The Dragons of Babel

by Michael Swanwick

  Will trembled.

  He bolted out the door and ran.

  The first sunset away from the dragon, Will threw up violently as the sun went down, and then suffered spasms of diarrhea. Cramping and aching and foul, he hid in the depths of the Old Forest all through the night, sometimes howling and sometimes rolling about the forest floor in pain. A thousand times he thought he must return. A thousand times he told himself: Not yet. Just a little longer and you can surrender. But not yet.

  A little longer. Not yet.

  Soon .Not yet.

  The craving came in waves. When it abated, Will would think: If I can hold out for one day, the second will be easier, and the third easier yet. Then the sick yearning would return, a black need in the tissues of his flesh and an aching in his bones, and he would think again: Not yet. Hold off for just a few more minutes. Then you can give up. Soon, lust a little longer.

  A little longer.

  He looked at the sky and could see by the position of the Scythe that there was still more of the darkness before him than behind. All his resolve, all his restraint, had filled next to no time whatsoever. He found himself weeping in self-pity. He had tried! The Nameless Ones knew, he had tried, and what had come of it? It was foreordained that he should fail and, that being so, he might as well give up the fight. And so he determined to do.

  Soon.

  Thus progressed the night, in continual defeat, yet with his surrender perpetually deferred. Sometimes he struck the harsh bark of the elm trees over and over again with his hands, just for the slight distraction the pain afforded him. The Scythe wheeled and dimmed unheeding of his suffering. This wasn't working! It was time he admitted it, and gave in. Time he returned to his master and acknowledged that he could no longer live without him.

  Not yet.

  Soon.

  By morning, the worst of it was over. He washed his clothes in a stream, and hung them up to dry in the wan predawn light. To keep himself warm, he marched back and forth singing the Chansons Amoreuses de Merlin Sylvanus, as many of its five hundred verses as he could remember. Finally, when the clothes were only slightly damp, he sought out a great climbing oak he knew of old, and from a hollow withdrew a length of stolen clothesline. Climbing as close to the tippy-top of the great tree as he dared, he lashed himself to its bole. There, lightly rocked by a gentle wind, he slept at last.

  A fortnight passed.

  Two weeks after his escape, Hag Applemere came to see him in his place of hiding. She found him sitting in the shade of an oak tree at the edge of a meadow rich in milkweed, horned-god's paintbrush and Queen Mab's lace. Honeybees dutifully worked the flowers. A short distance away was a cairn not of modern make but from some long-ago time, which treasure hunters had broken into and from which they had scattered the bones. There he had slept the night before, upon a bed of field grass, while outside it had thundered and stormed. Folk avoided the cairn, for it was said to be wraith-haunted, but if so, the spirits did not bother Will.

  The truth- teller bowed before him "Lord Dragon bids you return to him." she said formally.

  Will did not ask the revered hag how she had found him. Wise-women had their skills; nor did they explain themselves. "I'll come when I'm ready. My task here is not yet completed." He was busily sewing together leaves of oak, yew, ash, and alder, using a needle laboriously crafted from a thorn, and short threads made from grasses he had pulled apart by hand. It was no easy work. He had learned from it a new respect for seamstresses.

  Hag Applemere frowned. "You place us all in certain danger."

  "He will not destroy himself over me alone. Particularly when he is sure that I must inevitably return to him."

  "It is true."

  Will laughed mirthlessly. "You need not ply your trade here, hallowed lady. Speak to me as you would to any other. I am no longer of the dragon's party."

  "As you wish." Hag Applemere drew her shawl about her and plomped down cross-legged before him. All in a single gesture, she had become Bessie again.

  "It's a funny thing," Will said, still sewing. "You're not so many years older than I am. I can see that now. If this were a time of peace, who knows? Two years, six years down the line. I might well have grown enough to claim you for my own, by the ancient rites of the greensward and the silver moon."

  "Why, Will." Bessie smiled. "Are you flirting with me?"

  "If I were" — he bit the thread — "I’d be sitting closer to you. Nor would I be at needlework. I'd have a care to hold my hands free, so that they might advance my argument."

