Lords of the Sky (13 page)

They raised their arms, and I set a hand against each of their temples and slammed their heads together. I was, as I have said, no weakling, and I put all my strength into my effort. There was a dull sound, like two blocks of wood banged, and both gasped and went limp, falling bonelessly to the stones.

Cleton said, “I thought you needed no aid; I see you’ve no honor,” and I heard both anger and contempt in his voice.

Raede grunted and continued his advance. Cleton stood his ground, and I feared he would be caught in Raede’s terrible embrace. Then I winced, instinctively sympathetic, as he kicked Raede between the legs.

Raede squealed like a pig at gelding and clasped both hands to his assaulted manhood, knees and waist bending as
he curled over the source of his pain. His eyes were closed and his mouth wide open. Cleton performed a kind of pirouette that spun him full around and lifted his other leg in a sweeping kick to Raede’s chest. It was again so swift, I was not quite sure what my friend had done, but I saw Raede lifted onto his toes and toppled sideways. A choking moan burst from his open mouth, and he made no effort to rise, instead twisting in a fetal ball. Even in the yard’s wan light I could see his face was horribly pale. I wondered if he was dying.

Cleton stood watching him, his expression dispassionate. There was a murmur from the onlookers, and someone called for Cleton to finish the fight. My friend said, “It is finished.”

And then a toneless voice said, “Indeed it is, and now the price shall be paid.”

I turned, startled, to find Ardyon at my back, behind him two Changed. He glanced at the two students lying unconscious at my feet and raised his brows in silent inquiry. I nodded, silent myself, my heart beating very fast. He touched me on the shoulder with his caduceus and said, “Come with me.” The staff jutted in Cleton’s direction and the warden said, “And you.”

The crowd parted, opening a path to the gate, and we followed Ardyon to our punishment.

I
learned a great deal about stables in the days that followed. Ardyon decreed that we should relieve the Changed whose task it usually was to tend the horse pens, and so for three weeks Cleton and I spent our evenings shoveling dung. It was tedious, but not especially hard labor; the worst thing about it was the smell that permeated our clothes. I grew accustomed to it soon enough, but for all we found we had won a new respect amongst our fellow students, still we must suffer their teasing—the ostentatiously pinched nostrils, the elaborate offers of pomanders and scented soaps. We grinned and bore it: at least we were not expelled.

I was intrigued by the expertise with which Cleton had dispatched Raede (who lay recovering in the infirmary with Leon and Tyras for company) and was about to question him the first evening when a small man with the fair hair and pale skin of northern Draggonek came into the stable. He had very bright eyes, set close together, and wore the black sash of an instructor in the martial arts.

“I am called Keran,” he said, and preempted my inquiry. “Where did you learn to fight?”

“With the warband,” Cleton answered, leaning on his shovel.

Keran nodded and settled atop a stall watching us.
“Don’t let me halt your labors,” he said, “else Ardyon shall find you more.”

We returned to the task in hand. Keran said, “Did you not think it unfair? Raede is, after all, without skill in the art.” His voice was soft, with a slight northern burr, giving no hint whether he criticized or merely questioned.

Cleton deposited a pile of steaming dung in the cart and shrugged. “I warned him against baiting me,” he said, “and he’d the advantage of his size and strength.”

Keran’s face was impassive as he returned, “But you well know that size and strength are no match for skill.”

“Raede is stupid,” said Cleton calmly. “He took offense at the accident of my birth. I sought no fight, but he forced it on me—because I am an aeldor’s son, which should have warned him I’d have the advantage of training.”

I thought Keran might have smiled then, but his tone remained dispassionate as he said, “You might have killed him.”

“I might,” Cleton agreed, “but I did not. Only taught him a lesson when he called his friends to help him.”

Keran grunted and looked to me. I read a question in his eyes and said, “I saw Raede signal them, and then they readied to grab Cleton. That was unfair.”

“So you tapped their heads,” said Keran.

“I’ve not Cleton’s skill,” I said, “so I did what I could. Should I have stood by?”

“No,” said Keran, and he did smile then. “Not whilst a comrade faced unfair odds.”

I felt both vindicated and relieved. “They’re not bad hurt?” I asked.

“They’ll wake with aching heads,” he told me. “And Raede will ache in other parts, but they’ll survive. Likely they’ve learned a lesson, too. But you two—here not a full day and already fighting?”

“They left us little choice,” said Cleton. “What else could we do?”

Keran nodded as if thinking about that, then murmured, “We’ve rules here, and one is that disputes be settled under the eyes of a tutor. I suspect it’s unlikely you’ll receive another challenge, but does it come, you’ll meet it with me watching. Do you understand?”

We nodded dutifully, and I ventured to ask, “When shall the lessons begin?”

Keran chuckled then and said, “Are you so bloodthirsty, Daviot?”

I was somewhat surprised he knew my name, and shook my head, blushing. “No,” I assured him, “but I’d learn to defend myself. Like Cleton.”

“In time you shall,” he promised. “But not for this year. The Mnemonikos-elect receive no training in the martial arts until they are formally accepted. Do you remain, then next year you’ll start to learn.”

This was not what Andyrt had led me to believe, and once I should have been disappointed, but now I only nodded, accepting.

“Patience is one of the virtues cultivated here,” said Keran. “Do you study on that.”

Again we nodded, and he sprang limber from his perch, waving a casual farewell as he sauntered away.

When he was gone out the door, Cleton said, “I’ll tutor you, if you wish. But it had best be in secret.”

So it was that I received clandestine instruction in the art of unarmed combat. It was not easy, for our sudden fame brought us a following and we must escape our admiring friends to practice, but we managed as best we could, and Cleton taught me well.

