“Dead body. A smell I know.” Talking and flying were not easy to do together. Mordion saved his breath, first for sniffing, and then for the hard work of gaining height out of the air currents over the ravine. “Thought so,” he said, when he was properly aloft again. “Reigner Five. Two of them are dead.”
“Then between us we ought to be able to take the other three,” Sir John said happily. “I don’t mind tackling Reigner One myself.”
Mordion did not waste breath trying to convince him otherwise. He sailed on until his nose told him there were large numbers of people hiding in the trees somewhere just below a bare hillside.
“Our camp ought to be down there,” Martin said.
Mordion banked round and landed on the hillside, where he thankfully folded his wings. Sir John was heavy. As Sir John and Martin climbed carefully down across his spikes, Mordion said, “I shall need to speak to the outlaws too.”
“Then – er—” said Sir John, “I think they might appreciate you more in your usual form.”
“So do I,” said Martin.
Mordion was sure that if the outlaw Stavely was truly Vierran’s father, he would probably prefer to see a dragon, but there were the other outlaws to consider. He bent his head and wondered if it was possible to get out of this dragon’s shape.
“Can you change?” Martin asked anxiously.
“I’m not sure.” The dragon-form, Mordion thought, seemed to be an aspect of this net of pain that still encased him. The knack should be to shrink it round himself. The way to do that ought to be not unlike the way he had tried to wrap theta-space round Hume, only here the theta-space would be himself. Bracing against the pain he knew it would cause him, he wrapped – and pulled. He heard Sir John and Martin gasp and stumble away backwards. From their point of view, he knew, the dragon’s black glossy hulk was outlined against the night sky in a thousand tiny blue stars, while the dragon grunted in obvious pain and shrank to blue-glittering man-shape. Mordion winced, shortened his beard a little, and said, “Right. Ready.”
He wondered whether he ought to warn the two of them that the outlaws were on the alert. His night-sight, even in man-shape, was good enough to see dim movements down among the trees.
No need, he thought. Dark people sprang up all round them as they started down the hill. All of them were seized and hustled down among the trees. “Hey, it’s all right!” Martin protested. “It’s me! These two brought me back! Let go!”
“There’s a dragon around,” someone said.
“It went,” said Martin. “We saw it go.”
“It could come back,” he was told. “We’ll let go when we’ve got you all under cover.” And they were hustled on, through carefully hidden paths among the brambles and trees, until they reached a clearing where someone was hastily lighting a fire. Into this space, the most important among the outlaws were hurrying, some dragging on brown-green camouflage jackets, others wrapped in a blanket and barely awake. One of the first to arrive, wrapped in a blanket, was a lady Mordion recognised with some sadness as Alisan of Guaranty. When Alisan saw Martin’s face in the new, leaping flames of the fire, she dropped the blanket and ran to hug him. A boy with his arm in a sling sneaked along behind her and banged Martin on the back, and then got out of the way as Hugon of Guaranty hastened up to rub Martin’s head proudly, as any father might.
“Wonder what my kids think has become of me,” Sir John Bedford said.
The Bannus had certainly spread its field wide, Mordion thought. Among the people who arrived to greet Martin and stare cautiously at the two strangers, he recognised numbers from Homeworld, as well as one of the young men from the wine shop where he had used his credit card, and the butcher from Wood Street. All the firelit figures had the same look of leadership and purpose, whether they were the lady head of the House of Contract, minor members of the Houses of Accord, Cash and Measure, or men and women who were strangers from Earth. Hugon of Guaranty – Stavely, as everyone seemed to call him – seemed to be the most powerful and leaderly person there. Or he did until Sir Artegal stood up from lighting the fire.
Sir Artegal was another stranger to Mordion. He was, like Hugon of Guaranty, a tall well-muscled man with a look of intelligence about him, and a strong commanding feel to him that reminded Mordion of Sir John. In a way, those three men were not unalike, except that Sir John was shorter and Guaranty was older and darker. By the firelight, Sir Artegal’s hair seemed sandy and his face had a pleasant, open look. You might have taken him for the youngest and least intelligent of the three, unless you looked at his eyes, which were summing Mordion and Sir John up as if he could read them both like a book.
