by Andre Norton
“Loyal to the King of Babylon,” Nidintulugal guessed. “Loyal because they fear his demon army. Fear makes the conquering easy.”
“I thought demons were all made-up,” Shilo said. “The stuff of Stephen King stories and bad horror movies.”
“At least as real as dragons,” Ulbanu said. “More powerful than dragons because of their numbers and their intent.”
“Are they in my time, the demons?” Shilo didn’t want to think about such a hoard sweeping across the face of Wisconsin.
The dragon scratched a talon on the cave floor. “Hidden, like dragons are now. But far less in their numbers and strength if you are successful, Shilo. Never to be wholly destroyed, but they can be crippled.”
So she could save dragonkind and perhaps mankind by saving Ulbanu’s eggs.
“But what do your eggs have to do with all of these demons? I see demons ruining cities and killing people. I don’t see a single dragon or any of your eggs. Your eggs don’t hatch into demons, do they?”
“No.” The dragon let out a great sigh that gusted across the cavern and evaporated the sweat off Shilo. “My magic is not absolute, Shilo. I only know that my offspring will play a role in the coming catastrophe. And I know that only you have a chance to stop it. Only you, Child of Sigurd. My magic has divined that in all of the world, in all of the times, you are the one.”
Shilo stood and shook out her arms, still keeping her gaze on the image of the reborn city. “I’m fifteen years old.”
“And I am nearly fifteen hundred.”
The dragon’s age did not surprise Shilo.
“Look, I understand that you don’t want to swoop down on Babylon, reveal yourself and thereby let the world know dragons still exist. But I would think you’d risk all of that to stop all of this.” She stabbed a finger at the image. The scene had shifted once more, showing demons sweeping at the front of an army, heading to the east.
The chittering resumed.
The dragon sighed again, the force of the breath nearly knocking Shilo over. “I would risk all of that, Shilo, and more if I knew I would be successful. But I have divined the fate of a direct approach by me as a failure. The world will know of dragons, my eggs will be lost, and the demons will still be loosed. I would accomplish nothing good.”
Nidintulugal stepped up to Shilo’s side. He quivered, though not as pronounced as a few minutes earlier. He swallowed hard and looked up to stare into one of the dragon’s eyes. “How can this one girl succeed when a creature as powerful as yourself is destined to fail?” He shook his head to emphasize his disbelief. “This makes no sense to me.”
The cave floor trembled when the dragon growled. More stone dust filtered down, and a crack appeared at Nidintulugal’s feet.
“Because she is magic,” the dragon said. “Powerful, even though she does not realize to what extent. And above all of that, she is small.”
“Small?” Shilo raised her head from the image. “What’s small got to do with it?”
“My eggs are beneath the earth, Shilo, hidden from me and from men, in a horrid warren twisted by the foulest of men. Beneath Babylon. They are below a place beautiful and green.”
“Tunnels below the Hanging Gardens?”
“I do not know what men call the place. But my divinations show it to be the greenest land in all of Babylon. The tunnels below, though, are dark and hidden from my magical prying. Narrow and—”
“You’re saying that you’re too big to go get the eggs?”
“Shilo, do not ask why I cannot dig for them.”
Shilo was going to ask just that. “Because in doing that, you’d probably collapse something and break your eggs.”
“Yes.”
“Dragon eggs are fragile, huh?”
“All life is fragile,” the dragon returned.
Shilo sagged against Nidintulugal. “So I need to sneak into Babylon, which I can do because I have new clothes, find my way beneath the city, retrieve the eggs, and bring them back here?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, that’ll be a piece of cake.”
The dragon gave her a quizzical look.
“How heavy is one of these eggs?”
“You carried the bolt of cloth to the village.”
Shilo realized the trip to the village was a test. If she could carry the fabric to the village, she could carry a dragon egg.
