Dragon Sword Series - Dragon Sword Part 43

He would not meet her eyes. "When we fought one another, captain, I swore that I would rather be your friend than your foe. I find that my desire has been granted." He brought his hand from behind his back. In it was a small spray of b.u.t.tercups gleaned from the torn gra.s.s about the Circle. "I bring you these, lady, in token of our friendship. In token of peace."

Marrget stared. Then, slowly, almost without thinking, she reached up and accepted the flowers from him. "My thanks, Karthin. The ... the G.o.ds bless you."

"And you also, Marrget."

The silence grew, both captains speechless with embarra.s.sment. Marrget was white, Karthin red.

Alouzon broke in to save her friend. "What will you do in Kingsbury, Karthin?"

At her words, they both seemed relieved. Karthin pa.s.sed a hand over his face and took a deep breath. "As you know, much of Corrin's wheat was destroyed. Cvinthil informs me that Gryylth has some surplus that he is willing to give in aid. And there are methods of forcing an additional crop before the winter. I am ... I was a farmer before I found myself with a sword in my hand. I have some skill with planting. I can advise."

"The harvest will be ready soon," said Marrget. "But we have few hands available for a single gathering, much less two. I am afraid that the wheat will rot in the field for lack of men to cut it."

Karthin folded his arms thoughtfully, stroked his cheek. ' 'What of the women of Gryylth? "

She swallowed, paled again. "Women do not labor in the fields. By custom they are . . . confined to their homes."

He looked sympathetic, as though he understood her plight. "You spoke of fighting, captain. Perhaps you find your fight before you." Marrget looked grim, but he smiled. "Have no fear. You will not fight alone." He bowed and strode away. Alouzon noticed that he moved stiffly, as though he were in some pain.

Marrget looked down at the b.u.t.tercups in her hands, then at Karthin. "I remember him, Alouzon. I believe I broke his ribs in the battle at the Circle.''

"That's one h.e.l.l of a guy."

"Indeed." She stared after him. "We were so wrong about Corrin ..."

Wykla approached respectfully, glanced at Karthin, then bowed to her captain and the Dragonmaster. Her hair was loose, and it gave her a girlish air. "The king wishes to know when you will be ready to leave for Kingsbury," she said.

Alouzon could not meet their eyes. "I ... won't be returning to Kingsbury with you."

Wykla looked stricken.

"I've got to go home for a while," she said. "I'll be 380.

381.

back, though." She could not but return. Gryylth was hers. She might as well have tried to run from her own soul. "I'll help you. I mean it."

She felt empty and drained, as though her words had run out through a hole in her heart. There was little that she loved in Los Angeles, but it was familiar. She needed the familiar now-cars and college, telephones and cans of soda pop. She needed the sound of traffic cruising by outside her apartment, and she needed her own bed . . . to herself. Joe Epstein was out of a roommate, "My lady," said Wykla. "I ... would wish you to know ..." She blinked in the sunlight, her hair bright and unbound, looking for all the world like a coed from long ago. One who had not died. "... that I will continue. For your sake." She knelt, bent her head. "With your blessing."

Alouzon put her hands on Wykla's head. "Wykla, you have it. Do you think you can make it?"

The girl straightened, nodded slowly. "At first I thought I must die of shame ... or fear ... or ... I know not what. But then I fought at your side, and I decided that, if the Dragonmaster can be a woman, then so can I. I am afraid still, and shamed, but I will live. Someday, maybe, I will heal."

Marrget murmured beside her: "I understand." There were clear drops on the b.u.t.tercups that were not dew.

Healing. Alouzon wanted it also, but she could not be as confident as Wykla. Could her hands, so bloodstained, ever hold the utter purity of the Grail?

She felt hollow, but she could not allow herself to show it. She was a Dragonmaster. Trying to look encouraging, she took the hands of the other women. "Fight valiantly," she said. She could think of nothing else to say.

Silbakor bore her to the north, beating the air with heavy wing strokes. Below, the land unrolled as though it were a brightly painted canvas.

Preoccupied with her thoughts of Guardianship and her worries about the friends she had left behind, Alouzon did not notice for some time that there was still land beneath her. But eventually she looked down, frowned. "I thought you were taking me home, Silbakor."

"There is something I would that you see."

She shrugged. "You're driving."

The Dragon continued north in silence. Behind, and far away now, the peace was lengthening, hour by hour, and friendships and alliances were forming. Karthin's gift to Marrget was perhaps an emblem of the a.s.similation that would follow, a blending of two not dissimilar cultures. After years, or perhaps decades, a new society would evolve. The women of Corrin were not kept at home, and Alouzon hoped, for the sake of the First War-troop, that the custom would spread quickly to Gryylth.

