Dragon Sword Series - Dragon Sword Part 10

Last night she had dreamed of Kent, too. But last night, as she recalled, there had been something else in the dream, a golden haze that lent even Jeff's mutilated body a fragment of hope, declaring unequivocally that despair was not the inevitable outcome of faith. She had to believe that, else the bitterness that had tracked her throughout the last decade-visiting her with its fetid breath in city after city, licking her face with a slimy tongue in Dallas-would find her here also. Gryylth was horror enough; she did not need more. Sitting up, her face in her hands, dozing off in spite of 94..

95.herself, she willed herself to see it again. There was wholeness in the world/There was an end to the struggle. There was a place of safety. For a moment, it hung within her grasp: golden, beating, a life-hued glory that beckoned to her with the smile of a mother, or of a G.o.ddess, a chalice br.i.m.m.i.n.g with water in a wasteland. But even as she stretched out an arm to it, it fled from her sight.

She woke up with the Dragonsword in her hands, and she pressed the cold hilt to her forehead as though it could fill some of the aching emptiness she felt.

The sword was her security and her lifeline. She clung to it as though it were a lover, and she hated herself for her weakness. She had killed with this sword. She should throw it away. But it was all that stood between her and utter madness, for the thought of being in Gryylth, and being also helpless and at the mercy of Dythragor, was intolerable.

Unsheathing the sword, she held it up. The blade seemed to glow softly of itself. Not a trace of blood clung to the flawless steel. "It's me and you, guy," she said under her breath. "Just stay with me, huh?"

Sleep was well beyond her now, and she sheathed the sword. Rising, she pulled on the tunic that had lain under her leather armor. As she donned her boots, she discovered an interior sheath that held a small, sharp knife at the ready. Silbakor, or whoever it was that had so changed her, had thought of everything. Such wonderful little lethal niceties.

The door opened silently under her hand, and she stepped out into the moonlit night. Seena's flowers had turned to shades of silver, and the garden vegetables were scattered abstractions in argent and sable.

Around her was Kingsbury, a study in fifth-century British town life, but the strange constellations and the terribly foreign face of the moon above her told her that she could not have been farther from Britain. She sensed that Silbakor had flown through other dimensions, had entered twists of the universe that should not have existed. She might be on the other side of the galaxy. If she were in the same galaxy at all.

The isolation was a spike in her heart. Could the Dragon take her home? She hoped so. And she hoped that it would, soon. How much more of this could she take?

And yet Cvinthil and Seena had, once they had become used to her, entertained her with respect and consideration. They were actually nice people, without the ulterior motives of the Dragon or the sneering contempt of Dythragor. Alouzon Dragonmaster was a guest. Alouzon Dragonmaster was treated well. And Kallye, the midwife, had been all cheer and confidence.

There were problems with Gryylth, to be sure, but it was not all horror. The firelight on Ayya's face had touched the child with all the comfort and depth of a Rembrandt, and she had giggled as Alouzon, laughing, had shown her how to make a mouse out of a sc.r.a.p of cloth. Seena's shoulders had grown less hunched in the course of the evening, and she and Cvinthil had sung a song for their guest before bed.

She was making friends. She had actually laughed. She had not realized that she could still laugh.

She sighed, breathed deeply of the night. Horse p.i.s.s and straw, and the darker odors of human sweat and cattle. From the distance there came the yellow smell of wheat, and the brown of fallow land. Friends. Respect. And maybe a chance of finding something that, yes, might promise the return of her soul. It was pleasant to believe that. She began to wonder whether she were, in spite of herself, in spite of everything, beginning to like this place.

In the darkness of the moonshadow beside the house, a darker shape moved, a foot sc.r.a.ped on a stone. Alouzon was in action before she knew it, her bootknife sliding into her hand as she stepped toward the figure. The frost-colored blade was at the man's throat in an instant, its tip pressing into the hollow of his jaw, ready to let the life out.

CHAPTER 7.

