Memory of Dragons

by Michael G. Munz

  In the meantime, he was investigating the lead personally. This Austin Blanchard knew Rhianon, dead or not. One way or another, Maeron would get what he needed.

  His black leather Oxfords made no sound as he climbed the stairs to Austin’s apartment. A knock at the door went unanswered. The noise of a television drifted down the hall from another unit, but silence came from within this one. Maeron knocked once more before laying his hands on the knob and deadbolt, defeating both with a tiny magical effort. The door swung inward on protesting hinges.

  He entered.

  The apartment was small and recently tidied. Dark gray carpet stretched from wall to wall, save for the kitchen linoleum. Drawn shades permitted little sunlight, but Maeron kept the lights off and let his eyes adjust. A closed laptop and a stack of books lay on a cramped table in a dining nook. Maeron paged through the books: Applied physics. Classical mechanics. A book of cartoons about a boy and his tiger. He set them down and continued his search.

  A framed photo of Rhianon and Austin hung on the living room wall. It was the only sign of her so far. The otherwise bare walls featured only a few pictures of astronomical images, and a blank dry erase board in the dining nook. Maeron paused a moment to admire an image of a nebula, marveling at this world’s ability to capture such a remarkable scene. Smiling, he moved on.

  He was searching the bedroom when a voice came from the apartment’s front door. “Mister Blanchard? Is that you? I didn’t think you’d be back for another — ”

  A woman, at least fifty years old, stood looking startled in the bedroom doorway. Maeron smiled back, delighted as a shopkeeper, letting his pressed slacks and suit jacket add to the positive impression. He wore no tie, only a thin, textured sweater with a belt, creating a look he understood conveyed an approachable elegance.

  “Hello there,” he began with a step closer. “I’m a friend of Mister Blanchard’s. I wonder if you might be able to tell me where he is.” He smiled once more, charming, disarming.

  “Mister Blanchard is — he’s not here. What’s your name? I’ll tell him you were by.”

  “I’m sure you will. My name is Maeron. And yours?”

  “Harriet. I manage the building and saw his unit open. How did you — ”

  “You said you weren’t expecting him back yet.” He took another step forward. “My apologies, I imagine you thought I was him. How long will he be away? I have some important news for him.”

  The woman straightened a bit. “How did you get in here?”

  “Oh, he gave me a key.” Another step.

  “If he gave you a key, shouldn’t you know where he went?”

  “You have very pretty eyes, did you know that?” He noticed the ring on her finger. “I expect your husband tells you that all the time.” He closed to within a few feet of her, continuing to smile.

  “He — ” She swallowed. “Can I see your key? I need to see if he made a copy, is all. He didn’t ask permission.” She stepped back.

  Maeron paused, pretending to consider that. “I don’t want to get him into trouble. How about this?” he asked brightly. “I’ll leave now, and contact him on my own. And I’ll make sure he tells you about loaning his keys. If you’ll excuse me?”

  Calmly, he moved as if to pass her in the doorway. When she stepped aside, he seized the woman’s neck and squeezed her windpipe shut before she could do more than gurgle. Her pulse pounded under his thumb. Her eyes went wide, and she kicked out at him. Maeron dodged with a simple sidestep, his arm straight out, holding her in place.

  “Don’t struggle,” he ordered.

  Disappointingly, she ignored his words and beat at his forearm with both fists. Maeron caught one fist immediately. He clenched her neck tighter, then shoved her back to the wall, keeping his face out of reach. The impact startled her to stillness, briefly, before she resumed pounding with her free fist. He paid it no heed.

  “Full points for spirit, Harriet. If you wish to be choked unconscious, I’ll oblige you. But there would be very little point, would there? Stop. Now.” He squeezed tighter, with both hands, until a blue cast drifted into her ruddy face. Gradually, she stopped fighting. He released her arm and allowed her just a little air. After taking another moment to appraise his bludgeoned forearm, he smiled at her anew. “Now that’s going to leave me a bruise, isn’t it?”

