The Silver Mage (32 page)

“I didn’t. It stayed in the water. Now, there was a third fellow on the riverbank, but he was different-looking. I was far too high to see him clearly, but he looked like one of the Mountain Folk.”

Berwynna gasped, and Mic cried out. He clapped his hand over his mouth to stifle the noise.

“Think you it could be Kov?” Berwynna said to her uncle. “My Dougie—” Her voice caught, but she continued on. “My Dougie did wonder if Kov were truly dead, or if he were mayhap taken for a slave or such.”

Mic lowered his hand; he was smiling, his eyes full of sudden hope. “Maybe it’s so,” he said. “Ah ye gods, maybe he’s still alive.”

“I can find out easily enough,” Dallandra said. “I remember him quite well, so I can scry for him.”

“I’d be truly grateful if you did,” Mic said.

Dallandra looked up at the sky, where a few streaks of high cloud offered a focus. When she thought of Kov, his image built up quickly, though at first she had trouble identifying him, since the only light, and that a peculiar blue, came from glowing baskets.

“He’s in a dark tunnel with an absolute mob of other people,” Dallandra said. “I can’t tell if they’re asleep or just resting, but they all seem to have big bundles and baskets and the like with them. Refugees from the Horsekin? It could be.” She banished the vision. “He looks very much alive to me, Mic.”

Tears welled in Mic’s eyes. He wiped them vigorously away on his sleeve. “Then I’ve got to head back north,” Mic said. “He’s my bloodkin, distantly, perhaps, but bloodkin nonetheless, and it’s my duty to ransom him.”

“It’s too dangerous,” Rori broke in. “There are bands of Horsekin raiders all over the countryside.”

“But—”

“Uncle Mic?” Berwynna laid her hand on Mic’s arm. “Remember you when I did wish to go haring off across the countryside to find Da’s book? You did tell me then that the danger were too great. It be worse now, from what Da does tell us.”

Caught, Mic looked back and forth between his niece and the dragon, then nodded. “Well and good, then,” Mic said. “But how do we know that the danger won’t come his way?”

“We don’t,” Dallandra said. “It’s in the laps of the gods.” She frowned at the dragon’s side, where the leeches were finishing up their work. “As is this wretched wound, apparently. I think I’ll have Neb take a look at it.”

Once she finished tending to Rori, Dallandra returned to camp. She found Neb, told him that she wanted him to examine the dragon’s wound at some point, then went to her tent to nurse a hungry Dari.

Late that afternoon, in a flourish of silver horns, the hunting party rode back to camp with venison to distribute. Prince Daralanteriel and Calonderiel turned their horses over to Pir to rub down and put out with the herd. Dallandra followed the pair as they hurried out to speak with Rori, who was lounging in the high grass on the opposite side of camp from the herd and the flocks. While Pir’s dweomer was gradually accustoming the horses to the scent and sight of dragon, the sheep lacked the capacity to learn, and Pir knew nothing of ovine ways.

The two leaders joined Rori in the grass to hear his detailed report. A few at a time, other members of the alar gathered around as well, squatting down in the golden sunlight of late afternoon. When Rori described the old cities of the Far West, everyone sighed. A few of the men brushed tears from their eyes.

“So much for the splendor of the past,” was Dar’s only comment. Rori’s report on the new Horsekin fortress, however, brought more of a response from the prince.

“Very well,” Dar said. “If they’re putting so much work into that fortress, they won’t be raiding our borders, I suspect.”

“Not this summer, maybe,” Cal said. “Once they get their safe haven built, that’s when they’ll be coming south.”

Among the listeners a few whispered, a few swore in a soft breath of sound, quickly squelched when Dar began to speak again.

“Eventually we’ll have to deal with them, but for now, let’s continue on our way west,” the prince said. “I want Dallandra to send messages ahead of us to Cerr Cawnen. They’re our allies, and we need to consult with them. The Horsekin are closer to them than they are to us.”

Everyone turned to look at the dragon, lounging in the grass nearby. Rori nodded his massive head.“Cerr Cawnen needs to go on alert.”

When Dar got to his feet, the other members of the alar rose, too, and silently followed him. Dallandra felt danger like smoke in the air, choking her. Momentarily she saw smoke, spreading out like a vast fan into the air.

“Are you ill?” Rori said.

“No, just an omen.”