“And what have you two come to us in the night for?” Sir Artegal asked. The mere sound of his voice hushed Alisan of Guaranty, who was anxiously whispering to Martin about Vierran.
“I told you!” said Martin. “You heard me tell Mum. They—”
“Yes, but shut up. I want them to say,” said Sir Artegal.
There was no doubt who was in command here, Mordion thought. As Martin stepped back grinning, Mordion rather envied him his free and easy relationship with this formidable Artegal. He could see why they got on. Both had Reigner blood. So for that matter did Sir John, which accounted for his resemblance to Hugon of Guaranty. Interesting.
“I brought Sir John Bedford to join you,” Mordion said, “and I think he’ll want to discuss attacking the castle with you in a minute. But first, I have to tell you that we are all here in the field of a machine called the Bannus. The Bannus has cast an illusion over us, and though none of what we are doing is precisely false, most people here are not who they think they are. The reason the Bannus does this is because its aim is to select new Reigners. Its method, as far as I can gather, is to put all its candidates into a field of play where their various Reigner powers can operate without causing severe damage.” I sound like the Bannus myself! he thought.
He could see no one believed him. A young man from the House of Cash said, “New Reigners! That’ll be the day!”
“You must be mad,” Hugon of Guaranty said. “I know who I am. I’ve run a greengrocer’s shop all my life until those robbers from the castle forced us into the woods.”
“There’s no such machine,” said an Earthman with the look of a security guard about him. “Science hasn’t advanced that far.”
Sir Artegal, still looking keenly at Mordion, said, “No, it’s the truth. I know this machine. It came and spoke to me in the form of a large golden cup some time back. It told me to go to the castle. I told it to – well, it doesn’t matter, but take it from me this man is speaking the truth as he knows it. You say this Bannus has deceived us as to who we really are,” he said to Mordion. “Who am I?”
“I’ve no idea,” Mordion was forced to say. This, not unnaturally, produced jeering laughs. “But I know you,” he said to Hugon. “You are head of the House of Guaranty, and that lady is your wife. You are head of the House of Contract,” he said, pointing at another woman, “and you are the younger nephew of the head of Cash. And you—”
“And who are you, thinking you know all this?” Guaranty interrupted aggressively.
Mordion wished he need not say, but he knew of nothing more likely to convince Guaranty. “I am the Reigners’ Servant,” he said.
Belief hit everyone from Homeworld at that – then disbelief of another kind. “Watch it! It’s a Reigner plot!” someone cried out. Swords and knives flashed out into the firelight. A crossbow appeared from under someone’s coat, aimed at Mordion’s throat. And the outlaws from Earth, seeing that the others really meant it, drew weapons too.
“Look here!” said Sir John, and Martin said, “This is stupid! I know he’s OK.”
“Shut up, son,” Hugon said. “All go for him together. By all accounts this creature is very hard to kill.”
“Don’t try it,” Mordion said to the finger tensing on the crossbow trigger. He would probably escape, but it would always be like this, he thoug
ht, looking at the hatred and hostility in all the firelit faces.
“Put those things away,” Sir Artegal said quietly.
“You don’t understand!” several voices from Homeworld told him. “This isn’t really a man! It’s the Reigners’– “
“Just do as I say,” Sir Artegal said. There was real force to it.
They looked at him irritably and lowered their weapons.
“Thank you,” said Sir Artegal. “Now put every weapon right away. I vouch for this man.”
“But—” someone muttered.
Sir Artegal looked at Mordion. “You and I have never met, have we?
“No,” Mordion said regretfully.
“And yet I know you fairly well. Do you know me?” asked Sir Artegal.
Mordion looked at him. As far as he knew, he had never seen Sir Artegal until this moment, and yet – and yet – there was an unaccountably familiar feeling about him. Mordion felt his eyebrow climb his forehead as a possible explanation began to dawn on him. “Not—?” he began.
