Tales of Older Days (4/8)
Title: Tales of Older Days (4/8): Sleep Under Stone
Author: Clodius Pulcher *cough*
Characters: Erestor, A Heroine, An Urchin, A Villain, A Dragon Cub, HenchDwarves and Others.
Rating: K+
Book/Source: LotR
Disclaimer: I am not J.R.R. Tolkien and I make no money from this.
Note: I never forget stories! But sometimes I forget that when I only write them in my head, only I can read them... anyway, here's the next installment, rather later than originally expected. Many thanks once again to gogollescent and ignoblebard for all their nagging gentle encouragement (for this I am also indebted to, well, several other people) and for their sterling work as beta-readers. And since the lovely crowdaughter has gone to the trouble of nominating this trivial tale of urchins, dragon cubs and stunningly glamorous lady-villains for MEFA 2010, I am now unflocking it. For my frivolous twin's sake, you understand.
Summary: A streetwise urchin and a barely hours-old dragon cub on their own on the Barrowdowns, can this end well? Gogol is about to find out... MEFA 2010 Second Place in Genres: Humor: Incomplete.
It was a Dark and Stormy Night | The Patter of Tiny Feet | Indulge Your Local Narrator
~ sleep under stone ~
At this point, it should probably be noted that while Gogol might have been a Ranger’s brat, a decent sense of direction was not among the qualities Nature had seen fit to transmit from her unknown father. Had anyone been tracking her progress through the sunlit hills, they would have observed her gradual divergence from the line of the Great East Road, drifting unwittingly deep into the Barrowdowns. In her defence, this was very easily done, since those few paths that made any pretence of existing had a nasty tendency to slope seductively in precisely the wrong direction at any given time.
Not that hypothetical observers are usually inclined to be charitable, of course. Nor are dragonets. The grumbling noises emanating from the bag on Gogol’s back kept Gogol uneasily in mind of her reluctant passenger, as did its habit of wriggling at awkward moments. Gogol thought it must be investigating the bag’s contents, which naturally made her fingers itch to do the same. The first time she dropped panting onto the springy turf, however, the dragonet stuck its sleek silver head out of the bag with an irritable hiss, clearly wondering why she had stopped and wanting her to get moving again.
Gogol rolled her eyes. “Not gonna,” she said. She bundled Melinna’s cloak into a crumpled ball and shoved it under her head for a pillow, yawning. “Gimme a break!”
It was very warm and the sky blazed clear and cloudless overhead. With her eyes closed against the midday sun, Gogol would probably have fallen asleep, had her rest not been rudely interrupted by a sharp tug at her hair.
“Ow!” she said and reopened her eyes.
And sat up abruptly. The dragonet had slithered half out of the leather bag and tangled its talons into her spiky mop, its tongue flicking snakishly close to her face. A confused moment followed in which Gogol batted frantically at the clinging dragonet and yelped “Geroff! Geroff!” while the dragonet whined overhead and flapped its translucent wings just as frantically in order to stay attached. Icy droplets burned against Gogol’s scalp.
The bag lay open in the grass. Gogol reached for it desperately.
This turned out to be the correct move. At once the dragonet untangled itself and leapt for the dark cavern of the bag’s interior, slithering so fast it blurred silver. The bag bulged as the dragonet reclaimed its lair, settling down smugly with the tip of its muzzle poking out under the battered leather. Several long black hairs clutched in its folded forepaws were already taking on a frosty glitter.
Gogol rubbed her stinging scalp and sat back ruefully. So much for that nap!
It didn’t help that so far she hadn’t come across any berries. Given Gogol’s complete ignorance of the difference between, say, blackcurrants and belladonna, this was certainly for the best; naturally this point did not occur to her. She was hungry and tired and her feet hurt and now her head hurt too. And she couldn’t even console herself with a rummage through an Elf’s luggage, which did seem terribly unfair, considering that the Elf had given it to her. If you couldn’t take a look at someone else’s stuff when you’d been given it by someone all of their own free will, what was the point of anything? And she’d gone to all the trouble of stealing the dragonet in the first place and now it was biting her and trying to boss her around and pulling her hair, and that wasn’t fair either.
She heaved a huge sigh and clambered back up to her aching feet. “Bad Sugar!” she said loudly in the dragonet’s general direction, having forgotten the relevant Elvish word. “Don’t do it again!”
A rude chirrup emerged from the bag. Sugar did not sound impressed.
