The Fire Dragon

  Up in the north country of Deverry, the tardy spring lagged behind the Bardek season. Snow still streaked the hills round Cengarn and lay in sullen drifts against the stone walls. Yet the sunlight did shine brightly in the afternoons, and night took its time about falling as well. During the days, when the sun struck the window of her tower room, Dallandra would take down the ox hide that covered it and sit on the broad stone sill to let the warmth soak into her bones.

  Down below her the ward of Dun Cengarn spread out, cobbled and frosted with half-frozen mud, circled with stone walls. She could smell it, too, even up as high as she was, perfumed by a winter's worth of stable sweepings and human filth, piled up near the main gates. Once spring arrived, some of the local farmers would come up and cart the mess away to spread on their fields. Everyone who'd wintered in the dun would bathe, too, in the spring rivers, and wash the clothes that had grown stiff with dirt. Dallandra could only hope that spring came soon, when she would return to the Westlands and leave the stone tents of humankind behind forever.

  On a day when the rain melted off the last of the snows and left the world brown mud as far as Dallandra could see from her perch, she decided that it was time to consider exactly when and how she and the souls in her care would leave Cengarn. Wildfolk, a gaggle of gnomes and a sprite or two, sat on the sill with her and pretended to take the sun. Dallandra picked up the leader of their little pack and set him in her lap.

  “I need you to run an errand for me,” she said. “Find Evandar and bring him here.”

  The gnome nodded.

  “Are you sure you'll remember? Evandar, and bring him here.”

  The gnome hopped off her lap and crooked a finger at his fellows, as if he were the cook summoning kitchen boys. They clustered around him, pushing and shoving each other.

  “Evandar. Here,” Dallandra said for the last time.

  In an eddy of breeze they disappeared.

  Although Dallandra waited till dark, Evandar never arrived that day, nor on the next, not that she found this alarming. The Wildfolk always took their time about following orders.

  “I'm just impatient,” she remarked one morning. “I want to be out of here and gone.”

  “I couldn't agree more,” Rhodry said. “But I don't want to leave until Arzosah returns.”

  “Do you truly think she'll come back? Dragons aren't known for keeping their promises.”

  “She will. I know it in my heart.”

  They were sitting together in the tower room, Dallandra in the window, Rhodry in the only chair. He leaned back, his long legs stretched out in front of him. In the morning light she could see that grey brushed his raven-dark hair at the temples, an omen that troubled her. Rhodry was half-elven, and among the elves, signs of age meant a person's death hovered close by, ready to swoop down. And yet, as she reminded herself, he was only a half-breed, and perhaps would age in the human way.

  “I've been meaning to ask you,” Rhodry said. “Have you had any news of my brother?”

  “None, but I'm hoping Evandar will bring some. He promised me that he'd look in on Ebañy now and again.”

  “Good. I'll admit to being worried. He's the only kinsman I have left.” He smiled, but briefly. “Well, the only one that knows I'm still alive.”

  “Just so. He never should have dropped his dweomer studies the way he did. I can't be certain, but I'd wager high that it caused his madness. You can't just walk away from the dweomer after you've opened your mind to it.”

  “So you've said.” Rhodry shuddered like a wet dog. “Cursed dangerous stuff, dweomer.”

  “Not dangerous at all if you go about it properly.”

  “Every time it's touched my life it's brought me sorrow.”

  “Oh come now! It brought you Jill.”

  “And took her away again. And it gave me Aberwyn and snatched that from me as well. Oh, I could turn bard and sing you a pretty triad—the three worst sorrows of Rhodry Maelwaedd.” He paused for a lopsided grin. “It seems like dweomer's ruled and ruined my whole cursed life, ever since I was a lad in Cannobaen. Long before I met Jill, that was.”

  “Truly?”

  “It was all Nevyn's doing. I fell ill, and my mother summoned him to heal me—I think. I remember naught but waking from a fever dream and seeing the old man at my bedside. When I got well, he told me he'd received an omen, somehow or other. It ran ‘Rhodry's Wyrd is Eldidd's Wyrd.’ I thought of it often, after Rhys died and I inherited the gwerbretrhyn.”

