“I want you to let me go,” Sarissa said, “let all of this go. Let me get married and find my own way. Forget your feud with my father and his father and stay here. Things have changed, and you can change with them.”
Fafnaer leant his head down, and Sarissa hugged his scaly snout.
“Very well,” he said, “I promise. Sail home across the bay and be safe, the wind is picking up. There will be a storm.”
Sarissa looked at him for a long time, and cast off. The dragon thought about what she had said far longer than he intended. She was right; the Reginn line would end soon, and everything would change. He looked across the bay at the distant shores, and spread his wings.
Some part of Sarissa knew, and she piled on sails until every scrap of canvas hummed and white water crashed against the hull.
High above, she saw the dragon fly by below the clouds.
“You stupid old lizard!” she screamed at the sky, and the prow of her little sailboat cut through the whitecaps like a sword parting silk.
Sarissa flew across the bay, but by the time she crossed it the wharfs were already burning. Every timber was ablaze and there was nowhere for her to land.
“You can’t get rid of me that easily!” she yelled toward the castle, and hauled on the tiller until she was headed for the cliffs.
High above the cliffside battlements, the castle was in chaos. The wharves were burning and the dragon had crashed through the gates into the keep. At least one ship had already been seen to steer away from the conflagration, only to dash itself upon the rocks.
“We should go up there, or down to the docks,” one of the guards said.
“We bloody well shouldn’t,” his companion replied, “I like living and these are our orders. Wait a second, look.”
A hand appeared over the cliffside parapet clad in shredded lace and daubs of blood and grit. A disheveled girl climbed over the lip and lay gasping at their feet.
“Now see here miss-”
Sarissa rose to her feet.
“Out of my way,” she said.
Belatedly, the guards recognized her.
“My lady, let us-”
“Kneel!” Sarissa bellowed.
The two men both dropped as though they had been shot with crossbows.
“Thank you,” she said, and ran up the hill.
Racing up the last set of stairs to her father’s audience hall, Sarissa heard men cheer. She smelled smoke and heard steel ring and knew that despite everything, she was too late to mend the world.
The hall looked like a battlefield. The chandeliers had been torn from the ceiling, tapestries were on fire, and the flagstones were slick with blood. Fafnaer lay in the centre of the room, breathing heavily. A great hole in the roof showed how he had made his way in.
Sarissa stumbled along the dragon’s flank and tripped. Fafnaer was held down by a thick tracery of ropes and hooks. King Reginn must have come to the same conclusion the dragon had, and prepared. When she finally reached the dragon’s head, shocked faces turned to meet her.
Up on the dais the king sat on his throne. Beside him were one of his generals, and a tall Zenatan emissary. The boy prince and the chancellor were there, too, and before them all knelt Sigmund.
“I have dealt this blow,” the knight said, and started again, “I hast dealt this fell swoop in thy name, oh king.”
Sarissa slid to a stop by Fafnaer’s big head. The dragon was still breathing.
“Are you alright?” she said.
“No,” Fafnaer grimaced, “the knight’s sword arm is better than his grammar.”
Sarissa’s blood chilled. She looked back at the dragon’s huge body. None of his wounds looked fatal, until she saw the hilt of Sigmund’s sword. The blade was buried at the base of Fafnaer’s neck, struck downward toward his heart. The dragon shivered in pain.
“My lady,” Sigmund said, finally noticing her, “do not touch the beast, its blood burns.”
Sarissa ignored him, sat down and leant against Fafnaer’s cheek, sobbing.
“This is what I wanted,” the dragon said.
“Fool,” Sarissa said, then, with perfect inflection, “thou most infinite fool.”
“Perhaps, but I did listen. You were right; the time for this kind of thing has passed.”
“I still need you,” Sarissa said, simply.
“No, you want me. That’s different. You do not need me anymore than you need him.” The dragon’s eyes turned for a moment to the king, then back to Sarissa.
“Then stay alive a little longer, if you can” she said, “and watch.”
“Leave her be,” the king said, as the merchant prince took a step forward.
The princess slumped to her knees in the pool of blood below the great wound. She put both palms on its flank, and dragon blood coursed over her hands. There was a faint, distant sizzle.
“My lady,” Sigmund said, and took another step toward her.
The princess hid her face in her hands and leant her forehead against the dragon’s side. Her chest heaved, and the knight felt a pang of pity.
On the dais, the merchant prince took a step back, and no one noticed.
Sarissa felt the dragon’s blood scar her skin, felt it burn away her entire self and leave something new behind. Neither the vast sky of stars nor the bay below were as wide or deep as her anger, as her loss, as the gulf full of things she would be forced to leave behind. She felt the fiery, hollow emptiness of rage not in her mind, nor in her heart. She felt it in her soul.
With a cry borne by the infinite weight of her grief Sarissa dragged her fingers down her face. Fafnaer’s blood burned long marks into her soft skin, war paint that would never fade.
She stood and grasped Sigmund’s broadsword with both hands. The dragon’s heartbeat quivered through the steel. It beat steadily, painfully, rhythmically, until in one graceful stroke Sarissa pulled the blade free.
