The Dragon Lord (37 page)

Aldric seemed to hesitate an instant, shifting his feet and his balance; his grip on the
taiken
shifted fractionally. Then he feinted one—two—
three
... And the third was not a feint at all. He heard the strike go home and jerked himself to one side, away from the vivid spurt which burst out of Etek’s chest like wine from a new-tapped cask. It was a jet as deeply, brilliantly, ominously crimson as… as a rose which Aldric had once known, and it was as thick as his thumb and as long as his arm before its arch turned downwards and broke into droplets. They spattered against the floor with a sound like rain, a color like rubies, and a smell like a slaughteryard.

Etek looked down at the spread of gaudy stain across his shirt and tunic, at the pumping of his own heart’s blood and at the pale-faced young man who had drawn it from its secret places with his blade. He tried to say something—witty, angry, a curse, a denial of death or a protest at this theft of his life, something which might be remembered for a little while. It came out only as a blood-flecked exhalation and sounded like “
h’ahhh
...” Then his knees buckled and he fell down, and was dead.

Aldric held that last accusing stare long after Etek’s eyes had glazed—trembling, telling himself that he had done only what had to be done, that these men had been enemies, that the responsibility for choosing death had been theirs and not his; that he didn’t care at all. But he did.

The days were gone when he could have pushed a killing from his mind, dismissing it as no longer of importance once the act was done, and he was glad of it. The alternative to
feeling
was to have none, to have as little concern or conscience as the weapon itself. Widowmaker would eat
his
life as readily as any, with another hand about her hilt. That change had come with awareness of what he had always secretly known, that there was an obligation to the killing of another living thing beyond the swing of a blade or the squeeze of a trigger. It was remembrance. He stood very still with the new-copper stench of warm blood in his nostrils, looking at his dead; and feeling lost.
Not yet twenty four, and how many corpses now
?

He knew the answer: the number, and in some instances—not many—the names as well. There were some who might recite such a bloody list with pride in the skill it showed; and there were some who might think that he had done the same in the past. When he remembered… But that was not a recollection Aldric made proudly. He was humbled by it, and ashamed of it—humble that he had lived while they had died, filled with shame that without his hand they might live yet But there was
self-defence
, and there was
expedience
, and there was
necessity
. Three words which were all that any killer needed.

They left a taste like vinegar and ashes on his tongue.

A storyteller finished, smiled acknowledgement to the courteous bows of her audience as they left and sipped at a little more cold beer to soothe her throat. The story just concluded was one of her own and no effort to tell, linking as it did like a chain—or a mesh of mail, for it might lead off in several directions at once—with other of the tales she told. Tales whose characters were as well known to her as her own family and friends.

Aiyyan’s smile broadened at that, for often enough those characters
were
her family and friends, their quirks observed and embellished with humor and with love. It was a fault of hers. No, not a fault, a privilege which those who wove tales from the joint webs of imagination and experience were well allowed to exercise.

She had met several such potentials in the past day or two: that scholarly man whose fiery enthusiasm suffused everything he turned his considerable mind towards; the woman with the string of riding-horses—Aiyyan had bought one and left herself with an option on two more— and the string of anecdotes. And that twitchy young
ha-nalth
with the dragon fixation…

Something, some
thing
made her look up towards a sky which was half dark and flecked with stars, half gray with another band of snow-laden cloud. And she saw… She would have seen nothing on a cloudy winter’s night, had that night been other than what it was: festival. Ordinarily this great city was a dark place after sunset, freckled only sparsely with the lanterns hung outside the houses of the wealthy—or the loosely moralled, which was often one and the same. But now, tonight, on this holiday, Egisburg was lit as brightly as anywhere in the Drusalan Empire—even Drakkesborg or Kalitzim—and the glow of all that extravagance reflected dully from the surface of those lowering clouds. Not enough maybe to increase the light in the streets below, but enough that their no longer totally dark surface formed a pale backdrop to… things in the sky.

