Dragon's Ring

Dragon's Ring
by
Dave Freer

Table of Contents

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2009 by Dave Freer
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.
A Baen Books Original
Baen Publishing Enterprises
P.O. Box 1403
Riverdale, NY 10471
www.baen.com
ISBN 13: 978-1-4391-3319-4
Cover art by Bob Eggleton
First printing, October 2009
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Freer, Dave.
  Dragon's ring / Dave Freer.
       p. cm.
  ISBN-13: 978-1-4391-3319-4 (hc)
  ISBN-10: 1-4391-3319-0
1.  Magic—Fiction.  I. Title.
  PR9369.3.F695D73 2009
  813'.54—dc22
                            2009017405
Pages by Joy Freeman (www.pagesbyjoy.com)
Printed in the United States of America

 

This one is for my sons, Paddy and James,
the two finest lads in my universe.
I hope it may give you even one thousandth
as much pride and joy as you have given to me.

BAEN BOOKS by DAVE FREER

Dragon's Ring
A Mankind Witch
The Forlorn

with Eric Flint

Rats, Bats & Vats
The Rats, The Bats & the Ugly
Pyramid Scheme
Pyramid Power
Slow Train to Arcturus
The Sorceress of Karres
(forthcoming)

with Eric Flint & Mercedes Lackey

The Shadow of the Lion
This Rough Magic
Much Fall of Blood
(forthcoming)
The Wizard of Karres

This book owes its existence to my agent Mike Kabongo, and to editor extraordinaire Toni Weisskopf at Baen Books. My thanks to Artist Bob Eggleton for giving me a great cover, and to Jennie Faries and Carol Russo for fixing the last minute glitch with the name, which I appreciate ever so much.

My first readers: thank you, my friends, for putting up with erratic grammar and worse spelling and helping me chop the story out from the raw state, for seeing its potential in the rough, and for the constructive shredding. It's the cutter who turns the gemstone from a mere rock into a jewel.

And finally, thanks to my wife Barbara, who somehow copes with a husband whose head is often in another world entirely, and still does more for my writing than anyone else.

Actaeon

Centaur exile.

Belet

A king among the creatures of smokeless flame.

Brennarn

Dragon, ruler of Cark.

Breshy/Dvalinn

The leading artificer of the dvergar.

Díleas

Black and white sheepdog.

Finn/Fionn

Black dragon. (The word means "fair.")

Gywndar

Alv prince of Yenfar.

Groblek

Lord of the mountains. Possibly a mountain.

Haborym

A duke among the creatures of smokeless flame.

Hallgerd

Meb's stepmother.

Hrodenynbrys

Merrow and magical musician.

Hrolf

Meb's older step-brother, skipper of the fishing vessel.

Ixion

A centaur head of a phalanx.

Jakarin

Dragon who had lost her hoard. Friend of Myrcupa.

Justin

Scribe, petty thief, informer.

Keri

Innkeeper's daughter, Justin's lover.

Margetha

Chieftainess of the Merrow.

Meb/Anghared/Scrap

Human magic worker.

Mikka

Meb's younger stepbrother. A fisherman.

Myrcupa

Dragon, nasty piece of work.

Leilin

Loftafar woman, seamstress.

Lyr

All sprites are called Lyr.

Motsognir

Elderly king of the dvergar.

Ragath

Alvar duke of Starsey.

Rennalinn

An alvar lord from Maygn Isle.

Tessara

Female dragon, much involved in the dragon sisterhood.

Vorlian

Dragon overlord of Starsey. A large powerful dragon.

Zuamar

Dragon, old, rich and powerful. Ruler of Yenfar.

 

The dragon flew above the rage of the elements. Above the tumultuous maelstrom of ocean swirling into the void. Above the sheet lightnings and vortexes of dark energies released as the tower fell, with the vast granite masonry shattering into swirling dust.

A fierce delight filled his dragonish heart as he looked down on it.

The narrow—and, to Fionn's strange vision—coruscating band of twisted and constrained elsewhere that was one of the seven anchors of the place of dragons, stretched. Torrents of energy, shimmering fountains of it, across all the spectra, crackled and shrieked away into parallel planes. Great gouts of paramatter appeared briefly to interact with here-matter, before reaching an implosive null-state, destroying more and more of the magical foundation of the guardian tower.

The tower fell at last, into the endless void . . . and the threads of constrained elsewhere parted.

The dragon, his work done, fled.

