After the King: Stories in Honor of J.R.R. Tolkien

The Fellowship of the Dragon Patricia A. McKillip

A great cry rose throughout the land: Queen Celandine had lost her harper. She summoned north, south, east, west; we rode for days through mud and rain to meet, the five of us, at Trillium; from there we rode to Carnelaine. The world had come to her great court, for though we lived too far from her to hear her fabled harper play, we heard the rumor that at each full moon she gave him gloves of cloth of gold and filled his mouth with jewels. As we stood in the hall among her shining company, listening to her pleas for help, Justin, who is the riddler among us, whispered, “What is invisible but everywhere, swift as wind but has no feet, and has as many tongues that speak but never has a face?”

“Easy,” I breathed. “Rumor.”

“Rumor, that shy beast, says she valued his hands far more than his harping, and she filled his mouth with more than jewels.”

I was hardly surprised. Celandine is as beautiful close as she is at a distance; she has been so for years, with the aid of a streak of sorcery she inherited through a bit of murkiness, an imprecise history on the distaff side, and she is not one to waste her gifts. She had married honorably, loved faithfully, raised her heirs well. When her husband died a decade ago, she mourned him with the good-hearted efficiency she had brought to marriage and throne. Her hair showed which way the wind was blowing, and the way that silver, ash and gold worked among the court was magical. But when we grew close enough to kneel before her, I saw that the harper was no idle indulgence, but had sung his way into her blood.

“You five,” she said softly, “I trust more than all my court. I rely on you.” Her eyes, green as her name, were grim; I saw the tiny lines of fear and temper beside her mouth. “There are some in this hall who—because I have not been entirely wise or tactful—would sooner see the harper dead than rescue him.”

“Do you know where he is?”

She lowered her voice; I could scarcely hear her, though the jealous knights behind me must have stilled their hearts to catch her answer. “I looked in water, in crystal, in mirror: every image is the same. Black Tremptor has him.”

“Oh, fine.”

She bent to kiss me: we are cousins, though sometimes I have been more a wayward daughter, and more often, she a wayward mother. “Find him, Anne,” she said. We five rose as one and left the court.

“What did she say?” Danica asked as we mounted. “Did she say Black Tremptor?”

“Sh!”

“That’s a mountain,” Fleur said.

“It’s a bloody dragon,” Danica said sharply, and I bellowed in a whisper, “Can you refrain from announcing our destination to the entire world?”

Danica wheeled her mount crossly; peacocks, with more haste than grace, swept their fine trains out of her way. Justin looked intrigued by the problem. Christabel, who was nursing a cold, said stoically, “Could be worse.” What could be worse than being reduced to a cinder by an irritated dragon, she didn’t mention. Fleur, who loved good harping, was moved.

“Then we must hurry. Poor man.” She pulled herself up, cantered after Danica. Riding more sedately through the crowded yard, we found them outside the gate, gazing east and west across the grey, billowing sky as if it had streamed out of a dragon’s nostrils.

“Which way?” Fleur asked. Justin, who knew such things, pointed. Christabel blew her nose. We rode.

Of course we circled back through the city and lost the knights who had been following us. We watched them through a tavern window as they galloped purposefully down the wrong crossroad. Danica, whose moods swung between sun and shadow like an autumn day, was being enchanted by Fleur’s description of the object of our quest.

“He is a magnificent harper, and we should spare no pains to rescue him, for there is no one like him in all the world, and Queen Celandine might reward us with gold and honor, but he will reward us forever in a song.”

Christabel waved the fumes of hot spiced wine at her nose. “Does anyone know this harper’s name?”

“Kestral,” I said. “Kestral Hunt. He came to court a year ago, at old Thurlow’s death.”

“And where,” Christabel asked sensibly, “is Black Tremptor?”

We all looked at Justin, who for once looked uncomfortable. “North,” she said. She is a slender, dark-haired, quiet-voiced woman with eyes like the storm outside. She could lay out facts like an open road, or mortar them into a brick wall. Which she was building for us now, I wasn’t sure.

“Justin?”

“Well, north,” she said vaguely, as if that alone explained itself. “It’s fey, beyond the border. Odd things happen. We must be watchful.”

We were silent. The tavern keeper came with our supper. Danica, pouring wine the same pale honey as her hair, looked thoughtful at the warning instead of cross. “What kinds of things?”

“Evidently harpers are stolen by dragons,” I said. “Dragons with some taste in music.”

“Black Tremptor is not musical,” Justin said simply. “But like that, yes. There are so many tales, who knows which of them might be true? And we barely know the harper any better than the northlands.”

“His name,” I said, “and that he plays well.”

“He plays wonderfully,” Fleur breathed. “So they say.”

“And he caught the queen’s eye,” Christabel said, biting into a chicken leg. “So he might look passable. Though with good musicians, that hardly matters.”

“And he went north,” Justin pointed out. “For what?”

“To find a song,” Fleur suggested; it seemed, as gifted as he was, not unlikely.

