Dragon Stones (41 page)

Wert considered this; then his expression changed.  He leaned forward and spoke, his voice low and serious and remarkably coherent.  "This is what you must do.  Take Diasa, and the five of you go back to Dunshandrin, to the castle.  T'Sian will find—"

Ponn interrupted him.  "Crystals.  T'Sian will find crystals, to replenish her fire."

"Yes."

"Won't they be guarded?" Tolaria said.

"Not well.  Most of Dunshandrin's men are in Barbareth."

"Do you propose I attack his stronghold without my greatest weapon?" T'Sian said.  "I have seen how you men build your stone fortresses.  I may damage it with my claws and tail, but to properly destroy it, I need my fire."

"Perhaps you can infiltrate, instead of attack," Ponn said.

"I have no skill at infiltration."

"Are you mad?" Ponn said.  "You're doing it right now.  You are sitting here in a room full of humans, and none are the wiser.  You did the same thing when we were in Astilan."

"And Tolaria approached a human strumpet, thinking she was you," Wert said.  Tolaria felt herself blush again.

"Even if I presented myself as a human, why would they let me in?  They have started a war.  They will not want strangers in their fortress."

"If you approached Qalor as a woman, you might persuade him to bring you into the castle," Tolaria said.  "He is a very lonely man, I think, and would welcome any companionship.  And he does not see well; his eyes are clouded, like Wert's."

"Yes, yes, these are good plans," Wert said.  "But you must go quickly, before the wizard arrives.  I will stay here and face him."

"You will not!"  Diasa came out of the stairwell and stood beside the table, one hand braced on the back of the old man's chair.  "Wert, you're an oracle, not a magician, and you are also quite mad.  Orioke will go through you like a knife through bread."

"The wizard will find that it takes rather more than one stroke of his sword to bring me down," Wert said.  He looked at the door, as if Orioke might be coming through it at any moment.  "You must leave now.  He will be here tomorrow, and I will not be able to hold him for long.  A day, perhaps two."

"A day?" T'Sian exclaimed.  "Two days?  That is nonsense."

"They took Astilan in less than a day," Ponn said, "and that was defended by walls and soldiers."

"Ah, but Orioke comes here alone," Wert said.  "He brings no army, nor does he bring Deliban."

"We cannot rely on this old man to delay the wizard," T'Sian said, looking at the others.  No one spoke.  "We cannot!"

"T'Sian is right," Diasa said.  "Orioke broke our control over Deliban, and that spell was ancient.  He will force you to tell him everything you know.  You will betray us."

"I have taken precautions," Wert said.  "I will not tell him anything he does not already know or cannot already guess."

Diasa said:  "What precautions?"

"There are things an oracle can do."

"Such as?"

"I have no time to explain myself to you, child!" Wert exclaimed.  "You must listen to me, and leave before Orioke draws any nearer.  If he lays hands on the dragon, all is lost!"

No one moved.

"Go!" Wert cried, his eyes bulging.

"I will not go to the castle under these conditions," T'Sian said.  "We will be caught."

"You must!" Wert said.

"No."

Wert scowled up at the dragon, then leaned back and folded his arms.  "You're afraid," he said.  "I understand."

"Fear has nothing to do with it."

"The wizard bested you, stole your fire.  You said so yourself.  Of course you fear him."

T'Sian's eyes narrowed.  "I should pick you up and squeeze the life out of you right now," she hissed.

Tolaria bit her lip, watched the dragon's face.  If T'Sian did try to kill Wert, could any of them stop her?  What were the creature's capabilities in human form?

"Your crystals wait for you in Dunshandrin's castle," Wert said.  "Forget your fear.  Turn your anger that way instead."

T'Sian raised a hand, balled it into a fist, held it a moment, then relaxed it again.  "Very well," she said.  "If the old man wishes to be killed, let him.  If he wishes to be tortured for information, let him.  The rest of us will go to the castle, and he will remain here to become the wizard's plaything."

"We don't even know if Orioke is really coming," Ponn said.

