The Dragon Revenant (35 page)

When the Hawkmaster got up, the wolf turned its head and watched him, but with no malice and no real interest. Baruma took his chance and grabbed the meat. As he munched it, the wolf stared, lips back, drooling a little, but the drool vanished before it touched the floor. He could hear the Hawkmaster chanting, and to his magically engulfed sight a circle of pale blue fire appeared, running widdershins round him and the wolf both. Just as the ring closed, the wolf snarled and leapt—too late. It slammed into the invisible wall that emanated from the flames like glass-clear smoke, leapt again, howled, threw itself at the wall over and over until at last it fell back, panting, into the center of the circle. Ears down, hackles raised, it lowered its head and snarled at him, its teeth white and wet and gleaming as it took one stiff-legged step forward. Baruma screamed.

“You fool!” the Hawkmaster hissed. “It’s me it wants. I’m right behind you.”

Baruma heard the rustle of his tunic as the master knelt behind him and laid one massive hand on the back of his neck. With a moan Baruma felt himself slump as the grip tightened and the master’s power flowed into his mind, making his consciousness dance and sway until the world shrank to the red eyes of the wolf.

“Reach out your hand,” the master said. “Touch it.”

“No, oh please no!”

Pain shot through his neck in a spurt of fire that made him gasp. When he reached out a trembling hand toward the wolf, the creature snapped and sank its teeth in his fingers. Although he whimpered, there was no pain, just a coldness that spread up his arm and numbed him as it spread. It touched his neck, crept up his face, and at the last washed over his eyes. The room changed, turning all blue and swimmy, and he floated above his unconscious body in the midst of a sphere of silver light. The wolf was huge, towering above him, and from its navel stretched a silver cord made of mist that burrowed through the sphere and ran some long way off. When the master spoke, his voice seemed to come through water.

“Ride the wolf.”

Baruma floated up and settled onto the creature’s back. When he grasped a handful of hair at the wolfs roached neck, he realized that his hand was blue and transparent. Yet his fingers seemed to touch something solid and tighten as the silver sphere faded away. With a snarl the wolf leapt, bursting through the walls of the inn chamber and out into a night made grotesque by the stars—enormous, threatening, silver stars, hanging so low to earth that it seemed he should be able to touch them, sending rays like shards of glass into his eyes. He yelped, then whimpered steadily after he looked down to see a misty-blue landscape far below him. The wolf took no notice, merely loped through the sky as it followed the silver cord that led on and on.

At last the wolf stopped, lifting its head as if it were sniffing the wind, then swooped down, its tail wagging madly, circling round as it flew down into a long valley cut by huge silver walls of trembling mist. By then Baruma was too exhausted to whine; he heard his voice babbling, describing everything he saw as they reached the earth, not far from one of the walls of silvery smokelike mist. Here everything was a bright rusty-red, the trees like pillars of flame, the grass glowing and pulsating with vegetable force. As the wolf trotted along he could see ahead a swarm of fuzzy red and yellow shapes like a swarm of bees, and not far from them two ovoids of glowing light, one golden, one red shot with black, and two enormous silver flames. Closer and closer they came, until Baruma realized that he was seeing the auras of a herd of horses, two human beings, and two—what? The shapes within the silver flames were humanlike, yet no man or woman had an aura such as he was seeing.

Suddenly, bursting upon him like arrows Wildfolk appeared, an army of gnomes and sprites, clustering round, grabbing at him, pinching, shoving, biting at him until he screamed again, screamed and sobbed and begged for mercy while the wolf loped on, indifferent to the attack. He saw one of the silver flames ahead leap up and send a huge spear of light, hurtling straight toward him. Then the sky seemed to explode. They were gone—Wildfolk, wolf, auras, flames—everything gone, and he was falling falling falling a long way down to wake with an audible scream and a flash of pain that tore at his entire body. Writhing and moaning he opened his eyes to see the Hawkmaster leaning over him as he lay on the inn-room floor.

“You’re alive? Good. You’re proving very useful indeed, little Baruma.” The master sat back on his heels, then reached up and took a wine cup off the table. “Drink this.”

Baruma sat up and gulped the sweet wine; oddly enough, it seemed to clear his head rather than muddle it.

“Those silver flames were elven auras,” the Hawkmaster said.

“But one of them was Rhodry!”

