After the Dragon

by Wendy Palmer

  'Where did you find this one?’ His long fingers played with a sheet of paper in front of him.

  Trick was puzzled. ‘The Cult had him.’ He had known from Zircon's words that the child had to be important. Could he be Lanerol's son? How had Mizzle known?

  But Lanerol dashed that theory. ‘His parents?'

  'We do not know,’ said Mizzle. Her silver eyes watched him.

  She had known nothing, Trick realised. She merely laid him into Lanerol's hands and waited for his reaction.

  'I've been with the royal family since Ardmore was founded,’ said Lanerol, his voice gone soft as the lamplight. ‘I know what they look like.'

  Trick got it, finally. A scion of Rouen lay on the table before him. And Lanerol looked deeply unhappy. ‘There were rumours as well. Shier had a daughter who had a son.’ His hands still fidgeted with the paper. Mouse's letter, Trick realised, that he was so determined to deliver.

  Lanerol followed his gaze to it. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘This confirms it. A letter from Hesperus as she dies, telling us that the Cult has Rouen's heir, Toulon, child of Sharlon, child of Moraine and Shier.'

  Hesperus and her son, son of Mikcul, and how else did Mouse get such a letter and such a fervent need to hand it to Rouen, if not from his dying mother? He became, then and instantly, a threat to Lithia, Mikcul's son, and Trick resolved to never say a word. He kept the subject off the letter. ‘So why do you look as if we laid plague before you? Surely this will make Rouen happy?'

  Lanerol looked at Trick through half-lidded eyes, and faced Mizzle. ‘Send the boy away.'

  He meant Trick, and not the sleeping child.

  'No,’ Mizzle said before Trick could even think to protest.

  All the smug superiority and power seemed to have drained from the half-Elf. He sighed at her refusal and gave in. ‘Rouen is dead.'

  Disaster, Trick thought. ‘What happened? Don't think to lay this on us.'

  'He has been dead for some eight years,’ Lanerol said calmly. ‘He simply went into a sudden and not unexpected decline. If it becomes known that Ardmore has no legal ruler, Moraine will come out of hiding and put Shier on the throne.'

  'And so you've just been pretending? How long did you think you could do that?'

  'As long as the humans were prepared to accept it.'

  Mizzle stirred. ‘And the LightElves?'

  'They live longer lives,’ he said with a shrug. ‘They would not question a disappearance for such a short space of time.’ Lanerol glanced at the child. ‘But now—everyone will expect him to emerge with the joy of uniting with his granddaughter's child.'

  'But isn't that fine now?’ asked Trick. ‘You needed a ruler for Ardmore and now you have the boy and you can let people know Rouen is dead.'

  Lanerol shook his head and Trick knew he was being naïve. ‘Moraine will bring Shier forward as regent and I will have to step down. A child may easily have an accident and then Moraine has the throne. I will not have that.'

  Mizzle nodded. ‘So I still go to rescue Shier.'

  'And perhaps the daughter, Sharlon,’ said Lanerol with a nod. ‘Once we get them free of Moraine, either could act as regent and he would have no claim. The LightElves would at least enforce that, where they failed to act for her rescue twenty years ago.’ His tone turned suddenly bitter.

  The LightElves would come to the aid of Kiara Valley during attack, Trick knew the treaty provided for that. Except twenty years ago they had come too late and the treaty spoke only of defence. The LightElves would never attack at the order of the humans in Kiara Valley, not even to avenge the lost lives of LightElf Rangers. And Lanerol had served those humans too long and had enough human in him to see the folly of that, when Moraine sat safe in his stronghold for too long.

  Mizzle straightened. ‘I will go. You must give me someone to lead me.'

  Lanerol looked at her, eyes dark. ‘I'll send Sparrow.'

  Trick wondered if Lanerol would see the allure settling about himself if he was to look in a mirror now.

  Sparrow would go—callously ordered or politely asked, he would go.

  It seemed Mizzle's intention to walk from the hall and take up Skye again, riding out into the darkness without heed for anything

  'We need to sleep first, Mizzle.'

  Something about her glance at him warned him her intentions did not include him. Finally she thought to let him go, when it was too late, when he owed her and could not give up the obligation, even if she could.

