Will walked through the village streets, leaving footprints of flame behind him. He was filled with wrath and the dragon. “Come out!” he roared. “Bring out your greenshirties, every one of them, or I shall come after them, street by street and house by house.” He put a hand on the nearest door, and wrenched it from its hinges. Broken fragments of boards fell flaming to the ground. “Spillikin cowers herewithin. Don’t make me come in after him!”
Shadowy hands flung Spillikin face-first into the dirt at Will’s feet.
Spillikin was a harmless albino stick-figure of a marsh-walker who screamed when Will closed a cauterizing hand about his arm to haul him to his feet.
“Follow me,” Will/the dragon said coldly.
So great was Will’s twin-spirited fury that none could stand up to him. He burned hot as a bronze idol, and the heat went before him in a great wave, withering plants, charring house-fronts, and setting hair ablaze when somebody did not flee from him quickly enough. “I am wrath!” he screamed. “I am blood-vengeance! I am justice! Feed me or suffer!”
The greenshirties were, of course, brought out.
No-name was, of course, not among their number.
The greenshirties were lined up before the dragon in Tyrant Square. They knelt in the dirt before him, heads down. Only two were so unwary as to be caught in their green shirts. The others were bare-chested or in mufti. All were terrified, and one of them had pissed himself. Their families and neighbors had followed after them and now filled the square with their wails of lament. Will quelled them with a look.
“Your king knows your true names,” he said sternly to the greenshirties, “and can kill you at a word.”
“It is true,” said Hag Applemere. Her face was stony and impassive. Yet Will knew that one of the greenshirties was her brother.
“More, he can make you suffer such dementia as would make you believe yourselves in Hell, and suffering its torments forever.”
“It is true,” the hag said.
“Yet he disdains to bend the full weight of his wrath upon you. You are no threat to him. He scorns you as creatures of little or no import.”
“It is true.”
“One only does he desire vengeance upon. Your leader—he who calls himself No-name. This being so, your most merciful lord has made this offer: Stand.” They obeyed, and he gestured toward a burning brand. “Bring No-name to me while this fire yet burns, and you shall all go free. Fail, and you will suffer such torments as the ingenuity of a dragon can devise.”
“It is true.”
Somebody—not one of the greenshirties—was sobbing softly and steadily. Will ignored it. There was more Dragon within him than Self. It was a strange feeling, not being in control. He liked it. It was like being a small coracle carried helplessly along by a raging current. The river of emotion had its own logic; it knew where it was going. “Go!” he cried. “ Now!”
The greenshirties scattered like pigeons.
Not half an hour later, No-name was brought, beaten and struggling, into the square. His former disciples had tied his hands behind his back, and gagged him with a red bandanna. He had been beaten—not so badly as Will had been, but well and thoroughly.
Will walked up and down before him. Those leaf-green eyes glared up out of that silt-black face with a pure and holy hatred. There could be no reasoning with this boy, nor any taming of him. He was a primal force, an anti-Will, the spirit of vengeance made flesh and given a single unswerving purpose.
Behind No-name stood the village elders in a straight, unmoving line. The Sullen Man moved his mouth slowly, like an ancient tortoise having a particularly deep thought. But he did not speak. Nor did Auld Black Agnes, nor the yage-witch whose use-name no living being knew, nor Lady Nightlady, nor Spadefoot, nor Annie Hop-the-Frog, nor Daddy Fingerbones, nor any of the others. There were mutters and whispers among the villagers, assembled into a loose throng behind them, but nothing coherent. Nothing that could be heard or punished. Now and again, the buzzing of wings rose up over the murmurs and died down again like a cicada on a still summer day, but no one lifted up from the ground.
Back and forth Will stalked, restless as a leopard in a cage, while the dragon within him brooded over possible punishments. A whipping would only strengthen No-name in his hatred and resolve. Amputation was no answer—he had lost one limb already, and was still a dangerous and unswerving enemy. There was no gaol in all the village that could hope to hold him forever, save for the dragon himself, and the dragon did not wish to accept so capricious an imp into his own body.
Death seemed the only answer.
