The Dragons of Argonath (54 page)

This enemy had enormous powers in some areas, but was less omnipotent in others. That blue fire he employed like a club was a terrifying thing, but it was a matter of brute power. The art of unhinging a spell such as Lessis's on the door was a finer, subtler thing, and here he was deficient. Still, she knew he would not give up. Nor was this just another Enthraan of the Death Force, like the Masters in Padmasa. This was one of the Seven, closer to a god that a mere mortal.

In time the children were all lifted into the vent and moved up the shaft. Then they were led down the wider air passages by Eilsa. It was a pitch-dark world that had to be navigated by sound. The children, kept in near darkness for so long, took to this very easily.

When Mirk had carried and pushed the last few into the vent and helped the littler ones to climb to the ceiling level, Lessis turned to Relkin.

"We must go," she said softly.

"I will stay with the dragon."

Lessis looked into his eyes, and for a moment felt her spirit touched by something she saw there. He would never leave the dragon, any more than the dragon would ever leave him. A scapegrace in many ways, this brave young man. Always in trouble with the law for something or other. By the Hand, the first time she'd clapped eyes on him, he'd been stealing orchids from her neighbor's balcony on the tower in Marneri. Of course, even then he'd been doing it for his dragon.

And yet there was a pure and mysterious energy about him. The High Ones had selected him for their purposes. As a result, she had come to know him well and watched him grow, miraculously, from a scruffy youngster to the calm-eyed soldier before her. She remembered the box and the dragon chess piece.

What had he become? What had he been on his way to becoming?

And now, it would all be for naught. He would die beside his dragon.

"Don't let Eilsa come back," he said to her before turning back to the door, where the dragon was sprawled behind the stacked-up tables.

"By the fiery breath," Bazil muttered. "This dragon very hungry."

"Yeah, so is this dragonboy. Unfortunately we forgot to bring a hamper."

Lessis climbed the vent, with tears welling in her ancient eyes.

At the top of the first steep slope, she found level space. Mirk and the weakest children were just a little farther ahead. She raised her ring, and the stone illuminated the space with a faint light.

They went on into the air passages. The ventilation system lay directly above the network of big tunnels that had been driven into the green bank beneath Deer Lodge. By following the system they came to the trunk passage and thence to the spot, right above the gates, where the ventilation tunnel reached the outer sir. The passage was sealed with a barred grille. Beyond the bars was the slightly damp air of the night. The moon had risen, and the sky had cleared of clouds.

Mirk examined the bars.

"These are solidly set. We need the dragon's strength."

"Which we do not have," said Lessis.

Eilsa was examining the vent covering, and it was she who discovered the way out.

"It opens from the outside. There's a lock here."

Lessis put her hand out to the lock.

"It can be opened, but it will take time."

Mirk reached and examined it with his hands.

"Perhaps we can break it."

He went to work and found a way to put his sword into the lock and then get some leverage on its hasp. He heaved until sweat stood out on his forehead, and then at last the lock broke with a snap and the vent burst open and he fell out, clinging to the bars of the grating. For a moment he swung suspended over the drop past the great gates, which were firmly shut now that the lord was back in control of his lair.

Mirk scrambled back onto the stone ledge that ran across the top of the gates. They waited for a long, tense moment to see if the enemy would investigate. The gates remained shut. Their escape had kicked the great anthill into life. All the doors were now locked and watched. The air vent was the only way they could have gotten out, and no one seemed aware of it.

They emerged onto a narrow ledge that ran across right above the gate. Mirk explored the trees on the slope beyond. He came back and whistled softly. Now the children crawled across to him. He boosted them off into the bushes, where they were to lie low and be quiet.

This part of the gardens was given over to shrubs and ornamental rock gardens. There was plenty of good cover, even for a hundred or so children. At the end, getting the weakest children across went slowly, since they had to be carried. But at last it was done, the vent was replaced, and Eilsa crawled across.

She crouched beside Lessis and Lagdalen.

