Dragon's Eye

by Christopher Stasheff

  The long, low, lizardy shape stepped toward them, gleaming dully in the dim light, and Harris and Smyth stepped back.

  "You wouldn't have had much data about them, I suppose," Falera's soft, dry voice said. "They were all over Europe, once. Except Ireland, of course: the druids got rid of them, although Padraig took the credit, didn't he? He was never one to miss a propaganda opportunity . . . but never mind. They were everywhere, the drakes. A plague. It was a specialty of mine, killing them: I was much in demand. Of course I didn't know back then what I found out later, that the drakes weren't from here, originally, but from some other reality. That if you were exposed to their blood too often, there were side effects. A taste or so, and you might come to understand their tougue. More than that . . . wounds wouldn't take, the skin would harden, organs would regenerate. After that, if you still kept exposing yourself . . . long life. Surprisingly long."

  Harris finally saw where Falera was standing, pulled his own gun and shot him, too, in the head. Falera staggered a bit with the impact, but immediately straightened and laughed. Harris emptied the clip, but the shots went wide, or else Falera simply shook himself and stood upright again, behind the huge golden dragon that still stepped slowly toward them.

  "They could die, though," Falera said. "So many of them did. At first, when I started work, it was a blessing. But later, when there were almost none left . . . I realized they had to be preserved: they were part of our history, no matter how terrible a one. They were a deadly intelligence, but an intelligence nonetheless . . . and who knew whether there were any more of them left back where they came from? Who dares stamp out utterly a species that some god made? I found I couldn't do it. This last one, who lived down in the mountains south of Chur, I protected him as long as I could. It was always a problem: they crave gold as they crave blood. But finally, after many, many years, I found a way to turn that to our advantage. And the banks don't mind having one more secret to keep. External security, mechanical security, can always be beaten—but not instinct, not the drache's chief urge. Gold to guard . . . blood to drink. They don't have to eat often . . . just every now and then. Often enough for the bank's purposes, and their own . . . for nothing satisfies them like a nice fresh thief. Fear," Falera added as if an afterthought, "improves the flavor for them. It's the sudden rush of hormones, I suspect."

  Harris and Smyth cowered toward each other. Smyth emptied his own pistol at the dragon: Harris turned and fled desperately for the doorway through which they had entered the vaults.

  "It's locked itself again, of course," Falera said calmly, as the dragon advanced. "I have my own way out: for security personnel, there's always a back door. But as for you—you didn't even watch the screen to make sure of the times I was inputting. So sure of yourself, and yet so easily distracted by a little criticism." There was humor in the voice now. "You just don't think things through, do you?"

  Smyth screamed. Harris began hammering on the door. But there was no point in it. Shortly thereafter, having dealt with Smyth, a kind of gold which Harris had not sought came seeking him, and trod him under foot, and tore away at the choicest flesh, so that blood spattered its own golden hide and the gold piled up around.

  Silence fell after a while. "You're going to have to clean those up," Falera said.

  "Later, Gieri," said the slow, growling voice.

  Harris was not quite gone yet, though it would be a matter of minutes, since the dragon had just bitten his leg off above the knee, and what shock had not yet managed, the hemorrhage from the femoral artery would shortly complete. "Gieri . . ." he whispered.

  "It would have been George in English," Falera said.

  And there was silence again. And nothing else but the gleam of gold.

  THE ART OF REVOLUTION

  by S.N. Lewitt

  Czerny, the Dragon of Prague, awoke slowly in his place in the crypt of St. Vitus' cathedral. Voices filtered through to him before he had even opened his eyes.

  "Here, comrades, we have yet another example of the waste of the aristocracy," a man said stuffily. "To keep and feed this dragon, the people of Prague had to pay additional taxes to the rulers here at the castle. Twelve percent of the bureaucracy was involved directly in keeping this beast in comfort! Now, however, he sleeps at the discretion of the people, so we are not burdened with extravagance and upkeep."

