by Wayland Drew
On the whole, however, the summer passed blissfully, and Galen, who had no doubts that the dragon was dead, was preparing to spend at least the immediate future in this agreeable village and this pleasant land.
Then, one night late in August, when thunder rumbled in the distance, Simon suddenly raised his hand for silence. They had been working and talking together in the forge, and at Simon’s signal Galen stopped midsentence, for he heard what Simon had heard—the faint but unmistakable fall of horses’ hooves on Swanscombe bridge. It was too late for peaceful travelers to be on the road; it could only have been one of Tyrian’s patrols. Unbreathing, they listened while the hoofbeats approached and stopped outside the doorway of the forge. Again there were guttural chucklings; again the saddlery creaked ominously; again a black-clad figure darkened the doorway—Tyrian himself. “You. Galen. Come with me. Casiodorus wants you.”
“But . . .”
“Now!” said Tyrian. He was watching Simon.
Galen stood up. “I’ll get my pack.”
“As you are! Now.”
“I’m going with him,” Valerian said moving forward. “I’m going, too.”
Tyrian blocked the doorway, smiling. “When we want you,” he said, stabbing a finger at her, “we’ll come for you!”
Then, as quickly as they had come, the horsemen had gone, and Galen with them, their hoofbeats again echoing distantly on Swanscombe bridge and away on the road to Morgenthorme.
Grimly, Simon reached out and took his shocked daughter into his arms.
His Majesty Casiodorus, King and Lord Protector of Urland, Dragon Tamer and Appeaser of Spirits, was not an imposing figure. He was pale and scrawny. He had been afflicted since childhood with an asthmatic condition which caused him to breathe through his mouth, lending him an unfortunate and perpetually simpleminded expression. His eyes, too, were somewhat rheumy, and he had developed the stoop of very tall men who are constantly bending to hear. He was over six and a half feet, a height sufficient to silence supplicants, or to withdraw from tedious conversations simply by straightening his back and staring through a window of Morgenthorme across the moors to the distant hills. He rarely did this, however; unlike Tyrian, he was at heart a kindly man. He loved small dogs and roses and he loved his distracted daughter, Elspeth, with a passionate protectiveness. Sometimes, wandering in his garden, or stroking a puppy, or watching Elspeth’s childlike delight in one of her white animals, a surge of infantile joy would pass through Casiodorus so intense that he would straighten, suddenly grave, and say aloud, “I should never have been a king.”
Indeed, he never should have been. Saxon kingship owed little to succession, much to ability and presence; and had it not been for the extraordinary circumstances prevailing in Urland at the time of his father’s death, he never would have inherited the throne. He knew that fact well and would smile ironically, recalling it. But, of course, he meant something more human by the comment; he meant that there was in him a terrible softness incompatible with kingship. That very quality, which in other men might have been endearing, in a king was a weakness. Publicly, of course, he had sealed it over—or believed that he had. He had trained himself to make decisions quickly and to stand by them once made, right or wrong. He had also trained himself in the Steady Gaze, fixing courtiers and petitioners alike with a stare that was in stark contrast to the slack mouth beneath it. In many cases, this contrast in itself passed for intelligence or perspicuity. The most formidable protective device he had perfected, however, was his reliance on logic and directness.
He had always loved straight lines. The road leading to Morgenthorme was straight for the last half mile, the castle itself was a neat rectangle, and the corridors and staircases inside were as angular as possible. There were no turrets, no spiral staircases. The furniture, too, was rectangular and set squarely in its various rooms, each piece carefully aligned with the others.
Casiodorus had found that living among objects correctly placed, and in rooms correctly blocked off from one another, developed a sense of sequence, the key to clear thinking. Above all he prided himself on being a logical thinker. Reason—or if not reason, rationality—was the foundation on which he had built his rule. This is not to say that he could not improvise; on the contrary, he had shown that he could be as flexible and pragmatic as any other king if need be, but no matter what vagaries occurred in his policy or strategy, he was careful to keep alive in his court and in himself the sense of reason underlying all. This, he liked to believe, he had inherited from his great-great-grandfather, together with the centurion’s armor that he wore on ceremonial occasions, although it was slightly large for him and required felt pads on the shoulders. The Romans, he would remind Tyrian when that officer and his men had impulsively transgressed the bounds of decorum, were logical. Roman roads were straight; Roman battle plans predictable; Roman reasons for action sensible. They would not, for example, have shot an old man at random, only to discover later that he had been a powerless retainer, a flunky, and that the person who should have been apprehended was the boy. It would have been logical, he had pointed out, to have made inquiries, and he had dismissed Tyrian with a wave of his hand.
That incident had occurred six weeks earlier. For six weeks, he was torn by indecision and uncertainty. He had found it impossible to come to a logical decision. On the one hand, the boy Galen might simply have trifled with Vermithrax and annoyed it, in which case he should be seized and made an example of as soon as possible, in hopes that the dragon’s anger might be somewhat appeased. Probably there ought to be an extraordinary Lottery, as was provided for in the Codex Dracorum. On the other hand, the boy was a hero not only in Swanscombe but through all of Urland, and to arrest him would be to risk an uprising. Besides, what if he had destroyed Vermithrax? What then? The entire balance of Urland power would be upset, and Casiodorus’s very kingship would be placed in jeopardy unless, of course, he could somehow contrive to take credit for the dragon’s death.
