Dragonslayer: A Novel (2 page)

Again the grim head nodded: "Yes!"

"What solace, then?"

Hearing his voice, the birds mewed in response and moved restlessly on their perches. A breeze whispered through the darkening corridors.
Power.

Ulrich smiled and shook his head ruefully. Ah, if it were only that simple. If only the mere acquisition of power could compensate for the loss of that which made men human. For some, he knew, it did; but not for him. He required more. All his life he had required more. And now, as the visions began to form and dissolve in the viscous liquid of the stone bowl, he acknowledged again that it was not power that had seduced him all those years ago but
knowledge.
It was the incessant, insatiable itch of curiosity that had drawn him into the solitude of Cragganmore.

What solace? The bleak comfort that the world was not as most men perceived it to be, but that it was still, after the long and lonely decades of inquiry, an utter mystery.

Sighing, he leaned his cane against the table, straightened himself as far as possible, and prepared to conjure over the bowl. It was the eve of the vernal equinox. Twice a year, at the equinoxes, he probed forward and backward into the mysterious regions of the stone bowl farther than at any other time. Strange and unpredictable things happened in the liquid of the bowl. Time there was not what human beings imagined it to be, and often Ulrich would launch himself on what he believed to be a voyage into the future only to find that he had entered a time before he had been born— indeed, before the world itself was born. He always began, however, by requesting some vision of the present and the bowl responded by giving him a key, by showing him how—at least until the following equinox—past, present and future would be one.

So now he commanded, "The Present!" and made the adept and requisite gesture above the bowl. The bowl responded. It shuddered slightly and its liquid at first darkened, as if it were drawing in upon itself, and then quickly lightened, presenting a clear scene. The room in the vision was similar to the one in which Ulrich stood, but much smaller and without attendant birds. The oaken table in the vision was like the one before which he stood, and the stone bowl was identical to that in which Ulrich's vision was occurring. The boy leaning over that bowl, however, was having no success in conjuring a vision of his own. Under a disheveled shock of flaxen hair his brow was creased in exasperation, and as Ulrich watched, he attempted twice more, clumsily and futilely, the gesture that Ulrich the Master had performed so smoothly, each time afterwards peering into the unresponsive bowl. At last he brought his fist down hard on the table, and although the old man could not hear what he was saying, it was clear that his adolescent patience was exhausted.

"Oh Galen, Galen." The old man shook his head. "My dear boy. My poor muddled apprentice. That is
not
the way. I've told you a hundred times!"

"Ill wrought," said the white raven, who had fluttered to the old man's shoulder. "No luck. Never rich."

"Get away, Gringe." Absentmindedly, Ulrich shrugged his shoulder and the raven glided off, muttering. The other birds stirred and shifted on their perches. The falcon had turned toward the window, alert to high sounds passing—an owl's shriek, the shrill hunting cries of bats, and an unidentifiable sound that was either enormous and distant or infinitesimal, vibrating like a minute insect against the falcon's tympanum. The bird crouched immobile, listening. But the sound was gone, crowded out by the old man's voice.

"Rerum gestarum memoria
..." Ulrich was saying, and then, after a momentary hesitation, "The history of Galen."

"History, mystery," said the white raven, shuffling in the shadows beyond ancient stacks of books and manuscripts, "Galen may learn . . ."

"The lad may learn," Ulrich was saying, but the words merely echoed in the memory of the old man, and it was a younger self who was actually speaking them in the depths of the bowl, the Ulrich of fifteen years before, his scalp richly tonsured with white hair, his beard glistening, his stride vigorous. He was speaking to himself as much as to the fretting father and mother who accompanied him, and he was musing over the child Galen who had just created, by exuberantly shaking his fists, a bevy of monsters, strange and furry mammals that panted affectionately toward him, tongues lolling, some ambling on eight legs, some on six, some undulating serpentlike.

The mother shrank from them in genuine fear.

"Do you see, sir?" the father asked. "He does it whenever he wants to."

"I can see that," Ulrich said, nodding. "He has the Talent."

