Winterlands 2 - Dragonshadow (13 page)

Not long before dawn, she heard the whisper of rough wool against hazel branches and the tiny breath of grass beneath soft-booted feet. It was hard for her to bring her mind out of the music’s dark-shining depths. She timed the girl’s passage across the smaller spring, then the larger, heard when her jacket of pelts brushed the limbs of the birches just beyond the clearing. The music, funneled through the pool on the stone, drew the girl’s eyes to the stone first. Opening her own eyes, or rather adjusting them to common sight and common awareness, Jenny saw that she did not perceive her, thinking her only another tree, or a rock a little taller than the first.

The witch-girl was tall for her age, thin with the thinness of those poor trappers and hunters who eked out livings in the deep woods, barely seeing any but their families from one season to another. These people, though not quite sunk to the level of Meewinks and Grubbies, were often brutish in the extreme. Jenny’s long acquaintance with their kind was studded with the knowledge of bestialities, of casual murder and incest, of almost unbelievable ignorance and want. The girl’s long, narrow face was marked with such crimes, sullen and dirty, great eyes peering from beneath the coarse tangle of her hair. Her heavy lips were soft and sad. She crossed the clearing to the stone and reached wonderingly to dip her fingers into the hollow with its water, bringing them up to touch the wet tips to her eyes, her mouth, her temples.

Knowing the girl to be still dazed by the blow to her head, Jenny pitched her voice to the voice of dreaming, “What is it you want, child?”

The girl shook her head. “Me ma,” she replied, the truth of her heart. “What is your name?”

“Yseult.” She raised her head then, blinking at the dark small shape of Jenny in the darkness under the trees.

As a mage herself the girl could see through illusion, and Jenny used none on her, only a gentleness she used for her own sons. “Is Balgodorus good to you?” She was not, Jenny thought, many years older than Ian.

The girl nodded. Then she said, “No. Not no worse than Pa when he was liquored. Some of ’em’s worse.”

“But you don’t have to let them hurt you,” Jenny reasoned softly. “That’s what magic’s for.” Yseult sniffled and rubbed her head, not the back of the skull where Jenny’s slung stone had cracked, but the temples. Jenny saw the girl’s days-old blacked eye and a triangular scar on the back of her hand where it looked like a hot knife-blade had been laid. There were older scars the same shape, and a mark on her chin such as a woman’s teeth make when a man punches her in the jaw. “I get scared,” she said. Her short square-ended fingers picked at the untied points of her shift. “Men starts yellin’ at me and knockin’ me about, and I can’t think. I get angry, like I could call down fire and fling it at ’em by handfuls, but then most times it don’t work. And Balgodorus, he says if any of the men, any of ’em, come to grief it’ll go the worse for me. I can’t make it work all the time.”

The bitten nails twitched and pulled at the tapes, and the bruised dark eyelids veiled her eyes. Improper sourcing, thought Jenny. No sense of where the power’s coming from, or how it changes, with the course of the moon and the movements of the stars. The poor child probably doesn’t even know how to track her own moon-cycles to take advantage of her body’s aura. “Would you like to leave him?”

The lids flicked up, a glance like a deer seen in a thicket for an instant before flight. The girl’s body tensed, lifting on her toes.

“What is it? Don’t go.” She put Power into this last, a gentle touch that could have been shaken off like the touch of a staying hand. The girl’s mouth trembled.

“You’re from Rocklys.”

Jenny shook her head. “I know Commander Rocklys,” she said. “I don’t work for her.”

“You’re with her men, them in the fort. You came with her soldiers. You want to take me away. I got to go.”

“Please don’t.” “You’re a witch.” “So are you.”

“I ain’t! Not really.” She’d backed almost to the clearing’s edge. There were spells Jenny knew that might have constrained the girl, especially with her concentration shaken by fear and the dizziness of her wound. But Yseult would have felt them and known them for what they were. “Would you like to be?” she asked instead. And when Yseult’s eyes grew thoughtful, “Men don’t hurt witches.”

Yseult came down off her toes, and her breath went out. One grubby finger explored her nostril. “You’re a witch?” It was a question now, and Jenny had the sense that the girl was looking at her for the first time. Seeing her as she was, not as her fears had painted her.

Above the trees the dark was thinning. Jenny’s dragon-senses brought her a tangle of voices, tiny and sharp as images in far-off crystal: “I’ll teach the little bitch!” And, “You can’t trust ’em, Captain, not a one of ’em!”

She kept her voice steady. “I’m called Jenny. If you like, I’ll help you leave Balgodorus.” Sharp little white teeth peeked out, biting the scarred and chapped lip. “He’ll catch me.” “He won’t.”

