Dragonslayer: A Novel (25 page)

"Where is it?"

"It is in a vault. Under my forge. I have not looked at it since I came to Swanscombe, a quarter century since."

Valerian sat speechless in wonder. It was full night now, but there was enough light from guttering buildings to see her father. He had leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, and his shoulders were moving in such an odd and unfamiliar way that it took Valerian a moment to realize that he was crying. He was crying soundlessly. She had never seen this before; she watched in awe. Throughout that terrible day, surrounded by pain and bereavement and horrors, her father had worked in a dogged and tearless way, and she wondered now at the force of the memory that had moved him so.

"There is something else you should know," he said after a moment. "It concerns the price of the weapon. It concerns the bargain made with Grim and Weird those years ago, when I was too young and foolish to think that it could ever be paid. It concerns your mother."

Valerian sat motionless. She had no memory of her mother. The word opened a quick little door on a dark and empty room.

"I told you," Simon said, "I have always told you that your mother died of disease. That she died fevered, but painlessly and, in her sleep. That is not true. I lied."

"The Lottery!"

Simon nodded. "You were just a babe. Not even a year. Ca-siodorus's father reigned. I knew, even before I saw the chamberlain's arm go down into the drawing-bowl. I knew. I said my wife's name aloud,
Lilla!
And then the man drew, and turned to look at me."

"My mother!"

"She was very beautiful. She was only a little older than you are now."

"And that's why, in the Granary last June, when I went in and everyone saw that I was a girl, there were so few cries for vengeance for punishment!"

He nodded. "Already many knew. There were midwives, wet nurses . . ."

"They. . . they pitied you."

"Yes. I owe them everything, you see. I owe them you." As he spoke, a sound came, a sound like distant drums. They both started to their feet. "The bridge!" Simon whispered.

"Horses crossing!"

Holding each other, father and daughter watched through the opened window. At a slow walk, in single file, Tyrian's squad entered the village. The guttering firelight glistened on their faces, on their dragon emblems and accoutrements. There were ten. They bore no aid, no food, no solace. They moved in silence but for the footfalls of their stallions. Some distance behind, looking thoroughly miserable, came Horsriclc, riding in a new and creaking tumbril cart drawn, precisely as the
Codex Dracorum
stipulated, by a piebald mare. . . .

Galen woke at dawn. He was aware of the thick movements of animals in their stables below. He was aware of the eerie silence of the village. He was aware, by the streams of sunlight spilling through cracks in the wattle, that it was going to be a very hot day.

For several minutes he did not open his eyes. He had been dreaming of Ulrich. In his dream the old man had been radiantly alive, busily and happily mixing potions, gratifying multitudes of supplicants. In his dream the old man had paused in his labors, noticing him for the first time, as if he had just entered, and earnestly giving him complex instructions which Galen could not hear. Ulrich was pointing to the liquid in his stone bowl; yet, the bowl was not a bowl but one edge of a rocky shore, and the liquid was not the water of the limpid pool that Galen could recall, but a saturnine lake, its surface flickering with baleful fire, its depths turning with incomprehensible shapes. Nor, as his dream evolved, was Ulrich any longer a man; he dwindled, first to a child, then to a dwarf, then, horrifyingly to a screeching and gesticulating tiny doll in Galen's outstretched hand, waving toward the lake. And his voice, the buzzing of a barn fly in the morning sun, repeated, "The lake of fire! The lake of fire!"

Even before he opened his eyes, Galen groped into his pack-sack, to the bottom of his meagre store of belongings, and found there, safe in the soft leather pouch where Hodge had gathered them, the ashes and charred bone bits that were all that remained of Ulrich. It was little enough, but it was some comfort in the midst of the disaster that had befallen him, and he held the pouch thoughtfully, regretfully. Ulrich had been dismally right about him, after all. Not only had he learned nothing but, when put to the test, he had failed. He had even lost the amulet. He was a disgrace.

"What's in that?"

Startled, he sat upright, stuffing the pouch back into his knapsack. "N-Nothing. Just a memento."

Valerian was sitting in the hay close to him, her legs drawn under her. "You looked as if you were having a nightmare."

"I was." He yawned, stretched, scratched a vague itch under his left arm.

"Me, too. At least, all the time I slept I had nightmares. About Lotteries."

Galen stopped scratching. "There's to be one, then?"

She nodded.

"When?"

"Today. Three hours before sunset."

"And you. . ."

Again she nodded. "Yes. I'll be in it. I'm glad." She was silent for a moment, and then she brushed a strand of hair back from her face. "Do you know what I hate most? The
indignity.
The way it debases us. But I want to be part of it, at last." She looked away, unable to meet his gaze.

Galen knelt in the hay, hastily gathering his belongings. "Is your father still here?"

"Yes." She rose as he rose. "Why?"

"I want to get a sword from him. His best." He was already climbing down the ladder from the sleeping loft. "I can't pay anything . . ."

"It doesn't matter," she said, but he was hurrying on, not listening.

". . . but if he gives me a weapon, I promise to make good use of it." He nodded grimly. "I can do no more than that."

"Vermithrax?"

"Yes."

"You're a fool. You'll die."

"Yes, but what should I do, run away?" He turned, and was surprised and puzzled to see that she was smiling.

"That's up to you. At least you'd be alive."

Again he shook his head. "I've failed once. If I fail again, if I fail as a man as well as a sorcerer, and if I live, then I'll
really
be dead." He was hurrying ahead of her through the shadows of the dwelling toward the forge, where Simon was already at work. Rather, Simon seemed to be at work, for he was pumping his great bellows, the reflected lire was shimmering on his face, and he was turning iron bars amidst the coals. In fact, he was only consoling himself with the habits of a lifetime. He had nothing to make that

morning. No one in all of Swanscombe required anything from him. Later they would begin to build, but today they would be burying—burying and going to the Lottery.

