The Whim of the Dragon (23 page)

“I’ll think about it,” said Patrick.

Fence only chuckled. They all went to bed, the children in one tent and the grown-ups in the other; and if anybody poured poetry into Laura’s dreaming ears, she did not notice. She dreamt that she was back in school and had forgotten her homework. She woke up in a cold sweat to Ellen’s snoring, and Patrick’s light breathing, and a dapple of moonlight on the blackened remnants of the fire. The weather had cleared, and nobody cared that she had not looked up twenty-five botanical terms in the dictionary and copied down their major definitions in a clear hand with no mistakes in the spelling. Nobody was bothering her at all; but everybody else was bothered. Laura stared at the dark and tried to decide which was worse, and fell asleep again.

W
HEN the song that summoned her came next, it was not from a dream. Claudia walked down the hall to her back room, and laid a hand upon the yielding glass, and smiled. The summons was stronger than the spell that kept her here. It might be that she had a choice of where to go, that the summons, being played not by intention but in ignorance, might unlock all her windows. She called the cats, quickly; three of them came. She moved her hand on the glass a little, and said, “Krupton Chorion.”

She stepped through, the three cats winding about her ankles like some benign variation of the Nightmare Grass. She stood in the back room of her whole, clean, true house in the Hidden Land, and knew that someone had been here.
Someone
, said the voices, fading,
has been sitting in my chair.

The cats, pleased to be home, purred thunderously. She could still feel the summons. It had no physical power, but it called monotonously, like a cat in a locked room. It came to Claudia that it might benefit her to know where her summoner, however unconscious, was. She moved in the direction of the calling voice, and peered into the little diamond pane toward which it guided her. The stuff of the pane wavered like water. She saw the false Laura just putting the flute away beneath the huge trees of the Enchanted Forest. But she saw also, fading in and out like an agitated water-beast, the counterfeit Lady Ruth in the parlor of this very house, under the ceiling painted with goldenrod, playing a mundane flute. Andrew was tardy; or disobedient; or likeliest of all, cautious. She snatched at the poem as it ran between the shivering lines of the two scenes she saw, snapped it off short, and let the greater part of it fall back into the house.

It spoke tunefully out of the sunny air of her porch, in the mingled voices of Randolph and Andrew and others she did not know. She heard it through and laughed. Andrew had not been disobedient, nor very cautious. His abominable rhymes had let her catch the song and turn it aside.

She took her hand from the window, which settled into the scene of the Enchanted Forest. Claudia looked at it, and frowned. “Past,” she said, “passing, or to come?”

She went quickly into the kitchen. The sink was full of scraped dishes, and a smell lingered of garlic and tomatoes.

“Past,” said Claudia. “Belaparthalion.”

She ran across her front hall and took the steps two at a time, not because she thought she could do anything but because she was too curious to go slowly. The cats bounded after her; this was a game they liked. One last lone voice said thoughtfully,
With help of her most potent ministers, / And in her most unmitigable rage.

They had spoken to Belaparthalion, but they had not released him. She strode around to lean on the window, and addressed his remote, red, whiskered face. “Didst thou not fix them with thy glittering eye?” she said.

The englobed dragon was like a carved and enameled piece of jewelry. The light of the globe was as gray as the moon. She waited, and slowly the golden color flooded back, and the dragon closed its red-and-black striped lids, opened them again, and smiled. “Did thy sojourn like thee,” he said, “in thy old house?”

“Liketh thine thee, in thy new house with my sputtering beasts?”

“We’re well enough,” he said.

“Is thy power so minished that thou couldst not bring thy minions to release thee?”

“My power is so well kept,” said he, “that I did persuade them from that rescue. I know this prison cell, and I know you. I’ll come forth in my true shape, or not at all.”

“And shall Chryse come for thee?”

But he would not answer her.

O
N their second night, the embassy to the Dragon King camped on the enormous plain of waist-high grass from which, farther south, the mountains would rise with great abruptness.