Silbakor altered course slightly and flew toward the coast. Soon they pa.s.sed over a sh.o.r.e of blue breakers and white sand, and the Dragon swung north to follow it, its shadow flitting among the waves and foam.

"Silbakor, I ..." Alouzon rested her cheek against the adamantine scales. "I need a friend. You're all I've got now. What do I do? How do I keep going?"

"You are Alouzon Dragonmaster. You have both taken life and given it with honor. Live as befits your status."

"That doesn't help much, guy."

"I will help as I can."

There was an unfamiliar note in the Dragon's voice. Longing? Sorrow? Did it miss its former master? Did it grieve over the pa.s.sing of a familiar world?

Silbakor angled out over the water and began to follow a rocky promontory. "I will help as I can," it said again.

She suddenly realized that it was sorry for her.

"Look, Dragonmaster: out to the west."

She strained her eyes against the afternoon sun. The horizon was misty, blurred, but a definite form lay behind the clouds. Land.

"Behold," said the Dragon. "The world continues."

"I thought it ended." She knew -what had happened, but she hoped to hear otherwise.

"It did, once."

Alouzon sagged, wept.

"The Grail is there." The Dragon's voice was gentle.

382.

383.

"Yeah ... and what else?"

Silbakor said nothing.

"How bad are things there?" she said. "How many people am I going to have to kill there?''

"I am sorry. I wished to give you some hope."

She wiped her tears on her forearms, her eyes still on the distant land. Like Gryylth, it seemed fresh and new, with high mountains rising up behind a broad, fertile plane. Her land. "Maybe ..." The wind was a cool torrent that whipped her hair into a bronze cloud. "Maybe I did better than Braithwaite. I hope so." She leaned forward toward the Dragon's ear. "Did I ... did I despair that much?''

Silbakor was silent for a minute. It began to gain alt.i.tude, and the blue sky shaded into starless black. "At Kent State," it said softly. "Then and afterward. In Dallas. In your own apartment with each rising of the sun. The bullet that missed you wounded you nonetheless. You are Guardian of Gryylth, Suzanne h.e.l.ling, but your own land awaits you."

"And you, Silbakor?"

"As I said: I will help as I can."

The sky had faded, and void was about them. For a time, she felt the sensation of incredible velocity without apparent speed, and then all motion ceased. With a soft thump, the Dragon alighted on a floor that should not have existed, that stretched off into infinity on all sides.

"Dismount, Suzanne h.e.l.ling."

She found that her hands were once again plump and soft, her skin white, her hair long and dark. Clumsily, unused to the sluggish responses of her old body, she slid from the Dragon's back. As her feet touched down, she noticed that the floor had begun to take on the characteristics of inst.i.tutional linoleum.

Silbakor shrank, dwindled, and a nimbus formed about it that solidified into the appearance of gla.s.s. With a momentary flicker as of a projected image being brought into sharp focus, the paperweight returned, and Solomon's office reappeared.

Solomon was sitting in his chair before her, slumped to the side, dead. A soft smile was on his face, as though his last thoughts had been pleasant ones.

"In this world," said the Dragon from the paperweight on the desk, "Solomon Braithwaite has died of a myo-cardial infarction."

' 'What do I do now?''

"Notify the proper authorities. No time has pa.s.sed since you left."

Suzanne hesitated.

"Take the paperweight," said the Dragon.

Still, she did not move.

"Put the paperweight in your handbag."

At last, mechanically, she did so, and the rounded shape nestled against her hip. When she put her hand on the doork.n.o.b, sounds started up outside. Typewriters. Conversation. Dr. O'Hara was pa.s.sing by, talking to someone about fifteenth century warfare.

"Then we got into gunpowder," he was saying, "and it was a whole new ball game."

"Yeah," she muttered. M-ls and magic, and a Dragon, and the timeless sprawl of dead men. She gulped down some air and glanced once more at Solomon's body.

Gritting her teeth, she swung open the door and tried to look as though she had never seen death before. "Someone call the paramedics! Braithwaite's in trouble."

Faces turned toward her, conversations stopped in mid-sentence.

She faltered out the words. "I ... I think it's his heart."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR.

Gael Baudino grew up in Los Angeles and managed to escape with her life. She now lives in Denver . . . and likes it a lot.

She is a minister of Dianic Wicca; and in her alter ego of harper, she performs, teaches, and records in the Denver area. She occasionally drops from exhaustion, but otherwise can be found (grinning happily) dancing with the Maroon Bells Morris.

She lives with her lover, Mirya.