But how would he know? He waited for a sign. He had waited all summer for a sign.
Then, late in August, it came. He was in the treasury, deep under the foundations of Morgenthorme. It was a tiny bastion of a room, accessible only by a secret and labyrinthine stairway, which had been dug by the Romans when Morgenthorme itself was built. Here, by the light of guttering torches, Casiodorus watched closely as Knurl, the minter, prepared to pour small, easily transportable bars of gold. On the retort stand above the flame, the gold had melted and Knurl was reaching for the pot handle when Casiodorus stayed his hand. He had seen something in the molten gold, a trembling, and as he peered closely it came again, unmistakably.
Something deep in the earth had moved. Casiodorus hurried up the secret stairs and summoned Tyrian. “The boy Galen,” he said when the officer appeared before him. “The young sorcerer. Bring him here at once. Do you know where he is?”
“In Swanscombe, Your Majesty.”
“Bring him without delay. Even if, you must ride all night. And Tyrian.”
“Yes, Your Majesty?”
“Prepare for an extraordinary Lottery, the day after tomorrow.”
“But . . . I don’t know if we can do it that quickly, Your Majesty.”
“Just do it! Furthermore, I want it to be held in Swanscombe!”
“Yes, sir. Very good, sir.”
Now, waiting for Tyrian’s return, Casiodorus’s liver hurt as it always did in periods of stress and uncertainty. It was an inherited weakness; his father had died with a horrendously swollen liver, mumbling deliriously about Saxon ale and Roman plumbing, and at times Casiodorus did wonder about the purity of the lead-lined cisterns of Morgenthorme.
Pacing along the straight aisles from window to window, he drew deep breaths of morning air through his mouth, massaged his aching side, and awaited the arrival of the bumptious young sorcerer. No doubt he would be Saxon. They all were. Despite the fact that he had married a Saxon and often in the long evenings was paralyzed by memories
of the gentleness and humor of Elspeth’s mother, Casiodorus had no love for the race at all. They seemed a whimsical people, naïvely trusting and reliant on extraordinary coincidences and quirks of faith. Their prime attributes were their childishness and resiliency. They lacked fiber, control, discipline, direction. They were given to sudden turbulences and exuberances. They . . .
Casiodorus halted at a window overlooking the courtyard. There below, the Princess Elspeth was entertaining her white animals. One by one they came to her, the small white bear from the distant East, the white dog, the white goat and pony, the white rabbit, even a pair of white mice. She spoke to each in turn and had a treat for each. Freaks, Casiodorus thought. Colorless freaks that ought to be destroyed! Yet, in the very instant of thinking this, he regretted it, for there was his daughter among them, her blonde hair the palest blonde, her skin like snow, her silken white gown resplendent in the last of the light. The sheer irrationality of his love for her dismayed him. She was the center of as peaceful a scene as he could imagine, a cloister sheltered by high, calm walls from the fractious world beyond, a world in which dragons raged, and simpering madmen roamed, and where even now a plume of dust among the hills announced the approach of Tyrian’s trotting horsemen. Nothing of that other world had touched her; Casiodorus had seen to that. And although she had attended the Lotteries since the age of thirteen for the last ten equinoxes, and the Offerings as well, she had never been at any risk. Casiodorus had seen to that as well.
He was about to descend to the throne room where he would receive Tyrian and his prisoner, when Elspeth glanced up and saw him at the window. “Father,” she called.
“Yes, my dear.”
“See what has happened. A guest.”
For a moment Casiodorus thought that she might have intuited the sorcerer’s arrival, for she had her mother’s Saxon prescience; but then he saw that she was indicating a new creature among the others. A white raven perched cockily on the knobby branch of the pear tree. “Ah,” he said, “a new pet.”
The raven said something rude. Casiodorus was sure his ears were not playing tricks; he had heard it quite clearly in the still of the cloister, spoken in a clear, reedy voice.
Elspeth laughed. “He talks,” she said. “He says funny rhymes and riddles.”
“So I see.”
“He called me Elves’ bath. Isn’t that amusing? May I keep him, Father? Oh, say that I might.”
Across the short distance, Casiodorus stared into the placid, baleful, mildly amused eye of Gringe. He was aware that the distant plume of dust had drawn closer and materialized into a mounted troop, approaching rapidly. “I have a feeling,” he said, “that whether you keep him will depend on whether he wants to stay. But I must go, my dear. I have a meeting. We shall talk at dinner.”
“Winner,” said Gringe, and again the raven and Casiodorus exchanged a solemn and unblinking stare across the courtyard.
Tyrian was already waiting in the anteroom, drenched from a midnight rain, when Casiodorus entered the throne room through the secret passage. He rarely used this passage, for it was dank and full of effluvia from the nearby lakes, but he thought it expedient, although he could not say exactly why, to be found poring over affairs of state.
