The Dragon Griaule

by Lucius Shepard

  Whenever Jefe came within earshot they would resurrect their argument, debating conflicting styles of governance, and Snow, perhaps due to his dependency on Yara, the sense of helplessness it engendered, derived a trivial satisfaction from his ability to argue the right-wing point-of-view, one with which he did not agree in spirit, yet had to admit was the more pragmatic of the two political stances. He derided as a ‘leftist fairy tale’ Yara’s insistence that firmness tempered with altruism would bring about a peaceful and prosperous Temalagua, and suggested that it was odd to hear such drivel issue from the mouth of someone associated with the PVO since its inception.

  ‘What she’s saying is great for kids to hear,’ he said. ‘That is, if you want your kids to grow up without a spine. It’s moral pablum that weakens them, programs them to cling to their mothers’ skirts. A leader, a man who would rule, he has to rid himself of such naivete. He has a country to think of – every day he’ll have to resolve issues that will cause pain and anger whichever way he decides them. He has to see beyond that sort of morality, a morality whose function is solely to curb one’s instincts, to limit one’s behavior. His role demands he be capable of wider judgments.’

  Jefe no longer seemed distressed by their contentiousness. In fact, he acted as if he relished these exchanges and would signify hs approval whenever Yara or (more frequently) Snow said something with which he agreed. Then at breakfast one morning, the fifth day following the incident with Chuy, he invited them to watch him fly. His manner was casual, genial, as if he were asking them to join him at a movie. Snow was unable to conceal his dismay.

  Jefe clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Man, come on! I promise you’ll enjoy this.’

  Yara picked up the machete from beside her chair and he told her to leave it, saying with heavy sarcasm that he doubted she would find any chickens upstairs.

  A diversion from their plan so early in the game did not augur well, yet as they mounted the steps, though Snow knew the fearful incredulity of a condemned man going to the gallows, he nevertheless felt a corresponding sense of relief, one springing from the knowledge that they would soon have a resolution. Jefe stripped off his outerwear and stood before them clad only in black tights, his chest and arms plated with unusually smooth muscle, only the balance muscles in his back and those protecting his joints exceptionally defined. He opened a panel in the wall camouflaged by a section of indigo cloud and punched in a number on the keypad, initiating the grinding nose and starting the chains to slither up and down, to and fro in their tracks, some rapidly, some slowly, the light rivering along their silver links. He then pulled on a pair of thin black gloves and caught hold of a chain that carried him aloft.

  Yara squeezed Snow’s hand and shouted into his ear: ‘Once you get back down to the floor, run and get the machete!’

  When Jefe reached a height of around twenty feet he launched himself into the air, catching another chain, then whipped himself about, swinging higher, and caught yet another chain and swung again, repeating this process, going higher and higher until all Snow could see of him was a minute figure hurtling through a moving forest of silver chains and against a cinematic backdrop of brassy light and clouds like battle smoke. He descended in like fashion, performing a sequence of loops and somersaults, sudden shifts and reversals of direction that brought him, after several minutes, to within a few feet above them, whereupon he ascended again rapidly, arrowing from chain to chain, crossing spaces of forty feet and more before redirecting his course, throwing in spins and tumbling maneuvers and other elaborate stunts. Yara applauded wildly and shouted her praise, despite having scant hope of being heard. She elbowed Snow, enjoining him to do the same and, though he was not so inclined, he followed suit and was partly sincere in his applause, for he had never witnessed such a display of stamina and strength and coordination. He lost sight of Jefe among the chains and clouds, and inquired of Yara where he had gone – she pointed to a speck superimposed against a spray of golden light, perched on an invisible ledge. And then he was off again, soaring amongst the chains, not appearing to utilize their stability and momentum to alter his course, but scarcely touching them, as if gliding on updrafts, diving and banking, aerials too fluid and graceful to be other than flight.

