Winterlands 2 - Dragonshadow (33 page)

Ask my mercy. Ask my favor. Ask my love.

He was lying, it seemed, in the open, under a white dimpled horror of sky. Chains held his wrists and ankles to what felt, under his bare back, like a circle of stone, though beyond his outstretched fingers he saw thin gray grasses moving in windless alien wind. Silk blew over his face. He turned his head back, squinted up—he could not remember what had become of his spectacles— and saw Aohila standing just behind his head. He knew that what was going to happen next would be worse than the previous illusion. He said, “You know they’d never have sent me to bargain if there’d been any question of opening the mirror again. There isn’t. It can’t be done.”

She was holding a golden cup. She dipped her fingers into it, brought them out wet. “Why then should we help you?”

She dripped the liquid from her fingers onto his body. Where it struck it was deathly cold, then at once began to itch, and slowly, to smoke and to burn.

“Because what you’re doing to me, the seaspawn can do to you, and for the same reasons.

Maybe the pain of demons is tastier than the pain of men. I’ll look it up when I get back—it’s probably in Gantering Pellus, or maybe Curillius, though Curillius isn’t even accurate about how many horses you need to go on a quest across the Marches. But if they take over the southern kingdom, they’ll be able to get at your mirror, you know.”

She dipped out a handful of liquid from the cup and dribbled it down over his face. He jerked his head aside and got the splash of it down his cheek and neck, burning away the flesh, eating deeper and deeper.

“You don’t think we can take care of ourselves?”

“I think you can.” He had to fight to keep his voice steady, to keep the terror of more pain from dissolving his thoughts. “But I think there’ll be evil and horror if a demon war is fought in the lands of men. I’m bargaining not so that you can get out, but so that you’ll at least be left in peace.”

“It isn’t peace that we want, man.” She squatted behind his head and, reaching over, pulled his chin back, setting the rim of the cup to his lips. “It’s revenge on those who imprisoned us here.” She pinched his nostrils shut, forced his mouth open and poured the poison in, so that he choked, gagged, swallowed. “All we need is one servant in the realm of humankind to start with. And it need not be unpleasant.” She smiled and dipped her finger into the cup. Slowly, sensuously, she drew spells on his body, lines of fire and pain that ate into the flesh until his mind blotted with agony that never quite swallowed up his ability to feel. Then she emptied the remainder of the cup on the stone beside him, and rising, walked leisurely away across the endless gray grass.

He came to lying on her divan again. Raw inside and out, as if all that illusion had been done to him in fact. With his eyes closed he was aware of the other demons crowding around, whispering, but when he heard the dry friction of her silks and her hair beside him, and opened his eyes, it was only she. The mists were gone and the room had frescoes of deer and fishes on the walls; its windows opened into a darkness of jasmine and orange-trees. She asked him again, “What do you want?”

What he wanted most was a drink of water, but he stopped himself from saying so. Not having drunk the poison willingly he supposed it didn’t count, if it hadn’t in fact been illusion. He sat up and coughed, the pain of just that was excruciating, as if he were all scar tissue inside. “I want a spell that will defend machines against the magic of the sea-wights,” he said. He rubbed his wrists, felt the raw galls of shackles, though the skin was unmarked. “We’ve built a number of ’em—machines, that is—and we need to protect ’em all.”

“Done.” From the folds of her gown she produced a vial of red-black glass, like something carved out of ancient blood.

John grinned shakily, “Surely you don’t have pockets in that frock, now, do you, love?” and was rewarded with a stab of pain, as if she’d driven a sword into his belly and twisted it.

No sense of humor, he thought, sweating, as soon as he could breathe again. It’d never work out between us.

He blinked up at her nearsightedly and almost asked for his spectacles back. She’d probably count that as one of the traditional three requests—why was it always three?—and anyway, oddly enough, he could still see Mab’s sigil shining somewhere beyond the wall. Maybe the wall didn’t really exist. “I want a spell that will free both mages and dragons from the thrall of the sea-wights and restore their own minds and wills to them again.”

The goatish eyes narrowed, under the jeweled swanks of hair. But she said, “Done.” She produced a seal cut of crystal, cold and tiny and greenish-white, and laid it beside the vial on the cushions.

