After the Dragon

by Wendy Palmer

Trick had almost forgotten saying anything. It had just been a nasty comment his mouth had said while he was thinking about something else. And he had upset Faustus, and embarrassed him with a throwaway taunt that Faustus was apparently taking as against his own courage.

  Trick did think to apologise but he reminded himself he sat with an Ullwyn, so he stayed silent. His head buzzed pleasantly and he hardly jumped when he heard the outer door boom open.

  'Someone's coming!’ Faustus scrambled to sit on Trick's side of the cell, as if he thought he would be safer there. Maybe he did think that—Trick was officially Fortune's Favourite, most favoured of all Ullwyns.

  The lock clicked from the other side, and the door creaked open ominously. A figure stood outlined. Then it moved into the clean light of their room.

  'Well, it's just an old man,’ said Faustus. ‘Let us out of here, you decrepit old fool.'

  Trick took a breath and hit him on the shoulder. ‘Shut your mouth, Faustus.’ If any man could make him think of Wizards, this one did, with a mass of white beard and a long straight staff taller than him.

  'Two little rats in my trap,’ said the old man. ‘A third waits above. Fine physical specimens the pair of you, but today I have a different purpose in mind. You will come with me.'

  'Why don't we just overpower him?’ said Faustus none too quietly as they followed the old man through the outer room and down a passageway.

  Trick gave him a wide-eyed look, terrified of this tall old man where Mizzle had never made him flinch more than once. ‘Be quiet, cousin.'

  Faustus made an exasperated noise and stepped forward with fist raised. Without turning, the old man made a gesture. Faustus flew back and hit the wall behind Trick.

  Now the old man turned. ‘You think your puniness can touch Serin Avenir the Giant-Slayer?’ he said, eyes alight, beard crackling.

  Trick and Faustus stayed silent before the fierceness of his gaze and after a moment he strode on.

  Trick helped his cousin up. ‘Faustus, learn from this. Old men living alone under dead castles with transportation traps set up everywhere to catch physical specimens are not just old men and should not be set upon from behind.'

  'What is he?'

  'A Wizard,’ said Trick. Apparently what Livanians found obvious, Bourchians had to think about. He took his cousin's arm and walked on behind Avenir.

  They reached the same stairs that he had come down with Mizzle such a short time ago, and climbed up into the open. Avenir's staff lit the way with a bright blue glow as they followed their own tracks back to the little camp. Trick began to feel relieved. Surely Mizzle would never stand for the interference of a human Wizard.

  She sat cross-legged behind the fire, with the walls to her back. She fed a piece of wood in as they approached and only then did she look up, the small flames lighting her face from below. Trick hoped that sight, beauty and danger, made Avenir feel a little queasy. All three horses were saddled—Mizzle had been busy while she waited.

  'Normally I kill trespassers,’ said Avenir, that blue light crowding around him so that Trick thought he was nervous and was shielding himself. ‘But I need something and a DarkElf may succeed where I have so far met resistance.'

  Mizzle looked her two companions over and still said nothing.

  The Wizard went on. ‘I have an enemy who has thwarted my every effort to destroy him. He is powerful against me where he lives but weak outside that personal sphere of influence. One such as yourself may be able to go through his defences and bring him to me. If I had him I would not need my little rats to feed my spells.'

  Mizzle stood. ‘I must take one with me to assist me with this task.’ Trick was instantly appalled. She was bowing to the Wizard's demands. Or she chose to rescue one of them only.

  The Wizard paused, then nodded once. ‘Very well.'

  'Faustus,’ said Mizzle.

  Trick sucked in a second shocked breath. He had thought it and not believed it until she spoke.

  Faustus gave him a smug look and stepped forward.

  Trick could not speak. Linnet's hold on him warred with his instinct, very much not to die an unhallowed death at the hands of a Wizard. His dead wife wanted him to join her and he mostly wanted it too, but not this way.

  He turned to Avenir, feeling the blue light shine across his face, cold and shadowless. ‘I'm expendable to her. If you let the Ullwyn go, she will leave me and not deliver you your enemy.'

