Dog And Dragon Part 12

"Wreck rights are a lord's rights!" said the n.o.ble, his jowls quivering at the indignity of it all.

"You had better go and claim them then," said Fionn laconically, and sat down and put his head between his knees.

"Velas! Get what men you can. d.a.m.n this levy for the war. We need to get down there before they steal me blind. What's wrong with this man?"

"I'd guess he's half-drowned, milord. I think he's faint," said the overseer shaking Fionn. Dileas snarled at him.

"Well, leave him. Let's get down to the beach."

And in a flurry of shouting and yelling, they did. Before the dust had settled, Fionn got up, walked to the kitchen. "Your master said to feed the dog and me," he cheerfully told the cook.

Well breakfasted, they were on their way a short while later. Fionn wished the c.o.c.kle pickers and their masters the best of a miserable morning, and walked really fast. It would take the local lordling a few hours to establish he'd been gulled, but he was not going to be very pleased when he failed to find the wreck, or the sailor.

"The question is, Dileas, where we should go now? And don't suggest 'back.' I think 'back' is going to be a bad idea for some years," said Fionn as they stopped to take a breather at the top of a hill a few miles from the bay. "You appear to have an instinctive idea, which I've been following. But I am reaching a few conclusions after a bit of thought about this. If she went back to where she once came from...well that would fit with the Celtic cycle. Anghared was her name, and that could be from anywhere, with Annvn, Carmarthen, Abalach, and possibly Lyonesse being the more likely places. And she has the ability to stir things up around her, and to be in the very center of all sorts of trouble, and yet she's s.h.i.+fted from place to place. So right now my bet-if I was a gambler, which I am not, as I only bet on certainties, except where I am wrong about innate sheep-herding ability-is Lyonesse. On the other hand, your sense of direction indicates that either she is moving, or her world is, and as the latter is impossible, perhaps she is with an army that is moving? Or maybe some more of those travelers are with her."

He prodded Dilias with his toe. "Of course, I am open to your canine guidance."

The dog yawned, rolled onto his back, and exposed his belly.

"That's either a statement of trust or an invitation to scratch you. I think I should have investigated those travelers more closely. At least they would have been able to answer my questions," said Fionn, obliging Dileas with a scratch.

CHAPTER 14.

The one positive thing was that Neve, now that she'd started eating, recovered very rapidly indeed. It wasn't her body that had needed to heal. The other advantage was that Meb, having decided that she was going to leave Dun Tagoll, knew now that her purgatory was temporary. She smiled mechanically at the jibes and ignored them. She found there were several women in the bower who were mere general servants and she took one with her to visit Neve, or to take some air in the courtyard. They didn't like going with her, of course. But they didn't have to like it. Just be there. Ideally, Meb decided, between her and any cover an archer could shoot from. She did discover one odd thing. They all skirted the rock basin and its little weedy patch of wall. It was obviously a local shrine or something.

She had more important things to do than worry about that. She had to work out a way to escape from the castle for the two of them. And that was proving difficult, especially as she couldn't discuss it with anyone.

Vivien, in the meantime, kept pressing her to show the bower her magical power. Somehow Meb felt that would be a very poor idea. "It comes when I need it. Not when I want it," she explained. And that was partially true too.

Lady Cardun folded her hands in her lap and shook her head. "I don't know. She just does not say much, Medraut. And she's either a very good mimic or she was leading her maid on. She makes faux pas, she hobn.o.bs with the servants, she wanders about without any chaperonage. Yet...she does some things in a manner well-bred. I'd suspect she was raised in a n.o.ble household. The daughter of a favored woman, maybe."

Medraut tugged his beard. "I think she may be cleverer than we suspected. Look, it turned out that she could ride. To ride that well...she must have had a great deal of practice. I know you said she was stiff and sore the next day, but that is still possible, if she had not ridden for some time. She claimed never to have ridden a horse. And she's been very close to Vivien. We know she reports to the mage." He sucked his teeth. "Having her fall from a horse or become sick and die would remove her from the situation. That was my thinking. Yet Aberinn appeared genuinely angry and distrustful of her. And she's immensely popular with the men-at-arms for some reason. To act openly to get rid of her would be foolish until I have more information, I think.

