Harrowing the Dragon

by Patricia A. Mckillip

  “I do not know,” Justin said at last, and the woman answered, “The dragon’s name is hidden within a riddle.”

  Justin read my thoughts; her hand clamped on my wrist. “Don’t fight,” she breathed.

  “That’s not—”

  “The answer’s fair.”

  The woman’s brows knit thoughtfully. “Is there anything else you need to know?” She put her staff lightly on Justin’s shoulder, turned the jewel toward her pale face. The jewel burned a sudden flare of amethyst, as if in recognition. “My name is Sorcery and that is the path I follow. You will come with me for seven years. After that, you may choose to stay.”

  “Tell me,” I pleaded desperately, “how to rescue her. You have told me everything else.”

  The woman shook her head, smiling her brief moon-smile. Justin looked at me finally; I saw the answer in her eyes.

  I stood mute, watching her walk away from me, tears pushing into my eyes, unable to plead or curse because there had been a game within a game, and only I had lost. Justin glanced back at me once, but she did not really see me, she only saw the path she had walked toward all her life.

  I turned finally to face the dragon.

  I climbed the slope again alone. No jewels caught my eye, no voice whispered my name. Not even the dragon greeted me. As I wandered through columns and caverns and hallways of stone, I heard only the wind moaning through the great bones of the mountain. I went deeper into stone. The passageways glowed butterfly colors with secretions from the dragon’s body. Here and there I saw a scale flaked off by stone; some flickered blue-green black, others the colors of fire. Once I saw a chip of claw, hard as horn, longer than my hand. Sometimes I smelled sulfur, sometimes smoke, mostly wind smelling of the stone it scoured endlessly.

  I heard harping.

  I found the harper finally, sitting ankle deep in jewels and gold, in a shadowy cavern, plucking wearily at his harp with one hand. His other hand was cuffed and chained with gold to a golden rivet in the cavern wall. He stared, speechless, when he saw me. He was, as rumored, tall and golden-haired, also unwashed, unkempt, and sour from captivity. Even so, it was plain to see why Celandine wanted him back.

  “Who are you?” he breathed, as I trampled treasure to get to him.

  “I am Celandine’s cousin Anne. She sent her court to rescue you.”

  “It took you long enough,” he grumbled, and added, “You couldn’t have come this far alone.”

  “You did,” I said tersely, examining the chain that held him. Even Fleur would have had it out of the wall in a minute. “It’s gold, malleable. Why didn’t you—”

  “I tried,” he said, and showed me his torn hands. “It’s dragon magic.” He jerked the chain fretfully from my hold. “Don’t bother trying. The key’s over near that wall.” He looked behind me, bewilderedly, for my imaginary companions. “Are you alone? She didn’t send her knights to fight this monster?”

  “She didn’t trust them to remember who they were supposed to kill,” I said succinctly. He was silent while I crossed the room to rummage among pins and cups and necklaces for the key. I added, “I didn’t ride from Carnelaine alone. I lost four companions in this land as we tracked you.”

  “Lost?” For a moment, his voice held something besides his own misery. “Dead?”

  “I think not.”

  “How did you lose them?”

  “One was lost to the witch in the wood.”

  “Was she a witch?” he said, astonished. “I played for her, but she never offered me anything to eat, hungry as I was. I could smell food, but she only said that it was burned and unfit for company.”

  “And one,” I said, sifting through coins and wondering at the witch’s taste, “to the harper-king in the wood.”

  “You saw him?” he breathed. “I played all night, hoping to hear his fabled harping, but he never answered with a note.”

  “Maybe you never stopped to listen,” I said, in growing despair over the blind way he blundered through the land. “And one to the imps under the mountain.”

  “What imps?”

  “And last,” I said tightly, “in a riddle-game to the sorceress with the jeweled staff. You were to be the prize.”

  He shifted, chain and coins rattling. “She only told me where to find what I was searching for, she didn’t warn me of the dangers. She could have helped me! She never said she was a sorceress.”

  “Did she tell you her name?”

