She crouched with her head in her hands. "Yes. Shadow is somehow drawn to the Pilgrim. He looks like him too. We don"t know why."
Blain said, "And Vyin"s charm just happened to find its way to the Pilgrim too. Why?"
"I I think it"s meant to contain Shadow."
"Contain him?" said Blain.
"Yes! He"s drawn to it, I think. And it has trapped him, caged him. That"s a guess. Don"t hurt me."
"Don"t cut her yet! How is your guess so specific?"
"Little clues. Air patterns about the charm. Fragments of conversation they didn"t notice I overheard. They tried not to speak of it in front of me. They don"t trust me. Stop all this, please. I"ll tell you what I know. I"m not loyal to the dragons, nor to Dyan. Don"t you see? I have no one! I"m nothing!"
Blain cursed quietly. His illusion spell abruptly ceased. The room returned to normal with no sign of the Strategist or his Hunters.
Stranger went to the window. A dark shape moved in the southern sky. Dyan was coming so that"s why Blain had fled. She leaned out over the sill, sick and giddy from nerves. She yelled, "My love! Help me!"
The dragon wheeled once, twice as if searching for something, then swooped to the tower with a rush of wind which pushed her back from the window.
Dyan landed on the sill, sticking his head inside the s.p.a.ce too small for the rest of him, peering quizzically around the tower"s top floor. His scales glimmered with red and gold. Waves of heat came off him. "Are you hurt?" he said, his tail snaking through the window and gently running down her arm.
"Do you truly care?" She told him what had happened.
"Great Beauty, you are safe now. There is no one here but you and I, and whatever force gives this place life. A strange place. Well made, for human work." He sniffed. "Curious. A drake has been here."
"Dyan! The Strategist can"t be far. He was just here. Won"t you kill him? He will come for me again as soon as you leave me."
"Why do you say I"ll leave you, Great Beauty? Have I not returned for you? I have saved you from yet another peril, the man-beasts with horns. And I was burned for my trouble." He moved so she could see a black mark streaked down his hind leg.
"You are too careless," she reproached him, stroking his neck. "Won"t you come in? Change form and come in?"
"I"ll not cast more just yet," he said, sniffing. "There are foreign airs here. A big wave washed in across the boundary. Some strains of it have reached us here."
"The Strategist cast while you were gone. Very elaborate illusions."
"Then he is a fool, and the least of my concerns."
She was hurt. "What then is the greatest of them?"
"I went to see Sha," said Dyan, a ripple of white going over his scales. She had never seen this before but could tell it indicated fear. "They claim they did not send out another dragon. They are disturbed by what I told them."
"What happened?"
"I won"t speak of it," he said with a shiver. "But they will not be idle. Vyin"s betrayal enraged them."
"What will they do?"
Dyan quietened the deep music of his voice, as though afraid the great beasts would hear his voice from their sky holds. "They have gone to their forges and begun crafting artefacts of their own. They have guessed Vyin"s purpose. But they must rush their work, if they wish to change events already unfolding! That is why they are so angry. Vyin"s necklace was surely a work many human lifetimes in the making. Whatever the others create will be rushed by comparison, shall need to be crafted in mere days. Do you see now, Great Beauty, that when I leave you it is because I am called away by forces greater than either of us? Greater even than my love for you?"
She tried not to cry. "You have told me so many times that nothing was greater than that. And I believed you."
"I am sorry, Great Beauty. I longed to believe it as much as you. And now that I am with you again, perhaps I do."
3.
Movement caught the dragon"s eye down by the water"s edge. He showed little reaction, tried not to make it obvious he was looking down there as the woman continued to whine at him, and while he made the appropriate responses, said the necessary things. He loved these creatures, loved them as one might love a musical instrument. Such sentimental music.
But while he spoke to her he watched another. A most intriguing form: slender, with long curling dark hair, an immense bust, a face of dark smiling mischief, and an aura about her as dark and colourful as shed human blood. She had no native magic to her, just some borrowed effects from little charms.
But that mattered little; he felt drawn by the natural effortless magic of her intent. She was showing herself to him on purpose.
From the water"s edge she peered up into his eyes and slowly, teasingly, removed her clothes, revealing a body whose splendour would be the envy of all the Invia. Here she was, seducing him, trying to draw him with this provocative dance ... fascinating! He had never been in this position before. He had always been the seducer, never seduced.
There was no resisting this temptation.
One minor cast surely would not be too great a risk. Stranger would never know, would never remember it. Dyan whispered part of a word in the tongue of his kind, made short and simple for human understanding. It meant sleep. He put just enough power upon it. Stranger fell back in a faint. She"d not remember the latter part of the conversation when she woke.
