Wardragon (27 page)

Having secured the place against unlikely intrusion, they sent Davit and Osric to the night market to buy clothes, food and mild ale. Those two, at least, were not known here. Zimak asked about the possibility of magical masks to give them new faces, but Jelindel shook her head and said there were more important things on which to expend her magic.

They had a midnight meal after which Daretor drank rainwater from the roof cistern because he considered wine and ale to be fattening. They slept for several hours, then rose while it was still dark. Jelindel went into a trance and her mind entered the paraplane, so that she could search for the fragile threads that were clues to the future. The threads were faint, but she followed them carefully, glimpsing odd clues and symbols of what was probably, to some, worthless information. Eventually, after what seemed like days, she returned to her own paraworld and her own body. To the watchers, who had never grown used to this odd and disconcerting inward journey, it seemed that she had only been meditating for a moment before her body was wrenched by an enormous, convulsive gasp and her eyes bulged open. Her hand groped out to steady herself, and Daretor and Zimak grasped her arms from either side.

Jelindel’s dizziness abated, and they sat in a circle on the floor of the darkened room. They passed a bottle of wine around, lacking any mugs. Davit insisted that he should have Daretor’s share, but lost interest after tasting the mouth-numbing bitterness.

‘Hie, Davit,’ Zimak said, ‘you’ll get used to it.’

But apart from Zimak’s brief spark of humour, the spirit of the gathering was subdued.

‘So what did you learn?’ Daretor asked.

Jelindel sighed. ‘It’s hard to explain the paraplane to those who cannot go there. The traveller is given glimpses, clues, but all are ambiguous and nothing is fixed, especially where the future is concerned. The fact that I went and looked at the things to come has already changed them. If I went back right now, I would very probably see something different, yet that trip would also change things again. This is what the mystics mean when they say the future is unknowable.’

‘Which means …?’ asked Osric.

‘I can say that all threads lead to war,’ said Jelindel. ‘A great convergence in the plane on which we live is approaching. A battle lies ahead and in this battle all will be won or lost.’

‘It’s the way with battles,’ said Daretor. ‘Someone wins, someone loses, and lots of people die.’

‘The outcome?’ asked Osric.

‘Unknowable,’ said Jelindel.

‘What was the point then in journeying to this other plane?’ asked Osric, more out of curiosity than disappointment. He for one was used to the utterings of the Sacred One and knew that such things were uncertain.

‘We know a battle is coming,’ said Zimak.

‘The village idiot could have told you that,’ said Daretor.

‘One looks for preponderances,’ explained Jelindel. ‘A weighting this way or that, as well as turning points – those moments when great matters may be shifted by small actions.’

‘I see,’ said Osric.

‘Well, I’m glad you do,’ said Zimak, ‘because I’m still about as confused as a eunuch in a b –’

‘Zimak!’ snapped Jelindel, eyeing Davit.

‘Bathhouse?’ suggested the boy.

‘This battle that comes will involve many different peoples,’ Jelindel continued. She looked at Osric in the near-darkness. ‘We need the dragons more than ever, this I have seen. We must counterbalance the Wardragon’s ships of the air with flying warriors of our own. Before the battle the dragons must also spread the word of what is to come to the far corners of this land. War comes to Q’zar and we need every able-bodied fighter we can muster. The Wardragon
will
join forces with Fa’red now that we’ve destroyed most of his fleet. I also sense treachery will have a part in all this.’

‘So, you saw more than just a battle,’ Daretor concluded.

‘Yes. I suppose I did. Perhaps too much,’ she said cryptically. She smiled at a hidden thought.

When Daretor quizzed her she explained. ‘I just remembered something you said about Fa’red waiting to pick off the victor. I wondered why he kept his end of the bargain by swapping you and Zimak back to your rightful bodies. He wanted us to be at our greatest possible strength so that we would have a more even battle with the Wardragon.’

‘So we’d fight one another to exhaustion,’ Daretor guessed.

‘Of all the –’ Zimak began.

‘Then again,’ Daretor said, frowning, ‘he looked set to hang us.’

‘A ruse to fool the Wardragon into thinking Fa’red really did want us dead?’ Jelindel suggested.

