Dragon's Boy (9 page)

The path up to the cave was familiar even in the dark. When he reached the entrance, he took a long, shuddering breath, and called into the blackness.

“I—am—
not
—your—son.” Not asking—telling. There. It was said. So why did he feel so awful having said it?

There was an answering sigh. “True,” came the old man's voice, drawing him back inside the cave.

Artos walked carefully, avoiding both the metal foot and the hanging stones. He came around the wall and saw that Old Linn was still lying on the straw bed. The great carved door on the far wall was now ajar, as if he'd tried to leave and couldn't quite manage it.

“True? Then why did you call me your son? Why did you give me that awful lie?”

“True, not true. The storyteller does not ever tell the truth baldly. I tell you that you are the son of a dragon. Pendragon. That is truth made young and beautiful. You knew you didn't spring from the loins of a real dragon. Boadie bears pups. Lady Marion bears boys. Dragons bear dragons. That is truth baldly. But wisdom…” He smiled weakly.

Artos was not amused. “You said I was
your
son and you are a man.”

“I am a Druid priest, chaste, sworn never to marry nor to sire a child, all so that I may perform my magicks and study my particular wisdoms.”

“A priest?” The surprise in Artos' voice was undisguised. The only priest he'd ever known was Father Bertram.

“I did not sire you, but I bore you,” the old man said. “Answer that riddle, if you can.”

Artos answered warily, “Boadie bears pups. Lady Marion bears boys. Dragons bear dragons. And…”

“I bore you….”

Artos suddenly smiled. “You bore me away from some place. That's it, isn't it?”

The old man was silent for a long moment, as silent as the dragon had been for every correct answer.

“From whom did you bear me away?” Artos asked at last.

“From your mother, before your birth father ever saw you,” Old Linn said. “And carried you to Sir Ector's castle. And kept watch over you ever since. Is that not a fine fathering?”

Artos felt the anger rise up in him again, like spring sap. “A silent father,” he said quietly. Then louder, “A deceitful father.”

“I was sworn to secrecy, my boy,” Old Linn said, struggling to sit up. “Sworn to keep your name and lineage until you proved yourself worthy of it.”

“And if I did not?” The question paused in the air between them.

“Ah, well.” The old man coughed. “The dragon and I were meant to see that you became worthy.”

“But I found the dragon by accident,” Artos said.

“Did you?” the old man asked.

“Didn't I?” But then he remembered Boadie's flight and the tracks leading toward the cave and wondered. “I was to get wisdom,” he whispered.

The old man smiled. “Just so. Wisdom. Already you had some knowledge. Your childish promise showed when you learned your letters with ease.”

The bag seemed to grow warm against Artos' chest. He reached up to stroke it.

“Such ease of learning was part of your inheritance.”

My inheritance,
Artos thought.
And Old Linn the only one who can tell me of it.

“But,” the old man continued, “suddenly you reached your springtide and you stopped growing into that promise. You grew instead into a longing for the wisdom of sword and lance. That, of course, I didn't have to give.” His voice seemed to sigh into the air. “What was I to do? I enlisted that fool of a smith and that wraith of a hound, and by Lady Marion's good graces as well, you
accidentally
came upon a dragon. Or perhaps you did not. There is wisdom to be found in happy accidents, you know. It is the wisdom of the Land of Serendip.”

Artos' hand dropped from the bag. He closed his eyes to keep tears from starting. “But I
believed
in that dragon.”

Old Linn chuckled. “It was a good dragon, wasn't it? I made it myself.”

“I
loved
that dragon.”

“And yet you left it without a good-bye.”

Remembering the silence of the cave and how readily he had turned to his noisy new friends, Artos was nevertheless stung by the unfairness of the accusation. “I did come back,” he whispered. “The second day.” He walked over to the straw bed and knelt by its side. “I did try.”

The apothecary put his hand on Artos' head, then croaked out, “Did you…did you bring any of that stew?”

“I…” The tears, so long checked, were falling now. “I brought you seed cakes.”

