The Dragon Charmer Read online

  “Why would the Unnamed have struck such a bargain?” said Moonspittle.

  “For the dragon. In selling himself, Laiï has sold his Gift and his creature. He has bound the firedrake to the service of the Oldest Spirit. It is a weapon long sought.”

  “A clumsy weapon for the times,” said Moonspittle. “Unpredictable—overheated—excessive. What use is a dragon nowadays? This is—” he hazarded a guess “—the eighteenth century.”

  “The twentieth,” sighed Ragginbone. “The wheel has turned full circle. Dragon or firebomb: who will know the difference? Besides, the Oldest is not only of our time but of all Time, and in the domination of a dragon there is a prestige and glory unique to history. He would never resist flaunting such a symbol of his might in the face of the otherworld. However, there might be another reason…”

  “For what purpose does the Old Spirit covet the last of dragons, Bethesne?” Elivayzar asked.

  “This was the sole remaining egg from the clutch of Senecxys after her mating with Pharaïzon. Within the body of the dragonet is the spearhead that entered his father long before. When he was dying, Pharaïzon instructed his mate to devour his heart, that the splinter of the Lodestone that had made him lord of fire and air might be passed on to one of his offspring. Afterward, Senecxys fled to the dragon’s graveyard, laying her eggs there in a chasm of flame ere she expired. But Ruvindra Laiï found them, even there where no man had ever been, and he took the most precious and destroyed the rest, breaking the shells with a hammer, crushing the skulls of the unborn young.”

  “He loved dragons,” objected Moonspittle. “That was the obsession of his house.”

  The seeress’s tone did not alter. “Laiï had given himself to him who is without pity,” she said. “Though he may have wept, he could not disobey. That was the price he paid.”

  “And now?” said Ragginbone. “Does the dragon charmer still live? Ask her.”

  “One lives,” said the sibyl. “Ruvindra Laiï is slain, but another of his line has taken his place. Yet he is of corrupted race, and both his blood and his Gift are diluted. He needs the Old Spirit to increment his powers; thus the Unnamed has gained a foothold in his soul.”

  “And the dragon?” said Ragginbone. “What of the dragon? It would be difficult to hide such a creature in this world.”

  “Where has he hidden the dragon?” asked Moonspittle. “Is he in the Here and Now, or Beyond?”

  “I—cannot tell.” For the first time, the sibyl faltered. Her single eye wandered; the attenuated beam flinched and receded, withdrawing as if from a great depth of darkness. “It is … too well concealed. There is a mist over both dragon and demon.”

  “Will it manifest itself soon?”

  “I do not know. I can see what was, and what is, but not what will be. There was only one of our sisterhood whose gaze could penetrate the future, and the dread of her visions weighed heavy on her heart. She foresaw too many horrors that could not be averted, and so she lost faith in the idle hand of Providence—she lost faith in Time itself—and now she sleeps too deeply ever to reawaken. Her spirit is gone, and her body molders. Even a necromancer could not summon Skætha again.” She paused, and when she resumed the echoes were fading from her voice, leaving it cold and thin as an arctic breeze. “I grow tired now; I can see no more. Release me.”

  “Not yet.” Ragginbone loomed behind Moonspittle like a venerable Mephistopheles: an insistent murmur in his ear, an iron pressure on his neck. “Ask her about the owl.”

  “The owl?”

  “An owl bigger than an eagle, swifter than the beat of time. An emissary perhaps… a thief of spirits…”

  When Moonspittle repeated the question, the seeress turned her solitary eye on him: a lidless orb pink veined and sheened with blue, where the double circles of iris and pupil stood out against the white like the center of a target. A target that might shoot back. The searching ray had dwindled to a nimbus around it; the transparent features were barely visible against the ivory perfection of the bones. “I am tired,” she reiterated. “I have no strength for bird-watching.” A faint contempt tinted her colorless monotone.

  “Try.” Ragginbone’s voice spoke through Moonspittle’s lips, hand followed hand in duplicate motion, tightening the perimeter, sealing the boundary against any departure. The muted fire glimmer crackled and grew.

