The Dragonbone Chair

by Tad Williams

  Just past the edge of town he found a small stream gurgling along over the black, leafy soil. He knelt and drank. Ignoring the brambles and the dampness as best he could, he took his shoes back off again to use for a pillow and curled up at the base of a live oak, just out of sight of the road and the last house. He fell asleep quickly beneath the trees, a grateful guest in their cool hall.

  Simon dreamed…

  He found an apple lying on the ground at the foot of a great white tree, an apple so shiny and round and red that he hardly dared to bite it. But his hunger was strong, and soon he lifted it to his mouth and set his teeth in it. The taste was wonderful, all crunch and sweetness, but when he looked where he had bitten he saw the thin, slippery body of a worm coiled beneath the bright surface. He could not bear to throw the apple away, however—it was such a beautiful fruit, and he was famished. He turned it around and bit into the other side, but as his teeth met he pulled away and saw once more the sinuous body of the worm. Over and over he bit, each time in a different place, but each time the slithering thing lay beneath the skin. It seemed to have no head or tail, but only endless coils wound around the core, spreading through the apple’s cool, white flesh…

  Simon awoke beneath the trees with an aching head and a sour taste in his mouth. He went to the streamlet to drink, feeling faint and weak of spirit. When had anyone ever been so alone? The slanting afternoon light did not touch the sunken surface of the creek; as he kneeled for a moment staring down into the murmuring dark water, he felt he had been in a place like this before. As he wondered, the soft wind-speech of the trees was overwhelmed by a rising murmur of voices. For a moment he feared he was dreaming again, but as he turned he saw a crowd of people, a score at least, coming up the Old Forest Road

  toward Flett. Still in the shadow of the trees, he moved forward to watch them, drying his mouth with the arm of his shirt.

  The marchers were peasant folk, dressed in the rough cotsman’s cloth of the district, but with a festive air. The women had ribbons twined in their unpinned hair, blue and gold and green. Skirts twirled about bare ankles. Some who ran in front carried flower petals in their aprons which they cast fluttering to the ground. The men, some young and light-footed, some limping gaffers, carried on their shoulders a felled tree. Its branches were as ribbon-festooned as the women, and the menfolk held it high, swinging it jauntily as they came up the road.

  Simon smiled weakly. The Maia-tree! Of course. It was Belthainn Day today, and they were bringing the Maia-tree. He had often watched the tree go up in Erchester’s Battle Square

  . Suddenly his smile felt too wide. He was lightheaded. He crouched lower among the concealing brush.

  Now the women were singing, their sweet voices mixing unevenly as the throng danced and whirled.

  “Come now to the Beredon,

  Come to the Hill of Briars!

  Put on your merry flower-crown!

  Come dance beside my fire!”

  The men replied, voices ragged and cheerful:

  “I’ll dance before your fire, lass,

  Then, in the forest’s shadow

  We’ll lay a bed of blossoms down

  And put an end to sorrow!”

  Both together sang the refrain:

  “So stand beneath this Yrmansol

  Sing hey-up! Hey-yarrow!

  Stand beneath the Maia-pole

  Sing hey-up! God is growing!”

  The women were beginning another verse, one about hollyhock and lily-leaves and the King of Flowers, as the noisy band drew abreast of Simon. Caught up for a moment in the high spirits, his dizzy head full of the exuberant music, he began to push forward. Not ten paces away on the sun-blotted road one of the men nearest him stumbled, a trailing ribbon coiled about his eyes. A companion helped him to disentangle himself, and as he pulled the gold streamer loose his whiskery face creased in a broad grin. For some reason the flash of laughing teeth held Simon a step short of leaving the concealment of the trees.

  What am I doing!? he berated himself. The first sound of friendly voices and I go bounding out into the open? These people are merrymakers, but a hound will play with his master, too—and woe to the stranger that comes up unannounced.

  The man he had been watching shouted something to his companion which Simon could not hear over the din of the crowd, then turned and held up a ribbon, shouting to someone else. The tree jounced along, and when the procession’s last stragglers had passed, Simon slipped out on to the road and followed—a thin, rag-wrapped figure, he might have been the tree’s mournful spirit wistfully pursuing its stolen home.

