Dragonlinks

by Paul Collins

  Jelindel squeezed the trigger bar. The setting was for wide-beam heat, such as would melt without bursting the stone beneath. Within moments the links began to glow red, brightened to yellow, then became white. Finally they melted. Jelindel did not release the trigger bar until the last of the links had flowed down the stone steps as molten metal. A crowd of villagers gathered at a distance to watch and point.

  ‘It’s just a harmless lump now,’ Jelindel began, but even as she spoke the molten pool began to resolve back into the woven links of a mailshirt.

  Kelricka stared with her mouth hanging open, and she made the holy circle in the air before her. Gradually the mailshirt cooled, and Jelindel picked it up on the blade of her shortsword. One link fell free and jingled on the steps. The loose link had not been incorporated, so the metal fabric glowed faintly in the sunlight. The villagers crowded a little closer, fearful yet curious to see what the dangerous sorceress was doing now.

  Kelricka sat back down on a cool part of the steps, her fist pressed hard against her lips for a moment. Jelindel peered closely at the most recently reattached links, then dropped the mailshirt and picked up the loose link. It was no longer split.

  ‘The thing is self-repairing,’ she said glumly. ‘All the rough repair work on the last few links is smooth and seamless now. The loose link was not rejoined; it must need to be properly attached for its place to be known.’

  Jelindel kicked at the mailshirt several times. Tears of frustration were glistening on her cheeks.

  ‘Do what we like with it, the pieces will always call each other back together,’ she concluded.

  ‘Perhaps we could keep it under guard in the Great Temple,’ suggested Kelricka.

  ‘It was being guarded closely in Hamatriol but it was still stolen, that much I have learned in my travels. Kelricka, the mailshirt must be hidden if it cannot be destroyed. I am going to have to go into the mountains alone.’

  ‘Why? What are you going to do?’

  ‘You will have to trust me, Kelricka. Wait here, if you please. I’ll be gone a day or so, but first I must buy some lead sheeting from Gemoti.’

  Leaving the village, Jelindel rode out along a backhill trail for a day and a night. At length she had satisfied herself that nobody was following her, and that she had found the perfect resting place for the mailshirt.

  She secured her pony to an outcrop of rock and began to make her way down the side of a canyon to a melt water river. The mailshirt was enclosed in roofing lead in the pack on her back, giving physical weight to the responsibility for its powers. She left the sheet-lead package in a crevice beside the river, substituted a stone in her backpack, then made the arduous climb back up to her pony. After double-checking her written notes she reset the thundercast to full power.

  At a quarter mile distance, Jelindel raised the thunder -cast, aimed below a large overhang, glanced down at the crevice that hid the shielded mailshirt, then fired a prolonged, shattering blast. Rock exploded out from the face of the gorge and thunderclap echoes were flung all about Jelindel. Her terrified pony screamed and reared, but she had tied it tightly.

  Again she fired through the dust and smoke, and again. She blasted deeper into the rock each time. At last the entire overhang gave way and crashed down into the gorge with an impact that shook the ground beneath Jelindel’s feet. She sat waiting until the dust and smoke began to clear, noting with satisfaction that the river was already pooling into what would soon become a very impressive lake.

  Now she disarmed the thundercast and put it away, satisfied. Even an army would take years to dig away the millions of tons of rock that now covered the mailshirt.

  She rambled through the mountains for many miles, blasting another four gorges the same way, to further ensure that the trail to the mailshirt was lost. When she finally returned to the village, she had had no sleep for three full days. She practically fell out of the saddle and into the arms of Kelricka and her guards.

  ‘The mailshirt is beyond the reach of human hands,’ Jelindel reported in a voice slurred by fatigue.

  ‘Now will you come with me to the Great Temple of Verity to join the novices?’ asked Kelricka.

  ‘Yes, yes with all my heart,’ mumbled Jelindel. ‘But first I would like just one night’s unbroken sleep.’

  The next day Jelindel, Kelricka and the three guards set off along the road south. During Jelindel’s absence Kelricka had sewn the robes of a novice for her to wear as they travelled. While the entire village turned out to wave them off and thank them again, nobody bid them hurry back soon.

  Unknown to Jelindel and Kelricka, war had been declared between Hamaria and Skelt some days before, and squads of the Preceptor’s mounted militia had been sent deep into Hamarian territory to seize and hold strategic positions.

  One such patrol encountered a Verital priestess, her three guards, and a girl wearing the cowl of a novice.

  ‘Two ladies,’ said the squad captain to the prime lancer. ‘Two ladies alone, ’cept for those painted dolls as like escorts them.’

  The guards faced the militiamen bravely, but the numbers were against them. Three of the militiamen raised light crossbows and trained them on the guards.

  ‘Two priestesses,’ observed the prime lancer. ‘Priestesses be virgins.’

  ‘Virgins can cure the pox,’ replied the squad captain.

  Suddenly exasperated beyond bearing, Jelindel drew the thundercast and fired in a smooth, fluid movement. The squad captain exploded into smoking, bloody gouts of flesh and charred leather and ringmail armour. One of the crossbowmen fired wildly as his horse reared. Another took aim at Jelindel and fired, but hit her rearing horse in the throat. She slid down the animal’s back, dropping to the trail on both feet.