  The eye of the pythoness moved again, sending its piercing glance into some other dimension, a realm of distant night or twilit day. “The owl roosts,” she said, and there was effort in the words. “It is far away… on the edge … the very edge of things … The Tree stands there forever, in a forest of its own shadows. Its topmost branches are above the stars…”

  “How may I reach it?” Moonspittle’s question was still in the harsher accents of Caracandal.

  “There is no way there, no way back. Only the birds may come and go. The eagle and the owl fly where they will…”

  “Look closer. There are other things than birds in the Eternal Tree.”

  “The heads of the dead ripen there in season, like hanging fruit… I can see no more. Release me!”

  “Look closer!”

  “I can … no more. Release me!” The shadowy mouth strained into a rictus over pearl-pure teeth; the skull glowed with an opalescent luster. But on the eyeball the blood vessels had darkened, standing out in ridges; the pupil was a black hole; the bluish nimbus had turned red. The lone ray was clouded, a murky fume reaching from another place to choke its radiance, forcing it back onto its source. The orb grew hot, throbbing visibly. Smoke rose from the socket. The seeress screamed, plucking at her head with skeleton fingers. And then the eye burst from its anchorage, arcing through the air on a trail of sparks, bouncing once before sailing over the outline of the circle—

  Like a glittering marble it rolled across the floor. The cat Mogwit pounced upon it, entranced by this new plaything, patting it from paw to paw, evidently oblivious to the heat of its touch. In the circle the seeress howled with rage and agony, her empty socket weeping tears of blood. And around the periphery Moonspittle crawled on hands and knees, coaxing, threatening, wheedling, while the cat ignored his blandishments and slipped through his grasp, nudging the trophy so it was always just out of his master’s reach. In the end it was Ragginbone who caught Mogwit by the scruff of the neck, plucking him into the air while Moonspittle retrieved the eye and passed it to its custodian. Her hand closed upon it; she pulled the veil over her face. Cursing him in a voice like the hiss of cold fire, she faded from their sight.

  “The circle is broken,” said Ragginbone, tossing his burden floorward. “We must start again.”

  “He might have eaten it,” said Moonspittle, stroking his pet with unsteady fingers. Mogwit was still peering from side to side, clearly wondering where the fascinating bauble had gone. “He does, you know. Eat things. Rats, mice, cockroaches. Once it was a butterfly. I don’t know where he found a butterfly in Soho. And things out of dustbins. His constitution is very strong—like a goat, or do I mean an ostrich?—but… Dear knows what that would have done to him.”

  “We must start again,” said Ragginbone.

  Outside, afternoon had flowed into evening, the uniform daylight giving way to the jumbled illuminations of the city dusk. Streetlamp and headlamp, arc light and neon, all competed for airspace, jostling the shadows out of existence, splashing reflections on paintwork and windowpane. The screams of the seeress must have been lost in the beat of music from the basement club, the cacophony of small talk spilling out of a neighboring bar. In the cellar room the flames hovered over the candle stumps, each sustaining its own diminutive zone of light, while in between the darkness thickened into that unrelieved midnight peculiar to caves and dungeons, places where neither moon nor star ever penetrate. The circle sprang into fire again, its wan glimmer very bright now against the increased gloom. This time, on Ragginbone’s instructions, Moonspittle had traced runes of protection around the circumference. But when his confed
erate told him whom to summon he seemed startled, faintly disdainful.

  “Why waste the power? Her little brain is full of trivia. She talks of nothing and knows less. She will be no use to you.”

  “That depends on what I wish to learn.”