“Or a harp,” I guessed. “A magical harp.”

Justin nodded. “Guarded by a powerful dragon. It’s possible. Such things happen, north.”

Fleur pushed her dish aside, sank tableward onto her fists. She is straw-thin, with a blacksmith’s appetite; love, I could tell, for this fantasy, made her ignore the last of her parsnips. She has pale, curly hair like a sheep, and a wonderful, caressing voice; her eyes are small, her nose big, her teeth crooked, but her passionate, musical voice has proved Christabel right more times than was good for Fleur’s husband to know. How robust, practical Christabel, who scarcely seemed to notice men or music, understood such things, I wasn’t sure.

“So,” I said. “North.”

And then we strayed into the country called “Remember-when,” for we had known one another as children in the court at Carnelaine, and then as members of the queen’s company, riding ideals headlong into trouble, and now, as long and trusted friends. We got to bed late, enchanted by our memories, and out of bed far too early, wondering obviously why we had left hearth and home, husband, child, cat and goosedown bed for one another’s surly company. Christabel sniffed, Danica snapped, Fleur babbled, I was terse. As always, only Justin was bearable.

We rode north.

The farther we travelled, the wilder the country grew. We moved quickly, slept under trees or in obscure inns, for five armed women riding together are easily remembered, and knights dangerous to the harper as well as solicitous of the queen would have known to track us. Slowly the great, dark crags bordering the queen’s marches came closer and closer to meet us, until we reached, one sunny afternoon, their shadow.

“Now what?” Danica asked fretfully. “Do we fly over that?” They were huge, barren thrusts of stone pushing high out of forests like bone out of skin. She looked at Justin; we all did. There was a peculiar expression on her face, as if she recognized something she had only seen before in dreams.

“There will be a road,” she said softly. We were in thick forest; old trees marched in front of us, beside us, flanked us. Not even they had found a way to climb the peaks.

“Where, Justin?” I asked.

“We must wait until sunset.”

We found a clearing, where the road we followed abruptly turned to amble west along a stream. Christabel and Danica went hunting. Fleur checked our supplies and mended a tear in her cloak. I curried the horses. Justin, who had gone to forage, came back with mushrooms, nuts and a few wild apples. She found another brush and helped me.

“Is it far now?” I asked, worried about finding supplies in the wilderness, about the horses, about Christabel’s stubbornly lingering cold, even, a little, about the harper. Justin picked a burr out of her mount’s mane. A line ran across her smooth brow.

“Not far beyond those peaks,” she answered. “It’s just that—”

“Just what?”

“We must be so careful.”

“We’re always careful. Christabel can put an arrow into anything that moves, Danica can—”

“I don’t mean that. I mean: the world shows a different face beyond those peaks.” I looked at her puzzledly; she shook her head, gazing at the mountains, somehow wary and entranced at once. “Sometimes real, sometimes unreal—”

“The harper is real, the dragon is real,” I said briskly. “And we are real. If I can remember that, we’ll be fine.”

She touched my shoulder, smiling. “I think you’re right, Anne. It’s your prosaic turn of mind that will bring us all home again.”

But she was wrong.

The sun, setting behind a bank of sullen clouds, left a message: a final shaft of light hit what looked like solid stone ahead of us and parted it. We saw a faint, white road that cut out of the trees and into the base of two great crags: the light seemed to ease one wall of stone aside, like a gate. Then the light faded, and we were left staring at the solid wall, memorizing the landscape.

“It’s a woman’s profile,” Fleur said. “The road runs beneath the bridge of her nose.”

“It’s a one-eared cat,” Christabel suggested.

“The road is west of the higher crag,” Danica said impatiently. “We should simply ride toward that.”

“The mountains will change and change again before we reach it,” I said. “The road comes out of that widow’s peak of trees. It’s the highest point of the forest. We only need to follow the edge of the trees.”

“The widow,” Danica murmured, “is upside-down.”

I shrugged. “The harper found his way. It can’t be that difficult.”

“Perhaps,” Fleur suggested, “he followed a magical path.”

“He parted stone with his harping,” Christabel said stuffily. “If he’s that clever, he can play his way out of the dragon’s mouth, and we can all turn around and go sleep in our beds.”

“Oh, Christabel,” Fleur mourned, her voice like a sweet flute. “Sit down. I’ll make you herb tea with wild honey in it; you’ll sleep on clouds tonight.”

We all had herb tea, with brandy and the honey Fleur had found, but only Fleur slept through the thunderstorm. We gathered ourselves wetly at dawn, slogged through endless dripping forest, until suddenly there were no more trees, there was no more rain, only the unexpected sun illumining a bone-white road into the great upsweep of stone ahead of us.

We rode beyond the land we knew.

