Wings of Fire

by Jonathan Strahan

  “That’s sort of it,” said Jim dubiously, “only—”

  “You wouldn’t,” said Carolinus, “care to change your story to something simpler and more reasonable—like being a prince changed into a dragon by some wicked fairy stepmother? Oh, my poor stomach! No?” He sighed. “All right, that’ll be five hundred pounds of gold, or five pounds of rubies, in advance.”

  “B-but—” Jim goggled at him. “But I don’t have any gold—or rubies.”

  “What? What kind of a dragon are you?” cried Carolinus, glaring at him. “Where’s your hoard?”

  “I suppose this Gorbash has one,” stammered Jim, unhappily. “But I don’t know anything about it.”

  “Another charity patient,” muttered Carolinus, furiously. He shook his fist at empty space. “What’s wrong with the auditing department? Well?”

  “Sorry,” said the invisible bass voice.

  “That’s the third in two weeks. See it doesn’t happen again for another ten days.” He turned to Jim. “No means of payment?”

  “No. Wait—” said Jim. “This stomach-ache of yours. It might be an ulcer. Does it go away between meals?”

  “As a matter of fact, it does. Ulcer?”

  “High-strung people working under nervous tension get them back where I come from.”

  “People?” inquired Carolinus suspiciously. “Or dragons?”

  “There aren’t any dragons where I come from.”

  “All right, all right, I believe you,” said Carolinus, testily. “You don’t have to stretch the truth like that. How do you exorcise them?”

  “Milk,” said Jim. “A glass every hour for a month or two.”

  “Milk,” said Carolinus. He held out his hand to the open air and received a small tankard of it. He drank it off, making a face. After a moment, the face relaxed into a smile.

  “By the Powers!” he said. “By the Powers!” He turned to Jim, beaming. “Congratulations, Gorbash, I’m beginning to believe you about that college business after all. The bovine nature of the milk quite smothers the ulcer-demon. Consider me paid.”

  “Oh, fine. I’ll go get Angie and you can hypnotize—”

  “What?” cried Carolinus. “Teach your grandmother to suck eggs. Hypnotize! Ha! And what about the First Law of Magic, eh?”

  “The what?” said Jim.

  “The First Law—the First Law—didn’t they teach you anything in that college? Forgotten it already, I see. Oh, this younger generation! The First Law: for every use of the Art and Science, there is required a corresponding price. Why do I live by my fees instead of by conjurations? Why does a magic potion have a bad taste? Why did this Hanson-amateur of yours get you all into so much trouble?”

  “I don’t know,” said Jim. “Why?”

  “No credit! No credit!” barked Carolinus, flinging his skinny arms wide. “Why, I wouldn’t have tried what he did without ten years credit with the auditing department, and I am a Master of the Arts. As it was, he couldn’t get anything more than your spirit back, after sending the maiden complete. And the fabric of Chance and History is all warped and ready to spring back and cause all kinds of trouble. We’ll have to give a little, take a little—”

  “GORBASH!” A loud thud outside competed with the dragon-bellow.

  “And here we go,” said Carolinus dourly. “It’s already starting.” He led the way outside. Sitting on the greensward just beyond the flower beds was an enormous old dragon Jim recognized as the great-uncle of the body he was in—Smrgol.

  “Greetings, Mage!” boomed the old dragon, dropping his head to the ground in salute. “You may not remember me. Name’s Smrgol—you remember the business about that ogre I fought at Gormely Keep? I see my grandnephew got to you all right.”

  “Ah, Smrgol—I remember,” said Carolinus. “That was a good job you did.”

  “He had a habit of dropping his club head after a swing,” said Smrgol. “I noticed it along about the fourth hour of battle and the next time he tried it, went in over his guard. Tore up the biceps of his right arm. Then—”

  “I remember,” Carolinus said. “So this is your nephew.”

  “Grandnephew,” corrected Smrgol. “Little thick-headed and all that,” he added apologetically, “but my own flesh and blood, you know.”

  “You may notice some slight improvement in him,” said Carolinus, dryly.

