Dragon Magic (12 page)

Though he was sure that if there were a dragon he would remember from having heard it in Sunday school. Daniel in the lions’ den, that was a story he had heard several times when he was a little kid. And Sherkarer had heard the slaves talk about it in Babylon.

And if Napata and Meroë weren’t in the Bible, then maybe he could find them in a history book. He had never tried looking up things, except what he had to do for school. But this was different, more exciting, because he had been a part of it. Shaka was always talking about Africa and how people said black men didn’t have any real history, but they had.

Did one of those leaflets and books Shaka was always getting have something about

Meroë and the black Pharaohs like Piankhay and—Ras was impatient to get home and look at his brother’s library. Suddenly it was taking forever to get the drying done.

Another thought crossed Ras’s mind. Sig had put together the silver dragon, and he had done the blue one. But there were two more, the red and the gold ones. What adventures could they have with them?

When Ras returned home Mom was not in the kitchen doing the usual Saturday morning baking (Mom liked to make her own cakes—from scratch, she said—not use mixes except when she was in a big hurry).

Instead she sat in the living room and she was crying. Dad stood at the window, his back to the room, his hands in his pockets. The very set of his shoulders said he was good and mad.

“He’s of age,” Dad was saying as Ras came in. “And he’s so set in this madness that you can’t argue with him! But I won’t have that kind of lawless talk in this house—understand, Louise?”

Mom did not answer, she just went on crying. And Ras felt sick to his stomach, as he always did when Mom got so upset. Neither one of them looked at him when he came in with the clean laundry, and he was more uneasy than ever. It was as if they had forgotten all about him. Finally he had to say something.

“Got the clothes back, Mom.”

But it was Dad who turned to look at him. “George!” His voice showed that he was really upset, and it looked as though it was Ras who had upset him this time. The boy tried to think of what he had done. The old house—the puzzle—that must be it! And he had no excuse, either. He felt sicker than ever.

“I understand you have been refusing to answer to your proper name at school.” Dad crossed the room to stand over him.

Ras was so surprised at the accusation, which was so far from what he expected, that he had no quick answer.

“Your brother is both foolish and stubborn,” Dad continued. “I am not going to have you copy him, understand! Your name is George Brown and nothing else—no African mumbo-jumbo! And he is Lloyd Brown. If I catch you repeating any of his dangerous and stupid remarks, I’ll see that you don’t do it again. Your brother has just about broken your mother’s heart.

You look at her—look at her good, boy! Do you want her to cry like that over you? Do you?” Dad’s voice was close to a roar.

“No—no, sir,” Ras found an answer. What had Shaka—Lloyd—done?

“You had better remember that! Your brother has chosen his own way.

He’s left this house and he is not coming back as long as he talks the kind of treasonable rubbish he spouted out this morning! I served my country”—Dad ran his hands over his face and then rubbed his forehead as if he had a bad ache behind it—”I did not want to go in the army, very few men do. But there was a war on and I believed in what we were fighting for. I’m not an African—I’m an American, and I’m proud of it—proud, do you understand! And I’m not going to have treason talked in this house! I only hope Lloyd will come to his senses in time. He has a good brain, why doesn’t he use it?”

Dad went back to the window. Mom wiped her eyes on a tissue from her apron pocket. “He’s a good boy underneath all that foolishness, Evan.

He’ll come back, I know he will. I—well, it just surprised me so, his saying he was going to live with that awful Ali man. I guess I was shaken up. But I know it will all come out all right—Lloyd’s a good boy.”

Dad made some kind of a noise and Mom got up and went to stand beside him, her hand on his shoulder. Ras swallowed, picked up the laundry bag. So Shaka had left as he had threatened to do. Ras had seen Ali once—a thin man with a little pointed beard and a quick, angry want of talking. He was the one who had started Shaka reading all the African books.

Those books! Had Shaka taken them with him? Ras left the clothes in the hall and slipped upstairs. Shaka’s room was bare, except that his closet door was open and hanging inside was his good suit, the one he hardly ever wore any more. There was a drawer pulled crookedly out of the bureau, but it was empty. And there were light places on the wall where his posters had been. Yes, the bookshelf was bare.