"Relkin didn't come. I have to go back."

"No, dear," whispered Lessis, with no pretense at sorcery. "You can't do that. He will stay with the dragon to the last. He is a dragoneer. You understand, I'm sure. Besides, we need you to help us save these children."

Eilsa looked into Lessis's eyes and felt her heart break.

"They will die in there."

"We must get these children to safety."

Eilsa fought for self-control. "Yes, of course," she managed after a moment or two.

Across the dark lawns the children passed, some scampering, some hobbling, a few being carried. Lessis had a small boy on her back whose legs had been amputated. Lagdalen supported a girl, starved to emaciation. Mirk carried two boys, too weak to walk this fast themselves. Lessis's anger was like white-hot lava when she recalled the children they'd been forced to leave because they were too far gone. Lessis swore that this monster would pay. Somehow she would bring him down.

But it would not come from a frontal attack. Her brush with him had shown her that. He had powers that he sucked from the world itself. That blue flash had been a form of lightning, and thus she knew that this was the true lightning lord, and indeed one of the Seven.

They came to the edge of the rhododendron crescent. From behind them they could hear a bugle blowing in the house. Confused shouting followed.

"Time to be off," whispered Mirk.

Lessis nodded. "Absolutely."

Mirk led them along the edge of the rhododendron thicket and then across a short patch of lawn into a grove of ornamental pines. Beyond the pines lay a shrubbery. Cotoneasters were trained on trellises between hedges of yew and box. The box had been cut into the shape of hens and trees and the like. Now the fanciful creations of topiary made a fantastic background to a scene out of a nightmare, as the child slaves of the Dominator fled through it under the pale moonlight.

They came to another expanse of lawn. On the far side trees beckoned them to shelter. The gardens were coming to an end, and the woods were beginning. They made a quick head count and found that some of the children, seven in all, were missing.

"I'll go back," said Eilsa.

"No, child," Lessis began, but then realized that she needed Mirk to protect the children.

"It must be me, Lady." Their eyes met for a moment.

"We cannot wait here for long," said Lessis. The noise from the house had subsided, but torches had been briefly visible on a distant lawn. The hunt was definitely up for them.

Eilsa slipped away through the dappled moon shade and was gone.

Lessis kept her senses loose, relaxed, but alert. Mirk had explored the terrain on both sides of their position in the shrubs. Lagdalen stood there, as if she'd been carved in stone, her arms around two little boys that had been surgically connected at the hip. They were in great pain, but they had managed to keep up nevertheless.

Lessis prayed that Eilsa would be quick. Time wasted here was exceedingly precious. There were more parties of torchbearers leaving the big house. She dared to imagine that they might yet escape, but it would not be easy.

Moreover, she realized that is was essential that she survive to warn Ribela and the emperor about their foe. Ribela was correct in her identification of the threat. The empire's resources would have to be mobilized and kept ready. The Office of Unusual Insight would have to be strengthened. They faced a dreadful challenge, and they had to rise to it and win or else the world would become his, a wasteland crushed to dust by his urge to force his way into heaven.

How had Lord Waakzaam succumbed to this pitiless evil? In the beginning he had been great, but fair, most beautiful of mind and body, a giant in spirit, designed to infuse that spirit into the worlds and give them life. Instead he had withheld it to himself and refused his duty. He was not meant to dwell on this world. He was supposed to be a part of it.

So life had struggled into existence on its own and soon surrounded him in his solitary majesty. Standing amid the lesser beings of the worlds, he had inevitably taken to rulership. Absolute power had corrupted him, and he had descended into absolute vileness.

What thread had come loose in the tyrant's brain that he would stoop to the torture of children? For, while the children were not of his own rank in the world, they were its most precious fruit.

Her thoughts were shattered by a burst of noise from their right. Torchlight tinged the farthest shrubs with scarlet. Dark shapes were in motion there.