But what sort of death? Strangulation was too quick. Fire was good, but Tyrant Square was surrounded by thatch-roofed huts. A drowning would have to be carried out at the river, out of sight of the dragon himself, and he wanted the manna of punishment inextricably linked in his subjects’ minds to his own physical self. He could have a wine-barrel brought in and filled with water, but then the victim’s struggles would have a comic element to them. Also, as a form of strangulation, it was still too quick.
Unhurriedly, the dragon considered. Then he brought Will to a stop before the crouching No-name. He raised up Will’s head, and let a little of the dragon-light shine out through Will’s eyes.
“Crucify him.”
To Will’s horror, the villagers obeyed.
It took hours. But shortly before dawn, the child who had once been Puck Berrysnatcher, who had been Will’s best friend and had died and been reborn as Will’s Nemesis, breathed his last. His body went limp as he surrendered his name to his revered ancestress, Mother Night, and the exhausted villagers could finally turn away and go home and sleep.
Later, after he had departed Will’s body at last, the dragon said, “You have done well.”
Will lay motionless on the pilot’s couch and said nothing.
“I shall reward you.”
“No, lord,” Will said. “You have done too much already.”
“Haummn. Do you know the first sign that a toady has come to accept the rightness of his lickspittle station?”
“No, sir.”
“It is insolence. For which reason, you will not be punished but rather, as I said, rewarded. You have grown somewhat in my service. Your tastes have matured. You want something better than your hand. You shall have it. Go into any woman’s house and tell her what she must do. You have my permission.”
“This is a gift I do not desire.”
“Says you! Big Red Margotty has three holes. She will refuse none of them to you. Enter them in whatever order you wish. Do what you like with her tits. Tell her to look glad when she sees you. Tell her to wag her tail and bark like a dog. As long as she has a daughter, she has no choice but to obey. Much the same goes for any of my beloved subjects, of whatever gender or age.”
“They hate you,” Will said.
“And thou as well, my love and my delight. And thou as well.”
“But you with reason.”
A long silence. Then, “I know your mind as you do not. I know what things you wish to do with Red Margotty and what things you wish to do to her. I tell you, there are cruelties within you greater than anything I know. It is the birthright of flesh.”
“You lie!”
“Do I? Tell me something, dearest victim. When you told the elders to crucify No-name, the command came from me, with my breath and in my voice. But the form… did not the choice of the punishment come from you?”
Will had been lying listlessly on the couch staring up at the featureless metal ceiling. Now he sat upright, his face white with shock. All in a single movement he stood, and turned toward the door.
Which seeing, the dragon sneered, “Do you think to leave me? Do you honestly think you can? Then try!” The dragon slammed his door open. The cool and pitiless light of earliest morning flooded the cabin. A fresh breeze swept in, carrying with it scents from the fields and woods. It made Will painfully aware of how his own sour stench permeated the dragon
’s interior. “You need me more than I ever needed you—I have seen to that! You cannot run away, and if you could, your hunger would bring you back, wrists foremost. You desire me. You are empty without me. Go! Try to run! See where it gets you.”
Will trembled.
He bolted out the door and ran.
The first sunset away from the dragon, Will threw up violently as the sun went down, and then suffered spasms of diarrhea. Cramping, and aching and foul, he hid in the depths of the Old Forest all through the night, sometimes howling and sometimes rolling about the forest floor in pain. A thousand times he thought he must return. A thousand times he told himself: Not yet. Just a little longer and you can surrender. But not yet.
The craving came in waves. When it abated, Will would think: If I can hold out for one day, the second will be easier, and the third easier yet. Then the sick yearning would return, a black need in the tissues of his flesh and an aching in his bones, and he would think again: Not yet. Hold off for just a few more minutes. Then you can give up. Soon. Just a little longer.
By morning, the worst of it was over. He washed his clothes in a stream, and hung them up to dry in the wan predawn light. To keep himself warm, he marched back and forth singing the Chansons Amoreuses de Merlin Sylvanus, as many of its five hundred verses as he could remember. Finally, when the clothes were only slightly damp, he sought out a great climbing oak he knew of old, and from a hollow withdrew a length of stolen clothesline. Climbing as close to the tippy-top of the great tree as he dared, he lashed himself to its bole. There, lightly rocked by a gentle wind, he slept at last.
