The Dragon Lord Read online

  Efficiently. That was definitely what rankled, what had created the tiny flutter of uncertainty beneath his breastbone. It might have begun as embarrassment over the real and figurative ways he had been handled, but now it was much, much more. Suspicion was growing to certainty that there was another purpose behind what had happened, one beyond lust or curiosity or – and he would have accepted the reason gratefully – boredom on a foggy afternoon.

  With Kyrin, even with Gueynor, he might have been lying cuddled together with a quiet affection he would never feel for this bedmate or she for him. Kyrin had been right when once she had called him a romantic, because Kathur made love, and the word ‘love’ was itself a lie, like a professional. All was sensation, nothing was emotion, because emotion took time and to a whore time was money. That was a heartless judgement, but Aldric’s mind flashed to his first sight of her, the night she stalked into the tavern common-room in her furs with her guards to either side. Then he had wondered if she was noble or a top-rank courtesan. Now he knew.

  “Care killed a cat, my Kourgath.” Her spiked fingernails raked all the way down his spine. “What’s wrong?” Aldric shivered, for only a marble statue wouldn’t have responded to that contact, and set his glass aside before unsteady hands spilled its contents all across his lap. Not, he thought with another luxurious shudder, that such an accident would inconvenience Kathur in the slightest.

  “I told you already. Nothing’s the matter.” He eased himself free of her embrace. “I was thinking, that’s all.”

  “Then think about me.” She made the suggestion in a voice like cinnamon and hot honey as she relaxed into an inviting sprawl of naked limbs. Aldric looked and swallowed hard, then closed his eyes and took a deep breath he regretted at once as the lungful of dreamsmoke daubed rainbow patterns across the insides of his eyelids and through the echoing caverns of his mind.

  “Doamne diu!” he snarled. It needed no translation, one blasphemous expletive sounded much like another, and Kathur laughed at him then sprinkled more ymeth on the nearest censer. “Lady, stop that…!” Aldric protested, then turned it into a half-hearted shrug. “I’m less accustomed to this stuff than you are.”

  “It should take your mind off the battlerams in the harbour.”

  “Battlerams?” His face was a masterpiece of innocent inquiry, wasted effort because her spy had been with him at the time and had somehow made a report before the afternoon turned busy.

  “Battlerams,” Kathur repeated.

  “The Imperial military doesn’t like Albans much,” Aldric said, as if that explained everything.

  “To the Black Pit with the military! I like at least one Alban very much.”

  “Thank you, lady. But whose ships are they?” Kathur’s lips compressed for maybe half a second and her heavy-lidded eyes flicked wide open, but Aldric, staring pensively at the crawling glow of sparks in one of the incense burners, missed it all.

  “Curiosity killed a cat, hlens’l,”

  “Care, now curiosity.” Aldric smiled a smile as bright and false as paste jewels. “What have the Empire’s proverb-makers got against cats?” She didn’t seem particularly amused.

  “Why the sudden interest in battlerams? You’ve been fretting over something ever since you came back from the harbour. Tell me about it. A sympathetic ear might make you feel better.”

  “What about sympathetic lips?” It sounded evasive even to him, and Kathur didn’t reply. She just stared and waited for an answer. Aldric met that stare for maybe a minute then gave up, lay down with his head cradled on crossed arms and told her. Not what she wanted to know but what he wanted her to know, which wasn’t the same thing at all. Nearly, but not quite. He knew from experience that edited truth sounded more convincing than the best-thought-out lie, and right now he had no honour-bound compunctions about misleading her. None at all.

  “In spring of this year,” he began, “I took passage aboard an Elherran merchant ship. Unarmed, of course. But a battleram sailing under the Grand Warlord’s crest and colours attacked us anyway. Its hautmarin commander claimed the Elherrans was running contraband, and by then we were somewhat shot up and in no mood to argue. The battleram’s marine cadre boarded us and searched from keel to masthead, but didn’t find a thing. So did the hautmarin apologise and offer recompense for all the damage? Did he, hell! The arrogant bastard didn’t give a damn!”

