But these bounced harmlessly from the emerald scales. The dragon turned sharply around, and as its tail swung it ripped roof slates loose. The knights and the duchess had their shields up just in time to protect themselves from a roaring burst of flame. As the dragon readied itself for another breath, they lowered the shields for a second and threw their spears.
Most of the spears bounced off as harmlessly as the arrows had done, but one lodged for a second in the dragon's throat. It reared back, clawing at the spear until it fell, but where it had pierced the skin was a tiny drop of black blood.
"The dragon's throat," said the old wizard in my ear. "It's the one vulnerable point on its body."
But the knights did not have a chance to try throwing their spears again. The dragon leaped at them, beating its scaled wings, and with a swipe of a claw had knocked several into the courtyard, where they landed with metallic crashes. Then the dragon sprang upwards and circled over the castle, its head back, roaring in pain. In the few seconds before it returned, we ran out into the courtyard, helped the knights gather up their companions, and dragged them into the relative safety of the hall.
All of them were scorched, and several were badly wounded. Dominic, who had been knocked off the wall, seemed to have several broken ribs. He was the worst, but all had suffered in one way or another. The duchess was not directly wounded, but all her hair, where it protruded from her helmet, had been burned off.
The dragon returned to the top of the north tower, where it lashed its tail and looked down at us with real fury. I glanced over my shoulder. The chaplain was helping deal with the wounded. Most of the women in the castle were clinging together in the center of the hall, all with white faces and many sobbing uncontrollably. The king and queen, their hands linked, were embracing as many as they could reach, ladies and servants alike, and trying to talk soothingly.
I was shocked to see a dancing pair of blue eyes among the stricken faces. The Lady Maria, with rapt attention, was thoroughly enjoying the dragon.
The duchess was exchanging her shield for another, less scorched, and picking up a spear as though planning to go out again. "Stay here," I told her. "You can't stop it with force." My slow mind had at last given me an idea.
I started to make myself invisible. I started with the feet, pronouncing the heavy syllables of the Hidden Language as quickly as I could. The feet disappeared, then the knees, then the thighs, and I was further than I had ever before gone with this spell. But at the waist I became stuck. The top half of my body remained obstinately visible.
"Cover me with illusion," I told the old wizard. "I've got to get close enough to the dragon's throat to try to pierce it." The duchess, realizing what I was doing, handed me her spear. Fortunately, I was able to make the spear itself invisible without difficulty, while still maintaining the invisibility spell on my lower body.
"All right," said the old wizard. "Go!" I stepped on invisible legs into the courtyard and launched myself into the air.
I looked down at my upper torso. The old wizard had made me into a particularly ugly bird, clearly too small to be a person, and, I hoped, too unappetizing for the dragon to eat at once.
The dragon was scratching with whimpers of pain at its throat. When it saw me, it lowered its claw and opened its mouth. I darted upwards as a tongue of fire shot under me. But, uninterested, the dragon returned at once to scratching. I considered chirping to give my birdlike form an air of verisimilitude but decided not to stretch my luck.
I circled delicately, trying to find a good angle for a spear thrust. I couldn't see the spear but I could feel it, gripped tight in my sweaty palms, and I hoped I had the point forward. Twice the dragon reached up to bat me away, and twice I had to duck as deadly razor-sharp claws passed within an inch of my invisible legs.
And then my chance came. Its head back, the dragon was roaring again, and I flew as fast as I could straight toward it, and thrust the spear with all my strength toward the base of the throat.
But just as I thought I had it, the dragon twisted its neck, and the spear, clanging uselessly against the heavy scales, was jerked from my hands.
I dropped to the ground outside the wall, waiting for the dragon to come after me. Maybe at least I could lure it away from the castle. But I knew it could fly far faster than I could.
But it did not pursue me. It sounded instead as though it had decided to start taking the roof off the great hall.
I flew back up in time to see the chimney topple. The screams from within seemed to excite the dragon. But as it saw me its scarlet nostrils flared, and again I was nearly burnt to cinders.
Then all around the dragon was a new cloud of red balls, bigger than before, swirling, popping, ducking and weaving. I dropped into the courtyard to pick up an abandoned spear and realized that I too had become an illusory red ball.
With my new spear newly invisible, I rose into the cloud of balls. Furiously angry, the dragon clawed at the balls and roasted them with fire, but both his talons and his breath passed harmlessly through them. Camouflaged among them, ready to dart up or down, I waited for my opportunity.
When it came I almost missed it. Half obscured by the red balls, the dragon's throat appeared before me, the tiny wound in the center and all the scratches around it oozing black blood. Too close for a rapid approach and not daring to back up, I swung my feet up against the beast's neck and plunged the spear with all the force in my body into the space between them.
And the spear went home. A geyser of burning dragon blood covered me, blinded me, so that I was barely able to keep on flying. The roar of the dragon above me could have been my own scream. The tail in its writhing caught me, whirled me far out beyond the castle walls, so that my invisibility spell was knocked completely from my mind, and if I hadn't been able to free one eye in time to see the ground coming up toward me, the flying spell might have failed me as well.
