The Dragon Queen

by Alice Borchardt

  Maeniel swatted her into the air, out over the water, and she didn’t get to do the damage she wanted to. She gave a screech.

  Kyra said, “Bird, I’m having sausage for supper. Keep on, and I won’t give you any.”

  Magetsky circled the ship and came in for a landing where she had been sitting moments before. She hunched down. Fluffed her feathers, and looked sulky.

  “Sausage,” Kyra said.

  Magetsky began to talk to Maeniel. She had seen Arthur at Tintigal, not long ago, Maeniel told Morgana. She has been watching the place.

  He glanced suspiciously at Magetsky. I don’t know why.

  “She is a devious and dishonest creature,” Dugald said self-righteously. Magetsky made more kissie noises and a few more wet fart sounds at Dugald.

  “At any rate,” Maeniel plowed on, “she says she is glad she is a bird, because his mother was tormenting him with her beauty.”

  Morgana’s lips curled in disgust.

  “But he—no, I won’t say that in the presence of his kin,” Maeniel told Magetsky, who cackled raucously.

  “In any case,” Maeniel continued, “according to the bird, Merlin joined the party and the boy hit him … in—in—a very tender spot.”

  Morgana laughed. “I hope he ruined him.”

  Maeniel continued, “The wizard did magic and sent the boy back where he came from.”

  A manservant stood near Morgana.

  “Bird, I thank you.” She turned to the servant and said, “Give the bird some of what we had for lunch. This information is most useful. Merlin must have made an alliance with King Bade. Otherwise, Arthur couldn’t come and go so easily. The two have connived together to imprison him.”

  Magetsky strutted to and fro on the rail, until the servant returned with a bowl. Then she hopped down to the deck and attacked the meat ravenously.

  Farry brought cushions, and we all sat down together on the carpet and shared some wine, bread, and porridge.

  “This is a dangerous situation,” Morgana said. “Uther is furious and preparing for war.”

  Dugald and Maeniel nodded.

  “The way I found you was that your friend Farry here—he wouldn’t tell me where you were because he said Merlin was hunting you and that you had to flee the people of your village. But he said he would bring me to you. So, I am here. Tell me, girl, did you actually exchange any promises?”

  “What is your reason for wanting to know?” Dugald asked in a self-important manner.

  Morgana looked annoyed. “If they formed a tie, I might be able to use her to help me retrieve him. King Bade of the summer land is no trivial opponent, and reaching out into another world isn’t all that easy.”

  “No,” I answered. “No, it can’t be. But tell me how—”

  That was as far as I got, because Dugald snapped, “Be quiet. In this, you should be guided by your elders.”

  Kyra rolled her eyes. “Old man, the girl is wise enough about matters.… ”

  That was all she said, because Magetsky saw a chance to get her licks in at Dugald. She has really hated him since that trip to Ireland. She made a quick hop away from the food and drove her beak into Dugald’s thigh.

  He let out a yell. Magetsky cackled loudly and went yrrrrrp. She took wing and hovered just over his head.

  I leaped to my feet and snatched her out of the air. She gave another outraged screech and drove her beak into my wrist. The armor leaped out all along my arm. It partially protected me, but even so, blood ran down the back of my hand. It was my fire hand.

  Magetsky knew she had gone too far. She stopped struggling, hunched down, and said, yek! She studied me with one onyx eye. She looked very frightened. I shook with anger, and the armor leaped out all over my body.

  “Certain it is,” Dugald said, “that vile denizen of the air will be no loss to the world.”

  Funny, I had threatened her without meaning it. Now I frightened her without meaning to threaten her. I folded my legs and sat down on my cushion, and plunked Magetsky back by her bowl.

  “Eat,” I said. “And trouble me no more for the rest of the afternoon, at least.”

  Magetsky put the bowl between me and her, then went back to her dinner, unruffled, as far as I could tell, except that occasionally she cast a wary eye in my direction.

  “I think I can speak for myself,” I told Dugald.

  Morgana nodded.

