The Dragonswarm (22 page)

The whole body was frail, shriveled and bone-thin, but the staring face was worse. His eyes and cheeks were sunken and marred with permanent bruises. His lips were pencil-thin and split with cracks like fissures. The cleft in his jaw poked prominently past the thin stubble of a nomad life.

He was sickly and broken, made all the more nightmarish by the dried and flaking blood. Worse was the char-black scars that covered half his face. One eye was gone, one ear, and what remained of that half of his mouth dragged down at the corner and gapped over black-seared teeth.

The worst was that I knew him. I'd killed him once already.

The figure on the earth before me was Lareth Undinane—the rebel wizard who had started every darkness in my life. I rose, and gently lifted back his flapping cloak with the tip of my Chaos blade. He wore a frayed old silken doublet underneath it. I stared at the faded fabric, but I don't dknow what I expected to see: oozing blood, perhaps, or the bulge of thick bandages. I'd stabbed three feet of flawless steel clean through his chest. But that had been a hundred days ago.

He had not recovered well, but he had recovered. My teeth ground together in anger, and my hand ached from its grip on the sword's hilt. I felt the frantic thrashing of the monstrous rage in the back of my head, but I gave it no rein. Not even for this one. I took a slow, calming breath instead and focused on the lingering thrill of my new authority.

Still I could not tear my eyes from him. I shook my head in slow disbelief and breathed his name. "Lareth Undinane." It sounded like a curse in the still morning, and as I spoke the corpse stirred. I growled low in my throat, and his good eye snapped up and fixed on my face. He lay perfectly still, his breath wheezing through the scarred gap at the corner of his mouth. The eye flicked to the sword in my hand, gleaming black and smooth as silk, and then back to my head. His tongue flicked out to wet his lips. Sweat stood on his forehead.

I said, "You lived."

He did not offer me a pithy response. He didn't grovel or beg. He didn't draw a deep breath or fling up his hand dramatically. He just narrowed his eye and spoke a word of power.

It caught me entirely unprepared. Too much had happened too quickly, but more than that he did not look a threat. He looked pathetic. He looked weak and small and helpless, but he had nearly obliterated me and Vechernyvetr together the last time I'd faced him. He lashed out at me, a complicated working entirely of his own design, and I felt the shape of his will settle like a handkerchief over my mind.

I remembered the working. I remembered reaching for my wizard's sight and falling to my knees in agony. I remembered the utter helplessness under his power. Sudden fear spiked hard and hot beneath my heart, and I fought down the desperate panic that screamed for me to reach to the Chaos power. Instead I kept my eyes fixed firmly in reality and raised the tip of my sword until it hung just above his good eye.

"Release this spell," I said, more steadily than I felt. "Or I will do a more thorough job of killing you this time."

Half of his mouth curled toward a smile. "With a sword?" he said. "By strength of arms?" He closed his eye, and unseen chains latched tight around my wrist and jerked it back. More bonds constricted around my legs, slamming my knees together so I crashed to earth before him.

Still he smiled, though he did not open his eyes. "What
have
you been up to?" he asked. "Your colors are all strange."

New bonds caught my arms beneath the shoulders. I opened my mouth to shout for Caleb, but solid air crowded in, thick and smothering like sand. I shook my head, trying senselessly to get free, but a new cord curled around my throat and constricted.

Red flooded my vision, and my pulse rang like a gong inside my skull. I tried to raise a hand, to tear at the cords on my throat, but my arms would not respond. I tried to kick, to scream, but he had me completely bound. And all the while, my instincts screamed at me to reach for power.

At last, in utter desperation, I relented. My eyes fell closed, and the darkness pulsed with the staccato flashes of suffocation. I stilled my mind as best I could and opened my eyes to the wizard's sight.

I saw Lareth there before me, his lifeblood feeble but his willpower shining like a beacon. I saw the shape of his working on my mind, as well, a complex net stretched over me, knotted and cold and blue as gemstones, and I remembered the deadly pain that it could cause.

But there was more to me than there had been before. I was a churning blaze of energies, red and white and midnight black. I caught one glimpse of my own mingled, blinding power, and then the frail net of Lareth's mindtrap began to close around my will.

