Dragon Book, The

by Gardner Dozois

  “I am harming no one,” came the breathless whisper, proving that he hadn’t imagined it. “Why don’t you leave well enough alone?”

  “You’re a dragon.”

  “And you’re a human.”

  “Neither of us can help what we are.”

  “But are we slaves to our nature? That’s the question.”

  “I have no doubt that you would harm me if you could.”

  “You should doubt, a little. I have no such desire in me at the moment. If I did, you would know about it.”

  Ros was running low on stones. “So you claim not to be a captive, and that this isn’t a trap?”

  “Why do you ask when it’s clear you won’t believe the answer?”

  “To test my theory that all dragons are liars.”

  “Whether I am lying or not, it would be unwise to judge from my example alone.”

  “Ah, you see, you’re not the only dragon I know.”

  In reply, he received an empty hum, as though the dragon was thinking. When that faded, Ros had no more stones left to toss.

  A gust of wind sprang up, tugging at the threads and sending sand skittering around him. For the first time, Ros noticed the deep, desert cold biting at his skin. Do something, he told himself. You can’t stay hidden in the circle all night.

  Do what you have to do, Ros, then come find me in return.

  Lifting his left foot, he swept the sole of his shoe over the symbols he had drawn. The world instantly returned to its usual flavour: he could smell the stagnant water of the pool and detected a far-away rattle of crabblers moving about their nocturnal affairs. Distantly, he noted that the moon wasn’t as bright as it had been. It had drifted behind a cloud and came and went uneasily above him.

  Ros stepped from the remains of his circle. Nothing attacked him, physically or through the Change. His was the only will making itself felt at the moment.

  With great care, Ros reached out and plucked the nearest strand of the web.

  “See?” said the dragon. “I mean you no harm.”

  “This proves nothing.”

  “What proof do you require?”

  Ros thought of the third of Master Pukje’s conditions.

  “Tell me why you’re hiding here, and maybe I’ll believe you.”

  “Then will you leave?”

  “I can’t promise you anything.”

  “Without making a liar of yourself, I suppose.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Exactly that, I think. We haven’t said a true word to each other since you woke me. We have danced around the truth, guarding our secrets as though they were jewels. You talk about proof and lies and promises as though they somehow stand between you and what you want, but I tell you this: no amount of talk will satisfy you. What do you desire so badly that you have come to me in the dead of night and woken me from my slumber?”

  Ros thought this time of Adi, and of freedom, and of his promise to Master Pukje. “If you’re trapped,” he said, “then maybe I am, too.”

  “Trapped in a web of words,” the dragon scoffed, “as I am trapped in this web of spider’s silk.”

  “Yours is easier to break, I think.”

  “You might indeed think so. Try it and find out.”

  Ros’s index finger tensed to put the dragon’s suggestion into practice, but stayed on the verge of doing so. The wind bowed the silent dragon over him, as though urging him on.

  He couldn’t do it. Not without knowing more—and that, he intuitively understood, meant giving more.

  “I’ve been sent here,” he told the dragon, “to kill you. What do you say to that?”

  “I say this: who sent you?”

  “What difference does that make?”

  “All the difference in the world. You are not my enemy; you are just the instrument of my enemy. That’s the person I need to talk to, and I can only do it through you.”

  “He didn’t send me to have a conversation.”

  “Yet here we are. Why not do the deed and be done with it? Commit your murder; get on with your life. You still haven’t told me what it is you desire.”

  “I want to know why you deserve to die.”

  “Did the one who sent you not tell you? That was remiss of him.”

  “He tells me what I need to know.”

  “Do you trust him?”

  “He is—was—my teacher, my master.”

  “Then you should certainly trust him.”

  “That’s what I tell myself.”

  “But …?”

  But I know Master Pukje never does anything without a reason, Ros said to himself, and when the reason is hidden, that’s usually for a reason, too. What if this dragon doesn’t deserve to die? What if I’m being tricked into committing a terrible crime?

  “Once upon a time,” his master had told him, “the world was full of creatures like me. We are rare now, and, for the most part, we avoid your kind. We see the fear in your eyes when you gaze upon us. It’s unpleasant, for we belong in this world as firmly as you do. It was ours before it was yours. We understand it a little better.

  “So we hide ourselves in a variety of different ways. Some live in the sky as clouds or mysterious lights. Some live underground, feasting on molten rock. Some spread their wings in the canopies of forests, where vines will hide them, and they can sleep out the rest of eternity. Some find ways to walk among you as I do, as one of you.”

  And one, Ros now understood, took the form of a giant web and sailed gently through the days. He had offered the information of its imminent demise on impulse in order to see what it might provoke, but the news had raised barely a twitch of alarm.

  “There are different kinds of deaths,” he said.

  “Indeed,” the dragon agreed. “Hope can die, for one. The body lives on, but the inside turns to dust. Love, too, is another thing that doesn’t last forever.”

  Ros looked up sharply. What had the dragon guessed about his motivations? What did it think it knew? Ros was plucking the threads like a harpist, but maybe the dragon was playing him instead.

  He crooked his index finger again, and this time he did pull on the thread until it snapped.

