Dog and Dragon-ARC (23 page)

“They’re dangerous, m’lady,” said Neve timidly. “Spirits of old giants, so they do say.”

“Spirits of the rocks and tors actually,” said the spriggan. “And we’re dangerous all right, but not to you. Sadly.”

“The knockers and piskies did us no harm, Neve,” said Meb reasonably. “You even had knocker babies on your lap.”

“Probably piddled on you,” said the spriggan with a kind of gloomy satisfaction. “They do.”

“They were good little things,” said Neve defensively. “Nice to me and m’lady.”

“Ah, should have been suspicious then,” said the spriggan. “I daresay they gave you food which turned your insides to wax or something.”

“You’re a grumpy so-and-so,” said Meb.

“We have that reputation, yes. Now if you’ll follow me, I think we’ve got a few rabbits and some wild onions in the pot. Won’t agree with you, of course.”

Meb shouldered the axe, stepped forward and took the rather surprised-looking spriggan by the arm. Grey-skinned and touched with lichens, he was still warm, she noticed. “Lead on. Come on, Neve. He won’t eat us, or he would have, because there is another one at the start of the lane. We’re between them.”

The spriggan blinked. “My brother will give you a hand with the bags, if you like,” he said, escorting her in as courtly a manner as any of the haerthmen of the prince’s retinue.

They walked up the hill, to where the abandoned walled fields gave way to grazing lands and to the rocky tor at the top. Meb recognize it from her day’s hunting, and realized just how close to Dun Tagoll they still were. “It was you that I saw, watching me, wasn’t it?”

The spriggan nodded. “We weren’t too sure how to talk to you in all that press around you. Too much cold iron. It won’t kill us straight off, but we don’t like it.”

He tapped a rock and it slid aside to reveal a passage down. “An old tomb,” he said cheerfully. “Gloomy but clean and dry.”

Meb suppressed a shudder. “Just don’t mention the tomb part to Neve. She’s…she’s lived a bit of a sheltered life, compared to me. Can we leave it open?”

“It’ll let the spiders in, I daresay.”

“For now.” A glance showed Neve was almost white with terror. Meb winked at her, to tell her it would be all right. And Neve managed a smile, and appeared to relax slightly.

They walked down stone steps and into what should have been the cold of the tomb. The spriggans plainly didn’t have much regard for these ideas, as it was pleasantly warm, and scented with…not dust and decay, but the smell of onions, garlic, wild thyme, and cooking meat. It might once have been a tomb, but the current occupants had scant respect for funerary furniture or the dead that might have lain there, having used the central sarcophagus to make a table, on which they had laid a cloth, and around which they’d placed several three-legged stools. A fire burned in a grate in the corner, with a pot hanging from a hob, from which the smells were plainly coming.

“Welcome to our lair,” said the spriggan, rather formally.

Meb wasn’t sure how one answered that, but she had a feeling that formally would be best. “Our thanks to you. May it remain dry and warm and safe,” she said.

“What…what are you cooking?” asked Neve, warily.

“Rabbits. We have to make do. We can’t get enough unwary travelers these days,” said the spriggan tending the pot.

“Stop teasing her,” said Meb sternly, hoping she was the one not being naive. But they were just enough like Finn, when he was being outrageous, for her to recognize it. “The fay here seem to delight in mocking people.”

“But there is so much to mock,” said the spriggan who had escorted her. “I suppose it is that you humans are more numerous, more powerful than us in many ways. It’s that or kowtow to you. And we’d rather mock.”

The cook looked thoughtful. “The muryan are hard-working, serious and not given to practical jokes, if they understand jokes at all.”

“Yes, but there are more of them than humans. And look where it has gotten them.”

Meb looked at the stone-coffin table. Five places laid, trenchers ready. Three spriggans and the two of them. “Either you were expecting us, or you’re expecting some more spriggans.”

“Ah. It’s what they said. She’s so sharp it’s a wonder she doesn’t cut herself. Probably will, with that axe. Or her brain will overheat with all that thinking,” said the spriggan cook.

“Don’t you say nasty things about m’lady,” said Neve, straightening up. “She’s had enough of that.”

That seemed to amuse the spriggans. “Wouldn’t dare, your majesty, wouldn’t dare. Now, if you want to put your things down and take a seat, the food has been ready awhile, but you’re slow.”

