Chapter

20

Jelindel’s opponents closed and she drew her shortsword and the parry-hilt knife. Korok was shouting for the other mercenaries, which meant Daretor would be there soon. Jelindel knew that she could not wait, and that she might be dead by the time he arrived.

The mercenaries circled warily, slowly closing in while Korok hacked at the bench frame with his sword. It must be obvious that I’m hardly more than a child, she thought frantically. Why don’t they attack?

The word of binding! They thought she was a potent Adept! They could not know that as yet she had only a rudimentary grasp of magical words.

She sheathed her parry-hilt knife and tossed her shortsword to her left hand. Holding her right hand out in front of her she spoke a snare word, timed for a hundred heartbeats. Blue traceries enmeshed her hand, and a glowing blue spike about a yard in length stood out straight like a sword. She twirled it in the air for the benefit of the mercenaries. Because the life-force of the snare word was still attached to her, she felt no further fatigue.

‘Take ’im, flank ’im right!’ barked one mercenary.

‘What is that thing?’ cried the other.

‘Flank ’im!’

‘That fire-sword thing’s too fast.’

Jelindel lunged for the wavering man, who jumped back and fell over a pile of trays and pots being unloaded from a cart. The other hesitated, then lunged also, but by now Jelindel had her back to the cart.

Sword met snare word; the blue spike wrapped itself about cold steel and detonated with a bright flash as the snare word collapsed, quenched by the steel. Jelindel had known to blink at the right moment and she chopped her shortsword into the dazzled mercenary’s knee. He toppled and Jelindel skipped clear.

The other man had circled the cart by now. Jelindel spoke a second binding word that bound his left hand to the tie-rail of the cart. She had timed it short, but its strength was too great and her knees almost jellied. She pushed the cart’s brake lever free and slapped the already terrified pony across the rump with the flat of her short-sword. It bolted, dragging cart and mercenary away through the village, off the roadway and into the fields.

Three other mercenaries appeared, with Daretor following at a distance. There was blood on his axe.

‘Jaelin!’ he called, seeing her staggering.

She held up two fingers, then pointed to the ground with them. Two down.

‘Leave me, dolts! Kill those two!’ cried Korok as the mercenaries reached him.

Three against two, but Jelindel could spend no more of her life-force on binding words if she wanted to remain standing. The newcomers had not seen her in action, and were unaware of her magical powers.

‘Mind the smaller one, ’e can do ’chantments!’ warned the man who still lay on the road clutching his knee.

Saved. The boldness went out of the three attackers. Two faced Jelindel while another turned to fight Daretor, knife and sword against knife and axe.

The sword sliced out in a descending snap, which Daretor deflected with a hilt-block of his own parry-hilt knife, but as his axe came around in a flat snap the mercenary tried the same block. It was a foolish move. He discovered that an axe weighs considerably more than a sword and the blade smashed past the knife and buried itself in his throat.

Just at that moment the word binding the mercenary to the now overturned cart collapsed and flew back across the fields to Jelindel. Suddenly strong again, she spoke the snare word onto her right hand and the glowing blue mock-sword flashed out once more.

That was enough for the two mercenaries. Flanked by a large and skilled warrior on one side and a seemingly high Adept mage on the other, they dropped their weapons and fell to their knees with their hands in the air.

Jelindel sauntered over to where Korok was still trying to chop through the piece of wood to which he was bound.

‘Korok, I’ve had a foul day and I’m in a really vile mood,’ she warned. ‘Throw that sword away and hand me the link before I lose my patience.’

He complied, suddenly meek and cringing.

‘Knew this would happen. Korok knew. Fled, but knew in Korok’s hearts that you would catch Korok.’

‘Give me the damn dragonlink!’ Jelindel shouted, swatting at him with the blue spike. He held up his sword by reflex. Word met cold steel and collapsed with a loud bang, startling Korok so much that he dropped the sword.

‘Dragonlink, yes, dragonlink, Korok has link. Very nice ring, it makes.’

He removed the dragonlink from his finger with his teeth.

‘Swallow it and I’ll cut it out of you,’ said Jelindel.

Korok placed it on the table.

Jelindel snatched it up. ‘You will stay bound for two thousand heartbeats, Korok. Cold steel cannot collapse your bindings because they exist only between you and the table’s crossbeam. By then I suspect that the mayor of this village will be very interested in learning who torched the bridge back in Serpent’s Gap.’

