The Dragon Charmer

by Jan Siegel

  Fern remembered the things she had seen in the spellfire, crawling from every rock and shadow to devour Ruvindra Laiï. Her skin chilled.

  All she said was: “There’s nothing more for us here. Let’s get back to the car.”

  They drove off, heading out of the city, into a night as black as the abyss.

  XV

  Lougarry sat on the backseat of the car, listening with straining ears and all six senses on alert for the call that did not come. At one point a man came around the corner of the house, a man with a pale face and eyes sunken in a mask of shadow. He approached the car and even peered inside, but the wolf had dropped to the floor and in the poor light he did not see her. When he was gone she resumed her vigil. Afternoon sombered into a premature evening; dim swirls of cloud rolled down from the Pennines like a hangover from the preceding winter, darkening the belated spring. A few birds passed overhead, flying home to roost, but none sought shelter at Drakemyre Hall. There is some evil here that the birds avoid, thought Lougarry, and her ears flattened and her eyes gleamed brighter in the dusk. All living creatures coexisted naturally alongside both werefolk and witchkind: the animal kingdom made no moral judgments. There would have to be something very wrong for even the rooks and jackdaws to leave twisted tree and crooked chimney stack untenanted. An abnormal disturbance in the earth’s magnetic field—a place where the shadow world had encroached too far on reality. Or the presence of a predator so deadly that neither bird nor beast would venture into its vicinity…

  When the night was as black as an unopened tomb, she slipped through the window. She sensed the wrongness as soon as her paws touched the ground: it was there in the deep vibrations of earth, in the invisible ripples that irradiated from Hall and hillside, from the flight of a moth to the fall of a tree. Her skin prickled; the fur on her nape stood on end. The normal darkness of a country night seemed to have been invaded by something deeper and older, the Dark that was before any dawn. And the ground itself transmitted the beat of a gigantic heart, and the savagery of some subterranean beast, hungry and desperate, caged against its will. Lougarry always trod lightly, but here she moved with a kind of wary delicacy, as if walking on broken glass. She skirted the house: no lights showed from within and every window was closed. She found a back door that her nose told her led to the kitchen but it was locked, not latched, and there was no way of opening it. Close by was a coal bunker, now empty and unused, with a chute that might, she thought, lead somewhere. She was about to investigate when intuition told her she was being watched. She hackled and turned.

  To the wolf’s eyes, the night was less dark than monochrome. And among the black shapes of tree and scrub was a shape that did not belong. It was too indistinct for her to make out the fine details, but it appeared to have long ears, splayed feet, and arms of unequal length … She lowered her muzzle, questing for its scent, and froze. The smell that reached her was one no animal could mistake. Carrion …

  With extraordinary speed it leapt away, running on its longer arm as well as the flapping feet, vanishing around the corner of the house. Lougarry sprang after it, following the scent. Unlike ordinary wolves, lycanthropes do not eat carrion unless they are starving, and her upper lip was lifted in what might have been a snarl of distaste. But the thing had fled and her reflex was to pursue, to catch if possible and kill if necessary. She saw it skittering ahead of her down one of the paths into the formal garden: it disappeared into a net of shadows, reemerging a moment later looking somehow altered. Its ears were shorter, its legs longer, the feet taloned but it moved too fast for her to be sure. The smell of dead flesh tugged her on like a gleaming thread in a labyrinth, over barren flower beds, under tangled shrubs, crisscrossing from path to path. In front of her she saw what must be a sundial on a squat plinth, and there it was, the thing, clearly visible at last, leaping up and down as though taunting her. Only now it had a huge warty head like a toad, a toad with fangs, and its hind feet were webbed, but its forepaws looked like goblin hands. Gathering all her strength she hurled herself over the leaf-mottled paving toward it. She never saw the trap, hidden in the shadows, half-buried between broken stones. She never saw it, until her flying step released the spring, and the iron jaws closed with a crunch on her foreleg.

