The Pitchfork of Destiny

by Jack Heckel

  It was late afternoon when they caught their first glimpse of Two Trees. The road crested through a high pass in the foothills of the mountains, and the town lay in a wooded vale below, tightly surrounded by the steep, folded land. As they began their dizzying descent into the valley, fields and farmsteads perched on little terraced clearings began to appear among the trees. Many of them had visible scorch marks though the pattern seemed random.

  “Probably still rebuilding from the last time the Great Wyrm of the South attacked over a year ago,” observed Tomas.

  The closer they got to town, the thicker the mingled smell of woody smoke and animal grew. Also growing thicker were the crowds. About a mile from the wall of the village, cart and wagon traffic stopped altogether. There were tents on the sides of the road and in the farmers’ fields. The last half mile, Liz and Tomas walked, leading the horses carefully through the throngs of carts and horses, men and children, beggars and thieves.

  The going was slow, and not just because of the traffic, but also because, as in Quaint, the ­people coming to Two Trees seemed to have packed their whole lives with them. On one side of the road, a family was tucking their children into a curtained canopy bed that they had arranged beneath the sheltering arms of a tree. Opposite them, a farmer was herding his livestock, cows and sheep and chickens, into a corral formed of odd bits and pieces of furniture—­a set of chairs, a chest of drawers, a wardrobe turned on its side. A whole clan of pig farmers had set up a sty in what might have at one time been a churchyard. The church itself had obviously been destroyed by the previous dragon and never rebuilt though there was a large donation box still present to accept “Alms to ease the burdens of Dragon Attack.” The array of ­people and animals and things was dizzying, and so was the smell. The stench from the hogs in particular, and their snorting screams, set Liz’s already frayed nerves on edge and her still delicate stomach turning.

  They had to stop several times to let Liz rest and recover, and she could see from Tomas’s face that he was worried about her. She did feel a little weaker than normal, but she was determined to keep going as long as she could. What she was worried about was the chaos that was spreading through the kingdom. If Will was not returned to the castle soon, the whole place might erupt, and she was not sure if his rule would survive, or who would come to take his place if he fell.

  By the time they passed the wooden gates of Two Trees proper, the sun had set. The light of evening painted everything in a deep red while the darker shadows of night pooled beneath the trees and in the gaps between the buildings. The combination of light and shadow lent a carnival-­like atmosphere to the streets, which, even here, were lined with tents and carts and ­people and homemade banners flying their version of the Dracomancer’s symbol. And over everything hung the heavily mingled smells of cooking fires, unwashed ­people, and animal manure.

  Despite the chaos, finding the Dracomancer was easy. The first man they asked pointed them straight to a low-­slung tavern near the center of town. Its signboard, which appeared to have at one time sported a crow dancing a jig, had been crudely modified so that the crow now resembled a sort of beaked dragon surrounded by a circle of red flames. A mass of ­people crowded about the front of the building, but blocking the door were two burly-­looking men with battered, rusty pikes.

  Liz and Tomas tied up their horses and made their way toward the tavern. As they reached the edge of the crowd, one of the guards announced, “The sun has set! The Dracomancer will not be taking petitions until the morning!”

  ­People began shouting back at the guards, entreating them to let them in. They also began to argue with each other over the relative urgency of their needs. One man pushed another. A punch was thrown that missed, and another was thrown that did not. It looked like a riot was mere moments from breaking out.

  Tomas asked Liz frankly, “Do you really want to get in there and talk to him?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re absolutely sure?”

  She looked at the crowd, which in the few seconds of their exchange had grown even more restive, then nodded. “Yes, but it’s impossible. We could be here days trying to see him.” Just then, a woman screamed, and two men began wrestling in the mud of the street. Liz took a moment to frown. “And that’s assuming we don’t get killed in the process.”

  Tomas laughed harshly. “Lady Charming, you don’t know me very well.”

  He grabbed her hand and dragged her through the crowd, using his compact muscular body to bowl ­people out of the way. As the going got thicker, he bellowed above the general bedlam. “Her Ladyship, Lady Charming, sister of the Lord Protector and Dragonslayer King William, wishes an audience with the Dracomancer!”

