House of Shadows (42 page)
Ankennes had put a hand, in an involuntary gesture, to his unmarked chest. “Illusion,” he said, but with an involuntary tremor just audible within his voice. “A play of light and shadow.”
“
Of course. Also truth, for truth lies at the heart of all illusion as darkness lies at the heart of the light. It was not you who cast glass and iron and pearl into the shadow. You have not the inclination toward truth
,” said the dragon, dismissing him. Its talons parted, and the obsidian heart it held dissolved into the dimness
and was gone. The dragon turned its attention to Nemienne. “
It was you, young mageling, who cast the ephemeral and the eternal and the immanent into the heart of darkness, which is my heart. Was it not?
”
“Yes,” whispered the girl. Her voice shook, for which Taudde could not blame her at all.
“
Your heart echoes with the rhythm of my darkness
,” said the dragon. “
I see you are not a mage, nor yet a sorcerer of Kalches, nor a spellcrafter such as the sea-folk make, nor an enchantress out of Enescedd. What are you?
” And when the girl only stared, baffled and frightened, it asked, “
What would you be?
”
“I don’t know!” Nemienne protested.
“
You must choose
,” said the dragon. “
Would you be a mage of Lonne?
”
“… yes,” Nemienne answered, but uncertainly, with a flinching glance toward Ankennes and away.
“I hardly think so,” Ankennes said coldly. Two of the king’s men had moved up beside him and held him now between their drawn swords. One of them took his staff. Though he did not seem especially intimidated by them, neither did he try to resist his staff’s confiscation. And no wonder. After his last trick, Taudde suspected the men would have been happy with any excuse to kill him. He was only surprised they didn’t simply cut the mage to pieces without waiting for an excuse. Probably they were afraid the dragon might be offended. That possibility would make anyone hesitate.
The dragon ignored the mage. “
It is for you to choose
,” it said to the girl. “
Do you then reject magecraft and all its strictures and precepts?
”
“… no. I don’t… I don’t think so. Can’t I… can’t I choose more than one thing? You… you’re more than one kind of creature. Aren’t you? You exist in the ephemeral and the eternal and the immanent. All at once. Isn’t that right?”
The dragon lowered its long, elegant head across the pool toward Nemienne. The lapis and amethyst tones of its head
deepened toward sapphire and rich violet as it moved; the colors were reflected back again by the black water of the pool, the light of the caverns taking on a purplish cast. The dragon’s antennae stretched out in sinuous curves, reaching forward to comb through the air near the girl. What those delicate antennae perceived, Taudde could not guess. Magic, perhaps.
Nemienne had closed her eyes. She put up a hand without looking and laid her hand on the dragon’s jaw. For a moment the dragon was still. Then the light surrounding them took on pale opalescent tints, and the dragon lifted its great head with a sharp, decisive gesture.
Nemienne dropped her hand to her side and opened her eyes. “I can’t reject magecraft. But it’s all the same to you, isn’t it? Magecraft and Kalchesene sorcery and the sea magic of the islands and whatever they do in Enescedd. Because you’re not really a dragon at all. Dragons are natural creatures, but you… ‘Ekorraodde’ means ‘indwelling darkness,’ doesn’t it? Kelle Iasodde wrote about glass and iron and pearl, but he said if a mage wants to see the eternal darkness, he has to be ready to cast his heart into the darkness after those elements. Only… only, he didn’t write about what would happen after that.”
“
The gift of the ephemeral drew me into the ephemeral world
,” said the dragon. “
Did Iasodde write that? Much of what he wrote was false, but that was truth. You have indeed offered me your heart, little mageling: I have it already in my hand.
” Talons closed, with a gentle clicking sound, and opened again to reveal a heart like a delicate rose-and-pearl jewel. “
It was your gift. What would you have of me in return? You may ask one boon. Perhaps I will grant it. Shall I bring down the mountains? Do you wish the eternal sea to cover the bones of this transient city of men?
”
The king’s hand closed hard on his son’s shoulder. Prince Tepres’s mouth tightened.
“No!” Nemienne cried in horror.
“
No?
” To Taudde’s ear, the dragon sounded amused. He thought it had never expected the girl to agree to anything of the sort, but
what it expected her to ask for, or wanted her to ask for, he could not begin to guess. “
Then ask a different boon
,” said the dragon. And, relentlessly, when the girl did not answer at once, “
Ask.
”
Taudde more than half expected Nemienne to ask for everything to be back the way it had been the previous night, or for something else equally impossible. She bit her lip and glanced quickly at her sister, but then she straightened her back and said steadily, “O Ekorraodde, how should the ephemeral know what boon to ask of the eternal? I don’t ask for anything, only… only,” this time she glanced at the king, flinching slightly at his hard, impassive face. “Only, if it does not offend you, and if you think it wise, O Ekorraodde, I would like… I would like the transient cities of men to prosper and not be… not be covered by the sea.”
Geriodde Nerenne ken Seriantes closed his eyes briefly, letting out a breath. His expression eased.
The dragon tilted its head, regarding Nemienne out of one black eye. It began to speak.
Mage Ankennes, moving suddenly, stabbed to either side with knives fashioned out of darkness. Both his guards cried out and fell back—one clutching his stomach where the knife still stood and the other stumbling to avoid a second blow.
Ankennes dropped his shadow knives, deftly caught his staff as the first guard dropped it, raked the end of the staff through the blood still pooling on the floor where the prince had lain, raised the staff an inch from the stone floor of the cavern, and brought it down. The sound of that blow was like thunder, but like thunder that did not end: like an avalanche, like the sound of a mountain falling. All around them, the mountain trembled and cracked.
