Servant of the Dragon Read online

  Colva's touch was like a bracelet of live coals. Cashel wondered whether it had been the fight that made him so tired, or if the crystal warmth from the decanter was responsible.

  They reached the top of the staircase. Cashel's foot rose for a step that didn't exist and jolted down on the floor of the mansion's upper room. His eyes focused. He hadn't closed them, but he wasn't really seeing his surroundings.

  He clashed his staff on the floor, waking echoes. Colva jumped back, startled by the sound or the fat red sparks the iron ferrule had struck against the stone.

  The night sky gleamed above him. "Where's the ceiling--" Cashel said, and with the echo realized that he was looking at a dome with glowing dots for stars rather than the real vault of heaven.

  The constellations were just as they should be, though; and as Cashel watched in open-mouthed wonder, a shooting star traced across the purple-black to vanish again. Or had that simply been a flash of light within his eyes, another sign of how tired he was?

  "Here's your bed, Cashel," Colva said in a voice like warm honey. "Landure's bed, but yours tonight."

  The room's only furniture was a metal couch similar to the one downstairs. The thin bronze was as springy as a mattress of willow withies, though there were no blankets or other bedclothes.

  This one had a U-shaped headrest molded into one end. A man lying on it could look up at the false sky, his feet to the flat side of the building where the southern horizon would be in real life.

  "I can't take your bed," Cashel muttered. He could curl up on the stone floor. At home he'd slept in the kitchen of the millhouse, leaving the upstairs bedroom to his sister Ilna.

  "Not my bed, Cashel," the woman said. "Landure's bed, and tonight yours because you saved me."

  "I can't...," Cashel repeated, but Colva was drawing him to the couch and he was too tired to do anything but follow. He sat down, hearing the bronze feet scrape like woodland insects.

  Colva put her hand, both her hands, on Cashel's forehead with a gentle pressure. After a moment he let himself lie back. He was still able to wonder why the bed wasn't wide enough for two, but he was asleep before he felt his head touch the metal cushion.

  Cashel dreamed. He was a statue lying on a barren plain. The man he killed before the bronze gates was a giant standing before him, railing in a loud voice. Cashel couldn't understand what the giant was saying. Maybe the sounds were only angry thunder.

  Around the shouting giant capered an imp of purple light whose face looked like he'd been made from broken glass. Sometimes he swooped close and mocked Cashel with crackling laughter, then flashed away again. When he turned on edge he vanished like he'd been only a reflection.

  The moon rose. Its cool light penetrated the giant and the dancing midget, washing away their color. The giant raised his fist in fury, but his flesh grew transparent and then his bones wasted to shadows as well.

  The figures were gone. The moon climbed higher above the silent plain.

  The air was very cold. The moon was taking on human features, becoming a woman's smiling face. Cashel was sure he knew her, but he couldn't put a name to her now. He was a fallen statue, and he was freezing.

  A winged skull came out of the night, chattering its teeth together. It nipped at Cashel and was gone; flown away, flashed away. Its teeth burned like the touch of frozen iron.

  There were more skulls. Their wings whispered and he heard the click of their teeth, but he couldn't see them any more. They bit and vanished, taking each time another morsel of Cashel's life. He tried to slap them, but his arms wouldn't move.

  The moon's laughter rolled in silvery peals. There was greed in her lovely woman's eyes; greed and triumph, and when her smile grew broader Cashel saw the points of her teeth.

  Cashel's limbs were stone and as cold as the ashes of stars, but he would not be mocked by this thing. He lunged upward, feeling his body shatter when he forced it to move. His hands clasped to throttle the laughing, bodiless face.

  There was something sinuous in his fingers. It pulled free, but Cashel was awake now.

  He'd overturned the bronze couch. He half-knelt, half-sat on the floor of Landure's bedchamber, lighted by the glow of the false sky.

  The thing which called itself Colva had twisted away from him. Its features were more delicate than those of a human, and they were the denial of all good. From the thing's bald scalp came tendrils of gray light, still questing toward Cashel like leeches scenting blood.

  Cashel stood. His quarterstaff lay across the couch. He took it in his hands, feeling a cleansing touch in the smooth hickory.

