Meghan's Dragon Page 10

  “Five dukes,” Meghan said, holding up her left hand with the fingers spread out. Then she began counting the dukes off like a to-do list, folding fingers as she went. “Their castles are all close to the coast, except for the northern duke, the Red Duke, whose castle is on a hill or a mountain overlooking a river. The Green Duke has a castle overlooking the ocean, where there’s a river mouth and a port. The Blue Duke is a few days further south, just across from King’s Island, which has rivers on both sides emptying into the sea.”

  “They’re all named for colors?” Bryan interrupted.

  “They have names, but their armies wear different armbands and that’s how everybody keeps them straight. The Black Duke’s castle is on a river that runs into a large bay. The White Duke’s castle is on a really large ocean bay, or at least that’s how it looks on the map in the baron’s library.”

  “I wish I had seen that map,” Bryan said. “Everything is starting to make sense. I don’t know about the Red Duke’s castle, maybe it’s at the Connecticut river on Dark Earth, but I’ll bet the other four locations are the same as major port cities we have. I wonder why Boston didn’t make the list.”

  “I think the native name for the next major river to the east might be something like you said,” Meghan mused. “But why would Dark Earth’s people build cities around ocean ports if they have contraptions that fly through the air?”

  “That’s all recent, the cities have been there since horse and wagon days.”

  “You mean your mages gave up magic six thousand years ago but it took them almost all that time to learn new ways of doing things?”

  “Most of what I see here might have fit right into my world a few hundred years ago,” Bryan admitted. “I guess there was a lot of resistance to change.”

  Chapter 29

  Bryan let his sword fall and pointed at the sky.

  “I’ve seen that hawk before. It was watching us on the road before we joined up with you.”

  “Gods, boy. I can barely see a moving dot under the cloud and I’m half inclined to think that it’s a speck of dust in my eye. And you can recognize the blasted bird?”

  “Same one,” Bryan affirmed. “Wait, it’s going into a shallow dive now.”

  “At us?” the old soldier asked, squinting at the sky.

  “It’s heading somewhere up ahead of our wagon train. I’ll go tell Rowan.”

  After a moment’s thought, Simon said, “It’s probably just Storm Bringer then,” but Bryan had already put his words into action and was running past the startled members of the troupe on his way to the lead wagon.

  The young man’s haste had less to do with the reappearance of the hawk during their morning travel rest than with the fact that he was beginning to dread his practices with the stage master. In just five days of training, he had grazed the grizzled veteran numerous times, and inflicted several deep bruises with the dull sword that required magical healing. His teacher was pleased that Bryan was improving so quickly, but it was the trainee’s inhuman speed that accounted for most of the progress.

  When Bryan braked to a halt in front of Rowan, the leader of the players immediately demanded, “Did you kill him?”

  “What? Simon? No, he’s fine,” the student swordsman replied when the meaning of Rowan’s words sank in.

  “I watched you practicing earlier and I think that’s enough of that. Tell Simon he can continue teaching you the forms, but he’ll be no use to anybody with his ribs staved in, so from now on you’ll take your practice with me.”

  “I’ll tell him, but that’s not why I ran up here,” Bryan said, relieved to find that he wouldn’t become the accidental murderer of a man with grandchildren. “I saw a hawk following us, and it suddenly went into a dive towards just ahead there.”

  “They often circle above us and watch for prey that we startle into fleeing,” Rowan told him. “Why makes you think it was following us?”

  “I can just tell,” Bryan insisted. “I saw the same hawk last week, and Meghan said it was probably controlled by a shaman.”

  Rowan studied the sky and nodded in approval. “Then that will be Storm Bringer. He must have finished with the harvest early this year, so he’s come to meet us on the road rather than at the first festival. I’ll bet he’s waiting just over the next hill.”

  “You have a shaman who’s a farmer working for you?”

