Rogue Dragon (15 page)

He had not much long to wait.

The pursuers seemed to come bursting out of the fabric of the firmament, their trails thick and heavy and angry. He shot down at forty-five degrees, surged forward against his safety-belt as she hit the surface and watched the sudden surge of frothy water close over the dome and bubble like a dying whale. He put her onto full descent; descend far she could not, of course not, but if it were only hold here where she was as she was—And if the seams and shell proved leak-proof—And if they, the ones so way up high, did not see him—He looked at the chronometer and tried to calculate how long it would take for them to pass over and be gone.

The small craft surged slowly back and forth and slowly up and down. A dull, grinding nausea which seemed to go down to the very marrow of his spine began to afflict him. Finally, he could not go on standing it, tried to surface slowly, shot up like a cork in a spume, fell back and wallowed and rocked again. Hastily, he looked up, but through the moisture running down the dome he could see nothing. And when, finally, he could, he saw only the fading trails of vapor, vanishing into the Gulf.

And now at last he came to the end of that more-than-peninsula and not-quite-subcontinent where it joined the main landmass. He looked at the chart a moment, magnified in the sight-scan, then looked again below. Those rounded hummocks (from above they seemed little more than that) must be the Sixteen Hills; those sudden sparkles of light, the sun reflecting on the Sweet and Bitter Lakes. And there, there, shadowy and sere, was the abrupt descent of the Great Dry Valley. All the landmarks.

Beyond lay The Bosky.

He dropped lower. He looked up and around again. And still no signs of recurrent pursuit. The speaker was, as it had remained, silent. Whom had it been? Who
were
they? Again, Aëlorix? Or—his mind raced and tumbled about a bit—the Chairman of Drogue? Was there perhaps some force on Prime World of which he had never heard? After all, there was a lot more to it than this part which lay behind him and which was about all that he had ever known. Were there not thriving cities, so it was said, on that great archipelago which formerly formed part of Australia and ringed round that shallow sea once called Lake Eyre? It was possible that the flyers might have come from down there. But bound upon what mystic errands which required them to camouflage their craft, hide in woods, speak in code, and pursue him as though he were himself a rogue dragon—? He could conceive of nothing, in answer. And turned again to chart and to controls.

Meanwhile, let him pursue some answers to some previous questions. And follow his course to the nameless, numberless hill which seemed to have been the locus or focus of the unknown fingers whose tracery had left, faintly, the only clue there was. He went lower. He went lower. And there he saw where it was and what it was. His breath hissed in between his teeth. His decision was immediate, neither to stop nor even—there—to slow down. He went on as though he had not seen it at all. He had certain qualms as to whether or not it had seen him, though. But these did not preoccupy him long.

They came down on him like stooping falcons while he was still thinking of what he had seen.
Them,
he had not seen. The warning he had was cast by shadows and was a matter of seconds, but it was enough, and he did what the weaker birds do (if they can) when the falcon stoops: He hid in the thickets.

Not precisely, of course. What he did, precisely, was to dart down into a glade of great-boled trees with low and widespreading branches; he simultaneously turned obliquely and shoved her speed as low as it would go and still keep him aloft. She wobbled and wavered, but she bore it wonderfully, and he floated in between the sunshine and the shadow, between the branches and the ground, turning round and round the tree-trunks as close to them as he could in a sinuous figure-of-eight movement.

But the nigh pursuer was not as fluent of flight as a falcon. One convulsive effort he made to break—then he crashed. The off one did manage to break, escaping by the breadth of a cry. Up and up he went, hovered and darted and swooped. Time and time again he made as though to dash down into the glade, but his flyer was three times the size of the one Jon-Joras was in, and so, every time, he withdrew. But even while Jon-Joras played at his little game in safety below—in and out, in and out, around, around, around—at every tiny clearing and across every beam of light, he saw the great, dark, heavy, hovering shadow.

