Chapter |
16 |
‘This will be quite a kingdom when the Princess is on the throne,’ Jelindel commented as they inspected their new lodgings.
‘That Princess, she’s just brimming with style,’ Zimak said as he unpacked his few possessions on a huge bed.
‘Just you keep such thoughts to yourself or her father will give you an orchidectomy,’ warned Jelindel.
‘I – what’s that?’
‘They cut off your orchids.’
‘What orchids? I don’t see – What! Oh no, they wouldn’t, they couldn’t!’ bleated Zimak, his smile collapsing with dismay. ‘I’m a loyal citizen of Skelt.’
‘You’re also a fugitive from Skelt travelling on false border papers,’ Daretor pointed out. ‘Keep your hands to yourself and behave. And use those Hamarian phrases I have been teaching you. Use them whenever you can. It’s best not to advertise where we are from, for there are bounty gleaners about.’
The Adept 9 soon arrived and conjured guard spells for their doors and windows. Jelindel argued that she could do it herself, but he was adamant that the job was his.
That night Jelindel made a very detailed inspection of every stone, panel and plank in her room, and was gratified to find two narrow access ways. Even though they smelled musty and long disused, she jammed both shut, then added guard spells. As was her usual practice, she pushed at the bed but found it fixed to the floor.
When she lay down, it was on the floor beside an inner wall.
Slipping onto the paraplane of magical auras, Jelindel was surprised to find the linkrider almost at once, and apparently close to the aura of the physician. If it was indeed within the palace this potentially made the job of finding it easier, but that of obtaining it harder, given the palace protection. The sinister grey globes were nowhere to be seen, but a single bright sparkle of brilliant blue abruptly popped out of a snarl of domains in the mass of auras and spells that was the city. It flew high and unprotected, making for some domain that was so distant that Jelindel could not see it.
A scatter of larger predators flapped after it on billowing streamers of wings, but the bright entity was far faster than they, and had the advantage of surprise. Jelindel was curious as to its nature, but not sufficiently so to follow it.
That very night a strange bird arrived at the homing coops of the Preceptor in Tol. The communicard picked what appeared to be a black pigeon from the outer roost, only to have it crumble to dust in his hands.
Badly frightened, he took the thin brass case that had been on the bird’s leg and rushed to the Preceptor’s study. The Preceptor was reading by lamplight, bare-chested and swatting at mosquitoes with a whisk of angelwing birds’ feathers.
‘Heat and mosquitoes are no respecters of position and power,’ said the Preceptor, looking up with a gloomy expression on his face. ‘What do you want?’
‘This – this just arrived!’ blurted the communicard. ‘A, a thing brought it, not a bird.’
The Preceptor’s expression immediately hardened, his eyes becoming sharp and intense. He held out his hand for the capsule, examined it, then broke the minute seal on the sleeve. Within was a roll of reedbond tissue, and on that was script in black squid ink.
Longrical is dead. Assemble your militia for war games between the edge of Dragonfrost and the Marisa River. Mobilise the peasant reserve and declare it to be just training. Prepare to invade Passendof.
The Preceptor touched the tissue to a lamp flame and it vanished in a puff of brightness.
‘How many Altimak birds do you have?’ the Preceptor asked his communicard.
‘Twelve, Preceptor.’
‘Then arrange an accident. Have all twelve escape, is that clear?’
‘Yes Preceptor, but, but about that bird that brought the message. It just crumbled to dust –’
‘It was just a test of an enchanted carrier. It worked very well. One must keep up with the latest trends in communications, do you not agree?’
‘Yes, but –’
‘Go! Carry out my orders and tell nobody about that bird under pain of death. Understand?’
‘Yes, Preceptor.’
Far to the east, in Passendof, the deaths of the crown prince and court Adept were announced some days later. They were pronounced to have been from an accident during a particularly danger ous experiment in the alchemorium. The city of Dremari was plunged into a half-month of official mourning.
The funeral was held at the end of the fortnight, and was as lavish as befitted such an ornate, rich and magnifi -cent city. The two coffins were carried on black war elephants wearing full battle armour, and even the King and Princess were together in the cortege.