  The web shuddered, and the image of the dragon recoiled.

  “See?” the dragon whispered before the vibrations died down. “I am helpless before you.”

  That didn’t seem plausible. “So anyone could’ve come along and done this, at any time?”

  “I’m sorry if that makes you feel less important.”

  “This is supposed to be a quest, a challenge, a test—”

  “And so I’m sure it is, for both of us. If anyone could have done this, why you? Why now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you have no understanding at all?”

  Ros shook his head, full of conflicting emotion. If all he had to do to achieve his freedom was to snap a few threads and end the life of a feeble old dragon, what was stopping him from doing it?

  Perhaps this was the test, he thought. Perhaps this indecision was the challenge he had to overcome in order to be truly free.

  This led to a far more discomfiting thought. What if Master Pukje wanted Ros to earn his independence by disobeying his master’s orders, by doing what he thought was right rather than blindly following instructions?

  Threefold. He had found the dragon; that was something. But how could he leave the other two tasks unfinished and expect to earn the life he had dreamed of for so long?

  “Tell me why you’re hiding.”

  “The world has changed,” the dragon said, “and it’s changing still. All things reflect the world as it is, just as the world reflects those things inside it. We don’t stand apart. Our function alters with time.”

  “What function do you perform now?”

  “To dream.”

  “Not all dragons are sleeping.”

  “Don’t misunderstand me. Sleeping and dreaming aren’t the same thing.”

  “N
ot all dragons are dreaming, then.”

  “Ah, yes. You said you knew another. You believe it to be a liar. Is it lying to itself or to you? The former is, after all, one definition of a dream.”

  “Perhaps both.”

  “Then that makes it a very dangerous dragon indeed. Did you attempt to kill it, too?”

  “No. He’s the one who sent me.”

  “Did he, now?”

  “Yes.”

  The dragon didn’t react with surprise or anger, or any of the human emotions Ros might have expected.

  “Let me be sure I understand you: the other dragon you know, the one you believe to be a liar, is the one who sent you to kill me, the one you obey because you consider him your teacher and master?”

  “Yes.”

  “No, that’s not what you said. You corrected yourself. You said he was your teacher and master.”

  “My apprenticeship ends with the completion of this task.”

  “Killing me.”

  “And returning with proof.”

  “Naturally. I would demand no less, myself.”

  “Doesn’t that bother you—one of your own kind trying to murder you?”

  “Oh, he’s not the one doing the murdering. That’s you, of your own free will. What concerns me more is that a dragon took a human apprentice. What’s your name, boy? Let us talk as equals since that is what your master thinks we are.”

  “Roslin,” he said, keeping his heart-name to himself. “Roslin of Geheb. What’s yours?”

  “I’ve had many names,” the dragon told him. “You can call me Zilant, if you like. What name does your master go by?”

  Ros felt a need to prevaricate on that point. “Why do you want to know?”

  “I would like to know, Roslin of Geheb, how he passes among your kind. Does he have a form like mine or some other disguise?”

  “He looks much like a human,” Ros said. “When he wants to.”

  “Yes, and keeps his true form for when he doesn’t. We have such power, we dragons, when we choose to use it.”

  “My master says that choices are the most difficult thing to learn. Becoming powerful is easy compared to knowing when to be powerful.”

  “Are you powerful, Roslin of Geheb?”

  “I am told that I can be.”

  “It won’t take much to kill me, I’m afraid. Don’t be disappointed.”

  Ros reached out and snapped another thread. “Don’t think to arouse my sympathy, dragon. If you want to live, give me a reason to spare you, nothing else.”

  Zilant writhed, but his tooth-filled mouth seemed to gape in a smile. “Of course. I know I cannot win your allegiance. One dragon at a time, eh?”

  “I will never turn on my master, if that’s what you’re suggesting.”

  “You’re the one with all the suggestions. But remember: a thought voiced is a deed in waiting.”

  “Stop it.”

  “What do you believe will happen if you disobey this lying master of yours? Do you think he’ll descend from the sky and rend you with his beak? If you’re looking for reason, ask yourself why your master trained you. Not to die in his own claws, certainly. He has invested too much in you for that. You make your own decisions now. You are already your own master.

  “Or has your master no intention of setting you free? Is this monstrous task the first of many he has planned for you? By your guilt and shame you will bind yourself to him. He will trade an apprentice for a servant, and you will be trapped forever.”

  “Stop it!”

  Furious, Ros grabbed an armful of the strands and snapped them all. Severed silken threads fell on him and clung to his face. The dragon roiled and roared above him. The hum became a scream.

  “Who is master, Roslin of Geheb,” it shouted, “and who the slave?”

  Ros tore another armful, even as part of him asked why he was so angry. Wasn’t the dragon telling him what he had already suspected: that this was a fool’s mission designed either to humiliate or to ensnare him? Wouldn’t breaking his word release him from both threat and obligation?

  He couldn’t take that risk. Zilant had been in his life a matter of minutes. Master Pukje had raised him for five years. Ros owed one more than the other, and neither more than he owed himself. He would stick to the deal he had made. Zilant might deserve only to sleep and dream, but the dragon stood between Ros and the freedom Pukje had promised him, the future he and Adi had dreamed of.