  But she said, ‘We will go before dawn.'

  She turned back to Lanerol, looking at him as he stared down at the boy. ‘Do the LightElves still prepare for war?'

  Lanerol looked up sharply. Trick went very quiet and still. ‘No,’ he said. ‘We have not warred with the DarkElves for two hundred and more years.'

  Since before Mizzle was born. Lanerol equivocated, because Mizzle could well be a very bold spy, if war was in the works. Trick understood now her puzzlement over the iron-laced LightElf sword they had found.

  Mizzle said, ‘War was imminent. That is why I come now, for I could not fight the LightElves and then ask them to accept me.'

  Trick remembered she had said she had meant to wait longer before fleeing her people. Her hand had been forced by the threat of war, as he had once guessed. It had been dangerous, to hold to her plan and come to the LightElves with such a context, but where else could she go?

  'The preparations stopped,’ said Lanerol, with a barely visible shrug. ‘Rangers who had been called back to Wyvern returned to us.’ And swords were thrown into streams to rust. ‘The threat has passed while you travelled to us.'

  Mizzle nodded once, frowning, and walked from the hall.

  * * * *

  Sparrow woke him.

  Mouse stood with him, out of bed and dressed.

  'You're not coming,’ he said, pushing from his mind who Mouse was. Lithia might ignore it but Filipe had spent too many years and too many lives getting Mikcul off the throne to risk an heir. He could shrug off the rumour but never ignore the reality.

  But Filipe would never know.

  Mouse got that imperious set to his mouth. Trick had a fast exchange of signals with Sparrow. He was, truth be told, tempted to let Mouse come with them, he who had followed Mizzle into worse, but Sparrow and his soft heart would not permit it.

  Trick had slept in his clothes and it just remained to get his boots on and follow Sparrow down the hallway.

  Linnet came towards him and his heart clenched. But it was Rhea, Sparrow's youngest sister.

  'Fortune, you look like your—’ He stopped himself in the face of her flat look. She remembered him, and it seemed she sided with her father and oldest brother.

  'Rhea,’ said Sparrow gently, distracting her, turning her green eyes from him so he could breath again. ‘Rhea, take Mouse to Mother.’ Sparrow's mother was mother to everyone.

  For a moment she edged on refusing. She had to be here before sunrise for the same reason Mouse waited beside them. But Rhea could not refuse adored big brother Sparrow, and Mouse allowed himself to be led away.

  Trick stood outside Mizzle's room with Sparrow and watched them walk away down the hallway, with backwards glances. They both were worried, hand-in-hand with each other.

  'You don't need to come,’ said Sparrow. ‘You look worn.'

  Mizzle has that effect, he wanted to say, and didn't. And didn't say he had to come even though Mizzle hadn't asked because he had tried to crack her skull and had betrayed her and that had to be atoned for somehow but she wouldn't kill him for it.

  Instead of all that, he said, ‘I do have this destructive nature, don't I, Sparrow?’ and made his friend go red and mumbly.

  He knocked and Mizzle opened the door as fast as if she had stood on the other side and heard every word. But she was hardly the eavesdropping type.

  They went downstairs in the dim pre-dawn and Trick and Sparrow saddled Skye and Bet and a third horse that Trick would use.

 
The gatekeeper let them out, as he had let Mizzle and Trick in much earlier that morning.

  They turned south and west almost immediately, onto a faint and overgrown path. In the distance, the mountains rose, snowy peaks belying the taste of spring in the air.

  Mizzle rode ahead of them as the sun rose. It was almost Bourchia again, except his heart lifted to have Sparrow by him and not Faustus.

  'She's angry with you,’ whispered Sparrow, as they shared bread and cheese.

  'Yes,’ he said on a mouthful. ‘But this is how she acts anyway.'

  Sparrow didn't believe him. Sparrow had always had the most transparent expressions of any person he had known.

  Except maybe Linnet.

  'What will you do, after this?'

  'Follow her into Wyvern.’ That answer was easy.

  'After that,’ said Sparrow.

  Touching that Sparrow assumed he would live that long. ‘I think I'll go back to Livania.'

