Shadow (16 page)

It seemed a long time before she recovered. She wanted to attack him, spit curses at him, but had no power to do it. ‘You can see back along the axis,' he said. ‘So now I can too, but I can do it better than you. I shadowed you, see? We can look back together. You're not as hard to shadow as that thing was, in the woods.'

‘Where are we?' she said.

‘It's where we have to be to learn about the green dress. I cheated. I looked forward on the axis to when we'd learn about it. That's how I knew to come here. Then we came here and we'll make it happen, by looking
back.
It's like bending a little part of the axis into a circle. Why can't you do that?'

She looked about, half recognising the country. ‘Wait – you can control when and where to look, in the past and future?'

‘Some parts of it,' said his deadpan voice. ‘When you leave, I'll forget how. I can do more things than you can. But I couldn't do most of the stuff that thing in the woods could do, when I shadowed it. Do you understand?'

‘I think so, Shadow.'

‘I've taken us back along the axis.'

‘Back in time you mean.'

‘Time? Sure, call it that.'

‘How, Shadow? How did you do it? We can't really be here. But we aren't in our present time any more either. So where
are
we?'

‘I don't know. It's the same as moving around fast. I don't understand things, I just do them. Look up there if you want to learn.' He pointed at the sky where a long shape loomed, visible only because little points of light glinted off its dark flanks.

‘A dragon!' Siel's jaw dropped. It was bigger than a horse, bigger than a drake. It seemed to ripple like a boneless creature swimming through water, with a wide span of pinioned wings, a sleek head. Its long body was of slender proportion but thick with muscle.

It landed near them with the feline grace of a cat's leap, shook itself like a wet dog, its mane of fins and leathery spikes slapping against its flank with a sound of whipping leather. A serpentine tail snaked out behind it, ridged with spikes. Its long mouth was set in a curved grin. She recognised its eyes, the same ones that had peered at her from the woods. Its head swept around, gazed at where she and Shadow stood … but if this was the past, a glance back, surely it didn't
see
them.

Nonetheless its gaze lingered on their spot, its brow furrowed. It sniffed deeply, frowned at some anomaly. Then its head reared up and with impressive noise it sneezed a white foamy spray into the air, made a gagging sound, cleared its throat of a blockage, spat, yawned.

A Minor personality,
Siel thought with amazement which swept aside almost everything else she'd seen and felt tonight. She knew so little of dragons, had only once seen a drake from her father's shoulders as they walked home, not long before the city's invasion. It had been so distant she'd doubted since that it had been more than a bird. There
were
no dragons, not free to roam like this in the human realm!

On four legs, the dragon – Smaller than she'd have expected! Weren't they rumoured to be enormous? – moved forward with a crab-like walk, covering ground quickly. Without warning it slipped into a groundman hole she hadn't even seen.

‘I know where it's going,' said Shadow, his voice again making her jump. He grabbed her before she could reply. They sped down the groundman tunnels, right through the slithering dragon's body, which barely fit through the narrow spaces. Suddenly they were in the underground chamber which Anfen had described all too clearly: the place Stranger had taken him. There were those trapped souls, caught up in claw-like hooks on the wall. She did not feel the place's horrible heat; but she remembered talk of those hot hooks burning the flesh of ‘new mages' being formed. And there in their midst was Stranger, naked like the rest, her eyes closed, her face like that of a sleeper with troubling dreams. The claws holding her had not wormed their way as deeply into her flesh as had those in the bodies around her.

‘Can they hear us?' said Siel.

‘No. The dragon's coming.'

They waited. Minutes later, a cloud of smoky light flowed turgidly into the chamber. It crystallised slowly into the dragon's shape, solidified like mist becoming ice. ‘It couldn't fit through the tunnels,' said Shadow. ‘That's why it changed to gas. It doesn't like doing that. Hurts it.'

