Western Shore ac-3

by Juliet E. McKenna

  Some of the other savages jeered at her, nonetheless staying a discreet distance away. The feather-crowned woman walked as slowly as she could, face downcast yet looking this way and that. She stretched out a hand towards the flames, her fingers outspread. The fire flickered gold once again and she snatched back her hand with a frustrated cry. The mockery of the crowd grew louder as the bright red of elemental fire reasserted itself.

  'What are you going to do?' Risala couldn't hide her growing unease.

  'I'll get her out of this village,' Naldeth said grimly. 'Then she can take her chances.'

  Kheda watched as the wizard steered his now apparently acquiescent captive towards the woven thorn barrier. 'You don't think she'll come back in the night to slit your throat?'

  'Then at least I'll have some reason to fight her,' spat Naldeth, 'instead of murdering her in cold blood. Now open that sorry excuse for a gate!' he shouted, waving an authoritative hand at the bemused wild men. Three understood his meaning and immediately ran to do his bidding.

  As her magical prison halted, the woman made another attempt to touch the scarlet flames. Naldeth narrowed his eyes and the fire surged higher and brighter. At the same

  time, the circle shrank and the woman cowered within its reduced confines. As soon as the busy savages had ripped an adequate gap in the thorny barrier, Naldeth set the fiery circle moving once more. Now the woman began struggling, shouting what could only be threats and forcing her hands against the flames, which burned white where she touched them.

  'Just run, you stupid bitch, and good luck to you,' Naldeth muttered, frustrated, as he drove the circle of fire out onto the slope dotted with thistly plants and thorny spikes. He snapped his fingers and the fire extinguished itself.

  'If she's stupid enough to try fighting you, at least make sure she dies a quick and painless death,' Velindre choked out with reluctance.

  The woman stood, panting, blistered hands hanging by her sides. Sweat soaked her hide wrap, leaving it clinging to her body. The wax in her hair had melted and her feathers were all hanging askew. Trickles of red ochre ran down one side of her face and dripped on her bared shoulder. She stared back at Naldeth, utterly confused.

  All around, wild warriors raised whoops and cheers that chilled Kheda's blood. Snatching up clubs and spears, they ran towards the gap in the thorny barrier. The boldest favoured Naldeth with enthusiastic, appreciative grins, the rest doing their best to at least bob a bow as they ran. The feather-crowned woman took to her heels, fleeing for her life.

  'They're going to hunt her?' Appalled, Naldeth raised his hand.

  'There's nothing you can do.' Kheda grabbed the wizard's wrist and forced his arm back down again. 'You wanted her gone. Let her take her chances.'

  'Because that's her destiny?' spat Naldeth. 'You saw it in the stars?'

  'Because there's nothing you can do to save her.' Kheda ruthlessly set aside his pity for the young wizard and the doomed wild woman alike. 'Not without putting the rest of us in danger.'

  'She's heading for the hills.' Risala watched the woman skirting the thorny stockade.

  'They'll catch her.' Velindre pointed to a group of wild men using their spears to rip a new hole in the barrier to take the most direct path after their fleeing quarry.

  The feather-crowned woman was running as fast she could now, not looking back, heading for one of the thistle-choked gullies cutting into the slope on the landward side of this stretch of higher ground. Kheda watched, a sick feeling gathering in his stomach.

  Movement caught his eye. A deep shadow in another of the rock-strewn gullies shifted. Murky shapes melted, the lines of the random tumble of broken stone blurring and redrawing themselves into an ominously familiar shape. Darkness took on form and substance and the sun glittered on a deadly sheen of spines and scales. The earth dragon coalesced out of gloom and dust into implacable black solidity.

  The woman saw it and veered away, her terror-filled screams tearing the dry air. The wild men who'd been so keen to pursue her fell over each other in their haste to retreat, running headlong back to the spurious safety of the thorny palisade. Ignoring them, the dragon loped after the fleeing woman. It ran low to the ground like a lizard, feet set wide, with its broad, blunt head thrust forward and thick tail lashing behind.

