The Dragon Waiting Page 3

No one; no one at all.

  Without another word, he went to his bed, sat down on it and pulled off his boots, and toppled over asleep.

  Serpents coiled around Hywel, tightening around his arms and legs, trying to drag him down and crush the life from him.

  There was a sword in his hand; a white sword that shone in the enveloping darkness. The snakes drew their fanged heads back from the light, an instant before Hywel severed those heads with a stroke.

  Chop, swish, and his left foot was free; slash, his right. Short strokes, as at a kidney for pie, and bits of snake fell wriggling from his left arm. But still they hung on his sword arm, squeezing the blood out, scales scraping the flesh.

  Light sparked from a dagger hilt at Hywel's belt. He drew it with his left hand. His right arm was a writhing mass of knotted green. He put in the knife and skinned them off like skinning a hare, not even creasing his bare arm beneath.

  There was a tug at his neck. The largest snake yet, a green and black monster yards long, had wrapped itself around Hywel's throat. The sleek head came around, staring with black eyes into Hywel's, showing fangs like curved daggers. A drop of venom, red as blood and boiling, fell from each fang.

  Hywel brought up sword and knife at once, catching the serpent's head where the steels crossed. The coil tightened. Hywel felt his eyes bulge, his air stop. He levered the two blades. Smoking blood ran down to his hands and burned them. The snake's half-severed head turned sidewise, flicked its two-pointed tongue to brush Hywel's lips.

  A bone cracked and the head flew off. Its body spasmed, crushing Hywel's throat, and he thought they would die together—then he dropped the blades and pulled at the suddenly limp coils, and was free—

  Hywel awoke soaked with cold sweat. His arms were flung out on the bed; they moved, but slowly, without strength. He put a hand to his crotch; no, not that. He felt as if he had been swimming, buoyed by the water until his muscles had forgotten how to work....

  As he had felt after the magic.

  He tried to get up, and could not, and was afraid; the harder he tried, the less he did, the more afraid he became. He had seen horses ridden to death: sodden with foam, on the ground trembling and heaving, beautiful horses turned in one heedless ride to grunting dying things with something terrible in their eyes.

  Somehow he tugged his boots on, got to his feet. The world floated and spun and screamed in his ears.

  Some of the lights and noise, he knew after a moment, were real: torches and the shouts of soldiers in the innyard.

  Dafydd came in, in shirt and hose, carrying a fish-oil lamp that guttered and stank. "You are here," he said unevenly. "Well, then, that's something."

  "What...?"

  "The wizard's gone. Broke loose somehow." Dafydd looked Hywel up and down, and his voice fell. "Did you free him?"

  "No," Hywel said, and as he spoke knew that he had lied.

  Dafydd nodded. "No, of course. I'm sorry, son. I've been—"

  Afraid, Hywel thought.

  "Your uncle Owain was..." Dafydd did not finish that sentence either. He wiped his free hand on his shirttail and walked out.

  Hywel waited, listening for the innkeeper's steps to die away. Then he began stuffing his pouch with things from his keep-box. He put on his best cloak and went, softly, softly, down to the innyard.

  The serjeant was shouting, trying to form his men and decide on a pattern of search. Lanterns bobbed and metal shone yellowly. The men stamped and breathed fog in the chill night air. Hywel pulled his cloak around himself and sidled past unseen.

  He was not certain himself how to find Ptolemy. Up to the mountains, or down to the river, or along the roads, hiding at the roadside when anyone passed? He held very still.

  Along the valley, he thought, to Aberconwy and the sea. A ship, however I can, but a ship out of this vile country—

  Hywel blinked; it was not his thought, though it had been in his head.

  "Like the light from a candle," Hywel said silently, and swallowed a burst of giggles. He knew this part of Dyffryn Conwy better than any English soldiers. And he would find Ptolemy. He would follow the talent.

  Hywel was cold very soon. His wet clothes were icy and stiff, and every breeze froze him again. The ground he had been so sure of was another country by night, the moonshadows black consuming voids. He had no lantern, no fire. Only Ptolemy's candle-light.

  If he was very calm, and thought very hard, it seemed he could see it as a light, dancing slowly above the bushes and stones ahead. Fairy fire, Hywel thought, and then very clearly thought that he followed fairy fire, and when he returned, years would have gone by; everyone he knew here would be long dead. But he would come back a wizard.

