Medalon (35 page)

Tarja climbed to his feet warily as Ghari approached, pushing aside his despair in the face of a more immediate threat. They both knew that in a fight, Tarja would be the victor. He was bigger, stronger and far better trained—a professional soldier—where Ghari was a farm-boy-turned-freedom-fighter. But the younger man wanted him to fight. Tarja could see it in his eyes. He wanted Tarja to resist so that he could take out some of his frustration and anger on the man who had once been his hero. Tarja was in no mood to accommodate him. Neither was he particularly enamoured of being hanged.

“I didn’t betray you, Ghari,” Tarja repeated, partly as a plea and partly to distract the younger man long enough to get his bearings. Out in the yard, he heard voices again followed by horses leaving at a gallop. Padric leaving with R’shiel. How long would it take the old rebel to reach the Kariens? The faint beginnings of dawn lightened the sky through the dusty window.

“I don’t listen to traitors.” Ghari carried a sword but made no attempt to draw it. “Are you going to
come peacefully, or kicking and screaming like the miserable coward you are?”

“I wouldn’t give you the satisfaction.”

Ghari glared at him for a moment then motioned towards the door. “After you, Captain.”

Tarja walked toward the door, Ghari watching him warily. He was level with the young rebel before he brought his elbow up sharply into Ghari’s face. The young man barely had time to call out before he dropped to the floor, his hands clutched to his broken nose. Tears of pain filled his eyes as he opened his mouth to call out again, but Tarja silenced him with a second blow to the side of his head. He checked the pulse in Ghari’s neck to assure himself the lad was still alive. The young man had been about to escort him to his hanging. He had nothing about which to feel guilty. He quickly relieved the unconscious rebel of his sword and turned to face the door. Either Ghari’s cry had not been heard, or the rebels outside had not recognised the sound for what it was.

Tarja moved to the window and glanced out into the rapidly lightening yard. A dozen or more rebels were still out there, most of them concentrating on putting together a workable noose and pushing an unhitched wagon underneath the tree limb where the noose had been thrown. Mandah stood watching them but her back was to him. Knowing he had only seconds, Tarja ran towards the back of the house and the cellars. He had supervised the construction of this stronghold and knew its every secret. He barrelled down the stone steps into the wine cellar and ran through the gloom towards the last huge barrel. As raised voices reached him from above, he knew Ghari
had been discovered. Tarja forced himself not to rush as he felt along the wall in the darkness for the concealed latch. Pushing down on it, he waited as the barrel swung slowly outwards. He squeezed into the narrow opening and pulled it shut behind him, dropping the locking bar into place.

Muffled voices reached him in the darkness as the rebels searched the cellar. Tarja ignored them, and, stooping painfully, he felt his way along the tunnel. The darkness was complete. He couldn’t even see his hand in front of his face. Forcing himself to stop for a moment, Tarja tried to remember all he could about where the tunnel led. It opened out in the vineyard, he knew that much, but how far from the house he could not recall. It was pointless worrying about it any case. He would just have to rely on the fact that if he had enough brains to create an escape route, he had also had the sense to make the exit a safe distance from the house.

Several nasty bumps on his forehead convinced Tarja that crawling on his hands and knees was the safest way to negotiate the suffocatingly dark tunnel. Scuttling insects scurried beneath his fingers as he crawled along the dank floor. More than once something dropped on him, and he brushed the unseen creature away with a shudder.

Time lost all meaning as he cautiously made his way through the tunnel and he began to understand what it was to be blind by the time he discovered the exit by crawling headfirst into it. He let out a yelp of pain as he cracked his forehead on the rough wooden barricade. He touched his forehead and felt the wet, sticky blood with a sigh. Sitting back on his heels, he
felt along the rough planking that was sealed with turf on the other side. The roots grew through the gaps in the planking and brushed his seeking hands like ghostly tentacles. He found the latch and forced it down, not really surprised when nothing happened. Pushing on the trapdoor proved fruitless. With a curse, he manoeuvred himself around until he was lying on his back, then brought up both feet and kicked the door solidly. He winced at the sound in the close confines of the tunnel, praying there was nobody outside to hear it. A second kick brought a spear of light from a small crack in the opening. Several more kicks forced the trapdoor clear. Light pierced his eyes painfully as he turned his head away, giving himself a few moments to adjust. It would be pointless to get this far, just to stumble blindly out of the tunnel into the arms of his former comrades.

When he could finally face the light without squinting, he crawled clear of the tunnel into the open air. Tarja threw himself on the ground and took several deep breaths, the air clear and pure after the musty tunnel. His face pressed into the turf, he smelled the fresh dampness with unabashed delight. Nothing had ever smelled better.