  She actually had the nerve to appear pleased. Maeron chuckled. Her satisfaction gave way to fear as he lifted his free hand, palm near her face, fingers spread. The air between them began to tingle palpably. She stiffened as if to strike him again, but another clench of her neck put that intent to rest.

  “I could say this won’t hurt a bit,” he went on, still smiling. “But of course that isn’t true. What I can tell you is that you won’t remember a thing of this encounter. Now, let’s see what you recall of Mister Blanchard’s whereabouts, shall we?”

  He harvested her memories.

  THREE

  Austin was pleased with himself as the train rolled into Cardiff Central Railway Station. His pre-trip effort to adjust his internal clock to UK time via an altered sleep schedule felt, so far, successful. The clocks back home read four a.m., yet he remained as alert and energetic as the surrounding locals. The train came to a stop. Austin unlocked his bag from the luggage rack and hefted it out onto the busy platform.

  His plane had landed in London without any trouble. Austin had bid goodbye to his seatmate and shuffled his way through customs, marveling at being on his own in another hemisphere for the first time. The journey had officially begun!

  That Rhi only accompanied him in his heart gave the experience a bittersweet edge, yet it did not dampen his spirits. Knowing he was now in her homeland brought to life old memories and details that had been slipping away from him: the corners of her mouth when she smiled, the sound of her laugh, or the feel of her arm around his waist when she pulled him to explore something that had caught her attention. He would not — must not — forget her.

  Austin imagined, had she been with him, that experiencing the journey together could have helped to jog her own memories.

  On the train from London to Bath, and, from there, to Cardiff in Wales, he had periodically toyed with the onyx pendant she had always worn, just to feel it in his palm. It was a talisman against forgetting her, he supposed. Austin could not recall her ever taking it off, though she must have at some point. During his plane discussion, he had kept it on the left side of the mental chalkboard. Some things he needed to keep private.

  At last, the train halted at the Cardiff platform. In his rush for the station exit to escape the crowds and find his hotel, he didn’t see the woman until they collided. The impact knocked them both off balance. She stumbled before catching herself in his arms, and together they managed to right themselves.

  “Man, I’m sorry!” he stammered. “Are you okay?”

  She flashed him a grin from a young face framed with curly, dark red hair that didn’t quite touch her shoulders. “No worries!” she chirped in an Irish accent, her green eyes alight. “You be careful now! I’m off to a train!”

  With a wave, she dashed into the crowd.

  Her dazzling smile, along with taking in his first glimpses of Cardiff, distracted Austin until he had walked a full three blocks from the station. Only then did he slip a hand into his coat pocket. Rhi’s pendant was missing.

  Stolen!

  Shock locked him in place for a heartbeat before he whirled to go after the redhead. He covered the distance back to the station in half a minute, cursing all the way. Rapid glares through the crowd gave no sign of her. He flashed his rail pass at the attendant and pushed his way through toward the platforms. He picked one at random and dashed up to find it nearly empty, with no thief. The platform across the tracks held only a few people. Austin didn’t spot her there, either.

  His pounding heart hammered sweat through his skin in waves. Where did she go? He scrambled back down to find another platform. Crisscrossing travelers from a ne
wly arrived train flooded the area. Damn it! Even if she was here, what chance did he have of finding her on his own? Austin looked for a policeman or even a member of the station staff; he found none.

  “Excuse me, please,” he begged a nearby traveler. Austin managed the presence of mind to pick someone tall. “A woman stole something from me! Red hair, five or six inches — about ten centimeters shorter than me, with a black and green shirt. Do you see her?”

  The man glanced about and then shook his head.

  Austin moved on, scouring the platform, apologizing to those he bumped into, and asking whomever he could get to listen. He suspected he looked like a lunatic, but he didn’t care. Should he search the train he had arrived on? No; what if it left before he could disembark?

  Yet every second that passed increased the likelihood he had lost Rhi’s pendant forever. Desperate questioning gave way to cursing under his breath at the situation, at the thief, and at himself.

  The remaining platforms were less crowded, but he had no better luck. At last, out of breath and hope, Austin hauled himself back to the station entrance and searched the area where the woman collided with him. Maybe he had only dropped the pendant?

