The Hunting of the Last Dragon

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “Do you remember what Lan said about fear? She said fear was faith in the enemy. If you dwell all the time on what makes you afraid, your own fear sucks the strength out of you. The dragon doesn’t make you afraid, Jude—it doesn’t even know you live. You make yourself afraid, by believing in the beast’s strength, by having faith in it.”

  I was put in mind again of what Lan said to me about the worst dragons being the ones in my mind. I said, “’Tis hard not to have faith in it, though, when I’ve seen what it can do.”

  “Have faith in yourself, too,” she said. Leaning close, she pressed her palm flat against my chest, across my heart. “Hold fast to what lies in here,” she said. “No one can touch your heart, Jude—not unless you allow them to.”

  I thought on that closed look she got sometimes, that silent wall she built about herself. I understood it, now. It locked out a multitude of hurts, and locked in a mighty strength. And I despaired, thinking on my own lost dreams and joys, crushed out of me that day I returned to Doran and found it all burned bare. My heart had been touched, all right, with or without my permission—touched and torn, and tossed to utter grief.

  I think Lizzie knew what I was thinking, for she said, very gentle, “All things can be made new, Jude.”

  I looked into her face, and saw such understanding there that I looked away quick, afore she saw my tears. “I think we should finish our meal,” I mumbled, scrambling on the stones for the bread and figs that we had dropped when the dragon came. She helped me search, and our hands touched in the dark, and held for two heartbeats. Then we looked for the bread again, and found it. In silence we ate, though the bread was stale and gritty in our mouths.

  After, we lay wrapped in our blankets on the stones, listening to the sea, and looking at the stars through the tiny windows. Lizzie slept on the blanket that was already in the place, but I had only stones under me. The wind still blew off the sea, and the air was cool. Moonlight pierced the slits in the roof, for the moon was full, and our tiny shrine seemed filled with misty silver swords. There was a holy power in that place, doubtless from the saint who had once dwelled there.

  At some time in the night I woke aching, as if my back had been beaten. I heard Lizzie restless, too.

  “I think I prefer a witch’s straw mattress to a saint’s stones,” I said, and she giggled.

  “Aye, ’tis uncomfortable and cold,” she agreed. “But if you share this place we can sleep on two blankets, which will be softer, and have one to cover us.”

  Well, I wasn’t about to disappoint a maid in distress, so I got up and did as she suggested. It was more comfortable after that, and the smell of mouldy furs was worth the feel of Lizzie warm and close. Don’t dip your pen so eager-like in the ink, Brother, for there’s nothing thrilling happened, save that I was content for the first time since Doran, and found a wondrous peace in the nearness of a maid. Though I have to confess that in the morning I was sorely tempted, seeing her there against my arm, her hair—

  Hark! ’Tis a grand storm outside! Shall I close the window shutters?

  There—that’s stopped the draft. Still writing? Well, you may as well stop now, for I’ll not tell you any more about temptation, ’twill only torture you. I just saw Chen running across the courtyard to the barn, shining wet and all lit up by lightning like one of those bright fire-flowers Jing-wei told me about. He’ll be off to make sure the thunder doesn’t spook his horse. It’s lame, his horse, and he asked the Abbot if he can stay until its hoof is mended. The others are all moving on tomorrow; I suspect he wants to stay on Jing-wei’s account. I seem plagued with waiting for hooves to mend. I wish he would leave. His presence here is too disturbing. I confess, though, that Chen is making me think on things I have not thought about before. I’ve been remembering Old Lan of late, and the wisdom she had. I’m thinking now that mayhap she was no witch at all, but just a woman with more knowledge than perhaps we are comfortable with. Mayhap wisdom like Lan’s is only another side of truth, if truth be like a gem, cut on several sides to let the full light through. I see that sideways look, Brother. I’m sorry; I’m merely trotting out my thoughts. For God’s love, don’t write this down! I might be burned for heresy!

