Meghan's Dragon

by E. M. Foner

  “It wasn’t training,” he groaned, turning around on his hands and knees and beginning to crawl back out of the tent. “It was that giant beating me down with a sword until I thought my arms would fall off.”

  “Where are you going now?” the girl demanded.

  “To wash, and then to get something to eat. I’m starving.”

  “I stopped at the cook wagon when they were closing down and picked up a pot of leftovers. I’ll warm it up while you jump in the stream.”

  “Couldn’t you just look at me and mutter ‘clean’ or something?”

  “Just go,” she told him, adding a playful push on his backside with her foot, but her voice had softened since she realized he was more exhausted than inebriated. Meghan crawled out of the tent after him and decided to reheat the food the simple way, using her own magical fire. By the time Bryan returned from the stream, she had the stew pot bubbling and placed it on the ground to cool a bit.

  “Do you know anything about enchanting swords?” Bryan asked, sounding much more awake after his late-night dip in the cold water. “Rowan put so many notches in my blade that it looks like a giant bread knife.”

  “Let me see it.” Meghan accepted the scabbard from Bryan and pulled out a length of the blade to examine it. Like all of the men in the troupe, he kept the sword with him day and night now that they were on the road. “I can see why Phinneas gave you this sword. It’s really a practice weapon and it’s made to yield without breaking, but you wouldn’t want to go into battle with it because it won’t hold an edge. I can fix it for now, but we’ll need to get you a real sword as soon as possible.”

  “What about the enchantment?” Bryan persisted. He tried to reach around her for the stew pot but she slapped his hand away.

  “It’s too hot,” she chided him. “Most enchanted swords are just another form of magical fixing. I’ve never worked on one myself, but I could manage some basic protection that would be better than nothing. You want a blade that stays sharp, of course, but it’s also about not getting broken by other enchanted swords. And I’ll have to teach you how to maintain the strength of the enchantment with your own magic while you fight.”

  “Great. Something new to keep me distracted while I’m trying to avoid getting sliced in half,” Bryan grumped. “Are some swords better than others?”

  “Yes. There are famous weapons that serve as reservoirs and lenses for awesome amounts of magical energy, but they’re usually wed to a particular family, with successive generations building up the enchantment.”

  Bryan lowered his voice and peered around in the dark. He couldn’t make out colors, but with his vastly improved vision, it was like being out at dusk or dawn, rather than the middle of the night.

  “There’s something going on with these guys,” he informed Meghan. “I don’t know how they are at acting, but they’re all too good for their jobs. It’s like working in a tavern where the waiters are assassins.”

  “Huh?” The girl took a spoon of the stew, blew on it energetically, and managed to swallow it without burning her throat. “It’s ready if you don’t eat too fast.”

  “If I’m going to breathe fire one day, a little hot stew isn’t going to hurt me,” Bryan retorted, reaching for the pot. “What’s it like with the women? Are they as tough as the men?”

  “They aren’t like castle folk,” Meghan replied thoughtfully. “I’ve been spending so much time with Laitz that I haven’t gotten a chance to know them that well, expect for Bethany, and she mainly talks about her baby. I’ve caught them a few times changing the subject when I approach, but we are new here, and it will take time to win their trust.”

  “After I finished getting beaten down with a sword, Hardol took me to meet four other men, who I guess are Rowan’s lieutenants or something. I’ve never been in a military so I don’t really get that stuff, but one of them told me that we should stick close to Rowan if things get rough.”

  “What things?”

  “Well, the shaman said that the king has patrols out looking for a young couple, and everybody suspects that it’s us,” Bryan managed to reply through a mouthful of stew. “Can you fix my sword while I’m eating and we’ll talk about this later?”

  Chapter 34

  “They are the most gifted young people I’ve ever encountered,” the shaman answered Rowan’s question quietly. Then he lapsed into silence for a dozen heartbeats while the two men stared up at the stars. “The young man is like quicksilver, he changes even as I look at him, and the girl has a wall around her that my vision can’t penetrate.”

