The Whim of the Dragon

Randolph leaned suddenly on Ted’s shoulder and began to shiver. After a moment he sat down on the ground and put his face in his hands. Ted sat down with him, keeping hold of his arm.

  “Don’t listen,” said Ruth. “Randolph. Don’t listen. If you don’t concentrate, the voices fade away.”

  Randolph did not answer her; Ted, unable not to listen while actually looking at the tight cluster of King and children, turned around.

  “Andrew?” said Ted. “How is it?”

  Andrew’s strained gaze, stretched wide over Ted’s shoulder, jerked to Ted’s face. Andrew said, in a stronger voice than Ted had been able to muster, “’Tis a pretty show, my prince; you must show me the strings and the mirrors one day.”

  “I hope,” said Ted, judging that concern was not what Andrew wanted from him, “that you note the absence of the piteous figure and the shaky finger and the distraction in the aspect?”

  “The distraction’s all in Randolph’s,” said Andrew.

  This was inaccurate, since nobody could see Randolph’s aspect. But Randolph instantly dropped his hands and tossed his hair out of his eyes. Ted let go of his arm, and Randolph laid a hand on Ted’s knee. Ted suspected that it meant, “Keep your mouth shut.”

  “’Tis in your aspect also,” Randolph said.

  “He spoke you very lovingly for one so estranged in his philosophy,” said Andrew.

  “He’ll speak you twice as fair do you but pluck his sleeve,” said Randolph.

  “He loved you ever,” said Andrew. “I made him doubt you, but to hate you I could not move him one whit.”

  “Nor could your attempts move him to hate you,” said Randolph. “Go speak to him; you’ll have no peace else.”

  Andrew looked over Ted’s shoulder again, and shock wiped his face clear of all expression. “With whom doth he speak so close?” he said. He snatched his horrified gaze back to Ted. “Lady Ruth, in her habit as she lived,” he said. “What are you?” He half rose, telling over one by one the dim figures grouped around the King. Then he sat down hard and awkwardly, and looked for a very long time at Ruth.

  “Edward,” he said to her at last, “I cannot tell one from t’other; but thee, my lady bright, I know for a false jade. My lady’s with her father; and what art thou?”

  “Hold your tongue,” said Ted, creakily.

  “Wert puzzled?” said Andrew to Ruth, in rising tones. “Wert much afeared? Didst wreck thy thoughts on the tangle of my most—” He let out a wavering breath very like a sob, and set himself, visibly, to regaining his control. “How came matters to this pass?” he said at last; and he said it to Randolph.

  “Later,” said Randolph. “Speak to the King.”

  Andrew got up unsteadily and walked past Ruth and Ted and Randolph. None of them watched him go. Randolph put one hand over his eyes for a moment, and said, “Ruth, take not on so.”

  Ted looked quickly at Ruth, who was choking into the crook of her elbow. Ruth never cried.

  “Sorry,” said Ruth, thickly, from behind her arm and a cloud of hair. “What a fiasco.” She sniffed hard and shook herself as if she were about to emerge; then she said, “Oh, hell,” and choked again.

  Randolph fished in his sleeve, and in his belt pouch, and then patted himself vaguely, like a man in a three-piece suit looking for his parking ticket. He finally pulled a handkerchief from the sleeve of his cloak and tucked it into Ruth’s hand. Ruth blew her nose and tidied her hair back from her face.

  “There’s Shan,” said Randolph, and stood up hurriedly. “I pray you pardon me.”

  He strode past the clump of King, children, and Andrew, and walked into the clustering ghosts. They parted for him like a curtain of beads. Once Ted was alone with Ruth, he was able to pull her hair and say, “‘I have a speech of fire that fain would blaze, but that this folly douts it.’ ”

  “Don’t quote Edward to me.” Ruth blew her nose again.

  There was some commotion among the ghosts. Ted looked over Ruth’s shoulder and said, “Randolph did see Shan.”

  Ruth stood up; so did Ted. Randolph and Shan were coming slowly toward them; Shan kept stopping to talk to the ghosts, who then grew noisy. It seemed that, after he had spoken to a group of them, its members grew more solid and distinguishable, and their voices less shrill.

