Dog and Dragon

by Dave Freer

  * * *

  In a place where time ran slowly enough to at least sustain the illusion of immortality, where even free energy danced slow minuets, and the beings called the First dwelled, occupied by and large with passions of immortality, beyond most mortal ken. The First were not a matter for easy understanding. The dragon Fionn was one of the few beings that actually remembered them, which was . . . less than desirable. They had become distant and disconnected observers of their immeasurably vast creation.

  It had taken a human glimpse within their roil of energy, interconnected as all energy was, to let them know that after millennia there might be a problem that they had not foreseen. That they had taken no steps to prevent. That a group mind made of the descendants of fractions of themselves could exist briefly. That something rather like their own power could be exerted by it—temporarily, it was true.

  They didn’t like that.

  But there was a worse possibility. And they always looked at possible futures.

  The situation could become permanent.

  Food did not interbreed with its predator. They had designed it like that for that precise reason.

  Paradoxically, the very powers they had built into Fionn made him quite immune to their manipulations, and near invisible to them as a result. The same could not be said of the dog.

  But if they destroyed the dog, they would be blind to Fionn’s doings and movement.

  The dragon would not be easy to destroy, and the human had taken a part of them into herself. That made her difficult to deal with. The energy that flowed into her had been supposed to take control, not become a slave itself.

  It would have to destroy all of them, by proxy.

  Fortunately it had an almost infinite supply of proxies.

  Unfortunately, the planomancer would be able to detect and counter their movements. They would need to be subtle.

  * * *

  “Right,” said Fionn, looking at the rocking plank he’d set up. “Come, Díleas. I’ll have to carry you.”

  “You’re out of your mind, gleeman,” said Arvan.

  Privately, Fionn agreed with him. But he knew humans too well. When they stopped to think about it, they’d start getting even more suspicious about his dealings with the fire creature. And they had weapons that could hurt the dog. He could kill them if they tried, of course. Had he been any other dragon, he would have been free to devour them anyway. Had he been any other dragon he might have desired to do so. But he was Fionn: the last of those who were made first, to see intelligent life flourished. Best to get on the narrow board and away. The water running through the gap would not kill him. Not now. The acids and toxins were already much diluted. But it might still be too hot for the dog. He’d have to throw Díleas if he fell. “Ach. I was something of an acrobat in a traveling show once.” He looked at the plank. It was twelve cubits long and none too wide, or thick. It came from under the canvas of the cart, from the arch where it helped to spread the load. Now it stretched to a rock in the middle of the flow. “Let’s put it on edge, and jam it. It’ll be narrower, but stronger.”

  “You’re definitely mad. Leave the dog here. He’s a good, valuable dog,” said Arvan.

  Díleas growled at him, as if to prove he might be valuable, but he wasn’t good, and danced onto his hind feet. Fionn reached down a hand and said “up,” and Díleas jumped up, putting his front feet over one shoulder. He really still was a pup with more fur than body.

  “It’s like he understands every word you say!”

  “You wouldn’t say that if you knew how long it took me to teach him that trick,” said Fionn, sticking out a hand for balance and stepping out onto the narrow plank. And falling off it. He was still above the rock so no harm was done.

  “Give up, gleeman,” said the caravan leader, shaking his head.

  “I have hardly begun to try and you want me to give up!” said Fionn. “No. I can do it, I’ll wager.”

  One of the younger travelers snorted. “How much?”

  “Well,” said Fionn. “I haven’t got much.” He stuck his free hand into his pouch, felt about, past the nine golden coins he’d removed from their hidden trove. They had plenty more. Never pluck a peacock bare naked, and he’d give you plenty of tail feathers over time, was Fionn’s feeling. He fished out some coppers. Counted them with great show. “Nine. I’ll give you nine coppers if I fall in. What do you dare wager? A silver for my copper?”

  “Huh. Gold, I reckon,” said the traveler. It was Dravko, one of the men who had been discussing what price he’d fetch as a slave in Annvn. “But what’s the point? You fall in there and you’re not coming back, you fool.”

