Dragonlinks

by Paul Collins

  ‘No mouth, and blue flames can only be seen when smoke drifts across them. Not flames, maybe … spears of blue. They are long, thin bars that come from its belly. Not a single house, tavern or stable is standing. Those who run are burned down. Korok watches them running. Just a flash of blue, all about their bodies, then gone! Just a puddle of melted gravel on roadway.’

  Jelindel noted that he sat crouched and mumbled his words, and was close-lipped. It was as if he feared that something terrible would notice him if he stood up straight or spoke out loud.

  ‘Yet I heard that a dozen survived that night,’ she prompted.

  ‘Ha ha, more, maybe thirty surviving, young man. Most are fleeing inland to the Baltorian frontier, others come this way to flee by ship, Korok comes with them. They were from farms nearby, farmers have money to buy passage on ships. Not Korok. Very poor. Korok’s silver argents melted into stones of house. Farmhands are strong, hardy, they fight frontier outlaws and walk through deep snow. Not Korok. Korok must live in a town if Korok is to live. Korok is poor and feeble, see?’

  He pushed back his sleeve to reveal a scrawny arm, then returned to his sewing. Jelindel noted that he did exquisite stitchwork, even though he had no more than waxed thread and jackhare leather to work with.

  ‘Your craftwork is impressive,’ she said as she watched. ‘Your talents were wasted in such a remote village.’

  ‘Ha ha, sold jackhare gloves and riding caps with vermilion stitching of village coat of arms to rich travellers. Captive market, yes? Did fine repairs for fine garments, but all gone now.’

  ‘So you were the only survivor from the village itself.’

  ‘Gah … not quite. Korok is returning, ah, late dusk from farm where Hic’Tofdy boys hunt for jackhares. Fine boys selling fine pelts to Korok. Korok hiding behind rockslide, watched. Terrible, terrible. Those who ran flared alight like hay dropped on coals. Others die in their houses.’

  Jelindel reached across to a tray and selected a pair of gloves. They were very finely made, and a snug yet flex -ible fit when she tried them on.

  ‘Pah, they are lady’s gloves. I make you nice gauntlets for riding, very manly.’

  ‘No, I have small hands and besides, these are nice for reading beside a campfire.’

  ‘Reading? You can reading? Ha ha, clever boy. Nine silver argents.’

  ‘Would you include the work on the collar in that price?’

  ‘Oh, well … dear, dear, dear … maybe eleven the lot. Very little capital for new materials, still using skins from Hic’Tofdy boys. Not many left.’

  Jelindel picked up a patch of leather about the size of her hand. ‘If you would embroider a likeness of the dragon on this piece, then twelve argents. You said it was very beautiful, and I want to have a beautiful but deadly image for when I am awarded arms one day.’

  ‘Hie! He reads, he fights, and he is wealthy! You are count in disguise, yes?’

  Jelindel winced at the nearness of his joke.

  ‘No, I’m not a count. So, will it be twelve?’

  ‘Twelve, the lot … is fair. Down in warm seaside port are not many liking Korok’s gloves. Colder in mountains. All want splash collars for fishermen. Ugly things.’

  Jelindel practised turning the pages of an almanac with the gloves as Korok finished the collar. A tax collector’s wife stopped to ask Jelindel if the gloves were comfortable, then bought a pair herself. She and her husband had travelled through the remains of Korok’s village a fortnight earlier, and she confirmed that the very rocks had melted deeply.

  ‘Someone must have offended the dragon mightily,’ Jelindel said when she was gone.

  ‘Never see dragon before that night,’ said Korok.

  ‘Had there been strangers in your village around this time?’

  ‘There were always strangers in village. Village exist to tend travellers. Travellers strangers. Very logical.’

  ‘Was there any stranger that you remember in particular?’

  Korok paused to scratch his thin hair.

  ‘Warrior, has name Mentrian Hil’Tranl. He buys gauntlets from Korok. Very rich. Five lancers riding with him. Tall, and black, curled hair. Fine clothes, fine weapons. Wants Korok’s gauntlets, good taste you see. Hands not like warrior, more like priest or mage, very soft.’

  ‘Did he wear a plain ring on one of his lesser fingers?’

