Unexpected Magic (30 page)

“Don't I
just
!” I said. “He's been coming here and looking through our windows and giggling ever since I can remember! He lives on the Worm Reserve in a shack. Mother says he's a bit wrong in the head, but no one's locked him up because he's so good at managing dragons.”

There! I thought. That'll show them you can't trust a word Orm says! But they just nodded. Terens murmured to Alectis, “Sveridge worm,
draco draco
, was adopted as the symbol of the Dragonate—”

“We
have
all heard of dragons,” Palino said to him nastily.

Lewin cut in again. I suppose it was his job as presiding Updriten. “Siglin. Orm, in his deposition, refers to an incident in the Worm Reserve last Friday. We want you to tell us what happened then, if anything.”

Grim's teeth! I thought. I'd hoped they'd just ask me questions. You can nearly always get around questions without lying. And I'd no idea what Orm had said. “I don't usually go to the Dragon Reserve,” I said, “because of being Mother's heir. When I was born, the Fortune Teller said the dragons would take me.” I saw Renick and Palino exchange looks of contempt at our primitive customs. But Mother had in a good Teller, and I believe it enough to keep away from the Reserve.

“So why did you go last Friday?” said Lewin.

“Neal dared me to,” I said. I couldn't say anything else with a lie detector in my hands. Neal gets on with Orm, and he goes to the Reserve a lot. Up to Friday, he thought I was being silly refusing to go. But the real trouble was that Neal had been there all along, riding Barra beside me on Nellie, and now Lewin had made me mention Neal, I couldn't think how to pretend he hadn't been there. “I rode up behind Wormhill,” I said, “and then over the Saddle until we could see the sea. That means you're in the Reserve.”

“Isn't the Reserve fenced off at all?” Renick asked disapprovingly.

“No,” I said. “Worms—dragons—can fly, so what's the point? They stay in because the shepherds bombard them if they don't, and we all give them so many sheep every month.” And Orm makes them stay in, bad cess to him! “Anyway,” I said, “I was riding down a kyle—that's what we call those narrow stony valleys—when my horse reared and threw me. Next thing I knew—”

“Question,” said Palino. “Where was your brother at this point?”

He
would
spot that! I thought. “Some way behind,” I said. Six feet, in fact. Barra is used to dragons and just stood stock still. “This dragon shuffled head down with its great snout across the kyle,” I said. “I sat on the ground with its great amused eye staring at me and listened to Nellie clattering away up the kyle. It was a youngish one, sort of brown-green, which is why I hadn't seen it. They can keep awfully still when they want to. And I said a rude word to it.

“‘That's no way to speak to a dragon!' Orm said. He was sitting on a rock on the other side of the kyle, quite close, laughing at me.” I wondered whether to fill the gap in the story where Neal was by telling them that Orm always used to be my idea of Jack Frost when I was little. He used to call at Uplands for milk then, to feed dragon fledglings on, but he was so rude to Mother that he goes to Inga's place now. Orm is long and skinny and brown, with a great white bush of hair and beard, and he smells rather. But they must have seen and smelled him in Holmstad, so I said, “I was scared, because the dragon was so near I could feel the heat off it. And then Orm said, ‘You have to speak politely to this dragon. He's my particular friend. You give me a nice kiss, and he'll let you go.'”

I think Lewin murmured something like, “Ah, I thought it might be that!” but it may just have been in his mind. I don't know because I was in real trouble then, trying to pick my way through without mentioning Neal. The little box got so wet it nearly slipped out of my hand. I said, “Every time I tried to get up, Orm beckoned, and the dragon pushed me down with its snout, with a gamesome look in its eye. And Orm cackled with laughter. They were both really having fun.” This was true, but the dragon also pushed between me and Neal and mantled its wings when Neal tried to help. And Neal said some pretty awful things to Orm. Orm giggled and insulted Neal back. He called Neal a booby who couldn't stand up for himself against women. “Then,” I said, “then Orm said I was the image of Mother at the same age—which isn't true: I'm bigger all over—and he said, ‘Come on, kiss and be friends!' Then he skipped down from his rock and took hold of my arm—”

I had to stop and swallow there. The really awful thing was that, as soon as Orm had hold of me, I got a strong picture from his mind: Orm kissing a pretty lady smaller than me, with another dragon, an older, blacker one, looking on from the background. And I recognized the lady as Mother, and I was absolutely disgusted.