I don’t know where we slept that first night: wherever we fell off our horses, I think. In the morning we saw Black Tremptor’s mountain, a dragon’s palace of cliffs and jagged columns and sheer walls ascending into cloud. As we rode down the slope toward it, the cloud wrapped itself down around the mountain, hid it. The road, wanting nothing to do with dragons, turned at the edge of the forest and ran off the wrong direction. We pushed into trees. The forest on that side was very old, the trees so high, their green boughs so thick, we could barely see the sky, let alone the dragon’s lair. But I have a strong sense of direction, of where the sun rises and sets, that kept us from straying. The place was soundless. Fleur and Christabel kept arrows ready for bird or deer, but we saw nothing on four legs or two: only spiders, looking old as the forest, weaving webs as huge and intricate as tapestry in the trees.

“It’s so still,” Fleur breathed. “As if it is waiting for music.”

Christabel turned a bleary eye at her and sniffed. But Fleur was right: the stillness did seem magical, an intention out of someone’s head. As we listened, the rain began again. We heard it patter from bough to bough a long time before it reached us.

Night fell the same way: sliding slowly down from the invisible sky, catching us without fresh kill, in the rain without a fire. Silent, we rode until we could barely see. We stopped finally, while we could still imagine one another’s faces.

“The harper made it through,” Danica said softly; what Celandine’s troublesome, faceless lover could do, so could we.

“There’s herbs and honey and more brandy,” Christabel said. Fleur, who suffered most from hunger, having a hummingbird’s energy, said nothing. Justin lifted her head sharply.

“I smell smoke.”

I saw the light then: two square eyes and one round among the distant trees. I sighed with relief and felt no pity for whoever in that quiet cottage was about to find us on the doorstep.

But the lady of the cottage did not seem discomfitted to see five armed, dripping, hungry travellers wanting to invade her house.

“Come in,” she said. “Come in.” As we filed through the door, I saw all the birds and animals we had missed in the forest circle the room around us: stag and boar and owl, red deer, hare and mourning dove. I blinked, and they were motionless: things of thread and paint and wood, embroidered onto curtains, carved into the backs of chairs, painted on the rafters. Before I could speak, smells assaulted us, and I felt Fleur stagger against me.

“You poor children.” Old as we were, she was old enough to say that. “Wet and weary and hungry.” She was a bird-like soul herself: a bit of magpie in her curious eyes, a bit of hawk’s beak in her nose. Her hair looked fine and white as spider web, her knuckles like swollen tree boles. Her voice was kindly, and so was her warm hearth, and the smells coming out of her kitchen. Even her skirt was hemmed with birds. “Sit down. I’ve been baking bread, and there’s a hot meat pie almost done in the oven.” She turned, to give something simmering in a pot over the fire a stir. “Where are you from and where are you bound?”

“We are from the court of Queen Celandine,” I said. “We have come searching for her harper. Did he pass this way?”

“Ah,” she said, her face brightening. “A tall man with golden hair and a voice to match his harping?”

“Sounds like,” Christabel said.

“He played for me, such lovely songs. He said he had to find a certain harp. He ate nothing and was gone before sunrise.” She gave the pot another stir. “Is he lost?”

“Black Tremptor has him.”

“Oh, terrible.” She shook her head. “He is fortunate to have such good friends to rescue him.”

“He is the queen’s good friend,” I said, barely listening to myself as the smell from the pot curled into me, “and we are hers. What is that you are cooking?”

“Just a little something for my bird.”

“You found a bird?” Fleur said faintly, trying to be sociable. “We saw none … Whatever do you feed it? It smells good enough to eat.”

“Oh, no, you must not touch it; it is only bird-fare. I have delicacies for you.”

“What kind of bird is it?” Justin asked. The woman tapped the spoon on the edge of the pot, laid it across the rim.

“Oh, just a little thing. A little, hungry thing I found. You’re right: the forest has few birds. That’s why I sew and paint my birds and animals, to give me company. There’s wine,” she added. “I’ll get it for you.”

She left. Danica paced; Christabel sat close to the fire, indifferent to the smell of the pot bubbling under her stuffy nose. Justin had picked up a small wooden boar and was examining it idly. Fleur drifted, pale as cloud; I kept an eye on her to see she did not topple into the fire. The old woman had trouble, it seemed, finding cups.

“How strange,” Justin breathed. “This looks so real, every tiny bristle.”

Fleur had wandered to the hearth to stare down into the pot. I heard it bubble fatly. She gave one pleading glance toward the kitchen, but still there was nothing to eat but promises. She had the spoon in her hand suddenly, I thought to stir.

“It must be a very strange bird to eat mushrooms,” she commented. “And what looks like—”Justin put the boar down so sharply I jumped, but Fleur lifted the spoon to her lips. “Lamb,” she said happily. And then she vanished: there was only a frantic lark fluttering among the rafters, sending plea after lovely plea for freedom.

The woman reappeared. “My bird,” she cried. “My pretty.” I was on my feet with my sword drawn before I could even close my mouth. I swung, but the old witch didn’t linger to do battle. A hawk caught the lark in its claws; the door swung open, and both birds disappeared into the night.

We ran into the dark, stunned and horrified. The door slammed shut behind us like a mouth. The fire dwindled into two red flames that stared like eyes out of the darkened windows. They gave no light; we could see nothing.

