The Silver Mage (55 page)

He walked outside and glanced up, just idly, but carving on one of the higher ranks of stone caught his attention. He shaded his eyes with his hand and saw a line of lettering in the ancient style of the Elvish syllabary, picked out by the shadows of long light from the west. Craning his neck, he walked around the tower several times until he’d seen it all and could puzzle out the meaning.

“We, the last of they who stand on guard, carved these words. Traveler, if any travelers there be, we hold to our duty though no relief has reached us this hundred years.”

How much longer had they waited, he wondered, before making their retreat? Or had they all died in the tower, either in a Meradan attack or of simple old age, until the last of the last lay unburnt with no one to build him a funeral pyre? No one would ever know, he supposed.

“I’ve seen your message,” he called out. “I stand witness that you were faithful.”

The wind sighed around the stones, and in that sound he thought, just for a moment, that he heard voices answering.

In the last of the daylight the dragons flew out to hunt, Rori first, then the young. The combined beating of their wings boomed and echoed so loudly that Salamander clasped his hands over his ears and kept them there until they were well away. He scrounged himself enough fuel for a fire from the woody shrubs growing around the meadow’s edge, then considered the food he had left—half a sheep’s milk cheese, some scraps of flatbread, a sack of flour, a good chunk of purified lard, and his wooden box of soda.

Not far from the tower a little spring welled up amid tall grass. Salamander took his water bottle and hunkered down beside it. As he pulled the grass aside to reach clean water, he realized that someone had lined the spring mouth with neat blocks of stone—those watchmen of the tower, he could assume. He laid the bottle down, then used both hands to clean the grass and water weeds away until the spring welled up in a basin once again. He’d just finished when he heard the thrumming of dragon wings. A flash of silver in the sunset light, Devar circled low over him and dropped two dead rabbits on the ground next to Salamander. With a flutter of blue-and-silver wings he landed nearby.

“The rabbits are for you, Uncle,” Devar said in Elvish. “Da said you could roast them.”

“I can, indeed,” Salamander said. “My thanks, Nephew.”

“Da killed two horses for the rest of us. He and Medea are bringing them back.”

“Horses? I take it you found the Meradani army.”

“Yes. Da wouldn’t let me attack them, but it was still great fun, watching Da and Medea scare them! The horses all bucked and ran, and some of the Meradan, they ended up on the ground.”

“Splendid! How far away was this?”

“A long way north.” Devar half-opened his wings, then closed them again in the dragonish equivalent of a shrug. “That’s why they sent me on ahead with the rabbits. I can fly lots faster than the lasses can.”

Salamander considered the size of Devar’s wings and doubted it. Aloud, he said, “The horses must be heavy even for dragons to carry.”

“Yes. They had to fly slowly once they got them. Uncle, Da says that you can fly, too. Can you be a dragon like us?”

“No, alas, but I can turn myself into a magpie.”

Devar blinked at him.

“It’s a bird,” Salamander said, “a black-and-white bird that chatters a lot and loves shiny things.”

“I don’t think we have magpies in the mountains.”

“I doubt it, truly.”

Devar suddenly cocked his head, listening. “Here comes my clutch.”

Salamander concentrated on listening, but a fair many moments passed before he too heard the measured drumming of wings. The twilight began to deepen just as the three dragons, burdened with their dinner, reappeared above the valley. With a high-pitched roar, Devar leaped into the air and flew up to join them as they landed, one at a time, on the outcrop by the cave mouth.

Salamander watched as Rori divided up the kill for the hatchlings. He snapped at a greedy Devar and told him to wait for his sisters to take their share, had Mezza lick her face clean after a particularly disgusting bite of horse, and praised Medea for the care she’d taken of the younger wyrms while he’d been gone. It struck Salamander as passing strange that Rori would show the concern for this family that Rhodry Maelwaedd had never shown for his human children.
He’s too much at ease in dragon form,
Salamander thought.
We’re pulling him back just in time.

