Dragon's Ring (41 page)

"To talk," she said. "Some of the others sent me. We're worried."

"Having chased me out of the conclave, why would you want to talk to me?"

"That was before Fionn came and set things straight. Anyway, that was all Myrcupa and his gang of friends. Nothing to do with me," said Tessara.

Vorlian absorbed this. "My wings are sore and I am still a little burned," he said in a more reasonable tone. "Let us fly to those hills over there and we can talk."

"Awkward not to have the conclave as a neutral meeting ground. I was ready to flee," said Tessara, turning to follow.

Soon they'd settled on the high, sunbaked rocks of the ridge. "So, just what did Fionn say?" asked Vorlian.

"He made us laugh as usual," said Tessara. "And he took a great deal of risk in irking Myrcupa to tell us that Zuamar had been in your territory in the last week or so."

Vorlian blinked. "Yes. But what does that have to do with it?"

"Well, it does make your ambush and the murder of Zuamar more understandable. I mean, we knew that he'd killed Jakarin. We can understand you felt threatened. Perhaps it is best that he's dead. And if you were injured, it made sense not to fight Myrcupa. You didn't just run away."

Vorlian opened and shut his mouth like a beached fish. Then asked in a dangerous voice. "Did Fionn tell you this?"

"No. Myrcupa told us about the ambush and you running away from the scene of the murder, and then him . . . I found that hard to believe. Fionn just made a fool of him and said you'd defeated Zuamar and that we should all be grateful. Myrcupa was all set to kill him, but he slipped away."

"Fionn would kill him, rather than the other way around," said Vorlian. "He was the one who defeated Zuamar. Not me."

"But . . . but everyone, even Fionn, says that you killed Zuamar," said Tessara.

Vorlian nodded. "He defeated him and let him go. I merely killed Zuamar afterward, but in a fair midair fight. Half of Yenfar must have seen it. And I'll fight Myrcupa, injured or not. I'll fly over there now and deal with him. He couldn't drive me to flee if I was on death's door, Tessara. I have my sources. He's there by invitation. By invitation from the alvar! They sought protection from me, alvar alone know why. In fact I think I will fly over and devour the liar! And those alvar."

Tessara shook her head. "They are flying in pairs, expecting you, Vorlian. It's not natural. And they're changing things in conclave. They attacked Marcellus there. Inside the caverns. There was almost a riot. But not quite. They're the largest, and are sticking together. They say we need to start a program to exterminate humans."

Vorlian took a deep breath. "Then maybe we need to come together too. In times of crisis, dragons have allied before. We allied to create this refuge." He looked around. "What I really need to do is something I thought I would never admit to wanting to do. I want to talk to Fionn. I'm not sure what his game is but I think it is time that I found out."

Tessara shook her wings out. "I will talk to the others. Among the females we have our own . . . arrangement. There are those who have contacts among the lesser species. They will tell us what happened on Yenfar."

"I will lie on my gold and recover for a while. But if you hear of any sightings of Fionn, will you let me know? I need to talk to that black smart-mouth." He sighed. "I ought to have before."

"No one takes him seriously," said Tessara.

"Maybe that was a mistake," said Vorlian.

"That is the strangest thing I've ever heard a dragon say, let alone you," said Tessara dryly. "You never admit to mistakes. Dragons don't." And she flew off, leaving Vorlian to his thoughts again. They were as confused but less dark. Where did Fionn disappear to?

The answer, when he thought about it, was painfully obvious. It was just so undragonish . . .

Fionn had no qualms about assuming other shapes.

He was the tall, foxy-faced human.

Justin had recognized the two of them the moment he'd seen them together. The high priest of the lady of the forest's grove had showed them all the picture the day before.

Justin, scribe, petty thief, professional informer and would-be gigolo had joined the Lyr worshipers as a potential source of income, either from informing or from blackmail. It had been a good source of income and protection—his fellow devotees were, some of them, influential men. But this—this looked like the big pay-off. He'd originally had hopes of getting Keri pregnant and getting his way into the inn that way, but her father had made it clear that he'd rather see her dead in a ditch than married to Justin. The girl had the intellect and morals of a rabbit, and had been keeping herself occupied and miraculously un-pregnant with passing travelers for some years. Justin did consider that she was worth keeping as the first of his stable, because she'd sleep with whoever he told her to and bring him the money. Although he'd have to watch her. She stole! Now, he'd have the funds to set up in style. He'd caught up with two of the three that the Lady of the Forests wanted. There was no way off Lapithidia except via Port Lapith. And the sprites had a small grove on the island, just outside the port. Their sacred island of Arcady was close by.

The chaos generated by Finn and the girl's leaving made it a simple matter to hop off the ship without any centaur being the wiser. To his irritation Keri followed him.

"Go back," he ordered.

"No. You're up to something. Probably with that tramp in trousers."

It was a case of beat her there on the quayside, or put up with her. And there were any number of stevedores and other people about who would probably interfere in his business. So he merely shrugged. Let her tag along.

She complained about it being too cold to strip off once they got to the trees. Well, that was up to her. He'd seen what got done to those who broke the rules. He walked on, naked as the day he was born, while she carped at him. "Shut up or I'll beat you black and blue, bitch. Do as you're told."

"I only do as I wish," said the tree-woman suddenly. "Have you come to die?"

Keri screamed. Justin bowed. "I have found your quarry, Lady of the Forest. I have brought you the ones you seek."

This sprite looked identical to the one back on Starsey. "Explain," she said, as cool as ever.

For the first time doubt that he might get a reward crept into Justin's mind. But he could play hard to get.

