Dragon's Ring (24 page)

"And not on us, with luck," said Finn.

"I hardly ever eat guests who make me laugh," said Groblek.

Meb was not sure if he was joking or not.

Fionn had watched very carefully when Groblek had reached through the dimensions to give her snowballs. Looking at it again, he felt that he was just on the brink of understanding what Groblek was doing. Groblek was reaching outside of Tasmarin. In fact, Fionn was sure that he was reaching outside of the entire cycle of worlds that had been drawn from to make Tasmarin. Fionn had known the others existed, but it was just this ring that he was responsible for. Tasmarin still needed to be destroyed because it was damaging the rest, upsetting their polarities. It was also a trap which prevented him from seeing to his work in the wider cycle. He was stuck here and that would spell disaster for them all. Besides that, he found it intensely frustrating to be trapped here, knowing work needed doing badly out there. It ran counter to his purpose not to do it.

He had tried to get Groblek to explain it to him last time. But the giant was not someone you could force to do anything he did not want to do. In times before Tasmarin's building, back when Fionn had still roamed the fractal planes of existence, fixing imbalances across the ring which had been his responsibility, he had seen traces of the giant, from time to time. Huge bare footprints in deep snow. Footprints that came from nowhere and led to nowhere. Then, when he'd been trapped here the first time, he'd been foolish enough to contest Groblek physically. Fionn had learned: you cannot fight a mountain. You can only work with its natural bent, and try to out-think it.

As fortune would have it, Haborym was as close to Yenfar as he dared to go, without the slow leeching of his life-energies affecting him enough to kill. The rocky caves of the little islet a few miles off the coast were much used by smugglers, and Haborym did a great deal of business with them. Even here, he could feel the effect of the magical wards . . . and then, abruptly he could not.

"I need your ship," he said to the smuggler-captain he'd been discussing the price of a shipment of untaxed tar with, moments before. "Now. I must go to Yenfar."

The captain looked at him in puzzlement, possibly because he'd dealt with Haborym for some years, and this was the closest his business associate had ever come to the island. "But the cargo is still on board. It'll take us a couple of hours to shift it, Beng."

"Beng" was the name Haborym used when he assumed the illusory image of a human. It pleased him. He considered briefly. He could cross the ocean on his own. Not being a thing of mere flesh, he could drift above it, but his kind had an uneasy relationship with water. Instead he concentrated his will on the hapless captain. He did not care if the stinking tar-barrels were on board. He quite enjoyed the smell. A few minutes later the smuggling galley was nosing out to sea, heading for the coast of the larger landmass, her frightened crew pulling hard, driven by their still more frightened captain.

It was near moon-set when Haborym left them at a small beach hemmed with cliff. He did not need to find his way through the network of caves they used. He drifted up the steep rock walls instead. So: here he was—at last able to hunt their prey here in this, the one place on Tasmarin that had been denied to his kind. It was sweet. But first he had work to do. Lesser species might call it murder. But it was what augury required. Blood. Blood of her kind. He drifted on, coming soon enough to the walls of the town his smugglers hailed from. This was Yenfar: they were unprotected against the smokeless flame.

It did not take him long to find what he was looking for. She was getting old for the flesh-trade, which was probably why she was still out at this time. He performed the rite with practiced skill. It would fill the locals with horror. The results of the augury filled him with horror, although the deed did not.

She wasn't on this island. And neither was the merrow treasure.

Haborym knew fear. He knew how the strict hierarchy of his kind apportioned blame. He looked at the blood and filth and the patterns of invoked power, and knew his own end would be worse, if the human mage was dead. He hissed with rage and fear. Couldn't the sprites do anything right?

After a brief reconsideration of the augury he headed away, towards the mountains. He could, hopefully, at least work out if she had escaped the island—a faint hope—or if she was dead. Destroying the merrows' treasure was a small task compared with the need to take her, alive. The hierarchy of flames had plans. Those involved the attempt to recreate this folly of a plane of dragons—with all the attendant effects that it would have on the rest of this interconnected ring of planes.

There were fewer limits on Haborym than on creatures of flesh. Walls were no impediment—at least walls without protections against the nonmaterial. Roads too were more directional indicators than surfaces upon which to walk. And he could move as fast as a running man, without tiring the way a man would. Of course moving used up energy, but not in the same way that using a cloak of illusion did, or did other magical exercises. But the darkness was an adequate shield, for now. By dawn he had traveled many leagues. He did not like daylight, but the fear drove him on . . . until he came to a landslip that had completely blocked the road, and indeed, the river. It would have stopped most men, and possibly anything except a dragon. But Haborym crossed the shifting, precarious loose rock and headed past the temporary dam it had created. There was a solitary sentry there. In the normal course of things there should have been a fair chance that he would have been aware of the fire-being and able to defend himself. But the Loftalfar blood ran thin in this one, and he did not expect Haborym, who overpowered him and put him to the question. Haborym knew that he would have to kill him afterwards and dispose of the body carefully. The alv knew it too, and resisted as best he could. It was a contest of will and of pain.

Finally the alv told him what he needed to know. "The last of the human thieves were driven into the high places. But the hunt was put to flight by the giant."

It was enough to startle Haborym into a moment's inattention. The little Huldralfar squirmed and broke free, and ran as only one of the alfar could, and donned a glamour among the wet trees.

Haborym did not try to catch him. He might have succeeded, and that would have been desirable, but he would probably fail. A sprite would have had the alv out of there in no time, but the dripping woods were no place for fire-beings. Not even to conflict with a badly injured alv. Instead he moved on with as much haste as he could muster, heading for the high peaks beyond their white city.

