The Whim of the Dragon (33 page)

“Leave thy damnable doctorings and call thy masters,” said Edward. Shan swung on him as if he would have liked to knock him down; but Edward had forgotten him. He was gaping at Andrew; and then his anger seemed to clear away and he said, “My Lord Andrew of the limpid thoughts. What do you in this cloudy place? Edward Carroll, this is very ill done.”

“Very ill done indeed,” said Andrew, “if you must be your own commentary.” He looked shaken just the same, and stood staring from Ted to Edward and back again.

“Shan,” said Ted, “
please
call your masters.”

“Those are not my masters,” said Shan, his face shadowed again by a lighter version of the look he had turned on Edward.

“All right, I’m sorry. I’m a stranger. We have got to speak to the Lords of the Dead. This is getting out of hand.”

“Your presence alone should draw them,” said Shan. “Forgive me; I’ll return.” He disappeared into the crowd of ghosts.

Ted’s gaze, following him and trying to distinguish his wake through the crowd, stuck suddenly on a very tall figure moving purposefully toward them, out of the drifting mass of figures. It was King William.

Ted took two steps and closed his hand hard around Randolph’s arm. “Brace yourself,” he said, and pointed.

Randolph looked along his extended arm, and Ted felt him shiver. Then he smiled, which was even worse.

“Don’t do anything stupid!” said Ted.

“That advice cometh too late,” said Randolph; but he neither shook off Ted’s hand nor advanced to meet the King.

He did not need to. The King was coming to him. In his lined face were purpose and knowledge and recognition; but no anger, and no accusation. Maybe he didn’t know.

The ghosts of the royal children sank suddenly to their knees. Andrew, his face like a mask, knelt too. Randolph stood where he was; Ted, feeling obscurely that while he had hold of Randolph he had some small control over the situation, stayed standing too. Ruth came up on Ted’s other side and said, very softly, “Why is Andrew kneeling for a bad play?”

King William stopped a foot away from Randolph and said in his firm, carrying voice, “How fared the battle with the Dragon King?”

“My lord, we have won it,” said Randolph. His voice was steady, but not very strong.

“Using what strategies?” said the King.

“My lord, those in King John’s Book.”

“Thou hast done well, then,” said the King; and he put his ringed hands on Randolph’s shoulders and kissed him.

Randolph’s arm under Ted’s was like wood. Ted was the one who was shivering. The King was within six inches of him; the trailing sleeve of the King’s gown brushed Ted’s hair. And yet Ted had no feeling of any living presence; no warmth, no breath, hardly even the differences in the feel of the air that one has from a chair or a wardrobe. But the figure of the King filled his vision and the King’s voice lingered in his hearing.

The King stood back from Randolph, still holding him by the shoulders, and said, much more quietly, “By the oath you swore me, dear friend, I do abjure you now—hold your tongue.”

“I thought all for the best,” said Randolph, as if he were in the middle of some other conversation altogether.

“I know it,” said the King. “I tell thee again, Randolph, hold thy tongue. Take thy doom from the mouth of thy victim: guide my son, and confess not this deed.” He said in his original tones, “Where’s Fence?”

“Gone north, my lord, to beg with Chryse and Belaparthalion that they will impose some order on the Dragon King.”

“Edward,” said the King, turning his hollow eyes on Ted.

“Here, Father,” said Edward from behind the King.

The King turned; Ted saw his straight, broad back grow rigid. When he spoke he woke echoes, in this place that should be capable of none, and stilled the murmuring dead. “What makest thou here below the earth?”

“Oh, God,” said Ruth.

Randolph leaned suddenly on Ted’s shoulder and began to shiver. After a moment he sat down on the ground and put his face in his hands. Ted sat down with him, keeping hold of his arm.

“Don’t listen,” said Ruth. “Randolph. Don’t listen. If you don’t concentrate, the voices fade away.”

Randolph did not answer her; Ted, unable not to listen while actually looking at the tight cluster of King and children, turned around.

“Andrew?” said Ted. “How is it?”

Andrew’s strained gaze, stretched wide over Ted’s shoulder, jerked to Ted’s face. Andrew said, in a stronger voice than Ted had been able to muster, “’Tis a pretty show, my prince; you must show me the strings and the mirrors one day.”