  Shan and Randolph came out of the crowd and crossed the open gray ground toward Ted and Ruth. Something in their walk, their disparate heights, the absorption on their faces, was familiar to Ted. As they arrived before him, and Shan bowed, Ted realized what it was. Just so were Fence and Randolph accustomed to pace around together, arguing.

  “What news?” said Ruth, in a not altogether natural tone.

  “Good for these folk,” said Shan, “but bad, I fear, for all your party.”

  “Don’t tell me,” said Ruth. “They heard we were coming and they’ve fled the country.”

  “I know not what they’ve heard, my lady, but in truth, they are not here.”

  “They’re all gone?” said Ruth.

  “All nine,” said Randolph.

  “What about the Judge of the Dead?” said Ted.

  “You may speak to him, my lord, an you will,” said Shan. Ted surmised that Randolph had told him that Ted was the King of the Hidden Land. Shan went on, “But he cannot act; he can but bring suasion to bear upon the Nine Lords, when they do return.”

  “I want to ask him some riddles,” said Ted.

  “Why bother with him?” said Ruth. “You’ve got Shan right in front of you.”

  “Ask, by all means,” said Shan. “Most I meet here do ask me riddles, and cry aloud when I do answer them, for ’tis too late. For you the answers may prove more timely. Say on.”

  “What beast,” said Ted, obediently, “is it the unicorns pursue each summer?”

  “The dragon,” said Shan, in a curious voice.

  “Before what beast doth winter flee?”

  “The dragon.”

  “And what beast maketh that which putteth words to the flute’s song?”

  “Not the dragon,” said Shan. “The third question is rightly—”

  “But what’s the answer to our third question; please?” said Ruth.

  And Shan said, “The Outside Power.”

  The three living people looked at one another.

  “Outside power is unfurled,” said Randolph.

  Shan caught hold of his cloak, altering its hang only by a little; and said excitedly, “You did use the Ring?”

  “Why don’t you tell us,” said Ruth, in a flat voice, “about the Ring.”

  “Why don’t we sit down?” said Ted.

  They did. Watching Shan sit down was rather disturbing; where he and the ground met it was hard to tell which was which. The ground was soft, dry, and cold, and gave no reassurance by any of its characteristics that it would still be there the next minute.

  Shan told them, with a loving attention to detail that reminded Ted of Patrick, about Shan’s Ring. The unicorns had given it to him in reparation for some injury, which he did not elaborate. They had told him it would bring him his heart’s desire. Shan’s heart’s desire, it appeared, was death. Randolph raised his head at this point, and he and Shan exchanged a very long look, which Shan ended by saying, “Take better heed than I was able of dear, beauteous death, the jewel of the just.”

  Randolph said nothing, and Shan went on. He had thought, he said, that this remark of the unicorns was one of their cruel jests, because they themselves had deprived him of his death. He thought of his next dearest desire, and whether Shan’s Ring might aid him to achieve it. This was some means whereby the mere people of the Secret Country and its surrounding lands might receive justice from the magical creatures they lived with. There was no meeting ground between them, no appeal. The dragons and unicorns took offense, or took a fancy, and did what they would without consulting the people involved.

  Now the Red Sorcerers, of whom Shan was one, had been accustomed to use enchanted mirrors to see things far aw
ay.

  “That’s a device of the Red Sorcerers?” broke in Randolph. Ted remembered the hand mirror in Fence’s room, that they had used to scan the two hundred and eight steps for signs of Claudia. He thought of the innumerable mirrors in the stark house of Apsinthion.

  Shan grinned at Randolph. “Aye, Blue Mage, that it is.” He went on. He had found that if one looked in such a mirror while wearing Shan’s Ring, one saw many and diverse places, some pleasant and some dangerous. In one of these places, which looked like the Hidden Land and yet unlike, he had seen unicorns. After a great deal of thought and what he called “blundering,” he had made a sword to take him there. And on that ground he had proposed to the unicorns that they consent to bargain with anyone they had wronged who had the courage and the means to take himself there. The unicorns had been amused, and had consented; but there was a catch, as always. Anyone who found them on their bargaining ground might indeed bargain; but if he lost, worse would befall him than he had already suffered. If he won he would truly be better off; but it would be hard to win.