Fafnaer roared, and heart blood gushed from the wound to coat Sarissa’s arms and send a glittering ruby arc spattering through the air. The dragon coughed flames, shuddered, and lay still.
Sarissa stepped lightly past the dragon’s snout and strode toward the knight.
Sigmund opened his mouth to say something, and Sarissa spun past him in a crouch and scythed the red sword across the backs of his knees. The knight fell. Sarissa finished the spin and brought the blade around in a sweeping arc that kicked sparks from the stone floor. The stroke separated the knight’s head from his shoulders as cleanly as a seamstress cutting ribbon.
Everyone in the room took a step back, except the king, who pushed into his cushions. Sarissa strode inexorably onward. The chancellor hobbled forward on his cane, and Sarissa cut him down without ceremony. As she mounted the steps to the throne, she met the eyes of the merchant prince. He was taller, and the rapier at his waist sat comfortably for a change. His hand was on the hilt.
“Do you have anything to say about this?” Sarissa asked. Her eyes shone like falling stars in a black and fractured sky.
“No,” he said, “not a thing.”
Sarissa turned from him and started back up the steps.
“One thing, actually.” The princess turned her eyes back to him. They were the eyes of a madman or a monster. The eyes of a dragon.
“Yes?” she said, dangerously.
“May I call upon you again, my lady?” he said, and swallowed. For an instant, the old Sarissa came back. The girl he’d danced with. The girl who had listened to him, and showed him where to put his feet.
“Yes,” she said, distractedly, and turned away to face her father. She hefted Sigmund’s blade, tested its weight. The king spoke.
“How dare you?” he said, his voice taut with rage.
“Address me in the high speech. People will remember these words when I am queen.”
“No one will recognize you,” the king said.
“They will,” his daughter said, “when I give th
em a reason to.”
Finally, the old king heard her. He switched to the old tongue, barely realizing he had.
“Art thou insensate? That dragon hath corrupted thee, daughter, poisoned thee. He hath tainted thy sense of right and duty.”
“Thou sharest that honor with him, father, but he hath gone, and soon thou shalt follow him wherever goest fools.”
Sarissa said the words, and was sure of them. Hoped some vanishing part of the dragon might hear them. She didn’t know how long it took to die.
“Prithee, sit. Enjoy thy throne. Thou shalt never leave it, for thou hast killed that thing I loved and I cannot stand the sight of thee nor of him. I shall wash thy lands clean of thee, and my soul of thee, and this realm shall have a queen anon.”
The sword did not tremble. She watched her father listen, really hear her, and disbelieve.
“Thou dasn’t,” he said.
“I dast,” Sarissa said.
The blade was hot with dragon’s blood. Sarissa transfixed the king on its tip and drove it though him, through the thick wood of the throne, until she could lean over the hilt and her nose almost touched his. His eyes were full of surprise, and Sarissa found hers blurred with tears.
“Now is a fine time to be shocked,” she said softly.
“Why?” the king gasped. Little wisps of smoke drifted from his daughter’s face. His vision was going grey, but he could smell the burning of her skin. Saw that the dragon blood had soaked into the lace at her wrists. It would leave a pattern there.
“My weakness bothered me,” she said, “so I changed it.”
Sarissa waited until her father went to join the dragon, and the world waited with her. At length she straightened, leaving the sword where it was. She tugged the royal circlet from her father’s bent head and placed it atop her own. The white gold shone against the rusty ochre of her dragonburnt skin.
“Now,” she said to the prince and the generals and emissaries and the nobles, “shall we end this war and restore some sense?”
As one they nodded, and the wise among them knelt.
Blake Jessop is a Canadian author of sci-fi, fantasy and horror stories with a master’s degree in creative writing from the University of Adelaide. You can read more of his supernatural speculative fiction in the Winter 2020 edition of the Mad Scientist Journal, or follow him on Twitter @everydayjisei.
CANDAS JANE DORSEY
A NIGHT IN THE PHILOSOPHER’S CAVE
She woke in the usual darkness, alerted by the click of claws on rock and the sound of her own breath. Took her sword tiredly from its scabbard.
“Are you finally ready?” said a tired voice from the corner.
“Again?” she said. “Again?”
“Yes, again. Are you ready?”
“Why don’t we do this in the light this time?” she said, and from the other corner heard a chuckle.
“Because I am a being of the darkness beyond the darkness of the pit,” said the voice.
“Oh, don’t eat that, city boy,” she said, “it’s horseshit.”
This time it was a laugh. She pulled some of the dry, compacted, slightly humus-y straw into a heap, and struck her shield-edge against the stone beside it a couple of times, until a spark larger than the rest lit the heap. She lay on her stomach to blow on the tiny flame, and felt another warm breath stir the air from the other side of the fire. The beast was helping her nourish the flames.
“You blow, I’ll get some real fuel,” she said, and her hands, much more suited to the task than the beast’s curved claws, pulled more straw into a heap and fed it to the flames.
The fire woke a little more. “It won’t last long like that,” said the beast, pushing more straw from its corner into the flames with impervious fists and tail. Its fists were five-clawed, like hers, gold as the sunset and large enough now that they could have caged her torso, were the beast so inclined.
