The Whim of the Dragon

by PAMELA DEAN

  “This lamp casts a lot of light,” said Ted.

  “’Twill cast less below,” said Randolph. “Only honest light’s allowed below, and this flame’s someways tainted with sorcery.”

  Ted wondered at his choice of words; was he baiting Andrew?

  Randolph went down the ladder one-handed, carrying the lamp. Then he stood at the bottom, out of the way, and held the light for the rest of them. The metal bars were so cold that Ted expected his hands to stick to them. It was colder at the bottom of the shaft than in the cellar.

  Ted began to fasten, absently, the brooch of his cloak, watching Ruth’s nimble progress down the ladder and worrying a little about Andrew’s intent eyes on her downbent head. Then some warmth, some slight tingling, in his cold hands made him look at the brooch. It was of twisted silver, set with a blue stone. He had taken it from Shan’s robe of state, in the West Tower, on that day in August when he and Randolph chose their costumes for the feast at which the King died. He tried to remember, of all the times he had fastened and unfastened this cloak in the course of their journey, one in which he had noticed the brooch. He couldn’t. He finished fastening it, and said nothing.

  “What passage?” said Andrew, arriving last.

  Lo! said Edward, richly and pleasurably. Death hath reared himself a throne / In a strange city, lying alone / Far down among the dim West, / Where the good and the bad and the worst and the best / Have gone to their eternal rest.

  And, “West,” said Randolph, “but westward, look, the land is bright.”

  The western passage was perhaps seven feet high, and seven feet wide, clean, cold, and empty. The wavering light of the cat-lantern made and then spurned behind it twisty shadows that proved, when walked through, to hold only air. Little echoes ran away from their footsteps. Ted felt no urge to yell something and hear its echo come back to him. There was nothing here to dislike, and yet he did not like it here. After fifteen minutes or so, Ruth, who had been ranging among the company like somebody looking for a dropped pin, fell into step with him and put a cold hand in his.

  “This place mislikes me,” she said.

  “You too? I thought I felt so creepy because I’ve been there before.”

  “Don’t turn around,” said Ruth, “but Andrew’s got a look on his face as if he’s being followed by a hoofed fiend.”

  This seemed to wake up Edward. “‘He can sleep while the commonwealth crumbles,’ ” repeated Ted, hazily, “ ‘but a strange sound in the pantry at three in the morning will strike terror into his stomach.’ ”

  Ruth exploded into giggles, then stopped suddenly and said, “Why are you quoting Thurber?”

  Ted said, “Edward was.”

  “I don’t know why that should be any more mysterious than Edward quoting Shakespeare,” said Ruth, “but it seems so.”

  “I know,” said Ted.

  “Ted? Was it really bad down there?”

  “It’s a fine place to visit,” said Ted, seized by a desire to laugh, “but I wouldn’t want to live there.”

  Ruth squeezed his hand. “You must have a pulse of a hundred and fifty,” she said. “Your hand’s all sweaty.”

  “You can go hold Randolph’s hand if you’d rather,” said Ted, irritated. “What does he look like he thinks is following him?”

  Ruth didn’t let go; nor did she seem angry. “He doesn’t look like he thinks anything is following him,” she said. “He looks as pleased as punch.”

  “I was afraid of that,” said Ted.

  “And I wouldn’t hold Randolph’s hand for a wager,” said Ruth.

  Something in her tone made Ted wary of questioning her. They walked on. The passageway sloped downward. After a while a breeze began blowing up it. The lantern Randolph carried dimmed and wavered. The passage turned a sharp corner, and another, and another. Then a square of dim gray light made itself known ahead of them. They stepped through it, out onto a glimmering, featureless plain, under a dull, gray, misty sky.

  It was subtly different from the place in which Ted had found himself after he was killed in the battle. After a little thought, he realized why. He had not been, really, in the land of the dead. He had been on its borders. They had refused to let him cross the river, because he was neither dead nor alive, but being bargained for. Why he and his companions, who were unequivocally alive, had been allowed this time into the very midst of this realm, he had no idea. But they were in it, and probably in for it, now.

  “Well,” said Andrew, “call your ghosts.”

