The Dragon Queen Read online

  All over the room screams rang out as men died. As the first Saxon fell away, Maeniel saw another driving a sax into Vortigen’s back. Maeniel pulled the sax out of his own side and eviscerated the king’s assassin.

  The wolf reared and leaped out of his brain’s darkness, slamming Maeniel into the change to save his life. A second later, the gray wolf cleared the table and landed on the floor in front of the king’s chair. The wolf’s mind was a whirl of confusion. He knew no one here other than Vortigen and he was dead. Before Maeniel killed him, the assassin had done his work. This was Merlin’s doing. He was sure. The wolf lunged for the druid’s throat.

  Something like a club slammed into Maeniel’s body, sending him reeling. The snake was on him, its coils wrapped twice around his body. The head drew back and two glowing red eyes looked into his. It struck, burying its fangs to the hilt in the wolf’s shoulder.

  If Maeniel could have screamed, he would have. Instead, he became human. Even Merlin was stunned by the sight. A powerful, naked warrior stood between him and the fire, his skin gleaming with the ripple and play of iron muscles under it.

  Vareen’s dying brain took in the sight. Vengeance! The gods themselves would demand vengeance for the British druid’s actions this day. Merlin had thrown his lot with the Saxons and the chiefs who would sell out their own people and laid vile hands on a high king. He used the last of his energy to reach out and drive a message like a sliver of light into the gray wolf’s mind. Throw it into the fire.

  Vareen lay in the arms of the slave girl who had served Maeniel’s wine. She smelled of the sea.

  They both heard Merlin scream, “No!” He threw up his arms and crossed them over his face, as Maeniel ripped the golden serpent free, taking a lot of his own flesh and blood with it, and hurled the serpent into the heart of the fire. The fire seemed to explode, sending logs and parts of the serpent flying up toward the roof. It went splintering into shards of glass, coming down like smoke-colored knives on the guilty and innocent alike.

  The falling glass sheared away part of Merlin’s arm and sliced into his face.

  The wizard screamed and fell, as did dozens of his men, some dead, some yet living, in their own blood and guts, dying among their victims.

  The girl, cradling Vareen’s body in her arms, smiled and made a strange gesture toward Maeniel.

  The wind took Maeniel. Feeling as if he were caught in the rapids of a wild river, he hurtled into nothingness as the venom of the magical creature burned out of his body—and then he was in the wind above the clouds, for seconds looking down on a sea surging, moving, foaming by moonlight. He was so high he couldn’t tell if he were flying or falling.

  He yielded up everything—will, memory, and, finally, at last, consciousness itself—into nothingness.

  She was, Maeniel thought, a beautiful thing, to a somewhat battered wolf stretched out in a thick copse of rowan. He had landed here sometime in the night. At least that was his first thought when he awakened among the trees.

  Thirst had brought him up from the primal sea of darkness. The events in Vortigen’s feasting hall seemed like a dim memory or the shadow of an unhappy dream. Dreaming is a thing men have in common with all other warm-blooded creatures, and even as a wolf, Maeniel had been familiar with nightmares. He staggered to his feet, his shoulder still terribly painful, and went to look for water.

  He found it at the foot of the hill, a spring that emptied out of the rock into a stone basin.

  He drank. Thirst was a burning torture, but at first he drank too much and his stomach shot it back into a patch of bracken on the stream bank. He lay down for a few moments while raw terror flooded his brain. He remembered the golden snake with its glowing red eyes. Had it killed him? It had killed Vareen. And, indeed, Merlin had been at pains to kill Vareen, believing him more a threat than Vortigen.

  Oh, god, suppose he couldn’t eat or drink and simply vomited until he died. Died in torment. Thirst was a glowing coal in his mouth. What if he could never assuage it? But he was a solid creature. Most canines are, and he did not easily give way to panic. Rest now and let your stomach rest. He did so, and in a little time he drank again, this time exercising more moderation, and the water stayed down.

  He lay there for the remainder of the night, alternately sleeping and drinking until he felt stronger. He was awakened by first light stealing across the downlands below. He had heard of Hadrian’s great wall; it marched from sea to sea across the neck of Britain. It took Maeniel a few moments to realize he was looking at it—or what remained of it—built across open country. Wall, bank, and ditch, with a mile castle overgrown by weeds and small trees on a hill nearby.

  He worried for a few minutes about how he could have gotten so far from Tintigal, almost at the other end of the country. Then he was distracted by a serpent that came to drink. Every hair on Maeniel’s body stood up, and he let fly with a savagely menacing growl. The serpent, a normal green-striped individual, was profoundly intimidated and drew back into the grass. But it remained, peering at him through the red stems. He remembered his own overpowering thirst the night before and felt sorry for the creature, so he lay still and made no more threatening noises. At length the serpent, emboldened, returned, slid out of the sedges where it was hiding, lowered its head into the water, and drank.

  Maeniel was further disturbed when the serpent turned, faced him, and said, “Be quiet. Wait here.”

  Fine, Maeniel thought. Now I’m hearing things.

  No, you are not, the wolf half of his divided nature told him. Shut up and obey. He was so injured and so weary that all he could do was obey, and he drifted off into a light sleep.