A wight the size of a chicken ran up to the divan and leaping up, caught John’s wrist and drove its proboscis into the flesh. With a curse he shook it off, feeling the blood hot on his arm, but not daring to take his eyes from the Queen’s. The wight lunged at him again; the Queen caught it by the neck, casually, and bringing it to her mouth bit through its throat, her head jerking aside and back like a dog’s, to rip and kill.

With blood on her face, on her breasts and garments, she asked him, “Is there anything else?” “And I want a spell that will heal them of any damage they’ve taken.”

“Well.” Her red lips curved in scorn. The dead thing in her hand had ceased to twitch, but the blood still ran out of it over her fingers. “Done.” She dropped the dead wight to the floor, and something ran out from under the divan and began to gnaw it with thick little ripping sounds. With sticky hands she produced a blue stone box, soapy to the feel and heavier than it should have been as he took it in his hand. “Now let us talk of the teind you will pay me in return.” His hands closed around the box, the seal, the vial; he could not stop them shaking. He got to his feet and backed from her, and she lay back along the divan and smiled. “I’ll even let you out of here, for as long as it takes for you to take my revenge on the sea-wights,” she said.

“Thank you,” he said. “Afterward …”

“No afterward,” said John. “I’ll pay whatever price you ask of me, but I won’t be your servant in my own world. I hired my sword to the gnomes for a price, but when that price was paid I went my way. Sooner than that I’ll remain here.”

She sat up, angry, her lip raised a little to show a fang. He saw now that things lived in her hair—or maybe they were a part of the hair: eyeless, darting, toothed. I don’t think you’ve thought about what that will be like, o my beloved.

Sweat stood cold on his face, because like the dragons her mind spoke in images and sensations, and he could see what it would be: agonizing and without any end. Ever. He made himself meet her eyes, and though the runes and sigils she’d traced on his flesh began to burn with the memory of the poison, he did not look away.

God of Time, don’t let her take me up on it, he pleaded, in the deepest hollows of his heart. I don’t think I could do it…

They faced one another for some minutes in silence.

Very well, she said softly. We shall speak of terms, then.

The walls behind her shifted, and he could see the Hellspawn through them, like fish in murky water. He recognized the two with the whips. Others held bits and pieces of a man’s body— entrails, a hand, a foot. A long hank of bloodied brown hair with a faded red ribbon braided into it. A pair of spectacles. He looked back at the Demon Queen’s eyes and saw lazy amusement in them, and something else that frightened him badly.

Since you will not be my servant, in exchange I will ask that you bring us rare and precious things.

His mouth felt like flesh long dead. “Name ’em.”

Her smile widened, as if he had walked into a trap. “Even so. You’re a scholar, Aversin. You found the mirror here; you make machines that will slay dragons or fly with them across the skies. Therefore I name as your bond that you bring here a piece of a star, a dragon’s tears … and a gift given to you freely by one who hates you. That is your teind. If you do not redeem it by the last full moon of the summer, the one they used to call the King’s Moon, then you will return to this place and come through the mirror again, to become my bondsman indeed.” Bugger. Dizziness swept him, and the knowledge of what she was asking, of what she would do. Dragons don’t shed tears. Not a thing of dragons, Morkeleb would say… “And if I don’t come?”

She got to her feet. He could not tell if she were clothed or naked, but only sheathed in moving light. He had backed to the wall and felt behind him sometimes plaster, sometimes picking, bony hands that caught his wrists when he tried to sidestep her languid advance. She had a jewel in her hand, small and coldly sparkling, he could not tell its color. He tried to flinch aside but could not move in the grip of the things behind him, only turned his face away. For a moment he felt it burning in the pit of his throat. Then it was gone.

Her hand crept down the side of his face, along his throat, and he felt the scratch of her nails on his breast.

“If you don’t come,” she said softly, “we will assume that it is not your intention to redeem your bond. Then we will take you, wherever you are. Your flesh will be our gate. Living or dead.” His mouth was dry. He felt Mab’s spells fading, colder and colder in his flesh. His breath dragged in his lungs. Too soon, he thought desperately, too soon …

He only said, “Done,” forcing his voice to remain as level and calm as he could. Turning, he reached over and took the spectacles from the demon that held them. There was blood on them, and from the thing’s mouth dangled strings of sinew and part of a hand whose scarred fingers he refused to recognize. “Now I’ve taken up enough of your time …”

It was getting hard for him to see, his vision tunneling to gray. In the mists that parted before him he saw black glass, and tiny in its midst the inverted silvery sigil of the door. “Until the King’s Moon, then.” The Demon Queen drew him back to her and pressed herself to him, kissing his lips. The desire to stay with her, to throw her to the iron earth and take her then, rushed back onto him, consuming him like a flame.

