Dragonslayer: A Novel (9 page)

Much later—the legend did not say how long, it could have been a year or ten years after the first coming of Vermithrax to Swanscombe—the dragon mated. At sunrise when the sun was a mere bead on the eastern horizon, another dragon swept down the Swanscombe valley, and Vermithrax rose exultantly to meet it. Male-female, female-male, in that amorphous condition in which polarities are sensed merely, existing unformed for future convolutions of the species, they yearned toward each other in the pale clear air of morning, circling slowly, uttering high-pitched cries. When they met at last, cowled by the shifting curtains of the sun, not even the falcons which had accompanied them to that pitch, like lilting bridesmaids, were witnesses to the union, and the villagers in the valley far below saw nothing but the swirling sun itself. Certain it is that they mated; and it is probable that the decades of dragon gestation began for both.

Many years later, at the very hour when the Swanscombe pilgrims approached Ulrich's Cragganmore, Vermithrax lay deep within its earth beside the lake where weird flames played across the surface. For many hours the dragon had not moved. Only its hide moved, twitching and flickering over its great length. But then, imperceptibly at first, its lower regions began convulsive undulations that grew gradually quicker and sterner. Giving birth, Vermithrax saw amidst the visions of the burning lake the image of a bent old man gripping a boy by the shoulder. In the other hand, the old man held an object that the dragon could not discern before the vision faded into a conflagration which, to the dragon, was indistinguishable at that moment from its own agony. Into the cradling safety of its coils it produced three glistening and translucent eggs, cowled in a single membrane.

Sunlight as palpable
as water flooded Ulrich's conjuring room. Galen entered, crossed to the window, and for a long time stood numbly there, letting the sun warm him, gazing out across the countryside. In the far distance to his right, across the river and beyond the tangled wood, rose a plume of dust that he knew was Tyrian's patrol making its way toward the village. Closer, on the road to the west, he caught glimpses of the doleful band of Ur-landers as they retreated, appearing and disappearing among the trees.

Countless times during his childhood he had stood at this very spot in front of Ulrich's window and looked out over the green land that had seemed always full of purity and innocence. The meanders, the gently curving slopes, the canopies of great oaks touching the horizon, the occasional tended field and cluster of cottages with their lazy smoke—always before the serenity of these things had filled him with ingenuous peace. But now, although nothing in the landscape had changed, it was not the same for Galen, for he knew that in it lurked agents of madness, instruments of Evil.

His gaze was drawn away down to the moat by a rumbling on the drawbridge. Hodge emerged, wiping his eyes on his sleeve at one moment and chortling with some irrational merriment the next, leading a mule hitched to a tumbril cart on which, covered with the purple silken cloak he had used for grand occasions, lay Ulrich's body. Galen watched as the old retainer led the mule down the path to the little lake of Cragganmore, maneuvered the tumbril so that the corpse could be lowered gently into a waiting boat, and rowed out to the islet where, according to Ulrich's wishes, a funeral pyre had stood waiting these many years.

Behind him, the birds mewed softly—the pigeons, the gyrfalcon, the heron—restless on their perches. One by one Galen released them, letting fall the tiny silver leg bands crafted years before by small folk gone forever. One by one they responded, lifting their legs experimentally and, finding themselves free, spreading their wings and rising silently into the room and through the window. Every day at this time, Ulrich had released them, and so they had soared through the noon and the afternoon to return at dusk, each in accordance with its own agreement with the magus. This time, however, each bird in its turn glided toward the lake of Craggan-more and circled, crying and spiraling ever higher above the corpse of Ulrich. The falcon went last; with one sweep of its great wings it flew through the window and glided across the tarn, and Galen could hear its plaintive, falling cry of farewell as the bird rode higher and higher, became a mere speck at the edge of the cloud, and vanished.

Sighing, Galen turned back into the room. There was nothing to hold him now. Into his knapsack, which he had brought to the conjuring room already packed with his few belongings, he gathered those potions whose use he knew—dried herbs for the curing of simple ailments; unguents and potions for the soothing of skin disorders, vialled substances whose combining produced explosive results—all of these he gathered with increasing misgivings, for he seemed to be weighing himself down. He could see himself becoming one of the odd, ragged old men who roamed the byways selling charms, curatives, and, for Christians, pieces of the True Cross, and he had almost decided to leave all charms and potions to rot in the ruins of Cragganmore, when he opened a drawer in the conjuring table itself, directly beneath the now-still liquid in the stone bowl.

There lay the amulet.

In the shock of Ulrich's death he had forgotten the stone, but now it lay before him, its center glowing like a small moon at the bottom of a sea. Its gold chain coiled around it, and it was this chain that, after a moment's reflection, Galen took. Gold! Now
there
was a good companion for a journey and the means by which many a man had preserved himself; Galen knew
that
much of the world. But what could he want with the stone itself? Whatever weird power it contained was not his to possess. Besides, it was extremely heavy for its size. He knew that from the one time he had held it, watching the strange vision in the bowl. No, he had enough. He shut the drawer and was turning to leave when he was halted by a high clear sound so like the falcon's cry that he thought at first the bird had returned. But the sound came from
inside
the room, not outside, and although it seemed to be in every corner at once, its source seemed to be the alcove where Ulrich had kept his clothes. Puzzled, Galen investigated. There, incredibly suspended amid the robes, hung the amulet! He hurried back to the conjuring table and pulled open the drawer. The stone was gone! Nor was it, he saw, any longer in the wardrobe alcove. Yet the high-pitched ringing continued, centered now on another table at one side of the room, a table covered with various vials and earthenware containers. Unerringly, Galen selected one of these and picked it up. The jug hummed and pulsed between his palms, and it was clear, to Galen's astonishment, that the amulet was
inside,
although the neck of the container was much smaller than the stone itself.