“He catched me before.” She trembled, and Jenny felt a rush of fury at the man. “You didn’t have a true wizard protecting you before.”

Crashing in the trees, boots in the stream, on the rocks. Impossible that Yseult didn’t hear—hadn’t she even learned that much?

“You’re trying to trick me.” The girl backed again, and the dark pupils of her eyes were ringed in white. “You’re a witch for Commander Rocklys, and I heard what she does to witch-girls. I heard it from the Iceriders.”

“She doesn’t do anything,” said Jenny. “She’s trying to start a school, to help mages learn.” “It’s all lies!” Yseult’s voice edged with panic. “She lies to ’em to get ’em to come, so she can feed ’em to demons!”

“That isn’t true.” Jenny had heard that old tale a dozen times in a dozen different guises. It was a favorite with the Iceriders: John’s mother had told Jenny as a child that the kings of old drank the blood of witch-born children, or sacrificed them to demons on the rocks beside the sea, or on the lap of an idol wrought of brass. Other tales said they used a magic spell to transform them into sparrows, or mice, or cats.

“She’s never harmed me, nor my son, who is mageborn, too.”

“You’re lying to me!” Trapped between fear of Balgodorus and terror of the unknown, Yseult’s voice shrilled with panic. “You just want me to help you hurt my man.”

“He’s not your man,” said Jenny tiredly. “He’s …”

Yseult’s head went up. In the gloom beneath the trees voices cried out: “I’ll skin the bitch! Answer me, you little whore, or …”

“I’m here!” cried Yseult desperately. “I’m here! She’s tryin’ to catch me, trying to kill me!” She flung a spell, rough and undisciplined, and Jenny’s belly and bones gripped with nausea and pain. At the same moment Jenny heard one of Balgodorus’ men cry out and fall retching among the brush. Limitations. Furious, Jenny flung off the magic, which had no more holding power than a child’s hand, and faded back into the green-black shadows beneath the trees. “Don’t hurt me!” she heard Yseult scream. “She magicked me away! She went there, see her in the trees?”

She was pointing—her mageborn senses were at least that good—and Jenny turned and glided sidelong, wrapping the dark patterns of her plaids around her to break up the shape of her body. Balgodorus struck the girl, sending her to her knees in last year’s dead leaves, and Jenny felt in her bones the desperate flutter of unformed magic that Yseult tried to fling at him: make him forget, make him love me, make him not hurt me, make him go away … Nothing to the purpose, even had they not been shattered by the girl’s fear: not only fear, but her desperation to be loved by someone, even the man whose boot-toe smashed into her ribs. “It was her that made them spells!” Yseult sobbed. “She put that pain on you just now!” The men were spreading out, swords drawn, into the woods. Jenny remained still, veiled in mists and darkness, until they passed, while Balgodorus dragged Yseult to her feet by the hair, stripped her bodice from her back and welted her with his belt, new red marks burning on the white skin among the old. Only when he thrust her, shivering with her thin arms folded over her naked breasts, before him through the thickets toward the camp did Jenny finally turn away, and drift back to the manor.

“And damn me if it wasn’t a thing like an iron wash-pot, and no dragon at all!” John leaned forward on the low cushioned divan and gestured earnestly with a handful of fish stew. Lord Ragskar glanced at Lord Ringchin, and then at the three gnomish Wise Ones who completed the circle at the High Table beneath an intricate canopy of pierced and fluted sandstone. All were still, startled, tongs and spoons of inlaid gold poised in their hands. Servants—gnomes all, in liveries of the bright soft silks woven beneath the ground and huge overelaborate jewelry—drew close to listen, and John pitched his voice into tones of deep distress.

“So here I am, sittin’ me horse, feelin’ a complete ass with all these harpoons and arrows and such—I mean, I’ll go after any dragon in the northlands, but how the hell do you fight a wash-pot?—when me son come ridin’ out of the gate, and yells, I’ll draw it off, Da’, and goes after the thing with a spear. I shouted at him, but this sort of lid flips up in the thing and an arm comes out, a metal arm like a well-sweep, with iron claws on it, and grabs him, seizes him off his horse, and drags him inside it. And I’m throwing harpoons and firin’ the crossbow and none of it’s doin’ a bloody thing, and the arm comes out again and whacks me silly off me horse, except I snagged me boot in the stirrup and the horse goes tearin’ galley-west across the moor with me draggin’ along behind …”

