Echoes of Betrayal (37 page)

A
t Midwinter, the gnomes declined to come up and celebrate with the others; Arcolin felt bad about that but not bad enough to make it an order. For himself, that Midwinter Feast completed the process of becoming comfortable with his new role. The newest recruit cohort, smaller than usual, included youngsters who had never known any other commander or the stronghold without a Marshal near. Having a Marshal to light the fire of Sunreturn made him as happy as having the title himself. Or almost.

Immediately after Midwinter, he sent a courier south to Vérella, informing the king of the gnomes’ arrival and what they had said. He had no idea what the king would do. The secondhand report of a dragon might seem—would seem, Arcolin was sure—highly suspect, though the arrival of visible, recognizable gnomes would certainly carry weight. Though he himself was convinced the gnomes were telling the truth—the truth as they knew it—no king, he thought, would want to give up territory on the word of beings he had never met.

Yet the gnomes refused to go to Vérella unless he himself did, and he was reluctant to give them hard orders, they were so obviously distraught.

A
few nights after Midwinter, Arcolin sat busy with the year’s account rolls, considering what he should budget for equipment replacement in the coming year, when one of the gnomes—the estvin, he thought, though they still looked all alike to him—came to his door.

“Master, Dragon comes.”

“Dragon? Here? Why?” In the lamplight and firelight, the estvin seemed to waver; Arcolin realized the gnome was trembling so hard he could barely stand.

“It is—it is not to know. It is—it might—to burn us—”

“No.”

With no warning, a dark-clothed stranger stood in the doorway to the passage, eyes reflecting the yellow firelight. And there had been no alarm—there should have been—

“It is not to burn kapristi or human that I am come,” the man said. He looked like a man, but the room seemed warmer, with a faint tang of hot iron, and as he came nearer, into the light, his dark skin showed a pattern of fine lines. “The kapristi should withdraw, as he is frightened.”

“Go on,” Arcolin said gently to the gnome, who made a wide circle around the stranger and disappeared down the passage. Then to the stranger he said, “I am the Count, if that is whom you seek; my name is Jandelir Arcolin. May I have yours?”

The man smiled. “Bold you are, Jandelir Arcolin, but so I expected from one who had been captain under the new king of Lyonya. Who fares well, though lately having some difficulty.”

“Pargunese,” Arcolin said. Except for the bright eyes, whose yellow gleam seemed brighter than reflected fire would account for, and the tracery of lines on his skin, the man seemed completely human. A spy, perhaps? But certainly not—his mind blanked as the stranger opened his mouth and a tongue red and hot as iron in the forge-fire slid out farther than any human tongue, little flames writhing from its surface. The air wavered with heat; Arcolin felt sweat break out on his body.

“My name does not concern you,” the stranger said, after that tongue withdrew once more into the semblance of a human face. “My nature does. Kapristi told you truth, as kapristi usually do. Tell me, man of war, are you wise?”

For a long moment, Arcolin could say nothing, could scarcely bring his mind to understand those words at all. Then he gathered his thoughts. “You are … a dragon.”

The stranger nodded gravely. “But are you wise?”

“Not … very,” Arcolin said. “As you said, I am a man of war, and war is not often wise.” He nodded to the chair across the desk from him. “You might as well sit, if you will.”

The man sat; Arcolin felt no diminution of menace or power. “If war be not wise, why, then, do you pursue it?”

All the answers Arcolin could think of were too little or too much, and a shrug of the shoulders would be rude. “Choices,” he said finally. “Choices made when I was a lad that made this road the likeliest to follow.”

The stranger leaned back in the chair and tented hands that had ordinary fingernails. Arcolin had half expected talons. Surely dragons had talons … in the old legends they had talons.

“Only in my true shape,” the stranger said, as if Arcolin had asked aloud. “They would be inconvenient here.” He smiled again. “You claim no wisdom, and yet you are correct in your understanding of why you became a man of war. All have choices; choices both create new choices and close off old ones. I think you may be at least somewhat wise. For a human.”