Zimak laid back, stretching out on the floorboards. ‘Why is it that I always feel like a pawn?’

In the remaining hours to dawn Daretor did several thousand sit-ups, push-ups and leg squats, and even managed bench presses using Davit as a barbell. Even after only a couple of days back in his own body, he had reduced its weight by several pounds – in spite of the generous ‘gallows’ breakfast – toned the muscles, and even dressed and carried it better. All of which annoyed Zimak immensely.

Osric left D’loom at mid-morning, making his way out by a conventional gate rather than the sewers, since he was not known in the city, and his head carried no reward. Some time after noon he reached S’cressling, who was disguising herself as part of a rocky outcrop. They were back at the Tower Inviolate by mid-afternoon, and by the next day Osric had recruited a hundred dragons and their riders to fly to every city, drop message leaflets, and generally spread the word about the war to come.

Before long the rumour of impending war was well established. Everyone whose lives Jelindel and her companions had touched dropped what they were doing and prepared to march on D’loom. They gathered up many more during their trek to the port city.

Jelindel and the others went about D’loom, mostly at night, meeting with friends, and seeking out those dissatisfied with the city’s current leaders, including those who could be bought or bribed with promissory notes. The Magicians’ Guild was a particularly good source of recruits, being alarmed at the way things were going, and what seemed in store for magic – and their own livelihoods.

During this time Daretor became aware that Jelindel had become distant.

She had taken to spending more and more time alone, and shunning his company. At first, he had believed she just needed time to get over her subjectively long stay on Golgora, plus the further shock of Daretor being back in his own body. But he had begun to sense there was more to it than that. His own feelings, he had to admit, were just as confused, and moments of warmth and affection, of coming together in laughter and tears, didn’t seem to heal the distance, and maybe even accentuated it.

Jelindel was unhappy. And he did not know the cause, and was afraid to ask, in case it had to do with him. Such cowardice shamed him, for he would willingly have faced an angry dragon on her behalf, but he could not face the truth, or what he imagined might be the truth. As her unhappiness increased, so did his.

The two of them together, Zimak told Davit one day, was pure misery. The rift between his friends was just as painful to Zimak and, strangely enough, made him think of Ethella, so far away, trapped in her bitter lake.

But he said nothing, and watched his friends closely, even as chaos and death stalked the city.

It all came to a head in a tavern one evening. Jelindel had disguised herself as Jaelin, her male persona. Against Daretor’s advice she dragged him into the tavern and proceeded to get drunk, insisting that he join her in her insobriety. She had given him a thin disguise also, but he felt that all eyes were on them, and was uncomfortable. Jelindel’s strange behaviour only added to his discomfiture.

‘We should go,’ he hissed at her in an undertone.

Jelindel giggled, now quite drunk. She placed the broken leg of a chair over an empty tankard and magically balanced a full one on the other end. Directly above the whole thing was a ham, hanging from a rope, curing slowly.

‘Ah, to what purpose –’ he began before a spell sealed his lips.

‘Just this once, Daretor, do be quiet,’ she said, then took his dagger and flung it upwards. The blade severed the cord suspending the ham. The ham fell and struck the ‘empty’ end of the table leg which acted like the arm of a siege engine, sending the full tankard arcing through the air, spilling its entire contents on the head of the burly tapman.

The man roared in anger. ‘You two!’ he bellowed. ‘I saw that!’

Other drinkers cleared a path for the furious innkeeper as he stormed across the floor. Seizing the enchantment-bound Daretor and the still laughing Jelindel by their tunics, he dragged them both across the tavern to the door. Kicking it open, he flung first Daretor, then Jelindel, into the darkness outside. A moment later the enchanted bindings fell away from Daretor.

‘Why did you do that?’ he demanded.

‘Because I wanted to do something clever and funny,’ said Jelindel, brushing the dirt from her clothes.

‘I must go back in and restore my honour!’

‘How? By killing the tapman?’

‘Yes – that is, no. I – ah … Dammit! I don’t understand.’

‘Maybe that’s the problem.’

‘What? What’s the problem?’

‘Something is happening to me, Daretor. Golgora …’ She looked away. ‘It did something to me … It’s like – like when a spell is broken.’

