Servant of the Dragon Read online

  The screened audience chamber had solid walls on the other three sides. The windows in the sidewalls had screens of electrum filigree, and the door in the back wall had a grate over the viewport.

  The room was empty save for dust and a bier of travertine marble. Discolored patches on the floor showed where bronze hardware had decayed. What--

  Garric stepped through the alabaster as he had the door of the conference room when he started this journey. He felt momentary surprise, but he was too busy taking in his changed surroundings to marvel at inconsequentials.

  Now that Garric was inside, he saw a plump old man in a tasseled tunic on the bier. Over him a serpentine shape waxed and waned, never fully visible but casting a glow like a golden blanket.

  The old man's eyes opened. He rose with a cheery smile, pulling with him a tail of the quilted velvet covering the stone. "Good day, sir!" he said, extending his arm to clasp Garric's. "And who would you be?"

  The old man paused. His smile slipped into an expression half-wary, half-peevish. "Or have we met? Do I know you? Tell me!"

  It was late evening. The sky, visible through the electrum grating, was a sullen red. Crowds were looking up from the streets. Ships packed the quays, moored several deep in some cases, but no vessels were under way in the harbor.

  "Sir, I don't think we've met," Garric said. He stepped forward, offering his arm though the old man had jerked his own back as doubt struck him. "I'm Garric or-Reise of Haft."

  He swallowed. "But I think I'm dreaming."

  The old man's smile returned like the sun flashing after a summer shower. They clasped, hand to elbow so that their forearms joined. The old man's grip was firm; his flesh resilient and vaguely warm.

  "Dreaming?" he said to Garric. "Nonsense! You're here, aren't you? How can you be dreaming?"

  The room was the same as when Garric viewed it through the alabaster, except that now signs of occupancy littered it. A cushioned pad covered the bier, and wooden bookcases lined all three walls: shelves for codices and pigeonholes for scrolls.

  The cases were empty. Here and there a locked screen hung askew, wrenched off as the library was ransacked with brutal haste.

  Garric stepped back. The old man looked around him with dawning puzzlement. "Sir, may I ask your name?" Garric said politely.

  "What?" said the old man, again with a querulous tone. "I'm Ansalem, of course!"

  He'd been looking at the glowing shape rippling in and out of existence above the bier. It seemed to be a serpent with a short, fat body, but sometimes the head appeared to be on one end, sometimes on the other.

  Ansalem paused and fingered a wall niche large enough to have held a life-sized statue. It, like the bookcases, was empty. "I think I am, at least," he said. "But I don't understand. If I'm Ansalem the Wise...."

  He turned to Garric, his face wrinkling in an expression of concern foreign to it. "If I am, then where are my books? And where are the baubles I've gathered over the years?"

  Ansalem's expression flowed suddenly into something as cold and inhuman as the ice of a pond at mid-winter. "Have you taken them?" he demanded. "You must return them at once! They're objects of power. They aren't safe for anyone else to have, you see. I know better than to use them, but anyone else might--"

  He snapped his pudgy fingers in a sound as sharp as nearby lightning. "--blast this world to dust! I'm not joking, young man. You must return them at once!"

  "Sir," Garric said. "I haven't taken your property or anyone else's. I just arrived, and I don't even know where I am."

  His mouth was dry. Ansalem was as unpredictable as the sky in summer, changing from sun to storm before a shepherd has time to call his flock.

  And for all his general good nature, Ansalem was more dangerous than any storm. Garric didn't recognize the name, but he knew that the old man was a wizard. If he'd brought Garric here, he was a wizard of incalculable power.

  "Where you are?" Ansalem said, his sunny disposition reasserting itself. "Why, you're in Klestis, in my palace. Don't you know?"

  He gestured broadly. That made him notice the empty cases again; his face slipped back into a worried frown. "Where can--"

  Ansalem stopped. He fixed Garric with an analytical gaze and took the youth's chin between finger and thumb. He twisted Garric's head from one profile to the other.

  Garric accepted the attention, though he felt a surge of anger at being treated like a sheep being sold. Ansalem was an old man and obviously confused.

  Ansalem wasn't a bit more confused than Garric, though, if it came to that.

