The Coming of Dragons

by A. J. Lake

  ‘It’s the spring festival,’ Cluaran explained. ‘It lasts for three days – even when there’s no spring to speak of.’ His face was faintly mocking; the sky above was cold and grey with clouds. ‘But that’s a mark of all the children of Adam: they drink and laugh for the entertainment’s sake. And it’s as well for me,’ he added in a lighter tone. ‘I’ve a living to earn, after all.’

  More people were in the square now. Looking away down the road, Elspeth could see carts rolling into the town, and a man walked past leading a string of horses.

  ‘Meet me back here at sunset,’ Cluaran told Elspeth and Edmund. ‘And do not draw attention to yourselves.’ He turned and walked briskly after the horse trader.

  As the square became busier, Edmund saw that Cluaran was right; this was as much a fair as a market, with peddlers selling amulets and strings of beads and good-luck charms, and entertainments set up among the food stalls. A ragged man was playing the bagpipes for flung coins, and one or two booths offered fortune-telling or games of chance. Edmund felt a giddy sense of freedom as they wandered among the early buyers; he could not walk like this at home without some guard dogging every footstep.

  When they grew hungry, their noses led them to an open hearth where a whole pig was spit-roasting over a charcoal fire. Soon they were sinking their teeth in chunks of meat, the fat dribbling down their chins.

  By mid-afternoon, more entertainers had arrived – pipers, singers, a stout boy with a big drum.

  ‘Find the ball, sirs, find the ball! You, my lady, care to try your luck? A silver piece if you can uncover it.’

  The ringing cry made Edmund stop by a booth draped in fabric the colour of ox blood. A small crowd had gathered round the table where a burly man brandished three cups, tossing them in the air one at a time before upending each on a board. Then he held up a painted wooden ball and placed it under the middle cup with a flourish.

  ‘I’ve seen this trick,’ Elspeth whispered as the man began to move the cups rapidly over the board. ‘It looks easy, but you can never find the ball.’

  First one and then another customer paid his penny and made his guess, but it seemed that the stall owner could not be beaten. His hands were huge, almost hiding the little cups, yet they moved with dizzying speed, flicking the cups in complicated patterns without ever lifting one from the table. Edmund saw that Elspeth was watching the progress of the cups with growing fascination.

  ‘It must be that one!’ she muttered, staring at the left-hand cup as the hands stopped moving. The latest customer thought so too; he pointed to the cup on the left.

  ‘It’s not there,’ murmured Edmund, shaking his head. ‘He’s moved it back to the right again.’

  With a flourish, the man raised the left-hand cup to show that it was empty. ‘And here it is!’ he boomed, producing the yellow-painted ball from the right-hand cup as the customer marched off, leaving behind his copper coin.

  Elspeth turned to Edmund, open-mouthed. ‘You saw him switch it! Or,’ she added quietly, ‘did you use … you know … ?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Edmund said. ‘Or maybe I did, without realising.’ He flushed guiltily – it felt like cheating – but all the same, why not? He concentrated on the stallholder. There was a moment of uncertainty, then he found himself looking from the man’s own viewpoint. He could see the table beneath him, the great hands flashing to and fro. He could not see what the wooden ball was doing. But somehow he knew where it was. It was as if the man was focusing with more intensity on the cup that held the ball.

  He felt something else, too: a flicker of thought that sent him back to himself in a rush. The man despised his audience. He saw them all as fools, to be played with and duped.

  Three more customers tried their luck and failed. Each time, Edmund whispered to Elspeth: ‘The middle one.’ ‘Now the right again,’ – and each time, he was right.

  ‘You should play him yourself!’ Elspeth said. ‘I have a coin left.’

  Edmund thought for a moment. The man was so contemptuous, he deserved to be shown he was not dealing with fools after all. He nodded, took the coin from Elspeth and stepped forward to lay it on the table.

  ‘Trying your luck, young man?’ asked the stall owner, already moving the cups about. At first Edmund tried to concentrate on the movement, but he knew he didn’t need to. Looking through the stallholder’s eyes, it was obvious where the ball was each time.

  ‘The cup on the left,’ he said when the showman’s hands stopped moving.