  She was running away down the long, shallow slope now, her arms flailing wildly as she tried to keep her balance. The dragon sprang forward with a flash of silver beneath its folded wings. It didn't quite reach her, but as its forefeet landed the earth shivered like a living

  thing. An impossible ripple reared up through the solid ground to fling the woman off her feet. The dragon took a quick step as she tried to get up and skewered her with a swift downward thrust of its metallic grey talons. Ducking its head, it bit, cutting short her scream of agony.

  'Kheda, look.' Swallowing her revulsion, Risala pointed.

  The woman's would-be hunters were tearing at their matted heads as they ran back, some even hacking at their mud-caked locks with stone knives pulled from their loincloths. They tossed unidentifiable lumps back over their shoulders as they fled.

  'What are they doing?' As Kheda spoke he realised every man, woman and child still within the thorn barrier was drawing closer and closer to Naldeth.

  Because the only thing that can protect you from a dragon is a wizard. So you indulge his whims and his brutality and his women's arrogance. Until someone strong enough to defeat him turns up out of the blue ocean.

  The first of the men flung themselves through the gap in the spiny circle. Sweat was running down faces and bare chests, mingled here and there with blood. Hands and faces were bleeding freely where the razor-edged stone daggers had slipped.

  'It's gems,' Velindre said suddenly. 'That's what they had hidden in their hair, stuck in all the mud and wax.'

  Kheda saw she was right. Several of the erstwhile hunters still clutched rough stones that sparkled with the promise of an unpolished gem beneath the muck.

  To throw to a dragon in hopes that the beast might just slow down to lick up a jewel and give them a chance of getting away. Which is pretty much what we did in Chazen, leaving caskets of jewels on the beaches to draw that fire dragon away from the inhabited islands.

  'What do we do now?' Naldeth asked slowly.

  The menacing black beast turned in a leisurely circle, deadly tail-spike dragging to carve a sweeping trough in the dust. Lifting its head, it looked towards the spread of flimsy huts within the pitiful thorny barricade. Eyes of burning amber unblinking, it advanced towards them. Every few paces it halted, sniffing in the dust before licking something up with its forked ebony tongue.

  Accepting the savages' offerings. But I don't think that's going to persuade it to leave us alone.

  'Can you call up another dragon to lure it away?' Risala didn't look at Velindre, all her attention fixed on the advancing dragon.

  'I don't think this beast will fall for a trick like that,' the magewoman began.

  'Then what are you going to do?' Kheda gripped his sword impotently. 'Naldeth?'

  'I think—' The young wizard broke off with a choking sound.

  The dragon stopped and reared back on its haunches, spreading its wings just a little. The smaller scales in the folds of its belly skin were the exact shade of the steel of Kheda's sword. It opened its mouth and growled low. Kheda didn't so much hear the sound as feel it vibrating through the ground beneath his feet, up through the leather soles of his sandals. It shook his bones, reverberating ominously inside the hollow drum of his chest. He rapidly felt light-headed and increasingly nauseous.

  'Naldeth!' snapped Velindre. 'Fight it!'

  With painful effort, Kheda forced his head around to look at the young mage.

  Naldeth's soft brown eyes glittered like white crystal, all their colour drained away. His tanned skin shone with the implacable translucence of chalcedony, while his dirty white cotton clothes had taken on the rigidity of flow-stone. Only the metal of his fal
se leg was moving. The

  painstakingly fashioned steel flowed like quicksilver, rivets and folded seams melting away. The ungainly facsimile reshaped itself into a flawless limb, albeit one of living metal. The powerful muscles of a thigh formed above a sturdy knee where bone and tendons shone with amber magic beneath the silver flesh. Shin and calf emerged regular and straight and the liquid steel shaped itself around golden bones to make a strong high-arched foot, each separate toe tipped with a neatly trimmed nail that shone like quartz.

  We 're dead. We 're all dead, except perhaps Naldeth, and he soon will be. Or he'11 wish he was, if he suffers Dev 's fate.

  Kheda found he couldn't turn his head any more, not even to look back at the dragon. He could feel it approaching all the same, its every step sending tremors through the earth. Naldeth groaned like a man in torment and Kheda saw a faint red glint kindle in his crystalline eyes. Warmth wrapped itself around the warlord, not the sun's warmth but a harsh, punishing heat like the blast from an open furnace. Just when the heat was becoming too painful to bear, scorching his unprotected hands and face, Kheda found he could move again, albeit with every muscle screaming in protest.

