The Dragon Charmer (34 page)

“I will bring you some tea,” said the butler. “Indian or China?”

“China,” said Gaynor, and: “PGTips,” from Will.

“The lady has the preference,” the manservant declared, and retreated with the soundless tread of butlers long extinct or of gnomes.

“The butler did it,” said Will when he had gone.

“He looks like Goebbels.” Gaynor shuddered. “All the same, this isn’t what I”

“Nor me. I wonder if that Paul Klee really
is
a Paul Klee?”

“I was wondering if this really is a good time to phone Kuala Lumpur” She paused, fiddling with a stray lock of hair, braiding the ends into a plait. “Will what exactly are we looking for?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “A dragon’s tale a broken spear—a piece of stone. I ought to try to case the joint while our host is occupied elsewhere. When the butler comes back
I’ll say I need a piss. Going in search of the bathroom should give me a chance to see a bit more of this place: it’s bound to be miles away.”

“You won’t leave me?”

“Not for long.” He appeared slightly startled at the note of panic in her voice.

“It’s an awfully well-worn ploy,” she explained, pulling herself together, righting an irrational upsurge of fear. “Do you think he’ll believe you? The butler, I mean.”

“Nothing succeeds like an old trick,” said Will optimistically. “Anyway, why shouldn’t he? I can—if necessary—prove my point.”

But Gaynor did not smile. “The thing is,” she pursued, “we didn’t really come here to follow a clue, or trace a long-dead dragon or a magic spear. We came … because this is a trap, just like you said, and you want to find out who set it and why, and the only way to do that is to walk right into it. But…”

“Whatever the reason,” said Will, “we’re here now, and we may as well get on with the job.”

Presently the butler returned bearing a tray laden with crockery and a teapot from which wafted the scent of Lap-sang Soochong. Gaynor struggled to rise and failed as a table was whisked in front of her and the tray set down on it. Will scrambled to his feet, hampered by the cushions, requesting a bathroom. “Of course,” the butler said. “I will show you the way.”

“I won’t be a minute,” Will said to Gaynor by way of reassurance, and left in the wake of the gnome, following him back into the corridor, past numerous doors, and through what seemed to be a breakfast parlor to the farthest reaches of the house. Here he was shown a room with a lavatory and basin and left to his own devices. “I can find my own way back,” he assured his escort, and when he reemerged, he was alone.

Adjacent to the parlor was a kitchen and a storeroom, both unoccupied. Back in the passageway, he approached the first of the doors with caution, listening at the panels before venturing to turn the handle and push it a little way open, his excuse—“I’m afraid I missed my way”—on the tip of his tongue. Instead he found himself staring into a broom closet.
The second door admitted him to a small bare room that seemed at a quick glance unremarkable. Then he tripped over a footstool that he was almost sure hadn’t been there a moment earlier, picked himself up, and was immediately confronted by a picture so unpleasant, so seething with subliminal motion, that the ill-formed patches of color appeared to be actually heaving off the canvas toward him. He retreated shaken, trying to shrug off what he hoped was just fancy, approaching the next door with trepidation. It opened into a kind of gallery, with glass cabinets against the walls and a display case in the center similar to the type used in the museum. Forgetful of Gaynor waiting nervously in the drawing room, Will closed the door behind him and gazed and gazed.

The room was full of weapons. There were pikes, halberds, longbows, claymores, a broadsword whose blade was notched and misshapen, a ten-foot spear that looked too heavy for a normal man to lift. A ragged banner adorned the far wall showing a dragon rampant, rouge on sable. In the cabinets were helmets, many of them battered and blackened, reduced to mere lumps of metal, breastplates scored as if by giant claws, the tattered shreds of mail coats. The display case showed a single huge glaive, engraved with words in a language Will did not understand; red jewels shone in the hilt. The sight of it sent a strange shiver down his spine. He thought: Those stones must be worth a fortune; but it was the words that drew him, though their meaning could not be guessed. He pored over them, peering closer and closer, and when he finally wrenched himself away he seemed to have lost track of time. The room appeared to have both grown and shrunk, its proportions distorted, and the dragon banner rippled as if with hidden life, and he was staring at a hanging shield that he thought he had seen before, in a dream long ago. Realization dawned; he said to himself: These are the weapons of the dragonslayers, and for an instant he smelled fire, and there was blood running down the walls. The room shivered with the potency of what it contained.

