Part 24 (1/2)

She looked at him like he was as dangerous as any dragon. 'You're not to touch me. They'll know. Ghost can visit me any time, and he'll tell-'

'You're safe on that score,' he said. 'Would you like to go home?'

'Home?' She looked at him searchingly, then around at the others. They were quickly getting a store of goods together for Gorb to take with him. 'How?' she whispered.

'That's up to our drake. What do you say, Case? May we ride you? Will you take us north, to the castle?' The drake snorted and crawled before him with its neck lowered. 'Aziel? Will you come?'

She hesitated. 'You'll protect me?'

'I am your humble servant,' he said with a bow.

'It's been so long since someone told me that.'

'Is Shadow still within that charm?'

'Yes,' she said, touching the necklace embedded to her skin. Her voice went even quieter. 'He he doesn't like being in here. He wanted to get in so badly, but I think it was tricking him. Now he wants to be free. I think I can let him go-'

'Don't!' he said. 'Keep him there. We'll take him to the castle.'

'Yes! Arch will know what to do with him!'

'Hurry then, before the others see what we mean to do. Hop on.' Aziel took a seat on Case's back and Eric sat behind her. There was ample room for them.

'It is inevitable that you will, at times on our journey, need to touch me,' said Aziel primly. 'When we go through strong wind or rapidly up or down, we will be tossed around a little. You may at such times grasp me here, and here.' She demonstrated the permissible areas.

'Go, Case,' Eric said. 'To the window, quickly.'

The drake did as he asked it, hobbling toward the north-facing window. Siel saw them first.

'Where are you going?' she said, jogging over. Case put his front feet up on the sill, poking his head out in the night air.

'He must have been drunk, that first night,' Aziel mused. 'He was so clumsy. He's much better at using his legs and wings now!'

'Where are you going?' Siel repeated.

Eric looked back at her. 'Blain told us what we were to do. I'm going to do it. We're going to the castle.'

'And what in a dead G.o.d's ashen blazes do you think you're doing?' cried Loup, aghast.

'I guess you could say we're off to see the wizard, Loup.' Eric smiled sadly at Siel. 'I'm not Shadow,' he said. 'But I'm sorry I look like him. Go, Case. Fly.'

'Not without me, you don't!' Loup cried, clutching the drake's tail. 'Not without me!'

'Loup, I know where I have to go.'

'Aye, I won't persuade you different. But you'll be dead in half a day, the both of you, unless I mind you. You haven't even packed supplies, you twit! What did you plan on eating? Rocks?' Shouldering the pack he'd been preparing for Gorb, Loup clambered up onto Case's back. There was only just enough room for him. The drake groaned at the new weight it was being asked to carry. 'Don't you complain, you silly winged mule!' said Loup, slapping its rump. 'You had an easy life the last few days, lazing and sleeping and eating. Time to fly. You're Shadow's drake, according to tales. Look the part, why don't you? Fly!'

The drake fell out into the night sky, and all three riders screamed till it turned the fall into a dive. Case's beating wings took them through buffeting gusts of cold wind.

'Good boy!' said Loup, patting Case's rump. To Eric he said, 'Now where the heck are we off to? And why?'

'Well, I'll tell you, but I don't think you're going to like it.'

8.

First Captain Tauvene yelled, 'Hold!' until his throat and lungs filled with what felt like dirt. He had no idea if the men held or ran for he could not see a thing. Braziers had been lit all along the line but now they showed nothing. The strange chemical stink was incredible, like nothing else he'd smelled. His lungs clenched to reject it. He no longer had enough air to yell at all. He was coughing and crawling forward, disobeying his own order. His life, his past, his dreams had all burned down and he was now trying to breathe the ash. Hatred for Blain and l.u.s.t to kill the Strategist kept him crawling forward. Bodies b.u.mped into him from all sides.

Then everything changed and he went to a place that was not quite sleep.

He did not know how long he'd lain there. All was quiet in the visionless fog but for the sound of things rolling and twitching in the dirt here and there. He did not understand it he could not breathe, but he was not dead. Then with no warning he felt his body being pulled in several directions, but the feeling was good. He felt the bones of his feet breaking, his hands and arms breaking, but oh how good it felt. Yes! he thought. The other men's moaning and screaming filtered through the murk like sounds below water. Redness filled his vision. Yes!

His body felt like it was held in infinitely strong hands, being kneaded and rolled between thick fingers. A sound came from his throat, at first Tauvene's own familiar voice in a vibrating wail, 'Ah-ah-ah-ah-ahhh,' then something replaced it that was not a sound, but a new sense felt by a new organ. There were other senses too, not unlike touch, with which he felt the pulse and flow of time in the air. It was a current in one direction for the most part, but able to be moved against, and here and there possible to freeze or made so slow it was almost still. His bones kept breaking, stretching, breaking. His muscles clenched till they were tight and hard as stone.

When finally it ended he knew only that he had changed. He had become elegant, beautiful, glorious artwork.

That which had been First Captain Tauvene pulled itself upward. Things b.u.mped against him in the rolling reddish fog with a clack-clack like wood striking wood. A rattle of thin needles shook about his head: his laughter, laughter made to release the intense pleasure of being, to boast of this incredible pleasure to all the world! I feel! I sense, I am! he said in the new language, and the same sentiment echoed all around in the sightless fog.

How he longed to see himself ... there! Another like him! What beauty, what glory! The other watched him back with equal fascination, and both gave a rattle of many thin clattering needles about their manes, both expressing: What beauty you have! Look at you! What beauty!

Giddy with delight the n.o.ble creatures moved out of the dispersing fog into the evening. Their movements were joy; the creaking sounds of their stiff bodies' graceful steps was incredible music.

There, that strange quailing creature! It was a man, as they had been so recently. That lovely noise it made! That which had been Tauvene reached for the man. His beautiful hand spun a strange and lovely crystalline web in the air, ensnaring the frightened soldier and bringing him closer.

He played the man's body as an instrument, making beautiful sounds of dramatic, powerful pitch. To stroke it this way, a note! To stroke it that way, a note! He drew those notes out through time made sluggish, so they were long indeed.

About him the rattling voices of his kind expressed admiration for the song he made. They crowded around to watch. If only the soft little creature knew of the beauty it had within it, the glorious beauty. Slowly that which had been Tauvene played the symphony out, addicted to the sounds that came, in harmony with other such songs playing here and there, as his kindred found more men who had not been changed. The feel of blood drenching its flanks and limbs in rivulets was a new ecstasy altogether.

And they found they loved the music of their spiked toes punching into the ground's hard surface, loved the wind through the gra.s.s, the wind swaying the branches of trees. They loved their movements, loved watching one another, loved long periods of silence and stillness. Everything had its joys.

They swarmed north with jagged strides.

SETTING OUT.

1.

The drake, and Eric, Loup and Aziel on its back, were all soon gone into a wad of cloud, swallowed by the night sky that had poured war mages down on them. Watching them go, Siel wondered what it was exactly that she felt, what it was that had brought these rare tears to her eyes.

She gathered her bow, her knife, stuffed a bag full of bread, meat and fruit, all of which had been blessed for preservation. The night outside the window was now eerily still, with only the occasional faint inhuman cry of war mages coming from widely different points in the distance. The dragon had annihilated and scattered the flock. Over the ground and floating on the water were many of their broken bodies, bent into twisted shapes as though they were in the midst of casting one last spell of death.