The Dragon Queen

by Alice Borchardt

  The current swept me around the vast chamber, but once it flooded through the channel it had cut from the sea, it became a gentle swirl, the kind you get in your porridge in the morning as you cool it with a spoon. The light was unaffected by the water. It propagated all along the walls, whether open to the air or submerged. I thought about Treise, for I was minded to breathe water rather than let the monster rend me. But no, I would not do that. Maybe I could finish my work in spite of death. My hand still contained fire. I would punish it even as it destroyed me.

  It was close. I could see the yellow eyes, slit pupils, in the burgeoning light from the rainbow temple as its beauty swept along the walls around me. Then something blotted out the light from below. My mind was fuzzy and I was unable to comprehend what could dim such radiance.

  The dragon surfaced under the thing. The orca dragon exploded from the ocean like a broaching whale, with the horror clenched in its jaws the way a hunting cat takes a careless mouse. The monster screamed, but the dragon had it across the body, fangs buried in its midsection.

  The thing screamed again, the sound echoing under the high splendor of the arching roof. The sun struck again down. The horror was limp in the dragon’s jaws, blood a scarlet flood down its white chest, dripping from the fangs. The light was a blinding whirl—yellow, red, dashed with sheet gold, then green and blue as another cloud drifted over the sun.

  The thing went limp. A toss of the dragon’s head threw it back to the rocks, where it lay at the edge of the pool, a torn, red ruin. The dragon ducked his head to wash away blood and bits of flesh, then swam toward me. Swam under my limp body and surfaced with me on his back. Just as well he did. I clung to the row of spines on each side of his neck and gave way to total exhaustion as he scolded me all the way back to land.

  “I’ve been tracking you all along the coast. I kept hoping you would see me and lead the hideous thing into deep water. But no. You were so intent on putting distance between yourself and that horror that I could never get you to listen to my calls. I nearly got him when he swam around the headland, but the tide wasn’t fully in and … what!”

  That wasn’t what he said, but it’s the best approximation I can make in my human language.

  It seemed as though a shadow passed over the shell of light around us, and the broken creature lying on the stone shifted and changed, becoming something smaller and much less menacing. A little brown man.

  But as the dragon drew closer, I saw that all that remained of the murderous terror that had haunted the holy well could not be human either. The brown I saw was a pelt, light and soft at the top but more furry than any human ever is. Where the fur extended below the waist, it was long and thick, protectively covering the legs and genitals. The feet were hard, clawed as the monster’s had been, but with more digits. They seemed molded together and had a thick, horny covering like a hoof.

  But it was the monster, wounded in the belly by my arrows, charred by the fire, and torn by the dragon’s fangs. It lay in a pool of blood.

  “A faun,” the dragon whispered sadly. “A faun. I had not known any still lived. And I have killed it.”

  “No,” I said. “This thing needed killing. Don’t reproach yourself, my friend.”

  How did a faun, the gentlest of creatures, become the terrible monster I saw? What gave it the skin of the fish eaters that once hunted along these shores? I had not heard that fauns could change shape.

  The dragon’s murmurs must have awakened consciousness in the dying creature, because it opened its eyes and looked at me. They were soft and brown, the eyes of a deer or some other shy, wild creature like a hare or squirrel.

  The dragon had come to the stone edge of the pool. I stood and climbed off its back and approached my fallen adversary.

  Yes, it was certainly dying. Too weak to move, it studied me in an almost gentle silence. Just above its forehead, I saw the two horn buds. They just cleared its rather spiky hair. Even though dying, it managed to recoil when I stretched out my hand toward one.

  The light around me sang in silver, but it seemed to darken for a second, and I heard a sound as though the blow of an enormous clapper struck the side of a great bell. Suddenly I stood where I had last seen Mother, in the dark forest near the waterfall that glowed in its own light and emptied into a pool of stars at its base. In the intervening years, I had forgotten how beautiful the place was—the cool, peaceful presence of the giant pines around us, the only sound the deep-throated sigh of the wind among them and the trickling of the brook formed by the overflow of the basin beside me.

  The faun stood in front of me. I could see him clearly in the light borne by the water into the basin and in the occasional flashes of illumination when the wind took the column of falling water, spreading it into a curtain of glowing lace.

  “I didn’t know,” I said.

  “Of course,” he answered. “She didn’t tell you. Would it have made any difference?”

  “No,” I answered. “Probably not.” But I could feel the tears on my cheeks.

  “Don’t cry,” he whispered softly and stretched out one hairy hand toward my face. “Think! It almost went the other way.”

  “Yes.” And I wiped away my tears.

  Above, the wind brushed the pale column of water, spraying me with a mist. As Maeniel had told me, the whisper of its touch healed my hurts. It also made the fairy armor shimmer with a slight glow.

  I was clothed in it. It spiraled around my bare breasts, covered my arms in the meander’s coils and delicate vining traceries of the holy and everlasting union of not simply all life but a universe into which life is woven, one thread among the rest, many and one forever. A mystery my people comprehended and left its paths in their being once, now, and forevermore.

