The Dragons of Babel (8 page)

“Let me in,” Will whimpered. “I will do whatever you say.”

“You… you understand that you must be punished for your disobedience?”

“Yes,” Will said. “Punish me, please. Abase and degrade me, I beg you.”

“As you wish”—the dragon's cockpit door hissed open—“so it shall be.”

Will took one halting step forward, and then two. Stumblingly, he ran for the open hatchway. One hand closed on the short ladder up the dragon's side. Such an overwhelming sense of relief flooded through his body then that he was sure for an instant that he had returned too soon.

But then he let go of the ladder and stepped to the side, so that he was faced with the featureless black iron of the dragon's plating. From one pocket he withdrew Sergeant Bombast's name-stone. Its small blood-red mate was already in his mouth. There was still grave dirt on the one, and a strange taste to the other, but he did not care. He touched the name-stone to the iron plate, and the dragon's true name flowed effortlessly into his mind.

Simultaneously, he took the elf-shot from his other pocket. Then, with all his strength, he drew the elf-shot down the dragon's iron flank, making a long, bright scratch in the rust.

“What are you doing?” the dragon cried in alarm. “Stop that! The hatch is open, the couch awaits!” The words bounced from the shuttered buildings on every side, where villagers surely listened, though they dared not speak. Then his voice lowered, tinny and harsh from the loudspeaker, but still seductive. “The needles yearn for your wrists, oh best beloved. Even as I yearn for—”

“Baalthazar, of the line of Baalmoloch, of the line of Baalshabat,” Will shouted, “I command thee to die!”

And that was that.

All in an instant and with no fuss whatever, the dragon king was dead. All his might and malice was become nothing more than inert metal, that might be cut up and carted away to be sold to the scrap foundries that served their larger brothers with ingots to be reforged for the War.

Will hit the side of the dragon with all the might of his fist, to show his disdain. Then he spat as hard and fierce as ever he could, and watched the saliva slide slowly down the black metal. Finally, he unbuttoned his trousers and pissed upon his erstwhile oppressor.

So it was that he finally accepted that the tyrant was well and truly dead.

Bessie Applemere—hag no more—stood silent and bereft on the square behind him. Wordlessly, she mourned her sterile womb and sightless eyes. To her, Will went. He took her hand and led her back to her hut. He opened the door for her. He sat her down upon her bed. “Do you need anything?” he asked. “Water? Some food?”

She shook her head. “Just go. Leave me to lament our victory in solitude.”

He left, quietly closing the door behind him. There was no place to go now but home. It took him a moment to remember where that was.

B
lind Enna's cottage was at the end of a short lane half overgrown with wild honeysuckle, its scent heavy and sweet on the night air. Enna herself was down on all fours, scrubbing her stoop, when Will came walking up. “Auntie!” he cried. “I've come back!”

The old lady sprang to her feet, bucket in hand. Stricken, she moved her head slowly from side to side, as if attempting to locate him by smell alone. Those vacant eyes were black smudges in the moonlight, that ancient mouth an open and despairing pit. For an instant she stood thus. Then she dashed the water in her bucket onto the ground at his feet, as she might to drive off a carrion dog.

Will could have been no more astonished had she sprouted wings and flown away. “Why, Auntie!” he said. “Don't you remember me? I'm your nephew Will.”

“Oh, I remember
you!”
the old hag said.
“And
what you've done,
and
the disgrace you've brought on your family. Consorting with dragons! Crucifying your friends! Oh, you wretched, disobedient child! You horrid little shit! You unholy imp! Were you chained at the mouth of Hell, to serve forever as Ereshkigal's mastiff, your sufferings could not suffice to unwrite your guilt!”

Will stumbled forward, arms outstretched. But, hearing the scuffle of his feet, Blind Enna flung down her bucket and darted inside the house. She was, he realized with a shock, actually afraid of him. “Go away!” she shouted, and made to slam the door.

Will was there in a stride, however, before she could close it, and his strength was greater than hers. He forced his way inside.

