The Schemes of Dragons

II

THE MAIN STREET OF THE hamlet of Old Stump rumbled with the sound of mounted soldiers. Citizens prudently sought the shelter of the buildings, where they peered cautiously from shadowed doorways and curtained windows. A high noon sun washed the community with hard, revealing light, giving the watchers a view more vivid than they would have preferred.

They saw twenty riders seated atop heavy battle oeikani, the thick-necked breed seldom seen in Cilendrodel. The animals' short, knobby antlers had been capped with brass cones, and on their forward feet their cloven hooves had been filed to cleaverlike sharpness, so that they clicked as they crossed the tiles between the hall of the elders and the home of the mayor, the only paved section of roadway in the region. The mayor's wife and daughters heard the clicking and struggled to banish the unwelcome memories summoned to their minds.

The riders were all dressed alike, in chain mail hauberks and bronze greaves. They carried broadswords, dirks, and wooden shields reinforced with copper bands, except that the pair of archers at front and rear had substituted bows and quivers for the shields. But most important for Old Stump's populace, each of the soldiers wore a red and black design on the right breast of their jupons, so that there could be no doubt that they were the Dragon's men.

The second group of ten rode somewhat behind the first, leaving a gap at the center of the procession. In that gap something was being dragged in the dust. Owl the tavernmaster, peering tentatively out through the open half of his main doorway, decided the thing must have once been a man.

It was not easy to tell, even after the soldiers had reined up in the center square of the hamlet and lifted their burden up out of the dirt. The body had no eyes, no nose, no genitals. Several fingers and toes bent at impossible angles. His skin was covered with welts, burns, clotted blood, or in some cases was simply missing.

Four of the soldiers dragged the dead man to the center of the square. Until three years earlier the site had been home to Old Stump's great father tree, which antedated the first house. Now there was only a crudely hacked-off trunk, eight feet high, to which the soldiers tied their trophy. When the last knot had been cinched, the patrol leader dismounted and shuffled lazily to the spot.

The latter was stout but muscular, perhaps a bit less than forty years of age. He wore brass knuckles, polished to hot brilliance, and a sash of fine quarn silk. His cheeks bore shallow scars from a childhood bout with the pox. There were those in the hamlet who could remember the year when that sickness had swept through, taking one in ten of the children, and one in twenty of the adults. Others could recall when the man had been taunted by his juvenile peers because he had been afraid to climb the great father tree. Those were the days before Lord Puriel's nearby castle had been fortified as one of the Dragon's outposts, and many of Old Stump's homes taken over in order to quarter the men of the garrison.

The patrol leader pulled his dirk from its sheath and used the tip to carve a pattern in the corpse's abdomen, leaving gouges that seeped a few drops of cold blood. There were not many in the village who could read what was written; even the writer was merely copying it from a design he had memorized an hour earlier. They were characters of the High Speech of the Calinin, and they formed a name: Milec. In ancient days in the kingdom of Aleoth, this had meant fifthborn son of the weaver. It was a common enough name in Cilendrodel, but there was one particular Milec more famous than any other. When certain watchers saw the letters formed, they knew the rumor of his capture was true.

The carver finished his work and turned away. He found that an old woman was standing in the middle of the street, watching him. She lifted a bony finger at him and shook it.

"May your mother turn in her grave, Claric," she said, strong-voiced in spite of her age.

He laughed. "Aunt Seerie. Where are the menfolk? Afraid to show their faces? They leave old women to render their complaints?"

"This is a good man you have murdered," Seerie continued, as if Claric had not spoken.

"He was a criminal, condemned by Governor Puriel himself," Claric answered hotly. "It isn't murder to execute a rebel."

"And to mutilate him?"

"If he had told us what we wanted to know, he could have saved himself most of that." Claric climbed into his saddle. "The Dragon is not unkind to those who acknowledge his lawful rule."

From oeikaniback, Claric called to the buildings surrounding the square, "Tell the precious prince of Elandris and his whore of a sister that I will see them hanging from this same post one day."

He paused, as if challenging the village to speak, but no reply came. Then he spurred his mount and rode past his aunt in the direction from which he had come, missing her so narrowly that the wind of his passage nearly toppled her. She steadied herself with her walking stick. Half the patrol followed Claric at a gallop.

The ten men remaining, including all the archers, assumed stations around the square, two in the saddle, the rest standing. Seerie gave them a cold stare, which they met with disinterest. They joked as she limped away down the street.

