When Dragons Rage

9

Will didn’t even turn to look back toward the fire as the stick snapped. “Couldn’t sleep, Kerrigan?” The other’s breath caught in his throat. “Oh, the stick cracking told you someone was here. None of the others would have stepped on it, would they?”

A tiny part of Will wanted to reply, “No, you stone-footed oaf,” but he withheld that comment. He shrugged and pointed to a moss-saddled portion t of the log he sat on. “Only me, but that’s because I’m the only person less suited to being in the woods than you. Resolute’s worked hard to learn me things, but not all of it takes.“

Kerrigan sat and pulled his blanket tight around his shoulders. “You don’t have to humor me, Will.”

“I wasn’t.”

The jowly mage nodded. “You are a thief. Stepping on something like a stick would alert householders, so you would have learned long ago not to do I that. Moreover, I’ve seen you in the woods, but I’ve not heard you.”

The thief couldn’t suppress his smile as he glanced at Kerrigan. Off to the left, twenty yards back, the fire around which Princess Alexia’s bodyguards slept blazed merrily. At the southern end of that circle, a tent had been pitched to provide the married couple some privacy. A stake had been driven into the ground in front of it, and twin chains that led to anklets snaked in through the flaps. Beyond it, another twenty yards on, lay the Tolsin camp-fire, with Mably and his men positioned between the prisoner and the horses.

Out away from the fire only a fragment of its light and none of its heat touched them. “I really didn’t mean to be humoring you, Ker.”

The mage looked up. “Care?”

“Ker, like the first part of your name? I know you don’t want to be called Keri, but Kerrigan is kind of a mouthful. It’s a nickname, you know?”

Kerrigan shook his head. “No, I don’t. I’ve never had one.”

Will blinked. “Never? I’ve had lots, and even get called by one. Okay, look, Will is my nickname.” He lowered his voice. “My real name is Wilburforce.”

Kerrigan nodded solemnly. “That’s a good, strong name.”

“Now you’re humoring me.”

“Oh, no, I’m being quite sincere. In the Twilight Campaign, there was an Oriosan cavalry commander, Wilburforce Eastlan, who helped drive Kree’chuc north. Surely you know that, and know that is why your name is taken as a particularly good omen.” Kerrigan looked at him with innocent, green eyes. “When we passed through the Valsina area, that’s what people were saying.”

“You know this history stuff, and you don’t know what a nickname is?”

The mage shrugged. “On Vilwan we did not use nicknames.” He hesitated for a moment, then frowned. “I must amend that. On Vilwan I never had one. I don’t know about the others.”

Something in Kerrigan’s voice piqued Will’s curiosity. He turned, bringing his left shin to lie across the trunk of the fallen tree. “You didn’t have any friends who called you stuff? Sometimes, like in the winter, some of the other kids would call me Chill because it rhymes with Will, and is another word for ‘brrrr,’ which is part of my name and because my feet were cold in the bed. I hated that. The ‘Chilly-willie’ name.”

The mage canted his head to the right and nodded a couple of times. Will knew he was taking apart the nickname, studying it the way Resolute had him study tracks in the dirt. Finally, Kerrigan looked at him again and blinked a couple of times. “I see how they got it, yes. And, no, I didn’t really have friends. I remember, when I was very young, that there were some other students who studied with me, but pretty soon we were split up and I was given to tutors like Orla, though none of them was her equal.”

“You had no friends?” Will tried to keep the surprise out of his voice, but failed completely. “No one to joke with, to tease, nothing?”

Kerrigan recoiled from the questions. “Vilwan is a different sort of place.”

“I remember. I was there.” Will stopped short of pointing out that while he was there, he had seen plenty of mages who had friends, who fought together in teams, who could joke. Even Orla had had a sense of humor at times. “I was there at the siege.”

“Well, then, you know. They got me away during the siege.” The corpulent youth sighed. “I wish they had left me alone. I wouldn’t be here, and Orla wouldn’t be dead.”

“Yeah, and Chytrine would have the piece of the DragonCrown you’re carrying.”

Kerrigan’s eyes grew wide and a hand shifted beneath the blanket. “How did you… Did Crow tell you?”