Once, skimming round the bole of a vine-encrusted tree, Jon-Joras caught a glimpse of the smoke and fire of the wrecked plane. Then, turning and twisting, he saw the end of the glade up ahead, and the rough and broken ground which ran for a good wide way until ended abruptly by the gaunt escarpment of a tumbled cliff. He made to go back the way he had come and keep up the game until his fuel ran out or until the other’s fuel ran out or until… until… he scarcely knew what, until.

The idea came to him more suddenly than its execution followed. It might work, it might not work, it was infinitely risky, foolhardy, it was all those things—but he could not go on flitting up and down the glade like a butterfly.

So he took his flyer deeper and deeper back into the thickest of the glade, slower and slower, and lower and lower. He put the controls on
Circle,
and locked her so. Then he stepped to the door and stepped out. It was just a short jump. Slowly and ponderously, like a fat woman who has had just a shade too much to eat and drink, the flyer went wobbling around and around. He turned and looked back after a minute. But, so well had she been painted, he could no longer see her at all.

He paused a moment to calculate his bearings by the angle of a pencil-thin sunbeam. Then he slipped away through and into the woods. Later, looking back again, he saw the other craft still patrolling.

The trail, when he came upon it, puzzled him. There should by right be no trail here, in fact, how could there be, when there were no people? There were no people, but other things lived in the forests here beside birds (and, for that matter, dragons) and had to move about. Often he saw the rough patches of rougher hair upon the sides of the tree, two or three times he saw the small neat heaps of dung, and once he saw (but passed along as though he did not see) the twin spotted fawns lying so securely in the shady covert of the glen.

But of dragon he saw none. Nor did he hear any.

“Dragon? Dragon? Are you a dragon-chick?” he stooped to ask and to pick up a tiny, delicate orange lizard. It pattered cleanly and delicately along his hand and paused at the cushion of his upturned palm and looked at him so bravely, gravely, carefully he put it down upon the mossy rocks a foot or two in and off the trail where (he hoped) not even the dark hoof of a deer would menace it. He moved on.

Finally, as the sun commenced its decline, he saw what he had come to see, though of course by no means at first knowing that it was
this
that was here, had been here, waiting for him all alone. He had the notion of his having come full-circle, and of the thing there saying to him that he should Look—See?—You cannot escape. Not from me.

Not from us. Not from them. It was though he saw now as a whole the same place he’d seen before as a collection of fragments. But still all he saw was now an outside, looming and staring and gathering in its black stiff folds about it, head and snout thrust forward darkly from the green over-mantle—

A Kar-chee castle
…

And what was in it?

More men like monomaniac Hue and all his crew? More dragons being tormented into murderous patterns of behavior? More plots and plans to overthrow the status quo? He crouched and stared and thought that all the sweet waters of the Earth must be stained with blood; he saw them welling and spreading like a great scarlet stain across all the face of this aged and afflicted world.

But from within the black basalt walls came neither signs nor sounds nor movement.

His own movements, as he backed off, lips bared, were—though he did not know it, did not have the image, even, in his subliminal memory—for all the world like those of a dog in the presence of something known to be deadly and dangerous but otherwise all unknown. And, like a dog, he began to circle about the thing of menace. And it was while so doing that he observed for the first time a dragon.

With its green-black, black-green, green and black skin, its deep-set and faceted eyes flashing yellow and green and blue and red, long neck and huge body, it looked no different than any other dragon. In form and body, no different, that is. But immediately and immensely and frighteningly obviously it looked very different than any dragon he had ever seen, and the difference lay in its manner. It did not move in a mindless rush capable of being instantly diverted by a waving flag or the sound of a horn. And neither did it move in the relentless fashion of one intent upon its prey and knowing just what and just where that prey was. Least of all did it move along like some great, grazing pea-brained cow.

The word (it came to him in a moment that seemed to chill his skin) the word for this dragon was
alert.
And the other world for it (the echo after the shot) was
intelligent.

