The Whim of the Dragon (30 page)

“You know,” said Patrick, cheerily, and Laura jumped. “It’s all very well sitting here making deductions; but why don’t we just find these characters and ask them what the hell they think they’re doing?”

“I’d sooner go without seeing them,” said Fence, not to Patrick but to Matthew. Matthew nodded. Fence said to Michaelmas, “Where have you quartered them?”

“Atop the westernmost block,” said Michaelmas, still rummaging.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” said Patrick.

“Can we resolve our riddles and be gone by morning, we shall do so,” said Fence.

“You never did say if you thought the Dragon King sent them.”

“I trust he hath,” said Fence. “If they answer to him, at least they do answer.”

“Fence, where’s your spirit of adventure?” said Ellen, entering the fray with such suddenness that Laura jumped again.

Michaelmas looked up from his search and said to Fence, “Speak your riddles.”

Fence said, “What beast is it the unicorns pursue each summer? Before what beast doth winter flee? What beast maketh that which putteth the words to the flute’s song?”

Michaelmas sat back in his high, cushioned chair and whistled. “And you think to be gone by morning,” he said.

“You know them not?”

“I know one only, the second.”

“But,” said Laura, seized with irritation, “they’re a matched set. They all have the same answer. What’s the answer to the second one?”

“The dragon,” said Michaelmas. “But look you, this is clean impossible. The unicorns pursue not the dragon; nor maketh the dragon that which putteth words to the flute’s song.”

“Are you sure?” said Laura. “Because the one who gave us the riddles said that when we knew these things, then what manner of thing he was we would know also. And he talked as if he could fly; and he had a red light in his eyes.”

“Where met you this man?” said Michaelmas.

He had found what he was looking for: a large brass bell. He rang vigorously, and Chalcedony came across the room and took it out of his hand.

“The cook’s asleep,” she said. “It’s late. I’ve tea in my room.”

She went out, and came back with a tray, giving Laura time to wonder if she had said too much to Michaelmas about the man in red. Fence didn’t seem disturbed.

The tea was extremely strong, and unsweetened, but it was hot. Laura decided that, if she really couldn’t stand to drink it, she would leave it sitting on the floor to get moldy, and nobody would know the difference.

“Where she met this man,” said Fence, when they were all settled, “is all entangled with the matter of Shan’s Ring. Now, I’d meant to tell you of that; ’tis knowledge you can sift better than we, and of a sort that does belong in this Library. But I’d as lief th’other party had it not.”

“Had it never, or not for this present time?” said Michaelmas.

“Not for this present time.”

Michaelmas looked over Laura’s head to where Chalcedony sat on the table with Celia. Laura craned over her shoulder in time to see Chalcedony looking whimsical. Chalcedony said, “How long must this present time endure?”

“A year and a day,” said Fence.

Both Michaelmas and Chalcedony fell upon this proposal with scorn, and there followed about twenty minutes of wrangling. Laura, comfortably ensconced with a purring cat in a cushioned chair so big that she could pull her legs up into it, a chair that moreover was not jogging her anywhere at a pace too fast for comfort, did not pay them much attention. Both members of the Library staff appeared to view with horror the notion of hiding knowledge from anybody, even an unknown group of shape-shifters that had impersonated the party from the Hidden Land and made off with their boats. Patrick tried to enter the fray and was abjured to shut up, unsuccessfully by Ellen and successfully by Fence. Laura dozed, hearing dimly the four of them snapping “Nine months!” “A fortnight!” “Six months!” at one another like people bargaining in a market.

Laura shot to wakefulness as her relaxing hand tipped the mug and spilled warm tea all over her knees. It wouldn’t show on the dark green of her hose. Michaelmas’s cushions, however, were of yellow silk with a fetching border of running squirrels. She mopped surreptitiously at them with the hem of her cloak.

Fence said, “Until spring, then,” and Michaelmas nodded.

Laura decided to drink the rest of her tea. It would be safer inside her; and she might need to stay awake.