  Colva laughed and spread her arms out from her sides. Her nude body was as sexless as a frog's. The gray mass from her scalp reached toward Cashel like the many arms of an ammonite extending to seize prey.

  Cashel slashed his staff through them. Where the gray limbs touched the iron ferrule, they shrivelled like slugs in the sun. Cashel stepped forward.

  Colva shrieked in dismay and sudden terror. Cashel cocked his staff for the straight, iron-shod thrust that would crush this thing against the wall behind her.

  Colva leaped for the opening to the stairs and dropped out of sight. Cashel, holding his staff out for balance, stumped along behind her. He was weak, perhaps weaker than he'd been since infancy, but he was strong enough to finish this before he died.

  Colva screamed as she ran through the blocks of pure light. The gray phosphorescence burned away from her scalp like chaff in a bonfire. She stumbled at the base of the stairs, catching herself with a jerk like that of a broken-backed serpent.

  Cashel followed. He bumped the writing desk aside, hearing it clang to the floor like an angry carillon. He was focused on his task, crushing through anything that got in his way.

  Colva reached the entrance. The silver panel stood ajar as she'd left it after Cashel opened the door to admit her. She jumped, but the struggle had weakened her as well. Her hand brushed the silver jamb.

  Colva screamed. There was a sizzle like bacon frying and a stench like that of a reopened grave. Wailing in pain and fury, she staggered out into the night.

  Cashel reached the doorway and slammed backward. He'd been holding his staff crossways before him. He gasped, "Duzi help...," but he no longer needed help.

  All he needed now was sleep. Cashel felt his body slide to the welcoming floor. He still gripped his quarterstaff, holding it across the threshold.

  Chapter Nine

  Garric's consciousness rushed upward from sleep like a high-diver clawing for the surface of the pool into which he's plunged. His mind was full of a torrent of recent images, Ansalem's face and Ansalem's parting words. King Carus was a presence within him rather than standing at Garric's side like a champion.

  Liane took Garric's hands in hers. His skin was as cold as if he'd been caught by a winter storm far from shelter.

  "Tenoctris said we shouldn't wake you," Liane whispered. She looked at the floor as she rubbed warmth into his fingers. "I could only tell you were breathing because you fogged the mirror I held to your lips."

  "I wasn't sure we could awaken more than your body," the old wizard said apologetically. "The person who called you out of your flesh was too powerful. Was it Ansalem again?"

  "Yes," said Garric. He wondered how long he'd been dreaming. Tenoctris had brought a brazier into the room and burned written spells on its charcoal.

  Garric stood, marvelling that the tunic he wore was no more real than its shadow had been in his dream. The fine-spun goat's wool had the same soft texture.... "I was taken to him, at any rate," he added. "Ansalem didn't say he'd summoned me."

  The room's shutters had been thrown back; the sun was well up. Liane would have come for Garric by candlelight before dawn to start work, and found him--

  Garric smiled grimly. Next to dead, apparently. And summoned Tenoctris at once.

  Garric touched the hands of both women and said, "I'm sorry I frightened you. I don't think Ansalem intends any harm, though he can make m
istakes. Which is why he's asleep alone in a city he took out of time a thousand years ago."

  "Out of time?" Tenoctris said sharply. "What exactly did Ansalem say?"

  Servants hovered against the wall of the bed-chamber. Tenoctris made a hand-gesture; a pair of pages grabbed the legs of the tripod supporting the brazier and trotted outside with it. Unlike Garric and his friends from Barca's Hamlet, the two women were familiar from birth with ruling a houseful of servants. Garric would have removed the brazier himself without thinking, and no doubt scandalized the servants by doing so.

  Garric cleared his throat as he looked into memory for the correct words. "He said he'd taken Klestis out of its plane of the cosmos when King Carus died," he said. "He planned to shift the city and its people to our time to avoid the chaos to come in his day, but he fell asleep from exhaustion before he could. And while Ansalem was asleep, his acolytes walled him off in his room so that he'd never awaken. Does that make any sense?"

  Tenoctris nodded. There was a folding stool with ivory legs and a seat of silk brocade near where the brazier had been. She felt for it with her hand, then seated herself before a servant could slide the stool closer.

