Robert Hughes - The Prophet of Lamath

“Love the Prophet? Me? Ridiculous!” the woman snorted whenever he brought it up. But there was something there.

Admon Faye could sense it, just as he could sense the whereabouts of fools in the forest at night. “You’re badly mistaken!” Serphimera would scream. “Ride on! Faster!”

“Just why do we ride at all, my Lady?” he often smirked. “Is it to the dragon we’re racing? Or just away from Pelmen?”

“The pass is just above us!” she pleaded now in his ear. “Take us into it!”

“Tomorrow, my Lady,” Admon Faye told her, and this time he really meant it. In their weavings and wanderings that day, he had spotted Pelmen and his entourage far below them. “Tomorrow you’ll meet your lover—whoever he may be.” They sat encamped on the north-mouth field, at the foot of Dragonsgate. Serphimera had not been apprehended, but she and Admon Faye had been spotted that very morning in the foothills above them.

Pelmen sat on a rock, talking to the Power.

“I’m assuming there is some reason for all of this,” he said, and a breeze came up and blew tangles in his hair. “The girl is a Queen now, of course. She needs someone to win her back her throne.” Still the breeze blew. “But I suppose Rosha will do that for her.” The night was passing by quickly. Soon the rocky teeth of the Spinal Range would be visible against the sun’s first glow. “The boy needs more teaching. Who else is capable of taking him in hand?” The breeze died away, fading slowly into stillness. “Yet he’s already a hero. A bear’s-bane-battled Admon Faye and survived—what further need has he of me?” More time passed. “What about Serphimera? Someone has to protect her from her own zealous nature!” There was a stillness in the air—the kind of stillness possible only on the desert. “But Asher would willingly accept that assignment. And she’ll certainly never listen tome.” The sky turned purple, and then pale blue, before Pelmen spoke again. “All right,” he said. He held in his mind a picture of the dragon tearing him in two, and gave assent to it. “All right.”

“I thought I might find you here.” Pelmen jerked up. It was Asher, come to join him in his sleepless deliberations. “You should be in bed,” Pelmen said, unconsciously rubbing his injured shoulder.

“I couldn’t sleep, any more than you could. I’ve tossed and turned all night, thinking of dragons and death. I could wait for you no longer. Prophet, please—do you have any plan?” Pelmen licked his lips. “I think so.” Then he looked at Asher. “But I don’t think you’re going to like it any’ more than I do.” The sun came on up before the two men left the field. They were welcomed back to camp by silent, anxious faces. They planned throughout the early morning. Then, by noon, they were ready to march on the hell of an occupied Dragonsgate.

“What if he’s here? What if he’s here?”

“Whine that once more, nephew, and I’ll have you barbecued when we reach Tohn’s keep!”

“If I’m not barbecued before we reach Tohn’s keep.” Pezi shuddered.

They were climbing the last incline into Dragonsgate itself. In a moment they would turn the comer, and they would know at last if Vicia-Heinox were at home.

He was.

“He’s here!” Pezi moaned, very near tears.

“Don’t you think I can see that?” Flayh snapped.

The dragon, exhausted by his constant travel, had been sleeping. Now one long neck uncurled from the gigantic, scaly ball of his body and craned down to look at these two tiny intruders. “Wake up, Vicia,” said Heinox.

The other head did not open its eyes, but answered, “I would think, after all this time, that you would know that when you wake up, I have to wake up too.”

“Then get up and come look. We have visitors.”

“Human visitors?”

“That’s right.”

“Ridiculous. No human has come near us in days.” Vicia snuggled down into the curve of their tail. “You’ve been dreaming. Come on, let’s go back to sleep.” Heinox leaned down and nipped the exposed end of their tail, feeling that the shock of pain was well worth the aggravation it would cause his other half.

“Why did you do that?” Vicia roared, suddenly wide awake and thirty feet in the air.

“Look,” Heinox said calmly, and Vicia saw Flayh and Pezi cowering next to the rocky wall of the canyon.

“There really are humans in the pass!”

“I don’t lie.”

“It’s just difficult to imagine any human being that stupid. Should we bum them, or do you need a light snack? You could have the fat one—”

“The fat one is Pezi, isn’t it?”

“Pezi?” Vicia bent down to investigate, stopping two feet from the shaking merchant’s face. Then he lifted back up to speak with Heinox. “It is Pezi. Do you want to eat him or shall I?”

“Uncle Flayh?” Pezi stammered. “Ah—were there some—ah—tricks you were going to use?”

“I’m trying to remember how they go—” Pezi groaned loudly.

“What did you say?” Heinox asked, coming down out of the heavens to look at Flayh.

“I said, ‘Let us pass!’ I am a merchant, as is my nephew! I am a member of the Council of Elders of the merchant families! Our organization has a long-established tradition of service to your Dragonship, which it would not be in your best interests to end.” Vicia looked at Heinox. “He talks like a merchant. Let’s see how he tastes.” Flayh stumbled backward in shock.

“What my other head is trying to say,” Heinox explained, “is that we no longer wish to maintain any relationship with humankind, except that relationship dictated by our stomach.” He was moving closer and closer to Flayh, who suddenly waved his hands in the air and shouted some gibberish.

The heads looked at one another, then both slid in closer to the two merchants, pinning them against the cliff face.

“Was that one of your tricks?” Pezi whimpered, his disappointment very much in evidence in his voice.

“I’m afraid so.”

“Did it work?”

“Does it look like it worked?” Pezi stared up into those approaching jaws and was saying his good-byes to life, when Flayh finally lost his temper. He threw his hands into the air and screamed a series of curses so foul they would have curled the toenails of a troll. Then a most spectacular event took place. A gigantic ball of very white-hot light exploded in the dragon’s two faces, and suddenly Vicia-Heinox was blind. So was Pezi.

“What was that? What happened? Where’s the light? Am I dead?”

“Come on, you fool!” Flayh shouted, and he grabbed the reins of Pezi’s pony from the fat man’s hands and led his nephew’s mount into Ngandib-Mar at a gallop.

No one was more surprised than Flayh himself—he had worked on that trick in his study for weeks, with little sign of success. But there would be plenty of time to give a logical explanation of his achievement once they were safe. What was needed now was a place to hide, for the flash would not blind the beast forever. All of the woods had been burned off the mountains. They broke out onto the plain and turned sharply to the north. As they rode for their lives, they heard Vicia-Heinox scream behind them in frustration.

Admon Faye heard that chilling scream above them, and for the first time in many years his courage faltered. He stopped the pony.

“Go on!” wailed Serphimera. “What kind of a devotee are you? Go on! We’re almost there, can’t you see?” The Priestess was pounding on his back and pointing past his ear to the summit. She had worked herself into a frenzy of fear and excitement, and her voice was raspy from her constant screaming.

At last Admon Faye kicked the pony and urged it upward, but not from any sense of devotion. He could hear Pelmen coming in the pass below them.