Dragon's Boy (3 page)

The longer he waited for an invitation to join them, the clearer it became that none was forthcoming. He felt his cheeks grow hot, set his lips together, and ground his teeth.

I will not be hurt by them again,
he reminded himself, but his hand went up to the leather bag in the unconscious gesture he always made when snubbed by them. The feel of the leather around the little gold ring always comforted him, but this time the bag was heavier and bulkier. He smiled slyly and drew the jewel out, quietly tossing it from palm to palm, hoping one of them would look up from the game and notice.

When they didn't, he stuffed the jewel back in the bag and, with little more than an awkward sigh, rose and went out of the room. He thought he heard them laughing as he left, but he couldn't be sure.

The kennelyard was quiet. He wondered if it was Boadie's time yet, but it turned out she was running down the village streets, romping with some of the old hounds Sir Ector hadn't taken with him on the hunt and acting as if she weren't carrying a bellyful of pups. When Artos called to her, she ignored him.

Dreading his dreams, Artos went off to bed.

T
HE NEXT MORNING AT
his break, Artos hurried to the smithy, the jewel clutched in his hand. He was determined to purchase some kind of sword with it, even if it could only buy him a castoff. Though he'd no idea of the jewel's worth, he couldn't wait another moment for the sword. After all, with a sword the other boys would
have
to pay attention to him. He'd be almost a knight. The jewel in his hand was hard and real and it should have made the whole episode with the dragon seem just as real. Yet somehow it didn't.

The memory of the dragon was vivid enough, but it was the stuff of nightmares: the clacketing scales, the gigantic foot, the keen knifelike nail, the shaft of searing breath flaring hot from the cave's center, the horribly whispery shout. Indeed, he'd dreamed about it all night long. Especially the part about the forced promise to return with meat. Still, only the jewel in his hand, imprinting itself on his palm, seemed real. The reality of the dragon and the promise were carefully buried under layers of small-boy caution and years of polished imaginings. He would have been perfectly satisfied to leave them in the land of never-was, but then he arrived at the smithy in the middle of a quarrel.

The quarrel was between Sir Ector's apothecary Old Linn and Magnus Pieter the swordmaker. It was a whiney, word-whipping sort of argument that—because it isn't shouted—you don't realize it's happening until you're right in the middle of it and can't possibly escape. Artos had thought it an ordinary conversation until he was inside the smithy door, and then it was too late because the two of them looked over and saw him and he couldn't leave without embarrassment and loss of face to one or the other.

They noticed him but, in the manner of adults, they didn't stop arguing. It was as if his presence added fuel to their fires, as if each were trying to impress him so that he might choose up sides.

“But there's never any
meat
in my gravy,” Old Linn was saying, his voice rising into a mealy whine at the end. It was the word
meat
spoken in that way that brought the dragon's last words back to Artos.
Meat in the stew
was what the dragon wanted and what Artos had promised. He shivered.

“Nor any meat in your manner,” replied the smith. “Nor do you mete out punishment.” He fancied himself quite a wordsmith as well as a swordsmith, and so stated to any castle newcomers.

In fact, Magnus Pieter was not much good with words, being a lumbering sort of person. He was really only comfortable with iron and fire and the great bellows in the smithy. It was well known that he rehearsed his word jokes, banging them out with each fall of the hammer onto the anvil. Artos could almost hear the rehearsal for this rain of puns: “
Meat
in the gravy (
bang
),
meat
in your manner (
bang
),
mete
out punishment (
bang
),
meet
you in battle (
bang
).”

Once upon a time, Magnus Pieter had been regularly spitted in public by Old Linn's quick tongue. They'd been best friends by their long and rancorous association. But last year Old Linn had had a fit, brought on Cook said “by age and all them secrets of his.” He'd fallen face first into his bowl of soup during one of the High King's infrequent visits to the castle. And now Magnus Pieter was the castle wit (“What,—
bang!
—the wit—
bang!
”) and Old Linn a shambling wreck of an old man who never stood up after meals to tell any more of the great tales. Artos had loved the few stories he'd been allowed to stay up for.

