The Dragon of Despair (99 page)

Melina turned to Pichero, Idalia’s husband.

“The slaves are quite valuable to me,” she said, acidly sweet, “and so I must request receipts for them. Do include their names and a brief description. If you return them all safely, I shall show my gratitude by gifting one of each group to you.”

This bit of largesse on her part would be expensive, but it would assure loyalty. Idalia’s family was not wealthy or Idalia would never have had to turn to her brother’s patronage for Kistlio’s advancement. Melina’s promised gift would also assure that the best slaves were chosen for the task at hand—and that they were all returned. New Kelvinese law extracted rather stiff penalties for slave stealing.

Idalia’s older daughter, the one who had been least happy about relocating to these subterranean reaches, was quickest to realize both the benefits and problems of this arrangement.

“Will the gracious lady tell us to what purpose this Kiero will be turning the slaves? So we might choose the most appropriate ones,” she added hastily in reply to Melina’s haughty glower.

“As watchers and possibly guards,” Melina replied. “Choose for physical well-being, intelligence, and initiative—but not too much initiative.”

The young woman nodded, drumming two fingers against her collarbone as she reviewed possibilities.

Melina had Idalia dismiss her family members to their new duties, then drew the other woman aside.

“You must remain alert,” Melina said, looking deeply into Idalia’s eyes and fixing her with her own will. “Grateful Peace now knows of this refuge and may invade it with the power of his allies behind him. I must go forth to battle his treachery, but I trust you to hold this place and my slaves for me.”

Idalia’s eyes shone with fanatical determination when Melina broke the contact, and Melina felt sure that she would defend Melina’s interests no matter what her husband or children might say.

Leaving Idalia and the subterranean colony, Melina made her way to a cavern she had found during her searches for the Dragon of Despair. Although the final rituals must be done in the presence of the dragon, her researches suggested that the initial segments could be performed at a distance.

The cavern Melina had chosen for these preparatory rituals was an elegant place, egg-shaped and honeycombed with millions of tiny bubbles frozen within the black rock. It was in just such a place she had thought to find the dragon and therefore very appropriate for shaping her mind for its binding.

Steam rose from the crevice through which the cavern was entered, a momentary scorching immersion that made Melina feel cleansed each time she made the passage. The closeness of the cavern—it was hardly wider than Melina herself was when she was lying down—intensified the sensation of entering an earth womb. However, air entered along with the steam and the lot recirculated through a narrow slit at the apex of the egg, so the closeness never became smothering.

Even better than the natural sculpture of the cavern were signs and sigils still partially readable where they had been painted on the rock long ago. Not enough remained for Melina to understand their former meaning, but knowing that she had located a place once selected by the Founders themselves made her tremble with proud ecstasy. She even hung her lantern from a hook one of the Founders had set within the apex of the cavern’s ceiling, feeling a kinship with those long-ago sorcerers each time she did so.

From her first interest in magic, when she had been hardly more than a child, Melina had always worked little rituals to intensify her personal powers. Dances in isolated moonlit groves or the deliberate shaping in beeswax of the forms of those she wished to control were two of her favorites. These personal rites helped Melina focus her abilities, to drown any uncertainty she might feel.

She had continued these practices after her arrival in New Kelvin, gradually incorporating motions and incantations she learned from her readings and from the various ritual celebrations doting Toriovico had arranged for his new bride to observe. Tonight, however, was the first time Melina was going to attempt a wholly New Kelvinese ritual.

For a brief moment, as she bent to remove certain items from the bag she had carried with her, Melina felt afraid, all the fear of magical power and its abuses that had been ingrained into her from her infancy rising and clamoring their protests.
This
, her infant heart seemed to cry,
is
real
magic, not the playing around you have attempted so far. This is the forbidden
.

Melina shook those protests from herself with a single angry gesture. Was the magic of New Kelvin more real than that which she had evolved for herself? She could not—would not—believe that. From what she had observed, she was three times the sorceress of any of these New Kelvinese who claimed such grand traditions.

Then why bother with their rituals at all?
the doubt within her teased.
Perhaps their sorcery is as much sham as are their sorcerers.

“Because,” Melina defiantly answered that inner debate, “it is I who will use their lore. I have the power that they do not.”

Moving swiftly but with every motion careful and calculated, Melina dropped her robe to bare her upper body to the waist, then removed the day’s paints. Using a small hand mirror whose surface must be frequently wiped when steam clouded it, she adorned the empty canvas of her face and upper body with a series of potent symbols.

Next Melina exchanged her day robe for one of tightly woven fiery red silk, embroidered in gold thread with signs for earth and fire. Matching slippers went onto her feet.

Melina combed out the silver blond of her hair and rebraided it with a chain of gold strung with rubies. She then draped around each wrist bracelets from which hung dozens of charms, each promising its own protection or power. A thin girdle from which depended a pair of stylized but perfectly functional knives—one with a ruby in the hilt, the other with a dragon’s-eye opal—looped loosely about her waist.

A heavy, enameled breast pectoral shaped like a dragon with its wings outspread was her last adornment. This had belonged—so they said—to the Star Wizard and usually resided in the Dragon Speaker’s treasury. Melina had permitted Apheros to offer her a long-term loan.

Melina wished she could see herself in all her finery but settled for remembering how the ensemble had looked when she had tried it on before the long mirror in her rooms. She knew she looked impressive, draped in wealth to attract the dragon’s greed and wrapped in powerful charms to contain its ability to harm her.