  How does that help me? Other than by letting me see my death coming?

  He twisted his head to look for the dragon and saw it had halted on the far side of the thorny barrier. It crouched, cavernous mouth wide open, black tongue running around its grey metallic teeth. Golden fire burned in its amber eyes and the ebony ruff of spines around the back of its head bristled. Muscles rippled beneath its jet-black scales as it extended its steely talons, ripping gouges in the sandy ground. Dust rose from the holes the dragon's claws were making. Dust and then steam. The holes widened and belched hot metallic vapour. The dragon looked down

  and sniffed. It retreated a few paces, lowering its head to growl menacingly.

  Kheda's head throbbed unbearably. The oppressive heat wrapped still tighter around him and every breath he took threatened to sear his lungs.

  As the dragon's tongue flickered at the ground, sand and soil flowed into the gashes. Only as soon as one was filled, a new fissure opened up with a whiff of sulphur and a soft crack reverberating deep under the ground. The dragon growled more angrily and slapped at an importunate cleft with a murderous forefoot. The ground gaped to swallow its foreleg and the beast recoiled with a deafening roar. It would have taken a pace forward but a fissure split the earth just where its foot would have landed. Red fire from some unimaginable depth reflected off the polished black scales of the beast's chest. The dragon reared up to rattle its black and silver wings furiously.

  The ground shook and the dry sandy soil fractured all around the beast. Thistly plants and spiny fingers toppled into crevices opening wider and wider. Unseen in the depths, the plants burst into flames, adding a homely note of wood ash to the rising smell of sulphur. The dragon retreated, head swinging from side to side, its ceaseless growl now ringing with wrath.

  The crevices grew wider still and molten rock bubbled up to spill out over the barren ground. The trickles flowed faster down the slope, running together, merging into one swelling line of glutinous fire. The dragon walked slowly backwards, looking from one implacable stream to another. Each crawling line of burning red was curving slightly, not to follow the lie of the land but to take the most direct path to the black beast. It halted and crouched low, opening its mouth and growling so low that Kheda could barely hear it. The trickles of

  molten rock slowed and dulled and the murderous heat all around died away.

  Intense cold replaced it as the air above them filled with twisting whiteness.

  What are all these feathers?

  As Kheda's bruised wits went begging for any explanation, the soft whiteness drifted down. It wasn't a cloud but something carried on the breeze. It wasn't feathers, nor, as he next guessed, ashes. As the flakes of this mysterious stuff landed on his skin, they instantly melted. He shivered violently, gooseflesh rising all over his body. Kheda found he could move freely now. The stuff was falling thicker now, blinding him. He wiped it away from his eyes, finding it turn to water at his touch. Where the stuff was falling into the crevices and onto the motionless trails of solidifying rock, it turned to steam.

  Where's that accursed dragon?

  The black shape was still visible among the storm of white and wreaths of vapour. It snapped at the swirling mystery, brutal head twisting this way and that. Abruptly it sprang into the air. The furious downdraught from its wings drove the whiteness into Kheda's face where it stung like wind-flung sand. The dragon roared, sending furious eddies spiralling through the clouds of steam. It soared away, its shadowy shape soon lost in the milkiness.

  Kheda ached with cold, his teeth chattering. 'Risala?'

  'I'm here.' As the wind died and the whiteness began falling precipitately to the ground, Kheda wrapped her in his arms. He could feel her shivering violently through her sodden, freezing clothes.

  Velindre appeared as the blue sky cleared overhead. 'Where's Naldeth?'

  'Over there.' Kheda couldn't resist a shudder as he looked over Risala's damp head.

  The young mage was flesh and blood once again, his

  metal leg the same blacksmith's contrivance it had always been.

  'Snow?' The wizard turned a ghastly gaze on Velindre. The tiny veins in both his eyes had ruptured, bleeding vivid red to utterly obliterate the whites.

  'I didn't dare commit myself to anything more.' She shrugged. 'I just hoped any beast who'd spent its life hereabouts wouldn't have seen it.'