Salamander lit his fire with a snap of his fingers. By its light he cleaned the rabbits, then wrapped them in the fresh wet grass he’d pulled earlier and set them to roast in the coals. Overhead the twilight was deepening into night. He walked away from his fire and stood in the darkness to watch the stars appearing over the remains of the stone tower. The sight moved him nearly to tears. Why, he couldn’t say, except to speculate that he had once served the Seven Cities here on the border, perhaps even among the last of the watchmen in the tower.

Dalla’s right,
he thought.
I must meditate more and study more and do all those things I’ve fled from all my life.
While normally he found such thoughts wearisome, that night they gave him a peculiar pleasure, a sense of rightness, fitting the harsh times. All night he dreamt of the Western Mountains. He saw confused glimpses of a splendid fortress and of a city in ruins that, even in its ravaged state, dwarfed any he’d ever seen in Deverry.

On the morrow, Salamander woke to a less than splendid reality. He was eating cold roast rabbit for his breakfast when Rori glided down to the meadow. The dragon first drank from the spring, then waddled over to join him.

“My thanks for pulling the grass and suchlike away from the basin,” Rori said. “I tried to claw it away once, but all I managed to do was get mud in the water. Not having hands is a cursed nuisance.”

“I can well imagine.” Salamander paused to wipe his own greasy fingers on a clump of grass. “Devar told me that you found the Meradan last night.”

“Yes, we did. They’re some miles to the east of us, which doesn’t matter, and about two days’ march—for them, that is—to the north.” Rori considered briefly. “Which puts them a good six days from Cerr Cawnen, assuming they recaptured all their horses in time to get a full day’s march in today. How close to the army do you have to be to work whatever it is you have in mind?”

“Where I can see them but they can’t see me.”

“Easily done. Are you ready to leave?”

“I am. Let me just scatter these rabbit bones for whatever wants to eat them.”

Thanks to Rori’s powerful wings, they caught up with the Horsekin army just as the sun was reaching zenith. The enemy was marching through a narrow but long grassy valley, bordered on either side by forested hills. A silver riband of a river threaded itself through a stripe of trees for the entire length of the valley. Streams trickled from the hills to either side to join the river.

As he looked down from the height of dragonback, Salamander found himself thinking of the army as some sort of animal, huge, dangerous, but as awkward as a dragon on the ground as it plodded around clumps of trees and outcrops of rock. At every stream, it slowed to a crawl in order to ease its horses across the bad footing of the fords.

Rori circled high above to match its tedious pace. After a few miles the army halted, or at least, the front ranks halted, then those behind them, and so on down the entire length of the column in a sort of convulsion or ripple that at last reached the slaves and servants at the rear.
Have they seen us?
Salamander wondered, then realized that the Horsekin were merely pausing to rest their horses. Noontide heat shimmered on the hills.

Rori dropped a little lower, close enough for Salamander to see the tiny figures of riders dismounting. He noticed that they kept glancing up at the sky. As the army spread out into the grassy meadows on the western side of the river, Rori banked a wing and turned toward the western hills. On the highest hill, huge boulders and outcrops of pale brown rock emerged from the forest cover like the knuckles of an enormous fist. Rori soared up to the summit, circled once, and landed upon one of the outcrops. Salamander slid down from his back.

“How’s this?” Rori said. “You’ve got a clear view down to the valley floor, but you can hide among the trees as well.”

“It should do splendidly,” Salamander said. “Are you going back to the lair?”

“No. If you’re spotted, they’ll come after you, and you’ll need a way out.”

“I can fly, you know.”

“As fast and far as I can?”

“Well, no, and I think me I see some archers down there. An arrow that would bounce off you would skewer the magpie. Your company will be much appreciated as always.”

Salamander untied his saddlebags and bedroll from the dragon’s harness. As the sun beat down on the pale rocks, sweat began to soak through his linen tunic. He took his gear and slid down between two massive boulders to the bare dirt and sliver of shade between them, but Rori stretched out in the full sun with a sigh like the sound of a wave breaking on a graveled beach.