It had honestly not occurred to Taudde that Ankennes might still challenge the dragon. That despite its vast size and terrible power, the dragon might still be vulnerable. But at once it was obvious that he had merely suffered from a failure of imagination, because Kerre Maraddras itself was cracking open. And when Ankennes threw his staff, it flew like a spear straight for the drag
on’s own heart; and this time, Taudde knew that when it struck, carrying with it Prince Tepres’s mortality, it would strike deep.
The dragon whipped its long neck back and around, but despite its speed, Taudde knew it was not going to be fast enough to block that flung staff. So, in the only instant that remained, Taudde set the bone flute to his lips and called out of it a note pitched to echo the dragon’s own powerful, resonant voice. So small a flute should have been unable to produce such a note, but it did. The deep, powerful sound found Ankennes’s staff in its flight and flung it aside from its course to spend its force slashing harmlessly across white stone. The mage turned, furious. Taudde pitched his second note high, to match tides and chill currents and subtle greenish light, and cast music like a flung knife across the cavern.
Like Ankennes’s own shadow blades, Taudde’s weapon of music and sea craft was hard to block. Though the mage flung up his staff, Taudde’s attack struck straight through Ankennes’s defenses and found his heart, which, despite the dragon’s illusion, was still in his chest and not made of stone. The mage had time to look surprised. Then he fell, not all at once, but crumpling slowly first to hands and knees and then at last to lie in abandoned disorder on the cavern floor.
Everyone stared at the fallen mage, and then turned, almost as one, to stare at Taudde. Geriodde Nerenne ken Seriantes turned slowly, but with the power of the mountain in his pale eyes. The dragon itself tilted its head and regarded him from one vast, unreadable, black eye.
Taudde was glad he was still sitting on the floor, for if he’d been on his feet, the force of that combined gaze would surely have thrown him down. He stared into pale human and dark dragon eyes, each containing the same powerful depths. He thought, rather desperately, of the brilliant, windswept heights of Kalches, so unlike these caverns of shadows. If he played a melody of traveling and distance, a melody that recalled the cold heights of distant Kalches and called to them across all the miles that lay between… There was so much power loose in this cavern, he
knew he could gather merely the smallest part of it, wrap himself up in his song, and drop right out of the sky to land on his grandfather’s doorstep. He could take Leilis away with him. He thought she would not object—hoped she would not object, because he had no time to ask her. He lifted the flute again, reaching after power.
But there was, after all, no time to play a second enchantment into life. The king’s power came down on Taudde like the weight of the mountain. Crushed by that weight, Taudde fell into the dark, down, gone.
F
or a long moment after Taudde crumpled to the cavern floor, Leilis thought his collapse was an aftereffect of the strength he’d spent on all his foreign sorcery. Certainly he’d spent himself without stint this night. She’d watched him wear himself down to bone making that path for the king, and that was before the… dragon. Just bearing the weight of the dragon’s immense gaze would surely be enough to exhaust a man.
Then she saw the weary satisfaction in the king’s eyes, and the glance he shared with his senior officer, and understood. At once she was so angry she couldn’t speak. Or dared not speak. She was already kneeling beside Taudde. She lifted his head to rest on her knee and hid her anger carefully behind a keiso mask.
“
This mage of yours called mortality into his staff
,” said the dragon, putting out a saber-long talon to gently nudge Ankennes’s body. Its somber, powerful voice continued with slow condemnation, “
But once released, the mortality he sought claimed him instead, as is only just.
” It folded its talons around the mage, and when it opened its long, strange hand again, the body was gone.
“Ekorraodde,” the king began, and stopped. The dragon swung its head around and locked its gaze on the man’s. There was something frighteningly similar about the depths in their eyes, Leilis thought, but she could not have begun to describe what it was.
“
King of Lonne
,” said the dragon. “
Give me your name, O king.
”
“I am Geriodde Nerenne ken Seriantes,” answered the king.
“Great-grandson of Taliente Neredde ken Seriantes, whom I think you knew.” His voice was steady, but his hand on his son’s shoulder was white knuckled with strain and exhaustion. He lifted his hand to show the dragon, Leilis suddenly understood, his ring. The iron was cast in the shape of a dragon, she saw; the rubies were its eyes.
“
Yes
,” said the dragon. “
I remember Taliente Seriantes. You are much like him. Also, little like him. He offered me his heart. Will you give me yours?
”
“It is yours already, O Ekorraodde.”
“
Yes.
” The dragon opened its hand. The king’s heart gleamed dully against the dragon’s brilliance, a thing of black iron and stone, of smooth powerful lines and sudden sharp angles. “
It is not the heart of a dragon. Would you have a dragon’s heart, O king? That is what Taliente Neredde ken Seriantes desired. I could give you the heart of a dragon. It would be impervious to harm.
”
Geriodde Seriantes looked, beneath his calm mask, subtly horrified. “… That is not my ambition. No.”
The dragon tilted its head. Leilis thought it was amused, but not with any familiar human amusement. “
No?
” It closed its hand again, and the iron heart vanished. “
Then where lies your ambition? What would you have of me, O king?
”
The king made a little gesture of negation. “Nothing. I would never have… called you into the ephemeral. I ask nothing of you, O Ekorraodde.” He hesitated, then continued carefully, “What should I dare ask: I, who was blind to the heart of the mage?”