  Ted stared at him. They had forgotten the blood. The ghosts would talk to you if you gave them blood to drink. “Living man,” they had said to him, “hast thou brought blood?” Edward had talked to him without it, but Edward had recognized himself. Shan and whoever else Randolph might want to talk to would probably not be so accommodating.

  The lantern went out. Randolph set it on the ground and put a hand on his belt. Ted, in the wake of a horrible suspicion, leapt wildly at Randolph and grabbed his arm with both hands. “Oh, no, you don’t,” he said.

  Randolph looked at him without surprise. “It needs but a little,” he said. “Do it thyself, if thou wilt.” And as Ted’s nerveless hands fell from his arm, he pulled the dagger out of his belt and offered it.

  Everybody else was staring. Ted felt profoundly stupid, but he did not quite regret his action. Randolph wanted to die, and his moods had been erratic. Ted took the dagger. Its hilt was silver, with blue stones in it. Ted wondered if Randolph was still allowed to use it. Fence had not required it of him when he took Randolph’s ring of sorcery away; and it did not make Ted’s hand prickle as an enchanted weapon would.

  Randolph was holding out his hand to Ted. Ted took a firm hold of his chilly wrist, drew a deep breath, and made a small cut on the side of Randolph’s hand, where it should give the least trouble. A thin black line of blood sprang up. Randolph took the knife back, squeezed the blood onto its blade, knelt, and drove the knife up to its hilt in the gray stuff of the ground.

  “We call,” he said, “by Chryse’s blood and the mercy granted to Shan, the smilers with the knife under the cloak, the gracious presences of the Lords of the Dead.”

  Then he stood and waited. Nothing happened.

  “This entertainment’s someways lacking,” said Andrew, after perhaps fifteen minutes. He grinned at Ted. “I’m for a jig, or a tale of bawdry, or I sleep. I’ll go sit on the wholesome stone; do you call me when your prompt arriveth.” And he turned his back on them, walked over to the little square stone house they had emerged from, and disappeared inside.

  Something in the air of the place, thought Ted, squelched the desire for action. Just standing and waiting was a wearisome task. He went on doing it. Nobody spoke. Then the character of the plain they stood on changed. It might have been a field of white flowers under the moon. Somebody was walking toward them, a short, slight figure. He came closer, a young man with dark hair and decided eyebrows, with a cat on his shoulder. He wore a robe like those worn in High Castle, like Apsinthion’s. It might have been red.

  The young man came to within two feet of Randolph, and said, “Who calleth Shan?” He had a light, very pleasant voice, a voice you would like to hear reading to you at bedtime when you were very young. But now we are six, said Edward.

  “Randolph,” said Randolph, “King’s Counselor of the Hidden Land.”

  “You are welcome,” said Shan, gravely. “Take back my greetings to the world of light. How may I serve you?”

  “Act as our ambassador to the Lords of the Dead,” said Randolph. “They answer not, and our errand is most urgent.”

  “I will essay it,” said Shan. He cocked his head, and his inquisitive eyes moved from one to another of them, and finally returned to Randolph, at whom he looked steadily for a very long time. Randolph returned the look, with no particular expression; but Ted, behind him, saw how his hands clenched in the folds of his cloak.

  “What’s amiss?” said Shan at last, in the frie
ndly and resigned tones of a parent or a cousin.

  “Naught that death can’t mend,” said Randolph, tranquilly.

  “Randolph,” said Ted, stepping forward.

  Shan looked at him; and stared; and put out a hand. Ted felt it on his arm, very lightly, like the brushing by one’s legs of a cat that has other business. “Edward Fairchild,” said Shan. “How art thou translated?”

  “Edward Fairchild’s dead,” said Ted. “I come from elsewhere; and I came,” he added, “by your sword.”

  Shan’s whole face lit up in a flash of delight so intense that Ted found himself smiling back. “That,” said Shan, “is news I have waited long to hear. Soft you now,” he said, apparently to himself, and stopped smiling. “How came Edward Fairchild dead?”

  Faith, e’en with losing his life, said Edward.

  Shan’s head jerked upward and his hand fell from Ted’s arm. The cat jumped from his shoulder and stalked away into the misty distance. “Leave thy unicornish games and speak to me,” Shan said.