  But did he deserve it, now? He doubted his feelings for her and fantasised that his master was entangling him in a web of deception. His thoughts betrayed all of them. He was worthy of neither trust nor love.

  Ros ran headlong across the Divide floor, snatching at threads and pulling them apart. The fabric of the dragon, rent and torn, flailed in ribbons. Starlight gleamed like tears from the truncated ends and from his hand where web tenaciously clung. Reaching the far side of the canyon, he climbed up the rough cliff-face, leaping from handhold to handhold like a crabbler, ripping at the thickening strands, biting them, finally reaching for his knife and slashing when they became too strong for him to break with strength alone.

  How much time passed, he couldn’t tell. The moon had vanished entirely behind a cloud, so he couldn’t follow its passage across the sky, and nor, in the depths of his determination, would he have cared to know. Ignoring the aches in his muscles and the layers of web thickening around him, he laboured on, climbing and swinging from thread to thread, slashing indiscriminately as he went.

  At the top, he paused only to survey the best way to administer the killing stroke. A single, thick rope sagged from one side of the canyon to the other. From that hung all that remained of the dragon. Shimmying hand over hand along it with the knife between his teeth, Ros reached the middle and prepared to do what had to be done.

  “This is your last chance, Zilant,” he said. “Tell me something, anything, to change my mind.”

  “No,” hissed the dragon. “You cannot turn back now.”

  At hearing the same words that the crabblers had told him, Ros almost stayed his hand. He was too tired to be angry any more; only stubbornness kept him going. What did it mean that he couldn’t turn back, anyway? He no more believed in destiny than he did the Goddess of which some people spoke. The course of his life was mapped out by obligations, promises, and debts. They were what trapped him, not some absurd cosmic cartographer.

  Hanging from one hand, he raised the knife and brought it down hard.

  The rope snapped. The dragon rent in two, sagging like a curtain and taking him with it. The two of them fell with majestic delicacy to the canyon floor. He braced himself for the impact, rolled, and came up angling the knife safely away from him. The breath had been knocked out of him, and he was covered in dead web, but apart from that, he was unharmed.

  To the east, the sky was pale. By the growing light, Ros surveyed what he had done.

  The dragon was unrecognisable. Where once had hung the image of a beast in full flight were now just ephemeral rags. All magnificence had fled. No voice remained, no hum. Just the nameless wind, sighing endlessly across stone.

  A shaft of light caught Ros as the sun breached the far horizon. His hands shook in the golden radiance. He barely had strength to pull the thick mat of threads from his face.

  But it was done. He had killed the dragon. All he had to do now was prove it to Master Pukje. The proof he required lay in the remains of the web. His master had known what awaited him here, he was sure. Just the sight of Ros would be enough. He was practically encased in the stuff. It would take days to get all the threads out of his hair.

  He laughed hoarsely. The sound echoed back from the canyon walls like a sob. A cocooned caterpillar, what would he become when his chrysalis opened? Would Adi still want him, this killer of defenceless dragons?

  In that crystalline moment, he felt his reluctance to honour his promise to Adi become fear, and knew that the course of his quest had led him to pitfalls that, until now, he had neve
r needed to navigate.

  A rattling of crabblers brought him out of his desperate introspection. Six of them had crawled over the lip of the canyon, and more followed behind them. Their clattering was wild and incoherent. He had never heard them like this before. They swarmed down the cliff wall and over the remains of the web. Were they shocked at what they saw? Ros couldn’t tell. More and more poured into the Divide, and he retreated from their thickening tide.

  The sound of stirring water disturbed the silence behind him. He spun, raising the knife. The brackish pool was quiet no longer. Waves crossed its black surface as though something large was moving back and forth beneath.

  The wind whipped around him with increasing strength, raising a whirlwind of dust.

  Stones rained from the canyon walls.

  Clouds undulated in the sky.

  No, he realised through growing alarm. Not clouds. The very same cloud that he had seen yesterday while approaching the web. The one that had blocked the moon. It hadn’t moved in a day and a night, but did so now in defiance of wind and weather, its own kind of being.

  Some live in the sky …

  White, feathery wings unfurled. A long neck uncoiled. At the same time, a tower of water shot up out of the pool and spread wings of its own. Crabblers climbed acrobatically over each other, manoeuvring with eerie precision to become eyes, beak, talons, and tail, while boulders tumbling from the Divide wall landed to form legs, arms, a hunched back. The whirlwind of dust took a similar form, towering over him and flexing its muscles. Ros barely heard the strand beast explode as every bottle strapped to its side burst asunder, releasing the air trapped within.

  Dragon of air.

  Dragon of dust.

  Dragon of stone.

  Dragon of water.

  Dragon of cloud.

  He reeled back as the full import of what he had unleashed sank in. Even the crabblers, now gripped together in a grotesque tangle of legs and fat bodies, had been coopted by the dragons into their bizarre masquerade.

  “Why don’t you leave well enough alone?” Zilant had asked.

  Ros should have listened to him. Now he had killed one dragon and disturbed a whole nest of them. That was the price he would have to pay for freedom.