said, "This is the work of Ansalem the Wise, our leader. The kingdom is about to fall into chaos. Ansalem and his disciples are working to preserve us from that--"

  The citizen's dry throat choked on the next word. He swallowed, closing his eyes as though he were squeezing back tears. His whole family stared past him toward the strangers, but none of them spoke.

  "Ansalem is preserving us from that end," the man said. "That's all that's happening. Ansalem is our protector!"

  "They're on the roof of the palace," the nurse said in a voice with a Sandrakkan burr. "Ansalem and the other wizards. That's where they're going to save us."

  Despite the crowd in the square, nothing moved behind the windows of the palace. The door facing the plaza was open and unguarded.

  "Has Ansalem told you this, sir?" said Dalar. The bird moved only his head, but his body was as tense as a sapling bent into a snare.

  "We know it!" the man shouted. "Ansalem has always protected us! He's protecting us now!"

  From the roof of the palace an unseen man screamed, "My son! Not my son!"

  Sharina felt her guts knot. She looked at Dalar.

  The man screamed inarticulately; only the fact the timbre was familiar indicated that the sound came from a human being. The sky flashed like sunlit blood.

  The man and his wife were holding hands. The nurse sank to her knees, whimpering, "Ansalem will save us! Ansalem will save us all!"

  Sharina drew the Pewle knife as she ran for the palace entrance. Dalar, his weights spinning close to his hands, sprang past her to lead.

  Chapter Twenty

  "They've got heavy cavalry!" cried the commander of the first section of Blood Eagles to step from the bridge of light into Klestis. Instants later a trumpet signalled Enemy in Sight.

  "And a lot of good cavalry is going to do them!" King Carus sneered. "Trust a wizard to think horses on stone pavements are any more use than they'd be on ice."

  The Blood Eagles formed a skirmish line, screening the bridgehead. The first sections of the phalanx were swinging into position in a cacophony of horns, shouted orders, and the ring of boots on stone. Garric jogged to the right flank, sheathing his sword now that he was a commander again instead of a guide and cheerleader.

  Lord Waldron and the army staff of aides, standard-bearers, signallers, couriers--and the personal guard detachment--came with Garric perforce. Normally they'd have been mounted for visibility, but Garric hadn't wanted to risk having horses panic in the face of wizardry. The men were nervous enough.

  The right flank was as good a place as any for the command group. It was the point from which King Carus had usually directed his battles.

  "Your majesty, keep back!" Attaper snarled when he saw Garric beside him. As the phalanx deployed, the Blood Eagles shifted from an open array in front to tight masses of swordsmen on either flank. Attaper had gone with the right-hand platoons.

  The sixteen-rank phalanx was a terrifying, almost irresistible force to its front, but it was next to impossible to swing the pikes quickly to meet attacks from the flanks or rear. Until the four battalions of heavy infantry made it across the bridge, the Blood Eagles--the best trained soldiers in the Isles--would fill the need for flank guards just as they'd acted as skirmishers because the light troops were also still somewhere in the rear.

  "I'm not here as a fighter, Attaper," Garric said. "But I need to view the situation to command... and I am in command, milord!"

  The snap in Garric's voice came from his ancient ancestor--but Garric meant the words, and they were the right thing to say. Attaper, Waldron, and the other the royal officers were used to acting for themselves because King Valence had been no more than a figurehead even when he was younger. Prince Garric of Haft, with the help of King Carus, would rule the Isles.

  Or die trying, of course.

  Klestis was the same glittering ruin that Garric had seen in his dreams. Beneath a sun muted by a dome of wizardlight was a landscape of rank grass, tilted pavement blocks, and buildings from which the metal sheathing had begun to slip. Garric's eyes picked out the alabaster filigree around the audience chamber on the palace roof.

  To reach the palace, he'd have to get through the mass of armored horsemen marshalling in the plaza. Besides the cavalry there were eight shaggy mammoths with armored breastplates; the platforms on their backs held soldiers with javelins and long pikes.


  The mammoths' hair was falling away in patches. Fish or crabs had eaten half of one's trunk. The cavalrymen's armor was rusty, and where their visors were open Garric saw empty eyesockets and ravaged flesh. Yet they moved....

  Attaper and Waldron were expressionless. The trumpeter at Waldron's side began to tremble. Though he clutched his instrument to his chest, it still rattled on his bronze breastplate.

  Garric put his arm around the trumpeter's shoulders; the soldier was younger even than Garric himself, and he didn't have the benefit of King Carus to steady him.

  "They died once, lad," Garric said in a cheerful voice, loud enough for everyone in sight to hear despite the noise of troops rushing into position. "They'll die again--and by Duzi, they'll start doing it soon!"

  Three wizards stood around a brazier placed on a decorative arch at the western side of the plaza. Two were in black, one in white. Their sex was uncertain at Garric's distance from them, and inconsequential besides. As their hands moved, smoke from the brazier twisted and the cavalry below them charged.

  Waldron gave a crisp command; the trumpeter echoed it. The phalanx shuddered forward, opening ranks as it did so. Though the pikemen had never been in battle before, they'd drilled thoroughly with oars and their weapons. Their execution of the present complicated maneuver made Garric cheer. Carus smiled with grim approval.

  Several hundred javelin men slipped through the opened phalanx, jogging forward to meet the oncoming cavalry. If there'd been time to deploy properly, the skirmishers would already have been in position....

  "Welcome to war, lad," Carus said. "The only thing that ought to surprise you is when everything goes the way you planned."

  Garric had imagined a cavalry charge would resemble a horse race, but the squadrons advancing behind the crab banner of Yole started at a walk and built speed slowly. The weight of an armored man was a burden even for a powerful horse. The necromancers could bring armies back from the dead, but they apparently couldn't change the nature of the men and beasts they revivified.