The Dragon Griaule

by Lucius Shepard

  She nodded and reached for the kumquat. He started again to reproach her, but decided that she had enough to think about.

  It was not until after he handed her off to Sylvia that he began to speculate about his hesitation in pushing Peony away, thinking his reflexes may have been slowed not by sleep as much as by perversity; and it was not until that evening that he began to wonder about that first night after he had rescued Peony, when Sylvia had come to him . . . if it had been Sylvia. Her touch seemed in memory less practiced, less confident, akin to Peony’s in that regard. And surely Sylvia would have spoken to him – it was not like her to be so shy. The longer he thought about it, the greater his certitude that Peony had expressed gratitude the only way she knew. The idea repelled him yet he could not stop dwelling on it. As he went over the events of that night, a measure of prurience crept into his thoughts, repelling him further. He hewed to the notion that this was how the obsessive mind worked, seeking ever to betray itself, subverting every clean impulse by assigning it a base motive; yet as the days wore on he insisted upon punishing himself for his crimes. Even when occupied by the basics of survival, part of him was always focused upon Peony, upon what he had or hadn’t done.

  The matter should have been easy to resolve, but when Sylvia next visited him, George had feared that anything she said about that night would support his self-imposed verdict. Better, he decided, to maintain a modicum of doubt concerning his moral turpitude than to have none. He was unable to perform with Sylvia, excusing his failure by claiming to have stomach trouble, and as they lay listening to the wind flowing across the plain, watching clouds skimming a half-moon that set their edges on silvery fire, he allowed this intimacy to change his mind and blurted out what had happened between him and Peony the day before, and asked Sylvia if she had come to him the night following the rescue, because he feared now that it had not been her.

  She was silent for a beat and then turned to face him. ‘Is that what’s got you in a twist? Of course it was me!’ She gave him a playful punch. ‘I’m insulted you didn’t recognize me!’

  Later he realized that if he had desired an honest response, he would have asked the question without preamble, not letting on that he suspected his visitor had been Peony, telling Sylvia that he’d had a dream and he wondered whether or nor it was real. He should never have afforded her the opportunity to weigh the situation, to determine that it would be best for her if she lied, thus giving his confidence a boost and assuring that he would remain capable of defending her. This scenario called for a complex understanding on her part, but he had long since discarded the idea that she was other than an intelligent, subtle woman. And so the conflict remained unresolved, continuing to erode his mental underpinnings, distracting him from more important considerations.

  George could not separate himself from Peony during the day, but he minimized their physical contact and treated her with a rigid formality, permitting neither hugs nor holding hands. That the loss of a simple animal comfort appeared to have no effect on her should have offered him a degree of absolution, since it pointed out how damaged she was, how trivial an influence the actions of others had upon her inner turmoil; but instead it served to distress him further, seeming to add to his offense, and made him even more mindful of her well-being than he had been before. Every scraped knee and pricked finger was cause for worry; every complaining noise engaged his full concern. When he was unable to sleep (something that happened with increasing frequency), in order to safeguard her more thoroughly he would patrol the perimeter of the camp with a regularity that rivaled the dragon’s, taking pains to avoid his own booby traps. One evening as he made his rounds, he heard a succession of cries coming from the thickets out past his shelter. They subsided as he approached and he could hear nothing except the wind. An oblate moon emerged from cloud cover to the south, silvering the fluttering tops of the bushes and showing his path. Soon he heard the voices again. Men’s querulous voices. He crept toward the sound, peeking between leaves. Separated from the bank of one of the lesser pools by a thin fringe of vegetation, two men sat athwart an animal trail. Delicate rills of blood, black in the moonlight, trickled from wounds on their legs – they had fallen into one of his traps and were picking out banderilla barbs from their flesh. The smaller of the two, a sinewy man with a mane of dark hair half-hiding his face, wearing a pair of rotting trousers, cursed as he removed a barb, digging at his calf with the tip of a fishing knife. The other man was Edgar. He had received fewer injuries and was cautious with the barbs, yipping as he worked them free.

