The Pitchfork of Destiny

by Jack Heckel

  He turned away from her to stare out at the evening sky.

  Elle shuddered at the anger and pain she heard in Volthraxus. He was frightening when he was like this. At last, she said, “Killing Will won’t heal your heart. It would only destroy mine.”

  Volthraxus didn’t respond.

  “What would Magdela have wanted?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” he admitted, and the pain and regret in his voice was so strong that it was hard for Elle not to feel for him despite everything.

  She turned and stared back down at the bed. It did look warm, and the main room, with its open balcony, was so cold at night. She sat down on the edge of the bed and felt the soft covers and silken pillow. Elle sighed. It was foolish to deny that it would be far more comfortable than another night on the floor next to Volthraxus. She lay down on her side, gazing back out the archway into the main chamber, where Volthraxus sat watching the sunset over the mountains beyond.

  That must have been what Magdela did every night, she thought.

  Elle suddenly had a need to know more about the dragon that had been such a figure of terror all her life and whose shadow now threatened all of her dreams.

  “Come and talk to me while I go to sleep,” she said to the dragon’s back.

  He snorted in anger.

  “Don’t be like that,” she said, sitting back up. “We both have reason for thinking the other unreasonable and pigheaded, but that does not mean we need be discourteous to each other.”

  “I don’t feel like talking,” he said irritably.

  “If you don’t come and tell me stories, then I will keep talking all the night, and you won’t get a wink of sleep, and we shall both be out of sorts tomorrow,” she threatened.

  “Fine,” he said with a grumble, and, turning, snaked his long neck along the floor until his head rested just outside the door to her room. “What do you want to talk about, little princess?”

  She lay back down, staring into his gray face. A question hung on her tongue for a moment, and her mouth went dry as she waited to ask, wondering if it would be pushing too far.

  His lamp-­like golden eyes shone on her. “What?”

  She decided to come at the topic indirectly, and said, “I was wondering how you met her.”

  “Why?”

  “Don’t be like that,” she said, shaking a scolding finger at him. “Just answer the question.”

  His tongue flickered out in annoyance, but, finally, he said, “The first time I remember seeing Magdela was up north many, many years ago.” He closed his eyes in the memory. “She was in flight, and we soared and tumbled around each other for a long time. She was such a beauty. At once, I knew that I must have her.”

  “Did you tell her?” Elle asked softly.

  His eyes opened again. “I couldn’t speak. She was too beautiful and terrible. I . . . I flew away.”

  Elle giggled. “So, even big, bad dragons get nervous around girls. Imagine!”

  Volthraxus made a rasping sound, which she realized was a sort of draconic cough. “It wasn’t quite like that. Things are different with dragons. There are standards of behavior to uphold. You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Oh wouldn’t I,” she replied with an arched eyebrow. Raising herself on her elbow, she asked, “When you finally managed to work up the nerve to speak with her, what did you say?”

  He shrugged. “Most of the time she wouldn’t let me catch her. When she did, I never seemed to know exactly what to say. I tried the standard lines. I would tell her of my exploits and my titles. You know, armies killed, villages flattened, swine eaten, that sort of thing, but she didn’t seem that impressed. One day, I went looking for her, and she was gone. I heard that she had flown south, and later that she had been enchanted by the fairy and forced to guard Princess Gwendolyn.”

  “Why didn’t you fly after her at once?”

  He shuffled uncomfortably. “Dragons can be very proud, and dragon females terribly so, especially those of Magdela’s more youthful age. I was afraid that if I broke her free, she would resent it. Eventually, I ran out of things to distract myself with and got tired of waiting for her to break free herself. When I came south this time, it was to rescue her. But I was too late,” he concluded with a long, vaporous exhale.

  Elle knew they were getting near the heart of the matter now. She took a deep breath. “So you never did get to know who she was, not really.”

  A rumble of warning came from his throat, and she felt his hot breath rush into the room. “What are you saying?”

  Elle sat up so that she could look directly into his eyes. She was beginning to regret finding out so much about Volthraxus. She didn’t want to hurt him, but her only hope of saving Will was to make him understand the truth.

  “What?” he grumped, as she continued to stare at him.

  “What was Magdela’s favorite food?”

  “Something crunchy, I don’t know.” He snorted. “Why does it matter?”

  She took a deep breath and threaded her fingers together nervously. Making her voice as gentle as she could, she said, “I’m saying, Volthraxus, that you never truly loved Magdela any more than I loved one of my many girlhood crushes like Prince Charming. You were in love with the idea of Magdela, but you never knew her. I’m saying that I’m not sure why you are doing this. Maybe you feel guilty. Maybe you are mad at yourself, but whatever the reason, it isn’t because you were in love with her.”

  His eyes flashed from gold to a flaming red. “How do you know?”

  She reached a shaking hand out to touch his scaled snout. “I know because I know what true love feels like, and it is something that can only grow by knowing someone.”

  He pulled his head away from her touch. She saw in his body a tension of suppressed anger, and the heat emanating from him was almost unbearable. If he was ever going to kill her, this would be the time.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, and closed her eyes.

