The Parodies Collection

by Adam Roberts

  In the far distance: the cawing of gulls.

  ‘Right,’ said Käal, shortly. ‘Of course. Of course you don’t. Of course you don’t!’

  ‘I mean,’ said Marrer, grinning and rolling his eyes, ‘that wouldn’t be very nice, would it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be nice.’ Marrer put a claw on Käal’s shoulder. ‘And nice is what I am. Everybody says so! Shall I tell you something else I’ve never done? Committed incest with, and subsequently murdered, my sister Hellfire.’

  ‘I feel sure that goes without saying,’ agreed Käal, looking at the claw with some anxiety.

  ‘Come inside. Come along.’

  Käal followed Marrer in.

  They went into the main hall together, and the heir of Vagner spent some time talking Käal through the various portraits of eminent Vagner ancestors. ‘So there they are,’ he concluded. ‘All our illustrious dead, all illustrated here. Illustrious and illustrated. And all buried in the vault on this very island.’ He smiled warmly at Käal. ‘Right under our feet!’

  ‘It’s a little spooky to think of it,’ observed Käal.

  ‘Spooky?’ repeated Marrer, raising one eyebrow. ‘You think so?’

  ‘I do,’ said Käal, laughing nervously. ‘It’s as spooky as – as…’ He searched for an appropriate simile. In truth he was a little jangled by Marrer’s jokes. Or by what he genuinely hoped were Marrer’s jokes – the torture basements and incestuous murder material. ‘… er… a bicycle wheel,’ he finished, somewhat at a loss. ‘All those dead family members just lying underneath your feet? It doesn’t spook you?’

  ‘I can’t say it does,’ said Marrer, thoughtfully. ‘Although I’ve never really thought about it, if I’m honest. Come along. You must be hungry.’

  They went out of the great hall and ascended to Marrer’s spacious apartment. And there they were met by a firedrake: a younger one than the servant who attended Helltrik, but equally reticent. ‘Come in, and say hello to my girldragon, Redsnapper. Red? Red! We have a guest!’

  A comely she-dragon came out of a back room. Her eyes were nightsky, black with inset sparkles of fiery white; and her scales were of a remarkable silver hue. Even more strikingly, her wings were scarlet. It was hard to gauge her age, although there was something mature and settled in her manner. She padded over to Marrer, and the two put their mouths together and blew affectionate fire at one another.

  ‘Pleased to meet you,’ said Redsnapper. ‘You are—?’

  ‘Käal,’ said Käal.

  ‘Käal will join us for supper.’

  ‘Excellent!’

  ‘He is here to investigate my sister’s death,’ said Marrer.

  ‘After all these years!’ said Red, putting her foreclaws together. ‘Well, it’s about time.’

  The three of them took supper on Marrer’s balcony; a petal-shaped extrusion from the body of the castle built of white stone marbled with gold seams and whorls. The food was delicious: a starter of whole dog (shaved, basted, baked and served with a shredded cat stuffing), followed by a main course of tender mutton chunks, and for dessert crème brûlée, all washed down with some very serviceable firewater. As the small talk pattered agreeably across the table, and the sun went down in splendour over the western horizon, Käal came to the conclusion that all the stuff Marrer said about murdering his sister and torturing visitors to death had indeed been a joke. There was nothing suspect or dodgy about him. In fact, never in all his life had Käal encountered so deeply decent, reasonable and nice a dragon as Marrer. The worst that could be said against him was that he was not so skilled in properly judging the level of a joke. But surely, failing precisely to judge the level of a joke is an insignificant failing when set against the many courtesies, marks of intelligence and charm that Marrer displayed?

  ‘So, Käal,’ he said. ‘You’ve been here a day?’

  ‘Just a day.’

  ‘Do you have any theories yet as to what happened to my sister?’

  ‘Don’t pressure him, Marr,’ said Red.

  ‘No it’s all right,’ replied Käal. ‘In fact, I might turn the question back on you. Do you have a theory as to what happened to your sister? You must have given it a lot of thought.’

  Marrer put his smile carefully away, folded his fore-claws and replied: ‘I have indeed. Of course I have. I haven’t become obsessed – if that’s not too harsh a way of putting it – like great-uncle Helltrik. But of course it haunts me. I remember that last day so well! It was foul weather, perfectly impossible to fly. Impossible, even, to step outside. Drizzle for hours and hours, an uncanny, unsettling rainfall. Pretty much the entire clan had gathered, and since we couldn’t go out things got a little – tetchy, I suppose you could say.’