  Anger flowed into George’s mind, like a rider swinging with practiced ease onto his mount – it was as if he’d been preparing for this moment for weeks and, now it had arrived, he was more than ready to perform whatever duties were required. He stepped onto the trail, but before he could speak the sinewy man sprang to his feet, and made an awkward, hobbling lunge toward George and slashed with the knife, drawing a line of hot pain across his abdomen. A second stroke sliced his forearm. Panicking, George flung himself forward and grappled with the man, locking onto the wrist of his knife-hand. They swayed together like drunken dancers and careened through the bushes and out onto the bank. His opponent was strong, but George, much the larger of the two, had leverage on his side – he turned the man and secured a hold from behind and rode him down onto his knees at the brink of the pool. The knife went skittering along the bank and, as the man sought to retrieve it, George moved atop him, using his weight to flatten him out, and forced his head underwater. He surfaced and twisted his neck about, offering a view of his grizzled cheek, grimacing mouth, and a mad, glaring eye that glittered through a webbing of wet hair. His fetid odor enveloped them both. He grunted and gulped in air; then his head went under again and his struggles grew spastic, frantic, churning the water. He reached back with his left hand, trying to claw George’s face, and George latched his fingers behind the man’s neck and pushed down harder, his eyes fixed on the opposite side of the pool. He spotted Sylvia in a half-crouch at the verge of the bushes, but took no salient notice of her. Spasms passed through the man’s flesh, lewd convulsions like those of a lover nearing completion. George kept pushing down on his neck, making sure. Finally he rolled off the body and lay panting beside it. The moonlight had brightened. His stomach throbbed. He sat up to inspect the wound: it appeared superficial. The cut on his forearm was more worrisome. If the man hadn’t been impeded by injuries, George thought, then he might be the one who lay motionless. His hands shook. A placid current set the dead man’s head to bobbing. George imagined fish nibbling at the eyes and thought to pull the body from the water, but wasn’t moved to act. The smell of the man was on his skin, nauseatingly thick. Sylvia kneeled beside him, saying words he couldn’t make sense of. The sight of her confused him on a fundamental level, disordered all his certainties. He wanted to look away, but her insistent stare held him. She spoke again, her tone fretful, and he said, ‘I’m all right.’

  She slapped him. ‘The other one’s getting away!’

  He cast about, but saw no one.

  ‘Here!’ She pressed the dead man’s knife into his hand, its blade frilled with red. Resting on his palm, it had an incomprehensible value.

  ‘It’s only Edgar,’ he said.

  ‘Edgar? The one who was holding Peony captive? And that . . .’ She gestured at the body. ‘That was Snelling?’

  ‘I don’t know who he was.’ George set the knife down on the grass. ‘But Edgar’s no threat. He’s harmless on his own.’

  ‘But he wasn’t on his own, was he? He must have talked his friend into having a little adventure. Told him there was a nice piece over this way and suggested they fetch her back. Do you call that harmless?’ She left a pause and, when he kept silent, she said, ‘If you won’t do something, I will.’

  She snatched at the knife, but George closed his hand on the hilt and creakily came to his feet, feeling light-headed and feverish, moved not by an urge to seek out Edgar, but by the
desire to stop her talking.

  Edgar was not difficult to track. After they had walked the trail for several minutes, George heard a voice nattering on at a conversational volume. Thirty feet farther along they reached a creosote bush – many of its leaves were stripped away and it threw a complicated shadow across the ground – Edgar sat at the center of this shadow, like an innocent young demon with a moony face summoned by a magical design. He picked at a spine in his heel, noticed them and grinned sheepishly, as if he had been caught at something naughty.

  ‘I told you, didn’t I?’ he said, apparently addressing himself. ‘Leave ’em alone, I said.’

  George hunkered down in front of him. ‘Where are the Snellings?’

  Edgar was thinner than before, his cheeks hollowed, his belly flab reduced. He nodded, as if listening to an invisible someone responding to his chiding. George yelled at him to gain his attention and repeated his inquiry.

  ‘Peter’s dead,’ Edgar said. ‘And Sandra’s took ill. That’s why me and Tony come. To see if you had medicine.’

  Sylvia made a disparaging noise.

  ‘If that was your purpose,’ George said, ‘why did Tony try to kill me?’

