The Red Wyvern: Book One of the Dragon Mage (48 page)

“He’s here!” Menw called out.

The warband cheered. As Evandar and Menw hurried over, the women came out of the pavilion, led by the Night Princess, a dark-skinned woman whose hair was a tangle of long black curls. All the women wore dresses of silk in colors as bright as spring itself.

“What are these strange events, my lord?” she said. “What’s turned the world so cold?”

“It’s called snow,” Evandar said. “It falls during the season that men and elves call winter.”

“It’s nasty stuff! Make it go away.”

Whimpering, holding out their hands, the men and women alike clustered round him. The cold was making them suffer, Evandar realized. They’d come to believe in his illusions so completely that they actually felt pain from their effects. He realized something even more important as well, that he’d learned what suffering meant, and so their unhappiness caused him pain. A strange lesson indeed! he thought. And how many more would I learn if I were born into the world of Time?

“Please, my lord, please!” They were begging him. “Bring back the spring.”

Evandar’s power stemmed from the upper astral, but aeons upon aeons ago he’d learned to knot and twine the stuff of the lower astral like a weaver, laying it on the loom of his will to make forms and images. To keep those forms stable he’d also learned how to call down power and ensoul them.

With a cry Evandar threw his arms over his head and saw the light swirling just beyond the grey sky. It seemed to him that he flung the images of nets out from his fingers and trapped the light, pulling it down within his reach. He grabbed huge handfuls of energy and flung them, some into the river, some into the ground, some onto his people, who laughed and caught them like children catching coins flung by a great lord. At once the air grew warmer; the snow melted; the river began to churn and flow with new power. All along the banks the reeds turned glossy green in the light of a pale sun that shone once more from the sky. Evandar drew down more light and spun around, flinging it outward. Where each glittering jewel of it fell, flowers bloomed.

The people cheered him again as they cast off their cloaks. A bard struck up a tune on his harp; others appeared and joined in. With a laugh the Night Princess called to her women.

“Dancing! We shall have dancing.”

They caught the men by the hands and dragged them off, laughing and singing, to the dance. Only Menw stayed with Evandar as they whirled off across the sunny meadows.

“My lord?” Menw said. “Could your brother be responsible for this winter?”

“I don’t know, but that’s a good thought,” Evandar said. “I think me I’ll ask him. Page! Our horses!”

The boy appeared leading horses, a golden stallion for Evandar, a black gelding for Menw. They mounted and set off upriver. The water narrowed and ran faster as the land rose, dropping the river to a canyon floor below them. The light turned suddenly pale, a greenish light that thickened to mist at the far edge of the view. At a fast trot they plunged into a forest. Even though the ancient trees stood gnarled and grasping, and the bracken grew thick among thorn and vine, the horses never stumbled nor slowed, and not a single twig dared reach out and snag their clothes. In the eerie light they could just see huge stones set among the trees, and ruins that hinted of dead fortresses and lost kings. Some of this forest was Evandar’s doing, but some was not, and the farther they rode the less it belonged to them.

At the very edge of Evandar’s domain stood a tree, half of which grew green with summer leaves whilst the other half blazed with neverending fire. They slowed their horses to a walk and went round it cautiously. At this beacon the roads ran into some peculiar junctions indeed.

“Did I tell you about the man named Domnall Breich?” Evandar said.

“You did, my lord.”

“I wonder how he fares? Time runs so differently in his country that I’ve no idea if he’s a day older or twenty years.”

“Does it matter?”

“No. In the omens only his son matters, but I wish Domnall well nonetheless.”

At the very edge of this empire of images lay a barren plain. Beyond the horizon, it seemed, a great fire always raged, sending up huge plumes of smoke that turned the sun copper-colored and the light harsh and dry. Nothing lived there, not so much as a blade of grass. Nothing broke the silence but a rumble of thunder rolling in from the endless smoke. Menw shifted uneasily in his saddle and looked around him.

“No sign of him, my lord,” Menw said.

“He’ll come when I call him. I know his true name. Shaetano!” Evandar tipped his head back and called as loudly as he could. “I summon you! Shaetano!”

His words seemed to rage as loudly as the thunder and his voice carry as far. They waited while their horses danced under them and tossed their heads.

“Shaetano!” Evandar tried again. “I call you to the battle plain!”