  “I hope so,” said Smrgol, brightening. “Any change, a change for the better, you know. But I’ve bad news, Mage. You know that inchworm of an Anark?”

  “The one that found the maiden in the first place?”

  “That’s right. Well, he’s stolen her again and run off.”

  “What?” cried Jim.

  He had forgotten the capabilities of a dragon’s voice. Carolinus tottered, the flowers and grass lay flat, and even Smrgol winced.

  “My boy,” said the old dragon reproachfully. “How many times must I tell you not to shout. I said, Anark stole the george.”

  “He means Angie!” cried Jim desperately to Carolinus.

  “I know,” said Carolinus, with his hands over his ears.

  “You’re sneezing again,” said Smrgol, proudly. He turned to Carolinus. “You wouldn’t believe it. A dragon hasn’t sneezed in a hundred and ninety years. This boy did it the first moment he set eyes on the george. The others couldn’t believe it. Sign of brains, I said. Busy brains make the nose itch. Our side of the family—”

  “Angie!”

  “See there? All right now, boy, you’ve shown us you can do it. Let’s get down to business. How much to locate Anark and the george, Mage?”

  They dickered like rug-pedlars for several minutes, finally settling on a price of four pounds of gold, one of silver, and a flawed emerald. Carolinus got a small vial of water from the Tinkling Spring and searched among the grass until he found a small sandy open spot. He bent over it and the two dragons sat down to watch.

  “Quiet now,” he warned. “I’m going to try a watch-beetle. Don’t alarm it.”

  Jim held his breath. Carolinus tilted the vial in his hand and the crystal water fell in three drops—Tink! Tink! And again—Tink! The sand darkened with the moisture and began to work as if something was digging from below. A hole widened, black insect legs busily in action flickered, and an odd-looking beetle popped itself halfway out of the hole. Its forelimbs waved in the air and a little squeaky voice, like a cracked phonograph record repeating itself far away over a bad telephone connection, came to Jim’s ears.

  “Gone to the Loathly Tower! Gone to the Loathly Tower! Gone to the Loathly Tower!”

  It popped back out of sight. Carolinus straightened up and Jim breathed again.

  “The Loathly Tower!” said Smrgol. “Isn’t that that ruined tower to the west, in the fens, Mage? Why, that’s the place that loosed the blight on the mere-dragons five hundred years ago.”

  “It’s a place of old magic,” said Carolinus, grimly. “These places are like ancient sores on the land, scabbed over for a while but always breaking out with new evil when—the twisting of the Fabric by these two must have done it. The evilness there has drawn the evil in Anark to it—lesser to greater, according to the laws of nature. I’ll meet you two there. Now, I must go set other forces in motion.”

  He began to twirl about. His speed increased rapidly until he was nothing but a blur. Then suddenly, he faded away like smoke; and was gone, leaving Jim staring at the spot where he had been.

  A poke in the side brought Jim back to the ordinary world.

  “Wake up, boy. Don’t dally!” the voice of Smrgol bellowed in his ear. “We got flying to do. Come on!”

  II

  The old dragon’s spirit was considerably younger than this body. It turned out to be a four hour flight to the fens on the west seacoast. For the first hour or so Smrgol flew along energetically enough, meanwhile tracing out the genealogy of the mere-dragons and their relationship to himself and Gorbash; but gradually his steady flow of chatter dwindled and became
intermittent. He tried to joke about his long-gone battle with the Ogre of Gormely Keep, but even this was too much and he fell silent with labored breath and straining wings. After a short but stubborn argument, Jim got him to admit that he would perhaps be better off taking a short breather and then coming on a little later. Smrgol let out a deep gasping sigh and dropped away from Jim in weary spirals. Jim saw him glide to an exhausted landing amongst the purple gorse of the moors below and lie there, sprawled out.

  Jim continued on alone. A couple of hours later the moors dropped down a long land-slope to the green country of the fenland. Jim soared out over its spongy, grass-thick earth, broken into causeways and islands by the blue water, which in shallow bays and inlets was itself thick-choked with reeds and tall marsh grass. Flocks of water fowl rose here and there like eddying smoke from the glassy surface of one mere and drifted over to settle on another a few hundred yards away. Their cries came faintly to his dragon-sensitive ears and a line of heavy clouds was piling up against the sunset in the west.

