“People still live there?”
“Just Arthur and me. Even the servants have left now. Tintagel, we call it,” he said, walking toward it. “And it was great in its day!” he yelled over his shoulder.
I ran after him. “You walked off without me!”
“You are free to follow or not.”
“Couldn’t you use magic to force me along?” I asked him, again sounding too much like Tiberius.
“Oh, that would be a bad use of the craft, indeed. Besides, ’tis you should be doing magic.”
“Why do you say that?” My suspicion flared anew.
“You will see. I sense a rather interesting and profound future for you, if not always an enviable one.”
“What do you mean?”
“’Tis a journey you will have to make yourself, m’lady. That’s really all I know. Partial glimpses make Arthur crazy, too. Look.”
We stood at the entrance to the stone palace. It had been mighty once, towering over the landscape.
“Did you have a library and gardens…and a zoo?” I asked, remembering the palace grounds in Alexandria.
“We had everything, lass — Arthur and his queen, the Knights of the Round Table, the citizens of this kingdom. We were rich, with stories to tell and a purpose in the world.”
“What happened?”
“It’s hard to say, exactly. Not everyone shares the same purpose. Not everyone’s heart can sustain joy. Humans tend to feel restless without a good fight.” He gave me a small smile. “There were wars. Come, let us go to the Great Hall.”
Inside, the castle was drafty and dark. Torches still lit many of the halls; fires burned in hearths in many of the rooms. In some ways, it felt as people had just left, and — despite the breeze and holes in the walls — might return shortly. A feeling of having just missed something.
“The Great Hall, lady.”
“My proper name is Thea.”
“Named for the moon and shining light. Perfect.”
I looked around. We were in a small chamber. There was a fire in the hearth, two hard wooden beds covered in furs and skins, some large, rough-hewn chairs, and a couple of tables: One held the implements of science — maps of the constellations, hourglasses, compasses, and the like.
The other table had the implements of dining, if dining wasn’t too fine a word for it: bread rinds, half-empty wine goblets, chewed animal bones, and more. Odors drifted from the unwashed platters.
“Yes, the Great Hall. Or at least, the only hall actually used by the castle’s current occupants.”
On the wall opposite the beds hung a tapestry. Picking up a candle, I walked over to it: There was King Arthur next to a queen, several knights, dozens of retainers, children, animals, banners, and in the background, Merlin himself.
It must have taken a terribly long time to weave.
“The rest are all gone now,” Merlin said.
“Why?” I asked.
“The castle became almost impossible to defend. Somebody always wanted to take it, to come after the great king. And if they weren’t coming after Arthur or trying to ransack Tintagel, then Arthur and his knights were off seeking impossible things. Which made it even harder for those left behind to protect themselves.”
“What things?”
“The Holy Grail. Perfect love. Things humans aren’t meant to have.” Merlin raised the antlers to the wall, evidently looking for a place to hang them.
“These people didn’t love each other?” I was intrigued with all the faces in the tapestry. The weaver made them all seem…very alive.
“Oh, they did, lass. The Round-Table Knights. Arthur and his Guinevere. But none of it is perfect. ’Tis all only human. Things are never quite as good as imagined. Nor as bad.”
“Have you heard of a place called Peenemünde?” I asked, turning to face him.
“Why do you ask?”
I told him about everything I’d seen there — the wraithlike people working as slaves, the weapons and rockets they were building, the brutality of the overseers, of the Reich — their soldiers, their officers, and yes, the scientists — who ran it.
And then I showed him the picture of the mother and child, which I still had in my tunic.
Merlin held the image, then softly closed his eyes before handing it back to me.
“What am I to make of your future, child?”
“It isn’t mine. Well, perhaps it is now.” I slipped the picture back into my robes. “But those horrors have yet to happen. Peenemünde is built in times to come. Isn’t there a way to stop it?”
“That is the same thing I wondered, stripling, about the battles that destroyed our kingdom.”
“Couldn’t your magic end them?”
“For magic to really work, Thea, you have to let it in. You have to be open to it, the same way that you, as a scientist, have to be open.”
“But science uses logic and deduction. Magic feeds on fear and superstition.”
“Both lead to enchantment, if you follow them to the place where the world’s greatest mysteries awe you.” With that, he held out his hand — he was now holding some of the plasmechanical skin from the time-vessel.
It was then I realized the antlers were already hanging on the wall. Merlin folded up his hand inside his robe and turned to tend the fire.
“We could bring magic back into the world, Thea. I need an apprentice, someone to teach. Before it’s too late.”
“Before what’s too late?”
“Before the world is set on a course that brings us Peenemünde — and all that comes with it.”
Remain here to learn magic? From an old wizard? I imagine Mother would be properly horrified.
“My friends aren’t safe yet. They are my family now. What about them?”
“After your friends are safe, of course. Decide then.”
“And how do you know they will be? There was some other boy here when K’lion — when the dragon man and I landed. Who was that?”
“In recounting your journey, you mentioned the word Reich, did you not? I believe that other boy comes from the world of Peenemünde. And wishes to acquire more power, to spread harm.”
The news hit me like a full beam from Pharos.
