Shadow (21 page)

It took a minute for her to find the memory: around the campfire, asking Eric about Otherworld. He reaches into his pocket, into that small leather purse of such fine make she wonders if he may be a prince back home after all. He pulls out a thin object, a card with his likeness perfectly replicated. So perfectly she gasps in amazement. He explains how such pictures are made but she doesn't understand. This groundman portrait, she was sure, had been copied from his likeness on that little card.

She remembered further, hearing Eric's account of his travels with Case, about the groundmen who'd trapped then released them, taking the little card with them! She kept the laughter inside this time, but it wasn't easy. Something on the card, in either its picture or the Otherworld runes it bore, had convinced the little people Eric (or Shadow) was their saviour.

So there were two decent big people, at least. She supposed that to them it must have made sense that the two good ones knew each other, for they seemed to accept her story. She wondered if this could be played on. ‘Eric – Shadow – is turning a lot of the big people into good people,' she said. ‘You can trust anyone he works with. He has a way of changing people's minds. Your people and ours can do much good, if we work together. We can mend our wounds. Make all the world as beautiful as your art, above ground and below.'

‘We go,' said one of the little people with a note of urgency. ‘We go quick, now. Find him, this Eh-Rick. This Shadow. He help us!'

TELL US ABOUT THE DRAGONS

1

‘Was he your father?' said Stranger. They sat beneath the window Siel had broken while Far Gaze slept naked, sprawled on the floor by the steps. Little strings of magic now and then swam to Stranger through the air, though she appeared to do nothing to draw them to her. She twisted them through her long fingers, then they fluttered out through the window like animals set free.

‘No, Case wasn't my father,' said Eric. ‘I'm just a little shocked. I was beginning to think he was indestructible.'

‘Is there no one else you miss, from your home?'

‘That's the thing. He was my link back to them. I'm beginning to wonder now if that world even exists. I have a million memories of the place, but I don't know if
I'm
even real. Every ghost in the haunted woods may think he is still real and alive.'

‘Don't speak that way,' said Stranger, performing a small gesture with her hands. He'd seen others doing it when they'd passed through those very woods. ‘You're no ghost. How long have you known Case?'

‘Not much longer than you. I used to see him on my way to work sometimes, would toss him ten bucks now and then. He'd give me a chess lesson every so often.'

‘Chess?'

‘A game. You play it here in Levaal, I'm told. Case would be so drunk he couldn't stand up, but would still beat me. Easily. I think he'd have beaten most people.'

Eric shook his head at the sleeping form of Far Gaze, angry at how casually he'd broken the news of Case's death. Stranger noticed. ‘Don't be too angry at the wolf. He has had a hard road. I made it hard. He felt he was protecting you from me all the while.'

‘Was he?'

She sighed and released a little fluttering string of dark air. ‘I would say no, of course not.
I
meant no harm to you. But did Dyan? He tells lies so well. He said he just wanted to watch you.' The shrug of her slender shoulders was hardly perceptible. ‘Maybe he did, at least up until now. What he intends next, I can't tell you.'

‘Do you remember summoning wine for Case?'

‘Back on the castle lawns? Of course.'

‘That was one of the things that had Loup convinced you weren't just an ordinary mage.'

‘He was right. Summoning a cup of wine from nearby, or summoning an illusory one,
those
things a normal mage could do. But creating the real thing from nothing is unusual work. I hope you aren't thirsty. I can't do such things now.'

‘Why not?'

She wiped her damp eyes. ‘Most of it was Dyan's power. Not
all
of it. I can still do some things. I am as much a seer as I was, though that isn't much. And the knowledge Dyan gave will stay with me as he himself fades to memory.' Her voice thickened with those words.

‘So you
could
summon a glass of wine, if you really had to?'

‘I dare not try to cast now what he could cast through me. I may succeed, if there were enough power to fuel the spell, but it might hurt or kill me. Dragons have little worry about harm from casting. Their bodies are built to handle it. Ours aren't, however capable our minds.'

‘So if you're a seer, do you have a prediction?'