‘How you know that?’

‘I’m a Mage Auditor. It’s my job.’

The metal of the link continued to glow as it lay on the palm of Jelindel’s hand.

‘What are the properties of this dragonlink?’ she asked. ‘What weapons skills does it confer?’

‘You Mage Auditor, you find out.’

‘Korok! One more remark like that and you’ll find out what I know about pain.’

‘Korok not afraid to –’

The word that Jelindel spoke to enmesh his remaining hand and wrist was small and brief, but the coil was very, very tight. Korok screamed and howled with the crushing pain of the coils, batting at the blue tendrils with the stump of his other wrist until they suddenly collapsed, flashed over to dance about Jelindel’s lips, then vanished.

‘No more! Korok convinced. The care, servicing and control of thundercast – that is what dragonlink confers,’ Korok whined.

‘How did you come to have the thundercast and dragon -link?’ she asked. ‘Linkriders tend to be rather possessive about their dragonlinks, and you had this thunderbolt weapon as well.’

She took the thundercast out of her tunic and held it up.

‘One man rides into Korok’s village, very sick, very cold. Stays at inn, he does, and has much money. Comes to Korok for warm riding gauntlets, Korok makes them. Takes off ring during fitting. Man falls asleep as Korok works. Very tired. Korok thinks, “Very plain ring for very rich man”, puts on ring and learns about thundercast. Korok … finds thundercast, borrows thundercast. Hides both. Man complains, denounces Korok, but village sides with Korok, beats him and drives him out.’

‘So, he had a better reason than some mere tavern fight to melt your village into the mountainside. How did you learn about the mailshirt?’

‘Korok meets other holder of link, both links glow when close, you see. He teaches Korok about lead locket that stops glow from ring. Tells about mailshirt. Have pact. He makes Korok rich if Korok helps get mailshirt.’

‘Indeed,’ said Jelindel, shaking her head.

‘You not believe Korok?’

‘No. You have green blood, so you are not human. What were you doing as a glovemaker in a mountain village?’

‘Ah, very tragic. Korok exile. Korok speaks out against King of stars.’ He pointed up to the sky. ‘Evil King. Banishes Korok.’

‘Sensible King, I’d say. Why here?’

‘Ah. Lonely exile, all around are humans, nobody of Korok’s race. Very tragic.’

‘A whining, cringing coward,’ growled Daretor, who had come over after binding the surviving mercenaries. ‘As I expect from a linkrider.’

‘What were you writing?’ Jelindel asked Korok.

‘Chronicle of Korok’s suffering. One day Korok’s people come back, check here. Find Korok dead, but find beautiful epic of Korok the Exile. Have many copies transcribed by monks, maybe. Korok be famous.’

Jelindel put the link into the locket and pressed it shut. The glow from her mailshirt ceased at once. She searched Korok’s pack and found a dozen sheets of reed-bond paper covered with close-written but unfamiliar script. There was also another lead-lined locket, maps and some phials of coloured pills and fluids.

Korok was also found to be carrying twenty-five silver argents and fourteen gold oriels.

‘There is now the question of what to do with you,’ Daretor said as Jelindel packed Korok’s belongings away again.

Korok shrugged and spread his hands. ‘Korok poor, helpless.’

‘Korok also has his stall back at the port marketplace,’ Jelindel pointed out.

‘Korok has only one hand now.’

‘But you are alive,’ added Daretor. ‘Back down the trail I suspect that there is a burned-out bridge, and that you and your scabby friends were the last to use it. The money can pay for new beams and planks, and your labour can help build the new bridge. What do you think, Jaelin?’

‘I have a feeling that he’s lying about that other linkrider,’ said Jelindel slowly, turning the locket over in her fingers, ‘but it’s only a feeling. Yes, let him help rebuild the bridge, then go free.’

Based on what Jelindel told him, the mayor had Korok and the four surviving mercenaries riveted into chains and manacles on suspicion of burning the bridge. Riders were sent out with ropes and grapples to confirm the story, and Daretor went with them.

The village blacksmith was a stocky, blue-eyed, cheerful man with a pointy beard. He had seen the fight outside the tavern, and had shackled the prisoners in its aftermath. Jelindel showed him the link and asked if he could attach it to the mailshirt.