Arcolin wanted to ask what dealings the dragon had with Kieri, what news from Lyonya, but more urgent, he knew, was the dragon’s purpose in coming here.

“I would not come to Vérella if it can be avoided,” the dragon said. “Cities … are inconvenient for my kind, tempting to rash action. But your king must understand that some land is forfeit, and why, and that it is beyond my power to restore it.”

“Our law requires us to accede to gnomish—kapristi—claims of territory,” Arcolin said. “The kapristi told my captain, who told me, and I have sent word already to the king.”

“It is not of kapristi,” the stranger said. “It is of my kind and our history. The kapristi were but stewards of our trust and failed. In their failure lay the seeds of much evil, including that enmity between Pargun and Tsaia. My children—our children—are jealous and most unwise in their youth.”

“Your … children …?” Arcolin could not follow this.

“As it falls on you to lose land you thought you owned, and on you to explain this loss to your king, I will speak plain, though … plain is not always wise.”

Arcolin’s mind drifted to the refreshments on his desk: the jug of golden southern wine, the glasses, the plate of leftover Midwinter pastries. “Will you share a glass?” he asked.

The stranger chuckled. “I judge you meant to impose no host-right, but no—I drink nothing but wind and eat what you cannot eat. It was, however, a courteous impulse, and I consider it well done.” He glanced at the door; it swung closed silently, and Arcolin could just hear the faint snick of the lock. He thought he should be afraid, but he wasn’t.

“Here is the short tale, clear-spoken,” the stranger said. “In times ancient to you, dragons lived here, having come from lands you cannot imagine. But always we had too many children … and our children, as I said, are rash and wild and dangerous. They are fire’s spirit and burn all. The Sinyi, who have few children, begged us to limit our growth for the sake of the taig, and so we did, burying the eggs deep in stone, cold stone, away from any that might disturb them and bring them to life. Then came the Severance.”

“Severance?” Arcolin had not meant to speak.

“In time, humans had been born, and one came near the Sinyi in love for the One Tree. He sang to the Tree; the Tree sang back … and that was the first Kuakgan. You have heard that story?”

“Something of it, yes. It angered some elves.”

“Indeed. Some reproached the tree; all reproached the man. The Sinyi severed in twain—those who left took vengeance on those who stayed, on humans, on the very land itself.” The stranger closed those golden eyes for a long moment, then opened them again, looking past Arcolin into the fire on the hearth, which crackled under that gaze. “We are all Elders. Sinyi of both kinds, rockfolk, and dragons, each created for a purpose in this world by those more powerful, who juggle worlds as you might toss pebbles. As Elders, we too have choices, and the consequences of our choices affect all the lateborn, for we can shape—to some degree—even the fabric of this world. Wisdom meddles little. The iynisin, those elves cursed in the Severance, are not wise. They … meddle. They stole our hidden eggs and loosed scathefire on the world once more.” The stranger looked
down at linked hands. “Or it may be that there was no theft, that one of our own turned traitor.”

“How did any survive?” Arcolin asked.

“That is an even longer tale,” the stranger said. “A tale of great loss, great courage, great changes in the world. A night and a day are not long enough to tell it, and we both, man of war, have much to do.”

Arcolin said nothing, though curiosity burned in him.

“These kapristi you shelter had care of one clutch of dragons’ eggs. Mine, in fact. I do not blame the kapristi for the trouble that befell them from Achrya, but they did not send for aid, and in the end their prince gave in to her and told where to find the eggs and how to wake them. For that great unwisdom many have suffered already and yet more will suffer. Wine spilled from a broken jar cannot be gathered back into it, nor can the shards of a dragon’s egg be fitted back together and made whole …” Again the stranger’s eyes closed for a long moment. “What they loosed,” he said, still with shut eyes, “must be destroyed, and yet … they are my children.”

