R. Salvatore - The Dragon King

“And do not think that the balance of magical strength has shifted so greatly,” the duchess warned. “Mystigal, Resmore, and Theredon were minor spellcasters, conduits for their demon familiars rather than great powers in themselves, and neither I nor Ashannon hold much power anymore, now that our familiars have been banished.”

Brind’Amour considered the barrier Deanna had enacted on the plateau and thought that she might be underestimating herself, but he held the thought private. “Still,” he said, “I would rather battle Greensparrow alone than with his wizards allied beside him.”

“Our powers were great because of our relationships with our familiars,” Deanna explained. “If we achieved a higher symbiosis with them, even our lives could be extended.”

“As Greensparrow’s was obviously extended.” Brind’Amour realized where Deanna’s reasoning led. Brind’Amour was alive in this time because he had chosen the magical stasis, but Greensparrow had remained awake through the centuries. By now, the man should have died of old age, something even a wizard could not fully escape.

“So Greensparrow and his familiar are very close,” Brind’Amour went on, prompting Deanna to finish her point. “A demon, perhaps a demon lord?”

“So we once thought,” Deanna answered grimly. “But no, Greensparrow’s familiar is not a demon, but another of the magical beasts of the world.”

Brind’Amour scratched his beard again and seemed not to understand.

“He went into the Saltwash those centuries ago to find his power,” Deanna explained. “And so he did find it, with a beast of the highest order.”

Brind’Amour nearly swooned. He knew what creature had long ago dominated the Saltwash, and had thought that his brotherhood had destroyed, or at least had imprisoned, the beasts, as he had sealed the dragon Balthazar deep in a mountain cave.

“A dragon,” he said, all color leaving his face.

Deanna nodded grimly. “And now Greensparrow and the dragon are one.”

“Cyclopians,” Luthien muttered grimly, seeing the slaughtered horses strewn about the fields. A single farmhouse, no more than a shell, stood on a hill in the distance, a plume of black smoke rising from it.

Luthien was walking Riverdancer, alongside Bellick, Shuglin, and Solomon Keyes. He reached up and stroked the horse’s neck, as if offering sympathy to Riverdancer for the scene of carnage all about them.

“It might be that they’re making our task all the easier,” Shuglin remarked.

“The folk of Dunkery Valley have never held love for the one-eyes,” Solomon Keyes explained. “We tolerated them because we were given little choice in the matter.”

“You are not so different from everyone else in Avonsea, then,” Luthien said.

Further ahead on the road, the line parted to let a pair of riders, Siobhan and another of the Cutters, gallop through. They pulled up in front of Bellick and Luthien.

“A village not so different from Pipery,” Siobhan reported. “Four miles ahead.”

“Alanshire,” Solomon Keyes put in.

“How strong a wall?” Bellick asked Siobhan, but again it was Keyes who spoke up.

“No wall,” he said. “The buildings in the central area of town are close together. It would not be a difficult task for the folk to pile crates and stones to connect them.”

Siobhan nodded her agreement with the assessment.

“And how many soldiers?” Bellick asked.

“I can get in there and find out,” Keyes answered. He looked back over his shoulder and motioned to the other men of Pipery who had come along.

Bellick regarded Luthien, and the dwarf’s expression showed that he was suspicious of letting the priest go ahead of them.

“I can enter at dusk,” the young Bedwyr said in answer.

“And I will be there to meet you,” said Keyes. “With a full report of what we might expect from Alanshire.”

“Some would call you a traitor,” Bellick remarked.

Keyes looked at him directly, and did not back down in the least. “I only care that as few men are killed as possible,” he stated flatly.

The Pipery contingent rode off, four men and a woman sharing three horses. Bellick and the others went about the task of spreading the Eriadoran line to encompass the village. The dwarf king’s instincts told him to attack that same day, but after the situation in Pipery, he deferred to Luthien and to Keyes. If the night’s wait would make the fighting easier, then the time would not be wasted.

Luthien rode out at dusk, taking Shuglin with him at Bellick’s insistence. The dwarf king didn’t fully trust Keyes, and said so openly, and he decided that if the priest had arranged a trap for Luthien, sturdy Shuglin would prove to be a valuable companion. Besides, the crimson cape was large enough that it could camouflage the dwarf as well as Luthien.

The pair reached the outskirts of Alanshire with ease, moving along the more open streets beyond the blockaded center; Luthien was certain that they could have made it this far even without the shielding cape. Now Shuglin came out from under it, and Luthien dared to pull back the hood. Soon after, the pair came upon Keyes and another man, an older, gray-haired gentleman with perfect posture and the sober dress of a old-school merchant.

“Alan O’Dunkery,” Keyes introduced him, “mayor of Alanshire.”

“It is a family name,” the man said curtly, answering the obvious question before Luthien or Shuglin could ask it.

“The firstborn sons are all named Alan,” Keyes added.

The gravity in the priest’s tone seemed to escape Shuglin, but it was not lost on Luthien. This town was named after Alan’s family; it was even possible that the whole river valley had been named for the family O’Dunkery, and not the other way around. This was an important man even beyond the borders of his small village, Luthien realized, and the fact that Keyes had convinced him to come out and meet Luthien gave the young Bedwyr hope.

“Brother Keyes has given me assurances that Alanshire will not be sacked, nor pillaged, and that none of our men will be killed or pressed into service,” Alan O’Dunkery said sternly, hardly a tone of surrender.

“We’ll not fight any who do not lift weapons against us,” Luthien replied.

“Except cyclopians,” Shuglin grunted. Luthien turned a sharp gaze on the dwarf, but Shuglin would not back down. “We’re not leaving one-eyes on the road behind us,” he said with a determined growl.

Luthien allowed the pragmatic dwarf the final word on that.

“You’ll find few behind you,” Alan said calmly. “Most have fled to the south.”

“Taking much of Alanshire’s livestock and supplies with them,” Keyes pointedly added, reminding Shuglin that there were potential allies here, or at least noncombatants.

“How many cyclopians remain?” Luthien asked bluntly, the first information he had requested. This was a delicate moment, Luthien knew, for if Alan O’Dunkery told him outright, the man would be giving away information that would help the Eriadorans. “And if they are to make a stand at the wall, warn well any of your men or women who desire to stand beside them. Our fighters will not distinguish, human or one-eye, in the press of battle.”

Alan was shaking his head before Luthien finished. “All the cyclopians that remain are in that building,” he said, pointing to a tall, square structure that anchored the southeastern corner of the inner village. “In hiding, I would suppose, but in any case we will not allow them to come out.”

Shuglin nearly choked on that revelation.

The Eriadoran army entered Alanshire the next day. There was no fanfare, no warm greetings from the populace, so many people who had lost so much in the cyclopian exodus. But neither was there any resistance. Bellick set up his line around the cyclopian stronghold and made only a single offer to the one-eyes: that he would accept their surrender.