The Dragon Waiting

by John M. Ford

  Dimi's mother was in the front hall, the tall windows open to admit light on samples of carpet that lay all around. When Dimi came in, Iphigenia Ducas was in conversation with a merchant; the man wore silk hose and a liripipe hat piled up on his head, and his accent was Portuguese. The household's interpreter stood a little behind his mistress, listening patiently.

  Dimitrios waited for a pause. He wondered if the trader knew anything of the new lands the Portuguese Empire had discovered beyond the Western Sea; but of course it would be rude to ask. Or at least his mother would call it that. Finally he said "Where's Father?"

  "At the construction—what have you been doing?"

  "Riding, Mother."

  "Riding through what, the city sewers?" Iphigenia narrowed her eyes, and Dimi knew what was coming next. "With those... Gauls, I suppose."

  Frenchmen, Mother, Dimi thought, but there was no point in saying anything.

  "I wish you'd spend more time with the Roman boys. You're their natural leader, you know; they respect you. Those Gauls are just seeking advancement, favors."

  She had it just backwards, of course. "The Imperials are all clerks' sons, growing up to be clerks"—Dimi watched his mother's face— "and eunuchs."

  That did it; it was the one point that stopped all argument with Iphigenia. A eunuch could rise to any office or honor in the Empire, except one; could hold any title but Emperor. And many noble fathers castrated their sons for their future security, since the Emperor then need not fear them as usurpers.

  But usurpation—always called "restoration"—had obsessed the family Ducas since the last Ducas emperor was deposed over three centuries ago. Iphigenia Ducas could have kept her own respectable family name when she married, but she had bound herself fully to a dream. To mention the cutting to her, or to Dimi's uncle Philip, was to remind them that dreams could die.

  There was a silence. Iphigenia's nails picked at the swatch of Persian carpet in her lap. The Portuguese trader was politely deaf and mute. The interpreter, himself a eunuch, stood calm, a faint smile on his babyish face.

  "Pardon me, Mother; and you, sir." Dimitrios stepped back.

  "You'll bathe before dinner."

  "Of course, Mother." He went out.

  Above the old palace, a new one was rising: higher, greater, grander in every respect, and more Byzantine, complexly vaulted and buttressed, than the plain lines of the old house. A legion of workmen moved on the face of the hill, digging and conveying and stacking and truing. Sawdust and lime mortar mingled in the air.

  Cosmas Ducas stood near a partial wall, talking with his chief military engineer; his hands moved as he spoke, tracing palace in the air. Both men wore white capes, breastplates, and high greaves, all very dusty; they had plain steel caps with cloth to shade the neck. Cosmas turned, and Dimi saw the flash of the Imperial eagle inlaid in gold on his chest.

  "Father!"

  "Come up, son!" Dimitrios climbed the embankment.

  "Well, Tertullian," Cosmas Ducas said to the engineer, "what do you think of him?"

  Tertullian was broader than Cosmas, big-muscled, not as tall. "I'd have him as a captain, when he's..." Dimi did not need to guess the rest of the sentence. It was the same reason he was here.

  "Bull's blood, Tully, I know that. So would Caractacus. What I want to know is, would he be a better captain of engineers, or of horse?"

  Tertullian paused, though he did not fidget. "I hear his numbers are good. And as many times as I've chased him off this site, it's clear he can handle himself around works without getting killed."

  Cosmas crossed his bare arms across the golden eagle. He nodded slowly, looking straight at his son. Part of Dimi rebelled at this, almost angry at being discussed as the men might discuss a yearling colt or a marriageable woman; but another part knew that he could follow any of his father's knights in any art of war, and he was fiercely proud that Cosmas Ducas knew it.

  Tertullian said, "I've only one qualm, General."

  Cosmas stopped nodding, but that was all that changed. "Yes?"

  "Siegework's slow going, General. Even cannon peck slow at the walls they're building now. Looking at the boy just now, I wonder if he's got the patience for contravallations and latrines."

  Cosmas laughed, loud enough to turn heads among the workers. "By my brand, Tully, now I know why engineers are rarer than generals, and prized higher.

