The Whim of the Dragon

by PAMELA DEAN

  “What is their fashion?” said Fence.

  “Little one,” said the man, in a clam voice infinitely worse than any angry tone could have been, “my patience hath an end.”

  “The swords are small,” said the dark woman, laying her hand on the man’s arm. He went on looking at her, as if the sight of Fence would be too much for him, all the time she was talking. She said, “Small, as for a Dwarf, or a child. Their hilts are black, and set with stones, Shan’s with blue, Melanie’s with green. Their blades from time to time do glow, with the colors of their several stones. They send a kind of tingling into the hand that toucheth them. Now, Fence, give us answer.”

  “I have a milliard such,” said Fence. “How shall I tell the sword of Melanie from any that gloweth green?”

  “Have you,” said the tall man, still looking at his companion, “the swords of Shan and Melanie?”

  “It may be so,” said Fence. “You have not told me sufficient that I may mark them.”

  “They’ll take you, an you carry them aright,” said the dark woman, “almost as far as I’d send you, an I could.”

  “Have you,” said the tall man, turning his cold yellow eyes on Fence again, and speaking in a deadly monotone, “the swords of Shan and Melanie?”

  And Fence said, “Yes.”

  “Third time pays for all,” said Patrick.

  “We do require,” said the tall man, “that you deliver them to us.”

  “By what right?” said Fence.

  “None,” said the dark woman, crisply. The tall man turned and glared at her. She said to Fence, “’Twill serve if you but promise to employ them no more.”

  “I do so promise,” said Fence, without hesitation. He did not even glance at Ellen or Patrick or Laura, whom he had just condemned to the vagaries of Apsinthion.

  “For your little lifetime,” said the tall man. “A catnap; the space of a snore. What’s that to us?”

  “All you may have from so paltry a creature as I am,” said Fence, looking right back at him. His hands were gripped hard on the carved arms of the chair and his jaw was rigid, but he sustained the look of the tall man, and it was the tall man who suddenly jerked his head around and said to Michaelmas, “Choose thy guests better.”

  Whereupon he and the dark woman got up and went out, closing the door behind them with a solid and unfriendly thud.

  “Could I choose my guests at all, I know whom I’d un-choose first,” said Michaelmas. He wiped his sleeve over his forehead. “Fence, you harrow me with fear and wonder.”

  “They are not in agreement,” said Fence. “Had they been so, I do assure you, I had trod far softlier.” He stood up, carefully. Laura suspected him of having shaky legs, but he spoke steadily enough. “Now,” he said. “Let’s find Matthew, and the true Prospero, and ask our riddles, and get us gone.”

  “You’re better here,” said Michaelmas. “Outwith these precincts they are bound by no oath.”

  “Can we but travel quickly, they’ll have Chryse and Belaparthalion to deal with,” said Fence. “’Twere a very great pleasure, Michaelmas, but no profit at all, to bide here.”

  “No pleasure, either, with the pair of them huggermuggering about,” said Michaelmas.

  Fence, who had turned for the door, looked around. “Which of them were those?” he said.

  “Nay, I know not. Chalcedony?”

  “They’re strange to me,” said Chalcedony. “Do you think, Michaelmas, that they may be some species other than the usual? There was something in their eyes; and the cruelty that took your daughter’s form is of a different brand than what we’re used to.”

  Laura wondered who Michaelmas’s daughter was, and what had happened to her.

  Michaelmas rubbed his forehead again, scowling at the drifts of paper on his desk. “I’d thought we had seen them all.”

  “I know,” said Chalcedony. “But this troubleth me.”

  “Well,” said Fence, “let’s to Prospero’s chamber, an you will.”

  Chalcedony and Michaelmas both came, leading the rest of them down the bright-lit hall and the narrow, winding stair and along yet another hall to a closed door. Michaelmas knocked at it. Nobody answered. Michaelmas rattled the handle, and then stood aside for Chalcedony, who took a key from her bunch and unlocked the door.

