The Colour of Magic (17 page)

Hrun shrugged. 'Sure,' he said, 'the only reason for walking into the jaws of Death is so's you can steal His gold teeth.' He brought one arm around expansively, and the wooden bunk was at the end of it. It cannoned into the bowmen and Hrun followed it joyously, felling one man with a blow and snatching the weapon from another. A moment later it was all over.

Liessa had not moved.

'Well?' she said.

'Well what?' said Hrun, from the carnage.

'Do you intend to kill me?'

"What? Oh no. No, this is just, you know, kind of a habit. Just keeping in practice. So where are these brothers?' He grinned.

Twoflower sat on his straw and stared into the darkness. He wondered how long he had been there. Hours, at least. Days, probably. He speculated that perhaps it had been years, and he had simply forgotten.

No, that sort of thinking wouldn't do. He tried to think of something else – grass, trees, fresh air, dragons. Dragons . . .

There was the faintest of scrabblings in the darkness. Twoflower felt the sweat prickle on his forehead.

Something was in the cell with him. Something that made small noises, but even in the pitch blackness gave the impression of hugeness. He felt the air move.

When he lifted his arm there was the greasy feel and faint shower of sparks that betokened a localized magical field. Twoflower found himself fervently wishing for light.

A gout of flame rolled past his head and struck the far wall. As the rocks flashed into furnace heat he looked up at the dragon that now occupied more than half the cell.

I obey
,
lord
, said a voice in his head.

By the glow of the crackling, spitting stone Twoflower looked into his own reflection in two enormous green eyes. Beyond them the dragon was as multi-hued, horned, spiked and lithe as the one in his memory – a
real
dragon. Its folded wings were nevertheless still wide enough to scrape the wall on both sides of the room. It lay with him between its talons.

'Obey?' he said, his voice vibrating with terror and delight.

Of course, lord.

The glow faded away. Twoflower pointed a trembling finger at where he remembered the door to be and said, 'Open it!'

The dragon raised its huge head. Again the ball of flame rolled out but this time, as the dragon's neck muscles contracted, its colour faded from orange to yellow, from yellow to white, and finally to the faintest of blues. By that time the flame was also very thin, and where it touched the wall the molten rock spat and ran. When it reached the door the metal exploded into a shower of hot droplets.

Black shadows arced and jiggered over the walls. The metal bubbled for an eye-aching moment, and then the door fell in two pieces in the passage beyond. The flame winked out with a suddenness that was almost as startling as its arrival.

Twoflower stepped gingerly over the cooling door and looked up and down the corridor. It was empty.

The dragon followed. The heavy door frame caused it some minor difficulty, which it overcame with a swing of its shoulders that tore the timber out and tossed it to one side. The creature looked expectantly at Twoflower, its skin rippling and twitching as it sought to open its wings in the confines of the passage.

'How did you get in there?' said Twoflower.

You summoned me, master.

'I don't remember doing that.'

In your mind. You called me up, in your mind
, thought the dragon, patiently.

'You mean I just thought of you and there you were?'

Yes.

'It was magic?'

Yes.

'But I've thought about dragons all my life!'

In this place the frontier between thought and reality is probably a little confused. All I know is that once I was not, and then you thought me, and then I was. Therefore, of course, I am yours to command.

'Good grief!'

Half a dozen guards chose that moment to turn the bend in the corridor. They stopped, open-mouthed. Then one remembered himself sufficiently to raise his crossbow and fire.

The dragon's chest heaved. The quarrel exploded into flaming fragments in mid-air. The guards scurried out of sight. A fraction of a second later a wash of flame played over the stones where they had been standing.

Twoflower looked up in admiration.

'Can you fly too?' he said.

Of course.

Twoflower glanced up and down the corridor, and decided against following the guards. Since he knew himself to be totally lost already, any direction was probably an improvement. He edged past the dragon and hurried away, the huge beast turning with difficulty to follow him.

