Dragonsword #3 4 страница

" Nay, wife, " said Cvinthil. " It is not unseemly. You are my queen. Speak. "

' 'I would also feel safer myself, were my friend with me. "

Relys felt Helwych's eyes on her. Black. Blue-black. Eyes of void. Helwych wanted her out of the country, she was sure, and therefore was she all the more determined to stay. She kept her gaze on the queen and tried to ignore the hate that she sensed was pent within the frail, wounded body of the sorcerer.

Cvinthil pondered. Finally: " Are you sure of your request, my ladies? "

The women exchanged glances. Relys lifted an eyebrow: she would not ask any woman of her wartroop to place herself in such peril save of her own free will. But Timbrin squared her small shoulders and nodded.

" We are, " said Relys.

" Granted then. " Cvinthil said the words reluctantly. " Make whatever arrangements you must. "

Relys and Timbrin bowed and left the hall; but as they passed through the door, Relys noticed that Dryyim was on guard that day. The young man examined the two women critically—since being disciplined for harassing Relys, his resentment had doubled and redoubled—and Relys wondered suddenly whether she had sufficient courage to face the task she had set for herself.

Four wartroops of young men who had little respect for women. The king out of the country. A strange sorcerer advising the queen.

And two women standing alone.

Relys spoke softly as they stepped out into the street. " I hope a woman's heart is a strong thing, Timbrin. "

Alouzon got to her feet in the wash of blue-white incandescence that rained from the lamps bordering a small lake. Ornamental date palms rose up spectrally from the parched grass of a Los Angeles heat wave, and, off on an island across the water, ducks and sea gulls stirred uneasily at the pre-dawn intrusion.

Staggering, almost blind with thirst and the stifling heat, she groped her way to the shore. But though she had drunk many times from the clear streams of Gryylth and Vaylle, the water here was fetid and polluted, and she could not even bring herself to splash her face.

She was Alouzon, but she recognized this place: MacArthur Park. It was miles away from Helen's house and UCLA, but Silbakor had doubtless been making whatever interdimensional approach characterized its entries into the mundane world of Los Angeles, and the White Worm had attacked before the Dragon could bring her safely down. And so she had fallen.

Fallen. Fallen forever. And yet, impossibly, she had struck ground in Los Angeles with no more damage than a bump on her head.

" It must be the Grail, " she murmured, her throat parched and aching. " It made me see that booby trap in the mountains. It got me down here. I suppose it's a good thing Silbakor didn't drop me in the middle of a freeway. "

But she looked up. Where was Silbakor? The Specter? The White Worm? Aside from the lights of jetliners and the far-off strobe of a police helicopter, the sky was empty.

And then she recalled Kyria. The sorceress—or was it Helen, or something else? —had been lying at the base of a wall, crumpled in a heap of broken bones and shredded robes. And Santhe, and Wykla and Manda, and Dindrane, and Marrget and Karthin: they

were still there in the temple. The Gray faces had been killed, and the jets had been banished, but Alouzon's friends, as far as she knew, were in Broceliande, at the mercy of whatever horrors that land could create.

And she was in Los Angeles.

She lifted her arms as a scream forced its way up out of the mire of fear and frustration within her. Silbakor was doubtless holding the White Worm and the Specter away from her. It would protect her with all the potencies that a reification of physical law could command. But it would defend no one else. Gryylth could be a wasteland as far as the Dragon was concerned: all that mattered was its existence.

Hopelessness bore down on her like a weight. Some God.

She turned away from the lake. Where did displaced Gods go when in Los Angeles? For that matter, where did fifth-century warriors go? The Salvation Army? The shelters down on San Pedro Street?

Up on Wilshire Boulevard, a car drove by, its headlights splitting the darkness. Somebody heading for an early morning job or coming home from a night shift. About Alouzon, the city was slowly struggling out of slumber, preparing to shake off the night and resume the commonplace business of the day.

Where, indeed, did warriors and Gods go? This was Suzanne Helling's world. It had no place for warriors and deities. Its own God had, in fact, been declared dead.