"Oh, he is," Wert said.  "But when he gets here, he will find something he never expected to see again."

After returning to her room to gather up her things—which amounted to a change of clothes, a few coins, and, of course, her weapon—Diasa went back to the common room.  The others had gathered near the front door, looking glum and grave, except for T'Sian; she was tight-faced and angry, as if she would like to have burned the inn down and was frustrated that she couldn't.

Diasa paused at the table to say goodbye to Wert; he stared moodily into the fire and didn't answer, merely waved a hand in dismissal.  Diasa shrugged and turned away, but then stopped, realizing that she had seen that gesture many times, but never from Wert.  She hesitated, glanced at him from the corner of her eye, a vague and bizarre idea that had been fluttering around her mind suddenly becoming clear.

"Just go, child," Wert said.  "There is nothing more you can do for either of us now."

Shaken, she left him—them—there and moved toward the others.  They saw her coming and filed out of the inn; she joined them in the chill darkness outside.  "We've decided to leave the city on foot, so as not to attract undue attention," Ponn said, "and then T'Sian will meet us in the plains and take us onward to Dunshandrin."

"Take us?" Diasa said.  "You mean fly?"

"Yes."

"Through the air?"

"That's normally how one flies," Ponn said.  "Do you know of a faster way to get there?"

Diasa closed her eyes and imagined soaring through the air with the dragon, and realized that she didn't even know what a dragon really looked like.  She'd had seen drawings, sketches in books at Flaurent, but those were surely pallid imitations of the real thing.  "If we must," she said.

"The old oracle believes that we are very short on time," T'Sian said, "so yes, we must."  Then something like a smile split her face nearly in two.  "Do not worry.  I have not dropped Pyodor Ponn yet."

After a moment, Ponn said:  "Was that a joke?"

"All right, then," Diasa said.  "From here, the fastest way out of town would be by boat, not on foot.  Perhaps we can find someone trustworthy to take us down the lake and then put us ashore."

"I know some people who can help us with that," Tolaria said.  "Follow me."  She led them along the street to a noisy, ramshackle tavern that stood on an old wharf, supported by brine-encrusted stilts that looked as if they might collapse at any moment.  A variety of odd decorations hung from the dark underside of the building:  Dead water birds trussed up by their feet, tattered women's clothing, the bones of fish large and small.  Tolaria eyed the building, then looked at Pyodor Ponn until the Enshennean offered to accompany her inside.  The oracle gratefully accepted; Ponn set his daughter down on the ground and asked Diasa and T'Sian to watch the child, and then the two of them disappeared into the building.

Prehn made to go after her father, but Diasa caught her arm and hoisted her up onto her own shoulders, wincing a bit as the movement brought a twinge of pain from her wound.  T'Sian came up close and peered at the little girl.  "You look like your father," she said.

"No I don't.  I look like Mommy."

"I had babies once," T'Sian said.  "They would have been about your age, if they had been little men."

"Where are they now?" Prehn said.

For a long time, the dragon didn't answer; then she said:  "They died."

"Oh," Prehn said.  "That's too bad."

"Yes," T'Sian said, after another lengthy silence.  "Too bad."

She said nothing more, and eventually Tolaria and Ponn emerged from the inn with a sailor in tow.  "This is Rennald," Tolaria said.  "He's agreed to take us down the shore in his skiff."

"What is a skiff?" T'Sian said.

"It is a small, light boat, fast and quiet," Rennald said loudly.  "Just the thing for stealthy water travel!"  Then, looking confused as Tolaria and Ponn shushed him:  "What?"

"A small, light boat will not support my weight," T'Sian said, "and I do not look forward to a dip in the lake."

The sailor belched loudly.  "It holds ten men with ease.  I think it can carry you lot."

"I weigh more than you think," T'Sian said.  "Tell me where you are taking them and I will meet you there."

Rennald shrugged.  "As you wish.  East brings us out of town fastest, and the current—such as it is—will be with us.  So we will go east."  He pointed off into the darkness.

"That's west," Diasa said acidly.