  The words of summoning were spoken: at the center of the circle a cone of vapor, less than three feet high, swirled, shuddered, condensed into solidity. And there was a tiny creature—pixie or pygmy, leprechaun or homunculus—perched on a toadstool. Not an attractive picture-book toadstool, red capped and white spotted, but one of the noxious variety, a parasitic growth sprouting from an unseen tree trunk, its lip frilled into an alligator grin, its underparts emanating a sickly phosphorescence. It was leaking spores that drifted across the circle, and a smell came from it so unwholesome that Moonspittle almost gagged and Mogwit backed away, his fur on end. But the figure seated on the top, attenuated limbs curled beneath her, seemed untroubled by the stench. Standing, she might have reached the height of a four-year-old child, though she was far thinner, her jutting bones like flower twigs, her cunning hands and splayed feet adorned with more than the usual complement of digits. Many of them were twined with knotted tendrils and old-man’s-beard like rustic jewelry, outward stigmata of a primitive vanity. She wore a misshapen garment that passed for a dress, woven of cobwebs and grasses, stuck with torn petals and iridescent fragments of insect wings that glinted in the furtive light. Other wings sprouted from her shoulder blades, bird’s wings with many-shaded feathers, ripped from their original owner and rooted in place with goblin magic. Too inadequate to carry her in flight, they merely fluttered uselessly behind her, as though trying to break free of their moorings. Her small broad head was set on a neck so supple that she could twist a hundred and eighty degrees in either direction. Her skin was smooth, nut brown, and almost completely hairless, save for a short growth like mouse fur on her scalp; her ears were mobile and pointed; her slanting eyes utterly black from edge to edge, lustrous as polished coals. Across her brow she wore a chain of berries and daisy heads, like a woodland crown; but the berries were shriveled, last autumn’s crop, the daisies molting. Nonetheless she seemed pleased with her appearance, as a child is pleased with fancy dress, admiring herself at intervals in a mirror chip held in one hand, virtually oblivious of her audience.

  “I have some questions for you, Mabb,” said Moonspittle.

  She noticed him then; her chin lifted with exaggerated hauteur. “I am the goblin queen. You will address me correctly, or not at all.” Her voice was half child, half woman, playing on every note from the shrillness of petulance to a husky effect intended for seduction. “Why have you summoned me? I am no antiquated spirit, to be at the beck and call of wizards. I have my own dominion. You have no right—”

  “Right or wrong, you are here, the circle holds you, you may not depart until I give you leave,” snapped Moonspittle, adding, belatedly: “Your Majesty.”

  “Highness,” said the queen. “I am a Highness now. I have decided. What do you want?”

  “Information,” said Elivayzar, nudged on by his alter ego, “on one of your subjects.”

  “My subjects are legion, scattered throughout the north,” said Mabb, preening herself in the glass. “How should I know one individual among so many?”

  “Are you not the queen?” countered Moonspittle, echoing Ragginbone’s whispered dictates. “Are you not omniscient and wise, both the emblem and the confidante of your people?”

  “That is true.” She lowered the mirror, diverted by his flattery. “Who—?”

  “One Bradachin, a house-goblin, formerly a resident of Glen Cracken. Do you know him?”

  “I know them all,” said the queen, forgetting her lofty pose of moments before. “Bradachin… that is a human name. We gave him another, but I have forgotten it. No matter. Like all house-goblins, he spent too much time with Men. He wanted to play their games, squabble their squabbles, fight their silly wars. I fear he picked up bad habits: rashness, and folly, and the stupidity they call honor. Mortal stuff. I have not seen him in a long while. What comes to him?”

  “He left the castle,” said Moonspittle, “and crossed the border to a house on the moors.”

  “Why?”

  “The castle was modernized. Central heating, bathrooms, too many visitors.”

  Mabb shuddered. “I hate bathrooms,” she said, rather unnecessarily. “There is so little suitable accommodation for a house-goblin nowadays. Everywhere there are machines that whirr, and gibber, and bleep. No more quiet corners, no more cracks and crannies. We are being driven back to the woods—if they leave us those. Yes, I remember Bradachin. I remember him too well. He was obstinate—unreliable—a traitor to his own folk. I banished him once, but that was long ago. It had slipped my mind.”

  “Where did you banish him?” asked Moonspittle, and then, at a word from Ragginbone: “Why?”

  “Elsewhere. Why? He had something—something I wanted—and he would not give it to me. I am his queen, but he denied me. Me! There was a witch who offered to pay me in phoenix wings—wings that would carry me up to the clouds—and all for a trinket, a piece of rusted metal, a giant’s bodkin. But he would not give it to me, and I banned him from my sight. He said it was a sacred charge. I told him, I am all you should hold sacred. But he hid it from me, and I did not get my beautiful wings. I had forgotten. I will never forgive him.”

  “What was this sacred thing?”

