The Whim of the Dragon (19 page)

A
T ten o’clock, as calculated by Dittany’s astrolabe, when the moon would shine through the window of Claudia’s north tower and hit the golden globe, they all sat on the floor of the tower room. It had stopped raining while they slept, and a vigorous east wind had snatched the clouds over the horizon.

Ted squinted up at the globe and wished for Laura. It looked like a good thing to see visions in, if you had the knack. All he saw were minute, shifting scenes, as if somebody had made a kaleidoscope with its openings in the shapes of houses and trees and faces. Every time he had something in focus, a little stab of lightning would obliterate it.

“Get ready,” said Randolph, from his post by the window. He stood up.

“Get read-y!” whispered Ruth to Ted, “the world is coming to an end!”

What had gotten into
her
? Well, maybe this
was
a Thurberesque situation. “This cold night,” Ted whispered back, “will turn us all to fools and madmen.”

With a dramatic suddenness that you do not expect from a world in which you have lived for three months, and which has rained all day on the road you have to ride tonight, the dark arch of Claudia’s tower window lit up with silver. The roiling depths of the golden globe stilled; the rich light dimmed to gray; and from a little spark of red in the globe’s center there grew the stately form of a dragon. It grew to the size of the globe, to the outermost diameter of its glow; and stopped, before Ted had to decide whether he was going to leave the room, possibly dragging Ruth with him.

The wind rattled the windows. Ted could feel his heart thumping in his ears. He had a good side view of the dragon, which floated with its tail to the trapdoor and its head toward Randolph, at the window. The dragon was bright red with touches of black. It was a very twisty, decorated dragon, with seven claws on each foot and a great many tendrils and spikes and whiskers.

Ruth leaned over so close that Ted could feel her breath in his ears, and said very softly, “Speak to it; thou art a scholar.”

Ted forebore to shush her; he didn’t want that huge, tapering head to look in his direction. It had black eyes with red pupils and could have looked at him, if it had wanted to, without turning its head. But its gaze was bent on Randolph. Randolph went down on one knee and bowed his forehead onto the other. It was the most extravagant gesture of respect that Ted had ever seen anybody in the Secret Country make. Randolph could not have heard Ruth; but he did speak, and in the very words with which the scholar Horatio once addressed a ghost. “ ‘If thou hast any sound, or use of voice, / Speak to me: / If there be any good thing to be done,/That may to thee do ease and grace to me, / Speak to me: / If thou art privy to thy country’s fate, / Which, happily, foreknowing may avoid, / O, speak!’ ”

The dragon’s long mouth opened. Ted thought that he wouldn’t be at all surprised if, having been sown in the ground, those teeth came up armed men. The dragon’s voice crackled and fizzed like a badly tuned radio. It said, “Knowest me not?”

And Randolph, his face stark white in the mix of gray light and moonlight, and his eyes like saucers, said, “Belaparthalion.”

“Welcome,” said the dragon. There was something in its voice that Ted had heard before.

Randolph said, “Art thou imprisoned?”

“A part of me,” said the dragon, and Ted had it. The remote amusement of the unicorns, the dry glee, the sense of some joke beyond one’s ken.

“What may we do?” said Randolph.

“For me, naught,” said Belaparthalion. “For thyself, walk warily.”

“What part is so imprisoned?” said Randolph. “And by whom?”

“This shape thou seest,” said Belaparthalion, with a shade of sharpness, “and the speech whereby to make my captor known.”

“That smells of Claudia,” said Ruth.

“Most strongly,” said the dragon. It did not turn its head to address her. Ted wondered if it could. It was very unpleasant to think of so large and powerful and humorous a creature held captive; not least because of what this said about Claudia.

“What may we do?” repeated Randolph.

“Thy present enterprise will serve thee well enough.” There was a long pause. The dragon said, “Ask for me in the land of the dead.”

“I will so,” said Randolph, and bowed in the usual Secret Country fashion.

“All may yet be very well,” said Belaparthalion, in a tone of resignation mixed with very little humor. It tucked its long head under its long belly and folded its spiky, fragile wings and attenuated limbs, shrank steadily to a spark of red, and vanished. The globe stayed dull gray, swallowing the moonlight.

“For the love of heaven,” said Randolph, “let’s find some warmer place.”

“Is it the Crystal of Earth?” asked Ted.