“That bloody web-haired old spider,” Danica said furiously. “That horrible, putrid witch.” I heard a thump as she hit a tree; she cursed painfully. Someone hammered with solid, methodical blows at the door and windows; I guessed Christabel was laying siege. But nothing gave. She groaned with frustration. I felt a touch and raised my sword; Justin said sharply, “It’s me.” She put her hand on my shoulder; I felt myself tremble.

“Now what?” I said tersely. I could barely speak; I only wanted action, but we were blind and bumbling in the dark.

“I think she doesn’t kill them,” Justin said. “She changes them. Listen to me. She’ll bring Fleur back into her house eventually. We’ll find someone to tell us how to free her from the spell. Someone in this wilderness of magic should know. And not everyone is cruel.”

“We’ll stay here until the witch returns.”

“I doubt she’ll return until we’re gone. And even if we find some way to kill her, we may be left with an embroidered Fleur.”

“We’ll stay.”

“Anne,” she said, and I slumped to the ground, wanting to curse, to weep, wanting at the very least to tear the clinging cobweb dark away from my eyes.

“Poor Fleur,” I whispered. “She was only hungry … Harper or no, we rescue her when we learn how. She comes first.”

“Yes,” she agreed at that, and added thoughtfully, “The harper eluded the witch, it seems, though not the dragon.”

“How could he have known?” I asked bitterly. “By what magic?”

“Maybe he had met the witch first in a song.”

Morning found us littered across tree roots like the remains of some lost battle. At least we could see again. The house had flown itself away; only a couple of fiery feathers remained. We rose wordlessly, feeling the empty place where Fleur had been, listening for her morning chatter. We fed the horses, ate stone-hard bread with honey, and had a swallow of brandy apiece. Then we left Fleur behind and rode.

The great forest finally thinned, turned to golden oak, which parted now and then around broad meadows where we saw the sky again, and the high dark peak. We passed through a village, a mushroom patch of a place, neither friendly nor surly, nor overly curious. We found an inn, and some supplies, and, beyond the village, a road to the dragon’s mountain that had been cleared, we were told, before the mountain had become the dragon’s lair. Yes, we were also told, a harper had passed through … He seemed to have left little impression on the villagers, but they were a hard-headed lot, living under the dragon’s shadow. He, too, had asked directions, as well as questions about Black Tremptor, and certain tales of gold and magic harps and other bits of country lore. But no one else had taken that road for decades, leading, as it did, into the dragon’s mouth.

We took it. The mountain grew clearer, looming high above the trees. We watched for dragon wings, dragon fire, but if Black Tremptor flew, it was not by day. The rain had cleared; a scent like dying roses and aged sunlit wood seemed to blow across our path. We camped on one of the broad, grassy clearings where we watched the full moon rise, turn the meadow milky, and etch the dragon’s lair against the stars.

But for Fleur, the night seemed magical. We talked of her, and then of home; we talked of her, and then of court gossip; we talked of her, and of the harper, and what might have lured him away from Celandine into a dragon’s claw. And as we spoke of him, it seemed his music fell around us from the stars, and that the moonlight in the oak wood had turned to gold.

“Sh!” Christabel said sharply, and, drowsy, we quieted to listen. Danica yawned.

“It’s just harping.” She had an indifferent ear: Fleur was more persuasive about the harper’s harping than his harping would have been. “Just a harping from the woods.”

“Someone’s singing,” Christabel said. I raised my brows, feeling that in the untroubled, sweetly scented night, anything might happen.

“Is it our missing Kestral?”

“Singing in a tree?” Danica guessed. Christabel sat straight.

“Be quiet,” she said sharply. Justin, lying on her stomach, tossing twigs into the fire, glanced at her surprisedly. Danica and I only laughed, at Christabel in a temper.

“You have no hearts,” she said, blowing her nose fiercely. “It’s so beautiful and all you can do is gabble.”

“All right,” Justin said soothingly. “We’ll listen.” But, moonstruck, Danica and I could not keep still. We told raucous tales of old loves while Christabel strained to hear, and Justin watched her curiously. She seemed oddly moved, did Christabel; feverish, I thought, from all the rain.

A man rode out of the trees into the moonlight at the edge of the meadow. He had milky hair, broad shoulders; a gold mantle fanned across his horse’s back. The crown above his shadowed face was odd: a circle of uneven gold spikes, like antlers. He was unarmed; he played the harp.

“Not our harper,” Danica commented. “Unless the dragon turned his hair white.”

“He’s a king,” I said. “Not ours.” For a moment, just a moment, I heard his playing, and knew it could have parted water, made birds speak. I caught my breath; tears swelled behind my eyes. Then Danica said something and I laughed.

Christabel stood up. Her face was unfamiliar in the moonlight. She took off her boots, unbraided her hair, let it fall loosely down her back; all this while we only watched and laughed and glanced now and then, indifferently, at the waiting woodland harper.

“You’re hopeless boors,” Christabel said, sniffing. “I’m going to speak to him, ask him to come and sit with us.”

