The Whim of the Dragon

by PAMELA DEAN

  “Is that my sword?” said Ted.

  Randolph bent briefly. “I’ve laid the hilt ready to thy hand,” he said.

  “Or my foot,” said Ted.

  “Hence the blade is under the bed,” said Randolph. He walked to the other side, laid his own sword down, and got into bed.

  “Give you quiet rest,” he said.

  “And nice, innocuous dreams,” said Ted. “Randolph? What do you think Andrew will do?”

  “Good night,” said Randolph.

  Ted didn’t have one. He dreamed disjointedly of people with flames in their eyes, red or yellow or blue, who spoke him fair and hugged him warmly and turned in his arms to adders and asps, to flames that burned fast, to doves that beat their wings in his face and swans that pecked him. Last of all came the fresh-faced girl, who, when he smiled and kept his distance from her, turned appallingly into Margaret, Celia’s daughter, and asked him in the most prosaic possible manner if he would play the part of the cat for her, for she had been overtaken with sickness. Ted refused politely, whereupon she smiled, Margaret’s own bright mocking smile; and he saw in her eyes, where no flame stood, the little image of what she was looking at; and it was not his own familiar unprepossessing figure, but a cat.

  Ted jerked upright. The whole bed was bathed in moonlight and he had gotten himself tangled in the blankets. He began to set them to rights softly, so as not to wake Randolph, and saw then that Randolph lay staring open-eyed at the dark ceiling. He turned his head and took the edge of the misplaced blanket Ted held out to him, but he did not speak.

  The Dragon King held his audiences in the formal garden, before breakfast. The grass here was still green, and so were the dark, red-veined leaves of the little ornamental trees. The roses were everywhere, the smell of them heavy on air already warmer than a fall afternoon would be in the Hidden Land.

  The Dragon King looked like his daughter; or at least, the guise he had chosen, rosy-skinned, yellow-haired, quick-handed, and young for what he was doing, resembled hers strongly. He had a very deep voice. He sat on a raised platform that looked as if it were made of teak and was carved in closely packed shapes of animals and trees. His chair was silver. The people awaiting audience had carved chairs with silk cushions. The embassy of the Hidden Land sat, tense and sleepy and hungry, not speaking to one another, for about fifteen minutes while the Dragon King dealt incomprehensibly with a delegation from the Outer Isles, come to sell stone, and with two people who had some business to do with lions. Then the fresh-faced girl beckoned to them. Ted, Randolph, and Andrew walked over the long strip of carpet laid on the grass to where the Dragon King awaited them.

  Randolph, having received permission to speak for his King, who was young and but newly come to his eminence, was allowed to get all the way through his speech. Ted admired it. In the most flattering and mellifluous terms imaginable, it called the Dragon King an unprincipled meddler from no other motive than malice, and required him to desist or he would be sorry for it. It also required payment of damages for the waste of lives and property attendant on the late war.

  The Dragon King heard it all, smiling. He did not deny the charges; he did not, either, cloak his answer in the same flowery terms so that he would sound, superficially, as if he were admitting nothing. “I offer you in compensation for your wrongs,” he said, “the most precious thing in my power: the hand of my daughter in marriage.”

  Ted stared at Andrew; but Andrew had merely allowed mild interest to overtake the bland expression he had been wearing since he got up. It was impossible to tell if he had expected this, let alone engineered it.

  Ted looked at Randolph, in case he was, God help him, supposed to answer this offer himself. Randolph only regarded the Dragon King thoughtfully, and let a good long silence develop before he answered. “That is a most generous offering,” he said; and actually made his best bow in the direction of the fresh-faced girl, who did him a courtesy in return. “I do regret exceedingly that King Edward is betrothed already, and neither can nor will give offense in that quarter.”

  Ted was afraid to look at Andrew. The Dragon King allowed his own silence to develop. He said at last, mildly, “Might that quarter be otherwise satisfied? I have a son.”

  Ted felt his jaw dropping, and quickly clamped his mouth shut. Was this some kind of joke?

  Andrew said, “The King’s betrothed is here, your grace.”

  “Let her come forward,” said the Dragon King, agreeably.