  "It makes sense," Tenoctris said, nodding. "But--imagine that Ansalem had told you that he'd danced on his tiptoes while carrying his palace on his back. What you've just told me is much more remarkable than that. Did he mention what he used for a source of power?"

  Garric frowned as he tried to concentrate. "He said he'd used his amphisbaena," he said. "That's a--"

  "I know what the amphisbaena is," the old woman said in an unusually curt fashion for her. What Garric had said must have struck her deeply. "Though he must have gotten it after I visited him. And he said his acolytes had trapped him?"

  "He thought they must have," Garric said. "He said the only way to reach him was by the amphisbaena, but that it was inside the, the spell with him."

  Liane had released Garric's left hand, but she continued to knead his right with both of hers. The blood had returned to his skin and he was no longer shivering.

  "Poor Ansalem," Tenoctris said softly. "He was such an innocent man, really. He should have known that none of the wizards who joined him would be safe from the power of the objects he thought were toys."

  "If Ansalem had been worldly enough to understand human frailties," Liane asked, "would he have been safe, Tenoctris?"

  Tenoctris nodded approvingly. "No, he wouldn't," she agreed. "And if I'm going to wish for things to be different from what they are, I can find more important things to change than Ansalem's knowledge of human nature."

  "What happened to the acolytes, do you suppose?" Garric said. "When I was there, the palace was completely empty except for Ansalem himself."

  Tenoctris shrugged. "They were powerful wizards, especially Purlio," she said. "And they had Ansalem's cabinet of artifacts to increase the power of their spells."

  She looked out the window at the sunlit garden. "It's the objects themselves that I'm more worried about," she said. "Some of them really were pretty toys. There was a music box which created visions of the place whose tune its keys were set to play. But there were others...."

  The old woman shivered. Garric stepped to the chair and put his hands on her shoulders, offering his strength to her when she needed it.

  "There was the shell of a Great One," Tenoctris said, "changed to marcasite. It was a thing of enormous, evil power. If a wizard uses that, I...."

  Tenoctris spread her hands, palm up. "I don't know what will happen," she said. She smiled wryly. "Except that we won't like it, my friends."

  Lord Tadai's large tent was suspended from an external framework of blackwood poles gilded with flowing vines. Blood Eagles in half-armor guarded the front, back, and both long sides. Lantern light seeped beneath the tent's front and middle portions; Ilna heard the murmur of speech. The tent's rearmost third, where Tadai would sleep when he finally retired, was dark.

  A sailor played a double-pipe at one of the fires on the islet's sandy margins. The shrill notes sounded like bird cries and were almost as unpleasant to Ilna's ears, but the musician's fellows laughed and danced in a circle nearby.

  Garric had played the shepherd's pipe in Barca's Hamlet, six reeds of graduated length with wax-stopped ends. Ilna thought his tunes were the sweetest music in the world. She wondered if Garric ever found time to play now that he was a prince.

  "I need to see Lord Tadai," Ilna said to the guards. Though she didn't know their names, she recognized two of the four Blood Eagles at the tent's entrance; they'd guarded her bungalow in the palace during past months.

  "Wait here, please, mistress," said one of them. He rapped his spearshaft against the entrance cross-pole for attention and waited for a steward to open the tent from inside.

  While Mastyn spreads his poison to another score of sailors, Ilna thought, but she didn't let the anger warm her normal cold expression. She knew the Blood Eagles were going to carry out their task exactly the way they'd been told to, even though they knew Ilna and very possibly feared her. She couldn't quarrel with people doing their jobs correctly, even when it got in her way.

  The steward, a handsome fellow no older than Ilna herself, slid the entrance curtain sideways on its ring mountings. "What's the matter with you?" he said peevishly to the guard.

  Through the opening Ilna saw that an interior hanging separated the front of the tent into an antechamber and servants' quarters. While this man answered the summons, his three fellows reclining on couches continued to drink from goblets of glass etched with scenes of nymphs and satyrs. Tadai himself would be in the room beyond.

  "Mistress Ilna os-Kenset to see Lord Tadai," the guard said.