Gently he replaced the jug on the table. "All right," he said. "All right. I understand." The pot shattered. The amulet lay glowing dimly amid the earthen shards. He reached out and took it; at the touch of his fingers it moved of its own volition in his palm, and the singing ceased. It felt cool and wonderful. Holding it, Galen suddenly knew what he must do, and he knew how Ulrich had planned to help him, despite his incompetence—with the amulet. He would journey to Urland! And he would meet Vermithrax in combat there, and defeat the dragon.

Anticipating that victory, he extended his clenched fist toward the conjuring bowl. "I am Dragonslayer!"

At that the liquid convulsed. It boiled. In seconds it had generated a luminescent cloud of steam that swiftly formed into the image of a massive dragon, gouting pale fire. Galen's ears filled with its roar, and his nostrils with dragon-stench. Terrified, he shrank back against the wall of the conjuring room, aware that the amulet had begun to pulse against his palm. For an instant he feared that he might suffocate or be vaporized by the dragon's hot breath. But almost as swiftly as it had formed, the vision vanished, and Galen was left alone with the suddenly emptied bowl and with his racing heart, was left alone with the amulet, which had grown calm once more.

He swallowed hard. "Well," he said, "at least I'll
try."

Still shaking, he discarded the gold chain, strung the amulet on a leather thong, and hung it around his neck. Then, with a last look around at the conjuring room where he had spent so many hours of his youth under Ulrich's patient tutelage, he left. He walked down the stone stairs, through the banquet hall where the old conjurer had died so foolishly, and out into the sun of the courtyard. He did not look back. He crossed the drawbridge and went down to the shore of the lake where Hodge was squatting, staring pensively at Ulrich's unlit funeral pyre on the little island. "Good, ye be here at last," the old man said, gesturing toward the island. "Start the fire."

"But I. . . I don't know if I can do it."

Hodge stared up at him, gaping incredulously. "Not
do
it! But of course you can do it! You're a conjurer!" And his faith seemed so complete and so simple that Galen could not face the prospect of disappointing him.

"Well," he said, "all right." He summoned his concentration and gestured; it was, after all, like the charm that he had used to light the candles that very morning after the Urlander delegation had arrived.
"Flammam habeamus,"
he said in a very small voice. Deep inside he felt the revolution that told him the charm was correct, had succeeded. They saw a small flame—so small that it seemed at first a mere reflection of sunlight on the water—flicker amidst the tinder in the center of the pyre. Slowly it spread until Ulrich's body was encircled in a ring of fire.

Galen and old Hodge sat on the bank together and watched.

The pyre burned the rest of the day. It burned with unearthly hues—pinks, and crimsons, and multicolored blues—at a sedate pace, as if Ulrich himself were controlling it, as if it fed on mixtures of gases from the air and the earth that no other fire had savored. The two watched silently, as the day waned and the sky grew darker, and the colors in the tarn deepened and grew ever richer, until it seemed that the fire on the islet and the fire in the lake were one.

"Saved my life, he did," Hodge said. He laughed his wheezy, coughing laugh, and his laughter seemed so incongruous to Galen that again he wondered whether old Hodge were entirely sane, or whether the tides of time and circumstance had gently eroded his reason. Could it be that in some unfathomable way the distinction between life and death had so blurred for him that pretending to maintain it struck him as profoundly absurd? "Before yer was born," he went on. "Long before." He chewed contemplatively on a grass stalk. The funeral pyre glowed but Ulrich's body did not seem to be contorted or disfigured by the advancing flames; it merely grew increasingly transparent. "Young fella like yerself I was. Come along from Cantware, thinking I knew my way, could get along on my own, didn't need no help from man nor beast.

Out to see the world. Come along the road at dusk, just this time of day. Down the road there halfway to the village, four big fellas come up to me, lit into me. Laughin', they was. Cudgels. Broke both legs, both arms, did somethin' funny in my head." He laughed again. "Just sport it was to them, for I had nothin' to rob. They woulda killed me, yer know, yes, sir, they woulda. Kill me as easy as squash a bug and think no more of it than that. But Ulrich come along. Come by accident. Drove 'em off." Hodge chortled with delight, rubbing his arms and legs, remembering Ulrich's triumph and the pain through which he had witnessed it. "Drove 'em off with fireballs—Bam! Bam!—snappin' at their heels like big dogs all the way down the road and outa sight. Then he brung me here, to Cragganmore,
floated
me back somehow, for I felt no more pain than that, and nursed me to health with his own hands, for he had that skill, although he were a lad scarcely older than myself. When I was well he says to me, 'Hodge, yer can go on yer journey, now, and I'll give yer a little somethin' to protect yerself agin the bullies of which the woods is full.' But I says to him, 'Ulrich, I owe yer my life, and it will be spent in yer service from this time forth.'" The old man gazed into the reflections of the flames on the water. Dusk was falling. Ulrich's body had vanished. "And so it has been, lad," he said. "And so it will be."

"But, Hodge, how can you serve a dead man?"

He laughed. "By keepin' alive his memory. By doin' the good he would have done, along the way. And then there are other ways, there are other ways." Hodge nodded, smiling mysteriously.

After dusk the last of the flames died away, and the embers winked out, cooled, fell to ash. They rose and stretched. Galen shouldered his knapsack and turned toward the road before he realized that Hodge was not with him but was hobbling in the opposite direction down the slope to the water's edge, pushing the little rowboat out into the darkening lake. "One more little errand," he called. "Shan't be long." The boat vanished in the darkness, and in a moment Galen heard it grounding on the shore of the islet. "Ashes!" came Hodge's distant mumbling voice, clear over the water. "Maybe a bone or two to make sure." He said something further in Latin, laughing more.