Dragonslayer: A Novel (12 page)

"I forgot," Melissa said. She looked at the bowed king, his feebly applauding wife, and the trembling graybeards that surrounded him, and she was flooded with a sudden compassion. The irony of the situation amused her. Frivolously, smiling, she blew them a kiss from her bound hands, and was delighted to see that the gesture caused gasps and ripples of consternation among the crowd and the royal party. Would that, she wondered, become part of the ritual? Would another Horsrick, in another time, with another Chosen, stand at exactly this place and say, "It is written in the
Codex Dracorum Novus
that you must now blow across the palm of your left hand while I halt the tumbril. . ."?

Ahead lay the Blight.

It was a fan-shaped area perhaps a league wide, directly in front of the dragon's cave, and it was distinguished by its blackened rocks and its utter lack of life. The dragon breathed here. The dragon emerged onto the ledge in front of the opening and exhaled gouts of flame that rolled in liquid balls across the Blight, until they exhausted themselves and drained away amidst the pebbles. From the whole region arose a stench like scorched vomit. In the center stood a charred oaken stake.

At the edge of the Blight, where the lush green of the June foliage gave way to stunted and flame-scarred stumps and boulders, the procession stopped. Here occurred the last of the ceremonies, the Touching, when each of the villagers, crowding around the cart, brushed Melissa's garment, so that she would bear away with her into the Blight and into oblivion, all the six-month accumulations on their souls. The Touching was most clearly an expression of their shared guilt, shame, and impotence, and most came forward with downcast eyes, either silent or muttering something incomprehensible. "You must touch their heads," Horsrick whispered hoarsely. "Forgive them!" So Melissa did this; and as she did, she began to feel that she had transcended herself and had magically joined all the others who, for longer than the memory of Swanscombe, had stood condemned in this spot and conducted these ceremonies.

Casiodorus looked on from the green knoll.

A bulging sphere in the west, the sun touched the horizon.

The earth trembled. A few pebbles shook loose from the hillside and bounded down in little metallic percussions. The crowd gasped and then exhaled in a low, grieving, and anticipatory moan. The horse shuddered.

"I'll walk from here," Melissa said.

Horsrick stiffened. "It's never been done. No, the Chamberlain and the cart must go with you as far as the post. That's the way it's
always
been. That's the way it's written!"

"I know, in the
Codex.
Well, let's get on with it, then." Melissa gripped the front of the cart and peered forward, across the Blight and up the hillside to the cave's mouth. She thought for a moment that she saw a whiff of smoke. She was far past fear, and had entered a state of euphoric curiosity and anticipation.

Horsrick tugged reluctantly at the bridle. "Come on, Nerf! Gid-dup, Nerf." Although the horse balked at first, it yielded and began to pick its way down the slope. The sun was now a half-circle on the edge of earth; the ground shook again, and this time there was an unmistakable jet of smoke from the opening. The old nag whinnied piteously and braced its front legs, but Horsrick hauled on the reins, and again it proceeded down the remainder of the slope and across the fiat to the place where the charred post stood.

"Don't tie me," Melissa said. "Please." She was staring mesmerized at the cave mouth, relying on Horsrick's arm to guide her out of the tumbril.

"Sorry, Miss, but I must, you know.
And
read the proclamation." Horsrick glanced nervously up the hillside while he fumbled with yet another length of rawhide and tied it loosely around the post. "You never know, if everything is not done exactly as it ought t&be done, what the Thing will do." A rumble heavier than the others shook the earth and the horse skittered backwards. "Whoa! Hold on, there!" One foot on the reins, fumbling inside his jerkin, Horsrick found a creased parchment, drew it out, unfolded it, and began to read: "Now be it known throughout the Idngdom that this woman, having lawfully been chosen by the lot of fortune and of destiny, shall hereby give up her life for the good of Urland . . ."

His voice, made into a thin wail by distance and by tension, scarcely reached the crowd at the edge of the green. For them, the figures of Horsrick and Melissa were reduced to insignificance by the enormity of the Blight, and by the fact that their perspective allowed them to see, as the last crescent of sun vanished, the emerging head of Vermithrax.

