“No! No! No, no,
no!”
howled the Ice Dragon, thrashing about in the reeds until they were covered with hoarfrost.
“I’ve a plan,” Tom insisted, “and it
requires
an Ice Dragon.”
“Let’s hear it, then,” Murdan said.
Tom outlined what had occurred to him between that good-night kiss and deep sleep.
“Very good!” cried Retruance. “I’ve been lying low here for three, four days and never came up with even the glimmer of a plan. That’s what Companions are supposed to be for!”
Tom blushed at the praise from his Dragon. Even the Ice Dragon, despite his acidulous comments, was caught up in the urgency and excitement of the rescue.
“I can do it!” he murmured softly. “I
know
I can. Despite the puny heat!”
“I hope you’re right, old ice cube,” said Manda. “For if you fail, I’ll be sunk in the swamp!”
“Quicksand,” Findles corrected her with scholarly precision. “A swamp is a body of
stagnant
water. The water here...”
“Yes, of course,
it flows,
as you told me,” Manda said kindly. “My husband will have further questions about that, as soon as we can snatch back my little brother, capture his captor, and shoo the Rellings out of the kingdom for good and all.”
“My great pleasure,” responded the scholar, bowing. “When shall we begin?”
“As soon as I’ve finished lunch,” said Murdan rather grimly. “Flying always gives me a grand appetite.”
“I ate before we left Overhall,” said Hoarling. “That nice lady...Grumble? Gave me ten gallons of the most delicious food I’ve ever tasted. Ice cream! Chocolate was my favorite, but the strawberry was every bit as good!”
“Woosh!”
said Tom, sighing. “Wish you’d brought some along. It gets hot here.”
“See, it’s getting to you, too!” the Ice Dragon teased.
Murdan, wiping his lips and complimenting the scholar on his cooking skill, settled himself on an open bit of sand dune under the arching willows, where he had an unobstructed view of the fuzzy line of cypresses that marked Arbitrance’s low island sanctuary across the placid lake.
He relaxed and began to hum softly to himself, not words but a slow melody from some distant place and time. He was calling out to his long-lost Dragon Mount.
“He hears me, but...ah...refuses to answer,” he said after a quarter-hour of plaintive singing. “He knows it’s me, but he seems unable to say my name. It disturbs him greatly, I think.”
“Don’t push him too hard!” warned Tom. “Just keep him preoc-cupied for as long as you can.”
Findles brought his flat-bottomed skiff around and tied it to one of the ancient weeping willows, hidden from view if the rogue Dragon should decide to fly.
Manda climbed aboard and settled herself on the midship thwart.
She was dressed in the warm sweater, heavy woolen skirt, and thick stockings she’d worn the day before at Overhall. She was perspiring freely but bravely refused to complain, except to say, “Let’s go! Before I melt entirely into a puddle.”
“Good girl!” cried Furbetrance. “I’ll be pushing your boat from behind. Ready, Master Hoarling?”
“Swimming isn’t the worst part of all this,” griped the Ice Dragon.
“At least it’s a little cooler than the air in this furnace of a tropical swamp!”
“Where is he now?” Tom asked a white heron who flew down to report at that moment. “The Dragon, I mean.”
“Pacing nervously back and forth on the near shore. You could see him if you flew up twenty or thirty feet.”
“He’d see me, then,” Tom explained patiently. “And the child?
Where’s Ednoll?”
“Playing in the shade of blooming lemon trees near the Dragon’s nest. Building a sand castle, I think.”
“Return quietly and tell us if there’s any change. If Arbitrance goes back to the nest, or if the child wanders off somewhere. We really must know exactly where the Prince is
at all times.
It’s very important! Manda won’t have time to go looking for him!"
“Willingly!” the great white bird chirped softly, and flapped off, taking a roundabout course, flying just above the water.
“Now you’re off, Manda my love! Remember, direct your thoughts to Furbetrance when you want to contact us. Your Mount can hear you at a distance, as you already know. Retruance and I will be on the far side of the lake, in case Arbitrance flees with Ednoll. Murdan will keep Arbitrance distracted as long as he can. Furbetrance will be there to take you and the child off the rowboat once you’ve brought Ednoll away from the Dragon’s nest. Any questions?”