  Czerny was confused. He was the Dragon of Prague. Whatever was the man saying about his "upkeep." All he needed was a cow, and that only every other day. In return he slept here in the castle and guarded the jewels. And the castle.

  And then he felt deep shame. He remembered why he went to sleep. He had tried, truly he had, to guard the castle. But he alone had been no match for the tanks that had rolled up the hill. Not the German tanks, nor the Russian ones either.

  "In fact, there are stories about the Dragon of Prague trying to help defend the castle against the Nazis," the tour guide said. "However, he, along with the rest of the Czech military, was defeated. Had we not been rescued by our staunch Soviet allies, we would have suffered a terrible fate. Perhaps the city would even have been damaged, firebombed, burned to the ground and gutted like Budapest or Warsaw."

  Czerny remembered. He had stood on the roof of the cathedral and spit flame at the invaders until he had choked. He had swooped out of the sky into the shooting invaders until his wings had been riddled with bullet holes and he couldn't hold his own weight in the sky.

  He had tried, he had. He knew it. He had fought the invaders with every shred of his soul. And he had lost, and he was ashamed.

  So he had gone to sleep, the long long sleep of recovery. The long sleep of dreams, where he remembered the good times. The fights against other invaders, fights he had won.

  He only wished the golem were still around to help out. If the golem had still been working, Czerny was sure they would have defeated the tanks that roared up Castle Hill. They had repelled the French and the Germans at the Charles Bridge once before, the golem on one side and Czerny on the other. Between diem they had cut off the bridge and thrown the would-be conquerors into the river. Those had been the good old days.

  But Rabbi Loew had deactivated the mud monster and put it in the attic of the prayer house, and after all these years, it was probably only dust and mud again. And, to be quite honest, Czerny didn't like to fight quite as much as he had. The coffee houses and conversation before the last wars had intrigued him far more than breathing flame at enemies. And there hadn't been enemies for a very long time.

  "However," the guide droned on, "several very fine works of art were found with this Dragon of Prague. As there was no adequate place here to display these works, they are now on loan to the Hermitage. A small deposit on the debt we owe our Soviet comrades who saved us from the Nazi scourge. Very fine paintings, they were. Adequate even for the Hermitage. The Czech people should be proud to have made such a contribution."

  Even more than the music or the conversation, there had been the art. All the other dragons of Europe had envied him. Czerny had more beautiful, glittering things to hoard than three or four of them together. There were the jewel-like glass pieces in deep blues and greens and blood red edged in gold. There were doors in ironwork made to resemble the fluid undulating of flowers on a windy day. There were bright lights and silver tableware and chess sets of carved stone and precious metals. Only a small sampling of his personal chess sets would make Czerny's hoard one of the finest in all Europe.

  Some of the dragons of Paris and London and Madrid had gold plate and crown jewels to compare, but Czerny's hoard of art was unsurpassed. Among dragons his taste was far more famous than his battles.

  The older dragons of London and Paris, Brussels and Bonn might have more exciting war stories (though none of them had ever fought with a golem allied on the field, which Czerny always pointed to with pride to prove his luck of prejudice and how well the Jews of Prague were Integrated into the life of the city). They might have smashed armadas or gone to the
New World or met the Imperial Dragon of China in the Forbidden City in Beijing. But not one of them had Czerny's eye for fine art, and not even the collection of the Imperial Dragon could match his for the elegance and sophistication of choice.

  Most dragons were fairly conservative in their preferences, and their hoards were depressingly similar. Basic jewels (cabochon cut and rim beveled in the style of the tenth century, usually) were the mainstay of most collections. A few dragons had collected some icons and gilded work. And one or two of the Italian dragons made a serious investment in a Donatello bronze or a Chimabue crucifix. Their taste was so conservative, though, he had been able to negotiate on two graphite drawings by Rafael.

  Not one of the dragons had anything truly avant-garde in their collections. Lovely, true, and rich indeed, But not one dragon had such glittering service in Art Nouveau designs, bright ceramics in the most modern Deco, paintings that reflected the cutting edge of the era in art. They simply didn't have the eyes for it.

