The Dinosaur Lords (28 page)
Maris, La Dama Fortuna
, Lady Fortune
—Baroness of the Creators:
Dui
☱
(Lake)—The Youngest Daughter. Represents Fortune and the Sea; justice, fate, mariners, gambling; balance and imbalance; Equilibrium; and Wild Water. Also fish and swimming reptiles. Known for her caprice. Aspect: a slight albino woman with blue eyes and long, windblown white hair, dressed in a white robe, with the
taiji-tu
in her raised left palm. Sacred Animal: terrible mouth sea dragon (often shown devouring a man). Color: white. Symbol: a silver eight-spoked ship’s wheel.
—A PRIMER TO PARADISE FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF YOUNG MINDS
“Eldest Brother,” gasped the brown-haired young man who stood nearest Bogardus, “you’ve hurt yourself.”
“It’s nothing,” Bogardus said with a smile, “except for a reminder of a truth. Here, lend me a kerchief, if you will.” Several were thrust immediately toward him. He accepted one with a nod and thanks and began to wrap it around the wound.
“It’s a rare rose,” he said, handing it to a young woman with chestnut hair bound up in a silver fillet. Her green eyes lingered on Rob in a way he liked. “A variety developed by the former Comte Carles dels Flors, father of our own dear preceptor, Mor Jaume.”
“Imagine that,” said Rob, impressed and trying not to show it.
Recalling his mission, he puffed himself up and took a step forward.
“I am Rob Korrigan, and this is my lord the Voyvod Karyl Bogomirskiy.”
Bogardus’s followers looked at him with handsome faces as blank as fresh writing scrolls. Rob raised a brow. Karyl was a celebrated captain, his exploits widely sung. Even here in the South, only his nemesis Jaume’s fame surpassed his.
“So I reckon you don’t spend much time in taverns,” Rob muttered under his breath.
But Bogardus nodded and smiled. “Your arrival is warmly anticipated, gentlemen,” he said, stepping up with forthright stride and hand extended.
“No gentleman I,” said Rob, abruptly feeling even more contrary than usual.
“The Eldest is just being courteous,” piped up the youth who’d pointed out the wound to Bogardus’s hand. “All are equally gentle in the Creators’ eyes.”
“If you say so,” Rob said.
“You’re most welcome, both of you,” Bogardus said, shaking Karyl’s hand. “Aphrodite told me she’d sent you.”
Rob blinked. “Aphrodite?” Karyl said.
“Indeed. She visited us here several weeks back. She said she’d engaged not just one but two champions to help us.”
“How in Fae’s name did she get here ahead of us?” Rob burst out.
He instantly covered his mouth in alarm. He knew it made him look foolish.
But question the Creators’ existence as I might, I know the Faerie Folk are real. And not lightly to be invoked.
“You know her ways,” Bogardus said cheerfully. “She’s a witch, you know.”
Rob chuckled unkindly at Karyl’s frown.
Bogardus gestured at the bandage covering Karyl’s left hand. “You’re injured?”
“Nothing of consequence.”
“It’s so good of you to come to us in our hour of need. I’m honored to meet you, my lord.”
“Thank you, but I’m no lord,” Karyl said, and belied it with a bow of perfect courtliness.
Bogardus smiled with what seemed warmth rather than amusement. He turned the sun of that smile on Rob.
“And you, Master Korrigan,” Bogardus said, taking Rob’s hand likewise in both of his own. They were surprising hands, square and strong—hands that
did
things. “An honor to meet you as well. I hadn’t dared hope that we might acquire two such warriors of note. Truly the Creators smile upon us in our need.”
“The pleasure and honor are mine, Lord Bogardus,” said Rob.
Bogardus shook his head. “I’m no lord either, my friend. A simple philosopher, rather. And a teacher—that I consider my highest accolade.”
“But I do have to say,” Rob said, his tongue dragging its feet in his mouth, “I’m no mighty warrior. A dinosaur master, aye. Also a minstrel. A dab hand in a tavern brawl, I admit, but a champion never.”
