by Wayland Drew
Gradually the camp settled. The talk grew desultory, and one by one, men drifted back to their sleeping-robes, leaving only a yawning Henery on watch a little distance from the fire. Surreptitiously Galen tucked the amulet inside his shirt, drew his sheepskin over himself, and fell asleep watching the last of the embers. He had never in his life been so tired, or so full of anticipation.
Hodge fell asleep chuckling, one hand on the leather packet into which he had gathered the ashes from the island crematorium.
Valerian was the last to go to bed and the last to sleep. Frightening images, images of spreading wings, rose out of the fire. Nor did they cease when Valerian’s eyes closed and sleep approached; indeed, they grew more intense and more terrifying. As bad as the awful waking dreams themselves was the knowledge that for some unfortunate woman of Urland, these images had been, that very afternoon, no mere nightmare but a terrible, final horror. Despite all generous intentions, Valerian uttered a small prayer to Weird, god of fate and labyrinthine circumstance, that the victim may have come from one of the northern villages of Urland, from Turnratchit, or Verymere, or Nudd, and that she was not from Swanscombe, not someone that Valerian knew and loved. And yet, even as Valerian slipped into a troubled sleep, it was the villagers of Swanscombe, sickened by shame and loss, who sat beside their hearths that night.
CHAPTER FIVE
When her mother asked her, crying piteously, whether she had had a happy life, Melissa Plowman could not reply. She supposed that she had been happy. Like all other girls in Swanscombe village, she had been allowed to play much more than she had been made to work, and she recalled a childhood wrapped in love and laughter. Even the labor of harvesting, or thatching, or milking, or tending to the bees, or gathering the eggs, or any of the various tasks around the homestead, even those were not onerous, for she had learned early the chants and songs and games and gossiping that helped work time to pass quickly. So she supposed, remembering all the fun, that she had been happy.
But she knew from travelers—who never tarried long in Urland—and from some of the hushed stories told by the fire, that children lived differently elsewhere. In not every village were the equinoxes greeted with such dread and passed with such mourning. In not every village did girls weep on their thirteenth birthday, or did fathers lie and pathetically attempt to forge and alter documents that clearly showed their daughters had come of age, or to bribe the dark-clad officials who kept the roles. In not every village were there twice as many boys as girls. And in not every village was one’s whole childhood overshadowed by the passing of gigantic wings, wings whose approach brought such a hush of fear to the village that no one screamed, no one even breathed, and work and play ceased altogether. Although the presence in the hillside cave in the Blight was one that she had grown up with, accepted as a fact of life as inexorable as nightfall or moonrise, still she knew that her life could have been lived without it, had she been born elsewhere, and she knew she would have been happier then.
So, even while attempting to comfort her mother by saying that, yes, she had had a wonderful seventeen years, she understood completely that such things all were relative.
The question was more complex even than that; for, looking at the matter very calmly as she now did, alone in the sleeping loft, surprising even herself with her lack of fear, she recognized that there were pleasures, and that happiness contained the grains of sorrow which in turn—the world evolving ironically as it did—ultimately overwhelmed that which had engendered them.
The Lottery, for example.
She had hated and dreaded the Lottery for over four years—eight lotteries—with a fear that she shared with all the other women, a fear that was a stolid part of Urland womanhood, a fear that would begin to creep over her like a palpable, cold creature as the fated days drew near, until at last she felt as if her legs would not move, and she had to be half carried, walking stick-legged, to the Gathering where the lots were cast. And yet, she was not perverse but she had long since admitted to herself that within the terror was a delight, a delight that grew and grew during the swooning moments of the draw until, when the name on the lot was read, it burst into joy that found expression in a cry of the purest relief and ecstasy. Almost immediately, with thought and sympathy, the cry would be mingled with sorrow for the other creature, the friend, who would now die and die most horribly for the land. But the fact that the first reaction in the midst of that horror had been joy caused Melissa, an intelligent child, to think. The other girls must have felt very much the same—a fact that she quickly confirmed with friends when they talked as girls do, late into the night. She confirmed also that that surge of joy was the single most powerful emotion which any of her friends had ever felt; and, since that was the case, she wondered to herself—never asking, for the thought really was unspeakable: How much of the dragon-centered activity was designed to provide that surge? Could it be that the dragon, finally, was only a device? Could it be that on some profound level the residents of Urland, despite their protestations to the contrary, did not really wish to rid themselves of Vermithrax?