  "Come here, Dimi. It seems you may be doomed to be a general after all. Look, down from here. This will be the Governor's office, right where we're standing; there'll be a big window, with just this view."

  It was a glorious view of the town, the meeting of three valleys, the plains rich with vineyards; and it was a clever location too, on the western point of the plateau. A window here would not weaken the palace defenses, unless the attacker could fly.

  "Now, son. What's your news?"

  Dimi turned back to his father. Tertullian stood silent to the rear. "I want to ask about..." Don't look away, don't look at your toes. Say it now. "... the initiations. Into the Mysteries."

  "Dimi, the Emperor himself can't bring December any sooner."

  "Lord remind him of that," Tertullian said softly.

  Dimitrios shook his head. "I want... that is, Charles wants to be initiated. To become a Raven, with me."

  Cosmas looked serious. "Is this Charles's idea, or yours?" Cosmas said the name properly—Sharl, not Karolus as the other Imperials pronounced it.

  "His, sir."

  "And do his people worship Mithras, or Cybele?"

  "No, sir. Charles says they do not worship much at all, except a goddess called Sequana, when they are sick. And the divine Julius, and Claudius too."

  "May I speak, Lion?" Tertullian said.

  Cosmas said "I hear you, Persian." Dimi was puzzled for just a moment, because the engineer was of course hot from Persia; then he realized that they had used the titles of the fourth and fifth ranks of the Mysteries, Leo and Perses. Dimitrios was startled to hear that Tertullian outranked his father, but he hoped he did not show it.

  Tertullian said "Our Lord sees a man's heart, not his nation. The Mysteries are for those brave enough."

  "I know that," Cosmas said. "And I also-know..." He put his hand on Dimi's shoulder, gently, firmly. Dimi could see the sacred brand on his wrist, put there when Cosmas had reached the third rank of the Mysteries. "Do you understand, son, that the Empire has ruled these people since the divine Julius?"

  "Of course, Father."

  "And do you understand how the Empire rules, when it is not of the population ruled?"

  Dimi knew the words from his lessons. Now, for the first time, they began to mean something, and he did not think he liked the meaning. "We rule because we force nothing but the law. None need worship our gods, speak our languages, adopt our ways, even walk our roads, given only that they obey the law."

  Cosmas nodded. "And what is the first among Imperial laws?"

  "The Doctrine of Julian the Wise: All faiths are equal; no faith shall forbid another, nor shall the Empire champion any faith."

  Cosmas said, "And here, I am the Empire; and as my son, so are you. If Charles abandons his people's religion for ours, they will say we beguiled him, or perhaps even forced him, to do it. That is how rebellion begins…we say we rule from Julius's time, but it is not true. When Western Rome fell to the invaders, we lost these people. It was centuries before New Rome recovered the lands, with the help of the English King. And even after we had the lands again, we had to win the people again. Do you understand?"

  "Yes," Dimi said, and supposed that in fact he did. And he also began to understand something of his father's office.

  Tertullian spoke, without any note of criticism. "And does the young Gaul live without Mithras, then, for the sake of appearances?"

  "For the sake of the Empire, perhaps," said Cosmas, calmly.

  "If he were my son's friend—"

  "If you had a son, and he had a friend, I would most happily see him co
me to us, and be tested to the Mysteries."

  Dimi was confused. He had stopped being afraid of the denial— and also ceased believing a denial was possible. Now he wondered what else he might be about to lose. "Father—are you saying—the law is not the same for all?"

  Cosmas looked very hard for a moment, then very sad. "No, son. The law is equal for all. But duty is not."

  For a long moment the two men and the boy stood silent, removed from the motion around them. Then Cosmas took his hand from Dimi's shoulder, with an awkward pat, and went away with Tertullian.

  Dimitrios looked westward from the hill, saw rainclouds approaching. After four years in this country he had come to love its frequent rains, and especially that miraculous winter rain called snow. But now the breeze that led the rain was a change wind, a voice telling him that from now on, nothing would be as it had been.

  Dinner that evening was unpleasantly tense. Dimi said nothing, supposing he had said too much already today. Cosmas gave only the smallest comments, and seemed somewhere far away. Iphigenia talked a bit about the carpets she had purchased, but no one else was interested and she soon stopped. Zoe and Livia, Dimi's little sisters, knew better than to speak in such an atmosphere.