“Just.” The dragon rolled his oddly human eyes.

“Well, we already know how dangerous the wretched Horsekin are. I’m surprised that I’m receiving omens about it. Usually one gets them about unknown things.” She stood up, suddenly irritable. “I’m going back to—no, wait! Here comes Neb.”

With greetings all round, Neb strode up. Sylphs clustered around him in the air, and gnomes pushed their way through the thick grass at his feet. Rori flopped over on his side to allow him to examine the gash, a stubborn pink stripe on his silvery body.

Neb ran a cautious hand over the scales just above the wound. “Does that hurt?”

“Not truly,” Rori said, “though I can feel it. My hide’s thin about there.”

Neb made a thoughtful grunting sound, then ran his hand under the wound, back and forth several times. He muttered something too low to comprehend, then stepped back a pace. From the vague look in his eyes, Dallandra could tell that he’d opened his sight. He shook his head, then turned to speak with her. His eyes appeared normal again.

“Dalla, this is most peculiar,” Neb said. “It almost looks like he’s got a splinter under his skin, a big one, but at root just like a carpenter might get in his finger.”

Dallandra gaped at him.

“It’s not somewhat natural,” Neb went on. “I can see a dark mark in the aura, a straight flat line, though it’s thicker at one end. It’s like the splinter is somehow sucking the life force into itself.”

“If somewhat’s draining energy from his aura,” Dallandra said, “it’s no wonder the gash won’t close. I—” She hesitated, letting elusive memories rise. “Oh, by the Black Sun! The silver dagger!”

“What?” Neb and the dragon spoke together.

“Rhodry, I mean, Rori, your silver dagger! I never found it among your clothes after the transformation. Evandar was using it as a kind of focus for the dweomer that was building you a new astral body.”

“Ye gods!” The dragon lifted his enormous head to look at her. “I can remember that, though not very clearly. It’s like trying to remember a dream, but I was holding the dagger. I threw it into the air, and then—” He growled, baffled. “That’s all I can remember. I woke, and I was a dragon.”

“Indeed you were.” Dallandra laid her hand where Neb’s had been and pressed, making the dragon grunt in pain. She could feel something hard under the scaly hide. “It’s about the right size for a silver dagger. Neb, I’ve long thought that the daggers glow when one of the People touch them because they’re absorbing force from our aura.”

“That makes sense, truly,” Neb said.

“If we held one long enough, it might well kill us, or at least, leave us gravely ill. Rhodry was only half an elf, of course, and besides, a dragon has a tremendous amount of life force. Doubtless, a silver dagger would only irritate a wound rather than cause worse harm.”

“Why would Evandar have let it be incorporated?” Neb said. “I suppose it could be a physical component for the dweomer spell.”

“It could.” Dallandra felt suddenly weary. “It could also be a simple mistake. Evandar never much cared about consequences and details, you see. He could be very—well, the truth is—he was careless.” She sighed briefly. “And reckless. If an action matched one of his omens, if he thought he’d foreseen a thing, I mean, he’d do that thing without worrying about the outcome.”

Neb started to speak, then bit it back. Dallandra felt like screaming at him.
I know what you’re thinking. He was awful and crazed and a spirit, and it was absolutely perverted of me to go off with him! That’s what everyone thinks, isn’t it?
Aloud, she said, “Well, the real question is, what are we going to do about it now?”

“Have it out, I’d say,” Neb said.

“That’s my thought, too, though if it is a component—well, I suppose that doesn’t matter, since we’re trying to reverse the working.” She caught Rori’s gaze and gave him a grim stare. “Aren’t we?”

The dragon looked away. “Eventually,” he said. “I suppose.”

“Try supposing this,” Dallandra went on. “If we take the dagger out, if indeed that’s what it is, we stand a grand chance of getting your wound to finally heal. Is that worth the risk to you?”

With a long sigh the dragon rolled back to a sitting position, with his hind legs off to one side and his front legs extended in front of him.

“Besides,” Neb put in, “if we don’t heal the wound first, and you do decide to be transformed back, the wound will kill you.”

Rori contemplated his front paws then finally spoke. “If I didn’t want to return to Angmar, I’d die gladly once I was back in my old skin. My Lady Death might—”

“Oh, don’t start that again!” Dallandra felt like slapping him on the nose, dragon or not. “It’s so daft!”