  He was sorry that he would never see Nansi and Dafydd, Dai and Glynis and Annie, ever again. He put a hand on his bulging pouch, and was sorry he could not have taken more things with him; the tin plate that Sion Mawr had stamped with Hywel's name, the woolen sweater and scarf Annie had made him when Nansi taught her to knit—lopsided but warm; he wanted them very much just now. The innyard dog would have been good company, worthless old hound that he was.

  But you had to give things up. Like the offerings you put on the altar, when you wanted Ogmius to help with your letters or Esus to bless the wood you cut: you could not have those back again. If you cheated the gods they would hate you, and curse you forever.

  And in all the stories, wizards and heroes had to be—had to be—Shriven. That was the word. Hywel thanked Ogmius for it. Then he stopped, took Meredydd ap Owain's glass marble from his pouch. He made a hole in the ground with his thumb, dropped in the marble, covered it over. Hywel was certain the offering was proper, remembering the story of the Greek who talked with a mouthful of marbles.

  The light, or voice, or whatever it was he was following, was growing stronger. Kallian Ptolemy seemed to have stopped moving. The wizard might have fallen, been hurt. Hywel didn't know what he would do in that event, unless Ptolemy's magic could heal. Surely it could; old village women could do that much! And maybe— though he hardly dared think it—maybe Ptolemy had paused to let Hywel catch up.

  "Yes," said Ptolemy's voice, right out loud and just ahead, "I am waiting. Hurry along, Hywel ap Owain."

  Startled by the voice, and the name Ptolemy had called him, Hywel scrambled on, to a small cleft in the hillside. There, against a rock, sat Ptolemy in moonlight.

  "Did you bring me late supper, boy?" Ptolemy said. He spoke Cymric, for the first time.

  Hywel came close, knelt. "Please, sir...I came to follow you. To Constantine's City, if you go there. To be your student."

  "That's absurd," Ptolemy said flatly.

  "My lord sir," said Hywel, trying to be defiant and respectful at once, "you said I could be a wizard. I wish to be."

  "Why? Because the life attracts you? The romance, the adventure? The chains and the filthy straw, and the soldiers' spit in your face?" Ptolemy looked at the ground, shook his head. "They do not worship Thoth in Ireland; perhaps he does not go there. He deserted me, certainly." The wizard stared at Hywel, his face half-lit. "I went there for the purposes of the Empire. But I ate their food, and drank their whiskey, and lived in their houses, and slept with any number of their women... and then one day I found I was fighting their war. In time I cared for those... barbarians... so much that I actually ceased to do any magics that might injure them... which meant, any magics at all And soon enough the English soldiers put the iron on me. You don't understand a word of what I'm saying, do you, boy?"

  Hywel crawled closer. "I set you free, my lord Ptolemy."

  "I had my fill of that phrase in Ireland," Ptolemy said. "If you ever reach Byzantium, do not as you value—oh, whatever you call freedom—let them hear you say that.... To free someone, you see, is the ultimate human act. And in the City they know the difference between actors and directors. It is the Empire's heart and brain, that difference. This country is full of actors, I know very well; and did one of them move to aid me, any more th
an Thoth whom I worshiped?"

  "Bezants like you...here, my lord sir?" Hywel thought about what Dafydd had said, about Glyn Dwr and the Byzantines.

  "Why, this is Britain, isn't it, and not a part of Byzantium? So of course they're here, to change that. As I was in Ireland, until I was no longer of use to my directors."

  "If you won't teach me, sir, at least take me to the City with you. I set you free—"

  "Of course there's no use," Ptolemy said wearily. "You aren't enough aware that you have a soul to understand a threat to it. And if you were, you still couldn't leave the power alone. I wonder if there's any power any human can leave alone. Old Claudius tried to refuse godhood, and failed...."

  Ptolemy rested his head in his hands for just a moment. "Ah, there's no use. If I'd changed in Ireland, I'd never even have called you. Just let them throw me in the sea, and blessed them as I sank. And that crude bowman was right; you're a tempting boy. Come here, novice."

  Hywel got up. Ptolemy stood as he approached. The wizard's face went wholly into shadow as he turned and put a hand around the back of Hywel's neck. He spoke in clear and perfect Cymric.

