The Prophecy

by Hilari Bell

  Twice Perryn slashed at Cedric, but Cedric leaped nimbly aside and continued to press him back. The trees were many feet behind the master of arms now. Perryn realized he must be almost at the edge of the cliff and glanced behind.

  Cedric sprang. His hand closed around Perryn’s wrist and twisted. Perryn yelped with pain, and the dagger clattered on the stones.

  “Now,” said Cedric, stepping closer to the cliff. Perryn struggled with all his strength. Cedric took another step.

  A cry of rage echoed in Perryn’s mind. Prism ran toward them along the cliff edge, her white body gleaming in the dark. The spiral horn was lowered like a lance as she charged, straight at Cedric.

  “What in the—” Cedric let go of Perryn, who fell to his knees. The master of arms snatched up the dagger, moonlight glinting on its blade.

  Prism stopped a few feet from him. Perryn could see her legs wobbling with terror—he would have sworn she was about to faint, but she braced herself in place, lifting her head in silent challenge, holding Cedric’s attention until Sam’s point touched his back.

  “Don’t move,” said Lysander. “Or I’ll run you through.”

  “Turn around,” grated Sam. “Turn around and fight like a man.”

  “Don’t listen to him,” said Lysander, pressing Sam’s point harder against Cedric’s spine. “I’m the one holding the sword. Tie him up, Perryn. There’s some rope in Prism’s pack.”

  Sam complained bitterly as Perryn bound the master of arms with trembling hands. “I can’t just skewer someone tied up like a chicken. My honor counts for something, even if he hasn’t got any.”

  “Gag the man too,” Lysander ordered. “We don’t want him yelling for help. We’ve got enough to worry about.”

  Cedric didn’t appear to be inclined to yell, or try much of anything. The Norse believed in magic. The sight of Prism had stunned him. Hearing Sam’s mind-voice had left him still and silent, though Sam’s blade lying across his throat might have had something to do with that.

  “Why should we be worried?” asked Prism. “We’ve saved Perryn! I saw what that man was going to do.” She shuddered. “It was horrible.”

  “You were very brave.” Perryn stroked her neck. “All of you were.”

  “Prism was brave,” said Lysander. “I was clever. I’m the one who devised this bit of distraction and ambush. And on very short notice, I might add.”

  “How?” Perryn wrapped his arms around his knees and tried to stop shaking. Then it occurred to him that Cedric had almost killed him—he had a right to shake!

  Lysander put Sam down and went to check the knots that bound the master of arms.

  “We’ve been following you all afternoon,” he said. “Prism caught up with Sam and me when we got away, but we didn’t have a chance to get at you until Cedric hauled you off alone. Then we had to think fast.” He nodded at the bound master of arms. “I must say, I think it worked rather neatly. There’s only one problem left.”

  “What’s that?” Perryn asked.

  “What do we do with him?”

  “Cut him loose, give him a sword, and let Perryn and me at ’em,” demanded Sam. “I’ll carve out the coward’s gizzard! Trying to push the boy off a cliff!”

  “I hate blood,” said Prism.

  “We can’t just leave him,” said Lysander. “Even tied up. Sooner or later he’d work himself loose, or his men would find him, and then we’d have the whole troop on our heels.”

  “We can’t leave him,” Perryn agreed. “And I can’t kill him, either. I’m sorry, Sam, but I just learned something about myself. I always thought that if a fight was really important, somehow I’d be able to do it. But my father was right about that…about me.” For a moment the pain of acknowledging it overwhelmed him—but a scholar faced the truth. He steadied his voice and went on. “I’m not a fighter. I’m not a fighter and I never will be. I can’t kill him.”

  After a moment of silence Sam said softly, “A fighter isn’t necessarily someone who swings a sword. It’s someone who goes into a bad place and comes out on his own two feet. Or maybe he doesn’t come out, but the bad place ain’t so bad anymore. Anyway, it always seemed to me that the best fighters were those who went with their strengths. Whether it was swinging a sword or not.”

  “After all,” said Lysander, “you brought together the prophecy. Compared to that, thinking up a way to keep this spy out from under our feet should be easy.”

