The Silver Mage (54 page)

“
I
just can’t reach Laz’s mind,” Dallandra remarked. “I’ve been trying all evening. I can scry him out easily enough, but I can’t contact his thoughts. He seems to be somewhat ill. He’s shivering and rolling himself in a blanket.”

“Ken you where he be?” Niffa said.

“Inside some sort of house. I think it might be Haen Marn, because I can sense a water veil around it. I saw the dragon book propped up against a wall near his bed. I suppose that’s all I really need to know, that he’s safe and the book with him.”

They were sitting in the great room of Jahdo’s house in front of a small fire, lit to chase away the omnipresent damp of Cerr Cawnen. Dallandra had fed Hildie’s child, and his mother had taken him away to clean him and wrap him in swaddling bands for the night. As the two dweomermasters sat talking, Jahdo came in to join them. He sank into a cushioned chair with a long weary sigh.

“How does the temper of the town run?” Niffa said.

“Foul,” Jahdo said, then smiled. “Well, half of it be foul. I understand not our folk at times. Some fear to leave more than they fear to stay, even though we all do know what evils the Horsekin will bring with them.”

“Do they think your walls will fend them off forever?” Dallandra said.

“Not forever, only to the winter, when, or so they do hope, the snows will freeze the Horsekin where they sit. It be true that winter around our town be a fierce thing. Were it not for our lake’s warmth, none could live here, I think me.”

“True,” Niffa put in, “but the Horsekin, they live in the cruel north, too. They do ken how to outlast the snows.”

“So I did say to the doubters,” Jahdo said. “The true problem, I do believe, be a fear of what might wait for us in the Southlands, so close to the Slavers’ Country. Some do think that we shall be slaves there again, and it does seem preferable to be enslaved by the evil we know rather than some new one.”

“Surely they don’t think the Westfolk will enslave them?” Dallandra turned in her chair to look straight at Jahdo.

“None who remember Prince Dar do have such thoughts, but the young men, well, they know not what to think. They do have a hope that we might offer to join with the Horsekin to take the Summer Country back from the Slavers. I did try to impress upon them that the Horsekin, they want not an alliance this time, but a conquest.” Jahdo shrugged both shoulders. “What will the Horsekin want with our hundreds of ill-armed warriors, when they do command their own polished thousands?”

The fire was burning low. Niffa got up and took a stick of wood from the basket by the hearth, then placed it carefully among the coals to avoid the salamanders playing among them.

“Brother?” Niffa said. “Did the council send messengers to Penli?”

“We did. On the morrow, most like, will we get a reply.”

The reply arrived on the following afternoon in the form of the entire village of Penli. Some twenty families showed up at the south gates driving their milk cows, sheep, and hogs, with their dogs trailing after and some cats as well, perched on the loaded wagons and handcarts, and ferrets in cages. The town militia led them around the lake to a spot on the grassy commons where they could pitch tents, feed their livestock, and settle their crying children. Jahdo brought Cleddrik to the council chambers by the plaza, where Dallandra met them.

At the sight of her, Cleddrik took a step back. His eyes grew wide, but he stammered out a pleasant enough greeting after Jahdo’s introduction. Dallandra disliked him on first sight. The very fact that she couldn’t say why she did made her wary; the feeling had something of the omen-cold about it.

“My thanks for this shelter,” Cleddrik said to Jahdo. “My folk be sore afraid, and I did fear they would up and run off somewhere rather than holding their ground.”

“Running off may well be what we all must do,” Jahdo said. “The prince of the Westfolk be on his way here with an offer of land farther south. There be no hope in holding out against the Horsekin. There be thousands of them.”

Cleddrik turned dead-pale. Big drops of sweat broke out on his forehead and ran down the creases in his jowls. He pulled a rag from his brigga pocket and mopped the sweat away. It was a reasonable enough reaction, Dallandra decided, to Jahdo’s news. When she opened her sight and took a look at his aura, it swirled around him in a gray-green cloud of sheer terror—again, a reasonable reaction to a marauding Horsekin army from a farmer who stood to lose the land he’d worked all his life, to say naught of that life itself. She returned to her normal vision and saw Cleddrik trying hard to put on a brave front as Jahdo explained their situation.

“Well, what must be done must be done,” Cleddrik said at last. “My thanks, Chief Speaker, for this honest talk. By your leave, I’ll be going to tell my folk what we do face. Then we must make some sacrifice to the gods of the town, some of the first apples, they might please the holy spirits.”

“True spoken,” Jahdo said. “Tell your folk that the prince, we do expect him some three days hence.”

Cleddrik hurried away to the path down to the lakeshore, where the council barge stood at its pier, ready to take him across to the mainland. Jahdo crossed his arms over his chest and watched him go with narrowed eyes.

“Do you trust that man?” Dallandra said.

“I know not if I do or not,” Jahdo said. “Niffa did tell me that the Alshandra priestesses did come to Penli.”

“As far as we know they did.”

“If Cleddrik did believe in their false goddess, it be possible that the Horsekin, they did strike some bargain with him. Messages could go back and forth, like, with the priestesses.”

“Very possible indeed.”

“But then, we all be frightened, and mayhap my mind does see things that be not there. What think you?”

“I don’t know.” Dallandra managed a smile. “He could be so utterly terrified for many reasons. The question is, is he afraid of the Horsekin or of Prince Dar?”

Jahdo laughed, one short bark that edged close to panic. When Dallandra glanced around, she saw the other members of the Council of Five hurrying across the plaza toward them.

