The Dragon Lord (20 page)

So why, why,
why
could he smell such a reek of smoke and burning?

Aldric stopped in his tracks, suddenly afraid of the urgent summons, and equally suddenly there were two marines at his back, called up from God-knows-where or merely poised just out of sight against this very hesitation, ordinary troopers—if one could dismiss men so tall and strong as “ordinary”—and they hustled him inexorably through the hatch and out onto the open deck.

The sun shone down without heat from that sky of limpid blue which seems only to appear in autumn or winter, and Aldric shivered in air which by its very freshness felt chilly after the closeness of below-decks. Under the unsympathetic scrutiny of that bright, pale light, and despite the taint of smoke which stung his nostrils, he became aware of two things—and was disgusted by them both.

The first was his appearance, and the second was his smell.

He was wearing the same clothes as when he. had left Kathur’s house—clothes which since then had come into violent contact with a wet Tuenafen street—and they were filthy. Those same clothes, unchanged after the sweaty exertions of fight and fright and flight, and the capture which had brought him here, went beyond grime into foulness and the heavy stink of stale perspiration. Any Alban would have found such a state of affairs intolerable; to one so fastidious as Aldric, it was revolting. He felt his skin crawl as if it shrank from contact with his grubby shirt, the lank oiliness of his hair, the crescents of dirt under his fingernails. Light of Heaven, to have eaten a meal with such hands… ! He barely choked back the heaving spasm that would have spewed his late lunch all across the deck, and tried hard to think of other things. There were plenty such to think about.

For all that the air was fresh and at first cold, under its crispness was a strange medley of odours—even setting aside for a moment the aroma of unwashed Alban! Most powerful was the astringence of scorched cloth and wood; but under it was a warm, metallic tang reminiscent of the atmosphere in a blacksmith’s forge. Aldric had smelt it before—but not in any forge.

The man who stalked across the quarterdeck to face him was close to raving; whether with fear or fury, Aldric didn’t know. Most of the raving was in a Drusalan dialect which meant nothing—and given the few recognisable words which came through, ignorance was probably just as well. But inflection and tone conveyed enough for him to guess the gist of the captain’s complaint, even before his language changed to something more intelligible. Yes, this was the captain, for all that wild eyes and a fear-pallid complexion detracted somewhat from the
hautmarin’s
rank-marks on his green and scarlet Fleet armor.

“Look at my ship! Look what’s been done to my ship! You! Alban! Damn you! What do you know about it, eh? Devil burn you black! What do you know about
that
!”

Aldric’s escort seized him by the shoulders and wrenched him around, swivelling him in the direction of the captain’s outraged, outflung arm. The warship’s deck was a shambles: shattered yards, torn rigging and the charred shreds of what once had been its sails littered the vessel’s planking and drooped wearily over the plates of its armored hull. An acrid film of thin gray smoke hung over all. And he saw for the first time what was on, what was all over, what was coiled massively around the semi-sunken turrets of the battleram’s bow.

For just that instant, until he took a mental grip of himself that was as much a physical dominance of involuntary muscles, Aldric’s lower jaw sagged just as far as that of anyone else aboard, because of all the situations he might have expected to face, this was the least likely. And of all the emotions he might have experienced, this was by far the most utterly impossible.

For it was
recognition
!

Because although he had looked at one before, spoken to one before, fought down his disbelief when facing one before, the last thing that he had expected in all this wide and wonderful world was to meet a—
the
—name-known and familiar Goddamn firedrake!

Except that here it was!

“Ymareth,” he said, very, very softly. And perhaps his voice was not so quiet as he thought; or perhaps the firedrake’s hearing was far more acute than he believed—or perhaps the huge glow of delight that rose within him was strong enough to carry clearly to its cause. Whatever the reason might have been, it didn’t really matter. Because the firedrake heard him, or sensed him, or… something.

And it moved.

There was a dreadful languid grace in the way that the horned and jagged head curved back, elegant as an iron swan, but at the same time there was an arrogant flaunting of incalculable might and a pride that Aldric could appreciate. He heard sounds that he knew well, sounds that he recognised as if he had last heard them yesterday: a steely slithering of scaled coils and the slow bass surge of a vast respiration. The sounds of a living dragon.

