A Dragon at Worlds' End (25 page)

"Free men, you say. I fear this is a contradiction of terms. Men are born to be slaves. They were only put on the world to serve the elvish. They roam and rampage now only because their natural masters have withdrawn from the world."

Relkin wasn't sure if he understood it all correctly, but what he was hearing confirmed his fears concerning the Lords Tetraan. Zulbanides was an older model of Pessoba, and older, too, than Althis and Sternwall as he remembered them. But how could one tell the age of these creatures with their nearly identical features, all beautiful, all symmetrical, all perfect? And yet one could. There was something cold in the eyes and a sharpness in the creases around the mouth that marked Zulbanides as much older than Pessoba. Perhaps there was something about the aura. Zulbanides had lived too long.

"Tell me all," the elf lord said.

There was no obvious compulsion, but Relkin felt a strong urge to comply. "I will tell what I can."

Relkin found it hard to control the flow of words once he began. After Heruta's work on him, Relkin had learned ways to resist magical intrusions of this sort. Something had awoken in the mind of the orphan boy from the village of Quosh, some power of which he understood little. It was unformed, he had no control over it, scarcely knew it was there, but it had grown under Heruta's lash. Could he resist this sorcerer of an ancient era as he had resisted Heruta? It wasn't easy; the elf lords were practitioners of more skillful techniques than those possessed by the Doom Masters.

On the other hand, Relkin also wondered how much exactly he might tell Zulbanides without doing any harm. He had to tell him something, but he felt he'd already made the mistake of telling Pessoba too much. On the other hand, it was not as if Relkin were privy to state secrets of the empire.

"How did you really get here?" said the sweet voice.

There was no harm telling him.

"We came on the white ships. It was a long voyage and we had a few adventures during it, all right. By the gods, we had some close shaves on that voyage!

"Then we landed on the Bogon coast, and marched to Koubha, where we fought an army of the Kraheen there. Pretty much finished them off. We weren't there long, but Baz and I had a great dinner with the king. We were involved in an incident where the king was almost assassinated, but we just happened to be there." Relkin paused; Pessoba paused. Both of the blue-eyed, silver-curled heads were turned to him with evident fascination.

"Well, to cut a long story short, we left soon after and marched west. That was the longest march I can recall, but all dead west, straight to the big mountains there, the ones they call the Ramparts of the Sun. Have you heard of them?"

The Ramparts of the Sun—Zulbanides knew well what they were.

"Ashoth Dereth," he said reluctantly.

"It was cold up there in the high passes, I can tell you. Anyway, we crossed the mountains and went west on the rivers. Built big rafts to carry the army and the dragons, and floated down. We went into what they call the Lands of Terror."

"Narga Dulachu. That shadow has never lifted. Still the monsters hold their land."

"Well, we didn't have too much trouble with the pujish, not at first, not till we came down with that plague there. That just about did our whole army in. Everyone was down with it. I was lucky, I guess, since I never got it. We recovered, but it took a long time. Then we marched north, along the coast of the Inland Sea, the big body of water up there."

"The Wad."

"That's right, the Wad Al Nub. That's what they call it in Og Bogon."

"You have seen the Wad, then." Zulbanides' astonishment was now tinged with equal parts dislike and respect.

"We fought the Kraheen there, at Tog Utbek. We beat them, but they hurt us bad."

Somewhere deep within, Relkin found the ability to keep silent about the weapon of the masters and how badly the Legions had been handled at Tog Utbek. He was determined not to tell anyone about that.

"A small group went out to the Island there, that they call the Bone."

Zulbanides stared at him coldly with golden-yellow eyes.

"Well, that was the enemy headquarters. We found our enemy and sent him to Gongo. His shade lies in the halls of the dead now. But the volcano blew and Baz and me were thrown way out to sea. We swam for a long time. Never would have made it without the wyvern—they can swim forever. We landed on the south shore of the sea, back in the Lands of Terror. It was hard, couldn't get a thing to eat for a long time, then we started eating pujish, because they came after us and made it easy to kill them. Well, it wasn't that easy, actually, they're devilish quick, but Bazil is quicker and the sword is too much for them. By the gods, it's too much for battle trolls from Padmasa, so it's too much for pujish." Relkin smacked a hand on his thigh and gave them a grin. "So we ate well enough."