". . . and by this act shall be satisfied the Powers that dwell underground and all spirits that attend thereon. And in gratitude for this sacrifice, His Majesty has declared the family Plowman free of obligations, taxations, levies and imposts for a period of five years . . ."

Vermithrax's head rose above the ledge. The dragon did not look down at first; rather, it looked across the Blight and out to the distant hills whose tops were lit by the last of the sun, and to the horizon beyond. The great scaled head, like nothing else on earth, turned slowly as it searched that darkening line of horizon, searched for gliding shapes. Only when it had done this did it look down beneath the edge of the great bowl that lay before it, down over the little clusters of spectators to the horse, to the cringing figure of Horsrick gaping over the unrolled parchment, to the white-clad girl.

Whinnying piteously, the horse bolted and ran, the tumbril bounding across the boulders behind it. And Horsrick, despite his long experience with this dragon and despite his commitment to proper ritual, raced through the remainder of the proclamation: ". . . ordained and signed this day, etc., Casiodorus, in his glory the monarch of the realm, etc., etc., his seal, his mark, and duly read etc., etc., . . ." Then he turned and fled to the verge of the Blight.

Melissa was alone. She stood quite still, her head raised, meeting the glance of the dragon. She felt quite bodiless; nothing hampered the immense curiosity that had enveloped her.

But it was not Melissa that drew Vermithrax's first attention; it was the horse. Poor, frenzied Nerf had been halted in its flight by the jamming of the cart between two immense boulders, and now it struggled pathetically between hopelessly twisted shafts. For several moments Vermithrax observed this struggle, and then, very slowly, and with what in another time and place might have been dignity, it drew itself to the edge of the ledge and pushed off, plunging a hundred feet before the great wings completed their unfolding and the counterbalancing tail straightened; veering, it began its glide toward the horse.

Urlanders would disagree on what happened next. Some said later that the dragon passed only low enough above the horse to absorb its scent, and would have passed on, had not the maddened shrieking of the creature drawn it back. Others claimed that it circled above the horse for several moments before finally dropping upon it like a gigantic hawk. Still others insisted that the glide path never varied, but led directly to the unfortunate animal, and that the dollop of flame which ended the horse's life was a mere extension of the creature which, a moment later, fell upon the still-smoking corpse. However they may have disagreed on the details, none of the witnesses doubted that the old draft horse was incinerated and consumed and that some time, therefore, passed before the dragon's attention turned to the motionless woman. Dusk had fallen; some said that the dragon took flight and glided, low, the half-league to the woman. Others said that it ran, moving with uncanny speed on its ill-adapted legs . . .

There was still enough light for Melissa to watch the approach. From far away the dragon's eyes transfixed her. She saw nothing else; whatever remained of her will, her intelligence, and her individuality was drawn relentlessly into the twin vortexes of those eyes, and it seemed to her when she looked into them that she was staring across the horizons of time itself, infinitely profound, and at the same time into equally unfathomable pools of pain and loss. She entered a dimension utterly new and different. Simultaneously she was all that she would never be—child and old woman, mother and matriarch, queen and singing peasant. Intensely she was all of these and none, nothing, vapor and dreams, wishes and yearnings as old as blood. Never till that moment had she felt that she was beautiful, had been so sure of her radiance; yet she knew that, no matter what she was or might have been, she would never satisfy the need she saw there, a bottomless need. And when she spoke, it

was for both the dragon and herself, united then in an atmosphere their own, and bound forever: "Poor thing." Vermithrax moved forward around its eyes. "Poor Jhing," she said again.

And then a great, torn wing lifted in the last of the light, and enfolded her.

CHAPTER SIX

The Forest
Pool

Valerian had not
slept well. In dreams, the dragon moved. In dreams, with terrible clarity, a torn dragon wing had lifted above Melissa while Valerian stood paralyzed, powerless to help. The question that was always present, but present most insistently after the equinox, hung as if painted across the heavens:
Have I done this? Is this my fault?
In fact, swimming up into consciousness, Valerian realized that the words had actually been spoken, although no one else seemed to have heard. All were snoring in their robes.