"We must leave," said Mirk, who had reappeared out of the shadows. They got the children to their feet and struck out across the lawn. They had to cross to the trees before they were seen. It would be a desperately close thing.

The sound of excited hounds arose. Then the harsh caws of imp soldiery.

"Dogs," said Lagdalen in dismay.

"Hurry!" said Mirk.

They spurred the children to make their best effort. Lagdalen carried three, two on her back clinging like monkeys, another in her arms. She knew that there were horses not too far away now. They could put the weaker children on the horses, and that would be a great help.

But there was no sign of Eilsa. Lessis shook her head with regret. First the dragon and Relkin, and now Eilsa Ranardaughter. These were heavy losses to a certain witch in her sixth century of existence.

She lingered in the shrubs long enough to cast a spell of confusion over the immediate area of their trail. By then the dogs were getting close. Then she followed the others, catching up to a little girl who was running out of breath halfway to the trees. Lessis picked up the girl without breaking stride and kept up her trot. It felt as if her heart were going to explode, but she kept up the pace. Lagdalen was just ahead, bent over under the two children on her back.

Behind them they could hear the hounds coming closer with terrifying rapidity. The little children could never outrun the hounds.

But at the edge of the shrubbery, the hounds ran into the spell. They went wild and circled, baying in ecstasy, as they took up the scent of the great rabbit from the sky.

Mirk and Lagdalen were helping the last children over the ditch and into the woods when the imps started screaming abuse at the dogs on the far side of the lawn. They looked back. Were they seen? The imps milled around in the dark. It seemed they had not been spotted.

Within the safety of the darkness beneath the trees, they let the children rest for a few minutes. They had a long way to go yet, before they could even begin to think they were safe.

Back across the lawn, men were now bellowing in deeper voices and striking the imps with heavy quirts to improve their performance.

"We must go on," said Mirk. "This would be a good time to gain a little ground."

"Right." If they were going to have any chance of escaping, they had to reach the horses. Eilsa had not returned, she was trapped over there somewhere with seven lost children. She would have to make her own way out. Lessis left a prayer for her.

They went on through the woods. It was hard to keep the children moving, but with Lessis's help they kept up a walking pace. Soon they had traversed this band of forest and were confronted by a road and fields beyond. A farmhouse stood on the nearest rise, stark white under the moon. For a few moments they examined this scene, plotting their course across the fields.

Just as they were preparing to cross the road, something flew down it, five feet off the ground, huge insectal eyes scanning its surroundings. It shot past them, and Lessis glimpsed a creature like a dog, with wings and the eyes of a huge insect. She shivered. It was nothing she had ever seen on Ryetelth. Some further monstrosity from the laboratories of the Dominator.

It flew by and disappeared while everyone lay flat, scarcely daring to breathe. Then to their horror, it swung around and came back. It had seen something, flew back up the road on leathery wings, and circled above them, uttering a triumphant cry that echoed across the fields.

Lessis reached out with a spell to try and disable it. It dropped from the air and crashed to the road, where it thrashed a few times, then bounced up and flapped away with a harsh squeal, streaking back up the lane. Lessis tried again, but it was too late, the creature was too swift. Lessis knew immediately that they were going to regret her failure.

Across the road and into the field they went. The horses were tethered on the far side of the field, a distance of perhaps a third of a mile. The field had been left fallow that year. The furrows were gentle. They kept up the walking pace, though some of the children were lagging. Their slender reserves of strength were almost spent.

And there came shouts from behind them. Riders were in the lane, and more hounds were baying too.

Lessis turned and tried to set another spell of confusion, but the excited shouts among the riders confirmed that they had spotted the children.

Imps were coming at the run, with the hounds before them. There wasn't time for sorcery.

"Run, children, run for your lives," she said, and turned her powers to the children, kicking them into a mad dash for the trees.

The children responded with a crazed, desperate effort. Even on broken limbs, they ran flat out while Lessis, Mirk, and Lagdalen dropped back a little to put themselves between them and the oncoming riders.