Thanks to the steep rise of this particular hill coupled with his elven sight, Salamander could indeed look straight down to the army below. He was searching specifically for the white garments that marked the priestesses of Alshandra and the white mules they generally rode as well. Fortunately for his plans, he saw a good two dozen women in white, surrounded by slaves and servants, all in darker clothing, and among the horses, a little herd of white mules. The large number of priestesses in fact surprised him, until he remembered that their Holy Witness Raena had died in Cerr Cawnen. Most likely they were planning on founding a temple and shrine once the army had taken the city.

He could also pick out the tiny figures of the warriors by the glint and glimmer of their weapons and the mail they wore under long surcoats. It was odd, he reflected, that they’d chosen to ride in armor. Were they expecting an enemy force, out here in the wilderness? Or was it some mark of manhood among them, to expose themselves to heat and exhaustion by riding encased in metal on a summer’s day?

“Rori?” he called out. “Are you asleep?”

“I’m not.” The dragon slithered to the rim of the outcrop and hung his head over the edge to reply. “Why?”

“The Horsekin are riding fully armed. Do you know why?”

“The slaves, of course.” Rori paused for a huge yawn. “When you depend upon slaves, you fear your slaves. I learned that in Bardek. Here they are, some hundreds of miles from home. If all those slaves rose up to murder them, they’d have a nasty fight of it.”

“So they keep their weapons close to their hands, not on a wagon or suchlike where the slaves could steal them.”

“Exactly. Any more questions?”

“None for the nonce, my thanks.”

“Good.” Rori slid his bulk back from the edge. “Wake me when the army saddles up again.”

Waking a sleeping dragon struck Salamander as dangerous enough for a proverb, but he could always, he decided, throw rocks from a distance.

Salamander sat down cross-legged and braced his back against the rock face behind him. He went into a light trance in order to stay fully conscious and alert while he formed the Alshandra image in his mind. He imagined her as a towering figure, her honey-blonde hair pulled back into a single braid, her face grim and glowering with disapproval. He gave her mail to wear and a bow and arrows to carry. Once she lived apart from his will, he slowed his breathing and sank down into a deeper trance.

On the etheric plane the Alshandra image took on dimension and life. She seemed to breathe; she moved this way and that in the billowing blue light. Her hands raised the bow then lowered it. The long years of ritual worship by her cult had formed and ensouled astral images, creating a reservoir of power to quicken such creations as this. When Salamander rose up in his body of light, a silver flame that wrapped him round like a cloak and hood, the image rose with him, then drifted off on its own. After a struggle, he managed to haul it back.

Below him, the army—to his etheric sight—had dissolved into a pulsing river of auras, mostly red shot with gold, while the servants moved through wrapped in darker browns and grays. He could pick out the priestesses by their silver auras, steady points of pure light glowing in the mass yet somehow set apart. All around the sunlight energized the etheric substance in sparks and ripples of silver. The astral tide of Fire was rising and merging with the tide of Aethyr.

Salamander spotted a long wave of Fire energy flowing downhill and launched his image upon it. As she floated toward her worshipers below, she raised her arms and nodded her head. A priestess saw her and shrieked, pointing at the image. In a swirl of silver auras all the holy women turned toward her and began to chant, their signal to the army that their goddess had appeared.

Salamander heard the warriors’ sudden howl of greeting—“Hai! Hai! Hai!”—as a distorted wave of etheric sound, echoing and moaning through the blue light. Long streamers of red and gold swirled upward from the auras of the worshipers below. As their chant and the army’s howls rose toward the image, she battened on the etheric energy that rose with it.

Now came the crux. Could he control the thing? He sent his mind out toward the image and felt as if he’d slammed into a stone wall. The priestesses, with their instinctive dweomer fed by years of worship, had surrounded their goddess with such an outpouring of emotional force that he had no chance whatsoever of reaching the image, not in any subtle way.

In a fit of ill temper Salamander sailed downhill after the false Alshandra. He invoked the Light that shines behind all gods and begged it to destroy the false image he had created. In answer, the tide of Fire brightened around him. He used his flame-clad arm to draw a massive pentagram made of the sparkling light and hurled it at the image.