by Adam Roberts
‘But that would surely be wasteful, and inefficient. I mean, communication-wise.’
Käal thought about this. ‘Mon. Vagner, perhaps you could go on with your backstory… ? We don’t have all the time in the world, after all.’
‘What? Yes. Well I was telling you about my father, Firedrake. He’d been as brave and noble a dragon as you might hope for, during the war, though he’d been too young to more than fight in the last stages, when we had the apes on the run and were just mopping up. But somehow, after the war ended, he became – persuaded by Old Gutfire’s the-mockery arguments. I don’t know how it happened, or how a noble, honest dragon was converted to a… democrat. Perhaps it was a kind of nihilism – a desire to bring dragon society crashing into chaos out of existential despair?’
‘Logically, though,’ Käal said, ‘I suppose it’s unlikely he would have a single sheep to sell.’
‘What?’
‘The sheep trader. In your example. If he, or she, came up and said “wanna buy sheep?” you wouldn’t automatically think he, or she, was offering you a single sheep.’ Käal spread his lips in an unconvincing smile. ‘I mean, who sells individual sheep, in this day and age? I heard a Financial Saga that said the sheep factory outside Limbchopping handles forty thousand head of livestock every day. Every day!’
Vagner was looking coolly at him.
‘I’m sorry,’ Käal said. ‘Do go on.’
‘As I say,’ the old dragon resumed. ‘At first Firedrake was bitterly disappointed to have missed the glory days of war. He wanted nothing more than to train in the arts of the warrior. Then something happened, and all that changed. He began attending secret the-mockery cabals, and he lost his desire to fight completely. He made hamfast with a female dragon – Ulrikaka – and in quick succession my mother laid five eggs, one after the other, with no more than a year between them. Five! It must have set a record for fecundity! At least for the high-born families of Regin-bloodline dragons. It was as if my mother and father were trying, single-handedly, to boost the general dragon population! First my oldest brother Reekhard, then Hydra, my older sister, and Greendragon, and my other brother Ghastly – he lives here on Doorbraak. You’ll meet him, I daresay. And finally me.’
‘Five!’ said Käal, admiringly.
‘Indeed. But the shame of it is: four of those five were inducted into the ways of the-mockery. Luckily for her, Hydra never really believed all that, I think. But Reekhard believed it with fanatical single-mindedness, and Ghastly is quite open about his repellent views. Now Reekhard made hamfast with a fierce young dragon called Thatcheretta; they had a son whom, in grandfilial duty, Reekhard named Gutfire, and whom the family tends to call “Gutfire II” so as not to get confused, or else, “Young Gutfire”, except that he’s not young any more – he’s only a hundred years younger than me. He was a tearaway, dedicated mostly to partying, drinking fire-water and driving in Dragon-car Races. But he married eventually, under pressure from his father, my brother, a beautiful young dragon from the Necesseriona family – Isabella, her name. Hydra married after the Prodigy Scandal and the Dencrash: a decent, rather dull dragon called Igniter. Greendragon married Girder, of whom perhaps you have heard… if you follow contemporary music at all.’
Käal shook his head, self-deprecatingly. ‘I’m afraid not.’
‘No? He’s quite famous. Now, anyway…’
‘Er,’ said Käal. ‘Could I just…’
‘And Ghastly never married. Who’d have him? Despite his wealth, he’s ugly, his breath smells of watercress and he holds objectionable democratic views to which he gives voice night and day. Anyway, Gutfire and Isabella were married.’
‘Stop a moment,’ said Käal, grinning awkwardly. ‘Could I just ask you to stop? I’m finding it hard to, er, visualize all these family interrelations.’
‘Really?’ said Vagner, haughtily. ‘What do you want? Should I draw it all out, like a hatchling’s primer? Come along, it’s perfectly straightforward. Gutfire and Isabella were the parents of Marrer and Hellfire.’
‘… who died in the war?’
‘No! No! They were born long after the war, of course. It was Joblair died in the war. But that was a different Gutfire. Hydra and Igniter had three children. I sometimes wonder if they set out trying to emulate my parents for fecundity but were forced to give up. Now it’s important to remember that Bürner, their oldest son, was younger than the younger child of Gutfire.’