  Again she fired, twice, in rapid succession. The two crossbowmen detonated just as their leader had.

  The surviving militiamen shrank back, aghast and splattered with shredded, smoking flesh. Even the temple guards drew well back from Jelindel.

  ‘Now I’ve been having a particularly hard time lately,’ began Jelindel, ‘but luckily the heavens and moons are in such places that improve my mood and your prospects of living.’

  None of the surviving militiamen so much as blinked.

  ‘Dismount, all of you. Take off the saddles and fling them into the gorge. Good, good. Now your clothes and armour – and weapons. Everything! Do it!’

  She fired again, this time into the trail. The earth erupted, leaving a small, smoking crater. The militiamen undressed hurriedly and flung their clothing to the rocks hundreds of feet below.

  ‘Now mount up and ride. You might reach the Dominer Pass in two days with good weather and a lot of luck. The repair crew can minister to you.’

  Jelindel took the saddle from her dead horse and put it on the dead squad captain’s mare. The priestess and guards looked on, rather too nervous to even ask if they could help.

  ‘Was it really necessary to do that?’ Kelricka asked as they began to ride on.

  ‘Probably not,’ sighed Jelindel as she drew the thundercast and spun it on her finger. ‘I must have selected the wrong setting – blast instead of stun. Without the dragon -link I need my scroll of instructions and it’s packed away in my saddlebags. Besides, would you feel so merciful if they had ravished you, Holy Priestess and friend?’

  Kelricka shook her head. ‘As you just said, prob ably not. Now please, put that thing away.’

  Jelindel pressed what she thought was the disarming stud. The thundercast’s voice suddenly cheeped out.

  ‘Intrusion playback option, first instance: ‘Shoot, you damn thing, shoot! Nothing. Accursed trinket. Pah!’

  ‘That was Zimak’s voice!’ exclaimed Kelricka.

  ‘Intrusion playback option, second instance:’ declared the thundercast. ‘Gah! Pah! Shoot! I command you to shoot! I – I request you to shoot. Hie! Stupid bauble, it ignores a true warrior and obeys a girl. You try it, Daretor.’

  Daretor’s voice followed
. ‘Me? Never. That thing has no honour.’

  ‘And Daretor,’ said Jelindel grimly. ‘At least he had the honour not to try the thundercast … yet he didn’t attempt to stop Zimak. It must mimic what is said when those without authority are trying to use it.’

  ‘And that is not the only lesson that it teaches,’ Kelricka said.

  They rode on, noting how the mountains were giving way to green foothills with distant farmsteads clinging to them. Mostly they rode in silence, lost in contemplation of all that had happened in the days past.

  ‘So much for trust,’ said Kelricka, voicing her thoughts.

  ‘Makes me feel better about shooting them,’ replied Jelindel, who had been thinking along much the same lines.

  Chapter

  22

  The neophyte priestess wa s registered as Countess Jelindel dek Mediesar when she signed the register of the Great Temple of Verity in Arcadia. She swore to abide by the laws and regulations of the priestesses. Then, having laid claim to her dead family’s title and being ratified by the temple geneologist, she formally renounced the title of countess. The renunciation of a noble family or title allowed her to be admitted as a neophyte of the Verital Priestesses.

  Payment for the seven years of study that stretched before her was not guaranteed, but her entrance fee was provided by an unknown sponsor. It was decided by the entrance committee that Jelindel would teach the other students Siluvian kick-fist and basic fencing as a means of working her way through the temple’s school for priest-esses. Times were difficult with wars going on to the north, and it was felt that many of the priestesses might have to go about their work unescorted in times soon to come.

  After the tutors saw her entrance exam results they thought that she might need only four years.

  ‘You have mage Adept abilities rated at a marginal level 9,’ noted the Dean of Human Powers. ‘Have you been given a name by a high Adept in enchantment or a band in martial studies?’

  A priestess with a truth charm flickering about her ears sat beside the Dean, ready to catch any conscious lies. Jelindel was about to say no in all honesty, then she remembered an incident that was deeply etched in her mind.

  ‘Yes,’ she declared, and the priestess with the truth charm remained silent.

  ‘Have you accepted it as your truename?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jelindel answered again in all truth.

  Renouncing worldly wealth was not particularly hard, as Jelindel had very few possessions in the first place. She was taken to the tailor and fitted out with robes and beaded slippers in exchange for the tunic, trousers and sheepskin that had served her so long. She was allowed to keep the few things in her saddlebags after they had been taken away and inspected.

  ‘I have to return to Hamaria now,’ Kelricka said as they walked back to the student dormitories. ‘The Preceptor of Skelt has annihilated the Hamarian army at Lindfol and I have to organise the evacuation of our temples.’

  ‘I could help,’ Jelindel suggested.

  ‘No, your place is here. Now then, the older girls may try to perform some sort of initiation ceremony, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ Jelindel confessed.

  ‘It is a sort of … humiliation to put you in your place. The daughters of nobility often have a lot to learn when they first come here.’