  She tensed for an explosion, but in the next instant, there was a tremendous rush of wind. When she opened her eyes, Volthraxus was gone. She went out to the balcony, and saw him between the faint afterglow of sunset and the gentle kiss of the moon as the light reflected off his scales.

  The thought rushed through her that now was a chance to escape, but looking over the edge of the balcony, she could see the massive wall of thorns that Volthraxus had mentioned. It completely surrounded the tower’s base and covered the door. If she tried to push her way through that, she’d be torn to pieces.

  A wind blew in over the mountain, hinting at a cold night ahead, and even colder without the Dragon’s heat to warm the tower. She shivered and retreated back to the little room. Lying down on the bed, Elle thought back over her conversation with Volthraxus, picking over each word and gesture in the hopes that she might gain some insight into how the conundrum of Will and the dragon might be resolved without one of them dying. Soon, despite all the thoughts racing about her head, her eyes drifted closed, and she slept.

  Elle woke and felt instinctively that something was wrong. The feel of the air in the tower was different. Slowly, she opened her eyes and looked through the open door to the outer room. It was still night, and the main chamber was dark and empty.

  Volthraxus had not yet returned.

  Apart from knowing that he was gone, Elle could see little else in the dim light of the stars and the moon. She realized that she had become accustomed to the dragon’s warm glow being her light at night.

  Elle waited for a few minutes and had nearly convinced herself that her wakefulness was nothing more than nerves, when a gray shadow passed across the opening of her doorway. It looked about the size and shape of a wolf.

  The hair rose on the back of her neck, and goose bumps ran over her arms. Her heart pounded in her chest. She knew without a doubt that it was Beo. She also knew that i
f the wolf found her here, he would kill her.

  Slowly, deliberately, and quietly as a shadow, she slipped off the bed and crouched behind the stone platform that supported it. Here she would be hidden from the door, but if Beo investigated the alcove, he would be sure to find her.

  Straining her ears, she listened for any sign of activity from the outer room, but there was only silence and the sound of her own breathing.

  Elle started to relax, thinking perhaps that Beo had either found what he was looking for or had not found what he had expected and moved on, when she heard the soft flap of padded feet at the door to her room. The sharp sound of metal ringing on stone and the soft thunk as of something heavy being dropped on the carpeted floor of the main chamber followed, then the wolf began to sniff the air. Elle tensed in her hiding place, not even daring to breathe.

  “Lady Rapunzel?” came Beo’s harsh, clipped voice. “Are you there, little piggy?”

  Elle barely managed to suppress the scream that tried to escape her throat.

  The wolf took a few tentative steps into the room. “Come out, come out, little piggy,” he called in a mocking, singsong voice.

  Elle knew that it was darker here, even dark for the wolf’s night eyes. Perhaps he was only guessing that she would be here. He would have examined the other parts of the tower, and there were few other places she could be.

  She heard his footsteps just on the other side of the bed now. He was sniffing at the bedding. He knew her smell from the time in the cave. He would smell her.

  Elle’s nerves nearly broke, but at the same moment that she would have sprinted for the door, Beo spit. “Bah! This isn’t her scent. Where has that bloody dragon hidden her?”

  In his frustration, he shredded the covers and the pillow and sent them flinging about the room. “No matter. I have what I came for, and soon enough, the Dracomancer will kill Mighty Volthraxus, and there will be no one left to protect the foolish girl.” He padded back to the door, chuckling cruelly. “To think that the key to his destruction was sitting under his nose this whole time. The Great and Powerful Volthraxus is not nearly as clever as he believes he is.”

  There was the sound of something being dragged along the ground, then receding down the stairs to the lower level. For several minutes more, Elle dared not move. Only when she thought she heard movement in the rosebushes outside did she get up. Quietly, she made her way back to the balcony in a crouch. She peered over the edge of the balustrade and, in the light cast by the moon, saw Beo, with something long and glinting of metal clutched in his mouth, making for the trail down the side of the mountain. Although Elle knew the danger was gone, she still did not feel comfortable in the open. She crept back into the alcove to hide behind Princess Gwendolyn’s bed.

  When Volthraxus returned a few hours later, he found her shivering from a combination of cold and fear.

  The dragon’s red-­gold eyes took in Elle and the tattered bedding. “What has happened here, Lady Rapunzel?”

  “It . . . it was Beo.”

  There was a rumble of anger from him, but it wasn’t directed at her. “Come here, little princess. I will warm you up.”

  She rose, shaking, and walked to him. He gathered her gently into a claw and carried her to a mound of carpets he had made in the center of the chamber for his own bed. Using the barest bits of his breath, Volthraxus ignited a wall sconce. Elle had never felt happier to see the light of a flame. She leaned against his warm body and sighed.

  “Th . . . Thank you,” she said, as the shakes slowly subsided.

  “You have no reason to thank me,” Volthraxus said. “Once again, through my negligence, I have put you in great danger. I should not have left you alone, but I thought the thorns would keep you safe. I forgot that Beo and his kind are part snake when it comes to sneaking into places. Tomorrow, I shall block the entrance. He will not get in again.”

  “Where were you?”

  Volthraxus looked embarrassed. “Arguing with you made me hungry. I found a few pigs down on the outskirts of Prosper.”