  She did not yelp, nor howl. Werewolves are forever silent. The sundial was empty now but the smell remained, imprinted in the ground, in the very air around her. She explored the injury with her tongue, tasting blood; she knew the bone was broken, she had heard it go. The human part of her mind raged at her own stupidity, but the wolf was already scanning the darkness, summarizing her situation. She realized immediately that she could not open the trap: the mechanism needed the cunning of dexterous fingers, and its grip was too strong for her to force the jaws apart. The shock had caused a temporary numbness but she knew that soon the pain would begin, draining her energy, blinding her senses. And it they—were out there, not very far away, slipping from shadow to shadow, circling. Soon they would start to creep nearer. Stunted, malformed things, goblin-sized but not goblin-scented, smelling dead…

  A memory floated to the surface of her thought: Caracandal, leaning against a rock on a warm southern evening long ago, describing his one visit to Azmodel. His words had taken the warmth from the evening and the smile from the face of the moon. He had told her of the poisonous vapors that hovered over the rainbow lakes, and fauns and sylphids dancing in the Garden of Lost Meanings, and sacrifices screaming in the temple. And other beings who dwelt there, neither human nor animal, botched creations from the leftovers of the dead, possessed by the lowest form of elementáis, mindless and ravenous. “Many centuries before I was born there was a wizard called Morloch who was thought to be the greatest magician of his day. He thought so, anyway. I believe he was an ancestor of Morgus, who had similar delusions: evidently a family trait. He became obsessed with the Cauldron of Rebirth—the Cauldron of Hell, as it was later known, stolen from the ancient Underworld in a time before history, misused and ultimately shattered. Legend said that if, after a battle, the dead bodies and body parts were placed in it and heated, with the correct incantation spoken, they would coalesce and spring forth again in a terrible semblance of life renewed, possessed by demons, voiceless killers of unbelievable ferocity. Morloch, no doubt, hoped the Cauldron would make him a true creator, a father of armies. He spent half his life searching for the fragments, taking those he could find and welding them together in a patchwork reincarnation of the dread crucible. Then he instructed his servants to bring him carcasses for experiment: beast, man, goblin, whatever. Presumably he saw his first spellbinding as a mere trial. He heated the Cauldron, spoke the liturgy—but the Cauldron burst asunder, and the deformities that leapt forth were not warriors but only mouths, forever hungry. It is said, if they do not eat their famine will abate, but once they have tasted blood, unless prevented, they will feed and feed until they burst. They are supposed to have devoured Morloch himself first: he could not control them. The Old Spirits might have destroyed them, horrified by such monstrosities, but the Oldest took them, and hid them in Azmodel, calling them his pets, making them subservient only to him. He has used them ever since. They have no name, no kind, but sometimes they are called after their maker…”

  Morlochs.

  Caracandal had said they were bound to Azmodel, but her nose could not deceive her. They smelled of the carrion from which they were made. Somehow the denizens of the Beautiful Valley were here, in this corner of the real world, part of the wrongness that made up Drakemyre Hall. She was certain now that Will and Gaynor were imprisoned, maybe slain. As for her, she knew there was no chance. Her bared teeth and claws might hold the morlochs back for a while—a little while—but no help would come, because she was the help. She licked the fresh blood from her leg, that they might not catch the scent. Already the pain was beginning. She crouched with burning eyes, watching every shadow. Her last resolve was that she would make them pay dearly for their feast.

  Th
e night wore on. She began to catch glimpses of them, skimming the cracked pavings, skulking behind bush or plinth. Initially she thought there were three or four, later six, ten, maybe a dozen. They started to throw things at her gravel chips, bits of twig making her twist from side to side in a futile attempt to seize her tormentors. Eventually one of them ventured too close: a bulbous, vaguely arachnoid creature that approached with a swift scuttling motion. It was fast, but she was faster: her teeth met in its body. She ate it, though her stomach turned at the meal. It was all the sustenance she would get. She was thirsty from loss of blood and the thing had a high fluid content. She could sense the others watching as she ate; after that, they were more wary. They knew she would weaken soon.

