Song of the Wanderer

by Bruce Coville

  “We were fewer when we started,” said Moonheart. “Others . . . joined us along the way.”

  “What, precisely, is this mission?” hissed Ebillan. Distrust dripped like venom from his words.

  Moonheart nodded toward Cara. “This child seeks the Wanderer, in order to bring her back to Luster.”

  “What does that have to do with me?” The dragon’s tail was writhing faster now, knotting about itself, almost as if it were a separate creature. Suddenly he thrust his head forward. A broad crest sprang up around his neck, snapping out so fast it made Cara jump.

  Moonheart stood his ground without flinching. “According to the calculations of the Geomancer, the girl’s path lies through your cave,” he said quietly.

  Ebillan threw back his head and roared in fury, sending another column of fire shooting straight above him. “Through my cave! You expect me to let this . . . this human enter my home?”

  “It is the Queen’s wish that the child be given free passage,” said Moonheart.

  “What the Queen wishes is of little interest to me. She’s your queen, not mine.” The dragon dropped to a crouch, much like a cat about to spring. His tail writhed more wildly than ever. “This is my territory, and I do not welcome trespassers, sent by the Queen or not. Those who set foot here pay with their lives.”

  The sinuous neck reared back. It was about to shoot forward when Cara stepped up beside Moonheart and cried, “Stop!” The word seemed to come from somewhere deep within her, rising from her belly and scorching her throat.

  The dragon blinked at her in astonishment. “You speak our tongue?”

  It was only then that Cara realized she had addressed Ebillan in the language of the dragons. Smiling slightly, she said, “I have been given the gift of tongues by the Lady Firethroat, who considers me a friend of dragons. I do not think she would take it kindly were she to learn that you had eaten me.”

  Ebillan settled back on his haunches. His tail still writhed, but a little less rapidly now. “Why didn’t you tell me this to begin with?”

  “I didn’t know you were so lacking in courtesy that I would have to claim my dragon friendship merely to save my life.”

  “Yike!” muttered the Squijum, tightening his grip on her neck. “Be nice!”

  “I have little love for humans,” muttered Ebillan, sounding slightly embarrassed.

  “I do not seek your love,” replied Cara sharply.

  “Just as well,” said Ebillan, and now sarcasm dripped like flame from his words, “as you have little chance of earning it. But what, then, do you want?”

  “Only what Moonheart has already stated: the right to pass through your cave in order to return to my grandmother’s home. I do not seek this boon without offering you something in return.”

  “Ah,” sighed the dragon, sounding almost happy. “You wish to bargain.”

  “I offer to bargain,” replied Cara. Reaching into her pack, she closed her fingers over the enormous jewel that Grimwold had given her. She longed to keep it so she could try to see her mother in its crimson depths again. But it had been given to her for this purpose, for bargaining with the dragon. So she pulled it forth and displayed it on her palm, even though doing so felt like taking out a piece of her own heart.

  Medafil, standing behind her, sighed when he saw it. “Pretty!” he whispered. “Pretty!”

  Ebillan’s eyes widened in interest. “Very pretty indeed.” He extended a claw to take it.

  Cara pulled her hand back. “Do we have a bargain?”

  The dragon’s nostrils flared. “I wish to examine the offer.”

  Cara hesitated. Lightfoot, who was standing close behind her, whispered, “You can trust him. You have to trust him.”

  “Indeed she does,” said Ebillan. “Don’t forget, girl, that I could easily kill you — all of you — and simply take the jewel if I really wanted to. But that is not the dragon way. Now, let me see it.”

  She stepped toward him, holding up her hand. With talons that looked like burnished metal, he lifted the jewel delicately from her palm.

  “Very pretty,” said Ebillan again. Then he dropped it back into her hand. “But I think you can do better.”

  The surge of relief that Cara felt at not having to give up the jewel was quickly replaced by confusion and a touch of anger. “What’s wrong with it?” she asked, trying to keep her distress out of her voice. If the dragon wouldn’t take this fabulous jewel, what else could she possibly offer him?

