The Whim of the Dragon

  “It was Edward,” said Ted. “He wanted to fight. What was Randolph supposed to do?”

  Fence’s hold slackened. His eyes were on Randolph, not Ted.

  Randolph said, “It began with Andrew, who would have spewed the whole sorry tale all over the court of the Dragon King, and who moreover did muddy our dealings with offering Ruth and Ted in marriage to the children of the Dragon King. Ted did interfere in that bout, whereupon Edward did turn on me.”

  Fence still had no expression. He said, “There’s other matter in thy face.”

  “Fence,” said Ted, “when I rendered myself harmless and ordered him to drop his sword, he did it.”

  “Fence,” said Randolph, “let be.”

  Fence looked at him; then, “With very great pleasure,” he said, and taking his hand from Ted’s shoulder he put both arms around Randolph. Randolph leaned his forehead on Fence’s muddy robe and shut his eyes as if he never intended to look up again.

  Ted got up in a hurry and walked over to his little sister. “We owe it all to you, huh?” he said.

  “Somebody,” said Laura, in an agonized whisper, “should apologize to the Dragon King; and somebody else should separate Chryse and the red man, because they were fighting.”

  “I think somebody should explain, not just apologize,” said Ted, also in a whisper.

  “Are these new statues for my garden?” inquired the Dragon King.

  “My lord, no,” said Laura, with more haste than courtesy. She cast a stricken glance in the direction of Fence, who was standing up now but still talking to Randolph. “These—we—” She stopped. Ted saw that the problem was not a failure to speak, but the fear that she would say too much. He launched into a series of elaborate introductions.

  The Dragon King seemed to enjoy them. If Celia and Matthew disliked being presented to so fresh and elegant a monarch when they looked as if they had slept in a pile of leaves in the same clothes for a week, they managed not to sound like it. Ellen greeted the Dragon King sweetly and looked as if she were about to ask him a question. Ted hurriedly introduced Patrick, whom he had saved till last for fear of what he might say.

  Patrick bowed and said, “We’ve brought you, your grace, a little exercise in sorcery.”

  “Patrick!” said Celia.

  “Shan’s Ring,” said Patrick, disregarding her, “which we have just given to your good cousins there, hath rendered those two as statues. How, think you, might one best restore them?”

  Fence and Randolph came across the grass in time to hear this. “Master You-are-a-wizard-do-something,” said Fence to Patrick, “hold your tongue.”

  Patrick grinned at him, and was quiet. Ted looked at the Dragon King, who, mercifully, looked like somebody at the intermission of a good play. Maybe he would be patient.

  “Forgive us,” said Fence to him, “that we burst upon you unwashed and unannounced.”

  “The Hidden Land,” said the Dragon King peacefully, “is full of surprises. What of your embassy?”

  “Your grace, those two frozen there are our embassy,” said Fence.

  “Their forerunners were someways at cross purposes,” said the Dragon King; the only note in his voice was one of inquiry.

  “If they were,” said Fence, “your perspicacity will discover the reason for’t more readily than mine.”

  The Dragon King looked over Fence’s shoulder at Andrew, and nodded. “You are gracious,” he said to Fence. “So shall I be also. Do you take this garden and the servants therein, and the chairs, and what refreshment you will, till you have plucked out the heart of this mystery. When your embassy is prepared, send me word and I will receive it.”

  Fence bowed to him. The Dragon King lifted one ringed hand and beckoned. Andrew pushed between Fence and Randolph as if they had been a couple of trees, and went with the Dragon King and a great part of the crowd back toward the inner castle. The Lords of the Dead brought up the rear.

  CHAPTER 30

  THE two parties from the Hidden Land milled around uncertainly, and the elegant minions of the Dragon King drifted out of his formal garden, leaving them alone.

  “Fence!” said Ted, feeling irrationally that everything would be all right now. “What’s he going to do to Andrew?”

  “Give him his instructions,” said Fence, very dryly. “Don’t trouble yourself. Now. Is any part of your tale urgent?”

  “Well, if you’ve got the Lords of the Dead—” began Ted.

