“Go on then,” Danica said, chewing a grass blade. “Maybe we can take him home to Celandine instead.” I rolled over in helpless laughter. When I wiped my eyes, I saw Christabel walking barefoot across the meadow to the harper.
Justin stood up. A little, nagging wind blew through my thoughts. I stood beside her, still laughing a little, yet poised to hold her if she stepped out of the circle of our firelight. She watched Christabel. Danica watched the fire dreamily, smiling. Christabel stood before the harper. He took his hand from his strings and held it out to her.
In the sudden silence, Justin shouted, “Christabel!”
All the golden light in the world frayed away. A dragon’s wing of cloud brushed the moon; night washed toward Christabel, as she took his hand and mounted; I saw all her lovely, red-gold hair flowing freely in the last of the light. And then freckled, stolid, courageous, snuffling Christabel caught the harper-king’s shoulders and they rode down the fading path of light into a world beyond the night.
We searched for her until dawn.
At sunrise, we stared at one another, haggard, mute. The great oak had swallowed Christabel; she had disappeared into a harper’s song.
“We could go to the village for help,” Danica said wearily.
“Their eyes are no better than ours,” I said.
“The queen’s harper passed through here unharmed,” Justin mused. “Perhaps he knows something about the country of the woodland king.”
“I hope he is worth all this,” Danica muttered savagely.
“No man is,” Justin said simply. “But all this will be worth nothing if Black Tremptor kills him before we find him. He may be able to lead us safely out of the northlands, if nothing else.”
“I will not leave Fleur and Christabel behind,” I said sharply. “I will not. You may take the harper back to Celandine. I stay here until I find them.”
Justin looked at me; her eyes were reddened with sleeplessness, but they saw as clearly as ever into the mess we had made. “We will not leave you, Anne,” she said. “If he cannot help us, he must find his own way back. But if he can help us, we must abandon Christabel now to rescue him.”
“Then let’s do it,” I said shortly and turned my face away from the oak. A little wind shivered like laughter through their golden leaves.
We rode long and hard. The road plunged back into forest, up low foothills, brought us to the flank of the great dark mountain. We pulled up in its shadow. The dragon’s eyrie shifted under the eye; stone pillars opened into passages, their granite walls split and hollowed like honeycombs, like some palace of winds, open at every angle yet with every passage leading into shadow, into the hidden dragon’s heart.
“In there?” Danica asked. There was no fear in her voice, just her usual impatience to get things done. “Do we knock, or just walk in?” A wind roared through the stones then, bending trees as it blasted at us. I heard stones thrum like harp-strings; I heard the dragon’s voice. We turned our mounts, flattened ourselves against them, while the wild wind rode over us. Recovering, Danica asked more quietly, “Do we go in together?”
“Yes,” I said, and then, “No. I’ll go first.”
“Don’t be daft, Anne,” Danica said crossly. “If we all go together at least we’ll know where we all are.”
“And fools we will look, too,” I said grimly, “caught along with the harper, waiting for Celandine’s knights to rescue us as well.” I turned to Justin. “Is there some secret, some riddle for surviving dragons?”
She shook her head helplessly. “It depends on the dragon. I known nothing about Black Tremptor, except that he most likely has not kept the harper for his harping.”
“Two will go,” I said. “And one wait.”
They did not argue; there seemed no foolproof way, except for none of us to go. We tossed coins: two peacocks and one Celandine. Justin, who got the queen, did not look happy, but the coins were adamant. Danica and I left her standing with our horses, shielded within green boughs, watching us. We climbed the bald slope quietly, trying not to scatter stones. We had to watch our feet, pick a careful path to keep from sliding. Danica, staring groundward, stopped suddenly ahead of me to pick up something.
“Look,” she breathed. I did, expecting a broken harp string, or an ivory button with Celandine’s profile on it.
It was an emerald as big as my thumbnail, shaped and faceted. I stared at it a moment. Then I said, “Dragon-treasure. We came to find a harper.”
