In the Hall of the Dragon King

by Stephen R. Lawhead

  Would Quentin be equal to it? Ordinarily, yes. But not now, not in his present condition.

  Ronsard settled back along a rear bench and watched the room as one would watch a cauldron beginning to boil. Would this stranger, this Longbeard, show himself ? What if he did not come—what would happen? Ah, what would happen if he did appear? That was more to be feared.

  Ronsard stood and was about to return his long-empty ale jar to the bar when Longbeard entered. Ronsard did not see or hear him. Rather, he knew the man had appeared by the sudden tension in the room, the thrill that tingled in the dank, smoky air.

  The inn grew hushed.

  “He is here!” said a voice close by.

  “There he is. That’s the one I told you about.”

  “Ah, yes. Here he is.”

  “Now we will find out what to do.”

  “Longbeard will tell us what to do!”

  The whispers swirled around the gnarled old man like dry leaves around a bent old tree. Longbeard moved into them easily. If he understood the sensation his sudden appearance had caused, he showed no outward sign of it.

  Ronsard watched him walk to the center of the room, making his way to the bar. The inn was completely silent now. All eyes were on the old man with the flowing white hair and beard. Watching. Waiting.

  Then came a shout. “Longbeard! Have you seen him?”

  Seen whom? wondered Ronsard.

  Longbeard turned toward the voice and replied, speaking normally, but so every ear could hear him, “Yes. I have just come from his chambers.”

  A man standing near him asked, “Will he change his mind?”

  “No.” Longbeard shook his head slowly, with infinite sadness. “He will not change his mind.”

  “Then we must take matters into our own hands,” shouted someone from across the room.

  “Tell us what to do,” said another.

  Longbeard held up his hands. “It is not for me to tell you what to do. I am a simple man like yourselves. I know not the ways and minds of gods or kings.”

  The knowledge stung Ronsard like the blow from the flat of a sword. The king! He was talking about the king! Quentin was the “he” this Longbeard mentioned.

  But how was this possible? It was improbable that this white-bearded old stranger had been allowed to see the king. The Dragon King had shut himself in his rooms and would see no one—not even his closest friends, as Ronsard well knew. Yet, the implication was plain: I have been to see the king, and he will not change his mind. Change his mind about what? What game was this twisted old root playing? What was his aim?

  I must speak to him alone, thought Ronsard. I must get him out of here some way and take him where we can talk without being overheard. There are too many people here. The situation could get out of hand.

  But before Ronsard could form a plan in his mind, someone shouted, “Tear the King’s Temple down!”

  “By all the gods, yes. Tear it down!” answered another.

  Other voices took up the shout and added their agreement. Benches were thrown over as men jumped up. In an instant every man in the room was on his feet, fists in the air, crying for the destruction of the King’s Temple.

  This, then, is the spark that ignites the flame, thought Ronsard. But there must be a way to stop it. He glanced around for a place to stand, saw an empty table nearby, and jumped up on it.

  “Friends, what you propose to do is wrong. It is very dangerous as well. Some of you could get hurt—hurt very badly. Maybe even killed. It is no small thing to go against the king. Do you think he will not defend his temple? How many of you would make your wives widows this night?”

  Ronsard noticed that some of the eyes slid away from his uneasily. Good, he thought, this is working. But I must give them something now.

  “Let us instead send a petition before the king,” suggested the knight. “We will demand that he account to us for the raising of this temple. The petition can be our voice.”

  There were mutters of agreement all around. Hot heads were cooling under Ronsard’s sobering logic. He drew a sleeve across his face to wipe away the sweat.

  “Please,” he continued in a more reasonable tone, “for your own sakes, and for your families, let us all sit down together and draw up the petition.”

  “When?” said someone close by.

  “At once—here and now!”

  “And then?” the same voice asked.

  “And then I will take it to the king personally.” Yes, thought Ronsard, this is working. A disaster had been averted tonight.

