A Dragon at Worlds' End (35 page)

Ribela finished her austere meal, washed it down with tea, and performed some stretching exercises.

Sleep in her current state was out of the question. But she could achieve a restful meditative state. She crossed her legs beneath her and closed her eyes and composed her mind for the shift in modes. Her breathing became deep and regular; a count of seven through the left nostril and seven through the right was her favorite pattern.

There came the familiar dislocation, the feeling that the surrounding world was receding and growing silent. Darkness and peace entered her soul, and with them came a spreading relaxation.

She murmured a prayer to the Mother and the centering presence of the universe for which she dedicated her life. Once more she floated in perfect solitude in the emptiness. At this point she was ageless, connected in a heartbeat to the young woman, Ribela of Defwode, who had first explored the great powers of the white magic of the witches. It was she who had codified it and taught it to the Defwode coven, and from there to the world. She had located its secrets in this dark, solitary place in her mind. Here lay the essential Tao of existence and with it the ways of altering the vibrations of being and mastering the subtle energies underlying them.

For Ribela this was a blissful state.

And then quite suddenly she was aware of another presence. A horrifying intrusion, something that had never happened before. She recoiled in shock, but before she could even open her eyes and disengage, the presence exploded across her inner horizon like a vast thundercloud, lit from below with flickering lightning. And from the cloud came communication.

It was unintelligible. Like tiny voices shouting far away, the noise of the insects. Ribela knew at once that it was the High Ones, the strange, mercurial beings known as the Sinni.

Suddenly the voices of angels were singing around her, and perfect alabaster-white faces, elven faces, appeared to float in front of her eyes.

The most bizarre images flickered in her mind.

The white angel faces metamorphosed into the faces of insects with huge green eyes. A glass globe, with the continents of Ryetelth upon it, spun slowly and then fell from its cradle to smash in slow motion upon the floor, pieces flying in all directions, spinning, whirling, lost.

And then all went black, and in lightning flashes she glimpsed a vast edifice, walls that were miles long, towers and battlements beyond assault, huge gates that frowned over a precipice. Ribela shivered. Surely this was the Heptagon of the dread Lord Waakzaam, the largest single structure in the universe on the dead world Haddish. But what did it mean?

Then the oppressive sight was gone and was replaced by a scene of flat savanna upon which burned a hot sun.

Enormous monsters of antiquity placidly grazed in the thickets. Their huge heads were surmounted by frills of bone from which two deadly horns projected above the eyes, while a third horn stabbed up from their nose. They were the most dangerous herd animal that had ever existed, a river of enormous life, eating its way across an ancient continent.

Eigo, this was a view of the Lands of Terror in the heart of the southern continent. And then the monsters were gone and were replaced with a view of a city of white marble, seeming to float above a blue lake. A pyramid faced in marble dominated the rest. Out of that pyramid floated a face, all alone, and she realized with a start that she knew that face. It was a certain dragonboy from the Marneri Legions, a boy she had known quite well during the terrible struggle in Ourdh several years before.

The Sinni could not communicate easily with humans. It was as if thunderclouds wished to speak to ants; there was no basis to even begin. But Ribela understood.

They wanted her to find Relkin of Marneri. There was a message that he must hear, and things he must do, but they, the High Ones, could not contact him themselves. Ribela must do it. At once. There was not a moment to lose.

At last the shock struck home.

"But he is dead!" she said, breaking the silence of her cell.

Relkin's image remained vibrant.

"But the volcano…" she began, and then fell silent. They believed that he lived, though how he had survived the events retold by Lessis was hard for Ribela to grasp.

Somehow he had survived; that was all that mattered. She recalled what the dragons had said about Relkin. That he was harder to kill than a ratbug. If anyone could have survived the inferno, it would be Relkin.

"That little rascal is still alive. Well, well."

Ribela had a moment of fond feeling. She sighed. That's what came from this constant exposure to people. Then she had another thought. She must be sure to tell Lessis.

"But where is he?" she whispered.