  “I told you. A bodkin. I don’t want to talk of it anymore.”

  Moonspittle raised his hand, murmuring dismissal, and the pharisee was gone. The smell followed her more slowly.

  “She is grotesque,” he said to Ragginbone afterward. “An ugly little pixie as vain as a courtesan and as wanton as an alley cat.” Mogwit groomed his belly fur complacently, unruffled by the chaos he had caused earlier.

  “Malmorths are not noted for their moral fiber,” said Ragginbone. “However, she was useful. I needed to be sure about Bradachin.”

  “What do you think it was—the artifact he refused to give her?”

  “I believe it might be a spear. I recall Will telling me that Bradachin was carrying one when he arrived.”

  Moonspittle began to complain that Ragginbone abused his power and his hospitality while telling him nothing, but made little progress.

  “Your power and your what?” said Ragginbone.

  “Hospitality,” said Moonspittle, defiantly. “I let you in. Didn’t I?”

  “You had no choice.” Deep eyes glinted at him. “Come. We are not finished yet, and you are wasting time.”

  “Time is there to be wasted,” grumbled Moonspittle. “What else would you do with it? You live your life like a rat on a treadmill. Running, running, running. Going nowhere.”

  “Probably,” said Ragginbone. “Restore the circle. I need to call someone—anyone—from the vicinity of the Tree.”

  “You can’t! You saw what came to Bethesne. She—”

  “It must be tried,” Caracandal insisted. “Concentrate.”

  But Moonspittle was nervous; his power of concentration, like his other powers, was limited. In the circle, leaf patterns formed and faded, livid gleams of werelight hovered like will-o’-the-wisps, wing shapes beat the air and vanished. The night noises of the city came to them for the first time, un-dimmed by the spell, faint as a distant music: the sound of traffic rumbling and generators humming, of people chatting, drinking, quarreling, making deals, making love, of lives being lived, of a million different stories briefly interlocking, of time passed not wasted, of minutes and seconds being seized and savored and devoured. A wonderful sound, thought Ragginbone. The symphony of life…

  “It’s no use,” whispered Moonspittle, though there was no need to whisper. “I cannot reach… anything. There must be an obstacle—a restriction of some kind. Or else there is no one there to reach.” There was a thin rime of sweat on his pallid brow, as unlikely as dew on flowers long dried. He looked both frightened and
relieved.

  The figure appeared without warning at the heart of the circle. There was no buildup of magic, no slow materialization: he was simply there. A figure far more solid than his predecessors, with an intense, virile reality that made the perimeter seem inadequate to contain him, a flimsy barrier against the impact of such a presence. He looked part man, part monster, not tall but disproportionately broad and heavy in the shoulder, his bare arms and torso showing great knots and twists of muscle, ribbed with veins. He was in deep shadow, but either he wore breeches made of animal fur or his legs were unnaturally hairy, matching the ragged dark mane on his head. His outthrust brow branched into curling horns, ridged like those of a ram; something behind him might have been the sweep of a tail. His bulging, uneven bone structure achieved an effect of ugliness that was close to beauty: a crude, brutish beauty rendered more sinister by the lance of intelligence. For there was a mind behind that face, agile and amoral, though what it was thinking would have been impossible to guess. The other beings summoned to the circle had all appeared in a strong light, but he was in darkness, a red, sultry darkness that clung to him like an odor. In twin clefts beneath his forehead the Watchers saw the ruby glitter of eyes at once feral and calculating.

  “Well, well,” he said, “if it isn’t the spider. A leggy, whey-faced spider babbling charms to summon flies into his web. You should be careful, spider. I am big for a fly and I might snap the threads that hold me—if hold me they can.”

  “What are you doing here?” demanded Moonspittle, unnerved. “You were not called.”

  “I came without a call, O gormless one—for the pleasure of your company. The door was open, the way clear. Ask of me what you will.” The words were a taunt, the note of mockery vicious.

  “Begone, half-breed,” snapped Moonspittle, still shaken. “Back to whatever midden you came from. Vardé—”

  “You cannot dismiss me, half-wit. I am too strong for you. Who is that sly shadow whispering orders into your ear?”