Dragonworld

by Byron Preiss

  * * *

  Lagow of Jelrich Town was both woodwright and wheelwright to the town, and as such he made quite a decent living. Many of the houses and shops in the town were built by him, including his own—a fine two-story affair, with garrets and pantries and a wine buttery that was the envy of many. His wife of twenty-seven years was named Deena, and he still complimented himself occasionally for choosing her; she matched him length and breadth, he thought, in common sense. She had borne him two sons and a daughter. He had lost one of the sons to the raving fever, years ago, but that sadness had passed, and now his other son was learning to take over the business. His daughter was being sought by several very promising young men. It was a good life for Lagow of Jelrich Town, a life ordered and comfortable. He was proud of himself and his family, and proud of the fifteen years he had served as an Elder to the village. He felt he had earned the right to a peaceful old age, and so he was not at all pleased at being selected for the High Council.

  “An absurd business,” he grumbled, watching Deena pack his bags. “Disrupting an old man’s life for such nonsense. I’ll tell them so. See if I don’t.”

  “You do that,” Deena said crisply. “You’re not that old, Lagow. Forty-eight isn’t old.”

  “It isn’t young, by far.”

  “Look upon it as a compliment. They value your opinion.”

  “If they value it that much, let them come here for it. Why must I haul my poor old body all the way to the Summer Stairs just to tell that excitable fool Jondalrun to come to his senses?”

  “Listen to you! As if the man were a dotard in your charge!”

  Lagow snorted. “I met him at the High Council when we discussed the floods. He was high-tempered back then, and it doesn’t sound like he’s changed. Grown old and set in his ways, I’m sure.”

  “You haven’t?” she asked, handing him his bags and pulling a cap down over his ears. She changed her tone slightly as she said, “Be kind with him and watch your tongue, husband. I heard in the market last week of his loss.”

  Lagow sighed. “I hear you, Deena. I know the man’s hurt deep. But he’s stirring up more hurt with his grief, and only ill will be left of it. I think it’s my duty to tell him that.”

  She sighed. “Then be prepared to buy some beefsteak for your bruises, if what I’ve heard of Jondalrun is true.”

  He went down the stairs and out the door, where his son stood holding the horses yoked to his best shay. Lagow tossed his bags in the back, gripped his son’s hand firmly, then turned and kissed Deena, a kiss which lasted long enough to surprise both of them. He saw his son grinning broadly. “What’re you laughing at?” he roared in mock anger. “Hear me well, now—I want that spinning wheel for the widow Annese finished and polished by the time I’m back. And don’t go sitting on your hocks when that’s done—hustle up more work, if you want a wall between you and the witch next winter!”

  They laughed and waved, and he smiled and waved back as he chucked the reins and started down the road. The smile did not sit right on his face, however. This talk of war—this was a serious thing, a very serious thing. He was worried about it. Not only for himself—though it would be a bitter thing to be denied a comfortable old age after he had worked so hard for it—but also for his son. War was so much worse on youth. He had never been in one, but his grandfather had told him of the Southern Battles, after which the founders of Fandora had come over the mountains to settle the steppes. Lagow was glad to have missed that war. He wanted his son to miss this one. He hoped that would be the case.

  * * *

  The sheer cliffs of Fandora rose sixty to ninety feet out of the sea, and their depth below the waves had never been measured. That part of the ocean was treacherous; undersea caves and grottoes produced sudden currents and whirlpools that could drive fishing craft against the cliffs.

  Yet fishing was done here regularly; in fact, the community of Cape Bage made its livelihood by it. For only here, in these deep waters, could they find the large telharna fish, whose skin dried into a tough yet supple leather, and whose oil lit many houses during long winter nights. Also here were the schools of puney, the small, bland-tasting fish that, when seasoned with temwood spice, was one of Fandora’s dietary staples.

  The fishing was done by great winches and poles which lowered nets into the water from the top of the cliffs. The arrangement of the ropes and nets was complicated, and the end result was a sieve made of yithe fiber stiff enough to resist the currents, yet flexible enough to trap fish.