  ‘There were arguments?’

  ‘You have to understand the tensions. My grandfather, Reekhard, had – certain unsavoury political sympathies. This was something my mother Isabella, Reekhard’s daughter-in-law, could never quite understand. It was baffling to her, I think, and distressing. We were all gathered in the smoking room, passing round a number of old family eyes. Reekhard and my mother got into an argument. I honestly can’t remember how it started. But soon enough they were calling one another all manner of horrible names, and suddenly my sister just snapped. She flew up to the ceiling, dived back down through the door and hurried off towards the Great Hall.’

  ‘Did you go after her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘How do you know she went in that particular direction, then?’

  ‘Asheila saw her.’

  ‘And what was this argument about.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Marrer, glancing across the golden table at his girldragon. ‘The usual. There’s really only ever one argument in my family, endlessly repeated and varied. You see, Mon. Brimstön, there is… a guilty secret at the heart of Doorbraak.’

  ‘I know,’ said Käal, speaking up to spare Marrer’s blushes. ‘Your granduncle explained everything to me. I know that, despite heroic service in the Scorch Wars, several key members of your family displayed sympathy for the ideas of…’ He lowered his voice. ‘Democracy,’ he concluded.

  Redsnapper lowered her eyes. Marrer looked sombre. For a while nobody said anything.

  Eventually Marrer went on: ‘It wasn’t the first time Reekhard and Isabella had argued. Each taking their traditional side in the fight. Oh, but it wasn’t even the content of the argument that was so upsetting! If they’d had a properly dragonish flaming row, that would have been different! But it wasn’t like that. It was this drip-drip whining “yes you did” “no I didn’t” “yes you did” “no I didn’t”. It was demeaning for both of them, really, although my grandfather… well he really should have known better.’

  ‘And that was the last you saw of your sister?’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘And what do you think happened to her?’

  ‘I honestly don’t know. I have given it a lot of thought, obviously, and I’ve honestly no idea.’ Marrer looked thoughtfully out at the thickening dusk light, and said: ‘I know what didn’t happen to her. She didn’t commit suicide.’

  ‘Oh!’ said Käal. ‘Do some people think she did?’

  ‘The police investigated her disappearance, and that was the tentative conclusion they came to. The idea was: distraught, she rushed from the castle, straight into the rainfall, tried to fly, and instead fell a mile through the air to her death. But there are too many holes in that theory for it to be taken seriously.’

  ‘The eye,’ said Käal.

  ‘Well, yes. The eye underneath the mountain didn’t see anything. A dragon getting suddenly tangled up in her own wings and plummeting – that would be recorded. Like many others, I’ve had that eye in my own socket, and I have seen everything it saw. It didn’t see that.’

  ‘What did the police say? I mean, why did they conclude she had fallen when the eye shows that she didn’t?’

  ‘There was some chaff about poor visibility. Suc
h nonsense! I mean, it was raining, but not hard, and you can see everything with great clarity. You should have a look yourself. The eye is kept in the Vagner Vault, now. Pop it in, and check.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘The other problem is that, if Hellfire had fallen to the ground and been killed by the impact, then she would have left a pretty enormous crater. There was no crater – and no body.’

  ‘And how did the police explain that?’ Käal asked.

  ‘They couldn’t, of course. There was some talk of a second individual, somebody who retrieved the body and hid it, filled in the crater and so on. That’s so nonsensical, it’s beyond nonsense! It’s… what do you call something beyond nonsense?’

  ‘Sense?’ offered Käal. Both Marrer and Red looked rather sharply at him. ‘I mean – or, no, that’s the opposite, isn’t it. How about: nonnonsense? No, that’s another opposite. Sensenon?’

  ‘For one thing,’ said Redsnapper, ‘the police argued for a spontaneous suicide. So where did this mysterious accomplice come from?’

  ‘And for another,’ said Marrer. ‘The…’

  ‘Supernonsense!’ said Käal.

  There was a pause.

  ‘For another thing,’ Marrer said. ‘The ground underneath where the island was on that day has been thoroughly examined.’

  ‘Ultranonsense?’

  Marrer ignored this. ‘If there had been a crater it would have been found. Even if there had been a crater and some mysterious third party had shipped in dirt and filled it in, that would have been discovered. Perhaps you don’t know, my granduncle hired earthwyrms to search the lower portions of the island?’

