The Pitchfork of Destiny (13 page)

Another cheer greeted this.

He again held up one hand to quiet the crowd, and that was when Liz noticed that his other hand remained conspicuously tucked among the folds of his cloak.

“I have returned—­”

“Show us your other hand!” Liz shouted.

The Dracomancer blanched and tried to continue. “I have returned from the dark regionsss where—­”

“Show us what's under your cloak!” Liz shouted again. Tomas grabbed at her sleeve again, but she shook him off. She felt sick that this fraud might be causing trouble for Will. She felt angry that Charming was out hunting a dragon while this idiot sat in a tavern and claimed to have all the answers. She had to expose him, for Will, for Charming, for the kingdom.

The Dracomancer puffed himself up and glared down at her from beneath his bristly gray brows. “You, Lady Charming, are in no posssition—­” He hesitated a moment as he realized he was still speaking in the puppet's voice. He cleared his throat and adopted his deep, significant cadence again, “I mean, you are in no position to question me. You are condemned by the spirit of the dragon itself.”

Liz thinned her lips and frowned at him. “You mean the dragon spirit that's hidden in your cloak?”

“That is absurd,” the Dracomancer said with a nervous lick of his lips.

She turned her back on the Dracomancer and addressed the crowd. “I'll tell you what's absurd. What's absurd is that an entire tavern of otherwise sensible ­people have been taken in by a trickster. He is no sorcerer and certainly no prophet, and his ‘dragon spirit' is a bloody hand puppet. And you all should know better.” She ended by shaking a finger about the room in general approbation.

Although there was mostly angry denial at her speech, there were also a handful of ­people who looked genuinely ashamed. They cast their heads down and shuffled their feet in embarrassment.

From behind her, the Dracomancer tried to rally his followers. “Do not listen to her,” he grunted. “She is . . . she is,” he huffed breathily, “trying to deceive you from the . . . from the”—­he gasped again—­“from the truth of the dragon spirit's words—­”

There was something odd about the way the man kept huffing and grunting as he spoke. Liz turned about and saw that both his hands were now hidden in the folds of his cloak as he struggled to pull the hose puppet from his hand. She was about to point this out and also to question how it was he knew what the “dragon spirit” had said if he had been banished to some other realm, when a howl of rushing wind shook the tavern, sending the shutters and the doors clattering on their hinges and tearing great chunks of thatch off the roof.

Just as suddenly, the wind was gone, leaving ­people flattened on the floor from its passing fury. As Liz, Tomas, and many others began to pick themselves up, a flash of reddish-­orange light lit the night sky through the gaping holes in the ceiling. This was followed by a blast of heat and a sulfurous smell. An echoing, ear-­piercing roar rolled down upon them from above, louder than thunder, and Liz's blood froze.

She grasped at Tomas, standing beside her, and said, almost like a prayer, “Bless us all, Tomas, it's the dragon, the Great Dragon of the North.”

The Dracomancer, his eyes ablaze with intensity, reached across the table toward her. “Did you say the Great Dragon of the North? Are you absolutely sure?”

Liz backed away from him, nodding. A strange, hungry look came over the Dracomancer's face, and he murmured, “There's a chance. It actually might work.”

She was staring at the Dracomancer, trying to figure out why the dragon's name held such significance for him, when Tomas grabbed her and began physically forcing her toward the back door. “We've got to get out of here,” Tomas said in a voice that made the hair rise on the back of her neck, not because it was panicked, but because it was eerily calm.

There was another deafening roar and another blast of heat and light from the street in front of the tavern, then more and more ­people began scrambling wildly away from the dragon and toward the back door. Despite the maelstrom of ­people and chaos around her, Liz was protected by Tomas's guiding hand and his powerful fists, elbows, and ironclad boots. He did not so much carve as bull his way through the crowd.

As they went out the back, Liz caught a glimpse of the Dracomancer pushing toward the front of the tavern. His robe and hood had been thrown back exposing his skinny pale body, his high, stilted shoes, and, of course, the dragon puppet on his right hand. He should have looked ridiculous, but he did not. There was no panic in his face, no thought of flight, only a look of mad determination. Then he was lost in a sea of bodies.

The town was still under attack when they made it outside. Tomas led Liz up a rise at the back of the building and stopped next to a well. A din of noise—­a mixture of screams and shouts—­followed them as the pilgrims below transformed into a terrified mob.

“Stay here, Lady Charming. If it comes for you, use the well for protection. I'll try and get the horses.”

She grabbed his arm with a strength she didn't know she had. “No. Don't leave me here.”

