The Whim of the Dragon (39 page)

“Wait a moment,” said Ruth. “I still don’t understand. Does everybody who pretends as a child grow up to be a wizard?”

“No,” said Andrew. “Some cease to make believe; some make little tales; but all the great ones do turn to wizardry. All our great tales are true.”

“Wizards made them happen by making them up?” said Ruth. A voice in her mind that was not Lady Ruth’s said to her,
Poetry makes nothing happen.

“Wizards do make them happen by living them,” said Andrew. “And do write them down afterward. Also—” He hesitated, and said, “I do not well understand this. Melanie did believe that your play-makers, your poets, did make some events to happen, long ago; but that in the end the Outside Powers did appoint the unicorns guardians, that not every tale should burst in and jostle with every other. And she did believe that the unicorns do suggest the tales to the minds of wizards and plain folk here, who do then choose them, or not, as they will. And what Melanie did was to take from them their means of choosing.”

“And how do we come into all this?” asked Ruth, with a sinking stomach.

“I do not well understand that either,” said Andrew. He looked, furthermore, as if he didn’t want to. But he went doggedly on. “Think on this. In the natural way of things, tales made by thy poets do present themselves herein; the unicorns do choose or banish them; any with an ear to hear may choose or banish them from’s own life. But Melanie did turn all these matters upsodown; she did present the history of the Hidden Land to your several minds; and you did choose or banish, and add your own embellishment, which did in the ordinary way return to us, to choose or banish as we did wish, according to our several natures, our inclinations, and the keenness of our inward ears.”

“Jesus!” said Ted.

“Don’t swear,” said Ruth. “All right, I guess I’ll accept that for now. But why did she do it?”

“I have said before,” said Randolph from the depths of the sofa. “We can but ask her.”

“Can but ask is easily said,” said Andrew.

“I’m glad somebody here has some sense,” said Ruth, frowning at Randolph’s long form sunk in the red cushions. With his coloring, and more especially with the spectacular lack of it that had afflicted him since the King died, he looked better in red than in blue.

“There’s sense,” said Randolph, without rancor, “and there’s authority.”

“Which, in this matter,” said Andrew, pushing himself away from the window, “is still mine. We’ve tarried enough. The court of the Dragon King awaiteth us.”

“It’ll be dark in an hour,” said Ruth. Randolph had closed his eyes, as if to show that, whoever’s authority Andrew thought he was challenging, it wasn’t his. His lashes were longer than hers, blast him. She turned quickly to Andrew, who didn’t look very healthy either. “Why don’t we get some rest and have an early start in the morning?”

There was a difficult silence. Then, “Practical as ever,” said Andrew, with no particular expression; and walked out of the room.

Ruth waited for his footsteps on the bare boards to die away. Then she sat down on the floor. “Whew!” she said.

“That,” said Randolph, “was the triumph of sense o’er pride. Do you give him the credit for’t, an he chide in the morning.”

“I will so,” said Ruth. She leaned her head against the arm of the sofa and closed her eyes. “Is anybody hungry?”

“The first rule of erratic travel,” said Randolph, drowsily, “is this: eat when you may.”

Ruth stood up. “Well, come on, then,” she said to his recumbent form. “Or shall we come and drop it into your mouth?”

“I thank you,” said Randolph, sitting up hastily and looking as if he had managed to make himself dizzy, “not with our rations.”

“We could find some nice worms,” said Ruth, tartly.

Ted was staring at her. She said, “Let’s to the oatcake, then,” bolted precipitately out of the room, and dived into the first open door she saw. She heard the rest of them, a few moments later, clatter downstairs. This room was the double of the one she and Ted and Randolph had had their conference in, back in the Secret Country. Ruth sat down in one of the carved chairs, on a gold cushion, and pressed her fists to her eyes.

What was the matter with her? No; she knew that. But why did she have to act this way about it? Ruth the contained and careful, whose father called her Elinor after the character in
Sense and Sensibility
who embodied the first of those traits. Ruth thought she would like to die. “Oh, you would not,” she said to herself. “Think of where you’d end up. Well, at least you couldn’t make a fool of yourself down there. My God, I’ve got to travel with those people for another week. I can’t stand it.”
Men have died from time to time,
said the voice,
and worms have eaten them; but not for love.

“Who asked you!” yelled Ruth.