I dropped gently to earth, looking back toward the castle. The dragon was in its death throes, still spurting blood. It managed to pull out the spear, but too late, for it had penetrated its heart. Pieces of the castle went flying as it rolled in agony. Then, with a final roar, it slumped lifeless over the wall.
I took a deep breath and gathered up some snow to scrub my face. My hands were rubbed raw, all my ribs ached, and I had some lacerations and bruises, but other than that I thought I was unwounded. But my new Christmas suit was completely ruined by dragon's blood.
II
I walked back slowly toward the castle. It was incredible to me that only the evening before, after turning the young count into a frog, I had imagined myself a competent wizard. This was my worst failure ever. I had never before managed to destroy half a castle.
One would have expected, I thought, that a royal wizard would be able to deal with a product of wild magic without coming as close to getting himself and everyone else killed as I had done. For all I knew, there was a simple spell against dragons, taught in one of the lectures I had missed. I would certainly have to apologize abjectly to the king and queen. As I reached the castle and crossed the drawbridge, I wondered if I would have to resign as well.
I was highly startled when, as I stepped into the courtyard, the queen threw herself into my arms, heedless of the dragon's blood, and began showering me with kisses. I would have been able to respond more enthusiastically if I had not been so surprised.
In a few seconds she pulled herself away. "Oh, excuse me, I don't want to seem forward, but I'm so grateful! You're our hero! You saved Yurt!" Maybe, I thought, I would not have to resign after all.
The rest of the people in the castle who could still walk were mobbed around me, laughing and jumping to get a better look at me. "Our hero! The savior of Yurt! He killed the dragon!"
"Well, yes, but it took me an awful long time to do it!" I protested. "Don't thank someone who almost let the castle be destroyed! The old wizard is the real hero."
They pulled the old wizard forward. "What are you talking about
?" he said irritably. "Don't go putting your blame on me!"
"But you're the hero," I said. "You're the one who distracted the dragon long enough so that I could spear him! I never could have gotten close enough without your illusions."
"Took you long enough to do the business, too," he grunted, which was actually my assessment as well.
The king was checking the outer walls, but most of us went into the hall, where several of the wounded were already bandaged. Dominic was groaning steadily. "I wonder if the pigeons are still alive and flying, so that we could send for the doctor," said the constable, and hurried off to the south tower to see.
The hall had escaped much better than I had feared. The chimney had collapsed into the fireplace, and several of the windows were broken, but I was pleased to see that the Christmas tree was untouched.
"Well, I guess we'll just all have to squeeze into the kitchens for Christmas dinner!" said the queen.
"It's going to be hours late," said the cook.
"I must say," said the young count, who had not said anything since the dragon first appeared, "that I think this affair was all handled very sloppily. Castles should have established procedures to deal with emergencies." But no one paid him any attention—though I thought I heard one of the stable boys make a sound like a bullfrog just before he dissolved into hysterical giggles.
The queen stayed by my side. I was beginning to wish I had paid more attention while she was kissing me, but she showed no signs of starting again. "I'm afraid you've gotten dragon's blood on your dress," I said, as a hint that I had noticed how close she had been, only moments before. "And I feel terrible about my velvet suit, just after you and the king gave it to me."
She smiled. "I don't mind about my dress." I wondered if this was because it was the dress that was the same color as the duchess's dress. "We'll order you a new suit at once. I can see we'll have to order quite a few things in the next few days. Do you want midnight blue again, or would you prefer a different color?'
"One just like this would be exactly right."
I lowered myself into a chair, feeling more bruised than I had originally thought. The king was back and talking to the constable about arranging for repairs.
"Come here, Master," I called to the old wizard, and he came toward me, frowning. He had the calico cat in his arms, but all the cat's fur was standing on end and its eyes were wild. "I want to thank you for saving my life. I can't thank you for saving the castle, but only because it's not my castle."
"At least you took advantage of what little magic you knew," he said grumpily.
"Also I wanted to ask you something," I said, starting to feel more cheerful. If the king did not think Yurt was irredeemably destroyed, maybe it had not been. After all, he had already been out to make sure his rose garden had not suffered. "I've heard that being bathed in dragon's blood makes one's skin harder than steel. Is this true?'
The queen excused herself to talk to the cook, who was showing no signs of starting dinner.
The wizard snorted. "I don't know what kind of old witch's story they tell you at that school, but all dragon blood does is make you stink. You'd better take a bath. And that reminds me. You there!" to the constable. "You'd better get the dragon's body cut up and dragged away from the castle right away. It will start rotting in a few hours, and the castle will become unbearable."
The constable sent out some of the young men with saws. I decided I was enough of a wounded hero not to have to join in.
"I'm going to take a bath right away, Master," I said. "But before I do, I want to talk to you about that dragon."
"I'd warned you what all this loose wizardry would come to."
The hubbub of the hall was all down at the far end, and no one was near us. "That dragon didn't just come by itself. That dragon was summoned."
He thought about this for a moment in silence. "So who do you think summoned it? You're not accusing me, are you?"
"No. But I think you know far more about what's happened in Yurt in the last three years than you've told me, and I think the dragon's coming is part of that. Did you know that your magic locks were gone from the north tower?"