  “I don’t remember—what difference does it make? Hurry with the key before the dragon smells you here. It would have been so much easier for me if your companion had not lost the riddle-game.”

  I paused in my searching to gaze at him. “Yes,” I said finally, “and it would have been easier than that for all of us if you had never come here. Why did you?”

  He pointed. “I came for that.”

  “That” was a harp of bone. Its strings glistened with the same elusive, shimmering colors that stained the passageways. A golden key lay next to it. I am as musical as the next, no more, but when I saw those strange, glowing strings I was filled with wonder at what music they might make and I paused, before I touched the key, to pluck a note.

  It seemed the mountain hummed.

  “No!” the harper cried, heaving to his feet in a tide of gold. Wind sucked out of the cave, as at the draw of some gigantic wing. “You stupid, blundering—How do you think I got caught? Throw me the key! Quickly!”

  I weighed the key in my hand, prickling at his rudeness. But he was, after all, what I had promised Celandine to find, and I imagined that washed and fed and in the queen’s hands, he would assert his charms again. I tossed the key; it fell a little short of his outstretched hand.

  “Fool!” he snapped. “You are as clumsy as the queen.”

  Stone-still, I stared at him, as he strained, groping for the key. I turned abruptly to the harp and ran my hand down all the strings.

  What traveled down the passages to find us shed smoke and fire and broken stone behind it. The harper groaned and hid behind his arms. Smoke cleared; great eyes like moons of fire gazed at us near the high ceiling. A single claw as long as my shin dropped within an inch of my foot. Courtesy, I thought frantically. Courtesy, she said. It was like offering idle chatter to the sun.

  Before I could speak, the harper cried, “She played it! She came in here searching for it, too, though I tried to stop her—”

  Heat whuffed at me; I felt the gold I wore burn my neck. I said, feeling scorched within as well, “I ask your pardon if I have offended you. I came, at my queen’s request, to rescue her harper. It seems you do not care for harping. If it pleases you, I will take what must be an annoyance out of your house.” I paused. The great eyes sank a little toward me. I added, for such things seemed important in this land, “My name is Anne.”

  “Anne,” the smoke whispered. I heard the harper jerk in his chain. The claw retreated slightly; the immense flat lizard’s head lowered, its fiery scales charred dark with smoke, tiny sparks of fire winking between its teeth. “What is his name?”

  “Kestral,” the harper said quickly. “Kestral Hunt.”

  “You are right,” the hot breath sighed. “He is an annoyance. Are you sure you want him back?”

  “No,” I said, my eyes blurring in wonder and relief that I had finally found, in this dangerous land, something I did not need to fear. “He is extremely rude, ungrateful, and insensitive. I imagine that my queen loves him for his hair or for his harper’s hands; she must not listen to him speak. So I had better take him. I am sorry that he snuck into your house and tried to steal from you.”

  “It is a harp made of dragon bone and sinew,” the dragon said. “It is why I dislike harpers, who make such things and then sing songs of their great cleverness. As this one would have.” Its jaws yawned; a tongue of fire shot out, melted gold beside the harper’s hand. He scuttled against the wall.

  “I beg your pardon,” he said hastily. A dark curved dragon’s smile
hung in the fading smoke; it snorted heat.

  “Perhaps I will keep you and make a harp of your bones.”

  “It would be miserably out of tune,” I commented. “Is there something I can do for you in exchange for the harper’s freedom?”

  An eye dropped close, moon-round, shadows of color constantly disappearing through it. “Tell me my name,” the dragon whispered. Slowly I realized it was not a challenge but a plea. “A woman took my name from me long ago, in a riddle-game. I have been trying to remember it for years.”

  “Yrecros?” I breathed. So did the dragon, nearly singeing my hair.

  “You know her.”

  “She took something from me: my dearest friend. Of you she said: the dragon’s name is hidden within a riddle.”

  “Where is she?”

  “Walking paths of sorcery in this land.”

  Claws flexed across the stones, smooth and beetle-black. “I used to know a little sorcery. Enough to walk as man. Will you help me find my name?”

