The Dragons of Babel (9 page)

“That is neither here nor there,” Annie said.

“I fail to see why it isn't.”

“Well, exactly, dear. That's the problem in a nutshell.”

“I didn't—”

“It is not what you
did
that is in question here, but what you are,” Auld Black Agnes said. “You despise us and our ways. You cannot see our virtues anymore; our foibles and follies fill your sight. You are filled with anger and impatience and a restless urge to be
doing
things. Yet you are young and without wisdom, and there is nobody here who will teach you it. Nor would you accept their teaching if it were offered you. So there is no choice. You must leave the village.”

Every word she said rang true. Will could gainsay none of it. “But where will I go?” he asked despairingly.

“Alas,” she replied, “that is of no concern to me.”

4 S
CYTHE
S
NG

The first several days after leaving the village were peaceful. Will traveled south along the river road and then, where the marshlands rose up, followed that same road eastward and inland among the farms. Now and then he got a ride on a haywain or a tractor, and sometimes a meal or two as well in exchange for work. He fed himself from the land and bathed in starlit ponds. When he could not find a barn or an unlocked utility shed, he burrowed into a haystack, wrapping his cloak about him for a defense against ticks. Such sleights and stratagems were no great burden for a country fey such as himself.

His mood varied wildly. Sometimes he felt elated to have left his old life behind. Other times, he fantasized vengeance, bloody and sweet. It was shameful of him, for the chief architect of his ruin was dead at his own hand and the others in the village were as much the war-dragon's victims as he. But he was no master of his own thoughts, and at such moments would bite and claw at his own flesh until the fit passed.

Then one morning the roads were thronged with people. It was like a conjuring trick in which a hand is held out, palm empty, to be briefly covered by a silk handkerchief which, whisked away, reveals a mound of squirming eels. Will had gone to sleep with the roads empty and that night dreamed of
the sea. He woke to an odd murmuring and, when he dug his way out of the hay, discovered that it was voices, the weary desultory talk of folk who have come a great distance and have a long way yet to go.

Will stood by the road letting the dust-stained travelers stream past him like a river while his vision grabbed and failed to seize, searching for and not finding a familiar face among their number. Until at last he saw a woman whose bare breasts and green sash marked her as a hag, let slide her knapsack to the ground and wearily sit upon a stone at the verge of the road. He placed himself before her and bowed formally. “Reverend Mistress, your counsel I crave. Who are all these folk? Where are they bound?”

The hag looked up. “The Armies of the Mighty come through the land,” she said, “torching the crops and leveling the villages. Terror goes before them and there are none who dare stand up to their puissance, and so perforce all must flee, some into the Old Forest, and others across the border.' Tis said there are refugee camps there.”

“Is it your wisdom,” he asked, touching his brow as the formula demanded, “that we should travel thither?”

The young hag looked tired beyond her years. “Whether it is wisdom or not, it is there that I am bound,” she said. And without further word she stood, shouldered her burden, and walked on.

The troubles had emptied out the hills and scoured from their innermost recesses many a creature generally thought to be extinct. Downs trolls and albino giants, the latter translucent-skinned and weak as tapioca pudding, trudged down the road, along with ogres, brown men, selkies, chalkies, and other common types of hobs and feys. After a moment's hesitation, Will joined them.

Thus it was that he became a refugee.

L
ate that same day, when the sun was high and Will was passing a field of oats, low and golden under a harsh blue
sky, he realized he had to take a leak. Far across the field the forest began. He turned his back on the road and in that instant was a carefree vagabond once more. Through the oats he strode, singing to himself a harvest song:

“Mowers, weary and brown, and blithe,

What is the word methinks ye know…”

It was a bonny day, and for all his troubles Will could not help feeling glad to be alive and able to enjoy the rich gold smell that rose from the crops and the fresh green smell that came from the woods and the sudden whirr of grasshoppers through the air.

“What is the word that, over and over,

Sings the Scythe to the flowers and grass?”

Will was thinking of the whitesmith's daughter, who had grown so busty over the winter and had blushed angrily last spring simply for his looking at her, though he hadn't meant a thing by it at the time. Later, however, reflecting upon that moment, his thoughts had gone where she'd earlier assumed them to be. Now he would have liked to bring her here at hottest midday with a blanket and find a low spot in the fields, where the oats would hide them, and perform with her those rites that would guarantee a spectacular harvest.

A little girl came running across the field, arms outstretched, golden braids flying behind her. “Papa! Papa!” she cried.

To his astonishment, Will saw that she was heading toward him. Some distance behind, two stickfellas and a lubin ran after her, as if she had just escaped their custody. Straight to Will the little girl flew and leapt up into his arms. Hugging him tightly, she buried her small face in his shoulder.

“Help me,” she whispered. “Please. They want to rape me.”

Perhaps there was a drop of the truth-teller's blood in him, for her words went straight to Will's heart and he did not doubt them. Falling immediately into the role she had laid out for him, he spun her around in the air as if in great joy, then set her down and, placing his arms on her shoulders, sternly said, “You little imp! You must never run away like that again—never! Do you understand me?”

“Yes, Papa.” Eyes downcast, she dug a hole in the dirt with the tip of one shoe.

