Dragon Stones (42 page)

She lifted her head up, swiveled it around.  Her tongue flicked out, tasting the air.  The lingering scent of ashes was very strong, especially since her growth had knocked over one of the remaining walls.  She spread her wings, tensed her muscles, and leapt into the air.  The earth spiraled away beneath her as she climbed the sky; then she banked around in a wide circle, flying out over the lake.  She spotted the others, a blob of warmth on the cold, black water.  They were heading east, as promised, but very slowly.

She circled overhead, waiting for them to come ashore.

Pyodor Ponn had agreed to help Rennald row the boat, but he seemed to be doing most of the work himself as the drunken sailor—whose ducking in the icy water didn't seem to have sobered him up at all—attempted to make time with a devastatingly uninterested Diasa.  The man would pull once on the oars, then ask Diasa a question, then wait for the answer, if there was one; then he would think about the answer, and then, perhaps, pull the oars once more.  Meanwhile, Ponn kept them moving eastward along the shore, leaving Achengate behind in the darkness.

"So you must be very grateful that I saved your life, eh?" Rennald asked.  This was at least the third time he had brought up the incident on the docks; Ponn had lost count.

"Yes," Diasa said, not sounding grateful at all anymore.

"How grateful?"

"Just row the boat," Diasa suggested.

Rennald grinned and gave the oars a pull, then said:  "So why didn't your friend want to come in the boat?  Afraid of the water, is she?"

Ponn fielded that one.  "She doesn't like water very much," he said.  "She can't swim."

"Can't swim!"  He found this absurd.  "I could teach her."

"I don't think she's interested in learning."

"How's she going to know where to meet you?"

"She'll manage."

Rennald watched Ponn row for a little while, and then said:  "Why didn't you lot go with her, then?"

"Why do you ask so many questions?" Diasa said.

"I'm a curious sort of fellow," Rennald said.  "You know, seeing as I lost two friends and saved you and pretty Tolaria yesterday, you could be nicer to me."

"Sorry, Rennald," Tolaria said.  "Diasa has had a rough time of it.  Her mother was murdered and her home destroyed."

Diasa shot Tolaria a warning look.

"A terrible thing!" Rennald cried.  "Dunshandrin again?  All the more reason to fight!"

"We'll fight on our terms, not theirs," Diasa said.  "Our strategy will not be decided by a drunken bosun."

Looking wounded, Rennald gave a half-hearted pull on the oars, moving the skiff right and forcing Ponn to compensate to keep them from running aground.  Then, realizing that they had cleared the town and left most of the buildings behind, he decided this was as good a spot as any to put ashore.  If nothing else, it would get them away from Rennald before Diasa truly lost what seemed likely to be a ferocious temper, or Tolaria volunteered any more information that didn't need to be shared.  Using one oar as a pole, he pushed the boat alongside the crumbling, chalky bank, stopping it near a clump of rough grass that hung out over the water.

Rennald didn't seem to have noticed that they were ashore.  "I never knew my mother," he said with drunken wistfulness.  "I grew up on the docks."

"Now there's a shock," Diasa muttered as they clambered out of the skiff, leaving Rennald sitting alone, clutching the oars, a little tear glistening on his cheek.  The fate of Diasa's mother had made him go all maudlin.  Holding one hand over his heart, he reached beneath his seat with the other and pulled out a large, dark bottle, stopped up with a filthy-looking rag.  He pulled the cloth out, cleaned the neck of the bottle with it, and took a deep pull of whatever was inside.

"Rennald, maybe you should stay here until morning," Tolaria said.  "I don't want you to fall overboard and drown."

"What?" Rennald roared.  "Drown?  I've sailed drunker than this before!  Don't you worry about me, love."  He lifted the oars and gave them a tug, but the boat was firmly grounded and didn't move.  Rennald tried again; again the boat didn't move.  He looked up at them, shrugged, and set down the oars.  "Perhaps you're right," he said.  "The boat seems to be broken, anyway."  He produced a blanket out from under his seat, wrapped himself up in it, and settled in to stare out across the dark waters of the lake.

Their little group moved away from the water, out into the dark grassland.  Before long, a great rush of wind announced the dragon's approach.  She landed not far away from them, raising a cloud of stinging dust, then dispersing it with the rapid beating of her wings.

"
Come
," she said.  "
You may sit along my neck and back.  Use my hair and scales to hold yourselves in place.
"

Diasa said:  "You're not going to carry us?"

"
You are too many, and the journey is too long.  I do not want to accidentally harm one of you."

She must be thinking of Parillon.  Ponn supposed it was an improvement that she was considering their safety at all; Diasa, however, didn't seem to see it that way.  
"But we might fall," she protested.  "There's nothing to hold us in place."

"
I will fly carefully."

"If we can find Gelt's eagle
—
"

"
I do not relish playing the steed any more than you like the idea of being astride me, but this is the way we must do it."  
The dragon flattened herself against the ground.  
"Climb on, or be left behind.
"

They mounted her enormous bulk one at a time, using the thick, rope-like strands of her hair to pull themselves up.  The fleshy tendrils felt smooth and rubbery, warm as fresh bread.  Tolaria and Diasa moved down to the wider part of her back, while Ponn straddled her neck at its base, positioning Prehn directly in front of him.  He enfolded her in his cloak and tied the belt around her to keep her warm and secure.  He squeezed T'Sian's neck with his knees and took hold of a length of her hair, twisting it around his wrist.

"
Are you ready?
" T'Sian hissed.