“So I hit Orm and got up and ran away,” I said. “And Orm shouted at me all the time I was running up the kyle and catching Nellie, but I took no notice.”

“Question,” said Renick. “What action did the dragon take?”

“They—they always chase you if you run, I'd heard,” Alectis said shyly.

“And this one appears to have been trained to Orm's command,” Palino said.

“It didn't chase me,” I said. “It stayed with Orm.” The reason was that neither of them could move. I still don't know what I did—I had a picture of myself leaning back inside my own head and swinging mighty blows, the way you do with a pickaxe—and Neal says the dragon went over like a cartload of potatoes and Orm fell flat on his back. But Orm could speak and he screamed after us that I'd killed the worm and I'd pay for it. But I was screaming too, at Neal, to keep away from me because I was heg. That was the thing that horrified me most. Before that I'd tried not to think I was. After all, for all I knew, everyone can read minds and get a book from the bookcase without getting up from their chair. And Neal told me to pull myself together and think what we were going to tell Mother. We decided to say that we'd met a dragon in the Reserve and I'd killed it and found out I was heg. I made Neal promise not to mention Orm. I couldn't bear even to think of Orm. And Mother was wonderfully understanding, and I really didn't realize that I'd put her in danger as well as Neal.

Lewin looked down at the recorder. “Dragons are a preserved species,” he said. “Orm claims that you caused grievous bodily harm to a dragon in his care. What have you to say to that?”

“How could I?” I said. Oh I was scared. “It was nearly as big as this house.”

Renick was on to that at once. “Query,” he said. “Prevarication?”

“Obviously,” said Palino, clicking away at his block.

“We haven't looked at that dragon yet,” Terens said.

“We'll do that on our way back,” Lewin said, sighing rather. “Siglin, I regret to say there is enough mismatch between your account and Orm's, and enough odd activity on that brain-measure you hold in your hand, to warrant my taking you to Holmstad Command Center for further examination. Be good enough to go with Terens and Alectis to the van and wait there while we complete our inquiries here.”

I stood up. Everything seemed to drain out of me. I could lam them like I slammed that dragon, I thought. But Holmstad would only send a troop out to see why they hadn't come back. And I put my oldest dress on for nothing! I thought as I walked down the hallway with Terens and Alectis. The doors were all closed. Everyone had guessed. The van smelled of clean plastic and it was very warm and light because the roof was one big window. I sat between Terens and Alectis on the backseat. They pulled straps around us all—safety straps, but they made me feel a true prisoner.

After a while, Terens said, “You could sue Orm if the evidence doesn't hold up, you know.” I think he was trying to be kind, but I couldn't answer.

After another while, Alectis said, “With respect, Driten, I think suspects should be told the truth about the so-called lie detector.”

“Alectis, I didn't hear you say that,” Terens said. He pretended to look out of the window, but he must have known I knew he had deliberately thought
lie detector
at me as he passed me the thing. They're told to. Dragonate think of everything. I sat and thought I'd never hated anything so much as I hated our kind, self-sacrificing Dragonate, and I tried to take a last look at the stony yard, tipped sideways on the hill, with our square stone house at the top of it. But it wouldn't register somehow.

Then the front door opened and the other three came out, bringing Neal with them. Behind them, the hall was full of our people, with Mother in front, just staring. I just stared too, while Palino opened the van door and shoved Neal into the seat beside me. “Your brother has admitted being present at the incident,” he said as he strapped himself in beside Neal. I could tell he was pleased.