  But just as he framed the thought, there came a shout from across the room. He glanced up to see old Longbeard standing on a table pointing at him.

  “Lies!” Longbeard screamed. “Lies!” Before Ronsard could speak the old man shouted, “Do any of you know this man?”

  The crowd grumbled its answer: no one knew him.

  “Ah, you see!” shouted Longbeard. “He is one of the king’s men. I saw him when I went to see the king this evening. He was there. The king sent him here as a spy among us!”

  “No! It is not true! I only want to help you.”

  “King’s man!” a burly peasant shouted behind him.

  “It is true: I am a friend of the king. But I am no less your friend. I am warning you: do not go against him in this matter. Do not take th—”

  Before Ronsard could finish speaking, he felt the table on which he was standing rise up, tilting away from him.

  “Lies!” they shouted. “Liar! We’ll do for you!”

  The table tipped, and Ronsard was pitched to the floor. He landed on his side, and the fall knocked the wind out of him. He rolled to his knees, gasping for breath.

  A boot lashed out and struck him in the ribs. A fist caught him behind the ear. He struggled for his feet.

  The room spun crazily. The air was heavy, and Ronsard found it hard to breathe. Loud voices buzzed in his ears, but he could not hear what they were saying. Feet and fists pummeled him.

  Ronsard rolled into a ball to protect himself, throwing his arms over his head. A table crashed to the floor nearby, scattering ale jars. A heartbeat later, light exploded behind his closed eyelids. His limbs jerked convulsively, and he lay still.

  30

  The meal had been simple, wholesome fare: brown bread and white cheese, braised meat, early vegetables, and fruit. Esme, enraptured with Dekra, thought each dish a delicacy, and savored every bite.

  She spoke little during the meal, but listened to all that was said around her. There was a quality to the voices she heard—a song that rang in the air, faintly but noticeably; it was music to charm her soul. Upon reaching their rooms in the visitors’ quarters of the Governor’s Palace, they had bathed in fresh, sun-warmed water and changed clothes, accepting clean new gowns of white with light summer mantles of blue, tied at the waist with long blue sashes. They had rested then on clean feather beds, awaking refreshed when their young guides came for them.

  When they reached Elder Jollen’s dwelling, the stars were beginning to light the twilight sky, and the sound of laughter drifted out of the courtyard adjoining his home. Many of Dekra’s people had been invited to make welcome the important visitors. There were candle lanterns all around—lining the tops of the walls and hanging from the trees. A long table had been brought outside where they could sit; others made themselves comfortable on cushions or benches along the wall. After they had eaten, songs were sung, and the elders told stories to the amusement of all.

  The evening passed like a dream, a dream of happiness and light, of 973 fullness and peace. Flowing peace, thought Esme, like a river. Not merely the absence of care, but a deeper, all-absorbing trust in the ultimate rightness of things. Like a river that runs along its course, be it rocky or smooth, accepting both with equal ease, never allowing the rocks to stanch the flow, filling the deep and shallow places alike, covering all and flowing on.

  All this Esme received from looking and listening: looking at those around
her and listening to her heart.

  When at last they were alone with the elders—the little princesses were carried back to their beds sound asleep—Bria began to tell them why they had come. Esme waited to see how the elders would receive this news, and what they would do about it.

  They were unusual men, these elders, she thought as she watched them nodding their heads gravely; their very presence invoked an aura of wisdom and trust. Only moments before they had been telling funny stories and laughing the loudest of any. They sat or moved among their people without regard for their exalted position—indeed, more like servants than leaders. But now they sat in solemn council, entering into the troubled events that Bria described with empathy and compassion. Not as judges, but as sympathetic friends, they listened with all attention, sometimes nodding, sometimes shaking their heads sadly, but listening until the queen was finished.

  “. . . And that is why we have come to you,” Bria was saying. “We did not know what else to do.”

  Elder Orfrey, the man chosen to replace Yeseph, spoke gently in answer. “You have done well to come here. We will help you all we can.”