‘Are you sick?’

‘Perhaps.’ A moment later she said softly, ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know what came over me. I wasn’t – myself …’

‘Then everything is as before?’ He sounded hopeful.

‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’

Her words stung, and kept Daretor at arm’s length. They trudged on in silence, Jelindel feeling more starkly sober than she ever had.

A week after their return, their clandestine work paid off. The people of D’loom took back their city. Despite the weakening of magic, the merchantmen could not withstand the combined might of the Magicians’ Guild and the mercenaries hired by several other guilds. Local business had suffered because of the merchantmen, and rich people who are facing the prospect of growing poor are among the most dangerous beings in existence. Besides, the merchantmen were still not fully settled into the running of the city, having come into power less than a fortnight before, and they were taken completely by surprise by the swiftness with which the rebel force had appeared, and the effectiveness of its leadership.

Prince Augustus was located in a dungeon, and was swiftly restored as a figurehead. The prince was so grateful at being released from his dank cell that he appointed Daretor as War Commander of D’loom. The position was newly invented, which meant that Daretor could do what he liked as long as the prince’s bath and dinner were not interrupted.

D’loom quickly became a city gearing for war.

It was strange, Daretor reflected, how the merchantmen’s efforts to supplant magic with cold science had not only depressed the markets but had somehow dispirited the townsfolk as well, as if a vital part of their being had been stifled. Of course, it hadn’t helped that many locals had left to work in the Argentian mines. But with the restrictions of the merchantmen gone, many would hopefully return. The streets were already buzzing. Guards, watchmen, militia and ordinary townsfolk drilled, practised and worked on the defences. The workshops of the blacksmiths were frantically busy, belching sparks and black smoke as weapons of war were fashioned. The sound of hammers on metal rang throughout the city as did the cries of the men drilling with sword, pike and crossbow. The markets also bustled with activity. Weapons and armour were being produced courtesy of the royal treasury, but anxious citizens were laying in food and wine against the threat of a long siege. Prices doubled, then tripled.

All the while Daretor ate and drank minimally, but exercised a great deal. The city was administered while he did sit-ups, and his meagre meals were snatched between sword practice and readying the city for war. The warrior began to look considerably more like his old self. Quite a lot of interest was taken in Daretor by women who had known his body while Zimak had lived within it. Daretor knew that Jelindel noticed this and it bothered him that she did not become jealous.

One night, Jelindel contrived to be alone with Daretor. The coolness that had grown between them since Golgora – and maybe before that, if truth be told – had become a kind of careful civility, which separated them more effectively than any rage or petty argument might have done. Jelindel, feeling lonely and mad at herself for having allowed things to get to this point, sought out Daretor in a palace hall where he stood with a handful of throwing knives, flinging them at the head of a human-sized target with inhuman skill.

‘You’ve been avoiding me,’ Jelindel began. ‘Ever since that night in the tavern.’

‘I’ve been very busy,’ said Daretor. ‘It wasn’t my intention.’

‘I think it was.’

Thunk
. A knife plunged into the heart of the target dummy.

‘Daretor, stop it! Was it the tavern episode or are you jealous of Zimak. I mean, really,
Zimak
?’

‘Jealous of him, no. Disappointed with you, yes.’

‘Disappointed with me? How dare you! I made the prince appoint you!’

Daretor calmly took the chain and crest from around his neck and held it out to her. Jelindel turned away, walked over to a window bay, then sat down with her back to the city. Daretor dropped the chain and crest to the floor and continued with his knife practice.

‘I desire you greatly,’ ventured Jelindel.

‘Especially when it’s not me,’ replied Daretor.

‘I don’t have to sit here and take this!’ Jelindel retorted.

‘Then stand up,’ said Daretor. He whirled and flung a knife. Again it thudded into the heart mark of his target figure.

‘Look, I admit it, I flirted with Zimak,’ said Jelindel. ‘There, are you satisfied? I’ve said it!’

‘Why?’

‘Why? To make you jealous. And why not? He has his good points, along with the bad. He’s sharp, witty, challenging; it’s fun to match wits with him.’

‘But not me?’