Dragonslayer: A Novel (26 page)

Again she shrugged.

"You gathered more
last night!"

"Last ni. . ." Galen began.

"I only needed a few more, so I went up and got them. It was quiet, and I thought the Thing would be asleep. It was, I guess. At least, I didn't see it. Ah!" She raised a finger to Galen. "But what I
did
see was something you should know about." She shuddered as a cool wave of memory touched her, and she drew her arms around herself, pulling close an imaginary shawl. "Horrible! Ech!"

"What?"

"Well, the dragon isn't alone. There are at least two more of them. Little ones. Babies, I guess."

"Good Lord!" Simon exclaimed.

"Dragonets," said Galen. "They'll have to be killed, too."

"Funny," Valerian went on. "Funny that we never thought of it having young. But there they were. I almost stumbled on one in a shadow, out of the moonlight, and I
would
have if I hadn't seen the other one on a rock, silhouetted against the sky. When I stopped and stepped back the one on the rock hissed,
horrible,
like a wheezy old man laughing, and the other one answered it; it was right beside me. If I had taken another step or two . . ." Again she shuddered, and pressed her lips together. She pushed the hair out of her eyes. "Anyway, I didn't. So I'm here. And there's the shield. Maybe it will help you, maybe it won't."

"Thank you," Galen said. He was embarrassed and confused.

"When the time comes," Simon cautioned, "don't go out to watch the Lottery. Tyrian and his bunch will pick you up right away. Go up to the loft. Watch from there. Then, when everyone moves to the edge of the Blight, do what you have to do. You will have time enough, and it will be too late then for them to stop you. They dread the Blight; I don't think even Tyrian has ever gone into it. Good Luck."

They clasped hands.

Valerian embraced him and kissed him on the mouth. "I'll see you," she said. "Later." And it seemed to Galen that she was making both a wish and a promise—that it would be
she
whose name was drawn, she who would be saved by that dark blade.

"Yes," he said.

Later, he watched from Simon's loft as the Urlanders gathered for the Lottery. Since the first couriers had galloped out from Morgenthorme bearing Casiodorus's orders, parents had begun the grim journey with their daughters, and husbands, as the
Codex Dracorum
demanded, with eligible wives. The midnight roads thronged with travelers from the crofts, the hill-hamlets, and the northern villages.

Since dawn they had been arriving, gawking at the smoking ruins. Tyrian's men herded them into the central square, while a few patrolled the outskirts, watchful for any women who tried to slip away.

By the time Galen saw Casiodorus's party coming, resplendent in their white robes against the green, there were no more pilgrims on the road. All were gathered silently below, waiting. In the center was the platform constructed that morning, a platform dominated by carved dragons' heads on long poles. On the platform stood the great barrel that legend said had been used in the first Lottery. Always it was transported in Horsrick's tumbril and went back the same way to the cellars of Morgenthorme. It sat, a presence, awaiting the wooden lots which every woman had signed, and which Horsrick and his assistants had begun to gather, checking off each woman's name against the roll.

The royal party arrived and moved to the front seats reserved for them. Horsrick began the reading of the
Codex Dracorum,
as prescribed by custom, while his assistants collected the remaining lots. When he had finished, when the bowl had received all the lots, Horsrick raised his arms for silence. The Drawing was about to begin.

Galen found Valerian in the crowd. She was rigid with fear. A dreadful premonition began to form in the pit of Galen's stomach.

Horsrick's black cloak billowed in the breeze. Behind and above him, the carved dragons' heads nodded on their poles. The crowd hushed. Then a lone voice, the voice of an old, old woman said, "Stir the tiles!" The order was quickly taken up by others, "Stir the tiles! Stir the tiles!" Soon it was a whispered chorus, sweeping like a breeze. In response, Horsrick took the elmwood staff darkened by age and handling, inserted it into the bowl, and began to stir. A sigh of relief escaped the crowd at the sound of the tiles moving; for the moment they were satisfied and silent. But then the voice of another old woman, more impatient than the first, said, "Bare the arm!" And again the demand was hoarsely taken up in a thousand throats. "Bare the arm! Bare the arm!" The chamberlain extended his right arm, and one of his assistants scurried forward, unsheathing his dagger. Clumsily, he jabbed at the fabric of Horsrick's jerkin just above the biceps and hacked around the arm so the entire sleeve of the garment fell away, leaving the chamberlain's left arm bare. The crowd exhaled softly, an animal sigh of relief and expectation. "Draw," they said. "Draw!"

