Dog and Dragon-ARC

by Dave Freer

  The dragon would have shared even that with her. No. He would have given it all to her.

  “Finn,” she said, looking up at him.

  “What, my dearest Scrap?”

  “Nothing,” she said contentedly, trailing her fingers down his chest. “Nothing more. Just Finn.”

  The dog, being more intelligent than most dogs, found it a good time and place to chase seagulls.

  The Mountain and the Sea gave them some time—they were never sure just how long—in their secret place, which is beautiful, but not beautiful beyond human conception.

  ***

  “The tricky part is not dealing with the invasions, or frightening them off. It’s getting to them. Knowing where they are,” said Meb, still touching him. She just liked to have a hand on him. “We head east towards Dun Telas, and they pop up in the northwest on the coast—we had ships of Blessed Isles beach themselves there. It’s too many enemies at once.”

  “You need better communications at least,” said Fionn thoughtfully. “And to pass the word among the muryan and piskies that harassment is good. Have you tried asking the knockers to pass the word along? They have extensive tunnels and a system of using their little crowdicrawn drums to talk across the length of them. They need it for the spreading of gossip and warnings and calling for help when they have ground-falls.”

  “No. No one tells me. They all assume I know everything,” said Meb. “And what I wanted to ask, that you and half of the country seems to know, is just who my mother was?”

  “Queen Gwenhywfach, the last queen of Lyonesse.”

  “Who was supposed to have fallen or dived or been pushed out of the sea-window at Dun Tagoll with her son.”

  “Yes. But she fell trying to hold you. And as for the son: she hadn’t quite got around to admitting to the king or to anyone else, that the longed-for heir…was a girl. They’re patrilineal here. Girl-children don’t count much, except as trading counters in dynastic marriages. Only you’ve proved them wrong.”

  Meb pursued her line of thought relentlessly though. “So: is my mother some kind of ghost? Is this what Shadow Hall is? A place of ghosts?”

  “No, she’s very much alive. Has been waging and orchestrating war on the House of Lyon and every other imagined enemy in Lyonesse who stole and killed her baby. She seems to have a particular hate for Mage Aberinn.”

  As Meb stared at him, he said: “I hope Díleas and I put a stop to it. But I couldn’t actually kill her. And she is the kind that it would take death to really stop. Shadow Hall is a real place, though. She just uses her art to hide in shadow illusions and moves it with her muryan slaves.”

  “You have to tell me the whole story,” said Meb, snuggling up to him.

  Fionn did, using his precise recall to fill in as much as he could.

  At the end of it Meb sighed. “I always wanted my real mother. Dreamed she’d be everything Hallgerd wasn’t when I was being lectured. Being told to concentrate, work harder, find a nice fisherman who could support me. I think…when I had to leave you, I dreamed that my mother would be here waiting. I never thought she might be…like that.”

  “Environment and our society shapes us. Some more than others, I suppose. You’re my Scrap. The person you chose to be, that I love. Who, if I have daughters by, I would love as much as sons. You would be Scrap, not your mother.”

  “So my father was King Geoph, who thought I was his son.”

  “It’s possible,” said Fionn warily.

  She didn’t notice. “I don’t feel like a princess. I’m just me.”

  Fionn shrugged. “What’s the difference between a princess and someone else, beside politics? And sometimes money?”

  “But I thought only their nobility had magical power,” said Meb, puzzled.

  Fionn laughed. And laughed. And eventually stopped laughing to explain. “It’s a myth, Meb, to justify them being ‘nobles.’ At one time it must have been a rare genetic condition. That means, before you ask me, something like the color of your eyes or the tilt of your nose, that you get from your mother or father’s bloodline. It gave those who had it an advantage, so they ended up as the nobility. And it might have stayed that way, if the nobility had only bedded nobility. But the nobility spread it around by exercising droit du seigneur. By now I doubt if there is a single human in Lyonesse without some of the ability. Unfortunately most of it is weak, and needs ritual and training to use. Your maid, Neve, for example, has some. I can tell. She’s even managed occasional small workings. But she’s never been taught, and thus doesn’t know she’s as much one of the overlords by blood as they are.”

