Dragon's Winter (12 page)

“And Tukalina took pity on them, for She saw how few of them there were, and feared that in their pride they would kill each other, like the monsters and the men, and She did not desire that, because She loved them. So She spread Her wings, and made a wind into the Void, and the Void at that time was empty, except for the stars. So great was that wind that a star tore loose from the night, as a leaf is torn from a tree. It tumbled toward the world, and Tukalina caught it. It burned in Her hands. She blew on it, and cooled it, and then She shaped it, and gave it wings and a tail and a great proud head, and talons mightier than any eagle, and She named it Dragon. She said to Dragon, ‘Go to the north, and find your people.’

“Dragon flew north, and found the changelings, and flew to them. And the changelings were filled with wonder, and it seemed to each of them that here was one more puissant than any of them, and worthy of all honor. And each changeling bowed to Dragon in turn.

“And Tukalina was well pleased. She gave Dragon a home in the north, and She said, ‘You shall live here. And there will always be only a few of you, for many of you would be dangerous: you are changeling now, but at times you may forget this form, and remember only that once you were a star. When you do that, you will wreak great misery on men, and they will kill you. But if you live, you will live long, and the other changelings will bow before you, and obey you.’

“That is why I did it.”

“Hmm,” Thea murmured. She kissed his bare shoulder. “Because Dragon is lord.”

“Because Dragon is lord. And because that is a powerful man, and it cannot hurt Shem to be under his eye and his protection.”

“And you are a clever man,” Thea said. “Very clever.” She twined her bare legs with his. “Now tell me a different kind of story, husband.”

“What kind of story shall that be, wife?”

“One with no words.”

7

“...So the pigs all ran away into the snow, and Lorimir made the young soldiers go to round them up because it was their fault that the pigs had gotten loose, you see, and not the fault of the pig-boys, and now the soldiers are all hunting pigs on the mountainside, and Lorimir and my lord Dragon are sitting in the courtyard counting pigs and pretending to be very stern, except that Lorimir let out this big caw of laughter when three of the men brought back a sow tangled in a salmon net, and I saw Dragon’s shoulders shake, I swear it...”

The girl came to stand in front of him. She was young, with a round face, and black hair cut in a cap around her head. She had a pleasant voice, though not as tuneful as that of the woman in the little house, the one with the child, the one who had fed him.

“I hope you don’t mind that I talk a lot,” she said. “They told me you could not talk, and I thought maybe it was because you had forgotten how and you needed to hear the words to remind you. My grandmother had a fit, just a little one; it made her leg and mouth go numb, and it made her forget words for months, but we talked to her, and the words came back, mostly. Perhaps yours will, too. Is the fire big enough? Dragon said we had to keep you warm.” She had built the fire hot: it blazed in the hearth, yellow and blue and red. He nodded.

“Good. My name is Kiala. My brother Torik will be here in a little while to bathe you, and help you put on your clothes. Oh, and I am to tell you that Macallan will be in to see you. Would you like some water?” She brought it to him in a dipper, clear cold water. He drank with gratitude. He knew she was talking because he frightened her, and he wanted to tell her not to fear him, but then she left, leaving him alone with the fire.

People were shouting and laughing outside the window. He remembered what the girl had said, that someone had left a gate open, and the pigs had gotten loose. He supposed the shouting was the noise of the soldiers, whooping at pigs, and probably the cooks and pig-boys whooping at soldiers. There had been no pigs or pig-boys in the ice, no bright colors, no warmth, There had been laughter, though, and the memory of that cold, soft laughter made him start to shake. He gathered his will and made the trembling stop. He was not in the ice. He was free of the cage.
I will take you home,
his lord had said. Home. He held to that word, as a man holds to a rope in a raging sea.

He heard a flute. Someone was playing “The Ballad of Ewain and Mariela,” not very well. There had been no music on the ice.

Macallan came in. “Well,” the physician said, “you look better.”

