Meghan's Dragon

by E. M. Foner

  “Wait a minute, I don’t understand something. Those verses were written in English, but we’re talking your language and the rhymes still work. How can word pairs that sound the same but mean different things be paralleled in your language?”

  “Hadrixia told me that people who learn a new language through magic usually forget the old one,” Meghan informed him apologetically. “I didn’t think it mattered since you can’t go back, but it is funny you can still read it. Wait, have you tried writing?”

  Bryan picked up a stick and scratched a few letters in the dirt. “Cat,” he pronounced triumphantly.

  “But that’s our word,” Meghan reminded him. “Try pronouncing just each letter alone.”

  He complied with her request by sounding out each letter by itself, and the girl nodded her head knowingly.

  “You’re just using the letters you know how to pronounce to spell words in our language,” she explained. “I’ll bet that the rhymes on the map aren’t written in your language at all. Somebody just used your alphabet to write our language phonetically. It means you only have to teach me how to pronounce twenty-three letters, and then I’ll be able to read any of these messages. It will be like a secret code between us.”

  “Twenty-six letters,” Bryan asserted. “Our alphabet is better than yours.”

  “Grow up.”

  Chapter 57

  “Are you two planning on visiting the Blue Duke’s castle?” Laitz asked his assistants. They were engaged in setting up the illusion booth on the main drag of the festival associated with the middle dukedom, and the question took both Meghan and Bryan by surprise.

  “Why do you ask?” Meghan replied cautiously.

  “You know that rumors travel faster than draft horses, and it seems that the castles on the festival route have been visited by strange manifestations.”

  “Like what?” Bryan demanded pointblank.

  “Well, there was an odd incident at the Red Duke’s castle where the tower watch claimed they were attacked by a fire mage’s ghost which they slew with arrows. When the other guards entered the tower, they found nothing but some broken arrows on the floor, but there was fire damage to the wooden stairs and platform.”

  “The tower watch must have been drunk,” Meghan suggested.

  “At first the guard commander thought that as well,” Laitz confirmed. “Then the duke’s wife came forward and said she was out on her balcony before the incident took place and heard the tower watch call out a challenge. When she looked at the base of the tower, she saw two figures slipping through the door, a tall man and a small companion, perhaps a woman. She continued watching as the alarm bell started ringing and somebody pushed the door closed from the inside. Then the castle guard swarmed the place, and she assumed the intruders had been caught. It wasn’t until she woke late in the morning and heard the story that she thought to tell anybody.”

  “Maybe she was drunk, too,” Bryan said. “You know what those people are like.”

  “Yes, I actually do. But her testimony was enough for the guard commander to stop interrogating the tower watch and bring in a seeker, who confirmed the account given by the men. I’m told the Red Duke’s mage is going crazy trying to uncover a secret passage.”

  “Bryan and I were thinking it might be interesting if we could add riders to the dragons,” Meghan announced. “I haven’t quite mastered it yet, but he can manage a rider and even have him throw a spear.”

  “Then there’s the story of the ceiling art in the Green Duke’s shield room,” Laitz continued, ignoring the girl’s attempt to change the subject. “It’s not his real shield room, of course, just part of a tourist trap they set up to bring in some cash, but the painting—did I say painting? It was a fresco done by a traveling artist from Old Land back when that section of the castle was originally built. In any case, it was famous in some circles for its depiction of the angry storm goddess hurling a thunderbolt at some mythical creature who was bothering her daughter.”

  “Is there a point to this story?” Bryan asked rudely.

  “It seems that the painting was the high point of the tour, with the guide providing magical illumination just before the visitors moved on to the gift shop. Imagine when she lit up the ceiling and the goddess was smiling, watching her daughter dance with a young man.”

  “I thought you put it back the way it was,” Bryan said, missing Meghan’s frantic cues to keep his mouth closed. “Oh, Laitz obviously knows it was us or he wouldn’t have gone through the whole performance.”

  “He knows it was us now that you’ve confirmed it,” the girl retorted before turning to their mentor. “We’re sort of on a treasure hunt,” she told him. “An old family obligation of sorts.”