  “What about ‘Time awry is blown’?” said Ruth.

  “That,” said Shan, soberly, “is an incidental kindness of the unicorns the backlash whereof I do still await. They do nothing that profits them not, but this attribute of the ring seemeth to profit only their petitioners. For look you, time in this place of the unicorns runneth quicklier; an Shan’s Ring did not yoke it to the time of the human lands, for the duration of a human visit, even a man who won his petition might return to find his family dust and his grandchildren old as he.”

  Ted began to laugh. “Wouldn’t you know it!” he said. “In our world, time runs the same as it does in the Hidden Land. But that didn’t suit us; so we used Shan’s Ring for just the opposite effect, to slow down time at home so we could return a bare instant after we left.”

  “Why so?” said Shan.

  “To keep the grown-ups off our backs,” said Ruth.

  “Art so young, then?”

  “Not anymore,” said Ruth, with unexpected grimness.

  “Well,” said Ted, “the bargaining ground of the dragons?”

  “I found it not,” said Shan. “Nor, they tell me, did any Red Sorcerer ever lay eyes on’t.”

  There was a brief silence. Ted, looking around, saw that most of the crowding ghosts had dispersed. Andrew still stood with the King and the five royal children, but their voices were subdued. Ted was cold, and very tired. He pulled his cloak more tightly around him, and his hand brushed Shan’s brooch. He unpinned it hurriedly and held it out. It blazed like the ocean under a noonday sun.

  “Is this yours?” he said.

  “It was,” said Shan. In the rich blue light his face was thoughtful.

  “Then take it back again,” said Ted.

  “I’d not thought,” said Shan, not taking it, “that it would prove so potent below the earth.”

  “You could use some power around here,” said Ruth.

  Shan said to Ted, “These things do not fall out by chance.” “Well, maybe I found it so I could give it to you. You take it.”

  “An I may hold it,” said Shan. He took it from Ted’s fingers, and it lay on his small, wavery hand and did not fall to the ground.

  “My thanks to you,” said Shan. “May it be long ere I see you again. Or thou,” he added, to Randolph.

  Ted looked at Randolph, but Randolph only smiled. He looked back at Shan, and for a moment saw through him Randolph’s hand and arm.

  “My lord, you look tired,” said Ted to Shan.

  “The blood runneth dry,” said Randolph.

  “Where’s your dagger?” said Ted.

  “No,” said Shan. “You’ll need a whole skin and all the blood that’s in you. Quickly, have you any questions more?”

  “How did Melanie get hold of your sword?”

  “Melanie!” said Shan, scrambling to his knees and staring.

  “She left it for us to stumble on,” said Ted. He added, “And she left her own for some friends of ours. Did you know she had one that would do similar work?”

  “Of what color?”

  “Green,” said Randolph.

  Shan slapped his hands down on his knees, a violent motion that made hardly a whisper of sound. “Oh, I’m justly served,” he said. “I should have stayed. I am sorry, that I left this menace to ravage you. My lords and ladies, beware that sword of green. It will show you your own hearts in such a guise you’ll cut them out.”

  He stood up, an agitated, wavering figure fading rapidly into the gray land and the gray sky.

  “Where’s the dagger?” shouted Ted, leaping up himself.

  “No,” said Shan; he was gone.

  CHAPTER 25

  LAURA could tell from Fence’s face that he wished Ellen had not asked where Matthew was. Patrick seemed to see it too; and as Patrick terrifyingly sometimes did, he took his own advice.

  “What the hell,” said Patrick, walking up to the two tall men and looking from one to the other, “do you think you’re doing?”

  There was a petrifying silence. Laura considered her cousin, in his stained jeans and filthy tennis shoes and his dusty black cloak, and was stricken with admiration and jealousy. She looked at the two identical faces. One of them was grinning; the other wore an expression as of patience come abruptly to an end, like Laura’s teacher just before he sent somebody to the principal.

  The grinning Prospero spoke over Patrick’s head to Fence. “You come carefully upon your hour,” he said.

  “I do not,” said Fence. “I come abominably late.”

