The Dragons of Dorcastle Read online

  “You’re the first Mage I’ve ever met,” the Mechanic said. “Do you believe that there’s something wrong with helping others?”

  “Helping?” That had meant something once, too. He had been punished for that, and now shied from remembering.

  “Yes.” The Mechanic gazed at him, some other emotion he couldn’t identify showing on her face now. “You don’t know what helping others means? You don’t believe people should help others?”

  He did have a reply to that. “There are no others, and I do not believe this. I know it. Mages believe in nothing.”

  His frank statement seemed to startle her. “Nothing? And that makes you happy?”

  Another easy answer, drilled into him countless times during his years as an acolyte. “Happiness is an illusion.”

  “I don’t believe that, and I can’t believe you do.” The sound of shouts down in the pass came again, distance rendering them vague but still menacing. The Mechanic took another deep breath. “We can’t afford to rest any longer. Ready?”

  He finally realized that she had waited here, she had spoken with him, to give him time to rest even though it increased the danger for her. Alain took a moment to answer as he tried to understand the Mechanic’s actions, which were even more confusing than her words. “Yes.”

  The Mechanic started climbing again, toward a crest that seemed tantalizingly close now.

  Alain kept waiting for more thunder that would signify that the Mechanic weapons were launching their projectiles at him again, but they reached the top and slid over without any sign they had been spotted. The Mechanic was sitting below the ridge line on a slope that dipped down a short ways before rising to join more hills looming behind her. She was obviously waiting for him again. “They didn’t see you?” she asked.

  “I do not think so.”

  “How you can be so calm and unemotional about this, I don’t know,” the Mechanic said.

  “A Mage has no interest in the world,” Alain explained.

  “Not even when it’s trying to kill him? At least you’re consistent.” She rubbed one hand across her face, smearing sweat and dust into a dirty, wet mask. “You said that everybody else in the caravan died?”

  “I believe so. All I saw were dead. I heard no sounds from anyone fighting or calling out offers to surrender.”

  “Stars above.” She blinked away tears. “We were lucky to escape with our lives.”

  “They do not want to kill you. They sought to capture you,” Alain said, offering the obvious explanation.

  “What? Me?” She stared at him. “Why do you say that?”

  “The attack destroyed the front of the caravan. Your wagon was at the rear. None of the weapons were aimed at the area near your wagon. The bandits did not immediately kill you as they did all others in the caravan, and before I killed them, their leader stopped one from harming you. I could hear the shouts when the others reached your wagon. They were discontented.”

  “No, that’s…” She swallowed as her voice choked. “Bandits. They wanted to loot the caravan. That’s what bandits do.”

  “They destroyed the wagons in the lead. Why would they destroy so much if they desired to loot it?”

  The Mechanic ran one hand through her hair, haunted eyes gazing now at the nearby rocks. “Yeah, but…they shouldn’t even have known I was with the caravan. My Guild insisted I stay locked in that wagon so no one would know I was on my way to Ringhmon.” Her face darkened with anger. “They made me stay locked in there. If I hadn’t figured out how to take apart that lock I’d have been trapped in that wagon when the bandits got to it.”

  “I would have gotten you out before then,” Alain said tonelessly.

  Her eyes shifted back to him. “That’s why you were coming back?”

  “Yes.” There was no reason to deny that. “I had been contracted to protect the caravan and I thought whichever shadow was in the wagon might still need my protection.”

  “I never imagined a Mage would do that. The Senior Mechanics always said…you said that Mages didn’t care about people.”

  “I did not do it because I cared about you. You are nothing,” Alain said impassively.

  It did not take a Mage to see the resentment that statement aroused in the Mechanic. “Thanks.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “I’m being sarcastic, Mage. What’s your name?”

  Alain eyed her, trying to guess why the Mechanic had asked for that information.

  “If we’re going to depend on each other to live I deserve that much,” the Mechanic insisted. “And I need to know what to call you besides ‘Mage.’ ”

  His elders would be angry if they knew he was even talking to a Mechanic. They would be angrier yet if they knew he had accompanied her this far. Even though the elders, like all Mages, were supposed to feel no emotions, every acolyte learned to fear the anger the elders would never admit to.

  Many of those elders had also made clear their belief that he did not deserve to be made a Mage so young, despite his ability to pass the tests.

  And the elders had sent him here, alone, as if wishing for him to fail.

  The defiance he had kept carefully buried in recent years rose close enough to the surface to bring the words to Alain’s lips. “I am Mage Alain of Ihris.”

  “Mage Alain of Ihris.” The Mechanic studied him for a moment, her nervousness fading a bit as she examined him. Now, resting close to each other, he could see clearly how young she was. “Ihris is a long ways north of here. I’m Master Mechanic Mari of Caer Lyn.”

  “Caer Lyn.” Islands, to the west of the Empire. “That is also north of here.”

  “Not nearly as far as Ihris.” She closed her eyes, breathing deeply. “We need to keep moving, but I think we should rest a little longer. Climbing in this heat is very tough and we’ll kill ourselves if we push it too hard.” After he said nothing, the Mechanic opened her eyes to glare at him. “Well?”

