Dragonslayer: A Novel by Wayland Drew Read Free Book Online Page B

helmet. He moved with feline grace. "I don't wish to intrude," he said, his smile fixed and watchful.
    "You have intruded," Ulrich said.
    "So it seems. In that case, permit me to introduce myself. I am Lord Tyrian, Centurion to His Majesty Casiodorus, King of Ur-land."
    "And no friend of the maidens of Urland," Valerian said. The youth's face had lost its color, and he was trembling. "No friend to Urland! What do you want, Tyrian?"
    "Nay, young master Valerian." Tyrian chuckled softly. "The question is more what do you want. Why have you come to this . . . this magician? What seek you?"
    "That is none of your affair!"
    "But indeed it is my affair. The peace of the realm is my affair, my responsibility." His brow darkened ominously. "I sense that this peace is threatened."
    "Do you call it peace, what reigns in Urland now? A dragon in our midst?"
    "A pacified dragon. Yes."
    "Pacified by the sacrifices you supervise, the lotteries you arrange! Hateful!" Valerian's voice broke strangely.
    "The lotteries in which you participate. All of you!" Tyrian flung his hand away from his sword hilt to include the entire group of Urlanders, and Galen glimpsed terrible fires at the heart of his sudden rage. "What hypocrites you are! What fools! To maintain for all these years a compromise that works, and then, now, to sneak off in the night to seek the aid of this old man." He dismissed Ulrich with a flick of his hand. "Whose weak magic will do nothing more than aggravate the dragon and loose the wrath of Vermithrax on all of Urland. Fools!"
    "Perhaps," said Ulrich softly in the silence that followed. His voice was thin, like the call of a distant bird. Outside, horses stamped and whinnied, and warriors laughed among themselves. "But there are many kinds of power, and some that do not fade with age."
    "Or perhaps even with death?" Tyrian asked, openly sneering now.
    "Perhaps."
    "In that case, let us put it to the test, for I see no power here, but a pitiful old man." He drew a dagger from the sheath at his hip.
    With a hoarse cry, Hodge lunged toward the sword which he had stood in a corner, and Galen and Valerian both seized stout clubs of firewood. Instantly, other armed figures darkened the doorway at Tyrian's whistle; but what might have been a massacre never developed, for Ulrich had begun to laugh, and they were all frozen by his laughter, which was shrill and whistling, like a hawk's cry far away.
    "Death?" he said. "Death is the only test you can devise? How you reveal your fears, my friend! Had you asked me to change your sword to gold, or to heal some illness of mind or body, or to relieve the suffering of the poor and luckless in your land, then I might have been afraid, and wavered, and so compromised the charm. But of death I have no fear at all. Strike away!"
    "No, Ulrich!"
    "Nor should you be afraid, Galen. For shame, after all I have taught you? Ad lacunam igneam, there I shall be always, where opposites are resolved. As for you, sir . . ." He turned again to Tyrian and moved slowly, arms spread as if to embrace him, through the few paces that separated them. "I will give you the test you wish, and the results you wish, although you yourself will not see them all, for you will long since have been lost in a labyrinth of your own contriving, deeper, and darker, and more convoluted than any dragon's lair. Strike. You cannot hurt me. Not ever. Strike!" And again he began to laugh softly. Galen was also smiling. After his initial alarm he understood that Ulrich had some wonderful trick prepared, something that would make a fool of this bully Tyrian. Perhaps the dagger would go limp. Perhaps it would glance olf the invisible shield Ulrich had drawn around himself. Galen was amused too at Gringe, who launched himself squawking at Tyrian's inflamed face, causing the man to fling up a protective arm and brush the bird away.
    But then, suddenly, Galen stopped laughing. In one lethal movement Tyrian had his dagger and plunged it into