The Dragons of Argonath (51 page)

Lessis sighed. Things were going to get more complicated.

Back among the rhododendrons, at the bottom of the long lawn, there was movement, very cautious movement made by something big. The careful eye could soon detect a huge bulk hunkered down among the bushes, a deeper shade among the shadows. Bazil Broketail came from a long line of predatory hunters, he could hide with the best of them.

Relkin crouched down beside the wyvern.

"Something's going on, that's for sure," said Relkin with a nod to the lights in the house and the men on the roof.

"Whatever men do, we in time to join the party."

Relkin looked at the dragon, who stared back with wyvern seriousness.

"Well, yes, I think you're right."

Voices suddenly echoed from their left. Men were searching the rhododendrons.

"Move!" And Relkin was in motion, cutting back into the bushes and away to the right. The wyvern followed, shifting his huge bulk with remarkably little noise.

The big house was abuzz. Relkin wondered what the hell was going on and if Eilsa and Lagdalen were involved. Somehow he felt sure that they were.

At that moment, on the far side of the great house, up on the third floor, Lagdalen and Eilsa were running for their lives. Discovered during their disastrous attempt to sneak away from the house, they had been chased back inside. Now a group of imps, backed up by a pair of the enormous bewkmen, was on their heels.

Down a wide passage they went, ignoring the tasteful painting of lilies done by Aupose's great pupil Semere, their feet thudding on the parquet floor. Behind them came the pack.

At the end of the passage, they skidded into the end wall. Lagdalen cranked open a door, and they slipped through and slammed it shut just as the first imp arrived. The door shuddered under repeated blows as Eilsa reached up and shot a bolt home at the top.

They danced back from the door while they examined the room. It was a lavishly decorated salon. Heavy couches and wonderful rugs of a vibrant red were set out at one end. Windows looked out on an interior courtyard, one of the many such courts that broke up the interior of the huge house.

The door shook as one of the huge brutes slammed into it. It shook, but held.

"The window!" Eilsa ran to it.

They looked out. The courtyard was dark. There was ivy growing on the walls, climbing down would not be that difficult.

The door shook and shivered some more as huge bodies thudded into it.

"It's not going to keep them out for long."

Eilsa climbed over and started down, and Lagdalen quickly followed.

The door exploded inward in a cloud of dust. Two huge bewkmen struggled to get through at the same time. Immense limbs strained, and thick grunts came from their throats before they sorted themselves out and charged the open window.

Lagdalen was ten feet down and going strong by then. Eilsa was almost at the bottom.

There came a hoarse cry of rage. Lagdalen looked up. The pig-faced brutes were glaring over the edge at her. They screamed with hate and vanished. She redoubled her efforts.

Eilsa was down. Lagdalen jumped the last few feet and landed heavily. Sprawling on hands and knees, she sobbed for breath. From here they had to find a way out of the house. They had to get away from this mad place.

And then the doors to the courtyard burst open, and a dozen men with torches ran in. They gave a shout and sprang toward them.

Eilsa turned to fight. Lagdalen got to her feet, and readied the mallet in her right hand and the knife in her left.

The men rushed them, but one fellow reeled back from a mallet blow to the forehead. Another took a, slash across chest and arm. A third squealed in pain as Eilsa cut him with the sword. Bemused, they stood back a moment.

Faltus Wexenne pushed through to face Lagdalen.

"Young ladies, I beg you to cease this unmannerly display. You must surrender. You have no choice in the matter. You have been selected, and therefore you must go. Otherwise he will burn the Aupose."

"Made you his lackey, has he?" hissed Lagdalen. "Sent you out to fetch him his victims?"

Wexenne threw up his hands.

"I don't have the time to be polite." He signaled to the men.

The men made play with ax handles and brooms. Lagdalen evaded for a minute or so, but then an ax handle took her legs out from under her, and those brooms came down and kept thudding into her as she rolled into a ball. Eilsa kept them off with the sword for a while but eventually was felled from behind by a baton across the back of the head. The one with the baton wanted to beat them further, but Wexenne forbade it.