  The man’s face stiffened. ‘Are you sure now?’ His voice was cheerful, but his eyes had narrowed. When Edmund nodded, he lifted the cup. The ball rolled out – and a shout of approval went up from the watchers. Edmund held out his hand for the prize, but the stall owner, beaming around at his audience, raised his hand for silence.

  ‘You’ve a keen eye, I see,’ he said, looking at Edmund. ‘And you’re game for a wager, I’ll be bound!’ He picked out a small stack of coins from his leather bag, holding them between finger and thumb. ‘Ten silver coins if you can find the ball twice more! What do you say?’

  Don’t draw attention to yourselves, Edmund remembered too late. The audience had swelled to a small crowd, drawn by the cup-and-ball man’s ringing voice. In the front, Elspeth watched bright-eyed.

  ‘Go on, Edmund!’ she urged.

  From all around, people shouted conflicting advice.

  ‘Take your money, boy; don’t be a fool!’

  ‘Peace, woman, can’t you see the luck is with him? Go for the purse, lad!’

  Edmund hardly heard any of them. It had been hard taking coppers from Cluaran for today’s food; at home, Edmund had handed out silver to his father’s people without thinking twice.

  ‘I’ll wager,’ he announced, to the delight of the crowd.

  ‘Another coin, then, if you please,’ said the showman, matter-of-factly.

  Edmund faltered. ‘But I don’t have …’ he began. The people nearest to him heard, and began to hoot their disappointment. He felt his face heating, but there was nothing he could say. Burning with embarrassment now, he started to turn away.

  But the showman had scented a mark, and would not give up so easily. ‘Come now,’ he cut in. ‘A well-set-up young man like yourself will have something about you that you can wager. A ring or a brooch perhaps?’

  Before Edmund could move he stepped round his stall and twitched aside Edmund’s cloak. Edmund angrily knocked his hand away, but not before the man’s sharp eyes had spotted his name-brooch glinting in the muddy folds of his cloak. His meaty face crinkled in delight.

  ‘There, you see?’ he crowed. ‘That silver birdie will do fine.’ He was talking to the crowd now, over Edmund’s head. ‘And you can’t back out of a wager, can you?’ There was a mutter of agreement as people pressed forward, eager for the show.

  Beside him, Edmund felt Elspeth tense. We should run, he thought. But a cold determination, hard as stone, had seized him. The showman meant to cheat him, but Edmund knew for sure that the man would fail. He pulled his cloak tight around him, hiding the brooch, and took a confident step towards the booth.

  ‘I’ll wager,’ he said clearly.

  ‘What are you doing?’ hissed Elspeth.

  Edmund had no time to explain. All his thoughts were fixed on the showman, who had gone back to the other side of his stall. Soon the huge hands were making the cups dance across the board. Edmund realised that this time he was not looking through the man’s eyes, but focusing on the wooden ball itself – and it seemed the ball was answering him. He still knew where it was! Fierce triumph filled him as the hands skittered and whirled.

  ‘The middle one,’ he said, hardly looking at them.

  He was right. The crowd roared.

  Now the man was working in earnest. His face was set as he held up the ball and replaced it beneath the left-hand cup. Catching his mood, the crowd fell silent.

  Once more Edmund followed the movement of the invisible ball: centr
e, to right, to centre again. Then, with no warning, it vanished.

  Edmund wondered if anyone had heard his gasp. He had felt the ball there, under the cup. Now there was just a sense of emptiness. He heard the murmur of the crowd above the sound of the cups sliding on the table, and then caught sight of a sly glint in the showman’s eyes. No, he had not lost his power. If he stretched his mind he could still feel the wooden ball – not on the table but somewhere else, hidden.

  Edmund waited till the meaty hands had stopped moving. When he did not speak at once, the man raised his arms in a wide gesture.

  ‘Take your time,’ he said pleasantly, but Edmund could feel the malice beneath.

  ‘The ball is not there.’

  For a moment the two of them stared at each other, then the man broke into a hearty laugh.

  ‘And how could that be, young sir? As all these good people can tell you, I haven’t raised a cup from the table. No, I’ve carried out my side of the wager quite fairly!’ His voice was jovial, but his gaze was stony. ‘Choose a cup.’