And so he was. Tyrian waited for him to look up; when he did not the centurion cleared his throat. When Casiodorus still did not look up, engrossed as he was, Tyrian spoke: “I have brought the boy, Galen, as you requested, Your Majesty.”
Casiodorus raised his head then and looked into the eyes of Tyrian’s prisoner, a wet and disheveled but defiant young man. “So,” he said, “you are the sorcerer who brought down the boulder in the Blight.”
“I caused a landslide,” Galen said clearly. “I sealed the dragon’s lair. I killed it.” Pride shone through the fatigue of the nightlong ride for an instant before Tryian’s heavy gauntlet struck the side of his face and sent him reeling sideways.
“Your Majesty!” Tyrian said.
Galen said nothing. His eyes blazed. A spirited boy, Casiodorus thought nervously. A boy to have with you, not against you. Casiodorus regarded him from his great height. He was trying to recall what it had been like to be eighteen and to know that time and the world were unequivocally on your side. He could not remember. “You mean,” he said at last, “that you sealed a fissure in the side of the hill.”
“I sealed the entrance to the dragon’s cave. I killed the dragon.”
Casiodorus turned to look through the window again at Elspeth and her coterie of white creatures. “And do you think,” he asked, gazing out over his threatened land, “that dragons do not lie somnolent for months, for years? And do you think that one puny boulder will impede Vermithrax when it chooses to move?” He turned back suddenly and was both gratified and saddened to see that Galen’s face had fallen. “All that will happen is that it will be angered.”
“But . . . but . . . The villagers believe . . .”
“Of course. They will believe what they want to believe. They will not think of the next equinox until it is near at hand. Why should they?”
Galen straightened his back. “The dragon is dead!”
“I assure you,” Casiodorus said softly, descending the dais steps, “that the dragon is not dead. The dragon will burst out and rampage. Then what will you do, young hero?”
“I . . . I shall do battle with it, Your Majesty.”
“With what? It is clear to me that one so young cannot have attained such knowledge and power on his own to bring down the boulder. It is clear to me that you have been given a gift.”
Despite their watery enclosures, Casiodorus’s eyes were remarkably penetrating, and Galen resisted the impulse to touch the amulet dangling inside his jerkin. “My teacher was Ulrich,” he said. “I learned magic from him that would have no meaning to you.” He lifted his chin. “The Threefold Transmutation for example, or the Seven Hierarchial Incantations, or the Exorcism of Edda, or the . . .”
“No, no,” Casiodorus’s eyes closed with patronizing weariness. “You are lying. You are a simple boy easily distracted, not a student. Why, you can scarcely pronounce these words, let alone invoke the powers behind them, whatever they may be. No, no. Clearly you are merely the messenger, the intermediary. Clearly, the power that shook the Blight comes not from what you are but from what you have, what you carry. Confess now. You are the keeper of a concentrate of power!”
Galen shook his head.
“You have a talisman secreted.”
“No!”
“Where could it be? Where, among these rags?”
Galen shrank back, but Tyrian’s iron grip restrained him. To his horror, Casiodorus’s disturbingly long and feminine hand reached out, hovered, and touched with fearsome gentleness a spot at the center of his chest. “Here, I think!”
And there, of course, it was. With his free hand, Tyrian quickly frisked beneath Galen’s jerkin and pulled out the amulet. The next moment, it lay exposed in Casiodorus’s hand. Both he and Tyrian gasped at the sudden radiance of it, and even Galen, in the horror of his loss, saw that it was brighter than when he had last seen it. It glowed with a monitory intensity. “I warn you!” he said.
Casiodorus regarded him steadily. The hand that held the amulet stayed immobile and then closed. “You are hardly one to issue warnings, young man. You are a stranger. You have acted precipitously and presumptuously, and against the welfare of the state . . . You have meddled!”
“I wanted . . .” he began before Tyrian’s gauntlet struck him into silence.
“You jeopardized,” Casiodorus said slowly, “the welfare of Urland. You have never seen the dragon Vermithrax. You have never seen it enraged. You have never seen the horror that a furious dragon brings to the land—the death, the ruination. It is the very peace of Urland you have jeopardized. And your transgression is doubly serious, since you were warned by Tyrian, were you not?”
“Speak!” Tyrian said.
“Yes.”
“Yes. An
d you blundered ahead in spite of that. Oh, no, you are not the one to issue warnings, my young friend. The fact is, you deserve to be imprisoned!”
A surge of fear swept through Galen. The very word, prison, made his flesh creep, but he did not flinch and he did not show his fear.
Casiodorus regarded him with sorrow, his eyes mournful, his lips puffing out slightly at each exhalation. “You have caused a disruption. A break in order!” The more Casiodorus thought about what had happened, the more vehement he became. Unlike his late brother, he had never been able to act on impulse; he had always fallen back on what he knew, on routines among which he felt safe. Again, the thought that assailed him at all such moments arose: I should never have been a king. On the other hand, unlike his gallant and impetuous brother, who had taken his sword and shield and had ridden against rampant Vermithrax seventeen years before, he was alive.
Tyrian cleared his throat. “If I could suggest, Your Majesty . . .”