Alouzon felt dizzy, but the safety of her world and her people depended on her, and therefore as Suzanne Helling—newly arrived in a strange world and a strange body—had once shoved aside all thoughts and goals save those of survival, so now Alouzon Dragonmaster did the same.

Slowly, she stripped off her armor and bundled it around the Dragons word, leaving herself clad only in a relatively unobtrusive knee-length tunic and boots. Recalling the existence of such things as public rest

rooms, she found one, and though derelicts and junkies stared at the tall, well-muscled woman who strode up to the dirty sink, they said nothing to her, for Alouzon cleaned the cut on her throat and rinsed off the slime and blood that coated her arms and face with the manner of someone who would tolerate no questions or interference.

The water cleared her head. Her scrapes burned, and her throat stung, but that helped too, for it kept her focused on the task at hand. Slinging her armor and sword over her shoulder, she climbed the slope to Wilshire Boulevard, crossed to the westbound side, and stuck out her thumb to flag down a ride.

She was going to save her world and her people. But first she had to survive.

Early June. The sun had not yet appeared above the Camrann Mountains, but the invasion fleet bobbed in the quiet inlet, waiting for the word to sail.

Darham met Cvinthil on the dock. The morning air was fresh, with only a hint of the night's chill remaining, and a coracle waited at the base of the steps down to the water. " Well met, " said Cvinthil, extending his hand. " I am sorry that our visits must stem from war and not from neighborliness. "

" Ah, well. We must take our calves as they are born. " Darham clasped hands and reminded himself to smile. But he glanced at the men who were with Cvinthil: one or two veteran members of the King's Guard, a scribe, a scattering of officials from Quay. ' 'Is Helwych not here? ''

Cvinthil shook his head as though puzzled by the question. " He has stayed behind in Kingsbury. He is still weak from his wounds. "

" Ah. . . yes. . . " Darham glanced to the side. Calrach's lips were pursed, and the commander shook his head slightly. " I had hoped to talk with him. "

An older man, one of the representatives from Quay, spoke up. " It is indeed strange, lord, that he would

not come to meet his king. " His voice was weak, and he leaned on the arm of a woman.

Cvinthil pressed his lips together, bent his head. " Are you still suspicious, Hahle? "

The man nodded slowly. " I am, lord. I will not lie. "

Darham met Hahle's eyes and there read that not all of Gryylth had been wholly convinced by Helwych's tale. Some who had seen and talked with the young sorcerer obviously felt that something was not right.

The coracle bobbed like a cork. Sea gulls wheeled in the blue sky, crying mournfully. The sun suddenly flared in an arc of gold above the mountains.

Darham took Cvinthil's arm. " A word with you in private, brother king, " he said softly. He pulled Cvinthil out of earshot of the others.

" Well? " said Cvinthil. " If I guess rightly, you seem not to trust your own sorcerer. "

" He was a good lad, Cvinthil. If there was anything wrong with him, it was but the product of frustrated ambition and too many hours spent over books. A nature like that of a colt kept too long penned. But this Helwych that comes back bearing tales of slaughter... " Darham shook his head, his beard glistening in the new sunlight. " Something is wrong. "

Cvinthil's eyes had hardened with kingship. " Can you tell me, friend Darham, what that might be? "

Darham shook his head. " He does not seem the same, somehow. "

" And this you can say without meeting him face-to-face. "

Darham heard the flatness in Cvinthil's tone. Hasty. Too hasty. Tarwach was like this, but he listened to me. . . until that last meeting. But aloud he said: " I could not help but mark the words of the man you called Hahle. "

" He could give me no more reason than you, " said Cvinthil, impatience plain in his voice. " By your ad-

vice I sent a scouting party to Vaylle. Among them were two of your people. Well, they are now dead. "

Darham did not respond. Out across the water, the boats were waiting.

" Do you not care? " Cvinthil pressed. " Are you willing to leave a member of your own guard unavenged? And what about Karthin? He was your friend. "

The accusation stung, and Darham glared Cvinthil in the eye. " My friend, and my guard, and one other, " he said. " Wykla was too modest to tell you that I called her daughter while she was in Corrin. So I have lost a child, and Corrin has lost a princess. And if there is vengeance to be had, then by the Gods I will have it. "

Turning abruptly, he strode back across the dock, the planking echoing hollowly beneath his boots. With a gesture for Calrach to follow, he descended the steps to the waiting coracle.