  seventeen

  Don’t look so cautious, Brother—I’ll not bite off your head today. I’m sorry for my ill humour yesterday, and some of the things I said. They were not meant, and were certainly not deserved, after all your kindnesses to me. And you are doing well with all your writing: the Abbot told me that he read what you’ve done so far, and he likes it very well. He also likes the bits about the monastery, for they record a part of history as well, so he says. I suspect, between you and me, that he rather likes the idea of having his own name in a book. So you’d better write it: Abbot Dominic, of the Monastery of St. Edmund at Minstan, in the year of our Lord 1356. Perchance he’ll be famous one day, for he’s doing a newfangled thing: he’s building a school for ordinary folks, so they can learn to read and write. Learning shouldn’t be only for the rich, he said. And he’s started a goose farm for the quills, to keep your writing brothers well supplied. He’s offered me paid work looking after the geese, and I’m thinking on it, for it sounds a pleasant way of life. He offered Jing-wei work, too. He’s most impressed with the fact that she can read and write in her own language, and has offered to teach her to read and write in English, if she will afterwards become a teacher in his school. However, she won’t say if she will or no. She is quiet these days, and I think that, for some reason beyond me, I have offended her. She spends much of her spare time with Chen. But enough of my woes . . .

  I woke at dawn the next day, and lay listening to the strange breathing of the sea as it came and went upon the beach. I would have stayed long abed, for it was pleasant there with Lizzie, but she leaped up right quick once she woke, to watch for the dragon’s return. Well after sunup it came, flying low and with its belly full. It went straight to its cave, and we did not see it again all day.

  All morning Lizzie worked on the cut pieces of her mother’s dress, sewing them with Lan’s needle and threads into a long silken sheath. Right cunningly she sewed, and quick. I helped when I could, holding the pieces of silk together so the seams stayed true while she stitched.

  Near the middle of the day we drank the last of our water. Lizzie asked me to carry her down to the shore when the tide went out, and I watched as she upturned rocks at the water’s edge. She stood up, smiling, with a devilish-looking creature caught between her forefinger and thumb. She said it was a crab, good to eat. I gave her my knife, and she dealt swiftly with it, pulling off its claws and sucking the flesh from them. “The Gypsies ate these,” she said. “There are other sea-foods, too, if we can find them. Most are fine uncooked.”

  She offered me one of the creature’s evil-looking claws, but I shook my head, the bile rising in my throat. Truth to tell, I felt constantly sick in that place. I think it was the smell of it, the bitter air, the knowing that we were in our enemy’s domain. I shook in fear the whole time we were out there, while Lizzie hunted for her grotesque food.

  Back in the shrine, Lizzie began to sew again. She was making a long sleeve-like thing, and I couldn’t for the life of me see its resemblance to a fish or a dragon. Trusting her, I said nothing, save that I would go to Seagrief that afternoon to look for the sticks she needed.

  “This will be ready by the time you get back,” she said. “I’ll slide the sticks where they need to go, and we can fly it tonight.”

  “Tonight?” I cried, alarmed. “So soon?”

  “Just to see if it works,” she said, with her lips curved. “Nothing to get ruffled about. The dragon will be safely gone while we try it.”

  “I’m scared, all the same,” I confessed. “All the time I’m scared, in this place. I’ve tried to have faith in myself, Lizzie, but I can’t. I keep seeing the dragon, and Doran.”

  “Why are you afraid at this moment?” she asked.
>
  “The dragon might fly out of its cave. It might come here and burn us out. Do to us what it did to that soldier out there.”

  “Aye. And a shipload of mad pirates might land in the cove, and cut us to pieces. Or the stars might fall, or you might tumble down and break your stupid neck, or—”

  “’Tis not funny, Lizzie!”

  “I’m not jesting!” she said, standing up. “Is it likely that the dragon will fly down here in broad daylight, just to sniff inside this shrine?”

  “No,” I said, doubtfully. “I suppose not.”

  “Then what are you afraid of? I’m busy with my sewing. The dragon’s asleep in its lair. You’re standing safe and sound inside a stone shelter. What’s to be afraid of?”

  I sighed, and half smiled at her. “Only an angry maid,” I said.