  Edmund groped with his mind for the little wooden sphere. There it was: low down, rolling in the grass. He turned to the watching crowd, who had started to mutter, siding with the showman.

  ‘Look under the cups!’ he said. ‘You’ll see he’s lying. There’s a hole in the table.’

  Elspeth started forward, but before she could reach the table a stout, angry-faced woman whom Edmund recognised as one of the stall’s earlier customers pushed her out of the way.

  ‘Let me see those!’ the woman bellowed, and before the showman could stop her she had knocked over all three cups. ‘All empty!’ she announced. ‘I’ll have my money back, thank you!’

  As the man began to argue with her another townsman grabbed at the cloth hanging around the stall, ripping it away. The missing ball was clearly visible on the ground beneath the table. The people surged forward, yelling, and the showman took to his heels.

  Elspeth grabbed Edmund’s arm. ‘We must leave, now,’ she said, pulling him across the square.

  ‘Yes, but not that way,’ he told her. ‘Let’s hide in the church.’

  But when they reached the church, the doors were shut. Edmund cursed and ran around the building, Elspeth close behind. He headed for the abbot’s stables, and the empty stall where they had spent the night.

  ‘We can wait here till sunset. It’s not far off now,’ he told Elspeth.

  She nodded, her face unhappy. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have told you to try the game. Now everyone will remember us.’

  ‘We were both stupid,’ he said bitterly. ‘I wanted the money, and I wanted to show I could beat him. But it was more than that.’ In spite of himself, he felt a prickling of excitement at the memory. ‘I knew, Elspeth. I knew where that ball would be, each time. This isn’t the power Aagard said I had; it’s something more. The ball doesn’t have eyes! Nor a mind to read. This is beyond Ripente power. I have to find out what I can do with it.’

  ‘Well, now,’ said a familiar voice. ‘There’s some might say you done enough already.’

  Elspeth spun round. The cup-and-ball man was standing in the stable yard behind them, his face mottled with fury.

  ‘You lost me a tidy sum today,’ he snarled. ‘Not to mention giving away the tricks of the trade. So we’ll start with you giving me that silver bird of yours.’ He lunged towards Edmund.

  Elspeth sprang forward, the sword scorching beneath her skin. But she stopped just in time. Sunlight glinted off a short, squat blade.

  The man was holding a dagger to Edmund’s throat.

  Chapter Twelve

  I won’t die like this, Edmund thought. Not for such foolishness. Shame burned in his chest and the fear vanished. He drove his foot hard into his assailant’s shin. The man cursed and staggered, but kept one hand gripping Edmund’s neck. Edmund slammed his elbow into folds of soft flesh, then felt a rush of savage satisfaction as the man grunted and pulled back. His grip slackened enough for Edmund to twist his head away, painfully shaving his chin as he tried to dodge the blade of the dagger.

  Still gasping from the elbow jab, the showman grabbed Edmund in both arms like a bear. Edmund kicked out again and again, and managed to sink his teeth into a fleshy forearm. It stank of rancid fat, but the man flinched.

  Edmund writhed like an eel, feeling his cloak tear. He ripped himself free and darted clear, leaving a square of cloth in his attacker’s hand.

  The man laughed softly. ‘Lads, lads!’ His voice was hoarse, his gaze still fixed on Edmund. ‘There’s no need to get yourselves hurt! Throw me the brooch, and the wager is settled.’

  ‘Never,’ said Edmund. ‘You’ve not kept your side of the deal, so why should I keep mine?’

  The showman’s lip curled back. ‘Because I am armed, and you are not?’ he suggested with a sneer, taking a step towards him.

  Edmund backed to the stable doors. He could hear horses shifting uneasily inside. When he felt the door’s iron bolts jab in his spine, he stopped. The showman reached him in two strides and lashed out again, and this time the blade seared into Edmund’s arm.

  Through a mist of pain, he heard Elspeth shout – and the world exploded in white light.

  Edmund threw up his unhurt arm against the dazzle. He heard the man’s oath, the clang of metal, the whinnies of frightened horses.

  When he could look through the glare, the showman was standing stock-still, staring at the hilt of his dagger. The blade had been sheared clean off. Beside him stood Elspeth, the crystal sword flaring in her silver-clad hand, filling the yard with pulsing light.

