Dragon Sword Series - Dragon Sword Part 29

"And nothingness."

After a minute of bewildered immobility, she sat down on the ground before the Dragon, picked up a handful of soil and gra.s.s, let it sift through her fingers. She half expected it to evaporate before it hit the ground. "I had to ask, didn't I?"

"Lady, I have no wish to trouble you."

"Yeah, right." It was not evaporating. That was good, for if it did, she would have to start screaming, and she was already feeling the claws of the irrational. "As if I haven't been troubled since I got here." She got down on her hands and knees, studied what she could of the ground. The faint transparency that she had noticed from the beginning was still evident. "OK," she said finally. "Now tell me why."

"That ... is the way it was created."

The Dragon seemed to be choosing its words, which was exactly what Alouzon did not want. If she was to do anything to help this unfinished land, she had to know. "Created? By who? G.o.d?"

"No."

"Dammit, Silbakor, I don't have time for these games. Where did it come from?''

Unwillingly, the Dragon spoke. "From the mind of 252.

Solomon Braithwaite, who is here called Dythragor Dragonmaster." It rushed on, as though afraid that she would interrupt. "Do not judge him harshly, lady. A man or a woman may do many things in time of crisis, even unto creating a world where longed-for fantasies live."

"What . . . what you're saying is insane."

"Nevertheless."

Nevertheless. Everything was insane. Madness did indeed lurk in Gryylth, crawling in the corners of the world like a rabid dog. Alouzon's brain began putting the pieces together methodically, in spite of the fact that Alouzon herself no longer wanted to see the pattern. "We're all inside Braithwaite's mind, then?"

The Dragon shook its head. "Gryylth exists. It is an actual physical place. The stars you see above you are real suns, many with their own planets. For the most part, the physical laws with which you are familiar hold sway in this part of the universe. Gryylth is ... an exception. It is an anomaly."

"That's putting it mildly." Her hands pressed to her head as though to hold in the thoughts that swirled through her brain, she walked away from the Dragon and stood for a few minutes at the edge of the firelight. Marrget lay near her feet, her face tranquil in sleep. She was a lovely woman, her features fine and her fingers long and tapering. A short distance away, Relys murmured, clutched at her blankets, turned over and settled down again. Wykla tossed and turned, almost cried out.

"It's gonna be OK," Alouzon whispered, knowing they did not hear, knowing also that, despite her past, despite Gryylth's origins, she would somehow fulfill her promise. The Dragon had its oath, and the Dragonmaster had hers.

She did not doubt the Dragon. It could not lie. But the idea of Solomon Braithwaite creating a chunk of a world out of his mind swamped her comprehension even as it explained everything that she had ever questioned about the land. The swords, the costumes, the buildings . . . even the bitter hostility and endless conflict between Gryylth and Corrin had their counterparts in Braith- .

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waite's field of study. In creating Gryylth, he had reached into the world he knew best, fifth-century Britain, and had extracted the familiar, the emotional, the longed-for.

But he could not create everything, and so there were gaps and a sense of disjointedness. No one remembered their parents, past history was sketchy, and magic-the Tree, the Dragonswords, the Dragon itself-was an unmistakable undercurrent. What had not been specified had been filled in with a haze of common knowledge and unquestioned facts, eked out by a thin broth of unconscious desires and primitive beliefs that Braithwaite was loathe to claim as his own.

She returned to Silbakor. "He knows, doesn't he?"

"He does not."

She goggled. "You're letting an overgrown kid run around in a fantasy land with a big sword and no idea of what he's doing?"

"It is not my place to give advice without first being questioned. Dythragor has never asked me anything about Gryylth. He has been content to live his dream."

"Which involves killing people, right?"

"I ask that you do not judge him, lady. His wish was to fight evil. He forgot that, under many circ.u.mstances, evil is relative."

"And there's nothing beyond Gryylth?"

"Nothing save the s.p.a.ce between dimensions, which, under certain conditions, can be filled."

Something about the Dragon's words struck her, but she was already grappling with a thought. "Then the Corrinians have always been where they are. They've got no place to go."

"True."

"Oh, Christ, the whole thing's so f.u.c.king pointless! No wonder they've been fighting like they have. I can't blame them. It's just like Vietnam. It's just like Kent State. No one understood anything. No one wanted to understand. No one listened to anybody."

She looked at the sleeping forms of Marrget and her wartroop. Women. Casualties of a thoughtless coherence 254.

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of wishes and fears, of frantic hopes that pointed in opposite directions.

This time, it was not M-ls. Or M-16s, or napalm, or mortars. This time, it was the Tree. And the Tree could do even more.

She covered her face with her hands. "They're going to attack again. And they'll be using that thing." She tried to imagine Kent all over again, but expanded, lapping everlarger like a growing pool, touched with the colors of newsreel footage she had seen of Hue and My Lai, given currency by the heaped bodies that lay on the other side of the ridge. She failed. There were no proportions in death.

