Dragonshadow

by Barbara Hambly

  He performed an extravagant East Wind in Paradise salaam, and his brother an old-fashioned Greenhythe dip, with knees bent. “Curious,” remarked Jenny, as the tall form and the slender made their way from the kitchen, slinging on their travel cloaks. She glanced at Pellanor. “The Wildspae’s a good ten days’ ride. I didn’t think Yseult able to read the weather as far away as Nast Wall, where the river rises. Certainly not what it will be a week from now.”

  “Well, there’s been some sign.” Pellanor twisted the ends of his mustache. “I heard Yseult tell the boys that, and Bliaud said as much, too. Maybe this is something Master Caradoc taught them how to do.”

  “Been teaching ’em already, has he?”

  “Some,” said the Baron. “The Commander was anxious that he begin, with the news of the Imperteng fighting getting worse. Damned hill-men—I fought them myself twenty years ago and they never seem to learn. She called me here to tell me the Regent wants me in the south. I’m bound back to Palmorgin to get my affairs in order, then I’ll be marching out with my men.”

  John said nothing, but the antic humor that had been on him dropped from him like a wet shirt. Jenny felt his stillness, his silence.

  Pellanor felt it, too, for he said, “Well, with the pirates in the Seven Isles and the troop levies coming up short from the Marches, there’s folk in the council who say it’s madness to keep garrisons here, with so little income from the north.”

  “Aye.” The nimbus of anger around John reminded Jenny strangely of Morkeleb. “Aye, it is that.”

  “My dear Lord John.” Gilver the chamberlain appeared, bowing, in the kitchen doorway. “And my dear Mistress Waynest. I beg a thousand pardons for not greeting you. Breakfast in the kitchen? I am so sorry.”

  “I’ll be off.” Pellanor clasped Jenny’s hand in his gloved ones, then turned to John. “Don’t think ill of me, Aversin. I’m the King’s man, as you are.”

  “Aye.” John returned the grip. “Just send me word who they’re replacin’ you with, so I’ll know who I’ll be dealin’ with; and your people, too.”

  “I will.” Pellanor forced a laugh. “And I’ll call on you first thing, if we find we have a dragon to deal with.”

  “Oh, that’ll bring sunshine to me day.”

  “This is most unexpected.” Gilver hurried alongside them as they left the kitchen, crossed the muddy court where Bliaud was bidding an absentminded farewell to his boys. “Your business with Commander Rocklys was urgent?” He looked from John to Jenny, as if asking what could have brought them both away from Alyn Hold.

  “Depends on what you think about Icewitches.” John hooked his gloved hands through his belt. “We think the band of ’Riders Jenny saw a week ago had a sorceress among ’em.”

  What an undermanned garrison would make of a rumor about demons, wizards, and dragons, Jenny didn’t like to think, especially considering the way the grooms of the convoy regarded Bliaud behind his back. She chimed into John’s improvisation with, “There were signs at their camp that I couldn’t interpret. I thought perhaps Master Bliaud might have more information, from the books he’s read; this Master Caradoc, now, also.”

  “Ah.” Gilver laid a finger beside his red-veined nose. “He’s a wise one, Master C. The Commander spoke of you to him, and he wants very much to meet you, my lady. Handsome as ever he was when first he courted her—ten years gone that is now—and just as short-spoken.” He chuckled. “And still won’t make more of a salaam than a little twitch of his arm, not even to her— barely to the King himself. Flummery, he says. They should be returning tonight—Master Caradoc communicated just lately with Master Bliaud on that head. Shall I have a bath drawn for you? You must be shattered.”

  As they crossed the small inner court where Rocklys had her rooms, John remarked, “Has that gone bad, then?” A new wooden lid covered the well in the center, and rings had been driven into the stone lip so it could be locked down with a chain.

  The chamberlain grimaced. “That was an unpleasant story,” he said. “One of the men had a grievance—Dumpet only knows over what—” He named the southern godlet of chaos and anger. “He poured about three buckets of latrine-filth and dead animals into it, the Commander tells me. He’s been triced and blistered, of course, but it’s taken Master Caradoc these two days to cleanse it. Now, with being called away, he hasn’t had a chance to finish the job. The Commander has ordered it be kept covered because some of the servants will try to use it still, since it’s closer than the kitchen.”

