“If you insist,” said Tom, grinning broadly. “We missed you, Master!”
“Ah, the rescue of the little Princeling,” cried Murdan to hide his pleasure at the Librarian’s sincere words. “You say it’s certain old Arbitrance is at the bottom of it all? I scarce can believe it!”
“Not at the bottom, certainly, but used as a tool, likely unwillingly enchanted,” said Tom. “Arcolas maintains if anyone can break such a spell, it’ll be Arbitrance’s own Companion—you, Murdan. Do you feel up to flying on to Sinking Marsh tonight? You’ve had a rough journey.”
“I’d come at once,” agreed the Historian, “but a night of sleep might make all the difference in the world, too. What to do?”
“Tom and I can go ahead, as Retruance will be anxious for news and also need our help at watching Arbitrance’s redoubt,” Manda suggested. “You get your rest, Uncle, and come tomorrow morning. You really look worn out.”
“How will I come, though? Furbetrance will carry you...but I have no Dragon of my own handy.”
“How about yon Ice Dragon?” asked Tom.
Hoarling had not joined the party within Great Hall, preferring to take a reviving bath in ice-cold Gugglerun, much to the delight of the castle children.
“Will he do it?” Manda asked.
“Leave him to me,” cried Furbetrance, who had been listening all the while. “Dragons have certain obligations, no matter if they are Ice Dragons or not.”
“I’ll just have a bite to eat and a short nap and join you in the morning, then,” suggested Murdan. “Be off with you, youngsters!”
He yawned vastly, and when Furbetrance and the Librarian left Great Hall to speak to Hoarling he was already nodding over his roast beef. In a few moments Rosemary and two servants were struggling to strip off his dirty, wet clothing and wrap him in warm blankets.
rs
“Ho!” called Furbetrance as he and Tom trod out to the drawbridge over Gugglerun. “A word with you, Ice Dragon, if you please!”
Hoarling, who had surprised himself by enjoying the applause and calls of the castle children who were watching him swim, turned on his broad back, spread his wings from bank to bank to hold himself in place, and blew a jet of frozen crystalline mist high in the air.
“You’re looking for me, brother Dragon?” he gurgled. “Ah! You must be the young Tom Librarian Murdan spoke about, eh? Nice, ice-cold moat Murdan has here! Ice cold and fresh running, direct from the high mountains!”
“Hoarling,” Furbetrance began. “Hoarling...”
He crouched on the edge of the drawbridge looking down at the chilled water and the chilly Dragon.
“You were about to say?” Hoarling chuckled, grinning up at them from the water.
“Hoarling...I don’t think you’re as nasty as you’d like people to think.”
“I can be pretty nasty,” said the other Dragon, snorting, shaking frozen drops from his wings.
“But you saved Murdan and the others. And carried them to Murtal’s Old Place. A long way to go on a begrudging favor, I’d say.”
“Ah, but perhaps Murdan forgot to mention that I extracted my price!” crowed the Ice Dragon. “My pick of jewels and gold coins and spare diadems for my secret hoard. That’s why I agreed to make the trip, old Furbetrance! No other reason!”
He swam off around the edge of the castle, puffing steam with each stroke of his powerful legs until the whole castle was surrounded by a slowly settling ring of dense, cold mist catching the rays of the setting sun.
“Wait!” Furbetrance said quietly to the Librarian.
The two settled down on the drawbridge and watched the sun strike gold and crimson and purple from the low clouds overhead.
Hoarling returned around the castle wall, no longer steaming or puffing but slowly stroking, breasting toward the drawbridge in a more thoughtful mood, it seemed to Tom.
“I really should be getting home,” he announced when he reached the drawbridge and stopped, treading water with all four feet. “I really can’t abide this tropical climate at all! Give me ice and snow any day.”
“Understandable,” said the Constable Dragon, nodding graciously.
“Well, if that’s what you need and want, old icicle. We’ll understand.”
Hoarling heaved his enormous bulk out of Gugglerun onto a narrow stone jetty used by the moat cleaners to moor their scrub boats.
He streamed icy water and sloughed thin sheets of clear ice, which had formed on his back and tail.
“I know you Constable people!” he barked. “A smooth answer and a trick up your sleeve! Say what you’re thinking, old Furbie! But know that I’m going home as quickly as pinions can carry me!”
“It’s your right,” began the other Dragon.
