Wings of Fire Part 21

"Only two seed cakes."

"I like seed cakes."

"Then I'll bring them to you."

"Noooooooo." The sound held only the faintest memory of the powerful voice of before.

But Artos had already started toward the back of the cave, one hand in front to guide himself around the overhanging rocks. He was halfway there when he stumbled against something and fell heavily to his knees. Feeling around, he touched a long, metallic curved blade.

"Has someone been here? Has someone tried to slay you?" he cried. Then, before the dragon could answer, Artos's hand traveled farther along the blade to its strange metallic base.

His hands told him what his eyes could not; his mouth spoke what his heart did not want to hear. "It is the dragon's foot."

He leaped over the metal construct and scrambled over a small rocky wall. Behind it, in the dying glow of a small fire, lay an old man on a straw bed. Near him were tables containing beakers full of colored liquids--amber, rose, green, and gold. On the wall were strange toothed wheels with handles.

The old man raised himself on one arm. "Pendragon," he said and tried to set his lips into a welcoming smile. "Son."

"Old Linn," replied Artos angrily, "I am no son of yours."

"There was once," the old man began quickly, settling into a story before Artos's anger had time to gel, "a man who would know Truth. And he traveled all over the land looking."

Without willing it, Artos was pulled into the tale.

"He looked along the seacoasts and in the quiet farm dales. He went into the country of lakes and across vast deserts seeking Truth. At last, one dark night in a small cave atop a hill, he found her. Truth was a wizened old woman with but a single tooth left in her head. Her eyes were rheumy. Her hair greasy strands. But when she called him into her cave, her voice was low and lyric and pure and that was how he knew he had found Truth."

Artos stirred uneasily.

The old man went on. "He stayed a year and a day by her side and learned all she had to teach. And when his time was done, he said, 'My Lady Truth, I must go back to my own home now. But I would do something for you in exchange.'" Linn stopped. The silence between them grew until it was almost a wall.

"Well, what did she say?" Artos asked at last.

"She told him, 'When you speak of me, tell your people that I am young and beautiful. '"

For a moment Artos said nothing. Then he barked out a short, quick laugh. "So much for Truth."

Linn sat up and patted the mattress beside him, an invitation that Artos ignored. "Would you have listened these seven months to an old apothecary who had a tendency to fits?"

"You did not tell me the truth."

"I did not lie. You are the dragon's son."

Artos set his mouth and turned his back on the old man. His voice came out low and strained. "I... am... not... your... son."

"It is true that you did not spring from my loins," said the old man. "But I carried you here to Ector's castle and waited and hoped you would seek out my wisdom. But you longed for the truth of lance and sword. I did not have that to give." His voice was weak and seemed to end in a terrible sigh.

Artos did not turn around. "I believed in the dragon."

Linn did not answer.

"I loved the dragon."

The silence behind him was so loud that at last Artos turned around. The old man had fallen onto his side and lay still. Artos felt something warm on his cheeks and realized it was tears. He ran to Linn and knelt down, pulling the old man onto his lap. As he cradled him, Linn opened his eyes.

"Did you bring me any stew?" he asked.

"I..." The tears were falling unchecked now. "I brought you seed cakes."

"I like seed cakes," Linn said. "But couldn't you get any stew from Old Garlic?"

Artos felt his mouth drop open. "How did you know about her?"

The old man smiled, showing terrible teeth. He whispered, "I am the Great Riddler. I am the Master of Wisdoms. I am the Word and I am the Light. I Was and Am and Will Be." He hesitated. "I am The Dragon."

Artos smiled back and then carefully stood with the old man in his arms. He was amazed at how frail Linn was. His bones, Artos thought, must be as hollow as the wing bones of a bird.

There was a door in the cave wall and Linn signaled him toward it. Carrying the old apothecary through the doorway, Artos marveled at the runes carved in the lintel. Past the door was a warren of hallways and rooms. From somewhere ahead he could hear the chanting of many men.

Artos looked down at the old man and whispered to him. "Yes. I understand. You are the dragon, indeed. And I am the dragon's boy. But I will not let you die just yet. I have not finished getting my wisdom."

