The Well-Favored Man

by Elizabeth Willey

Hicha had turned up only eight books with substantial material on dragons. She also had a long list of references, but most of them were just a few words here or there. I curled up in the deep blue-cushioned window seat of my study and began to read.

  Two of Hicha’s books were ones I myself had added to the Archives; I already had gone over the copies in my own collection. I flipped through these just in case, but no, all was the same.

  The others were more interesting. Prospero, Uncle Dewar, Freia, and Gaston were all book lovers of wide-ranging taste and had added freely to the Archives, collecting material from all over. One of the manuscripts I looked at now was very old and in Latin with a translation in my mother’s minuscule handwriting on tissue paper between each page, the translation being sandwiched between two more sheets of tissue. She had also made editorial comments. I read a few lines and then closed it; her voice, evoked in my thoughts by the handwriting and the characteristic style, made me shake.

  Two others were in archaic script, probably from Noroison via Dewar. I set them aside.

  Oriana’s gift to Gaston was a scroll in a pictogrammatic-looking brush-writing I didn’t understand with an attached Lannach précis in Gaston’s writing: “On the Ways of the Lords of the Air (dragons) with a description of their habits”—thanks, Gaston. Just what I needed, but no, he didn’t translate the whole thing. Damn. Maybe somebody else could read it. The pictures were very pretty. They looked like someone working from a fifth-hand description had drawn them as accurately as possible.

  One of the bound books was a standard hunting treatise and another was also a hunting treatise which contradicted most of the first’s assertions about life cycle, feeding habits, and so on. They also disagreed on the best way to kill a dragon. It was clear that the unintelligent and nonmagical variety was intended, but I read them anyway.

  That was all. I sighed and settled in with the books from Noroison. Had Dewar, I wondered, ever run across a dragon? He had not mentioned it to me.

  These books were very informative. One of them, by a man I’d never heard of named Lord Uvarkis, even cited the other in a few places, agreeing and expanding in detail on cursory observations by the earlier writer, Duke Nellor Trephayenne. Duke Nellor was a legendary hunter, dead for many centuries before Uvarkis had written his sequel. When I read, I tend to hear the writer’s voice, or to invent one for him; now I conjured up an image of the doughty, bass-voiced Duke Nellor and the dry, academic Uvarkis, who coughed occasionally and smiled a sidelong smile.

  NELLOR: “The lesser dragon be sluggish in chill weather and as the year wanes he groweth insensible in the greatest cold, which be to his disliking so he will fly if he be not injured or ill to milder climes to avoid this if he possess no lair or be from it sundered by accident. Yet he endureth the cold if necessary in a wakeful dullness of sense which passeth if he be roused by attack and if he be sundered from his lair. And if he be in his lair he doth nought but sleep all the season until the sun returneth. And in the days of winter-sleep the females lay their eggs.”

  UVARKIS: “Nellor states that the female of Draco sapiens will lay her eggs during hibernation. This is incorrect. She (and there are very few shes) lays them in the spring. Selecting a spot with good exposure to sun or other source of heat, such as a volcanic steam vent or hot spring, she will construct a sort of mound or heap and lay them in it, coiling herself about the pile during the incubation. The number of eggs can be many or few, but only one or two, possibly three, of the hatchlings will survive the cannibalistic feeding frenzy that follows hatching …”

  NELLOR: “Purloining a souvenir object from a dragon’s hoard be ill-rede, should you chance to find the hoard unattended. For he will mark the lack forth-withal and hunt you a-raged through Ocean and Vapor, Earth and Hell, until he recover the object and devour the thief.”

  UVARKIS: “Dragons brood over their hoards until they are intimately familiar with each item. In the case of the dragon of Li Changroven, the hoard numbered some eighty thousand jade objects great and small, each of which the dragon could apparently describe in detail, provenance and workmanship both, with a fair assessment of the item’s current market value. It may be possible to appease a dragon by offering him a unique or novel item for his hoard, but I would personally not rely on this.”

  NELLOR: “The great dragon be solitary in his habit as a hermit, withal it liketh him to partake of fellowship of men of passingly quick wit. So from time to time will he suffer one with whom he hath held particularly pleasant discourse to escape uneaten.”

