The Realms of the Elves a-11 Page 3

  "My friends!" the dragon said.

  Winterflower curtsied, and Rhespen bowed. "Good evening, Majesty," the wizard said.

  "It is now that this lady has seen fit to grace us with her presence," Orchtrien said. "What will you sing for us, my dear?"

  "A new ballad," said Winterflower, stammering almost imperceptibly, "to commemorate your victory over the green wyrms. I composed the tune myself-well, tweaked an old one, really-and one of the court poets helped me with the lyrics."

  "It sounds splendid." He studied her features. "Yet you don't seem particularly eager to perform it, or to be here at all."

  "I… I'm told that many singers feel faint before they take the stage. Your Majesty's court is an illustrious and demanding audience, and I'm not even a bard, just a girl with a habit of warbling for her own amusement."

  "You're too modest," Orchtrien said. "I also worry you're less than completely forthcoming. I hope you're not afraid of me, Milady."

  Winterflower hesitated. "Only to the extent that any subject fears the displeasure of the king."

  "Well, stop it," said the drake. "I summoned you to Dawnfire to forge a bond of friendship between us, and so you could teach me to be a better sovereign to your people."

  "Surely Lord Rhespen is well qualified to explain our needs."

  "Oh, he does his best, but you possess qualities he lacks." To Rhespen's surprise, Orchtrien shot him a wink. "I'd love to hear your song now, assuming you feel up to it."

  "Of course, Majesty." Though she masked it well, Rhespen could tell she was eager to embrace any excuse to distance herself from the gold.

  Winterflower climbed onto the orchestra's platform to sing, and they, master musicians all, began to accompany her with the second verse. As before, the performance was fine enough to engage every listener, but this time, the sentiments expressed were so unobjectionable that not even Maldur could take them amiss.

  "Delightful," murmured Orchtrien, amber eyes subtly aglow to reveal the drake within, "and the scent of treason clinging to her makes her all the more so."

  Rhespen felt a twinge of uneasiness. "Majesty, I swear to you, Lady Winterflower's no traitor."

  "Nonsense. All the hostages are rebels at heart, or at least they started out that way. That's why we caged them here, to subdue them. By gentler means than we usually employ, but still. You've managed the first stage admirably, and now that the wars are done until spring, I'll undertake the next."

  When the song concluded, Orchtrien applauded loudest of anyone, and gave Winterflower a gold bracelet cast in the form of a coiled wyrm. He then led her to the center of the floor for several dances in succession, while various other ladies struggled to swallow their jealousy.

  The dragon drew his captive close and whispered in her ear. Winterflower looked to Rhespen with trapped, frantic eyes. From across the hall, Maldur gave him a smirk.

  Rhespen climbed the stairs to the archway, balked, then forced himself onward. A hundred years, he thought, I've served him faithfully for a hundred years. That surely counts for something.

  Beyond the doorway was a round stone platform surrounded by a parapet, with a chill autumn wind whistling across. By nature a creature of mountain peaks and the boundless sky, Orchtrien had incorporated several such high, open perches into the city, and repaired to them whenever walls and ceilings came to seem oppressive.

  Rhespen crossed the platform, kneeled, and set his staff at the gigantic reptile's feet. Despite the gray clouds sealing away the sun, Orchtrien's scales still shimmered.

  The dragon snorted a wisp of smoke. "Such stiff formality when it's just the two of us! You must intend to ask for a very great boon indeed."

  Rhespen rose. "Yes, Majesty."

  "Petition away, then."

  He wanted to, but it was difficult. Though he fancied that he didn't lack for courage, over the course of a century, he'd cultivated the habit of pleasing his master, not annoying him.

  Perhaps he could ease into the matter at hand. "You frequently invite Lady Winterflower to join you in one diversion or another. You've sent her a series of costly gifts. You don't pay nearly as much attention to the other hostages."

  Orchtrien chuckled. "The other hostages are nowhere near as charming. Nor is any of them the darling daughter of the Count of Duskmere, who, according to your inquiries, was the chief dragon-hater among the rebels. Imagine his vexation when he hears I've seduced Winterflower to be my mistress. Or if she bears him a halfcgold grandchild!"