  “No doubt.”

  “And so old Nevyn stayed at my mother's court as one of her servitors until the Wyrd was fulfilled.”

  Dallandra felt a sudden cold, as if a north wind had suddenly blown through the window. She moved uneasily, as if she could physically shake the omen-warning off.

  “What's so wrong?” Rhodry said. “You've gone as white as milk.”

  “If I knew I'd tell you, but I don't. It probably means something grim.”

  Rhodry laughed, his high-pitched berserker's chortle. “Let's hope it is,” he said at last, and his dark blue eyes looked more than half-mad. “I can't tell you how much I long for the bed of my one true love. Mayhap this will be the summer she takes pity on me, my lady Death.”

  “Oh do stop! I hate it when you talk like that.”

  “My apologies.” He got up and busied himself with putting the chair back under her little table. “I don't mean to trouble your heart.”

  Rhodry turned, made her a sweeping bow, and strode out of the chamber. For a long time Dallandra sat looking at the closed door and wondering if she dared search for more omens. The dweomer-cold had warned her that Rhodry's Wyrd still waited, unfulfilled. In the end she decided against scrying further. Wyrd always fell where it would, and there was naught that she or any other dweomermaster could do about it.

  The Wildfolk eventually found Evandar on Lina-lantava, the Isle of Regret, but by then they'd forgotten why Dallandra had sent them. He could assume that she wanted to see him. They danced around him in a circle and pointed at the sky with stabs of their warty fingers, their usual way of asking him to follow them. The most intelligent of the pack, a big purplish gnome with scabby wens all over his face, tugged at the edge of Evandar's green tunic as if it were trying to pull him along.

  “Tell her you found me,” Evandar said. “But I can't leave just now. I'll come soon.”

  The gnome grabbed his tunic with both hands, this time, and tugged so hard Evandar nearly stumbled.

  “Is she in danger?”

  The gnome looked up, frowning, and shook its head.

  “Is anyone else in danger?”

  Again the no.

  “Then I'll come when I've finished my business here. Now be gone!”

  With a sour and reproachful look, it faded away.

  Evandar had just arrived on the island, or, to be precise, on the mountaintop that housed the exiled remnants of the Collegium of Sages, formerly of Rinbaladelan. All round him the wind moaned, unfolding long scarves of dust and wrapping them around stunted trees. In the middle of a stretch of pale coarse grass stood a scatter of wooden buildings. Every inch of them—walls, lintels, doors, shutters—bore words in the elven syllabary, embellished with little birds and animals, all engraved deeply into the wood and then rubbed with red and blue pigments to make them legible. These texts and the similar ones on the interior walls held a volume's worth of history, the story of the fall of Rinbaladelan, placed there so that even the very walls would share in the grief. From one of the distant buildings drifted the sound of chanting in young voices, as a group of pupils recited some lesson in unison with the wind sighing in the grass.

  Evandar walked over to the longest of the buildings, but before he could knock, Meranaldar opened the door to him. A tall man and a little too thin, he had stooped shoulders and soft hands stained with black ink. Normally his face showed so little emotion that he seemed perpetually wistful, but today he was grinning, his large violet eyes snapping with delight.


  “Come in, come in! Your map is finished! Or did you know that?”

  “No, not really, but something did prompt me to visit you.” Evandar smiled in return. “Let's have a look at it.”

  Inside the library, rows of wooden cabinets lined the walls and stood rather randomly in the middle of the room. They housed crumbling relics of the Great Library of Rinbaladelan, books snatched from the death of the city by the armload and thrown into the escaping boats. The smell of mildew hung thick, despite the low fires smouldering in two tiled hearths to dry the air. In an adjoining room stood open shelves filled with the copies that centuries of scribes had made of these treasures.

  Close to the hearth stood a long narrow table and upon it, a thick papyrus scroll. Meranaldar untied the blue riband and spread the map out with a flourish. In black and red lay the plan of the city that had been the first earthly thing Evandar had ever loved. For a long time he stared at it without speaking, remembering the rose gardens and the fountains, the marble stairways leading down to the sea, the great observatory where elven sages studied the fixed stars and the wanderers moving through the heavens. All that remained now were ruins upon the land and these black lines of ink upon a map.

