The Dragon in the Sword (24 page)

“Are your people so depleted by aggressors?” von Bek asked sympathetically, after we had returned the introductions. “Is that why you were so cautious, lord prince, to admit us here?”

Prince Groaffer Rolm paused, raising a hand. “I have misinformed you, it seems. Until lately, this realm knew peace for century upon century. We grew used to persecution, certainly, and we built our cities away from the envious eyes of Mabden and others. But we have so successfully hidden ourselves from enemies we have only the habit of caution left!” He pretended to turn his head and inspect the fire. Actually he was inhaling more of the incense.

His wife, Prince Faladerj Oro, spoke. “Most of what we mine is too precious, too beautiful, to trade. You see before you five decadent old creatures in the decline of their race’s age. We have lived without stimulus for too long now. We are dying.”

“Though,” said one I took to be younger, Whiclar Hald-Halg, “we have seen four full cycles of the multiverse come and go. Few others survive one.” She spoke proudly. “There are few with histories as long as those you call the Ursine Princes. We call ourselves Oager Uv. We have almost always been a river people.” She began to seat herself, fluffing her lace and her heavy wools as she did so.

Prince Groaffer Rolm waited with attentive stillness until Whiclar Hald-Halg had completed her speech. “There you have us,” he said. “We have a few family left, but that is the sum of our race. We had expected to end our days in peace. The Mabden offer us no trouble. Sometimes they trade one of their young for whatever it is they have decided they need from us. We, in turn, pass the boys on to Gheestenheem, where we know no harm will come to them. But then came news of this army of liberators, apparently sworn to release the Mabden from imprisonment here. Is it this you would warn us of?”

Alisaard was puzzled. “I know nothing of such an army. Who leads it?”

“A Mabden. I cannot remember his name. They are coming through on the Eastern Banks, apparently, in large numbers. Of course, it is many years since we were there ourselves. If all they wanted were those shores, we would have given them up. We want nothing but this city and tranquility. But, thanks to a Mabden more honourable than most, we learned of this invasion in time. And so our allies will arrive here shortly, to defend us in our last years. It seems an unlikely irony. And, moreover, it is a familiar one, eh? The remnants of an ancient aristocracy defended by those who were once their fiercest enemies?”

I was suspicious as, I could see, were Alisaard and von Bek.

“Pardon, Prince Groaffer Rolm,” said Alisaard. “But when did you learn of this holy war against you?”

“Not thirty breaks since.”

“And do you remember the name of the honourable Mabden who has offered to help you?”

“That I can remember easily, aye. Her name is the Princess Sharadim of Draachenheem. She has become a good friend to us, and asks nothing. She understands our principles and our customs and she has made it her business to learn much of our history. She is a good creature. It is a blessing for us that all our other cities are long since abandoned. She only has the one to defend. We anticipate her soldiers during the next conjunction.”

Alisaard flushed. Like me, like von Bek, she did not know how best and with what formal manners, to disabuse the Ursine Princes.

At last von Bek said brutally, “So she deceives you also. As she deceives so many in her own land. She means you ill, my lords, and that is certain.”

There came a considerable snuffling, throat clearing and not a little cracking of joints.

Alisaard spoke passionately. “It is true, my princes. This woman plans to league herself with Chaos and destroy the barriers between the realms, turning the Worlds of the Wheel into one vast and lawless place where she and her allies of Chaos shall establish a perpetual tyranny!”

“Chaos?” Prince Glanat Khlin waddled to the fire and breathed in the smoke. “No Mabden can league themselves with Chaos and survive—not in their original form, at any rate. Or does she hope to be made a Lord of Chaos herself? That is sometimes the ambition of such people…”

“I would remind my Sister Prince,” said Snothelifard Plare, “that we have only heard charges from this trio. We have been offered no evidence. I have, for my own part, an instinctive trust of the Mabden female Sharadim. I have a way of understanding her kind. These emissaries could be from those who march against Adelstane!”

“On my word,” cried Alisaard, “we are not your enemies. We serve neither Sharadim nor the jihad you speak of. We came to you for help in our own quest. We seek to stop the spread of evil, to halt Chaos and its schemes for our realms. We came to you because we hoped to find Morandi Pag.”

