The Whim of the Dragon

by PAMELA DEAN

  “Well, if they tell him his sister killed them, maybe he’ll think again about whatever plots he has with her.”

  Randolph looked thoughtful. “Aye. Our word would not suffice. He and Claudia are very fond.”

  “How the hell can they be very fond when she’s the most powerful sorcerer in the entire place and he doesn’t even believe—oh, never mind,” said Ted. “I don’t want to know. All right, let him find out the hard way.”

  “What troubleth thee else?”

  “Ruth,” said Ted. “Why did she smile like that? Did Lady Ruth ever smile like that?”

  “I never saw her so,” said Randolph.

  “Do you know anything about this contriving of Melanie’s, this stuff in the back of the head?”

  “How should I?” said Randolph. “When in all our history have we had strangers that are the doubles of our dead to walk among us?”

  “I’ll talk to Ruth, then; I want to know what she thinks happened.”

  There was a meditative and uncomfortable pause.

  “Well,” said Ted, “now you know what all I’m worrying about. What are you worrying about?”

  “We’ve heard naught from Fence,” said Randolph, at once.

  “Could our message have gone astray? Should we send it again?”

  “There’s little harm in the trying,” said Randolph.

  They sat on amid the cold rocks. The nearby singing broke up in laughter. Somewhere in the distances of Ted’s mind, Edward said, I will friend you, if I may, in the dark and cloudy day. The singing began again.

  “Don’t call us,” said Ted, a little wildly, “we’ll call you.”

  “What’s that?” said Randolph.

  “Edward just offered to friend me in the dark and cloudy day.”

  “I knew not he spoke to thee as well as in thee.”

  “Well, that’s a recent development. And, having watched Ruthie’s face this evening, I don’t think I like it.”

  Randolph pushed his hood back and looked at Ted for a moment. His pale face was all angles in the moonlight, and the curling black hair stuck to his forehead as it would stick to Ruth’s or Ellen’s. His eyes were shadowed. He said, “Spoke Edward thus? ‘I will friend you, if I may, in the dark and cloudy day’?”

  “Yes, exactly,” said Ted, rather unsettled.

  “That’s from a song,” said Randolph. “Canst tell Edward from the other voices in thy mind?”

  “I never had any voices in my mind until I came to this mad country!” said Ted.

  “Thou canst not, then?”

  “No,” said Ted, ashamed of his irritation. “I thought it was all Edward. What else could it be?”

  “When we come to Gray Lake,” said Randolph, “I will know.”

  “And when thou knowest, oh counselor, wilt thou tell me?”

  “Of a certainty,” said Randolph; and in his voice was something Ted found very comforting, and something he found fearful. Neither of them said anything more.

  CHAPTER 20

  ON the northern party’s third day of travel, they descended into Fence’s Country. Laura squinted at the trees, the smooth, sharp green of the pines, the violent red of the fire-maples, the deeper red and sullen brown of the oaks, the paleness of birch branches from which the yellow leaves hung like coins. Princess Laura had been here once. They went down and up and down again, for three hours, leading the horses, and then struck a road. It was narrow, its cracked slabs of stone wedged in lopsidedly between the hills and the river. They were able to ride again, which was a mixed blessing. In another hour the road brought them to a town.

  Laura was astonished. She had never in all the Secret Country seen a town. This one had a grim-looking wall around it on three sides; on the fourth was the river. The hills above the wall were striped with stubble fields and tidy rows of grotesque apple trees. The wall had a gatehouse with a tower. The town was three streets wide and four long, with two wooden piers and small boats moored to them. Its houses were of stone, some with thatched roofs, some with slate. Laura could see a man working in a bed of dark red flowers; and two children throwing a stick for a dog; and a cat sitting atop one of the crenellations of the gatehouse, washing its foot.

  “What’s that?” said Ellen.

  “Feren,” said Fence.

  They rode up the road toward the gate. Fence stopped them about ten feet away from it, rummaging in his belt-pouch. While they waited, the heavy door of the gatehouse creaked its way up, and a man ran out. He wore a brown tunic and breeches and a red cape. He had brown hair, and a brown beard, and very large blue eyes. To Laura’s relief, he did not remind her of anyone.