  “Calm down, Kourgath. It doesn’t matter now.”

  “No. Not now. Of course not. You’re right. But can you wonder that I wasn’t happy to see that pack of bloody commerce raiders in the harbour?”

  “I don’t wonder at all. I don’t wonder about many things. It’s better not to wonder about what They do, not in public anyway. They have many ears, and contacts in the most unlikely places.” Kathur didn’t elaborate enough to tell him which They she meant. Instead her lips curved in a small, cold smile and she studied his face for a while as she toyed with the silver crest-collar at his throat. “You worry too much,” she concluded. “And about other people’s problems. That’s a bad thing. Bad for your health, at least while you’re within the Empire’s borders. So we’ll find something to occupy that over-busy mind. Something to help you relax.”

  “Something besides this?” Real or feigned, that incredulity and the expression it put on his face was enough to make Kathur laugh.

  “This, as you coyly call it, is mere diversion. A pleasant way to…” Her words faltered for the merest intake of breath as a phrase or just a word was almost but not quite spoken. “To pass the time. And to convey a little gratitude in a way you seemed to enjoy.”

  Aldric had heard such reasoning before and didn’t like hearing it again, but he kept quiet.

  Kathur rolled over in bed and reached for a slender silken cord running up out of sight through a hole in the ceiling. She tugged it twice, then twice again, and lay back as if exhausted by the effort. Aldric watched her, because despite his other reservations the way her sleek body moved was a pleasure, and as she flopped against the pillows he gave her a broad smile.

  “By the look of you,” he said virtuously, “it might be time to cap those incense burners.”

  *

  For a moment Kathur glared at him, ready to be angry if his teasing turned out to be more than a joke. She had taken enough criticism of her private affairs and conduct from her own brother – who didn’t know the half of it – without more of the same from this hlensyarl who was just part of her work. He was a better-looking and a more enjoyable part than many who had preceded him, but in the long run looks and pleasure changed nothing.

  Her instructions had been concise, direct and not open to interpretation. Find. Identify. Hold. They had arrived twofold, as was the custom, the first a cursory cipher borne on a pigeon’s leg, and the second… Ah yes, the second. Its pigeon was a Falcon, a weary, dirty horseman in the yellow crest-coat of the Imperial couriers with a message lead-sealed in a leather pouch. Using a Falcon had told her of this mission’s importance even before she read what he had brought her.

  The whole thing had Voord’s touch about it.

  There was his arrogance, using a rider forbidden to all but the Imperial Household. There was his sense for the dramatic, which had prompted the risky gesture. And there was his foul mind, in the clinical precision of the prose which set out in graphic detail what he wanted her to do.

  But that was Voord’s way. He was always fastidious and excessively neat in everything he did, no matter how perverse. Kathur hadn’t forgotten and would never forget the whimpering, agonized, ecstatic night the Vlechan tested her fitness for recruitment, and she shuddered with revulsion as a conscious effort crushed the memory back into the dark and dirty part of her subconscious where it stayed confined. Then he had been kortagor; now he was hautheisart, promoted again at the end of summer for something unspecified. What it might have been she didn’t know and wouldn’t dare to guess, because if the rumours spoke the truth, Voord was stranger than ever.

 
And if so, what did that make her?

  The thoughts tumbled through her mind like images glimpsed on the flicking pages of a thumbed book, and during those few seconds the Alban’s gaze remained locked with hers until she looked away. It was a stare up from under his brows that Kathur hadn’t seen before and would as soon not see again, for it made her feel wary of him for the first time in their brief acquaintance.

  No. It made her feel afraid.

