The Dragon Masters

Chapter 3

Across the long Aerlith years the fortunes of Happy Valley and Banbeck Vale fluctuated with the capabilities of the opposing Carcolos and Banbecks. Golden Banbeck, Joaz’s grandfather, was forced to release Happy Valley from clientship when Uttern Carcolo, an accomplished dragon-breeder, produced the first Fiends. Golden Banbeck, in his turn, developed the Juggers, but allowed an uneasy truce to continue. Further years passed; Ilden Banbeck, the son of Golden, a frail ineffectual man, was killed in a fall from a mutinous Spider. With Joaz yet an ailing child, Grode Carcolo decided to try his chances against Banbeck Vale. He failed to reckon with old Hendel Banbeck, grand-uncle to Joaz and Chief Dragon Master. The Happy Valley forces were routed on Starbreak Fell; Grode Carcolo was killed and young Ervis gored by a Murderer. For various reasons, including Hendel’s age and Joaz’s youth, the Banbeck army failed to press to a decisive advantage. Ervis Carcolo, though exhausted by loss of blood and pain, withdrew in some degree of order, and for further years a suspicious truce held between the neighboring valleys.

Joaz matured into a saturnine young man, who, if he excited no enthusiastic affection from his people, at least aroused no violent dislike. He and Ervis Carcolo were united in a mutual contempt. At the mention of Joaz’s study, with its books, scrolls, models and plans, its complicated viewing-system across Banbeck Vale (the optics furnished, it was rumored, by the sacerdotes), Carcolo would throw up his hands in disgust. “Learning? Pah! What avails all this rolling in bygone vomit? Where does it lead? He should have been born a sacerdote; he is the same sort of sour-mouthed cloud-minded weakling!”

An itinerant, one Dae Alvonso, who combined the trades of minstrel, child-buyer, psychiatrist and chiropractor, reported Carcolo’s obloquies to Joaz, who shrugged. “Ervis Carcolo should breed himself to one of his own Juggers,” said Joaz. “He would thereby produce an impregnable creature with the Jugger’s armor and his own unflinching stupidity.”

The remark in due course returned to Ervis Carcolo, and by coincidence, touched him in a particularly sore spot. Secretly he had been attempting an innovation at his brooders: a dragon almost as massive as the Jugger with the savage intelligence and agility of the Blue Horror. But Ervis Carcolo worked with an intuitive and over-optimistic approach, ignoring the advice of Bast Givven, his Chief Dragon Master.

The eggs hatched; a dozen spratlings survived. Ervis Carcolo nurtured them with alternate tenderness and objurgation. Eventually the dragons matured. Carcolo’s hoped for combination of fury and impregnability was realized in four sluggish irritable creatures, with bloated torsos, spindly legs, insatiable appetites. (“As if one can breed a dragon by commanding it: “Exist!’ ” sneered Bast Givven to his helpers, and advised them, “Be wary of the beasts; they are competent only at luring you within reach of their brachs.”)

The time, effort, facilities and provender wasted upon the useless hybrid had weakened Carcolo’s army. Of the fecund Termagants he had no lack; there was a sufficiency of Long-horned Murderers and Striding Monsters, but the heavier and more specialized types, especially Juggers, were far from adequate to his plans. The memory of Happy Valley’s ancient glory haunted his dreams; first he would subdue Banbeck Vale, and often he planned the ceremony whereby he would reduce Joaz Banbeck to the office of apprentice barracks boy.

Ervis Carcolo’s ambitions were complicated by a set of basic difficulties. Happy Valley’s population had doubled, but rather then extending the city by breaching new pinnacles or driving tunnels, Carcolo constructed three new dragon-brooders, a dozen barracks and an enormous training compound. The folk of the valley could choose either to cram the fetid existing tunnels or build ramshackle dwellings along the base of the cliff. Brooders, barracks, training fields; water was diverted from the pond to maintain the brooders; enormous quantities of produce went to feed dragons. The folk of Happy Valley, undernourished, sickly, miserable, shared none of Carcolo’s aspirations, and their lack of enthusiasm infuriated him.

In any event, when the itinerant Dae Alvonso repeated Joaz Banbeck’s recommendation that Ervis Carcolo breed himself to a Jugger, Carcolo seethed with choler. “Bah! What does Joaz Banbeck know about dragon-breeding? I doubt if he understands his own dragon-talk.” He referred to the means by which orders and instructions were transmitted to the dragons: a secret jargon distinctive to every army. To learn an opponent’s dragon-talk was the prime goal of every Dragon Master, for he thereby gained a certain degree of control over his enemies forces. “I am a practical man, worth two of him,” Carcolo went on. “Can he design, nurture, rear and teach dragons? Can he impose discipline, teach ferocity? No. He leaves all this to his dragon masters, while he lolls on a couch eating sweetmeats, campaigning only against the patience of his minstrel-maidens. They say that by astrological divination he predicts the return of the Basics, that he walks with his neck cocked, watching the sky. Is such a man deserving of power and a prosperous life? I say no. Is Ervis Carcolo of Happy Valley such a man? I say yes, and this I will demonstrate.”

Dae Alvonso judiciously held up his hand. “Not so fast. He is more alert than you think. His dragons are in prime condition; he visits them often. And as for the Basics—”

“Do not speak to me of Basics,” stormed Carcolo. “I am no child to be frightened by bugbears!”

Again Dae Alvonso held up his hand. “Listen. I am serious, and you can profit by my news. Joaz Banbeck took me into his study—”

“The famous study, indeed!”

“From a cabinet he brought out a ball of crystal mounted on a black box.”

“Aha!” jeered Carcolo. “A crystal ball!”

