The Well-Favored Man

by Elizabeth Willey

  “Argylle was ruled by a woman,” Prospero agreed softly.

  “Waaaas,” purred the dragon. “Ho. Perhaps I should have paid my respects earlier, then. One dislikes to force oneself upon a lady, of course, but gentlemen may call freely on one another.”

  No answer from us. He continued to study us, concentrating his attention on Prospero and me again. “Prospero, son of Panurgus,” he said. “That is it. I have heard of you.” He seemed interested now. “It was you who claimed the Spring here.”

  Prospero smiled faintly.

  “I am here principally because I was curious as to the result,” the dragon went on. “There is more than I expected to find. Prospero, Maker of Argylle, and his heirs. You, bastard sorcerer, I think I know you now.”

  I froze the smirk that was ready to burst onto my lips and Prospero too controlled his face carefully. It seemed the dragon thought I was Dewar. Good.

  “You appear to have the advantage of us, then. Perhaps you have a name also,” I said.

  “It would take several days to say it,” he retorted. Dragons increment their names when they eat noteworthy people. “The first few syllables are harmonious, however. I am Gemnamnon.”

  “I have never heard of you.” Prospero shrugged.

  He blinked. “Nor will you again,” he rumbled. “Your petty sorcerer and your pins and needles will not keep you from me, O Prince of Landuc and Maker of Argylle.”

  The fear, I remembered. Dragons enjoy fear. None of us were showing it. Alexander and Marfisa had their usual neutral, clear expressions. Prospero seemed amused. I was simply watchful.

  “I did not come here to listen to a lizard boast,” Alexander said coldly.

  “But you have small choice, Sir Knight. I can keep you here as long as I wish now that you have come.”

  I felt a brief prickling in the flow of the Spring around me, as from a Summoning begun but suddenly cancelled. Belphoebe, perhaps? It was gone now. Gemnamnon didn’t seem to have noticed and was speaking to Prospero again.

  “Son of Panurgus, you may buy yourself a few additional heartbeats by telling me of the history of this place.”

  “Meseems you know it,” Prospero said, unfazed.

  “Apparently my source was outdated, if not unreliable.”

  “What source was that?” Prospero asked.

  “Ho.” He wasn’t telling.

  “We are not obliged to remedy your ignorance,” I said. “Your impulse has led you astray if you expected to find easy pickings.”

  “Ho. No, it was largely curiosity that brought me, bastard sorcerer.”

  “Too bad.”

  He was examining me again. I shrugged off another magical probe.

  “Those bother you, do they, boy?”

  “Your source was very deficient indeed if you did not expect to find me,” I said softly, gambling on Uncle Dewar’s reputation and sending a short, sharp probe back.

  Gemnamnon sneezed. A hot, acid wind puffed past us. The horses shied, rolling their eyes back. The dragon lifted his head and looked at me directly, but with no effect; my tapping of the Spring seemed to buffer me from the entrancing effects of his gaze. He projected an air of amusement. “But I did expect to find you. And, finding you, I am delighted to accept your challenge.”

  He exhaled, a sighing sulphurous breeze. A luminous ball of fire drifted toward Prospero and me, gathering speed. I shielded us and dispelled it.

  The non-sorcerous part of our party, namely everyone but me, had been forced to concede that if magic started flying, they must retreat. Marfisa put her hand on Alexander’s arm as if to remind him of this, but he shook it off and moved away from her. The dragon lifted his head a bit higher, higher, higher—his neck alone was perhaps fifteen or twenty feet long—and snapped his head around to puff a ball of fire at the twins.

  I knew, I knew I should have come alone.

  I managed to shield them from the worst of the blast and dispel it with a snap from one of the lines of Spring-force laced through the area, which I now commanded because I was drawing on the Spring.

  Alexander said, “Hah!” and Steel reared up suddenly and danced to the right. Marfisa dropped back, lifting her lance. Alexander was holding his lance like a spear.

  I summoned Gemnamnon’s attention back to myself by casting a Steelburst spell, which sprayed fire and shrapnel into his face. At the same time, Alexander threw the lance at his throat. Gemnamnon caught it in his teeth like a pencil and crushed it, laughing a laugh that boomed back from the mountains. The spell had no apparent effect. He whipped a couple of coils of his body out from around the tower and a heavy, clawed leg appeared. It was as thick as two men, the digits a meter long, plus claws, and pale silver in color. His tail snapped out and Steel jumped over it as it whizzed by.