  “I guessed it was something like that,” Laitz replied. “Your affairs are your own. We’re all up to something or another around here, but I wanted to warn you. Some of the dukes may be stupid, it happens when leaders are chosen by order of birth, but their advisers and their mages include some of the best minds in the land. If you see the need to extend your sightseeing to the Blue Duke’s castle, I would save it for our last night in the area. And be prepared for a higher level of awareness on the part of the guards.”

  “Thank you,” Meghan said. “And I was serious about showing riders on the dragons.”

  “I’m sure you were. I’ve been working on that myself, so we’ll give it a try as soon as you’re ready. Then we really will have the finest illusions on two continents.”

  “That Red Duke’s museum was just a tourist trap anyway,” Bryan said. “Serves them right that their ceiling art got screwed up.”

  “I’m afraid it didn’t play out the way you imagine,” Laitz told the young man. “Everybody is calling it a miracle. They’ve raised the price of admission, and local people who never would have given the displays the time of day are lined up around the moat waiting to get in.”

  Chapter 58

  “Why do I have to play the evil baron?” Bryan complained. “I do lighting and the dragon illusion, plus I let Rowan beat on me with his sword every day.”

  “It’s just three lines,” Meghan chided him. “Do you know how many lines I had to memorize to play Elstan?”

  “But the baron is really a jerk. At the beginning of the first act, I order the death of my loyal war mage. At the end of the first act, I order the death of his son, and in the middle of the second act, I send a soldier to kill the mage’s dog. I’m on stage for less than a minute, and all I do is give stupid orders.”

  “Bethany told me you have a good death scene at the end.”

  “I don’t even have a line then. I’m sitting back in a chair getting a shave, and the barber cuts my throat!” Bryan paused and broke into a smile. “It is kind of cool, though. Simon showed me how to work the jugular kit they use. The barber slices the tip off the nozzle glued to my neck while I’m squeezing the bladder, and the blood will shoot halfway across the stage.”

  Meghan shook her head in mock disgust. Then she retrieved her slate with the painstakingly transcribed alphabet letters from the oilskin map, along with the phonetic equivalents in mage’s script. Getting Bryan to repeat himself just two or three times so she could memorize a new letter was a task in itself, but the thought of spurting blood had him in a good mood.

  “So when the ‘c’ and the ‘h’ are next to each other, you say them as ‘ch’ instead of ‘kuh-huh.’”

  “Check in the flue,” he reiterated.

  “And the ‘u’ followed by ‘e’ turns into ‘ooh.’”

  “You’ve got it,” he replied, already bored with playing teacher. “I’ll bet you read better than I do now. When do I try on the dragon gown?”

  “You’re willing?” Meghan asked in surprise. “I thought you weren’t in any hurry to become a dragon.”

  “It beats reading. Besides, I guess this business about the king having a warrant out for you is serious, so we’d better do everything we can to prepare. Up until now, all of the s
word training and stage fighting didn’t feel that different from the games I used to play. Watching and hearing a guy get pole-axed off his horse changes things. It’s just lucky that we ended up with Rowan rather than being on our own.”

  “That’s what I tried to say earlier,” the girl replied. “Do you think it was really luck?”

  “Sure. Phinneas happened to come across the players on his way back from that last battle, and he knew Simon.”

  “You know I’ve been spending time with Simon’s wife, teaching her some of the healing techniques I learned from Hadrixia. It turns out that Faye and the other folk healers always share what they know, but the methods I learned are on a completely different level. Faye thinks it’s all Old Land training.”

  “What’s wrong with Old Land? Even Laitz has been there.”

  “Traveling across the sea is a rare thing. And so are the magical knots that Hadrixia taught me. What I’m saying is that just like Rowan and his veterans are too good to be players, Hadrixia and Phinneas were too good to be living in a minor baron’s castle on the frontier.”

  “So you think they tricked us?”

