Dog and Dragon

by Dave Freer

  * * *

  By dark Fionn was back, pleased with himself. “It was a bolt-hole, I think. A neat piece of spellwork, but rubbed out now. I had words with the knockers to stop them going in before us, in case there are other alarms and defenses. How is the pontoon-bridge?”

  “We’ve had some of the Lyonesse nobility exercise their magic,” said Meb. “We took the coracle apart, gave a fragment to each of them and had them apply their magic. We’ve got planks to put across the top. Now all we need is low tide.”

  “That comes, as does the mist,” said Fionn.

  And it did. At dusk a column of men came down. A few paddled across in a coracle with the ropes and soon the floating bridge was in place. There were a good two thousand men there.

  “They’ll have to be deaf up there if they don’t realize something is going on,” said Fionn, grumpily.

  The little door proved no match for Fionn. But the narrow passage beyond was going to be something of an impediment to the invaders. Getting thousands up was going to take time. Fionn went ahead. He knew better than to tell Meb—or Díleas—to stay back more than a few paces. The narrow passage brought them out into huge caverns. The knockers provided light, showing the great iron chains and sluices and a waterwheel that drove the engines far above.

  The stairwell led upwards and upwards. Fionn looked and listened intently and, when he got to a certain point, called a knocker miner out from the crowd following. “There’s a hollow just behind this wall.”

  “That’ll be the wine cellar. We used to visit it. There are a few of our passages into it,” said the chief Jack, with a toothy smile.

  “Send a few of your lads in there to see if it is empty. Not of wine. Of people. And if it is, we’ll have this wall down and send some men that way.”

  About a minute later the knocker was back. “Just the chief steward. Drunk. He’s locked himself in. By what he’s muttering, the murdering bastards upstairs will have no more wine even if he can’t get out. The wine is dreadful. My lads will have that little wall down in no time at all. And quietly too.”

  “Good. We’ll go on up while you do that.”

  They did. Another two flights of stairs and Díleas growled.

  Fionn could hear him now, too. The dog had keen ears and a keener sense of smell. They advanced slowly on the human they could hear snoring on the other side of the door.

  Then there were shouts and yells and the sound of swordplay in the distance. Fionn pulled the door open. The men coming in through the cellars must have encountered some resistance.

  The door opened onto the courtyard, at the foot of Aberinn’s tower. The guard who had been asleep at the tower door was still trying to wake up when a sheepdog bit him, and rough hands grabbed him and threw him down as more men spilled up out into the moonlight.

  Fionn and Meb had not waited. The key here was not the castle. It was the mage’s tower. And the iron-studded door was locked. Meb swung her axe at it, the magical blade cut through the bolts, and they were into Aberinn’s tower.

  There were signs that the mage had left in haste. Part of a machine was scattered onto the floor, in contrast to the neatness of the other tables.

  Outside there was screaming and shouting.

  Here, only a gilded crow looked at them from its cage.

  “Upstairs!”

  So they ran up towards them. “Stop!” shouted Fionn.

  They did and he disarmed the little cross-bow miniature set to fire across the passage. Disarmed two other trap-spells.

  They advanced cautiously. There was a great creaking sound. The next room was a mass of cogs and interlocking wheels—a great driver for the planar orrery above.

  And that was where they found Aberinn. Behind a phalanx of forty-nine armed and fully armored men that advanced as one.

  * * *

  Meb looked at the small army that faced them. “They’re not real! It’s a broomstick and some tin.”

  “Curse you,” screamed Aberinn, pulling a lever down. Machinery began to clank, and he took the long lever and ran to the stair up to the roof, Díleas tearing his robe.

  And there on the roof, they cornered him, standing on the edge of the parapet.

  “Come any closer and I will throw the key to the Changer. I may get it into the sea from here.”

  “Give up, Mage. The Defender has come,” said one of the men who had come up with them. Everyone wanted to be there with her.

  “Defender!” spat Aberinn. “You fools! I made that prophecy up. I invented it. I did it so that when my son returns I could use some stupid woman to get rid of the regent easily. So I could avoid the silly plots in the meantime. Lyonesse needed me. I preserved it. And my son still lives and only he, because he is my blood, will be able to find the ancient font. Without it Lyonesse will never have a king who is the Land. It will never be able to defeat the invaders.”

  * * *

  When the black dragon had opened the castle, he had broken Aberinn’s circle of protection. Queen Gwenhwyfach, sitting peering into her basin, had at last been able to see into Dun Tagoll. She’d seen how Medraut fled to the women’s quarters and was dragged out by two young squires.

