A dragon?
But my musings were cut short by a man dressed in bright orange who stood in our path. He peered through an odd instrument on the end of a pole.
I glanced at the duke, walking now at my side. He had begun to shiver.
The man in orange looked up as we approached. “Good afternoon,” he said, the half frown on his face disproving the words. “Could you move a little faster? You’re blocking the emperor’s highway, you know.”
The duke shook violently.
“Highway?” Ebenezum asked, stopping mid-path rather than hurrying by the man in orange.
“Yes, the new road that the great and good Emperor Flostok III has decreed—”
“Flee!” the duke cried. “Dragons! Dragons! Flee!” He leapt about, waving his hands before the emperor’s representative.
“See here!” the orange man snapped. “I’ll have none of this. I’m traveling to see the Duke of Gurnish on important business.”
The duke stopped hopping. “Duke?” he said, pulling his soiled clothing back into place. “Why, I’m the Duke of Gurnish. What can I help you with, my good man?”
The man in orange frowned even deeper. “It’s about the upkeep of the road…”
“Certainly.” The duke glanced back at us. “Perhaps we should go somewhere that we can talk undisturbed.” The duke led the man in orange into the underbrush.
“They deserve each other,” Ebenezum muttered. “But to business.” He looked at me solemnly. “A bit about dragons. Dragons are one of the magical sub-species. They exist largely between worlds, partly on Earth and partly in the Netherhells, and never truly belong to either. There are other magical sub-species—”
Ebenezum’s lecture was interrupted by a commotion in the underbrush. Large arms with a thick growth of grayish-brown hair rose and fell above the bushes, accompanied by human screams.
“Another sub-species is the troll,” Ebenezum remarked.
I let my pack slide from my back and firmly grasped my staff. They would eat my true love’s father! I had never encountered trolls before, but this was as good a time as any to learn.
“Slobber! Slobber!” came from the bushes before us. A rough voice, the sound of a saw biting into hardwood. I assumed it was a troll.
“Wait!” another voice screamed. “You can’t do this! I’m a representative of the emperor!”
“Slobber! Slobber!” answered a chorus of rough voices.
“Let’s get this over with!” Anther voice, high and shaky. The duke?
Although the voices were quite close now, it was getting difficult to distinguish individual words. It just sounded like a large amount of screaming, punctuated by cries of “slobber!” I lifted my staff over my head and ran forward with a scream of my own.
I broke into a small clearing with four occupants. One was the duke. The other three were among the ugliest creatures I’d seen in my short life. Squat and covered with irregular tufts of gray-brown fur, which did nothing to hide the rippling muscles of their barrel-like arms and legs. Three pairs of very small red eyes turned to regard me. One of them swallowed something that looked a good deal like an orange-clad foot.
The sight of the three hideous creatures completely stopped my forward motion. They regarded me in silence.
“Oh, hello,” I said, breaking into the sinister quiet. “I must have wandered off the path. Excuse me.”
One of the trolls barrelled toward me on its immensely powerful legs. “Slobber,” it remarked. It was time to leave. I turned and bumped into my master, who ignored me as he made a mystic gesture.
“No slobber! No slobber!” the trolls cried and ran back into the heart of the woods.
I picked myself up and helped the wizard regain his feet as well. Ebenezum sneezed for a full three minutes, the result of his actually employing magic. When he caught his breath at last, he wiped his nose on his robe and regarded me all too evenly.
“Wuntvor,” he said quietly. “What do you mean by dropping all our valuable equipment and running off, just so you can be swallowed by—”
The duke ran between the two of us. “Flee! Flee! Dragons! Trolls! Flee!”
“Add you!” my master said, his voice rising at last. “I’ve had enough of your jumping about, screaming hysterical warnings! Why do you even worry? You were surrounded by trolls and they didn’t touch you. You lead a charmed life!” He grabbed the duke’s shoulder with one hand and mine with the other and pushed us back to the trail.
