Bloodstone (31 page)

Wherever he went, people were always pushing him, testing him, trying to see if what they’d heard about the Shadow Man was true, and then treating him like a pariah when he proved their fears. Once he discovered the effect seeing him caused, he dared not unveil to anyone.

Except for those would-be robbers,
the Voice in his head said.

They deserved what they got.
They’d goaded him, ignored his warnings and forced the Shadow upon themselves. He thanked Kiros at least Ulerroth understood the Shadow Man’s needs, providing a haven where he could trade in peace. But Ar-Deneth was of no concern here, now. He needed to deal with the problems at hand—a fat man and a sick old fool who understood nothing about where they were or how they should behave.

And the sick old fool had lain in his pool.

By your own choice,
the Voice in his head said.

I don’t recall having much of a choice.
But the damned voice was right, as usual, and what he’d done terrified him. The woman—Mirianna—thought he’d saved her father, but none of them were truly safe. One slip, one provocation, and the Shadow could assert itself again. He’d been thinking like Durren for—what? Three days? The Shadow had owned him for more than a dozen years. It could afford to lie in wait.

Sweat ran into the corner of his mouth and he licked it away. If he stripped off his clothes, he could wash all that grit away, all that fear and loathing, suspend this misery, this frustration. For a few hours he could lie with his mind blissfully blank and just drift...

****

Gareth returned with a couple of eggs and some vegetables cradled in his tunic. He flushed when Mirianna thanked him, but his offering reminded her they all needed to eat, she as much as the others. She found the pot and filled it with water while Gareth cleaned the vegetables. She remembered the venison from the lion’s kill, and he fetched slices to add to the stew while she set the eggs to boil.

The smells woke both Pumble and her father. Pumble devoured the stew Mirianna put before him. She spooned a bit of the broth into her father’s mouth and washed it down with more of the Shadow Man’s water. He smiled at her and his voice seemed less raspy. He lifted his hand, too. His fingers couldn’t close around the cup, but they skimmed her cheek, and the touch brought tears to her eyes. While she blinked them away, Pumble let out a belch.

“Freth always says that’s a compliment to the cook.” Gareth had kept pace with Pumble, and he burped too.

Pumble laughed, but his eyes darted around the courtyard while he drained his cup. “What is this place?”

“He calls it Drakkonwehr.” Mirianna glanced at the boy and wondered if he knew that.

“Drakkonwehr? But that’s—that’s practically at the gates of Beggeth!” Pumble pressed his charm to his lips. “I wish somebody would tell me how I got here.”

She could tell him a Wehrland lion had led him, but he’d already blanched on learning the name of the place. Instead, she said, “What do you know about this place?”

“It’s the Dragon Keep. Every child knows that.”

“I don’t,” Gareth said. “What dragon?”

Pumble stared across the fire at the boy. “Why, the Last Dragon. Don’t you know the tales?”

Gareth shook his head.

“Well then.” Pumble released his charm to rub his hands together. “Rees always gets in first with telling the story, but I know it just as well. Let me see...” Chin on fist, he pondered, then his voice deepened, and he looked not like a pear-shaped man in floppy hat and stained tunic, but a master of the art as words Mirianna had heard from every storyteller who’d ever come to Nolar wove their timeless spell…

“
In Shadowtime the world was dark and violent, and the Krad ravaged the land. The people clung together for comfort and protection, until Kiros and his sword cleared the fertile bottom land, the forests—even the broad, high plain—of the beast-men, destroying their camps and hovels. He set in place the Stone Dam at Herrok-Eneth, separating the good land from the evils of Beggeth and bringing forth Dawntime.

“
For many ages of man, the plains and the valleys and their waters lay at peace. Then the Dragons came, and the Black Mages with them, and together they plunged the land into Dragontime. The winged lizards breathed upon the grain in the fields, the pastures, the forests, and the land burned with a creeping flame while magic crackled like lightning in the summer sky.

“
It was a time of horror and fear, and the people despaired. At last, Koronolan raised the Sword of Drakkonwehr and the Hero Mages rallied to its shining. They drove the Black Mages against the walls of Beggeth and smote them with magic and sword until the earth quaked and smoke covered the sun and night lay on the land for a full cycle of seasons.

