“She played it! She came in here searching for it, too, though I tried to stop her—”
Heat whuffed at me; I felt the gold I wore burn my neck. I said, feeling scorched within as well, “I ask your pardon if I have offended you. I came, at my queen’s request, to rescue her harper. It seems you do not care for harping. If it pleases you, I will take what must be an annoyance out of your house.” I paused. The great eyes sank a little toward me. I added, for such things seemed important in this land, “My name is Anne.”
“Anne,” the smoke whispered. I heard the harper jerk in his chain. The claw retreated slightly; the immense flat lizard’s head lowered, its fiery scales charred dark with smoke, tiny sparks of fire winking between its teeth. “What is his name?”
“Kestral,” the harper said quickly. “Kestral Hunt.”
“You are right,” the hot breath sighed. “He is an annoyance. Are you sure you want him back?”
“No,” I said, my eyes blurring in wonder and relief that I had finally found, in this dangerous land, something I did not need to fear. “He is extremely rude, ungrateful and insensitive. I imagine that my queen loves him for his hair or for his harper’s hands; she must not listen to him speak. So I had better take him. I am sorry that he snuck into your house and tried to steal from you.”
“It is a harp made of dragon bone and sinew,” the dragon said. “It is why I dislike harpers, who make such things and then sing songs of their great cleverness. As this one would have.” Its jaws yawned; a tongue of fire shot out, melted gold beside the harper’s hand. He scuttled against the wall.
“I beg your pardon,” he said hastily. A dark curved dragon’s smile hung in the fading smoke; it snorted heat.
“Perhaps I will keep you and make a harp of your bones.”
“It would be miserably out of tune,” I commented. “Is there something I can do for you in exchange for the harper’s freedom?”
An eye dropped close, moon-round, shadows of color constantly disappearing through it. “Tell me my name,” the dragon whispered. Slowly I realized it was not a challenge but a plea. “A woman took my name from me long ago, in a riddle-game. I have been trying to remember it for years.”
“Yrecros?” I breathed. So did the dragon, nearly singeing my hair.
“You know her.”
“She took something from me: my dearest friend. Of you she said: the dragon’s name is hidden within a riddle.”
“Where is she?”
“Walking paths of sorcery in this land.”
Claws flexed across the stones, smooth and beetle-black. “I used to know a little sorcery. Enough to walk as man. Will you help me find my name?”
“Will you help me find my friends?” I pleaded in return. “I lost four, searching for this unbearable harper. One or two may not want my help, but I will never know until I see them.”
“Let me think…” the dragon said. Smoke billowed around me suddenly, acrid, ash-white. I swallowed smoke, coughed it out. When my stinging eyes could see again, a gold-haired harper stood in front of me. He had the dragon’s eyes.
I drew in smoke again, astonished. Through my noise, I could hear Kestral behind me, tugging at his chain and shouting.
“What of me?” he cried furiously. “You were sent to rescue me! What will you tell Celandine? That you found her harper and brought the dragon home instead?” His own face gazed back at him, drained the voice out of him a moment. He tugged at the chain frantically, desperately. “You cannot harp! She’d know you false by that, and by your ancient eyes.”
“Perhaps,” I said, charmed by his suggestion, “she will not care.”
“Her knights will find me. You said they seek to kill me! You will murder me.”
“Those that want you dead will likely follow me,” I said wearily, “for the gold-haired harper who rides with me. It is for the dragon to free you, not me. If he chooses to, you will have to find your own way back to Celandine, or else promise not to speak except to sing.”
I turned away from him. The dragon-harper picked up his harp of bone. He said, in his husky, smoky voice,
“I keep my bargains. The key to your freedom lies in a song.”
We left the harper chained to his harping, listening puzzledly with his deaf ear and untuned brain, for the one song, of all he had ever played and never heard, that would bring him back to Celandine. Outside, in the light, I led dragon-fire to the stone that had swallowed Danica, and began my backward journey toward Yrecros.
