The Dragon Charmer (28 page)

“Only I can declare when your debt is paid.” Azmordis’s voice grates with a stony dryness deadlier than any anger.

“You cannot threaten me—no, not even you. You need me too much.” Ruvindra’s face is proud and impudent and cold. His boldness before this most powerful of adversaries is reckless to the point of madness, terrifying, wonderful. In this moment, Fern knows that she loves him, and her heart shrinks with the fear he does not feel. “The dragon cannot be bound. He is not a slave or a familiar: dragons are the freest of the free creatures. Only a true charmer may talk with them. And thanks to you I, too, am the last of my kin. I have outlived my
descendants, and the blood of my family is muddied with lesser blends. You will not find another with my complexion and my skill. Slay me, and you will lose your mind link with the dragon, and all your scheming over the empty centuries will be in vain.”

“Our bargain was that I should control the dragon,” says Azmordis, very softly. “Do you wish to… renege?”

“You can control him—if that is the word—only through me. His name will be of my choosing, and the hour in which it is given.” And he reiterates, dispassionate even in defiance, hot blooded, cold tempered: “Our bargain is voided. I have paid my dues.”

“So be it.” The huge whisper is bone deep, rock deep; the air shudders with it. “You made the covenant that cannot be broken, signed in your own blood, yet you would break it. Despite your Gift, you are as lesser mortals. You think to take and take and never pay the price. Be sure, in time I will claim all that is due to me. For now, the dragon shall remain unnamed, a hatchling still. Dismiss it.”

“He is not a pet to be so lightly dismissed, as you will learn,” says Ruvindra. But he speaks to the dragon, and it stretches up to nuzzle his cheek before moving away, lifting now on a double wingbeat, hovering an instant as if in glee at its newfound ability, and then plunging into a lake of scarlet. The ripples hiss into steam at its entry, then the water smooths over it into immobility.

“So be it!” says Azmordis, and his voice expands with the words, making the mountains resonate. The outline of arm and shoulder blurs, soaring upward into a cusp of darkness that leans over the recusant. The sun, sinking toward the pith of the valley, turns red; shadows reach out like spears from every jut of rock. “Our covenant is ended. The payment is all that you have, and all that you are. For I have found another of your kith to serve me in your stead: a degenerate whose blood is impure, yet his skill will suffice to finish what you began. His hunger is strong but his spirit is weak. He will open his mind to me, and I will bend his little will like pliant wood. The dragon will be his, and through him, mine. My weapon and my plaything. You will never give it a name or send it forth to ravage the world. Think on that, while thought endures.
You broke a compact with Azmordis: your life is forfeit. All that you sought to gain I will take, and you will die in pain, knowing that where you sowed, your enemy will reap. That is my price for oath-breaking.”

The black figure stands motionless. “I could recall the dragon.”

“It is young and still vulnerable, its flame uncertain. It would die with you—and believe me, I would rather see it dead than beyond my power. Recall it!”

Laiï does not answer. His silhouette is straight and tall against the red sunlight. “So be it.”

Then: “Come to me!” cries Azmordis. “Creatures of Az-model! Come to me and FEED!”

Out of every shadow, every hollow, every wormhole they come, out of stillness and emptiness, wriggling and writhing into a multitude of unnatural forms. They are blotched and piebald, maggot white, scarlet speckled, slime green. Some are earless, some bat eared, eyeless or many eyed, some with rat’s whiskers, beetle’s antennae, the warts of a toad. They pour over the ground in a slow tide, skimming on lizard feet or pattering on cloven hooves, groping with fingers, talons, claws. They are too many and too diverse to identify species or similarity, creatures of drugged delusion or fevered fancy, but each has at least one mouth, and all are open, and the whole horde flickers with the darting of wet red tongues, and strands of saliva drool from every lip.

Still Ruvindra Laiï does not move. He has drawn a knife from his belt, his only weapon: the naked blade is as black as the hand that wields it, and so held that it seems to be an extension of his arm. But it means less than nothing against the swarm now converging on him. The spell-scene closes in, until he is staring directly at Fern, his blue eyes burning all the more fiercely on the edge of despair. And in that instant she knows he sees through Time and Reality, past danger and death, across the dimensions—he sees
her
. She glimpses something in his gaze that is almost recognition. In that meeting of eyes there is a bond, like a sudden cord drawn tight around her heart, a bond stronger than all loves, deep as the roots of the Tree.
I will know you again
, says that look, though his final moment is come. And then the horde engulfs him like a
wave, and the dance of the knife is black lightning, and grotesque fragments of anatomy are sent spinning through the air.

