Dragonfang (29 page)

Hargav looked like a cornered rat, then his shoulders sagged. ‘My father,’ he muttered.

Several of Jelindel’s deductions fell into place. ‘The Duke was holding him in exchange for the pentacle gem. Yes?’

Hargav nodded gloomily.

‘Your father did not want you to give the gem to the Duke?’

‘No.’

‘But you did it anyway.’

Hargav suddenly seemed much more than a frightened boy on his first sea voyage. Jelindel’s instincts kept her on a knife’s edge.

‘Yes. The Duke only has two other gems, there was no harm in it. With five he can do dangerous things, but he will never get five together.’

‘Besides, Mordicar is half a continent away from D’loom,’ added Jelindel.

‘I never said that.’

‘But you must have thought it. As for never collecting five pentacle gems – you have been misled. Despite what
The Book of Alchemorum
says, there are more than five pentacle gems. In fact, I know of at least eight in existence.’ Jelindel paused, weighing up her chances of getting a further confession out of Hargav. ‘Where does Larachel fit into all of this?’

Hargav shrugged. ‘He’s a simple envoy, on the make. He doesn’t intend returning to D’loom with the profits from this trip.’

‘That I believe,’ Jelindel said. ‘As for being a “simple envoy”, give me more credit. The pair of you are up to your necks in this. Where is he now? Did he go to the Duke’s palace with you?’

Hargav clenched his teeth.

‘So be it,’ Jelindel said. ‘You’re a foolish boy trying to play a man’s game. Now tell me where the Duke has his ringstone circle. Is it in his palace or not?’

Hargav looked startled when Jelindel’s hand shot out to stop him from turning, even before he had moved.

‘One false move, Hargav. That’s all you have left before I lose my patience. Now
talk
!’

‘But –’

‘You have your father back, and the
Dragonfang
sails on the morning tide. Tonight, I have business with the Duke.
Where
is the ringstone?’

Hargav told Jelindel everything she wanted to know about the ringstone. At the end of their conversation she dwelled on just how much he
had
known, and how easily he had tricked her and the crew. There were massive holes in his story, but they
would need to be filled at a more opportune time. As Captain Porterby was often heard to say, time was of the essence.

Jelindel locked Hargav in a storing compartment. She located Henrik and filled him in on as much as she felt he needed to know. ‘I’ve locked Hargav away for the time being until I get a chance to talk to him properly. I suggest you put a guard on him.’

‘He’s unlikely to go far if his father’s on board,’ Henrik reasoned. ‘What’s he done this time? Stolen extra rations from the galley? I’ve warned him more than –’

‘It’s a lot more serious than that, Henrik. I suspect he’s been in league with others all this time. But I don’t have time to explain. The guard isn’t to prevent escape,’ Jelindel said, distractedly. ‘It’s to prevent his murder. There’s been a rotten apple on board and everything points to Larachel. But then, nothing pointed to Hargav and look where that led us.’

‘I’ll see to the guard,’ Henrik agreed. ‘I doubt any of the crew would like to lock up Larachel, though, Jaelin. There’s been talk, you know.’

‘I suspect there is more to Larachel than any of us could possibly imagine,’ Jelindel said. ‘But don’t worry, you’ll not find Larachel on board anyway.’

Jelindel collected the pentacle gem and the drones and left the
Dragonfang
at a run.

The Duke of Mordicar’s temple looked more like a fortified villa than a place where arcane rites were likely to be performed. The walls were high and thick enough to slow down a group of cavalry raiders long enough for the Duke’s private guards to man the defences, and light a beacon pyre to signal for help from the garrison at Mordicar.

Jelindel arrived on a hired horse, wearing light but expensive clothes that she had bought in Mordicar an hour earlier. Her tanned skin and sun-bleached hair were not conspicuous in this part of the continent, but she had visited a bathhouse to smooth out the more obvious signs of her recent sea voyage. An introduction was all she needed, but in order to get that she needed to be taken seriously.

Not far from the temple she spied a small house on a pair of enormous chicken legs. A pair of very large wings protruded from the sides of the house. Several men on stepladders beneath the port wing appeared to be working on an enormous splint for a broken bone.

