Chapter Twelve
It took them two days to bury their dead. They were too few, and the corpses too many, and not all of the survivors were in any condition to dig graves. The remaining doctor ministered to those as best he could, and the priest lived long enough to bless the wooden markers the Princess Cerise herself drove into the hard soil with bleeding hands. Prince Reginald wanted to do it but was silently refused. When it was done, they started home.
The Princess never once spoke during the return journey. She still rode at the head of the pitiably shrunken procession, but she kept her eyes on the ground, and her body slumped in the saddle, all pride and royal dignity gone out of it. Robert continued to ride at the rear of the party—though the distance between them was sorrowfully shorter than before—keeping constant watch to make certain that no vengeful dragons were following from that wood of slaughter. But even from behind, he always knew when the Princess was weeping again.
They avoided the last, dragon-ravaged village by silent consent, but whenever they passed through a town of any size, the inhabitants poured out to offer welcome. Word of the near annihilation of the company had somehow run before them, and shocked and decimated as they were, many of them—though not the Princess Cerise—managed a wrenching smile or a feeble wave. The throngs were usually composed primarily of women and children, the men being mostly at work in the fields. But Robert took particular notice in one village of a tall old man leaning on a knotty staff, who seemed to be staring angrily at Prince Reginald as he passed. It was a plainly personal anger, directed at one specific individual, and Robert recognized it—or thought he did—in every town or settlement farther on. He told himself that he must be mistaken, that there was no possible way for so old a man to be keeping pace with them, but the visions troubled him all the same.
It was only when they were nearing Bellemontagne that he thought to ask Mortmain, riding beside him, “I suppose this is a bad time to speak of my becoming a valet?”
“Actually, it would be the most logical time in the world,” Mortmain responded. “In fact, I was about to bring it up myself.”
“You were?” Robert had come to like Mortmain well enough over what now seemed a lifetime since their first meeting in the Great Hall, but trusting him was another matter.
Mortmain’s first allegiance was to his own smooth, sallow skin; his second to King Krije by way of Prince Reginald. Robert suspected that he himself came rather further down the list of loyalties, but that no longer seemed to matter much. He said, “When should we begin my instruction?”
“Well,” Mortmain said. “That depends, somewhat.” Robert looked at him. Mortmain continued, “You saved our lives. Prince Reginald was the first to acknowledge that. The very first, as I’m sure you remember.”
Robert shrugged. “I suppose I did. I don’t really know how it happened.”
“Exactly. The dragons might simply have fallen on each other out of hunger, or stupidity, or… who knows why such creatures do what they do?” Mortmain lifted a finger, his eyes widening slightly, as though at a sudden new realization. “Or conceivably they were frightened to madness by the sight of a fearless, menacing hero such as Prince Reginald. That’s possible, don’t you think?”
Robert’s expression did not change. He said, “I don’t recall Prince Reginald being anywhere in sight until the Princess and I found him with you.” He paused, holding Mortmain’s gaze with his own, feeling very much older than he had only a week before. “We were all mad with terror when the dragons attacked, every one of us. I think the Prince ran straight to you for shelter, and no blame to him if he did. Tell me if I am wrong.”
Mortmain opened his mouth to answer, but Robert never learned what he might have said. A dull, toneless voice on his left said, “You are not wrong,” and he turned to see Prince Reginald beside him, riding one of the supply-wagon horses. His own had been literally burned out from under him with the first charge of the first dragon.
“I ran away,” he said. “I threw away my weapons, and I ran blindly, trying to find Mortmain, weeping like a child who has bruised his knee. And now he is going to ask you to let me take the credit for destroying the dragons, so that I can go home to my father a hero. That was always the plan, didn’t you know that? How else would I ever have dared to go anywhere near a dragon hunt?” He leaned toward Robert and gripped his arm with surprising force. “But don’t you do it, don’t you listen to him! I don’t care what my father thinks of me—I know what I think, and that’s bad enough. You’re the one, you faced the fire and… and the screaming and the horses, and the… the awfulness—you’re the one, nobody else.” He jerked his head forward. “You’re the one who should have been riding with the Princess from the beginning—and she knows it, too. Don’t let Mortmain make me the hero, I don’t want it! I don’t want it!” He swung the lumbering horse away to the far side of the trudging line, dropping back to ride alone.
“He’s upset,” Mortmain said. “He’s been under quite a strain.” Neither he nor Robert spoke for a time after that.
“Very well,” Robert said finally. “I agree to your plan. Prince Reginald can be the dragonslayer—tell any story you like to the King and Queen, I don’t care. I’d forget all of it this minute, if I could. Give him the credit, as loudly and publicly as you wish, but while he is being celebrated, while the festivities are going on—and the mourning—and they should last for some while, you will be teaching me to be a prince’s valet. Are we agreed?” His voice was very tired.
Mortmain nodded in some surprise. “We are. In the time we have together, I will instruct you in every aspect of the personal servant’s art. And it is an art, I assure you.”