  “What? No, that’s not what I mean,” Meghan sputtered. “Why are you so suspicious? I was thinking it’s odd that two powerful people lived in the backwater castle where I grew up, and they both befriended me.”

  “Sounds like somebody is suffering from princess syndrome.”

  Chapter 59

  “Kill the mage,” Chester prompted in an undertone. Bryan stood frozen, looking out at the audience. The experienced leading man improvised, moving to stand directly in front of the rookie actor, blocking his view of the paying public. “What are your orders, Baron?” he practically shouted in the young man’s face.

  “Uh, kill him,” Bryan stuttered.

  “The mage?” Chester hinted.

  “Yes, kill the mage,” Bryan finally managed to pronounce.

  “You can go off now,” Chester muttered, adding a small shove to get Bryan moving. The new actor exited to the left, and the action shifted to the right of the stage, where Grey brought up the lights on a scene in the woods.

  The painted backdrop included the body, folded wings, and long tail of a dragon, but the head was a wood and paper construction, with moving jaws manned by Jomar. The audience gasped at the effect as the dragon began to speak.

  “The truce between dragons and men has been broken. The murdered mage was a friend of mine, an honorable man who wore my pledge ring. Take the head of the baron who committed this crime, or I will leave your kingdom to face its enemies alone.”

  “Now, now,” Rowan replied. “A king’s loyalty is owed to more than one party, and the baron and his family have supported my rule for generations. Am I to break that bond and start a civil war over one foul deed?”

  The men playing the king’s attendants unrolled a blanket on the stage, and then began to make a pile of silver goblets and cutlery, strings of pearls, copper and silver coins. The reptilian head drew back and the actor inside manipulated the mechanism in such a way as to cause a sneer to appear on the dragon’s lips.

  “I smell no gold here,” Jomar roared, his magically amplified voice causing the wooden superstructure of the stage to shake. “You would try to purchase the life of my servant with the plunder of the local gentry? You push me too far, King Bane. The head of the baron, or your kingdom is forfeit!”

  “Now, now,” Rowan tried again, clearly unruffled by the dragon’s display. “I realize that my offering is a bit light, but the locals have grown adept at hiding their gold, which they value above their women and children. Take these trinkets as a down payment on what I owe you, and let’s part as friends.”

  The dragon’s head reared back and smoke came from its nostrils, as if it was preparing to loose a blast of flame on the king’s party. Members of the audience in the line of fire instinctively tensed to flee. Rowan didn’t even flinch, and when the dragon opened its mouth, it struck a conciliatory note.

  “You can’t expect me to carry this junk to the mountains myself,” Jomar said plaintively. “It’s hardly worth the energy to move.”

  The rest of the negotiation was drowned out by the audience’s cries of, “Cowardly lizard! Evil king,” and similar expressions of disdain. A rain of rotten fruit and vegetables hit the netting that had been erected across the front of the stage for just that purpose. Of Dragons and Men was notorious as the messiest play on two continents.

  Bryan did a little better when he came on at the end of the first act, ordering the murder of the good mage’s son, though he almost lost his temper when an egg slipped through the protective net and spattered his costume. When he came back on stage the third time to order the death of the mage’s dog, some young men actually tried to rush the stage to punish him, but they were easily handled by members of the troupe working crowd control.

  At the end of the play, Bryan was so excited about having his throat slit that he straightened up in the barber’s chair and opened his eyes to watch the spurts of fake blood launched by his rhythmic squeezing of the hidden bladder. The first gout of blood almost reached the audience, which everybody seemed to take as a good omen. They switched from throwing rotten vegetables to tossing coins, which easily penetrated the mesh of the protective screen.

  Chapter 60

  Meghan’s eyes went wide when Bryan returned from his daily sword exercise with Rowan.

  “You’re finally transforming!” she exclaimed. “I read that some dragons have characteristic marks that only show when they reach their full power, like secret tattoos that appear under magical light.”

  “What are you talking about?” Bryan replied in irritation, rubbing at his forehead. “Do you know any healing tricks to repair a dent in the skull? Rowan caught me good.”

