Dragonslayer: A Novel (3 page)

Ulrich was profoundly shaken by this vision. He gripped the table, and he found that he had trouble breathing, and that a strange, circling pain was teasing the center of his chest. But there was more to come. Before the images vanished forever, he saw the skin-clad sorcerer a final time. It seemed that some years had passed. The man was thin and haggard and perhaps very close to death. His energies had clearly been almost totally drained from him. He was kneeling and he was offering to a boy, whose hand was outstretched to take it, the very amulet Ulrich held, which shone with eerie luminescence. But the sorcerer was looking at neither the newly crafted stone nor the boy. He was pointing into the distance, and following his line of sight Ulrich could see approaching, very low above the horizon, the awesome silhouette of an airborne dragon.

"So," Ulrich said, nodding slowly. "So."

The liquid in the bowl clouded, calmed, cleared, lay inert.

Ulrich's back ached miserably. Groaning, he held the amulet in one hand and leaned on the table with the other. His knees had stiffened, and he performed a little shuffling dance to stimulate his circulation. He muttered wordlessly. He had never really learned to curse, although as a youngster among the fens he had tried hard, in Latin, and in Celtic, and in Anglo-Saxon too.

"Old rick," said Gringe, the white raven, scrabbling across the flag floor to safety under the table.

"Avaunt!" Ulrich shouted at him, lifting his gnarled oak cane. "Get Galen!"

"Galen may win."

"Get him!"

The raven made several obscene sounds in quick succession.

"Gringe." Ulrich raised the fist with the amulet. "I warn you!"

The raven complained more, but he was going. One eye on the amulet, he was already scurrying past the aloof falcon and fluttering from chairback to windowsill and away into the night. A moment later Ulrich heard him chattering below at Galen's window.

In another moment a soft knock came on the door, and Galen entered diffidently. "You wanted me, sir?"

"I sent Gringe for you," Ulrich said, still staring morosely into the bowl.

Galen nodded, rubbing his neck. "I was practicing the new spell you gave me, and when I didn't answer right away, he came over and pecked me."

"Um. The fact is, he's never forgiven you for turning him white."

"I know. I apologized, though. It was an
accident,"
Galen said, louder than necessary, frowning at the raven, who had reappeared on the window ledge.

Gringe blinked mournfully.

Ulrich gestured impatiently. "Nevertheless, you
were
impetuous. I told you not to try that charm; I warned you there was a coda to be attached to it, a danger..."

"Well . . ."

"But you went ahead anyway. You experimented. And Gringe got in the way."

"I . . ." Galen shrugged and offered a palms-up gesture. He had no excuses. He was a slim boy, eighteen now. He had an honest jaw and broad-spaced confident eyes, the green-blue of forest pools. His head, bowed deferentially now in Ulrich's presence, was covered with curly and disheveled flaxen hair. His shoulders were broad, his stance elastic. The open-handed gesture had revealed calluses and black, broken fingernails—the hands of a laborer.

"And so," Ulrich asked, still gazing at his bowl, "did you master the new charm?"

"No, sir."

"The gesture? Did you practice the conjuring gesture for the present
exactly
as I showed you?"

"Well, sir, I thought so. I
did
try."

"But, obviously, you didn't get it right."

"No, sir." Galen sighed. "As a matter of fact, Ulrich—" He brushed back his hair resolutely. "I'm not sure
I am a
sorcerer."

"Nonsense!"

Galen shrugged. "Oh I know that you believe that I am, and it's true that I get an occasional charm right; but usually they go wild and something crazy happens. A tree grows fur, or flowers start laughing, or somebody passing by, like Gringe, gets turned a different color." He shrugged again. "Last week, when we had that thunderstorm?"

Ulrich nodded.

"Well I went down to the tarn and I tried to calm the waters—a simple little charm like that! And what happened? Fish! Dozens of fish came crowding up and rubbed against my legs like cats!"

"You must try
harder,
Galen. You must discipline yourself! You must concentrate!"

The boy grimaced. "I know, sir. But I
do
concentrate. I
do.
And there
are
times when I feel almost that. . ."

Ulrich leaned forward, eyes narrowing, "What?"

". . . that I am going away from myself. Up, somehow. And I feel that if that could happen then I could do
anything.
Anything would be possible."

"And what happens then?"

"Well, I don't know exactly. Something brings me back. I see something. Something ordinary. Maybe a bird, or a glimpse of the river or somebody walking past—and then, well. . . it's lost."

Ulrich covered his face. "I know," he said. "I know."

"But the odd thing is that right away I feel better. I feel . . . human again, and being a failed sorcerer doesn't bother me so much. It doesn't seem to matter, except that I let
you
down."

Ulrich brushed this away, shrugged wearily, and did a little

shuffling circling walk. Then suddenly his old fist began to pump the air in agitation. "And yet, you had the
Talent,
Galen!"

Galen looked up quickly. "I did? When?"

Ulrich's hand faltered. "When you were small," he said, speaking more carefully, "I saw that you had . . . potential. That you might be capable of grand events. I... I would like to think that that was still true."

Galen frowned dubiously, and when he looked up his face was pale. "The fact is, sir, I'm frightened. I don't understand the power. I think ... I think I would like just to be human, and to let the power go."

Ulrich dropped his hand and drew himself to his full height. "Go? Go
where?"

"Back where it came from, I guess."

"But it comes from you, boy! From
you!
And if you eschew it, relinquish control of it, you will make monsters; you will loose monsters on the world! Do you not recall the first condition of the Regulae:
whosoever has accumulated the power through fortune, or zeal, or labor, let him beware that the safety of it is his forever . . ."

