Dog and Dragon: Chapter Four

    Meb awoke to the sound of someone in her room. She had only vague, exhausted memories of how she got to this bed. Of the women, talking around her. But the sound of someone there, now, trying to keep quiet was enough to make her instinctively nervous. She opened her eyes just a crack. Unless she was due to be murdered with a ewer by a young, scared-looking female, she was in no danger. There were towels and a basin set on the tall kist already, and a wisp of steam suggested that the water was hot. It brought back to Meb that her last wash had been in a horse trough, and that had not had warm water in it.

    Once, not so very long ago, washing herself all over had been something undertaken only when unavoidable. Usually in spring. Now she itched to do so. Well, maybe just itched. The bed linen was fine, but there was undoubtably a flea in bed with her.

    Her doing something about that itch nearly had the young girl pour the ewer down her own front. “I am sorry, your ladyship. I didn’t mean to disturb! Only, Lady Cardun said…”

    Meb blinked. Your ladyship? “I don’t bite. I’ve got a dog who does, but he’s not here.” She swallowed. Díleas. How she missed his unswerving, unquestioning loyalty. But he couldn’t be here. She’d told him to look after Fionn, when she’d hugged him farewell. It was almost as if he understood. Obviously, the distress must have showed in her face.

    The serving wench forgot her own fear in seeing it. “Is…is something the matter, lady? Can I do anything?”

    “Just missing my dog,” said Meb, her voice cracking a little.

    The serving wench nodded. “We always had a dog, too. And then, when I came to take service…he ate a blowfish and died. You’d think a dog living on the foreshore would know better. But he always was eating some rubbish.”

    Meb nodded. “There was always trouble with Wulfstan about dogs and the stockfish. I grew up in a fishing village.”

    The serving wench gaped. “You, my lady? But you’ve the power!”

    “I’m not too sure what you’re talking about,” said Meb, although she did indeed have a very good idea. It struck her that it might be a reasonable idea to find out a little about this world she had exiled herself to. The misery of that exile struck her again. Best to distract herself. “Tell me about this place.”

    The servant wench looked puzzled. “What place, lady? Dun Tagoll?”

    “That’s this castle, right? I know that, but it means nothing to me. I’ve never heard of it.”

    “But…but it is the greatest castle in all Lyonesse!” said the maid. “Everyone knows that. Even the forest people.”

    “I’d never even heard of Lyonesse until last night. And now I am here,” explained Meb.

    “So, where are you from, my lady?” asked the maid.

    The “my lady” was beginning to irritate her. “I was from the island of Yenfar, the demesne of Lord Zuamar — but he’s dead and no loss. Tasmarin was my world. And my name is Meb.”

    “Oh. They said you were the Lady Anghared. That’s one of the royal names, lady. They don’t use it anymore after Queen Gwenhwyfach died. Only the royal line were called that. It’s usually used by…by the daughters of kings.”

    “Oh. Finn said that was my birth name. But no one ever called me that.”

    “Not even your mother, lady?” asked the maid.

    “Hallgerd called me Meb,” said Meb resolutely. “And she was the only mother I ever knew. The sea spat me out on the beach at her feet when I was a baby.”

    The girl wrinkled her forehead. “But your father Finn knew your name was Anghared?”

    The very thought of Finn as a father made Meb laugh. Not that he hadn’t helped her grow up a bit. “I think you should put the ewer down. What’s your name? Are you needed elsewhere?”

    The girl shook her head. “No, my lady. I’m to wait on you. I’ve never attended a lady before.”

    Someone didn’t think much of the “Lady Anghared” then, thought Meb, sending her a tirewoman who was so new she still had fish scales on her hands. Well, the girl suited Meb better than someone she couldn’t talk to. “So I am supposed to give you orders, am I?”

    The girl nodded, looking worried.

    “Well, my first order is to put the ewer down before you spill any more of it. And then to tell me your name.”

