Dragon's Teeth (15 page)

Hardly thinking, he followed that pull, trusting to it as he had trusted to the pull that led him to the doorstep of the woman destined to be his Teacher, and as he had followed the pull that had led him ultimately to the Mage Guild at High Ridings and to Martis. This time it led him down the twisting, crooked path of a strangely silent street, a street hemmed by tall buildings so that it scarcely saw the sun; a narrow street that was wide enough only for two people to pass abreast. And at the end of it—for it proved to be a dead-end street, which accounted in part for the silence—was an odd little junk shop.

There were the expected bins of rags, cracked pottery pieces, the scavenged flotsam of a thousand lives. Nothing ever went to waste in this quarter. Rags could be patched together into clothing or quilts like those now covering Martis; bits of crockery were destined to be fitted and cemented into a crazy-paving that would pass as a tiled floor. Old papers went to wrap parcels, or to eke out a thinning shoe-sole. No, nothing was ever thrown away here; but there was more to this shop than junk, Lyran could sense it. People could find what they
needed
here.

“You require something, lad,” said a soft voice at his elbow.

Lyran jumped—he hadn’t sensed
any
presence at his side—yet there was a strange little man, scarcely half Lyran’s height; a dwarf, with short legs, and blunt, clever hands, and bright, birdlike eyes. And a kindness like that of the widow who had rented them her extra room, then brought every bit of covering she had to spare to keep Martis warm. “A sword,” Lyran said hesitantly. “This one needs a sword.”

“I should think you do,” replied the little man, after a long moment of sizing Lyran up. “A swordsman generally does need a sword. And it can’t be an ill-balanced bludgeon, either—that would be worse than nothing, eh, lad?”

Lyran nodded, slowly. “But this one—has but little—” The man barked rather than laughed, but his good humor sounded far more genuine than anything coming from the main street and marketplace. “Lad, if you had money, you wouldn’t be
here
, now, would you? Let me see what I can do for you.”

He waddled into the shop door, past the bins of rags and whatnot; Lyran’s eyes followed him into the darkness of the doorway, but couldn’t penetrate the gloom. In a moment, the shopkeeper was back, a long, slim shape wrapped in oily rags in both his hands. He handed the burden to Lyran with a kind of courtly flourish.

“Here you be, lad,” he said. “I think that may have been what was calling you.”

The rags fell away, and the little man caught them before they hit the paving stones—

At first Lyran was conscious only of disappointment. The hilt of this weapon had once been ornamented, wrapped in gold wire, perhaps—but there were empty sockets where the gems had been, and all traces of gold had been stripped away.

“Left in pawn to me, but the owner never came back, poor man,” the shopkeeper said, shaking his head. “A good man fallen on hard times—unsheath it, lad.”

The blade was awkward in his hand for a moment, the hilt hard to hold with the rough metal bare in his palm—but as he pulled it from its sheath, it seemed to come almost alive; he suddenly found the balancing of it, and as the point cleared the sheath it had turned from a piece of dead metal to an extension of his arm.

He had feared that it was another of the useless dress-swords, the ones he had seen too many times, worthless mild steel done up in long-gone jewels and plating. This sword—this blade had belonged to a fighter, had been made for a swordsman. The balance, the temper were almost too good to be true. It more than equaled his lost twin blades, it surpassed them. With this one blade in hand he could easily have bested a twin-Lyran armed with his old sword-pair; that was the extent of the “edge” this blade could give him.

“How—how much?” he asked, mouth dry.

“First you must answer me true,” the little man said softly. “You be the lad with the sick lady, no? The one that claimed the lady to be from the Mage Guild?”

Lyran whirled, stance proclaiming that he was on his guard. The dwarf simply held out empty hands. “No harm to you, lad. No harm meant. Tell me true, and the blade’s yours for three copper bits. Tell me not, or tell me lie—I won’t sell it. Flat.”

“What if this one is not that person?” Lyran hedged.

“So long as the answer be true, the bargain be true.”

Lyran swallowed hard, and followed the promptings of his inner guides. “This one—is,” he admitted with reluctance. “This one and the lady are what this one claims—but none will heed.”