Fence explained what Ruth had discovered about Shan’s Ring, and what, he kindly said, Patrick and Laura had discovered about the swords of Shan and Melanie. Laura, listening to him, was stricken with a combination of admiration and horror. He wasn’t lying. You couldn’t say he was lying. But he conveyed the impression that Laura’s own world was a third version of the Secret Country, as the glassy place Ruth had gotten into was a second version of it. This concept was apparently a pet theory of Michaelmas’s; he thought that, if there were a second version devoted to bargaining with unicorns, there must be a third one devoted to bargaining with dragons. Chalcedony pointed out, in the tone of one who has said this before and knows she will have to say it again, that never in the history of the world had anybody bargained with a dragon or any dragon evidenced the slightest desire to bargain with anybody. Michaelmas agreed with her but seemed not to think it mattered.

Laura was interested to see that Fence agreed with him and Celia did not. Matthew, if he had an opinion, did not vouchsafe it. He said, “Forget not the man in the stark house.”

Fence gave him a look half-grateful and half-impatient, and told Michaelmas about the man in the stark house, who, in addition to the characteristics mentioned by Laura earlier, wore red, and used cardinals as messengers, and knew three riddles about the unicorns, and used mirrors as if they were windows, and called himself Apsinthion.

“I would I could see his face,” said Michaelmas.

Laura had to clear her throat, it was so long since she had spoken. “My lord, he looks like Fence and Randolph,” she said.

She felt silly as soon as she had said it, but Michaelmas looked suddenly alert. “In what particulars?” he said.

Laura rallied her courage, gave herself time to think even though Patrick was bumping his foot impatiently against the leg of his chair, and spoke. “He had black hair, but it was straight like Fence’s,” she said. “He was sh—as tall as Fence. He had Randolph’s hands and nose, and his chin, but his eyes were round like Fence’s. His voice wasn’t like either of theirs, but I recognized something about it.”

“High or low?” said Michaelmas.

“Low,” said Laura, “and rather crackly.” She heard him in her mind’s ear, saying,
Oho. Sits the wind in that quarter? “Oh,”
she said. “It wasn’t his voice, it was the
way
he said things.” She stared at Michaelmas. That dry voice, talking as if everything it said were a joke you weren’t getting. “In the way of unicorns,” said Laura.

“Would their fancy take them so far?” said Michaelmas to Fence.

“To wear red?” said Fence. “To come under a roof in that place wherein dragons may bargain?”

Laura didn’t see why not, but Michaelmas seemed to find this a cogent argument. “The other, then,” he said, slowly. “Well, Fence, what are thou and Randolph, commingled?”

“An ill fighter and a worse wizard,” said Fence, dryly.

“What’s amiss with Randolph, then?” said Chalcedony. “He was your excellent good student when I saw him last.”

“I jested,” said Fence, very shortly indeed.

Laura looked quickly at Chalcedony. She seemed doubtful, but said no more. Fence was getting careless; things must be weighing on him.

“Well,” said Fence, and stood up. “You have your knowledge, the which you may impart to any visitors you will, in the spring. We have the answer to one riddle, and with that, I think, we must content ourselves and depart. I had rather have these meddlers behind me than ahead of me. Can you direct their researches into some byway of detail, Michaelmas, until we’re a day gone?”

“You can’t go unsatisfied,” said Michaelmas. “Stay but an hour; Prospero’s your man for riddles; I’ll wake him.”

“You’ll—” began Chalcedony, and looked at Celia, and shut her lips.

“There’s no need, i’truth,” said Fence.

“I’truth, there is,” said Michaelmas, standing up also. He was as tall as Benjamin, but half as broad. “We’ve sent no one hence so soon since Shan came to us; and that once will serve us a mort of years. Sit down. Those who shadow you are long abed, awaiting report from some three of our apprentices. And that,” said Michaelmas, coming around his desk and frowning, “might have been a sign to me, had I been quicker. When did the scholars of High Castle send apprentices to do their reading for them? Well,” he said again, and putting a hand on Fence’s shoulder bore him back into his chair. “Rest, and I’ll bring Prospero.” He left.

“Rest,” said Fence; he sounded as if he were going to follow it up with “Ha!” but in fact he said, “Celia? Thou mayst take this chance to hobnob with thy schoolfellow.”

“If she can spare the odd hour,” said Celia.

“Gladly,” said Chalcedony.

