The Whim of the Dragon

by PAMELA DEAN

  “Andrew,” said Fence, having considered Ruth and apparently decided not to comment on her remark, “doth require that those accompanying him be prepared to depart four days hence.”

  “Oh, good,” said Ruth. “There’s an enormous Green Caves ceremony six days hence.”

  Fence frowned. “’Twere better not delay our speech to Meredith,” he said. “She’ll need one can take thy place.”

  “Give me today to poke around,” said Ruth, “and then you can tell her I’m resigning. I’m still in disgrace, you know, so the place she’ll have to fill won’t be very exalted.”

  Fence nodded. “Well,” he said. “Matthew and I will also make ready to depart four days hence. We must devise some means of exchanging news.” His glance brushed Randolph and moved to Ruth. “What training hast thou?” he said to her. “Canst read a message in the grasses, or the stones along thy way?”

  “Of a certainty I cannot,” said Ruth; she did not sound sorry.

  “No matter,” said Fence. “We will send by music. Laura, wilt thou bring thy flute?”

  “Yes,” said Laura, staring a little but seeming more pleased than otherwise.

  “Dost thou play also?” said Fence to Ruth.

  “Pretty well,” said Ruth. “On an ordinary flute.”

  “Excellent,” said Fence. “Celia, who goes north with us, will aid Laura, and before we depart also will instruct thee.”

  “On the subject of instruction,” said Celia, “we have brought somewhat. Edward, hand thy lady cousin the undermost book. ’Twere best she read it before the Green Caves are barred to her. Thou and Patrick will profit most from the scrolls and the blue books.”

  Ted slid the dusty volume from his stack and handed it down the table to Ruth. Its dark green cover was stamped in silver: The Book of the Seven Wizards. It sounded like something they would all have enjoyed reading, before they got into this mess.

  “Now,” said Fence. “If aught’s unclear to our visitors, let them ask us not to unmuddy them. And if aught’s unclear to you, Randolph, Celia, Matthew, ask now.”

  All of Ted’s relatives looked alarmed. He could at least postpone the inevitable. “Can you tell us,” he said, “the story of Shan?”

  “’Tis in the thicker blue book,” said Celia.

  So much for that.

  “Can you tell us,” said Celia, “of Andrew? This report of his spying mislikes me. What, as such, did he accomplish?”

  “Nothing,” said Ellen. “He was always thwarted.”

  “Was he so foolish, then?”

  “No,” said Ellen, “but he was wrong. He didn’t believe in magic.”

  “Which was a considerable handicap,” said Ruth dryly.

  “Fence,” said Matthew. “The antidote is hereby explained.”

  Celia said, “But how knew he one would kill the King?”

  “And who did so?” said Matthew, gloomily.

  Celia turned back to Ellen. “What hath Andrew yet to do?”

  “Nothing, I think,” said Ellen.

  “He betrayeth not this embassy?”

  “We don’t know,” said Ellen. “The embassy wasn’t in the game.”

  “How not?”

  Ted said quickly, “We ran out of time. It was September by then, and we had to go back to school.” It seemed to be the outsiders’ turn again, so he said, “What about Laura’s visions? They can’t really be a talent of her mother’s house.”

  “Did Princess Laura have visions?” said Laura.

  “She had dreams that would have grown so,” said Celia, “but was too young for visions.” She looked intently at Laura. “What age hast thou?”

  “Eleven,” said Laura.

  “The Lady Laura was but nine,” said Celia.

  Celia and Matthew looked at one another. Nobody said anything. Ted thought what a strain this must be for all of them, confronted with the lying doubles of children they knew in their minds, but surely not yet in their hearts, to be dead, and to have been dead for three months. Ted remembered Laura’s vision, that Claudia had buried the bodies in the cellar of the Secret House. But keep the wolf far thence, that’s foe to men, he thought, for with his nails he’ll dig them up again.

  Ted made a sharp movement, as if he had found a spider walking up his arm, and both Fence and Celia turned inquiring faces his way. “Fence,” he said, “Edward says to keep the wolf far thence, that’s foe to men, for with his nails he’ll dig them up again.”