“Voices,” said Sir Artegal. “This was long ago for me, you understand, but I remember them very well. You were one of four voices I used to listen to, though you seemed to get fainter and fainter over the years. It got so that you couldn’t seem to hear me, though I could hear you. It was whatever they did to your brain, wasn’t it? None of us could really contact you except the Girl Child.”
“You’re—!” Mordion began again, but Artegal held up his strong square hand into the firelight to stop him.
“You must listen to this,” he said to the staring outlaws. “This man and I have known one another, at the level of souls, where one mind knows another’s true nature, and I can thereby assure you that there is nothing to hate or fear in him. At that level, you do not know a man’s given name. I called him one thing in my mind, and he called me another. To show you this is the truth, I shall whisper to you – Alisan – what he called me and then ask him to tell you all aloud.” Alisan was a good choice, Mordion thought, as Artegal called her over and whispered in her ear. She would not cheat, and she was the kind of person who was believed. “Now,” Artegal said to Mordion. “Say what you called me.”
“You’re the King,” Mordion said.
“That’s what Artegal whispered,” Alisan confirmed. “Hugon, you don’t believe this, do you? Hugon—!”
Hugon of Guaranty seemed thoroughly disturbed. He went roving up and down beside the fire, almost snarling to himself. Finally the snarl became a thick growl directed at Artegal. “You’re tricking us! You read minds. And everyone says he does too!” He jerked an angry thumb at Mordion.
“I do, to my sorrow, know what’s in people’s heads when I try,” Artegal admitted, “but you must accept my sworn word that neither of us did try. I also whispered to Alisan what I called him. Will you tell him, or shall I?” he asked Mordion.
Mordion shrugged. “He called me the Slave,” he confessed.
Hugon gave out a great snarling roar and roved up and down again, swearing to himself. “This is terrible!” he said. “Then I think you’re one of – all right, all right, I’ll have to believe you! I suppose I’ll have to vouch for you too. When I think of all the things you could have put into her mind – and I know you didn’t. All right!”
Sir Artegal said soberly to Mordion, “Now, what made you put your head in a noose by telling all of us here these things about the Bannus?”
“Because,” Mordion answered, “I think the Bannus has more power than it is used to from former days, and I think it is getting out of hand. I think the time has come to stop it. If enough of us know what it is and what it is doing, we ought to be able to put an end to its games. My idea was for you people to attack the castle and hunt the Bannus down there. I know it’s in the castle somewhere.”
“Then we plan war,” said Sir Artegal, nodding to Sir John, who nodded back very grimly. “Tomorrow?” he asked Mordion. And when Mordion nodded, Artegal said, “Are you going to join this attack?”
“I’ll join you at the castle,” Mordion said. “I have one more thing to do first. I hope to get it over some time during the night.”
He left them all gathered round the fire, seriously, although Martin and Sir John both waved to him as he left, and Martin smiled.
He was escorted out on to the hillside by some of the outlaws. When they left him, Mordion paused to gather courage. It made sense to hunt Reigner One in dragon-shape, if only because he could see and smell so much more keenly like that, but making the change did most horribly hurt. He took a deep breath and thrust the net of fire outwards. And it hurt. But not quite so much as before. Mordion knew the pain would be with him all his life, but he began to hope that it might get bearable with usage. He spread his great black wings and took off into the cool pre-dawn air.
He hit the scent over the thick forest and followed it this way and that for some time. To and fro, round and back, like a waiting hawk, Mordion circled. And the scent just seemed to stop in an open glade. Each time he circled, he hoped to pick it up, and failed. Dawn came. Mordion watched his huge vague shadow gliding across trees that were bronzy with dawn light, and he watched that shadow become smaller and darker as daylight advanced, and still he kept losing the scent of Reigner One. It was almost as if Reigner One had taken wings in that open glade. He was returning to the glade for yet another cast, when Hume’s voice suddenly dinned in his head, so sudden and so loud that Mordion dipped sideways and nearly stalled.
Mordion! MORDION! HELP – quickly! I’ve been so STUPID!
The castle was astir before dawn. Vierran was woken in the tiny stone cubby hole that Yam had found her by tremendous wooden batterings. When she went cautiously out on to the walls to see what it was, she found workmen busy on the walls on the other side of the gate. They were erecting a bank of wooden seats above the battlements there.