‘Aye then, sound the test warning,’ called one of the men, and a large beak that protruded from the front of the house bellowed BUK BUK BUKCAW! Although Jelindel nearly fell from her horse, the peasants working in the nearby fields did not even look up. The wings began to move up very slowly. They descended again and locked vertically.

‘Not bad. We could take the splint off tomorrow,’ another man called. ‘After that, serious flight testing.’

Flight testing? Jelindel pondered. As she passed by, the enormous chicken legs walked a few yards, then squatted. Branches and leaves began to grow out of the roof. Never get me up in a thing like
that
, mused Jelindel.

She presented herself as an itinerant Adept at the temple gates, and gave the gatekeeper a scrawled note of introduction. He sent for the steward, who could read, and the steward escorted Jelindel into the cloisters to await her summons. In order to establish his authority, the Duke wanted to keep Jelindel waiting. But the message he had been given contained the words ‘pentacle gem’.

While Jelindel waited she could hear the many sounds of the
temple: the tolling of bells, the whispering of leather sandals scuffing the polished tiles as maids hurried about their work, the intermittent conversation of guards unusually alert at their posts. The temple and its adjacent buildings were full to capacity, yet there was an absence of the cooking smells that would indicate a great feast for the newly arrived guests. Rather, she smelt the fear in the air, and the perspiration of visitors unaccustomed to the equatorial humidity. There was an urgency about the place, a sense of nervous anticipation.

Jelindel filled her senses with everything the temple offered, and decided it was an unsavoury place. She felt some relief when her wait proved to be brief.

The Duke of Mordicar entered the antechamber a mere three minutes after her arrival. His attire was rich in mauves and magenta, his boots, of polished brown leather, covered his knees in courtly fashion. And the sword that hung from his waist was definitely not ceremonial.

Despite the warmth outside, the temple’s thick stone walls maintained an even cool temperature inside. Jelindel found herself wishing that she had purchased slightly warmer garments – it seemed the Duke was a stickler for court fashion.

The Duke stood beneath a guttering oil lamp. His coat of arms showed an embroidered snarling dragon’s head complete with fiery breath; not a crest Jelindel recognised.

‘My steward said that you were interested in selling a pentacle gem,’ he said, looking speculatively at Jelindel. ‘If that is true, you are welcome indeed. If false, you will leave here with your feet tied to your horse’s tail, after your horse has been given a good feeding of purgatives.’

‘A highly imaginative punishment,’ Jelindel said, off-handedly. All the same, her stomach tightened at the Duke’s candour. ‘But
one that will be unnecessary. No, the word “selling” is the only small bend in the truth,’ she explained. ‘I actually intend to give it to you in return for a small favour.’

The Duke looked at her shrewdly then dismissed his lackeys with a click of his fingers. When the doors closed behind them, he said, ‘So? And what is that?’

‘I must be allowed to use your ringstone circle to get home.’

Doubt registered on the Duke’s face. ‘You – you are not of our world?’ he exclaimed. He stepped closer and peered at her.

It wasn’t the amount of incredulity that Jelindel had expected, but it was enough. ‘Correct.’

‘I cannot see a problem with that, as long as you have a pentacle gem in the first place. May I see it before we continue?’

Jelindel opened her hand to reveal a ruby-coloured pentacle gem. The Duke’s eyes widened, then narrowed just as quickly. ‘It’s a fake.’

It was Jelindel’s turn to feel alarm, but she hid it before it surfaced. ‘It’s not glowing as it should within range of the others,’ she said. ‘A simple cloaking device.’ She ran her fingers over the gem’s surface and mumbled a word of cleansing.

The gem shimmered with a lambent light.

The Duke’s hand twitched in Jelindel’s direction. She closed her fingers over the gem again.

‘Well?’ she asked. ‘Are you satisfied?’

‘If it is genuine, we appear to have a deal – but any carnival spell vendor can make objects glow. There is one way to be certain, of course. Come with me. You have arrived at a most fortuitous time – my other guests are also waiting.’

Jelindel quelled her alarm and smiled. She had hoped to look around before committing herself to the ringstone circle. Although Lady Forturian had instructed her in the ceremony of
stone circle rites, it was a different matter altogether to plunge into one without due preparation.