  “That’s another spell of Shan’s,” said Fence.

  “But why’s it in the back of my head? Are Laura’s visions another manifestation of it?”

  “Have all of you this affliction? Hath Patrick?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Ted. “But it’s not words, with him. It’s muscle memory. All the prestidigitation.”

  “But not the bladework?” said Fence.

  “No. And Laura has the visions, but she can’t ride a horse.”

  “I don’t have much,” said Ellen. “The name of a flower, or knowing that the pies have bones in them.”

  “The devising of Melanie,” said Fence, “was that some dear to her, whom Shan had killed, should speak to his lightest thought, as do the unicorns in the places of their abiding.”

  “What’s Melanie got against us?” said Ellen.

  “Could Claudia have learned it from her?” said Ted.

  “Or from another,” said Fence. “Or it may be that, being so like your others, wearing their clothes, sleeping in their beds, answering to their names and observing all their ways with the very comment of your souls, that you be not found out, you are like enough to them that you hear them speaking. For sorcery makes nothing happen that may not happen left alone. It can turn a trickle to a sea; but there must first be a trickle.”

  “Your turn,” said Ellen.

  “In your game,” said Celia, “who did murder King William?”

  Ted’s whole interior recoiled like a snapped rubber band. Fence was actually managing to give Celia an admiring glance, as if to say he should have thought of that question himself. Randolph was extremely pale, but that wasn’t much of a change. Ellen looked thoroughly shocked, which would be good for her. Laura appeared to be going to say something, and Laura was not good at improvising.

  “It depended,” said Ted. This was just short of a lie; in the early days of the game, it had depended. “Sometimes,” said Ted, “it was Andrew; sometimes it was an evil castle magician that we got rid of later; and sometimes, when we got tired of the obvious, it was Randolph; and once it was Agatha, and—”

  “No profit there,” said Celia.

  “Well thought,” said Randolph, to the tabletop.

  “Our turn,” said Ellen, quickly. “Why didn’t breaking the Crystal of—”

  “What do you know about Claudia’s sorcery with the windows?” Ted overrode her loudly. It was, of course, too late. When people in the Hidden Land heard “breaking the Crystal,” there was only one interpretation they would give it.

  “Edward,” said Fence, in a less terrible voice than Ted had expected. “Tell the tale.”

  Ted felt put upon; why should he have to guess Patrick’s motives or, where he knew them, decide whether to betray them? But he told the story. The Crystal of Earth was no part of their original game, but Patrick had dreamed about it: a globe like a gigantic snowflake paperweight, which had a magic in it that, let loose, would destroy the Secret Country. Fence had confirmed this, more or less, by listing for them the three things that were dangerous to the Hidden Land: the Border Magic, the Crystal of Earth, the Whim of the Dragon. So on Midsummer’s Day, Patrick, infuriated by Fence’s taking from them the swords of Shan and Melanie, their only way home from this country, had decided that he would break the Crystal and set them all free. Ted had followed him to the North Tower, protesting. Patrick had broken the Crystal. And for the barest moment, they had seen home. Then they were back in a Secret Country none the worse for this wavering. They gathered all the colored fragments
up and hid them in Ruth’s room.

  Ted looked over at Fence’s intent face, and said, “There’s an awful lot Ruth didn’t think to tell you in that letter!”

  “Well, she was hard-pressed,” said Matthew.

  Fence said nothing, but only waited. Ted would have felt better if he had been angry. None of them looked angry. He supposed they were waiting for Patrick.

  “All right,” said Ted. “I noticed, during the Unicorn Hunt, that the ground in the Enchanted Forest sometimes feels like the magic swords—there’s that tingling. So I thought we should try standing there and changing things around, the way we used to do in the game. So I tried it, saying that Patrick and I had never practiced with the magical swords, and therefore you and Randolph took them not. And that didn’t work. But Laura said, ‘Let’s say Prince Patrick broke not the Crystal of Earth.’ And she felt the ground tingle. So we went back to Ruth’s room and looked in the towel; and all the fragments were gone. We went to the North Tower, and there was a floating globe, much larger than the one Patrick broke, and having inside it sparkles of all colors, but giving off a deep gold light like nothing I have seen. And that,” said Ted on the last of his breath, “is the tale of the Crystal of Earth.”

