They were nearly at the bottom of the winding pass by noon, when they were met by Justin standing waiting at the side of the trail. He waved at them to them to stop.
"I don't like him, Finn," said Meb, quietly.
"Neither do I, but we need him to take a message to the sprites. She . . . Lyr may remember me. We've crossed paths before and I left her with a grudge against me. Not entirely undeserved, I must admit. Besides, you turned one of them into stone."
"Me? That was you, Finn."
He shook his head. "Earth magic, Scrap."
They'd come to a halt next to Justin. "I have something for you," he said to Finn, and handed him a small bag cloth bag. Finn opened it and shook it out. A golden coin fell out onto his palm . . . And then Finn fell over like a mighty tree, onto Meb.
Justin leaped forward to grab her—to be kicked by a centaur as he did. That left Meb on the ground next to the cart, half-stunned by the fall. Finn was lying on the seat. Díleas had leaped after her . . . and there was a vast melee going on. Men and sprites had come running out of the trees. They were fighting with the centaurs.
"A rescue, a rescue!" shouted a centaur. The cart horses bolted with Finn, as Meb was trying desperately to struggle to her feet. Galleys were beaching, and hundreds of men, alvar and sprites were pouring towards them, outnumbering the centaurs.
There was the sound of distant horns.
* * *
Ixion had watched from the head of the trail, watching as the glad cavalcade escorted the water diviners down, watching how the ships came and went. Watching one that did neither. He caught the sudden winking flash of a mirror. The windsack hung at his side—a heavy burden. As yet the council of elders had reached no decision as to what should be done with the breath of the nation. He had been given it, so he still carried it. Perhaps because he was thinking about that, he took an extra few moments to process the fact that the ship lying offshore was signaling to someone out of sight in the lea of the cliffs. On that flank it was only three or four hundred yards from the cliff-point to the shoreline just inside of the harbor. The harbor was not fortified. Why bother? The solitary narrow trail led to the high plains, and holding the harbor would not serve an enemy well. The centaurs could roll rocks down—right onto their ships and onto any who tried to come up the trail.
Now, too late, Ixion saw why defenses could have been valuable. He lifted his horn to his lips and called on his phalanx to gallop. But even as they plunged down the trail, Ixion knew that they could never be in time to save those who had restored the vision of the Children of Chiron. He saw how the few centaurs who were down there were being massacred. One of their guests was somehow behind the main fight, and there were some ten attackers closing on her and her dog.
Ixion knew he had but one choice.
Meb and Díleas ran desperately after the cart. Here she was again, running unarmed into a fight. She had to get to Finn . . . She wrenched the stick out of her pack. She'd give anyone who tried to stop her reason to be even sadder than the stick.
And then they confronted her. Díleas suddenly snarled in a way she'd never heard him do before. There was a hooded man—like the one who had called her before—and one of the tree-women and a group of men-soldiers. The hooded man called her . . . Only this time she was aware that he was trying to bespell her, and although she could do nothing—her arms were frozen—it had no effect on Díleas. Part of her mind screamed "no!" knowing that the sheepdog pup stood no chance. But Díleas—his hair standing out in a black and white mane—the silver collar shining, white teeth exposed, was not going to stop.
The fire-being reached out a casual hand, seething with fire . . . and then screamed like a woman, and turned and fled straight over one of the warriors who had a broad-bladed spear upraised to deal with Díleas. As the fire-being touched him he burned. Immediately the paralysis left Meb and she swung the stick at the sprite. It was a feeble stick, but it was if Meb had hit the tree-woman with a club. She fell onto her followers. It had a less traumatic effect on them than the fleeing fire-being. It was just a tumble. But it gave Meb a moment to call Díleas back, and to ready herself.
Dog and girl still faced seven men.
"We have to take her alive!" yelled one of the attackers.
She didn't feel the same about them.
Ixion ripped at the old thong that bound the windsack with his teeth as he rode. It broke . . . and he and the phalanx found themselves carried along on the gale, as it swirled in a fury down on the invaders. Some had run for their galleys already. The rest . . . the dry wind full of the dust of high plateaux hit them. And somehow it breathed new strength into the outnumbered centaurs too. Like the heroes of old they charged again out of the dust. Javelins, sabers and war axes came slashing down on the invaders.
