by Adam Roberts
‘Whatever notions you have in your head, Lizbreath, you are not a mature dragon. You are a Salamander still, and subject to the dominion of the Dragonlords. In your case, and because you are so insignificant and puny a wyrm, they have delegated that dominion to me. Do you understand?’
She closed her teeth together, tight as the seal of a zip, and resolved not to say anything. But he pressed her snout onto the rock of the platform, and wrenched her wings painfully upon their sockets, so she was compelled to bark: ‘Yes!’
‘Good,’ he said, relaxing his pressure a little. ‘You had better remember that. Dragons are an ancient and a noble species, little Lizbreath. We have rituals and traditions stretching back hundreds of thousands of years. We don’t look kindly upon little wyrms, barely out of the egg, disrespecting our authority, and painting horrible-looking creatures upon their backs.’
‘It’s not painted,’ she said, through gritted teeth. ‘I told you – it’s a tattoo.’
‘I don’t care if it’s a ta-twentytwo, you contemptible Sillymander,’ he snarled. ‘I would advise you to try to put me in a good mood. Because if you don’t, I shall make your life very unpleasant indeed.’
Lizbreath ducked her head with a low snarl, a sign of defeat.
She could feel his hind claws moving up and down her lower back, searching and groping. It was intensely unpleasant, not least because she had no idea how it would end, or what his intentions were. But then he seemed, suddenly, to grow bored. ‘You have taken up enough of my time,’ he said, releasing her. He leapt up in the air, swivelled himself about and settled back on his gold hoard. ‘I have other business to attend to. Off you go.’
‘But,’ said Lizbreath, quailing back and trying to suppress her tremors. ‘I need money.’
‘Not today,’ said Burnblast, imperiously.
‘I need it!’
‘If you need it then you will need to find a way of convincing me to give you some,’ he said.
Scared and trembling as she was, this was so outrageous that Lizbreath could not let it pass. ‘I’m entitled!’ she said.
‘Oh, you won’t starve,’ said the old dragon, sneeringly. ‘You get a salary from your archive work, I suppose. Spend it on mutton, rather than on adding to your crazy hoard of silver.’
‘That’s not the point,’ Lizbreath pressed. ‘You are literally sitting on my ancestral hoard – some of this gold is mine. You have no right to deny it to me!’
‘Oh, but I do have the right, in Law, and in the eyes of the Dragonlords – of all dragon society. They know that I am a respectable old dragon who has never put a talon out of place. And they know you are a tearaway young fool, probably wrong-in-the-head, anti-establishment, drawn to ideas of democracy and certainly not to be trusted. Try raising the matter with the authorities and see who they believe.’
‘This isn’t fair!’
‘Fair?’ bellowed Burnblast, with sudden and genuine-seeming rage. ‘You’ll not speak the polluted vocabulary of democracy in this cave! Fair? Being a dragon is about force, not fair! You may relish squirming in the mud like a tadpole, my dear, but the rest of us rejoice in the majesty and dignity of Draconus Sapiens.’ He blew a great horizontal oak-tree of flame and smoke out of his mouth. Lizbreath barely had time to clamp her eyes shut and close her nostrils before the wavefront of scalding, choking heat washed over her. When the heat passed, and she opened her eyes again, Burnblast seemed to have calmed. ‘Come back, my dear, on Cinderday, and we’ll see about loaning you a little money.’
Lizbreath crept backwards, towards the exit. ‘You’re not open on Cinderdays,’ she pointed out.
‘Oh, I’ll be in the office next Cinderday. I have some scrollwork to do. Off you go now.’
With a deep sense of the humiliation she had endured – the intrusive questions, the physical bullying – and a deeper sense of her own shameful subordination, Lizbreath Salamander backed down the corridor and rushed past sneering Galgewater up the stairs and into the sunlight.
4
‘There is a great shame at the heart of the Vagner clan,’ old Vagner told Käal. ‘It is so shameful, that we never speak of it. You see, the family is deeply implicated in—’ He lowered his voice. ‘I can hardly bring myself to say it to an outsider – implicated in liberal democracy.’
The words were like ice-water splashed in Käal’s face.
