Dragonfield: And Other Stories Read online

  Who bought these parts? For the most, it was alchemists and devil’s worshipers, trespassers in the forbidden zone. I do not think he asked, nor would they have answered him. What he did not know could not hurt, was his motto. His was a grisly but profitable trade.

  It happened late one night when he was applying his singular skill and saw to the body of the late and unlamented Strangler of Hareton Heath, a corpse that had one leg shorter than the other because—it was said—he had lived so long on Dun D’Addin’s hill. There came a loud knock on the door, a veritable drumroll of knuckles.

  Startled, the surgeon’s apprentice cried out.

  “Who is there?” His voice was an agony of squeaks.

  “Open in the name of the king’s own law,” came the call.

  It was, of course, too late to hide the evidence of his night’s work for that was spilled all about him. And there was no denying his part in it. Evisceration is a messy business; it leaves its own bloody calling cards. Gathering his wits about him—and leaving the late Strangler’s on the table—he donned his black coat and black hat, a midnight disguise.

  Just as he slipped out the back door, the king’s law broke down the front.

  The lead dragoon spotted the hand of the surgeon’s apprentice still on the door knob. Grabbing onto the hand, the dragoon cried out, “Sir, I have him.”

  That, of course, is when the hand came off in his, for it was the Strangler’s hand, hard and horned from its horrible vocation. The apprentice had carried it off with him for just such an emergency.

  The soldier, being an honest sort, screamed and dropped the severed claw. In the ensuing melee, the apprentice escaped. It is said he climbed Dun D’Addin in a single breath and was on the far side before he thought to stay. And here he has plied a similar trade—but that is only a rumor and not one that I, at least, can vouch for.

  “I’ll give you a hand for that tale,” cried out a lusty listener, the local butcher, clapping loudly but alone.

  Jok smiled and bowed his head towards the applause. “So point two is the hand.”

  The fat man sighed. “And I expected more from you than yet another joke. I suppose point three is the same?” He scratched under his eye with the mutilated finger.

  Jok, fascinated, could not stop staring at him. “No,” he said at last. “As a matter of fact, point three is very serious.”

  “Three!” said the innkeeper, suddenly remembering his role in the affair. “Three!”

  “Point three,” Jok said, tearing his gaze from the fat man and looking again at his audience, which had enlarged by four or five drinkers, much to the innkeeper’s satisfaction. “Point three is the voice. In roguery, that voice must be melodic and cozzening but, in the end, forgettable.”

  Three: The Voice

  Ellyne was the fairest girl on any of Dun D’Addin’s borders, the fairest in seven counties if one were to be exact. Her hair was red and curled about her face like little fishhooks ready to catch the unwary ogler. Her skin was the color of berried cream, rosy and white. Not a man but sighed for her, though she seemed oblivious to them all.

  One day she was walking out in the woods, not far from the Hill, picking bellflowers for a tisane and listening to the syncopations of the birds, when a rogue from Dun D’Addin chanced by.

  Now his name was Vyctor and he was known Under-the-Hill as The Voice, for he could cast the sound of it where he willed. It was his one great trick, that mellifluous traveling tone. With it he had talked jewelers out of their gems, good wives out of their virtue, and a judge out of hanging him. He was that good.

  Vyctor saw the red-headed Ellyne and was stunned, felled, split and spitted by her beauty. He had heard tell of it, but that had been on Dun D’Addin’s byways where every word is doubled and every truth halved. But those who had praised Ellyne’s beauty hadn’t sung the smallest part of it properly. Vyctor the Voice lost his—and his heart as well. He began to stammer.

  Now Ellyne was used to the stammering of men. In fact she was of the belief that—except for her own father and a blind singer in her town—all men above the age of puberty stammered. She was an innocent for sure, and not aware of her beauty, for not a man had been able to string three words together to tell her of it.

  But if Vyctor could not speak directly to her, he could still talk by throwing his voice, and so he spoke to her from the nearest tree.