From their position, Liz could see the devastation caused by the dragon. Much of the sprawling village of tents and wagons around Two Trees had been swept aside by the flight of the beast, and here and there, blazes had sprung up in the debris. Most horrifying were the ­people. Everywhere she looked, there were ­people. Like ants from a kicked mound, the former townsfolk and pilgrims scattered. Some were running back down the road away from the village with nothing, while others still swarmed around the devastated tent city, trying to salvage what they could.

Above it all flew the dragon, a black stain in the sky. The creature was attacking an area near the edge of town. Over and over it dove down below the walls and houses, then rose again with one or more writhing things in its talons. It was too horrible. Liz knew that she could not remain in safety while countless men, women, and children were devoured by the beast. She would have to go down there to do what she could, even if it was futile, even if all she accomplished was to care for the wounded or comfort the dying.

“We have to go down and help those poor ­people, Tomas,” she said.

For once, Tomas didn't argue. He touched his cap, and said, “Very well, Your Ladyship.”

Liz continued to study the dragon as they made their way back down the hill. He was larger than the Great Wyrm of the South, and he had horns. His scales flashed silver when the torchlight struck them. As he beat his wings, tents fell over and collapsed. She saw a fire erupt, but it was near a mass of panicked ­people, not even close to the dragon. And the things he was gathering, they didn't have clothes. They weren't ­people, they were . . .

Pigs.

“It's pigs. The dragon's eating pigs,” she said.

“What?” Tomas said.

“It's concentrating its attack on the churchyard where that sty was. I don't think it's going after ­people.”

“What about the tents and the fires?” he asked, pointing to the devastation of the village and rapidly spreading fires.

She watched the dragon swoop down once more. Tents flew in the air as its wings buffeted to slow its descent. When it flew high again, another pig squirmed in its talons.

“The wind from his flight is enough to send the tents flying,” she pointed out. “And as for the fires, I suspect most of those are from ­people knocking over their cooking in their panic.” Even as she spoke, a new fire erupted on a distant hill, far away from where the dragon was attacking.

“You may be right, milady. It's a bloody madhouse down there, and if the dragon had started the fires, they'd be more concentrated. See how they're scattered about?”

She did see this. She looked across the valley and saw that hundreds of ­people were, just like her, watching the drama unfold below almost like the town had become a stage and the hills about the town the seats of some vast amphitheater.

“So, the dragon hasn't attacked anybody,” she said now, staring at the beast with a thoughtful expression as the creature continued to dive up and down like the hook at the end of a fisherman's rod.

“Nobody,” he agreed, and added after a pause, “Although, that may be about to change if that crazy Dracomancer has anything to do about it.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Look,” he said pointing. “The damned fool is marching right toward the dragon, waving his stick and that silly puppet.” He punctuated his disgust of the man by snorting emphatically. “It's time for us to go. In my opinion, Two Trees is no place to be and will be even less inviting once the dragon leaves, and all those ­people start trying to sort out whose stuff is what.”

Liz nodded absentmindedly, but she was busy studying the Dracomancer. He was standing in the square in front of the ruined church, gesticulating wildly up into the air with his staff. Almost directly above him loomed the dragon, which was still glutting itself on the pigs—­swooping and rising, swooping and rising.

“He seems to be trying to fight it,” she said

Tomas squinted, then scratched at his head and chuckled. “What a lunatic. He's damned lucky that dragon seems to prefer the taste of pork to man, or the kingdom would have one less sorcerer about now.” He turned to Liz, and said, “I'm sorry I brought you here, Your Ladyship. You were right. The man's a fraud, and worse still, a harebrained, one-­sock-­short-­of-­a-­pair, candle's-­burning-­but-­there's-­nobody-­home madman. All we can hope is that this little display will make all these ­people sit up and take notice, and we'll have no more of these fools following him about and causing mischief.”

Liz watched as the little man continued his dance with the dragon. In its frenzied feasting, she doubted it even saw the little man amid the general chaos below. He was such a small, insignificant figure compared to the massive winged creature, but where the contrast in their size and the utter futility of the ­Dracomancer's efforts might have made the man appear comical, they did not. If anything, it made him seem larger than life.

Again and again, the dragon seemed to swoop toward him although Liz could see that the real target was the pigsty, and again and again, the Dracomancer gestured wildly with his staff at the swooping dragon. After a few more minutes of this apparent struggle, the monster rose one last time into the air, two squealing pigs clutched in his talons, and, without a backward glance at the town or the sorcerer, flew off to the north.

As the dragon disappeared into the mists high above, there was a roar from the surrounding hillside. Liz watched as all of the ­people, those who had believed and those who had not, came streaming down into the town toward the square in front of the church where the solitary figure of the Dracomancer lay slumped to the ground, exhausted from his battle.