  UVARKIS: “According to Nellor, the great dragons are solitary creatures. This is true, and it is because they are jealous of their hoards and their hunting territories …”

  Uvarkis even gave an account of a conversation he had had with one dragon, annotating it to explain the reasoning behind his parts. They had talked for a day and a half. I read it over several times. The key seemed to be to play Scheherazade, to keep the dragon guessing, wanting more, without annoying him quite enough to end the chat.

  I wondered how my scintillating conversational skills would compare. Uvarkis had a masterful command of language; puns and anecdotes and double-entendres tripped lightly along in a fluent, easy style, references to other dragons and ancient history indicating his wide experience and familiarity with the species. Ottaviano had survived such an encounter. I was not certain I could.

  Dragon coloration seemed to be a random thing, rather like spots on cats, not indicative of anything special.

  Dragons favored high places near, but not too near, human habitation. I knew that.

  Dragons were attracted to magic and magical locales. They could sense magic as easily as a dog could smell a rabbit.

  Dragons preferred warm climates, but the great dragons, the biggest and oldest and most intelligent (they kept growing and becoming smarter with age) were impervious to the cold. Nellor described standing next to one such as being near a smelter’s furnace, so great was the heat thrown off by the beast. This made sense, considering their Elemental pedigree.

  Dragons’ eyes were their principal weak spot, although Nellor had had good results when he had managed to pitch an explosive right down the throat of one yawning. It had annoyed the dragon so much it had gotten careless, and Nellor had been able to get in a clear swing at the head, decapitating it. I could not see any of us trying that. Maybe Herne would, but he was an impatient man and he was also lucky.

  I closed the books and looked out the window. It was raining. I thought of the rain hissing and evaporating off the hot hide of our dragon. What had become of Uvarkis? Had he run across a dragon too smart for his wry wit? Had he gotten too close to the throne and been murdered, as happened to successful courtiers? Uncle Dewar might know. I sighed.

  I picked up Gaston’s scroll again and read his inscription once more. He was the expert on killing things. Phoebe and the twins knew a lot too, but the sheer weight of experience on Gaston’s side was overwhelming, as Prospero had hinted the previous night. Prospero had never gone in for wholesale death the way Gaston had. Gaston had never gone in for sorcery the way Prospero had. They had widely different tastes in most things, despite being brothers.

  I looked at Mother’s translation of the Latin manuscript, which was a bestiary. The dragon part was nothing compared to the Nellor and Uvarkis books, being patently inaccurate or fictional. But it was pleasant to read her writing, to hear her quiet voice with its warm undertone echo dimly in my mind, and so I read on and on about the Camelopard and the Roc, the Oliphant and the Griffin (similar to but obviously not related to our gryphons). The light grew poor, and I learned of the Unicorn and the Wyvern (a local variant, perhaps) and the Beast Glatisant. The pictures were familiar, and I wondered if Mother had read to me from this, or just shown it to me and made up stories around the pictures, when I was a child. Soon the light was too dim for reading. I closed the book and leaned my head back against the wall, eyes closed.

  “Gwydion.”

 
I started and lit the lamp with a finger-snap invocation of an ignis. No one was there. Had I dozed through a failed Summoning?

  I was tired from my sleepless night, my worried days. It had been Mother’s voice I had heard: a hallucination induced by reading her manuscript. I slammed the books down on my desk and went off to find dinner.

  3

  BELPHOEBE HAD A BOW WITH SILVER- and gold-tipped arrows of black steel. Three black spears and a few throwing knives concealed about her person were her other weapons. She doesn’t like armor, and we had pleaded with her to reconsider, but no, light mesh mail over her usual leather tunic was the most she’d have, not even more protection on her legs than her lightweight leather leggings.

  Alexander was in silver-colored scale mail over leather; Marfisa’s mail was coppery. They had lances, long swords, shields. Alexander was on his terrible horse Steel with its sharp teeth; Marfisa rode a beast I had not seen before with wild yellow eyes, clawed not-quite-hooves, and quilly fur that was almost scales. Still rather horselike. Her helmet was winged and her eyes, clear and neutral, scanned her brothers and sisters, cataloguing our weaponry.