  ***

  The First knew fear. And worse, knew uncertainty. They retreated into their councils. It would take some time to decide just what they would…or could do next. There were plenty of pawns…But their source of fears had allied themselves with powerful allies, and were hard to find or harm. And the future was uncertain.

  CHAPTER 26

  It had taken Queen Gwenhwyfach a day to get out of the now lidless adamantine box. The black dragon had left it open, and she had at least some of the tools for symbolic magic with her. True, if it failed, she would be out of water. But she hadn’t. She had flooded the trap instead and swum to the lip.

  It had taken her a while to think of this, and she’d also had a period of reflection on what the black dragon had said about her daughter.

  So her first reaction was not in fact to pursue revenge, but to use her seeing-basin to scan across Lyonesse. She still could not see inside Dun Tagoll, but the rest of the country was hers to overlook.

  She had expected a fair proportion of it in flames by now. It did not take her long to find that this was not so. It took her a great deal longer to find the “girl-child” that Baelzeboul had tried to pass off as an irrelevant someone they wanted killed.

  Gwenhwyfach followed and studied her with great care for nearly an entire day, although it had taken the queen seconds to decide the dragon was probably right and, moreover, that the child was a many-times-more-powerful magic worker than she was.

  The Cauldron of Gwalar had almost finished producing the new crop with the material she had been provided with by the creatures of smokeless flame. As soon as they were ready, she set them to work. There were eight of them, and she’d made them so large that, once they emerged from the cauldron, she had to assemble them with her muryan slaves.

  While this was under way, she sent orders to all of her other minions.

  ***

  “What I don’t understand,” said Meb, “is why you came on foot through the Southern Marches at all. I mean, why didn’t you fly? You were telling me you flew with Díleas in the basket.”

  “Because, my dearest Scrap, we couldn’t. Someone,” he said kissing the top of her head, “has bespelled all the birds of the air to attack dragons. I wanted to fly to you as fast as I possibly could, but it was still wonderful to be attacked, because your magic has a distinct signature to it. I finally knew I had found you. Still, now I think it would be useful if you took it off.”

  “Of course,” she gave him a squeeze. “I just did it for Aberinn’s mechanical gilded crows. I made them walk back to him. I suppose they would be able to fly again.”

  “Possibly. But even if this mage wishes to find you, what he sees with the crows will probably discourage him,” said Fionn. “I plan to discourage him. Permanently. Him and this Medraut. I think I already put any ideas of killing you firmly out of Alois’s head. Not, to be fair, that he wanted to kill you once he had decided you were this promised Defender. But it would be nice if I could fly again at need.”

  “Yes. How do you think I undo something I don’t even know how I did?” asked Meb, seriously.

  “I’d start with calling a bird and telling it. And telling it to tell others.”

  So she did.

  ***

  They moved against the men of Erith that afternoon—to get news that they were already fleeing. So Meb’s army set up camp in a
gentle valley just outside the fortress of Dun Telas.

  Neve, blushing and wringing her hands, came to Meb. “M’lady, I’d like to ask leave…to go into the town. I’ve got family here.”

  Meb seemed to recall a “better not ask” zone around this. “Of course.”

  Neve smiled a tight little smile. “They said I’d end up a castle slut. They, they were very…unpleasant. I’m…I’m going back to rub a few noses in things.”

  Fionn smiled. Dug in his pouch. Handed her some silver—by the look on her face, more coined money than she’d ever seen in her life before, let alone held. “I’ll bet she’s never paid you either. Go and be generous. Nothing hurts more. My dearest, can you spare Neve an escort of men-at-arms? Say half a dozen of those stout fellows from Dun Calathar. Show them how important she is to you.”

  “Oh, Finn. You make me feel so guilty. I should have paid you, Neve…only I forget you aren’t just my friend. And, uh, I didn’t have any money. Never thought of getting any.”

  Little tears started on Neve’s cheeks. “That is the greatest thing you could have done for me. But…I couldn’t take your money, my lady. I want to serve you.”