  “He’s not a farmer, boy. If he was born to our people, he’d be one of the most powerful weather mages in New Land, maybe Old Land as well. The natives do things differently though, and they don’t specialize as much as we do.”

  “So he predicts the weather? I wondered how you got by at festivals without a giant tent.”

  “Weather predictions? Performing inside a giant tent?” Rowan burst out laughing so hard that several of the troupe’s members who had gathered around the front wagon during the travel break stopped talking so they could hear what was so funny. “Did you fight your wars under tents at Castle Trollsdatter when your weather mages predicted rain?”

  The line brought a laugh from the men near enough to hear, all of whom Bryan had come to realize were ex-soldiers. He had yet to see the troupe perform, but Meghan had told him that a couple of the men played all of the principal male roles, and the rest only participated in action scenes or in non-speaking parts. It was common to see the women and the older children teaching each other lines from the troupe’s standard plays as they walked along, but the men mainly talked about the castles and armies, sometimes changing the subject when Bryan approached.

  “If he’s not a farmer, why did you say he must have finished the harvest early?” Bryan asked.

  “He holds off the rain clouds so the farmers can get the crops in and dry their hay. We travel a week for each week we play, and the festivals don’t change their dates for the weather, which makes Storm Bringer the most valuable individual in the troupe. I remember one year that people packed our shows just to get out of the rain.”

  Bryan wanted to ask for details about the shaman’s weather-control capabilities, but he saw Meghan walking up to find out what was going on and clamped his mouth shut.

  “Your husband was just explaining to me how the people where he comes from pay somebody to tell them what weather is coming,” Rowan told the girl, struggling to keep a straight face.

  “He must have been trying out material for my magic act,” Meghan explained hastily. “Wouldn’t it be funny if I told the children I could predict when the weather would be sunny, and then a little cloud came and rained just on me?”

  “Just in case that doesn’t work out, have you memorized the part for Elstan yet?” Rowan inquired.

  “I could play it in my sleep,” Meghan replied sourly.

  “Why don’t you run through it with me while we walk?” Rowan raised and dropped his arm, and the wagons began moving forward again. “I’ll do all the other parts, but you pay attention too, boy. The play works best when there’s real chemistry between the leads, so I want you to start learning the captain’s lines.”

  Chapter 30

  A giant boulder left behind by a retreating glacier forced a sharp curve in the road, and Storm Bringer seemingly materialized out of the woods a wagon’s length ahead of the column. A hawk was perched on a leather shoulder protector built for the purpose, but the shaman was otherwise dressed in the manner of the natives, in deerskin breeches and moccasins. He wore a necklace of shells and bones across his bare chest, but a castle-style pack lay at his feet.

  “Our paths cross again,” Rowan called to the shaman. The encounter brought a merciful end to his interpretation of the captain’s protestation of love to Meghan, who was playing Elstan’s part of a boy disguised as a girl. “You made good time to catch us this far inland.”

  “Weather didn’t cooperate,” Storm Bringer replied with a shrug. “Tough to sell your people protection from the rain when there wasn’t a cloud on the horizon.”

  “Why didn’t you make some rain and
then sell them your services?” Laitz asked. The illusionist had come forward in search of his assistants and fallen in alongside Bryan to see how Meghan performed her lines.

  “I don’t squander my magic that way,” the shaman replied scornfully. “Have you made any progress with your dragons?”

  “I’m getting there,” Laitz said. “With these two youngsters to assist me, I think I might manage a dragon duel.”

  “Any news from the south?” Rowan asked Storm Bringer, who took his place walking alongside the leader of the troupe.

  “The usual wars and sieges. The castles are cold in the winter, they stink in the summer, and they’re crowded year-round. Your barons and dukes tell your people they need castles and armies for protection from us, but the only threats you face are from the soldiers of the other castles.”

  “You’ll get no argument from me,” Rowan replied easily. “Let me introduce you to the two newest members of our troupe. The short one is Meghan and the tall one is Bryan.”