Probably he did. He had slept. He was warm. He shut his eyes as Macallan drew back the covers. He knew well enough what had been done to him; he did not need to see it. Macallan prodded his right leg. “Broken?” He nodded. It had snapped in a fall during his first escape attempt. He had splinted it himself, and gone on, but they had found him, and brought him back, and put him back in the cage.

“Didn’t feed you very well, did they?” Macallan put an ear to his chest, and thumped on him. “Lungs seem clear.” He drew the covers back. “Did they take your tongue?” His voice was matter-of-fact. Azil shook his head. “Good. You have to eat, and to move, so that your body can start to make muscle. I will send Torik to help you dress and bring you food. Let me see your hands.” He took hold of Azil’s curled fingers, and opened them gently, drawing his breath in when he saw the deformities, and the terrible red scars. “Can you move your fingers?” Azil slowly closed his fingers, and opened them again. “Your arms?”

He lifted his arms from the covers. They moved perhaps six inches. After his first escape Gorthas had ordered him bound: they had tied his arms behind his back with leather thongs around his wrists and elbows. They threw food into the cage, and he ate by putting his face to the floor. When they cut the thongs, his arms and hands had flapped as if the strings of his shoulders had been cut by a knife.

Macallan said, “It will improve. But I do not know how the hell you got here.”

He said the same thing, later, to the lord of the Keep. They sat side by side on a bench in the courtyard. The yard was quiet; the soldiers had retrieved most of the wayward pigs. “I have seen the result of worse torment. Though he is still in pain. But to have traveled alone in the north, over rocks and snow, starving, half-frozen, and to still be alive—” He shook his head in amazement. “Most men could not have done it.”

“Will he—can he speak?”

“I don’t know. He has the means. I would guess that he was forbidden to speak, punished if he did.”

“He might be under a spell,” Karadur said.

Macallan glanced sideways at his lord’s unrevealing profile. He knew that Azil had left the Keep in the company of Tenjiro, the lord’s twin brother. Rumor in the Keep then had said that Tenjiro Atani was a magician. For two years, tales had drifted with the hunters out of the north woods, tales of warriors of ice, and hideous fanged beasts, and fogs that no wind could dissipate.

“He might be. But spells fade far from their maker, or at least, so it is said.”

“I need him to speak,” Karadur said. “I need to know what he knows.”

Macallan said, “It will happen, or it will not. There’s nothing I can do for it. And even if he regains his speech, he may not be able to tell you what you need to know.”

“Will he otherwise recover?”

“Will his body recover? Probably. He may limp on one leg. His hands—something very brutal was done to his hands. Broken, burned—I don’t know what. Wasn’t he a musician? He’ll never hold harp or flute again, or a pen, or any fine instrument. Will his mind and his heart recover? I don’t know. He is not what he was. I do not know what he is; I doubt that he knows what he is. He has been emptied.”

“Then he must be filled,” Karadur said, and rose. He went into the castle, to the room in which they had put Azil. Torik, sitting on the bed, was helping the man close his fingers around a spoon.

Karadur said, “Go outside.” Torik went. Karadur sat where Torik had been sitting. He brought the spoon handle to Azil’s right hand, and waited for him to tighten his fingers around it, and then closed his own fingers lightly around Azil’s shattered ones. The meal was simple, a child’s meal, porridge with bits of meat in it. “Eat,” he said. “I want you strong.” Beneath his hand, Azil struggled to clench his fingers and to lift the spoon. Bit by bit, slowly, the dragon-lord fed Azil the meal, and then brought him water, and helped him drink.

“Can you say my name?”

Azil swallowed, and shook his head.

“Can you say
his
name?”

Azil’s whole body went rigid.

“You will. I need you strong, and I need you to speak.” He cupped Azil’s face in one hand. There was no flesh on the man; it was like holding a skull. Under his grip, Azil was trembling. Karadur let him go, and stood, and made his voice gentle. “I will send Torik to you. Find a way to tell him what you need.”