The image returned of the savanna, and in the distance a great range of snowcapped mountains. A shoreline on which a warm sea beat endlessly.

"Eigo, of course, but Eigo is a big place."

The marble city floated above the blue lake. The view had shifted to show a steep-sided peninsula that jutted into the lake. Atop the hill was a turret bearing a massive statue of a man with arms extended.

Ribela knew at once what it was.

"The statue of Bos. He is in Mirchaz."

Ribela gave a nervous shiver. Alas, what dreadful mischance had lured Relkin to that nest of evil? There, locked away in isolation, dwelled the fallen lords of Gelderen. Long ago they had forsaken the world and hidden themselves in their fastness.

Since then they had been known only for their perversities, their massive population of slaves, the vileness of their imagined universe. They had grown fell and evil and ignored the world outside their savage realm. For Relkin to have landed among them did not bode well.

The final image was mysterious; three moons tumbled through the sky, their surfaces cratered in an interesting way.

Abruptly the thundercloud in her mind shrank to a sphere and then to a pinpoint and was gone in a clap of psychic thunder that left her shaken as she emerged from the remains of her meditation.

She put out a hand to steady herself. This was not the way one usually came out of meditation mind.

But already she was thinking through what she would need. The first thing would be a couple of dozen prime young mice.

The Ardu fleet now consisted of five longboats, a dozen smaller ones, and the raft, on which reposed the dragon. The raft was a crude affair. It sagged beneath Bazil's weight and was devilishly difficult to steer. Frequently it snagged. As the days went by, the front became waterlogged and began to dip. Some of the bindings were coming apart and the logs shifted every time he moved.

Bazil realized that the Ardu were not nearly as good at building rafts as the imperial engineers that he was used to. He recalled with sad fondness the huge rafts on which the Legions had floated down the great River Chugnath on their way to the Inland Sea. Those rafts had been tight, their bindings taut and their upper surfaces dry. The Ardu raft was soon halfway waterlogged and Bazil's feet were wet the whole time.

This wasn't a problem at first; wyvern dragons were designed to swim. But he had cuts on his feet that began to fester. Nothing Lumbee could do would stop it, since they were in the river water all the time.

Finally they had to call a halt and let Bazil's feet heal in the sun while the Ardu men did their best to rebuild the raft. After two days the cuts were mending and the raft was much reinforced. They resumed their progress downstream.

Along the way they had picked up some Ardu who had been abandoned by slavers spooked during the campaign in the forest. They'd been wandering in the forest for months and joined the expedition, eager to kill slavers any way they could. They were happy to throw in their lot with the forest god and his little army.

Towns were few and far between in this region of steep-sided hills and dark, primeval forest. But whenever the travelers came across one, they liberated a few more Ardu, acquired more swords and spears, and left columns of smoke threading the skies above the slaver mansions. In front of them went a swelling tide of fear-stricken fugitives and a growing rumor of terror and war.

Town militias were incapable of dealing with hundreds of Ardu warriors and a battledragon armed with dragon-sword. There was a notable slaughter at a place called Calzac, where a force of about a thousand men gathered, confident in their numbers. They found the Ardu line hard to break, and before it could they were beset by the dragon, who suddenly appeared whirling a huge blade that cut through men by the half dozen in a tight press. The men panicked. A few armed with long spears tried to rally behind their leader, but the Ardu threw war clubs with lethal accuracy and then the dragon broke them up and sent them running.

The Calzac brigade was forced to swim the river after a third of its number had been hewn down or taken captive by the Ardu. In the river, other predators took their toll. Scarcely half the brigade made it to the farther shore. The tale of the Battle of Calzac soon spread down the river and helped to empty the frontier settlements.

In between fights and some fishing, Bazil had little to do. He kept the sword sharp and performed exercises with it at every landfall, to keep his muscles in shape. A good long swim at the end of the day when he went fishing was enough to keep him healthy. The rest of the time he sat silent, trying not to worry.

