The Whim of the Dragon

  “Better late than never,” said Fence, grimly for him. “I’ll see you at supper.” And he tucked the book under his arm and went out, slamming the heavy door behind him.

  CHAPTER 9

  AFTER the council, Ted and Patrick retired to their room, where Patrick lay on the rug and read Inherit the Stars, and Ted sat in the window seat and read the book Celia had given him.

  Its framing narration was written for ten-year-olds; but it quoted copiously from Shan’s journals, from later commentators on them, and from a variety of other sorcerous and historical works that were hard for Ted to puzzle out and would have been far too much for a ten-year-old. Maybe you were supposed to begin with the framework and grow gradually into the quotations. Ted plowed doggedly through them whether he understood them or not; maybe they would wake up Edward’s knowledge, or spur Edward to make some enlightening remark.

  He was reading the story of the wizard and the animals. The old man in all the tapestries and carvings was Prospero, who had been Master of the Red School, where Shan had started out as an apprentice. In pursuit of his studies, he had been sent to a place called Griseous Lake, to watch a song happen. This made no sense to Ted, but there was no explanation. He had lost his horse and arrived too late for the song, as the result of which a young Blue Sorcerer had died. At Griseous Lake, he had met Melanie, and after a time had quarreled with her because she had made him immortal. Ted, remembering that immortality came from the blood of a unicorn killed by treachery, could understand a reluctance to profit from such a deed; but Shan, besides that, seemed also to object to immortality itself.

  The Red Sorcerers all had animal companions, whom they called fellows. One of the early tasks of an apprentice was to find his inner ear, wherewith he could understand his fellows, and his inner voice, wherewith he could speak to them. Shan, who had been clumsy and backward in this regard, achieved both voice and ear suddenly in the course of gaining his immortality. He had not meant to cheat, if you could call that cheating, and he did not want the immortality anyway. But the Red School dismissed him from its service.

  He had taken from the body of the dead Blue Sorcerer anything he thought the man’s friends might find valuable. He accordingly took this collection to the Blue School, which welcomed him happily and invited him to join its ranks instead. His first task was to discover exactly what had happened to the Blue Sorcerer. That was a separate story, which Ted reluctantly skipped because it had little to do with Shan.

  The discovery took Shan about ten years, during which he made up his quarrel with Melanie. He still had his fellows with him, cat, dog, horse, and eagle. He had refused to tell what few secrets of the Red School he knew to the Blue Master, but he found himself telling them to Melanie. Melanie, who had a long-standing grudge against the unicorns, enlisted the aid of a dragon and managed to turn a unicorn into a fellow. When Shan found out, he was outraged; Melanie refused to release the unicorn, and moreover had told the Blue School about her achievement. The Blue School was half fascinated and half horrified; it was certainly very pleased to get the information it had wanted about the methods of the Red School. Shan spent much fruitless effort seeking a way to free the unicorn, and finally, at the unicorn’s request, killed it. Then he resigned from the Blue School before they could kick him out.

  “What a hideous story!” said Ted.

  “It’s suppertime,” said Patrick.

  Ted told him about it on the way downstairs, and had the satisfaction of seeing Patrick blanch. They found their respective sisters in the crowded hall. Ted sat down next to Ruth and requested that she pass the salt.

  “Do you know where Fence is?” she said, pushing the heavy cut-glass salt cellar in his direction so carelessly that she spilled its silver spoon and a good pile of salt. Ellen made an exasperated noise and began spooning the spilled salt back into the cellar, along with a few crumbs and some cat hair.

  “I haven’t seen him since this morning,” said Ted, looking away from this operation and concentrating on Ruth’s face. She seemed to be trying not to cry, and Ted felt it necessary to justify having lost track of Fence. “I’ve been reading.”

  “So have we all,” said Ruth, darkly. “Fence has gone to beard Meredith in her den, and he said he’d see me at supper.”

  She explained what had happened. Ted couldn’t blame her for worrying. It was Fence’s nature that, if he said he would see you at supper, then he would see you at supper. Ted said, “Where’s Meredith’s den, Ruthie? Should we go rescue him?”