  “Actually, it is easy.” Perryn managed a smile. “I may not be able to kill him, but if he sleeps for the next three weeks it won’t matter who finds him. His men won’t act without orders; they’ll just take him home. Where’s that book on the black-bog waters? I have to figure out the dosage.”

  “What usually happens to captured traitors?” asked Prism.

  “I’m not sure.” Perryn dug into the pack the bard held out to him. “No one’s been convicted of treason since Olin Blackhand, and that was four hundred years ago.”

  “What happened to him?”

  Perryn’s hands stilled. “Even my father wouldn’t do that. He couldn’t.”

  “Really?” said Lysander. “I wouldn’t bet money on it. Anyway, that’s not our problem. All we have to worry about is the dragon. Right?”

  “Right,” said Perryn weakly.

  And so they went to fight the dragon—the bard, the unicorn, and the sword. Just as the prophecy had foretold.

  11

  AFTER THEY PASSED THROUGH THE DRAGON’S GAP, THEY climbed for two days. Snow lay all around them.

  “Be quiet,” snapped Perryn in a whisper, for the fourth time.

  “I am quiet,” the bard whispered back. “Sam’s the one who’s talking. You said we won’t reach the dragon’s lair till evening. And the dragon’s nocturnal. You think it can hear us in its sleep, at this distance?”

  “It’s not the dragon I’m worried about. It’s that.” Perryn pointed at the hillside above them.

  “What?” asked the bard. “There’s nothing up there but snow.

  “Shh!” Perryn hissed. “There’s too much snow up there and your voice might bring it down. Any voice might.”

  “Sam’s and Prism’s won’t,” the bard said. His voice softened even further. “It was an avalanche that killed your mother, wasn’t it?”

  “It was about this time of year.” Perryn’s throat was tight. He barely remembered her, but her death had begun the changes in his life. The change in his father. “Early spring is the worst time for avalanches, but they didn’t know that. The dragon’s raids had been fierce that winter and my father had been making plans for months. He forbade my mother to come, but she wanted to see the dragon slain. To be near my father, I guess. She disguised herself as a powder boy and bribed the gunners to take her with them. They set the cannons under a huge bank of snow. It was the best place for them to hit the dragon, and they were so ignorant. The noise of the first shot brought it all down.”

  His father had blamed himself. He hadn’t known about the danger of the avalanche. No one could have known back then. I was in command, he’d cried out once, in drunken anguish, when Perryn was six: I should have seen the threat, should have known she was there, should have known…

  No wonder the king drank so deeply in the spring.

  “You know a lot about it,” the bard commented.

  “Studying avalanches is what taught me to be a scholar. In the beginning I just wanted to find out how my mother died, but then I got interested. I read everything I could find and talked to people in the high villages. I wrote a paper about how you can set off an avalanche deliberately, when no one’s in its path, so it won’t fall unexpectedly. I sent the paper to all the mountain villages. My tutor even sent it to the universities. Some of the villages wrote back to say they’d used my idea, that it would save many lives.”

  “What did the universities say?”

  “They said it was good research.” Perryn shrugged. “I was only nine.”

  “Is that
when you ran away?”

  Perryn nodded bitterly. “I’d barely reached the next village before the guardsmen brought me back.”

  His father hadn’t bothered to look for Perryn then, either. Why had Perryn thought it would be different now? Just because he’d gotten farther this time? Been gone for weeks, instead of two days?

  “That’s pretty impressive scholarship, for a nine-year-old.” The bard’s voice was growing louder.

  “Shh!” said Perryn.

  BY SUNSET THEY HAD REACHED THE ENTRANCE OF THE valley where the dragon laired.

  “According to what the survivors said, there should be a cave in that cliff.” Perryn gestured. “They stored their powder there to keep it dry. We can camp in it tonight and…and face the dragon when it returns in the morning. It should be tired after a night of hunting.”

  The bard’s cheeks were red with cold; he looked about eagerly. “A fit setting for a new legend.”

  “What am I going to eat?” Prism was almost invisible against the snow, except for the pack of armor she still carried.

