Dragonfang (6 page)
‘Of course you did. But since the Temple shall soon be no more than an irritating memory, your renunciation might be considered annulled.’
The Preceptor stared at her. He had a severe, angular face with thick dark brows that hunched together when he glared. Though he had become a King of Kings, and though his ambition knew no limit, he dressed simply in warrior’s garb. He appeared like a general who had but recently returned from the campaign trail to deal with unpleasant matters of state, and who hungered to return to the field. The only garment that belied the militaristic bearing was a scholar’s cloak. Jelindel knew that the man was a deadly but learned adversary.
Standing next to the Preceptor and holding the blunt stick was a dwarf of a race Jelindel had never seen. She presumed this was Kantor. His throat appeared to have been ripped out and a metallic plate melded with the living skin. A row of lights and dials on the plate flickered whenever someone in the room spoke.
Jelindel stared levelly at the two. ‘The Temple of Verity has stood for many centuries. I doubt that you or all your black arts will bring it to an end.’
The Preceptor laughed. ‘We shall see,’ he said, lightly. His manner changed abruptly. He leaned forward, searching her face. ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘where might I find the mailshirt?’
The dragonlink mailshirt, an off-world artifact of immense and toxic power, had been hunted down and destroyed by Jelindel and her two companions. With the help of the honour-obsessed Daretor and the street-savvy Zimak, she had journeyed across the
continent to find the missing dragonlinks and restore them to the mailshirt. With the final restoration, however, she discovered the diabolical nature of the mailshirt and managed to render it harmless, placing it where it could never be found.
‘The mailshirt is destroyed. I destroyed it,’ Jelindel said.
The Preceptor tensed. ‘For your sake, you had better be lying,’ he said. ‘Fetch the truthseer,’ he ordered Kantor. ‘This spawn of a fool will tell us nothing willingly.’
‘Let me stimulate her again, my lord,’ Kantor said. His harsh voice sounded like the vocal chords had been replaced by a machine.
The Preceptor waved his hand, dismissing the idea. ‘I am in too much of a hurry, and I do not trust her to speak the truth even under torture.’
Kantor bowed and departed. The Preceptor poured himself a drink and crossed to the roaring fire. He stood before it, backlit and ominous.
‘How did you like my
enhanced
deadmoon warriors?’
‘You mean
Fa’red’s
enhanced deadmoon warriors, don’t you?’
The Preceptor went still, eyeing her over the rim of a goblet. ‘You would do well not to irk me, Countess. I can make your passing a thing of perpetual pain, such that peasants a thousand years from now will shudder to recount.’ He paused, sipping his wine.
Outwardly urbane, as if he were entertaining a dinner guest, the Preceptor smiled. Jelindel shuddered. Thus does a shark smile moments before it tears its victim apart, she thought.
‘Where is your Adept 12 tonight?’ Jelindel asked. ‘Surely he would want to be here for such an important interrogation.’
‘Away on business. A pity. As you say, he would not wish to miss this.’
‘Especially after the destruction of his deadmoon warriors.’
The Preceptor almost spilt his wine. ‘What’s that you say?’
Jelindel stared at him. The two levitating warriors had not told the Preceptor what had transpired at the Temple the previous night. Obviously, they owed their allegiance to Fa’red rather than the Preceptor. A thought, Jelindel could clearly see, that was beginning to form in the Preceptor’s mind as well.
He slammed his wine glass down, snapping the stem, and roared for his attendants. A small knot came bursting through the door like a scrum of
kutark
ball players.
The Preceptor’s eyes picked out a tall skinny man whose clothing and accoutrement indicated he was a counsellor of some rank. ‘What is the report on the Temple attack?’ he demanded in a sibilant voice. It left the listener in no doubt that one false word or gesture would cause the Preceptor to lash out.
