The Dragon-Charmer

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‘He had to go out,’ Maggie said. ‘Big meeting with the archdeacon about church finances. It’s a funny thing: the smaller the finances, the bigger the meeting. Did you want him for anything special?’

Maybe she would be better off talking to Maggie, woman to woman, Fern thought, tempted by the hazy concept of universal sisterhood. Haltingly, she began to stammer out her doubts about the forthcoming marriage. She felt like a novice curate admitting to the lure of religious schism. Maggie’s face melted into instant sympathy. Her normal Weltanschauung combined genuine kindness and conscientious tolerance with the leftovers of Sixties ideology at its woolliest. In her teens she had embraced Nature, pacifism, and all things bright and beautiful, Freudian and Spockian, liberal and liberationist. She had worn long droopy skirts and long droopy hair, smoked marijuana, played the guitar (rather badly), and even tried free love, though only once or twice before she met Gus. At heart, however, she remained a post-Victorian romantic for whom a wedding day was a high point in every woman’s life. Relegating the loan of sheets to lower on the agenda, she pressed Fern into an armchair and offered coffee.

‘No, thanks, I …’

‘It’s not too much trouble, honestly. The percolator’s already on. What you need is to stop rushing around and sit down and relax for a bit. All brides go through this just before a wedding, believe me. I know I did. It’s all right for the men – they never do any of the work – but the poor bride is inundated with arrangements that keep changing and temperamental caterers and awkward relatives, and there always comes a moment when she stops and asks herself what it’s All For. It’s a big thing, getting married, one of the biggest things you’ll ever do – it’s going to alter your whole life – so it’s only natural you should be nervous. You’ll be fine tomorrow. When you’re standing there in the church, and he’s beside you, and you say “I do” – it all falls into place. I promise you.’ She took Fern’s hand and pressed it, her face shining with the fuzzy inner confidence of those fortunate few for whom marriage really is the key to domestic bliss.

‘But I’m not sure that I –’

‘Hold on: I’ll get the coffee. Keep talking. I can hear you from the kitchen.’

‘I had this picture of my future with Marcus,’ Fern said, addressing the empty chair opposite. ‘I’d got it all planned – I’ve always planned things – and I knew exactly how it would be. I thought that was what I wanted, only now I – I’m not sure any more. Something happened last night – it doesn’t matter what – which changed my perspective. I’ve always assumed I liked my life in London, but now I wonder if that was because I wouldn’t let myself think about it. I was afraid to widen my view. It isn’t that I dislike it: I just want more. And I don’t believe marrying Marcus will offer me more – just more of the same.’

‘Sorry,’ said Maggie, emerging with two mugs in which the liquid slopped dangerously. ‘I didn’t catch all that. The percolator was making too much noise. You were saying you weren’t sure –?’

‘I’m not sure I want to get married,’ Fern reiterated with growing desperation.

‘Of course you’re not.’ Maggie set down the mugs and glowed at her again. ‘No one is ever one hundred per cent sure about anything. Gus says that’s one of the miraculous things about human nature, that we’re able to leave room for doubt. People who are too sure, he says, tend to bigotry. He told me once, he even doubts God sometimes. He says that if we can deal with doubt ultimately it strengthens our faith. It’ll be like that with your marriage: you’ll see. When you get to the church –’

‘Maggie,’ Fern interrupted, ruthlessly, ‘I’m not in love withMarcus.’

The flow of words stopped; some of the eager glow ebbed from Mrs Dinsdale’s face. ‘You don’t mean that?’

‘I’ve never been in love with him. I like him, I like him a lot, but it’s not love. I thought it didn’t matter. Only now –’ Seeing Maggie’s altered expression, she got to her feet. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have saddled you with all this. I’ve got to sort it out for myself.’

‘But Fern – my dear –’

‘Could I have the sheets?’