  Prospero made a clicking noise with his tongue. “Lay on,” he muttered, and drew the Black Sword. The blade flashed in the midafternoon light. Marfisa had meanwhile come over to the dragon’s right side, opposite Alexander, dodging several passes of the tail. He was playing with them. I hit him with the simple Bolt of Death, which he parried with another fireball, but the aftershock seemed to rock him somewhat.

  I wasn’t shielding my brother and sister any longer; I couldn’t. They had been warned.

  Prospero suddenly swung his sword and splattered a series of small bolts of lightning Gemnamnon had thrown in our direction, at him, actually. I spurred Cosmo forward, lifting my black spear and my shield.

  Gemnamnon laughed again and knocked Marfisa over with a puff of flame and gas, swishing her mount’s legs away simultaneously so that it fell on her. She made not a sound as she went down like a stone. Cosmo bounded over the dragon’s lashing tail and closer in to the tower, in the lee so to speak of a section of wall. The tail couldn’t strike close in here, but the claws could. He lifted his foot to bat me and I shouted the words to a freezing spell. He hissed; the foot hissed and steamed too. I followed up with one of Dewar’s special compositions, the Shower of Molten Iron, right in that huge face, and he hissed again and drew back, then bellowed, a deafening sound, as just in the periphery of my vision, to the left, I thought I saw a movement.

  One of Belphoebe’s spears was stuck in the side of his mouth—in his gum, like a weird whisker. He struck it away and sent a fireball poofing in the direction from which it must have come. I slammed him with the Locomotive Pile-Driver, knocking his head back as he brought it down toward me. A roar and a bounce, and Gemnamnon was up, suddenly rampant on the stones and ruins. I cried out Hand of Fire and the Bolt of Death and punched at his left eye. He jumped toward me, and Cosmo jumped back, away, and I barely had time to finish Thunder Fist, which made him pause, but not for more than a millisecond. Fire and acid smog shot from his nostrils. I heard a horse screaming somewhere. I drew a fast shield around myself and Cosmo and threw the spear I’d been holding toward the eye I had hit before, with a swift-spoken repetition of the Bolt of Death reinforced with the Pile-Driver.

  With a deafening howl that made stones crack, Gemnamnon took to the air. The wind from his wings was corrosively smoky and stank of various gases. He dropped from the tower ruin and off the top of the mountain. I could not see his left side; I did not know what I had done, though plainly it had annoyed him. He dropped out of sight.

  I was running out of really useful spells at the tip of my tongue; not one had wounded him mortally, nor had the most powerful done extensive damage, even in concert. To finish him off, I would have to come back. Nothing any of us had done thus far had had a significant effect on him except a few of my sorcerous sallies; I did not think I could keep pounding away at him, with the few which had thus far proven efficacious, and survive.

  It was eerily quiet for a moment, and then the silence was broken by a soft groan and a thud.

  I looked around. Prospero and Alexander were bending over Marfisa. They had just heaved her dead mount off her. Prospero glanced at me as I joined them warily.

  “Best call the day’s work
done,” he said.

  “Yes,” I agreed. Alexander was easing Marfisa onto his cloak. She was badly charred down the left side of her body; the leather had burned and the metal was simply melted. The smell of burnt flesh and leather around her nauseated me, but she was alive, breathing with difficulty, and in shock. A rattle from the rocks made us all spin around. Just Belphoebe, though. She sucked her breath in when she saw her sister.

  I reached through the Spring for my birds, sent them soaring to find the dragon, then turned to her.

  “Phoebe,” I said, “I want you to get down the mountain and keep an eye on the place, as before. He is hiding in a cave on the north side, about a third of the way down, above that big scree slope. Be very, very careful.”

  She nodded once and sprang away through the boulders.

  Prospero and Alexander lifted Marfisa. I prepared a Way and conducted us all back to the Citadel, after collecting a few small stones from the area and a handful of earth for use on a return trip.

