Dragon Sword Series - Dragon Sword Part 17

With a weight as of oceans, he was dragged down into darkness, his nose and mouth plugged with muck. Gasping at fleeting pockets of air, clawing at the ooze, he saw her looking scornfully at him as she packed the last of the things awarded her by the preliminary settlement. The masking tape crackled and sucked as she peeled it off the roll and taped the boxes shut, and her eyes bored at him 152.

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as though from out of a vat of soured love now fermented into rage.

It was a calculated, seasoned hate, one compounded of all her intimate knowledge of his faults, his failings, his habits, his inadequacies in bed-everything that only a woman who had lived intimately with him could know. And he had no place to turn. The courts were against him, his friends shunned him, his family politely declined to discuss such a tawdry thing as divorce. Only his lawyer-well paid-lent a sympathetic ear.

While outside the walls of his house, beyond the masonry of the court building, the country was going to h.e.l.l, crazed students fighting with the forces of law and order, tear gas frothing across the campuses like clouds of yellow poppies.

But he was not powerless: he had the Dragons word.

Lifting it high over his head, he waded through the slime that rose about his thighs, prepared to settle the matter at last. But the sword was growing unspeakably heavy, and, against his will, it dragged itself to the ground.

He stared. His hands were weak, womanish. Long nails, delicately manicured. Bangles on his wrists.

In his left palm was the bottle of pills that he had emptied one night when the house itself had seemed empty and the Santa Ana winds had whined dryly through the palm trees in the front yard. Everything had reminded him of Helen, and of what she had said, and of those kids just standing there, getting shot down . . .

And he ...

"Go on. Take them," said Helen. "That's what you wanted, wasn't it?"

"They . . . they didn't kill me."

"That was a mistake. You wanted to die, didn't you?"

Trembling, he uncapped the bottle, poured the red capsules into his hand. More than enough to kill, but he had, comatose, retched up enough so that he had lived. "I lost everything ..."

Helen c.ame closer. "Do it, Sol. Do it right." He hes- itated. "d.a.m.n it, Sol, you never could follow through on anything, you're just a weak little spineless-"

He threw the pills in her face, backhanded her. She writhed away from him, her face stretching into serpentine .angles, her body a.s.suming the form of a dragon.

It was not anything like Silbakor that he was now facing. It was a White Worm, its pallid scales nacreous in the swirling fog that surrounded it, its eyes a dark glow that shaded beyond the visible spectrum and deep into the ultra-violet. Darting at him, it twined its length about his legs, mired him in its own flesh. It stank abominably, and the sword dropped from his hands as he gagged.

"All right, Mr. Braithwaite." Old Markasham was the chairman of the department, and he had a grudge against this young man who was so belligerent in his opinions about Arthurian Britain. "Suppose you tell us why you hold such . . ." He glanced at his colleagues, and they chuckled. "... curious views." Here was the bad little boy of the archaeology department, come to take his doctoral orals. They had him right where they had always wanted him, and they were amused.

You spread your legs and you take it, boy. You want your precious little Ph.D? You do exactly what we tell you.

(And Marsha protested weakly as he fumbled with the fastenings of her prom gown. Her protests, though, turned to laughter when he lost control and came before he could get his pants down. She laughed at him. His father never tolerated such behavior from his mother: .she had black eyes to prove it.) "b.i.t.c.hes!" He found his sword and swiped at the White Worm. Its head popped off with a sound like a champagne cork ...

(The relatives toasted the newly weds, eyes hard and greedy for heirs, intolerant of divorce. A s.e.m.e.n factory, that was all he was. He would show them all, would see them in h.e.l.l before they got any descendants out of him.) A little distance away, Marrget and the wartroop were facing off against a dark, woolly thing with a mouth like a dribbling, crimson slash. Their images wavered and 154.

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shifted as though reflected in an unquiet pool, but he heard Marrget barking orders.

With an odor like musk, the shapeless thing advanced on the wartroop, its slit of a mouth widening to show icy fangs dripping with venom. "Marrget, I'm coming!" he shouted, but the White Worm's body was still entwined about him, and he could not budge, "Dr. Braithwaite."

He turned to find Suzanne h.e.l.ling seated at a desk beside him. A pile of books was spread out, open, before her.

"Suzanne! Help them!"

"I have some questions to ask you," she said calmly. ' 'As your successor, I think I have a right to know. This material you wanted me to get from Special Collections: what does it have to do with Gryylth?" "Gryylth? Why, nothing. Nothing at all." (And the woolly thing fell on one of the men, crushing him, leaving his broken body slimed with mucus and musk. Alouzon was rushing at it, the Dragonsword bright in her hand. Suddenly aware of her, the creature fell back, but her sword leaped out and wounded it. Blood flowed freely as blank, filmy eyes peered from the rent.) "That's all I wanted to know," said Suzanne as she made a note. "Just as I expected. Find the Tree." "What tree? What G.o.ddam tree?" "Ask your wife."

