Dragon's Ring (34 page)

"You know too much," said Fionn with a wry grin.

"Yes. We do. Only the centaurs know more. The sea will be in their debt for returning its power."

"Indeed. But they didn't. The little human did," said Fionn, slyly. "So if there is a debt, that's where it lies."

"Your doing, Fionn? Clever," said his guide, as they came to huge chamber where many of the dvergar were happily at work—including their king.

"I have my moments. Ah, Motsognir."

The dvergar king looked up at him from the anvil. "And now?"

"Just this," said Fionn, producing the blueish silver hammer. It generated a suitable number of amazed comments and exclamations as he handed it to the dvergar king.

Motsognir held it. Felt its weight. Stood up and hefted it at the anvil—which broke in two. "To make sometimes you have to break," he said wryly. "It was never the easiest of tools, this one. But much thanks, Fionn. And to what do we owe its return? And what do we owe
for
its return?"

"The people beneath the waves have the Angmarad returned to the waters. It was not right that you should no longer have your treasure back."

"We've made several more, you know," said Motsognir, echoing his son's words.

"So I've just been told. But this is an old one."

Motsognir smiled. "Dragon logic. You like old things. We like to make things. We'll melt old things down to make new and better. Old things have worth only if the artifice of making them has been lost. We still know all of those arts. Still, it's a very rare alloy, and we appreciate the gesture. So what can we do for you?"

"There is the matter of the dragon treasure," said Fionn.

He was prepared to meet resistance. He was prepared to exercise his persuasiveness. The dvergar were intrinsically honorable, though . . . they'd agree in the end.

He wasn't prepared for the smirks and snickers that gave way to outright laughter.

"All right. What's the joke?" he asked, smiling back. There was no point in doing otherwise. Getting upset with dvergar was an exercise in futility.

Motsognir wiped his eyes. "What was the treasure of the dragons, Fionn?"

"A dragon. Made of gold."

"Very precise and lifelike it was," said Motsognir. "Who made it, with you dragons not being known for artifice?"

"The dvergar . . ." Fionn looked suspiciously at him. "Are you saying it was another of your tricks? You got every dragon in whole of the new Tasmarin to give gold and a small part of their magic to it. Even me."

"Their virtue went to the dragon statuette? The thing was not very large. Dragons hate giving away gold. You were one of the more generous, as I recall. A half-ducat."

"I've got rather a lot of those," Fionn admitted. "But I didn't want to draw attention to that fact. So I kept it small."

"It was all melted down, and blended together. Some of the gold went into stabilizing the plane. I believe you also had something to do with that," Motsognir said pointedly.

Fionn shrugged. "It's what I do. And seeing as I was stuck here, at first I thought it might be a good idea. I've changed my mind."

"So have we. But there was a very little gold left over. Enough for a hollow statuette."

"We all saw it."

"There was no virtue, no magic in the statuette."

"There was a great deal of magical power in it!" Fionn was starting to get a little irritated now. He remembered it perfectly, of course. He remembered everything.

"Oh yes. But the statuette was just a lost-wax casting. For pretty. We put no dvergar magic into it. The magic was in the gold itself, not the object."

Fionn blinked. He'd never fully understood dvergar magic, but it was in making of things, not just in the nature of the material. The Angmarad . . . both the raw stuff and the structure of it, had been full of ocean magic. But the dvergar could take plain iron ore, and in their making, make it powerful. "So just what have you done with it?" he asked suspiciously as they watched and waited, with little twinkles showing in those dvergar eyes. They were enjoying every moment of this. And he'd hardly ever played any practical jokes on them!

"We gave it to you. Or at least we gave it to her. The little human mage you had in your care. It seemed right that humans had one of the great treasures."

Realization dawned on Fionn. "You reworked it?"

"Yes. We put a great deal of our own magic and some of hers into it this time. And the gold still has all its own magic. It is now a great deal more powerful than it was," said Dvalinn earnestly.

"You are a bunch of lunatics," said Fionn, as the entire shaggy black-haired bunch of reprobates laughed themselves into near apoplexy.

Eventually Motsognir had a coughing fit and managed to stop. "It serves our purpose. We think the towers need to come down. We wish it could be otherwise, Fionn."

"I think I'll have that drink you were about to offer me. You need one too, you devious old . . ."

"Friend, I think," said Motsognir. "Let's have some mead. What have you done with her, by the way? We liked her."

"She's on Starsey," said Fionn. "Safe, I hope. I put enough protection around her, and it's not an easy place to find. But I want to be back there by morning."

Motsognir handed him a tankard of mead. "Then you'd better drink up and get going. It is not long until the dawn."

Vorlian had reached his decision. The sky had not even begun to pale when he lumbered into flight. Taking the fight to another dragon was poor strategy, but he could see that he had little choice about it. Zuamar was a danger to them all. Besides he'd come here, into the territory Vorlian considered his own. The time had come to deal with him. Dragons were not early risers. They liked the heat of the sun to make flying easier. Vorlian hoped to be high up above his enemy's eyrie before then. Circling and waiting.

Zuamar had had traffic with creatures of smokeless flame before. He trusted them not at all, naturally. But they could make the kind of charm he needed, so he'd gone searching, and found them on a fumarole some seventy leagues away. They'd been cooperative. And he could spare a few hundred humans and some alvar to pay the debt. If they wanted slaves, they'd get them. He wanted to catch the guilty dragon. He was sure that it would turn out to be his neighbor, Vorlian. Upstart. This way he'd know for certain,
and
catch the human mage.

The amulet with the ducat in it pulled towards the dragon-magic that had flavored it.

Zuamar expected to fly to Starsey.

