He had noticed this and was pondering it (he had always been introspective) when the woods around him became quiet. In the Wandering Forest it was no great feat of woodsmanship to notice the silence; it was a place filled with birds that piped, small animals that chittered, larger animals that growled. When they unceremoniously stopped the orchestration (leaving Miklós feeling vaguely stupid for having missed whatever message they had all received), Miklós stopped as well, listening intently and looking around.
On a branch of the oak nearest him sat an athyra with its thick brown plumage and hooked beak. A little way off, a teckla sat up on its back legs, motionless except for quick, furtive movements of its gray, whiskered head. Nothing else moved.
Miklós dropped to one knee so he wouldn’t tire of standing. He realized that he knew, as well as any of the other animals, that something was coming. He had to keep reminding himself to breathe. Gradually, though, he adjusted to the rhythm of the Forest—the tensionless waiting, the alert calmness.
He had been kneeling, motionless, for several minutes when it appeared, as a flickering movement through a thicket, far off to
the right of the direction he was facing. He watched it carefully, not wanting to move until he knew what direction it was safe to move in.
The teckla knew this before he did—it darted off to Miklós’s left. Miklós considered briefly, then followed. He glanced back, but the athyra hadn’t moved. He looked over to where the movement had appeared and had a sudden, clear vision of a monstrous head—narrow, triangular, and reptilian. He had never seen it before, but his stay in Faerie had taught him to recognize it. Three small tentacles, which Miklós knew to be sense organs, descended from its chin. There would be larger ones around its neck, but Miklós didn’t remain to see them. He raced off through the woods, hoping the teckla knew enough to pick a direction opposite the one the dragon would choose.
THE WANDERING FOREST WRAPPED ITSELF LIKE A SHEET around the base of the Mountains of Faerie. Here and there, intermixed with trees, brooks, weeds, and shrubs, were outcroppings of granite—an advance guard, as it were, for the eastward march of the mountains. Some of these were almost high enough to be considered mountains themselves, or at least hills. They were new, as such things go, and hadn’t been around long enough to develop a layer of topsoil for the use of grass and trees. Only occasional weeds sprang from flaws in the rock.
It was from a shelf on one of these that Miklós, perched like a hawk ready to dive (though feeling more like a teckla ready to scurry), watched the dragon, trying to guess its path. Even from this vantage, forty feet above the floor of the forest, he could only rarely glimpse the massive form of the beast, weaving in and out of trees that it doubtless found as strange as Miklós did. Odd how silently a dragon could move, even on unfamiliar terrain.
The dragon was a mountain animal, he reflected. Odd that it
was only when he came down out of the mountains that he encountered one.
The dragon stopped suddenly, and the Prince could see its neck tentacles becoming hard and rigid. He chuckled to himself at the vaguely sexual impression it gave. Then he realized that the dragon was standing in almost the same place he had vacated a few minutes before, and he was very pleased he had moved. But what had it found? The athyra?
Then he saw the dragon’s head snapping at the branch of a tree and knew that it was true. He shook his head in sudden sympathy with the foolish bird. Apparently dragons were so rare in the Forest that the athyra didn’t know how to contend with one. The athyra was a hunting bird; it lured its prey to it with mind-tricks, sending out silent messages of safety and food. Its means of defense were similar—hiding itself and sending messages of fear to keep predators away. It was a shame, Miklós reflected, that it didn’t know better than to play mental games with a dragon. Or maybe it did know, but the dragon had snared it in the same sort of web it wove, so it was powerless to escape.
The dragon struck again, and the prince’s straining eyes could almost make out a few feathers, drifting softly to the ground.
AN HOUR BEFORE, MIKLÓS HAD HAD SOME IDEA THAT HE was traveling in the right direction. Now, he had none. He had blundered by many streams and pools, but not the River. Was he anywhere near it? He had had no time to search. Whichever way he went, it seemed, the dragon was behind him.
Yet the oddest thing was his feeling, almost a conviction, that the dragon
wasn’t
following him. Certainly, there was no reason why it should, unless it had gotten a good, strong scent where it had killed the athyra, but there was no indication that it was following or looking for anything. It was more as if, no matter which
way Miklós turned, the dragon happened to turn that way, too. And every time Miklós turned, he became that much more lost.
Yet the fires of Faerie had tempered him, and even pursuit by a dragon didn’t shake the stubborn confidence he had learned among that people—fighting for everything he needed during days of labor and nights of hopelessness. He was lost and he was pursued; he was not frightened.
He heard a snarl off to his left and stepped back, alert. He found himself staring into the yellow eyes of a dzur, about thirty feet away from him. Five hundred pounds of black death.
He let out his breath. “Nice kitty,” he remarked.
Thoughts of the Power came flickering through his mind, but he brushed them off; even his master would have feared to use it against such an animal. The dzur snarled again.
Miklós had encountered dzur before and knew that they didn’t usually attack men. He watched its rear legs and took a slow step back. The cat continued watching him. Miklós sensed, rather than saw or heard, that the dragon was approaching. Another step back and he bumped into a tree. His start almost made the dzur leap, but not quite. He stepped around the tree, and the dzur’s head suddenly swung.
Miklós followed the dzur’s gaze, and gasped. He had never before been so close to a dragon. It is one thing to know that a dragon’s head is taller than you are, another to see one close up. The dragon wasn’t looking at him but at the dzur; and all of its tentacles were fully erect. This time Miklós found nothing amusing about it. He stared, mesmerized, until he heard a louder snarl than he’d heard yet, and a thin black streak launched itself across his line of sight and into the dragon’s face.