  Prospero’s room was the same size as Michaelmas’s, but sparser in its furnishings. He had a bed, a table, a chair, a wardrobe, and many shelves crammed, but neatly, with books. If there was a bed in Michaelmas’s room, thought Laura, it was well buried. Prospero’s room was empty, though all its lights blazed and on the table were a half-written sheet and an uncapped bottle of ink. From the smooth bed a white cat blinked at them.

  “Where would Matthew seek him next?” said Fence to Michaelmas.

  Michaelmas looked helpless; Chalcedony said, “The Index Room; and then in the Special Collection. I’ll go seek them; you stay here should they return.”

  She jingled off down the hallway. Michaelmas walked into the room, and after a moment of hesitation the rest of them followed him. There wasn’t really anywhere to sit, and none of them, it appeared, felt comfortable wandering around looking at the books and other possessions of someone who had not invited them. Laura looked at the cat; that was not an invasion of privacy. The cat was large and clean, like the room, and well brushed. It wore a green collar with gems in it. Laura walked across the room, and the cat lifted its head.

  Gold light flashed off the stones in the collar, and ran like water over rock, and dimmed and dulled until she saw a small bare room lit with cloudy light from one round window. A young man in a red robe sat on the floor, leaning forward over his crossed legs to write on a large sheet of waxy paper. He looked uncomfortable, but his voice when he spoke was pleased. He said, “Never go down to the end of town if you don’t go down with me.” Something tapped at the window; Laura looked at it, and saw a flash of red.

  Ellen shook her arm. “Wake up, Laura, here’s Matthew and Prospero.”

  The real Prospero looked just as the false one had. Laura received her introduction to him rather absently, and only just remembered to do him a courtesy.

  Ellen shook her arm again, and she gave up. Michaelmas was delivering an admiring account of Fence’s dealings with the two false Prosperos, for the benefit of the real one and Matthew. They greeted it with blank silence during which Laura sat down on the bed, careful to miss the cat. Prospero’s embroidered black robe swam giddily before her eyes, behind a gloss of gray light and redness.

  “What’s the matter?” said Michaelmas, sharply.

  “Fence, I’d credited thee with more sense,” said Matthew, in a tone so unlike him that Laura forgot her vision completely.

  “What do we need those characters for?” said Patrick.

  “Matthew?” said Fence. “I see we do need them. What’s the matter? Sit down, man, thou’rt like suet.”

  “Yon shape-shifters you all so blithely did offend,” said Matthew, “are the Lords of the Dead, come forth from their dominion for the first time since it was laid down. A fine welcome you gave to them.”

  “You didn’t hear them,” said Ellen. “They had terrible manners and they didn’t care beans about us. They were miffed because we’d woken them up.”

  “We require a boon of them,” said Matthew.

  He looked at Fence until Fence sat forward and opened his mouth; then Matthew said suddenly, “I cry you mercy; I had done the same had I been here.”

  “No doubt,” said Fence. “Do you do otherwise when you come to ask our boon.”

  Matthew looked as if he were going to object; Patrick said, “How do you know they’re the Lords of the Dead?”

  “I came upon two of them in the kitchen,” said Prospero.

  “You’ve seen them before, then?”

  “How does seeing them before help?” demanded Ellen. “They’re shape-shifters; they can look like anybody.”

  “There’s a little fire in the eyes,” said
Prospero.

  This kept getting worse. “The man in the stark house had a little fire in his eyes,” Laura said.

  “Of what nature?” said Prospero.

  “Red,” said Laura.

  “Triangular, or i’the’shape of a diamond?”

  “I don’t know,” said Laura, regretfully.

  “For future reference,” said Patrick, “which is which?”

  “The triangular flame defineth the Lords of Death.”

  “Prospero,” said Fence. “Is the Judge of the Dead among them?”

  “I know not,” said Prospero. “I got no speech of them.”

  “Wiser than I,” said Fence. “Well, we’d best get it now. Matthew?”

  Matthew looked around at all of them. “Said the rest of you aught to discomfit them?”

  “I asked them what the hell they thought they were doing,” said Patrick.

  “Aught else?”

  The rest of them shook their heads.

  “Well, then,” said Celia from the doorway, “Patrick and Fence shall stay here and beguile Master Prospero with the tale of our adventures; for our poor part, we’ll seek out these lords and beg their favor.”