  “What?” Did all Mechanics act in such strange ways?

  “I expressed an opinion. What is your opinion?”

  “It does not matter.”

  Her expression changed from disbelief to anger to resignation so quickly that he barely had time to recognize each emotion. “Fine. I’m in charge, then. Why does everybody always want me to be in charge? Have you ever been in anything like this situation before?”

  “No. This is my first contract.”

  She frowned this time. “Mine, too. What’s such a young, inexperienced Mage during out here by himself?”

  He knew no Mechanic would catch any bitterness leaking through his control of his voice as he answered. “My Guild has declared me a Mage, but being inexperienced, my price is less than that of older Mages. The caravan could not afford more.”

  “If you’re so inexperienced, they should not have sent you out alone to face this kind of danger!” Strangely, the Mechanic’s anger now seemed aimed at his own Guild’s elders.

  “The commands of the elders are not to be questioned.”

  What did her expression mean now? But her brief gasp of laughter did not sound like she was happy. “I never expected to hear something that made your Guild sound like my Guild.”

  This talk was treading onto dangerous ground. Guild secrets. If there were another Mage here…

  If there were another Mage here, he would never have spoken to this Mechanic. He would not have gone with her. He would never have known anything about her or any other Mechanic.

  If Mechanics were enemies as he had always been told, then he had a duty to learn more about them. And perhaps he would learn that this Mechanic, at least, was not an enemy. She did not act like an enemy. But she was not a Mage. What was she then? “Why are you here alone, young, inexperienced Mechanic?”

  She flushed slightly at the question. “I wish I knew all of the answers to that. I asked for some of those answers, but Senior Mechanics aren’t in the habit of giving explanations when they issue orders. The short answer is that I have some unique skills that Ringhmon needs.” Her voice held undeniable pride as she spoke that last sentence.

  Alain almost frowned, too, barely catching himself in time. If everything the Mechanics did was a trick, why import this girl when more experienced tricksters surely lived in Ringhmon? How could she have unique skills? But it was obvious now that what he had been told about Mechanics, or their weapons at least, was at best incomplete. “Are these unique skills of yours the reason why the bandits seek you?”

  “No. No, that’s impossible. They’d have no possible use for my skills, unless they were thinking of ransom,” she said. “But kidnapping a Mechanic? The Guild would never stand for it.”

  “The attackers had many of the weapons made by your Guild,“ Alain pointed out.

  “Yeah.” The Mechanic’s lips twisted, her feelings once again hard to read. “A bandit gang with as much firepower as an army could afford.”

  Twelve years of Mage Guild training had never been able to suppress Alain’s curiosity. “Why would your Guild elders permit that?”

  “I told you that my…elders…don’t provide reasons for what they do. They don’t listen and they don’t explain.” Her feelings didn’t seem so much anger as frustration now. “I wish—” The Mechanic’s eyes went to him, startling him with the intensity of her gaze. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be talking about things like that with a…”

  “I am a Mage,” Alain said. That was not a matter for the comfort or discomfort of others, whose feelings did not matter anyway, but he understood the Mechanic this time. There were things that should not be discussed with any outsider, and especially not with a Mechanic. But perhaps there other things she would explain. “I have been trained in tactics, since my work would involve the military forces of the common people. Perhaps that is why I was thought able to handle this contract alone. Tell me your thoughts on your tactics. Why did you choose to run up the side of the pass instead of back down the road along the way we had come? Why did you choose the harder path?”

  The Mechanic slumped, then to Alain’s amazement began laughing softly. “That’s who I am, I guess. If I’m working on a piece of equipment, say a locomotive or a far-talker, I do things the best way I can. Not the easy way. And I’m like that in everything. I don’t do what’s easy. The Senior Mechanics, my elders, haven’t always appreciated that.” She sighed, her eyes gazing bleakly at nothing. “From what I’d seen of the road to the pass, it was wide open. We’d have been spotted and run down in no time. So going up the side of the pass was the harder road, but the right one.”

  “You were correct,” Alain said, then wondered why he had felt any need to tell her that. “Once I had the opportunity to think it through, I realized that you were right.”

  Her gaze went back to him, puzzled. “Why is a Mage telling a Mechanic that she was right?”

  “I…” do not know. “Because we survived and have a chance to reach Ringhmon.”

  “Yeah. A chance.” The Mechanic closed her eyes again. “Do you have any food or water? I don’t.”

  “I do not, either.”

  “How long can we survive in the Waste without water?”

  It took him a moment to realize she was not expecting him to answer that with some exact number of days. “The caravan master’s map showed wells farther up the road once we had cleared the pass.”

  She opened her eyes, looking at Alain with hope. “You’re sure? How far?”

  “I am sure, but I do not know how far.” Mechanic Mari nodded wearily, leaving Alain wishing he had been able to tell her something more hopeful. She is a shadow. Do not forget. Nothing more than those you have fought today.

  He felt a cold hollowness inside himself. He had never fought in earnest before today, never killed before today. The common folk he had seen among the caravan now lay dead themselves. People who had depended upon him for protection. All of them were shadows, so none of that should matter, but it did.