"Enough!" snapped Wexenne. "Bring them, quickly!"

Wexenne gestured down a corridor. A door opened and closed behind them, just before the imps and bewkmen thundered past on their way to the courtyard.

Another door opened, and they entered the servants' stairwell. Quickly they descended to the butler's apartment, which was at the back of the house on the first floor. More doors were shut and bolted.

Lagdalen and Eilsa were shoved behind a table in the big kitchen. Wexenne sat on a wooden chair and sighed to himself. This was not the way things were supposed to be. As much as he felt the urge to gloat, the situation remained quite terrifying. Once he gave Lapsor these young women, what power could he continue to hold over the demon he'd let loose? With Lapsor he had no more power than a mouse with a cat.

"Believe me, I regret this most dreadfully, but I must save the painting."

"Which painting?"

"The
Gates of Cunfshon
itself. The monster will destroy it if I don't give you to him."

"And what will he do with us?"

"Ah, what indeed?" Wexenne scratched behind his ear. "This is something that it is best not to think about. I would advise that you try to live moment by moment."

Lagdalen saw that Wexenne understood his fate already. The proud cock-rebel of Aubinas was laid low. His honor and reputation were destroyed. Soon he would be nothing but a slave for the monster he had helped unleash.

"You know that you are doomed, Wexenne. You cannot save your painting collection; you cannot save your own life. What you have let loose will devour you from within until you are but a husk."

He flinched and threw up a hand.

"He will use you," she hissed, "and when he is done with you, he will cut your throat and toss you away."

With a sob in his throat, Wexenne nodded. He knew his fate was sealed. He'd known it since the moment he'd seen Salva Gann brought back. But somewhere in the process, he had found a new purpose for his own existence.

"I must save the paintings. I know the truth of what you say, but my course is set. In the end they will kill me. I have seen it in my dreams. But I must save the works of Aupose. They must not be lost to the world."

She marveled a moment at the odd contradictions in Wexenne of Champery. Here he wished to serve nobly in the cause of great art, but to do it, he would trade two lives to save the jewel of his collection. It made her laugh bitterly to herself. Were they worth so much, she and Eilsa? Were they worthy of this honorable fate?

Was any painting worth a life? Or should it be read the other way around?

The door opened behind her. Lagdalen felt a familiar presence.

No! How? It was impossible.

A cool breeze seemed to blow through the room for a moment. It was almost as if a cloud had suddenly obscured the sun. A change had occurred. Wexenne had gone slack-faced. His eyes stared vacantly at nothing. His men were in a similar state of vacuity.

Then, with startling suddenness, Lessis and a pair of fierce men seemed to pop out of nowhere; Wexenne and his servants moved nary a muscle.

Lagdalen shook her head with disbelief.

"Come, children, we must leave quickly. My spell of invisibility is broken now."

Lagdalen took Eilsa's hand. The Highland girl was stunned into silence, but she responded quickly enough to Lagdalen's pull. They skipped quickly behind Lessis. The tall man with the pale hair ran ahead, and the other took up the rear.

They paused by the outer door. A handful of sentries were on duty, but that was all.

Lagdalen had to speak.

"Lady, we saw this enemy you speak of."

Lessis swung around.

"Saw him, child? How?"

The witch's calm grey eyes seemed to peer into her. Lagdalen suddenly felt the power of the Queen of Birds.

"There are extensive cellars below the house. They put him in a thing like a stone coffin, only very large."

"A sarcophagus?"

"It took four of those huge beasts to lift the lid off it."

"Yes? Go on."

"And they put him inside it and put the lid back on."

"When was this?"

"Not long ago. We had to hide for a while. Then we tried to get out of the house. That's when they spotted us."

"Could you find your way back there?"

"I think so. We took the servants' stairs to get out of the cellars."

"Describe this place and how it is guarded."

A desperate plan had blossomed suddenly in Lessis's thoughts.

The rhododendron grove grew in a fat crescent around the end of the long lawn. From one horn of the rhododendron crescent, there extended a series of shrubberies that ended with the tiered shrub-garden beside the house.

