The Silver Mage - Katharine Kerr [188]
It was, Dallandra decided, as much of an admission as a dragon could possibly make.
“I suppose,” Arzosah continued, “that if I refuse, you’ll only force me to do it, anyway. If I could think up some new curses for Evandar, I would, giving away my true name the way he did. That slimy little clot of ectoplasm!”
“No, I won’t. I’d never force anyone to work dweomer.”
“You must be jesting, just to add to my misery.”
“I’m not doing anything of the sort. Forcing you to use dweomer against your will—that’s a kind of slavery I could never ever countenance.”
Arzosah’s head jerked up, and she slithered around to look Dallandra in the face.
“Slavery.” Arzosah spoke so softly that the word was almost a hiss. “You bring memories to mind, dweomermaster.” Her tail slapped the ground hard. “Do you truly mean this, that if I refuse, that will be the end of the matter, and Rori will stay mine?”
“That’s exactly what I mean. The decision is yours and Rori’s.”
The great wyrm went very still, crouching, her eyes fixed on some far distant thought or time.
“You’re free to go,” Dallandra said. “But please, think well on this.”
“Now that I can promise you. I shall think long and hard.”
She turned and waddled some yards away, where she could spread her enormous wings without causing Dallandra harm. With a shudder of muscles, she leaped into the air and flew, flapping hard as she gained height with her greenish-black wings drumming the clear sky. Dallandra watched as she headed north, dwindled to a speck of shadow, and then was gone.
Rori had followed the Horsekin south all that day, but the army made slow progress. Some hours after noon, when they stopped yet again for no discernible reason, his impatience got the better of him. He suspected that Arzosah would be returning as soon as she possibly could after speaking with Dallandra. His life hung on that conversation like the sword that hung from a single thread in the ancient Greggyn fable, whether he lived five hundred years as a dragon or only a few as a man on Haen Marn. Waiting to hear became intolerable. He took out his dread on the army below. He swooped down, scattered their horses, killed one, grabbed one of the Keepers of Discipline and let him fall to his death, then made his escape from the cloud of angry arrows and javelins that followed him without doing him harm.
In a considerably better mood, Rori headed south, but he’d not gone more than a few miles when he saw Arzosah, flying north in the last of the long summer daylight to join him. They circled round each other in greeting, then flew back toward the army together. That night they made a lair on a long ledge of rock tucked into the side of a hill. Below, at a good distance, they could see the campfires of the Horsekin army spread out along a stream.
“I spoke with Dallandra in Cerr Cawnen,” Arzosah said. “But I suppose you realized that I would.”
Rori winced and braced himself for a tirade. None came.
“She says Laz Moj has that book,” Arzosah went on. “She doesn’t know if she can work the dweomer in it or not because she’s yet to read it.” She paused to consider him with narrowed eyes. “But Dallandra also told me that she can’t reverse the transformation unless I help her.”
“That settles that, then,” Rori said. “I’ll be staying in dragon form.”
“And I suppose you’ll fly off and sulk for a hundred years, leaving me all alone.”
“No. Why would I do that?”
“To punish me, of course.”
“For what? Wanting my company?”
Arzosah sighed and crossed her front paws. For some while she stared off into the gathering night.
“Do you remember Evandar’s silver ring?” Arzosah said abruptly.
“Of course. It’s the beginning of everything between us.”
“I like the evasive way you say that. You’re beginning to speak like a dragon, Rori. Are you sure you want to turn into a despicable, two-legged, earth-bound creature again?”
“Does it matter?”
“Think back! You threw me that ring, and I ate it, and I was free of its spell over me. You set me free when I might have been your slave. Why wouldn’t I do