by Adam Roberts
‘No, sir,’ said Bingo. ‘Yes, sir.’
It was clear that the dragon had finished talking. He reared up from his pile, and stood for a moment on his hind legs with his huge wings unfolding behind him, as tall as any of his tall kin. The edges of his wings were lined with sharp claws, and the aerodynamic whole was perfectly designed – a tool for flying, but a tool keen and sharp for cutting the air. Bingo felt fear return to his gut, and he staggered against the wall. The dragon fell forward, and stalked into a corridor just high-ceilinged enough for him to stalk in, although it seemed a mighty cavern to the soddit as he scurried along at the creature’s heels. With earth-jarring strides the beast covered the whole length of the corridor in minutes. Bingo had to run to keep up, passing many side rooms and archways leading through to other lairs, rooms, caverns, although the soddit had no time to look in. He was running too rapidly for that.
‘Sir Dragon!’ he gasped. ‘You go too fast!’
‘Oh,’ said Smug, turning his long face over his shoulder. ‘I do apologise. Don’t feel you have to run at my speed. I’ll leave the door open for you.’ And with that he leapt forward like a tiger, a mighty leap, landing in the air outside the mountain and spreading his wings.
Bingo sat on the floor until he had recovered his breath. Then he got up and trotted down the remainder of the great corridor. The massive front doorway, tall as twenty soddits, grew as he ran towards it. He was almost outside again in the clean air but, at the last minute, his eyes were distracted by something glittering, something precious-looking, sitting on the floor next to the door: an enormous gem. Other precious flotsam and jetsam was scattered about, pieces of gold and jewel-encrusted cups, but it was this huge diamond, as large as Bingo’s fist, that caught his eye.1 Eager as he was to get outside the mountain, he could not pass by so magnificent a gem. As he bent over it he thought he discerned a gleam shining out of the heart of the jewel. He cradled it in both his hands and lifted it before his face.
‘Woof,’ said the jewel.
‘You are fairer than any jewel I have ever seen,’ said Bingo. ‘I shall … borrow you. Perhaps Smug won’t mind. What do you think?’
‘Wooah! Wooah!’ said the stone.
But Bingo ignored its warning and slipped the great jewel into his coat pocket, where it settled with a gentle ‘woof’.
This, although he did not realise it at the time, was the famous, enchanted Barkingstone, a gem with a long and special history. It was as valuable a gemstone as existed in Upper Middle Earth, and a very great find for a burglar to make.
Bingo trotted out of the main entrance to the caves of Strebor with a sudden gaiety in his heart. He had survived his fall down the chimney, had come away from his interview with the dragon with his life intact, and to boot had discovered a gem of fabulous wealth and beauty. All in all, he told himself, it had not been a bad day. The sunlight prickled on the fast-flowing stream that led out between the two arms of the mountain, and the land to the south looked yellow-brown, fresh and warm. The sun was still climbing, and Bingo realised that he had spent only a few hours inside the mountain.
It took him more than a few hours, however, to make his way back to the dwarfs. First he had to clamber over a spur of the mountain, and down into the valley on the other side. Then he had to circle the flank of Strebor until he recognised the place where the party had climbed up two days before. Then he had to retrace that arduous and difficult climb.
But when he hauled his puffing body on to the plateau, as the sun sank red in the west, the dwarfs were delighted to see him. ‘Bingo!’ cried Mori. ‘You’re alive!’
They clustered around him.
‘How glad we are, see, that you’re all right, boyo,’ said Mori embracing him. ‘We’d almost given up on you.’
‘We were debating what to do next,’ said Gofur.
‘We weren’t at all sure what to do,’ said On.
‘My dear friends,’ said Bingo. After he had refreshed himself with some water and a bread roll, whilst the dwarfs lit a fire, he settled himself and told them the sequence of his adventures – omitting only the part about finding the Barkingstone. But instead of becoming more and more congratulatory as he proceeded, the dwarfs became more and more dismayed.
‘You told him,’ said Mori severely, ‘what?’
‘You said we were here to kill him?’ said a horrified Failin.
‘Well, yes,’ said Bingo, faltering. ‘That is why we’re here, isn’t it? I understand that to be the purpose of our quest.’
Five dwarf faces stared at him aghast.