Finally, he pushed himself up onto his hands and knees and looked back towards the farmhouse, astounded at the distance the tunnel had covered. It must have taken him hours to crawl through it. Glancing up at the sky, Tarja discovered the sun was quite high overhead. His elation vanished as he realised how great a start Padric had on him. He pushed himself up to his knees and looked around, suddenly aware of a deep rumbling that seemed to be
coming from everywhere and nowhere. For a moment he stopped to listen, unable to place the sound, sure that it sounded like nothing so much as someone breathing. Someone very large, admittedly, but breathing, none the less. As he identified the sound, he glanced at the tree trunks that grew in front of the tunnel. Their roots spread out evenly like claws gripping the fresh turf. Two coppery-scaled trunks, glinting in the sunlight, grew from the claw-like roots. About the same time it occurred to Tarja that he wasn’t looking at tree trunks, he thought to look up.

The massive dragon’s head lowered itself slowly until its plate-sized eyes were almost level with his head.

“Are you human or worm?” the dragon asked curiously.

“You found him,” a musical voice said behind him as Tarja tore his eyes away from the curious gaze of the dragon.

“Of course,” the beast replied, as if there had never been any doubt regarding the outcome. Tarja looked over his shoulder. The woman who walked toward him was of the same tall and slender proportions as R’shiel, dressed in dark, close-fitting riding leathers that covered her like a second skin. The dragon moved his massive head forward to greet her and she gently reached up and scratched the bony ridge over his huge eye. Her eyes were as black as midnight.

“You must be Tarja. My name is Shananara,” she said by way of introduction. “This is Lord Dranymire and his brethren.”

“His brethren?” He had not yet recovered from the shock of being confronted by a dragon, but he was certain there was only one creature standing before him.

“Dragons don’t really exist, Tarja. This beast is simply a demon meld.” She turned to the dragon. “You frightened him. I asked you to be careful.”

“He’s human. They jump at their own shadows.”

Shananara shrugged apologetically. “He’s not been around humans much lately. You’ll have to excuse him. Where is the child R’shiel?”

“R’shiel?” Tarja asked. “I don’t know. They rode off with her in the middle of the night. I think they plan to hand her over to the Kariens.”

Shananara’s expression clouded. She turned to the dragon. “Can you feel her at all?”

“We have felt little since early this morning when we felt her pain.”

“What does he mean?” Tarja asked, forgetting for a moment that he was talking to a dragon and a Harshini magician, two things that only a few days ago he thought were long extinct from his world. “What pain?”

“She might have done something. She’s already proved she has considerable power, particularly for a wildling, she just doesn’t know how to control it. Or…”

“Or what?” The Harshini was not telling him everything. For that matter, she was not telling him anything. What had happened to the rebels?

“If you say she has been given to the Kariens, then the pain may have been caused by a Karien priest,” the dragon informed him. “Unfortunately, we can only tell that she suffers. Not how.”

Tarja needed no further prompting. He turned for the farmhouse at run, his only thought to find a way to follow R’shiel. Shananara called after him. He ignored her. A thunderous rush of wind almost flattened him as he neared the farmhouse. The dragon landed, blocking his path. Tarja skidded to a halt.
The beast was taller than a two-storey building and the wingspan of his coppery wings was almost too wide for Tarja to comprehend. The dragon stared at him disdainfully.

“Human manners have not improved in the last few hundred years.”

Shananara caught up to them and grabbed Tarja’s arm, pulling him around to face her. “What are you doing?”

“I’m going to find R’shiel. The Kariens have her.”

“You don’t know that for certain. And even if they do have her, you have no idea where she is or how to find her.”

“Then what do you suggest I do?” he snapped, intensely annoyed as he realised that she was right. He had no idea where Padric had taken R’shiel. All Tarja knew at that moment was that he had to find her and that he would happily murder Padric himself, if any harm had come to her.

The Harshini studied him. “Is she a particular friend of yours?”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

Shananara frowned, as if she knew something Tarja was not privy to. “Oh, nothing. Let’s wake up one of your rebel friends and ask him where they took her, shall we?”

Shananara led him back to the yard of the farmhouse. The dragon followed, his huge tail leaving a trail as wide as a narrow road in the dirt behind him. The dozen or so rebels who had been planning to hang him lay still on the ground, the noose waving gently in the breeze like a child’s swing. Tarja looked away from the uncomfortable reminder of his close
brush with death and glanced about him with growing dread.

“Did you kill them?”

The Harshini rolled her eyes with exasperation. “No! Of course I didn’t kill them! What do you take me for? They’re asleep. Which one should we wake?”