There were two such: one was the Red Tower, and its hard-edged outline sent an unsummoned shudder up from Aiyyan’s imaginative soul. There was a brooding about that dark fortress, and an expectancy which was enough to make her glad that in the morning she and her new horse—or maybe horses—would be leaving this city and returning home before the winter closed on them completely. But the other thing was smaller than the Tower, and blacker than the Tower; it was a scrap of lightless nothingness, a rent in the clouds that was blacker than black and as lean as hunger.

And it sailed through the night sky at twice the Red Tower’s height above the Red Tower’s topmost turret!

Aiyyan stared until small glowing motes began to swim before her eyes, and then she stared some more. She watched until the—all her mind would shape was
what I daren’t believe I’m seeing
, in case giving it a name would somehow make it disappear—the winged creature drifted out beyond the gray of the clouds and across the starlit heavens. Even then she could still follow it, for those cold star-fires blinked briefly out as the great dark shape sliced between them and the world.

Another of the sparks which danced in her vision expanded, putting forth a long bright tendril that as swiftly died again. Aiyyan released a breath that was more than half a sigh; had she not been watching—what she knew now that she
was
watching—she might have thought that quick straight scratch of fire across the sky to be the track of a falling star. Except that no starfall that she had ever seen before had swirled and plumed and choked in smoke as this had done.

“
Ohh v’ekh
!” said Aiyyan ker’Trahan, and put a deal of feeling into it. “
M’nei trach’han kelech-da
?” Oh yes, Commander Dirac. I see now. I
see
...”

She did indeed: something she had always wanted to see, since the first tale she had ever made about them. A dragon.

But having seen this one, she wasn’t sure that she wanted to stay for more. Huge and powerful though
her
dragons were, there was still an underlying gentleness in them; and she had felt nothing of the sort in her brief glimpse here. Another long talk—with a little more forth-rightness in it!—with
Hanalth
Dirac would prove enlightening, even educational, but Aiyyan had no desire now to wait in Egisburg to find out for herself the answers which he had hoped to learn from her. It was not fear— a daughter and mother of soldiers, Aiyyan wasn’t particularly subject to that—but it was most certainly caution, for once she started thinking about him again in connection with what she had seen, the storymaker began to notice little oddities which at the time had gone unregarded. Most important was his speech; its accent had not been that of Drusul, nor Tergoves, nor Vlech. And if he was not of the Imperial races, then he was a provincial. And if he was a provincial, then there was no way in the world that he could possibly wear the
hanalth’s
bars and diamonds. Her own sons had been in the Empire’s armies, the younger just released from his term of service, and she knew of the unofficial—but rigidly enforced—restrictions on promotion.

So why
was
he wearing those rank-tabs? Aiyyan didn’t want to know. And because she had been speaking to him, and been seen speaking to him, she wanted to be away from Egisburg before whatever he was brewing boiled up in her face. The doings of the great, the not-so-great and the downright notorious had a way of hurting all around them, innocent bystanders most of all.

Aldric walked slowly and steadily along the street and along his own shadow, flung far in front of him by the leaping flames behind. Those flames cleaned away the final remnants of what he had done, but he did not look back. Instead he ignored the fire and pushed it from his mind; but he did not and would not push aside the two whose funeral pyre it was. The two whom he had killed. “Serej and Etek,” he said softly—recalling the names, the faces, the men. Because forgetting would be to kill them twice.

What to do? Stay or run? He had thought about both sides of the problem, even though all along he knew that he, what he was and what he tried to be had only one choice that could rightly be made.

There would be no point in running anyway, because somewhere in this city—whether in Voord’s or Tagen’s or maybe even Bruda’s hands—there was a
telek
which was the undoubted match of that weapon seen by all too many people bolstered at his saddle. An unusual accoutrement for a cavalry
hanalth
—though apparently not so unusual as to be forbidden by Lord General Goth— it would have been noticed, remarked upon… And would be remembered. With its mate still unaccounted-for, then whether or not he was there to take the blame at once Princess Marevna would die tonight—and even if he fled, that would be explained in such a way as to compound and confirm his already apparent guilt. It could not save him, and it would not save her.