Nobility from all over the mountain kingdom flocked into Dremari to pay their respects, and all foreign ambassadors, envoys and visiting nobles were there in formal robes and wearing black sashes of mourning. One was the ambassador from Skelt, who was wearing both his King’s coat of arms and that of the Preceptor. Jelindel shivered as he went past, but he paid her no attention.
The linkrider continued to elude her, although she frequently noted his nearness as she combed the city from her paraplane perspective.
Daretor kept Zimak busy in the inner city, enquiring after anyone wearing a glowing orange ring. It also kept Zimak at a safe distance from the Princess.
With the funeral over and the palace returning to normal again, Jelindel decided to pay a visit to her two assistants while away from their lavish quarters. The guard spells that the Adept 9 had left on the doors had an option invoked that was suspiciously like a sound well, and Jelindel was nervous about speaking her mind there.
The Muleteer’s Arms was a large and rowdy tavern at the edge of the market. The alehall held upwards of two hundred drinkers and was full as Jelindel entered. Predictably, Zimak was conducting an exhibition bout of barefist against all comers. Daretor sat patiently to one side, minding the youth’s tunic, shortswords and purse.
‘Has fortune attended your searches?’ Jelindel asked as they sat watching Zimak fighting someone twice his weight.
‘We could be closing in. One of the loafers was seen to wear a glowing ring on the first night that we arrived.’
‘Good. His name?’
‘Charapax Brinkle. He works in the palace gardens sometimes, shovelling lion turds and suchlike. Nobody seems to know him very well. He was alarmed at the glow from his ring, and vanished for about a week.’
‘The gardens. So, he has access to the palace.’
‘Do you think the linkrider is also a lindrak assassin?’
‘The dragonlink was not near when I saw the Prince murdered from the paraplane, but time and space are very different there so who knows?’
‘The Princess makes me wonder,’ Daretor speculated. ‘She shows remarkably little sorrow for her dead brother, and that is not an honourable attitude. She gained most by his death, because she is next in line for the throne.’
‘A heavy show of grief could also be seen as suspicious,’ Jelindel suggested. ‘Do you have a description of the linkrider?’
‘He is perhaps twenty-five years of age, and of a build like mine, apparently. He has a short beard and hair a little deeper blond than Zimak.’
‘Why, only this evening but that was the first time in a week. He was not wearing the link, according to my informant.’
‘He might have it in his pouch, or be wearing it on a toe inside his boot. Is your informant still here?’
Daretor indicated a potbellied carter with a shaven head and a silver ring through the bridge of his nose. A year ago Jelindel would have fled in terror at the very sight of him. Now she just went straight up to him without a thought and paid two silver coins to talk with him about Charapax Brinkle.
Within a quarter hour she had sketched a good likeness of Brinkle and noted down as much as anyone probably knew about the man.
The sun was down by the time she set off for the palace, leaving Daretor to watch over Zimak. Jelindel was nervous, because only every third street lantern was burning as a sign of respect for the dead Prince, and the streets were unfamiliar and dark.
After a year on her own, Jelindel had learned to tell when she was being followed. There were two of them now, taking turns to be here and there as she passed. She knew their build, their height, their outlines after a few minutes. They knew that she was aware of them and she realised that she was being herded to wherever they wanted her.
Jelindel had her own alley skills as well. Turning a corner she immediately dropped to her haunches amid the shadows and drew her cape up over her head.
Footsteps approached, passed, receded, then pattered back and passed again. She waited for several minutes to be satisfied that they were really gone. When there was no further sound Jelindel straightened against the wall. As she stepped out into the street again she suddenly noticed fading patches of blackness on the cobblestones. Lindraks! They could walk in silence by evoking the enchantment which changed sound into black patches. They might be closer than – suddenly something glided into view!
Jelindel panicked. She said a word of binding and spat blue ribbons that snared the lindrak’s legs and arms. Immediately her own legs buckled and she cursed herself for having flung too much of her life-force at the man. Where was the other lindrak?
The bound lindrak began a twittering, cheeping alarm call. Jelindel drew her shortsword, but her arm felt as if it were clothed in woven lead.
