The Dragon Lord (41 page)

What if there was no one here at all?

But a book lay on the floor where it had slipped off the arm of a chair, its pages ticking slowly over one by one by one, and there was a tray of honeyed fruit on a nearby table, sweet glaze glistening stickily in the firelight. Beside the tray was a crystal wine flagon and two partly filled—or partly emptied—goblets.
Two
? Aldric’s mind yelled in alarm.

Two.

A woman rose from the concealing embrace of one of the deep, padded chairs which faced the fire and rounded on him, dropping a needlework tambour as she did so. There was a sleepiness in her face, as if she had been dozing until awakened by the clatter of his arrival; but that sleepiness did not conceal the expectant look which he had caught in her dark eyes as their gaze first met. It was a look which faded almost at once as she realized he was not the one for whom such expressions were intended, but it worried him. It was wrong. Surely princesses did not carry on liaisons with their jailors—no matter how handsome, or how boring the imprisonment? Although, knowing the Drusalan Empire, such snap judgments were as well avoided.

But even the way she looked, dressed,
stood
, was unprincesslike—to Alban eyes at least. Taller then Aldric, almost as broad in the shoulders—which contrasted dramatically with a neat waist—and plentifully endowed both with curves in all the proper places and aquiline darkly glamorous good looks, this woman was scarcely Imperial. But imperious? There was no doubt about that at all.

“Have you not heard of knocking on a door, soldier?” she demanded. “Or of waiting to be invited into a noble lady’s presence? Answer me—then get out!”

“To your questions, lady: yes and yes. To your order: no.” Aldric glanced backwards over one shoulder, saw nobody behind him and stepped quickly further into the room. “Where’s the Princess Marevna? Not you, I think.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m here to take her out of this, lady; where is she?”

“And where’s your written authority for the move?”

“Listen to me: there aren’t any authorities—written, spoken or bloody well sung! This isn’t a move—it’s supposed to be a
rescue
! If you’d be good enough to let it!” He back-heeled the door shut and looked in vain for bars and catches, finally leaning his weight against it for want of anything better, then glared at the tall woman whom he had now categorised as one of those over-protective waiting-women. Though why she had to look the way she did, he couldn’t understand. “And if
you
don’t start to move, it’ll turn into attempted murder!”

A knife appeared from somewhere in the woman’s elaborate clothing, and with that length of bright steel jutting thumb-braced above her fist, she suddenly looked capable of such a crime herself.

Aldric coughed a mirthless laugh. “Not by me, lady— I wouldn’t have announced my intentions otherwise; but there’s one outside who— Never mind that; quick— boots and gloves and cloaks. Foul-weather travelling gear. And the princess!
Move
!”

“Why so excited?”

Aldric’s helmeted head snapped a few degrees right to pinpoint the source of this new voice as the depths of the second chair and whoever was sitting in it—and he saw her: the princess. The one for whom, or against whom, or because of whom, time and money and blood had been expended as if they had as little worth as leaves in autumn. She looked like a princess indeed, the way he had imagined the sister of an emperor should look: small and slight, dressed simply in a pure white robe with silvery patterns embroidered on its back and shoulders, with enormous brown eyes that regarded him gravely from a pale, heart-shaped face. As she stood up and flicked long, long dark hair away from that high-cheekboned face, he could sense the dignity that she wore about her like a garment, a measured control which refused to let all she had overheard disturb the way in which she paced forward to look up at him.

Up—because the top of her head came only to the junction of his collarbones. Even Aldric’s desperate ur-gency had to be leashed in the face of such awe-inspiring serenity, for although a failure to comprehend the situation lay behind it, Marya Marevna an-Sherban’s vast calm was indeed an awesome thing in one so small. Trained tranquillity; and something which, regretfully, he would have to shatter.

“Chirel,” she said across his chest to the other woman, “who is this person? And why is he here?”

“Princess, you were sitting there and you heard me well enough. I came to take, you from the Tower. By command of General Goth—and I presume your brother.”

“For how long has the Lord General used Albans over and above our own excellent soldiers?”

