War in Tethyr (31 page)

The girl turned a tear-drenched face to Nyadnar. "You've got to help her!" she pleaded. "Please!"

"That is not my way."

"Let me
go!"
Chen drummed impotent fists on the tentacle that held her. Then to the sorceress: "I've heard her talk about you. You were her friend."

"I have no friends. I can afford none. My responsibilities are too great."

"You
used
her! How can you just let her die?"

"I employed her services from time to time. She was rewarded suitably, even generously. Where she is now, she came to by her own choice."

Slobbering, the toothed jaws had worked their way to Zaranda's hips. "She'll die! You have to do something!"

"I cannot." A pause. "But you can."

"Me? I'm just a girl! What can I do?"

"You are not
just
a girl, Chenowyn," the sorceress said. "As to what you can do… whatever you choose."

The jaws were about her friend's waist. Zaranda uttered a hawk scream of rage and frustration.

"Damn you!" the girl flared. "Damn you, damn you, damn you! And damn you, too, you great big wad of
filth!"

Her body went rigid with rage. Her hair rose, and her eyes began to glow. Her lips peeled back from her teeth in a grimace of fury…

And her jaws extended forward, telescoping.

Her apprentice was transforming before her eyes. Her skin was darkening toward a brilliant, shiny, red; at the same time it grew visibly thicker, scaly, with an oddly crystalline quality. Face and limbs grew longer, became toothy jaws, forelimbs and legs wickedly clawed. Her skull flattened and broadened, and two long back-curving horns sprouted from its rear. Nubs formed on her back and grew into great ribbed wings.

The deepspawn found itself holding a small but very angry gem dragon. A mouth-arm darted for it, jaws spread wide. The dragon uttered a furious, piercing scream. A spray of brilliant red dust, like rubies ground to sand, gushed from its mouth.

Tough hide and muscle were scoured from the deepspawn's mouth-arm. Skeletonized jaws fell to the floor. The monster drew back a stump gouting green blood.

The dragon-Chen clawed at the tentacle about her waist. What an adolescent girl's fists could not achieve, an adolescent dragon's talons made light of. Ruby talons shredded the tentacle. It let Chen go and jerked away.

Chen's wings exploded from her sides, beat tentatively. She fell on her rump. Rising up on her hind legs, she thrust her head forward and breathed her spray of ruby dust against the neck of the mouth that had worked its way to Zaranda's armpits.

The abrasive spray cut through the arm. The head fell to the floor, jaws working spasmodically. Zaranda began to struggle free.

A tentacle lashed at Chen. Her jaws snapped it through. Then she flung herself at the monster, buffeting it with her wings, lashing it with her tail.

The remaining tentacle snaked out, looped back, wrapped itself around the young dragon's neck. She uttered strangling sounds and beat at it with her wings. It held her up in the air while the surviving mouth-arm trumpeted a cry of triumph.

Zaranda had extricated herself from the still-spasming jaws. Crackletongue lay on the floor nearby. Her right hand would not respond; she snatched the sword up with her left, screamed,
"A star!"
and slashed at the tentacle that was throttling Chenowyn.

With a flash and a crack, a stink of ozone and burned fetid meat, the magic blade cut through the tentacle. The severed end dropped from Chen's neck to writhe on the floor like a snake with a broken back. The stump, spewing foulness, flailed wildly, knocking Zaranda against the wall.

Chenowyn braced her legs, gathered herself, and
breathed.

Corundum spray enveloped the monster. The spawn-heads growing from it opened wide their eyes. They began to scream in a horrid cacophony of voices.

The bulk heaved and flopped, trying to escape the awful torrent of ruby dust. Its skin abraded away, and then its flesh, and that which served it as bones, and its pulsating inner organs. The sprouting bodies withered to skeletons and went quiet.

A psychic scream burst like a sun exploding inside Zaranda's skull. Consciousness left her.

"Oh," Zaranda groaned. She sat up. She felt like Death on a bender. But she was alive, and nothing seemed broken. "Chenowyn?"

"She is well, " the sorceress said, nodding toward the middle of the floor. A very normal-looking human girl lay curled about herself. "Just resting."

"And L'yafv-Afvonn?"

"Destroyed. Or at least, fled to another dimension to avoid dissolution. One from which he cannot return, should he even desire to, for a time longer than the span of your lives, and a dozen generations of your descendants."

The girl moaned, jackknifed. Zaranda was up at once, running to her side, gathering her into her arms.

"What happened?" the girl moaned. "What did I do?"

"I don't know, honey," Zaranda said, "but it sure worked."

"You have saved the balance of the world, which was in danger of being thrown hopelessly awry," Nyadnar said, "You have done well, my daughter."

The others gaped at her. "Yes," the sorceress said, in a tone of voice like none Zaranda had ever heard from her. "You are my child, Chenowyn."

"She's a dragon?" Zaranda demanded. "How could that be? She didn't so much as shimmer in Armenides's dead-magic room; she couldn't have held a polymorph spell. And she's no half-dragon. She's as human as I."