The air was very still and crisp, and the huge stars of the Secret Country sprinkled the darkening sky. Ted looked at the circle around the fire, and grinned despite himself. They were arranged in such a way as to make everybody unhappy. He was sitting between Andrew and Randolph. Ruth was on Andrew’s other side, but Andrew couldn’t bother her because on Ruth’s other side was Dittany, who had noticed that Ruth disliked Andrew, and seemed to take pleasure in getting in his way. Ted couldn’t talk to Randolph about anything important because on Randolph’s other side was Julian; Julian was made uncomfortable by having to sit next to Stephen, who had annoyed him the first day out with some theory of farming. Stephen had to put up with Julian’s refusal to discuss his theory, and also with the presence of Dittany, who called him “Boggy”—presumably because mallows grow in marshes—and only laughed in genuine delight when Stephen snarlingly addressed her as “Dropsy”—presumably because peonies fall over in midsummer. But Dittany had to put up with Jerome, who didn’t think there was any dignity in the entire exchange; while Jerome had to put up with the exchange on one side, and a lack of attention from Dittany on the other, because Dittany was keeping Andrew from bothering Ruth.

Ted laughed. Everybody instantly looked at him. He watched them formulating various ways of saying “What’s so funny?” and decided to forestall them. “Look at us!” he said. “We ought to be hung on a wall to scare the crows. We were merrier than this when we rode to lose our lives.”

“We’ve sent all the musicians north, that’s it,” said Ruth.

“You rate yourself too low, my lady,” said Andrew.

“You’ve brought your flute, haven’t you?” said Ted.

Ruth shot him a furious look. He wondered too late if it would be better, on principle, not to fall in with anything Andrew wanted, no matter how innocent.

“That flute’s for messages,” Ruth said, flatly, “and all my musical talent is for magic. You’d rather—you’d rather hear your dog bark at a crow,” she finished, somewhat hysterically, “than me play a song that’s not a spell.”

“What of ‘King Conrad’s Last Journey’?” said Andrew. His voice was pleasant, his tone helpful. But there was something in it more than friendly; Ted’s mother would sometimes say mundane things to his father in a tone like that. He had the awful feeling that Ruth had been right about Lady Ruth; certainly she was right about Andrew’s attitude toward that enigmatic person.

Ruth sat absolutely still, staring at Andrew. Ted could see her face quite well in the firelight; she had no expression at all. Then, slowly, the corner of her mouth curved up, in a smile Ted had never seen in all the years of their acquaintance.

“That’s true, my lord,” she said, lightly. “I had forgot. I’ll play that tune, an all do will it.”

There was a chorus of assent, half-polite and half-eager. Ruth started to get up to fetch the flute and was forestalled by Andrew. Andrew was then beaten to the baggage by Stephen, who either was developing a crush on Ruth himself or had heard that tone in Andrew’s voice and decided, like Dittany, that Ruth didn’t care for it. Ted groaned inwardly. Why, oh, why, had they ever wanted to put any romantic complications in the blasted game? And what the hell did Ruth think she was going to play on that flute? He didn’t know any song called “King Conrad’s Last Journey,” and he would bet that Ruth didn’t either. Ted put his face in his hands suddenly; he was going to laugh or shriek, he wasn’t sure which. Ruth might not know that song; but Lady Ruth would. Had that smile been hers? Were these dribs and drabs of knowledge broadening into some insidious possession?

Randolph laid a hand on Ted’s knee, and Ted almost jumped out of his skin. “What’s amiss?” said Randolph, very quietly. Andrew had not sat back down, but was looking thoughtfully after Stephen.

“Didn’t you see her look at him?” breathed Ted. “Ruthie never looked like that in her life; that was Lady Ruth in the back of her head.”

Randolph raised both eyebrows, but was prevented from saying anything else. Stephen had come back with the flute, which returned Andrew’s attention to Ted’s immediate vicinity.

Ruth unwrapped the flute, put it together, warmed it briefly, and, without any other preliminary, began to play “Good King Wenceslas.” Ted, confounded, looked around the circle. Nobody seemed surprised. Eventually they all began to sing.

