“I have never seen anything so—so beautiful,” Crob said. “I believe the rusty lock you removed to free Camlach was ready to break. But this ...”
“It is evil,” Maug said standing up stiffly. “Her tricks have brought nothing but evil.”
“Hush,” Politha said. “A newly named Oldwife must get used to her new powers.”
Camlach stood and faced Maug but said nothing. Maug sneered and sat down. Marwen had not intended to use her magic this way, with tricks and illusion, and in a way it had not even been her spell. There had been some other force at work, some power that had sensed her own and had touched and embellished and magnified it. It was not a force of good.
“I felt almost as if the eyes of the dragon could see me, as if it were seeking me,” she said staring at the fire.
“I know what the dragon seeks,” Camlach said. “He has sent messages by way of many a horrified survivor. He seeks the wizard, but all say he seeks in vain.”
“Because there is no wizard.” Crob said.
Maug said, “Aye.”
Camlach glared at Maug. “So said my people of dragons.”
Maug snorted, and then there was silence.
Crob left off his shoemaking and joined them by the fire, shivering. “If the wizard lives would he let his people die by this dragon? Only one thing to vanquish this great evil, and that is a well-placed arrow.”
The wind buffeted against the house with a force like the beat of great wings and screamed in the doorjambs and the chimney.
Politha groped with her hand for Crob. “This storm ...” she whispered.
Everyone listened. Maug’s head was bent back, staring up at the ceiling. His mouth gaped open, his body tensed as if he were about to run. A brief white light blinked in the chinks of the walls and the heavens cracked and thundered from end to end. The shutters burst open again, and the wind swooped in with a roar.
“One Mother save us,” Politha said. Maug leaped up. His knees were bent and his hands fisted and he looked wildly from the ceiling to Marwen and back again, his face flickering red and black in the firelight.
“It is not a storm but the dragon’s firestorm,” Maug said between gritted teeth. “I’ve heard it before.”
Marwen breathed deeply. There was the smell of wet burning straw bricks and the cry of an infant on the wind.
Crob stood to close the shutters. The rain lashed at the sheets of leather and the wind blew the fire out. Crob stuck his head out the window.
“There is fire—in the town below,” he cried.
“Perdoneg!” said Maug. “She’s brought ’im. The witch brought ’im.”
“Hold your tongue,” Camlach said to Maug.
Marwen felt the ground roll beneath her. She clutched at Politha. The wind whined, then whipped into a wail. Politha’s blind eyes shone white as the room was lit by another seam of lightning, but Marwen couldn’t hear the thunder. Above the thunder came the crashing of a great voice on the wind, a voice like the sound of a mountain crumbling.
“Listen!” Camlach shouted. Marwen listened. All the hair on her arms stood on end. The great voice was almost as indiscernable as the rumble of rain and thunder, but as she listened she thought she heard the words, “Nimroth ... Nimroth ...”
Maug grimaced and put his hands over his ears.
Crob and Camlach raced out of doors. Marwen ran after them. From all the houses men were running, their eyes lifted to the low dark sky, their hands white around sword hilts and bows. In the walled city below, black clouds of smoke billowed in the rain. Marwen could see no fire.
“There!” Camlach shouted above the shriek of the wind. He pointed upward. There was a fierce joy in his voice. “There is a sight that will make all other dreams die: Perdoneg!” His arms dropped, and he stood smiling savagely up at the clouds, his chest heaving.
At first Marwen could see nothing but the clouds rolling and steaming over the gray hills. Then she saw flames streak like sunlight to the west, and a moment later she made out the black shadowed shape of a creature whose great wings sucked and beat at the wind, and caused the clouds to wheel.
“Nimroth ...”
Camlach threw his arm around Marwen. She stopped looking at the clouds to look at him, but his eyes were fixed on the sky. “That is the wizard’s name,” he said. He laughed and gestured rudely to the sky. “I knew it already, Perdoneg. But he is not here!” His arm fell to his side, and the other arm dropped from around Marwen’s shoulders, but still he looked up. “Nimroth is not here,” he said.
Then the rain poured down in dense cold streams, and Marwen could scarcely see Camlach. The sky lightened faintly as they ran into the house, and norwind died away to windeven. Marwen did not look up. She knew the dragon was gone.
Chapter Ten
Intelligence is the stem and stalk upon which agency blooms, the brilliant flower or life.
Maug was hunkered on the floor before the dying fire, Politha was stroking his arm and whispering a spell of calming. Camlach pushed past Maug, ignoring him. He pulled off his wet overshirt and began coaxing the fire back to life.
“So. I was not wrong. I followed what I thought was the trail of the wizard to Kebblewok, and if Perdoneg himself came here, then the trail I followed is the right one.”
“Camlach, tell me what you know of the wizard,” Marwen said. She knelt beside him on the hearth.
The wind was blowing less violently now, more plaintively, and the rain was falling like a whispered song. Marwen waited for Camlach to speak, listening to the wind in the chimney. She did not repeat herself, she knew he had heard. She had waited all her life for this, it seemed; she surely could wait these moments more. She reminded herself that if nightmares could come true, so could dreams. When he did speak, there was a nobility in his voice that caused Marwen to see him as if for the first time.
“I went to the old people first. Many would not speak to me. But after some days, I learned from the elders of a man whose name is Nimroth”—Marwen watched his lips carefully as they formed the word—“or thus he called himself in the foothills of the Verduman mountains where he lived. Folk of the heights claim he was studious and spent much of his time alone in his books. They say he became expert in the history of the tapestry and its meaning. When he first came to dwell with the mountain people, he loved to sing and recite poetry, but as time went on, he hinted at finding dangerous things, and one day he disappeared. I think this man is the wizard.”
Marwen thought nothing, said nothing. She could hear each drop of rain falling on the straw roof. She counted each drop of rain that fell through the chimney onto the fire, watched it sizzle and smoke. Finally she looked at Maug. His upper lip was drawn back, and his right eyelid drooped almost shut, and she was afraid of him.
If it were true ... but it could not be.
It could not be.
“But where is he?” Politha asked. “A wizard would know that you cannot run away from a dragon. Besides, he would have left an heir. It is, by legend, the most important task of the wizard.”
Camlach nodded. “Yes. No wizard would die without leaving his heir. But perhaps the wizard is not dead. Or if he is, the heir is unknown. This we know—that the heir does not dwell in the Verduman mountains. And this was my quest, to find the wizard or his heir. I have followed his trail to Kebblewok, speaking to old ones, believers, people to whom he revealed himself, but I can go no farther. I intend now to return to Verduma to seek the wizard’s house and find what help I can there. They say the dragon sleeps around a lonely house near the mountains and allows no one to enter. They even say it is a magical house that the dragon cannot destroy. Some have died trying to get into it. I believe it is the wizard’s house.”