Echoes of Betrayal (38 page)

Arcolin stared a long moment. He had not really imagined a dragon at all, and being asked—commanded—to touch tongues … He wanted to ask if Kieri had done so, but thinking of Kieri gave him courage. Of course Kieri would have. He knelt on the cold stone flags and with great difficulty forced himself to open his mouth and extend his tongue into the heat that rose from the dragon’s tongue.

That tongue felt dry and hot, stinging a little, but no hotter than a roll from the oven. It left a taste like bread-crust in his mouth.

“Well done, man of war,” the dragon said. Arcolin sat back on his heels, then stood. “Your courage commends you. Though I take from you lands you were granted and give you a task you may find difficult, convincing your king, and am no kapristi who cannot give or take without exchange, yet I would gift you in return, as you asked no return. Is there aught that dragonfire can do for you or your realm?”

“I do not know what dragonfire can do,” Arcolin said, but as he spoke, one face came unbidden to his mind. Stammel. “Unless it can cure blindness.”

“Blindness of mind or eye?” the dragon asked. “You are not blind either way, I perceive.”

“My sergeant,” Arcolin said. “He was blinded when a magelord tried to steal his body; he fought it off through days of fever, but—”

Scales clattered like dropped armor, echoing off the walls around the court. “What magelord?” the dragon asked. Now Arcolin faced both eyes, the dragon having rearranged itself.

“I do not know the full name,” Arcolin said. “He first appeared in the body of someone who had been a recruit here, but he had apparently yielded his body willingly. Duke Verrakai believes it was a Verrakai who had such powers.”

“So it comes again,” the dragon said.

“What?”

“Mageborn evil,” the dragon said. “Tell me more of your sergeant.”

Arcolin did his best to describe what Stammel had done in that office in Vonja, but the dragon asked more and more questions about Stammel’s life. “He was a paladin’s sergeant,” he said finally. “Paksenarrion’s—”

Steam rushed over him. “He nurtured
that
paladin?”

Arcolin would not have called a sergeant’s untender care “nurturing” but said Stammel had been her recruit sergeant and her cohort sergeant later.

“Would she not heal his sight?” the dragon asked.

“She heals as Gird commands,” Arcolin said. “Stammel is not Girdish, but Tirian. I think he is drawn somewhat to Gird and if not blinded, might have sworn to Gird soon, but being blinded, he thinks it unfair to do so seeking a cure.”

The dragon blinked. “A man of high honor and courage. I do not know, man of war, if dragonfire can cure what magefire ruined … humans are fragile to Elders. Speak to your sergeant. If he will risk, I will try. Now I must go, lest harm come to all.”

The dragon rose into the air, still in the coil that had circled the courtyard, scales clattering as it then uncurled wings Arcolin had not noticed, black against the stars. It glided away, that dark shape; he
shivered and turned to go back inside. By the entrance stood the guards he had not seen before, looking at him with surprise.

“Sir! I—how’d you get past us?”

“No matter,” Arcolin said. He took the route to the cellar stairs; the estvin waited there.

“The dragon’s gone,” he said.

The estvin nodded. “It is felt. Does—does dragon demand we go?”

Arcolin felt his brows going up. “Why would it?”

“For that we did not hold to bargain.”

“No,” Arcolin said. “The dragon said you had failed but no more than that about you. The dragon’s command for me was to tell my king about the lands lost, which I had already done by courier, and prevent my people wandering there. That is all.”

The estvin just stared at him.

“Did you think I would break faith with you?” Arcolin asked.

“Your law is not our Law,” the estvin said. “But I am relieved to see trust justified.”

T
he next morning, Arcolin went to see Stammel, who had settled into the barracks as usual. He found him in the main courtyard, sparring with the new armsmaster, the two of them rolling around on the cold stone as if it were summer.

“Sir!” the guard at the archway said. The two disentangled and stood, panting puffs of steam in the cold air that looked nothing like the dragon’s.

“Sergeant Stammel,” Arcolin said. “I need to talk to you—barracks empty?”