    The girl set the ewer down, carefully. Curtseyed. It was plainly not something she had done often. “Neve, m’lady.”

    Meb smiled. “Now come and sit down on the bed and answer my questions.”

    “Oh, I can’t sit on the bed, m’lady!” said Neve, horrified.

    “You can. I just told you to. And I also told you my name was Meb.”

    “But…but I’ll get into terrible trouble from Lady Cardun.”

    Meb got up. The stone floor was strewn with rushes, but still cold on her feet. The door was heavy and had a bar. So she closed it, and put the bar down. And took her cold feet back into the bed. “Now she won’t know,” said Meb. “Sit.” She’d hold off on the “m’lady” a little.

    The girl giggled nervously and did, at the very foot of the bed. On the very edge. “I…I’m very new to this work, lady…um, Meb. I don’t want to lose my place. Times are hard.”

    “I’ll do my best not to lose it for you. I promise I won’t tell anyone you sat on the bed while I asked you questions,” said Meb, smiling at her. “I just…I’m just lost. I don’t know anything at all about this place. I should be doing your job if anything. I’m not a lady. I can’t dance, or play music, or do embroidery or even ride. I rode a donkey once. I fell off that. I should be a kitchen maid, if they didn’t turn me out. I don’t know why they’re doing this to me. Who do they think I am? I…I don’t want to be turned out either. There’s an army out there.” Armies had a certain reputation. Meb decided that if she couldn’t have Finn…they wouldn’t have her either.

    The girl shrugged. “Ach, there is always some army. Every few months, it seems. They’ll be gone in a week or two when the moon is full. Or we will. Then we try and get our lives back together. The nobles send messages and play at politics and we try to make a living again.”

    That seemed a rather fatalistic acceptance of war. “You’re always at war? Who are you at war with?” No wonder they were enchanting stale bread. Growing crops and farming during a war were going to be difficult.

    The girl, her round face serious, started counting on her fingers. “Albion, Brocéliande, Albar, Annvn, Vanaheim, the Blessed Isles. There are more…My gamma said in Queen Gwenhwyfach and King Geoph’s time it wasn’t so, but it has been almost ever since. And there was much magic then, and there was peace and plenty.”

    “Hmm,” said Meb. “I bet she also said us young people don’t know how lucky we are.”

    The girl giggled so much that it shook the bed. Nodded. “It was all rich and wonderful and we’re soft and disrespectful, and don’t know what hard work means. I love my gamma Elis, but if you believed her, there were spriggans in every pile of rock, piskies in every field and bog, muryans everywhere, knockers underground, and even dragons on the hilltops. Dragons, I ask you!”

    Gradually Meb began to build a picture of the place she had ended up in. A craggy coastline to the west, with Dun Tagoll in its center, with a fertile plain bounded by mountains to east and north, and the shifting sand coast across the bleak moorlands, to more mountains in the south. Ruled by men — not the alvar, or the dragons. Under almost constant attack from the forces of darkness itself, cursed because the kingdom had to be ruled by a regent, and its magic needed a king. And the king needed its magic…not Prince Medraut.

 

---

 

    “Him? No, m’lady. He’s scarcely noble enough to raise a magefire on his blade. Without Aberinn the wizard, Dun Tagoll would have nothing magical. You’d barely think the prince was of the old blood, but he’s good at turning troubles to his advantage, as they say.”

    “Why?” asked Meb. “I mean why would you say you’d barely think he was of the old blood?”

    The girl looked puzzled. “Because he has the magic, m’lady. Only the House of Lyon has that. That is why they rule.”

    Men ruled. Meb shook her head. It was just so different to Tasmarin. And then the fact that magical ability marked the noble house. On Tasmarin the use of magic by a human would have got one killed. Here…It turned out that even the court magician was a royal by-blow. A very ancient and much feared by-blow.

