A Guile of Dragons Read online

“In a way,” Merlin replied. “Hereabouts, and elsewhere, too, they talk about the Coranians as if they were a different breed of humankind. But they weren’t, really—just some people with . . . with a common idea. An idea with certain merits, I’ve come to realize. Someday I’ll bring you to the Northhold of the Wardlands. There you can still see the graves of the Corain, the high kings of the Coranians.”

  “Are they so impressive?” Nimue wondered.

  “In a way. At night.” There was an odd tone in his voice—pride mixed with shame or grief.

  They were nearly at the tower; it loomed over the nearby trees.

  “Who is Earno?” The question, so often on her mind, was out of her mouth before she was aware of it. But she decided, belatedly, that it was only fair that Merlin have a warning, however oblique, of his imminent danger.

  But Merlin was serenely, stupidly unflappable. “Have I mentioned him to you? That seems odd. He’s a vocate, a member of the Graith of Guardians. He killed a dragon once—his chief claim to fame.”

  “Many knights have done as much.” Despite her words, Nimue was impressed. Imagine old Earno with a mailcoat and a longsword! she thought, and smiled.

  “So they say,” Merlin agreed dryly. “But this was no sickly Scandinavian hole-dweller. Kellander Rukh was his name, full master of a guile of dragons. To defeat such an enemy is something to boast about, and to give him credit, Earno never does. Not really. Earno was a man to watch at one time, but he missed his chance somehow. Not a player, just a piece; he follows Lernaion’s faction on the Graith. He has some cause to dislike me.”

  “Then you’re in danger from him.”

  Merlin stopped walking and took her hands. “No. He had some suspicions, but Lernaion reined him in. I am perfectly safe.”

  “But the Third Summoner—suppose—”

  “Be at peace. I am the Third Summoner. There. Now you know something worth knowing.” He squeezed her hands once more, let them go and walked into the green shadows at the base of the tower.

  Nimue followed silently. There was nothing more to say. And if there were, she would not.

  The tower spiraled, hornlike, above the green-gold tops of the nearby trees. It was set on a gray rock carven with strange letters. There were no stairs ascending the sheer rock, but Merlin wasn’t concerned.

  “‘Venhadhur,’” he read. “A king’s name. The epitaph is mere bombast. He must have been very late, a semibarbarian petty king of mixed Coranian ancestry. Otherwise he would have been buried near the Hill of Storms in the Northhold.”

  “You taught me to read the secret speech, but I can’t read this.”

  “Yes, yes. It’s a Firbolgi script, if I’m not mistaken. But I beg you to remember, my dear, it is not ‘the secret speech,’ nor ‘Coranian.’ It is the language of the Wardlands—Wardic, some call it. Aha. Look at this, now.”

  He had made one of the carven words recede, revealing a small lever.

  “This is very clever workmanship,” he said, “but it won’t last. Look at the cracks in that tower! Much of the foundation is based on spells that are now fading. In a century, no one will know this tower was ever here. The Coranian makers could have learned something from their enemies, the dwarves.”

  He pulled the lever and stood back. Part of the stone split open and moved aside, revealing a curved stairway that led deep under the rock.

  “That’s strange,” Merlin remarked. “No treasury; no coffin. There is something on that bottom step, however. Wait here; I’ll just go see what it is.”

  She had no intention of going down. This was the very moment of betrayal, and she didn’t want to be near him when he discovered it.

  “It’s a summoner’s cloak,” he called up to her, “the long white mantle of office. How odd.” He bent down to examine the cloak. His own cloak, which he kept wrapped over his shoulders to conceal the crook in them, fell away. He ignored that. Gingerly, almost as if he could not help himself, he reached down to touch the white cloak.

  Abruptly the white cloak rose of its own accord and fell about Merlin in tightening folds. He began to cry out some words, perhaps some sort of counterspell. She might have gone to him then, in spite of everything, but Earno was at her side, holding her arm in an unbreakable grip.

