Dragonlinks (41 page)

Jelindel flopped down to the dust while the villagers heaped sand onto the molted ellipse surrounding her. She was carried over the sand bridge by the blacksmith, who set her down on the shrinestone steps.

Those villagers who were not smothering fires or tending the wounded gathered around Jelindel so quickly that Daretor and Zimak had to push their way through.

‘That was fantastic!' shouted Zimak, embracing her. ‘You faced that dragon alone, you shot it, you used its magic name to drive it away. Jaelin – Jelindel, you're the greatest Adept who ever lived.'

‘Nobody but you could have done it,' said Daretor clapping her on the shoulder.

They pulled away as the mayor made his way through the crowd and thanked her with tears in his eyes. ‘Mage Auditor, you saved our village and our lives!' he cried.

Everyone else now came swirling about her with their personal thanks. Gemoti held up his hands after several minutes, and tried to clear a space around Jelindel.

‘Ease back now, folks, the poor girl's getting a worse battering from ye all than she got from the dragon.'

A circle began to clear around Jelindel as the people dispersed to clear up the mess. Only her companions, and Kelricka and Gemoti remained standing at the base of the steps.

‘How did you know all that strange language?' Daretor asked as she sat resting, her back against the shrinestone steps. Jelindel noted the slight, familiar frown of suspicion on his face as she tapped at the studs on the thundercast.

‘Because I am wearing Korok's link on my toe,' said Jelindel as she pointed the thundercast at Daretor and shot him.

The villagers who were still nearby screamed and flung themselves to the ground as the tall, well-muscled warrior collapsed, as limp as a feather pillow.

‘Jaelin! Why did you do that?' cried Zimak, aghast.

‘Because I know who has the last link,' Jelindel replied sadly, turning the thundercast towards him.

‘Bawdykin!' Zimak cursed, then he tried to leap for her.

Jelindel shot him in mid-air. He crashed heavily to the steps and tumbled down to the ground.

Jelindel descended the shrinestone steps. Unsteadily she beckoned Gemoti to come over.

‘Hurry, we don't have much time,' she said, her voice quavering. ‘Get some men together and take these two over to your shop.'

Once they had reached the smithy Jelindel slipped Zimak's lead ring from his finger. A bright glow of orange was coming from the inner surface. She peeled the lead casing away with her knife.

‘The last dragonlink,' said Kelricka, nodding her head in understanding. ‘But was it necessary to kill them both?'

‘They are still alive,' Jelindel said, sounding more weary than ever. ‘Now help me prop Zimak up beside the anvil.'

‘What are you doing?' asked Gemoti, bewildered.

‘Repairing a dream.'

Jelindel curled Zimak's hand around the chisel and pressed it down on the link as it lay on the anvil. She took the hammer from the blacksmith and struck the chisel, square and hard. Blue tracery crawled about Zimak's fist for a few moments, then dispersed.

‘What will you do when they revive?' asked Kelricka. ‘They will not be well disposed to you.'

‘Daretor hates anyone who would use another's fighting skills through one of the dragonlinks. His idea of honour blinds him to all other need or necessity. If he wakes up here, he will know that both of the people that he trusted most in the entire world have betrayed him, and have been as dishonourable as his worst enemies – in his eyes, at least. I used a dragonlink to defeat Korok, but Zimak was using one all the time that he was with us. Daretor would … gah, it doesn't even bear thinking about.'

Kelricka clasped her hands together in alarm. ‘At least
you
can defend yourself. When Zimak wakes up he will be without his fighting skills. Daretor may kill him.'

‘Not so. I used a special technique to split the dragon -link. Zimak will keep a measure of his abilities for some weeks, and if he works hard he will be able to keep some of them forever. I learned the trick from a … a friend that I met in the Valley of Clouds. I kept it secret, confident there would be just such a day as this. Now then, Kelricka and Gemoti, strip everything from them.'

‘What?' they chorused.

‘Remove their clothes and weapons. Everything!'

‘But why?' asked Kelricka.

‘To make them think that nothing but living flesh was able to go with them on their journey. Hurry.'

