Filter House (6 page)

The fire guttered low, almost all embers now. The jewelled walls barely glittered. Ousmani found the leather wallet and fortified herself with more unclean meat, also consuming half the onion. The last flame died, and she was left in a red twilight.

The princess was not afraid of darkness. But conditions made a scientific program of exploration impossible. She moved her inquiries out toward the cave’s opening.

It was morning. Quite early; dawn, in fact. Thin, delicate clouds the color of apricots drifted jauntily above and on all sides. And as the Princess discovered by inching out to the edge on her silk-covered stomach, they drifted below as well. The dragon’s lair was indeed completely unapproachable by foot. Unretreatable, too, or whatever the complementary verb might be. She was trapped.

Ousmani sat for some time contemplating the prospect of the new day, outwardly so bright and cheerful, yet in its essence bleak. She allowed herself some melancholy, for would not her situation upon escaping from the cave be almost as hopeless as it was now? Her rescuers, followers of the Imam, had been persuaded to deliver her to this holy man’s hareem. There she would live, if breath alone meant life. But her mind would stifle, smothered in layers of doctrine like muslin, light but numberless swathes of it falling upon her till she was buried, though yet undead. And her body…she shuddered and drew back from the cave’s opening. Best not to dwell on that. There would be a struggle, between the Imam and her father, between her father and the Caliph. Her loins would be the battlefield.

Resolutely, the Princess turned her back on these problems. If life looked to be so insupportable outside the cave, she would concentrate once more on what went on within it.

Her eyes adjusted, and gradually she saw what had escaped her notice on her way to the opening: dim recesses on either side. The one on the left proved to contain logs of wood, stacked in rough pyramids. If the dragon’s absence continued long, she might be glad of such a ready supply of fuel. But from what she had observed on the journey into this cold and barbarous land, she would need some sort of kindling as well.

The recess opposite appeared to be smaller, containing only a pair of moldy boots and, further in, a large, open chest overflowing with pale, cylindrical objects. These might do, thought the Princess, if they were composed of some combustible material. Hastening to slip the boots over her saffron satin slippers, which were beginning to show a bit of wear, she shuffled eagerly toward the chest. She found to her delight that its contents were indeed of a highly combustible material, but that they would not do at all for starting up the fire. The chest was filled with books.

Reverently, Princess Ousmani knelt in the sand and began sorting through the dragon’s library. She found a number of treatises on obscure points of infidel doctrine; some extremely unexciting plays; that humorously inexact
History
by Paulus Orosius;
The Book of Ceremonies
from Porphyrogenitus; Dioscorides’
De Materia Medica,
untranslated, and sure to be authentic—alas that she had so little Greek—

She barely glanced up when, some time later, the dragon made its return. “Good day.”

“Good day to you, Princess. I see you wasted no time in discovering my true treasure. Will you plunder me of my books, then?”

“Not I, but mice and insects have made a very good start. You should keep a cat,” she said, forgetting to whom she spoke. “How came you by all these?”

“The legacy of a cleric, a plump young monk. He traveled here from Narbonne in hopes of converting me to the one true faith.”

The words “plump” and “young” recalled to Ousmani that she was in the presence of an anthropophagic animal, an animal that had recently, perhaps only yesterday, slain the paladin whose weskit she now wore. She looked at him closely, searching for signs of hostility or hunger. “Of which one true faith do you speak?”

“Surely there can be only one,” said the dragon, bringing his head closer in what she hoped was an inquisitive gesture.

“By definition, yes. But in my experience of religious claims they are all ‘true,’ and all similarly singular in this truth.”

“You have a pragmatic turn of mind.”

“Yes,” said the princess, rolling up the scroll she held and reaching automatically for another. “And pragmatically speaking I have been throughout my life a follower of the Prophet, Mohammed. But now that I am here with you, I should no doubt subscribe to some more dragonish creed—unless, of course, the monk from Narbonne met with success?”