I felt the knife-edged pain for half a heartbeat, and watched in my second sight as the well of power within me flared up brighter still, and burnt the wizard's cruel working in its fire. The spell cracked, then splintered, then shattered into motes and disappeared. His mindtrap could not have lasted longer than a moment, then the pain was gone.

And he was screaming. He curled into a ball upon the ground, bony fingers scrabbling at his black-scarred face, and he keened like a wounded hare. His bonds were still upon me, but with the wizard's sight I could trace the shape of them plain as day. It was living air and nothing more. I rolled my neck and flexed my will, and his crushing noose unraveled. I spread the fingers of my hand and called the energy of his bonds into my palm. The little threads wavered for an instant, bound in service to his will, but mine was greater. I huffed one irritated breath, and the air flowed into my hand and set me free.

Still he screamed, all unaware of me. Perhaps he'd tried to fight my force of will, as wizards sometimes did. Or perhaps this was a peculiarity of the strange spell he'd worked against me. I couldn't say, but he was caught within the costs of all his pride. I raised my Chaos blade toward him, thinking to silence the aggravating shrieks, but then decided better. Too many men had died today.

Instead I bound his hands and feet with ropes of air and forced a gag into his mouth, though he went on and on and on all unaware. I shook my head and reached out to the patient earth and unfolded it beneath him so he sank through dirt and grass like water. A grave swallowed him whole, and I sent along enough air to last him for a day, then closed the world above him. For some time I stood there, breathing slow and steady, remembering humanity. It was no easy thing.

Some small sound caught my attention and I turned. They were there, my army, their neat formations broken now. The wizard's screaming must have called them, and they had seen what I had done. I hadn't meant it for a public show, but it would serve. I ran one long, slow gaze out over all of them, then turned my back and trudged on up the hill.

Behind me, Caleb barked an order, fierce in his frustration, and a few hundred men all moved at once to do as they were told. I left them to their orders and went to rest beneath the oak.

"Daven." Caleb's voice, pitched low and urgent. "Daven. Rouse your sleeping ass. My lord."

I cracked one eye, scowling up at him, and fought a yawn. Then I noticed the darkness behind him, nearly absolute, and I jerked upright.

"You let me sleep all day?"

He cocked his head, curious, then looked away. "I let you sleep for two. And it was a mistake."

"Caleb!" I lunged to my feet and then had to catch myself against Caleb's arm as something shot out from under my foot. I frowned at the darkness for a moment, then slowed down long enough to really notice my surroundings.

"You brought me to a tent?"

"The men were growing worried," Caleb said. "Rumors were taking root. I brought you here myself."

I conjured living fire to light the tent's interior. It was nearly three paces high at its peak and five paces to the wide tent flaps. The space between held a finely-carved desk and several comfortable chairs, a heavy bound chest and a tall standing mirror chased in silver. A rack against one wall supported a dozen bottles of wine, and the bed I'd been stretched upon was made up with thick fur blankets. I saw the pillow that had slipped from under my foot, its fabric fine black silk, and the tent itself was made of the same.

A low growl rose in the back of my throat. "You brought me to Lareth's tent?"

"To their leader's tent," Caleb said, his voice sharp. "And that is what we must discuss."

"Lareth?" I asked, and then memory stole over me. I felt the blood drain from my face. "What's he done?"

"Done? He's buried in the earth," Caleb said. "I suspect he's scraped his hands to bone is what he's done, but I need you to bring him out."

"He's not escaped?"

"Not that I can tell," he said. "You'd better hope he's not."

I frowned at Caleb. "Why?"

"You need him. Now."

I shook my head. "I have no use for that man. I should have killed him clean."

Still, I closed my eyes and looked through my wizard's sight. It took me several beats to find my bearings, nearly two hundred paces beneath a different hill than the one I'd gone to sleep on. But I found the spreading oak and found the spot beneath it where the wizard waited.

