Gaal the Conqueror Read online

  The sword-belt round his waist supported a sword and scabbard, and with growing excitement he snatched at the jeweled hilt, pulling the sword out to look at it. It was the Sword of Geburah, the sword he had worn on his previous visit to Anthropos, and as he stared at it relief flooded his body. He had done the right thing. Everything would work out. Evidently he was expected.

  But where exactly was he? He replaced the sword and stared around him, gasping at the stunning picture he saw, a symphony in gray and green. Five hundred feet below him was what looked like a narrow lake, or perhaps a narrow arm of the sea. Jade-green water rested calmly between steep mountainous slopes clothed with evergreens. The tops of the mountains were hidden. Gray clouds formed a ceiling several hundred feet above where he stood, and a light rain fell.

  From one side he heard the excited yelp of a dog, and before he knew what was happening, it was leaping up at him, licking his face as though it knew him. "Hey, quit it!" he cried, pushing the dog down and away from him. "I hate licks-what is it you want?"

  The dog had turned and was barking at him, running a few paces from him, turning and barking again. It was a lean, shorthaired, nondescript black dog, with a white patch between its eyes and over its forehead. Each time it turned it half crouched, puppylike, wagging its tail with such enthusiasm that its whole rear end wagged too.

  "You want me to follow you? I guess I might as well."

  Instantly the dog turned and began trotting toward the trees, the rear end askew, so that the hind legs did not follow the front legs but constantly seemed to be trying to catch up with them and pass them. But they never did. John watched the unstable arrangement fascinated, wondering that the creature never tripped over itself.

  Soon they were following a narrow trail among pines, firs and cedars. Massive trunks crowded round them while undergrowth spilled wetness on them as they passed. For about twenty minutes they wound their way along the trail. John's pants were itchy, and before long he began to smell of warm wet wool. Then quite suddenly they emerged into a narrow glade.

  The dog made for a spot near a rather large rock a hundred yards away on the right-hand side of the glade and began to dig. As John got closer, he began to realize that the dog was not digging near a rock at all but near a round stone well. John looked inside but saw nothing and John sighed. "I thought you might be some kind of messenger," he said, half to himself and half to the dog. "Instead, you're only showing me where you hid your bone."

  Almost as though it understood him, the dog turned and looked at him. Then it barked once, turned and resumed its furious digging. John stood and watched. "Who's your master? And where do you live?" he asked.

  Again the dog turned. But this time it cringed in terror. It trembled and its eyes were wide and staring. Then with a loud yelp it leaped toward the trees, its tail between its legs. Before John could follow, a booming voice startled him from behind. "Excuse me! Do you realize you're trespassing? At times I have had to breathe fire on trespassers. I wouldn't like ..."

  John turned around to look and terror seized him also. Ten yards behind him a dragon reared its scaly head. Flight would have been as useless as it was impossible. His legs had become unstable columns of fluid. Had the dragon spoken? His mouth was dry, and he felt foolish as well as terrified as he said, "I'm sorry. I wasn't meaning to trespass. It was the dog.. ."

  "Ah, yes. Dogs," the dragon said, its huge body writhing elegantly. "Always good for an excuse, aren't they? Who are you, anyway?"

  John hesitated for a moment. Then, remembering what he had done when last he was in Anthropos he said, "I'm the Sword Bearer."

  "Hm. The Sword Bearer indeed. You do have a sword-but who knows? Let me see.... If you are the Sword Bearer they say that when you draw your sword it will throw off a kind of blue light."

  John's heart sank. "Not always," he managed to say. "It depends."

  "Aha! A complication. So it might, and on the other hand it might not. You wouldn't be stalling, would you? You say, `It depends.' Depends on what, may I ask?"

  "Well, it mostly shines when there are evil things around, like goblins. Sometimes it shines on special occasions ..."

  "That could make it rather difficult for you, couldn't it?"

  "Well, if I'm evil, your sword will shine. But then, if I'm evil, there's no saying what I might do to you."

