Authors: S. Andrew Swann

Dragons & Dwarves (15 page)

BOOK: Dragons & Dwarves

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Looking at me through the glass was the man I was waiting for. I lowered the window.

“Are you Kline Maxwell?” he asked me.

“That’s me,” I said with a smile.

The man gave me a sour expression. His hair was white, his face clean-shaven. Narrow glasses with gold rims perched on a beak of a nose. He wore a charcoal-gray suit that could have been a twin to the one he’d worn yesterday. He still wore a black armband. “I do not appreciate blackmail,” said the late dragon Aloeus’ personal lawyer.

I couldn’t help smiling, because what kept going through my mind was that kid Sam Barlogh saying,
“You used to be big, didn’t you?”

I let myself out of the car and looked at my quarry. His name was Jefferson Friday, and he had been a partner in one of the largest law firms in the city—one that, coincidentally, had Forest Hills Enterprises as a major client. Shortly after the Portal opened, he went into private practice which, some tentative research showed, had not hurt his standard of living despite his only having the single client. Apparently, Aloeus, Inc., paid well.

“Mr. Friday, this is not blackmail. Blackmail involves a
quid pro quo.
I was just letting you know information that I’ve gathered, and I’m providing you the opportunity to comment.”

“You can’t print things like . . .”

“Like what?” I prompted.

He shook his head. “Come on,” he waved me forward, “You’ll have your comment.”

Having Friday lead me into Aloeus’ lair within the Cleveland Trust Building was no small achievement. While dragons were notoriously insular, their lawyers brought client confidentiality to a whole new level of pathology. It had taken me a few hours on the phone, sifting through what I could find of Aloeus’ employees, before I even found out who Friday
was
. There had been a dozen lawyers on Aloeus, Inc.’s payroll—but there was only one personal counsel to the dragon-in-chief.

And, while Friday could quite readily stonewall the likes of Sam Barlogh and his fellows, Sam Barlogh and his fellows weren’t following quite the same paths I was. A catalog of property damage might make a splashy feature, and details of the corpse’s explosive demise might make titillating copy, but those angles weren’t going to raise Friday’s eyebrows a millimeter or encourage him to give anything but a boilerplate comment on the death of a client. However, a tastefully composed e-mail hinting at Aloeus’ powerful connections to the current administration and massive land deals with Forest Hills Enterprises, and suddenly Jefferson Friday, Esq., was a lot more interested in talking.

We stood on one of the massive stone steps of the Cleveland Trust Building, and Friday faced the elaborate scrollwork on the heavy metal door. He made a few passes with his hand and muttered something under his breath. The metal doors silently opened, revealing a marble stairway into the soft-lit inner sanctum.

He led me through a room that was all pillars, wood, and marble. The only furniture was that of a permanent nature, like the long marble partition that housed the darkened tellers’ windows.

The spaces were still and silent, tomblike. The tinted windows allowed little daylight to break the gloom, and only one out of three light fixtures were in use.

Scattered over the marble floor, leading back into the darkened areas, were Persian rugs and embroidered cushions the size of my couch. There was room down here for a dragon, but I didn’t see how it could enter or leave.

“Did Aloeus live here?” I asked.

“This was his home.”

“How did he get into the building?”

He looked over his shoulder as he took me back to a curving staircase. “We removed a wall opposite East Ninth and Euclid.” He looked back up the staircase.

I looked around and tried to see the exit as we ascended. I couldn’t find it. Warded and camouflaged, most probably. Wouldn’t want just any riffraff walking into your lair.

On the second floor, we passed through a massive mahogany door into an office that overlooked the intersection of Euclid and East Ninth. He seated himself behind an acre of desk that reflected the white monolith of National City back at me in shades of rose.

There wasn’t a chair for visitors, and I doubted he was the type to open up to someone casually sitting on his desk, so I leaned against the doorframe.

“So,” I asked as I took out my notebook, “for the record?”

He shook his head. “You have excessive temerity, Mr. Maxwell.”

“I’m a journalist, Mr. Friday. My job is to report the facts.”

“However distorted those facts are?”

“Mr. Friday, a distorted fact is an oxymoron.”

“And what you e-mailed me were
facts?
”

“You say they aren’t?” I smiled. “Can you elaborate on where, exactly, I am mistaken?”

“You are ready to print all about his involvement in mundane affairs. Human affairs. Nothing could be further from what he stood for.”

“From my point of view, Aloeus was a major player in city politics. There’s legislation that wouldn’t have existed if not for him.”

“That is my point. You do not understand. No one would.”

I nodded. “That’s why we’re here, for you to explain it all.”

Friday explained it for me, in depth, as if arguing his point to a judge. He began with the standard, though detailed, explanation of what was on the other side of the Portal.

On the other side was an empire whose name roughly transliterated as Ragnan. Ragnan was a massive state that enveloped that world’s main continent the way the Roman Empire had once enveloped Europe. Ragnan was a human state, upstart by immortal standards. But upstart or not, it had about five thousand years to establish itself as the ultimate temporal power in that world.

Ultimate control of the empire rested in the Thesarch, a human emperor who not only held ultimate political and spiritual authority, but—due to the nature of magic’s attraction to ritual and meaning—held massive power inherent in the office.

I knew the story. The mention of divine kings made most people think of medieval Europe. Close enough for people whose only dealings with the place was three steps removed via the side effects of the Portal. However, the reality wasn’t something out of the knights of the round table. The Thesarch was a true god-king, a cross between a pharaoh and the pope.