  ‘No ring, but … very strange. Hic’Tofdy boy sees fight in tavern, tells me. Warrior gets cut on cheek from Daba Rouse. Very good with knife, Daba Rouse. Good friend of Korok.’

  ‘But what did the boy see that was strange?’

  ‘Ha ha! Green blood. Hic’Tofdy thinks big fight to start, but no. They leave. Ride into night. Hic’Tofdy stays at Korok house, tells all, takes Korok money for pelts, then Korok goes to Hic’Tofdy farm with him but carries no money. Many, many bandits, but want silver, not pelts. Korok not silly.’

  Jelindel said nothing. She knew that she was too excited, that she would be over-eager and blurt out something that she might regret.

  Korok finished the collar and went on to embroider the dragon. The shape of the dragon slowly emerged under his fingers. At last he held it up, complete. The shape was that of some exotic pendant, rather than a dragon, and it meant nothing to Jelindel. ‘Did you notice which way the … the warrior and his men travelled?’

  ‘No, no. Might be here! Might be that some churl cut him again then dragon with blue fire comes here too. Maybe Korok learn sailmaking and leave on ship. Hard for Korok to stay alive, easy for Korok to die.’

  Jelindel paid the twelve silver coins, then left to find the others.

  The night was warm in the port city, but Jelindel wore her new gloves all the way back to the hostelry. The gloves made her hands look a little larger and less feminine, and her old gloves had recently fallen apart. Daretor and Zimak were sitting on a bench under the awning of an open-air tavern across the square and they called her over.

  ‘These were the price of a great discovery,’ she said as she held up her gloved hands for them to see.

  ‘Hear our discovery first,’ said Daretor excitedly. ‘The mailshirt glowed orange for a moment.’

  They had been sitting in their room in the hostelry, cleaning and sharpening their blades and preparing for the journey to the next town with the mailshirt between them. Before their eyes it suddenly glowed like a pile of dull coals in a grate, then faded almost as rapidly. That meant that another link was within a half-mile of the hostelry.

  ‘You say it flared up within a heartbeat, then died down almost as fast?’ Jelindel confirmed.

  Both of them nodded.

  ‘Like a casket opening and closing?’

  ‘A box – yes, yes!’ exclaimed Zimak. ‘Or like the door of a tavern opening to spill light into a dark street, then closing again.’

  Jelindel rubbed her gloved hands together, frowning.

  ‘Then we have two lessons to take from this. The first is that this linkrider has a casket that somehow quenches the link’s emanations. The second is that if he keeps the link in such a casket, he cannot be wearing it.’

  ‘Another lesson is that he is very close by,’ Zimak added. ‘In this very port.’

  ‘And a further lesson is that he knows we are here,’ Daretor concluded. ‘Our mailshirt flared, so his link must have flared as well. He must have had the casket’s lid up just long enough to notice the glow.’

  ‘What luck!’ Zimak chirped, holding up his tankard for a toast.

  ‘Not so lucky,’ warned Jelindel. ‘My discovery may be connected to yours, and if that is so we are all in danger. This entire port could be burned to a lake of molten rock.’

  Jelindel told them what she had learned from Korok, and they both confirmed that they too had heard the story of a village up in the mountains being annihilated a month ago.

  Like Thull, Mentrian Hil’Tranl had bled green blood.

  ‘The destruction of the village may not have been revenge,’ Daretor suggested. ‘He
may have been trying to move about unnoticed, and was willing to sacrifice the village to keep his secret.’

  ‘But he still has that dragon-demon at his call,’ Jelindel pointed out.

  ‘Nice gloves,’ said Zimak.

  Jelindel showed them the embroidery of the dragon, which resembled something between a wedge and a teardrop.

  ‘No legs or wings, nothing that resembles eyes either,’ said Zimak. ‘It could be a huge magical amulet, the size of a ship –’

  ‘That’s it!’ exclaimed Jelindel. ‘A ship!’

  ‘In the mountains? Flying?’

  ‘There are obscure scholarly theories about the dragon that caused the crater in Hamaria being a huge, powerful flying ship. The crater filled with water, and is now known as Skyfall Lake. We passed through it on that barge, remember?’

  Jelindel looked to the sky, which was colouring with evening. ‘Where is the mailshirt now?’