Dae Alvonso went on placidly, ignoring the interruption. “I examined this globe, and indeed it seemed to hold all of space; within it floated stars and planets, all the bodies of the cluster. ‘Look well,’ said Joaz Banbeck, ‘you will never see the like of this anywhere. It was built by the olden men and brought to Aerlith when our people first arrived.’

“ ‘Indeed,’ I said. ‘And what is this object?’

“ ‘It is a celestial armamentarium,’ said Joaz. ‘It depicts all the nearby stars, and their positions at any time I choose to specify. Now,’ here he pointed, ‘see this white dot? This is our sun. See this red star? In the old almanacs it is named Coralyne. It swings near us at irregular intervals, for such is the flow of stars in– this cluster. These intervals have always coincided with the attacks of the Basics.’

“Here I expressed astonishment; Joaz assured me regarding the matter. ‘The history of men on Aerlith records six attacks by the Basics, or grephs as they were originally known. Apparently as Coralyne swings through space the Basics scour nearby worlds for hidden dens of humanity. The last of these was long ago during the time of Kergan Banbeck, with the results you know about. At that time Coralyne passed close in the heavens. For the first time since Coralyne is once more close at hand.’ This,” Alvonso told Carcolo, “is what Joaz Banbeck told me, and this is what I saw.”

Carcolo was impressed in spite of himself. “Do you mean to tell me,” demanded Carcolo, “that within this globe swim all the stars of space?”

“As to that, I cannot vouch,” replied Dae Alvonso. “The globe is set in a black box, and I suspect that an inner mechanism projects images or perhaps controls luminous spots which stimulate the stars. Either way it is a marvelous device, one which I would be proud to own. I offered Joaz several precious objects in exchange, but he would have none of them.”

Carcolo curled his lip in disgust. “You and your stolen children. Have you no shame?”

“No more than my customers,” said Dae Alvonso stoutly. “As I recall, I have dealt profitably with you on several occasions.”

Ervis Carcolo turned away, pretended to watch a pair of Termagants exercising with wooden scimitars. The two men stood by a stone fence behind which scores of dragons practiced evolutions, duel with spears, swords, strengthened muscles. Scales flashed, dust rose up under splayed stamping feet; the acrid odor of dragon-sweat permeated the air.

Carcolo muttered, “He is crafty, that Joaz. He knew you would report to me in detail.”

Dae Alvonso nodded. “Precisely. His words were—but perhaps I should, be discreet.” He glanced slyly toward Carcolo from under shaggy white eyebrows.

“Speak,” said Ervis Carcolo gruffly.

“Very well. Mind you, I quote Joaz Banbeck. ‘Tell blundering old Carcolo that he is in great danger. If the Basics return to Aerlith, as well they may, Happy Valley is absolutely vulnerable and will be ruined. Where can his people hide? They will be herded into the black ship, transported to a cold new planet. If Carcolo is not completely heartless he will drive new tunnels, prepare hidden avenues. Otherwise—’ ”

“Otherwise what?” demanded Carcolo. “ ‘Otherwise there will be no more Happy Valley, no more Ervis Carcolo.’ ”

“Bah,” said Carcolo in a subdued voice. “The young jackanapes barks in shrill tones.”

“Perhaps he extends an honest warning. His further words . . . But I fear to offend your dignity.”

“Continue! Speak!”

“These are his words—but no, I dare not repeat them. Essentially he considers your efforts to create an army ludicrous; he contrasts your intelligence unfavorably to his own; he predicts—”

“Enough!” roared Ervis Carcolo, waving his fists. “He is a subtle adversary, but why do you lend yourself to his tricks?”

Dae Alvonso shook his frosty old head. “I merely repeat, with reluctance, that which you demand to hear. Now then, since you have wrung me dry, do me some profit. Will you buy drugs, elixirs, wambles, or potions? I have here a salve of eternal youth which I stole from the Demie Sacerdote’s personal coffer. In my train are both boy and girl children, obsequious and handsome, at a fair price. I will listen to your woes, cure your lisp, guarantee a placidity of disposition—or perhaps you would buy dragon eggs?”

“I need none of those,” grunted Carcolo. “Especially dragon’s eggs which hatch to lizards. As for children, Happy Valley seethes with them. Bring me a dozen sound Juggers, you may depart with a hundred children of your choice.”

Dae Alvonso shook his head sadly, lurched away. Carcolo slumped against the fence, staring across the dragon pens.

The sun hung low over the crags of Mount Despoire; evening was close at hand. This was the most pleasant time of the Aerlith day, when the winds ceased, leaving a vast velvet quiet. Skene’s blaze softened to a smoky yellow, with a bronze aureole; the clouds of the approaching evening storm gathered, rose, fell, shifted, swirled, glowing and changing in every tone of gold, orange-brown, gold-brown and dusty violet.

Skene sank; the golds and oranges became oak-brown and purple; lightning threaded the clouds and the rain fell in a black curtain. In the barracks men moved with vigilance, for now the dragons became unpredictable—by turns watchful, torpid, quarrelsome. With the passing of the rain, evening became night, and a cool quiet breeze drifted through the valleys. The dark sky began to burn and dazzle with the stars of the cluster. One of the most effulgent twinkled red, green, white, red, green.

Ervis Carcolo studied this star thoughtfully. One idea led to another, and presently to a course of action which seemed to dissolve the entire tangle of uncertainties and dissatisfactions which marred his life. Carcolo twisted his mouth to a sour grimace; he must make overtures to that popinjay Joaz Banbeck—but if this were unavoidable: so be it!

Hence, the following morning, shortly after Phade the minstrel-maiden discovered the sacerdote in Joaz’s study, a messenger appeared in the Vale, inviting Joaz Banbeck up to Banbeck Verge for a conference with Ervis Carcolo.