The Dragon Revenant (16 page)

“I don’t blame him, no, but it’s too bad.” Salamander glanced ever so casually at Jill. “We could use a Deverry man in the show. It would look good on stage, especially if he were another blonde.”

“Oh, this slave had black hair,” Galaetrano said. “But I see your point about the effect. You know, it’s odd. You’re the second man who’s asked me about barbarian slaves lately.”

“Indeed?”

“It was before my last trip to Ronaton, but this other fellow was from the islands. Let’s see, I don’t think he ever did mention his name, actually, kind of odd, now that I think of it. But anyway, he was only interested in buying for resale. He came from Tondio, I think he said. He didn’t take passage with me, anyway, so I didn’t think much more about him.”

After more wine all round, this time at the captain’s expense, Salamander announced that he and his handmaiden had to prepare an evening’s show, invited everyone to come see it, and left on a general wave of good cheer. Jill managed to keep smiling until they reached the street—no longer.

“May this Pommaeo freeze in the third hell!”

“I’ll admit to being vexed, miffed, and in general annoyed with our gallant. Even worse, however, is the captain’s other bit of news.”

“That so-called slave trader who was asking about barbarians?”

“I like that ‘so-called,’ turtledove. It shows you were listening with crafty ears. I don’t like this at all. Of course, it might be some sort of coincidence.”

“Just like it was a coincidence that Brindemo was poisoned the day before we got to Myleton.”

“Entirely too true spoken, alas. You know, when we get back to the inn, I think I’d better have a look around.”

“What? If you want to look around town, why go back to the inn?”

“At times there are better ways of traveling than using one’s feet, my sweet sandpiper. Haven’t you ever seen Nevyn go into trance?”

“Well, so I have. You mean you can do that, too?”

“I can, and soon, no doubt, you’ll be learning how yourself. It’s one of the basic techniques.”

Jill went cold all over, partly in fear, but partly in excitement. She’d been assuming that Nevyn’s ability to work in the trance state was the mark of a highly exalted master, not of a mere journeyman. Yet Salamander’s trance was certainly nothing exciting to watch. With Jill kneeling to one side, and a crowd of curious Wildfolk at the other, he lay on the divan in their inn chamber and crossed his arms over his chest. In a moment he seemed to have fallen asleep, his eyes shut, his mouth a little open, his breathing slow and soft. For some time Jill watched him, then let her mind wander, so much so that she yelped aloud when he abruptly sat up and started talking.

“I don’t like this, Jill. I don’t like it at all.”

“What happened?”

“Naught. But there were … oh, how can I describe them? I can’t, truly. Call them traces or tracks—that will have to do. And I saw one particular spirit that could only be associated with a dark master, a pitiful twisted thing.” His face darkened with rage. “I wanted to help it, but it was so frightened I couldn’t get close to it. It obviously associated human and half-human souls with pain and naught more. Oh ye gods, how I hate these swine!” With a toss of his head he stood up, stretching, then smiled, slipping back under his mask of a sunny-natured idiot. “Is there wine, oh beauteous handmaiden? The wizard’s worked up a powerful sort of thirst.”

“I’ll fetch some, but are you telling me that the dark masters are here in Daradion?”

“Naught of the sort, turtledove. Only that one or two of the lesser slimes oozed through here some days ago. I think me, though, that we’d best be as sly as sly from now on.”

When she went to bed, Jill lay awake for a long while, her mind drifting on the borderlands of sleep. She happened to remember the Dark Sun, the elven goddess whom she and Salamander had called upon to witness their vow of vengeance against Rhodry’s tormentors. It seemed years ago, not a matter of months, when back in Cerrmor they’d pledged death with goblets of mead. The goddess had death wolves, or so Salamander had told her, and the vow invoked those beasts to run ever before them on their bloody hunt. She liked that vow, liked the image it called to mind, of a goddess standing tall, an elven longbow in her hands, quiver at her hip, and at her feet the two crouched black wolves.

In her mind one of the wolves turned its head and looked right at her. With a little yelp she was wide awake, annoyed with herself for letting her mind play tricks. Yet she could remember the picture perfectly, and when it was time to do her exercises with mental images, she chose the wolf—but without, unfortunately, telling Salamander what she was doing. Since it was an ancient nexus of power on the astral, the image built up remarkably fast, and since it was so easy to work with, she decided to go on using it for a while in her practice.