The counsellor cleared his throat nervously. His voice was a soft squeak: ‘Report? Of course, your lordship. The report was … I mean, is … in other words, the report reports that …’
His voice trailed off. A smaller man, stocky of carriage, spoke up. ‘Your deadmoon warriors were … perhaps inadequate for the task set them, my lord. We believe the witch was responsible. Many fell to their deaths. A handful returned.’ He bowed low and was silent.
‘A handful?’ the Preceptor shouted. ‘Are you insane? These were deadmoon assassins. None can stand against them. None but lindraks, and them I had slaughtered to the last of their order. A handful!’
He dismissed the cowering men with a wave of his hand and turned to Jelindel, his dark eyes simmering. He drew an iron from the fire. Its end, shaped like a pike’s blade, glowed white-hot. He advanced towards her.
‘Iron for the witch,’ he said, as though not in his own mind. ‘And fire for the flesh. The truthseer can wait. I will have the answer I seek from you or I will sear the skin from your bones.’
Jelindel fought to clear her mind of the panic that almost consumed it. She uttered a binding word and the blue sparks lashed themselves about the Preceptor’s legs. He fell with a cry and the glowing poker clattered across the floor. It came to rest against the wall, beneath ornate curtains. The Preceptor uttered an oath and Jelindel added an extra small binding word that fastened his lips. He could not cry out for help, although he thrashed across the slate floor.
In moments, the curtains were ablaze. The fire spread quickly to the ancient timber rafters that formed the groined ceiling. Smoke began to fill the chamber.
Jelindel coughed, her eyes watering. A lesser timber crashed down from the ceiling, spilling coals across the floor. A rug began to smoulder. As an Adept 9, Jelindel had few major abilities. But one that most novice Adepts practised with ease was telekinesis, moving small objects. Even market charm vendors could manage as much. She uttered a summoning spell. A small glowing coal flew across the room and lodged in one of the leather thongs that bound her left hand. It was uncomfortably close to her skin and she had to grit her teeth to keep from crying out.
Meanwhile, the Preceptor struggled with the binding spells. Unable to best them, he had managed to squirm his way to the main door. It was an ungainly and humiliating mode of locomotion. His eyes were wild with fear and hatred, like those of a horse that has seen a snake and would like nothing better than to grind it out of existence.
Just then the doors burst open. Kantor rushed in, followed by a grey-haired truthseer. Kantor went immediately to the
Preceptor’s aid but the Preceptor shook his head. Unable to speak, he pointed at Jelindel, then at the truthseer.
His meaning was clear. Kantor dragged the truthseer through the smoke and heat towards Jelindel. They stopped in the middle of the room. The beams above Jelindel were blazing fiercely and would not hold much longer.
‘Establish a link!’ shouted the dwarf.
The truthseer, trembling and coughing, put out his arms towards Jelindel. His eyes went milky white and he seemed to go into a trance.
Kantor faced Jelindel. ‘Where is the mailshirt, Countess? Where is the mailshirt?’
Jelindel tried to think of anything but the shirt. The coal had nearly burned through the thong. Once her left hand was free she had only to untie her right and she could escape. She bit down on her lip. It was no good. The scalpel of the truthseer’s thought-search sliced into her mind, scouring for the truth. She tried to fight it but she was no match for the ancient’s power.
Then several things happened at once. The ceiling began to collapse just as the leather thong gave way. At the same moment, the truthseer found what he was looking for, or at least part of it, and gasped in triumph. Jelindel swung around behind the scaffold she’d been bound to as the ceiling came down like a volcanic landslide.
Kantor dragged the old man back, but not quickly enough. A flaming rafter swung down and swept the pair from their feet. Green blood spurted from Kantor’s ruptured chest. The truthseer screeched and pushed himself back from under the cinder-hot rafter.
As the truthseer’s life drained away, so did his power over Jelindel. As though barely making the surface from a deep dive,
Jelindel gasped for air and gagged on the smoke. She registered Kantor’s green blood, and in that moment of recognition, her binding words left the Preceptor and returned to her. The scaffold had protected her from the collapsed ceiling. Now she freed her right hand and made for one of the scullioned windows. She kicked out the glass and climbed outside. Pressing her back against the wall, she scuttled sideways along the stone ledge and clambered up a terracotta pipe to the roof. In no time at all she was some distance away.