“I like seed cakes,” Old Linn said.

“They're awfully mashed.”

“Even so,” the old man said. “But couldn't you have gotten any stew from Garlic Mag?”

Artos felt his mouth drop open. “How did you know about her?”

The old man smiled, showing terrible teeth, and whispered, “I am the Great Riddler. I am the Master of Wisdoms. I am the Word and I am the Light. I Was and Am and Will Be.” He hesitated, reached up, and pulled the cylinder toward him, speaking directly into its open mouth.

“I AM THE DRAGON!”

The words ran down into the tubing and issued forth out of an opening in the wall so loudly that the cave was awash with echoes.

Artos picked up the old man's hand and held it. He was amazed at how frail the hand was.

His bones,
Artos thought,
must be as hollow as the wing bones of a bird. As hollow as the wing bones of a dragon. A bird. A dragon. Merlinnus.
He thought about the hawks in the castle mews, one of them a little merlin. Smiling, he mouthed the words “Perhaps you are the dragon” to Old Linn's fingers, but the old man didn't hear it.

“Look,” the apothecary said, pointing to the door in the far wall, barely illuminated by the brazier's fading light. “Through that door, Pendragon, are the men you must learn to lead. With passion. With fairness. With wisdom. Are you bold enough to do it?”

Artos looked not at the door but at the carved signs of power on it. In the flickering light, the runes seemed to move and change even as he watched.

Suddenly he didn't feel very bold. He didn't have the wisdom to even read any of the warnings set out in the wood. All he had were a few stories, a great longing, some riddles and songs, and a game of cups and peas. How could
those
be enough?

He turned and looked at Old Linn. The old man's eyes caught the light of the brazier and they burned like the eyes of a dragon.

Artos squared his shoulders and whispered, “I cannot go alone, sir.” He bent down, put his hands under Old Linn's arms, and pulled him gently to his feet. Then with his hand firm under the old man's elbow, he guided them both through the door.

As they passed beneath the lintel, Artos looked up. He could just make out a few of the words carved there. Something to do with kings, once and in the future. He shook his head and smiled a small smile.

Past the door was a warren of hallways and rooms. From somewhere ahead, Artos heard the chanting of many men.
Celebrating with Mithras
, he thought,
just as Lady Marion said
. He wrinkled his nose briefly at the thought of drinking bull's blood and wondered if Sir Ector was among the men, his bandaged foot upon a chair. Mithras, the Druids, Christianity, the fenfolk—wisdom, it seemed, came in many forms and from the mouths of many gods. It was seen placed under many different cups. How one
used
the wisdom was what really counted. He smiled.

“I think I am beginning to understand, sir,” Artos said.

“Understand?”

“About wisdom.”

“Are you now?”

“Yes. You may not
look
like a dragon, all teeth and nails. But you
are
a dragon indeed.”

“A very
old
dragon,” the apothecary warned.

“How…”Artos' voice was suddenly troubled. “Just
how
old, sir?”

“Five of your lifetimes, my boy. But then, my own father reached one hundred.”

“One hundred lifetimes?”

Old Linn smiled. “One hundred years.”

“Good.” Artos breathed deeply, then added quickly in his head. “That means you have at least two of my lifetimes to go. I would not have you die just yet. I have not finished getting my wisdom.”

He thought the old man chuckled, but perhaps it was a simple clearing of the throat.

“Can I have that piece of cake now?” Old Linn asked.

“It's two pieces, really. And quite mashed.”

“Two pieces then, one for each lifetime to come.”

“They really should be shared,” Artos said.

Old Linn looked directly at him and drew himself up to his full height. “But I…” he said, his voice suddenly hard, “
I
am the Dragon.”

“And I…” Artos replied, reaching into his shirt and scraping together one piece of the cake, which he pushed toward Old Linn's mouth before taking the second piece for himself, “
I
am the Dragon's Boy.”