“But Anne—there’s another—” She scrabbled across loose stone to retrieve it. “Topaz. And over there a sapphire—”
“Danica,” I pleaded. “You can carry home the entire mountain after you’ve dispatched the dragon.”
“I’m coming,” she said breathlessly, but she had scuttled crab-wise across the slope toward yet another gleam. “Just one more. They’re so beautiful, and just lying here free as rain for anyone to take.”
“Danica! They’ll be as free when we climb back down.”
“I’m coming.”
I turned, in resignation to her sudden magpie urge. “I’m going up.”
“Just a moment, don’t go alone. Oh, Anne, look there, it’s a diamond. I’ve never seen such fire.”
I held my breath, gave her that one moment. It had been such a long, hard journey I found it impossible to deny her an unexpected pleasure. She knelt, groped along the side of a boulder for a shining as pure as water in the sunlight. “I’m coming,” she assured me, her back to me. “I’m coming.”
And then the boulder lifted itself up off the ground. Something forked and nubbled like a tree root, whispering harshly to itself, caught her by her hand and by her honey hair and pulled her down into its hole. The boulder dropped ponderously, earth shifted close around its sides as if it had never moved.
I stared, stunned. I don’t remember crossing the slope, only beating on the boulder with my hands and then my sword hilt, crying furiously at it, until all the broken shards underfoot undulated and swept me in a dry, rattling, bruising wave back down the slope into the trees.
Justin ran to help me. I was torn, bleeding, cursing, crying; I took a while to become coherent. “Of all the stupid, feeble tricks to fall for! A trail of jewels! They’re probably not even real, and Danica got herself trapped under a mountain for a pocketful of coal or dragon fewmets—”
“She won’t be trapped quietly,” Justin said. Her face was waxen. “What took her?”
“A little crooked something—an imp, a mountain troll—Justin, she’s down there without us in a darkness full of whispering things—I can’t believe we were so stupid!”
“Anne, calm down, we’ll find her.”
“I can’t calm down!” I seized her shoulders, shook her. “Don’t you disappear and leave me searching for you, too—”
“I won’t, I promise. Anne, listen.” She smoothed my hair with both her hands back from my face. “Listen to me. We’ll find her. We’ll find Christabel and Fleur, we will not leave this land until—”
“How?” I shouted. “How? Justin, she’s under solid rock!”
“There are ways. There are always ways. This land riddles constantly, but all the riddles have answers. Fleur will turn from a bird into a woman, we will find a path for Christabel out of the wood-king’s country, we will rescue Danica from the mountain imps. There are ways to do these things, we only have to find them.”
“How?” I cried again, for it seemed the farther we travelled in that land, the more trouble we got into. “Every time we turn around one of us disappears! You’ll go next—”
“I will not, I promise—”
“Or I will.”
“I know a few riddles,” someone said. “Perhaps I can help.”
We broke apart, as startled as if a tree had spoken: perhaps one had, in this exasperating land. But it was a woman. She wore a black cloak with a silver edging; her ivory hair and iris eyes and her grave, calm face within the hood were very beautiful. She carried an odd sta
ff of gnarled black wood inset with a jewel the same pale violet as her eyes. She spoke gently, unsurprised by us; perhaps nothing in this place surprised her anymore. She added, at our silence, “My name is Yrecros. You are in great danger from the dragon; you must know that.”
“We have come to rescue a harper,” I said bitterly. “We were five, when we crossed into this land.”
“Ah.”
“Do you know this dragon?”
She did not answer immediately; beside me, Justin was oddly still. The staff shifted; the jewel glanced here and there, like an eye. The woman whose name was Yrecros said finally, “You may ask me anything.”
“I just did,” I said bewilderedly. Justin’s hand closed on my arm; I looked at her. Her face was very pale; her eyes held a strange, intense light I recognized: she had scented something intangible and was in pursuit. At such times she was impossible.
“Yrecros,” she said softly. “My name is Nitsuj.”
The woman smiled.
“What are you doing?” I said between my teeth.
“It’s a game,” Justin breathed. “Question for answer. She’ll tell us all we need to know.”
