Dragon Scale Silver

7 Silver Bright

She who had menaced us from the block was gone. But the red flyer darted again at my eyes in such a fury of attack that I stumbled away half-blinded. In my hand was still the sword, and I thrust with it down into whatever we might have uncovered. There was a low wail. The red thing vanished.

I stood at the edge of a small pit. There had been a casket there in the hollow but the point of the sword had pierced it, cleaving the metal as if it were no more than soft earth. From that now spread a melting so that the riven casket lost shape, became a mass, which in turn sank into the ground on which it lay. In moments nothing was left.

Now the very pavement under my feet began to crack and crumble in turn, becoming rubble. First around the edges of the pit, and then, that erosion spreading, in lapping waves, as if all the untold years that this place had had its existence settled all at once, a burden of age too heavy to support.

The waves of erosion touched the feet of the first man. He shivered, moved. Then his armor was rust red, holding bare bones, until all toppled, to crash in shards, bone and time-eaten iron together, to the riven pavement.

So it was with the rest. Dead men, losing the false semblance of life as time caught up and engulfed them, to reach to the next and the next.

“Dead!” Jervon said.

I looked around. He had lost that rigid cast of countenance, was staring about him as if he wakened from some half-stupor into full consciousness.

“Yes, dead, long dead. As is this trap now.”

I pulled my sword from the pit where it had been standing upright, its point no longer anchored in the box, but in the dark ground. But that point—it was eroded, as if it had been thrust into acid. I held but three-quarters of a weapon. I sheathed it, amazed at what power must have erupted from the box.

Elyn! Almost I had forgotten him who had brought me hither.

Swinging from that hole I looked to where my brother stood, one among the other prisoners. He moved, raised a hand uncertainly to his head, tried to take a step and tripped over the bones and armor of one of his less fortunate fellows. I sped to him, my hands ready to steady him. He was blinking, looking about as one who wakes out of a dream, to perhaps find not all of it a dream after all.

“Elyn!” I shook him gently as one shakes awake a child who had cried out of a nightmare.

He looked at me slowly.

“Elys?” But of my name he made a question, as if he did not believe I was real.

“Elys,” I assured him. And, though I still kept one hand upon his arm, I held out now the cup.

That dark tarnish was gone. And in the moonlight the silver was as bright as it had been from the night it was first wrought. He put out his hand, traced the rim with one finger.

“Dragon scale silver—”

“Yes. It told me that you were in danger—brought me here—”

With that he looked up and around. The erosion had spread. Those pillars had lost their eerie light; most of them had crumbled and fallen away. The power which had knitted it all together had fled.

“Where—where is this place?” Elyn was frowning, puzzled. And I wondered if he knew at all what had happened to him.

“This is the heart of Ingaret’s Curse. And you were caught in it—”

“Ingaret!” That single name seemed to be enough. “Brunissende—where is my lady?”

“Safe in the Keep at Coomb Frome.” But there was an odd feeling in me. It was as if Elyn had taken a step away from me—a step? No, a stride—still my hand was on him.

“I do not remember—” Some of his uncertainty returned.

“That does not matter. You are free.”

“We are all free, Lady. But are we like to remain so?”

Jervon was by me. He still held his unsheathed sword and he had the watchfulness of one who treads through enemy territory where each wayside bush may mask armed surprise.

“The power here is gone.” I was sure of that.

“But is it the only power hereabouts? I shall feel safer when we are to horse and on the back trail.”

“Who is this?” Elyn spoke to me.

I thought perhaps some of the mind daze still held by his curt question, and I made ready answer.

“This is Jervon, Marshal of Haverdale, who has ridden with me for your deliverance. It was by his sword aid that we won this battle with the Curse.”

“I give thanks,” Elyn said remotely.

I thought—he is still under the edge of the spell, his wits are slowed, so I can forgive his bareness of thanks. Yet his manner chilled me a little.

“Coomb Frome—where lies it?” At least on that question Elyn’s voice was alive and eager.

“A day’s ride away,” Jervon answered.

In that moment I could not have said anything, for it was as if the struggle with the silver woman had sustained me against any weariness, but now that that was past, and Elyn once more free, all fatigue settled upon me at once, as time had done to crack open this foul web. I staggered. Instantly there was an arm at my back, strong as any keep wall, supporting me.