“Then take me out of here, back through your magical woods, and show me how to find my friends!”
“Very well. But I have learned there is much less you can do to protect them than you might imagine.”
“I have always prided myself on a very active imagination.”
Then a loud, unearthly scream came to my ears, freezing me where I stood.
“What was that?” I whispered.
“That,” Merlin answered, rising from the fireplace, “sounded very much like the battle yell of a dragon.”
Chapter Twenty-two
Clyne: Ungarth
After Dragons
What strange Saurian music. The notes looked like an ancient war cry, from the times before Cacklaw. I sounded it out myself, from the transcription on the wall. What an odd and eerie noise. I wonder how often such a cry was used. And on a planet such as this, once home to both Saurians and mammals, was such a sound meant as a warning? As tribal comfort? A way to grieve?
The cave I’d found through sheer whiffery. I was surprised — shocked, even — to find vaguely familiar Saurian odors wafting into my nasal ramps as I raced through this forest.
Despite the medium-grade danger I was in from the mammal-king who wanted to slay me, I decided to follow the scent. This was the first real evidence I had of another Saurian presence on Earth Orange. And that evidence led me to the nest-home of Ungarth.
At least, I believe it was pronounced “Ungarth.” The pictographs on the wall are in ancient Saurian, and in a strange dialect at that. I was sounding them out — singing them — as I read along. According to the record, this is their story:
A type of Saurian, native to this planet, did survive their otherwise disastrous encounter with a meteor, an incident known on ot
her Earths as the Great Sky Hammer. It seems, strangely, to have occurred — with varying degrees of severity — in numerous parallel dimensions at once (a fact that bears further research).
On Earth Orange, the results were shell-shattering: Mammals surprisingly evolved to become the dominant class of species. Dominant, at least, in terms of their impact on the planet. The insects are far more numerous.
As for Ungarth’s people — he calls them Saurish Folk, a term that tickles my imagination nodes and which I may start using — they grew and lived and prospered in secret. Ungarth didn’t know the term Homo sapiens, which I learned while studying at the zoo with Howe and Thirty, but he describes an emerging species of “singing hunters.” They invented their own weapons and wars, tales and legends, and the few Saurians they would glimpse became known as “dragons.” This was possibly derived from draghoorh, a Saurish term for “lost one.”
As their numbers dwindled, the word became a type of greeting between the Saurish.
At first, these early humans were content to live with these “dragons,” but dragons, in Ungarth’s words, “need wide places to dream and roam.” And with human tribes growing, there were fewer wide places available.
Eventually, human warriors would hunt these dragons as a way of proving their bravery to their own tribes. A chill ran down my backslope reading this: I was reminded of the destruction of the Bloody Tendon Wars in our own ancient history — when the meat-eaters and plant-eaters battled each other over what — or who — should be called “food.”
The singing hunters pursued their Saurish prey for generations. And as my absent host wrote: “I, Ungarth, faced off with their king, Arthur, many times throughout my life. As we both grew older — and sadder — he finally managed to injure me. I had let my guard down. Arthur came in for the kill. ‘Give me your worst flame, dragon. I shall still win.’ I replied in his language: ‘We do not have fire in our breath. That was just a trick with light and steam to impress your kind.’ The exchange seemed to shock him — he held off delivering a death blow. I retreated to this small cave to lick my wounds and hide from the world. As far as I know, I am now the last of the Saurish Folk.”
After that, Ungarth composed the Saurish history on the wall in front of me. When I tried singing it, the effect was startling. There was a dissonance to it. Perhaps it was a mammal-like cultural influence on the Saurians of Earth Orange. In which case, I am left to wonder: What effect did the dragons have on the humans in exchange?
Now there would be a thesis topic unique in the history of our school!
I don’t know how much longer Ungarth lived. His song cycle ended with a chant about returning to the “mists of the first valley.” All his artifacts were still in the cave. My thought was to bring many of them home for further study, in the vessel piloted by Thea.
There was, for example, a simple fitted skull-screen, for protective wear. When I put it on my cranium, I must have looked like an actual top-stomper from an ancient round of Cacklaw. But I didn’t have time to marvel at the image.
“Ungarth! ’Tis you come back to me!” It was the mammal-king, Arthur. Brandishing his sword.
“Not Ungarth, me. Ungarth died,” I told him. “I’m k-k-kt! compiling merely extra credit. I mean no pain to you.” I smiled and tried extending my forearm in the friendship gesture I had witnessed.
He nearly sliced my claws off. “The legend says you died, but I know I only nicked you that day. Lancelot is gone. Perceval is gone. Guinevere is gone. Knights and queens all gone. But you, I knew you would come back to me! And I daresay the fire’s real this time.”
He took a few more swipes with the blade, and in that close space I had to time my jumps to stay away from him.
“No! Fire-breathing was a kt! trick! No pain aimed!” Maybe if he thought I was Ungarth, he would hear better.
“Doesn’t…matter,” King Mammal grunted, swinging and managing to just cut into the end of my tail. His pain was aimed. I’m glad I wasn’t Ungarth, if this was his constant game-cycle with the king. “I had to slay dragons to keep the people happy. I was king! It was expected. And now all that’s left me is to prove I was ever king at all.”
