The Whim of the Dragon

by PAMELA DEAN

  “Fence!” she whispered. “Give me Shan’s Ring.”

  Fence had plunged his hand into his belt-pouch before the surprised look was off his face. He pressed the ring into her hand. Laura, plucking bad poetry out of her memory, breathed. “And Shan’s sword.” He wouldn’t do it. A peculiar magical artifact, sure; but not a weapon. But Fence drifted backward, as if to give the combatants more room, and pulled Matthew with him.

  Chryse and the man in red had begun to circle each other. Laura wondered if they would actually have a fencing match, with the horn serving as a sword, or if Chryse would charge and stab with that horn and the man in red fend for himself as best he could. If Chryse wanted to show him his weakness, she might succeed.

  Fence edged up beside Laura and said, “It’s beneath my cloak. What mean you to do?”

  “Blow time awry,” said Laura, “so everybody can think. Hand me the sword.”

  She still thought he would not do it. She could not explain her reasoning, if he should ask. Patrick would not call it reasoning at all. Chryse moved suddenly and drove the needle-sharp icicle of her violet-spiraled horn straight at the red man’s breast. He skittered to one side; Celia, right in Chryse’s path, did not move, and Chryse stopped in a shower of pine needles.

  “Think, lady,” said Celia, the scar standing out on her forehead.

  Chryse backed without looking at her and lowered her horn again. And the hilt of Shan’s sword, so perfectly sized for a ten-year-old’s hand, tingled from Fence’s hand into Laura’s nervous grip. Laura took three steps forward, dropped Shan’s sword onto the ground between the combatants, stepped back, hurled Shan’s Ring into the air, and gabbled, “I am a trinket in the world, unvalued gold and sullen stone, but Outside Power is unfurled, when outside power I am hurled, and time awry is blown.”

  Chryse and Belaparthalion stood still, Chryse in a graceful pose that any sculptor would have been proud of, and the man in red with one foot in the air and the sword arrested between one useful position and another. Their eyes were alarming; so wide and empty that neither of them seemed to be there at all. Laura remembered Claudia, staring on the steps of Fence’s tower with a knife in her fist.

  “Nice work,” said Patrick, a little hoarsely. “But they’re going to be just as mad when they wake up.”

  “I thought,” said Laura, “that if we got the unicorns to surround Chryse and took the sword away from Belaparthalion, we could calm them down enough to explain what’s going on.”

  “Excellent,” said Fence; there was congratulation in his voice, but also a definite irony. “Now we’ve only to find out that we must explain to them.”

  “I thought,” said Laura, coming back to his comforting vicinity, “that the Lords of the Dead could tell us.”

  “The Lords of the Dead,” said the piercing voice of a unicorn, from the froth among the trees, “have been sleeping.”

  “The Lords of the Dead,” said the lilting voice, “wish only to go on sleeping. Give us these raucous swords and we’ll trouble you no longer.”

  “And also that shrieking ring,” said the rich voice.

  The unicorns made a sound like an entire acre full of wind chimes. It came to Laura that they were laughing. She hoped the Lords of the Dead would not notice.

  “Know you aught of the Judge of the Dead?” said Fence, to the soberly dressed party generally.

  “He is of the Outside Powers,” said the lilting voice.

  “Are dragons also of the Outside Powers?” said Fence, patiently.

  “Dragons,” said the rich voice, “are not so much as of the immortals. We have seen dragons beneath the earth; Apsinthion hath judged them; do you ask him.”

  “By and by,” said Fence.

  “So Chryse’s charges are true,” said Celia.

  “How came matters to this pass?” said Matthew.

  “That would we know also,” said the lilting voice.

  “Well, Apsinthion aka Belaparthalion ought to know,” said Ellen. “He’s the one who’s fish and flesh. So to speak.”

  “Why should he know?” said Patrick. “You might as well say, when we got into this country we should have known what was going on, just because it happened to us.”

  You might as well say, chorused the unicorns, that “I sleep when I breathe” is the same thing as “I breathe when I sleep.” There was a pause, and as the white horde drifted and nodded just a little in the direction of the Lords of the Dead, they added, It is the same thing with you. Laura and Ellen burst out laughing. Patrick, who scorned Lewis Carroll, rolled his eyes at them.

