“True, but—”
“Hush. Of course I still love her and fear for her, and I’ll do all I can for her, too, but I don’t want you gone!”
“And I don’t want to leave you, but I must.”
She twisted round, swung a leg free, and slid inelegantly down over the rump of the horse, which stamped and shied. She nearly fell headlong, in fact, but she caught a stirrup just in time and steadied herself. He leaned over to stare, utterly bewildered. The stallion tossed his head and snorted in a scatter of foam.
“Evandar, please, try to understand. I can’t simply do what I’d rather do. If I could, I’d stay with you. I love you.”
“If I were in danger, would you put your joy aside and come after me?”
For a moment she thought him jealous; then she realized that he was, indeed, honestly trying to understand.
“I would,” she said. “I’d leave the best feast in the world, the happiest day, to come after you.”
“Because you love me?”
“Because I love you.”
Evandar considered for a long moment. Finally he dismounted, calling to one of his warriors to come tend his horse. A blue-eyed fellow, more human than otherwise, took the reins and led the stallion some paces away. Evandar watched them go, and he seemed to be studying his court, too, as they sat slouched and waiting on their own mounts.
“Answer me one thing,” he said without turning round. “When I gave my brother the whistle, he used my mercy against me by capturing you. Now I’ve spared him again. Will I regret that mercy as well?”
“I have no idea. It was still the right thing to do. What made you forgive him?”
“Forgive him? I’ve not forgiven him one wretched thing, my love, not one shred of his black deeds, not one jot of the harm he worked you. Someday I’ll take my payment for all of it, and he’ll not find joy in my doing so, I promise you.”
The quiet way he spoke made her shudder.
“Well, then, why didn’t you just destroy him when he was groveling in front of you?”
Evandar started to speak, then hesitated, thinking.
“I’ll tell you the truth.” He turned to face her. “Instead of a riddle, the truth, and then you shall know I love you, because I don’t speak cold truth as easily as all that. I need him.”
Dallandra goggled, speechless.
“Without me he’d cease to live, just as I told him. But I suspect, my love, deep in my heart I even believe, that without him I’d die myself. Light and shadow, my love,shadow and light. Can there be one without the other? Or hot without the cold, and moist without the dry, fire without water, air without earth? And so I call him brother, because it’s true, because we were born a pair, though I’m the elder, because light leaps from the candle flame before the shadow hits the wall”
“I see. And who then lit the candle?”
“That, my love, is a riddle I can’t answer. I wouldn’t even presume to try. Perhaps those beings your people call gods? Ah, I see from your face that you can’t answer it, either. Well, mayhap one day I’ll know, but until then it matters little to me.” All at once he smiled and turned away, calling to his court. “Wait for me! I’ll return in but a little space of time, before you truly know I’ve gone.”
To Dallandra he held out his hand.
“Let us go to Jill, then, since you want to and for no reason more.”
She took his hand and allowed him to lead as they walked slowly, deliberately, across the dusty ground. Round them the mist gathered, an opalescent, shimmering mist all light-shot and silvery.
“Mind your step,” Evandar said, and rather slyly.
When she glanced down she found a flight of broad stairs, a flow of white marble between walls of gray mist. She looked up and found him grinning like a pleased child.
“I thought I’d make the way easier than usual.”
“My thanks, my lord.” She made a little curtsy. “There’s something about these stairs that makes me feel like a great lady.”
“I modeled them upon those in the king’s summer palace in Rinbaladelan.”
She laughed, glad of a moment’s wit and grace before they braved the next battle in their peculiar war. As hand in hand they walked down the staircase, she thought for a moment that she heard music and laughter, the lilt of many harps in some vast room and many voices raised in song, a reminder of better times and peaceful days. The mist whirled, lightened, blew away. Dallandra took one last step down into Jill’s tiny chamber, where the dweomermaster sat at her table, fallen asleep over one of her books, her head pillowed on her arms.
“There she is.” Evandar’s voice was already fading. “When I have news of Alshandra, I’ll return.”