The other lindrak appeared in the distance. Jelindel backed against a wall, trying to present the smallest profile possible.
The lindrak began spinning something that glittered in the light from Blanchemoon’s crescent. He twittered as he approached and the bound lindrak cheeped softly in reply. Twenty steps away, ten, five, four –
Something streaked past Jelindel with a rolling growl and leaped straight at the advancing lindrak. The lindrak went down under the sheer weight of muscle and bone. A glittering cord tangled about one leg of the huge, wolfish thing that buried its muzzle in the lindrak’s throat. The lindrak’s knife flashed in his hand but before he could stab the beast, it lifted him from the ground and snapped his neck with a mighty twist of its head. After a moment it turned to regard Jelindel. Two huge dagger-fangs hung down from the wolfish snout: a sabre-toothed wolf.
As Jelindel watched in morbid fascination the sabretoothed wolf slowly went limp and toppled over. She clumsily sheathed her sword and crawled over to its body. The weighted cord around its right forelimb was lined with barbs glistening with something wet and acrid smelling.
Jelindel was wearing gloves, and she untangled the cord from the huge beast. Suddenly the blue coils released the bound lindrak and shot back to enmesh Jelindel’s head as they poured strength back into her body.
The lindrak lithely sprang to his feet and flung another weighted cord at her, but she caught it on her arm … an arm covered by chainmail beneath the sheepskin coat. She stood for a moment, feeling the points that pressed against her skin without actually piercing it, then she calmly spoke a lesser word of binding that ensnared the lindrak’s legs without draining her so very badly.
The lindrak chattered a litany of sounds. The alley brightened as his whole body began crackling with violet fire. The coils binding his legs began to disperse and waft in the gentle breeze.
Jelindel drew her shortsword with a prayer to whatever gods might be listening. The lindrak swept towards her.
Jelindel was never really sure what happened next, but her impression was that the sabre-toothed wolf revived sufficiently to seize the lindrak’s leg in its jaws as he passed. Jelindel joined in, and there was a desperate melee of blades, teeth and claws, slashing flesh and scraping across chainmail.
When Jelindel awoke she was lying on her back with a roll of soft cloth beneath her head and a female face just above hers lit by yellow torchlight. The headpiece that she wore was that of a priestess of the Temple of Verity.
‘The lindraks,’ croaked Jelindel.
‘Both dead,’ said the priestess soothingly. ‘I do not know who trained you, Mage Auditor, but they should be proud of their good work. I have never even heard of anyone killing a lindrak before.’
‘There was a sabre-toothed wolf,’ said Jelindel, looking about. ‘It – it seemed to help me.’
‘I saw no wolf. My name is Kelricka – ah, what are you doing?’
‘I have to warn –’ began Jelindel, but the world spun around her as she tried to get up.
‘Let me help, my Lord Adept,’ said Kelricka. ‘Ah, is that the correct way to address a Mage Auditor?’
‘Yes, yes.’
‘I did not even know that our order had such an office as Mage Auditor,’ Kelricka began.
‘Please, help me to walk,’ Jelindel hastily cut in. ‘I must get to my friends and warn the Palace.’
Kelricka helped Jelindel to stand, then ordered two of her guards to take the dead lindraks to the city watch-house while another went with her and Jelindel.
The alehall of the Muleteer’s Arms fell silent as Jelindel entered. She had not realised what a spectacle she presented, being streaked with blood and grime, and supported by a Verital priestess dressed in gold and crimson robes.
‘Which of you are the Mage Auditor’s men?’ shouted Kelricka.
A purseguard came forward, anxiously wringing his big, meaty hands.
‘A man came in here and said the Mage Auditor had just killed two lindraks, but was wounded and needed their help.’
‘I – damn!’ exclaimed Jelindel hoarsely. ‘Was he about twenty-five, with deep blond hair and a short beard?’
‘Aye.’
‘Damn – your pardon Holy Kelricka. Please, could you help me to the Palace? I would not ask unless this was most desperate.’
‘My duty and pleasure, gracious Mage Auditor.’