  My fear now was that Gemnamnon would strike at the City. All remained quiet. Belphoebe later reported that he had burned a postal relay station and eaten the three inhabitants before returning to roost at Longview. I set birds to watch him there at closer range than Belphoebe could approach.

  We did what we could for Marfisa. I used sorcery to help her body begin to mend some of the worst internal damage. She would recover, I was sure of that, although it would be a long time before she had the full use of her left leg again; it was burned to the bone from foot to hip. A draught of the Spring might help her healing later; for now, she must rest. Tellin sat with her, unnaturally quiet (she was a merry shield-maid to serve my dour sister), watching over her.

  Alexander’s condition was another care. He had inhaled a heavy dose of mixed caustic gases and was coughing blood, but refused my help—whisky, oxygen, and bed rest were his prescription for himself. Walter sat with him, playing on a harp, until he drifted off to sleep.

  Prospero came to my study after we had cleaned up.

  “I must attack him again,” I told him. “No distractions. Sorcery is what will work.”

  “Take me with you,” he said.

  “No.”

  He stared me down for a moment and then shook his head. “As you will, then.” But he pounded his fist on the table as he turned and left the room.

  “Prospero!” I called after him.

  He spun around, his face angry and hard.

  “It will take me a day or so to prepare myself. I shall need to work without interruptions of any kind. Please, will you act for me?”

  He nodded curtly and closed the door painfully quietly behind him.

  Why was he so angry? I hoped he didn’t blame me for the twins’ injuries. They had had time to flee and had stayed, against my advice. I decided to take a nap before starting in swotting my spell-books afresh.

  Curled up on my side in bed, I looked at a photograph of my mother and her brother. They are on a sailboat, Freia lying on her stomach and looking over the side and Dewar sitting beside her leaning on the cabin. His hand is on her back, ready to grab her if the boat should suddenly lurch. The photographer is on the cabin, perhaps next to the mast, and so the angle of the shot is downward and a bit slanted. They are not looking into the camera. Mother is gazing into the unevenly green water, her chin on her crossed forearms, and Dewar is looking down at his sister, smiling slightly.

  Ottaviano had explained that he took this picture long ago when Dewar was making great efforts (in vain, as it befell) to reconcile his sister to their cousin and to reconcile his sister to boats, by coaxing her to join them in a swift Pheyarcet Eddy where Otto had a fine safe boat and calm waters. Otto gave it to me after her death and Dewar’s disappearance, saying he had always liked it and he hoped I would too. I do.

  I dozed, thinking of the slap of waves against the boat’s hull, imagining the silence on the boat except for the sound of the wind in the sails and shrouds, and then the stealthy photographer’s camera clicks and they both look around, startled for an instant, Dewar’s hand tightening on Freia’s shirt, his eyebrows shooting up, Freia lifting herself up on her elbows, chin on her shoulder …

  I fell asleep with a pleasant feeling of being safe and secure, at home, and drifted into a dream of walking in my mother’s garden outside the Citadel, looking for her, knowing she was always just ahead, around a corner, out of sight.

  4

  IT WAS DARK AND FROSTY OUTSIDE when I woke, dark and chill in my room. I ought to have lit the fire before sleeping. I remedied this at once, then pulled the bell to send the manservant who answered down to the kitchen for sandwiches and whatever was around. While he did that I bathed quickly and the place grew less cold. Finally I built up the fire in the study and sat beside it in my favorite leather chair, wrapped in a quilted black silk dressing gown, wolfing down my late supper or early breakfast.

  In my dreams I had divined the reason for Prospero’s anger: it was not directed at me, but at his son Dewar, absent Dewar, believed by most of the family to be wandering madly through the worlds crazed by the death of his sister. If Dewar were here, I would not be in half the danger I was walking into. Probably we would have been able to destroy Gemnamnon between us, right away, rather than in this haphazard, fumbling fashion.

  I wished he were around myself, but I was capable of finishing this. I was sure of it. I had Gemnamnon’s present injury—I suspected I had damaged, possibly blinded, his left eye—working for me now. If I went in well-prepared and calm, I would live and he would die. My error lay in allowing the others to come with me at all.

