Dragons deal gm-3

by Robert Asprin

  "You're welcome, anytime," Griffen said, sincerely. His own throat felt thick. He watched them move away, feeling like a matchmaker. He would never have thought of them as a couple, but they were. Griffen desperately wanted to know the history of that relationship, but he doubted he would ever get it from either of them. All he did know for certain was that Harrison had been devastated when she died. It was none of his business, but he would have liked to know just the same.

  Since Griffen never knew when he would see the voodoo priestess's ghost, he had left the cream-colored envelope addressed to her on the park bench on the Moonwalk where they sometimes talked. She had obviously found it. He was glad. It was the least he could do for Harrison.

  He managed to enjoy the rest of the ball after all.

  Forty-two

  Griffen frowned at the map and its multiple overlays that Cos Wrayburn had prepared and spread out on Holly's kitchen table. He followed the four colored lines along St. Charles, around Lee Circle, to Canal Street, where three of the lines diverged.

  "Only Aeolus keeps going," Holly pointed out. She poured coffee for all of them from a copper-colored pot. Her kitchen suited her, furnished in sunny colors and sturdy furniture and appliances. "That's east, Air's cardinal direction. We're going in along Rampart as far as St. Ann."

  "I know we turn right on Canal and go south to Tchoupitoulas," Griffen said. "Mitch has been drilling us. We step off forty-five minutes apart, from five fifteen on."

  "So," Cos said, pointing a thick forefinger at the map, "all the routes intersect at the corner of Canal and Rampart."

  "So we release the energy then?" Bert asked.

  "No. That's when we bind it," Cos said. "Haven't you been paying attention?"

  "You think I do a lot of this on the used-car lot?" Bert asked. "Build living sculptures of water out of my hoses?"

  "Get you a lot of customers," Griffen joked.

  "I can use them to wash the vehicles on my lot, maybe." The king of Nautilus laughed.

  Griffen didn't laugh. He had the Scepter of Fire in his hands. Holly had shielded the little white-painted house and overgrown garden with wards as soon as the three others had come inside, and let them take the heavy gold wands out of the metal-bound chest. Griffen felt the warmth grow in his solar plexus like the return of a happy memory.

  "It'd be good if we all knew our capabilities on parade day," Holly reminded them. This was their third practice session. Every time Griffen touched the long-handled object, he found it hard to let it go. The sensation that went through his body was like the twanging of harp strings or guitar strings. The vibration went on and on.

  "Has anyone had any, uh, element-related incidents outside?" Griffen asked. "Maybe it's my imagination, but fires seem to start around me more easily than usual."

  Cos let out a gusty breath. "I thought it was just me," he said. "I left some footprints in concrete the other day."

  "So?" Bert asked.

  "It was dried hard. And the plants around my house are just busting out like crazy. They don't know it's February."

  Bert looked at them all sideways. "You all don't believe what you're sayin', do you? I'm a man of faith! The things been happening around me are coincidences--just coincidences."

  Holly nodded. "It could look like that. What are you talking about?"

  Bert seemed to find it embarrassing to put his thoughts into words. "Well, I get wet when it rains, same as everyone, but the moment I step inside, I'm dry as a bone. And I never get thirsty anymore. Never. Doc says there's nothing wrong with me."

  "It's the scepter," Cos said. "I, too, am a man of faith, but I see nothing more than the Hand of God working through us."

  "It's uncanny, though," Bert agreed. "Only, I do agree that it's benevolent, whatever its source."

  "I know I'll find it hard to pass on the scepter to next year's king," Griffen said. "It really makes me feel connected to all of nature, not just things associated with fire."

  "Learn to let go," Holly said. "Practice thinking about it. I know it's hard. I feel it myself."

  "Never felt nothing like that," said Wrayburn. "It's a test. God wants me to do my job and walk away. I can do that."

  "You are every inch Antaeus," Holly praised him. She looked at Griffen in concern. "It's Griffen I'm worried about. We three have been preparing for ages. You didn't even have any reading material."

  "I'll handle it!" Griffen said, disliking being singled out. "And if you say I'm too young . . . !"