  Mizzle turned in the saddle. Their eyes met but she turned around again without saying anything.

  Trick saw a warning but did not understand it. Did she suggest not making plans?

  Sparrow, oblivious, said, ‘Come stay with us for a while.'

  'I'm sure your father would approve.'

  Sparrow's mouth tightened. ‘You can stay in my quarters at the Keep.'

  Trick smiled. Sparrow was not so insensible as to brush away what his father thought of him. But staying with Sparrow drew him. Mouse could stay with them. Or Sparrow's landbound mother might keep him, the way she kept other stray children.

  He started. For just that moment, he looked to the future and planned for himself and others he felt responsible for. He had not seen such a thing in himself for a long time. Not since Linnet fell to the Dragon. Impossible that he could think he would survive to settle under Sparrow's wing. Anyway, who was he to find a place for Mouse? The boy was a gifted Illusionist, no matter how quietly he wore it. Perhaps now he had handed over the message, he would want to return to Livania and find another master to train under. Or, gods knew, look for his own apprentice.

  He shook his head and became aware of Sparrow watching him, patiently, without expectations. He could share his thoughts or not, and Sparrow would accept it. This was the travelling companion Mizzle had needed all along. Not himself, bitter and grieving, and not besotted stupid Faustus.

  But he didn't say that. He shook his head again and they rode on in silence.

  * * * *

  It wasn't long before Sparrow slowed them for fear of patrols.

  'We are close?’ asked Mizzle.

  'No,’ said Sparrow. ‘It's just that we have no idea what their habits are. We've ignored them, they've ignored us. I think it's better to be careful.'

  He got a long slow look from Mizzle, a look which spoke of the folly of ignoring an enemy. But they went on with caution, hugging slopes, seeking trees where they could. The crawling pace played at Trick's nerves and twisted the tension in his stomach until he heard Moraine's men behind every bush.

  He hid it, gripping the reins and trying not to twitch too much. He was exhausted, that was all.

  As dusk fell, Sparrow stopped them. ‘We should go on foot from here.'

  Sparrow could be over-cautious, but horses’ hooves echoed in these hills. They left their animals watered, fed, and tethered on open grazing land, then walked on as night fell. Stars made their roof as they lay on a hillside and peered over at Moraine's fortress.

  Towering grey-black walls confronted them as if Moraine had hewed his fortress from the very rock of the mountain that loomed so close behind.

  'They say a Giant helped him build it.’ Sparrow was frowning.

  Trick could well believe it, with those walls rearing twenty men high. From the expression on Sparrow's face, he hadn't expected what faced them.

  'You can wait here,’ he said. ‘You were told to lead us here, not help us.'

  'No, I'll go in.’ Sparrow's voice was firm but not confident.

  Trick saw Mizzle give him a thoughtful look.

  'How do you want to do this, Mizzle?’ Trick asked.

  Her attention came away from Sparrow. That narrow-focussed attention span of hers could only take in one thing at a time, but it drank it all in.

  He repressed a shiver and told himself it was the cool night breeze. Her starlight eyes blinked at him.

  'It is too far south for Giants,’ she said.

  She was off-kilter, slightly out of beat with them. Trick had to wonder if he had rattled her skull harder than he had thought.

  She looked at the fortress again, looking at the scale of the walls, the mountains rearing behind. She was silent for a long time. He recognised that expression on her face. She contemplated something that she had to re-think and double-think. At last, she said, ‘Not for the rest of us.'

  He didn't understand and Sparrow didn't. But they followed her along the lee side of the hill, circling down until they reached the side of the fortress, far from the main gates and any possible entrance.

  'We can't climb it, Mizzle,’ said Trick. She did forget, sometimes, what humans were capable of. Trick craned up at the top of the walls. Could a sentry even see them from up there?

  'I am aware.’ She took something from that pocket in her cloak, where she kept the DarkStone.

  Trick took a couple of steps away and brought Sparrow with him. She was going to split the walls like an egg with the stone and he didn't want to stand too close. But Mizzle shook her head.

  She spoke in his ear, her body cold against the length of him. ‘I dare not. Your attempt was diffused but if I use it purposefully on such a scale, the LightElves will hear and know.'