By this time, Lewin and Renick had strapped themselves into the front seat. Lewin drove away without a word. Neal looked back at the house. I couldn't. “Neal—?” I whispered.

“Just like you said,” Neal said, loudly and defiantly. “Behaving as if they own the Ten Worlds. I wouldn't join now if they begged me to!” Why did I have to go and say that to him? “Why did
you
join?” Neal said rudely to Alectis.

“Six brothers,” Alectis said, staring ahead.

The other four all started talking at once. Lewin asked Renick the quickest way to the Reserve by road and Renick said it was down through Wormstow. “I hope the dragons eat you!” Neal said. This was while Palino was leaning across us to say to Terens, “Where's our next inspection after this hole?” And Terens said, “We go straight on to Arkloren on Nine. Alectis will get to see some other parts of the Manifold shortly.” Behaving as if we didn't exist. Neal shrugged and shut up.

The Dragonate van was much smoother and faster than a farm van. We barely bounced over the stony track that loops down to Hillfoot, and it seemed no time before we were speeding down the better road, with the rounded yellowish Upland Hills peeling past on either side. I love my hills, covered with yellow ling that only grows here on Sveridge, and the soft light of the sun through our white and gray clouds. Renick, still making conversation, said he was surprised to find the hills so old and worn down. “I thought Eight was a close parallel with Seven!” he said.

Lewin answered in a boring voice, “I wouldn't know. I haven't seen Seven since I was a Cadet.”

“Oh, the mountains are much higher and greener there,” Renick said. “I was posted in Camberia for years. Lovely spot.”

Lewin just grunted. Quite a wave of homesickness filled the van. I could feel Renick thinking of Seven and Alectis not wanting to go to Nine. Terens was remembering boating on Romaine when he was Neal's age. Lewin was thinking of Seven, in spite of the grunt. We were coming over Jiot Fell already then, with the Giant Stones standing on top of the world against the sky. A few more turns in the road would bring us out above Wormstow where Neal and I went—used to go—to school. What about
me
? I was thinking. I'm homesick for life. And Neal. Poor Mother.

Then the air suddenly filled with noise, like the most gigantic sheet being torn.

Lewin said, “What the—?” and we all stared upward. A great silvery shape screamed overhead. And another of a fatter shape, more blue than silver, screamed over after it, both of them only just inside the clouds. Alectis put up an astonished pointing arm. “Thraller! The one behind's a Slaver!”

“What's it doing
here
?” said Terens. “Someone must have slipped up.”

“Ours was a stratoship!” said Palino. “What's going on?”

A huge ball of fire rolled into being on the horizon, above the Giant Stones. I felt Lewin slam on the brakes. “We got him!” one of them cried out.

“The Slaver got ours,” Lewin said. The brakes were still yelling like a she-worm when the blast hit.

I lose the next bit. I start remembering again a few seconds later, sitting up straight with a bruised lip, finding the van round sideways a long way on down the road. In front of me, Renick's straps had broken. He was lying kind of folded against the windscreen. I saw Lewin pull himself upright and pull at Renick. And stop pulling quickly. My ears had gone deaf, because I could only hear Lewin as if he was very far off, “—hurt in the back?”

Palino looked along the four of us and shouted, “Fine! Is Renick—?”

“Dead,” Lewin shouted back. “Neck broken.” He was jiggling furiously at buttons in the controls. My ears started to work again and I heard him say, “Holmstad's not answering. Nor's Ranefell. I'm going back to Holmstad. Fast.”

We set off again with a roar. The van seemed to have lost its silencer and it rattled all over, but it went. And
how
it went. We must have done nearly a hundred down Jiot, squealing on the bends. In barely minutes, we could see Wormstow spread out below, old gray houses and new white ones, and all those imported trees that make the town so pretty. The clouds over the houses seemed to darken and go dense.

“Uh-oh!” said Terens.

The van jolted to another yelling stop. It was not the clouds. Something big and dark was coming down through the clouds, slowly descending over Wormstow. Something enormous. “What
is
that?” Neal and Alectis said together.