“Every aspect,” Robert repeated. “Once I merely dreamed of traveling with a prince or a duke, seeing other lands, other peoples, everything that isn’t Bellemontagne, just as such a man would see it all. Now… now I want to learn, not just what you do, but what you are. How to flatter, how to praise, how to make someone do what you desire while he thinks it’s his own idea—how you put your own words into his mouth, how you dress and school and advise and shape a great lord all as you choose, all to your will. Clearly, this is what a humble exterminator needs to know, if he is ever to rise in the world. Do you understand what I am seeking, Mortmain?”
“I understand,” Mortmain said. “I will teach you.”
Robert laughed softly and sadly. “Odelette—my mother—she always tells me that the goddess Vardis put the soul of a hero into me at my birth. But she doesn’t know very much about heroes, and maybe Vardis doesn’t either.”
“Never laugh in the presence of your master.” Mortmain’s own voice had abruptly become clipped and severe. “They always think you might be laughing at them, underneath. And never say troubling things involving souls and goddesses. Your constant aim must be to keep them happy and simple, so you must constantly tell them simple, happy things.” He smiled his dark, dry smile at Robert. “Here endeth the first lesson.”
Home with his family, all crowded into the kitchen along with Ostvald and Elfrieda, Robert was lovingly compelled to relive the dragonquest and the slaughter in the pleasant wood over and over, as Rosamonde asked him to describe the three dragons again, so she could squeal and shiver deliciously, or Hector requested particulars about the Princess Cerise’s behavior in the face of terrible danger. Ostvald wanted every detail concerning weapons and armament, as useless as they had all turned out to be; while Elfrieda simply looked on worshipfully. For her part, Odelette was only interested in how well he had eaten and slept on the journey, in the relationships he had formed with his noble companions, and in what he had felt when he began walking toward the dragons, alone and unarmed. When he described the moment to her, as best he could, she clapped her hands, very nearly dancing with rapture. “I knew! I knew the gods would answer my prayers!”
“Mother,” Robert said firmly, “if your idea of a hero’s soul is something inside that makes a person do something completely daft, completely suicidal, all the while wetting himself with fear and barely able to stand up—”
“Yes!” Odelette interrupted him. “That is exactly what I mean, but it’s not what I’m talking about. You were afraid of the dragons, of course you were—we didn’t raise any idiots, your father and I. But there was something else, too, something else…. Wasn’t there?”
She stood close to him, looking intensely up into his face, as his brothers and sisters watched in puzzlement. Robert said, “I was… angry. They were killing everybody, burning them, devouring them. I was very angry.”
“Yes,” his mother whispered. “I thought so.” Robert could barely hear her. She turned away for a moment, crossing and uncrossing her arms at the wrist three times in a gesture he had never before seen her make. When she turned back to him, she was smiling, but her face was pale and her eyes were glittering with tears. She said softly, “Dragonheart.” Robert stared.
Odelette said, “Vardis did not merely give you a hero’s soul. She gave you the heart of a dragon. I have heard about such things—my own mother used to tell me—but I thought… I thought it was just a story.” She clasped her hands tightly in front of her. “Dragonheart.”
Looking around him, Robert realized that his listeners had each unconsciously moved a step or two away—all but Elfrieda, whose eyes were shining like his mother’s. It alarmed and irritated him at the same time, and he said, “No. No. I never believed that story about a hero’s soul, and I don’t believe this one for a minute. I’m me, and I’ve got my soul and my heart, along with my liver, my kidneys, my teeth, my flat feet—”
“Your poor father’s feet,” Odelette said fondly. “He did suffer so from those feet—”
“My feet. And my very own intense desire not to be a hero, not to be a dragonslayer—”
“Of course not! You couldn’t be, not the way you feel for them.” She pointed past him, and Robert noticed for the first time that the dragonlets—even the nameless white one—were in the kitchen, perched variously on chairbacks, shelves, and shoulders, plainly listening intently. Odelette said, “You talk to these little ones, and they hear you.” Robert remembered Mortmain saying the same thing in Dragon Market. His mother went on, “You felt those big wicked ones—I told you, they couldn’t be the Kings—and what they felt you turned against them, so that they turned against each other. Only someone who shared a dragon’s heart, a dragon’s very being, could have done that. Only a dragonmaster. Only my son.”
In the silence Robert heard a murmured, reverent “Yes,” and knew the voice for Elfrieda’s. He shook his head to clear it, and his eyes met those of Adelise, her scaly neck stretched forward to its fullest extent, her sea-green eyes aglow with awareness. They held his as he struggled to answer Odelette. “I’m just me. I’m a human being who wants to be a prince’s valet. That’s all.”
