Dog And Dragon Part 8

He looked anything but asleep. "Ah. Fleas too. They are an irritation, but at least you can get rid of them with a bath, Dileas. Those blackhearted old trees there wanted all of your blood, not just a few drops."

Dileas scratched and wrinkled his nose at Fionn. "You'll live through a bath. You would not live through that place. Let's move on."

A half a mile further and they merely had the fleas and not the tiredness. Fionn knew that that was a good bargain, even if the trees would not have thought so.

Dileas rolled and rubbed his back, and Fionn kept a lookout for fleabane plants. Dragon hide was hard for a flea to get through, but these ones were hungry and determined. It was a pity they didn't eat Sprite. A little later Fionn and Dileas came on a stand of silver birch-with a sprite. There was something familiar about them. It was Lyr. All the tree-sprites on Tasmarin had been Lyr, part of the one tree that was Lyr.

The beautiful tree-woman bowed. "Fionn. We bear fruit."

"Ah. So he is still fertile, is he?" Plainly the sprites who had been trapped in Tasmarin were either leaving there or merely spreading back to other sprite places. His Sc.r.a.p had given them back their male sapling, and brought the long-dead stick back to life. Male sprites had no intelligence, but plenty of sprite-pollen.

There was a joyousness in the "Yes."

"Good. He is growing well?" asked Fionn, out of politeness. They made bad enemies, the sprites. The sisterhoods-and there were various forms, each a.s.sociated with its own tree type, and some were more talkative and friendly than others, although all of them poorly understood animal life, and did not tolerate it very well. Lyr had been one of the worst...until his little Sc.r.a.p had given them what they needed.

The sprite nodded her gracious head. They were beautiful. Humans, and alvar, found them almost irresistibly so. Dragons, and it appeared dogs, could take them or leave them. "The human chose well. The soil there is rich."

"I think she made it like that for him," said Fionn. "She had powers over earth, and she's, well, kind by nature. It's not something you sprites understand, but it is something humans possess from time to time."

"We had not understood humans. We need to cultivate more such. Where is she who gave us back our mate?"

"We're looking for her ourselves. She is no longer on Tasmarin."

"Lyr has not seen her. She has not been near living wood since the day the towers became bridges and some of us could return to sprite lands."

That was worrying. The sprites weren't everywhere of course. But they did have ties to forests, and all trees communicated. Mostly they did not say anything very interesting, except to other trees.

"Well. The dog is getting impatient, Lyr. It seems to know where it is going, and I am hoping it is to her. But if you find her...well, a bit of dragon grat.i.tude would be good for the trees."

"If we find her, you will be told. We understand your role too in saving our beloved. We have learned the value of that."

"The tree-women learn grat.i.tude and wisdom," said Fionn. "Well, you'll have mine, if you help me find her and keep her safe."

"Word will go out."

Fionn and Dileas walked on. And on. As far as Fionn could establish, the dog walked as straight as it was possible to walk in the forest. That night they slept in a pile of dry leaves under the trees. It was warm enough for sheepdogs and dragons, anyway. Both of them would have preferred a comfortable bed, and a meal that consisted of something other than the remains of the food from Sir Bertran's feast. There was no other animal life, and Fionn had not seen any fruit. Like Dileas he thought fruit was all very well for herbivores and omnivores. Not for dragons, unless it was a slice of melon wrapped in salty ham.

Drink was supplied by a stream. Dileas eyed it very suspiciously, and looked at Fionn a couple of times, before coming to drink thirstily. He was a very intelligent dog, to have learned the danger of afancs (and other water creatures he hadn't met) but he seemed to prefer walking in the stream and drinking downstream of himself. Perhaps he liked the flavor of the mud. Fionn wondered if they would be reduced to eating that before they got out of this Sylvan world.

The next day was more of the same. Fionn found flows of unbalanced energy to put right. There was a newness about them. He wondered if they'd come about as a result of Tasmarin rejoining the great ring. That had to have had an effect. Magic would grow a little stronger in places. Much had been tied up just in keeping Tasmarin isolated. That magic would flow now.

It should change a great many dynamics. It might well even change the way magical forces worked.

Most mages performed their arts by rote. They'd find this interesting, thought Fionn with a nasty laugh, imagining the consequences. Undoubtably, what he'd just done was going to make their lives difficult.