  The lurching parade turned up a small hill behind the church. Across the broad fields the last splinter of sun was vanishing fast; the shadow of the church’s rooftop Tree lay across the hillock like a long, curve-hilted knife. Not knowing what was planned, Simon hung well back of the group as they carried the tree up the slight rise, stumbling and catching on the new-sprung briars. At the top the men gathered, sweaty and full of loud jests, and levered the trunk upright into a hole dug there. Then, while some held the swaying bulk steady, others shored up the base with stones. At last they stepped back. The Maia-tree tottered a bit, then tipped slightly to one side, drawing a gasp of apprehensive laughter from the crowd. It held, only slightly out of plumb; a great cheer went up Simon, in the tree-shadows, gave voice himself to a small, happy noise, then had to retreat into hiding as his throat tightened. He coughed until blackness fluttered before his eyes: it had been nearly a full day since he had uttered a spoken word.

  Eyes watering, he crept back out. A fire had been kindled at the hill’s foot. With its highest point painted by the sunset, and the flames jigging down below, the tree seemed a torch fired at both ends. Irresistibly drawn by the scent of food, Simon moved near to the gaffers and gossips who were spreading cloths and laying supper by the stone wall behind the little church. He was surprised and disappointed to see how meager the stores were—slim rewards for a festival day, and, dreadful luck, an even slimmer chance of him making off with any unnoticed.

  The younger men and women had begun to dance around the base of the Maia-tree, trying to make a ring. The circle, with drunken tumbling-down-the-hill and other impediments, never became completely joined; the spectators whooped to see the dancers vainly reaching for a hand to close on as they whirled giddily by. One by one the merrymakers reeled away from the dance, staggering, sometimes rolling down the low hill to lie at the bottom laughing helplessly. Simon ached to join them.

  Soon knots of people were sitting all about the grass and along the wall. The highest tip of the tree was a ruby spearhead, capturing the sun’s final rays. One of the men at the base of the hill brought out a shinbone flute and began to play. A gradual silence descended as he piped, touched only by whispers and an occasional squeak of muffled laughter. At last the breathing blue darkness surrounded them all. The plaintive voice of the flute soared above, like the spirit of a melancholy bird, A young woman, black-haired and thin-faced, got to her feet, steadying herself on the shoulder of her young man. Swaying gently, like a slim birch tree in the wind’s path, she began to sing; Simon felt the great hollowness inside himself open up to the song, to the evening, to the patient, contented smell of the grass and other growing things.

  “O faithful friend, O Linden tree.”

  she sang,

  “That sheltered me when I was young,

  O tell me of my faithless one

  Be friend again to me.

  The one who was my heart’s desire

  Who promised all for all in turn

  Has left me lorn, my heart has spurned

  And made of Love a liar.

  Where has he gone, O Linden tree?

  Into the arms of what sweet friend?

  What call will bring him back again?

  O spy him out for me!

  Ask me not that, my mistress fair

  I’d fain not make answer to you.

  For I could only answer true
>
  And I would your feelings spare.

  Deny me not. O Linden tall

  Tell me who holds him close tonight!

  What woman has overthrown my right?

  Who keeps him from my call?

  O mistress fair, then truth I’ll tell

  He’ll not to you come anymore.

  Tonight he walked the river shore

  And stumbled there and fell.

  The river-woman now he holds

  And she in turn holds fast to him.

  But she will send him back again

  All river-wet and cold.

  Thus will he come from there again.

  All river-wet and cold…”

  As the black-haired girl sat down again the fire crackled and spat, as if in mockery of such a damp, tender song.

  Simon hurried away from the fire, his eyes filling with tears. The woman’s voice had awakened in him a fierce hunger for his home; for the joking voices of the scullions, the offhand kindnesses of the chambermaids, his bed, his moat, the long, sun-speckled expanse of Morgenes’ chambers, even—he was chagrined to realize—the stern presence of Rachel the Dragon.

