Dragon Sword Series - Dragon Sword Part 1

DRAGON SWORD.

GAEL BAUDINO.

AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

Three days after I began correcting the final proofs for this reissue of DRAGONSWORD, an international military coalition under the leaders.h.i.+p of the United States began operations against Iraq in an attempt to force that country to relinquish control of Kuwait.

Now, my corrections finished, the war continues with dismaying predictability. It is the usual: bombs, guns . . . and bodies. The protests against the fighting have already de-eenerated into rhetoric and violence.

This book remains dedicated to Allison, JefF, Bill, and Sandy; but at this time I should like to extend the dedication to others-to the innocents whose names I do not yet know, but whose blood will flow as redly as that which stained the campus of Kent State on a May morning in 1970.

* CHAPTER 1 +.

The Dragon's eyes could show no trace of emotion: they were no more than two b.a.l.l.s of yellow light that peered out of a head the color of dull iron. In contrast, its voice, halfway between a thrum and a hiss, held the slightest edge of impatience as it carried softly through the curving gla.s.s walls of the paperweight and into the quiet air of the study.

"Braithwaite," it said, "you are getting old. You will die soon. You will have to choose."

Solomon Braithwaite looked up from his desk. He was not overly surprised by the bluntness of the statement, for he had heard it before, in these same uncompromising terms. "Soon? Are you giving me a date, Silbakor? Perhaps next Friday? Should I note it down on my calendar?"

"I have said before: I do not predict the future."

"You said soon. Why are you pressing me?"

Much as a man might fidget with his fingers, the Dragon coiled and uncoiled its body against the gla.s.s. "You will . . . have to choose."

The print on the page in front of Solomon was as black and deep as if it had been chiseled into the paper. Gueith camlann in qua arthur & medraut corruerunt. . . Arthur and Modred perished. And had the b.a.s.t.a.r.d son fidgeted and squirmed as he planned his treachery? "I want to know what's happening. You're edging around just like Helen did before she-"

"You must choose. You will die eventually."

7.8."Tell me!" Solomon snapped the book closed and pushed it away. "Do you always have to drag everything out forever? You're the Dragon. I'm the Dragonmaster. Remember that. ' '

"I will."

"So tell me."

"It is a matter of fact. You are old-"

The same equivocation. Arthur had Modred, Solomon Braithwaite had Helen, and Dythragor Dragonmaster . . . was there a traitor out there for him, too? The Dragon? "I'm not that old."

" - and I have never hidden from you the fact that you would have to find a successor. Consider: your hairline has receded, and your gray hairs are no longer confined to your temples - "

"Shut up."

Silbakor did not blink. Solomon wondered if it were capable of blinking. No, that would have been too human. Too mortal. The Dragon was neither.

But neither had the Dragon ever betrayed him. For the last ten years, the Dragon had been constancy, loyalty. Why was he speaking harshly to Silbakor? What madness was making him suspect that it would ever do him wrong?

"I haven't found anyone for the job yet," he said. He hoped that Silbakor could not read his thoughts of the past minute. "I see no reason why you have to keep interrupting me. We spoke about this last night."

"We did. To no avail."

"Have you looked at the people I have to work with? Have you seen my students? Of course you have: You're with me when I lecture. Pretty bits of manflesh, aren't they? They go on about Ambrosius and Arthur, and Vor-tigern and the Saxons, write up nice little papers about heroic culture, but they'd soil their pants at the thought of actually shedding some blood themselves. How about one of them, Silbakor? Would you like me to hand one the Dragonsword and tell him to go out and fight the Dremords?"

The Dragon lowered its head and stopped its thras.h.i.+ng. "The choice has always been yours. But choose soon: 9.

Gryylth must not be without a protector. The line must not be broken, even for an hour."

Shoving his chair back roughly, Solomon got up from the desk and went to the plate gla.s.s window. Not even for an hour, or a minute . . . probably not even for a second. He was still annoyed. Gryylth already had a protector. To speak of his replacement now seemed not only premature, but faintly cynical also.

Outside, it was dark, and the lights of the San Fernando Valley burned through air that had been washed clean by the afternoon's rain. The streetlamps danced in the heat s.h.i.+mmers like the campfires that had once dotted :he Valley of Benardis where the wartroops of Gryylth had a.s.sembled under great, red-bearded Helkyying, and Solomon smiled quietly at the memory.

The battle had been glorious. At dawn, Gryylthan and Dremord had met face to face, challenging and being challenged in return. Weapons had been sword and s.h.i.+eld, spear and javelin, and when the fighting had been done, the outcome had been certain: Gryylth had conquered, and the Dremords had been pushed back.