  Picking up one of our bags, she emptied it of all save our two water skins. “Fill these while you’re in Seagrief,” she said. “And make sure you collect sticks that are light and strong. Willow, if you can find it, for it will bend without breaking.”

  “I think everything will be scorched dry,” I said, taking the bag, “but I’ll do my best.”

  “I have no doubt you will,” she said, and to my surprise reached up to kiss my cheek. “Take care,” she added. “I need you, Jude of Doran.”

  My heart sang all the way up the cliff path, and even the burned walls of Seagrief couldn’t cool my joy. I found the well, lowered the bucket, and filled our water skins. The water was grey with ash, for the little roof over the well had burned and fallen in, but it didn’t taste too foul. I drank deeply there, then went to look for the sticks Lizzie needed.

  It was terrible to rummage about in those devastated homes, searching strangers’ sorry rubble. I found several blades from knives, and though the handles were burned away and the steel was black, they were still sharp. I wrapped them in a scrap of scorched leather, to take back for Lizzie to put in the fire-dust with the flint and metal shards. I found other things as well, too terrible to talk about. Twice I near spewed, and I ached, thinking on Doran. I felt displaced, unreal, like a lost phantom poking about in some forgotten part of hell. It was strange to look up at blue skies and realise that the rest of the world was still there, sound and ordinary in parts.

  At last I discovered pieces of a wattle fence behind a blackened clay wall, and some of the willow sticks were undamaged by the fire. I pulled them out, and found them still supple; the fence must have been built just afore the dragon came. I got all the sticks that were available, binding them into a bundle that I could carry on my back, and returned to the beach.

  Partway down the cliff path I stopped to rest, and looked to where the lair was. In a moment of pure, mad defiance, I lifted my right hand and jabbed two fingers in the air. “I’ve still got my bow fingers, you old lizard!” I yelled, and the words echoed around the cove like an abbey bell. Then I scrambled down the path and raced to the shrine. But that small act of boldness had done my soul good.

  When Lizzie saw me, she laughed. “I heard your battle cry,” she said. “The dragon must be mortal scared.”

  “Aye,” I replied, smiling, handing her a swollen water skin. “Only it’s not my fingers it needs to worry about, but yours, as you do that sewing there.”

  “It’s done,” she said, “and needs only the sticks to give it shape, to hold it open so the wind can fill it.”

  “’Tis wondrous work, Jing-wei,” I said.

  She looked at me strangely, a smile playing about her lips. “You called me by my true name,” she said.

  I was flustered a moment or two, because of the pleasure on her face. “Well, it fits you better than Lizzie,” I said. “Besides, only a brave maid from Hangchow could sew a silken flying-thing, and use it to slay a dragon.”

  She lifted the water skin to her lips, but not before I saw the red blush on her cheeks. I swore to myself that I would never again call her by any name save her own true one.

  As she drank, I dropped the sticks on the floor beside her, and unbound them. “There was little left,” I said. “I got these from a fence that had been only partly burned. They’re supple, still.”

  Marvelling, I watched as she slid the sticks down some of the seams she had sewn, then stitched the silk around the frame to make it stable. She gave me two of the longer, more supple sticks and asked me to soak them in the sea, to make them softer. I did as she said, all the while keeping a wary eye on the lair above. Back in the shrine, I watched as Jing-wei slid the wet wands into the wider end, curving them into a hoop, binding them into place within the silk. Then she spread her work along the floor. Like a long hollow snake it was, wide at the end supported and held open by the willow frame, and tapering to several silken tails. The main body of the thing stretched the full length of the shrine; the tails were as long again. For size and colour, I suppose a half-blind dragon might perceive it as a fledgling of its kind, though a fatally deflated one.

  Jing-wei saw my doubt, and smiled. “It will come alive in the wind,” she assured me. Then she took one of the balls of cord Lan had given her, cut off several lengths, and fixed them to the silken sleeve, near the willow hoops at the wide end. One of the cords she did not cut, but left attached to the ball. “With this we’ll control the silk dragon, even when it’s far in the sky,” she said. “Don’t look so forlorn, Jude; I know what I’m about.”

