With its green-black, black-green, green and black skin, its deep-set and faceted eyes flashing yellow and green and blue and red, long neck and huge body, it looked no different than any other dragon. In form and body, no different, that is. But immediately and immensely and frighteningly obviously it looked very different than any dragon he had ever seen, and the difference lay in its manner. It did not move in a mindless rush capable of being instantly diverted by a waving flag or the sound of a horn. And neither did it move in the relentless fashion of one intent upon its prey and knowing just what and just where that prey was. Least of all did it move along like some great, grazing pea-brained cow.
The word (it came to him in a moment that seemed to chill his skin) the word for this dragon was alert. And the other world for it (the echo after the shot) was intelligent.
It came slowly along, slowly and carefully, head turning from side to side, tongue tasting the air. Now and then it paused and it raised its head, slowly and deliberately, gathering in the details of sight and sound and scent at all levels. Then it proceeded in its careful, one might almost say its measured, pace. Then, too, in a third terrifying flash of understanding, Jon-Joras understood what now in retrospect seemed blazingly obvious to him: that the paths which he had been treading through the forest were too wide by far to have been made entirely by the narrow slots of deer’s hooves. He had been walking, careless — almost — and certainly all unknowing, in the dragons’ walk! He had been treading in the dragons’ tracks! And now he had at once to retreat and to vanish, otherwise this careful questing beast of a dragon would certainly, soon, be treading in his, Jon-Joras’s, tracks—!
But even as his tendons tensed to move him back and away, the dragon, as though in obedient command to his, the man’s own fears, turned aside and moved away and in another moment was hidden in the woods and in the towering thicket. Jon-Joras did not relax, gratefully or gracefully; he slumped and almost fell over his own sweating legs. He had come here in response to a stupid bravado, and now he was trapped — at least twice-trapped. The patrolling flyer kept him captive here in one way. And now, it would seem, the patrolling dragon might (if he were not exceedingly careful) keep him captive in another. If it didn’t kill him first. The strange thing (the strange thing? and was all else commonplace?) was that the dragon had not looked fierce. Its fear and its terror came from other attributes entirely. This beast might not charge him upright upon its hind legs… neither, though, was it likely to be diverted by a rag of a shirt fluttering in the breeze, or some other trick of the sort.
Time enough some other time to wonder why this one dragon was so different. Time now all but screamed aloud to be used to go as far and as fast away from here as might be possible. He would head back as silent-swift as ever he could to the general area where he had left the stolen flyer. The patrolling vessel might have gone away. Or its pilot might have landed it and come out himself to investigate. Or Jon-Joras might simply regain the one he’d used before and continue a terrain-hugging, tree-hiding tactic until some better notion or occasion offered itself.
Then he looked up and saw that, although he had moved and the dragon had moved, the dragon was in front of him once again. He crouched. He slunk off to the left. The dragon, moving slowly and without undue concern, moved in the same direction. He moved more quickly. So did the dragon. And now, from a great distance, overlaid with a multitude of memories, he heard the voice of Aëlorix speaking to him at the estate, back when all was well and all was amity and peace. They were the Kar-chee’s dogs… They hunted us… Was that what this one was doing now? Hunting him? With deliberate speed and awful majesty? No… No… Not quite, not quite. Jon-Joras crept here and crept over there, crawled, dodged, twisted, retreated, retreated… The dragon followed, followed, followed. But actually it was not at all that Jon-Joras was going where he wanted and the dragon merely following.
Actually, Jon-Joras was going where the dragon wanted him to go, the way the dragon wanted him to go. He wasn’t being hunted. He was being herded.
And so, through the great, crouching, vine-heavy gate of the castle, Jon-Joras walked with slouching shoulders and with hanging head, and the dragon walked watchfully behind him.
The dragon had ceased to be a surprise and, when he saw it at last, the Kar-chee really came as no surprise. It was not just that he had smelled it, the scent not faint and old and musty as it had been in the other, in the abandoned castle, but strong and fresh. But scent and, subsequently, sight, were but confirmations of what logic — without either — had already revealed. For if the dragons had been the Kar-chee’s dogs and if here and if now a dragon was acting like a dog, then—
It was the man who was the surprise.
— then there had to be Kar-chee to direct them.
But he did not expect to see the man and the Kar-chee together; he did not expect to see the man at all. Any man at all.
One picture only had he ever seen, and then the carven figure in the frieze, dusty and webby and observed from a bad angle; but there wasn’t and couldn’t be a second’s question or doubt. The dull black and ten-feet tall form, the comparatively tiny head, the huge anterior arms bent so that the hands or paws were folded loosely together upwards, the upper body slanted and canted forward, seemingly under the weight of its limbs: unmistakably, the Kar-chee.
The man was colorless, ageless, dirty, face and figure loose where one would think to find them tight, tight where they should have been loose. He sagged, blinked, mumbled his mouth and smacked his lips and he said nothing. In his hands, hands held up hieratically as a Pharoah’s with crook and flail, he the man held some curious arrangement of fans or fronds and sticks.
The dragon composed itself for rest and observation on the mossy, grassy terrace, ran its tongue out once more, hissed a bit and made a slight coughing, barking, grunting sound.
The Kar-chee snapped its head up and began to move itself in an odd way and made an odd sort of rustling, clicking noise. And the man, in turn, cocked his head and looked away and the Kar-chee stopped and the man looked at Jon-Joras, and, in a curious sing-song voice he said, “Oh, mmmm, message, mmmm, so, It appears that he this man has not come here-place in, mmm, a proper, an authorized, mmm, orderly fashion, purpose, mmm.” Click, click, rustle, rustle, click-clack. “Does-has he the man a correct mmm intent, mmm in coming here-place, so, or is it mere, mmm, intrusion; what reply is conveyed? Mmm, so.”
