Dog and Dragon

by Dave Freer

  She had a drink and washed her face. It had been another restless night. She sat and thought about happier times. Before she’d known too much. When she’d had a dog and Finn to follow. And had slept rough and been nearly killed . . . and had been happy.

  At last she decided there was no use moping, and she needed to go and do something. Anything.

  She got up. Bent down, had a last drink, washed her face, and walked away, away from the little oasis next to the wall.

  She was passing next to the washhouse when an uneven stone made her stumble and fall headlong into the muck. It saved her life. The arrow would have spitted her otherwise. She sat up and saw it quivering in the wooden washhouse wall. For a second she stayed still. And then she scrambled on hands and knees behind the nearest wall. And another arrow hit that.

  Someone was trying to kill her. And it wasn’t one of the crudely fletched big Fomoire arrows either. Those, she’d seen, had long multibarbed points. This was a normal arrow, with the single barb of the Lyonesse arrows.

  Meb wondered just what she should do now . . . besides get out of there. “What’s wrong, Lady Anghared?” Anxious voice, male . . . it was the elderly steward who had changed her wine from the one Aberinn had bespelled that first night. Was that why she saw and tasted what the food really was? She didn’t care. He was help.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, kneeling next to her.

  “Someone shot at me. Someone tried to kill me.”

  “Are you hit?” he asked.

  “No. I tripped over a stone. It saved me,” she replied.

  “The Fomoire have not managed to get many shots over the wall. Come, my lady. Let me help you . . .”

  “It wasn’t the Fomoire. It was someone in the castle. Look.” Meb pointed at the arrow in the washhouse wall.

  Only it wasn’t there anymore. There was just a narrow hole where it had struck.

  Having someone try to kill her was bad enough. That had her on her feet and sprinting for the shelter of the main keep, with the elderly steward running behind. She didn’t stop until she had barred herself into her own room.

  Panting, she sat on her bed. If magic was that difficult inside the castle—unless one was Aberinn—it could only be the castle mage who had had a hand in trying to kill her.

  * * *

  It took her quite some time to settle her nerves. She had to get out of here. She would have to wait until the siege was over, unless . . . well, she had no idea how to get herself magically anywhere else. And if mere wishing would do it, well she knew where she would have been now . . . except it would kill Fionn. And she’d rather die herself. She took a deep breath. Stood up. Well, she’d brave the bower. At least there, if anything happened, she had some kind of ally.

  Walking down the passage towards it she met that smiling ally.

  “Good news! I’ve just heard that the Mage Aberinn has nearly enough power for the Changer. We’ll be able to escape the Fomoire, months before anyone could have expected it.”

  Several other women came down the passage. Now was no time to tell Vivien that she was going to flee this castle just as soon as the siege was lifted. Instead she made her best effort to smile and said, “I must talk to you later, but first I will go and see poor Neve.”

  She made her way down to the sickroom. The news had plainly got there too by the looks on the faces of the injured. She made her way to Neve’s bedside. The poor girl looked, if anything, worse. Meb had heard that others—those who had not died—recovered. The only thing holding her here in this castle was this faithful girl.

  Holding her hand, she said. “Neve. Someone tried to kill me. I . . .”

  Neve squeezed her with a clawlike little hand. And then spoke in a little dried-up whisper. It was the first thing she’d said for two weeks. “I didn’t want to do it, m’lady. They said I’d be turned out. Left to starve and be raped.” She sobbed convulsively, wracking her little body. “So I told them. I . . . hate myself.”

  Meb looked at the weeping woman in puzzlement. “But you’ve been here in the infirmary for weeks.”

  “I . . . I told them about the donkey. That you couldn’t ride. So they put you on the killer. I tried to run and warn you, but Methgin, he held me, put his hand across my mouth when I screamed.”

  Methgin was one of Prince Medraut’s bodyguards. And some of the comments about the horse now made sense. “I didn’t get killed. The horse liked me, and I liked it. So all their plans came to nothing. Stop worrying about it, and get better.”

  “I never told them about the magic. I told them things I thought would make you seem safe. They’d be scared by the magic, and want to kill you. But it didn’t work. They told me I’d have to poison your wine. Prince Medraut sent the order . . . I couldn’t. So . . . so I went and looked at the evil eye. You must flee, m’lady. You must go.”