Instead he found himself drawn back towards Yenfar. It was a long flight through the night. Anger lent him strength. So the offspring of a diseased wyrm thought to raid Yenfar while its master was away? He doubted that the dragon would get through the booby traps that protected his hoard. But it still made him nervous. And very angry. Angrier than he had been in centuries.

Fionn hastened down the long passages of the dvergar's hidden kingdom, up to the water-door. He could only go as fast as the dverg guide, but he wanted to run. It was going to be awkward if he got back to the inn late, after they'd got up. Besides there were risks to flying over Zuamar's—and then Vorlian's—territory in daylight. A black dragon was hard to see at night, and all too easy in daylight. He did not wait for a coracle-lift out but simply dived into the icy water and swam out, and then on rocks at the far side of the long pool transformed himself and took flight into the predawn.

And that was when he realized that he was too late and in trouble. Because laboring in from the south was the bulk of another dragon. And far off, to the west . . . was yet another set of wings silhouetted against the sky.

Fionn used the fact that he was fresh and relatively rested to beat his way up into the sky. He pondered the idea of fleeing and hoping that he could simply outfly the closer dragon and that the second one was merely there in passing. But the nearer dragon—it looked like Zuamar now, was using all of his strength to close the distance. And even if Fionn outflew him . . . well, the second dragon was between him and Starsey. So Fionn kept gaining height. He had an advantage up there. Zuamar might possibly burst one of his hearts flying like that, which would solve some of Fionn's problems. Fionn could not kill him. It was imprinted into the very threads of Fionn's being. Zuamar had no such constraints in his make-up. Of course if old carrion breath would drop dead or fly into a cliff himself—well, that went beyond the caution laid on Fionn by the First.

Zuamar—by dint of super-dragon effort—had managed to gain enough height to try a rising blast of flame, trying to sear his quarry's wind tendrils and wing webs. He wasn't to know Fionn was more resistant to dragonfire than all the others.

Vorlian saw the start of the aerial duel from a distance, spotting the gout of dragonflame from Zuamar. The big old dragon had quite a range of flame-cast! The smaller dragon flew on however, seemingly unaffected.
It must be the distance, fooling my judgement,
thought Vorlian.
I'd swear he must have seared him.
Vorlian too began to put every last bit of strength into reaching the battle before it was over. If the other dragon had only waited . . . well, maybe it would hurt or weaken Zuamar.

The two were high enough now to gain the first sunlight. And Vorlian could see now that the dragon being chased was black. Black and a great deal smaller than Zuamar.

It ought to be a one-sided contest.

Looking south, Fionn saw that Vorlian was the second dragon he'd seen, and that he was now heading for the two of them. Fionn allowed himself a brief irritated snort of flame. So these two had now allied? Unless they were most conveniently planning to fight each other? Well, he'd have to deal with the situation . . . best to get Zuamar out of the way quickly then. He turned in a sudden sharp dive, neatly tearing Zuamar's left outer wing-web on the way into a steep bank and a corkscrew away from frantic talons, to snatch at Zuamar's tail as he went past and tumble the heavier dragon onto the torn wing. Zuamar tried to turn and flame—and managed to burn his own wing.

Fionn, smaller, faster and not dead tired from a long flight, streaked below him and twisted up overhead again, as Zuamar struggled with one burned wing and with a near useless wingtip, to cope with his smaller attacker—who had managed to get behind and above him again, and . . . when Zuamar tried desperately to turn and dive . . . did not come in for the coup de grace. Instead he side-slipped and ripped a talon through the opposite wing-web. As a parting blow he gave Zuamar a wallop with his tail that was hard enough to crack the diamond-hard scales, and send Zuamar reeling across the sky. The aerial duel raged on, with the smaller, faster, more agile opponent driving Zuamar towards death from exhaustion if nothing else.

Vorlian saw—as he flew closer, how the smaller black dragon—that he had now recognized as the impertinent Fionn—gave the far larger Zuamar a lesson in aerial combat. But Fionn was obviously unprepared for his successes—he'd missed two good opportunities for the kill, and he seemed very little affected by Zuamar's frantic blasts of dragon-fire. If anything Zuamar kept burning himself.

* * *

Zuamar recognized his opponent. And knew fear. He knew that Fionn was not just smaller. He'd also been there from the very origins of this plane. Fionn had been the same size back then, unlike other dragons that kept growing with age. Zuamar suspected that he was not quite the same kind of dragon as the others of Tasmarin. He'd . . . known too much. Always had a smart answer. Zuamar had been a relatively young dragon then, but the older ones, dead now, had been wary of him. Now Zuamar knew why. Fionn was wholly unaffected by Zuamar's fire, and far too fast for the talons or tail. Zuamar, burned by his own fire, dazed, and now suddenly feeling the exhaustion and fear that Jakarin must have felt, began to flee. It made him an easy target, he knew. He tried to look back and defend himself as he struggled to fly away.

Only the black dragon wasn't following. He was gaining height again.

Zuamar could only think of one reason. The death dive. The hard, neck-snapping strike. And the hard-bodied little dragon was capable of that, if he got high enough. Zuamar flew, neck turned to look back at the black nemesis . . . If he could sideslip at the last minute . . .

It was only when he flew into a wash of dragon fire that Zuamar realized that he'd got the wrong reason entirely. And, seeing Vorlian there, desperation led him into a last frantic effort. He made no attempt to sheer off. Just collided mid-air with the other dragon. They fell together in a rending tangle of tearing claws and thrashing tails.

The hungry earth below reached for them both. At the last minute both struggled free, flapping wildly.

But Zuamar, with torn wing webs, found that he could not stop falling.

Then rock stopped him instead.

The last thing he knew was that he had failed: human mages would not all be destroyed. Neither would the dragon that had raided his territory.