The Dragon Queen

by Alice Borchardt

  “Yes,” Kyra said.

  “Half the seats in the hall of heaven are empty. Only the songs are remembered,” the dragon said. “Of some, the line of the ancient seer queens have failed. In others, the dance floors are gone, swallowed by the sea. Others have nothing to do with us. We have no more truck with the archer, the wolf, or the fox. It has been how many centuries since all twelve queens were seated at once? It takes only one to bring a king to the people.

  “Seven centuries, Kyra. Seven,” the dragon said, “since you and your people fared forth no more, and you were content to tend your sheep, harvest the salmon, run and sit in your dark-raftered halls, telling each other tales of lost glories. Seven hundred years since you last sailed to the wine-dark seas of Greece or into the frozen north, where the seas glitter with islands of ice, in search of the ivory-tusked walrus or dark seal pelts. And buried your dead in the giant boulder tombs that dot the shores of Britain, Ireland, and Gaul.

  “We mattered to you then, Kyra. We sailed the sea lanes with you, warned of storms, drove fish into your nets. The Dragon Queen was the greatest one of all. Then you didn’t grudge us our tribute. Salmon, eel, ling, kelp, samphire, and sometimes even seal and whale we took to feed our young. It was only at the end, when you began to go in mortal fear of the Romans, that she, the last queen, betrayed us and thereby wrought her doom.”

  “No!” Kyra said. “None who ever occupied the Dragon Throne died in her bed. No, you may not have this one. No! And no again! Leave us! Go! Relations between your kind and ours are sundered. They were broken when Onbrawst danced, and the rock she danced upon was stricken by the trembling earth, and she and it fell into the sea.”

  “Don’t I get a say in this?” I asked.

  Kyra cried out, “What? Will you kill me with grief? Have I not had enough of sorrow in my life without this evil coming upon me?”

  “Kyra,” I said, “tonight there is a place I must go and a thing I must do.”

  A roar of wind came from behind me, parting my hair and blowing it out on either side of my face. The wind changed, and when I turned into the blast, I saw lightning dance over the mountains inland. The wind blew out to sea, and I knew I was being summoned.

  I knew something, certainly not enough, of Kyra’s grief. But I, or perhaps it, was something left by her to reassure Kyra, my mother in love.

  “Kyra,” I said, “whatever my fate, you will not live to mourn me. That grief will be mine. The sorrow at our parting.”

  Then I ran into the surf where the dragon waited. “Do you know …?” I asked him.

  “I know. The silver manes told me. They are old, and the centuries they have waited and watched are more than the stars in the sky on a clear night or the grains of sand on all the beaches throughout all the world. They do not speak to just anyone, but they will talk to you. The one called Lais promised, and they keep their word.”

  In moments, the only sight of the beach was the thin, pale line of the boiling surf. Then the dragon and I entered the darkness, and he began again to call down on me and his people the blessings of the star songs. And I knew that whatever might happen, I loved not just him but all his people. And they would make me a great queen and never, never, no matter what the cost to myself, would I ever betray them.

  NINETEEN

  RTHUR HAD SENSED THEIR PRESENCE. And, moreover, he knew in general who they were. He was aware that they were not Merlin or Igrane. He thought Morgana must have found a way to check up on him. He wasn’t surprised. But he didn’t think even she could get him back, not easily.

  He remembered the basin at the foot of the cliff. He tried to empty his mind of the apprehension these things roused in him. Igrane’s star-covered mantle had always given him chills. And in her mirror he knew she saw things that told her of the movements of others. She used it to terrorize him as a child. She told him he could never escape her gaze.

  One night, waking from a nightmare about her, he confessed these fears to Morgana. He had begun to trust her a bit by then. No one at her stronghold ever laid hands on him in anger. He found out later she had forbidden anyone to touch him. It wasn’t customary to correct children by beating them, not among his people, though the Saxons and the Romans both were very violent with their offspring. And so, these orders caused no resentment.