“Let us ride then!” Elyn was already starting away.

“Presently.” Jervon’s word had the crack of an order. “Your lady sister has ridden through one day without rest, battled through the night, to win you free. She cannot ride now.”

Elyn glanced impatiently around, a stubborn look I knew of old on his face.

“I—” he began, and then after a moment’s pause, he nodded. “Well enough.”

If he said that grudgingly, I was far too sunk in this vast weariness to care. Nor was I really aware of how we came free of the ruins of the spiral. Or of aught, save a drowsy memory of resting on the ground, with the soft roll of a cloak beneath my head, my furred one spread over me, while a firm hand held mine and a far-off voice urged me to sleep.

I awoke to the tantalizing fragrance of roasting meat, saw through half-open eyes the dancing flames of a fire, and near that, on spits of branches, the bodies of forest fowl, small but of such fine eating that not even a Dale lord would disdain to find one on his feast table.

Jervon, his helm laid aside, the ringed under-hood of that lying back on his shoulders, sat cross-legged, Watching the roasting birds with a critical eye. Elyn—? I turned my head slowly, but my brother was not to be seen in the firelight, and I levered myself up, his name a cry on my lips.

Jervon swung around and came to me quickly.

“Elyn?” I cried again.

“Is safe. He rode out at noontide, being anxious concerning his wife, and doubtless his command.”

I had shaken sleep from me now, and there was that in the tone of his voice which made me uneasy.

“But dangerous country—you said yourself to ride alone across it was deep peril—with three of us—” I was babbling, I realized, but there was something here I could not understand.

“He is a man, full armed. He chose to go. Would you have had me overpower and bind him into staying?” Still that note in his voice.

“I do not understand—” My confusion grew.

Jervon arose abruptly, half turned from me to face the fire, yet still I could see the flat plane of his cheek, the firmness of his chin, that straight line which his mouth assumed upon occasion.

“Nor do I!” There was heat in his voice now. “Had any wrought for me as you did for him—then I would not have left her side. Yet all he pratted of was his lady! If he thought so much of her, how came he into the toils of that—?”

“He perhaps cannot remember.” I pushed aside the furred cloak. “Oftentimes ensorcelment has that effect upon the victim. And once that power set up its lure he could not have resisted. You remember surely what spell she cast. Had you not the loop cross it might so have drawn you.”

“Well enough!” But his voice did not lose that heat. “Perhaps he acted as any man. Save, that from your brother one does not expect the act of any man. And—” he hesitated as if he chewed upon some words he did not want to say yet there was that forcing him to the saying, “Lady, do not expect—Oh, what matter it. I may be seeing drawn swords where all are sheathed. What say you to food?”

I wanted to know what chafed in his mind, but I would not force it from him. And hunger was greater than all now. Eagerly I reached for a spitted bird, blew upon it and my fingers as I strove to strip the browned flesh from its small bones.

So long had I slept that it was dawn about us when we finished that meal. Jervon brought up the single horse. So Elyn had taken the other! That had not occurred to me. My brother’s behavior seemed more strange as I thought on it.

I did not gainsay Jervon when he insisted that I ride. But I made up my mind that I would not spend the whole of this journey in the saddle; like true comrades, we would share alike.

However, as we went, my thoughts were well occupied with Elyn. Not just that he had left us so—any man newly out of a spell might well be so over-cast in his mind to hold only to one desire and the need for obtaining it. If Brunissende meant so much to him, he might see in her the safely he craved. No, I could not count his leaving as unfeeling, for I had never been in the grip of a spell.

It was Elyn the boy I began to remember, recalling all I had once accepted without question. Though why I had this overshadowing feeling that I was about to face another testing I could not tell. Save that no one who had Wise Learning ever puts aside such uneasiness as without cause.

Elyn had never shown any interest in the Wise Way. In fact, now that I faced memories squarely and sounded them for full meaning, he had shunned that. Though I had had laid on me the vows of silence in many things, there had been lesser bits of learning he might well have profited by. Also he had not liked it when I had shown my arts in his presence.