It was a little while before she answered. ‘Only that several key people will converge here, in this spot. More than are here now. This tower may have been designed for that purpose, to draw us.'

‘It all looks like chance to me.'

‘I feel there are too many of us here already for it to
be
just chance.'

‘You also assume we're key people.'

She laughed. ‘We are, for we surround you, Pilgrim. More will surely come, and if they do, we will know I'm right. Even the timing of this building's revealing itself has me curious. Your friends showed up just in time to find it ere anyone else did.' She gazed around at the room's peculiar devices. ‘It is masterfully built. We are not masters of quick spell-casting, we humans. In that, we are insects to the greater dragons. To a Minor personality like Dyan, we are not
insects,
but our most powerful caster is still less than him. It is in our slower, more careful craftsmanship that we actually have the dragons' respect. Even though in that craft too, they best us. Small wonder they feel cheated that we have taken their world.'

Loup staggered down the steps, yawning and farting. He glanced at Far Gaze's sleeping form with no more reaction than a grunt, but stood flabbergasted on sight of Stranger.

‘Hello?' she ventured.

‘I knew
he
was coming,' said Loup, nodding at Far Gaze. ‘What in Inferno's red blazes are
you
doing here?'

‘I think I am your captive,' she said, shrugging. ‘Although I'll be an ally if you'll let me. You'll have to ask the wolf when he wakes up. He brought me.'

‘Ehh! So you
weren't
an ally before, is that what you're saying, lass?'

‘I don't know. I thought I was. I might have been wrong.'

‘You'd judge it better than I,' said Loup. ‘Less kick about you now though, mark me. Oh I noticed you on the road, could feel you about the place even at some distance. It was you all right. Not now though! The fire's gone out of you.'

‘Not completely,' she said testily.

He laughed. ‘Oh yes it has, enough for us to handle. You're not much more than
me,
now. And not a candle on him.' He nodded to Far Gaze. ‘Maybe you can bless the meals around here from now on.' To Eric, Loup said, ‘Where's the other lass?'

‘Siel? She's not been here since I woke,' said Eric. ‘And I'm nervous about it. I had a dream where she was far away.'

‘Dream!' Loup's eyes went wide. ‘Normal dream, or more funny business? Tell me about it and don't waste words.'

Eric told him what little he remembered.

‘More trickery!' Loup cried when he'd finished. His gnarled face twisted into a fury Eric had not before seen in him. ‘
And you clutz fool shit didn't think to wake me at the first scent of it!
'

‘See, here's where you explain to me what it all means. Then the
next
time it happens, I'll know what to do.'

‘Next time if we're lucky!' Loup staggered back and fell as though he'd been shoved, hands to his face. ‘You know what
he's
liable to do? He's like a wee tot taking toys apart to see what's inside em. What he'll be when he grows up? Well who knows that?
If
she's alive, call it more luck than a rain of diamonds. If she's not, it's
your
hands helped kill her, and I don't care if you're a Pilgrim or a common idiot or both. Scale! Where's the black scale? Oh there better be enough left. Pinch of green in the mix might help, might not. Oh what's he done…?'

Wailing and cursing, Loup ran back up the steps.

Eric said to Stranger, ‘If you are a captive here, I'm not your guard.'

She laughed. ‘You'd turn a blind eye if I jumped out the window? I don't want to. I want nothing. He's right, the fire is out. Do you see? It's not the power I mourn, nor is it strictly
him.
I don't know if it was a spell that made me love him, that's beside the point. The connection, the bond. Its very threads, the firm grip of them.
He
didn't matter, I understand now. But his power made the bond stronger than anything I will have again. I'm over.'

‘Unless he returns?'

She laughed. ‘He won't. I know him now that we've parted, in the way you know a familiar place even more when it's left behind you. He was never mine. Just as we keep horses and beasts until they're not useful any more. That's all I was to him.'

Eric noted the choice of words.
He won't return
was not quite the same as
even if he did return, I'd not have anything to do with him.
Aloud he said, ‘But that's not to say a person can't be a genuine friend to his steed.'