  Marfisa had had an intense, low-toned non-argument with her squire Tellin at the stables before we left the Citadel. Redheaded Tellin had firmly entrenched herself in the squire’s duty to accompany her knight, and Marfisa had besieged her position with the knight’s duty to train, not kill, her squire. Prospero, Alexander, and I had made ourselves scarce until Tellin, head high and face set and pale, left the stables. Alexander had brought no attendant with him; he never did when visiting Argylle, and Marfisa never had done so before. It was natural that the girl would want to accompany Marfisa, if only for the novelty of the adventure and the glory to be got, but Marfisa had the discretion of wisdom and experience and would not waste the girl’s life, and rode out to join us alone.

  I rode Cosmo and wore black leather and carried only one spear, a shield, and my favorite gold-damascened sword, Talon. Out of habit I had a small axe and a mace at my saddle, but I doubted I’d be using them. In the back of my mind, my memory ticked with spells, as I had spent the previous day and much of the night poring over my books and freshening my memory. Many of the spells I had reviewed I’d never actually used, though I’d learned them. The more powerful ones are more elaborate and take longer to say, because one must specify and control more things. Recalling a longer spell imperfectly meant that either it would be a dud, or that it would backfire on me, or that it would perform something—not necessarily what was intended—in an unpredictable manner.

  Prospero was with us, the Black Sword at his side, an indicator if one were needed of how serious this was. He wore leather armor also, under a long mail shirt. He too surveyed us, seeming pleased with what he saw. His white horse, Blitzen, fidgeted, made nervous by Alexander’s and Marfisa’s peculiar mounts.

  Walter had been counted out of this. I had wanted also to leave Prospero home to help Walter if every one of us were killed. The twins had shouted me down. “Every one of us has a right to go,” said Alexander.

  “Walter is going to need help if we get toasted.”

  “Prospero is a superb swordsman. He must come.” Marfisa rarely expressed strong opinions like this. “It is essential that we hold nothing in reserve.”

  I threw up my hands. “What do I care, anyway? I’ll be dead. So be it.”

  Government by committee has its drawbacks.

  We had also bickered about armament. From Nellor’s book, I had gathered that the right armor for going against dragons hadn’t been invented. He had spent an entire chapter on the subject. Cogent arguments could be made for and against both leather and metal. Nellor had preferred a combination of leather and mail: leather because of the flames a dragon was likely to produce, and mail because of the teeth and claws. He also allowed that there was much to be said for plate—although it was bad in a fight with a lot of fire, it could be life-extending if you were going to be at close quarters.

  I had passed this information on to the others and encouraged them not to wear plate. The twins had decided to wear part plate, part mail—mail on the arms and upper body, greaves and cuisses on the legs. I had decided to go for light weight and maneuverability. It was reassuring to see that Prospero had gone the same route.

  Alexander grinned at Phoebe, who had just doused the Way-fire; I had opened a Way from the Citadel, a temporary Road in effect, to get quickly and (I hoped) unnoticeably close to the beast’s roost. “Sister, lead us onto his slot,” he said.

  “Right gladly will I,” she replied, and set off through the trees and undergrowth. Alexander trotted after her, then Marfisa and Prospero, and I brought up the rear, cold fear uncoiling in my stomach.

  O Gaston, I thought, wherever you are, think of us today.

  Maybe we should have invited Fulgens and Josquin and Herne along. The more the merrier. Safety in numbers. Et cetera. But of course we could not. To do so would imply that Argylle couldn’t manage her own affairs. Mother had fought for years to prove that we could.

  Cosmo followed Blitzen, snuffing. I could not smell anything unusual—maybe a slight extra freshness in the air. It was cold; the sky, overcast. We had had a few days of hard freezes. The predawn darkness made going difficult but not impossible; as we progressed, we left the taller trees below us and the ground became harder and drier.

  The trail was one I had climbed before on hunting and picnicking trips. It winds around the mountain and then zigzags up one steep side. How far would the dragon let us get? Surely he had seen us. He’d cruised by after we arrived.