"But it's not a talent, it's a curse!" The mother wrung her hands, beginning to weep. "How can it be a talent to create monsters? He does it even at night. He
dreams
them!"

The father nodded blankly. "And then they just wander away. Out. Into the world. Who knows where? How do they survive?"

"Dreams," Ulrich said. "Other people dream that they are fed."

"Awful!" The mother shuddered and the father embraced her comfortingly. "Why has this happened to us? Why? The
other
children are all normal."

Ulrich regarded the parents silently and with profound pity. He had no answer to that question, "Why me?", although he himself had asked it countless times. He leaned forward and took the child's tousled head between his hands. "Such talent!" he said. "If only . . ." He did not finish the sentence, but fell into a reverie from which he was finally drawn only by the mother's broken sobbing and the father's plaintive question, "Can you . . . can you
cure
him?"

Ulrich made his decision then, a decision influenced by the fact that in all the long and lonely years of his sorcerer's quest he had never seen such a natural and exuberant talent as that which sent these strange creatures tumbling about his feet, and by the fact that he deeply feared the bending of such power to evil ends, and by the fact—most poignant—that he had no heir to whom he might pass on his knowledge of the ancient, dwindling Craft. "Cure him? No. That I cannot do. I can merely govern his power. But . . ."

"Oh thank you!" The mother seized Ulrich's hand.

The father's brow creased. "Will it . . . cost much, this cure?"

"Nothing. But later, when the child has become a boy, I will want him to come here, to Cragganmore, to live. I shall want to teach him. That is my condition."

Sighing, drying her eyes, the mother nodded.

"And you understand," Ulrich added, raising a warning finger, "that it will be dangerous. It is always perilous to meddle with such power. If I should miscalculate ... If I should cast too strong a spell. . ."

"Oh," the mother whispered, "you couldn't make a mistake. You're a sorcerer."

Ulrich smiled sadly.

"Done!" the father said. "Agreed."

Ulrich frowned and sighed heavily, remembering.

All visions vanished. The liquid in the bowl lay still, reflecting only the flames from the braziers and the sconces, while the old man dreamed back, his tongue working at the bearded corner of his mouth. He had indeed erred, suppressing that innocent power; the charm, a dangerous one, had twisted serpentlike upon him. It had flawed Galen's gift, leaving him bemused and easily distracted. Later, when Ulrich had begun the formal training, following the precepts of his master Belisarius, he found that the boy lacked interest and concentration. And in fifteen years—what failure! what shame!—Ulrich had not brought him even to the First Degree. After all this time the lad still could not levitate, could not transmute, could not foresee. He was unable, in other words, to perform the most rudimentary tasks. Very soon, Ulrich feared, the boy would be called upon, and then he would need help; yes, would need much help.

Stiffly, massaging his hip, the old man straightened up. He groaned and sighed. The birds stirred expectantly, watching as Ulrich shuffled toward a second table, smaller and raised on a dais at the center of the room. On it lay an object covered by a white silk cloth. It was cunningly embroidered, this cloth, colored with arcane symbols intertwined, and as the magician approached, it began to shimmer with a light which was not a reflection but which radiated intermittently from the embroidery and from the object beneath, brightening and fading with an unnatural rhythm.

When Ulrich lifted this cloth—rather, when he caused it to rise by a touch at its edges and an upward gesture—a marvelous and subdued luminescence briefly pervaded the room. The night birds blinked and stared at the object that had loosed such weird light. It appeared to be a stone, gold-set and hung on a golden chain. To the gyrfalcon's eye it was the size of a small mouse scurrying through November stubble.

"Ill wrought!" muttered Gringe, shrinking in the far shadows of the room. Ulrich took it, enclosed it in his cupped hand, momentarily containing the light, and then gathered up the golden chain so that the amulet nestled among its coils like a small egg. Then he released the strange glow again from his cupped palms, just as it began to fade.

Seen close, the object was almost colorless, its tints of blue, white, and rose so subtle that they vanished and reappeared, like shifting and magically layered seas. An infinitesimal spark lay captured in its center, and this was the source of the undulating moonlike radiance in the room.