‘Aye, but it’s a wee bit out of my usual work,’ he replied brightly. ‘How much time d’ye have?’

‘How much time do you need?’ asked Jelindel wearily, sitting down and rubbing a bruise on her arm.

‘Well now, I’d like to practise making and joining a few links meself, but before that I’ll need to run up some finework tools fer the job.’

‘That seems like a lot of trouble –’

‘Oh no, Mage Auditor. If those rogues really did burn our bridge, then ye’ve provided us wi’ money and labour to help build a new one. We’re in your debt. Now let’s see. I’ll start on the tools today, but tomorrow’s market day, then there’s a big wedding on the day after. Fine young couple, the taverner’s son and my very own cousin.’

‘So three days, you think?’

‘Ho ho, but you’re a direct young man. Three days it is.’

Jelindel stood up and stretched. ‘I had better take rooms at the inn.’

‘Oh, and if you please Mage Auditor, you and your warrior are most welcome at the wedding.’

‘A wedding. I … would be honoured.’

Just then a boy came running in from the direction of the stables.

‘Mage Auditor!’ he gasped. ‘The man Korok’s gotten away!’

According to the mercenaries who had been chained with him, Korok had been able to dislocate the joint of his own ankle with no apparent pain, then he wriggled his foot free of the manacle. He had clubbed down the stablehand keeping guard, then dressed in his clothes and walked off leading a horse. The taverner said that Korok’s pack was missing from the shelf in his taproom.

‘Well, we still have his money, and he was too scrawny to be of much use in repairing the bridge,’ said the mayor. ‘Besides, he only had one hand.’

Jelindel rummaged around outside and found one sheet of Korok’s reedbond paper that had slipped behind one of the benches beside the wall. It had only a few lines of script on it, but she could make nothing of it at all. She sat in the sunlight for a moment, considering what to do. Daretor was away, and she had Korok’s link. Korok had been writing frantically and wearing the link when she had found him. When he had escaped he had taken only the sheets of paper.

Almost of their own volition her fingers popped open the lead-lined locket, and the link glowed faintly in the sunlight. She slipped the link onto her finger.

All at once the script became legible, yet there was very little of it, and she was seeing it out of context.

Giving up for the moment, she took out the thundercast and held it in her hand. Its touch triggered a whole series of associations and facts: settings for stun, burn, cut, blast, something called auto-sighting, feedback shield option, and password.

Password. Jelindel probed what seemed to be her own thoughts, and found that the thundercast was set to Korok’s aura, but that the password was stored within the link and available to her.

‘Reset on password JILG’MIS AK-TO-JI-7-YA,’ she said as she held the thundercast.

‘New password please?’ asked the weapon.

At hearing the weapon speak Jelindel got such a fright that she nearly dropped it. She opened her writing kit and wrote down SENGITO 7-6-F-5, then spoke the password to the thundercast.

‘Please repeat,’ it responded flatly, and she did so. ‘Confirmed. You are the new and exclusive user,’ the flat voice informed her.

Now the little studs on the thundercast made sense. She reset it to ‘cut’ and aimed at the edge of the table before squeezing the trigger bar. A piece of wood about the size of her fist fell away, leaving a charred, smoking surface behind. There had been no blast or flash of light, as there had been back in the port.

With shaking hands Jelindel copied down the settings and operating procedures for when she took the link off later. After putting the thundercast away she turned her attention back to Korok’s page of script. Probing the false memories that the link gave her revealed nothing about what it all meant: MASTER CONTROL INVOKE, NAVIGATION AUTO INVOKE, FIRE CONTROL, DEFLECTION FIELDS, DAMAGE CONTROL SUBSTRATE, SINGULARITY RESONANCE FURNACE, CLOAKING OPTION.

Jelindel wished there was someone to train her in what the thing was meant to do – and the thought TRAIN set off a whole set of link-induced memories! It was training her, just like her governess, kindermaid and tutors once had.

Jelindel sat there, aghast, as she realised what the link was telling her by means of the false memories.

The late afternoon sun was bright; there was little wind, and children played happily among the folk from the outlying farms setting up stalls for the market day. Jelindel tried to imagine it all as a bubbling lake of glowing, melted rock, but her mind recoiled from the vision.

