Meghan's Dragon

by E. M. Foner

  “Who is your baron?”

  “We don’t have one. The mountains are dragon country, going back before the exiles came to New Land. It was all Gwyneth’s territory, and even though she’s gone now, her magic still protects the mountains. Men have tried to dig through the rubble to her lair in search of treasure, but more rock just slides down from the mountaintop.”

  “I’ve heard stories about her,” Meghan said, remembering not to admit that she had read the stories. “She’s very old, and she moved here from Old Land a long time ago. Some say she could even visit Dark Earth, like the original dragons.”

  “Gwyneth always had a soft spot for players, and the pact she made with the kings of New Land put us all under her protection. The Old World dragon who took over the coast claimed all of her rights, so now we’re actually his subjects. Rowan pays something to him every year, but it’s all done through agents.”

  “Has Rowan always been with the troupe?”

  “He grew up as a player, but he left when he was sixteen to become a soldier for the White Duke. He was a famous fighter, no man could stand against him in a duel, and he rose to become the head of the duke’s guard. Then an Old Land troupe of players came through on a tour, the first time in over a hundred years, and he fell in love with one of their actresses.” Bethany motioned for Meghan to lean closer and whispered, “She’s supposedly a highborn lady who ran away with players to avoid an arranged marriage, and from the looks of her daughters, I believe it.”

  “So why did Rowan leave the White Duke and return to the players?”

  “It was right after they married,” Bethany continued in a whisper. “I think he quit the duke because her family and the prince she jilted have powerful friends, and Rowan didn’t want to cause the duke trouble.”

  “But that must have been almost thirty years ago. Surely they would have gotten over it by now.”

  Bethany shrugged. “Maybe he’d had enough of being a soldier as well. All I know is that we’re always welcome in the White Duke’s castle, and we play our shows there within the walls rather than on the festival grounds.”

  Chapter 62

  Getting into the Blue Duke’s castle and finding the brewery was easy. Empty wooden kegs with arrows painted on them were positioned at every turn in the labyrinthine passages and galleries that were formed from the arches supporting the upper levels of the castle. If that hadn’t been enough, the occasional group of men rolling a full keg in the opposite direction would have gotten them there eventually.

  “It looks pretty popular,” Meghan ventured. “I don’t know how we’re going to find what we came for if there’s a crowd.”

  “There better not be a charge to get in,” Bryan responded, looking daggers at an unfortunate man in the Blue Duke’s livery who happened to be passing by.

  “More likely there’s a charge for sampling the wares. I asked around before we came, and supposedly this is the best beer in the kingdom.”

  “Really?” The young man’s attitude did an about-face, and he stole a glimpse at Meghan. “Did you, uh, bring any money? I meant to, but…”

  “I’ll buy you a beer if you behave. Ugh, it doesn’t smell very good.”

  Bryan shrugged and began shouldering his way through a crowd of men who blocked their way, Meghan in tow. She was horribly embarrassed by his rudeness and was muttering, “Sorry,” left and right, when she realized that the men weren’t lined up to get into the brewery. They were waiting for their turn at a stone trough that must have run into the castle’s drainage system. She grabbed on to the back of Bryan’s coat, closed her eyes, and stopped apologizing.

  “This looks just like a brew pub,” Bryan declared as they entered the cavernous gallery. There were lines of barrels along one wall, half a dozen giant copper kettles, and pipes running everywhere. The crowd inside was nowhere near as bad as the mob in the hall, and as if to provide an explanation, a bell above the bar began to toll. Most of the remaining customers pushed away from the bar reluctantly.

  “I guess we just missed the lunch crowd,” Meghan said.

  “Lunch? I wonder if they serve food.” Bryan bellied up to the bar and called for two tankards.

  “He old enough to be in here?” the barman asked, gesturing at Meghan with his chin. “We’ve had complaints about kids falling off walls and slipping under wagon wheels. This isn’t the small beer you get back on the farm,” he added gruffly.

  “I’ll keep an eye on him,” Bryan replied, his eyes searching behind the bar. “You got any food here?”

  “Does it look like a cook shop to you?” The barman slid two full tankards in front of them. “Two coppers.”

  Meghan fumbled in her change purse, removed three coppers, and pushed them across the bar.

  “A proper young gentleman, you,” the barman said, scooping up the money and the tip. “Sorry I took you for a kid. I see you’re just delicate, like an Old World prince.” He laughed at his own joke as he retreated, but quickly returned with a basket full of some kind of little dried fish that had been heavily salted. “On the house.”

  “Thanks,” Bryan said, picking up one of the hard little snacks and munching on it. “Hey, these are pretty good. Almost too salty.” He took a long swallow of beer to chase it down.

  “That’s why they’re free,” Meghan told him in a low voice. “To get you to drink more.”

  “I don’t need little fish for that. So a flue is like a chimney, right?”

  Meghan blanched white and stared at him. “What’s wrong with you? Has one sip of beer gone to your head?”

  “You have a problem with brewery talk?” Bryan countered, twisting on his stool and looking around the well-lit space. “Those copper kettles are cool. I take back what I said about charging to get in. I wish this place did have a tour.”

