"You also wished your sword whole again: that curse cannot be lifted save by the same magic the White One seeks. In your case that sword, which bears magic runes not seen by mortal eye, can only be welded together by flame from dragon's tongue, again freely given."
Conn started up in protest, no doubt once again to point out that dragons were extinct, but The Ancient waved him to silence, and I felt a sudden surge of excitement, as if there was more to come.
He turned to me. "And you: do you believe in dragons?"
"I believe in them, yes of course, because everyone knows they existed once. My—the witch sometimes used powdered dragon-bones in her spells: the one to make different coloured flames, I think . . ."
The Ancient positively beamed. "Well, then?"
"But Sir . . ."
"Yes?"
"I must confess to believing, like Conn, that they—they . . ."
"Well?" He scowled.
"Well, that they—are extinct."
"Like witches and unicorns, I suppose. And magicians," he added maliciously.
"Well, no . . ." I trailed off.
"You see? Never take things like that for granted, youngster. You, of all people, with your upbringing, should know better! I daresay if you told the folk in—oh, say Sarum or Silchester of your life with the witch, they would pelt you with refuse for lying." He leant forward. "Now, leaving aside the question of dragon/no dragon for the moment, why have you come on this quest? What is your desire?"
"To get rid of my pebble," I said, on surer ground. "And so have the others," and I nodded at Corby, Puddy, Pisky and Moglet. "You see we all want to be whole and unencumbered and free of pain again. I want to be able to walk upright, Corby wants to fly, Puddy wants to be rid of his headaches, Pisky needs to eat properly and little Moglet wants to run fast enough to catch mice. And to do this we must find the person or thing who rightfully owns these pebbles and give them back; the witch stuck them fast but I expect the rightful owner might have a way to extract them. Oh, and we'd like our memories back, too," I added.
"Don't want much, do you?" but he was smiling. "Right: Let's have a look at these famous pebbles . . ."
One by one we showed him our encumbrances, and he himself picked up Pisky's bowl. Then, when he had inspected them all, he did a very strange thing.
He laughed.
He laughed till the rheumy tears ran down his cheeks, leaving rather dirty runnels; he laughed till he wheezed and coughed and, speechless, pointed to his back and Conn kindly went and gave him a couple of good thumps between his shoulder blades to stop him choking. At last he sat up, wiped his eyes on the orange scarf, blew his nose again, and took a swig from Pisky's bowl.
"Oh dear, oh dear," he said at last, still chuckling. "Oh dearie, dearie me . . ."
We looked at one another, feeling like idiots, and it was Corby who voiced our feelings. "What we done, then? Must be mighty foolish to make the Man o' Wisdom laugh as if we were the village idiot who saw his face reflected in the pond, thought it were the moon, an' tried to pluck it out to stop it from drowning—"
"No, no, my friend!" said The Ancient, trying to compose his features. "I'm not laughing at you: I'm laughing with you, and for you, for I think I have solved the mystery!"
We all began talking at once, but he raised his hand for silence.
"I'm going to tell you all a story," he said. "So settle down and listen . . ."
So it was that the warm night closed around us like a cloak as we heard the tale of a young dragon sent out on his Master-Quest. We heard of the gold he collected, of the brilliant jewels he snatched, stole, retrieved, found; we heard how the last search, for his personal pearl, had led him to this land, and how he had stored his treasure high in a cave in the Black Mountains, and one night had left it unguarded to pay one last visit to the villagers nearby who had feasted him regularly during his years of search. How in that last feasting a black shadow, a greedy, grasping thing, crept to his cave and stole his hoard, fleeing into the forests of the night where he could not find her. And how the dragon could not return to his homeland without the jewels, and lay a-dying from grief and frustration in that same cave.
How the thief fled far, far away, as far as the winds would take her; how she had to hide the jewels, possession of which, given the correct spells and formulae, would give her a mastery of magic greater than any ever known. How she had not hidden them from the dragon by burying them deep, lest they be dug up; neither had she thrown them into the deeps, lest they be trawled to surface; nor had she hung them from a tree, lest they fall: rather had she fastened them safe into living creatures snatched at random from the highways and byways, as they came to hand. A netted crow, a toad pulled from under a stone, a kitten taken from its doorstep, a fish scooped from a rich man's pond, a child taken under promise of protection—
"It's us!" I shouted, bobbing up and down like some crazy creature. "It's us!"