  He looked for some sign of the Loathly Tower, but the fenland stretched away to a faint blue line that was probably the sea, without showing sign of anything not built by nature. Jim was beginning to wonder uneasily if he had not gotten himself lost when his eye was suddenly caught by the sight of a dragon-shape nosing at something on one of the little islands amongst the meres.

  Anark! he thought. And Angie!

  He did not wait to see more. He nosed over and went into a dive like a jet fighter, sights locked on Target Dragon.

  It was a good move. Unfortunately Gorbash-Jim, having about the weight and wingspread of a small flivver airplane, made a comparable amount of noise when he was in a dive, assuming the plane’s motor to be shut off. Moreover, the dragon on the ground had evidently had experience with the meaning of such a sound; for, without even looking, he went tumbling head over tail out of the way just as Jim slammed into the spot where, a second before, he had been.

  The other dragon rolled over onto his feet, sat up, took one look at Jim, and began to wail.

  “It’s not fair! It’s not fair!” he cried in a (for a dragon) remarkably high-pitched voice. “Just because you’re bigger than I am. And I’m all horned up. It’s the first good one I’ve been able to kill in months and you don’t need it, not at all. You’re big and fat and I’m so weak and thin and hungry—”

  Jim blinked and stared. What he had thought to be Angie, lying in the grass, now revealed itself to be an old and rather stringy-looking cow, badly bitten up and with a broken neck.

  “It’s just my luck!” the other dragon was weeping. He was less than three-quarters Jim’s size and so emaciated he appeared on the verge of collapse. “Everytime I get something good, somebody takes it away. All I ever get to eat is fish—”

  “Hold on,” said Jim.

  “Fish, fish, fish. Cold, nasty fi—”

  “Hold on, I say! SHUT UP!” bellowed Jim, in Gorbash’s best voice.

  The other dragon stopped his wailing as suddenly as if his switch had been shut off.

  “Yes, sir,” he said, timidly.

  “What’s the matter? I’m not going to take this from you.”

  The other dragon tittered uncertainly.

  “I’m not,” said Jim. “It’s your cow. All yours.”

  “He-he-he!” said the other dragon. “You certainly are a card, your honor.”

  “Blast it, I’m serious!” cried Jim. “What’s your name, anyway?”

  “Oh, well—” the other squirmed. “Oh well, you know—”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Secoh, your worship!” yelped the dragon, frightenedly. “Just Secoh. Nobody important. Just a little, unimportant mere-dragon, your highness, that’s all I am. Really!”

  “All right, Secoh, dig in. All I want is some directions.”

  “Well—if your worship really doesn’t…” Secoh had been sidling forward in fawning fashion. “If you’ll excuse my table manners, sir. I’m just a mere-dragon—” and he tore into the meat before him in sudden, terrified, starving fashion.

  Jim watched. Unexpectedly, his long tongue flickered out to lick his chops. His belly rumbled. He was astounded at himself. Raw meat? Off a dead animal—flesh, bones, hide and all? He took a firm grip on his appetites.

  “Er, Secoh,” he said. “I’m a stranger around these parts. I suppose you know the territory… Say, how does that cow taste, anyway?”

  “Oh, terrubble—mumpf—” replied Secoh, with his mouth full. “Stringy—old. Good enough for a mere-dragon like myself, but not—”

  “Well, about these directions—”

  “Yes, your highness?”

  “I think… you know it’s your cow…”

  “That’s what your honor said,” replied Secoh, cautiously.

  “But I just wonder… you know I’ve never tasted a cow like that.”

  Secoh muttered something despairingly under his breath.

  “What?” said Jim.

  “I said,” said Secoh, resignedly, “wouldn’t your worship like to t-taste it—”

  “Not if you’re going to cry about it,” said Jim.

  “I bit my tongue.”