“Go on then,” Danica said, chewing a grass blade. “Maybe we can take him home to Celandine instead.” I rolled over in helpless laughter. When I wiped my eyes, I saw Christabel walking barefoot across the meadow to the harper.

Justin stood up. A little, nagging wind blew through my thoughts. I stood beside her, still laughing a little, yet poised to hold her if she stepped out of the circle of our firelight. She watched Christabel. Danica watched the fire dreamily, smiling. Christabel stood before the harper. He took his hand from his strings and held it out to her.

In the sudden silence, Justin shouted, “Christabel!”

All the golden light in the world frayed away. A dragon’s wing of cloud brushed the moon; night washed toward Christabel, as she took his hand and mounted; I saw all her lovely, red-gold hair flowing freely in the last of the light. And then freckled, stolid, courageous, snuffling Christabel caught the harper-king’s shoulders and they rode down the fading path of light into a world beyond the night.

We searched for her until dawn.

At sunrise, we stared at one another, haggard, mute. The great oak had swallowed Christabel; she had disappeared into a harper’s song.

“We could go to the village for help,” Danica said wearily.

“Their eyes are no better than ours,” I said.

“The queen’s harper passed through here unharmed,” Justin mused. “Perhaps he knows something about the country of the woodland king.”

“I hope he is worth all this,” Danica muttered savagely.

“No man is,” Justin said simply. “But all this will be worth nothing if Black Tremptor kills him before we find him. He may be able to lead us safely out of the northlands, if nothing else.

“I will not leave Fleur and Christabel behind,” I said sharply. “I will not. You may take the harper back to Celandine. I stay here until I find them.”

Justin looked at me; her eyes were reddened with sleeplessness, but they saw as clearly as ever into the mess we had made. “We will not leave you, Anne,” she said. “If he cannot help us, he must find his own way back. But if he can help us, we must abandon Christabel now to rescue him.”

“Then let’s do it,” I said shortly and turned my face away from the oak. A little wind shivered like laughter through their golden leaves.

We rode long and hard. The road plunged back into forest, up low foothills, brought us to the flank of the great dark mountain. We pulled up in its shadow. The dragon’s eyrie shifted under the eye; stone pillars opened into passages, their granite walls split and hollowed like honeycombs, like some palace of winds, open at every angle yet with every passage leading into shadow, into the hidden dragon’s heart.

“In there?” Danica asked. There was no fear in her voice, just her usual impatience to get things done. “Do we knock, or just walk in?” A wind roared through the stones then, bending trees as it blasted at us. I heard stones thrum like harp-strings; I heard the dragon’s voice. We turned our mounts, flattened ourselves against them, while the wild wind rode over us. Recovering, Danica asked more quietly, “Do we go in together?”

“Yes,” I said, and then, “No. I’ll go first.”

“Don’t be daft, Anne,” Danica said crossly. “If we all go together at least we’ll know where we all are.”

“And fools we will look, too,” I said grimly, “caught along with the harper, waiting for Celandine’s knights to rescue us as well.” I turned to Justin. “Is there some secret, some riddle for surviving dragons?”

She shook her head helplessly. “It depends on the dragon. I know nothing about Black Tremptor, except that he most likely has not kept the harper for his harping.”

“Two will go,” I said. “And one wait.”

They did not argue; there seemed no foolproof way, except for none of us to go. We tossed coins: two peacocks and one Celandine. Justin, who got the queen, did not look happy, but the coins were adamant. Danica and I left her standing with our horses, shielded within green boughs, watching us. We climbed the bald slope quietly, trying not to scatter stones. We had to watch our feet, pick a careful path to keep from sliding. Danica, staring groundward, stopped suddenly ahead of me to pick up something.

“Look,” she breathed. I did, expecting a broken harp string, or an ivory button with Celandine’s profile on it.

It was an emerald as big as my thumbnail, shaped and faceted. I stared at it a moment. Then I said, “Dragon-treasure. We came to find a harper.”

“But Anne—there’s another—” She scrabbled across loose stone to retrieve it. “Topaz. And over there a sapphire—”

“Danica,” I pleaded. “You can carry home the entire mountain after you’ve dispatched the dragon.”

“I’m coming,” she said breathlessly, but she had scuttled crab-wise across the slope toward yet another gleam. “Just one more. They’re so beautiful, and just lying here free as rain for anyone to take.”

“Danica! They’ll be as free when we climb back down.”

“I’m coming.”

I turned, in resignation to her sudden magpie urge. “I’m going up.”

“Just a moment, don’t go alone. Oh, Anne, look there, it’s a diamond. I’ve never seen such fire.”

I held my breath, gave her that one moment. It had been such a long, hard journey I found it impossible to deny her an unexpected pleasure. She knelt, groped along the side of a boulder for a shining as pure as water in the sunlight. “I’m coming,” she assured me, her back to me. “I’m coming.”