The palace was undisturbed when they arrived, but the physician came running to Jelindel’s room as soon as he heard the news. By then Jelindel was in a trance and scanning the paraplane’s lights. Only her ears registered the flurry of talk and explanations going on around her body.
She quickly found three grey globes in the process of degrading a guard spell of considerable strength. Just then the voices of Daretor and Zimak joined the others.
‘The King,’ Jelindel said, working her jaw and tongue from the remote paraplane. ‘Three lindraks are attacking him.’
Footsteps pattered down flagstones into the distance as Jelindel returned to her own body. Only Kelricka and her guard remained in the room as she opened her eyes and sat up.
‘Stay here!’ ordered Jelindel as she stumbled out into the corridor, but the Verital priestess and her guard came after her anyway.
At the entrance to the royal suite’s wing there were palace guards battling other palace guards, and the lepon was shaking something black like a ragdoll, apparently trying to break its neck.
Zimak had cornered a lindrak and was fighting the lithe, shadow-like warrior with what appeared to be two broken table legs chained together, while Daretor was using twin axes to hold back three palace guards from the door to the Princess’s chambers.
Jelindel made for the King’s chambers. The door was locked. Kelricka’s guard ran at it, but bounced back from the heavy panels without effect.
Jelindel went around to the upper cloisters and looked across to the windows of the King’s chambers. A rope hung ready by the light of Reculemoon.
Leadlight glass suddenly burst outwards, and the shadows in the window seemed to deepen for a moment. Jelindel spoke her word of binding just as a figure leaped. Her blue coils pinned his arms before he could seize the rope, and the cry he gave as he fell was more one of baffled rage than terror. It was cut short by a dull and ominously final thud.
By now the other lindrak and traitorous guards were dead, and Jelindel shouted to Daretor and Zimak to run down to the little stone courtyard while she stumbled along behind, exhausted and supported by Kelricka. Behind them some guards were using a table to break open the doors to the King’s chambers while the lepon stood guard before those of the Princess Royal. Daretor and Zimak were standing over the lindrak’s body as Jelindel arrived.
Just then there was a distant crash as the doors to the King’s suite gave way, followed by a howl of anguish a moment later when the guards found the monarch to be dead. This was followed by the shrieking of the Princess Royal as she learned the news.
‘There is one more assassin to be found, but to me he appears to be an Adept trying to disguise his aura as a lindrak,’ Jelindel panted as she got her breath back.
‘This lindrak’s still alive, but he’s going to croak as surely as a bullfrog in love,’ said Zimak, nudging the ink-black shape with his toe.
Jelindel bent over the lindrak, whose face was painted with charblack, and bleeding from his fall. For all that, there was something familiar about the face.
‘Hullo … little sister,’ whispered the dying youth.
‘Lutiar!’ Jelindel gasped.
‘Jaelin, what does he mean?’ exclaimed Zimak.
‘Jelindel … she is …’ Jelindel’s brother rasped painfully.
Jelindel stood back. The room seemed to reel in crazy circles. Indecision tore at her. He was part of her that had been inexplicably snatched away. But now … here he was. Lutiar. Flashbacks snapped before her eyes like lightning. Lutiar laughing; Lutiar scaling the east wall and falling, fracturing his elbow; Lutiar being praised by their father for deciphering a particularly hard code; Lutiar … sly Lutiar, over-ambitious Lutiar, lying, social-climbing Lutiar.
The surprise faded from Jelindel’s face, to be replaced by hate and contempt as she hastily assembled a handful of facts to draw one horrifying conclusion.
‘Jelindel?’ gasped Kelricka. ‘As in Jelindel dek Mediesar?’
‘You’re a girl?’ exclaimed Zimak.
‘So, this is how the lindraks got past the guard spells and bullhounds of our father’s mansion,’ Jelindel said, looming over her dying brother’s face. ‘You let them in!’
‘That afternoon, ’guised as some of my student friends,’ he admitted, fighting for each shallow, wheezing breath.
‘So they ate with us even though there was murder in their hearts!’ An image of R’mel flashed before her. No wonder he had been so intent on joining the court dance. It was an almost obligatory dance for any banquet attendee, single or not; the one time in the evening when everyone would be in the dining room. The moment to strike.