She did not know. It was a mystery. Certainly her mother’s tears, and the tears of her friends, were real enough.
Certainly the distant creaking of the tumbril, which caused her father to wrap pathetically helpless arms about her, was real enough. She shuddered, but she remained extraordinarily calm; she had been calm ever since that morning . . .
Ever since she had shared with all the others of the town the great hush as King Casiodorus mounted the stone dais, as she had seen him do eight times before, and looked upon his subjects with a gaze of profound sorrow and pity. Old Horsrick, Chamberlain Res Dracorum, had mounted the dais with the king, as usual, and had raised his right arm so that the loose sleeve fell away from it down to the shoulder, and then slowly had lowered the bared arm into the bowl, closing his eyes as he did so. This time, however, had been different. Melissa had felt no purging swirl of relief as the name was read, for she knew even before Horsrick drew out the chosen shard and turned it over that the name was hers.
“Melissa Plowman!”
She had neither screamed nor fainted as others had done. The fear had drained away to be replaced by a pale relief that at last it was over, all the suspense and the waiting; the day for which she had been unconsciously trained since infancy had arrived. She stood very still, aware of being surrounded by the cries she knew so well, and she felt as if she had no body at all. Then, incredibly, she laughed. It was a thing no one ever did in the presence of the king, and that no one had ever done before at a Gathering; and although she would be forgiven under the circumstances, nevertheless those nearby joined her parents in striving to calm her and silence her. She would not be silenced, for in that instant she had glimpsed a profound absurdity, of which Weird himself was only a tiny part . . .
There were hands touching her, guiding her, soothing, calming her. And at length, calm, she was taken home for her last hours, those hours she had always wondered about, so awful she thought they must have been for the other Chosen she had known—like being with guests who had overstayed their welcome, when there was nothing left to say. Of course, her mother wept uncontrollably and Melissa soothed her, but it seemed to her that the sorrow and frustration of her father were even more pitiful—the impotence of a strong man in the grip of powers beyond his comprehension, wandering along the household paths that he knew well, touching the tools that had grown from long use to the shape of his hands. He was a carpenter; he had made all the furnishings in their dwelling and in half the dwellings of the village. A tree he understood. Grains and grooves, dowels, bevels and tenons, all these he understood and fashioned with an honest craftsman’s eyes and hands; but what was happening to his daughter he did not understand and had never understood. He roamed bewildered, groaning, and Melissa finally had to fetch him from the window of the workshop and draw him down on the settle beside her, so that they could sit for a time as they had done during the fir
elit evenings of her childhood. This time, however, she told the stories. She told all the amusing and wonderful stories that she could recall from her childhood. She spoke for over an hour, and several times they laughed together before they lapsed into silence and left each alone with private thoughts and memories, staring into the fire.
“Shall I . . . shall I fetch Brother Jacopus?” her father asked at last.
“Why?”
“Why, to bring the Christians’ message. Perhaps if you believed, even now . . .”
“That death is not death? That it is possible to live forever? Do you believe that, Father?”
“Well, no, but there is a comfort in it.”
“A childish comfort, to be sure. No, let us keep our dignity and let us call things by their names. It will be easier to do that. Leave the illusions to those who need them.”
