Lords of the Sky (84 page)

“No, listen!” This to Rwyan, who had moved to speak
but fell silent as I under the bleak intensity of his eyes. “I do not name you enemy. Not you two Dhar; nor you. Urt. But what you ask is too much! You’d have me ride Peliane against my own. You ask me to betray all that I’ve believed in. I am nothing save I be true to my beliefs, but you ask me to fight my brothers, my kin. You ask me to go against the wishes of the Three! You ask me to damn myself for your dream, and I cannot do that.”

He closed his eyes, his head flung back so that his long plait hung down behind his chair. I saw his left hand finger the dagger at his waist and knew what he should likely say next.

I was right: he said, “Already I’ve betrayed my kin in aiding your escape from Trebizar. I could do no less in face of my pledge to you, Rwyan. But this—” He shook his head wearily. “No. Better that I take the Way of Honor now.”

Rwyan said very softly, “Do you truly think that’s the honorable course, Tezdal?”

His eyes sprang open. His head came forward. He stared at her, fierce as a bull dragon. “Yes.”

I said, “I’d not see you open your belly, my friend.”

He laughed. The sound rang wild about the empty hall. It seemed to me brother to the howling of the wind outside. I ached for him. I knew his decision was infinitely difficult.

He reached for the jug. I pushed it toward him, and he filled his cup; drank it off before he spoke again. “Would you deny your god?” he asked, rhetorical. “Would you ask me to deny the Three, all my beliefs, all my life has meant? Forgive me—I intend no disrespect, but you Truemen Dhar lack that honor that shapes us. I am Kho’rabi: my life has been lived for the single purpose. And now you’d ask me to deny it?”

Rwyan began to shape an answer, but to my amazement Urt set a hand upon her arm and motioned her to silence; and it was he who gave Tezdal the response.

“I was born Changed,” he said. “I am the by-blow of Dhar magic: dragons’ prey, a servant. In Dharbek I was nothing—invisible, a creature born of made things, born to serve unseen, unthanked. I was traded like an animal, as you’d no doubt trade a hound or a horse or a cow. I was nothing!

“Do you not think I dreamed of conquest then? Of my
people rising to overthrow our masters? I’d not go back to that. No! Not ever! That was why I fled Karysvar and crossed the Slammerkin, to find the wild Changed and live free.

“But what did I find in Ur-Dharbek? That those who promise freedom dream of power! That Allanyn and her cohorts would join with you Kho’rabi to destroy the Truemen, to set themselves up where the Dhar stand now. Not make a better world—only shift the order of the old. I’d have no master, Tezdal, neither Trueman nor Changed. Only be myself, free.

“What think you the Great Coming shall mean? Surely bloodshed, when your battalions come down out of the sky and Allanyn brings my people south over the Slammerkin, and the Changed of Dharbek rise. And after? What then? Shall your Attul-ki and Allanyn parcel out their conquests? Or shall ambition vaunt itself again and Allanyn decide she’d not share with Sky Lords, or your Attul-ki decide to enslave my Changed people? Where shall those Dhar who still survive be then? As you Ahn were—slaves and outlaws, dreaming in their turn of reconquest? I’ve found honesty in Truemen—two sit before you now, exemplars!—and I’ve known cruelty. I’ve found the same in my own kind, and I tell you that we are none of us so different. Daviot saw that years ago and paid the price of his vision. Rwyan saw it, and now she’s here—a Trueman mage, her life dedicated to defense of Dharbek. Until now! When she sees a truer future.”

He broke off. He seemed to me almost embarrassed by his eloquence. He took up his cup and drank. I said nothing; neither Rwyan. I think we both knew Urt had said it all, and we could not put it better. I smiled at my old friend, but he was looking away at Tezdal still. His eyes were locked with the Sky Lord’s, as if he’d burn the import of his belief into Tezdal’s brain.

My Sky Lord friend sat silent a while, his aquiline features impassive, a mask. I had no doubt he hid the turmoil within.

We waited, all of us.

Finally, Tezdal said, “A truer future, Urt? Tell me what that is, eh? Tell me what truth there can be in vows denied.”