Martus was our sole official tutor for that year. He seemed to me a fount of knowledge, his memory prodigious, his ability to impart his erudition astounding. History and the basic mnemonic techniques were his subjects—what he casually named “the tricks of our trade”—and from him I learned to refine my natural talent. It was not, I came to realize, simply a matter of remembering: there was too much to remember, and to hold and recall all of it, we must learn to use those mental devices that enable us to fix things in our minds as if in storage, to be called up by means of specific images or key words. I remember well Martus’s first explanation of the technique.

He brought us to a study chamber where there stood a cabinet set with numerous drawers, a piece of simple carpentry. Martus set a hand on its polished surface and said, “This is your mind. Each drawer holds a memory.” He tapped a
drawer. “Label each one, and when you need it”—he took a rosewood knob and drew out the drawer—“you may simply open it.”

Behind me I heard someone—Raede, I think—mutter, “Are we then woodenheads?” Martus only smiled, easygoing man that he was, and said, “This is the simplest explanation—one even a woodenhead can understand,” which elicited laughter and ended the muttering. He was a fine tutor: he made our lessons enjoyable, and so we learned them the better.

He taught us to observe and memorize, to listen and recall with total accuracy, devoid of embellishment. He would take us about the College and have us study rooms, or the sundry walled gardens, then ask us, singly and alone, to describe them; sometimes we would go into the city, and after recount all we had seen, retrace our routes. Thus did we learn something of Durbrecht’s geography—and its taverns, for Martus was fond of good ale and saw no reason why our lessons should not be conducted in taprooms. I excelled at this, and I drank in the history he taught us, finding soon that I need not think consciously of his analogy with the cabinet, but employed it automatically. Thus I learned of our past and came to understand better the age-old enmity of Dhar and Ahn. And, though I knew it not, the seed of an idea was planted.

In the Dawntime the people were nomads, wandering the cold northern plains far beyond the Dragonsteeth Mountains. There were no Rememberers then, and so little is known of those ancient times, save that the wanderers came south into what then was named Tartarus and now is called the Forgotten Country.

There they met the dragons.

The land was mountainous, the slopes and valleys thickly wooded, and no men lived there, only the dragons and the game on which the dragons preyed.

They were great, the dragons, vast and ferocious, terrible hunters whose wings would darken the sky, their teeth and talons like sword blades. They were the Lords of the Sky then, living in their great Dragoncastles, lofty on the highest peaks, descending into the valleys to hunt. And to them the Dhar were no more than prey: they hunted men as they did
the animals of the woods and fields. The people feared them, but the people had traveled far in their wanderings and found a land rich in game, where they might linger and—were they not taken by the dragons—grow sleek on the land’s bounty. So it was they settled in Tartarus, finding ways in which they might defeat the great sky-hunters.

They built strong holds and tamed the wild beasts, raising herds of meat animals for themselves, but also for the dragons, to whom they offered sacrifice from their herds, that the winged ones not slaughter men. Thus did cunning overcome strength, and the people spread through the valleys and forests. But none ventured, ever, into the high country, which was the domain of the dragons.

And then the Dhar found the beginnings of magic.

There were some amongst them, they discovered, able to converse with the dragons. This was a thing of great wonder, for the people had thought the dragons like wolves, or the mountain cats—all fury and hunger. But they were not; they were, in their alien fashion, more akin to men than the beasts, for they spoke amongst themselves, and gathered in squadrons, and were loyal one to another. It was a very great wonder, and those men able to understand the sky-hunters’ tongue were named Dragonmasters and hailed as saviors, for they interceded betwixt the Dhar and the dragons, oftentimes persuading the great predators to take their kills from the offered herds, not the people.

Then there was a time of peace and the Dhar grew in numbers, until the Dragonmasters warned that they were become so many, the dragons felt their ancestral land was overrun and spoke of culling the invaders.

Some scoffed at this, and the chiefs told the Dragonmasters that their duty it was to dissuade the dragons and protect their fellow men, and the warnings went unheeded. And in time the dragons came against the people in a terrible slaughter, seeking to drive them from Tartarus. Then did many turn against the Dragonmasters, blaming them, but the more sensible of the chieftains saw that they could not defeat such dreadful foes and looked once more southward. And so the Dhar became wanderers again, going down from the mountains into Ur-Dharbek, and those who remained behind were never heard of again and were supposed dead, slain by the dragons.

It was a hard land, Ur-Dharbek, a place of bleak moors and poor hunting, but still the people had their herds and thought to make a life there, free of the dragons.

They were wrong. The dragons followed, for they had found a taste for the sport of it, and for human flesh. They quested southward over Ur-Dharbek, and none were safe save the Dragonmasters, whom the sky-beasts would not touch, perceiving a kind of kinship. Then the Dragonmasters were hated, for they could not—or perhaps, would not—dissuade the dragons from their killing, and many were slain in rage and others chose to go away from the people, back north to the Forgotten Country. They were lost to the Dhar, and if they still live, there is no one knows it.

That was a time of suffering for the people, for it seemed they must forever be hunted and never find a peaceful land. But then it seemed the Three Deciders, or the One God, took pity on the Dhar, for that magic that had enabled the Dragonmasters to converse with the beasts grew stronger, albeit along different roads.

There were born ever-increasing numbers of children gifted with the occult talent, such that they were able to send their magicks against the dragons and destroy them. But even so they were not enough, and for every dragon plain it seemed the fury of its kin waxed the greater, until the mages turned their powers to other means of defense. They found ways in which to transform animals into semblance of men, and they named these creations the Changed, and sent them out to be the dragons’ prey while the people, the Truemen, went on southward across the Slammerkin into the land they called Draggonek.