Dragon's Winter (9 page)

“But Cerdic shook his head. ‘That I will not. For this child has not harmed me, nor my kingdom, nor anyone in it. I do not kill children. Tell my father,’ he said to the Dragon-king’s courtiers, and to the woman, ‘that I have taken vengeance for my mother’s death.’

“It was barely a day later that Lyr returned, to find his kingdom in turmoil, and his dragon-son dead. With tears of fire streaming down his face, the old dragon buried his son. What was the name, he demanded of his councilors, of the warrior-king who had overcome his son.

“Shaking in terror of his anger, they told him, ‘Lord, the warrior said only that he was the son of the daughter of Morrim. And he said to us, and especially to the lady Elinor, “Tell my father that I have taken vengeance for my mother’s death.’“

“Then Lyr perceived that the killer of his son Sedrim was in fact his son Cerdic, Sedrim’s younger brother. Wild with grief and remorse, he flung himself into the sky, and disappeared like a winged shadow into the blaze of the summer sun. Har, the son of Sedrim the son of Lyr, inherited his father’s kingdom. And the moral of the story is, at least as it was told to me: Do not lose yourself in Dragon’s country! For it is perilous for humans to know and love the dragon-kind.”

The fire shifted and hissed into the darkness. Shem, limp in Thea’s arms, stretched suddenly, and sneezed without waking, boneless as a sleeping cat. “That is a fine story,” Thea said softly, with great delight. “Thank you, Hawk.” She rose. Her hair, left long, framed her face like wings.

“The cradle for you, my heartling.” She brushed Wolf’s hair with one hand, and smiled at Hawk. “Good night, my guest.”

Hawk left the next morning with a guest-gift—a length of soft silver-grey wool, Thea’s finest weave—in her pack, and the memory of Shem’s gurgling laughter.

In the cold damp darkness of the tunnels, a slender man walked slowly down an endless corridor. The tunnel walls glowed, a spectral, greenish-white glow that pulsed and moved as though it were alive. The man muttered softly as he staggered from one icy wall to the other. An observer might have guessed him drunk, but he was not. The jewels on his once-elegant clothes were muddy and dim.

“They will see. They will all see.
He
will see. I will bring him here, and he will see that I am strong. He always hated me. He always wanted my power, my power. It was my power. I should have been the one to have it; I should have been Dragon.”

You shall be Dragon. He always hated you. A metallic whisper shivered through his mind. His power shall be yours. It was meant to be yours.

“It was meant to be mine. I should have been the one to have it. I will have it. It is mine, I have it now, in my little box, my cold little box.” He laughed, a terrible soulless cackle. His pale face was thin and lifeless. Only his eyes burned, with a black, hungry stare that was not human.

Suddenly his face changed. Color flooded into it; his thin mouth softened. The black horror in his eyes diminished. In a child’s voice, he said, into the chill, “Lirith? Are you—is it you? Please don’t be angry. I never meant to hurt you.” Then his features grew rigid. The black stare blazed out of them. He straightened. With light, firm steps, he walked down the corridor and stepped into a high cold chamber filled with cages. A man in tattered furs crouched near the door. He cringed as the other man passed him.

Most of the cages were empty. In one, a man lay moaning weakly. His back and chest were bloody and marked with weals from a recent beating. A woman with long blond hair sprawled in another. As the man went by her cage, she lunged upward, throwing herself against the icy bars with a cracked, demented roar.

The man in the last cage was naked, slimed with his own waste, and very thin. He lay on his side, knees drawn up. A crust of bread lay at his feet. His sides were scarred with whip-marks. “Azil,” the standing man said, “I know you’re awake. Look at me.” The captive opened his eyes. “I’m sure you missed my company. It must be lonely here. Are you bored with the silence yet?” The man in the cage did not answer. “You know, you could be warm. Even the slaves have coal fires, and fur. That would feel good, so good, the warmth and softness of fur against your bruised skin. You have been cold for so long. Cold hurts. Tell me it hurts. Say it.”

