Dragon Arcana

by Pierre Pevel

  He kneeled.

  Was he now going to pray?

  The dracs stirred, intrigued, but Kress Karn restored order and silence with a single word. He had already guessed what the dragon was about to do, having just before seen him discreetly drain a small bottle of golden henbane liqueur.

  Looking rapt, eyes closed, the Illuminator began breathing more and more noisily. Then it was as if he was struck by a sharp pain. Without opening his eyes, he arched his back and suddenly grimaced. The pain seemed to go on and forced a moan between the Illuminator’s clenched jaws. Soon, he was unable to contain the brusque movements of his shoulders and arms. He stood up, his brow covered in sweat, looking clumsy and shaky as his naked body changed and became covered in scarlet scales. He grew several inches in height and stifled a scream. He gained twenty pounds of muscle at the price of terrible pain. Bony growths sprouted from his suddenly knobbly spine and razor-sharp claws emerged at the tips of his rigid fingers. His face stretched forward into a snout and a pair of bestial jaws, while his eyes, turned yellow, were now divided by vertical slits.

  Finally, the Illuminator – or the creature he had become – settled into his new state.

  It was not a complete metamorphosis. The dragon had not recovered its primal form, only one of the intermediate variants. But the creature that turned towards the dracs subjugated them with its air of strength, brutality, and savagery. It stared at them for a long while, as its powerful shoulders rose and fell in time with its deep, hoarse breaths and threads of thick slaver dripped from its fangs.

  The dragon seized the schiavone planted in the ground and brandished it.

  ‘Let’s go,’ it said in a cavernous voice.

  Night had already fallen when, at the appointed hour, La Fargue and Laincourt crossed the Château de Mareuil courtyard heading for the signora di Santi’s quarters.

  ‘I’m still not sure this is a good idea,’ said the old captain. ‘After all, it was not so long ago that La Donna duped us and left us to be killed, as I hope I do not need to remind you.’

  ‘No, captain. But we want to speak to Gagnière, which we can only do with the agreement of the Pope’s representative. And we will certainly not obtain that if the signora advises against it.’

  ‘Not to mention the fact that she probably knows more about the Alchemist than Gagnière does himself,’ added La Fargue grudgingly.

  ‘Quite true. This invitation to dine with her is an open hand La Donna is extending to you.’

  ‘A hand, yes. Or another trap …’

  They found Marciac and Laincourt waiting on the front steps and entered with them.

  In the ‘hall’ of the Renaissance-style pavilion, everything was almost ready. Numerous candles were burning in holders on the walls, between the paintings and the stuffed hunting trophies, and La Donna’s two village girls had just finished setting all the dishes on the table, as custom dictated, before the meal was served. Considering the place and the circumstances, La Donna had managed to prepare quite a feast: meats, pâtés, hams, cheese, fruits, creams and jams lay spread in abundance.

  Embellished by several bottles of wine, this vision delighted Marciac but only aggravated La Fargue’s suspicions.

  ‘Who are they trying to dazzle here?’ he grumbled.

  Meanwhile Laincourt wondered what horn of plenty had supplied all this food. He told himself La Donna must have brought these victuals in her carriage and sacrificed most of her stocks to make a strong impression on her guests.

  But to what end?

  Alessandra di Santi soon arrived, entering on the arm of the gentleman Laincourt had identified as a Jesuit agent of Rome. Dressed and coiffed according to the latest fashion, La Donna was superb. She wore a blue satin dress that highlighted her red hair and pale complexion, and was smiling and radiant, as if enchanted to be receiving long-lost friends. Signor Licini was no less elegant, nor less courteous.

  Leprat took charge of the introductions. La Donna greeted each of the Blades with a charming word and extended her hand, last of all, to La Fargue. Then, after glancing at her escort who was exchanging amiable remarks with Marciac, she whispered to the captain:

  ‘It is Providence that sends you. We need to speak together alone, later.’

  It was said in a single breath, after which Alessandra regained her smile and invited her guests to take their places around the table.