And then he was gone, relinquishing her to the world of men and elves, caught in the grip of Time and Time’s daughter, Death.
6
CAPUT DRACONIS
Some loremasters say that this figure signifies great blessings no matter into which house it falls—save the House of Salt. I myself have grave doubts, for all know that he who would ride a dragon must risk a great burning.
The Omenbook of Gwarn, Loremaster
“I WAS WONDERING ABOUT somewhat,” Rhodry said “What makes you so eager to see this dragon? Just the glamour of the beast?”
“A fair question,” Enj said. “But it be more than that.” In striped shadow they were perched side by side on an outcrop of black basalt like an overturned boat. Behind them rose forest; before, nothing, just a long fell of cliff down, down, down to a tiny riband of water among minuscule trees in a valley below. Far across that rift and to the west another cliff climbed, leveling off to forest. Mountain flanks rose, green-gray waves of a sea, fogged with resinous mist.
“It be due to my father,” Enj said abruptly. “He taught me all I know, you see, about the great wyrms, and truly, he did know a great deal, because he found them beautiful. Once when he were very young, he saw a black one flying over Haen Marn, or so he told me, and never could he forget the sight. So down in Lin Serr he studied lore, finding much in books as well as in various tales from bards and priests.”
“I didn’t realize that the dwarves had lore books. Well, I couldn’t have read them anyway, I suppose, when I was there.”
“Oh, there’s a book hold in Lin Serr, Rori, that’s as big as the manse back home in Haen Marn. From what my father did tell me, he spent a long time there, studying dragon lore. But then he came to regret it, not that he should have. You see, when my sister was born, and it came clear that she were, well, so strange, he felt it was his fault.”
“What?”
“Oh, it’s a daft idea, his blaming of himself, and it did distress my mother sorely, as well you can imagine. Because he’d spent all that time brooding about dragons and talking about dragons and suchlike, he was convinced that he’d somehow summoned a dragon soul to be born into his daughter’s body.”
Rhodry could only gape at him. Enj looked away, his voice turning unsteady.
“He drowned soon after, of course. I was about a score of summers old, so I remember him well. I loved him well, too. Often we’d take a boat over to shore and go off for days together, hunting. We’d take dogs and bows, you see, and hunt the deer and wild sheep to feed the island. And while we made our nights’ camps, he’d tell me tales about dragons, and how his heart ached, just from longing to see another one fly.”
“And so you want to fulfill his quest?”
“Just that.”
“Well, you know, if you could pass that lore on to me, I’d be truly grateful. It would be a shame to have him gone, and only one person knowing his lore.”
“True.” Enj’s voice choked. “And I will.”
They sat together in silence for a few minutes more, until Enj wiped his eyes on his sleeve and stood, stepping back cautiously from the edge.
“And now it be best we get on our way. If we follow the rim of this valley, it should lead us to the waterfall that Avain saw in her basin, and th
en well know we’re heading the right way.”
Rhodry and Enj had left Haen Mam when the moon was just waxing full. By the time that they were speaking of Enj’s father (and this was also about the time that Dallandra reached Jill’s chamber), the moon was past her third quarter. Some days earlier, they’d left the hill country behind for the flanks of the mountains. Although Rhodry had been dreading the climb, paradoxically enough it was in one way easier going than the hills. Though the slopes rose so steeply that at times they walked bent double, leaning upon sticks, once they crossed in to high timber the underbrush thinned out. Huge firs of the kind the dwarves call “mountain grays,” taller than any pillar in a High King’s hall, rose straight and dark, dropping a blanket of dead needles the color of dried blood, thick and spongy underfoot. Although bringing a pack animal through would have been close to impossible, especially since there was no green fodder to speak of, two men could pick their way at a reasonable pace.
“There be little that can grow here, such be this ground,” Enj remarked. “I don’t know why, but it’s as if the firs claim these mountains for themselves alone and choke out any usurpers.”