‘Lutiar … was there so much hatred in you? … You had everything!’
‘Pah. Second son of … a count. Nothing son. I was stronger, a better Adept, more worthy than … damn eldest. Aye, I let the lindraks in … but then I abandoned them, joined the deadmoon warriors. Deadmoons, they take … only the best, bravest. Proved I was … best, bravest.’
‘Brave enough to murder and burn your own family?’ Jelindel cried, nearly hysterical with rage and loathing. But he was her brother! How could his accumulated hatred have manifested itself like this? She strode away from his crumpled body, then turned abruptly and paced back to him. ‘Answer me, damn you!’
‘Brave … brave enough to kill a king,’ her brother whispered.
‘Stupid enough to miss the Princess Royal, and to miss me.’ She felt the helplessness of life itself. What a waste of a human being.
He began a low, gurgling laugh, but it quickly became a bloody splutter. ‘Glory … glory to the Preceptor … great teacher. He will unify –’ He coughed, and blood dribbled down from the side of his mouth.
‘You’re a girl?’ Zimak said again. ‘No wonder you never pissed with Daretor and me – and what the hell is a deadmoon warrior?’
‘So it was you in the D’loom temple four months ago,’ said Kelricka. ‘Students and priestesses swore that they saw you alive, yet the gate guards thought they fought a boy who matched their martial skills. Word spread that it was a shapeshifter, because the real Jelindel could never have fought like that.’
‘Six months living as a boy in the market taught me a great deal, Holy Kelricka,’ Jelindel said wearily.
‘This secret must remain between us here,’ Daretor warned.
Lutiar coughed more blood, and gasped sibilantly as he fought for breath. He looked to Jelindel and his lips moved, but he did not have the breath for words.
‘He bleeds inside and drowns in his own blood,’ Kelricka said.
‘He has nothing more to say that would interest me,’ said Jelindel, tears coursing down her cheeks. She made to stand up but could not.
‘But he’s your brother,’ said Zimak.
‘A brother who was evil enough to murder his own family.’ Her voice was a monotone.
Daretor bent over to examine Lutiar. ‘His pulse has ceased,’ he reported.
Jelindel turned away and was violently sick on the cobblestones, retching over and over again between sobs of dismay and anger. Most of all she resented the shame that Lutiar had brought upon herself and their family. At least he did not live to see me throwing up, she thought as she sat back on the cobblestones, the early warning signs of a bad headache behind her left eye and her stomach was racked with cramps.
Kelricka ordered her guard to fetch water, then knelt beside Jelindel and drew her close.
‘Mind your robes, holy mistress,’ Jelindel croaked. ‘I’m a mess.’
‘Shush, Jelindel, you have done enough and it’s time that others looked after you.’
‘No, I’ve one last duty,’ she replied with her eyes closed. ‘Daretor, take your axe and strike off Lutiar’s head. He may be feigning death by some lindrak trick.’
‘Jelindel?’ Kelricka said, shocked. ‘He’s of your own blood!’
Jelindel clenched her eyes shut against the pain. ‘And in my memory he shall always be!’ she said forcibly. ‘But he cut those mortal ties when he … turned.’
‘He called himself a deadmoon,’ Kelricka pointed out as Daretor drew his axe again. She shook her head, silently pleading for more time with Jelindel. ‘Was he really a Skeltian lindrak?’
‘There are dozens of names for the lindraks; what is one more?’ said Jelindel, who was uninterested in arguing. ‘They look like lindraks, they fight like lindraks and they twitter like lindraks so they are lindraks! Come now, Daretor, make sure he’s dead,’ she said with finality.
The full consequences of Skeltian lindraks murdering the Passendof King were swift and terrible. All known Skeltian subjects from the ambassador to stallholders in the market were ordered to be seized and executed within a handful of days.
Daretor could speak Hamarian fluently, and Jelindel could speak eleven languages, but Zimak knew little Hamarian and was inclined to use the Skelt tongue in public without thinking. Thus it was that Daretor spent much of his spare time teaching him basic words and phrases in Hamarian, but they knew that anyone who exchanged more than a few phrases with the blond, wiry youth would know him for a subject of the enemy.