  “Well, we’d better figure out something,” he said. “We don’t know how long this spell lasts.”

  “Come to that,” said Matthew, gently, “we know not how to remove it. Laura, why not have used ‘From the horns of Unicorns’?”

  “Because that wouldn’t have done Chryse any good,” said Laura. “He was mad at her by that time.”

  “True,” said Fence. “And very well done.”

  Laura began to feel foolish just the same. There was no use in averting a crisis if all you achieved was a limbo. She looked at the two arrested figures, and at the sword of Shan where it lay among the dry brown needles. She unclenched her cramped hand from around Shan’s Ring, and held it out to Fence. And she remembered something.

  “Hey!” she cried. “You unicorns! Didn’t I do it? Didn’t I change time of my own power?”

  “What hast thou seen and not told?” said one of them.

  Laura felt herself turning red. She dropped the ring into Fence’s palm and sent and stood on the far side of an immense pine tree. Stupid, stupid, stupid. She thought of Cedric’s flute. No, this could not be called the end. This was a silly situation, but it was hardly the end. The stupid tears dazzled her vision.

  She groped inside her cloak to find a piece of shirt clean enough to wipe her eyes on, and the blur of sun and saltwater sharpened suddenly into a scene that was not the green pine woods with their dusty shafts of sunlight. It was the massive castle she had seen once at night, garlanded with fireworks; and folded within one corner of its vast stretch of walls, between the low outer wall with its bristling of towers and the high, thick inner wall, lay the formal rose garden she had also seen before. Andrew and Randolph crossed swords; a clump of brightly dressed people watched. Then Ted flung himself out of the crowd, yelling something she could not hear, and with his own sword struck to the ground the crossed blades of Randolph and Andrew. A figure with flying black hair grabbed Andrew from behind. And Randolph lifted his sword again and lunged at Ted.

  It was what they had come back here to avert. And she could tell, by the length of Ted’s hair, by the clothes they wore, festive clothes she had helped Agatha pick out for the embassy to wear at the court of the Dragon King, that it was happening soon; or perhaps it was happening now.

  “Fence!” shouted Laura, and bolted around the tree. “Listen. Ted is fighting Randolph in the Dragon King’s rose garden. We’ve got a magic ring, a magic sword, and a magic flute; can’t we do something?”

  “This is a present vision?” said Fence.

  “I don’t know. It’s not very future.”

  “Let’s not take the risk, for God’s sake,” said Patrick.

  “You’re a wizard; do something.”

  “I can’t fly through the air!” snapped Fence. He drove both hands into his hair and strode between Chryse and Belaparthalion, ducking under the vicious horn as if it were a dangling vine. He plunged in among the unicorns, gesticulating. Laura could not hear clearly what he was saying in his light voice, but the replies of the unicorns were clear.

  “We can take thee.”

  “Aye, we can take you all.”

  “But upon one condition; that thou releasest our sister.”

  Fence’s reaction to that was louder. “An I release thy sister, will you stand surety for the safety of her enemy there?”

  “That is her affair and thine, not ours.”

  “
Shan’s sweet mercy!” shouted Fence. “I am making it your affair. I will release her only on that condition.”

  “He can’t release her anyway,” said Patrick.

  “Shut up,” said Ellen.

  “An you release her not, we carry you nowhere,” said a unicorn.

  “I’ll give you Shan’s Ring,” said Fence, in less furious but carrying tones.

  The little knot of the Lords of the Dead stirred. In very mellow tones, a unicorn said, “The bargain made touching that ring precludes our having it.”

  Something in the voice alerted Laura. It wanted to be argued with; it wanted to coax some particular statement out of them, so that it could take the ring. She pushed through the crowd of unicorns and caught Fence by the hand. His burning-leaf smell mingled with the spicy scent of the unicorns. “Listen,” said Laura. “Shan’s Ring was supposed to save the Hidden Land from the machinations of Melanie. But she made the sword that woke you up; she made Shan’s Ring too.” Fence’s hand jerked in hers; he had not known that. “This is all a machination of Melanie,” said Laura; and stopped. That was not true; and her intuition failed her suddenly. It had all been so clear in her head.