  “Interested in brewing?” A short man wearing grimy coveralls and a sooty cap materialized at Bryan’s side. “Most people drink village brew, the stuff every widow mixes up in her kitchen cauldron, but we have the most modern facility in New Land. Those copper kettles you were admiring are imported, you know, and that whole wall is honeycombed with air passages for the fires below.”

  “I wondered where the heat came from,” Bryan said, winking at Meghan. He motioned to the barman to bring the newcomer a beer, and the short man nodded his thanks.

  “Use my tankard, Phil,” the kettle fireman said, settling onto the stool next to Bryan. “Thirsty work, banking the coals, but the manager has a strict rule about drinking on the job, and absolutely no freebies.” He sighed out loud after a long pull at his over-sized tankard, and then stuck out his hand towards Bryan.

  “I’m Shep.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Shep. I’m Bryan, and this is my little brother.”

  “Does the kid have a name?”

  “Elstan,” Meghan mumbled.

  “Just like the play. Name suits, if you don’t mind my saying. You look a bit girlish,” Shep added.

  “How do you heat the kettles?” Bryan asked. “My little brother said it must be magic.”

  The fireman laughed outright at Meghan, who lifted her tankard and gulped some beer to cover her irritation over having such dumb words put in her mouth. “Kids think everything is magic, they don’t realize how hard their parents work. If you look around the courtyard when you go back up, you’ll see a little wooden roof on the ground, not far from the main gate. It tips back so the carters can dump in a full load of charcoal, and it all runs down a chute to the fire room below the floor here. We go through enough charcoal to keep a village of burners employed, I tell you.”

  “It must get hot down there,” Bryan prompted.

  “It’s not that bad,” Shep replied, after draining half of his beer. “When they first built the place, men kept dropping dead for no apparent reason, but a healer came in and said it was something about unseen smoke from burning charcoal to boil the wort. So they hung the guy who designed the place and called in the mages, who worked out how to
keep the chimneys drawing and the fresh air moving through. You can actually feel a breeze down there.”

  The fireman lifted his over-sized tankard again, finished the contents in a series of giant gulps, and smacked his hand on the bar.

  “So there must be a chimney in the courtyard,” Bryan ventured. “I didn’t notice it when we came in.”

  “There’s a flue for each coal bed running up the back wall, but we’re almost under the castle’s outer wall here, and the flues all combine in a single chimney that comes out of the ground outside. It almost looks like the architect didn’t know what he was doing and had to add a buttress to the wall. The mouth of the chimney reaches up past the wall-walk.”

  “Thanks,” Bryan said. “We’ll have to check that out.”

  “Good to see young people interested in something other than magic for a change,” the fireman said, sliding off his stool. “Well, I’d stay for another, but I’m dead on my feet. Took my family to the last night of the festival, and the kids couldn’t fall asleep afterwards.”

  As soon as the man was gone, Meghan pushed her tankard away. “The riddle must mean the mouth of the chimney. That’s the place all the flues come together.”

  “Or the buttress outside.”

  “Come on. The wagons have started rolling by now, and you don’t want them to get so far ahead that we miss dinner.”

  “We can walk twice as fast as the wagons, and I’m finishing my beer.”

  Meghan fumed while Bryan took his time, looking around at the bar fixtures in between sips. Finally he pushed his tankard away, and she hopped off the stool.

  “What are you doing now?” she asked in dismay.

  “Finishing your beer,” he replied complacently. “Just because it was a bargain doesn’t mean you should waste it. It cost a copper after all.”

  The look on Meghan’s face caused him to drain the tankard in one long chug, after which he rose, feeling inordinately pleased with himself.

  “Stop at the trough on the way out,” Meghan said with a scowl. “We can’t have you looking around for a tree in the middle of our escape.”

  Chapter 63

  There were six separate flues in the chimney that could have been mistaken for a buttress, except for the fact that it rose over the crenellated battlements by the height of two old-fashioned jousting lances. Meghan looked around nervously for guards, but the only people visible on the wall-walk after lunch were a few stray tourists and some carpenters installing a new pulley system in one of the corner towers.

  “They aren’t exactly on war footing around here,” Bryan commented, looking out over the neighborhood surrounding the castle. It was heavily built up with wooden houses, though some multi-story brick buildings were rising along the main streets. “There must be twenty times as many people living outside the walls as in the castle grounds.”

  “Stand between me and the men working on the pulley,” Meghan instructed Bryan, intent on the coming task. “We’ll be in trouble if somebody figures out what we’re doing.”

  “Don’t worry so much. If anybody asks why you’re moving your hands around like that, I’ll just tell them you have a nervous condition.” Despite his words, he moved to shield her from the work crew, and with a last look around, she began the intricate motions needed to untie the magical knot.

  “Done,” she said, just as Bryan finished counting the ropes to figure out that the pulley’s mechanical advantage was ten-to-one. He was surprised it didn’t fall apart at that level of complexity, but then it occurred to him that may have been why they were replacing it.

  “What’d we get?” he asked out of the side of his mouth, playing up the part of burglar.