  Tamark had been a cliff fisherman of Cape Bage since the age of twenty-two. His father had been a fisherman, and it was his grandfather who had invented the fishing nets. Tamark was a huge man, with a bald head that gleamed as though anointed with telharna oil, and an aggressive tuft of beard. His nose had been broken years before, when a winding lever had slipped from his hands while the nets were on the way up. His large hands were scarred with rope burns and callused to shining smoothness from winding the winches. He was a strong man, too, for it took a giant’s strength to haul the nets full of gleaming, struggling fish up the cliff as often as forty times a day.

  He stood now in one of the Baskets—the railed wicker platforms that overhung the cliffs—and looked down at the lines that fell away into the fog-hidden sea. It was a gray and gloomy day at the coast. Behind him there came a strange hollow sound, like the wailing of a wolf in the hills. Tamark did not look around. A moment later a fine mist moistened the fish-hide jerkin he wore, as a pounding wave far below was pushed up through the network of tubes and passageways in the cliff, to vent at last through some hole in the ground as water vapor and a moaning wail. Tamark hardly heard or felt it—it was as much a part of his life as the smell of fish.

  It had been a bad day for catch—the mist and fog seemed to depress the fish as much as they depressed the fishermen. The nets had been let down twenty times, and they had filled barely three carts with fish. Tamark stared moodily down into the mist, the clammy billows that seemed like the edge of the world. Three carts of fish would bring barely enough waxings in his share to buy a decent meal. The life of a fisherman was hard at times. On days of poor luck like these, Tamark sometimes wished that he had not returned to Fandora, to his father’s trade—that he had instead stayed a traveler. He had thought to see the world when he had been a young man, and so he had signed up as a merchant’s apprentice. The caravan (such as it was: four horses and a few carts loaded with cloth goods, but to him it had been a caravan, and an impressive one, too) had traveled to Bundura, one of the Far Westlands. For several weeks they had stayed there, and Tamark had been dazzled by the comparative wonders of Dagemon-Ken, the capital. It had stone pipes in the city square from which water spurted in fountains. The streets were paved with jointed flagstones, not rough cobbles, and some of the buildings were huge, as much as three stories high and containing ten rooms or more. There were colonnades filled with taverns and shops, and peacocks wandered the streets. An impressive wall surrounded the city, and soldiers with cuirasses of beaten brass and bearing spears stood guard at the gates—and the women there! He had fallen madly in love with the doe-eyed daughter of a livestock baron. But he soon learned that his love was not reciprocated—she had tolerated him merely as a curiosity, someone whose bumpkin manners and mistakes could be counted on to amuse her and her friends. Tamark had returned home when he discovered this, and swore that he would never again leave the town of his birth.

  He sighed. That was many years ago, and though he was still asked on occasion to tell of the marvels he had seen in his travels, he seldom felt the same surge of excitement and adventure at the memories that he once did. He was now a fisherman of Fandora—nothing more than that—and that was what he would be until he died. True, he was also an Elder of Cape Bage, but these duties, though he discharged them conscientiously, he found difficult to take seriously at times. Settling disputes such as which chicken belonged in whose pen, or deciding who owned the apples that fell on the oth
er side of the fence, were scarcely problems requiring knowledge of far-off climes and cities. Tamark sighed again. He wished he had the opportunity to do something of value, for himself as well as his city, as his grandfather had done by inventing the nets.

  It had come time to haul up the catch, and so he stepped out of the Basket and took his place at one of the winches. Twenty or so other fishermen were doing the same; Tamark watched them, waiting until they were all at their posts, hands firmly gripping the worn wooden handles. “Pray for a good catch this time!” he shouted, and was rewarded by a few despondent looks. At least he was not the only Fandoran dissatisfied. “Crank, then!” he cried, and they tugged the cranks toward them in unison.