Once more they waited while distant lightning flashed and thunder rolled, but still Shaetano never appeared.

“I begin to remember something,” Evandar said. “I knew Alshandra’s name, too, but she evaded me quite nicely, once she had worshippers among the Horsekin.”

“I don’t understand, my lord,” Menw said.

“Neither do I, not in the least. I’m merely stating it as what elven sages would call a fact. Alshandra must have drawn power from her worshippers and used it to have a life in their world apart from our country. Why shouldn’t Shaetano be doing the same?”

Menw started to speak, then merely stared at him in confusion. Before I met Dallandra, Evandar thought, I wouldn’t have been able to link these two events so neatly, either.

“Why don’t you return to the others?” Evandar said aloud. “Join in the feasting. I’ll go on after Shaetano alone.”

“My thanks, my lord! When will you return?”

“I don’t know. As soon as possible, though I’ve got more than a few errands to run. Shaetano may be the worst of my troubles, but he’s not the only one, more’s the pity.” Evandar dismounted, then threw his reins up to Menw. “Take my horse back, too. I’ll not be needing him.”

Often in the long winter darkness Raena would go up to the ruined temple to invoke Lord Havoc. Occasionally she would allow Verrarc to come with her, but more usually she would insist on going alone, no matter how much he argued against it.

“It be a frightening thing,” he said one night. “It be the dark of the night, and there be snow all round about. What if you should fall and hurt yourself or suchlike?”

“Then you’d come look for me, wouldn’t you now, before the night was out?” She patted his arm. “Fear you not, my love. When Lord Havoc says you may, you shall go with me and learn what I do know.”

After she left, he paced back and forth by the fire for what seemed to him half the night. Finally he decided that he’d just go to bed. Why should he give her the satisfaction of knowing he’d waited up, half-eaten away by jealousy of the secret lore she learned from her strange teachers?

Yet he’d barely fallen asleep when she returned, slipping into the bedchamber with something in her hands. He lay still, eyes half-open, and watched by the light of the glowing coals and embers in the hearth without letting her know he waked. She set the something down directly on the hearthstone—a basin filled with snow. While it melted she stripped off her dresses and hung them from the wooden peg on the back of the door. Naked and shivering, she knelt by the basin, seemed to be considering something, then began feeding tinder and scraps of wood into the dying fire. It sprang to life as she fed it and sent her shadow dancing round the room.

With a yawn Verrarc pretended to wake. He sat up, stretching.

“You’re back, are you?”

“I am, and sore troubled.” Raena sat back on her heels and looked his way. “Lord Havoc did warn me somewhat. There be someone in this town, he did say, who does have great gifts for the working of dweomer. He fears that she be a foe to him and me.”

“Did he say who this might be?”

“He did not. But I shall scry in the water and mayhap search her out.”

When she leaned over the basin, her long black hair fell forward, framing her face and gleaming in the firelight. One tendril lay snakelike between her naked breasts.

“What do you see?” Verrarc whispered.

“Naught, yet.” She frowned, waiting. “Hah! There! I do see her now but dim, not yet her face, just her carriage. A young girl, from that walk.”

The fire crackled, sending long darts of light round the chamber. Smoke rose in a lazy drift.

“Well,” Raena said at last, “this be a startlement, Verro. The dark young lass, the ratcatcher’s daughter.”

“Niffa?”

“The very one.” Raena looked up from her scrying and sat back, crouching on her heels. “There’s a need on us to dispose of her.”

“We’ll do no such thing. I won’t stand for it, Rae. You mayn’t harm that lass.”

“Oh indeed?” Her eyes narrowed and her voice turned lazy. “And just why, may I ask?”

Raena got up, stretching in the fire warmth, but she kept watching him all the while, narrow-eyed and sulky. It occurred to Verrarc that she must be jealous.

“Because of her mam,” he said. “Not for her own sake. I do owe her mam a debt, a great debt, and I’ll not let anyone harm her kin.”

Raena considered, then shrugged, relaxing.

“And just what might this debt be?” she said.