  That left the forum open to Cosmas's brother Philip, which was worse than all the silences put together. Iphigenia Ducas had a dream of the Imperial throne; Philip Ducas had a vision. Sometimes he literally had visions, falling to the floor chewing his tongue.

  Many years ago, Cosmas had told Dimi, Philip was a fine captain of cavalry; but he had fallen from his horse and struck his head.

  Now he talked in circles and crooked paths. For some years he had worn togas instead of decent gowns and hose, but no one minded because the togas were easier to clean.

  If Fortune was a goddess, as some said, then there was no defying her. And Philip would always be Cosmas's elder brother. And (Dimi's father would add, in a different voice) it was well recorded, in Rome and the City and even in Gaul and Britain, that the divine Emperor Julius had himself had a falling sickness.

  But sometimes Philip was awful.

  "And then I said, ho, you Paleologue, twice presumptuous, I call you, first to the name of divine Constantine, then to the title Emperor—ho, Paleologus, Dipleonektis, you think you have done for the Ducai, don't you, making them kings of the Gaulish mud." Rain spattered the narrow windows, and the lights wavered. Philip's eyes went wide, then he went on: "But seed put living into soil takes root, yes, and vines grow long, and you watch that a vine does not crawl across your bed of stolen purple, Paleologus Usurper, and twine round your crooked neck."

  "All this I said. Would have said, had I been there. Oh, Cosmas, brother, youth, why did you not take me with you to confront the creature in his marble lair?"

  Philip was looking directly at Dimitrios. Dimi said nothing. He was beginning to wonder if there was any use in speaking to any of his family.

  "That is enough, brother," Cosmas said levelly. "Enough of strangling Emperors, enough of stealing the purple."

  It had no effect. It never did. But Dimi remembered his father saying that at certain times one must charge regardless, even uphill.

  "Ah, you can't fool me, Cosmas, young brother!" Philip slapped his half-bare thigh and rolled on his couch, so that Dimi was afraid he was about to have a fit again. "Philip's bold, but Cosmas is clever, just as our mother said! He'll catch the Paleologi napping in their false-dyed silk, and with his son, Digenes—"

  Dimi sat up on his dining couch, told a servant to clear his place. He spoke French; the dinner servants were discharged if they showed any sign of understanding Greek or Latin. "Excuse me, Father?"

  Cosmas nodded grimly. Iphigenia looked distracted. Philip noticed nothing. Dimitrios pushed his feet into leather pattens and walked out of the dining room, as silently, as invisibly, as he could.

  The corridors were dim, and the skylights rattled with rain. Dimi passed a fresco of Caesar's defeat of Vercingetorix, the pigments a dozen times renewed. Farther on was a tapestry depicting the Partition of Gaul, the Emperor Manuel the Comnene and King Henry II of Britain dividing the country from North Sea to Mediterranean, three hundred and four years ago.

  Dimitrios did not understand how a war could end like that, with a streak drawn across a map. England was such a little country; how could it have stood against the Empire, had only Manuel chosen to send the Legions?

  There had been Legions in Britain during the Old Empire, Dimi knew. The Divine Julius of the fresco had led them. There had been a Caesar of the Narrow Seas, when the Legions and not the lawyers were the Empire's strength.

  Dimi's mother had already chosen a place in the new palace for the Partition tapestry, but the engineers believed the fresco was too old and fragile to be moved. Dimitrios thought that he would have to come back here occasionally, after they all lived up the hill, to see the painted Caesar.

  Victories of the New Empire, he thought, running a hand across the tapestry fabric, nails picking at the threads. Clerks' victories. Lawyers' victories. But I will remember thee, O Caesar.

  Perhaps there would even be a Caesar—or a strategos—of the Narrow Seas once again. If his father was right, if he was destined to be a general... But that was too much to quite imagine, on a bellyful of dinner and the aftertaste of Uncle Philip.

  A light was burning in the next room, the library. Dimi knew it must be Lucian, his father's deputy administrator; still, for some reason, or no reason, he slipped his feet from the leather sandals and walked on hose, silent, into the room.