"Yes," said Galen. "I remember it."

"Then . . ." Ulrich was breathing deeply. His anger had flown, and in its place had come a stealthy reptile of dread deeper than any he had known. ". . . then you must never talk of abrogating your power.
Never.
You must control it, and contain it, and use it. You must. . ." His voice trailed off.

He had almost said that the young apprentice must use his power for the forces of Good, and once he could have said that and meant it. But now, although he believed in Good, he was much less certain how to attain it. He had known too many charms to go awry in the name of Good, to twist like snakes and cause pain, loss, and tears. Time, he knew, was the culprit; time and circumstance and chance, but mainly time. All his efforts had sought to transcend that ambivalent whirl of time and to enter a purer ether, where intention shone like crystal, and was never tarnished by action. Gravity he had conquered, but time he had not, and the evidence of his failure was there, in the aching back and legs, the bent shoulders, the seamed and blemished face, the uncertain hands.

He sighed deeply.

Power. What was it, after all, but a conjunction of coincidences which he had not, for all his study and magic, begun to fathom?

Rather, the more power he had attained, the more the conundrum had deepened, broadened, grown away from him in labyrinthine passageways; and, having no alternative, he had descended deeper into those passageways until it seemed that he had lost his grasp on any thread connecting him with the healing simplicities of sky and earth and water. . . .

"I know," the boy was saying, still musing. "I know there is
something
there, but it's not like
your
gift, Ulrich. I'm not a great sorcerer like you, or like Belisarius, or like any of the others."

"You might have been," Ulrich said softly. "You might still be."

"Well, maybe. I don't know. What's the point of having power, after all? Is there anyone to help? No, I think . . ." He paused.

"Go on."

"I think that if it weren't for you, Ulrich, I'd stop trying. I'd travel. Maybe I'd go south, or maybe west with the next longship to come up Raggenfirth to the tarn."

"Simpleminded stuff!" Ulrich snorted. "Diversions for bumpkins!" But for the fraction of a moment he had been thrilled by old longings of his own.

"Think of it, sir! I have heard that beyond the Western Isles, where the Christians are, there are mountains all of ice that fall into the sea and go voyaging themselves."

The gyrfalcon moved restlessly. It canted forward on its perch and lifted its wings, staring as if it shared the boy's free vision; but it did not take flight.

"I have heard those stories," Ulrich said. "But do not believe them."

"They are true! I have heard . . ."

"You
have heard? From whom? What do you know? No, Galen, you must stay with me for a little time yet. For only a little time. Then you will be free to make your own decisions; to use your power as you see fit."

"What do you mean—only a little time?"

"Come," said Ulrich, taking the boy by the arm and leading him to the conjuring table. "Look, and you will know all that I know now." He gestured with the hand that still contained the amulet.

The substance in the bowl again flickered with life, pale green, but the images that formed within it were less substantial than those which had appeared before, for they were the intimations of what was yet to be. Galen stared entranced, for the first thing that he saw was the very stone that Ulrich held. For only a moment it retained its present shape, and then slowly and inexorably it began to expand with terrible force, fragmenting in myriad pieces, each of which shattered, infinitely expanding, to ever-smaller particles, and finally to drift down in a cool and universal rain, which quenched all fire within the vision, leaving only the shifting greens, turquoise, and blues of a water world. Yet, at the heart of the vision, even as it lay at the heart of the amulet in Ulrich's hand, there remained a gleam of fire.

"What does it mean, Ulrich?" Galen whispered.

The old man shook his head. "Well, see for yourself . . ." He again indicated the shifting scene within the bowl.

Ulrich was there himself now, and it seemed that he was flying, for he was borne magically up and farther up. Above him, the colors were no longer ultramarine, but had shifted to vivid yellow and orange, and the space above him flickered with a steely luminescence. For an instant the surface of the water suddenly contracted, drawn into the vortex of itself, and then erupted violently in an uncontrollable turbulence of tiny clashing waves and waterspouts. In the same instant the old sorcerer cried out and shuddered so violently that Galen feared he might collapse. Then all changed—the cataclysm passed, and the image which faded in the bowl was that of a transparent Ulrich, smiling beatifically, soaring ever higher as the water calmed. . . .

"Out of time," the old man whispered.

"But what does it
mean,
Ulrich?"

"It means that I am going to die. And quite soon, although I do not know how or when.
That
knowledge is always hidden. But it means also that it will be a perfect departure. A time when all things will converge. And you, Galen, you will be part of it! You will know beyond all doubt what must be done." Ulrich had begun to rub the amulet delightedly, and he was about to say something further when he paused, listening."

"But, Ulrich, you
can't
die! That's terrible!"

"Nonsense. Of course I can. It's not terrible at all. It's rather interesting, the thought of being transmuted back into the elements again, beginning a thousand journeys. Besides, when you get old, my son, things are, well, different—you'll see—and death begins to look more like
you,
like a brother and an old friend." He shook himself. "In any case, I know it's coming soon. And I know, although I do not know how, that
you
will be involved in my death . . ."

"I don't
want
you to die!"

The old man was far away, oblivious to the boy's distress. "Shh." Ulrich placed a hand on the boy's shoulder. He was staring over Galen's head, far over the tears that the apprentice was wiping away with an embarrassed knuckle. "Listen!" Ulrich said.

Galen raised his head, turning it right and left like an alerted animal; but he heard nothing, nothing beyond the mutterings of Gringe, who had hopped onto the conjuring table and was peering into the bowl in a mimicry of Ulrich; nothing beyond the restless movements and the soft, reptilian inhalations of the other birds.