The Dragon Charmer Read online

  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 murmurs Azmordis, and the shadow of his being is withdrawn, and the sun is swallowed up in the jaws of the valley.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.

  “What I do with my black plum,” says Fern, “is my own affair.”

  “And if l tell Morgus?”

  “She will be pleased. She has been looking for it.”

  “So if I leave you to your spells, what will you do for we?”

  “Nothing.” She will ask no favors from him. Instinct tells her he will batten onto weakness like a vampire onto an open vein.

  “I thought we might make a bargain.”

  “No. Tell Morgus, and she will pat your head, and call you her good dog. This is a bone she has been seeking for a little while. Also, she will be angry with me, she may punish me. Tell her, or don’t tell her. It’s your choice. I do not bargain.”

  “You are a proud little witch, aren’t you?” he says sourly. “So it’s to be my choice. How do you think I will choose?”

  “I won’t play that game,” Fern says, “so don’t try it.”

  “What games do you play?”

  “None that you know.”

  There is a red glint in the darkness of his eyes, but he laughs unexpectedly, this time with genuine amusement, and it fades. He moves away suddenly and swiftly on clawed feet, padded like the paws of a lion: a fantastic conglomerate of beasts, like the mythical monsters of old, parts of this animal or that tacked together to create an improbable whole. Lion’s feet and ram’s horns, human skin and matted pelt. Briefly he pauses to look back, dropping to a crouch on a shoulder of root, balancing with his tail. “I go to Morgus,” he taunts, “like a good dog. I will see you there.”

  “What should I call you?” she asks.

  “Kal.”

  And on the name he is gone, vanishing into the environs of the Tree as if it was his native habitat. Fern follows more slowly, picking her way by the marks she has trained herself to recognize. She hopes or hazards that he will tell Morgus nothing, but nonetheless she reenters the cave of roots with a certain trepidation. But for once Morgus pays her no attention. “What are you doing here?” she is saying, and the scorn in her tone is blatant. In front of her Kal stands at a little distance: he is so much the shorter he appears to be cowering. “Filial duty? Affection? I hardly think so. We know each other too well for that. Your loathing for me can only begin to match mine for you. The first of my sons, for all his failings and failures, had beauty if not charm; the second—”

  “Mordraid was a monster under the skin; I show it. I am as you made me, mother dear. The fruit of your womb.”

  “The heads are the fruit of the Tree, but it lets them fall and the wild hog eats their brains. Don’t dabble in sentiment: it doesn’t become you. Stick to your jeers and gibes: they are pinpricks I cannot feel, and as long as I ignore you, you are safe from me. What brings you here?”

  “I met someone who was asking after you. It inspired me with a curious urge to pay a visit.”

  “It inspired you with curiosity, no doubt. Who was it? I am not one to be casually spoken of. Who was it?”

  “An ancient spider—a negligible creature—setting his nets for a fly too big for him.” He speaks in riddles, or so it seems to Fern. “But there was another in the background, one far more skilled, a tarantula who has lost his venom but not his bite. He was telling the first little spinner how to weave his silken traps. I wondered who—or what—he was hoping to catch. So I came here, to consult the Greek oracle.”

  “Syrcé!” The’s sounds hiss like snakes.

  “I told him only what he could learn for himself,” says Sysselore defensively.

  “You have a pretty new toy, Mother. Such a pretty thing. May I play with it?”

  Still Fern says nothing, and Morgus does not spare her a look, though she must sense the girl’s presence.

  “Don’t touch her,” Morgus says, bored, “or you may live to regret it”—but whether the threat is personal or an expression of her confidence in her apprentice is unclear. “Who was this tarantula who impressed you so much?”

  “I didn’t say he impressed me.”

  “You didn’t need to. Who was he?”

  “You knew him of old. I thought you would remember.”

  “Him.” Derision warps her face, tugging her thick mouth off center. “He’s no tarantula. A legless crawler who champs his hollow fangs because he can no longer dance. What does he want in all this?”

