Everran's Bane (26 page)

I knew his shame at eavesdropping would dwarf mine at what he had read. That he would absolve me, and probably never forgive himself. Never had I missed my harp with such a pang. Bitterly I recalled Fengthira's, “Horses' morals are simpler than men's.”

He stood up, his back to me. Over his shoulder, muffled, he said, “I can't bear that you should be—afraid.”

In that moment I plumbed the depths of an aedr's isolation as well as the lure of the aedric vice. So easy to take a fearsome revenge. So impossible to live as a man among men whom your smallest art can reduce to terror, drive away.

“It doesn't matter,” I gabbled, snatching at the nearest banality. “Don't blame yourself—it was my own fault. I shouldn't have ‘thought so loud.'”

The sally was as pathetic as his laugh. “Well, in future,” he said, turning, “when you mean to do it, put up a sign.” And I knew with grief that if our comradeship had been salved, it would never be quite the same again.

When Everran next came to my mind I diverted it by asking Beryx what had happened there. If it pained him, I felt it would be the lesser hurt.

“Hawge has finished up... Saphar Resh.” He was staring into the fire. It made his face seem chipped from hard red stone. “It had a turn round Meldene too.” I saw ancient hethel groves blazing: the knife turned in my own wound. “Then it went back to Tirs. Tenevel was very pleased about that.” The irony in his mouth's twist deepened. “My uncle got out of Askath with singed heels, and now he's down in Maer Selloth too. My ‘government.'” That was black bitterness. “Morran managed to survive being left behind. The Guard have drilled so much they wish he'd gone.”

Two impossible alternatives lay before me. I was thankful when he chose the lesser one.

“The maerian thief is hiding in Estar. Perhaps he thinks, among so many, Hawge won't recognize one.” The irony muted. “Odd that dragons know Letharthir, yet not Pharaone... But Maerdrigg will have to wait till I have time to fetch him back.” As I swallowed, his mouth-corner spoke Fengthira's mockery. “Oh, yes, I can bring him back. Like a fish on a line.”

Skirting the other pit, I asked tentatively, “And Hawge? How will you—?”

“We'll cross the Gebros at Gebasterne. It still has an open gate.” Remembering the road west to Astil I thought he meant to move with speed, but he shook his head. “I'm going to deal with Hawge as soon and as safely as I can. Out in Gebria on some nice... flat... barren plain.”

His brows were down. His mouth had straightened. What looked into the fire was cold, sure, implacable, fuelled but not commanded by revenge. I said, “But if Hawge is in Tirs...” And he glanced up: I caught one glimpse of his eyes before I averted mine.

“King-summoned,” he said. “I understand part of that, now. When I'm ready, I'll call it. And it'll come.”

* * * * *

Gebasterne lies at the point of the V where the Gebros meets the Helkents' last northern elbow, before they vanish into Hethria. We came there just before sunset on a bitter afternoon, riding for miles over a plain of stones no bigger but harder than a fist, with a few silver-green istarel bushes scattered on its breadth. The wind was behind us with all the cold of Hethria's wastes. Low, mean clouds broke the sun, so the Helkent glowered, the Gebros looked decrepit, and homecoming was robbed of joy.

Beryx had ridden slowly, partly for the stones, partly to reach the gate when the token guard would be so thoroughly bored two desert travelers would earn no more than a glance that missed the phenomenon of his eyes. For some reason he meant to remain anonymous.

In the event it was quite easy. I said we had come from Phengis' garrison, on a hunting trip. Agreed that it was wretched weather. Wished them goodnight, and beyond the echoing arch Gebasterne's cluster of adobe houses lay behind the spike-topped mud wall, all dim in a dusk already starred with lamps. As I looked longingly, ashiver in my thin desert robe, Beryx reined in.

“Harran,” he said, “could you buy us some supplies? A couple of coats?” He dragged out the pouch so long unused and tipped the last three rhodellin into my hand. “I'll water the horses while I wait.”

The travelers' well is outside the gate. When I arrived he had hobbled the horses and made a fire of prickly bush. We ate some of the nauseous dried Gebrian cheese and a few flourcakes, shivered through the night, and before dawn were riding north-west into Gebria's flat, monotonous red wastes.

Before I went there I wondered how people lived in Gebria, and I am no wiser for having been. The truth is that they are only born there and depart as soon as possible, to be replaced by those with no money or no sense or no choice, who take up the little wretched holdings east of Saeverran Slief, work them a year or five if they have good seasons, then go bankrupt and leave. Or those who come on east to the deep gold mines at Deltyr or Gevdelyn and work a season or two before moving on, or being killed in the drives. Or those who are posted to the Gebros. Survive a season of garrison feuds, Hethrian hunting and Gebros boredom, say the Guard, and you are safe in war.

We, however, were riding into the real desert, south of the mines, east of the farms, west of the wall, stony red flatland stretching to the horizon, with desert herbage too meager to make a show. It would have been impossible, except in autumn, and with an aedr. But storms had left some pools, and Beryx found them where no native Gebrian would have dared to go.

What he was seeking I have no idea. What he chose was another stretch of rusty stones running north from a semi-permanent water in a weathered outcrop that I suspect would interest a miner far more than it did me. A few of the rare Gebrian desert trees stood on the northern side. We arrived in late afternoon, icy cold, and Beryx insisted on a bath as well as a shave, which I thought lunacy, until I realized: tomorrow was battle-day.

I was knee-hobbling the horses out on the apology for feed when a more pressing point arose. How was I supposed to ‘appraise the men of valor' on a plain that would not hide a half-grown mouse?