Bazil and Relkin crept through these shrubberies with all the stealth they could muster. Bazil hugged the ground, Relkin covered him with his bow, and they slithered close to the house.

They came up short at the end of the shrubberies. A flower bed and then a gravel walk about fifty feet wide lay between them and the western entrance. A pair of guards stood by the door talking to each other in animated tones and looked up toward the roof from which could be heard shouts and imprecations as the search parties continued their labors.

It seemed unlikely they could surprise these men. And once they were inside the house, the dragon would be vulnerable due to the confined space. Relkin didn't like it at all.

Shouts from farther up the gravel walk announced the arrival of a group of ten men, bearing torches and spears.

"Back," whispered Relkin.

The dragon was already in motion, slipping back beneath some ornamental pines. Relkin heard the approaching men shout to the guards at the door, "They've caught the women!"

The guards whistled and shouted. The men came up, and the group conversed in loud voices. Everyone was very much excited by the events of the night.

Relkin knew these women could be no one but Eilsa and Lagdalen.

"We have to do something fast," he said to the dragon. Bazil nodded.

"True. Question is, what?"

Relkin hushed him. There was a sound off to their left, not far at all. They waited, ears straining. There it came again, a muted clink.

Cautiously Relkin stole forward. Past an ancient poplar, the ground fell away into a defile that led to a gaping entrance dug into the ground. Heavy wooden gates were propped open in front. This tunnel was on a much larger scale than the doors to the house. It also led directly toward the house.

"More our sort of size, anyway. What do you think?"

"Dragon could wield sword in that."

"Well, in that case." They stood up and moved down into the pit that led to the tunnel mouth.

Two bewkmen were there to guard the entrance. At the sight of their grotesque features, Relkin was moved to feelings of disgust and something almost like pity. These creatures of the enemy, made so abundantly and so horribly, were given no choice in the matter. Once brought into existence, they were set to the work of evil.

The huge men turned at the sound of Bazil approaching downslope. With grunts of surprise, they took up enormous spears and readied themselves to meet the dragon. Relkin, running on swift feet from farther up the slope of the defile, was in position before they noticed him. His arrow was sticking straight through the cheeks of one of the brutes a moment later. It shrieked and pulled the arrow through with a rough jerk. Relkin readied another as Bazil drew Ecator.

An imp, which had been napping behind one of the propped-open gates, jumped up with a squeak of alarm and ran into the tunnel and out of sight.

The bewkmen lunged at Bazil with their long spears. He tried to knock the points aside with Ecator, but the bewkmen were quick enough to evade. Bazil retired a step, defending with Ecator, but forced into awkward maneuvers by the speed of the bewkmen's thrusts.

Relkin threw himself to the ground as the great sword whistled low. The bewkmen dodged back and then thrust forward again. Bazil attacked, and they withdrew a step, but lunged forward at him as he came to the end of his stroke. A spear grazed his chest.

Relkin's heart was in his mouth. His aim steadied, and he planted his arrow in the eye of the bewkman he had already wounded. It staggered back, still not dead, still trying to fight. Relkin was stunned at such brute persistence of life. Bazil took the opportunity, though, and Ecator cut the wounded one down a few moments later.

The remaining bewkman tried to throw his long spear, but before he could get his arm all the way back, Relkin spoiled his aim with an arrow that sank into his hoglike nose. Bazil knocked the spear up and ran its wielder through in the next moment.

The witch blade gave a soft gleam against the black of the tunnel.

Relkin had run ahead, hoping to nail that imp. He reached the tunnel mouth, knelt, and took aim. The imp was going hard. He released, but the shaft bounced off toe imp's shoulder plate. He tried again, but missed completely. It was just too far.

"Imp is getting away!" said Bazil.

"Looks like it. Come on! We'll just have to arrive on its heels."

"What is this place?" groused Bazil, shifting into mode for running, bent over with the tail outstretched, sword held back on the shoulder.

"Don't know, but it goes toward the house. Must connect with the cellars."

They headed down the tunnel, moving at a lope. Ecator was still glowing slightly. Bazil felt the excitement in the blade. Their enemy was here, that much was certain.