Dragon Sword Series - Dragon Sword Part 42

* CHAPTER 25 *

It was a lovely night for flying. Though the sun had set hours before, the air was still tepid from the heat of the day, and the fragrance of midsummer lingered sweetly even at the alt.i.tudes sought by the Dragon. Dythragor held to its neck as the great wings beat rhythmically, ma.s.sively, and the flow of air on his face and in his hair was bracing, the wash of moonlight cleansing. The odors of mortality and the dust of the land were, he felt, leaving him, laved away in a ritual bath of light and wind, preparing him for what lay ahead.

But, for now, he did not think of the future. That was Suzanne's affair-or Alouzon's-and in any case, he was content to watch the stars, to breathe the clean air, to relish the sight of the land that had been his for the last decade.

The years had been filled with battles and with what pa.s.sed for glory. Men had fallen: friends, enemies, trusted comrades. Even Helkyying, that red-bearded giant who had led the First Wartroop, had died fighting the Dremords on the great plain that lay to the south of Ridge-brake Forest. It had taken four men to carry his body to the grave, and all the captains of the wartroops had let their blood for him.

Dythragor shook his head sadly. Helkyying. His place had been taken by Marrget. And he had failed . . . her.

Her face had been drawn with fatigue and with the strain of an interior battle fought more valiantly than any 370.

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waged with sword and spear, and yet he had run from her. But she had, in the end, extended her hand to him in friendship, and had allowed him to fight once more beside her. If there was any glory in Gryylth, any at all, it was hers.

Marrget. . . And what would happen to her afterward?

He put his hope in Alouzon. He did not understand her, doubted that he ever could, but he knew that the Dragon had chosen well. She had helped Marrget and the wartroop, had inspired Vorya and Cvinthi! and Santhe, and had won the admiration and respect of every soldier who had fought with her. If anyone could break down the ramparts of social structure and custom that hemmed in the women of Gryylth, it was Alouzon.

Ironic. Here he was, rooting now for the student radical. Everything that he had wanted was gone, and he had actively embraced what had once revolted him. Helen would have laughed.

He shut his eyes at the thought. Her laughter was too cruel to comfort him tonight. But, nonetheless, he wished that she could see. He was doing something right for a change, and he wanted her to know that.

"Silbakor," he said. "Old friend."

"Dragonmaster."

"Will Suzanne accept the Guardianship?"

The Dragon was silent for a moment. The wind rushed by. "I do not prophesy."

"I'm not asking you for that. I want to know what you think about it. I've got to know. I need someone to tell me that Gryylth . . . will continue. I ..." His voice caught, and the stars blurred into vague nebulae. "I can't do this without knowing."

The Dragon's voice was laden with regret. "Solomon," it said softly, "I cannot tell you that which I do not know. Suzanne h.e.l.ling is an individual like yourself. Her movements and decisions can neither be predicted, nor even guessed at." It drove ahead through the sky, its yellow eyes glowing like lamps. "Nor can she be judged, regardless of her choices."

"I don't want to judge her."

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"That is wise."

"I just want to know if there's any hope."

"There is always hope."

Dythragor sighed. The Dragon was as difficult as ever. He put his hand on his sword, leaned against the wind, and peered down. The Circle was a cauldron of light, the figures of the sorcerers tiny and deceptively insignificant. To one side of the conflict, the Gryylthans struggled to pull the trilithon down onto the Tree.

From the beginning, he had known that they would have trouble. It had taken thousands of years to topple even the weakest of Stonehenge's members, and the Circle was barely ten years old. Despite the stresses of magical battle, it was essentially stable and intact. Given time, given more people who had not been fighting since morning, Alouzon's party might have succeeded. But when the diversionary attack on the Corrinian forces had continued on and on with no sign from the Circle, he had summoned Silbakor.

Now he patted the great, iron-colored neck. "It's time, old friend."

"It is well." The Dragon circled rapidly out to the southwest, reversed its course, and began to descend. Far ahead and far below was the trilithon that contained upright 57. It had tipped, but it had not fallen. It needed one extra jolt, but Alouzon and the rest were too tired to supply it.

The wind turned cold as the Dragon gained speed. It roared in Dythragor's ears. "Silbakor!" he called above the noise, "I think you must be pretty sure that Suzanne will take the Guardianship. You wouldn't fight the Tree like this if you weren't!"

' 'I but bear you, Solomon Braithwaite, Dythragor Drag-onmaster. I carry you. In doing so, I do not oppose either Tree or Circle with my own being."

The Circle was directly ahead now, growing quickly, upright 57 leaning crookedly . . . refusing to fall . . .

He readied himself for his spring, just as he had prepared for his first exultant entrance into Gryylth. He had .

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tensed, then leaped into the thick of battle, his sword flashing, a smile on his face.