  “What do you suppose we can do against a bunch of sorcerers?” said Patrick.

  “Quite a lot, probably,” said Ruth. “They’re sworn to abjure violence, and there are five of us. But we aren’t supposed to know anything about it.”

  “Where’s Randolph, then?” said Laura.

  They all looked around; it was crowded in the Dragon Hall, and all the red and pink light made it hard to recognize people. Ellen finally located Randolph by standing on the bench. He was sitting with Matthew and Celia at one of the shorter tables to the right of the fireplace.

  “Benjamin’s with them,” said Laura, also standing, rather precariously, on the bench.

  Ted got up. Sure enough, between Randolph’s wild black head and Celia’s smooth, braided one loomed, six inches higher than either of them, the graying, dark head of Benjamin and his big, brown-clad shoulders. Matthew, sitting across from the three of them, caught Ted’s eyes and favored him with a steady, if blank, look, probably intended to tell Ted to behave without attracting Benjamin’s attention.

  “Well, he’s got to look at us sometime,” said Ted, and started to climb over the bench.

  Ruth caught hold of the hem of his shirt and dragged him back down, upsetting her ale into her plate. “Not today,” she said. “We were specifically ordered to leave him alone today.”

  “Do you want to help Fence, or don’t you?”

  There was a furious silence.

  “Well, for heaven’s sake,” Ellen said. “You’re the King, aren’t you? Get a page to fetch Randolph.”

  At a formal banquet Ted would have thought of this himself. There would have been pages everywhere, and he would have been stuck up at the head of the table feeling silly. But in this hall you served yourself and sat where you pleased. “Seest thou any pages?” he said.

  “I see John,” said Ellen.

  “Well, wave to him and then get down off that bench before Benjamin sees you. Laura, get down before you fall down.”

  Laura got down. Ellen also did as she was told with remarkable meekness. John came up to them smiling, leaned over the table, and said to Ted, “How may I aid you?”

  “Could you, of your courtesy, go to Lord Randolph and tell him—privily,” added Ted, “that I need to speak to him?”

  John looked not as if he were going to refuse, but as if he were puzzled. Ted said, on impulse, “Benjamin is vexed with us.”

  John grinned a grin of perfect comprehension and said, “As Your Majesty wills it,” in a tone that any one of the five of them might have used, playing. Then he charged across the crowded room to Randolph. Randolph got up promptly, crossed the room, sat down next to Ted with his back to the table, and said, “What is your gracious will?” in a perfectly serious voice.

  Ruth told her story for the fourth time. Randolph frowned all through it. “You have been with the cavernous magicians these three months, and knew not sooner?”

  “How was I supposed to know sooner?” said Ruth, so sharply that Ted blinked. Randolph seemed unaffected; and also unconvinced. Ruth said, “I spent those months as a disgraced apprentice; because of the Nightmare Grass.”

  “Oho!” said Randolph, as if something had suddenly become clear to him.

  “Yes,” said Ruth. “So I didn’t know. But your Lady Ruth knew right where those books were.”

  “The next question,” said Randolph, slowly, “is, knew Meredith that she knew?”

  “You think she might have been as sneak
y as I am?”

  “Sneakier by far,” said Randolph, looking her in the eye until she turned red.

  “Shouldn’t we all do some sneaking?” said Ted, impatiently. “You don’t know what may be happening to Fence.”

  “But look you,” said Randolph. “Ruth must not seem to have betrayed her to Fence.”

  “Well, you won’t find out by speculating,” said Patrick. “Let Ruth stay here.”

  “Come on, then,” said Ellen, jumping up.

  Randolph stood up from the bench and surveyed them. “All of you?” he said.

  “Say Fence asked you to come for him if he was late, and we were all with you and would not be gainsaid,” said Ellen.

  “And that’s no more than truth,” said Randolph. He stopped in the act of turning away, and looked at Ruth again. “Will you guide us so far as the door?” he said.

  “Good heavens, don’t you know where Meredith’s study is?”

  “How should I?” said Randolph.