Jon-Joras, astonished, allowed his mouth to fall open, said nothing. The Kar-chee clicked and rustled and the interpreter, allowing his dull and uninterested eyes to slide over the newcomer, said, “Communicate with, mmm, he the man and obtain, mmm, mmm, the reply. So.” The voice changed a trifle in tone and timbre and the empty eyes appeared to try to concentrate. “Why did he the — No. Why did you come?”
Thinking rapidly and fearfully for what might be an acceptable answer, even a lie which — if not too outrageous — might be carried off — Jon-Joras said, “The overlords have sent me.”
The interpreter clicked and rustled his stick and his fan or frond. The Kar-chee rustled and clicked, and Jon-Joras stared at its gaunt, chitinous body.
“‘What overlords?’”
“The overlords of all the stars of men.”
“‘Why approached in furtive manner?’”
“Desired not to be seen by the other men who sometimes approach.”
“‘Why desired not?’”
“Lest they prevent the consultation.”
“‘Purpose of consultation?’”
Here it was, and Jon-Joras could think of nothing safe to put forward. So he decided to leave this to the other, and so he said, “To discuss and discover what it is that the Kar-chee most want, with a view to adjusting matters.”
Silence fell. After a moment the Kar-chee clicked, then stopped, then rustled, and stopped. The interpreter coughed a bit and cleared his throat. Then the Kar-chee “spoke” rapidly and abruptly turned and made off in its eerie, stalking, waddling gait. The interpreter spat on the ground and rubbed his spittle into it with his foot. He glanced up, grimaced, shrugged, seemed to hang and dangle on invisible wires which, if cut, would let him collapse into a huddle of puppet-cloth.
“What did he — What did it — What did the Kar-chee say?”
“Mmm? Say? Said to give you food, take care of what you, mmm, will want… What will you want?” the old man asked, almost querulously. And added, “Come, then. Come. Come on.”
The rank odor of the Kar-chee was thicker down below, but it was largely replaced in the old man’s quarters, away off in a distant chamber down long and dusty echoing empty corridors, by the at least equally rank odor of the old man himself and his quite indifferent housekeeping. New clothes were piled in a niche in the wall and old clothes mouldered on a heap in the corner and one nasty garment hung over the sill of the high slit-window as though the effort of tossing it there precluded any attempt to correct the poor aim and shove it on through. The old man sat down on his frowsty bed and coughed and rumbled and spat. Then he stared blankly at his sudden guest, a long while. From time to time a flicker of something passed over his dehumanized face and it twitched and made movements as though it were about to express interest or another emotion. But before ever this was done, the face sagged into the same blankness as before. Was he drugged, perhaps, Jon-Joras wondered.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
This did produce reaction; after all, the old man’s function was to serve as a channel for questions and answers to pass through and to repass through; he had to employ his own mouth and tongue and vocal cords for one of these passages, and his mind, no matter how mechanically, for both. “What’s…” the question seemed to sink into the sands of stupor and there be lost, but after a moment it welled up again, a bit diminished: “… name?” Blear eyes looked up, slack mouth pursed and twisted, lips blubbered in a short, abrupt sound which might have retained the ghost of scorn or pain or laughter: the scornful, painful laughter which ends in a little bubble of blood, seen or unseen: the hands fluttered in the briefest, slightest gesture of pushing things away; then fell back and down.
There was a not-quite-mutter, a more-than-whisper, which might have been, “Never mind…”
“Well, but… Where do you come from?”
No. Not drugs. The old man’s mind had simply rusted away. Who could say how long he had been here, a prisoner? A prisoner-at-large, but still a prisoner. He licked his thin lips with a bluish tongue, stirred on his dusty couch and looked about him. “Food,” he said. Sighed. Pointed. There was a small pile of camp-rations, and empty and part-empty containers lay where they had fallen or had been dropped, adding the rotten-sweet tainted smell of garbage to the other ill smells of the room. “Food,” he said again.
Jon-Joras got up and helped himself, paused with a bit of something almost at his mouth. “They bring it here for you?” he asked. And, answering his own question, said, “Yes. They bring you the food and the clothes, too. The other men who come here — the ones who approach in a proper order. Who are they? Who are they? And what is this all ab—”
Now the old man leaped up and scuttled across the dirty floor and sort of crouched before him, looking up and breathing into his face a fetid breath and now his face was distorted with feeling and he grasped Jon-Joras’s arms and he said to him in a whisper like a scream, “Oluc? Oluc? You know Dondon-oluc?”
Remembrance sprang into the young man’s mind and must have instantly been reflected on his face, for the old one tightened his timid grip and made anguished little noises.
“Dondon-oluc and Tiran-lou,” said Jon-Joras. “And the huge old trees—”
“And Lou! And Lou!” the old man cried, in a jerky voice. “Oluc and Lou, ah! And the trees, the trees! The trees…”
He fell into a heap of smeared and smattered clothes that cried and twitched and made dreadful, sobbing noises. Jon-Joras was torn between pity and dismay and hope, and then the old man scuttled backwards away from him and rose to a slouch and stared at him with his awful crumpled face askew and then turned and ran, tottering, out of his nasty room and down the dim, black corridors and whimpered and flapped his wrinkled, dirty hands.
Jon-Joras stared after him. Run after him? No, no, he might get lost, and he had no desire to get lost here in this place where the Kar-chee scent was forever strong, forever fresh. Was the old interpreter off to reveal something to his alien masters? It seemed not likely. Likelier only that he had been all unsettled by having some of the rust and dust of decades fall in scales and flakes from his poor withered mind and memory. The young man put the bit of food into his mouth and looked out the tall slit-window. Outside, downside, between the castle and the woods, the dragon patrolled. Alert, watchful, and with deliberate leisure.