The Silver Mage (42 page)

“Naught.” Leejak shrugged the problem away. “Cowards, these are.”

“I worry for Kov, not us,” Jemjek said. “Horsekin all round.”

“He travel at night. He sees in dark. Horsekin do not.”

But they can sniff me out,
Kov thought. Kov wondered if he were about to faint and disgrace himself. He’d be on his own, exposed, running for his life in the middle of Horsekin territory.
But free,
he reminded himself.
For all the good it’s going to do me.

His escape went smoothly. Between them Leejak, Grallag, and Jemjek smuggled supplies, a few at a time, out of the night’s camp and placed them at the foot of the ladder in a ventilation shaft. Once the rest of the Dwrgwn slept, Kov crept down the tunnel and bundled the supplies in his blanket. He found a length of rope among them and used that to harness the bundle to his back. Before he climbed up, he waited, listening, peering down the dark tunnel to the faint blue glow of the camp’s fungi baskets. Everyone lay still; some snored.

Kov climbed the ladder, but at the top his spear, stuck crosswise across the bundle on his back, caught in the opening. He clung to the ladder with one hand, managed to get the spear free, and threw it out ahead of him. As he clambered over the edge of the opening, clods of earth fell and landed with a plop on the tunnel floor below. He froze for a moment, but heard nothing behind him. He grabbed his spear and set off at an awkward run with the bundle thumping against his back.

Ahead he saw the dark mass of the forest, rising against the starry night. He kept running until he was gasping for breath, then drove himself to keep walking until at last, he could plunge in among the pines. In the hopes of foiling the Horsekin’s keen sense of smell, he made himself a nest of pine needles. On the trunk of the tree above him, he found several globs of resin, which he smeared on his clothing. He nearly gagged on the strong scent, but he could hope that the Horsekin would smell only pine trees and not the filthy dwarf who hid under them.

Safe,
he thought.
For now.

A
fter he’d left the Red Wolf dun, Rori had carried Cadryc’s answers to the prince’s messages back to the royal alar. He lingered there for several days, lairing with Arzosah and his step-daughter, to let his wound recover from the stress of his flight east. Every morning, Neb examined the incisions, which were healing up nicely, or so the young healer said.

“No sign of infection,” Neb pronounced. “And the gold won’t become tarnished and spread corruption like the silver dagger did. I’ll take the staples out later, though, once the skin’s grown back together.”

“Good,” Rori said. “It still itches, but not as badly.”

“Soon it won’t itch at all. Arzosah was right. Dragons do mend fast.”

“She generally is right, when it comes to things dragonish.”

Although,
he thought to himself,
human things are another matter entirely.

Dragonish things were much on Arzosah’s mind that day. When Rori rejoined her, she brought up a delicate matter. Medea had reached her hundred and twentieth year, close to the age when she would want a mate.

“I”ve sniffed out a few young males up north,” Arzosah told him. “Eventually one of them will smell Medea’s scent upon the wind and come flying our way. Then he’ll no doubt tell the other about Mezza, as well, once she’s ready. But I do worry about our son.”

“No scent of young females?” Rori said.

“None.” Arzosah heaved a sigh. “A mother’s lot is so difficult when you’re a dragon. It’s not like we can fly in flocks like birds or suchlike.”

“Well, we have years yet before he’ll be wanting a mate.”

“True, true, he’s but five and thirty years old, by my reckoning. A mere child yet. But I don’t want him taking an unhealthy interest in his sisters when the time comes. It’s not good for the bloodlines.”

“We’ve raised him better than that!”

“So I hope.” She sighed again. “I worry about the younger hatchlings in general, though, off alone like that. Don’t you? One of them is yours.”

“So he is. Why not send Medea back? She doubtless finds guard work just as tedious as you do. She can care for the young ones until we return. The prince is heading for Cerr Cawnen, and our lair’s not far beyond that. You can fly on home from there whilst I keep an eye on the prince.”