  Ted jerked, and felt Randolph’s hand on his arm, very lightly. Then Randolph turned and walked back along the red carpet, past the brightly dressed people in their carved chairs, to where Ruth sat petrified in the midst of her traveling companions, and held out his hand to her. Ruth had put on one of Lady Ruth’s white dresses, a gauzy thing that didn’t show creases. It was better suited to this weather than the layered silks and velvets everybody else was wearing. She was whiter than the dress; but when she took Randolph’s hand and stood up, the red mounted in her face until she looked as she had three summers ago, when she won their influenza competition with a temperature of a hundred and four.

  She and Randolph walked back up the strip of carpet, and Ted and Andrew fell aside for them.

  “What say you, lady?” said the Dragon King.

  “I cry you mercy,” said Ruth in an admirably steady and carrying voice. “It grieves me to refuse your splendiferous offer. But my heart is given already.”

  Oh clever Ruth, thought Ted.

  “Is it, lady?” said Andrew. “And to whom? Not to your King, to your betrothed, is that not so?”

  “It is given,” said Ruth, “what matter where? Why should I insult the son of the Dragon King with an empty betrothal?”

  “There is no insult,” said the Dragon King, equably. “A marriage of policy likes us well. He’s richly dowered; and how in conscience could we make war on any country wherein he lived and was happy?”

  Ruth stood dumb; she was out of her depth, and Ted couldn’t blame her. He had the horrible feeling that the Dragon King was not playing a part; that his understanding of marriage and giving of hearts was extremely faulty, and that he truly thought, making this monstrous offer, that he was offering just, even liberal recompense.

  “What saith the King of the Hidden Land?” said Andrew.

  Ted looked at Randolph, who returned him a steady gaze of which Ted could make nothing, and who did not offer to answer for him. Ted assembled what courage he had, and addressed the young, benign face of the Dragon King. “I am sorry,” he said. “But I think it would be a greater wrong than that you so liberally seek to recompense, to break up these old agreements and shatter all the fabric of policy they uphold in our country. Nor could we be easy having wrested from you the fairest flower of your land. Some more modest payment, surely, would serve better, as is commonly given after war.”

  The Dragon King still looked benign, but as if he were turning this speech over in his mind to see what it was made of.

  Andrew said, “There is no fabric of policy. These are lies. Lord Randolph is—”

  “Andrew,” said Randolph, softly, as if he were asking him, under the hum of dinner conversation, to pass the salt, “hold your tongue.”

  “I will not so,” said Andrew. He addressed the Dragon King, on whose unclouded countenance a shadow of trouble was appearing. “My lord. It’s time for plain speaking. These men do fling your offer in your face because they are most—”

  Randolph whipped the sword from its sheath at his side and slammed the flat of it across Andrew’s chest. “One of us,” he said, “will die ere the next words leave thy mouth.”

  In fact, Andrew could probably have blurted out a few words before Randolph killed him; but Ted saw from the reaction around him that this was not an extemporaneous remark, but the beginning of a ritual challenge. He didn’t see why Andrew should choose to abide by it when he was willing to flout any other convention that hindered him; but Andrew stood still, his face flaming and his
eyes burning into Randolph’s, while all around them people got out of their chairs and moved them back and created a wide open space, dotted with a few rose trees, for their arena.

  “I cry you mercy, lord King,” said Randolph, without looking around, “that these our private woes should come to their conclusion in the realm of your pleasures.”

  “All may yet be very well,” said the Dragon King, placidly.

  Ted turned slowly and stared at him; Ruth was doing the same. Randolph, however, disengaged his look from Andrew’s and turned it on Ted. “Do you remember those words,” he said.

  “Now wait,” said Ted, “just a—”

  But the daughter of the Dragon King touched Andrew on the shoulder, and both Andrew and Randolph followed her to the center of the open space. All the brightly dressed people crowded around in a circle, like the audience at some open-air juggling act. Ted saw the alarmed faces of Stephen and Julian, with Dittany shaking her head behind them and Jerome looking furious; but none of them, it was clear, proposed to do anything except watch. The Dragon King joined the crowd. Whether from respect, scorn, or suspicion, nobody stood closer than a few feet to Ted and Ruth.

