The Fire Dragon (35 page)

“My apologies, my love,” Evandar said. “I did mean to get here faster than this.”

“No harm done, truly,” Dallandra said. “I suppose you stole that horse.”

“Borrowed it only.” He flashed her a grin. “I'll return it to the farmer when I'm done riding, I promise.” He glanced

Arzosah's way. “Ah, I see our wyrm is in a sunny mood to match the morning.”

“Hold your tongue, you foul clot of ectoplasm,” Arzosah growled. “How I wish I could snap you up and crunch you down my gullet!”

“No doubt, but being as I know the dweomer of your true name, I suggest you don't bother trying.” Evandar was grinning in a way that must have been infuriating to the dragon. “Be a good little lass and follow us through my country when we go in.”

“Your country? Never!”

“And why not? Your poor little wings will have to do less flapping that way.”

Arzosah opened her mouth and hissed like water poured on red-hot iron. Rhodry came hurrying up and laid a hand on Evandar's shoulder.

“Here, here, don't tease her,” Rhodry said. “For my sake if not for hers.”

“Oh very well.” Evandar gave him a lazy smile. “But it'll take the pair of you too long to fly all the way to Cerr Cawnen on your own.”

“No doubt she'll take the shortcut if I ask her. Just leave her to me.”

Rhodry returned to the dragon, who turned her back on him with a great deal of grumbling and swearing. Still, when he trotted round her bulk to face her, she did bend her head to listen as he talked, too softly for the others to hear. Evandar watched him with his head cocked to one side.

“Rori deserves the names she gave him,” Dallandra said. “Dragonfriend, dragonmaster.”

“For now,” Evandar said. “But I hope he can keep on handling her this well. She's a dangerous beast.”

“As if I didn't know that.”

“I don't mean her teeth and claws, my love. She has dweomer as well.”

“Ye gods! I had no idea.”

“All of Wyrmkind loves dweomer, and they have workings that pass from mother to hatchling. They dwell in the fire mountains, and the mountains listen to them and obey them.”

“Obey them? What—”

“They can call forth the molten blood of the earth, should they want to. Fire and ash and devastation come at their beck and call.”

Dallandra wondered if he were having a jest on her, but he seemed solemn enough.

“I've seen it happen,” Evandar went on. “Anger a dragon too near its lair, and you'll lose rather a lot of countryside. Why do you think I went to all that trouble to learn her name?”

“Indeed.” Dallandra shuddered like a wet dog. “Well, I'll do my best to keep her feeling kindly toward us.”

“Do that. I have hopes that the power of her name will work for you even without the ring. But Rhodry will be able to do naught that she doesn't want done.”

Once everyone had eaten, the men loaded up the packs and saddled the riding horses. Dallandra and Carra stood off to one side out of the way as Dar and two of the archers packed up the tent. Carra was holding Elessario in her arms, and the baby fretted, not quite crying, refusing to be cheered, until Evandar walked over to them.

“Look, beloved,” Carra said. “Look there! It's your grandfather.”

When Elessi saw Evandar, she squalled and stretched out her chubby little arms to him. As soon as he'd taken her, she quieted.

“Now that's real dweomer,” Carra said, laughing. “Maybe you should carry her from now on.”

“If I didn't have a working to do, I would,” Evandar said. “Come to think of it, it would be best if she slept on this part of the journey.”

As she understood, Dallandra winced and nodded her agreement. If Elessi should see her old homelands, she might well try to leave the body that was proving such a nuisance.

“That's all very well,” Carra said. “If I could make her sleep on command, my life would be a good bit easier, good sir.”

“Ah. Then I shall sing to her.”

Evandar settled the baby at his shoulder, then began to sing in a high-pitched wail that seemed to follow no particular rhythm. At first Elessi laughed, then she yawned, and in a few moments she shut her eyes and slept. When Evandar handed her back to Carra, she barely stirred.

“I'll teach you that song later,” he said, “when we have more time. We should be riding out.”

“I'd be ever so grateful,” Carra said. “And at least she'll sleep today for Dar. He's carrying her, whether he wants to or no.”