  The murmurs and laughter behind him filled the spring darkness like the whir of soft wings.

  A score or so of people were in the street before the church. Most of them, in knots of two or three or four, seemed headed through the settling darkness toward the Dragon and Fisherman. Firelight glowed within the door there, stippling the loiterers on the porch with yellow light. As Simon approached, still wiping at his eyes, the odors of meat and brown ale rolled over him like an ocean wave. He walked slowly, several paces behind the last group, wondering if he should ask for work right off, or just wait in the sociable warmth until later, when the innkeeper might have a moment to speak with him and see that he was a trustworthy lad. It made him fearful just to think about asking a stranger to take him in, but what else could he do? Sleep in the forest like a beast?

  As he squirmed through a clump of drunken farmers arguing the merits of late-season shearing, he nearly tripped over a dark figure huddled against the wall beneath the inn’s swinging sign. A round pink face with small dark eyes turned up to stare at him. Simon mumbled noises of apology, and was moving on when he remembered.

  “I know you!” he said to the crouching figure; the dark eyes widened as if in alarm. “You’re the friar I met in the Main Row! Brother…Brother Cadrach?”

  Cadrach, who for a brief moment had looked as though he might scramble away on hands and knees, narrowed his eyes to stare in turn.

  “Don’t you remember me?” he said excitedly. The sight of a familiar face was as heady as wine. “My name is Simon.” A couple of the farmers turned to look blearily and incuriously in their direction, and he felt a stab of fright, remembering that he was a fugitive. “My name is Simon,” he repeated in a softer voice.

  A look of recognition, and something else, passed over the monk’s plump face. “Simon! Ah, of course, boy! What brings you, then, up from the great Erchester to dismal little Flett?” With the aid of a long stick that had been leaning against the wall beside him, Cadrach climbed to his feet.

  “Well…” Simon was nonplussed.

  Yes, what have you been doing, you idiot, that you should strike up conversation with near-strangers. Think, stupid! Morgenes tried to tell you that this was no game.

  “I have been on an errand…for some people at the castle…”

  “And you decided to take the small bit of money left to you and stop at the famous Dragon and Fisherman,” Cadrach made a wry face, “and have a bit of something to eat,” Before Simon could correct him, or decide if he wanted to, the monk continued. “What you should be after, then, is taking your supper with me, and let me pay your count—no, no, lad, I insist! It is only a fairness, after the kindly ways you showed to a stranger.” Simon could not utter a word before Brother Cadrach had his arm, pulling him into the public room.

  A few faces turned as they entered, but no one’s eyes lingered. The room was long and low-ceilinged, lined along both walls with tables and benches so wine-stained, hacked, and carved-upon that they seemed held together only by the dried gravy and suet with which they were so generously splattered. At the end nearest the door a roaring fire burned in a wide stone fireplace. A sooty, sweating peasant lad was turning a joint of beef on a spit; he winced as the dripping fat made the flames sizzle. To Simon it all suddenly looked and smelled like heaven.

  Cadrach dragged him to a spot along the back wall; the tabletop was so cracked and pitted that it hurt to rest his skinned elbows on its surface. The monk took the seat across from him, leaning back against the wall and extending his legs down the length of the bench. Instead of the sandals that Simon would have expected, the friar wore ragged boots, splitting from weather and hard use.

  “Innkeeper! Where are you, worthy publican?!” Cadrach called. A pair of beetle-browed, blue-jawed locals that Simon would have sworn were twins looked over from the opposite table with annoyance written in every facial furrow. After a little wait the owner appeared, a barrel-chested, bearded man with a deep scar across his nose and upper lip.

  “Ah, there you are,” said Cadrach. “Bless you, my son, and bring us each a mug of your best ale. Then, will you be so good as to carve us off some of that joint—that, and two trenchers of bread to sop with. Thanks to you, laddie.”