The elven lords stared at him. Their eyes tinged gold on blue.

" 'Tis amazing, Lord. It claims to eat kebbolds, but has a tame waterkebbold of some kind. The whole thing is quite astonishing. The world has changed since the days of Gelderen."

"Ah, Pessoba, we must not speak of Gelderen. The world did not need our mastery, so we were told by the kings. We left and we must have no backward looks. Still, I must agree that this creature represents something most significant. You did very well in bringing it to the society."

Zulbanides turned back to Relkin. "So how did you come to be such a champion of the Ardu? Are there Ardu people that far north?"

"We found this girl, and we helped her. She'd been wounded getting away from your damned slavers."

Zulbanides' mouth wrinkled in a strange smile. "You come all the way south and cause the slave merchants no end of woe, all on behalf of some Ardu wench?"

"Slavery is wrong. No man should be owned by another."

The eyes shone intensely gold.

"It seems to think we are men, Pessoba. Astonishing impudence, don't you think?"

"Astonishing, m'lord."

Zulbanides turned his gaze to Relkin, who felt suddenly oppressed. A vast, superior mind was focused on him. "I am no mere man, child. I am of an older kind."

"And that gives you the right to own men?"

"Yes. Just as men take the right to own horses and dogs, so I take it as my right to own men. They are no more and no less a commodity than the other animals. All are there for my pleasure and purposes."

"We do not think that way in the Argonath. We give no worship to men, only to the gods and the Great Goddess. We obey our kings, for the king is the center of each of the nine realms of Argonath. We obey our officers in the Legions because discipline is the backbone of the army. We know that it works. But we do not worship kings, and we do not allow slavery."

Zulbanides, despite himself, was brought to respond. "Listen to Zulbanides, child. I was here long before the sun's rays fell for the first time on the kind known as men. Ye may deny each other the possession of one another's bodies, but what is that to me?"

Relkin stared at the golden eyes and did not flinch. They tightened, hardened their gaze, seemed to bore into him, but still he looked straight back. He felt the pressure of the golden orbs, the might of the lord was pressing down on him, but he found himself able to resist.

Finally Relkin shrugged. "I believe you would have to bring an army with you if you wanted to own slaves in the Argonath. And the army that you bring will have to face the Legions of Argonath on the field, and none has defeated us there."

Zulbanides stemmed his first, scornful response. Something in this boy's demeanor told him there was a powerful truth behind these words.

"Fascinating! I do believe you are a proud young man. I expect that you deserve to be. Tell me more about your cities and why I should not enslave them."

Relkin recited the names of the nine cities and spoke passionately about their mission. They worked to renew the civilization that had fallen when Veronath had succumbed to evil in days of old.

This interested Zulbanides. "So you are no novice of the cycles of history. You realize that there is always decay and eventually a fall. Even your mighty cities of today will one day be leveled unto the ground."

Relkin of Quosh had had little formal schooling. But he had learned to read and write and he had read a few items from the camp library in Dalhousie, and also from the larger one in Marneri. His brush with destiny in the Arneis campaign had sparked in him an interest in history and fable.

"Veronath of old rotted from within. Veronath was already weakened when the masters sent Mach Inchbok to strike. What rotted out the old empire was slavery and the corruption that went with it."

"Indeed, child, continue." Relkin had Zulbanides' attention now. The gold had faded; pale blue filled the orbs.

"There was the dark age. And during that time only the Isles were free in all the east. And from the Isles, where all men worship the Great Mother, came the founders of the cities. They landed and they drove back the forces of dark-hearted Padmasa and in time they defeated Mach Ingbok and tore down his dread fortress at Dugguth."

Just thinking of his homeland brought on a sudden, dismaying wave of homesickness. Relkin had never wanted to see the white city of Marneri more than he did just then. His voice grew steadier as he harangued the elf mage as if he were drawing strength from the idea of the Argonath itself.

These elf lords, related in some way that he did not understand as yet to those golden elves that had rescued him from slavery to the dwarves, lived amid a splendor of gold, white marble, red silken hangings, and the marks of high civilization, and yet they operated under the regime of slavery. For this Relkin felt a natural contempt. It strengthened him. He spoke on for some time, surprising himself with this sudden oratory.

