Dragon Death Part 25

Wykla, too, was tired, but when she sat down with her food, a slump to her shoulders and a set to her face said that there was more to her weariness than simple physical exhaustion. Alouzon knew the cause, though: Wykla, rejected though she had been by her father, had just lost her own family.

Alouzon rilled her bowl and cup, then wandered over to the young woman. "Can I join you?"

Wykla's food lay untouched beside her, but she mustered a smile. "Aye Dragonmaster. Of course."

Alouzon settled down, crossed her legs. Coming from someone like Wykla, the t.i.tle disturbed her. "Are we back to Dragonmaster now?''

Wykla's eyes turned questioning. "But ..."

"But nothing. Yeah, there's some h.e.l.lacious stuff going on, but let's stay friends. I just want to be friends. That okay?"

Wykla nodded. "It is well, Alouzon."

"Good." Alouzon tore off a piece of bread, dipped it in the stew in her bowl. "Where's Manda?"

"She is seeing that the Vayllens are provided for." Wykla picked up her own food. "They are frightened of us, and Manda has a good smile and a way with words."

"She's a fine woman. I'm glad you two found one another."

Wykla blushed. Still wearing her t-s.h.i.+rt and jeans, she still looked like a coed. Young, pretty . . . sad.

"I'm . . . uh . . ." Alouzon swirled the wine in her cup. "I'm sorry about your father."

Wykla fingered her bowl. "I . . .do not know what to say, Alouzon. He, I am sure, no longer considered himself my father. I suppose I showed myself foolish when I insisted upon claiming him as such."

"I can understand why you did, though. We only get one father."

"Well ..." Wykla lifted her head as though searching. Off near the fire stood Darham, his beard sparkling in the light. He was. speaking with Cvinthil, but he seemed to become aware of Wykla, and he smiled at her and bowed.

Wykla dropped her eyes quickly. "It seems that I have been provided with two," she said. "Darham offered to adopt me when I was in Benardis."

"He's one h.e.l.l of a guy."

"I wounded him at the Circle."

' 'Just goes to show, doesn't it?''

Wykla set down her bowl, covered her face with her hands. "What shall I do, Dragonmaster?" she whispered. ' 'What shall I do? I cannot unmake the past. I cannot deny what has been. And yet Darham ..." She sobbed for a moment. "When he put his hand on my head and called me daughter, my heart filled near to bursting. I ... I think I loved him from that moment. But . . ."

She stopped, swallowed her tears, wiped her eyes.

"Advise me, Alouzon," she said.

"You love him?"

"I do. He is a fine and n.o.ble man."

Alouzon looked up at the stars, considering. Wykla had been rejected. Back in 1970, a whole generation had been rejected, and some had been killed. But here was a chance for renewal, a chance, despite Wykla's words, to unmake the past. "We grow up," she said. "Sometimes we have to leave things behind. Sometimes we have to take on others."

Distantly, she sensed a smile. The Grail.

"You ..." Wykla sniffled. "You think that I should accept?''

Fl.u.s.tered by the divine approval, Alouzon fumbled for words. "I think that you've got to follow your heart. You can't do something like this for profit, or for n.o.bility, or any of that c.r.a.p. You just have to do it because it's the right thing to do."

Again the smile.

"But ... my father . . . Yyvas."

"He's dead, Wykla. Sometimes ..." Alouzon looked up at the stars again. "Sometimes you have to take family where you can find it." Or, she thought as the smile widened, a world. "But don't rush it. Take your time. Anything or anybody who loves you that much will wait for you." She picked up Wykla's bowl-yet another manifestation of that all-nouris.h.i.+ng Cup-and put it into her hands. "Eat now. You need it. It's gonna get hairy in L.A., and you and Manda will have to show everyone the ropes."

Wykla's eyes had turned thoughtful. "Thank you, Alouzon."

"I hope I helped."

The young woman hugged her.

But late that night, Alouzon sat by the fire, keeping a lonely personal vigil amid the sleeping camp. Wyk- la's love and trust were unquestioning, unconditional. And so, for that matter, were everyone else's. And she was going to be leading them all off through a worm-hole in s.p.a.ce that should not exist, into an incomprehensible city, and then back through another wormhole and into the h.e.l.lish devastation and demonic attack of a world that might not even continue to exist after she met the Specter for the last time. "It's too much responsibility," she murmured to the Grail. "I'm still not sure I can handle it. No matter what you say, I'm not a G.o.d ..."

"Not yet," said Kyria from behind her.

Alouzon looked up. "I'm going to be leaning on you a lot in Los Angeles. And then there's Gryylth . . . There's no way I can do this by myself."

