The Dragon Charmer (42 page)

It would not be long now.

   Will awoke slowly and unpleasantly to find he was lying on cold stone with the scratch of sacking against his cheek. A pneumatic drill appeared to be boring into his skull and the dryness in his mouth had shriveled his palate. When he tried to move a wave of nausea rolled over him, and he lay still for some time, closing his eyes against the gyrations of his surroundings. He had no idea where he was or how he had got there. Recollection trickled back piecemeal. Gaynor … he had left her for too long, much too long; she would think he had abandoned her. He tried to call her name, but it emerged as a groan and there was no answer. He thought he was in a sepulchre, with his head on a shroud. The ceiling seemed to be vaulted, and the only light came from a single naked bulb, swaying slightly from side to side although there was no draft: the shadows around him stretched and shrank, stretched and shrank, reviving his sickness. A muted tremor reached him
from the stone itself, but he dismissed the sensation as a hallucination born of his condition. He found himself remembering other things: a sword whose hilt was set with red stones, a faded banner, stepping out too hastily into an empty corridor. And then—nothing. Realization stabbed him: he had been careless, careless and stupid, and now he was a prisoner, and Gaynor God knew what had happened to Gaynor. He struggled to sit up, and retched violently. When the paroxysm subsided he crawled to a nearby wall and propped his back against it. He was in what appeared to be a large cellar divided into separate units by stone arches: the few windows were sealed and set high out of reach, and a flight of steps straddled one wall, climbing to a door that looked as solid and immovable as the exit from a dungeon. His previous experience of cellars had included racks of wine, beer barrels, chest freezers, root vegetables stored in the cool; but there was nothing here except a couple of broken crates and an ancient wellhead covered by a stone slab. His captors had not left him either food or drink, and he was very thirsty. When he could stand, he went to take a piss against a wall in one of the more distant corners. As he unzipped his jeans he found the knife, still wedged against his hip: it made him feel slightly better, but it was of no immediate use. Feeling wobbly in both legs and stomach, he mounted the steps to examine the door.

It was old and heavy, made of oak probably three or four inches thick; even if he had been possessed of his normal strength, he could not have smashed his way through it. He thrust his shoulder against the panels with what force he could muster, but it barely shuddered. The lock looked recent, a businesslike specimen of steely efficiency. Will studied it for several minutes, principally to convince himself he was covering all the angles. Even if he had known how to pick locks, this one did not appear easily picked. He staggered back down the steps and collapsed shakily onto the floor. Since there was no possibility of instant action he rested the diminuendo of his headache against the wall and tried to think. His watch told him it was half past six but there was no daylight to clarify if this was morning or evening. He feared it must be morning, guessing he had been unconscious for a long time.
His arms felt stiff and sore: rolling up the sleeves of his sweatshirt, he found black bruises and the marks of clumsy injections. The discovery both disturbed and frightened him, pushing him further into disorientation. With artificial sedation, he might have slept not merely hours but days: Gaynor could have been spirited half a world away, Fern been drawn deeper and deeper into oblivion. He tried to rationalize, to hold on to his sanity, inadvertently touching the hilt of the knife that protruded from his waistband. It felt inexplicably reassuring, as if it were not stolen from his enemy but the gift of an unknown ally, the weapon of a dragonslayer endowed, perhaps, with some special power. He could not imagine a dagger being much use against a dragon, but he had an idea warriors used to cut out the tongue in proof of victory, as if dragon carcasses did not remain lying around in evidence. He pulled the knife out and tested the blade with a cautious fingertip. A tiny red line opened on his skin, and he sucked it almost with relish, feeling a sudden tingle of excitement. This, he thought, is a blade that would split a candle flame, or slice the shadow from your heel. The knife of a hero or a villain, maybe tempered in dragonfire, touched with magic. With such a knife, he was neither alone nor helpless. He surveyed his surroundings with different eyes, looking for weaknesses.

