by PAMELA DEAN
The dragon’s long mouth opened. Ted thought that he wouldn’t be at all surprised if, having been sown in the ground, those teeth came up armed men. The dragon’s voice crackled and fizzed like a badly tuned radio. It said, “Knowest me not?”
And Randolph, his face stark white in the mix of gray light and moonlight, and his eyes like saucers, said, “Belaparthalion.”
“Welcome,” said the dragon. There was something in its voice that Ted had heard before.
Randolph said, “Art thou imprisoned?”
“A part of me,” said the dragon, and Ted had it. The remote amusement of the unicorns, the dry glee, the sense of some joke beyond one’s ken.
“What may we do?” said Randolph.
“For me, naught,” said Belaparthalion. “For thyself, walk warily.”
“What part is so imprisoned?” said Randolph. “And by whom?”
“This shape thou seest,” said Belaparthalion, with a shade of sharpness, “and the speech whereby to make my captor known.”
“That smells of Claudia,” said Ruth.
“Most strongly,” said the dragon. It did not turn its head to address her. Ted wondered if it could. It was very unpleasant to think of so large and powerful and humorous a creature held captive; not least because of what this said about Claudia.
“What may we do?” repeated Randolph.
“Thy present enterprise will serve thee well enough.” There was a long pause. The dragon said, “Ask for me in the land of the dead.”
“I will so,” said Randolph, and bowed in the usual Secret Country fashion.
“All may yet be very well,” said Belaparthalion, in a tone of resignation mixed with very little humor. It tucked its long head under its long belly and folded its spiky, fragile wings and attenuated limbs, shrank steadily to a spark of red, and vanished. The globe stayed dull gray, swallowing the moonlight.
“For the love of heaven,” said Randolph, “let’s find some warmer place.”
“Is it the Crystal of Earth?” asked Ted.
“No,” said Randolph, lighting a candle. “By no means.” And he disappeared through the trapdoor before Ted could ask him anything else.
“Julian?” said Ted, irritated with his Regent. “Could you stay and guard this thing?”
“As you will, my lord,” said Julian, and sat down again in the corner.
They reassembled in the kitchen; Dittany fetched Jerome from his watch outside. Stephen was asleep, and they left him alone. Andrew hung the kettle over the fire and made a large pot of very strong tea. The pot was red. The mugs, also red, were styled like those of High Castle, but each of them had a little white plaque of a unicorn’s head in unglazed clay on it, and the eye of each unicorn was picked out in yellow. Ted found them unnerving, but the tea, if you put enough honey in it, was very welcome.
“Well,” said Ted, when he was tired of watching people slurp tea and avoid one another’s eyes. “What meaneth this apparition?”
“Yon globe,” said Randolph to his empty mug, “is not the Crystal of Earth. Yet it is like unto that Crystal. Now that Crystal contains the Hidden Land in little, and whoso breaketh it breaketh also the Hidden Land. Yon globe containeth the dragon Belaparthalion, also in little.” He stopped.
“Wherefore,” said Ruth, impatiently, “whoso breaketh it breaketh also the dragon?”
“No,” said Randolph. “Breaketh, most like, the dragon-shape merely. Dragons walk abroad in many forms. But look you, the dragon-shape is native to them, and in it alone do they possess their full powers. This is truth. ’Tis said, and may be truth also, that outwith that shape they may run mad. Wherefore, with the whim of the dragon among those things that may destroy the Hidden Land, we may not so provoke that whim.”
“May it not, so imprisoned,” said Andrew, “equally run mad and destroy us?” There was humor in his voice also, but it was neither remote nor dry.
“Not yet,” said Randolph.
“Besides,” said Ruth, “it told us not to mess with it.”
“Most clearly,” said Jerome, in a dissatisfied tone.
“’Twill abide ’til we come to the land of the dead,” said Randolph.
“All right,” said Ted. “What does this tell us about Claudia? Who can imprison a dragon? What are they vulnerable to?”