“I believe you! I believe you!” But I wasn’t the one he needed to prove it to. I have discovered that the inner-face is fragile among Earth Orange mammals. I have a theory this may be connected to the atmospheric gases here, but I’ve had no time to run field experiments.
He swung at me again, and I was forced into an improvised Cacklaw move — bouncing off the cave wall, flipping over in the air, landing behind the king, then spinning around to lash him with my tail.
The tail-whip sent him tumbling over, the sword flying from his hands. I picked it up to keep it away from him and immediately noticed a vibration that pulsed through the weapon.
King Mammal — who now looked very sad indeed — stared up at me from the ground. “I suppose it’s your turn to end the game, eh, Ungarth?”
“We can play skt! something else, instead,” I offered.
“Why don’t we play Give the Sword to the Dragon Youth?” It wasn’t the king’s voice. I turned and saw them at the cave entrance: My friend Eli, held prisoner by the other time- roaming boy. He had his gun pointed at Eli’s head.
“Hi, Clyne,” Eli said, sounding both regretful and irked. “I heard your cry. Unfortunately, Rolf here was waiting for me by the cave.”
“Hello, friend Eli. And you, d-dk! Dragon Youth Rolf, should content yourself with simply Rolf. You are most definitely no dragon.”
“If I bring that sword back, I am a dragon, wolf, lion — whatever I wish. The Fuerher himself will reward me. Thanks to your stumbling through time with that ship, I can make this assignment more glorious than a suicide mission. Give me the weapon, and I will let the little American go.”
“Brash boy! You cannot handle Excalibur!” the king spat. “The sword will eat you up! For once, Ungarth is right: You are no dragon!”
“The boy for the sword.” Rolf No-Dragon looked right at me. He clicked his gun apparatus, preparing to cause Eli terrible harm. On purpose.
I threw the blade down on the floor of the cave. “Let my friend go. Please, mammal.”
“We shall see who the most fearsome creature here is,” the Rolf said as he picked up the blade. “You see, old king, I am perfectly able to —”
The sudden effect was like a terrible case of herk-jitters. The sword swung the Rolf around so much he looked like a Saurian losing an argument with his tail about which direction to go. Eli ran over to me, as much to be free of Rolf No-Dragon as to get out of the way of the erratically moving blade.
“Give me back my sword!” roared the king, diving for the boy. Although the Rolf tried to aim the weapon in the king’s general direction, it was the boy who was flung at the monarch by the dancing blade. But he kept enough of a grip on the weapon to nick the king by chance as he and the sword went sailing by.
“Excalibur!” King Mammal yelled, seemingly more outraged than injured. He sunk to the floor, like a rear-guard ace in Cacklaw who realizes all at once that the other clan is about to overrun him.
“Excalibur,” the king hissed. “Excalibur has hurt me.”
As the king’s red blood dripped onto the ground, I wondered what Ungarth would think to know that Arthur was now bleeding in his cave, too.
Chapter Twenty-three
Eli: Dragon Sword
Somewhere in Old England…
King Arthur’s holding his arm, furious, not from the cut, which is bad enough, but at the fact that it happened with his own sword.
I’m trying to remember if Laddy ever found himself in a jam like this with Arthur in any of those old cartoons. Those cartoons, though, weren’t really scary. Not the way this Rolf is genuinely, actually scary.
He’s still being jerked around by Excalibur, but he won’t drop it. Maybe if we just stay out of his way, he’ll smash into a wall.
I wish I could’ve smashed him into a wall ea
rlier.
I was lost almost as soon as I ran into the woods. Thea was next to me, then disappeared. The path I thought I was on disappeared, too. I was surrounded by trees.
I yelled, but no one yelled back. I was definitely, absolutely lost.
That was also genuinely scary.
And I might still be out there if Clyne hadn’t screamed. Actually, I didn’t know it was Clyne at first. Didn’t know what it was. But it was the first noise beside my own voice I’d heard, and the trees suddenly opened up in the direction the sound came from — so I followed.
I heard water, then found a stream. I bent over to take a drink. Two sips later, the reflec- tion of a cave appeared in the water. When I was looking straight at the same spot a moment before, I hadn’t seen a thing.
I sat up, and there it was — a large opening hidden behind some vines in the high banks along the creek. And then I heard Clyne and Arthur, and it sounded like they were fighting.
But I didn’t get to see their fight — I had one of my own. Rolf jumped me as I was heading inside.
“Hi, Roy Rogers!” He was almost cheerful about it as he knocked me down.
“Get off me! I’m sick of you!” I tried to punch him, but since he was on my back, I couldn’t reach.
“You will have a chance to be sick of me — and the Reich — for a thousand years, little Roy!” I decided to let the “little” crack pass for now. “I knew someone would come along and want to help, acting out of cheap sentimentality,” he said with a smile. “Now I have a hostage, a bargaining chip. Because everyone else will be sentimental, too. Get up!”
I felt the gun press against the base of my skull, and I rose slowly to my feet. You hate to think of someone like Rolf being both clever and patient. You just wish people who do bad things in the world would have their plans backfire every once in a while.
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