  The wineglasses on the table began to hum, then dance on the surface. Holly grabbed for the stemware and held it steady.

  "What's going on?" Cos asked. "Is there something that the scepters caused? Is it you?" he asked Griffen.

  "No!" Griffen protested.

  "No," Holly said. "I doubt that's him. He's not radiating that kind of destructive energy. You'd be able to feel it yourselves, sitting that close to him. Let me concentrate. Something is attacking the wards." She squeezed her eyes shut. "It's coming from outside, not inside."

  Griffen felt pressure on his chest, like invisible walls closing in on him. He swiped at the air, but there was nothing solid to push aside. Cos fingered the collar of his polo shirt.

  "I'm choking. What's happening?"

  "Are we under attack?" Bert asked. "From who? And what?"

  "No idea," Holly said. Even she looked shaken. "It's some kind of external force. It's trying to get in. It doesn't feel elemental, it feels malign."

  "How in God's name would you know that?" Bert asked.

  "I do know," Holly said. "Just like you would know the word of God when you heard it. This isn't the time for an argument, Bert."

  "Let me out there," Griffen said, even though fear planted a cold hand on the back of his neck. "I'll take care of it."

  Holly knew what he was talking about. "No! We must not break the wards. They are giving us more protection than you can. We'll ride this out."

  "What if they don't hold?" Griffen asked.

  "We can hope they do."

  "What can we do?" Cos added.

  "Pray," said Bert. "Pray hard."

  "I agree," Holly said. "Guys, I'm going to do something a little premature and use some of the energy we're raising to protect us.

  "You can't do that!" Cos said. "It's too soon."

  "The energy will still be there," Holly said. "But we might not. Don't you feel that?"

  "'Course I do," Cos said. He put a hand on his chest. "Feels like . . . asthma attack."

  Holly took his hand and squeezed it. "Lend me your power. Concentrate on putting the force of your element into my hand."

  "This doesn't seem right," Bert said, even though his face was gray. "Need to save power . . . for the parade."

  "Don't you want to live to ride those floats?" Cos asked, his head beginning to droop.

  "God will protect us if He finds us righteous," Bert said.

  "Sometimes we have to help ourselves to get His help," Holly said. "Don't be a self-righteous fool. Remember that story about those footprints in the sand?"

  Bert gave her a crinkle-eyed grin. "I always thought the man in the story was the . . . biggest idiot ever born. All right. I just wish . . . I could breathe."

  "You will, soon," Holly promised. Her voice was the strongest of the four of them. Griffen marveled at that, but Air was in her power. "Lend me your power. Let's do it now."

  "All right," Cos said. "Do what you know."

  Griffen was full of admiration for the other two men. Humans were more resilient than he would ever have guessed. These men, who didn't officially believe in magic, were putting their lives in trust to a wiccan, whose practices were condemned by their own churches. They were handling the whole supernatural thing a lot better than he did when he found out he was a dragon. Unlike Harrison, who had been in love with a voodoo queen, these were adherents to more formal sects. He admired them, but he was concerned for his own involvement.

  "Holly, I don't know if I should," Griff
en gasped out. "I'm afraid of setting everything on fire."

  She turned intense eyes to him.

  "It'll be all right," she said. She laid the Scepter of Air on the table with its top at the center. Griffen, feeling as if he were in a dream about drowning, dropped his with a thud and pushed it with clumsy fingers until it touched hers. Bert's head was sagging. He needed both hands to put his scepter in place. Cos made a mighty heave and put his point forward with the others. Then he dropped back in his chair with his eyes closed.

  Holly tossed back her long blond hair, tilted her face to the sky, and let out an eerie wail. It resolved into words. "We ask thy aid. Let that which others send to us return to them threefold! Lend us thy will. We ask this for the good of all, according to the free will of all. Let all that comes to us return to the giver threefold! Let it happen now!" She let her hands fall on the junction of the four scepters. Griffen felt something rise from it like a hot burst of steam. He squeezed his eyes shut. The howling of a hot wind swirled around them. Grit tore at his skin; rain lashed it. Griffen's heart pounded. He felt it tearing him and the others apart.