“Come,” he continued. “We will reach Gurnish Keep before nightfall. There, my assistant and I will deal with this dragon, and you, good duke, will pay us handsomely for our efforts.” The wizard deposited us on the trail and walked briskly toward the castle before the duke could reply.
“Look!” The duke pulled at my sleeve. There was a break in the trees ahead, affording a clear view of the hill on the wood’s far side. There, atop the hill, was Gurnish Keep, a stone building not much larger than Ebenezum’s cottage. Smoke poured from the Keep’s lower windows, and once or twice I thought I saw the yellow-orange flicker of flame.
“Dragon,” the duke whispered. I hurriedly reached into my satchel and pulled out How to Speak Dragon. The time to start learning was now.
I opened the book at random and scanned the page. Phrases in common speech filled one side. Opposite these were the same phrases in dragon. I started reading from the top:
“Pardon me, but could you please turn your snout?”
“Sniz me heeba-heeba szzz.”
“Pardon me, but your claw is in my leg.”
“Sniz mir sazza grack szzz.”
“Pardon me, but your barbed tail is waving perilously close…”
The whole page was filled with similar phrases. I closed the book. It had done nothing to reassure me.
Ebenezum shouted at us from far up the trail. I ran to follow, dragging the Duke of Gurnish with me.
We walked through the remaining forest without further difficulty. The woods ended at the edge of a large hill called Wizard’s Knoll or Mount Gurnish, depending upon whom you spoke with. From there, we could get a clear view of the castle. And the smoke. And the flames.
The duke began to jabber again about the dangers ahead, but was silenced by a single glance from my master. The wizard’s cool gray eyes stared up toward the castle, but somehow beyond it. After a moment, he shook his head and flexed his shoulders beneath his robes. He turned to me.
“Wunt,” he said. “More occurs here than meets the eye.” He glanced again at the duke, who was nervously dancing on a pile of leaves. “Not just a dragon, but three trolls. That’s a great deal of supernatural activity for a place as quiet as Wizard’s Woods.”
I expected the duke to object to the wizard’s choice of names, but he was strangely quiet. I turned to the pile of leaves where he had hidden.
The duke was gone.
“Methinks,” Ebenezum continued, “some contact has been made with the Netherhells of late. There is a certain instrument in your pack…”
My master went on to describe the instrument and its function. If we set it up at the base of the hill, it would tell us the exact number and variety of creatures from the Netherhells lurking about the district.
I held up the instrument. My master rubbed his nose. “Keep it at a distance. The device carries substantial residual magic.”
I put the thing together according to the wizard’s instructions, and, at his signal, spun the gyroscope that topped it off.
“Now, small points of light will appear.” Ebenezum sniffled loudly. “You can tell by the color of—”
He sneezed mightily, again and again. I looked to the device. Should I stop it?
Ebenezum sneezed to end all sneezes, directly at the instrument. The device fell apart.
“By the Netherhells!” Ebenezum exclaimed. “Can I not perform the simplest of spells?” He looked at me, and his face looked very old. “Put away the apparatus, Wunt. We must use the direct approach. Duke?�
�
I explained that the duke had vanished.
“What now?” Ebenezum looked back toward the forest. His cold gray eyes went wide. He blew his nose hastily.
“Wunt! Empty the pack!”
“What?” I asked, startled by the urgency of my master’s voice. Then I looked back to the woods, and saw it coming. A wall of black, like some impenetrable cloud, roiling across the forest. But this cloud extended from the sky to the forest floor, and left complete blackness behind. It sped across the woods like a living curtain that drew its darkness even closer.
“Someone plays with great forces,” Ebenezum said. “Forces he doesn’t understand. The pack, Wunt!”
I dumped the pack’s contents on the ground. Ebenezum rifled through them, tossing various arcane tomes and irreplacable devices out of his way, until he grasped a small box painted a shiny robin’s egg blue.
The magician sneezed in triumph. He tossed me the box.
“Quick, Wunt!” he called, blowing his nose. “Take the dust within that box and spread it in a line along the hill!” He waved at a rocky ridge on the forest edge as he jogged up the hill and began to sneeze again.