  "Are you sure I don't know you?" Ansalem asked, not harshly but with a note of sharp interest. "Surely we've met! Now where, I wonder?"

  He turned to the bookcase on his right, obviously reaching for a volume that was no longer there. He froze, his face taking on the terrible icy hardness Garric had seen before.

  "Where are my acolytes?" Ansalem demanded. "Have you seen them, Master Garric? Purlio will know what's going on here."

  "Sir, I don't know anything," Garric said. "I've never heard of you, and the only Klestis I know of is a fishing village on the south coast of Cordin."

  "Fishing village indeed!" Ansalem said in a tone of amazement. He beckoned Garric to the window looking onto the harbor. "Does this look like a fishing village, sir?"

  "No sir," Garric said, "but--"

  "But what's wrong down there?" Ansalem said, looking himself at the scene and finding it different from whatever he'd meant to show Garric. "Everyone's standing in the streets and staring up...."

  He spun on Garric with another flash of mercurial temper. "What have you done with my acolytes?" Ansalem said. "Purlio, come here at once!"

  "I--" Garric said.

  Ansalem stepped to the bier from which Garric had awakened him. He ran his hand through the air, seeming to caress the flickering serpent. "The amphisbaena is here," he said, "but not the other objects. Some of them are too dangerous to use, even for me! Don't you understand?"

  Ansalem's patted the tall niche, then touched other alcoves and ran his fingers over the top of a marble plinth standing empty beside the door in the back of the chamber. He moved with the quick, jerky motions of a toad hopping, desperate in its terror.

  "You must bring them back!" Ansalem said. "They won't do you any good, I assure you. There's nothing there but destruction for whoever uses them!"

  The chamber grew foggy as another world began to interpenetrate it. "Bring me...." Ansalem cried in a voice as high as a distant gull's.

  The words faded. Garric felt his soul rushing back the way it had come. He was a shimmer in existence like the current of a rushing stream.

  "Garric?" a voice said. Not Ansalem, but--

  Garric opened his eyes. He lay on a bench in the conference room. Liane stood beside him, holding a lamp; the light through the open door was the last red of sunset. His friends were watching him with guarded concern: Cashel and Sharina, Tenoctris and Ilna; and Liane, thank the Lady; Liane, her worry clear in her dark, limpid eyes.

  "I was dreaming," Garric said as he sat up cautiously. "And I'm very glad to see you all."

  "You didn't wake up," Sharina said. "We thought--well, Tenoctris says there's something dangerous going on."

  "Something very powerful which I don't understand, at any rate," the old wizard explained. She cocked Garric a wry smile. "Which I suppose means it's dangerous, true enough."

  She sobered. "I need to learn what the--source of power--is. It's already causing disruption on this portion of the cosmos. There's a nexus nearby; somewhere in Valles."

  "I'm going with Tenoctris to, well, fetch and carry," Cashel said with a grin. To protect the old woman, Cashel meant; he was carrying the hickory quarterstaff he'd shaped with his own big, capable hands. "Sharina and Ilna are coming too. We know you're busy, but we thought we'd ask if you wanted to come along. Like old times, you know."

  "You're scheduled to dine with Chancellor Royhas tonight," Liane said, meeting Garric
's eyes but speaking with a careful lack of emphasis. "I was going to suggest that a more relaxed evening might be a good idea anyway."

  "I've seen you lots of times after you've plowed all day in the hot sun," Cashel said. "That sweated you down to a nub, but you never looked as bad as you do now."

  Ilna nodded. She'd stayed arm's length behind the others, unwilling that anyone might think she was pushing herself forward even though she and Garric had been friends for all their mutual lives.

  "You're stretched too far," she said crisply. "Anyone can see that. I can't imagine how a meal with your chancellor can be a strain, but you obviously think it is. Only a fool would break himself by going to dinner instead of getting the sleep he needs."

  "I don't need to go with Tenoctris," Sharina said apologetically. "Garric, why don't you get proper rest in a bed tonight. I'll meet with Lord Royhas if it's just a formal meal."

  Garric looked at his friends. "It's not just a formal meal," he said. "It's part of the biggest problem I've got as, as whatever I am now."