She jumped to her feet and paced furiously around the red and gold rag rug, trying not to think, trying to think of something else. The odious voice said musically,
Sing we for love and idleness, / Naught else is worth the having. / Though I have been in many a land, / There is naught else in living.

“Irresponsible hedonist,” said Ruth, breathlessly.

The voice continued unperturbed.
And I would rather have my sweet, / Though rose-leaves die of grieving, / Than do high deeds in Hungary / To pass all men’s believing.

It had drowned the sound of footsteps on the bare wooden floor of the hall. Ruth heard only the first step in the room itself, before the newcomer trod on the carpet and stood still. She flung herself around. It was Ted. Ruth was enormously relieved, and even more enormously disappointed.

“Ruthie?” said Ted. “What’s the matter?”

“I,” said Ruth, between her teeth, “am a jerk and an idiot.”

“What?”

“Everybody is a jerk and an idiot at sixteen,” Ruth explained to him. “I expected it. I figured I could confine it to a diary, or writing bad poetry. My God, how does anybody survive to be twenty?”

“Slow down,” said Ted, painstakingly. “Have you remembered something vital, or what?”

“No,” said Ruth, wildly. “I’ve forgotten something basic. I’m too young for this. I don’t want this to happen. My
God,
” said Ruth, taking Ted by his wool-clad shoulders and shaking him, “no wonder teenage girls are pregnant all over the place.”

Ted’s face arrested her. He put both his hands, which were exceedingly cold, over hers, and said, “Say it again. Slowly.”

“No, it’s okay,” said Ruth. “Or at least, it isn’t, but—forget all that. Never mind.”

“Okay, fine,” said Ted. “Come on down to dinner.”

“Oh, no,” said Ruth, retreating from him. “I’m not going down there.”

“What in the hell is the matter?”

“If you tell anybody I’ll kill you.”

“On my honor,” said Ted.

Ruth looked at him.

“As crowned King of the Hidden Land, may any pain you care to name come upon me sevenfold if ever I reveal this secret without your express permission
what the bloody hell is wrong, Ruth?
”

“I’m in love with Randolph.”

Ted’s jaw dropped. Then he looked as if he were going to laugh, and Ruth prepared to hit him. Then a reflective look came over his face; and then he looked at her as if he were really seeing her, and said, “That’s bad. I’m sorry.”

“How would you know?” snapped Ruth, ungratefully.

“Remember I told you Edward was in love with Lady Ruth?”

“It’s
monstrous,
” said Ruth. “How can anybody stand it?”

“Well, it had its moments,” said Ted; his straightforward blue gaze altered momentarily, and became disconcerting. Then he rubbed his eyes and said, “Or at least, it would have if I’d been Edward.”

“It doesn’t have any God damn moments at all,” said Ruth.

Ted looked at her thoughtfully. “I know what’s the matter with you,” he said.

“Oh yeah? Well, please enlighten me.”

“I didn’t know love made people sarcastic.”

“I’m sorry. What is it that’s the matter with me?”

“Remember right after we got here, when we were trying to figure out what was happening, and Patrick came up with all his theories about mass telepathic hallucinations?”

“I try very hard to forget it,” said Ruth, despite herself, “but go on.”

“And you told Patrick he was crazy, and he said, all right, you could explain it, then. And you said you didn’t want to explain it; you wanted to know what to do about it.”

“Well?”

“Well, you want to know what to do about being in love with Randolph. And you don’t know; and I don’t know.”

“I don’t want to do anything about it,” said Ruth. “First love is a mistake; you just have to get over it. Nobody as idiotic as I am could possibly make a decision like that and get it right. I refuse. I don’t want to do anything about it. But I keep doing things about it. I keep saying stupid things. Did you
hear
me in there? That was
flirting.
That was
despicable.
”

“Do you want not to be in love with him?”

“Of course I—shit,” said Ruth, for the second time in her life; and said it again, three times. The voice said implacably,
Let me not to the marriage of true minds / Admit impediments.

“I thought so,” said Ted. “Now come on down to dinner.”

“Are you crazy?”

“You can’t stay up here. Ruthie, look. Randolph probably didn’t even notice. He’s falling asleep on his feet.”

“This,” said Ruth, after a pause to examine her feelings, “is abominable. Am I relieved that he didn’t notice? No.”

“He’s going to notice, if you don’t come downstairs,” said Ted, “and that will be worse. Just keep your mouth shut. I’ll kick you if I think you’re going to say something stupid.”

