Wardragon (29 page)

Zimak was sceptical. ‘I can’t help but notice that you still have your hands.’

‘I was caught by a mercenary warrior who had watched me fight. He said that any boy who had the spirit and reflexes to prevail against odds like that could be trained to be a true warrior. He adopted me, and I was raised on the road, trained in the way of weapons and warfare, given lessons in integrity and honour. He became my master, and he was the wisest man I have ever known. He taught me everything.’

‘Including how to be infuriating.’

Daretor smiled again. ‘Including that. Perhaps I was a bit enthusiastic sometimes.’

‘Sometimes?’

‘I’d lived so long on the streets, always hungry, always scared. I hated it. So when Pyrus came along … I suppose I renounced everything to do with my past. I did not even let myself think about it for a long time, in case it might somehow reinfect me. I think I feared that I might one day get sucked back into that life.’

‘So you walked around like you had a broomstick up your arse, and never got roaring drunk, and never told a lie …’

‘I wanted to blot out my childhood altogether – and everything that was associated with it.’

‘Oh, you were good at it. A prince among prigs. What happened after that?’

‘I grew strong and deadly as Pyrus declined with age. We made a good team, and he lived longer than he might have without me minding his back. Then I met you and Jelindel. End of story.’

‘What happened to your mentor, this Pyrus?’

‘We were ambushed soon after Lokribar’s Hamarian campaign. We were in Tol after I had won the marathon-fighting carnival. I have little memory of the event, but Pyrus was killed and I was imprisoned on charges of sedition. I’ve long since suspected the Preceptor had a hand in the affair. I was pardoned to accompany Jabez Thull on a mission to steal a chainmail link. You know the rest of the story.’ Daretor’s melancholy deepened, as he realised that that story was still unfolding.

‘Gah, Daretor. My past was no featherbed either. My father was a drunk who fell off a bridge and drowned, and my mother was a fishwife whose language was more foul than her fish. I soon learned that I could only get a better life by stealing it. When I chanced upon a dragonlink ring, I gained powers of fighting that even a champion would envy.’

‘You used another man’s skills,’ said Daretor, but there was no accusation in his voice. What once would have infuriated him merely made him shake his head.

‘That I did, and it saved me from a life as a sewer thief and pickpocket. I became a champion at market tournaments, I won prizes, I earned money as a guard. Girls smiled at me, men envied me. Was that so very bad?’

Daretor said quietly, ‘No, that wasn’t so very bad.’

Zimak rose to his feet. ‘I have to get back to the War Council.’ He paused before leaving. ‘Is this why you gave me such a hard time all these years?’

Daretor looked up. ‘I saw myself in you – the self I would have been if Pyrus hadn’t rescued me. I know it makes no sense, but I … I feared that …’

Zimak said, ‘The past isn’t a form of leprosy, Daretor. You can’t catch it.’

Daretor nodded miserably.

‘So I reminded you of you?’ said Zimak, smiling. ‘Must have been pretty tough when you actually ended up as me – I mean, in my body.’

‘You have no idea.’

Zimak rested a hand on his shoulder. ‘You should get some sleep,’ he said. He looked one last time at Jelindel’s body. ‘What I don’t get is who ordered Jelindel’s death. I thought Jelindel said Fa’red wanted us at our best so we’d be an even match for the Wardragon.’

Daretor shook his head. ‘Jelindel couldn’t work it out. And she didn’t reckon on Fa’red needing a bargaining chip. He can now go to the Wardragon’s table bloated with his little victory.’

‘He’ll pay for it,’ Zimak said and left quietly. Daretor felt the weight of Jelindel’s death settle back on him, only it seemed heavier now, and darker.

Daretor woke to a knocking on the door. He got to his feet slowly, his limbs stiff and cold, aware of who the visitors would be. Thankfully, the howlers had dispersed to lament someone else’s ill-fortune. However, as he feared, they were replaced by members of the Undertakers’ Guild, into whose hands fell the job of conducting the Ritual of Passing. The man in charge nodded once to Daretor, peering in past him at Jelindel, who was still on the bed.