  “Well, in that case…” Jim walked up and sank his teeth in the shoulder of the carcass. Rich juices trickled enticingly over his tongue…

  Some little time later he and Secoh sat back polishing bones with the rough uppers of their tongues which were as abrasive as steel files.

  “Did you get enough to eat, Secoh?” asked Jim.

  “More than enough, sir,” replied the mere-dragon, staring at the white skeleton with a wild and famished eye. “Although, if your exaltedness doesn’t mind, I’ve a weakness for marrow…” He picked up a thighbone and began to crunch it like a stick of candy.

  “Now,” said Jim. “About this Loathly Tower. Where is it?”

  “The wh-what?” stammered Secoh, dropping the thighbone.

  “The Loathly Tower. It’s in the fens. You know of it, don’t you?”

  “Oh, sir! Yes, sir. But you wouldn’t want to go there, sir! Not that I’m presuming to give your lordship advice—” cried Secoh, in a suddenly high and terrified voice.

  “No, no,” soothed Jim. “What are you so upset about?”

  “Well—of course I’m only a timid little mere-dragon. But it’s a terrible place, the Loathly Tower, your worship, sir.”

  “How? Terrible?”

  “Well—well, it just is.” Secoh cast an unhappy look around him. “It’s what spoiled all of us, you know, five hundred years ago. We used to be like other dragons—oh, not so big and handsome as you are, sir. Then, after that, they say it was the Good got the upper hand and the Evil in the Tower was vanquished and the Tower itself ruined. But it didn’t help us mere-dragons any, and I wouldn’t go there if I was your worship, I really wouldn’t.”

  “But what’s so bad? What sort of thing is it?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say there was any real thing there. Nothing your worship could put a claw on. It’s just strange things go to it and strange things come out of it; and lately…”

  “Lately what?”

  “Nothing—nothing, really, your excellency!” cried Secoh. “You illustriousness shouldn’t catch a worthless little mere-dragon up like that. I only meant, lately the Tower’s seemed more fearful than ever. That’s all.”

  “Probably your imagination,” said Jim, shortly. “Anyway, where is it?”

  “You have to go north about five miles.” While they had eaten and talked, the sunset had died. It was almost dark now; and Jim had to strain his eyes through the gloom to see the mere-dragon’s foreclaw, pointing away across the mere. “To the Great Causeway. It’s a wide lane of solid ground running east and west through the fens. You follow it west to the Tower. The Tower stands on a rock overlooking the sea-edge.”

  “Five miles…” said Jim. He considered the soft grass on which he lay. His armored body seemed undisturbed by the temperature, whate
ver it was. “I might as well get some sleep. See you in the morning, Secoh.” He obeyed a sudden, bird-like instinct and tucked his ferocious head and long neck back under one wing.

  “Whatever your excellency desires…” the mere-dragon’s muffled voice came distantly to his ear. “Your excellency has only to call and I’ll be immediately available…”

  The words faded out on Jim’s ear, as he sank into sleep like a heavy stone into deep, dark waters.

  When he opened his eyes, the sun was up. He sat up himself, yawned, and blinked.

  Secoh was gone. So were the leftover bones.

  “Blast!” said Jim. But the morning was too nice for annoyance. He smiled at his mental picture of Secoh carefully gathering the bones in fearful silence, and sneaking them away.

  The smile did not last long. When he tried to take off in a northerly direction, as determined by reference to the rising sun, he found he had charley horses in both the huge wing-muscles that swelled out under the armor behind his shoulders. The result of course, of yesterday’s heavy exercise. Grumbling, he was forced to proceed on foot; and four hours later, very hot, muddy and wet, he pulled his weary body up onto the broad east-and-west-stretching strip of land which must, of necessity, be the Great Causeway. It ran straight as a Roman road through the meres, several feet higher than the rest of the fenland, and was solid enough to support good-sized trees. Jim collapsed in the shade of one with a heartfelt sigh.

  He awoke to the sound of someone singing. He blinked and lifted his head. Whatever the earlier verses of the song had been, Jim had missed them; but the approaching baritone voice now caroled the words of the chorus merrily and clearly to his ear:

  “A right good sword, a constant mind