  He found nothing. Rhi’s pendant was gone.

  Austin found himself on a pitiless train station bench. How long anger held him there, he didn’t know. He couldn’t even recall sitting down. After he managed to bottle his rage enough to appear civil, he found the station’s information window and reported the theft. They had the courtesy to act sympathetic. They took his name and the name of his hotel. They promised to contact him if it turned up. Even doubting their chances of finding it, he had to stop himself from tipping a ten-pound note to motivate them. Eventually he plodded his way toward his hotel, noticing nothing of the walk but the litter on the sidewalk.

  A short while later, Austin dropped his bag and body onto his hotel room bedspread. The window afforded only a view across an alley to a darkened parking garage. The carpet boasted a few stray toenail clippings. A stale musk permeated the entire building. He had picked the place for its affordable rate and proximity to the train station rather than any specific comforts. As he stared at the stain-littered ceiling, Austin considered just how little comfort it offered.

  His hand rested atop the money belt worn under his jeans. At least the bitch didn’t get any of his cash or his passport. His bank cards remained safe.

  But so what? Cash he could replace. He had copies of his passport. But an irreplaceable, one-of-a-kind treasure? Oh, that he left in a side pocket for anyone to grab! Why not simply chuck it into a urinal the second he stepped off the plane and save them the trouble?

  Austin lay there for a time, trying to calm down and recreate the pendant in his mind’s eye. It was, he reminded himself, only a bridge to his memories of Rhi — just a trigger to help her stay fresh in his mind. It was not Rhi herself. He had pictures, and the book of her writings. He grabbed for his bag to make sure the book was still there. It was.

  Yet the pendant was different. Irreplaceable. It had been taken from him, as she had been, and now even less of her remained.

  A rumble in his stomach finally convinced him to rise. He sampled the sausage and mash in a nearby pub and, unwilling to suffer his room again until necessary, wandered up the street toward what turned out to be Cardiff Castle. There, a lonely, crumbling keep stood atop a motte at the far end of a wall-bounded, grassy courtyard.

  He tried to imagine how Rhi would react to it all were she there — and still wearing her pendant.

  The sky was going purple by the time he climbed to the roof of the keep. Acrophobia faltered his first steps before he could overcome it to gaze across the city. Austin leaned against the old roof wall, alone, and imagined everyone who might have touched that same stonework in the centuries since its construction. What conversations had once passed there? How many of the speakers’ names were lost to history?

  The wind turned cooler. Near the castle he could see a park, divided by a river, where people still moved about. Done with solitude for the moment, Austin descended the steps, left the castle behind, and found his way into the park.

  Austin walked along a concrete path framed by grass and sparse deciduous trees. Birds darted from branch to branch, mirroring children who played below near watchful parents. A trailer selling ice cream was parked where the path crossed another. Austin turned down the intersecting path and strode across a bridge over the river into a gauntlet of flowers beyond.

  He had walked many times in such places with Rhi before. Though his graduate studies had taken much of his time in the year and a half in which they were together, Rhi could usually coax him to walk through a park with the promise of her smile alone.

  Lost in his thoughts, Austin reached for his pocket to take out her pendant before he knew what he was doing.

  Damn it. Damn it!

  It was getting dark anyway, he supposed. Tomorrow would be better. He backtracked through the flowered path and across the bridge. The ice cream trailer had closed. The children had disappeared. Birds now sang from the concealment of the growing shadows.

  “No!” The shout came through the trees from across the park. “Hooligan! Thief!”

  Austin tensed and squinted through the twilight for the source. Someone dashed through the trees from the near end of the bridge. A shouting, hobbling figure followed, struggling to keep up and plainly failing.

  “Thief!” called the hobbling figure. “Damnation! Help!”

  Austin vaulted a low rope barrier and launched across the grass after the thief. A man in jeans and a sweatshirt, the thief continued to outpace his victim on a semi-perpendicular course to Austin, heading into thicker tree cover without looking back. Austin pushed himself faster, glaring through the shadows ahead. Every ounce of frustration bottled earlier now flowed free, hurling him forward.