“He’s my comrade,” Karyl said. Rob looked at him in surprise. His cheeks felt unaccustomedly warm beneath his beard. “He’s got more talents than he’s confessing. You’ll need them as well as mine.”
“So Aphrodite told me,” Bogardus said.
He turned to the acolytes. “Sisters, Brothers, business beckons, of a nature with which I’d rather not burden your souls. Please excuse me to speak with my guests.”
With a marked lack of the graciousness that radiated from their leader, the gaggle broke up and flocked into the villa. Rob caught more than one look of startling virulence shot toward him and his companion.
Not all the Gardeners welcome our warlike gifts
, he thought.
The chestnut-haired woman paused on the marble steps. The glance she cast over her bare shoulder at Rob was not at all like her companions’.
Rob thumbed his moustache as she vanished through finely glazed doors.
It’s a frightful job we’re taking on
, he told himself,
but it may yet have its compensations.
* * *
“It’s hard for me to admit this,” Bogardus said, “but we need help. Specifically, we need
your
help.”
They sat at ease on curved marble benches surrounded by garden. Out of consideration for their host’s sensitive nose, Rob resisted the temptation to take off his boots. It was a pleasant break to be off his feet after so many weary days on the road.
The setting sun shone through scarlet-flowered vines lacing the arbor that sheltered the table, dappling Bogardus’s care-seamed face. Water sang gently in a nearby marble pool, spilled from a ewer on the marble shoulder of the Creator Maris, goddess of Fortune and the Sea. Both of which, Rob knew too well, were notorious for their changeability—and capacity for sudden destruction.
“We’re men of war,” Karyl said. “The Garden is devoted to peace, if I’ve heard correctly. What help can we give you?”
“You’ve heard correctly. From my friend Aphrodite you’ve also heard how sorely beset we are.”
The young woman with the chestnut hair and deep reddish-purple gown materialized from the dusk to place a silver ewer and three flagons before them on the round marble table. Rob caught her eye and grinned, leaning back and cocking one bandy leg over the other.
“A servant?” he said sidelong to Bogardus.
Bogardus smiled as he poured Rob’s flagon full. “We all serve the Garden, in our ways.”
“We gladly do what we can, Master Korrigan,” the woman said, her voice low and thrilling. She turned and walked away. If she made an effort to subdue the movements of her buttocks beneath the thin fabric, it was not apparent to Rob.
He gulped wine. Even he recognized at once it was too good for such cavalier treatment. So he gulped a bit more and slipped a glance at Karyl.
Though the day was still warm, Karyl sat with his cloak held close about him. An arm clamped his walking stick with its concealed swordblade propped against his shoulder. His right hand held his bandaged left as if to hide it.
“We still believe in peace,” Bogardus said. “But our neighbors seem bent on forcing us to choose between it and life.”
“I understand your Garden follows the philosophy of Count Jaume,” said Rob, helping himself to a refill. It was really excellent wine, and his throat was parched from travel. He carefully did not look at Karyl. “Who happens to be the Empire’s foremost warrior. And surely no pacifist, so?”
“Indeed not. We do follow Jaume’s precepts on beauty and morality. They’re wise and beautiful themselves.”
He reached to caress one of the woody vines. “And as we’ve grown our own version of them, we shape his teachings to our own needs. As gardeners do.”
“And now you’re reshaping them to encompass war,” Karyl said.
“Purely in self-defense.”
“Fair enough.” He tossed back the last of his own wine and set the mug down with a
tunk
. “What’s your situation?”
“As you no doubt saw on your journey, ours is a fertile land, placid and well-favored. Our people are prosperous and cosmopolitan, thanks to trade caravans passing along La Rue Imp
é
riale. Peace was the norm here for many years before our Garden’s seeds were ever planted in Providence’s soil.”
“So why haven’t your neighbors overrun you before?” Rob asked.
“Providentials may never have been warlike, but they have a tradition of standing up fiercely against invaders.”
“I note you say ‘they’ instead of ‘we.’”
Bogardus shrugged. “I’m a relatively recent arrival. I’ve come to love this land and its people. A good thing, I suppose, since I now somehow seem charged with responsibility for the welfare of both.”
“Does Providence still have any kind of army?” Karyl asked.