Ulrich bore the amulet to the table where the bowl lay, its liquid trembling slightly at his approach. He carried it with utmost reverence; candlelight glinted palely in the swaying gold of the chain. Holding it as he addressed the bowl he whispered,
"Nunc, illo tempore!
And now, the old, old time!"

Again the liquid swam with visions. This time they took longer to form, and they churned the bowl with a darker and deeper turbulence than before. Tiny splashes reached for Ulrich's hands as if seeking to draw the amulet he held back into the darkening vortex of the bowl. Indeed, a vortex
had
formed, rotating clockwise, revealing the very bottom of the bowl which seemed at that instant, even as Ulrich watched amazed, to open farther into huge dark spaces speckled by random fires.

Ulrich found himself again gazing into the Past—not merely the few millennia of human history, but the time for which there were no records but enigmas buried in the earth, buried in the troubled myths and dreams of men. At first it appeared as an undulating mass of plasma, gray and black and purple relieved by streaks of pale white, then brown, then orange, then finally yellow, broadening and fluctuating until at last what appeared were the irregular horizontals of sky and earth and water. Through these moved the first life, amorphous and ponderous shapes, lifting monstrous snouts through the scum, dragging themselves down hopeless paths. Then, later, gaunt frames were lifted on updrafts of ceaseless storms, coupled clumsily, spilled young; they died and were swept away to become rock at last, flesh liquefied, bones pulverized by pressure.

Ulrich watched wearily. He had long known, had long understood. But what now occurred within the bowl was new to him, and despite the clamoring pains in his back and legs he eagerly leaned closer to watch.

He saw a man first, a man clad in skins, poised in a sorcerer's stance that Ulrich knew well; it was the stance taken when attempting a spell beyond one's reach—determined, yet wary and defensive. Even as the vision clarified, the spell passed from that other sorcerer, leaving him drained and weak, and at the same time the scene shifted so that Ulrich saw the effects apparently through the eyes of his fellow.

The charm had been directed at the earth and had entered it. At first it seemed that only a minor tremor would result; bushes shook and pebbles rattled down a rocky grade. But then the agitation grew, and very soon the earth, which was in places like a scaly hide, undulated rhythmically. Fires pocked its surface in cones and opening fissures, and tiny rivulets of fire snaked down the slopes. Streams of water vanished in sudden steam.

Even as the sorcerer reeled back from the heat, a fissure wider than any others spread magenta lips, and from between them a creature emerged. Two sets of talons came first, and then a leg, and then the membranous tips of incandescent wings. It was a winged lizard, cowled heavily with a ropy brow. The head was bejewelled with ruby encrustations, the snout surmounted by a gray-brown shield. Its thick tongue was pure scarlet, like a gross red pepper. Embryonic horns knobbed the skull. As far as Ulrich could see, it had two legs only. The end of its tail was clenched in the corner of its mouth. Shreds of a membrane hung upon its scales, and from it there spread the stench of unearthly amniotic fluid. Its eyes had opened and were apparently sealed open, utterly unblinking. The slit pupils were horizontal, and looking into them was like staring across the horizons of time itself.

Around and beneath, the earth gradually subsided, the trembling diminished. There was still the hissing of steam on hot rocks and a deep complaining as the last small rockslides occurred and the land composed itself. From the far distance came the fear-and-mourning cry of a strange bird. Incredibly, Ulrich heard these sounds distinctly, although what he was watching was but a vision.

Then the small dragon roared. It was a monstrous sound, like the scream of a gutted horse, and the sorcerer recoiled from it just as Ulrich recoiled from the vision in the bowl. Again came the roar, and again, more jubilant as the man was driven back, and the beast lifted scrawny arms in triumph. Fleeing, the man turned to face Ulrich, and Ulrich saw the frozen mask of horror and despair that was his face, and saw too, as clearly as if it were graven on the stone of the bowl the thought that was in his mind:
Have I done this? What have I done?