Winterlands 2 - Dragonshadow (21 page)

Ian. Oh, Ian.

The power of demons was Other. Demons came and went from another plane of existence, where magic was different. Everything was different. And these, she could sense, were more powerful than any she had heard of.

Would she have been able to protect her son, had she remained a dragon? Would she have wanted to?

As a jere-drake she had known intense and passionate desire, and the coupling of dragons was like being transformed into fire made of jewels. But that was not the same as loving, or caring for those one loved.

Patiently, her eyes the eyes of darkness, she searched, and in time she found the place where the dragon-wizard had drawn power out of the earth. At her summons the eroded ghosts of the power lines drifted to the surface once more, but they told her little she did not already know. The dragon-wizard had been trained in the southern traditions—the Line of Erkin, it looked like. But demon-fire had imbued and informed every trace and circle. Every exorcism she had ever performed—and they had been few enough—returned to her, the snaking insinuation of even petty pooks and gyres. The wormlike crawling to get inside a human mind, a human soul; to have a body whose pain the demon could drink. To have the ability to torment and hurt others, to generate more fear and more pain. They would inhabit even corpses, given the chance. A tiny image came to her, the broken fragment of a memory: a big gray-haired gentleman walking on a beach at dawn. Walking after troubling dreams. Sea-wind lifted his dark scholar’s robe to show the clothes of a wealthy merchant beneath. A scholar-dilettante, such as she had met in the Court of Bel. A man with a face too intelligent for the company of money-hoarders and counters-up of bales.

She saw him stop, look down at something—a shell? a piece of glass?—where the waves creamed on the pewter beach. He bent down and took it in his palm. Oh, John, she thought, as the memory slid away. Stay away from them. She drew her plaids closer about her, trying to still the dreadful hurting of her heart. In her mind a voice said, Wizard-woman.

He was behind her, crouched on the smashed ruin of Cair Dhû’s walls. His black bones folded together like a fan of sable silk, and the clear cold silver eyes seemed to emit both light and darkness. Her heart soared at the sight of him as a wave soars when it shatters itself on rock. Love and wonder.

And as a wave shatters her first words ran away unspoken. Your heart wept, he said.

They have taken my son. She spoke as dragons speak. And John was hurt.

Heat rose off him, and he turned his face aside. Wind shifted the black ribbons of his mane, the tufts of ebon feather. Curving horns striped black on black gleamed as if oiled. Oh, my friend, she said. I am so glad to see you.

So. The heat seemed to spread and widen, but grew calm, like water deepening and deepening, stilling as it deepened. She had a sense of deadliness, of terrible things taking shape far below the surface, things that stared with mad silver eyes into the dark. Then slowly all that rage collected itself and vanished as through a hole in eternity, utterly away from this world. So, he said again. It rejoices my heart to see you also, my friend. Something in the air around him changed.

She said, Forgive me.

Forgiveness is not a thing of dragons. Each deed and each event exists forever in our minds as what it was and is. But what you speak of, when you ask forgiveness, is only a part of what you were and are, Wizard-woman, and what you will be.

He settled himself, a dense black shining shape in the thickening dusk. His eyes were cold twin moons, looking into hers.

Four years now I have dwelt apart from the star-drakes, seeking to understand those things in my heart that were no longer the things of dragons. When we came unto the Skerries of Light, there were Shadow-drakes among us, Dragonshadows, and they lived on the Last Isle. I went there seeking them, for they understand all things, and have in them power greater than that of the greatest among the dragons. They were not there.

For some reason she recalled the stone house on Frost Fell, autumn evenings when rain hissed down the chimney in the fire, when even her harp seemed a violation of the world’s sleepy peace. Yet I stayed in that place, he said. And in these four years I have tried to do as they anciently taught, hoping that in the achievement of their power I would find relief from my pain. But the pain itself is no less.

Her heart reached to him in wordless sorrow, but he rippled the dark scales of his back, putting her anguish aside.

It is not as it was, Wizard-woman. You have no need for grief for my sake. In this hour, as I see you, I find that indeed I feel differently than I did, although it was my hope then not to feel at all. As if jewels shifted, catching a sharp blink of light, she felt his wry humor. And so my wizardry, and my knowledge, and all the roads of the galaxy that I have walked have led me to this: a black knot that cannot be unraveled, an eyeblink in all the flowing years of time, and yet that I cannot put by. And I do not know whether this knot is a thing of men that came to me from your heart, Wizard-woman, or a thing that lies hid in dragon-kind as the eggs lie hid within the jere-drakes until it is time for them to transform into queens. Perhaps even if I could find the Shadow-drakes I would receive no answer. They do not give answers that make sense except to one another.