And then the boulder lifted itself up off the ground. Something forked and nubbled like a tree root, whispering harshly to itself, caught her by her hand and by her honey hair and pulled her down into its hole. The boulder dropped ponderously, earth shifted close around its sides as if it had never moved.

I stared, stunned. I don’t remember crossing the slope, only beating on the boulder with my hands and then my sword hilt, crying furiously at it, until all the broken shards underfoot undulated and swept me in a dry, rattling, bruising wave back down the slope into the trees.

Justin ran to help me. I was torn, bleeding, cursing, crying; I took a while to become coherent. “Of all the stupid, feeble tricks to fall for! A trail of jewels! They’re probably not even real, and Danica got herself trapped under a mountain for a pocketful of coal or dragon fewmets—”

“She won’t be trapped quietly,” Justin said. Her face was waxen. “What took her?”

“A little crooked something—an imp, a mountain troll—Justin, she’s down there without us in a darkness full of whispering things—I can’t believe we were so stupid!”

“Anne, calm down, we’ll find her.”

“I can’t calm down!” I seized her shoulders, shook her. “Don’t you disappear and leave me searching for you, too—”

“I won’t, I promise. Anne, listen.” She smoothed my hair with both her hands back from my face. “Listen to me. We’ll find her. We’ll find Christabel and Fleur, we will not leave this land until—”

“How?” I shouted. “How? Justin, she’s under solid rock!”

“There are ways. There are always ways. This land riddles constantly, but all the riddles have answers. Fleur will turn from a bird into a woman, we will find a path for Christabel out of the wood-king’s country, we will rescue Danica from the mountain imps. There are ways to do these things, we only have to find them.”

“How?” I cried again, for it seemed the farther we travelled in that land, the more trouble we got into. “Every time we turn around one of us disappears! You’ll go next—”

“I will not, I promise—”

“Or I will.”

“I know a few riddles,” someone said. “Perhaps I can help.”

We broke apart, as startled as if a tree had spoken: perhaps one had, in this exasperating land. But it was a woman. She wore a black cloak with a silver edging; her ivory hair and iris eyes and her grave, calm face within the hood were very beautiful. She carried an odd staff of gnarled black wood inset with a jewel the same pale violet as her eyes. She spoke gently, unsurprised by us; perhaps nothing in this place surprised her anymore. She added, at our silence, “My name is Yrecros. You are in great danger from the dragon; you must know that.”

“We have come to rescue a harper,” I said bitterly. “We were five, when we crossed into this land.”

“Ah.”

“Do you know this dragon?”

She did not answer immediately; beside me, Justin was oddly still. The staff shifted; the jewel glanced here and there, like an eye. The woman whose name was Yrecros said finally, “You may ask me anything.”

“I just did,” I said bewilderedly. Justin’s hand closed on my arm; I looked at her. Her face was very pale; her eyes held a strange, intense light I recognized: she had scented something intangible and was in pursuit. At such times she was impossible.

“Yrecros,” she said softly. “My name is Nitsuj.”

The woman smiled.

“What are you doing?” I said between my teeth.

“It’s a game,” Justin breathed. “Question for answer. She’ll tell us all we need to know.”

“Why must it be a game?” I protested. She and the woman were gazing at one another, improbable fighters about to engage in a delicate battle of wits. They seemed absorbed in one another, curious, stone-deaf. I raised my voice. “Justin!”

“You’ll want the harper, I suppose,” the woman said. I worked out her name then and closed my eyes.

Justin nodded. “It’s what we came for. And if I lose?”

“I want you,” the woman said simply, “for my apprentice.” She smiled again, without malice or menace. “For seven years.”

My breath caught. “No.” I could barely speak. I seized Justin’s arm, shook her. “Justin. Justin, please!” For just a moment I had, if not her eyes, her attention.

“It’s all right, Anne,” she said softly. “We’ll get the harper without a battle, and rescue Fleur and Christabel and Danica as well.”

“Justin!” I shouted. Above us all the pillars and cornices of stone echoed her name; great, barbed-winged birds wheeled out of the trees. But unlike bird and stone, Justin did not hear.

“You are a guest in this land,” the woman said graciously. “You may ask first.”

“Where is the road to the country of the woodland king?”

“The white stag in the oak forest follows the road to the land of the harper king,” Yrecros answered, “if you follow from morning to night, without weapons and without rest. What is the Song of Ducirc, and on what instrument was it first played?”

“The Song of Ducirc was the last song of a murdered poet to his love, and it was played to his lady in her high tower on an instrument of feathers, as all the birds in the forest who heard it sang her his lament,” Justin said promptly. I breathed a little then; she had been telling us such things all her life. “What traps the witch in the border woods in her true shape, and how can her power be taken?”

“The border witch may be trapped by a cage of iron; her staff of power is the spoon with which she stirs her magic. What begins with fire and ends with fire and is black and white between?”

“Night,” Justin said. Even I knew that one. The woman’s face held, for a moment, the waning moon’s smile. “Where is the path to the roots of this mountain, and what do those who dwell there fear most?”