  “Paw through the surface,” Perryn suggested. “There’s probably grass beneath it.”

  Prism muttered something Perryn was glad he couldn’t hear and shook herself free of the pack.

  Lysander leaped forward and caught it. “That’s right, drop a sack of tin cans down the rocks. We wouldn’t want to surprise the dragon tomorrow, would we?”

  “Ah, about that armor,” Sam began.

  Lysander sat the pack down gently. It was growing lighter again. They only had enough food for about four days. “Yes?”

  “You might want to try getting into it while it’s still light. It may need a few adjustments.”

  THE TWENTY-SEVENTH WARRIOR-KING OF IDRIS had been six inches shorter than Lysander.

  “Not a chance,” the bard finally conceded. “None of it fits. And we’re out of light.” He scowled at Perryn. There were several kegs of old gunpowder in the cave, and Perryn wouldn’t let him light the torch.

  “I can’t fight without someone in armor around me,” Sam fretted. “It just won’t seem right.”

  “I know,” said Lysander. “Prism can carry it. We’ll buckle it together, set it on her back, and the dragon will think there’s two of us. In fact, since it will look more formidable, the dragon will probably go for her first. Then we can…don’t faint, Prism. Isn’t courage part of the unicorn creed?”

  “You said I wouldn’t have to do anything dangerous! You promised!”

  “You don’t have to,” Lysander said quickly. “But danger alone won’t darken you, will it? And think how much the other unicorns will respect you when they hear about it.”

  “That would be nice. It’s a bit lonely, being the only all-white unicorn in the forest. But what if…”

  Perryn left them to it. They were the ones in the prophecy, after all. He’d done his job. He should have been jubilant, but his hands were cold. His soul felt cold. His dreams that night were filled with thundering snow and rustling wings.

  THE SOUND OF THE DRAGON RETURNING TO THE valley woke them just before dawn, but it took them a while to prepare. Now Perryn stood in a small grove of trees, in the clear morning light, staring out into the valley where his mother had died. The ledge on which they had placed the cannons was easy to find. A huge snowbank overhung it like a threat. Before he’d completed his research no one had known much about avalanches; still, Perryn wondered how his father could have missed it.

  “Be careful of that,” he warned the others. “Don’t end up fighting beneath it. The noise of the battle might well bring it down.”

  If this state of helpless worry was what command was like, it was no wonder his father drank. Lysander must have noticed Perryn’s distress, for he turned abruptly and embraced him. Tears came to Perryn’s eyes as he hugged the bard and he blinked fiercely. Lysander handed Perryn his harp.

  “To keep till I get back,” he said. “I’d hate to have it broken. I’ve already got an idea for the first verse.”

  Perryn hugged Prism, who shuffled to keep the suit of armor balanced on her back. It was amazing that Lysander had talked her into this. He stroked Sam, who was vibrating with excitement. His palm came away red with rust. He handed the sword to Lysander and watched them go together, down the long, steep slope into the valley—the bard, the unicorn, and the sword. They were the stuff of legend. They were the prophecy.

  A scholar had no place beside them.

  They stopped in the center of the valley.

  “Come forth, foul wyrm!” The bard’s challenge was a direct quote from the Ballad of the Battle for Edam’s Keep, and it echoed off the rocks.

  Perryn winced and glanced at the snowbank, but all was still.

  Then the dragon appeared.

  It crawled out of a crack in the cliffs, well above the valley floor, squinting in the bright sunlight. It yawned, its body gleaming like black iron. When the beast spread its wings they all but covered the cliff face. Perryn hadn’t dreamed it could be so big.

  The dragon saw them. It paused a moment, studying them carefully. Then its laughter resounded in Perryn’s mind, as dark as the depths of the earth.

  The dragon launched itself, drifting easily down to stand before the companions. The spikes along its back glittered like spearheads and its bulk shadowed them like a great tree.

  That was too much for Prism’s newfound courage. She sank limply to the ground, the empty armor rolling and crashing around her.