  'Snow,' Kheda marvelled. 'I've read about it—'

  'These people haven't.' Risala twisted in his embrace to watch the wild men and women staring astonished at the piles of white now melting rapidly as the fierce sun reasserted itself. Several matronly women ran to fetch hollow gourds as they realised this unknown stuff was turning to precious water that was just being wasted.

  'How did the dragon take you unawares like that?' she snapped at Naldeth with sudden anger.

  'What did it want?' Kheda asked in a more moderate tone. 'Before the snow came—'

  'It's a stealthy beast, and I was concentrating on saving that woman—' The wizard stopped, closing his eyes momentarily to veil their bloodshot eeriness. 'It didn't want to kill me,' he continued painfully after a long moment. 'It wanted me to feed it. It would have been quite content to leave me here corralling these people and offering up whomever I chose when it felt hungry.' His face twisted with emotion. 'Now leave me alone. I want some peace and quiet.'

  His voice rose perilously and he stumped away across the snow-covered ground. Stopping by the sodden corpse of the first feather-crowned woman, he made an angry gesture and scarlet flames leapt from the body. Flesh and bones were consumed with incredible swiftness, the snow all around shrinking away. The savages watched him disappear into the dead wizard's hut. Most were still

  looking stunned, fearful respect blended with awe in their faces.

  'He's worked more magic today than he'd have done in a whole circle of the compass back in Hadrumal,' Velindre said slowly. 'He needs to rest, and to eat and drink, before he exhausts himself and collapses.'

  Risala pulled herself free of Kheda's arms. 'I'll see if I can persuade him.' She went over to the communal hearth where various women were looking askance at the comprehensively quenched fire. Risala clapped her hands together and pointed authoritatively at the fat fleshy leaves. A woman immediately hooked a couple out of the wet ashes and offered them up. Nodding curt thanks, Risala went on her way.

  Looking around, Kheda saw that nearly all the whiteness had vanished. He shivered. The sun was beating down as hot as ever before but some chill seemed to have got into the very marrow of his bones. He stripped off his sodden and clammy tunic. 'Are you recovered enough to drive off that black dragon if it comes back?'

  'I very much doubt it,' Velindre said dryly. 'Still, let's have something to eat, before all the food goes.' The wild men and women were all delvi
ng in the wet ashes and salvaging whatever they could. The magewoman walked towards the dampened fire pit and an anxious girl hastily proffered a fat spiny leaf, wizened by the fire.

  'Will it come back?' Kheda waved away an offer of inadequately cooked fowl flesh and took a stuffed spiny leaf instead.

  'Eventually,' the magewoman said thoughtfully. 'We gave it plenty to think about. And it gave Naldeth plenty to think about.'

  'What happened to him?' Kheda struggled with the memory of what he had seen.

  'I don't know.' Velindre walked over to an empty space

  and sat cross-legged on the ground. 'He'll tell us when he's ready.' She drew her belt knife and slit open the spiny leaf. 'Oh.' Her prize proved to be filled with noisome coils of some worm or eel.

  'You must have some idea.' Thanks to blind chance, the leaf Kheda opened contained fish, and he used his dagger to skewer a lump. It tasted sweeter than he had expected.

  'You have to understand that a wizard must learn to live within the boundaries of his or her elemental affinity.' Velindre gingerly raised a twisted grey coil to her mouth, chewed and swallowed. 'Those wizards who cannot, who become totally enthralled with their element, lose all sense and caution as they go further and further, searching for the limits of their power.' She scowled. 'Only there aren't any limits. Those mages trying to find them either go utterly mad in the process and destroy themselves, or are destroyed by the Council and Archmages of Hadrumal.'

  'What has this to do with dragons?' Kheda shook his head, confused.

  'A dragon's power is utterly intoxicating.' Velindre closed her eyes, torn between longing and abhorrence. 'It offers a wizard the possibility of going beyond every constraint of elemental affinity that they have learned to live with, without penalty, without fear, to learn secrets undreamt of by countless generations of mages.'

  'Do you think Naldeth can resist such temptation?' Kheda asked bluntly.

  Velindre opened her eyes and scraped the rank contents from the inside of her leaf with her knife blade. 'Don't you think I could have found a competent mage with two flesh-and-blood feet to bring on this voyage?' She tasted the leaf pulp cautiously.