Chapter Ten #5
The tale of the dragon’s death spread, and in this story it was Neb who struck the killing blow.
Soon, he was Neb no longer; his shoulders had grown broad enough that the mantle of hero and the name of Valourentius were not so ill-fitting, though he still wore them uneasily.
Valourentius was feasted at the keep, and a recuperating Sir Rudyard toasted him with tea.
Congratulatory letters came from the capital under the king’s seal; no dragon had been slain in many years, but the custom of the congratulatory letter was still on the books – and the letter came with a purse of gold.
Neb came to the Wychwood Door one morning.
He looked older than his thirteen years, very fine in a new cloak and a sword belted at his hip – or so I am reliably informed.
Three times he knocked, the first hesitant and soft, the second too loud, the third an authoritative rap-rap-rap on the ancient door. No answer came.
He sat down to wait.
He rose, occasionally, to hammer on the door again or call through the keyhole, but never did he cross the Dungeon threshold.
The rest of the time, other than an interlude for sandwich of black bread and mutton, he devoted to rehearsing his speech.
Had I been there, and had Neb been inclined to take advice from a skull, I would have told him to stand tall, to speak clearly and loudly, and from the heart, to say what he really believed.
But I’ve rarely done any of those things, and he would not have listened.
Once, he heard something moving on the far side of the door, as if some huge beast snuffled at the lock. Without thinking, his hand went to his sword. But nothing emerged from the Dungeon to threaten him.
At twilight, Bait came creeping out of the Wychwood Door.
“New cloak,” she said.
“It is.”
“It’s all right.”
“He gave me a sword, too. Sir Rudyard did.” Neb brandished it.
“Bit late for that. Dragon’s dead.”
“They say I killed it. Not you.”
Bait shrugged. “Dungeon Denizens don’t care what surface folk say. Don’t care what they think. Enjoy being a dragon-slayer.”
“You’re the one who killed Nithscalpa. I tried to tell them, but none of them saw you. They don’t know what you did, and they should. It’s not right.”
“Don’t care what they think is right, either.” She slipped past Neb and made for the Wychwood Door.
“The king’s summoned me. The dragon-slayer, I mean. A letter came from the capital. Look.”
The letter was very impressive decorated with any number of important seals, although it had been more impressive before Neb had stuffed it into his pocket.
Like the missive to Sir Rudyard, it had been written under the king’s seal, not in the king’s own hand – although the king had actually signed this one, if the feeble scrawl of ink at the foot of the page could be called a signature.
Bait stared at the uncertain lines for a long moment, imagining, perhaps, the fingers that had drawn them.
Had that arm once cradled her? Had those eyes looked down at her in the crib, before the dragon stole her? Or was that someone else’s life?
She forced herself to read the rest. The letters swam in her eyes, knocked from their neat lines by her pounding heart. Again, the endless salutations and titles, even more larded on this time. Her lips moved as she muttered a translation into the Dungeon Tongue.
. . . His majesty requests and requires the presence of the one who slew the fabled dragon . . .
. . . Honoured and feted as befits a hero of the realm . . . colloquy with the scholars of the Royal Antiquarian Survey . . .
. . . immediately depart for the capital . . .
“You’re leaving?”
“It’s a royal summons. My father and Sir Rudyard say I have to obey. That it’ll be the making of me if I go, and the ruin of me if I don’t.”
“It’s not even your name. It’s to Valourwhatsitius.”
“That is my name. My proper name. Lord Rudyard said it was a more fitting name to wear to court.”
“It’s not you.”
“Yes, it is.” Suddenly, he knelt, the mud squelching under the knee of his new breeches. Clumsily, he offered her the sword. “But you’re the true dragon-slayer. You should be the one going to court. Come with me. It should be you.”
Bait shook her head. To leave the Dungeon – no, not now, not when she’d just won it back. Not when there was so much to do below. Her heart pounded. She had to work very hard to think of words in the human tongue. “Can’t.”
“I’ll take care of you. I’ve gone down the road a little, and Sir Rudyard said he’ll send guards with us.
We’ll get to the capital safe, I promise.