  Edgar puzzled over this. ‘I reckon because you surprised him. He didn’t know you from Adam.’

  ‘You could have said something, couldn’t you? You could have told him who I was.’

  He fingered his ratty hair. ‘I reckon you surprised me, too.’

  ‘Finish this,’ Sylvia said flatly.

  ‘I want to ask him some more questions,’ said George.

  ‘He’s making things up as he goes along. It’s obvious!’

  George spoke to Edgar. ‘You wanted to see Peony, didn’t you?’

  ‘I’m always wanting to see Peony, but that weren’t why we come.’

  ‘Did you tell Tony about her?’

  Edgar’s mouth worked, as if tasting some sourness. ‘I don’t recall.’

  Sylvia threw up her hands. ‘Can’t we have done with this?’

  George stood and pulled her aside, out of Edgar’s hearing. ‘Lying or not, he can’t harm us. He’s simple.’

  ‘You say he’s simple, I say it’s an act. But be that as it may, suppose another Tony happens along – do you think he won’t tell him about Peony? He wants her back, can’t you see that?’

  ‘We survived Tony, we’ll survive the next one.’

  ‘We barely survived! You may be willing to put yourself at risk for no good reason, but not me.’

  George glanced at Edgar – he was picking at his heel.

  ‘This is the man you blamed for Peony’s condition,’ said Sylvia. ‘I’m not wrong about that, am I?’

  ‘I think we need to step back a moment,’ George said. ‘We don’t always have to react straightaway.’

  ‘You great fucking idiot!’ Sylvia looked as though she wanted to spit. ‘All this time out here, after everything we’ve been through, and you still don’t know who you are . . . or where you are. You just killed a man in self-defense. Held him under the water until his lungs burst because he threatened us. Now you’re reluctant to finish the job. I guess you’d rather pretend you’re a moral sort. That you’re too sensitive to be a killer. You need time to contemplate the idea, to fit it into your philosophy of life. Well, maybe that’ll make you feel better, but feeling better won’t change the fact that there’s no place for morality here. If truth be told, there’s no place for it in Morningshade, either. Nor anywhere, really.’

  ‘You’re being ridiculous. I keep telling you Edgar’s not a threat.’

  ‘Everyone’s a threat! There’s no law here except Griaule’s. If he wasn’t flying around all hours, frightening everybody, people would be braver, they’d explore their surroundings. And if that were the case, like as not Peony and I would be slaving away on our backs day and night, and you’d be dead. We’re fortunate the people camped close to us were cowards.’ She prodded his chest with a finger. ‘Sooner or later Edgar’s bound to tell his story to someone more adept at killing than you. Someone who’s not hampered by morality. Then we’ll find out how moral you are.’

  Edgar started to mumble. The wind tailed off – George could hear the rush of the stream. The sound fatigued him and filled him with melancholy.

  ‘You want him dead?’ He offered her the knife. ‘I’ve shed enough blood this evening.’

  Her face closed down, armored by a blank expression. George expected her to back away from his challenge, but after a pause, as he was about to say, ‘What are you waiting for?’ she seized the knife and went toward Edgar with a decisive step. At the last instant he turned his head, grinning at her, and she drove the knife into the side of his neck, giving a truncated cry as she struck. The force of the blow knocked Edgar onto his side, tearing the hilt from her grasp, and she fell back, as if shocked by the result. He made a mewling noise and pressed his fingers to the steel protruding from his neck; dark blood jumped between them, spattering his pale shoulder. He seemed to be straining at something, trying to preserve a critical balance, perhaps torn between the desire to yank out the blade and the thought that such an action would be the end of him. His legs kicked out, briefly causing it to appear that he was running in place. Then the straining aspect ebbed from his limbs and he lay staring at the base of the creosote bush. Off in the night, the dragon screamed.