  He sensed something then, and turned to look back at the crest of the ridge. A black haziness floated there, the sort of thing that might drift into vision when physical stress was so intense that a person was in danger of passing out. He knew that type of thing all too well from years of intense training to teach him to ignore what non Mages called reality, but this haze was different.

  It did not waver, and suddenly Alain realized what the haze represented. Foresight, warning of danger. That skill has finally come to me, in a time of great stress as the elders taught. But the elders also said foresight was an undependable gift at best. He inched upward cautiously until he could see back down the slope they had climbed. There were figures visible down there, above the dust now as they clambered up the heights, their Mechanic weapons shining in the sun.

  Alain crawled backward rapidly. “They are coming up in this direction,” he reported without letting any betraying feeling into his voice this time.

  Chapter Three

  Mari’s heart jumped at the Mage’s words. Her right hand went to the pistol she had holstered, then she took a breath to calm herself. All right. Time to go. Which way? “There,” she said to the Mage as she pointed. “Farther into the heights.” She had stopped questioning their weird alliance, which after all was going to be as temporary as she could manage. The Mage was unnerving, with his emotionless voice and face and his strange attitudes. But the fact that these so called bandits were still chasing them made teaming up with him a simple matter of survival, even if she didn’t feel responsible for his fate.

  The Mage gave her one of his impassive glances. “To the west? The ground is more difficult that way and the original attack came from that direction.”

  “Exactly! They’ll think we’re running in panic and taking the easiest route, which is in the other direction.”

  “And you always take the more difficult route,” the Mage said.

  “Well…yes.” She hadn’t expected a Mage to remember that. “Because it makes sense this time. Besides, it’ll be easier to stay hidden up there.” Mari paused, thinking of how Mage Alain had fallen after whatever he had done to the bandits on the ledge. “Can you manage it?”

  What would she do if he couldn’t? Leave him? No. Nobody gets abandoned. Not by me. Not even one of them. Touching him earlier to help the Mage to his feet had felt…peculiar, after all that she had heard about Mages. But if he needed assistance again, she would grit her teeth and do it.

  Despite his usually successful attempts to hide his emotions, Mage Alain gave her a look which communicated a trace of wounded pride. For that brief moment he seemed more human, more a boy close to her own age. “Of course I can manage.”

  She lurched to her feet, wishing tools weighed a lot less. Leaving them behind was unthinkable, though. Being a Master Mechanic had qualified her to have one of the limited number of portable far-talkers. It was in her pack, but the range on the device was so limited that Mari figured she would have to be within less than a day’s march of Ringhmon before she could use her far-talker to contact her Guild for help. Until then it was simply a heavy object in her pack.

  “Why do you not leave your treasure behind?” The Mage’s bland tone made the question sound as if the answer held no interest to him.

  “Treasure?” She gave him a baffled glance, then realized the Mage was looking at her pack. “This isn’t treasure. My tools are in here.”

  “Tools?”

  “Mechanics use tools. Didn’t anybody ever tell you that?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t have time to explain,” Mari said, wondering if she should be explaining tools at all to a Mage. “But a Mechanic never loses or abandons her tools. It’s one of the most important rules of my Guild.” Taking a deep breath, Mari started off, scrambling along the slope at an angle until it merged with another rise before climbing. Mari didn’t know why the young Mage was so tired. He looked strong and healthy, even tough, but he had almost collapsed after whatever he had done to take out those bandits, so it must be related to that. But how? The engineer in her kept puzzling over the answer, a welcome distraction from the fear she still felt.

  Despite his obvious weariness, though, the Mage stayed right behind her, displaying a stubborn determination to keep up that she had to admire.

  They rolled over another, higher crest, once again blocking their view of the way they had come. Mari tried to swallow and then coughed, trying to muffle the sound with both hands over her mouth. How far into these hills would the bandits search for them? How close behind were they now? “Did you see any sign of them, Mage Alain?”

  He shook his head. “I saw nothing of the bandits. I heard a few faint cries, but they seemed far distant.”

  Maybe she had made the right decisions. I’m only eighteen years old, and ten years of studying engineering isn’t exactly the best preparation for running for your life from bandits. Knowing how to fix a steam engine isn’t likely to be too useful out here.

  The Mage had approved of her first decision, and left other decisions to her, so he must think she knew what she was doing. She wished she had the same confidence in herself.Why had she been sent to Ringhmon this way? Sent alone on her first contract, contrary to normal procedures, and told it was too urgent to wait for the winds to shift so she could take a ship from the Empire to Ringhmon’s tiny coastal port. With the Empire and Ringhmon not at war at the moment, that would have been the safest way to travel. If this contract was so blasted important, if getting her there as fast as possible were so critical, then why had they put her into this kind of danger?

  And why had Professor S’san, who had always shown the greatest interest in Mari at the Mechanics Guild Academy in Palandur, insisted on giving her as a graduation gift a very expensive and hard-to-acquire semi-automatic pistol? Every weapon and every machine was made by hand, their quantities strictly limited by the Mechanics Guild, and the allotted production of pistols like Mari’s was only a few a year. What had worried S’san enough to justify that gift?

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