Split Heirs (26 page)

The rest of his tale was short and bitter. One of the children, famous throughout the quarter for having inexplicably bad luck keeping a pet, tried to set off a string of firecrackers under the dragon's rump. The dragon merely glanced down at the youngster's attempt at wit, sneered, raised one huge haunch, peed liberally over the firecrackers and their patron, and then announced, “You like setting fires, do you, you horrid little mound of rabbit turds on the pasture of life? Well, so do I.”

And she did.

By this time the streaks of smoke rising from the Exhalations of Persistent Happiness quarter were growing too thick for even the most mole-eyed guard to shrug off. Smoke from a hearthfire wasn't that black, burning leaves smelled better, and cityfolk never incinerated their garbage but threw it in the nearest river, like civilized people. There was also a large cloud of dust approaching. Gorgorians and Hydrangeans alike knew that such clouds generally arose when large numbers of people were on the road in an awful hurry to get away from something nasty.

“Dragon, you say?” the first guard asked, his tongue having suddenly gone all papery.

“And headed this way,” the rider affirmed.

A loud, inarticulate cry that sounded like someone putting badgers through a mangle made all the men jump out of their skins. The horse uttered a terrified whinny, bucked off his rider, and pounded into the palace courtyard, scattering the badly-shaken guards. The wailing was still going strong, up and down several scales, by the time they all regained their feet.

It was Ubri. She had her head thrown back, her eyes rolled up so that only the whites showed, and she appeared to be either suffering a conniption fit or doing a spot of folk dancing.

“Oh, the vision! The vision!” she howled. “Oh, darkest fate of complete draconian devastation! Oh, fiery fiend that falls upon out frail festivities!”

“What's the matter with her?” the well-bruised rider asked one of the shrouded women.

“It is a holy vision,” the lady explained. “The women of my tribe, we have the power to see the future. Sometimes. A little. Some more than others. Nothing too fancy, you understand, no guarantees, we're not show-offs, and if it doesn't always come true it's because
you
have to believe in it, too, or else
—
”

“The dragon is at the gates!” Ubri decreed, looking very striking in her dungeon-soiled finery, her hair and eyes wild. “The city, the
kingdom
can not stand against its might. We are all doomed, condemned to have the flesh seared from our bones, our blood gouting from our headless necks as the dragon rends us limb from limb!”

“Wait a minute,” the first guard said. “How can the dragon rend us limb from limb, blood gouting and all, if it's already seared the flesh from our bones?”

Another Gorgorian guard gave him a smart thwack in the head and said, “It's a holy vision, you clod. Things don't need to make sense when they're holy visions.”

“Oh, agony, agony,” Ubri chanted. A crowd began to gather, though none of them looked as if they wanted to stay once they got there. With every dire prognostication that fell from Ubri's lips, they all shifted nervously from foot to foot and cast uneasy glances all around, looking to see whether anyone else was walking away. No one was bold enough to take the first step, so everyone stayed and suffered.

This went on for some time.

It was getting a little old and Ubri was running out of evil tidings to scatter when an Old Hydrangean guardsman actually found the backbone to announce, “Well, this is all very nice and picturesque and an authentic display of the Gorgorian folkloric tradition of silly woman's stuff, but the fact remains that we've got a dragon coming to pay us a visit. Has anyone done anything practical about it?”

“Practical?” The Gorgorian captain-of-the-guard was astonished. “You, a Hydrie, asking us to do something
practical
? Sure you don't just want the rest of the day off to write a poem 'bout it or something?”

“I want the rest of the day off to fireproof my house, or run away, but that's about it,” the Hydrangean retorted.

“I hear as how they've locked and barred the city gates,” someone from the back of Ubri's crowd piped up.

“The gates lie smashed and shattered!” Ubri cried. “The dragon's fire leaves them smoking in the dust. Oh, fools, fools to think that mere gates made by the hand of man can ever hope to stand against so great a monster! The lowest slug that beslimes the face of earth knows that there is but one hope of diverting a dragon!”

This latest pronouncement scared up a flurry of renewed interest in Lady Ubri's words. Suggestions flew hither and yon as the crowd battled to come up with the answer to dragon diverting. Most of these were shouted down as soon as they were uttered, and the unlucky soul who recommended sending out a company of street mimes was beaten senseless.