It was all strangely homely and familiar. Gently lit by hovering witch-fires, the great room in which he had spent so much of his youth spread itself before him, its every detail a tug at his heart. There was his bed, straw tick mattress and all, in the niche above the black stone fireplace, and there by its head the loose stone where he'd hidden away magic rings, bits of colored glass, and suchlike trash when he'd been a child—by which he meant a few short months ago. Here was the rooster-shaped teakettle that, from a defective charm, could neither crow nor whistle. Here the pious etching of a dryad being flayed alive by two of the Seven. There the large wicker basket that had served his imagination as ship and roc and cavern many a time, and the small wicker basket that had been his helmet, cauldron, and treasure cask equally often. Copper cook-pots gleamed upon their hooks. Bundles of oregano, rosemary, and thyme dried on the rafters. There were moths pinned to the lintels of every window and door.

Blind Enna retreated to her sewing corner and, brandishing her distaff as if it were a weapon, quaveringly said, “Stay away. Don't you dare try to hurt me.”

Suddenly, Will was sick and weary unto death of this confrontation, of this day, of all of life and everything else. He had neither energy nor patience enough to endure any of it one moment longer. “Oh, Enna. Nobody's going to hurt anybody. That's all over and done with.” And, so saying, he climbed the side of the fireplace up to his bed.

He was astonished how small it was. Though it didn't
seem possible, he must have grown since last he'd been here.

When Will awoke, it was almost noon. His aunt had let him sleep late, which was unlike her, and the house was merry with sunshine and dancing dust motes. Blind Enna was nowhere to be seen. She'd left the door wide open, and that was unlike her as well. So Will dressed and washed and made a cold breakfast of bread and jam, washed down with a pint of sour beer, and went out looking for her.

It was a bright blue day and the dragon was dead. In Tyrant Square, the hammermen, clad in protective gear, were dismantling his corpse. They'd brought in a halfwit giant out of the deep hill country to do the heavy lifting. So all the village should have been joyful.

It was not.

The hostility was sharp enough to flense the flesh from his bones. A beldam hanging laundry out her attic window slammed the shutters at the sight of him. A hob rolling a cask of ale down the street would have run the thing right over his feet if Will hadn't danced away. Then, when Will cursed at him, the bastard kept on going, without so much as a glance over his shoulder. It was as if the events of the previous day had never happened at all. Bluebell sprites scowled and flounced away from his tentative smile. The Ice Tongs Man thumbed his nose and shook the reins to make his cart-horse trot. Not a soul in the village had a kindly look for their savior.

You are summoned
.

Will spun around. There was nobody there.

Come
. The word buzzed in Will's ear. He swatted a hand irritably at the air by his head, though he knew the action to be useless. He recognized Auld Black Agnes's voice. It was a compulsion, then, a command meant for him and him alone, which nobody else could hear. Angrily, he shut it out of his thoughts.

You cannot disobey
.

“The fuck I can't.”

The street before him beckoned, a gentle downslope guttered with wildflowers and emerald weeds. The way behind felt wrong, difficult, too hot, unpleasant. Hunching his shoulders, Will headed wrongwards.

Turn back
.

“Fat chance,” Will muttered. Leaning forward, as if into an opposing wind, he navigated the streets, going nowhere in particular but everywhere seeking his aunt. Each step was as familiar to him as the breath in his lungs. Here at the edge of town, not far from the trash pit, was the meadow, thronged with horned-god's paintbrush and Queen Mab's lace, where he had caught fire-mites in a jar when he was little. There the alley where he and his mates had cornered a manticore cub and stoned it to death. Down by the cannery was the shady spot where, all unintentionally, he had seen a russalka undressing through her second-floor window before black and leathery hands had drawn her down out of sight. All of his young life was imprinted upon the circuitry of the village streets.

Everywhere he went, he was shunned. It was as if nothing had changed. As if the dragon still rode him.

As in a sense it did.

