Part 25 (1/2)

She crouched with her head in her hands. 'Yes. Shadow is somehow drawn to the Pilgrim. He looks like him too. We don't know why.'

Blain said, 'And Vyin's charm just happened to find its way to the Pilgrim too. Why?'

'I I think it's meant to contain Shadow.'

'Contain him?' said Blain.

'Yes! He's drawn to it, I think. And it has trapped him, caged him. That's a guess. Don't hurt me.'

'Don't cut her yet! How is your guess so specific?'

'Little clues. Air patterns about the charm. Fragments of conversation they didn't notice I overheard. They tried not to speak of it in front of me. They don't trust me. Stop all this, please. I'll tell you what I know. I'm not loyal to the dragons, nor to Dyan. Don't you see? I have no one! I'm nothing!'

Blain cursed quietly. His illusion spell abruptly ceased. The room returned to normal with no sign of the Strategist or his Hunters.

Stranger went to the window. A dark shape moved in the southern sky. Dyan was coming so that's why Blain had fled. She leaned out over the sill, sick and giddy from nerves. She yelled, 'My love! Help me!'

The dragon wheeled once, twice as if searching for something, then swooped to the tower with a rush of wind which pushed her back from the window.

Dyan landed on the sill, sticking his head inside the s.p.a.ce too small for the rest of him, peering quizzically around the tower's top floor. His scales glimmered with red and gold. Waves of heat came off him. 'Are you hurt?' he said, his tail snaking through the window and gently running down her arm.

'Do you truly care?' She told him what had happened.

'Great Beauty, you are safe now. There is no one here but you and I, and whatever force gives this place life. A strange place. Well made, for human work.' He sniffed. 'Curious. A drake has been here.'

'Dyan! The Strategist can't be far. He was just here. Won't you kill him? He will come for me again as soon as you leave me.'

'Why do you say I'll leave you, Great Beauty? Have I not returned for you? I have saved you from yet another peril, the man-beasts with horns. And I was burned for my trouble.' He moved so she could see a black mark streaked down his hind leg.

'You are too careless,' she reproached him, stroking his neck. 'Won't you come in? Change form and come in?'

'I'll not cast more just yet,' he said, sniffing. 'There are foreign airs here. A big wave washed in across the boundary. Some strains of it have reached us here.'

'The Strategist cast while you were gone. Very elaborate illusions.'

'Then he is a fool, and the least of my concerns.'

She was hurt. 'What then is the greatest of them?'

'I went to see Sha,' said Dyan, a ripple of white going over his scales. She had never seen this before but could tell it indicated fear. 'They claim they did not send out another dragon. They are disturbed by what I told them.'

'What happened?'

'I won't speak of it,' he said with a s.h.i.+ver. 'But they will not be idle. Vyin's betrayal enraged them.'

'What will they do?'

Dyan quietened the deep music of his voice, as though afraid the great beasts would hear his voice from their sky holds. 'They have gone to their forges and begun crafting artefacts of their own. They have guessed Vyin's purpose. But they must rush their work, if they wish to change events already unfolding! That is why they are so angry. Vyin's necklace was surely a work many human lifetimes in the making. Whatever the others create will be rushed by comparison, shall need to be crafted in mere days. Do you see now, Great Beauty, that when I leave you it is because I am called away by forces greater than either of us? Greater even than my love for you?'

She tried not to cry. 'You have told me so many times that nothing was greater than that. And I believed you.'

'I am sorry, Great Beauty. I longed to believe it as much as you. And now that I am with you again, perhaps I do.'

3.

Movement caught the dragon's eye down by the water's edge. He showed little reaction, tried not to make it obvious he was looking down there as the woman continued to whine at him, and while he made the appropriate responses, said the necessary things. He loved these creatures, loved them as one might love a musical instrument. Such sentimental music.

But while he spoke to her he watched another. A most intriguing form: slender, with long curling dark hair, an immense bust, a face of dark smiling mischief, and an aura about her as dark and colourful as shed human blood. She had no native magic to her, just some borrowed effects from little charms.

But that mattered little; he felt drawn by the natural effortless magic of her intent. She was showing herself to him on purpose.

From the water's edge she peered up into his eyes and slowly, teasingly, removed her clothes, revealing a body whose splendour would be the envy of all the Invia. Here she was, seducing him, trying to draw him with this provocative dance ... fascinating! He had never been in this position before. He had always been the seducer, never seduced.

There was no resisting this temptation.

One minor cast surely would not be too great a risk. Stranger would never know, would never remember it. Dyan whispered part of a word in the tongue of his kind, made short and simple for human understanding. It meant sleep. He put just enough power upon it. Stranger fell back in a faint. She'd not remember the latter part of the conversation when she woke.

Dyan dropped from the window, landed gracefully by Evelle. 'Welcome,' she said, opening her arms to him. He curled his tail about her, ran the point of it over her skin.

'I will call you Hathilialin, which means in my tongue great beauty ...'

4.

Stranger sat up. The peaceful lap of waves and the breath of breeze across water still played soothing music but she knew before hearing the knife being drawn that her death was close.

Stepping before her was a wiry man, naked from the waist up, with thin braids of beard hanging from his chin and a long knife in hand. The tattoos across his chest looked like protective wards; the piercings over his body had to be charms, for they made almost invisible patterns in the air about them.

Next to the man, Blain leaned on his walking stick, face twitching as though burned and singed by a hot simmering rage beneath his bearded mask. To the Hunter he said, 'Cut off her hands.'

The man sighed regretfully. 'Yes, Strategist.'

Thaun had her before she could reach the window. Stranger let her arm go limp in his hand. Without Dyan here to help, her only spell options to get out of this situation would likely kill her instantly. It was better to try talking her way out. She said, 'What do you think you will gain from doing this?'

Blain said, 'This is your last chance to talk. Your true love is busy with Evelle. He's taken her on a long romantic flight.' He shuddered. 'Talk, girl. Lend me a hand.'

Thaun's knife-edge gently touched her skin. 'Tell him you'll talk,' he said quietly. 'I don't wish to do this.'

'Do not do that in here,' said a quiet voice from the stairway. Blain wheeled about, face betraying his shock. A tall magician stood at the top of the steps, peering at them with half-lidded eyes. He said, 'It will do no good to mutilate her, unless the act is its own pleasure for you, Blain. Do you do it for a purpose, or for love of such deeds?'

'A purpose, of course,' said Blain, sputtering. Crimson colour flushed through his robe.