“Sad to relate, he did not.”

“Then you must teach me all of your beliefs.”

“I am afraid there will be insufficient time for that exercise.”

So it would be soon. “I am not nearly so dull as I look,” Ousmani asserted in a voice that quavered slightly. “You might at least attempt…” Words failed her.

“I have assessed the situation,” said the dragon, “and find it to be worse than your words led me to fear. It is more than conquest your father desires; it is colonization.” A gentle hiss of escaping vapors, a fitful flick of one glistening wing betrayed its agitation. “His train contains not only siege machines but seeds, not just warriors, but women. He has recruited his retainers from the inhabitants of some far Southern mountains; the Atlas range, I gather they are called.”

“You discovered all this…how?”

“An outrider was careless, and when I captured him, rather rude. It took much restraint to— But these explanations are unnecessary.” He turned his golden gaze full on her face. “I regret to inform you that your stay must end all too abruptly for my tastes.”

“Really?” asked Ousmani, fascinated with dread. “It will be quite, quite quick, then?”

“No more than the time it takes to sing a rondelay,” the dragon promised. “But first I must turn myself around the right way. I have never really mastered the reverse ascent.” With this puzzling assertion the dragon moved into the depths of its lair. Ousmani had only a moment’s wonder before it reappeared, this time with its head foremost.

“Be seated, Princess, and we will be off.”

Ousmani remained where she was, cross-legged before the chest, arms full of books. She shook her head. “No. I have concluded that it would be unreasonable for me to cooperate with you in my destruction. If you must slay me, it shall be here, no matter what your custom or instincts.”

“Slay
you? You—my dear Princess, how did you manage to arrive at this deduction? Slay you? I am merely attempting to return you to your father’s camp.”

“I thought you were going to eat me. Like the monk.”

“At first, I admit, the thought did enter my head. But soon enough, I had already supped to a sufficiency. Again, you proved so charming that the notion of you as no more than a source of nourishment became offensive. Finally, at my age, consuming large quantities of humans is a luxury I simply can no longer afford.”

“Why?”

“Salt. You all have an abominably high salt content. It makes you difficult to resist, but I am convinced that the retention of fluids which inevitably results when I succumb is damaging to my delicate constitution.”

While Ousmani digested this novel concept, the dragon slithered to the cave’s entrance and peered out, wings flickering nervously. “This will proceed the better,” it suggested, “the sooner we depart. You wish to arrive before the evening, do you not?”

The Princess gathered her wits. “On the contrary,” she asserted, “I see no necessity for me to arrive there ever. At any time. If you explained this before, I am afraid I missed your arguments, which I hope you will not object to repeat in all their doubtless elegance.”

“Why, I—” The dragon’s glittering head drew back, and a hiss of steam came from its suddenly dilated nostrils. “It appears obvious. These mountains will soon be filled with your people, who at best will be far more punctilious than the present scattered peasants in offering me a food that I know to be too rich for my health. This while removing my accustomed dietary sources through their husbandry.

“At the worst, they will hunt me down and slaughter me. Their greater concentrations betoken a greater likelihood of success.”

Ousmani opened her hands and held them up as if to protect herself from this eventuality. The opportunity for research, the wasted knowledge, the sheer, strange
beauty
of the beast, lost to her father’s madness. Not to mention access to a marvelous and altogether unappreciated library. “This must not happen.”

The dragon smiled. “I am glad to see you agree. Princess, I must leave, and while it desolates me to deprive myself of your discourse, I cannot take you with me, for I know not where I go. I have some distant relatives in Sind. Also, in Hyperborea…”

“Stay!” said Ousmani. “There is another solution, one that has just now occurred to me. The more I think upon it, the more good I see. But wait—your cleric from Narbonne, had he upon him any implements for writing, or tools with which one might illuminate a book?”

“He did, Princess, though I fail to see what use such scholarly activities will prove in the face of my persecution.”

