The Pitchfork of Destiny (11 page)

Elle sat in her chair, her body slumped in defeat. She had been naïve and silly to imagine that her simple machinations would be enough to sway the dragon's heart. He had been playing with her the whole time, and now there was nothing she could say that he would not second-­guess as self-­serving. Tears pooled in her eyes at her failure, and she said miserably, “I realize now what a fool I've been. Please, if I have made you angry, remember that it was me and not Will who tried to deceive you.”

Volthraxus stopped his doodling. “Given your situation, you would have been a fool not to try. I know only too well how you must hate me. The fact that you have been able to maintain your composure and this persona for so long is a testament to your character. I spoke truly earlier when I said that I enjoy your company and that your conversation has made the last week bearable. I only wish that we had met under better circumstances and that you were not quite so human.”

She nodded thoughtfully at her plate, then came to the sudden conclusion that she would have to use a more direct approach. Elle sat up straight in her chair. “Volthraxus, I intend to convince you to abandon your plan to kill Will. I hope that by getting to know me, you will see that I mean you no harm, and I have every intention of proving to you that killing Will won't bring you the peace you seek.”

Volthraxus nodded, then rose so that he loomed above her and the table. “Now we have the truth. Although I think it is a waste of time and will make our conversations increasingly tedious, I will not try to dissuade you from your course, Lady Rapunzel. You will defend your love using the weapons available to you, just as I will avenge my love using those weapons available to me. In the end, we will see whose resolve fails first. Now, if you will excuse me, there is pork on the menu for tomorrow, and for once in weeks, I am hungry.”

He began to move very carefully past her toward the mouth of the cave. Just as he was passing out into the forest, the dragon looked back at her. “You will do what you must do Lady Rapunzel, but if I could give you advice from one that has loved and lost to another, do not put your faith in hope. She is the cruelest of mistresses.”

With that, he flew off into the night, leaving her alone.

 

CHAPTER 6

WHEN PIGS FLY

L
iz and Tomas made their way down the Southern Road toward Prosper for more than a week. Refugees, confusion, and panic choked the towns and inns, but nowhere could they find any sign or word of Charming and Will. She had been certain that, with the extra horses and more level heads on their shoulders, they would overtake the two men before they made it to Prosper, but the chronic nausea that had gripped her that first day in the cottage continued to plague her, and it was slowing them down. Liz was beginning to wonder if it wouldn't be a better idea for her to send Tomas off on his own, but thus far she had been unwilling to abandon the search.

Something else that was growing as they got farther south was the legend of the Dracomancer. The mysterious man's name, or at least his title, seemed to be on every traveler's lips, and with each passing mile, the stories grew more and more fanciful. The Dracomancer had killed a dozen dragons in his time, perhaps two dozen. No, the Dracomancer kept dragons as pets and could call them from the sky like songbirds. And the craziest, that the Dracomancer had a magical talisman that allowed him to summon dragon spirits. By the time they reached the road that would take them to Two Trees, they found themselves in a long caravan of pilgrims all trying to reach the legendary man.

In this part of Royaume, the Eastern and Southern Mountains crowded close together, and while the Southern Road followed the valley that ran between them, the way to Two Trees climbed steeply up, cutting back and forth across the mountains through a deep forest of fir and pine. Tomas and Liz settled into their saddles for the long, slow ascent.

“Tell me more about the Dracomancer,” Liz said, as the path narrowed, and the trees closed in over their heads.

“Well, what do you want to know?” he asked, taking a drink from a leather skin that Liz suspected held something other than water. “He was an apprentice to a court magician, but he only made a name for himself later when he made the prophecy. After that, he got pretty famous, wrote that book
The Dragon's Tale
, and for many years was traveling about as a sort of seer for hire to the gentry.”

“I thought Hans Perrault Grimm wrote
The Dragon's Tale
?”

“Pen name,” Tomas said with a loud belch. “Did pretty well with it too as I understand.”

Liz was silent for a minute or two as she grappled with the fact that her favorite book was written by a man who called himself a “dracomancer.” After a while, she asked, “So, what happened to him after the dragon died? How did his reputation survive after his prophecy proved false?”

Tomas snorted. “It didn't. After that dragon died in your field, he was run out of Castle White. Two Trees probably gave him sanctuary because he had been so good for business for so long. In the heyday of the Great Wyrm, Two Trees got most of its money out of the King's coffers.”

She frowned at this. “I know Two Trees was attacked now and then, but no more than Prosper, and probably less.”

Tomas took another swig from his skin. “All I know is that the town elders were constantly at the castle requesting funds to rebuild the town from the latest dragon attack. The other courtiers used to call them the beggars court. Not nice, but true.”