  As she speaks, Fern has a sudden mind picture of a weather-brown face, creviced and cragged, lurking in the shadow of a pointed hood, of green-gold eyes bright as sunlight on spring leaves. She sees him in the fire circle, shaking the sparks of wereglow like water drops from his coat. And she sees him beside a clean white bed, watching over the sleeper who lies there. Caracandal. Ragginbone. Once her ally, if sometimes unreliable, always her friend, though it is long since they have exchanged a word. The awareness that he might be searching for her, shielding her unoccupied body, is like a hand reaching out when she had believed herself entirely alone. But she keeps her face immobile: even in the uncertain wormshine Morgus can read the slightest change of expression, and the thought behind the change. Fern moves toward them, letting her gaze fall coldly on Kal. Morgus’s luminous black stare flickers over her—flickers and passes on.

  “Maybe,” Kal is saying, “he too is driven by… curiosity.”

  “He is driven by the urge to spy and pry. He is the sort who minds other people’s business, and calls it responsibility. He does nothing, neither evil nor good, and makes a virtue of it. He will spend ten years watching a pebble, waiting for it to hatch. He was a charlatan, a poison peddler who tried to turn himself into a magus and sickened of his own failure. And now he is a snooper who, without reason or power, lays claim to some kind of mandate from an unknown Authority. Senile delusions. His mind is as calcified as his body.”

  “All the same,” Sysselore interjects, perhaps for provocation, “he lives in the world beyond—the world of Time. He moves around. He meets people. He knows things. His presence—his interest—always means something. You have said so yourself.”

  No one likes having their own words used against them. Morgus rounds on her, spitting vituperation. As her attention shifts Kal looks sidelong at Fern, a sly sardonic smile on his misshapen face. “It is good to know that the coven sisters still exude so much sisterly love,” he remarks. Morgus turns back with a word, a gesture, so swift that there is barely a break in her tirade. The sudden whiplash of power knocks him down like a blow: he sprawls on the ground, helpless and ungainly, before snapping his body into a huddle from which he glowers, red eyed, rubbing a mark like a burn on his chest. Fern has never seen Morgus use her strength in such a way before and the ease, the carelessness of it is terrifying. She recalls lashing out herself once, at the house-goblin—a reflex of anger without thought—but she made no contact, caused no pain. She finds herself clutching right hand in left as if to keep it under control.

  Sysselore cowers under the diatribe with the resentful cringing of a subordinate who feigns submission while plotting a petty revenge. The long habit of sisterhood has engendered certain rules between them: conflict is only ever verbal. Morgus stops as abruptly as she began; her black
gaze veers, finding the girl. “Are you enjoying the spectacle, Fernanda?” she asks.

  Fern shrugs. “A family squabble.”

  Morgus laughs—her mouth splits and widens, the soft flesh shifts and re-forms itself around the red hole of her mirth. “Do you see this?” she says at last, indicating the hunched figure on the ground. “This was a mistake. Learn from it. I had a son once, when I was young: his father was a king whose legend they still remember.”

  “He was your half brother,” mutters Sysselore.

  “Irrelevant. My son was handsome and proud, though with little Gift, but he was also impatient and greedy. Ambition and rancor destroyed him. When I saw he was flawed I set out to make myself a better child. I took the seed of a god and warmed it into mortal life, I infused it with a phantom drawn from the ether. It was a magic like no other—”

  “Galataea,” murmurs Sysselore. “The flower bride of Llew LlawGyffes.”

  “Galataea was a statue, a receptor put to a different use. Blodeuwedd was a doll made of forget-me-nots and love-in-idleness. My experiment was with flesh and blood—my flesh, my blood. I nursed it like a fragile plant and it grew in my belly like a tumor. When it emerged I saw—this. Neither Man nor Spirit, a monster from infancy, crawling in his own dirt. I gave him to a peasant half-wit and he drank in stupidity with her breast milk. When he was older, he used what little power he had to sneak and steal, growing only in vice—the crude vices that spring from a mean imagination, from brute sensuality and bile. I had named him after Caliburn, the sword of fame and fable. Now he is Kaliban, a byword for a beast. I let him live as a reminder. The Ultimate Laws can be bent but not broken. Look at him and learn.”