But he is overwhelmed in seconds, and the lightning is quenched. She hears not a cry, not a scream, only the sucking, swilling, rending noises of gluttons at a feast. Spatters of blood fly upward, organs discarded by one feeder only to be fought over by two more. Faces, claws, arms emerge smeared red. Teeth crunch on bone. She watches because she cannot turn away: she must watch and go on watching until the very last instant. Morgus, Sysselore, the Tree, personal peril, and peril of friends are all forgotten. “What do you think of your bargain now, Ruvindra?” murmurs Azmordis, and the shadow of his being is withdrawn, and the sun is swallowed up in the jaws of the valley. The dark flows down over the grisly banquet, and the smoke enfolds it all. Fern is released, and she steals softly to her pallet, and lies down, curled like a fetus, shivering as if with an ague.

When day returns she resolves to find the black fruit, and see if it is ripening.

   Fern can come and go now without hindrance: Morgus does not stop or question her anymore. She believes Fern has accepted her fate, and thus she is accepted in her turn. Sysselore follows her sometimes, dogging her steps like a furtive shadow, not because she thinks their apprentice capable of secret rebellion but because such is her nature, or so her nature has become. It gives her pleasure to take Fern unawares, sidling softly to her shoulder to whisper in her ear, or reaching out to touch her unexpectedly with her choppy fingers. But Fern learns to sense when she is near: she feels that prickle on the nape that betrays a watcher. When she goes to visit that one special fruit, she is careful to remain unobserved. Morgus still hunts for it, roaming the root maze, examining the heads at every stage of their early growth, probing half-formed features or the swelling hump of a nose. She pays particular attention to those whose color appears darker or to be darkening; imagination cheats her, as she revisits this fruit or that, fancying it is the one she seeks. The crop hangs only on the lower branches; maybe the Tree bears other fruit higher
up. If there are any she cannot reach she sends her magpies to look at them. Many of the smaller birds dislike and fear her, chattering spitefully at her approach, but the magpies come at her command, bringing her the larvae that light the cave, performing nameless errands for her. They are bigger than they should be, bullying gangsters with stabbing beaks, their customary black-and-white marking enhanced with bands of blue on the wing. They are not her only allies among the avian population. Once Fern sees her with a kind of hawk that hovers and screeches at her; another time with a gigantic owl, white masked and sloe eyed. There is something familiar about it, and something frightening, but she cannot remember why.

But Morgus does not find the black fruit.

It is changing now, lengthening into narrow shapeliness, the definition of the nose increasing, the ridges of cheekbone and brow bone beginning to swell. The first hairs sprout prematurely around the stem, ears start to uncurl. The closed eyelids bulge like buds. Fern does not touch it: she feels to do so would be an intrusion, like caressing a sleeping stranger. In the night, the hog has been here. There are the prints of trotters in the earth, nearly a foot long, and deep furrows made by tusks, raw wounds in the grass. So far she has hidden the fruit with a wish, a thought, nudging the search always in another direction, keeping the pressure so gentle that Morgus does not feel it—even as they have taught her to do with the spellfire. They little suspect how well she has learned her lessons. Now a stronger protection is needed, a deeper and more subtle concealment. She must weave a net to hide this hollow not merely from the witches but from the marauding pig. She visualizes it suddenly very clearly, stamping the ground until the fruit shakes on its stem, lifting its snout to catch the scent of ripening. Fern knows the words for the spell but fears that Morgus may hear it, sense it, brush its outer strands in passing, and then she is lost. But the risk must be taken. This fruit above all others matters to her, though she cannot explain exactly why. And so she concentrates all her thought, reaching for the power within, channeling it through the Atlantean phrases—the language of the Gift, the words of the Stone—binding, hiding. A spell to cloak a spell, a deception of leaves and shadows, of turning away and leaving
alone. She seals it with a Command, though she dreads the mind of Morgus may be sharper than her ears. She can feel the danger, watching her back. Yet when she turns around no one is there.

