The Well-Favored Man

by Elizabeth Willey

  I had picked up something of both attitudes. When I had met Otto in Ascolet with my uncle, he had seemed a good enough fellow, but all through my childhood before that I had heard his name spoken with coldness. I had decided to give him some benefit of the doubt: it seemed hard to forever damn a man for ill-doing he must himself regret, and by all reports Otto had repented heart and soul of the ungentlemanly conduct which had led the Emperor Avril to accuse Gaston of treason during the Independence War. Gaston did not commit treason; he lost the war because Freia was assisted by a mysterious woman named Thiorn who commanded the military actions. For Gaston, the truth of a matter sufficed. Prospero and Mother, however, both knew how to cherish a grudge, and had.

  Walter, mollifying me, said, “I would rather have had Josquin as a guest again too.”

  “I would rather have done it in Landuc, but His Majesty made it impossible for me to refuse,” I said, irritated with the memory of that discussion.

  Walter spread his hands. “He’s a vexatious man,” he said soothingly, “and difficult to talk to. There’s none who’d disagree with that. And he does have a point, albeit a small one.”

  “It is the point of a wedge. We must be careful.”

  “Yes. I will not allow Otto to stray into mischief, and Prospero will keep him leashed and muzzled straitly. But we cannot intern the man like a criminal when he is a guest. So this is just enough, all elements weighed and assayed.”

  “Just or not, it will have to do.”

  I went back to the Citadel and left him to rehearse an ensemble and choir.

  Belphoebe was waiting for me on the steps. This was an enormous surprise; she rarely leaves her woods if she can help it.

  “Brother Gwydion,” she greeted me, not smiling.

  “Belphoebe, what brings you here?” I had a sinking feeling. More bad news, surely.

  “I come on the wings of ill tidings.”

  I led her to my private office and closed the door, leaning on it. “Tell me.”

  “There is a dragon on Mount Longview.”

  “A dragon?” I remembered Walter’s rumor. “You’re sure?”

  Phoebe nodded, pacing around the room, up and down by the tall arch-topped windows. She’s never at ease inside. “I have seen him myself. Gwydion, this is not one of the pesky little worms we have been plagued by of late. He is enormous. My hair stood on end when I glimpsed him.”

  “How did you see him?” I uncorked a bottle of wine from the sideboard and poured us each a cupful. It was not yet midday, and the morning had been long indeed.

  Belphoebe sat on the corner of my desk as I sat behind it. “I had gone up to Beza Ridge to see where you slew your manticore and to bury the carcass, but you did a clean job and so I decided to hike out to the end of the ridge. There is a good view from there.”

  “Yes, you can even see Longview on a clear day.” Longview is the highest mountain in the Southern Wall of the Jagged Mountains, which comprise the mostly uninhabited, rugged country between Argylle and Errethon.

  “Just so. I had my spyglass with me and used it, scanning the forest. I have been thinking about establishing a base at Beza, although ’tis exposed in winter, and then as I stood there looking at the mountains of the Southern Wall it occurred to me that, although distant from the more habited areas, Longview would be a good place to set up a watch-post, to try to keep a lookout for these troublesome intruders in Threshwood.”

  “I suggested that to Mother more than once—I am sure Gaston did as well.” In fact, the ruins of a gigantic tower lay tumbled on the stony, bare top of Longview. Someone had fortified the place once upon a time.

  She shrugged. “There are reasons it is unfeasible … So I stood there looking along the range with the glass and I saw something moving behind Longview. I watched and watched and finally he drifted around, riding the thermals up from the valleys I suppose.”

  “The dragon.”

  “Yes. I could not guess at how big he must be, Gwydion, but I could see him quite clearly in the glass. He is very pretty: indigo tail, blue-violet-purple on his back, shading to darker, deeper violet and blue on his head, possibly white underneath.”

  I sat in my chair and leaned back, looking up at her sun-bronzed head. “Sun and stars, Phoebe—if you could see him coasting around Longview from the ridge, he must be simply gigantic.”