So she recognised the accent. And wouldn’t therefore move without an explanation unless he knocked her out and carried her. But her companion had heard the word
Aalban’r
and moved instantly to shield Marevna with her own body and poised knife. Against a fully armored man it was a useless gesture, but very fine for all that.

“Lady, ladies, it’s a matter of politics.” Despite the helmet he could hear movement just outside and an instant later the stealthy pressure as someone tested the door. Aldric braced his feet flat and wide apart against the floor and held firm. “Because my king wants to show support—”

He would have kept on talking as persuasively as he knew how had he not heard a sudden, familiar thrumming in the air, felt a tremor in the wood at his back, tasted an acrid flavor both in his mouth and in his mind. All of it too familiar by far.

“Get
down
!” He screamed it, hurling himself forward and sideways, clear of the door and the doorway and the straight line from them to the corridor beyond, but he hadn’t even hit the floor before thick timbers and iron hinges and steel bolts all jolted out of their frame in a single mass which was twice the weight of a man and went scything across the room as if flung from a catapult, leaving a swathe of destruction in its wake. Something ponderous plucked at Aldric’s shoulder and no more, but all of a sudden a hand’s span of the cloak and the rank-robe—and the splint-mail under all—were ripped away and his whole arm struck numb by the impact.

High Accelerator! Aldric almost retched with the shock and with the pain of returning sensation in his arm, but most of all with his own stupidity which had almost lost him the game before he had begun to play.
Voord
! he thought frantically, his mind log-jammed and overloaded with conflicting signals.
And Bruda even
told
me of his talent
! He glanced sideways even while he still sprawled on the floor, his face gnat-stung by the cloud of sparks exploded from the fireplace when the door’s wreckage struck it. The princess was safe; the princess’ feet weren’t even on the ground for Chirel, the big woman with the knife, had actually plucked up her small and slender charge in the crook of one arm. Marevna dangled there now like a doll, all white robe and long dark hair, all dignity gone. But alive… for the moment.

Voices outside, coming closer. Fragmented shouts. Bruda’s voice: “Voord, what in hell happened?”

Voord’s voice right outside the door: “Don’t know! Magic! The princess… Treason? Can’t be treason— not with a foreigner. Murder?”

Oh, clever, clever Lord Commander, to sow that seed so quickly!

A figure appeared in the doorway, ill-defined through the dust and shadowy because so many lanterns had been snuffed out. One hand a crooked claw, almost useless—but not quite. Aldric could see the hazy shimmering of power around it. How did he gain so much? What bargains did he strike, what promises were made? And in the other hand, half-raised, poised and ready: a
telek
.

“Princess, are you safe?” Voord’s voice was loud, full of concern—for other ears to hear. The
telek
spoke silent truth of his intentions. “My lady, where are you?”

“Don’t move! You, Chirel—both of you keep out of sight!” Aldric’s yell broke into a fit of coughing as he choked on the dust and the stinking smoke from dead lamps and smouldering fabrics and the charred, scattered, still-glowing logs.

Voord snapped sideways out of the back-light at the door, and as he moved Aldric saw the
telek
drop forward to a ready position. The Vlechan said nothing. Yet. Did nothing. Yet. But he waited for a target, any target, to show itself. Alban, Drusalan, male, female. Anything or anyone that he could kill.

Another silhouette filled the space where the door had been, more clearly seen now that the dust was settling. Too tall for Tagen and not broad enough. Anyway, Tagen had been dismissed. Bruda. The Prokrator had a drawn sword in his hand. “Voord?” He spoke cautiously, still shaken by the suddenness of events.

“Look out, sir!” Voord’s voice had all the right notes of horror in it. “He’s trying to kill the princess!”

“Impossible! Where are you, Alban?”

“Get out of sight, sir! He’s got a
telek
!” And as he named the weapon, Voord used it to shoot his own commander at close range.

Aldric heard the slap of discharge and saw Bruda’s tall figure stagger back three steps, then fall to the floor. He didn’t know where the man had been hit, but even point-blank no
telek
dart could punch through proof armor like this officers’ issue they all wore. That left the vulnerable places: face and throat. And both of those were fatal.