"I think I am," Tolaria said.

"No," Diasa said.

Ponn glanced back at her; she lay on her stomach on the dragon's broad back, clutching at the shorter trailers of flesh that grew there.  Tolaria sat next to her, on the ridge of T'Sian's spine, looking similarly secured.  "We're ready," Ponn said.  "Go.  And no aerobatics, if you please."

The dragon gave a snort that may have been a chuckle; then Ponn felt her muscles tense beneath him, and she sprang upward.  Her powerful hind legs launched them into the sky like a gigantic locust; then her wings beat the air and caught it, pulling them higher.  He had never been in this position before and the whirls of air felt strange, like the buffeting of a minor cyclone.  Prehn looked at the ground as it fell away and screeched, a delighted expression on her face.

Ah, to be young and fearless.

Ponn closed his eyes and pretended he was on a horse.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Adaran woke up, and immediately wished he hadn't.  His extremities throbbed as if on fire; his skull felt like someone had cut a hole in the top and stuffed the cavity with hot peppers.

"So this is the man."

"Yes."

"He doesn't look like much, does he?"

"No."

The two voices came from either side of him, but they sounded the same.  Adaran knew what that must mean.  He raised his head, opened his eyes.  They were gummy with something, tears, maybe blood.  He was back in Dunshandrin's dungeon, possibly even in the same cell, with the same wall against his back and the same manacles around his wrists and ankles.  He doubted they would pop open for him this time.

Two men with identical faces stood in front of him, watching him.  "Look, Torrant," the one on the left said.  "He's awake."

"So he is," said the other.

"I trust you remember us, thief."

"I remember you.  You're Lord Dunshandrin's sons."

"Yes.  And you killed our father."

"Thanks to you, we are orphans."

Adaran said nothing.

"You were clever with your hands, weren't you, thief?  But no longer.  Our men pierced them with hot blades."

"And you were swift on your feet, but no longer.  Our—"

"Your men pierced them with hot blades."  He looked at his right hand, but it was heavily swaddled in dirty-looking cloth and he couldn't see the damage they had done to it.  "Why not just chop them off?"

"We wanted to, but our physician advised us that you might bleed to death," Tomari said, "and we wished to speak with you before you passed from this realm of misery."

"Our physician is quite competent, but he is not a worker of miracles," Torrant added.  "He did a fine job removing the crossbow bolts from your legs, by the way."

"Remind me to thank him some time."

"You may not be so grateful by the time we're done with you," Tomari said, giggling a little.

Torrant said:  "You see, we were thinking how odd it was that we sent Orioke to kill you, and yet you turned up here, sticking your dagger where it didn't belong."

"It wasn't
my
dagger."

"It was
a
dagger," Torrant said, "and you wielded it."

"Yes.  You wielded it.  And you were supposed to be dead."  Tomari inspected his fingernails.  "We're not sure that father's pet wizard can be trusted."

"Of course he can't.  You need
me
to tell you that?"

"And yet he is a valuable asset," Torrant said, "and not to be cast aside lightly.  You see our predicament."

"Not really, no."

Torrant sighed.  "You will tell us, in detail, how you came to be here, and how you found your way into our father's chambers without being discovered.  Then we will decide what to do about the situation."

Adaran opened his mouth to answer, but then he realized that he couldn't remember exactly what had happened; the events of the previous evening seemed to have faded from his mind, like the color from a cloth left out in the sun.  He recalled being in the dungeon, and he recalled standing over Dunshandrin's bed after stabbing the man with a ceremonial dagger; but how had he gotten from the first place to the second?

"We are waiting," Torrant said.

"First I was here," Adaran said slowly.  "In the dungeon."

"Yes?"

"And then I … I wasn't."

Torrant and Tomari exchanged a glance.  Evidently this testimony did not impress them.  "Obviously you weren't in the dungeon when you killed our father," Tomari said.  "How did you move through the castle undetected?
"

"I don't remember.  I suppose I just did it."

"No one is
that
stealthy," Tomari said.  "I see Orioke's hand in this, as well as in that other incident.  What was he doing in the oracle's room, that Wyst would find him stripped and bound and hidden under her bed?"

"He claims he went there to evoke further visions."

"I know what he
claims
."

"We must be sure before we act against him."

Tomari made an exasperated noise.  "Why?  Let us have him killed, and be done with it."

"That would be over-hasty.  The mage is still of use to us; if nothing else, he controls the earth elemental."  Torrant
went to the cell door and gave it three quick raps; it opened and a guard entered.  Torrant whispered something to the man, who then came up to Adaran and delivered a vicious punch to his stomach.  If he hadn't been fastened to the wall, he would have doubled over from the force of the blow.  Instead he simply tried to vomit, but his stomach was empty and had nothing to heave out.

The guard glanced at the twins.  Torrant shook his head and the man stepped away.  The princes eyed Adaran as he gasped for breath.  Finally, Torrant said:  "Once again.  Tell us how you made your way through the castle undetected.  Tell us how you found our father's chambers and unlocked the doors."

"I told you, I don't remember.  It's hidden in a fog."

"Dear me," Torrant said.  "If that's the case, then this is going to be quite a lengthy interrogation."

Just before dawn, as T'Sian began to descend from the high, cold heavens, banking downward toward the night-shrouded earth, Tolaria could make out a few flickering lights in a village some distance to the north, and above that, the watch-fires of a keep:  Dunshandrin Town, and the castle of its Lord.  She had never expected to return to this place, certainly not in this fashion; and yet, here she was.