“
No,
you lackwits!” Ubri shouted, miraculously snapping out of her holy vision trance. “None of those will do. Gods, don't you ever patronize marketplace storytellers? What every dragon wants is a nice, fresh, royal virgin staked out to await its pleasure.”

“A
royal
virgin, ma'am?” The captain-of-the-guard rubbed his forehead. “The way I heard it, the dragons never checked the poor girl's pedigree before…”

“
Royal.
” Ubri showed every tooth in her head in a grin that would send most wolverines yipping for their dens. “Else the beast will know, and its wrath will be great, and there will be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, and a dreadful plague of toads with the croup will fall upon the land, and
—
”

“Yes, but a royal virgin
—
!” The captain blew his lips like a winded horse. “It's not like we're over-rich in such. Finding a royal
woman's
scant enough pickings. Queen Artemisia was married to Gudge, after all. No way we could fix her up so's the dragon would think she's still
—
”

“But, my friends, don't you see?” Ubri spread her arms wide and beamed at the mob. “The gods are kind. They have foreseen this very disaster and in their mercy they sent you the solution even before the disaster fell upon you!”

“That was nice of 'em,” someone commented.

“Aye, for once,” another bystander replied. “Makes a pleasant change from all that smiting they're usually up to.”

“So where's this solution the gods sent us, then?”

“The prince!” Ubri exclaimed, pointing at the palace. “The
princess
, I mean! Arbol's transformation, which was ascribed to witchcraft by some royal fool
—
I'm not mentioning any names but it starts with A-r-t-e-m-i-s-i-a
—
is in reality the work of the gods! Oh, wise and noble people, now you may clearly see the only course open to you, the one way in which you may save your lives, and the lives of your dear ones, and your more expensive possessions.”

“We may?”

“We do?”

“I don't mind the part about saving my life, but do we have to save my brother-in-law, too?”

“Most expensive possession I've got's a new rutabaga.”

This time when Ubri howled at the sky, she meant it. However, not everyone there present missed the true meaning of the Gorgorian noblewoman's words. The captain and his men were right behind her, especially after the Hydrangeans among them passed on a few of the local myths about what happened to people who overlooked the gifts of the gods.

“I never heard of celestial wolverines,” said one Gorgorian as they marched into the palace to do what needed to be done.

Of course there was some resistance, but Queen Artemisia was easily restrained and Prince
—Princess
Arbol could not stand against so many guards, especially since she had been forced to wear a long dress and Artemisia confiscated all her favorite weapons because swords weren't ladylike.

Thus it was that when Bernice and her contingent of Bold Bush-dwellers approached the city, they were confronted by a large banner reading WELCOME, DRAGON, draped above the city gate. They entered the capital only to find the streets deserted. There were other banners hanging from balconies and windows, most saying things like WE GREET YOU WITH WILLING SACRIFICE and THIS WAY TO FEAST and SORRY YOU'VE GOT TO EAT AND RUN and MY BROTHER-IN-LAW IS A ROYAL VIRGIN TOO IF YOU'RE STILL HUNGRY AFTER.

“What a bunch of jerks,” Bernice remarked after one of the literate Bold Bush-dwellers read her the signs.

“It's all that city living,” the Blue Badger replied.

“But I
am
getting hungry,” Bernice told him. “And the signs do say there's a feast. I think it's meant for me. How nice.”

“You can't eat yet!”

Bernice's huge head turned slowly towards the Blue Badger. “Sez who?”

“If you eat too much, you may get all sluggish.”

“So?”

“So a sluggish dragon's no use to us in the fight for freedom.”

“Ask me if I care.”

“You promised you wouldn't do anything until we rejoined the Black Weasel.”

“Promises are such slippery things.”

“And then you'll have come all this way for nothing.”

“Not if the feast is any good.”

The Blue Badger got a canny look in his eye. “Sluggish dragons are pretty easy to slay, you know.”

“Oh.” Bernice was abruptly silent.

“Look, don't take it so hard,” he coaxed. “As soon as we find the Black Weasel, we'll all have a nice snack and then we'll free the kingdom and
—
and then we'll probably throw a party after and you can eat all you want.”

“All right, I'll wait for the Black stupid Weasel.”

“Well, you did promise.”