He stood, goggling at her, wrapped up to his groin in dead dragon. Suzanne faded away, leaving the books behind on the desk.

(And Marrget and the Troop battled the creature, led by Alouzon. The swords of the men seemed to do it no harm, but Alouzon's blade, wielded by a woman's hand, cut deep.) Maddening. Just like Korea: tied down to a sterile desk job, going over photographs with a jeweler's loupe while the real action went on miles to the north. And then Mac-Arthur wanting to invade and the petty bureaucrats holding him back. When was Solomon Braithwaite going to squeeze the trigger of an M-l?

Bit by bit, he extricated himself from the lifeless coils, hacking with his sword when he was unable to untie the knots. He ran for the wartroop and plunged headfirst through the shimmering wall. His vision exploded into yellow and silver sparks, but when it cleared, he was back on the sandy plain.

Alouzon was holding the ma.s.s of fur away from the wartroop, driving it back. "You can't have them," she was screaming. "I won't let you have them."

He made as if to help, but Marrget caught his arm. "What the h.e.l.l are you doing?" said Dythragor.

"Our swords are useless, my lord," said Marrget. "Only Alouzon Dragonmaster can oppose the beast."

"So she's made a woman of you, too," he snapped. "Ever since she came here you've been sweet on her."

Marrget stepped back from him suddenly, his eyes hot with the insult. "By my sword," he said, "if you were not Dythragor Dragonmaster, I would have your life for that."

Turning, he took a running start and threw himself on the creature that was trying to catch Alouzon in a flow of impure blood. He succeeded only in deflecting the attack onto himself. Moving to save him, Alouzon tripped, fell.

An unfamiliar voice shouted: "Forward!" Stupidly standing without anything to do, Dythragor saw Wykla lead the wartroop in a charge. The men surrounded the beast, waving swords, distracting it as Alouzon gained her feet and swung. The thing opened up .with a reek as of rotting vegetables.

Dythragor stared up at the milky sky. He felt numb. He could hardly think. Above him, he saw Helen laughing and he looked away. A strange woman with long, dark hair and robes of silver and sable caught at his arm. "Come," she said softly. "It is time to give this up. You have to. It's killing you."

"Who are you?"

"I'm your wife."

His wife? "Leave me alone. You want to feed me those pills again?"

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Her face was gentle, almost virginal. She looked vaguely familiar, but she was not Helen. "I can learn, you can learn. Come."

He shook her hand oif, and she left without protest. He sat down and put his face in his hands, forgetting, for the moment, his sword and his duty.

The sound of battle subsided, and he looked up and saw that the woolly thing was gone. Alouzon was getting up after another tumble, rubbing a shoulder. Two men were dead. Another lay injured, tended by Wykla.

The sky showed him pictures, but he did not understand them. His memory was confused, and he hardly knew his own name. Solomon? Dythragor? What was he? How many things had he been since he had first drawn breath? Since he had first heard his parents arguing through the m.u.f.fling presence of a closed and locked door? Since he had sat at a desk in Seoul, wondering what it would be like to kill a man? So many things to be. So tiring.

He rose and walked toward the others, his dragging sword furrowing the dry sand with its point, a meandering track in a featureless waste.

Alouzon saw him first, and noticed the glazed look in his eyes. Marrget glanced at him, scowled, and went to help Wykla with the wounded man.

"Marrget, he's hurt," she said, calling him back.

"Hurt? My lady, there is not a mark on him."

"Maybe not, but he's screwed up pretty good." She stopped Dythragor and searched his face. "Dythragor?"

"Why did you laugh at me?"

"Dythragor, come out of it." Her shoulder was bothering her, and the musk of the woolly thing was still & rank odor at the back of her throat. She was not inclined to be gentle with him, but she held her temper in check. "Come on, man."

"And the mud. You did it, Helen. You did it all."

She shook her head, frustrated. Gryylth defied explanation, but she was beginning to put together a few pieces of Solomon Braithwaite's personal history. A bad mar- .

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riage, a messy divorce. They could happen to anyone, but he seemed to take them more personally than most.

Marrget handed her a skin of water and she splashed some over Dythragor's face, giving his cheeks a few quick slaps for good measure. Slowly, he came to himself. "What tree?"

The question chilled her. "Look, Dythragor, what's your problem? "

"I saw you. You told me about a tree. What did you mean?''