“Of course, my
right!”
snarled the Ice Dragon, shaking his head fiercely. “We’ve said it all there. I’m about to leave!”
“And we’re not all that sorry to see you depart,” admitted Furbetrance solemnly. “It sadly confirms a growing opinion my brother and I have been forming of your sort for some years, old snowball!”
Hoarling stopped in the middle of turning away and stared over his shoulder at Furbetrance, scowling.
“I don’t need your damned approval, Constable! You live your way—I intend to live mine!”
“Of course, ice creature!” said Furbetrance calmly. “No real civilized Dragon expects splinters like you Ice Dragons to be otherwise.”
“Otherwise!
Otherwise?
I just wish you’d explain that base ca-nard, Constable!"
He whipped around to face Furbetrance and Tom on the narrow draw span.
“I’m my own creature. I owe nothing to you or any other simple-minded hot-gutted Dragon, let alone any Elf or Human! I come and go where I wish! I am Hoarling the Frigid, the Awesome Ice Fog, the—”
“The fool!” snorted the other Dragon. “You confirm our opinion of such northern trash! Go! No matter that the honor of all Dragons is concerned with the reputation, maybe the very life, of one poor Dragon, sorely enchanted and helplessly bound in magic toils. Who needs you!
Certainly not Dragonhood at large. Certainly not me or my brother or my poor, gentle papa! Or my own five kits!”
Hoarling opened his mouth to roar a retort, but Furbetrance’s final shot had told, at last.
“I...I...didn’t know you were a father yourself, old cinderhead!
Five?
Five kits! I’d not heard of a Dragonkind birthing in centuries. This is great news! Congratulations, Furbetrance!”
Furbetrance solemnly bowed his head.
“Thank you for your courtesy, Ice Dragon. I had hoped to take you to our Obsidia Isle nest after this is all over and decided. My kits would be all agog to meet a real live Ice Dragon. Why, my son just recently asked me if Ice Dragons were truly real. ‘As real as rocks!’ I told him, but I couldn’t prove it. Young ones believe what their fathers have to say, at least
until they
grow old enough to doubt his words.”
“The little boy-kit should see proof for himself, I say!” cried Hoarling. “I...”
“But maybe you’ll allow us to visit your snow lair and frozen hills one day?” asked Furbetrance. “Say, in a century or so? The climate is much too harsh for young kits up there, their mother’d insist.”
“Nonsense! Any Dragon worth his scales can withstand the very worst the arctic sends his way.”
Hoarling suddenly lay down in the middle of the draw span and turned to gaze north, to where the peaks of the Snows were blazing with the last of the sunset.
“I ask myself,” he said softly, after a long silence, “which is worse?
To suffer the terrible heat of your southlands? Or be alone and miss the joys of dandling a kit or two or three on your tail and hear them cackle and chortle.”
Tom and the Constable Dragon stood unanswering.
“And you’re right in one thing, at least,” continued Hoarling. “If I run away from Arbitrance, I’ll always be remembered for that deed, among all Dragons, including the very young.”
“Probably true, although my family will never repeat the tale, I assure you,” said Furbetrance.
The Ice Dragon nodded slowly.
“No, I do believe you people would never blame me for stopping short of the common goal. I’d feel better about it if you would rant and rage and curse my bones!”
He laughed then, a deep, rough rumble that reminded Tom of distant ice in a river fracturing and beginning to slide of its own weight out to sea.
“Well, you’re right, of course! I was being mightily selfish—part of my lonely nature, I guess. I suppose I should see this adventure to its end. I
will
see it to its ending! Count on me, Dragon and Librarian! I may be sour and sound bitter and cold, but I’m not at all insensitive.
And I’m not a fool, either!”
“Nobody ever said a word to that effect, at least in my hearing,”
said Tom. “We’re more than just pleased to have you come with us to rescue the child. His mother and father will be overjoyed! And we welcome you as a friend, not just a passing acquaintance, Ice Dragon!”
“Thank you, Tom Librarian! And I don’t even ask for more fee than already agreed to, to show my
bona fides,
or whatever it is the scribes and lawyers call it. Well...now that’s settled, I think I’ll cool off with another swim around this delightful moat. Be some time before I am that cool again, I’m afraid.”
He rolled over and crashed flat into Gugglerun, soaking the watch-ers on the draw to the skin.