  Something about the things the creature said reassured him. Relief made John take a deep breath. He still felt scared, but only in the way some schoolteachers can make you feel when you suspect you're in the wrong but you can't quite understand what they're driving at. It wasn't what could be called real dragon fear.

  "But if I'm not evil," the dragon continued, "and if your sword doesn't shine, then I'll think you're making your story up. And even good dragons get upset when boys tell them lies. So draw your sword!"

  John took another breath. "Look, I'm not lying. I am the Sword Bearer, and this is the Sword of Geburah. I can't prove it. And it may not light up when I it ..."

  "Well, then draw it, and let me see what the fates have brought into my path." Slowly and reluctantly, hoping against hope that it would shine, John began to pull it from the scabbard. And even when only an inch of the blade showed, it emitted penetrating blue rays. Relieved, he pulled it out the rest of the way and waved it in the air. It flamed dazzlingly, pulsing with light and humming with energy. Uncertain of how dangerous the dragon was, John did not replace the sword in its scabbard. He could not tell what the dragon was thinking, and for several seconds it gazed at him without saying anything. When it did speak, it seemed to be delivering a lecture.

  "The Sword Bearer, now. First appeared in response to a prophecy. Arrived on the planet from regions unknown around the end of the sixth century and disappeared a year or so after getting rid of the Tower of ... what's its name? The Tower of Geburah."

  "No, no, you've got it wrong," John protested. "I got rid of the Lord Lunacy's tower."

  The dragon was not looking at him, but talking about him as if he were not there. "But didn't the Goblin Prince kill him in the cave beneath the Tower?"

  "Of course notl I wouldn't be here if I were dead, would I? I killed him-or it. The Goblin Prince was a thing, not a person."

  The dragon continued as if it never heard him. "And the fellow Mab, now, vanished about the same time the Sword Bearer did, didn't he?"

  "Yes-he's my father."

  The dragon lost his lecturing manner. "Your father indeed? Well, well, well-how did you manage that? When and under what circumstances did he sire you?"

  "I don't understand."

  "No. Probably not. You look too young, even if you are several millennia old. Tell me, Sword Bearer, what brings you here now?"

  Several millennia. The words startled him. Several millennia! Did that mean that in Anthropos time it was thousands of years since he had left? Anthropos history would have advanced enormously during the few months he had spent in Canada. His anxiety began to mount again. There would be nobody he knew, nobody who could help him find the girl. The dragon was still staring at him, waiting for an answer to its question. But he had forgotten what the question was.

  He looked up at the creature, its enormous, scaly body towering above him, and said in a thin and foolish voice, "I'm not that scared of you anymore, but are you really safe? I mean, what about breathing fire?"

  "Safe? No, I don't suppose I'm safe. I'm not in the least safe. Who ever heard of a safe dragon? And what was the dog digging for?"

  "The dog?" He had forgotten about the small black dog with the white patch on its forehead.

  "Yes, the dog. The dog you were following. It was digging."

  "Oh, yes. I suppose it had buried a bone."

  "I don't think so."

  "How do you mean?"

  The situation was absurd. He had come to rescue a girl. Why was he holding an Alice-in-Wonderland conversation with a dragon about a strange dog and a bone?

  "It comes here often, and digs in the same p
lace alwaysright next to the Holy Enchanted Well. Sometimes the hole gets quite deep. I want to know what's at the bottom of the hole. I've tried to talk to it, but the creature gets scared and runs off." The dragon paused, then sighed a cloud of acrid smoke.

  "Perhaps it's as well," it continued after a moment. "If I got excited about the hole, I might breathe fire. And I can't stand the smell of singed dog hair any more than the sight of a singed and naked dog."

  John turned and saw the dog sitting under the edge of the trees and looking at them both. Something about the dragon's manner had reassured him, and he felt sure it was joking about the danger of breathing fire. He put the sword away and whistled. "Come here, boy! Come on! It's all right! Come on, boy!"

  "You might offend the creature by referring to it as a boy. The term implies both humanness and gender," the dragon said, but John never heard him.