  “No,” I said. “We exchanged no vows, but he told me he wanted me. And as far as I dared, I told him his … his … attentions were very welcome.”

  This sounded a bit stiff, but I didn’t know how to tell a distinguished stranger that my knees weakened whenever he so much as touched my hand.

  “So there is a tie,” she said.

  “Yes,” I answered. “There is. I cannot say how much of it is our doing or how much is … the work of the veiled ones.”

  She nodded, because she knew of whom I spoke. I have not known any who do not believe in the veiled ones, though they call them different things. Certain it is the Romans did, the Greeks, the Saxons, and certainly my people. The fates, so called, they are her eldest servants, but it is not known if even she commands them.

  “So,” Morgana said. “Give me your hand.”

  “No!” Dugald roared.

  “No,” Kyra said. “My lady, with all due respect …”

  “Yes,” I said. They both started to speak, but Maeniel lifted his hand. “The choice is hers,” he said, “as it was last night. Though I would she had chosen otherwise, none of us can force the issue.”

  They were silent.

  I stretched out both hands to Morgana. “Which one?” I asked.

  “The left,” Morgana said without hesitation. “Though likely you believe otherwise, it is the ruling one.”

  Yes, I thought. I healed Gray with it and used it to comfort Talorcan.

  So I rose and walked toward her. We clasped hands, standing face-to-face, our fingers laced together. Her right held my left. Then she bent her elbow, and I mine, and our hands were lifted between us, the palm of mine facing my heart, the palm of hers facing her heart.

  I felt the abyss. Dugald had told me about it. The abyss is the greatest barrier to magic. It is the nothingness from which everything came. Called up in some unknowable fashion. That is the question, the one permanent, eternal question, unendurable and unanswerable: why anything at all—why not nothing?

  If practitioners get caught in the contemplation of that question for too long, it drains their power and they fail in whatever task they have undertaken.

  Look away, she said. I have found it’s the best way to handle that particular problem.

  Dugald says it must be overcome, I answered.

  A daunting task, that, she replied. We were not speaking in words, you understand, and I felt the humor of her reply. One might say an impossible one. No! It cannot be overcome. Men, they place such trust in brute force. I’ve found simple avoidance works much better. That is the danger of dealing with Merlin. He thinks like a woman. He merely distracted Uther for a short time, and his net fell over Arthur while we weren’t looking. His stratagems are endless and brilliant, but his subtlety suggests his powers may at length be waning.

  Truly? I asked.

  I believe so, she answered.

  I tried to close my mind to the abyss by calling up Arthur’s face. Very easily, it seemed, I found myself beside him.

  He had just finished speaking. I knew that. The crowd around him seemed stunned by his words. Many wept. Others stood silent yet with a light in their eyes that suggested a great burden had been lifted from their souls. But he seemed uninterested in what they thought or felt, as if he wanted to evade their gratitude at all costs.

  He spoke to a man-at-arms near him. “It is growing late. We must cross the river. If, as you say, this place grows more dangerous after dark, we haven’t much time.”

  Then he strode toward the bridge. The women moved back to the shallows to fish. The men fell in
behind Arthur, who took point and led them away.

  “Law, Balin,” he said as the group marched, “is all well and good. But cattle are how we live.”

  “Don’t try to make what you just did less,” a black-bearded man said. “That we are not free men haunts us all. Much of what we think of ourselves is defined by what others tell us. And all our lives we have been told we were slaves and the property of this King Bade.”

  I could sense Arthur was surprised at this man’s acuity. His brows rose. “May I know your name?” he asked.

  “Caradog Freichfras,” the black-beard answered. “I was one of the chief’s sons caught in the sweep. Will you now become our king and lead us?”

  Arthur looked uncomfortable. “I have …” he began, but then broke off because they were well beyond the bridge and into the trees. And they had reached a point where they could see the cattle and far out into the valley beyond.