Just after dawn on a chilly wet day the
Gray Kestrel
left her dock at Daradion and wallowed out to sea. Since they had a favoring wind, in about an hour or so the lumbering ferry-barge was out of sight of land, and the tedium—to Jill’s taste, anyway—of a sea voyage settled over her. While Salamander regaled crew and fellow passengers alike with his stories, songs, and juggling, Jill spent most of the uneventful voyage working with her wolf image. Finally, on the last night aboard, she felt for a moment that a giant wolf lay beside her on her bunk, and it seemed that she could almost see it. Although she made the usual banishing gestures at the end of the practice session, the wolf seemed curiously reluctant to go.

They reached Ronaton in the middle of a sunny morning and left the city straightaway by the main road, running southwest along the coast. They rode for about two hours, until, just at noon, they came to a stand of trees and a spring, deepened then lined with stone for the benefit of travelers by the archons of Ronaton, where they stopped to make an early camp to rest the horses and mule, who were still nervous and stable-weary from being in the ship. While Jill unloaded the stock and let them roll, Salamander wandered away a few yards and stood staring out to sea. When he returned, he was shaking his head in frustration.

“Well, I scried Rhodry out, for all the good it’s going to do us. He was down in some sort of cellar, arranging big clay pots of what looked like pickled food and even larger amphorae of wine against a wall. There was an older man with him who seemed to be in charge of things. Ye gods, I hope they don’t stay down there all day!”

By then both of them were used enough to the Bardekian custom of the afternoon nap to spread out their bedrolls and lie down for a couple of hours. Although Salamander went straight off to sleep, all of Jill’s rage came to a head that afternoon. She was thinking of Rhodry, as she so often did, and she burst into tears that were more frustration than grief, a baffled rage at all the dark and magical events that had pulled them apart. Once her fit of weeping had run itself out, she gave up trying to sleep and began to think of her wolf image. It built up fast, and she imagined the shaggy creature lying at her feet.

As Salamander had taught her, she used all her senses in building the image, imagined she could smell it, could feel its weight across her ankles and its warmth through the thin blanket. All at once, she felt something snap into place in her mind. Right where she’d imagined ft, the wolf appeared, a bit misty and thin, to be sure, but the image actually seemed to be there, living apart from her will. She worked on bringing it into focus, made it appear more substantial, thickened its glossy coat, imaged the teeth and the panting tongue. When she noticed it was wearing a gold collar of elven design, she was suddenly afraid, because she’d imagined no such thing. The great head turned her way, and the dark eyes considered her. Only then did she realize that a thin, misty cord seemed to connect her solar plexus with that of the wolf; yet whenever she tried to look directly at the cord, it faded away.

With a stretch like a real dog, the wolf got up. Although she started the banishing ritual immediately, her words and motions had no force behind them, because frightened though she was, she was fascinated with her creation. The wolf ignored the ritual, anyway, merely sniffed Salamander and his blankets with a remarkably real-looking wet black nose.

“It’s a pity you’re not real, you know. I could send you tracking Baruma down.”

It swung its head and looked at her. She found herself talking to it, then, a confused babble of all her hatred, all her scraps of knowledge about Baruma, what he was, what he looked like, but she somehow knew that his physical appearance was of little moment to the wolf. With a toss of its head it leapt over her, trotted into the trees, and disappeared.

At that point she woke up, or so she thought of it. All at once she felt a jarring sensation, as if she’d dropped flat on her back from a few inches up, and her eyes were open to the sunlight flooding the camp. Oh by the gods and their wives! she thought irritably. So that was just a dream, was it? Perhaps it’s for the best. She got up, and as she was rummaging for food in her saddlebags, she forgot the whole thing. Although she was so exhausted that she felt drained of blood, she put it down to the long months of strain.

In a few minutes Salamander woke, muzzy-eyed and yawning, and stumbled over to the spring. He knelt down, plunged his head into the cold water, snorted, coughed, and swore for a moment, then looked up grinning with the water streaming from his hair to drench his shirt.

“Much better,” he announced. “I’m going to try scrying out Rhodry again. He’s got to leave that wretched cellar sooner or later. Come join me—see what you can see.”