To hell with Jenny, to hell with Ian, to hell with the outer world …

He thrust her from him and walked toward the sigil, with the wailing sweetness of her singing in his ears.

“Better than your little brother, aren’t I?” whispered Jenny into the ear of the man who grunted on top of her and laughed as she felt his body tense, chill in horror as he reared back from her, whiskered face aghast. How she knew about the incident she didn’t know—the distant, locked-up part of her assumed it to be some knowledge of Amayon’s—but she saw that the clear tiny incident was in fact true. The guilt of it had driven this poor soldier all his life, and lived, cruel as a snake in his vitals, even after all these years.

“What was it he said to you?” she purred, as the man tried to throw himself from her couch.

“Bultie—he did call you Bultie, didn’t he? Bultie, don’t hurt me anymore, don’t hurt me …” Her mimickry was flawless; it was as if the seven-year-old’s voice flowed out of her throat as she held onto Bultie with iron strength.

“Whore bitch!” he yelled at her, struggling, and Jenny laughed again at the comical revulsion and nausea that contorted his face.

“What, can’t take it?” She shook back her hair, lovely and thick as a cat’s pelt. All around the canvas walls the camp echoed with men’s voices, jesting and laughing over the latest triumph, and saying it won’t be long now. The dragons had burned the Regent’s camp and scattered most of his men into the woods. The Regent himself, and his father, and a small remnant held out in the devastated fort. In celebration Rocklys had distributed an extra rum ration to the men. Jenny hadn’t found it difficult to entice them one after another to her tent. Stupid fools.

“You know what happened to him, to little Enwr, after you were done? When he ran to your papa and tried to tell on you? Oh, don’t worry, Bultie, your papa didn’t believe him—” “Stop it, whore!”

She raised her perfect eyebrows mockingly. “What, didn’t you pick Enwr because you knew your papa wouldn’t believe him?” Her perfect fingers toyed with the silver collar about her throat, a silver and crystal dew-spoon hanging like a gem below. “After your papa beat him—” “Stop it!”

“—little Enwr ran away—” “Be silent or I’ll kill you!”

“—and met some bandits in the road …”

With an inarticulate cry the man dragged his hand from her, bloodied from the grip of her nails, and stumbled toward the door, sobbing. He didn’t make it, but fell to his knees vomiting wine onto the carpets, cursing weakly and weeping while Jenny crooned in little Enwr’s voice, “Oh, Bultie, that hurts! Oh, it hurts!”

She nearly rolled off the divan, laughing, as Bultie crawled out of the tent. And turning her head, saw a man standing nearby, half in shadow.

She knew him. She’d never seen him before, but she knew him.

She held out her hand—Amayon held out her hand—and said, “What, you’ve never seen a woman before, handsome?”

For he was handsome, in a curious thin-boned way. Long gray hair framed a narrow face marked with fresh cuts, as if he’d seen recent battle. Shadow concealed his eyes, but in the dark under those brows she thought there were stars shining far off. His long thin hands were folded under a cloak like a black silk wing. He said, “You can call fire with your mind, Wizard-woman, and salt with your mind. Call them through the flaw in the jewel and ring the flaw with them, to guard you as you reach through it, and to sustain you there.”

She heard Amayon scream, felt the stab of pain, the flush of heat, rising and rising …

“You are dragon as much as you are woman,” said the stranger, and his voice was dark echoes in her mind. “There is a dragon within you …”

“Pig! Bastard! Catamite!” It was Amayon screaming, Amayon who flung Jenny’s body against the stranger, clawing, biting, gouging.

But the stranger was strong, astonishingly so. He caught her wrists, held her hands from his eyes, eyes that, she saw now, were white as stars. “You are dragon,” he repeated, and the words shone through the flaw in the jewel, through into her heart. “You have no shape, no body of this world. Slip through that flaw as water slips through the crack in a jar.”