  But the unicorn said, “Well enough. Now what of the second condition, that that ring become an heirloom of Shan’s house?”

  Once again, you could tell that it hoped for the point it made to be properly countered. Laura’s invention had dried up.

  “The children of Shan’s house,” said Fence, with a terrible grim triumph, “are below the earth. That condition’s forfeit.”

  The unicorn was taken aback by this; but the rich voice of a Lord of the Dead said, “’Twere better you gave it to us.”

  “What will that profit me?” roared Fence, without turning.

  “First, we will deliver all present to the court of the Dragon King. Second, we will deliver Shan’s Ring to Edward Fairchild, that both conditions of the bargain be met.”

  There was a small silence.

  “Well, fair ones?” said Fence. “White ones? Drinkers of verse? What say you to that?”

  “Give it them,” said the unicorns, in overlapping waves. “We’ll have no peace else.” Even in the midst of her anxiety, Laura thought how curious it was that magical creatures wanted sleep and peace more than they wanted anything else.

  Fence said, “Stand you witness to this bargain?”

  “We do.”

  Fence turned around. “Done,” he said to the Lords of the Dead.

  The Lords of the Dead did not believe in preliminaries. Being delivered by them was not like riding a unicorn. It was a great deal more, Laura thought, like being picked up by a tornado. Darkness stabbed about with red fire, howling voices, and a vast noise of distant water overtook her. Dwindling down the distances of her mind, the unicorns remarked, I pray you pass with your best violence.

  CHAPTER 29

  THE fresh-faced girl sat at the head of their table; saw to it that whatever she thought they needed arrived promptly; and conducted the conversation with the same absent-minded skill Ted’s father exhibited when he played solitaire at four in the morning because he was too tired to go to bed. She had sorted them out so that it was impossible to continue the argument in any kind of privacy: on her right were Ted, Jerome, Ruth, and Julian; at the foot of the table, pale but smiling, was Andrew; and up the other side, from Andrew to the fresh-faced girl, sat Stephen, Dittany, and Randolph. Ted was sure she had seated them that way on purpose.

  Sometime after the roast chicken and the potatoes cooked with cheese and radishes and the three kinds of bread and the sweet butter and the cucumbers and several dishes veiled in pastry that Ted couldn’t identify had all come and gone, the conversational topics she had sown over the table actually took root down at its foot; something about a new kind of stone they were digging up in the Outer Isles. The five at that end were absorbed by it, while Dittany, Randolph, and Jerome got tired of shouting their comments into the intellectual morass at the table’s far end and diverged into a discussion of the castle’s architecture. Ruth sat stranded between these two conversations, a line between her black brows, biting her lip and eating when she remembered. She looked as if she were doing a stiff homework assignment.

  That left the fresh-faced girl only Ted to deal with. She smiled and commended him on his part in the battle just past, as if she were congratulating him on a good game of tennis. It would be rude to appear horrified, especially when he had no idea of the exact status of all the creatures he had killed. Ted said something deprecating and watched her peel a peach. He remembered Conrad at the Banquet of Midsummer Eve, eating a peach without bothering to peel it; and his cheerful acceptance of the fact that Ted, going for Andrew, had spilled his dinner all over Conrad. Conrad was dead; one of the creatures of dubious status had killed him. And the other people those creatures had killed, strangers to him, he knew their status also. Edward had known all of them.

  The fresh-faced girl finished her peach and looked inquiringly at him; he had missed her last question. Wanting still to be polite, both because it would be disaster to be otherwise and because she was so pretty, he looked up at her, readying a change of subject that would not seem too abrupt; and saw the little blue flame standing in each of her eyes. Edward said remotely, They will turn me in your arms into a lion bold. And Ted saw her clear eyes and fresh skin and silky yellow hair and clever hands all as a garment she was wearing, the black dress but a cloak dragged carelessly over it.

  They were clearing away dishes and bringing in the rose-water by then. Ted swallowed hard and asked her, completely at random, if she played any musical instrument. This got her off the subject of the war; but it also brought her, lute in hand, back to their rooms with them, for three acutely uncomfortable hours. She was a brilliant musician. Ruth got out her flute; Randolph took a turn at the lute; everybody sang. But there was no comfort in it and all the camaraderie was false.