  “Beauteous maid,” the birch began.

  Ellyne turned round and about, the movement making her hair a halo and bringing a magnificent flush to her cheek. For a moment even the birch stammered; then it went on.

  “Beauteous maid, you make my sap run fast; you make my bark tingle. I would embrace you.”

  Well, Ellyne had never heard a tree talk before and she was fascinated. It was so well spoken and, besides, it was giving her compliments instead of the stuttering and spitting and gawking she was used to from all the men of her acquaintance. She moved closer to hear more.

  Vyctor took a step or two in the tree’s direction and the birch continued its serenade.

  “My love for you is deeply rooted,” said the birch. “Do not ever leaf me.”

  Ellyne sighed.

  Just then the wind came up and blew the birch branches about. One grazed Ellyne’s arm. She shrieked—for she was a good girl and not about to be touched before the wedding banns had been posted.

  Vyctor leaped forward, his sword suddenly in hand. “I … I … I will save you,” he cried, forgetting for that instant that the birch was his spokestree. He lay about vigorously and had soon carved up enough firewood to keep the hearths of Dun D’Addin warm for a week.

  “Monster!” cried Ellyne. “You have slain my own true love.” She fell upon the woodpile and wept.

  From the back she was not as beautiful as the front and Vyctor came immediately to his senses. Besides, her noisy sobbing had alerted the local dragoons, all of whom were in love with her, and a company of them marched into the woods, bayonets fixed.

  Vyctor was arrested and tried, but his voice having made a full recovery, he was released.

  Ellyne carried half a dozen of the finest birch branches home and placed them tenderly over her mantel. Then she took the surname Tree. She was careful not to burn wood or eat vegetables thereafter and wore widow’s weeds the rest of her short life.

  The laughter that greeted Jok’s third tale signaled another round of ale. The innkeeper was just pouring when the miller said, “If that’s three, what’s four?”

  Jok smiled. “Eye, hand, voice,” he said slowly, ticking them off on the fingers of his left hand. “But the fourth point of roguery is…”

  “The Great Escape!” came a voice floating back from outside. Then the door snicked shut.

  “The Great Escape,” Jok agreed. “Now there was a rogue…”

  “My purse!” cried the man closest to the fire. “It’s been cut!”

  Jok turned white and held his hands out in front of him, staring as honestly as he could at the accusing man. “I am not the culprit, sir. Look. I am clean. I stand here empty.” He turned out his pockets.

  Every man in the inn, used to the ways of Dun D’Addin, did the same.

  The innkeeper came to the center of the circle of men and looked around. Someone was missing. It was the fat florid merchant with the maimed hand. He was gone. And all their purses were gone as well.

  Of course, slip-fingered Jok never told this final part of the tale. Even if he had known it, it would not have helped his reputation as a rogue. But in a nearby land, in a larger inn, known perversely as the Eagle and the Child, though it had nothing to do with either, a rather florid thin man, lying back on the very pillows that had lent him substance, told this tale to me, naming the points of roguery on his fingers. But he lacked one finger and therein lay his own miscalculation, for I relieved him of his pants and purse when he thought to make a long and interesting night. And so I end the tale.

  For the first three points of roguery may be Eye and Han
d and Voice, and the fourth the Great Escape. But the fifth and final point, which every true rogue knows well, is the Last Laugh. And I have often been complimented on the engaging quality of mine.

  Dream Weaver

  “A PENNY, A PENNY, KIND sir,” cried the Dream Weaver as she sat at the bottom steps of the Great Temple. Her busy fingers worked the small hand loom. “Just a penny for a woven dream.”

  The King of Beggars passed her by. He had no time for dream weaving. It was too gossamer, too fragile. He believed in only one dream, that which would fill his belly. He would not part with his penny for any other. Gathering his rags around him, a movement he considered his answer, he went on.

  The old Dream Weaver continued her wail. It was a chant, an obeisance she made to every passer-by. She did not see the King of Beggar’s gesture for she was blind. Her sightless eyes stared only into the future, and she wove by the feel of the strands.