Ras sat down on the edge of the bed. That sick feeling which had started at seeing Mom cry was worse. Shaka had gone. Dad said he was wrong, stupid. But when his brother had talked about what he believed, he could make you believe it, too. Or almost—because Dad’s arguments were just as strong. It was like Sherkarer’s belief in Apedemek and Daniel’s in the Lord God Jehovah.

But Ras knew one thing: Sherkarer had gained his freedom because he had trusted in a man of another religion and race. They had worked together to destroy the sirrush-lau; neither could have done it alone.

Working together—Like Sig and he. Last time, in the old house, they had fought and Sig had locked him in the basement. But today they had had something in common.

Now he wanted to see Sig again—talk about those two other dragons.

And it was easier to think about that than about Shaka and what was happening here at home.

Artie Jones kicked the football so that it hit the curb and bounced back.

He picked it up, saw its new brown side was already scuffed. He had done that himself, just fooling around with it. What was the use of having a football if you didn’t have any guys to play with? Nobody lived around here but that kook Kim Stevens, and Sig Dortmund, and that Ras guy. He did not want to get hooked up with them, not when there were smooth guys like Greg Ross and his gang around. He had hoped they would suggest kicking when he took his ball to school yesterday. But they had been so busy talking about how they were all going to the Senior High game this afternoon that they had not heard him say he had a new ball or even looked his way when he got it out of the locker to show them.

Greg’s dad was taking them in the station wagon, and they sure would have a groovy time. Artie had stood there, hoping, just a little, that Greg would turn around and ask him to go, too.

Nothing much to do around here—never was. He could go down to the movies. But he’d seen the picture they had this week. And the TV was at the repair shop. If he hung around home Mom would ask about doing homework. He sure was not going to spend Saturday doing that!

There was Sig heading to the corner in a hurry. If they played ball here, though, Sig would expect to hang around with him at school, too. Then Artie might never get a chance to be one of Greg’s gang. Only, it sure was lonesome. Halfheartedly Artie began to walk down the block after Sig.

Sig did not look in his direction at all. Was he going back to the old house? Suppose he was? It was a spooky place but exciting. Had Sig found something in that locked room? Artie had not asked him. Now he wondered. But Sig was waiting there at the corner. Not for Artie, he never turned around to see him. No, he was waving at someone on the other side of the street. Why, it was that dopey kid who wouldn’t tell his right name.

What was Sig doing with
him
?

Artie trailed half a block behind the other two, who had joined forces.

Yes, they were heading for the old house. They had stopped by the wall, were looking around. Moved by an impulse he did not understand, Artie crouched down behind a rubbish can., It did not hide him very well, but he guessed they did not see him, for they were going on in. Suddenly he was determined to follow them. If Sig had found something he should have told Artie, not that dope! After all, Artie had been with him that first time.

Maybe Sig thought Artie was too chicken because he had not stayed. Well, he would go in behind them, see what they had found, then let them know he’d watched them. That would show Sig!

He watched Sig climb through the window, Ras slipping in after him.

Artie, still holding the football, followed. They had a flashlight, he did not.

But today there was enough light for him to find his way. He heard the murmur of their voices, but not their words.

They had gone right to the room Sig had wanted to open that first time.

Artie slipped along the wall of the hall as quietly as he could, trying to hear.

“Heads takes the red—that fair?” Sig asked.

“Right!”

There was a moment of silence and then Sig said, with disappointment,

“Tails. Well, are you going to try?”

There was another period of quiet and then Artie heard Ras say in a very excited voice, “You saw that, didn’t you? It—it moved right away from my fingers!”

“Let me try!” Sig sounded impatient.

“See? It does that for you, too!”

“Let’s try the yellow one then.”

Red what? Yellow what? Artie was so curious he almost went to the doorway to see.

“It’s no good,” Sig said. “That first time, the pieces went together as if they wanted to, like I was hardly working at it. Was it the same for you?”