"It's-us-is-us-is-us," bubbled Pisky. "Which have I got? What am I? Tell me quick!"
"My headache is a jewel?" pondered Puddy.
"Cripes!" squawked Corby, peering under his wing. "Bleeding 'ell! A sapphire for a splint . . ."
"Don't want it," mewed Moglet. "Take it away, Thing dear! Don't want a diamond . . ."
"I don't particularly want a ruby navel either, my pet," I said, after a quick peek to confirm, picking her up and cuddling her. "But at least we now know what they are. And just think how costly that paw of yours is now!"
Pisky was trying to squint at the bulge in his mouth. "What-is-it, what-colour, which-one? Quick! Quick!"
The Ancient took pity on him. "A moon-pearl, precious one. The dragon's special stone . . ."
"I-knew-it-I-knew-it!"
Puddy had got his by a process of elimination. "An emerald? Hmmm . . . could be worse, I suppose. Green
is
my favourite colour . . ."
"Ruby, emerald, sapphire, diamond, pearl," I said, musing. "Is that why we used to—still do—hurt? The spell she put on us to keep them hidden?"
"Yes," said The Ancient. "But the spell worked against her in the end. At first, individually, she could keep you in thrall but later, collectively, and without realizing it, you formed a bond between yourselves that was enforced by the holding of the jewels: if you like, the dragon's power was transformed into a shield against harm, as long as you kept together, and neither the witch, nor anyone else, could really hurt you. Especially if you kept in physical contact with each other."
I nodded. I could remember when she had had to set Broom to beating us because she dared not do so herself; those times when we huddled together under my cloak.
"And so she never really benefited from the jewels," said the old man. "You never gave her the chance: by the time her knowledge was sufficient to use them you lot had adopted them for yourselves. If you hadn't that last experiment would have worked, and powers that should lie hidden would have walked the Earth . . ."
I shivered: I could still remember with loathing that night on the island when our world had nearly come to an end . . .
Conn had remained silent until now. "But—does that mean that there really is a dragon still alive? That somewhere, in those Black Mountains you spoke of, he is waiting for Thingy and her friends to return his jewels?"
"I think he has given up all hope," said The Ancient, "but yes, he is still there." He glanced round at us all. "He is the only one who can rid you of your burdens, his jewels; he is the only one to mend your sword, Connor O'Connell, and grow your new horn, White One, with a blast of fire and a drop of blood. He is
your
only hope, my wandering ones . . ."
"I knew we all belonged together," I said. "I knew it!"
We talked far into the night—at least the others did, for all too soon the excitement, the warm night, my full stomach, the earlier travelling and, most of all, the knowledge that our quest had not been in vain, that there really was hope for us all, however far away, induced in me the most complete and utter weariness, and my eyes kept closing in spite of themselves. In the end I fashioned my cloak into a pillow and lay down, an equally soporific Moglet tucked up to my chest. As we dropped off to sleep Conn was questioning the magician on Time-and-Space Travelling, and I heard him ask what the other side of the moon looked like.
"Very disappointing . . ."
And so I fell asleep to dream I travelled in a silver tube with windows open to the stars to where the moon grinned away like a yellow cheese; and then I spun round to her backside to find—
"But supposing you could," said Puddy. "Just how much would colour weigh?"
I drifted off again to find myself trying to scrape colours from a leaf, a stone, a jewel and weigh the differences in little pots and pans on my fingers . . . But before I knew where I was I had taken all colour from everything, and the whole world was white, white as snow; but white is a colour too, and I had to catch each snowflake and take away the white, and wash the white from every fleece of every sheep in the world, but Snowy was the only white thing that wouldn't play and ran off into the forest, but I could still see him for now everything else was without colour, clear as glass, transparent as crystal; and The Ancient was an icicle, and then he melted and dripped all over me—
"Come on children," he said. "It's starting to rain. You'll be better off inside."