I walked back to the saddlebags. Beryx was shaving, carefully as a bridegroom. This time there was none of that crazy gaiety he had shared at Coed Wrock: he was composed, contained, entirely self-assured. Looking round, he gave me a little grin and answered my unvoiced question.

“With me,” he said. I hardly noticed, Fengthira had made me so used to it. “You're too valuable to leave anywhere else.”

Nothing I could see made me the least valuable, until I recalled Fengthira's parting words. Taking it for some odd aedric superstition, like Sellithar's talisman, I said no more.

* * * * *

Dawn came in a slow wide golden-red glow and a bitter wind, to find Beryx whistling softly as he piled up sticks, broke off to light them with one quick green flash, put on the tiny traveling kettle, smiled at me, and said, “Mustn't make Hawge wait.”

Groaning, I clambered from my blankets into the new sheepskin jacket. Before the sun had risen a hand span we were walking out into the north.

“Have to leave the horses.” Yet again he answered my thought. “They'd go crazy. If Hawge tries to take them... I'll see what I can do.”

I did not answer. My stomach was turning hoops; my heart was trying to climb out of my suddenly arid throat. Beryx looked up into the cloudless blue and lemon-tinged sky and said, “This'll do.”

After awhile I sat down, which did help to warm my legs. He went on standing, occasionally scanning the sky, patient, utterly unperturbed. The wind tried to make noises in the stones and failed.

The sky turned entirely blue. Not moving, stiffening, betraying any sort of emotion, Beryx said, “There.”

I had been looking too high, too far, and the wrong way. As I jumped up, Beryx stepped round in front of me, and past his shoulder I saw Hawge.

It had made a circuit to come in from the east with the sun behind it, and it was gliding down along the sunbeams' angle, no more than three hundred yards away, barely fifty feet up, the huge black wings held out horizontal, motionless, the sun making gold on the impenetrable mail. It must have been stalking us. When Beryx turned, seeing it had failed, it backwatered and dropped heavily to earth.

Then it advanced. Gradually the shoulders sank, the back arched, and the tremendous body seemed to vanish behind the eyes, which did not revolve but were steady and glowing and wide as a stalking cat's.

Beryx's shoulder nudged me. I took a step back.

The dragon spoke, in its vast grating whisper which after aedric speech made me suspect it had no voice at all, but thought directly into your mind.

it said.

Beryx responded in a soft, carrying, expressionless voice.

“Hawge.”

When he did not go on, the dragon said,

Beryx said nothing. After a moment Hawge mused, slowly, obscenely, it licked its lips,

Beryx still did not reply. The dragon sank its chin toward the ground. Its vast nostrils dilated, but blew no fire. The wind tried to blow again, and failed. Yet some sort of duel was going on, too subtle for senses' perception, a preliminary crossing of swords.

Then Hawge said,

Beryx's voice was soft, empty, remote. He said, “Thou knowst.”

Hawge's eyes revolved slowly, once. When it spoke again its whisper was a suave, ingratiating purr.

Its eyes cocked, to judge the efficacy of the thrust. Then it went on, softer still.

When Beryx did not reply, it began to straighten from its crouch. The great wings flexed, drawing forward along the ground, the hind claws shifted a little, gaining purchase to launch its flight.

Beryx still sounded soft, almost gentle. He said, “I will follow thee.”

Hawge dropped back into a crouch. Its eyes spun rapidly, then grew crystalline and fixed. It said,

Beryx answered softly, “I know.”

Hawge's nostrils flared. This time they shot a puff of black oily smoke.

I flinched. Beryx did not. His voice was soft as ever. “I know.”

Hawge breathed a short, sharp gout of flame.

now the whisper grated,

Through a black wave of horror I heard Beryx answer, soft, steady, quite unflinching, “I know.”

Hawge's breath came in pants. Its tail lashed. The whisper went shrill.

also
knowst who holds my firestone!>

Beryx moved. His shoulder pushed me sideways and I woke with a shock to find the sun behind me and realize in hair-crisping fright that all the time it spoke Hawge had been creeping forward, and Beryx had been edging sidelong, keeping his distance and forcing it to pivot to maintain its own. As the sun centered behind us he answered, softly as ever, “I know.” And then he smiled.

Hawge reared right up on its hind legs with a scream that stunned my ears and blasted a huge gout of fire at the sky. The tail lashed round with the sting flying foremost and Beryx bent his knees, arched his back; his eyes shot a blinding green flash and the tail flew harmlessly over our heads while Hawge turned turtle as the force of the stroke upset its balance and rolled it over and over, hurling stones like a horizontal avalanche.

It came up with a plunge, gravel flying from the monstrous claws, and the wing-blast battered us as it flung itself into the air. It screamed again. Beryx tilted his head back as it climbed, shooting itself up in huge rocketing thrusts, then whipped over with folded wings as the head came out in that arrow-like dive. I cowered, Beryx took a quick fierce breath.

Down it came, those eyes skewered me, the nostrils were open furnaces, big as caves, full of leaping flame—Beryx clenched his hand and went up on his toes as if launching a missile with all his bodily strength. Hawge shrieked hideously and botched its dive in a tangle of head and claws and floundering wings, hit the ground, ran a few ungainly strides like a pelican that has misjudged its landing, and thrust itself back aloft.

Beryx stood rigid, panting, huge hungry breaths. Hawge whipped round again. Dived. Beryx arched his back. And the dragon's nerve broke.