It was a full hungry day and a night later, that they came to what Dileas had plainly been aiming for. As a way out of a Sylvan world, it was appropriate.

It was a row of trees...well, it had been a n.o.ble double column of lance-straight firs, standing in what could only be a planted line to the top of a round hillock. A mound, Fionn guessed. An ancient one, that trees had long since covered. Dileas walked up, until he got to the last pair of trees...which were different. They had been the same, but now they were just blackened stumps. That would put off the sprites, Fionn thought. They feared fire. Didn't even like its old sign. Just as the people of Broceliande would superst.i.tiously avoid triliths...

There was a pattern here.

Mysteries like this teased Fionn. He'd get to the bottom of it, just as he'd eventually work out how the dog knew where they were.

The other mystery was that, having got there, Dileas just sat down. He'd been eager to go through the gates to other places before. But now he was just sitting. Looking intently ahead. In a way that was worrying. The Sylvan worlds were slow-time worlds, not as much as the alvar ones, but still, a month might pa.s.s in human worlds while a day slipped by in the tranquil Sylvan forest.

Fionn tried walking past him. Dileas growled at him. A real growl. A "don't do that even if you are a dragon" growl. So Fionn sat down, and waited. He stared into the energy patterns around him. Most of the time he confined his vision to the ordinary spectra and a few others. Otherwise it simply became too much for his brain to process. Now he looked deep, trying to learn more. Trying to learn how to find these gates to other planes. They were magical workings, and yet...and yet showed little sign of their presence. The trees were centuries old at least. Had this been here when he'd soared over this forest looking for things to put right? The planes he patrolled were huge. He went to areas where the balance was disturbed. They often seemed to be the same places. That too was unsurprising.

Dileas suddenly got up, turned and barked at Fionn, and walked forward. The dog vanished from view as he stepped past a certain point. And there was quite a vortex of energy between the trees, right now. It hadn't been present, earlier.

Fionn followed...

...And was not surprised to find that they were elsewhere. And, pleasingly enough, in an elsewhere where he might find food for the two of them. That was undoubtably peat smoke on the air. Of course hearth fires had their own down sides, but it was better than hunting worms and bugs in Sylvan.

The problems the First had with the bauble of energy that hung from the dog's neck were twofold. For a start it gave a limited view of the world that the dog experienced. It was not impossible to track the dog and dragon by their energies, but it was harder. It had been many eons since the First had exerted themselves, and the time dilations and contractions were confusing and very rapid. Logically they lived where time pa.s.sed slowly. Very, very slowly. Some of the movements of the tiny gobbets of energy seemed absolutely microscopic, to the First.

But this was better than the Sylvan worlds. Annvn was a slower world, and they could move plenty of p.a.w.ns here. They were easier to move than trees.

CHAPTER 10.

"The kitchen workers have it that we're going to have a bit of a rest. Gather fresh food. Ys is slow to arm and their Eorls are too busy fighting and robbing each other to send much of an army," said Neve, "and Queen Dahut does not care."

"And what of the army at our gate?"

Neve shrugged. "They go or are killed."

It was outside her knowledge, obviously. So Meb asked Vivien. She had, with her contact with her sons, and her dead husband's position, a far better grasp of the military.

"Some of them fled after the rock thrower was destroyed. But most of them are trapped here. Obviously their mages thought they had at least another month before we could acc.u.mulate enough power to change. It can take up to six months sometimes. I know Prince Medraut was surprised. He expected it to be another month or three. Anyway, the ones that are left...the prince will offer them terms in a week or two. These days they always refuse them. It's a pity. The Angevins make good soldiers, my husband said. The army used to recruit most of its men like that. My Cormac's father was a galloglaigh himself, trapped here with the armies of King Olain."

Meb shivered. Trapped, far from home, with no way out but to accept service in the army of your enemy. She felt a little bit like that herself. "It's cold this morning. Is it always this cold here?"

"No. In summer it is often too hot!" said Vivien with a smile. "It is only the start of spring. We still have bitter nights and occasional cold snaps if we have a cloud front come in from the ocean. You can usually see the warmer weather coming from the outer parapets, with the blue patches forming across the sea. Take your cloak and we will walk up there and have a look. You are looking a little confined."