  Besides, as many abused children are, he was almost frighteningly well behaved. So when he began to trust Morgana, she was careful not to betray that trust. She explained the limitations of Igrane’s mirror to him, and he was reasonably sure, also, that she placed some sort of protective spell around him to keep Igrane from locating him as long as he was in her care.

  He smiled a little at the memory, then returned to his consideration of the bowl, weighing the chances that it might be of some use to him. He decided he wouldn’t know much, not without further investigation.

  Balin broke in on his thoughts. “There they are.”

  Arthur saw a wavering column of white smoke rising from a grove of small oaks close by.

  “They will not be expecting us,” Arthur said. “How much killing will be required?”

  “That’s a strange question, coming from you,” Balin said.

  “I don’t favor it unless it’s necessary,” Arthur replied. “Had those three been oath men of mine, I would have executed them had they abused even a captive woman the way they tried to do your wife. At worst, they were vile creatures who needed to be wiped from the face of the earth. At best, such behavior shows a dangerous lack of self-control. The first business of a warrior is self-restraint.”

  “Yes-s-s-s,” Balin said slowly.

  “I’ll go see how many there are,” Arthur said.

  “May I accompany you?” Balin asked humbly.

  “Yes. The rest of you stay here.”

  Arthur moved quietly. So quietly he astounded Balin. He picked his path, avoiding dead leaves, branches that might crack under his feet, and going around piles of dead leaves. A few moments later, they stood at the edge of a clearing in the long, dark shadows of the slender oaks, watching two men who sat near a small fire at the center of the grove.

  Things were settled rather quickly. The two men didn’t want to fight Arthur, and they handed over their weapons rather quickly.

  Arthur studied the three on horseback. The dead men.

  “They are truly dead?” he asked Balin.

  “Yes,” he answered.

  One of the prisoners, a big man with a broken nose, said, “They give me the shivers. She—” he indicated the tower “—rules them now.”

  “She lives in the tower?” Arthur asked.

  The other prisoner, a stout redhead, said, “I doubt if live is the word you want. I’ll get a flogging for giving up so easily, but I’ll live over it. I don’t want any more part of this.”

  “I take it,” Arthur said, “that neither of you is a devoted follower of this King Bade.”

  They looked at each other, then at Balin and Arthur.

  “Where the hell is he from?” the redhead asked.

  “I’m … not … sure, Firinne,” Balin replied to the redhead.

  “Truthful, at least,” Arthur said. “I’m not sure either.”

  “No,” Firinne continued. “No, we are not devoted followers of King Bade. We are his prisoners and slaves, the same as Balin here is … or was. Did Eline make it?”

  “Yes,” Balin said. “Bax led us through the marsh. He knows where the drowning pools are, the flesh eaters are afraid of him, and he found his way around the thorn barrier. It took us three days, but we got through.”

  “Good. I’m glad.”

  “Why don’t you stay?” Balin asked. “Yes,” Arthur asked. “Why don’t you? Why go back to be punished?”

  “I have a wife and child there,” Firinne said. “They are security held against my return. As it is, I live pretty well. The king’s soldiers do. Eline was one of the king’s dog handlers. He—” Firinne pointed at Balin “—was a field hand. No wife, slept in a ba
rracks at night. If Eline hadn’t taken up with him, he’d still be there. She and that dog got him out.”

  Balin looked shamefaced. “Firinne!”

  His broken-nosed companion said, “No need to insult the man before his war chief.”

  “Is that what you are?” Firinne said. “A war chief? You look more like an unsuccessful brigand.”

  Arthur threw his head back and laughed. How long, he thought, how long since I laughed like this? It felt good.

  “Well, look at him,” Firinne said. “His clothes are clean enough, but they’re about to rot off his body. A bird could make a nest in the hair on his face. He hasn’t even got any weapons.”

  Arthur scratched his beard and grinned. “I don’t need any,” he said.

  “It’s the truth,” Balin said. “He accounted for those three.” He pointed to the mounted corpses.