‘I can see that you are shocked,’ said Vagner, in a grim voice. ‘And I don’t blame you. It’s only my familiarity with this hideous blot upon the honour of our nest that prevents me from being shocked.’ He shook his long head, slowly. From the corners of his mouth threads of sad, grey smoke trailed into the air, braiding and blurring over his head in the draught created from this motion.
‘Old “Roarer” Gutfire, my grandfather, was one of the fattest and most important dragons in all Scandragonia. I’m talking a dozen centuries ago, or more – during the Scorch Wars.’
‘Your grandfather fought in the Scorch Wars?’
‘Oh he was a leading figure, a mighty dragon warrior. That fact makes his shameful secret all the more shocking, of course.’
‘Where did he fight?’
‘He led the squadrons that took Emberland. It wasn’t Emberland back then, of course. In those days it was still clogged and contaminated with myriad varieties of wetlife: slime moulds such as grasses and bushes and trees, bags-of-mostly-water like slugs and apes. In fact it used to be called “Angerland” because it was infested with a particularly virulent and aggressive species of hömös apes. Infested! Really swarming with them. In Scandragonia things weren’t so bad; the hömös infestations were much thinner here. But over there, the apes were virulent. They got into everything: valleys, hills, forests, underground, overground, rambling free. There was no choice. Purging them meant wrecking the land – desertifying it completely. I suspect my grandfather, Gutfire, went into battle a proud and noble dragon. But he came out of it twisted by what he had seen and done. He came out having lost his inherent faith in the cleanness of dragonkind.’
‘What a terrible story,’ said Käal, with feeling.
‘Is it? I suppose it is. To me, the Scorch Wars are ancient history. Emberland, Scorchland, the whole desolation – it has no power to move me, because for my life it’s always been that way. To me, Gutfire’s fall from grace is nothing more than an occasion for shame and grief amongst those I love.’ He paused. ‘No, I suppose it is more than that. It is a curse that has ruined the Vagners, and dampened and drowned every spirit it has touched.’
‘You think it has something to do with Hellfire’s death – her disappearance, I should say?’
‘Be patient, Käal,’ said the old dragon. ‘It is a long and involved story, the background to the family. But you need to understand it if you are to understand what happened to Hellfire.’
‘Fair enough.’
‘After the war, Gutfire received the Gold Star and the Order of the Purple Heat from the grateful Dragonlords, for his part in the Emberland campaign. If he had only bided his time, and carried on living a virtuous and regular dragon life, he would in all probability have become a Dragonlord, in good time. But he could not. The war had altered him. He saw the Truth and he loathed it: its brightness hurt his eye, its heat repelled him, its violence intimidated him… I’m guessing, because I don’t really know what happened. I do know that he became fascinated with the Lie, as all Lie-berals are, of course. But Lie-beralism, or “Liberalism” as it is now called, was not the worst of it. More than that, he became convinced that the nobility and dignity of dragon society should be humbled. He became democratic.’
Käal gulped. It seemed wrong, somehow, even to utter that word: it was so completely at odds with everything Scandragonia stood for. ‘It’s strange,’ he said. ‘to think that actual people living their lives by that offensive doctrine…’
‘And yet many dragons believe in it! It is rarely talked about, but all over Scandragonia – and especially in Swedragen – there are ma
ny sly, secretive democrats.’ He articulated the word, with, as it were, tongs; as if it were made of ice. ‘And many of them are members of my family. Not me, thank Woden – I have never understood the appeal. But several of my uncles and aunts, and even my brothers and sisters.’
For a long time he stared gloomily into the middle distance. Käal removed his attention from his host, and took a proper look at the frieze that ran around the rim of the circular room. What Käal had assumed was a conventional representation of dragons in poses of triumph, was actually a stranger, more fiddly ribbon of moulded stone. Those little asterisks in various positions all along its length were, Käal could now see, apes – thousands of apes, in all their strange little jackets and leg-tubes: apes running, lying tangled in heaps. Those few dragons on the frieze were represented as treading down upon the writhing mass of hömös, but instead of glory their expressions looked oddly sorrowful. It was, on reflection, a very disagreeable piece of interior decoration.