  I heard Arthur gasp and I understood why. Long have I lived, but not before or since have I seen such beauty. Near the river, a mountain torrent flowed over a cliff, watering the first meadow where the cattle—pale buff beasts with red ears, hooves, and tails—grazed. Beyond the first meadow, the river flowed over a slope of giant boulders, into a second meadow a bit below it. And from there, into a third. Like giant steps, the meadows fell away toward a valley, sunstruck and hazy with distance.

  “Ah, God,” Arthur whispered. “Never have I seen so fair a place as this. The realm of King Bade.”

  The meadows were surrounded by mountains, but they were not unapproachable snow-covered peaks in the distance rising sharp as pale knives against the sky. These were low hummocks of dark stone slopes covered by forests of ancient hardwoods stretching down into the open meadowed valleys. The long, rich green grass brushed Arthur’s kneecaps, and the cattle were fat with it.

  “Eden!” Arthur said. “Before Eve took the serpent’s apple and gave it to her lover.”

  “Well and good,” Balin said, “but there was a serpent in Eden after all. And there is one here.” He pointed to the dark tower.

  Arthur’s first thought was that the thing was a ruin. But it wasn’t. It simply flowed out of the earth the way the supports for the bridge had. Trees grew out of it, and some of them seemed to be part of it. An incredibly old oak was set close to the ground, and the roots, rather than tearing up the stones—boulders, really—at the base of the tower, seemed to be holding them together. A willow farther on had a hollow trunk that formed a catchment basin for water that fed vines, flowering vines that grew in and out between smaller stones like mortar.

  The mixture of trees and other plants covered a round tower that rose beside the waterfall, up and up, until it looked out over the falls, the river, and all the valleys beyond.

  “They say she rules here as much as Bade does,” Balin said.

  “Who?” Arthur asked.

  “The Queen of the Dead,” Balin answered.

  “The Queen of the Dead,” Arthur repeated.

  “She rules them,” Balin said, and pointed to three horsemen herding the cattle. They were the three Arthur had killed in the barn.

  “She heard the flies, smelled the stink, and called them,” Balin whispered.

  “Ah!” Arthur said. “I see.”

  He didn’t, I was sure, but you must appear confident when you lead men. An army is as liable to panic as a flock of children. Or so Maeniel tells me. I expressed doubt about this when he said it. But even Dugald agreed with him, and they did not have their usual acrimonious debate.

  This is one of the reasons the Romans were so successful—military discipline. It keeps them headed in the right direction and obeying their officers’ orders.

  The herdsmen were a grisly crew, pale, the washed-out gray that corpses show when the blood is gone. One’s throat had been cut and sewn back together with sinew; another had no eyes—only reddish paste in the sockets. The third looked well enough but for the dreadful wound in his back. They had been gutted, and their bellies had been sewn together to keep them from rotting quickly.

  “They can do simple tasks,” Balin said, “until they decay and fall to pieces. There will be men nearby to supervise them.”

  “Let us go and find the—” Arthur said.

  The water hit me square in the face. I screamed, and the connection between me and Arthur was broken. I found myself standing on the deck of the ship, the sun burning my neck, blinded by what seemed like the deluge that poured over me.

  “You were in too deep,” Dugald complained. “In a short time, you might have been drawn into—” he made the sign of the cross, and I remembered he was a Christian priest, also “—into God knows where,” he finished.

  Morgana was sitting on a cushion, looking exhausted. One of her attendants handed me a towel, and I dried my face and body. Morgana was panting as if she had run a long race, and I felt drained and exhausted also.

  “He has escaped Bade and Merlin both,” I said, “and is free, though I think in peril. But I believe Bade will find him a troublesome guest. Avery troublesome guest.”

  Morgana couldn’t speak yet, but she grinned wolfishly. I saw she agreed with me.

  We returned to our encampment without telling Morgana what our plans were. She said she didn’t want to know. And Maeniel and Dugald agreed that was probably for the best.

  I said a kind farewell to Farry at the dock. He did kiss my cheek then, and told me to keep him informed of our movements. To this end, he gave me a cage with four birds in it.

  “You know how to use them,” he said.