  Andrew drew his own sword. He and Randolph saluted first the Dragon King and then each other. The fresh-faced girl held out a short sword of her own, over which they crossed theirs. She removed her sword with a hiss of metal, and Andrew and Randolph began to fight.

  Andrew was amazingly good. Ted doubted that he was as good as Randolph; but of course, Randolph was not going to do his best. He was going to give them a good show to save Andrew’s face, and then he was going to let Andrew kill him. William had told him to hold his tongue, so he would hold his tongue; but both his natural inclinations and his bargain with the Lords of the Dead had determined him to die. Ted could see it in his face.

  “Ruth, we’ve got to do something,” he said, very quietly.

  “He wouldn’t,” said Ruth, who had clearly come to the same conclusion Ted had and was now rejecting it. “He wouldn’t leave us in a mess like this.”

  “I’m not prepared to take the risk. This has got to stop. Besides, I don’t want him killing Andrew either, just to keep our secret. Or for any other reason. I’ll introduce some due process into this place if I—Die for it,” finished Edward. Ted let his breath out.

  “Good point,” said Ruth. “Which of them do you want to tackle? If we stop Andrew, Randolph will stop.”

  “You can’t just stop him,” said Ted, “you’ve got to shut him up long enough for Randolph to retrieve the situation.”

  “All right,” said Ruth, “I’ll go for Andrew; he’s not very big.”

  This is crazy, thought Ted. “I,” he said firmly, “will distract Andrew so you can get near him, and then grab Randolph.”

  To a point, this worked. Ted pushed his way through the intent crowd, awaited his moment, ran out into the open space, and smashed his own sword, the one he had found in the armory of High Castle, which fit into his hand as one piece of a jigsaw puzzle fits into its neighbor, down on the momentarily crossed swords of Randolph and Andrew. Andrew disengaged at once, and turned on him. A pair of gauze-clad arms wrenched Andrew’s arms behind. Ruth wasn’t strong enough to stop his mouth too, but he didn’t shout anything distinguishable while he struggled. She twisted at his wrist in a way Ted thought she must have gotten from Lady Ruth, and Andrew’s sword bounced on the grass.

  None of the Dragon King’s people seemed likely to interfere. Ted, breathing hard, looked at Randolph; and Randolph struck Ted’s drooping sword upward with his own and lunged at him.

  Ted’s sword, the sword he had dreamed of before he found it, the sword with which he fought a dream-bout with Randolph and made but one mistake, answered for him.

  This was not the cool, moon-silvered garden of his dream. He had neither moon nor sun in his eyes, but heard the roaring of the sea. The grass was not wet; it gave him good purchase. His feet and Randolph’s did not squeak on the Dragon King’s grass, but rushed and rustled. Their light blades did not hiss, but clanged as they came together, for this was neither a dream nor a session of practice. Ted’s eyes stung with sweat. The clear, bright light of this southern morning seemed to be dimming; the roar, maybe, was a storm coming up. The air in the rose garden was still. He had no leisure to look up.

  But he was fighting in the same way as he tied his shoes or rode a bicycle, easily and without thought. Somewhere in the back of his mind, the names of Randolph’s moves and his own were flicking by, too quick and faint to catch. The crowd was quiet. Suddenly Ted knew he had Randolph. He did something with his wrist that swept Randolph’s sword out of line; and lunged straight at Randolph with a force that should have put the sword through him. And froze, fully extended, his sword stretched foolishly in the empty air, three inches from Randolph.

  He saw on Randolph’s face not fear, not relief, but a sick disappointment. Randolph would go on standing there, and Ted could kill him. “Oh, no,” he said, the harsh air rasping in and out of his aching throat. “No way, my lord.” The crowd was making a great deal of noise now, but nobody had come out here to intervene. The roaring was louder.

  Have at him now, said Edward. He killed my father. Your father forgave him! thought Ted furiously, which was a mistake; it let Edward further in, and Edward knew this sword, this body, and his own mind.