  The effort should have been rewarded by a fairly heavy resistance, a weight that they would overcome slowly but surely. Even a full catch did not pose a back-breaking strain for twenty fishermen. So Tamark was surprised when the crank turned perhaps half a revolution and then stopped, as if he had run his knuckles against an invisible, unyielding wall. He looked at his fellows—they looked as puzzled as he did. It had to be a catch heavy beyond precedent.

  “Again . . . crank!” Tamark shouted, and they pulled once more. The lines came in half a yard, and then the heavy poles of wood, grooved to allow the passage of the lines, creaked alarmingly. Whatever they had caught weighed enough to threaten the winch; if not handled properly, it could pull the entire rigging into the sea.

  Tamark looked at the ropes. They showed none of the familiar thrashing that accompanied an unusually large haul of fish. But they fairly hummed with tension. He had never seen them under such a weight; even the occasional wrecks dredged up in the nets had not caused such tension. He hoped the ropes would withstand the weight. No diver could be sent into the currents below to untangle them, and to cut loose the precious weavings of yithe fiber that formed the nets was unthinkable. It would take months to replace them.

  “Pull!” Tamark shouted again. “Pull hard! Turn those cranks and lift!”

  They put their backs into it, their muscles bunching along their shoulders and sides. Tamark felt himself sweating, the foggy air cold against his skin. The gray sky seemed to press down from above, and the fog was rising; trails of mist crept over the cliffs. Tamark listened to the subdued roar of the breakers far below, as if it might hold a clue to their unknown cargo. The creaking of the winches filled the air, punctuated by the gasps of his men.

  The fog was a gray ghost all about them now. Tamark was suddenly seized with the strong feeling that whatever was in the net was not something that should be seen by man. This leaden weight was ominous in its resistance, its reluctance to leave those lightless depths from which it was being dredged. He had to breathe hard to keep from letting his sudden fear overcome him. But he did not order the ropes to be cut, for the nets were not something to be lost to childish fears. He set his teeth, shook his head, and kept turning.

  They could tell when the nets broke the surface—the cranking became slightly easier. None of them could step to the edge and see what was in them, however—it took every man to turn the wheels. Slowly the ropes creaked through the grooves, layering about the huge drums with dreamlike slowness.

  “Almost!” Tamark suddenly gasped. His single word of encouragement was taken up by the others: “Almost! Almost!” By the length of rope coiled about the drums, he could tell that the nets were about to swing into view. He longed to have it over with, to let the muscles rest. Yet, deeper down, he dreaded it.

  The nets cleared the cliff.

  For a moment, the fog hid them. Then a vagrant sea breeze dispersed the mist. The fishermen stopped cranking. They stared at what hung there entangled in the nets, shrouded by the fog.

  It was the white, clean-picked skeleton of a sea creature, the like of which Tamark had never seen. It was gigantic, well over fifty feet long, its head larger than a horse. Long, serpentine vertebrae told of a sinuous neck, mounted on a body which, judging from the length of the ribs, must have been ten feet thick. Not a scrap of flesh still clung to the bones—the sea scavengers had seen to that. Yet the skeleton still held together, for the most part, by ligaments and tendons that had hardened like cables. The skull was missing the lower jaw, but the huge curving teeth of the upper showed without doubt that it had been a hunter. Two of the teeth were longer and thicker than Tamark’s arm. Water dripped from the black eye sockets—a disturbing suggestion of weeping.

  No one moved. No one spoke. There was not a sound, save for the creaking of the ropes. Then, from behind, came the rising eerie moan of air forced through the fissures of the cliff. At the other end of the line, one of the men let a cry escape from his throat.

  As though severed by the sound, one of the ropes holding the massive tail snapped with the strain. The sudden shifting of weight was all that was needed; one after another, the ropes parted with sounds like breaking bones. The men barely had time to brace themselves against the sudden release of the weight. The thick poles whipped up and down like riding crops, and as the last rope snapped, the gleaming skull seemed to nod at Tamark with a strange, dreadful intelligence. Then the skeleton, together with the tattered nets, plunged downward. Several fishermen ran to the cliff’s edge to watch it vanish into the cottony mist, and to hear the splash, dim and filtered. Tamark did not move. He stood still and staring, his mind filled with the eyeless gaze of the monster that had seemed to single him out.