  John and Jenny exchanged a glance. The wizards lived on this court as well.

  Camp servants filled baths in Rocklys’ private balneary. The room they were given was beside Bliaud’s, on the other side of the chamber in use as a library and schoolroom. Bathed, combed, and refreshed—both turned down Gilver’s offer of mulled wine—Jenny and John had a look at the small collection of books Bliaud had brought from Greenhythe and Master Caradoc had carried up from Somanthus Isle.

  “Gaw, I never knew Dotys wrote a history of Ernine!” exclaimed John, turning one volume over in his hands. “Not that the old faker knew the first thing of what he’s talking about, six hundred years later. Look, he says the kingdom came to ruin because the last monarch didn’t worship the Twelve Gods properly and loved concubines to excess. That’s what he says about ’em all, you know. And here’s a complete copy of Ipycas’ Nature of Minerals— I didn’t think any were still in existence! And copied a treat. Those have to be Carunnus’ illuminations—look at the mazework on the borders. D’you know, Jen, that according to Ipycas, or at least the pages I have of Ipycas, King Ebranck Ferrex of Locris used a combination of sulfur and quicksilver as an aphrodisiac and fathered fifty-three children, all on different women?”

  “I presume,” said Jenny dryly, “that the women had some pressing reason to assure him of the paternity of their offspring?”

  “Well, he was gie rich.”

  “And not particularly bright, it seems.”

  “Now, Corax, the Master of Halnath, this was back when the Masters ruled Halnath in their own right, had a diamond so big it had been hollowed out into a bottle, like that dew-spoon of yours, and he kept in it what was said to be the tears of a sea monster, because those would dissolve ordinary glass and turn it and themselves into smoke … How’d they figure that one out, I wonder?” He perched on the back of a chair, his feet on the seat, lost in the wonder of antique trivia. “Gutheline II, it says, had cages carved for his pet crickets out of chunks of coal …”

  “Lady Jenny.” Yseult stopped in the doorway, startled to see them. She would, Jenny thought, have turned and fled had she been able to do so unseen. “I … I’m glad to see you. Did you find your boy?”

  “We’ve found … word of him.” Jenny drew her breath deep, trying to keep her voice from shaking. The girl looked better than she had a week ago, the food at Corflyn Hold beginning to fill out some of the hollows in her face and body. The dress she wore gave her a curious dignity, green wool embroidered with yellow flowers and quite clearly donated by the wife of a sutler or yeoman. Her oak-colored hair was braided and bound with ribbons of yellow.

  But her eyes were downcast, avoiding Jenny’s; the wary mouth settled to a neutral line. Jenny frowned a little and put out her hand to raise the girl’s face to her; Yseult stepped self-consciously away.

  “Are you all right?”

  Yseult looked up quickly, the wide brown eyes determinedly smiling, cheerful as she had not been cheerful when Jenny had left. “Yes. ’Course. I’m fine, Lady Jenny.”

  “Is this Master Caradoc treating you well?”

  She nodded, too fast and too many times. “He’s good to me, m’am. Good to me, and teaches me everything, everything I always wanted to learn.”

  Jenny was silent, remembering her own desperate hunger to learn between Kahiera Nightraven’s going and Caerdinn’s grudging acceptance of her as his student. Remembered the magics she’d tried to invent for herself in those awful years, which a
lmost never worked: the power that would not come. The nights weeping when the patched-together remnants of Nightraven’s teachings turned out to be only mumbles of nonsense words.

  Even Caerdinn’s curses and beatings had been a blessing, then.

  Men had called her whore and witch and hag in the streets when they saw her following after Caerdinn, and the children with whom she had once played ran from her. She reached out compassionately and touched Yseult’s braided hair. “It isn’t easy.”

  The girl’s eyes flickered briefly to hers, then dodged away again. She shrugged and smiled. “You said it weren’t going to be easy, m’am. But I’ve done harder.”

  “He isn’t …” There was something very wrong in the too-quick replies, the casual voice. Something evasive in the studiedly averted face. “Are you all right?” she asked again.