“Only one,” said the Princess. “Have Dragons ever been known to kill?”
“Not to my knowledge, Princess,” said Furbetrance, gently. “It’s not generally in our nature to take life.”
“It’s not in a Dragon’s nature to kidnap babies, either,” Manda reminded him.
Without further comment she pushed the skiff away from the shore with its long oar. The boat floated free among thick-matted hyacinth, but the lass made no attempt to row.
There was a sudden ripple behind the boat and a Dragon’ s muzzle appeared just a few inches out of the tea-dark water. Furbetrance began to swim underwater, pushing the skiff easily along with his nose.
“Tell him to take it easy! Making a bunch of noise!” whispered Tom, sending a mental message to Furbetrance through Retruance.
The skiff slowed and the slight sound of its fast passage died away altogether.
“I’m off, too,” announced Hoarling, sounding more cheerful than usual.
He slid down a slippery sandbank and disappeared under the water with hardly a ripple. A trail of misted bubbles showed where he swam. They looked like nothing so much, Tom thought, as floating electric light- bulbs. They quickly popped and melted into Sinking Marsh’s almost-still waters.
Tom clambered aboard Retruance, grabbed a pair of ears, and held fast when his Mount hurled himself into the now-clear afternoon sky, streaking in a roundabout course for the black bank of rain-fat clouds to the south and west.
Good! They’d be screened from Arbitrance’s sight by islands and later by those black clouds, Tom fervently hoped.
Manda steered the scholar’s light skiff toward the south-facing shore of the Dragon-enhanced islet, circling well away from the point where she now could occasionally glimpse him pacing nervously back and forth on the eastern shore.
Furbetrance lifted his head from the water, high enough to assure himself of their course. The Princess waved him back under the water, signaling to him that she was in control. No spoken words were necessary between Dragon and Companion. It was her first experience with this strange rapport, and she found it both disturbing and comforting.
Astern at some distance, a chevron of ripples and an occasional puff of vapor that clung coldly to the water surface showed her where Hoarling swam.
A white heron glided down to land on the forward thwart, startling the Princess.
“Ah...the
child?”
began the bird
shyly.
“Yes, my dear?”
“He’s tired of playing alone and has lain down to rest under the lemon trees. You can’t miss him. The lemons are loaded with bright green and yellow fruit.”
“Thank you, mistress,” said Manda. “Go back and keep a close watch, please.”
“Yes, Princess!” replied the bird, bobbing her head several times.
And she was off, flapping rapidly for altitude.
rs
I
know
you!” groaned Arbitrance, suddenly loud in the Historian’s thoughts. “But...uh?...can’t think of your name! Yet you are a Companion! I
had
a Companion myself once...didn’t I?”
“I
am
your Companion,” said Murdan calmly, evenly, silently. “Don’t you remember old Murdan of Overhall? Your grandfather Altruance built my castle for me, remember? You lived there much of your youth.”
“Overhall...I seem to remember,” quavered the Dragon’s thought uncertainly. “I was told not to remember you, whatever your name is.
I’m not to say your name or even imagine your face.”
“What
is
this terrible barrier that separates us, my dear Arbitrance?” asked the Historian, almost sobbing. “Who gave you such wicked, wrong commands?”
“I
cannot
tell you, Voice of the Past!” cried the great beast in very real anguish. “Don’t ask me, I beg of you, unknown sir! It causes pain to even think of it!”
“I do not wish to cause you pain, old fellow! You’re distraught.
Why don’t you lie down in the warm, soft sand for a while and close your so-tired eyes? You’re very tired.”
“The Prince...the boy-child. So innocent! So trusting! I must go to him, mustn’t I?”
“Not right now,” replied Murdan, struggling to sound calm and unconcerned. “He’ll be all right, dearest of friends. Stay with me yet awhile. We’re old, old friends, you and I. Rest there, where it’s warm, so very warm and cozy. You’ve provided a safe nest for the kit-Princeling, there in the middle of this great marsh. Tell me! How long did it take you to build your island, Arbitrance Constable? Your grandfather would be proud of your work!”
The sound of his name seemed to calm the beast on the other side of the lake. Murdan sensed he had lain himself down wearily, lowered his head to the ground, and closed his eyes.
Good!