Equipped with a sufficiency of linen, Fern and Trisha made up the beds together while Mrs Wicklow prepared a salad lunch for anyone who might arrive in time to eat it. Marcus and his family were to stay in a pub in a neighbouring village, maintaining a traditional distance until D-Day – something for which Fern was deeply grateful. Having to cope with her own relations was more than enough, when all she wanted, like Garbo, was to be left alone. Shortly after one the sound of a car on the driveway announced the advent of Robin, Abby, and Aunt Edie, the latter an octogenarian with a deceptive air of fragility and an almost infinite capacity for sweet sherry. Robin, at fifty-nine, still retained most of his hair and an incongruous boyishness of manner, though where his children were concerned he radiated an aura of generalised anxiety which neither their maturity or his had been able to alleviate. Abby in her forties was getting plump around the hips but remained charmingly scatty, easily lovable, impractical in small matters but down-to-earth in her approach to major issues. They had lapsed into the habits of matrimony without ever having formalised the arrangement and Fern, suspecting her father of a secret mental block, had never pushed the subject. Abby had received her seal of approval long before and she was content not to disrupt the status quo. However, even the nicest people have their defects. Abby had a passion for pets, usually of the small furry variety and invariably highly-strung to the point of psychosis. There had been a vicious Pomeranian, a sickly Pekinese, a succession of neurotic hamsters, gerbils, and guinea-pigs. Unfortunately, she had brought her latest acquisition with her, a chihuahua salvaged from a dog’s home whom she had rechristened Yoda. Fern tried not to fantasise about what might happen if the canine miniature came face to face with Lougarry. There was much cheek-to-cheek kissing, hefting of luggage and presentation of presents. Fern felt she was functioning increasingly on automatic pilot: her mouth made the right noises while inside her there was a yawning emptiness where her uncertainties rattled to and fro like echoes in a gorge. At Abby’s insistence she showed her the dress, thrown in haste back over the dummy, and while Abby touched and admired it a sudden cold fatalism told her that all this was meaningless, because she would never wear it now. She would never wear it at all.

‘What’s this?’ Abby enquired, picking up the drift of gossamer on the bed.

‘It’s mine,’ Fern said quickly, almost snatching it from her. ‘It was given to me – ages ago. Ages ago.’ And then, seeing Abby’s expression of hurt: ‘I’m sorry if I … It’s very fragile. I must put it away. I shouldn’t have left it lying about.’

The intrusion of Yoda put paid to further embarrassment. Abby scooped him up in her arms to prevent him soiling the dress and marvelled aloud how he could have managed to climb so many flights of stairs when the treads were nearly his own height. Fern could not resist a sneaking hope that he might slip on the descent and roll all the way to the bottom.

Will and Gaynor walked up the hill towards the moors. The same gleam of sunlight which spun a rainbow from the Atlantean veil as Fern gazed into the mirror danced across the landscape ahead of them, pursued by a grey barrage of cloud. The sun’s ray seemed to finger the farthest slopes, brushing the earth with a fleeting brilliance of April colour: the green and straw-gold of the grasses, the brown and bronze and blood-purple of thrusting stems, vibrant with spring sap, and in an isolate clump of trees the lemon-pale mist of new leaves.

‘Spring comes later here than in the south,’ Gaynor said.

‘Like a beautiful woman arriving long after the start of the party,’ Will responded. ‘She knows we’ll appreciate her that much more if she keeps us waiting.’

He seemed to know where he was going, changing from track to track as if by instinct, evidently treading an accustomed route. In due course Lougarry appeared, though Gaynor did not see from where, falling into step beside them. Her coat was scuffed and ruffled as if she had slept out, the fur tipped here and there with dried mud, burrs and grass seeds adhering to her flank. Gaynor tried to imagine her and her owner living in an ordinary house, sharing a sofa, watching Eastenders; but it was impossible. They were, not quite wild, but outsiders: outside walls, outside society, outside the normal boundaries in which we confine ourselves. She sensed that Ragginbone’s knowledge, his air of culture, had been acquired by watching and learning rather than taking part – endless years of watching and learning, maybe even centuries. She could picture him standing sentinel, patient as a heron, while the tumult of history went rushing and seething past. The wind would be his cloak and the sky his shelter, and Lougarry would sit at his heels, faithful as his shadow, silent as the wolf she resembled.

‘If Ragginbone is a retired wizard,’ she asked Will, ‘where does that leave Lougarry? Is she a retired werewolf?’

‘Reformed,’ said Will.

Gaynor had spoken lightly, her manner mock-satirical; but Will, as ever, sounded purely matter-of-fact.

They found Ragginbone on the crest of a hill where the bare rock broke through the soil. Gaynor did not know how far they had come but she was tired and thirsty, grateful for a long drink from the flask he carried. It was cased in leather like a hip-flask, though considerably bigger, but the contents tasted like water – the way water ought to taste but so rarely does, cool and clear and straight-off-the-mountain, without that tang of tin and the trace chemicals that so often contaminate it. But afterwards she thought perhaps its purity was mere fancy: thirst can transform any drink into an elixir. Will related most of her story, Gaynor speaking only in response to direct questions from Ragginbone. He made her repeat the description of Dr Laye several times.

