The Red Wyvern: Book One of the Dragon Mage (47 page)

“Cold!” he whispered. “Ah well, we’ll be warm soon enough.”

He engulfed her in his embrace so fiercely that for a moment she was frightened, but his familiar kisses soothed her. In the past month or so, knowing that their marriage was arranged past breaking, they’d touched each other often, at first shyly, then more boldly when they’d discovered the pleasure it brought them. Now, when she felt his hand sliding up her thigh, she let her legs ease apart and whimpered at his touch.

“Now,” she whispered. “Please?”

“I be afraid to hurt you.”

“If it does hurt, it’ll be but that once. Do let’s put that behind us.”

Yet he kissed and caressed her a while longer, so that when he finally did take her, she felt no pain at all, just a sharp thrust into her desire, and then pleasure.

It was four nights past Samaen, the turning of the new year, when the first snow fell over Cengarn, far south of the Rhiddaer. Dallandra woke one morning to the smell of snow in the air and a fanged chill in her tower room. Near her bed stood the bronze brazier, stacked ready with twigs and lumps of charcoal. She stuck a cautious arm out from under the covers and pointed, summoning Wildfolk to light the fuel, then drew her arm back in fast.

“It must be snowing,” she remarked to Rhodry.

He mumbled something foul and pulled the blankets over his head. She snuggled down next to him and watched the Wildfolk, mostly grey gnomes, who lounged at the foot of the bed like cats. The next time she woke, the air in the chamber seemed just bearable. Since she kept her clothes over the chair back and next to the brazier, they were warmer than the air, at least. She struggled into her leggings under the blankets, then grabbed her tunic and, like a trout breaking water to catch a fly, sat up fast and just long enough to pull it on.

“You’re determined to get up, aren’t you?” Rhodry said.

“I am. I’m hungry, and the chamberpot is almost full.”

“Ah. If you’re going down to the great hall, bring me some bread back, will you?”

“Lazy sot.”

With a long martyred sigh, Dallandra sat up and grabbed her boots from the floor. Not until she had them on did she get out of bed. When she opened a shutter a crack, she could see grey light and indeed, snow falling in long ropes let down from the heavens. At least the worst of the stinks would freeze, but she swore an oath to herself that this would be the very last winter she would spend among humans in their stone tents.

“It
is
snowing,” she said.

Rhodry had fallen asleep again.

Down in Dun Cengarn’s great hall, the gwerbret’s warband clustered around the lesser hearth to get warm after their night in the barracks. At the table of honor Gwerbret Cadmar was sharing a loaf of bread with his guest, Prince Daralanteriel, Carra’s husband. The gwerbret had once been an imposing man, well over six feet tall, broad in the shoulders, broad in the hands, but the summer’s fighting had left him exhausted and somehow shrunken. As an herb-woman and the only real physician in the dun, Dallandra frankly worried about him. His slate-grey hair was thinning, and his moustaches were turning white; he sat slumped in his chair with his twisted right leg stuck out in front of him to soak up the fire’s warmth. The prince, however, was a young man and as handsome and vital as most of his kind, with raven-dark hair but pale grey eyes, slit vertically like a cat’s to reveal lavender pupils. Although his hair had grown shaggy, there was no hiding his ears, long and tightly furled like seashells, as elven as Dallandra’s own.

At the honor hearth, where a great stone dragon embraced the fire, a clot of boys sat as near as they could get without singeing, Jahdo among them. Two of the older boys played a game of carnoic while the others watched or fended off the dogs, who kept threatening to sweep the stones off the board with their tails. Since Jahdo was attending upon Rhodry as his page, Dallandra decided that he could take up the bread Rhodry wanted and empty the pot as well. She was just walking over when she heard first one woman scream, then another join in. She spun around in time to see Evandar walking through the dun wall some ten feet from her. The dogs leapt up and started barking.

“My pardons,” Evandar said. “I just wanted to see little Elessi.”

“She’s upstairs in the women’s hall,” Dallandra said. “And I wish you’d remember to use the door.”

With a laugh Evandar disappeared, leaving a whole gaggle of maidservants screaming and pointing while the men pretended they’d seen nothing and the boys stared goggle-eyed. Dalla kicked the nearest boar hound and bellowed at the dogs to shut up. They obeyed, lying back down with a few quiet growls.

It was later in the morning that Ylla, the lady Ocradda’s maidservant, asked Dallandra to come up to the women’s hall. Dalla found the gwerbret’s wife sitting by the hearth in a carved chair with sewing in her lap. Dallandra sat on a footstool near her ladyship.