He was horribly afraid, but he knew he had to stay, to look at every spearhead, every fragment of arrow or blade: the thing he sought might be here. But the shafts were tipped only with iron and steel, stone and bronze, all scorched and chipped
and scarred; the splinter of Lodestone would be unmarked and unmistakable. At the far end on a small table he came across a knife that looked different from the rest. It was entirely black, without scratch or ornament, gleaming as if new: when he touched it the hilt seemed to nestle into his hand. It felt like something that belonged to him, that had been made for him, for this contact, for his grip. A leather sheath lay beside it. He slid the knife into the sheath and then, with a cursory glance over his shoulder, tucked it into his jeans, dismissing a minor qualm of conscience: he might have need of a weapon. It occurred to him that he had been absent for too long; Gaynor must be frantic. He hurried to the door, opened it without precaution, stepped into the corridor.

The blow fell dully on the back of his head.

   Gaynor waited. She had poured a cup of tea, but she did not drink it. He wouldn’t leave me, she told herself. He wouldn’t leave me here. Nearby, a clock ticked. And slowly, very slowly, the light changed. The fire sank and guttered, the gold flecks faded from the paneling, the electric lamps seemed to blear. The gray daylight retreated beyond the half-curtained window, leaving the room dim and unfriendly. Shadows gathered behind the furniture. A disquieting sense of déjà vu assailed her. And then she remembered: It’s my dream … The room there had been darker, the woodwork more somber, the details exaggerated, but surely, surely it was the same. Soon she would see the eyes… She got to her feet, stumbled over a rug, but even as she reached the door it opened. “I am sorry to have kept you waiting,” said Dr. Laye.

In the flesh, his grayness was shocking, a hideous abnormality. The insides of his eyelids remained pink, making his eyes look bloodshot, the irises luridly blue. As he spoke, yellow-ivory teeth flickered between colorless lips. His suit was almost as immaculate as that of his servant, but Gaynor could not help shrinking at the proffered handshake, her gaze averted from the remembered horrors of finger and nail. Yet his voice was not quite the one that had summoned her nearly two weeks ago. It was somehow lighter, single toned, more… human. “I see my complexion disturbs you,” he said, withdrawing the gesture. “Many people react that way. It is a
hereditary peculiarity: I assure you not contagious. Do sit down. I trust Harbeak has made you comfortable.”

And she was plunged back into the sofa, stammering something incoherent, while he added with a thin smile: “I have been so looking forward to meeting you.” For a moment her head spun: she thought he might actually allude to the nightmare incident of the television screen. Then: “I have acquaintances among your colleagues,” he went on, and named a couple of people she hardly knew. “I understand you are interested in dragons.”

She had not said so, but perhaps the curator had telephoned him. How else would he know? “Will,” she interrupted. “My friend. He’s the one who—I mean, I think we should wait for him.”

“We’ll let him take his time,” said Dr. Laye. “I expect he’s having a look around. There are many interesting things in this house.”

“Maybe he’s lost,” said Gaynor, braving raised eyebrows. “I ought to go and find him.”

“Then you might become lost, too,” Laye responded. “Much wiser to stay here.” She did not like his choice of adjective. “Shall I order fresh tea? Brandy, perhaps? No? Very well then. We will talk. You are interested, as I said, in dragons.” It was a statement, not a question. Gaynor did her best to assume an academic mien. She could think of no alternative. “Dragons have always fascinated me,” he continued. “Did they ever exist? If not, why did we have to invent them? Of all the monsters of mythology, they are the most charismatic, the most enduring. And yet, what are they? Lizards with wings—magical cousins of the dinosaur, breathing flames, endowed with a hypnotic eye and a human intelligence. According to legend—and we have few other sources—they eat virgins and hoard gold, undoubtedly human traits. Such creatures can only be demons born of the wishful thinking of mortal men. Yet I used to dream that in the dawn of history there were true dragons, spirits of fire, dreadful and irresistible, soaring beyond the imaginings of minstrels into a wider world. There was a tradition in my family that our ancestors were once dragonslayers, their skin not gray but black, dragon burned,
dragonproof.” And, as Gaynor started: “Perhaps you have heard that tale?”