“Splendid! I’m looking forward to getting home. A nice cozy winter, that’s what I’m longing for.”

“And so am I.”

With a yawn she snuggled closer to him. She seemed to have no idea that he was considering returning to human form. Sooner or later, he would have to tell her, if indeed he did decide to spend the winter as a man on Haen Marn instead of inside a fire mountain as a dragon. For the moment, however, he could put the decision out of his mind.

Or at least, he could try to do so. In the morning, when he was about to leave on another scouting expedition, Dallandra confronted him.

“I”ve been wondering,” she said. “If you’ve made up your mind yet.”

“Do you mean about the transformation?” Rori said.

“What else would I mean?”

“True enough. I’ve not decided yet, frankly. My mind keeps going this way and that.”

“Well, it’s time you steadied it.”

He considered just taking wing and flying away, but a voice in his mind whispered, “Coward!”

“With the dragon book still lost,” Rori said, “I assumed that the matter couldn’t be settled.”

“It may not be lost for long. Laz Moj has gone after it, and no matter what you think of him, he does have dweomer.”

“Does that mean he might find the book? Huh, I wouldn’t think he could, the wretched bit of scum.”

“Rori, he’s trying to make amends in this life. It’s a struggle for him, but he truly wants to set his feet on the right road.”

“Well, then, more honor to him. I suppose.”

“But Laz’s wyrd isn’t the issue.” Dallandra put her hands on her hips and glared at him. “Do you want to remain a dragon or not? I need an answer, Rori.”

He raised himself up on his forelegs, but Dallandra held her ground. When he snarled at her, she merely rolled her eyes in disgust.

“There’s a thing I don’t understand,” he said in a decent tone of voice. “Why do I have to answer before Laz has found the cursed book?”

“Because your reluctance may well be what’s keeping the thing hidden. I’m beginning to think that Evandar linked it to you, somehow or other. That may be why he put it originally on Haen Marn, because he knew you’d connected yourself to the island through Angmar.”

Rori lay down again and considered the grass directly in front of him.

“I know you’ve heard about currents in the astral,” Dallandra went on. “Some waft a thing to its true owner, like the silver dagger that caused you so many years of pain. Others push a thing farther away. This book is not a real object, not as we know ‘real’ on the physical plane. It’s drifting on the astral at the moment, waiting for you to make up your mind. It needs an answer, Rori, and by the Black Sun herself, so do I.”

With a long rumbling sigh he looked up to face her again.

“So you do,” he said, “so you do. Ye gods, I don’t know my own heart these days, and that’s the honest truth. I don’t know what I want. I love the freedom of the air, I’m fond of Arzosah, but there’s Angmar.”

“Indeed. Perhaps you’d best go see her, and listen to what your heart tells you there at Haen Marn.”

Every muscle in his body went tense against his will. He felt himself crouch for the leap into the wind that would free him from her questions. His wings trembled, longing to spread. He fought them quiet, but his tail lashed of its own accord.

“Perhaps you’re right,” he said. “I’ll think on it.”

“Please do. Sooner or later you’ve got to decide.”

Dallandra turned on her heel and stalked back to camp. Rori waited until she’d gone a safe distance away, then unfurled his wings and flew, heading north for another look at the Horsekin fortress.

When, on the morrow, his wings brought him gliding over the long mound, he roared with laughter at what he saw. For a long while he circled on the air currents to savor the sight. The entire top of the mound had collapsed inward like a rotted melon, revealing a jumble of stone blocks and charred wooden planks, all piled this way and that. A few of the stones showed the black marks of burning, but mud oozed among and over the rest.

From the base of the mound, water oozed in rivulets that trickled off toward the river. Rori could only guess at the cause, but he assumed that the Horsekin had dug too deep and hit either groundwater or some hidden spring. Near the mound stood a welter of tents and rough shelters, improvised from blankets and the like, for the Horsekin soldiers and their slaves. As he flew in lazy circles above the mess, Rori could just discern a few individuals on the edge of the camp. They were standing with hands on hips and looking up at the ruins. He could imagine how forlorn and dispirited they must feel—he laughed again in a long rumble. If the Horsekin decided to rebuild at all, they’d have to build on the flat, where their enemies would have a far easier time of destroying a fortress.