  “Milord Fence!” he called. “What’s amiss? Hath—” He stopped, staring not at any of the party, but at their horses. “Who are you?”

  “Your lord Fence,” said Fence, and held out the ring he had taken from his pouch. It was of twisted silver, with a blue stone that, just at the moment, glowed faintly. The sun had disappeared behind the trees, and the ring in Fence’s grimy hand looked like the first star of evening wandered from its appointed rounds.

  The man in the road must have thought it looked like something else. His face was sick. “We have your horses within,” he said. “You took the boats and rowed upriver two hours since.”

  “And had I this ring then?” said Fence.

  “Milord, you did not. Your—their answers came so pat; they knew my name, they knew of your letters.”

  “And,” said Celia, “there was a kind of glamour on them that so pleased you, you considered not, but obeyed them.”

  The man’s face relaxed, as if he recognized in Celia somebody who could put matters right. “You know our weakness,” he said.

  Celia smiled. “Everyone born in this country were well advised to spend a century outside it. Exile sharpeneth the eyes.”

  “And the wits,” said the man in the road, as if he were capping a quotation. He looked back at Fence. “Milord, I am sorry for our carelessness. I think your foes are very great. Will you take their horses?”

  “I’ll take my boats,” said Fence.

  “You’ll take your money, an it please you,” said the man; “but the boats are taken already.”

  Fence pressed one palm to his forehead and let his breath out. “Matthew?” he said. “Celia?”

  “I think we must ride,” said Matthew.

  “The road’s good,” said the man. “’Twill take you halfway to the house of Belaparthalion.”

  “Have you lodging for the night,” said Fence, “or is that taken also?”

  “That we have,” said the man.

  “Deliver it, then,” said Fence.

  “Is there time for this?” said Matthew.

  “The horses need rest, if we do not,” said Fence.

  Matthew smiled. “Take the horses of those that removed our boats.”

  “Take them by all means,” said the man in the road. “We have little enough fodder for our own beasts; and though we’re well paid to house these, neither we nor they can eat silver.”

  “Celia?” said Fence.

  “I don’t advise it,” said Celia. “They’re too like to turn to sticks and land us in the river; or worse, drown all our victuals there.”

  “We could send our message, if we’re somewhere Laura’s fingers can thaw out,” said Ellen.

  Laura’s fingers were not so much cold as sore and swollen, but she supposed they would perform better in a heated room.

  Matthew looked at his wife; she raised her eyebrows; Matthew sighed heavily and turned to Fence. “Know you this man?” he said, gesturing at the man in the road, who stood comfortably with the air of somebody watching a medium-good magic show.

  “As well as he knoweth me.”

  “Which is to say, not well enough?”

  If anybody had spoken about Laura in that tone of voice, she would have been indignant, whether she understood what was being said or not. The man in the road looked resigned. Fence said to him, “Will you,
of your courtesy, bring the horses to us here?”

  “An you take them away, aye.”

  “Until I see them, I know not or I shall or I shall not take them.”

  “Why are you so eager to get rid of them?” said Patrick to the man in the road.

  Laura thought this was a shrewd question. The man in the road said, “As I did say, we have not their maintenance.”

  “Why’d you take them, then?” said Patrick.

  “For that they did, we thought, belong to your party, toward whom we have some obligation.”

  Fence said, “An we take them not, I’ll leave you a letter wherewith you may have from High Castle the fodder to maintain those beasts the winter.”

  The man moved his thoughtful blue gaze from Matthew’s irate countenance to Celia’s judicious face, past Patrick’s considering expression and Ellen’s delighted grin. He glanced briefly at Laura, who tried to look alert but feared it had come out startled. Finally, last of all, he looked at Fence. Fence quirked the corner of his mouth.

  “I’ll bring them,” said the man, turned smartly, and went back through the gate.

  “All right, quickly,” said Patrick. “What is going on here?”

  “I sent letters,” said Fence, “asking for the hire of three boats. A party in our likeness hath come before us and taken the boats, leaving behind their horses, which belike are no horses at all.”