“Squads still scrubbing out,” Stammel said. “Bit of a problem last night.”

“Ah.” Arcolin didn’t ask; if he needed to know, the recruit sergeant would tell him. “We’ll go to my office, then.” He moved closer; Stammel touched his shoulder, and they started off.

As they came into the inner court, Stammel said, “If it’s about my sight, sir, it’s no better. Just that bit of light blur, is all. And sir—much as I want to be with the Company, I’m not what you need. Like I said before.”

“It’s not just about you,” Arcolin said. “And it will take some explaining.”

Once in his office, with the door closed and Stammel sitting across from him, where light from the window revealed the cloudiness in his eyes, Stammel looked, but for that, the fit, healthy sergeant of middle age he had seemed before. But how many campaign seasons could anyone sustain? Most sergeants retired with the first bad wound. Why, Arcolin asked himself, was he so sure Stammel should not? If the man himself had been willing …

“You remember what the gnomes told me,” Arcolin said. “About the dragon.”

“Yes, sir. And you weren’t sure of it, you said, but don’t tease them.”

“Right. I thought they were frightened, hungry, confused—anything but a dragon, which, Gird and the High Lord know—hasn’t one been seen in Tsaia in generations. Since before Gird’s day, anyway.”

Stammel did not ask anything, just sat, composed and steady as usual.

“Last night,” Arcolin said, “a dragon came here.”

Stammel jerked as if he’d been pricked. “Sir?”

“A dragon. I—I can’t begin to describe it, except that it was here, in this room, in the guise of a man, but for the markings on its skin, its yellow eyes, and its tongue—such a tongue you never saw.”

“A tongue …” Stammel sounded half mazed.

“In the shape of a man who could put out a sword’s length of tongue—
my
sword’s length—and the tongue like red-hot iron and giving off heat.”

Arcolin related the tale of the Pargunese stealing a dragon’s egg, of the scathefire, of the dragon-man changing shape in the courtyard into the dragon of legend, and of touching the dragon’s tongue with his. Stammel’s hands, he saw, were now clenched on the chair arms; his body rigid and sweat trickling down his face. Arcolin knew what that was: the memory of those days Stammel had burned inside with the spirit that had tried to consume him.

“You—touched fire, sir?”

“I had to,” Arcolin said. “Kieri would have. I’m sure Kieri did, though the dragon didn’t tell me that.”

“And yet—you live and are not … consumed?”

“No. It seemed burning until I touched it, and then it was warm, no hotter than fresh bread. And that brings me to you, Stammel.” It felt indecent that he could see Stammel’s distress and Stammel could not see him, but there was no help for it. Yet. Maybe never. “At the end, for sealing the bargain so and because I asked nothing in return for the lands I and this realm must lose, the dragon chose to grant me a favor.”

Stammel did not move, though his eyelids flickered.

“I thought of you,” Arcolin said. “I asked if dragonfire could heal blindness, and it asked if I meant blindness of the mind or of the eyes.”

Stammel’s breath came short; his voice sounded different when he asked, “And … you told it of me?”

“Yes.” Arcolin sighed. Perhaps this had been a very bad idea. “It told me to ask you—to see if you were willing to attempt it—but it offered no guarantee. Humankind are fragile to Elders, it said. I don’t know what it will ask of you if you are willing. I do know it was upset at the mention of magelords who can change bodies—”

“Not as upset as I am, sir,” Stammel said. He grinned, the grin of a man facing danger.

“It wants to see you, I gather. It might heal you or might not, but—I must know, what is your wish?”

Stammel said nothing a long moment, then turned his face to the light from the window. “I had given up hoping for sight,” he said. “Despite the glow that tells me where the sun is. I wanted to stay here, among people and places I knew. But to have the chance of real sight—this—a dragon—but fire—” His hands opened and clenched again. “Do you think I will have to … to be burned again?”

Arcolin watched Stammel struggle with his fear. “Did Paks ever tell you the whole story of her becoming paladin?” Arcolin asked. He went on without waiting for an answer. “The Kuakgan raised a magical fire, and she had to reach into it. But it did not burn her. Just as my tongue felt heat, as from hot food, but no worse. Yet if you choose not to, Stammel, no one would call you coward. You have endured more fire than anyone I know, more than we thought you could survive.”