He was still alive. I could see the glow of his life, the brighter sheen of his active will. I frowned, wondering how he had survived, but then I looked closer and it came clear. He had not escaped. Not with me still up here. Not after I had so easily overpowered him. But he was still a wizard. He had undone his bonds, and he had worked the earth above him to provide a narrow chimney, a passage narrow enough that it would be easy to overlook, but enough to give him air to breathe.

"He could have gone," I said, more to myself than to Caleb. "He knows the trick of traveling. I've seen it. But he bides."

"Good." Caleb planted a hand between my shoulder blades and propelled me toward the tent flaps. "Go and dig him up."

I dug in my heels and met the soldier's eyes. "Why?"

"He'll make a powerful ally."

"He's tried to kill me three times now," I said. "He has tortured me more than once. He takes the blame for this rebellion—"

"Which means he made this army," Caleb said. "Your army. They respect him. Make him yours, and—"

"He is my enemy," I said. "Almost as much as the dragons."

"Almost as much as the king?" Caleb asked.

I frowned. "What? No. I have no quarrel with the king." As soon as I said it, I blinked. And then I shrugged. "Very well. But he considers me a criminal, not an enemy of state."

"That was before you left Teelevon," Caleb said.

I frowned up at him. "How did you know about that?"

"The rebels had a prisoner before we arrived. I only learned of it this afternoon, and I have been to speak with him."

"A prisoner?"

He nodded, grim. "A scout from the King's Guard. They've been looking for Lareth's army."

I frowned. "They have? But you said the king had not been willing to hunt the rebels."

"He had not." The words fell down like stones. After a moment he spat. "He had decided the rebels didn't matter. He had left the problem to resolve itself. And then he made a trip to Teelevon in search of a man named Daven."

It felt a lifetime ago. I remembered Othin stalking down the halls of the Eliade house. I remembered dropping from Isabelle's window. I remembered running away from one monster and straight into the clutches of another.

"I only just escaped," I said.

Caleb nodded. "You did. And then rumors began to spread that the rebel army had a new leader. A wizard. Everyone had heard that Lareth was dead—"

"By my hand," I said. "But...not. It took him those months to recover."

"And when Lareth returned, the king believed it was you," Caleb said. "You escaped him, then went to make yourself an army. He has gathered back the force he'd sent against Brant to track you down."

"No. No. He was wrong."

"Yet here you are," Caleb said.

"But
I
didn't build this army!"

"Did you try to assassinate the king in Tirah? I don't believe it, but that's why he came hunting you in Teelevon."

"Well, no, but—"

Caleb nodded, slow and serious. "I know this Timmon well. If he has set his heart against you...if he finds you among these men...."

"Then we must move."

Caleb shook his head. "That is not enough. You need the wizard."

"Why?"

He narrowed his eyes. After a moment he said hesitantly, "You have two options there."

"What?"

"Get his help. If Lareth swears an oath to you, it will bind these men far more than anything else you've done. Without that, we'll need weeks before they're useful, and much longer before I can trust even a handful of them."

I shook my head. "But you would have me trust
Lareth
?"

"Never. I would have you conquer him."

"Even if I knew a way, that isn't reason enough," I began, but he raised a hand.

"It isn't all the reason," he said. "The king's forces are already assembled. They will move against us soon, and they have the numbers to cast a wide net."

"And?"

"Your wizard can outrun them."

I opened my mouth to ask the obvious question, but stopped myself long enough to consider it. I thought for a moment, then asked, "How fast can we move three hundred men?"

He nodded slowly. "These men? Ten miles in a day. Give me a few weeks with them and we'll triple that, but give me the wizard—"

"And we can step to the other side of the continent." I had seen his travelings firsthand. I still hated the very thought of it, though. "What is my other choice? Just let them go? You and I alone could travel much faster."

Caleb shook his head. "No. That will not stop the king. He will still hunt you."

I nodded. The truth of it tasted bitter in my mouth. "He will obliterate all the little bands of Lareth's army and have his hounds inspect every last corpse until he's certain I am dead."

"He'll find you. Wherever you go. And then you'll have only me to fight his thousands. I cannot kill them all."

He said the words as level as everything else, but they hit me like the shock of cold water. I searched his eyes for some sign of mocking, but there was none. As he had told me more than once, he was my man.