  “Phinneas wouldn’t have sent them if he didn’t trust them with his life,” Rowan said. “I put the boy through his paces with the sword. He barely knows the basic forms, yet his speed and strength would give him a chance against an average swordsman. He almost killed poor Simon within days of first holding a blade.”

  “His magic is something I’ve never felt before,” Storm Bringer said. “It is not the energy of your people or my people, nor is it a mixture of the two. It’s more like what I sense from a mountain lion or a bear.”

  “And the girl is strong enough to block your vision,” Rowan prompted the shaman.

  “I don’t believe she’s doing it consciously, though her magic must be strong to maintain the barrier against me. Somebody else must have put the block in place many years ago. We do the same thing with young children whose magical strength grows faster than their understanding, to prevent them from becoming a danger to those around them. The block must be placed by a close relative, usually a parent, and either it slowly dissolves with maturity or disappears when the child achieves some goal.”

  “And you’re sure it’s the king looking for them now?”

  “The first few days it was just the people from her castle out for the reward money, to make her a prize for one of the baron’s sons,” Storm Bringer related matter-of-factly. “Then somebody got their messenger pigeons mixed up, and all of a sudden the king became involved. My agents don’t know the precise instructions of the king’s men, but the reward is fifty gold rings, so you’re going to find out pretty quickly if all of your people are loyal.”

  “Fifty,” Rowan groaned. “There’s men and women who would sell their own children for that much. The king wouldn’t offer enough to buy a productive farm on the off chance that the girl was as powerful as some rumors make her out to be. He’s a greedy man but not a fool.”

  “I agree. If we can find out why he wants her so badly maybe we can use it against him. If we don’t act this winter the opportunity may be lost for another year.” The two men sat in silence for a while, and then Storm Bringer added, “I think I’ll break with tradition this year and offer to help Laitz with his illusions.”

  “That’s a good idea, get closer to them,” the big man nodded. Then he barked a short laugh. “But not too close or he may swallow you whole. That one makes me look like a picky eater.”

  Chapter 35

  “Why do we need a stage?” Bryan asked. “If the audience sits on the slope so they’re looking down at the play, what’s the point of raising it up again?”

  “First of all, not all of the festivals have a natural amphitheatre space,” Hardol told Bryan, grunting as the balance of the timber he held shifted when the younger man hoisted his own end off the ground. “Second, some plays need the trapdoors, and the stage holds the frames in place for the curtain and backdrops.”

  “It’s got to take at least a day to build a stage,” Bryan argued, adjusting his hold on the heavy timber to make it easier to walk. “I know that Meghan went with Laitz and some of the others to perform in the market area and try to drum up a crowd for tonight. Won’t the farmers be home in bed by the time we’re ready?”

  “We’ll have it all put together well before supper,” Hardol said. “Rowan hired a shipwright to build the stage so the joints all fit perfectly. You see the lines cut into your end?”

  “Three of them,” Bryan affirmed.

&nbs
p; “The dirt crew leveled the corner sleepers and put the posts in place while we were unloading the wagon and laying out the timbers. Line up your mortise with the tenon at the back corner as I do with mine.”

  “My what with the what?”

  “The rectangular hole you have your fingers in is a mortise. Take your fingers out of it and slide it down over the piece sticking up there, the tenon.”

  “Why didn’t you say that in the first place,” Bryan mumbled, moving his hands and lowering the timber onto the belt-high post. “Hey, if we’re building it up off the ground like this, won’t everybody be able to see underneath?”

  “We hang skirts all around. Save your critique until it’s finished.”

  Theodric and Bryan returned to the stack of timbers for the next structural member, passing three other two-man teams carrying their own beams on the short trip. In less time than Bryan could have imagined, he found himself climbing the pegs on one of the vertical members at the front of the stage, trailing the rope that would help him haul up the narrow top-beam. Before they finished hanging the lightweight curtain, the group of boys who were installing the planking on the stage completed their task.