It would be infinitely more convenient, Mernyl decided, if affairs in Gryylth were predicated more upon trust and affirmation than force of arms. As it was, he was saddled with the latter, and the point of Alouzon's dagger was sharp, and her arms were strong.

' 'I give greetings to the Dragonmaster,'' he said stiffly, inching the words past her choke hold.

"Christ ..." He did not understand her oath. Some G.o.d, perhaps. Did they really have names, then? "It's you, Mernyl?"

"Aye." The dagger flicked away from his throat instantly, and she slid, it back into her boot with a fluid motion.

He stood back, rubbing his neck. "I see you are adapting quite well to Gryylth, my lady."

She winced noticeably at his words, an expression of genuine pain. Mernyl frowned. Alouzon was, even more than he had thought before, very different from Dythra-gor. "Yeah . . . don't pay me any compliments, huh?"

"As you wish, lady. If I have wounded you, my apologies."

She was shaking visibly. "I've killed too much already, Mernyl. It seems to come d.a.m.ned easy here. I was just starting to find some good things about this place, and now ..." She bent her head, teeth clenched. "I could have killed you. And without even thinking."

"There has been too much war in this land," Mernyi 96 .

97.said gently. "And you did not kill me. You held back. That was a good thing."

"Yeah . . . that's true. I didn't kill you." In the moonlight, her thick hair was silvered, her eyes glinted like steel, and the double-dragon hilt of her sword glowed white and not-white. But her thin tunic made her seem less the Dragonmaster and more the woman, and he found that he pitied her. "What are you doing out at this hour?" she said suddenly.

"I came to see you, lady. Though I am surprised that you are awake."

She half turned away as though she possessed a guilty secret. "I have . . . bad dreams." Very different indeed.

His staff was in his hand, and he could have, if he had wanted, pried into her thoughts. It quivered, ready to do his will, but he bade it sleep. Alouzon, he sensed, had already been violated enough. "I, too, have bad dreams sometimes," he said.

He was still rubbing his shoulder, and she noticed. "I'm . . . sorry about that, Mernyl. I hope I didn't hurt you too bad." Her voice nearly broke.

He hastened to rea.s.sure her. "It is nothing, lady. Dy-thragor did much worse this morning in the Hall. If anything, you startled more than hurt me."

"Yeah ..." She looked around at the town, shadowed by the night. The full moon crawled toward the horizon. "I'm glad you showed up, though. I've been wanting to talk to you, too. You seemed to know a lot about that Corrinian at the Hall Corrinian? She was using the Dremords' own terms. Mernyl rather admired her for it. "I . . . know very little, my lady. That he had been badly hurt is obvious, but-"

Her words were blunt. "Mernyl, you're lying. You know. I could tell from the energies around you."

He stopped with his mouth open, the words sticking in his throat as though set about with fish-hooks. She knew. And doubtless she would also know if he lied again. He 98.chose his words carefully. "I ... suspect a number of things."

"So why didn't you say something at the Hall?"

"You expected me to tell everything?" He wondered if her question were rhetorical, was irritated nonetheless. "And who would listen to me? Dythragor? Marrget? Either would gladly use me for pike practice."

"OK, I'm sorry. But what happened? That guy was a mess."

He had not come to speak of the Tree. He wished that he were back at his house, concerned with nothing more than pure magical research. The lethal and untidy aspects of practical sorcery were leaving him dismayed. "Have you ever heard of the Tree of Creation?"

"No. What is it?"

Her answer revealed the depth of her ignorance. What was it not? "You heard mention of the Blasted Heath."

"Yeah. We're going there tomorrow morning."

Worse and worse. "The Tree grew in the Heath. I think, though, that it is no longer there. I believe that Tireas and the Corrinian phalanx went in and took it."

"Why would they do that?"

"Control. Magic. You saw what happened to that man at the Hall."

"The Tree did that? That's ..."

For a moment, in spite of himself, he saw a flicker of her thoughts. Blood and torn flesh. Weapons he did not understand. A keen edge of despair that had lingered over many years. He flinched away from the images. Alouzon hurt. His own heart labored for a moment.