Old Linn hunched around the forge looking more like a tortoise than a man, his thin shoulders bent over as if they wore a carapace instead of a tunic, his scrawny neck poking out between the humps. His eyes were rheumy and staring.
Definitely a tortoise,
Artos thought.

“My straw is never changed but once a se'en-night,” Old Linn whined. “My slops are never emptied. I am given but the dregs of the wine to drink. And now I must sit—if I am welcomed at all—well below the salt.”

Well below the salt.
Artos knew full well the sting of that, for being seated below the salt meant to be in a place of no honor at all at the table. To sit alongside the impoverished and the nameless, like himself. Only it wasn't exactly true. Old Linn had never sat by him, but rather at the High Table not far from Lady Marion. He wondered why Old Linn bothered to lie about it. It was only later, after he'd left the smithy, that he understood the old man was exaggerating, as storytellers always do, for the effect.

The smith smiled but never stopped the tap-tap-tapping on the piece of iron he was working. He argued back to the beat of the hammer. “But you've got straw (
bang
), though you no longer earn it (
bang
). And a pot for your slops (
bang
), which you could empty yourself (
bang
). You've got wine (
bang bang
), though you never pay for it (
blow bellows
). And even below the salt there's gravy in the bowls (
turn over iron, bang-bang-bang
).”

Artos nodded at that because he knew there
was
gravy in the bowls, even when you sat well below the salt. Sir Ector was a kind man and Lady Marion insisted on it. Then, realizing the nod had suddenly brought him right into the middle of their conversation when he hadn't meant to be in it at all, he instantly regretted that nod.

But they ignored him anyway, and Old Linn repeated his piteous whine.

“But there is never any
meat
in my gravy.” At the word
meat
, Magnus Pieter was off again, beating out five or six slightly new variations on the anvil, and this time the word rang like a knell in Artos' head. The hammer sounded like the clanking dragon scales and the word
meat
was spoken each time as the dragon had spoken it: loud, commanding, and with great implied meaning.

Artos swallowed back all his own saved-up words. Clutching the jewel so tightly it left a deep print in his palm, he slunk out of the smithy. He'd never even had a chance to mention the sword, that shining piece of steel that might have made him the equal of any of the castle boys.
And what good anyway,
he thought miserably,
is the dragon's wisdom or the dragon's jewel to me? Or the dragon?

A
RTOS STRUGGLED ALL THE
rest of the morning with his promise. Yet—though he couldn't quite put into words why—he found himself in the kitchen begging a pot of gravy with meat at the beginning of his two-hour break. He would have been happier asking Cook herself, but she was sleeping off the heavy noon meal of soup, beef, and turnips. It was to Mag the scullery, hard at work scouring out the great tureens, whom he had to do his pleading. Mag was his bane. Several years his senior, she was small, wiry, and always smelled of garlic, with a bristly dark mustache like a scar under her nose. She'd had an unlikely passion for him ever since he was a small boy. While all the other serving girls moped after Lancot with his gold curls and maddening smiles, Mag longed for Artos. He gritted his teeth and spoke directly into the middle of her sighs.

“Mag, could I get another pot of gravy with meat?”

She sighed. “Master Artos, what would you be needing a pot for? (
Sigh
) Not for that scamp, Boadie? (
Sigh
) She's big as a tun already. (
Sigh
)”

“No, not for any dog,” he said quickly.

She waited expectantly for the rest of the answer.

“For…for…for…” Now when he most needed it, once again his imagination failed him.

“For yourself, Master Artos? (
Sigh
) I'd gladly give it…thee. (
Sigh
)”

The
thee
, familiar and tender, was so daring on her part that he grabbed for it at once.

“Yes, for myself. For me.”

“Thee. And growing into thy full manhood (
Sigh
) and needing such sustenance. (
Sigh
)” She actually fluttered her eyelashes at him in a terrible imitation of one of Lady Marion's maids, adding slyly, “And what'll thee give a poor girl for it? (
Sigh.
)”

“Give?” He hadn't considered the need of any exchange. Gulping, he managed to whisper, “My thanks, Mag?” He hoped it was enough.

