Dragonslayer: A Novel (10 page)

"Come on, Hodge!" Galen called. "There are things to do!" He had absentmindedly been fingering the amulet, and now he beckoned unthinkingly with the hand in which it was clenched. Instantly the boat skidded up at his feet, bearing a startled Hodge sprawled in its bottom.

"Don't
do
that!"

"Sorry, sorry . . . I didn't. . ."

"Think, lad! A sorcerer ye may be, but all the more reason to
take care!
Ye can't do just what ye want, ye know. Got to think of other people." Awkwardly, the old man regained his feet and clambered out of the boat, folding a bulging leather packet as he did so. "Ulrich always said, he always said, 'Hodge, if yer a sorcerer, ye cannot cause hurt to them that does not deserve it.' That's me, Master Galen, and my backside! It does not need the hurt!" Grumbling still, he stuffed the leather packet in his knapsack. "Only one thing left to do."

"Wh. . . What's that, Hodge?"

"Why, destroy Cragganmore, lad! D'ye want to leave it to become a place of thieves and vandals, when it has harbored such as Ulrich?"

"Well, no."

"Then end it, lad. Cast a charm upon it." He waited confidently.

Hesitantly, Galen extended the amulet, waited until the moment felt correct, and gave the order: "Cragganmore!
Silva te celet!"
He felt the amulet twist in his palm, and in the last of the light he could see that his command was being obeyed. Vines swarmed up the walls, covering the battlements with leafy tendrils. Some grew thick trunks, and very quickly, for centuries were compressed into those moments. The walls crumbled, were overgrown, became a tranquil, wooded mound of earth. The Cragganmore that Hodge and Galen knew had vanished utterly.

"Good," Hodge grunted, shouldering his knapsack. "Come on now, lad. It's a long journey, where we're goin'."

They walked for several minutes through the silent darkness.

"Hodge?"

"Yes."

"I'm sorry. When I told you to hurry up, when you were in the boat, I really wasn't thinking," Galen stared down at the luminescence of the stone in his palm. "It won't happen again."

"Everybody makes mistakes," Hodge muttered. "Yer young."

Again there was silence, except for their footfalls in the darkness.

"Hodge?" "Um."

"You know, I really miss Gringe. I wish he were going with us."

Suddenly a white form swooped low above their heads from behind, and a singularly abrasive voice said, "Hodgepodge!"

"There yer are
again!"
Hodge yanked off his cap and swatted his knee with it. "I wish yer'd
think
man! Now look what we're stuck with! Damn saucy bird!"

"Sorry, sorry," said Galen. But actually he was smiling in the darkness—smiling both at the astonishing glowing object in his hand and at the white spot that was Gringe hovering just ahead, showing them the path through the tunnel of trees.

It was after midnight when they came upon the camp. They saw the fire from a distance, glowing through the trees beside a little brook, and they halted, consulting in whispers, fearing that the campsite might be that of robbers. It was Gringe who scouted and came back saying "Ur . . . Ur . . ." So they proceeded, and soon saw that although some of the Urlanders were asleep in their sheepskin robes—Galen recognized the bulky figures of Xenopho-bius and Harald Wartooth—most were still up despite the lateness of the hour, and arguing.

". . . for a funeral!" Greil exclaimed. "All this way, while at home there are seeds unplanted and calves to be born! All because
you
said the chances would be good."

"And they
were
good," Valerian replied. In the firelight, Galen thought he looked extremely tired and frail.

Greil spat. "A major necromancer! Ha! A chafl-witted dottard who could protect not even himself!"

"Sit, Greil," Malkin said wearily. "We've been over it enough. Leave him alone. We agreed when we set out. Now that nothing can be done, let's at least have peace."

Greil scuffed the turf with his heel. "I know. But every time I lie down, every time I look up at the heavens and see the tail of the Great Bear pointing east . . ." He suddenly put a hand to his face.

"It's the equinox for all of us, Greil," Mavour said.

"You
haven't all lost a daughter."

"That's true."

"Still, we can be quiet and hope that the gods will help who-ever's daughter perished tonight."

Galen and Hodge emerged from the forest and into the ring of firelight, the humus cushioning their steps. "Hello."

The Urlanders' camp suddenly broke into action at the strange voice. Men rolled away from the fire and into the bushes, fumbling for their weapons; in a moment someone stood behind Galen, ready to strike. Valerian, however, had seemed to recognize his voice and had stood up slowly, smiling, a hand shielding his eyes against the fire.

"Who are you?" Greil demanded. "What d'you mean, creeping up on us?"

"Oh for heaven's sake, Greil, can't you see who it is?"

"Ha! Now I can. What do you want, youngster?"

"I want to help you."

"How can you help us?"

"I can ... I can slay Vermithrax." For a moment the words hung, as if they had been written in fire against the blackness. No one was more surprised than Galen himself, for although they had issued from his mouth, in his voice, he had not really intended to say them, had not intended to commit himself. But neither had he expected the incredulous and bitter laughter of the Urlanders.

"You can, can you?"
Greil spoke with such vehemence that a strand of spittle fell across his chin. "What makes you
think
you can?"

"Because I hold the key to Ulrich's Craft. I am his heir. I have inherited his . . . power."

Again the bitter laughter. "And what good is that? What good was that to the old man himself?"

"It's different! I have something he did not have when he died! I have the . . ." He had wanted to say amulet but could not; nor could he open the hand that contained the stone. He felt a sudden surge of terror, a prisoner within a body which suddenly was no longer his. It was like the dread a small animal must feel when the net falls. But then, as quickly as it had come, the feeling passed.

When Greil said, raising his dagger, "In that case, you won't mind submitting to the same little test," he felt almost serene, and had actually moved half a step toward the man, only distantly aware of Valerian's voice commanding: "There'll be no more of that, Greil! No more tests!"