  He caught Mizzle's single shining silver glare as Avenir snagged Faustus back. ‘Leave the Bourchian. You may take this one.’ He thrust something into Trick's hand and pushed him at Mizzle. ‘A map to direct you to his abode.'

  Trick, tempted sorely to give Faustus's smug look back to him, looked at the ground and not at his cousin and not at Mizzle while he mounted Bet. Mizzle swung up on Skye beside him and they rode past Faustus standing in Avenir's light, wearing Mizzle's cloak.

  After them, Avenir called, ‘You have three days. My patience is limited.'

  'So is mine,’ said Mizzle, and they rode out through the gate.

  Chapter Three

  Kintore comes through the crowded common room and up the stairs hooded. He risks insolent human hands snatching strands of gold from his head as keepsakes whenever he goes outside and so resorts to DarkElvish methods to hide.

  Jacoby is not hooded as she passes him on the stairs. They studiously ignore each other as they have done for the last few days but as Kintore reaches the top of the stairs, he spins.

  'Why do you not leave?'

  She looks up from the bottom, one long-fingered hand on the banister. ‘Why do you speak Bourchian?'

  Kintore blinks down at her. She goes on. ‘LightElves speak Livanian if they bother with a human language at all. And here you are, speaking Bourchian and staying at this tavern even though I am here. Why?'

  Kintore stands frozen. Jacoby nods to him and pushes her way towards the door. As she reaches it, it slams open, and a crowd of men fills the doorway and spills inside. She steps back, narrow-eyed, waiting for the humans to get out of her way. Three or four do not.

  'What's this?’ asks one, pressing too close to her.

  'It's an elf,’ says another. ‘It's a dark elf.’ The disrespect is open and intentional.

  Jacoby strides forward, her face blank. One of them grabs her arm hard, the unthinkable sin. ‘I hear you nymphs give good—’ Jacoby draws her sword and runs him through with one smooth motion. He falls, dead or dying, and Jacoby steps back, the bloody sword in her hand.

  There is silence. Jacoby raises her violet eyes to Kintore very briefly, then back at the group with the dead man at their feet.

  'How dare this elf bitch kill a human?’ Mutters of agreement rise up. The crowd is ugly and growing.

  Jacoby cannot help but make things worse for herself. She lifts her sword, runs her fingers along it, and flagrantly licks the blood from them, watching the men in front of her all the while.

  It is enough. They surge forward like wolves with loud and angry cries, fall back as Jacoby draws her other sword, and then circle forward again. She cuts several of them badly, yet they press at her, swarming her, cramping her swords and pushing her inexorably off balance.

  Joshe is suddenly there, swinging a nasty-looking club and shouting. They turn on him and he is quickly knocked off his feet and out of his senses. Jacoby, covered with blood, not her own, slips and half-falls and is pushed. She is down. She takes several with her, and is crushed.

  She catches the eye of the man who has fallen half on her and he cannot look away. ‘This will cease now,’ she whispers, and he repeats it louder, is ignored, and begins to shout it again and again

  And then Kintore shouts, ‘This will cease now.’ And it does. His sword is unsheathed and unused. The mob is now just a group of drunk and embarrassed men. They avoid each other's eyes, the DarkElf's eyes, the LightElf's single gleaming eye.

  'This establishment is closed,’ says Kintore. ‘You will leave.'

&nbs
p; They help their injured to their feet and shuffle out the door. The barmaid Marle bolts it behind them and kneels beside Joshe, only just stirring.

  Kintore peers into his eyes. ‘He will be fine,’ he tells her. ‘But his head will hurt. He will need to be in bed.’ He addresses Joshe. ‘Can you walk?'

  'I'll get him to bed.’ Marle slings a hand over the man's shoulder.

  Kintore frowns slightly. ‘He will need to rest.'

  The barmaid flushes. ‘He will be doing that, sir,’ she says. ‘What will you and she be doing?'

  Jacoby, who has gained her feet, laughs with true merriment. Kintore frowns harder, but helps Marle pull Joshe to his feet. The two humans make their way slowly towards the back of the tavern.

  Kintore turns at last to the DarkElf. ‘You are an idiot.'

  It seems Jacoby will not take offence tonight. She limps towards the stairs, moving stiffly.