  When she trailed her black skirts out the door at last, thanking them all graciously and bidding them to have pleasant rest, it was after midnight. The Dragon King had granted them audience at nine in the morning.

  Stephen, Dittany, Jerome, and Julian looked hopefully at Randolph, and then went upstairs. Ted lay on the bed and looked around. Ruth was sunk in the armchair Andrew had sat in earlier. Randolph sat on the hearth with his head in his hands. Andrew was sitting on a stool in a far corner. To reiterate his order to Andrew would be an insult. But Ted wanted to say something, after the constraint of the evening.

  “Was that a strange dinner,” he said, “or am I just uncivilized?”

  Randolph gave a brief snort of laughter from under his hands. “I hope you never see one stranger,” he said.

  “Did you see that woman peel that peach?” said Ruth. “It would take me ten years to learn to do that.”

  “That wasn’t a woman,” said Ted. “Randolph, what does it mean that she has little blue flames in her eyes?”

  “That she is of the shape-shifters that choose what form pleaseth them,” said Randolph. “All present were but so.”

  “Why did that form please her?” said Ruth, sitting forward.

  “A courtesy to us, who have been but the one form, perhaps,” said Randolph.

  “Well, that would be why she didn’t turn up as a tree or a horse; but couldn’t she have been a nice wholesome-looking boy?”

  “She’s the Dragon King’s daughter,” said Andrew, “and her eye’s on Edward.”

  Randolph lifted his head and looked at Andrew. Ruth, too, turned and peered over the edge of her armchair at him; and both of them looked as if they wondered, not at the assertion itself, but at how Andrew knew it.

  Ted said, as levelly as he could, “Is that part of your idea of an alliance rather than a chastisement?”

  “You could do worse,” said Andrew.

  He did not look at Ruth; he clearly meant Ruth; and nobody in the room took him up on it. Ted rolled over and sat up on the bed. Randolph said, “What have y
ou promised him?”

  “I?” said Andrew. “How should I promise him aught?”

  “Aye, how? Do tell us.”

  Andrew seemed unlikely to answer. He was the only relaxed person in the room; the rest of them were strung up like so many overwound crossbows. Then he made a little impatient motion of the head, and said, “An the servers call her Princess, is she not the Dragon King’s daughter? An she make eyes at Edward, shall I not note it?”

  Randolph swung around and caught Ted’s eye. Ted stood up. “Andrew,” he said, “I’m sorry, but I fear your tongue. I think you had better not come to our audience with the Dragon King.”

  “You should fear’t,” said Andrew. “Shall I call our four companions?”

  Ted thought of them; one unknown quantity; one of the old King’s men-at-arms; two of the old King’s Counselors, whose opinion of his heir was not high, who had served on the board of inquiry into the old King’s death. If there were factions in that odd body, the old King’s Council, Jerome and Julian were not of Fence and Randolph’s faction.

  “You gave your word to King William,” said Ted.

  “Randolph, believing King William misguided,” said Andrew, “did wish to do him a great injury. Wherefore should not I, believing Randolph misguided, do him a lesser?”

  “Andrew,” said Randolph, “do but consider the injury you do yourself. Your nature is not made for these convolvings; the leaning of your thought is to plain proceeding.”

  “And thine is better made for crooked ways?” said Andrew.

  “No,” said Randolph. “Wherefore I may so advise you.”

  “I will come to this audience,” said Andrew.

  “You know,” said Ruth, reflectively, “I don’t think you can stop him.”

  “For God’s sake,” said Ted, “let’s go to bed.”

  There was a large alcove with a bed for Ruth, and a smaller one with a bed for Andrew. Ted and Randolph got the four-poster, which had a feather mattress into which you sank so far you hardly needed the blankets. Ted hoped he wouldn’t have to leap out of it in a hurry. He was sleeping in his clothes, as was Randolph, precisely out of a fear that he might want to leave this room quickly. He lay enfolded in lavender-smelling linen and watched Randolph bank the fire, and move around the room, blowing out all the candles and bolting the door. Cold moonlight trickled in from the window to the inner courtyard, which nobody had bothered to shutter. Randolph came to Ted’s side of the bed, holding a long, thin shape that glinted.