  “We saw your hawk last week,” Bryan said, staring accusingly at Storm Bringer.

  “It might have been a different bird,” Meghan interjected, stepping forward and offering an apologetic curtsey.

  “I sent her ahead last week to scout for Rowan,” the shaman explained, looking amused rather than intimidated by the naked distrust radiating from the young man. “She shared a vision of two people ducking into a field to avoid some horsemen, and I wondered if they could be the same youngsters who are being sought by everyone. I encountered a patrol of king’s men on my way here and the officer told me that a young mage pretending to be a magicless girl had brought down the Castle Refuge tower with just a word.”

  Meghan’s eyes went wide and she stepped back uncertainly, but Rowan and Laitz seemed unsurprised by the news.

  “You know the king, always after something he shouldn’t be,” Rowan replied without breaking stride.

  “Come with me and we’ll smoke a pipe,” Laitz added, taking a friendly grip on the elbow of the shaman, with whom he was obviously well acquainted. “We’re interrupting an important artistic rehearsal.”

  “Try the short one as Elstan,” Storm Bringer suggested over his shoulder.

  Chapter 31

  “Rowan is giving your husband a workout, so we’d better start without him,” Laitz told Meghan. “Anyway, I suspect he’s had more time for practicing illusions than you since he’s already mastered the wing beats.”

  “He doesn’t practice at all unless you bribe him with food,” Meghan complained. “He’s just a fast learner.”

  The illusionist raised an eyebrow but didn’t comment. Both of the young people had progressed much farther than he had hoped, but in different ways. Meghan was proving to be an excellent observer who could imitate Laitz’s technique down to the finest level of detail, while Bryan seemed to be endowed with an excess of magical energy that allowed him to overcome every obstacle through brute force. It was the teacher’s experience that in magic, as well as in life, brute force trumped technique nine times out of ten.

  “I want you to work with colors today,” Laitz continued, handing the girl two small pouches. “Use the bands to strap these to the undersides of your wrists. You’ll wear long sleeves when we perform, and by turning your hands up like this,” the illusionist paused and demonstrated, “while waving your arms, you’ll release particles of colored dust. I designed the bags to let out a fixed amount with each pass.”

  Meghan secured the pouches in place and her instructor showed how bending back the hand at the wrist puffed out a small amount of colored dust. The new complication took all of her concentration, and soon she had managed a brilliant green dragon, which awkwardly exercised its wings without making any forward progress.

  “Excellent,” Laitz said approvingly. “Now release some powder from the other pouch and let’s see what you can do with it.”

  As Meghan shook out some of the red dust, the slight disturbance of the air caused by the movement of her arms sent a ripple through her carefully constructed illusion.

  “Don’t worry about that,” her instructor hastened to tell her. “To an audience seated more than a few paces away it just makes the illusions seem more lifelike.”

  “How do I keep the dust from becoming visible before I need it?” she asked. Her dragon looked like it was blushing as she moved one color of dust through the other.

  “Normally I’d let the red out first and build the green around it before bringing up the light,” Laitz explained. “That’s good, let it out in a concentrated stream.”

  Meghan’s dragon opened its reptilian mouth and a stream of fire shot out. She was so amazed by the sight that she lost her concentration and the whole illusion collapsed into a muddy mess.

  “Is the dust expensive?” she asked Laitz. “Can I try again?”

  “I make the dust from anything that can be mashed into a fine powder,” the illusionist said. “Once you start experimenting with preparing colors yourself, you’ll find it becomes addicting. Just make sure you grind a little up and sniff it before you get carried away making a whole batch.”

  “You worry about the smell?”

  “Nothing ruins an illusion faster than a sneeze,” Laitz informed her.

  Chapter 32

  “That was some workout,” Hardol told Bryan, clapping the sweaty young man on the back. “I’m usually the one stuck keeping Rowan in practice but you’re welcome to the job. You’re certainly up to it.”