"Oh, aye."  Rennald dropped his arm and pointed in the other direction.  "East."

T'Sian turned and stalked away, vanishing into the darkness toward shore.  Rennald threw one arm around Tolaria and the other around Ponn, as if they were all old friends; or maybe it was to hold himself up.  Diasa wondered if the man could be trusted to find his way safely to his skiff, let alone take them out on the lake and then return to Achengate in the darkness.

"So, Tolaria, why sneak away in the night?" Rennald said as they walked along the wharf.  Once again, Ponn had to remind him to keep his voice down.  "Is it because of the assassin Dunshandrin sent?" he continued, in an exaggerated whisper.

"No," Tolaria said, "there's a wiz—"

"Yes, there are more men coming," Diasa said, speaking nearly as loudly as the drunkard had, interrupting the oracle before she could say anything about the wizard.  Tolaria kept talking, of course; she had told Diasa about her compulsion to answer direct questions truthfully.  Still, the less Rennald knew about their situation, the better off all of them would be.

Fortunately, the sailor was so inebriated that he couldn't follow both answers at once, and so he went with the louder.  "Don't run away!" he exclaimed.  "Stay and fight!  We'll help you!  We haven't evened things up with those curs yet.  We'll make them sorry they ever looked at you twice!"

"No, we must go," Tolaria said.  "I've put you in too much danger already."

"Danger."  Obviously Rennald scoffed at physical jeopardy.  "I can have two dozen sailors jump them at once.  We'll see how much good their poisonous tricks are against honest men and their swords."

"You're very brave," Tolaria said, "but no.  Just do this one thing for us.  Take us out of the city."

"Of course, of course.  Here we are."  They had reached a small flatboat, like the ones that plied the shallow rivers of the Salt Flats.  Rennald helped Tolaria aboard, then Ponn.  He tried to help Diasa, but she jumped down to it without assistance.  The landing sent a small jolt of pain through her ribs, and the cut on her belly twinged like a cord drawn too tight, biting into her skin.

From behind her, she heard a splash.  She glanced into the water, sighed, and said to the others:  "Our deliverer needs to be pulled out of the lake before he drowns."

T'Sian made her way through the streets of Achengate, ignoring the other pedestrians as much as possible; apparently a woman walking alone in this part of town was taken to be looking for some sort of work, because men kept coming up to her and asking her how much she wanted.  She never bothered to find out what they were talking about; she just pushed them aside and kept going.  This often resulted in invective; once one of them went so far as to grab her and try to drag her into an alley.  Without breaking stride, she flung that fool across the street and into the side of a building.  She hoped she had hurt him badly.

At length she came to a vacant lot; the pallid moonlight illuminated an open space, surrounded by a low wooden fence, overgrown with weeds and tangled grass.  The remains of a burnt-out building poked through the vegetation, empty and overgrown, like an ancient stump whose middle had long since rotted out.  She kicked down a section of the fence and moved into the lot.  She tasted the air; traces of the fire still lingered, a comforting scent not unlike the aroma of her lair, making her feel homesick.  She had been away far too long, chasing the shadows of the wicked men who had wronged her.  She hoped it would be over soon.

She took cover near the building, and began the change to her true self, shedding her human flesh to reveal the great beast beneath.  Everything went dark and silent as her senses were extinguished and her massive serpentine body exploded outward.  The scales that clung to her like a dress grew, stretched, locked into place, encasing her in a shell harder than iron.  Her hands and feet elongated into talons, digging into the earth; her mane of hair lengthened and flowed along her neck and around her chin, the sensitive tendrils trembling in the light evening breeze.  Her back split open, allowing her wings to unfold, gossamer-thin at first, then thickening like leather, becoming broad and strong.  Her skull twisted and expanded, moving away from her body as her neck extended, snakelike, from her shoulders.  Her teeth lowered into spikes larger than a human thumb.  Her senses came back one by one, sight and smell and hearing, so much keener than they were in human form, as if she had emerged from a filthy, smothering cocoon.