“I keep hoping,” her mother said, “that the men—Valerian and Greil and Malkin and the others—will come back in time, and that they will have found the great necromancer, and that he will destroy the creature before . . . or that the Thing has died in its cave since the autumn equinox.” Melissa did not reply. She had resigned herself so totally to the Giving that her resignation had almost become resolve, and she had been able to refuse the traditional, calming potion that the apothecary, Offa, had mixed for her. But her mother’s mention of Valerian had sent her off on a reverie of her own. Valerian had been the one love of her life. She had known many boys, of course, and grown with them, romping and intimate, through the anarchic turbulence of childhood; but Valerian she grew to admire more than all the others. Speed, grace, and a watchful animal reserve had set Valerian apart. Together they had grown, shared hopes and fears, success and disappointment, and in all their adventures Valerian had been the leader. It was Valerian who proposed that they climb the great oak outside the wall of Morgenthorme, in order to catch a glimpse of the Princess Elspeth—who was never allowed to mix with the other children—playing with her white pony and her white rabbits in the garden. It was Valerian who proposed, although they were only nine at the time and forbidden by the Codex Dracorum from witnessing a Lottery, that they observe the ritual by hiding among the boulders in the hills. And it was Valerian who had led her, although she had been weak with terror, across the Blight and up the very slope that led to the mouth of the cave, charred by dragon’s breath and acrid with the stink of dragon. Just as Valerian had promised, each of them had found what they had come for—a perfect dragon scale wedged amidst the rocks and washed and bleached clean by countless rains and suns. Valerian had whispered that these were magical and would give magic protection from Vermithrax, since each of them now controlled that much of the dragon itself; but when Melissa had proudly taken her scale home, her mother had screamed in terror, her father had blanched and drawn back, and together they had insisted that it be destroyed. They had thrown it into the fire but it had not burned; instead, it had fed the flames in a strange and baneful way, causing them to curve up and out from its edges in a hissing cauldron in which all had watched visions, horrible and fascinating, until the scale suddenly and without any warning had evanesced, and the unearthly radiance had vanished. Later, Melissa learned that Valerian’s father, Simon, had taken Valerian’s scale in his blacksmith’s tongs and had hurled it as far as he could into the Swanscombe River that flowed beside the forge, and that it had exploded on contact with the water, like the substance she had once seen a one-armed traveling necromancer use, leaving a dome-topped cloud of spray and smoke. So both of the scales, treated violently, had responded in kind, although Melissa had thought it strange that, when she had actually held the object—like the wing of a giant fly, it was—she had sensed neither good nor evil emanating from it, but only profound antiquity. It was the same sensation she had felt once as a very small child when, while playing on the riverbank, she had kicked out a curiously shaped piece of stone which her father had told her had been made by people who had lived at the village site so long before, so long even before the Britons whom Melissa’s Saxon forebears had driven away, that no one knew who they had been.
Valerian. Melissa smiled. Valerian had been so central in her life for so long, at once so important and so distant in Valerian’s own curious way, and she had always felt so protected by Valerian’s decisiveness and ebullient optimism, that she had grown to share her parents’ assumption that their friendship would develop into marriage. She had assumed this, quite without reason and, she realized in retrospect, quite without any indications from Valerian. When she had discovered Valerian’s secret, less than a year ago, by chance, swimming in the pool beneath the falls, she had been both horrified and fascinated. Gradually, with the passing months, she had learned to see the absurdity and the pathos in the situation and she had grown up enough to laugh, for she had realized that despite all Valerian’s bravado, it was she, Melissa, who had finally been the braver of the two. And yet, after everything, there had been between her and Valerian more than friendship, of that she was certain; and she would carry Valerian’s secret to . . .
“There won’t even be a grave!” her mother wailed suddenly. “There won’t be a place to put flowers! There won’t be . . . anything!”
“But there will,” Melissa said quickly. “There always will be. I’ll always be here. In everything. In the wind, and the water, and the flowers themselves. And . . . and in the children. Remember! Please!”
The creaking of the tumbril had been drawing closer; as Melissa finished speaking, it stopped outside the doorway. Melissa’s father started up from his seat wide-eyed as if, now that the ominous sound had ceased, he heard it for the first time. A horse stamped and snorted beyond the door. Someone knocked gently. “Time,” a voice said.
“Horsrick!” Plowman looked wildly around, as if for a weapon, but Melissa embraced first him then her mother. “It’s all right,” she said. “Don’t come.” She opened the door.