  I did. They are an old trick of the Veneti, one way a dispersed people can communicate quickly. Carrier pigeons.

  Then we returned to camp.

  That night, I lay in my blankets near Kyra, looking up at the stars. I was surprised that I couldn’t sleep. The half cup of wine I had with dinner had nearly knocked me out, and I turned in almost at sunset, not the usual custom with me. Normally, even when we were at home, we sat up late.

  Sometimes Kyra told us a story or Maeniel and Dugald argued and debated whatever of the world’s events they had disagreed on during the day. And they seldom agreed to disagree. Instead, after nightfall, the dispute usually became louder and more heated, until the Gray Watcher went wolf and Dugald stalked away to his bed, muttering to himself loudly.

  Kyra, Black Leg, and I took sides, sometimes supporting the wolf, at others Dugald. Now Black Leg was gone and I didn’t know when I would see him again, if ever.

  Thinking of him, a dark finger of grief touched my heart. If I could have, I would have wanted to have him nearby always as a friend and brother. But that wasn’t possible, and it would not have been fair to him to try to keep him.

  I rolled on my back and lay looking up at the stars. The bear was overhead, and I remembered that some called Arthur the Bear.

  Dea Arto. The mountain goddess.

  Kyra told me she was very ancient. Long ago, when her people fled the rising seas and came to the highlands, they made offerings to her of honey and oil. And also, in spring, salmon, because these were all things she loved. Among the Silures, men only offered the salmon.

  The Bear society was the fiercest and best. When they fought, they drew lots, and the winner went naked into battle as an offering. The Romans thought us mad to fight naked, and, indeed, most often we don’t. But those on whom the battle goddess’s exultation falls do march out in the vanguard as offerings, blood offerings to the wrathful, blood-drinking daughters of Dis that they may quench their thirst and spare the rest.

  Maeniel says it doesn’t work, and for once Dugald agrees with him. But the Bears still follow the old custom, and it is said no Bear has ever been known to die of a wound in his back. However great the odds, they have always fallen with their faces toward the enemy. If Arthur was a Bear, he was a mighty man, a deadly man, and King Bade would have his hands full with him.

  I closed my eyes and must have slept a bit, because the dragon’s voice awakened me. H
e was singing a song of the stars. One of the songs about the houses of heaven that Kyra’s people learn, that they may track the hours of the night, the days of the year, and the march of the centuries.

  All people know the houses of heaven, or so Kyra tells me, but only the Veneti and the Painted People know the parts of the songs that allow them to traverse the whale road, far out of the sight of land, yet look up into the sky by night and know where they are. The queens of Kyra’s people sit in their great halls, and each rules one house of the universe and one month of the year. The dragon sang of the house of the dragon.

  I rose from my bed, pulled on my tunic, and walked down to the shore. The whole world was silent but for the low roar of the surf and the sea wind playing against the shore. The dragon glided back and forth in the shallows; his paddlelike fins stirred phosphorescence in the sea and the splash they made left a wake of cold fire.

  He glided like a swan, neck arched, head bent down—a darker shape against a star-filled sky. Back and forth in a small bay between two rocky headlands.

  I knew he felt me watching, yet he continued to swim, and as he swam, he sang. And I understood he was doing magic. He was asking the almighty powers for something.

  And the something was me!

  I didn’t dare interrupt his singing, because I knew that whatever rules the universe was listening to him. Listening and answering.

  The dragon song is a long one. Humans and dragons haven’t always gotten along. They compete with humans for the basking shark, seal, and walrus; but above all, for the salmon and eel coming upriver to spawn. More than once a dragon rookery along the coast has been wiped out by angry and greedy humans who smashed their eggs and killed their young and, often as not, such females who remained to defend their children. The song spoke of all these things, and I found myself shivering, though the sea breeze wasn’t unduly cold.

  At length the dragon finished, turned, and glided toward shore. I felt rather than saw Kyra come up behind me.

  “You go north,” he said to her rather than to me. “And you, most royal lady, will sponsor her in and among the dwellings of your people.”