  “And do you think you know who this party was?”

  “I know what they were,” said Fence.

  “Shape-changers,” said Ellen. “Since they came in our likeness, you know,” she added to Laura.

  “Does that mean the Dragon King sent them?” said Patrick.

  Laura didn’t want to think about it. Apparently Fence didn’t either; he got down off his horse and handed his reins to Celia. Matthew did the same. Laura wondered what Celia could be expected to do if one of the four horses she was suddenly in charge of took fright or felt perverse. But the horses just nosed about the road and bit off the grass in its cracks, seeming far more disposed to go to sleep than to cause trouble. Perhaps Celia had been taking lessons from Benjamin.

  The man in brown and two children in yellow came back out of the gate, leading three nondescript brown horses. One had a white blotch on its nose and another had three white stockings. They looked as bored as the Secret Country horses. But the Secret Country horses suddenly flared their nostrils and put their ears back and showed the whites of their eyes. Laura felt the one she and Patrick were sitting on jump and tremble. Celia said something in some language Laura didn’t recognize, and the horses stood still; but they kept their ears back and looked distinctly uneasy.

  “No closer,” said Fence.

  The three leading the strange horses stopped where they were. Fence and Matthew came forward, cautiously. Fence said, in an extremely prosaic voice, “They’ll shape me in your arms, Janet, / A dove, and but a swan: / And last they’ll shape me in your arms / A mother-naked man. Cast your green mantle over me, / I’ll be mysel’ again. Wherefore,” said Fence, much more vigorously, “thy mantle, Ellen.”

  Ellen stood up in her stirrups, pulled off her green woolen cloak, and flung it at Fence, who caught it neatly and in his turn hurled it at the three horses. It billowed hugely, like a queen-sized bedsheet being snapped open, and settled over all three horses and one of the little girls. There was a tremendous commotion from under the green folds, and a certain amount of heaving and stamping. The man in brown backed hastily off the road, climbed the slope until he came to an evergreen with branches like the rungs of a ladder, climbed that too, and appeared to settle in to watch the fun. Laura wanted to emulate him, but Patrick was holding the miserable horse firmly where it was, and she would attract attention if she got off.

  The heaving mantle slumped suddenly to the road, to the accompaniment of a huge blast of hot air and a pelting of dust. Laura and Patrick both sneezed; Ellen coughed; the grown-ups just put their hands over their eyes.

  When the dust had settled, Ellen’s half-sized green cloak lay meekly in the middle of the road. The man in brown sat in the tree and laughed. One child crouched in the ditch, gaping.

  “Wow,” said Patrick. Laura couldn’t remember ever having heard him say that. Patrick did not like to appear impressed.

  “Wherefore laugh you?” shouted Matthew to the man in the tree.

  “I feared they were monsters,” gasped the man; Laura realized that he was not so much amused as hysterical. “I thought them poisonous, direful, dangerous; and what were they but a puff of air and a screeching as of cats?”

  “What were they but concerned elsewhere?” said Fence, grimly. He walked forward, picked up Ellen’s cloak, and shook it briefly. The child in the ditch sneezed. “So, thou’rt real enough,” said Fence. Laura deduced from this that shape-shifters didn’t sneeze, and that Ellen’s mantle had known which creatures were shape-shifters.

  Fence helped her back onto the road. She backed away from him and ran, which Laura thought ungrateful.

  “What about the other kid?” said Ellen.

  “An she’s gone, she’s one of them,” said Fence. He surveyed his party. “Celia,” he said, “I do commend thy stubbornness. I think we must stay the night.”

  In the little town, they were given a square room, about ten feet by ten, with a stone floor and a fireplace, and tapestries on the walls. The tapestries had largely to do with quarrying rock and building castles. Nobody seeming inclined to trust the food offered by the denizens of the town, they ate their usual rations, except that Celia crumbled up the oatcake in boiling water and made porridge. It was hot, and as far as Laura was concerned, that was all you could say for it.

