The Silver Mage (33 page)

“Got it!” Neb called out. “Dalla—”

Dallandra stepped forward with her kettle of warm herbwater and ladle. Neb picked up the disgusting object with a pair of tongs and carried it out of her way. While she washed the wound clean—and it took the entire large kettleful to get all the pus out—Rori sighed several times, perhaps in relief. Medea had to lie across his tail, however, to hold it down. Once Dallandra had cleansed the cuts, she packed them with clean linen strips, soaked in an astringent, to stop the bleeding.

Neb returned with a handful of thin gold wires. “The prince gave me an old Deverry brooch made out of woven wires,” he said. “He got it in trade, I think, but anyway, I unwound it. Thread isn’t going to hold this cut closed. Rori, my apologies, but I’m going to have to cause you more pain. I need to make holes and lace you up like a bit of leather work.”

Rori mumbled something which sounded, with his bound mouth, much like “Very well then.” He rumbled briefly, as if he’d made a jest. Medea shifted her hold on his tail to secure it, and once again Arzosah leaned over his shoulders.

“I must say,” Arzosah said, “that it gladdens my heart to have that awful stink gone.”

“Me, too,” Neb said. “Very well, here we go.”

Once again Rori’s self-control held him rigid and still. Dallandra pulled out the linen strips, then stepped back out of Neb’s way. With an awl Neb made holes in his hide, inserted the gold wires, and laced both the new cuts and the old shut. With the cyst opened and the irritant gone, Dallandra could hope that the wound would heal up properly at last.

“Dragons heal quickly,” Arzosah said. “But he’d best not fly for a few days.”

Rori muttered some inarticulate curse.

“Neb,” Dallandra said, “you can untie his mouth now. Medea, you can let the tail go. My humble thanks for your aid! Arzosah, you were both splendid.”

She rumbled, then carefully slid off her prostrate mate. Medea let go the tail, stood up and stretched, then backed away. Neb began to uncoil the rope from around Rori’s mouth.

“And my thanks to you and Neb,” Arzosah said. “To think that nasty thing’s been in there all this time! It’s been a trial for all of us, living with him so on edge.”

“It must have been hardest on him,” Neb said.

“Oh, of course.” Arzosah paused to lick Rori’s face, as if to comfort him. “But you know what the old proverb says, when a dragon farts, the whole mountain stinks.”

“Indeed,” Rori said. “Ye gods, that remedy stung almost as bad as the wound! Still, the worst is over, isn’t it?”

“It should be.” Dallandra patted his massive jaw. “Neb, when you finish coiling that rope, you can wash that lump off, and we’ll see what’s inside it.”

“I’m going to boil it,” Neb said. “It’s crawling with live things, Dalla, just like Hound’s bandages were. I can see the auras as a very faint reddish glow.”

“Fascinating!” Dallandra turned to look at the lump, held in Neb’s tongs. When she opened her Sight, she could see the reddish, pulsating glow. “It’s truly remarkable, seeing it for myself. Not that I didn’t believe you, mind. Ah, now the aura’s fading. It’s curdling, actually, like souring milk.”

“There must be a lot of tiny lives in an infection,” Neb said. “Not a few larger ones. Gods, it stinks!” But he was grinning in the sheer pleasure of having solved the puzzle.

Once Neb had finished removing all the matter crusted upon it, both living things and dead pus, Rhodry’s silver dagger did indeed appear. Although the leather binding around the hilt had long since dissolved into the gray matter in the wound, the semi-magical metal itself cleaned up to its former shine. Mic came to watch as Neb polished it with an old rag. When he handed it over to the dwarven jeweler, Mic traced out the falcon device that once had belonged to Cullyn of Cerrmor, graved on the blade.

“Otho himself made this dagger,” Mic said. “He told me the secret of the metal, you see, when we were off in Alban. He tried to tell me how to place the two dweomers upon a piece, too, but I never could work them properly.”

“Two dweomers?” Dallandra said. “I thought there was only one.”