  “Let me see it,” Meghan repeated. “It’s a red dragon and the wings are extended, which is a sign of power. Have you looked at your reflection?”

  “I don’t need to see my reflection,” Bryan said sourly. “Rowan pommeled me.”

  “Pummeled?”

  “Pommeled. Since the incident on the road, I asked him to stop going easy and to teach me one serious combat trick each day, since I figure that’s all I’m capable of learning.”

  “What are you talking about?” Meghan echoed back his earlier question. “Don’t you understand that you have a dragon on your forehead?”

  “It’s the dragon from the pommel on Rowan’s sword. You wouldn’t believe how much that hurt.” Bryan set down his own weapon and sank into a cross-legged position. “Is there anything to eat? I think I burned a lot of extra energy shaking it off. Hardol said that blow should have knocked me out and required a healer, but they all saw my sword flash white after the impact, and I got right back up again.”

  Meghan ran her fingers over the dragon mark, which stood out from a round indent in Bryan’s skin. “This is from the hilt of Rowan’s sword?”

  “The pommel. He baited me into trying an overhead blow and blocked it near the base of his blade. When I pulled my sword back from the impact, he suddenly came forward and caught me on the forehead with that metal ball at the end of his hilt. I guess it’s an old trick, but I was watching the tip of his blade, and I never saw it coming.”

  “So the red is just blood under the skin,” she said in disappointment. “Oh, I didn’t mean it that way. Does it still hurt?”

  “Not really, though it itches a little. I bet some food will make it better.”

  Meghan shook her head and brought out the pot of kitchen wagon leftovers that she kept on hand. She didn’t mind that feeding Bryan outside of mealtimes had somehow become her responsibility, but the cooks tormented her with sly innuendos about how her husband was burning up all that extra food. Now that they were at the coast, one of the women always made a show of adding oysters to whatever she put in the pot for Bryan, much to the amusement of whoever else was present.

  “Why do you think Rowan has a dragon on his pommel?” she ask
ed, once Bryan was happily spooning in the stew.

  “I thought the pommel was for extra grip,” he replied between swallows. “Simon said it’s more for a counterweight, to move the balance of the sword closer to the hands. Maybe that’s how they fine-tune the balance, by gouging a little out.”

  “What’s on your pommel?” she asked, suddenly curious.

  “Mmph,” he said, busily chewing, but he pushed the weapon in her direction.

  Meghan lifted the hilt end of the sword and examined the base of the pommel. The engraving showed the profile of a woman’s head with flowing hair. She gave Bryan a dark look and went back into the tent, leaving him to eat alone.

  Chapter 61

  “How long have you and your husband been with the players?” Meghan asked Bethany. The two young women were relaxing together after stowing away the props, the first step in breaking down the show to return to the road. The boys were just starting work, knocking the pegs out of the stage boards from the bottom, a job that came with the bonus of any coins that had slipped between the cracks.

  “I grew up in the troupe,” Bethany replied. “My parents only stopped coming on the road last year, they stay at the camp now. My husband saw me on the stage and convinced Rowan to hire him on so he could court me.”

  “I keep hearing people talking about the camp, but I feel silly asking.”

  “You shouldn’t hesitate to ask us anything,” the young mother told her. “How else can you learn? You know that we go on the road after the spring planting and the fall harvest for festivals, but the summer and winter we spend in the mountains, just a few days inland from here. Several of the player troupes keep permanent settlements up there.”

  “We make enough money during the festivals to pay for the summer and winter off?”

  Bethany laughed merrily, causing the baby to smile along with her. “You’re so funny, Meghan. We work harder at home than we do on the road. During the summer, we put on plays and musical performances for people who can afford to come for a vacation, and of course, we have to feed them, house them, and help watch their children. It’s mainly the wealthy farmers and merchants, especially from around the big castles, but we also get the families of barons who aren’t too good to stay in a cabin or a tent. My parents and the others who live there all the time work year-round getting the place fixed up for the summer season. Plus, there are some orchards, hunting, and fishing.”