‘Are you all right, Mage Auditor?’ asked a serving girl who had just arrived at the tavern for the evening’s work.

‘Yes, perhaps,’ replied Jelindel, barely aware of her.

‘I’ll get you a nice mug of ale from the chill cellar.’

‘Do you have limewater?’

‘Not so far into the mountains, sir, but I could make a cherrymelt for you.’

‘Yes please,’ responded Jelindel, more to get rid of her than because she was thirsty.

Daretor returned with Zimak just after sunset. The bridge had indeed been burned, and their horses were still on the other side of the chasm that Zimak had been pulled across with ropes.

Daretor was annoyed that Korok had escaped, but said that there seemed to be little harm in it. Because she had used the link, Jelindel could not tell him what she knew, or how she had found out.

All that night Jelindel sat in her room with a lamp and her writing kit, exploring the false memories from the link and growing steadily more desperate. Korok’s other weapon was overwhelming in its power, and she knew that she could barely comprehend it, let alone fight it.

The next day was the weekly market, and in spite of his bandaged ankle Zimak gave a challenge to all comers to wrestle with him for a stake of five silver argents. Much to Jelindel’s amusement, he was beaten in the first round by the blacksmith.

Daretor set off for the wrecked bridge with the prisoners. Several villagers accompanied him with a block-and-beam hoist to haul their horses across the few yards of nothingness that had replaced the bridge.

‘Jaelin, is that you?’ a familiar voice shouted.

Jelindel turned to see Kelricka running towards her, with three temple guards following close behind. The young priestess stopped two yards from Jelindel, as if she had hit an invisible wall.

‘Mage Auditor, I – I am very pleased to see you again,’ said Kelricka.

She can’t be seen to embrace a youth in front of her guards, Jelindel reminded herself, even though she was aching to throw her arms about her.

‘I’m pleased that you reached the Great Temple safely, Holy Kelricka.’

‘And are you still collecting your, ah, links, Mage Auditor?’

‘I have but one to go. What are you doing here in the mountains?’

‘A village was burned away to nothing by a real dragon. I was sent to check for myself and scribe out a report for the local high priest and the governor. I did find the ruins of such a village, and something hideous had indeed happened there.’

‘I am surprised that the Preceptor of Skelt’s governors care about the fate of mere villages,’ said Jelindel, genuinely puzzled.

‘We are in Hamaria, not Skelt. The border is a few miles further along at Serpent’s Gap.’

‘Ah, so that is why they speak both Skeltian and Hamarian here. But what are you doing on such a lonely road?’

‘I was on my way into Skelt when the Galenian Bridge was destroyed by the Baltorians, so I have come down the back roads. Now these villagers tell me that the bridge ahead is gone as well.’

‘Give it a week and the bridge will be up again,’ said the blacksmith as he joined them. ‘Meantime any friend of the Mage Auditor is a friend of ours, so ye can stay here. Mind now, ye wouldn’t be a priestess, would ye?’

‘Yes,’ replied Kelricka.

‘Ho ho, now! We have a wedding tomorrow, but no clergion to do the blessing. I can do it meself under the laws of Hamaria, as any blacksmith can officiate. Joinin’ together couples and joinin’ together metals is seen as a like skill, or so the laws say. If ye be a priestess, though, well so much the better and what a blessing for the young couple.’

That evening Daretor, Zimak and Jelindel walked some distance along the flood plain of the river. Jelindel had the thundercast with her, and she looked very unhappy.

‘I wish to stay in this village for a time,’ she announced as they gazed out across the valley that had been scoured out by a glacier many millennia ago.

‘For how long?’ asked Daretor.

‘I don’t know.’

‘What about the last link?’

‘I’m aware of the last link, but this could be even more important. This village is in terrible danger, and I could be the only one who can defend it.’

Zimak laughed. ‘Gah, Jaelin the Mighty, caster of mighty spells and protector of the weak and stupid.’

‘Next time you need protection we’ll look the other way,’ said Daretor to Zimak. ‘Jaelin, if you want us to help then you’re going to have to tell us more.’

Jelindel took out the thundercast.

‘Just as a castle gatekeep knows passwords to admit only allies and keep out enemies, so too does this thing have a password to permit its use. I have just barred Korok and authorised myself, with a new password.’

‘Gah! Prove it,’ cried Zimak.

