4
The courier kept his dragon under tight rein. Given its head, the small riding dragon could swiftly outfly the larger battle dragon. But the courier did not dare fly unescorted. Elven corsairs often lurked in the clouds, waiting to snap up lone human dragonriders. And so the going was slow. But at length the torches of Ke’lith vanished behind them. The craggy peaks of Witheril soon obscured the smoke rising from the bier of the province’s fallen lord.
The courier kept his dragon flying near the tail of the nightrae—the battle dragon. It was a sleek black wedge, cutting through night’s gray gloom. The King’s Own, strapped into their harnesses, were so many black lumps upon the nightrae’s back.
The dragons flew over the small village of Hynox, visible only because its squat, square dwellings showed up plainly. Then they passed over Dandrak’s shore and headed out into deepsky. The courier glanced up and down, this way and that, like a man who has not flown much before—an odd thing in a supposed king’s messenger. He could see two of the three Wayward Isles, he thought. Hanastai and Bindistai showed up clearly. Even in deepsky, it was not truly dark—as dark as legend held night had been in the ancient world before the Sundering.
Elven astronomers wrote that there were three Lords of Night. And though the superstitious believed that these were giant men who conveniently spread their flowing cloaks over Arianus to give the people rest, the educated knew that the Lords of Night were really islands of coralite floating far above them, moving in an orbit that took them, every twelve hours, between Arianus and the sun.
Beneath these isles were the High Realm, purportedly where lived the mysteriarchs, powerful human wizards who had traveled there in voluntary exile. Beneath the High Realm was the firmament or day’s stars. No one knew precisely what the firmament was. Many—and not just the superstitious—believed it to be a band of diamonds and other precious jewels floating in the sky. Thus, legends of the fabulous wealth of the mysteriarchs, who had supposedly passed through the firmament, evolved. There had been many attempts made by both elves and humans to fly up to the firmament and discover its secrets, but those who tried it never returned. The air was said to be so cold it would freeze blood.
Several times during the flight, the courier turned his head and glanced back at his companion, curious to note the reactions of a man who had been snatched from beneath the falling ax. The courier was doomed to disappointment if he thought he would see any sign of relief or elation or triumph. Grim, impassive, the assassin’s face gave away nothing of the thoughts behind its mask. Here was a face that could watch a man die as coolly as another might watch a man eat and drink. The face was, at the moment, turned away from the courier. Hugh was intently studying the route of their flight, a fact that the courier noticed with some uneasiness. Perhaps sensing his thoughts, Hugh raised his head and fixed his eyes upon the courier.
The courier had gained nothing from his inspection of Hugh. Hugh, however, appeared to gain a great deal from the courier. The narrowed eyes seemed to peel back skin and carve away bone, and might have, in a moment, laid bare whatever secrets were kept within the courier’s brain, had not the young man shifted his eyes to his dragon’s spiky mane. The courier did not look back at Hugh again.
It must have been coincidence, but when the courier noted Hugh’s interest in their flying route, a blanket of fog immediately began to drift over and obscure the land. They were flying high and fast and there was not much to see beneath the shadows cast by the Lords of Night. But coralite gives off a faint bluish light, causing stands of forests to show up black against the silvery radiance of the ground. Landmarks were easy to locate. Castles or fortresses made of coralite that have not been covered over with a paste of crushed granite gleam softly. Towns, with their shining ribbons of coralite streets, show up easily from the air.
During the war, when marauding elven airships were in the skies, the people covered their streets with straw and rushes. But there was no war upon the Volkaran Isles now. The majority of humans who dwelt there thought fondly that this was due to their prowess in battle, the fear they had generated among the elflords.
The courier, considering this, shook his head in disgust at their ignorance. A few humans in the realm knew the truth—among them King Stephen and Queen Anne. The elves of Aristagon were ignoring Volkaran and Uylandia because they had much bigger problems to deal with at the moment—a rebellion among their own people.
When that rebellion was firmly and ruthlessly crushed, the elves would turn their attention to the kingdom of the humans—the barbaric beasts who had stirred up this rebellion in the first place. Stephen knew that this time the elves would not be content with conquering and occupying. This time they would rid themselves of the human pollution in their world once and forever. Stephen was quietly and swiftly setting up his pieces on the great gameboard, preparing for the final bitter contest.
The man sitting behind the courier didn’t know it, but he was to be one of those pieces.
When the fog appeared, the assassin, with an inward shrug, immediately gave up attempting to ascertain where they were going. Being a ship’s captain himself, he had flown most of the airlanes throughout the isles and beyond. They had been taking a negative rydai[3], traveling in the general direction of Kurinandistai. And then the fog had come and he could see nothing. Hugh knew the mist had not sprung up by chance, and it only confirmed what he had begun to suspect—that this young “courier” was no ordinary royal flunky. The Hand relaxed and let the fog float through his mind. Speculating about the future did no good. Not likely to be much better than the present, the future could hardly be worse. Hugh had done all he could to prepare for it; he had his bone-handled, rune-marked dagger—slipped to him at the last moment by Gareth—tucked into his belt. Hunching his bare, lacerated shoulders deep into the thick fur cape, Hugh concentrated on nothing more urgent than keeping warm.
He did, however, take a certain grim delight in noting that the courier seemed to find the fog a nuisance. It slowed their flight and he was continually having to dip down into clear patches that would suddenly swirl up before them, to see where they were. At one point it appeared that he had managed to get them lost. The courier held the dragon steady in the air, the creature fanning its wings to keep them hovering in the sky in response to the rider’s command. Hugh could feel the courier’s body tense, note the darting, shifting glances cast at various objects on the ground. It seemed, from muttered words spoken to himself, that they had flown too far in one direction. Altering course, the courier turned the dragon’s head and they were once again flying through the mist. The courier cast an irritated glance at Hugh, as much as to say that this was his fault.
Early in his life, primarily for his own survival, Hugh had taught himself to be alert to all that happened around him. Now, in his fortieth cycle, such precaution was instinctive, a sixth sense. He knew the instant there was a shift in the wind, a rise or dip in the temperature. Though he had no timekeeping device, he could tell within a minute or two how much time had elapsed from one given period to another. His hearing was sharp, his eyes sharper. He possessed an unerring sense of direction. There were few parts of the Volkaran Isles or the continent of Uylandia that he hadn’t traveled. Adventures in his youth had taken him to distant (and unpleasant) parts of the larger world of Arianus. Not given to boasting, which was a waste of breath—only a man who cannot conquer his deficiencies feels the need to convince the world he has none—Hugh had always been confident in his own mind that, set him down where you would, he could within a matter of moments tell where upon Arianus he stood.
3
Navigational term used in the Tribus Standard. The center for all navigation is the Imperial Palace in Tribus, from which—since early days when the races were at peace—all navigational readings are referenced. A negative rydai refers to moving closer to the current position of Tribus, while a positive rydai refers to heading in the opposite direction.