I did as my master bid, laying an irregular line of blue powder across the long granite slab. I looked back to the woods. The darkness was very close, engulfing all but the hill.
“Run, Wunt!”
I sprinted up the hill. The wizard cried a few ragged syllables and followed. He tripped as he reached the hilltop, and fell into an uncontrollable sneezing fit.
I turned back to look at the approaching blackness. The darkly tumbling wall covered all the forest now, and tendrils of the stuff reached out toward the hill like so many grasping hands. But the fog’s forward motion had stopped just short of the ragged blue line.
There was a breeze at my back. I turned to see Ebenezum, still sneezing but somehow standing. One arm covered his nose, the other reached for the sky. His free hand moved and the breeze grew to a wind and then a gale, rushing down the hill and pushing the dark back to wherever it had come.
After a minute the wind died, but what wisps of fog remained in the forest below soon evaporated beneath the bright afternoon sun. My master sat heavily and gasped for breath as if all the air had escaped from his lungs.
“Lucky,” he said after a minute. “Whoever raised the demon fog had a weak will. Otherwise…” The magician blew his nose, allowing the rest of the sentence to go unsaid.
A figure moved through the woods beneath us. It was the duke.
“Too exhausted to fight dragon,” Ebenezum continued, still breathing far too hard. “You’ll have to do it, Wunt.”
I swallowed and picked up How to Speak Dragon from the hillside where it lay. I turned to look at Gurnish Keep, a scant hundred yards across the hilltop. Billows of smoke poured from the windows, occasionally accompanied by licks of flame. And, now that we stood so close, I could hear a low rumble, underlining all the other sounds in the field in which we stood. A rumble that occasionally grew into a roar.
This dragon was going to be everything I expected.
The duke grabbed at my coatsleeve. “Dragon!” he said. “Last chance to get out!”
“Time to go in there,” Ebenezum said. “Look in the book, Wunt. Perhaps we can talk the dragon out of the castle.” He shook the quivering duke from his arm. “And if you, good sir, would be quiet for a moment, we could go about saving your home and daughter. Quite honestly, I feel you have no cause for complaint with the luck you’ve been having. Most people would not have survived the evil spell that recently took over the woods. How you manage to bumble through the powerful forces at work around here is beyond…” Ebenezum’s voice trailed off. He cocked an eyebrow at the duke and stroked his beard in thought.
The rumble from the castle grew louder again. I opened the thin volume I held in my sweating palms. I had to save my afternoon beauty.
I flipped frantically from page to page, finally finding a phrase I thought appropriate.
“Pardon me, but might we speak to you?”
In the loudest voice I could manage, I spat out the dragon syllables.
“Sniz grah! Subba Ubba Szzz!”
A great, deep voice reverberated from within the castle. “Speak the common tongue, would you?” it said. “Besides, I’m afraid I don’t have a commode.”
I closed the book with a sigh of relief. The dragon spoke human!
“Don’t trust him!” the duke cried. “Dragons are deceitful!”
Ebenezum nodded his head. “Proceed with caution, Wunt. Someone is being deceitful.” He turned to the duke. “You!”
“Me?” the Gurnish nobleman replied as he backed in my direction. Ebenezum stalked after him.
They were squabbling again. But I had no time for petty quarrels. I firmly grasped my staff, ready to confront the dragon and my afternoon beauty.
The duke was right behind me now, his courage seemingly returned. “Go forward, wizard!” he cried in a loud voice. “Defeat the dragon! Banish him forever!”
“Oh, not a wizard, too!” cried the voice from within the castle. “First I get cooped up in Gurnish Keep, then I have to capture your beautiful daughter, and now a wizard! How dull! Doesn’t anyone have any imagination around here?”
I came to a great oak door. I nudged it with my foot. It opened easily and I stepped inside to confront the dragon.