  New footsteps came to the Dream Weaver’s ear. Her hand went out.

  “A penny, a penny, young miss.” She knew by the sound there was a girl approaching, for the step was light and dancing.

  “Oh, yes, buy me a dream,” the girl said, calling over her shoulder to the boy who followed.

  The Weaver did not speak again. She knew better than to wheedle. The girl was already caught in her desire. The young so loved to dream. The Weaver knew the penny would come.

  “I do not know if I should,” said the boy. His voice was hesitant, yet pleased to be asked.

  “Of course you should,” said the girl. Then her voice dropped, and she moved close to him. “Please.”

  His hand went immediately to his pocket and drew out the coin.

  Hearing the movement, the Dream Weaver cupped her right hand. “A dream for a beautiful young woman,” she said in a flattering voice, though to her all the young were beautiful.

  “How do you know?” It was the girl in surprise.

  “She is beautiful, “said the boy. “There is no one as beautiful in the whole world. She has my heart.” His words were genuine, but the girl shrugged away his assurances.

  The Weaver had already taken threads from her basket and strung the warp while the boy was speaking. And this was the dream that she wove across the strands.

  Brother Hart

  Deep in a wood, so dark and tangled few men dared enter it, there was a small clearing. And in that clearing lived a girl and her brother Hart.

  By day, in his deer shape, Brother Hart would go out and forage on green grass and budlings while his sister remained at home.

  But whenever dusk began, the girl Hinda would go to the edge of the clearing and call out in a high, sweet voice:

  Dear heart, Brother Hart,

  Come at my behest.

  We shall dine on berry wine

  And you shall have your rest.

  Then, in his deer heart, her brother would know the day’s enchantment was at an end and run swiftly home. There, at the lintel over the cottage door, he would rub between his antlers until the hide on his forehead broke bloodlessly apart. He would rub and rub further still until the brown hide skinned back along both sides and he stepped out a naked man.

  His sister would take the hide and shake it out and brush and comb it until it shone like polished wood. Then she hung the hide up by the antlers beside the door, with the legs dangling down. It would hang there until the morning when Brother Hart donned it once again and raced off to the lowland meadows to graze.

  What spell or sorcerer had brought them there, deep in the wood, neither could recall. Their faces mirrored one another, and their lives were twinned. Their memories, like the sorcerer, had vanished. The woods, the meadow, the clearing, the deer hide, the cottage door, were all they knew.

  Now one day in late spring, Brother Hart had gone as usual to the lowland meadows, leaving Hinda at home. She had washed and scrubbed the little cottage until it was neat and clean. She had put new straw in their bedding. But as she stood by the window brushing out her long dark hair, an unfamiliar sound greeted her ears: a loud, harsh calling, neither bird nor jackal nor good gray wolf.

  Again and again the call came. So Hinda went to the door, for she feared nothing in the wood. And who should come winded to the cottage but Brother Hart. He had no words to tell her in his deer form, but blood beaded his head like a crown. It was the first time she had ever seen him bleed. He pushed past her and collapsed, shivering, on their bed.

  Hinda ran over to him and would have bathed him with her tears, but the jangling noise called out again, close and insistent. She ran to the window to see.

  There was a man outside in the clearing. At least she thought it was a man. Yet he did not look like Brother Hart, who was the only man she knew.

  He was large where Brother Hart was slim. He was fair where Brother Hart was dark. He was hairy where Brother Hart was smooth. And he was dressed in animal skins that hung from his shoulders to his feet. About the man leaped fawning wolves, some spotted like jackals, some tan and some white. He pushed them from him with a rough sweep of his hand.

  “I seek a deer,” he called when he glimpsed Hinda’s face, a pale moon, at the window.

  But when Hinda came out of the door, closing it behind her to hide what lay inside, the man did not speak again. Instead he took off his fur hat and laid it upon his heart, kneeling down before her.

