Dragonslayer: A Novel (31 page)

Ulrich!

Galen could now see that it was definitely the old sorcerer—the white beard, the familiar stern brow, the disheveled purple gown. "Ulrich!" he cried, clapping his hands. "You did it! You did it!" His cries echoed in the cavern,
Ulrich, Ulrich.

The figure on the column moved. His hands lifted and lightly massaged his temples in the manner of a man with a ferocious headache, and then he touched a finger to his lips and moved a slow, quieting hand in Galen's direction. "Shh," he said. "Don't shout." Very slowly he turned and tipped upright until he was standing on a flagstone only a few feet from Galen. His eyes opened. He lifted a finger. "That Latin you just used, Galen . . ."

"Yes, Magister?"

"Appropinqua.
Rather pretentious, wasn't it? Why not a simple
veni?
You were always erratic, Galen. Always."

"Yes, Magister." Galen was weeping with disbelief and joy.

"Galen, did you bring food?"

"I. . . I'm sorry, Magister."

"Hm. Oh well, no time anyway. But you were improvident, Galen, weren't you? Always. Running around laughing and enjoying yourself. Living for the moment. But you were bright. Flashes of insight. You had the Talent. That's why you've brought me, and not Hodge. Correct?"

"Yes, Magister. You see. . ."

Ulrich again waved the quieting hand. "It's a long story, isn't it?"

"Yes sir. You see. . . ."

"There's no need to tell it, Galen. I know it all. In fact, there's no
time
to tell it." He stepped onto the farthest of the stepping stones, and behind him the spiraling funnel dissolved back onto the surface of the lake. "Are you
sure
you have no food?"

"Yes sir, quite sure."

"Hmm. Pity. I'm very hungry. Famished, in fact."

He peered around the cavern. It all seemed to be familiar to him—the tunnel ascending from the world above, the faintly flickering lake, the vaults and arches that stretched into interminable recesses. For several seconds, his attention was caught and held by something upward, at the roof of the cavern and beyond. Ulrich stared grimly at this area; as he did so, his shoulders straightened, and his white beard lifted and protruded challengingly. Then he nodded slowly. "Yes." He spoke so softly that Galen scarcely heard him, and yet his whisper echoed into the farthest recesses of the cave. "Yes. It's time." For a moment Galen believed— although it might have been only the effects of the ceaseless echoes, of the susurrations of the lake—that there came a sigh of consent, a shuddering exhalation. Ulrich heard it too, for again he nodded.

"Come," he said, turning stiffly to Galen. "Come, my boy. It's very close, now. We must be on the surface. Give me your arm! I forgot my stick." Leaning on Galen, he turned his back on the lake and started up the sloping corridor. Although he moved slowly, his step was light and ten years younger. Galen kept glancing anxiously at him. He was filled with both anticipation and foreboding. He had seen such light in other eyes, in the faces of young knights, Saxon and Briton, who had passed Cragganmore on their way to distant conflicts, stopping to take a meal and a flagon of mead, to rest awhile and then go on. They had never returned, none of them. The purpose that had moved them contained their own destruction, and the knowledge of that destruction.
They knew that they would die, and it made no difference.
For a little time they lived intensely, and their radiance had suffused the fives of all around them. So now, with Ulrich. It seemed to Galen that this journey to the mouth of the cave, which even now he could see ahead, was a short life; and yet, if there was anything the old sorcerer had taught him, it was that life and death, the two partners, journeyed always together, and that the one was eternally born from the other.

When they came to the place of slaughter, Ulrich cast a single pitying glance at the body of Elspeth and the corpses of the dragonets. He did not pause.
Death,
his glance said.
Decay and transformation. Good and bad together.
In fact, Galen believed for a moment that the master had spoken, although Ulrich said nothing until they were only a few paces from the cave's mouth. Then he stopped. Beyond, in the almost complete dusk lay green and tranquil hills. Looking at these hills, not at Galen, Ulrich asked, "Do you have the amulet?"