  "You're feeling bold today." She studied him for a long, silent moment. "And you've grown, too. Physically, I mean, as well as emotionally."

  "It's all that cold iron, I think. It forced my growth. Only months ago, I would have found the notion of us together unsettling. But now... Well, in any event, it's not going to happen, is it?"

  "No," she said, "it's not." Then, cautiously. "Will, whatever are you up to?"

  He held up the garment, complete at last, for her to admire. "I have become a greenshirtie." All the time he had sewn, he was bare-chested, for he had torn up his dragon sark, charred it, and since used strips of it for tinder as he needed fire. Now he donned its leafy replacement.

  Clad in his fragile new finery, Will said. "How many would follow me, do you think, were I to show them an end to the dragon's reign?"

  "None. As his creature, you are far from beloved. Puck's crucifixion weighs heavy on many a mind."

  "Not even you?"

  "Oh, well." Bessie blushed. "I'd follow you, yes. For what little that's worth. But I'm only me — what could I do?"

  "You could lie." Will looked the truth teller straight in the eye "You can lie." he said, "can't you?"

  Bessie turned pale. "Once," she said in a tiny voice, and reflexively covered her womb with both hands. She looked downward, avoiding his glance. "And the price is high, terribly high."

  He stood. "Then it must be paid. Let us find a shovel now. It is time for a bit of grave robbery."

  It was evening when Will returned at last to the dragon. Tyrant Square had been ringed about with barbed wire and harsh, jury-rigged lights that cast everything in shades of white and gray. A loudspeaker had been set upon a pole with wires leading back into his iron hulk, so that he could speak and be heard in the absence of his lieutenant. Taken together, these improvements made the square look like a concentration camp writ small.

  "Go first," Will said to Hag Applemere. "that he may be reassured I mean him no harm."

  Breasts bare, clad in the robes and wide hat of her profession, Bessie Applemere passed through a barbed-wire gate (a grimpkin guard opened it before her and closed it after her) and entered the black-and-white arena of the square. "Son of Cruelty." She bowed deeply before the dragon. "Your lieutenant has returned to you."

  Will stood hunched in the shadows, head down, hands thrust deep in his pockets. Tonelessly, he said. "I have been broken to your will, great one. I will be your stump-cow, if that is what you want. I beg you. Make me grovel. Make me crawl. Only let me back in."

  Hag Applemere spread her arms and bowed again. "It is true."

  "You may approach." The dragons voice sounded staticky and yet triumphant over the loudspeaker.

  The sour-faced old grimpkin opened the gate for him, as it had earlier been opened for the hag. Slowly, like a maltreated dog returning to the only hand that had ever fed him, Will crossed the cobbled square. He paused before the loudspeaker, briefly touched its pole with one trembling hand, and then shoved that hand back into his pocket. "You have won. Well and truly have you won. Thou art victorious over all my desire." It appalled Will how easily the words came, and how natural they sounded coming from his mouth. He could feel the desire to surrender to the tyrant, accept what punishments he would impose, and sink gratefully back into bondage. A little voice within cried: So easy! So easy! And so it would be, perilously easy indeed. The realization that a part of him devoutly wished for it made Will burn wit
h humiliation.

  The dragon slowly forced one eye half open. "So, boy..." Was it his imagination, or was the dragon's voice less forceful than it had been fourteen days ago? "You have learned what need feels like. You suffer from your desires, even as I do. I... I... am weakened, admittedly, but I am not all so weak as that! You thought to prove that I needed you — you have proven the reverse. Though I have neither wings nor missiles and my electrical reserves are low, though I cannot fire my jets without destroying the village and myself as well, yet am I of the mighty, for I have neither pity nor remorse. Thought you I craved a mere boy? Thought you to make me dance attendance on a soft, unmuscled half-mortal mongrel fey? Pfaugh! I do not need you. Never think that I... that I need you!"

  "Let me in," Will whimpered. "I will do whatever you say."

  "You... you understand that you must be punished for your disobedience?"

  "Yes," Will said. "Punish me, please. Abase and degrade me, I beg you."

  "As you wish" — the dragon's cockpit door hissed open "so it shall be."