They padded down a series of passages that crisscrossed like a maze. At one point Twoflower thought he heard shouts, a long way behind them, but they soon faded away. Sometimes the dark arch of a crumbling doorway loomed past them in the gloom. Light filtered through dimly from various shafts and, here and there, bounced off big mirrors that had been mortared into angles of the passage. Sometimes there was a brighter glow from a distant light-well.

What was odd, thought Twoflower as he strolled down a wide flight of stairs and kicked up billowing clouds of silver dust motes, was that the tunnels here were much wider. And better constructed, too. There were statues in niches set in the walls, and here and there faded but interesting tapestries had been hung. They mainly showed dragons – dragons by the hundred, in flight or hanging from their perch rings, dragons with men on their backs hunting down deer and, sometimes, other men. Twoflower touched one tapestry gingerly. The fabric crumbled instantly in the hot dry air, leaving only a dangling mesh where some threads had been plaited with fine gold wire.

'I wonder why they left all this?' he said.

I don't know
, said a polite voice in his head.

He turned and looked up into the scaly horse face above him.

'What is your name, dragon?' said Twoflower.

I don't know.

'I think I shall call you Ninereeds.'

That is my name, then.

They waded through the all-encroaching dust in a series of huge, dark-pillared halls which had been carved out of the solid rock. With some cunning too: from floor to ceiling the walls were a mass of statues, gargoyles, bas-reliefs and fluted columns that cast weirdly moving shadows when the dragon gave an obliging illumination at Twoflower's request. They crossed the lengthy galleries and vast carven amphitheatres, all awash with deep soft dust and completely uninhabited. No-one had come to these dead caverns in centuries.

Then he saw the path, leading away into yet another dark tunnel mouth. Someone had been using it regularly, and recently. It was a deep narrow trail in the grey blanket.

Twoflower followed it. It led through still more lofty halls and winding corridors quite big enough for a dragon (and dragons had come this way once, it seemed; there was a room full of rotting harness, dragon-sized, and another room containing plate armour and chain mail big enough for elephants). They ended in a pair of green bronze doors, each so high that they disappeared into the gloom. In front of Twoflower, at chest height, was a small handle shaped like a brass dragon.

When he touched it the doors swung open instantly and with a disconcerting noiselessness.

Instantly sparks crackled in Twoflower's hair and there was a sudden gust of hot dry wind that didn't disturb the dust in the way that ordinary wind should but, instead, whipped it up momentarily into unpleasantly half-living shapes before it settled again. In Twoflower's ears came the strange shrill twittering of the Things locked in the distant dungeon Dimensions, out beyond the fragile lattice of time and space. Shadows appeared where there was nothing to cause them. The air buzzed like a hive.

In short, there was a vast discharge of magic going on around him.

The chamber beyond the door was lit by a pale green glow. Stacked around the walls, each on its own marble shelf, were tier upon tier of coffins. In the centre of the room was a stone chair on a raised dais, and it contained a slumped figure which did not move but said, in a brittle old voice, 'Come in, young man.'

Twoflower stepped forward. The figure in the seat was human, as far as he could make out in the murky light, but there was something about the awkward way it was sprawled in the chair that made him glad he couldn't see it any clearer.

'I'm dead, you know,' came a voice from what Twoflower fervently hoped was a head, in conversational tones. 'I expect you can tell.'

'Um,' said Twoflower. 'Yes.' He began to back away.

'Obvious, isn't it?' agreed the voice. 'You'd be Twoflower, wouldn't you? Or is that later?'

'Later?' said Twoflower. 'Later than what?' He stopped.

'Well,' said the voice. 'You see, one of the disadvantages of being dead is that one is released as it were from the bonds of time and therefore I can see everything that has happened or will happen, all at the same time except that of course I now know that Time does not, for all practical purposes, exist.'

'That doesn't sound like a disadvantage,' said Twoflower.

'You don't think so? Imagine every moment being at one and the same time a distant memory and a nasty surprise and you'll see what I mean. Anyway, I now recall what it was I am about to tell you. Or have I already done so? That's a fine looking dragon, by the way. Or don't I say that yet?'

'It is rather good. It just turned up,' said Twoflower.

'It turned up?' said the voice. 'You summoned it!'