The dwarf held out his hand, “Three copper bits,” he said mildly. “And some advice for free.”

Lyran fumbled out the coins, hardly able to believe his luck. The worst pieces of pot-metal pounded into the shape of a sword were selling for a silver—yet this strange little man had sold him a blade worth a hundred times that for the price of a round of cheese! “This one never rejects advice.”

“But you may or may not heed it, eh?” The man smiled, showing a fine set of startlingly white teeth. “Right enough; you get your lady to tell you the story of the dragon’s teeth. Then tell her that Bolger Freedman has sown them, but can’t harvest them.”

Lyran nodded, though without understanding. “There’s some of us that never agreed with him. There’s some of us would pay dearly to get shut of what we’ve managed to get into. Tell your lady that—and watch your backs. I’m not the only one who’s guessed.”

Lyran learned the truth of the little man’s words long before he reached the widow’s boarding-house.

The gang of street-toughs lying in ambush for him were probably considered canny, crafty and subtle by the standards of the area. But Lyran knew that they were there as he entered the side-street; and he knew
where
they were moments before they attacked him.

The new sword was in his hands and moving as the first of them struck him from behind. It sliced across the thug’s midsection as easily as if Lyran had been cutting bread, not flesh, and with just about as much resistance. While the bully was still falling, Lyran took out the one dropping on him from the wall beside him with a graceful continuation of that cut, and kicked a third rushing him from out of an alley, delivering a blow to his knee that shattered the kneecap, and then forced the knee to bend in the direction opposite to that which nature had intended for a human.

He couldn’t get the blade around in time to deal with the fourth, so he ducked under the blow and brought the pommel up into the man’s nose, shattering the bone and driving the splinters into the brain.

And while the fifth man stared in open-mouthed stupefication, Lyran separated his body from his head.

Before anyone could poke a curious nose into the street to see what all the noise was about, Lyran vaulted to the top of the wall to his left, and from there to the roof of the building it surrounded. He scampered quickly over the roof and down again on the other side, taking the time to clean and sheath the sword and put it away before dropping down into the next street.

After all, he hadn’t spent his childhood as a thief without learning something about finding unconventional escape routes.

About the time he had taken a half a dozen paces, alarm was raised in the next street. Rather than running away, Lyran joined the crowd that gathered about the five bodies, craning his neck like any of the people around him, wandering off when he “couldn’t get a look.”

A childhood of thieving had taught him the truth of what his People often said: “If you would be taken for a crow, join the flock and caw.”

Lyran took the cracked mug of hot water from his hostess, then shooed her gently out. He didn’t want her to see—and perhaps recognize—what he was going to drop into it. She probably wouldn’t understand. For that matter, he didn’t understand; he just trusted Martis.

His lover tossed her head on the bundle of rags that passed for a pillow and muttered, her face sweat-streaked, her hair lank and sodden. He soothed her as best he could, feeling oddly helpless.

When the water was lukewarm and nearly black, he went into a half-trance and soul-called her until she woke. Again—to his relief—when he finally brought her to consciousness, there was foggy sense in her gray eyes.

“I have the tea,
thena,”
he said, helping her into a sitting position. She nodded, stifling a coughing fit, and made a weak motion with her hand. Interpreting it correctly, he held the mug to her lips. She clutched at it with both hands, but her hands shook so that he did not release the mug, only let her guide it.

He lowered her again to the pallet when she had finished the foul stuff, sitting beside her and holding her hands in his afterwards.

“How long will this take?”

She shook her head. “A bit of time before the drug takes; after that, I don’t know.” She coughed, doubling over; he supported her.

“Have you ever known any story about ‘dragon’s teeth,’ my lady?” he asked, reluctantly. “I—was advised to tell you that Bolger has sown the dragon’s teeth, but cannot harvest them.”

She shook her head slightly, a puzzled frown creasing her forehead—then her eyes widened. “Harvest! Gods! I—”

The drug chose that moment to take her; between one word and the next her eyes glazed, then closed. Lyran swore, in three languages, fluently and creatively. It was some time before he ran out of invective.

“I
know ’bout dragon’s teeth,” said a high, young voice from the half-open door behind him. Lyran jumped in startlement for the second time that day. Truly, anxiety for Martis was dulling his edge!