The Lottery.

Late the previous night, after his men had encamped, Tyrian had corne to see him. He had come alone, and so stealthily that Simon had not suspected anyone was there until he heard him speak beyond the shuttered window. "Smith! Do you hear me?" It was half a shout, half a whisper. "You will bring your daughter tomorrow, do you hear? You will bring her. She will take part in the Lottery. Do you hear me, smith?"

"I hear you," Simon had answered.

"She must participate!"

"I know that."

"The king has had mercy on you. But should you or she try to escape, there will be no mercy. I shall see to that. Do you understand, Simon?"

"Yes," he had said.
If I had courage to use the lance,
he thought. But he did not have the courage. He had never had the courage . . .

"You have a weapon?" He thought for an instant that Tyrian had returned, but this was a younger, clearer voice.

"Yes," he said, turning to Galen. "And it is yours for the taking, if you intend to use it as I believe. But you must help me get it. It is beneath the anvil."

Together, they heaved the anvil aside, revealing a trap door beneath. Simon bent and managed to pry it open. "It's been twenty-five years," he said. Below lay the oak casket, as fresh and gleaming as when he had put it in. He raised it. No rats had gnawed it, no worms bored in. Oh, but he had taken care! The little chamber was thoroughly brick-lined and mortared.

Gasping at its beauty, Galen reached out and lifted the casket, feeling the tough, masculine grain of its oak.

"Open it," Simon said.

"But I can't. I don't see how."

Smiling, Simon touched the secret place; as smoothly as if it had been made the day before, the lid swung up. Galen gasped again. He was astonished first at the cunning device; but then his gasp faded to openmouthed silence, for the weapon itself lay before him. Even Simon was surprised; he had forgotten how beautiful it was.

It was a slim lance head about eighteen inches long, gracefully proportioned. Unlike lesser blades it did not shine; rather, it stretched its dark length on the soft doeskin in which Simon had laid it those many years ago. Only its silver inlay stood out in intricate, swirling Saxon tracery along its spine and around the empty socket. Galen read the inscribed runes:
I am Sicarius Dra-corum! Use me well!
Surrounding these runes was a magnificent configuration in pure silver: the head of a rampant dragon.

At a nod from Simon, Galen reached for it and picked it up. It was so light that it seemed made of some unearthly material. He reached to touch the edge, but Simon's hand restrained him: "Don't. We shall see this way how well it has kept its edge." From under his bench he picked up a dry oak leaf. Gesturing to Galen to hold the blade steady with only the slightest incline, he placed the leaf across the edge near the hilt. Gently it slipped downward; as it went, the blade bisected it, so that it fluttered in two halves past the point to the floor. "Very sharp," Simon said, smiling proudly. "Now the point." Once again he used an oak leaf, this time setting it carefully on the tip while Galen held the blade upright; and once again, with the slightest trembling of Galen's hand and the merest breaths of morning air through the windows, the leaf turned like a living creature, turned again, and impaled itself. Galen tipped the blade and let it slip off, looking from the weapon to Simon and back again with astonishment and delight.

Laughing, Simon took the blade from him and examined its socket. Then with care he selected from the corner of his workshop a stout oaken stave, and fitted it to the lance head. When he had done this he handed the weapon back to Galen. "Now," he said. "Try the strength. Try the anvil."

"The anvil!"

Simon nodded. "Grip well."

For a moment Galen hesitated, but then, as Simon and Valerian moved back, he squared his feet to the anvil like a woodsman to a block of wood, swung the superbly balanced blade above his head, and with all his might brought it down on the center of the block of cold iron.

The anvil split. There was the slightest shudder through the lance, and the anvil opened, not with the crack of hardwood on a winter morning, but rather with the grudging resistance of cool butter to the knife.

"Still tough," Simon smiled. "A good blade. The best I can make."

Galen stared in amazement at the anvil. He leaned forward to touch the split place, but snatched his hand away. It was red hot! "With this," he said wonderingly, to himself, "or not at all."

"With that," Simon said, "or not by human means." They gripped hands, the blade a dark bond between them. "There is yet one more thing," Simon continued, bending and withdrawing a black canister from the crypt. "When I tempered the steel I used but half the potion. The instructions were that I should use the second half on the very day the blade was to be used, and in the presence of him who would use it." Opening the container, he gestured to Galen to lay the lance on its deerskin again. Over it he poured a pale green, viscous substance which caused the steel to tremble like a living thing and to emit an unearthly glow. He coated both sides. The trembling subsided; the glow vanished. The blade lay ready. "There," Simon said. "Take it up. I should have used it myself, years ago, but I lacked the courage. If you do not, then strike, strike for us all!"

"And I," said Valerian after a moment, very quietly, "I have something too. It is not as beautiful and terrible as my father's blade, but I made it for you. Last night. Because I knew that you would do this thing today and would have need of it." She drew back a blanket on the workbench. Beneath lay an object that Galen did not at first recognize, for it was crafted of interlocking and tightly wired disks, dragon scales, and it was only when he picked the object up, fitting his hand around the limewood grip inside the boss, that he realized what it was. "A shield!" It was not round like Saxon shields; it was a shape such as he had never seen —long and convex and so large that his entire body could he hidden beneath it. "You'll need it," Valerian repeated. "There's nothing else immune to dragon's breath."

"There must be a hundred here," he said, touching the scales. "Over a hundred."

She shrugged, "I've gathered them. For a long time. There are a lot around, but you have to go, you know, up
there
to get them."

Simon, too, had been looking closely at the shield. Now he said, "But, you didn't have this many. You gathered more."