Tarja looked around, but he couldn’t see Ghari among the unconscious rebels. He led Shananara into the farmhouse and found the young man lying in the doorway, his face still bloodied and bruised from Tarja’s attack.

“What happened to him?” she asked.

“I hit him. I was trying to escape.”

She knelt down beside the unconscious rebel. “And these people were friends of yours? I wonder what you do to people you don’t like?”

“Just wake him up. Ghari will know where Padric took R’shiel.”

Shananara gently placed her hand on Ghari’s forehead, closing her eyes. Tarja watched expectantly, but he felt nothing. Ghari’s eyes fluttered open. He looked at them blankly for a moment before jerking backwards in fear at the sight of the black-eyed Harshini woman leaning over him.

“Don’t be afraid,” Shananara said.

Tarja didn’t know if there was any magic in her musical voice but the young rebel visibly relaxed as she spoke. He turned his gaze on Tarja before cautiously climbing to his feet. They stood back to give him room.

“What happened?” he asked, gingerly touching his broken nose.

“I escaped,” Tarja told him. “And the Harshini came looking for R’shiel.”

Ghari stared at the woman. “They really do exist?”

“Yes, they really do,” Tarja agreed. Every moment they wasted R’shiel was getting further away. She was suffering. “And the Karien Envoy will kill R’shiel as soon as he learns what she is. Where did Padric take her?”

Ghari’s eyes narrowed. “Why should I tell you anything?”

Tarja’s first impatient reaction was to beat the truth out of Ghari, but, as if she knew what he was planning, Shananara stepped between the two humans.

“Now, now, children. There is no need for any unpleasantness. Where did they take her, Ghari?”

The young rebel found his gaze locked with the Harshini’s. “To a jetty about eight leagues south of here. The Karien Envoy was to meet them there.”

She released the thrall on Ghari and turned to Tarja. “There! That was painless, wasn’t it?”

Tarja did a few rapid calculations in his head. The results were not encouraging. “She’s long gone, then. They would have handed her over just after dawn.”

“About the same time the demons felt her pain,” Shananara agreed. “I’m sorry, Tarja.”

“What do you mean, you’re sorry? Aren’t you going after her?”

“Tarja, we risked much coming this far. The demons can only assume a shape as complex as a dragon for a limited time, even with hundreds in the
meld. I can’t risk taking them so far from Sanctuary. If the meld weakened and we were airborne at the time…” Her voice trailed off helplessly.

Tarja was sure that he would have been quite sympathetic to her plight, had he the faintest idea what she was talking about.

“Can’t you do something?” he asked.

“I can,” she conceded, “but a Karien priest would see right through it. And not for you, or R’shiel or the King of the Harshini, will I risk my demons being seen by a Karien priest. I’m sorry.”

“Then what do we do?” Tarja refused to give in so easily. He couldn’t, wouldn’t, leave R’shiel in the hands of the Kariens. Not if there was the slightest chance he could save her. He owed her that much at least.

“Find a boat, I suppose,” she suggested. “I don’t know much about them, but I imagine there are faster boats on the river than the Karien Envoy’s. Shipbuilding was never a strength of the Kariens. Maybe you can catch up with them.”

“And then what? Suppose I get her back? Will you help then?”

“Do you know what you’re doing, Tarja?” she asked. “Do you know the pain that comes from loving a Harshini?”

“What?”

“We call it Kalianah’s Curse,” she told him. “You will grow old and die, Tarja, while she is in the prime of her life. Just because we look human, don’t mistake us for your kind. You do not understand the differences between our races. They are differences that can only cause you pain.”

Tarja opened his mouth to object again and then wondered why he should bother. He didn’t have the time to argue with her.

“Will you help her or not?”

“You’ve been warned,” she said shaking her head. She slipped a small pendant over her head and handed it to Tarja. He examined it carefully. It was a cube of transparent material, with the faint image of a dragon clutching the world in its claws, etched in the centre. “If you find her. If you are certain you are unobserved and only if the Karien priest is dead, you may call us.”

“Only if the Karien priest is dead?” Tarja asked. “I thought you people abhorred killing?”

“We do. And I am not asking you to kill the priest. I could not do that, even if I wanted to. I am simply telling you that you must not call us unless the priest is dead.”

Tarja slipped the fine gold chain over his own head and hid the pendant under his shirt, wondering at the fine distinction she made between not asking him to kill the priest and asking him to ensure he was dead. He glanced at Ghari, who stood staring wonderingly through the open doorway at Dranymire, who had settled himself down in the centre of the yard, his huge tail wrapped elegantly around him like a contented cat.

“I’ll take Ghari with me,” Tarja told her. “What about the others?”