  How long Jefe flew, Snow could not have said. An hour, surely. Long enough so that his motivation for clapping and cheering waned and he stood silent and motionless until Jefe descended to the floor of the shaft and walked over to them, a light sheen of sweat the only register of his exertion. Yara congratulated him, patting his shoulder and smiling, but Snow, incapable of participating in this charade any further, looked off as if distracted, fighting panic, going over the list of things he needed to focus upon. Jefe smirked, stepping to him with a swaggering walk, rolling his shoulders, and gave him a push, moving him toward the wall covered with smoky clouds. Snow scuttled away and Jefe gave him a harder push that sent him reeling backward. As Snow toppled, windmilling his arms, Jefe sprang after him, snagging his belt, and lugged him toward the wall, kicking and twisting like a living satchel. He seized a chain, wrapping it once around his arm, and let it bear them upward.

  Watching the floor shrink beneath him, Snow ceased his struggles and shut his eyes, clinging to Jefe’s leg, dizzy and sick with fright. After an interminable time he felt himself lifted. He screamed, convinced that this was the moment he had dreaded, but instead of plummeting downward he found himself pressed back against the wall, held there by Jefe’s hand at his throat and by something solid underfoot. A ledge. He slid his left shoe forward, feeling for the edge, and found it after two or three inches.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Jefe said in his ear. ‘I’m not going to harm you.’

  Snow squinted at Jefe, who stood beside him, facing the wall, and then glanced down at the floor of the shaft. Their elevation was so great he could not be certain he saw the floor, only a chaos of glittering, slithering chains, bright clouds on the wall opposite, and, as his eyes rolled up, the autumnal blue of the ceiling near to hand. His stomach flip-flopped, his knees buckled, and if Jefe had not tightened his grip, half-throttling him, he would have fallen.

  Jefe gave him a gentle shake. ‘Didn’t you hear me?’

  Mind trash erupted from a shadowy place in Snow’s consciousness, like a gusher from a vent in the sea bottom, resolving into a silt of childlike prayers and wishes.

  ‘Calm yourself, my friend! It’s okay!’

  If you fell far enough, Snow had heard, you would lose consciousness before the impact.

  ‘I know you don’t like it up here,’ said Jefe. ‘But I’ve got you, see? Try to relax.’

  Jefe’s face was too close to read, only an ear and part of his cheek and neck visible. He had an arid scent, slightly acidic – like the smell of an alkali desert. Snow released breath with a shudder and closed his eyes again. The grinding of the chains gnawed at the outskirts of his reason.

  ‘Your advice strengthens me,’ said Jefe. ‘I value it greatly. I want you with me. This is a joke. A little joke I’m playing on Yara. Nothing more. Do you understand?’

  Snow did not understand.

  ‘She deserves it, don’t you think? You were right about her.’

  There were voices in the grinding noise, like those you hear in the humming of tires while resting your head against the window glass of a fast-moving car – hypnotic, hyper-resonant, trebly voices eerily reminiscent of Alvin and the Chipmunks, voices at once sinister and cheerful that sang a simple song advising him go with the flow, go with the flow, go with . . .

  ‘Look at me!’ said Jefe.

  He pulled back, permitting Snow to see his entire face, a face composed so as to illustrate the quality of assurance, and then came close again. ‘Everything’s going to be fine. You’ve won.’

  Snow couldn’t think of anything to say – he essayed a grin, but wasn’t sure he had pulled it off.

  ‘We haven’t had much chance to talk,’ said Jefe. ‘That’s my fault. I apologize. When I found you
in the village I assumed you were a spy. I very nearly killed you the first night. But over the past days I’ve come to appreciate your insights into my situation. Others might say fate brought you to me, but someone like myself shapes his own fate. I must have sensed you and called you to my side, so you could give voice to what I know in my heart.’

  He removed his hand from Snow’s throat and patted his cheek. Snow felt the pull of the gulf below and tried to sink into the wall.

  ‘I’m an intuitive sort,’ Jefe said. ‘I know you can help me access the portion of my life that’s closed off. I think I knew that the instant I first saw you, but I understand now that you were afraid. That’s why you refused me. You needed time to adjust, to acclimate to my presence. I tend to forget the effect I have on people. I can’t always be expected to notice it. Obviously I don’t have the same effect on myself.’

  Snow would have preferred to tune him out and concentrate on his footing, but Jefe kept on bellowing nonsense into his ear, inducing him to listen. He had the cogent, albeit somewhat hysterical thought that he might have been onto something when he berated Yara after Enrique Bazan’s visit – maybe when translated into human form dragons were reduced to prattling twits with superhuman powers, yet once returned to their natural state they expanded into their bodies and became the mysterious cosmic beasts of legend. Or not. Maybe they were assholes, whatever their shape.