Being the new monarch, the Princess formally declared war on Skelt, but there was little that a landlocked kingdom with no common border with Skelt could do aside from closing down all trade and slaughtering every Skeltian subject within reach. Some courtier soon remembered that a Skeltian enclave existed right on the very border at Chasmgyle. It was in the free trade and movement zone on Baltorian land, but the Marisa River treaty stated that ‘All persons doing business with either Baltorian or Skeltian merchants should have free and unimpeded access’. The Princess Royal decided that revenge was included in the word ‘business’, and despatched three hundred of her elite royal lancers to destroy the Skeltian enclave.
Jelindel continued to work in the library of the palace Adept, taking notes in her fine, small script. She made frequent trips to the library of the local Temple of Verity as well, and it was on one of these trips that Kelricka invited her to use their baths.
After not having gone fully naked for more than a year, Jelindel felt intensely vulnerable as she lowered herself into the warm water of the creamy stone tub. Kelricka was already in the next tub, with soapsuds spilling out onto the salmon-pink tiles.
Two neophytes took Jelindel’s clothes away to be laundered, while another unbound and washed her hair. In the year since she had cut it the new growth had it down past her shoulders again.
‘I have waited a full year for this bath,’ Jelindel said as soon as the neophytes were gone. ‘Sometimes I wondered if I would ever again have one.’
‘You have led an incredible life in that year, Jelindel. Who would ever imagine a girl of sixteen surviving while disguised as a youth, killing lindraks, even learning magic to … well you must be at least Adept 9 magic – and without a master!’
Jelindel thought before answering. It was transparent that Kelricka doubted her Mage Auditor status. ‘Most of that was luck.’
‘Luck is no more than being alert for the right opportunities.’
‘Luck is also having a fairly thin figure – so far.’
Kelricka settled further into her suds and warm water and closed her eyes while Jelindel inspected some of the scars and scratches that she had collected.
Neophytes who were actually older than Jelindel brought in pitchers of warm water and poured them into the tubs so that both overflowed. One whispered to Kelricka before they left again.
‘I caught something about clothing,’ said Jelindel.
‘No secret is safe from you, Jelindel,’ Kelricka laughed. ‘Your clothes have been washed and are being dried on the thermocal’s stone pipes. Measurements have been taken as well, and a new set is being made in the same style, but of more durable and pleasing fabric.’
‘Oh. Ah, my thanks. I – this was not necessary.’
‘Of course it was. Tomorrow is the coronation of the Princess Royal, and you have to look your best.’
‘Yes, and the Adept 11 will be back tomorrow morning, so that I shall be free to go.’
‘Indeed? I shall soon be going as well, to the Great Temple in Arcadia. I leave this afternoon, so I shall miss the coronation. I am taking the aqueduct boat to where the waterway system joins up with the South Caravan Road at Headport. Will you be going by the South Caravan Road, too? We could travel together if you were to overtake me.’
‘If fortune allows it, why not?’
The priestess gestured with a suds-shrouded hand to the rack where Jelindel’s mailshirt was hanging.
‘That is very old,’ she said. ‘It is also from beyond our world.’
‘From one of the paraworlds?’ asked Jelindel.
The priestess shook her head slowly, then extended an index finger to point straight up through the skylight in the roof.
‘One thousand years ago there was a great war in the firmament, yet it had little effect on our world. There were moving lights in the sky, flashes and sparkles, and then something celestial fell and hit a Hamarian river. It left a flooded crater a league in diameter. A body descended as well, hitting the ground very hard. It was wearing that mailshirt.
‘Soon after that, mysterious strangers arrived in search of the body, but the Hamarian prince of the time had burned it by then. His mage-advisors had counselled him that it had fallen from the heavens, and so it should be returned to the heavens as smoke.
‘The strangers had swords of lightning and rode black chariot-birds, according to the chronicles that survive from that time. They were shown the ashes from the pyre, and they removed some metal amulets and devices that had been unharmed by the flames.’