Along the streams, of course, a tangle of shrubs and seedlings fought for water and sun both. In and among them Enj found edible herbs of various sorts as well as fish. Whenever they camped, they set wire snares for rabbits and rodents to supplement what flatbread and cheese they were carrying on their backs. They needed every extra bite they could forage. The forest stretched on and on, a sea indeed, roiling over the high mountains and plunging down into the rare valley. Rhodry felt like a swimmer, making his way underwater to bob up now and then for a view. Whenever they came to the rim of a valley or scrambled over an out-crop of rock, he would always look north, where the white peaks floated far above, still as unreachable as ever, even though he walked among them.
As they worked their way higher, the nights started turning cold, even though their short length told them it was summer still. On dry days they would scrounge dead wood for a fire. Enj was always on the lookout as well for rotting leaves and desiccated needles to augment the meager supply of tow and rotted rags in their tinderboxes. Since Rhodry’s — entire life had been spent either in towns or along the roads leading between them, how well Enj lived in the woods filled him with admiration.
“This be my home,” Enj said simply. “Never have I felt Haen Marn as home since the night my father did drown.”
“Well, you still have my thanks from the bottom of my heart. Without you I’d never be able to do this, Wyrd or no Wyrd. Never have I known a woodsman like you, never.”
Enj looked away fast, blushing round the ears, then glanced at him smiling.
As they traveled Enj scouted for the landmarks his sister had seen in her silver basin. One after another they found them, the rock face eroded in a pattern like an ear of ripe wheat, the hundred-foot-tall fir, dead some twenty years at least, that still stood stark and black on a hilltop, an enormous boulder split by ancient ice with a young tree growing ‘twixt the two halves. Other subtler markers came and went, an oddly shaped hill, a pattern of trees, a waterfall that seemed to break in two round rock. Yet the day came when they reached the last of them, if indeed the outcrop they found really did look like a hound’s head. Avain might have seen a resemblance; they were both unsure.
“Hound or no, it does provide shelter from the wind,” Enj said. “So let’s make camp here.”
They set out snares, then scavenged for firewood.While Enj split their haul with their hand ax, Rhodry scrambled to the top of the putative hound’s head and stood looking round. They were on a slope downhill to their line of march, and to the west he could see a fair ways into the bluish haze of a summer forest.
“Enj! Here’s an odd thing! I see hills, flanks of the big peak due north, but then I think there’s a plain of some sort. It’s too cursed big to be a mountain meadow or suchlike, way at the horizon.”
The ringing of the ax stopped.
“You be the one with elven eyes, not me,” Enj called up. “Do the peaks rise again on the far side, like?”
“It’s too far to tell.” Rhodry shaded his eyes with his hand. “Looks flat, and oddly barren. You don’t know what it might be?”
“I’ve never traveled this far in my life. Truly, I’d wager that no man nor dwarf neither has ever walked this far north.”
All at once Rhodry felt dizzy. He slid down from his lookout and sat down in the shade of the outcrop, and as he did so, he patted the firm ground just to make sure it was still there. Enj sank the ax into a log.
“If it be round, that valley might be the ‘Gods’ Soup Bowl’ that Avain kept mentioning.”
“It looked long and narrow, actually.”
“Well, then, I don’t know.” He grinned, suddenly as sunny as his sister. “Let’s go see, shall we, and be the first men in the world to walk there.”
“That would mean somewhat to you, wouldn’t it?”
“Oh, as much as jewels and gold, truly. I do see that you don’t care in the least.”
Rhodry shrugged.
“If I weren’t heartsick with worry over this siege, it would mean more. For all I know, Cengarn’s fallen to her enemies by now, and me stuck here without one thing to do to save her.”
“My apologies. I keep shoving that horror out of my mind, like. Well, then, Rori, on the morrow, let’s keep moving in the direction of this mysterious plain, but if you can’t see any peaks by the time we camp, then we’ll have to turn back. We won’t be finding our dragon anywhere but near a fire mountain.”
“Truly? Why?”
“That be where they lair in the winter. They be cold-blooded, the great wyrms, and in the winter they’d die without some source of heat.”