“Jests,” said Randolph, “games of chance; and the promise of gold.”
“These things are poison to them?” said Ruth. “Or they have a weakness for them?”
“A weakness only,” said Randolph. “Unicorn’s blood is poison to a dragon; naught else.”
“What a very unpleasant thought,” said Ruth.
“All right,” said Ted again. “What do we need to do?”
“Ride posthaste to the Gray Lake,” said Randolph, “where we may ask after Belaparthalion in the land of the dead. But first I think we must send word to Fence. It may be that the Council of Nine at Heathwill Library can read this riddle.”
“I’ll get the flute,” said Ruth. “You compose your message.”
Randolph got up and went into Claudia’s front hall, whence he returned with a huge sheet of paper, a glass pen, and a bottle of ink. Ted observed the pen with fascination. Its nib was the usual sharpened goose-quill, but this had been attached to a hollow cylinder of red glass. You dipped the pen and filled the cylinder, and could write whole paragraphs before having to dip the pen again. Ted had struggled with ordinary dipping pens at High Castle, and hoped Randolph was taking proper notice of this improvement.
Randolph seemed to be engaged in some sort of parlor game with Dittany, Jerome, and Andrew. Dittany took it very seriously, but gloomy Jerome warmed and brightened as it went on. Randolph kept asking them for rhymes and laughing at their suggestions. Andrew affected to be bored and skeptical, but the three most difficult rhymes were all provided by him; not to mention the abominable part-rhyme “crystal / mizzle,” which, after much argument, was pronounced acceptable on the ground that the message was about a dragon.
Ted, who was tired and who had not been present at Celia’s instruction of Ruth, finally figured out that they were putting the news about Belaparthalion into verse. It sounded like any anonymous fifteenth-century ballad by the time they were finished. Ruth meanwhile could be heard in the hallway, squeaking on the flute and finally producing an even and euphonious version of “Puff the Magic Dragon.” Ted thought this was both silly and risky, but nothing seemed to come of it.
Ruth returned with the flute, and Randolph handed her the ink-smudged paper. Ruth scowled over it. “Maybe ‘Matty Groves,’” she said. “No, I don’t think so; that’s awfully ill-omened. Oh, I know! We’ll use ‘The Minstrel Boy.’ How odd; I never thought of those tunes as interchangeable.” She grinned at Ted, who frowned repressively at her; she put the flute to her lips and played briskly through six repetitions of “The Minstrel Boy.”
It was not until Ted, feeling bored at the fourth repetition and thinking that one would have to wrench the words to make them fit that tune, peered at the paper again, that he realized what was happening. The first three blotched verses had vanished from the paper, and the fourth was evaporating as Ruth played. There was nothing special about the pen and paper; she was doing it all with the flute. When she stopped, Randolph had a clean, empty sheet of paper and a pen full of ink. How thrifty, thought Ted. But it seemed uncanny to him. Nobody looked at all tired, and they hadn’t even used up any ink. Maybe the work was all done by the receiving end. He hoped it wouldn’t be too much for Laura.
“Well, good,” said Ruth. She began to unscrew the mouthpiece of the flute. “I suppose now we ride away and make however many miles we were supposed to have made by now?”
“Alas, yes,” said Randolph.
“At least it’s stopped raining,” said Ted.
“I’ve stopped its raining,” said Randolph; “’twill begin again within the hour.”
He got up and went out, followed by Dittany and Jerome, leaving Ted and Ruth to stare a
t each other. Andrew tipped his heavy wooden chair back like an insolent student awaiting his turn to be spoken to by the principal, smiling faintly.
Ted reflected that Edward knew little about magic, and took a risk. “When’d he do’t? He didn’t make a production of it.”
“The Blue School doesn’t,” said Ruth. “It’s the Green Caves that like ceremonies and drama.”
“We should let Ellen join them, then,” said Ted, thoughtlessly, “and give you to the Blue School.”
This suggestion produced a harrowing silence. Ted looked from Ruth, who was very red, to Andrew, who had restored the chair to its upright position and was upright in it, staring at Ruth with an expression of disbelieving discovery.
