Dragon Weather (30 page)

He stared at the southern horizon, thinking.

Hathet had said that Arithei was a land of magicians, that the people there
had
to use magic simply to survive in that land.

Magic was precious and rare in the Lands of Man, as Arlian had overheard Sandal say. If he wanted to trade his swords and daggers for something that would be valuable back in Manfort, he could scarcely do better than to go to Arithei and buy magic with them.

He didn't know enough about magic to guess what form that magic might take, but there would be time for that in Arithei—if he got there.

Magic would bring him wealth and power back in Manfort. It would help even the balance between Lord Dragon and himself. It might even provide a means to strike at the dragons themselves; after all, while the dragons had kept the wild southern magic out of the Lands of Man, the wild southern magic seemed to have kept the dragons out of Arithei, as well.

And Hathet—if he had told the truth, then his family was somewhere in Arithei, unaware of what had befallen him.

Arlian still had the bag of amethysts—one hundred and sixty-eight of them. If Hathet had told the truth, and they had some protective magic, those might be worth more in Arithei than the swords were!

Arlian had doubted that Arithei existed; it did. He had doubted that there was any Aritheian ambassador to the Lands of Man, but Lady Thassa and Lord Drens had met one. He had doubted that the southern lands were as magical as Hathet said, but he could see the magic in the southern skies for himself. Perhaps
everything
Hathet had said was true, no matter how absurd it had sounded.

Arlian owed that old man a debt, and he wanted to pay it. Here was an opportunity to do that. If Hathet had told the truth about his origins, then Arlian could go to Arithei and tell Hathet's family what had become of him, and give them the amethysts. The stones were theirs, by right, as Hathet's own blood, and not his.

Lady Thassa was heading in the right direction, but would not cross the Dreaming Mountains. Arlian could not stand the idea of coming so very close, and then turning back. He owed it to Hathet at least to
try
to reach Arithei.

The road had been closed for years, too dangerous for passage—everyone agreed on that. But had they
tried
it?

Arlian resolved to head for Arithei—on his own, if he had to. Aside from his debt to Hathet, he wanted to sell his weapons where they would not fall into bandits' hands.

“Only a madman would attempt it without a guide and magicians and guards,” Lady Thassa told him when he asked her to reconsider.

“I'm going, whether with you or alone,” Arlian said.

She shrugged. “Then you're mad, and I'll have no part of it. But you're free to do as you choose.”

When she had gone Arlian sat thoughtfully for some time, considering the situation.

Thassa wouldn't attempt the Dreaming Mountains without a full complement of guards, but Arlian thought he would do better traveling alone; he might be able to hide from the worst dangers, and what good would guards be against magic?

He talked to Quickhand about his plans, as the two of them inspected his wagon for any damage that might need attention.

The guardsman looked troubled. “I don't want to go to Arithei,” he said. “I've no business there.”

“I'm not asking you to accompany me if you don't want to,” Arlian said. “I can drive and tend oxen well enough now.”

“The masters pay me to guard the caravan, my lord; if you leave the caravan, you leave me.”

“Fair enough,” Arlian said.

Quickhand hesitated, then said, “I think you're making a mistake, Lord Ari.”

“I'm sure you do,” Arlian said. “And maybe I am—but I have business in Arithei.” Hathet had made his early years in the mines bearable, had taught him so much—the best he could do toward repaying the old man was to go to Arithei.

And the possibility that he might turn his wagonload of weapons into a fortune did nothing to discourage him.

“I wish you'd talk to Black before you go.”

“He's ill,” Arlian said. “I won't trouble him.”

More accurately, he feared that if anyone could talk him out of going, it would be Black, and he didn't want to risk it. Instead he devoted himself to preparing for the journey.

He had only three oxen left to draw his wagon, which left too small a margin of error; he hastily used a part of his share from the six dead merchants to buy a fourth.