Three days later, Hag Applemere came to see him in his place of hiding. The truth-teller bowed before him. “Lord Dragon bids you return to him,” she said formally.
Will did not ask the revered hag how she had found him. Wise-women had their skills; nor did they explain themselves. “I’ll come when I’m ready,” he said. “My task here is not yet completed.” He was busily sewing together leaves of oak, yew, ash, and alder, using a needle laboriously crafted from a thorn, and short threads made from grasses he had pulled apart by hand. It was no easy work.
Hag Applemere frowned. “You place us all in certain danger.”
“He will not destroy himself over me alone. Particularly when he is sure that I must inevitably return to him.”
“It is true.”
Will laughed mirthlessly. “You need not ply your trade here, hallowed lady. Speak to me as you would to any other. I am no longer of the dragon’s party.” Looking at her, he saw for the first time that she was not so many years older than himself. In a time of peace, he might even have grown fast enough to someday, in two years or five, claim her for his own, by the ancient rites of the greensward and the midnight sun. Only months ago, young as he was, he would have found this an unsettling thought. But now his thinking had been driven to such extremes that it bothered him not.
“Will,” she said then, cautiously, “whatever are you up to?”
He held up the garment, complete at last, for her to admire. “I have become a greenshirtie.” All the time he had sewn, he was bare chested, for he had torn up his dragon sark and used it for tinder as he needed fire. Now he donned its leafy replacement.
Clad in his fragile new finery, Will looked the truth-teller straight in the eye.
“You can lie,” he said.
Bessie looked stricken. “Once,” she said, and reflexively covered her womb with both hands. “And the price is high, terribly high.”
He stood. “Then it must be paid. Let us find a shovel now. It is time for a bit of grave-robbery.”
It was evening when Will returned at last to the dragon. Tyrant Square had been ringed about with barbed wire, and a loudspeaker had been set upon a pole with wires leading back into his iron hulk, so that he could speak and be heard in the absence of his lieutenant.
“Go first,” Will said to Hag Applemere, “that he may be reassured I mean him no harm.”
Breasts bare, clad in the robes and wide hat of her profession, Bessie Applemere passed through a barbed-wire gate (a grimpkin guard opened it before her and closed it after her) and entered the square. “Son of Cruelty.” She bowed deeply before the dragon.
Will stood hunched in the shadows, head down, with his hands in his pockets. Tonelessly, he said, “I have been broken to your will, great one. I will be your stump-cow, if that is what you want. I beg you. Make me grovel. Make me crawl. Only let me back in.”
Hag Applemere spread her arms and bowed again. “It is true.”
“You may approach.” The dragon’s voice sounded staticky and yet triumphant over the loudspeaker.
The sour-faced old grimpkin opened the gate for him, as it had earlier been opened for the hag. Slowly, like a maltreated dog returning to the only hand that had ever fed him, Will crossed the square. He paused before the loudspeaker, briefly touched its pole with one trembling hand, and then shoved that hand back into his pocket. “You have won. Well and truly, have you won.”
It appalled him how easily the words came, and how natural they sounded coming from his mouth. He could feel the desire to surrender to the tyrant, accept what punishments he would impose, and sink gratefully back into his bondage. A little voice within cried: So easy! So easy! And so it would be, perilously easy indeed. The realization that a part of him devoutly wished for it made Will burn with humiliation.
The dragon slowly forced one eye half-open. “So, boy…” Was it his imagination, or was the dragon’s voice less forceful than it had been three days ago? “You have learned what need feels like. You suffer from your desires, even as I do. I… I… am weakened, admittedly, but I am not all so weak as that! You thought to prove that I needed you—you have proved the reverse. Though I have neither wings nor missiles and my electrical reserves are low, though I cannot fire my jets without destroying the village and myself as well, yet am I of the mighty, for I have neither pity nor remorse. Thought you I craved a mere boy? Thought you to make me dance attendance on a soft, unmuscled half-mortal mongrel fey? Pfaugh! I do not need you. Never think that I… that I need you!”
“Let me in,” Will whimpered. “I will do whatever you say.”
“You… you understand that you must be punished for your disobedience?”
“Yes,” Will said. “Punish me, please. Abase and degrade me, I beg you.”