And it kept muttering incomprehensibly in Gogol’s ear when she started walking again, which really didn’t help the headache she’d been incubating ever since Bree. She might have minded less, only the dragonet had stuck its head out of the bag again and was peering over her shoulder with its claws hooked into her tattered shirt, and she was getting a distinct feeling that it had drawn blood. Feathers clung to the dragonet’s silvery muzzle, which inclined Gogol to suspect it had found breakfast and possibly also lunch in the Elf’s bag. All in all, she was feeling decidedly hard-done-by. She wandered sulkily between two huge standing stones patched with moss and curling lichen. How could she lure the dragonet out of the bag? Was there even anything left to eat in there by now?
The path had taken an upwards turn towards the rounded hilltop. Sweat prickled under Gogol’s shirt and sweltered in her heavy boots. She was carrying her oversized coat now as well as Melinna’s cloak. She gritted her teeth and climbed doggedly onwards.
A carpet of grass spread invitingly over the top of the hill, sprinkled with daisies and the odd yellow dandelion. The path seemed to have petered out, which a proper Ranger’s brat might have taken as a warning. Gogol dumped her armful of unnecessary garments on the ground and stared around, a chill that had nothing to do with sweat fizzing down her back as she realised she couldn’t see the Great East Road anywhere.
She was still going in the right direction... right?
To her left, a great mound bulged stonily against the sun-filled sky. Gogol slung Melinna’s bag down on top of the clothes, ignoring the dragonet’s indignant squeak, and clambered up to the top of the mound, skinning at least one knee in the process. The additional height of this new vantage point, unfortunately, made no difference whatsoever to the complete invisibility of her main landmark. She rubbed her knee and peered worriedly across the green hilltops stretching out in all directions. Still no Road. On the plus side, she couldn’t see any Dwarves either. So that was something.
A chirrup from below distracted her. The dragonet had emerged from its leather lair and was nosing around the loose stones at the base of the mound.
“Hey -” said Gogol, alarmed.
The dragonet glanced upwards, blinked its innocent blue serpent-eyes and disappeared through a crack with a flick of its silver tail.
Gogol’s first thought was that now she could finally get a look in Melinna’s bag. Her second thought involved the Elves and their probable reaction to finding out that Gogol had lost the dragonet. Visions of Elvish cities (or at least what Gogol imagined Elvish cities would look like) flickered before her eyes, only to be replaced by bearded Dwarvish faces. Very angry ones. She scrambled back down the mound in panicky haste.
Grass and trailing ivy lay green over the mound; but beneath the greenery a slab of grey stone only a little taller than Gogol herself stood slightly askew, a narrow crack slanting behind it into the mound. Gogol crouched in the grass and squinted gingerly through the crack.
Only darkness met her eyes. She hissed, “Sugar! Get back here!”
She thought she heard a distant chirrup. The dragonet did not reappear.
“Sugar!”
Still nothing. Gogol exhaled crossly.
The stone slab was heavy and ivy-tangled, but Gogol managed to heave it aside enough for the crack to stand almost an urchin’s-width wide. An odd dusty smell drifted out of the darkness. She took a quick breath.
“All right,” she said to herself. “Here goes nothin’!”
Even in its newly widened state, Gogol had to wriggle considerably to get through the crack. Luckily she had quite a lot of experience at wriggling into narrow nooks and crannies. On the other side of the crack, a dark space opened up, which was something of a relief, since Gogol had been afraid that the dragonet had disappeared down some animal’s dragonet-sized burrow. As it was, she found herself in what seemed to be a sensibly-sized passageway. She felt cautiously around and waited for her eyes to acclimatise to the darkness.
“Sugar!” she hissed. “Bad dragon!”
From somewhere deep in the dark, a slight scraping sound could be heard. Gogol’s ears at once translated this into the dragonet’s pewter claws against the stone floor. This was confirmed by a distant and distinctly surprised ‘meep’. Gogol started forwards into the murky passage.
It actually wasn’t all that dark, now that she’d had time to get used to it. In fact, there must be another crack somewhere. Some sort of greenish light leaked into the shadows. She could just about make out the way the passage widened ahead.
Something bounced off her boot with a metallic clatter. The floor was strewn with peculiarly-shaped objects.
Was that a goblet?