"There are those who believe she made the queen's window reappear. But the more I think of it, the more certain I become, that the entire scene with Alois was contrived. It was Aberinn's doing. They may have fallen out since. I have spies in the south, still. We may hear something."

"Her maid is recovering. She has returned to work. She will tell us what we need to know," said Lady Cardun confidently.

"It would seem to me that she's guessed that the maid is a spy." The prince pursed his lips. "I may have to trump something up, to at least put her to the question."

"You cannot deceive me, Vivien."

The eyes bored into her. She wished the mage was wrong, just this once. "I've told you," she said, wringing her hands. "She did the embroidery as no mortal could. It's sidhe work. It's some kind of glamor. Some kind of deception, but I don't think she knows she's doing it. It's not like our magic at all."

Vivien hated this. Hated being in the tower. Hated being given orders. Hated reporting to the mage. Hated his touch. But she was trapped here. Trapped by chains of fear and her children. Trapped by the shreds of hope. Hope that had breathed in her when she'd seen that spatha-blade axe. She'd thought Aberinn would be pleased at the time. It would spell the end for Prince Medraut and his pretensions.

Aberinn rolled his eyes. "There is no secret magic. There is no unknown magic."

"I've tried to get her to use her magic again, so you could trace it. So you could see," said Vivien.

"She probably can't. There are ways around the protection on Dun Tagoll. But it is self-healing. Such tricks will work only once."

He toyed with the models on his workbench. The interior of the royal chambers, perfect in every detail. He was building a model bedchamber. The shape of the chest showed that to be that poor child's room...she looked away, at anything else. A miniature of an Angevin crossbow, a tiny thread on the arrow, a trebuchet...she had been taught some of the theory behind symbolic magic and scalar spells. The magic of Lyonesse had, especially among the males, always been tied to mechanical symbols. But she had no idea of how the compulsion on her worked or how to break it. She stood, silently. Waiting for the orders. Finally, she could endure no longer. "Maybe she is the one you prophesied. Maybe she really is the Defender."

Aberinn snorted. "That she cannot possibly be. She may even be less than human, as you suggest. But put one idea from your mind. She is not this 'Defender.'"

"But how do you know?" asked Vivien.

He laughed. "She is the third fraud we've had. And soon she too will be dead. Now go."

He walked away to the piece of bench with the symbols and careful patterning as she turned away. She knew, from her training as a child, what some of those symbols were. She wished she dared stay and make it permanent. But he would have his protections. And she had her children, hostages to fate.

The mage had cheated death for so long by being one with the dead for most of day and night. She'd recognized the symbols, even before she'd seen him lying there, unbreathing.

Weeping to herself, she fled the tower.

From its cage the gilded crow watched her with a jewel eye.

Meb sat in her room as Neve brushed her long wavy hair. Hair that at least was like the hair of the locals...she felt the dragon neck piece of the dvergar gold, heavy, magical and yet invisible, its links cunning and perfect, full of what magic the dvergar had been able to bind into it, designed to enhance her own power, designed to draw on the magics of wood, fire, gold, earth...She must still have some of the courage of the centaurs' windsack about her...centaurs? Maybe that was why the horse had liked her? What was it that the dvergar had said about the piece of magical enhancement she wore about her neck? It would help her to be what she wished to be. Well, at one stage she'd wished to be dead, and it had nearly helped her there! Only she'd changed her mind. It had helped her, and Fionn, to travel unseen and unsuspected into Albar, she was sure.

So could it help her to get out of here? Just how would her master have done it? Besides outrageously? Well, maybe that would have to work.

"Is it a full moon tonight?" she asked.

"Yes, m'lady." Nothing Meb had done or said had ever been able to shake Neve from calling Meb that. Not even discussing gutting and gilling techniques.

"So tonight will be the night for the Changer?"