The Dragon leveled out. Dythragor dre* his sword. "Silbakor," he said suddenly, the question overwhelming him, ' 'was I wrong? Was I so wrong?''

The trilithon bloomed in front of him, and just at the proper moment, he sprang from the Dragon, falling freely as he crossed the outer peristyle. His timing was perfect, his form flawless, and, arms wide as if seeking the embrace of an old lover, he hit the top of the upright at something over seventy miles an hour.

Alouzon guessed what Dythragor was doing the moment she saw the Dragon, and she nearly lost her hold on the rope. For an instant, she thought of running, fleeing the Circle, putting as much distance between herself and Gryylth as possible. But that choice was gone, she realized. She could no more leave Gryylth than she could have left Wykla, or Marrget. She had other choices now, and other strengths.

Though her hands were slick with her own blood, her palms raw and burning, she sought a better hold, pulled, shouted encouragement to the others with what breath she had to spare. Eyes narrowed with her efforts, the trilithon blurring into a phantom doorway into night, she put her back and shoulders into her efforts, calling inwardly on the Grail for help.

For most of its approach, the Dragon was hidden behind the stones, and yet she knew precisely when it was going to arrive. She did not want to see, or to hear, but there was a sudden blast of rushing wings, a fleeting shock wave that penetrated the unyielding barriers surrounding the Circle, and, finally, a dull, m.u.f.fled thump.

The rope gave in her hands.

The trilithon was falling.

The others were already moving, Marrget and Santhe brutally shoving their warriors toward the peristyle as the upright ground slowly down. Alouzon had one glimpse of Mernyl before she was half dragged toward the rear of the monument: the sorcerer was standing straight, facing 374.

toward the Avenue, his staff pointing out along the axis of the Circle. Tireas was looking at the trilithon, helpless, his face white.

The warriors had moments to escape. Amid the rending of nearly sixty thousand pounds of rock, they reached the peristyle. No force field barred their way now, and they pa.s.sed through without slowing, fleeing out along the flat expanse of gra.s.s that surrounded the monument.

The first explosion threw them to the ground. Alouzon slid for several feet, propelled both by her own momentum and by the shock wave that ripped through the air. But that was only from the lintel striking the ground. Upright 57 turned slightly as it fell, reared as though in surprise, and crashed down directly on top of the Tree.

A moment of silence as though life and time had been suspended. A coffin lid might have been screwed down on the world. Then, with a crack that seemed to reach from the sky into the foundations of existence, Stone and Wood detonated.

Light burst as though a star had kindled within the peristyle. Blue white, white blue, it flared into incandescent life, expanded hugely, and enveloped the monument. Alouzon had put her head in her arms and clenched her eyes, but the brilliance dazzled her still. It mounted unbearably; continued to mount, and threatened to grow forever and ignite the universe with unquenchable flame.

One terrific blast, one flash that must, she thought, leave her blind, and then it was all over, dying away suddenly without even an echo, the light vanishing as though turned oif by a switch. Dazed, fighting for the breath that had been crushed out of her, she rolled over on her back. At first, she could hardly focus her seared eyes on the sky, but when she did, a scream forced its way up from her throat.

Calmly, without any visible cause, the moon was disintegrating. And the stars were fading, one by one.

As though it were bleeding into a vacuum, the air turned thin. Crawling to her hands and knees, Alouzon looked around frantically, saw, a short distance away, her companions lying sprawled on the ground, unmoving.

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Marrget was closest, her face serene and tranquil, delicate and lovely . . . shimmering, beginning to turn transparent.

"Marrget!" She scrambled toward her. But the transparency was even more p.r.o.nounced when she drew near and bent over the captain, afraid to touch, afraid to move.

. . . should your successor be found ...

The sky was an empty darkness steadily lightening toward white. The ground began to ripple. Marrget was fading, and Wykla, and Relys, and all the rest. Deprived of a Guardian, Gryylth was ending.

"Please . . ."she whispered. "Someone . . . ?"

Out beyond the broken and scattered remains of the Circle, a golden light flickered into being, grew. For a moment, she saw the Grail. It held within it everything that she wanted, everything that could rea.s.semble her life from the fragments into which it had fallen. It held life, and wholeness, and an end to yearnings and pain.

And, as she watched, it, too, shimmered, faded.

"No ... No, don't . . ."

The light went out. The sky was a blank piece of paper.

She was alone, bereft of friends, world, Grail, hope. The choice was inescapable. It was, in fact, no choice at all, and with the toppled monoliths of the Circle beginning themselves to waver, she sat back and screamed at what was left of the heavens: "All right, you b.a.s.t.a.r.ds! I'll take it!"

She clamped her eyes shut, fell on her side. "I'll do it. I'm crazy, but I'll do it. Just . . . bring it back. Put it back together again. I'll do it . . . please ..."