Horsrick's bared arm sank into the bowl of wooden tiles, sank deep, to the bottom, stirred. "Draw!" His hand reappeared, gripping a single tile, and he began, his body stiff and his eyes upcast, the chant of the Chosen: "Hear me, my countrymen. Behold, for I am chosen. I shall die that you may five. I shall lay down my life for you and for your families. I shall go to the dragon for Urland, for my people, and for my king. I am the Chosen, and my name is . . ." Horsrick lowered his eyes to look at the tile, and the crowd held its breath.

"Valerian!" Galen whispered, numb with fear.

But Horsrick said no name. He said nothing. He gaped; he started back as if the tile had struck him; he glanced fearfully at Casiodorus and the royal party, and then wildly at the assembled Urlanders. "The name!" they demanded. "The name!" But still he did not speak, and for a ludicrous moment the chamberlain, who for that instant became simply a silly, cringing old man, actually tried to conceal the tile as if he had not drawn it, as if it were not gripped in his sweaty palm. "The name," the crowd screamed, in a bestial roar, a single, mindless animal, "The
NAME!"

"The name of the Chosen," Horsrick stared wide-eyed at Casiodorus and spoke so softly that he could scarcely be heard, "is Elspeth,
Filia Regis. . . ."

From his place in the loft, Galen did not hear the name, but he knew that something extraordinary had happened. The crowd was utterly stilled; Tyrian's men clutched their weapons in defensive, frozen positions, and for moments the only sound was the stamping of Tyrian's horse on the cobbles and the high, keening laughter of a distant bird.

Then Casiodorus was on his feet. "No! Impossible!"

"It is not impossible, my Lord," said a pale and shaken Horsrick. "It is the very name. See for yourself."

"There is some mistake!"

"There is no mistake, my Lord." And he dropped the tile into Casiodorus's outstretched hand.

Again the crowd held its breath, and in the instant they saw from Casiodorus's face that what Horsrick had said was true; Elspeth was indeed the Chosen.
"No!"
he shouted, no longer the king but only a father. "No!"

But the crowd responded in a vast fateful breath of relief and anticipation. "Yes!"

"You have misread it, Horsrick! Look, this is a mere scrawl. Unintelligible! Draw again!" And he flung the tile into the smoking ruins of one of the nearby buildings.

The crowd roared. Men shook their fists. Women, transformed into harpies by their grief, thrust indignant hands on hips and shouted out their protests. Among their voices, Galen could clearly hear Valerian's: "No! No! It was a fair draw! Let it stand!"

Tyrian's men moved forward again, and a line of them appeared before the dais where Casiodorus stood, his dignity abandoned, his hair wild.

"Back!" he said, pushing Horsrick away from the bowl. "We will repeat this draw! The first was invalid!" And despite the roar of outrage surrounding him, he plunged his robed arm into the bowl and seized a second tile. "The name," he shouted above the uproar. "The name . . ." But he never said the name. He staggered back, stricken by what he had seen on the tile, incapable of speech. He gaped at his daughter as if she were a stranger.

