Dog and Dragon-ARC

Dog and Dragon-ARC

Dave Freer

Advance Reader Copy

Unproofed

Baen

BAEN BOOKS by DAVE FREER

Dragon’s Ring

A Mankind Witch

The Forlorn

WITH ERIC FLINT

Rats, Bats & Vats

The Rats, The Bats & the Ugly

Pyramid Scheme

Pyramid Power

Slow Train to Arcturus

The Sorceress of Karres

WITH ERIC FLINT & MERCEDES LACKEY

The Shadow of the Lion

This Rough Magic

Much Fall of Blood

The Wizard of Karres

Dog and Dragon

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2012 by Dave Freer

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

A Baen Books Original

Baen Publishing Enterprises

P.O. Box 1403

Riverdale, NY 10471

www.baen.com

ISBN: 978-1-4165-3811-0

Cover art by Bob Eggleton

First printing, April 2012

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

1230 Avenue of the Americas

New York, NY 10020

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

t/k

10
 
9
 
8
 
7
 
6
 
5
 
4
 
3
 
2
 
1

Printed in the United States of America

This one is for my Old English Sheepdog, Roland, loyal companion, faithful friend.

Acknowledgments

My thanks go to the many readers who asked for this, and to my editor, Toni Weisskopf, for listening. To my agent, Mike Kabongo, for getting me to write a high fantasy in the first place. As this is my first entirely Australian-written novel: To the Australian immigration authorities for letting us come here to our own enchanted island, Flinders, and to all those who saw our animals (Roly, Puggles, Wednesday, and Duchess, Robin and Batman) safe through quarantine and here with us. To the friends who helped us settle in so that I could write, and the ones (that’s you, Jamie) who came up with good ways to kill monsters.
 

And, as always, most thanks to Barbara, for editing, supporting and driving through Melbourne traffic.
 

CHARACTERS

CHAPTER 1

Back to the sunset bound of Lyonesse—

A land of old upheaven from the abyss

By fire, to sink into the abyss again;

Where fragments of forgotten peoples dwelt,

And the long mountains ended in a coast

Of ever-shifting sand, and far away

The phantom circle of a moaning sea.

Idylls of the King
, Tennyson

“Who are you?” hissed the lithe, dark-eyed man with the drawn sword.

Meb blinked at him. Her transition from the green forests of Arcady to this dark, stone-flagged hall, had been instantaneous. The stone walls were hung with displays of arms and the horns of stags. Otherwise there was not much to separate it from a cave or prison, with not as much as an arrow slit in the walls—let alone a window—to be seen in the stone embrasures.

In Tasmarin from whence she had come, she had known just who she was: Scrap, apprentice to the black dragon that destroyed of the worlds. You could call her anything else, but that was who she had been. Now…

“Cat got your tongue, wench?” he said quietly. “Well, no matter, I’ll have to kill you anyway.”

He swung the sword at her in a vicious arc.

Moments ago, before she’d made the choice that swept her magically from Tasmarin, from the green forest of Arcady, she’d thought she might be better off dead rather than leaving them behind. Leaving
him
behind.

Now she discovered that her body didn’t want to die just yet. She threw herself backwards, not caring where she landed, as long as it was out of reach of the sword.

She screamed. And then swore as the blade shaved across her arm to thud into the kist she had fallen over. She kicked out, hard, catching her attacker in the midriff, knocking the breath out of him in an explosive gasp. Trying to find breath, he still pulled weakly at the sword now a good two-finger-widths deep into the polished timber of the kist. Meb wasn’t going to wait.

But it looked as if she wasn’t going to run very far either. Her scream, and possibly the swearing, had called others and they burst in, flinging the great iron studded doors open. Men-at-arms with bright swords and scale armor rushed in.

As she turned to run the other way, her passage there was blocked by a sleepy-looking man—also with a sword, emerging from the only other doorway.

There wasn’t a window to be seen.

She wanted one, badly.

And then she saw one, just in the embrasure to her left. She just plainly hadn’t spotted it before.

She ran to it, and realized it wasn’t going to help much. In the moonlight she could see that it opened onto a hundred feet of jagged cliff, to an angry sea, frothing around sharp rock teeth far below.

Some of the soldiers surrounded the man she’d kicked. They’d blocked her escape too, but you couldn’t really call it surrounding her. Not unless that included “getting as far from her as possible, while not leaving the other prisoner, or the room.”

The man who had looked so sleepy moments before didn’t anymore. His sword was up, ready, his eyes wide as they darted from the window to her, seemingly unsure which was more shocking.

“Who are you?” he asked.

There was something weaselly about him that made her very wary about answering, in case her words were twisted against her.

And why did they all want to know something she wasn’t too sure of herself?

***

There was a narrow bridge across the void. Along it walked a black and white sheepdog, followed by a black dragon. The dog never looked back at the dragon, just forward, his questing written into every line of his body, from the mobile pointed ears, to the feathered tail.