‘It’s time,’ he said.

His voice was neither gruff nor gentle, just matter-of-fact, as if this were a day like any other, and business as usual. Daretor folded his arms.

‘I’m not ready,’ he said. ‘It’s too soon.’

His voice caught in his throat and the man on his doorstep bobbed his head, though whether in sympathy or impatience, Daretor couldn’t tell.

‘It’s time,’ he said again, in the same tone of voice, neither hurried nor demanding. ‘It’s time.’

The word
time
echoed inside Daretor’s skull, giving him a mild headache. He found he did not have the will to argue with this man. He had been raised all his life to believe as firmly in the rituals of death as in those for birth and battle. All he could do now was put up a token and temporary defence.

‘I will bring her myself. When is the hour?’

‘The tenth hour of the clock. Bring her to the House of Reckoning an hour before.’ Thwarted, the man’s voice finally betrayed something. Distaste. This was not how things were done.

Daretor closed the door in his stony-eyed face and collapsed against it, all his strength suddenly gone. And just as suddenly he was pounding the door, and bellowing in rage and grief, as hot tears streamed down his cheeks. Finally empty, he was left with his face pressed to the cold wood, his breath coming in short jagged pants.

Presently he stumbled back to Jelindel’s side, clasping her hand.

‘What am I to do?’ he asked. ‘This is not how it’s meant to be …’

In the distance he heard the hammer of blacksmiths and the rote calls of the militia. A pang of guilt shot through him. His job was out there, protecting the city, readying a force to battle the Wardragon.

Yet he could barely move, and part of him no longer cared.

His gaze fell on one of Jelindel’s books, the one she had been carrying in a sling bag when the assassin’s dart had struck.

A sudden thought sent him hurrying across the room to a shelf of her most prized tomes. He found the book he wanted, an ancient volume that spoke of death and healing. He carried it back to the chair and spread it on his lap, finding a silk marker. He studied the page Jelindel had last looked at, who knew how many months ago, and gasped softly. The page outlined an ancient and powerful spell that summoned the spirit globes, those strange beings that could augment a mage’s power, and which some mages like Fa’red enslaved for their own benefit. Jelindel had freed many of these ‘entities’ and they had promised to help her in time of need. They had fulfilled this promise in a great battle against the Preceptor.

Daretor’s mind raced. Maybe the spirit globes would help again.

Despite, or because of, his grief and desperation, he knew he had to try this, and he had to try it now. He didn’t know if the spirit globes could resuscitate someone already dead for hours, but time was running out. It was already the seventh hour. He had two hours before he was to deliver Jelindel to the House of Reckoning, then another before they lit the flame that would take her from him forever.

Daretor sent runners and errand boys hurrying in search of people and equipment, and tried to recall everything that Jelindel had ever taught him about magic. It seemed, in this moment, precious little.

‘Some magic,’ she had once said, ‘can be done by anyone. It’s independent of the person doing it, almost like having a key that opens a door. Anybody can turn the key. Other types of magic require magical muscles. Strength.’

Was this one of the kinds that anybody could work? Daretor wondered. He could not tell from reading the spell. It was too complicated and probably left out things that were so obvious to an adept that nobody had thought to write them down.

By the time he had all the necessary ingredients in front of him, he had boiled some water, and had studied a recipe. Soon, he was carefully preparing a potion that looked and smelled toxic. When drunk, it apparently induced a mild trance and gave nonmages a kind of mage-like concentration, a minimal requirement for working any kind of serious magic. While the potion brewed and bubbled in its glass beaker, Daretor studied the spell, memorising the incantations, practising the special movements of the hands, and hoping that the speed and emphasis with which it should be delivered were not too critical. He swallowed the potion. It looked like scribe’s ink and, as expected, tasted like pig droppings boiled in vinegar.