Liz returned to the question that had been bothering her this whole time. “Do you think the Dracomancer will actually know something about how to fight dragons?”

Tomas shrugged. “I don't know. King Rupert brought him in to tutor your husband, but Charming didn't like him much. I can tell you that back in the day, he had a really good look, and in my experience, that counts for a lot in these sorts of things.”

“Look? Look?” she repeated, her voice raising several octaves. “Are you telling me we're going all the way to Two Trees because he
looked
like a sorcerer?”

Tomas glanced about nervously and gestured for her to lower her voice. “I'm not saying that's the only reason, I'm just saying he had the air of magic about him. And, if I were you, I wouldn't voice your doubts too loudly because I think a lot of our fellow travelers
really
believe, if you know what I mean.”

He glanced meaningfully at several of the carts and riders surrounding them. Liz saw that a number of the wagons, if not a large majority, had crude drawings of dragons in various poses and of varying levels of ferocity sketched, painted, or carved into their sides.

“Is one of those his symbol?” Liz whispered.

“All of them are, I think,” Tomas said with a nod. They rode on in silence. Liz spent her time wondering exactly who or what they would find at the end of this winding road and whether she would regret the decision to seek him out.

It was late afternoon when they caught their first glimpse of Two Trees. The road crested through a high pass in the foothills of the mountains, and the town lay in a wooded vale below, tightly surrounded by the steep, folded land. As they began their dizzying descent into the valley, fields and farmsteads perched on little terraced clearings began to appear among the trees. Many of them had visible scorch marks though the pattern seemed random.

“Probably still rebuilding from the last time the Great Wyrm of the South attacked over a year ago,” observed Tomas.

The closer they got to town, the thicker the mingled smell of woody smoke and animal grew. Also growing thicker were the crowds. About a mile from the wall of the village, cart and wagon traffic stopped altogether. There were tents on the sides of the road and in the farmers' fields. The last half mile, Liz and Tomas walked, leading the horses carefully through the throngs of carts and horses, men and children, beggars and thieves.

The going was slow, and not just because of the traffic, but also because, as in Quaint, the ­people coming to Two Trees seemed to have packed their whole lives with them. On one side of the road, a family was tucking their children into a curtained canopy bed that they had arranged beneath the sheltering arms of a tree. Opposite them, a farmer was herding his livestock, cows and sheep and chickens, into a corral formed of odd bits and pieces of furniture—­a set of chairs, a chest of drawers, a wardrobe turned on its side. A whole clan of pig farmers had set up a sty in what might have at one time been a churchyard. The church itself had obviously been destroyed by the previous dragon and never rebuilt though there was a large donation box still present to accept “Alms to ease the burdens of Dragon Attack.” The array of ­people and animals and things was dizzying, and so was the smell. The stench from the hogs in particular, and their snorting screams, set Liz's already frayed nerves on edge and her still delicate stomach turning.

They had to stop several times to let Liz rest and recover, and she could see from Tomas's face that he was worried about her. She did feel a little weaker than normal, but she was determined to keep going as long as she could. What she was worried about was the chaos that was spreading through the kingdom. If Will was not returned to the castle soon, the whole place might erupt, and she was not sure if his rule would survive, or who would come to take his place if he fell.

By the time they passed the wooden gates of Two Trees proper, the sun had set. The light of evening painted everything in a deep red while the darker shadows of night pooled beneath the trees and in the gaps between the buildings. The combination of light and shadow lent a carnival-­like atmosphere to the streets, which, even here, were lined with tents and carts and ­people and homemade banners flying their version of the Dracomancer's symbol. And over everything hung the heavily mingled smells of cooking fires, unwashed ­people, and animal manure.

Despite the chaos, finding the Dracomancer was easy. The first man they asked pointed them straight to a low-­slung tavern near the center of town. Its signboard, which appeared to have at one time sported a crow dancing a jig, had been crudely modified so that the crow now resembled a sort of beaked dragon surrounded by a circle of red flames. A mass of ­people crowded about the front of the building, but blocking the door were two burly-­looking men with battered, rusty pikes.

Liz and Tomas tied up their horses and made their way toward the tavern. As they reached the edge of the crowd, one of the guards announced, “The sun has set! The Dracomancer will not be taking petitions until the morning!”

­People began shouting back at the guards, entreating them to let them in. They also began to argue with each other over the relative urgency of their needs. One man pushed another. A punch was thrown that missed, and another was thrown that did not. It looked like a riot was mere moments from breaking out.

Tomas asked Liz frankly, “Do you really want to get in there and talk to him?”