‘Ghastly?’ Käal hazarded.
‘No, no,’ snapped Vagner, growing irritated. ‘Are you an idiot? The younger child of Gutfire Vagner was Hellfire Vagner. Her brother—’
‘Bürner,’ said Käal, to show he had been paying attention,
‘No! No! Bürner?’ The incredulity with which he repeated the name was a mixture of disbelief and ferocity. ‘No! Of course not Bürner! Her brother wasn’t Bürner.’
‘Azazel?’ Käal tried.
‘Azazel’s a girl!’ Old Vagner’s face was assuming a look almost of disgust. ‘Were you even listening when I explained it all before? Is it so hard to get the relationships of the various members of my family clear in your head?’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Käal, becoming flustered and starting to leak mahogany-coloured smoke. ‘It’s just that there are quite a few individuals, and…’
‘It’s disrespectful, is what it is!’ thundered the senior dragon. ‘It’s the symptom of a degenerate age!’
‘I think,’ said Käal, ‘with just one more explanation of the various relations…’
Vagner gave him a hard stare. ‘My grandfather was called Gutfire,’ he said, shortly.
‘And so was your… uncle?’
‘So was my nephew. Honestly! I’m starting to have my doubts about you, Mon. Brimstön.’
‘Your nephew! Yes, of course. I think I’ve got it clear in my head now.’
‘Do you, Käal? Do you really?’ Helltrik looked with-eringly doubtful. ‘In that case, you’ll be able to tell me what relationship I have to Alexandragon?’
Käal was pretty sure that old Vagner had never mentioned an Alexandragon. ‘Uncle?’ he guessed.
Old Helltrik looked at him closely. ‘That’s right,’ he said eventually. ‘Assuming you meant to say that I am his uncle – not that he is my uncle – which would be ridiculous!’
‘Ridiculous,’ agreed Käal.
‘Well. All right. Do you think you have a sense of it, now?’
‘Absolutely,’ Käal lied.
‘Good. Because you’ll need to get a good sense of the family interrelations if you are going to write our Saga. Won’t you!’ Suddenly Old Vagner began chuckling, a resonant repeating sound like a goose tut-tutting the sloppy workmanship of another goose. ‘How comical it would be, if you attempted to write our Saga, and you didn’t even know that Isabel and Azazel were second cousins once removed!’
‘That would be insane,’ Käal agreed, tight-voiced. ‘So, you were—’
‘Richly comical!’ laughed Old Vagner.
‘—you were telling me about the secret shame of the Vagners?’
‘Only imagine, thinking Bürner was Hellfire’s brother!’
Old Vagner’s laughter deepened and stretched out. The more he thought about this the funnier it seemed to become to him. ‘What a crazy thought! Just fancy! It’s funny! To imagine those two brother and sister! Oh, that would have been a bizarreness!’
Käal waited until the old dragon’s laughter slowed and settled, before prompting him again. ‘The secret shame of the Vagners? Democracy?’
‘Oh – yes. Well, there have been, and there still are, a lot of the-mockeryites in my family. We have paid a considerable amount of money to keep the news out of the Gossip Sagas, I can tell you.’
‘And you think this has something to do with the disappearance of, er, ah,’ but the name was simply not in Käal’s short-term memory. ‘Your grandniece?’ he concluded.
‘I think so. You need to understand how poisonous this pervasive
ideological commitment to mockery is. A family is like a society in miniature: it needs a degree of respect, of solidity, to function. What has happened with the Vagners is that this toxin has worked itself into all our relationships. None of us respect one another. According to the beliefs of democracy everybody is on a level with everybody else, everyone is competing with and trying to put everybody else down. Mockery, sniping, ridicule, nastiness – this is the currency of interpersonal relationships under such a regime. You’ll be able to see for yourself, Mon. Brimstön, if you stay on Doorbraak – as I hope you will.’
‘You want me to stay here?’