  "As King of the Isles, lad," whispered Carus through the ages. The king was back in Garric's mind; as straight as an ancient pine, and as great a support to the youth he guided. "That's what you are."

  "The greatest problem I've got as King of the Isles, I mean," Garric said, correcting himself with a rueful smile. This was no place for self-deprecation. "And sure, I need sleep, but this nap's been enough to hold me. What I really need is to talk to my friends about the kingdom."

  "Garric, I don't know anything about kingdoms," Cashel said. "Maybe Sharina...?"

  Garric stepped forward and embraced Cashel. It was like hugging a warm boulder. Garric was taller than his friend--by a bit--but Cashel had a solid strength that went beyond that of any other human being Garric had met.

  "I need to talk to people I trust," Garric said. "You five are the only people on earth I can trust to want exactly what I want--peace for all the people of the Isles."

  He stepped back and glanced toward the wizard. "Tenoctris?" he said. "Can the thing you're looking for wait for us to eat and talk first?"

  "Yes," Tenoctris said. Frowning as she tried to explain to people who couldn't see the varied forces that worked the cosmos the way she saw them, she continued, "It isn't a hostile intrusion, not a thing of Malkar or a wizard allied to Malkar."

  To Malkar: to evil, the force of absolute black evil that was the abnegation of all light and good.

  "It's just very powerful," Tenoctris added, spreading her hands.

  Garric nodded. "Half the buildings in the palace compound haven't been repaired yet," he said. "Let's find a quiet spot in one of them and I'll cook supper like I would if we were watching the flock overnight in the North Pasture. All right?"

  "Cook?" Liane said. She clapped her left fingers to her lips in embarrassment the instant the question slipped out.

  "Cook," Ilna repeated with emphasis. "If the stewards can't supply Prince Garric with flour, cheese and onions promptly, I suspect the chamberlain will have replaced them all before morning."

  "And a flitch of bacon," Garric said, laughing with the relief of not being Prince Garric of Haft for this one evening. "We'll eat like rich folk tonight, with meat for dinner!"

  He shrugged to loosen his muscles. He needed to exercise more than he'd been doing recently.

  "After we talk and eat," Garric said, "we'll find the nexus Tenoctris is looking for. And if it's a problem, then we'll deal with it."

  "As we've done before," boomed King Carus. He stood with his thumbs hooked in his swordbelt, grinning at the youth whose mind he shared. "And as we'll keep on doing until the Isles have the peace I wasn't able to give them alone!"

  Chapter Three

  The big kitchen had served the servants' dormitories when all the palace staff were housed within the compound. That had been under Valence II a generation previous; the site had been abandoned since then. Within the past week a team of gardeners had cleared the honeysuckle off the long building and rolled it into a bale higher than a man was tall.

  The gardeners would burn the vines As soon as they'd dried. Ilna guessed that the flames would glare from the bases of clouds. Honeysuckle blazed as hot and fierce as anger.... Ilna's anger, at any rate. She smiled.

  A pair of cook's helpers had deposited a hamper of food and a jar of beer--on Ornifal they carried liquids in tarred earthenware instead of wooden casks--on the brick floor of the kitchen. They waited doubtfully for orders. Liane glanced toward Garric, but he and Sharina were too busy looking over the range to notice the servants.

  "Go on, then," Ilna said to the helpers. "We'll take care of anything further ourselves."

  Garric glanced up and nodded, but the servants were already scampering back to wherever they normally sat on their hands. No point in them hanging around here looking silly. Ilna wouldn't trust either one to sort carrots from parsnips.

  "Garric, I can do the cooking," Sharina said as she straightened from the range. She glanced at Ilna and smiled. "Or Ilna can."

  The heavy iron bars of the grill were still solid though rust and ancient grease caked them. Ilna suspected that even when the kitchen was in daily use the cooks' standards of cleanliness had been lower than any she--or Reise's children--would have permitted if they were in charge.

  "And do a better job, I know," Garric said. "But I'll do well enough, and I feel like it."

  Sharina grinned at her brother. "Then I'll chop firewood," she said agreeably. "There's no lack of fallen limbs here, is there?"