“But there are four eggs.” Shilo was talking to herself now, and had leaned away from Nidintulugal. “Four trips from somewhere under Babylon. I’d have to get a wagon to get them out of the city. They have wagons, don’t they?” She remembered seeing one on the street. “Does the village down the hill have a wagon?” She could take that into Babylon. “Four trips.”
“You will be risking your life, Child of Sigurd. And you will need help.” The dragon looked at Nidintulugal.
A profound silence settled in the cave.
Deep in the hill, no sounds from outside could be heard. There was just the rhythmic breath of the dragon, echoing against the walls, its force stirring Shilo’s hair like a strong breeze.
“I will aid Shilo. It is the will of Shamash that—”
“Accepted, priest. But your help alone will not be enough,” Ulbanu interjected. “Four eggs, four people, four hearts and minds, four wills, four with courage.”
Four, Shilo thought, like the four dragons pictured on the lid of the puzzle box.
“More priests of Shamash?” Shilo looked to Nidintulugal.
“Perhaps.” He rubbed his chin and shifted forward on the balls of his feet. “They must be made to understand about dragons and the threat of demons. Priests would believe me.”
Unless they think you’re mad, Shilo thought. Then they’ll try to lock you up.
“Priests, they would stay silent on this matter if I asked them.”
“I guess it’s settled then,” Shilo said. “This is all pretty dangerous, Mission Impossible skullduggery, and no Tom Cruise in sight. But if I want to get home, I’ll give it a shot. We’ll sneak into the city and—”
“No.” Ulbanu had closed her eyes. “Priests of Shamash are not the answer. They believe in their god, but not in magic. They will think you a demon, Shilo, or touched by one. There is too much risk in approaching them. Besides, the temple is watched.”
“I did not believe in magic,” Nidintulugal whispered. Louder: “I will convince them, great dragon. I will find a way to reach the priests and—”
“There is another way.” The dragon’s lips quivered, sending ripples in the pool of saliva beneath her jaw. The image of a devastated land shattered, the chittering of demons receded, and the floor’s stony appearance returned. “I sense two others who will aid you, Shilo, priest. I call them even now, and they will come. You will soon find them in the courtyard.”
“In Babylon?” Shilo didn’t like the sound of this.
“Where you appeared in the city,” Ulbanu continued. “They believe in magic and dragons, and if you are convincing they will follow your instructions.”
“Wh-who?”
The dragon didn’t answer this, as she started humming, a dissonant tune that Shilo instinctively knew was some sort of spell. “Ulbanu, you said you’d teach me how to use my magic, you said—”
The humming continued for several moments more, growing louder and causing the cavern to shake.
Nidintulugal looked on wide-eyed, and Shilo wondered just how much of all of this he really believed. Spiderweb-fine cracks appeared in the cavern floor, and Shilo worried that the hill would come down on top of them. But then the humming stopped and the cavern settled. Ulbanu opened her eyes.
“You gained things in the village, Shilo. Bring them.”
Shilo decided against repeating the question, and retreated to the other chamber and brought in the net bag. She started to pull out the clothes, looking for a dry spot on the cavern floor to place them.
“No, the nuts.”
“Nuts?” How did the dragon know what s
he’d traded for? She shook her head; the dragon seemed to know a lot about a lot of things. She reached for the bag of nuts.
“Sit.”
Shilo likened herself to a dog in obedience school, but complied.
“The nuts…”
Shilo put them in her hands, turning them over, feeling the smoothness of some of the shells, and the wrinkled roughness of others. “I need a better disguise than just the clothes, don’t I, Ulbanu?”
“Yes.” The dragon seemed pleased that Shilo comprehended the point of this lesson.
“But how? What’s nuts got to do with—” Sherwood Forest! Shilo thought. She’d read a story about Robin Hood and his Merry Men, and how one of them needed a disguise and so made a dye from walnut shells. “I need to have darker skin, don’t I?”
“As will your new companions,” the dragon said.