“
When dawn returned, Koronolan hurled the Last Dragon deep into the earth, and the land heaved over it, and the Wehrland was born beside the walls of Beggeth. Dragon’s blood, raining from the sky, became stone, and Dragontime became Dragon’s End. The people rejoiced while Koronolan mounted a bloodstone on the Sword of Drakkonwehr and passed it to his sons and their sons ever after them, who would watch forever the resting place of the Last Dragon.

“And that resting place, my boy,” Pumble said, spreading his arms to encompass the courtyard, “is under the fortress Drakkonwehr, the Dragon Keep.”

Gareth had sat enthralled while his people’s history unfolded, but now the brows showing dark through his shaggy hair drew together. “If this is Drakkonwehr, as my master says, and it’s the powerful place you say it is, why is it a ruin?”

Pumble lowered his arms and looked around in the twilight. “Um...so it is.” Then he brightened and leaned forward. “Well, there’s another story about that, you see.”

“It’s about Durren Drakkonwehr.” When man and boy turned to her with expectant faces, Mirianna wished she’d kept her mouth shut. She didn’t want to participate in a storytelling session, but she couldn’t sit still and let Pumble tell the boy a version that might’ve been perverted by Rees’s imagination. She’d already seen in Ar-Deneth how he’d twisted the tale.

“He...” She rearranged her skirt over her knees while she tried to remember what Ulerroth had told her, what Durren himself had told her. “He’s the last Drakkonwehr. Years ago—before you were born, most likely—a mage came and tried to raise the Dragon he was guarding. He stopped the mage, but something went wrong and the Stone Dam at Herrok-Eneth broke and released the Krad into the Wehrland. They—they destroyed this place and everything in it.”

Although she gazed up at a sky streaked with purple and gold, she saw none of its beauty. Instead, she imagined the horror Durren found in this courtyard at the end of that awful day. The closest she’d come to that kind of carnage had been their battle against the Krad days ago. She tried to compound that image, but her mind refused to comply. Even her attempt raised shudders from the pit of her stomach. How could he have endured? He was a warrior, but this was a massacre of unspeakable proportions.

“But the dragon—” Gareth’s voice recalled her to the present. “He stopped the mage from raising it, didn’t he?”

“Yes. He did that.” The Shadow Man—Durren Drakkonwehr—had told her he’d failed, but that wasn’t true. He’d done what he’d been charged to do. At least part of it.

“So it’s still here.” The boy tapped the earth with his staff. “Somewhere below us?”

Pumble nodded. Then with a chagrinned expression he thumped his forehead and spoke. “That’s right. It’s sleeping.”

Gareth’s hair obscured his face as he seemed to study the paving stones. Mirianna itched to cut it for him. While the strands dangling in his eyes had to be uncomfortable, what troubled her more was when he bent, she couldn’t read his expression under the mop. Dealing with one being whose face she couldn’t see was difficult enough.

“I suppose that’s why it’s so hot down there,” the boy said.

Pumble raised an eyebrow. “Down where?”

“In the deeper chambers,” she said before Gareth could elaborate. “They’re full of rubble and not safe. Especially when the Dragon takes a turn.”

The two gaped at her. Mirianna uncurled her fingers from her skirt, hoping she’d diverted their attention. Somehow she didn’t think the Shadow Man wanted Pumble to know about the tunnels.

“Don’t tell me it
moves
!” Pumble said.

“Why haven’t I felt anything?” The boy frowned.

Now what do I tell them?
She licked her lips. “It happened when you were asleep. Besides, you don’t really notice the motion unless you’re up on the wall, but it shakes the whole place. That’s why it’s not safe to go deep into any chambers.” She wondered if her warning would penetrate the shock showing on Pumble’s face. He’d pulled his charm from his tunic and was mouthing words over it.

Gareth, meanwhile, sat with forearms on knees and staff grasped before him. He rotated his staff between his palms, making a faint grinding sound on the pavement.

She held her breath, suspecting he was about to ask another difficult question. Pumble proved easy enough to divert, but Gareth hung onto an idea like a dog with so few bones he was determined to chew every bit.