The dragon did indeed look nonplussed once it had finally changed back into its true form; it spat and licked its teeth as though it had tasted something vile. It hopped down from the upper perch to the floor level, then strolled up and down the line of bodies, not bothering with the men, but pausing before each of the women to examine them closely. Every so often, it would very gently nudge one with its nose or paw. When it got to Stranger, it gave an odd shiver, stroked her with the dark tip of its tail, then seemed to weigh up a choice: her, or another it had lingered over before, a few bodies back.

It hooked its tail behind the claws pinning Stranger in place and, with a strain that made it shiver for a second or two, ripped them out of the stone wall one by one, also employing its teeth for the task. It caught her arm in its mouth as she slumped to the ground, then laid her carefully down, stroking her from head to toe with the point of its tail.

The dragon turned about, glanced again directly at them, frowned (How human the frown seemed!) in disquiet before examining its prize again.

‘You know what it does now,' said Shadow.

‘What?' she whispered.

‘It started with you, till I interrupted it. It makes you its house.'

‘I don't understand.'

Shadow considered his words. ‘The dragon wanted to ride inside you. So it can stay hidden. It's like if you were riding on the dragon's back. It can only do it if you let it. Like you could only ride its back if
it
let you. That's why it was doing what it did to you, making you feel good so you would let it in. I could tell that much when I shadowed it. It only rides women. It likes your bodies. The shape, I guess. I do too. They're nice.'

The dragon's head bent low. It –
he,
Siel felt quite sure it was male – whispered in Stranger's ear, and she showed signs of stirring. ‘It has to ask. Has to get permission. She'll be scared at first, then she'll agree, and be happy. Until it leaves her for the wolf to find. Then she'll hate it. I've seen enough now. I'm going.'

‘Wait!'

‘What for?'

‘Take me back to the tower.'

Shadow looked at her with his hole-eyes. ‘I don't want to go all the way back there. I want to see what else there is around here.'

‘Don't you dare leave me here. Take me
back.
Like you said you would.'

‘Only if you make that sound you made. With the dragon, back in the woods. I liked that sound.'

‘
What?
' She spat at him instead. Then he was gone and she was alone in the chamber.

HER RAIN FALLS

1

Tempest's mood shifted like the restless pulse and heave of the world's water. She had many homes. The rivers and lakes were hers.

The skies were hers in part, their wind and rain and cloud. She could be many places. She could be spread thin as scattered raindrops, millions of eyes collecting little glimpses of the world as they fell, to coalesce later and be seen as a whole. Or she would howl in wild temper, lashing down on the further seas where no people went, where there were only wild forces. So-called Vyan's sea (his no longer!) was a favoured place for wild moods, for smashing glaciers and bergs together, screaming her voice as winds that blasted the heaving waves.

Just occasionally the Godstears – A far better name for a sea! – would get a good shake too, enough to make its furthest reaching waves lap upon the feet of its villages. Seldom more than that, seldom the tsunamis which swept these polite people into its waters, their polite bodies gently bobbing, feeding the fish they usually ate.

It had been a while; perhaps it was time for another such storm. They provoked, strangely, yet more rituals and prayers,
exquisitely
polite. Fevers of them for years and years.

Now on those shimmering waves she languidly stretched. The lines of some Godstears fishermen passed through the very easternmost part of her. If they could share eyes with the gulls flying overhead, they'd have seen her face: enormous, long and stretched across the heaving blue, bent around the curve of the shore. The fishermen speculated on where she was today, when she would send rain. The water burbled with her laughter – she enjoyed hearing herself discussed, politely or otherwise. She summoned a school of big fish for them, set it loose among their lines and nets, and watched, pleased, their delight as they hauled aloft an impressive catch and praised their own handiwork.

Then day ended, the men went home, night came and she moved from there, a breeze taking the sparkle off the water like someone blowing flame from a billion little candles. She was high now, dispersed in the wind and cloud. Off in the northeast, in the fields of Kopyn, a family had made their ritual for rain, clumsily done but polite in intent. She'd heard them previously do something much more elaborate but had not felt like obliging. Now she saw no harm in tossing a handful of wet sky their way. She did so, perhaps a touch more rain than they'd expected, and certainly its arrival more abrupt. No matter! Funny little things.