“How can I—” Shilo juggled the nuts so she could take off all of her rings. Then she cupped the nuts close to her, stared at them, and concentrated. Like ice cubes, they melted in her hands and turned into a paste that she rubbed on her arms and face and legs and feet. There was just enough to cover her entirely, and when she was done she looked into one of the pools of saliva, using it as a mirror. “Wow. It worked.”
“Your magic, Shilo, is to manipulate things. You altered the nuts because you willed it. Use your newfound skill well.”
“Wow,” she said again. She replaced her rings, careful not to spread the nut dye on them.
Nidintulugal gaped at her, his gaze alternating from her hands to her face, his lips moving, but no sound coming out.
“But my hair. I don’t think nut shells will work on that.”
Nidintulugal shook his head to clear his senses and retrieved Shilo’s net bag. He fumbled with it for a few moments, then cinched the tie cord and placed it on Shilo’s head like an odd-looking hat. It was similar to some of the head coverings she’d seen women in Babylon wear.
“Your companions come, Shilo, priest. Though the journey will take most of a day, it would be best that you be in the courtyard to meet them. Pity if they would draw the attention of Babylon’s guards.”
Shilo selected the brown robe and put it on. No time for that bath, she glumly decided.
Wouldn’t want one now anyway; it would only wash off her new skin. For a brief moment she thought about the tennis shoes, much more comfortable than these sandals. She grabbed up her old robe, and the other one she’d traded for in the village. She figured she might need them for the two others the dragon had summoned.
“I don’t suppose my magic will let me fly or run really fast to whisk us back to Babylon?”
Ulbanu gave a disconcerted sigh. “Your magic, Shilo—”
“—allows me to manipulate materials. I know.” She offered the dragon a weak smile.
“Wish me luck, huh?”
“I wish you well,” the dragon returned.
* * *
It was still dark when they reached the village, though the sky was lightening ever so faintly in the east.
“I will need something different to wear,” Nidintulugal said. “A … disguise … as you name it. And you will need more nuts for the people we are to meet in the courtyard.”
On the trip down he’d asked her how she would notice the two who would help them. Shilo merely raised her eyebrows and gave him a “how do you think” look.
“They will look out of place,” Nidintulugal said to himself.
“Like a fish pedaling a bicycle.”
It was his turn to raise his eyebrows.
Shilo had expected him to find the village elder or mayor, the old gentleman who’d tended to her feet. Instead, he crept around to the eastern edge of the village, plucked a man’s robe off a line, reached in through a few windows to gather bowls of nuts, and then scuttled to what passed for a barn. Every few minutes he held his finger to his lip to make sure Shilo stayed quiet. Like I’m going to make a racket now, she thought.
Inside the barn he pointed to a four-wheeled wagon and a large, two-wheeled cart. He selected the latter, which looked sturdier and less worn, and pulled it outside, cringing when the wheels creaked as they moved. He did his best to silently hitch it to an ox, and to put the small bowls of nuts in it. The village had one ox and a big horse. Shilo had gestured to the horse, but he shook his head and led the ox through a pair of buildings and down the widest village street. A few people were stirring; hushed conversations and the clanking of pots drifted out of windows. Shilo took off a pair of her silver earrings and placed them on the windowsill of one of the homes where he’d appropriated the nuts. She breathed a sigh of relief that no one had stopped them.
He turned the ox north and started in that direction away from the village. Shilo tugged on his belt.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
Nidintulugal gestured with his head toward the village. “Gehud watches us out his front door. And Nurthar saw us out his window. Let them think we go to the north.”
Shilo fell in beside him, deciding not to stay with this ruse long. She didn’t have to. As soon as they’d passed out of sight of the village, by following a curve in the road, Nidintulugal put on the borrowed robe, and took the ox off the road and started southwest.
The land sloped down, and so they would not be spotted by any villagers—unless they came out onto the road and purposely looked in this direction. A mile later, they made their way through tall grass, the stalks so high it hid them at times.
“Now you have me confused, Nidin.” Shilo reached over and scratched at the ox’s neck.
