“I only feared that you would go without bidding me goodbye,” she lied.
“Not goodbye,” Luthien corrected. “Just a kiss and a plea from me that you keep yourself safe until I can return to your side in this, the domain of Queen Deanna Wellworth.”
His optimism touched Katerin, mostly because she realized that Luthien only half-believed that he had any chance of getting back to her. Still, she could not tell him to stay. She kissed him, and bit back the word “Goodbye,” before it could escape her lips.
Then the gallant pair were off, Riverdancer as powerful in flight as he had been in the gallop, climbing high above the embattled city, noting the progress of their allies. Then Carlisle was far behind them, and the fields of Avon rolled along far beneath them.
The Saltwash was waiting.
30
The Dragon King
A gray and hazy morning greeted the companions as the great pegasus set down on a patch of soft and mossy turf. They had flown throughout the afternoon and the night, straight to the east, but had not caught sight of the speeding dragon.
Luthien’s fears were obvious: what if Greensparrow had not really gone to the Saltwash, but had merely flown out from Carlisle to rest before resuming the battle?
Brind’Amour would hear nothing of that disturbing talk. “Greensparrow knows that all is lost,” he explained. “He revealed himself openly in his true and wretched form, and the Avon populace will never accept him as king. No, the beast went home, into the swamp.”
As comforting as the wizard’s confidence was, Luthien understood that filtering through Greensparrow’s home in search of the runaway wizard would not be an easy thing. The Saltwash was a vast and legendary marsh, its name known well even in Eriador. It covered some fifteen thousand square miles in southeastern Avon. On its eastern end, it was often unclear where the marsh ended and the Dorsal Sea began, and on the west, where Luthien now stood, the place was deep and dark, filled with crawling dangers and bottomless bogs.
Luthien did not want to go in there, and the thought of entering the swamp in search of a dragon was almost too much for the young man to bear.
Brind’Amour was determined, though. “Take your rest now,” he bade Luthien. “I have spells with which to locate the dragon king, and I will strengthen the enchantment on Riverdancer. We will find Greensparrow before the sun has set.”
“And what then?” the young Bedwyr wanted to know.
Brind’Amour leaned back against the winged horse, trying to find a reasonable response. “I did not want you to come,” he offered quietly at length. “I do not know that you will be of much help to me against the likes of Greensparrow, and do not know that I can defeat the dragon king.”
“Then why are we here, just we two?” Luthien asked. “Why are we not in Carlisle, finishing the task, helping Deanna assume her rightful throne?”
Brind’Amour didn’t appreciate the young man’s sharp tone. “The task will not be finished until Greensparrow is finished,” he replied.
“You just said—” Luthien started to protest.
“That I may not have the power to defeat the dragon king,” Brind’Amour finished for him, the old wizard’s eyes flashing dangerously. “A fair admission. But at the very least, I can hurt the beast, and badly. No, my young friend, it cannot be finished in Carlisle until the true source of Avon’s fall is dealt with. We could have defeated the cyclopian garrison, and roused support for Deanna—no doubt that is happening even as we stand here talking—but what then? If we packed up our soldiers and marched back to Eriador, would Deanna truly be safe with Greensparrow lurking, waiting, only a few score miles to the east?”
Luthien had run out of arguments.
“I will go into the swamp later this day,” Brind’Amour finished. “Perhaps it would be better if you waited here, or even if you took the road back to the west.”
“I go with you,” Luthien said without hesitation. He thought of everything he had to lose after he had spoken the words. He thought of Oliver and Siobhan, his dear friends, of Ethan and the possibilities that they might live as brothers once more, and most of all, he thought of Katerin. How he missed her now! How he longed for her warmth in this cold and dreary place! All the good thoughts of how his life might be when this was ended did nothing to change the young Bedwyr’s mind, though. “We have been in this together since the beginning,” he said, laying a hand on the old wizard’s shoulder. “Since you rescued Oliver and me off the road, since you sent me into the lair of Balthazar to retrieve your staff and gave to me the crimson cape.”
“Since you started the revolution in Montfort,” Brind’Amour added.
“Caer MacDonald,” Luthien corrected with a grin.
“And since you slew Duke Morkney,” Brind’Amour went on.
“And now we will finish it,” Luthien said firmly. “Together.”
They rested in silence for only a couple of hours, their adrenaline, even Riverdancer’s, simply too great for them to sit still. Then they walked cautiously into the swamp. Brind’Amour hummed a low resonating tone, sending it off into the moss-strewn shadows, then listening for its echoes, sounds that might be tainted by the presence of a powerful magical force.
The Saltwash quickly closed in behind them, swallowing them and stealing the light of day.
Luthien felt the mud seeping over the tops of his boots, heard the hissing protests of the swamp creatures all about him, felt the sting of gnats. To his left, the brown water rippled and some large creature slipped under the water before he could identify it.
The young Bedwyr focused straight ahead, on Brind’Amour’s back, and tried not to think about it.
The fighting in Carlisle had continued through the night. There were no recognizable lines of defense in the city anymore, just pockets of stubborn defenders holding their ground to the last. Most of these were cyclopians, and they continued to fight mainly because they knew that the Avon populace would show them little mercy after twenty years of cyclopian brutality. The one-eyes had been Greensparrow’s elite police, the executioners and tax collectors, and now, with the king revealed as a dragon, and long gone from the city, the cyclopians would serve as scapegoats for all the misery that Greensparrow had brought.
Not that all the citizens of Carlisle had taken up the cause of the returning queen. Far from it. Most had taken to their homes, wanting only to stay out of the way, and though many had surrendered and even offered to fight alongside the Eriadorans, more than a few continued their resistance, particularly in the southern sections of Carlisle against the fierce Huegoths.
To Oliver, Siobhan, and Katerin, and many others who had come from Caer MacDonald, it seemed a replay of the revolt in Montfort, only on a much grander scale. The trio had witnessed this same type of building-to-building fighting, and though they had been split apart from each other during the night, they understood the inevitable outcome and where it would lead. Thus Oliver was not surprised when he galloped Threadbare through the main doors of Carlisle Abbey to find Siobhan and Katerin, each leading their respective groups of soldiers, already inside, battling the one-eyes from pew to pew. The slanting rays of morning cut through the dimly lit cathedral, filtering through the many breaks in the wall of the semicircular apse, where the tower had crumbled.
“So glad that you decided to join in!” Katerin called to the halfling as he cantered past her, his pony thundering down the center aisle of the nave.
Oliver pulled Threadbare up short, the pony skidding many feet on the smooth stone floor. “We cannot let them have the cathedral,” he said, echoing the reasoning that had brought Katerin in here, and Siobhan, and many others. It was true enough; in all of Carlisle, as in every major Avonsea city, there was no more defensible place than the cathedral. If the cyclopians were allowed to retreat within Carlisle Abbey in force, it might be weeks before the invaders could roust them, and even then, only at great cost.