  He repeated this twice before a silence fell, which was quickly replaced by a hushed murmur that spread out in ripples through the crowd. ­People near Tomas and Liz began to back away, forming a path up to the steps of the tavern. Liz raised her head and threw back her shoulders in what she thought might be taken for a Royal Air. Shedding Tomas’s hand, she strode with dignity through the avenue of ­people and up to the guards, who both stood unmoving as she approached.

  “Guardsmen,” she said, and made a sweeping motion with her hands.

  The guards held their ground. One even managed an awkward sort of bow, and said, “I am sorry, Your Ladyship, but His Eminence the Dracomancer is not taking any additional visitors this evening.”

  Tomas bristled at this and stepped forward, clearly intending to open a way through them by force, when a voice, deep and melodious, rang out from within. “Let the Lady pass.”

  The guards jerked to attention and stood aside, and Liz and Tomas walked through a swinging half door into the smoky gloom of the tavern. Behind them, the murmurs of the crowd instantly grew to a cacophonous roar as the news spread that Lady Charming was consulting with the Dracomancer.

  Liz bent low, and whispered to Tomas, “I’m not sure that was the wisest course. We may never make it out of this village if this interview doesn’t go well.”

  Tomas whispered back, “Your point seems a bit academic now.”*

  Liz blushed at Tomas’s response, but as the interior of the tavern was only lit by a ­couple of utterly inadequate oil lamps and a log fire that was in the process of dying to embers, Tomas never had the pleasure of seeing her reaction.

  Despite the door guards’ injunction against visitors, there were a fair number of ­people still milling about, clustered in groups here and there. Liz peered around the hazy room to see if she could spot the Dracomancer, hoping that someone would clearly stand out as having the “look” of a sorcerer about him.

  From a smoky recess at the back of the tavern near the fire, a single flame sparked, throwing into momentary relief a man with deep-­set eyes, a sharply sloping nose, and a long gray beard. Perhaps it was his voluminous robes or some trick of light and shadow created by the dancing flames of the fire, but he seemed to be too large for the room, like a giant crouched in a cave.

  He sat by himself, two men, just silhouettes in the dimness, standing on either side. On a table in front of him were the remains of his supper and a half dozen or so mugs, all but one empty. The sorcerer took a few deep puffs on a bone-­white pipe shaped like a dragon’s head, the glowing tobacco ember in its bowl illuminating his face beneath the deep cowl of his hood in flashes of orange and yellow. With each inhale, a small ring of smoke issued from the side of his mouth and floated up toward the deeper darkness that lay among the rafters. He regarded her silently as he smoked, his dark eyes luminous in the flickering light of the pipe.

  Liz moved forward hesitantly, feeling the weight of attention as everyone watched her. She stood in front of him for a moment at a total loss as to how to begin, her hands clasped one in the other to keep from shaking. She had been so sure that when she finally met the Dracomancer, he would turn out to be just an ordinary man, like the street magicia
ns who passed through Prosper now and then, but now, face-­to-­face with him, Liz found that she was not sure how to behave. She had never dealt with a sorcerer before, much less a sorcerer as grave and dignified as this one. Liz turned to Tomas for support, but somewhere between the door and the table, the squire had slipped away.

  Liz cursed quietly to herself, then opened her mouth to speak, but before the words could come, the Dracomancer spoke. “Lady Charming, welcome. Please, sit.” He gestured to a low chair across from him.

  She shook her head, indicating that she would rather stand, but then decided that was rude and stuttered out, “No . . . no thank you. I don’t want to disturb your supper. I . . . I just wanted to see if I . . . I could ask you some questions about the . . . the dr . . . dragon?”

  The Dracomancer threw his hands wide, his pipe spilling smoke into an arc in the air above the table. “Come. Talk with me, Lady Charming. Burden me with your troubles. That is why I’m here.”

  His voice was deep and sonorous, almost mesmerizing, and he spoke as though each of his words was filled with a deep and equal significance.

  She stepped a bit closer and coughed from the thick tobacco smoke around the man. “Well, you see, Your . . . I mean . . .” Liz stopped and gathered herself, finally scolding her nerves, if not into submission, at least into a brief retreat. “How do I address a sorcerer?”