But the walls were solid, the windows bricked up and inaccessible. The door he knew was impassable, with its gleaming steel lock. His headache was clearing and he found himself wondering
why
the lock had been installed, when there was no valuable wine to protect, nothing in the vault but rubbish. It could hardly have been for his benefit: he could not believe Dr. Laye made a habit of keeping prisoners here. Yet the lock was new, it was here for a purpose, shutting something in, keeping people out. And inevitably his eye was drawn to the wellhead. Wells were often dug in the cellars of old houses, he remembered; when you might have to dig a long way down, it was logical to start as low as possible. It did not seem a likely object for so much security, but there was nothing else. He got up, still feeling rather unsteady about the knees, and went over for a better look.

The stone lid fitted very closely to the rim and it took him a while to find a crack where he could insert his fingers and get
a grip. When he tried to lift it the weight was too much for his drained physique: he raised it an inch or so and then dropped it, almost catching his hand in the gap. The thud of its fall carried far down into the ground, the echoes coming back to him, making the floor shiver. Imagination, he told himself, cursing his own feebleness and the stone that defied him. Next time he concentrated on shifting it sideways, though it took considerable effort before he could open up even a narrow space. He leaned over, staring down into a crescent of absolute blackness. He had been half expecting some gruesome secret, a putrefying corpse or an antique skeleton; but there was no glimmer of bones, no stench of decay. The draft that issued from below was warm, very warm, and there was a faint sulfurous smell, an elusive hint of burning. He could not tell how deep the well was. Will took a coin from his pocket and tossed it into the shaft, hearing it ricochet off the wall and the fluting echo of a clink as it struck bottom a couple of heartbeats later. And gradually, as he peered into the darkness, he began to distinguish a disc of murky red far beneath at what must be the base of the shaft. It opens out into somewhere else, he thought, with a sudden surge of optimism. Maybe a cave… Grasping the lip of the well, he poked his head under the cover in order to see better. The circle of red seemed to brighten, the air grew hot. Belatedly Will’s brain made the missing connection.

He sprang back, tugging furiously at the unwieldy slab. Adrenaline pumped into dehydrated muscle: the stone creaked over just in time. Even so, there was still a sliver of space remaining as he threw himself to the ground. A thin jet of flame shot through the crack with the force of a blowtorch, reaching the high ceiling and hissing against the vault. After a moment or two it sank to a flicker and retreated back into the well. Will saw the stonework blackened, noticing other evidence of charring in the vicinity. He found he was shaking and a sweat had broken out all over his body. He sat for a long while until the tremors abated, cursing himself for his weakness.

“At least I know why the lock is there,” he reflected aloud, striving for a pragmatic approach, for a note of bravado or flippancy, though there was no one else to hear. “All I have to do is open it.”

Since there was no other way out, he climbed back up the steps to the door.

Once before he had lifted a window latch with the aid of a kitchen knife. Will knew this lock was too sophisticated for similar manipulation, but he drew out the dagger for an exploratory probe, attempting to insert the tip of the blade into the threadlike chink between door and frame. To his astonishment, it slid in smoothly, without effort; when he withdrew it a slender wood shaving fell out onto the top step. He looked at it for a minute, then at the crack, which seemed a millimeter wider. He discovered he was holding his breath, and released it in a long sweet sigh. Then he stood up, and plunged the knife into the door above the lock. The hard, seasoned wood parted at its touch as if it were chipboard. Sawing it to and fro, he cut his way around the mortise. A little sawdust sifted out: otherwise, the line was as neat as a surgical incision. When he had finished he slipped the dagger into the crack and levered the door toward him. Exercising far more caution than on previous occasions, he snaked his body through the gap into the passageway beyond.

He had been hoping for daylight, but it was dark. His watch showed nearly nine, but whether it was the same evening, or a day later, or more, he had no way of telling. Through an adjacent doorway he saw the kitchen, with unwashed plates and crockery stacked in the sink. The lights were on, but he could hear no one. Physical need took over: he nipped inside, switched on the tap, grabbed a nearby cup—and drank, and drank, and drank. He thought he could feel the water flooding through him like a spring tide, swelling shrunken muscles, lubricating, revitalizing. He glanced around for something to eat, lifted the lid on what proved to be a cheese dish, and cut himself a hunk of cheddar. His hand hovered over an apple in the fruit bowl, but there was little other fruit and he knew its absence might be noticed. He must not lapse into carelessness again. He had closed the cellar door, slotting the lock section into place like a piece in a jigsaw puzzle. He took another long drink of water, then replaced the cup where he had found it.