The ringstone was in the open air, in the centre of the temple courtyard. The five stones were neatly chiseled columns. Each one had a little concave in the top and a single emerald stud to mark the exact centre.

Three separate groups of servants escorted the first three pentacle gems from their vaults within the temple. No one person or group was allowed to have access to all three at the same time. A small squad of guards in Skeltian armour carried the box with the fourth gem. The great doors to the courtyard were closed and guards took their positions beside them. The rite could not be interrupted.

‘The fourth pentacle gem belongs to the Preceptor,’ the Duke explained, pleasantly. ‘It is only here on loan, for our mutual benefit.’

Jelindel saw a hawk-faced man watching the proceedings from a distance. He was flanked by a pair of guards. The Preceptor, without a doubt. The man who had quite possibly signed her family’s death warrant. The man, who, with his Adept 12 Fa’red, was the most powerful man on the continent.

The Duke donned a plain black silken robe. His retainer belted the robe, adjusted the cowl and fixed a silver clasp.

‘I take it you have fasted, Jaelin?’ the Duke asked.

‘For three days,’ she lied. Apart from two dry biscuits, she had fasted for six weeks of ‘normal’ time, since the last meal she had eaten at Lady Forturian’s had been lunch in her alternate time.

‘Excellent, excellent,’ the Duke said. ‘Then there shan’t be any mishaps. It’s important the rite be performed according to the rules of such things. Now take your position.’

Jelindel bowed and joined the ceremonial party. She noted
that neither the Preceptor nor Fa’red had stepped forward to insert their pentacle gem in the ringstone. Perfect.

They waited while retainers lit consecrated incense candles set in iron sconces. The pungent scent of blackwood and hoop-grass hung in the air. A gong boomed for five sonorous counts. A hushed expectancy washed over Jelindel, as though all her training, the sum total of her experience, had led her to this moment.

One by one, the pentacle gems were ceremoniously lifted from their containers and placed in each stone’s concave. Finally, it was Jelindel’s turn. She took the fire gem between her thumb and forefinger and placed it in the concave of the fifth stone.

She didn’t immediately join the dignitaries and their retainers in the procession. They shuffled three times around the ringstone, each sprinkling salt to purify and protect the space they were about to create. A sombre chanting of the Om mantra rose from the retainers as they drew pentagrams to banish the negative energy. The mantra was one word only, chanted end over end in one monotonous drone. Jelindel moved slowly towards the chanters, but kept within the consecrated circle.

The Duke stood by the north point with his hands held aloft in open supplication, and invoked the elements of fire, air, earth and water. The procession stopped, and drew invoking pentagrams for positive energy.

The chanting rose in crescendo as the core of power strengthened. The air stilled and Jelindel felt a tingling energy run through her. She had read the runes of the portal spell in
The Book of Alchemorum
, but hearing them invoked in the Duke’s booming voice, the bass chanting and the Duke’s intricate gesticulations, Jelindel realised that the Duke had also been trained in the arts. But had his mentor read correctly the formula hidden within the runes, as Lady Forturian had? Jelindel hoped not.

The Duke thanked the elements in turn and dismissed them, releasing the excess power back into the earth. Trance-like, the chanters now visualised a paraplane portal.

A slight wind hissed throughout the courtyard, whisking the dust into eddying whirlpools that battered and stung the gathering. The closed doors shook on their hinges. Everyone stood their ground. The spell was starting to work. Fine lines of energy were forming a matrix in the centre of the ringstone.

The Duke’s voice rang with unflagging power. The words of enchantment boomed above the now howling wind. ‘
Ashstillin!
’

Eyes clenched shut against the stinging wind and the brilliance of the portal, the chanters took up the call. ‘
Ashstillin!
’ echoed between the four walls of the courtyard.

The portal shimmered, faded, then was called back by the powerful incantation. The spherical portal solidified and swallowed the wind like water pouring into a drain.

Magic is a little like fencing. You have to actually do it to learn the subtle aspects. It was stated in
The Book of Alchemorum
, stolen from the Hazarian library by the Preceptor, that one should stand within the circle and chant certain spells once the last pentacle gem was in place. What the book had failed to mention was that from the instant the gem was placed on the standing stone, the circle would be surrounded by a sphere of unreality. Thus making it absolutely impenetrable.