She did not know whom she so entreated. Perhaps it was the Grail, perhaps the nameless G.o.ds in whom Mer-nyl had put such trust. But the gra.s.s was soft and fragrant, and the breeze that sprang up was fresh and clear, smelling of wheat and forests and the sea. Suddenly and incongruously, she remembered the yellow flowers she had seen at the Circle: b.u.t.tercups and dandelions.

Alouzon sobbed, her hands clutched tight over her face. Marrget and Wykla found her that way, and together they 376.

held her, as they themselves had each been held, while the Dragonmaster dealt with her own racking, blinding grief.

Mernyl was dead. So was Tireas. The Tree and the Circle were both utterly destroyed.

In his last moments of life, the Gryylthan sorcerer had apparently done his best to focus the blast he knew was coming. Using the remaining trilithons as reflectors, he had sent much of the detonation out along the Avenue, directly into the ma.s.sed ranks of the Corrinian phalanxes that had been gathered together by Vorya's diversionary attack. A swath of earth fifty yards wide and nearly three quarters of a mile long had been fused into green gla.s.s, and only an occasional charred remnant of weaponry or armor was left from those who had encountered the terrible heat.

There were a few survivors. Much of Vorya's party had been clear of the blast, warned by Dythragor to flee the moment the Dragon began to descend. Twenty or thirty Corrinians had also escaped, but they were in no mood to continue a fight that had exterminated most of the young men of their land.

Age and loss of blood had brought Vorya down shortly after Dythragor had left, and Tarwach had perished in the blast. Cvinthil and Darham were the rulers now. The councilor of Gryylth had wept bitterly when informed that his king was no more, and Darham, summoned back from his journey to Benardis by the incredible light and explosion, had come to him bearing his own grief, for he had lost a brother.

Neither man was any more interested in continuing the war than were his soldiers and warriors, and after they had together raised a single mound over both their kings, they swore peace to one another, offering friendship and what aid was theirs to give.

Alouzon stood by, watching and listening as Cvinthil and Darham made their oaths and promises. The scribes would come later, and parchments would be written on, sealed, and signed with the monograms of the new kings, .

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but here in Gryylth, one's word alone was binding. The war that had raged since the beginning of the world was over.

Her arms around Marrget and Santhe, she wept and turned away. The war might have been over, but other matters were just beginning. Gryylth was her land now.

The captains led her to her blankets, and she slept for twelve hours, bathed wearily in a nearby stream, and slept again. When she awakened, the sun was bright on the tumbled and blackened remains of the Circle, and it sparkled on the river of gla.s.s that stretched out along the Avenue, but she still felt a numb weariness, and her hands still felt the tackiness of blood.

Clad in fresh garments, she sat in the shade of a makeshift canopy and watched the survivors of both armies making ready to leave for their homes. Marrget was beside her, once again wearing an oversized robe. The captain looked tired, and the lean hauntedness that had left her eyes in the thick of battle had returned.

"Dragonmaster," she said, "I do not know whether to thank you or not.''

"Marrget?"

Marrget looked away to the activity on the slope before them-men and women gathering and bundling belongings, calling horses, Corrinians and Gryylthans making tentative shows of camaraderie and trust-but did not seem to see any of it. "When we entered the Circle, I was looking for death. An honorable death, to be sure, but death nonetheless. I had hoped that the destruction of the Tree and the Circle would be so all-consuming that we would all die."

Alouzon hung her head. Were it not for her choice, Marrget would have gotten her wish.

"Instead," continued the captain, "I am alive, and . . . unchanged." She regarded the soft roundings of her body, sighed. "I cannot say that I am grateful. Forgive me."

"Your place is among the honored of Gryylth."

"I am a woman. My place, in the opinion of my peo- 378.

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pie, is over the cooking pots, and with the children," She grimaced, snorted defiantly.

"I take it you're not inclined to follow custom."

She lifted her head, and her voice was even. "We are the women of the First Wartroop. We have fought before. We will continue to fight.''

A deeper voice came to them. "Is there need for more fighting, my lady?" A tall Corrinian stood before them. "Forgive my interrupting. I am Karthin, from Rutupia ... on the eastern coast." He was a big man, his hair gold and his eyes clear and blue, but he blushed suddenly like a schoolboy.

"Marrget of Crownhark," said the captain. "And Alouzon Dragonmaster beside me." She peered at him, shading her eyes against the sun. "What do you wish, sir?"

"King Darham has ordered me to a.s.sist with the sharing of food between our two peoples. I will be accompanying King Cvinthil back to his seat."

' 'You do us honor, sir,'' said Marrget.

Karthin fidgeted, still blushing furiously. He held something behind his back.

"Is there something more?"

"Forgive me, lady," he said. "I fear you will think me ill-advised and hasty."

"Nay, sir, pray continue."