The following day at dawn, as the three masters sorted out the wagons, Arlian set his four oxen, new and old together, on the road south. He rode alone; Quickhand was traveling with Lord Sandal.

The journey was uneventful at first, but Arlian knew, four days later, that he had crossed the border and left the Lands of Man behind; the wind, which had been blowing hard from the west for more than a day, no longer howled but laughed. The sky above was streaked with orange even at midday. He glimpsed things from the corner of his eye, but when he turned to look at them they were gone.

It was strange and unsettling, but he saw no real danger in any of it, and pressed on.

The worst part, at that point, was the tedium of traveling alone. The oxen moved so slowly that the scenery did not change quickly enough to be interesting, and he had no one to speak to. He met travelers on the road occasionally, and for the first few days he often passed farms and villages, but he made camp alone each night, sleeping in the wagon, rather than finding lodging; he did not trust these people.

When he did speak to someone—at wells or village markets, when he stopped for provisions—the conversations were hardly satisfying; the southerners spoke with strange accents that made it hard to follow their words, and seemed wary of him.

That was hardly surprising; they were brown-skinned and dressed in loose multicolored robes, while his skin, even after his travels, remained relatively pale, and he wore a white shirt, tight blue breeches, and a broad-brimmed black hat.

They gave him directions when asked, though, and assured him that he was still on the right road. Since he had seen no other routes he had been fairly sure of this, but confirmation was welcome.

The road was overgrown in places, clearly used little, if at all, in recent years, but he was able to follow it well enough.

A week after he crossed the border, one foggy evening when he was onto the lower slopes of the central ridge of the Dreaming Mountains and had not seen another human face for two days, the first attack came. He was making camp for the night when something black and shapeless leaped at him out of the darkness.

He saw it coming from the corner of his eye, and dodged, diving to one side. He drew his sword as it wheeled and came at him again; he never saw it clearly in the mist and gathering gloom, but had a vague impression of great smothering arms, gleaming fangs, and a black, furry chest. He thrust, plunging his blade into it.

It burst and melted away at the touch of steel, leaving nothing but a wet smell and a damp smear on the ground.

Arlian stared into the night, astonished at the ease with which he had defeated the thing.

“That can't be the sort of monster that everyone's scared of,” he said aloud.

The wind laughed derisively overhead, and he looked around uncomfortably. The monster had been absurdly easy to destroy—
if
it was really destroyed—but he had been awake, with his sword on his belt. What if another attacked while he slept? He had no one to stand guard; the best he could hope for would be that the oxen would be disturbed and awaken him with their bellowing.

He didn't have much choice at this point, though.

He slept in the wagon with his sword by his hand, and was awakened from uneasy dreams once that night—not by the oxen, but by a slithering sound close by. He slashed at it, but didn't hit anything so far as he could tell.

For the rest of his journey he never had a good night's sleep. The nightmares he had anticipated never came; his dreams were never worse than vaguely disturbing. Strange sounds and sudden attacks became commonplace, though, and not all monsters were as readily defeated as that first one. Cold steel did indeed repel some, or destroy them by its mere touch, but others had to be fought and butchered as if they were common beasts, rather than magical horrors.

That they
were
magical horrors Arlian had little doubt, given that many changed shape or vanished when slain. The worst in that regard was the poisonous spider-creature that became a girl of twelve or thirteen when he beheaded it; Arlian was ill after that, and wept intermittently for the next few days whenever her dead face returned to his thoughts.

The hardest to kill were the venomous black rat-things, simply because of their size and numbers; they left only glowing bones that dissolved when the sun rose.

He considered turning back—but he had already come so far! He decided to keep going.

The condition of the road continued to deteriorate; now and then he had to stop and hack down a sapling that had sprung up between the two faint ruts, and the oxen grew accustomed to simply trampling anything smaller.