Resolutely, despairingly, the caged man shook his head, and was silent.

“Traitor,” purred the man outside the cage. “Damn your stubborn soul! You will speak, you know.” He picked up a short-thonged leather whip. He ran the three tails through his fingers. “Get him out,” he snarled at the man beside the door. The cage door swung open by itself. Gingerly the slave dragged the unresisting prisoner through the narrow entrance, and backed away. The man with the whip snaked the thongs very lightly, caressingly, across the other’s battered ribs. Then he brought it down hard. Azil gasped. “That’s better,” Tenjiro Atani whispered. His eyes were hollow with the darkness. “Sing, traitor.”

PART TWO

5

In the city of Mako a woman gazed into a puddle of water as if looking into a mirror.

She saw: a small child curled in a dirty blanket, sleeping; a man, dark hair tipped with silver, lying mortally wounded; a red hawk flying in a mist; a man with shattered hands shivering in a snow bank; an icy field, strewn with bodies of the wounded living and the broken dead.

Last she saw a man. He was fair-skinned, fair-haired, with eyes that should have blazed blue in a young and vital face. But the face was haggard, aged beyond its natural time, and the eyes were deep, deep black, welling with a destructive and malevolent darkness.

She slapped at the image, and it shattered. Water filmed her hand.

She rolled to sit, clenching her teeth against the ache in her joints. Even with the heavy blanket she had wrapped around her like a winding sheet, the August nights were ridiculously cold. She wiped her wet hand on the dirty wool. The sky was thick with clouds, but beyond the clouds lay darkness. Her stomach growled. She was hungry, though she had eaten meat that night, the bottom round of a merchant’s dinner, thrown out as scraps for the dogs. No one in the fine house on Aspen Street had seen a beggar woman crouched near the back gate, and no dog living could cow her; they had not even barked, only slunk aside whining, and the bitch had licked her hand.

The streets were stirring; a wagon creaked along the road, pulled by a balky mule. Haggard features slid stealthily into her mind, between clip and clop, heartbeat and heartbeat. Ignoring them, the beggar woman rolled her blanket, tied it with heavy twine kept for the purpose, and slung it on her back. Pulling her black stick from its place against the wall, she levered herself to her feet.

At the House of White Flowers on Plumeria Street, two doors down from the Temple of the Moon, the girls were still asleep, but the cooks were up, grumbling over their pots. She banged on the door till it opened.

Kira the head cook brought her half a loaf and honey in a crock.

“A cold night,” Kira said. “A bad night to be sleeping on the street. It’s been strange weather for August. Did you eat last evening?”

She grunted assent. As she lifted the bread, the crust warm in her hands, she saw a dead woman lying in snow. Beside her lay the man with silver-tipped hair, his red belly ragged and wet. She growled like a dog at the image. It vanished.

Kira said, “What is it?”

Shaking her head, she bit into the loaf. A picture slid into her mind: two dragons, one black, one gold, locked in lethal combat in a brilliant blue sky. Deep within her mind she heard the cold laughter of the darkness. She snarled, and the laughter ceased.

Kira chattered at her: house gossip; this or that girl was sick, or having a birthday. This one was in love, or sulking, or pregnant. The torrent of words broke over her head like a wave. She finished the bread.

“Here.” Kira slid her a wedge of hard cheese. “For later.” She thrust it under her cloak.

Kira hovered over her. Kira was always kind to her. It entered her mind to wonder why.

“Thank you,” she said. The words came slowly, as if her mouth had no memory of such sounds.

Because she was looking at the floor, she did not see the wonder that fell across Kira’s round face. Rising, she shouldered her bundle, and left the kitchen, leaning on her black staff. The temple cats, as always, came to twirl around her ankles. She bent, crooning to them, and then went on. Kira watched the silver-haired figure until it rounded the corner. “Watch the oven,” she said to Lena the under-cook. Then, drying her hands, she sped from the warm kitchen up the brothel stairs and scratched on Sicha the madam’s door.