“Yes,” she said, “Yes, I … It was in a manuscript in the museum.”

“I lent them that manuscript. From my earliest youth, I wanted to learn the truth behind the story, the real cause of a pigmentation that no dermatologist could explain. Was it a genetic freak, a rare illness, the mark of Cain—or of a hero? Surely you can appreciate my obsession.”

Gaynor nodded. For all her repulsion, she felt a stab of sympathy for this man disfigured from birth, marked out by he knew not what. He had slipped under her guard, stirring both her compassion and her curiosity. She found herself urging him to go on.

“I spent my life searching. There were no fossilized bones, no remains preserved in glacier or bog. Only written accounts, thirdhand, secondhand, a very few by genuine witnesses. I became a collector, a scholar with an established reputation. Yet the more I learned, the less I knew. My dreams told me more than any document dreams of fire and combat, of desperate valor culminating at last in a mind link with the monster itself. I
was
the dragon, I clove the skies in flight, I controlled its thoughts, wielded its power. For, as that manuscript you read had told me—and it took me thirty years to procure it—my ancestors were not slayers but tamers, the dragon charmers whose inherited talent set them above lords and kings, uniting them with the immortals. The discoloration of my skin, so often abhorred, was not a deformity but a gift, the greatest Gift of all.” Gaynor’s eyes widened at the word. “Yet there seemed to be no dragons left for me to charm. My search had become a quest doomed to unfulfillment.”

He paused as if awaiting comment or commiseration, but Gaynor’s momentary sympathy had dried up. Beyond the high-flown language she glimpsed an ego swollen with the lust of power and the cult of Self. She said, trying for a note of pragmatism: “If there ever
were
any dragons, there are none now.”

“So I thought.” He licked his lips. “So I feared. Yet the dreams still haunted me. I saw a dragon hatched in a high lonely place among men too simple and too foolish to do
more than marvel at it; but the hands that held it were black. I knew this must be long ago, yet my heart swelled with hope. I saw the dragon grow in a hidden valley far from the farthest outposts of civilization. I saw it dance on the air above lakes of green and scarlet. I dreamed it was alone, the last of dragons, living while I lived yet forever beyond my reach, and I woke to disillusionment and an empty existence.” He paused once again, but this time Gaynor said nothing at all. “And then I had a visitor. He came in the night, nearly a year ago. He said he had felt me calling. He was—not like us.” The tongue reemerged, circling the moistureless mouth, a gross red thing against the monochrome flesh. “Would you like to meet him?”

“No!” Suddenly Gaynor noticed that the daylight had drained from the window. Jerked back to the terrors of the moment, she cried: “Will! Where’s Will?
What have you done with him?”

But the face of Dr. Jerrold Laye had changed. His eyes were infused with a baleful phosphorescence; the voice that issued from his mouth was deeper, colder, and familiar. “We meet again, Gaynor Mobberley.”

“No,” she reiterated, but her tone had shrunk to a whisper. She tried to stand but her knees gave, and the quagmire of the cushions reclaimed her.

“You are not like your friend,” the voice continued. “Fernanda is Gifted, and strong; you are powerless, weak, afraid. Yet you came to me. I called you, and you came.” I chose to come, thought Gaynor; but she wasn’t sure. “And Fernanda will come for you, you and her brother. She will come to me at last.”

“She c-can’t,” Gaynor managed, though her lips shook. “She’s in a coma in hospital. Her spirit is lost”

“Fool! Do I not know her better than you better than that beggar Brokenwand whose wisdom has gone with his Gift? She is strong: strong and cunning. She will find a way back, no matter how perilous or how far. Danger draws her. Power guides her. She does not need your feeble assistance, or that of the vagabond who seeks to be her mentor. I understand her mind her spirit—as no other can. I have cast the augury, and seen her. She will come to me, and submit to me, or die,
knowing that both you and the boy will perish with her. To lose all, or to gain all: there is but one choice. Love will betray her, and in my service she will be loveless forever.”

Gaynor wanted to cry out in defiance—She will fight you! You cannot win but her vocal cords were numb. The gray hand reached out toward her, the arm extended over an impossible distance; dust-dry fingers wound around her throat. Horror filled her, paralyzing struggle; but only for an instant. The strength of that hand was beyond Nature, and in seconds the room darkened, and went out.