The Whim of the Dragon

  “Now,” said Matthew, leaning forward. “What in truth, Fence, do thou and Randolph make, commingled?”

  “A fool and his twin,” said Fence, turning around and leaning on Michaelmas’s desk. His face was not encouraging.

  Patrick said, “I wondered when you’d think of that.”

  “Thou wert not o’er-hasty wi’thy advice,” said Fence; his voice wasn’t encouraging either.

  “Why let him know we’d caught on, if there’s anything to catch on to; if there’s not, why offend him?”

  “I am of two minds, to go or stay,” said Fence to Matthew. “How well acquainted is Celia with Chalcedony?”

  “Very well, once,” said Matthew.

  “She’d know a deception?”

  “Very like,” said Matthew; and got up suddenly. “Wherefore—” he said.

  “She’s seasoned,” said Fence, irritably. “What’s thy acquaintance with Michaelmas?”

  “It is but slight,” said Matthew. “Prospero, however, I do know well.”

  “Mayhap thou shouldst wake him,” said Fence.

  “Fence, if we’re contemplating leaving soon, should we disperse all over the castle?” said Patrick.

  “If Michaelmas is not himself,” said Fence, “it is too late. Matthew, go.”

  Matthew went. Laura would have obeyed that tone too, no matter how unwelcome the task it assigned her. She was beginning to feel cold, although this was the warmest room she had been in since they came back. She looked at Ellen. Ellen wore a half-smile and an air of deep interest. Laura gave up on her.

  “Now,” said Fence. “Heed this lesson. The hair meaneth appearance, the hands deeds, the eyes intention, the height potential, and the dress desire.”

  Ellen and Patrick and Laura all looked at him blankly. “Well,” said Ellen, after a moment, “that might make sense if somebody were drawing a picture.”

  “If the man in the stark house is the Judge of the Dead, or a unicorn gone mad, or some other great power,” said Fence, “then he is but a picture; a weareth that shape but as a garment.”

  “Why should the garment tell us anything?” said Patrick.

  “Any shape-changer is constrained by his nature,” said Fence.

  “Of course,” said Patrick, rolling his eyes.

  “Any artist is named by his work,” said Fence, rather sharply. “Think on’t in that light, an it please thee better.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Patrick, to Laura’s shock. “I don’t mean to fault your explanations. But it’s all so subjective.”

  They embarked on a discussion that Laura didn’t listen to. She was remembering what Fence had said. When there was a pause in the conversation, Laura marshalled her list carefully and leaped into the gap. “So,” she said, “he’s got your and Randolph’s appearance—”

  “Which is obvious anyway,” said Patrick, with such alacrity that she knew Fence had been getting the better of the argument.

  “It meaneth, the outward seeming where that differeth from the inward form,” said Fence.

  “—Randolph’s deeds, both your intentions, and a desire for redness.”

  “And a limited potential,” said Fence, grinning at her. “An my middle name be not tact, I know whose is.”

  “What’s a desire for redness?” said Ellen.

  Fence shrugged. “The knowledge of the Red Sorcerers,” he said. “Fire. Iron. Blood. The carnation.”

  “Wisdom,” said Ellen, suddenly. “Don’t you remember? Black for death, yellow for sickness, white for health, gold for faith, violet for purity, silver for treachery. And the major schools of sorcery: red for wisdom, blue for sorrow, green for novelty.”

  “That was the game,” said Patrick, scornfully.

  “It’s true just the same,” said Fence. He was beginning to look tired. “So. What have we, then? A man whose intentions are whatever few Randolph and I yet have in common, whose desire is for wisdom, whose deeds are murderous, and whose power is small.”

  “That doesn’t seem to get us anywhere,” said Ellen.

  “Have patience,” said Fence. He sat down again and propped his forehead on his hands. The thick, ill-cut hair tumbled over his scraped knuckles; he always forgot to put his gloves on until he had bumped his hands on something. He had a birch leaf caught in his collar. Laura looked at him worriedly. She herself might be stupid, and just now figuring out what they were talking about; but indeed Fence ought to have thought sooner that, if there were shape-shifters loose in Heathwill Library who could look like the party from the Hidden Land, they might just as well appear as members of the Library staff.