We could stay with Lady Nala, maybe. See the King’s Palace and the Court of Chance and Courage, and the Glassmarket and – all the places from the stories! ”
The merchants and pot-menders who visited Clove’s kitchen had told stories of the capital.
The stupid serving girls crowded around them, eager for ragged second-hand glimpses of distant glamour.
Bait had stayed aloof, hidden in her little nook, but she’d listened, too.
In the stories, the capital was immensely crowded, a swarming anthill of people.
The clamour of those crowds crawled into Bait’s ears, into her skull, and they were flying ants.
It was very bright, too, of that she was certain, the harsh shadowless burning blazing daylight all through the capital at the centre of the world, and King Arus was there, who might and might not be her father, she might and might not belong there.
She felt like the pit trap had opened beneath her once more, just after she’d found her footing in the Dungeon.
“I’m not going,” she whimpered.
“There’s a whole world out there,” he said, “outside this dungeon. You can’t stay here for ever.”
Bait had faced down dragonfire. She’d climbed the waterfall, braved the haunted halls of the wraith-temple, called unimaginable horrors her friends – but in this moment, such fear welled up in her that she could not stand still.
She tore her hand free from Neb’s grasp and ran past him, into the Dungeon.
“What’s wrong?!”
She fell back against the Wychwood Door, slamming it behind her. Darkness embraced her.
“Bait!” called Neb. He sounded very far away. “What’s wrong? What did I say?”
She tried to answer, but only the Dungeon Tongue came out. I can’t go. I want to belong here. I want this to be home. I want to stay here and hide. Out there it’s all confusing.
“Come back,” he called. He hammered on the door, trying to force it open. “Bait, please!”
She pushed back with all her strength against the door, even though she could not say why. The door stayed shut.
“Why must you always be so strange?” he snarled.
Everything churned. She felt as though she was dissolving – a changeling’s borrowed shape, stolen form liquifying.
She spread her fingers out over the cold metal, feeling in the dark the intricate ancient carvings, constant across the centuries.
She closed her eyes and thought of Nala’s maps of the Dungeon on their cool blue paper, all that she knew and loved laid out in precise detail.
“I’m sorry!” called Neb. “I didn’t mean that.” He shoved against the door again.
She pressed back harder. Neb stopped.
A moment of silence.
“I’ll come back,” called Neb. “One day, I’ll come back.”
Bait wanted to throw open the door and run into the sunset. She wanted there to be nothing keeping her trapped here. She sank to her knees, not sure why she was weeping.
She thought of times when she’d been lost in the dark, and the minotaur had brought her home.
She crouched in the dark, all alone, for a very long time, waiting. But no one came. The Dungeon was still and silent.
At last, she rose. She wiped her face. He did not come back, and she told herself that she did not need him. She set off down the tunnel.
Bait told me none of this, then. I only learned it after, when it was too late.
And Neb, who was now Valourentius again? Well, parts of his tale you know better than I, but I’ll tell the portion I know in my own particular idiom.
He went back down the hill, head and heart as tangled as could be.
He told himself he was angry, but that did not help, because he could not say who he was angry with – a common complaint of young men.
He took his new sword and beheaded gorse bushes with savage fury.
He returned to the village, where he was acclaimed a hero.
(The villagers had already acclaimed him.
This was not the first time he’d returned home since the dragon’s death, but it had been a hard year, and they took any excuse for an acclamation.) He visited his father Gyul, and the marker they’d put up for his mother’s grave, and made his farewells.
Then he set off down the road that led to Dunshelm, and past Dunshelm, and through Eskerlund, and past Eskerlund, on and on to his fortune.
He did not look back.
Anyway, as I said, life in the Dungeon returned to what passes for normal below. We lurked, we festered, we brooded and glooped according to our own particular natures, and Bait tried to be one of us.
From time to time, the minotaur came back up to the upper halls.
Witless, heedless and matchless, he wandered.
Now it was Bait who was his shadowy protector.
There was nothing on our level that could threaten the titanic beast that Sir Peledon had become, but he might forget to eat, or find himself baffled by the complicated working of a door handle.
Bait cared for him, as best she could. He did not notice. Even Gloop was more cognisant of her.