  The tavern had been mostly silent since she’d entered, but now a murmur of shock and outrage filled the room. He held up a long, pale finger. “I am a Dracomancer, in fact, The Dracomancer, not a mere sorcerer or wizard.”

  “The Dracomancer?” she asked, having a hard time keeping her tone measured. Up until this moment, she had been maintaining the earnest hope that the title Dracomancer was some kind of ill-­advised joke. It seemed too ridiculous.

  “Yes, the Dracomancer,” he said with a significant flare of his eyes. “Through long study and dark sacrifice, I have harnessed the magical spirits of the dragons to my bidding.” To punctuate this statement, he placed his pipe on the table and traced a complicated series of symbols in the smoky air.

  Liz didn’t really know how to respond to this without giggling, which she knew would not go over well, so instead she asked, “So, should I call you Dracomancer?”

  He laughed, a rich and hearty sound, and his laughter was echoed by his watching followers. “You may, if you wish.”

  “Dracomancer, I need to know how to defeat the dragon.”

  The room fell absolutely silent. Liz thought that she saw, just for a moment, the Dracomancer’s gravitas break, and he appeared to nearly swallow the long stem of his pipe. He recovered himself by taking a few deep puffs and rebuilding the clouds of smoke around his head. When he finally spoke, his voice rang like a tolling bell. “To defeat the dragon, one must put aside all fear. Fear”—­he paused dramatically—­“is the ambrosia of the beast, consuming the soul even as surely as the dragon’s flame consumes the body.”

  Liz silently digested this obvious bit of advice, hoping that he would say more, but when he did not, she decided she would have to press him. “Yes, Dracomancer, I understand that fear would be . . . problematic, but do you have any practical tips, perhaps a weakness that we might be able to exploit?”

  This time he was ready and, after a pregnant pause in which many smoke rings were blown, he said significantly, “The ancient sage, Lochnar Zagroot, teaches us that the Wyrm bathes in flame beneath the earth.”

  “Is that a bad thing for them?” she asked in real confusion. “I mean, the bathing in flame? Do they do it every night? Do you know where the baths are? Are you suggesting that we attack the dragon while it’s bathing?”

  The Dracomancer’s eyes widened at her questions, and when he responded, his voice had lost a bit of its timbre and much of his earlier cadence. “In . . . in the mad poet Mudthug’s Black Tome, he writes, ‘A wet Dragon never flies at night.’ ”

  “What?”

  The Dracomancer had recovered his earlier calm and leaned back comfortably in his chair. He took a deep puff on his pipe before responding quite solemnly, “A wet Dragon . . .” he paused significantly, his eyes wide with intensity, “never flies at night.”

  Liz rubbed her temples, which were beginning to throb violently, and snapped in frustration, “What the bloody hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “The wisdom is perhaps too deep for a layman, or even a laywoman.”

  “No,” Liz snapped, and literally snapped as she punctuated her denial with a snap of her fingers. “I don’t mean I don’t understand it, I mean that’s nothing but gibberish!”

  A collective gasp erupted, and the Dracomancer rocked back so violently that his chair slipped out from under him, and he clattered to the floor in a flutter of robes and a cloud of blue-­gray pipe smoke. The two shadowy figures that had been standing to the sides of the Dracomancer quickly helped him up. The man wobbled a little as he tried to get his feet back under him in a way that made Liz think that he must be wearing very-­high-­soled boots if not actual stilts. The Dracomancer grasped the table to steady himself, exposing pale, rail-­thin arms that suggested much of his looming bulk was made up by the incredibly large cloak he was wearing. He leaned forward so that his face came out of the smoky shadows, his eyes ablaze with indignation.

  “How dare you call my words gibberish?” he shrieked in a voice that had grown surprisingly squeaky. “Your ignorance of dragons is astounding! Have you never read the Ars Dragonica, or the collected works of Shuuman the Meddler, or Balgethar the Drunkard, or . . . or . . . um . . . well, anyone?”

  It might have been a devastating rebuke if the Dracomancer’s beard, which was now revealed to be at least partially a fake, had not taken this opportunity to slip down his face, exposing a weak chin and a mouth of yellowed teeth.