    “He’s awful, m’lady. Been here through three regents. They say he keeps dead men’s bones in that tower of his. It stinks enough, and no mortal ever gets in there to clean, unless it’s the prince himself sweeping the floor. You be very careful of him, m’lady. You can’t lie to him. He pounces on you the minute you offer him falsehood. He has the power. It’s his great engines that keep Lyonesse free.”

    Meb avoided saying she didn’t think much of the freedom. “Engines of war? Great catapults?”

    “Oh no. Magical engines. They defend us from the magics and the enchantress of Shadow Hall and her dead creatures. And it’s there the great engine of change is, m’lady. We hear it clanking, but it’s few who have seen it.”

    That all left Meb none the wiser. Dead creatures and sorceresses were something they accepted as sort of normal here. So was magic by humans. Dragons were not. “So what’s this bit about the sons of the dragon? This prophecy?”

    The girl looked at her, openmouthed. And then recited:

    “Er. So who are the sons of the Dragon?” asked Meb.

    Neve shrugged. “It could be the Vanar — that’s who I think it is — in their dragon ships, or the Saxons under the white dragon banner or there are princes of the middle kingdoms who call themselves the sons of the dragons, whose banner is a red wyrm. No one knows. Not even Aberinn. They say he fitted and foamed at the mouth when he spoke the words.”

    “I wish I could have seen that. I didn’t like him much. He had egg in his beard.”

    Neve snickered. “My father says men with beards should only eat boiled eggs. Or have a wife to watch them.”

    Someone knocked on the door. A sort of perfunctory knock…and pushed it. And then knocked harder. “Lady Anghared. Lady Anghared, are you within?” By the look of terror on Neve’s face it could only be the chatelaine. What was her name? Cardun. She was nearly enough to frighten Meb, and best on the far side of the door.

    “Who is it?” said Meb, grabbing Neve’s arm as the girl wanted to run to the door.

    “It is I. Lady Cardun,” said a chilly, haughty voice from outside.

    “I am busy with my ablutions,” said Meb, very proud of that word. She’d heard it on their journeying, and had to ask Finn what it meant. And then she realized…it wasn’t the same word by shape or sound, coming out of her mouth. It was not the language she had spoken all her life. Neither was the rest of what she’d said. And in this language, Díleas actually meant “faithful.” How…how had she learned another language? Learned it as if she had spoken it all her life.

    There was a moment’s silence from outside the door. “Do you need any assistance? A message has come that we are to take you to Mage Aberinn’s tower.”

    Meb looked at the window. It was far too narrow. She touched her throat, and the hidden dragon that hung there, and courage came to her. “Thank you. But no. I have my tirewoman to attend to me. I shall be out, when I am finished,” she said, doing her best to sound like a spoiled alvar princess.

    It must have worked. Cardun sounded slightly chastened. “The girl is new. Is she satisfactory? I could send some of my women…”

    “She is exactly what I want, thank you. A perfect choice. I would like her to continue to attend to me,” said Meb trying not to laugh at Neve’s expression. “And now, I will need to finish washing and robing, if you do not mind.”

    “Oh. Yes, my apologies,” said Cardun from outside the door, sounding as if the words would choke her.

    It was a good thick door. Meb was at it, listening. No footsteps. Huh. She motioned Neve — who looked like she might just burst — to silence. She tiptoed back to the bed and poured water from the ewer into the basin. “Next time,” she said loudly, with a wink to Neve, “see the water is hotter.”

    “Yes, m’lady,” said Neve. “Do you want me to fetch more?”

    “No. Just remember in future,” said Meb, in what she hoped was a suitably long-suffering manner for a noblewoman, putting up with inferior service.

    Meb washed, and went to see what clothes she had. And then she was truly glad of Neve, because she had absolutely no idea of how to put the garment on. The woolen cloth was fine-woven, and while, as far as she was concerned, gleeman colors were her colors, not this pale blue, and breeches were more practical than skirts, and anything was more practical than this dangly robe thing. It was still rather nice to have fine new cloth against her skin, though.