“That’s a splendid idea,” said Ruth. “I’ll have two broken ankles before we get out of the house in the morning.”

But she followed him downstairs.

 

Ruth did not have any broken ankles when they got out of the house in the morning. Ted had not had to kick her at all, because she had not said a word. He began to wish he’d promised to kick her for sulking too; but she wasn’t really sulking: she just looked glazed. Andrew, on the other hand, appeared to be sulking. Randolph was so tired that nothing else showed. Ted thought he looked as if he had given a great deal more blood than the token three drops. Perhaps in some sense he had.

They had eaten their supper, such as it was, at teatime, and gone to bed at suppertime, so they were able to make such an early start that even Andrew didn’t complain. There was a line of red on the western horizon; the morning star glared at them like the beacon of a lighthouse; the huddled mountains were dark. It was chilly.

Randolph took the lead, without consulting anybody. Ted was so sleepy that it was not until the sun had risen and transformed the fantastic landscape of dawn into something more ordinary that he realized how far they had come. The mountains were gone. They were in a hilly country pocked with little lakes, riding on a good road under a sky filled with birds. There was a tower on almost every hill, and the rolling country was crossed like a chessboard with the lumpy white lines of drystone walls. It was a much homier and pleasanter-looking place than the Hidden Land; but something about it made Ted nervous.

He persuaded the mare to move up next to Ruth’s horse. “What’s wrong with this place?” he said.

Ruth looked at him out of the corner of her eye, her wild hair blowing. “There’s something paranoid about those towers.”

“At least nobody’s shooting arrows out of them,” said Ted.

Not long after, they overtook another party traveling in the same direction, a party cumbered with wagons, whose outriders, their plain cloaks abandoned in the warm morning, could clearly be seen to be wearing tunics appliquéd with the running fox of High Castle.

Stephen, Dittany, Jerome, Julian; the four they had left behind when they went to brave the Gray Lake. Ted had completely forgotten about them. What prior arrangements, what arcane communications, what good planning or timing had brought about this rendezvous, he neither knew nor cared. The remote voice that was not Edward’s said,
Why, what a king is this!

And that, of course, was fair. He ought to care. Ted smiled at the four of them and let the chatter of reunion divide around him and flow on behind. Not only did he not care, but nobody had consulted him. Randolph, of course, had known all along that he was not the true heir; although for the beginning of the journey he had treated him as a proper king-in-training. Andrew had never had a high opinion of Edward, and now knew that Ted had not even Edward’s claim to authority. This was a bad precedent; as was the fact that Ted didn’t want to think about it.

The reassembled embassy to the Dragon King rode on down the good, broad road. Ted made himself think about it. If the Lords of the Dead had been doing their jobs, instead of gallivanting about nobody knew where, Edward might even now be restored to his rightful place. Ted would be able to drop back and be a piece of baggage. He didn’t like that thought as much as he would have expected.

Nor did he like at all the thought of, sometime today, or tomorrow, or when they arrived at the house of the Dragon King and began their work, asserting what authority he had. It had probably not occurred to Andrew yet, among all the shocks recently administered to him, that he had in sober fact sworn Edward Carroll an oath that must be honored. Ted did not relish reminding him of it; but Ted’s oath too would have to be kept: to deal lightly in the exercise of his privileges and straitly in the fulfillment of his obligations; to reward valor with honor, service with service, oath-breaking with vengeance.

All right, thought Ted. All right. But not just yet.

They reached the dwelling of the Dragon King just before sunset. It sat in the middle of a flat sheet of water. The water was a blinding gold on the right-hand side where the departing sun laid a path of light across, and dark green on the other. The castle was not the gray-white of High Castle’s alternating walls, but a smooth, pure, unnatural white. And it was enormous. It was probably, thought Ted, smaller than High Castle. But High Castle was a hodgepodge, and only its inmost structure had been seriously intended as a fortress. This castle had been built all of a piece. Where High Castle rambled, this one was perfectly symmetrical. It had an eight-sided curtain wall that bristled with towers, each matched by its fellow on the opposite side. There were four drum towers, each with its own small turret towers sprouting from it; two massive D-shaped towers; dusky blue slate roofs capping the outer towers and sunk behind the crenellations of the inner ones. Ted could not begin, from this distance and in the flat red light of sunset, to tell how big it was.