“I said I'd wait! Isn't that enough for you? Because if it's not…” Bernice's narrow eyes got even narrower.

“It's enough, it's enough. Let's go.”

On they went, but not too much further before they came to a great public square. A crowd had gathered on the far side of the square, being held back by a troop of very skittish-looking guards.

In the center of the square was a platform and on that platform was a pole and on that pole were a set of iron shackles and locked in those iron shackles was Princess Arbol in a white satin gown. She was cursing alternately in fluent Gorgorian and Hydrangean. When she saw the dragon, she just cursed louder and started screaming for someone to bring her a sword so that she might slay it.

The big banner spanning the square above the princess's head said
EAT HEARTY! THEN GO AWAY.

“No!” the Blue Badger cried, seizing Bernice by a scale. “The Weasel's not here yet. You promised you'd wait for the Weasel.”

The princess called the dragon a bad name. It was so bad that it made Bernice blush, no easy thing in a dragon.

“I'll wait,” she said, scowling. She sat down with a sound like thunder, pitching several Bold Bush-dwellers off their feet. “But I'm not going to wait forever.”

The princess called the dragon another name.

“You kiss your mother with that mouth?” Bernice roared.

The royal virgin gave her intended devourer the royal raspberry.

Chapter Thirty

Wulfrith really wished that Queen Artemisia would answer his question. It was such a simple question, after all.

Had Arbol been a girl all along?

Everyone else was assuming that she'd been a boy, but Wulfrith didn't see how that was possible. He might be only an apprentice, and to a mere bush-wizard who lived out in a cave in the mountains, rather than to one of the great magicians of the royal court, but he still thought he knew something about magic, and he just didn't see how Arbol could have been changed into a girl without a great deal of fuss and bother that would have been very hard to hide.

But after reading some of the more lurid romances and adventures in the palace library, he was reasonably familiar with the notion that girls might sometimes dress up as boys, and that kings preferred sons to daughters.

So had Arbol been a girl all along?

He had asked Queen Artemisia right after the Disaster of the Bath, and she had shushed him without answering. He had asked again later that evening, and she had told him not to worry about such silly things, which wasn't an answer.

Wulfrith didn't know everything that was going on, but he had the definite impression that Arbol was in trouble
—big
trouble
—
because she was a girl. He felt a twinge of guilt every time he thought of it; if he had bothered to remember everything the silly ritual people had told him, he might have
warned
her about the bath, and maybe all this wouldn't have happened.

And now the queen was out bullyragging people, or some such; he hadn't seen her in hours. She had dropped him off in these same apartments, where he had been kept when they were readying him to be crowned, and had told him to stay put. It all seemed foolish; why bring him
here
? Arbol, whether male or female, was the heir to the throne.

Maybe the queen just thought this was somewhere he could stay out of trouble. And at least here he didn't have to wear that stupid mask. He sighed, and picked threads out of the velvet upholstery on the arm of his chair.

Had Arbol been a girl all along, or was it really magic? Maybe the Gorgorian women really
did
have some strange magic that wasn't anything like the stuff he knew.

That would be interesting; he wondered if there was any way he could learn about it. That Ubri…but she was probably going to be beheaded, or burned, or fed to the wolverines, or something.

That might be interesting to watch, but it seemed like something of a waste. He had only just started to learn things from Ubri. Reading the books simply couldn't convey everything the way hands-on experimentation could.

He sighed again, just as the door burst open.

“Wulfie?” she said, charging in.

He sat up and smiled at her.

“Oh, good, you're still here,” she said. “Is everything all right?”

“It's fine, Your Majesty,” he said. “I mean, except for Arbol being a girl and everything.”

“Yes, well…”

“Was she
always
a girl, your Majesty?” Wulfrith asked quickly, before he could lose his nerve.

Queen Artemisia gave a nervous little laugh as she began rummaging through a chest of drawers, not looking at the boy. “
Always
a girl, Wulfrith? Of course not, how silly you are!”

“So Ubri and those other women really changed her?”

“Well,
I
think so,” Artemisia said; even with her voice muffled by the contents of the second drawer, Wulfrith didn't think she sounded completely convincing.

“Does everyone think so?”

Artemisia straightened up and turned to glare at him.

