A Dragon From the Desert, page 29
“Help! Help!” I shouted, hoping that Spider or Ghoran or my mistress might be within earshot.
He lashed out with his hand and caught Ruth on the jaw. Her head snapped back, and she tumbled to the ground. Red screamed in high-pitched agony nearby. I felt his pain as if it were my own. It burned in my chest.
“No one is coming to help you, boy. Just shut up and I won’t kill you.” Something in his eyes told me that he was lying. He advanced towards me confidently. He had the same air of menace that Ghoran sometimes revealed, only in him it was augmented by the coldness of his expression and the calmness of his voice. He talked about killing me in the same tone another man might have talked about buttering his bread.
He sprang. I stabbed upward but he swept the knife aside with a swift movement of his arm, grabbed my wrist with his left hand and my throat with his right. His fingers were like bands of iron. I tried to move my knife hand but could not. I reached up with my left hand to pull his hand away and could not. I tried to shout but no sound would emerge from my mouth.
He pushed my knife hand back until it was pinned against the wall of the tent. He leaned forward so that his dark eyes glared into mine. They were cold as chips of ice and death was in them. “That was stupid, boy, and now you are going to die.”
He was certain of that. His hand was immovable as a mountain. I tried to dig my nails into the skin of his wrist, but it was like pushing against iron. My vision darkened. Red squealed and fluttered into the air, trailing blood and then flopped down onto the bed. I thought I heard something moving behind Xander, but I could not be sure. I hoped it was Ruth crawling away.
His fingers tightened on the wrist of my knife hand. Agony surged along my arm. The weapon dropped. For a second, I thought he might stoop and pick it up and I braced myself to try and spring at him when the opportunity presented itself. He did not move. He increased the pressure on my throat. His breath was warm on my face. There was a hint of garlic in it.
Strength drained from me now. My life was over. So quickly. I was going to die. Red was going to die. Ruth was going to die. Alysia was already dead. Xander had succeeded in his goal after all my mistress’ efforts to keep her alive. From outside came the sounds of fighting and burning.
I tried to shout for help again but no words came. My heart pounded against my chest. My lungs screamed for air. I closed my eyes. Lights danced in the darkness behind my lids. Sparks, stars, I don’t know what. It made me think of something.
A word. In Eldrak. I thought of the pattern I had seen on the stone when I had first come into my power and thought that I might live to become a mage. The swirling dots seemed to form into that pattern.
“What the…” Xander muttered. My eyes opened. A faint illumination lit the room, centred on me. Xander’s hand relaxed for a moment and I almost managed to force some air into my lungs. He glanced at the door, perhaps afraid that my mistress would appear through it. No one was there. His grip tightened again, and the pressure increased.
I closed my eyes. The pattern was still there, burning, but it would not make any difference. I had finally managed to call forth light, but it could not save me. My first conscious casting of a spell was going to be my last. It was not fair.
I tried to clear my mind, to ignore the hammering of my heart, the bursting of my lungs. Everything slowed. Sounds receded. My mind felt unnaturally clear. I looked upon the pattern of light and for a moment I felt I understood its meaning completely, totally, utterly.
I saw it for what it was, a representation of one of the primal powers of the universe, a means of focusing it and drawing on it, of manipulating it. If you moved that vertex, it would concentrate the light. If you foreshortened the rune there and added a line across here the power would be directed thus…
I remembered my mistress saying that the light could be used as a weapon. I understood what I needed to do. I opened my eyes and gazed upon Xander’s smiling face. He was enjoying himself. He could have beat me to death or killed me with a blow of his hand, but that would have been too quick, and he would not have been able to relish the sense of power it gave him.
I superimposed the rune over his face, shifted the lines as I thought they should be shifted. The light blazed brighter than an exploding firework, bright as the sun seen at noon, brighter.
Xander shrieked and reeled backwards, blinded by the flash. The pressure on my throat vanished but the pain remained from the bruising. I knew I had but a moment. If only I could reach down, pick up the dagger I might yet save myself.
Then I saw Xander’s mouth was open and his eyes were wide. Spittle emerged from his lips and he stumbled forward to fall at my feet. Ruth stood behind him, eyes wide, fear etched on her face.
I stared at her uncomprehending for a moment then I saw that the blade was gone from Lady Alysia’s chest and I knew what had happened. She must have crawled over and picked it up and stabbed Xander when he reeled away blinded.
Just as that thought crossed my mind, a hand grasped my ankle and Xander looked up at me, lips twisted in a rictus of pain. He was still alive.
