The Fire Dragon (53 page)

Rhodry turned to face her, and he smiled, an arrogant smirk. Raena's face blanched. With one smooth motion she scooped Yraen's dagger from the table in her clumsy left hand and leapt forward, swinging her arm to stab up from below. Admi yelled, Zatcheka screamed, the men of the town watch surged forward—all too late. Dallandra barely saw Rhodry move. He flung one arm around Raena's shoulders and grabbed her jaw with the other hand. There was a sickening sort of crack, and Raena's head flopped back, her neck clean broken. Rhodry let the corpse fall and glanced at the judges.

“So much for that,” he remarked. “You're better off rid of her.”

For a moment the silence held, then like the first few drops of a breaking wave a woman screamed. Voices followed, crashing down and thundering across the plaza in a babble of confusion and fear. Dallandra realized that Rhodry was leaning over the table and gripping it with both hands. A bright red stain was spreading across his chest and abdomen. The dragon leapt to her feet and roared, a boom of angry thunder that sent the crowd running.

Dallandra rushed forward and reached Rhodry just as Zatcheka hurried around the table to do the same. His face was pale as ice and twice as cold, it seemed, but Rhodry smiled at her.

“Dwarven silver,” he whispered. “It burns an elf like me. Ah gods, the hurt of it!”

Between them the two women managed to pick him up and lay him on the table. His head lolled to one side in a faint. His breathing was dangerously shallow. The dragon hurried over with her peculiar lurching walk.

“Save him, curse you!” Arzosah was roaring the words out. “Or I'll take a blood price from Cerr Cawnen that the stinking humans will remember down the long centuries of years! Save him!”

“Don't you think I will if I can?” Dallandra yelled back at her.

For an answer the dragon merely growled, tossing her head back and forth. Dallandra grabbed the bloody edges of the cut in Rhodry's shirt and ripped them back. The wound was a small stab, but she could hear his death in every gurgling breath he drew.

“Did it pierce a lung?” Zatcheka said.

“I think not, but he's drowning in blood all the same. It's the dweomer on the metal, I think, that's doing so much harm.”

The dragon roared in rage and grief both. The very earth seemed to shake—no, it was shaking, a tremor deep inside Citadel. Dalla grabbed the edge of the table to steady herself, but the tremor passed as quickly as it had come.

“If he dies,” Arzosah snarled, “pray to your gods, elf! I shall call forth fire, I shall make the earth shriek beneath us, I shall drown this wretched city in fire!”

“And will that bring him back to life?” Dalla snarled right back. “Don't disturb me again, you lackwit wyrm! I'm trying to do what you want.”

Arzosah crouched and said naught more. Dallandra leaned over the table and put her hands on either side of Rhodry's face. Beneath her fingers his skin felt not only cold but slimy. As she stared down at him, trying to conjure some desperate dweomer to force life into him, he stirred and woke, smiled at her—and in that faint smile she saw the truth, that he no longer wanted to live.

“Rhodry,” she hissed. “Arzosah's crying for vengeance. She says she'll destroy the town, and she can.”

“Ah gods.” His voice was so faint that she could barely hear him. “Call her.”

Although the wound oozed, it no longer flowed, at least not outwardly. Deep within his chest it was no doubt drowning him in his own blood; she could only hope it was doing so slowly enough for him to calm the dragon's rage. She turned and gestured at Arzosah.

“Come see him! He wants to talk to you. See for yourself.”

Head down, her wings half-raised, Arzosah padded across the cobbles. The enormous black head swung round, the eyes glittering as they sought his face.

“It's such a little cut,” Arzosah said, her voice a hiss and roil. “Heal him, elf!”

“I can't. It may look little to you, but it's deep enough for him.”

For a moment Dallandra thought that she was about to die with Rhodry. The great head swung up, the jaws dropped, fangs gleamed in the setting sun as Arzosah propped herself up on her forelegs and arched her back. Zatcheka screamed and ran.

“Hush, my little one.” The voice came from behind Dallandra and sounded amused. “Mind your courtesies, or I won't even try to save your beloved's life.”

“You!” Arzosah's voice dripped hatred. “You! What could you do of any good to anyone?”

“Probably naught,” Evandar said. “But mayhap I can try.” He glanced at Dallandra. “He'll die here before the sun touches the horizon.”