  She’d seen surrender and the bloodshed she’d dreamed of.

  She was quite empty of emotion now, as her daughter and the black dragon faced her former lover across the roof of the tower.

  And now she understood what had driven him.

  He’d never known that she’d given birth to a daughter.

  When she’d found out about King Geoph’s little pleasures with her chambermaid Elis, when Gwenhwyfach herself could not fall pregnant . . . She’d gone to Aberinn, and the magics they’d worked had made sure the king would sire no more bastards.

  Then she’d needed a lover to see to that herself.

  His spells on cord-blood told him their child lived.

  It did not tell Aberinn the sex of that child.

  * * *

  Fionn could feel the build of energies. It worried him. These humans had no idea what forces they dealt with messing about as they did with the planes and subplanes. “Let us stop your Changer. I think I may be able to solve the mystery of this son you wait for. I saw the workings you had below. They’re centered on your blood.”

  “All is made for my blood and my son. And I will destroy you now, woman!” screamed Aberinn. “It’s too late. The Changer is set so it will try to change . . . when there are no Ways to open! All that energy will pour in here, and the tower will burn. I just had to hold you for a few more minutes. I have the key.” And he threw it, out into the darkness. “And now no one does! You will all die with me.”

  “You fool,” said Fionn. “You’ve probably destroyed Lyonesse, let alone this tower. And it should have been obvious to you who your child was. Díleas, NO!”

  The sheepdog had been edging forward quietly. He took a nip at a skinny calf. Just as he might have worried a recalcitrant sheep into moving.

  The sheep would have pulled away too.

  But it probably would not have been standing on a narrow parapet eighty cubits above a stone-flagged courtyard.

  And from below them in the tower, there was a horrible scream and a grating noise.

  Silence. And another scream from inside the tower.

  They ran down.

  It was Alois’s son, Owain, his hand trapped in the cogs. Whatever he’d done, the Changer would not change anything anymore. Pieces of spring and little brass cogs lay scattered about.

  “Axe,” said Fionn grimly, holding out his hand for the ancient and magical alvar blade.

  It would cut steel.

  It cut brass.

  The alternative would have been to cut the arm off.

  “I . . . heard what the mage said,” said the boy. “I squirmed between the legs, back down here. Stabbed it. It . . . drew my hand in,” he said through gritted teeth. “Mother . . . said I wasn’t to come. But I wanted to do something for the Lady Anghared. So . . . so she would pardon m
y father. Not have his head . . . I was too scared already when I thought he was dead last time.”

  “Whatever else you’ve done by this deed,” said Meb, “I promise that I am not going to have your father’s head. I was never planning to.”

  “Tell my mother I am sorry . . . I disobeyed,” he said faintly and slumped in Fionn’s arms.

  There was cheering and shouting down the stairs.

  But Fionn only had space for the small sorrow in his arms. “He’s a brave lad. We must see if we can save the arm. But he saved all of us. I think the castle has been taken. You’d better send for his mother, Scrap.”

  * * *

  It was only a few hours until morning. When the sun came up that day, the gates of Dun Tagoll were open. The bodies had been dragged away. People came and went. Messengers rode north and south.

  And the dragon, dog, and the daughter of Queen Gwenhwyfach and Mage Aberinn stood together in a little oasis of quiet by the outer wall, where the water trickled through the now luxuriant ferns and tiny star lilies and into the stone basin.

  “This is my favorite place here. About the only place I like here, actually. I didn’t like this castle when I came to it. And now I like it even less,” said Meb. “I always wondered just who my parents were. Daydreamed I might be a princess or the daughter of a great magician. Did I make that happen?” she said, touching the dragon pendant at her throat.

  “No,” said the dragon. “It’s common enough, I gather, for humans to dream such things, especially when they know little of them, or the price of them. Would you have dreamed them as they were?”

  Meb shook her head. “No. I . . . I didn’t like either of them. I should have loved them. They were my parents.”

  “If you had, Scrap, I would be worried about you,” said the dragon. “They had their strengths. Even, oddly, good points. But they were not strong enough to rise above their upbringing and society.”

  “It’s not a society I want. Not for the sons of the Dragon,” she said, twisting her fingers in his. “So what do we do now?”

  “Eat breakfast, I would think. Ruling is what they expect of you, though.”

  “Me?”

  “It seems you have found their holy puddle. Díleas is drinking from it, which probably makes him the king dog. I wouldn’t tell him, because he gets insufferable enough anyway.”