“One to attune the metal to the elven aura and one to bind the dagger to its true owner.” Mic began to say more, paused for a long moment, then laughed in an oddly tense and high-pitched way. “It stuck close to poor old Rhodry, all right, didn’t it?”

Neb laughed at the black jest, and Dallandra joined in, but she was laughing in relief.
Not Evandar’s fault, then,
she thought.
That’s one thing no one can blame him for.
She was tempted to tell Valandario, just to defend Evandar further, but she wondered why she’d bother.
Why do I get so angry?
she thought.
I suppose because Val’s right.

One thing, however, she did tell Valandario and Grallezar as well. “The silver dagger was a component of sorts,” she told them. “I’m thinking that removing it could be the start of his giving up the dragon form. What do you think?”

Both of them agreed. “If somewhat be wound,” Grallezar said, “then the unwinding does start with but a few inches of thread.”

For the next few days, Rori stayed on the ground near the alar’s camp. Arzosah brought him venison, and from time to time he would waddle down to the stream to drink. By the time the flocks and herds had grazed down the fodder around the camp, he was well enough to walk after the alar when it moved farther west, a trip of a mere five miles. Dallandra relied on Arzosah’s opinions about his condition; she herself had no idea when a dragon might have recovered enough to fly. Finally, on the fourth day after the surgery, Arzosah announced that he might take to the air for short distances.

“Those gold wires were a very fine trick, indeed,” she told Neb and Dallandra. “If you can leave them in, I think me he can fly again.”

“Oh, I intend to leave them in,” Neb said. “Fear not! I want those cuts well healed before I do anything more to them. Rori, can you get up? I want to make sure the wires will hold when you extend your wings.”

“Good idea,” Rori said. “I’d best try flapping them, too. Here, let’s get a good ways away from the others.”

Chirurgeon and dragon ambled off together. Neb clasped his hands behind his back and bent forward slightly as he walked to keep an eye on the wound.

“This looks very promising,” Dallandra said.

“It does, indeed,” Arzosah said. “I was truly worried, you know, that the wound would eventually poison him to death. You and Neb both have my thanks for this healing.”

“You’re most welcome.” Dallandra was as surprised as she was pleased by this expression of gratitude. “You know, while we’re here, there’s somewhat I’ve been meaning to ask you. It’s about your daughters. When Rori found you and brought you to Cengarn, where were they? No one even knew that you had young hatchlings. I’m sure Jill and I would have made some provision for them if we’d known.”

“I thought of telling you,” Arzosah said, “but I was afraid to. My experience of you two-legged groundlings had not been pleasant, you know. Medea was old enough to defend herself, but Mezza was only some twenty years old, practically an infant. Men with spears and the like could have slain her.”

“I can understand your being cautious. I gather Medea could feed them both?”

“She could and did.” Arzosah’s voice rang with real pride. “She’s a splendid little darling, truly. My two gems were hiding in that cave where Rhodry found me, you see, and they saw and heard what happened with that loathsome dweomer ring. The poor wee mites!”

“That really is very sad. I don’t suppose it would have occurred to Rhodry to ask if you had young ones.”

“He was a male with mannish blood. Of course he didn’t. But they knew I’d come back to them as soon as I could, and Rhodry was decent enough to release me at the end of the summer.” Arzosah paused, turning her head to watch Rori and Neb walking slowly together toward open ground. “I worried about them, of course, the entire time we were apart. The next summer I made provision for them before I returned to Cengarn.”

“Provision?”

“None of your affair.” She hissed softly. “We dragons have our secrets, and please, don’t use my name to force me to say more.”

“Very well, I won’t. You’re right. It’s none of my affair.”

A huge drum began beating—the sound of Rori flapping his wings to allow Neb to inspect the strength of the golden wires. Since neither Dallandra nor Arzosah could have heard the other, they fell silent. Dallandra had a moment’s stab of guilt. She’d not thought of Loddlaen once after she’d returned to Evandar’s country, while the dragon, a female of coldhearted wyrmkind, had fretted about leaving her young.

Rori stopped drumming and folded his wings back. Neb turned and called out, “He’s doing well! The wound’s holding nicely.”