“I know that. It won't staunch, and it's too deep for me to reach with a bandage or suchlike.”

Evandar knelt, slipped one arm round Rhodry's un-wounded side, and hauled him up with a surprising flourish of strength. With a yell Dallandra darted forward to stop him from killing her patient there and then. Dimly she was aware of the earth shaking as the dragon leapt up and
roared. Dimly she felt cold mist wrapping them all round and grass, damp under her feet.

They stood in the last remnant of Evandar's country. Sluggish between deep banks the river flowed brown through dying water reeds. Black trees raised withered arms to the grey sky. Automatically Dallandra clutched at her throat and found the amethyst figurine hanging there. Rhodry himself stood nearby, holding a silver dagger between clasped hands, but he seemed barely conscious, as if he were a child suddenly awakened from deep sleep. He stared this way and that, fingering the dagger hilt for comfort. When she saw the chip on the blade Dallandra realized that it held his life the same way that the figurine held hers.

“Where's Arzosah?” she snapped.

“Over there.” Evandar pointed to the riverbank. “Not even I can bring a dragon through with a snap of my fingers, my love, so she used a dweomer of her own.”

Dallandra could just make out Arzosah's astral form as a shaft of silvery light, cool to look upon, towering up into the mist. When Rhodry walked toward it, the mist reached out tendrils as if to put an arm around his shoulders. Dallandra—they all—felt Arzosah's voice as a touch of mind upon their own, not as spoken words. Though her rage flowed out as pure as fire, in it swirled hope.

You, sorcerer! Will he live if he stays here?

“After a fashion,” Evandar said. “And for a while.”

Then I'll stay with him.

“And welcome you are, for that little while.” He glanced at Dallandra. “You have a bit of time, my love, to reconcile her to the inevitable. That's all I can do. May it be enough to save the innocents in your world from the venting of her grief.”

The dragon had understood. Her roar spread like a flame within the mist.

Heal him!

“I can't. No one can.”

Then I shall fly to the mountain and call up its fire. I will drown this city in fire.

“Hold your tongue!” Rhodry stepped forward, staggering a little, as if even here on the astral he felt his wound. “Ah ye gods, leave the town be!”

I will have vengeance! Hush, Rori! Don't argue with me! I shan't listen if you try.

“All things come to their dark, Wyrm,” Evandar said, “and he has come to his. Soon, too soon, I know, by the way that your kind measures Time, just as that cut would be but a scratch upon a dragon, but—” Evandar paused, staring into the darkening water of the river. All at once he laughed, a berserker howl much like Rhodry's own. “Such a little cut, isn't it? Rhodry, Rhodry, do you still crave death?”

“Not if it means the death of everyone I fought to save.” Rhodry turned to look his way. “If I'd die to save them, wouldn't I live?”

“What I can offer you is life, of a sort.”

“I think I understand you. And it'd be a death of a sort as well, wouldn't it now?”

“And a darkness come upon you, as the time demands.”

“But could you do that? You're the master of changes, I know, but can you bring about such a change as that?”

Only then did Dallandra understand.

“No!” she snapped. “You can't! Evandar, you just can't. It's impious. It would take him away forever from his own kind. Every race has a life that flows like a river in Time. You've got to ride your own river, not someone else's. Think of the consequences. I can't, you can't, no one can or could predict what such a thing would do.”

“A riddle, then, and haven't I always been the master of riddles as well?” Evandar was grinning like a mad thing; indeed at that moment she realized that he'd been mad for years, for all the long years that she'd known him. “Safety for the city, my love. It would buy safety for Cerr Cawnen, and life for all that dwell within, and I do in my heart think it would buy hope for me as well.”

“Evandar, you can't! The price—”

“I'll risk the price.”

“Easy for you to say, safe here on the astral, free and far from the consequence.”

“No longer, my love. A riddle, a riddle for my soul, and I offer it freely. Chains for a riddle, chains for a price. I'll take up the chains and buy his freedom with my slavery.”

“What are you saying?”

“I told you. It's a riddle.”

When he laughed, she grabbed at his shoulders to give him a good shaking, but he caught her wrists and held her a little away.

“Go down, my love, go back to your own country and then return in your body of light. I don't trust my dweomer to keep you safe in this form.”