‘Until it's of no more use,' she repeated sadly.

Far Gaze opened a bleary red eye and groaned. Unabashed by his nakedness he got up and moved very stiffly, like an old man, though he could not have been much older than forty. His hairy body was broad and muscled. ‘Get me food,' he said. ‘The mongrel tried to kill me.'

‘What happened to Case?' Eric demanded.

‘Jumped off a cliff. Said thanks for the … I forget the words. He said something a friend would say in farewell. I have no more answers for you.'

‘No more answers,' Eric echoed hollowly.

‘I was in shifted form. Not ideal for playing messenger. Leave me be. I must think about what the wolf scented and heard. There's a lot.' Far Gaze cocked a thick eyebrow at Eric, belatedly perceiving his attitude. ‘And as for saving you in the woods, from one peril after another, after keeping a
dragon
at bay, among other things, after a futile sprint across the world. You … are …
welcome.
Pilgrim.'

He went up the steps clutching his back. A moment later, through the window Eric and Stranger sat beneath, a drake's head burst in.

2

It was well that Stranger saw in time there wasn't room for Aziel's head to clear the top of the window, or the Lord's daughter might have been sent tumbling to the small shelf of turf below. The drake pushed its way in, getting a wing caught on the window and flipping over onto its back with a grunt, almost landing squarely on Eric, who was too surprised to move until he heard the bone-breaking force of its squat body hitting the floor. Stranger pulled Aziel inside.

‘Hands off me!' the girl yelled shrilly, thrashing her legs around. ‘Leave me alone. Do you even know who I am?'

Stranger – perhaps expecting ‘thank you' for saving the new arrival's life – was lost for words. The drake, on sight of Eric, got up and rushed at him. ‘Help!' he yelled, backing into a wall, but the drake had him cornered. Rather than attack, it pushed its head into his midriff as though it wanted to have its ears scratched.

‘He won't hurt you,' Aziel snapped at Eric. ‘He's mine. Don't touch him.'

‘What is yours?' said Stranger. ‘Eric or the beast? Or maybe everyone and everything?'

‘Don't speak to me that way!' said Aziel, though she sounded more frightened than anything. ‘Do you even know—'

‘You are Aziel, our Friend and Lord's daughter,' said Stranger with a smile. ‘And I believe my prediction was right. Don't you, Eric?'

Eric was too busy fending off the drake's affections. It had propped itself up on its hind legs and tail, with one foreleg planted on his chest, looking into his face with what seemed imploring eyes. Eric felt his ribs bend under its weight. ‘What's wrong with it?' he gasped.

‘He might be thirsty,' Aziel said. ‘He likes beer.'

‘Is it going to breathe fire at me?'

‘No! He doesn't do that much. He's a nice drake. Take me home. Take me back to Arch. I don't understand why I'm here or why it came and took me. I just want to go home.' She burst into tears.

Stranger laid a palm on her forehead, muttered something, then Aziel collapsed into sleep. ‘You have a new friend,' said Stranger, a drop of blood leaking from her nose.

‘I think so.' The drake had calmed down a little. Now it sat before Eric like a dog awaiting instructions from its master. It made sounds deep in its throat as though it were trying to speak, though the sounds had no meaning Eric could discern. ‘It's trying to tell me something.'

Stranger stroked the beast's back. ‘It seems very tame. There were some drakes trained for fighting, years ago. If they escaped their handlers, they were dangerous. It's quite remarkable, if this creature will stay with us and be a steed. Drakes are very rare.' The drake turned to her and made more sounds like it was trying to speak. Stranger said, ‘They are the only dragon kin allowed to live in the human world, though they were hunted near to extinction for the privilege.'

‘Why hunted?' said Eric, patting the creature's back.

‘Drake skin makes fine leather armour, easily enchanted. Their blood and body parts are used in rituals. Highly potent, their blood. And they were ridden to war, killed faster than they bred.' Stranger took Aziel in her arms and carried her upstairs. ‘I think your new friend will need a name, Eric,' she called over her shoulder.