“The path is fire, which will open their stones, and what they fear most is light. What is always coming yet never here, has a name but does not exist, is longer than day but shorter than day?”

Justin paused a blink. “Tomorrow,” she said, and added, “in autumn.” The woman smiled her lovely smile. I loosed breath noiselessly. “What will protect us from the dragon?”

The woman studied Justin, as if she were answering some private riddle of her own. “Courtesy,” she said simply. “Where is Black Tremptor’s true name hidden?”

Justin was silent; I felt her thoughts flutter like a bird seeking a perch. The silence lengthened; an icy finger slid along my bones.

“I do not know,” Justin said at last, and the woman answered, “The dragon’s name is hidden within a riddle.”

Justin read my thoughts; her hand clamped on my wrist. “Don’t fight,” she breathed.

“That’s not—”

“The answer’s fair.”

The woman’s brows knit thoughtfully. “Is there anything else you need to know?” She put her staff lightly on Justin’s shoulder, turned the jewel toward her pale face. The jewel burned a sudden flare of amethyst, as if in recognition. “My name is Sorcery and that is the path I follow. You will come with me for seven years. After that, you may choose to stay.”

“Tell me,” I pleaded desperately, “how to rescue her. You have told me everything else.”

The woman shook her head, smiling her brief moon-smile. Justin looked at me finally; I saw the answer in her eyes.

I stood mute, watching her walk away from me, tears pushing into my eyes, unable to plead or curse because there had been a game within a game, and only I had lost. Justin glanced back at me once, but she did not really see me, she only saw the path she had walked toward all her life.

I turned finally to face the dragon.

I climbed the slope again alone. No jewels caught my eye, no voice whispered my name. Not even the dragon greeted me. As I wandered through columns and caverns and hallways of stone, I heard only the wind moaning through the great bones of the mountain. I went deeper into stone. The passageways glowed butterfly colors with secretions from the dragon’s body. Here and there I saw a scale flaked off by stone; some flickered blue-green-black, others the colors of fire. Once I saw a chip of claw, hard as horn, longer than my hand. Sometimes I smelled sulphur, sometimes smoke, mostly wind smelling of the stone it scoured endlessly.

I heard harping.

I found the harper finally, sitting ankle-deep in jewels and gold, in a shadowy cavern, plucking wearily at his harp with one hand. His other hand was cuffed and chained with gold to a golden rivet in the cavern wall. He stared, speechless, when he saw me. He was, as rumored, tall and golden-haired, also unwashed, unkempt and sour from captivity. Even so, it was plain to see why Celandine wanted him back.

“Who are you?” he breathed, as I trampled treasure to get to him.

“I am Celandine’s cousin Anne. She sent her court to rescue you.”

“It took you long enough,” he grumbled, and added, “You couldn’t have come this far alone.”

“You did,” I said tersely, examining the chain that held him. Even Fleur would have had it out of the wall in a minute. “It’s gold, malleable. Why didn’t you—”

“I tried,” he said, and showed me his torn hands. “It’s dragon magic.” He jerked the chain fretfully from my hold. “Don’t bother trying. The key’s over near that wall.” He looked behind me, bewilderedly, for my imaginary companions. “Are you alone? She didn’t send her knights to fight this monster?”

“She didn’t trust them to remember who they were supposed to kill,” I said succinctly. He was silent, while I crossed the room to rummage among pins and cups and necklaces for the key. I added, “I didn’t ride from Carnelaine alone. I lost four companions in this land as we tracked you.”

“Lost?” For a moment, his voice held something besides his own misery. “Dead?”

“I think not.”

“How did you lose them?”

“One was lost to the witch in the wood.”

“Was she a witch?” he said, astonished. “I played for her, but she never offered me anything to eat, hungry as I was. I could smell food but she only said that it was burned and unfit for company.”

“And one,” I said, sifting through coins and wondering at the witch’s taste, “to the harper-king in the wood.”

“You saw him?” he breathed. “I played all night, hoping to hear his fabled harping, but he never answered with a note.”

“Maybe you never stopped to listen,” I said, in growing despair over the blind way he blundered through the land. “And one to the imps under the mountain.”

“What imps?”

“And last,” I said tightly, “in a riddle-game to the sorceress with the jewelled staff. You were to be the prize.”

He shifted, chain and coins rattling. “She only told me where to find what I was searching for, she didn’t warn me of the dangers. She could have helped me! She never said she was a sorceress.”

“Did she tell you her name?”

“I don’t remember—what difference does it make? Hurry with the key before the dragon smells you here. It would have been so much easier for me if your companion had not lost the riddle-game.”

I paused in my searching to gaze at him. “Yes,” I said finally, “and it would have been easier than that for all of us if you had never come here. Why did you?”

He pointed. “I came for that.”

“That” was a harp of bone. Its strings glistened with the same elusive, shimmering colors that stained the passageways. A golden key lay next to it. I am as musical as the next, no more, but when I saw those strange, glowing strings I was filled with wonder at what music they might make and I paused, before I touched the key, to pluck a note.