  I saw those pathways echoed in the casings of the tiny horns, and I comprehended they were not for defense but sensory organs, allowing us to speak to each other. To bridge the chasm placed between us by time, language, and breeding.

  “I’m glad it’s over,” he said. “I have missed myself, my soul so.”

  “Your soul?” I asked.

  “Yes. You see, that is the one thing you must never barter away. I did, and have regretted it bitterly ever since. I have not had speech with a flower or a butterfly or a star an age agone. But I was jealous and angry that such as she”—and I knew of whom he spoke—“had life eternal while we lesser mortal creatures die.”

  I understood his sorrow, and, in the course of time, I was sure I would know more.

  He continued, “So I bartered away what I was—that is what your soul is—for power and immortality. And I became the creature you saw. You freed me from an eternity of regret. An eternity of sorrow.”

  “How will I know if someone demands my soul?” I asked.

  “You will know,” he said as he turned toward the fountain.

  Then he went to one knee beside it and scooped up the water in one big, furry hand. “She will tell you what to do,” he said. “I may tarry no longer.”

  “Wait!” I said. But he was already drinking. And a second later, I stood before her, back in the world I had left in the splendor of the light.

  She had a double-edged, bronze ax in her hand. She looked down into the sad, brown eyes of the faun.

  “My son,” she whispered in tones of deepest grief. “My son. My son.” Then she pressed the double ax into my hand.

  “Take his head before he dies,” she commanded.

  “No!”

  “Fool!” she snapped. “This is not the time to falter. Would you have him be lost? Do you hate him so much?”

  I looked down and met my adversary’s gaze.

  “She is ever wise,” the dragon said. “Do it.”

  I swung the ax. Its edge rang against the stone.

  She helped me wrap the head in white linen. Then we put it in a sack.

  “I will need to know his name to command him,” I said.

  “You will not need to command him,” she said. “And w
hen you awaken him, he will tell you his name. After he has served you for a time, let him go. Give him his freedom. Then be his transgressions forgotten, and he may forget his suffering, have life again, and use it to do good.”

  The tide was at the flood, and the sun was resting among the clouds. The half dome was showing me the beauties of gray, white, and, at times when the sun peered through, a golden haze. I cannot describe how wild, strange, and beautiful the place was at the end of the long platform of rock, looking out over the ocean. Where could the time have gone? Had I struggled so long with the monster? It seemed late afternoon.

  I shivered and realized I was naked. The last struggle and my transition to the antechamber of death had torn away the last few rags from my body. Only the wild swirls of the green armor clothed me, yet I was modest in a sense, for it covered my sex and breast tips. I had fastened my hair up to keep it out of my way. But the braids had long come undone and, except for the two warrior braids that descended from a part just above my forehead and hung down on either side of my face, my hair floated free down my back.

  Kyra taught me how to prepare it when on the hunt. She said the fighting women among her people always wore it thus, to be sure that even when taken by surprise or awakened abruptly from sleep, it wouldn’t get in their faces. I had, you see, after the manner of her people, never cut it. Uncut hair proclaimed my virgin status. A man who interfered with me without my consent would face a dreadful curse. And even my husband might not be so bold as to take my maidenhead. Sometimes a virgin girl was first offered to a powerful lord or a chief, so that any ill luck would be turned aside from her husband. Kyra told me that such a rite was uncommon, but in my case, I would certainly frighten my future in-laws and I needed to be prepared to make the best of things if such a proposal was made as part of the marriage contract. To endure the rite with dignity.

  I had thought men being what they are, jealous as rutting stags or bulls, that such magic would be highly unlikely, but now.…

  Given the characteristics of my armor—I touched my belly and the complex curves and meanders leaped out and hardened—how would I ever be able to make love to anyone? Would I, like Gydden’s daughters, need to be forced the first time?

  Then I looked down and saw the blood running down my legs. I was puzzled. How had I hurt myself there of all places?

  I frowned, then looked up at her.

  “You are now a woman,” she said. “I put my hand on you when you cut off the faun’s head.”

  I surprised myself by beginning to cry. It had been a long, hard day.

  Then a soft haze, wearing the colors of sunset, surrounded her and me. Someone, again I did not see who, gave her clothing—my old tunic and pants, now repaired, and another outfit, a white tunic and leggings. Then she showed me, as Kyra would have, how to wash and pad myself so that the womanly purification would be neat, and told me that I must wash myself and how often during my courses.

  I was still trembling and weeping. “The daughters of Gydden,” I said. “The choosers of the slain. I don’t … I won’t.… ”

  “No,” she said. “You need not fear that rite, but only one man is your true destiny. You are horribly dangerous to all others—avoid them.”

  “I think I know who …” I began.

  “Yes. He is already known to you,” she said. Then she touched my forehead with all five fingers.

  I felt her arm around me as I went limp. Even now, I cannot say what happened. A wave went through me.

  “What was that?” I said as I regained my senses.

  “The reward of your labors,” she said. “When you need it, you will know it.”

  “What is this place?” I asked.

  Beyond the rocky shelf, the sun was sinking close to the water. The haze around us had faded once I was clothed, but the colors danced and sang in the walls.