“She did save me grief, and I’ll not be giving her any. It were my da. Here, you came down from the north country for the Great Market many a time when you were a lass. You did see him then, opening the fair, all smiles and bows as he did welcome merchants and men he did stand to profit by in some way. You never saw him at home. He beat my mam, he beat me, he did kill her, I’m sure of it though to this day I don’t know how.” Verrarc felt his hands crush into fists, heard his voice drop. “I were too young to know, but I do remember her face, all purple and swollen as she wept, and then the herb-woman did come, all in a flutter, and told our servant lass to take me out of the house. And when we did come home, she lay dead.”

“Ai!” Raena whispered. “Never did I hear this tale.”

“I’ve kept it locked up, a poison treasure.” He forced his hands to open, took a deep breath to steady his voice. “So then, no other woman would marry him. He had naught to soothe his rages but me, and he soothed them on my back. Here, look. He had a belt with a silver buckle, and I keep the marks of that buckle still.”

Raena sat down on the bed, slid half under the covers, and turned when he turned so that she could see his back. He could feel her fingers, soft and warm, tracing out old scars.

“I did wonder what gave you those,” she said. “And where does Dera come into this tale?”

“Everyone in this cursed town knew what my da did to me, and not one person would shelter me when he was in his rages nor would they speak out. Except Dera. She may be but a ratcatcher, but she does have a noble soul and the courage of one of her weasels, too. When I ran to her she took me into her house, and she would not let my father in her door, no matter how he raged and swore. And then in the public streets, whenever her path crossed his, she would denounce him, and she would point him out to all the passersby and say what a shameful thing it was, that a man should beat a boy who was not half his size. She shamed them all into shaming him, and the beatings stopped.”

Her hands came to rest on his shoulders.

“Well, then,” she said at last. “I’ll not be harming the lass, not one hair on her head, Verro. I do promise you that. And truly, I do wonder somewhat. Mayhap I could make a friend of her, like, and then see if these gifts of hers do fit her to serve the gods.”

“My thanks.” He turned to face her, twisting around under the blankets. “I’ll not have Dera brought grief.”

“None from me, I do swear it.”

She sealed her oath with a kiss, and then another. He caught her by the shoulders and pressed her down into the bed, then took her the way she liked—roughly—while she pumped and squealed under him.

In the upper astral, what Evandar imagined became real, though it lasted but a brief span of time. Here in the physical world, what he imagined took on no existence at all.

“A riddle,” he told himself. “One of the greatest riddles yet.”

He was standing on the top of a stone wall, crusted with moss and ivy, that was all that remained of the Palace of the Zodiac in Rinbaladelan, the City of the Moon. Over the thousand years or so since the city had fallen, the surrounding forests had moved to take it back. From his perch Evandar looked out on green: trees stood in the middle of fragments of cracked pavement, vines and mosses covered the walls, shrubs and grasses burgeoned in the courtyards. Just below him a pair of black ravens chased each other and shrieked as if they were mocking him. He could remember this part of the city clearly enough to picture it in his mind, but in his mind the picture remained, a memory only and impotent. When he tried to invoke the astral light, none came.

Dallandra had tried to explain to him the difference between the world of men and elves and his own bright country. Although her words made sense when he was listening to her, when he left her they melted away as fast as his memory-pictures. He simply did not understand what she meant by fine words such as matter or the inertia of forms. Although he’d travelled much in this world of time and stone, never had he lived here, never had he worn real flesh and felt himself bound by the passing of years.

“And I never will! Better to fade away than that!”

But for the first time in the four hundred years that he’d been mulling these questions, his proud boast sounded empty to him. What would it be like to fade away, to cease to exist, to die? Not to die and be reborn, endlessly dragging himself through the muck and pain of the world of Time, but to simply die, once and for all, to fade away like one of his memory-pictures but with no one to recall him to mind? He understood even less about this final death than he did about Dallandra’s talk of things astral and material. He did know that thinking about fading away frightened him.

Evandar dropped down from the top of the wall and landed in the weed-choked courtyard below. If he remembered correctly, under the ivy covering the broken shard of wall in front of him should lie a painting of the Palace of the Sun in Bravelmelim, another city of the Westfolk that once had stood far to the north. He grabbed some of the ivy strands and began pulling them free of the wall. With the roots and stems came dust, bits of filth, dead leaves, the occasional snail, and flakes of some odd substance, faintly colored and grainy. When he picked off a particularly large flake, as long as his little finger and a bit wider, he found upon it markings that looked like part of a character from the elven syllabary.