The Preceptor leaned over the dying truthseer. He cradled the dying man’s head as though it were fine china. Nearby, Kantor’s neck brace continued to register words, but no more would come from him.
‘Tell me what you found, old man,’ whispered the Preceptor, ‘and I will ennoble your family for all time.’
The truthseer coughed blood and ash. The Preceptor wiped it away with his own sleeve. ‘Where is the mailshirt?’ he asked, gently.
‘It is …’ The truthseer gasped for air. ‘It is – as she said … It is gone, destroyed. I know not where. Could not get that …’
The Preceptor’s jaw tightened. All his plans, everything he had worked for, lost forever.
As if reading his thoughts, the truthseer suddenly clutched the Preceptor’s tunic in a tight grip. ‘There’s something else … in her close future,’ he wheezed. ‘A device … just as powerful … five gems … The witch needs … transference … will soon seek the gems. Find them before her, my lord, and you will rule not only this world, but
myriad
worlds.’
The truthseer coughed once and died in the Preceptor’s arms.
For a long time the Preceptor did not move, but sat like stone, hardly aware that he still cradled the old man.
Warriors and attendants ran madly back and forth trying to quench the roaring flames.
Finally, the Preceptor’s lips moved. A senior counsellor had to lean forward to hear the words: ‘… find that witch …’
I
t was evening on the first day of month ten 2132. The lone figure walked along the creaking pier, looking at the ships. Nobody paid any attention, as boys from poor families often started very young aboard the ships, and were a common enough sight. Despite her age, however, Jelindel dek Mediesar was no youth.
Jelindel stood by a rotting wooden derrick and tapped her fingers against the blistered frame. Night in the docklands was always the time of departure. During the day dockers loaded and unloaded, vendors sold, and carpenters repaired, but at night work ceased. And when the night tide turned, the ships did the only profitable thing that they could: they sailed.
The dockland’s clock clanged the twentieth hour. Jelindel pushed away from the derrick. The cold wind bit hard, leaching any warmth from her body, but she seemed not to notice. Her mind was preoccupied.
She had idled away several hours of the previous night in a
tavern. The taverners had seemed amiable enough, she thought while sipping limewater. By the stone hearth had been two Hamarians, with their telltale axes hanging loosely from their waist clips. By the bar, in twos and threes, and dotted around the bustling tavern, were the suntanned Bravens, southern Nerrissians and Baltorians, from that newly besieged kingdom.
At odds with the forlorn foreigners, the locals, retired ship-wrights and longshoremen, ruddy faced seamen and fishermen gone to seed, were revelling in past glories and boasting of fresh conquests.
The hearth had been well fuelled and half a pig was being turned on a spit, awaiting the carve master. None paid Jelindel any attention, for she had been suitably attired in dowdy wool-lens of close weave. She had also tied back her hair as experience had taught her when visiting men’s lairs. She was as much a man as any, in strength and courage if not stature.
Perhaps it had been the cloying tobacco smoke that had made her drowsy, or perhaps someone had spiked her drink, hoping to press-gang her. Whatever the case, Jelindel’s mind had wandered. A dangerous lapse under the circumstances.
She thought of D’loom’s past. It had once been an important port, visited by every merchantman plying the Skelt coast. But the former King’s navy had been too ill equipped, or too corrupt, to stem the tide of brigands who more often than not looted and pillaged at will. Soon, the merchants began blazing new trails in camel trains – some even braving Dragonfrost Plain rather than risk the high seas and the brazen pirates. Such were the fortunes of seaports, she thought drowsily as the merriment washed over her.
A disturbance had broken out beyond the smoke haze. Indiscernible at first, Jelindel paid it little mind. It was this
detachment that saved her life. While tables were upturned and patrons rushed to harry and encourage the fighters, two men held back. It was no coincidence that the two Hamarians she had spotted now flanked her.