  Lucian sat on a high stool before a sloped desk, his white gown bunched up in his lap. At his elbow was a rack of pens and inkwells, and a stone to grind the points. A lensatic lamp threw bright light on his writing, and his eyes were intent behind lenses of their own. A black ribbon tied the eyeglasses around his head.

  Dimi knew he must be silent now. A noise, making Lucian blot a word or twist a letter, and he'd be wishing he'd heard out Uncle Philip.

  Lucian was an Egyptian, with doctorates from the University at Alexandria; it was customary for a strategos to have a civilian as deputy. His real name sounded odd in Greek—"like an obscenity," he said—and he had changed it. He was brown, and dry as a stick, and the thinnest eunuch Dimitrios had ever seen; he didn't seem ever to eat, and drank boiled herbs instead of wine. His religion was a weirdly complicated thing called "Knowingism."

  Dimi stood entirely still, watching Lucian's goose-quill stroke gracefully across the paper, forming the angular characters of the formal Byzantine alphabet, Cyril's alphabet. Dimi read, A 14th Report to the University Authority. To Be Destroyed After Reading.

  I remind my lord that the theories of (the scribe's hand hid a part) in the actual case; these are human beings, not ciphers. However, I believe

  Lucian's nose twitched. Lifting the pen carefully, he turned his head. "Good evening, Dimitrios." He smiled, his mouth a sharp V. "Did you require a book, or myself?"

  "Neither, Lucian. I was just... walking. What are you writing?"

  Lucian looked at the sheet, sighed, then reached to the top of the desk and rolled down a sheet to cover the work. "Another in an endless series of self-justifying explanations of myself, to people who demand but never understand them."

  Dimitrios understood that sort of thing perfectly. "Lucian... why have there been so many emperors named Constantine? Isn't it.. .well, disrespectful to the Divine one?" It was a silly sort of question, Dimi knew, especially since the tenth Constantine had been a Ducas. But it kept him from asking the question he wanted— about the obligations of a frontier governor—and getting the answer that he very much supposed he did not want.

  Lucian looked thoughtful. He had at times refused to answer Dimi's questions, or sent Dimi to his father for an answer, but he had never dismissed a question as childish or stupid. "I don't know if eleven Constantines in eleven centuries is so many. There have been a lot of Johns, too. But. You know that we have no law of Imperial successi
on; anyone who can get to the throne and stay there, whether by dynasty or force or inertia or... anything else... is the true Emperor. With a few exceptions." The eunuch looked at his lap.

  "Yes. I know that." If there was anything Dimitrios knew much too well, that was it.

  "And you can read in any book that the first Constantine died of old age, in the Imperial bed, with his eyes still in his head. Now, discounting his son Constantius, who could hardly help it, I suspect they were trying to bring back the better aspects of the Divine Founder's reign. Name-magic, if you will. That hardly seems disrespectful. Even if it did not help the Third Constantine, or the Sixth, or the Seventh."

  Dimitrios nodded. "Thank you, Lucian."

  "Not at all, Dimitrios." They each had elaborate formal titles of address, but those had never been necessary in private.

  Dimi turned to go.

  "Dimitrios..." Dimi turned. The administrator sat perched on his stool like a skinny white bird. The lamp made stars of light in his eyeglasses. "... would be an entirely acceptable name for an Emperor."

  Dimi nodded and went to his room, wondering if Lucian knew what had really been in his mind, when he himself was unsure.

  "Down! Vite! Quick!"

  Dimitrios dropped onto his chest at Charles's whisper, at once wishing he wore his brigandine jacket; but the leather was lighter, easier to move in.

  Beside Dimi, Charles slowly raised his head over the half-built wall they hid behind. "I think it's clear now. Ready?"

  Dimi got to hands and knees. "Ready."

  "Now, then," and they were over the wall, two moving shadows in the autumn afternoon.

  Today the two of them were playing the Great Raid: the unfinished palace was a sorcerer's castle in Middle Africa, Dimi was Richard Lionheart, and Charles was Yusuf al-Nasir. Dimi had wanted to be the Eastern King, but Charles wouldn't be an Englishman, even a great Englishman.