“Don’t look like that,” said Ted to him. “I’m not going to marry her.”
He plunged out of the kitchen, followed by Ruth, who grabbed the sleeve of his shirt and shook his arm violently. “Why did you say that? It would have been better to keep him guessing. Now he’ll think I’m going to marry Randolph.”
“Well, he’d better think so,” said Ted. “If he bothers you too much, why don’t you tell him about the bargain with Meredith? Blame it all on her.”
“I am not telling him anything,” said Ruth. She had relaxed her grip on his sleeve, but she made a sudden surprised noise like that of somebody who has been poked in the ribs, and clutched Ted’s arm in a grasp that hurt. “Oh, Lord! What if it’s nothing to do with the Dragon King? What if I said I’d help him keep Randolph from murdering William?” She giggled hysterically. “ ‘Murder, though it have no tongue, will speak / With most miraculous organ.’ ”
“Shhh!” said Ted. They were out of earshot of Andrew, but not of Stephen, if he should wake up. “Stop quoting Shakespeare. Haven’t we got enough of that?”
“Lady Ruth said it,” said Ruth. She had stopped laughing, but she was still holding on to his arm. Her hand quivered. “I thought she meant her own murder, Ted. What if we meet the King in the land of the dead?”
“The ghosts don’t remember who they are.”
“But if Andrew asks the King’s ghost—”
“‘Don’t borrow trouble,’” said Ted, quoting Agatha. Ruth seeming unconvinced, he added something of his own. “We can burn that bridge when we come to it.”
Ruth laughed, as if in spite of herself. “The readiness is all,” she said.
They left from behind Claudia’s house, following a narrow path through a meadow and up a little rise, on the other side of which they found the road they wanted. The moon shone clear, and made sparkles on the wet leaves and stones. Ted looked over his shoulder once, and saw the dead gray light pouring out of Claudia’s tower. He wondered where the golden light had gone, and half wished they had left things alone. The back of his mind said, And, for thou wast a spirit too delicate / To act her earthy and abhorred commands, / Refusing her grand hests, she did confine thee.
Ted thought of the intricate, muscular shape of the dragon, and the remote humor of its crackling voice. A spirit too delicate? “Somehow,” he said aloud, “I can’t see it.”
CHAPTER 16
LAURA had always been so petrified by the dangers of horseback riding that its discomforts had not occurred to her. By the time they stopped for lunch she was extremely stiff; by the time they stopped for the night, she hurt all over.
The Enchanted Forest did not act enchanted. It did not even keep off the rain. Laura realized that both its appearance before the Unicorn Hunt, when it had been wild and tangled, and its appearance afterward, when it had been park-like, were forms of holiday attire. Now they were seeing it in its everyday dress. It had enormous beech and oak and rowan trees; clear paths; a plenitude of yellow, white, or orange flowers like stunted chrysanthemums; a dearth of undergrowth, aside from the little bushes that look as if they ought to be growing seventy feet tall in a prehistoric forest, and turn bright red in the early fall; and convenient logs and rocks in clearings perfectly suited for building a fire and spending the night.
Laura stood under a beech tree and watched Celia and Fence build a fire. They had erected a little awning of oiled leather over it, to keep off the rain the trees let through. Fence thought this precaution unnecessary, but had given in, smiling, when Celia insisted. Ellen had gone to get water, and Patrick to find more wood. Matthew was unburdening the horses and covering them up with blankets.
Ellen trudged into the clearing, lugging a skin of water. “There’s more unicorn footprints by the stream,” she said.
Laura was grateful that Patrick was absent. Unicorns left flowering plants and trees behind them the way cats leave hair; Ellen had decided this morning to call these manifestations unicorn footprints, and Patrick, being Patrick, promptly began calling them fewmets. Laura suspected that he would have called them something considerably more vulgar if Celia had not had her eye on him. Laura hadn’t figured out why Patrick respected Celia when he scorned everybody else in High Castle, but it was a great blessing.
