Dragon Stones (30 page)

"Yes," Diasa said.  "I think I would."

As dusk approached, Ponn and T'Sian returned to The Man with a Sack of Sorrows.  The only productive thing they had accomplished was getting Ponn a warmer garment; the rest of the day had been spent wandering the city, asking fruitless questions, slipping coins to questionable characters in exchange for equally questionable information.  The dragon, increasingly frustrated, had begun to move from bribery to threats, prompting Ponn to call off their search for the day.  She capitulated with bad grace, complaining about the perfidiousness of men, convinced that they were all liars.

"We don't even know that Gelt came to Astilan," Ponn reminded her as they approached the inn.  "That was never more than an assumption."

"Where else would he go?"

Ponn shrugged.  "It depends who he works for."

"He works for Varmot," T'Sian said.  Then:  "Talking to these street people is futile.  We must go to the castle and confront him."

"Confront the king?"

"Yes."

"In your true form?"

"Of course.  Showing up at his gate in
this
guise will hardly impress him."  She looked at the sky.  "This would be a good time to attack."

"But it's getting dark."

"Yes, and you men cannot see in the dark.  I can."

"There are many innocent people in the castle," Ponn said.  "Women, children, men who had nothing to do with Gelt.  If you destroy it, you will hurt them."

"I do not intend to destroy it," she said.  "Not right away.  First I will damage it a little, to make him come out."  Suddenly she stopped walking.  The inn stood nearby; he smelled dinner cooking, heard voices talking, laughing.

"T'Sian?"

She paid him no attention, looking off to the northwest, peering into the darkness.  He looked in that direction, but saw nothing except the gloom of approaching night as it settled over the city's walls.

She said:  "Can you see them?"

"What?"

"Things in the sky, coming this way."

"Where?  I don't see anything."

"There," she said, pointing a long, crimson-tipped finger at the distant horizon.  He spotted them then, in the fading twilight, dark shapes silhouetted against the clouds, little more than specks.

"What are they?"

"Giant eagles, far away," she said, "like the ones you described to me when we first met."

"No.  So many?  It can't be.  It's a trick of the light.  They must be smaller birds, flying nearby."

"Believe what I tell you.  They
are
eagles, Pyodor Ponn, and they carry men on their backs.  Varmot's minions are returning from some other depredation."

Ponn watched them coming closer.  T'Sian was right, he realized; they
were
eagles, they
did
bear riders.  They carried objects as well, sacks or parcels, clutched in their talons.  Loot?  It was difficult to tell.  He moved into the street, away from the dragon, hoping for a clearer view.  Instead he spotted another group, as large as the first, approaching from the southeast.

Two groups, converging on the city from two directions.

An attack from two sides.

He turned back to the dragon.  "T'Sian, they aren't coming to bring Varmot treasures!  They …"  He trailed off.

She was gone.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Night.

On the outskirts of town, where the inn stood, Astilan was lost under the blanket of darkness, with only the house-lights to show that men lived here.  Deeper in the city, torches and lamps burned along the streets, illuminating the roads and alleys for those whose business extended into the hours of night, or who didn't venture out until the sun had gone down.

As her great wings pulled her higher into the sky, T'Sian could see the whole city beneath her, larger than any settlement of men had a right to be, spreading across the plains like a burgeoning growth.  She spiraled higher, above the level of the approaching eagles.  As she rose, she spotted a second group, coming from a different direction.

Pyodor Ponn had only spoken of four eagles, but here were two groups of riders, flying in formation, numbering in the dozens.  The men astride the birds wore different uniforms than the prison-wagon guards she had killed the night before.  A ruse?  Ponn said Gelt had worn no colors, carried no device.  Rather than attack immediately, she decided to wait, to see what these men would do.

The group from the north arrived first, fanning out as they crossed the river.  The eagles clutched cargo in their talons;  the packages glowed like embers, not with heat exactly, but with energy, power, like a wildfire contained and waiting to explode in a consuming fury.

Dragon stones.  
Her
stones, and more.

She pulled herself higher, rising well above the level where the eagles flew.  They came in low, a few hundred feet above the ground.  She wondered if anyone in the city had seen them, if an alarm would be raised.  She doubted it.  The beating of their wings made no sound, and the darkness concealed their approach; only her exceptional vision had enabled her to see them.  If she had not pointed them out to Ponn, he would have gone in ignorance of them.

The darkness concealed her as well; they would not know she was in the air with them.  She aimed herself northwest, toward the nearer group, gliding high above their heads.  Looking down upon them, she saw that they had split into angled rows like migrating birds.  

Once she had cleared the ranks of the attackers, she banked around and approached them from behind. She could incinerate them now, but instead she waited, wondering where they would go.  Below them was a part of the city she and Ponn had not visited that day, a neighborhood of large homes and broad avenues surrounding the castle of King Varmot, gated and walled off from the rest of the town.

Suddenly all the eagles released their radiant burdens and then banked sharply upward, climbing away from the city.  T'Sian watched the glowing bundles fall, mystified.  Why would these men go to all the trouble of stealing her crystals, only to drop them in the streets of Astilan?  It made no sense.

Then the first of the packages hit the ground, and roaring explosions tore the night to shreds.  Smoke and fire belched into the sky, heaving the air against her.  She had to struggle to maintain control against the force of the shockwaves.  She saw rings of heat and force rippling through the city, leveling buildings, setting them ablaze.