“I’ll go back to the house,” she told Jahdo. “I see that you have a council meeting.”

“True spoken. We do meet many a time in a day now, after we do go through the town and talk to our folk. The others,” he gestured at the council, “they do see the wisdom in leaving. So that be one battle we need not fight.”

Later that day, Dallandra contacted Salamander through the fire. He and Rori had flown a good distance since they’d left the alar. By Salamander’s estimate, they were some miles to the west of Cerr Cawnen and a good bit farther north.

“And the Horsekin?” she asked.

“Well, there’s been no sign of them so far,” Salamander said. “Which is all to the good. We’ve been following the route they must be taking, you see, just in the reverse direction.”

“Very well. Suppose the army was camping where you are now. How far is it from there to Cerr Cawnen?”

“At least three days’ ride for a horde such as Rori described.”

“Only three?”

“Well, they must be at least a day’s ride north of where we are, so make that four days at least.”

“It’s still not enough.”

“I know, O Mistress of Mighty Magics, but we have yet to deploy and display our wiles, tricks, and shows of brute force and harassment. In short, we shall slow them down, never fear.”

I do fear,
Dallandra thought to herself.
Profoundly so.

To him, she said, “I just hope there are priestesses traveling with the army. I’d hate to think of you performing a dangerous feat for an audience that can’t see you.”

“So would I, but I’m willing to wager high that the holy ladies have come along. These days the Horsekin never go anywhere without at least a pair or two, or so it seems.”

“Well and good, then. Do let me know how things go.” She broke the link before he could feel just how troubled she was.

S
ince Rori had no desire to tease his brother with sudden drops in height or near-vertical climbs, Salamander was finding the trip north on dragonback a far easier ride than the one Arzosah had given him. By the time they reached the dragons’ mountain lair, the view from high in the air had come to delight him. Rivers ran sparkling in tiny silver threads through forests that billowed and swayed in the winds like one massive living thing rather than separate trees. Grassy valleys lay like jewels among the dark rocks and twisted pines of the foothills. When they reached the mountains, they dodged among enormous pillars of rock and skimmed above craggy slopes. The boom and thunder of Rori’s wings echoed back to them like a chant.

At last, late on an afternoon, Salamander saw the remains of a stone tower standing at the edge of a mountain meadow. Above the meadow loomed a sheer cliff, leading up and up to a streak of snow on a rocky ridge. Low on this cliff, behind the tower, he noticed a ledge of rock and the dark slash of a cave mouth.

“Hang on!” Rori called out.

Salamander tightened his grip on the rope harness around his brother’s chest as the dragon swooped, flapped hard, curled his wings, and landed neatly on the ledge. Salamander slid down from his back just as Medea poked her green-and-gold head out of the cave and roared a welcome.

“Rori’s brought Uncle Ebañy!” she called out in Elvish. “Mezza, Devar, come meet Uncle Ebañy!”

A smaller dragon—Salamander estimated she was perhaps fifteen feet long—waddled out of the cave. Her scales shone as golden as the sunlight on a summer afternoon, darkening on her belly to the orange-red of a sunset. Behind her came a slender hatchling about the size of a plow horse, iridescent silver like his father, though his underside was a definite dark blue to match his dragon-slit eyes. Beautiful though the three young wyrms were, the vinegar stench of dragon billowed out of the cave along with them, so strong that Salamander felt faint. He managed a decent bow to the two females, who rumbled in answer, and caught his breath at last.

Devar, his nephew, his dragon brother’s son—Salamander hardly knew how to address him. His name, Salamander could guess, came from that of his and Rori’s father, Devaberiel Silverhand. The young silver wyrm bobbed his head respectfully to his uncle. His dark blue eyes caught Salamander’s attention. He had the vertical cat-slit eye of a dragon, but, rather than round, his eyes were oval like a human or elven eye.

“Greetings.” Devar had a dark voice, but still within a human range, thanks to his youth and size. “Did you bring my new sister, too?”

“I told him about Berwynna,” Medea put in.

“Wynni’s visiting friends farther east,” Rori said. “I hope you’ll meet her someday soon.” He paused, glancing around him. “Ebañy, that tower just below us? I thought you might want to lair in it. I know the cave’s a bit dank for someone of your delicate sensibilities.” He rumbled briefly.

“Delicate as horseshit,” Salamander said, “after everything I’ve been through. Be that as it may, the tower intrigues me, and it should provide all the shelter I need, this time of year.”

“Good.” Rori turned to the hatchlings. “We have something important to discuss. Medea, it’s time you learned to hunt the Meradan.”

Medea lifted her graceful green-gold head and roared with joy.

While the afternoon sunlight lingered, Salamander clambered down the cliff face to the meadow. Medea swooped down with his saddlebags and blankets in her claws, dropped them into the high grass, then swooped up again to the ledge. When Salamander looked back, he saw that the other dragons had all gone into the cave, which must have been, therefore, far larger than it looked from the outside. With a shake of her green-and-gold tail, Medea slithered in after them.

Salamander walked over to inspect the tower. It lacked a roof, and its wooden door and the inner ceilings had long since rotted away, but the walls still stood high, although inside green moss grew thick upon them. In the center of the roofless circle, where sunlight could reach, tall grass and some sort of bramble formed spiky tangles. Snakes and a variety of spiders and insects, Salamander assumed, lived under the greenery. He decided that he’d sleep outside the tower rather than in it.