    Neve brushed her hair. “How would you like it put up, m’lady?” she asked, nervously.

    Meb had absolutely no idea. She had a feeling her fisherfolk plait and pin would not do. Anyway, she’d lost the wooden pin to the sea, before the merrow took her hair. And she was willing to bet Neve was not much of a hand at it either. She needed something like that combination of comb and hair clip the alvar women had used at the Alba soiree she and Finn had walked through disguised as elegant alvar butterflies. It was something that could look beautiful and keep the hair out of your eyes. She’d truly envied one. She recreated the filigree curlicues of it in her mind, thinking of the details.

    It would appear she could summons small items to her; she marveled, looking at the intricate, ornate piece of silver in her hand. She hoped the alvar that had owned it would forgive her. She also hoped she wasn’t unbalancing things too much, as Finn said her magic did. She’d never understood that aspect of the black dragon’s work. She handed the pin-comb to the startled Neve. “It’s worn at an angle.” She shook her combed hair forward. “Slide it from the front, to pull the hair away from my face, and then slide the pin in, once the back corner is past my ear.”

    Neve did. “Oh, it’s beautiful, m’lady,” she said, holding a mirror so that Meb could see. “But…but it’s not how it is done here.”

    Meb looked closely at the reflection. Of course she’d remembered it perfectly, capturing the details in her mind’s eye. But she’d not really realized that it was filigree dragons — very Tasmarin alvar. The silver of them showed bright against her dark hair. Looking at Neve’s tight braids, here at least she was no longer the wavy-haired brunette among the straight yellow thatch heads of the fisherfolk of Cliff Cove or Tarport. “I am not from here. I don’t think I could pretend to be.”

 

---

 

    She stood up, and Neve held the mirror. She wasn’t sure she recognized the stranger in it. “Well. That will just have to do. What do we have for footwear, because I don’t think my water diviner’s boots will do, will they? They’re the best boots I’ve ever owned.”

    Neve looked at them, critically. “They’re good boots. But, well, they look like, well…men’s wear. Lady Vivien — she sent the clothes and the combs with me, sent some lachet boots for you. They’re good boots.”

    Meb tried them. “They’ll do. But they’re too narrow. I have wide feet. Finn said it was from going barefoot. He had to get the cordwainer to change his lasts to make them for me.”

    Neve looked impressed. “Specially made just for you? This Finn, he was your father?”

    “My master,” said Meb quietly. “I love him very much. But…”

    Neve nodded understandingly, although Meb was absolutely sure she did not even start to understand. But Meb wasn’t going to try to explain. Instead she walked to the door. “Do you think I get to break my fast before going to see the mage? Or does he feed me on the bones of dead men?”

    Neve shuddered. “I don’t know, m’lady. No one goes to his tower. I told you. I don’t know what is in there.”

    Meb took a deep breath. “Time to find out, I suppose. Can you show me where I have to go?”

    “Well, there’s an inner door, but it’s locked. I’ll have to take you into the courtyard.”

    Meb let Neve lead her down the flagged passages and up the stone stairwell, onto the battlements and up the stair to the door of the mage’s tower. It faced the narrow causeway of land that linked the almost island of Dun Tagoll to the rest of the lands beyond. Meb looked out at those, across fields and forests toward the distant high fells tinged purple with blooming heather.

    The door swung open abruptly, before she’d even gathered herself to knock. Neve squeaked and retreated behind Meb as Mage Aberinn loomed out at them. His beard, in daylight, was longer and less clean than she’d realized the night before. “I didn’t know I had sent for two of you,” he said curtly.

    Meb knew she ought to be afraid, but instead, his manner just made her angry. “My mother told me not to go alone into strange towers with men I did not know,” she said coolly. Actually, Hallgerd had not ever quite said that, but variants of the same usually involving bushes, huts or fishing boats. And she hadn’t been too concerned about whether Meb knew the men or not. But it would do.