  “Who are you?” asked Hinda. “What are you? And why do you seek the deer?” Her voice was gentle but firm.

  The man neither spoke nor rose but stared at her face.

  “Who are you?” Hinda asked again. “Say what it is you are.”

  As if she had broken a spell, the man spoke at last. “I am but a man,” he said. “A man who has traveled far and who has seen much, but never a beauty such as yours.”

  “If it is beauty, and beauty is what you prize, .you shall not see it again,” said Hinda. “For a man who hunts the deer can be no friend of mine.”

  The man rose then, and Hinda marveled at the height of him, for he was as tall as the cottage door and his hands were grained like wood.

  “Then I shall hunt the deer no more,” he said, “if you will give me leave to hunt that which is now all at once dearer to me.”

  “And what is that?”

  “You, dear heart,” he said, reaching for her. Startled, Hinda moved away from him, but remembering her brother inside the cottage, found voice to say, “Tomorrow.” She reached behind her and steadied herself on the door handle. She thought she heard the heavy breathing of Brother Hart through the walls. “Come tomorrow.”

  “I shall surely come.” He bowed, turned, and then was gone, walking swiftly, a man’s stride, through the woods. His animals were at his heels.

  Hinda’s eyes followed him down the path until she counted even the shadows of trees as his own. When she was certain he was gone, she opened the cottage door and went in. The cottage was suddenly close and dark, filled with the musk of deer.

  Brother Hart lay on their straw bed. When he looked up at her, Hinda could not bear the twin wounds of his eyes. She turned away and said, “You may go out now. It is safe. He will not hunt you again.”

  The deer rose heavily to his feet, nuzzled open the door, and sprang away to the meadows.

  But he was home again at dark.

  When he stepped out of his skin and entered the cottage, he did not greet his sister with his usual embrace. Instead he said, “You did not call me to the clearing. You did not say my name. Only when I was tired and the sun had almost gone, did I know it was time to come home.”

  Hinda could not answer. She could not even look at him. For even more than his words, his nakedness suddenly shamed her. She put their food on the table and they ate their meal in silence. Then they lay down together and slept without dreams like the wild creatures of the wood.

  When the sun called Brother Hart to his deerskin once again, Hinda opened the door. Silently she ushered him outside, silently watched him change, and sent him off on his
silent way to the meadows without word of farewell. Her thoughts were on the hunter, the man of the wolves. She never doubted he would come.

  And come he did, neither silently nor slowly, but with loud purposeful steps. He stood for a moment at the clearing’s edge, looking at Hinda, measuring her with his eyes. Then he smiled and crossed to her.

  He stayed all the day with her and taught her wonders she had never known. He told her tales of kingdoms she had never seen. He sang songs she had never heard before, singing them softly into her ears. He spoke again and again of his love for her, but he touched no more than her hand.

  “You are as innocent as any creature in the woods,” he said over and over in amazement.

  So passed the day.

  Suddenly it was dusk, and Hinda looked up with a start. “You must go now,” she said.

  “Nay, I must stay.”

  “No, no, you must go,” Hinda said again. “I cannot have you here at night. If you love me, go.” Then she added softly, her dark eyes on his, “But come again in the morning.”

  Her sudden fear puzzled him, but it also touched him, so he stood and smoothed down the skins of his coat. “I will go. But I will return.”

  He whistled his animals to him, and left the clearing as swiftly as he had come.

  Hinda would have called after him then, called after and made him stay, but she did not even know his name. So she went instead to the clearing’s edge and cried:

  Dear heart, Brother Hart,

  Come at my bidding.

  We shall dine on berry wine

  And dance at my wedding.

  And hearing her voice, Brother Hart raced home.

  He stopped at the clearing’s edge, raised his head, and sniffed. The smell of man hung on the air, heavy and threatening. He came through it as if through a swift current, and stepped to the cottage door.

  Rubbing his head more savagely than ever on the lintel, as if to rip off his thoughts with his hide, Brother Hart removed his skin.