He could not pretend the dragon had never been inside him. He could not muffle the experience. He saw the world now as the dragon had, without illusions. He saw it as it really was. The brewer who watered his beer, the tavern-keeper who needled it with ether, and the barfly who drank down the lees of any glass of it left unfinished, were all natural denizens of this place. As were the cobbler who beat his wife, the knocker who solaced her, and the dame verte who lived in the woods and for a price would give the cobbler, and whoever else wanted it, what his wife no longer would. To say nothing of the greenshirties, the neighbors and families who'd betrayed them, and he himself who'd persecuted them.

The village was a shabby and corrupt place, and he the worst of all of them: irredeemable.

A
nd so, having no destination, he wandered by whichever ways were easiest, and so found himself confronted by the open door of Auld Black Agnes's cottage. The interior was dark and inviting.

Enter
.

Lost in thought and self-recrimination, Will had let his legs carry them where they would. So it was that, they being under compulsion, he found himself facing the open door of Auld Black Agnes's cottage. The interior was dark, mysterious, inviting. With a wrench, he started to turn away.

Where else do you have to go?

He hesitated. Before the door opening into the dark, inviting, and mysterious interior of Auld Black Agnes's cottage.

Come in
.

He did.

S
it down
. Auld Black Agnes was sunk deep into a chintz chair with lace doilies on the arms. Her face, as wrinkled and soft as an apple left too many days in the sun, rested on her knees like a pallid spider. She gestured toward a too-small chair at the center of the parlor.

Will sat uncomfortably.

The other elders of the village moot were scattered about the room, some standing, several on folding chairs, three stiff and unblinking as owls on the divan, and one perched shoeless on the upright of the sideboard. On an ottoman at Agnes's feet sat Jumping Joan, still for once in her life, eyes spooked and hands folded. It only made sense. With Bessie Applemere a hag no longer, somebody would need to be trained as a truth-teller in her place. She would not speak at this moot or for many a moot to come, of course.
Yet her place was important nevertheless, for without a full coven of thirteen, the village moot would not be legal.

The village elders were always true to the letter of the law.

“Tea?” Black Agnes asked.

Mutely, Will accepted a cup. He let her add milk and two lumps of sugar.

“You were late in the coming. I'd almost given up on you entirely.”

“I… I was looking for my aunt.”

The old crone lifted her beak of a nose from her cup and pointed it into the darkest corner of the parlor, where an archway led into a lightless kitchen. “Well, there she is.”

With the slightest shift of Will's attention, the darkness assembled itself into his aunt. Blind Enna cringed back, as if sensing his attention, and held her head as she did when listening intently. It seemed to him that her ears pricked higher. “Auntie…,” Will said.

Blind Enna wailed in fear. She flung her apron over her face and fled into the interior of the house.

Bewildered, Will stood. “Wait,” he said. “I didn't… I wouldn't…” He had no idea what to say.

To his intense embarrassment, he burst into tears.

As if this were what she were waiting for, Auld Black Agnes said, “All right, the male elders can leave now. We'll handle this as a lady-moot.”

“Be ye sure?” the Sullen Man rumbled. “Ye haven't the right of coercion without us.”

“He cried,” she said. “So we'll do this by persuasion.”

So with sighs, mutters, and scrapes of chairs, Daddy Fingerbones and Spadefoot, the two Night Striders, and Ralph the Ferrier, followed the Sullen Man out of the room. Annie Hop-the-Frog took the forgotten teacup from Will's hand. “I don't think you want this,” she said kindly. “You haven't touched a drop.”

He shook his head hopelessly.

“Look at this darling boy.” The matron stroked his hair. “As blond as a dandelion and every bit as foolhardy. It's always the heroes who break your heart, the seventh sons and holy fools. All those who march out to solve the woes of the world without ever asking themselves whether the world wants saving or who has the advantage of weight.”

The ladies of the moot clucked in agreement.

“It's a pity that we must exile him.”

Shocked, Will said, “What?”

“There's no place for you here, dear,” Annie said. “You saw your aunt. The poor thing is terrified of you.”

“Everyone is,” the yagewitch muttered sourly. Nobody contradicted her.

“I killed the dragon!” Will cried. “I did for you a deed that not all the village put together could have done.”