  I went and leaned on the window ledge, looking at the sea. The wind still came in, strong and steady, and I did not ask what she would do if that night the air was still.

  “I have another task for you,” she said, from behind me. “Will you go out and fetch that sword you saw? We’ll need it, if the beast is only wounded.”

  I turned to face her. She was bent over the ashes on the floor, mixing water into them with a stick.

  “Lan said our weapon cannot fail,” I said.

  “Aye, so she did. And it won’t. The beast will be torn apart. But it might not die at once, and I will not leave it suffering. Please fetch the sword.”

  “His hand was still about the hilt,” I said, faltering. “I don’t . . . I’m not . . .”

  She said nothing, but dipped one end of a willow stick into the sooty paste. Then carefully she began painting eyes on the silken thing she had made, near the larger end.

  Full of dread, I went out to do as I was told. But the corpse was gone, dragged out by the waning tide, or burned to nothingness by the beast. I found a strip of leather, metal-studded, caught between the rocks, and knew it was the soldier’s belt. It seemed familiar, with those studded bits, and I supposed I had seen another like it in a different place. The sword I found at last, black as the stones it lay among, half buried in sand. I was afraid to touch it, lest some part of the dead soldier’s flesh still clung to it, with dragon’s blood; but it was clean save for the soot that covered it. I scoured it with sand, taking off most of the blackness, then lifted it by the hilt, feeling its awful weight, and raised the blade to the sky.

  Again a strange memory stirred in me, and I stared hard at the handle, the fine work etched along the blade. Then it hit me: this sword was Tybalt’s! And the moment I knew that, there crowded into my head a dozen other things: the image of Richard that night the minstrel told us where the dragon was, and how Richard’s face had shone, as if he heard a summons; words Richard had spoke, and how he longed to slay a dragon the way his forefathers had; how the soldier here upon the beach had worn no armour, no helmet, and had only this sword. And the studded belt I had seen abandoned in the rocks—it was the belt Richard had worn. I remembered, too, another thing, so awesome and powerful that I scarce could take it in: I remembered that the soothsayer had told Richard that this sword—this sword I held now in my hands—would be the sword to slay the last dragon.

  I cannot tell the feeling I had as I stood there on the beach that moment, with that sword held high, and in my mind and heart a sense so strong of destiny before me, and a thousand souls behind me, like angel-guards
gathered about, and saints, and all the company of heaven, to help me do this thing that was ordained for me. I thought on what Old Lan had said about my destiny, and how Jing-wei and I were bound by fate to find her place; and I thought on the sword and its history, and how all things had come together here, on this ashen shore, with a strange weapon only Jing-wei understood, and this star-fated sword, and a dragon to be slain. And I swear, Brother Benedict, there was then no fear in me, no doubt, but only a sense of destiny, and a steel-strong will to win.

  I felt Jing-wei beside me, and lowered the sword point to the stones, for my arms were mortal tired.

  “’Tis a long while you’ve been out here, Jude,” she said. “The sun is going down. Come back to the shrine, afore the dragon flies.”

  “This is Tybalt’s sword,” I said.

  She limped a little way past me, looking to where the body had been, her hand shading her eyes from the low sun. “Then Tybalt should be buried,” she said, very low. “At least, a pile of stones should be raised over him, and a cross placed where he lies.”

  “The body’s gone,” I said. “And it wasn’t Tybalt. It was Richard. I saw his belt caught in the rocks, the studded belt he wore.”

  She went very quiet, thinking; then she said, with a look almost of relief: “I didn’t kill him, then, that night in the forest.”

  There was a movement high in the sun-gold cliff; we looked up to see the dragon emerge, slow, from its lair. It stopped in the entrance, only its head and neck visible to us. Seemingly unaware of us, it looked out to sea.

  “Don’t move,” warned Jing-wei.

  “I wasn’t about to,” I said, visions still blazing in my head. “Let it come down here now, if it will, and I’ll do battle with it.”