  Will took one halting step forward, and then two. Stumblingly, he ran for the open hatchway. One hand closed on the short ladder up the dragon's side. Such an overwhelming sense of relief flooded through his body then that he was sure for an instant that he had returned too soon.

  But then he let go of the ladder and stepped to the side, so that he was faced with the featureless black iron of the dragon's plating. From one pocket he withdrew Sergeant Bombast's name stone. Its small blood-red mate was already in his mouth. There was still grave dirt on the one, and a strange taste to the other, but he did not care. He touched the name-stone to the iron plate, and the dragon's true name flowed effortlessly into his mind.

  Simultaneously, he took the elf shot from his other pocket. Then, with all his strength, he drew the elf-shot down the dragon's iron flank, making a long, bright scratch in the rust.

  "What are you doing?" the dragon cried in alarm. "Stop that! The hatch is open, the couch awaits!" The words bounced from the shuttered buildings on every side, where villagers surely listened, though they dared not speak. Then his voice lowered, tinny and harsh from the loudspeaker, but still seductive. "The needles yearn for your wrists, oh best beloved. Even as I yearn for —"

  "Baalthazar, of the line of Baalmoloch, of the line of Baalshabat," Will shouted, "I command thee to die!"

  And that was that.

  All in an instant and with no fuss whatever, the dragon king was dead. All his might and malice was become nothing more than inert metal, that might be cut up and carted away to be sold to the scrap foundries that served their larger brothers with ingots to be reforged for the War.

  Will hit the side of the dragon with all the might of his fist, to show his disdain. Then he spat as hard and fierce as ever he could, and watched the saliva slide slowly down the black metal. Finally, he unbuttoned his trousers and pissed upon his erstwhile oppressor.

  So it was that he finally accepted that the tyrant was well and truly dead.

  Bessie Applemere hag no more stood silent and bereft on the square behind him. Wordlessly, she mourned her sterile womb and sightless eyes. To her, Will went. He took her hand and led her back to her hut. He opened the door for her. He sat her down upon her bed. "Do you need anything?" he asked. "Water? Some food?"

  She shook her head. "Just go. Leave me to lament our victory in solitude."

  He left, quietly closing the door behind him. There was no place to go now but home. It took him a moment to remember where that was.

  Blind Enna's cottage was at the end of a short lane half overgrown with wild honeysuckle, its scent heavy and sweet on the night air. Enna herself was down on all fours, scrubbing her stoop, when Will came walking up. "Auntie!" he cried. "I've come back!"

  The old lady sprang to her feet, bucket in hand. Stricken, she moved her head slowly from side to side, as if attempting to locate him by smell alone. Those vacant eyes were black smudges in the moonlight, that ancient mouth an open and despairing pit. For an instant she stood thus. Then she dashed the water in her bucket onto the ground at his feet, as she might to drive off a carrion dog.

  Will could have been no more astonished had she sprouted wings and flown away "Why, Auntie!" he said. "Don't you remember me? I'm your nephew Will."

  "Oh. I remember you!" the old hag said. "And what you've done, and the disgrace you've brought on your family. Consorting with dragons! Crucifying your friends! Oh, you wretched, disobedient child! You horrid little shit! You unholy imp! Were you chained at the mouth of Hell, to serve forever as Ereshkigal's mastiff, your sufferings could not suffice to unwrite your guilt!"

  Will stumbled forward, arms outstretched. But, hearing the scuffle of his feet, Blind Enna flung down her bucket and darted inside the house. She was, he realized with a shock, actually afraid of him. "Go away!" she shouted, and made to slam the door.

  Will was there in a stride, however, before she could close it, and his strength was greater than hers. He forced his way inside.