The potion induced its trance almost immediately. He felt a great sense of wellbeing suffuse his body, as if matters of the ordinary world were unimportant now. He had a task. A single task that burned like a beacon fire in the darkness. Nothing else was really visible, nothing else had any importance. In this state he
felt
the spell rather than read it; the words floated in the air in glowing letters as he spoke them, before vanishing.

A mist congealed out of the air above Jelindel, and enveloped her whole body. Inside the mist, things moved and something serpentine coiled and uncoiled with an unsettling sinuosity, as if it were trying to push its way out into this world. Daretor kept chanting the spell, letting the deep resonant syllables hang on the air; he was becoming part of the spell or it of him … one word,
dommmmmmm
, reverberated deep in his chest, like a basso profundo note played on a church organ.

The sound, or its vibrations, reached every part of his being, crackled along his limbs, and expanded into the air, filling the room with resonances.

But nothing more happened.

The echoes of Daretor’s chanting died away, and a profound stillness pervaded the room. He knew, without opening his eyes, that the spell had not worked. He had failed. He felt this deep within his soul.

Jelindel had slipped too far away.

‘Daretor?’ The voice was so soft it was almost inaudible. Daretor looked up. Zimak had his head in the doorway.

‘What do you want?’ asked the exhausted Daretor.

‘They’re insisting on collecting the body. They want to take her. It’s time.’

‘Dammit, Zimak, if old Harrin the Ratter died in a corner of the marketplace
they
would not bother with his body until the smell became a problem to the stallholders. Why all the hurry now?’

‘Jelindel was –
is
important.’

Daretor did not have the strength to resist. He stood slowly and moved back, away from the bed. Zimak ushered in the undertakers, and they quickly wrapped Jelindel’s body in silk cloth and bore her away. Daretor dimly heard the creak of a wagon as it started into motion. It hit him with a vengeance that they were taking Jelindel away forever.

He hurried from the house, with Zimak in his wake, and followed the wagon through the crowded streets. Daretor was not aware of doing or saying anything at all, but presently he found himself in a crowd gathered in the great stone chamber constructed at the centre of the Undertakers’ Guildhall. The centre of the roof had been slid open; the funeral pyre was the size of a house, the wood soaked in oil. Daretor was to be forever reminded of that moment every time he ate in a tavern.

The ritual prayers and chants were performed. Lines of black-robed death priests filled the room. Incense and candles burned. Dignitaries from all over the city and some from further afield came and filed past the pyre to pay their respects. Prince Augustus was also there, surrounded by his entourage. Jelindel dek Mediesar was famous, and not just in D’loom.

The final Ritual of Passing was chanted, then the torchbearers appeared from an archway at the end of the hall. They came out silently, gliding as if there were no feet beneath their robes, and surrounded the pyre. A priest walked to each of them in turn, chanting something that sounded vaguely magical to Daretor. At this, each torch burst into flame.

As the torches were lit, a low keening in the crowd swelled into a storm of noise. Some, brought to hysteria, were comforted, their wails muffled against the shoulders of loved ones. Daretor’s stomach churned. He had seen and caused much death, but the death of someone he cared about so much was new to him. Recent memories of Pyrus only served to heighten his grief. He fought down a wave of giddiness, then noticed Zimak nearby. It was the first time Daretor had seen Zimak looking desperate and fearful without the youth’s own life being in danger.

Everyone expected so much of her. The thought further saddened him, for he knew he was among those who had leached her.

Everyone made her do more and more because she was so powerful. And perhaps everyone – including himself – had come to rely on themselves less and less because they knew she was there.

Zimak joined him. ‘They’ll not mourn us like this when we go.’

Daretor ignored him.

Part of the pyre settled suddenly, and Jelindel’s head turned, and her eyes seemed to gaze straight at him. He gasped. In that moment, she seemed not only alive to him, but both child and woman: there was an ancient youthfulness in her face that made his heart beat painfully against his chest.

‘Jelindel,’ he cried. ‘I failed you …’

Zimak steadied him.

A hush fell on the huge chamber, then, as one, the torchbearers stepped forward and thrust their flaming torches into the oil-drenched pyre. The flames sizzled and crackled, climbing eagerly up through the wood with a startling
whoosh.
Within a dozen heartbeats the entire pyre was a raging inferno, in the midst of which lay the small white-shrouded form of Jelindel.