And Conn picked me and Moglet up in one sleepy heap and carried us into the cave and plonked us down on a heap of bracken and heather, covered with some soft, silky material, and we snuggled down and I could smell thyme and rosemary. Someone covered me with my cloak, tucked it round snug, and then someone else was singing, a wordless song that ran and turned and curled back on itself like the golden ring Conn wore on his finger . . . And then I felt him lie down beside me, and his hand stroked my hair, and the trees and the rocks began to sing too, and the wind and the waters, a song so heart-catching and sad and beautiful that my eyes were full of tears, and yet I was smiling—
"Liebestod," said The Ancient, at least I think that is what he said. "But for you it will be Liebeslied . . ."
I didn't understand the words but I did understand my feelings, and I snuggled up to Conn's breathing, sleeping body and my heart sang with the music.
After breakfast the next morning—a helping of what looked like gruel but tasted of butter and nuts and honey and raspberries and milk—the magician led us outside into a morning sparkling with raindrops and clean as river-washed linen, but strangely the grass was dry when we seated ourselves in a semicircle in front of his throne. Hoowi, the owl, was again perched on his shoulder, eyes shut, and he took up Pisky's bowl into his lap. Although the birds sang, their songs were courtesy-muted, for The Ancient's voice was softer this morning as though he were tired, and indeed his first words confirmed this.
"I have been awake most of the night, my friends, pondering your problems. That is why I have convened this meeting. We agreed yesterday that you had all been called together for a special mission, a quest to find the dragon. You need him, but he also needs you." He paused, and glanced at each one of us in turn. "But perhaps last night you thought this would be easy. Find the Black Mountains, seek out the dragon's lair, return the jewels, ask for a drop of blood and a blast of fire and Hey Presto! your problems are all solved.
"But it is not as easy as that, my friends. Of your actual meeting with the dragon, if indeed you reach him, I will say nothing, for that is still in the realms of conjecture. What I can say is this: in order to reach the dragon you have a long and terrible journey ahead of you, one that will tax you all to the utmost, and may even find one or other of you tempted to give up, to leave the others and return; if that happens then you are all doomed, for I must impress upon you that as the seven you are now you have a chance, but even were there one less your chances of survival would be halved. There is no easy way to your dragon, understand that before you start. I can give you a map, signs to follow, but these will only be indications, at best. What perils and dangers you may meet upon the way I cannot tell you: all I know is that the success of your venture depends upon you staying together, and that you must all agree to go, or none.
"I can see by your expressions that you have no real idea of what I mean when I say 'perils and dangers': believe me, your imaginations cannot encompass the terrors you might have to face—"
"But if we do stay together?" I interrupted.
"Then you have a better chance: that is all I can say. It is up to you." He was serious, and for the first time I felt a qualm, a hesitation, and glancing at my friends I saw mirrored the same doubts.
"And if we don't go at all—if we decide to go back to—to wherever we came from?" I persisted.
"Then you will be crippled, all of you, in one way or another, for the rest of your lives."
"Then there is no choice," said Conn. "And so the sooner we all set off the better," and he half-rose to his feet.
"Wait!" thundered the magician, and Conn subsided, flushing. "That's better. I have not finished."
"Sit down, shurrup, be a good boy and listen to granpa," muttered Corby sarcastically, but The Ancient affected not to hear.
"There is another thing," said he. "If you succeed in your quest and find the dragon, and if he takes back the jewels, and if he yields a drop of blood and a blast of fire, if, I say . . . then what happens afterwards?"
The question was rhetorical, but Moglet did not understand this.
"I can catch mice again," she said brightly, happily.
But he was gentle with her. "Yes, kitten, you will be able to catch mice, and grow up properly to have kittens of your own—but at what cost? You may not realize it but your life, and the life of the others, has been in suspension while you have worn the jewels, but once you lose your diamond then time will catch up with you. You will be subject to your other eight lives and no longer immune, as you others have been also, to the diseases of mortality.