And indeed, the Elspeth who rose now from her place at the front of the screaming throng and made her way onto the dais
was
a different woman. The old Elspeth had been wan; this one was flushed with new life and purpose. The old Elspeth had been reticent, even almost cowed at times; this one was calm, firm, self-controlled, and utterly assured. She lifted her arms, and in awe and respect the crowd fell silent. Her voice was clear, like the cool song of a waterbird, and Galen could hear it perfectly in his hiding place. "The reason that my father will not tell you the name on the second tile," she said, "is that it also is mine. And so is this." She held up a third tile, then a fourth. "And this. The bowl contains as many tiles bearing my name as it does all of yours." She waited a moment for the significance of the statement to be understood. "Yes, there is a lot with my name for each of yours. Do you know why I have done this?" The crowd was spellbound, waiting. "To compensate. To balance all the Lotteries of other years when I have risked nothing, when my name was on no lots at all. It is correct that my name be chosen now. And so I go to meet the dragon, and to know what others before me have known." She spoke with a strange elation, before turning to Casiodorus, who was being supported by Horsrick. "As for my father, do not think ill of him. Forgive him. He has governed according to his lights. And if he has violated the
Codex,
he has not done so out of malice but out of love." She embraced the helpless Casiodorus in the long, last embrace of the unmarried daughter of her father. Then she summoned Horsrick and his cart. This time, there would be no delay between the Lottery and the Giving.

"No!" Casiodorus tottered forward, his eyes bulging, his hands outstretched. "No! I forbid it! Horsrick, do not bring the cart!"

The old chamberlain turned bewildered eyes on his king. "Sir," he whispered, "the Lottery has begun. The Chosen has been called. It is too late, Your Majesty!"

"Tyrian, stop this!"

Tyrian did not look at the king. He gazed out over the seething crowd to the horizon of the Blight. "The Lottery is more important than any one person," he said, "man or woman. What has been done is done. I cannot prevent this Giving."

Casiodorus sank into a chair that a retainer had placed behind him, and there he remained, staring without seeing, while the procession formed for the journey to the Blight. At last he allowed himself to be guided onto his horse.

As for the procession itself, for the first time in as long as any could remember, there was a kind of pride and even a triumph in it. Someone had found uncharred banners, and they fluttered in the breeze. Flowers had appeared to bedeck Elspeth and her cart, and several of the younger women had even run ahead to strew blossoms in her path. It did in fact seem much more the triumphal parade of a conqueror than of a sacrificial victim; but then, Galen thought, standing and picking up Sicarius for the coming combat, they believed that she
had
saved them, at least this once. Yes, that explained their exuberance; it was a triumph of hope.

Simon had gone with the rest. Only Valerian was left in the square. As the others departed, she climbed the platform and one after the other drew several tiles from the bowl.
Elspeth R., Elspeth R.,
Elspeth. . . . Thoughtfully she turned each lot over, before dropping it back. She stood a long time staring eastward, in the direction the princess had gone. And then, with a glance toward her own home, and up at the loft where she knew Galen was hiding, she hurried after the rest.

Now,
Galen said to himself.
Now!
With Sicarius balanced in his right hand, bearing Valerian's shield that flickered with a thousand lights, he strode through Simon's dwelling and out into the sun. Valerian had shown him a high, fast path to the Blight.

He was eighteen.

He had never in his life used a warrior's weapon.

He was going to fight a dragon.

CHAPTER TEN

Battle

Elspeth was being
tied to the stake when Galen arrived. The forest path he had taken opened onto the Blight above the main road, and he was able to look down on Horsrick performing his duty, and on the skittish horse. He looked down also on the gathered Urlanders, the distracted king among them, only slightly removed with his court, at the edge of the greensward.

The lair opened above him. Just outside and down from it, wedged between two large boulders and pointing with one stick arm toward heaven still, lay the charred corpse of Jacopus. Galen shuddered, remembering. There was no sign of movement yet in the mouth of the lair; clearly, if Vermithrax was to be engaged, it would have to be sought out. He remembered fleetingly Valerian's warning about the dragonets, but a careful inspection of the area in front of the cave mouth revealed no sign of them. Could she have been mistaken? Could she have imagined them?

His first step was to free the princess. It was unconscionable that she should be tethered there like some farm animal awaiting execution. He hoisted Sicarius, and strode out into the last of the sunlight on the blackened rubble of the Blight. In a few moments he had reached Elspeth's side, and with one thrust, the first stroke of Sicarius, he severed the thongs which bound her to the post. "Thank you," she said. She rubbed her wrists and glanced up the hillside.