The Dragon Revenant (39 page)

“I wouldn’t call it power, exactly. I mean, they’re in no position to get laws passed in their favor or proper government contracts. Every now and then some archon does hire them, of course, but that’s kept from the general run of voters. And some influential men use them, too, just now and again, and they wouldn’t want them eliminated from the scheme of things. But what really protects the Hawks is simple terror. If you declare war on a guild full of assassins, you’re not likely to live to savor victory, are you?”

“Sooner or later, though, someone’s going to have to do it, or the islands won’t be civilized for long.”

“True enough. I thank all the gods that the guilds have never gotten a toehold in Orystinna.”

“How come they haven’t?”

“Our top men would rather die than be terrorized.” Elaeno smiled tightly. “And the little bastards know it.”

As a shipmaster Elaeno owned a large collection of maps of various islands as well, of course, as a good working knowledge of navigation. He was the one who realized how to turn Perryn’s strange talent to an even greater advantage. First he had Perryn stand in the innyard and point in the exact direction which led to Jill; then he took him out the north gate of the city, some two miles from the inn, and had him do it again. Then they retraced their steps and went out the east gate for one last try. Since Elaeno never bothered to explain, Perryn was bewildered, thinking that somehow he’d failed the dweomermaster the first two times, but later, after they rejoined Nevyn back at the inn, everything became clear. Elaeno spread a bark-paper map out on the table and used the dull point of a spoon and the edge of his dagger to score straight lines, each originating at a place where they’d taken a reading off his inner lodestone. Just like magic, to Perryn’s way of thinking, the lines all came together up in the central plateau of Surtinna.

“And Jill has to be about there.” Elaeno stabbed at the map with one blunt finger. “Pastedion’s the closest city to the point I’ve marked.”

“Well and good,” Nevyn said. “Now, tell me, Perryn. Could you tell if Jill was closer or farther away today than she was when we first landed?”

“Er, well, ah, I’d say she hasn’t moved at all.”

“Indeed? That’s interesting. I hope it means they’re in a safe place, and not that they’re being held prisoner.”

“Oh come now, don’t be morbid,” Elaeno broke in. “You’d know if the lass were in some foul danger.”

“No doubt I would, or at least, I’d hope I would. At any rate, we’ll be leaving tonight. What do you think, Elaeno? Sail down to Indila, and then take to the land from there?”

Perryn forced himself to stifle a groan.

“How many filthy horses did the archon give you? Twelve and then the pack mules?” Elaeno considered, rubbing his chin. “Well, I guess we can fit some into the hold and then tie the rest up on deck—if your men stay there with’em. My ship’s a merchanter, not some stinking cattle barge.”

“Er, ah, well, um, my lord? Couldn’t we just ride and spare the captain’s boat?”

“You’re being a bit obvious, Perryn,” Nevyn said. “If we sail to Indila we can save a night—at least—and we’ve got to make all possible speed. I’m afraid we’ll be taking to the sea again, but it won’t be for long this time.”

As he began packing up Nevyn’s gear, Perryn was thinking that making restitution was turning out to be a lot more painful than he’d anticipated back in his nice safe prison in Eldidd. For the first time it also occurred to him to wonder what Jill was going to say or do to him when they met again. He began shaking so badly in a tangle of terror and desire that he had to sit down for a moment and gulp for breath.

The high priest’s prediction that the archon of Pastedion would take a few days to settle Rhodry’s case turned out to be overly optimistic. For more than a few Jill and the others had stayed in the temple compound—languished there, or so she preferred to think of it—while Salamander and Brother Merrano trotted back and forth between the temple and the archon’s palace to bribe various civil servants, arrange appointments, keep appointments, spread more bribes, and arrange still another round of meetings with this official or that. In between each stage of this complex operation, they waited for messages to come back saying that so-and-so had accepted their humble gift or such-and-such a scribe might possibly be in his office at a certain time. The one good thing about all these delays, to Jill’s way of thinking anyway, was that she had plenty of time to work on her dweomer-practices. Finally, on the afternoon when Nevyn was leaving Surat for Indila, Salamander came dragging into the guesthouse with one hand pressed dramatically to his forehead.

“The Wondrous Witch Wizard of the Far Far North has a headache fit for the biggest demon in the deepest hell,” he announced. “Please, oh beauteous barbarian handmaiden, pour me some wine from that flagon, will you?”

