Dragonlinks

by Paul Collins

  Jelindel guessed that it was probably difficult. ‘Yes, Sire, but an Adept’s path is a dangerous one. His death was more his fault than mine.’

  The King rubbed his hand over his eyes for a moment. Jelindel stood still and silent, guessing that something well beyond her comprehension had just taken place.

  ‘Adept 14 mages keep the peace in a very real sense,’ the monarch stated, almost as if he were trying to explain something to himself. ‘The kingdoms and empires of this continent have been at peace for two thousand years, apart from minor border squabbles and a bit of piracy. That peace is based on five Adept 14s: one of them was the court Adept in Hamaria until his death last year, another guards a shrine in the far south and has not been heard of for some time. Two others have not been heard of in centuries, and are rumoured to have become lost in other paraworlds. That leaves the man at your feet.’

  Jelindel bowed and retained a grave, calm expression, although she was sweating with fear beneath her robes and concealed mailshirt.

  ‘Your Majesty is well informed and gifted with understanding,’ she replied blandly.

  ‘There are difficult times ahead of us. I always told Longrical that we should have more Adept 14s, but he insisted that only a very special kind of person could wield such responsibility wisely. Sometimes I think that he and his peers were merely selfish, and jealous of young rivals.’

  The monarch looked up from the corpse of the mage and past Jelindel to the door. ‘Unhand the Mage Auditor’s men,’ he ordered.

  Daretor and Zimak shrugged off their guards.

  ‘Stay by the door,’ Jelindel commanded firmly in Hamarian.

  Both Daretor and Zimak exchanged angry glances, then Daretor whispered Jelindel’s order in Skeltian for Zimak’s benefit.

  A physician finally arrived, and was ushered into the room by two footmen who were wide-eyed with terror. He promptly pronounced the royal Adept dead.

  ‘Accept my apologies for my Adept’s behaviour,’ said the King, who now seemed resigned and distant.

  ‘Of course,’ said Jelindel, bowing yet again.

  ‘I shall order that every assistance be given you in your work. I am convinced of your power, and I must trust that your motives do not run counter to my own interests – for now, at least.’

  My next royal audience will surely be easier, thought Jelindel as she watched him leave. Nothing could go worse than what’s just happened.

  ‘This leaves the royal household in a difficult position,’ the physician explained to Jelindel. ‘Over a single day the palace has lost an Adept 14 mage and his Adept 10 deputy. Only an Adept 9 now survives to oversee the palace defences, and that Adept 9 is me.’

  ‘I did not kill your court Adept deliberately.’

  ‘But you did anyway,’ interjected the Princess, who was still lounging on the stone bench, her feet resting on the glaring lepon. ‘You have an obligation to us to guard the palace until Longrical’s Adept 11 brother returns from his pilgrimage to Sunwell Temple.’

  ‘But Your Highness, I have a search to make.’

  ‘The palace guard can help with that. You might even find it faster than with just your two assistants.’

  ‘Your Highness is generous,’ Jelindel replied, unsure of whether this was going to be a help or a hindrance.

  ‘Royal Highness, as of last night. My older brother was the Adept 10 who was murdered.’

  Jelindel gasped. ‘I am deeply sorry to hear that.’

  ‘There will be a public announcement soon, and I shall be declared heir to the throne.’ She inclined her head a little. ‘You don’t like me, do you?’

  ‘Your Royal Highness, it is not my business to like or dislike anybody. That would interfere with the sort of work that I do.’

  The Princess snapped her fingers and the lepon rose to its feet and climbed up onto the bench beside her. She stroked its glossy fur and caressed its ears, but it always kept a wary eye on Jelindel.

  ‘My brother was like you, always cold and calm, very serious about his spells, words of power and enchantments,’ the Princess continued. ‘He even kept celibate to maintain his life-force at a higher pitch. It was very hard for anyone to be close to him. In fact even I have much trouble raising an appropriate level of sorrow now that he is dead.’

  ‘It is the way of the Adept calling,’ Jelindel said.

  The Princess did not reply. Instead she looked past Jelindel to Daretor and Zimak.