‘Could he be an ambulant?’ Will suggested.

‘Maybe. However … You are sure his skin was actually grey? It was not an effect of the television?’

‘I’m sure,’ said Gaynor. ‘When his hand reached out I could see it quite clearly. I can’t describe how horrible it was. Not just shocking but somehow … obscene. The greyness made it look dead, but it was moving, beckoning, and the fingers were very long and supple, as if they had no bones, or too many …’ She broke off, shuddering at the recollection.

‘Yet the picture remained flat – it wasn’t like your three-dimensional vision of Azmodel?’

‘The screen went sort of rubbery, and the arm was pushing at it, stretching it out like plasticine, but – yes, the image behind stayed flat.’

‘And this was a programme you expected to see?’ Ragginbone persisted. ‘It was listed in the newspaper?’

‘Yes.’

To her frustration, Ragginbone made no further comment, his bright eyes narrowing in an intensity of thought. Will, better acquainted with him, waited a while before resuming the subject. ‘You know him, don’t you?’

‘Let us say, I know who he might be. If the skin tint is natural, and not the result of disease, that tone – or something like it – was a characteristic of a certain family, though it has been diluted over the ages. There is the name, too … Clearly, since this was a real programme, and he was invited to appear on it, he is a person of some standing in his field. Possibly Gaynor could use her contacts to learn more about him?’

‘I never thought of that,’ Gaynor admitted. ‘Of course, it’s obvious. How stupid of me.’

‘Not at all.’ Unexpectedly, Ragginbone smiled at her, a maze of lines crinkling and wrinkling at eye and cheek. ‘You had a disconcerting experience, but you seem to have kept your head very well. It was a pity you were so upset by the bats.’

‘I hate bats,’ said Gaynor.

‘What about the Old Spirit?’ asked Will. ‘He has to be behind all this.’

‘I fear so. He was weakened by his failure in Atlantis, but alas, not for long. And no other has ever laired in Azmodel.’

‘But why is he targeting Gaynor?’

‘Possibly because you put Alison’s television set in her room,’ Ragginbone retorted, with a flourish of his eyebrows. ‘Technology lends itself to supernatural control, and after all, what is a television but the mechanical equivalent of a crystal ball? Gaynor was not targeted, she was merely on the spot. It is Fern, I suspect, who is the target.’

‘Revenge?’ Will asked after a moment’s reflection.

‘Possibly. He has always been peculiarly subject to rancour, especially where the witchkind are concerned. The first Spirits hated the rumour of men aeons before they arrived, fearing them as potential rivals for the dominion of the planet, knowing nothing of who they were or from whence they would come. When they realised that their anticipated enemies were no fiery angels descending from the stars but only hairless apes who had clambered down from the trees, their hatred turned to derision.’ Ragginbone paused, smiling a wry smile as if at some secret joke. ‘Time passed. For the immortals, time can move both very fast and very slow: a week can stretch out indefinitely, or a million years can slip by almost unnoticed. Man grew up while their eyes were elsewhere, the Gift was given and Prospero’s Children learned to vie with the older powers. And of all the Spirits, his self-blame for such wilful myopia – the contempt and enmity that he has nourished for mortals ever after – was the greatest. Yet he yearned for Men – to rule, to manipulate, to control. And down the ages he has grown close to them, learning too well their follies and weaknesses, becoming their god and their devil, their genius and nemesis. Learned but never wise, he has remade himself in their image: the dark side of Man. Revenge gnaws him, but power motivates him. And Fern … Fern has power. How much, I do not know. In Atlantis, he must have seen more than we. In the years when the loss he had suffered there drained him like a slow-healing wound he may still have dreamed of using her, turning her Gift into his weapon. The Old Spirits have sought before now to corrupt witchkind and force them into their service, though such bargains have usually achieved little for either partner in the end. Remember Alimond. Still, it is said that the Fellangels, his most potent servants, were numbered among Prospero’s Children, until both their souls and their Gift were warped into the form of his purpose. Fern would not listen to the whispers of the Old Spirit – at the moment, she listens to no one – but … she might be subjugated through those she loves. Or so he may calculate. I think …’

‘You mean us?’ Will interrupted.

