The Last Dream

by Gordon R. Dickson

  “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 thickheaded 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 inch worm 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 his 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 directi
ons.”

  “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, 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. “Your 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, whatever 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, A trusty spear and true! The dragons of the mere shall find What Nevile-Smythe can do!”

  The tune and words were vaguely familiar. Jim sat up for a better look and a knight in full armor rode into view on a large white horse through the trees. Then everything happened at once. The knight saw him, the visor of his armor came down with a clang, his long spear seemed to jump into his mailed hand and the horse under him leaped into a gallop, heading for Jim. Gorbash’s reflexes took over. They hurled Jim straight up into the air, where his punished wing muscles cracked and faltered. He was just able to manage enough of a fluttering flop to throw himself into the upper branches of a small tree nearby.

  The knight skidded his horse to a stop below and looked up through the spring-budded branches. He tilted his visor back to reveal a piercing pair of blue eyes, a rather hawk-like nose and a jutting generous chin, all assembled into a clean-shaven young-man’s face. He looked eagerly up at Jim.

  “Come down,” he said.

  “No thanks,” said Jim, hanging firmly to the tree. There was a slight pause as they both digested the situation.

  “Dashed caitiff mere-dragon!” said the knight finally, with annoyance.

  “I’m not a mere-dragon,” said Jim.

  “Oh, don’t talk rot!” said the knight.

  “I’m not,” repeated Jim. He thought a minute. “I’ll bet you can’t guess who I really am.”

  The knight did not seem interested in guessing who Jim really was. He stood up in his stirrups and probed through the branches with his spear. The point did not quite reach Jim.

  “Damn!” Disappointedly, he lowered the spear and became thoughtful. “I can climb the dashed tree,” he muttered to himself. “But then what if he flies down and I have to fight him unhorsed, eh?”

  “Look,” called Jim, peering down—the knight looked up eagerly—“if you’ll listen to what I’ve to say, first.”

  The knight considered.

  “Fair enough,” he said, finally. “No pleas for mercy, now!”

  “No, no,” said Jim.

  “Because I shan’t grant them, dammit! It’s not in my
vows. Widows and orphans and honorable enemies on the field of battle. But not dragons.”

  “No. I just want to convince you who I really am.”

  “I don’t give a blasted farthing who you really are.”

  “You will,” said Jim. “Because I’m not really a dragon at all. I’ve just been—uh—enchanted into a dragon.”

  The man on the ground looked skeptical.

  “Really,” said Jim, slipping a little in the tree. “You know S. Carolinus, the magician? I’m as human as you are.”

  “Heard of him,” grunted the knight. “You’ll say he put you under?”

  “No, he’s the one who’s going to change me back—as soon as I can find the lady I’m—er— betrothed to. A real dragon ran off with her. I’m after him. Look at me. Do I look like one of these scrawny mere-dragons?”

  “Hmm,” said the knight. He rubbed his hooked nose thoughtfully.

  “Carolinus found she’s at the Loathly Tower. I’m on my way there.”

  The knight stared.

  “The Loathly Tower?” he echoed.

  “Exactly,” said Jim, firmly. “And now you know, your honor as knight and gentleman demands you don’t hamper my rescue efforts.”

  The knight continued to think it over for a long moment or two. He was evidently not the sort to be rushed into things.

  “How do I know you’re telling the truth?” he said at last.

  “Hold your sword up. I’ll swear on the cross of its hilt.”

  “But if you’re a dragon, what’s the good in that? Dragons don’t have souls, dammit!”

  “No,” said Jim, “but a Christian gentleman has; and if I’m a Christian gentleman, I wouldn’t dare forswear myself like that, would I?”

  The knight struggled visibly with this logic for several seconds. Finally, he gave up.

  “Oh, well…” He held up his sword by the point and let Jim swear on it. Then he put the sword back in its sheath as Jim descended. “Well,” he said, still a little doubtfully, “I suppose, under the circumstances, we ought to introduce ourselves. You know my arms?”

  Jim looked at the shield which the other swung around for his inspection. It showed a wide X of silver—like a cross lying over sideways—on a red background and above some sort of black animal in profile which seemed to be lying down between the X’s bottom legs.