A Dragon at Worlds' End (49 page)

"So glad, my lady, so—"

"It sheltered me. It was as if it knew I was coming. There is much I do not understand yet, but I have glimpsed a new mystery. And I never felt a thing! Not since…" and in her mind's eye she saw the grotto below as she fell into it, in Ferla's body. It was all a magical illusion, but Ferla's impact on the rocks below had felt real enough.

She hugged the astonished Gert and let the tears flow.

"Oh, Gert, sweet gentle Gert. I think I have learned a little about contrition. I must talk to Lessis someday."

On higher planes of existence beyond Andiquant, beyond Ryetelth itself, the tremors from Mirchaz were felt clearly. Something unique had come into existence on the Sphereboard of Destiny. Others took note of this event with mingled awe and concern.

Closer to the city, in the western hills, the people came out in wonder as they saw the volume of smoke that now arose. The burning of the City of Slaves had produced a fair-sized cloud already, but now the whole sky was alight, the great city itself was burning.

In the palaces and grand houses, the former slaves avenged themselves most horribly upon their oppressors. Many an ancient name was extinguished, often with horrifying cruelty. Lord and Lady Filguince were roasted alive over a bonfire in the avenue outside their mansion. Others suffered similar fates.

There were survivors, and many houses were left untouched during the killing spree, the simple cast of the dice of chance determining who died and who did not.

Lord Pessoba escaped by hiding in the foul gutter beneath the barrels in his wine cellar. The tall, elegant house was sacked by the mob, but Pessoba survived. And so did Master Lum, who pretended to be one of the rioters.

When the gates went down, Katun and the guards saw their peril clearly. They moved to seize control of the buildings of the Astrologers' College. The elf lords sought shelter there, too, since it was the most easily defended building in the Upper City. It even had a high surrounding wall. The guards were in a nasty trap. They began to think differently of their contract with the elf lords.

The elf lords tried to hold the guards in line with sorcery. The guards learned of this before it became effective and turned on the elf lords, thrusting them out to the waiting mob. The men nominated Katun to speak for them in negotiating a way out of the trap. They wanted safe passage south.

The elf lords received no mercy. Some were torn to pieces on the spot. Then the slaves built fires and when they were blazing high they threw the elf lords onto them alive.

Later the killing subsided. The fires burned themselves out. Whole sections of the graceful city of the elves had been reduced to rubble.

The plaza in front of the pyramid became a focus of new organizational energy, with Norwul and Lumbee taking charge.

The Ardu recruited as many able-bodied as were willing from the rioters and armed them from the equipment abandoned or lost by the guards. Their task now was to impose a new kind of order on the city. Killing had to stop. Looting, on the other hand, was justified and could continue, at least for now. Fires were to be put out.

A handful of surviving elf lords were brought to the plaza. The atrium of the pyramid was being used as a temporary prison to hold the former rulers.

Near the city gate, Ium and Wol found Relkin leaning against a warehouse wall on the commercial road. He was dazed and incoherent and barely able to stand.

They brought him to shelter and then sent for help. Soon Relkin was borne to safety by a crowd chanting "Iudo" over and over.

While chaos raged in the city, he was cared for in a house in the City of Slaves. The destruction here had been limited to the commercial road and the warehouse zone around the city gates. The tenements and mean houses of the City of Slaves had survived. He rested there in the house of a horse trader. He slept, briefly.

When the orgy of destruction and murder had subsided a bit, the Ardu bore him into the city and along the shore promenade to the pyramid. Here they found Baz, lying back against the staircase to the pyramid with his leg propped up on a stack of shields. They had stretched a sheet of cotton over him to shade him, and they had promised him food and beer.

Bazil lay back, propped up with piles of shields and armor stripped from the guards. Relkin hugged the great beast, and was hugged in return so hard the breath went out of him.

"You came to find me, right?"

"Found boy."

"Well, it has to be said, you showed up at just the right moment."

The dragon chuckled indulgently. "Elf lords lucky they not kill boy."