  Ruth stood up and shook crumbs from the white folds of her skirt. “It’s in the old wine cellars.” As Randolph simply went on standing there, she added, “Fence knew where those are.”

  “Shut Fence in a wardrobe,” said Randolph, precisely, “and he’ll find the loose plank i’the back before thou’st turned the key i’the lock.”

  “I’d think,” said Ruth, exasperated, “that rival schools of magic would spy on one another.”

  “So they have,” said Randolph, in extremely grim tones. “But one of ’em hath been o’er-trusting. Come your ways.”

  They followed him out of the noisy hall. Ruth then led them to the back of High Castle, out of the regions Ted was familiar with. Nobody said anything until she marched down the last narrow stairway and flung open the door into a dazzle of gold light. It smelled of flowers and greenness and grass baking; it smelled like the soul of summer; it smelled as the whole outdoors had smelled on the day of the Unicorn Hunt. Something stirred and stretched in the back of Ted’s mind, and, incomprehensibly but with a pleasing rhyme and rhythm, Edward said, “The fieldis ouerflouis / With gowans that grouis, / Quhair lilies lyk lou is, / Als rid as the rone.”

  “I never knew this was here!” said Ellen, indignant.

  And Patrick said, “They can grow trees underground. One point for us.”

  “What’re you doing,” said Ted, irritated, “keeping a list of everything we got right in the game?”

  “Shut up,” said Ruth, from the far door.

  Randolph had already joined her there; the rest of them hurried up. “Now, then,” said Ruth to Randolph. “Meredith’s study is the second door on the right.” She took him by the elbows and shook him slightly, as if he were Patrick. “Now watch out,” she said. “Meredith is a demon. She’ll say awful things that go around in your head for weeks afterward.”

  Randolph said, “We’ll heed your warnings,” and Ruth let go of him. He opened the door softly, and they followed him through it.

  CHAPTER 10

  RUTH stood in the green smell and waited. She leaned her back against an oak and thought very pleasantly about almost nothing. In the far spaces of her mind somebody said, The fieldis ouerflouis / With gowans that grouis, / Quhair lilies lyk lou is, / Als rid as the rone. She looked thoughtfully at the lilies at her feet, which were certainly the color of rowan berries, although she would not have called that red. She blinked; the tangled, half-familiar language drifted away.

  The far door burst open and the rest of them tumbled back in. Ellen and Patrick bolted up to her and began talking about broken glass and people in white.

  “Not here,” said Fence. “Come to my chamber.”

  “Oh, Fence, for the love of mercy,” said Ruth. “Not all those stairs. Come to my room. I think Lady Ruth might even have kept there somewhat for our refreshment.”

  They came with her docilely enough.

  It seemed to Ruth, ushering her six guests into her room, that she had done nothing since returning to the Hidden Land except gather in odd places for uncomfortable conferences. Her three younger relations piled into the room and took over the bed. Ted lay on the rug. Fence, refusing her offer of the one chair, sat on the table. Randolph came past her last of all, and Ruth felt suddenly peculiar. He was much taller than the rest of them, and his constraint and the signs of stress on his face made him seem by far the most adult. Fence was as grown-up as they came, but Fence seldom looked it. How old were they, anyway? Younger than her parents? Ruth consulted the back of her mind, which was silent; and then blurred her thoughts, whereupon she knew that Randolph was twenty-six and Fence three years older.

  Ruth shut the door. Randolph sat down on one of her chests, beneath the tapestry depicting the double white violet that blooms twice a year. Ruth felt it necessary to take the situation in hand. She took from the little wall cupboard a tray containing eight rather dusty goblets in red glass and a large red glass decanter. She put the tray down beside Fence, twisted the stopper out of the decanter, and poured into one of the goblets a thick, dark fluid. It clung to the sides of the glass and gave off a potent smell of blackberries. Ruth handed the glass to Fence, who was looking bemused.

  “There,” she said. “Is that fit to drink?”

  “It’s one of Agatha’s cordials,” said Fence. “Sweet but wholesome.”

  Ruth accordingly distributed glasses to everybody, and sat down in Lady Ruth’s chair. “Now will somebody tell me coherently and in a decent order,” she said, “what happened in there?”