  Firewood was a valued resource, but this great compound was royal property. While Valence lost his grip on power, dead wood had been allowed to rot on the ground instead of being put to productive use.

  Sharina wore a thin tunic with a black, knee-length linen cape for modesty. It was a common outfit in Valles among women of middling station who wanted to be comfortable while they were doing the day's shopping.

  The metal kitchenware had gone when the kitchen went out of service, but there was sufficient pottery remaining to feed a packed common room, let alone the six of them. Sharina unpinned the clasp of enameled gold and hung the cape on a peg meant for a skillet. Belted to her waist where the cape had hidden it was a very unladylike weapon: a Pewle knife in a sheath of black sealskin.

  The knife's heavy blade was straight and as long as Sharina's forearm, with a deep belly that put the weight of a blow at the tip. A Pewle knife would chop wood as well as an axe and let a life out as quickly as a sword. Its former owner, the hermit Nonnus, had used the knife for both purposes until the night he died protecting Sharina.

  Sharina had carried the knife ever since. More as a memorial than a weapon, Ilna supposed, but she'd never asked and Sharina had never volunteered her feelings on the matter. It was good to have it around to chop kindling since there wasn't a hatchet by the side door as there was in most prosperous houses in the borough.

  Ilna laughed. Everybody looked at her, even Cashel who was checking an overturned bowl to see if he'd have to clean it before he used it to carry water.

  "It's hard to live in a normal way in a palace," Ilna explained. "The normal things aren't here unless you ask for them specially."

  Garric smiled, but he looked tired at a level deeper than muscle or even bone. Ilna would have hugged him if... well, if she hadn't been Ilna os-Kenset. And nobody was to blame for that but her.

  "I don't even know what normal is any more," Garric said. "But I know I'm glad I have friends who make do with what's available. If there were more people in Valles and the kingdom who--"

  He stopped himself. "Well, maybe there will be when people see that there's a real chance for unity and peace," he concluded. "And if not, well, we'll make do, won't we?"

  Liane looked at Garric , worried by the tone of his voice. She put her hand on his and squeezed it.

  "I saw loofas growing in the kitchen garden," Ilna said as she turned away. "I'll fetch some to clean the grill."

  She walked quickly
around the building, blinking at tears. The garden had been abandoned when the kitchen was, but some crops survived. The row of asparagus had grown into a thicket and the gourds had continually reseeded themselves. Ilna squatted and reached for the paring knife she carried in her sash.

  "I'll help," said Liane.

  Ilna looked over her shoulder. Liane knelt beside her. She'd drawn a double-edged dagger from its hidden sheath. The blade was only a finger long, but the steel was better than anything seen in Barca's Hamlet. It was the sort of weapon a wealthy lady kept by her while travelling, insurance if her retinue of guards and servants wasn't enough to prevent the unexpected.

  Despite the jeweled hilt and gold filigree on the blade, it would open gourds just as well as the knife Ilna used for the tasks of kitchen and household.

  Liane's tunics, inner and outer both, were simply cut but made of silk. Her sandals were vermilion leather with decoration in gold thread; one of them had sunk ankle-deep in soft earth on the way to this nook in the palace grounds. Ilna didn't bother with footwear within the compound, though she wore clogs when she went out on the hard cobblestone streets beyond.

  But just as the fancy dagger was able to do this job, so was its fancy owner.

  "Yes, all right," Ilna said, twisting the vine and then slicing through the woody fibers which still held the gourd. "I'll need about a dozen of them, I'd judge, as filthy as those grills looked."

  Liane snipped off a loofa in a close approximation of what she'd seen Ilna do. "And I'll help with the cleaning, though you'll probably have to show me how to do that too," she said as she reached for another vine.

  Ilna swallowed. "I wonder...," she said, keeping her eyes on her task. "You were reading a poem the other day. Something about bees weaving?"

  "'I've a jar of wine in its ninth year, Phyla, and in my garden the bees weave crowns...,'" Liane said, "Yes, isn't that lovely? It's Celondre."

  "I wonder if you could go over that for me till I can remember it all through," Ilna said, dropping a third gourd into the lap of her outer tunic. She cleared her throat again. "There was something about knowing your station, too."