  “I guess you’ve done this before,” Bryan said to Hardol. He couldn’t help admiring the solidity of the structure and the speed with which it had come together without any tools, other than the mallets used to drive in the pegs that held the floorboards in place. “I can’t believe it will come apart as quickly as it went together, though.”

  “It takes a little longer,” the older man acknowledged. “The peg holes go all the way through so the boys have to drive them out from the bottom, but there are only two per board, so it doesn’t take long. The fit is what makes it work. That shipwright Rowan hired specialized in building small boats that could be broken down and stored in the hold of a bigger boat for use in shallow water. Imagine the skill it takes to build boat kits that don’t leak.”

  “Will you be performing tonight?” Bryan asked, as he headed back with Hardol to move the now empty wagon to their camp area.

  “I couldn’t act my way out of a sack,” the ex-soldier admitted. “Half of us work crowd control at festivals. There are always men in the audience who drink more than they can handle, and then the costumes the women wear set them off. Have you seen Juliana and Nesta dressed as elf princesses?”

  “The tall, blonde girls with the…?” Bryan made a lifting motion in front of his chest.

  “Don’t let Rowan see you do that,” Hardol cautioned. “They’re his daughters. Fortunately, they inherited all of their looks and acting talent from their mother. I’ve even seen noblemen throw gold on the stage, not that the girls would ever look to see where it came from.”

  “Noblemen throw gold on the stage?” Bryan repeated is disbelief. “Hey, if you need a volunteer to crawl under there and, uh, work the trapdoors or something, I’m your man.”

  Chapter 36

  “It’s a dragon, Mommy!” screamed the little boy, bringing the fairgoers within earshot to a sudden halt.

  Meghan couldn’t help smiling at the child’s excitement. She temporarily forgot her own embarrassment at being dressed as a boy in a doublet and short breeches with high boots, though she was thankful that the peaked cap allowed her to hide her hair rather than cutting it off. Laitz nudged her and winked, leading Meghan to expel a thread of red dust from the dragon’s mouth.

  The crowd’s reaction was stunned silence, followed by a roar, and they pushed forward to get as close as possible to the three-sided booth that Laitz had erected from slender poles and blankets. The opening faced away from the sun, but a strategically placed slit in the back allowed a beam of sunshine through to backlight the illusions.

  “Tonight, during intermission, the great illusionist Laitz and his assistants will present the first-ever performance of a dragon duel to be seen in New Land,” Jomar shouted over the crowd. Meghan had always thought that Phinneas must be the loudest man on Earth when he used magic to enhance his voice and issue commands, but the small man with the throwing knives had the war master beat by a factor of two.

  “What’s the play?” somebody called from the crowd.

  “We open after sunset with The Stolen Twin,” Jomar thundered, and his voice must have carried for a hundred paces in either direction. “Tomorrow the early show will be Elstan, followed by a reenactment of the The Duke’s Uprising, for which we will be joined by Brom’s players, and then a second presentation of The Stolen Twin. All week, exclusively with Rowan’s players. Laitz, The King of Illusions.”

  At a nod from her mentor, Meghan swept her dragon out of existence, and Laitz stepped forward, theatrically waving his arms about. A confused mass of half-formed shapes began to materialize in the beam of light filtering through the back of the booth. All of a sudden, the illusion snapped into focus for the audience as if a veil had been drawn from over their eyes, and they saw an impossibly detailed scene of a crowd of people.

  “Look, it’s us,” a woman cried, gripping her husband’s arm in excitement and pointing at a couple of figures in the illusion. Other members of the audience gasped and stared, while Meghan looked on in awe of Laitz’s control. Then the scene wavered a few times before dissolving, and the illusionist let his hands fall and took a bow.

  “Rowan’s players. See us tonight at the West Amphitheatre,” Jomar thundered. “Now move along and let somebody else get a look.”

  “How were you able to reproduce the crowd so quickly and in such detail?” Meghan whispered to Laitz. The people reluctantly began to disperse, helped along by scowls and shoves from Jomar.