  ‘That little guard of yours with the wavy blond hair, sulky face and brown tunic,’ she said, pointing languidly at Zimak.

  ‘Yes, Your Royal Highness?’

  ‘He’s cute.’

  I have a bad feeling about this, thought Jelindel. ‘He is not of noble birth,’ she said tentatively.

  ‘That’s all right, I like them witless and pretty.’

  The physician came to Jelindel’s rescue.

  ‘Your Royal Highness, we have need to arrange lodgings in the palace for the Mage Auditor.’

  ‘Of course.’ She waved her hand airily. ‘You may all go.’

  Chapter

  16

  ‘This will be quite a kingdom when the Princess is on the throne,’ Jelindel commented as they inspected their new lodgings.

  ‘That Princess, she’s just brimming with style,’ Zimak said as he unpacked his few possessions on a huge bed.

  ‘Just you keep such thoughts to yourself or her father will give you an orchidectomy,’ warned Jelindel.

  ‘I – what’s that?’

  ‘They cut off your orchids.’

  ‘What orchids? I don’t see – What! Oh no, they wouldn’t, they couldn’t!’ bleated Zimak, his smile collapsing with dismay. ‘I’m a loyal citizen of Skelt.’

  ‘You’re also a fugitive from Skelt travelling on false border papers,’ Daretor pointed out. ‘Keep your hands to yourself and behave. And use those Hamarian phrases I have been teaching you. Use them whenever you can. It’s best not to advertise where we are from, for there are bounty gleaners about.’

  The Adept 9 soon arrived and conjured guard spells for their doors and windows. Jelindel argued that she could do it herself, but he was adamant that the job was his.

  That night Jelindel made a very detailed inspection of every stone, panel and plank in her room, and was gratified to find two narrow access ways. Even though they smelled musty and long disused, she jammed both shut, then added guard spells. As was her usual practice, she pushed at the bed but found it fixed to the floor.

  When she lay down, it was on the floor beside an inner wall.

  Slipping onto the paraplane of magical auras, Jelindel was surprised to find the linkrider almost at once, and apparently close to the aura of the physician. If it was indeed within the palace this potentially made the job of finding it easier, but that of obtaining it harder, given the palace protection. The sinister grey globes were nowhere to be seen, but a single bright sparkle of brilliant blue abruptly popped out of a snarl of domains in the mass of auras and spells that was the city. It flew high and unprotected, making for some domain that was so distant that Jelindel could not see it.

  A scatter of larger predators flapped after it on billowing streamers of wings, but the bright entity was far faster than they, and had the advantage of surprise. Jelindel was curious as to its nature, but not sufficiently so to follow it.

  That very night a strange bird arrived at the homing coops of the Preceptor in Tol. The communicard picked what appeared to be a black pigeon from the outer roost, only to have it crumble to dust in his hands.

  Badly frightened, he took the thin brass case that had been on the bird’s leg and rushed to the Preceptor’s study. The Preceptor was reading by lamplight, bare-chested and swatting at mosquitoes with a whisk of angelwing birds’ feathers.

  ‘Heat and mosquitoes are no respecters of position and power,’ said the Preceptor, looking up with a gloomy expression on his face. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘This – this just arrived!’ blurted the
communicard. ‘A, a thing brought it, not a bird.’

  The Preceptor’s expression immediately hardened, his eyes becoming sharp and intense. He held out his hand for the capsule, examined it, then broke the minute seal on the sleeve. Within was a roll of reedbond tissue, and on that was script in black squid ink.

  Longrical is dead. Assemble your militia for war games between the edge of Dragonfrost and the Marisa River. Mobilise the peasant reserve and declare it to be just training. Prepare to invade Passendof.

  The Preceptor touched the tissue to a lamp flame and it vanished in a puff of brightness.

  ‘How many Altimak birds do you have?’ the Preceptor asked his communicard.

  ‘Twelve, Preceptor.’

  ‘Then arrange an accident. Have all twelve escape, is that clear?’

  ‘Yes Preceptor, but, but about that bird that brought the message. It just crumbled to dust –’

  ‘It was just a test of an enchanted carrier. It worked very well. One must keep up with the latest trends in communications, do you not agree?’