  Nobody said anything. Patrick got up restlessly and began examining the room, poking into corners and lifting piles of papers. Ellen looked at Fence, as if expecting a remonstrance; when none came, she got up and began an exploration of her own. Laura’s cat jumped out of her lap, climbed into Ellen’s abandoned chair, and went to sleep again. The cats Patrick and Ellen had disturbed followed them around the room.

  Laura left them to it, and watched Fence, and thought about shape-shifters. There must be several kinds. There were the ones they had fought in the battle with the Dragon King, which Matthew said were held to seven shapes only. Then there were the ones that could look like other people; and then there were the ones that could look like whatever they chose, except that it would reveal their nature one way or another.

  “Fence?” she said.

  Fence looked up, with his usual accommodating expression.

  Laura said, “Were the horses you threw Ellen’s cloak over the kind of shape-shifter that is held to only seven shapes?”

  “Five,” said Fence. “Horse, cat, dog, eagle, unicorn.”

  Those were the animals in all the tapestries about Shan. Laura decided to ask about that later. She said, resignedly, “What other kinds are there?”

  “Those held to three shapes, to five, to seven, and to nine. All these are animal shapes only. Those that have a shape of their own and can but mimic other forms of’t, as a young white hart may make itself a mighty buck or a helpless fawn; or a child form itself as an old woman. Those that have no shape of their own but may form themselves as they will, by memory or by imagination.”

  Well, she hadn’t been completely wrong. “So the ones looking like us could be either of the last two kinds? Because if they were people to begin with, they could look like other people? Or if they could form themselves as they would, they could also look like other people?”

  “Well done,” said Fence, and smiled at her.

  Then he stopped smiling, at the sound of footsteps.

  Celia and Chalcedony came back into the room. Chalcedony looked sober and Celia irate. Celia sat down next to Fence, in the chair vacated by Ellen.

  “This lady’s herself,” she said. “She saith that were Michaelmas other, she’d know’t.”

  “Wherefore we must look to Prospero,” said Chalcedony.

  “Both Michaelmas and Matthew have gone to fetch him,” said Fence. “Chalcedony, how well doth Michaelmas know Prospero?”

  “As well as a knoweth anyone,” said Chalcedony. “Which is to say, did a expect to see Prospero, a child waving a rag on a broom-handle and talking with a raspy voice might persuade him.”

  “Great,” said Patrick, from the opposite end of the room.

  “But Matthew would note a deception,” said Fence.

  “The matter,” said Celia, between her teeth, “is, what may not Michaelmas tell a seeming Prospero atween Prospero’s room and this?”

  “That’s the matter,” said Fence.

  More footsteps in the hall averted what would certainly have been an argument. Michaelmas came back into the room, followed by a remarkable figure. Prospero wore a black, starry robe like Fence’s, except that all the stars were embroidered in some metallic thread in every possible color, and they had the obligingness to stay still when you looked at them. He had white hair rather like Einstein’s, and a magnificent white beard tucked into
his belt. He looked so very much like a wizard that Laura wondered about him.

  “Welcome to Heathwill Library,” he said. He had a deep voice, and a slight accent; he said his L’s oddly, as if he were on the verge of trilling them into R’s but could never quite make up his mind to it. His R’s he said as Laura and her relations did; people in the Hidden Land trilled theirs a little, especially when they were excited.

  “Thank you,” said Fence.

  He stood up and bowed, and then looked at Chalcedony. She bit her lip. “Prospero,” she said, “where are my ten pennies?”

  “I gave you them a month since,” said a voice in the doorway. It was a deep voice, and rather raspy. Its owner was a tall man in an embroidered black robe who looked exactly like a wizard.

  “Will the real Prospero please stand up,” said Patrick, in a tone of considerable enjoyment.

  The first Prospero turned and looked at the second. On their identical faces were identical expressions of amusement; they looked like Patrick and Ted in the middle of a contest of puns. They looked so exactly alike that Laura doubted both of them. She was glad they were enjoying themselves; an angry shape-shifter was not something she cared to think about; nor was an angry wizard.