From behind her, Tomas called out, “We should really go, Your Ladyship.”

She nodded. “Yes, Tomas,” she said. “It's past time for us to be gone.”

“Perhaps it is,” came a harsh voice, and a group of six black-­robed followers of the Dracomancer surrounded them. “But you aren't going anywhere, Lady Elizabeth. We are holding you and your man for heresy and treason against the Dracomancer.”

Tomas moved between Liz and the lead figure. “They aren't nothing but farmers, Lady Elizabeth,” Tomas said over his shoulder in a voice loud enough for the men to hear. “Let me deal with them.” His hand went to the hilt of his sword.

They did look like farmers, and each carried a tool instead of a real weapon. One had a club made of a piece of a fence post, one had a hatchet, another had a scythe, but Liz' gaze rested on a young man with a pitchfork in his hands. His eyes were wide with fear, but there was a grim determination on his face. He reminded her of Will.

Perhaps Tomas could cut his way through them. They were untrained and might flee once one or two had been struck down, but they were not soldiers, they were simple ­people driven by fear, and she would not bring about their deaths if she could prevent it.

“No, Tomas,” she said calmly. “We will go with them.”

“What?” he said incredulously, and, turning, lowered his voice to a whisper. “Trust me, Your Ladyship, I wasn't fooling when I said this is not a place you will want to be now that the dragon's gone.”

“That is a risk we are going to have to take, Tomas.”

They were led in front of the tavern, where they saw a mob of cheering ­people carrying the Dracomancer on their shoulders toward them. A chill went up her spine as she looked out over that multitude of faces, all lifted up in a kind of frenzied rapture. She didn't give voice to the fear, but it struck her that, though she was worried for Elle, perhaps this man and the mob of fanatics he had drawn to him was more of a threat than any dragon.

Liz suddenly felt a wave of nausea. She leaned over to retch and found herself falling. Tomas was beside her, and she heard him say, “The Lady is unwell,” and she fainted.

 

CHAPTER 7

MY, WHAT BIG TEETH YOU HAVE

I
n fairy tales, danger is almost always foretold, and when misfortune strikes, it comes from the direction you expect. If you're a princess and get engaged to a frog, then you can't be surprised when he hops up to your door one day looking to get married. If you're a pair of starving children wandering through the woods and come upon a delicious house made of all sorts of yummy things, should you really be shocked when you discover that the mad crone who lives inside it likes to eat children? And when you're a little girl with golden locks wandering through the woods and come upon a cute little cabin with three bowls of porridge and three wooden chairs and three comfy beds, and you decide to take advantage of this uninvited hospitality, you should hardly be taken aback when the owners return and are a trifle miffed.

However, Elle was completely unaware that the cave that served as her prison previously had been the home of a family of bears. If she had known, she would have slept far less soundly, despite the presence of a lovely, four-­poster bed. She would have been even more nervous had she known that the pile of furs and odds and ends of splintered wood that the dragon used as his bed represented the entirety of the previous inhabitants' earthly possessions. And she would have been positively terrified to know that the bears were only one ridgeline away, spending their considerable free time pondering their revenge and whether they would ever be able to get the dragon smell out of their cave.

Beo the wolf, on the other hand, was keenly aware of all these facts. Being a practical wolf, he was growing tired of the endless tasks he was being required to perform to please Elle. He was losing any benefit that he had gained from the dragon. In fact, he was working far harder than hunting had required, and his ribs were beginning to show again. His growing emaciation led him to one conclusion: Elle must die. When she did, the dragon would give up his quest and let Beo free from his contract. The tricky part was that Beo couldn't be implicated in Elle's death, or he would surely be roasted, eaten, or both.

He had initially tried to be subtle. He reasoned that if she committed suicide to save her love (which seemed the sort of ridiculous thing humans did), the dragon couldn't possibly blame him. First, he left a rope next to her bed, then some deadly hemlock tea, and, finally, a sharp knife, hoping that she would take the hint. However, the woman clung to hope, believing that she would be rescued or that her Will (Beo was so tired of hearing her whisper that name) would find a way to save her. It was very disappointing.

Something more “proactive” would clearly have to be done. He had been pondering for a ­couple of days now on how he could effect her death without actually risking his own hide. That was when he struck on the idea of using the bears.

After Volthraxus had flown off on his latest hunt, and Elle had fallen asleep in her comfy bed, Beo slunk out of the cave. Making use of his superb nose and their awful smell, he easily tracked down the three mightily grumpy bears, two males and a female, huddled together in a shallow, uncomfortable depression on the side of a hill.