T
HE DRAGON'S BOY
BEGAN
as the result of an obsession I had with King Arthur and Merlin—an obsession that dates back to my childhood. One of the first important tales I ever read was in the
World Book Encyclopedia
, and it was about Camelot and all who dwelt there.

Years later, I wrote a series of Merlin stories and poems, and one of them was called “The Dragon's Boy.” The story was published first in the
Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
in 1985, and eventually in my collection
Merlin's Booke
. Only much later did I enlarge the tale and turn it into the novel that you have here.

A lot of the physical details in this book came from a trip my husband and I took to England in the 1990s, when we walked around the actual High Tor and the countryside that spreads out beneath it.

All part of my obsession. As I like to tell people, I am an Arthur-holic.

Jane Yolen

I was born in New York City on February 11, 1939. Because February 11 is also Thomas Edison's birthday, my parents used to say I brought light into their world. But my parents were both writers and prone to exaggeration. My father was a journalist; my mother wrote short stories and created crossword puzzles and double acrostics. My younger brother, Steve, eventually became a newspaperman. We were a family of an awful lot of words!

We lived in the city for most of my childhood, with two brief moves: to California for a year while my father worked as a publicity agent for Warner Bros. films, and then to Newport News, Virginia, during the World War II years, when my mother moved my baby brother and me in with her parents while my father was stationed in London running the Army's secret radio.

When I was thirteen, we moved to Connecticut. After college I worked in book publishing in New York for five years, married, and after a year traveling around Europe and the Middle East with my husband in a Volkswagen camper, returned to the States. We bought a house in Massachusetts, where we lived almost happily ever after, raising three wonderful children.

I say “almost,” because in 2006, my wonderful husband of forty-four years—Professor David Stemple, the original Pa in my Caldecott Award–winning picture book,
Owl Moon
—died. I still live in the same house in Massachusetts.

And I am still writing.

I have often been called the “Hans Christian Andersen of America,” something first noted in
Newsweek
close to forty years ago because I was writing a lot of my own fairy tales at the time.

The sum of my books—including some eighty-five fairy tales in a variety of collections and anthologies—is now well over 335. Probably the most famous are
Owl Moon
,
The Devil's Arithmetic
, and
How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight?
My work ranges from rhymed picture books and baby board books, through middle grade fiction, poetry collections, and nonfiction, to novels and story collections for young adults and adults. I've also written lyrics for folk and rock groups, scripted several animated shorts, and done voiceover work for animated short movies. And I do a monthly radio show called
Once Upon a Time
.

These days, my work includes writing books with each of my three children, now grown up and with families of their own. With Heidi, I have written mostly picture books, including
Not All Princesses Dress in Pink
and the nonfiction series Unsolved Mysteries from History. With my son Adam, I have written a series of Rock and Roll Fairy Tales for middle grades, among other fantasy novels. With my son Jason, who is an award-winning nature photographer, I have written poems to accompany his photographs for books like
Wild Wings
and
Color Me a Rhyme.

And I am still writing.

Oh—along the way, I have won a lot of awards: two Nebula Awards, a World Fantasy Award, a Caldecott Medal, the Golden Kite Award, three Mythopoeic Awards, two Christopher Awards, the Jewish Book Award, and a nomination for the National Book Award, among many accolades. I have also won (for my full body of work) the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement, the Science Fiction Poetry Association's Grand Master Award, the Catholic Library Association's Regina Medal, the University of Minnesota's Kerlan Award, the University of Southern Mississippi and de Grummond Children's Literature Collection's Southern Miss Medallion, and the Smith College Medal. Six colleges and universities have given me honorary doctorate degrees. One of my awards, the Skylark, given by the New England Science Fiction Association, set my good coat on fire when the top part of it (a large magnifying glass) caught the sunlight. So I always give this warning: Be careful with awards and put them where the sun don't shine!

Also of note—in case you find yourself in a children's book trivia contest—I lost my fencing foil in Grand Central Station during a date, fell overboard while whitewater rafting in the Colorado River, and rode in a dog sled in Alaska one March day.