Urt still did not look at me, or at Rwyan, but only held Tezdal’s gaze. He said, “A better world, my friend. A world of equals, not servants and their masters. Neither vanquished
and oppressed; neither any who dream of conquest or liberation, but only live together in freedom.”

“And how,” Tezdal asked, “would you achieve this Utopia?”

Urt said, “I think it shall not be easy. I think it shall cost us pain, and the payment of it be likely bloody. But I have come to Rwyan’s belief, to Daviot’s dream—I believe we might achieve it.”

Tezdal lowered his eyes to his empty cup. Rwyan rose and filled it. The Sky Lord drank and brought a hand to his mouth, where a droplet of red wine sat upon his lip. He wiped it, fastidious, away. He studied his fingers.

Then he said, “Tell me.”

His tone was carefully measured, his expression controlled. I saw he hid the anguish that consumed him, the pendulum swing betwixt despair and hope that Urt’s justifying argument set in motion. I pitied him. I’d not dare say it aloud—he’d likely have found that an insult to his Kho’rabi honor—but I grieved for him in his torment, knowing that he, more than any of us, was caught in the dilemma of perceived betrayal. I thought, as I watched his bleak face, that if this pattern I’d described to comfort Rwyan, this pattern she now believed in and I almost could see, were true, then it was not unlike those spiders’ webs that had decorated this hall before Rwyan brought her talent to their clearing. It was a great web of many strands, impossible to trace to ends or center, sources or conclusions. It was larger and far more complex than we caught in it could see, and poor Tezdal was like a fly landed there by none of his own design—only caught, the mandibles of decision’s spider moving ever closer as he struggled to find a way, an honorable way, out.

I looked at his face and felt my soul bleed for him as I outlined the stratagem I’d wrought.

T
The wind tapped demanding knuckles at the windows as I spoke. It was yet only midafternoon, but the sky was dark, laden heavy with the promise of snow to come that night. What little light the sun succeeded in thrusting through the clouds fell in long slanting rays over the mountains. I spoke with all the eloquence of my calling; and more, for I was impassioned by conviction. I saw it kindle a fire in the Sky Lord. He was, at first, still doubtful, but then I saw his eyes narrow, and then widen, as the seed Urt had planted took root and grew under the sun of my words. I watched as his expression shifted, swift as those patterns of light and shadow dancing over the snowfields and forests beyond the windows. I saw him come to belief, to trust, and his hope minded me of the sun in springtime, emerging from winter’s gloom.

“Think you it might be done, truly?” he asked, not of me, but of Rwyan.

She nodded and told him, “I believe it might. I believe that to fail its attempting is to betray all our peoples.”

Tezdal looked then at Urt, who lowered his head in solemn, silent agreement.

He turned to me, brows raised in question. I said, “Save we go on as we’ve done, in war unending, I see no other way.”

He asked, “Even at the price you Dhar shall pay?”

“Weighted by the lives lost—those likely saved—that price seems small to me.”

“It seems to me a very great price,” he responded.

I shrugged and said, “We’d change our world, Tezdal. I think that price must always be high. But still worth the paying.”

He hesitated. He filled his cup and drank again. It seemed he offered a toast. He set the goblet down and said, “I’m with you.” And then, much softer, “May the Three forgive me.”

“Hurrah!”

We all of us started as Bellek’s voice came from a doorway. How long he’d stood there, silent and listening, I could only guess. I thought perhaps since first our conversation had begun, for he came to join us with so purposeful an expression, I must assume he knew all we had decided.

He glanced at the jug and took it from the table. “Such weighty decisions demand a weightier wine,” he said, going to the kitchens. Calling back over his shoulder, “And you’ll require my aid in this.”

He came back with the jug replenished and filled all our cups. It was a rich, red vintage, smooth and heavy. I’d tasted nothing so fine.

“I’d wondered how long it should be,” he said, “before you came to this.”

I stared at him. “You knew?”

He chuckled. “I know your dreams,” he said. “The dragons tell me. I was not certain—I could not be—but I suspected that such as you must sooner or later come to some decision. And that decision must go the one way or the other. You choose the course I thought you’d take.”