“Thank you for coming up,” Ocradda said. “I trust I’ve not interrupted some um, er, well, important work?”

“None, my lady. What troubles your heart?”

“Well, it’s the servants. They do worry so dreadfully about sorcery, and with winter here, there’s not truly enough work to keep them busy.” She forced out a brittle little laugh. “Silly of them, of course.”

“I wouldn’t call it silly. They’ve seen enough evil dweomer to trouble anyone’s heart.”

Ocradda let her forced smile disappear.

“This Evandar,” Ocradda said. “He’s little Elessi’s grandfather, or so Princess Carra tells me?”

“That’s true, my lady.”

“Well, then, he’s welcome in our dun whenever he wants to see the child, but couldn’t he ride up like an ordinary man? The way he just appears—it frightens everyone.”

“So I’ve noticed. I’ll have a word with him the next time he comes.”

“My thanks.” Ocradda leaned back in her chair. “We’ve all seen too many strange things. But ah ye gods, dweomer saved us all! I hope you don’t think me ungrateful.”

“I don’t. Now you know why the dweomer prefers to work in secret. Life’s much easier for people if they can pretend magic simply doesn’t exist.”

“So it is. I’m just so glad all that’s over now.”

As she was leaving, Dallandra remembered a trifle she’d been meaning to attend to.

“My lady? Might I trouble the chamberlain for some soap?”

“Soap?” Lady Ocradda raised an eyebrow. “At this time of year?”

“Just a little bit would do,” Dalla said. “For the occasional wash.”

“Well, perhaps the chamberlain might be able to find you a scrap, though I doubt me it would be more than that. It’s because of the siege, you see. We always make soap in the fall, with the fats and tallow from the slaughtering, but this year every scrap of fat got itself eaten, not that there was much with the poor beasts half-starved.”

“Of course.” Dalla felt ashamed of herself. “My apologies. I’ll make do with water, then.”

“If you don’t mind?” Ocradda looked faintly desperate, as if wondering whether Dallandra would set fire to the dun over its lack of soap.

“Not in the least, not at all.”

What Ocradda didn’t know, and a good thing, too, was that Dallandra worked dweomer in the dun every night. For some while now she’d been placing wards around the bed she and Rhodry shared to keep Raena out of his dreams. Although she’d carved elvish runes on strips of wood for a physical focus, the true wards burned on the etheric and astral as images of flaming stars.

“They’re working nicely, too,” Rhodry said that evening. “I’ve had naught but pleasant dreams since you started doing this.”

“Good. I think it’s time to spring my trap, then. By now Raena should be good and angry. I wanted to make her frustrated, you see, so she won’t think clearly.”

“I think I do see. Then one night you won’t put up the wards?”

“Just that, and I think I’ll try it tonight. You just go to sleep as usual—”

“—knowing a crazed sorceress is out for my blood. Just a trifle. I’ll not let it trouble my heart.”

“Well, you went riding with the prince today, didn’t you? You should be nice and tired.”

Involuntarily Rhodry yawned.

“So I am,” he said. “This cold weather takes it out of a man.”

That night when she slept, Dallandra went to the Gatelands, an “area,” if you wish to use that metaphor, at the “edge” of the astral plane. During sleep the average person’s soul drifts close enough to the astral to receive true dreams as well as the mundane images from their own minds. A dweomer-master, or a strange case like Raena, can therefore track down a dreaming person and make some sort of contact with them. Conversely, another master can meet and confront the dream-meddler as well.

Long years of practice had made Dallandra adept at true dreaming; as she was drifting off to sleep she had merely to tell her mind what she wished to dream in order to dream of it. It seemed she walked through a meadow of wild grasses, strangely pale and silky against her bare legs. Overhead hung a purple moon so huge that it filled half the sky. When she glanced back over her shoulder, she saw the remains of her wards—two dull five-pointed stars on the verge of flickering out. Between them lay the dream-gate leading down to Rhodry, a mark in the grass so clear and hard that Raena must have used it often. Dallandra dreamed herself a coil of rope, then invoked pure force from the etheric and channeled it into the rope, giving it life beyond a mere image. In front of the two stars she laid a snare, hidden in the grass. She angled off a short way and sat down, hiding herself as well, with the rope’s end in her lap. By parting the stalks she could see the fading wards.