“No,” said Randolph, lighting a candle. “By no means.” And he disappeared through the trapdoor before Ted could ask him anything else.

“Julian?” said Ted, irritated with his Regent. “Could you stay and guard this thing?”

“As you will, my lord,” said Julian, and sat down again in the corner.

They reassembled in the kitchen; Dittany fetched Jerome from his watch outside. Stephen was asleep, and they left him alone. Andrew hung the kettle over the fire and made a large pot of very strong tea. The pot was red. The mugs, also red, were styled like those of High Castle, but each of them had a little white plaque of a unicorn’s head in unglazed clay on it, and the eye of each unicorn was picked out in yellow. Ted found them unnerving, but the tea, if you put enough honey in it, was very welcome.

“Well,” said Ted, when he was tired of watching people slurp tea and avoid one another’s eyes. “What meaneth this apparition?”

“Yon globe,” said Randolph to his empty mug, “is not the Crystal of Earth. Yet it is like unto that Crystal. Now that Crystal contains the Hidden Land in little, and whoso breaketh it breaketh also the Hidden Land. Yon globe containeth the dragon Belaparthalion, also in little.” He stopped.

“Wherefore,” said Ruth, impatiently, “whoso breaketh it breaketh also the dragon?”

“No,” said Randolph. “Breaketh, most like, the dragon-shape merely. Dragons walk abroad in many forms. But look you, the dragon-shape is native to them, and in it alone do they possess their full powers. This is truth. ’Tis said, and may be truth also, that outwith that shape they may run mad. Wherefore, with the whim of the dragon among those things that may destroy the Hidden Land, we may not so provoke that whim.”

“May it not, so imprisoned,” said Andrew, “equally run mad and destroy us?” There was humor in his voice also, but it was neither remote nor dry.

“Not yet,” said Randolph.

“Besides,” said Ruth, “it told us not to mess with it.”

“Most clearly,” said Jerome, in a dissatisfied tone.

“’Twill abide ’til we come to the land of the dead,” said Randolph.

“All right,” said Ted. “What does this tell us about Claudia? Who can imprison a dragon? What are they vulnerable to?”

“Jests,” said Randolph, “games of chance; and the promise of gold.”

“These things are poison to them?” said Ruth. “Or they have a weakness for them?”

“A weakness only,” said Randolph. “Unicorn’s blood is poison to a dragon; naught else.”

“What a very unpleasant thought,” said Ruth.

“All right,” said Ted again. “What do we need to do?”

“Ride posthaste to the Gray Lake,” said Randolph, “where we may ask after Belaparthalion in the land of the dead. But first I think we must send word to Fence. It may be that the Council of Nine at Heathwill Library can read this riddle.”

“I’ll get the flute,” said Ruth. “You compose your message.”

Randolph got up and went into Claudia’s front hall, whence he returned with a huge sheet of paper, a glass pen, and a bottle of ink. Ted observed the pen with fascination. Its nib was the usual sharpened goose-quill, but this had been attached to a hollow cylinder of red glass. You dipped the pen and filled the cylinder, and could write whole paragraphs before having to dip the pen again. Ted had struggled with ordinary dipping pens at High Castle, and hoped Randolph was taking proper notice of this improvement.

Randolph seemed to be engaged in some sort of parlor game with Dittany, Jerome, and Andrew. Dittany took it very seriously, but gloomy Jerome warmed and brightened as it went on. Randolph kept asking them for rhymes and laughing at their suggestions. Andrew affected to be bored and skeptical, but the three most difficult rhymes were all provided by him; not to mention the abominable part-rhyme “crystal / mizzle,” which, after much argument, was pronounced acceptable on the ground that the message was about a dragon.

Ted, who was tired and who had not been present at Celia’s instruction of Ruth, finally figured out that they were putting the news about Belaparthalion into verse. It sounded like any anonymous fifteenth-century ballad by the time they were finished. Ruth meanwhile could be heard in the hallway, squeaking on the flute and finally producing an even and euphonious version of “Puff the Magic Dragon.” Ted thought this was both silly and risky, but nothing seemed to come of it.