Alouzon did not have to wait long for a ride. The sky had barely begun to lighten when an old Mercury pulled up, radio blaring, Alouzon winced at the music. A little over a week ago, in Quay, she would have given anything to hear rock and roll. Now the music was merely a reminder of the foreignness of this place.

" Where ya goin'? " said the man behind the wheel. He was in his twenties, his thin face pocked with old acne scars, and he reeked of cigarette smoke.

Alouzon shrugged inwardly. She had survived Ban-don and Broceliande. She could deal with a little nicotine. " Out towards UCLA, " she said. " Bel Air would be even better. ''

" Gotcha. Hop in. "

He gestured, and she pulled the passenger door open, tossed her armor and sword in the back seat, and settled in on the worn upholstery.

Despite the Mercury's faded exterior, its engine was

in excellent shape. Acceleration shoved Alouzon back in her seat as the car roared out into the left lane.

" Jia would be jealous, " she murmured to herself.

The driver blinked at her with dark eyes. " Jia? "

Lights were passing: street lights, traffic signals, the neon glow of bars and storefronts. Alouzon regarded them with a clenched throat. " Uh... a friend of mine. "

" Don't I know you? "

She nearly laughed, but she stifled it: she was afraid she would start crying. " No. You don't. "

The big Mercury cruised out towards Western. " Sure I do. Lessee. Uh. . . waitaminute. I remember: you're a waitress. I seen you up at the. . . uh. . . Tropicana. Yeah, that's it. I go there all the time. You do that mud wrestling. You girls got some muscles, I'll tell you. And you're built like goddesses. " He grinned at her. " I got me a celebrity. "

Despite her efforts in the park rest room, Alouzon decided that she probably made the mud wrestling girls look clean by comparison. " Sorry. You're out of luck. "

The driver was unfazed. " You comin' back from a party? ''

She snorted softly. ' 'I wish. ''

The city went by. Western Avenue and the green porcelain of the Wiltern Theater, then Wilton Place. Early morning, pre-dawn: traffic was light, and the Mercury purred and grumbled along Wilshire as though it were a jungle cat marking its kingdom.

" What'cha do for a living? "

Trainee God came to mind. Alouzon shrugged. " I get by. "

" You interested in earning a little extra cash? "

She read his meaning. It would have been easy to become angry, but she had other things on her mind. " Sorry. Not interested

" Come on, I'm not a cop. Fifty? "

" No. Give it up. " Just get me to Bel Air, dick-head. I've got things to do.

He frowned petulantly. Face set, he glowered over the wheel, took the turning onto Highland, and cruised up the street at ten miles an hour over the speed limit.

" This isn't going to get us to Bel Air any time soon, " said Alouzon.

" I know what I'm doing. "

" Suit yourself. " She settled back, tried to decide what she should do after she had picked up her car. Go home? What was home? " By the way: what day is it? "

He grinned. " You don't know? It's Saturday. Musta' been some party. "

" Yeah, " she said. " Quite a party. " 3. 5-inch rockets, and Skyhawks, and hounds whose blood melted flesh like hot lye. And then the Specter.

The Mercury passed beneath the Hollywood Freeway, but, caught up in her thoughts, Alouzon did not notice for a minute. When she did, she chewed it over hi her mind for a moment, then: " All right, dude. Where are you taking me? "

He did not look at her. " I got some friends that want to meet you, girl. "

" Not interested. "

He pulled up at a stop sign. " Sorry, dude, " said Alouzon. She reached for the door handle. It had been removed. The Mercury pulled out again, tires screeching. " Say, guy, what the fuck is going—"

She broke off. He had drawn a knife and was holding it a few inches from her linen tunic. " Just sit still, babe, and you won't get hurt, " he said. " You got a cute body and you had your chance to make a few bucks with it. But you turned it down. Now it's all gonna be for free. "

The Mercury picked up speed. Alouzon examined the knife. Sharp, but thin and cheap, it was, she decided, suitable only for abducting properly socialized

females. " Cute, " she said, biting back her anger. " Does it come in an adult size? "

He drove on. The car was traveling too fast for her to make a move. As Gryylth, Corrin, and Vaylle hung balanced in precarious existence, she bided her time.