“Is there—?” Arcolin began; the stranger lifted a finger and he fell silent.

“No other way? No. Two of them only, streaming scathefire, rent great holes in the Lyonyan forest taig, tracks it will take more than a human life to bring back to healthy forest.”

“You stopped them,” Arcolin said.

The stranger smiled, a slightly wistful smile. “Not alone. I met a half-Sinyi woman on my way to find the Lyonyan king. Braver than any human woman I had ever met; she helped me.”

“Paks?” Arcolin asked. He could not think of any other woman it might be, though he wondered that someone would think her part-elven.

“That is not her name: she is Half-Song to me, and Arian to her lover, the king.” The stranger shook his head as if to clear it. “But that is not to the point. You, man of war, must be wiser than you believe yourself to be. The place where the eggs were—where these kapristi lived—is near the border between your land and that of the Pargunese. That is why I told the kapristi to tell you it must be barred to all lateborn. I must find all the eggs, transport those not
shattered, find all pieces of those that are … and any that escape will loose scathefire.”

“If Achrya began this evil, will she not attack you? Prevent you?”

The golden eyes opened wide. “Achrya has been given a lesson; she will soon be … nothing again.”

“But she’s a goddess,” Arcolin said.

“No.” The stranger shook his head. “She is not even Elder. She was created of fear and loathing, stealing power from greater powers. You must tell your king why the land is barred and long will be. I can assure you that the Pargunese will take no advantage.”

“The Pargunese are indeed my concern,” Arcolin said. “For my king bids me defend the eastern border and stand ready to help other lords between here and the Honnorgat.”

“The Pargunese have more pressing concerns,” the stranger said. “Including me.” He yawned; the inside of his mouth glowed like a bed of coals, and once more heat rolled out. “You said you sent a courier. Did you tell your king of a dragon?”

“Not … precisely,” Arcolin said. “I told him of gnomes, which our law covers, and what the gnomes told me, but I thought the gnomes—I thought they were mistaken. So tired, so ill, perhaps, that they had mistaken some bane of Achrya’s—”

“And now?”

“I understand they were not mistaken.” What else could he say with those fiery eyes looking at him, that heat and forge smell all around him?

“Good.” The stranger stood. “We must go outside to seal this agreement. There is not room here for the change.”

“The … change?”

The stranger smiled. “You would not want to miss seeing my true form, would you?”

Arcolin shook his head, unable to speak. The door to his office opened before they reached it; they passed through the halls and down the stairs and out into the inner court with no one to see them. The night air struck bitter cold, but warmth and a dim light came off the stranger, less than the light of the oil lamps that burned in their niches either side of the entrance.

“Stand there,” the stranger said, pointing to the well in the center.
Arcolin obeyed. Across the court, he could see the orange glow of another lamp in the arch between this courtyard and the larger outer one, where a soldier should have stood guard, but he did not see the soldier. Had the stranger—the dragon—taken his guard away? “I did no one here harm,” the stranger said. Then he shimmered, as if he were made of water on which sunlight glittered, and grew until the space around the well was full of scaled dragon: head and neck and body and tail. Talons rasped the stones; near Arcolin the dragon’s snout blew a jet of forge-smelling steam that warmed him, and above and to his right the dragon’s golden eye peered down at him.

“I named your commander and Lyonya’s king Sorrow-King,” the dragon said. “You I will name … Kindly-Death.”

Arcolin shivered; he felt that naming had a terrible power. “May I ask why?”

“You kill, but you are kind of heart,” the dragon said, as if it were obvious. “Do you not know your own nature?”

“Not … entirely,” Arcolin said. “No human does, I think.”

“Indeed, man of war, you have some wisdom. But we must seal our bargain, that you leave the land that I must take, and allow none to wander there, lest they take hurt.” The dragon opened its mouth and extended its tongue, red-hot and smoking in the cold air. “Come, now: touch your tongue to mine.”