“They’ll wake up eventually. They will remember nothing.”

“What about Mahina?”

“She is safe with Affiana and the other human. Never fear, Tarja, they will not be harmed.”

“Is Affiana one of you?”

The Harshini shook her head. “She is the a descendent of Brak’s human half-sister. Brak’s niece, I suppose you could call her.” She laughed at his expression. “Brak is somewhat…older than he appears. He was born in a time when human and Harshini were less at odds with each other. Don’t let it bother you, Tarja.”

With a frown, Tarja pushed Ghari ahead of him into the yard. Dranymire turned a curious eye on the two humans. “Are we taking them, too? You should have told us if you wanted a public transport conveyance. Then we could have assumed the form of a draughthorse.”

“No, my Lord,” Shananara assured him. “They have other tasks to take care of.”

The demons in dragon form stared directly at Tarja. “You seek the wildling?” Tarja nodded, assuming he—they—meant R’shiel. “Then we wish you luck, little human,” the dragon said.

Tarja and Ghari rode into Testra mid-afternoon on the wagon that had taken them to the farmhouse the night before. Tarja’s eyes were gritty with lack of sleep and the wound on the back of his head throbbed at every bump in the road. Ghari looked in even worse shape, his nose swollen and bent, but at least he had the benefit of a few hours’ sleep—albeit magically induced. The young heathen had been strangely quiet ever since meeting the Harshini and her demons, for which Tarja was extremely grateful. It was hard enough for him to cope with all he had seen and heard this day, and Tarja at least had some inkling that the
Harshini still flourished. Ghari, on the other hand, had confidently considered them long extinct, despite his belief in their gods. Since seeing the mighty Lord Dranymire and his brethren in dragon form, Ghari had been in shock, answering only in monosyllables. Occasionally he reached across to grip Tarja’s forearm painfully to demand: “It was a dragon, wasn’t it?”

By the time they rode into the town, Ghari had recovered his wits somewhat. Although hardly talkative, he had lost the wide-eyed look of startled terror that he had worn for most of the day. They drove their wagon slowly through the town, heads lowered. Tarja had discarded his Defender’s uniform gladly and they were dressed as farmhands. He turned the wagon for the docks and looked at Ghari.

“Do you have many riverboat captains among your sympathisers?”

“A few. But we’ll be lucky if they’re here. Do you have any money?”

“Not a rivet.”

“Then we’ll have trouble. Even our sympathisers won’t take us for love. They must have coin to show their owners at the end of their journey.”

“We’ll think of something,” Tarja assured his companion, although how, he had no idea. As they drove along the waterfront, he glanced at the dozen or more riverboats tied up at the docks. Which of them, he wondered, could he convince to risk everything in pursuit of a vessel belonging to a foreign envoy, to save a girl who was one of a race that supposedly no longer existed?

“Here,” Ghari told him, pointing at a swinging tavern sign. The Chain and Anchor was the largest
tavern along the wharf, and even from this distance, Tarja could hear the rowdy singing coming from the taproom. He pulled the wagon to a stop and climbed down.

Ghari followed him, catching his arm. “I have to ask you, Tarja. Was Padric right about the letter? Were you really writing to the Defenders?”

“We’re not ready for a war, Ghari. I wasn’t trying to betray you, I was trying to protect you.”

“But what of our people who died after you were captured? How did the Sisterhood learn of them?”

“You underestimate the depth of Garet Warner’s intelligence network. Joyhinia had those names long before I was captured. She simply held off using them until it would have the most effect.”

The young man nodded. He jerked his head in the direction of the tavern, the matter apparently now put to rest. “They know me here,” he warned. “And your name isn’t very popular. Keep your head down. I’ll do the talking.” Tarja stood back and let Ghari lead the way.

The taproom was crowded with sailors. The singing was coming from half a dozen men standing on a table near the door, their arms linked, belting out a chorus about a handsome sailor and a very accommodating mistress. Another sailor accompanied them on an accordion. He seemed to know only about three notes, but he played each one with great enthusiasm, making up in volume what he lacked in talent. Tarja lowered his head as he followed Ghari through the crush of bodies, trying not to draw any attention to himself. Ghari pushed his way through to the bar, leaning forward to catch the eye of the
overworked, but extremely prosperous, tavern keeper. Tarja glanced around the room, hoping he would recognise someone, praying no one would recognise him. In the far corner of the room, a figure was hunched miserably over his tankard, his back to the revellers, totally uninvolved in the celebrations. Startled, Tarja tapped Ghari on the arm and pointed. Ghari’s eyes widened in surprise and he abandoned his attempt to catch the tavern keeper’s attention. They pushed their way back through the crowd.