As the ornate, elongated wedge of Ymareth’s head swung towards him, Aldric prudently lowered his eyes— not merely through respect, for all that this huge being was deserving of such courtesy where many men of rank were not. As the firedrake’s phosphorescent stare raked over all the men who lined the armored railing of the warship’s quarterdeck, only one among them knew that he
had
to look away or be entrapped as much as any little bird before a snake. Aldric knew. No man born of woman could meet such a gaze and hope to walk away unscathed—or if the circumstance was wrong, hope to walk away at all…

The dragon exhaled gently and Aldric smelt again that harsh, clean furnace wind. The hot gust carried words in a voice that few had ever heard—a voice which held the sounds of steam and falling water, the sounds of stone-stroked metal and storm-waves on a rocky shore, the sounds of the sifting of blasted ashes. A voice that none save Aldric understood, and he only by virtue of the Charm of Understanding laid on him at their first meeting, months ago and miles from here.

“I give thee greeting, man. Well met, Aldric Talvalin.”

Aldric shook free from the hands which held him and they fell away slack-fingered, the marines who flanked him struck dumb and witless by Ymareth’s gaze.

He knelt, paused and then bowed forward to place his crossed hands against the deck and press his forehead briefly onto them in the Second Obeisance which he had given when he first met the dragon in the Cavern of Firedrakes on Techaur Island. Here and now it was perhaps not quite appropriate—Second Obeisance was properly due an equal or superior under the roof of his own hall and nowhere else—but overly elaborate manners were always better than insufficient, if sincerely meant.. Then he sat back neatly on his heels and composed himself as best he could. Ymareth, watching in reptilian stillness, had not moved.

“Well met indeed, Lord Firedrake,” Aldric returned; then, greatly daring, “But why—and how?”

Flame licked momentarily between the dragon’s parted jaws and Aldric flinched despite himself. He felt like a man walking a tightrope, balanced precariously between the perils of ignorance and that insolence which comes of importunate curiosity.

“Which first, O man—the ‘why’ or the ‘how’? Thine is the choice.” Insofar as it was possible to attribute human reactions to something so manifestly unhuman, Ymareth was amused and gently teasing. This was enough to make Aldric marginally bolder.

“Try the ‘how,’ my lord. I already know that Techaur and your abiding-place lie many leagues from here.”

There was another quick spout of flame, that harmless incandescent swirling which Aldric had already come to recognise as laughter—and which he had already guessed was responsible for the state of the battleram’s sails. Even though he was only halfway right…

“I am Ymareth. I am dragonkind. I searched for thee: I found thee. Such is our way.” The dragon’s head swung leisurely towards the sea, staring south along the now-vanished track of its passage through the upper air. “Yet verily, any task is made as nothing when there is a true guide with that searched-for. As was the Eye of the Dragon with thee,
kailin
Talvalin.”

“The Eye of… ?” Aldric’s voice trailed off with its question incomplete, for in his own mind’s eye there was an image of Gemmel Errekren with the Dragonwand Ykraith in one hand and the azure-glowing stone of Echainon in the other. The spellstave’s carven dragonhead had an eye already; but only one, and that an ordinary sapphire gemstone. Its other socket was empty. Then the wizard’s hands came together, and when they parted the Dragonwand looked out on the world with two eyes, one of them alive and throbbing with the glow of its own internal energies. The Eye of the Dragon indeed!

And the self-same talisman which Aldric had carried these months past, in ignorance of the truth.

There were a great many things which he might have said, and probably an equal number which he should have said. But what at last came from his mouth was no more than a barely audible exhalation of, “Oh
God
. . . !”

Which served no real purpose whatsoever.

Ymareth watched him and again seemed to derive amusement from his confusion. Its thin-lipped mouth stretched back and back in a grin, that foxy smirk which Aldric had seen before; and though then he had thought it no more indicative of real humor than any other so-called “expression” on an animal’s face, now he wasn’t quite so sure. There was a certain precision about the way in which the firedrake’s facial muscles moved which suggested that Ymareth was deliberately copying something observed and noted by its icy draconian brain, something which might be used to reassure the nervousness of humankind. If that was indeed the reason, it failed: there was no reassurance to be found in the shocking armory of fangs which the dragon’s grin put on display.