  “Ah, the many shapes of evil,” said Elder Patur. “Darkness is most inventive in its combat with the light.”

  “But powerless in the end,” added Elder Clemore.

  “Yes, as long as men refuse to give in to it,” said Elder Jollen.

  “The battle rages on all sides,” said Patur, “and men are drawn into the melee whether they will or no. I see that the battle has come once more to Askelon and to the king. But it is ever thus—darkness fears the places where light burns the brightest, and these the darkness would destroy.”

  “What can be done?” asked Bria. Esme wondered the same thing.

  “That is the responsibility of the Most High,” replied Clemore. “We will seek his guidance.”

  “Through prayer?”

  “Yes, through prayer,” said Patur. “We will hold a prayer vigil for Quentin and young Gerin, Toli, and the others. Concerning Durwin, though we mourn his passing, we will rejoice in his entrance to the kingdom of the Most High, and pray that his reward is great. We will begin at once.”

  With that the men joined hands with the women and began to pray. Esme, who had never prayed in this fashion, felt awkward at first, but relaxed and turned her mind to the prayers of the elders. As she listened, she felt a moving within her; her heart quickened, responding to the words, but also to something more: a presence unseen, but distinct. It was as if the Most High had come to sit among them, entering into their prayer.

  Esme’s scalp prickled at the thought—a god who walks among his people! How strange. Gods were remote, disinterested, living in their mountains or in their temples, served by man, but never serving, as likely to harm as to help if it pleased them.

  At that moment she gave herself to the God Most High, saying to herself, “I know not of your ways as others here; but, Most High, if you will receive me, I will follow you. For I, too, would learn of you and serve you.”

  In response Esme felt a slight rising sensation, as if her soul were being lifted up. By this she knew that her prayer had been heard and accepted. She gripped the hand on either side of her more tightly, and felt life begin to trickle through her heart once more, after being dried up for so long.

  Pym stood in the darkness of the king’s chamber. He could hear him breathing slowly, rhythmically, like an animal in its lair. Should he speak? he wondered. Should he wait until addressed?

  The moment stretched to an awkward length, and still the king said nothing. Pym cleared his throat hesitantly. He waited.

  “Well?” asked a voice out of the darkness. The voice rasped like the voice of an old man. “What do you want?”

  “I’ve come—,” began Pym.

  But before he could continue the king shouted at him, “I do not care why you have come! Go away and leave me!”

  The tinker saw the hulking form before him suddenly lurch to its feet and stagger toward him. He took a frightened step back. “Sire, I meant no harm. I meant—”

  “Get out of here! Can you not see I want to be left alone?”

  Pym made a move toward the door.

  “No! Wait! You have news of my son?” the Dragon King asked. He came near and gripped the tinker by his shoulders, blowing his breath in the man’s face.

  Pym recoiled from the grasp and from the king’s foul breath. “Nay! I have no sech news,” Pym managed to stammer.

  “Ach!” cried the king, and released him with a shove that sent him flying.

  Pym slammed against the door and stayed there, petrified. Surely the king would not kill him, would he?

  “What is it?” spat the king savagely. “Well? Tell me. Have you lost your tongue?”

  Before Pym could reply, there came a hasty knock behind him, and the door was shoved open, sending the tinker sprawling.

  “Sire! Come quickly. Something is happening! Trouble, Your Majesty! Come quickly.”

  In the light from the open door Pym saw the king—face as gray as ashes, dark circles under his eyes, cheeks sunken and hollow. He looked like a wraith who had come back from the grave, not a flesh-and-bone man with warm blood in his veins. Was this the great Dragon King?

  Without a second glance, the king swept by him and out of the door. Pym scrambled to his feet and peered through the doorway. There were other voices now ringing down the corridors. Pym paid them no attention; his only thought was to leave at once and get as far away as possible before the king came back and found him still there.