  The dog rose to all fours and stared at them uncertainly, and John bent forward and continued to encourage it. Slowly, stopping every few paces, it began to approach them. Behind John the dragon lounged gracefully on its side, studying the dog's progress. Eventually, after much encouragement and much slapping of John's thigh, it stood on the opposite side of the hole wagging its tale uncertainly and looking at John. "What's in the hole?" John asked. The dog now wagged its tail vigorously. "What's in there?" he repeated.

  The dog began to dig again, and soon to dig furiously. Before long the hole in the soft brown soil had deepened. Water trickled into it and the dog's paws were muddy. But its enthusiasm never waned. John turned to look at the dragon again, wondering about the monocle in its left eye and the enormous pair of spectacles hanging from a steel chain around its neck. With one scaly claw the dragon was toying with a leather sack.

  "What are your glasses for?" John asked.

  "The glasses are for reading. The lenses are prisms so that I can read a book at one side of me-sideways or lateral reading is the correct term, I believe."

  "Why would you want to read a book at one side of you? Why not hold it in front of you?"

  "Because when I get excited about what I am reading I, er, I breathe fire. It's very frustrating to get to an interesting part of the book and see it go up in flames. Problems of that sort never trouble you, I suppose."

  John sniggered. He felt reassured once more, the dragon's absurd pomposity putting him at ease. Perhaps it might even prove a help in finding Eleanor. In that case it would be wise to be as polite as he could and make conversation. But what kind of conversation ought he to make with a dragon? "I've heard that dragons eat metal and jewels and things. Is that true? Do you eat jewels?"

  "Dear me, no! No jewels. Absolutely no jewels. Not even the purest blue diamonds. I have to diet." The dragon wriggled with embarrassment. "Too much stress, I suppose," it said whimsically.

  "Once I stopped kidnapping princesses I found I could not eat real dragon food-even tried to become a vegetarian, but then my fire went out. So I eat iron-horrid stuff-in order to breathe properly again."

  "Is that what you carry in your sack?"

  "My what? My sack? Oh, you mean my briefcase-well, yes, I do keep a bit of lunch in it-ax heads, rusty old swords, the odd anvil, you know. After all, I'm an asher."

  "A nasher? What's a nasher?"

  "Excuse me-not a nasher, but an asher, A.S.H.E.R-asher."

  "But what is it?"

  "Oh, it's just a bit of local dragon slang referring to an unmarried male dragon, a hot male dragon if you know what I mean. Some of us are hot, others of us suffer from failing powers. Hot young dragons like yours truly breathe fire. We turn things to ashes. Hence the expression, asher."

  By now the dog had disappeared inside the hole it was digging, but the digging continued unabated. A fountain of wet soil was rising from the hole. John was about to go and look, but the dragon seemed to want to talk. Its tone suddenly became somber, and it seemed embarrassed.

  "It was rude of me not to introduce myself properly. The truth is that I was testing you. I had to wait until the real Sword Bearer came. Several false ones presented themselves. One even had a sword that shed light-red light. But all of them fell down when it came to history."

  "History?" John asked curiously.

  "Details of what the Sword Bearer did in the sixth century. You passed that one with flying colors, though the blue light was pretty convincing."

  The dragon paused for almost a minute, and then went on. "I ought not to be embarrassed and ashamed, but I often am. That's what makes me talk the way I do. I am considered a traitor to my race-the first asher to be so regarded. I have chosen another loyalty, a loyalty of which I am proud. Or at least, when I am not afraid I try to be. But the price has been heavy. I try to disguise my fears and shame. My name is Pontificater."

  "Pon-what?"

  "Pontificater, one who pontificates."

  "Oh, dear, I don't know what that means."

  The dragon shuffled his claws in apparent embarrassment. "Of course there's really no connection between my name and the verb `to pontificate.' I don't. It's just a coincidence."

  "But what does it mean?"

  "My name doesn't have any meaning. Does yours? But to pontificate means to-well, pontiffs are important peoplekings, high priests and such like. To pontificate is to throw your verbal weight around."