  Firinne and his companion fell silent.

  “That’s why I told you not to put up a fight,” Broken Nose said. “When I saw him, I told you I had a feeling.”

  “Yes! Well and good,” Arthur said. “I killed them. Now, how do I get rid of them? Killing doesn’t seem enough.”

  Balin asked Arthur, “How good are you with a sling?”

  “Passable,” Arthur said. “Passable.”

  Balin handed him his and, surprisingly, some lead shot.

  “Empty their skulls,” Broken Nose said.

  Arthur nodded and faced the one farthest away—the one with the sword wound in his back. “One.”

  He swung the sling.

  The corpse’s head exploded.

  “Two.” Arthur turned to the one with no eyes. He was facing them, except after the shot hit, the face vanished.

  “Three,” Arthur said. The stitches at the neck failed, and the head flopped grotesquely to one side, held on only by skin, before he slid from the saddle.

  “You were right,” Firinne said. “I don’t want to fight him.”

  “Now,” Arthur said. “Call the rest. Round up the cattle and bury that carrion or burn it—whatever it takes to get rid of it. And no shame about it, tell me about this King Bade. Tell me how he keeps his people in subjection, how he controls them, and why.”

  The story was surprisingly familiar to Arthur. Many of the powerful landowning families among the Romano-British behaved very little better than this King Bade. Who had, if the truth were known, at least the excusing factor of not being human.

  That was one thing all present agreed upon. He wasn’t a human, though none were willing to guess just what he might be. A demon? A god of some kind?

  The word demon covered a lot of territory—fallen angels, the spirits of the malevolent dead, evil spirits in general, and a further class of beings almost everyone believed in. Earth spirits, indifferent to the good or ill of mankind, who had their own agendas.

  He had heard Morgana’s version of the blind men and the elephant, and he was certain none of the individuals he was speaking to had enough evidence to venture a solid guess as to the king’s nature. They did agree on his treatment of them; it had been cruel in the extreme.

  The sexes were kept separated. Given the nature of people, the measures taken by Bade’s class of enforcers often failed. But children born of such unions were killed, usually aborted after quickening by one of the dog handlers like Eline. This was done by crushing the fetus in the woman’s womb, a horribly painful procedure for the woman, who was given nothing to ease her pain, though the fetus was probably killed in advance by drugs prepared by the dog women, as they were called.

  Yes, those talented individuals that Bade found more useful than the general run of children were given better treatment, privileges, such as marriage, leisure, being taught to read and write, more food, and some, even freedom of movement. Also, the right to sometimes enjoy the company of the opposite sex. No one explicitly permitted the favored dog handling women to take lovers, but often—very surreptitiously, to be sure—they did.

  Eline had. Balin. They shared stolen embraces for almost a year. Then she found she was pregnant. She had an easy out. She could report the fact to the woman chief, take the drugs, and have it aborted. Or she could try to escape.

  The women ruled the dogs, but the dogs were the actual fighters. They gave Bade his teeth.

  “That’s what the dogs are,” Balin told Arthur. “The king’s teeth. He thinks it’s funny for some reason. No one knows why. The dogs are fixated on the women. The guard dogs are male, all male. The bitches are kept only to breed from. And they will kill in a split second on their handler’s command. And they do. Oh, boy, how they do.”

  Everyone agreed with this assessment. By then all the men and most of the women had crossed the river also, and the cattle were being rounded up and driven home. Everyone knew their own, usually by name. Almost all were cows with calves at their udders. Almost all were strawberry with red ears, an absolutely beautiful dairy breed. In his world, such cows were held in some awe, and most herds belonged to powerful families. But Balin told him all the cattle here were marked this way, and Arthur remembered the wonderful creamy milk he’d had at the farm. This breed was a fine one.

  “So the women keep order among the slaves,” Arthur said.

  Balin nodded. “I suppose you could put it that way.” He sounded reluctant to adopt the point of view. “But that’s not exactly how it works.”