The man turned into the maze of streets that wound through the hills east of Hollywood Lake. Houses here were dark and set back behind overgrown gardens and unkempt lawns. Trees that had not seen a pruning in twenty years straggled and drooped over roofs and power lines.

The Mercury slowed because of the twists in the road. The shoulders of the road were unpaved, and a vacant lot appeared ahead, overgrown with grass and weeds.

The lot was on the right now, passing swiftly. Alouzon moved. Grabbing the hand that held the knife, she bent it back until she heard the wrist snap. The sound was as gratifying as the harsh, sucking intake of breath that came from the man's lips.

The Mercury wavered. Backhanding the driver with a fist, Alouzon grabbed the wheel and ran the car over the unpaved shoulder and into the tall grass of the vacant lot. With a free hand, she grabbed the ignition key and pulled it out, but when the car continued running she cursed aloud and pushed down on the brake pedal with her hand until the engine lugged and stalled.

Wary of another knife, she shoved herself away from the man, but he was looking at a right hand bent back at a crazy angle. Pieces of bone stuck out of his wrist, and blood was oozing from the rents they had left.

Pain finally cut through his shock, and he started to scream. " You. . . you... "

Cities had been razed. Dindrane's people had been decimated. And Cvinthil and an army bent on revenge were making for Vaylle. There was too much death in the past and future for Alouzon to be bothered by the whining of one bully.

She reached to her boot and extracted her own dagger. It was small, but its leaf-shaped blade was broad, sharp, and built for fighting. It made the man's stiletto seem a child's toy. " You're playing with the big girls now, shit-for-brains, " she whispered, laying the point against his throat.

His screams cut off. He started to whine frantically, and he made a lunge for the door handle, but she caught him by the shirt.

" You're not going anywhere, " she said. " And shut the fuck up. I've seen men with wounds a lot worse than yours holding their own against three. " Alouzon gave him a shake. " You goddam wimp. "

She kicked out the passenger side window, opened the door from the outside, and sprinted around the car. Jerking open the driver's door before he had time to move, she shoved him to the far side of the car and slid in behind the wheel. " Don't even think about trying anything, " she said.

Terrified, holding the ruin of his wrist, he stared at her as she restarted the car, backed out of the lot, and drove down to Highland. Taking the turning onto Sunset, she made her way westward, faintly astonished that she could operate anything more technologically complex than a horse. But the Mercury purred along under her guidance as her would-be abductor cowered in the corner.

She glanced at him. His eyes were glazed with pain, his wrist was bloody, swollen, and discoloring with massive bruises. But her pity evaporated when she thought of what he had intended to do to her—what he would have done to another woman with less experience in fighting.

The man groaned and shut his eyes, obviously expecting no more mercy than he himself had been prepared to give. But Alouzon shook her head and turned onto Helen's street, still wondering at the anomaly of her strong brown hands on a welded chain-link steering wheel. Just around a bend from the house, she

made a U-turn, stopped, and pulled on the parking brake. " OK, buddy. It's your turn again. "

He stared, unbelieving, but after dumping her armor and sword onto the asphalt, Alouzon got out, grabbed him by the shirt, and dragged him over behind the wheel. Her knife was in her hand again.

" Now, " she said, holding the blade to his throat, " you drive. And you drive real good. The UCLA Medical Center is at Le Conte and Tiverton, right by the campus. They've got an emergency room there: they can fix your wrist. " She started to close the door, but a thought struck her and she stopped and leaned towards him. " And don't ever think you're gonna use a knife to grab a little piece of ass again, 'cause I'll fix you good if you do. "

She slammed the door and picked up her armor. The man dithered at the wheel, groped for the parking brake and the shift with his good hand.

She kicked the side of the car. " Move. "

Shakily, weaving back and forth, he drove off down the street. The sound of the Mercury's engine faded into the distance.