  “You look sad,” Meranaldar remarked at last.

  “I am. Roll it back up, will you? It's splendid, and you have my profound thanks.”

  “You're most welcome. I also have a map case to give you.” Meranaldar began to roll the map loosely and gently from the shorter edge. “And I have interesting news, as well. The council is meeting down in Linalandal. They're finally ready to act on this matter of our people out in the Westlands.”

  “Oh indeed? And what do they propose to do?”

  “Nothing, yet.” Meranaldar looked up with a grin. “It's taken me twenty years to get them to even consider sending a boat to the old homelands. Surely you don't expect a decision in a day?”

  Evandar laughed with a shake of his head.

  “Well spoken. But you know, this interests me greatly. Tell me something—why are you so eager to get that boat sent?”

  “Oh, my dear Guardian! The lore, of course. You yourself told me that their bards remember all kinds of lore about the loss of the cities.” Meranaldar paused to slip the scroll into a silver tube. “Things that we've forgotten here.” He looked up with a rueful smile. “I'd risk my life twice over for the chance to copy it down. I'm more than a little deranged, I suppose.”

  “I wouldn't call you that. You know, this could be very useful. I have another problem in hand, you see, and I've not forgotten our bargain, either. Would you like to gain the favor of the greatest bard in the Westlands—assuming you should be allowed to travel there?”

  “Of course I would!”

  “Good. His son lives in Bardek in rather difficult straits. If you could get him home, Devaberiel would be most grateful.”

  “Devaberiel.” Meranaldar looked away, smiling a little. “The name of a man I never knew existed till today. A man of our people, in our old homeland.”

  “And there are a great many others. I—”

  Evandar paused; the purplish gnomes had materialized again, standing on the table and looking at him with sad eyes. He was about to banish them when he realized that their persistence might mean Dalla truly did need him.

  “What's all this?” Meranaldar frowned at the gnomes, who stuck their tongues out at him.

  “A nuisance,” Evandar said. “I'd best leave.”

  “Ai! That's a pity!”

  In a crowd of triumphant gnomes they walked outside to a lingering sunset. The wind was scouring up the dust and blowing it in great gusts round the carved wooden huts and longhouses. In the distance the ground fell away fast to the long valley, lost in mists below. Meranaldar shivered and tucked his hands into the long sleeves of his grey robe.

  “When will I see you again?”

  “As soon as possible.” Evandar considered for a moment. “I have another bargain for you. How would you like me to appear before the council to argue your case?”

  “That would be splendid!”

  “Very well. If you agree to help this fellow, the bard's son who's in Bardek, then I'll speak on your side in council.”

  “You have my humble thanks. I'll certainly be glad to do what I can about Devaberiel's son. I'll wager you'll tip the scales with the council. They're not so arrogant that they won't listen to a Guardian.”

  “Good. I'll return in some few days.”

  Evandar glanced around and saw the glimmer of power in the air that marked an entry to the mother roads. He slipped the map case into his tunic, then walked briskly to the entry line, stepped up into the air, and walked back into his own country in two long strides. No doubt he'd left Meranaldar shivering in awe. Although the elven race never fell down in worship of any being, they considered the race they called the Guardians a species of god.

  As a master of illusions and transformations, Evandar had fostered that belief over the long years of his existence. It had amused him at first to terrify and amaze lesser beings with his magicks. Once he became enchanted with the elven race and their culture, he had used his magic to help them in any number of ways. For a time in fact he had believed himself a god. Hadn't they all called him one? Those few others among his kind who had developed a true personality and a mind believed themselves divine as well. But at the siege of Rinbaladelan, Evandar learned that he was just a mere trickster. All of the sorceries he thought so mighty had failed to save the city and its people from the ravaging Horsekin.

  “What a pity Alshandra never saw the truth,” he said aloud. “She died believing herself a goddess, and by the true gods, the troubles that's caused!”