Oh, fine, thought Ted. It’s even got some lines from the real song. What the hell is going on here? Claudia didn’t explain the half of it. Maybe she didn’t even do the half of it. I’m going to go crazy if we can’t figure this out.

The song went on forever. If Andrew had really wanted to cheer people up, he had chosen a good way to do it. They were all singing; and though the song didn’t have a chorus, it used three repeating verses, which came not at regular intervals, but rather on some cue Ted could not figure out. The singers themselves were always guessing wrong or coming in late, and they seemed to be enjoying themselves hugely. Even Randolph was smiling, although he sang only when nobody else could remember the words.

Ted couldn’t decide what the song was about. It was a rambling tale of various adventures, but the main point of it seemed to be that, once King Conrad became enraged about whatever it was that had made him spurn his kingdom, it was impossible for anybody he knew to talk to him. He was followed in all his doings by pages and messengers from his court, asking advice on how to run the country; but he wouldn’t answer them, or they were plagued by interruptions whenever they seemed to have worn him down, or they couldn’t find him at all. And as soon as the people he met became friends instead of strangers, they would decide that he really ought to go back and run his kingdom, whereupon he would refuse to speak to them and they too would fall prey to the misfortunes that dogged his messengers. The crowd of people trying to follow him became larger and larger, and they began to quarrel among themselves. It was an amusing song, but there was something disquieting about it.

He looked at Randolph, who was sitting with his arms around his knees. His hood hid his face, but the moment Ted moved he leaned over and said, “What’s the matter now?” He was not exasperated; he sounded as if things being the matter was the way of the world and it was to Ted’s credit to have noticed.

“This song bothers me,” said Ted, speaking softly.

“Which of your play-makers now?”

“None of them. I know the tune, and some of the lines, but not the story. Is this a normal kind of song for the Hidden Land?”

“No,” said Randolph; “but Conrad was no normal kind of king.”

Somebody touched Ted on the shoulder; he looked around wildly, and Andrew let go of him and laid one finger across his own mouth in a gesture that any parent might have used.

“Sorry,” whispered Ted. He turned back to Randolph and said, “Our talk’s a trial to Lord Andrew; will you walk apart with me?”

Randolph grinned at him, the grin that made you feel pleased and clever and as if the world were not in such bad shape after all. “Gladly,” said Randolph, and got up, and gave his hand to Ted. Ted needed the help; one of his feet had fallen asleep, and he felt, of a sudden, shaky inside, as if Andrew had given him an ominous look instead of a mildly rebuking one.

They walked away from the fire, following a little path in the grass that the army had made when it camped here, and that animals, or perhaps other human wanderers, had kept clear until now. Ted trudged all the way to the quarry, Randolph behind him. Their breath steamed in the starlight. A few late insects creaked industriously. The quarry was a circle of quivering silver surrounded by ghostly white rocks. Ted sat down on one of these, and Randolph sat down beside him.

“What was the matter with Conrad?” said Ted. He added, “Which Conrad was this? The one who wouldn’t mend the Great South Door?”

“Nay; his grandson,” said Randolph. “The fourth of that name. He was King when Melanie and her brothers did murder the unicorn.”

“Did he think it was his fault?”

Randolph nodded inside his hood. “Some had warned him; but he so trusted the brothers of Melanie that he did summon and ask them if this were truth. And they said it was not; and so the Hunt was held as always, and the unicorn killed.”

“So,” said Ted, “he decided he would never listen to anybody he knew? That’s
just
like somebody in a fairy tale.”

“Knowing he had given his trust amiss,” said Randolph, rather sharply, “how could he bestow it again?”

So that was what was the matter with him. “That’s foolish,” said Ted. “Did he expect never to make any mistakes?”

“Some must not be made,” said Randolph, with finality.

Ted did not have the courage to argue further. “Why did Andrew want Ruth to play the song?”

“He trusted the Lady Ruth, and thinketh now that she doth betray him,” said Randolph, slowly. “Also, very like, to sting me. He knows the King did trust me and I did betray him.”