THE CHAMPION OF DRAGONS
Mickey Zucker Reichert
The rising sun haloed a red-tiered fortress on the mountain’s highest peak. Far below, in a glade partially covered by mats of woven grass, Miura Usashibo and Otake Nakamura knelt in silence, chests rising and falling from the strain of mock combat. Nearby, their Sensei watched, stroking his wispy beard.
Usashibo closed his eyes, and a familiar quiet darkness overcame his world. His heart pounded from a mixture of exertion and excitement. Sweat rolled down his face. The reed mats cut their regular pattern into his knees, and the euphoric afterglow of combat consumed him. Victory no longer granted him the unbridled sense of triumph it had scarcely a year ago. Winning had become mundane. But the physical and emotional peak attained in combat never dulled. It seemed as if no reality existed beyond the feelings of inner peace and power he could reach only through all-consuming violence.
Usashibo turned his thoughts to the dragon that Sensei had chosen and trained him to fight. Sensei either would not or could not describe the creature and its method of combat. His initial explanation detailed all he would reveal of Usashibo’s enemy. “Every ten years the Master and I select a champion to seek out and slay the dragon. We train him to reach beyond his limitations and drive him until he surpasses even the Master. We have chosen you, Miura Usashibo, as the fourteenth champion of dragons. The others never returned.” Yet, despite this grim appraisal, the possibility of failure never occurred to Usashibo. In the quiet of my soul, I am invincible. I will return.
A sharp handclap snapped Usashibo’s attention back to his surroundings. Sensei bowed, signaling an end to Usashibo’s last practice session before setting out to destroy the dragon. As the old man turned, his linen jacket and pants hissed gently. Pausing, he bowed to the shrine of the mountain’s spirit and climbed the long flight of stone steps which led to the Master’s fortress.
Otake Nakamura remained kneeling where Usashibo had landed what Sensei had judged a killing blow. The interlocking squares of his abdominal muscles rose and fell, and blood beaded from the vertical red line where the champion of dragons’ wooden sword had cut his stomach. Silently, he stared at the mats before him. Usashibo searched Nakamura’s face for signs of the friendship they had shared a little over a year ago, but none survived. Usashibo studied his old companion, hungry for recognition that he was still a human being if no longer a friend.
Nakamura touched his forehead to the ground, then rose. “May you return from tomorrow’s battle victorious and the gods of the winds and the mountains watch over you.” Etiquette demanded Nakamura remain until Usashibo responded to his overly formal gesture.
Usashibo shifted uncomfortably, recalling the many times he had tried to force Nakamura to acknowledge how close they had been in friendship. But the mountains they had climbed together, the girls they had known, and the fights they had started became distant memories. Early in his training, Usashibo vented his frustration and loneliness on Nakamura during their practice sessions, battering him until he could barely walk. As he withdrew further, Usashibo’s anger lessened. But the feeling of betrayal remained. The soul mate who would have urged Usashibo to rip the dragon’s ugly head off was gone, and Usashibo missed him.
Usashibo rose and pressed wrinkles from his pants with the palms of his hands. He replied with exaggerated formality. “Thank you, Otake.” Usashibo dismissed his sparring partner, anxious for the solace of being alone.
Nakamura turned and followed Sensei up
the stone staircase, apparently unable to understand the inspired madness that goaded Usashibo to consecrate his life to a goal no one had ever achieved and the fleeting glance at immortality it offered. As boys, Nakamura and Usashibo had shared visions of greatness, but it seemed Nakamura dreamed with his mouth instead of his heart.
Over the years of training, Usashibo had paid a high price for his dream. He denied himself many of the indulgences of youth, gradually surrendering pieces of himself to his art until only the warrior survived. Only one aspect of life remained inviolate: his love for his wife, Rumiko. He knew she fought to maintain the spark of desire within him. He wished her task was easier. Usashibo turned toward the narrow path which led to the village of Miyamoto and resolved to grant Rumiko the only gift which remained his to give: the last night he knew he would be alive.