  The owner frowned at Cadrach’s words, but nodded his head curtly and walked away. As he left, Simon heard him grumble: “…Hernystiri buggerer…”

  The ale came soon, and then the meat, then more ale. At first Simon ate like a starving dog, but after easing his initial, desperate hunger, and looking about the room to make sure no one was paying them undue attention, he slowed his pace and began to attend to Brother Cadrach’s meandering conversation.

  The Hernystirman was a wonderful storyteller, despite the burr of his accent that sometimes made him a little difficult to understand. Simon was vastly amused by the tale of the harper Ithineg and his long, long night, despite being a bit shocked to hear such a story told by a man of the cloth. He laughed so hard at the adventures of Red Hathrayhinn and the Sithi woman Finaju that he sprayed ale over his already stained shirt.

  They had lingered a long while; the inn was half-empty when the bearded innkeeper finished filling their mugs for the fourth time. Cadrach, with broad gesticulation, was telling Simon of a fight he had once witnessed on the docks of Ansis Pelippe in Perdruin. Two monks, he explained, had cudgeled each other into near-unconsciousness during an argument about whether or not the Lord Usires had magically freed a man from a pig-spell on the island of Grenamman. Just at the most exciting point—brother Cadrach was waving his arms so enthusiastically in the description that Simon feared he would fall off the bench—the tavernkeeper thumped an ale jug loudly down in the middle of the table. Cadrach, caught in midexclamation, looked up.

  “Yes, my good sir?” he asked, cocking a bushy brow. “And how can we be helping you?”

  The innkeeper stood with arms folded, a look of suspicion pinching his face. “I’ve let you stand credit so far ’cause you’re a man of the faith, father,” he said, “but I must be closing up soon.”

  “Is that all that’s afflicting you?” A smiled raced across Cadrach’s round face. “We’ll be right over to reckon up with you, good fellow. What was your name, then?”

  “Freawaru.”

  “Well, never fear then, goodman Freawaru. Let the lad and me be finishing these noggins and then we’ll let you get your sleep.” Freawaru nodded in his beard, more or less satisfied, and stumped off to yell at the turnspit boy. Cadrach emptied his mug with a long and noisy swallow, then turned his grin on Simon.

  “Drink up, now, lad. We must not keep the man waiting. I am of the Granisian order, you know, and have a feeling for the poor fellow. Among other things, good Saint Granis is the patron of innkeepers and drunkards—a natural enough pairing!”

  Simon chuckled and drained his cup, but as he
put it down a finger of memory tugged at him. Hadn’t Cadrach told him when they first met in Erchester that he was of some other order? Something with a “v”? Vilderivan?

  The monk was fishing about the pockets of his robe with a look of great concentration on his face, so Simon let the question pass. After a moment Cadrach pulled out a leather purse and dropped it on the table; it made no sound—no clink, no jingle. Cadrach’s shining forehead wrinkled in a look of concern, and he held the purse up to his ear and slowly shook it. There was still no sound. Simon stared.

  “Ah, laddie, laddie,” said the friar mournfully, “will you look at that now? I stopped to help a poor beggar-man today—carried him down to the water I did, and washed his bleeding feet—and look what he has done to repay my kindness.” Cadrach turned the purse over so that Simon could see the gaping hole slit across the bottom. “Can you wonder why I sometimes fear for this wicked world, young Simon? I helped the man, and, why, he must have robbed me even as I was carrying him.” The monk heaved a great sigh. “Well, lad, I’m afraid I’ll have to prevail on your human kindness and Aedonite charity to lend me the money that we are owing here—I can soon pay you back, never fear. Tch, tch,” he clucked, waving the slit wallet at the gape-eyed Simon, “oh, but this world is sick with sin.”

  Simon heard Cadrach’s words only vaguely, a babble of sounds in his ale-muddled head. He was looking not at the hole, but at the seagull worked on the leather in heavy blue thread. The pleasant drunkenness of a minute before had turned heavy and sour. After a moment he raised his stare until his eyes met Brother Cadrach’s. The ale and the warmth of the commons room had flushed Simon’s cheeks and ears, but now he felt a tide of blood that was hotter still mounting up from his fast-beating heart.