By evening, Old Stump came back to life, in a quiet way. Light glowed from the tavern windows, and the lamp above its sign clearly displayed the name: Silver Eel, called that because of the house specialty, delivered daily by local fishermen. A new squad arrived from the garrison, and several of those who had guarded Milec's body throughout the afternoon gladly whiled away the first of their off-duty hours in the pub room. Houses rattled to the sound of children running and wives cooking. Citizens occasionally appeared on the street, until the curfew drew near.

There was even some activity in the square, though no one lingered there. An elderly man with cataract-tainted eyes stopped and peered at the corpse, but a soldier's half-drawn sword kept him ten paces off. If anyone had any interest in the spectacle that went beyond morbid voyeurism, they hid it. Here in the shadow of one of the Dragon's strongholds it was not prudent to show concern for an enemy of the state. As Owl the tavernmaster put it, "Better him at that post than me."

In the small hours of the morning, a sentry yawned and thought once more of the relief squad due at dawn, and of the night's gambling that he had missed. Motherworld hung overhead, full and oppressive, staving off darkness with a bright orange glow. The shadows of the dead man's eye sockets seemed to hide an accusing stare. The sentry almost wished the rebels would try something, thereby relieving his boredom. But they would not. This was too deep in the Dragon's territory. If it had been otherwise, the guard would have been more numerous. The entire scheme had been staged merely to humor the Dragon's sorcerer.

It came as a shock, then, when the latter burst into the square, nearly drawing fire until the guards recognized his fine silk garb. "Have care!" the wizard shouted. "There is magic being cast."

The swordsmen drew their blades. The archers nocked their arrows and pointed them toward the shadows of adjacent buildings. But all they saw or heard for their trouble was a silk moth fluttering across the avenue toward the light of the tavern.

The sorcerer lowered his arms. "It is over now," he said.

"What was it, Master Omril?" asked the leader of the squad.

Omril stepped forward, rubbing his cheek in a habitual gesture, and sniffed the air at various points within the square. Eventually he strode up to the body of Milec. Even before he spoke, some of the sentries saw what he had discovered.

"The name is gone," Omril said.

Where Claric had carved Milec's name, there was now only smooth skin. One of the sentries made a sign against demons.

"Enough of that," Omril snapped. "It's only a trick." But he knew otherwise. It was a rare enough thing to be able to heal damage so quickly. To be able to do it to a corpse, and at a distance, was a talent beyond even the best of the Dragon's sorcerers.

One of the archers suddenly spun on the balls of his feet, pointing his weapon toward the middle of the street. An old woman bundled in a shawl was approaching, her shaky steps supported by a cane.

"It's Claric's aunt," one of the swordsmen declared.

"She's out after curfew. Arrest her."

Seerie made no attempt to shake off the hands that clamped on her thin upper arms. "A clumsy trap," she called to Omril. "Did you think the prince would let himself be caught?"

"If he wants the body, he or his men are going to have to stand revealed. Trap or not. If he doesn't come, then Milec will stay until he rots, and that will be a lesson in itself."

"I suspect he'll not rot, however long he stays there."

The sentry made the sign again. Omril felt another sliver of doubt, picturing the corpse's fingers straightening out, its skin becoming pink again. "Are you the rebel's spokesman, then?"

"I am only an old woman, who has lived too long already," Seerie stated. "And so I can speak my mind freely." She started to say something more, but stopped to stare behind them, eyes wide.

They all turned to look at the body. One of the archers gasped. Omril's jaw dropped, and he probed more thoroughly, but to his consternation sensed no magic in the vicinity.

"It has wings!" a swordsman yelled.

The body looked as if it were covered with a horde of huge moths or dragonflies, all fluttering at great speed. As the men watched, the ropes fell away, and Milec began to rise upward. Both archers fired. Omril saw at least one shaft strike home in the dead man's thigh, then the body was airborne. It shrank to a silhouette against the globe of Motherworld, and was gone westward, toward deep forest.

Seerie laughed.

Omril turned toward her with fury. "He's gone, but we have you. Will you be so smug in the governor's dungeon?"

"I am on Death's door," Seerie said calmly. "I have a cancer. I have no fear."

"You will," Omril promised.

"It is you who should fear, you and Lord Puriel and my nephew Claric. That was no ordinary rebel you killed."

"I have the favor of Gloroc himself," Omril said. "I'm not afraid of your prince."

"It is not the prince you need worry about. It is the princess."