  The thief angled close around a cluster of bushes before he caught sight of Austin for the first time. The two locked eyes. Austin yelled and grabbed for him in a wild tackle that slammed them both to the ground. They tumbled, grappled, and then separated. For a moment, they lay sprawled in the dirt, neither moving, a faded leather satchel between them. As one, they sprang and seized it, suddenly caught up in a two-man tug of war. Austin kicked out at the thief. He fought for the satchel as if it were his own.

  Before Austin could consider what he was doing, the thief let go. Momentum pushed Austin onto his butt in the dirt. A wordless victory shout burst from Austin’s throat as the thief abandoned the satchel to flee. Had he won?

  Belatedly counting his luck that the man didn’t carry a weapon, Austin stood, glanced about to make certain he wasn’t coming back, and then, with his lungs reminding him he was still getting back into shape, half-walked, half-jogged back toward the bridge and the satchel’s owner.

  He found the owner in a heap on the grass, resembling nothing so much as a pile of laundry. Short and squat, the fellow’s outfit appeared stitched together from garments of varying colors, each of which had seen more vibrant days. Their styles not so much complementary as forcibly meshed, they hung tight in places, loose in others, and partially covered the man’s legs, which, while bent at the knees, splayed at angles odd enough to make Austin’s own ache with sympathy. Eyes shut, he rocked back and forth as a litany of sobs and indecipherable profanity leaked out of him.

  Austin hesitated. “Ah, sir? It’s okay, I got your bag back.”

  “Bollocks!”

  “Er?”

  “Bollocks-ripper-scab-farming-puspot!” The man opened his watery eyes for the first time, his gaze lighting immediately on the satchel. Awareness dawned. “Oh! Oh, give! Give it to me, please!” The man beamed as he reached up with both hands.

  Austin relinquished the satchel to the squat man’s waggling fingers. He tugged it open, inspected the contents, and then pushed it closed with a grin. “You, sir, are far too sterling a man!”

  Though his accent was reminiscent of the various Engli
sh ones Austin had encountered, it came laced with a foreign twinge that he couldn’t place. More striking was the lavender color of his eyes.

  Austin shrugged in the face of the other’s unrelenting grin. “Someone took something from me today. I — I just did what I could.”

  “Ha! Did what you could, did what you could,” the man chuckled, scrambling to his feet. It failed to increase his height much. “Snuck up on me, he did. Rotting pus-sucker! Took advantage of old crippled Fefferman. Make you no mistake, I’m no helpless babe, oh make you no mistake at all!” This came punctuated with a dingy, pointed finger. “Had I seen him coming, oh, ohhhhh . . .”

  The man collapsed into a fit of chuckling that ended with him sucking his own teeth. Austin stood by. How might he end the conversation without seeming rude?

  “What’s your moniker, man?” The other shot.

  Moniker? “I’m Austin.”

  “Austin, eh?” Lavender eyes made a quick, trembling appraisal. “Truly, just my fortune you’d be an Austin. Heh! Well then, Austin, Mister Austin, Austin the savior of old Fefferman’s treasures: there must be a rewarding! Come on, now. After me.”

  “No, that’s okay, I’m just glad I could — ”

  Already hobbling away, Fefferman turned back and blinked away drying tears. “No selflessness, man! Can’t abide it! Won’t stand for it! Rotten thing to have no matter where you call home! This way. Right by the bridge here.”

  He stared at Austin, waiting. After another moment’s hesitation — during which the squat man’s jaw began to quiver with renewing heartbreak — Austin followed, his curiosity winning out. Fefferman seemed likely homeless and a pitiable sort; no sense adding to his troubles with poor treatment. After all, wasn’t meeting new people what travel was about?

  It wasn’t as if he couldn’t outrun the man if he needed to.

  As Fefferman had claimed, they only went as far as the bridge, stopping at its edge where the ground sloped down toward the river. “You wait here now, Mister Austin. Won’t be a moment, no I won’t.” With that, he hobbled down the bank and under the right side of the bridge to leave Austin standing in the amber glow of the park lights.