  “I’ll set the coins on the rock here,” said Fionn, suiting the deed to the word. “Then you get them if I lose. Give me a coil of rope, and I’ll tie it off and toss the two ends back, and you can tie them onto your cart. With one line for my hands and one for my feet I can walk across easily.”

  “And then we lose a coil of rope when you fall in,” said Dravko scathingly, but looking at the coins.

  Fionn shrugged. “No entertainment for nothing.”

  “A coil of rope is worth nine coppers,” said Arvan. “Give him one, Nikos.”

  So Nikos did. It was a finely braided rope, and worth, Fionn reckoned, at least eight coppers.

  Fionn took a few dozen steps back and measured it all carefully with his eye . . . and sprinted at the plank. It was only three long strides to the rock, with a bit of a wobble in the middle, and he was on the midstream rock. The tricky part had not been crossing, but stopping in time to avoid landing in the water beyond—or dropping the twisting dog, who squirmed loose and bounded around on the lump of rock. Fionn leaned out and levered up the plank—a feat of strength most humans could not have managed, and swung it over. The other bank was not as far off—a mere nine cubits or so. Fionn laid the plank on the widest edge, with a good overlap.

  As Fionn inspected it, Díleas ran over it, nearly but not quite falling in. He stood on the far side, and barked at Fionn. Fionn shrugged. Walked along it. It bent quite alarmingly, but did not break.

  On the far side, Fionn, not quite off the plank, did an artistic stumble and jumped for the rock, kicking the plank off its rest and into the water, but gaining the far side, rolling. It was pure showmanship, but the fool dog was not proof against arrows. Someone could still decide they were demons. He stood up and dusted himself off. “Now I just need somewhere to tie the rope to, and I can come back and fetch my coins, and my winnings. Come, dog.”

  They walked off. They must have been a good seventy yards further along the causeway when one of the travelers said: “I don’t think he is coming back.” Fionn had keen enough ears, even at this range, to hear them, just as he’d heard the quiet talk on the price that he might fetch as a slave.

  Fionn whistled cheerfully and lengthened his stride. “I’d run ahead, dog,” he said quietly. “They might not have gone through with selling us, but soon someone is going to work out that I didn’t leave nine copper coins for no reason. They didn’t cheat me too badly for the price of a rope though. It might be useful. And you nearly fell in, you fool dog.”

  Díleas looked at the red, dragon-hide boots as if to say, “they have poor grip,” and then bounded away along the hexagonal stones. Fionn walked still faster. He did hear distant yells, but there were no arrows.

  And it was comforting to have a little gold about him again. It always made a dragon feel good, in a way that coppers did not.

  The causeway was an interesting thing. He’d never run across it in his many earlier wanderings across the multidimensional ring before, and yet it apparently led to places he once used to visit, and visit quite often.

  Had the structure changed? And what would reintegration of Tasmarin do to it all?

  If Fionn had not had to walk the worlds looking for his Scrap of humanity, he’d have been dead keen to find out. He rather liked changes, after millennia of the same.

  Chapter 4<
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  Meb awoke to the sound of someone in her room. She had only vague, exhausted memories of how she got to this bed. Of the women, talking around her. But the sound of someone there, now, trying to keep quiet was enough to make her instinctively nervous. She opened her eyes just a crack. Unless she was due to be murdered with a ewer by a young, scared-looking female, she was in no danger. There were towels and a basin set on the tall kist already, and a wisp of steam suggested that the water was hot. It brought back to Meb that her last wash had been in a horse trough, and that had not had warm water in it.

  Once, not so very long ago, washing herself all over had been something undertaken only when unavoidable. Usually in spring. Now she itched to do so. Well, maybe just itched. The bed linen was fine, but there was undoubtedly a flea in bed with her.

  Her doing something about that itch nearly had the young girl pour the ewer down her own front. “I am sorry, your ladyship. I didn’t mean to disturb! Only, Lady Cardun said . . .”

  Meb blinked. Your ladyship? “I don’t bite. I’ve got a dog who does, but he’s not here.” She swallowed. Díleas. How she missed his unswerving, unquestioning loyalty. But he couldn’t be here. She’d told him to look after Fionn, when she’d hugged him farewell. It was almost as if he understood. Obviously, the distress must have showed in her face.