“There you have it!” Snothelifard Plare pulled back her muzzle and clicked at her teeth with her nails. “There you have it!”

Alisaard looked from face to face. “What do you mean?”

Groaffer Rolm inhaled an enormous mouthful of smoke. Even as he spoke the fumes began to escape from his nostrils and add to those already in the room. “Morandi Pag has gone mad. He was one of us. An Ursine Prince, you would say. Prince of the South East Rushers and the Cold Ponds. A great trader. Always his own steersman. Friend. Oh!” And Groaffer Rolm raised his snout to the painted ceiling and gave a mournful groan.

“His childhood friend,” explained Faladerj Oro as she stroked her husband’s wrinkling head. “His great sharer.” And a little whimper escaped her mouth. “Yes. He is with them, we are informed. We sent for him. Urgently. We told him we must see him in Adelstane, so that he could tell us he does not serve the Mabden. But he did not come. He did not send a message. Amongst our people that is a statement that what is rumoured is true.”

“Morandi Pag has an odd mind,” said Glanat Khlin. “Always an odd mind. Took action, he did. Always action following his delicate and unreadable logic. As a trader he was the last of the true River Princes. As a seer he had trained himself to look into a thousand times and places. As a scientist his theories were of exquisite intricacy. Oh, Morandi Pag was what our ancestors were. An odd mind which could foresee unimaginable possibilities. So he left for his crag at last. But we did not know he disapproved of our treatment of the Mabden. He had only to make it clear. We do merely what the Mabden say they want. We offered them one of our loveliest cities for themselves. They refused it. If we are guilty of obtuse reasoning, we should be told. We would change. If the Mabden want to return to a Mabden realm, we can take them. But they would not consider any of our suggestions. Now this comes. We did no wrong, I think.”

“Perhaps we did wrong,” said Snothelifard Plare. “If so, Morandi Pag of all the Princes could have told us how. Yet that is done. We have a barbarian force marching against us. It means killing. We cannot defend ourselves entirely without employing death. These other Mabden know death and how to deal it. We are without resources in the matter of tools, even.”

“Aye,” agreed Groaffer Rolm, recovering himself slowly. “No weapons, and Sharadim has the means of finding these. She defends beauty, she says. That, we think, is worth defending. But we could not easily kill. Mabden can easily kill, as we all recognise here, I think. Ah! Morandi Pag. He will not send even writing to us. No. We do not want the Mabden. They are fleas. Ah!” And he turned his head into the fireplace, leaving his wife in great confusion, offering us a glance of apology for her husband’s description of those she considered our kind.

“They are worse than fleas, Prince Faladerj Oro,” I said quickly. “They are perhaps the worst sort of flea, at any rate. Wherever they bite, they leave disease and ruin behind. But I suspect both Mabden armies to be commanded by Sharadim. She uses one to frighten you, one to reassure you. We know she planned to bring an army here. But we thought she marched against Morandi Pag. If so, how can she be in league with him?”

“Someone should visit that crag, as I said.” Groaffer Rolm puffed smoke from his nostrils again. “If he is dead or ill, then much is explained. And I agree with these Mabden, fellow Princes. Sharadim cannot any longer be trusted. I suspect we waited so long to find Mabden whose morality we could respect that we deceived ourselves…”

“The Princess Sharadim is an honourable creature,” said Prince Snothelifard Plare. “I know it in my bones.”

“Why did you not send someone to this crag before?” I asked. “If you suspected Morandi Pag to be ill.”

Groaffer Rolm’s snout grew wet and he sniffled. He coughed and pushed his head so far into the fireplace it almost disappeared. “We are too old,” he said. “There is none can make the journey.”

“Is the crag so far away?” Von Bek’s voice took on a new urgency.

“Not so far,” said Groaffer Rolm, re-emerging from the incense. “About five miles, we used to reckon.”

“You could send nobody five miles?” Von Bek began to sound contemptuous.

“It is across the lake,” Glanat Khlin spoke defensively. “The lake he himself explored, looking for the mythical Central Passage which is said to pass permanently through all realms at once. All he found, they say, was his crag. But there is often a maelstrom there. And often big winds. We have no boats for it. Nothing made. And we can make nothing ourselves now.”

“You, the great River Princes, have no boats? I have seen your ark at the Great Massing.” I could not believe they were lying. “You do have boats.”