  "Will you, Hywel Peredur ap Owain, swear by every god you honor and fear that you will concentrate upon the lessons I give you, that you will take the meaning of each lesson fully, forgetting it never?"

  "I swear," Hywel said, hearing himself very shrill.

  Ptolemy's voice went cold and dead. "Then here is your lesson in the nature of sorcery, and wizards, and the truth about every magic that is done."

  The grip on Hywel's neck tightened painfully. Hywel tried to turn, but could not move at all. The end of Ptolemy's forefinger glowed in the darkness, red and hot as a poker in the fire. Hywel's eyes went wide, and he was as helpless to close them as in a dream.

  The burning finger pierced his eye, hissing like a snake when it strikes.

  Chapter Two

  GAUL

  IMITRIOS Ducas was ten years old when the Emperor of Byzantium made Dimi's father the governor of a province on the frontier. The day was carved into Dimi's memory forever: the clear sunlight outside the family villa, the hlueness of the Aegean below, breeze scented by sea and olive groves.

  His father had let him touch the Imperial order, and he remembered the authority and weight of the paper, the red wax seal on a ribbon of purple silk. The seal smelled of cinnamon, and showed the Emperor with a big nose and tiny eyes (though perhaps the wax had not properly filled the seal) and the Year of the City: 1135.

  There was another seal, much smaller, in golden wax, imprinted with a three-pointed thing Dimi's father said was the flower of Gaul, and the inscription: 300th Year of Partition

  Most of all Dimitrios remembered his parents. His father Cosmas stood in the slanting light of the atrium, his casual gown worn loose, looking like Apollo. "I am to be a strategos in the West. It is an honor. The province is an important one; the eastern part of the old Provincia Lugudunensis, which the Gauls call Burgundy. Our capital"—he looked straight at Dimi—"will be Alesia."

  If Cosmas Ducas was Apollo, then Dimi's mother Iphigenia was surely Hera. "Gaul? How can you call that an honor, when you know very well what it is? The Paleologi Emperors are still afraid of the Ducai; to steal the Throne of the World from our line was never enough for them. Now they're purging their righteous fears, by purging us—sending us to die of cold and isolation. If we're not murdered by trousered barbarians, or stricken with a plague...We're being sent away, never to return!"

  "If that is my Emperor's order," Cosmas said.

  "Emperor? Usurper! You are more an Emperor than he—you, Ducas...."

  The argument went on for a long time; Dimitrios recalled it as lasting hours, though perhaps his memory stretched that. Alesia, he had thought, Julius Caesar....

  And in the end, both Cosmas and Iphigenia were proven right, in their ways. The family Ducas went to Gaul; and no one bearing that name ever returned to Greece.

  Dimitrios was first over the hill. He shot a glance back, making sure the others could not see him, then bent his head on his horse's neck and talked her to a canter.

  There are times when you must use the spurs, son, Cosmas Ducas said, but remember, you lead with your voice and your body, not the metal.

  Dimi was well down the valley before his companions topped the rise; he heard their shouts, their horses' protests, then finally the rumble of hooves far behind. He laughed and whispered to white Luna beneath him, "We'll feed them a little dust before supper, won't we, girl."

  To either side of him, endless ranks of green vines on wooden arbors flashed past. The smallholders were out, wooden-shod, broad- brimmed hats shading their faces. A few bowed as the Governor's son rode by, dazzling in his armor of bright steel scales.

  Dimi heard another horse, closer behind than it should have been. He looked back; a dapple gray was gaining on him. The rider had streaming black hair and a grin visible across the distance.

  Dimitrios laughed and waved. Charles, of course. Only Charles could have come so close to catching him.

  "But no closer, eh, Luna," Dimi said. "The gallop, now, girl."

  Luna responded, swift as a white cloud across the wide blue sky.

  The dirt road met the Imperial road just ahead. "Enough, Luna." Dimi knew better than to drive a horse too hard, and he also knew better than to gallop down an Imperial road, scattering the common traffic, without a very good reason.

  Luna slowed to a walk just as her hooves hit the paving stones. Then Dimi heard hoofbeats to his left and rear, and turned in the saddle.