He saw the two gnome-kings clutch hard at their dignity and their manners and shut their mouths tight to keep from laughing at the image, and knew that he’d destroyed himself as any threat in their eyes. He glanced down at the hunk of pale flesh and sauce dripping in his hand, as if just remembering that he held it, and gulped it down, licking his fingers and then cleaning them fastidiously in the lotus-shaped glass goblet beside his plate. Tongs and spoon lay beside it untouched, the gems on them winking in the glow of lamps that hung on long chains from the ceiling. Clear pale light, far stronger than that of fire: hothwais charged with sunlight, beyond a doubt. John had always found his display of amiable barbarism—his dancing-bear act, as he called it—an effective means of getting people to underestimate him, particularly those who put stock in table manners. Or, in this case, those who had contempt for all of the tall men who lived above the ground. They didn’t have to know that Aunt Jane would have worn him out with a birch broom to see him eat with his hands.

“I’ve been on this thing’s track for three days,” he went on after a time. “Did I say it had wheels? Well, sort of wheels—they were like two inside another three, and they moved …” He gestured vaguely, his hands trying to describe something that wouldn’t tell them anything, really. He’d seen some fairly bizarre designs in his studies of ancient engineering. The less said the better to the gnomes about dragons, or about mages who saved their lives in order to enslave them. “Anyroad, the thing I’m using to track them with—this thing Jen rigged up that will smell out the magic amulet around Ian’s neck—tracked ’em to the Gorm Peaks at the north of the peninsula here, or maybe to Yarten Isle beyond. I can’t tell, for it’s too far, and this device of Jen’s needs a thunderstone—a piece of a star—to work properly. And that’s why I’m here.” He wiped his fingers on his plaid, propped his spectacles, and leaned forward, his face desperate with genuine anxiety and the feigned earnestness of the man he sought to make them think he was: barbarian, braggart, and not terribly bright. “I need magic thingies, y’see,” he said. “Thingies to make this device of Jen’s work, and to get close enough to where this wizard’s hidden that I can find him and Ian. You know I’ve served your kin in Wyldoom, and served ’em well. And I’ve come to ask—I’ve come to beg—if there’s aught I can do that’ll get me these things from you.”

Lord Ragskar’s pale eyes slid sidelong to touch those of his brother-king. Lord Ragskar was the smallest gnome John had ever seen, barely over two feet in height and with a disturbingly babyish, beardless face. He looked in fact like a child—a wildly overdressed child, with his collars and bracelets of heavy gold and slabs of opal and turquoise, his rings of jewels faceted as the gnomes knew how to do—until you saw him move. Lord Ringchin was larger, fatter, and older, but clearly it was Ragskar who was the brains of the pair.

“In fact, there is.” Lord Ragskar set down his tongs and wiped his fingers on a napkin: John had used his to wrap around his hand when he seized a joint of hot meat. “There is a bandit.” He cleared his throat, and John leaned forward and did his best to look like he believed every word. “A robber, who … er … entered the Deep some weeks ago to steal. Eluding the guards, he took refuge in the mine shafts, but he has attacked a number of guards—to steal weapons, so he is now well armed—and has tried several times now to break into the food stores on the Twelfth Deep.”

He nodded to the foremost of the Wise Ones, a hard-looking creature like a densely withered apple, pale gold eyes peeking from beneath brows long enough to braid. “Lord Goffyer here, Lord of the Twelfth Deep, has attempted to scry him out, but Brâk—this is his name—has stolen scry-wards and so protects himself from being found. Moreover, as a human, Brâk is able to move faster than we, particularly where the levels are flooded, and in a narrow way his strength is greater than ours in single combat. We would take it as a great favor if you would deal with this man. Then we can speak of reward.”

“I’ll do that very thing.” John sprang to his feet and managed to knock plate, cup, and three pieces of cutlery off the low stone table as he did so, not bad for a single swipe. “Oops. Sorry.”

He held out his hand, grasping in turn the tiny, hard, muscular hands of each startled king. “You can count on me. Oh, and accordin’ to Cerduces Scrinus’ Principles, soda-water will take care of that stain.”

John did not for a moment believe that any robber in his or her senses would attempt to thieve from the Deeps of the gnomes. In fact, he guessed that his target was the leader of escaped slaves. But simply having a square meal made him feel better, and afterward the Wise One Goffyer came to the guest chamber and gave him medicaments for his half-healed wounds. Despite this helpful hospitality, the moment Goffyer was out of sight John went over the chamber very thoroughly, pulling aside wall-hangings and propping what few pieces of furniture there were in front of any part of the delicately hued wall that looked like it might conceal a doorway. He slept with all the lamps of green and gold glass left burning and his satchel of poisons tied around his waist. The Wise One had made two discreet attempts to get his hand on it and hadn’t taken his eyes from it throughout the visit.