  "I thought you hoped to win the affection of the rebels."

  "Of the young ones. I believe we must settle for compelling the obedience of their elders."

  "Perhaps so, Majesty, but… Let me say it straight out.

  I love Winterflower, and she reciprocates my feelings."

  The dragon cocked his head. "I had no idea."

  "I suspected not. You've been away, and we've done our best to keep our bond a private matter between us."

  "Under the circumstances, I suppose that's fortunate."

  "Majesty, do you understand what I'm trying to say? To you, Winterflower would be the diversion of a season, or a year, to put aside as soon as she starts to bore you. I aspire to spend the rest of my life with her."

  "So you wish me to indulge my appetites elsewhere."

  "Yes, Majesty. Indeed, I beg it. The realm is full of women who would give anything to be your mistress."

  "Or yours, Royal Councilor. Perhaps that's what ails us both, for where's the sport if the quarry races eagerly toward the hunter? Whereas Lady Winterflower presented you with a challenge, just as she now flinches at the sight of me."

  "Maybe that was what first stirred my interest, but at this point, my sentiments are far more profound. Thus, I implore-"

  Orchtrien snorted. "Enough, my friend. I hear your plea, and will conduct myself accordingly."

  By dint of magic, Rhespen could have floated from the ground up to the door of Winterflower's residence as effortlessly as smoke rising from a fire. Or shifted himself through the intervening space in the blink of an eye. Instead, he chose to trudge up the steps spiraling around the trunk of the shadowtop, because he dreaded the conversation to come.

  He still found himself in Winterflower's presence before he could think of a gentle way to present his news, and the welcome in her face twisted into dismay when she registered what was no doubt the dazed, stricken look on his own.

  "What's wrong?" she asked.

  "This morning," he said, "the king gave me a new commission. It seems he's decided it would be advantageous to make some effort to prosecute his wars through the winter months. I'm to lead a company across the eastern border to harry the dominions of the greens. To raid, burn houses and barns, and steal or destroy food."

  "Leaving me behind."

  "Yes. When I told Orchtrien that you and I had fallen in love, he seemed sympathetic, but apparently it isn't so."

  "In fact, he's punishing you for having the audacity to ask him to leave me alone."

  Rhespen shook his head. "I don't know. He may think he's buying me off. That's the common practice when the king or one of the princes wants to bed some wretch's wife. They give the cuckold a fine appointment that takes him away from court, so he needn't witness what's occurring. And the fact of the matter is, before I met you, Ibegged repeatedly for such an opportunity. With the kingdom perpetually at war, fighting is the surest way to win the highest honors and the most profitable offices."

  "You're saying you couldn't refuse."

  "No one may refuse a royal command."

  "I can't stay here alone as the target of that creature's lust. Let's run away. Tonight."

  "We could try, but he'd find us."

  "You don't know that!"

  "Yes, I do. Do you understand why the drakes are conquering the world? It isn't their physical prowess, mighty though they are. It's their magic. They possess arcane secrets unknown to elves or men."

  She took a deep breath. "Give me one of
your spellbooks, then."

  "You know I can't do that. If it was discovered in your possession-"

  "Don't you see, I can't let him force me! I never could have borne it, and now that you and I… He'll be vulnerable in the form of an elf, and if I catch him by surprise-"

  "No! No matter what shape he wore, you wouldn't be a match for him, and in any case, it won't come to that. I told you before, he wouldn't stoop to rape."

  "I fear that even now, you refuse to see him for what he is."

  He took her hands in his own. "Promise me you won't do anything foolish. Rather, use all your tact and womanly wiles to put Orchtrien off without offending him, and wait for my return."

  She studied his face. "Can you promise you will return?"

  He forced a confident smile. "Of course. By that time, the king, bored with laying futile siege to your chastity, will have turned his attentions elsewhere, and I'll ask your father for your hand."