  “Nothing is wrong with it,” said Ebillan smoothly. “In fact, it is flawless. But I believe you can do better.”

  Cara thought for a moment, then pulled M’Gama’s ring from her finger. Hoping the Geomancer would forgive her, she said, “This was a gift from a friend. It is a piece of great beauty, but even more, it is close to my heart. To me, it has much value.”

  Ebillan took the ring and studied it. “Interesting, but not good enough.” Returning the ring to her hand, he added, “Hold on to it, though. It may be of use to you someday.”

  “How?” asked Cara eagerly as she returned the ring to her finger.

  Ebillan snorted. “I am not an oracle. You will have to discover that for yourself. Now, do you have anything else to bargain with, or are you ready to turn around and go?”

  For a moment Cara feared that all was lost. Then she remembered the glowing sphere Medafil had given her. She glanced back at the gryphon. Hoping he would not be angry, she reached into her pocket and pulled it forth.

  “This is not only beautiful, it is useful,” she said. Her words were rueful, for she had planned to use the bauble to light her way through darkness for the rest of her life. Twisting the sphere as Medafil had taught her, she expanded it until it was nearly a foot across and looked like a small moon glowing in her hands.

  “Very clever,” said Ebillan. He took it from her, easily gripping it between two claws, despite its size. To her surprise, the sphere continued to glow, reflecting off the burnished surface of the dragon’s talons. He examined it for a moment, then returned it to her hands. “Charming, but I have little need for such a light since I can provide my own.”

  “Arrogant dragon,” muttered Medafil angrily.

  Ebillan rolled an eye in the gryphon’s direction but did not bother to respond. Instead, he said again to Cara, “Do you have anything else?”

  “No,” she replied angrily, “I don’t!”

  Then, her heart sinking, she realized that she did, indeed, have one more item that the dragon might accept. It was a minor thing compared to the others, but closest of all to her heart, even more precious than the sphere, the ring, the jewel.

  Slowly, sorrowfully, she reached into her pack and took out Medafil’s second gift to her. She heard a little cry of sorrow from Jacques as she brought forth the shell that held her grandmother’s voice. Ebillan, however, snorted contemptuously at the sight.

  Cara held in a flash of anger. “Though this is more humble,” she said enticingly, “it carries a special beauty and is more dear to me than anything else I have offered.”

  Looking at her with new interest, the dragon took the shell.

  “Hold it to your ear,” Cara whispered.

  Ebillan did as she directed. After a moment he closed his eyes and nodded. The hint of a smile appeared at the corners of his vast, scaly mouth.

  Faintly, very faintly, Cara could hear her grandmother’s voice singing the now familiar words of “Song of the Wanderer.” M’Gama’s ring flickered on her finger. It was all Cara could do to keep herself from reaching forward to snatch the shell from Ebillan, to tell him that he couldn’t have it after all. She prayed he would reject it, feeling that giving it up was like giving up her closest link to her grandmother.

  Then she retracted the prayer, knowing that giving up the shell might be the only way to regain her grandmother.

  The dragon put down the shell and sighed. “It will do,” he said softly.

 
Throat tight, heart aching, Cara nodded and whispered, “Then it is yours.”

  19

  The Tinker’s Diversion

  Ebillan’s cave was halfway up a stony mountain. Since the black dragon was much smaller than Firethroat, and had no interest in carrying them anyway, they had to walk the entire distance across the bleak and blistering territory. It took them nearly a week.

  Finder led the group now, picking a safe way over the treacherous lands of the Northern Waste through some process that only he understood. By the end of the second day, even Belle had expressed a grudging admiration for the skill with which he steered them away from sinkholes and gas vents — a skill that became more obvious when he had started down one path and then abruptly turned back only moments before a gout of vile-smelling flame erupted from the ground, sending rocks the size of Cara’s head several dozen feet in the air.

  Every evening at sunset Cara made another mark on her counting stick. When they reached the foothills that led to Ebillan’s mountain home, only four days remained until the beginning of autumn and the end of the cave’s usefulness as her point of passage.