“Oh, indeed?” The master rose, reaching for the wine cup. “For that information you get another drink. Did you recognize anyone else?”

“Gwin. Gwin was there.”

“I wondered if he’d been taken prisoner. I would have known if he’d been killed. Who were the others? They have magic, tremendously powerful magic, and you should be able to recognize them. They must be Inner Circle members.”

“Her. Rhodry’s woman. She was there. And the other elf used dweomer against me. He was the one who sent the spear of light.”

The Hawkmaster went on refilling the cup, his face betraying not a twitch or a grimace, but through the link that bound him to the master Baruma could feel his fear.

“It’s the dweomer of light, isn’t it, master?” he whispered. “They’re not from the guild at all. They serve the dweomer of tight, don’t they?”

“Shut up!” The master threw the wine cup full into his face.

Baruma began to laugh. In the last small sane corner of his mind he wondered if he were laughing because he was going to be revenged on the Hawkmaster or out of simple hysteria, but either way he gasped and howled and writhed on the floor until the master kicked him into silent submission.

“Very well, then,” the Hawkmaster said, and his voice was perfectly steady. “At least now I know who our enemies are. They certainly weren’t sent by the Old One, were they? Later I’ll see if I can arrange a parley with him, but for now, let’s give Gwin’s captors something to think about. Tonight that wolf goes home to stay.”

Rhodry had just come back to their cold camp from checking on the horses when he saw a swarm of Wildfolk rise up and tear off to the west like a flurry of dead leaves in a wind. All at once Jill yelped in surprise and scrambled to her feet; Salamander yelled even louder and jumped up, too, to wave his arms in the air and chant in some strange language. When a silver ball of light blossomed above the camp, dimly in midair Rhodry could see a horde of Wildfolk mobbing what seemed to be the misty and ill-defined figure of a wolf, and an even vaguer indication of something riding on its back. Then they were all gone, and Salamander was standing with his hands on his hips and swearing like a pirate. It had all happened so fast and been so cryptic that Rhodry felt as openmouthed stupid as a peasant gawking at a fake unicorn skull in the market fair. He was honestly surprised to find Gwin white-faced and shaking.

“Here,” Rhodry said automatically. “No danger now.”

“Like Hell,” Gwin snapped. “I don’t know exactly what happened, but the Hawkmaster’s behind it. I should have known I’d never get free of him, not for long.”

“Na, na, na, don’t fret about that now,” Salamander broke in. “You’ll get free of him eventually, if we have to kill him to do it, which, come to think of it, we doubtless will. Be that as it may, I wonder if he was looking for you specifically or merely scouting out the lay of the land—if indeed that was him, which I doubt, because our wolf-rider looked most unhappy, brigga-sopping scared in fact, and I doubt me if you get to be a Hawkmaster by giving in to fits of cowardice.”

“Oh.” Color ebbed back into Gwin’s face. “But he could have sent—by the Clawed Ones, he would have sent someone else to spy for him. He’s above scut-work like this.”

“Since when is scrying on the etheric scut-work?” Salamander said. “Well, I suppose a Hawk might see it that way.”

“For the love of every god,” Rhodry snarled. “Would you two tell me what’s going on?”

“My apologies, younger brother of mine. Jill and I looked up to see a more or less human figure riding on the back of a wolf whilst a profusion of Wildfolk tried to tip him off. Needless to say, we found the sight alarming, didn’t we, my turtledove—oh ye gods! Jill!”

Rhodry spun round to find her standing some five feet away. Perfectly still, perfectly rigid, one hand out in front of her as if to ward a blow, she was staring down at a wolf crouched in front of her, its lips back in a soundless snarl as it stared up, seemingly into her eyes. For a moment he thought it was real; then he realized that he could see right through it. By the light of Salamander’s dweomer-lantern Rhodry could also see the silver cord that ran from its navel back to hers and the peculiar waves of force that rippled like water back and forth between them. When he lunged forward, Salamander grabbed him and hauled him back.

“She’s got to finish this herself. Jill! Listen to me! You’ve got to reclaim it. Bend your will to the cord! Suck the thing lifeless through that cord!”