  Liz was too angry to take any notice of the angry murmurs around her. She felt a tug at her sleeve and saw a very nervous Tomas, who had appeared out of nowhere, desperately gesturing toward the door. She shook him off and instead stepped closer to the Dracomancer, so that only the table separated them and pointed her own finger at him.

  “I call it gibberish because it is gibberish. ‘A wet Dragon never flies at night’? ‘Bathing in flames in the earth’? ‘Ambrosia of the beast’? I defy you to tell me what any of it means. Personally, I don’t think you know the first thing about dragons. Your prophecy about Lord Charming was proved false, and now you sit here spouting nonsense and drinking free ale. You are a charlatan, plain and simple.”

  Shouts of indignation mixed with a few rumbles of tentative agreement, mostly about the amount of ale he consumed, spread through the tavern. The Dracomancer, perhaps sensing that the crowd was turning on him, gazed about anxiously and threw his arms out broadly. “Enough!” he roared, and resumed his overly emphasized speech pattern. “Having offended the dragon spirits I serve, you, Lady Charming, have sealed your own doom. The ancient flames that stir within my blood boil at your blasphemy! The spirits, they rage within me! I can no longer control them!”

  Suddenly, he convulsed, his eyes closing and his arms opening wide so that his chest was thrown painfully forward. “I warn thee, flee while you can, the Dragon Spirit Comes . . . the Dragon Spirit Comes.”

  After this pronouncement, Liz saw his eyes flicker briefly back to her. She frowned at him, put her hands on her hips, and began tapping her foot on the ground in irritation.

  His eyes closed again, then opening wide, they rolled back so that only the whites could be seen. He began shaking, his mouth working spasmodically back and forth. Then a hideous throaty babble began to spew from his lips, along with a great volume of spittle. “Dwarlivish canthon fraxus thrilbit quantrotont lishish, Lishish, LISHISH!”

  He was shouting and shaking so violently that many in the crowd began to draw back, likely in fear that such a dramatic display of madness might turn out to be contagious. Liz, how
ever, stood her ground stoically, watching his performance with open disdain. She started to say, “When you are quite done,” but at that moment, the Dracomancer’s body seemed to collapse in on itself. His arms and head rolled forward violently, and his legs bent under him so that he dropped to the ground, and nothing could be seen behind the table where the Dracomancer had formerly stood except a large bundle of deep purple robes.

  Almost on cue, but a bit prematurely, one of the tall, shadowy shapes that stood in the darkness behind the table moaned, “Woe to us. The Dracomancer, who was our only hope, is now gone, consumed by the dread forces he once kept at bay.”

  A stunned silence greeted this latest development, and someone by the bar shouted, “ ’E’s dead?”

  The other shadowy figure said, perhaps in reply, though it seemed too prepared for Liz’s ear, “Who can say if he may die, when his spirit can with the dragons fly.”

  A deep and deeply slurred voice behind an enormous tankard of ale said, “Lor’ bless us all, ’e musta’ been taken by da’ dragon spirits!”

  A particularly warty woman stomped toward Liz with an accusing finger, and shrieked, “It’s ta witch what done it to ’im. I saw ’er a castin’ a curse at ’im wit’ her evil eye!”

  “That’s absurd,” Liz said stiffly, a little stunned at the Dracomancer’s sudden collapse.

  She knew that leaving—­and leaving now—­was the prudent thing to do, but she could not believe what had happened and continued to stare at the pool of gathered cloak where the Dracomancer had been.

  “I don’t understand,” she replied softly and mostly to herself. “He was a fraud. He had to be a fraud.”

  She was about to turn away and follow Tomas when the Dracomancer’s cloak rippled and pulsated like an animal had been trapped beneath it and was trying to escape.

  There was a collective gasp as something crawled from among the folds of the cloth accompanied by a cloud of smoke. The shape, still only a silhouette in the dim light beneath the table, rose, serpent-­like, higher and higher, until it emerged into the oily orange light of the lanterns. Its head, for that was all they could see, was slightly larger than a man’s hand, virulent red and covered here and there with mottled patches of black and blue. Wide, unblinking eyes stared, doll-­like, from beneath glittering metallic brows, and short, bristly green scales ran along the back of its skull, where two twisted brown horns sprouted from the sides of its forehead. An elongated snout jutted out of the middle of the face. Another puff of smoke surrounded it.