  A pale, windy dawn blew in from the east; leaves stirred on the pathways. No one came from the house to gloat or administer the final blow. The morlochs had no speech to pass on messages, no capacity to plan, only appetite and instinct. By day they grew more furtive, shrinking into the scenery, the poisonous hues of skin and fur, scale and slime dimming to blend with a background of gnarled stems, faded soil, lichened stone. She might almost have thought they were gone, if their distinctive odor had not been so pervasive. The pain swelled, battering her in waves, traveling in spasms up the injured leg and racking her whole body. Her thirst returned with a vengeance: the watchers saw her furred tongue lolling between parched lips, the droop of her head, the gradual closing of her fierce eyes. A couple slithered from the spaces between leaves, from a snarl of matted stems. Cautiously they crawled nearer. The day was pale and shadowless; the sun gleamed intermittently far away, never reaching Drakemyre Hall. Yet Lougarry, her mind a still, cold place in the midst of a spinning maelstrom of agony, felt the glare of another sun on her back, and saw the neglected garden melt into an alternative Eden, with improbable fountains and weedy grottoes and dim green shade. She could hear an eldritch piping, and the thrum of cat gut, and the patter of finger drums. This is Yorkshire, she told herself. It’s spring—a chilly gray day such as you only get in an English spring. There is no music, no fountains … A wolf is without imagination to exploit, without a vision beyond reality. The fantasy receded. Her narrowed gaze measured the distance to the nearest morloch. It was the one with the toad’s head, its wide maw snake fanged, its flickering tongue already tasting her savor on the air. More reckless than its fellows, it drew nearer, nearer. Lougarry let her eyes close completely; smell pinpointed its position. When it was within touch she pounced. Her jaws scrunched the thin skull; the warty hide excreted a sour mucus, but she ignored it. She ate quickly, trying not to gag, her yellow stare once more bright and deadly. Warning. Challenging.

  She thought: I won’t get away with that again.

  The day changed. Gradually, inexorably, her lupine reflexes dimmed with pain; her injured leg had swollen into stiñhess; her strength lessened. Ears that could hear an ant in the grass were deafened with the beat of her own heart; eyes that could see the night wind misted into a blur. More than once she felt the stabbing rays of a merciless sun, caught the elusive strains of goblin music. Only her nose did not fail or lie, telling her the morlochs were growing bolder. They stalked from bush to scrub, from leaf shadow to stone shadow, making quick darting rushes toward her, testing her defenses. There were more of them now, she was sure: she saw stubby horns, grasping hands, claws, hooves. And mouths opening like red gashes, with broken teeth and questing tongues. She wanted to kill and kill before she died, but she sensed that they were waiting till her vigor and her resistance were gone. They wanted an easy meal.

  It would not be long now.

  Will awoke slowly and unpleasantly to find he was lying on cold stone with the scratch of sacking against his cheek. A pneumatic drill appeared to be boring into his skull and the dryness in his mouth had shriveled his palate. When he tried to move a wave of nausea rolled over him, and he lay still for some time, closing his eyes against the gyrations of his surroundings. He had no idea where he was or how he had got there. Recollection trickled back piecemeal. Gaynor … he had left her for too long, much too long; she would think he had abandoned her. He tried to call her name, but it emerged as a groan and there was no answer. He thought he was in a sepulchre, with his head on a shroud. The ceiling seemed to be vaulted, and the only light came from a single naked bulb, swaying slightly from side to side although there was no draft: the shadows around him stretched and shrank, stretched and shrank, reviving his sickness. A muted tremor reached him from the stone itself, but he dismissed the sensation as a hallucination born of his condition. He found himself remembering other things: a sword whose hilt was set with red stones, a faded banner, stepping out too hastily into an empty corridor. And then—nothing. Realization stabbed him: he had been careless, careless and stupid, and now he was a prisoner, and Gaynor God knew what had happened to Gaynor. He struggled to sit up, and retched violently. When the paroxysm subsided he crawled to a nearby wall and propped his back against it. He was in what appeared to be a large cellar divided into separate units by stone arches: the few windows were sealed and set high out of reach, and a flight of steps straddled one wall, climbing to a door that looked as solid and immovable as the exit from a dungeon. His previous experience of cellars had included racks of wine, beer barrels, chest freezers, root vegetables stored in the cool; but there was nothing here except a couple of broken crates and an ancient wellhead covered by a stone slab. His captors had not left him either food or drink, and he was very thirsty. When he could stand, he went to take a piss against a wall in one of the more distant corners. As he unzipped his jeans he found the knife, still wedged against his hip: it made him feel slightly better, but it was of no immediate use. Feeling wobbly in both legs and stomach, he mounted the steps to examine the door.