“A prince’s valet?” Odelette laughed scornfully at what had been her fondest dream a week before. “When Prince Reginald knows what you are, he’ll beg to be your valet, I promise you—”
“No! You tell him nothing—you tell nobody anything!” Robert looked around at the others, all gaping in bewilderment. He said slowly, “I thought I understood dragons. I don’t. I don’t want to. I’ve seen them too close, and I don’t want their hearts or their spirits, or anything of theirs, inside me. No more. Never.” He patted his mother’s hand absently and put her gently aside. “Now, if you’ll all excuse me, I’ve got a lesson to go to. Ostvald, we have to be at the Gerhards’ dairy tomorrow early—they’ve found a clutch of wyvern eggs near hatching, and the mother’s footprints near the barn. Meet me at the crossroads at eight o’clock.”
He walked out of the kitchen then, and out of the house, without looking back. Odelette called after him, “There is no choice for you, my son. You cannot return a goddess’s gift,” but Robert never turned. In the silence, his sister Patience began to cry. Several of the dragonlets went to her—Adelise even touched her face, to make the tears stop, but Patience continued to weep.
“They want to be told what to do. That’s the most important thing to remember about them.”
“Princes? Dukes? The great lords?”
“All of them. Deep down, they know they’re fools—they know they don’t know what they’re doing when they order men into battle, when they make policies and draw up treaties, when they decide to marry this one, promote that one, throw the other one into a dungeon. They love to be told what to wear, what foods will make them fat, what dances are currently fashionable at what court—even when to go to bed, if you’ll believe me. Discipline, system, consistency—there you have it all in a nutshell. And I think that will do very well for your second lesson.”
They were in the stables, where Mortmain had been showing Robert how to fold cloth shirts and polish iron ones for Prince Reginald, as well as the tricks involved in cleaning muddy boots. The Prince himself was brooding in the hayloft overhead, where he had lately taken to spending most of his time, even though it made him sneeze. Robert said, “You speak of them as though they were children.”
“And so they are—large children, yes, who can be dangerous, if not properly controlled. It’s what they want, it’s a great relief to them after a day of playing grown-up. No, you’ve left a spot, right there, over the instep. They do love their boots so, lords do.” Mortmain put a neatly folded shirt carefully down on a feed barrel and turned to study Robert out of his strange yellow-brown eyes. “You’re not ever going to be a valet, you know.”
“Yes, I am.” Surprised by the remark, Robert was indignant. “You can’t say that, after just two lessons.”
“I wouldn’t have before certain recent events occurred. Then, you might actually have managed it, as badly as you wanted to transform your life. Now…” Mortmain shook his head. “Now you want something altogether else, and we both know it. It doesn’t matter how many lessons I give you, it’ll just be a skill. You won’t be a valet—you’ll be a man who knows how to be a valet. Useful, doubtless, but… different.”
Robert met his eyes for a moment without replying, then bowed his head. Mortmain said, “Look on the bright side, boy. Princesses hardly ever marry valets.”
Robert’s head came up so fast Mortmain actually heard the crackle of his vertebrae. “What are you talking about? Princess Cerise is going to marry Prince Reginald—everyone knows that!”
“Maybe not,” Mortmain said. “Maybe not everybody.”
They regarded each other in silence, though Mortmain’s left eyebrow kept flicking quizzically. Robert said at last, “It’s right. She should marry him. He’s… well, he’s a prince and a hero.”
Mortmain’s mouth twitched like his eyebrow. “He’d really rather not be a prince, just between ourselves. He’s not good at it, and it only embarrasses him. As for his heroism, the King and Queen may swallow that, but the Princess knows… what she knows. And soon everyone else will—except perhaps you yourself.” He chuckled, so dryly and softly that Robert barely heard the sound. “Perhaps you really are a hero, after all, born a favorite of the gods. You’re certainly thick enough.”
Robert did not bother to take the time to feel insulted. He said, suddenly and sharply, “The old man.” Mortmain blinked. Robert said, “Coming home… the towns we passed through. You saw him—didn’t you?”
The valet frowned thoughtfully. “An old man. The same old man, all the time?” Robert nodded. “I wasn’t in the best possible shape to recognize anyone, you understand… but I do recall—yes! Yes, I… tall, was he? Long hair, a bit like yours, only white, yes. Leaning on a staff, didn’t look happy—very odd. If I could travel from place to place as swiftly as he seems to, I’d be happy.”
The strange eyes probed Robert’s eyes more deeply than usual. “You think he’s some sort of wizard, don’t you?”
Robert shrugged and sighed. “I wouldn’t know a real wizard if I met one on the road. It’s just that I started to wonder, seeing him everywhere, all the way back… maybe he had something to do with those dragons, some way.” Mortmain looked utterly uncomprehending. Robert said, “The ones that attacked us—they weren’t like any dragons I’ve ever heard of. My father taught me all the different kinds—he’d go over and over them with me, and he’d shout at me, or even whip me with his suspenders if I missed one species. He took his job very seriously, my father did.”
Mortmain said, “Suspenders? How do you beat somebody with your suspenders?”
Robert went on. “I know dragons the way you know your alphabet, even the ones I’ve never seen in my life. They didn’t fit any of my father’s descriptions—they didn’t match anything I’ve ever heard or read anywhere. Somebody…” He hesitated, never having put into spoken words what he needed to say aloud. “Somebody bred them.”