“Ah, well, he’ll always be the same sassy old Hoarling, I suppose,”
said Tom, laughing. “I’m going to go rub down with a hot towel before I catch a bad cold!”
And he left Furbetrance watching the Ice Dragon making designs in thin, crystal-clear ice on the surface of Gugglerun below the drawbridge.
rs
Mist shrouded Sinking Marsh as Furbetrance glided silently over Findles’s hummock the next morning just after dawn. Lightning lit the black-and-gray western horizon, but above, the sky was clear and intensely blue. So far the autumn storm had held off.
Retruance’s deep booming voice rose from the dark trees below.
“All quiet!”
He showed a bit of clear red flame to guide his brother to a safe landing between two huge oaks heavily festooned with moss, hung to hide the scholar’s camp from the eyes on the redoubt island across the way.
“The herons say Papa and the boy went to bed at sunset after a long game of hide-and-seek,” the older Constable told them once they were safely aground.
“Oh, my! How does one play hide-and-seek when one is a fifty-foot fire-lizard,” asked Manda with a giggle despite the
seriousness of
the
situation.
Findles of Aquanelle bobbed bashfully to Manda and welcomed Tom back to the marsh with a firm handshake.
“Anything’s possible to a four-year-old boy, I guess,” said the Librarian. “Murdan will be here in the morning aboard your old friend Hoarling the Ice Dragon, Retruance. Perhaps then we can do some serious rescuing.”
“Hoarling! Not one of my favorite Dragons,” said the older Constable brother, growling. “Still, I suppose...”
“He’s been very helpful, if rather snide and sarcastic about it,”
Manda admitted. “I think he may be the kind who groans and growls so nobody will know he has a good heart within. A bit like Uncle Murdan, you know?”
“That,” grumbled Furbetrance, “remains to be seen. Is that breakfast I smell?”
Findles had made a huge meat loaf baked within a thick, brown crust of bread, enough to satisfy even two Dragons’ appetites. After three days and nights of fish and freshwater clams, Retruance had flown east to purchase meat and produce from Phoebe and her farmer husband.
They all ate, talked, and admired the neatly designed shelter Retruance and Findles had built while Tom and Furbetrance had flown off to Overhall.
“What keeps the mosquitoes away?” asked Manda as she and Tom settled for a short catch-up nap, for they’d flown all night to reach the scene of action. “I can hear them snarling and whining. I expect to be eaten alive in my sleep!”
“Something to do with the smell of Dragon, I understand. One of the many advantages of being a Dragon Companion, tenderfoot,” Tom teased.
Manda kissed him and snuggled into the crook of his left arm. In moments they were both asleep, totally un-bothered by the hungry mosquitoes or anything else.
Tom had been prepared to lie awake thinking of the problem of the kidnapped child less than five miles away on the redoubt hummock built by the rogue Dragon in the midst of deadly quicksand. But good sense and weary limbs prevailed and he slept long and peace-fully beside his wife.
When he woke in late morning to the sound of rain drumming on the broad banana leaves Retruance had used for his roof, Tom found a plan for the rescue of Ednoll fully formed in his mind.
They brunched on filets of fresh-caught bass breaded in egg and cornbread crumbs, fried over the scholar’s cook fire. Findles found an eager student in Manda and explained his study of the sources of the waters that kept Waterfields fertile and lushly green.
Tom listened also, asking questions at the right moments, and filing all the information away in his librarian’s memory.
Furbetrance dozed in a patch of watery sun after the rain stopped.
His big brother went off to consult with the white herons, who had thrown themselves eagerly into spying on the Dragon’s island.
Murdan, on Hoarling, dropped from the sky just then.
“It must have been a short nap you had,” said Tom to greet his master. “No more than three or four hours, at most.”
“Hard to sleep in these circumstances,” agreed the Historian. “I’m glad to be here. I’ve heard little but bad-tempered fussing and complaining since we took off from Overhall.”
Hoarling lay panting in the deepest shade he could find, waves of frosty vapor rolling off his back and shoulders and even the tips of his nose and tail.
“What a terrible, awful, dreadful climate!” he gasped. “It’ll be the death of me, sooner than late, gentle sirs and beautiful Princess! May I please go home, now? I’ll even forgo
my
fees, if you wish.”
“He must really mean it!” snorted Murdan. “Well, he’s served us well. We should let him go, I think.”
“Sorry, but we must extract one more favor from him,” Tom said, shaking his head firmly.