“I hope,” said Ted, judging that concern was not what Andrew wanted from him, “that you note the absence of the piteous figure and the shaky finger and the distraction in the aspect?”

“The distraction’s all in Randolph’s,” said Andrew.

This was inaccurate, since nobody could see Randolph’s aspect. But Randolph instantly dropped his hands and tossed his hair out of his eyes. Ted let go of his arm, and Randolph laid a hand on Ted’s knee. Ted suspected that it meant, “Keep your mouth shut.”

“’Tis in your aspect also,” Randolph said.

“He spoke you very lovingly for one so estranged in his philosophy,” said Andrew.

“He’ll speak you twice as fair do you but pluck his sleeve,” said Randolph.

“He loved you ever,” said Andrew. “I made him doubt you, but to hate you I could not move him one whit.”

“Nor could your attempts move him to hate you,” said Randolph. “Go speak to him; you’ll have no peace else.”

Andrew looked over Ted’s shoulder again, and shock wiped his face clear of all expression.
“With whom doth he speak so close?”
he said. He snatched his horrified gaze back to Ted. “Lady Ruth, in her habit as she lived,” he said.
“What are you?”
He half rose, telling over one by one the dim figures grouped around the King. Then he sat down hard and awkwardly, and looked for a very long time at Ruth.

“Edward,” he said to her at last, “I cannot tell one from t’other; but thee, my lady bright, I know for a false jade. My lady’s with her father; and what art thou?”

“Hold your tongue,” said Ted, creakily.

“Wert puzzled?” said Andrew to Ruth, in rising tones. “Wert much afeared? Didst wreck thy thoughts on the tangle of my most—” He let out a wavering breath very like a sob, and set himself, visibly, to regaining his control. “How came matters to this pass?” he said at last; and he said it to Randolph.

“Later,” said Randolph. “Speak to the King.”

Andrew got up unsteadily and walked past Ruth and Ted and Randolph. None of them watched him go. Randolph put one hand over his eyes for a moment, and said, “Ruth, take not on so.”

Ted looked quickly at Ruth, who was choking into the crook of her elbow. Ruth never cried.

“Sorry,” said Ruth, thickly, from behind her arm and a cloud of hair. “What a fiasco.” She sniffed hard and shook herself as if she were about to emerge; then she said, “Oh, hell,” and choked again.

Randolph fished in his sleeve, and in his belt pouch, and then patted himself vaguely, like a man in a three-piece suit looking for his parking ticket. He finally pulled a handkerchief from the sleeve of his cloak and tucked it into Ruth’s hand. Ruth blew her nose and tidied her hair back from her face.

“There’s Shan,” said Randolph, and stood up hurriedly. “I pray you pardon me.”

He strode past the clump of King, children, and Andrew, and walked into the clustering ghosts. They parted for him like a curtain of beads. Once Ted was alone with Ruth, he was able to pull her hair and say, “‘I have a speech of fire that fain would blaze, but that this folly douts it.’ ”

“Don’t quote Edward to me.” Ruth blew her nose again.

There was some commotion among the ghosts. Ted looked over Ruth’s shoulder and said, “Randolph
did
see Shan.”

Ruth stood up; so did Ted. Randolph and Shan were coming slowly toward them; Shan kept stopping to talk to the ghosts, who then grew noisy. It seemed that, after he had spoken to a group of them, its members grew more solid and distinguishable, and their voices less shrill.

Shan and Randolph came out of the crowd and crossed the open gray ground toward Ted and Ruth. Something in their walk, their disparate heights, the absorption on their faces, was familiar to Ted. As they arrived before him, and Shan bowed, Ted realized what it was. Just so were Fence and Randolph accustomed to pace around together, arguing.

“What news?” said Ruth, in a not altogether natural tone.

“Good for these folk,” said Shan, “but bad, I fear, for all your party.”

“Don’t tell me,” said Ruth. “They heard we were coming and they’ve fled the country.”

“I know not what they’ve heard, my lady, but in truth, they are not here.”

“They’re
all
gone?” said Ruth.

“All nine,” said Randolph.

“What about the Judge of the Dead?” said Ted.

“You may speak to him, my lord, an you will,” said Shan. Ted surmised that Randolph had told him that Ted was the King of the Hidden Land. Shan went on, “But he cannot act; he can but bring suasion to bear upon the Nine Lords, when they do return.”