"She is. She is also a dragon-as much as I."

Chenowyn jumped to her feet. "No! It's not true! I'm not a dragon! And stop talking about me like some… some
thing
that's not even here!"

Zaranda seized her hand. "Chen, I love you, no matter who you are-and you will never be a
thing
to me. But you
were
a dragon. I saw."

She straightened and faced the sorceress, one arm around the sobbing girl's shoulders. "How can somebody be both fully human and fully dragon? And what kind of dragon? She's not like any I've ever heard of."

"She is a new thing in the world," Nyadnar said, "A thousand years ago I noted an alarming fact: while you humans are small, short-lived, and weak, and we dragons are great, long-lived, and powerful, your numbers were increasing rapidly, year by year, whereas ours diminished slowly, but steadily.

"One solution-bandied about by the council of wyrms more frequently than it would reassure you to know-has been to eradicate your mayfly kind. I opposed this course of action. For one thing, by the time it came up for debate, I was morally certain it was too late-that were we to attempt any such thing, we should succeed only in hastening our own extinction. For another, I perceived your kind as having a function in the great system of the world, even as dragonkind has.

"Yet I could see the two coming inevitably into conflict. I wished to preserve both races if possible. So I sought to see if I could somehow reconcile them. Many years have I spent in study, in contemplation, and in experimentation. The end result you see before you: a person who is both human and dragon. A super-being, if you will: a ruby dragon."

Zaranda frowned. "I've heard that certain evil wizards of the Dalelands created an artificial woman by magic a few years ago. She didn't turn out as expected, if the story's to be believed."

"You speak of the woman who calls herself Alias of Westgate. I have interviewed her. She was indeed a less-than-pleasant surprise to her creators." The sorceress shook her head. "But the cases are nothing similar. There is nothing artificial about Chenowyn. By means beyond your comprehension I quickened her in my womb, carried her for nine months as a human woman, bore her in pain as a human mother."

"And then you just… turned her out," Zaranda said.

"When it was clear she was strong and would survive, I left her at the Sunite orphanage in Zazesspur." Nyadnar turned to the girl. "I hope you will understand, my daughter. I had to let you make your own way, to prove that this new order of being was viable. I had to let you show you could survive, though it tore at my heart to do so."

"You mean I'm just an
experiment?"
Chenowyn wailed.

"No, not at all. You are, as I said, an entirely new order of being. Possibly superior to anything that has existed on this plane before. And you are my daughter."

"Don't call me 'daughter'!
" The girl turned and bolted from the chamber.

Zaranda ran after her. She got out the door in time to see Chen transform herself into a scarlet-hued dragon and fly upward.

Zaranda looked sidelong at Nyadnar, who stood staring up into the cavern darkness. Her inhumanly beautiful-literally
inhuman,
Zaranda realized-features remained expressionless, but her alabaster hands were knotted into fists.

"Nyadnar," she said gently, "you may've spent a thousand years studying how to give birth to her, but you have a
lot
to learn about being a mother."

A vast crowd thronged the civic plaza. Through the doors of the Palace of Governance, Zaranda emerged, supporting a gravely wounded Stillhawk. Tatrina followed, looking right and left, tentative as a wild animal.

From far back in the crowd, a voice yelled, "All hail Zaranda Star!" The crowd took up the cry in a mighty cheer:
"Hail Zaranda!"

"I hope that wasn't one of our people," Zaranda said to herself.

Duke Hembreon set a halting foot on the bottommost step of the broad concrete stairs. Tatrina's cornflower-blue eyes went wide.

"Daddy?" she said. Then: "Daddy!" and she went flying down the steps into her father's plate-armored arms.

"All part of the service, folks," Zaranda said. Suddenly she had to sit down on the top step. She managed to ease Stillhawk down to lie beside her. "Can somebody fetch a stretcher? My friend here needs care."

An astonishingly beautiful woman in a low-cut crimson robe came bustling up the steps. She had long white-blonde hair done up in an elaborate gleaming coiffure, and a huge gaudy gold Sune pendant a-dangle between her not-particularly well-concealed breasts. A pair of strapping young men in red tunics followed her.

"We shall personally tend this hero's hurts at the Temple of Sune Firehair," she said, clasping her hands before her bosom. "Ooh, he's so handsome!"

Stillhawk, now altogether unconscious, was gathered up and borne away by the ingenue acolytes, trailed by the hand-wringing priestess. Well, Zaranda thought, I guess it's no more than he deserves. He's had a rough day. On the long hike up from the Underdark, the ranger had told her of dying and being resurrected by Shield of Innocence.

Having turned his daughter over to a covey of nurses and seen her carried off in a palanquin, Duke Hembreon approached up the steps again. Zaranda reached to her belt.

"Here," she said, flipping the late King Faneuil I's crown to him. "You might be needing that."

Hembreon fielded it without turning a hair. "It could be so."

"What happened while we were gone?"