Relkin looked over to the group of survivors. They all looked so similar, with the identical stiff faces and the silver curls, it was hard to be sure, but he thought he saw Pessoba. They seemed such a sad, dislocated group. In the flash of a moment, their gaudy worlds had been undone and they themselves dispossessed.

Lucky?

Relkin was examining the wound in Bazil's thigh. There was no getting around it, it was really bad, probably mortal. The spear had gone a foot deep and had moved around as the dragon continued fighting. To remove it would risk cutting major arteries, and that could be fatal. To leave it was to ensure gangrene. The leg would have to come off at the minimum.

It was a sickening thought, but Relkin could see no other way. The elf lords had skilled surgeons among their servants, they had already been sent for and they concurred with Relkin's first impression.

He sat there stumped. He wondered how to explain it to Bazil. If ever Caymo and the Old Gods were going to help him, now was the time.

"Baz—" he started.

The dragon waved a huge hand. The eyes fixed on Relkin's. "This dragon know end is coming. Spear in too deep. Leg already infected. You want to cut off leg. It better to be dead."

"Baz…"

"Besides, you look like your end is coming, too." The dragon clacked his long jaws in amusement.

Relkin had to agree he looked like he was already embalmed, wrapped in bandages. And yet his wounds had continued to heal rapidly since the elf lady's healing magic. Even his battered nose, though still swollen, was no longer an active source of pain.

"Baz, we have to take off the leg. It's the only way."

"This dragon not live one-legged."

"You could retire. Live by the sea. I'm sure the Legion would give you dispensation."

"This dragon not live without one leg."

Relkin confronted the realization that the dragon would be immovable on the subject.

"Then we still have to try and take it out, or else you will die."

"Die anyway, why bother?"

"No! I think we can do it. There has to be a way to get it out."

Bazil groaned. "Dragons feel pain, just like you."

"I know, Baz. But we'll get the elf lords to use their healing magic. I have felt it. The lady, she healed my arms. I thought I was going to lose them, they were burned so bad."

"Magic not work on dragons. Not easy."

"We can't just let you die. I won't give up without trying."

There was a long moment. Both of them thought about the agonies involved. Relkin set his jaw. He would not let the dragon die. Somehow.

"All right, you torture me before the long sleep." Bazil stared at him again with something like fury. "But first we eat."

Bazil's sensitive, top-predator nose had informed him that there was food in the offing. From the surviving houses in the city came the makings a fine dinner rolled out by Master Lum and a squad of cooks for the houses of the elf lords. Bazil devoured a side of beef, spit-roasted over hot coals, plus a couple of sides of bacon, along with two dozen loaves of bread. He washed this down with a barrel of dark beer rolled up from the cellar of the pyramid.

While Bazil ate, Relkin turned away. His thoughts were a whirl of confusion and fears. How would he live without the dragon? Could he? It seemed unimaginable. He pushed himself to investigate the pyramid. Anything that might take his mind off the problem at hand. What had become of the entity he had felt arise here? It was something entirely new in the world, he could not guess at its powers, especially considering the load it had carried in operating the Game worlds of the fallen Lords Tetraan. Yet he imagined that the ten thousand would still need to be fed and cared for. Their physical bodies were the essential basis for the grand gestalt they had fused into. They would have to be kept alive for the gestalt to survive.

Relkin walked through the catacombs, past row upon row of stone cribs in which lay the silent slaves. He wondered how many thousands had been used up in these cold cells, consumed and tossed aside like so many sheep or swine. The place fairly reeked from the horror of what had been done here.

The cells and corridors were oppressive. He soon decided to leave the ten thousand to their quiet darkness and returned to the dragon's spot beside the great staircase. There was still a little left of the keg of beer Bazil had been working on. Relkin took a cup in a silver mug. It was heavy, and sweetish, but it was still recognizably beer. It went down very easily. He had another cup.

He called for Lord Pessoba to be brought out, if he still lived. He did, and he was.

"As you are aware," Relkin told Pessoba, "circumstances have changed. Your Great Game is gone forever. Something new has replaced it."