Ruth returned with the flute, and Randolph handed her the ink-smudged paper. Ruth scowled over it. “Maybe ‘Matty Groves,’” she said. “No, I don’t think so; that’s awfully ill-omened. Oh, I know! We’ll use ‘The Minstrel Boy.’ How odd; I never thought of those tunes as interchangeable.” She grinned at Ted, who frowned repressively at her; she put the flute to her lips and played briskly through six repetitions of “The Minstrel Boy.”

It was not until Ted, feeling bored at the fourth repetition and thinking that one would have to wrench the words to make them fit that tune, peered at the paper again, that he realized what was happening. The first three blotched verses had vanished from the paper, and the fourth was evaporating as Ruth played. There was nothing special about the pen and paper; she was doing it all with the flute. When she stopped, Randolph had a clean, empty sheet of paper and a pen full of ink. How thrifty, thought Ted. But it seemed uncanny to him. Nobody looked at all tired, and they hadn’t even used up any ink. Maybe the work was all done by the receiving end. He hoped it wouldn’t be too much for Laura.

“Well, good,” said Ruth. She began to unscrew the mouthpiece of the flute. “I suppose now we ride away and make however many miles we were supposed to have made by now?”

“Alas, yes,” said Randolph.

“At least it’s stopped raining,” said Ted.

“I’ve stopped its raining,” said Randolph; “’twill begin again within the hour.”

He got up and went out, followed by Dittany and Jerome, leaving Ted and Ruth to stare at each other. Andrew tipped his heavy wooden chair back like an insolent student awaiting his turn to be spoken to by the principal, smiling faintly.

Ted reflected that Edward knew little about magic, and took a risk. “When’d he do’t? He didn’t make a production of it.”

“The Blue School doesn’t,” said Ruth. “It’s the Green Caves that like ceremonies and drama.”

“We should let Ellen join them, then,” said Ted, thoughtlessly, “and give you to the Blue School.”

This suggestion produced a harrowing silence. Ted looked from Ruth, who was very red, to Andrew, who had restored the chair to its upright position and was upright in it, staring at Ruth with an expression of disbelieving discovery.

“Don’t look like that,” said Ted to him. “I’m not going to marry her.”

He plunged out of the kitchen, followed by Ruth, who grabbed the sleeve of his shirt and shook his arm violently. “Why did you say that? It would have been better to keep him guessing. Now he’ll think I’m going to marry Randolph.”

“Well, he’d better think so,” said Ted. “If he bothers you too much, why don’t you tell him about the bargain with Meredith? Blame it all on her.”

“I am not telling him anything,” said Ruth. She had relaxed her grip on his sleeve, but she made a sudden surprised noise like that of somebody who has been poked in the ribs, and clutched Ted’s arm in a grasp that hurt. “Oh,
Lord
! What if it’s nothing to do with the Dragon King? What if I said I’d help him keep Randolph from murdering William?” She giggled hysterically. “ ‘Murder, though it have no tongue, will speak / With most miraculous organ.’ ”

“Shhh!” said Ted. They were out of earshot of Andrew, but not of Stephen, if he should wake up. “Stop quoting Shakespeare. Haven’t we got enough of that?”

“Lady Ruth said it,” said Ruth. She had stopped laughing, but she was still holding on to his arm. Her hand quivered. “I thought she meant her own murder, Ted. What if we meet the King in the land of the dead?”

“The ghosts don’t remember who they are.”

“But if Andrew asks the King’s ghost—”

“‘Don’t borrow trouble,’” said Ted, quoting Agatha. Ruth seeming unconvinced, he added something of his own. “We can burn that bridge when we come to it.”

Ruth laughed, as if in spite of herself. “The readiness is all,” she said.

 

They left from behind Claudia’s house, following a narrow path through a meadow and up a little rise, on the other side of which they found the road they wanted. The moon shone clear, and made sparkles on the wet leaves and stones. Ted looked over his shoulder once, and saw the dead gray light pouring out of Claudia’s tower. He wondered where the golden light had gone, and half wished they had left things alone. The back of his mind said,
And, for thou wast a spirit too delicate / To act her earthy and abhorred commands, / Refusing her grand hests, she did confine thee.

Ted thought of the intricate, muscular shape of the dragon, and the remote humor of its crackling voice. A spirit too delicate? “Somehow,” he said aloud, “I can’t see it.”

L
AURA had always been so petrified by the dangers of horseback riding that its discomforts had not occurred to her. By the time they stopped for lunch she was extremely stiff; by the time they stopped for the night, she hurt all over.