Dar, however, was perfectly willing to take a turn with his daughter, though Carra had to lengthen the sling with a bit of rope to go over his broader shoulder. Watching them together, fussing over their child, made Dallandra smile. Yet all at once she felt a thin cold line of fear run down her back—the dweomer-cold. There was some danger close at hand, too close, a thing she'd overlooked somehow. In the bustle of leaving she had no chance to meditate upon the warning, but she knew she'd remember it.

Once everyone had mounted up, Evandar led the way back to the path at the far side of the meadow. Dallandra rode next to him while the line straggled out behind. Overhead Arzosah flew in lazy circles with Rhodry on her back. For a few miles they followed a dirt track that wound through wild grasslands. At their approach birds broke cover and flew, grouse with a whir of wings, the occasional lark, winging up on a spiral of song. The sun was well risen by the time they crested a low hill and looked down to see a river where a mist was forming, a strangely opalescent mist, rising in long tendrils. Evandar held up one arm for the halt.

“Is everyone in good order?” Evandar called out.

Dallandra turned in her saddle and looked back. Carra sat on her horse at the head of the line while Prince Dar, one arm around the sling with the baby and the other gesturing as regally as he could manage, arranged his men in a proper two-abreast marching order, followed by Jahdo, leading his white packhorse. Tied down for safety's sake, Carra's dog lay uneasily atop the pack.

“All except Rhodry and the dragon.” Dallandra paused, shading her eyes with one hand. “Where—ah, there they are, coming right toward us.”

Evandar waited until the dragon had flown close enough to see them and the mist both, then yelled out the order to march. As they rode downhill, the gleaming pearl-shot mist swelled and put out long cool arms to greet them. A few more paces, and the grey covered the sky above, though when she looked back, Dallandra could still see the morning sun in the east. Once they'd ridden well into the grey-and-lavender clouds, they could see naught but mist and a pale strange light that seemed to emanate from inside the water drops rather than from any sun beyond. Dallandra could hear the prince's guard muttering among themselves.

“Hold steady, men!” Daralanteriel called out. “The Wise One knows what she's doing.”

Dallandra smiled to herself. It was better to let them think that she was the one working a familiar dweomer, but of course, she understood next to nothing about Evandar's gates between worlds.

At length the mist began to thin in patches, as if invisible fingers were teasing it out the way a woman teases out wool for the carding comb. The sun beyond brightened as the mist finally faded away. In a cool sunlight they found themselves on the bank of a dead river where brown reeds stood crisp and lead-grey water oozed over filthy sands. The bank itself, covered with short dead grass, made a hard road under the horses' hooves. Dallandra turned in the saddle to look at Evandar, whose eyes had gone bleak.

“Oh by the holy stars!” Dallandra whispered. “What's happened, my love?”

“When my people left to cross the white river, they took the life of the Lands with them.” Evandar kept his voice flat and steady, but she knew how much losing his creation must have cost him. “I built this world for them, after all.”

Dallandra rose in her stirrups and looked round. Her formal garden had disappeared, although a few cracked bricks among dead weeds marked the spot where it had
stood. The cloth-of-gold pavilion had disappeared without leaving even that much of a trace behind. She sat back with a shake of her head and leaned forward to pat her nervous horse's neck.

“It's a ghastly change, in't?” Evandar said.

“It is, and I'm so sorry. I know you loved this place.”

Evandar shrugged, then turned to call to Daralanteriel.

“We're all here? Good! Let's move on.”

With a wave of his arm the prince signalled to his caravan, and they set off, following the dead river through desolation. After perhaps a mile's worth of riding, the view around them began to change, burgeoning green and wild, with long meadows sprinkled with white daisies and yellow buttercups. Farther away grew trees in shaggy copses. Here and there Dallandra saw rabbits out in the tall grass. When they passed a stand of trees, squirrels chattered.

“This isn't your doing,” Dallandra said. “Where did it come from?”

“I don't know,” Evandar said. “I suspect it's the work of an old man who lives out in the further reaches.”

“What? Who?”

“Ah, I see I've forgotten to tell you. When I was searching for the hag Alshandra, back last summer, I flew beyond my lands and into a dead place, all barren rock and sand, where ugly creatures lived, mostly under the rocks. You could see their little red eyes, glaring at you. But in the midst of this grim spot I found an old man, sitting and peeling an apple, and every slice he cut turned into the stuff of life, somehow, like the heat of a fire pouring into the dead place. Whenever I visited there, it seemed more alive and larger, and so I think that in the end his work succeeded, even as mine was dying.”