Before she could protest, he pushed her, tossed her, sent her sailing through the currents of mist. Beyond her power to stop herself she fell, flew, spinning as she soared, down and down, always down, to wake, sick and dizzy, with a ringing in her ears like the sound of iron striking bronze. She was kneeling on the cold stone of Cerr Cawnen's plaza in the deepening twilight.

“Dalla, Dalla!” Someone came running toward her— Niffa, with Jahdo right behind. “Where be they? We did see you all disappear. Where be Rhodry?”

“No time to explain! Guard my body. Let no one near me, no one!”

“Well and good, then.”

Jahdo pulled his own silver dagger that once had belonged to Jill. With Niffa guarding her head and Jahdo kneeling by her feet, Dallandra lay on her back and crossed her arms over her chest. She shut her eyes, shut out the outside world, breathed deep, then summoned her body of light. When she transferred her consciousness over to the flame-shape, the etheric plane sprang into being around her, and the physical earth seemed to drop away.

In the silver-blue glow she could see lives teeming, swarming, flashing, and pouring round her, a horde of elemental spirits like the foam and swirl of rapids on a deep river. Never had she seen so many all at once. In the midst of this outpouring of masks and voices she flew, calling Evandar's name like an invocation, until she saw him at last, a frozen flame of gold, a spear against the
blue. Before him stood the dragon, more or less in her true form, though made of some golden stuff that billowed or shrank like clouds. Under the shape of a huge wing Rhodry stood, the silver dagger still in his hand. To either side, dull grey, pitiful, stretched the dead meadows by the shrunken river.

“Rhodry!” Dallandra called out. “Don't! Don't do this.”

For an answer he tossed back his head and howled, a berserk peal of laughter.

“Dalla, my Lady Death spurned me too long and once too often. She'll have to wait, though she'll have me in the end, for I've found another hire.”

“What do you mean—”

“I've always been the king's man, heart and soul. I shall stand guard for him on the border.”

“And do you love the king enough to throw your human soul away? That's what you'll be doing.”

“Human soul? And when have I ever had one?”

“Forever, Rhodry, maybe forever. That's what you don't understand. I think me you don't understand any of this.”

“Oh, but I think I do—well enough.” Rhodry flung the dagger into the blue flux of the etheric light. “I'll take the gamble.”

Spinning and tumbling it flew straight up, flashed at the top of its arc, then disappeared. As if at a signal Evandar flung both his arms out to the side and screamed a wordless command. Mist, meadow, river, rock—every scrap and remnant of his lands began to break and swirl, began to spin, to flow, turned to a vast and silvery vortex, centered upon Rhodry, the raw etheric stuff to build his new form. Round and round him it spun, but instead of catching him up and whirling him away it shrank, grew thick as water, poured into him, solidified as it shrank, so that for one moment he seemed trapped at the apex of a vast cone of quicksilver, as if he stood upon a sea and a waterspout towered over him.

Light flashed, blinding. Dallandra heard berserker laughter, then mad demon laughter, or so it sounded to her, but she knew the voice was Evandar's. The light died away. The Lands were gone. Riding serene on the billowing blue
light hovered a pair of dragons. One had a tiny cut, a mere nick, on his flank under one wing.

“Naught but a scratch,” Evandar said, laughing. “To a dragon.”

In a roar of joined minds the dragons leapt and flew, swooping away on a spread of wings, seeking out the physical world far below and beyond. As they flew, and in the echoes of that roar, Dallandra heard a voice still human and felt the touch of human gratitude. For a long time she stared at the silvery wake they left behind, until even that disappeared in the constant ebb and ripples of the Light. Yet she could imagine—or was she scrying them out?—at any rate she could see them in her mind, the pair of dragons, the one greenish-black, the other dark silver touched here and there with shadows of blue, flying fast and steadily through the night sky, heading for their home at the Roof of the World.

“Evandar, Evandar!” Dallandra felt half-sick with grief. “What have you done?”

“Time will answer that riddle, for I cannot.”

His voice was so spent and broken that she turned fast to look at him. Instead of his solid elven shape he seemed only a flicker of pale light, a boy, really, slender and frail, his arms still flung out from his sides, as if imploring the gods as he hung upon a shaft of silver light.

“I've spent it all, Dalla, all my power, all my strength. Don't you see? I'm going to be born. I'm going to follow my people down, because at last I can. I'm empty and weak and spent, and I shall have the life you promised me.”