  Belphoebe nodded. “Exactly. As I stood looking at him, he turned his head and, I would swear, looked back at me, directly into my eye. Then he soared around the mountain again. I watched, but saw no more.”

  We were quiet for a moment. Then I slammed my hand on my desktop, frustrated. “Damn it, Phoebe! Where is this stuff coming from? The manticores, the erltigers, the wyverns, the karyndrasks, that damned pack of satyrs last spring … It is like when Tython was causing us all that trouble.”

  She just nodded again, her grey eyes serious, a furrow between her level brows.

  “A dragon,” I said under my breath. “Just what we need! They don’t hibernate, do they?” It was autumn; if we could get it during the winter …

  Phoebe, seeing my thought, shook her head ruefully. “The lesser ones do. The greater do not. That is a rule of thumb. There are exceptions. I know but little of the magical kind. I have never seen one.”

  “They tend to be fairly individualistic,” I told her, “although there are common traits among them all.”

  “Such as?”

  I rummaged in my memory for gleanings from tales and anecdotes. “They all tend to hoard something, although it varies from dragon to dragon. Gold and diamonds are most popular, but they will settle for other precious stuff. I once read of one who favored titanium. They like their prey kicking and screaming; perhaps it is the fear. And they get off on eating other sentient animals.” I paused, thought. “I should add that everything I know about the intelligent ones is from books and hearsay. I have never encountered one myself. Just garden-variety dragons. The intelligent ones are very rare and are distinguished from the ordinary by size, habits, and naturally intelligence.”

  “And how intelligent are they?”

  “I don’t know. Probably no one has tested them.”

  She scowled at me. “Be serious! This is nowise laughable!”

  “I know. At least he’s fifty miles away at Longview. Let us pray he stays there until we can work out what to do.”

  “Kill him, naturally.” Phoebe tossed back the wine.

  I lifted my eyebrows slightly and looked at her. Oh, so? I thought, but did not say it.

  “ ’Twill be no joust, no child’s play,” she conceded, setting her cup down. “Marfisa and Alex will be delighted to have a share in the hunt, certes.”

  “There are so few opportunities for genuine heroism these days,” I agreed drily. “Phoebe, it is very likely that one of our family is going to be dead before that dragon is.”

  She thinned her mouth. “How do you know?”

  “The odds are for it. It is not like killing a wyvern in Jurlit’s barn. Great dragons know who’s who and what’s what.” I pulled a sheet of paper toward me. “I shall close the southern roads, I think.” In an emergency like this, I couldn’t wait to consult the Council, and legally I didn’t have to.

  “At once?”

  “At once. It is autumn trading season and that road is heavily used. He may already have taken someone and questioned him. If not, we can make it harder for him to find anyone. Nobody is much around there, just a few mountain men … Perhaps,” I went on, “I should route everything around him along Leys and the Road.” That would require that I send Phoebe and Walter out to lead caravans of merchants …

  “That seems a sound precaution.”

  “But he may well be able to follow anyway. If he is a real dragon, a magical one, he sees the Road and Leys as clearly as you see the lines on your palm; they are his natural paths. He knows without looking how they lie and where in the fabric of the world the pocket-worlds are stitched and how the Road leads in and out of the
m, among other things.”

  “Such as?” my sister prompted.

  “Extensive knowledge of magic.”

  “Oh.” She didn’t say anything else for a while. I wrote a list of roads in that area and drafted a closing order and a mobilization and a few other notes to Gracci the Castellan and his subordinates. Anselm, my secretary, would draw the order up prettily, and Gracci would take some of the City Guard up toward Errethon border to enforce it.

  “Should we talk to the others first?” Phoebe suggested diffidently as I pulled the bell.

  “This is the best way to start. I will call a meeting for tonight.”

  “Then I’ll tarry here. Till then I shall go watch the archers practicing.” And sting them to better performance, I thought. She met Anselm coming in. I gave him my draft and told him to hurry. I wanted the closing official by sundown. The Councillors would squall; they were used to being consulted, but in times of emergency Mother had always gone straight over them, and I thought this was an authentic emergency.

