“What did you do?” Retruance wanted to know.
“What could we do? Move away or try to drive him off—and he could easily beat us in a fight, what with those sharp claws and his fires and all.”
“Understandable,” agreed Retruance. “What happened next?”
“We were undecided—and greatly afeared. Then he came one night and stole a second child!”
“Great heavens!”
cried Furbetrance with a blast of red fire.
“There’s something very, very wrong here.”
“Wrong is right!” agreed Quillan emphatically.
His people nodded their heads and looked very serious.
“Who was it this time?” asked Retruance, almost afraid to ask.
“A boy of five or so,” the chief of Timberside told them. “Young Diamont there, son of Diamont, it was. Snatched him from his evening play and kept him for three whole days!”
“We were about to sing the death song for him, too,” wailed a woman identified by the chief as the boy’s mother, “when Diamont wandered back into camp on the morning of the fourth day.”
She pushed forward a lad of six or seven, looking very frightened but determined to seem brave facing the two enormous Dragons.
“Diamont, my lad,” said Furbetrance most gently. “No need to fear old Furbetrance and Retruance! If that...
other
...Dragon harmed you or frightened you, it was because he was...sick, it may be, or somehow out of his head. I think he may have been enchanted.”
“Yes, sir,” said Young Diamont.
“Did he—this other Dragon...his name is Arbitrance Constable, did you know? Did he hurt you?”
“N-n-n-no, sir,” the boy admitted slowly. “Carried me up high, is all.”
“What did he say to you, this Dragon?” Retruance asked.
The lad shivered—more at the present circumstances than the memory of his captivity, Furbetrance thought.
He gently picked the lad up in his right foreclaw and set him beside his chief on the higher ledge. Quillan put an arm about the boy’s shoulder and gave him a reassuring hug.
“Tell us—tell these great beasts, I mean—what they want to know and
tell them truly, laddy. The...the other
Dragon, the one who took you off? He was their father, you see, and they are terribly upset about it.”
“I see, yes, sir!” said Young Diamont carefully. “Great Dragons, I’ll tell you whatever I can. But will you hurt him, then? Your father, I mean. For he wasn’t bad to me at all and gave me good food to eat and played games with me, you see, sirs.”
“No, we won’t harm him. He’s our papa,” Retruance reassured him softly, “and neither a Dragon nor a young man like you, my boy, wants his very own papa ever harmed, does he?”
“No, sir,” agreed Young Diamont.
“Well...if
your
papa were...
deranged
...or, more likely, enthralled by some magician or wizard,” Retruance went on, “you’d want to find him and help him back to his senses, before...”
“I see,” said the boy, and everyone in the village nodded and murmured in sympathetic agreement.
“What did you two talk about, though?” asked Furbetrance. “You were together three days?”
“Two days and two nights and half a day,” replied the lad con-cisely. “We played games—like ‘eye spy,’ you know? In his nest, that was.”
“I remember playing that with Papa when I was a kit,” said Furbetrance, nodding solemnly. “Go on, Young Diamont, please.”
“Well...he said he would teach me to fly, he said, but I said I didn’t have any wings, you see, sirs. So he didn’t teach me to fly.”
He seemed genuinely disappointed at that.
“A natural thing for a Dragon father to say to a youngster, I guess,”
said Quillan. “We teach our young to hunt and fish and climb mountains. You Dragons teach your young ones to fly.”
“Precisely!” agreed Furbetrance with another nod and a mournful sniff.
Young Diamont was warming to his subject now. After all, it had been a year or more since anyone had asked him about his strange adventure.
“He took me on his head and...and I held fast to some of his ears.
And we flew through the air over the low jungles and down to the ocean shore!” he said eagerly. “I’m the very first of my tribe ever to see the ocean’s waves from up close! Nobody believes me, sirs! Tell them that some waves are higher than a grown-up man’s head. Much higher!”
“It’s quite true!” said Retruance, nodding to Diamont’s mother and father. “The lad didn’t just make that up.”
“We caught fish in our bare hands for a fry!” continued the lad.
“The Dragon made a fire by blowing on a pile of dry sticks—like you just did! And we swam in a sandy-bottomed pool where the water was as clear and still as in Mama’s cooking pot. There were colored fish all around us!”