  The steward looked at Ilna, letting his lip curl. "Lord Tadai is working on his personal accounts," he said. "They've been sadly neglected because of his public duties. He doesn't want to be disturbed."

  Ilna's stomach tightened. Another soldier turned and touched the steward's nose with an index finger that looked sturdy enough to drive stakes with. "How about you ask him anyway," the soldier said. "That'll keep him from being disturbed by you squealing like a pig when the butcher clamps his nose."

  The steward's eyes opened, but he turned and flounced away. The other servants had put down their cups and were sitting upright on their couches, though none of them seemed inclined to get involved.

  The steward spoke to someone on the other side of the curtain. Ilna said, "Thank you," in a low voice without turning her head toward the guards.

  The soldier who'd offered the bland threat snorted. "Jumped-up little ponce," he said. "Thought he was too good to do his job, he did."

  "Lord Tadai will see you now, mistress," the steward said as he trotted back to the entrance. Spots of color brightened his cheekbones. He swept the curtain aside with a clatter of suspension rings, resolutely refusing to notice the soldiers grinning at him. When Ilna entered, the steward closed the curtain--He probably wishes it was a door he could bang--and hustled ahead of her to open the inner curtain as well.

  Thick rugs overlay one another on the tent's floor. Ilna kept her face stiff, but she wished she was wearing slippers instead of going barefoot. Suffering was the way of the world. She didn't know why it should bother her just because this time it happened to be children doing the suffering. She didn't like children!

  Lord Tadai reclined on a couch, holding a lap desk. Notebooks made from laced sheets of wood and ivory lay on the cushions beside him. His two aides sat at travelling desks whose legs folded out of the bottom and were braced with silver hardware. There was a carafe of wine in a parcel-gilt stand, but this was clearly no drinking party.

  "Mistress?" Tadai said. "I'd rise, but I'm afraid I'd lose such organization as we've managed to achieve tonight." He waved a negligent hand at the litter of documents that would skid to the floor if he moved incautiously.

  Ilna shook her head curtly. "I've been listening to the crew," she said without bothering about small-talk
that would only waste time. "There's a mutiny brewing. I think the leader's a bosun named Mastyn, but the sailing master of our ship, Vonculo, is part of it too."

  The younger aide started to speak. Tadai hushed him with a hand and called, "Appun! Come here please."

  The curtain slid back so quickly that the steward on the other side must have been leaning close to the cloth to hear what was being said to his betters. "Yes, milord?" he asked obsequiously.

  "Bring Lieutenant Roubos at once, please," Tadai said. "And Lord Neyral as well, I suppose."

  The steward turned away so quickly that his bow of obedience was bestowed quite generally across the interior of the tent. His three fellows were on their feet also, their wine-cups cautiously removed from sight.

  "Would you like a seat, mistress?" Tadai offered. "We can have a couch brought in, or a stool if you prefer."

  Ilna shook her head with a pinched grimace. The rugs were more distracting to stand on than live coals would have been. Pain was something she could wall off, but not the despairing wails. Why hadn't she worn sandals?

  Roubos, commander of the Blood Eagle detachment, entered the tent barefoot and still buckling his equipment belt. He was a middle-aged man with a pronounced limp; a solid sort who'd taken wounds in service that didn't quite require his retirement but which made him a good choice for a ceremonial command like this embassy. "Milord?" he said, saluting by placing his right hand over his heart.

  "Mistress Ilna here says the crew is plotting mutiny, Roubos," Tadai said. He nodded toward Ilna. His tone wasn't ironic, but there was no hint of excitement or urgency in it either. "Is that possible, do you think?"

  There was a bustle in the antechamber. Lord Neyral, the captain of the Terror, entered. His face was flushed. As he pushed past, Ilna smelled as much wine on Neyral's breath as he'd managed to spill on the front of his tunic.

  "What's this, Tadai?" he demanded. "Sister take it, man, couldn't it wait for morning?"

  "Your men are plotting mutiny," Ilna said, trying to keep the contempt out of her voice. She wasn't particularly successful at doing so. "If you arrest Mastyn and Vonculo immediately, you can nip it in the bud."