T'Sian pulled up and away from the blasts, afterimages lingering in her vision, fading just in time for her to see the second wave of eagles drop their own packages in another neighborhood to the south.  Where the devices landed, Astilan bloomed like a fiery rose.  Structures fell to splinters, stones cracked, trees burned.

These men had taken her crystals and transformed them into weapons; they had wanted to make themselves into dragons, and they had succeeded.

Suddenly an eagle swooped up in front of her and stopped, its wings thrumming as it hovered in the turbulent air.  Two men rode on its back, one pulling on the reins, the other strapped in behind him.  The driver was clearly terrified, but the one behind stared at her with an expression of intense concentration.  His lips moved quickly, as if he were whispering rapid instructions to his companion.

She didn't know who they might be; nor did she care.  She reared back and spat fire at them, sending a stream of brilliant flame scorching across the night to incinerate them where they hovered in insolent challenge.  But
the fire broke harmlessly over the men and the bird, curving around them as if they were encased in an invisible, fireproof sphere, leaving them untouched.  The driver cringed at the dancing flames, but the one who whispered continued to stare through them, his gaze
fixed on her; and then she knew which of them was her true foe, and which was but a fool.

She closed her mouth and the flow of fire stopped.  The men and their mount held steady.  In the distance, more explosions threw earth and debris into the air, sent smoke billowing skyward in curling clouds.  They had begun to bomb other parts of the city, farther from the castle.  The night had become full of screams, and for a moment she thought of Pyodor Ponn, wondering if he was safe.

The whispering man suddenly spoke.  "Why is a
dragon
defending Astilan?" he said, his voice unnaturally loud and clear, as if he had amplified it somehow.  "Surely you are not one of Varmot's minions?"

"
I am no one's minion
," T'Sian said.  "
Tell me who sent you and I will spare your life.
"

The man laughed at her.  He
laughed
.  Incensed, she sent another torrent of flame against them, to no more effect than before.  But then she felt something reach down her throat, some force, gripping like a hand; it caught hold of the fire and drew it out of her like a brightly-colored ribbon.  She clamped her mouth shut, but even so, the flames kept coming, streaming between her teeth, out her nose.

What manner of man could do such things?

As the last of her fire flickered out and the hand released its hold, she turned and dove toward the city, down into the fiery, ruined streets, crashing into the midst of an inferno.  She could feel the cold hollow in her breast where the crystals had been, empty now, nothing but ashes in there.  This man, with his words, had drained her dry.

Suddenly the ground erupted beneath her, earth and stone swallowing her feet and the lower part of her legs.  Astonished, she spread her wings and tried to take flight, but the bonds held her fast.  The flames nearest her sputtered and died, covered over by a creeping tide of dirt; the men on the eagle descended in front of her, hovering near the ground.

"Hold the dragon tight, Deliban," the whispering man said.

Something emerged from the ground in front of her, rising from the earth and stones as if it were part of them.  It took a vaguely human shape, perhaps mimicking the form of the one who must be its master, but it made no response.

"Kill the beast and be done!" the driver said.

"
Kill
her?  Oh, no.  We will bring her back with us.  The princes will appreciate such a gift, don't you think?  A dragon of their very own?  Perhaps it will make up for the loss of the oracle."

"Are you mad?" the driver cried.  "Bring a
dragon
back to Dunshandrin?  How will you control it?"

"That is not your concern.  Take us closer."

"I will not!"

"You will do as you're told."

As the reluctant pilot guided his mount closer, T'Sian lashed out with her tail, which had remained free of the earthen bonds that held her down.  It wasn't long enough to reach the humans, but the strange earth-creature was within striking distance; she swept it into the air, sending it flying at the eagle like a thrown boulder.  The bird screeched as the creature smashed into it, knocking it out of the sky.  The earthen bonds around her loosened and she broke free, pivoting in the narrow space to run in the other direction, away from the men and the earth monster.  She veered to the right, down a side street barely wide enough to contain her even with wings fully folded.  Burning structures scraped her on both sides, scratching against her metal-hard scales.  Hoping that the powerful man would not be able to find her in the smoke and fire, she began the transformation into her human guise.  She was not fleeing, not admitting defeat; she was merely assuming a camouflage, so that she would have time to think, to devise a plan.

When her change was nearly complete and her senses restored, she began to hear the man's voice from the sky.  She could not see him through the smoke, but thought he must be nearby.  "Dragon?" he called.  "Where are you, dragon?"

T'Sian had hoped the man had been killed when she knocked his eagle out of the air, but evidently he had survived and found himself a new mount.  She peered into the sky but the heat of the inferno polluted the night, kept her from seeing the inconsequential warmth of the man or his giant bird.

"I have realized who you must be, dragon," the man continued; and after a moment she realized that she had begun moving in his direction, walking up the alley toward the wide street.  She stopped herself, grabbing onto a burning post, resisting his entreaty.  What manner of man was this, who could lure her with the sound of his voice?

"You must be the dragon from the mountains, whose hatchlings we killed to take their stones," he said.  "Had we known you were so easily defeated, we might not have waited for you to be gone before we attacked."

So this was one of the men she had been seeking!  He would pay for what he had done to her babies!  She opened her mouth to name him a butcher and a coward, then checked her rage and remained silent.  That was what he wanted; he was trying to find her, to goad her into revealing herself.  She was unprepared to face this man right now.  She needed to talk to Pyodor Ponn, to find out what he knew of men who used words to bend the world to their will.