  After this vexing meal, Laura and Ellen sat on a pile of all their bedclothes, looking dismally through one of Patrick’s physics books and trying to find something to laugh at. Ellen rather liked “mean acceleration,” but Laura was not finding anything very funny. Mean acceleration just sounded like what a horse did when it wanted you to fall off. They had a branch of candles to read by; its light was bright but rather wavery. Patrick had the fire, and was, infuriatingly, reading the only piece of fiction he had brought along.

  Matthew and Celia were sitting on two more wooden stools, holding hands, their heads leaning against one of the quarry tapestries and their eyes shut. Fence had spread a battered map the size of a game of Twister out on the floor, and was kneeling in the middle of it, scowling.

  “Fence,” said Matthew, “Heathwill will furnish us a newer map.”

  “The man of Feren,” said Fence, “did say the road ran halfway to the House of Belaparthalion.”

  Laura looked up from an uninspiring picture of two wooden carts with roller-skate wheels being smashed together to demonstrate the conservation of momentum, straight into the firelit swirls of Fence’s robe. She saw Claudia and three black cats standing in tree-dappled sunshine on the bank of a stream. The cats were fishing; Claudia appeared to be making sarcastic remarks, which they ignored. She was still wearing the red checked dress in which she had greeted Ted and Laura on their return to Illinois. It was limp. Claudia looked different. She was still elegant, as she leaned against a rowan tree and laughed at her cats. She was one of those people of whom Laura’s mother said that they had elegant bones. But the conscious grace she had displayed even walking in the damp woods gathering herbs was missing. She was somehow more likeable and less alarming than Laura had seen her. She cocked an eye at the wet-footed cats, shook her head, sat down on a convenient rock, and picked a white crocus the size of a tulip.

  Laura leaned forward to see better, and found herself staring at a mud-smeared nebula on Fence’s gown. She rubbed her eyes. Claudia was where they had been the night before. Why should she be following them on foot, with three cats?

  “Laura Kimberly Carroll,” said Ellen, glancing up from the physics book and fixing her with a look as stern as any of Agatha’s, “what is the matter with you?”

  Laura shrugged. />
  “Fence,” said Ellen. “She’s seen something.”

  “Seen what?” said Fence, to Laura.

  It was no trouble to tell her visions once she was cornered. She obliged. This one was not very dramatic, except for Claudia’s location. Her attempt to describe in what way Claudia seemed likeable was not a success. Ellen and Patrick stared at her, and Celia made a very sharp remark, for Celia, about people who killed children but cherished cats.

  “You never should have called that cardinal, Ellie,” said Patrick, laying his pen down. “I bet that’s how she found out where we were.”

  “But how could she get there so fast?” said Ellen. “I think she was following us all along.”

  “With three cats?” said Laura. “Cats that fish?”

  “Well,” said Matthew, who still had not opened his eyes, “if travel one must with cats in the wilderness, let them by all means be cats that fish.”

  “I wish we knew more about her powers,” said Patrick.

  “Her greatest deeds meseemeth are performed with the aid of the windows in her house,” said Fence. “She hath none now.”

  “She can escape the spell of Shan’s Ring,” said Ellen.

  “Or,” said Patrick, rather smugly, “the spell of Shan’s Ring has a limit to it.”

  “She knows what I taught her, and what Meredith taught her,” said Fence. “That sufficeth to follow us, but not to catch us.”

  “Let’s go in the morning early, all the same,” said Matthew.

  “Wherefore,” said Celia, “let us to bed now.”

  “Celia,” said Laura, with a silent apology to her sore hands, “shouldn’t we try to send the message about Belaparthalion?”

  Celia got up, came across the room less briskly than usual, and examined Laura’s hands. “Well,” she said, “an it be short, and we have the horse-salve for it after.”

  “That stuff smells awful,” said Ellen. “I have to sleep with her.”

  “Canst thou play the flute?”

  “You know I can’t.”

  “Well, then,” said Celia.

  Laura dug the flute’s case out of her bedding and took out the mouthpiece. It hurt her hands with a cold throb, not so much on the surface as in the bones. She dropped it onto the physics book. Celia touched it with the tip of her finger, let her breath out softly, and, picking up the mouthpiece in one hand and the next piece in the other, began fitting the flute together.