  “Tell him,” Firinne said. “Don’t make us sound worse than we are. The children of the women dog handlers aren’t always killed. Some, the ones who seem most reliable, are allowed to keep their babies. Their children belong to the king. I am such a one. My mother is the women’s chief, my wife one of the handlers. If I don’t return, my mother will lose her position. My wife will become one of the comfort women and my children, since they are too young to work—none is yet eight years of age—will be killed. I can’t do that to my wife and mother. I hope to survive the flogging. But if I don’t, they at least will be safe.”

  “Comfort women?” Arthur asked.

  “Most of the men have no women of their own. What do you think?” Broken Nose asked in return.

  Caradog walked up to the group of men around Arthur and complained, “You said to bury them, but those corpses are still wiggling.”

  “Bury them anyway,” Balin said. “Snakes do the same thing when their heads are off. But they die by sundown. So will they.”

  Sundown was close. By now all the cattle were gone and most of their owners. Only Balin, Caradog, and Bade’s two servants remained with Arthur.

  Balin stared up at the tower apprehensively. “She will be unhappy with us for sure. We’d best get across that bridge by sunset. Firinne, if you’re going back, best start now and get out of her valley.”

  Firinne and his broken-nosed friend began hurriedly collecting their possessions from the campsite. Arthur stood staring at the tower across the valley. The light was deep orange now, and the tower glowed like a golden finger draped in greenery, a thing of strange splendor and beauty in the gathering dusk.

  Only when Arthur looked away from the glowing spire did he realize how close it was to night. He saw how the shadows had begun to condense in the dim places under the trees. The meadow was still bright, the long grass shimmering in the rays of the westering sun, but in the thickets, the forest was already welcoming the night.

  Arthur began to walk toward the tower, his moving shadow like a finger on the shimmering grass, pointed east.

  “Stop!” Balin screamed. “It is death to go there!”

  “Who says?” Arthur answered without turning or slowing his pace.

  “Everyone!” Balin shouted, and began running after Arthur.

  As Balin neared him, Arthur spoke—again without slowing or turning. “Go home, my friend. If you try to stop me, I will hurt you. I won’t kill you. I have too much respect for your good lady to do that. But I will hurt you badly. Go home. Your wife needs you. No one and nothing needs me.”

  “Why?” Balin shouted. “Why
?” He was just behind Arthur.

  “I have no time to explain,” Arthur said. “It would take too long.”

  TWENTY

  MET MOTHER ON THE STAIR NEAR THE well. I saw her eyes as I often had seen them when we were hunting or I got up at night to relieve myself outdoors. It always made me feel better to know she was there.

  She was sitting near the well where I had seen the Flower Bride. She looked calm. She sat upright on her haunches, in the starlit darkness, looking down at the sea. “Mother,” I said.

  She made the sound that always meant Yes, I’m here; it is not some other wolf.

  I was worried. “How do I get to the top?”

  “The stair,” she said. That’s not really what she said. It was more like wolf for path or the usual way.

  “The stair,” I said, “is gone.” I remembered the last sight I’d had of the island when I turned back to look, saw only the few broken steps on the side of the cliff, and realized I had climbed something nonexistent to get to the top.

  Mother simply sighed and grunted as she always did when she was confronted with human perversity or flat-out ignorance. Then she turned and began to climb … something.

  Mother is dead, I thought. But then, I reasoned, when had she ever led me astray?

  I knew the answer. Never. By night in the wilderness on the edge of towering cliffs when we were together on the hunt, up and down rocky slopes where a misstep might mean a broken ankle or leg, into the fords of rivers and streams that might have drowned us both if she had miscalculated—I had followed her and always she led me safely to my destination.

  So I followed and found myself climbing something. She marched ahead confidently until we reached the top. Then she entered the rock-cut chamber.

  It was pitch-black inside. I dropped my hand to Mother’s neck. Felt nothing, and then remembered in my grief she wasn’t really here. But suddenly there was fur under my hand, and I heard the amused low bark she gave when she laughed at something.