“As a matter of fact,” she said, “no. This multiply damned wizard had to go and turn up at exactly the wrong time, after fifteen years in exile, and show off how he could turn people into assorted beasts, so of course
he
got himself blamed for it, now, and they're letting that harridan Ubri go, and they've thrown the wizard in the dungeon in her place. But that's not important right now.”

Wulfrith blinked. “It's not?” Ubri saved, and a wizard in the dungeon in her place? How could that not be important?

A wizard…

“No, it's not,” Artemisia told him, turning back to the drawers, “because right now they're talking about sacrificing your sis…I mean, Prince Arb…I mean,
Princess
Arbol to a dragon, and I need to find a way to prevent it. Damn!” She kicked the bottom drawer shut. “Don't they use dragonsbane in any of the ceremonies? I could have sworn they did!”

“I don't remember any,” Wulfrith said.

“You wouldn't,” Artemisia replied, looking angrily around the room.

“What's dragonsbane look like?” he asked.

“Oh,
I
don't know,” Artemisia snapped. “Green, I suppose. Maybe I should check the herb gardens.” She turned, and before Wulfrith could stop her, she stormed out.

He grabbed for the doorknob just as he heard the click of the key turning in the lock; he stopped, stared, and started swearing as the queen's footsteps faded down the hallway.

He stood for a moment, glowering at the door.

Dragonsbane
—
dragonsbane was a myth, an old wives' tale, according to Clootie.
That
wasn't going to save Arbol from a dragon.

But then, there weren't any dragons anywhere near the capital anyway; hadn't been in centuries. Everyone knew that.

Wulfrith decided that the stress of the last few days
—
the king's death, the switching of the heirs, the Disaster of the Bath
—
had driven the queen mad. Why would anyone go to the trouble to haul Arbol way out to the mountains and feed her to a dragon just because she turned out to be a girl? That was crazy.

What about the rest of it, then? Was there really a wizard in the dungeon?

Well, that was almost as silly; the only real Old Hydrangean wizard left was Clootie, and Clootie…

Wulfrith's anger faded, and he swallowed hard.

Clootie could change people into various creatures, just as Artemisia had said. Clootie had been in safe exile for fifteen years.

And Clootie just might have come to the city to recover his missing apprentice.

And if that was what had happened, then not only was Wulfrith's dearly beloved master locked in the palace dungeons, but it was Wulfrith's own fault!

He had to get down there and check for himself, as fast as possible, before they did something terrible to poor Clootie. He rattled the doorknob, pounded desperately on the panel, to no avail. He had to get
out
of here, regardless of the Queen's instructions.

But then, he knew there was no way out, he'd spent weeks cooped up in here…

No, what was he thinking? He
had
gotten out! He had the unlocking spell he had found in the library.

But if anyone saw him roaming the palace without his mask, how could he explain himself? They'd think he was Arbol, and she was supposed to be fed to a dragon. And the only way to prove he
wasn't
Arbol would be to show that he was male, and the way things went in this madhouse of a palace they might want to make him king if he did that.

He didn't want to be seen, he decided
—
but then, thanks to Arbol, he knew how to avoid it.

Quickly, he headed for the secret passage.

Twenty minutes later, after three wrong turns and two transformation spells that had eliminated two guards and produced a rat and a canary, Wulfrith finally found himself in a narrow and unpleasantly damp stone passageway roughly twenty feet below ground level, lit only by a foul-smelling and smoky torch.

If this wasn't the palace dungeon, then some interior decorator had entirely the wrong idea.

Wulfrith crept along carefully, moving through corridor after corridor as silently as he could manage, peering through cell doors, and always watching for guards. True, he had his transformation spell ready, and it had served him very well so far, but sooner or later he was going to get something nasty when he used it. Most of the time it produced small, harmless creatures, but that was simply because the vast majority of creatures
are
small and harmless. Anyone who paid attention could see that the world was simply full of bugs and worms and rodents of every description, while nasty predators, with fangs and claws and the size to be dangerous, were relatively scarce.

The big nasty ones were still out there, though. And the transformations didn't seem to be
completely
random, in any case; mammals came up far more often than random chance would account for. Wulfrith had no idea what
did
determine the exact result, but he was sure that if he kept transforming people, either with the original spell or the intermittent version, sooner or later he'd get something like a lion or a wolverine.