He went out, and gestured Torik to go in. Inside his head, he condemned his twin to all the hells that all the gods of all the universes had ever made. The fire was moving in him, glowing and pulsing beneath his skin. Light flickered on his hands, and those of his house who needed to go to the other end of the hall hesitated, and found a different path, rather than pass that formidable burning presence leaning on the tapestried wall.

The next morning, the steward of Dragon Keep, Aum Nialsdatter, who was also Azil’s mother, went to see him. Whatever she said was not anywhere recorded, and what Azil, still wordless, responded, no one knew but those two alone. That night, Azil was able to feed himself, though slowly. Three days later, he could dress himself.

Six days later, in the evening, Karadur sat at a table in the castle library, studying a map. Books, most of them old, and worn, and powdered with decades of dust, made a rickety tower at his elbow. The door swung open; Azil limped in. Torik followed him.

The boy said, “My lord, I couldn’t stop him.”

Karadur said, “Why should you stop him? He can go anywhere he wants to. Get that chair.” Torik scrambled across the room and struggled with the big chair. He brought it to the table. Azil sat. His dark eyes gleamed with triumph, and his face was less gaunt. “Torik, get him a glass.” Torik brought a glass from the cabinet by the wall. “Thank you. You may go now.” He saw anxiety in the boy’s face. “What is it?”

“Lord, he’s never walked so far before—”

“I’ll care for him. Go on.” The boy bowed, and obeyed. Karadur poured wine into the second glass, filling it nearly to the brim.

Azil lifted it to his lips with his deformed right hand. His wrist trembled slightly, but he did not drop the glass or spill the wine. He drank, and set it down.

“Good,” Karadur said. “You are getting stronger. Say my name.”

Azil tried. And could not. He slammed both hands on the table. His face whitened at the jolting pain.

“Don’t do that,” Karadur said sharply. “Look at this.” Turning the map around, he slid it across the table to Azil, and moved the candelabrum so that light fell on the thin old paper. “This library is full of maps. Old maps. Some are hundred of years old, and have been in this library nearly that long. There are maps of every county and city in Ryoka, from every time, so that if you set them side by side, you can see how a city has changed. There are maps of Isoj, with the invasion paths marked. There are maps of sea currents, star maps, even a map of the desert. There are maps of lands I have never heard of. And this one. It is the best map of the north I can find. Here is Hornlund. Unik. Ashavik. Tolnik. Mitligund.

“I have spoken with the northern hunters and with people who fled the north with their possessions on sleds. They tell me their villages are burned, broken, gone. A huge black fortress, larger than Dragon Keep, has appeared just north of Mitligund. That is
his
castle, is it not? Show me where it is.”

Azil drank a little, and the color came back to his face. He drew a line with his right forefinger along the map. Karadur reached for the quill beside his right hand, and daubed a mark on the map. “Good.” He reached his huge left hand out suddenly, and trapped Azil’s right hand against the table. “But not sufficient. What did he do to you, that destroyed your hands?” Azil tried to free himself, and could not. Karadur seized his chin with his other hand. “Tell me.” Azil caught his breath, unable to look away from that fiery blue gaze. Blue fire stroked his skin. Then Karadur released him.

“He makes himself a kingdom on the ice.” He put a hand on the tower of books. “Can you guess what
these
are? Old histories, old legends. They speak of another castle: the Black Citadel, they name it. It was the stronghold of the Dark Mage, during the time of the Mage Wars. Is it the same castle? The hunters tell of hideous fanged beasts that leap on them from the mist. Do you know where they come from? Are they illusion or real?” The candle flames flared like torches. Karadur glared at them, and they retreated. “You were with him for two and a half years. You must know. I need you to speak. Say my name. Say it!”

Azil was silent.

Karadur rose over him. “Say my name!”

The candlelight flared as if a wind had caught the flames. Toothy shadows leaped across the table and the map. Azil looked despairingly, painfully, courageously at him, as he might have looked at an avalanche, or a firestorm. Karadur strode from the chamber. Torik sat cross-legged on the floor, playing a game with colored stones.