Sweltering, Valerian rose and followed the river to a little upstream pool at the foot of a small rapid, and there, without ceremony, undressed and slipped into the cool and soothing water.

Beside the dead fire, Galen had also been dreaming. He had dreamed of Ulrich, and in his dream the old man was vibrantly alive, turning from the conjuring table with a question; yet, the voice that spoke that question was not Ulrich's but a much, much younger one: "Is this my fault?" Galen rose gently up and broke the surface of consciousness. He opened his eyes but did not move. Two feet in front of him was a praying mantis, stationary, its folded wings bedecked with dew. For a crazed second between dream and wakening, Galen thought it was the insect that had spoken. "No," he said very softly, laughing. "It certainly isn't
your
fault." And he blew gently, causing the iridescent wings to spread.

From behind came a sound: a movement, a sigh, a rustle of clothes on sheepskin. Someone was getting up. Galen lay still until the soft footfalls had receded, then looked up to see Valerian's retreating back. "Hey," he called softly, not wanting to waken anyone else, "wait for me!" But Valerian was already out of earshot. Galen pulled himself out of his robe, checked to see that the amulet was still safely suspended around his neck, and pulled on his boots. The forest was alive with birds; to the west the moun-taintops glistened. A frog leaped into the river at his approach, and a salamander on a mossy rock lifted the membrane of its eye and stared blankly. "It's all right," Galen said. "I'm not going to hurt
you."
He felt magnificent; he felt pure, and powerful, and absolutely certain of what he had to do. He felt—he hesitated to admit this even to himself—but he felt
heroic.

When he reached the pool, Valerian was already in the water and stroking toward the sunlit center in a steady crawl. "Hey!" Galen called, beginning to strip. "Great!"

"What?" Valerian threshed around, momentarily bewildered, then located him.

"I said that's a
great
idea!"

"Swimming? No! It's not! For one thing, the water's very cold. And for another thing there are . . . there are . . . snakes. Yes, snakes!"

"Snakes?" Galen shrugged, pulling off his shirt and trousers. "Snakes are all right. They don't bother you if you don't bother them." Naked, gasping a little, for the water was indeed very cold, he negotiated the slippery stones and plunged. Once in, he luxuriated. He had always loved the water and, whenever the weather and his studies with Ulrich had permitted, he had gone swimming in the river below Cragganmore, sometimes drifting and dreaming for a lazy mile in the currents before coming to his senses and jogging back naked along the river path. Now the crisp tingling of this spring-fed stream matched and sharpened his mood perfectly, causing him to whoop joyously, to slap the surface, and then to execute a perfect duck-dive, feeling the surface slip inch by inch down his raised legs as he sank into the green and shadowy underworld.

He was aware that Valerian had shouted as he submerged and had begun to swim away from him, but he had not caught the words. And now, having reached the stony bottom about six feet down, he saw Valerian only as a distant, bubble-swathed white shape above him. With long and easy frog-kicks, Galen set in pursuit, the stone brushing his ribs and belly, the amulet beating a soft tattoo on his chest. He gained quickly, certain in the first moments that Valerian was no swimmer, and beginning to estimate the upward glide that would allow him to seize one of those flailing ankles. For a moment he enjoyed this chase; but as he drew closer he glimpsed something that disturbed him profoundly, something that he could not be fully certain of, in the shifting shadows and curtain of bubbles. What he believed he had seen spun him back into early childhood. Once he had opened a door unexpectedly on his older sister, Apulia, and discovered that there were differences of which he had known nothing, but of which he was part. Then later, again in water, when one day he had been borne farther from Cragganmore than he had ever ventured on the river currents, suddenly rounding a bend near to the bank, he had chanced upon four girls from the village and heard them laughing in the water at the same instant as he saw their clothes littering the bank ... So now, in the seconds before he seized Valerian's ankle, he was overwhelmed by the same exhilarating sense of difference which spiraled through his stomach like a scaly tail, and was at once both a dread and a joy.