Dyan dropped from the window, landed gracefully by Evelle. "Welcome," she said, opening her arms to him. He curled his tail about her, ran the point of it over her skin.
"I will call you Hathilialin, which means in my tongue great beauty ..."
4.
Stranger sat up. The peaceful lap of waves and the breath of breeze across water still played soothing music but she knew before hearing the knife being drawn that her death was close.
Stepping before her was a wiry man, naked from the waist up, with thin braids of beard hanging from his chin and a long knife in hand. The tattoos across his chest looked like protective wards; the piercings over his body had to be charms, for they made almost invisible patterns in the air about them.
Next to the man, Blain leaned on his walking stick, face twitching as though burned and singed by a hot simmering rage beneath his bearded mask. To the Hunter he said, "Cut off her hands."
The man sighed regretfully. "Yes, Strategist."
Thaun had her before she could reach the window. Stranger let her arm go limp in his hand. Without Dyan here to help, her only spell options to get out of this situation would likely kill her instantly. It was better to try talking her way out. She said, "What do you think you will gain from doing this?"
Blain said, "This is your last chance to talk. Your true love is busy with Evelle. He"s taken her on a long romantic flight." He shuddered. "Talk, girl. Lend me a hand."
Thaun"s knife-edge gently touched her skin. "Tell him you"ll talk," he said quietly. "I don"t wish to do this."
"Do not do that in here," said a quiet voice from the stairway. Blain wheeled about, face betraying his shock. A tall magician stood at the top of the steps, peering at them with half-lidded eyes. He said, "It will do no good to mutilate her, unless the act is its own pleasure for you, Blain. Do you do it for a purpose, or for love of such deeds?"
"A purpose, of course," said Blain, sputtering. Crimson colour flushed through his robe.
The tall man inclined his bald head. "And you have chosen a course in life that requires such deeds quite often. A coincidence?"
"Why do you care about her?" said Blain, hobbling toward the newcomer. "The dim wench is going to free the great beasts. Do you plan on a place by her side among the Favoured?"
"I don"t care about her," the magician said. He peered at Stranger with a look of distaste. "Do with her as you like. I just asked you not to do it here. It bothers the airs and the senses. Mine, at least. Besides, it may be that I can answer your questions better than she can."
Blain grunted, a sound in which Thaun apparently detected instruction, for he put away his knife. "Very well," said the Strategist. He stroked his beard thoughtfully, trying to work out if this was the one who had interfered with his casting earlier; until now, he"d presumed it had been Stranger"s doing. He said, "What do you know of Shadow?"
"I suspect you have guessed Shadow"s purpose as well as I," the magician replied. "Avridis wishes to be rid of Vous, to find a more pliable personality to elevate to G.o.dhood. So too does a part of Vous yearn for death and peace. Avridis fed this part of Vous till it grew large, fed it by accident at first, then in recent times on purpose. In response, Vous created something able to destroy himself, quite subconsciously, of course. He created Shadow.
"For some reason Vous selected the Pilgrim to represent Shadow. I have over the past days observed the Pilgrim closely. In my estimation, the selection was random. The Pilgrim himself is just an ingredient, no more significant than that, possessed of no native powers or greatness of any kind. Whether Shadow will destroy Vous or not, no one yet can answer, and my guesses are useless."
"What is your guess then?" said Blain, infuriated to be lectured. "Useless or not, let"s hear it!"
"As you like. I guess that Shadow will not destroy Vous, nor will Vous destroy Shadow. We are stuck with both ent.i.ties for the foreseeable future."
"Reasoning?"
The magician smiled at Blain"s barked demands. "Because the greater part of Vous, that which drives him and always has, is l.u.s.t for power, for G.o.dhood. Which is now attainable to him. And I feel this part of him is greater than his urge to self-destruct. I repeat, my guesses are useless."
Blain paced, muttering into his beard, his walking stick smacking into the floor.
"You are belatedly perturbed," the magician remarked with a hint of private amus.e.m.e.nt. "Did it never seem vain or improper to you, to attempt the creation of a G.o.d? After a point, Blain, use of magic goes beyond a matter of simple spell craft. It becomes less controlled and predictable. It is why the G.o.ds and dragons act within limits, limits they hardly dare approach, let alone break. They know as we fleet-lived and all-too-curious humans do not that magic of the kind they wield can do things to alter fundamental existence. And it can make changes as impossible to undo as the clock is to rewind."
"Yes, fine," said Blain.