  Randolph interrupted. “Belaparthalion is im—”

  “In that guise,” said Fence, gesturing at the man in red.

  “That’s Belaparthalion?” said Ted. “But—”

  “Who did destroy the dragon-shape?” said Randolph.

  “Patrick,” said Fence; and as Randolph made for Patrick he stepped in the way and added, “At Chryse’s instigation.”

  “Why, what a guardian is this!” said Randolph, bitterly.

  “It was not at Chryse’s instigation, damn it,” said Patrick, “except indirectly. Belaparthalion told me to do it. He said that he would get more power from Melanie’s sword than he would lose by giving up the dragon-shape. Why the hell shouldn’t I have let him out?”

  “You couldn’t help it,” said Ruth. “It’s this obsession you have with breaking large glowing globes.”

  “Shan,” said Ted to Patrick, “told us to beware Melanie’s sword, because it would show us our hearts in such a guise we’d cut them out.”

  “Well,” said Ruth, hollowly, “that’s what Belaparthalion did, isn’t it?”

  “Nobody warned me,” said Patrick.

  “Randolph,” said Fence. “What part of thy tale is urgent?”

  “None, I think, beside this agitation of thine,” said Randolph. “Sit down, and speak of it.”

  Fence folded himself to the ground, and the rest of them followed suit, forming a ragged circle. Fence said, “We are here for that Laura saw Ted and Randolph fighting, and did fear the outcome.”

  “You might have helped prevent it,” said Ted, “if the Lords of the Dead took it into their heads to get Edward out of mine.”

  “But,” said Fence, “we have now brought the two strongest guardians of the Hidden Land, helpless and at odds, into the very heart of the enemy.”

  “The enemy seems pretty harmless,” said Patrick.

  “He is indolent,” said Fence, “and the workings of his heart are strange to us. But he is not harmless. Can we release Chryse and Belaparthalion, and reform the cause of their quarrel, then all will be well. They will perform their word to us, chastising the Dragon King; and we may depart in peace with all good protection. But do we release them merely to quarrel, it cannot come to good.”

  “All right,” said Ted, “what’s their quarrel?”

  Fence explained it to him. Ted thought it sounded completely crazy; but he saw that Randolph took it seriously. “All right,” said Ted. “If Belaparthalion is somehow half an Outside Power—is Chryse right? Would he have to give up the guardianship of the Hidden Land? Who gave it him, anyway?”

  “Who did so transform him?” said Randolph. “For look you, an he did so himself, then he hath forfeited the terms of his guardianship. An it were done to him unknowing, then—”

  “What we need,” said Fence, “is the author of these disturbances.”

  “Melanie,” said Ruth, flatly.

  “What?” said Celia.

  So Randolph explained that. Matthew was shocked. Celia looked grim. Ellen made an astonished mouth. Fence and Laura looked at each other as if they suddenly understood something; Ted wondered what that was about.

  “Remember what the unicorn said, after the Hunt?” said Patrick to Ted. He, too, looked as if he understood something.

  “We asked, who is Claudia, and it said, subtle, fair, and wise is she, but none of ours did send her.”

  There was a gloomy silence.

  Patrick said at last, “Do you suppose, if we give the Dragon King two statues for his garden, he’ll agr
ee to leave us alone?”

  Ellen sighed heavily; nobody else even looked up. Ted rubbed at his salt-encrusted eyes. His brain felt lamer than his body. They needed to find or fetch Claudia. Who and what was she, indeed? What did she want or care about; what shout would raise her? She was not dead; she was not in any of her houses they had been to in this country.

  “Maybe we should go home,” said Ted. “That’s where we keep finding Claudia, in the Secret House in our own world.”

  “I thought you burned it down,” said Ellen.

  “That’s a weary journey,” said Fence, “during which we must leave these two hostage.”

  “Besides,” said Laura, “if you use the swords, you wake up the Lords of the Dead, and they get nasty.”

  “Do it quick, then, before they go back to sleep,” said Patrick.

  “There are other Outside Powers,” said Fence, rustily, “harder to wake, and harder to lay to rest again.”

  “Why a weary journey?” said Ted. “You got here fast enough.”