Oddly enough he had not resented the fact that I shared his swordplay. He had treated me then more as a brother, and I had been content. But let me speak of what I might do with Aufrica and he had shied away. Yet at that last meeting he had allowed the cup pledge. The first time, to my knowledge, that he had ever agreed to any spell binding.

We both knew our mother’s story, that she had sought out powers which might prove fatal in order to give our father a son. She had forged the dragon cup—but at the last moment she had asked for a daughter also, gladly paying with her life.

So we had not been conceived as ordinary children; magic had played a part in our lives from the beginning. Did Elyn fear because of this?

Though I had been much with him and my father, yet I had had those other hours of which my father never spoke. He, too, as I recalled those years now, had seemed to ignore that side of my life. As if it were something—like—like a deformity!

I drew a deep breath, a whole new conception of my past opening before me. Had my father and Elyn felt aversion—even shame— But how could they? There Was my mother— What had happened in that land of Estcarp across the sea which had rift my parents from their former life, tossed them into barren Wark?

Shame of the power? Did my father, my brother, look upon me as one marked—or tainted—?

“No!” I denied that aloud.

“No what, my lady?”

Startled, I looked at Jervon walking beside me. I hesitated then. There was a question I longed to ask, yet shrank from the asking. Then I nerved myself to it, for by the reply I might perhaps find some solution to the problem of Elyn.

“Jervon, do you know what I am?” I asked it baldly, my voice perhaps a little hoarse as I braced myself for his answer.

“A very gallant lady—and a mistress of powers,” he replied.

“Yes, a Wise Woman.” I would not have flattery from him. “One who deals with the unseen.”

“To some good purpose, as you have here. What troubles you, Lady?”

“I do not believe that all men think as you do, comrade. That there is good in being a mistress of powers. Or if they admit so much at times, they are not always so charitable. I was bred up to such knowledge, to me it is life. I cannot imagine being without—though it walls me from others. There are those who always look askance at me.”

“Including Elyn?”

He was quick, too quick. Or perhaps I was stupid enough to give away my thoughts. But since I had gone this far, why try to conceal my misgivings farther?

“Perhaps—I do not know.”

Had I hoped he would deny that? If so, I was disappointed, for after a moment his reply came:

“If that is the way with him, it could explain much. And having been caught in what he distrusted—yes, he could wish to see the last of all which would remind him—”

I reined in the horse. “But it is not so with you?”

Jervon put his hand to sword hilt. “This is my defense, my weapon. It is steel and I can touch it, all men can see it in my hand. But there are other weapons, as you have so ably proved. Should I fear, or look sidewise (as you say) upon them because they are not metal, or perhaps not visible? Learning in the arts of war I have, and also, once, some in the ways of peace. That came to me by study. You have yours by study also. I may not understand it, but perhaps there is that in my learning also which would be strange to you. Why should one learning be less or more than any other when they are from different sources? You have healcraft which is your peace art, and what you have done to lay this Curse is your art of war.

“No, I do not look with fear—or aversion—on what you do.”

So did he answer the darkest of my thoughts.

But if I must accept that Elyn felt differently, what lay in days ahead? I could return to that nameless dale—unless early winter sealed it off—where the Wark folk stayed. There was nothing to tie me to them save Aufrica. Yet I had known when I rode forth that her farewell to me had been lasting. There was no need for two Wise Women there, and she had done her best for me. I was now a woman grown and proven in power. The hatched fledgling cannot be refitted into the eggshell from which it has broken free.

Coomb Frome? No, I had nothing there either. I was sure I had read Brunissende right in the short time I had seen her. She might accept her Dame, but a Wise Woman close kin to her lord—there would be more sidewise looks.

But if I went not to the Dale nor to the Keep, where would I venture? Now I looked about me wonderingly, for it seemed, in that moment of realization, I was indeed cast adrift and even the land around me took on a more forbidding cast.

“Do we go on?” Once more Jervon spoke as if he could read my unhappy thoughts.

“Where else is there to go?” For the first time in our companying I looked to him for an answer, having none myself.

“I would say not the Keep!” The decision in that was sharp and clear. “Or, if you wish, only to make sure of Elyn’s return, to visit only and let that visit be brief.”

I seized upon that—it would give me breathing space, a time to think—to plan.

“To Coomb Frome then—in brief.”