"That's . . . monstrous," she said. "What the h.e.l.l do they want with something like that?"

"The war has gone on for a long time, Dragonmaster. The Corrinians are desperate."

"What is it? What does it do?"

"I am not sure." He regretted now, as he had regretted often, Dythragor's ban on the use of magic. In Cor-rin, Tireas worked under the patronage of King Tarwach. He had supplies, a house, an a.s.sistant, and safety. Mer-nyl, though, lived in fear for his life, and he had a shabby .

99.little hut in the Cotswood Hills. He made his own books and grew his own food, but survival left little time for magic.

And now, with the possibility of the Tree being in Corrinian hands, and with puzzles and questions about the very nature of the land thrusting themselves at him from every direction, he was beginning to worry that Dythra-gor's prejudice might prove fatal to everything.

"As far as I know, it is an emblem and an embodiment of change," he said. "All change. My books are uncertain as to this, and I have only seen the Tree from a distance. Tireas is a brave man for having ventured so near to it." And a lucky man to have the support of a phalanx when he did.

"So what happened to that Corrinian?"

"An accident, I would wager. He probably went too near the Tree."

"And they're going to do that to Gryylth?"

"I do not believe that it would profit Corrin to lay waste to Gryylth. Tarwach, for all his skill in battle, would rather pursue peace, and Tireas is not one to squander life. I think ..." Anything was possible. The land itself seemed to be a tissue of dreams. "I do not know what to think."

"So it's possible, right?" Alouzon's voice was a fierce whisper in the darkness.

"Mernyl, if you're right, that Tree is staring us right in the face."

Everything was staring him in the face: the Tree added only a single pair of eyes to the throng. "Dragonmaster-"

"Cut the Dragonmaster s.h.i.t. My name is Alouzon."

' 'What would you suggest I do? I tried to bring peace once, and I was driven away, and the war continued. At present, my hands are tied. Dythragor will kill me if I am not gone by tomorrow morning. I cannot do anything if I am dead.''

"How about on your own?"

"On my own, I can do what I have always done. I can 100..

101.

study, I can research, I can wait to be summoned." Actually, Alouzon had a point. If anything was needed at present, it was preparation and understanding. The whole land had turned into a puzzle, and he wondered if what he had found at the ends of the earth could not have some bearing on what was happening here, at its heart.

"OK." She seemed disappointed, but she added: "If I have anything to say about it, you'll be called pretty soon."

"I am afraid that I will be called whether you have anything to say or not.''

Her next question took him completely off guard, and he stared at her for the better part of a minute after she asked it. "Listen, this sounds kind of crazy, but you're someone I can ask about this. Is there something here in Gryylth that . . . that heals or something like that?"

She was not talking about the Circle, for she did not even know of the Tree. Besides, the Circle sustained-it did not heal. She had to be referring to ... something else. Had she seen it herself then? "Why do you ask?"

" 'Cause . . ."She shook her head. "Aw, s.h.i.t. I don't know. I told you I had bad dreams, but since I came here they're not quite so bad. There's something else in them. Like this big gold light that makes everything better. And it's not just a dream. It's real. I know it."

He had seen the Cup again, recently, but it had fled from him as it had before. He had been riding with Santhe, and he had dozed off in the saddle. This time, a woman had been holding it. Her hair was long and dark, and she was comely enough, though her round face was worn. She had lifted her head and looked at him with an expression of both unutterable weariness and illuminated hope.

"I think that there is something in Gryylth like what you describe," he said. "I do not know where." He could not dissemble. He had to tell the truth. The sacramental quality of the vision would have made any other utterance sear his tongue like a hot coal.

In the silver light, her face was lined and marked with shadows, and with a shock, he realized her expression was that of the woman with the Cup. Weariness. Hope. "I want it," she said. "I think I need it."

Gryylth needs it too. Desperately. Even more desperately than you, Alouzon Dragonmaster. He wondered how he knew that so clearly, without any doubt, but he spoke cautiously. "I believe that the G.o.ds give what is truly needed. If what you say is true, then you will have it."