Beo studied them from behind a large fir tree as he considered how he was going to convince them to kill Elle. They shouldn't have any trouble with the physical part of the job he thought. Each of them looked like a furry boulder with claws and teeth, one large, one exceedingly large, and one absurdly large. Any one of them could easily make a meal of the woman, or more accurately a light repast, but Beo had to be sure that they would not add a side of wolf to the feast. Wolves and bears did not always get along as they often competed for the same prey, notably children—­hopefully juicy girls—­who had lost themselves in the woods.

After watching for a time, during which the three bears did little more than snore heavily, shuffle about uncomfortably, and scratch themselves with their knifelike claws, Beo came to a few conclusions. First, the bears were really really big. Second, they would be unhappy at being woken up. He recalled that they had been a bit groggy when the dragon evicted them. Beo believed that the dragon had turned them out of their cave before the bears had, strictly speaking, finished hibernating. The last thing he realized was that while he knew these bears were more intelligent than your average bears—­and certainly more verbal—­they were still bears and not known for their wits. If he were not properly direct in explaining the plan, the entire scheme would likely fly over their heads.

Right, so I'll be direct,
he thought. He stepped out from behind his tree and cleared his throat rather loudly.

“Hmmm.”

The smallest of the large bears rolled over and snorted. Otherwise, there was no reaction.

“Hmmm.” He cleared his throat again a bit louder and added even louder still, “My dear bears!”

This time, the absurdly large one (as opposed to the large and exceedingly large ones) sat up with a jolt and opened his eyes, but only for a second. Then, his body fell forward, and, chin on ground, he began to snore again.

Beo took a few more cautious steps forward until he was sitting directly in front of the absurdly large bear's nose but out of claw reach. Putting a paw to his muzzle, he veritably shouted, “My dear bears, I have a proposition!”

Three roars echoed through the night. He had awoken the bears. All three jumped to their feet, teeth bared and claws extended, growling growls with varying depths of ferocity. They were all staring hard at him.

The largest of them said very deeply, “Wass all this then?”

The second largest said only slightly less deeply, “Yea' wass the idea?”

The third said a little less deeply still, “Waking us up like that?”

Without waiting for an answer they then asked in varying degrees of pitch and wording, “Who are you anyway?”

The wolf had anticipated this question and so had a ready answer, but he shifted slightly back so that he could immediately spring away. “I am the dragon's wolf?” he said as though it were a question.

His anticipation of violence was prescient as the biggest bear took an absurdly large-­sized swipe at him, the slightly less big bear took an exceedingly large-­sized bite at him, and the still even less large bear attempted to put him into a simply large-­sized, but still undeniably fatal, bear hug. Beo leapt backwards and danced away from his attackers.

“Let's not be too hasty. You haven't heard my proposition yet.”

“Why should we listen to you? You and dat beasty frew us right outta our hawse!” roared the absurdly large bear in an absurdly large voice.

“Yea, and now we've gotta live here in a hole!” roared the exceedingly large bear in an exceedingly large voice.

“And the least ya could do ta make it up is ta let us eat ya!” roared the simply large bear in a still-­quite-­deafening voice.

“Well, if I did that, then I couldn't tell you about the proposition,” the wolf replied. He wondered if he hadn't been terribly naïve to think that he could reason with bears.

“We don't give a fig about no propy—­propysotioun,” the largest bear said, trying to circle around behind the wolf in a large-­sized circle.

“ 'E's right. Why should we care about your propulozytion?” asked the larger bear trying to circle around behind the wolf in a middle-­sized circle.

“This propo—­what's it, can you eat it?” asked the large bear as he tried to circle around behind the wolf in a little-­sized circle but tripped over his own feet and sprawled onto his backside instead.

The other large bears were interested enough in the answer to the littlest of the large bear's question that they hesitated in their attacks. Beo saw an opening, and he raced past them and jumped up onto a boulder. “Yes, of course you can eat it, my friends.”

“Right, less hear da propy—­propy—­the deal,” said the absurdly large bear, sitting down on his absurdly large backside.

“Yeah, we're listenin', ” said the exceedingly large bear, sitting down on her exceedingly large backside.

“But, if we don' like wha' we 'ear, we're gonna eat you instead,” said the simply large bear, finally getting back up off of his simply large backside.

“Sounds more than reasonable,” the wolf drawled as he sat down on the boulder and spread his front paws wide in a gesture of acceptance. “Let me start by saying that I never wanted to drive you out of your comfy cave in the first place. The dragon was quite unreasonable on the point, and as you have no doubt observed, the dragon can be quite violently persuasive when he wants to be.”

“Yeah,” all three bears replied at once, and each pawed at an appropriately sized patch of singed fur somewhere on their bodies.