At the edge of the rice mats, Usashibo slipped his feet into his sandals and slid his swords through his belt. Despite his melancholia, his mind entered his familiar regimen of imaginary combat. As he walked, he consciously controlled each step and shift of balance. His left hand rested on his scabbarded sword, draped over the handguard. He recalled Sensei’s words at times when he had doubted his purpose: Once a raindrop begins to fall, it must continue to fall or it is no longer even a drop of rain. A man must finish his journey once the first step is taken. Usashibo laughed to himself and wished Sensei spoke more directly.
As Usashibo entered Miyamoto, he tried to close his mind against the ordeal mingling with its citizenry presented. The townspeople regarded him as the epitome of virtue or the target of envy, not as human. Soon, peasants and the rough wooden huts of the village surrounded him. Although people jammed the streets, the throng parted before him. Young girls leered invitations, and men he had known since childhood pretended not to notice him with exaggerated indifference. A child asked him if he could really slay the dragon, only to be snatched away by an embarrassed mother before Usashibo could answer. He felt the tension of hastily averted stares.
Stories of Usashibo’s feats, provided and embellished by Nakamura, endeared the teller but not the subject. Many attributed Usashibo’s prowess to magic or unwholesome herbs. Others sought tricks to make his accomplishments fall within their narrow view of possibility. Even those people who dismissed Nakamura’s tales as lies managed to attribute the blame for the deception to Usashibo.
Quickly, Usashibo crossed the town and traversed the white gravel path through his garden to his cottage. He paused before the faded linen door and removed his sandals. Closing his eyes to help escape the cruel reality of Miyamoto, he stepped through the curtain. The starchy smell of boiling rice mingled with the pine scent of charcoal and the musky aroma of freshly cut reeds. Rice paper walls shielded him from the attentions of people who believed him either more or less than human. Gradually, Sensei’s demands and the unattainable goals the peasants projected onto him were borne away on the breeze as wisps of smoke. His own aspirations still burned obsessively in his mind like an endless fire in a swordsmith’s forge. He basked in the feeling of power it inspired. He accepted the flame he knew he could never entirely escape or extinguish. Without the desire it inspired, he would not be Miura Usashibo. He opened his eyes.
A ceramic pot rested on a squat, black hibachi. Steam and smoke rose, darkening the tan walls and ceiling. Rumiko knelt on the polished wood floor, and the brush in her hand darted over a sheet of paper. The soft beauty in her round face and dark eyes belied a wit that could cut as quickly and deeply as his sword and a strength which, in many ways, surpassed his own. The rice pot’s lid rattled. White froth poured over the sides and hissed as it struck the charcoal. Rumiko rose, turned toward the hibachi, removed the lid, and stared into the boiling rice. Quietly, Usashibo waited for her to meet his gaze.
The steam freed several strands from Rumiko’s tightly coiffed hair. Her face reddened. Droplets of sweat beaded on her upper lip, but she did not look up.
Tension filled the room. It seemed almost tangible, as it does when a delicate glass bottle has fallen but not yet shattered on the floor. He could deal with Rumiko momentarily, but Usashibo knew his swords demanded their proper respect. In four strides, he crossed the room and knelt before a black, lacquered stand. He withdrew the longer sword from his cloth belt, applied a thin coating of clove oil, blotted it nearly dry with powder, and delicately placed it in the stand. He slid the companion sword free, repeated the process, and hung it above its mate. Respectfully, he bowed, then rose.
Rumiko stood, stiff-backed, stirring the rice. Her wooden spoon moved in precise circles.
As Usashibo walked, the green reed mats crackled beneath his feet. He stopped behind Rumiko, swearing he would allow nothing to spoil this night for her. With a finger, he traced a stray lock of hair along her neck and trailed off across her shoulder. His hand discovered taut muscles beneath her thin robe. Confusion and concern mingled within Usashibo. “Rumiko?”
The faint, hissing explosions of Rumiko’s tears striking the charcoal punctuated the silence. Usashibo’s grip on her arms hardened, as if to lend her his own strength.
Rumiko shifted uneasily in his grasp. “Always the swords first. If you loved me as much as you love them, you’d stay. Let someone else try to kill the dragon.”
Usashibo snapped Rumiko toward him and wrapped his arms around her. She braced her elbows against his chest. Carefully, Usashibo pulled her to him, despite her resistance, and buried his face in her hair. “Ah, Rumiko. I will return. You must believe.”