"The world is shattered. Such wanton slaughter! Did we deserve such?"

Relkin shrugged. "I have seen Game worlds with ten thousand times as much slaughter. You destroyed the lives of millions for your pleasure. I can understand why the slaves did what they did."

"And now you are the master?" said Pessoba.

"No. The Ardu are the masters now. But they might spare you if I ask them."

"Oh, please do, please do. Really! I have no desire to be thrown to the flames."

"There is work for you to do."

"What is that?"

"The ten thousand in there, they must be cared for. You will organize it. They have to be fed and cleaned. Until we know what else they want. Something very great and very mysterious has happened. We will have to wait and see how it manifests itself."

"What has happened? I am not at all sure that I understand the progress of recent events. You came to me from Katun. I thought you charming, of course. We visited the Arkelauds. That damned woman claimed you were the Iudo Faex. Nobody believed her, but they still wanted to kill you. Then you vanished. Just up and vanished. Finally Mot Pulk was sought for the crime. Mot Pulk, he has a great deal to pay for."

"Mot Pulk is dead. He was caught when the worlds went down. He did not return to the Game board."

"Then he escaped full punishment."

"None of you will escape punishment. The folk you oppressed shall rule the city now. You shall serve them."

"Of course, I understand this. I will see that the ten thousand are tended to. They shall be fed and watered just as they always have. The pap they are fed is nutritious. The system is stable. We shall change nothing unless they so order it."

"Good."

Pessoba was dismissed. Relkin lay back against the wall. The dragon was picking through the remains of the feast. He turned big eyes on Relkin.

"You listen to me, boy. This dragon not live one-legged."

"I know, you told me."

"I not be one of the cripples. That is no life for a wyvern dragon."

Relkin thought his heart would break. That damned spear would kill Bazil unless it was removed, and pulling it out would probably prove lethal, too, and would only cause the dragon much pain before he died. Taking off the leg was the only option open to them.

"It has been a good life. This dragon has seen much, done more. We have made our enemies fear us, eh?"

"Yes, Baz, we did."

"They sing of us for a long time to come."

Bazil set down the empty barrel and cradled his big arms across his belly and went to sleep as if quite unconcerned for the future.

Relkin lay beside the dragon and felt tears course down his cheeks. The wound was seeping blood at a steady rate. Relkin wondered if Bazil would last until morning. Perhaps it would be better if he didn't, if he went in his sleep. He knew he would not try to pull the spearhead out; it would only cause agony. He would have to let go, let Bazil go peacefully, but it was hard, very hard indeed.

Somehow, perhaps because of the underlying exhaustion, he slipped into sleep, curled up next to the dragon for the last time.

Late in the night Bazil stirred, drifting in light sleep. The leg throbbed evilly, but it was not the pain that had awoken him. He sensed a presence close by. He opened one eye. There was nobody there, and yet he felt the weight of someone, something. It waited there patiently.

"Who are you?" he said softly in dragonspeech. "Are you death come to take me to the dragonstar?"

There was no answer, just a breeze stirring off the lake.

Bazil's hand strayed to Ecator's hilt. There was a familiar faint tingle, which meant the spirit blade sensed troll or some other manifestation of foul magic.

If it was death, then it could not be fought with the sword this time. There was no point in preparing for battle. Still the presence hovered there. The dragon grew sleepy again and after a while dropped off once more into a troubled sleep.

Bazil awoke as the first fragile light of dawn tinged the sky. He came awake suddenly, feeling a great rushing in the air, but not from the wind, and a sensation of unbearable pressure began to build.

Relkin woke up with a sudden yelp.

And there came a blinding flash of green light that seemed to pass through the dragon's leg. It was gone in an instant, leaving only a smell of ozone and a medley of screams and cries from the plaza. It took a half minute or so for vision to return.

"My leg itches!" said Bazil. "Oh, whooo! It really itch."

He reached to scratch his wound and discovered that the broken stub of the spear shaft was no longer projecting from his leg. The itch came from inside the leg, and there was no way to scratch it.

Relkin discovered that the spear shaft was gone a moment later.