Daretor closed his eyes, feeling the awful heat on his face. By all the Odd Gods, he would make Fa’red and the Wardragon pay for this!

Chapter 19

The Funeral Pyre

T
he Wardragon looked up from its desk. Outside the tent, the first of its forces was coming through an enormous paraworld gate. Meanwhile, in here, another matter must be dealt with, another move made in the great game that was unfolding.

>FA’RED. HOW GRACIOUS OF YOU TO JOIN ME<<<

It was indeed the archmage, looking somewhat fretful but nevertheless striving to appear in command of himself. Behind him stood Ras.

>AND YOU, RAS? YOU HAVE RETURNED TO ME?<<<

Ras nodded.

Fa’red stepped forward, bowing slightly. ‘M’lord,’ he said, ‘the trappings of war suit you.’ He forbore to say the Preceptor’s face had aged twenty years since he had last seen him. ‘As for your lieutenant, my apologies. He was detained at my convenience.’

>YOU LOOK HARRIED, FA’RED. DO YOUR ENEMIES GNAW AT YOU, DO THEY SEEK TO STRIKE YOU FROM BEHIND?<<<

Fa’red peered closely at the man before him. He could not read the face of his old ally, the Preceptor. Nor could he divine the meaning beneath the Wardragon’s words. Indeed, it was like trying to read a brick wall. ‘Jelindel dek Mediesar,’ said Fa’red airily, ‘certainly
was
a great annoyance.’

The Wardragon went still. >>>WAS?<<<

‘The past is such an interesting tense, do you not agree?’

>SHE IS DEAD?<<<

‘I greatly fear that the Countess has fallen into a coma from which she shall never awaken. It seems a nasty poison has found its way into her veins. Soon they will burn her, as the Rituals of Passing demand.’

The Wardragon felt his confusion return. Should he rejoice at Jelindel’s death? What was this strange and awful regret that filled his soul? He realised Fa’red was waiting for some response. He must give it. He must hold things together, even as he felt himself falling apart. >>>SOMETIMES THE SIMPLEST METHODS ARE BEST, ARCHMAGE<<<

‘My thoughts exactly.’

>OUR TASK HERE IS NOW MADE EASIER. YOU HAVE DONE WELL. I AM IN THE MOOD TO GRANT YOUR REQUEST. AN ALLIANCE IT IS. WHAT FORCES DO YOU BRING?<<<

Fa’red listed his allies. The Wardragon nodded.

>IF AS YOU SAY THE WITCH IS DEAD, WE HAVE THE ADVANTAGE. HOWEVER, I CANNOT DENY THAT MY RESOURCES HAVE NOT BEEN DIMINISHED. LESS THAN A FIFTH OF MY FORCES SURVIVED THE COUNTESS’S WELL-PLANNED ATTACK ON GOLGORA. I WILL NEED TIME TO REBUILD. AN ALLIANCE WILL GIVE ME THAT TIME<<<

Fa’red bowed again. He was under no illusion that the Wardragon would not do away with him the moment his usefulness had ended. He would of course do the same. The art of war was really in the timing. When to strike and destroy the mailshirt? Too soon, and Fa’red’s own forces might not be strong enough to prevail; too late, and Fa’red would not be around to enjoy his just deserts.

The Wardragon stood in a flurry and threw back its robe, revealing itself fastened onto the Preceptor’s torso. The eyes glittered strangely. >>> STRIKE ME<<<

‘Pardon, m’lord?’

>STRIKE ME NOW. USE YOUR MOST POWERFUL MAGIC<<<

‘Surely you jest?’

>DO IT, OR I SLAY YOU WHERE YOU STAND<<<

Fa’red bristled. ‘You forget to whom you are speaking, m’lord.’