But its rumble was replaced by another, and when Alouzon turned towards the bend in the road, she saw the trees and shrubs lit by the reflection of flashing lights: red, blue, yellow, white. A helicopter was circling above, its searchlight stabbing down into the darkness, the roar of its engine blending with the distinctive sound of idling fire and rescue trucks.

She suddenly remembered the attack on Helen's house. Weeks had passed in Gryylth. Los Angeles had known only a few hours.

Lugging her armor and sword, she turned the corner and found that the house was a ruin of glass, brick, steel, and wood. As though a great weight had fallen upon it, it had been demolished so thoroughly that the two-story structure now rose no higher than the head of a tall man. Police cars were parked in the street and

on the lawn, and officers and firefighters were examining the wreckage cautiously.

Radios crackled with unintelligible orders. The odor of smoke and diesel exhaust hung in the damp air beneath the trees. Alouzon hesitated, then forced herself forward, trying to walk casually. She was just here to pick up her car. Clenching her teeth at the alien sights and sounds, she took the spare key from beneath the VW's bumper, unlocked the door, and put her armor and sword inside.

But for a moment before she got in and drove away, she turned around to the lights and the wreckage. Helen's house was as ruined as Bandon. All that was missing was the stench of napalm and the charred bodies of the dead.

And then she saw that the paramedics were wheeling two gurneys out to the waiting ambulance. A still form occupied each cart, and white cotton blankets were pulled up over the faces.

* CHAPTER 5 *

At times now, Helwych wondered if he could see everything, for the world at times had come to resemble a great, open map, like one of those in Tireas's old texts that depicted other worlds and distant countries spread out before his curious eyes.

He was indoors, and the shutters were closed. Physically, he could see no further than the walls, floor, and ceiling; but, in his mind's eye, Gryylth was a particolored daubing of life and activity, its people minute, antic dancers. He saw Cvinthil aboard ship with Dar-ham. He saw the months-old ruins of Bandon sprouting with grass and weeds. He saw Seena caring for her children with the same obsessive single-mindedness that had driven her husband from her side. He saw Relys pacing nervously in her house. He saw Timbrin standing on the other side of his shuttered window.

Toys, all of them. Little toys that would soon be his.

Deep within his mind, blue-black eyes suddenly blinked curiously, and he hastened to re-direct his thoughts. Ours, he thought. They will soon be ours.

But in the few corners of his mind that remained his own, he had formulated other plans. There, the possessive remained mine.

The Specter had given him much: wizardry that made the potencies of Tireas and Mernyl seem mere dabblings, a will that could wrap itself about the

thoughts and feelings of others and manipulate them as a child might play with a doll, a sense of subtlety.

But for the Specter, all those gifts were as spears that wounded the hand, for in sending him to Gryylth and turning its attention to whatever end it had planned for Alouzon and her company, it had given Helwych a certain freedom, a certain breadth of thought; and, empowered as he was with borrowed magics and skills, he had surreptitiously turned along his own road, one that would lead first to Gryylth, and then to Corrin itself.

Daydreaming, savoring the success of his plans, he had allowed his eyes to close, but now he opened them. He was sitting in his working chair to the east of the circle he had inscribed on the floor of the house Cvinthil had given him. Triangles, squares, and multi-pointed stars—mnemonic emblems of the powers he commanded—filled the floor within the circle, and at the very center, floating a hand's breadth from the ground like a lifted scepter, was his staff. To others it had seemed a crutch, but that was as much the stuff of illusion as the injuries he had been feigning for the last three and a half months.

That the staff was floating was a good sign: it meant that the potencies he had summoned the evening before were building towards their climax. Even as he watched, the outlines of the circle were taking on a nimbus of red and violet, and when he reached a hand towards the edge of the working space, he felt his flesh tingle.

Good. Very good indeed. The Specter had wanted only a curtain wall that would bar the return of the flotilla, but it was about to receive much more than that.

He paused and looked beyond the walls of his house. Timbrin was still at the window, keeping watch. The flotilla had sailed halfway across the White Sea. The potencies he had summoned were at their peak. It was time.