Will shook his head and picked with a thumbnail at a piece of bark trapped in the triangle of his legs. “I’m a thief, remember? You’re guarding that thing as well as a gem merchant with a hoard, or some swain mooncalfing over a locket with a curl of his lover’s hair. No one else would have noticed. Well, probably Resolute—he sees everything. But you’re big enough that most’ll just figure you have chiggers in your armpit.”

“I do not.”

Will shrugged. “Just scratch like you do and it’ll keep folks away.”

“So you knew I was hiding something, but how did you know it was a fragment?”

The thief pursed his lips. Instead of telling Kerrigan he’d not known for certain until he’d seen Kerrigan’s reaction to his bluff, he decided to lie. “You’ve been hiding it since we left Fortress Draconis. Now, aside from the people we got out, the only things of worth there were fragments. The Draconis Baron had to try to get at least one piece out and if there was anyone who could hide it with magick, it would be you. I just kind of figured it out from there.”

“He made me promise not to say anything, not to tell anyone but Crow and the princess. Will, you can’t say anything.”

Will shook his head. “I won’t say a word, but you have to let me help you hide it. Here, on the road, it’s not so important. Strikes me, though, that given what folks think about Crow, Meredo is pretty much going to be enemy territory. Chytrine had sullanciri in Yslin last autumn, so you know she could have them in Meredo.”

The magicker nodded slowly. “Yes, that makes sense. How will we hide it?”

“Easily. We’ll start on the road.” Will shivered. Kerrigan was leaning forward, hanging on his every word. Not having had friends growing up, and with Orla dead, Kerrigan was desperate for someone to talk to. Had Will been setting him up to be robbed, well, it would have been too simple.

The small part of Will that had absorbed all Marcus’ lessons wanted to laugh at Kerrigan. Here he was, a powerful mage, in possession of an item so priceless that the Aurolani Empress would destroy nations to possess it. Kerrigan had already seen the riches that she’d offered the Pirate Queen Vionna for the Lakaslin fragment, so he knew just how much it was to be treasured. Yet despite all that, here he was listening to Will’s advice as to how to safeguard it. In a heartbeat the fragment could be Will’s—the reward for it, too.

Will snorted. “Starting tomorrow, put all your stuff in one of your saddlebags, then fill the other up with junk.” He leaned over and picked up a pine cone. “Things like this, and little animal skulls, funny-shaped rocks. Have Qwc and Lombo find things for you, and spend time looking at them. Offer to show them to the Tolsin men. Let them think you’re a little crazy.”

Kerrigan nodded. “They think that already. And that I’m useless, even though I started their fire for them, wet wood and all.”

“I’d have left them cold. ‘Cept maybe Mably. I’d start a fire with him.”

“No, Will, don’t think that. It didn’t work with Wheele and Orla died because of it.”

“Hey, Ker, stop right there.”

“What?”

“Orla’s death isn’t your fault.” Will held up a hand to prevent a protest. “I know you said I wasn’t good at being a mind reader when I said that before, but you remember back in Yslin? Orla came with Crow and Resolute and the princess and we went after a sullanciri. And that Dark Lancer had made my friends into monsters, and we had to kill them. We didn’t have any choice ‘cuz they would have killed us. But when it was all over, they were dead and they were just kids again. And I couldn’t help thinking, somehow, that there was a way we could have not killed them.

“But, you know, I worked out that it wasn’t my fault. You trace it back, and it’s all Chytrine. She’s the one who made the sullanciri, and she’s the one who wants me dead, and she’s the one who had the pirates attack Vilwan, which meant you had to go away and Orla with you.” His head came up. “You and me, we’re not doing this. We might not do everything right, but we have to do something because if we don’t, then she wins and folks will be dead. Lots of them.”

Kerrigan sat there for a bit, his thick lips pursed. Will wasn’t sure how long the magicker thought, but it was long enough that the cold and the silence began to gnaw at Will. If not for the steam drifting from Kerrigan’s nostrils, he could have imagined the mage had turned to stone.