  The eastern sky was lightening to gray, but it was still black in the west. Rhespen squinted, straining to spot a telltale flicker of motion against the stars.

  Serdel, the stocky, grizzled veteran who served as his second-in-command, peered alongside him.

  "See anything?" the warrior asked, evidently clinging to the hope that the keen eyes of an elf had noticed something imperceptible to human sight.

  "Not yet," Rhespen said.

  He supposed it was ironic. At the start of the summer, Prince Bexendral had rushed to his servants' aid without even being called. This time around, Rhespen had carried the proper spell to send a message to his distant masters ready for the casting, and had employed it as soon as calamity struck. Yet now, no one had responded.

  It made him wonder if Orchtrien truly had dispatched him on this errand in the hope that he would die. Though he hadn't admitted it to Winterflower-he'd needed to calm her, not agitate her further-he had some reason to suspect so. Winter warfare was notoriously hard and dangerous. That was why civilized people generally eschewed it. The king, moreover, had sent him forth with a relatively small raiding party, ostensibly because a larger one would find it too difficult to forage sufficient food and hide from the enemy.

  But despite freezing temperatures, howling blizzards, and the meager strength of his command, Rhespen had executed his commission with considerable success. Until one of the green drakes, possibly despairing of the ability of its minions ever to catch the marauders laying waste to the border marches, forsook the warmth and other amenities of its palace to address the problem itself.

  The wyrm had attacked by surprise, in the middle of the night. Rhespen estimated that it had slaughtered half his men. Others, terrified, had scattered and were lost to him. He'd somehow managed to keep the rest together and to retreat with them under the cover of a conjured darkness and other sleights intended to hinder pursuit.

  But he was certain that wasn't the end of it. The green would surely track them, and likely find them before the sun climbed into the sky.

  He raked his fingers through his hair, struggling to devise a plan, then said, "We have to assume that for some reason, His Majesty didn't hear my call, which means we need to look after ourselves. Divide the men into four groups. Have them he down and bury themselves in the snow there, there, there, and there." He pointed to indicate the proper spots.

  Serdel frowned. "Do you think that will fool a drake, Milord?"

  "Not by itself, but it's a start. Now move! The wyrm could appear at any moment."

  As soon as the men-at-arms covered themselves over, Rhespen summoned several whirlwinds to smooth away the telltale signs of their burrowing. When the spirits of the air completed their work, only the footprints the soldiers had left prior to their division into the four squads remained.

  He then conjured the illusion of fifty frightened warriors scurrying along, fast as the snowdrifts and their exhaustion would allow, at the terminus of the trail. Because the insubstantial phantoms couldn't make new tracks, the display had to remain more or less stationary, with the individual figures stepping in place, but he hoped that wouldn't be a problem. Dragons flew so fast that the green might well spot and overtake the illusion before it noticed the column wasn't making any forward progress.

  The object was to give the reptile safe targets on which to waste its magic and poisonous breath. Though adult, it wasn't as huge and ancient as, say, Orchtrien, which meant it didn't command as many spells, and that its lethal spew took longer to renew itself after repeated discharge. It had already been profligate in its use of those resources during the initial attack. If Rhespen could trick it into exhausting the rest He smiled bitterly. Why, in that case, it would still be a wyrm, the most fearsome creature in the world, a behemoth quick and nimble as a cat, with scales as protective as plate, and claws and fangs capable of obliterating any lesser being with a single slash. Dragons sometimes killed each other, but it was preposterous to imagine that elves and men could do it.

  Still, better to try than die a coward.

  He summoned a spirit of earth and bade it lie quiet inside a patch of soil near his illusion, took up a position behind a gnarled, leafless birch, and shrouded himself in invisibility. After that, there was nothing to do but wait. He wondered how Winterflower fared, and if she would ever learn how he'd met his end.

  Then the green came hurtling out of the north.

  Its eyes glowed yellow, it appeared more charcoal-colored than green in the wan dawn-light, and hornlets jutted like warts from its brow and chin. A drake's senses were so sharp that it was by no means certain that either the warriors' covering of snow or Rhespen's own masking spell would keep it from detecting them, and he held his breath until the creature's headlong trajectory made it clear that it was intent only on the illusion.