“Well, I'm going to tell you
why
the dragon is here and what you can do to make him go away—­permanently.”

“We're listenin', ” the absurdly large bear said, running his absurdly large tongue over his absurdly large snout.

“All ears,” the exceedingly large bear said as she scratched at an itch on her back with a claw that would only be considered middling by comparison to a battle-­axe.

“And teeth,” the simply large bear said, eyeing him largely like he was trying to decide which bit of the wolf he would like to eat first.

“There can be no doubt of that,” the wolf said, backing further away from the littlest of the large bears, who, he had decided, was either the most pathological or the hungriest of the bears.
Although,
he thought,
with bears the two may be the same.

Despite his continued misgivings about whether he could trust the bears, the wolf was feeling more confident than ever. He had managed to avoid being killed outright, and he had convinced them to listen. All he had to do now was sell them on the plan, and selling things was what the wolf did best. He drew himself up on his hind legs and began to spin his yarn.

“There can be no doubt that you have been wronged,” the wolf said to general grumbles and growls of profane agreement, the level of profanity seeming to correspond inversely to the size of the bear. “What you all do not know is that the cause is not the dragon himself but the dragon's guest.”

“ 'E's brought a pest into our cave?” asked the absurdly large bear with a large amount of shock.

“It's a bloody outrage!” said the exceedingly large bear with a moderate amount of shock.

“Bedbugs, I knew it,” grumbled the simply large bear with no shock at all. “Dragons are filthy beasts.”

The wolf slapped a paw to his forehead in frustration. “Not pest, you damned—­I mean,” he amended hastily, “dear bears. He has a
guest
, with a ‘G.' ”

The bears all looked at him with varying amounts of confusion, from puzzled to baffled to utterly clueless.

Be patient and be direct!
Beo counseled himself silently. He took a deep breath and said, “I mean, there is someone else in your cave with him, and she is the reason he is living there.”

“Right,” said the absurdly large bear with little comprehension.

“Someone else,” said the exceedingly large bear with only moderately more comprehension.

“Bloody hell,” the simply large bear said with so much comprehension that he invented his own facts. “Wif two dragons in dere, we'll never get our cave back.”

“Ahhh,” purred the wolf, “but there is the delicious irony. His guest isn't a dragon at all, but is a helpless, and, might I add, delectable, young woman.” He emphasized the delectability of Elle by running his long tongue suggestively back and forth over his whiskers.

“What, a girl?” the absurdly large bear asked with a large rumble of his stomach.

“A lass, you say?” the exceedingly large bear asked with a medium smack of her lips.

“Yummy, a delectablized girl and a delishikous imony!” The simply large bear shouted with a little twinkle in his eye that was distinctly disturbing.

“Ummm, more or less,” the wolf said. “So, now you see my proposition. You go and eat the girl, then the dragon will have no reason to stay in your cave. Simple.”

“Yeah, simple!” said the absurdly large bear with a great deal of enthusiasm.

“But, what do we do about the delicioumus irony?” asked the exceedingly large bear, still moderately confused.

“Forget the imony, what do we do about the dragon?” asked the simply large bear with more than a little skepticism.

Beo assumed an innocent pose, which is inherently difficult for a wolf, and replied, “Oh, didn't I mention, the dragon is gone. There is no one currently guarding the lady in question. Just a short stroll over the ridge, and she is yours.”

The largest one looked at the wolf for a long second, and asked, “But wha' if da dragon comes back while we're at it?”

Beo was not concerned in the slightest that Volthraxus might return. It would take the bears no time at all to deal with the girl. Still, he made a point of looking up at the moon as though considering. “He will be gone for hours still, more than enough time to dine as long as you don't linger.”

The middle large one looked at the wolf for a medium second, and asked, “Wha' if da dragon don't leave after we et' her?”

Beo was surprised at such a perceptive question. He understood why the bears cared, but the answer didn't really matter to him. He would be rid of Elle. “That I can all but guarantee,” he lied. “The dragon will be gone before morning, and if he is not you are no worse off and considerably better fed.”

The little large one looked at the wolf for less than a second, and asked, “Wha' stops you from tellin' the dragon it was us an' settin' him ta eatin' us?”

This, in the wolf's opinion, should have been the bears' only question. Indeed, fear of the dragon's wrath was the reason Beo wouldn't devour the woman himself. He intended to play dead as long as necessary and hope that the bears would give Volthraxus enough victims if he wanted to seek retribution for the loss of his pretty little plaything. “I am supposed to be guarding the girl. If he will be angry with anyone, it will be with me. Do you think I am going to wait around and risk his wrath?”