By the same token, there was nobody he could safely tell: in this Imperial city everyone was a potential enemy, a potential informer ready and willing to betray him for no reason other than what he was, if that was discovered.
Hlensyarl
and
h’labech
, foreigner and spy: the Drusalan words were probably interchangeable, even more so when the foreigner was wearing a uniform and a rank to which he was most certainly not entitled.

It left the conclusion Aldric had reached at the very beginning, when Serej the courier had first outlined this dirty little plot: to rescue the Princess—it was still a cliche, but he no longer laughed at it—but to rescue her on his own terms. Properly. At least he had a slight advantage now; he was forewarned of treachery and knew to expect it, while They—whoever
they
might be— were unaware of his knowledge. He hoped.

“One day, Aldric,” he told himself, “all this is going to get you killed.” It was like something Dewan ar Korentin might say; and there would be those who would presume that his reason and his choice lay with what else Dewan might say. Because of Dewan, and Gemmel, and the king—yes, even the king—and all those others who would mutter and look askance if he did his duty so well that he had the death of an innocent woman on his conscience. But that was not and never had been his reason. It was simpler and more straightforward than that, a reason which would have made him continue with this rescue even if by running now, at once, as far and as fast as Lyard’s legs could carry him, he would avoid all the consequences of his failure.

That reason was the self-respect which men called Honor. Drusalan though Marya Marevna an-Sherban might be, and sister of the lord of a state that one day might be at war with his own, yet he was still bound to help her to the best of his ability.
Honor-bound
: a term used lightly now, but when it was meant sincerely it bound as tight as chains of steel. He had the right to fight for it, and the right to die for it either on another’s blade or on his own. The
tsepan
he now wore hung from his belt in the Drusalan military manner was a constant reminder of the oath which he had taken—an oath which he might put aside as he might put aside the black dirk, but one whose existence he could never forget while the white scars on his left hand’s palm remained.

Aldric looked down at that hand, at the place where the scars were hidden by his glove—and its fingers clenched into a fist at what he saw on the wrist above the black leather cuff. There was a flame within the spellstone: tiny, spindle-shaped, and throbbing in time with his own pulse. Its appearance was familiar: the slitted intensity of a cat’s eye.

Or the Eye of a Dragon.

Aldric’s head tilted on his shoulders and he flung back the rank-robe’s hood to stare straight up at the night sky; just as, elsewhere in the city, a storyteller was doing at this same moment. He saw what she saw; but in his case there was no momentary hesitation before acceptance, no beat of disbelief. He knew and recognised at once.
Ymareth
.

Not knowing the power of the dragon’s eyes at night, but quite willing to believe that one way or another the great being was watching him, Aldric drew himself up straighter and offered the shadow in the sky the courtesy of an Alban crown salute. No matter that it was incompatible with the uniform robe he wore, no matter that such a token of respect was rightly due the king alone; Ymareth the dragon had done more for him than Rynert, and had shown him more kindness in its reptilian way than the king had ever done in his. The dragon hung against a sky half-snowclouds and half-stars, and vented a brief, bright lance of fire. It was a signal, a reminder and an encouragement needed now if ever that Aldric was not entirely alone in this city full of enemies.

And after all was done, once the princess had been freed—
oh, such confidence, Talvalin
!—and he had discharged his present obligation to the man whom he called “Liege” and “King” and “Lord”? What then?

Aldric didn’t know.

• • • *
      

“Did you see that? Gemmel, did you see it?”

“So you’re talking again. Well, thank you for that much, anyway.”

The soldier and the sorcerer stood together on a low ridge near the road which led down and across the river-plain to Egisburg’s great gated walls. They had been set down something like two miles from the city—a negligible distance in fine weather, or even now had it been daylight and they able to use the roads. But it was not, and they had not, and the cautious slog in darkness through snowfields where drifts had sometimes risen to six and eight feet in height like frozen white ocean waves had taken the best part of an hour. It had been accomplished in total silence on Dewan’s part, except for grunts of effort and the occasional heartfelt oath. His mouth had closed at Gemmel’s final revelation and he had not spoken to the old man since; perhaps no longer sure that “man” was a proper term of reference.