Dragons of the Watch (25 page)

“We make goat cheese on the farm.”

Old One nodded. “Bealomondore, there’s a kettle in that cupboard. Put some water on to boil for tea, if you would.”

Ellie sat opposite the urohm. “Would you tell us about coming to Chiril?”

“Yes.” He paused, then gave Bealomondore’s back a quick glance, where he stood at the pump, filling the kettle. The old man winked at Ellie. “My memory’s clear if you go back far enough. I suppose you’ve figured it out, the two of you. You’re young and clever.”

Ellie smiled with understanding. Her gramps had the same troubles at times. “You don’t remember things from today or yesterday or a couple days ago. And as the day goes on, you get too tired to think, and you forget more. At least, that’s what my gramps says is the case.”

“He’s got the right of it,” Old One said around a dollop of dough in his mouth.

“Would you tell us how Rumbard City came to be in the bottle?”

He looked so sad and weary that Ellie regretted having prodded him. She wanted to tell him it didn’t matter. But of course, it did. She contemplated telling him to keep the tale for another time. But he heaved a great sigh and began.

“We were sent here by the paladin of Amara. We were chosen because our race, the urohms, had demonstrated once before that we could stand honorably. Alas, this time we failed the test.”

“How?” asked Ellie.

Bealomondore sat down at the table while waiting for the water to boil. “Why did Paladin send you to Chiril?”

“Paladin knew of Chiril and that the people here had lost the knowledge of Wulder.” He looked at them sharply. “Do you know who Wulder is?”

Bealomondore nodded. “Our country has been visited by a wizard
and a librarian from Amara. And our own Verrin Schope visited Amara and came back with the truth of Wulder. Now Chiril has its own paladin. Our people are beginning to learn of Wulder and the teachings in His Tomes.”

Old One’s shoulders drooped, and he looked down at his hands. He’d polished off the spoonful of dough, so he slowly turned the spoon around and around. “That was our job, our first duty. We were to tell the people of Chiril the truth. A very simple task, but we managed to bungle it.”

The kettle called, loud and shrill. Bealomondore jumped to take it off the heat. The shriek lost momentum and became silent. The tumanhofer hastily poured the tea, and while it steeped, the three companions in the kitchen removed trays of crisp, hot daggarts from the oven and replaced them with trays containing lumps of dough. With Old One to handle the oven and the heavy baking sheet, Ellie and Bealomondore could manage the other chores easily.

Soon they each had a cup of tea and a daggart.

“I’m glad you came,” said Old One.

Ellie reached to pat his arm. “I’m glad we got to meet you. But the truth is, we would like to leave. Perhaps we can all get out.”

Bealomondore looked intently at their host. “If you can tell us more about why we are in the bottle, we hope we can discover how to get out.”

Orli came to roost on Old One’s shoulder. The urohm broke off a piece of the daggart and handed it to his dragon companion. “I suppose I could, but I don’t see how it will help. We had a wizard traveling with us, Wizard Pater and his dragon, Salm. The wizard rode the dragon while we sailed in a great ship. I suppose that was the beginning of our demise. The wizard would visit the ship and give us lectures about how
we were to conduct ourselves to further the cause set before us. Then he flew off, not suffering the daily rigors of a life at sea.”

“Lectures?” asked Bealomondore. “That doesn’t sound very encouraging.”

“Exactly.” Old One broke off another piece of daggart for Orli. “We began to resent his intrusion. But it was his desertion that rankled most. It placed a barrier between him and us. He rode comfortably on his dragon while we suffered seasickness, cold, wet gales of the northern ocean, and then as we came south, times when heat almost smothered us and no winds billowed our sails.”

“But where was the wizard?” asked Ellie. “He and the dragon would have had to rest. They couldn’t fly continuously, could they?”

“Wizard Pater used his knowledge of the way Wulder had made the world to slip through holes in the sky to land. He visited various places and would tell us about them when he called upon us. We didn’t really appreciate the descriptions of his stopovers.”

As they once again tended the baking daggarts, Old One continued the tale. “During his long absences and our uncomfortable voyage, we began to devise our own plans for relating the wonderment of Wulder. We knew that these Chirilians had never seen a urohm. We forgot our first duty as it had been revealed to us.”

The old urohm grimaced, his wrinkles creased in an unhappy mask of tragedy. “We saw a better way. The ignorant people of Chiril would undoubtedly be impressed with our size. We would go another step and impress them with our sophistication.

“We planned to build a huge city with cultural attractions like a theater, a museum, a library, and industry. Once they were dazzled by our superiority, we would invite them to join us in our worship of Wulder, the Maker of all things, the Giver of all that is good. They would
be able to see with their own eyes just how much our people had benefited by serving Wulder.”

“You obviously built the city,” said Bealomondore. “What went wrong?”

“Before we landed on Chirilian shores, one more horrendous storm beset our voyage. Wizard Pater had just left us. And we were particularly glad to see him go because he had outlined a plan that emphasized being humble and having a servant’s attitude. We were full of rage and bitterness. The storm seemed to match the fury of our umbrage against the wizard and his plans.

“I now believe that if we had relied more on Wulder, focused our devotion on Him instead of stewing over the injustice of being made to withstand all the elements of nature, all would have been well. During the storm, we feared for our lives yet survived.

“And when we saw that we had not perished, we assumed it was because our party of urohms was great. We’d defeated the sea’s attempt to slay us one more time. We deserved all the good things that would befall us. And I am sorry to say, we assumed that Wizard Pater had perished. He’d never returned.”

“So,” said Bealomondore, leaning across the table and completely caught up in the story, “you landed and built your city.”