"It'll be even colder up there," said Neve. "There is a fire in the bower."

Meb shuddered. "I'd rather freeze than face the bower right now," she said.

So they walked across the courtyard to the outer parapet on the western side. Here there was no cliff, but a steep green slope down to the foam-laced edge of the dark ocean. That was deep water. "You could get a line out to some big fish from there," said Meb expertly. She'd caught fish, along with all the Cliff Cove children at the foot of Cliff Cove's crags. She'd missed fish, she suddenly realized. She'd never thought she would.

Neve laughed. "They'd never lower themselves to fishing here."

Looking out to sea there was no sign of blue-sky patches in the slate grey. Instead there was a wall of cloud, right down to the water, stretching across the horizon. "That doesn't look good. If I saw that back home, in Tasmarin, I'd expect a sea mist for days. Cold and clammy and useless for fishing," said Meb. "The fishermen would stay home, drink too much and get morose."

Lady Vivien gave a little snort of laughter. "I thought you said you had no experience that would help you to live in a castle. It sounds like winter. We get freezing fogs in the winters. But I have never seen anything like that before."

It was apparent that not many of the castle people had, as others had come up to look at the cloud wall. Someone had even called the prince.

And the mage was called too.

His face became as bleak as a winter storm as he looked at it. He sent a soldier running along the battlement.

To fetch both her and Prince Medraut.

He turned to the women accompanying her. "You are not needed. Go." Before Aberinn had made some pretense of abiding by the conventions. Now he was plainly simply too angry. "Prince. I do not know what meddling you are attempting but you have led us to the very brink of disaster."

Medraut first looked guilty-which Meb had decided was his normal look-and then puzzled and worried. "What are you talking about, High Mage?"

Aberinn waved a hand at the western horizon. "That!" he snarled. "The Changer was set to take us to Ys. This is your doing somehow, Medraut. Ever since you brought this woman here, nothing has worked as it should."

"My doing? MY DOING?!" Prince Medraut snarled, roused to fury like a cornered rat. "I nearly got murdered in my bed, Aberinn. The a.s.sa.s.sin escapes, and we still do not know how he got in in the first place, although I've put the suspects to torture. You are supposed to guard me. To guard Lyonesse. Your precious prophecy says I need you. You brought this woman here, not me. Admit it. She could not lie to us without your magic supporting her."

"You fool!" shouted Aberinn right back, inches from his face. "There are records, ancient records of all the places the Ways link Lyonesse to, even the non-human places. This Tasmarin creation was a mistake. There is no such place. I do not know which of the Lyon have allied their magic to this prop of yours, but I will find out. I have means denied to you..."

Meb looked at the two madmen...and walked away.

"Where are you going?" demanded Aberinn.

Meb shrugged. "Away. Away from that," she pointed at the horizon, "and away from you two. Even that army out there has to make more sense than either of you."

"The gates are closed," said Medraut, tersely.

Meb shrugged again. "Then I'll go as far as I can. You're killing this place, both of you. And neither of you care, except about yourselves."

Aberinn snorted. "Well, you'll be glad to know that you have brought about its final destruction, you and this prince of plots. The Ways are not open to Ys. They are open to the Fomoire. And they come."

It looked like a wall of cloud to Meb, but it was enough to make Medraut's blood-suffused face go from red to white. "It cannot be. After the last time the Changer was set so that it could not link us to Fomoire lands."

"So see what your meddling has brought us to!" yelled Aberinn.

Meb did not stay to listen to them. She kept walking away.

Vivien and Neve hurried to her. "What is it? What do they say?"

"They say those are the Fomoire. They both accuse each other and somehow it is my fault too. I don't even know who the Fomoire are."

Vivien stopped dead. "In King Gradlon's time, when Lyonesse was near the peak of her strength, the Fomoire came. They nearly destroyed us."

"Who or what are they? It just looks like a cloud to me."

"The sea people. They come from under the sea and have much magic."

"Under the sea...the merrows?" Meb felt a shred of hope. She knew and got on with merrows. She knew she had to watch them, but she could trust them, deal with them. She'd liked them, for all their tricky ways.

"No...not water-creatures. They live in a land beneath the waves, and the waters are magically held at bay. They're human...well, giants, but deformed." Vivien shuddered. "And they are powerful and evil. They built great bridges of ice and came with their war chariots and mages. They don't have ships, so they must freeze the sea into a bridge to attack us."