“And the ‘why,’ Aldric Talvalin? Does ‘why’ not begin to pique thy curiosity?”

It did. So much so that for just an instant, just the merest breath of inattention, Aldric’s gaze flickered speculatively upwards as the many possibilities of that
why
crossed his mind. And in that momentary glance he met the smoking amber mirrors that were the eyes of Ymareth. Truly the Eyes of the Dragon. Aldric’s own eyes met them and locked with them. And were caught.

Time stops as it stands still
. The voice was within his head, as Ymareth’s had been—but this was not the dragon’s voice at all. It was, or seemed to be “Gemmel?” Aldric’s mind alone shaped the word, for his mouth and tongue could not. There was no reply—no repetition of the voice that had no place here, no reason to be here, and no reason to say what it had said, for all that the words were right and proper in the here and now. If here and now there was.

For time ceased to have meaning and reality ceased to exist. There was only himself and the two great glowing orbs that stared and stared and never, ever blinked. He was laid bare before their gaze: not naked
unclothed
but naked
without concealment
, stripped of the screens and shields men use to disguise the truth from one another. He was stretched out before the coldly burning scrutiny of the dragon, and what was there was all that he was. Without rank, without privilege, without title. Without anything to hide behind.

And he was ashamed.

He could see, as Ymareth could see, all the ugliness that was within him; all the unadmitted secret vice that might be indulged if only he dared to do so, all the carefully-forgotten sins that at one time or another had been indulged, all the things that any and all but the very purest carried deep inside, buried under manners and courtesies and outward show like the slimy life under a rock. Always there and known, but never revealed even to the closest of friends.

Until now.

The questions were not asked in any way that ears might hear or mind might comprehend; they merely formed, resolving from the gray mist of sadness that surrounded him. But once they had taken shape, they struck and flayed like iron whips. Questions which he could not answer—simple questions which in their simplicity probed with pitiless directness deep into his soul.

Aldric said nothing—and could say nothing—in his own defence. Guilt sickened him, rose choking in his throat, raised scars that would never heal. Then something snapped; he heard it snap, or felt it snap—a sound and a sensation like the breaking of a leash. And the world came back to him with a jolt.

Nothing had changed; he was still kneeling on the deck, straight-backed, sitting on his own heels. But his face was wet and chilled by the cold breeze. One hand came up—oh, so slowly—to touch the wetness. Tears. He had been crying, for no reason and for every reason. Because he felt dirty, soiled by having those things which were secret drawn out into the light of day, and yet at the same time he felt strangely cleansed as though that same drawing-out had purged him and somehow made him whole. Blinking the blur of unshed tears out of his eyes and dashing them away with his knuckles, Aldric focused on reality again. On the ship; and on the dragon.

Ymareth’s huge head was right above him, an arm’s length over his own, ponderous as the raw stone roof of the Kings-mound and as redolent of great age. He could feel the arid scouring of the being’s fiery breath on his skin, and could smell the heated-metal tang of it. For the flames and the death they carried were so close now. And he was not afraid.

The fear had always been there, whether he admitted to its existence—tempering such an admission with mockery, as if to prove he wasn’t really scared at all—or kept it locked away, nestled deep within him. Aldric had always imagined that fear of Ymareth as heavy and foreign arid cold, a lump of ice-sheathed lead tucked underneath his heart; but now both lead and ice had been taken from their hiding-place and washed with dragonfire until they were melted and left not a trace behind.

“Know now why I came, Aldric Talvalin. Honor awakened me. Honor summoned me. Honor bound me as it binds you.”

“Honor? What honor have I left? I threw it all away in Seghar long ago!”

“So say
ye
. I say
not
!” Flame gouted above his head— not the flutter which indicated humor but a blasting torrent of irritation that slapped heat down at him like a physical impact. There was an edge in the great voice, a steeliness like crossed blades; Ymareth was not accustomed to dispute. “Hear me, O man. I have such wings as may bear thee to thy liberty, if such is thy desire. Speak and say, will ye escape thus? Speak!”