  There was another side to the coin, another reason for fright which had nothing to do with any threat Kourgath-eijo might pose. Rather the reverse. There was a warmth within her that was more than the familiar aftermath of loving. She knew that sensation well enough to recognise this one as somehow different. It went beyond the physical into something which she knew was impossible in so short a time; not love, or the convenient form of it used so often by the song- and storymakers, but far more than merely business.

  She was becoming involved.

  It was something Kathur hadn’t felt for any man since… Since a very long time ago. A sense of responsibility, a feeling that might in time become concern. It was something she neither understood nor wanted and, for the first time ever, the thought of disobeying her instructions crossed her mind. These instructions, from that source. In its wake came a nauseating spasm of terror, because disobedience would mean a reckoning later with Lord-Commander Voord. But if she obeyed as she had always done, if she followed her orders as she had always done…

  Then she would have to meet her own eyes in the mirror forever afterwards, and admit to the guilt and the betrayal and the dishonour she would see reflected there.

  She was thinking the unthinkable. And she didn’t know why.

  *

  Had she thought to search amid the tangle of Aldric’s discarded clothing, Kathur might have found a reason for the thoughts troubling her so much. Concealed from sight in the lining of a tunic pocket, yet close enough for her to touch had she known of its presence, was the spellstone of Echainon.

  Had she known, and had she touched, she would have felt the crystal’s surface warm against her skin. Not hot, not painful, but as comforting as the sun on a summer day or the body of a lover in the night. And had she thought to listen she might have heard a melodious humming on the outer edges of awareness, a sound never caught by concentration, only by chance.

  Had she known, or heard, or touched, or even looked close enough, she would have found the crystal suffused with a misty blue radiance from the hair-fine spiralling of sapphire flame deep down at its core. That above all might have answered her unspoken question as to the source of those strange thoughts, for the spellstone’s light pulsed with a rhythm Kathur would have recognised at once.

  It was the beat of her own heart.

  *

  Two men walked through the twilight along a fogbound road.

  They walked slowly, for one was no longer as strong as his burly appearance suggested, and his face wore the grey, haggard look of a man recovering from a grave illness. They walked slowly, because the other was white-bearded, old, and moved as if every one of his many years was a lead weight in the pack strapped to his drooping shoulders.

  He leaned heavily on the black walking-stave in his right hand, yet also seemed to cringe away from all but the most necessary contact. It was as if the thing was hot, had burned him before and was waiting for another chance to do so. There were beads of moisture on his forehead which hadn’t condensed from the fog. Suddenly he cried out, with a note of resigned familiarity, and let the staff clatter to the ground. Both sounds were flat and dead, muted by the fog-thick air. He stared at the fallen staff with something close to loathing, but made no move to pick it up.

  “Again?” There was sympathy in ar Korentin’s voice.

  “Again.” Gemmel pressed his hands together and flexed their fingers, trying to soothe away the pain. “It keeps on drawing power. Never enough at once as to do me lasting harm, always with enough rest between times for me to recover. And then it happens again…!” One booted foot shifted as though he considered kicking the fallen Dragonwand, then settled again as he thought better of the idea.

  “Why? What does it want with so much power?”

  “Your guess, Dewan, is as good as mine. And I don’t know why or what. It no longer obeys me. You saw that on the beach in Alba.”

  “Then give it what it wants. Give it more than it can handle. Let it gorge itself to death!”

  “No!” Gemmel was appalled by the suggestion. “I’ve no idea what Ykraith’s capacity might be, and I’m reluctant to find out. I might not survive the experience.”

  “Then…” Dewan hesitated, brow furrowing as he tried to make sense of sorcery’s alien concepts with a mind not trained to its rules of logic. “Then give the little you say it always takes, that it’s always taken despite all you do to prevent it. But this time give freely. Don’t resist.”

  “An interesting proposition.”

  “Try it. What have you got to lose?”