‘And the mailshirt?’ asked Jelindel.
‘They asked about the mailshirt, but the first man to reach the body was a poor carter. He knew that a fine suit of chainmail was worth more than a lifetime of his earnings, so he took it from the body before anyone else arrived. The strangers eventually left, and the carter tried to sell the mailshirt to a local warlord. The warlord had him killed and took the mailshirt anyway. The trouble was that it gave him such strange visions that he soon grew too afraid to wear it.’
‘Visions. It would have been complete then. What sorts of visions, I wonder?’
‘The obscure texts say no more than what I have told you. After a few decades the warlord’s grandson’s armourer began using links from the mailshirt to repair other suits of mail, and it was found that the individual links and the main body of mailshirt glowed when they were near to each other.’
‘Perhaps it was a simple mechanism to allow lost links to be recovered,’ Jelindel suggested.
‘Quite probably it was just that. Nobles began wearing them as rings, and very soon it was discovered that the links could draw the fighting skills out of one wearer and bestow them onto the next.
‘Several dozen links were removed thus, but they caused such chaos and mayhem that the famous mage Gri-Lagric sealed the remains of the mailshirt in a lead casket and formed the order of the White Lancers. Each of their leaders wore a link on a thong around his neck, and by the glow of the links they managed to hunt down twenty of the scattered dragonlinks.’
‘I have read a little about Gri-Lagric,’ said Jelindel. ‘He bled green when he died by the knife of an assassin. Perhaps he came from the sky but went about disguised as one of us. Perhaps Thull was another of the sky people as well … but if they are so powerful, why do they not descend from the sky at the head of legions of green-blooded warriors riding chariot birds and wielding swords of lightning?’
‘I do not know. However, there have been green-blooded warriors searching here for years in secret, I’m sure of that. You see, if the rightful heir to the mailshirt is a celestial king then he could take it by force from the warrior who finds it, tossing him a mere bag of gold if he were feeling generous. My feeling is that the complete mailshirt is worth more than a thousand bags of gold.’
‘Why?’
‘Why, oh yes, why? Nobody from this world knows that question’s answer.’
Jelindel struggled with a thought before she spoke it. ‘If this chainmail has been around for a thousand years … well, I think it odd that the sky people have taken so long to locate it.’
Kelricka smiled. ‘Very clever. My own idea is that time moves at different speeds in some paraworlds.’ She pursed her lips in thought. ‘The life span of an insect might be several days of our time, yet for the insect it would seem a hundred years. These green-blooded beings might outlive us as we outlive insects. A year of their time could be a hundred of ours.’
‘What an unusual idea,’ Jelindel said wonderingly. ‘Yet now that I think of it, I have met some … beings who said that time in their paraworld runs slower than in our world.’
Kelricka sighed contentedly and slid further into the scented water. ‘Once the old church discovered the links’ potency, they declared them holy relics. The current owners, vain men all, were easily tracked down by their mighty deeds. It has been documented in certain texts that mention of the links was punishable by death.’
‘Praise the unknown gods that such chronicles were not lost during the Great Cultural Purge last century.’ The thought churned Jelindel’s stomach. ‘So many learned people – entire cities – sacked and laid waste.’
‘The Forbidden Library was also razed. Fortunately its administrator at that time had had a premonition. She relocated many priceless tomes. Even so, much knowledge was lost.’ Kelricka rang a bell chime. ‘It’s getting cold.’ She paused in indecision. Then her mind made up, she said, ‘Let your quest take you to the seaport of Centravian, Jelindel. Ask me no more on this matter. I have just broken a vow.’
Jelindel returned to the palace with her new clothing after promising Kelricka to be at the aqueduct dock in the mid-afternoon. She had insisted on bidding farewell to the priestess.
Beneath Jelindel’s sheepskin coat the mailshirt was again glowing with the nearness of the other link. As she sat reading in the court mage’s library, the physician arrived in search of her. Protective enchantments were required for the next day’s coronation, so the two of them went to the Princess Royal’s chambers and applied their work to the garments and regalia for the ceremony.