"I think you devalue yourself, Alouzon, for I think you can indeed do it by yourself." Kyria smiled encouragingly. "Indeed, you will more than likely have to."

"Oh, great. You just signed the death warrant for this whole G.o.ddam planet.''

A howl drifted through the night.

Alouzon was on her feet instantly, her sword in her hand. "Sentries."

"Hounds in the distance, my lady, but no attack yet,'' came the reply.

The howl, repeated, was joined by others. The camp started to stir: men and women struggling out of sleep, reaching for weapons, tightening armor.

Kyria spoke. "Hold, please." She hardly raised her voice, but her words cut through the night with a razor edge.

The camp fell silent. With Alouzon following, the sorceress went towards the edge of camp closest to the disturbance. The moon was full and bright, and the Vayllen fields gleamed like polished gla.s.s. Off in the distance, yellow shapes were milling, yelping, gathering into a pack.

Kyria's face was a mask of moonlight and night- shadow as she lifted her right hand. The moon appeared to flare, and the rain of its silver light turned the color of steel. The hounds' yelps and howls suddenly changed pitch, became a frantic whining, vanished. The fields were empty. The hounds were gone.

"That's ..." Alouzon was staring. Kyria stood proud and unfatigued. Her powers now came to her effortlessly. Maybe the army would indeed make it through Los Angeles. "That's pretty good."

"Such is the power with which Helwych will be comfronted," said Kyria softly. "I am not the hag, nor am I Helen, but I share some of the sympathies of both. And one who allows women and children to perish will himself die." She turned to Alouzon. "Fear not, G.o.ddess. Your people will triumph."

Alouzon paled. "I'm not a-"she started, but there was black fire in Kyria's eyes, fire of a strength and pa.s.sion that stilled the protests even of a frightened and incipient deity.

Slumped in his chair in Hall Kingsbury, surrounded by the expressionless forms of the Grayfaces, Helwych did not have to lift his head to see the wattle and daub walls about him, to examine the thatched roof above his head, to scrutinize the flagstones on the floor or the gray plastic gas-masks of the beings who guarded him. It was all there in his mind, all one with the magic that he had wrested from the Specter.

And also within his mind were the battles: the virulent conflicts that crawled across the land like so many poisonous slugs. He saw Grayface pitted against Grayface. He saw the swarming packs of hounds. He saw the Skyhawks and the F-16s spraying bullets and dropping napalm.

And he saw more coming all the while, materializing in an instant, armed and ready and looking for something to kill, forcing him to reach out, to turn their loyalties to himself, to turn them against their fellows, keep the battles raging, the defoliants falling, the bombs bursting.

He could never turn them all. At the most, expending all his strength, driving himself into a red-eyed and fevered exhaustion, he could turn half of them. He could achieve parity, he could prolong the deadly attrition.

His mind was only half on the report that Lytham was giving, for he was searching the land, feeling out its soil and its rivers, looking for something that might live, that might promise some kind of hope for the future. The coastal plains were still untouched, and Corrin appeared to have been spared; but he did not doubt that, given time, the battles would spread, would overtop the Camrann, would pa.s.s the Great Dike. And then all would be gone.

I do not want this. I never wanted this.

"My lord?"

Helwych opened his eyes. "What do you want, Captain?"

"I ... ah ... was making my report.''

"Indeed you were ..." Helwych was about to close his eyes again, but he detected a trace of dissemblance in Lytham's manner. "Was there something else, captain?"

Lytham squared his shoulders. A boy, Helwych thought, a boy in the armor of a man. Perhaps they were all little boys, then. Little boys dressing up as men, playing at power and rape and domination until the real adults returned and- "Kingsbury itself was unhurt by the bombardment," said Lytham. "Most of the sh.e.l.ls fell short and struck the Gray face positions at the base of the hill."

"Most?"

The report was a formality only, something to keep Lytham busy. Helwych already knew the extent of the damage, where the sh.e.l.ls had fallen, how many Gray-faces had been dismembered in the detonation of high explosive and spray of shrapnel. But the sense of dissemblance still clung about Lytham, and Helwych began to probe beneath the surface of his words, examining his fleeting thoughts. Mutiny was always a possibility. Betrayal was a constant threat. Relys had been only the first. Dryyim had come then, and then Kallye.

Those strangers in the town. And, before that, Relys's strange disappearance from the men's barracks. And Timbrin had never been found either . . .

Lytham swallowed nervously. Helwych watched him intently. "Those that did not fall short," said the captain, "detonated in the air. There were a few sc.r.a.pes and cuts among the refugees, no more."

"The refugees," Helwych said, "who continue to drop like summer flies in the first frost." He leaned forward, gripping the captain in his glance. "Tell me, Lytham. What do you think of that?"