It seemed the mountain hummed.

“No!” the harper cried, heaving to his feet in a tide of gold. Wind sucked out of the cave, as at the draw of some gigantic wing. “You stupid, blundering—How do you think I got caught? Throw me the key! Quickly!”

I weighed the key in my hand, prickling at his rudeness. But he was, after all, what I had promised Celandine to find, and I imagined that washed and fed and in the queen’s hands, he would assert his charms again. I tossed the key; it fell a little short of his outstretched hand.

“Fool!” he snapped. “You are as clumsy as the queen.”

Stone-still, I stared at him, as he strained, groping for the key. I turned abruptly to the harp and ran my hand down all the strings.

What travelled down the passages to find us shed smoke and fire and broken stone behind it. The harper groaned and hid behind his arms. Smoke cleared; great eyes like moons of fire gazed at us near the high ceiling. A single claw as long as my shin dropped within an inch of my foot. Courtesy, I thought frantically. Courtesy, she said. It was like offering idle chatter to the sun. Before I could speak, the harper cried,

“She played it! She came in here searching for it, too, though I tried to stop her—”

Heat whuffed at me; I felt the gold I wore burn my neck. I said, feeling scorched within as well, “I ask your pardon if I have offended you. I came, at my queen’s request, to rescue her harper. It seems you do not care for harping. If it pleases you, I will take what must be an annoyance out of your house.” I paused. The great eyes sank a little toward me. I added, for such things seemed important in this land, “My name is Anne.”

“Anne,” the smoke whispered. I heard the harper jerk in his chain. The claw retreated slightly; the immense flat lizard’s head lowered, its fiery scales charred dark with smoke, tiny sparks of fire winking between its teeth. “What is his name?”

“Kestral,” the harper said quickly. “Kestral Hunt.”

“You are right,” the hot breath sighed. “He is an annoyance. Are you sure you want him back?”

“No,” I said, my eyes blurring in wonder and relief that I had finally found, in this dangerous land, something I did not need to fear. “He is extremely rude, ungrateful and insensitive. I imagine that my queen loves him for his hair or for his harper’s hands; she must not listen to him speak. So I had better take him. I am sorry that he snuck into your house and tried to steal from you.”

“It is a harp made of dragon bone and sinew,” the dragon said. “It is why I dislike harpers, who make such things and then sing songs of their great cleverness. As this one would have.” Its jaws yawned; a tongue of fire shot out, melted gold beside the harper’s hand. He scuttled against the wall.

“I beg your pardon,” he said hastily. A dark curved dragon’s smile hung in the fading smoke; it snorted heat.

“Perhaps I will keep you and make a harp of your bones.”

“It would be miserably out of tune,” I commented. “Is there something I can do for you in exchange for the harper’s freedom?”

An eye dropped close, moon-round, shadows of color constantly disappearing through it. “Tell me my name,” the dragon whispered. Slowly I realized it was not a challenge but a plea. “A woman took my name from me long ago, in a riddle-game. I have been trying to remember it for years.”

“Yrecros?” I breathed. So did the dragon, nearly singeing my hair.

“You know her.”

“She took something from me: my dearest friend. Of you she said: the dragon’s name is hidden within a riddle.”

“Where is she?”

“Walking paths of sorcery in this land.”

Claws flexed across the stones, smooth and beetle-black. “I used to know a little sorcery. Enough to walk as man. Will you help me find my name?”

“Will you help me find my friends?” I pleaded in return. “I lost four, searching for this unbearable harper. One or two may not want my help, but I will never know until I see them.”

“Let me think …” the dragon said. Smoke billowed around me suddenly, acrid, ash-white. I swallowed smoke, coughed it out. When my stinging eyes could see again, a gold-haired harper stood in front of me. He had the dragon’s eyes.

I drew in smoke again, astonished. Through my noise, I could hear Kestral behind me, tugging at his chain and shouting.

“What of me?” he cried furiously. “You were sent to rescue me! What will you tell Celandine? That you found her harper and brought the dragon home instead?” His own face gazed back at him, drained the voice out of him a moment. He tugged at the chain frantically, desperately. “You cannot harp! She’d know you false by that, and by your ancient eyes.”

“Perhaps,” I said, charmed by his suggestion, “she will not care.”

“Her knights will find me. You said they seek to kill me! You will murder me.”

“Those that want you dead will likely follow me,” I said wearily, “for the gold-haired harper who rides with me. It is for the dragon to free you, not me. If he chooses to, you will have to find your own way back to Celandine, or else promise not to speak except to sing.”

I turned away from him. The dragon-harper picked up his harp of bone. He said, in his husky, smoky voice,

“I keep my bargains. The key to your freedom lies in a song.”

We left the harper chained to his harping, listening puzzledly with his deaf ear and untuned brain, for the one song, of all he had ever played and never heard, that would bring him back to Celandine. Outside, in the light, I led dragon-fire to the stone that had swallowed Danica, and began my backward journey toward Yrecros.