I brought my boot down on his wrist and his grip relaxed. I kicked him in the face and his head snapped back. I reached down and picked up the dagger. It felt cold in my hand.
I saw Red still on the bed and Lady Alysia and the sentry motionless, I saw the bruise on Ruth’s face and felt the mark of Xander’s fingers on my throat. I fought the urge to lean forward and stab and stab and stab. My heart raced. Fear and hate filled my mind urging me on. I saw a vision of my face, pale-white, red-haired and filled with darkness. It took everything I had not to plunge the dagger down into Xander’s heart.
From outside came the sounds of battle, and it seemed to me as if I could see through the silk walls of the tent. A gigantic four-legged serpent of fire crawled through the camp, devouring men as it went, filling the air with the sick, sweet smell of burning flesh. Beside it a skull-faced woman killed with a gesture. A red-haired man with an axe slew everything that came close to her, moving like some warrior god of legend.
The vision held me for a moment, then the doorway of the tent, opened and I saw Mistress Iliana was there, Ghoran beside her, axe dripping. The drum was empty. Behind her, a gigantic thing of flames and terror loomed. It was all too much.
I tumbled forward into darkness overcome by pain and a sudden flood of exhaustion.
Chapter Thirty-One
I woke in an unfamiliar place, feeling awful. Something sharp edged lashed my face. When I opened my eyes, a small red dragonling crouched next to my head. His chest bandaged, his wing patched. He squealed when he saw me awake and then snuggled down against my ribs.
“Good morning,” said a voice I recognised as Mistress Iliana’s.
“Where am I?” I asked.
“The Ducal Palace in Solsburg,” she said.
“What happened to me?”
“You have been unconscious for several days. We feared you would remain in a coma for good, but your little friend there brought you back.”
“I mean what happened back in the camp?”
I tried to sit up, but the room reeled. I took in thick hangings on the windows, a strange four poster bed, a quilt on which was the symbol of the Duke of Solsburg. Red squealed and scampered away from his perch, glaring at me as if I had betrayed him. He had just started to get comfortable.
“I am sure you can work it out for yourself.” Mistress Iliana’s voice was cold, but there was a slight crack in it, as if she was trying to keep her emotions under control.
“The monks were assassins.”
“Very good.”
“The beer was poisoned. They used it to eliminate most of our men.”
“Yes. Keep going.”
“It was the Crimson Brotherhood. They got Lady Alysia after all.”
Mistress Iliana’s face drifted into view, a white moon, cratered by black eyes.
“No. They did not. You saved her.” The voice held the same authority as always, and the same doubts. And her eyes were the same, calm and measuring and cold.
“She was dead. I saw it. Ask Ruth, she was there.”
“Ruth is gone. Forget her.” There was an awful finality in the way she said it. Sadness was written on Mistress Iliana’s face, and sympathy of sorts. I felt tears well up in my eyes.
“That can’t be, mistress. She was alive when I saw her. What happened?”
“I said she was gone. I never said she was dead.” I wondered if this was some new form of magician’s quibbling. I did not want to hear it. I was still trying to adapt to the news. There was so much that I had wanted to say and now would not get the chance to.
“What do you mean?”
“You will find out for yourself soon enough. Lady Alysia wants to thank you in person. She left instructions to be called as soon as you were awake.”
“Wonderful,” I said. I could not keep the anger or disappointment out of my voice.
“The gratitude of the nobility, although likely to be short-lived is not to be sneered at,” Mistress Iliana said. “It’s something that may stand you in good stead in the months to come.”
“I will try and look suitable grateful,” I said.
“You are a remarkably sullen boy,” Mistress Iliana said. I waited for the lash of her words. “But I am glad you are all right. Now I hear footsteps approaching so I shall leave you to your other visitors.”
Her last sentence left me so shocked that I paid no attention to the two figures who entered the room. One was a slim looking young woman in noble garb. The other was a tall, thin elderly woman who looked very much like the witch that everyone thought Mistress Iliana was.
There was something oddly familiar about the younger woman, but it was the voice that shocked me. “I am glad to see you are all right.”
“Ruth?” I studied her face beneath the veil. The lines looked the same.
She shook her head. “I am Alysia, daughter and heir of the Duke of Solsburg.”
Her eyes narrowed and she glanced at the old woman chaperoning her. There was some sort of warning in her eyes, but I was not sure what it meant. “Then who was Lady Alysia?”
“My cousin, disguised and masked by a spell of illusion placed by your mistress. She threw herself between me and the assassin’s blade in that Cathedral in Solsburg. Mistress Iliana decided that the safest way of bringing me home was to disguise me as my cousin and have the wounded woman take my place. She dyed my hair and wove illusions around poor Ruth.”