  “Oh, yes, m’am. Everything’s fine.” The girl produced a dazzling smile, as if for inspection. “Everyone’s so good to me. There’s not a thing amiss.”

  Everything in Jenny screamed at the lie, but she let it go. Quietly, she said, “And yes, we … we know what happened to Ian. John saw him.” She nodded back to that lithe unlikely form, digging around in a volume titled Revealed Geometries of the Planetary Movement. She drew another breath, trying to steady herself against the memory. “Ian was taken—kidnapped—by a mage who appears to be putting together a corps of mages and dragons under the influence of demons. A wizard named Isychros did the same thing a thousand years ago. Has anyone come to you, or to Bliaud, trying to get you away from this Hold?”

  “Oh, no, m’am.” Yseult retreated a step, shaking her head. “Nothing of that. I stayed in the walls, like you told me to, and I been safe. Master Bliaud, too.”

  “And no one’s sent you dreams, as I did, to try to get you away?”

  “No, m’am.”

  It was on Jenny’s lips to ask about the weather witchery, so improbably far in advance, but instead she asked, “Are you happy here, Yseult?”

  “Yes, m’am.” The girl dropped a quick curtsy. “I maun be going, m’am. ’Cuse me, m’am.”

  Jenny watched her worriedly as she crossed the courtyard, running a casual hand over the chained cover of the contaminated well, and vanished into one of the three shuttered rooms on its opposite side.

  “What the hell are they doin’ to the poor chit?”

  She looked around. John was still perched on the back of the chair, the book on his knees, but he, too, followed Yseult out of sight with his eyes. “She acts like me cousin Ranny did when her mother’s husband was comin’ to her bed.”

  “Yes,” murmured Jenny. She folded her arms inside her plaid. “Yes, that’s what I thought.”

  “This old Bliaud bird wouldn’t be witchin’ her to him on the quiet, would he?” He stepped down from the chair, laid the book aside and came to stand beside her. “Or this Master Caradoc?”

  “I’m not sure Bliaud could get the spells right.” Jenny’s brows pulled together, at the memories of the two or three village girls who’d crept to her cottage in secret, over the years, begging for charms to make “this man I know”—they never would tell names at first—“stop bothering of me.” Without exception they pleaded that “this man I know” not be hurt, though Jenny knew perfectly well that those pitiful little cantrips for impotence or “have him be back in love with me mother again” wouldn’t put an end to what was going on. “Though you never can tell. And of this Master Caradoc I know nothing.”

  “Nothing except that Rocklys is in no position to get rid of him, if he’s able to teach the others. And that he was a suitor of hers she wouldn’t have.”

  “That wouldn’t stop her from sending him about his business.”

  “You think so?”

  Jenny looked up into those sleepy-lidded cynical brown eyes.

  “She’s first and foremost a military commander, Jen, one of the best I’ve seen. She lets nothing stand in the way of good order and her objectives, whatever they may be. This school of hers means a lot to her. It may be she just doesn’t want to know. If,” he added, “that’s what’s goin’ on. It may not be.”

  “But something is.”

  “Aye.” John scratched the side of his chin. “Somethin’ is.”

  Later in the day word reached Corflyn Hold that Rocklys’ forces had been sighted from one of the signal-towers on the Stone Hills and would be at the gates by twilight. John and Jenny had spent most of the afternoon in the library, hunting for further mention of dragons, demons, or the long-forgotten incident of Isychros’ Dragon Army, with no success.

  “Dependin’ on how many dragons this wizard can round up,” John said, emerging from a slim and badly corrupted text of the Pseudo-Cerduces, “we’re like to need somethin’ along the lines of the Urchin. But we’ll need to plaster the thing with spells if it’s to be the slightest good.”

  “And I’m not sure ward-spells will work.” Jenny laid aside a grimoire. “I have no experience with the magic of the great Spawn, but if dragon-magic won’t touch them, I don’t know what will.”

  “Well, they got rid of ’em somehow way back in the days,” pointed out John logically. “Morkeleb spoke of desert mages from someplace called Prokep, wherever that was. And with Rocklys behind us we can at least prepare and get word to Gar, and see if there’s anything of use in the archives at Bel or Halnath. This Caradoc may have heard somethin’, too.”