"I found out this morning. Went out to inspect them while you were flirting with the duchess after breakfast."
So much for my efforts to keep an eye on the wizard!
"Why didn't you tell me, young whipper-snapper? Were they just broken today?"
"They've been gone since I first arrived. I didn't dare tell you because I was afraid you'd blame me, and you'd said there was nothing up in the tower anyway. Master, you've got to tell me. What's escaped from the tower?"
For a minute I was afraid he would say nothing. He kept patting the cat, which was gradually calming down, although it clearly did not like the smell of blood on me. At last he said, "Well, you're Royal Wizard of Yurt now, and I'm retired, so it's your problem." And he told me.
Even though I had been expecting this, my veins turned to ice. I would have to get into a hot bath before I died, but I knew I would never have another chance to talk like this to the old wizard. "How long has it been here?"
"I first found it three years ago."
I decided it would be undiplomatic to remind the old wizard that he had categorically denied any supernatural presence in the castle while he was Royal Wizard.
"I don't know who summoned it to Yurt in the first place," he continued, "but finding it wasn't very difficult, once it arrived. The old chaplain, this one's predecessor, found it too. He blamed me for it, even though I'd never imagined to myself that the powers of darkness were romantic—not like you!"
I nodded, not daring to protest.
"Interfering old busy-body! He tried to catch it himself, with his bell and candle. Pretty ineffective, I thought. No wonder it killed him."
He must have seen the horror on my face, even though his eyes were directed toward the cat, for he snorted. "I'm sure the old priest died with his soul ‘intact,’ if that's what you and your friend the young chaplain are worried about. He was chasing it around the parapets, and he fell off. Nobody knew how he'd fallen, except for me, and I didn't see any reason to say. Terrible accident, they all agreed. You can imagine I didn't tell that young priest anything about it!"
"But you caught it?" I said in a low voice, as he stopped and did not start again.
"It took me close to three years. It took all the magic I knew, and then some. But I finally cornered it in my study and put the binding spells on it. It had been out far too long for me to send it back, but at least I could bind it so it couldn't move."
Except that it had moved.
"I locked the tower so the person who had summoned it couldn't get in to free it, and, just in case it did break loose, I put separate spells around the outside of the castle, so it couldn't cross the moat."
"Did Dominic know about this?"
The old wizard glanced at me sideways. "How did you guess that? He did. I needed his help, near the end. He's not the person I would have chosen, but he'd somehow already found out about it. He was the one who did the drawing while I held it down with my spells."
The cat was almost asleep on the wizard's lap now. "We caught it just in time, too. I was afraid black magic was starting to kill the king, so I was pleased to see him so much better when I arrived yesterday. Maybe he's hoping for that baby boy again!"
The wizard stood up abruptly, scooped up the startled cat, and settled it on his shoulder. "Well, young wizard, it's your castle and your problem now. Capturing it once wore me out so thoroughly I decided to retire at once. Catching it again is the job for a youngster with fancy magic from the City."
He started stumping toward the door.
"Where are you going?" said the king. "You can't be leaving already! We haven't even had Christmas dinner!"
"I'd rather eat my vegetables at peace in the woods than eat a fancy dinner to the smell of dragon's blood!"
I turned toward my own chambers, in search of a bath, without w
aiting to see the end of the argument, for I already knew how it would end. At least I was pleased that the old wizard's hand, with which he was gesturing, wore the king's Christmas ring.
Lying in the bathtub, completely submerged except for my face, I could feel my bruised muscles starting to relax, but I did not dare relax too much. The old wizard had clearly guessed more than he had told me. But even he might not know why the dragon had appeared today.
As long as I stayed in the tub, I imagined, I would not have to deal with this. After all, evil had been loose in the castle for three years, without permanent damage to Yurt, so maybe another three years wouldn't matter much either.
But I could not persuade myself of this, because I knew it was not true. The old wizard had known that too, and that was why he had returned abruptly to the forest, before I could enlist his aid.
The bath water was cold. I surged up and out of the tub, reaching for a towel. This was my kingdom and my problem.
III
The hall, with its fireplace destroyed, was unusable for dinner, but the kitchen was just about big enough to squeeze in the tables, and it was certainly warm enough. Pushed companionably close together, so that the smell of singed hair was all around us, we ate oyster stew, roast beef, and plum pudding.
Several of the kitchen maids had broken down completely and were unable to help, and the cook's own stability had lapses, so dinner was served in a leisurely manner, with pauses between courses while the next course was prepared. The queen, the Lady Maria, and several of the other ladies helped, all of them considering it quite a joke.
"Well, this will certainly be a Christmas we'll always remember!" said the old count.
Since everyone had survived, and even the worst of the wounded looked as though they would mend without grave danger, the mood had become lighthearted. Several of the knights seem positively to have welcomed the rare chance to do something warlike, even though their swords and spears had been useless against the dragon. The terrors of the morning and the repair work of the weeks to come were primarily subjects for triumphant mirth.
C. Dale Brittain_Wizard of Yurt 01 Page 20