“That is it, though, Will,” he finally said. “You and I might not do everything right, but at least you’re doing some things right. I…” Kerrigan’s voice failed for a moment, then returned muted and cool. “All the training I had was meant to prepare me for something great. What, I don’t know, no one ever told me. They just made me do more and more and more. And then, when I was leaving Vilwan, the pirates tried to stop us. I destroyed their ship, but the people on the boat with me were hurt and then the ship capsized, and that was my fault, so that those who weren’t dead already drowned. And then I used the wrong spell on Wheele…”

“But, Kerrigan, your spell let Orla’s spell work. And you’re forgetting all the stuff you did during the Svoin siege, and figuring out those spells when we were in Loquellyn, and your lighting up the firedirt that killed Chytrine’s troops and saved the people we were getting out of Fortress Draconis. You’ve done good, lots of good.

“And I know I haven’t been fair to you.” Will sighed. “I let Scabby Jack and Garrow’s gang beat you up. I said you froze when that big frostclaw came after you. I never told you I was sorry Orla died. I guess, growing up, I had friends, but I never had people I could trust like you could her. I saw how she was, and I envy you knowing her. She was a good person.”

“I know, and I miss her.”

They both sat there quietly for a moment. Will thought about Orla for a bit, then about Resolute and Crow. They were the first real friends he’d ever had, and the first people he could trust, because they trusted him. Granted, they had drawn him into things without telling him who he was, but time had let him see that they were trying to protect him, preparing him to accept his responsibility as the person who was prophesied to bring an end to Chytrine’s invasion of the south.

Kerrigan’s voice came soft through the night. “Did you ever think you’d be here, Will?”

“Here, in some forest in Oriosa, wearing a mask, freezing, while the most evil man in the world is sleeping with a beautiful princess and the most evil woman in the world is sending vast armies south to kill me? Not specifically, no.”

“You know what I mean.” The magicker’s hands emerged from beneath the blanket and he stared down at his open palms. “When I was growing up, I used to imagine things. I thought maybe I would become Grand Magister of Vilwan and invent new and wonderful spells. And other times I’d dream about opposing Chytrine, but in those dreams it would be the two of us in some wizards’ duel and I’d batter her down and save the world.

“But here I am, in a cold wood, talking to someone who is younger than me and, no disrespect intended, about as ill prepared to save the world as I am.”

“And don’t forget that we’re being hunted.”

“I haven’t.” Kerrigan glanced over at the tent. “Orla told me to follow Crow and Resolute, and now Crow turns out to be Hawkins and King Scrainwood will probably kill him. And I have a fragment, and you are a pawn of destiny, and Fortress Draconis has fallen, and my mentor is dead. Have I forgotten anything?”

Will grinned. “General Adrogans took Svoin, then burned it to the ground.”

“Oh, yeah.” Kerrigan winced. “Things are not going well.”

“When you look at it that way, yeah. I mean, if I’m the hope of the world, then the world ought to be feeling pretty worried.” Will shrugged. “Then again, we aren’t dead yet, we’ve killed a couple of Chytrine’s Dark Lancers, and there are two fragments that are not in her hands. The fact that Fortress Draconis has fallen means some folks are going to have to start doing things to stop Chytrine, so we have a chance.“

“Yes, we do at that.” Kerrigan nodded slowly. “And we will make the best of it. Pursuant to which, when I get this collection of things, I hide the fragment in it?”

Will shook his head. “Nope, but you’ll treat the collection as if it does contain something valuable. You’ll show folks some things, but never let them examine the collection itself. When we get to Meredo, that collection will be the thing they go after. And when they find there is nothing of value, they’ll just think you are crazy and have nothing to hide. And so they will stop looking.”

“That makes sense.” But despite his words, Kerrigan sounded uncertain. “In Meredo, you will help me hide it so no one will get it?”

Will stood, stretched, and stamped his feet. “Yes, we’ll find a place for it that no one will ever discover.”

Kerrigan’s brows furrowed and his jowls quivered. “But, logically, if we can find it, then it can’t be a place no one would ever… Oh, sorry.”

“We’ll find a place.” The thief smiled. “Trust me, Ker. You owe Chytrine for Orla, I owe her for my friends and more. Keeping that fragment from her is just the first part of paying her back.”