  Then he stood waiting. His face was remote and a little worried. Ted considered his flesh-and-blood companions. Randolph was looking at Shan as if he were the answer to a prayer. Ruth was looking at Randolph as if he were crazy.

  After some indeterminate time, the shape of the cat returned across the flowery field, followed not by one figure but by five. Edward Fairchild, in an unlaced white shirt and hose and soft boots, a velvet cap on his head and on his face a kind of eager scorn, walked up to Shan, swept off the hat, and bowed. He was taller than Shan, and taller still than Ted. Behind him the dimmer forms of Lady Ruth, of Prince Patrick and the Princesses Laura and Ellen, stood silent, the sourceless light gleaming in their eyes. Ted heard Ruth draw her breath in.

  Shan did not return Edward’s bow. He said, “How came you here?”

  “Ask thy lady,” said Edward.

  “Oh, Lord,” said Ruth.

  Lady Ruth said, “What distorting mirror is this?”

  “Be quiet,” said Shan, without heat. “Edward: what power hath the Hidden Land over the Lords of Death?”

  “That the mercy granted to Shan did leave that land at the mercy of Melanie,” said Edward, with an astonishing bitterness. He sounded as if he were reciting a rote answer that had suddenly taken on meaning, and that meaning was not a welcome revelation but a disaster.

  “And what mercy did she show to thee?”

  “As much as she did show to you,” said Edward, more calmly.

  “What wouldst thou have then from the Lords of Death?”

  “That they bestow the same mercy upon Melanie as she did bestow upon us,” Edward rattled off, and flung his cap to the ground. “My lord, this is folly. Death is no mercy, nor is the death of our murderer a boon to us. We died almost before we lived. What will it avail us to bring Melanie to cheer our exile? The boon I beg from the Lords of Death is our lives again, in their full measure.”

  “Edward,” said Ted, “you told me to avenge your foul and most unnatural murder.”

  Edward wheeled on him. This was not the diffident, stuffy prince Ted remembered from their last meeting. Edward said, “I was but half awake when I told thee that; and what else hadst thou power to do?” He turned back to Shan. “The Lords of Death are very great in power; and by their debt to all my country, Shan the Red, I do demand this recompense. Let them sate their greed on Melanie; she’s lived more years than I and all my cousins can come close to. But send us home again.”

  “Wait,” said Ted. He pressed both hands to his head, where the blood was pounding like drumbeats. “Wait. You told me Claudia killed you.”

  “Verily, in that guise were we slain.”

  Ted was speechless. Ruth came up beside him and said carefully, “The Melanie? Who helped kill the unicorn?”

  “She is that.”

  “Angels and ministers of grace defend us,” said Ruth.

  Ted looked at her. Claudia’s being Melanie would explain a lot; but the explanations would be worse than the mysteries. “Amen,” said Ted.

  “How?” said Randolph to Edward. He had no expression at all, and there was very little breath behind his voice.

  “She’s of the blood of the unicorn,” said Edward, rather impatiently.

  Shan said, “She hath a blithe spirit, when she doth choose to set it free. And in her time she’s learned every trick, great or trifling.”

  Ted remembered that Shan had loved Melanie too. He was answering the question Randolph had really asked. Ted watched this realization come more tardily to Randolph, who looked blankly at Shan and then nodded.

  “Thou canst not flee her beneath the earth,” said Shan.

  Around them rose a thin murmuring, like the wind in a grove of willows. Ted looked up. The whole gray plain, which had seemed like a field of white flowers when Shan walked across it, was thronged with ghosts. Looking at them, he realized how solid by comparison Shan and Edward had become. Very distantly, a voice that was not Edward’s said, and what i want to know is / how do you like your blueeyed boy / Mister Death?

  “Melanie, the architect of all our woes,” said Randolph, as if Shan had said nothing at all. “Well, ’tis tidier so. But heavens, what a web of deception must we now unravel.”

  “Andrew thinks she’s his sister,” said Ruth, suddenly. She flung her cloak about her with a determined motion and marched off to the little stone house. She returned very shortly with Andrew, talking vigorously and keeping a wary eye on him, like somebody shut in a room with a bat. Andrew wore a weary, resigned look under which some wilder emotion was struggling to make itself known. Ted felt rather like that himself.