She crouched down to investigate further. It was a goblet. When she tapped a gnawed fingernail against the rim, a pleasantly golden ‘ching’ was produced. She began to feel around herself with mounting excitement. A fine chain with some sort of pendant attached - into the goblet with it - and here was (she ran her fingers round it) some sort of circlet - and another goblet - and a dagger in an embossed sheath - and the edge of a shield - and a ring with several very large jewels -
She heard a growl from the dragonet at the other end of the passage. “Oh, shut up!” said Gogol absently, her attention fixed on cataloguing her gains.
Here was another brooch - why hadn’t anyone told her there was treasure on the downs -?
The dragonet skittered out of the greenish murk and straight into Gogol’s accumulated treasure-heap, startling Gogol considerably. It gripped something long and gnarled between its sharp little teeth. Gogol took this at first for a stick; then she realised that it was attached to a clawlike hand, and that the long-nailed fingers still clutched vainly at empty shadows.
She scrabbled backwards with a startled yelp. The dragonet was pawing at its horrible trophy, apparently trying to subdue it.
A dark figure loomed monstrous in the passageway. Gogol yelped again and redoubled her scrabbling efforts, abandoning both her treasure and the dragonet. She saw pale eyes gleaming from the gloom. It was reaching towards her with, she could not help but notice, only one arm.
Long nails scraped her face. Gogol was transfixed by a chill of horror -
A strong hand grasped her collar. Much to her surprise, she found herself being hauled back through the crack into sunlight, acquiring several new scrapes and bruises along the way, and deposited ungently on the grass.
She sat up, choking. One of the Elves was standing there with a shoulder against the stone slab. By the swirling grey cloak, it must be Erestor. She saw his white face when the dragonet scampered out from under the slab after her and laid the Barrow-wight’s arm proudly at his feet, its fingers still clawing frostily at the grass.
The Elf uttered a very sharp word and kicked the quivering thing back into its barrow. Then he set his shoulder against the stone slab again and gave it a tremendous shove. It grated back into place.
“Elbereth!” he said and snatched up his wife’s bag. The dragonet coiled whining around his feet. Erestor reached down, which enabled it to scramble directly up his arm, making liberal use of its claws, and slither into the hammock of his grey hood. It peeked out under his dark braid and gave a happy little chirrup, nuzzling lovingly against his neck.
Gogol found herself staring up into a decidedly displeased Elven face and a pair of smug blue serpent-eyes. She wasn’t sure which was more disconcerting.
“You’ve got a real talent for finding trouble, haven’t you?” said the Elf. “Wandering into a wight’s barrow! Why didn’t you stick to the Road? You’ve been wandering all over the downs, child!”
He set Gogol on her feet by further application of her collar as a handle. “Get your things,” he added. “This isn’t a good place to be. Ever. Come on.”
She had to scurry to keep up with him. He strode surefooted over the hillside, paying no heed whatsoever to the path trailing temptingly back up the valley towards the standing stones. “Hey -” she said plaintively. “How’d you find -?”
“Easily. You’re not hard to track.”
“But the Dwarves -”
“Still chasing along the road east of Bree, I should think.” He scratched the dragonet under its chin and shuddered as it purred white mist in his ear. “Dwarves have no imagination. Where’s Melinna?”
“Uh...”
The Elf swerved round with an abruptness that startled Gogol almost as much as the Barrow-wight had done. He seemed very tall suddenly, and very frightening. He said harshly, “What’s happened? What’s she done?”
Gogol gulped and told him.
Erestor’s response was in Elvish and seemed to be addressed to his absent wife. Gogol was pretty sure it wasn’t complimentary. “I shouldn’t let her go off on her own!” he concluded crossly in his silky Westron. “Elbereth!”
~*~*~
Back in Bree, the individual currently known as Lady Inez was not having a good day.
Actually, that was an understatement. Lady Inez was having an awful day. It showed in her hair, which had burst free of its nacreous constraints and snarled golden over her shoulders in tangled fury, rather than the shimmering waterfall of ringlets that usually complemented her effortless elegance. If things didn’t start looking up soon, there was a decent chance it would start trying to eat people.
At least she’d managed to maintain her perfect complexion. So far.
Elves! They really did spoil all her fun.
The thought, along with associated memories, made her scowl harder. This caused a nervous shadow to fall over the beard of the pet Dwarf currently in attendance by the door, which brought to mind another of Lady Inez’s grievances. Dwarves! Oh, they were all so proud of their ancient lore and their forges and their mountain halls and their elaborate social conventions and their road-building (as if there was anything particularly special about that! why, a whip and a couple of hundred Orcs was all anyone needed to build roads across the continent), but give them the simplest of morally ambiguous tasks and look what happened!