She was walking on the opposite side of the ox now, talking across it to Nidintulugal.
“You stole that robe and this cart, this ox, bowls of nuts. Stole them.” She had put her two spare robes in the cart, glad to have her hands free.
“Borrowed them, Shilo.”
“Not very priestly, whatever you want to call it. And there’s no borrowing—the nuts.”
Her brow furrowed, and she opened her mouth to press the matter.
“I will return these things, Shilo, if I am able. And pay them for the nuts.”
“Able?”
“If demons become involved, I … we … may not live through this. But if we do, I will return these things and compensate the people for their use.” Nidintulugal’s face was lined with worry. “I could not simply ask to use these things, though my friends in that place would have allowed it. They would have wanted to know what I needed these things for.”
“And a priest of Shamash does not lie.”
“I would have told them, yes. Though I would not have mentioned the dragon.”
“Just dragon eggs.”
“Eggs. Just eggs.”
Shilo smiled at that. While the priest wouldn’t lie, he wouldn’t necessarily tell the complete truth. “You would make a good politician in my time, Nidin.”
“I do not understand the word. Politician.”
“That’s all right. I don’t understand politicians either.”
The banter ended, Nidintulugal tugged the ox into a reasonably fast pace. Shilo thought the horse would have been the better option, but as she watched the animal’s muscles ripple in the growing light, she realized the ox was stronger, maybe younger, and should have little trouble pulling a cart filled with four heavy dragon eggs. They could have traveled faster without the ox and cart, but then they would have to deal with acquiring something similar in Babylon. Perhaps Nidintulugal didn’t have anyone to borrow these things from in the city, Shilo thought.
They traveled through what was left of the night, staying off the road and not seeing the squad of guards that marched toward the village, led by the Hand of the Hand.
17
Ibinghal’s Disruption
Ekurzakir stood before the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, face glowing with pride. He’d presented the items on the shopping list, which made Arshaka smile. Ekurzakir had not seen Arshaka smile in many days, and so he decided to reveal the rest
of his information, rather than save it—to make his employer supremely pleased.
“There are people in this city, Hand of Nebuchadnezzar, who deal in rumors and secrets.”
Arshaka nodded as he sniffed the special ink. “And they gave some of their secrets to you.” It was not a question.
“Yes, Hand.”
Arshaka looked up and waited. He did not press Ekurzakir. His expression admitted that Ekurzakir had something promising to disclose and would relish the telling.
“The girl traveled to a village north of here, a place of farmers and shepherds.”
“Ibinghal?”
“Yes. I do not know if she is still there, but I have assembled a dozen guards to accompany me. If she is hiding in Ibinghal, we will take her and bring her back to the city. If she is not there, we will discover where she is.”
Arshaka was obviously pleased and disturbed by the news.
“While I want this girl, Ekurzakir, I wanted as few as possible involved in her capture. One dozen guards … I would have chosen three or four of my closest men. Still, my men have come up empty-handed so far.” King Nebuchadnezzar would be away for weeks, and had left Babylon in Arshaka’s more than capable hands. On his return, the king might learn nothing of the girl, and certainly nothing of Arshaka’s plan. “Until it is too late.”
“Your pardon, Hand of Nebuchadnezzar?”
“Nothing, Ekurzakir. You brighten my day with this information.”
Ekurzakir did not try to hide his smile.
“I was going to keep this information to myself for a time,” he admitted. “I wished to come by the girl and bring her here to surprise you.”
“Surprises are not always good.” Arshaka’s eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly. “Better that you told me. Better that you keep no secrets, Ekurzakir.”
“Yes, Hand of Nebuchadnezzar. By your will, I go to lead the men to the village of Ibinghal.”
“You have my leave,” Arshaka said. He reached out and clamped his hand on Ekurzakir’s shoulder, applying a little pressure, which could be taken either as friendship or a warning. Arshaka meant it as both. “Hurry, and be successful.”