  All the way to the top, it turned out. Of course, I thought; let us tire ourselves with the climb. Let our fear mature.

  Cosmo grew balky, as did Prospero’s horse, as we grew closer to the top. We passed areas of crushed trees, some still bleeding pitch and sap. Belphoebe fell back behind Marfisa—I had ordered her to, since she was the most lightly armed of us all—and preceded Prospero now. I could smell something like petrol or kerosene. Halting to listen, I could not hear the clatter and rattle of Alexander and Marfisa. A small, localized breeze shouldered through the rocks and brushed past us. I looked quickly behind me, nervous—there was no one there. Ahead of me, Prospero frowned and stopped too, loosened the Black Sword in its scabbard, and advanced through the rocky, narrow passage after staring around him with a preoccupied scowl of suspicion. I followed him.

  The top of Longview is bare and barren, rock and stunted shrubs and the tumbled ruins of the tower. The dragon was draped comfortably around the tower, waiting for us. Alexander and Marfisa had their heads together to one side. Prospero allowed me to draw abreast of him and Belphoebe stayed out of sight, among the rocks.

  “One is lacking,” rumbled the dragon. Nothing I had read had prepared me for the voice, like a pipe organ. He spoke musically, with archaisms and a courtly manner. “Where is the squirrel who has been scampering about from tree to tree of late?”

  I had advised my family not to get involved in a conversation they would surely regret. But Prospero smiled.

  “Perhaps the squirrel has found a tasty nut to gnaw,” he said.

  “Perhaps. I am fond of squirrels. They amuse me. I am fond of people, too. They amuse me as well. I see that you have come prepared for … amusement.”

  Hypnotic, that was the word Uvarkis had used describing the effect of a dragon’s personality. I shifted my attention to the haze of power that was tangible here—it was a vigorous upwelling, a substantial Node—and the dragon’s head swung toward me. My head cleared as I began tapping the Spring via its emanations.

  “Ho,” he rumbled, a cathedral sighing. “The real opposition makes itself known.” He examined me, the cilia-like whiskers around his huge mouth waving gently, testing the magical currents. “I do not know you, boy, though you smell of Landuc.”

  “Close enough,” I said. I curtailed his inspection of me with a quickly-drawn shield.

  “And your sorcery reeks of Morven. Ther
e was rumor of a bastardization of the two lines some time ago …” The great head lifted, tilted, looked from me to Prospero and back. “Ho. A true son of Panurgus, and a false one.”

  I urged Cosmo forward a couple of steps. Our agreed-upon strategy was that we would wait for the dragon to make the first move.

  “The Stone of Phesaotois is in you,” the dragon boomed, lifting his head higher and fixing his gaze on me. “It is defiled by your blood, bastard of bastards.”

  I twisted my mouth wryly. He reminded me of my conservative and parochial relatives, who had certainly had worse to say about all of us—though never to our faces. Indeed, the Emperor of Landuc had at least legally cleansed all of us of the stain of bastardy by formally acknowledging our parents’ marriage, though it was still a moot point there whether it was lawful for a man to marry his half-brother’s daughter. Fortunately, in Argylle we reckon kinship differently, so nobody ever gave a tinker’s damn about it.

  “Your name and lineage!” he demanded. “I would know what I have before me here.”

  “What difference does it make?” I replied. Overhead, three of my dark hawks drifted in circles.

  “It is a matter of consequence and reputation,” he said. “I am something of a gourmet.” He blinked lazily and turned his attention to Marfisa and Alexander. “A noble pair of Landucians, yes. It seems a shame to eat a matched set like that.”

  Prospero chuckled softly.

  The dragon looked back at Prospero and me. “No, the real zest in this meal lies here. I cannot quite divine the connection. It is close, surely, but unclear. Not quite direct. Not quite father and son. No.”

  A feeling of closeness in the air around me oppressed me suddenly. I threw it off with a gesture. “Your manners are graceless,” I said coldly.

  “Bastard of bastards,” he repeated, looking at me, and then at Prospero. “I had understood Argylle was ruled by a woman. That creature there is scarcely such.” He flicked a look at Marfisa, who did not react. Alexander’s jaw tightened.