"They have no choice," said the Dragon. "Their existence is threatened. If Vorya's army had been defeated and no more, they might have waited for a settlement. However, with Dythragor's actions . . ."It had no physical capability of shrugging, but the slight curve of its neck conveyed the meaning to Alouzon. "They are now pressed."

"And you might have told Dythragor what all this was about."

"Lady, he did not ask."

He had not asked: that was all the reason the Dragon needed, and its alien nature could be summed up no better. She wondered what crucial questions she herself was allowing to go unasked.

"What can we do, then?"

"I do not know. Often I have had advice to give and have not been asked. Now I am asked and have nothing to offer. The Tree that the Corrinians possess can be used in many ways. It could conceivably be wielded so as to unmake Gryylth. That would not be a wise choice."

"What is it, exactly?"

"It is called the Tree of Creation by Mernyl and Ti-reas. I myself do not fully comprehend it: it lies outside of my knowledge and existence. Like the Circle and myself, it was created as an integral part of Gryylth, springing directly from the unconscious of Solomon Braithwaite, and, I believe, your race."

"Archetype, then." She mused. "He doesn't like change, he doesn't like magic, he doesn't like anything that he can't control. The Heath was everything that he wanted to repress, but now there's a part of it that's loose." Silbakor, the Tree, the Circle . . . But there was something else, too, something that might actually be more important than all the rest. "What about the Grail, Silbakor? Is that real too?"

The Dragon actually looked uncomfortable. Its yellow eyes burned like suns. "It is."

"Is it just Braithwaite's, or ..." She waited, the Dragon stared. "Don't make me pull teeth, Silbakor. Please. This means something to me."

It squirmed for a moment, as though wrestling with an answer. "It, like the Tree and the Circle, springs from the mind of your species. It is a universal. It . . ." Silbakor hesitated. "It cannot be used for war."

War? The Grail could save the whole land. The Grail could help Marrget and the warfoop. The Grail could heal Suzanne h.e.l.ling. Set against its absolute wholeness, war was a paltry and puerile consideration. "I don't want it for war, Silbakor. That's the farthest thing from my mind. Where is it?"

"Within yourself."

"Don't give me metaphysics, Silbakor. It's in Gryylth. I know it. Where?"

"Within ..." The Dragon could answer questions, but it could not volunteer information. ".Within yourself. '' It opened its mouth again as though to speak, and Alouzon was given a glimpse of the black, obsidian-keen fangs that lay on the other side of its lips. But it said nothing.

What was the Dragon not telling her? Something important, doubtless, but she had no idea how to pry the knowledge out of it. Silbakor was not human. It hardly understood humans. How was it supposed to know what it was that she wanted?

She was left with a quest that she did not know how to begin. "OK, Silbakor, can you do anything?"

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"I am but a balance. As was Gryylth created, so was I formed to insure its preservation."

"Cause and effect?"

"There is no cause," said the Dragon. "There is no effect. We are."

"And what if Gryylth is destroyed?"

It said nothing. Plainly unable to speak further, Sil-bakor closed its eyes and rested its head on the ground. Alouzon stood for a moment, frustrated, struggling with unknown questions, and then climbed onto its back and sat cross-legged between the great black wings, watching the distant fire and the uneasy sleep of the wartroop.

He had flown across the territory of the Dremords, sowing fire and destruction; he had returned to the king and found that his support had withered. Now he rode across the night-cloaked landscape of Gryylth, pressing southward, headingibr no particular destination, wanting only to escape what lay behind him: the crush of men, and weapons . . .

. . . and women.

But dawn .crept up on him like an a.s.sa.s.sin, and when the sky was gray and his hands were shaking, his eyes half blind with lack of sleep and the dust of the road, Dythragor turned his horse toward the town that lay a few miles off his course-which really was no course at all-looking for shelter. He might have slept outdoors, but the open sky left him feeling vulnerable, and though the stars were eclipsed by the upwelling of light that was the new day, he knew they were there, and he found their presence disquieting, as though they might, unasked, tell him what he did not want to know.

Shelter then, and a bed in a room. A roof. Shutters he could close. A door to lock. The gates of the town opened as it awoke, and he approached it, ignorant of its name, looking to hide in it as a child might pull a comforter over his head to keep out the dark.

Perhaps he had been here before: he could not remember. But the townsmen knew him, and the gate guards, a man too old for war and a boy too young to swing more than a wooden sword, jumped to their feet and saluted as he rode through. He paid no attention to them. Furtive, desperate, he rode through the half-sleeping streets that were denuded of their young men, searching for an inn.

Women were about. One, blond and fair, looked like Marrget. Her hair was braided and she walked quickly and with her head down, a basket on her arm. He averted his gaze.

He found that he was shaking as he dismounted in the courtyard of an inn. His swagger was gone: he entered the door like a pauper. Would Marrget one day-?