“What kinds of flowers?” Laura asked, rather tardily. Ellen had dumped her water into their camp kettle and was rummaging in the heap of saddlebags.
“White violets,” said Ellen, pulling out six little yellow apples and lining them up on a flat stone. “Forget-me-nots. Crocuses. And just in case you might think it’s spring, a huge great clump of Michaelmas daisies.”
“What’s a Michaelmas daisy?”
Ellen blinked up at her. “That’s weird,” she said. “They’re asters; kind of a dusty blue. But Princess Ellen calls them Michaelmas daisies. Michael-mass,” she added. “Not micklemus , which is how we say it.”
“What’s Michaelmas?”
“The feast of the archangel Michael,” said Ellen.
“Do they have archangels here?”
Celia came over to fetch the kettle, and Ellen said to her, “What’s Michaelmas?”
“September twenty-ninth,” said Celia, “is Michaelmas’s Day. ’Tis a feast of Heathwill Library; something to do with the end of the wizards’ wars.”
“Who’s Michaelmas, then?” said Laura.
“Prospero’s apprentice,” said Celia, simply.
“I can’t stand it,” said Ellen. “Michaelmas is a person?”
Celia smiled. “Some might dispute,” she said. “A walketh very like one. Of your courtesy, find me the jars of stew i’th’other pack.” She carried the kettle away to the fire.
Laura followed her. “What does Michaelmas’s name mean?”
“That Michael who hath been dismissed,” said Celia, straightening. “There were three named Michael on the Council of Nine when Heathwill Library was planned, wherefore they found other names for two of them.”
“Who dismissed the Michael who was dismissed?”
“Prospero. Ellen, the stew?”
Ellen leapt up with a start and began searching through the other bag. Laura, with several questions begging for resolution, chose at random, and said, “Who was Prospero?”
“Say not was,” said Celia. “He’s of the Council of nine that found Heathwill Library; a most formidable sorcerer once, and now the most terrifying of scholars.”
“Why’d he stop being a sorcerer?”
“A was of the Red School,” said Celia, accepting the earthenware pot Ellen handed her and beginning to pry off its wax seal. “And their tenets did lead him on to most dreadful acts; which, when he saw their issue, he did regret.”
“What acts?”
“A was Melanie’s eldest brother,” said Celia, rather shortly.
“Oh!” said Laura. He was one of the family that had killed a unicorn by treachery. Which was, of course, why he was alive still; the blood of a unicorn killed by treachery conferred immortality. Laura had always thought this a supremely stupid setup; it was one of the remnants of earlier games that Ted and Ruth had played before the rest of them were old enough, and they had insisted on retaining it. She wasn’t at all sure that she wanted to meet Prospero, no matter how regretful he was.
> People having finished their various tasks, they sat around the fire and ate their stew. Laura recognized it from dinner at High Castle the night before. She also knew, having helped Celia unpack for lunch, that there was not much of it in their baggage. She had seen quantities of dried fruit, little square cakes with oatmeal and raisins in them, dried meat, and a few long-keeping vegetables like onions and potatoes. They would not eat this well for most of the trip, unless somebody shot a rabbit or something. Laura didn’t care for this notion.
And shot it with what, anyway? Nobody had a bow. Archery did not seem to be much practiced at High Castle. But there were arrow slits all over the castle. Laura looked sideways at Patrick, planning to ask him to read this riddle for her, and then she figured it out herself. The arrow slits must have been put in before the Border Magic, when it was still possible that an enemy army might besiege High Castle.
Laura came out of her reverie with a jerk as Ellen passed her a squashed apple tart. There wouldn’t be more of those, either. Laura savored it while she could, and listened to the others.
“How long do you think it’s likely to rain?” said Patrick.
“I’d thought it had cleared sooner,” said Matthew.
“Claudia?” said Patrick.
Celia said, “’Twould be a petty persecution.”
“Maybe it’s just a warm-up act,” said Patrick.