  “Lucky,” Meghan replied. “It’s a scroll canister, and I’ve already slipped it inside my jacket and resealed the flue. This could be our easiest task yet.”

  “Let’s get going then. If I don’t miss my workout with Rowan, our friends probably won’t ask any questions.”

  The two took the nearest stairs down the inside of the wall and headed for the main gate, which was divided by a railing to separate the incoming traffic from the outgoing.

  “They should do this at all the castles,” Meghan said as they entered the outgoing stream of people and carts. “I can’t tell you how many times I saw the gate jam up back home when a couple of carters going opposite directions wouldn’t give way.”

  “Maybe it’s not such a good idea after all,” Bryan muttered, his eyes on a tall man wearing a green hood. The man stood in the gateway and seemed to be paying close attention to the people leaving the castle. “What’s a green hood mean?”

  “Mage,” the girl replied, her voice going cold. Meghan had seen mages, of course—every baron had at least one in service, and a duke was bound to have several. But she’d been careful never to draw attention to herself before Bryan’s arrival, so there had never been occasion for a mage to scrutinize her up close. She had practiced clearing her mind and pushing her magical energy into a small spot, an evasion method described in the scrolls, but it was different with an inquisitive mage just a few paces away.

  “A private word,” the mage said, stepping into the flow of foot traffic and blocking the way. “I am Sawith, the duke’s war mage. Please come with me.”

  “Don’t,” Meghan mouthed at Bryan, adding such a pleading look that the young man managed to stop his initial urge to react violently. They followed the mage into the empty gatehouse guardroom, and at a small finger motion from Sawith, the door swung shut after them. The three stood in silence for a moment, then a yellow aura crackled into existence around the mage, and the smell of ozone filled the small room.

  “A girl disguised as a boy whose presence in front of me I can barely detect, and a young man, if that’s what you are, who practically oozes raw magical potential. No, don’t try it,” he added, raising a hand as Bryan began to summon up a fireball. “It’s clear that neither of you are war mages, so be warned that the shield I have erected will return any magical attack you launch with twice the potency you give it.”

  “What do you want from us?” Meghan asked, putting a restraining arm across Bryan’s chest.

  “Isn’t that obvious? I’ll start with the king’s reward for your capture, young lady, as you are obviously the girl described in the circular. Whatever magic you’ve been practicing in secrecy, however many poorly built towers you’ve collapsed, you’re no match for me.”

  “I never collapsed a tower, I just caught my boyfriend when he fell off,” Meghan rebutted the mage. “It’s all I can do, catch things that fall. Whatever potential you sense in him, he couldn’t even save himself.”

  “Is that so?” Sawith said, raising an eyebrow. “That won’t diminish the king’s bounty by one gold piece. Now, there are some questions you need to answer for me before I put you to sleep for transport. I know you are traveling with one of the player troupes and have visited the castles of the Red Duke and the Green Duke, and now I’ll have the reason why.”

  As he spoke these words, the war mage’s voice rose in a commanding tone, and Meghan felt his magical force and intense gaze compelling her to answer. At that moment, Bryan’s left fist caught the tall mage in the pit of the stomach, doubling the man over. Bryan followed the punch with a right uppercut to the jaw, which was accompanied by the unmistakable sound of bone breaking. Sawith collapsed in a heap.

  “You punched out a war mage?” Meghan half-screamed. “You can’t do that.”

  “I just did,” Bryan replied, rubbing his hand. “Hard jaw, I think I might have broken a knuckle. Should I finish him?”

  “Finish him? As in kill him? Are you crazy?”

  “I’m not kill-crazy if that’s what you mean, but we can’t have him coming after us,” he replied, looking around the empty guardroom. “I’ll just grab one of those axes and take off his head. The guys say it’s the surest way to kill a war mage.”

  “No, wait,” Meghan said, interposing her body between Bryan and the weapons
rack. “He’s completely out and his jaw is broken. Let me just spell him to sleep for a few days and we’ll be long gone.”

  “You don’t think somebody will come along and wake him up?” Bryan shook his head impatiently and reached around her for the axe.

  “It doesn’t work that way,” she pleaded, trying to hold the axe in place in the weapons rack. “Listen, if you were a war mage, would you admit that somebody broke your jaw with a punch?”

  Bryan paused. “That would be kind of embarrassing, wouldn’t it?”

  “He’d lose his job for sure, and nobody would ever hire him as a war mage again,” Meghan said in relief. “I’m just money to him. When he realizes that we’re gone, he won’t tell anybody. I’ll untie his bootlace and we’ll close it in the door when we leave. It will look like he tripped and slammed his chin on the table. It can happen to anybody.”

  Bryan looked skeptical, but he wasn’t really that enthusiastic about the idea of chopping the head off an unconscious man, so he helped Meghan move the body and undo one of the mage’s long leather bootlaces. In a burst of inspiration, he tied a knot in the end of the lace and wedged it into a crack in the flagstones, just inside the door.

  Meghan worked over the downed mage for a minute, her hands on his face, whispering to herself. Then they opened the door just wide enough to slip out into the stream of people leaving the busy castle.

  Chapter 64