He liked that: cut and dried. To be sure, the war had been going on for a long time, and the Dremords had yet to be driven from the land, but the battles themselves had been invariably successful. Decisively so. If an understanding of his own world had eluded him, at least Gryylth v, as an open and honest place, with no ulterior motives, no hidden machinery, no shadowy conspiracies. Any enemies there were obvious and uncompromising.

As were friends. Vorya and Helkyying and now Marrget. And Silbakor the Dragon. Loyal. Friends in battle and in council. How could he blame the Dragon for doing its job?

Solomon regretted his anger. "All right," he said, turning around, "who would you say I should choose?"

For a moment, he thought that the Dragon blinked. Maybe it was something understandable after all. But, no, Silbakor never blinked. "This is strange."

"I can't make a choice myself."

"Surely there is someone."

10."Silbakor, you've seen the people I know."

The Dragon's eyes had resettled into a yellow stare. "I have."

"So you understand my problem. There's no one suitable. Ten years ago, when I found you, there might have been a chance. Students and faculty were of a little sterner stuff then. But then again ..."

The Dragon was watching him. At times, before those yellow eyes, he felt more naked than he had when Helen had turned on him, using her wifely knowledge of his frailties and weaknesses as knives and razors with which to slash him.

"But then again, I probably would have been wrong. Fairweather idealists, the whole lot of them. They knew their Karl Marx and their C. Wright Mills and their obscenities, but that was all." His voice almost caught: Helen had taken their side. "Now they're all hiding, or they've settled down to nice jobs and full lunch buckets. So much for the revolution. Good riddance." Was he talking to Helen? It annoyed him that he did not know.

"The choice was not necessary ten years ago," the Dragon thrummed softly. "It is necessary now."

"Are you saying that I'm going to die?"

"I am saying that you must choose."

Strange words from the Dragon. He thought he detected a trace of disingenuousness in its tone, but he could not be sure. Was Silbakor telling him that his death was imminent?

The diplomas on the wall. The certificate of appreciation. The photo of a younger Solomon Braithwaite in the hallowed robes of academia, receiving his doctorate on a rostrum before a weathered library of faded brick and old ivy. The portrait of Helen he should have thrown away years before but could not. Age. All age. For a moment, the study felt claustrophobic, coffin-like, as though someone were about to screw the lid down and sign to the pallbearers that it was ready.

I'm not that old. I could keep on for years . . .

A flash of yellow from the paperweight. Solomon again .

11.wondered if the Dragon could read his mind. He had never asked. He was, he admitted, afraid to know.

' 'I am sorry.'' It sounded genuinely sad.

He pretended not to have heard it. "You still haven't answered my question."

The Dragon roiled in the paperweight like a cloud of smoke. Helen had answered him. As brutally and sear-ingly as possible. He was sorry now that he had asked.

"You have thought of all possibilities?" it said.

"All of them."

"What about your a.s.sistant, Suzanne h.e.l.ling?"

Solomon had never heard the Dragon joke before, and he did not quite know how to react. He walked back across the study and peered into the paperweight. ' 'Suzanne?" He chuckled in spite of himself. "Very good, Silbakor. A plump little earth-mother who most likely spends her time doing yoga and baking granola cookies." He leaned on his desk, laughing quietly. Oh, wonderful! Suzanne, with her big brown eyes and her dark hair worn in a style now ten years out of date. Dressed for 1980, she seemed an anachronism, as though she could only really be at home in s.h.i.+fts, peasant blouses, and miniskirts.

Solomon found himself looking at one of the papers he had been examining that evening: it was in Suzanne's neat, backward-slanting handwriting. But, beside it, the picture of Helen smiled at him in sharp contrast to his memories of her. Where was Helen now? Was she well? Did she too still sleep on only one half of the bed? He reminded himself sharply that he did not care.

"She's a woman," he said abruptly.

"She is."

"She's just like those radicals I was dealing with when I found you, Silbakor. In fact, from what she's said, I think that she was one of those radicals."

"Like you, she has her history."

"She'd never fit in. Gryylth wouldn't accept her. In fact, / wouldn't accept her."

"She is my suggestion."

"A woman?" Hardening, angry, he swung round to 12.the paperweight. "Dammit, Silbakor, what's the matter with you? She ought to be married and tending the children and the cooking pots, but instead she's shacked up with some law student-"

"She is your research a.s.sistant."