Zulbanides and Pessoba listened intently, eager to hear everything he told them about the outside world beyond the mountains that ringed them in in southern Eigo.

Suddenly Zulbanides came awake with a jerk. He realized with astonishment and some chagrin that he had fallen under the youth's spell. Time had slipped away while he listened to incredible stories of these nine cities far away. No one in Zulbanides' circle could have achieved this effect with plain speech. Perhaps it was something to do with the complete uninflected conviction in the youth's mind. In Mirchaz they had long since lost any vestiges of the simple, of the uninflected, even of convictions.

The sun had definitely declined in the sky. Zulbanides realized the day had almost passed. He waved a hand to Pessoba.

"This has been fascinating, dear Pessoba. I must speak with you again, very soon. However, I have some moves to make today. I'm due to play at the sunset switch. I have engaged Pitz as my player. What do you think of that? Old Pitz will play today for the Tendency."

Naturally, Pessoba was thrilled to be asked to discuss matters of the Game with a member of the first hundred, indeed one of the top ten. His head bobbed up and down.

"Turns the record books quite upside down," he said.

"I've got a flank on Yermst of the Hawkbishops. Old Pitz is the one to exploit it in board play, don't you think?"

"He's had a very good year, I believe." Pessoba struggled to recall Pitz's statistics.

"An extraordinary season, but all for the Cabal. Now I've secretly recruited him for the Tendency. Wait till Cabalatu and the others see him in Tendency blue! Now, that will be a sight to see!"

Pessoba sighed. He ached for the prestige of a high rank on the Game board. To have the opportunity to wield the top board players would be perfection. One would think of strategies, but leave the tactics to the aces with the pieces. One's energies could be devoted to the social and political side of the Game. One could enter the true heart of it, the rulerships of far-off places, both probable and improbable worlds.

If he wanted to witness the sight of Pitz in Tendency uniform, he would do so from the public seats, far above the booths of the Thousand. Once he had had a booth himself, so he knew how fabulous it was for watching Game play. There was such a sense of belonging, of being central to the great mysteries of the Game. Of course, as a Game lord of the nine hundredth quality, Pessoba had been forced to play his own board moves, very hard work, and to eke out an existence at the edge of the great swirls of Game play. A cautious Game, much concerned with survival and given to frights. The lesser hundredths were natural prey for the powers in the top hundredths. The pieces were hard to concentrate, and scattered pieces were easy targets for such killers as old Pitz, or Swalock or Gamutz.

Indeed, it was to a combination of bad luck and a sudden attack by three strengths moved by Swalock that had destroyed Pessoba and driven him from the Great Game on a day of personal infamy that he would never forget.

Zulbanides left them in the court outside and headed for the looming pyramid that housed the hall of the Game. This rested above the mind mass of the slaves that provided the psychic energy that powered it all.

Pessoba's hired bodyguards, men who reminded Relkin somewhat of Katun, formed up around them and they strode back to Pessoba's house through the marble-covered plateau of the Upper City.

Once safely within Pessoba's walls, Relkin took a light meal and exercised on the open rooftop. At his request a punching bag, some weights, and a skipping rope had been provided, and he soon worked up a sweat. He pondered his predicament and plotted an escape.

So far no opportunity had presented itself. Pessoba took no chances. There were well-armed guards around Relkin at all times. He slept in a windowless room with a pair of guards at the door. There were guards at the front door, on the roof, and covering the back garden. There had hardly ever been a moment when he was completely out of sight of the guards, except when he relieved himself in the morning, and even then he was in an escape-proof chamber.

The best chance to make a getaway would therefore come during one of their social visits. For example, this very evening they would attend a dinner given by Lady Tschinn and Lord Rasion, the current heads of the Arkelaud clan. This would be a larger occasion than previous dinner dates when the bodyguards had been oppressively close all evening. Several pairs of eyes had followed his every move. Even an attempt to palm a small fruit knife had been spotted. With any luck, there would be a little more chaos at this evening's dinner. Certainly Pessoba had described the place they were going as the zenith of society in the Upper City. That promised a good dinner in glamorous surroundings. Perhaps there would be a crowd, and perhaps some opportunity for escape would present itself.