  ‘In the pack between my feet,’ said Daretor.

  ‘Then we must keep a watch for any glow at all times. Daretor, I’ll take it to the hostelry while you keep watch here. Every time it glows, I’ll put a lamp on the windowsill for a moment. Zimak, can you get about the port and ask after Mentrian Hil’Tranl? A tall, finely dressed man –’

  ‘– with black, curly hair and an escort of five men. It may take a day or so, but I can find him if he’s here.’

  Jelindel realised as she left them that they were suddenly accepting her authority again. While the days were mundane and routine she was a mere girl to them. Once they were close to the next dragonlink, they suddenly needed her.

  The mailshirt did not brighten again, and Daretor joined Jelindel in the hostelry after the tavern closed. He put on the mailshirt and a coat over it, leaving some of the sleeve links visible. Zimak returned much later, and he had news.

  ‘Hil’Tranl is here,’ he announced as soon as he arrived. ‘He and his men have been taking short voyages over to Kaplus Island, staying at one of the inns there for a few days, then returning here. One of the ferrymen knows them well. Ah, and look at these, I got them for sixteen argents!’

  He proudly held up a pair of jackhare riding gloves and Jelindel recognised Korok’s stitching at once.

  ‘Nice gloves, but you were robbed,’ said Jelindel. ‘Mine cost half as much.’

  Zimak’s shoulders slumped for a moment, but he rallied. ‘They’re heavier gloves, with a drip-flap in the wind sheath for riding in the rain. There’s a lot more leather, too.’

  ‘Mine are jackhare, yours are goatskin. The old devil must have really seen you coming.’

  ‘He wasn’t there. The woman who was tending his stall said he left in a hurry to do some urgent errand.’

  ‘Or because he was terrified,’ Daretor suggested. ‘There’s something else, too.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘They’re nice gloves.’

  Zimak flung the gloves at Daretor’s head but the warrior ducked – and the room lit up with a dazzling blue flash followed by a blast like a thunderclap. The room filled with smoke as they crawled for the door.

  A second bolt of blue lightning annihilated the half-open window shutters.

  Horrified, Jelindel watched a line of blue light pierce the smoke and blast the opposite wall to blazing matchwood.

  Just as Daretor reached the door it was smashed inwards and several men burst into the smoke-filled, burning room. Jelindel rolled to one side as Zimak lashed out with one leg and caught a man in the knee.

  Daretor’s axeshaft struck a shadowy face, then he swung back blindly at someone whose blade had scraped across the mail under his coat.

  Jelindel spoke a soft word at the legs in front of her and they became enmeshed in blue coils that brought the intruder crashing to the floor. Two others engaged Daretor outside the door, lit only by the fire within the room.

  Zimak flung his knife, catching one in the ribs, but the other fled as Daretor tried to get past the body. Daretor threw his axe, catching the attacker between the shoulders. The assailant was dead long before he had tumbled to the foot of the stairs.

  The municipal constables arrived to arrest the surviving assassins on charges of malicious affray. Then the Port Authority’s Inspector of Order came to survey the magical damage to the hostelry. Jelindel had already done a quick check herself, and had been amazed to find not a single trace of the aura of enchantment.

  They retired to Jelindel’s room. Outside, a steady, soaking rain had set in.

  ‘Not one of them had green blood,’ Jelindel pointed out as they sat in darkness relieved by a single thumb -lamp.

  The constant thrum of rain on the wooden shingles above was like being beneath thousands of stampeding mice. Zimak glared upwards.

  ‘I hope we’re not meant to be going out in that,’ he said, pointing upwards.

  ‘They were all local blade-hands,’ said Daretor. ‘I checked with the sergeant of the constables. All were blades-for-hire who usually work as bodyguards, or sail with privateer crews. The tallest of them did have curly black hair and fair skin, like the one Korok described. His blood was red, though.’

  ‘I had a careful look at the room once the fires were out,’ said Jelindel. ‘Those blue lances of light were near-horizontal, and judging from the direction … well there is only one tower with a line-of-sight to the window. The Morgendros Tower.’

  ‘That’s over four crossbow shots away,’ scoffed Zimak. ‘A half-mile at least.’

  ‘Could a crossbow have done what happened up there?’