  Meb hugged her. “I am not leaving you here, you silly goose. You didn’t have to do this to yourself.”

  “I’m dying, m’lady,” said Neve. “You’ve got to go, as soon as you can. As soon as the Changer takes us from the Fomoire.”

  “Firstly, you’re not dying. If you were going to die, you’d have been dead within hours. You’ve just been wishing yourself dead and starving yourself to death. That stops right now. I am going to need you to help me get out of this place,” said Meb firmly. “I’ll talk to Vivien . . .”

  “She reports to the mage.”

  “What?”

  “She’s scared for her place and her children. Besides, her family are old queen’s men. Aberinn is too,” said Neve.

  Meb swallowed. Friendship? All she’d had was spies. And Aberinn had to be behind the latest attempt, surely. And then she got a grip on herself. One of those spies had tried to kill herself, rather than go through with murdering her.

  She hauled Neve upright, sitting her against the wall. “Let’s get some food into you, dear. You’ll need your strength, because we are going as far as possible from this nasty little nest of vipers.”

  “Me?” asked Neve, puzzled.

  “Well, unless you’d rather stay here and starve yourself to death, while we could go and take a chance on just starving to death.”

  “You . . . forgive me?”

  “There’s nothing to forgive, and everything to be grateful to you for,” said Meb, kissing her. “And I probably would have done the same if it had been the other way around. Now, let’s get you some food.”

  Neve ate, very little, but she ate. But one-handed, as the one skinny little claw hand held onto Meb. And Meb knew that the mending had started.

  Now all she had to do was get the two of them out of here, which was going to be more complicated than just going missing during a hunting ride, which had been her half-formed plan up to now.

  It did have one positive effect. Meb was so absorbed in thinking about it that she forgot to be afraid. She decided there was no point in trying to go through the motions with the bower—they knew who she was, and what she was, by now. Instead she went to the stables, something ladies did not do. The expression of the stable hands would have told her that, if she hadn’t known already. “The horse I rode.”

  “Yes, Lady Anghared,” said the chief groom, who had hastily swept up to see what she wanted. He had looked very wary before the mare was mentioned. “Leia. Um. a good bloodline.”

  “Can I see her?” asked Meb.

  “Um. Yes . . . she’s got an unchancy temper.” The groom looked as if his own entrails might melt out of pure terror.

  “She was lovely to ride,” said Meb. “Who was kind enough to suggest her for me?”

  “The . . . the p-p-prince’s groom.”

  But you all knew, thought Meb. They’d arrived at the stall. And the mare rolled a liquid eye at her, and whickered softly and pushed her nose at Meb. Meb stroked it instinctively. “I wish I had an apple for you,” she said, putting her cheek against the side of the nose, horsey whiskers tickling her neck.

  And of course, she then
had one. She just wished, earnestly, that she really understood this and could do it with intent—but that wish was not granted. And it was only right that she took a bite of the apple first. It was real food, not old castle food. The mare thought so too.

  The chief groom shook his head in amazement. “They said you were a good rider, lady. Not that you were the Horse Goddess herself.” Obviously she had stepped up several leagues in his esteem. “If you need anything of us, my lady, you just say.”

  There was a murmur of assent from around the stable. “Just look after her,” said Meb. She couldn’t ask them for what she’d need. Horses, and a way out of here. But . . . step by step. “You could show me how you put the tack on properly. I have never learned.”

  If she’d wanted to be shown how to fork dung they’d have shown her, even if she was supposed to be a lady. When she left the stable, she was floating on a sea of goodwill and feeling oddly happier than she’d felt since parting from Fionn and Díleas. Horses were not as clever as dogs, or certainly not as clever as Díleas—but they had some of the same kind of trust for humans.

  Of course it was all too good to last. She had horsehair on her dress, her hair less than well ordered, and she found Lady Vivien waiting for her, worry written all over her face. “Anghared. You look a fright. You mustn’t go to the stables. You mustn’t wander around without an escort. The women are in an uproar about it.”