"Yes, Magister." Galen removed the talisman from his neck and placed it in the old man's outstretched palm. Still gazing at the pastoral green of the far hills, Ulrich closed his fingers and smiled.

At that precise moment, outside, Vermithrax crossed the southern edge of the Blight and, losing altitude, becoming indistinguishable from the hills behind, it saw Valerian alone on the ledge of its lair. Its spines rose. Hot phlegm gathered in its throat. Its mouth opened fractionally. Its descent was perfect and almost silent, except for the smallest whistling of wind on scaly encrustations and the protruding splinters of the lance haft in its neck. It was a hundred yards away; its mouth opened wider.

At that moment Galen and Ulrich emerged from the cavern and Valerian, her back to the approaching dragon, saw horror on their faces.

Later she would be unable to say what she actually heard first, the whistling descent or the raucous cry of warning. She heard both, and both caused her to whirl and look into the very jaws and glowing eyes of the dragon. She was so close that she could see in those eyes what Melissa had seen and what generations of other Chosen had seen, so close that she saw the gout of flame that would envelop her already forming, a bright spiral, deep in the creature's throat.

But that flame never reached her. The shrill cry of warning had been uttered by a white bird that, by the time she had spun around, had plummeted to within inches of the dragon's face, claws extended.

"Gringe!" Galen's shout mingled with Valerian's shriek and with the roar of the dragon as it veered to protect its eye, sending a lash of fire spattering into a thousand globules down the hillside.

"Gringe!"

Carried past by its momentum, the raven turned and looked at them, crying again, a long cry of terror and triumph and farewell. Then the dragon twisted, lithe as an airborne snake, and caught its small tormentor with a lick of flame. There was a puff of smoke and Gringe vanished; what was left, tumbling to the boulders where Jacopus already lay, was a charred lump, trailing a black wisp.

"Here!" Ulrich commanded Galen and Valerian. "Come to me!" As the dragon whirled over the Blight, preparing another assault, he gathered the two young people to him, embracing them with astonishing strength. "Do not be afraid." His eyes turned upward. He muttered a charm which Galen had never heard before, and they rose.

They rose effortlessly. Airborne, they saw the Blight begin to revolve beneath them faster and faster, until it was spinning in a dizzying whirl. Valerian screamed, but Ulrich's arm clasped her firmly to his side, and Ulrich's calm words soothed her. "All is well, my child. Our journey is very brief."

A moment later the whirling slowed and ceased. They found themselves on the highest crag, overlooking the Blight, overlooking the river and the village. Vermithrax was far below, circling, rising.

The eclipse was complete.

"There is something you must do," Ulrich said. "A final service." His arms were still around them. His eyes glittered like crystals.

"Anything, Master."

"You have borne the stone well and you have kept it safe."

Galen hung his head, but Ulrich went on, shaking his head slightly.

"But you know that you are not a sorcerer. Not now. Perhaps the fault is mine. You are many other things. You are brave, and kind, and generous, and pure of heart. But you are not a sorcerer. You are not One with this stone, as I am. You have the Talent, and someday, perhaps, in another place, another time . . . But my time is now, mine and the stone's. You must help, Galen."

The sun was a circle of beads around the darkened moon. Time had stopped. The Blight lay dark and silent. Vermithrax rose inexorably, neck arched in challenge, on its mighty wings.

"How, Magister?"

"Take the stone. Here. There will be a moment when you must destroy it utterly and forever. You must release into me that power which my ancestor placed in it at its creation. You will know the moment. You must act while there is life yet in me."

"But . . ."

"No! No questioning. No thought! You must! It is my command!"

As he spoke he detached himself from Galen and Valerian and waved them to the safety of a nearby crevasse. Then he strode to the edge of the precipice and his voice rang like a benediction across the Blight and far out to the fear-ridden villages beyond. "Know the time! Peace be with you now, forever!" He poised on the very extremity of the ledge.