A little later he knew that he could not. And that his life would be a great reward. But the Lady of the Forest was not finished with him.

Belet arrived on Arcady at the same time as the ship with the hasty message from Lapithidia did. The sprites did not keep the message from him. And he in turn shared what he had with them.

"He has to be a dragon. A shape-shifted dragon, protecting her."

"A shape-shifted dragon," said Lyr. "It fits. Well, we can deal with that together."

Belet concurred. They had. Compulsion had now been set on no less than fourteen dragons, together. But that was a complex working, and shaped their inclinations.

"I think we should settle for merely stunning it. We can do that too, you know."

"Of course I know. The first Lyr knew. We all know. We have some gold for us to bespell."

"I will move in some troops from Cark. We can keep watch . . . it will take them as long to come down from the plateaux as for us to land in force. We can move over by night and wait in the lee of the cliff west of Port Lapith. One vessel at sea with a mirror can relay the message by day, and a phosphorus flare by night."

The Lyr nodded, a habit she had learned from her human devotees.

On the high plateaux, with a phalanx of centaurs acting as outriders and guides, Meb found that she was pleasantly alone with Finn. She hadn't realized how Justin and the innkeeper's daughter had irritated her just by being in their space so often. And, for once, Finn seemed quite disposed to talk. He pointed to a rocky tor. "I put those there. I do occasionally have to do some hard work."

Meb looked at the strange shaped spike of weathered stone. "Why, Finn?"

He shrugged. "Energy flow problem. Think of everything as flowing rivers of forces. Patterns of it. Sometimes something disrupts that pattern. Mostly things correct themselves. I mean, think of a stream. It can only do just what it is meant to do if it flows exactly down a certain path. A child puts some stones in the stream and it deviates . . . it either comes back to the path or, next time there is a storm the stones wash away. Occasionally someone will come along and jam the stones together so that they cannot wash away. Then I may have to adjust things—either to compensate with other forces or to undo the blockage or put another rock in higher up or lower down. That's what that tor is."

It was said so matter-of-factly that Meb had no doubt that he'd done it. And that he knew exactly what he was talking about. "What would happen if you didn't do it?"

"It gets very complicated. It can actually just destroy things. Or it can distort other areas. It can affect anything from how much rain a place gets to how prosperous a local farmer is. Mostly it is fairly stable. But the world is not entirely self-correcting. Eventually the errors and problems and pressures build up and then you get the energy-equivalent of a storm, which tries to wash away blockages. It is my job to see that it doesn't get to that point."

"You . . . fix Tasmarin?"

"Good gracious, no! Only the energy flows. But not only for this world. I had a ring of eighty or so I was responsible for. Planes."

"Planes?"

"Places like this. When you are a little more experienced I'll try to explain the maths to you. Think of them as many, many different worlds. I traveled around them keeping them stable, keeping them linked."

"You mean . . . there are many worlds?"

"Possibly an infinity of them. There are also some that are joined. It all comes down to the First."

"The first?"

"The First. Intelligent beings, rather like dvergar. And centaurs. And merrows and creatures of smokeless flame. The whole boiling lot of you except us dragons. You are all in some way aspects of the First. I always have to laugh when one of the species—usually the alvar, tells me they are descended from the First. You all are."

"Except dragons," said Meb grinning at him. "They're entirely different."

He nodded. "Yes. The First made us, the way the dvergar make things of metal. We were to them something like what dogs are to people. I was one of the early ones, from just after they'd discovered how to make worlds link. Díleas was bred to herd sheep. I was made to fix energy imbalances in the great rings of worlds. See, there have always been multiple discrete planes of existence. Worlds . . . but really more than just worlds. Certain conditions cause them to form. That is intrinsic to existence. The First discovered this. They also discovered that, given certain stringent conditions, it was possible to cause planes to divide, but not to become discrete. To remain linked. Of course such a thing was not stable. In the beginning they could barely keep them mutually linked for the briefest of moments. But they found stable forms, shapes in multidimensional mathematics which could remain in that formation state—in which separate universes are linked—as long as they feed back into themselves. In other words: they created a ring of universes. Many strange and cataclysmic energies are required to remain in balance. That is my task. Energy is not destroyed or created, it merely changes states and places. It needs to move to prevent too much building or being lost from any one place. I was built in the beginning, to do this. There were . . . quite a few of us back then."

Meb thought she understood at least one word in ten of what he'd said. But it seemed important to keep him talking. "And now?" she asked.

Fionn shrugged. "I may be the last. We never had much to do with each other. Saw each other in passing, occasionally. Anyway I have been stuck here on Tasmarin for a number of centuries. I've never been too sure whether the dragons were right, and that this was their escape . . . or whether it was merely human mages getting rid of more trouble than they were worth. Either way, both sides have been the loser. They may not have understood that."

"Now I am the one that really doesn't understand."

"Tasmarin—this world—is a made-up thing. Pulled together from the places that linked the ring of worlds. Think of that as a whole lot of ships anchored to each other, by their strongest and most magical of places—and that someone went and chopped out those pieces and made a new ship out of those pieces."

"That probably wouldn't be too good for the other ships."

"You grasp the problem. And they're not very well joined together any more either. That causes difficulties too. Makes them likely to sink each other. Of course the only way to fix it all up again is to give the pieces back. The people on the new ship need to be able to get back to the old ships in one piece. And that, you might say, is what I am trying to do now. Return the part that attached them to their place of origin. I have dealt with the Angmarad of the merrows, the hammer of the dvergar, and windsack of the centaurs. I'm on my way to do the next as soon as we get the staff of the sprites."