“A few. The ark is mere trickery so that no Mabden will look greedily on our artifacts. The Gheestenheemers have similar strategies, which is why we have always been allies. A few little boats left, yes. But we are too old.”

“Then lend us one of those,” said Alisaard. Hesitantly she put her hand on Groaffer Rolm’s massive arm. “Lend us a boat and we will cross the lake to find Morandi Pag. Perhaps we shall find that he does not work against you. Perhaps the Mabden lied in this as in everything else?”

“The Princess Sharadim has psychic gifts,” growled Snothelifard Plare. “She knows Morandi Pag schemes our finality.”

“You will let them prove this.” Groaffer Rolm rose up from his chair in a great hissing and whispering of fabric. “You will let them prove it, lord prince. What bad can that bring us?”

Snothelifard Plare bent with fastidious slowness towards the fireplace and drew in the fumes by means of a long, loud sniff.

“Take the boat, but be careful,” Faladerj Oro said, sounding almost like a mother to her children. “The crag lies beneath the sun. It is hot and the water acts strangely. Morandi Pag went there for solitude, to study. But he stayed. Only he knew the exact way the sea runs. It was one of his golden strengths. We watched him as young females, scenting for the currents lying in the deepest reaches. Then he would take his rafts and race through. Half our charts were drawn before the birth of Morandi Pag. Half our charts have been drawn since he came to us. And even a long-lived people like ours do not pass through four full cycles of the multiverse. He was our last great pride. If he had been a leader, I think we should have survived even a fifth cycle.” She did not seem greatly upset by the prospect of her race’s extinction. “Morandi Pag has derived his knowledge from the whole of the multiverse. Compared to him the rest of us are ignorant and parochial. We have boats below. They can be floated up to the old mole. Will you wait for the boat there? We shall give you charts. We shall give you provisions. We shall give you messages of friendship and concern for Morandi Pag. And then, if he lives, he will reply.”

Not an hour later we stood in the grey light beneath those massive cliff walls, on a worn stone quayside, watching as, from the depths, there drifted a pale golden boat, with a mast all ready and a sail wrapped against the wet; with oars and little watertight boxes full of sweet pastes and grains, the water pouring from her as she rocked beside the stone mole, ready to receive us.

“I have seen these boats of theirs once before,” said Alisaard, stepping confidently into it and arranging a seat for her comfort. “They cannot fill with water. It is a system of vents and valves, but so cunningly hidden in the design that they cannot be discovered by anyone save their makers.”

The boat was much wider than the last one we had used. This boat was plainly designed to accept the weight and bulk of the bearfolk. But the boat responded with subtle ease to the tiller and the breeze.

We saw no more of the Ursine Princes as we set off towards the vent in the clouds, where light still poured, almost violently, upon water which, as we approached closer, was evidently foaming furiously and sending up occasional geysers of steam.

“Scalding water,” said von Bek wearily. He seemed ready to accept defeat. “That’s what defends Morandi Pag’s crag. Look at the charts, Herr Daker. See if there are alternative means of approaching.”

But there was none.

Soon, picked out by that vast funnel of sunlight, we saw through the steam and the foam a tall spike of rock, rising at least a hundred feet above the turbulent waters. Upon this spike, just visible now, was a building resembling those we had just left behind. It might even have been a natural formation, worked by thousands of years of elemental forces, but I knew it was not. It could only be Morandi Pag’s house.

We slowed our boat’s progress, heaving to before we were caught up in the swirling currents. The steam was so hot that we were soon all of us perspiring. There were other crags, other vicious spikes of rock surrounding Morandi Pag’s, but none was so tall. We stood upright in the boat and waved in the hope that he had some means of guiding us in. There was no sign of life from the white lace palace on the crag.

Alisaard had the charts beside her. “We can go through this,” she said, pointing. “It is a slab of rock which the sea has worn through. It offers the best protection from the geysers. Once through that we have to steer between the crags, but the water, according to the chart, is cooler there. At Morandi Pag’s crag, there is a small bay, apparently. This is what we must reach before we are crushed against the rock walls. We seem to have only this choice. Or we can return to Adelstane and tell them we were unsuccessful. We can wait until Sharadim comes with her army. What shall we do then?”