  It was old and heavy, made of oak probably three or four inches thick; even if he had been possessed of his normal strength, he could not have smashed his way through it. He thrust his shoulder against the panels with what force he could muster, but it barely shuddered. The lock looked recent, a businesslike specimen of steely efficiency. Will studied it for several minutes, principally to convince himself he was covering all the angles. Even if he had known how to pick locks, this one did not appear easily picked. He staggered back down the steps and collapsed shakily onto the floor. Since there was no possibility of instant action he rested the diminuendo of his headache against the wall and tried to think. His watch told him it was half past six but there was no daylight to clarify if this was morning or evening. He feared it must be morning, guessing he had been unconscious for a long time. His arms felt stiff and sore: rolling up the sleeves of his sweatshirt, he found black bruises and the marks of clumsy injections. The discovery both disturbed and frightened him, pushing him further into disorientation. With artificial sedation, he might have slept not merely hours but days: Gaynor could have been spirited half a world away, Fern been drawn deeper and deeper into oblivion. He tried to rationalize, to hold on to his sanity, inadvertently touching the hilt of the knife that protruded from his waistband. It felt inexplicably reassuring, as if it were not stolen from his enemy but the gift of an unknown ally, the weapon of a dragonslayer endowed, perhaps, with some special power. He could not imagine a dagger being much use against a dragon, but he had an idea warriors used to cut out the tongue in proof of victory, as if dragon carcasses did not remain lying around in evidence. He pulled the knife out and tested the blade with a cautious fingertip. A tiny red line opened on his skin, and he sucked it almost with relish, feeling a sudden tingle of excitement. This, he thought, is a blade that would split a candle flame, or slice the shadow from your heel. The knife of a hero or a villain, maybe tempered in dragonfire, touched with magic. With such a knife, he was neither alone nor helpless. He surveyed his surroundings with different eyes, looking for weaknesses.

  But the walls were solid, the windows bricked up and inaccessible. The door he knew was impassable, with its gleaming steel lock. His headache was clearing and he f
ound himself wondering why the lock had been installed, when there was no valuable wine to protect, nothing in the vault but rubbish. It could hardly have been for his benefit: he could not believe Dr. Laye made a habit of keeping prisoners here. Yet the lock was new, it was here for a purpose, shutting something in, keeping people out. And inevitably his eye was drawn to the wellhead. Wells were often dug in the cellars of old houses, he remembered; when you might have to dig a long way down, it was logical to start as low as possible. It did not seem a likely object for so much security, but there was nothing else. He got up, still feeling rather unsteady about the knees, and went over for a better look.

  The stone lid fitted very closely to the rim and it took him a while to find a crack where he could insert his fingers and get a grip. When he tried to lift it the weight was too much for his drained physique: he raised it an inch or so and then dropped it, almost catching his hand in the gap. The thud of its fall carried far down into the ground, the echoes coming back to him, making the floor shiver. Imagination, he told himself, cursing his own feebleness and the stone that defied him. Next time he concentrated on shifting it sideways, though it took considerable effort before he could open up even a narrow space. He leaned over, staring down into a crescent of absolute blackness. He had been half expecting some gruesome secret, a putrefying corpse or an antique skeleton; but there was no glimmer of bones, no stench of decay. The draft that issued from below was warm, very warm, and there was a faint sulfurous smell, an elusive hint of burning. He could not tell how deep the well was. Will took a coin from his pocket and tossed it into the shaft, hearing it ricochet off the wall and the fluting echo of a clink as it struck bottom a couple of heartbeats later. And gradually, as he peered into the darkness, he began to distinguish a disc of murky red far beneath at what must be the base of the shaft. It opens out into somewhere else, he thought, with a sudden surge of optimism. Maybe a cave… Grasping the lip of the well, he poked his head under the cover in order to see better. The circle of red seemed to brighten, the air grew hot. Belatedly Will’s brain made the missing connection.