Why not send more water down? The clouds were hers. The lazy sleeping Dragon may shift them about, but they'd come back to
her,
they were
hers
and she'd make them weep if she wanted to, wherever they went. She summoned a thick grey blanket about her, thicker and thicker, turned it dark and poured water down on the castle, beating water on the great stone walls. The window panes streamed in that place where the new Spirit grew, the place the other Spirits never dared go near. Brave new Spirit! Vous its name, weak for now but growing. Its purpose she didn't understand, so different it seemed from the others, and from her.

But she had no thoughts for it now. She was too caught up in the joy of drenching the world, the pure free joy brought by what looked like falling tears. It was the same feeling as the first ever rainfall. In a way, it
was
the first all over again. It didn't matter that the world she drenched had changed, whether dragons or humans roamed about down there: wet, wet, wet! Her laughter pattered down and gushed over the castle's glistening flanks, gently teasing the Dragon, so close, which did not sense her here, would never know of her jest and laughter.

And many little glimpses the raindrops caught for later as they slid down the castle windows …

2

The Arch Mage paced the Hall of Windows, head craned sideways beneath the weight of three horns that had never felt so cumbersome as they did now. He looked over the note-takers' shoulders to read their useless scrawl. And with Vous's words still clattering through his mind –
lies, Avridis
– he watched those Windows to see what they might show him now.

Nothing beyond World's End. None of the wonders and mysteries they'd been eager to show him before.

In the Windows were glimpses of men fighting in the dark, trebuchets flinging stones at Faifen's walls, people dragged from homes outside the city, his men having their way with enemy women. The city would fall by morning. Tsith would be his by the week's end. The rest within a month. Normally all this would be pleasing theatre, to see an enemy crushed.

‘Have any of you seen the girl?' he said, knowing to ask was futile. Along the row of grey-robes manning the Windows, all heads swivelled toward him, each expression blank and serene. ‘Have you seen the girl?' he repeated. ‘Answer me. Each of you.'

‘Not I, Arch Mage.'

‘Not I, Arch Mage.'

Dozens of identical answers and their heads turned back to the screens before them.

Rage like a curtain of red fire was pulled over his eyes. The airs about him fluttered in response to it. His fist clenched, shaking, on his staff. He drove its forked point through the neck of the nearest Window-watcher. A grunt, a convulsion, then the mind-controlled thing slumped to the floor and obediently died. The two seated to either side, needing no instruction, stood and dragged the body away, while another fetched a mop to clean the red trail slicked behind it.

The Arch watched the blood get cleaned up, reprimanding himself for the loss of control, then resumed his pacing.

Aziel's voice:
Arch, you know who did it! But … what is on the other side? Are there people there?

He went to a regular window and gazed through a sheet of rain at the Entry Point's tall fenced valley, hidden in the dark but its features so familiar he could practically see it. For a long time he stared, wondering if it would ever be necessary to flee there, wondering how that place would handle magic, which it
seemed
not to possess. How it would handle a shuffling horde of Tormentors pouring through its cities? For that matter, how would it handle a demented god set loose? (It seemed not to have gods either.)

In the Windows behind him, soldiers taught to scorn Valour's ideals for war cast open the city gates and rushed in, their blade arms threshing through men, women and children, whether they fought or fled or surrendered, trampling the falling bodies. The grey-robes took notes, observing with expressionless faces as rain washed the city's blood-slicked streets clean.

3

Tempest was spread thin and far. She lashed the backs of soldiers marching directly along the Great Dividing Road with the push behind them. They clogged the human-built highways, which branched away from the Road like a river system of pavement. They went with care, these armies, for the foreign things were about, loose from their herders beneath the surface. Or else the creatures had wandered from Elvury, where big numbers of them still held the city as their own. Over there Tempest slapped rain hard on their tough spiked hides, causing a flurry of movement among the dark shapes which had been motionless (and, it seemed, purposeless) as statues. She did not like them very much.