  Ellen said, “Where’s Matthew?”

  CHAPTER 24

  TED wasn’t accomplishing anything with the windows. He found Claudia again. Her fire had burned low and the cats were asleep. She was not; the small red light glimmered in her open eyes. She was staring straight out of the window at him, but her gaze was unfocused. Her mouth drooped a little. She looked as if she were waiting for something unpleasant, without either fear or resignation. Ted thought this might be the first really natural expression he had ever seen on her face; even the several flashes of anger he had witnessed seemed now, next to this calm distaste, contrived for someone else’s benefit.

  Andrew’s clear, unimpassioned voice said behind him, “Canst thou catch my sister in the net of her own contrivances?”

  Ted’s stomach clenched, both at the question and at the uncanny echo of his thoughts; but he managed not to start. He turned around. Andrew knelt on the floor next to him, looking not unfriendly.

  “I suppose it might not be her own contrivance,” said Ted, laying his hand on the window. It was warmer than his skin, and repellent in some indefinable way; not exactly greasy, not exactly sticky, not exactly rough. He removed his hand. “Somebody might have made it for her; or she might have taken it over. But she did use it. I saw her.”

  He was talking too much. Andrew might be about to learn everything; but he might not. Andrew, looking over Ted’s shoulder at the pane in which Claudia sat, did not question him further. And Ted, looking at Andrew’s face, a little lined with tiredness, did not want to be the one to shatter Andrew’s illusions about his sister.

  “Where’s everybody else?” he said.

  Andrew shook his head, and turned away from his sister and her fire. “Contriving baths, and a meal,” he said. “We must look our best when we seek to parley with the dead.”

  His tone showed that he thought this a silly notion; Ted thought he probably considered it silly quite apart from his disbelief in the possibility of talking to the dead.

  “It is possible to talk to the dead, you know,” said Ted. “I’ve been there.”

  “Truly, do you believe this?” said Andrew.

  “Truly, I do,” said Ted.

  There was a protracted pause. Andrew sat back on his heels and rubbed a soiled finger over his moustache. “Forgive me,” he said. “This thought will not be father to any action. But hearing you speak so, my liege, I do find in me for the first time some small, weak understanding of Randolph’s reasoning, when he did murder thy father.”

  “I’ve been speaking so,” said Ted, recoiling hurriedly upon the safer area of this supremely unsafe speech, “all along. What did you think, that I was lying? That I was part of some conspiracy of wizards to deceive the populace? I take that badly, my lord,” said Ted, looking Andrew straight in his troubled brown eyes. “I take that very badly.” And he did, on behalf of Edward, who might have been stuffy but had certainly been honorable and had probably never told a lie in his short life.

  “If you’re not a deceiver, then you are one of the deceived,” said Andrew, unruffled. “Take you that in better part?”

  “Better a fool than a knave,” said Ted, bitterly.

  “Oh, aye,” said Andrew, growing rather heated, “a fool to be cozened by such a knave as Randolph. This conspiracy thou deniest did slay thy father.”

  “Randolph didn’t do it,” said Ted. And that was almost true. Claudia had done it; Laura and Ruth and Ellen and Patrick had done it; Ted had done it, literally, when he knocked from Randolph’s hand the poisoned bottle into which Andrew had already slipped an antidote.

  “Give me strength!” cried Andrew, jumping to his feet and glaring down at Ted.

  “And I’ll tell you something else,” said Ted, tipping his head and glaring back. “Nobody is a fool in every part. I might be deceived in Randolph, and still have the right of it concerning magic. Or I might be deceived by this pack of rogue magicians, and still know Randolph’s heart better than my own. Do you think on that, my lord.”

  “If you did think Randolph harmless and kindly,” said Andrew, breathlessly, “why knocked you that bottle from his hand the day the King died?”

  Ted was beyond caution. “Because it did pass by you, my lord, ere it came to him.”

  “Is that the story you hope will fadge?” said Andrew.

  “You did put somewhat in that bottle,” said Ted.

  “What I put in that bottle, sweet prince,” said Andrew, whitely, “was an antidote.”

  “And who told you you’d need one?”