  He was aware the moment a doe and her fawn stopped to drink and when one of the wild stallions that roamed the downs showed up accompanied by three mares. But he didn’t move and remained near the wild rose thicket where he was resting. He was too weak and weary to go after any of them for food. Especially not the horses, who were in a dither about something. They reeked of fear.

  Then she came and was a beautiful sight to his eyes. A young she-wolf, her teats swollen with milk and a load of meat in her belly for her pups. She drank and her eyes met his over the pool. She gave a slight start, then walked around the well to look down on him.

  “Mother,” he said, “give me some of what you have in your belly. I am in great need.”

  “I have my young to think of,” she replied.

  “I will repay you when I regain my strength.”

  She made her decision. “It is not every day I find a strong stranger lying under a bush. Will you remain with me or return to your kin?”

  “My kin are far away and I cannot think I will be able to find them.”

  “You temporize like …” She didn’t quite know what to compare him to.

  He lifted his head. She was life. “I will remain.”

  She lowered her muzzle and he licked it. She regurgitated all the meat in her belly for him. He ate and felt the life returning to his body the way longed-for rain soaks into the dry earth. When he stood, he was lean but whole and hungry.

  She had sat and watched him gulp the meat down. “Well,” she said.

  He remembered the four horses that had been so afraid. He was pretty sure he knew why. The wind told him a number of things.

  “Bear?” he said to the she-wolf. (Wolf is laconic.)

  “Yes.” (Translation, yes we have bear here.)

  “Come.”

  She hesitated.

  “I will protect you.”

  “You look as though you might be able to.” And she followed.

  Not far from the spring the hillside had fallen away, leaving a low bluff. The bear had killed by driving the horses over the bluff.

  One had not survived.

  The bear fed on the haunch, then left to seek his cave. There was plenty of meat on the carcass. The she-wolf sat, then lifted her muzzle to the sky—a notification song.

  She and Maeniel began to feed. He chose the
haunch where the bear fed, leaving the shoulder to her. By wolf law, she was entitled to as much as she could consume for herself and her pups.

  Her two brothers arrived somewhat later. By then Maeniel was finished. He was full and grooming himself.

  They looked at him.

  The she-wolf lifted her head and spoke to the two of them. “Don’t even think about it. Besides,” she continued, “I need a husband. He will do.”

  The brothers studied Maeniel. He studied them. At best, at the very best, they were yearlings. So was she; in a well-realized, prosperous pack she wouldn’t even be thinking of motherhood, but something had happened here.

  “Men?” Maeniel asked.

  The brothers looked at each other. “Yes.”

  “I will join you. I can provide some wisdom.”

  “You know men and can predict their strange ways?” one of the brothers asked.

  “Yes. I am very good at it.” Maeniel was patient as they sniffed him nose to tail. Afterward, they joined their sister at her meal.

  Maeniel sat, and from time to time his tail thumped on the ground. He considered his options. Why not? They needed his help. Wolf love was less satisfying than human but, oh my god, the complications involved in human desire. He had other obligations, but he had no idea how to work his way back to France or if he could do so at all. Even if he could, it would take months or years of dangerous travel across a wartorn land. If last night’s events were an indication of how things stood on the island of Britain, there was no help to be found here. In addition to owing the she-wolf a debt of gratitude, he was very tired of humans.

  I want a rest, he thought. I did all I could for the Bagaudae. I have no more to give. I will remain.

  With that, he was decided. He rose when she finished and accompanied her as she left for the den to feed the pups. It will be nice having a family again. It’s been a great many years. In spite of some soreness and fatigue, he found her company lifted his spirits, and he was greatly cheered.

  TWO

  OU CANNOT WRITE ANYTHING IMPORTANT DOWN.”

  I told him—my teacher—I thought that was ridiculous. He only nodded, shook his head, and looked wise. I hate it when they do that. We were lying in the grass and heather on a beautiful, warm spring day watching the gates. They loomed high, cloud shadows, or perhaps clouds themselves, not far from the western horizon. On this day they formed a V, open at the top and joined near the water. Birds floated against the high-topped clouds massed inside the gates, and the sun on its journey to the western horizon shone onto them and formed a rainbow.

  The dragons played on the beach and in the shallows at the foot of the cliff where we were lying, and farther out they caught fish for their young, who were crying in the nests below us. They were beautiful, blue below and silver as the sea at dawn above. As we watched, the males contended in tests of strength. They wound their long necks together and then, heads facing each other, each tried to push the other down. This is the way snakes prove their mettle, and so it is with the serpents of the sea.

  The females fished, a wonderful sight. They glided through the water like giant swans, large eyes looking down into the sunstruck sea for schools of fish. When they spotted one, the head would drop like a lance tip, followed by the wide-flippered body. If you were lucky and the water was clear, you could follow them in the depths as the fish moved in unison up then down, flashing around rocks and kelp like so many living, shining needles, the shadow terror of the dragon always following, taking her prey until she was gorged. Afterward, they would surface and return to the beach to regurgitate their catch for the tiny ones calling in the nests among the dunes.