  “It’s not hers, it’s mine,” said Fionn. “And I have lots more, and your being lady bountiful to your kin is a small thank you from me for looking after my lady.”

  “And you’ll have an honor guard and a fine horse to ride. I can escort you myself.”

  Neve shook her head. “I’d rather you didn’t see me doing this, m’lady. It’s…its not very nice. But they need to learn.”

  Neve had not been gone for more than an hour when Fionn wished Scrap had gone with her.

  He could defend her and the camp against one dragon easily enough. Two, possibly.

  But the eight—flying in a rigid formation, and thus very undragonlike—were six too many. And they were carrying something beneath them in a spider web of lines. Had the creatures of smokeless flame gone into alliance with some of the dragons who were less than pleased about the opening up of Tasmarin?

  “I think this may call for your magic, Scrap. And quite quickly. No, Díleas. You cannot see them off, or herd them.”

  “They’re carrying white flags, Finn. And…they seem to be settling. Putting down whatever it is they’re carrying.”

  Fionn could work out what it was, now. And that didn’t make him much happier than the dragons had. Actually the dragons might be less trouble, but he did understand why they behaved so undragonishly now.

  Shadow Hall began to trundle slowly toward them. It was as hard as ever to see. But the white flag was easy enough to spot. It stopped a hundred yards away and a party of men came out escorting someone.

  “Queen Gwenhwyfach,” said Fionn. “And that is Shadow Hall. And the ones escorting her I would guess are some of her cauldron-men. She makes them, as I told you, from dead tissue.”

  “Do you think she’s come to surrender? They have a white flag.”

  “Let me go and find out,” said Fionn.

  “Not without me. And by the looks of the way Díleas is bristling, not without him, either. I don’t…really think I want to meet her, Finn.”

  “I think you’ll have to, nonetheless.”

  They walked forward to meet the queen of Shadow Hall. She was, Fionn noted, much better at playing the traditional part of being nobility than his Scrap could ever be. Gwenhwyfach was being carried on a palanquin of golden silk, dressed in velvet and ermine, with a crown. Meb was wearing an old skirt, a shirt that had blood on it, and her only “dressing” was an alvar comb in her hair. There was quite a lot of glamor on that ancient alvar piece, and it did make her hair exceptionally bright and flowing. Like that spatha-axe she carried…she didn’t seem to realize that she called the most powerful magical artifacts to herself. The axe had been buried a long time. As Fionn recalled, it was supposed to be sharp enough to cleave stone, and she’d magically sharpened it further.

  Still, his Scrap looked very ordinary compared to Gwenhwyfach’s pomp. That was good in Fionn’s opinion. He wasn’t sure how it sat with humans. “She did plan to kill us both,” he said quietly. “This may be a relatively unwise thing to do.”

  “Good thing that it’s us doing it then,” said Meb, squeezing his good hand.

  The bearers set the palanquin down and a flunky gave her his arm to stand up. The queen did not appear to need it.

  “It smells a bit,” said Meb quietly as the queen approached.

  “My darling daughter! Anghared, how I have longed to hold you! Come to your mother’s arms!”

  “I hear you were trying to kill me,” said Meb, not moving. “I also hear you tried to kill Finn. And that you’ve been sending your half-dead creatures to stir up war. That stops.”

  Fionn wondered if his Scrap even knew that she was projecting her voice so that the entire camp, and probably the town and fortress could hear it.

  It must have got to the queen too, because she took one more step, and stood, arms outstretched. Or perhaps it was Díleas, growling with deep menace. “I never tried to kill you, child. As the dragon told me, it was the flame creatures and their masters and their treachery. I have been working on some traps for them. And Lyonesse…I merely repaid them for their treason.”

  “There was no treason. You were wrong, you blamed the wrong people,” said Meb flatly.

  The queen drew herself up. “There was much treason, even if I was wrong about who had stolen you and where you were taken to. But now you will be queen after me. Together we’ll take Dun Tagoll and put that traitor Aberinn and his hireling regent onto sharpened pikes. We will find you a suitable noble from the House of Lyon to be your king. And your sons will rule. It is what I thought I would do, but I will celebrate your ascension to the throne…”

  “No thank you,” said Meb. Fionn had heard that tone from her before. And he and Díleas knew it meant trouble. “I don’t want you, or need you, or your dreams. I defend Lyonesse. I do not attack it, nor will I let anyone else do so. Not you, not anyone.” And with that Meb turned and began walking back to the camp.