Then came the waiting, and since this was the world of dream, it could have been a few moments or several hours while the moon hung motionless in the sky. At length Dallandra heard someone rustling through the grass. When she looked, she saw Raena striding along in her dream-body. Her oily black hair hung down her back, but otherwise she was naked. At the wards she paused, smiling.

“Well met!” Dallandra sprang from cover as fast as a lark. “Thinking of mischief, were you?”

With a scream Raena turned to run, but Dallandra grabbed the rope and pulled. The loop tightened around Raena’s legs and toppled her, flailing and shrieking. Hauling on the rope to keep it taut, Dallandra trotted over to find her prize sitting up and struggling to free the loop from her ankles. With a practiced flick of her wrists, Dallandra sent another loop spiralling around her shoulders and yanked. The rope bit before Raena could free herself.

“My people are horse-herders,” Dalla said. “Struggle, and I’ll cover you with rope burns. They’ll hurt, too, even when you wake. I know a thing or two about witch bodies, you see.”

Raena glared up at her, her mouth a little open as she panted for breath.

“Leave Rhodry alone,” Dallandra went on. “You don’t truly understand what you’re doing, and you could hurt yourself if you keep this up.”

Raena slumped, letting her head fall forward.

“I don’t care if you want to listen or not,” Dallandra snapped. “You don’t have any proper training in dweomer. If you trust your would-be god, he’ll lead you into trouble and then leave you there.”

Raena was sitting oddly still. Dallandra suddenly realized what she must be doing and leapt forward to grab her—too late. With a shimmer of blue light and a burst of silver, she disappeared in a flurry of falling rope. For a brief moment a raven hopped in the grass; then with a shriek it hurled itself into the air and flew, flapping hard, back the way Raena had come. Dallandra considered transforming into her own bird-form, but the raven had a long start. Most likely Raena could wake herself up and escape the Gatelands entirely even if Dallandra did manage to catch up to her.

Before she left, Dallandra reset the wards, pouring energy into them until they burned with red and gold. For a moment she watched them, then walked to the dream-gate and let herself drop, gliding down into her body and a normal sleep.

It was no wonder that Evandar’s appearances startled the dun so badly, because he travelled by those secret routes, the mothers of all roads, that lead between the worlds. Since his country existed in no true world at all, the roads met within it. At that time, Evandar knew them better than any other being in the vast universe, but on this trip he found a surprise waiting for him. The entrance to his country lay on a small hill, and when he stepped onto it he saw a world gone strange.

Winter had settled in, the first winter this etheric land had ever known. When he’d been creating it, so many aeons ago that he could no longer remember exactly how long, Evandar had chosen to keep the season always spring, and a warm and sunny one at that. In those ancient days his country had lain far beyond the physical world of elves and men, but with time and over time it seemed to have drifted closer—he could think of no other way to frame the change to himself.

Snow lay white on the long meadows. Below him at the foot of the hill, it heaped in drifts against the broken walls and dead hedges of the formal garden he’d once created for Dallandra. Trees stood leafless; dead flowers hung on blackened rosebushes. In the ruin one of his warriors was wandering around, poking at the snow with a long stick.

“Menw!” Evandar called out.

At the sound the warrior tossed the stick away and started up the hill. A tall fellow, with ash-blond hair and bright blue eyes, as he climbed he kept one broad hand on the hilt of his silver sword, as if the snow were an enemy, waiting to pounce.

“My lord!” Menw said. “It gladdens my heart to see you. I’ve been waiting here, hoping you’d come back. We’ve all been frantic, wondering what’s gone wrong.”

“A great deal,” Evandar said. “We’ve swung close enough for Time to invade us.”

“Indeed, my lord? Well, so far it seems to be winning the battle.”

Evandar considered the silver river, where dead water reeds and rushes stood brown along the banks. The water still flowed, but even more sluggishly than usual.

“Where are my people?” Evandar said.

“In the pavilion, waiting for you.”

Over dead grass and snow they walked downhill to the riverbank. Some ways along it stood an enormous pavilion of cloth-of-gold, listing to one side from the weight of snow upon its roof and the drifts piled against its windward side. With cloaks over their silver armor, the men of his warband were standing outside, talking among themselves. They were a beautiful people, Evandar’s folk; their illusions of bodies had been modelled on the elven race, with hair pale as moonlight or bright as the sun to set off their eyes, violet, grey, or gold, and the long delicate curled ears. For the most part they had pale skin, but some had seen the human beings of the far southern isles, and had copied their skin, as dark as fresh-plowed earth under a rain.