There were other doors from the kitchen leading variously to a coal cellar, a breakfast parlor, and a storeroom; he remembered
from his earlier exploration that beyond the parlor was the long corridor that led back to the heart of the house. His first priority was to find Gaynor, but he had no wish to run into the manservant, or the as yet unknown figure of Dr. Laye. He returned to the short passage outside the main cellar. A narrow stair ascended from it to an upper floor and at one end was a back door opening on the garden. Will hesitated. The stair was tempting, but outside was the car, where Lougarry might still be waiting. He could enlist her support, or send her for assistance. Use your head, he told himself, just for once. He opened the door and stepped out into the night.

It was very dark. The hunchback ridge loomed over him, close against a low sky: he could see dim shapes of rolling cloud, hear the fretful wind whining among the chimney pots. It had been warm in the house (not surprising, he reflected, in view of the underfloor heating) but out here it was cold, and he shivered automatically. Guessing he was around the back, he skirted the building until he could see the gnarled topiary of the formal garden and the approach to the main entrance. There was a light behind shrouded windows on the ground floor, possibly the drawing room, and another light on an upper story showing a striped pattern against the curtains that might have been bars. Will stared at it with fierce concentration, fixing its location in his mind. Then he made his way to where the car was still parked, peered inside while fumbling for his keys. But Lougarry was gone.

She’s gone for help, he thought. That’s it. She would never have waited this long. (How long
had
it been?) Nothing could have happened to her. He had known her to stop a speeding motorbike, confront both witch and demon, outrun the hounds of the Underworld. Nothing could happen to Lougarry. But it was unlike her to go straight for Ragginbone, instead of searching for Will and Gaynor first… He began to call her, softly, uncertainly, more with mind than voice, accustomed over the years to hearing the werewolf without the interruption of ears, touching thought to thought. And almost immediately the call came back to him, urgent to the point of desperation, but faint and growing fainter.
Run
… run …
too dangerous
…
Azmodel
… this is Azmodel…

“Where are you?” Will whispered; but his voice was loud in his head.

Don’t come
…
don’t look
… run…

She was near, he was sure: he could feel her urgency, her danger, somewhere very close by. He drew out the black knife. It looked like a splinter of the abyss in his hand. He grasped the hilt firmly: it seemed to convey to him the strength of an owner long dead, someone nightwise, dauntless, reckless, as sharp and deadly as the blade he wielded. The warning in his mind had dwindled to a whisper—
run
—but he knew now where it came from. He padded softly across the weed-grown drive and into the formal garden.

Fading paths crossed one another, trickling away into unkempt flower beds or vanishing under roving shrubs. Will trampled the beds, thrust a passage between impeding bushes. He was vaguely aware of thorny stems plucking his jeans, the scratching fingers of twigs, but Lougarry’s despair filled his thought to the exclusion of all else. Behind him, the house was lost: the garden appeared far larger than he had realized, a sprawling maze where everything was crippled, eroded, diseased, and nothing grew but the hardiest of weeds. He saw the sundial first, like the stump of a pillar, significant and ominous. Then he perceived movement, right in front of him—indistinct shapes circling something that did not move, darting, pouncing—the snapping of feeble jaws, the moon-glow of eyes once bright and fierce. He was so close, he had almost stumbled straight into it. He took a second—less than a second—to absorb what was happening. Then he attacked.

The black knife arced to and fro, singing as it cut the air. He felt its hatred for these creatures that he could not see, the dreadful eagerness with which it sliced through flesh and limb. Some of them tried to turn on him—talons scored his leg, flabby hands seized him—but the knife was too quick for them. In moments, all lay dying, dismembered on the ground, or fled into the night. Yet when Will came to step over the bodies there was nothing there. Only Lougarry. He knelt down beside her, took her head in his hands.