She said, Perhaps it is a thing that will come clear in time. Time was the thirteenth god, they say, until the other gods cast him out because he was mad. He carries all things in his pockets, but what he will take out, no one knows.

And as she said it tears came down from her eyes, remembering again all those strange pain-filled gifts the mad Lord of Time had given her.

No one indeed, retorted the dragon. Least of all did I ever conceive that I, Morkeleb the Black, would come down from the north drawing that silly toy boat of your Songweaver’s by a rope, like a dog with a string in its mouth.

And Jenny laughed, delighted with the shape the dragon put in her mind: the Milkweed trailing with half-deflated balloons, its charred gondola piled with broken bits of machinery, at the end of a rope whose other end was gripped in the dragon’s iron beak. On the heap of debris John sat cross-legged, telescope in one hand and map across his knees, making notes. My poor Morkeleb! She held out her hand to him. That was very, very good of you. Good is not a thing of dragons. His spikes bristled like Skinny Kitty when routed from a cupboard. Your Songweaver is in his own walls once more being made much of by his fools of aunts. But it was not for love of you, my Wizard-woman, or for the sake of your brat, that I left the Last Isle.

Half-rising, he exposed to moonlight the nacre of new-healed flesh on his belly and sides. They are demons, who eat the souls of dragons and mages alike, as they ate the soul of this southern mage; as they ate the soul of your son. And demons will always seek to open the way for other demons. These have a strength that I have not seen since the Fall of Ernine, a thousand years ago. Whether these are the same demons or others with the same power I know not, but they can devour my magic—I, Morkeleb!—and they can and will devour yours, and anyone else’s they so choose.

Silent, they regarded one another for a time, the dragon black and glistening in the starry night and the woman small in her plaid skirt, her bodice of worn leather. All the old legends warned against meeting a dragon’s eyes, but having been a dragon herself Jenny had nothing in her mind or soul that Morkeleb could trap. Rather she saw into his mind, to the will that was core and spine of dragon-magic: the magic at the core of dragon-flesh and dragon-dreams. It was like losing oneself in night sky.

For a moment more their minds touched, his bitterness and her sorrow that each person, each being, has only one future and cannot have two.

Things are as they are, Wizard-woman, he said at last. Now come away. There is a man who awaits you at that stone hovel you call your home, and two others of your young. And we must speak, you and this Songweaver and I, of demons, and of what must next be done.

“Where’d you spring from, me lord? And you too, Lady Jenny?” It was the same guard who had admitted John a month ago. He looked past them at the village street, mucky in the cindery dawn, then back, frowning in outrage. “By Cragget’s beard, those bandits are getting above theirselves! Were you hurt? Not but that you couldn’t take on any bandit in the country, either of you,” he added hastily, touching his forehead in salute. “But a band of ’em …” “We took no hurt.” Jenny looked around as they stepped under the half-raised portcullis and into the empty parade court. Only a few servants and batmen stirred, though the smell of smoke issued from the bakeries. By the chapel two yellow-hooded priests and a flute player waited for the augur to proclaim the proper moment for them to go in to morning rites. “Son, I’m a Dragonsbane—and not a very good one—not Alkmar the Godborn.” John glanced in the direction of the chapel. “I’d thought the Commander’d be up at rites.” Morkeleb had set them down on the far edge of the hills, after flying most of the night. A day’s rest at Alyn Hold had given John at least a chance to shave—he’d resembled some mad, bespectacled hermit two nights ago, when Jenny had run up the stone steps of the Hold to throw herself into his arms—but he still looked desperately thin, face worn down to its bones. His shoulders were pointier than they should have been through the patched linen of his shirt, and his hands bandaged.

Jenny was astonished that he wasn’t dead.

“Nay, sir, it’s the Iceriders, see.” The guard touched his brow in apologetic half-salute. “Not that her La’ship ever puts foot in the Temple, but there! Old Firebeard gives her victory all the same. But yesterday half the garrison rode out, when word of ’em came. They burned out two farms over by the Eldwood …”

“There were more at Cair Dhû,” Jenny stopped herself just in time from saying, four days ago. There was no way, short of riding a dragon, that she could have covered the distance. She concluded with barely an in-taken breath, “a week ago; a woman at the Hold saw them. Is Mistress Yseult still here?”