  “My life, perhaps.” With an open hand Gemmel forestalled Dewan’s protest, if protest it was and not another untutored attempt to verbalise the workings of magic. “But I’ll try. Anything’s better than this. I can’t use the Dragonwand and I’m growing afraid to carry it, but I daren’t just walk away and leave it.” He stooped to recover the spell-stave, but in stooping caught an odd look of puzzlement on Dewan’s face and hesitated. “What’s the matter now?”

  “A thought, no more. Shouldn’t you find an answer to what I asked? Before you offer the power it wants, learn why it wants the power.” Gemmel jerked his hand away from the Dragonwand as if it had changed to a venomous snake, and the glare he directed at ar Korentin was just as venomous.

  “You contradict yourself as easily as my son!” he snapped. “Do, then don’t do. Make up your mind!” Gemmel’s reluctance wasn’t just about how much power the talisman might take, but how that power would be used. His mind’s eye could still see the summoning on Dunacre Beach as clearly as if its colossal bulk was hanging overhead right now, one whose form was not what he intended, but which fitted Ykraith’s name all too well.

  It was a dragon, summoned by the Dragonwand.

  Gemmel lifted the spellstave and stared at the design which ran from end to end as if seeing the serpentine inlay for the first time. Or as if gaining a new insight from its shape. Not knowing whether hope or fear was the stronger, he supported the talisman’s dark length on the palms of both his outstretched hands and shaped a spell-pattern in his mind. His power, the knowledge and skill that made him a sorcerer rather than a harper or a scholar or so many other things, was focussed by that pattern and flowed through it into the dragon-shaped coil that wrapped around Ykraith.

  This time there was no pain, only warmth on his open hands like rubbing them together on a winter’s day, and a tremor in all his muscles as if he had set down a heavy weight after holding it too long. That was all. Gemmel raised his eyebrows and turned to ar Korentin with the beginnings of a smile on his face. It was a wary smile, but a smile nonetheless.

  “Was I right?” Dewan asked.

  “Well done, the untrained mind! Sometimes I’m too subtle for my own good. Yes. You were right. It didn’t hurt me, and it didn’t drain more than I offered even though the channelling was wide open.”

  “So what use can it make of the power? Have you answered that yet?”

  “I think so. Dewan, you know the name of this talisman. You know where it came from. And you know what else was there.” Ar Korentin’s gaze jerked south and west, towards the distant sea lost in the mist and the yet more distant island lost over the unseen horizon.

  “Is it wakening? I remember what happened last time!”

  “It’s already awake. Indeed, it’s slept only lightly since the day Aldric took this from the Cavern of Firedrakes. That young man gained a deal more than he could imagine when Ymareth—”

  The spellstave began to make a droning like bees in clover, though it was a
vibration more felt in the air than heard aloud, and he fell silent. Both men stared at the talisman, Dewan with awe and wonder, Gemmel with nervous anticipation. There was a soft, explosive sound like that of a great breath held in too long, and white light burst from the crystalline flame of its carven dragonhead. It hung between them like a captive star, bleaching the fog to silver and etching their shadows across it with the clarity of charcoal on new paper.

  An instant later there was only afterglow. The bolt of energy had ripped through the fog with stunning speed, and fled out of sight to leave the dull day duller yet. But both had seen the direction of its flight, south and west towards the sea and that which lay beyond.

  “Lord God,” breathed Dewan ar Korentin, respect and disbelief mingled with the oath.

  “No,” Gemmel corrected him. “Not Lord God. Lord Dragon.”

  *

  The island had never been an inviting place, not even when it was lush and green with growing things. That time was long past. Now it was black and grey and desolate. What few trees remained more than a memory were charcoal stumps. All else was ash and blasted naked rock.

  A thin plume of smoke drifted lazily from the island’s solitary mountain, vented in gusts like exhaled breath from the yawning crater where once its tapered peak had been. But there was no other sign of a convulsion in the bowels of the earth, no black rivers of once-molten rock, none of the great bubble-pitted cinders flung out by such activity. There was only the aftermath of heat.