  ‘He,’ said Käal, ‘mentioned something.’

  ‘Well, he also paid them to examine the land underneath Doorbraak too. They’d have spotted a recently filled crater: it would have stood out like a sore thumb-claw. Nothing.’

  ‘Where was the island over at the time?’ Käal asked. ‘By which I mean: over where was the island that time at? No, wait a minute. Over which country did the, was the island, during the time at when over? Over whence did the island then be at, over?’

  ‘Limbchopping,’ said Marrer. ‘The island moves, slowly but inexorably, you know, following a great oval. It passes north over Swedragen, loops round in Fangland, comes back south over Lizardania, Lostvia and Stonia, and sweeps back over Dustland and Dragonmark. It takes exactly a year to make one revolution.’

  ‘How very remarkable!’ said Käal.

  The sun had set. Fireflies circled lazily over the table. ‘Well,’ said Marrer, rearing up. ‘It’s been very pleasant meeting you, Mon. Brimstön. I trust this is the start of a genuine friendship; and that I will not end up having to cut your head off with a magic dragon-slaying weapon!’

  ‘Ah!’ said Käal, likewise rising, uncertain at the abrupt termination of the meeting and not able to read the tone of Marrer’s last comment. ‘Well that would be… a shame.’

  ‘Wouldn’t it! Chopping your head right off! That would be terrible!’ He laughed. ‘I’m joking!’ he added.

  ‘Aha!’ said Käal, with some relief.

  ‘Of course I’m joking! Or—’ His face abruptly fell.

  ‘—am I?’

  ‘You,’ said Käal, feeling his way, ‘are?’

  ‘Of course I am! Good night, Käal. Sleep well! Good luck with your investigation!’

  11

  When he got back to his room that evening Käal found a raven waiting for him on the end of his bed. It was from Beargrr, sent from the offices of the Köschfagold Saga. ‘She wants you back in Starkhelm, tomorrow,’ cawed the bird.

  ‘What? But she just sent me here! Why do I have to go back?’

  ‘She wants you ba-a-ack,’ repeated the raven.

  Now, the thing with ravens is: if their message isn’t instantly clear, you must frame your question such as their small-as-a-piece-of-gravel brains can recognize, and to which they have been primed with an answer. If they don’t recognize the question, they will just repeat the last thing they’d been taught. I’m sure you know that.

  ‘Baack,’ said the raven, rummaging amongst its own tailfeathers.

  ‘OK, raven,’ said Käal. ‘Is it to do with the trial? Do I have to go back to Starkhelm because of the trial?’

  The raven put his head on one side, in that insolent way ravens have. It did a little moonwalky dance with its asterisk-shaped feet. It fixed Käal with its blank eye. ‘Back!’ it cawed. ‘Sta-a-a-rkhelm.’

  ‘Yes, I understand that part of your message. But I don’t understand why. Is it the Wintermute court case?’

  ‘Back!’

  ‘Is it the court case, though? Is it to do with me appearing in court.’

  ‘B’kaaaak!’

  ‘Is it some Köschfagold Saga business?’

  ‘Köschfagold !’

  ‘So – there’s something. I have to go back to Starkhelm because the Saga need me to… what?’

  The raven opened its beak very wide, soundlessly, as if yawning. Then it leapt into flight, and disappeared through Käal’s window without another word. He thought of going after it, but there seemed little point.

  There was a knock at the door. When Käal verbally encouraged whoever it was to push open the door, the knock was repeated. Käal reiterated his invitation to enter. ‘Coo-ee!’ said Asheila. ‘Hellow-w-w, lover-dragon!’

  ‘Ah! Hello, Asheila.’

  The she-dragon pounced through the door with an arch expression on her lips. She was wearing a girdle belt of or-massif, a purse carved from a single giant ruby, and she had dabbed Sulphur behind her ears.

  ‘My but you look glum!’ she said. ‘Why so sad, my love? How can there be any sadness when we have discovered between us the true love that only spirits of flame can share?’

  ‘Oh!’ said Käal.

  ‘Our spirits have touched one another!’ sang Asheila. ‘Since the first sun poured pure fire upon the world, the gods have been waiting for a love like ours to blossom!’ She flew up to the ceiling, and from her ruby reticule she brought out a chiffon scarf in shape and colour, though not in temperature of combustability, like a flame. She then flew around the ceiling, singing ‘Love is a Dragony Splendour’d Thing’ at the top of her voice.