  The man moved first. Still holding the useless hilt like a weapon, he took a step sideways, his red face the colour of clay.

  ‘It’s witchcraft you use, is it?’ he snarled, his voice unsteady. ‘I’ll have the Guardians on to you!’

  Elspeth said nothing, just stepped forward and brought the sword up over her head, ready to strike again.

  The man’s nerve broke. With a howl of terror, he threw down the knife hilt and ran from the yard.

  For a long moment Elspeth stood with the sword raised over her head. Then she let out a long breath and let her arm fall.

  The sword had come when she called it – and there had been a rightness to its appearance, as if the sword had answered her. Power had surged through her, a bolt of fire, with a shard of ice at its heart. Nothing can hurt you, it had promised, nothing…

  ‘Your sword can cut through metal!’ she heard Edmund exclaim.

  Elspeth said nothing, just stared at her hand. The sword was beginning to fade, and her skin was visible through the silver gauntlet.

  She shivered. The day had turned cold. The sun had dipped behind the stable buildings and the yard lay in deep shadow. In the gloom, Edmund’s face loomed palely beneath the sweat-streaked walnut juice. His blue eyes held her like the bluest rock pools. Then Elspeth noticed the bloody gash along his chin, and saw the awkward way he held his arm as he picked up his torn cloak.

  ‘You’re hurt!’ she cried. ‘Let’s go to the abbot’s house. There will be a healer among the monks.’

  ‘No time,’ he snapped, and she could tell it took an effort for him to speak. ‘We have to meet Cluaran. That man will have told the Guardians about us by now.’

  Elspeth felt the weight of the sword vanish, the mesh of the gauntlet dissolve into her skin. ‘We said we’d wait for Cluaran in the market,’ she reminded him. ‘We’ll just have to hope he comes soon.’

  Edmund nodded, his face strained. Praying he wouldn’t faint, and draw even more attention upon them, Elspeth led the way back into the main square.

  The stallholders still there were lighting torches, fixing them to poles beside their booths. Elspeth looked around anxiously, hoping against hope to spot Cluaran in the crowd. But the minstrel was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘I think one of the stalls had medicines for sale,’ she said. ‘We could trade something.’ But when she saw Edmund’s face, she knew it was no
good. He could not show his bleeding chin around the stalls for fear of attracting too many questions.

  Edmund clearly had the same thought. He pulled up his hood. ‘We can’t risk showing ourselves,’ he said. ‘Maybe we should stay by the church.’

  ‘But that’s where they’ll look for us first!’ said Elspeth. ‘We’ll be safer in the crowd.’ She caught Edmund’s hand and dragged him into the throng, keeping her head bowed. Where was Cluaran? Had the minstrel got wind of the upset and taken off to save his own skin?

  Torches now flickered and flared at every booth and stall. At opposite ends of the square, a fiddler and a bagpipe player sent out conflicting melodies, and in between, the queue at a pudding-woman’s stall was being entertained by a boy juggling clubs.

  Suddenly Edmund tugged her arm.

  ‘What is it?’

  He nodded towards the juggler. On the far side of the crowd, directly opposite them, was the cup-and-ball man. He was talking earnestly to a dark-dressed man with a sword hanging at his belt.

  ‘Run!’ Edmund hissed. Elspeth swung round to follow him into the crowd, but it was too late. The showman had spotted them.

  ‘Hey!’ he yelled. ‘There! Over there!’

  Elspeth sped after Edmund. He was heading for the church, instinctively seeking sanctuary with the God that was not his own.

  But as they drew nearer, the great doors swung open, and instead of candlelight and monks’ chanting, out spilled three armed horsemen, with more behind. The horses’ hoofs clattered on the stone flags and torchlight danced on the shields’ silver bosses.

  The Guardians!

  ‘Back to the market!’ Edmund cried, spinning round.

  They dived back among the stalls. Elspeth squirmed between fat bellies and bony elbows; earned foul curses and a slapped ear as she struggled to keep track of Edmund for, wounded though he was, he pressed ahead like a rabbit bolting through a warren.

  Just as she caught up with him, there were cries of panic from behind, indignant yells and the jingle of spurs as the Guardians urged their horses through the crowd.