Through a break in the pale stone the water welled up noiselessly and rippled out, splashing a little against the side of the basin before it ran out the overflow pipe. When Salamander put his arm around her and pulled her companion-ably close, she was aware not of his physical touch but of his aura, raw power welling up from his very being as the water did from the earth.

“Concentrate on the ripples and let your eyes go a bit out of focus. Then think of Rhodry.”

For a long while she saw nothing but the glassy surge of water against stone. Then, all at once, she saw a dim, broken picture on the ripples: Rhodry making his way through what seemed to be a marketplace. To her imperfect vision the stalls and peddlers waved and fluttered as much as the cloth banners, but Rhodry’s image was solid and steady At first he looked perfectly well, tanned and fit, striding along and even smiling as he greeted the occasional person that he seemed to know. As she stared at him with hungry curiosity, she had the sensation of moving in closer, until it seemed that she hovered beside him. Then, when he turned his head so that he would have been looking right at her if she’d actually been there, she saw the change in him, a subtle thing, truly, a certain slackness about the mouth, a certain bewilderment in his eyes. Even when he smiled, something was missing. Where was the life that used to burn in his eyes, the grin that could set a roomful of men laughing in answer? Or the half-toss to his head, and the proud set to his shoulders that said here was a warrior, dangerous but a man of honor, born to command? She felt gut-wrenching sick when she realized that his mental injury was as clear and palpable as a physical wound.

“I know this place,” Salamander whispered. “All that stucco and pink stone, and that view of the mountains from the marketplace, it’s … Wylinth, by the gods!”

His crow of triumph broke the vision. He let go of her, sat back on his heels, and gave her a grin which disappeared abruptly at the sight of the look on her face.

“Salamander, he’s going to recover, isn’t he? We can do somewhat for him, can’t we? We can cure him. Can’t we?”

His mouth as slack as his brother’s had been, he was silent for a long moment.

“Salamander!”

“I don’t know, turtledove. I truly don’t know. If naught else, we can get him home to Nevyn, and there’s Aderyn, too—I’m sure he’d come to Eldidd to help.” Again the heavy silence. “But I don’t know.”

Jill dropped her face to her hands and wept. When they rode out, vengeance shared her saddle.

Although Wylinth was only some sixty miles away, about three day’s ride, Salamander decided that they’d best approach it by a roundabout way. That first afternoon they headed dead west, following the river to the small town of Andirra, which sported only two inns, both, much to Salamander’s horror and Jill’s relief, of medium price and quality. Their performance, however, was a great success, as few traveling showmen came through Andirra. The head of the local merchant guild even invited them to meet some of the leading townsfolk at his house for a lavish supper, the perfect opportunity for Salamander to ask casual questions about the availability of exotic barbarian slaves. Although the merchant knew of none, he did remark that a slave trader, passing through on his way to Tondio, had asked him that very question just the week before.

Once they were back in the privacy of their inn chamber, Jill asked Salamander whether he thought this mysterious trader, was the same man whose trail they’d crossed in Daradion.

“I’d wager a goodly sum, truly. But how odd this is! If he’s asking questions of merchants, he can’t know how to scry. Unless, of course, he never saw Rhodry before, but why would the Dark Brotherhood send someone like that?”

“Maybe he is just a trader. He might not be from the Dark Brotherhood at all.”

“Then what about that poor little spirit I saw in Daradion? Oh, I don’t know, Jill! Ye gods, I feel like a farm-wife chasing chickens into her henhouse. Two pop out again for every blasted one that goes in!”

The first time that Baruma saw the wolf, he thought nothing of it, because he was staying in an inn whose owner kept a pack of hunting dogs. He was by then traveling through the mountains in northern Surtinna, working his way closer to the Old One’s isolated estate but taking his time to allow the blood guild to recapture Rhodry, and he’d stopped for the night in a small town some miles east of Vardeth. Just at twilight he was crossing the courtyard on his way to his chamber after a dinner out, when he saw, on the far side of the compound, a large black dog standing and watching him as he went upstairs—an event of absolutely no moment, or so he thought at the time. Later that evening, he heard a paw scratch briefly at his door and a canine whine, but he ignored it. Sure enough, in a few minutes he heard human footsteps come down the hall, and at their approach, the scratching stopped, as if the dog had gone off with its master.