“If Durren Drakkonwehr was the last of the Drakkonwehrs, why does my master call this place his home?”

“Because...” Mirianna didn’t know why she felt compelled to explain. Perhaps to clarify her own mind, to come to terms with what she’d learned, to try to comprehend what had only days ago seemed incomprehensible, but now...

They both turned in her direction, Pumble’s face white and glistening, Gareth’s head tilted in a sign of close attention.

She gripped her knees. “Because it is...his. Home, I mean.”

Pumble expelled a breath. His eyes expanded to the size of cups. “The Sword! That—that’s the Sword—” He gripped his charm in both hands and panted as if he couldn’t breathe.

Mirianna watched him in alarm. When blue tinged his lips, she reached over and pushed his head between his knees. “Stay down until your head stops spinning.”

“What sword? You mean that short sword in the pack?”

“That—that one must be mine,” Pumble wheezed, stirring dust between his feet. “He’s...the Shadow Man is...”

“Durren Drakkonwehr,” she said, hoping to stop his talking. If he keeled over too close to the fire, she and the boy together couldn’t shift him out of harm’s way.

“But...if he was the last, and everything was destroyed, didn’t he die?” the boy said.

She plucked at her skirt, wondering how to explain what any sane person, who understood nothing of magic, would say was impossible. “He didn’t die, like everyone thinks, but he got...damaged when he stopped the mage.”

“Cursed—that’s what magic does, curses people.” Sticking out a hand, Pumble flashed his charm. “You need protection.”

She wanted to point out his little charm hadn’t protected him from being attacked by Krad or magically led to this place reeking with its own magic, but she held her tongue. “Anyway, now he has to cover himself and he stays away from people because—”

“Because he can kill them with a look.” Gareth seemed pleased to supply an answer. “But if he’s really Durren Drakkonwehr, why does he call himself the Shadow Man?”

“He doesn’t.” She remembered the moment she’d first glimpsed the fortress and learned the identity of the being who held her by a promise. “Other people call him that.”

“Why does he let them? I wouldn’t want anyone to call me by some other name.”

“I’ll tell you why.” Pumble heaved himself to an upright position and mopped his face, now mottled a somewhat healthier pink and red. “Because it’s easier, that’s why. If some mage blasted you with a curse that made you what, immortal?—who’d believe you?”

“Oh,” Gareth said as if Pumble’s words made perfect sense.

They did, Mirianna thought, but they didn’t go far enough to explain why a being who couldn’t die was hiding out in a ruined fortress. Wouldn’t such a being be tempted to flaunt his powers? He could lead armies and suffer no ill effects while slaying countless enemies with a mere look. No one could stand against him if he desired to rule. If Durren Drakkonwehr had come down out of the Wehrland in his changed form, she could barely comprehend how her world might have changed.

Why hadn’t he done all that and more? Why had he chosen to essentially crawl into a hole and withdraw from the world? Because he hadn’t died and was convinced he should have? Because he was no longer himself and was ashamed of, even afraid of, what he’d become? Because he didn’t want to be associated with a name, a reputation he’d failed to uphold? Because he held himself responsible for destruction he somehow should’ve been able to prevent? Which of these was true?

Everything he’d told her suggested all were reasons he’d give her, if she asked. She wondered if the real reason was simpler. He was a warrior with a broken sword, but he carried that broken weapon with more grace than any man she’d seen. He had great power to do harm—he could’ve killed them all with a look when they happened upon him the first time—yet he’d hidden himself rather than confront them. And then he’d helped them find their way, even kept her horse from shying, when he could’ve remained hidden. And he kept the boy, not as a slave but safe, and the boy trusted him.

She saw his shame, his pride, his heart-wrenching loneliness, and she understood at last why she’d been permitted to sit by a fire in a ruined courtyard with her father restored to her while the being, the man who was responsible, hid himself in the dark depths of the place. And she understood, at least a little, what he sought from her promise—
Only your presence. Your companionship. At Drakkonwehr.

He’d delivered on every part of his promise, but she’d given so little in return. She tried to swallow the lump filling her throat. Just because the idea terrified her was no reason to withhold what he asked, what she knew he needed more than anything.