  “We paid the Lords of the Dead with Shan’s Ring to bring us here,” said Patrick. “We’re running out of merchandise.”

  “We’ve got Cedric’s flute,” said Laura. She looked suddenly, below the filthy, tangled hair and the scratches, alert. “Is this the end it will save us at?”

  “It’s a pretty calm end,” said Patrick.

  “What music will call Claudia?” said Randolph.

  “God knows,” said Ruth. “Nobody knows her, that’s the problem; we haven’t the faintest idea what she’s like.” She looked up suddenly. “Randolph,” she said. “You know her. Think. You were by her night and day, you said, for—”

  “And I never divined what she was,” said Randolph. He looked her squarely in the face. “That is what I said.”

  “You must have divined something,” said Ruth, staring squarely back at him. Tears stood in her eyes, but her face was merely impatient. “Think, won’t you? Good grief, if even a shape-shifter gives away his nature no matter what his outward form, surely she must have given away something to you?”

  Randolph rubbed at his forehead, streaking all the dust and sweat in a new direction. He looked up and said painfully, “When we would meet, there was a tune I’d whistle, that she would know who approached. At least there can be no harm in Laura’s playing it?”

  “What was it?” said Ruth.

  “‘The Minstrel Boy,’” said Randolph.

  Laura, disentangling the flute from her tunic, said, “She showed up once, when I whistled that.”

  “Randolph,” said Fence. “Do you think on the historical layer of that song. One great harp will sing thy praise and one strong sword defend thee. The harp is Chryse, the sword Belaparthalion. And would it not suit Melanie’s humor, that wished ill to the Hidden Land, to use that song as her emblem?”

  Randolph looked sideways at him and smiled, not very successfully. “No doubt,” he said.

  “Okay,” said Laura, “I’m ready.”

  “Play, then,” said Fence, “as well as you are able.”

  She played it through once. Ted lay back in the cool grass and closed his eyes. The sound of the flute was very sweet, and all the dim noises of the Dragon King’s castle died along the distances of the song. Laura played it through again, and Ruth, who had a pleasant voice, rather like Ted’s mother’s, began to sing. The others joined her, one by one. Ted had forgotten why they were doing this; but it was balm after the confused, stiff courtesies and pretended jollity of the evening before. He did not sit up, but he sang too. Laura played the song through for a third time, and the singers managed the second verse in something very like unison. And Ted looked idly through the green blur of the grass, past the still form of Chryse, around the bend of one of the drum towers, and saw a dark and slender woman in a red dress walking rapidly toward them over the grass. Ted thought she moved like an otter.

  Ted sat up with a jolt. “Look,” he said.

  She seemed to be taking a long time to get there. Ted wondered if they should all loll on the grass like this and watch her come. He felt no impulse to go and greet her. The last time he had seen her, he had hit her in the stomach, and broken the magic windows of her house, and started a conflagration therein that he still hoped had reduced it to rubble. Claudia walked past Chryse as if Chryse were in fact some fanciful statue of the Dragon King’s, and was within two feet of Laura when Randolph stood up and went toward her.

  She smiled at him. “Oh, whistle,” he said, “and I’ll come to you, my lad.”

  Randolph neither smiled nor answered her; it seemed to be all he could do to sustain her cat-eyed gaze. She moved a little away from him and tilted her head at Chryse and Belaparthalion. The black hair fell down her back like water. “Your harp and your sword want mending,” she said.

  “How came they broken?” said Randolph.

  “Wherefore should I tell thee?”

  Randolph said, hardly above a whisper, “For the sake of what lay between us when we were innocent.”

  Her face did not change. “I am five hundred years old,” she said. “When I was young, I had twelve fair lovers, the which I hated passing well. And lately in the summer, because my plans did draw to their conclusion, I did have you.”

  “To what conclusion,” said Randolph, more strongly, “have they come?”

  Claudia, who was Melanie, was silent for a very long time. Then she said, “That I should answer your question.” She walked a few steps farther, surveyed the seated representatives of the Hidden Land, and sat herself down on the edge of the Dragon King’s dais. Randolph came quietly around the outside of the circle and knelt in the grass behind Fence and Ruth.