“Yes.”

“You're absolutely sure?”

She looked at the crowd, which in the few seconds of their exchange had grown even more restive, then nodded. “Yes, but it's impossible. We could be here days trying to see him.” Just then, a woman screamed, and two men began wrestling in the mud of the street. Liz took a moment to frown. “And that's assuming we don't get killed in the process.”

Tomas laughed harshly. “Lady Charming, you don't know me very well.”

He grabbed her hand and dragged her through the crowd, using his compact muscular body to bowl ­people out of the way. As the going got thicker, he bellowed above the general bedlam. “Her Ladyship, Lady Charming, sister of the Lord Protector and Dragonslayer King William, wishes an audience with the Dracomancer!”

He repeated this twice before a silence fell, which was quickly replaced by a hushed murmur that spread out in ripples through the crowd. ­People near Tomas and Liz began to back away, forming a path up to the steps of the tavern. Liz raised her head and threw back her shoulders in what she thought might be taken for a Royal Air. Shedding Tomas's hand, she strode with dignity through the avenue of ­people and up to the guards, who both stood unmoving as she approached.

“Guardsmen,” she said, and made a sweeping motion with her hands.

The guards held their ground. One even managed an awkward sort of bow, and said, “I am sorry, Your Ladyship, but His Eminence the Dracomancer is not taking any additional visitors this evening.”

Tomas bristled at this and stepped forward, clearly intending to open a way through them by force, when a voice, deep and melodious, rang out from within. “Let the Lady pass.”

The guards jerked to attention and stood aside, and Liz and Tomas walked through a swinging half door into the smoky gloom of the tavern. Behind them, the murmurs of the crowd instantly grew to a cacophonous roar as the news spread that Lady Charming was consulting with the Dracomancer.

Liz bent low, and whispered to Tomas, “I'm not sure that was the wisest course. We may never make it out of this village if this interview doesn't go well.”

Tomas whispered back, “Your point seems a bit academic now.”
*

Liz blushed at Tomas's response, but as the interior of the tavern was only lit by a ­couple of utterly inadequate oil lamps and a log fire that was in the process of dying to embers, Tomas never had the pleasure of seeing her reaction.

Despite the door guards' injunction against visitors, there were a fair number of ­people still milling about, clustered in groups here and there. Liz peered around the hazy room to see if she could spot the Dracomancer, hoping that someone would clearly stand out as having the “look” of a sorcerer about him.

From a smoky recess at the back of the tavern near the fire, a single flame sparked, throwing into momentary relief a man with deep-­set eyes, a sharply sloping nose, and a long gray beard. Perhaps it was his voluminous robes or some trick of light and shadow created by the dancing flames of the fire, but he seemed to be too large for the room, like a giant crouched in a cave.

He sat by himself, two men, just silhouettes in the dimness, standing on either side. On a table in front of him were the remains of his supper and a half dozen or so mugs, all but one empty. The sorcerer took a few deep puffs on a bone-­white pipe shaped like a dragon's head, the glowing tobacco ember in its bowl illuminating his face beneath the deep cowl of his hood in flashes of orange and yellow. With each inhale, a small ring of smoke issued from the side of his mouth and floated up toward the deeper darkness that lay among the rafters. He regarded her silently as he smoked, his dark eyes luminous in the flickering light of the pipe.

Liz moved forward hesitantly, feeling the weight of attention as everyone watched her. She stood in front of him for a moment at a total loss as to how to begin, her hands clasped one in the other to keep from shaking. She had been so sure that when she finally met the Dracomancer, he would turn out to be just an ordinary man, like the street magicians who passed through Prosper now and then, but now, face-­to-­face with him, Liz found that she was not sure how to behave. She had never dealt with a sorcerer before, much less a sorcerer as grave and dignified as this one. Liz turned to Tomas for support, but somewhere between the door and the table, the squire had slipped away.

Liz cursed quietly to herself, then opened her mouth to speak, but before the words could come, the Dracomancer spoke. “Lady Charming, welcome. Please, sit.” He gestured to a low chair across from him.

She shook her head, indicating that she would rather stand, but then decided that was rude and stuttered out, “No . . . no thank you. I don't want to disturb your supper. I . . . I just wanted to see if I . . . I could ask you some questions about the . . . the dr . . . dragon?”

The Dracomancer threw his hands wide, his pipe spilling smoke into an arc in the air above the table. “Come. Talk with me, Lady Charming. Burden me with your troubles. That is why I'm here.”

His voice was deep and sonorous, almost mesmerizing, and he spoke as though each of his words was filled with a deep and equal significance.