"An unexpected honor, Dragonmaster," said the host. He was aged and fat, his soldiering days over. But his face was open and honest. Just what Dythragor wanted. Behind, in Vorya's tent, were Mernyl, with his secretive smiles, and Alouzon with her politics and her peacenik sympathies. Here was the solidity of Gryyith, a representative of the people he had vowed to keep safe from the Dremords. "You'll have something to eat, too?"

A meal would help. Tireas, the Dremord sorcerer, had kept him aloft for days, and when he had at last given up and turned to the firing of the crops, he had done so without pausing for rest or food.

A meal, then. And, after that, sleep. "Yes . . . yes, that's a good idea."

"How goes it with the war, if I may ask, Dragonmaster? What brings you to Crownhark?"

He had turned to enter the common room; but the host's questions transfixed him like a pair of spikes. He was known and respected, and that meant that he would eventually have to say something about his anomalous absence from the battle.

And Crownhark was Marrget's town. And he had run from . . .

. . . her.

"Uh ... it's ..." He saw her still, sitting in a chair, lapped in a robe that was too big for her, her hair long and blond. Or maybe she was shuffling along the streets of Kingsbury, head down, a basket on her arm. No. Not 258.

that. Never. "It's fine. Just fine. I'm on ... uh ... business." His head was spinning from a combination of fatigue and lack of food, and he was suddenly afraid that Solomon Braithwaite might return and present the people of Crownhark with a bewildered, middle-aged scholar who could no more lift a Dragonsword than he could an anvil.

He thought that the host looked at him oddly, his bland face illumined from within by curiosity and doubt. Doubt. Doubt everywhere. "What the h.e.l.l do you want?" Dy-thragor demanded. "Papers? Want to see if I'm AWOL?"

The host blinked, frightened, and gestured him into the common room with tremulous waves of his hands. "Sit yourself down then, my lord Dragonmaster. I will have food for you in a moment. Fear not: we know how to treat honored guests here, since one of our own sons has risen to command the First Wartroop of the land. Do you know him? His name is-"

Dythragor fled into the room. With most of the young male population of the land absent because of the war (killed now, he knew, or worse), the inn was quiet. There were no women visible, and the only men present were aged and weak. One was in the corner, mumbling a piece of bread and gravy. Two others were engrossed in a board game, moving pegs about from one hole to another gravely and deliberately, as though by so doing they determined the fate of worlds.

Age. Everything here was age. An old room for old men. He might just as well have been in a nursing home, having arrived between visits of the white-clad nurses and the disinterested doctors.

Solomon Braithwaite hung over his shoulder as he made his way across the room to a dark corner and sat down with his back to the wall. The gamesters did not look up-he might have been one of them-but the old, toothless codger with the bread and gravy had marked him. He stood up and hobbled toward the Dragonmaster. Dythragor tried to look occupied. He should have stayed out of towns. He should have stayed alone.

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"Hail, Dythragor Dragonmaster," the old man wheezed. "I am Perni."

"Yeah." Go away, d.a.m.n you.

The dribbling, gravy-streaked face of the old man revolted him and made him slide his stool back until it met the wall, but Perni paid no attention to Dythragor's discomfiture. He dragged up another stool, spat into a corner, and settled himself gingerly. "My bones are a little old, these days, Dragonmaster. Do you know me?"

"Uh . . . no."

"Ah, but I think you do." He gloated with the knowledge. "Ten years ago, I was in service of Gryylth. I was a soldier! Think of that! I was under Hylic, of the Fifth Wartroop, and back when that fiend Memyl was betraying the whole country to the Dremords, I was stationed up by the Eastreach River." He coughed, brought up mucus, spat it into the comer.

The host tottered in with food and drink. Dythragor looked at the tracing of spittle that wound down Perm's chin, shuddered and left his meal untouched. This was all that was left in the towns. The young men lay dead under the summer sun, their bodies picked over by the crows. "I'm ..." An old man, living his dreams. Pathetic. "I'm sure you served well."

"Well! I will tell you how well I served, Dragonmaster, and then you'll know what kind of reward to give me. I have bided my time for a good number of years now, waiting to reveal myself. Oh, youngsters like Marrget grew up and took all the honor, but 'twas I started everything and gave the boys a chance," He huffed and snorted under his breath for a moment, did not notice how Dythragor shook at the mention of the name. "You know, I have been in some sore straits since my heart started troubling me a few years back."

Dythragor unconsciously felt his right arm. "I'm sure you've been pensioned."

"I have indeed, but I want credit. And honor! There has been plenty of honor these last ten years, but all of it went to others while I stayed home with my bad heart.

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But I deserve it, I do, for it was I saved Gryylth from destruction." He cackled, rubbing his hands together.

Arrogant, c.o.c.ksure old man. It was the beginnings of senility he was seeing, Dythragor was certain. Why else would a grown man prattle on about fantasy exploits? "I'm sure that Gryylth owes you a great debt," he said, trying to bring the conversation to a close. At his elbow, the sliced meat and bread were growing cold, the beer sc.u.mming over and turning flat. He tried not to look at the food.

"You don't believe me."

"Of course I believe you." Now go away.