"I . . ." There was fear in Lytham's eyes. "I think it is ... unfortunate."

"Unfortunate, indeed. Do you have any criticisms of my actions in this matter?''

"I ...".

"Be careful, Lytham."

"I ...".

And then Helwych saw it: Gelyya. She was crouched in the shadows at the base of the hill, silhouetted by the floodlights of the Grayface defenses.

Interesting.

"What about Kallye?"

Lytham blinked. "She was killed by a hound."

"Indeed. What of her apprentice? Where is Gelyya?"

"I . . .".

"She escaped, did she not, Lytham? She escaped with your help?" Useless, all of them. He would have been better off with Grayfaces from the beginning, and he was now sorry that he had not sent these little scrubbed boys to share the fate of Cvinthil and Dar-ham and their warriors.

"There was an attack that night, lord. She . . . might well have made her way into the countryside in the confusion."

"All by herself, too, I imagine. And perhaps someone took the trouble to show her the location of a gate." Helwych sat back. Dryyim. And now Lytham. "I want you to go and find her."

"Find her?"

Helwych grounded his staff, and the flagstone cracked beneath it. "Find her. Take ten of your men ..." Men! He almost laughed. "... and go after her.''

Lytham was plainly frightened. "But, lord, the land is-"

"Infested with Grayfaces and hounds, yes," said Helwych. "It is almost certain death to enter it. Quite correct, captain. You should have thought of that when you helped the girl escape. Now go: you leave within the hour."

"But-"

"Go!"

Weeping with fright, Lytham stumbled away and out the door. Helwych slumped back down in his chair. Had he allowed himself, he also might have wept, for as surely as Lytham faced death out in the open countryside, Helwych was beginning to believe that he himself would never leave Hall Kingsbury alive.

A boy. A little boy dressed up in the robes of a sorcerer ...

With the dawn, Alouzon led the columns along the west road. The last time she had been this way, spring had lain several weeks in the future, and the land had been tricked out in pastels and gray. But while she had been in Broceliande and Los Angeles, summer had come, and as though to spite the Worm and the Specter and the blight across the Cordillera, Vaylle had rip- ened. Barley was bearded. Wheat stood tall and kingly. Oats fluttered and laughed. Wildflowers had unrolled in a variegated carpet, and pastures glowed so green that they hurt the eye with pleasure.

Alouzon rode out from the road. About her was a fantasyland of innocence and fertility set with fairytale cities and villages as a crown might be set with jewels. Struck with the beauty, she stared openly, unabashed.

Dindrane had followed her. " 'Tis good work you do, my lady."

"Me?"

Boyish and girlish both, the priestess spoke as though uttering common fact: "You made it, did you not?"

"Yeah ..." Alouzon agreed, and she suddenly wondered how she could be so reluctant to claim such a place as her own.

Maybe it was the power. She had said it herself: I don't want power. Power kills. Or maybe it was the sense of hubris that clung to such a claim. But power did not inevitably have to kill. Power could make. Power could heal a wound, or soothe a spirit, or keep an entire planet up and running. And even the question of hubris was rendered meaningless in the end, for what she faced in the Grail was not in any way based upon pride or vainglory, but-again the simple fact-upon the absolute humility of pa.s.sionate and gentle sacrifice.

Dindrane was watching her as though witnessing a mystery as deep as that which, once, she had celebrated with Baares, conjoining cup and knife in a symbol of quintessential union. "From love can come only creation," she said.

Alouzon was still reeling. "Thanks, Dindrane. I'll remember that. I think that'll be one of those things that keeps me going until..." She groped for words, shrugged.

Dindrane bowed slightly in acknowledgement.

They reached Lake Innael in the late afternoon. The kings' instructions had been that the a.s.sembled troops should be ready to move at a moment's notice, and they were indeed prepared. Wagons were loaded, horses fed, saddles and bridles at hand. Supplies and weapons were at the peak of condition.

Alouzon, aware of the transience of the doors and unwilling to delay even a minute, ordered an immediate departure. By the time darkness was settling firmly over the plains about the lake and the first glimmerings of the door were flicking into existence, over five hundred warriors had formed into orderly columns and were waiting for the word to move out.

Of all those a.s.sembled on the sh.o.r.e save Kyria and Alouzon, the harpers and healers of Vaylle-steeped as they were in magic and the spiritual realms-were perhaps the best equipped to deal with the sights and images that lay between the Worlds. Dindrane had taken the precaution of scattering her people throughout the ranks of the warriors so that they could soothe any fears that might arise; and at her word, the harpers struck up a gentle strain that lifted even Alouzon's spirits.