  He stood and stretched his back, and walked to the window, where one of the camp washerwomen was crossing the courtyard with an armful of clothes. Fine linen shirts, stiff from drying, and on top a blue robe trimmed with squirrel fur, a southerner’s garment for the northern summers. Jenny, looking past John at the bright sun of the court, smiled.

  Then she heard the intake of John’s breath and saw his shoulders stiffen.

  But he waited, silent, until the woman went into the third of the three shuttered chambers and reemerged without her burden. Then he caught Jenny by the wrist. “Come on,” he said.

  Silently she followed him across the court.

  The room assigned to Master Caradoc was small, dim, and filled with half-unpacked boxes and bundles. The laundry lay on the neatly made bed, shirts folded, blue robe carefully spread out. And on top of the blue robe lay an embroidered cap.

  Puzzled, Jenny looked at John, who was walking quickly from pack to pack, touching, feeling, manipulating the leather and canvas as if searching. “What is it?”

  There weren’t many bags. Some appeared to contain blankets, cookpots, and other articles of travel, others books. On the windowsill was what looked like a shell, wrought of thinnest glass and broken at one end.

  John twitched aside the knots of one bundle, dug into it like a hound scenting carrion, and straightened up. In his hand was a cup wrought also in the shape of a shell, gold overlying mother-of-pearl as fine as blown glass.

  “It’s him,” he said softly. “It’s Caradoc.”

  Jenny frowned, not understanding.

  “The wizard who took Ian. The mage I saw on the isles of the dragons.” John raised the cup. “I saw this in his hands.”

  Jenny opened her mouth to speak, then let her breath out unused. Their eyes met in the shadowy chamber.

  John said, “We’ve got to get out of here.”

  Book Two

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Beneath a camouflaging plaid, John and Jenny passed the telescope back and forth and watched Rocklys and her men march into the fort with the setting of the sun.

  Mailshirts made a muffled leaden ringing when the drums and pipes fell silent. In the back of her mind Jenny heard Caerdinn’s harsh angry voice: A great gray snake of men, with banners on its spine, they were. Marching away to the south. Leaving us to our foes, and to poverty and ignorance afterward. Leaving us without law.

  Rocklys rode ahead on her big stallion, and the smoky light made her helmet plumes and cloak dark as blood. John touched Jenny’s arm and pressed the spyglass into her hand. Through it
she saw the man who rode at the Commander’s side.

  Square-jawed, strong-built, his face was settled into lines of arrogance, the arrogance of money that has always bought unquestioning obedience. A fair match for Rocklys, if she had taken him. Merchants wanting to be aristocrats, she said in scorn … A maid of the House of Uwanë was perhaps the only thing he couldn’t buy. On his hair he wore an embroidered cap; gloves of embroidered leather protected his hands.

  The man who’d taken Ian.

  Jenny shut her eyes. She should, she knew, feel only pity for the man himself, whatever fragments of his consciousness might still remain. She’d seen what even small wights did to and with those they possessed.

  But she could feel no pity. You arrogant, greedy bastard, she thought, knowing she was being unjust, for he must have been as hungry for craft as she. You heard the demon whispering in your dreams, promising power if you just did one simple rite…

  Didn’t you know? Couldn’t you guess?

  Or didn’t you want to know? Did you think you could control the situation, as you controlled all of your life before?

  Her jaw ached and she realized her teeth were clenched.

  “There.” John nudged her. “Look.”

  The column was interrupted for a space, where prisoners walked, hands bound up to wooden yokes set over their necks. Women and children mostly, with the alabaster-fair skin, coarse black hair, and low flattened cheekbones of the Iceriders. But nearer the front, where Rocklys and the southerner Caradoc rode side by side, two prisoners rode bound on horses, a boy and a girl. Through the spyglass Jenny saw the silver chains, the sigils and wards that lashed their wrists to the saddlebows.

  So John’s mother Nightraven must have been brought to Alyn Hold, a prisoner of Lord Aver’s spear.

  Those, she thought, and not the protection of the farms, were the reason for Rocklys’ pursuit of the band.

  As Yseult must have been Rocklys’ motive in convincing Jenny to seek Balgodorus, while Caradoc took Ian.