  Dittany and Stephen were now holding on to Andrew. Ruth might not be strong enough to hold Edward, but he didn’t trust anybody else. “Ruth!” he shouted at the top of his voice. “Come here!” He and Edward lifted the sword, and then Ted wrenched himself around so that it pointed nowhere. Randolph circled and placed himself before it again. Ruth came up behind Ted. “Grab my arms,” gasped Ted. “Get the sword away.”

  Ruth promptly pinioned him as she had Andrew, but made no move to take the sword. “Are you crazy?” she said in his ear. She smelled of lavender.

  “It’s Edward,” panted Ted. “Say something soothing to him, can’t you?” Edward was silent now, but Ted was afraid to move the sword, lest it call him back.

  “Randolph,” said Ruth, “put away thy sword.”

  “No,” said Ted, “don’t make him disarm himself. Edward wants me to kill him.” Confusion now hath made his masterpiece, said Edward, faintly. The roaring grew louder.

  “Edward won’t kill an unarmed man,” said Ruth. Edward said nothing. “Randolph,” said Ruth, as if she were talking to Patrick. “Drop the sword.”

  Randolph, the sweat running down his flushed face, his hair dripping, and every fold of his doublet limp as old lettuce, shook his head. His gaze, however, lingered on Ruth.

  “Randolph,” said Ted, in desperation, “by your oath to me, put down that sword.”

  Randolph’s hand tightened visibly on the hilt of the sword; he brought it back into line; and then he curved up the corners of his mouth in the most mirthless smile Ted had ever seen, said, “I do obey you, both my lieges,” and dropped it.

  Ted uncramped his sword hand, and his own sword rolled on the grass with Randolph’s. Ruth let go of him, and he walked unsteadily up to Randolph, a long, ordered, meticulous rebuke rising in his breast. Randolph reached out a shaking hand, probably meant for his shoulder, and bumped it against his collarbone with no more force than that of a falling leaf. “Look behind you, my prince,” he said, in what was left of his voice.

  Ted turned, thinking that Andrew was going to make trouble again. He found Andrew’s gold velvet back, but Andrew was just standing there, as was everybody else. Ruth was making her way in their direction with great speed. Ten feet away stood what they were all looking at, a grimy and bedraggled group of people, every one of whom Ted knew; and a cluster of soberly dressed and nondescript people, whom he did not know, and a little apart from them, the man in red, and a unicorn, both unnaturally still.

  The man in red held a sword that shone green as bottle-glass. Melanie’s. Who had given him that? Ted took an incautious step forward, and one of his knees bu
ckled. Randolph caught him under the arm, and then they were both on their knees in the grass.

  “Just rest a moment,” said Ted. He almost had his breath back, but his legs felt rubbery, and Randolph’s arm was quivering. “Let them get settled down. Who are those weird people in brown? They look like a bunch of lawyers.”

  “Those are the Lords of the Dead,” said Randolph, “as they commonly appear in drawings.”

  “And the man in red?”

  “Him I know not.”

  “It’s the man from the stark house, the one who asked us the riddles. He’s not the Judge of the Dead, then?”

  “There are no drawings of the Judge of the Dead,” said Randolph.

  “What’s he doing with Melanie’s sword? What have they been up to?”

  “That is Chryse,” said Randolph. “Beside Fence.”

  Ted had been counting heads. “They’re all there,” he said. “All of ours.”

  He and Randolph leaned together in the grass and listened to the vivid voice of the Dragon King greeting the Lords of the Dead as his dear cousins, and asking to what he owed this pleasure. One of them, in a lovely, lilting voice, answered, “To Fence the Wizard, King’s Counselor of the Hidden Land.”

  “I might have known,” said Randolph. His voice was less raveled.

  Fence answered this assertion rather sharply, and in a louder voice than he usually employed. “Rather to the Princess Laura,” he said. “I pray you pardon me.” He pushed through the crowd and came swiftly across the trampled grass to Ted and Randolph, his tattered black robe floating behind him and no expression whatsoever on his round face. He dropped to his knees in front of them, squeezed Ted’s shoulder in a grip that hurt, and said to Randolph, “Laura saw you fighting in a vision.”