Without hesitation Jelindel aimed at a boulder across the valley, flicked a safety catch and squeezed the firing bar. The boulder detonated with a blast that echoed up and down the valley, and a few fragments even fell into the river at the valley’s centre.

‘Impressive,’ said Zimak shakily. ‘Could you reset it so that I – er, any of us could use it?’

‘Perhaps,’ said Jelindel coldly. ‘But instructions are from a mind that has very alien paths of thought, and some of them are hard to interpret.’

‘How did you learn to do that?’ asked Daretor suspiciously. ‘You didn’t use Korok’s dragonlink, did you?’

‘No, I just talked to the weapon,’ Jelindel lied. ‘It was lonely, so it told me how to use it.’

‘What?’ gasped Daretor.

‘It’s like a hunting dog,’ Jelindel quoted in carefully rehearsed lines. ‘It’s a sort of live weapon. Korok has other weapons, though, and he might still be dangerous.’

‘It’s a bit late to tell us that,’ said Zimak.

‘How could he use his weapons with the dragonlink in our hands?’ asked Daretor.

‘Until now I thought that he might have used this very thundercast to destroy that other village, but if the tale about the dragon is true, then … Daretor, I – ah, never mind.’

‘Tell me.’

‘Those notes that he snatched from the tavern when he fled may have been instructions for operating some other weapon. He wrote them out while wearing the dragonlink so that he would have the memories back if the link were taken away by us.’

‘You can’t write down a skill,’ Daretor scoffed.

‘No, but this thundercast only needs words and the crudest of movements to operate it. You could still swing a sword when the dragonlink was first removed from your finger, but you couldn’t do it with skill.’

‘Prove it,’ Zimak challenged.

Jelindel held up the thundercast and pressed a stud.

‘Tell them what you are,’ she ordered.

‘I am a Gh’viv 57 Remote Singularity GVG,’ said the flat voice. ‘I have twenty-two settings, resonance absorption charging and –’

‘That’s enough. Note, Zimak, I am wearing no dragonlink.’

Jelindel lowered the thundercast and pressed the stud again.

‘Were I to wear the link and read what Korok wrote on that sheet of paper, I might know more,’ Jelindel suggested.

‘No!’ snapped Daretor. ‘You do not fight a thief by becoming a thief.’

Jelindel shrugged and looked out over the valley again, where the shadows were lengthening. Two shepherds were hurrying over to where the boulder had exploded, one with his pike-hook ready, the other holding up an axe.

‘The bridge will not be repaired for a week,’ Zimak said with a quaver in his voice, ‘so we have to stay here till then.’

‘If we go our own ways I want to take the mailshirt,’ Daretor said emphatically. ‘I can’t find the last link without it.’

‘Hunting alone is a good way to get killed,’ Jelindel retorted. ‘We only beat those mercenaries by fighting as a team.’

‘I killed two!’ Daretor shouted.

‘But I defeated the other four!’ Jelindel shouted back. ‘And I snared Korok long enough to take the link from him.’

Sullen silence descended again.

‘If our luck is good, Korok will be back within the week,’ Zimak suggested as he began to shiver with the chill in the air.

‘That won’t be good luck,’ said Jelindel.

‘And if not?’ asked Daretor.

‘Then go!’ snapped Jelindel. ‘Zimak, will you go with him?’

‘I – I don’t know,’ mumbled Zimak, squirming. ‘With you I could, ah, learn to read better, but, ah …’

‘But with Daretor you two would still be a fighting team. I’m weary of all this – this fighting, searching and hiding.’ She threw her arms up in frustration. ‘I have nothing else to teach you, Zimak. I simply long for a quiet life.’

‘You’ll never have that particular curse,’ Daretor said mirthlessly.

‘All right, then, consider this: you two take the mailshirt and go in search of the last link. I shall stay here and keep Korok’s link –’

‘What?’ exclaimed Daretor.

‘Shut up and listen! I shall stay here for a year. If Korok has not returned by then, I shall come after you. I can use the link to find you.’

‘I don’t like it,’ muttered Daretor. ‘It’s not safe to leave a link in this fleabag of a village with only a girl to guard it.’

Jelindel opened her mouth to reply, but recognised that anything that she said would only make things worse. She pressed her lips together instead.

‘Zimak?’ asked Daretor.