  “My sister.”

  Ted no longer felt so tender of Andrew’s illusions. “Your sister killed the King,” said Ted.

  “She knew not you’d knock Randolph’s arm.”

  “She could make me knock Randolph’s arm if she had to,” said Ted, “and she did know I’d do it, because—oh, hell, it’s too complicated. She did it, Andrew. I’m sorry, but she did.”

  “And that’s what this mummery of visiting among the dead is to accomplish,” said Andrew, very quietly. He leaned on the left-hand wall. Behind his sleek brown head the ghostly mountains of the Secret Country floated like clouds, and a little wind rippled the water of the lake. Ted saw with compunction that Andrew was shaking. But Andrew’s voice, when he went on, was perfectly steady. “You’ll show us by your vile illusionist’s arts the piteous figure of the murdered King, all pale and wan, distraction in’s aspect, pointing a shaky finger crying, ‘She, ’twas she, thy sister, Andrew! ’”

  “What the hell good would that do?” said Ted. “How should the King know who did it?”

  That remark, he was pleased to see, stopped Andrew. “I’d thought the dead knew all things.”

  “Why should they?” said Ted. He grinned suddenly. “Yes, I know; they should in order that they may serve the conspiracy of wizards. But really, Andrew, I don’t see why they should know any more than they did while they were alive.” He felt much better, for a moment. Then he stopped grinning. Edward had certainly known who killed him. Ted did not know if Edward had found this out before or after he died. What did go on down there? “Well,” said Ted, “we’ll have to wait and see, won’t we?”

  They had their baths, and Ted began to understand Ruth’s views on the subject of hot water. They dressed in clean, if creased, clothing. They foraged in the garden behind the house, which reassuringly was not laid out like the garden of the house near High Castle. They found an orchard behind the garden. They ate their limited meal. They sat on the dusty floor of the dining room in a litter of apple cores and dirty bowls, and looked at one another.

  “‘Never put off,’” said Ruth, quoting Agatha. “Randolph, how do we get where we’re going?”

  “Through the cellar,” said Randolph.

&nbs
p; “Oh, great,” said Ted. “I suppose it’s full of cobwebs and spiders and all the doors creak?”

  “In Claudia’s house,” said Randolph, dryly, “I doubt the doors creak not.” He stood up, brushing crumbs of oatcake from his shirt. “Ted?” he said.

  Ted, startled at being addressed by his ordinary name, stared at him. Randolph said, “Is it cold below?”

  “Haven’t you ever been there?” said Ted, without thinking.

  Randolph didn’t answer him. Ted said, “I was dead. It didn’t feel like anything. It looked cold. There’s a river and a lot of mist. Let’s not go dancing down there in our shirt-sleeves, if that’s what you mean. We’ll be cold with nerves, if nothing else.” Nerves was right; he was talking too much. Ruth, sitting on the floor across from him in a welter of blue wool and pink legwarmers, smiled and shook her head.

  They all stood up and put on some or all of their outer garments. Randolph took something rather like a hurricane lamp from a carved shelf. It was made of a rough, greeny metal like the door knocker, and consisted of three cats wound lovingly around the central glass chimney, their tails encircling it at the top and their bodies at the bottom. Randolph made a small motion in the air with his free hand, and a little flame bloomed obediently from the candle in the middle of the lamp. Without a word, he walked through the hall into the kitchen, and they followed him.

  The door to the cellar was undersized, but otherwise normal. Randolph pushed it open and ducked through it. He went down the steep flight of steps, set the lamp on a short stone pillar, and beckoned to Ted. Ted came cautiously down the steps, and the others followed.

  The cellar was a little damp and completely empty. Its floor was made of great blocks of stone, like the floors of High Castle. Two of these had been propped up. Darkness gaped below them. Randolph held the lantern down near the opening, and Ted bent over next to him and looked. A clean smell of rock and water rose from the depths. A shaft walled with stone blocks dropped maybe twenty feet to a stone-block floor. Down at the bottom of the shaft were six square dark doorways. Thick metal bars were fastened into two of the walls of the shaft, to make ladders. They shone as bright as a well-kept sword, with no sign of rust.