  A gracious and playful hostess, she wanted La Fargue to sit on her right and Valerio Licini on her left. Then she proposed a toast, ‘In honour of the captain, whose merits are never appreciated enough.’ A glass of wine was filled, in which a piece of toasted bread was placed to soak. The glass was passed from hand to hand so that each guest could take a sip and, according to custom, when it was La Fargue’s turn, as the one being toasted he was supposed to finish the wine and swallow the bread, cheered on by the others.

  As the glass went round the table, Laincourt watched Licini.

  He wondered if the Jesuit priest had recognised him as well, and had realised that his identity was no longer a secret. On meeting the cardinal’s former spy’s gaze, the Pope’s agent removed any ambiguity by giving him a complicit nod of the head.

  Laincourt concluded that they knew where they stood with one another, but was not given the chance to pursue his train of thought.

  ‘TO ARMS!’

  The château’s gate was blown away by the deafening explosion of an enormous powder charge. Spat out through the archway, a cloud of dust and debris invaded the courtyard. Fused grenades had followed and gone off, adding to the confusion.

  ‘TO ARMS! TO ARMS!’

  Rapiers in their fists, La Fargue and the others burst from the building where La Donna and Licini were quartered, just as the first musketeers reached the courtyard. The poor devils who had been caught in the initial explosion were staggering around in a daze, some of them wounded. But no one had time to go to their aid: sinister silhouettes were swiftly making their way through the smoke, bent on attack.

  ‘DRAAAAACS!’

  While combat was engaged with Karn’s band of mercenaries, La Fargue held back from the fray, trying to take stock of the situation. He looked around, wondering why the sentries had not raised an alarm prior to the explosion. His eyes lifted at the precise instant when the Illuminator leapt down from the ramparts and he tracked the path of the dragon’s fall. The creature landed heavily but without harm in the middle of the courtyard before straightening with a roar. It brandished the massive schiavone, a detail that struck the captain.

  ‘LEPRAT!’ he yelled over the noise of the battle. ‘LOOK TO YOUR PRISONER! WE’LL TAKE CARE OF THIS MONSTER!’

  Leprat had already spotted a red drac who appeared to be directing the assault. But he nodded to the captain, renouncing his target. As La Fargue, Laincourt and Marciac deployed themselves around the scaly colossus, he ordered:

  ‘DURIEUX, WITH ME! MUSKETEERS, STAND FIRM!’

  And he left at a run, with Durieux at his heels.

  He was leaving his brothers-in-arms to fight against two-to-one odds and the Blades facing a monstrous adversary that looked capable of breaking a man’s spine over its knee. But he had no choice. His first duty was to protect Gagnière, and the dracs were here to either set him free or to kill him. The Black Claw must have instigated this attack. But why would they choose to take the château by force when it would have been easier to attack the musketeers between Paris and Mareuil? Had they lacked the time to set up an ambush along the road?

  Gagnière was locked up in the basement of one of the corner towers. Leprat and Durieux had to go round the big central keep to reach it, ignoring the cries and the smoke from the courtyard. They ran into a drac who was pulling his blade out of the body of an unarmed stable boy. Without halting, Leprat laid the murderer out with a blow from the guard of his ivory rapier, leaving Durieux to finish him off with his sword as he passed. The tower door was ajar. Leprat’s mighty kick slammed it wide open against the wall, surprising a d
rac inside who turned, pistol in hand. The gun went off and Leprat felt the ball brush by him as he charged forward and hit the drac in the shoulder, almost lifting the reptilian from the ground. The musketeer brutally shoved him into the wall and stepped back. The drac had no time to recover: Durieux fired a pistol ball into the middle of his brow. The two musketeers exchanged a glance. They made a good team.

  The room suddenly shook from another explosion.

  A powder charge had detonated in the ditch at the foot of the tower, a good third of which collapsed outwards in a cascade of stones, wood, and ancient dust. The rest of the shattered structure groaned, creaked, and tottered dangerously before falling in on itself. Leprat and Durieux barely had time to fling themselves back outside before the cellar was engulfed in rubble and a thick cloud of debris.

  In the courtyard, the battle continued.