  “Fence first,” said Randolph, in a stifled tone as if he wanted to laugh, “for great events transpired e’er we arrived.”

  Fence snorted, and ran both hands through his hair, flattening it again. “Oh, great,” he said. “Two sorcerers with more wit than to use their powers; the one barred from any effect of violence by the lack of his weapon and a disinclination to do harm, t’other by her sworn oath. A tussle of children.”

  “What made you so mad?” said Ellen.

  “Me, thou knowest,” said Fence. “What did so enrage Meredith was, first, that any dare meddle in her affairs; second, that I should presume to remove the Lady Ruth; third, that I demanded to read o’er the indices of her libraries. She soon minded her that should she ope her indices to me, my presumption would then be revealed to me regarding the Lady Ruth.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that,” said Ruth.

  “You shouldn’t,” said Ted.

  Fence looked at him, and then at Ruth. “Indeed, she said she’d speak to you herself, and I could not gainsay her.”

  Ruth experienced the swooping dread of a person who wakes up on a lovely summer morning and remembers that she has to go to the dentist. “Shan’s mercy, Fence! You told me not to trouble myself! Now she’s thrice as stirred up as she’d have been had I braved her, and you’ve left her to me?”

  “What am I to the Lady Ruth,” said Fence, rather sharply for him, “that I might meddle so in her affairs?”

  “How should I know? You said you could meddle!”

  “Forgive me,” said Fence, more quietly. “I did in some wise mistake the Lady Ruth’s commerce with Meredith.”

  “She hasn’t—-I haven’t had any commerce with Meredith all summer, not to speak of.”

  “That, I think, is for your punishment. She hath withdrawn her custom of friendly confidence, thinking to wound you.”

  Ruth found this reasonable, but could not refrain from saying, “Oh, that’s wonderful. Now I get to go be wounded, I suppose, and hope that’s excuse enough for leaving her tutoring?”

  “Wait,” said Randolph. “Fence, thou hast no power o’er the Lady Ruth, but I have. I’ll remove her, as my betrothed, from a malign influence. Meredith will be choleric, but she’ll have little recourse.”

  Ruth struggled with contradictory impulses. Having scolded Fence for saying he would help her and failing, it was foolish, not to mention ungrateful, to refuse the selfsame help when Randolph offered it. And yet she was indignant th
at he should choose this way out, as if he were certain she would never manage the matter on her own.

  “Ruth doesn’t like it,” said Ellen, who was acute, if not discreet.

  “Nor I,” said Randolph, promptly. “Yet meseemeth the handiest way from out our difficulties. My lady?”

  “I’m not anybody’s lady,” said Ruth. She had figured out what bothered her. She disliked Randolph’s calling attention to the betrothal just when breaking it off would save them both embarrassment. But Randolph was right. She said, more calmly, “Yes, it is the handiest way out. It’s just not very savory.”

  Randolph stood up. “No,” he said. “It is of a piece with all our business this summer. By your gracious leave, I’ll go rant at Meredith.”

  “Shouldn’t you wait until she’s calmed down?” said Ted.

  “No, I think not,” said Randolph. “In the wake of calm cometh thought; the less she thinks while yet she hath Ruth in her grasp, the better.” He paused on his way out and said to Fence, “I’ll make report to you.”

  “Make it here, to all of us,” said Fence.

  Randolph said, “As you will,” and left, closing the door with a certain force.

  “What else happened?” said Ruth.

  “ ’Twas Claudia,” said Fence. “Like me, Meredith taught her, and did presently refuse to teach her; yet she learned more than Meredith knew, and did, it now appeareth, some little mischief. She did strew about the open library library works not rightly the Green Caves’, or rightly theirs but secret. We know not whence she had Shan’s journal. The book concerning animals they had most properly from the Red Sorcerers, before the war; and they do use it to subdue the cardinal to their will, and for naught else. The third book, the history, they had from the Dwarves, though it differeth from our own accounts.”

  Ted listened earnestly to all this, as if he were trying to commit it all to memory. The three younger ones, having heard it twice already, bounced gently, trying out the bed.