"A sudden confusion overtook the darklings. They ceased attacking and fell into a listless state in which they were easily overwhelmed." He looked abruptly apprehensive. "You did dispel whatever evil loosed them upon us, didn't you?"

"Oh, yes. It got dispelled good and hard. So did the late king, unfortunately."

Hembreon's bushy white brows lowered. "You mean that? You mean to call his death unfortunate?"

"I do. He was a good man. He just got in over his head." So to speak, she thought, and shuttered.

"Some short while after the darklings lost direction," Hembreon went on, "many reliable witnesses claimed to have seen a small dragon, scarlet in color, take wing from the roof of the palace. Some said it was a red dragon; others, including the Lord Inselm Hhune, who himself once slew a red dragon, said it was no such thing. It has occasioned considerable debate over whether the apparition was a good omen or ill."

"Oh, that was just my apprentice," Zaranda said. "She's definitely a good omen."

The old duke blinked. Behind him Zaranda saw two more elderly noblemen mounting the steps.

"Good even, Countess Morninggold," said the taller, a very distinguished gentleman with a neat gray mustache. "I wonder if we might discuss an important matter with you."

Zaranda gestured toward the crowded plaza. "As long as you don't mind discussing it in front of fifteen thousand people or so."

"Not at all," the nobleman said. "In fact, the more who hear, the better. I am the Lord Inselm Hhune, and this is my friend and associate, the Lord Faunce."

"Honored, my lords," said Zaranda. She made no effort to rise. She wasn't being rude, merely exhausted. "Lord Hhune, is it? Killed a dragon once, didn't you?"

"Indeed. Now, Countess, we have a proposition to make to you."

Lord Faunce, shorter and rounder than Hhune, dropped to one knee before her. "We crave that you do us the honor of agreeing to be crowned queen of Tethyr."

Zaranda swayed. "I beg your pardon?" she said.

"For some time Lord Faunce and I have belonged to a movement dedicated to restoring monarchy to the land of Tethyr," Hhune said. "Obviously, we had to keep our activities discreet until very recently. We had our reservations-"

"Now more than vindicated," said Faunce.

"-about the former Baron Hardisty, but we felt that restoration of the monarchy was of paramount importance, and so opted not to oppose him. Now, however, we are prepared to offer the crown to you without reservation. Your heroism has saved our land."

"With all due respect, my lords," Zaranda said, "this is crazy. This morning I was a convict under sentence of death; I'm not even supposed to be alive."

"I have already attempted to apologize for that unfortunate turn of events," Hembreon said stiffly.

"That was a gross miscarriage," Faunce said, "and as members emeritus of the city council we add our sincere regrets that it occurred. On the other hand-" his eye twinkled "-the throne might not be considered poor recompense by some."

"Oh, it's more than generous-can you please help me up here?" Hembreon aided her to her feet. "It's just that I'm having a hard time taking it seriously."

"I assure you-" the duke began.

Zaranda waved a hand at him. "I believe you." She took a few paces away, feeling a need for room.

A small form pushed out of the crowd and knelt on the bottom step. It was Simonne of Gond. "I hope you won't hate me for saying this, Zaranda," she said, "but you'd make a very good queen."

"I know you mean that as a compliment, Simonne, but-"

The spectators nearby took up Simonne's words and made them a chant: "Queen Za-RAN-da! Queen Za-RAN-da!" In a moment it had spread across the square.

Zaranda held her hands up. "Wait!" she cried. "QUIET!"

The crowd subsided. "Didn't
anybody
listen to what I told the city council when I was being tried by them? You don't need kings or queens. You need to learn to look out for yourselves and one another. If you don't do that, nothing else means anything."

The Zazesspurians looked at each other. The chant began again, slowly at first, rapidly swelling: "Za-RAN-da! Za-RAN-da! Za-RAN-da!"

She shook her head in disgust. Hembreon tapped her on the elbow. She inclined her head toward him.

"If you are not ready to be crowned," he said, "there is no need to rush into anything. But like it or not, you have just been acclaimed ruler of Tethyr." He smiled gravely. "Would it not be wisest to accept your fate with grace?"

"Well, several times today I've met kicking and screaming what I thought was going to be my fate. I guess it can't hurt to try something new." She turned to the crowd and held both hands clasped above her head-an idiot gesture, she thought, as if she had just won a footrace.

"All right!" she cried as the chant subsided. "I'll do it! I'll be your chief executive, or whatever."

The mob cheered rapturously. And then hundreds of hands were pointing skyward, and voices were crying, "Look!" in tones of mingled fear and wonder.

Zaranda looked up. Selune hung overhead, in a state even the most confirmed pessimist would have to acknowledge was past half-full, with her Tears a glowing trail behind her. Against the moon's face a great shape wheeled, winged and dark.

"Don't worry," she called to the crowd. "She's with me."

She turned to Hembreon. "If you'll excuse me, I have some personal business to attend to." He frowned. "If you could find it in you to say a few words-"

Brightening visibly, the old man stepped forward, raising his arms. "Friends, fellow Zazesspurians, countrymen and -women-" he began. The mob booed lustily.