  Meb wondered if now was the right time to challenge Vivien about being a spy for Aberinn. She decided she just couldn’t face dealing with it right now. “What does it matter? They don’t like me anyway. They won’t like me, and won’t accept me.”

  “They’re saying you must be some kind of lowborn imposter.”

  “Well, I am, I think. I’m not what they thought I was, anyway. And the minute I can get out of here, I will leave. I know . . . I promised to help Lyonesse, but I can’t do anything here. There must be somewhere else I could go.”

  Vivien shook her head. “Anghared!” she sighed. “Yes, there are some fortresses to the north, and down to the south where Earl Alois still has some following. But, well, they are leagues away. You can’t just ‘go.’ Even the regent’s messengers go with an armed escort of twenty men. There are the tail ends of armies out there. You can’t feed yourself and there is nowhere safe or dry to sleep. And anyway, judging by the talk, they’re more likely to throw you in a cell and question you than to let you go. You have to try to fit in, and you have to show them your power.”

  “That will probably make them want to kill me instead,” said Meb crossly. As if they hadn’t been trying to do that already. It was obviously no use asking Vivien for help in escaping. “I’ll wash and change, and come and smile and try to be nice. And tell them I had left something in a saddlebag, and as I don’t have a tirewoman to send, I went myself.”

  * * *

  The queen of the Shadow Hall peered in puzzlement and anger at her glass. Not only had Dun Tagoll withstood the evil eye, but they were thinning the ice bridge. She’d worked hard, feeding pieces of the dead to her cauldron, mixing, blending and making her creatures. Filling their minds with her orders and sending them out. Spreading the fear of treachery across Lyonesse. She’d been able to preempt the false, treacherous Aberinn, because she’d known the patterns of the Changer. Known that the Ways between would open when next the mage used the ancient device in the tower. He did not understand it fully. His strength lay in protecting, cloaking and hiding. Who would have thought he could turn that against her skills? Of course he did have the legacy of the devices and the books in the tower.

  She had the cauldron, her muryan slaves and the vision. He could stop her looking at Dun Tagoll, but that was the limit of his power. She sighed to herself. She’d fought this war for such a long time now, she would not let a little check stop her. There was work to do, the cauldron to be fed. The muryans brought a constant stream of material for it. She’d been getting behind, and some of it was quite ripe. Of course, when the muryans brought it in, some of it was overripe already.

  Chapter 13

  It was inevitable, Fionn thought, that they didn’t meet just one Fomoirian, but a good fifty of them, All waiting as they came out of the mouth of a defile, so there was no avoiding them. And they were in a filthy, fight-picking mood. In other words, their normal selves.

  “What are you doing here?” their leader demanded. A number of them, Fionn noted, were walking wounded.

  Fionn stared at him as if he was a large salad at a carnivore dinner. “It’s more like what are you doing here? Here of all places.”

  “Why shouldn’t we be? It’s our hunting territory,” said the burly, misshapen leader, scratching his vast paunch.

  “Where have you been?”

  “Killing Tuatha Dé children with the magic-stealers. But they’ve melted the south bridge, and the priests say they can’t find the cold to send out.”

  “Ah. That explains it. Part of the sky is going to come down,” said Fionn, pointing at the dark water above their torch flares. He got suitable expressions of terror from the Fomoire. It had happened, occasionally. “They’ve drawn too much cold out. It got too warm in here, and that’s making the sky fall. I’m supposed to be looking for fires. You better put those out.”

  “But . . . it’ll be darker than the inside of a whale’s belly if we do.”

  “It’ll be wetter than one if you don’t,” said Fionn. “Keep one lit, and head out for somewhere higher.”

  “And you?” demanded one of the warriors. He was quite well made for a Fomoirian. Could almost have passed for a large, pallid man with very big ears and horns.

  “I can see in the dark. Been sent by my clan chief to smell out fire. So that’s what I’ll do.” And he walked on past them, aware that his neck piece was twitching. The dog was behaving as if it was going to sneeze.

  “Who is your clan chief?” demanded one of Fomoire.

  “Balor.” There were always at least twenty Balors in the evil-eye clans. And they had the most power and the most respect as a result of the status of the evil eye.