  “Will you help me find my friends?” I pleaded in return. “I lost four, searching for this unbearable harper. One or two may not want my help, but I will never know until I see them.”

  “Let me think…” the dragon said. Smoke billowed around me suddenly, acrid, ash-white. I swallowed smoke, coughed it out. When my stinging eyes could see again, a gold-haired harper stood in front of me. He had the dragon’s eyes.

  I drew in smoke again, astonished. Through my noise, I could hear Kestral behind me, tugging at his chain and shouting.

  “What of me?” he cried furiously. “You were sent to rescue me! What will you tell Celandine? That you found her harper and brought the dragon home instead?” His own face gazed back at him, drained the voice out of him a moment. He tugged at the chain frantically, desperately. “You cannot harp! She’d know you false by that, and by your ancient eyes.”

  “Perhaps,” I said, charmed by his suggestion, “she will not care.”

  “Her knights will find me. You said they seek to kill me! You will murder me.”

  “Those that want you dead will likely follow me,” I said wearily, “for the gold-haired harper who rides with me. It is for the dragon to free you, not me. If he chooses to, you will have to find your own way back to Celandine, or else promise not to speak except to sing.”

  I turned away from him. The dragon-harper picked up his harp of bone. He said in his husky, smoky voice, “I keep my bargains. The key to your freedom lies in a song.”

  We left the harper chained to his harping, listening puzzledly with his deaf ear and untuned brain, (or the one song, of all he had ever played and never heard, that would bring him back to Celandine. Outside, in the light, I led dragon-fire to the stone that had swallowed Danica, and began my backwards journey toward Yrecros.

  Lady of the Skulls

  The Lady saw them ride across the plain: a company of six. Putting down her watering can, which was the bronze helm of some unfortunate knight, she leaned over the parapet, chin on her hand. They were all armed, their warhorses caparisoned; they glittered under the noon sun with silver-edged shields, jeweled bridles and sword hilts. What, she wondered as always in simple astonishment, did they imagine they had come to fight? She picked up the helm, poured water into a skull containing a miniature rosebush. The water came from within the tower, the only source on the entire barren, sun-cracked plain. The knights would ride around in the hot sun for hours, looking for entry. At sunset, she would greet them, carrying water.

  She sighed noiselessly, troweling around the little rosebush with a dragon’s claw. If they were too blind to find the tower door, why did they think they could see clearly within it? They, she thought in sudden impatience. They, they, they…they fed the plain with their bleached bones, they never learned…

  A carrion bird circled above her, counting heads. She scowled at it; it cried back at her, mocking. You, its black eye said, never saw. But you bring the dead to me.

  “They never listen to me,” she said, looking over the plain again, her eyes prickling dryly. In the distance, lightning cracked apart the sky; purple clouds rumbled. But there was no rain in them, never any rain; the sky was as tearless as she. She moved from skull to skull along the parapet wall, watering things she had grown stubbornly from seeds that blew from distant, placid gardens in peaceful kingdoms. Some were grasses, weeds, or wildflowers. She did not care; she watered anything that grew.

  The men below began their circling. Their mounts kicked up dust, snorting; she heard cursing, bewildered questions, then silence as they paused to rest. Sometimes they called her, pleading. But she could do nothing for them. They churned around the tower, bright, powerful, richly armed. She read the devices on their shields: three of Grenelief, one of Stoney Head, one of Dulcis Isle, one of Carnelaine. After a time, one man dropped out of the circle, stood back. His shield was simple: a red rose on white, Carnelaine, she thought, looking down at him, then realized he was looking up at her.

  He would see a puff of airy sleeve, a red geranium in an upside-down skull. Lady of the Skulls, they called her, clamoring to enter. Sometimes they were more courteous, sometimes less. She watered, waiting for this one to call her. He did not; he guided his horse into the tower’s shadow and dismounted. He took his helm off, sat down to wait, burrowing idly in the ground and flicking stones as he watched her sleeve sometimes, and sometimes the distant storm.

  Drawn to his calm, the others joined him finally, flinging off pieces of armor. They cursed the hard ground and sat, their voices drifting up to her in the windless air as she continued her watering.