  Meb looked at the rock-bowl. “This is the font? I thought it was a horse trough. No one ever comes near it.”

  Fionn shrugged. “Because they can’t see it. It looks like a rock to them. Aberinn hid it so only his bloodline could see it, the same as his other illusions. The question now is what you are going to do with it.”

  “But I thought it was for kings. I drank from it. Washed my face in it.”

  “Some of the best kings have clean faces, at least once in a lifetime,” said Fionn.

  “So what do you think I should do?”

  “That you must decide. I can’t decide for you,” said Fionn, hoping he hid his nervousness.

  “I’d make a slightly worse king than Neve.”

  “In the way they see matters, in terms of bloodlines anyway, she has a better claim,” said Fionn. “She’s the king’s granddaughter; you are not actually more than the queen’s daughter. And of course there are any number of others. Getting this society to accept that may be difficult, though. They have gotten used to the idea of you.”

  “I think I would make the worst possible queen or king or . . .”

  “Dragon partner? Troublemaker? Provider of breakfast to faithful sheepdogs?”

  She smiled and kissed him. “I think those sound more like what I wish to be good at.”

  And, thought Fionn, will be, even possibly without help from a dragon pendant. “I hear Earl Alois has arrived. I think we need to go and give him greeting.”

  Meb winced. “We’d better.”

  They found the earl with his son.

  He knelt when he saw Meb. “Lady Anghared. Defender of Lyonesse.”

  Meb looked at him. Looked at the boy, pale and drugged by Fionn. Looked at his wife, holding him by the shoulder. “He’s a very fine son, Earl Alois. He did this for you. And even if I had wanted your head as much as I wanted Medraut’s or Aberinn’s, I would have forgiven you, for his sake.”

  “I failed you, too, Alois,” said Fionn. “I did not keep him safe.”

  The earl stood. “My son has taught me honor. And they tell me that he would have lost his arm completely if it were not for you, Sir Spriggan. That you were the one who set the bones and sewed the skin. I cannot blame you for his actions.”

  “Then you’d blame me for his courage too. And that, I think he learned from his father,” said Fionn. “And actually, I’m a dragon, not a spriggan.”

  “Oh, I’d say his mother, too,” said his Scrap, as Alois stared at him.

  Fionn could see it in her face. She reached her decision. “Earl Alois. Pick him up. I know he is sore, but this is important. Lady Branwen, please bring your daughters. I’ve learned that the land doesn’t care what sex its kings are. They might have to find a better word than ‘king.’”

  They walked out into the courtyard, to the outer wall, with, by now, a large following.

  Meb came to what everyone else there perceived as a protruding piece of rock.

  She told it to be what she could see. Then she made Earl Alois come forward and took a handful of water from the stone bowl. Bathed Owain’s forehead in it. “And your daughters. The land is a heavy burden, best shared. One guardian for the South, one for the North, one for the East.”

  So she bathed their foreheads too.

  “But you are the Defender. You are the Land,” said Earl Alois.

  “The Land does not belong to any one person,” said Meb. “Lyonesse belongs to the people of Lyonesse, and they belong to it. But you will be the regent for it.”

  “But you . . .”

  “I came to change it, not rule it. I am going to hold the sons of the Dragon, not Lyonesse. However, I do need two favors of you.”

  “You will always command whatever I or mine can do, Lady Anghared,” he said earnestly.

  “My Neve is to be chatelaine of Dun Tagoll. And a place of honor and lands must go to Vivien’s sons.”

  Earl Alois nodded. “My word on it.”

  Meb smiled at them. Patted Owain’s head. Took a firm hold of Finn and called Díleas to her.

  It was easy to vanish.

  And it was also easier to vanish from their sight, to leave them with an event that would grow in song and story, than to try and leave in any normal manner.

  * * *

  “Where now?” asked Fionn, enjoying sitting watching the confusion.

  “We can still see you,” said the spriggan. “And they’ll make a mess of it. Just you wait.”

  “Probably,” said Meb, smiling at the grey-faced fay. “But that’ll make you happy. Anyway, this is not our place. And Finn would make a worse ruler than I would.”

  Fionn nodded. “I can’t think of anything I’d like less. My work still needs doing, and if the First are going to meddle . . . it may need more. There are some travelers out there we can quietly fit in with. We can come back from time to time. When they least expect us. I will make you and Díleas a home somewhere, but this is not it.

  She put her arms around them, dog and dragon. “Home is not one place. It’s where we are together.”

  “So let’s go home,” said the dragon.

  Appendix