He rose from his chair, not with a tottering lurch, but with the spring of a young man, and he removed his shabby outer robe to reveal an inner garment of white samite. A wave of his hand opened a door in the circle through which he entered. Another wave closed it behind him. Here, in the heart of the raised potencies, magic crackled across his skin in hot waves that lifted his lank hair away from his scalp and sent coruscations of crimson fire through the expanding field of his inner vision.

Now he could see Timbrin as though he stood behind her. Silly, meddling woman. She would learn her place. As would Relys.

Helwych took up his staff with a quiet smile. He had a wall to create, but there would be a sizable backlash of energy. It would be a simple matter to direct a handful of it at Timbrin. She might die; she might not. In any case, Helwych was not worried. Gryylth and its queen would be his, and his four wartroops would be without opposition in the land.

He was not shielding his intentions. He had no need to. In minutes, not only would Cvinthil, Darham, and all their warriors be barred from Gryylth, but also the Specter itself.

But as he began the working, a thought came to him unbidden: Corrin was his homeland. Darham had always treated him decently, and had, as though to make up for Tireas's neglect, even encouraged his studies. And Alouzon and her friends might have smirked at him, but on the road to Bandon they had fought against the hounds in order to save his life.

Why did he want to bring destruction and pain to such as these?

He steeled himself, recentered his thoughts, and went on. The energy mounted. Physical reality seemed to part before him, revealing the intricate workings of the universe—wheels within wheels, living light, planes of reified causality—and he stretched out his staff and stirred the matrix of existence as though it

were one of the countless bowls of gruel he had eaten and despised since he had arrived in Gryylth.

With a roar as of an angry ocean, worlds shifted, blurred, flowed. In another minute, he would lift his arms and send the result of his workings into the physical and non-physical world. It would become not magic, not desire, but reality.

The blue-black eyes within him suddenly opened wide. Too busy to gloat, Helwych only marked their astonishment. But he noticed that the eyes were, for a moment, not fixed on him at all. They were turned elsewhere, towards something that—incredibly—terrified them.

He had little time to wonder. The energies were building fast. Seconds now. Heartbeats. Then all would be done.

A blinding scream slashed through his mind, loosening his hold on the spell, and only the energies that had solidified about him kept him from staggering to the side. Reeling nonetheless in the suddenly chaotic flow of power, he saw that the eyes were gone, banished by...

Banished by what? Nothing could drive those eyes away. And yet...

But now even the scream was eclipsed by the thunder of energies in Helwych's ears. Released from his careful manipulation, the spell was now out of control, the energies whipping into raging turbulence as Helwych struggled desperately for balance. Gripping his staff with sweat-slick hands, he grabbed for the strands of the working and stuffed them back into their carefully-wrought channels.

Shakily, the barrier formed, and a blackness rose up in the White Sea, gusting mightily and wrapping itself around the coastline of Gryylth and Corrin like a sable curtain. But the world was quivering. All the Worlds, in fact, were quivering. Rents were forming. Fissures. Unintended gaps...

A flash of daylight. Timbrin, aroused by the tumult

within the house, had battered through the shuttered windows. She stared at Helwych for a moment.

Now the backlash was coming, falling like mountains. The entire spell was lashing out at Helwych; and with a last, panicked effort, he swung his staff over his head and managed to deflect the brunt of the catastrophe onto Timbrin. Caught full in the face by the energies, the small warrior was smashed away from the window.

But the tail end of the magics, sharp as a scorpion's sting, drove into Helwych: he fell heavily onto the flagstone floor, dimly aware not only of the wall he had formed, but also of eyes. Blue-black eyes. Eyes of void and darkness. Stupid little Dremord fool, they said. But it really didn't make any difference now, did it?

Alouzon drove home to the apartment of a stranger.

Her armor and sword rattled incongruously on the passenger seat of the VW, and her hands looked distant and tentative on the black plastic steering wheel. As the morning grew over Los Angeles, the sun glinting alike on high rise windows and her steel wrist cuffs, she peered out through the front window of the automobile like a child grappling with a fearful dream: wondering and yet afraid, defiant and yet impotent.