  Like others before them, they spoke of what the most precious thing of the legendary treasure might be, besides elusive. They had made a pact, she gathered: If one obtained the treasure, he would divide it among those left living. She raised a brow. The one of Dulcis Isle, a dark-haired man wearing red jewels in his ears, said, “Anything of the dragon for me. They say it was a dragon’s hoard once. They say that dragon bones are wormholed with magic, and if you move one bone the rest will follow. The bones will bring the treasure with them.”

  “I heard,” said the man from Stoney Head, “there is a well and a fountain rising from it, and when the drops of the fountain touch ground they turn to diamonds.”

  “Don’t talk of water,” one of the three thick-necked, nut-haired men of Grenelief pleaded. “I drank all mine.”

  “All we must do is find the door. There’s water within.”

  “What are you going to do?” the man of Carnelaine asked. “Hoist the water on your shoulder and carry it out?”

  The straw-haired man from Stoney Head tugged at his long moustaches. He had a plain, blunt, energetic voice devoid of any humor. “I’ll carry it out in my mouth. When I come back alive for the rest of it, there’ll be plenty to carry it in. Skulls, if nothing else. I heard there’s a sorceress’s cauldron, looks like a rusty old pot—”

  “May be that,” another of Grenelief said.

  “May be, but I’m going for the water. What else could be most precious in this heat-blasted place?”

  “That’s a point,” the man of Dulcis Isle said. Then: “But, no, it’s dragon-bone for me.”

  “More to the point,” the third of Grenelief said, aggrieved, “how do we get in the cursed place?”

  “There’s a lady up there watering plants,” the man of Carnelaine said, and there were all their faces staring upward; she could have tossed jewels into their open mouths. “She knows we’re here.”

  “It’s the Lady,” they murmured, hushed.

  “Lady of the Skulls.”

  “Does she have hair, I wonder.”

  “She’s old as the tower. She must be a skull.”

  “She’s beautiful,” the man of Stoney Head said shortly. “They always are, the ones who lure, the ones who guard, the ones who give death.”

  “Is it her tower?” the one of Carnelaine asked. “Or is she trapped?”

  “What’s the difference? When
the spell is gone, so will she be. She’s nothing real, just a piece of the tower’s magic.”

  They shifted themselves as the tower’s shadow shifted. The Lady took a sip of water out of the helm, then dipped her hand in it and ran it over her face. She wanted to lean over the edge and shout at them all: Go home, you silly, brainless fools. If you know so much, what are you doing here sitting on bare ground in front of a tower without a door waiting for a woman to kill you? They moved to one side of the tower, she to the other, as the sun climbed down the sky. She watched the sun set. Still the men refused to leave, though they had not a stick of wood to burn against the dark. She sighed her noiseless sigh and went down to greet them.

  The fountain sparkled in the midst of a treasure she had long ceased to notice. She stepped around gold armor, black, gold-rimmed dragon bones, the white bones of princes. She took the plain silver goblet beside the rim of the well, and dipped it into the water, feeling the cooling mist from the little fountain. The man of Dulcis Isle was right about the dragon bones. The doorway was the dragon’s open yawning maw, and it was invisible by day.

  The last ray of sunlight touched the bone, limned a black, toothed opening that welcomed the men. Mute, they entered, and she spoke.

  “You may drink the water, you may wander throughout the tower. If you make no choice, you may leave freely. Having left, you may never return. If you choose, you must make your choice by sunset tomorrow. If you choose the most precious thing in the tower, you may keep all that you see. If you choose wrongly, you will die before you leave the plain.”

  Their mouths were open again, their eyes stunned at what hung like vines from the old dragon’s bones, what lay heaped upon the floor. Flicking, flicking, their eyes came across her finally, as she stood patiently holding the cup. Their eyes stopped at her: a tall, broad-shouldered, barefoot woman in a coarse white linen smock, her red hair bundled untidily on top of her head, her long skirt still splashed with the wine she had spilled in the tavern so long ago. In the torchlight it looked like blood.