  ‘Erm,’ said Käal, his eyes going to the open window.

  Asheila settled, slowly, to the floor, the chiffon scarf drifting down to drape itself over her snout. ‘How have you been? It’s been ages since I saw you last!’

  ‘Er,’ mumbled Käal. ‘Yesterday… ?’

  ‘Oh but EONS pass when we are not in one another’s company! I cannot bear to spend a wingbeat apart from you! To be in a separate room feels like I have been banished to Hostileia!’

  ‘Yes, look, now,’ said Käal. He thought how best to say what he needed to say. ‘Erm,’ he said.

  ‘Let us seal our hearts together in the flowing magma of our passion!’ suggested Asheila.

  Käal jumped up. ‘I’ve got to go!’ he squealed.

  ‘Go?’ A cloud passed across Asheila’s face. Of smoke, obviously. ‘Go where?’

  ‘Starkhelm – just got a raven – urgent business with – thing – in Starkhelm.’

  The arch banter vanished. ‘You’re not serious,’ she said, in a menacing voice.

  ‘I’ll only be gone a day. Two at most.’

  ‘No,’ said Asheila.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘We are meant to be together. If you are in Starkhelm and I’m on Doorbraak, then we’re not together. Think about the logic. I think you’ll find it unassailable.’ She put her long face close to his, and repeated: ‘Not together. See? Hmm?’

  ‘Well…’ said Käal, trying to think of a way of countering what was, after all, a fundamental truth of the orientation of objects in physical space. ‘Err,’ said Käal.

  ‘You shan’t go.’

  ‘I think I’d better, actually.’

  Asheila’s nostril’s flared. Which is to say, fire came out of them. S
he rocked back on her hind limbs, and threw her wings wide for emphasis. ‘Fly through that window,’ she warned, ‘and you and I are over. We are icing done. Through. Finished with!’

  ‘Ah, OK,’ said Käal, nervously.

  ‘I’m serious! Do you really want to throw away all that we have built together?’

  ‘Look,’ said Käal. ‘I hope you haven’t got the wrong end of the stick. You’re a super she-dragon, you really are. But I wasn’t looking for a long-term relationship. It was just a fling, really.’

  ‘Of course it was a fling,’ yelled Asheila. ‘But a fling of iron! A fling for the ages! A fling that minstrels will sing about for centuries to come!’

  ‘But – a fling, yeah?’

  ‘Well naturally,’ said Asheila. ‘I can hardly hamfast with you. The blood of Regin himself flows in my veins.’

  ‘Mine too,’ said Käal, a little peeved by her tone of automatic superiority.

  ‘Yes, yes. But I am a Vagner! We are lineal descendants of Regin the Royal! You’re just a dragon. I mean,’ she added, seeing his crest fall, ‘you are a dragon, which is splendid, of course, one of the children of Regin – you’re not a firedrake or lowly wyrm, or anything like that. But you must see there’s a difference between you and me. I’m a Vagner!’

  ‘Mmm,’ said Käal. ‘This seems to have shifted about a little from where it started. You were lamenting my going-away in operatic terms?’

  ‘Indeed!’ said Asheila. ‘Just so that we understand one another?’

  ‘I think so.’ Käal smiled, thinking to himself: this is one unpredictable loon of a dragon. ‘The thing to do, Käal-me-lad,’ he said to himself, ‘is to give this one a wi-i-i-de berth. Let her down gently, but then try never to have anything more to do with her.’

  ‘So,’ she said, ‘want more sex?’

  ‘Go on then,’ said Käal.

  Afterwards, as Asheila snored on the bed, and Käal moved quietly about his rooms picking up the knocked-over furniture, his mind went back to affairs in Starkhelm. Though he was not, in the usual course of things, a dragon much given to deep thought, he found himself worrying about the raven’s message. If the Köschfagold Saga folded, it would be an inconvenience for him. He’d have to find another Saga to employ him. That was assuming the court case with Wintermute didn’t go against him. A contrary judgement could cost him a great deal of money, and he didn’t have a great deal of money. His was a modest hoard, stylishly designed, but made up of new-minted ingots rather than old treasure and far from heavy. He had never been able to raise much actual money on the strength of it. In a worst-case scenario he could actually go to prison. Decades in the stone wells of Hardland!