'Yes, well, all I did—'

'You have the Power!'

'All I did was think of it.'

'That's what the Power is! Have I already told you that I am Greicha the First? Or is that next? I'm sorry, but I haven't had too much experience of transcendence. Anyway, yes – the Power. It summons dragons, you know.'

'I think you already told me that,' said Twoflower.

'Did I? I certainly intended to,' said the dead man.

'But
how
does it? I've been thinking about dragons all my life, but this is the first time one has turned up.'

'Oh well, you see, the truth of the matter is that dragons have never existed as you (and, until I was poisoned some three months ago,
I
) understand existence. I'm talking about the true dragon,
draconis nobilis
, you understand; the swamp dragon,
draconis vulgaris
, is a base creature and not worth our consideration. The
true
dragon, on the other hand, is a creature of such refinement of spirit that they can only take on form in this world if they are conceived by the most skilled imagination. And even then the said imagination must be in some place heavily impregnated with magic, which helps to weaken the walls between the world of the seen and unseen. Then the dragons pop through, as it were, and impress their form on this world's possibility matrix. I was very good at it when I was alive. I could imagine up to, oh, five hundred dragons at a time. Now Liessa, the most skilled of my children, can barely imagine fifty rather nondescript creatures. So much for a progressive education. She doesn't really
believe
in them. That's why her dragons are rather boring – while yours,' said the voice of Greicha, 'is almost as good as some of mine used to be. A sight for sore eyes, not that I have any to speak of now.'

Twoflower said hurriedly, 'You keep saying you're dead . . .'

'Well?'

'Well, the dead, er, they, you know, don't talk much. As a rule.'

'I used to be an exceptionally powerful wizard. My daughter poisoned me, of course. It is the generally accepted method of succession in our family, but,' the corpse sighed, or at least a sigh came from the air a few feet above it, 'it soon became obvious that none of my three children is sufficiently powerful to wrest the lordship of the Wyrmberg from the other two. A most unsatisfactory arrangement. A kingdom like ours has to have one ruler. So I resolved to remain alive in an unofficial capacity, which of course annoys them all immensely. I won't give my children the satisfaction of burying me until there is only one of them left to perform the ceremony.' There was a nasty wheezing noise. Twoflower decided that it was meant to be a chuckle.

'So it was one of them that kidnapped us?' said Twoflower.

'Liessa,' said the dead wizard's voice. 'My daughter. Her power is strongest, you know. My sons' dragons are incapable of flying more than a few miles before they fade.'

'Fade? I did notice that we could see through the one that brought us here,' said Twoflower. 'I thought that was a bit odd.'

'Of course,' said Greicha. 'The Power only works near the Wyrmberg. It's the inverse square law, you know. At least, I think it is. As the dragons fly further away they begin to
dwindle.
Otherwise my little Liessa would be ruling the whole world by now, if I know anything about it. But I can see I mustn't keep you. I expect you'll be wanting to rescue your friend.'

Twoflower gaped. 'Hrun?' he said.

'Not him. The skinny wizard. My son Lio!rt is trying to hack him to pieces. I admired the way you rescued him. Will, I mean.'

Twoflower drew himself up to his full height, an easy task. 'Where is he?' he said, heading towards the door with what he hoped was an heroic stride.

'Just follow the pathway in the dust,' said the voice. 'Liessa comes to see me sometimes. She still comes to see her old dad, my little girl. She was the only one with the strength of character to murder me. A chip off the old block. Good luck, by the way. I seem to recall I said that. Will say it now, I mean.'

The rambling voice got lost in a maze of tenses as Twoflower ran along the dead tunnels, with the dragon loping along easily behind him. But soon he was leaning against a pillar, completely out of breath. It seemed ages since he'd had anything to eat.

Why don't you fly?
said Ninereeds, inside his head. The dragon spread its wings and gave an experimental flap, which lifted it momentarily off the ground. Twoflower stared for a moment, then ran forward and clambered quickly on to the beast's neck. Soon they were airborne, the dragon skimming along easily a few feet from the floor and leaving a billowing cloud of dust in its wake.