“How could fire heal my eyes, when fire burned out my sight?”

“I don’t know if it can. But the thought of you would not have come to me, standing there with the dragon, if a god had not put it in my head. It may be something beyond your eyes: the dragon seemed interested that a magelord had invaded you. It’s been so long since dragons were here—perhaps they know things about the magelords and Old Aare. And with the regalia Dorrin told me about and the trouble in the South, there may be more than one reason for dragons to return.”

“More than one dragon?”

“I don’t know,” Arcolin said, raking his fingers through his hair. “All I know is the dragon offered a favor, and your face came before me, and … here we are. Think about it, is all I ask.”

Stammel frowned. “I should have gone Girdish back then, when Paks was here and saved us. I just … it felt too easy.”

“I understand,” Arcolin said, thinking of his own years of fading faith, now renewed. “I think she made us all more what we were rather than changing us to something else.”

“I suppose,” Stammel said slowly. “I—I’d rather ask Paks for a healing than a dragon, truth to say, sir. If I was Girdish.”

“I understand,” Arcolin said again. “So would I, if I had that choice. Just … think, will you?”

“Of course, sir. Any idea when the dragon’s coming back?”

“None at all,” Arcolin said. He sighed. “And now I must write another report to King Mikeli … He’s likely to think I’m winter-crazed.”

“Should you go yourself, sir?”

“No—I think not, with the gnomes still unsettled and the move of the border. It’s not that I doubt the dragon—or for that matter the gnomes—but as Count, I should be here, ready to do whatever needs doing. It’s not as settled a situation as when Kieri governed here.”

Stammel nodded. “Makes sense, sir. And you don’t have experienced captains, other than Cracolnya. Though Captain Versin and Captain Arneson are both well respected.”

“I hope Selfer’s found a good one in the south,” Arcolin said. “But that’s not your problem. I’ll be taking Cracolnya and Versin south with me; I think Arneson’s ideal for recruits. If the Pargunese are truly settled, then I’ll need only one captain up here. Especially with the gnomes in the west hills—they’ll know if any orcs threaten.”

“They aren’t very many to fight off orcs, sir,” Stammel said.

“No, they couldn’t drive them off alone, but they’d know where the orcs were when we go after them. And it’d give our young troops some experience, as well.” He shook his head. “Well. Let’s go down.”

Captain Arneson had the recruits paraded in the large courtyard and was delivering as professional a reaming out as Arcolin had seen. Four recruits, it seemed, had taken extra Midwinter sweet tarts and tried to hide them in the barracks for later consumption at a private celebration. As clean as the stronghold was, any place that stored grain and other foodstuffs attracted rats and mice, and when the recruit corporal made his mid-third-shift round through the barracks, he’d seen a couple of rats—undeniable rats—scuttering along the wall behind the bunks.

That led to the discovery of the illicit food—no food was ever allowed in the barracks—and to the guilty parties—and to two other stashes—and thence to the morning spent scrubbing the barracks twice over as punishment. Plus no breakfast.

“My lord Count,” Arneson said when his recruit sergeant announced Arcolin’s arrival. “Your pardon, my lord.”

Arcolin looked at the recruits as if they were darkling beetles. “Captain, they’re your recruits. But if they were my recruits—”

“My lord?”

“I’d hope my commander gave me another turn of the glass alone with them. When you’re quite done, I’d like to see you about another matter, entirely unrelated.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“I’ll see you later, Sergeant,” Arcolin said to Stammel, and went back to his office, stopping at his scribe’s cubbyhole to warn him that he’d need to be on hand in the afternoon. He allowed himself a few moments to contrast today’s Captain Arneson—healthy, fit, with only a neat patch over his missing eye—with the starved-wolf-looking man hired last summer in Valdaire. He’d become a superb recruit commander, approved by both Valichi and Stammel, and on top of that a companionable officer to share a dinner with.