That could be a serious threat to his continued health.

It was preferable, therefore, to be as quiet as possible while sneaking around the dungeons.

And he was very much afraid that he was going to have to do quite a bit of sneaking around, as the dungeons seemed to go on and on in all directions, with narrow little side-corridors in unexpected places, and quirky twists and turns, and unnecessary steps up and down. There were any number of cells to be investigated
—
though so far, every one he had checked was empty.

Something screamed in one of the cells; it didn't sound like Clootie, but Wulfrith hurried toward the sound. At least it was someone alive, other than a guard. Someone was clearly being tortured, and if it
was
Clootie…

The scream sounded again, and Wulfrith was able to identify which cell the sound came from; he peered in through the tiny barred window, expecting to see a hellish scene of inhuman cruelty.

A bearded face looked up him, startled, and said, a bit peevishly, “Move aside, would you? You're blocking my light.”

“Sorry,” Wulfrith said, leaning as far to one side as he could while still seeing into the cell.

It was tiny, but reasonably clean, with fresh straw on the floor and a bucket in the corner. The occupant was seated cross-legged in the center; he wore a ragged white robe, most of it hidden beneath billows of hair and beard.

“Thanks,” the man in the cell said. “You might want to cover your ears; I'm going to scream again.” Before Wulfrith could reply, the man let out a blood-curdling shriek.

When the lad's ears stopped ringing, he demanded, “Why'd you do that?”

“'S my job,” the prisoner explained.

“It's what?”

“It's my job.”

“What kind of a job is that?” Wulfrith demanded angrily.

“What kind of a dungeon is it that hasn't got some poor wight screaming?” the prisoner countered.

Wulfrith's mouth opened, then closed. The screamer took pity on him and explained.

“The basic problem, y'see,” he said, “is that the Gorgorians aren't any good at torturing people.”

“They aren't?” This did not accord with what Wulfrith had previously heard.

“Not really, no. Oh, they do pretty good with the public spectacles and the short-term stuff, your burnings and wolverines and so forth, but they haven't got the patience for the really slow stuff, the stuff that keeps a dungeon busy for months on end and keeps up a good, steady supply of screams and whimpers and so on. They aren't really much on prisons at all, they'd rather just kill someone and get it over with. Anything that lasts over a week, the Gorgorians get bored and go get drunk, or just lop the victim's head off.”

“I can see that,” admitted Wulfrith.

“Yes, well, you can't run a self-respecting dungeon that way; a bunch of empty cells, that's what you'd have. In fact, most of the cells here
are
empty. I'm doing my best to keep up appearances, but I'll tell you, lad, it's not easy.”

“So did you…I mean, how'd you get the job?”

“Oh, well, I was a prisoner here when the Gorgorians took over, fifteen years ago. They let a lot of prisoners go, if they were here for political reasons, and they lopped the heads off a bunch of others, but they couldn't figure out what to do with me, since nobody could remember why I was here in the first place.”

“Why
were
you here?”

The prisoner shrugged. “Haven't the faintest idea,” he said. “I forgot long ago. Been here since I was a boy.”

“Oh.”

“Anyway, so they were arguing about what to do with me, and it looked like they were going to whack my head off just to be on the safe side, and I suggested that they could just leave me here, to give the dungeon some style, as it were. Took some talking, I can tell you, but they agreed in the end.” He smiled proudly.

Wulfrith smiled weakly in return.

“So I've been here ever since, as their professional screamer. They give me good fresh straw and empty the bucket regular, or I go on strike and stop screaming. It's not the best position, I suppose, but I'm satisfied.”

“Oh.” It occurred to Wulfrith that he was wasting time. “Well,” he said, “it's been nice talking to you, but I need to see if they have a wizard I know locked up somewhere down here.”

“A wizard?” The prisoner cocked his head. “You're looking for the wizard they just brought in? Oh, he's in Number Forty-Three
—
down that way, turn left down the steps, then it's the sixth door on the right.”

Wulfrith blinked in surprise.

“Oh,” he said.

“Thought I'd save you some time,” the prisoner remarked.

“Thank you,” Wulfrith replied.

“Now, get out of my light, please.”

“Yes, sir.”

Wulfrith retreated down the corridor as screams echoed from the stones behind him, and followed the directions.