    Aberinn raised his eyebrows. “Your mother. And who was your mother? Do you remember her?” he seemed to find that very important.

    Meb remembered what Neve had said about not being able to lie to him. She thought…well, she should try it. “I ought to. I lived with her for seventeen years,” she said.

    It seemed to take the wind out the mage’s sails a little. “Ah. Well, I suppose your reputation should be considered. Yes, bring her along.”

    Neve looked as if she might faint in pure terror. “Me? I was just showing m’lady the way.” she squeaked.

    “Just think what stories you’ll have to tell the others,” said Meb, smiling an unspoken “please” at her.

    “Of course, she’ll do as she’s told,” said the mage, an edge coming back to his voice.

    The fisherman’s daughter took a deep breath. “For you, m’lady.”

    The first interior room of the tower, reached after climbing a short stair was rather a disappointment after all that. It was a large and comfortable room, with a fireplace, and a number of tables, and book- and equipment-filled shelves lining the walls. It was, unlike the magician’s beard, very tidy and ordered. No spider webs, no dust, no disorder. The tables were full of various items being worked on, but even the tools were set out in very precise neat rows, and components tended to be set out in what almost seemed geometric patterns. There were no dead men’s bones. In fact Meb couldn’t even see a thing made of anything that was not metal, let alone human remains. The nearest to “human” anything was a model — a very precise and carefully made model — of part of the castle. It was opened so she could see into the rooms, with every item in them exact. It looked like a child’s — a very rich child’s — dream dollhouse.

    That was not to say that the room looked like anything but a magician’s workshop, because it did. The objects being worked on were strange. Some glowed with their own inner light. Odd clicking noises came from somewhere. And some things looked as if they might almost be alive. There was a bird in a gilded cage. A crow. Only it too was gilded, and appeared to be made entirely of metal.

    Meb had seen dvergar artifice, and that was finer. But the magician was better than most humans at mechanical contrivance. She identified the source of least some of the clicking — a device with a series of globes suspended from thin brass rods. As it clicked, the globes moved. “What is it?”

    “An orrery. It allows me to predict the positioning of certain celestial forces for my work,” said Aberinn. “It is essential for the Changer. Unfortunately I have found certain inaccuracies in the movement. There may be factors outside of my knowledge operating on the spheres.”

    “How…how does it move?” Part of her was impelled by the peasant fisherman fear of the unknown, to not want to know, to fear the worst, to believe it demonic and evil. The other part of her mind was already imagining small imps on treadmills, or perhaps magical recitations of spells that would command it to move…

    “Springs, counterweights, and various cogwheels. My magic is confined to working on things of a higher order,” he said, as if reading her mind. “But I asked you to come here to establish some of your own history.”

    Which, thought Meb, I don’t think is a good idea to tell you too much about. But she smiled. “I will be glad to answer the questions of the High Mage of Lyonesse.” She wondered how much of alvar life in Tasmarin she could get him to swallow. Finn, gleemen and fishing villages seemed good subjects to avoid.

    Oddly, she didn’t need to. His questions seemed designed to catch her out. To betray a knowledge of Dun Tagoll or the people and politics of Lyonesse. He asked about the view from home and the plants there. Meb was happy to describe the cliffs of Cliff Cove in loving detail. He asked about the rulers of Tasmarin. Meb didn’t think it necessary to point out that the dead Lord Zuamar and Prince Gywndar were a dragon and an alvar princeling. Or even that they were both now dead. And then someone came knocking on the door. In obvious irritation Aberinn went to open it. “What is it?” he asked the wide-eyed page.

    “A message from Prince Medraut, high mage. The prisoner…Earl Alois, has escaped. Magic, the prince believes. And the woman has vanished from her chambers!”

    Aberinn sighed. Shook his head. “The young lady — and her maid — are right here. And it was obvious Alois must have had some accomplices to get so close. This is not magic. It is treachery.” He sighed again. “Tell the prince I am coming. Send messages to the other Duns. He won’t get far on foot.”