“I see. I wish we had some scouts to send ahead of us. You know, here’s an odd thing! In all of our traveling, I’ve not seen Wildfolk, not a single gnome or sprite or suchlike at all. Usually they come round me, and every now and then one will run me an errand, too.”
“Well, they shun me.” Enj smiled, but ruefully. “We Mountain People can see them, but they dislike us, and so I suppose they’re avoiding you because I be here.”
“Then that’s why I never saw them swarming round Avain. Usually they like a person who shows dweomer talent.”
“Do they? I didn’t know that. You know, when Avain scried, she kept holding the ring, and without the ring she saw little enough. You’ve elven blood in your veins, and you wear the dragon’s name. Can’t you scry for it?”
“Not in the least, or I would have.”
“Well, true, and my apologies. I just feel that somehow we’re missing some thing or other that would help us.”
And they needed every scrap of help they could get, Rhodry realized. After they’d eaten, while the late sun still shone golden over the plain far to the west, he climbed the outcrop again and stood staring into the view. The longer shadows of sunset did seem to pick out mountain peaks on the other side of the mysterious plain, though far away, as sharp as cat’s teeth, these, if indeed mountains they were. He was painfully aware that he and Enj could wander in this unknown range for months, circling round their dragon, even, or missing the beast by a scant mile or two. When he lowered his hand, the ring glinted a reminder.
“Here, Enj, don’t think I’ve lost my wits, but I think me I’ll try calling our wyrm.”
It took him a moment to remember what Jill had taught him, and he slipped the ring off, too, to make sure he had each elven letter right in his mind. First he mouthed the words to get the feel of it again, Arzosah Sothy Lorezohaz; then he gathered himself, took a deep breath, and intoned the name.
“Ar Zo Sah Soth Ee Lor Ez O Haz.”
In the silent mountains, hushed with sunset, the name boomed out like a gong. Like a gong the sound lingered, quivering to a long stop. For a moment he felt nothing but foolish. Down below Enj was staring gape-mouthed.
“Do it again, Rori,” he whispered. “I’ve ne
ver heard anyone but a priest do that.”
Rhodry gathered himself again, and this time he imagined himself on the brink of some crucial battle.
“Ar Zo Sah Soth Ee Lor Ez O Haz.”
A blare of sound, this time, like the brass horns in the Dawntime style that Deverry priests blow at Samaen, humming and vibrating as much as it trumpeted over the valley, echoing round, racing, it seemed, to the horizon itself. The answer came, a touch, an awareness, a feel of a mind, an alien mind upon his. The dragon lived, and not far, not far measured by the distance they’d already come. He could feel its disquiet—not a fear, certainly, nothing so strong as that—but an ill ease, a wondering that some thought it couldn’t understand had touched its mind.
As he shaded his eyes and stared toward the sunset plain, he knew that the wyrm laired to the west. He tossed back his head and laughed his berserker’s howl, the mad chortle echoing round the hills, but yet it sounded almost normal after the intoning of that name. Still grinning, he slid down again and clapped his hand on Enj’s shoulder.
“We go west. You’ll walk upon that plain, lad, just like you wanted.”
In but two days more they had solid evidence to match his dweomer knowledge, when they reached the high plain, a sliver of land caught between two ranges. As they hiked down the last slope leading to it, the first thing they noticed was the change in the trees—still the gray mountain fir, but stunted, with scant branches that drooped more and more the nearer they went to the peak. Rhodry found himself sniffing the air like a dog, finally realized what he’d been scenting.
“Ye gods,” he said. “The air stinks of brimstone.”
“It does, at that.” Enj paused to sniff as well. “Just now and again, like, when the wind comes from the due west.”
They exchanged a grin and trudged on.
Toward evening they came down at last onto the plain. Rhodry had been prepared for something grim and blasted, but instead it looked ordinary enough at any distance away. As they hiked through, however, they saw that the long stretch of grass grew scant and pale round black rocks, sticking up through thin soil. What few trees there were stood twisted and sickly. Enj hunkered down and dug his fingers deep into the soil, then held up a black and oddly glossy handful, as if it had started life as cinders.
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