“What’s this for?” she said.
“It must be so that the king may watch the dragon killed in safety,” Yam told her. “Hume is going to kill it.”
“What?” exclaimed Vierran. She bundled up her skirt and went clattering down spiral stairs into the front court. There she saw Hume in the distance, walking with long, hasty strides towards the armourer. Vierran tucked her skirt up under both arms and pelted to catch him. “Hume! Are you mad?”
Hume turned to wait for her. She thought she had seldom seen him looking more cheerful – or so tall. He now towered above her. If one of his eyes was not exactly smaller, then Vierran thought it seemed to crinkle more as he laughed down at her. “Of course I’m not mad,” he said. “It’s only Mordion out there.”
“I know that!” said Vierran. “But you’re going to—”
“Fake it,” said Hume. “Don’t be a donkey! I’ll tip Mordion the wink as soon as I get out there. Between us we can easily make them think I’ve killed him.”
“But why?” Vierran demanded.
“The king offered the hand of Lady Sylvia to the person who killed the dragon,” Hume said, “and – well—” He tailed off and shrugged, looking much less cheerful. “It’s probably the only way I have a chance with her.”
“Absolutely right!” Vierran told him roundly. “Apart from the fact that you will have tricked her, which no one is going to like when they find out, she is nearly twenty-three, Hume! In real life she holds down a big post in a major interstellar insurance company, and she never did have any patience with lovelorn teenagers. She doesn’t even live on this planet, Hume, and you—!”
“I know what I am,” Hume interrupted. “And I don’t care!” He turned his back on her and set off for the armourer again.
“I hope Mordion doesn’t come back!” Vierran called after him as loudly as she dared.
Hume called over his shoulder, “Then sucks to you! He is back!” and strode on.
Vierran might have followed him, but at that moment Morgan La Trey appeared on the steps of the hall, majestic in black and scarlet. Twenty squires followed her carrying bundl
es of velvet for the wooden seats, and her ladies followed the squires with armfuls of embroidered cushions. Lady Sylvia tripped along with them, dressed in a bride’s fluttering white, and looking quite serene at the idea of being handed over as part of a bargain.
“I don’t know! Perhaps she thinks he’ll lose!” Vierran muttered, backing behind a cart of spare timber. “I wonder where La Trey thinks I am. She doesn’t seem to be missing me.”
Morgan La Trey as she passed, had an inward, concentrating look, as if her mind was set on something far beyond such things as missing ladies-in-waiting. When her ladies had also passed, Vierran skipped among the servitors carrying fruit and cakes and mulled wine for the party on the battlements and found herself some bread and sausage in the hall. As the king was carried through, she fled again, back up the spiral stairs to the cubby hole on the walls. The room was in a tiny tower. From there it was only a step to the battlements and an excellent view of the empty slope of turf running down to the lake.
Vierran leant on the battlements beside Yam, munching her sausage. “Hume said Mordion’s back,” she told Yam. “I don’t see him.”
“The dragon is walking round and round the castle,” Yam said.
Vierran craned for a sight of Mordion, unavailingly, and then craned to look at the royal party, banked up above the walls in their brightly draped seats. “That’s an awfully silly place to be if it was a real dragon. Don’t they know dragons can fly?” She watched the servitors edging along the rows, presenting plates of fruits and pouring steaming drink into goblets. “They’re behaving as if this was a concert or something!”
“The dragon is coming,” said Yam.
Vierran looked straight downwards and caught a glimpse of broad scaly back slinking along below, glistening like a toad in the early sunlight. Funny! she thought. Mordion looked black last night! It must have been the darkness, I suppose. He looks pondweedish by daylight.
A fanfare of trumpets, loud and strident, announced the coming of Hume.
The noise irritated Orm. He spread his wings and glided downhill a short way, where he landed and turned to blare back at the things making the noise. The double din was awful. Vierran was trying to cover her ears with one hand greasy and the other full of bread, when Yam’s toneless voice penetrated the din. “That is not Mordion. It is a different dragon.”