  “I think not,” said Matthew. “Fence, they’ll not hear me. I am neither a wizard nor a king.”

  “I begin to think I’m neither also,” said Fence.

  “They will tell you otherwise,” said Matthew.

  They looked at each other for some time; and then Fence nodded. “Come, then,” he said.

  Ellen, Chalcedony, and Celia moved from the door, with an alacrity that Laura found disturbing. She herself went on sitting on the bed, hoping to be forgotten. But Fence looked back at her quite kindly and said, “Come, lady; this concerneth thee closely.”

  Laura got up and went out the door in the others’ wake. “Well, Mistress Chalcedony,” said Fence, as they reached the juncture of the two halls and headed for the staircase again, “what ground wilt thou choose for this battle?”

  “The Reading Room,” said Chalcedony. “Any such company will think thrice, e’en on the verge of breaking all its oaths, afore ’twill do damage there.”

  “What if somebody’s studying there?” said Ellen.

  “Then he’ll garner a spectacle,” said Fence.

  Ellen caught Laura’s eye and grinned at her. Laura shook her head and looked away. Celia and Matthew were holding hands again, and carrying on a complex and wordless conversation with their eyes. Laura and Ellen were accustomed to referring to such behavior, in their parents or in the older kids at school, as “making goo-goo eyes.” But there was nothing gooey about this exchange of glances. Laura wished she knew what they were worried about; or perhaps she didn’t.

  They went back the way they had come, and turned into the room across the corridor from Michaelmas’s chamber. It was furnished with three large tables in the middle and a series of carrels, exactly as you could find in a modern library, along the walls. The furniture was heavy and beautiful, and perhaps half the material on the shelves was in the form of scrolls rather than bound books. The polished floor was scattered with intricately worked rugs; the light was warm and golden, not the harsh glow of fluorescents. But in its essentials, it looked like a library. Laura felt better immediately.

  In a far corner of the room, somebody in a green robe and a black hat was scribbling furiously. Michaelmas went over and spoke to her quietly. She laughed, and appeared to thank him, and went back to scribbling.

  “Well,” said Ellen, sitting down sideways at one of the tables. “We’re here. Who’s going to round them up?”

  “We who know the Library,” said Chalcedony; and without further ado, she and Michaelmas made for the door. Ellen’s voice arrested them halfway through it.

  “Wait! Can we look at the books?”

  “Wash your hands first,” said Chalcedony. “Celia can show you.” And they were gone.

  The five remaining looked soberly at one another. Ellen did not clamor to be shown where to wash her hands. Matthew said, “I would we knew how th’other party fareth.”

  “They’ll have been to the land of the dead for nothing,” said Ellen. “Unless the Lords of the Dead can be two places at once.”

  Matthew smiled a little. “Not to my knowledge,” he said.

  Laura sat down next to Ellen and leaned back in the chair. The ceiling of the room was beamed and plastered. The wood was carved, the plaster molded; both were painted. The wood showed hunting scenes, and people building castles and making brooms and kneading bread and mending a wagon wheel. The plaster was formed into a series of medallions. Laura found the running fox of High Castle on its blue background; there were also an owl perched in a thornbush, and a mountain hare sitting up on the bank of a stream, and three brindled hounds with their tongues hanging out, each scene stylized and cleverly fitted into the confines of its circle. And there was also a scarlet curve of dragon with, horribly, a unicorn drooping from its toothy mouth. The dead unicorn looked like pictures Laura had seen of antelope being dragged away by the lions that had killed them. Its open eyes were picked out in gold paint.

  Laura couldn’t look away from them; and suddenly the glitter strengthened and spread. Good, thought Laura, maybe she could figure out what she was supposed to see in the young man’s bare room. But what she saw was Claudia, in the back room of her house, leaning on the diamond-paned glass. She still wore the checked dress. Now she raised her hand to the glass, grimaced, and dropped it again. Then she smiled. She looked like somebody who has decided to eat a piece of chocolate cake despite a New Year’s resolution to lose ten pounds. She went on watching her windows. Laura tried to see what she saw. A stone wall, a shelf of books, a golden globe for a lamp. Meredith’s domain in High Castle? Heathwill Library? Some place other?