It came slowly along, slowly and carefully, head turning from side to side, tongue tasting the air. Now and then it paused and it raised its head, slowly and deliberately, gathering in the details of sight and sound and scent at all levels. Then it proceeded in its careful, one might almost say its measured, pace. Then, too, in a third terrifying flash of understanding, Jon-Joras understood what now in retrospect seemed blazingly obvious to him: that the paths which he had been treading through the forest were too wide by far to have been made entirely by the narrow slots of deer’s hooves. He had been walking, careless—almost—and certainly all unknowing, in the dragons’ walk! He had been treading in the dragons’ tracks! And now he had at once to retreat and to vanish, otherwise this careful questing beast of a dragon would certainly, soon, be treading in his, Jon-Joras’s, tracks—!

But even as his tendons tensed to move him back and away, the dragon, as though in obedient command to his, the man’s own fears, turned aside and moved away and in another moment was hidden in the woods and in the towering thicket. Jon-Joras did not relax, gratefully or gracefully; he slumped and almost fell over his own sweating legs. He had come here in response to a stupid bravado, and now he was trapped—at least twice-trapped. The patrolling flyer kept him captive here in one way. And now, it would seem, the patrolling dragon might (if he were not exceedingly careful) keep him captive in another. If it didn’t kill him first. The strange thing
(the
strange thing? and was all else commonplace?) was that the dragon had not looked fierce. Its fear and its terror came from other attributes entirely. This beast might not charge him upright upon its hind legs… neither, though, was it likely to be diverted by a rag of a shirt fluttering in the breeze, or some other trick of the sort.

Time enough some other time to wonder why this one dragon was so different. Time now all but screamed aloud to be used to go as far and as fast away from here as might be possible. He would head back as silent-swift as ever he could to the general area where he had left the stolen flyer. The patrolling vessel might have gone away. Or its pilot might have landed it and come out himself to investigate. Or Jon-Joras might simply regain the one he’d used before and continue a terrain-hugging, tree-hiding tactic until some better notion or occasion offered itself.

Then he looked up and saw that, although he had moved and the dragon had moved, the dragon was in front of him once again. He crouched. He slunk off to the left. The dragon, moving slowly and without undue concern, moved in the same direction. He moved more quickly. So did the dragon. And now, from a great distance, overlaid with a multitude of memories, he heard the voice of Aëlorix speaking to him at the estate, back when all was well and all was amity and peace.
They were the Kar-chee’s dogs… They hunted us…
Was that what this one was doing now? Hunting him? With deliberate speed and awful majesty? No… No… Not quite, not quite. Jon-Joras crept here and crept over there, crawled, dodged, twisted, retreated, retreated… The dragon followed, followed, followed. But actually it was not at all that Jon-Joras was going where he wanted and the dragon merely following.

Actually, Jon-Joras was going where the dragon wanted him to go, the way the dragon wanted him to go. He wasn’t being hunted. He was being herded.

And so, through the great, crouching, vine-heavy gate of the castle, Jon-Joras walked with slouching shoulders and with hanging head, and the dragon walked watchfully behind him.

The dragon had ceased to be a surprise and, when he saw it at last, the Kar-chee really came as no surprise. It was not just that he had smelled it, the scent not faint and old and musty as it had been in the other, in the abandoned castle, but strong and fresh. But scent and, subsequently, sight, were but confirmations of what logic—without either—had already revealed. For if the dragons had been the Kar-chee’s dogs and if here and if now a dragon was acting like a dog, then—

It was the man who was the surprise.

—then there had to be Kar-chee to direct them.

But he did not expect to see the man and the Kar-chee together; he did not expect to see the man at all. Any man at all.

One picture only had he ever seen, and then the carven figure in the frieze, dusty and webby and observed from a bad angle; but there wasn’t and couldn’t be a second’s question or doubt. The dull black and ten-feet tall form, the comparatively tiny head, the huge anterior arms bent so that the hands or paws were folded loosely together upwards, the upper body slanted and canted forward, seemingly under the weight of its limbs: unmistakably, the Kar-chee.

The man was colorless, ageless, dirty, face and figure loose where one would think to find them tight, tight where they should have been loose. He sagged, blinked, mumbled his mouth and smacked his lips and he said nothing. In his hands, hands held up hieratically as a Pharoah’s with crook and flail, he the man held some curious arrangement of fans or fronds and sticks.