  Now that he mentioned, she noticed an overwhelming smell of bacon. “Is that what you were doing? Eating?” she asked indignantly.

  “Yes,” he said, then added at her glare, “I was also watching what is transpiring in Prosper. There is an army. They speak of the Dracomancer, and there’s talk of something they call the Pitchfork of Destiny. It is supposedly the weapon used to kill Magdela.”

  She gasped. Now she knew what Beo had been carrying. It had been a pitchfork; she could see the glint of the metal tines at the end of the long, wooden haft in her mind’s eye. She got up and ran to the alcove. It was gone.

  “That is why he came,” she said. “It was the pitchfork. I saw him carry it off. I didn’t know what it was at first, but that must be it. He has the Pitchfork of Destiny.”

  “You are overwrought and imaging things, Lady Rapunzel,” he said in a soothing tone. “Whatever might have been taken, it wasn’t the Pitchfork of Destiny. Frankly, I have serious doubts about whether such a thing even exists. Besides, who would leave an item of such value, a weapon, pitchfork or not, that actually slew a dragon forgotten?”

  Volthraxus curled up, much like a cat Elle thought, and his massive body filled the tapestry room. Nothing was going to get past him. She returned to his side and lay against his warm belly. His final question repeated itself in her mind. She finally whispered the answer. “Will Pickett.”

  CHAPTER 14

  UNEASY LIES THE HEAD

  If one happens to find oneself a king someday, it would be advisable not to model one’s rule after the kings of fairy tale. The kings of fairy tale seem for the most part to be ineffective, lazy, stupid, or just plain evil. We can all laugh at the emperor king who is convinced to walk naked through his kingdom by a pair of hucksters selling invisible cloth, but others are not so amusing. Take Snow White’s kingly father. He is apparently perfectly willing to let his new queen plot the murder of his daughter, or at least raises no hand to stop it. And what of the poor weaver girl who is married to the king of the realm based on her purported ability to spin gold from straw? Far from being the devoted spouse a girl might hope for, the king threatens to kill her if she cannot produce bolts of golden cloth for him, and in the end she is forced to promise their firstborn child to the lonely manikin, Rumpelstiltskin, to give her betrothed what he wants.

  As he rode toward Prosper, Will Pickett, King of Royaume, knew that he had not been a particularly good king lately. He had failed in his duty to the ­people of his land. He had let his selfish need to rescue Elle overwhelm all other considerations, and the evidence of his failure was to be seen all around. It was there in the burnt farms and ruined fields that marked the passage of the Dracomancer’s army. These ­people had been depending on him to protect them, and he had failed them just as he had failed Elle. If he wished for one thing, it was to be given the chance to set things to right, to make Elle safe and his ­people whole. Fortunately, he now knew where he was going. He felt the calm confidence of the man who knows where the end of his journey lay.

  Prosper.

  It was in Prosper that he would find his sister, Liz, who could give him the practical guidance that he had always relied on. It was in Prosper that he could talk to Gwendolyn, the one person in Royaume who might have an insight on how to defeat the dragon. Perhaps most of all, it was in Prosper that he would come face-­to-­face with this Dracomancer. This is not to say that he was confident that he would be able to best the dragon and save Elle, or bring the Dracomancer and his Dracolytes to heel, but he at least knew where the ending chapter of this particular tale would be written. Whether alive or dead, king or prisoner, one way or another his fairy tale would end in the place it had started a year earlier.

  Ahead, the roofs of the village became visible. It was as if the fairy-­tale story of Will’s life had run backwards. He knew that all that had
been done could be undone and that he had no one to blame but himself, and a part of him wondered if he would not be better off. He would never shirk his responsibility, nor would he willingly subject Elle to the hard life of a farmer’s wife, but the smell of the earth and the animals, and the light of the sun in the South Valley felt like a comfortable pair of boots. He was coming back home, back to the familiar, and some of the tension he’d been holding for so long eased in him.

  Unfortunately for Will, the calm only lasted until the road turned, and the whole of Prosper came into view. The quaint village he had known and grown up in had been transformed by the Dracomancer’s army. Throngs of ­people and tents lined the road that led into town, and in the distance, he could see a crowd gathering around a wooden stage that had been erected on the green in the central square. Will had never imagined that the Dracomancer could gather so many ­people to him. He felt his shoulders tighten and his head begin to throb.

  Without knowing it, Will had stopped in the middle of the road, too stunned to move. Charming rode on for a bit, then, realizing that Will was not with him, he turned and came back. He moved his horse close in, and said, “I would guess the stage is for the Dracomancer, Will. We need to get closer so we can be on hand to challenge the man when he appears.”

  Will nodded dumbly. How had so many lost faith in him so quickly?

  Charming turned his horse to ride on, and when Will still did not move, he came back again. “Is there a problem, Will?”

  “All the ­people . . .” Will said stupidly. Had he been that bad a king?

  Charming’s brow wrinkled in puzzlement for a second, and a sudden, knowing gleam came into his eyes. “You’re right, Will, there are far too many ­people to take the horses. We can leave them here and continue on foot.”