  “Huh. The Tuatha Dé children taught you lot a lesson, didn’t they?”

  Fionn could only hope they had. The evil eye gave him a headache, which of course was nothing to what it did to creatures less robustly built than dragons. The dog wouldn’t survive it, even if it was about to sneeze in his ear. “Yeah. But we’ll make them pay,” Fionn grunted and walked on. Fomoire were, because of where they lived and because bathing was not a cultural practice they’d ever been that keen on, always a smelly bunch. But this lot had a real taint to them. Dead meat. Rather like that giant.

  “I don’t think he is what he claims to be,” said the fellow with the horns.

  Most of them had been good little Fomoire and put out the torches. Fionn helped the surviving two to go out, and loped off.

  They wouldn’t manage to find him. But word would get around. That would cause panic. The Fomoire had retreated here to be safe from the cheerful genocide of their successor people. They had made repeated attempts to take their old lands back, in the earlier days anyway, secure in the knowledge that they had a place which was safe. Which could not be reached, let alone invaded, by others. It had meant that they didn’t even have to try to get on with their neighbors. It also meant no one could get away, and they had to live with their own fire smoke and mistakes. The place didn’t even have decent beer. Fionn hoped that the dog was leading them out of Mag Mell, and soon. They’d been walking in this direction for several hours now.

  And then, abruptly, the dog sat up and barked in his ear. Fionn looked around. It was pitchy dark of course, but planomancer dragon eyes could still see a little. They were alone, in the darkness.

  The dog nosed at his face.

  “What do you want?”

  Díleas jumped down and began walking . . . back. He turned around and gave his little “come along” bark.

  Fionn wanted to sit down, put his head in his hands and use s
ome very descriptive terms in several long-forgotten languages. “We just came from there,” he said between gritted teeth. “Look. I followed you, principally because I didn’t want you to get hurt. You’re important to her, and one place is much the same as the next for starting a search. I’ll spot her magic easily enough. When you started taking me through gateways between worlds that I didn’t even know existed, instead of the usual transitions, and you brought me to the Celtic cycle . . . well, I assumed you had some way of knowing where she was, just as the shepherd’s kidnapped dog found its way home. I’d heard of lost dogs tracking people who had moved before, but this is insanity. This is the second time you’ve just changed direction. Do you have any idea where you’re going?”

  “Hrf.”

  “Two barks for yes. One bark for no.”

  “Hrf. Hrf.” A pause. “Hrf.”

  Fionn closed his eyes. “That’s either ‘yes and no’ or ‘maybe’ or just me imagining things. Well, the only way I know out of here is a good two weeks’ walk away . . . so is it back the way we came?”

  “Hrf hrf.”

  So they began the long walk. That was one of the major drawbacks, as far as Fionn was concerned, of Mag Mell. The land beneath the waves had a magical “roof” a mere ten cubits up, which made dragon flight impossible there. It was shank’s pony or nothing. Anyway, he had the dog to look after. He needed to see how he could fly with it.

  Fionn was careful to avoid Fomoire. It was easier, because night had fallen above the water, and even in the shallows there was little ambient light. Smoke drifted up here and was trapped, polluting their best lands. One could, to some extent, understand why the Fomoirians were such a charming bunch, even if it was partly self-inflicted injury.

  Fionn was glad the dog knew where to find the way out, because there were absolutely no marks on this side. Just gravel that had once been seabed and dead scallop shells in the water-filtered moonlight. Díleas jumped down and danced around him on his hind legs. So Fionn reached down and picked him up and held him above his head. Díleas jumped through the “roof” of dapples. Fionn, determined not to lose him again, used all his strength to jump up and follow. It was pretty much, Fionn decided, exactly where they’d entered Fomoire lands, only it was not dark out here, but late afternoon instead. Well, time ran at variable speeds in these planes. Fionn and Díleas swam back to the beach. The rocks provided some fresh oysters, and a driftwood fire dried them, and while Díleas did not deign to dine on raw oysters, he did eat them cooked; a small, slightly brackish trickle provided their drink. It wasn’t ale and a good roast dinner, but Fionn was tired, and tomorrow would have to provide those.