“Who told you to expect us?” asked Meb.

“The knockyan—what you call knockers. Very full of it they were. But their tunnels are a bit tight for your kind.”

That was reassuring. Meb knew the knockers had liked them, and if they were willing to trust the spriggans, then presumably the rabbit stew wasn’t a first course to fatten up two women as the main roast. The stew was very good indeed, so good that it didn’t worry either of them that one of their hosts got up to close the front door to keep the rain out.

“To think,” said Meb, stomach full, warm and sore feet up on what could easily be the treasure chest of a dead king, “that I worried about food and shelter on our journeying.”

“Tonight is well enough,” said the spriggan, “but they’ll be looking for you. The mage has tools in his tower and he’ll have traces of you. Best to go further off, and to keep moving a while.”

“The piskies seemed to think they could stop us being followed.”

“Ah, but that’s piskies for you,” said the spriggan. “They’re not great on the understanding of things. We can’t really shelter you indefinitely, any more than the piskies can mislead the prince’s troops indefinitely. Neither we nor they can stand cold iron, and their misleading and mazing can be dealt with by turning your clothes. Once the prince’s men realize that they’re being piskie-led, they’ll counter it. Our kind are weak and small here, for all we seem frightening. There are places where it is otherwise, where our kin rule. We are kin to those you call alvar, just as the knockyan are distant cousins to the dvergar.”

“Um. You’re nicer than a lot of the alvar I’ve met,” said Meb, thinking of the faintly supercilious attitude of even Finn’s friends Leilin and her sister. Finn had told her that the alvar were of many different groups, but this degree of difference had not occurred to her.

It amused them, and seemed to please them.

“It’s not a reputation we need among humans. We’ve changed too, with being here. The underlying magic of the worlds shapes us.”

Meb juggled for them. It seemed the least payment she could offer for shelter and food. The spriggans enjoyed it. Not with the childlike delight of the knockers, but with an appreciation of craft. They slept on a bed of heather in the corner of the tomb that night, and Meb slept better and longer than she had since she’d lost Finn and Díleas. Tiredly, just before she slept, she wondered if there was some kind of magic that would at least allow her to see them. It would make such a difference to know they were safe and happy and that all was well back in Tasmarin.

The next day brought a gruel breakfast, salve and leaf plasters for their feet, and a quiet, friendly but firm escort further from Dun Tagoll. “We are tied to the tor. We cannot go more than half a league from it. You’ll find that’s true of all of the spriggans and piskies here. They have their place, and they’re quite strong in it,” said the spriggan walking along with them. “The knockyan can travel but don’t like to. The muryan, well, they do move, but it’s war when one tribe meets another.”

Neve coughed. “I didn’t ever believe in the muryan either.” She turned to Meb. “Do the magic creatures come to see you, m’lady? I mean…I lived all my life in the village and people talked of these things…it was stories. Some you believed and some, well, you mostly didn’t. Never saw any myself, never saw one in Dun Tagoll either…until with you. Now, it is as if they’re everywhere. Even,” she colored, “when I went to relieve myself, without you. There was this little blue-green man looking at me.”

“I hope you were very rude to him!”

“I was,” admitted Neve.

“The piskie have no sense of privacy,” said the spriggan. “Now if it had been one of us, you could have known it was to laugh at you. But they barely understand clothes. They wear them for pretty, when they feel like it. And of course we come to see you. We’ve always been here, but many were in a kind of hibernation. Like bears in winter. Now the fay of the land are waking as the magic pours back in. Like the equinox flood tide it’s been, after so many years.”

Tasmarin. Magic and energy confined there for so long must be flowing back here. Suddenly Meb knew exactly what the problem with their Changer was. In a way, she was really the right one for the mage to blame. It was her, her and Fionn, back in Tasmarin that had started this. Mind you, it could have been worse, had Fionn succeeded in his original aim of destroying the place and returning all its parts and people to where they came from.

“And of course,” said the spriggan, “we can’t go to the Old Place on the headland, where the castle now stands. It’s been bespelled against us for many a year. But even that weakens.”

***

“Fleeing certainly confirms her treachery,” said Lady Cardun.