  The serving wench forgot her own fear in seeing it. “Is . . . is something the matter, lady? Can I do anything?”

  “Just missing my dog,” said Meb, her voice cracking a little.

  The serving wench nodded. “We always had a dog, too. And then, when I came to take service . . . he ate a blowfish and died. You’d think a dog living on the foreshore would know better. But he always was eating some rubbish.”

  Meb nodded. “There was always trouble with Wulfstan about dogs and the stockfish. I grew up in a fishing village.”

  The serving wench gaped. “You, my lady? But you’ve the power!”

  “I’m not too sure what you’re talking about,” said Meb, although she did indeed have a very good idea. It struck her that it might be a reasonable idea to find out a little about this world she had exiled herself to. The misery of that exile struck her again. Best to distract herself. “Tell me about this place.”

  The servant wench looked puzzled. “What place, lady? Dun Tagoll?”

  “That’s this castle, right? I know that, but it means nothing to me. I’ve never heard of it.”

  “But . . . but it is the greatest castle in all Lyonesse!” said the maid. “Everyone knows that. Even the forest people.”

  “I’d never even heard of Lyonesse until last night. And now I am here,” explained Meb.

  “So, where are you from, my lady?” asked the maid.

  The “my lady” was beginning to irritate her. “I was from the island of Yenfar, the demesne of Lord Zuamar—but he’s dead and no loss. Tasmarin was my world. And my name is Meb.”

  “Oh. They said you were the Lady Anghared. That’s one of the royal names, lady. They don’t use it anymore after Queen Gwenhwyfach died. Only the royal line were called that. It’s usually used by . . . by the daughters of kings.”

  “Oh. Finn said that was my birth name. But no one ever called me that.”

  “Not even your mother, lady?” asked the maid.

  “Hallgerd called me Meb,” said Meb resolutely. “And she was the only mother I ever knew. The sea spat me out on the beach at her feet when I was a baby.”

  The girl wrinkled her forehead. “But your father Finn knew your name was Anghared?”

  The very thought of Finn as a father made Meb laugh. Not that he hadn’t helped her grow up a bit. “I think you should put the ewer down. What’s your name? Are you needed elsewhere?”

  The girl shook her head. “No, my lady. I’m to wait on you. I’ve never attended a lady before.”

  Someone didn’t think much of the “Lady Anghared” then, thought Meb, sending her a tirewoman who was so new she still had fish scales on her hands. Well, the girl suited Meb better than someone she couldn’t talk to. “So I am supposed to give you orders, am I?”

  The girl nodded, looking worried.

  “Well, my first order is to put the ewer down before you spill any more of it. And then to tell me your name.”

  The girl set the ewer down, carefully. Curtseyed. It was plainly not something she had done often. “Neve, m’lady.”

  Meb smiled. “Now come and sit down on the bed and answer my questions.”

  “Oh, I can’t sit on the bed, m’lady!” said Neve, horrified.

  “You can. I just told you to. And I also told you my name was Meb.”

  “But . . . but I’ll get into terrible trouble from Lady Cardun.”

  Meb got up. The stone floor was strewn with rushes, but still cold on her feet. The door was heavy and had a bar. So she closed it, and put the bar down. And took her cold feet back into the bed. “Now she won’t know,” said Meb. “Sit.” She’d hold off on the “m’lady” a little.

  The girl giggled nervously and did, at the very foot of the bed. On the very edge. “I . . . I’m very new to this work, lady . . . um, Meb. I don’t want to lose my place. Times are hard.”

  “I’ll do my best not to lose it for you. I promise I won’t tell anyone you sat on the bed while I asked you questions,” said Meb, smiling at her. “I just . . . I’m just lost. I don’t know anything at all about this place. I should be doing your job if anything. I’m not a lady. I can’t dance, or play music, or do embroidery or even ride. I rode a donkey once. I fell off that. I should be a kitchen maid, if they didn’t turn me out. I don’t know why they’re doing this to me. Who do they think I am? I . . . I don’t want to be turned out either. There’s an army out there.” Armies had a certain reputation. Meb decided that if she couldn’t have Finn . . . they wouldn’t have her either.