Rori considered turning back immediately and bringing the news to Prince Daralanteriel and Calonderiel, but in the end, he decided to wait—just long enough to visit Haen Marn for a look at Angmar and his other daughter. He wouldn’t need to land, even, merely fly overhead and spare Angmar the sight of him. He was assuming that from the air he’d be able to find Haen Marn easily, unlike the time when he’d sought it on foot. Afterward, he’d swing by the fortress on his way back to the royal alar. Perhaps by then the Horsekin would either have started to rebuild or packed up to march away, giving him more information to tell the prince.

Rori banked a wing and headed north. As he skimmed over the forest verge, he saw ahead of him a tattered bridge crossing the river. The clumsy surface of uncured timber marked it as Horsekin work, but he could tell little about it from his height. For a better look he landed, but on the solid riverbank, not the fragile structure itself.

When he saw marks like writing on the ancient stone pillars, he waddled closer to examine them. As a man and a Maelwaedd heir, Rori had known how to read, a talent extremely rare in Deverry at that time, and practically unknown among noblemen. He still remembered the mysteries of that craft well enough to recognize the marks as Deverrian letters, worn down with time, half-covered with moss. He turned his massive head this way and that as he tried to see them more clearly.
If I only had hands!
he thought.
I could brush that moss away.
Finding writing so far from Deverry proper intrigued him.

“Rori!” The voice sounded behind him. “Ye gods! Rori! Is it really you?”

Rori swung around to see a bedraggled man of the Mountain Folk running toward him from the forest. His clothes were filthy, the bundle upon his back lumpy and ill-packed, his beard long and straggly, and his face smeared with mud. It took Rori a moment to recognize the once-dapper Kov, the dwarven envoy from Lin Serr.

“It is indeed,” Rori said. “Well met!”

“You cannot know how truly you speak! “ Kov’s voice trembled on the edge of tears. “I”ve escaped from the wretched Dwrgwn, but now I’m at the mercy of the Horsekin, should they find me.”

“You’re safe enough now. I doubt me if they’ll argue with a dragon.”

Kov did weep, then. He plastered his hands over his face to hide the tears, but his shoulders trembled as he sobbed.

“Forgive me,” he mumbled. “This last month, it’s been horrible. The Third Hell, indeed!”

“No doubt! Here, Dallandra scried you out, so your cousin Mic and little Berwynna know you’re safe.”

“Ah.” Kov lowered his hands. The tears had left streaks in the mud on his skin. “Where are they? Cerr Cawnen?”

“Truly, I forget myself! You wouldn’t know. After you were taken from the caravan, it was attacked by Horsekin raiders.”

“Ye gods! Maybe the Dwrgwn weren’t so bad after all.”

“You might have had a bit of luck, truly. Berwynna’s betrothed is dead, alas, and half the muleteers with him, but Wynni and her uncle are sheltering at the Red Wolf dun with Tieryn Cadryc.”

“Ah, I see.” Kov paused to wipe his nose on his sleeve, a gesture which only distributed the mud a bit more evenly. “Ye gods! It saddens my heart to hear about so many deaths, but I’m cursed glad Wynni’s safe, I tell you, and Mic, too. Will you take me to them?”

“Eventually.” Rori hesitated, but he knew that he had to make the trip to Angmar before his courage deserted him. “I hope you’ve got a fancy to see Haen Marn, because that’s where we’re going first.”

“I’m sure it’s the most beautiful place on earth, and all because it’s not a Dwrgi hold. Never has a man been so glad to see a wyrm as I am, I’ll wager.”

“No doubt.” Rori gestured with his head toward the river. “You, on the other hand, need a bit of a wash, and I need your help. Can you brush the moss from those stones so I can read the letters?”