  Kintore follows. ‘You are hurt.'

  'Really?’ she says. ‘I had not noticed.'

  He hesitates for a very long time. ‘Come to my room,’ he says finally, and the DarkElf stops and faces him.

  They look at each other, violet eyes and golden. Then she says softly, ‘Thank you for the offer, hiruko, but I am not really in any condition for it.'

  Kintore comes as close to a blush as an Elf can. ‘That is not what I meant,’ he says, with considered mildness. ‘You are hurt. I wish to help you.'

  'You owe me nothing.'

  Kintore smiles at her, sudden and fleeting. ‘Thank you for admitting it, yoruko, but this has nothing to do with what has happened between us.'

  'Do you tell me you wish friendship with a DarkElf?’ Jacoby is truly disbelieving.

  'You told me you have been sent to Told for rest and reward,’ he says. He is standing lightly, tensely. His sword is very close to hand. ‘I am here for the same reason. There is no need for us...'

  'For us to be enemies?’ finishes Jacoby. ‘Unusual.'

  'To say the least.'

  'I will go to your room,’ she says then. She starts up the stairs again and does not look back as she adds, ‘I do not believe you for a heartbeat, faerie.'

  * * * *

  Mizzle did not speak until well after dawn. Following the map, Trick had sent them back down the way they had come in such difficulty and then west along a path he had not seen in the storm last night. He expected all the while for her to turn them back towards Livania. But it seemed she would not leave Faustus where she would have left him. It was only when he tried to rein Bet in so he could rest and eat breakfast that she finally said something.

  'You will keep going.'

  He looked back at her. ‘I need to eat.’ He felt anger roiling under her blank face, and this time she did not blink and make it go away.

  'And eat,’ she said. ‘But go on.'

  'I don't know why you're angry at me.’ Trick knew he sounded sullen and petty and felt it. ‘I'm the one you tried to leave. I get to be angry, you get to be guilty.'

  'You are a fool and worse than a fool.’ She pushed Skye past him and went on down the path, back straight, sunlight glinting off leaves and snow all around her.

  He sent Bet on after her, pulling dried meat and old apples out of his saddlebag, fighting outrage. She turned her own bad behaviour on him but he held his tongue. She was already angry because he had spoilt her plans and he shouldn't push her now, unless he truly did wish to die; he never knew from moment to moment if he did.

  He checked the map again. A cross marked the rival Wizard's tower, hugging the forest edge where it gave out to the plain north of the Salding River, dividing line between Bourchia and Livania. Except that since the Second Day War, a good portion of the land to the north of the Salding was Livanian territory. An ill-defined and ill-guarded border divided Bourchian sheep and Bourchian wheat from Livanian sheep and Livanian wheat on that plain, and it was, all rumours said, the dearest wish of King Fillip's heart and pocket to have that land back and the river as his border all the way west. To the north of the plain was the beginning of the stretch of hills they had come through the day before. North and east was the Giant's fire and then the fire that had been Dester.

  They would reach the tower around midday. Why the Wizard should give them three days to do a task worth only one day's round travel was a source of great anxiety for Trick. The delay with Mizzle's cousins only a day behind them made him feel worse.

  He risked talking to Mizzle again. ‘If you couldn't do anything against Avenir, why does he think you can act against this enemy of his?'

  She cast him a pale-faced look over one shoulder and said something in DarkElvish that pushed him into high offence before he remembered he wasn't supposed to understand it.

  'That didn't sound nice,’ he said, flippant in the face of an insult he knew wasn't close to nice. ‘Tell me why I deserve this.'

  This time she didn't bother to turn around. ‘I wanted Faustus and not you.'

  'So you didn't get your own way.’ He was more offended then he had been when she had sworn at him in DarkElvish. She so openly admitted her intention and was not even ashamed. He should not have to keep reminding himself she was not human.

  He rode close enough to see white-knuckled hands clenched on Skye's reins. Only then did he realise how much she struggled to control herself in the grip of a DarkElvish black rage. If he said one wrong word—if he had not done so already—she would slay him.

