‘But in this version — ’ Pryn tried to blot the image of sun and glaring sand that had itself blotted her image of darkness, full moon, and cool air — ‘it was night?’
‘Yes,’ Norema said. ‘And the full moon was up.’
Pryn started to ask, But how did you know? then decided that if she were going to hear the end, she’d best stop interrupting. Besides, it was the teller’s tale; the teller ought to know what happened in it, for all her multiple versions.
‘The remaining money was in huge piles beside the queen, in heaps and bags and bundles, and the circle of different stars lay on the rock near her knee. Down the ledge from her, the water was covered with fog. The moon looked ghastly, a yellow disk hanging over a fuming inlet. Water flickered beneath mists. Olin sat on the rock, hugging her knees in the chill light, biting her inner lip, her chin on her kneecaps. A bird woke up and screeched! The queen looked to see green wings starting from the branches of a pecan tree. She got to her feet unsteadily, still groggy from the poison. She stood on the ledge and cried out across the waters, just as if someone had told her what to say (though none of the versions I know says who): “I am Olin, and I have come to warn the Worm of the Sea of the Northern Eagle’s evil gaze!” Then she took a step back and put her wrist up to her mouth as if she were afraid she had said something blasphemous. She stepped to the ledge’s edge again and looked down toward the foggy water. The mists were a-broil, and now and again splashes geysered up hot silver.
‘There was a rumbling, as of some vast engine, not only from the water, but from the ground. Trees trembled; small stones shook loose to roll down into fog. Below swirling fumes waves swirled even faster.
‘Water surged, now into the land, now away. At each surge away, water lowered; and lowered.
‘Olin saw the first broken building tops cleave mist and waves — three towers and a bridge between, dripping. Waves broke higher than fog; foam fell back, roaring, into the sea. More buildings emerged. Water poured from their roofs. Through fog, water erupted from stone windows. Fog rolled and roiled off. Green and white water lapped away through mud and weeds and clotted alleys. Water rushed from a street where pillars still stood. Water carried weed and mud from patterned blue flags; other pillars were broken. One lay across its square pedestal. At the same time she saw the cleared street, she saw other avenues still silted, dark, and wet. Shapes that might have been buildings were mounded over with mud, glistening, black, and green. To the earth’s rumblings and the water’s ragings, the city rose.
‘The young queen, half running, half falling down the slope, only just managed to get her feet under her — when she plunged shin deep in muck. She staggered on, arms flailing, till she reached the first cracked paving — nowhere near as clean as it had looked from the ledge. Mud clung to the walls beside her. Weeds in windows hung down dripping stones. Fallen masonry, scattered shells, and soaked branches made her progress by the carved pillars almost as slow as it had been in the mud. Dirty-footed, wet-handed, scratches on her shoulders and legs, the young queen pushed between stones and driftwood, making her way by broken walls, their carvings veiled in sea moss.
‘What movement down what alley made her stop, the queen was never sure. Off in the wet green filling another street, something dark as excrement flexed, shifted, slid. The building beside her was heaped over with runnelled mud. That moved too, quivered, rose — not mud at all, but some immense tarpaulin. The sheet shook itself loose.
‘Olin looked up.
‘The moon lit yellow fogs which shifted over roofs. Through them, over them, the wing rose — not a soft, feathered, birdlike wing, but a taut, spined, reptilian wing, sheer enough to let moonlight through its skin, here and there darkened by spine or vein.
‘That wing blotted a fifth the sky!
‘Wind touched the queen’s cheek, her wrist. A second wing, as huge, rose from where it had lain over buildings at the street’s far side. Ahead, beyond the pillars, something slid forward, pulled back.
‘To the extent she had seen it at all, she’d thought it was a toppled carving, a sculpted demon’s head, big as a house and fallen on its chin. A gold and black eye opened; and opened; and opened, wider than the wide moon. Then, perhaps fifteen feet away, from under a rising lid, the other eye appeared. A lip lifted from teeth longer and thicker than the queen’s legs. The head, still wet, rose on its thick neck, clearing the near roofs, rising over the towers, spiring between the wings.
‘The dragon — a giant dragon, a sea dragon many times the size of her mountain cousins — was coiled through the streets. She’d slept with the city beneath the water. But now, as the city rose, the dragon rose above it, to stare down at the young queen with black and gold eyes.
‘Again Olin cried out, loud enough to hurt her throat: “Oh great Gauine — ” for that was the dragon’s name, though I don’t know where she learned it — “I have come to hide my treasure with you and warn you of the Eagle’s antics — ”’
Squinting silvery eyes in the sun, the ordinary mountain dragon just then put her foot down and hissed at the ox; the ox shied, backing up five steps. The cart trundled and creaked. Norema turned to grab it.
Pryn pushed up to her feet and snatched at the dragon’s swinging reins. Green wings flapped futilely.
Norema calmed her ox. Pryn led her dragon to a tree and lashed it. Norema came over to give her a hand, then walked with Pryn back to the fireplace. Pryn rubbed her hands together. Her palms were sore where the reins, first in landing, then in tethering, had jerked through. ‘The story you were telling?’ Pryn asked. ‘What happened next?’
‘Not much,’ Norema said. ‘Using the magic circle of different stars as a guide, Olin and Gauine hid the money in the city. Then Gauine settled down on top of it to guard it — just in time, too. For water began to roll back through the streets. Once more the city began to sink. The queen clambered up the slope to the ledge, barely managing to escape drowning. And the moon was down.’
Pryn frowned.
‘Oh, Gauine was a very exceptional dragon,’ Norema explained.
They stopped by the cart; the ox nipped more weed.
‘But then, if she hadn’t been,’ Norema went on, ‘I doubt the queen would have entrusted the treasure into her keeping. The next day, wandering half dazed along the beach, Olin was found by a troop of traveling mummers. Fortunately, over the night she’d been gone, the rest of her relatives had managed to defeat the evil priests. The young queen was taken to Kolhari, capital of all Nevèrÿon, where she was crowned queen for real. From all reports, she was never popular and led a horrid life. She went through several kings and a number of children, most of whom ended up frightfully. But she managed to make several arcane political decisions which have always been considered praiseworthy, at least by people who count such things important.’
‘Queen Olin,’ Pryn mused. ‘I’ve heard other stories about her, here in Ellamon. She was the queen who set up the dragon corrals and decided that bad little girls would be condemned to work there.’
‘One of the more interesting fables,’ Norema said. ‘Well, she was always fond of the animal, since it was a giant sea dragon that guarded her sunken treasure on which her power rested.’
‘That was the story your friend set out to find was true or not?’
Norema nodded.
‘She wanted to find Mad Queen Olin’s treasure in the sunken city guarded by the dragon Gauine?’