‘I know you said it was gold,’ Bingo told them, becoming a little annoyed himself. ‘I mean, I know you said that. But clearly that wasn’t it. Or wasn’t the whole story. There is lots of gold down there, by the way,’ he added. ‘Just lying around. Seems a shame to leave it.’
‘You idiot,’ exploded Mori. ‘Id! i! ot!’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘You told the dragon we were going to kill it? Why did you tell it that?’
‘I was in a tight spot,’ said Bingo, growing heated.
‘And it flew off towards Lakeside?’
‘Yes.’
The dwarfs looked to the south. In the darkening sky, nothing could be seen except a series of shadowed vaguenesses in the landscape and the emerging stars over the horizon.
‘At least,’ said Mori, with hope in his voice, ‘you told him you had travelled with a troop of dwarfs?’
‘No,’ said Bingo proudly. ‘I managed to stop myself before I blurted that out.’
The dwarfs stared at him. It was actually possible to see their mouths, so far had their jaws dropped.
‘Look—’ Bingo began.
‘Idiot! Idiot – idiot – idiot – sheep-for-brains,’ exclaimed Mori. ‘You should have told him we were dwarfs. He’d have never believed we were coming to kill him if he’d known we were dwarfs.’
‘Wouldn’t he? Why not?’ Bingo looked from face to face. ‘Why wouldn’t he? I don’t understand,’ he said.
‘Oh,’ said Mori, ‘that’s perfectly plain.’
‘Well,’ said Bingo, his soddit anger roused, ‘don’t you think you should explain it to me? Don’t you think I’ve been blundering about in the dark for long enough? Maybe you should have told me at the beginning, instead of spinning these yarns about gold and gold and gold. Eh?’
Mori, in the firelight, looked at the ground. ‘If we’d told you,’ he said, ‘you’d never have come.’
‘I wish I’d never come!’ Bingo declared.
‘It’s not the kind of thing a dwarf, or a wizard, can just – tell,’ said Mori, after a while. ‘It’s private. It’s not something we’d want the rest of the world to find out about. We thought, see, that we’d wait a while, see how you shaped up. We always planned to tell you sooner or later,’ he added.
The other dwarfs nodded.
‘Tell me what?’ Bingo demanded. ‘Tell me what? Why have we come all this way, to this mountain, past all these dangers? Eh, Mori? What was the reason?’
‘The reason,’ said Mori. Then he stopped. He turned his gaze to the sleeping figure of the wizard. The whole party looked at Gandef. ‘There’s the reason,’ said Gofur. ‘He’s why we came.’
Bingo stared at the wizard.
There was a silence for a several minutes.
‘Things are not always as they first appear,’ said Mori in a low voice.
‘I thought he came along as a guide, as a sort of protector,’ said Bingo. ‘Protecting us. Like he did with the Gobblins. Or the wolves. But you’re saying it was actually the other way around. We were bringing him, not him bringing us?’
‘Of course,’ said Mori. ‘Couldn’t you read the clues?’
‘What clues? What – what is happening to Gandef?’
‘He’s turning,’ said Mori in a low voice, ‘into a dragon, look you.’
Bingo digested this for a while. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Where did you
think dragons came from?’ Failin asked.
‘I’d never really thought about it,’ said Bingo. ‘I assumed that a mummy dragon and a daddy dragon got together and, I don’t know, laid an egg.’
‘The processes of life are much richer than you realise, la, and much more closely interconnected,’ said Mori. ‘You know an insect egg becomes a grub, and a grub becomes a caterpillar, and a caterpillar a moth. You know this is how nature works. If it is so complex, so interconnected, at the level of moths, how much more so for the larger winged creatures?’
‘You wanted me to read the clues?’ said Bingo. ‘That wizards are the larval form of dragons? How on earth was I supposed to deduce that? Why couldn’t you just tell me? I can’t even think what the clues might have been that I was supposed to read.’
‘Well,’ said Mori. ‘There was the smoking.’
‘Plenty of people smoke,’ Bingo pointed out. ‘Not just wizards or dragons.’
‘There was the deafness.’
‘Deafness?’
‘He was losing the use of his ears. Dragons don’t have ears – they hear through the membranes of their wings. Didn’t you know that?’
‘And Gandef has wings, does he?’ said Bingo snidely, to cover his ignorance.
