Servant of the Dragon (38 page)

* * *

Sharina squatted beside the slab. There wasn't any question which block the Dragon had meant: this three-foot length of hard white granite looked nothing like the crude limestone ashlars that made up the rest of the foundation layer. Identification aside, though, she couldn't imagine how she and Dalar were going to remove it.

Dalar stood between her and the street, facing forward and back over his shoulderblades in quick succession. He looked like an extreme example of a spectator watching both sides of a game of net-ball. Sharina was afraid that the bird's movements were going to attract more attention than they'd help, but she was too unsure of what
she
was doing to tell him to stop jerking his head around.

"Well, he said...," she murmured, trying to grip the stone with her fingertips. To her amazement, it
did
have a greasy willingness to move; but whatever had happened to normal friction, the stone still weighed twice what she and Dalar did together.

Sharina drew the Pewle knife and thrust it into the gap between the altar stone and the block to its left. She didn't like to use her only physical reminder of Nonnus as a prybar—but she needed a prybar, and this was what she had. Nonnus himself had trained her to remember that objects were only objects, and that human beings alone were worthy of real concern. Sharina's memory of her friend and the lessons he'd taught her were important; his knife was just a tool.

She worked the blade gently sideways. Bits of mortar cascaded from the joints as though she was moving a block of ice, not stone. Sharina set a pebble in the crack to brace the stone, then slid the knife into the opposite joint. The steel was thick and of the best quality. It wouldn't snap under Sharina's careful use, though there'd be scratches to polish out as soon as she had a chance.

The stone pivoted out a full two finger's breadth. Sharina wiped grit from the blade unconsciously before sheathing it. "Help me, Dalar," she said as she set the fingers of both hands against the left side of the stone.

Dalar knelt on the other side of the block. Sharina pressed hard, sliding the stone forward at an angle. As it straightened, Dalar pressed and pulled also.

The block scraped half its depth out into the alley before Sharina had to shift her grip. They could use their palms now. She'd wondered how strong the bird's thin arms really were. The answer appeared to be, "Quite strong enough."

"Hey, what're you doing there?" someone shouted from the alley mouth. His shadow blocked half the dim light from the street.

"We're fixing the foundation so the wall doesn't fall in!" Sharina shouted back. She made eye contact with Dalar and murmured, "Now."

They heaved, scrambling backward as the block slid completely clear of the wall. Sharina's hands were on the verge of cramping from the strain. The edges of the granite were sharp. They didn't cut flesh, but they clamped off circulation in fingers pressed hard against them.

"Fixing the foundation?" the voice said. "Hey, that don't make any sense. Leimon, come here and look at this."

If Sharina had to, she'd fling a handful of silver ingots into the street.
That
should prove an adequate distraction to let her and Dalar escape.

Though 'escape' probably wasn't the right word.

"Once more," she said and gripped the back edge of the altar stone for a straight pull outward. They tugged together. The stone's weight resisted while Sharina's biceps bunched and the bird made a faint wheezing noise through his closed beak.

When the block moved, it was with a frictionless rush that made the pair of them jump up quickly to avoid being crushed.
Foolish
! Sharina thought.
As silly as cutting vegetables against the palm of my hand, and a good deal more dangerous!

"Hey, you guys got no business here," the speaker said, coming a step farther into the alley. Two friends had joined him. The fellow didn't sound angry—or drunk, which was much the same thing. He was simply a busybody.

"Go!" Sharina muttered, gesturing Dalar to the opening. The wall above was holding together for the time being, but she wouldn't bet it would stay that way forever.

Dalar slid through the rectangular hole, leading with his clawed feet. "Hey, what's he doing?" whined one of the strangers.

"See here, my man," Sharina said, trying to sound as snooty as she could in a foreign dialect, while squatting in the filth of an alley. "You go check with the building's owner and he'll tell you that he's hired us to do this. And he'll probably put a flea in your ear for nosing into his affairs!"

She took off the belt with wallet and sheath. The rig was under her cape, so even though she'd slung it over her shoulder she had to unclasp the buckle first. It was carved from the dense bone of a sea mammal.

"I don't believe a word you say!" the first man said. He glanced back at his companions before he decided what to do next.

Sharina drew the Pewle knife, then slung the wallet and harness through the opening. "By the Lady!" a man cried. All three of them backed hastily, stumbling on one another's feet. "Hey, what
is
this?"

Sharina thrust her feet through the opening, then pushed herself backward with her left hand. The knife wobbled, not a threat unless one of the men decided he ought to stop her. They'd run back to the street, though, shouting for help.

Rain dampened Sharina's feet. She tensed her belly muscles against the lip of the wall and dropped to the ground no more than a foot beneath her. "Oh!" she gasped, glad of Dalar's hand bracing her.

They stood in the ruins of a city. It was early afternoon. The warm drizzle must have been falling all day, because puddles filled every hollow and indentation.

Dalar handed Sharina her belt. She sheathed the knife and took stock of herself. She'd scratched her thighs—nothing serious—and hiked her tunic up to her navel. Her cape had caught on something as she went over the edge. The wing of the cloisonne butterfly pin had bitten at her throat, but when she rubbed herself she found the skin hadn't been broken.

"I see what you meant about coming from far away," Dalar said. He clucked with laughter. "Is it possible, do you think, that you could go to Rokonar?"

Sharina noticed that as the bird spoke, his short fingers manipulated the chained weights in his right palm. He surveyed the landscape in quick jerks of his head.