After an hour the physician was past the edge of his skills and quite exhausted. He left Jelindel to finish the work while he went to fetch them some lunch.
All the while the lepon was stretched out on a wide stone windowsill, watching Jelindel speak delicate traceries of pink fire into the royal crown.
‘Where is the link, Charapax Brinkle?’ Jelindel asked without turning her head.
The lepon growled deeply and tensed its muscles.
‘That would be a stunningly stupid idea, Charapax. I have powers that you could not dream of, and a sealed note resides in a safe place explaining everything. If I should not return from this chamber that note will become very, very public.’
Jelindel turned to face the lepon now, and saw its throat seeming to shimmer as if crawling with burnished copper ants. It slipped fluidly from the window and sat facing her.
‘What do you want?’
The sound was like Zimak speaking into an empty tankard to make a deeper voice.
‘So then, shapeshifting is considered to be a weapon,’ said Jelindel. ‘Where did you get the link?’
‘I clean turds from the palace beastarium. One day watch great sabre-toothed wolf die, very old. I like, feed him for years, I tell him my sorrows and hopes. He change to man as I watch. Naked man, but wear little ring. He hold up ring and say, “Live better as beast, my friend. Take this.” He die. I wear ring, learn shapeshift. Learn ten shapes. Princess like lepon best, make lepon favourite.’
‘So the sabre-toothed wolf was you?’ Jelindel asked.
‘That me. You seemed like ally. I need your help to protect mistress. How did you know about me?’
‘The scent of the paralysis oil on the lindrak’s cord which entangled you betrayed it as one specific to humans only. I know the scent well from my time in the D’loom marketplace, for it is used by physicians to stop the struggles of patients who need teeth extracted. Thus a sabre-toothed wolf that toppled under its influence had to be a human with a sabre-toothed wolf’s form. That could only happen with a human changeling.’
‘You clever, very clever.’
‘I must have the link, you know. It is a dragonlink, something very dangerous.’
‘If you want expose me, you do it already. Why not?’ ‘I want the dragonlink. I have no interest in you.’
He growled, but it was a spiritless imitation of menace.
‘Without link I am carrier of turd pails. Nothing man. As royal lepon I have caresses from Princess. I have more of Princess than even fancy boy lovers. Fancy boy lovers die. Princess sets pet lepon on them in morning. Very nasty for them. Very tasty for me. Taste like pork. Princess always loyal friend to lepon, she tells all secrets to lepon.’
‘Why not give me the dragonlink and remain a lepon,’ Jelindel suggested.
The thought had obviously not crossed the shapeshifter’s mind. He sat pondering for a time, then got up and padded over to her.
‘Back outer toe, feel carefully,’ he said, holding up a back paw.
There was a fearsome claw, a rough pad of skin, and something hard and circular with fur glued to it. The link came away after some careful manipulation, and a glow spilled out from the inner surface. Jelindel dropped it into her pouch.
‘Good fortune be with you,’ Jelindel said as the lepon turned and sat facing her again.
‘Princess tell me secrets,’ he said. ‘Princess has fancy for your blond guard. On night of crowning she has mind to bed him, then … I have live breakfast in morning. Lovers tell no tales.’
‘Indeed,’ Jelindel said slowly, unsure if what she was feeling was fear, anger or jealousy.
‘She has made tryst with him for night after crowning. You save him, yes? You friend of him.’
‘“Friend” is putting it a little strongly, but thank you.’ Jelindel stood up, her legs unsteady.
‘Mage Auditor, I have many more secrets, terrible secrets but I love my princess. For all what she does terrible things, I forgive her.’
‘Say no more, lepon. If I should learn too much I might become dangerous.’
The physician returned with a servant carrying their lunch on a tray, and they finished their work as they ate. Jelindel tossed a chicken drumstick to the lepon, who snapped it out of the air.
‘It trusts you,’ said the physician in amazement.
‘It recognises me as another of the Princess’s guards. It’s an understanding between equals. The Princess is still his mistress.’
‘Maybe so, but you still have a way with animals, Mage Auditor,’ declared the physician.
‘I ought to, after travelling with two for over a year,’ Jelindel replied with a wry smile.