  “I didn’t,” the illusionist replied with a grin. “It’s just a scene I’ve practiced over and over again so I can build it quickly from memory, like a song you know by heart. The figures are small enough that nobody can make out the faces. I just use dark dots for the eyes and mouths and match a color here and there. Somebody in the audience always believes they see themselves, and then everybody else goes along.”

  Chapter 37

  “Stop staring at Juliana,” Meghan hissed at her supposed husband, who along with all of the males and not a few females in the crowd, was staring at Rowan’s daughter in her scanty elf costume.

  “I’m not staring at Juliana,” Bryan retorted indignantly. “She’s not even on the stage.”

  “Then stop ogling Nesta,” Meghan insisted. She added a punch in the shoulder to prove she was serious, but their difference in height made it awkward and she ended up hitting his bicep. Then curiosity got the better of her, and she asked, “How can you tell them apart?”

  “Juliana has a little mole on her left thigh and Nesta has one on her right thigh,” Bryan explained. “Nesta’s left ear is a little lower than her right ear, and Juliana’s cheekbones are more prominent. I heard she was sick last week, so she lost a pound or two,” he added in concern.

  “What color are my eyes?” Meghan whispered sharply.

  “Blue,” he answered absently, before the edge in her voice sank in. “No, wait. Um, black?”

  “Lucky guess. Are my ears pierced?”

  “Sure, you wear earrings all of the time,” Bryan bluffed.

  The ferocity with which she dragged him away from their vantage point by the side of the stage informed him that he had guessed wrong. He hated to miss the final scene of the first half in which he heard the kidnapped twin was forced to perform her seductive elf dance for the evil sorcerer. But it was one of the troupe’s most popular plays, so he was sure he would have plenty of opportunities to see it in the future.

  Twenty paces away from the stage, Meghan pushed her potential dragon behind the props wagon. “How can I wear earrings all the time when I’m supposed to be a boy?” she demanded. “And don’t tell me that men on Dark Earth wear earrings, I’m not having any of your lame excuses anymore. I know you look at me when we’re talking, but you don’t see me, do you? Not the way you see Rowan’s daughters.”

  “Is this about the whol
e Elstan thing?” Bryan asked. “I thought you agreed that it was a great way to hide out.”

  “It is not about Elstan!” Meghan had to restrain herself from kicking him in the shins to make her point. “It’s about us being in this together and everybody else believing that we’re married. I do my part, but you wander around staring at pretty women like some sort of…”

  “Guy?” Bryan interrupted. “Everybody in the audience was staring at them, and half of the troupe too. Didn’t you see those outfits? It’s like they weren’t wearing anything at all.”

  “That’s not the point. You’re supposed to be loyal to me. I saved your life and in return you ruined mine,” Meghan added, stifling a sudden sob. She really didn’t know why she was getting so upset, since everything Bryan said was absolutely true.

  The restrained emotion in the girl’s voice accomplished what her arguments couldn’t, and Bryan suddenly gathered her in his long arms.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize I was hurting you. I’ll, uh, stop looking.”

  Meghan was so surprised by Bryan’s reaction that for a moment she let herself relax against his body, turning her head up to see if she could read anything from his face. She felt somebody’s heart pounding and saw green fire dancing in his eyes as his neck bent and his mouth approached hers.

  “None of that,” she stuttered, shoving against his chest to put distance between them. He refused to release her and moved one of his hands to the back of her head to hold it in place. The heat from his body felt unnatural, and she wondered for a moment if she had discovered the secret to releasing his inner dragon.

  “Hey, save it for after the show,” Laitz said, tapping Bryan on the shoulder. “It’s almost intermission and we’ve got to get ready. I was beginning to worry that the two of you came down with a sudden case of stage fright and ran off.”

  Bryan growled rather than replying, but the distraction was enough for Meghan to gain breathing room and get her mind working again. “Chill,” she muttered, gambling on the fever-reduction technique Hadrixia had taught her. The older woman had once joked that it could also be useful in cooling unwanted amorous advances.