  John hesitated for a moment. Then he said, "I see. But tell me about your race. I didn't know dragons had a race. I thought you were all kind of lone rangers."

  "True. But we all emerge from the egg with an allegiance to the dark powers. From that point on we are governed by the Circle of Nine, who are in turn controlled, I suspect, by Shagah and the Lord Lunacy. I broke away. So far I have been protected from their wrath."

  "In a way that does make you important. Is that perhaps why they call you Pontificater?"

  "Perhaps my name is Pontificater because I am called to govern the area round the treasure, the treasure I suspect the dog is now digging up."

  John's eyes widened. "So you actually know what might be there. Does the dog know? Is that why it's digging so deep?"

  The dragon sighed another cloud of smoke. "I don't know what the dog knows. I was told to protect the field from all comers except for a black dog with a white patch between its eyes and the real Sword Bearer. The dog arrived two years ago. I was told that the dog would dig up the treasure and be able to talk. It would explain to me what the treasure was and what was to be done with it. But so far the dog hasn't spoken a word and has scampered off every time I approached. As for you, you did not come until today, and I have been waiting a hundred years for you."

  "But what's the treasure for? I mean, what's it about? Why were you waiting all that time?"

  "I gather that you and the dog have to get the treasure inside the Tower of Geburah, though why you have to do so is a mystery. Part of the treasure consists of a book-laws and history and that sort of thing. That has to do with Gaal in Bamah. And there's a jeweled something or other in the chest. The chest, along with an enormous iron key which is in my possession go to the tower. I am supposed to render whatever assistance I can."

  John said nothing. Part of him was excited by the possibility of further adventures. But it didn't seem to have anything to do with finding Eleanor. He began to worry about his father too. What would he think when John didn't return? How much time had elapsed in Canada since he had left? But the dragon was still speaking.

  "You may have a problem with the sorcerer."

  "What sorcerer?"

  "Shagah. He is the most powerful sorcerer known-in charge of all spells and magic in Anthropos. Magicians all have to get permission from him even to do something as trivial as turning a spider into a newt. A sorcerer's sorcerer, so to speak Special agent of the Circle. Plans to hide inside his own picture. They say he keeps the picture frame in the evil temple in Bamah, where he has his chambers. When he's not hiding, the picture is totally blank, but when he takes refuge inside it, he grins at you from inside the frame. Spooky i
dea, don't you think? Anyway, I suggest that you capture the picture and hang it on the wall once you get to the tower."

  "Why?" John asked.

  "Because rumor has it that if you do that he'll be trapped inside the picture, totally powerless, for several thousand years."

  The black dog had emerged from the hole and sat panting on the far side of it. It seemed to be waiting for them to inspect what it had done, and showed no fear of the dragon. John stepped up to the hole and looked in. A bulky and rather moldy leather bag protruded from the bottom of it. A good portion of the well wall had also been exposed. In fact it looked as if the bag were half stuck in the wall. John managed to get one foot inside the hole and the other braced on one side of it. Gripping the bag tightly and exerting all his strength, he heaved it onto the grass. A hole was left in the well wall where the bag had been stuck. John then got out of the hole and tore up several handfuls of wet grass to wipe it clean.

  "You'll find the key in my brief case," the dragon said. "I was tempted to eat it, but Gaal warned me not to. And perhaps you'd better open the bag since you're to be the principle figure in this little drama."

  With trembling fingers John loosened the leather strings that tied the neck of the bag. It took him several minutes to open, for the knots were tight and the leather slippery, and he had to keep drying his hands. More than once he gave up in disgust, but the dog and the dragon never moved, staring at him expectantly. At one point the dragon said, "The prophecies said that you, young sir, would open it-so you might as well go on trying. You're going to do it sooner or later."

  At last with a grinding of teeth the knots were loosened and the bag opened. Two items lay inside, a large leather-bound volume and a smaller wooden box. Quickly John pulled them out. He laid the box and the key on the grass, and placed the book on top of the box. A metal clasp held the book closed. Something made John feel that he ought not to look inside itat least not just then.