Rumiko ceased struggling. Usashibo relaxed his arms and dropped them to her waist. She leaned away from him and stared through red-laced eyes. “Do you really believe the thirteen others thought they would lose? Why risk your life here with me to fight a dragon that never hurts anyone who doesn’t attack it? Stay. Please.”
Usashibo had never questioned his reason to slay the dragon. The thought of surrendering his dream seemed so alien it did not merit consideration, but her words raised doubt. Perhaps the dragon could kill me as it did all the others. After so many consecutive victories, the thought of defeat appalled Usashibo. He knew he must fight the dragon, if only to prove himself invincible. If he quit now, all his striving and sacrifice meant nothing. One moment of weakness would make him and everything he believed in a deadly joke. Ideals are worth dying for. I have trained my entire life for this one fight. If I cannot win, I deserve to die. Once a raindrop begins to fall, it must continue to fall, or it is no longer even a drop of rain. I’ve lied to myself; Rumiko never understood my dream. She is the same as all the others.
Usashibo recalled a clear winter day half a year and a lifetime ago. His first Sensei, the consummate warrior in action and spirit, had died in his sleep. He had much left to teach, and Usashibo had much he still wanted to learn. It seemed unfair for Sensei to die as quietly as a peasant. Shortly after learning of his teacher’s death, Usashibo fought with Rumiko over how the rice was prepared and left her.
Then, distraught, Usashibo had walked to the falls north of Miyamoto and sat on the crest, watching water crash to the rocks below. Mist swirled around him as he folded a small square of paper into a swan. He tossed the bird over the precipice as a gift to the god of the cascade. It spiraled gently downward until it struck the water. Then it plummeted and disappeared beneath the foam. He had seen his future as a warrior perish with old Sensei, and he had lost Rumiko, too. At that time, he realized he wanted to follow his swan over the falls.
A hand had touched Usashibo’s arm. He spun, drew his sword instinctively, stood, and faced Rumiko. Resheathing his sword, he had turned back to the waterfall. She stood beside him, and forced him to face her. He felt tears run down his face, and Rumiko smiled sadly. Her presence spoke more deeply than words. He thought he sensed an understanding and similarity of purpose that transcended love.
But the love Usashibo had believed in was a lie. Now, the muscles at the corners of his jaw tightened as well as his grip. Rumiko winced and twisted, pushing desperately a
t his hands. He released her, and she retreated, kneading bruised arms. “Go now. I refuse to spend the night with a man who would rather die alone than live with me.”
Rage and self-pity warred within Usashibo. His stomach clenched, and thoughts raced through his mind. He was truly alone. Sweat formed on his forehead, and he walked mechanically from Rumiko. He stooped, lifted the swords from their stand, and returned each to his belt. The familiarity of his weapons became an anchor for his troubled thoughts. In the past year they had cost him much, but they had returned far more in a way no one seemed to understand. While the world changed, they remained reassuringly constant. Though they tested him unmercifully, they never doubted or judged. Rumiko cannot force me to give up the direction that shaped my life. I refuse to become her servant. He dropped his left hand to his long sword and sprinted for the door.
The linen curtain enwrapped Usashibo like a net. His momentum carried him blindly through, tearing cloth from the doorway. Anger and frustration exploded within him. He shredded the faded linen. When the cloth fell away, he snatched up his sandals and resumed running.
Stones crunched beneath Usashibo’s tread. Their sharp edges bit into his feet, and he sought the physical pain to replace the hurt Rumiko’s betrayal had caused. He burst from his garden and into the street. He crashed into a young man and both sprawled in the dust. The man rose, swearing viciously. But when he recognized Usashibo, he broke off and apologized for his own clumsiness. The bastards won’t even curse me. Unconsciously, Usashibo placed his right hand on his hilt. The dragon won’t single me out as different.
Usashibo leapt to his feet and raced down the street, knocking peasants aside when they did not dodge quickly enough. Soon, they cleared a lane before him, and he ran between walls of people to meet the dragon.
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