"It is why my school, and the others, respected limits to what humankind should attempt. We devoted much study to it, in those rare moments people were not pestering us to cure runny noses or a.s.sist in their political squabbles. But you burned those books and kept the others. You were not quite so curious about what boundaries should not be broken."
"Don"t blame me," Blain snarled. "Avridis and Vous made all decisions. We Strategists just advised, or managed things. And our advice may as well have been coughed phlegm for all they valued it. But I"ll spare you my pleas. I shed no tears for your schools. I took looted artefacts gladly. I cheered for your deaths. That much is true."
The magician tilted his bald head as though in thanks. "Your attacks were predicted, incidentally. But as you know, most predictions fail. This place was built in case that future came to pa.s.s. To our great surprise, it did."
"Then there are other places like this?" said Blain.
"Of course there are I shan"t lie to a potential ally, whatever his past. There are several towers of varying design. My colleagues wait in them, those who survived."
"For what do they wait?"
"The inevitable ruin of Vous, Avridis, and those aligned with him."
"Inevitable," grunted Blain. He paced around the room, his cane thumping down the only sound. Even the swishing music of breeze on waves had gone quiet.
Stranger said, "How do you keep Shadow out of this place?" The mage turned slowly and gazed at her. His expression was impossible to read. "It is difficult," he said. "Shadow has a strange power. He mirrors something, becomes a different version of it. A fraudulent copy, so to speak. If it could be done to G.o.ds it would make him formidable indeed, if only for a little while." Stranger"s eyes widened as though with some realisation. The mage"s eye seemed to look deep into her. He said, "Or indeed, if done to dragons.
"I pondered what Vous may do to protect himself from Shadow"s power. What Vous may do is divide himself. I did similar things to keep Shadow from this place. What Shadow saw or believed he saw at the water"s edge was an infinite number of small powers as though in a swarm. Each on its own so weak as to be negligible, too numerous and fleeting for his comprehension. Think of a mighty beast in a blinding cloud of insects. What can it do? Had Shadow known this was just illusion, he might have crossed the waters, giving you no haven."
"You have learned much of him," said Stranger.
"Indeed. And I learned much of Dyan, when he was at the window, an hour ago. And much of you, since you have been here. Your heart is treacherous, to you most of all. But also to us." The mage turned to Blain. "There is nothing more to learn from this woman. It is best to kill her. Do so with mercy. I will leave this task with you. Do not do it here, in this place which is my home. Do this for me at the water"s edge and you shall be invited back. We shall speak and make plans."
Stranger gasped. Blain looked surprised. "Good!" he said. "We will speak more when it is done. I cannot undo my past. But we are of similar purpose."
"That may be," said the magician. "My purpose has never changed. Yours has, and may again. We shall see."
Blain began to reply but the tall magician dissolved into a pile of sand which sank into the floor.
5.
Stranger pleaded as they led her down the steps, then through the waves to the sh.o.r.e. She twisted around in Thaun"s hard grip, her dress spreading out on the water"s surface like a dark green flower. Thaun smiled sympathetically but did not yield at all. "I want to see him again," she said. "Just once. Just once. If I may just see him again."
"Do you think that is a rational request?" said Blain.
"Just once, please-"
"Draw from your memories. They"re sweeter than a current look at him, f.u.c.king Evelle as we speak." Blain shuddered. "A whole new world has opened up before me. I often wondered why Invia look as they do. Now we know. How does a dragon f.u.c.k?"
Apparently directed at Thaun. He replied, "Very well, it would seem."
Blain laughed, a wholly different sound from his usual bitter cough. "I"m serious. How?"
"I am unsure, Strategist. Maybe they a.s.sume the form of men."
"Or shape their women like dragons? I had wives like that. Who knows?"
"You have light consciences, to lead a woman to death, laughing and joking," said Stranger.
"It has long been a flaw of mine," said Blain. "Thaun is weeping inside, I"m sure."
"Such is war, Strategist," said Thaun.
She threw herself away from Thaun"s grip as they neared the water"s edge. He caught her again easily. "Dyan!" she screamed.
"Shut her up," said Blain, looking around nervously. "Kill her."
"Here, Strategist?" said Thaun.
"Get her out of the water altogether, like our new friend asked. If he truly built this place, he"s useful. We"ll honour his wishes. And watch your manners, he may have ways to hear us even now." He examined the line of trees some way back from the water. Kiown was still among them somewhere, keeping watch. Blain murmured a quick lurking spell just to be safe. The smallest burn from casting it flushed through him.
And there! Blain sensed another power he thought was the woman"s dragon friend. It was like a weight pulling the blood to the south side of his body. It was some way distant still. Or perhaps it was that other magician, that shape-shifter, Far Gaze.