“And he said to you?” his mother prompted.
“He asked me my name and I told him and he said I was a good boy and big and brave for my age,” replied Young Diamont proudly.
“And he carried me across the mountains to see the far water, the Gulf as he named it, and there was a terrible storm, but we flew high over it and came straight home. Then he said good-bye and set me down a short walk from our house and told me to go home.”
“He told you not to tell anyone about your...adventures?” Retruance asked.
“No sir, Dragon, sir! He was very nice to me. We picked melons from a wild melon patch and ate them for breakfast just before he set me to home again. I do hope no harm comes to him.”
“One more thing,” asked Furbetrance quietly. “What did he ask you to call him? Did he give you a name?”
The lad thought about this hard for a long moment, then shook his head.
“I called him ‘sir’ and later ‘Dragon,’ is all,” he replied.
“Well!” sighed the older Dragon brother. “Well and well!”
“Twice more the same Dragon, this Arbitrance as you name him now, flew down and captured one and another of our babes. Once a lass of twelve who was picking berries beside the river,” said Quillan.
“He kept her for only an afternoon.”
“Is the girl here? Could we speak to her?” asked Furbetrance.
“Well, ah, no,” replied Quillan. “Her parents thought it best to take her off to stay with her cousins over near Brittlestone Quarry.”
“The Dragon didn’t harm her, did he?”
“No, not as far as we could tell from what she said, but...” Quillan shrugged. “The last time was just three months back and it was then we finally decided to weave and hang the net to catch him if we could and warn him to stay away from us...or kill him if we had to. Although nobody’s been hurt, you can imagine how fearful we are of...what
might
happen.”
“I wish I could tell you why Papa did what he did,” said Retruance with a sigh, loosing a cloud of white steam, “but we just don’t know!
Can’t even imagine! Who was the last to be snatched up, did you say?”
“A five-year-old lass,” Quillan told them. “Same as with Diamont, but she was much more frightened. She’d heard us talking about the terrible Dragon and it put a fright into her, near as I can figure. She cried and carried on all the time and wouldn’t play games with the terrible, ugly lizard...ah, your poor papa, that is...and he brought her home after less than a day. Her family took her and moved down the mountain to Fishkill Ponds, for good and ever. I can’t say as I blame them much, either.”
It was full dark and there was no moon yet, so the Dragons asked Quillan’s permission to spend the night in this meadow, which he gave readily, and he even offered them what food the village could furnish.
“Thank you! We don’t need it, however. You’ve helped more than we could expect under the circumstances,” Retruance answered. “Good night, all! We’ll be leaving with the rising of the moon.”
“Er,” hesitated Quillan. “Ah...about not ever coming back here? I don’t think you need keep that part of your promise.”
“When we find Papa...” said Retruance. “Well, he may want to come back and apologize—and see his little friends again, you know.”
“Warn us in advance, is all I ask,” said Quillan, smiling for the first time that evening. “He can come then.”
“You know, then, which way to go?” Furbetrance asked when the villagers had left them alone in the mountainside meadow. The dry meadow grass rustled in a chill breeze dropping down from the peaks, and the stars were as clear as silver bells.
“Well, he isn’t
north
of here, we know for sure, nor is he
west
of here. That leaves south or east. What’s to the south, d’you know?”
The pair settled side by side in the soft, cool grass. Dragons seldom took more than a few hours sleep a night. For them, eating was always more important than sleeping.
“As I recall my geography, there’s nothing much at all south of here,” Retruance continued sleepily. “Hot, humid wilderness and lots of lions and snakes and such. Very few Dragons have ever gone there, I’d say.”
His brother sighed.
“The continent between the two oceans narrows to a proper isth-mus four hundred miles south of here, I’ve been told,” Retruance went on. “At one point the two oceans are less than thirty miles apart. Mama told me that. She visited there once, a long time ago. What happens beyond that...who knows? Maybe someday I’ll take time to explore and map it.”
“But you think eastward has possibilities?”
“Greater possibilities and the chance that, if what Papa is doing is due to an enchantment, the magic comes from the east or north.