“I want to ask him some riddles,” said Ted.

“Why bother with him?” said Ruth. “You’ve got Shan right in front of you.”

“Ask, by all means,” said Shan. “Most I meet here do ask me riddles, and cry aloud when I do answer them, for ’tis too late. For you the answers may prove more timely. Say on.”

“What beast,” said Ted, obediently, “is it the unicorns pursue each summer?”

“The dragon,” said Shan, in a curious voice.

“Before what beast doth winter flee?”

“The dragon.”

“And what beast maketh that which putteth words to the flute’s song?”

“Not the dragon,” said Shan. “The third question is rightly—”

“But what’s the answer to our third question; please?” said Ruth.

And Shan said, “The Outside Power.”

The three living people looked at one another.

“Outside power is unfurled,” said Randolph.

Shan caught hold of his cloak, altering its hang only by a little; and said excitedly, “You did use the Ring?”

“Why don’t you tell us,” said Ruth, in a flat voice, “about the Ring.”

“Why don’t we sit down?” said Ted.

They did. Watching Shan sit down was rather disturbing; where he and the ground met it was hard to tell which was which. The ground was soft, dry, and cold, and gave no reassurance by any of its characteristics that it would still be there the next minute.

Shan told them, with a loving attention to detail that reminded Ted of Patrick, about Shan’s Ring. The unicorns had given it to him in reparation for some injury, which he did not elaborate. They had told him it would bring him his heart’s desire. Shan’s heart’s desire, it appeared, was death. Randolph raised his head at this point, and he and Shan exchanged a very long look, which Shan ended by saying, “Take better heed than I was able of dear, beauteous death, the jewel of the just.”

Randolph said nothing, and Shan went on. He had thought, he said, that this remark of the unicorns was one of their cruel jests, because they themselves had deprived him of his death. He thought of his next dearest desire, and whether Shan’s Ring might aid him to achieve it. This was some means whereby the mere people of the Secret Country and its surrounding lands might receive justice from the magical creatures they lived with. There was no meeting ground between them, no appeal. The dragons and unicorns took offense, or took a fancy, and did what they would without consulting the people involved.

Now the Red Sorcerers, of whom Shan was one, had been accustomed to use enchanted mirrors to see things far away.

“That’s a device of the Red Sorcerers?” broke in Randolph. Ted remembered the hand mirror in Fence’s room, that they had used to scan the two hundred and eight steps for signs of Claudia. He thought of the innumerable mirrors in the stark house of Apsinthion.

Shan grinned at Randolph. “Aye, Blue Mage, that it is.” He went on. He had found that if one looked in such a mirror while wearing Shan’s Ring, one saw many and diverse places, some pleasant and some dangerous. In one of these places, which looked like the Hidden Land and yet unlike, he had seen unicorns. After a great deal of thought and what he called “blundering,” he had made a sword to take him there. And on that ground he had proposed to the unicorns that they consent to bargain with anyone they had wronged who had the courage and the means to take himself there. The unicorns had been amused, and had consented; but there was a catch, as always. Anyone who found them on their bargaining ground might indeed bargain; but if he lost, worse would befall him than he had already suffered. If he won he would truly be better off; but it would be hard to win.

“What about ‘Time awry is blown’?” said Ruth.

“That,” said Shan, soberly, “is an incidental kindness of the unicorns the backlash whereof I do still await. They do nothing that profits them not, but this attribute of the ring seemeth to profit only their petitioners. For look you, time in this place of the unicorns runneth quicklier; an Shan’s Ring did not yoke it to the time of the human lands, for the duration of a human visit, even a man who won his petition might return to find his family dust and his grandchildren old as he.”

Ted began to laugh. “Wouldn’t you know it!” he said. “In our world, time runs the same as it does in the Hidden Land. But that didn’t suit us; so we used Shan’s Ring for just the opposite effect, to slow down time at home so we could return a bare instant after we left.”

“Why so?” said Shan.

“To keep the grown-ups off our backs,” said Ruth.

“Art so young, then?”

“Not anymore,” said Ruth, with unexpected grimness.

“Well,” said Ted, “the bargaining ground of the dragons?”