Dragonslayer: A Novel Read Free Page B

rockslides occurred and the land composed itself. From the far distance came the fear-and-mourning cry of a strange bird. Incredibly, Ulrich heard these sounds distinctly, although what he was watching was but a vision.
    Then the small dragon roared. It was a monstrous sound, like the scream of a gutted horse, and the sorcerer recoiled from it just as Ulrich recoiled from the vision in the bowl. Again came the roar, and again, more jubilant as the man was driven back, and the beast lifted scrawny arms in triumph. Fleeing, the man turned to face Ulrich, and Ulrich saw the frozen mask of horror and despair that was his face, and saw too, as clearly as if it were graven on the stone of the bowl the thought that was in his mind: Have I done this? What have I done?
    Ulrich was profoundly shaken by this vision. He gripped the table, and he found that he had trouble breathing, and that a strange, circling pain was teasing the center of his chest. But there was more to come. Before the images vanished forever, he saw the skin-clad sorcerer a final time. It seemed that some years had passed. The man was thin and haggard and perhaps very close to death. His energies had clearly been almost totally drained from him. He was kneeling and he was offering to a boy, whose hand was outstretched to take it, the very amulet Ulrich held, which shone with eerie luminescence. But the sorcerer was looking at neither the newly crafted stone nor the boy. He was pointing into the distance, and following his line of sight Ulrich could see approaching, very low above the horizon, the awesome silhouette of an airborne dragon.
    "So," Ulrich said, nodding slowly. "So."
    The liquid in the bowl clouded, calmed, cleared, lay inert.
    Ulrich's back ached miserably. Groaning, he held the amulet in one hand and leaned on the table with the other. His knees had stiffened, and he performed a little shuffling dance to stimulate his circulation. He muttered wordlessly. He had never really learned to curse, although as a youngster among the fens he had tried hard, in Latin, and in Celtic, and in Anglo-Saxon too.
    "Old rick," said Gringe, the white raven, scrabbling across the flag floor to safety under the table.
    "Avaunt!" Ulrich shouted at him, lifting his gnarled oak cane. "Get Galen!"
    "Galen may win."
    "Get him!"
    The raven made several obscene sounds in quick succession.
    "Gringe." Ulrich raised the fist with the amulet. "I warn you!"
    The raven complained more, but he was going. One eye on the amulet, he was already scurrying past the aloof falcon and fluttering from chairback to windowsill and away into the night. A moment later Ulrich heard him chattering below at Galen's window.
    In another moment a soft knock came on the door, and Galen entered diffidently. "You wanted me, sir?"
    "I sent Gringe for you," Ulrich said, still staring morosely into the bowl.
    Galen nodded, rubbing his neck. "I was practicing the new spell you gave me, and when I didn't answer right away, he came over and pecked me."
    "Um. The fact is, he's never forgiven you for turning him white."
    "I know. I apologized, though. It was an accident," Galen said, louder than necessary, frowning at the raven, who had reappeared on the window ledge.
    Gringe blinked mournfully.
    Ulrich gestured impatiently. "Nevertheless, you were impetuous. I told you not to try that charm; I warned you there was a coda to be attached to it, a danger..."
    "Well . . ."
    "But you went ahead anyway. You experimented. And Gringe got in the way."
    "I . . ." Galen shrugged and offered a palms-up gesture. He had no excuses. He was a slim boy, eighteen now. He had an honest jaw and broad-spaced confident eyes, the green-blue of forest pools. His head, bowed deferentially now in Ulrich's presence, was covered with curly and disheveled flaxen hair. His shoulders were broad, his stance elastic. The open-handed gesture had revealed calluses and black, broken fingernails—the hands of a laborer.
    "And so," Ulrich asked, still