  ‘Yes, but –’

  ‘Go! Carry out my orders and tell nobody about that bird under pain of death. Understand?’

  ‘Yes, Preceptor.’

  Far to the east, in Passendof, the deaths of the crown prince and court Adept were announced some days later. They were pronounced to have been from an accident during a particularly danger ous experiment in the alchemorium. The city of Dremari was plunged into a half-month of official mourning.

  The funeral was held at the end of the fortnight, and was as lavish as befitted such an ornate, rich and magnifi -cent city. The two coffins were carried on black war elephants wearing full battle armour, and even the King and Princess were together in the cortege.

  Nobility from all over the mountain kingdom flocked into Dremari to pay their respects, and all foreign ambassadors, envoys and visiting nobles were there in formal robes and wearing black sashes of mourning. One was the ambassador from Skelt, who was wearing both his King’s coat of arms and that of the Preceptor. Jelindel shivered as he went past, but he paid her no attention.

  The linkrider continued to elude her, although she frequently noted his nearness as she combed the city from her paraplane perspective.

  Daretor kept Zimak busy in the inner city, enquiring after anyone wearing a glowing orange ring. It also kept Zimak at a safe distance from the Princess.

  With the funeral over and the palace returning to normal again, Jelindel decided to pay a visit to her two assistants while away from their lavish quarters. The guard spells that the Adept 9 had left on the doors had an option invoked that was suspiciously like a sound well, and Jelindel was nervous about speaking her mind there.

  The Muleteer’s Arms was a large and rowdy tavern at the edge of the market. The alehall held upwards of two hundred drinkers and was full as Jelindel entered. Predictably, Zimak was conducting an exhibition bout of barefist against all comers. Daretor sat patiently to one side, minding the youth’s tunic, shortswords and purse.

  ‘Has fortune attended your searches?’ Jelindel asked as they sat watching Zimak fighting someone twice his weight.

  ‘We could be closing in. One of the loafers was seen to wear a glowing ring on the first night that we arrived.’

  ‘Good. His name?’

  ‘Charapax Brinkle. He works in the palace gardens sometimes, shovelling lion turds and suchlike. Nobody seems to know him very well. He was alarmed at the glow from his ring, and vanished for about a week.’

  ‘The gardens. So, he has access to the palace.’

  ‘Do you think the linkrider is also a lindrak assassin?’

  ‘The dragonlink was not near when I saw the Prince murdered from the paraplane, but time and space are very different there so who knows?’

  ‘The Princess makes me wonder,’ Daretor speculated. ‘She shows remarkably little sorrow for her dead brother, and that is not an honourable attitude. She gained most by his death, because she is next in line for the throne.’

  ‘A heavy show of grief could also be seen as suspicious,’ Jelindel suggested. ‘Do you have a description of the linkrider?’

  ‘He is perhaps twenty-five years of age, and of a build like mine, apparently. He has a short beard and hair a little deeper blond than Zimak.’

  ‘When was he last seen?’

  ‘Why, only this evening but that was the first time in a week. He was not wearing the link, according to my informant.’

  ‘He might have it in his pouch, or be wearing it on a toe inside his boot. Is your informant still here?’

  Daretor indicated a potbellied carter with a shaven head and a silver ring through the bridge of his nose. A year ago Jelindel would have fled in terror at the very sight of him. Now she just went straight up to him without a thought and paid two silver coins to talk with him about Charapax Brinkle.

  Within a quarter hour she had sketched a good likeness of Brinkle and noted down as much as anyone probably knew about the man.

  The sun was down by the time she set off for the palace, leaving Daretor to watch over Zimak. Jelindel was nervous, because only every third street lantern was burning as a sign of respect for the dead Prince, and the streets were unfamiliar and dark.

  After a year on her own, Jelindel had learned to tell when she was being followed. There were two of them now, taking turns to be here and there as she passed. She knew their build, their height, their outlines after a few minutes. They knew that she was aware of them and she realised that she was being herded to wherever they wanted her.

  Jelindel had her own alley skills as well. Turning a corner she immediately dropped to her haunches amid the shadows and drew her cape up over her head.