Rwyan said, “And shall you aid us, Bellek?”

The Dragonmaster fixed her with his pale eyes. On his face I saw emotions chase like shadow and light over the mountains, one overlaying the other so swift, I could not read them clear. I thought I saw hope and confirmation balanced with some indefinable loss. He said, “It shall not be without a price.”

I said, “Name it. Likely we’ll pay.”

Bellek chuckled again, and in the sound I heard the echoes of those mixed emotions that had just decorated his
seamed features; also, that hint of madness. I wondered what the price should be.

He said, “That you become, truly, Dragonmasters.”

I sensed behind his words some hidden meaning. I said, “Shall we achieve our aims if we are not?”

He shook his head. “No. Save you be utterly committed, you cannot take the dragons into battle.”

Rwyan said, “Then I accept.”

I found those pale eyes on mine. I glanced an instant at Rwyan, then ducked my head. “I accept.”

“Good.” He looked to Urt, to Tezdal, who both nodded and gave their word.

“Then,” Bellek declared, “let us plan this thing. It shall not be easy, but”—his eyes twinkled as he surveyed us—“I think the dragons shall greatly enjoy it.”

We fell then to talk of stratagems, of distances and objectives.

We each had in our possession information of great value, that should make the task easier; or so I hoped. Rwyan’s was of that magic commanded by the Dhar sorcerers—of the Sentinels and the Border Cities, and what was owned by the mages of Kherbryn and Durbrecht, the other great cities. I could offer knowledge of the keeps of Dharbek, of the war-engines and the warbands, the mood of the people and the aeldors. Urt spoke of Ur-Dharbek—of Trebizar and the magic Allanyn and her followers possessed, the strength of the Changed armies. Tezdal told us of the Kho’rabi and the Attul-ki, of the preparations for the Great Conquest.

It grew late as we talked. The winter darkness outside gave way to that brief twilight the mountains know, and that to night. The wind fell away, seemingly satisfied its task was done. Great banks of moonlit cloud obscured the sky, and from them fell snow that drifted soft and silent, building on the ledges and the parapets of the Dragoncastle. We repaired to the kitchen, still talking as we assembled a hasty meal, continuing as we brought the food to the table, talking still as we ate.

There were no clocks here, neither clepsydras nor sundials (for what good they’d have done in this season) nor any other kind. It was as if time ceased here, and what divisions of the days and hours existed were imposed only by our
urgency. I had seen none in Bellek until now; that I now perceived him quickened worried me in a manner I did not properly understand.

You know from this accounting of my life that I’d that teaching of my College that allowed me usually to interpret a body’s language—the hints of eye and intonation, the movements of the hands and shoulders, those little oft-hidden signs that speak as loud as words. Bellek remained a mystery. I believed I sensed excitement in him, but also a multitude of other emotions I could not explain. I trusted him—I had no doubt he should aid us as he promised—but there was something else, something he concealed. It was that that prompted me to follow him when he left us.

I followed Bellek across yards tracked thick with snow and passages where the trickling water froze and rats skidded on the ice. We came out into a night whirlwinded white and slipped and slid our way—he confident, I furtive as a nightcome thief—along the trailing walkways that brought us to the caves where the dragons lived.

It was cold. I wished I’d brought a cloak. I shivered, thinking that my drumming teeth must reveal my presence, but Bellek showed no sign, only paused before the cave, and then went in.

I came after. I halted at the entrance. The bull Taziel was inside the gaping arch, alert. His wings were furled; his fangs were exposed. He looked at me, and I sent out that silent message Bellek had taught us all.

Peace. I mean no harm. You are mighty and magnificent, and I humbly beg to admire your brood.

He granted me permission, and I went after Bellek into the cave.

I could no more ignore the sending I got from Deburah than I could my earlier curiosity. I should have thought of that before; should have known it. But I was then still newcome to that relationship, and like a lover slowly sensing out all those areas allowed and forbidden that lovers delicately find, I knew not how much this monstrous, majestic love of mine would tell.