"I hope so. It's ... right around here ... I can feel it. I just saw it a few minutes ago. If only ..." She cast about uneasily, as though it would appear before her. But no: it was only a vision. At least for now.

If there was a physical battle going on in the land between Gryylth and Corrin, there was also another, subtler conflict, one that pitted the complete against the partial. The world ended in an abyss, but that was as nothing to the hollowness that he saw in Alouzon. She was like a wounded thing, like the deformed man at the Hall, achingly unfinished, painfully flawed. But both levels, he knew, were somehow linked, and Alouzon Dragonmaster had come to Gryylth for much more than simple swordwork.

The land ended. The war had arisen from nothing. But the Cup . . . the Cup promised wholeness. And Alouzon was right: it was not just a dream, It was real.

The sky was lightening in the east. "You need sleep, Aiouzon," said the sorcerer. "Your journey to the Heath will begin early, and you have no friends among the war-troop, if I judge correctly."

She nodded slowly. He felt, of a sudden, that he wanted to put his arms about her, to comfort her as though she were a child. But he put the thought aside. Alouzon needed respect as much as that same child needed meat.

"To bed, then," he said. "I will see you again, fear not. And your dreams this night shall be peaceful." He smiled and thumped his staff on the ground, and felt the reality of the night change slightly in accordance with his will.

"Yeah. Thanks."

He made his way back to his room at the Hall, wrapping himself ia confusion so as not to he noticed by the 102.

103.

guards. But his confusion was within as well as without, for his meeting with Alouzon had raised more questions than it had answered.

But what answers had he hoped to find? He had gone to Alouzon with no more definite a goal than that speech with her would be good. Therefore, whatever he had found out, he decided, was for the best. He might not understand at present, but understanding, like everything else that was wanted-whether absolution from past horror, or the unity of a golden cup-came only after time.

He slid through the gateway. He had time, he knew. But not much of it.

The sun was just beginning to melt the mist from the eastern downs when the First Wartroop, Dythragor, and Alouzon mounted up for the Blasted Heath. Dythragor scowled when he saw Alouzon supplied with a horse, but he did not press the matter, for Wykla had, with much embarra.s.sment, delivered her remark about the Dremord sword. Marrget had chuckled dryly, and Dythragor had been forced to admit that it was true.

But he held his tongue also because he was pondering the fact that the Dragon had brought her. Regardless of his likes or his dislikes, the Dragon never did anything without a reason. And even then, it did only what was absolutely necessary.

So, it had brought Suzanne h.e.l.ling to Gryylth. He still resented it.

But saddling up, checking on men and supplies, making ready to leave-the commonplaces of combat and travel-soothed him a little. The sun was bright, weapons were sharp, and if, as he took his position beside Marrget at the head of the twin columns of the wartroop, he felt a flare of annoyance that Alouzon rode on the captain's other side, he nonetheless felt a sense of power, too. With the twenty-one men of the wartroop behind him, he could march into h.e.l.l itself and not fear.

The thought made him straighten up in the saddle. If what he had heard about the Heath was true, that was exactly where they were going.

The idea that such a place as the Heath even existed in his land was a dull ache that seemed to want to shade into a sense of depression. Something was roiling around in the depths of his mind, thoughts that he wanted to leave unformed, unspoken, but which, invisible and unknown, were profoundly unsettling, as though one's backyard fishpond might harbor a school of piranha.

Perhaps it would not have been a bad idea at all to have brought Mernyl. The sorcerer seemed to know his way around the unseen world. And if he could not fight the Heath with power, at least he might baffle it with his chicanery.

He started suddenly. Work with Mernyl? Never. He was surprised that the idea had even occurred to him. He seized hold of his thoughts, reminded himself of the war-troop, the long road; took a good look at the countryside, the sky. There was no room for magic in Gryylth. This was his land.

He took the reins into one hand, patted the Dragon-sword with the other. He had nothing to be afraid of: the stories of the terrors of the Heath were simply stories, tales designed to frighten women and children. They had no place in a man's heart.