  “I thought my sword would break,” Bryan admitted. “Look at all the notches he put in the edge. Can I get this fixed, or will I need a new blade every time I duel him?”

  Hardol laughed and clapped Bryan on the back again. “You’re funny. A few of us are tapping a keg on the second wagon and we’ve been waiting to have a word with you.”

  Bryan willingly followed the older man from the impromptu practice area next to the road back towards the wagons. It was the first time Hardol had spoken to him, and he wasn’t going to blow the opportunity to finally get to know some of the former soldiers who had ignored him to this point, even if it meant missing his regular evening session with Meghan and Laitz.

  “Did he wreck your sword every time you dueled him?” Bryan asked his new friend.

  “My blade is enchanted, same as Rowan’s, though you have to use your own magic to keep the edge. You really are new to the fighting business.”

  “Enchanted, I should have thought of that,” Bryan said. “So were all of you soldiers like Simon?”

  “Not like Simon. The rest of us got out while we still had all of our fingers,” Hardol replied, but the jest carried an undertone of sadness. “Soldiers in this land are like grist for the mill. You might avoid getting ground up for a while, but if you stay in too long, it always ends the same way. Simon served for more years than any of us, despite the fact he’s not that strong, magically speaking.”

  “You must be thrilled that the new kid is giving you a chance to rest up, Hardol.” The man who spoke handed each of the newcomers a brimming tankard, then resumed his seat on the wagon’s tongue. “If I’m not mistaken, Rowan may actually have broken a sweat towards the end there.”

  “I thought he was going to chop me in half,” Bryan confessed. “With Simon, I was always worried about accidentally hurting him because I didn’t know what I was doing. With Rowan, I felt like I was fighting for my life.”

  “He doesn’t play around,” one of the other men commented, which struck Bryan as bit odd, given that they were a troupe of professional players. “Is it true that you and your wife are on the run from the king?”

  Bryan almost choked on his ale, but Meghan had prepared him for the question and he replied, “Not that I know of. I’ve never seen the king, or even a duke for that matter. My wife is the one who knows about that stuff.”

  “But you acknowledge the king as your sovereign,” Hardol pressed, fixing the young man with his eyes. The four other men near the freshly tapped keg fell silen
t, and Bryan realized they were all waiting for his answer.

  “I don’t remember voting for him,” Bryan replied cautiously. Apparently it was the right answer because the men all laughed and repeated his words like he’d invented the punch line to a new joke. Somebody took his tankard and tossed it to the tap man to be refilled, and the others crowded around to introduce themselves.

  “I’m Grey,” a heavily scarred man only a few years older than Bryan told him. “We knew Phinneas wouldn’t send us a king’s man, but we have to be careful.”

  “Jomar,” announced a small man with a mouth full of crooked teeth and a bandolier of throwing knives across his chest. Bryan had seen him casually bring down small game for the communal pot with his knives.

  “Theodric,” a large man introduced himself, returning Bryan’s refilled tankard at the same time. “The five of us are the group leaders, but if things get rough, just stick to Rowan for the time being. We’ll figure out where to put you after the festivals.”

  Bryan nodded. He didn’t have a clue what it was all about, but he read their body language well enough to realize they had decided to accept him into something, at least provisionally.

  “Chester,” the last man said, grasping Bryan’s hand. He was the handsomest of the players, around thirty years old, with piercing blue eyes and a long black ponytail that reminded Bryan of a Hollywood pirate. Meghan had told him that Chester played the lead male role in practically every play the troupe put on. “Now that I’ve seen you fight I’m nervous about playing the captain to your wife’s Elstan. Are you sure you don’t want to give it a shot?”

  Chapter 33

  Meghan was not a happy camper when Bryan finally crawled into their tent reeking like a brewery. “You skipped our practice to get drunk? How can you smell so bad after I got your clothes fixed for you? Didn’t you hop in the stream after your training with Rowan?”