It stood on its haunches, regarding me in turn. It was everything the duke had mentioned, and more. Blue and violet scales, twenty-five feet in length, wings that brushed the ceiling. The one oversight in the duke’s description appeared to be the large green top hat on the dragon’s head.
I saw her a second later.
She stood in front and slightly to one side of the giant reptile. She was as beautiful as I’d ever seen her.
“Why, Wuntvor,” she said. “What are you doing here?”
I cleared my throat and pounded my staff on the worn stone pavement. “I’ve come to rescue you.”
“Rescue?” She looked up at the dragon. The dragon rumbled. “So father’s gotten to you, too?”
The duke’s voice screamed behind me. “I warned you! Now the dragon will bum you all to cinders!”
The dragon snorted good naturedly and turned to regard the ceiling.
“The game is up, duke!” Ebenezum called from the doorway, far enough away so that the dragon’s magical odor would not provoke another attack. “Your sorcerous schemes are at an end!”
“Yes, father,” my afternoon beauty said. “Don’t you think you’ve gone far enough?” She looked at my master. “Father so wanted control of the new Trans-Empire Highway, to put toll stations throughout the woods below, that he traded in his best retainer for the services of certain creatures from the Netherhells, which he’d use to frighten off anyone who stood in the way of his plans.”
She turned and looked at the dragon. “Luckily, one of those creatures was Hubert.”
“Betrayed!” The duke clutched at his heart. “My own daughter!”
“Come, father. What you’re doing is dangerous and wrong. Your greed will make a monster of you. I’ve been worrying what my future was with you and the castle. But now I know.” She glanced happily back to the dragon. “Hubert and I have decided to go on the stage.”
The duke was taken aback.
“What?”
“Yes, good sir,” Hubert the dragon remarked. “I have some small experience in the field, and, on talking with your daughter, have found that she is just the partner I have been looking for.”
“Yes, father. A life on the stage. How much better than sitting around a tiny castle, waiting to be rescued by a clumsy young man.”
Clumsy? My world reeled around me. Not wishing to be rescued was one thing, considering the situation. But to call me clumsy? I lowered my staff and walked toward the door.
“Wait!” my afternoon beauty cried. I turned quickly. Perhaps she had reconsidered her harsh words. Our long afternoons together still meant so
mething!
“You haven’t seen our act!” she exclaimed. “Hit it, dragon!”
She danced back and forth across the castle floor, the dragon beating time with its tail. They sang together.
“Let’s raise a flagon
For damsel and dragon,
The best song and dance team in the whole, wide world.
Our audience is clapping,
And their toes are tapping,
For a handsome reptile and a pretty girl!”
The dragon blew smoke rings at the end of a line and breathed a bit of fire at the end of a verse. Six more verses followed, more or less the same. Then they stopped singing and began to shuffle back and forth.
They talked in rhythm.
“Hey, dragon. It’s good to have an audience again.”
“I’ll say, damsel. I’m all fired up!”
They paused.
“How beautiful it is in Gurnish Keep! What more could you ask for, damsel, than this kind of sunny day?”
“I don’t know, dragon. I could do with a shining knight!”
They paused again.
“Romance among reptiles can be a weighty problem!”
“Why’s that, dragon?”
“When I see a pretty dragoness, it tips my scales!”
They launched into song immediately.
“Let’s raise a flagon
For damsel and dragon—”
“I can’t stand it any more!” the Duke of Gurnish cried. “Slabyach! Grimace! Trolls, get them all!”
A trapdoor opened in the corner of the castle floor. The trolls popped out.
“Quick, Wunt!” Ebenezum cried. “Out of the way!” But before he could even begin to gesture, he was caught in a sneezing fit.
The trolls sauntered toward us. I bopped one on the head with my staff. The staff broke.
“Slobber!” exclaimed the troll.
“Roohhaarrr!” came from across the room. The dragon stood as well as it was able in the confines of the castle’s great hall. It carefully directed a thin lance of flame toward each troll’s posterior.
“No slobber! No slobber!” the trolls exclaimed, escaping back through the trapdoor.
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