  It was all strangely homely and familiar. Gently lit by hovering witch-fires, the great room in which he had spent so much of his youth spread itself before him, its every detail a tug at his heart. There was his bed, straw tick mattress and all, in the niche above the black stone fireplace, and there by its head the loose stone where he'd hidden away magic rings, bits of colored glass, and suchlike trash when he'd been a child — by which he meant a few short months ago. Here was the rooster-shaped teakettle that, from a defective charm, could neither crow nor whistle. Here the pious etching of a dryad being flayed alive by two of the Seven. There the large wicker basket that had served his imagination as ship and roc and cavern many a time, and the small wicker basket that had been his helmet, cauldron, and treasure cask equally often. Copper cook-pots gleamed upon their hooks. Bundles of oregano, rosemary, and thyme dried on the rafters. There were moths pinned to the lintels of every window and door.

  Blind Enna retreated to her sewing corner and. brandishing her distaff as if it were a weapon, quaveringly said, "Stay away. Don't you dare try to hurt me."

  Suddenly. Will was sick and weary unto death of this confrontation, of this day, of all of life and everything else. He had neither energy nor patience enough to endure any of it one moment longer. "Oh, Enna. Nobody's going to hurt anybody. That's all over and done with." And, so saying, he climbed the side of the fireplace up to his bed.

  He was astonished how small it was. Though it didn't seem possible, he must have grown since last he'd been here.

  When Will awoke, it was almost noon. His aunt had let him sleep late, which was unlike her, and the house was merry with sunshine and dancing dust motes. Blind Enna was nowhere to be seen. She'd left the door wide open, and that was unlike her as well. So Will dressed and washed and made a cold breakfast of bread and jam, washed down with a pint of sour beer, and went out looking for her.

  It was a bright blue day and the dragon was dead. In Tyrant Square, the hammermen, clad in protective gear, were dismantling his corpse. They'd brought in a halfwit giant out of the deep hill country to do the heavy lifting. So all the village should have been joyful.

  It was not.

  The hostility was sharp enough to flense the flesh from his bones. A beldam hanging laundry out her attic window slammed the shutters at the sight of him. A hob rolling a cask of ale down the street would have run the thing right over his feet if Will hadn't danced away. Then, when Will cursed at him, the bastard kept on going, without so much as a glance over his shoulder. It was as if the events of the previous day had never happened at all. Bluebell sprites scowled and flounced away from his tentative smile. The Ice Tongs Man thumbed his nose and shook the reins to make his cart-horse trot. Not a soul in the village had a kindly look for their savior.

  You are summoned.

  Will spun around. There was nobody there.

  Come. The word buzzed in Will's ear. He swatted a hand irritably at the air by his head, though he knew the acti
on to be useless. He recognized Auld Black Agnes's voice. It was a compulsion, then, a command meant for him and him alone, which nobody else could hear. Angrily, he shut it out of his thoughts.

  You cannot disobey.

  "The fuck I can't."

  The street before him beckoned, a gentle downslope guttered with wildflowers and emerald weeds. The way behind felt wrong, difficult, too hot, unpleasant. Hunching his shoulders, Will headed wrongwards.

  Turn back.

  "Fat chance," Will muttered. Leaning forward, as if into an opposing wind, he navigated the streets, going nowhere in particular but everywhere seeking his aunt. Each step was as familiar to him as the breath in his lungs. Here at the edge of town, not far from the trash pit, was the meadow, thronged with horned-god's paintbrush and Queen Mab's lace, where he had caught fire-mites in a jar when he was little. There the alley where he and his mates had cornered a manticore cub and stoned it to death. Down by the cannery was the shady spot where, all unintentionally, he had seen a russalka undressing through her second-floor window before black and leathery hands had drawn her down out of sight. All of his young life was imprinted upon the circuitry of the village streets.

  Everywhere he went, he was shunned. It was as if nothing had changed. As if the dragon still rode him.

  As in a sense it did.

  He could not pretend the dragon had never been inside him. He could not muffle the experience. He saw the world now as the dragon had, without illusions. He saw it as it really was. The brewer who watered his beer, the tavern keeper who needled it with ether, and the barfly who drank down the lees of any glass of it left unfinished, were all natural denizens of this place. As were the cobbler who beat his wife, the knocker who solaced her, and the dame verte who lived in the woods and for a price would give the cobbler and whoever else wanted it, what his wife no longer would. To say nothing of the greenshirties, the neighbors and families who'd betrayed them, and he himself who'd persecuted them.