“Oh, aye. Though not up yet, of course.” The guard got a batman to show them to the kitchen, where the cook gave them bread and cheese and mulled cider and John shed his disreputable doublet, pushed up his sleeves, and lent a hand with breakfast porridge for the garrison. Jenny sat quietly in a corner, watching with some amusement his account of being robbed of their horses: “’Master, master,’ says this beggar, ’an entire army of three thousand bandits came down on me farm. They had to take it in turns to sack the house ’cause there wasn’t room for more’n twelve inside at a time, and the line of ’em went right down the lane past two other farms. Me neighbor Cob Rushleigh’s wife was out sellin’ cider to the ones that was waitin’ their chance …’” “They’re getting arrogant.” Lord Pellanor stepped over to the bench and took a seat beside Jenny, a quarter loaf in one hand and a pitcher of cider to share in the other. “We’ll keep a watch for them when we set out for Palmorgin.”

“They’re miles away.” Jenny shook her head. She wondered at the Baron’s presence here. He had given no indication of leaving his siege-damaged Keep when she departed it ten days ago. “But thank you just the same. I called their images into the fire as soon as we knew the beasts were gone and set Words to them, so the horses will come back to Alyn Hold, but there’s no knowing how long it will take.”

The Baron started, then grinned under his gray mustache. “The more fool me, forgetting. Maybe you can come out to Palmorgin again and put a little word on my cattle. Balgodorus hasn’t been back, but the small fry are out in the woods. We lose a beast now and then still.” “I’ll do that,” promised Jenny. “I do it at Alyn. But Come Back spells on beasts wear off quickly if they don’t have an amulet to hold them.”

“And of course the amulet’s the first thing thieves would get rid of,” sighed Pellanor. “Just a thought, my dear.”

“Is that the type of thingummy you’re going to teach old Papa?” A young man dressed for travel in extravagant yellow joined them—one who was clearly his brother stood drinking cider near the stove and laughing uproariously at John’s imitation of himself hunting under rocks and behind bushes for the missing horses. Through the kitchen windows Jenny could see the grooms in the stable court, saddling horses and roping gear onto mules, under the grim eye of a grizzled sergeant, assembling the convoy that would take the latest installment of tax money to Bel in the south. A small, rather fragile-looking old gentleman, bundled in a coat of gray fur fussed around the perimeter of the action, now and then scuttling forward to scribble sigils on the baggage in red chalk—every time he did so the men visibly flinched, and the sergeant had to step in and tactfully draw him back. Bliaud, thought Jenny. Half the sigils were mismade and none of them Sourced or Limited. They would be dangerous if they weren’t wholly ineffective. Jenny laughed. “If he likes. It’s just piseog—hedge-magic. I had to put a spell like that on John’s spectacles so they wouldn’t get lost or broken.”

“Strike me purple, it sounds a damned sight more useful than some of those spells in Papa’s books.” The young man smiled— his name, Jenny recalled hearing somewhere, was Abellus, Bliaud’s son. “I always thought them a bit silly myself, and filthy dirty and just centuries old, but they’re nothing to what this fellow Master Caradoc brought in.”

“Master Caradoc?” said Jenny. “Did the Commander find still another mage, then?”

“Came two days ago,” said Lord Pellanor. “Rode out with her yesterday, after these Iceriders.” In the courtyard Master Bliaud made impressive arm-passes over one of the mules, which promptly kicked its groom. The sergeant took the mage by the arm, explaining gently, and behind their backs the head groom bit his thumb and rubbed surreptitiously at the chalked wyrds. “He’s from Somanthus Isle, across the gulf from Bel. One of the merchant princes. I think like Master Bliaud he kept quiet out of caution, when the Lady Zyerne was all but ruling in the south. But he and the Commander knew one another at court.”

“The Commander said she nearly fell over with surprise when he disclosed himself as a warlock,” Abellus laughed, unconsciously using the pejorative variant of the word. Bullion flashed on his glove as he gestured. “Of all the world, she said, he’s the last she’d have guessed.” “Given that wizards can’t hold property in the south, I bet he kept quiet about it.” John came over to the table, licking butter off his fingers.