  With her goal so close and time so short, Cara found herself nearly frantic with impatience at being forced to trudge along a seemingly endless path. She watched the sky anxiously. The days were growing shorter; even more than her wooden calender, they assured her that the first day of autumn was nearly upon them. She was terrified of arriving too late, of finding that she would not be able to use the cave as a transit point to her grandmother’s home after all.

  “I can fly you, if need be,” offered Medafil.

  “A noble offer, and one we may yet need,” said Moonheart. “But we do still have a little time, and I would rather Cara not enter Ebillan’s home without all of us to guard her.”

  “You don’t think he’ll betray us, do you?” she asked.

  “Dragons claim to be bound by their word,” said Moonheart. “Even so, I would just as soon not push our luck on that front too hard.”

  And so they trudged onward.

  Though Thomas’s cart moved easily over the foothills, when they reached the base of the mountain itself two days later he folded it down to its smallest size — no bigger than a man’s wallet — and tucked it into one of his pockets.

  “Well,” he said, squaring his shoulders, “a tinker’s trade takes him many places. Even so, this is one spot in Luster I had never planned to visit. Ah, well. Upward, friends!”

  And up they went.

  It was the next-to-last day of summer.

  * * *

  Ebillan was lolling at the mouth of his cave when the group arrived. They were exhausted by the climb and ravenously hungry as well, since they had found little to eat during the final stage of their journey.

  “I wondered if you would make it,” said the dragon casually. “Perhaps you are more serious about this trip than I realized.”

  “If I weren’t serious, you wouldn’t have that shell right now,” snapped Cara, in no mood for the dragon’s rudeness.

  “And if I weren’t kinder than you think, you would be nothing more than a bit of well-grilled meat,” replied the dragon smoothly. “I’m tempted to simply return your shell and tell you to go back the way you came. I don’t need your snippiness here in my home.”

  The Dimblethum growled. Cara, repenting her rash words and terrified that she might have ruined the bargain, put a cautioning hand on his thick arm.

  The uncomfortable silence that hung between Cara and Ebillan was broken, unexpectedly, by Thomas.

  “You don’t happen to have anything that needs fixing, do you?” asked the Tinker in a cheerful voice. “Something in the treasure pile that’s a little bent and worn, perhaps?”

  “What are you talking about?” asked the dragon. Though his voice was surly, it was clear that he was intrigued.

  “My trade,” said Thomas. “I am a traveling tinker. I mend things. It’s my job. Knowing dragons — I have met a few in my day; in fact Fah-Leing is rather a friend of mine — it wouldn’t surprise me if you might not have need of my services.”

  The expression on Ebillan’s face was unreadable.

  “I can fix practically anything,” continued the Tinker encouragingly.

  The dragon made a noise deep in his throat. “All right,” he said at last. “Come inside.”

  They entered the cave, which was rank with the smell of sulfur.

  “Wait here,” said the dragon. Then he turned and headed for the back of the cave.

  The sound of Ebillan’s scales slithering across the stone floor made Cara shiver. She took Medafil’s sphere from her pack and twisted it between her hands until it was about half a foot wide. Its pearly light revealed two openings at the back of the cave. Ebillan vanished into the one on the left.

  “Big hotmouth bad ptooie!” muttered the Squijum once the dragon was out of sight.

  “Shhhh,” cautioned Lightfoot. “His ears may be better than you think.”

  “And you’re the perfect size for a quick snack,” added Belle, glaring at the Squijum.

  While they were talking, Thomas sidled over to Cara. “If I can get him distracted, and I think I can, head for the back of the cave and go on through to your home. It may be your only chance.”

  “Won’t he be furious?”

  “Not if I do my work well enough. And time is precious. We can’t waste any more of it. Shhh! He’s coming back!”

  At first, Cara thought Ebillan hadn’t brought anything with him. But when he reached them, he opened his mouth. Out fell a gem-studded goblet made of gold and so big Cara would have had to use both hands to hold it. One side was torn by a jagged split, as if the goblet had been pulled apart by some great force.