“Yes. But now it won’t. See, I can’t even hold a piece, it slips right away from me. Sig, do you suppose that means we are not going to be able to finish it?”

“But why not? What good is it only half done? There is no reason—”

‘There might be one we don’t know. I—I think we ought to leave it alone now, Sig, I really do.”

“It’s darn queer. Maybe it’s just today, maybe if we came back some other time—”

“Maybe, Sig, but somehow I don’t think so. And don’t you feel queer now, as if we shouldn’t be here at all? I didn’t feel that way before.”

There was a long moment of quiet and then Sig answered, “Yeah. I wasn’t going to say that, you might think I was a kook or something.

But—let’s get out of here—right now!”

Artie was confused. Somehow he did not want to face them at this moment. He looked around a little wildly, tugged open the nearest door, and swung into a closet, keeping his hand on the doorknob and the door open a crack. He did not even see them go by, but he heard their footsteps echoing through the big rooms. When it was quiet again he came out, determined to see what was in the room, what this red-yellow thing might be.

At first glance he saw nothing at all but a table and a chair. Then the light from the window showed him color on the table, which drew him closer.

The football dropped from his loosened grasp and he was not even aware he had lost it. A puzzle—a jigsaw puzzle! Why had Sig and Ras been so excited about a stupid old puzzle? There was a box there, too, with a lot of pieces in it. Some were turned up to show brilliant red or gleaming gold. There were a few red pieces lying by themselves to one side. How they glowed!

He could see the picture on the lid of the box, with a big silver dragon at the top and a queer blue one at the bottom, just like the finished two on the table. Then there were two more, a red dragon on the left and a gold one on the right. He hardly looked at the gold one. It was the red which caught his full attention.

It was—it looked so real! Artie put out a finger and touched one of the red pieces. It moved a little and—why, it actually seemed to snap into place beside another, interlocking smoothly. But Sig and Ras, they had talked as if they couldn’t get the pieces together at all! What did they mean—this was easy!

One of the pieces was lying face down and there was black writing on it, the letters thick and blocky. “R-e-x—Rex,” Artie spelled out.

Uncle Jim had had a dog named Rex once, he said it meant “king” in Latin.

Artie nipped the piece over. Yes, it went in here. Say, this was smooth.

He began to sort out the rest of the red pieces. Why, he could do this, even if Ras and Sig could not. This went here, and that there—Forgetting everything else, Artie settled down in the chair.

Red dragon, a red dragon up against a blue sky—Pendragon! That was it, he knew it as well as if someone standing at his elbow had told him—the Pendragon!

ARTOS, SON OF MARIUS

It was harvest time and most of the war host were scattered, out in the fields where the barley stood high and ready for the cutting and the grain was as golden as the sun was hot. A good harvest, as all had hoped, for it had been a bad year earlier with the cold, and there had been scant gleanings from a too-wet summer last year. Men had gone with empty bellies through the last of that cold and had sown grain they would joyfully have crammed by fistfuls into their mouths and chewed raw, even as they threw it into the waiting earth.

Not only in Britain had hunger pinched, but over-water, too. So that all men knew the winged-helmed invaders were on the prowl, and a coast watch had to be kept even though the men were needed in the fields.

Artos smeared the back of his hand across his forehead and tried not to wince as he straightened his aching back. Field work was harder than the training in the war band, though he had not had too much of that yet, just enough to prove how much he had yet to learn. He glanced now to where his shield mates were strung out in a straggling line along the field. It did not matter if one’s father was Marius, troop commander under the Dragon himself. A man was matched against his own deeds, not by what his father, or his father’s father, had done before him.

Artos had been named for the High King, Caesar of Britain, but he took his turn in the fields all the same. Just as he suffered the hard knocks of the wooden training sword when he was awkward or unlucky, or stupid enough not to be able to defend himself against Drusus’ attack. Drusus was old now, but he could remember seeing the last of the Legions go down to the sea, taking the might of Rome with them, leaving Britain open to the sea wolves.

The High King had ridden north five days ago, to visit the posts manned against the Scots and the painted men in the north. And he had taken most of the Companions with him. Modred ruled here in Venta.