‘They’re growing now. Whilst he sleeps.’
Everybody looked at the supine wizard again.
‘I still don’t see,’ insisted Bingo, ‘how I was supposed to guess.’
‘There’s the magic. Wizards and dragons are the two great magic creatures in the world. Didn’t you know that? There was the fire.’
‘The fire?’
‘The time Gandef breathed out fire and burnt those wolves. Didn’t you think that was a strange thing?’
‘I assumed it was a spell,’ Bingo said.
‘Then when his beard came off, we thought that was the giveaway,’ said Gofur. ‘You’ve never seen a dragon with a beard, have you? Dragons don’t have beards.’
‘This,’ said Bingo, ‘is a lot to take in.’
He sat for a while, listening to the sounds of the fire. It was as if the long red fingers of flame were cracking their knuckles.
‘So we were in fact bringing Gandef to Smug for him to – what? Complete his transformation?’
The dwarfs nodded in the darkness.
‘So why were you doing it? Why does it matter to a load of dwarfs what happens to one old wizard?’
‘Perhaps,’ said Mori, ‘you’d like me to enumerate the many points of similarity between dwarfs and wizards – not counting, of course, the difference in sizes. There’s, one, the beards—’
‘You mean,’ said Bingo, understanding striking him suddenly, ‘that dwarfs are an earlier form of wizards? Grubs to caterpillars to moths, you said. Dwarfs turn into wizards?’
‘Well, if they live long enough,’ said Mori. ‘As you’ve seen, the world is a harsh environment for us. But yes. Dwarfs are quickened in the rocks, and we emerge much as you see us, only smaller, in caves and caverns. We grow slowly, and many of us perish, but eventually some small number change, metamorphose, shoot up in height and acquire our adult magic, and then we are wizards. A wizard’s life is long, and not without peril, and few survive as long as Gandef here – Mithrandwarf, to give him his proper name. But, for those few, eventually, the second great transformation begins. He senses it, last year. We brought him here to Smug for the change to be completed, and so that he will have a mentor when he emerges. You were supposed to slip down the chimney, and get Smug to open the front door. That’s all.’
‘But,’ said Gofur sourly, ‘you have instead sent Smug down to Lakeside to pick a quarrel with the men who live there. And even if he has survived that encounter, he now thinks we have come to kill him! A pretty pickle.’
‘Pickle,’ murmured the other dwarfs in sorrowful agreement. ‘Pretty. Hmm, hmm, hmm.’
All eyes turned south again, trying to pick out the shapes of the lake and the town in the increasing darkness.
1 The earlier story of this gem is told in the famous tale A Diamond As Big As The Fist.
Chapter Ten
FIE! AND WATER
And so we must, if you desire to know what happened between Mighty Smug and the marketing men of Lakeside, move our imaginary point of view southwards to the slow waters of Lake Escargot. For that was the direction in which the dragon wended.
Smug flew with easy, lolloping strokes of his broad wings through the midday sunshine. In a brief time he was circling above Lakeside, blowing great gusts of wind up and down the narrow wooden streets with his leathern1 wings. The Lakesiders scurried to and fro crying out, variously,’ The dragon is come! Woe! Woe! Woe!’, and, ‘Ichabod and alas, the glory has departed from Lakeside!’, and, ‘Who’ll buy my lovely apples, lurvely apples? Ten a penny, come buy.’
‘Now,’ boomed Smug from the air, his voice sounding like a hundred thunderstorms.2 ‘Let’s not get carried away down there! I have only come to talk!’
Lard the Bowman stood, his belly proud. He was the only stationary person in the milling throng, his strong longbow in his hand. ‘Dragon!’ he called up, his voice almost lost in the wind made by the beast’s wings (although, luckily, dragonic hearing is unusually acute). ‘Fie Dragon! Beware!’
‘Now, now,’ said Smug. ‘I mean no harm. Can we not simply talk, dragano-a-mano? Just thee and me?’
‘I have my bow!’ called Lard, brandishing it above his head.3 ‘And I’m not afraid to use it! Be warned!’
‘Eeek!’ called the crowd. ‘Alas! Disaster! The dragon is come!’
‘Apples, apples!’ called the deaf appleseller.
