Dragonlinks (25 page)

‘I'm safe and whole. You may have your shop back with my thanks.'

Drusen entered alone, glancing fearfully around.

‘I'm sorry about the door,' said Jelindel. ‘I can pay a few argents to –'

‘Damn that. I'm honoured that you chose my shop to do … what did you do?'

‘Assisted a four hundred tev lady in distress. There will be no more daemons, Drusen. I know that this will be hard to believe, but Brother Clevarian was conjuring them into our world and pretending to fight them.'

‘I know, I know. We were crouched nearby, listening to what you and the daemon were saying.'

‘What is concealed beneath your gloves, Drusen?' asked Jelindel. ‘I thought that
you
wore an enchanted link because you never let your hands be seen. My warrior escorts were near to cutting your hands off to get hold of the link.'

Drusen slowly removed a glove, to reveal the ugly brands of crossed yellow feathers on the back of his hand. One of his fingers bore a roughly sewn gash.

‘The mark of a coward,' explained Drusen. ‘I was in a minor border skirmish years ago, but I turned and ran from the enemy when the fighting went against us. My people won in spite of some ill fortune, and when I was run to ground I was branded a coward on the back of both hands. When I came here I learned bravery. I learned to fight unselfishly against the daemons. My wife has suspicions about me, because at night my gloves do not come off until
the bedlamp be out, and I am always first up and about in the morning.'

‘But after all these years has she not once asked?'

‘I am a loving and hardworking husband to her, with no vices. All that I ask in return is that my hands be not seen, and she is wise enough to grant me this one little secret.'

Jelindel slowly reached out and shook his hand.

‘Put your glove back on,' she sighed.

Zimak and Daretor returned to the town to find Jelindel being carried shoulder high in a cheering procession. They were quickly gathered into the crowd and feted as well, and the entire town mounted a spontaneous revel for the heroes who had ended their years of terror and misery in less than a day.

While Daretor and Zimak danced, ate and drank in the open-air feast in Proclamation Square, Jelindel borrowed a lyaral and joined in with the band. They can afford to relax but I cannot, she thought to herself grimly. She told the bandsmen that she liked to collect dance tunes in the towns and villages where the Temple sent her. In spite of all that was offered to her, she drank only rainwater and ate only honeycakes.

By midnight Jelindel suddenly noticed that Zimak had collected a girl, who was fawning over him and sneering at several others who were also trailing after the blond hero. All of them were probably older than he was. Something akin to jealousy stung Jelindel, and she missed several notes as she played a bracket of mountain jigs. Jealousy over Zimak? The thought surprised her. He was a friend, but she certainly did not love him. Then what?

Daretor pranced by, hand in hand with a dark-haired beauty who was the daughter of the warden. Another stab of – what? Not jealousy but resentment, she realised!
They
were free to do whatever they would, but Jelindel was trapped behind the bars of a male name and male clothing.

‘Not trapped, but protected,' she whispered as she played, and the music smothered her words.

As Jelindel she would be dead. As Jaelin she was alive and freer than Jelindel could ever have been. She was leaner, stronger, could ride, could fight, and took no nonsense from anyone. If she was not as strong as Daretor or Zimak, she was nevertheless immune to the charms of female vendors and serving wenches with a mind to cheat them. In that sense she was a man without a man's weaknesses.

The thought cheered her immensely, and now she gazed across at the dancing Zimak with the suave smile of a minor god. For all his skill with the footwork of fighting, she noted that he was a very clumsy dancer.

They spent two weeks in the Valley of Clouds, and were offered everything from free food and lodging to proposals of marriage.

When not translating embarrassing propositions for her companions, or avoiding girls who were even trailing after her, Jelindel studied for much of the time in the local temple's library. She also went out to the more isolated fields and vales to secretly practise the skills of using words that she had absorbed from Brother Clevarian's link. She planned to tell Daretor that they were more enchantments that she had managed to master by herself.

When they left the valley it was by one of the difficult back roads, and they gave false destinations to those who enquired. Daretor never let them forget that they were being hunted.

‘Such wonderful girls in that valley, with such milky white skins,' said Zimak, scratching his head as they rode. ‘Of all the girls I've met with, they were the most lovely.'

‘One of them told me you didn't know where to put it until she showed you,' said Jelindel coldly.

‘That's not true!' exclaimed Zimak. ‘I was just tired.'

He scratched at his head again.

‘One of them also seems to have given you lice.'

‘What? Impossible. I've been washing my hair every week.'

‘That just gives you clean lice. I'll boil up the roots of a plant that I know next time I see one beside the road. That will kill them.'

Daretor smiled as he turned back. ‘You get along well with girls, Jaelin, yet you keep your vows of chastity. Why did you flee the monastery if you follow its rules so faithfully in the world outside?'

‘Matters of principle and scholarship,' was the only reply that Jelindel was able to give.

‘Well, I'm glad of your learning but I cannot understand how you think. I love girls, especially fat, fierce girls whose fathers are vintners.'

‘You're wasting your time,' sneered Zimak, then turned to Jelindel. ‘He's never laid a hand upon a naked girl. I doubt he'd know how to give a girl pleasure.'

Some day, Zimak, I shall make you regret those words, thought Jelindel. For the moment she chose silence.

Something about Zimak did not quite match up to his behaviour. There had been more than generous offers for him to stay in the Valley of Clouds. He was obviously quite enamoured of the girls who paid him their attentions there, yet there had been no hesitation in him when Daretor declared that it was time to move on to Passendof and find the next dragonlink. Why?