  Three musketeers were lying in a pool of blood amongst a dozen drac bodies. Most of their comrades were wounded and only a few blue-caped figures were still fighting, but they did not concede an inch of ground. A short distance from the general mêlée, La Fargue, Laincourt, and Marciac stood against the Illuminator. They harried the dragon, attacking it from the right and left, forcing it to turn back and forth in response, always retreating before its blows to allow another to take it from behind. They had quickly realised that they could not accomplish much against this powerful and cunning creature whose scales deflected most of their sword strokes. It was a lesson they learned at great expense to themselves. The schiavone had sliced into Marciac’s arm, while Laincourt had recklessly exposed himself to the monster’s claws, which had ripped through his doublet and shirt, leaving a row of bloody stripes across his chest. As for La Fargue, with his vision restricted by his eye patch, he’d been too slow to see a reverse blow by the dragon’s fist that had struck him in the temple and left him senseless for a moment. It was only a matter of time before one or another of the trio committed an even graver mistake.

  A fatal one.

  Covered in dust and still staggering from the aftereffects of the explosion, Leprat and Durieux were rejoining the fight when the blast of a horn resounded in the night, at some distance from the château. Immediately, the dracs broke off combat and retired in good order. The scaly monster seemed to hesitate, considering its exhausted opponents. Then with three mighty bounds it was at the top of the ramparts and, after a last backward glance, it disappeared off into the night.

  Within the devastated château, those who were still standing struggled to understand what had just transpired. Then the reality of their situation set in and they rushed to the aid of their fallen comrades. Leaving Durieux to see to the most urgent cases, Leprat went to confer with the Blades:

  ‘God’s blood!’ he exclaimed. ‘For a moment I thought … Are you wounded?’

  ‘Nothing serious,’ asserted La Fargue.

  The two others nodded or confirmed the same with reassuring expressions as they re-sheathed their weapons.

  ‘Gagnière?’ Marciac enquired.

  ‘Dead … But what just happened here?’

  Leprat turned to give an incredulous glance around the courtyard that had been transformed into a battlefield and at the ruins of the collapsed tower.

  ‘The Black Claw,’ La Fargue said. ‘Obviously, they were prepared to do anything to prevent Gagnière from being handed over to the Pope.’

  Leprat nodded, thinking that although the Black Claw had been forced to employ a sizeable force to achieve its aim, their third attempt on Gagnière’s life had succeeded.

  ‘I don’t know, captain,’ Laincourt objected. ‘The dracs managed to place the mine that brought down the tower without being seen. Why would they attack us, rather than simply set it off and kill Gagnière? Why this assault? Why all these risks and useless deaths?’

  La Fargue stared at Laincourt for a long moment in silence.

  Then he cursed and ran for the pavilion where La Donna had been lodging.

  ‘What now?’ wondered Marciac, following Laincourt and Leprat as they raced after the captain.

  ‘It was a diversion!’ shouted the musketeer. ‘A bloody diversion!’

  The Renaissance-style pavilion was filled with an ominous silence.

  They found Valerio Licini’s lackey lying on his stomach in a puddle of his own blood at the bottom of the great stairway.

  ‘Dead,’ said Leprat, turning him over.

  The poor wretch’s throat was slit.

  Sword in hand and bleeding along one side, Licini himself lay across the last flight of steps before the first floor.

  ‘He’s still alive,’ Laincourt pronounced after leaning down to inspect him.

  They called out, conducted a rapid search of the premises, and discovered the two village girls hiding in a cubby-hole. But La Donna had vanished.

  The outer wall had been pierced with windows on this side of the Château de Mareuil. One of them stood wide open to the night, next to an overturned table, torn curtains, and a single woman’s shoe.

  ‘MERDE!’ swore La Fargue, driving his fist into the wall.