  Thomas bent to pick it up. “Ow!” he cried. Standing, he began passing it from hand to hand. “Still hot,” he explained.

  “Fix it,” said Ebillan.

  “Your wish is my command,” replied the Tinker, so smoothly that Cara couldn’t tell if he was being sarcastic or not.

  He placed the cup gently on the floor, then began to unfold his cart. “Convenient sort of thing, isn’t it?” he asked, glancing up at Ebillan as he worked.

  The dragon nodded, obviously astonished — something Cara would have thought impossible.

  Once the cart was at full size, Thomas went inside. Cara could hear the clatter of tools as he rummaged around. “All set,” he said happily, reappearing a few minutes later. “Now, Ebillan, if you could warm this up for me again. Just a bit! I only want to soften the metal.”

  Heating things “just a bit” turned out not to be something that came easily to the dragon. Finally Thomas discovered that by using a pair of tongs he could soften the metal of the goblet by holding it inside one of Ebillan’s nostrils. Soon the musical clink of the Tinker’s tools was echoing from the stony walls of Ebillan’s cave.

  “Beautiful piece,” said Thomas as he worked. “What happened to it, anyway?”

  “I’d rather not say,” growled the dragon.

  “Probably did it himself,” muttered Lightfoot, who was standing next to Cara.

  Ebillan hissed angrily. “You forget yourself, unicorn. My hearing is indeed better than you think. But you are right. I did do it myself. This cup was the cup of my heart. From it I drank the flaming dragonwine that is used in our pledging ceremony. With it I pledged myself to the Lady Nakreema.”

  “What happened to it?” asked Cara, feeling a tug of sympathy for the dragon in spite of his nastiness.

  The flames flickering around Ebillan’s nostrils grew brighter. “Long ago, even before the unicorns left Earth, the dragons began to flee to another world. Their reasons were much the same. Earth was becoming hostile to magic, and to magic’s children. And they were being hunted, though not so fiercely as the unicorns later were by Beloved and her descendants.

  “A magician named Bellenmore — the same one who later helped the unicorns — opened
a gate for us. Not all fled. Some of us refused to leave our home, refused to let the humans force us out. Nakreema and I argued about whether to leave. She insisted we had to go. I, being stubborn, insisted on staying. Finally she left without me. I swore a dragon oath that I would see her again, that either I would come for her if things got better, or go to live in that other world myself if things on Earth got worse.”

  He turned his head away from them. When he spoke again his voice was soft, like a whisper of flame. “Finally, of course, I did have to leave. But I had waited too long, decided too late, and though dragons can move between worlds, the gate to this new world was closed to us by the very magic that had opened it. Thus when the last seven dragons of Earth — Firethroat, Redrage, Fah-Leing, Master Bloodtongue, Graumag, Bronzeclaw, and myself — finally admitted defeat, and agreed that we had to flee as well, Luster was the only choice left to us.”

  “A tragic story,” murmured Jacques mournfully.

  Ebillan swung his head back. “Luster is not my home! That other world, the world where my lost love lives, is not home. Earth is home. But Earth, like my love, is lost to me. No dragon can live there now. Too much of the magic has been drained, and we would quickly sicken and die. Even if not, we would be hunted and killed — or, even worse, imprisoned. Do you wonder, human child, that I have little love for your kind?”

  He lifted his head and shot forth a gout of flame. It struck the cave’s ceiling, then spread across it and down the walls. For one terrifying moment Cara thought it would engulf them all. But Ebillan closed his mouth, and the flame vanished. He dropped his head to the floor. “I tore that cup as a sign of my own broken oath,” he whispered sadly. “I did it in a moment of rage and sorrow. Now I repent of my rashness and wish to have it repaired.”

  Thomas looked up. “I shall do my best,” he said. Then, putting his tongue firmly between his teeth, which he did whenever he wanted to concentrate, the Tinker returned his attention to the goblet.

  Ebillan settled before him, watching the work with fascination.