“You’ve grown,” she said. She looked around for more fuel.
“I always grow,” said the beast. “It’s our curse. If nobody kills me, I’ll grow until I can’t lift my own bones. It’s annoying.”
The cave had grown too. She knew from the shape of the striations on the curved shell of it that the bored beast enlarged it in its spare time. She laughed. “Some days I can’t lift my own bones either. It’s not annoying, it’s entropy. But today’s a good day. More or less. I survived the dream again.”
Over in the corner, the broken handles of the weapons of warriors gone before were swept into an uneven heap as high as her ribcage. She limped over and began to drag an armful of them toward the fire.
“Hey,” said the beast. “I was saving those.”
“For what?” she said. “A museum? In here? You’re supposed to eat everybody who comes here. Who’d see it?”
“Point,” said the beast, and reached above her head for a spear haft. The golden points decorating its arm clattered, and combed her long hair on the way past.
As she put a couple of mace handles on the flame, the beast turned the spear handle in its front claws. “I remember this one,” it said, “fought like a demon. Cheated really. Gave me this,” and it raised its scarlet-plated hip to show her a long, puckered line, green with scar tissue, across a wrinkled haunch.
“Pretty good one,” she said. “Takes heft to hew those scales. What did you do to him?”
“Oh, I let him go, of course,” said the beast, “but I ate his right arm first. Had to, really. Couldn’t let him think I was getting soft.”
“But you are,” she said.
The beast roared and reared up in the darkness beyond the flames. She saw iridescence gleam on silver belly scales, and the fierce eyes with their own banked golden glow blinked and glared down from far above her.
She continued calmly to feed weapons to the flame. She laid aside a good yew longbow, not yet old and brittle, because it would be a waste to burn it, but she made sure to toss it outside the cave mouth, so as not to give the wrong message.
After a moment, the beast backed off into the corner again, came down with a thump on all its golden feet, flat as a flung cat, but it continued to grumble, like a closed kettle coming to the boil.
“How pretty your belly is,” she said. “I wish we had something to drink.”
The beast still grumbled.
“Oh, give over,” she said. “We’re both old. Older than we used to be, anyway. So what? We’re smarter. We can still show the young ones a thing or two.”
There was silence beyond the rim of light. A great ruby and gold and copper and verdigris coiling and uncoiling, smooth, and its sound as if a bag of coins was dragged behind a horse, which was a thing she had seen, though the bag was tied to the belt of a dead man (who hadn’t been dead when his long, bouncing career through a foreign forest had started.)
After a long while, she said, “Well, if they’ll let us, of course.”
The beast rumbled, but this time it was a wry sort of rumble, and after a moment it untied itself and flowed into the firelight again, and, arranging itself with belly turned to the fire, drooped its head until its cheek rested upon one front claw. Its tail still lashed slightly. “Look out for the fire,” she said sharply, “you’ll burn your tail.”
“I’m part salamander,” said the beast. “It’ll be fine.” But it tucked its tail around a rear haunch, extinguished the slightly-smouldering molten-gold tip under a slightly over-rich roll of scaly blood-red hip.
“I’ve got some cave-water,” said the beast. “Over in that corner, a spring and a pool. You could probably drink it out of one of those old helmets.”
“Most of those have skulls in them.”
“Find an old one. It’ll be clean by now.” So she did.
“Tell me a story,” she said after a while.
“You first this time,” said the beast.
“Fine,” she said. “Let me tell you how I met my—”
“Oh, another ‘fir
st lover’,” said the beast. “‘How we met’ stories. It’s what all the humans want to tell. What about us beasts that have to live alone? Don’t you think we get sick of all this breeder talk?”
“I never bred,” she said sharply, “and I was going to tell you who my father was. At last. Too bad for you. I’ll tell you about the first thing I stole, then.”
“I thought you were the honest hero in this scenario,” said the beast dryly.
“Oh, come on,” she said. “Do you think anyone gets to our age without stealing something? A slice of bread, a piece of candy, a trust, a lie, a gold coin from the trough in front of a tavern’s counter? A heart?”
The beast turned its long head and delicately, with the small row of front incisors between its fangs, scratched and rearranged at its isinglass ribcage until several ruffled scales were smooth and aligned, then raised its blunt snout, lip still pushed upward by its teeth’s rummaging, and shook its head like a dog until its face returned to its inscrutable norm.
“What do you do all day in here?” she said. “Besides—” she gestured at the curve of wall-into-ceiling “—renovations?”
“Scratch and snort, scrabble and sniff,” it said. “Never mind. Go on with my story.”
“Your story!” she said. “My story rather. Telling it to you does not make it yours.”
“Giving it to me, you mean.”
“Where I come from,” she said, “the stories of a teller still belong to the teller.”
“But you know,” said the beast, “you and I have been doing this for so long, we’re starting to forget whose stories are whose.”
“That’s true,” she said, “but this one is different. There’s no doubt whose story this one is.”
The beast hooted its bellowing laugh. “So it’s not the one about the dragon and the scorpion!”
Hear Me Roar Page 25