  He waited, riding in her reach, to see what she would do. And she shook herself and turned to him. ‘Faustus held my cloak,’ she said. ‘And in my cloak is a relic with which I could destroy the Wizard as easily as breathing.'

  Trick held himself still. She had asked for Faustus not because she planned to leave with only one of them but because she had wished her cloak back. He had stepped into her way, filled with mistrust and the sure knowledge of what he would do in her position. Small wonder she had fought her own worst nature so as not to kill him. The only question was why she had bothered to control herself so.

  He could not bring himself to apologise in the face of a mistake words could not hope to repair. He bowed to her in the saddle and reined Bet back and was silent as they rode on through the forest.

  Mizzle should have killed him and did not. It made him second-guess her intentions and motives yet again as they came towards the edge of the forest.

  At last he could not take the uncertainty. ‘Why do you not just kill me?’ Straight honest question and probably tempting Mizzle and Fortune to the edge of endurance.

  But Mizzle said, ‘I must not be a DarkElf if I expect the LightElves to accept me.'

  He had heard amiss. ‘You wish to join the LightElves?'

  She looked aside at him, giving nothing away in that slanted silver glance. ‘Yes.'

  'We're almost there,’ he said, unable to tolerate that frank look. But he could not let it drop. ‘This is not truth.'

  Again she looked at him. ‘I answer truth or not at all.'

  This, with her uncompromising silver gaze on him, he could well believe. She at least seemed honest when he was prepared to believe her, and if he accepted that, he must accept she told the truth when he did not want to believe her. It meant she told the truth about Dester, so the town's fate had been thoughtless accident, not purposeful trap. That took a weight from his shoulders. And it meant she did truly go to Wyvern Forest to plead admittance to the LightElf clan.

  He could find no answer for her as they broke out of the last few trees onto the edge of the plain. The ground sloped down in front of them to a river, flowing slow and wide, thin ice creeping out from the banks. On the crest on the other side of the river stood the tower, and nothing grew in its shadow.

  As he stared up at it, crows burst out from the crenulations and wheeled around the tower, out over their heads and back again. The Wizard knew they were there. He felt that in their flight.

  'Fortune's eyes,’ he said. ‘Let's just go back to Avenir and get your cloak.'

/>   'I have considered it,’ she said. ‘I see no way to get my cloak back without first getting my cloak back.'

  It edged on humour, the first hint of it he had seen in her. He could not help but give her a second glance and she smiled impishly and threatened him with allure. ‘What do you see?'

  Siren, he almost said, before he realised she meant across the river. ‘The tower,’ he said, not understanding what her real question was. Surely she saw it too and then why ask?

  She reached out and laid one long-fingered hand over his eyes and away, too quick to catch.

  Where the tower had loomed now huddled a cottage, letting smoke into the cloudless sky, all fenced around with its back to the forest. No crows nested here. A bridge spanned the river where none had been.

  'What?’ Trick stared down, not knowing which one to believe, the tower falling in with his expectations, the cottage so neat and out of place.

  'Illusion,’ said Mizzle. ‘Ineffective against DarkElves.'

  'Illusion,’ he repeated. ‘Livanian magic.'

  So a Bourchian Wizard fought a Livanian Illusionist, divided as always along nationalistic lines. And in this case the Wizard had the advantage, because Mizzle saw right through solid Illusion.

  Avenir had been right. Mizzle would romp through his rival's defences. Trick's heart lifted. They would bring the Illusionist back and hand him over in exchange for Faustus and Mizzle's cloak and then Mizzle could take care of both of them.

  Mizzle led him across the bridge and to the front of the cottage. It was neatly painted with meticulously tended winter gardens in the snow. They tied their horses to a fence that existed only to lay down the Illusionist's territory, and went down the path through rose bushes. Footsteps in the snow betrayed human occupants and more than one.

  Trick knocked on the front door. He was, safe with Mizzle beside him, curious to see what kind of Wizard lived not in a tower and not alone.

  An old man cracked the door open and peered out at them. He looked frail as Avenir had never appeared frail and Trick doubted his own immorality to be able to give this man over without a qualm. But he looked at the freshly painted fence and the freshly weeded garden and doubted again, that this man could possibly be as weak as he appeared.