He turned slowly, to see the widow’s youngest son peeking around the doorframe.

“And would you tell this one of dragon’s teeth?” he asked the dirty-faced urchin as politely as he could manage.

Encouraged, the youngster pushed the door open a little more. “You ain’t never seen a dragon?” he asked.

Lyran shook his head, and crooked his finger. The boy sidled into the room, clasping his hands behind his back. To the widow’s credit, only the child’s face was dirty—the cut-down tunic he wore was threadbare, but reasonably clean. “There are no dragons in this one’s homeland.”

“Be there mages?” the boy asked, and at Lyran’s negative headshake, the child nodded. “That be why. Dragons ain’t natural beasts, they be mage-made. Don’t breed, neither. You want ’nother dragon, you take tooth from a live dragon an’ plant it. Only thing is, baby dragons come up hungry an’ mean. Takes a tamed dragon to harvest ’em, else they go out killin’ an feedin’ an’ get the taste fer fear. Then their brains go bad, an’ they gotta be killed thesselves.”

“This one thanks you,” Lyran replied formally. The child grinned, and vanished.

Well, now he knew about dragon’s teeth. The only problem was that the information made no sense—at least not to him! It had evidently meant something to Martis, though. She must have some bit of information that
he
didn’t have.

He stroked the mage’s damp forehead and sighed. At least the stuff hadn’t killed her outright—he’d been half-afraid that it would. And she
did
seem to be going into a proper trance; her breathing had become more regular, her pulse had slowed—Suddenly it was far too quiet in the street outside. Lyran was on his feet with his new sword in his hands at nearly the same moment that he noted the absence of sound. He slipped out the door, closing it carefully behind him once he knew that the musty hallway was “safe.” The stairs that led downwards were at the end of that hall—but he had no intention of taking them.

Instead he glided soundlessly to the window at the other end of the hall; the one that overlooked the scrap of back yard. The shutters were open, and a careful glance around showed that the yard itself was empty. He sheathed the sword and adjusted the makeshift baldric so that it hung at his back, then climbed out onto the ledge, balancing there while he assessed his best path.

There was a cornice with a crossbeam just within reach; he got a good grip on it, and pulled himself up, chinning himself on the wood of the beam—his arms screamed at him, but he dared not make a sound. Bracing himself, he let go with his right hand and swung himself up until he caught the edge of the roof. Holding onto it with a death-grip he let go of the cornice entirely, got his other hand on the roof-edge, and half-pulled, half-scrambled up onto the roof itself. He lay there for one long moment, biting his lip to keep from moaning, and willing his arms back into their sockets.

When he thought he could move again, he slid over the roof across the splintery, sunwarmed shingles to the street-side, and peered over the edge.

Below him, as he had suspected, were a half-dozen armed men, all facing the door. Except for them, the street below was deserted.

There was one waiting at the blind side of the door. Lyran pulled his knife from the sheath in his boot and dropped on him.

The
crack
as the man’s skull hit the pavement—he hadn’t been wearing a helm—told Lyran that he wouldn’t have to worry about slitting the fighter’s throat.

Lyran tumbled and rolled as he landed, throwing the knife as he came up at the man he judged to be the leader. His aim was off—instead of hitting the throat it glanced off the fighter’s chest-armor. But the move distracted all of them enough to give Lyran the chance to get his sword out and into his hands.

There was something wrong with these men; he knew that as soon as he faced them. They moved oddly; their eyes were not quite focused. And even in the heat of the day, when they must have been standing out in the sun for a good long time setting up their ambush, with one exception they weren’t sweating.

Then Lyran noticed that, except for the man he’d thrown the dagger at—the man who
was
sweating—they weren’t casting any shadows. Which meant that they were illusions. They could only harm him if he believed in them.

So he ignored them, and concentrated his attention on the leader. He went into a purely defensive stance and waited for the man to act.

The fighter, a rugged, stocky man with a wary look to his eyes, sized him up carefully—and looked as if he wasn’t happy with what he saw. Neither of them moved for a long, silent moment. Finally Lyran cleared his throat, and spoke.