They went out together, Celia bestowing on Fence as she went by a very curious look, compounded of wryness, reproach, and irritation. Their footsteps sounded on the stone floor outside, and a door opened and closed again. The two rings on the desk winked in the golden light, and burst suddenly on Laura’s eyes like a display of fireworks. Huge shapes of fire blossomed against a starry sky. They illuminated, falling, the massive bulk of a square castle set in the middle of a sheet of water. Blue and green and red and yellow shot streaming across the sky and rippled blurrily on the surface of the water. Very faintly, she heard Ted’s voice cry, “Have at you now!”

She blinked, breathing hard, and the two rings winked tranquilly at her.

“What’s the matter?” said Ellen.

“Fence,” said Laura, “don’t you think you should take those rings back?”

“No doubt,” said Fence, and coming forward he picked them up and dropped them into his pouch. His mild gaze lingered on Laura, but he said nothing. Ellen glared at her, but she didn’t say anything either. Laura expected to be tackled later. She ought to tell them about this vision, right now. Some reluctance she could not define nor defeat closed her throat. The dread of her dreams was with her still, the baseless feeling that Fence was not a safe repository of confidences.

“Now,” said Matthew, leaning forward. “What in truth, Fence, do thou and Randolph make, commingled?”

“A fool and his twin,” said Fence, turning around and leaning on Michaelmas’s desk. His face was not encouraging.

Patrick said, “I wondered when you’d think of that.”

“Thou wert not o’er-hasty wi’thy advice,” said Fence; his voice wasn’t encouraging either.

“Why let him know we’d caught on, if there’s anything to catch on to; if there’s not, why offend him?”

“I am of two minds, to go or stay,” said Fence to Matthew. “How well acquainted is Celia with Chalcedony?”

“Very well, once,” said Matthew.

“She’d know a deception?”

“Very like,” said Matthew; and got up suddenly. “Wherefore—” he said.

“She’s seasoned,” said Fence, irritably. “What’s thy acquaintance with Michaelmas?”

“It is but slight,” said Matthew. “Prospero, however, I do know well.”

“Mayhap thou shouldst wake him,” said Fence.

“Fence, if we’re contemplating leaving soon, should we disperse all over the castle?” said Patrick.

“If Michaelmas is not himself,” said Fence, “it is too late. Matthew, go.”

Matthew went. Laura would have obeyed that tone too, no matter how unwelcome the task it assigned her. She was beginning to feel cold, although this was the warmest room she had been in since they came back. She looked at Ellen. Ellen wore a half-smile and an air of deep interest. Laura gave up on her.

“Now,” said Fence. “Heed this lesson. The hair meaneth appearance, the hands deeds, the eyes intention, the height potential, and the dress desire.”

Ellen and Patrick and Laura all looked at him blankly. “Well,” said Ellen, after a moment, “that might make sense if somebody were drawing a picture.”

“If the man in the stark house is the Judge of the Dead, or a unicorn gone mad, or some other great power,” said Fence, “then he is but a picture; a weareth that shape but as a garment.”

“Why should the garment tell us anything?” said Patrick.

“Any shape-changer is constrained by his nature,” said Fence.

“Of course,” said Patrick, rolling his eyes.

“Any artist is named by his work,” said Fence, rather sharply. “Think on’t in that light, an it please thee better.”

“I’m sorry,” said Patrick, to Laura’s shock. “I don’t mean to fault your explanations. But it’s all so
subjective
.”

They embarked on a discussion that Laura didn’t listen to. She was remembering what Fence had said. When there was a pause in the conversation, Laura marshalled her list carefully and leaped into the gap. “So,” she said, “he’s got your
and
Randolph’s appearance—”

“Which is obvious anyway,” said Patrick, with such alacrity that she knew Fence had been getting the better of the argument.

“It meaneth, the outward seeming where that differeth from the inward form,” said Fence.

“—Randolph’s deeds, both your intentions, and a desire for redness.”

“And a limited potential,” said Fence, grinning at her. “An my middle name be not tact, I know whose is.”

“What’s a desire for redness?” said Ellen.

Fence shrugged. “The knowledge of the Red Sorcerers,” he said. “Fire. Iron. Blood. The carnation.”

“Wisdom,” said Ellen, suddenly. “Don’t you remember? Black for death, yellow for sickness, white for health, gold for faith, violet for purity, silver for treachery. And the major schools of sorcery: red for wisdom, blue for sorrow, green for novelty.”