  They stopped at the door to the dormitory wing and embraced for a moment. When Jelindel entered, she was carrying only the books she had signed out from the library a half hour before and a kit bag.

  Beyond the door were a dozen girls wearing cowls and seniority sashes. The door was pushed shut behind her.

  ‘Neophyte, you are to be taught your place and the rules,’ declared one of the anonymous seniors.

  ‘My place is room 37B, and I have memorised the rule book,’ Jelindel replied calmly.

  Jelindel’s reaction was not the usual bluster or cowering that the initiators encountered from young noblewomen. In fact there was a certain confidence about her that set them on edge.

  ‘There are rules that are not written down, neophyte!’ snapped the senior. ‘You will not be able to go running to your big brother to fight your battles in here.’

  ‘I couldn’t anyway,’ Jelindel replied. ‘I killed him last year.’

  The senior made an odd choking sound.

  ‘You – you killed your brother?’

  ‘He was a lindrak.’ Jelindel paused at her error. Maybe not a lindrak as such, but certainly of their making, she reasoned. ‘And I don’t like lindraks.’

  ‘You killed a lindrak?’ sneered a senior who had said nothing so far. ‘Tell us how.’

  ‘With a word of ensnarement.’

  Suddenly the first senior’s voice filled with confidence again. Only an Adept 9 could even begin to use that sort of dangerous magic, everyone knew that. ‘Prove it,’ she said after a derisive snort.

  Zimak’s image flared in Jelindel’s mind. If only the girl had chosen a challenge other than ‘prove it’, Jelindel might have kept her patience better.

  Her binding word lashed out to wrap about the senior’s legs and she fell with a scream of terror, bound from her calves to her thighs by writhing blue coils.

  After holding her for ten heartbeats the coils vanished back into Jelindel’s mouth.

  The girl clawed her way backwards on the floor as Jelindel approached and the others backed away in an expanding arc.

  ‘Ser – servitor, take her bag, show her to her room,’ the senior stammered.

  A girl without a cowl came forward and offered her hand for Jelindel’s bag. They walked away down the corridor together.

  ‘And what is your name?’ asked Jelindel as they went. ‘Mine is Jelindel.’

  ‘I – I am Metriele,’ quavered the terrified girl, who was no less than Jelindel’s age.

  ‘No need to be afraid,’ said Jelindel. ‘I only bite when cornered.’

  They climbed a flight of stone stairs.

  ‘Did you really kill your brother?’ Metriele now asked in wonder rather than fear.

  ‘It was self-defence, mostly,’ Jelindel replied. ‘My brother betrayed the rest of my family to assassins, but I escaped and lived alone as a boy scribe in a market. I learned magical and mundane weapons, how to cook, sew and wash clothes, and even how to pretend to shave my face. Eventually I fell in with two youths who …’ They stopped in front of a door with 37B on it. ‘Metriele, we have many years ahead of us. Perhaps we could save my story for later?’

  Epilogue

  By the eleventh day of Month-Eight 2129, the Preceptor of Skelt had crushed Hamaria. Arcadia had a reprieve, however, as full-scale war had broken out between Skelt and Baltoria. The Preceptor did not like to fight on more than one front at a time, so he turned his full attention east. He declared himself head of his new Algon Empire, although he retained the title of Preceptor rather than Emperor. His Adept 12, Fa’red, became the Imperial court Adept.

  The King of Skelt was trapped like a rat and executed after he tried to flee Skelt on a Lycellian merchant ship. The vessel was caught by Imperial sloops, and the King was bound and flung overboard to the sharks without ceremony, or so the story went. Thus the man Jelindel suspected of having her family killed suffered a death no less terrifying, but it brought her little satisfaction. She had learned that revenge was not sweet, only vaguely unsatisfying and laced with guilt. Too, Jelindel had cause to ponder the King of Skelt’s hand in the murder of her family. It was likely that the Preceptor was not without blame – and Jelindel vowed to make amends if she found this to be so. The Queen of Passendof became a prisoner of the Preceptor. Try as Jelindel might, she could not feel sympathy for her. The thought of all her lovers who had spent the night with her and had then become breakfast was not easy to squeeze past.

  The Great Temple’s seminary was moved out of reach of the Preceptor. He had sworn a vendetta against the Verital orders after they began preaching against his versions of the truth. Most of the girls were terri
fied of the prospect of such a journey, but to Jelindel it was just another trip with some dangers, some delights and a lot of discomfort.

  The classes that Jelindel conducted in Siluvian kick-fist went well, even though some of the girls were less than enthusiastic students. With the future looking as uncertain as it did, they could need their kick-fist skills very soon. Jelindel missed the mailshirt: had she kept it, she might have combed the paraworlds to see what had become of Daretor and Zimak, but she was only an Adept 9 without it, and her unaided powers were feeble by comparison. Their fate seemed destined to remain a mystery to her.

  She relinquished the thundercast, as she had her few other worldly possessions.

  Her past became as surreal as a dream.

  For now she had a place in the world and real friends. It was still a dangerous and violent world, but at least the dragon links were gone forever. Compared to a lot of people, Jelindel was doing very well indeed.