“It may, but how was she able to do so?” asked Prince Medraut. “My man should easily have been able to deal with two women. And yet they disarmed him, cost him a finger, and frightened him into gibbering superstitious nonsense at half of the men-at-arms in the Dun. And the troop that was out this morning managed to get lost. Lost! A good half of them were born around here. They couldn’t get lost in a thick fog. But they claim they blundered around country they’ve never even seen. And I’ve been shown it myself—they’re black and blue from something. They’re claiming it was bewitchment or a curse. And half of them are blaming Shadow Hall and the other half are saying it was Lady Anghared punishing them. If it wasn’t for Aberinn and the fact that he keeps the Dun safe and provisioned, they’d desert.”

***

Earl Alois had been relieved to see the moon full, hoping the Changer would bring some respite. Perhaps he’d been wrong about that girl being the Defender. But no. He’d seen it with his own eyes. It had been grim fighting the Fomoire, but the earl and his men had dealt them some doughty blows. More by luck than judgement, some of them. A sheep carcass landing in one of the chariots of the evil-eye men had been one such. It had caused a fight among them. There had only been nine by the time they got ashore. And the men of Carfon had laid traps that didn’t involve looking, had the archers drop shots in a valley, had fired from ambush once the chariots had passed. The evil eye was terrifying, but there were few of them, and they had to look at you for a good few moments.

If Dun Tagoll and the North had held them off too, and there were no more coming south…they’d won.

And of course…if there was no next army. But there would be, and a next. And a next.

CHAPTER 17

Fionn was both worried by this placard, and seriously quite put out by it. So he was a spy from Lyonesse, now. How had this human mage—they were fairly inept generally—found out this quickly and not only found out but also got more posters out?

And the dead or alive part was…interesting.

It was quite a generous sum. In gold, too.

That had to be very tempting.

“I think you’re going to get your fur dyed, and I am going to have to change yet again,” he said to Díleas. “This is getting tiresome.”

A little work and he and Díleas had different appearances and, according to the documents he carried, Fionn was an agent of Prince Maric, the local panjandrum. He and his agents plainly commanded a great deal of respect and fear, by the way that they passed through the checkpoints. Fionn was able to glean a fair bit of information about himself in the process. He’d been seen in an amazing number of places. Fionn could imagine there were any number of very upset shepherds. Well, as the city of Goteng seemed to lie directly in their path, Fionn thought he’d do some reparation. Fionn and Díleas made their way through the streets peacefully, with a brief contretemps with some butcher’s dogs who thought they owned the streets of Goteng, and not this black upstart who was passing through. The smell of dragon gave them pause, and Díleas delusions of grandeur.

Mage Spathos lived in a sumptuous tower within the grounds of the Military barracks—where even the parade ground was now full of tents.

It was near evening anyway, so Fionn found a tavern, fed himself and Díleas, avoided trouble with some bored conscripts on a pass out of their camp, before he went to the military barracks. As was usual with taverns near military camps, this one was something of a freelance brothel too—except that the women were very wary. Spathos’s guards had apparently taken to collecting fresh meat for him every night, and payment was not part of his equation. Fionn decided that the man was due a call. Besides putting a price on the head of a dragon, such conduct deserved it.

As with most military establishments of the kind, the barracks were designed, really, to keep bored soldiers in, rather than determined dragons out. Seeing as dogs did not climb as well as dragons, they used the forged documents to enter the barracks and Spathos’s tower, and to pass all the guards, except for the last two. With those ones he used the documents to distract, before cracking their heads together with calculated force—calculated not to kill, but to stun. After which he tied and gagged them and put them into a storeroom.

He did lock and bar the mage’s door for them, but it was probable that they had been supposed to do this…with him on the outside.

He then stopped and examined the passage quite carefully. It was likely that any self-respecting magic worker would have a few other defenses, besides guards. Fionn’s vision helped him to spot such disturbances of natural energy. He was not disappointed. They were there.

They were also inept rent-from-a-grimoire-I-don’t-understand-properly spells. Spells written into that grimoire in the first place by someone who barely understood effects and had no real grasp of the causes. Not quite what he’d expected after the wanted posters. He was able to erase a little of the pattern and proceed to the wizard’s workshop, where Mage Spathos was hard at work…eating supper. Most of the paraphernalia, Fionn judged at a glance, had no purpose and had not actually been used. It looked good though.