  Charles bore down on him, standing in the stirrups. Dimi shouted, Luna stepped sidewise; the Frenchman brought his horse around at an amazingly acute angle. Then he leaped.

  Dimitrios let himself be taken down, and the two of them rolled in the dust at the roadside. As Charles tried to pin his shoulders, Dimi got a toe hooked behind Charles's knee, put out his other leg for leverage, and flipped them both over; he put his knee on Charles's chest and drew his thumbnail swiftly across the other youth's throat.

  Charles panted, then laughed. "Ave, Caesar," he said, "morituri salutandum."

  "You're already dead," Dimi said, and then he was laughing too. He stood, pulling Charles up with him, and they knocked dust from each other's clothing as their horses looked on.

  The others, all of them boys of Dimi's age, rode up shortly: tall thin Robert, noisy Jean-Luc, and quiet Leon; the Remy twins, dissimilar as twins could be—Alain, hairy and bearish, and Michel, small and acrobatic as a circus dwarf. They wore linen shirts and leather vests like Charles's, and sashes of purple silk Dimitrios had filched from his mother's sewing; they were his Praetorians, his cohors equitata. "Who won?" Jean asked, in French. "If not for Dimi's armor, we couldn't have told you apart at all."

  "And it was all dusty," Robert added.

  Charles said "The race, I won."

  "Like a Cantabrian!" they all shouted, Dimi as well.

  "The fight, Dimitrios won."

  "Like a Caesar!"

  Charles and Dimi remounted, and the cohort rode up the Imperial road to town, through the Ozerain valley. Ahead of them rose the Plateau d'Alise, thirteen hundred feet high, the lesser hills around it faded in the summer haze. Sun flashed from the heliostat atop the plateau, new Empire built on the site of old Empire's triumph. For this was Alesia, where Vercingetorix had stood for the last time against the divine Julius. To Dimi's left was Mont Rea, where Julius had himself ridden to the relief of his cohorts, his bodyguard behind him... just as Dimitrios rode now.

  They reached the town wall, slowing their horses to a walk at the gate. The men at the gate wore bronze dress armor and scarlet cloaks, and carried gilded spears with eagles as cross guards; they saluted the Governor's son, and he and his fellows drew up straight in their saddles, trooping by.

  They passed trim houses of wood and whitewashed clay, sloped roofs shingled with wood, or tile, or even lead, for Alesia prospered; the two wealthiest vintners in
town and the Jewish banker were rebuilding in stone from Narbo to the south—Lyon, as the French called it. The streets were broad enough for two carts to pass without crowding a pedestrian to each side, and had gutters that drained down to vaulted sewers underground. There were smells of cooking, and sawdust and stone dust, and now of sweating horses, but none of the latrine stinks of the little provincial villages.

  Smoke rose in white feathers from pottery chimneys. Along the roof peaks were set barrels and troughs of water, an idea of one of Cosmas Ducas's engineers. Should a fire start, and burn through the roof, the water would fall on the blaze and drown it. The tests with models were disappointing, but someone pointed out that the little house was more rapidly consumed by flame than a real one, and the model barrel contained vastly less water—the cube root of its dimension. After the engineer had proposed the construction and burning of a real house, the Governor let him put his barrels on the rooftops of consenting citizens, to wait for empirical proof.

  Jean-Luc reined in as the party passed his house. "Ave atque vale," he said, and the others hailed him farewell. One by one—two, counting the Remys—they separated, until at the base of the Mont- Alise slope, the gates to the Governor's Palace, only Dimitrios and Charles were left.

  "I know we passed your house," Dimi said, trying to sound careless.

  "I want you to ask your father," Charles said. "I want you to ask him today, Dimi."

  "Why today? December's half a year off...."

  "Don't you want to ask him?" Charles was not laughing now, nor even smiling.

  "Of course." What I don't want, Dimi thought, is to hear him say no; and until I ask him, he can't say no. He looked up at the sun, and prayed directly that his fear did not show. "Come with me, then."

  "What? No, I—I'll see you tomorrow." And Charles clucked to his dappled horse, turned, and rode off down the street at an unlawful speed.

  Then Dimitrios knew that his friend was just as afraid as he was, and somehow that made everything—even the refusal itself—all right in Dimi's mind. He rode through the palace gates, to find his father.