"Yes, m'lady. The Fomoire will have their ice melt under them," said Neve with grim satisfaction. "Except those ones already ravaging the country. They kill just because they can."

"I hope the next change is something better."

"Can't hardly be any worse, m'lady," said Neve.

Finn would have said that that was a sure guarantee that it would be.

He would also have walked into the stables and demanded that they saddle a horse for him and Neve. Meb didn't think she'd quite get away with that. But a little glamor...If the alvar could do it..."How do I look?" she asked, thinking of Hallgerd, dressed in her best go-to-market-in-Tarport clothes.

Neve dropped the brush. Backed away, fright on her face. "M'lady?" Her voice quivered tremulously.

"It's just me," said Meb, wondering if her appearance would stay like that. It didn't, it appeared. Neve hugged her. "Oh, m'lady. I'm sorry. I...I just got such a fright. There was this wicked old crone here. An old fishwife..."

"It was me. I just took on a seeming."

Neve shuddered.

"Tomorrow we will use it to leave," said Meb. "Or as soon as some ordinary women walk out of here. They must, sometimes."

"Once the troop rides out to clear out any last foes, m'lady. Could be a week or two. But the Fomoire will know something is wrong quick when their ice bridge goes. Then, usually after the men have gone, the kitchen women go out and collect rock samphire and birds' eggs on the cliffs with a couple of guardsmen."

"Excellent. Once we're among the cliffs and rocks we can slip away."

"Yes...but...those are the kitchen drabs," said Neve. "And you're..."

"A fis.h.i.+ng village brat. Like you. How did you end up in the bower?"

Neve blushed. "My granny was a bower woman in the old king's court. Not to say anything, but my mother was born something like seven months after the wedding, which happened soon enough after she left service with a fine gift. She must have taken the fancy of one of the lords here, because it was enough to buy a house and boat and a cow, and to keep a bit for spoiling us. The Lady Cardun, she remembered my gamma. Took me for the bower. Didn't take her long to find out that I didn't know much, though."

"Well, at least you know who your mother was. Which is more than I do. Or my father," said Meb. "Anyway. A seeming is easier with some props. Can we get some baskets?"

"Easy," said Neve. "They're hung in the corner of the kitchens. But, m'lady. I'm quite scared. And it won't be safe for you out there..."

"I could probably look like a dragon, as easily as a fishwife."

Neve squeaked at the thought.

It was hard to sleep that night, and then when she did finally get to sleep, Meb woke abruptly again. It was...different. The last time the air had held the smell she'd come to realize was Fomoire. This...this was a melange of new scents. Just hints of them, as if carried by errant breezes from faraway places. Some were of forest, mushroomy and moist, some of gorse flowers, and some of Tarport on a hot day.

It wasn't all pleasant, but it was a lot sweeter than the Ways to the Fomoire had smelled. She slept well now, for the first time in weeks. She had such sweet dreams too, dreams that involved her kissing Fionn and didn't, in a rather confused fas.h.i.+on, entirely stop there, so that being wakened was anything but welcome.

Neve was too full of the news to even wait until Meb's eyes were properly open. "Oh, m'lady! The Changer. Something is wrong. It didn't work properly. The mage is up and in a rage. The prince is going to ride out with his troop soon to try and work out which of the Ways are open."

"And somehow it will all be my fault," said Meb. "We'd better go, and quickly."

She'd tried to think, last night, just how she could take the axe with them. Could she tell it to look like a stick? Could she rely on summonsing it again? She rather wanted it with her. She tried making it look like something else. An old stick.

It seemed to work, at least while she was holding it. Put it down, and it reverted to being an axe.

"M'lady! You can't take that!" said Neve, shocked, seeing her pick it up.

"But it's just the thing for cutting rock samphire," said Meb, swinging it about. "Anyway, it changes appearance with me. Look."

They made their way down through the pa.s.sages of the castle. No one questioned the old woman, with her stick and one of the castle maids. Collecting two baskets from outside the back of the kitchen where Neve had stashed them, they walked down to the great gate, to sit and wait in the sun on a mounting block.

"The other women will be along presently. They were talking about it last night," said Neve.