‘You, and others. You two seem to be the most readily available. You will have to be careful.’

‘You aren’t very reassuring,’ said Gaynor. ‘I thought I was scared before, but now … I suppose I could decide not to believe in any of this: it might be more comfortable.’

‘Is it comfortable,’ Ragginbone enquired, ‘to be afraid of something you don’t believe in?’

Gaynor did not attempt to respond, relapsing into a nervous habit of childhood, restless fingers plaiting and unplaiting a few strands of her hair. Presently, she broke into Will’s murmur of speculation, addressing the old man: ‘Why did you say “them” all the time?’ Ragginbone frowned, baffled. ‘When you talked about mankind, you said “them”, not “us”. I was wondering why.’

‘I wasn’t aware of it,’ Ragginbone admitted. ‘You are very acute. Little things betray us … I was born into the dregs of humanity, my Gift raised me higher than the highest – or so I thought at the time – and when I lost it I felt I was neither wizard nor man. The human kernel was gone: all that remained was the husk of experience. I became a Watcher on the periphery of the game, standing at the elbow of this player or that, giving advice, keeping the score. The advice usually goes unheeded and the score, at least on this last hand, was evidently wrong.’

Will grinned. ‘That’s how it goes.’

‘You’re an outsider,’ said Gaynor. ‘I thought so on the way here. Outside life, outside humanity, perhaps even outside time. Are there – are there others like you?’

‘Some that I know of. Probably some that I do not. We are the invigilators: events unfold before us, and occasionally we may try to give them a nudge in the right direction, or what we hope is the right direction. Our task is neither to lead nor to follow, only to be there. I have been an onlooker for so long it is hard to remember I was once part of the action. The human race … that is a club from which I was blackballed centuries ago.’

‘But –’ Gaynor broke off, gathering her courage for the question she was suddenly afraid to ask.

‘But?’ Ragginbone repeated gently.

‘Who appointed you?’ asked Gaynor. ‘There must be someone – Someone you work for, Someone who gives you orders …’

‘There are no orders,’ said Ragginbone. ‘No one tells us if we have succeeded or failed, if we have done right or wrong. We work for everyone. All we can do is all anyone can do: listen to the voice of the heart, and hope. I should like to think that we too are watched, and by friendly eyes.’

‘You will never get a straight answer from him,’ Will said. ‘Only twisted ones. He could find curves in a plumb-line. Ragginbone, Bradachin said the thing that came out of the mirror was not Alison but a tannasgeal. What did he mean?’

‘They are the spirits of those who died but feared to pass the Gate. They have long forgotten who they were or why they stayed; only the shreds of their earthly emotions linger, like a wasting disease. Hatred, greed, bitterness: these are the passions that bind them here. They loathe the living, and lust after them, but alone they have little power. However, the Oldest has often used such tools.’

‘How could it look like Alison?’ Will demanded.

‘People – and events – leave an impression on the atmosphere. Such creatures are parasites: they batten onto the memories of others, taking their shape. No doubt the tannasgeal saw her in the mirror.’

‘Mirrors remember,’ said Gaynor.

‘Exactly.’

They were silent for a while, leaning against the rock where once, long before, Ragginbone had shown Will and Fern the Gate of Death. Every so often there was the rumour of a passing car on the distant road, but nearer and clearer were the tiny sounds of insects, the call of an ascending skylark. The colours of the landscape were dulled beneath the cloud-cover; the wind was chill.

‘What can we do to protect Fern?’ Gaynor said eventually, shivering now from cold rather than the recollection of horror.

‘I don’t know,’ said Ragginbone.

‘I thought you were supposed to advise us?’ Gaynor protested indignantly.

Will laughed.

‘Advice is a dangerous thing,’ the Watcher responded. ‘It should be given only rarely and cautiously, and taken in small doses, with scepticism. What can I say? Keep your nerve. Use your wits. Premonition is an unchancy guide to action, but there is a shadow lying ahead of you, through which I cannot see. Remember: the Old Spirit is not the only evil in the world. There are others, less ancient maybe, less strong – as the tempest is milder than the earthquake, the tsunami cooler than the volcano – but not less deadly. And mortality gives the Gifted an edge that the undying cannot match. Your dream about the owl puzzles me, Gaynor. Of all the things you have told me, that is the one that does not fit. There is something about it that I ought to recognise, a fragment that eludes me. Tread carefully. The shadow ahead of you is black.’