  Czerny's collection was famous, even among dragons. All the great wyrms of the earth prided themselves on their riches and their exquisite taste. But only Czerny, the official dragon of a city on the forefront of art, had quite the instinct for the moderns.

  Before he had gone to sleep, even the dragons of Paris had consulted him on acquiring Cezanne, and he had managed to trade some traditional but glittering stuff for a rose period Picasso. That, along with the Rafael drawings, the glasswork, and a rather wonderful Matisse that the French dragons just didn't understand, were the prizes of his treasure. Not to say that he didn't have the usual pearls and silver service and golden candlesticks as well. But to Czerny, these were merely furnishings to show off his true paragons.

  He wondered where the Picasso had gone. He looked around the bare stone that surrounded him and, with a shock, realized that there was no hoard any more. The most elegant collection in all Europe, it was all gone.

  Czerny lumbered to his feet, stretched out his back, and let out a great roar of fury. His Picasso! His glass collection! His carved chess sets! All the things that were important for a dragon, that made life worthwhile. That gave him status among his peers.

  Members of the tour group that had been staring at him in polite interest screamed and tried to run. A few braver souls struggled with their flashes in the dark crypt as the Dragon of Prague let out a bellow that could be heard across the river, all the way to Wenceslas Square.

  "Comrades, comrades," the tour guide yelled ineffectively, 'There is no reason to be afraid. Our resident dragon, while a tool of the former imperialist state, has never hurt a native of this city. He is merely. . . ." The tour guide fainted.

  "My Picasso," Czerny yelled. Misery flooded him. He couldn't even take pleasure in the people screaming, running up the stairs as he stared at them with his vast, multifaceted eyes. The eyes, he remembered, that had inspired several of the glass artists for which his city was justly famous. He was not merely a dragon as a collector, he was one of the premiere models as well. And no other single dragon of Europe could say that!

  Now, with his collection gone, he wondered if any of the brass street lamps with his likeness on them remained. Or had those, too, been taken by the enemy? Though which enemy was hard to say. Things were all so confused. He was confused.

  A group of schoolchildren entered the crypt with their teacher. The children all had red scarves around their necks. Czerny wondered if it was some holiday, or a church sodality. He decided not to roar this time. Schoolchildren, when they were not afraid of him, often had treats. Czerny liked treats. Not so much as paintings, of course, but children couldn't be expected to understand that.

  And he could have explained so much! He could have shown them the difference between the Impressionists and the Academy. He could have explained cubism, shown how it had grown out of the industrial age. And they would have loved the Matisse. Children always liked Matisse, the brilliant colors and vitality of the figures.

  These were, after all, the children of Prague. Some of them would grow up to become painters and potters and writers and musicians. One of them might even found a new style. The very thought made Czerny's eyes tinge rose with pleasure.

  And then he realized that he couldn't show the children these things. He couldn't explain the philosophy of Dada or the evolution of Art Nouveau because he didn't have anything at all to show them. He felt sad and hoped that they would still give him peanuts anyway, the way children had in the last century when he was a fixture in the Third Courtyard of the Palace.

  "This is the dragon, Czerny," the teacher said. "He once was one of the symbols of the city of Prague, along with the clock tower and the castle itself."

  "Are we going to the square?" one of the children asked. "My big brother says that we should all go to the square today because something important is going to happen."

  "Yeah, real history," a little girl with long dark braids added. "Not any of this old stuff."

  The teacher held up her hand for silence. "You all know what happened before," she said softly. "There were . . . mistakes."

  "A tank shot at the National Museum. Pow, pow!" one of the boys yelled.

  A tank? Fired on the museum? Czerny didn't think he could possibly have heard correctly. "Who shot the museum?" he asked in his softest voice. He still made the heavy pillars shake.

  The teacher looked around, panicked. "Who said that?" she asked. "I didn't say anything."

