The Dragons of Argonath (30 page)

Sooner rather than later, Relkin found himself sitting in that musty room with Selera and Bell. Selera began the questioning and focused, as so often before, on the processes of thought that he'd gone through during the critical moments in the village of Quosh. He tried to explain. He knew deep down that what they were trying to do was very important.

"It was a long fight, a really desperate thing. I don't know if you've ever been in one, but fights are really tiring. And if they go on for more than a few minutes you get worn out, and you have a hard time thinking clearly, I never would have tried to send any thoughts to the camp at Cross Treys. I'm not a wizard, and I don't want to be one. I don't know how I did the things that happened in Mirchaz. In fact, most of the time I don't want to know. I'm afraid of being a freak, afraid I'll go mad. I don't like to even think about all this."

"But you must, Relkin. We must learn all we can from you. This may be a most critical juncture in history."

He sighed. "Oh, well, if you put it like that." The witches were very good at making you feel guilty if you weren't giving your absolute all for the cause.

So the questions went on, over and over the same ground, turning it for minute details of memory as Relkin strove to reconstruct the scene during those critical hours in the smoke and terror of the street in Quosh. Time passed, but Relkin could detect little progress.

He didn't notice the door open, but suddenly the Lady Lessis was there in the room. Bell and Selera had fallen silent. They bowed in their seats to the Grey Lady, and she nodded back to them.

"I thought it might be helpful if I joined you for these discussions. I was at Quosh, and I know our friend here pretty well."

Relkin felt his spirits lift a little. Lessis was a dangerous person to know, but in these circumstances, she offered insight and enormous knowledge. If anyone could help him, it would be her.

"Welcome, Lady. We are most honored." Selera actually got up and brought a chair out for Lessis, who sat in the corner, away from the table, where she could watch both the witches and the dragonboy.

"You have been going over the events at Quosh, I take it."

"Yes, Lady," said Bell. "The moment when he produced the magical effect in Cross Treys."

"And he has little to tell, I'm sure."

"Correct, Lady."

Relkin spoke up. "I was telling them earlier that you get tired pretty quick when you're in a real fight. And that fight was a long one, or rather it was a long series of fights—I'm sure you remember."

"I do," she nodded. It had been an exhausting ordeal, a horror and a memory she wished she could blot out. Like so many.

"So I was desperate and kind of crazed. I just thought of Cross Treys: I visualized the camp and the Dragon House. Then I thought about the dragons, and tried real hard to see them clearly in my mind. It was like when you pray, which is what I told these ladies."

"Like a prayer?"

"Yeah, you give a prayer to the Goddess, or maybe to the old gods, and you try to see them as you say the prayer."

"Ah, Relkin, you still adhere to your faith in the old ones, do you?"

"Well, it's hard to know what to think sometimes. The old gods seem more real to me somehow; but then, there's times I think they can't be real. The elf lords in Mirchaz spoke of the gods too, but I couldn't tell if they were different gods. There seems to be a lot of gods, and then there's the Goddess too, so I don't know. I get confused. I've seen too much in the way of gods."

Lessis nodded to herself. This unlettered boy had been chosen by some combination of circumstance and the will of the High Ones to be tested again and again. What did they want with this child? Why him? Yet he had survived, along with his mighty wyvern. They wanted him for some great service, it was plain to her.

"Different gods, indeed, Relkin," she replied. "The Lords of Mirchaz were grown fell and evil. They had anointed themselves as gods. As with all of those who would rule and crush and destroy others, they thought themselves completely separate from the Mother of us all, who pervades everything."

"Why had they turned to evil, Lady?"

"The story of the Lords of Mirchaz is a long and sorry one, child, too long for me to tell it to you now. I will provide you with a book if you like, Dantone's history of Gelderen is what you need to begin with."

"They were strange folk, Lady. I spent a long time with the Lady Tschinn, who was a kind of princess among them. I would have died, but for her magical arts of healing. And then she sent me forth to destroy the power of her people."

"Child, they were once the noblest, fairest folk in the world. The first lords, secure in the glory of the highest estate. Perhaps she recalled that greatness and regretted their fall into such evil."