After a long while, Sicha herself opened it. She had obviously been wakened from sleep: her hair lay loose and straggly over the shoulders of her cerulean silk robe, and her fine narrow feet were bare. Green malachite stained her face above the high curve of her cheek. The room smelled of jasmine. The bedcovers were soft fleece, and the lamp was fine silver, with a bronze base.

Kira said, her voice shaking, “She spoke. The Silent One spoke.”

“What did she say?”

“She said,
Thank you.
For the bread and cheese. Every day for ten years I have given her bread and cheese, and never has she done more than grunt.”

Sicha said, and her voice, too, shook, “Was there more?”

“No. That was all.”

“It doesn’t matter.” Sicha sat, then. The smell of baking bread drifted upward from the kitchen. “I will have to go to the castle.” She glanced sharply at Kira. “You know you must not speak of it.”

Kira said, with dignity, “I shall not speak of it. I never have.”

That afternoon the beggar crouched in her place against the temple wall. It was raining, a hard, dismal rain; it pounded on the cobblestones and ran in rivulets along the muddy streets. Only the beggar’s heavy blanket and the jutting overhang of the temple roof kept her from the wet.

A passing cartwheel splattered her. She glared from the tent of her blanket at the oblivious driver. A rear wheel wobbled and dropped from the cart, which lurched, and juddered to a stop. The driver leaped swearing to the ground. He scoured the street for the pin, which had unaccountably come loose. Borrowing a hammer from the bakery across the alleyway, he banged it back into place.

You did that.
The words leaped accusingly from the depths of her mind.

“No.” She did not realize at first that she had said the word aloud. The sound skipped from her like a pebble from a child’s hand. “No,” she whispered.

Sleeping, waking, moonlit eye, find the one for whom I cry...
The words, a country witch’s rhyme, came unbidden out of the jumble of her mind. She felt for her staff. Shivering, she stood. Her blanket slithered unheeded to the street. She saw again the man with silver-tipped hair lying in the snow. The dead woman was his. The living child was his. He would die, too, and she could not save him.

“Go away!” she cried aloud.

The words, abrupt and flinty as stones, hurtled from her and spun into the rain-wet day. The rain stopped abruptly. The clouds drew apart. Sun lit the puddles and sparkled off the cobblestones. A fierce warm wind blew down the wide street. The staff in her right hand was vibrant with life. An image slid across her mind. She cupped her left palm.

“Fruit,” she said aloud. A large yellow peach appeared in her hand. She rubbed its fuzzy skin against her cheek; smelled it, touched her tongue to it. She bit into it. Sweet juice ran down her chin. She ate it, and dropped the ridged pit into a crack in the cobblestones.

“Cloak.” The folds of a cloak settled on her shoulders. It was thick and warm, a soft dark red, lined with black fur. It seemed to draw the sunlight into her tired bones. She tucked her hands beneath it.

When she looked up, two soldiers with badges on their vests stood watching her. “What?” she said to them.

The older man, whose scabbard and sword belt were well-worn with the mark of battles, said respectfully, “My lady, I bear you greetings from the lord Erin diMako. He asks if you would come to the castle and speak to him. He sent us to escort you.”

The castle: that was the grand white building on the hill, where the great horse banner waved in the sun, where the soldiers lived. She stroked the fur of her cloak. That was not a place for her; she was a beggar.

Go
with them
, said the whisper in her mind. It had been years since she had been inside such a building. The street was her home: this district, this wall, this eave.

“No,” she answered and wondered if they would yell at her, and draw their swords.

But they only looked unhappy. The older man nodded. “As my lady wishes,” he said, in excellent imitation of a courtier, and did not move. She reached for her staff, and saw the young one flinch. His fear made her want to comfort him. She handed him a peach, twin to the one she had eaten. He handled it as though it were venomous.

“Good,” she said to him simply. “Eat it.” He lifted the peach to his face, sniffed, and took a bite. She watched him eat it. He was not hungry, she knew, but he had eaten it to please her.