  I went to my workroom and assembled the materials needed to perform high-quality Lesser Summonings for my family, had a cup of bitter thick tea to fortify me for the physical drain involved, and began with Prospero.

  The familiar preliminary words rolled off my tongue smoothly. The fire in the iron dish leapt up and showed me to myself in the mirror, the underlighting playing odd shading-tricks with the planes and angles of my cheeks and nose. I smiled at my reflection just to reassure myself. When I sprinkled three drops of water on the flames, my face was obscured in the disproportionate steam they made. I breathed on the glass, whispering. As the mist cleared, my image was replaced by Prospero’s. We look much alike, so the change was not particularly dramatic; I seemed to acquire a beard, a few lines around my eyes, and a floppy blue velvet hat.

  Prospero scowled when I told him about this latest headache. He was on a moored ship; the ocean and another ship moved asynchronously behind him, and a spit of land with a high white tower, the Ollol light, seemed unstable by its contrasting stability. The image yawed, too—he must have lit one of the gimballed lamps to bring my Summoning image as well as sound.

  “What in the blistering hells—! A dragon? Whence comes this bestiary plague?”

  I smiled in spite of myself. “I don’t know. I killed a seven-and-a-half ell Argylle manticore on Beza Ridge yesterday.”

  He frowned more deeply. “Aye, and that wandering wyvern but a few days past. ’Tis one damned thing hot on t’other’s heels, as they say. Tython’s legacy haunts us still, may he twist in agony eternally and his deviant minions with him! I’ll make my excuses here and be there forthwith; I must ride, as I rode hither and I’d liever not leave Blitzen.”

  “Good. I will call the others. By the way—”

  “Yes?” he snapped, halting in mid-reach toward the focussing light.

  “I know I ought to have asked you first, but I have already issued an order closing the southern roads. The Council will be complaining.”

  He nodded, and more mildly said, “Well thought on. You need not beg my permission, Gwydion, nor theirs; you are the Lord of Argylle.”

  I shrugged. Prospero’s style was always high-handed. He smiled scantly and cut the connection. I cast my line upon the currents again. Punctiliously observing seniority protocol, I Summoned my eldest brother Alexander next.

  “Alexander,” I said as he appeared in the glass.

  He was far away, in a green-draped alcove, looking at me via a mirror flanked by candles. It made a beautiful receiving focus. Behind him I could see a white marble corridor. His clothing looked formal. He glanced over each shoulder before speaking softly. “Gwydion. It has been a while.”

  “Not that long. Three months here? Yes …”

  “Ah. What is afoot?”

  “Not afoot, but aloft. We have a genuine dragon in Threshwood, on Mount Longview.”

  “A dragon?” He began to smile.

  “Phoebe, using a spyglass, saw him quite clearly from Beza Ridge.”

  “Fifty miles away! Gods! It must be enormous!” He looked interested, excited.

  “Precisely. I’m fairly sure, just based on the size, that he must be one of the real ones, not one of the mundane ones.”

  “Magical, you mean? Ley-finding faculty and so on?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oho! But it can still be killed, no doubt.” He smiled. “I misdoubt he’ll move on simply at the asking. Who’ll evict him?”

  “If you can come to a meeting here, tonight, the topic will probably be touched on.” Something about his eagerness to get the dragon to the taxidermist rubbed me the wrong way, but I had to be careful not to annoy Alexander. “I know it is very short notice, but we must move fast.”

  “Catch it off guard, perhaps. Yes. I’ll be there.” He glanced aside, shook his head, and turned away. I snuffed out the fire.

  My next call was to Alexander’s twin sister Marfisa, his junior by half an hour, like him in almost everything save sex. This unnerved people, who often took her for his brother, especially when she was armored.

  “Marfisa?”

  “Ah—Gwydion.” She was far, far away. Her voice was thin and remote from the lily-shaped crystal trumpet.