Jelindel finally reached up to the fine chains at her neck and snapped one. She drew out a blue teardrop shape and stared at it for a moment before putting it in Daretor's hand.

‘What is the journey? Where are you sending them?' asked Kelricka.

‘I don't know,' Jelindel said as she draped Zimak's arm
across Daretor's back. ‘The weight is all wrong, so – I don't know.'

‘Weight?'

Jelindel spoke a word, and Daretor was slowly swathed in blue tendrils that originated at his hand and spread to the rest of his body, then down Zimak's arm to encase him as well. The pair began to fade within the cocoon of writhing blue lines.

‘Move back,' Jelindel commanded the blacksmith and priestess, and they pressed against the wall as Jelindel stood with her hands clasped together. The writhing mass of blue suddenly vanished with a loud blast. All that remained was a little pile of blue powder on the floor of the smithy.

‘What did you do?' asked Kelricka as Jelindel scuffed the blue powder with her boot.

‘The blue jewel was given to me by – well, you would not believe who it was. The device could have transported me to another world, but it is destroyed in the process. Daretor and Zimak are in a paraworld now, and can never return. Ever.'

‘You make it sound like death,' said Kelricka softly and quietly.

‘It's as final as death, but not death. Daretor will awake thinking that Zimak is the one friend who never betrayed him, and Zimak will retain his kick-fist skills if he practises them henceforth. Meantime, I am safe from Daretor's wrath, even if his hate for me burns in some unimaginably distant place.'

Zimak stirred, and beside him Daretor groaned. They were lying on rubble in the half-light of morning or evening, he could not tell which.

In the distance were the sounds of tuneless singing and coarse laughter, interspersed with an occasional scream. Up in the sky was a huge banded moon in a greenish-blue haze. None of the stars or constellations were familiar.

‘Zimak, is that you?' asked Daretor.

‘Aye, but – my clothes! Everything's gone.'

Daretor sat up, warily looking about him. ‘Damn that traitorous little bitch Jelindel!' he spat, enraged. ‘Damn her to Black Quell's pit, aye and below it too. She's magicked us to another world and kept the mailshirt for herself. She was probably scheming to do it all along.' He glanced down at himself. ‘It seems that clothes and weapons cannot be sent to this particular paraworld.'

No ring, thought Zimak in dismay. ‘We, ah, we do seem to be in a new world, indeed,' he said in almost a whisper.

‘Damn you, Jelindel!' Daretor shouted at the sky. ‘Damn your learning, there's no honour in it!'

‘What a strange place,' said Zimak as the echoes of Daretor's shout died away. ‘These ruins are smoking! They must have been only recently razed – White Quell save us, there are bodies everywhere!'

There were at least a dozen dead men where Zimak was pointing. Daretor made his way over the rubble to examine them.

‘All have their hands tied, and have been clubbed to death. It's a dishonourable way to die. They should never have surrendered. They should have died fighting.'

‘They wear strange, fine robes,' said Zimak as he joined Daretor. ‘We should take a set each to wear. We need warmth more than they ever will again.'

One of the bigger bodies was nearly Daretor's size, while Zimak had his choice of the rest. Their sandals were a flexible design that strapped on easily.

‘I can't help but worry about these robes,' Daretor said, experimentally hefting a wooden beam that he had pulled from the rubble.

‘Why is that?'

‘Because they brand us as being among the losers in whatever fight destroyed this place – look out!'

Two heavily bearded, unkempt barbarians had been drawn to the sound of their voices. They cried out in delighted surprise at finding two more survivors and drew curving, weighted swords to attack at once. Reeling drunk and over-confident, they did not recognise Daretor's confident, defiant stance.

Daretor parried the swing of the first man's sword with his length of wood and drove his elbow into his face.

Zimak skipped back from his opponent, hands spread and open to show he had no weapons. The warrior lunged and missed as Zimak executed a step-dodge then brought his heel around in a spinning back kick that landed on the man's hairy jaw. Zimak's sprained ankle stung with the impact, but not beyond bearing.

Daretor and Zimak stood over their defeated opponents, staring at each other.

‘Good work,' panted Daretor. ‘We make a better team of two than three, do you not think so?'