  Jefe gave him a hug and kissed him on the cheek, a move that made Snow cringe. ‘We’ve been up here long enough,’ he said. ‘We can talk more later. Let’s go down, shall we? Let’s finish the joke. Yara will be surprised to learn she has lost. We’ll show the bitch, won’t we?’

  Snow had a presentiment of what was about to occur, but the idea that he might be carried down from the wall swept all else aside.

  Jefe winked broadly at him, grabbed his belt and, before Snow could react, he leapt for a nearby chain, Snow hanging from his left hand. There was a split-second when he thought Jefe had lied and the joke was on him, but he felt a severe jolt that stopped his fall, the belt buckle digging into his gut with such force, he couldn’t breathe. Once he recovered he saw that they were descending at a rapid clip, the floor growing larger and larger. This time he didn’t shut his eyes – he yearned for the floor, he wanted the floor above all things, he willed it to rise to meet him, and when Jefe deposited him on the concrete, when the rough surface abraded his cheek, he almost wept with relief and lay there soaking up its beautiful wideness and firmness. He remembered Yara and looked for her. Spied her thirty feet above on a ledge, on the wall that portrayed clouds at dusk. She stared at him – he couldn’t make out her expression, but a bolt of terror shot through him, as if she had beamed it into his heart. Jefe flew in swoops and ascensions high above, sticking close to the wall, and then went higher yet, out into the center of the shaft. Something was different about his flying. It was less dervish, less spectacular than earlier, having a languorous air that reminded Snow of a trapeze artist doing lazy somersaults, relaxing, gathering momentum for his next show-stopping trick. Panicked, realizing what that trick must be, he sprinted to the panel and started to enter the code, but blanked on it. Her birthday. Seven . . . seven something, he thought. Fuck! He racked his brain. Seven thirteen ninety-one. He put in the numbers and his forefinger hovered over the keypad as he tried to locate Jefe among the chains. Spotted him descending from the heights, from the wall across from Yara, tumbling and twisting, a mad Olympic diver committed to a suicidal plunge, already halfway to her, more than halfway . . . Snow jabbed the Enter key, knowing he was too late.

  Had he thrown in one less tumble, one less frill or flourish, Jefe might have saved himself. As it was, his momentum almost carried him out of danger. The grinding noise stopped abruptly and his graceful run became floundering and disjointed high above the concrete floor. His fall lasted two or three seconds, no more, but the replay, when Snow summoned it, took much longer to unwind. Jefe flung out a hand, snatching at a chain still attached to the ceiling, his fingertips grazing the links, and he went down without kicking or flailing his arms, his body describing a simple half-roll onto its side. He gave no outcry and impacted with a sickening crack, a leg touching first, as if he had made an effort at the end to land on his feet. He sagged onto his back so that, if he were still aware, he would have seen the chains collapsing, appearing as they descended to coalesce into a cloud of silvery serpents with long, lashing tails, their lengths all entangled. They smashed into the concrete with a clashing sound, dozens of them striking out in every direction as they hit, one leaping straight at Snow, cobra-quick, missing him by inches. Then it was quiet. An ominous quiet despite the happy result it represented. The lair had been made over into a piece of Gothic art, a stage set for the final scene in a surrealist play, a grim medieval fable whose ending was open to interpretation. A considerable fringe of chains remained connected to the ceiling, curtaining the huge photomurals, and a pall of concrete dust was suspended throughout the lower third of the shaft, a lunar fog partially obscuring the mountainous heap of chains that lay dead center of the floor, like a burial mound intended to confine some immortal monster.

  Yara called out to Snow, telling him to bring the machete, and he shouted, ‘Not until you’re down!’

  ‘The machete!’

  Stubbornly, Snow asked what he should do to help her down. She stood pressed flat to the wall on the narrow ledge, arms outspread for balance. He knew she must be afraid to do so much as nod for fear of toppling off the ledge, yet she briefly lifted a hand to point at the mound of chains. He saw nothing and said, ‘What are you pointing at?’

  ‘He’s alive! Look at the chains!’