  Chapter Seven

  From then on, certain illusions went by the board, the illusion that they were a family foremost among them. George and Sylvia stopped having sex, a decision that was mutual albeit unspoken, and there was an overall diminution of pleasantries; yet these things seemed to indicate a larger change, one whose most profound symptom was an atmosphere of dejection, if not outright defeat. It was as if the spark that gave them life had been dampened. Occasionally that spark sputtered and sparked, providing a bright moment, as on the night when Sylvia told a story she’d written and memorized, one of several she related, all set in Ali’s Eternal Reward, concerning a girl of the brothel and her romance with a man who was the spitting image of the Sinistral from a deck of fortune-telling cards. Peony was entranced by the story and George offered extravagant praise that brought a smile to Sylvia’s face; but that flare of good feeling quickly faded and they were as before – three damaged people with no palpable bond to shield them against the oppressions of heaven and the disappointments of the world.

  Peony became severely agitated in the week that followed Edgar’s death, and, though Sylvia swore Peony had been asleep, George assumed that it was due to her having witnessed Edgar’s execution . . . or perhaps sensed it in some fashion. She would rock on her haunches, fists clenched, making noises like a tiny teakettle, and nothing would console her. After four days she ceased being agitated and instead sat fiddling with the dragon scale, sometimes lapsing into a state that resembled catatonia, drooling and listless and completely unresponsive. Memories and dreams of the man he had killed and of Edgar, the man in whose death he had been complicit, plagued George’s nights. He wondered if Sylvia had trouble sleeping, curious as to how efficient her justifications were in protecting her against the depredations of conscience – he suspected they served her very well, indeed. His own sleep was fitful at best. He commonly woke well before sunrise, a circumstance that left him exhausted and slow-brained by day’s end, and he would nod off while sitting or even standing. At dusk, ten days after the killings, following a brief lapse of this sort, he stood at the margin of the camp, looking blearily across the plain, and observed a yellowish red glow on the horizon beneath a line of slate clouds. Sunset was his first thought, but then he realized that he was not facing west and what he had taken for clouds were actually the peaks of the eastern hills. The glow issued from an area between the hills and his vantage point. For a minute he watched it brighten and spread, thinking it odd. He heard piping cries and saw four or five people running through the thickets, their heads visible over the tops of the bushes. The dragon wheeled above and he assumed they were
fleeing him. Fools, though. The edges of the glow wavered and he thought he detected a smoky odor. He stared dumbly a moment before recognizing the source of the glow. The plain was burning and a brisk wind was driving a wall of flame toward them.

  Shouting the alarm, he raced to the shelter and found Sylvia and Peony outside, frightened and clinging together, asking questions with their eyes. He flung out an arm toward the east and said, ‘The thickets are on fire, the wind’s bringing it straight for us. We have to run!’

  Light had almost faded from the sky when they began their westward flight, going at a steady pace, carrying nothing other than the rags on their back and a few meager possessions, like a family out of prehistory, united in fear. Soon they were racing in full night, yet before long the darkness was illuminated by the fire – they could see the spikes of separate flames and hear a dim roaring. George tried to keep close to the stream, but Griaule harried and herded them in a direction of his choosing. George had little doubt that he had set the plain afire in order to simplify that chore. Now and again the dragon would drop out of the sky, a creature of shadow with scales burnished by flame, and bellow at them, altering their course and adding his fierce noise to the din of the fire. On several occasions they made contact with other groups, but the people never materialized from the darkness sufficiently to identify or count their number. They shied away, as if their time on the plain had acclimated them to fear and suspicion. Hedgerows of fire closed around them. They stumbled and reeled through the thickets, their glistening faces dark with soot, darting this way and that to avoid sudden new channels of flame that threatened to hem them in. Peony fell and George picked her up; when Sylvia began to stagger and her pace faltered, he supported her with his free hand. There was so much smoke in the air, breathing was a chore, and this broke his concentration, causing him to feel fatigue. Griaule harrowed them onward, looming out of the night with his wings half-unfolded, seeming more terrible for being partially visible in the dark, here a reddened fang gleaming, here flame reflected in a golden eye, his roar outvoicing the roar of the flames, snapping, gusting flames that sucked oxygen from the air and heated it so that he felt his throat crack whenever he inhaled. He lost his bearings and suspected that Griaule was toying with them, that he would wear them out and let them to burn in a cul de sac; but he was too weary to come up with an escape plan, too wasted to care, and found himself hoping for a swift resolution, whatever form it might take.