  ‘No weapon known to man could do such damage,’ Daretor said with authority. ‘It’s a weapon without honour. I say it’s the linkrider.’

  ‘That is my thought too, and I feel he is still in that tower,’ said Jelindel. ‘We should go there.’

  ‘What?’ Zimak exclaimed incredulously. ‘That weapon can roast you whole from a half-mile away, yet you want to get closer? Besides, it’s raining.’

  ‘She’s right,’ said Daretor. ‘The linkrider will be expecting his blade-hands to return with the mailshirt covered with the splattered remains of my head. There was a lot of smoke about. I doubt he could have seen what happened, even with a farsight.’

  ‘My beautiful gloves,’ Zimak said miserably. ‘They are soaked with water.’

  ‘Riding gloves that cannot stand against water are useless as riding gloves,’ said Jelindel.

  Zimak grunted, but did not disagree. They slipped away from the hostelry and made their way across the port towards the tower.

  They were not far away when a small section of the mailshirt began to glow steadily through a tear in the sheepskin jacket’s sleeve.

  ‘He has the link out!’ hissed Zimak.

  ‘Pah, he can’t know whether friend or foe carries it,’ said Daretor.

  ‘But once he sees that we are none of his lackeys he will cast his lightning bolts again.’

  ‘But Jaelin has lightning of her own,’ Daretor said thoughtfully. ‘Both of you, run ahead of me to the tower, and I’ll come more slowly with the mailshirt. Your word of ensnaring works at up to ninety paces, Jaelin, does it not?’

  ‘Yes, but at that range I’d barely have the life-force left to crawl until it returns to me.’

  ‘Then we must get you closer to him. You go on alone. Zimak, stay with me. I have an idea.’

  Jelindel ran in an arc, to come up to the Morgendros Tower from the side. The rain had soaked through her boots and her rain cape was of little use when running through such a heavy fall, but she scarcely felt the discomfort.

  She stopped, panting hard, too tired and keyed up to be afraid for the moment. At the base of the tower was some sort of grillwork fence. Jelindel could not tell if it was ornamental or served some other purpose. The only light was from a lantern at the edge of a small square before the tower.

  The rain eased as she waited, but still nobody came and nothing happened. Jelindel walked into the square, keeping to the shadows. All the while she kept glancing at the
bluestone tower that dominated the square.

  There was a balcony near the top of the tower. That had to be where the blue thunderbolts had originated, Jelindel decided. She stared up at the balcony in anticipation. A break in the clouds allowed light from Reculemoon to leak through.

  A flash of light erupted from the ground floor portal and a building across the square collapsed in a cloud of dust. A figure emerged holding something small and stubby straight out in front of him. He stopped and seemed to take aim, as if with a small crossbow.

  Jelindel took aim herself and spoke a sharp, focused word.

  The blue coils were off-target, but not by much. A glowing tangle pinned the linkrider’s hand and weapon to a grille. He struggled frantically to get his hand free.

  Unsteady and drained, Jelindel drew her shortsword with a brisk ‘shrick’ and slowly stalked across the small square.

  There, in the light of Reculemoon, the linkrider struggled desperately against the blue, glowing coils. A shortsword flashed in his free hand, then he chopped down at the blue coils, screaming hideously as his hand was severed at the wrist.

  Jelindel tried to run across the rain-drenched square, but she was fatigued and her legs sluggish.

  The linkrider dropped his sword, turned and ran, padding away into the shadows much faster than Jelindel’s legs could carry her. He was clutching his stump of a wrist in front of him. Jelindel had not set a long delay on the entrapment coils, and they suddenly collapsed and let the weapon and hand fall to the ground.

  She picked up the angular, unfamiliar object and carefully put it into her tunic pouch. As she examined the hand she noticed something odd about the smell of the blood. Taking it over to the lamp she realised that it was green.

  Jelindel had expected Daretor and Zimak to have come running by now. A crowd began to gather about the ruined building. Some speculated about lightning hitting the place. Others deemed it an evil portent.

  Suddenly a section of rubble burst upwards and an arm and head emerged.

  ‘Daretor!’ screamed Jelindel as she scrambled up to help the emerging warrior.

  ‘I thought you said you could read street signs, you stupid little clown!’ Daretor called back into the rubble.