"That doesn't mean I have to approve of her! Dammit, Silbakor, you saw them back then: dirty, unwashed trash that didn't respect anything. Just like the Saxons. Just like the Dremords. How on earth Helen could have sided with them-"

There was a sudden tightness in his chest, and he stopped in raid-word and straightened up. His face felt cold. So did his arm. His right arm. His sword arm. With a quick gasp, he found his way to his chair and sat down, fumbled in the desk drawer for the pills the doctor had given him. He did not look at the label. He never had.

Painfully, he got one down, and the seizure pa.s.sed slowly.

"Braithwaite?"

"You'd better not joke like that anymore, Silbakor," he said.

The skies had been clear when Suzanne had gone to bed, but during the night the clouds, gray and dull in the darkness, had moved in from the sea, and she awoke in the small hours to the sound of rain.

For a moment, she did not remember where she was. It seemed to her that everything about her-this apartment, this night alive with the pattering of rain, this man sleeping beside her-was merely another enactment of a play that had followed her from city to city, with different actors, an occasional change in the business or the props.

Her bedmate's leg was thrown over hers; his hand cupped her breast. What was his name this time? Steve? Mark? Dave? What city was this? Where was she now? She did not know. It might have been Seattle, or Akron, or Portland, or ... or Dallas ... No. Not Dallas. Not Dallas ever again. Her belly still cramped at the thought of the clinic, the abortion. Now, honey, you just take these pills like it says on the bottle and call me if you DRAGONSWOR.D.

13.have any problems. And then she had come home and Russ had skipped out on her, taking the furniture, the money, even the car. And the rain, warm and wet, had been pattering down on the balcony just like it was now.

Slowly, she put together the lay of the light from the window, the feel of the sheets, the luminous dial of the clock by the bed: this was Los Angeles. Joe Epstein was beside her, snoring softly. Dallas was well in the past.

But the rain . . . the rain continued.

Suzanne turned over and tried to go back to sleep, tried to remember sunny skies, springtime flowers and bright green leaves, something with which to counter the rain, rut ail she could corne up with was the May morning ten >ears ago that had started the play going, had given it its ::nes and its plot. It had begun with the mildness of early summer in northern Ohio, had ended, abruptly and bru-*_iily, with the crack of M-ls, screams, and blood pooling ..uickly on the dusty asphalt of a university parking lot.

She wandered among the crowds at Kent State: the students who shouted at the National Guard, the faculty members with their blue armbands who tried to moderate a confrontation that edged inexorably closer to violence, the Guardsmen themselves, who were caught in the middle of att.i.tudes and lifestyles they did not understand.

A girl near her stuck a flower in a gunbarrel. "Flowers are better than bullets," she said to the soldier.

The strident tones of the Victory Bell shuddered through the air like a tocsin. Suzanne caught at her white cotton sweater, tried to pull her away. "You've got to get out of here," she said. "They're going to start shooting." About her, the crowds surged, expressions and words indistinct. It was Carnival, it was Mardi Gras, it was the white face of impending death that loomed up out of pale clouds of tear gas. There was too much happening, and though this was a dream, Suzanne felt powerless to stop any of it.

But the girl nodded to her. "It's all right," she said. "You can bury me. You'll be around." And she walked off toward the parking lot. The Guardsmen marched up the hill.

14.She grabbed a blond man who carried a bullhorn. His hair was wild and disheveled. "Stop them!"

"Hey," he said. "This is it. This is what we've been waiting for. This is the revolution." He spoke quickly, easily, the well-rehea.r.s.ed rhetoric falling from his tongue.

"They're going to kill some of us!"

"This is what we've wanted all along."

The Guardsmen reached the crest of the hill, turned, and . . .

Ten years now, and she was still dreaming of it. Even from thirty yards away, she could tell that the slim barrel of the rifle was pointing straight at her. The face of the Guardsman was, like those of his companions, indistinct, distorted by the gas mask he wore, but she felt his expression: she did not have to see it. She heard the click of the safety coming off, or maybe it was the shutter release of the student photographer next to her.

The shots had gone on for some time, the fusillade continuing in waves, rising and falling for nearly a quarter of a minute, but all she remembered, all she dreamed about, was the whine of the bullet next to her own head. It filled the air, filled the universe, and turned into the buzzing of her alarm clock.

She flinched awake with a small cry, realized again where she was, and turned off the alarm. Sitting up with her hand covering her eyes, she waited for her heart to stop pounding.

The dreams were like her migraines: they came, they went, and there was not much that she could do save sweat them out and survive. She had been surviving for ten years now.

After a while, she swallowed, took a deep breath, and prodded at the sleeping body beside her. "Up, clown," she said. "Another exciting day."

"I can sleep in," said Joe, his voice m.u.f.fled by pillows. "Cla.s.ses were canceled."