  The stone began to grate shut over the stairwell. Soon the rock was a single piece again, and Merlin had disappeared underneath it.

  She turned on Earno, venting on him the shame and rage she felt for herself. “Liar! You said he wouldn’t be harmed!”

  “He hasn’t been,” the stocky red-bearded man replied patiently, deliberately. “Give me a moment and we’ll speak with him.”

  He took a piece of silvered glass and a diamond stylus from a pocket in his cloak. He scraped a few symbols on the mirror and muttered some words latent with power. She could feel the spell activate, and the mirror went dark. Somehow, although there was no light in the glass, she could see Merlin in the darkness, struggling with his bonds in the underground chamber.

  “Merlin!” Earno called through the glass.

  Merlin’s swaddled form grew still. “It is Earno, isn’t it?” he replied, his voice rising through the glass with an odd echoing ring.

  “Yes.”

  “This trap has been ingeniously prepared.”

  “I only had to change the cell slightly. It was a Coranian tomb at one time.”

  “And now it is mine. Ironic.”

  “On the contrary. I suggest you induce a withdrawal trance until I return with the Two Summoners. It may take some months, as time runs here, to navigate the Sea of Worlds.”

  “And if I choose to starve, or die of thirst, instead?”

  “Then the partisans of the Ambrosii will mourn, and a terrible danger will have been removed from the Wardlands.”

  “Earno! Listen. The Wardlands are in danger. That’s why we need unity. The realm will need to use all its . . . resources with . . . with efficiency—”

  “Merlin,” Earno interrupted, “when I was a child my rhetor made me spend a full day justifying the notion of setting a monarch over the Wardlands.”

  “And?”

  “I liked my arguments. But I didn’t convince my rhetor or myself. Don’t flatter yourself that you will.”

  “I am impressed, Earno. I’m sorry now I mocked you.”

  “No doubt you are. That woman is here.”

  “I don’t wish to speak to her.”

  “You should. You will not have another chance for some months.”

  “Ah. Of course. She will provide your evidence that I have broken the First Decree.”

  “Yes.”

  “But . . . I don’t understand. Why did she agree? Can you tell me . . . How did you know she would agree?”

  Fear and pain vibrated in Merlin’s glassy voice. Nimue had never heard him speak that way before. She took the mirror from Earno and, ignoring him, told Merlin everything: about her pregnancy, and her fear, and Earno’s promises. They talked a long time, till the sun was westering and a red light filtered through the green trees. Finally, she found herself saying, “But I never promised to testify against you. And I will not.”

  After a long pause, Merlin responded, “I can’t say it doesn’t matter. But, of all people, I should understand. This is not the end, not for such as you and me. So.” Another pause. Then, “As to testifying, they will place you on the Witness Stone. It will place you in rapport with the assembled Graith. The questions you are asked will raise memories the Graith can read. Don’t resist. It’s dangerous and will do no good.”

  The concern in his glassy fragile voice wounded Nimue deeply with love and anger. “But we must fight them!” she cried fiercely.

  Merlin laughed—it sounded as if it hurt him, and it surely hurt her. “Nimue . . . I think we will. With all our strength and sight. At another time. But now you should go. Go away!”

  She handed the mirror to Earno and turned away while he broke the glass and the spell.

  “We’ll take
your horses to the coast,” he said presently. “I have a ship waiting there.”

  They turned their back on the tower and walked in silence for a while, as shadows rose around them.

  “What has he done that is so terrible?” she asked, finally.

  “Many things. But it amounts to one thing: he has conspired to rule the Wardlands. That is not permitted.”

  “Your king forbids it, I suppose. How did he get his power?”

  “There is no king—save One.”

  She guessed this was some sort of religious statement and changed her approach. “Your governors, then. This Graith he spoke of.”

  “The Graith are not governors. We simply defend the border.”

  “Well . . .”

  “I can’t explain,” he said impatiently. “People govern themselves in the Wardlands. No one is permitted to have unrestricted power over anyone else. There is no governor, no class of rulers, as you have in the unguarded lands.”