Smiling broadly, the old man turned toward him like a baby rooting at its mother's breast, found the seed cakes, ate one of them and then, with a gesture both imperious and fond, stuffed the other in Artos's mouth.

The Miracle Aquilina Margo Lanagan Margo Lanagan was born in Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia, and has a BA in History from Sydney University. She spent ten years as a freelance book editor and currently makes a living as a technical writer. Lanagan has published junior and teenage fiction novels, including fantasies WildGame, The Tankermen, and Walking Through Albert. She has also written instalments in two shared-world fantasy series for junior readers, and has published three acclaimed original story collections: White Time, double World Fantasy Award winner Black Juice, and Red Spikes. Her latest book is a fantasy novel, Tender Morsels, a World Fantasy Award winner and Printz Award Honor book. Lanagan is working on a new novel, The Brides of Rollrock Island, and collection Yellowcake. Lanagan lives in Sydney, Australia.

You'd have thought the bread-dough was the Captain's head, the way I went at it, squashing any mouth or eye that opened. Bringing shame upon us--smush, I smeared that mouth shut. No daughter of mine--punch, that one too. Daughter of his? I was my own self; he did not own me. If I was anyone else's I was Klepper's; he owned more parts of me than Father did, than father wanted to know about. I was married to Klepper in all but name; part of him floated in me, growing slowly into a bigger shame-- Thump, squash--I shook the thought out of my head. Reddy was spinning one of her stories--of a fisher-girl and a kingmaker, this one--to keep Amber and Roper quiet at their needlework, and I began to listen too, to stop from thinking more, from caring, from fearing. And I was almost lost in the poor girl's story--how insolent she was to the king, and how lucky he did not have her hanged for it!--when the Captain strode in, all leathered-plate and rage. He had his helmet on, even; he was only indoors for a moment.

"Here," he said. "I'll show you." He came for me, and so swiftly I didn't even flinch away. He grasped my arm; he tore me off the dough and pushed me to the door, my hands all floury claws. "I'll show you how girls end up, that don't do as they're told."

Reddy was half up, and Amber and Roper turned in their seats, a matched pair, but they would do nothing, only gape there. They would never defy him, or question; they would never save me. Then we were out on the bright street, and me all ap.r.o.nned and floury. I shook him off, but he caught my elbow again, hard, that everyone should see he was in command of me.

"This woman." He muttered it as if woman-ness itself were an evil. "She worships wooden saints--you've seen them. She prostrates herself before those foolish things. Which would be bad enough."

There was a law, that those people be left at peace in their beliefs. Even if our Aquilin G.o.ds were richer and more clearly seen--for their stories and families were all written down strand for strand, and painted on walls for those of us who couldn't read, and taught in church and school--still we were to indulge the saint-followers, allow them their shrines and mutterings, only jeer among ourselves.

"She was one of ours, from a faithful family, but her nurse impressed her to the saints-belief, corrupted her." Ah, that was the cause of his bitterness, was it?

"She's to be punished for that?" I said, because I was not sure what the law was, for our people gone over to the saints' ways, but I did not think we could call it exactly a crime.

"No!" He pushed me to the right, through the council portico, along the colonnade there, people glancing at us but too important about their own business to accost us. "She refused the King himself, is her offence!"

"Refused him what?" I struggled as much as I could without making a scene. "Let go of me! I will walk with you!"

"You will," he said, "you will." And did not let go. "Refused him herself. Her hand, or failing that her body. Wife or concubine he offered her. Wife! Out in the fields with her sheep, she was! Who knows what vermin were on her; who knows what lads had been at her w.i.l.l.y-nilly? And our King says I will have you, I will save you, you are beautiful enough to be queen or mistress to me! And No!, she says! She would rather turn to leather out there on the hillside, making her signs on herself, chattering to her pixies. A madwoman, or at the least imprudent! You will see, though." He shook me, and I staggered. "You will see how imprudence is dealt with, and wilfulness."