Though we perforce went slowly, by mid-afternoon we were sighted by those Elyn had sent to meet us. So I came a second time to the Keep. I noted also that, though we were treated with deference by that party, yet Elyn had not ridden with them.

We reached the Keep long after moonrise and I was shown into a guest chamber where serving maids waited with a steaming copper of water to ease the aches of travel, a bed such as I had never known for softness. But I had slept far better the night before on the bare ground in the wilderness, for my thoughts pricked and pulled at me.

In the morn I arose and the maids brought me a soft robe such as the Dale ladies wore. But I asked for my mailed shirt and travel clothes. They were then in a fluster so I learned that by my Lady Brunissende’s own orders those clothes had been destroyed as too travel-worn.

Under my urging one of the maids bethought herself of other clothing and brought it to me. Man’s it was but new. Whether it had been for my brother, I knew not. But I wore it together with boots, my mail, and the sword belt and sheath in which rested the mutilated weapon which had routed the Curse.

I left my cloak, my saddlebags, and journey wallet in my room. My brother, they told me, was still with his lady—and I sent to ask for a meeting.

So I went for the second time into that fated tower room. Brunissende saw me first and she gasped, put out her hand to grasp tight Elyn’s silken sleeve. For he wore no armor.

He gazed at me with a growing frown. Then he took her hand gently from his arm to stride towards me, his frown heavy as he looked me up and down.

“Why come you here in such guise, Elys? Can you not understand that to see you so is difficult for Brunissende?”

“To see me so? I have been so all my life, brother. Or have you forgotten—?”

“I have forgotten nothing!” he burst out, and it was as if he were deliberately feeding his anger, if anger it was, that he might brace himself to harsh words. “What was done in Wark is long past. You have to forget those rough ways. My dear lady will aid you to do so.”

“Will she now? And I have much to forget, do I, brother? It would seem you have already forgotten!”

His hand came up; I think he was almost moved to strike me. And I realized that he feared most of all—not me as a Wise Woman, but that I might make plain to Brunissende the manner of his ensorcelment.

“It is forgotten—” He said those words as a warning.

“So be it.” I had had no decision to make after all. It had been made for me, days, seasons—long ago. We might be of one birth, of one face, but we were otherwise hardly kin. “I ask nothing of you, Elyn, save a horse. Since I do not propose to travel afoot—and that I think you owe me.”

His frown cleared a little. “Where do you go? Back to those of Wark?”

I shrugged but did not answer. If he wished to believe that, let him. I was still amazed at the chasm between us.

“You are wise.” Brunissende had crept to his side. “Men hereabouts still fear the Curse. That you have had dealings with that power seems fearsome to them.”

Elyn stirred. “She broke it for me. Never forget that, my lady.”

She answered nothing to that, only eyed me in such a way as I knew there could be no friendship between us.

“The day grows, I will ride.” I had no desire to prolong this viewing of something already buried in the past.

He gave me the best mount in his stable, ordered out also a pack horse and had it loaded with gear. I did not deny him this attempt to salve his conscience. All the time I saw the looks of his men who, seeing us so like together, must have longed for the mystery to be explained.

After I had mounted I looked down at him. I did not want to wish him ill. He lived by his nature, I mine. Instead I made a sign to summon fortune and blessing to him. And saw his mouth tighten as if he wanted it not.

So I rode from Coomb Frome, but at the gate another joined me. And I said:

“Have you learned where your lord now lies? Which way do you ride to return to his standard?”

“He is dead. The men of his following—those still living—enlisted under other banners. I am without a lord.”

“Then where do you go, swordsman?”

“I am without a lord, but I have found a lady. Your road is mine, mistress of powers.”

“Well enough. But which road and where?”

There is still a war, Lady. I have my sword and you yours. Let us seek where we can best harry the Hounds!”

I laughed. I had turned my back on Coomb Frome. I was free—for the first time I was free—of Aufrica’s governing, of the wretched survivors of Wark, of the spell of the dragon cup, which henceforth would be only a cup and not any lodestone to draw me into danger. Unless—I glanced at Jervon, but he was not looking at me, but eagerly at the road ahead—unless, I chose to make it otherwise. Which at some future day I might just do.