  He crept out of the chamber and back along the now-deserted passageways of the castle, coming at length to the entrance. He stepped out into a cool night, bright with stars. Tip lay waiting for him with head on paw.

  “It’s home fer we’uns, Tipper,” said Pym, still shaken by what had happened to him. Tip wagged her tail. “Back t’ the Gray Goose we go right enough.”

  He cast a last look behind him and then made his way across the inner ward yard and through the gate into the outer ward yard and toward the castle gatehouse. The great gates were closed, but a keeper stood near the smaller door, which was still open within the larger.

  Pym said nothing, but hurried on by, through the gatehouse tunnel, lit with torchlight, and onto the huge drawbridge. Upon reaching the ramp he slowed, feeling like a malefactor escaped from the castle dungeons to freedom. He walked along the streets and as he turned toward the inn, heard a rumbling like the sound of distant thunder carried on the wind. He stopped and listened.

  A group of men came around the corner—a dozen or more, shouting loudly and carrying oily, smoking torches. They brushed by him in the narrow street, hurrying away. One look at their wild, twisted faces, and Pym knew that they meant no one any good.

  He shivered as he watched the men disappear down a side street. Shouts echoed in the empty streets far off. Pym shook his head dismally. “Aye, there be trouble, Tip. Master Oswald spoke aright. Come along, old girl. ’Tis no night fer we’uns to be about.”

  They hurried back to the Gray Goose. In the distance the rumbling could still be heard intermittently; not thunder now, but the drums of battle just before the inevitable clash.

  31

  By the time Theido reached the site with his small force of knights, the destruction was almost complete. Three walls had been toppled, and the fourth was wobbling under the stress of ropes and poles in the hands of scores of frenzied townspeople.

  “My lord, we have come too late,” said the knights at Theido’s right hand. His face flickered in the blaze of torchlight around them. “Do you want us to disperse them?”

  Theido watched the men screaming and leaping to their task, obviously caught in the rage of destruction. At that moment the upper layer of stones on the last wall gave way and tumbled to the earth—thudding with such force that the ground shook and reverberated like a drum.

  “No, not yet,” replied Theido. “Someone could get hurt. I do not want anyone killed
; the damage is done already.”

  “We should do something,” the knight insisted. “The King’s Temple . . .” His voice trailed off as he gestured hopelessly to the ruin.

  “What would you have us do?” snapped Theido angrily. “The deed is done! Broken heads will not save anything. Look at them out there— the whole town has gone mad!” Theido stared into the mob. Ropes snaked out through the air; poles thrust against stone; shouts became a growling chant as another whole section of the wall caved in. A cheer went up. It was the cry of a beast.

  Theido said wearily, “Send the men around the perimeter to ring them in. When it is done, disperse them. We will not have this insanity spread. Do not hesitate to use the flat of your swords. But I want no unnecessary hurt done to anyone—is that understood?” The knight nodded. “See to it, then. I am returning at once to the castle.”

  From the high battlements Quentin watched the assault on his new temple in mute agony. The hill on which the temple was being constructed blazed with torchlight, and he could hear the shouts of the townspeople clearly in the night air, though the building site lay some distance away from the castle. He saw the churning mass around the walls, and he saw the stones of his great temple fall.

  Those around the king held their tongues, afraid to speak, fearful of what he might do. The cold, unnatural light on his haggard face created a ferocious, almost savage aspect. Muscles tense, limbs rigid, the veins in his neck and forehead standing out, eyes staring from his head in horror—he appeared ready to leap over the battlements at any moment, or of a disposition to tear the limbs from any who came near him.

  Quentin stood as stone and watched the desolation of his dream take place before his very eyes. With every stone that fell to earth, a piece of him was laid waste, and he could do nothing but watch and feel the wound in his soul knifing deeper with every section of wall that thundered down.

  When the last wall came crashing onto the pile of rubble, he turned without a word and went back to his chamber. Theido found him there, sitting in the dark.