"I don't think so," she said. She fitted the belt again over the snakeskin sash, concentrating on the task so that she didn't have to look at Dalar. Not that she'd have been able to read pain in the bird's expression. "I go where the person I serve sends me. All I know is that I'll continue to move until I'm where he wants me to be."

She met Dalar's eyes. He nodded; she didn't know whether that was a gesture of his own race or something he'd learned to do in human society. "A warrior of the Rokonar doesn't question where his lord takes him," he said. "It was a matter of personal curiosity that might better have remained unspoken."

Sharina took her first real look at the landscape. Behind her was a wall, limestone except for the granite slab she and Dalar had removed in Valhocca. The hard stone was noticeably worn, and half had split off on a ragged diagonal.

"I saw you crawling over it," Dalar said, nodding to the slab. "Your feet appeared, then the rest of you. Out of the air."

The granite was on top of the remaining portion of the wall, but the building of which it had been part must have been enormous before it collapsed.
Probably a temple; at any rate, the stone drums of fallen pillars line what should be the front of the structure.

Dalar waited silently. He occasionally spun a weight between two fingers on an inch of chain, perhaps implying that he'd like his mistress to direct him. Sharina would like somebody to direct her, too.

"I have no idea where we are," she said. "Or where we should go next. The Dragon—the person who, whom I serve—appears as you saw."

She smiled. "Well, you saw me," she corrected. "I had no warning the first times he came to me with directions, and I doubt it'll be different in the future."

The ruins could have been of Valhocca, but the destruction was so complete that it could have been any city in the Isles—centuries after a cataclysm. "The legend of my time," Sharina said evenly, "was that a wizard destroyed Valhocca and cursed it so that it was never rebuilt. That was in the mythical past of
my
age, however. No one could really have known."

Dalar clucked. "Indeed, you're from very far away, mistress," he said.

His downy feathers slicked as the rain wet them; the warrior looked like a larger version of a chicken that Sharina had scalded and plucked for dinner. To keep from giggling—and because they had to do something—Sharina said, "Let's see if we can find some cover. And do you suppose there's anything to eat in this forest?"

It was past berry season and Sharina didn't see any nut trees on a quick survey of their surrounding. The vegetation was mostly broad-leafed and succulent, quite different from the woods she'd been chased through on her way to meet the Dragon.

Something hooted raucously from the forest south of them. Sharina couldn't guess how far away it might be. She started to say, "Probably a bird," but she closed her mouth again without speaking.

That would have sounded like she was hoping away danger. She simply didn't know what had been calling. And while anything
could
have made the sound, it hadn't really sounded like a bird.

She grinned at Dalar and drew the Pewle knife. "We'll go this way," she said, nodding northward along the line of a boulevard separating rows of ruins.

"It might be edible," the bird said. His head flicked in tiny movements as quick and uncertain as light wobbling from faceted glass.

"So might we," Sharina said.

They started off, moving parallel on either side of the street's centerline. The trees were just as large here as elsewhere in the ruins—many were too thick for Sharina and Dalar to have spanned if they linked arms—but the footing was easier than if they'd had to clamber over piles of rubble which once had been buildings.

The drizzle made it harder to concentrate on anything that was more than arm's length ahead. Sharina repeatedly reminded herself that she
had
to be aware of her wider surroundings, but she kept finding her eyes focused on the ground just ahead of her feet.

She giggled. The bird glanced at her and said, "Mistress?"

"It isn't fair we have to be uncomfortable
and
in danger both," Sharina said.

"I've been contemplating a severe complaint to the Gods about just that situation," Dalar agreed with a straight face. "All that's holding me back is deciding precisely which God is primarily responsible for the conditions. My race has ten thousand separate deities, you see, so it's difficult to correctly apportion blame."

Sharina giggled again. Not that the bird had much option about the straight face, since instead of mobile lips he had a beak as rigid as cow horn. It pleased Sharina to see that her companion not only had a sense of humor, it was a sense of humor that agreed with her own.

They heard the call again and both paused. "It sounded farther away than before," Sharina said. She spoke instead of swallowing her words because this time she could make a truthful statement instead of expressing a frightened wish.

"Yes," said Dalar, "and well to our right. Whatever it is."

A ghoul with yellow tusks and skin the color of lichened rock stepped out of the ruined building beside Sharina. It walked on two legs like a human, but it was eight feet tall despite its slumped carriage. Its broad hips were cocked back to balance the weight of its canted forequarters.

Sharina shifted slightly, settling both feet for a good grip on the soil. Dalar stepped around her right side so that they were both facing the creature.

The ghoul lifted its head and hooted to its fellows who'd been calling in the distance. Close up the sound was deafening, like a bull roaring through a crude iron trumpet.

The ghoul's arms were long enough to touch the ground, but at present it held a headless rabbit in one clawed hand and picked bits of flesh from the teeth with the other. Six teats flapped against the creature's belly; it was a female.

The ghoul grinned and dropped the remains of the rabbit. Sharina raised the Pewle knife, gripping the hilt with both hands. Her only chance was to chop into the creature's rush with all her strength. Running would be useless.

She heard a whistling sound from the side, but she didn't dare take her eyes off the ghoul. If her timing was perfect, they might surv—

The ghoul leaped. The mushy
choonk
of impact sounded like an axe hitting a melon.

The creature's hairless skull twisted sideways and deformed. One of Dalar's bronze weights froze momentarily in the misty air, having transferred all the momentum of its spin to the misshapen head.

Dalar snatched the weight back into his palm and set the other one spinning on six feet of chain. After two quick twists of the bird's wrist, the bronze was a shimmer in the air rather than a discrete object. He tilted the weapon slightly so that it was safely above Sharina's head on that side of its circuit.