In the end it hadn't been enough. Mag was a crafty bargainer. He'd had to kiss her on the cheek, avoiding the stink of garlic by the simple expedient of holding his breath. He kissed her between one deep sigh and the next and escaped with the pot of gravy lumped with three pieces of meat.

Artos strolled casually out of the Cowgate as if he had all the time in the world, nodding slightly at the sleepy-looking guards standing over the portcullis. Overhead a marsh harrier coursed the sky.

Artos could feel his heartbeat quicken and he went faster across the moat bridge, glancing briefly at the gray-green water where the ancient moat tortoise—looking remarkably like Old Linn—lazed atop the rusted crown of a battle helm. Once he was across, he began to run.

As he ran, it occurred to him that if the dragon wanted more stew—in fact stew every day—he might have to give Mag more kisses. Kisses on the cheek and, perhaps, kisses right on her garlicky mouth. He wrinkled his nose at the thought. This business of dragons could very quickly get out of hand.

Since kissing Mag didn't bear thinking about, he concentrated instead on the path. Though he hadn't noticed in his haste to get home the day before, it was a quite well-worn thread, winding through the wilderness of peat mosses and tangled brush, past bright yellow kingcup and the white clusters of milk parsley. Once he had to clamber over two rock outcroppings that looked rather like the lumps of meat, and once he had to free his hose from a briar. But they were little troubles compared to the peat pools farther north that everyone knew held bones way far down, and only the fen folk could traverse safely day after day on their hidden paths.

He got to the cave much quicker than he'd bargained. Breathless and unprepared (
Indeed, how does one prepare for a dragon?
he thought), he squinted nervously into the dark hole. It was much less inviting than yesterday. He listened hard but this time heard none of the heavy dragon breathing.

“Perhaps,” he said aloud to lend himself courage, “perhaps there's no one at home. Perhaps I can just leave the pot of gravy and go.”

“STAAAAAAAY,” came the sudden rumbling.

Artos almost dropped the pot.

“I…I have the gravy,” he shouted. He hadn't meant to speak so loudly, but fear always made him either too quiet or too loud, and he was never sure which it was going to be.

“Then give it meeeeeeee,” said the voice, somewhat modulated and followed immediately by a clanking as the great claw extended halfway through the cave.

Artos could tell it was the foot by its long shadow, for this time there was no illuminating gout of fire. There was only a hazy smoldering from the far end of the cave. All of a sudden—things seeming fairly familiar—Artos felt a little braver. “I shall need to take the pot back with me. When you are quite done with it. Sir.”

“You shall take a bit of wisdom instead,” the dragon said.

“Please, sir, I'd rather have the pot.” But fear had made his voice so quiet, he could hardly hear it himself. At the same time, he wondered if the dragon's wisdom would make him wise enough to avoid Mag's garlicky embrace. Somehow he doubted it was
that
kind of wisdom.

“Tomorrow you shall have the pot,” the dragon said. “When you bring me more meat.”

“More?” This time Artos' voice squeaked unaccountably. He could already smell Mag.

“MOOOOOOOORE.” The nail on the dragon's foot extended just as it had the day before, catching under the handle of the pot. There was a hideous screeching as the pot was lifted several inches into the air and slowly withdrawn into the recesses of the cave. Then came strange scrabbling noises, as if the dragon were sorting through its various possessions, before the clanking resumed. When the claw returned, it dropped something at Artos' feet.

He looked down. It was a book, rather tatty around the edges. The cave light was so dim, he couldn't read its title.

“Wisssssssdom,” hissed the dragon alarmingly, like a kettle almost out of water yet still on the boil.

Artos shrugged. “It's just a book. And anyway, I already know my letters. Father Bertram taught me.”

“Letterssssss turn matter into ssssspirit.”

“You mean it's a book of magic?”

“All books are magic, boy.” The dragon sounded a bit cranky and that made Artos begin to get very nervous again.