East and north have always been the most magical directions, Murdan once told me.”
But Furbetrance was asleep, snoring slightly and blowing slowly rising puffs of smoke with each exhalation.
rs
“Bailiff Kedry!” the magistrate of Lakehead called. “Come at once!
I need you!”
The burly—some would say corpulent, others insisted on saying just plain fat—court official sighed, set down his jack of midmorning beer and crossed the square of the city at the head of the lake to where the magistrate was waiting on the top step of City Hall.
It was a pleasant early-fall morning, cool and breezy. Flocks of gray-and-white lake gulls circled and cried to each other over the docks, hoping that the overnight lake boats would soon empty their breakfast leavings into the harbor, providing a rich meal without demand-ing very much labor from them.
The housewives of Lakehead, in striped aprons and lacy mob caps, stood about in groups, waiting their turns at the city pump, at the far end of the square.
Townspeople and visiting sailors nodded respectfully to Kedry as he rumbled past them. Very few were quite sure they really
liked
the huffy, puffy bailiff of Lakehead. But fewer would have wanted his job.
As for Kedry himself, he rather enjoyed it. Except when duty interfered with his midmorning quaff from the tapped kegs of Head o’
Lake Tavern.
“Sir!” he greeted the magistrate.
“Sorry to bother you at your...morning meditations,” Fellows said, grinning at his subordinate. “I’ve just had important word from Lord Granger of Morningside by post pigeon. Come inside. There’s important work to do.”
Kedry nodded, tugged his forelock respectfully, and followed the mayor into City Hall, down a wide corridor, up the stair, and into the mayor’s room at the second-floor rear.
“Sit you down,” Fellows directed his bailiff.
He himself dropped into his leather-upholstered, high-backed chair behind the large, shiny, smooth table and spread the message from their liege lord between them.
Kedry, having peeked to confirm the letter was just what the mayor said it was, plopped his ample posterior onto a straight-backed chair and prepared to listen.
“Lord Granger tells us a large force of Northmen is advancing south from Frontier on Lexor!” Fellows began.
Kedry’s face, usually set in an easy, happy-go-lucky grin, suddenly became white and grim.
“Lord High Chamberlain has issued a call to arms to all Achievements, large and small,” the mayor continued, studying the message.
“We must call muster at once, Bailiff!”
“No problem there, sir,” said the court officer. “Will do so at once, Magistrate!”
“There’s more! Morningside has already sent the call to Lord Granger’s own holdings. He orders that we detail lake sailors to establish a patrol on the lake. There’re reports of bands of roving invaders—believed to be Rellings from the Northland—appearing on the lake above Rainbow and headed this way!”
“No problem there, either, sir,” Kedry said, after a moment’s thought. “I’ll put Captain Boscor Sack and his brother Trover in charge of that. They’re both in port right now. Armed, would you suggest?”
“These Rellings aren’t here on a fishing trip, Bailiff! If they come this way, they’re to be stopped, killed if they fight, or captured and held until Lord Granger tells us what to do with them.”
“Meanwhile, I’m to muster the militia?” Kedry asked,
struggling
to
raise his bulk from the chair.
“In the square. At four o’clock this afternoon. Swear them in and give them until tomorrow at dawn to get their arms and baggage and to elect their petty officers.”
He ran his eye over the paper in front of him, marking his place with a forefinger.
“I’m to lead them to Rainbow, then up to Lexor, Lord Granger orders, to meet the other militias and help the Royal Army defend the city and drive the Northmen back to their ice and snow. We’re to meet Lord Granger there. You’ll stay here to keep order in the town and county, of course.”
The bailiff tried very hard to look disappointed. In a way, he actually
was
...for a moment. On second thought, however, he nodded in satisfaction.
“Yes, Lord Magistrate!”
“Very good, Bailiff Kedry! Find the pigeon trainer and send him to me at once. I must send the message on to Ffallmar and to Lord Murdan at Overhall.”
Kedry bobbed quickly and left the mayor’s office, frowning and muttering to himself, rehearsing in his mind everything that needed doing and saying—all at once.
Mayor Fellows raised his voice to bellow for his clerk.
“Rellings?” Kedry said, pondering the question aloud.