She didn’t allow herself to wonder if the carefully constructed costume would work as planned, but set about placing on points carefully coordinated with the directions nine items she had collected in accordance with her research. Each was meant to distract and bribe the dragon, to focus its greed so that it would not resist the binding she would lay upon it. They were beautiful things, constructed in secrecy to her precise order.

To the eye the Nine were vases and weapons, boxes shaped like strange creatures, and elegant jewelry. The hand, however, would find their weight wrong, their balance strange, for in reality they were facsimiles of the things they represented. Each was carved of scented wood impregnated with rare oils. The metal was a delicate tissue overlay, the “gems” cunning replicas made from resins and pastes.

Nodding with almost housewifely approval as she reviewed the collection, Melina began her first recitation, the invocation to awaken the dragon. The invocation was long, but nothing in Melina’s research had said that she could not read this piece, rather than recite it from memory as with so many of the others, so Melina read, paying particular attention to stress and cadence, giving the words their antique pronunciation wherever she could.

Melina was about to move to the second part of the ritual, an incantation that reminded her of some of the things she said to those she wished to impose her will upon, when she heard the sound of rocks rattling against each other from the other side of the steamy barrier that cloaked the entrance to the egg-shaped cavern.

Melina froze, for a moment as frightened as if she’d been caught doing something forbidden by the late duchess her mother. Then she remembered where and who she was. She stiffened and snapped out:

“Who is there? Come forth and show yourself!”

Such perfect silence followed that Melina could almost believe she had been mistaken, but she knew she had not. Reaching up, she removed the lantern from its hook and stepped through the steaming veil.

Immediately, her light fell upon the spy and for a long moment they froze—one in fear, the other in purest astonishment.

XXXVIII

“
AWAKEN, WOLFLING!
This is no time for sleep. Melina comes for me, even now.”

Firekeeper knew she was asleep but, resigned to the dragon’s invasion of her dreams, replied as if she were not:

“How do you know?”

“I hear her will untwining the bars that hold me. Do you think I would not know?”

Firekeeper really had no way to judge what the dragon would or would not know. However, in all the host of annoying dreams the dragon had thrust upon her, it had never told her anything like this.

“Where are you?”

“Where your friends have guessed, beneath Aswatano.”

Firekeeper had gone with Peace and Derian when they ventured out to investigate the statue that adorned the Fountain Court. Her task had been to keep watch for any indication that the merchants and their customers had seen through the disguises Peace had constructed for them. She had remained alert, but felt her alertness wasted, for not only did no one give the three of them even a passing glance, the dragon had given her no hint that they were near its prison.

“Why didn’t you tell me where you were before this? It would have been useful to know.”

“I only learned the name of the place today when you explored with the others and I sensed your closeness.”

“I have been to the Fountain Court before. Why did you never sense me then?”

“Perhaps I did. Perhaps I did not. Perhaps your focusing so on me forged a connection that had not existed before.”

“Why didn’t you say something to me this afternoon?” Firekeeper persisted, piqued.

“I sought to avoid unwise action on your part. You can be impulsive.”

At this moment, Firekeeper felt anything but impulsive. Memories of her last failed venture were as sharp as the remaining pains in her leg. Only slightly less sharp were her recollections of her last meeting with Melina—and how Melina had bested her.

“What do you want me to do now?” she asked, suspecting she knew perfectly well what the dragon wanted.

“Consider,” the dragon replied, “whether you want Melina to bind me—for she will succeed if she comes here unimpeded. Consider, too, who will be her first targets once I am hers to command.”

The voice in Firekeeper’s head fell silent and after a moment Firekeeper realized that she was no longer asleep. The night air was distinctly autumnal, with a bite in it that tasted of the north. Somehow she had missed the change. That made Firekeeper realize how wrapped up in herself and her own concerns she had been. Once she would have known without question. Now the seasons could change with her unaware.

But there was something else she realized. The dragon had good cause for leaving her to reason out what she must do on her own. Certainly it dreaded she would be frightened away beyond its ability to convince her otherwise.

How best to stop Melina? How best to prevent her from binding the dragon?

Simple. Finish the hunt before her. Claim Melina’s prize before she could. The only other answer was to kill her, and though Firekeeper would much prefer that option, it had its dangers. Melina alive was Melina who could claim the dragon. Claim the dragon first and Melina could still be killed after.

Firekeeper swung herself upright on the grass lest the mere thinking of what she must do freeze her into inaction. Blind Seer was awake almost before she had steadied herself on her feet.

“Where are you going?” the wolf asked, blue eyes narrowing in suspicion even as he stretched.

“The dragon woke me,” Firekeeper answered bluntly. “Melina is coming for it. I go to stop her.”

The wolf growled softly, low in his throat.

“How will you do that? Surely you don’t think Melina would be foolish enough to come alone?”

“She might,” Firekeeper replied evasively. “What she does will not be even as these New Kelvinese wish. We know that from both Peace and the Healed One.”

Blind Seer growled again.

“You don’t believe she will come alone, no matter how bravely you speak.”

“No,” Firekeeper admitted. “I don’t, but still I must try to stop her.”

“Alone? Haven’t you learned to keep a pack strong around you if you are to be strong?”

“I have,” Firekeeper admitted, “but I think that for what I must do more hands and feet are not needed.”

“What do you think to do?” Blind Seer asked sharply, but something in his bearing told Firekeeper that he had guessed.