  “What appearance had the Forest, when this was done?” said Fence.

  “Very different from during the Hunt,” said Ted. “The hedge of roses had grown wild, and the stream was much deeper.”

  “But there were roses?” said Celia. “That was the true power of the unicorns, then, and not some meddling of Claudia’s.”

  “Okay, but why was what Patrick broke not the Crystal of Earth?” Even as he said the last few words, Ted realized what the answer was. “Because we were going to stand in the Enchanted Forest and say, ‘Let’s say Patrick broke not the Crystal of Earth,’ the Crystal of Earth wasn’t there for Patrick to break?”

  “What did he break?” said Laura. “Something happened when he did it.”

  “Now that may be some meddling of Claudia’s,” said Celia.

  Somebody rattled the door. Matthew got up and let Patrick in. Patrick was flushed, and his eyes gleamed. Ted realized that he was excited, not tired. The things that got Patrick excited were always either incomprehensible or troublesome.

  “Did it work?” said Ellen. “Where’s your watch?”

  “It worked,” said Patrick. “When I got back there, the watch said it was eight forty-five on June seventeenth. That’s when we left. But that’s not the half of it.” Patrick shouldered himself out of his knapsack, opened it, and began piling books on top of those already on the table.

  “Now,” he said. “These books are about a lot of things that must be just as impossible here as digital watches. This used to be my digital watch.” He pushed back the violet silk sleeve of his shirt, thick with embroidery in black and white, and showed them the watch he wore. It had a plain leather strap, a round crystal, and the usual twelve numbers picked out in gold. The hour and minute hands were gold too.

  Laura remembered the serviceable black plastic watch with all its baffling buttons and its red characters in twenty-four-hour time that would show you the date and the day of the week if you knew how to ask it, and was safe underwater to two hundred meters.

  “That’s your watch?” she said.

  “You bet it is. This happened once before, remember? And I think you must have been right, Laurie. Your flashlight did turn into a lantern. Now, just what happened when it did?”

  Laura looked at Fence, who nodded at her. Ted decided that they were letting Patrick dig his own grave, and then they would push him into it.

  “It stayed a flashlight,” Laura said, “until Ted tried to turn it on. Then there was a flash of blue light. Ted dropped it in the stream. There were a lot of sparks, and then the blue light went out. And all we found in the stream was a lantern.”

  “I got a green flash from the watch. Now.” Patrick lined the books up on the table. The Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, Elements of Programming Style, The Communist Manifesto, An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish, and a science fiction novel called Inherit the Stars. “I went through these and marked passages contrary to the way reality works in the Secret Country,” said Patrick. “And they are all still here. Nothing whatever has happened to these books. Whatever makes these things happen alters artifacts, but it leaves books alone.”

  “Touching the alteration of artifacts,” said Celia. “What is this tale we hear of the Crystal of Earth?”

  “Who told you?” said Patrick, in a dangerous tone. His face had not changed.

  “Never mind,” said Fence, to Laura’s profound relief. Ellen would feel bad enough without Patrick’s hollering at her.

  Matthew said, “Why broke you that Crystal, knowing what fate you doomed us to?”

  “I wanted to go home,” said Patrick, pale but still calm.

  “Patrick,” said Fence, “there must be no more of these trials and testings, neither out of temper nor out of thy cooler speculations. Thou knowest nothing; thy proddings are perilous. Have I thy word?”

  Patrick’s calm face moved swiftly into stubbornness. He said, “I prefer example to authority.”

  Randolph stood up, his face furious.

  “No, wait,” said Ted. He looked at Patrick. “You swore me an oath,” he said.

  “Oh, no, you don’t,” said Patrick. “You may be my King, but you’re not my superior officer.”

  “He is more,” said Randolph. “He hath the power of life and death o’er thee, without counsel or appeal. Thy officer is answerable to his, and to his King; the King is answerable to himself, and to powers so fickle ’twere better none awakened them. And thou didst swear.”