  The dragon laughed again. “A shiny little bauble to light the darkness of my cave.” The mind-voice vibrated through Perryn’s bones like an earthquake. “How long will you remain white within my darkness, I wonder? And what’s this? Not a warrior, surely.” It reached out and picked up Lysander as if he were a doll.

  The bard lifted his arms and swung Sam with all his might.

  The dragon’s scream brought Perryn to his knees. He shook his head, trying to clear it, and looked fearfully at the snowbank. But there had been no real sound.

  Oily blood poured from a gash in the dragon’s forearm, steaming on the snow. With a roar of incredulous rage, the dragon hurled Lysander against the cliff. He fell to the snow and lay unmoving.

  The dragon bent and picked up the sword, turning it curiously, like a twig in the great claws. Then the dragon grasped the sword by each end and snapped it, dropping the pieces to the ground. The creature examined its paw. Even from the hilltop where he crouched, Perryn could see the small, bleeding cut. The dragon wiped the blood on the snow, then picked up the unconscious unicorn and the bard and carried them into its cave.

  Perryn ran, tripping, flailing wildly in the snow. He should have been there, should have stopped it, should have known.

  He fell to his knees beside Sam, gathering the cold hilt and blade into his hands.

  “Sam,” he cried desperately. “What happened? What went wrong?”

  “My fault, mostly.” The rusty whisper was almost inaudible; Perryn could barely feel the vibration. “Didn’t know it was so strong. Wanted one more fight. To die in battle, ’stead of rusting away to nothing.”

  Tears rolled, unnoticed, down Perryn’s cheeks. “But what about the prophecy?”

  “Forget the prophecy, boy. Mardon made it up. Wanted a shot at wooing some knight’s lady. Feller was a good fighter, wild for glory. Mardon thought he could send him off hunting for unicorns and dragons, but the knight didn’t fall for it. Said he’d take me dragon slaying when one showed up and not before…sorry. My fault. Wanted to fight again, so bad. Didn’t realize I’d bring the others down too.”

  “He made it up?”

  “Well, he pro’bly didn’t foresee this.” Sam’s chuckle was a bare whisper in Perryn’s mind. Then its fading voice sobered. “You have to rescue them. Dragon’ll play with them for a few days. I recognize the type. But when it gets bored…it’ll kill them. You haven’t much time.”

  “But the prophecy failed! It was fake! I can’t—”

&
nbsp; “It’s not about prophecies, boy. Or magic swords, or any of that nonsense. It’s about getting it done. Always is. You’re going to be a king someday. Seen a lot of kings come and go. I know what makes them. What breaks them. Save your friends and kill the dragon. Or you won’t be worth a cracked copper to Idris. Or to yourself. That’s what it’s really about…in the end. About you. Save them. Kill…”

  The sword was still. Perryn let the pieces fall from his hands. He rose to his feet and stood for a moment, staring up at the cliff where the dragon had vanished.

  And the prophecy failed.

  12

  PERRYN CROUCHED IN THE CAVE, GAZING OVER THE valley. Not even the brilliance of sunlight on snow could lighten the shadows on his heart. What could he do? Tonight, after the dragon left, he might be able to sneak into its lair and free his friends. If they still survived. But he wasn’t a fighter! How could he challenge the dragon, when fifty of his father’s best men had failed? Perhaps there was some other way—something he hadn’t thought of.

  With shaking hands Perryn pulled the Mirror of Idris from his pack. “Please, Mirror, is there some way…show me a way to rescue Lysander and Prism from the dragon.”

  Colors washed over the face of the mirror, swirling sluggishly, then the image formed. It was dusk on a bleak mountain crag. An old Norseman stood, gazing at the sky. The leather of his shirt was painted with bright designs and stitched all over with small bones and beads—more decoration than the Norse warriors wore—and his long, gray hair streamed in the wind.

  A pair of warriors stood nearby, two children beside them. The boy was weeping and the girl’s face was pale and dazed, a dark bruise spreading across it. Were they…? Perryn looked closely. Yes, their hands were bound. His stomach clenched with dread, even before the dragon’s shadow flowed over them.

  The warriors flinched when the great beast landed but the old man, the shaman, stepped forward and raised his hand.