"I . . ." She hesitated. Dythragor had been acting hopelessly irrational for the last few minutes, and she had no intention of setting him off again. "All I know is that you fell down, out cold, and then something that looked like an MCP's nightmare jumped up out of the sand. Now you're asking about a tree." She looked at Marrget. "The Heath, I suppose."

The captain's anger had cooled. "The Heath, my lady." He turned to Dythragor. "My apologies."

"No, don't apologize," Dythragor said quickly. "Don't do that. I don't know what's happening out here, but you didn't do anything wrong."

Alouzon used some of the water to rinse the musky slime from her arms. She was mildly surprised that she had not been hurt worse, for the creature had fallen on her with all its weight. It had crushed one of the men with the same action, but she had come oif with nothing more than a sore shoulder. The effect of the Dragon-sword, more than likely.

The wounded man's injuries were minimal: he appeared to have had the wind knocked out of him, nothing more. In a few minutes, he was on his feet, a little shamefaced, but essentially well. The dead men had been stretched out together, their sightless eyes regarding the shimmering sky.

She turned away, tried to compose herself. The coed in her dream had looked at the sky in much the same way.

"Shall we go on?" said Marrget.

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"This is a bad place," said Dythragor. "The wartroop should stay together. Marrget and I will search further."

"The lady Alouzon appears to have some power here, my lord. Perhaps it would be wise . . ."

In response, Alouzon nodded and stepped beside the captain. Dythragor was outnumbered, and he nodded curtly.

"Relys, you are in command," said Marrget, and the three moved off, swords drawn. The air was fairly clear at ground level, and they had no difficulty keeping the wartroop in sight.

Alouzon a.s.sumed that they were moving toward the center of the Heath, but without landmarks, she could not tell for sure. They might have been anywhere, headed in any direction. Perhaps it did not matter. The Heath was a convoluted anomaly in an anomalous world: nothing prevented it from violating physical law even more flagrantly than the land that contained it.

They came suddenly upon a pit that gaped in the sand like a lanced boil. It was perhaps ten feet across and as deep as a man was tall, but it did not seem at all natural, and when Marrget found a spade lying nearby, Alouzon knew what it had once held.

Dythragor walked around the perimeter of the pit. He seemed distracted, almost dizzy. If Alouzon did not know of his chronic addiction to bravado and glory, she would have suspected that he was on the verge of running away.

"You mentioned a tree," she said cautiously. "Did you have anything . . . specific in mind?"

"I saw you at school. You said: Find the tree. "

"It's . . ." She examined the pit. Mernyl had told her something about the Tree, and everything she saw was fitting the pattern. "It's about big enough to hold a tree."

"A tree of fair size,'' said Marrget. ' 'But in this desert place?'' He lifted his eyes to check on the wartroop, and Relys raised a hand in salute. Satisfied for the moment, he looked to Dythragor, waiting.

Dythragor shrugged impatiently. ' 'We can a.s.sume that. But don't ask me what they intend to do with it."

Alouzon risked a little more. "Maybe we should ask Mernyl about this. He ... might know something."

His response was as she expected. "You can leave that charlatan out of this affair. This is too important."

"Maybe it's too important to leave him out of it," she insisted. "That night we spent in Kingsbury, he told me about something called the Tree of Creation. He said that the Tree was responsible for what happened to that Dre-mord back at the Hall."

"Grails . . . and Trees now. What did I tell you about the irrational?"

The Heath around her, and two men dead by a v.a.g.i.n.a dentata: she nearly laughed out loud. "Maybe you haven't noticed, Dythragor, but this entire country runs on irrationality. Magic. Hocus-pocus. Call it what you want."

"Give me a break."

She decided to risk it all. "Can you tell me why everyone speaks English here?"

He stood, stunned. "English?"

"English is an Indo-European language." She punched out the words like a drop forge. "It took a special set of circ.u.mstances for it to evolve. But everyone speaks it here in Gryylth, and it's fairly modem English at that. You call that rational?"

"We don't bring magic into this. Leave it. Mernyl is an idiot, a stupid man who nearly sold Gryylth down the river. There's no room for him here."

"Come oifit, Dythragor," she said. "I backed down before because I was new here and didn't know enough about the place. But not now. This place is crazy down to the bedrock. Nothing fits. Everything I know tells me that it couldn't have evolved naturally." She stopped, thought, turned to Marrget. "I mean no insult to you, Marrget. This is just a matter of theory."

He shook his head. "Do not stay your words for me, lady. I do not understand most of them in any case."

She went back to Dythragor. "I mean what I'm saying. Have you looked at your sword?"

He glanced at it. "So?"

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"It's Celtic, straight out of fifth-century Britain. You can find its mate in any textbook on the subject. Where's Britain from here, Dythragor?"