It was not somewhere you could follow a road to anymore. And soon, as he gained altitude, there was worse than the wetness. There was snow. Haborym kept going, although it took a great deal more energy than he liked.

If the alvar warrior lived, they'd be hunting his kind and barring them from entry into various places. He doubted that the alvar still had the strength or the allies to set a spell that would bar his kind from the whole island again. In the meanwhile . . . it was possible that the accursed little human quarry had fled from this plane entirely. His only satisfaction to that was that it would appear that somehow, the human magic worker had fallen in with his thieves, and they'd taken the merrows' treasure with them. The merrows' oceans would die without it. And with that would go this frozen wet stuff. The place would warm to a habitat suited to his kind.

Meb remembered the food well enough, even if the rest was a little vague. A huge hot crusty loaf, big enough for fifty . . . or Groblek and them. Thin slivers of a salted meat. Some fresh curd cheese. Bilberry preserve. She'd loved that.

"It's good, eh?" said their host, when she asked.

"It is just the best thing I have ever eaten," said Meb.

Groblek beamed. "Little berries. About the size of your little finger's first joint, where I gather them. And they don't grow in bunches, but in ones and twos on a stalk. A lot of work, but they go well with the cheese."

Meb had to wonder how his great big fingers could ever handle such tiny berries.

And of course, there was beer. Meb drank cautiously. Nearly as cautiously as the merrow ate.

"Don't you like my food, little fish-man?" asked Groblek.

"It's of the unfamiliar kind," said the merrow. "I'm more used to fish, if you take my meaning. So far I'm liking it, especially the red salty stuff, but I've a feeling that I would prefer not to know what it was. It's a little like marlin, a little like mako, except that something's lacking and different."

"It doesn't taste of fish," said Meb, nodding.

"That's a bit unnatural, to my way of thinking," said the merrow, seriously. "But understandable up here."

That amused Groblek, rather than offended him. "I get salmon and trout and some eels. But I am more familiar with the harvest of the high places than the sea. But if you have had enough I'd not say no to some more music. Without quite so much dance to it."

The merrow scowled. "I can't but play the dance with the music. I've tried, to be sure. But it is as much part of me as the playing is."

"Magic, strong magic, but intrinsic and uncontrolled," said Finn.

"That's the way of it with us," said the merrow. "Mostly anyway. Wild magic."

"Well, you could play us something quiet then," said Groblek. "And get the dvergar to teach you. They're of the opposite ilk. Form and discipline make their magics."

"Part of the balance of all things," said Finn, lazily, lifting his leather tankard. He was enjoying the food and the beer, without any appearance of caution to the consumption of either.

Groblek nodded. "Play, fish-man. I enjoyed the earlier tune."

So he did.

Later Meb juggled some more—and Finn talked to the giant. It was a very odd conversation that she quietly listened in on. Almost as if everything they said had more than one meaning, and the second meaning was just beyond her. It was like hearing Wulfstan and Hrolf discuss whether they'd get sprats or mackerel today without knowing that the mackerel chased the sprats inshore, and that they were very seasonal. "There are cracks in the mountains, Groblek."

"There have always been cracks in the mountains, Fionn."

"Well, there are cracks in the sea."

"I'll have nothing to do with the sea. Unfathomable stuff. And powerfully wet too," said Groblek.

"Full of salt, too."

"Salt as tears. I'll have no more of it."

"Without it there would be no rain and no snow for the mountains."

"You make a good case, Fionn," said Groblek heavily. "But no."

"Do you know what they're talking about?" whispered Meb to the merrow.

The merrow nodded. "I grasp some of it anyway. The Lord of the Mountains is in love with the Sea. But she cannot not live in the mountains and he cannot live by the sea. It's an old, old story. I'd thought it just a story."

'Brys cleared his throat. "I'd be owing you an apology, human."

"It's all right," she said awkwardly. "It all worked out. I mean if you hadn't cut my hair and taken my clothes, I would, um, probably have been just in time to get killed. And Finn wouldn't have taken me on as his apprentice if he'd known I was a woman. You're not going to tell him, are you?"

"Ach, you must be the worst bargainer in the world," said the merrow with a fine imitation of disgust. "I'll not do so, but it was ever so reluctantly I was going to let you persuade me, in payment for throwing a soul-net of your hair at you. You take all the fun out of it."

Meb shook her head at him. "You're impossible."

"Never. It's just improbable that I am. But the truth be told you are still wearing the Angmarad, and you have my cloak of red sealskin. I can't return to my kind without it, or leave the diadem of the sea."

She touched the piece of twisted bladderwrack. "Finn said I must keep it on my head."

The merrow smiled wryly. "And I wouldn't be quick to disagree with him. He's a power, that one. I was just a bit slow in recognizing it. It's something I'd not have Margetha told, if you've a wish to have the balance of the bargain with me."

She understood that this too was a gesture of good faith. She nodded. "Fair enough."

"Well," said Groblek. "I've tasks for the morning. Play us a last tune, merrow. Something soft and restful."

What he did play was sad enough to make Meb weep. At the end of it Groblek got up and walked away into the shadows without saying a word.

"You took a chance," said Finn.

" 'Tis my nature to do so," said the merrow, shrugging.

Meb realized she was missing something. "What was that? It was so sad."

"It's a lament. The lady of the water longing for the tumult of the waves and the sound of the gulls and the Lord of Mountains wanting his majestic silences, and the distant spiral of eagles," explained Finn.