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Authors: Christopher Rowley
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inquisitive dragon stares. He knew it was useless to lie, because they would sense it at once. They were uncanny that way, dragons, once they knew you, they knew you through and through, every last weakness.
"Look," he changed the subject in desperation. "I want to get some sleep. Let's talk about this tomorrow. I have to sit in that courtroom all day."
The dragons looked at each other. Tails twitched and big eyes winked. They quietly slipped out of the stall and made their way down to the exercise paddock.
Relkin lay there and tried to sleep. It wasn't easy. The noose was closing in, just as so many had predicted. More than anything he hated the thought of Dragon Leader Turrent being able to watch him hang.
Advocate Sweeb was doing his best, but he wasn't making any progress. Everything would depend on General Wegan's testimony on the next day, and that would come to little more than another character reference. The general had trusted the dragonboy. The problem remained. Without dragon testimony, he could hope for little.
His thought glanced away for a moment to his friends, far off in Marneri and beyond. Lagdalen and her baby, and Hollein Kesepton, who was in his home city for a spell of relief duty and thus could live with Lagdalen and his daughter. How would they receive the news that a certain dragonboy had been hanged for murder at Fort Dalhousie?
And further away, where ever she happened to be, what would the Grey Lady, the witch Lessis, have to say when she was told? If they even informed her, in the scale of things what did the death of one dragonboy in one fort in Kenor matter? And she was a Great Witch with power beyond measure in the empire.
It was all monstrously unfair. Death he had long ago accepted as the risk you took in his line of work. That and hideous maiming. Many dragonboys ended as beggars lacking a limb in the alleys of the ennead cities of the Argonath. He knew he risked such a future. But somehow he had just never imagined that he would die at the end of a rope. It was so ignominious. Death in battle yes, that was possible anytime. He'd envisaged his own death in a thousand ways, but being hanged in front of the regiment as an example to others had never occurred to him. His spirits sank to frigid depths and congealed there.
In this mood he eventually fell asleep and lay there snoring gently, dreaming of monstrous serpents, gods with no names left in human tongue, terrors from beyond the world. Anything but courtrooms and military tribunals.
CHAPTER EIGHT
While Relkin tossed and turned in uneasy sleep, tormented by vague terrors, there were others, far away, who would have understood his dreams only too well and who also faced the uncertain future torn by apprehension, their hearts beset by fear.
Far, far to the east, far beyond even the city of Marneri, hundreds of miles across the sea, where stretched the Isles of Cunfshon, these dream-seers, witches of the highest order of their art, and accidental friends of a dragonboy who seemed destined to hang, were gathering to present their viewpoints to the Imperial Council of the Empire of the Rose. They were aware that they approached a deadly nexus in time, a crucial sticking point, a crisis that would test the very limits of the strength of the empire. They were aware also that the majority of the council were not in agreement with them.
They met alone on the top turret of the Tower of Swallows, which dominated the land around it. Two women of indeterminate age, but vastly dissimilar appearance. The one short, slender, grey-haired and grey-robed, and seemingly utterly indistinguished, a perfectly ordinary woman of about fifty years. The other tall, beautiful, glittering in black and silver garb, her black hair pulled back and gathered behind her head in a net laced with gemstones, her costume decorated with silvered skulls of mice. And yet, while they appeared as mistress and mere servant, they were equals and both more than five hundred
"Look," he changed the subject in desperation. "I want to get some sleep. Let's talk about this tomorrow. I have to sit in that courtroom all day."
The dragons looked at each other. Tails twitched and big eyes winked. They quietly slipped out of the stall and made their way down to the exercise paddock.
Relkin lay there and tried to sleep. It wasn't easy. The noose was closing in, just as so many had predicted. More than anything he hated the thought of Dragon Leader Turrent being able to watch him hang.
Advocate Sweeb was doing his best, but he wasn't making any progress. Everything would depend on General Wegan's testimony on the next day, and that would come to little more than another character reference. The general had trusted the dragonboy. The problem remained. Without dragon testimony, he could hope for little.
His thought glanced away for a moment to his friends, far off in Marneri and beyond. Lagdalen and her baby, and Hollein Kesepton, who was in his home city for a spell of relief duty and thus could live with Lagdalen and his daughter. How would they receive the news that a certain dragonboy had been hanged for murder at Fort Dalhousie?
And further away, where ever she happened to be, what would the Grey Lady, the witch Lessis, have to say when she was told? If they even informed her, in the scale of things what did the death of one dragonboy in one fort in Kenor matter? And she was a Great Witch with power beyond measure in the empire.
It was all monstrously unfair. Death he had long ago accepted as the risk you took in his line of work. That and hideous maiming. Many dragonboys ended as beggars lacking a limb in the alleys of the ennead cities of the Argonath. He knew he risked such a future. But somehow he had just never imagined that he would die at the end of a rope. It was so ignominious. Death in battle yes, that was possible anytime. He'd envisaged his own death in a thousand ways, but being hanged in front of the regiment as an example to others had never occurred to him. His spirits sank to frigid depths and congealed there.
In this mood he eventually fell asleep and lay there snoring gently, dreaming of monstrous serpents, gods with no names left in human tongue, terrors from beyond the world. Anything but courtrooms and military tribunals.
CHAPTER EIGHT
While Relkin tossed and turned in uneasy sleep, tormented by vague terrors, there were others, far away, who would have understood his dreams only too well and who also faced the uncertain future torn by apprehension, their hearts beset by fear.
Far, far to the east, far beyond even the city of Marneri, hundreds of miles across the sea, where stretched the Isles of Cunfshon, these dream-seers, witches of the highest order of their art, and accidental friends of a dragonboy who seemed destined to hang, were gathering to present their viewpoints to the Imperial Council of the Empire of the Rose. They were aware that they approached a deadly nexus in time, a crucial sticking point, a crisis that would test the very limits of the strength of the empire. They were aware also that the majority of the council were not in agreement with them.
They met alone on the top turret of the Tower of Swallows, which dominated the land around it. Two women of indeterminate age, but vastly dissimilar appearance. The one short, slender, grey-haired and grey-robed, and seemingly utterly indistinguished, a perfectly ordinary woman of about fifty years. The other tall, beautiful, glittering in black and silver garb, her black hair pulled back and gathered behind her head in a net laced with gemstones, her costume decorated with silvered skulls of mice. And yet, while they appeared as mistress and mere servant, they were equals and both more than five hundred
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