The dragon had climbed in wide spirals. Now it turned, not in the convulsion with which it had attacked Gringe, but in an incredibly graceful movement. For an instant it seemed suspended; the head tilted down toward Ulrich, and the body followed. The body stretched to a lean arrow guided by wings almost folded. Clearly, Vermithrax did not intend to kill Ulrich by fire; it meant to seize the sorcerer and lift him triumphantly aloft. Even the twin sickle claws on the edges of its wings stretched eagerly for him and almost sank into him—would have done so, had not the magician flung out his folded arms as if to push the dragon back and away. Galen could not hear what he said; the words were drowned in the rushing of Vermithrax's wings and Valerian's screams as she cowered beside him, pressing her face against the rock wall. But Vermithrax uttered a scream of pain and missed almost entirely on this first pass; one talon snagged the shoulder of Ulrich's gown and tore a strip of it away. It fluttered like a pennant as the dragon rose again, and then drifted free and down, to be lost amidst the boulders of the Blight.

Ulrich remained poised on the brink of the cantilevered ledge, his palms-out gesture changed now to two raised and defiant fists. He had not flinched from the claws. He continued to shout even as the dragon retreated and rose again, and Galen heard in those shouts the exultant defiance of a young man testing his power for the first time. He wanted to scream,
Kill it, Ulrich! Kill it! You don't need the amulet!
But he said nothing. He was not sure that he believed that. Ulrich, though staunch, was very frail, while the dragon seemed to have drawn strength from pain; it was darker, leaner, larger.

"Why don't you
help
him?" Valerian asked. She was wringing her hands and sobbing. "You said you would. Why don't you smash the amulet?"

He held the stone close. He could feel its pulsing. Its radiance bathed them all like the glow from a tiny sun. "I can't," he said.

"Are you afraid? Give it to me, then. Let me do it."

He shook his head.

"Why
not?"

"Because," he said, looking at her through eyes that were clear and wise with an old, old knowledge, "that will kill them
both."

Again the dragon came. This time it swept from a higher pitch, steeper, faster. It was upon Ulrich with terrifying speed, and the sorcerer's curses and extended palms had less effect, for Vermithrax dropped screaming through buffeting air and fell half on the old man, half on the ledge. Only the lance, embedded in the dragon's neck, saved Ulrich, for had both claws seized him the battle would have been over. As it was, Vermithrax's torn muscles failed it. One claw grappled Ulrich while the other missed the ledge completely. The beast landed heavily on its belly. Ulrich's head and neck had been raked by one talon, and another had stabbed into his thigh, paralyzing him with agony. But, in the seconds during which Vermithrax scrambled to regain its balance, Ulrich twisted free, wrenching at the talons until the dragon released him with a scream and half pushed, half fell from the ledge. It was still screaming as it glided down parallel with the slope of the hill, almost to the floor of the Blight.

Galen, however, was not watching the dragon; he was watching Ulrich. The sorcerer's torn gown was bloodsoaked and he was stiff with pain. When he tried to walk, his arms flailed helplessly as the wounded leg buckled. For a moment he was a bent and broken insect, a travesty of the man he had been but minutes before. But then, miraculously, he managed to straighten and watch the descent of his enemy almost to the valley floor. As Vermithrax rose, he shook his fist and bared his teeth through a bloodstained beard in a grim parody of laughter. "While there is life," he said, turning to Galen. "Remember!"

The dragon rose again, magnificent against the darkened sky and with an obscene languor, as if it knew that it could finish off this prey at leisure. It rose, spiraling, and once more descended.

As it did so, Ulrich raised his arms, although the left one would lift only part way because of his grievous wound. Galen saw that this time instead of repelling it, the old man was actually summoning the beast!

Gripping the amulet hard, he watched.

The dragon swooped, its neck a sinuous arc, its claws extended. Wind whistled on its scaly protuberances. Despite his horror and terror, Galen thought:
You beast! You are magnificent!

Indeed the dragon was. Its hurts had scarcely slowed it. For that moment, its lean shape gliding across the crags of the Blight conjured another time, a timelessness. Its scream of defiance became all other screams long faded to silence. It was all dragons. Dragon!