  Footsteps approached, passed, receded, then pattered back and passed again. She waited for several minutes to be satisfied that they were really gone. When there was no further sound Jelindel straightened against the wall. As she stepped out into the street again she suddenly noticed fading patches of blackness on the cobblestones. Lindraks! They could walk in silence by evoking the enchantment which changed sound into black patches. They might be closer than – suddenly something glided into view!

  Jelindel panicked. She said a word of binding and spat blue ribbons that snared the lindrak’s legs and arms. Immediately her own legs buckled and she cursed herself for having flung too much of her life-force at the man. Where was the other lindrak?

  The bound lindrak began a twittering, cheeping alarm call. Jelindel drew her shortsword, but her arm felt as if it were clothed in woven lead.

  The other lindrak appeared in the distance. Jelindel backed against a wall, trying to present the smallest profile possible.

  The lindrak began spinning something that glittered in the light from Blanchemoon’s crescent. He twittered as he approached and the bound lindrak cheeped softly in reply. Twenty steps away, ten, five, four –

  Something streaked past Jelindel with a rolling growl and leaped straight at the advancing lindrak. The lindrak went down under the sheer weight of muscle and bone. A glittering cord tangled about one leg of the huge, wolfish thing that buried its muzzle in the lindrak’s throat. The lindrak’s knife flashed in his hand but before he could stab the beast, it lifted him from the ground and snapped his neck with a mighty twist of its head. After a moment it turned to regard Jelindel. Two huge dagger-fangs hung down from the wolfish snout: a sabre-toothed wolf.

  As Jelindel watched in morbid fascination the sabretoothed wolf slowly went limp and toppled over. She clumsily sheathed her sword and crawled over to its body. The weighted cord around its right forelimb was lined with barbs glistening with something wet and acrid smelling.

  Jelindel was wearing gloves, and she untangled the cord from the huge beast. Suddenly the blue coils released the bound lindrak and shot back to enmesh Jelindel’s head as they poured strength back into her body.

  The lindrak lithely sprang to his feet and flung another weighted cord at her, but she caught it on her
arm … an arm covered by chainmail beneath the sheepskin coat. She stood for a moment, feeling the points that pressed against her skin without actually piercing it, then she calmly spoke a lesser word of binding that ensnared the lindrak’s legs without draining her so very badly.

  The lindrak chattered a litany of sounds. The alley brightened as his whole body began crackling with violet fire. The coils binding his legs began to disperse and waft in the gentle breeze.

  Jelindel drew her shortsword with a prayer to whatever gods might be listening. The lindrak swept towards her.

  Jelindel was never really sure what happened next, but her impression was that the sabre-toothed wolf revived sufficiently to seize the lindrak’s leg in its jaws as he passed. Jelindel joined in, and there was a desperate melee of blades, teeth and claws, slashing flesh and scraping across chainmail.

  When Jelindel awoke she was lying on her back with a roll of soft cloth beneath her head and a female face just above hers lit by yellow torchlight. The headpiece that she wore was that of a priestess of the Temple of Verity.

  ‘The lindraks,’ croaked Jelindel.

  ‘Both dead,’ said the priestess soothingly. ‘I do not know who trained you, Mage Auditor, but they should be proud of their good work. I have never even heard of anyone killing a lindrak before.’

  ‘There was a sabre-toothed wolf,’ said Jelindel, looking about. ‘It – it seemed to help me.’

  ‘I saw no wolf. My name is Kelricka – ah, what are you doing?’

  ‘I have to warn –’ began Jelindel, but the world spun around her as she tried to get up.

  ‘Let me help, my Lord Adept,’ said Kelricka. ‘Ah, is that the correct way to address a Mage Auditor?’

  ‘Yes, yes.’

  ‘I did not even know that our order had such an office as Mage Auditor,’ Kelricka began.

  ‘Please, help me to walk,’ Jelindel hastily cut in. ‘I must get to my friends and warn the Palace.’

  Kelricka helped Jelindel to stand, then ordered two of her guards to take the dead lindraks to the city watch-house while another went with her and Jelindel.