Smug circled again. ‘I’m going to land on that bridge,’ he said, pointing down with one of his mighty claws. ‘Then we’ll be able to chat. I don’t suppose,’ he added, as if in afterthought, ‘that you’ve any tea, have you?’
‘Woe, woe, woe!’ called the people of Lakeside.
Smug curled the ends of his wings in and beat in slightly circular motions, creating a down-draught that enabled him to land. People scattered beneath him as he settled on to the town’s main bridge. Lard approached the great beast, running with his head down in the accepted human manner (if there is a draught from above). The timbers of the bridge creaked under the creature’s weight.
‘Ahh!’ said Smug, as he folded away his wings and reached to the breast pocket from which his enormous pipe protruded. ‘That’s better. I’m not as fit as I used to be, you know. I used to go for a constitutional, a quick flap around the mountain, after every meal. But I’ve been neglecting my exercises latterly. Dear me! So you must be Lard? Delighted to meet you. Delighted.’
‘Fearsome worm,’ shouted Lard, brandishing his weapon again. ‘Begone back to your hole of vileness! Fie!’
‘Well,’ said the dragon, a little nonplussed. ‘Eh. Quite. Yes, I must say, you’ve done a lovely job with the lake town here. A lovely job. Is that pine cladding on the oak beams of the main hall? Lovely, lovely.’
‘Creature of darkness!’ yelled Lard. ‘Spawn of Malcorm! Ye shall not pass!’
‘I see,’ said Smug, unable to keep a certain crushed tone out of his voice. ‘Ah well. It’s nice to see you. I thought I’d pop down—’
‘Grrrr!’ said Lard.
‘– pop down,’ said Smug, in a more subdued voice as he tamped tobacco into the tub-sized bowl of his pipe. ‘See if we can’t sort out this little difficulty.’
The beams that held the bridge groaned again under the great weight of Smug.
‘I understand,’ said Smug, puffing on the stem of his giant pipe, ‘that some of your customers have been a bit – shall we say? – shy, since my arrival in the Only Mountain …’
‘Fie! Bah!’ called Lard, fitting an arrow to his bow. ‘Grr! Evil wyrm! Fie!’
‘… I really must assure you I had no idea. It’s a most unfortunate situation. I feel obliged to try and find a solution, and restore your trade. Now, I was wondering if—’
Lard lifte
d his bow, and aimed his arrow.
But the supporting beams beneath Smug could take the weight no longer. With a series of splintering crashes, they gave way, tipping the whole fifty-yard stretch of bridge into the water. With a grumbling ‘oh, my’ the dragon toppled backwards and disappeared into the lake with an apocalyptic splash.
Spray leapt a hundred feet in the air. Waves surged and rose between the timber legs on which Lakeside stood clear of the water, the swell pressing against the underside of the town and water squeezing through the planks to flood up into many streets and houses. When the first waves had subsided, a wreath of moisture lingered in the air, scattering myriad tiny rainbow sparks as the bright sun shone through.
It took the people of Lakeside many moments before their collective relief found expression in a shout of joy. ‘Hurrah!’ they cried. ‘Lard has slain the dreadful beast!’ ‘The dragon is no more!’ ‘Apples! Apples! Only slightly bruised!’ and, ‘All hail Lard the Deliverer! Lakeside is saved!’
Lard stood at the extreme edge of the wrecked bridge and stared out over the water. The waves were settling now, the surface resuming its snail-like placidity, and closing over the sunken body of the dragon. He stood motionless for a long while, half expecting the creature to rear up from the lake in fire and tempest. But nothing broke the surface of the waters. It began to dawn on Lard that Smug was truly dead. ‘For is not a dragon,’ he said, more to himself than anybody, ‘a creature of fire? Is it not truly said, to kill a dragon, drown it?’ He turned to his people. ‘The waters have swallowed the beast! The curse has been taken from Lakeside!’
‘Hurrah!’ they cried.
A dozen strong men swarmed around their mayor, and grasped him to carry him, shoulder-high, amongst the rejoicing people. They abandoned this ambitious plan after half a minute of grunting and heaving, and instead Lard consented to walk amongst the throng. ‘If only I were still a bard,’ he said to himself. ‘What a lay I would compose about this adventure!’ And, thinking of lays, he passed about the town.