  So she had changed her mind about giving it to them. Or, at least, she wished to hold this secret a little while, so that not even Sparrow could overhear.

  'Besides,’ she added, moving away, and her voice lit with that touch of humour. ‘If I use it, I will have to keep using it, yes?'

  If she used it on the walls, every guard in the place would come running. She'd have to turn it on them as well.

  Instead, she showed him her hands. In her white palms lay six small globes, brown and smooth. Seeds, he realised.

  She rubbed each one in her hands and planted them in a line along the walls. ‘Stand well back.'

  They already were and she joined them. ‘What are they are?’ Sparrow dared to ask.

  'Dryad seeds,’ she said. Trick remembered then that the dying Dryad had given her something in exchange for the energy she had allowed to be taken from her. ‘The soil is good here.'

  A creaking warned him, that was all. Then trees pushed themselves from the ground, shooting up and shouldering the wall into shattering pieces.

  'Oh, and this won't bring every guard in the place?’ asked Trick.

  'Yes,’ she said. ‘But it is not our concern.'

  The six Dryad oak trees towered above their heads, looming over the wall that crumbled away from them. Around them sprung smaller trees, with whipping branches and flailing roots.

  Mizzle strode forward and the small trees fell still. ‘Keep close to me.'

  Trick and Sparrow crowded after her as she walked through the grove. Trick felt watched, the very stillness of the trees threatening him. Once a branch crept over his shoulder and seemed to grab at him. He jumped. Mizzle barked out something in DarkElvish and the tree subsided.

  They crept through the gap the Dryad oaks had punched in the wall. More small trees had sprouted on the other side. They were not still. They fought the human guards who came too close.

  Trick saw one man whipped by a root; he went flying back across the courtyard. ‘Won't they fetch axes or fire?'

  'I think no,’ said Mizzle. ‘Moraine had Ancient help to build these walls. He must be careful of his obligation.'

  They slipped along the wall, gliding from shadow to shadow, away from the forest battle and towards the castle itself. It was squat, made from the same ugly grey stone as t
he walls.

  They came, finally, to a side door, left locked but unguarded. Trick picked the lock.

  As they went inside, Trick heard a great shouting arise from behind them, ordering the men back. Moraine had come downstairs, it seemed, and honoured his pact with whatever Ancient he had dared approach. Trick suspected Giants, no matter what Mizzle said.

  Torches burned on sconces as they made their way along the narrow hallway to a stone staircase. Mizzle touched Trick on the shoulder. ‘I go down,’ she said. ‘You find Shier.'

  She didn't wait for him to answer, but hurried off down the stairs. Trick and Sparrow exchanged glances and went up.

  'What do you suppose she's doing?’ whispered Sparrow.

  Trick shrugged. Who knew with Mizzle? He wasn't even surprised she had left the actual rescue to them. They reached the next floor. More torches flickered here, dimly lighting a long, empty hallway.

  He felt uneasy at the emptiness. Surely not every single guard had run downstairs? But perhaps Moraine was that confident in his walls. He had no moat, no inner defensive wall. That implied a kind of confidence. And he had made off with the king's daughter and never had retaliation, not for twenty years. That implied laxness.

  So Trick eased out into the hallway, hugging the wall.

  Sparrow came soft-footed behind him.

  They came to a door and Trick turned the knob. Inside was an empty antechamber, and beyond that, a large chamber with a fire in the grate. The air was warm and close.

  As they stood looking around them, a door on the far side opened, and a woman came out, wrapping herself in a robe.

  'Moraine, what was it?’ she called, and then, ‘Who are you?'

  'Don't scream,’ said Sparrow quickly. ‘We're here to rescue you.'

  Trick thought to check. ‘Shier?'

  The woman walked closer. ‘That's right,’ she said. Her voice had gone soft. Her hair shone faded blonde in the firelight. ‘My father sent you, did he?'

  'Your father's dead,’ said Sparrow. ‘I'm sorry.'

  Her expression did not change, and Trick had a sudden inkling. He was not shocked by what she said next. ‘It was Lanerol, I suppose? I had hoped he died in the attack.'