Horsrick, Chamberlain Res Dracorum of Urland, awaited her. He seemed at first glance a twin of Tyrian—the same black-dyed woolen jerkin, the same black-tanned leather doublet, studded helm, and greaves. On his breast flamed the same crimson dragon. The cut of his moustache and beard mimicked Tyrian’s. But there was an essential difference between them—Horsrick was clearly a man whose heart was not in his work, at least this part of it. His demeanor, his posture, his gestures—all were apologetic. All said more plainly than any possible words, “I’m dreadfully sorry that we’re both mixed up in this, that it has to be this way. I wish there were something I could do, but, you see, I’m a victim too.”
“Step in, please,” he said, indicating the little cart.
“I think I’d rather walk, Horsrick.”
Concern spread on the man’s face. “Oh, but you can’t, Miss Melissa. It’s never been done, you see. It’s always been that the tumbril cart took the Chosen at her door, and left her only in the Blight—beg pardon, Melissa—and that her foot never touched ground between that place and this. It’s in the laws and the Codex Dracorum, and neither you nor I can change it, don’t you see?”
“All right.” She stepped in and, when Horsrick came shuffling toward her, unwinding a strip of rawhide, held out her crossed wrists. “And I suppose I must be tied, too?”
“Oh yes, Miss. It’s there plain as can be in the records and in the Codex: ‘. . . to be bound with rawhide three feet in length, as it was at the beginning, and wound three times in either direction, cruciform . . .’ ” He fumbled at the lacings. “Not too tight, is it?”
“Repent!” The reedy voice arose some distance behind her, and for the first time Melissa was aware of the silent crowd following. She had known, of course, that the villagers would come—they always did—but she simply had not noticed. “Repent your sins, Melissa, and be saved! It is not too late!” A fist rose up from the back, and Melissa glimpsed a sparse head of sandy hair.
“Be quiet, Jacopus!” Horsrick paused in his work and glowered at the man who had called out. “Get down.
Scandalous!” he muttered to Melissa. “The way these Christians behave! Presumptuous! No respect for tradition and proper ritual, none at all! Well, there we are. Giddup, Nerf!”
Prodded, the old piebald mare jerked into motion, and the creaking of the tumbril recommenced. The procession moved forward with a single, long sloughing sigh, like the breath from a dying creature. Here and there in the tail of people behind the cart there appeared brightly painted placards bearing dragon insignia, and banners, and when the procession had reached the rise at the village’s edge, a child’s dragon-shaped kite struggled upwards. The whole affair had a festive atmosphere. Had it not been for the scraggly figure of Jacopus, who had detached himself from the rest of the crowd and was scampering along the hillside, shouting something about setting a candle to the Devil, it would have seemed like the Celebration of the May. Someone had even woven a little garland of wildfiowers for Melissa, and she wore it like a trailing crown.
The low road which they followed crossed Swanscombe bridge and wound northeastward about half a league to the edge of the Blight. As they approached the place from which people watched the Givings, Melissa saw that the king’s party had preceded them. Unlike his father and his grandfather before him, Casiodorus always attended the Givings, although no one could tell what he thought or whether he knew anything about the Chosen. He was an aloof ruler, unlike his father, who had been fond of the village girls, and his grandfather, who had been fond both of the girls and the Swanscombe mead. A stark white and golden figure, Casiodorus stood with his retinue at the edge of the greensward, watching the procession approach. With him was his rather simpleminded new queen, Nevera, whom he had found among the hillfolk somewhere behind the mountains and who smilingly applauded everyone and everything—in fact, she was already applauding, Melissa could see—and the stunningly beautiful but rather absentminded Princess Elspeth, who would play with nothing except white animals. Also with the king were several retainers, advisers and functionaries, although not—to Melissa’s relief for she hated the man—Tyrian. As the procession wound past the knoll on which the royal party stood, Casiodorus joined the rest in bowing deeply to her. Melissa was on the point of returning the bow from long habit when she was halted by Horsrick’s whisper: “No, no, you must not, according to the ritual! The first Chosen did not bow, nor must you! It is written in the Codex: ‘. . . the Chosen is the queen of Uroborus, the Great and Perfect Worm, and raised above all earthly rulers; and the Chosen is the savior of her people, and honored over all . . .’ ”