The bridge itself was narrow—made of vast, interlocking blocks of adamantine—or at least that is the way it looked. Reality might be somewhat different, at least to the eyes of a planomancer. Such eyes would see deeper than the ordinary spectra of light, and could see patterns energy. Fionn, the black dragon, saw it all as the weave of magics that made the bridge between the planes of existence. He knew the bridge was fragile and fraught with danger. That did not stop him walking along it, any more than it stopped Díleas the sheepdog.

The bridge was barely two cubits wide and had no rail. Far, far below seethed the tumult of primal chaos. The only way the dog could go was straight ahead. He kept looking left though.

That was where he wanted to go. Sometimes he would raise his nose and sniff.

Fionn knew there was nothing to smell out here. The air that surrounded the bridge was drawn and melded by the magics of it, from the raw chaos. It was new air, and Fionn knew that it did not exist a few paces behind them, or a few paces ahead.

He was still sure Díleas was following the faint trail of something. A something which even a very clever dog could best understand as scent…even if there was nothing to smell.

At least he hoped that was the case.

Hoped with ever fiber of his very ancient being.

Fionn had long since given up on caring too much. He was not immortal, as far as he knew. He could certainly be killed. But compared to others, even of his own kind, the black dragon was long-lived. Time passed, and so did friends. His work was never done, fixing the balance, keeping the planes stable. He moved on.

He’d been hated. He’d been worshiped, though it irritated him. He’d been laughed at and reviled. He’d been feared.

He’d even been loved.

He had never loved before, though.

The black and white sheepdog was more experienced at love than the dragon, and he was a young dog still, maybe eight months old. Barely more than a pup. But Díleas—whose name was “faithful” in an old tongue, long forgotten by most men—would go to the ends of the world for her, and beyond, as they were now. His mistress was his all and he would search for her until he died, or he found her.

Fionn knew that he’d do the same. His Scrap, his inept apprentice, had been plucked from them by magic. Her own magic and her own choice, made freely for them, and for Tasmarin, the place of dragons. Fionn knew, however, that it had cost her dearly. For him, left here without her, it was a worthless sacrifice.

So now, somewhere, back in some place that she’d been torn from as a babe, they had to find her again.

Fionn had no idea where that might be. A place of magics, where human magery ran strong in the blood, that much he could be sure of. But there were many such places in the interlinking chain of worlds, and they themselves were large and complex places.

It was a good thing that Díleas seemed to have some idea where to go, because Fionn didn’t know where to even start, except by trying everywhere. He would do that, if need be. He had time. He would never give up.

The only problem was that she was human and very mortal. And, if he had to be truthful with himself, she was able to attract disaster toward herself, just by being there.

Fionn had never known love. He’d never really known worry either. Pain, and the avoidance of it, yes, fear, yes, but now he was afraid for her. Worried.

The end of the bridge was now visible, if wreathed in smoke or mist.

Fionn wondered if it would be guarded, or if the bridge was too new. The transit points often had their watchers, or barriers.

As the other side of the void came closer, Fionn realized this place would not need such things.

Most travelers would turn around and go back just as quickly as they could.

Gylve was a place of fire and black glass.

Fionn had been there before, and wouldn’t have minded if he’d never had to go there again. A planomancer needed to visit such places and straighten things out. Last time, it had glowed in the dark, and he’d had to do some serious adjustment. He was pleased to see that the radiation levels at least had dropped. Still, you could see fire dancing across the sky as the methane jets caught.

On the silver collar on Díleas’s neck hung a bauble. A little part of the primal fire, enclosed in what merely appeared to be crystal. It should keep the dog safe from demons and from actually freezing. It wouldn’t keep his feet safe on the broken volcanic glass in the place they were coming to; only dragon hide would do for that.

Fortunately, he had some with him, available without the discomfort of slicing it off himself. He could have done that. Dragons were tough…even if they really didn’t like making holes in themselves any more than the next creature. But every now and again a dragon died or was killed. If a dragon was sharp about it, they could get a piece of hide before the humans did. Honestly, thought Fionn, for a species that was afraid of dragons, humans had a habit of sticking their necks out.

It was one of the things that he liked about them.

The bridge was beginning to widen…to open onto the jet-black clinkers of one of the fire-worlds. Fionn stopped.

Díleas didn’t.

“Díleas, come here!”

The dog did turn and look at him, with a “what do you think you’re wasting time at?” look. And then began to pace forward.

“This muck will cut your feet to ribbons. And then you won’t be able to walk to her.” Fionn had to smile wryly at himself. Talking to the dog. Just like his Scrap of humanity had.

The dog turned around and came back to him. Lifted a foot.

Fionn’s eye’s widened. He’d have to do some serious reevaluation. And yes, now he could see that the dog was substantially magically…enhanced. Curse the dvergar and their tricksy magics. He was supposed to be the practical joker, not them. His Scrap had
wanted
Díleas to understand her. And she wore a very powerful piece of enchanted jewelry, which bound the magics of earth, stone, wood, fire and worked metals to her will.