Dragons are proud and capable builders,
Murdan thought to himself.
Get him to talk about building that wretched island.
“Well, it took me most of four years, once I decided to hide the Princeling here rather than in the Isthmusi Mountains,” Arbitrance began, matter-of-factly. “First I had to build a firm retaining wall and lay a foundation of huge boulders from far to the west, south of Obsidia Isle. I laid them carefully, one at a time, just below water level. That was the hardest part, stranger! I brought them round about, over the Isthmusi highlands, one or two at a time.”
He rambled on, dreamily describing the enormous problems he’d solved, and the materials he’d brought from afar. Murdan listened with all his attention. Was it necessary to build so carefully? With such precise materials? Was the Dragon subconsciously delaying the next phase of a distasteful task—the actual kidnapping of the royal children?
“A task, in its way, even more difficult in many ways than building Overhall,” he told his Mount. “Go on, please! Tell me all about it.”
Tom and Retruance had the hardest task—waiting and watching.
The great green-backed Dragon relayed snippets from his brother, who was in the water behind the skiff, and conveyed some idea of what Murdan and his enchanted Mount were saying to each other.
Retruance soared in great, lazy figure-eights along the western and southern edges of Sinking Marsh just in front of the storm front.
Rain would move in at any moment. Occasionally the west was alight with fierce flashes of blue lightning, and their rumble reached them over a long distance, slowly coming closer.
“Manda has reached the point near the south shore that we selected, screened by the young mangroves,” said the Dragon finally.
‘‘The next step is up to Hoarling.”
“He’d better do it right!” Tom ground between his teeth.
They passed through a pelting rain shower, which soaked him to the skin. He didn’t notice it.
Hoarling was not at all happy, even in the cool of the marsh’s upwelling water. He was a creature of arctic wilds, ice and snow and everlasting wind chills. To an Ice Dragon, the marsh water felt like live steam.
The very air burned in his lungs. Vapors rising from the marsh made his eyes water and blurred his vision.
But the task he had been asked to perform would provide some relief, he knew. He was eager to begin.
“Through the mangroves here to the stones that bind the island,”
said Manda, gesturing to him as he floated, just submerged at the edge of the mangroves. “The ice will float, I presume?”
“Ice floats,” Hoarling assured her, forgetting to be sarcastic. “Your husband was correct about that. I’ll use the mangroves here to anchor the ice, the bridge, so it won’t drift if the wind rises.”
“Begin then, please,” she urged him.
She wiped sweat from her eyes with a soaking handkerchief.
“It won’t take long,” said the Ice Dragon.
“I’ll be ready!” the Princess assured him.
Hoarling wheezed great sub-zero gusts from his wide, frost-rimed nostrils onto the still lake surface, making it shudder, glaze, and crackle.
He increased the chill severalfold.
The water began to glisten, hair-thin ice widening to squares of clear blue rime around the wide-spreading boles of the nearest mangroves. An incautious movement from Furbetrance, waiting nearby, shattered the delicate film.
“Keep still, for goodness’ sake!” Hoarling hissed irritably.
“Sorry!” whispered the other Dragon. I’ll fall back a length or two, shall I?”
“No, no. Curl yourself about me from behind. Make a water-break to keep wavelets away from my nice new ice, at least until I get a good thickness here.”
Furbetrance moved very carefully to shelter the Ice Dragon’s work area.
It went faster all of a sudden, with the skin of fragile new ice spreading after Hoarling as quickly as he could swim in the mixed sand and water. Manda in her skiff was fascinated by the beauty of the freezing water, the clear, flat crystals forming straight lines and smooth planes, rayed stars and webs of cracks.
“Not thick enough,” she heard Hoarling say to himself.
He slowed his forward progress and concentrated on increasing the ice’s thickness. The Librarian and the Ice Dragon had estimated Manda required at least two inches of hard ice to hold her weight.
“Better make that four inches,” Hoarling muttered, “just to be safe. If you fall in here, and the quicksand catches hold of you...you’ll just keep going down and down...”
Fifteen minutes later the waiting Manda, shivering now in the cold mist rising in billows from the ice, leaned from the immobile skiff and pounded the ice with her fist.
“Now!” said Hoarling. “I’ll keep on ahead, Princess. Watch your step, please!”