“As you wish,” the dragon’s cockpit door hissed open, “so it shall be.”
Will took one halting step forward, and then two. Then he began to run, straight at the open hatchway. Straight at it—and then to one side.
He found himself standing before the featureless iron of the dragon’s side. Quickly, from one pocket he withdrew Sergeant Bombast’s soulstone. Its small blood-red mate was already in his mouth. There was still grave-dirt on the one, and a strange taste to the other, but he did not care. He touched the soulstone to the iron plate, and the dragon’s true name flowed effortlessly into his mind.
Simultaneously, he took the elf-shot from his other pocket. Then, with all his strength, he drew the elf-shot down the dragon’s iron flank, making a long, bright scratch in the rust.
“What are you doing?” the dragon cried in alarm. “Stop that! The hatch is open, the couch awaits!” His voice dropped seductively. “The needles yearn for your wrists. Even as I yearn for—”
“Baalthazar, of the line of Baalmoloch, of the line of Baalshabat,” Will shouted, “I command thee to die!”
And that was that.
All in an instant and with no fuss whatever, the dragon king was dead. All his might and malice was become nothing more than inert metal, that might be cut up and carted away to be sold to the scrap-foundries that served their larger brothers with ingots to be re-forged for the War.
Will hit the side of the dragon with all the might of his fist, to show his disdain. Then he spat as hard and fierce as ever he could, and watched the saliva slide slowly down the black metal. Finally, he unbuttoned his trousers and pisse
d upon his erstwhile oppressor.
So it was that he finally accepted that the tyrant was well and truly dead.
Bessie Applemere—hag no more—stood silent and bereft on the square behind him. Wordlessly, she mourned her sterile womb and sightless eyes. To her, Will went. He took her hand, and led her back to her hut. He opened the door for her. Her sat her down upon her bed. “Do you need anything?” he asked. “Water? Some food?”
She shook her head. “Just go. Leave me to lament our victory in solitude.”
He left, quietly closing the door behind him. There was no place to go now but home. It took him a moment to remember where that was.
“I’ve come back,” Will said.
Blind Enna looked stricken. Her face turned slowly toward him, those vacant eyes filled with shadow, that ancient mouth open and despairing. Like a sleep-walker, she stood and stumbled forward and then, when her groping fingers tapped against his chest, she threw her arms around him and burst into tears. “Thank the Seven! Oh, thank the Seven! The blessed, blessed, merciful Seven!” she sobbed over and over again, and Will realized for the first time that, in her own inarticulate way, his aunt genuinely and truly loved him.
And so, for a season, life in the village returned to normal. In the autumn the Armies of the Mighty came through the land, torching the crops and leveling the buildings. Terror went before them and the villagers were forced to flee, first into the Old Forest, and then to refugee camps across the border. Finally, they were loaded into cattle cars and taken away to far Babylonia in Faerie Minor, where the streets are bricked of gold and the ziggurats touch the sky, and there Will found a stranger destiny than any he might previously have dreamed.
But that is another story, for another day.
The Laily Worm
Nina Kiriki Hoffman
Nina Kiriki Hoffman was born in San Gabriel, CA, and grew up in Santa Barbara. Her first story, “A Night Out”, appeared in Jessica Amanda Salmonson’s Tales by Moonlight anthology. The first of her nine novels, Child of an Ancient City (with Tad Williams), appeared in 1992 and was followed by Bram Stoker Award winner, The Thread that Binds the Bones, Nebula and World Fantasy Award nominee The Silent Strength of Stones, A Red Heart of Memories and Past the Size of Dreaming, A Stir of Bones, and Tiptree and Mythopoeic Award nominee A Fistful of Sky. Hoffman then turned to SF with Philip K. Dick Award nominee Catalyst: A Novel of Alien Contact before returning to fantasy with Mythopoeic and Endeavour Award finalist Spirits that Walk in Shadow and her most recent novel Fall of Light. Coming up is a new novel, Thresholds. Hoffman’s more than 250 short stories have been nominated for the World Fantasy and Nebula Awards and are collected in Legacy of Fire, Courting Disasters and Other Strange Affinities, Common Threads, and Time Travelers, Ghosts, and Other Visitors.
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