We were going down the backs now, where it was unpaved, and smelt, and was narrow. He pushed me ahead of him. There was the barracks, with soldiers smoking at the upper windows, grinning down, and the woman-houses, the crones at the doors watching us shrewdly as we pa.s.sed. Then we turned the corner, and there was the prison, blind of windows, its wall-tops all spikes and potsherds.

The guard at the entry-way saluted my father, staring hard at nothing. For a moment I felt the bitterness of belonging to a Captain. This guard's respect was for my father's rank only; the Captain the man was as nothing to him. I was as nothing, a parcel or a doc.u.ment the Captain brought with him to his place of work.

In we went, and along in the blind stony darkness, farther in and along again, until we were deep in the place. He was imprisoning me? He was placing me in a cell, to teach me this lesson? I would not learn it, no matter what weight of stone and military he put about me, no matter how long he kept me from the world.

Finally we came to a door that stood open; here the guard gave me a look of alarm, even as he sharpened his stance for my father. From inside came the sound of a whip through the air, like a little outraged shout, and a slap on something wet.

The chamber was vast, yet not airy. Evils were done here, it was easy to tell; their equipments reared and languished in the shadows, away from the men grouped torchlit in the middle of the room.

The woman was in a cleared s.p.a.ce at their centre, as straight as if she stood on a hilltop stretching to glimpse a distant beacon. Her back was to us; her dress-cloth was shredded into her flesh from the whipping; her blood ran freely down.

"Her legs," said the King. You could tell him by his seatedness and stillness; if a gathering can have two centres, he was the other.

Two soldiers hoisted up her skirts, from bare dirty heels, from white calves. The backs of her knees made my insides shrink, the vulnerable creases of them, the fine skin.

"Her b.u.t.tocks, too," said His Majesty.

Something gave, in the crowd of men--a kind of relief, or excitement. The soldiers pulled the skirts up above her thighs and b.u.t.tocks--all I could think was how soft, how that flesh would sting to the whip. My own b.u.t.tocks clenched at the sight, my own thighs expected that sting. But the woman herself, she stood straight and trembled not at all, as if there were no indignity in what they did, let alone any pain to come.

They made her hold her own skirts aside; the first strokes striped, then diamonded her flesh. She did not wince, or cry out. Her back glittered crimson in the torches' light, and black with the wet threads; now the stripes on her thighs and calves began to join together red; now the first gleam of blood showed there.

"The arrogance of her!" growled the Captain to himself, and this seemed to remind him that he had a voice, and he took my arm harder, and shook it. "You see? This is what's done to girls who will not be bid!"

He met my eye and he was all hot rage, that this demonstrating to me was even necessary. He could not turn me by the power of his words. He could raise his voice as loud and long as he liked, but he could not control me by the raising, as once he'd used to. I will see whom I please, I'd said. I will marry whom I please. It is Klepper I want, not some rock-headed legionnaire you owe a favour to.

"Cease," said the King's cold voice onto the congested air, and there was no sound but the breathing of the soldiers who had been taking turns to beat the woman. "Let me see her," he said.

She did not wait for them to turn her, but dropped her skirts, and spun on the wetness of her own spilt blood, to face him. The soldiers moved to take her arms, much as the Captain had mine, but the King waved them aside, a casual movement, but involving many weighty rings, from which red light flashed, and a shard of kingfisher blue.

They stepped back from her; she stood, tall and full of joy, and truly my breath stopped in my throat for several moments, for it was clear what drove the King to want to marry her. She was the model of an Aquilina: broad-browed, straight-nosed, full-lipped, strong-jawed, all strength and delicacy combined. Her eyes were clear, green, open; they gazed down at the King, almost in amus.e.m.e.nt, I thought. I loved her in an instant myself, for what they had done to her, and for why. But he is the King!, I thought. What does she have, that she can dismiss the King's wishes? That she is not dazzled by him, that she holds her own ground? I wanted to know, and I wanted it for myself.

"What have you to say, shepherdess?" There was steel in the King's voice, for he saw, as all of us could see, that she had defeated him with her carriage and beauty.

"I have nothing to say, sir," she said happily.