As the dragon gave a bellow, Miklós came to himself enough to turn and run. The bellow echoed through the forest and left the prince with a ringing in his ears that went on and on and on. He
wasn’t really aware that it had stopped until, some time later, as he lay face down at the edge of the River, another sound came to him from behind.
This far-off sound he recognized as the death wail of a dzur.
TWO HOURS LATER MIKLÓS LAY ON HIS BACK, CHUCKLING TO himself. Instinct, of course; his own and the dragon’s. The dragon had never been following him, and he had never really been lost. Both of them had been making for the River.
And why not? It was cool and pleasant to his legs. Lifting his head to look downstream through a tunnel of elms dotted with occasional willows, he was certain it was cool and pleasant to the dragon’s feet as well. He chuckled again.
There was, however, a more serious side to it. Now that he was at the River, it would be dangerous to leave it; he might become lost indeed. But the dragon was
down
river from him, and he did not relish the idea of walking past it. Dragons, unlike dzur, had no objection to manflesh; or so the stories said.
He lifted his head and considered crossing over. That would be a solution, except that here, fresh from the waterfall and the trip down the mountain, the water was cold, fast, and deep. A raft? That would do, if he could make sure the raft would bring him to the other side before it brought him to the dragon. The idea of floating into the dragon’s maw was not appealing. A pole? Would that be enough?
As much to test his skill as for any other reason, he found a large tree and brought forth the Power, forcing his mind through the rigid paths and strict logic required to bend it to his will. The tree fell. The dragon looked up, startled, then went back to drinking from the River.
Using the same Power, Miklós cut the tree into eight even sections. He laid them next to each other and concentrated still
harder. Using the power of Faerie to destroy was hard; using it to build was even harder. Or, at least, using it to build something that would last.
The Power was there, and the Pathway in his mind, and the Source whence came the Power. All that was needed was understanding—strict, inflexible rules guided the use. They must be remembered without error and applied without hesitation.
Three hard, sweating hours later he lay back, exhausted. The sun had set long ago, but he had scarcely noticed. He wasn’t even sure if he had succeeded, but that was for tomorrow. Now he needed sleep.
THE NEXT MORNING HE STUDIED HIS RAFT. IT WAS BOUND together by the Power of Faerie, and only by his desire could those logs be broken from each other. He dragged the raft over to the River (yes, the dragon was still there) and made sure it floated. Good. Now, for a pole.
He pulled the raft ashore, found a sapling, and cut it easily. He used his shaving knife to trim off the small twigs and branches. Good.
Now, of course, the question was did he trust his ability as a waterman to carry him past the dragon, or, alternately, did he trust the dragon to leave him alone?
He was considering this when he heard the sound of splashing from downstream, surprisingly loud over the rushing of the River itself. He couldn’t see the cause of the splashing, but apparently the dragon could, for its tentacles were growing stiff and its head was turned to look farther down the River.
Miklós stood up and took a hesitant step forward, then changed his mind. The dragon turned ponderously to face the shore; evidently whatever it was was coming on land. Then he heard another sound—so strange he couldn’t believe he had heard it—a human voice shouting.
He heard it again but still couldn’t make out the words. But—didn’t that voice sound familiar?
He began walking toward the dragon, almost against his will. It couldn’t be … .
He was a hundred feet away when he saw that it was. He stopped. He would have yelled, but his tongue felt frozen against the roof of his mouth. Some analytical part of the back of his mind said,
So this is what being paralyzed with shock is like. I hadn’t thought it would ever really happen
.
And his brother Vilmos, now close enough to hear, had eyes only for the dragon. He cried out, “All right, monster. My turn first.” He held up one of his massive fists, and there was a sudden flash of light. Miklós, now beyond surprise, felt the emanations of the Power.
The dragon felt them, too. It flinched back and roared, sending waves rippling down the River that knocked Miklós onto his back, though only his feet had been in the water.
He got to his knees and heard Vilmos cursing wizards in general and Sándor in particular, and saw him heaving something up over the dragon’s head and away, apparently in disgust.
The dragon seemed surprised, but not harmed. It was on Vilmos faster than Miklós would have believed possible. For a moment Miklós feared the worst, but then his brother emerged from the River, his back to Miklós, having dived under the dragon. He was waist deep in water, but his strength allowed him to stand against the current, at least for a while.
Miklós thought of calling out to him, but feared it would only distract him. Miklós began running.
He was fifty feet away when Vilmos leapt onto the dragon’s back, crying, “I said I’d strangle you, and by the Demon Goddess I will!”
Even his massive hands couldn’t come close to actually fitting
around the dragon’s throat, but he took one of its great tentacles and twisted and pulled it.
The dragon lurched and fell into the water. Miklós stopped, then shook his head and continued at a walk. He didn’t know whether the moisture on his face was from the River, from sweat, or from tears.
Vilmos stood up in the water at the same moment that the dragon did, towering above him. It spotted him at once, and its head came crashing down. Vilmos threw himself out of the way, then rolled quickly up onto shore. The dragon followed, leaping.
Vilmos spun around, as if looking for something, then threw himself once more out of the way of the dragon’s jaws. Teeth, however, are not the dragon’s only weapon. A claw that was as big as Vilmos himself swung out too quickly to be seen, but somehow Vilmos wasn’t there. He retreated, still searching the ground. Then the dragon was between Miklós and his brother.
Miklós broke into a run again. He was only twenty feet away when the dragon struck again, first with one claw, then the other. Vilmos screamed, and Miklós heard himself scream as well.
The dragon’s head came down hard, and the ground shook with the force as it missed its target. Miklós saw his brother, his chest soaked with blood. Over his head, Vilmos held a rock half as big as he was. For an instant their eyes locked, and Miklós saw his brother’s widen. Then Vilmos brought the rock crashing down on the dragon’s head.