Lessis looked across to Bell and Selera, who she could see were reassessing their views of Relkin. As she'd expected, they had taken his unlettered exterior for the whole. They did not know all the details of his history; such matters were secret, even within the Office of Unusual Insight, and so they had seen a dragonboy and heard nothing but a dragonboy's answers to their questions. Even though they had been told something of his strange exploits in Mirchaz. Now they were realizing that he was much more than just a dragonboy. That Lessis was there to witness the interrogation had changed their minds. Bell and Selera needed more field experience, Lessis decided.

"I have an experiment that I wish to conduct with you, dear child." Lessis produced a small box from within the sleeve of her robe.

"I have placed an object in the box. I want you to try and imagine what it is."

Relkin looked at the box, then back to the Lady. He nodded. This at least made more sense than going over and over the same barren ground with Bell and Selera.

"Close your eyes, child, and try to visualize the object in the box. Give yourself plenty of time."

Relkin took a deep breath and tried to relax. He pushed all thought of the golden elf lords out of his mind. The box, the little box, what was in it?

It was no bigger than a snuffbox and made of unpolished wood from the look of it. Close the eyes. He did so. Lessis used no spell to help him relax. It was vital that Relkin do this all by himself. Any intervention could ruin the experiment.

Bell and Selera were watching with fascinated eyes.

Relkin found it hard to really relax. The chair was not the comfortable kind, and Bell and Selera were sitting behind their table still. He was wound up and nervous. After being under interrogation, it wasn't easy to just calm down instantly.

The box, the little box, what was in it?

A vision of his dragon came to him. Bazil was just waking up after a nice long nap. He was thinking of taking a nice long dip in the plunge pool. Tomorrow the scabbard would be delivered. Bazil looked forward to seeing Ecator properly housed once more. The old scabbard had really taken a beating; it was falling apart, in fact. The pool was waiting.

Relkin snapped out of it. A strange reverie, unusually strong. The box, what was in the box.

"Chess piece," he said. "A dragon."

Lessis's eyes grew more piercing than he had ever seen before. She opened the box and produced the little white wooden figure of the dragon, which played the position of rook or castle on an Argonath chessboard. Bell and Selera gaped.

"Child, what did you do just then? Think hard, and carefully."

Relkin stared at the chess piece. By the roll of Caymo's dice! Now he'd gotten himself right in it. He had no idea what he'd gone. He'd seen Bazil, and then he knew what was in the box. But how?

The witches were staring at him with a frightening intensity. He groaned inwardly.

The 109th had finally been brought back to a full complement of ten dragons and ten dragonboys, plus trainee Curf. The newest additions were a leatherback named Gunter and his dragonboy Uri, plus the veteran Roquil, who had been absent since the Battle of Quosh with an infected chest wound. Gunter was a Blue Hills dragon, like Bazil, except he came from the western village of Querc. Uri was a solidly built, red-haired boy with a quiet demeanor. Roquil's Endi was his old self, glad to be back in the unit after weeks at the infirmary with a sick dragon.

As for young Curf, he was still a ways from being judged ready for a dragon of his own. Cuzo had decided that Curf would never get anywhere unless he kept up harsh pressure. Otherwise he'd simply daydream his life away.

Leatherback Gunter was young with a pleasant disposition and good sword moves. He soon became popular with the other wyverns. Even the Purple Green accepted the newcomer with little of his usual truculence. Meanwhile dragonboy Uri had showed himself to be a steady sort and no trouble to Cuzo.

As usual, the boys of the unit all came together in the early evening, while the dragons were finishing off their dinner. They had taken to sitting around on a long bench set outside the Purple Green's double stall. From the bench they had a good view along the line of stalls all the way down to Cuzo's office. His movements could thus be monitored quite easily, and as long as they didn't talk too loud, Cuzo couldn't hear what they were saying.