  “You are wanted here, Marfisa. In Argylle. Can you come?”

  “Now?”

  “Yes. Or in the next few hours.”

  “Ah.”

  I thought we had lost touch for a moment, and then the glass fogged completely and cleared again and the image in it improved markedly. She was seated at a low table, cross-legged, in a loose smocklike shirt and trousers, in a tent it appeared. Her short-cropped curly hair was rumpled, her face expressionless in its classical regularity. A matchstub was between her fingers. There seemed but one light there, the one receiving my Summoning, and it stood some distance from Marfisa.

  “Some emergency?” she inquired.

  “Yes,” I said, guessing that I had interrupted something.

  A sigh. “Very well. What?” A line between her even brows, just like Alex’s—“Father?”

  “No. We have a very large dragon on Mount Longview. We are going to have to do something about it.”

  Her eyes narrowed and a spark of interest came to her face. “Such as kill it.”

  “Something like that, yes.”

  “When?”

  “We will discuss and decide at our meeting here in Argylle this evening.”

  “How long from now by your clock?”

  “About eight hours.”

  “I shall attend.”

  She pinched out the flame.

  I sent a messenger to Walter with a note about the meeting and then went back into my workroom and tried to raise Gaston and my uncle.

  No answer, of course. Just wanted to feel sorry for myself, I guess.

  We sat in the same order around the same oval table in the same long green-panelled room where Prospero had officially declared that I was the new Lord of Argylle. He had declared here to us once that he was worried about Mother, too, and announced a full-scale search. Mother had turned up on her own, apologizing for the fuss—she had miscalculated the speed of an Eddy’s spin and overstayed. His son Dewar had been missing twenty-two years now, and Prospero hadn’t bothered being officially worried. He had wandered the Road searching in every world he passed for a long time, and still went off periodically when he had a new idea about some place, but not even a rumor had he found. I had hunted around too, but if people want to hide, they can, and it is hard to find someone who does not want to be found, particularly an adept like my uncle. We knew he had bolt-holes, strongholds, retreats; we did not know where even one of them was.

  This time I chaired the meeting.

  “Belphoebe, please describe what you did today.”

  She obliged. I then tapped Walter and asked him to repeat the rumors he had heard about a dragon in Threshwood. He repeated them with cautions that they were rumors only; he hadn’t traced any back to eyewit
nesses.

  “The timing is something we must ascertain,” I said. “How long has he been there? What has he been up to?”

  “Has he given our citizens cause for complaint?” asked Prospero.

  “Farmers missing offspring or livestock and suchlike devilry? No. Not even a sighting as definite as Phoebe’s,” Walter said firmly.

  “So he is but newly lighted here, taking his bearings,” said Alexander. One long finger tapped the base of his wineglass. He and Marfisa exchanged a glance, gold-sparked hazel eye to identical eye, a moment’s nonverbal communication, no more.

  “What do you know for certain about such creatures?” I asked my grandfather.

  Prospero stroked his beard. “Hmmm. Since you told me of this, they’ve been much in my mind. Never have I faced one, nor would I gladly, though I believe your father Gaston did so ages past when he was a hot youth.”

  That was a long time ago.

  “I did not know that,” Alexander said. Marfisa lifted her eyebrows a hair’s-breadth.

  “ ’Tis but a tale I heard once, and the truth could be something wholly other. Histories alter day to day. Someone else in Landuc might remember better, or know more … There were dragons seen over the Palace of Landuc at Panurgus’ death, a brace of them I’m told. The lesser ones, those that are like unto the Elemental creatures in form though not in nature, are commonplace in Phesaotois, to wit Noroison and its vicinity. Certain folk are wont keep the dragonets for guardian-pets till they grow large and ungovernable. Are you certain this is of the Elemental strain?”

  I hesitated. I was not sure. “The size is extraordinary. Although I slew a manticore of unnatural size the other day, dragons are another thing. This one must be inconceivably big, and even if he be of the common run …”