  The men stood stunned, both at their loss and at the creature that had caused it. Gradually, isolated voices penetrated Tamark’s shock.

  “What was it, then?”

  “Never seen a sight to match it.”

  The high wavering voice of old Kenan, the netmender, cut through the speculation. “I’ll tell ye what ye caught,” he said. “That were the remains of a seaworm, a serpent of the ocean—Old Shipcrusher, we called them. They could wrap about a fishing boat and snap it to kindling. I only saw one once, from a distance, looping in and out of the water like a darning thread through a jerkin. It were forty years ago, but I never forgot it.”

  The discussion swelled again, the story already growing in the telling. Tamark turned and lumbered away from them. There would be no more fishing today, nor for many a day in the future, until nets and ropes could be fixed. The men started back to their small quarters or to the taverns of Cape Bage.

  The Elder breathed heavily, as if to banish the dark air he felt around him. He had been dissatisfied with his lot in life, though it was better than most in Fandora. Very well, he thought ruefully, perhaps it would be taken from him. Something was looming in his future, of that he was sure. He was not eager to learn what it would be.

  When he entered his rooms behind the village bakery, he found a brief message summoning him to a meeting of Elders in Tamberly Town. Tamark read it quietly. He had been wanting a chance to do something momentous for his village, to make a contribution equal to that made by his grandfather, years ago. Perhaps the chance had now come, he thought. He was a man with a sense of the dramatic, and the arrival of the letter and the terrible experience at the cliffs on the same day was a coincidence he could not ignore.

  He sat down on his cot and put parchment on the stool in front of him. With the treasured writing skills he had learned in his travels years ago, Tamark laboriously drew instructions for the men to follow in his absence.

  Then he rose, taking two or three small waxings of local currency from his taboret, and rang a small window bell which would summon a messenger to his door.

  After the young boy had left with the message, however, Tamark still found it difficult to banish the feeling of unease within him. Despite his dreams, he was not looking forward to the council.

  V

  Tamberly Town was alive with the sounds of children, of angry parents and disgruntled Waymen, of anxious bartermen and gossiping farmers. There was an excitement in the town square unlike any the Fandorans had experienced in years. There was also tension; townspeople walking the street in the day or a
t night were apt to suddenly crane their heads skyward, as though they expected to see a Simbalese windship swoop low over the village.

  The talk was of the Simbalese and the threat of war. The possibility frightened them.

  “I hear they’re devils, you know,” Dame Sarness said to her sister. “I hear tell they can change themselves into any shape or form in an eye-wink; they could turn into bees and spiders and creep into your house, and then throttle you in your bed!” and she gave such a graphic pantomine of it that her sister bleated in fear and ran home, where she spent a vigorous afternoon cleaning her house of pests.

  “Oh, yes, magic,” the barber said to the butcher knowingly. “Why, all they needs is a lock of your hair, or a cuticle from your finger, and they can make you do things you wouldn’t do in your worst dreams!”

  “If they come near me, I’ll cut off more than a lock of their hair,” the butcher promised, testing his cleaver with a callused thumb.

  “Don’t believe the tales you hear,” Agron reassured his wife. “The Simbalese are as human as we are, and they’re no doubt just as scared of the idea of war.”

  “It’s not the ones who are scared of it that worry me,” his wife said. “They’re the sensible ones. But the ones that want war—they frighten me.”

  Little children played war in the streets and alleys, fighting with swords made of thistlesticks, turning carts and baskets into windships by children’s magic. Many a mock battle was fought and won behind steps and in corners, and many imaginary Simbalese sorcerers died there.

  “Would you really go to war?” a young lass asked her beau as the two of them sat on a hill overlooking the town. “Would you wear a uniform and carry a sword and all, just like in the Dancers’ story tales?”

  “Sure would,” her beau said. “Would you wait for me to come home, all covered with medals?”