  Laura blinked her way back to the Reading Room to find everybody except Fence staring at her. Fence had leaned his head against the high back of his chair and closed his eyes.

  “I thought you were seeing things again,” said Ellen. “What were you seeing back in Michaelmas’s room?”

  Laura told her instead of what she had seen in Prospero’s room. Urged to tell what she had just seen, she told what she had seen in Michaelmas’s room. She did not want to tell Fence about Claudia, even if he didn’t seem to be paying any attention. Nobody had any comment. The woman at the far end of the room rustled her papers. It grew so quiet that they could hear the scratching of her pen. Laura was sleepy. It must be almost morning.

  “Matthew?” said Ellen. “Do you want us to say anything to the Lords of Death?”

  “Heaven love you, not a word,” said Matthew. “Indeed, I’ll say naught myself. Celia and Fence have the lighter touch.”

  “Oh, much thanks,” said Celia.

  There was a commotion in the hall outside. Five people came in, all scowling. It was hard to tell what they looked like; they were like sketches, or cartoon drawings, or the artistic efforts of a five-year-old. They made Laura’s eyes hurt.

  Matthew jumped to his feet and bowed; so Laura and Ellen scrambled out of their chairs and made the best courtesies they could manage, given their clothing and the inadequate warning. Celia stood up more naturally and bowed from the waist.

  “The rest come by and by,” said one of the newcomers, in a rich contralto Laura would have known again, she thought, in ten years, or fifty.

  “Sit you down, then, and wait in comfort,” said Celia.

  The newcomers settled themselves at the end of the table, displacing the party from the Hidden Land. The dim voice in Laura’s head said, Move down; I want a clean plate.

  The newcomers began talking among themselves, in some language Laura did not understand, but recognized. It was that maddening tongue, used in the Secret Country’s ceremonies, that one felt always just on the edge of understanding. It was less vexing this time because all of the speakers had such breathtakingly beautiful voices. Well, thought Laura, that made sense. They had come here to talk, so they had e
xpended their arts on their voices and kept the appearance to a minimum.

  She looked at Matthew and Celia, who were standing stiffly at about the middle point of the long table. They, it was clear, could understand the maddening language perfectly, and the lovely tones in which it was spoken were not mitigating in the least their reaction to what was being said. Fence had opened his eyes and appeared to be listening, but not to be disturbed by what he heard.

  The voice in her head said, more clearly, Is’t not possible to understand in another tongue? You will to’t, sir, really.

  There was a burst of unintelligible speech in the corridor, and four more indeterminate shapes spilled into the room, followed by Michaelmas. The four sat down next to the first five; Fence got up and marched down to the head of the table; and Celia, Ellen, Laura, and Michaelmas sat at the foot, separated from the nine strangers by an empty chair or two, and from Fence by an appalling stretch of polished table.

  All nine went on talking. Fence did not call them to order. It took them about ten minutes to calm down, during which Ellen amused herself by drawing cats with a stick of charcoal and some scraps of paper that she found in a drawer of the table, and the voice in Laura’s head said, The sun was shining on the sea, / Shining with all his might: / He did his very best to make / The billows smooth and bright.

  Finally the hubbub died and the shape with the rich contralto voice turned to Fence. “You have a grievance?”

  “That’s for you to determine,” said Fence.

  “Tell your tale,” said a clear, lilting voice.

  Fence told it, without adornment, and without explaining who the extra royal children were or where they came from.

  “Five at one swoop,” said the rich voice, consideringly. “This Claudia is bold.”

  Fence grew red; Laura could see that, all the way at the other end of the enormous table. He said nothing. The lilting voice said, “But we are cautious. Five at one swoop, back to the world of light? For what consideration?”

  “For Shan’s Ring,” said Fence.

  A babble of almost-sense broke out. Fence sat with his hands folded, his round face blank but rather light. The yellow light shone on the table, and on the almost-present shapes of the Lords of the Dead. A new voice, deep and resonant, said, “The River’s Guardian hath been offered this token already, and hath refused it, on the ground that it was too eagerly given.”