Daretor wanted to collect the dragonlinks so that he could destroy them. Jelindel wanted to keep on the move under the protection of a skilled warrior until she was trail-wise enough to look after herself. She had only wanted Zimak along at first because she could not manage the horses by herself and Daretor was wounded. Why did Zimak stay with them if he could live in the Valley of Clouds in secrecy and safety?

Could he be more than he seemed, she wondered. Was he in league with the Preceptor, or someone worse? Was he a lindrak, biding his time and waiting for a chance to seize the completed mailshirt? None of those ideas seemed likely, and Jelindel began to feel guilty for thinking such thoughts of an obviously loyal – although often obnoxious – friend.

After a time the magnificent layers of striped rock in the mountainsides took hold of her attention, and her thoughts about Zimak faded away.

T
he Preceptor looked down into the training yard from the battlements of Firebrand Castle, which was Fa'red's main base and stronghold in the foothills of the Barrier Ranges. Two men were practising Siluvian kick-fist with lead weights attached to their hands and feet, while another, metal claws strapped to his hands and feet, was climbing straight up a stone wall with a bag of sand strapped to his back.

At the centre of the yard were two blindfolded men who were fighting each other with pikestaffs. They listened for the sound of breathing, the rustle of robes, the swish of the other's pikestaffs, and even the crunch of feet on gravel. More often than not their responses were deadly accurate. In the pitch dark of some noble's bed-chamber they would be able to stab accurately by no more than the sound of a snore.

The man who had been climbing the wall now leaped for
a rope that hung from an overframe and climbed all the way to the crossbeam above using his arms alone. He descended to the yard, then removed the weight from his back and did the whole thing again. This time he did the vertical course in a third of the time.

The Preceptor was impressed.

The catch on a door in a nearby tower rattled and Fa'red came through. The senior Adept was healing well after the ordeal of escaping from his burning house in D'loom, although his skin was heavily scarred and some of his hair and beard had not grown back. His eyebrows were gone, which made a distinct contrast with the bushy hedgerows that had earlier adorned his face.

‘What do you think of them?' he asked the Preceptor. They grasped each other's wrists in greeting.

‘They are impressive. Now I can see why much is made of the King's lindrak warriors.'

‘Impressive they are, lindraks they are not.'

‘I – I don't understand.'

‘They dress like them, fight like them, and even have a similar language, but they are my very own creation. I call them deadmoon warriors to avoid confusion, but very, very few people know of them.'

They leaned over the battlements again and watched the warriors at work. The Preceptor now viewed the martial feats below with renewed interest. ‘Unbelievable,' he said as he gazed down. ‘Lindrak training methods are guarded better than the royal treasury. How did you learn the lindrak way so well?'

Fa'red touched the Preceptor's arm and gestured to a door in the tower. They entered and began descending a stone stairway. They went in single file, and in silence.
When they reached the base of the stairway, Fa'red conjured a tiny globe of light to float along just before them and they started down a long, narrow corridor. There was nothing to see but the bricks of the walls and arched roof. Eventually they came to a door bound shut by writhing blue traceries. There was no sign of a bar, bolt or lock.

‘I feel obliged to warn you that what is behind this may be rather upsetting to behold,' said Fa'red as if through obligation rather than concern.

‘Open it,' said the Preceptor.

The creature lying on the hay inside the room was about the size of a small cow, but was covered in amorphous folds of pasty skin. Its eyes were bland and sheep-like, its head was closer to that of a goat, and it was ruminating contentedly.

A human head shared its neck, above the other and just forward of the shoulders.

The Preceptor made a sound like someone about to be violently ill who nonetheless had the self-control to fight it back down. Fa'red snapped his fingers and the thing got to its feet.

‘This is how I learned lindrak training methods,' declared Fa'red, going up to the beast and rubbing the lower head between its ears.

‘You have lost me, Lord Fa'red.'

‘When you, ah, persuaded our King to have his lindraks burn Count Juram's house in D'loom, you also arranged that the lindraks should be based at my own humble residence. Remember?'

‘Yes.'

‘They came there for refuge with their wounded comrade after they had done their work and started the fire.
The man was clearly dying, so the chief of the squad struck off his head and they bade me good evening after stripping off his clothing and weapons.'

‘The lindraks are very pragmatic about things like that,' agreed the Preceptor.

‘Very pragmatic, to be sure. I was left with a body and a head, and they were very much separate. I had a mind to open a gate to the next paraworld and heave the remains through, but it just happened that I also had a trained voriole in a cage at that time.'

‘A voriole?' asked the Preceptor. ‘I cannot place the word.'

‘A very rare, enchanted beast with shapeshifter abilities but no intelligence. They can be used to keep wounded people alive while their bodies heal, because they can partly merge with their bodies. An idea came to me then, a very ambitious idea. I made the voriole assume a human-supportive essence and the common, stocky structure that you now see. After making an incision I had it assimilate the severed head of the lindrak. This was all within moments of the other lindraks leaving, but even with such a short interval the operation was perilously close to failure. As fortune would have it, I was lucky.

‘The mind of the dead man was a little damaged, but his memories were whole and he was quite compliant with my orders. I had him brought here and set one of my best Adept assistants to teaching my own people the way of both lindrak and Adept.'

‘A formidable but illegal combination,' said the Preceptor uneasily. ‘A positively frightening combination.'

‘But very effective. The first of them are ready to be sent out at this very moment, and the training of most of
the others is at a very advanced stage. I shall be sending them to Passendof, to assist my brave colleague Gilvier in retrieving the missing dragonlinks and mailshirt.'