  “I can’t believe that. It must be chaos.”

  “This Europe of yours, this is chaos.”

  “Not Britain.”

  “Britain is closer to chaos than you might think. The Britain you know is a creation of Merlin Ambrosius. He distorted the history of your world with a power focus I found myself unable to influence, or even fully comprehend. Sages from New Moorhope may be needed to counter-inscribe it. Once that is done, history will begin to resume its natural shape.”

  “Arthur’s kingdom will last. It’s been foretold.”

  “Maybe. Maybe so. But the French knights have had more than one quarrel with Arthur’s relatives that Merlin had to smooth over. Then there are the Saxons and, for that matter, the Grail cult. Merlin tried to suppress it, but he never quite succeeded. Possibly it was an inevitable side effect of the focus, or there may have been other powers in play—”

  “What does any of this matter to your Graith of Guardians? Your Wardlands are far away, across the sea, you said.”

  “Across the Sea of Worlds,” he said, correcting her. “Yes, it is far away, worlds away. But Merlin was creating an alliance of warriors and seers that the Graith might have been unable to defeat. Now you understand, I suppose.”

  “Is he so evil for this? Will you put him to death? He said—”

  “His motives don’t matter. His actions threaten the realm I swore to protect. I don’t judge; I defend.”

  “So you will kill him.”

  “No. If the Graith finds he has broken the First Decree—and they will—he will be sent into exile. He must leave the Wardlands and never return.”

  They didn’t speak again until they had almost reached the horses. Then Nimue turned to Earno and said, “What did he mean when he said, ‘I’m sorry I mocked you’?”

  Earno Dragonkiller shook his head and did not answer.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The Sea of Worlds

  Nimue tried to escape from Earno fifteen times on the ride from Broceliande to the coast. Each time she failed. Earno didn’t seem to resent it; he explained he had been a ship’s officer for many decades and he was used to chasing down men who had jumped ship. He wasn’t ill-tempered, but he was relentless. The next day they reached the stony pink shores of Bretagne where his ship was waiting, and the reluctant Nimue was still in tow.

  It was an odd ship indeed to Nimue’s eyes. The wood of the hull looked blue and shiny like glass; and it was smooth and cold like glass under her fingers when Earno helped (or forced) her to climb aboard. The interior of the ship was just ordinary wood, as far as she could tell, so she guessed the exterior was like paint or glaze applied to decorate the ship. She didn’t know how one could do this with glass, but she added it to her list of things she was eager to know.

  The single sail was pale and translucent, as if it was woven from glass. It moved in the wind, as sails will, but when Earno hauled it high and cast off from the shore, Nimue noticed that the wind that moved the sail was not the wind she felt on her face. The world’s wind was from the northwest, and should have driven Earno’s shining blue craft back onto the rose-pale rocks of the Breton coast. The shining sail felt the wind from some other quarter, some other world, and carried them westward, straight into the Ocean.

  She wanted to ask about the boat and the sail and the wind, but Earno brushed her off. “I will answer all your questions in time,” he said. “But now I have a course to lay out. I prefer to travel with a navigator, but that wasn’t possible on this trip.” He sat on a bench outside the little ship’s single cabin and fiddled with a slate and a spidery sort of compass which had a number of legs that moved independently.

  Nimue solemnly watched the coast fade behind her, then turned to look ahead. She had never been on a long sea voyage, and she wondered what it would be like. Ahead of them was a clot of darkness and fog, strangely out of place in the bright clear afternoon.

  “Earno,” she said, “there is a dark patch ahead of us.”

  “Excellent,” he replied.

  The patch grew larger as they grew nearer—actually larger, not just apparently larger. Soon it stretched from horizon to horizon. The mist covered sun and sky like a curtain. She felt her heart fall suddenly, as if she were losing something she could never regain.

  Earno got up from time to time to adjust the tiller or the sail, but apart from that he was absorbed in calculations. She moped at the rail of the ship, idly staring into the fog.