"And best we got down here early. Mage Aberinn will be sending for me again," said Meb. "And somehow it's always someone else's fault. I'll be glad to be out of here."

"But...m'lady. Just where are we going to go? What are we going to do?" asked Neve.

And then Prince Medraut and his troop rode up, and saved Meb from answering something she had no idea of the answer to. Because things went badly awry, just about immediately. Medraut didn't recognize her. But he did recognize Neve. "You. Wench. Where's that mistress of yours?" he demanded, jigging his horse up closer, reaching down and raising her chin with his whip.

She dropped onto her knees. "P-please, your Highness Prince, I don't know. I just got told to go and collect samphire this morning."

"By whom? Your mistress?" demanded Medraut.

"N-no. Lady Cardun sent me to the kitchen. I'm not to work in the bower anymore."

The whip slashed at her unprotected face, and Neve screamed as it cut her cheek. "Don't lie to me. I spoke to Cardun not two minutes back. She said she had no idea where you were." He raised the whip again.

"Stop it," said Meb, standing in front of her. "Don't you dare hit her!"

The whip halted. Prince Medraut stared. "So that's where you've got to."

Meb realized she'd stopped concentrating on the glamor. She was no alvar, able to just to set a glamor in place and have it stay in place.

"Yes. I am leaving," said Meb.

"No one leaves Dun Tagoll without my permission," said Medraut. "Aberinn is blaming the latest disaster on you."

"Everything that goes wrong is my fault," said Meb. "What has he done this time? Just so I know what my fault is supposed to be, so I can be very sorry for it." She was seethingly angry now.

"We are not in the right place to intersect to the Ways," said Medraut, tersely. "Some form of sabotage is suspected. And you are the stranger in our midst, Anghared, as you call yourself."

Meb sighed artistically. "He got it wrong, and now it's my fault again. I think he is going senile. Or your machine is not right. It's the second time it has been wrong, and it has nothing whatever to do with me. Maybe he just needs a little more effort or more power. Magic is like that."

Medraut looked at her strangely. "You came here, and were granted a place for appearing to have performed a major magic. Yet...you don't seem to me to understand the rudiments of magic. It can't be wrong, young woman. The very rules of sympathetic magic are scalar relations.h.i.+ps. They are very precise. One grain of weight becomes seven or seventy-seven or seven hundred and seventy-seven. One hair width is multiplied by precisely the same measurements. Not somehow some arbitrary number! Magic would be chaos then!"

His eyes narrowed. "You've claimed to be a worker of magic, but yet you do not appear to know the very most basic principles. What is the law of contagion?"

"If you get sick it spreads?" said Meb, who honestly had no idea.

The prince rolled his eyes. "How were we ever fooled by you, woman? I was shaken, I suppose, by Alois. But even the newest of adepts learns the principles of 'once together, always together.' You claim to be a summonser and do not understand how the basis of it works. Lady Cardun was right: you are simply a fraud."

"I never claimed to be anything," said Meb. "You all said I was. And anyway that's not how summonsing works. If I need it and want it badly enough, and can imagine it clearly...it comes."

That provoked scornful laughter from the prince. "Yes, that is how the commons think it works. Well, you've had a good time imagining you can live as your betters do. And I'll be first to admit, you were a quick imitator. Well, you seem to have a taste for the neyfs and kitchen trulls, by all reports. You will make an excellent one. But first you can have some time at the posts and a good whipping. Afterwards I will be back to ask some questions and finally get some straight answers." He gestured to one of his bodyguards. "Methgin. Take the two of them to the posts. And you, Captain, get them to open that gate so we can go and try to establish just what sort of mess we have to deal with this time."

The gate swung open and the press of horses rode out. For a mad moment, Meb thought of trying to run with them.

But Methgin was in the way and she still had Neve with her, and besides, they would have to cross the causeway single file...there was no point in even trying to run.

Methgin grabbed Neve, roughly with one hand and then reached to twitch Meb's "stick" from her with the other, plainly thinking two women no match for his burly frame.