“How very odd!”

“And here I was hoping you could tell me what it all meant.”

Dallandra merely shook her head. Something of his tale had triggered a memory—no, more a ghost of a memory, deep in her mind. She had heard that place of rock and death described once, some very long time ago, but try as she might, she could not recall when or how.

They were approaching the wild forest that had formerly divided Evandar's lands from those he'd made for his brother and his brother's people. The forest, at least, still flourished, as wild and tangled as she remembered it, but then, it owed its life to older, stranger magicks than Evandar's. As they followed a road into the twisted, moss-covered trees, the sunlight faded, and a huge greenish-silver moon rose off to their left, hanging in the sky just above the treetops. When she turned in the saddle to glance back, she saw that the elven archers had spread out to surround Carra, Dar, and his precious burden. Jahdo seemed to be having no trouble urging his mule and packhorse to trot along quickly. But in the sky—

“We've lost Rhodry!” Dallandra said abruptly.

“Curse that wretched snake of a dragon!” Evandar looked up, searching the narrow stripe of view between the trees. “I saw them fly into the mist.”

“But I never saw them after. We should stop and wait—”

“Stop? Here? Under this moon?”

“True enough. Well, maybe they're just circling our line of march.”

“So I'll hope.” Evandar's voice sounded full of doubt, not hope. “I should never have trusted that slimy little wyrm.”

Thanks to Rhodry's coaxing, Arzosah had flown into the dweomer mist readily enough, following the horsemen. Evandar, however, had forgotten that the mist would blind any creature who flew so high above the ground. At first Arzosah flapped along steadily through the light-shot silvery air, and Rhodry thought he could hear the jingle of tack and the clopping of horses' hooves. All at once, though, they burst out of the mist into sunlight and looked down upon open sea, dotted with what seemed to be white islands. “Ah by the black hairy arse of the Lord of Hell!” “What?” Arzosah called back. “Speak louder!” “Doesn't matter!” Rhodry raised his voice over the wind sweeping over him as they flew. “We've lost them.”

“I can see that for myself.” The dragon dipped one wing and began to turn. “Hang on!”

He clung to the leather straps of her harness as she banked a wing for the wide turn around. When he risked a look at the ocean below, he saw the white islands more closely and realized that they were chunks of ice, exactly like those that form on lakes of a winter but a thousand times the size. The mist rose up all silver and lavender in front of him and swallowed the ice from his view. They swooped into the fog, flew some way in the blind grey, then swooped out again. Below them crawled a lead-colored river, oozing its way through brown reeds.

“Here we are!” Arzosah called back. “I know this place.”

“How?”

She ignored him and flew smoothly onward over the grasslands. At the horizon he could see the dark mounds of what appeared to be a forest. Arzosah changed course slightly and headed for it.

“The mother roads go through there,” she shouted. “They must have gone that way.”

“If you say so, then.”

All at once Arzosah flung up her head and sniffed the air like a hunting dog. She let out a screech that made the hair on the back of his neck prickle, then with a huge beat of her wings launched herself upward, flapping hard to gain height. Rhodry clung to the straps for all he was worth.

“What are you doing?” he yelled.

He got no answer until she'd risen so far above the ground that he felt dizzy. She levelled off her flight, banked one wing again, and turned in a lazy arc.

“Look down!” she called out.

Rhodry saw, so far below that they might have been beetles crawling on a dead log, a line of horsemen marching in military order. When Arzosah began a long glide down, he could count about twenty of them, all riding heavy horses and leading pack mules. He could also discern that they had manes as wild and long as those of their mounts. Leading them, flying fairly low to the ground, was a raven the size of a small pony.

“Horsekin!” Rhodry yelled.

“And Raena with them! Let's have a bit of sport!”

With a roar like a river in spate Arzosah plunged down. The raven saw them first; shrieking, she turned tail and flapped away fast. The men looked up just as their horses smelled the dragon. Kicking, plunging, bucking, the horses tried to bolt. The Horsekin riders were yelling and grabbing manes and necks, shortening up on their reins, clutching their saddle peaks—anything to keep from being thrown. Some of the horses did bolt, with cursing riders still clinging to them. Arzosah ignored them and swooped after the raven.