Salamander flopped onto his back on a cot and groaned until she did just that, but he did manage to sit up to take the wine cup. Although both Gwin and Rhodry looked annoyed at the display, Jill could recognize Salamander’s symptoms.

“What’s wrong?” she snapped.

“Well, I’m not sure if anything is wrong, actually. It’s merely tedious beyond belief.” He paused to gulp half the wine straight off. “We do finally have an advocate, and Brother Merrano assures me that he’s the best there is.”

“A what?” Rhodry said.

“A legal advocate. Someone who knows the laws and can speak for you in the archon’s malover.”

“Why can’t I speak for myself? Or is it because I’m still a slave?”

“No one speaks for themselves in the malovers here, oh brother of mine.”

“Why not?”

“Because they don’t. It’s the custom. You hire this man who’s made a profession out of advocating, the way you’d take cloth to the dyers’ guild if you wanted to change its color. Advocates know all the tricks of the trade when it comes to arguing cases and convincing people to vote their way. If we can get Baruma arrested, he’ll have an advocate, too. You see, although the archon delivers the final judgment on a case, he doesn’t actually try it. They pick a hundred free citizens by lot, and they sit on something called a jury and decide the merits of the case by a vote after everyone’s finished talking.”

“What?” Rhodry was utterly outraged. “I’ve never heard of anything so stupid and dishonorable in my life! Why should I accept the judgment of a lot of common-born dolts as law?”

“Because you don’t have any choice, you lackwit!” Salamander finished the rest of the wine and held out his cup. “Please, beauteous handmaid, all the way to the brim. Somehow I knew this was going to be difficult.”

“Well, if I don’t have any choice, I don’t,” Rhodry went on. “But I don’t have to like it.”

“Just so. I only ask one thing: that you keep your noble-born outrage clasped light in your secret heart when you talk to the advocate. He’s coming here after dinner to hear our story, which means that you and I had best closet ourselves and rehearse a convincing one. Remember, never ever men-don one word about dark dweomer and Hawks and all the rest of it. Such unpleasant verities are most unwelcome visitors to the ears of our esteemed islanders.”

When the advocate arrived, Jill decided against sitting in on the conference, but rather than stay in the guesthouse and be alone with Gwin, she took a stroll round the temple grounds. She had just reached the flower garden by the front gates when her gray gnome appeared, waving its arms in excitement and jigging up and down.

“Has somewhat happened?”

It nodded a yes and pointed to the south and west.

“I don’t understand.”

Clutching its head it stamped in annoyance. When Jill knelt down on the cobbles, it trotted a few paces away, then slowly and deliberately walked toward her while it pointed to the west.

“Is someone coming here from downriver?” It nodded yes in evident relief, then twisted up its face as it tried to think.

“Are the bad men coming?”

Apparently not, and it went on thinking.

“Friends, then?”

This time she got another yes. Since Jill couldn’t imagine one person in all the islands who would qualify as a friend, she was as puzzled as it seemed to be.

“Here,” she said at last. “Can you act out this person’s name somehow?”

It shook its head in a mournful no.

“That’s the trouble, is it? They don’t have an easy name like Blaen or Rhodry that you can put a simple meaning to.”

Yes, most definitely, to judge by the way it nodded.

“Is this a Bardek man or woman?”

It wasn’t.

“Someone from Deverry?”

Although the gnome nodded a yes, she could barely believe it.

“How could they get here in the winter? Why, no one could—oh, of course! Do you mean Nevyn’s coming?”

The gnome jumped up and down and clapped its hands together while it smiled and nodded. Jill started to cry, a helpless sob of utter relief, while the little creature clambered into her lap and patted her cheek to comfort her.

Salamander’s reaction was just as strong, when, after the advocate had left, he returned to the guesthouse and she told him the news. As he sat there sniffling, she realized for the first time just how frightened he’d been, just how hard he’d worked to keep up his mask of a chattering fool. Finally he wiped his eyes and blew his nose on a silk handkerchief and arranged one of his typical vacuous smiles.

“Well and good, then, my most magical magpie. It seems we may all live to vex the gods a little longer, then. Did the gnome say how far away the old man is?”

“Things like distance don’t mean anything to the Wildfolk.”