“Very well.” Rori laughed in a long low rumble. “If there’s somewhat stuck under my hide, then I want it out, whether I’m a dragon or a man, so do your worst, chirurgeons.”

“I’m hoping we can do our best,” Neb said. “We have one problem left to solve. I don’t want to be slain by a pain-crazed dragon when I’m in the midst of slicing open that abscess. Truly, Rori, I don’t know if there are enough herbs in the grasslands to ease the pain for you. I do know for certain that there’s no one strong enough to hold you down.”

“Ah, but there are,” Rori said. “Arzosah and Medea between them, Medea to sit on my tail, and Arzosah to tend to the head. I’ll let you bind my mouth with rope, too, to make sure I can’t bite.”

“You sound positively cheerful about this,” Dallandra said.

“I’ve had this cursed wound itching and smarting for over forty years now. By the black hairy arse of the Lord of Hell, cursed right I’m cheerful! It’ll be worth a day or two of pain, let me assure you. Can we do it now?”

Dallandra glanced at the sky, where the sun sat just above the horizon. “Is there enough light, Neb?”

“Just, but I’d rather wait till morning. That will give me time to brew up an herbal wash to clean the wound once we’ve gotten the dagger out.”

“And it will give me time to explain the procedure to Arzosah,” Dallandra said. “She’ll need to be careful where she puts her weight.”

That night, Dallandra lay awake in her blankets. Finally she rose and left the tent before her tossing and turning woke Cal and the baby both. The warm night air soothed her as she picked her way through the sleeping camp, as did the sight of the river of stars hanging close above. At the edge of the tents she paused and looked out across the grass, much beaten down by the day’s comings and goings, to the place where Rori and Arzosah were sleeping, curled into tidy bundles. Medea lay sprawled nearby. As Dallandra watched, the young dragon flopped over onto her back, legs akimbo in the air.

In the starlight Rori’s skin gleamed with silver highlights, much like his dagger from the old days, which he’d always kept polished to a high sheen. Dallandra searched her memories of the dweomer that had turned Rhodry into a dragon. She was trying to pin down the moment of Evandar’s mistake, if such it was, with the silver dagger. At last the memory came clear. Rhodry had tossed the dagger away, thrown it high into the air, there in Evandar’s country. She had seen it spin up high and give off a flash of light before it disappeared.

At the time she’d thought it had fallen back onto the physical plane when Evandar destroyed his etheric constructions. When she hadn’t found it, she’d assumed that it had somehow dissolved. Silver, especially enchanted silver, can be profoundly unstable during dweomerworkings.
But it wasn’t pure silver,
she reminded herself.
The daggers are made of some sort of alloy.

She gave up trying to solve the puzzle. If Neb’s chirurgery retrieved the dagger from Rori’s side, she would have her answer then and not before.

Just after dawn on the morrow, a strange group of chirurgeons assembled out in the grasslands near camp: Neb with his implements, Dallandra with her supplies, and two dragons with their great strength and weight. After Dallandra bound Rori’s mouth with rope, he lay down on his side. Medea pinned her stepfather’s tail under her forelegs, while Arzosah arranged herself across his shoulders. Neb stepped up to the wound. He’d found a large boning knife, of the sort a hunter would use to draw and disjoint a deer, and sharpened it to a scalpel’s edge.

“Very well, Rori,” Neb said. “Brace yourself.”

When she’d known Rhodry in human form, Dallandra had always been impressed by just how indifferent to pain he could be. Apparently, the dragon shared this trait. Neb felt the splinter one more time with his left hand, then slashed the hide just under the wound. Rori never moved nor made so much as a grunt or mutter, though his wings, folded tight along his back, did tremble. Blood trickled out of the slash along with a gray thick ooze that stank worse than any excrement.

“It did form a cyst,” Neb said. “I thought so. I’m making a second cut.”

This time Rori’s tail tried to lash out. Medea threw her weight forward and held it still as Neb cut vertically up from the original slash at each end, as if he were shaping a flap out of leather for a pouch. Rori allowed himself a low moan, quickly stifled. More blood spurted out of the new wounds, and green pus followed. Neb made a gagging sound deep in his throat from the stench, but his hands were steady as he used the point of the boning knife to pry something free.

In a wad of foul matter a dagger-shaped object fell to the ground. Slime oozed into the grass.