‘Oh, you’ll need to, if you’re going to write our Saga. Don’t worry, it needn’t be for very long – a year at most. And you will be very well rewarded, after all.’
‘Hmmm,’ said Käal.
‘You have other plans, perhaps?’
‘It’s just that – well, frankly, Doorbraak seems a little grand for a modern dragon like me.’
‘You must help me, Käal,’ said Old Vagner. ‘I’m elderly, frail – my time is almost up. I cannot go into the shadow without discovering the truth of what happened to my beautiful grandniece! I must know the truth, and you can uncover it for me.’
How could Käal refuse? Well, he could either have said ‘I refuse’, or else, ‘no thank you’, or some variant of that. But he didn’t. He said: ‘I’ll do it!’
5
‘So,’ said Käal, settling himself. ‘Tell me how it happened – Hellfire’s murder, I mean.’
‘Ah!’ said old Vagner. ‘You see that it must be murder?’
‘To be honest,’ said Käal, ‘I don’t. It may have been, I concede that. But why do you say, must?’
‘First of all, you have to understand that Doorbraak is an island, here in the sky.’
‘Of course.’
‘Well, we are well separated from the mainland. I keep an eye above and an eye below. Our privacy is important to us, you see, and we like to keep comings and goings in view. But the crucial thing is that neither eye saw Hellfire leave. Had she flown above, or ducked below, then she would have been observed.’
‘Did nobody leave?’
‘Not a person. For the whole of that last day, the day of her disappearance, we were surrounded by drizzle.’
‘Woden!’ Käal swore. ‘For a whole day?’
Old Vagner nodded.
‘What kind of drizzle?’
The old dragon looked straight at him. ‘The thin sort that really sticks to you – the worst kind. Cold, moist, invasive.’ He shuddered, his scales rattling as he did so like a beggar’s tin.
‘But—’ said Käal, finding it hard to believe: ‘all day? Where did this rain come from?’
‘That’s a very good question. We maintain this flying island at this altitude for a reason, Mon. Brimstön, as I’m sure you can imagine. We exist above most of the low-lying weather fronts, all those seed clouds that rain to keep grass green for our mutton to graze. Up here, you see, the sky is gloriously dry and windy. Every now and again we get a freak shower, of course, but never for more than a half-hour. But that day – the day Hellfire was murdered – it rained all day. It is too much of a coincidence.’
‘You think it might have been – arranged?’
‘Over the centuries I have become more and more convinced that it must have been. You see, the day in question the whole nest had gathered. It is something we do every decade. But, because so many members of the family are so hostile to one another – so mocking, so snide – these get-togethers are never very comfortable. There were several flaming rows.’
‘Hmm?’
‘… which is what you’d expect in any family, of course. And not all the disagreements were as healthy as that. Some of the arguments were positively icy.’
‘No!’
‘I’m afraid so. Some really chilly, slushy, cold arguments. The last I saw of Hellfire, she flew from the main dining hall, after Reekhard and Isabella had an icy clash. I think that seeing her mother and her grandfather behaving so abominably to one another drove her to genuine grief.’
‘And that’s the last you saw of her?’
‘Yes. Asheila saw her about fifteen minutes afterwards, heading down to the main hall. But I myself went into that hall five minutes after this sighting, and she wasn’t there.’
‘Maybe she went into the hall and came out again?’
Old Vagner shook his head. ‘It is where the main hoard is kept. There is only one entrance, and it can only be approached by a long winding corridor. I came down that corridor looking for her – I wasn’t unobservant. If Hellfire had left, she would have come straight past me. She didn’t: I didn’t see anything. So I don’t believe she went into the great hall at all.’
‘So she went another way. What else is down in that direction?’
‘The great hall is right at the heart of Doorbraak. If, instead of heading down the approach tunnel, a dragon decided to take a different corridor – well you could go pretty much anywhere in the complex.’
‘So that doesn’t help narrow it down. What other clues are there?’
‘Well, Hellfire’s room was untouched. If she had somehow decided to leave home – to become a flyaway, as the authorities suggest she did – then she would have taken some items with her. Her diary scroll, for instance. Her lucky elephant foot. Her favourite clawboots. She would not have left without these things.’