“Good,” Arzosah said. “Almost healed at last!”

While he’d been healing, Rori had apparently been laying plans. When Dallandra had a moment alone with him, he brought up the matter of Kov.

“After I get Berwynna to safety, I’ll go back for Kov. I promise you that.”

“My thanks, but what do you mean, get Wynni to safety?”

“I don’t want her in Cerr Cawnen. I have a bad feeling about all of this, Dalla. I’m going to take my daughter to the Red Wolf dun and ask Tieryn Cadryc to take her under his protection.”

“No doubt he will, and truly, I think you’re wise. But you can’t just leave her there by herself.”

“What? She’ll hardly be alone in that dun.”

“But she doesn’t know anyone there, doesn’t know if she can trust them or if she’ll like them or what. Your poor child’s in mourning for her man, Rori. She’s been dragged away from her home and everything she’s ever known, and—”

“Stop! Yes, of course.” The dragon interrupted her with a toss of his head. “You’re right, truly. My apologies, Dalla, and my thanks as well.” He fell silent, and when he spoke again, it was in Deverrian. “That’s somewhat else I’ve forgotten, how a woman can feel weak and timid if she’s surrounded by friends she doesn’t know are friends.”

“Only women feel that way?”

His laughter rumbled briefly. “You’ve caught me there,” he said. “Men, too, at times.”

“So I thought.”

“But well and good, then. I’ll take Mic with her, if he’ll go, and I think he will. We don’t want him sneaking off to try to rescue his cousin on his own, anyway.”

“Very true, especially since Kov isn’t where Mic left him. Every time I scry for him, I see him still in some sort of tunnel with all those other people.”

“Then he’s safe for the nonce. Good. I’ve not got the time to rescue him right now.”

T
raveling underground with a pack of Dwrgwn was coming close to driving Kov insane. He was accustomed to the tightly organized and rapid marches of Mountain Folk, who could cheerfully cover thirty miles a day, even when burdened with children and household goods. Under the same conditions the Dwrgwn dawdled, dragged, whined, complained, and at moments, outright stopped to sit down and announce that they simply couldn’t move one more step. At the most, Kov figured, they were making twelve miles daily, and that on a good day.

The tunnels meandered, changed direction and levels, and branched off in a welter of ways. Kov could keep track of where they’d been, but since he had no idea of where they were going, he could only listen with the others while Lady and Leejak argued furiously about the route. Eventually one or the other would win, and the ragged procession would set off again, trending generally north.

Now and then they reached an air vent where a ladder leaned against a nearby wall, the sign of an observation hole. One of the Dwrgi men would climb up, stick his head out for a look around, then climb down again to tell Leejak what he’d seen—usually mere landscape. Finally, however, after a long blur of days in the tunnels, the scout hurried down and began chattering in sheer excitement.

“He did see huts,” Leejak told Kov. “We be here, and they be not burnt.”

Most of the Dwrgwn stayed in the tunnel to watch over their goods while Kov, Leejak, Lady, and a guard of five men climbed up and out. Waiting for them was a delegation from the new village, a half circle of Dwrgi spearmen guarding a woman dressed in shimmering gold. When Lady hurried forward to greet her, Kov guessed that she held the same position of lady in her tribe. The two women walked a few steps away from the crowd and began to talk in low voices.

Both sets of men crossed their arms over their chests and stared at each other in cold silence. One of the men from the new village wore clothing made of leather, Kov noticed. Around his neck, a bronze knife with a long blade dangled from a chain.

When Kov looked around, he realized from the position of the sun that he faced east. Straight ahead, in a bend of a river, stood a circle of meager-looking huts some hundred yards away. In among them, he saw two of the narrow wooden booths indicating entrances to the underground domain of this new group. He turned back to the west and saw straggly fields of grain stretching out to a stand of trees.
I could be anywhere in the Northlands,
he thought. Even if he managed to escape his captors, getting home to Lin Serr was going to be an adventure at best but more likely an ordeal. At worst—what if he never found it?