  ‘Where? I don’t see anything!’

  ‘The pile of chains! The section nearest me! Just look!’

  He could detect nothing, no trace of blood, no sign of a living presence, but came forward, stepping over outlying snarls of chain shaped like the ridged and twisted roots of a metal tree, like crocodile tails, like the spines of antediluvian creatures whose heads were buried beneath the spill of silver links. The mound was three times higher than his head and shed a cold radiance. He began to circumnavigate it, pacing slowly, warily, alert for movement, yet seeing none.

  ‘Where do you mean?’ he shouted, and then saw chains slither down across a slight convexity at the edge of the mound where they were piled only four and five feet deep. His heart jumped in his chest, but there was no further movement.

  ‘The mound’s settling, that’s all!’ He glanced up to Yara. ‘How do I get you down?’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  He waited a bit, watching the mound, and said, ‘Yeah!’

  ‘Go to the panel – key in nine-nine-nine! That’ll start the chains moving down!’

  ‘Don’t you want me to come up?’

  ‘I can hang on long enough to reach the floor!’

  A rattling at Snow’s back – the chains shifted, the base of the mound bulged, and then a bloody-knuckled fist punched out from it and Jefe’s fingers clawed the air.

  Galvanized with fear, Snow ran for the stairs. He pounded down the steps, grabbed the machete, and raced back again, pausing on the landing to gather his courage, and his breath, and then re-entered the lair. Lengths of chain were draped around Jefe’s torso and legs, but he had fought mostly free of them and gotten to his knees. Blood welled from splits on his chest and arms – it was as if his skin had not been torn or abraded, but rather had cracked like a shell. He stared balefully at Snow, yet spoke not a word and made no threatening movement. Yara shouted, ‘Kill him! Kill him!’ Jefe did not react to her, continuing to watch Snow, who approached with trepidation, holding the machete behind his head, poised to strike.

  He assumed Jefe would lunge at him when he came near, but he closed to within a few feet, just beyond reach, and Jefe had not moved, merely tracking his progress. This gave him confidence and he aimed a blow at Jefe’s head. Jefe flung up his arm to block it and the blade skimmed along the
inside of the arm, taking with it a shaving of skin. Not human skin, but a rind of sorts, a thick sheath protecting his flesh, and Snow, as he retreated, remembered how hard Jefe’s hand had felt when he slapped him.

  ‘Don’t let him stand up!’ Yara shouted. ‘If he stands, he’ll be harder to get at!’

  Snow did not believe Jefe could stand and he was uncertain whether or not Yara’s statement was accurate. The mound made it impossible to get behind Jefe and his range of motion enabled him to defend attacks from every available angle. On his feet and badly wounded, he might be vulnerable to a range of attacks – in his current posture there was no option except to try another frontal assault. Snow stabbed with the point of the blade and Jefe deflected it with ease. He feinted a backhand slash, shifted his stance, and swung the machete straight down at the top of Jefe’s head – but he strayed too close to his target. Jefe clubbed his wrist, sending the machete skittering across the floor, and snatched at his shirttail. Snow broke free and hurried to retrieve the weapon. As he stooped for it, Yara shouted a warning. Jefe had clambered to his feet and was heading toward the stairs, dragging his right leg, his torso bent to the right, staggering, going off-course and having constantly to correct it, a crooked man on a crooked path. Snow darted after him and took a swing at the side of Jefe’s good knee, hoping to cut a tendon, but due to the awkward angle at which he delivered it, the blow had little force and did no discernable damage. Moving with an old man’s stiffness and deliberation, Jefe turned to him and gave a hissing cry, like that of an enraged cat. His face had lost every ounce of humanity, revealing it to have been a cunning mask behind which some odious and repellent thing had hidden, and now that the tissues of the mask were dissolving, a corrosive anger shone through, directed not only toward Snow, but toward all things not itself, a vicious, wormy hatred that had kept it alive for millennia and become its sole reason for existence. All of this conveyed by a mere glance. It was as if a germ of the dragon’s vileness had spanned the distance between them and infected Snow, breeding of an instant its semblance in his brain and inspiring in him a consonant anger. As Jefe labored toward the stairwell, Snow let that anger spur his actions and guide his hand.