"Are you mad, girl?" said a courtier at the King's side. I had seen that man before. I didn't like him; he was all bones and brains. "Have your pains driven you mad, that you affect such cheer, such insolence?"

She glanced at him bemused, then returned her gaze to His Majesty. "I a.s.sure you, I have all my senses at my own command."

"You will marry me, then," he said, his voice momentarily softer, fuller, with something in it that would have been pleading, had this not been the Aquilin king, who pled with no one, not prelate or general or sultan or sent prince from foreign parts of anywhere in the world.

"I will not," she said. "As I have told you, I belong body and soul--"

"To your lord," said Mr. Bones-and-brains disgustedly. "Yes, girl, we have heard all that." He waved her to turn her back on us again. "Bite deeper, lads! Scatter the floor with her flesh!"

Willingly she turned. But a gasp went up, from me and from all around me. For though her blood had stained all the back of her skirt, though she stood in a puddle and her feet were red with it, her flesh within the torn dress-back was white, was clean, as if no whip had touched it. And when they lifted her skirts, her calves there, and then her thighs and b.u.t.tocks, were unwelted and unbled, restored entirely to wholeness, to perfection.

Astonishment stilled them all, the soldiers agape, the n.o.bles hands to mouths. Then gradually all turned from the marvel of the woman's recovery to His Majesty. He gazed on her grimly, up and down, his eyes a-glisten with moving thought. What would he do? What power was being shown him, that undid this work of his upon this woman's body? Whom did she have behind her, and how would he conquer them?

"Put her in the pot," he said very softly--you see, Father, how much power a soft voice can carry? "We will make a soup of her."

There, again, the air changed; the excitement pitched itself a little higher, into a kind of gaiety. All was business and haste to obey him, our King our church our G.o.d and saints. I had never seen it so direct, how his will drove us, how he sat at the centre and played us all like game-pieces, or as a spinner's foot sets the pedal, then the wheel, in motion.

Pale-faced, the Captain pulled me back against the wall. "She is some kind of monster!" He watched the summoned servants run for kindling.

"She is one of us," I said. Her Aquilin hair gleamed motionless, smooth black around her head, caught away forward over one shoulder so as not to snarl with the blood-wetted whip. "And she is a miracle. If truly it is her Lord--"

He slapped my cheek, hard.

I regarded him, half my face burning from the blow, my eyes drinking back the tears that had sprung from the shock of it. His fear and weakness were written strong as his rage in his face. Don't think I cannot force you, he had said to me. But I did think it; I knew it. My sisters would bow their heads and do what he told them, but I--he had this weakness in him, when it came to me. He had this softness. I would have my way.

"We should worship her as a miracle," I said evenly, coldly, straight into his eyes.

"We should kill her, and smartly! She is a demon! The longer she lives, the longer she dazzles such fools as you! You will see," he hissed close to my face, "how pretty she is, all red-boiled and bursting. You will see what insolence will bring you, and thinking you can please yourself!"

It took some while to ready the pot, though boiling water was brought down from the council-house kitchens. It was a large pot, big enough to boil several people at once, I would have thought. They built the fire so high that the walkway around the top of the pot began to scorch, and a man was sent up there, to keep it wettened, and not catch fire himself. Every face about me, except for the King's and the more important of the courtiers' imitating him, was alive with surprise and curiosity, or with a kind of greed--whether for more suffering by the Aquilina or more embarra.s.sment of the King I could not tell--and some with suppressed mirth. Whatever his state of mind, every man here, at this moment, contained very little more than the vitality of his interest in what would befall them next, this woman and this king, what damage would be done by each upon the other. I was glad the maid had her back to us still and did not see any of this, how eagerly men wished her ill, and the lengths they were going to, to see her harmed and to have that harm endure.

They led the woman to a spread net of rope, such as is used to tangle and tie a mad bull in, and subdue it. They made her stand in the middle of it; they threw the corner-ties over a ceiling-beam and the net rose around her and lifted her, and up it carried her to the railing of the pot-platform, where a hook held it aside from the rising steam. Up went the King and his nearest; one of these turned and beckoned for more to climb the wooden steps, and my father was high-ranked enough that he could bustle me up there, and press me to the front of the crowd, where a second railing kept us from pitching forward ourselves into the bubbles, into the cauldron full of torch-flash and darkness.