“Why must it be a game?” I protested. She and the woman were gazing at one another, improbable fighters about to engage in a delicate battle of wits. They seemed absorbed in one another, curious, stonedeaf. I raised my voice. “Justin!”
“You’ll want the harper, I suppose,” the woman said. I worked out her name then and closed my eyes.
Justin nodded. “It’s what we came for. And if I lose?”
“I want you,” the woman said simply, “for my apprentice.” She smiled again, without malice or menace. “For seven years.”
My breath caught. “No.” I could barely speak. I seized Justin’s arm, shook her. “Justin, Justin, please!” For just a moment I had, if not her eyes, her attention.
“It’s all right, Anne,” she said softly. “We’ll get the harper without a battle, and rescue Fleur and Christabel and Danica as well.”
“Justin!” I shouted. Above us all the pillars and cornices of stone echoed her name; great, barbed-winged birds wheeled out of the trees. But unlike bird and stone, Justin did not hear.
“You are a guest in this land,” the woman said graciously. “You may ask first.”
“Where is the road to the country of the woodland king?”
“The white stag in the oak forest follows the road to the land of the harper king,” Yrecros answered, “if you follow from morning to night, without weapons and without rest. What is the Song of Ducirc, and on what instrument was it first played?”
“The Song of Ducirc was the last song of a murdered poet to his love, and it was played to his lady in her high tower on an instrument of feathers, as all the birds in the forest who heard it sang her his lament,” Justin said promptly. I breathed a little then; she had been telling us such things all her life. “What traps the witch in the border woods in her true shape, and how can her power be taken?”
“The border witch may be trapped by a cage of iron; her staff of power is the spoon with which she stirs her magic. What begins with fire and ends with fire and is black and white between?”
“Night,” Justin said. Even I knew that one. The woman’s face held, for a moment, the waning moon’s smile. “Where is the path to the roots of this mountain, and what do those who dwell there fear most?”
“The path is fire, which will open their stones, and what they fear most is light. What is always coming yet never here, has a name but does not exist, is longer than day but shorter than day?”
Justin paused a blink. “Tomorrow,” she said, and added, “in autumn.” The woman smiled her lovely smile. I loosed breath noiselessly. “What will protect us from the dragon?”
The woman studied Justin, as if she were answering some private riddle of her own. “Courtesy,” she said simply. “Where is Black Tremptor’s true name hidden?”
Justin was silent; I felt her thoughts flutter like a bird seeking a perch. The silence lengthened; an icy finger slid along my bones.
“I do not know,” Justin said at last, and the woman answered, “The dragon’s name is hidden within a riddle.”
Justin read my thoughts; her hand clamped on my wrist. “Don’t fight,” she breathed.
“That’s not—”
“The answer’s fair.”
The woman’s brows knit thoughtfully. “Is there anything else you need to know?” She put her staff lightly on Justin’s shoulder, turned the jewel toward her pale face. The jewel burned a sudden flare of amethyst, as if in recognition. “My name is Sorcery and that is the path I follow. You will come with me for seven years. After that, you may choose to stay.”
“Tell me,” I pleaded desperately, “how to rescue her. You have told me everything else.”
The woman shook her head, smiling her brief moon-smile. Justin looked at me finally; I saw the answer in her eyes.
I stood mute, watching her walk away from me, tears pushing into my eyes, unable to plead or curse because there had been a game within a game, and only I had lost. Justin glanced back at me once, but she did not really see me, she only saw the path she had walked toward all her life.
I turned finally to face the dragon.
I climbed the slope again alone. No jewels caught my eye, no voice whispered my name. Not even the dragon greeted me. As I wandered through columns and caverns and hallways of stone, I heard only the wind moaning through the great bones of the mountain. I went deeper into stone. The passageways glowed butterfly colors with secretions from the dragon’s body. Here and there I saw a scale flaked off by stone; some flickered blue-green-black, others the colors of fire. Once I saw a chip of claw, hard as horn, longer than my hand. Sometimes I smelled sulphur, sometimes smoke, mostly wind smelling of the stone it scoured endlessly.