  He made the phantom warriors shriek and cringe, and when the reptile swept over them and spat its fumes, collapse as if the lungs had rotted in their chests. The green wheeled, snarled words of power, and tendrils of filthy-looking vapor oozed into existence among the figures on the ground. Rhespen commanded more of his puppets to stumble and drop.

  But not all of them. He "had to leave the green something to attack with tooth and talon, a reason to plunge to earth, and he needed the cursed reptile to do it soon, before it perceived the true nature of the targets he'd conjured to befuddle it.

  It dived. It slammed down with a ground-shaking impact that would have pulverized any genuine creatures of flesh and bone caught underneath. It clawed and bit at several more of Rhespen's phantasms, at which point it unquestionably discerned their lack of substance.

  He shifted the focus of his concentration to the waiting elemental, and the spirit exploded up out of the ground. A massive, almost shapeless thing compounded of rock and mud, it possessed an eyeless, featureless lump of a head, and long, flexible arms like enormous snakes with three-fingered hands at the ends. Its lower body was just a legless, undifferentiated mass linking it to the earth, but that didn't constrain its mobility. It could slide wherever it wished like a wave flowing on the surface of the sea.

  It rushed the surprised green, seized hold of one of its batlike wings, and tore and twisted it, just as Rhespen had instructed. He knew his agent, mighty though it was, was no match for the dragon. But if it could deprive the green of its ability to fly before it perished, that would eliminate another of the reptile's advantages.

  The green tried to wrench its wing up and out of the elementaPs hands, but the spirit of earth maintained its hold. The drake contorted itself to bring its foreclaws and fangs to bear. It ripped chunks of its attacker's substance away.

  Rhespen decided he needed to help his servant. He declaimed a spell and swept his staff in a mystic pass. A mass of snow rose from the ground, congealed into a long, glittering icicle, and flew at the green.

  The spear of ice pierced the base of its neck, and the shock of the injury made it stiffen and falter in its attack. The elemental, or what was left of it, heaved on the wyrm's now-tattered wing, and bone
snapped. A jagged stump of it jabbed outward through the reptile's hide.

  The green tore the elemental to inert clods and stones with a final rake of its talons. Then, hissing in fury, crippled pinion drooping and dragging, it rounded on Rhespen, who'd relinquished his invisibility by flinging the frozen lance.

  He should have been terrified, but he realized with a pang of surprise that he wasn't. Rather, relished the success of his tricks and the green's resulting discomfiture. Perhaps the prospect of his imminent demise had unhinged his reason.

  The wyrm lifted its head and cocked it back. Its neck and chest swelled repeatedly, pumping like a bellows. A foul scent suffused the air, stinging Rhespen's eyes. Evidently the creature believed it could muster one more blast of venom.

  Rhespen snatched a little cube of granite from one of his pockets, brandished it, and rattled off an intricate rhyme. The green's head shot forward, its jaws gaped, and at that instant, he declaimed the final syllable of his incantation. A plug of stone appeared in the back of the dragon's mouth. Instead of jetting forth at its intended target, the wyrm's breath spurted uselessly around the sides of the obstruction.

  The green's head jerked up and down as it tried to spit out the stone that choked it.

  "Now!" Rhespen bellowed. "Hit it now!"

  Like the elemental before them, his men-at-arms surged up from their places of concealment. As Rhespen had insured by their placement, and the positioning of his illusion, the dragon fought in the center of the four squads.

  Spears and arrows flew. The majority glanced off the dragon's scales, but some penetrated. Raising his staff high, Rhespen created a mesh of sticky cables to bind the wyrm's head to the intact wing lashing atop its back. The idea was to hinder the green in its effort to retch the stone out, but its thrashing tore the web apart immediately.

  The green's jaws clenched, the obstruction at the back of its mouth crunched, and it spat out the granite plug in fragments mixed with ivory shards of broken tooth. It oriented on one of the groups of warriors and took a stride, commencing its charge.