‘Not many dragons know,’ said Old Vagner, after a long pause, ‘that the-mockery was actually invented by the hömöses. Oh, you can call it democracy if you like, but I’m an old-fashioned dragon, and I like the old-fashioned ways of pronouncing words. Modern pronunciation seems so mumbly, somehow.’
‘Invented by the hömöses?’
‘Indeed. Interesting, no?’
‘I suppose it makes a kind of sick sense,’ said Käal. ‘It’s the kind of thing one would associate with… their sort.’
‘The notion originally occurred to a hömös tribe in the country we now call Grits. Before that, hömös society was more like dragon society – was more elevated, I mean, more authoritarian and therefore authoritative. But then this new idea came into being. It set itself implacably against absolute leadership by the fattest and oldest dragons – that ancient, noble and dignified system, founded upon respect and reticence. That wasn’t the hömöses’ way. Instead, they would gather together a crowd of possible leaders, usually senior apes, every five years or so. And then they organized giant national circuses, in which the leaders were mocked. Mocked mercilessly and repeatedly, over and over again… sometimes for as long as a year, or a year and a half. It was a fantastically, destructively but worst of all deliberately destructive procedure. The ape who best endured “the mockery” would win, and become leader. But he or she was of course fatally diminished by the ordeal. They had no dignity left at all by the end, and a leader without dignity cannot effectively lead others. The process of “the-mockery” rendered them, in the fullest sense imaginable, laughingstocks.’
‘But how could society function under such conditions?’
‘Well, the short answer is: badly. We can see that from hömöses. The apes did organize against us, of course, during the war – but their organization was a muddle, a mob. Some areas held out for longer than others, naturally. The apes in Dustland showed a fair bit of discipline and determination, for instance. And before being blasted, Emberland was known as “Angerland” because the apes who lived there were distinctive in the sheer fury with which they attacked us. But by and large ape society lacked the necessary solidity and resilience to oppose us. We were able to burn them out. To eradicate them. They’re a legend now; a bugaboo to frighten hatchlings. Horrible tiny scuttling creatures, incapable of flight but full of malice and cruel quick-witted ingenuity.’
Käal knew all the folkstories, of course. ‘So what you’re saying is that this crazy apean political philosophy was entirely discredited during the Scorch Wars. I can see that. What I don’t understand is why any sane dragon would think it was a good idea to resurrect it.’
Old Vagner nodded. ‘Of course you’re right. You know Scandragonia as it is often represented in the Tourist Sagas: noble, fiery, hierarchical, martial – a place of savage grandeur, a place anathema to everything petty. But there’s another Scandragonia that coexists with that fire-tinted vision – however shameful it may be to admit it, however much we want to close our eyes to it. This is the subaerial world of democratic Scandragonia: a world of…’ He steeled himself to go on. ‘A world of egalitarianism, of social responsibility and,’ his voice fell to a whisper, ‘taxes. A world of welfare extended to the weak and helpless…’
‘As if the helpless want their misery prolonged!’ Käal expostulated. ‘As if the weak want anything at all except the one crucial thing – not to be weak! To be strong!’
‘I couldn’t have put it better myself,’ agreed Vagner. ‘Taxes! The very idea of taxes is emasculating! To have somebody rob me of a portion of my gold – right in front of my snout? – to expect me to smile and nod? Never! Robbery is one thing; it has its noble pedigree. But to be robbed and expected not to come out flaming with death-hatred? And why – to give my gold to some disease- or age-raddled dragon too weak to steal his own? Where’s the honour for him in that?’
Old Vagner paused for a moment. ‘Yet,’ he went on, shortly, ‘key members of my family thinks this system should be instituted throughout dragondom! They want to see the Dragonlords swept away, and all the old solidity overturned.’
‘It would be chaos!’ Käal cried.
‘Oh you don’t have to persuade me that it is madness,’ said Vagner. ‘But it was the peculiar madness of my grandfather. He passed it down to his descendants. His eldest son, Joblair, had gone blithely to war with his father – by all accounts he was a smirking and insignificant figure, easily influenced and pathetically eager to waste the lands of others. But Joblair was killed in the Scorch Wars, struck down and drowned in the Enough Sea, so Gutfire’s wealth eventually came to his other son, Firedrake.’