But if a soldier of the Drusalan Empire could use a
telek
and sorcery, then how much better might an Alban
kailin-eir
who was also a wizard’s fosterling? Aldric tugged free his own
telek
from beneath the layering of garments which had concealed its presence, cocked the weapon quietly, released its safety-slide—then laid it down beside him on the floor. More quietly still he stripped away the glove from his left hand and looked at the spellstone of Echainon, the Eye of the Dragon, as it seemed to look at him. There was still no flare of azure energy; just that cat’s-eye pupil at its center, twisting, turning, pulsing to the rhythm of his heart. Pulsing fast; very fast indeed. Aldric slipped it around his wrist so that the stone was snugly cradled in the hollow of his palm, then closed his fist around it as if trying to absorb something of the crystal’s power into himself.

“
Abath arhan
,” he said, Light that was as blue and brilliant as a summer sky began to stream between the interstitial spaces of those clenched fingers, painting vivid dapples all across the walls and floor and ceiling, cutting through the smoky air in rods and fans of luminescence that seemed almost solid. The stone was primed now. Ready. Waiting,

And the Red Tower shook to its foundations. Aldric felt the floor beneath him lurch like a battleram’s deck and saw more wreckage tumble from the shattered doorframe. He heard glass beyond the window-shutters fragment to shards, and by the half-light of the crushed and dying fire he saw a fresco-decorated wall abruptly crack from side to side and top to bottom. Great chunks of the painted plaster fell away, clogging the air with dust once more. But most of all, there was that sound from outside and above.

Piercing shriek and sub-bass bellow all melded together into a single huge atonal roar and the window-shutters blew in, spraying the room with broken wood and with a whirl of snow made phosphorescent by the flood of light behind it.

Ymareth!

A female voice screamed something, even though the sense of the words—if words there had been—was lost. But the mere sound was enough for Voord. Locating on it, he sent another dart whipping through the air towards the source of that cry. It hit hard, stone or metal amid a shower of sparks, then ricocheted further and drew a shrill yelp of pain from someone. Chirel—or the princess?

“Bastard!” Aldric sent four spaced shots across the most likely target zone in as many seconds; there were more sparks, the clack and clatter of metal missiles hitting stone and the chiming diminuendo of their rebound— then the rewarding soggy thump as a dart hit home, and Voord’s voice raised in agony.

But how hard had he been hit? There been none of the thrashing of limbs which normally accompanied a
telek
strike
-nor even the slack, felled-tree thud of a body knocked dead off its feet. Only that single cry. Aldric thought
ruse
, thought
decoy
and cuddled the rubble-strewn floor until he was sure.

It happened sooner than he thought. That hazy, translucent globe of contained force which he had seen perched like a falcon on Voord’s ruined hand came surging from the shadows, almost unseen, crossing the room in a flicker of refraction where verticals and horizontals kicked nauseously out of line. It hit the wall over the fireplace, striking square and hard as a siege-ram, and splashed a coruscation of rainbow fire all through the room. The wall slumped downwards, shearing near the ceiling as it folded noisily into the space where thirty square feet of its substance had been ripped into a sparkle of disrupted matter.

Where in hell did he learn
that? Even as the thought coagulated in his brain—an organ right now as capable of coherent thought as a bowl of beaten eggs—Aldric knew, knew,
knew
that Voord hadn’t been taught that spell or any of the others he might use. They were a gift. Not a gift like the ability to play music, or shoot straight, but the sick, sardonic gift of shoes to a legless man or a beautiful painting to one struck blind. Voord was a channel, a pipeline to this world from somewhere else. Aldric had said it himself: “Where in hell?”

“Fool! Thee has power to match this petty casting— power and more! Why lie ye thus in the dirt, O Dragon-lord? Rise up! Rise up and smite!” The voice which burst into Aldric’s skull was Ymareth’s; but now its background of heard sound was not the metallic rustling hiss which he had—just about—grown used to. Oh, no. This was the draconian equivalent of a yell half urgent and half enraged by stupidity, and it had all the delicacy and subtle nuance of a full-great chord on a pipe organ. It was devastating. What little was left of the window-shutters fell apart with the sheer volume of sound, and the remnants of the fresco wall first crazed with a network of fine cracks then went to powder.