‘I … would go with you, Daretor,’ he said cautiously, ‘but I have to admit that there may be sense in what Jaelin says.’

‘She has no grounds to her fears, Zimak.’

‘Well, she just may. Korok said that he has met the other linkrider. From what he says, it must have been recently, so it could not have been any of those that we have run to earth. Might Korok also not seek him out and bring him back here to fight us? Just think, the link might come to us!’

Jelindel nodded, but was still too angry to say anything.

‘Wisely put,’ Daretor had to admit. ‘We could give him … perhaps a month.’

Zimak and Daretor stood up to go but Jelindel stayed sitting on her rock, the chunky, alien thundercast still clasped in her hand.

‘Are you coming, Jaelin?’ asked Zimak.

‘You go back, I want to have some practice at thunder -bolt archery,’ she said as she pressed another stud.

She aimed and fired. Across the valley there was a puff of smoke beside a rock but no dramatic blast this time. Damn, missed, she thought to herself, but she would not admit it to the others.

The wedding was held mid-morning the following day. Jelindel did not sleep well, and had spent much of the night searching a paraplane for any strange magical auras that might signal Korok’s return.

She was woken before dawn by the taverner next door and his son, who were rolling barrels out to the square. This disturbance was followed swiftly by the young men of the village seizing the groom and subjecting him to a cold bath right outside Jelindel’s window. After that she dozed for an hour, but then the local band arrived at the tavern to tune up and practise between tankards of ale.

Jelindel cursed whoever had built the tavern next to the inn and gave up on trying to sleep. She warmed a pot of water in the taproom fireplace, then back in her room she stripped and washed thoroughly. By the time Kelricka called in she had changed into the clean clothes from her saddlebags and was washing her hair.

Jelindel paused and listened to Kelricka arguing with the guards that it was safe and moral for her to be alone with the Mage Auditor.

‘If only they knew the truth,’ Jelindel said as Kelricka entered.

‘Even this brief meeting will be entered in Yalok’s trip log,’ grumbled Kelricka. ‘They watch me, even though I lead them.’

Jelindel began to towel her hair dry, and was surprised it was now so long when unbound.

‘One day I would like to walk about in robes again,’ she said. ‘Each day I tell myself that, but each day I put on the mailshirt and sheepskins, strap on a sword – then swing my leg over a horse and ride until my backside hurts. Every so often someone tries to kill me, and from time to time I end up killing one of my attackers.’

‘How long before the last dragonlink is found?’ asked Kelricka. ‘Do you have any clues as yet?’

‘Yes, and a strong one. I cannot say anything to anyone, but the end is very near now. The mailshirt will be complete and we may be able to render it harmless forever, but that will be at the price of tears, hate, and possibly deaths.’

‘How can you know all that?’ exclaimed the shocked Kelricka.

‘Were I free to tell you, there would be no problem. Kelricka, that pair I ride with are enough to make me scream most of the time, yet they are my only family now. We have been through so much together, risked our lives for each other, yet … I know in the deepest corners of my heart that the last dragonlink will be the end of us.’

‘I do not follow what you mean.’

‘Don’t try. It’s … almost impossible, yet I have a scheme to ensnare the last dragonlink that may leave us in harmony. But what then? How could we settle down together? Daretor has a warrior’s heart and thinks of little else but honour. His true destiny is yet to be fully realised; I somehow know this. Zimak is an errand boy and alley fighter, but he too could be much more – if he ever grows up. Much as I despair for him, I think that if he stays with Daretor he may be guided to a better path.’

‘And you?’

‘Gah. I am a scholar. I don’t fit in with all that. Besides, I’m a girl. Sooner or later one of them might look my way on some remote road and try to suggest a bit of dalliance. I would not like the idea and, well, things could get quite ugly. Zimak is shiftless, for all his good points, and I know for a fact that he would throw our friendship to the winds to cover himself. Daretor would do the same over some petty matter of honour.’ She gave a mirthless, rueful laugh. ‘While I can admire them both for what they are and can be, I can also see their flaws.’

‘Jelindel, you sound as cynical as some old courtier,’ said Kelricka, inclining her head and raising an eyebrow.

‘I’ve travelled too far and endured too much with those two in my formative years. I’m sixteen, but I feel like sixty.’

Kelricka stared at her sternly. ‘No, you’re still in your formative years.’