The spell hangs fire, visible to seeing eyes, a cat’s cradle of spider lines that glitter faintly before fading into air. Fern withdraws slowly, watching the fruit disappear into a maze of foliage, climbing out of the hollow, which seems to close behind her, lost beneath a plaited mass of root and earth. Then she lets herself succumb to a trickle of relief, a release of tension that might be premature.

“You go to a great deal of trouble,” says a voice, “to hide one unripe plum.”

It is a dark, ugly, feral voice, thick as a bear’s growl. Fern starts abruptly, turns to stare—yet still sees nothing. And then gradually a shape develops, as if it has been there all the while, like a secret image in a puzzle picture, twisted horn and knotted muscle emerging from the twists and knots of the roots, the shag-haired lower limbs from grasses and leaf mold. The hues of skin and pelt seem to take color from their background, camouflaged chameleon style against bark and blade. But the eyes, set aslant in the deep cleft between cheekbone and brow, have a darkness all their own. Apart from the hog and the denizens of the Tree itself, she believed Morgus and Sysselore to be the only living beings here. They have never mentioned any other, resident or visitant. And he has seen her bind her spell, he knows what she wishes to protect. She inches cautiously into speech, picking her words. “What is it to you, if I wish my plum to ripen unharmed? The pig has been here…”

“I can smell it.” His wide nostrils flare, as if savoring every tincture of the air. Fern can smell only him. He has the warm, rank odor of a hot animal and the fresh-sweat smell of a hot human.

“Anyway, why are you spying on me?”

“I had heard Morgus had a new toy. I wanted to take a look at you. Maybe she will let me play with you, one day.”

“You can try,” she says with an edge of contempt, confident in the reflexes of power. It is a long time since she feared any male. “What is Morgus to you?”

His laugh is arid, as if starved of merriment.

“She’s my mother.”

For a moment Fern says nothing, struck dumb at the thought. That Morgus could mother anything seems incredible, that a child of hers might be freak or monster all too likely, but this is no victim of birth defects: he is a creature of an older kind. She senses his nature, alien and inimical to Man, yet with a suggestion of warped humanity. His very hostility reminds her of something she cannot quite place. She speaks without reflection or dissimulation, asking the question in her mind. “Who was your father?”

“Can’t you guess? He is an Old Spirit: Cerne they call him in one form, Pan in another. He is the Hunter, the Wild Man of the Woods. Such a union should produce no offspring, since the immortals live forever and have no need to reproduce. But my mother-to-be planned to outwit fate: by her arts she conceived, and summoned an elemental to inhabit her unborn fetus. She hoped to bear a child of exceptional powers; instead, she got me. A mongrel, a hybrid, a sport. Half-human, but without a soul; half-spirit, but alienated by a vestigial humanity. My mother hates me, since I remind her of failure. I am her punishment for transgressing the Ultimate Laws, but for what am I being punished? Are you clever enough to tell me that, little witch?”

The elusive familiarity crystallizes: she remembers a young man in Atlantis long ago—a young man beautiful as a god—talking with derision of his own mixed blood, part highborn Atlantean, part plebian mainlander. Rafarl Dev, whom she loved once and always, or so she thought—the man she unwittingly sent to his death. His face seems dim now, but she can still hear the self-mockery in his voice, masking pain. The one before her is almost ludicrously different, a face of lumpy bones with a cruel, sardonic mouth, deep-delved eyes and a cunning, secret intelligence, yet the same pain might be hidden there, buried far down where its owner cannot touch it. She says: “You may be more human than you know.”

“If that is meant for reassurance or compliment, I require neither.”

“It is neither. I spoke my thought, that’s all. Your—attitude—reminded me of someone I once knew.”

“Mortal or otherwise?”

“He was a man I loved.”

“So you are drawn to misfits and monsters, creatures of crooked make. That is the witch in you. What unnatural seed will you grow in your little belly? Will you swallow that black plum you protect so carefully, and sprout a baby plum tree of your own?” He is standing very close to her now. His loins and chest are hung about with rags of leather and skins, but much of his torso is bare. The giant muscles appear to wind his limbs like cables imprisoning him within the bondage of his own body. He seems more primate than man, more demon than spirit.