‘Firedrake,’ said Käal, trying to hold these names in mind.
‘My father. Firedrake was a secretive though dedicated supporter of the-mockeries. Immediately after the war, times were hard for such people. Pretty much all the great dragon families had lost members in the fighting, and much of the world had been ruined and wasted. By eliminating the apes, we had also destroyed much of the farmland necessary to grow our food. Several decades passed before proper intensive factory farming of goats, sheeps and pigs was established – they were, by all accounts, hungry times for many dragons.’
Käal, nodding, didn’t want to interrupt the old man’s flow, not least because he wanted to get to the end of this story before Dragontterdammerung rolled up the scroll of the world. But he couldn’t help himself. He was not the biggest, bravest or fieriest dragon in Scandragonia, but he was certainly the most pedantic.
‘Sheep,’ he said.
Helltrik stopped. ‘What?’
‘Sheep. Just, sheep.’
‘Yes indeed, sheeps.’
‘The plural of sheep is sheep.’
‘What?’ Old Vagner looked confused.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Käal. ‘I didn’t mean to break up your flow. You said that, after the war, dragons developed the factory-farming of goats, pigs and “sheeps”. That was all.’
‘What’s your point?’
‘Only that – forgive me – I thought I ought to point out: the plural of sheep is sheep.’
‘What’s that about plural?’ Vagner looked bleary-eyed. ‘Did I get it wrong?’
‘I’m afraid you did. It hardly matters – only, I have an eye for details like that.’
‘I see. So the plural is?
‘Sheep,’ said Käal.
‘Yes, the plural of sheep.’ He waited expectantly. ‘Is… ?’
‘Sheep.’
‘Yes. And the plural is?’
‘Sheep,’ said Käal. ‘It’s sheep.’
‘Really, Mon. Brimstön, you’re the one who interrupted me on this matter. The least you can do is tell me what the plural is.’
‘You don’t understand what I’m saying, Monster Vagner. The plural of sheep is – sheep.’
Vagner’s brow folded, the scales on his head snapping as he frowned. ‘You’ve lost me.’
‘The singular is sheep, one sheep, a sheep. But the plural is also sheep. It’s
not sheeps, which is what you said. You don’t add the s. That’s all.’
The creased-up brow did not uncrease. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes – but, look, ignore me, it doesn’t matter. Which is to say: perhaps it matters, a little, but it’s not relevant, not exactly relevant to what you were saying. Go on with your story.
‘Is it – then, pig the plural of pig, goat the plural of goat?’
‘No, no,’ said Käal, shifting uncomfortably on the floor. ‘Pigs, goats, that’s fine. You can say sheeps, too if you like. Why not? Nobody cares, really.’
‘No, no, I want to get it right. Sheep. But why should it be different to the other barnyard animal names? That’s what I don’t understand. Do you know, why, Monster Brimstön?’
‘No,’ said Käal. ‘No, I don’t. It’s one of the mysteries of language. Can we go on with your narrative, please, Monster Vagner? You were telling me of the devotion of your father to democracy… ?’
‘Was I? Oh, yes, Firedrake. Well, the political climate after the war was not conducive to those who thought that democracy might benefit dra— Sheep? Are you sure that it’s not one of those words that shifts its medial vowel in the plural? Like drink becomes drank, you know?’
‘Um,’ said Käal. ‘Look—’
‘It could be shap, say? One sheep, several shap – doesn’t that sound right?’
‘I really don’t think—’
‘Yes,’ said Old Vagner, ruminatively. ‘That must be it. After all, there must be something to differentiate singular and plural, don’t you think?’
‘I rather regret raising the matter, to be honest.’
‘Well, otherwise a trader could come along, and you might ask him: “What have you got for sale today, Mon. Trader?” and he – or she, of course – could answer “sheep” and you wouldn’t know if they were trying to sell you one sheep or twenty, uh, shap.’
‘I suppose,’ said Käal, in a strangled voice, ‘I suppose you could work it out from context? Could you maybe do that? Or else just ask him: “Mon. Trader, do you mean a single sheep or more than one?” Wouldn’t that be a… thing you could do?’