Ixion rallied the centaurs, and, shortly, faced by the sudden berserker onslaught, their foes tried to flee. They'd left it too late. Centaurs swarmed the ships, burning, chopping and kicking holes in the planking.
Only two of the twenty-one galleys managed to get to sea, rowing as if their lives depended on it. They did. The centaurs, having faced no conflict for centuries, were giving no quarter now. An old battle rage filled them. Arrows followed the galleys, with centaurs actually running into the sea and swimming after them.
In the midst of the wind, and the chaos of battle, Ixion found the water-diviner's apprentice—a slight young human—walking into a gale that made armored men stagger. With the dog under one arm and a stick in the other hand, the young human walked forward, head bent against the wind. A small human, but a very determined one, Ixion realized. He stopped next to the apprentice. "Where is your master?" he called down above the gale.
"They took him. I couldn't get there in time. I think he may be dead." There was utter heartbreak in that voice.
It took a little time to return order from chaos, but it happened eventually. Ixion took the apprentice to a warehouse at the quay-side, and set a strong guard, and then began organizing a systematic search and capture operation. A force of some fifty were sent to search the grove that the centaurs had allowed the sprites to set up.
They found the human that one of the centaurs escorting the cart had seen precipitate the entire affair. He wasn't going to be telling them anything. Centaur hooves could make a terrible mess of a man's face and rib-cage. They found his leman too, tied up in the little patch of forest.
The woman was terrified when they released her. Cursing her lover. And then, as they walked out, went from fear and some relief, to anguish and rage, when they came across two of the other centaurs dragging his body to add to the rest.
Ixion—who had been told of the finding of the man's body—came on the scene at this point, with the woman screaming furious accusations, not at whoever had put their hooves down on his face and chest, but at the sprites and at some woman in trousers that she seemed to blame for all her misfortunes. "It's her! She did this. She killed Justin. She did this to me. She's ruined my life!" She clung to the body.
"Hysterical," said Hylonome.
"So it would seem. I am going down to the docks. The water diviner's apprentice is down there. Perhaps a human can comfort her."
The woman lifted her tear stained, fury and despair contorted face from the dead man's chest. "She isn't a water diviner's apprentice. She's a woman! She did this!" she spat out.
"But we saw her find the water," said Hylonome, slightly puzzled.
It came pouring out of the woman then like a lanced boil. Much was illogical . . . but it did mention the black dragon, and Starsey and, repeatedly, the fact that the water diviner's apprentice was a woman, who had tried to steal her man. A man who had promised her gold and jewels if she slept with the apprentice . . . And of how badly the sprite had treated her, when Justin had gone to tell her about the pair. The sprites had been looking for them. But they hadn't rewarded Justin after all . . .
"I understand now, why we find our scrying of human affairs so confusing," said Hylonome.
"I think we know now that this raid was simply to capture the water diviner and his apprentice. And that the sprites had a hand in it," said Ixion grimly. "I must treble the guard on her and move her up to the high plateau."
He galloped down to the warehouse, to find that she had other ideas.
Fionn awoke groggy and confused. And thoroughly tied up. Well, that was an interesting conceit. He cursed himself for a fool. Many the dragon had been taken that way, once, with a bait. And gold was so hard to resist and held magic so well.
He wondered just what had happened to Anghared and her dog. He was constrained against killing, but he could make the lives of the creatures of smokeless flame and sprites hardly worth living. He would think of something particularly cruel and unusual. It wouldn't be punishment if they didn't find it cruel. And expecting something made it possible to prepare. It would be exceptionally unusual. He felt the bonds. Gold thread in them, and some form of spell on that. They knew he was a dragon—well, that had been obvious from the trap. That might have worked for another dragon.
"It would seem that the prisoner is awake," said the sprite to her companions, one of the fire-beings named Belet, and an alvar called Rennalinn. Fionn understood the strength of the spell on the gold now. Three of the intelligent species had lent their magic to it.
They had tied his jaws, with a rope lashed repeatedly around his head. Tied him to a large slab of stone. He was outdoors but in the shade—under an overhanging lip of rock. A stream splashed into a cascade and a pool off to one side of him, to remind him of how thirsty he was. The place was slightly higher than the surrounding woodland, affording a fine view out over the treetops to sea, and, ironically, to Fionn's next target. The second tower. So: he was on Arcady.