  On a mother road made of twilight, Evandar travelled back to Deverry. Meranaldar had unwittingly handed him a riddle along with the map. When, last summer, Evandar had been laying his plans, he'd assumed that he'd simply keep the map with him until that future time when he would at last be ready to build Rinbaladelan anew. Now, however, with the omens—or rather their lack—gnawing his soul with fear for teeth, he knew that he had best find a place to keep his treasure where eventually someone who'd appreciate it would find it.

  He considered Rinbaladelan itself, but the ruins offered no safety to something as fragile as a papyrus scroll. Perhaps the temple of Wmmglaedd, where priests dedicated to learning had assembled hundreds of scrolls and codices of ancient lore? But they were human men, and he hated the thought of entrusting them with this record of elven civilization. He could give it to Dallandra, but that choice struck him as too logical. He knew that he was playing carnoic with Wyrd for the map's survival. Only a spectacular move, something with a touch of wild luck about it, would win him the game. Yet thinking of Dallandra made him think of Rhodry, and there he found an answer.

  In those days the border between Eldidd and the lands of the Westfolk lay unmarked for most of its length, but down at the seacoast stood a stream called Y Brog, the Badger, and upon it, the westernmost human settlement, a town called Cannobaen. For hundreds of years this demesne and its dun had belonged to the Maelwaedd clan. Back in the 1040s, the holding had passed briefly into the hands of the Clw Coc, the Red Lion clan, in the form of a dower settlement upon one of its daughters, the lady Lovyan. In her will Lovyan had given it back to the Maelwaedds by settling it upon her granddaughter, Rhodda, the bastard Rhodry had sired on a local lass. In Rho-dda's veins, therefore, ran enough elven blood to satisfy Evandar's schemes. He'd used her dun as a treasure-house before, in fact—not that she knew it.

  The dun stood on the edge of a cliff behind high stone walls, a typical enough fort, with a round broch rising some four stories at the center of a cobbled ward. Around the broch stood wooden sheds for storage, servants' huts, stables, a pigsty, a smithy, and the like in a disordered profusion. When Evandar turned up at its iron-bound gates, he wore an elven form, but that of an old man, all withered and stooped. He'd made himself illusions of Deverry clothes, and he'd stolen a horse to
ride upon. Her gatekeeper told him that the lady was up in her chamber and sent a page to announce this unexpected guest.

  “So it's you again, is it?” the gatekeeper said. “Come to sell her more of those cursed books, have you?”

  “Oh, I have a thing that might interest her,” Evandar said. “But I assure you, it's not cursed.”

  “Well, it's an eerie thing, our lady always shutting herself up like she does, up there with all them books. Makes folk talk. Tain't natural.”

  While he waited, Evandar tipped his head back and considered the stone tower that loomed over the dun. It was a slender thing, and tall, wound round by spiralling stone stairs. He could just see, up at the very top, a shedlike structure: a roof supported by four pillars but no walls. Once Rinbaladelan's harbor had sported a lighthouse like this one, though made of finer stonework and set with brightly colored tiles.

  “Had many storms?” Evandar said to the gatekeeper.

  “Oh, it's been a powerful bad winter, truly. We had a shipwreck, too. The lighthouse keeper couldn't keep the fire burning in all the wind and wet.”

  “Tell him he needs a glass wall.”

  “Oh here!” The gatekeeper spat into the dirt.

  “I don't jest, my good man. Put squares of glass into some sort of frame. It lets the light through and keeps out the wind.”

  “And that would cost our lady what? A year's taxes at the very least! No lord out here could stand the expense.”

  “Well, I suppose so. I—Ah, here's Lady Rhodda now.”

  With a wave Rhodda came hurrying across the ward. She was wearing a pair of dresses of the finest blue linen, but she'd pulled up the long loose sleeves and tied them behind her neck like a farmwife to leave her tanned arms free. Since last he'd seen her, her dark elven eyes had lost none of their beauty. Her raven hair, though, had grown streaks of silver, and she wore it bound round her head in thick braids. Since she'd never married, she wore no head scarf.