“You will see, though, for I shall show you. First, the tools. Or, no, stay—we must prepare a suitable place in which to work. A desk—I suppose a log will do, if you will roll it near the fire. And speaking of the fire, I must ask you to build it up—”

The dragon proved most pliable when apprised of the details of the Princess’s plan. It kept the flames burning brightly through the entire night, sleeping but fitfully. The Princess slept not at all, but toiled without ceasing, for penmanship was not one of her areas of greatest expertise.

“Your name,” said Ousmani, when the dragon put its head over her shoulder during one of its wakeful spells. “We ought to include your name, and I don’t know what it is.”

“My mother called me Bumpsy.… I suppose that will not do.”

“No.” The princess retied the dead knight’s garter, from which tendrils of black hair were escaping to daub themselves with gold and cochineal. “What of your victims? Did they construct any memorable epithets?”

“Their remarks were always decidedly insipid, dear Princess, unlike yours. ‘Gaaah,’ I believe, was one of the more cogent exclamations.”

“Have you no preference as to how you will be styled?”

“I never gave the matter any thought. I am that which I am.”

“You are the very seat of reason. I will name you Aegyptus,” decided the princess. “Aegyptus was the ancient ruler of a kind and learned land called Egypt. Many defenders of the faith call this place their home. Also, it is warm there.”

The proclamation of Aegyptus’s conversion to Islam and renunciation of his former dragonish ways was complete by mid-morning. After a lengthy nap, the Princess declared herself much refreshed and not at all hungry. So they set off at once in order to be able to deliver the proclamation during the call for evening prayer.

Unlike her previous ride, this trip afforded the Princess a splendid prospect. Partially obscured by her mount, marguerite-embroidered valleys and dazzling waterfalls fell behind her. The wide-winged shadow of the dragon’s passage stained white snows with purple, scattered flocks of sheep and dark-winged birds, rippled over grey fog-banks, growing larger and more distorted with the lowering of the sun.

All too soon, the last straggling slaves and pack animals of her father’s train slid into view, plodding wearily through the dust of their superiors. Next she saw a broad, marshy looking meadow full of half-erected tents. Above the noisy wind of their passage, Ousmani asked Aegyptus to circle higher, that they might wait for the most opportune moment unobserved.

It seemed forever coming. The horses, understandably nervous due to the hovering draconic presence, took forever to settle, and the tents were pitched and re-pitched in a futile search for dry ground. In fact, the camp was still in total disarray when the piercing cry of the muezzin floated up to Ousmani’s ears. But those with prayer rugs procured them and rolled them out aside those less fortunate, all prostrating themselves on the damp, green ground. All aligned with the hope of the faithful, the source of enlightenment on Earth, with Mecca and the East. “Now,” shouted Ousmani in her dragon’s ear, and they soared out of the West, swooping over the backs of the astonished congregation.

Circling back, Aegyptus held his huge golden wings fully unfurled, gilding them again with the light of sunset. Impossibly, they seemed to pause, and Ousmani held her breath, expecting to drop helplessly from the sky.

“There is no God but Allah,” intoned the dragon into this unnatural silence. “And Mohammed is his prophet.” With that he lowered his tail almost to the ground, and uncurling it, deposited the parchment scroll detailing his conversion exactly at the head of the alarmed and immobile Imam. Glancing back as they flew away, Ousmani saw him rise to stand, still reading.

“Success!” she screamed into the wind.

“Perhaps,” Aegyptus equivocated. “I have my doubts.” Suddenly veering, the dragon flew in an unfamiliar direction. Presently they came to the base of a steep cliff. Aegyptus climbed the updraft, circling like a hawk. Again, it was startlingly quiet.

“You are as much a Muslim as I,” she tried to reassure her mount. No, her friend. “More, for you have never consumed alcohol, nor rebelled against the wearing of the veil. The scroll we left for my father tells nothing but the truth. You decided to convert because of my example.”