His overwhelming concern was that he would be too late and that the boy would be dead before he could get there and find him. If boy was dead, he vowed to take a grim revenge on Mirchaz, whatever it was.

In the mornings before they pushed off into the river again, the Ardu practiced the arts of war taught them by Relkin. They formed squares, at first of four men, then of eight, and then of sixteen, and practiced defensive tactics. In actual battle they still lost all cohesion very quickly and became a line or a mob. Still the drills were performed enthusiastically and they were steadily getting better. The Ardu had the sense that this was magic of a high order brought down to them by the forest god and that they must learn it well.

Then they practiced fighting in threes, two men in front armed with newly acquired swords and a third behind them, ready to assist or to stab over their shoulders with the spear. All carried spears now, as well as swords and war clubs. No matter what, they would not give up their war clubs. They had become reasonably proficient in this style of fighting, and with a single commander they might have gone far. As it was, they argued a lot of the time about who should be saying what to whom.

They practiced with the sword, but they had much to learn, and in actual sword combat had taken quite a few casualties in some of the earlier battles. After Calzac, however, few militia groups would stand against them and they passed almost unmolested.

Lumbee had tried to fill the place of the dragonboy. She had tiny amounts of the Old Sugustus antiseptic from Relkin's big pack. She had Ardu poultice lore and herbs and guidance from Bazil himself, who insisted on cleanliness. Water had to be boiled, bandages cleaned. He knew these things from endless lecturing in the Legions. One reason the Legions stayed sharp in the field was that they paid attention to details. Cleaning wounds and using antiseptic was one of the most important of those. They avoided dozens, even hundreds of unnecessary deaths to the deadly infections that could take hold from the smallest cut. Between Lumbee's efforts and Bazil's memory of how things were done, they had cured his feet and kept him in fighting shape.

At night he sat a little apart from the Ardu, by a small fire that they made especially for him. Lumbee brought him food, usually roasted tubers and baked fish. Bazil ate heartily, as always, and felt no shame, since he usually contributed a big river fish to the pot. Sometimes these fish weighed more than two men and were ten feet long. When he had eaten, Lumbee would go over him for cuts and ticks.

As she worked, Lumbee practiced her Verio on Bazil. This always meant she wound up asking the dragon for new words. Nearly always, he was able to supply them. Bazil was surprised at just how much of the human tongue of the Argonath he had absorbed over the years. Indeed, he knew it as well as any man.

On the tenth night on the river, Bazil watched the dragonstars creep above the hills. Lumbee put some more wood on the fire.

"We cannot be far from Mirchaz now."

"How do we know that?" Bazil was depressed. Lumbee did not know it, but she had a sulky dragon on her hands.

"I just feel it. We have come a long way. Mirchaz must be close."

"Bah! This dragon does not feel this. No signs yet of larger towns. In fact there have been fewer of them these last few days. Perhaps we are going in the wrong direction."

"Oh, no, this is the right way to go. Ardu know that much."

"Ardu know too much for own good," rumbled the wyvern.

"We have never been in these places, either, Lord Dragon."

"I am not Lord Dragon. We do not have lords among dragons."

"Yes, uh, Lord Bazil."

He growled in dragonspeech, Lumbee went on blithely. "We know the slavers come up the river. That is all they have to do to reach the Ardu summer land from their city."

"We are lost."

"Lord Bazil, we just have to follow the river."

"You not understand." Bazil seemed on the verge of an outburst. Perhaps he would get up and plunge into the river for a swim, if only to get away from all humans, Ardu and otherwise. He'd done that before. He'd also taken Ecator and savaged some vegetation, even though he knew it would dull the blade. Lumbee didn't know the tricks required to stir the sulky dragon out of his mood and help him settle.

But this time he got a grip on his emotions without any help and slowly damped down the anger and fear that were causing such turmoil in his heart.

"Sorry. You good friend to dragon, Lumbee. This dragon just anxious. Just have to find boy."

Far away, in the city of Andiquant above the harbor of Cunfshon, the Greatwitch Ribela made preparations for great magic.