  For a moment Fionn thought the old queen would have apoplexy on the spot. She did take one angry step forward…and sank up to the knees into the earth.

  “Hee hee hee,” chortled the spriggan who had been doing a passable imitation of a rock. “She’s the Land, old Lyon. It won’t let you harm her, even if you could.”

  “That…that is not possible,” said Queen Gwenhwyfach. “The King is the Land, and the Land is the King. It only serves the anointed king!”

  Fionn could see deep energy patterns. “I’d go,” he said quietly to the queen, as his Scrap turned her back and walked away. “Go and do your best to make reparations. Stop the invasions, make peace. Don’t do anything else. In time she may come around, but not if you make things worse.”

  And then he turned and followed his human.

  She had a dog and dragon for comfort, and needed them.

  ***

  Fionn had been glad to see Shadow Hall—and the dragons—leave. His Scrap now of course wanted to know all about it, about the Cauldron of Gwalar, about how it moved. She could have had a guided tour, Fionn was sure. But perhaps better not.

  “The cauldron appears to be a magical artifact that takes the patterns of the living creatures from dead matter and makes more, and reanimates them. She had her muryan slaves collecting corpses, and then she puts them back together and to work for her. It seems they have no free will and fairly limited intelligence.”

  “Slaves and prisoners should be set free,” said Meb firmly.

  “In the case of the muryan,” said Fionn, “it raises an interesting question. The workers and soldiers are slaves to the queen, to the death, by their very nature. They are imprinted on her and cannot do anything but what she wants them to do. They adore her, and in that you might say it is a willing bondage that they would never swap. The queen, on the other hand, is their prisoner, watched and guarded every second. The soldiers assess d
anger to her; they will not permit her to expose herself to anything they consider even faintly risky. She will never touch the ground nor eat food that has not been tasted and waited upon for an adverse response on the health of the taster. She will never be alone. They would do anything for her but leave her to her own devices. And she would never choose otherwise. To be served, to be their prisoner, is as much part of her as being her slave is to them.”

  “Yes, but she is the prisoner of this woman. And that isn’t right. I’m not sure about the rest, but that isn’t right.”

  “We’ll liberate the muryan queen from her somehow,” said Fionn, not adding that the muryan queen would then be indebted to Meb.

  ***

  Earl Alois and his troops had been hiding in ambush for the knights of Abalach when the dragons came. He thought it was the end, after their success against the troops of Cantre’r Gwaelod, who had been in disarray and piskie-led already. It had seemed that the Gods above and below might grant them victory. And now defeat, and disaster, and death.

  It was…for many of the knights of Abalach.

  Afterwards, one of his men stood up from where they’d cowered in the forest brake. “Do we chase after them, my liege?”

  “No.” He took a deep breath. “No. We go north to meet the Defender.”

  There was a cheer from his men.

  “How far north?” asked one of the officers. The man on whom provisioning rested, Alois realized.

  “At least as far as Dun Tagoll. I think,” said Alois.

  ***

  For the second time in her life Gwenhwyfach found herself in the pit of despair. It was worse than being in an adamantine cage with a dragon.

  She had begun to dream great things of her daughter. And also realized that she was eclipsed in power by her. That was enough to make her both proud and afraid.

  At first she had been inclined to blame the dragon.

  But, stripped of her illusions, she realized that the dragon had firstly spared her life. Even though he could not kill, to put the lid back on the trap was not beyond him, and he had left her water, and told her she’d eventually get out, and secondly he had told her the truth. There were almost shreds of sympathy there. His kind were long-lived. And what did she have to fight for anymore? She’d hoped her daughter’s son might eventually rule. She’d thought, once, that she might be the power behind the throne, but, whatever, her bloodline would rule Lyonesse. She’d never dreamed of ruling it herself. That was for men.