"Will there not? And
why
not, you young snotnose? Do you want to let him come bumbling into Urland? Enrage Vermithrax? Get us all killed? I say no! I say Tyrian has shown us the way! We have the tests here and now, and not when
our
lives depend on them." Greil glanced around the circle, and got grim nods of agreement.

"And I say," Valerian spoke quietly, "that there'll be no killing here, nor any attempt to kill."

Greil was beyond listening. His face contorted, he gripped the dagger with both hands and lunged at Galen. The blade never reached its destination. Moving with remarkable speed and agility, Valerian chopped a stick of firewood across Greil's wrist and, as the dagger went spinning and the big man doubled in agony, delivered a kick to his stomach that sent him collapsing backwards.

"Now come to your senses, all of you!" Valerian still had the club, although after a moment he tossed it into the fire. "What kind of way is this to treat friends who want to share our troubles and to help if possible. Offer food!"

Grudgingly at first, embarrassed, the Urlanders drew Hodge and Galen close to their fire and scraped out the last of the evening's gruel. Soon even Greil came over to them and, rubbing his wrist, apologized. "It's a kind of madness," he said. "A kind of sickness. We all have it in Urland. You'll see. It comes because there's no way of fighting back."

Gradually the camp settled. The talk grew desultory, and one by one, men drifted back to their sleeping-robes, leaving only a yawning Henery on watch a little distance from the fire. Surreptitiously Galen tucked the amulet inside his shirt, drew his sheepskin over himself, and fell asleep watching the last of the embers. He had never in his life been so tired, or so full of anticipation.

Hodge fell asleep chuckling, one hand on the leather packet into which he had gathered the ashes from the island crematorium.

Valerian was the last to go to bed and the last to sleep. Frightening images, images of spreading wings, rose out of the fire. Nor did they cease when Valerian's eyes closed and sleep approached; indeed, they grew more intense and more terrifying. As bad as the awful waking dreams themselves was the knowledge that for some unfortunate woman of Urland, these images had been, that very afternoon, no mere nightmare but a terrible, final horror. Despite all generous intentions, Valerian uttered a small prayer to Weird, god of fate and labyrinthine circumstance, that the victim may have come from one of the northern villages of Urland, from Turnratchit, or Verymere, or Nudd, and that she was not from Swanscombe, not someone that Valerian knew and loved. And yet, even as Valerian slipped into a troubled sleep, it was the villagers of Swanscombe, sickened by shame and loss, who sat beside their hearths that night.

CHAPTER FIVE

'The Chosen

When her mother
asked her, crying piteously, whether she had had a happy life, Melissa Plowman could not reply. She supposed that she had been happy. Like all other girls in Swanscombe village, she had been allowed to play much more than she had been made to work, and she recalled a childhood wrapped in love and laughter. Even the labor of harvesting, or thatching, or milking, or tending to the bees, or gathering the eggs, or any of the various tasks around the homestead, even those were not onerous, for she had learned early the chants and songs and games and gossiping that helped work time to pass quickly. So she supposed, remembering all the fun, that she had been happy.

But she knew from travelers—who never tarried long in Urland —and from some of the hushed stories told by the fire, that children lived differently elsewhere. In not every village were the equinoxes greeted with such dread and passed with such mourning. In not every village did girls weep on their thirteenth birthday, or did fathers lie and pathetically attempt to forge and alter documents that clearly showed their daughters had come of age, or to bribe the dark-clad officials who kept the roles. In not every village were there twice as many boys as girls. And in not every village was one's whole childhood overshadowed by the passing of gigantic wings, wings whose approach brought such a hush of fear to the village that no one screamed, no one even breathed, and work and play ceased altogether. Although the presence in the hillside cave in the Blight was one that she had grown up with, accepted as a fact of life as inexorable as nightfall or moonrise, still she knew that her life could have been lived without it, had she been born elsewhere, and she knew she would have been happier then.

So, even while attempting to comfort her mother by saying that, yes, she had had a wonderful seventeen years, she understood completely that such things all were relative.

The question was more complex even than that; for, looking at the matter very calmly as she now did, alone in the sleeping loft, surprising even herself with her lack of fear, she recognized that there were pleasures, and that happiness contained the grains of sorrow which in turn—the world evolving ironically as it did—ultimately overwhelmed that which had engendered them.

The Lottery, for example.

She had hated and dreaded the Lottery for over four years-eight lotteries—with a fear that she shared with all the other women, a fear that was a stolid part of Urland womanhood, a fear that would begin to creep over her like a palpable, cold creature as the fated days drew near, until at last she felt as if her legs would not move, and she had to be half carried, walking stick-legged, to the Gathering where the lots were cast. And yet, she was not perverse but she had long since admitted to herself that within the terror was a delight, a delight that grew and grew during the swooning moments of the draw until, when the name on the lot was read, it burst into joy that found expression in a cry of the purest relief and ecstasy. Almost immediately, with thought and sympathy, the cry would be mingled with sorrow for the other creature, the friend, who would now die and die most horribly for the land. But the fact that the first reaction in the midst of that horror had been joy caused Melissa, an intelligent child, to think. The other girls must have felt very much the same—a fact that she quickly confirmed with friends when they talked as girls do, late into the night. She confirmed also that that surge of joy was the single most powerful emotion which any of her friends had ever felt; and, since that was the case, she wondered to herself—never asking, for the thought really was unspeakable: How much of the dragon-centered activity
was designed to provide that surge?
Could it be that the dragon, finally, was only a device? Could it be that on some profound level the residents of Urland, despite their protestations to the contrary, did not
really
wish to rid themselves of Vermithrax?