Mono and Manuel were sitting beside each other quietly discussing the technical difficulties of securing the new-style vambraces that had been issued for the dragons. The vambrace was a piece of steel plate that protected the forearm from wrist to elbow. Traditionally they had been secured by leather thongs tied to eyelets in the corners and down the sides, but the new pieces had chain fringes. The idea was that chain was harder to cut or break in the heat of battle, and thus the vambraces would be more securely held. Unfortunately the chains tended to chafe the delicate dragon skin of the inside of the forelimb, just below the elbow. Mono had made leather sleeves for these chains and that had cut down on the problem for big Chektor, the veteran brasshide. Manuel was keenly interested, since the Purple Green had complained loudly about the chafing from the first hour of wearing the new vambraces.

Meanwhile the rest of the group were busy with the matter of the mascot's ashes. Stripey, the little pygmy elephant, who they'd brought back from Eigo, had passed away from a sudden fever during the winter. Everyone, even Cuzo, had been saddened. Little Stripey had been a joyous creature, smarter than any dog and able to get into everything with that skillful trunk. However, while Stripey's spirit had gone to the Mother's Grace, his ashes were still in their possession. At the insistence of the Purple Green, Stripey had been cremated and his ashes placed in a small iron-lapped casket. The mascot's ashes had become the new mascot. This had satisfied everyone.

Unfortunately the little casket had become a focus for the attentions of the wagon-train master, one Captain Glif. The unit had far too much baggage. The dragonboys of the 109th had spent their stay in Marneri by acquiring as many duplicates of kit items as they possibly could. Thinking they were on their way to siege duty in Axoxo, they'd tried to think of everything they might need way out at the end of a long, fragile supply line in freezing, winter weather in the mountains. "Everything" became a descriptive term for their needs after a while, and stuff piled up outrageously in the Dragon House locker room.

Captain Glif had put pressure on Cuzo. The 109th baggage train was too long, filling nine wagons. They should only take five. Cuzo had begun a round of inspections, weeding out non-regulation items, and triplicates of things like joboquin straps. Frantic dragonboys had hidden spare helmets, breastplates, tail swords, joboquins, and blankets all over the Dragon House. Cuzo had led search-and-remove missions, scouring the gallery over the combat yard where several helmets were discovered, and taking a careful look through dragon lockers and the lockers in the plunge pool room. More armor and dozens of blankets were uncovered.

Now there was tension over the ashes. Cuzo had decreed that the casket containing the mascot's ashes would have to be left behind in Marneri. The casket was a non-regulation item that Cuzo could not bring himself to allow.

Needless to say, this was the last straw. The dragonboys were close to rebellion. It is one thing to never have a wealth of duplicate equipment. It is very much another to have a wealth of such equipment and then to lose it.

"I say we take the ashes, and we hide it really well and just let him try and find it." Swane was angry.

"Where would you hide it, then?" said Curf.

"I don't know exactly, we'd have to think it over carefully. Maybe we'd even move it around. It ain't big, doesn't take up much room. We can hide it easy, and to hell with Cuzo."

"All the dragons are well upset by this."

"By the Hand, Alsebra was ready to go and talk to Cuzo herself. And if she felt that way, I hate to think what the Purple Green would like to do."

"So we take the ashes away," said Howt, the other new boy, who tended big Churn.

"Right!" said Jak. "Hell with Cuzo."

Relkin tried to plead for calm. "Hold everything, before we get into going around him, let's try and reason with him. I'm telling you, Cuzo has gone out of his way to be honest with me. After Wiliger and Turrent, that's been a great relief."

"By the Hand, that Wiliger was a crazy!" muttered Jak. Swane chuckled. Wiliger was a legend in the legions now, the only officer who had ever transferred out of an infantry regiment into the dragon squadrons.

Relkin pressed on, since he had their attention. "Let's ask Cuzo first if we can't talk about this. He won't want the dragons all sulky. He's not stupid, he knows the dragons are the unit. They're the ones who do the important stuff."

Relkin's words seemed to ring true for the new boys. Howt and Uri nodded. So did Curf and Jak. Only Swane, obstreperous as ever, was still unconvinced. Relkin switched tacks after a while, feeling this was a good time to bring up the greater question of their gear.

"Anyway, the casket is a small thing. Cuzo will let us take it, I'm sure, once we talk it over with him. But we have to face the fact that we've got too much stuff. We're going to have to give some back. I mean, I'm not claiming to be innocent or anything, I've got three freecoats. Because I thought we'd be spending the winter at Axoxo."