  The books Hicha had given me lay on the window seat. I leaned back and picked up the top one, Uvarkis’. There might be some clue in here as to what the animal’s weak spots were and how they might best be exploited. I leafed through it, rereading stray paragraphs that caught my eye:

  Dragons, being Fire Elementals, are impervious to most sorcerous attacks as most spells of destruction are based on Fire. Basing an attack on other Elements is not recommended, as they easily conquer all but the strongest manifestations thereof …

  The fortress of Vos was laid siege to and subsequently laid waste by the dragon Thembushskandriskar after the inhabitants rallied and attacked the dragon in his lair …

  Conversation with a dragon is always enlightening and usually lethal …

  Usually lethal? Yes, ours had been lethal.

  Enlightening? He had insulted and goaded us, not enlightened us, and our conversation had been atypically brief.

  Ottaviano had spoken with a dragon. If I had talked to him first, he might have been able to tell me about the beast’s supernatural swiftness, its offhanded use of power and sorcery, its imperviousness—all of which had startled me in that first attack. I bit my lip and put the book aside. I had not wanted to bring him in on this, but if it were inevitable that he hear about it anyway, perhaps I should use him as I would any other knowledgeable source.

  Prospero would not approve, and I misliked it myself. It was not good to appear vulnerable in any way to the Empire Otto represented, now or at any time. But he had encountered one of the things—possibly this individual, though I had no idea what the population of dragons in the Elemental Void might be, if that was indeed where they came from. The only source on that was dragons themselves, and Uvarkis said their stories varied and might be elaborate fictions spun to amuse themselves with our stupidity.

  I did not want to get killed. Otto might know something I had not found in Nellor’s and Uvarkis’ helpful narratives. There was really no choice: I would consult him before I attacked again. In the morning, I decided, and opened Uvarkis again to reread him, searching for clues.

  “Good morning, Otto. I hope it is not too early to ask you to strain your memory for me.” I had invoked Ottaviano with a Lesser Summoning as soon as I was dressed.

  “Hey, Gwydion. No, not really. I’m on my first coffee.” Ottaviano hadn’t combed his beard or brushed his hair ye
t, but he was clothed and alert-looking. The beard was a dapper touch; Otto is one of those blond fellows whose beards are rust-and-gold. It lent him dignity, a mature, wise look: fitting for an Imperial Envoy.

  Now I faced another of those lightning decision moments. Generosity won again. Besides, it was better for me to keep myself available here in the City than for me to go to him in Ollol, two hours’ ride along the Wye. “Come have your second here. I’ve not had breakfast, myself. I’ll make a Way for you.”

  Otto hesitated a fraction of a second, nodded, and set his cup down. “I’m at your service, of course. I’d better leave a note,” he said.

  “Certainly.” I cut off my Summoning and cast a new spell through my Mirror of Ways, seizing on a glass in the room where he now sat as my receiving focus. There was no difficulty in opening the Way between us; the opalescent, fluctuating compression zone was but a thin line, and so the impression was that my broad, tall Mirror in the Citadel was just a doorway leading to Otto’s bedchamber—in Ollol.

  He glanced up at me, smiled, signed his note, and left it on the desk where he’d written it, then came toward me and stepped through the Mirror.

  “We’re in the Citadel?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Come with me,” and I took him down to the breakfast-room. Food was laid out on the table; someone had been there already, probably Prospero.

  I served us coffee. Gaston and Mother were tea-drinkers. The kitchen staff had kept making tea and sending it up for a few years after her death, until I had to ask them to stop. The rest of us like coffee—which comes from Landuc, and is a luxury trade item because of the cost. Mother had never allowed anyone to import seedlings and start a plantation of our own, though the climate north of the Bevallin Coast was suitable.

  “Good coffee,” murmured my cousin.

  “Your brother Josquin’s own Madanese,” I said. “Have some hash and eggs.” We ate without talking much. I had not seen Otto for many many years, and never had I thought to see him in my own Citadel, and I was preoccupied, and all these things made me a silent host to my guest. Utrachet and Anselm came in and we rearranged some of the business of the day; it was all minor, relative to the dragon, and I postponed and referred everything planned before luncheon. I spoke Argos with Utrachet and Anselm, Lannach with Otto; they ignored Otto and Otto pretended to immerse himself in his food while the Seneschal was there.