Of course, the Thesarch wasn’t universally loved. Ragnan’s history was drenched with the blood of countless wars, most against nonhumans. At the time the Portal opened, Ragnan was ruled by a Thesarch more despotic than most—the Thesarch Valdis.

Valdis had reigned for a century before the Portal opened. He exhibited all the characteristics of a good despot: a conviction in his own infallibility; an unquenchable thirst for control; and a ruthless paranoia. Friday related a story that was worthy of an Old Testament rewritten by Josef Stalin: in the third decade of Valdis’ reign, he issued an order for the Lords in each district to monitor the population for criticism of the Thesarch. The speakers of such disloyal thoughts were to have their property seized and ceded to the empire. One Lord Mayor refused to obey the order as being too much of a burden on the population. When Valdis learned of this, he called down a rain of fire that reduced the city and everyone in it to ashes—except for the Lord Mayor, whom Valdis left as a crippled beggar just so he’d know what had happened.

During Valdis’ reign, the population of dragons in the world had been halved, a nation of elves had ceased to exist, and five of Ragnan’s own cities were reduced to ash.

I nodded a lot, and took a few notes, but so far a lot of this I could have been obtained from the
Encyclopedia Britannica
. Then Friday mentioned Aloeus, and my attention sharpened.

The Portal formed in a place fortunately remote from the forces of Ragnan and Valdis. And while the great despot knew of the disturbance, he did not initially know its nature. Elvish fugitives were the first to scramble through it, a few days ahead of Valdis’ mages, and few weeks ahead of his ground forces.

Aloeus saw the Portal as more than escape for a few. He saw it as the prospect of a different world, without Valdis’ totalitarianism. In the middle of the night, the day after I had seen the Portal open, Aloeus flew through into our world.

At this point, the Portal was still guarded by a half dozen cops in an empty floodlit stadium. The only things to have come through had, so far, been alien-looking humanoids who spoke no English. Everyone was preoccupied with the electronic chaos the Portal’s opening had caused. The Portal itself wasn’t seen as a direct threat.

The sight of Aloeus unfolding his wings and rising from the top of the Portal changed that. Fifteen cops saw him unfold out of the top of the spherical Portal, a hundred feet from skull to tail, the shadow of his wings blacking out half the field.

The cops, being cops, started shooting, which did very little. Killing a dragon with a handgun is kind of like trying to kill a bull elephant with a drinking straw—it might be theoretically possible, but would require twenty years of anatomy study and complete surprise on the part of the victim.

Aloeus let out a belch of fire that outshone the floodlights just to get the point across, before he flew off into the night.

His point being that the Portal was dangerous. His goal was to throw a scare into the folks on this side of the Portal, so they wouldn’t be caught completely off guard if Valdis tried to invade. It achieved the desired effect. Within twenty hours, the National Guard was ringing the stadium.

Aloeus lived here, concealed by his own magical abilities, for nearly two months before he absorbed enough of the language to communicate with the men here. He picked his first contacts very carefully, not people in the city administration, but powerful men who supported the administration. Friday didn’t name Baldassare, but we both knew who he was referring to.

Friday talked about Aloeus’ career as one of a diplomat, not a politician. He was very clear on that point. Aloeus had always kept a distance from human politics.

“His interest was always Ragnan, and the citizens from there.” His eyes were very bright and distant behind his glasses, through his expression never changed. “Do you understand? His goal was to lead his people to a new homeland, free from oppression.”

Uh-huh, Dragon as Moses.
“From what I know about local history, Valdis stopped being a problem over there about four months after the portal opened.”

The bright light in his eyes didn’t dim. I was almost ready for him to start chanting or speaking in tongues. “A changing of the guard, no more.”

I nodded. “More than that, I think. Where Valdis was blockading the Portal on his end, his successor has been much more willing to deal with us.”

“With Rayburn, you mean. With the human government. Do you think the purges have stopped there, or that the expansion of the empire has ceased? No. These people need an advocate, every nonhuman citizen of that world and this.
That
was Aloeus’ mission. That was why he was so . . .
political.
” In Friday’s mouth the word was a curse.

Now he’s Martin Luther King.

“Still, with Valdis deposed, there’s free traffic across the Portal. That is an improvement.”

Friday looked at me, and I had a gut feeling that there was something he was holding back.

“Did Aloeus have anything to do with the coup in Ragnan?”

“He never involved himself directly in any of Ragnan’s affairs after he left the Portal.”

That was a nondenial. “What about indirectly?”

“Indirectly?” Friday folded his hands in front of him and frowned. “Valdis’ power was largely based on the perception of his omnipotence. When the Portal opened, he was fatally weakened.”

“So, according to you, Aloeus’ public life was an exercise in altruism?”

Friday nodded.

“What about the purchase of land in Mexico? What motivated Aloeus to do that?”

He leaned back in his chair and turned around to face the window. “He did not do that. Aloeus, Inc., did that.”

“That’s sidestepping. Outside the state of Ohio they’re effectively the same thing.”

“No, sir,” Friday said. “One is dead.”

“I apologize.”

He shook his head. “The corporation is large, and Aloeus did not oversee everything personally. It was an investment opportunity one of our people took advantage of, that’s all.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose and said, “Please go now. If you need more questions answered, e-mail my office.”

“I’ll do that,” I smiled and flipped the notebook shut. “I can let myself out.”

Friday nodded, still facing away from me.

I started to leave, but the pressure of too many “Colombo” reruns got to me. “Pardon me, just one more thing—”

Friday turned toward me. “What?”

“You know a person by the name of Faust?”

BOOK: Dragons & Dwarves

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