  Suddenly, it stopped. He panted for breath.

  He opened his eyes. Nothing was there but four people sitting around a table in a small kitchen with gingham curtains. No water or sand dripped from the walls. The cheerful copper-colored clock above the stove clacked.

  "That was scary as hell," Cos said. "But that pressure's gone."

  Bert regarded her severely. "I don't agree with what you just did."

  Holly was outraged. "What? I sent the power back to where it came from."

  "But the threefold stuff, that's punitive. You're hitting back more than we were attacked!"

  "If you listened, you heard me say that all good things shall also be returned threefold. And I am not the one doing the meting out of justice. That is the universe's job. I am just asking. Just what you do when you pray. And it seems to have worked, thanks to all of you."

  Cos cleared his throat. "Hard to argue with that," he rumbled. "Got to ask my preacher."

  "But why did that happen?" Griffen asked.

  "I don't know," Holly said. "We might never know. It could be a function of our power-raising, or from someone who doesn't want us to do it."

  Griffen immediately thought of Stoner, but how could he know about the scepters? They hadn't been out of their box in six decades.

  "We'd all better get going," Cos said. "Just in case it starts again."

  Holly held her hands over each one of them. Griffen felt as if she had just sprayed a suit of armor on him.

  "You'll be protected for a while," she said. "But be careful." She smiled at Griffen. "See you all at your king's party."

  "Yeah, Griff," Bert said, shaking his hand. "Lookin' forward to it."

  Griffen kept all his senses sharp as he went home.

  Forty-three

  Griffen, black bow tie crisp as a potato chip, shook hands with each person who entered the dining room. Val stood beside him, smiling and gracious in her blue dress with her long golden hair flowing over her shoulders. By tradition, the queen of the krewe would have been next, but Val threatened to boycott the whole party if Melinda was closer than three feet.

  "It's silly," Melinda had declared, but she went along with it. She was fifth in line after Etienne and his mother, Antoinette. She wore pale green scaled jacquard with a little jacket over her shoulders. Even Griffen had to admit she looked queenly. He stopped thinking about her and concentrated on his party.

  The restaurant had come through for Griffen in every way. Waiters and waitresses in immaculate white aprons poured red or white wine or delivered drinks on tiny round trays. Hors d'oeuvres that smelled and looked marvelous were circulated on large silver platters with white napkins. The guests nodded or shouted compliments to Griffen.

  The movie posters were an enormous hit. Griffen had five of them arranged on easels for the guests to see as they came in. Everyone laughed at The Dragon Who Came to Dinner, with an illustration that looked like Griffen with his leg in a cast. Most of the guests were dragons, so they appreciated the jokes more than the humans, but there were plenty of movie buffs from both species.

  Griffen gave a thumbs-up to the leader of the band he had hired. The Crescent City Brass Band had been highly recommended to him by a singer he knew in the French Quarter. Their audition CD had sold him, and he watched his guests bobbing their heads and tapping their feet to the heady beat. Later, there would be dancing. Fox Lisa would have the first dance, to be followed by Val, then Mai. The ladies had worked out the order themselves. He was happy to abide by their agreement. All the decisions for the evening had been made. He had his speech on note cards in his pocket. The menu cards were on the table.

  When the last of the guests had shaken his hand, the reception line broke up. Griffen allowed himself to mingle, wandering into the crowd to exchange a few words with people he knew. Holly and her partner Ethan waved at him from a group near a pillar. He couldn't guess what they were discussing by their hand gestures, but it had something to do with either belly dancing or sex. Terence Killen slapped him on the back without breaking off his conversation. A couple of ladies who had been promoted to lieutenant because of his efforts came up to give him a kiss on the cheek.

  "Looks mighty fine, Your Majesty," Etienne said, catching up with him. "Pretty close to an ideal."

  "I hope so," Griffen said, smiling whenever someone caught his eye. He plucked a bacon-wrapped scallop off a passing tray. He planned to enjoy the dinner all he could. He had been living on carry-out food, a thousand miles away from this in quality. Until the games picked up, his access to gourmet food was limited to krewe events for which he had already paid.