She nodded, the barest movement of her head to show she’d heard him, and kept staring the wolf down. Although she never moved, it suddenly leapt up onto all fours and laid its ears down, its mouth opening in a silent howl. When it jerked itself toward her, Jill flung up a hand palm-outward and stopped it cold. For a moment they glared at each other, the wolf all fangs and lowered head, poised for the attack, she grim concentration and hard eyes. All at once its tail began to wag, just timidly, and it whined, lifting one paw, staring up, pleading with her, then flopping down to roll on its back, whining like a puppy. Rhodry saw energy flowing up the silver cord in her direction, leaching the creature’s life away as it begged and fawned desperately at her feet, growing fainter, then smaller, then fading away to the sound of a whine, hanging on the air.

Jill dropped her face into her hands and sobbed. This time, when Rhodry started toward her, Salamander let him go. He caught her in his arms and pulled her close, let her keen between sobs in honest grief, but he’d never been so bewildered since the day when he’d woken in the hold of the ship to find Baruma gloating over him. All at once Jill pulled back and looked at him, her face wet and puffy with tears.

“I loved it,” she whispered. “It was part of me.”

Then she fainted, so suddenly that if he hadn’t been holding her she would have dropped where she stood. As he knelt and laid her down, he heard his brother cursing. Salamander knelt down next to him and laid his long fingers on Jill’s face.

“Ah, by every stinking demon in every stinking hell, she’s cold as ice! Gwin, fetch me a blanket! My apologies, Rhoddo, but she had to kill it herself. There wasn’t one cursed thing I could do to help.”

“You better be telling the truth, or I’ll have your hide for a saddlebag.”

“I was afraid you’d take it that way. My thanks, Gwin. Go away, will you, younger brother, and leave her to me and the fresh night air?”

Fuming with reluctance Rhodry got up and stepped back as Salamander began wrapping the blanket round his patient. A crowd of anxious Wildfolk hovered, clustering round Jill, climbing all over Salamander, darting round Rhodry’s head. Two sprites even perched briefly on his shoulders, but when Gwin came up behind him, the sprites disappeared with a hiss.

“He’ll set her right,” Gwin said. “I’ve never seen anyone with dweomer like your brother’s, or like your woman’s, for that matter.”

Only then did Rhodry realize that he’d just witnessed a magical working, and that Jill had been the one to perform it. He felt as if his already shattered and unstable world had twisted under him once again, leaving him struggling to find his footing. Gwin, it seemed, misunderstood his silence.

“Look, Salamander knows what he’s doing. He’s pouring enough magnetism into her to heal an elephant, and out of his own aura at that.”

“That’s supposed to be a good thing?”

“Of course it is! Come now, you don’t have to be jealous of your own brother.”

This last made so little sense that Rhodry shook his head as if he could physically shoo the words away like a buzzing fly. Later, when Jill was sitting up, dead-pale but managing to smile, and his worry had subsided enough to let him think clearly, he remembered Gwin’s obscure remark again, but this time it stabbed him to the heart. Jill and Salamander had ridden all over Bardek together for weeks, looking for him. He found himself watching them closely, as they sat under the magical silver light, heads together, whispering about things that he couldn’t understand, and he wondered why he had never noticed before just how intimate they seemed.

If Jill had been her normal self, she might have noticed immediately that something was wrong with Rhodry, but as it was, reclaiming the wolf had left her exhausted, and realizing that the danger round them had just doubled did nothing to let her rest. All that night she slept fitfully, waking often to mull over the strange fragments of dreams that came to her, torn visions of sneering sorcerers with burning dark eyes or enormous wolves that came plunging from the air to snap at her throat. Finally, about an hour before dawn, when the sky was lightening to a pale gray, she gave it up and rolled out of her blankets, leaving Rhodry sound asleep and snoring on his back with one arm over his face. Some couple of hundred yards from the camp, perched on a pale tan boulder, Salamander was keeping watch. Stumbling a little and yawning, she joined him there.

“You should be sleeping,” he remarked.

“Can’t. I feel like the Lord of Hell dragged me behind his chariot for about twenty miles, but I just can’t sleep.”

“How do you feel? Debilitated, mayhap, infirm, unwell, feeble, ailing, or just plain sick?”

“Just tired, my thanks. Or, well…” She hesitated, thinking. “There’s somewhat wrong, but I can’t quite place what it is … not a headache or suchlike, but … somewhat’s missing.”

“Missing?”

“Missing. Part of me died with the wolf, like. I still hate the dark dweomer and everything it stands for, but I don’t hate it in the same way. It’s all cold, now. Does that make sense?”