The girl's pursuers came panting up. “Sir! Sir!” cried the lubin. He had a dog's head, like all his kind, was great of belly but had a laborer's arms and shoulders, and wore a wide-brimmed hat with a dirty white plume. He swept off the hat and bowed deeply. “Saligos de Gralloch is my name, sir. My companions and I found your daughter wandering the roads, all by herself, hungry and lost. Thank the Seven we…” He stopped, frowned, tugged at one hairy ear. “You're her
father
, you say?”

“Good sir, my thanks,” Will said, as if distracted. He squatted and hugged the child to him again, thinking furiously. “It was kind of you to retrieve her to me.”

The lubin gestured, and the stickfellas moved to either side of Will. He himself took a step forward and stared down on Will, black lips curling back to expose yellow canines. “Are you her father? You
can't
be her father. You're too young.”

Will felt the dragon-darkness rising up in him, and fought it down. The lubin outweighed him twice over, and the stickfellas might be slight, but their limbs were as fast and hard as staves. He would have to be cunning. “She was exposed to black iron as an infant and almost died,” he said lightly. “So I sold a decade of my life to Year Eater to buy a cure.”

One of the stickfellas froze, like a lifeless tree rooted in
the soil, as he tried to parse out the logic of what Will had said. The other skittishly danced backward and forward on his long legs and longer arms. The lubin narrowed his eyes. “That's not how it works,” he rumbled. “It can't be. Surely, when you sell a fraction of yourself to that dread power, it makes you older, not younger.”

But Will had stalled long enough to scheme and knew now what to do. “My darling daughter,” he murmured, placing a thumb to his lips, kissing it, and then touching the thumb to the girl's forehead. All this was theater and distraction. Heart hammering with fear, he fought to look casual as he took her hand, so that the tiny dab of warm spittle touched her fingers. “My dear, sweet little…”

There was a work of minor magic that every lad his age knew. You came upon a sleeping friend and gently slid his hand into a pan of warm water. Whereupon, impelled by who-knew-what thaumaturgic principles, said friend would immediately piss himself. The spittle would do nicely in place of water. Focusing all his thought upon it, Will mumbled, as if it were an endearment, one of his aunt's favorite homeopathic spells—one that was both a diuretic and a laxative.

With a barrage of noises astonishing from one so small, the sluice gates of the girl's body opened. Vast quantities of urine and liquid feces exploded from her nether regions and poured down her legs. “Oh!” she shrieked with horror and dismay. “Oh! Oh! Oh!”

Her abductors, meanwhile, drew back in disgust. “Pfaugh!” said one of the stickfellas, waving a twiggish hand before his nose. The other was already heading back toward the road.

“I'm sorry.” Will smiled apologetically, straightening. “She has this little problem…” The girl tried to kick him, but he nimbly evaded her. “As you can see, she lacks self-control.”

“Oh!”

Only the lubin remained now. He stuck out a blunt forefinger, thumb upward, as if his hand were a gun, and shook it at Will. “You've fooled the others, perhaps, but not me. Cross Saligos once more, and it will be your undoing.” He fixed Will with a long stare, then turned and trudged heavily away.

“Look what you
did
to me!” the little girl said angrily when Saligos was finally out of sight and they were alone. She plucked at the cloth of her dress. It was foul and brown.

Amused, Will said, “It got you out of a fix, didn't it? It got us both out of a fix.” He held out his hand. “There's a stream over in the woods there. Come with me, and we'll get you cleaned off.”

Carefully keeping the child at arm's length, he led her away.

T
he girl's name was Esme. While she washed herself in the creek, Will went a little way downstream and laundered her clothes, rinsing and wringing them until they were passably clean. He placed them atop some nearby bushes to dry. By the time he was done, Esme had finished too and crouched naked by the edge of the creek, drawing pictures in the mud with a twig. To dry her off, he got out his blanket from the knapsack and wrapped it around her.

Clutching the blanket about her as if it were the robes of state, Esme broke off a cattail stalk, and with it whacked Will on both shoulders. “I hereby knight thee!” she cried. “Arise, Sir Hero of Grammarie Fields.”

Anybody else would have been charmed. But the old familiar darkness had descended upon Will once more, and all he could think of was how to get Esme off his hands. He had neither resources nor prospects. Traveling light, as he must, he dared not take on responsibility for the child. “Where are you from?” he asked her.

Esme shrugged.

“How long have you been on the road?”

“I don't remember.”

“Where are your parents? What are their names?”

“Dunno.”

“You do have parents, don't you?”

“Dunno.”

“You don't know much, do you?”

“I can scour a floor, bake a sweet-potato pie, make soap from animal fat and lye and candles from beeswax and wicking, curry a horse, shear a lamb, rebuild a carburetor, and polish shoes until they shine.” She let the blanket sag so that it exposed one flat proto-breast and struck a pose. “I can sing the birds down out of the trees.”

Involuntarily, Will laughed. “Please don't.” Then he sighed. “Well, I'm stuck with you for the nonce, anyway. When your clothes have dried, I'll take you upstream and teach you how to tickle a trout. It'll be a useful addition to your many other skills.”