On the eighteenth night after leaving Sweetwater something got one of the oxen. Arlian never saw it, nor heard it, nor knew what it was, but when he arose the next morning he found nothing but the ox's empty skin wrapped around dry bones; the flesh and blood had been sucked out through half a dozen gashes.

The three remaining oxen were terrified but unharmed, and Arlian pressed on; he was now descending the southern slopes of the Dreaming Mountains, far past the point where turning back would make any sense.

That was the last serious threat, however; the following two nights were troubled only by sounds, fleeting apparitions, and something large that moved invisibly but audibly through his camp, extinguishing the fire and tarnishing the brass wagon fittings as it passed. The quality of the road seemed to be improving again, as well—he no longer had occasion to stop and poke through the underbrush to find the faded traces when the way was unclear, but could simply follow the obvious path.

Two days later his wagon rolled through black iron gates into the first Aritheian village, where the natives greeted his arrival with astonishment and delight. Children ran shrieking and pointing alongside; adults gaped openly as he passed.

He had developed a very definite set of priorities in his travels; he ignored the attention until he had stopped at the trough in the village square and watered his surviving oxen. The villagers kept a respectful distance as they stood and stared at him, whispering to one another.

Once the oxen were drinking, Arlian turned to look at his new hosts.

They were dressed strangely, all of them, men, women, and children in short, loose gowns dyed in bright colors—not the flowing pale robes of the Borderlands, but abbreviated garments in much more intense hues. Their legs were bare, their feet sandalled. He realized that his white blouse, blue breeches, and broad-brimmed black hat must look as peculiar to them as their garb did to him; no wonder they stared! Had someone walked into Obsidian robed in scarlet, yellow, and parrot green when he was a boy, he would have stared just as rudely—and in fact, except for staring, these people were being quite polite. No one had shouted at him or tried to touch him, his wagon, or his oxen.

That was promising.

He could not make out a word anyone said, however, which was not quite so encouraging. “Excuse me,” he called. “Does anyone speak my language?”

No one replied. A few of the villagers exchanged unintelligible words among themselves; two or three men slipped away, presumably tiring of the spectacle.

He shrugged, and returned to tending his oxen.

Half an hour later the interpreter arrived.

25

Arithei

Meriei, the interpreter, was a young man—older than Arlian himself, by at least a year or two, but far less sure of himself. Although he appeared to speak Arlian's native tongue fluently it took some time before Arlian was able to make his intentions clear.

“I have come to Arithei to find the family of a man named Hathet,” Arlian repeated, as the two of them stood by the trough where Arlian's oxen were placidly drinking.

“I know of no one named Hathet in the House of Slihar,” the interpreter said.

That was an improvement over his first two replies, but still not very satisfactory. Did that mean that Hathet had been lying after all, and had not come from Arithei? Or did it mean that this interpreter was too young to remember the old man? Or did it merely mean that there was still some sort of confusion about what Arlian wanted?

Arlian sighed and looked around at the crowd surrounding them, wishing somebody else here could speak Man's Tongue. Evidently no one else did, and he had to make do with what he had. “What is the House of Slihar?” he asked. “Is that the name of this town?”

“No, no,” the interpreter said. “This town is Ilusali. Slihar is a
House.
A … a family of families.”

“And there are other Houses?”

“Yes, yes. Eleven Houses. Slihar and ten more.” The interpreter tapped his orange-robed chest. “I am Meriei, of the House of Slihar.”

“Then perhaps Hathet belonged to one of the other Houses,” Arlian suggested. “Or to no House at all—does everyone belong to a House?”

“Everyone belongs to a House,” the interpreter agreed. “It is the House of Slihar that traded with the lands beyond the mountains. This is why I know your tongue.”

“And no other House has ever sent anyone to Manfort?”

Meriei was clearly struggling with the unfamiliar language—he knew it, but Arlian suspected he had had little use for it until now. “It is the House of Slihar that traded with the lands beyond the mountains,” the interpreter repeated.

“Hathet was not a trader,” Arlian said.