“The Counts’ income has always enabled them to maintain a small but well-equipped force of house-shields.”
“But no longer,” Karyl said.
“No longer. Count
É
tienne has accepted our Garden doctrines and joined as a humble Brother, leaving a Council of Master Gardeners—the Garden Council—in charge of the province. A few of his men accepted our ways. Most sought their fortunes elsewhere. And some”—he sighed—“some have joined Count Guillaume of Cr
è
ve Coeur or his allies.”
“Cr
è
ve Coeur,” Rob said. “Broken Heart. Appropriate, if they’re back of the raids.”
“Knights and barons?” Karyl asked.
Bogardus sighed.
“They have to look to their own lands and castles, they claim. In truth, I don’t think all of them look with favor on our experiment here. Egalitarianism is a key tenet of our beliefs. And without a seated count to compel them with oaths of fealty—” He ended with a shrug.
“Threats?” Karyl asked.
“Guillaume’s the strongest and worst of our bad neighbors. The Shield Mountains protect our northeastern frontier; Grand Turan currently finds trade with the Empire more profitable than war, and the neighboring pasha suppresses raids across the passes. Which are difficult propositions at the best of times.
“Three Imperial provinces surround Providence: Guillaume’s to the north, M
é
tairie Brul
é
e in the west, and Casta
ñ
a south across the Spa
ñ
ol border.”
“Natural boundaries?” Karyl asked.
“If you came in by the High Road you passed over the Lisette River. It’s our border with Cr
è
ve Coeur as well as part of the frontier with M
é
tairie Brul
é
e. The other half of our M
é
tairie Brul
é
e border is L’Eau Riant, the Laughing Water, which also divides us from Spa
ñ
a and County Casta
ñ
a.”
“I see.”
“Since Providence is now without a ruler, as they see it, our neighboring magnates believe its wealth—and its people—are free for their taking. For now it’s mostly Guillaume’s knights who afflict us: raiding incessantly, plundering, burning, raping, butchering. Lately they’ve taken to capturing our people for slaves.”
“Slaves?” Rob said. “But that’s forbidden by both Creators and Imperial law!”
“Ah, but you see, my friends, no one cares. After all, we are merely heretics. We’ve even heard of voices being raised in the Imperial Court to wage war against us, lest our beliefs bring a Grey Angel Crusade down on the Tyrant’s Head.”
For a moment it was as if a breath of ice had puffed down from the high peaks. Rob made the sign of the Lady’s Mirror. Not to avert
evil,
exactly: the Grey Angels were evil’s polar opposite, the supernatural avengers of righteousness.
It was the zeal—and the thoroughness—with which they avenged it that made them so well feared.
He glanced at Karyl. His companion wore an unaccustomed look of discomfort behind his beard. Rob couldn’t help a certain smug satisfaction. He felt an almost malicious glee in seeing Karyl’s distress.
Perhaps I owe him better
, he thought, with a wisp of guilt—not the most familiar of emotions to Rob Korrigan. He knew that Karyl’s skepticism, his disbelief in Creators and Grey Angels and magic and the Fae and all that mystic lot, had formed the one constant in a life full of travail and uncertainty.
With the regrowing of his severed hand, now all but complete, even that bedrock had cracked beneath his feet. Talking about Grey Angels was like running a jagged fingernail over the ultrasensitive back of his budding hand.
“What do you want us to do, Eldest Brother?” asked Rob, belatedly remembering his role as mediator.
Bogardus laughed. “First, please, just call me Bogardus. I’m trying to break the Gardeners of giving me titles I don’t actually claim.”
“Fair enough.”
“And second—”
Bogardus leaned forward across the table, his eyes glittering like daggers.
“Teach my people how to fight.”
Rasgu
ñ
ador,
Scratcher
—Various species of
Oviraptor
. Nuevaropa breeds: 1–1.5 meters, 5–10 kilograms. Bipedal; short, powerful, toothless beaks. True omnivorous dinosaurs, named for their habit of scratching with hind legs in farmyards for insects, grubs, and seeds. Breeds vary widely in plumage and color. Kept worldwide for egg laying and meat.