Jelindel laughed in spite of herself. ‘Before we reached Dremari I heard what Daretor and Zimak thought about girls in the most candid and lurid of detail. Very few girls hear what men really talk about when they are alone together.’

‘But are they typical of all men?’

‘Maybe, maybe not.’

Jelindel began combing her hair back.

‘Leave the thonging off, Jelindel, your hair is lovely without it.’

‘What? No, it has to stay bound for me to pass as … what am I playing at now? A Mage Auditor passing for a Skeltian freerover, I think.’

‘Not today. This is a wedding and you should go as what you are. Besides, remember that my guards have noticed that I like you and spend much time with you. We cannot have such rumours getting back to my superiors, can we?’

At mid-morning the village bell rang out to summon everyone to the wedding and feast. Kelricka’s guards remained outside the inn, muttering to each other and writing in their trip log.

There was a collective gasp from the tavern as the band beneath its awning caught sight of Jelindel when she emerged into the sunlight. Kelricka’s guards goggled for a moment and dropped the trip log in the dust.

With the guards and village band trailing along behind them, Jelindel and Kelricka walked out into the village square.

Kelricka had taken in the waist of Jelindel’s clean tunic to show her figure to full effect, and the Mage Auditor was wearing it over trews and newly oiled boots. Her hair was down and dancing in the wind. She wore cherry red lip-blush and green eye shade. Her wide-buckled belt was cinched tight, emphasising her figure even further – although she still wore the thundercast on her hip in a leather sheath that she had sewn.

The blacksmith Gemoti took one look at her and dropped a stoneware jar of wine, which smashed at his feet.

‘Mage Auditor!’ he cried, and everyone nearby turned to stare.

‘Yes?’ asked Jelindel. ‘What – what have – I mean, why are you dressed like that?’

‘Because I’m a girl,’ she replied demurely. ‘You said to dress in my very best, so I have.’

Jelindel turning up to the wedding as Jelindel was almost enough to upstage the bride and groom. Although she had transformed from a fairly plain youth into a stunningly pretty girl, she still walked with a pronounced swagger and had learned only the men’s dance steps in her travels since escaping Dremari. Any number of men, Gemoti included, were always there to be dancing partners and give her helpful instructions, however.

Finally the bell rang out again, and Kelricka met the bride and groom at the shrinestone steps. She read out a fairly long and elaborate version of the formal wedding ceremony, but for the villagers the presence of a real Verital priestess was an honour and blessing beyond purchase by mere coins.

After the newlyweds had kissed, the groom carried his bride to the centre of the square, set her down, and gestured to the band. They danced three jigs alone, then other married couples joined in, one by one and in the order of those most recently married.

The rest stood about clapping, then the two groups swapped roles and the unmarrieds all danced. Gemoti and Jelindel were first, followed by Zimak with a serving girl from the tavern and Daretor with Kelricka.

Kelricka’s guards stood back looking unhappy, but they wrote nothing more in their trip log. One had already torn several pages out and fed them to the fire beneath a sheep roasting on a spit.

It was the bride who first saw the approaching dragon craft, and her scream pierced the music of the band and silenced them.

The craft was moving slowly among the peaks, and a deep rumble was audible even though it was still beyond the edge of the fields.

Everyone in the village square stood in silence for a moment, then the place dissolved into bedlam. Mothers gathered up their children and men ran for their swords, axes and bows. Only Jelindel stood where she had stopped dancing.

With legs planted solidly at shoulder width, she watched the dragon craft approach. Her knees were shaking, her bowels seemed about to betray her and there was a sharp, acidic taste of fear on her tongue. Despite it all she stood her ground and slowly drew the thundercast.

With great deliberation she depressed two studs.

As the thing got closer it was obvious that it was about the size of a very large grain ship, vaguely disk shaped, but with a neck-like structure protruding from what seemed to be the front and vanes like wings from the sides. The deep rumble that emanated from it shook the very ground that they stood on. The craft stopped above the market area and hovered. Its hulking mass cut off all sunlight from the village centre.

Suddenly it made a squealing sound and one of the larger cottages exploded into burning wood, thatching and broken stones. A line of blue fire became visible in the smoke.

A patch of heat moved on to the next cottage at the end of the blue beam, leaving a trail of melted, smoking ground in its wake.