  “Not so late as we’d have made you,” said the tall man, smiling still. There was something about the smile that oppressed Laura.

  Michaelmas had been leaning in the doorway between the two Prosperos and preserving a perfectly blank expression. This latest remark, however, or perhaps that smile, appeared to stir him to wrath. “If that’s a threat, my lords,” he said, “go make it otherwhere.”

  The smiling Prospero and the frowning one both swung on him.

  “Doubt you our word?” said the smiling one.

  “No,” said Michaelmas. “But I do doubt your manners. Having sworn to do no harm in Heathwill Library, it will behoove you not to threaten none. And concerning harm—what have you done with my colleague Prospero?”

  “Why, nothing, save to look upon him in admiration,” said the frowning man.

  Michaelmas made an impatient motion with his hand. “Go in,” he said; “sit down; and answer the boy’s question.”

  The two men came in. Every cat in the room leapt up, sniffed the air, and curved across the floor to purr at the Prosperos. Michaelmas rolled his eyes at them, and sat down behind his desk.

  The two Prosperos sat where Patrick and Ellen had been. Patrick and Ellen sat on the table. Celia and Chalcedony stood in the doorway.

  “And for the love of mercy,” said Michaelmas in a tone of profoundest irritation, “do you, one of you, or both of you, take some form other. And do you not,” he added sharply, as the two men turned and smiled at each other, “assume some other, horrible form which might deprive our sovereignty of reason, and then say in innocence, I did bid you do’t. Take you,” said Michaelmas, breathing hard through his nose, “some harmless and inoffensive form that can speak with us, and leave your frivolings for but five minutes.”

  “You’ve dealt with us before,” said the austere Prospero.

  “And to my sorrow,” said Michaelmas.

  “Wizard, have a care,” said the smiling one, and stopped smiling.

  “Oh, go to,” said Michaelmas. “You’re as slippery as a mess of eels, but you do not break your sworn word.”

  “No,” said the once-smiling Prospero, “but our memories are as long as time.”

  “Peace; make thy change,” said the austere one.

  The once-smiling one looked at him, and shrugged; and by what means Laura could not see, by the time his shoulders had leaned back on the cushion again, he w
as a little dark woman dressed in an infinity of layers of pink gauze. In a voice melodious as a flute, she said, “Will this serve?”

  Behind Laura, Chalcedony made a muffled exclamation. Michaelmas, who appeared to be of a ruddy complexion and who had been growing ruddier in his exasperation, turned stark white, leaned forward, leaned back again with great deliberation, and swallowed hard. “It will serve,” he said. “But I say to you now, my memory is long also.”

  “So,” said Patrick, insouciantly but with a strained look on his sharp Carroll face, “is anybody going to answer my question?”

  “We are come,” said the dark woman, “to ask it of you, or of some minion of the Hidden Land. Something is amiss there.”

  “Took you long enough to notice,” said Patrick.

  “Patrick,” said Fence, mildly but definitely. He turned his head and addressed the two shape-shifters. “Well, great ones, what amiss is this, and how may we mend it?”

  “We look to you to tell us of the first,” said the one who still looked like Prospero. “Michaelmas hath given us some clue. Is it true that you have dabbled with Shan’s Ring?”

  “It is,” said Fence.

  “That did awake us from our dreaming,” said the dark woman. “But ere our start was o’er, before we could settle again, we did hear something other.”

  “A great shearing and clashing of swords,” said the man.

  “There was a battle in the south,” said Fence.

  The dark woman laughed. “We who slept through the ten years’ agony of Owlswater, the twenty-five years’ tossing of Feren atween Fence’s Country and thine, to wake at that?”

  Fence was silent. Laura knew what these two had heard. They had heard Ted and Patrick, practicing with Shan’s and Melanie’s swords in the rose garden.

  “There are few sorceries,” said the dark woman at last, “so potent as Shan’s Ring.”

  “No doubt,” said Fence. “Seek you the list of th’others in this admirable library, and come to me again when you have a more particular question. I’d tire the moon with talking, to tell you all our petty deeds since first we wielded Shan’s Ring.”

  The tall man said, “Have you the swords of Shan and Melanie?”