>AND YOU HAVE NO IDEA TO WHOM
YOU
ARE SPEAKING. ATTACK ME, OR FORFEIT YOUR LIFE<<<

Fa’red was no fool. This wasn’t a test. It was a demonstration. Fine. He would play along. Protecting himself, he summoned vast energies and hurled them at the mailshirt. A dazzling green light enveloped the Preceptor’s body, blinding Fa’red. As the maelstrom of energies faded, the mage half-hoped to see a pile of ash wearing a mailshirt. He was disappointed, but not terribly surprised, to see the Wardragon still standing. He was however a little disturbed to see that the Wardragon had not sustained so much as a scorch mark.

‘Your power is legendary, m’lord,’ Fa’red began.

The Wardragon raised an arm in a casual gesture. Fa’red felt himself lifted off the ground and pinned to the wall of the tent by an enormous force. His throat constricted till he could barely breathe. He was choking to death, and not a word of any spell had been uttered by the Wardragon. There was just that odd gesture.

The Wardragon came close to Fa’red, the face itself devoid of expression, though the eyes held a strange, hypnotic glitter.

>YOUR POWERS ARE NOTHING COMPARED TO MINE, ARCHMAGE. I KNOW YOU WILL BIDE YOUR TIME UNTIL YOU CAN MOVE AGAINST ME. TREACHERY IS A PART OF YOUR SOUL<<<

At least I have a soul, thought Fa’red.

The Wardragon flicked a single finger. The force that bound Fa’red collapsed, and he dropped to the ground, gasping for breath. Ras helped him to his feet.

The brush with the raw power of the mailshirt left Fa’red in an ugly mood. But the mage was not deterred. Indeed, the Wardragon had done him a favour, revealing the true measure of his power.

But there were things the mailshirt did not know. It did not know, for instance, that there existed a force on Q’zar that could unmake the very fabric of the dragonlinks which made up the mailshirt.

Very probably, Fa’red was the only person in the universe who did.

>LET US NOW CONSIDER OUR STRATEGY<<<

Fa’red bowed for the third time, taking great care to hide any hint of mockery.

There was nothing to be seen by the old hermit, just a shimmer in the desert. He was basically a retired adventurer, but one who also played the part of a wandering monk for the more isolated communities around the Garrical Mountains. He had never been ordained, but he carried the part well, and it helped atone for his sins.

From his position aboard a laden wagon, Hawtarnas squinted. He pulled rein and the mule lurched to a halt. Deserts always shimmer, the hermit thought. What’s different this time? Although he had written
The Book of Wars
some five hundred years before, he almost failed to sense the danger sweeping toward him.

His eyes were slits amid wrinkles in a brown weather-beaten face. Great tufted eyebrows drooped hairs and gave some scant shade from the glaring sun. The thought crossed his mind that this place had once been at the bottom of a lake. He had found shells embedded in the rocks and outrageous bones of long-dead creatures that had shapes like nothing alive. Now there was just time and the desert, and the strange shimmer that made him think of all that bygone water. Maybe a great shoal of ghostly fish was coming back from the past. He thought of the bigger bones that he had chanced upon, and pondered on things long vanished from this world.

The shimmer persisted. Dust was swirling up now, as if an army of feet stirred it. Some of it became mean little dust devils. Hawtarnas swore. The devils blinded him for a moment, and filled his eyes and ears and nostrils with fine sand.

The old man coughed now. At the sound, part of the shimmer seemed to detach itself from the rest but he lost sight of it against the fierce glare of the sun-baked earth. His mule, sensing danger, reared, and it was perhaps this movement that woke the hermit to his own bleak future. He fumbled for a weapon deep within his robes. Recently made, he hoped it would work.

Then something dark slashed out at him from the shimmer. He saw the blade as though it were a mirage. His thundercast spat and his attacker fell from the wagon. Others swarmed forward, but the mule, desperate to flee, was already galloping across the desert, its cargo careering behind it. The hermit hung on for dear life.

At any other time D’loom would have basked in the sunshine of an autumn day, but nobody in the city felt like basking. Though the blue waters of the harbour sparkled, and the white canvas sails of the ships blazed in the sun, the town was enveloped in a haze of drifting smoke, and fear.