  “Can you write this down?” my teacher asked. “The way the cool, fresh salt air smells, the colors of the flowers blooming around you?”

  “No, I probably couldn’t,” I was forced to admit. “I could try.”

  “Yes, and never fully succeed,” the old man said, “and the fascination of the attempt might bring you back again and again, battering your mind, heart, and spirit against the impossible. As the poets do. For that is what they do. And indeed a life such as that is no bad thing. But I cannot think it is the life for you. No, the movement of the stars, the flight of the birds, the falling of sticks, the shadows in the water when I looked, all predicted a different fate for you.

  “Indeed, I felt you cry out to me in your mother’s womb, and so I brought you here. No, nothing that is important for you to know can be written down. I can tell you what you need to learn, and I can place you on the pathway to knowledge, but the only real way to learn about war is to fight a battle. And even then you will not know all about it, but the choices of command will be a lot more clear to you and the only way that you learn about love is to love and be loved. And then you may count the cost of knowledge too high.

  “So for now I bring you to see the dragons and the gates that they may give you happiness as they do me, and because I’m a lazy old man and I want to see the dragons once more before I die. They don’t come to their old nesting grounds now very often, and the gates open only on increasingly rare occasions.”

  He was speaking to himself as though he were an ancient, but even as a child I knew he wasn’t really that old, only incredibly learned. And I was often told that I was lucky to have him for a teacher. Dugald was his name. He took me to watch things often. He showed me mother birds caring for their young in the nest. We walked behind the plow, and the plowman told us how he knew the earth was ready for the deep steel horn, how he could feel with his feet if she was warm enough, dry enough, to be plowed so the soil would turn and not scour, and how when he saw the plowshare cut its first smooth furrow, his heart leaped with joy. We visited the armorer at his forge. I learned to ride even if we had no horse, and I began weapons training before I can remember. These were the chief things I needed to know because, as he told me and it seemed I knew even before I was told, I was born for war, and I would spend my life practicing my trade. I knew this to be true, and it has governed my every waking thought for as long as I can remember. How it all began is my first memory, and though I have been told I should not remember that first day, I do remember, and it is not only the first thing I remember but the most important memory I have or ever will have.

  He was coming home, his belly stuffed with food for the pups, when he heard the alarm yip. It was high and sharp, really out of the range of human hearing. It brought him up short. He had not been paying as much attention to his surroundings as was his wont, and momentary confusion was the result. Wolves cannot say “what!” All the yip said was trouble—watch out. His belly was loaded with several pounds of meat, and he thought a few human curse words because he was groggy and slow. But he moved into a thick growth of bracken and the remnants of a fallen pine; had a human been watching, he would seem to have disappeared. None of the fronds moved more than a few millimeters as he went belly down among them.

  The den was set just below a hilltop. He and his mate had chosen the spot because the ground was so broken that even the shepherds avoided it, but as far as a wolf was concerned it was a high road. He circled the den coming up on the hilltop. He looked down and saw the child.

  She was not a newborn but a toddler, and began to squall and stretch out her arms to the retreating backs of three adults. However, once they were out of sight, she fell silent.

  Good practical intelligence, the wolf thought. Why screech when there is no one to comfort you?

  As he watched, she turned and crawled toward the den. The warning yip he’d heard had come from inside, where his mate and the pups had taken cover. One of the pups, probably the oddly marked one with the dark leg, had ventured toward the entrance. The baby stuck her head inside and their noses touched.

  Both reacted with shock. The child drew back quickly, and he heard a scrabbling sound as the pup crawfished down into the earth, returning to its mother. Then the baby sat quietly—after the manner of good children—playing in the pebbles at the den mouth
. She was not a fat child, but one of the lean, rangy ones who learn to crawl early and walk even before they begin babbling because they are not carrying so much weight as their plumper confreres. They behave as though they were in a hurry to reach independence.

  She was not particularly pretty.

  As he watched, his mate stuck her head out. He loped easily down the hill to join her.

  “Why is it here?” he asked in laconic wolf speech.

  “Possibly they do not care about it,” she answered.

  He gave her a look that expressed skepticism. Wolves are not birds. They do not see the need to chatter a lot. He ducked into the den to leave his belly load of food for the pups. Then he came out again.

  “I will see if they are truly gone,” he said. “Don’t harm it.”

  The she-wolf gave him a razor-edged glance of contempt as if to say what am I, a fool that you must instruct me in the obvious? He trotted away, ears down, to track the people who brought the child.

  Three of them, two men and a woman, had come directly to the den, climbing up the mountain and then, after leaving the child, gone directly back down. Probably guided by the woman. He knew her: Idonia.

  He returned to the den. The she-wolf was suckling the three puppies and the human child. He looked long.

  “I have plenty,” she said, and put her head down and began to doze in the sun.

  After their meal the puppies and the child began to rough-house. Two other wolves belonging to the pack arrived, and but for a few raised wolfish eyebrows no comment was made. By then the sun was low in the sky and beginning to set. The wolf puppies were weary and began to yawn, as did the child. She turned to the she-wolf but was nosed firmly away. Then she crawled hopefully toward the pack leader and found better hospitality.