  "Besides, we know it's true," said the girl who'd spoken before. "We know that you're all listening all the time and you don't want us to have our own government. My mother told me all about sixty-eight. She told me. She said you went out and killed people in Wenceslas Square. And she was there and she's my mother and she's right."

  The girl looked over Czerny as if he were just one more element for Friday's history test. "Havel to the Castle," she said. "No more Russians in Prague. Havel for President. That's why my mother says." Then she turned and walked out.

  The teacher was white with terror. "Don't say things like that here," she hissed. But the children were already leaving, singing. Singing a song Czerny found familiar.

  Czerny looked around, wondering who they were talking to. Who had killed people? What was sixty-eight? He had been asleep for a very long time. He knew the year he had fallen asleep. It had been nineteen forty-five. He just realized that he had no idea of the date, no measure of how long he had slept. Only that he had been unconscious from the day the tanks had rolled up the hill and into the First Courtyard of the castle until today.

  Except for the time he had woken up for some water. But that had been in the middle of the night. He had gone down to drink at the river and the water had tasted bad. Though if he thought of it, he couldn't remember his paintings being properly hung in the crypt then, either.

  No, he had not been properly awake that time. His memory was hazy. The last thing he remembered was curling up on the stone floor of the unfinished cathedral and slipping into a deep, healing sleep.

  He had heard of the long sleeps of dragons. The Imperial Dragon of China slept deep and often. The Great Dragon of England had once slept over a hundred years. Czerny was younger than those venerable ancients, and he had not fallen into the great sleep before. Though he remembered the Dragon of England saying something about it.

  "The terror is that you wake up and nothing is the same," the old resident of Camelot had told a group of youngsters when they had come to celebrate the coronation of some queen named—Victoria, Czerny thought it was. Foreign royalty was so hard to keep straight.

  "The cave isn't the same, the landmarks have all changed, and the people don't even know you exist any more," the ancient dragon had told them. "And nothing makes any sense. Once I went to sleep and it was a lovely little Anglo-Saxon village and I woke up next to a great heap of a fortress and they didn't even speak English. If you can imagine that."

  Czerny couldn't imagine that. At least, so far, all the people he had heard spoke Cze
ch. That was reassuring. And the walls were familiar. This was the crypt at St. Vitus. He recognized the stairway, the doors, the little door to the small underground chapel where the crown jewels were stored.

  He turned and put an eye to the opening into the chapel. Something was wrong. It was all as he remembered it, the white cloth and the locked cases with the crown and the rest of the things that were not his to own but surely his to guard. But there were no candles burning on the altar. There were no fresh flowers in front of the statues. The place felt unused.

  Slowly he stretched out his neck. Then he went to the stairs and came up out of his dark hole into the world. He left the cathedral and lumbered into the courtyard where he had perched at guard for so very long. He looked up. The cathedral, three quarters finished for hundreds of years, was complete. The second tower was done.

  He wondered how much else had changed. He unfurled his wings and gave a few warm-up flaps. The hideous rents in his lovely scales were now healed. Only scars of pale iridescent blue showed how deeply he had been wounded. As he spread his wings across the sky there was more scar color than the deep shimmering aquamarine that was his true and proper color.

  "My wings," he whimpered. "My Picasso and my wings." His shook his great head from side to side as if searching out the next thing that would be wrong. And then beat his wings against the breeze and rose effortless to the sky.

  There was joy in him. He had not been fully awake until he soared, claimed his right to the air over his city. But he wasn't alone in the air. There were things there, heaving metal things that made him think of tanks, made him think of the Fokker running him down, shooting the tip of his ear so that steaming ichor ran into his left eye.

  This time the things were far away and did not come close. He was ready if they came near him. He could feel the fire churning in his belly, begging for release. But the great metal birds stayed far away. They did not swoop down over the river as he did, gliding the length of the Charles Bridge, counting the saints against the orange-pink twilight sky. Over the river, out of the Mala Strana and toward the "new" city, Czerny inspected his demesne.