“True enough. Let us hope he’s close at hand, because I doubt if it’s safe to scry him out. We can wait here in relative safety and let him find us, as I’m sure he will, hopefully sooner than later, and most utterly hopefully, sooner rather than way too late. Oh most rapturous joy! It seems I was correct to work my latest most clever and recondite ruse.”

Jill groaned aloud.

“Oh by the Lord of Hell! What have you done now?”

“Naught new. I mean hiring the advocate and insisting on laying formal charges against Baruma. We had to have a reason to stay here in the safety of temple sanctuary for as long as we possibly could. If you want to waste a great deal of other people’s time, Jill my turtledove, there’s no better way than starting a lawsuit.”

If the archon’s men had only known it, the man they wanted to present with a writ of appearance
sub poena
was only ten miles from Pastedion, even though Baruma wasn’t exactly in full possession of himself in the legal sense. Up in the hills to the east of town, the Hawkmaster and his two journeymen had taken shelter from the continual rains in a public caravansary provided by the archons of Pastedion. Since it often rained in the summer up in the central plateau, this particular public rest area also sported a shelter that was basically a very long roof, supported by stone pillars instead of walls, over a slate floor that was a little higher in the middle than at the sides so that any rainwater that blew in would run right out again. By sticking to this high ground they could stay reasonably dry. Although the Hawks were so used to physical hardship that this shelter was a luxury to them, Baruma was miserable, cramped in every muscle and exhausted. By then, however, his mind was beginning to fight back against being ensorceled.

Although he still had no will of his own in any true sense, he did possess a kernel of hatred cached in a secret corner of his mind. His sheer physical discomfort fed that hatred and kept it alive. His terror of the Hawkmaster kept it hidden. Often the master sent him out on the etheric to spy, or rather, to soar above Pastedion and the warded temple to look for traces of the barbarian party. Every now and then Baruma saw the silver flaming aura of the elven sorcerer hurrying through the streets in the company of one or two normal human ovoids, but he never found Rhodry, the woman, or Gwin. The Hawkmaster was particularly worried about Gwin—not out of some fine concern for his man, of course, but from a simple fear that Gwin would betray the guild by babbling all its secrets under torture. In the secret place of his hatred Baruma hoped that Gwin would do just that.

On a night when the waning moon rose only a few hours before the dawn, the Hawkmaster sent Baruma out farther than usual, flying round and round in an ever-widening spiral with Pastedion at its center. Here in this sparsely populated country he saw little but the wild hills, rolling in the rusty-reddish glow of the burgeoning grass up to the mountain peaks, silver-blue and grim under their eternal snow. He felt the master’s will speaking in his mind, then, urging him south along the river. At first Baruma whimpered and fought. Gushing up from the water rose a silver veil of elemental force, a surging and turbulent counterpart to the flood runoff swelling the physical river below, and a real danger to a weak soul like him, flying on someone else’s will rather than his own. But the Hawkmaster’s whisper promised torments, and in the end, Baruma flew south.

Whenever he could, he pulled away from the threatening veil with its tendrils of mist that seemed to reach out deliberately to snare and drag him down to his death. He was so preoccupied with the river, in fact, that it was some time before he realized that he had a shadowy companion. Out of the corner of his eye, just behind him and on his left, he could see a dark misty shape following along. Whenever he turned his head for a better look, the shape dodged away and disappeared. His fear began to swell like the water veil, and he heard his own voice babbling to the master.

“You’d better come back, then.” The master’s hated voice had never sounded so welcome.

Baruma swooped away from the river and began to circle back, only to come face to face with a dark tower of a figure: a sweep of black robes, marked with glowing red sigils and belted with a string of severed heads, and a face barely visible in a heavy hood. When he yelped, the figure raised a shadowy hand and shoved back the illusionary hood to reveal the grim eyes of the Old One.

“So, I’ve found my lost little sparrow, have I?”

Baruma could only babble out a confused welter of thoughts. He could hear the Hawkmaster’s voice, edged with fear, demanding to know what he was seeing, but the voice seemed very far away. When the Old One’s simulacrum raised both hands, a line of grayish light appeared, stretched between them. As he worked his hands back and forth, the line doubled, then snaked out like a thrown rope to circle them both. Once it was in position, it swelled, shot up and down, and turned into a wall of dirty-colored light, glare-shot and feverish, ringing them round.