  The girl shrugged. “Ach, there is always some army. Every few months, it seems. They’ll be gone in a week or two when the moon is full. Or we will. Then we try and get our lives back together. The nobles send messages and play at politics and we try to make a living again.”

  That seemed a rather fatalistic acceptance of war. “You’re always at war? Who are you at war with?” No wonder they were enchanting stale bread. Growing crops and farming during a war were going to be difficult.

  The girl, her round face serious, started counting on her fingers. “Albion, Brocéliande, Albar, Annvn, Vanaheim, the Blessed Isles. There are more . . . My gamma said in Queen Gwenhwyfach and King Geoph’s time it wasn’t so, but it has been almost ever since. And there was much magic then, and there was peace and plenty.”

  “Hmm,” said Meb. “I bet she also said us young people don’t know how lucky we are.”

  The girl giggled so much that it shook the bed. Nodded. “It was all rich and wonderful and we’re soft and disrespectful, and don’t know what hard work means. I love my gamma Elis, but if you believed her, there were spriggans in every pile of rock, piskies in every field and bog, muryans everywhere, knockers underground, and even dragons on the hilltops. Dragons, I ask you!”

  Gradually Meb began to build a picture of the place she had ended up in. A craggy coastline to the west, with Dun Tagoll in its center, with a fertile plain bounded by mountains to east and north, and the shifting sand coast across the bleak moorlands, to more mountains in the south. Ruled by men—not the alvar, or the dragons. Under almost constant attack from the forces of darkness itself, cursed because the kingdom had to be ruled by a regent, and its magic needed a king. And the king needed its magic . . . not Prince Medraut.

  “Him? No, m’lady. He’s scarcely noble enough to raise a magefire on his blade. Without Aberinn the wizard, Dun Tagoll would have nothing magical. You’d barely think the prince was of the old blood, but he’s good at turning troubles to his advantage, as they say.”

  “Why?” asked Meb. “I mean why would you say you’d barely think he was of the old blood?”

  The girl looked puzzled. “Because
he has the magic, m’lady. Only the House of Lyon has that. That is why they rule.”

  Men ruled. Meb shook her head. It was just so different from Tasmarin. And then the fact that magical ability marked the noble house. On Tasmarin the use of magic by a human would have gotten one killed. Here . . . It turned out that even the court magician was a royal by-blow. A very ancient and much feared by-blow.

  “He’s awful, m’lady. Been here through three regents. They say he keeps dead men’s bones in that tower of his. It stinks enough, and no mortal ever gets in there to clean, unless it’s the prince himself sweeping the floor. You be very careful of him, m’lady. You can’t lie to him. He pounces on you the minute you offer him falsehood. He has the power. It’s his great engines that keep Lyonesse free.”

  Meb avoided saying she didn’t think much of the freedom. “Engines of war? Great catapults?”

  “Oh no. Magical engines. They defend us from the magics and the enchantress of Shadow Hall and her dead creatures. And it’s there the great engine of change is, m’lady. We hear it clanking, but it’s few who have seen it.”

  That all left Meb none the wiser. Dead creatures and sorceresses were something they accepted as sort of normal here. So was magic by humans. Dragons were not. “So what’s this bit about the sons of the dragon? This prophecy?”

  The girl looked at her, openmouthed. And then recited:

  Till from the dark past, Defender comes,

  and forests walk, the rocks talk,

  till the mountain bows to the sea,

  Till the window returns to the sea-wall of great Dun Tagoll,

  beware, prince, beware, Mage Aberinn, mage need.

  For only she can hold the sons of Dragon,

  Or Lyonesse will be shredded and broken and burned.

  Only she can banish the shades,

  and find the bowl of kings.

  Mage need, mage need.

  “Er. So who are the sons of the Dragon?” asked Meb.

  Neve shrugged. “It could be the Vanar—that’s who I think it is—in their dragon ships, or the Saxons under the white dragon banner or there are princes of the middle kingdoms who call themselves the sons of the dragons, whose banner is a red wyrm. No one knows. Not even Aberinn. They say he fitted and foamed at the mouth when he spoke the words.”