  “Shan,” said Ted, “where are the Lords of Death?”

  “They came not,” said Shan, perplexed.

  “Call them louder, then,” said Andrew, in a cracked voice.

  Shan turned and looked at him with an expression that froze Ted where he stood, although it was not aimed at him. Andrew stared back as if he were looking at a very badly painted picture. Shan’s face cleared suddenly, and he said, “What’s amiss here?”

  “Leave thy damnable doctorings and call thy masters,” said Edward. Shan swung on him as if he would have liked to knock him down; but Edward had forgotten him. He was gaping at Andrew; and then his anger seemed to clear away and he said, “My Lord Andrew of the limpid thoughts. What do you in this cloudy place? Edward Carroll, this is very ill done.”

  “Very ill done indeed,” said Andrew, “if you must be your own commentary.” He looked shaken just the same, and stood staring from Ted to Edward and back again.

  “Shan,” said Ted, “please call your masters.”

  “Those are not my masters,” said Shan, his face shadowed again by a lighter version of the look he had turned on Edward.

  “All right, I’m sorry. I’m a stranger. We have got to speak to the Lords of the Dead. This is getting out of hand.”

  “Your presence alone should draw them,” said Shan. “Forgive me; I’ll return.” He disappeared into the crowd of ghosts.

  Ted’s gaze, following him and trying to distinguish his wake through the crowd, stuck suddenly on a very tall figure moving purposefully toward them, out of the drifting mass of figures. It was King William.

  Ted took two steps and closed his hand hard around Randolph’s arm. “Brace yourself,” he said, and pointed.

  Randolph looked along his extended arm, and Ted felt him shiver. Then he smiled, which was even worse.

  “Don’t do anything stupid!” said Ted.

  “That advice cometh too late,” said Randolph; but he neither shook off Ted’s hand nor advanced to meet the King.

  He did not need to. The King was coming to him. In his lined face were purpose and knowledge and recognition; but no anger, and no accusation. Maybe he didn’t know.

  The ghosts of the royal children sank suddenly to their knees. Andrew, his face like a mask, knelt too. Randolph stood where he was; Ted, feeling obscurely that while he had hold of Randolph he had s
ome small control over the situation, stayed standing too. Ruth came up on Ted’s other side and said, very softly, “Why is Andrew kneeling for a bad play?”

  King William stopped a foot away from Randolph and said in his firm, carrying voice, “How fared the battle with the Dragon King?”

  “My lord, we have won it,” said Randolph. His voice was steady, but not very strong.

  “Using what strategies?” said the King.

  “My lord, those in King John’s Book.”

  “Thou hast done well, then,” said the King; and he put his ringed hands on Randolph’s shoulders and kissed him.

  Randolph’s arm under Ted’s was like wood. Ted was the one who was shivering. The King was within six inches of him; the trailing sleeve of the King’s gown brushed Ted’s hair. And yet Ted had no feeling of any living presence; no warmth, no breath, hardly even the differences in the feel of the air that one has from a chair or a wardrobe. But the figure of the King filled his vision and the King’s voice lingered in his hearing.

  The King stood back from Randolph, still holding him by the shoulders, and said, much more quietly, “By the oath you swore me, dear friend, I do abjure you now—hold your tongue.”

  “I thought all for the best,” said Randolph, as if he were in the middle of some other conversation altogether.

  “I know it,” said the King. “I tell thee again, Randolph, hold thy tongue. Take thy doom from the mouth of thy victim: guide my son, and confess not this deed.” He said in his original tones, “Where’s Fence?”

  “Gone north, my lord, to beg with Chryse and Belaparthalion that they will impose some order on the Dragon King.”

  “Edward,” said the King, turning his hollow eyes on Ted.

  “Here, Father,” said Edward from behind the King.

  The King turned; Ted saw his straight, broad back grow rigid. When he spoke he woke echoes, in this place that should be capable of none, and stilled the murmuring dead. “What makest thou here below the earth?”

  “Oh, God,” said Ruth.