  As she did so, strange notions began to grow in her head. Ordinary fog veils sight by putting something in the way of everything else, but this fog seemed to be too full of things for any one thing to be seen clearly. But if she concentrated, she could see things in it: faces, and human forms, and inhuman forms, and dark shapes like islands, although they moved past very quickly, much more quickly than she thought they were sailing. She heard voices, too, a mingled chorus of ghosts and shadows like a crowd on tournament days, everyone saying so much that none of it made any sense.

  Then another ship passed quite near them. It was only a boat, really. But it was quite clear in the darkness and fog, because of an orange lantern hanging on the stern. A ghostly pale old man was pulling the oars, singing a sad song in a happy voice. Nimue didn’t know the words, but they moved her inexpressibly. In the prow sat a dark-skinned child or dwarf. The boat came into view, passed alongside them, began to vanish in the mist.

  Earno was wrapped up in his calculations. If he didn’t notice the splash when she struck the water, she might reach the other boat and be well away before he saw she was gone. And, with escape attempts, perhaps the sixteenth time was the charm. Hoping that was so, Nimue jumped from the blue craft into the sea.

  Except she never did strike the water. She found herself adrift in the dense mist alongside the blue craft, the other boat quite gone. She felt strange; she could suddenly hear all the voices sighing in the mist. And now they did make sense. It was she who didn’t. Didn’t make sense at all, would never make sense again. The blue craft began to get rather vague and indefinite, as if it were farther away in the foggy sea-that-was-not-a-sea.

  Then Earno was there, bending over the rail. He grabbed her by the hair and dragged her back into the blue craft.

  “You must not do that again,” he said to her. “Please believe this for your own safety: the time for escape has passed. This is like no worldly sea you may know; it may transform those reckless enough to pass through it. Our course and the magical intentions sealed into the hull will protect us, but if you leave the ship you may be changed or destroyed.”

  She did believe him, but she guessed his warning came too late. She already felt different. The voices she had heard in the mist were still in her head, and her belly had changed size and shape; she was more pregnant than she had been this morning.

  She lay on the deck, her head sodden with alien dreams, a strange life moving tentatively within her, and waited for her next chance.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Witness Stone

  There wer
e voices in Nimue’s head all the time now. Only some of them were her own, and those weren’t the most interesting ones.

  People, she found, were like choirs of singers, not all of whom were singing the same tune. Very often the same thought, the same words, were sung very differently by the mind’s many mouths.

  She was standing once on a street in A Thousand Towers—a city much greater than any she had seen. And a woman was saying to a man, “I will see you at Three Hills House when Trumpeter sets.” That was what she was saying with the mouth in her face, the least important of her many mouths. But inside her, she was screaming it with fear. She was crooning it with desire. She was gnashing the words angrily like broken teeth. She was grieving over them like dead children.

  And the man said nothing, but smiled at a woman who wasn’t there at all. They walked off in different directions, unaware that they had never really been in the same place, would never be.

  But Nimue stayed, and watched, and listened to the things that people said, and the things that they really said.

  She never tried to escape anymore. She had no idea where the Wardlands were, what part of the map they were on, if they were on any map. But she knew she didn’t know how to get from here back to where she was from, and she had a thin frosty feeling from the future that she would never see the old places again.

  She wasn’t terribly upset about that. She had seen the spires of Camelot and the walls of Paris. She had even seen Rome, where fingers of broken stone accused the uncaring sky and a frightened baron and his knights crouched behind a curve of the dirty green river and called themselves the kings of the world. She had heard wilder tales of the east with its many cities and silken roads. But she didn’t believe there was any city on Earth like A Thousand Towers.

  The many towers that gave the city its name were mostly very old, from a time when the city was bound by its walls. But they were all in excellent repair, working homes for the ancient families that lived in them. She herself was housed in one: Tower Ambrose, ancestral home of Merlin and his notorious kin. Every morning she climbed to its height and watched the sun rise out of the west, over the steep ragged ridge of the Hrithaen Mountains.