"We have sent messages to the human mage that we hold you hostage. Our informant told us that she was infatuated with you," said the sprite.
"We need some answers from you as to how she was able to fend us off," said the fire-being. "And by the way, there is a boulder above you, weighing many tons. We can't effectively bind you, but we can bind your bonds to it. Dragons are tough but you too can be crushed."
Fionn's relief at the fact that his Scrap of humanity was still free made any rock seem light. And now that the grogginess was gradually fading he could see the structure of the place and the force lines as well as the view.
"I don't think he can answer you," said Rennalinn. "His face is tied up."
"True. I will have to work out how to remove those bindings without bringing down the stone. In the meanwhile, we have work to do. A few things to prepare before Vorlian gets here," said the sprite.
"I have issued orders for the others too," said the fire-being. "The transports are leaving Cark. Let the war begin," said the demon.
"What about a centaur?" asked Rennalinn.
"We will ask for one of those too, along with her," said the sprite. "We will need the windsack as a bargaining chip."
"We agreed to provide that," said the demon, all too easily. "It shall be fetched."
Left to himself, bound and beneath an immense boulder, Finn looked about in the deeper spectra for signs of life-energy. He found some, soon enough. A lizard, slow and cold in the winter sun, basking on the rock. The reptile mind was small and simple. Quite easy to command. There were things about this island that the sprites did not know.
Vorlian stirred on his hoard. The healing had left him hungry. He began shaking out his wings, only to be aware that one of the creatures of smokeless flame—not Belet, but something far smaller, had entered his cave. He was going to have to remind the fire-beings just how close it was safe to come to a dragon's hoard, soon.
"I have a message from King Belet," it said. "You are to come to Arcady Island with all due speed. They have the dragon who is the human mage's companion captive and have sent for her. We must be ready to enact the rites of creation anew." It turned and left, as Vorlian stared.
Vorlian sat for a while in thought. He had to go, but . . . Then he reached his decision. He pulled himself out of the cave. Closed it with the sealing rock. Activated the traps. And then looked out to sea. There were some half a dozen dragons flying closer. He wondered, briefly, if he ought to open the cave and retreat into it. A dragon was safe like that. He could fill the tunnel with fire, and draw strength from his hoard.
Then he decided that if they wanted conflict, they could have it. But that looked very like Tessara, leading.
It was. "Vorlian. We need you," she called. "Strange and terrible things are happening."
She was in earnest, and it was, Vorlian discovered, good to be told that he was needed. Yet, strangely, he felt compelled to fly to Arcady. "What am I needed for?"
"We need you to lead us," said one of the others. "Brennarn, Myrcupa and some of the others have gone mad. They're attacking Malarset island at the head of an army of men and alvar and even fire-beings. They've killed Kyria."
In a way that made things simpler. Malarset was near to Arcady and Cark and Lapithidia. Which in itself made some kind of sense. Brennarn was the dragon-ruler of Cark. It was late afternoon already—a long flight to Malarset or Arcady. And then looking east, Vorlian saw the answer.
Moon-rise.
"We go to the conclave," he said. "It will transport us west, and give us a height advantage."
"And help us recruit!" said Tessara.
"Will I have trouble there?" asked Vorlian, beginning to beat his way upward.
Tessara shook her head. "The sisterhood of dragons did some investigating, Vorlian. They asked questions of fishermen. The humans bore out your version of events. And they have no reason to lie. Word has been going around about it. But we dragons do not unite and act together easily."
So they flew toward the conclave.
No trouble greeted Vorlian there.
No hellflame either.
The orb was gone from the entry. Just two sheared copper pipes dangled from the plinth.
Vorlian knew what that meant. The creatures of smokeless flame had their "treasure."
And some other dragon had taken it to them.
He was surprised to find himself given a hero's welcome inside.
The lesser fire-being on duty had not known quite what to make of the object that the dragon Myrcupa had deposited on the edge of the fumarole before taking off to complete his allotted work on Malarset. It took the orb down to deposit in the saferoom that the people of the smokeless flame used for objects that were of no use to them. In the process he discovered that two other objects, a bag and a harp, were missing.
The creatures of smokeless flame work according to a strict hierarchy, and many were away, busy with the great program. It took a little while for the news to be dispatched, by the fastest means practical, to King Belet.