Ellie thought about how no one, not one person she knew, told the story of Rumbard City and the urohms. She had never heard a minstrel sing of them. There were no plays given by traveling performers recounting the things Old One talked about. The bottle city, the standing stone dragons, nothing whatsoever tickled the ears of even the closest neighbors.

“We did,” said Old One, and again his tone was of defeat. “We
proudly invited the citizens of Chiril to visit our grand metropolis and experience the goodness of Wulder.”

“Did they come?” asked Ellie.

“Oh yes. They came.”

She wanted to know everything, and he stalled, not completing the tale just as it was becoming more interesting. Patience deserted her. “Were they impressed?”

“Yes, though we hadn’t gotten around to explaining much about Wulder. Our first duty had slipped somewhere down an imaginary list to an obscure slot somewhere near the bottom. We attributed everything to Wulder but didn’t speak of His principles. We would have plenty of time to do that, or so we thought.”

Ellie felt like one of the children when a storyteller visited and deliberately paused to build their anticipation. But Old One had no thought of artificial dramatics. He truly seemed distressed. She leaned forward, and just as she touched his arm, Bealomondore lightly grasped the old man’s other arm.

Bealomondore asked, “What happened?”

“Wizard Pater found us.”

“His anger roiled the clouds in the sky. The citizens of Chiril ran, and as they escaped from the city, the wizard took all their memories of us, the buildings, and the civilization we presented as better than their own. He pulled the memories from them and placed them in a bottle.”

Ellie blinked and looked at Bealomondore. Neither one of them spoke. Ellie wanted to know if the city was in the same bottle as the memories, but that didn’t quite make sense.

“Our leader, Gordman Rumbard, faced down Wizard Pater and claimed that he no longer had the right to dictate what we do.” Old
One’s voice dropped to a whisper. “That’s when the wizard, the spokesman for Wulder, assigned our punishment. We would be in Chiril but not allowed to be a part of Chiril.

“None of the adults would be entrusted with the treasure of the knowledge we had of Wulder. We would not be able to distribute the gems of life to these people. Only when this generation, my generation, had perished. Even if it were to take four hundred years, none in the city would be released from the bottle. The children would not mature until that time. We would be taken care of, but even being taken care of would be a curse.”

Ellie’s heart ached for the urohms. Their folly had brought them down. “How is it that the provisions would be a curse?”

“Boredom. No fruit of our labors. No task to do that gave a sense of satisfaction. Nothing we could give of our own to a neighbor to express friendship.”

He sat for a moment, dejected. “This has worn me down. I cannot continue.” He moved to get up. “I shall go to my room.”

“No,” said Bealomondore. “One thing has changed. You are not useless. We need your help to make the daggarts.”

Old One looked at Bealomondore as if he could not quite understand the words he had just heard.

“I will die soon,” he said. “Then perhaps the bottle will dissolve.”

Orli chittered, a scolding sound.

Ellie could almost make out the dragon’s words. “He doesn’t approve.”

Old One laughed without humor. “He believes there is one urohm left with honor in his heart. He believes I can change what is meant to be. He thinks too highly of me and too little of justice.”

Ellie didn’t want to part with his company until they had lifted his
spirits. To go off to his room in this state of mind could not be good for his health. “Stay and help us.”

“Time to take out the next batch of daggarts,” said Bealomondore. He handed two hot pads to the urohm and opened the oven door. Old One allowed himself to be brought back into the job of baking. Later he helped them package the treats. Then he and Bealomondore worked the dumbwaiter, with Ellie at ground level emptying the car of its load.

Late that night, Ellie and Bealomondore walked to the butcher’s shop to see if a meal had been left. They assumed the box would be empty since food had been deposited in the library. The box was gone, the butcher’s stoop empty.

Ellie stood with her hands on her hips and scowled at the sight. “I don’t know if I like the idea of not having to come to get the food.”

“I know,” agreed Bealomondore. “When Old One told us of the futility of living with nothing to do, I thought of my dilemma. I have more than one thing that would satisfy my need to be of use. Instead of seeing that as a blessing, I regarded it as an annoyance.”

Ellie pushed her arm under his and grasped his hand. They stood for a while, linked and comfortable with the closeness of body and soul.

“What do you think our first duty is, Bealomondore?”

“I think we may have already done the first thing on the list.”

“Making contact with Old One, bringing him out of his isolation.”

“Yes, I don’t think Wulder approves of turning our backs on others.”

“Do you suppose the children are next?”

He leaned closer and kissed the top of her head. “I know you think so.”

“I don’t want to get caught up doing my list and not paying attention to what should be first duty for us.”

Bealomondore turned to face her. “I thought we did first duty—Old One.”

“Yes, but once you’ve done first duty, it’s taken off the list, and the next thing down becomes first duty.”

“Well, until we get the list and can read it, why don’t we work on getting the daggarts to the ragamuffins?”

“That seems like a logical course.”

Bealomondore embraced her and hugged tight. “No, my adorable tumanhofer. A logical course would be to avoid the monsters altogether. That way no one would get hurt.”

“No one would get better either.”

He mumbled, “Good point,” right before he kissed her, but Ellie, at that moment, didn’t much care whether he thought her logic held up.

Old One refused to leave the library to participate in the Great Lure of the Children. Bealomondore didn’t blame him and wished he, too, could forgo the experience, calling the enterprise the Great Trap of the Horrible Horde.

Bealomondore met Ellie at the back entrance. He carried bait and so did she—an appealing treasure of daggarts in two baskets, a cloth covering the contents.

“I’m excited,” said Ellie.

“I’d rather you limit your expectations to a reasonable outlook. These children are not civilized. A daggart will not make them docile, sweet-tempered, and obedient.”

“I’m not expecting all that. I just want them to associate good things with us.”