I heard harping.
I found the harper finally, sitting ankle-deep in jewels and gold, in a shadowy cavern, plucking wearily at his harp with one hand. His other hand was cuffed and chained with gold to a golden rivet in the cavern wall. He stared, speechless, when he saw me. He was, as rumored, tall and golden-haired, also unwashed, unkempt and sour from captivity. Even so, it was plain to see why Celandine wanted him back.
“Who are you?” he breathed, as I trampled treasure to get to him.
“I am Celandine’s cousin Anne. She sent her court to rescue you.”
“It took you long enough,” he grumbled, and added, “You couldn’t have come this far alone.”
“You did,” I said tersely, examining the chain that held him. Even Fleur would have had it out of the wall in a minute. “It’s gold, malleable. Why didn’t you—”
“I tried,” he said, and showed me his torn hands. “It’s dragon magic.” He jerked the chain fretfully from my hold. “Don’t bother trying. The key’s over near that wall.” He looked behind me, bewilderedly, for my imaginary companions. “Are you alone? She didn’t send her knights to fight this monster?”
“She didn’t trust them to remember who they were supposed to kill,” I said succinctly. He was silent, while I crossed the room to rummage among pins and cups and necklaces for the key. I added, “I didn’t ride from Carnelaine alone. I lost four companions in this land as we tracked you.”
“Lost?” For a moment, his voice held something besides his own misery. “Dead?”
“I think not.”
“How did you lose them?”
“One was lost to the witch in the wood.”
“Was she a witch?” he said, astonished. “I played for her, but she never offered me anything to eat, hungry as I was. I could smell food but she only said that it was burned and unfit for company.”
“And one,” I said, sifting through coins and wondering at the witch’s taste, “to the harper-king in the wood.”
“You saw him?” he breathed. “I played all night, hoping to hear his fabled harping, but he never answered with a note.”
“Maybe you
never stopped to listen,” I said, in growing despair over the blind way he blundered through the land. “And one to the imps under the mountain.”
“What imps?”
“And last,” I said tightly, “in a riddle-game to the sorceress with the jewelled staff. You were to be the prize.”
He shifted, chain and coins rattling. “She only told me where to find what I was searching for, she didn’t warn me of the dangers. She could have helped me! She never said she was a sorceress.”
“Did she tell you her name?”
“I don’t remember—what difference does it make? Hurry with the key before the dragon smells you here. It would have been so much easier for me if your companion had not lost the riddle-game.”
I paused in my searching to gaze at him. “Yes,” I said finally, “and it would have been easier than that for all of us if you had never come here. Why did you?”
He pointed. “I came for that.”
“That” was a harp of bone. Its strings glistened with the same elusive, shimmering colors that stained the passageways. A golden key lay next to it. I am as musical as the next, no more, but when I saw those strange, glowing strings I was filled with wonder at what music they might make and I paused, before I touched the key, to pluck a note.
It seemed the mountain hummed.
“No!” the harper cried, heaving to his feet in a tide of gold. Wind sucked out of the cave, as at the draw of some gigantic wing. “You stupid, blundering—How do you think I got caught? Throw me the key! Quickly!”
I weighed the key in my hand, prickling at his rudeness. But he was, after all, what I had promised Celandine to find, and I imagined that washed and fed and in the queen’s hands, he would assert his charms again. I tossed the key; it fell a little short of his outstretched hand.
“Fool!” he snapped. “You are as clumsy as the queen.”
Stone-still, I stared at him, as he strained, groping for the key. I turned abruptly to the harp and ran my hand down all the strings.
What travelled down the passages to find us shed smoke and fire and broken stone behind it. The harper groaned and hid behind his arms. Smoke cleared; great eyes like moons of fire gazed at us near the high ceiling. A single claw as long as my shin dropped within an inch of my foot. Courtesy, I thought frantically. Courtesy, she said. It was like offering idle chatter to the sun. Before I could speak, the harper cried,
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