  “The twelfth of my fair lovers,” said Melanie, “was Shan. And we did think to have the moon and the stars in our hands. But he did betray me, in every way that it was possible for him to do; and then he did escape me; for his betrayal was a joy to the Lords of the Dead, and they did admit him where I could not go. Now, while he lived, your little country was his dearest care; and he did almost refuse the great mercy of death granted him, for that it might leave you open to my malice. And he did therefore set safeguards over you. The royal family of the Hidden Land hath his blood; the libraries of the Hidden Land have his learning; the rivers of the Hidden Land run with his songs. I have taken from you every safeguard you possessed, save these two here. Between them I have set a quarrel shall harm one or both, when Shan’s small meddling spell is removed.”

  “Can you remedy that quarrel?” said Randolph.

  “Oh, aye,” said Melanie. “Belaparthalion will not be as he was; but he’ll guard you well still, an he be spared to’t.”

  Randolph did not say, And will you spare him? He did not say anything. He knelt in the grass in his green doublet with tissue of gold, and laid one hand on Fence’s shoulder, and looked at Melanie as Ted had seen his cousin Jennifer, who both adored and was allergic to strawberries, look at a bowl heaped full of them.

  Ted swallowed. “How came Belaparthalion to this pass?”

  Melanie had not, throughout her recitation, looked at anybody but Randolph. But now she turned her eyes on Ted, who felt as if he were being stared at by a basilisk.

  “I gave him unicorn’s blood,” she said.

  “No,” said Fence.

  “Oh, yes,” said Melanie. “It killeth them not; that’s a tale of the Blue Sorcerers. Over a mundane creature, the power of the unicorn’s blood is to make it sorcerous, and that sorcery is expressed in immortality. Over an arcane creature, the power of the unicorn’s blood is to make it otherworldly. Hence Belaparthalion became an Outside Power.”

  Matthew sat forward suddenly. “And the post of the Judge of the Dead was empty.” He seemed to remember to whom he was speaking, and cut his historical enthusiasm short.

  “It was,” said Melanie.

  “So,” said Randolph to Fence, “Belaparthalion forfeits not his guardianship.”

  “It would like Chryse well, had she
devised it, that he must protect the Hidden Land ’gainst himself also,” said Melanie. “In a hundred years, or two, the thought will be pleasing to her.”

  “The thought that her fellow guardian hath taken unicorn’s blood will not please her in ten thousand years,” said Fence.

  “She is too proud,” said Melanie, shrugging.

  Patrick said, “Why are you telling us all this?”

  “There’s another thing,” said Melanie, looking at him briefly. Her voice altered and grew light, incredibly, with laughter. “All this I did in despite of Shan. How, do I complete my plots, I shall never say to Shan, ‘Thus did I; thus didst thou’; for the Lords of the Dead will never let me in. An I desist, and they do let me in, for Shan I’ll have no tale. You did swear me, my lad, many several sorts of aid and comfort. What remedy hast thou for this ill?”

  She looked back at Randolph, who did not move. Into the charged, unnatural silence fell the ordinary sound of footsteps. Ted wrenched his head around, and saw three of the Lords of the Dead coming purposefully in their direction. Melanie saw them too. Her calm face, lightly etched with amusement at her own dilemma, set suddenly into fierce lines. But the Lords of the Dead, arriving at the edge of the circle, did not speak to her. “Lord Randolph,” said the middle one, in its lilting voice.

  Fence flinched under Randolph’s tightened hand, and then laid his own hand over it. But Randolph stood up. “What would you?” he said.

  “Your time of grace hath been long, and you have walked above the earth with the one whose life you bought,” said the right-hand one, in its austere voice. “Since we have come hither, we thought to bring you back.”

  “I’m ready,” said Randolph.

  “You God damn well are not!” said Ruth, scrambling to her feet. Fence got up also, but said nothing.

  “If there is dissent,” said the left-hand Lord, in its rich voice, “we have a thing to suggest. Edward Fairchild, for whom you did in fact bargain to exchange your life, proveth troublesome under the earth. We will send him back also.”