“Lady Alysia,” said the old woman disapprovingly. “This is not a matter to be discussed even with a trusted servant in private chambers. The less reference to it the better.”
Ruth, for so I still thought of her, looked at her chaperone and said, “I owe this young man my life and an explanation is the least he deserves.”
There was a lash of command in her voice that would have made Mistress Iliana proud. I saw Red had scampered into a position where he could study her and had now pounced forward to drag at the sleeve of her dress. If looks could kill the chaperone’s glare would have sent him from the place a corpse. Ruth gently disentangled him, and he scampered up her arm and began investigating the hair beneath the head scarf. It was blonde.
“How?” I managed to croak.
“How did we get away with the switch? My lady in waiting assisted and such servants as knew were bound to secrecy by Mistress Iliana. There was a strong resemblance between my cousin and I.” I thought of some of the things she had said when we had talked, and pieces of the puzzle fell into place. She studied me, head tilted to one side.
“I was not the only one who practised deceit.” She sounded almost angry.
She was staring at me now and I wondered what she meant. Red was on her shoulder, hissing at the chaperone. It appeared he disliked the old woman as much as she disliked him. Ruth reached up with one hand and placed him gently beside me on the bed.
“You did not tell me you were Mistress Iliana’s apprentice,” she said.
I wondered why she sounded so offended by that. I was busy reviewing things I had noticed about her on our journey. The amulet I had sensed magic in. Had it been to aid the deception or was it some sort of protection. I focused my attention on her. I did not sense its presence now.
She kept staring at me, obviously expecting an answer. “I too was sworn to secrecy. Mistress Iliana’s previous apprentices had been murdered by assassins.”
As I said it, other pieces of the puzzle slid into place. I turned them over in my mind, appalled by the thoughts that were suddenly there. My expression gave me away.
“What is it?” Ruth asked.
I considered telling her my suspicions but what good would it do? I thought about the murdered lady in waiting who had stood in for Ruth or Alysia as I must now learn to call her. I thought about the soldiers who had drank the poisoned beer. And I wondered if all of this had been part of a bigger scheme, to draw out the assassins, and slay them. Was my mistress capable of such a thing? I already knew the answer.
“I was wondering about the soldiers who were poisoned.” The lie came easily and then it turned to truth. “Jay and Ghoran.”
“They are alright, most all of them. The drug made them sleep, and some of them very sick. One or two died. They choked on vomit or had some sort of reaction to the drug, according to Mistress Iliana and Master Lucas. Ghoran was with Mistress Iliana. He stood guard over you and Jay the whole way here.”
“I would like to see them if I may.” I wondered at the barrier that had dropped between us. She was the Duke’s heir now. I was apprenticed to one of the Duke’s retainers. It changed things. She knew it and I knew it, and I wondered what would have happened really if I had been bolder that last night on the high walls as we watched the lighthouse glow break the darkness.
“That’s a very sad smile,” she said.
“I was thinking about the ruined monastery and the lighthouse,” I said.
She laughed, and I thought I saw the servant girl again briefly. “I was too.”
The chaperone sensed the shift in our attitudes, and she did not like it. “Milady, it is time to go. You have an audience with your father and this young man must be allowed to rest.”
“Of course,” Lady Alysia said. She inclined her head. “We will speak again soon.”
“I hope so, milady,” I said.
“Oh we will,” she said. “Count on it.”
I watched her depart and Red snuggled down beside me, ready to sleep once more. I lay there and stared at the canopy above my head and wondered what my life was to become.
That was the start of it all.
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Copyright © 2019 by William King
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About the Author
William King lives in Prague, Czech Republic with his lovely wife Radka and his sons Dan and William Karel. He has been a professional author and games developer for over a quarter of a century. He is the creator of Gotrek and Felix for Black Library. He is also the author of the World of Warcraft novel Illidan. Over a million of his books are in print in English.
He has been nominated for the David Gemmell Legend Award. His short fiction has appeared in Year's Best SF and Best of Interzone. He has twice won the Origins Awards For Game Design. His hobbies include role-playing games and MMOs as well as travel.
You can find out more at www.williamking.me
He has been short-listed for the David Gemmell Legend Award. His short fiction has appeared in Year’s Best SF and Best of Interzone. He has twice won the Origins Awards For Game Design. His hobbies include role-playing games and MMOs as well as travel.
His website can be found at: www.williamking.me
He can be contacted at bill@williamking.me
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William King, A Dragon From the Desert