The fumes rose from the forges of smithies, the smouldering embers of the nightly watch fires on the walls, and all those baking, brewing and roasting to preserve meat and grains against the prospect of a long siege. There was no breeze to blow it all away, and it gave the city an ominous look, as if it wore a dark hat pulled down over its head, like an assassin ready to strike.

This was the feeling the rider felt as he galloped for the outer battlements of the city, the low and cheaply made wall that encircled only the cottages, warehouses and workshops. Already those on the wall had sighted him, and several archers had nocked arrows ready to shoot him from the saddle, but as he drew closer he resolved into an ordinary horseman, not some monster that could try a direct assault on the main gate with a good prospect of success.

With a hundred yards to go a challenge was shouted, and he reined in at once. He shouted back the password. Immediately the defenders on the wall relaxed, and the bolts in the small door within the main gate were rattled open. The rider dismounted and led in his horse, while the archers looked into the distance in case they had to provide covering fire against pursuers; but none arrived before the door was again secured.

The scout remounted and galloped through the streets, till he came to the palace. Here he was identified and admitted, though an escort of wary guards stayed with him till he was well inside. A captain met with him, waved the guards away, and took him up several flights of stairs to a chamber in the main tower. The young captain was about the same age as the rider, though he looked as if he were living a much rougher life. The weight of command was especially onerous in these dark days.

‘The other scouts?’ asked the captain. His voice was tired and emotionless, his face lacking any expectation of good news.

‘Dead, or worse,’ said the rider, shuddering a little.

‘We heard the enemy was amassing on the Zaria Peninsula.’

‘They were.’

‘Were?’

‘They’re not there anymore.’

The captain knuckled his bloodshot eyes, trying to concentrate on the scout’s words, to make sense of them. He had been too long without sleep, and the smog over the city was making him drowsy.

‘So where are they?’

The scout walked over to the window and pointed.

‘There.’

The captain hurried over and blinked at the shimmer on the horizon.

‘Impossible!’ he exclaimed. ‘No army could travel so fast.’

The scout said nothing for a moment. ‘Yesterday they were on the peninsula, now they are here. I have changed horses eight times on the way here, yet they have never been far behind me. How they travel, I do not know.’

The captain shaded his eyes and peered out through the window. In spite of his fatigue, he felt energy flooding into his body with the prospect of a battle within sight. He shouted for a lackey, and the man was standing beside him within moments.

‘Have the alarm bell rung, now!’ he ordered. ‘Then have my horse made ready, I need to go to the outer walls.’

The lackey scurried away, fear bright in his eyes.

‘They’ll be here very soon,’ said the scout, following the man’s exit with his gaze.

‘You should get some rest,’ said the captain.

‘Should and can are so very different,’ replied the scout.

The captain squeezed the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger, trying to ward off an approaching headache. He thought to seek out Daretor, but knew the alarm bells would tell the War Commander all he needed to know.

‘Rest as well as you can, then. When that horde arrives there will be little scope for it.’

A bell pealed stridently, drowning out the scout’s reply.

As the combined forces of the Wardragon and Fa’red bore down on the city, someone shook Daretor where he knelt in grief on the floor of the guildhall chamber.

‘My lord! My lord! Something is wrong!’

Daretor sprang to his feet, almost knocking over Zimak. The pyre blazed fiercely, but though the flames had engulfed Jelindel’s body, and the heavy logs surrounding it glowed red, the body itself did not burn.

Only now did Daretor realise that all of the priests had fled. ‘What does it mean?’ demanded Daretor.

‘Don’t ask me, I’m only an undertaker,’ fretted the man who had spoken to him.

‘We probably ought to get her down,’ Zimak pointed out, though the blistering heat made nonsense of his suggestion.

As they stood staring, something happened. At first the fire’s glow seemed to intensify, but a white light seeped from the burial cloth in which Jelindel was swaddled. Soon it surrounded the body like a glowing fog. Shapes appeared amid the flames.