  2

  It took a day for Cardinal Richelieu to learn of the attack on Château de Mareuil and the terrible price its defenders had paid. It took two for La Fargue, Laincourt, and Marciac to return to Paris and, on the third day, the captain of the Blades was summoned to the Palais-Cardinal. That morning, it was Rochefort who bade him enter the antechamber where Richelieu waited for him, dressed as a cavalier. The cardinal had taken advantage of a hunting expedition organised at Saint-Germain by the king to come back to the capital in secret, riding full out. At forty-eight years of age and despite his precarious health, Armand-Jean du Plessis, cardinal de Richelieu, was still an accomplished horseman. His boots were dusty and he held a slender cravache in his gloved hands.

  La Fargue presented himself, hat in hand, saluting the cardinal with a bow and then waiting in silence. The cardinal was standing, facing the window.

  ‘In a few weeks,’ he said, ‘the king will enter Lorraine at the head of his armies. There will be some last-minute negotiations but nothing will hinder His Majesty’s inexorable march towards Nancy. The capital of Lorraine will undergo a siege and, very soon, the duc Charles IV will have no choice but to capitulate … This intervention has legitimate motives, not least of which is to force the duc de Lorraine to respect both the spirit and the letter of the treaties he signs with the king of France and then seems to … forget about later on. The European powers will condemn us for this invasion but do nothing to impede it. To be sure, some will accuse France of wishing to annex Lorraine in order to gain a door onto the Holy Roman Empire in Germany, and they are not entirely mistaken …’ The cardinal turned away from the window to catch La Fargue’s eye. ‘As you can see, the future is already written. And if God wills, only a few cannon will need to be fired in the execution of this necessary operation.’

  A flagon of wine with a glass, a plate of biscuits and a plate of grapes stood on a tray. Richelieu took off one of his gloves in order to detach a grape from its bunch, started to bring it to his mouth, then changed his mind and put it back down.

  ‘The only real difficulty,’ he continued, ‘stems from the fact that Lorraine is Catholic. And the Pope does not look at all kindly on one Catholic state making war on another, when there are so many Protestant states to make war on instead. In France, the Catholic party that hates me says as much in all its tracts, just as they oppose France being allied with the Protestant republic of the United Provinces of Holland against Spain …’

  The cardinal fell silent for a moment, thinking to himself.

  ‘The king will need the benevolent neutrality of the Pope when he occupies Lorraine. That is why France has been trying so hard not to displease Rome recently, and has even sought ways to please her. The marquis de Gagnière was an opportunity to do just that. Now he is dead, which is unfortunate. Even more serious is that signor Licini, otherwise known as Père Farrio, one of Rome’s most
zealous agents, has suffered a sword thrust through his body. Graver still, La Donna has been abducted. And all of this occurred in France, under the very noses of a full detachment of the King’s Musketeers.’

  ‘Four of those musketeers perished during this mission, monseigneur, and most of the others were wounded. The attack also took the lives of several innocent victims among the château’s personnel.’

  Richelieu stared at La Fargue.

  Was the captain insidiously reproaching with him with only considering the diplomatic implications of this affair, while ignoring the human toll?

  There was a knock at the door and Charpentier, the cardinal’s old and faithful secretary, appeared.

  ‘It’s time, monseigneur,’ he said.

  ‘Already? Very well. Accompany me, captain.’

  And leading La Fargue as he strode through the Palais-Cardinal, he asked:

  ‘This creature that you and your Blades confronted, was it a dragon?’

  ‘Yes, monseigneur. No doubt a last-born, as it was incapable of a complete metamorphosis.’

  ‘Thank God. Are you one of those who believe the Black Claw instigated this attack?’

  They descended a small spiral staircase which brought them to the ground floor.

  ‘Who else, monseigneur? The Black Claw had an account to settle with La Donna after the affair with the Alchemist. Moreover, since she often serves the Pope, she must know secrets likely to be of considerable interest to the Grand Lodge.’

  They arrived at a brisk walk in a courtyard where several gentlemen, including the comte de Rochefort, were waiting in their saddles.

  ‘I am convinced that Gagnière’s death was not the main objective of the attack,’ added La Fargue. ‘The Black Claw were really after La Donna.’

  ‘I want you to find her,’ said Richelieu, halting to pull his glove back on. ‘It is only a matter of days before the Pope, through his ambassador, complains about this to the king. I want to be able to reply that signora di Santi is safe.’