"You see what fate awaits you, girl," said the King, stilling the murmur around him that the sight of the water had started.

Silence from the net.

"Answer His Majesty!" snapped some official.

"His Majesty did not ask a question," she said coolly; I could not see her face for stripes of rope-shadow. But her voice was clear enough, fine and light among these rumblers and roarers. "Yes," she said, "I see my fate there in that water, in that fire--is that the answer you wish for?" A green eye, only, looking sharpish out.

"You know the answer I want, girl," said the King, and truly he did look most handsome and n.o.ble, regarding her fiercely and gently both, as if he could not quite believe what he had come to, as if he might take pity on her at any moment, did she show any sign of distress, or of indecision. "Marry me and you live. Refuse me and I lower you to boiling."

"Then lower me, Your Majesty, if those are my only choices. For my body and soul are not mine to give to you." And her fingers, strong and lean and sun-browned, sprang through the netting and grasped it in preparation.

Soldiers unhooked her, and let her out to swing in the steam, in the silence but for the fire-noise, but for the water bursting and rolling. Within the ropes, she looked up and listened, as if she were a child hiding, waiting for the seeker to find her, for her amus.e.m.e.nt to begin.

The King gave a sign. Some other behind him pa.s.sed it on, and the men below began to let out the rope.

It would have been most unsatisfactory for His Majesty, for the drowning woman let out not a whimper, let alone a scream or a begging for mercy, but went down into the water silent as a turnip or herbouquet, and the water closed over her head, and her dark hair lifted and snaked on the bubbled water a moment among the ropes. Then, only the weighted corner ropes stood stiff out of the turmoiling water, and the steam buffeted all our faces, without cease.

"There," said the King. His be-ringed hand gestured for the bringing up of her body. Little sighs of accomplishment sounded around us, murmurs of excitement at the prospect of seeing what had been done on her, but my father the Captain only leaned, with his wrists on the rail and his hands fisted, looking down, watching the woman boil.

Up they hoisted her, but we could not see her immediately for the steam pouring up and the water pouring down, and then she was only a slumped thing in the net there. The man with the hook-stick caught and pulled the net towards the platform, and a s.p.a.ce was made, several people having to move down the steps to make room.

But not us; we were only one layer of watchers from where she was brought to land. Her small foot hung white below.

"You said she would be boiled red," I whispered to the Captain.

The foot touched the wooden platform and dragged as if it were dead--but then the touch woke it, and it braced itself against the boards, and in the moment that the net was loosed from above and fell open about her, up rose the shepherdess, the miracle girl, to standing. The steam of the boiled rope, of her boiled self, rushed up, rushed out. "Praise my Lord and Lady and all the Saints for their works and wonders!" came her clear, happy voice out of the cloud, and there she was, not a mark upon her, no worse for her wetting, or for being wrapped in boiling-wet cloth and cloaked in boiling-wet hair.

All fell back from her--in horror, in wonder, in both--and the Captain pulled me back too, so it should appear I did the right thing, instead of standing forward and laughing and clapping my hands with delight, as I was tempted to do.

The King? I saw a flash in his eyes, just a moment there and then gone, of the rage I had seen in the Captain's face, hissing and pressed close to mine. Then the handsome man was dead-pan again.

"Bring my robe and mask," he said, and on the word mask his voice broke to a growl. "Bring me a flask of spirit. Bring reeds, bring knives--you know what I need." He did not look at those he commanded; his gaze was fixed on the steaming, smiling woman.

The courtiers looked to Bones-and-brains, who was a little forward of them, startled-faced and on the point of speaking. But the King was motionless, watching the shepherdess like a hunter keeping a faun in sight as he fits an arrow to the string. Mr. Bones stepped back into the servants' doubtful silence, not taking his eyes from his master. "You heard His Majesty," he said sharply over his shoulder.