Even a dragon could be destroyed by that cataclysm he'd caused. Pieces of here and elsewhere roiled in the backlash wave, a tsunami of water and debris that bore all before it.

Nothing could live through that wave.

Except . . . something did.

Something small, soft and terribly fragile, which was torn from a desperate mother's arms. A mother somewhere on the other side of elsewhere.

The dragon, winging his way south, was not aware of it, in all the chaos he had caused.

This was beyond the babe's understanding too. She only knew that she was suddenly cold, wet and frightened. But the sea would not hold her, nor could the wild surge warm and caress her. She screamed, demanded that it be changed. She did not understand how or what was happening. But she wanted it to stop, NOW.

And it did. Her kind could not drown. The wave cast her up on the broken shell shingle. She wanted warmth, and she wanted a breast. For comfort, as much as anything. So she called for it.

"It's alive!"

"Leave it. It's no mortal child, Hallgerd. Let the sea take it back to where it belongs."

"It's a baby, Wulfstan. I know a human baby when I see one," said Hallgerd, picking up the girl-child up. It burrowed into her arms, nuzzling. She knew right then that she'd never give it up, no matter what the headman said. It filled the hole her own lost child left in her heart.

"It's ill luck to cheat the sea of its meat," he said, crossly.

"The sea spat it out," said Hallgerd, unbuttoning her blouse.

Wulfstan spat too, onto the wet shingle. "Nothing good will come of it, mark my words."

A few yards in front of Meb, the green headland dropped away to the sea far below the fractured basalt of the cliff. The wind carried the shriek and mew of the gray-backed gulls swooping out from their cliff-nests. That should have been a warning to her.

But Meb was too busy. Dreaming, and lost in her dream.

When the boats came in on the morrow's tide, she'd be working too hard to dream. Along with every other woman in the fishing hamlet, she'd be gilling and gutting fish, as fast as her hands could work. A person had to concentrate when they had a razor-sharp knife in their hand. She still had the scar from learning that lesson. Today . . . well, today the East wind had kept everyone home, with not as much as a coble out on the bay. A cold mist clung to the water out there, as it did when the wind was in this quarter, hiding reefs and landmarks, muffling the warning sounds of surf.

She sighed. There had to be more to life than fish-guts. She turned the focus of her attention inward again, not sure what had disturbed her. In her mind, she rode a dragon across the sky of Tasmarin. His scales gleamed obsidian . . .

Being precise by nature she tried to get the details of the dragon right, but it evaded her. Of course, there was no such thing as a black dragon, but the basic shape was the same for all dragons. Their overlord, the dragon Lord Zuamar, flew seldom, but if only he would appear and take a turn over the bay, and land on the fang-rocks across the inlet.

She looked out across the sea, her gaze drifting unseeing across the black ship clawing its way inwards across the bay. Another, and then another, followed it, sliding out of the cloaking sea-mist, long oars raking herringbone patterns on the still water. Meb was not truly aware of their presence. They were not what she was looking for.

And then, to her delight, she saw the dragon spin down from heaven in a tasseled and spiky spiral of shimmer of sable, flaring its wings to land on the rocks across the water from the ships.

Suddenly her mind registered the shrieking gulls . . . and the ships. Her first thought was that the fleet must be in early—the gulls were flying off to feast on the scraps. And here she was idling on the cliff-top! She stood up hastily, wiping her hands on her patched skirts.

But . . . but they hadn't gone to sea today!

A second, incredulous look told her that this was something far worse than being late for the gutting. The gulls might be fooled into believing that all ships were fishing-boats, but Meb wasn't. She knew a galley from a fat-bottomed fishing smack, no matter what her adopted family said about her.

A bare second's hesitation and she lifted her skirts and began to sprint back, frantically screaming "raiders!"

The broken basalt of the cliff curved high above the bay. From time to time pieces fell off, down into the hungry waves that ate at its foot. Running along its edge Meb was gasping for breath already. If she'd stopped to think for a moment, she'd have realized that she couldn't both run and yell, but she wasn't thinking, right then. Still doing her best to sprint, she cut as close to the curve of the rotting cliff-top as she dared. She had to get to the village before them.

Too late, Meb realized that she'd dared too much.

A curl of white-hot steam drifted away from Fionn's mouth. His talons dug into the sea-etched basalt. He twitched, sending a shimmering shiver through his ebony scales. He'd always been a bit wary about the vast surge of salt water. It was even more relentless than dragons.