Zimak suddenly realised that he had just fought with skills that he had acquired through his disguised dragon -link – yet the link was gone! How? Perhaps the skills of the dragonlink were threaded into his body when it was magicked into the paraworld, leaving the link behind. Yes,
the skills of the link could only be lost if it were taken off, but he never actually took it off. Whatever the case, his secret was safe from Daretor forever.

‘We ought to dress as these two,' Zimak suggested. ‘They seem to be the victors.'

He began to remove the weapons and clothing from the man that he had kicked. The clothing was too large, but it would have to do. Daretor examined the other.

‘Pah! This one has been drinking,' he said.

‘Mine too. There's a big revel somewhere close, by what I can hear.'

When they had changed clothes again they climbed a low wall and surveyed the area. Off to one side were the remains of an angular, precisely laid out garden, and within it a crowd of barbarians was gathered around a bonfire.

Three or four women were amid the crowd, but from their cries and screams it was obvious that they were not willing companions of the hairy revellers.

‘Now what?' asked Zimak.

Daretor did not reply. He just stared out at the revellers around the bonfire.

‘Daretor, you couldn't be thinking of us two attacking those yahas, could you? There must be a dozen of them, maybe fifteen.'

‘Maybe more,' echoed Daretor. ‘Remember the trouble we had from the last girl that we fell in with?'

‘These are helpless, and in need,' rumbled Daretor. ‘This is what I understand, this is a matter of honour.'

Zimak looked down at the blade he had taken from his vanquished opponent. The design was functional yet
unlike anything he had ever seen. This is the end, this is the beginning, a voice kept saying in his mind.

Many worlds away Jelindel sat against the village shrinestone steps in the late afternoon sun, watching the villagers try to restore the celebration of the wedding day. They were avoiding her now, confused and fearful of the girl who had destroyed the mighty dragon that had threatened to annihilate their village, yet who had shot her own companions. Even the bodies of the two youths had been enchanted out of existence by her.

To even begin to explain the reason behind her actions was more than Jelindel dared to tell them. There was a curse on the mailshirt, she told them instead, and it had to be destroyed now that it was complete.

Kelricka walked across, climbed the steps and sat down beside her.

‘Damn, but I'm going to miss them, Kelricka,' Jelindel sighed. ‘I'll miss Daretor blustering about his honour and wooing skill back into his swordwork as if it were an angry mistress. I'll even miss Zimak putting on his all-comers' challenges at every village and showing off to the girls, then confiding his fears to me as we counted the winnings later.'

‘How did you know about Zimak having a dragonlink?' asked Kelricka as she squeezed her hand.

‘I listen a great deal. In D'loom the stallholders in the marketplace told me that they were amazed how Zimak had been transformed from a cowering boy to king of the market gangs almost overnight.

‘The great master of Siluvian kick-fist, Mir-gish, even unofficially rated Zimak at black band twelve when he
visited D'loom. I was there and I spoke to him. Nobody under the age of fifty has
ever
achieved that ranking.'

‘So, you became suspicious?'

‘More than suspicious, but I kept my thoughts to myself. We all have our secrets, myself especially, so I decided that Zimak would probably tell me when he was ready. When I learned more about the powers of the dragon links I drew the obvious conclusion. His ring was lead but it was big enough to cover a dragonlink on the inside. The lead smothered its aura while allowing his finger to be in contact with it. Flesh also smothers the aura. That's why he could be so close with the link yet go undetected.'

The priestess looked down at the mailshirt as it lay across the steps. It was now all silvery gleaming highlights with tiny stars of colours. Gemoti made ready some improvised tools and began to put the last links into the mailshirt that very afternoon. Jelindel watched carefully as Korok's link was split, heated, flattened, heated, looped in and hammered closed again. The mailshirt ceased to glow, then Jelindel opened the locket where she had been keeping Zimak's link and the glow blazed up again.

Gemoti split the last link and heated it. As he tapped the ends flat Jelindel unfolded her arms and held out her hand for his tongs.

‘I would like to do the last link,' she said firmly. ‘Alone.'

‘Meanin' no disrespect, but, ah, do you know how to?'