  The dragon drifted in the pool under the dome of light. He was fishing. His black and white was reflected in the walls, an unending dialogue between the permanent and the ephemeral, being and potential met as one.

  “Oh,” I said. “I see.”

  “No. No, you don’t. But you come as close to grasping the concept that ruled its makers as any I have ever known,” she said.

  “What was the faun?” I asked.

  The dragon lifted his head from the water. He answered me. “The world you live in is cruel. Once it was—” he glanced at her “—less cruel. We tied the sea creatures together. He and his kind ruled the forests. They could speak the language of … bees tumbling among the flowers. The flowers themselves as their poignant solitude was fulfilled told him of their enrichment. Ferns spoke of their explorations among damp leaf mold. Even the spreading fungi constructing their webs through soil and damp, dissolving wood, spoke to him of the world’s endless cycles of renewal. He could follow the butterfly’s anxious search for the proper plant host for her young and understand the ecstasy of the crawling leaf eater’s epiphany as she wore her wings in the sun. He had all of those things and bartered them for …”

  The dragon paused. “I cannot think what,” he said sadly.

  “He is still my son,” she said. “Be kind to him,” she cautioned me. “And one day, set him free.”

  The dragon paddled close to shore. A beautiful golden haze began to rise from the water. I climbed to the dragon’s back.

  “Treise,” I said.

  “Treise will be fine. In fact, had you shown fear and let the creature eat her, you would have vanished immediately. She is an important ancestress of yours.”

  The haze was thick as fog now, hiding the domed room, the sea, and even the water.

  “Take her home!” she commanded.

  And the dragon obeyed.

  SIXTEEN

  E WOKE LOOKING AT THE FIRE. HIS EYES burned and he knew he was not blind. His face was wet. He ran his tongue over his lips and tasted wine. That’s where the illusion of blindness came from. Igrane had thrown wine in his face when he savaged her lover’s groin.

  He blinked and sat up, still shaking with reaction and some fear. The fire was warm and bright. All he could think, though, was, How can I keep from letting them get me again?

  But then, there had been that face looking at him from the mirror. And the fire—someone must have tended it while he was absent. Left to itself, it would have gone out.

  He sat with his head bowed, simply letting the warmth soak into his body. Then at length, he asked the silence, “Am I alone here? If I should happen not to be, who are you?”

  He didn’t really expect an answer, but he got one in the form of a sigh. A little like the wind, he thought, but there was no wind. Only the tall, black outlines of the trees against a sky pearled with moonlight.

  She rode high above the horizon, the full moon, on a sea of low clouds hovering over the distant mountains, a luminous vessel, adrift on phantom waves. The air was still. A voice followed the sigh; it was faint and every word articulated carefully, as though the speaker had limits set on his ability to communicate.

  “At last. I was beginning to think I would never be able to persuade you to take the hints we kept dropping.”

  “The bird,” Arthur said, “and your face in the mirror.”

  A woman’s laugh trilled from the shadows. “I sent the bird.”

  Her voice was as faint and cool as the whisper of a breeze over a water meadow on a hot day. “You are in the yew.”

  “Yes,” she whispered, “and he is in the birch.”

  “This is?” he asked.

  “The summer country,” was the answer. The man’s voice spoke.

  “The land belongs to King Bademagus,” Arthur finished the sentence for him. “Morgana taught me well. But what took you so long?”

  “We take our energy from you,” was the answer in the woman’s voice. “We feared to drain your strength.”

  “I must escape this place,” Arthur said.

  “And do so quickly, before Merlin can lay hands on you again,” the woman
’s voice said.

  “I would rather die than let that happen,” Arthur said.

  “That may be the choice,” the man’s voice supplied.

  “Then I will take it,” Arthur said, rising to his feet.

  “Don’t be in such a hurry,” the woman said. “You have a little time.” She laughed, a strange sound in the shadows around the fire. “Your adversary is still in a lot of pain.”

  “I certainly hope so,” Arthur said.

  “Yes, you have gotten a little revenge. Below the yew, the deepest roots claw their way into a fissure in the rocks. It forms a chimney. It doesn’t run all the way to the ground, but it terminates at the top of a rock slide that will provide you with a slope of sorts until you reach the floor of the valley.”

  “I don’t like it,” the man’s voice said. “It is a terrible risk.”

  “What? Will you wait? Until they drive him mad?”

  “I don’t know about him, but I won’t,” Arthur said. “A few weeks of their sport and I’ll be a drooling, whimpering wreck.”

  “I think not,” the man’s voice said. “They have not got as much power over you as even they believe they have. You bore their torments as a child.”

  “Yes, and they have poisoned my life.”

  “See?” the woman’s voice whispered. “I told you. We must get him out of this cage.”

  “Is this then a cage?”

  “The cage of bones,” the man said, “and escape from this part of it won’t set you free. Not completely. But he will not find it as easy to seize hold of you when he wants you.”

  “Good enough,” Arthur said. He slung the bow over his shoulder. “I want to keep it. Show me the way.”

  “Leave the fire burning,” she whispered. “He will search near it first. You have nearly mastered this prison. You came here with nothing, and now have fire, food, and a vision of the eldest Flower Bride.”