"Um. What do they do when they get here?"

"It was said they brought disease and bitter cold, but I suppose that could just have been the ice. Their chieftain had the evil eye. He only had one eye, but if he looked at a man...he turned them to stone. Not that that is possible."

It was. Meb knew that. She'd done it once. But that had taken touch, on her part. The news was obviously spreading around the castle by the frightened looks on many faces.

And a cold, stinking wind was blowing from their ice bridge. It reeked of staleness and of old smoke. Meb wondered for the first time if she could bring some kind of magical power to bear on these attackers. This was not her home and these were not her people. But they were so afraid.

The next weeks were fraught with fear, tension...and helplessness. They could see the ice bridges now, although the cold meeting the warmer water tended to swirl up a sea mist. The Fomoire mages were pushing them in three long tongues toward the sh.o.r.eline. When the wind-bitter cold and dry-came blowing off the ice, the people of Dun Tagoll could hear the chanting and the drumming coming out of the sea mist. When the wind blew the other way they could see the black huddles of the mages walking circles on the ice tongues. And day after day it grew closer. And colder.

Aberinn had retreated to his tower, and although sounds of industry, hammering and metal shrieks came from inside, he did not.

The Angevins had broken camp and fled inland.

Meb wondered if they should not all just follow.

She did, finally, get out of Dun Tagoll herself. Hunting parties-those included the ladies, and the dogs and the hawks-sallied out on horseback to see what food they could gather in. She was invited to ride out with them.

Meb decided she liked the country a great deal more than the castle. And riding, which she'd been more than a little terrified of, she actually found she loved. She hadn't dared to tell anyone, except Neve, that she'd never even been on a horse before. A donkey wasn't quite the same, and she'd feared the derision that would bring. But like the language, riding came easily. So did being sore afterward, but the horse liked her as much as she'd liked it. She'd treated it rather like Dileas. She'd watched covertly as the other ladies had mounted, and realized she was being watched herself.

Either she was more athletic than most castle ladies, or she was mounted on a good mare, or her magic worked as well on horses as puppies, but those who expected her to fall off, or cling to the saddle, were disappointed. Meb spent a fair amount of time petting the dun, and talking to it. She had no idea if she was supposed to do that, but she wanted to, and did, leaning forward to whisper in the horse's ear, telling it quietly where she wanted to go. It seemed to work, which was just as well, because the reins were something she was less than sure about what one did with.

"You have a fine seat, Lady Anghared," commented one of the n.o.blemen. "You need to watch that mare. She's nasty-minded."

Meb thought the seat could do with a bit more padding, if it was supposed to be so fine. And the mare seemed the sweetest-natured animal. But she knew very little about riding, so she settled for smiling.

The country near the castle showed signs of the devastation from the armies, but Meb could see it could be rich and fertile. There really wasn't much game left on it though, and of course the farmhouses had been burned and there had been no crops in the fields for years, by the look of them.

The day's hunting tally had been one feral pig, some songbirds and some rabbits. And, oddly enough to Meb, a glimpse of a nasty little grey-mottled alvlike face from among the rocks near a hilltop, grinning wickedly at her. No one else seemed to see it, but having seen one once, Meb saw several others. They vanished when they realized she was looking. Were they so normal here no one spoke about them? Or did no one else see them?

She wasn't ready to ask.

They dismounted in the blackened ruins of a village-something that tore at Meb, remembering Cliff Cove, before the raiders. This was long-gutted and burned though, and the wilderness was reclaiming it. There remained, however, a fountain that bubbled out of a central rock and down into a stone bowl set among the winter-dead ferns. It overflowed into a long horse trough. The hunters went to drink, as did their horses. And, leaning against the stone, being sniffed and nuzzled by the dun mare, Meb saw something walking across her hand. She'd stripped off her gloves to drink, and had not put them on again as she was rubbing the mare's nose. It was quite a large ant. She nearly brushed it off but something made her pause at the last moment, and peer closely at it.

It had an oddly human face, and it was staring at her, as intensely as she was staring at it.

"Excuse me," she said to one of the n.o.bles walking past. "What is this?"

"Your hand, Lady Anghared." He seemed to find that funny.