  "This is just brilliant, Griffen!" Callum Fenway said, holding up the souvenir poster from his plate. Griffen bowed over Lucinda's hand and shook her husband's. "Lucinda here wants to swap hers with Madeline Grade's, if you don't mind."

  "Not at all," Griffen said. "Glad you like them."

  "I think these are just so clever," Lucinda said.

  "Whatever you would like," Griffen said, pleased. "Enjoy the evening." He and Etienne made their way to the table at the center of the room, where Antoinette was holding forth. Griffen's ladies and Gris-gris were already seated, as was Melinda. Val was angry to have her at the same table, but Griffen had pointed out, it would have attracted attention if she were not seated in a place of honor. With a look that told him he would pay for it later, Val subsided. She made sure Gris-gris and Mai were on either side of her.

  He signed to the bandleader, who played a fanfare on his trumpet. Griffen took his cards from his pocket.

  "My friends, I want to thank you all for coming tonight. The king's party is an opportunity for me to express gratitude to you for the honor of naming me as king of the Krewe of Fafnir for this year. I am a newcomer to New Orleans, but I have never felt so at home anywhere as I do here in this city. To give me a chance to participate in this most famous event is far beyond my wildest dreams. To see New Orleans prepare for Mardi Gras seems as if it's getting dressed up, but what's really happening is that the city's revealing to the rest of the world what it really looks like all the time, only on the inside. The good times roll. We take things easy, big-time. But we work hard at having fun, too, but all the fun leads up to a time when you take your faith seriously. A krewe is set up to hold a parade or a party, but most of them, Fafnir included, do some serious work for charitable institutions. I respect that.

  "I want to offer a special welcome to all my fellow kings and queens and potentates and whatever names you've given to the honorees who ride at the front of our parades." Cos waved a languid hand from the table nearest him. Everyone laughed, including Griffen. "We're one of the first things the paradegoer sees, but we're only a minor part of the whole. Behind each of us, literally, are hundreds, if not thousands of people who make Mardi Gras happen. I had no idea how far in advance everything has to be planned or how much de
tail has to be seen to--and I'm grateful I didn't have to."

  The audience chuckled again.

  Griffen smiled at them, feeling expansive and relaxed for the first time in ages. The warm glow of the candles cast a golden light on the ladies in their finery and the gentlemen in their tuxedos. He'd seen many of them in sweatpants and T-shirts slinging paint and papier-mache. It was his night to shine, but theirs, too.

  "There are too many of you to name individually. I wish I could. First, I want to thank Etienne de la Fee for getting me into this in the first place. Second, I want to curse Etienne de la Fee for getting me into this in the first place." Everyone laughed, especially Etienne, who slapped the table and guffawed. "Credit also goes to the Fenways, the Grades, the Killens, my sister Val . . ."

  As he named each, the audience applauded. Griffen just barely heard the noise of a cell phone blaring its irritating beep. Someone hadn't bothered to turn his off when he came into the dining room.

  With a shock, he realized it was his. The clapping died away, and everyone laughed again when they heard the insistent peeping.

  "You better get that, Mr. Griffen," Etienne shouted.

  Griffen knew he had to go with the flow.

  "Excuse me," he said. He took the phone out of his breast pocket. The screen said that it was Detective Harrison calling. "Hello, Harrison. I . . ."

  The detective's voice bellowed in his ear. "Don't you Harrison me! I'm at one of your goddamned games. It's turned ugly, and I want you here, now!"

  Griffen grinned uneasily at the tables of guests. "Detective, I'm in the middle of something. It's going to have to wait a few hours."

  "I don't care what you're in the middle of!" A loud crash, followed by shouting, erupted out of the receiver. "Get your ass down here, McCandles! If you aren't down here in ten minutes I'm sending a patrol car. Damm it, you stop that! Hold on to her, Sherer! Move it, McCandles. This is your business and your problem." The connection snapped off.

  Griffen found himself staring at the handset in dead silence. He looked up. "Uh, folks, there's an emergency. I . . . have to leave for a little while."