  “I said faith and truth,” said Patrick, “and you’ll get more of both of them if you let me go my gait.”

  “Patrick,” said Ted, “remember where you are. The oath means what it means. Words have power here.”

  “Say some, then,” said Patrick, his face flushed again but otherwise unreadable.

  “Don’t go performing private experiments like breaking the Crystal of Earth. Don’t do anything without consulting us.”

  Patrick looked from Celia and Matthew, who were a little tense but clearly amused, to Randolph, who was still angry, to Fence, whose face was as uninformative as Patrick’s own. Then he looked at Ted. “It’s as bad as having a government grant,” he said. “All right. No unauthorized research. I hope you won’t be sorry.”

  “Thy hopes commend thee,” said Fence, dryly.

  Patrick sat down in the chair to the left of the King’s, looking as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. If those four people had ganged up on Laura, she would have been in tears.

  “Whose turn is it now?” said Ellen, without much vigor.

  “Yours, yours,” said Fence, “for we have just put Patrick to the question.”

  “Pat?” said Ellen. “Ask them something you want to know.” And that, thought Laura, was Ellen’s apology for what Patrick didn’t know she had done.

  “Tell us,” said Patrick, “about Shan’s Ring.”

  “Nay, do you tell us,” said Fence. “Shan says in his journals that he had it from the unicorns, and that it did greatly magnify the power of his mirrors.”

  “What was the power of his mirrors?” said Ted.

  “To see matters far off, as ours show us still today,” said Fence. “Mayhap also to see things that shall be an certain conditions be met; we are not agreed.”

  “Because that’s what Apsinthion could do with his mirrors,” said Ted, “and I don’t think he had a ring.”

  “Well, does Shan’s Ring magnify the power of your mirrors?” demanded Patrick.

  “Not ours,” said Fence. “Shan’s were, it may be, made differently.”

  Patrick scowled. “What about the riddle?” he said.

  “We solved that,” said Ruth.

  “I don’t think so,” said Patrick. “I think that was fortuitous. I think blowing time awry is
a side effect, and every time we use Shan’s Ring we do we don’t know what.”

  “The red man,” said Laura, “said it worked too well and woke up powers that were better off sleeping.”

  “What powers?” said Fence. “Only the Outside Powers do sleep.”

  “But Benjamin said they were rising,” said Ellen, “before we ever found Shan’s Ring.” She seemed to give up. “Your turn,” she said to Fence.

  “This matter’s too long for talk,” said Fence, “but I would you’d write me the story of your game as you did most commonly play’t out. In its departures from our history we may find answers.”

  Laura thought this would be tedious; but it was clever of Fence to avoid asking them to talk about the game, in front of people who didn’t know what Randolph had done. “You should get another question, then,” she said.

  “In this game,” said Fence, “how were events ordered?”

  They all looked helplessly at one another. Fence said, “Tell me of a small thing only.”

  “Fire-letters,” said Matthew. “Had you those?”

  Ellen laughed. “Oh, yes,” she said. “That was my fault. Ted and Patrick sneaked off and built a bonfire without me, and I got so mad they had to make up the fire-letters on the spot.”

  Matthew looked as if he wanted to withdraw the question. Randolph said, “This is how our very lives are ordered?”

  “Or the other way?” said Laura, quickly.

  “Yes,” said Patrick, with an approving glance. “Because in the Hidden Land there are fire-letters, when Ted and I needed to calm Ellen down with some intriguing thought, fire-letters came into our minds.”

  Ellen started to say something; Laura shook her head, hard; and Ellen closed her mouth. Laura was relieved. This was no time for the old argument about who had put what into whose head. However distasteful it might be to the five of them to think that their wonderful game had been slipped into their heads by Claudia, it was far worse for the characters of the game to think that all their actions and all their history had been dictated by a bunch of children in unwitting collaboration with a renegade sorcerer. Until they knew which way—if either—it had gone, it would be better for the people who had to live in the Hidden Land to think that power flowed from them to Laura’s world, and not the other way around.