‘How can you be so sure?’
‘Because she and I were very close. These things had immense sentimental value to her. You know how young dragons are. Now, I have given this a lot of thought, over the years. Of course it’s possible to imagine circumstances in which she was forced to leave them – if she were kidnapped, say – or in which she might deliberately leave them, to create a false trail. Both things are possible. But after centuries of reflection I am convinced that neither is likely. The probability is massively on the other side: that she is dead.’
Käal coughed up a piece of sticky brimstone, and spat it discreetly into the spittoon. It landed in the copper concavity with a sonorous chime, like a bell. ‘Forgive me Mr Vagner. I need to get this clear in my head before I can begin trying to solve it. You are convinced that Hellfire was murdered?’
‘I am.’
‘That is, in part at least, because you’re convinced she couldn’t have sneaked off the island?’
‘Absolutely not.’
‘She couldn’t be hiding on Doorbraak somewhere? It’s quite an extensive place.’
‘For three hundred years? Come, Käal, show some dragonsense.’
‘What you’re saying is: you have had the place searched?’
‘Over and over again. Now, there are two halves to this floating paradise, the top part, and the bottom. The top half, as you saw when you flew in, is spacious gardens, animal pens, large marble halls – the main hoardroom, of course, from where we run Vagner Industries, and smaller hoardrooms for the junior executives to practise sitting on their hoards. All of this has been searched. Every room, every open space. I personally sifted through every item in the main Vagner hoard. Can you imagine it? I was so tortured by not knowing what had happened to my grandniece that I wondered if she had burrowed into the family hoard, and was lying doggo underneath all that gold.’
‘She wasn’t there?’
‘No.’
‘And was anything missing?’
Old Vagner looked up abruptly, his yellow eyeslit narrowing even further, like the last moment before a total solar eclipse. ‘One trivial item. Nothing important.’
Käal was instantly struck by this reply. For the first time in his dealings with the old snake, he felt the whiff of cold and rainy distrust. No dragon would blithely talk about losing ‘one trivial item’ from his or her hoard – for no part of a hoard was trivial, from the biggest helmet, nugget and ingot right down to that last extracted gold hömös tooth, or those microscopic lower-case letter ‘t’s so many of the apes had liked wear
ing, for unfathomable reasons, about their necks. To search one’s entire hoard (and the Vagner hoard, accumulated over millennia and rarely spent from) must have been an immense undertaking. But once it was searched, any dragon discovering that he had been robbed of even the smallest piece would fly into a blasting, fiery rage. And not rest until he got it back. ‘Did you look for these missing items?’ Käal asked.
‘I can see you’re surprised,’ said old Vagner, in a weary voice. ‘I understand why, too. I comprehend the vigour of youth, when your energies are dedicated to assembling your hoard. And don’t make the mistake of thinking I don’t prize it. In the normal course of things, if I had missed a golden cup or a golden candlestick, something of that nature, then of course I would have raged about searching for it and scorching everything to cinders. But try to understand: I have lost something far more precious than gold. I have lost my grandniece. That was all I could think about.’
Käal supposed he could believe this. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘So you’ve searched the upper part of Doorbraak. What about the lower?’
‘Indeed,’ said Old Vagner, nodding ponderously. ‘Hellfire was never much of a digging dragon. Her blood was too aristocratic, you understand – too aetherial. She yearned for the high, empty spaces where the fire of the sunlight is purest. True to her lineage, you see. But – naturally I considered the possibility that, to escape some unknown threat, she might have tossed her dignity to the rain and burrowed underground like a common Möle. It’s unlikely, but I had to consider it.’
‘Would she have to dig?’ asked Käal. ‘Aren’t there tunnels?’
‘Naturally there are. And naturally we searched them – I myself squeezed myself through them, though their soil was crumbly and smelt horribly of moisture. But I searched them anyway – many times, so desperate was I to glean any facts that might uncover my grandniece’s fate. When that proved bootless I searched into the great mass of soil itself.’
‘What? You did what?’
‘Yes, into the very soil itself.’