'It's a shame these people can't get the benefit of all the eloquence of an Aldabreshin warlord.' Velindre switched her gaze to Naldeth. 'We might be able to persuade these wild mages to surrender, short of killing them, if we stifle their magic. If we can drive the dragons away, there'll be no aura for them to draw on.'
'But how do we drive off dragons?' Naldeth shook his head. 'We should take this to Hadrumal and lay it before the Council. We've done all we can.'
'I still don't fancy my chances of working any spell over that distance,' Velindre told him with some chagrin. 'I'm definitely not about to try any translocation and I don't know what would happen if I tried a bespeaking. The fire
dragon that attacked Chazen insinuated itself into my magic and looked right back through my spell at me when I was scrying for Dev once, before I ever came to the Archipelago. That black dragon could well do something similar.'
'Then what are we going to do?' Naldeth cried, exasperated.
'We try using nexus magic to drive off the dragons,' Velindre said promptly.
Naldeth gaped at her. 'What?'
'You were working with Usara and Shiv, weren't you?' she demanded. 'I know they've been looking into blending sympathetic elements. You've a powerful fire affinity and working with Planir has honed your abilities with the earth. There are few wizards to equal me with the air, even if the Council decided Rafrid was a safer choice for Cloud Master.' She swallowed the bitterness tainting her words. 'And unwelcome as Azazir's attentions were, the mad old bastard taught me more about water magic than I ever expected to know.'
'Every scholar in Hadrumal would still say it takes four wizards to manipulate four elements.' Despite his reservations, Naldeth sounded tempted.
'Ordinarily, with the usual run of affinity and elemental power available.' Velindre nodded. 'But we will have the elemental congruencies here to draw on.'
'Nexus magic is best worked through a focus gem,' Naldeth said unguardedly.
'A ruby, perhaps?' Kheda asked bluntly.
Velindre surprised him with a sudden laugh. 'I imagined you'd go poking about in the holds.'
Kheda wasn't smiling. 'Are you sure you can do this? Overconfidence killed Dev just as surely as that fire dragon's egg.'
'We should be able to repel any dragon if we can draw
the other elements into a nexus antithetical to its own affinity.' She sounded confident.
'Then we have to recover the Zaise,' Kheda said determinedly. 'And I can find good uses for the rest of that cargo. Our best chance of doing that is if we take the fight to the tree dwellers while they're still reeling from this defeat. Can you undertake to keep that dragon away, and curb their mage's power?'
Velindre nodded slowly, frowning. 'I'd like some time to think through a few ways of constraining that wizard's magic without killing him outright.'
'We should discuss this theory of nexus magic' Naldeth didn't sound quite so sanguine as the magewoman.
'As long as we're not attacked, we can wait a day or so.' Kheda looked around. 'These people need time to recover a little.'
'What then?' Risala was gazing at Kheda, unblinking.
What are you expecting me to tell you? I'm sorry, my love, but I won't lie to you.
'Then we will have the Zaise and its cargo and we can decide how to make best use of both.' He swallowed unpalatable truths that he could not bring himself to voice just yet. 'Now, let's teach these people a few things that will give us the advantage in the fight.'
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The old woman was inexpressibly relieved when she finally saw dusk sweeping swiftly across the sky. After keeping the whole encampment busy all day, the strangers had finally gone back to the painted man's hut. The old woman accepted a piece of peeled vine from a shyly smiling child and spared the little girl a brief smile of her own. As the child scampered back to her mother, the old woman chewed on the sweetness coating the fibrous core, mindful of her sparse teeth. It soothed the qualms in her belly.
Was something wrong? The strangers had been harsh and curt as they spoke to each other ever since they had come back from defeating the men from across the river. Then the golden stranger and the red-faced one with the powers of painted ones had spent long periods just talking to each other, sitting in the hut, heads close together, murmuring like brooding birds. The tall stranger had been stirring all the men to action, making himself understood with wordless gestures and a frown that brooked no dissent. His woman had offered her helping hands to the women setting everything to rights again after their abortive flight to the uncertain safety of the thorn scrub.
People were still busy about their huts and enclosures. One or two smiled at her as they passed by. The old woman nodded obsequiously to acknowledge the mother of a healthy brood who'd earlier offered her shelter for the night. She knew why they were being so solicitous.
They wanted answers to their questions. How would they react when she finally had to admit that she had precious few answers? Would they still be as kind?
At least it still looked as if she didn't have to fear being tied up, to be kept barely alive with meagre scraps and water until some painted man demanded food for his beast. Everyone was still talking about the tale that the men had brought back from the battle. Neither the golden stranger nor the ruddy one had waited to woo a beast with the carrion. Instead they had shown the bodies of friend and foe alike the courtesy of fire. Of painted fire, at that.
She realised she had sucked the purple vine tasteless and her stomach growled with hunger. Welcome as it was, the sweetness hadn't filled her empty belly. She noted that the few men and women of her own age were sitting by the embers of the fire so they might warm their bones against the encroaching chill of the night. Perhaps they would be willing to share whatever softer food there might be, as long as she could conceal the full extent of her ignorance about the strangers.
As the old woman skirted the hearth, she watched some of the men of the village adroitly gutting and skinning a pair of the great grassland lizards with well-made blades of black stone. Emboldened by their victory over those who'd come from across the river, the hunters had ventured out to return with the scaly hissing creatures slain and slung on their spears. They were still boasting to each other of their prowess as they worked. Two men grasped the creature's clawed feet and lifted the naked carcass while another pulled the loosened hide down and slashed at the last webs of tissue along the lizard's backbone.
The village women were hacking the succulent meat from the first lizard. Dark lumps were already skewered on branches wedged with stones and propped with sticks
to hold the meat safely above the flickering flames. Dripping juices spat in the embers while the hunters gnawed freshly flensed ribs and discussed whose valour had won the choicest pieces of the lizards' hides.
As she approached the elders, the old woman noted a young girl still with maiden hips kneeling where the hunters had carefully spilled the lizard's guts onto a length of bloodstained hide. The girl cut the convoluted bowel into slippery, pungent rings and dropped hand-fuls into a series of gourds. As she chopped up lungs and stomach, one of the hunters sat with a stone in his fist and obligingly smashed open the lizard's long bones so the maiden could scoop out the marrow and add it to the gourds. Topping each one up with water, she pushed them carefully into the embers around the edge of the fire, smiling at the grandmothers sitting a short distance away who querulously warned her not to let them burn instead of merely seething in the fire's heat.
The old woman sat slowly down, careful not to infringe on the elders' gathering. One old man and a couple of grandmothers, wizened as berries at the end of the dry season, eyed her keenly.