It was bad enough that Kat Ferny had failed so dismally to retrieve the Thing from that thieving urchin. The woman was only mortal, after all. Under other circumstances, Lady Inez would happily have had the wretched alewife disembowelled pour encourager les autres; but given the shocking state of contemporary politics and her current place in it, which was to say as unnoticed as possible, she was willing to forgo the usual punishment for an agent’s failure. But Mili had managed to let the Thing and the thief and a pair of meddling Elves slip through his stubby little fingers. And since Inez was currently obliged to rely on Mili and his Dwarves, there was absolutely nothing she could do about it.
Yet.
She glared at her mirror. Dwarves were such ridiculous creatures. All this fussing about right and lawfulness and the correct way to talk to women. (Why were Dwarves so concerned about talking to women anyway? They hardly had any of their own.) All of their Maker’s stodginess and none of His - none of His - well, whatever redeeming features Aulë might have, His hairy pets had none of them! If only she could have brought a battalion of Orcs through the Brown Lands and over the Misty Mountains without attracting the attention of any prying Wizards or Elf-lords. Curse them all!
A beard appeared around the door. “Ma’am, Mili’s returned...”
... with a prisoner. One of the two meddling Elves. Perhaps Dwarves were not quite so useless after all.
Lady Inez smoothed the silver-patterned black silk of her skirts and rose gracefully from her chair. She did glance into the mirror one last time before she left the room, though, just to be sure her anger hadn’t written itself literally all over her perfect, polished face.
The Elf had been taken to one of The Pony’s parlours and secured to a chair with the aid of substantial amounts of rope. Being an Elf, he might as well have been lounging on a gilded throne; he had stretched out his long legs casually and his expression as Lady Inez entered suggested only critical interest. She had paused on the threshold, mostly for effect, and was therefore annoyed when the Elf said lightly, for all as if he owned the place, “Do come in.”
“I need no invitation from you, Elf,” said Lady Inez frostily.
She entered the parlour, gesturing for her attendant to close the door. Mili stood by the Elf’s chair with the naked edge of his axe gleaming in the shadows. Weapons were piled at his feet. “We caught him by the West-gate, ma’am,” he reported. “He was distracting us while his companion escaped with the thief and the hatchling.”
Lady Inez’s newfound respect for Dwarves plummeted. She said, “And you let him?”
“Ma’am?”
“Never mind.” She turned her attention back to the Elf, who was regarding her with a rather maddening lack of anything resembling fear. “I suppose you think you’re very clever?”
The Elf yawned in a way that implied agreement. “Tell me,” he said, “what are you doing with a dragon’s egg? It’s not what one expects to find in a lady’s baggage. Did you steal it from the dragon-mother yourself?”
“You’re in no position to ask questions, Elf. What have you done with it?”
“Nothing,” said the Elf. “Do I look like I’m carrying a dragon around with me?”
Even nervousness would have done. Lady Inez thought wistfully of happier times when merely glancing in someone’s direction could produce instant cowering.
She changed tack, and also tone. “The recovery of my stolen possession means a great deal to me,” she said, dropping the pitch of her voice to a seductive purr. “Procuring it for the sake of my political experiments was not an easy matter and I should be grateful for your assistance in this matter. Very grateful.”
She leaned forwards slightly, allowing the sweep of her gown’s deep neckline to do the rest.
“I’m sure you would,” said the Elf, eyeing her décolletage with mild appreciation. “Come back when you’ve got something I want and we’ll talk.”
At this point, Lady Inez was obliged to clasp her hands together behind her slender back. She had a great deal invested in the Dwarvish conviction that a beautiful blonde woman could be up to no harm, and punching the amusement right out of the Elf’s dark eyes was not likely to do much for her standing among her current henchpersons.
She said tightly, “We know you were on your way to Imladris. Your companion and the thief will be captured on the Road. Obstinacy will get you nowhere.”
The Elf blinked twice. “My,” he said, “how clever of you! They will be surprised. You might as well tell me what you planning to do with the dragon, in that case. It’s rather an exotic sort of pet. Political experiments, did you say?”
This wasn’t getting anywhere. Lady Inez narrowed her eyes.
“What is your name?” she said. “Why did you get involved?”
“It seemed like a good idea at the time,” said the Elf. “What’s your name? I don’t believe it’s Inez.”
It wasn’t, as it happened. Not that the Elf needed to know that, let alone Mili or his Dwarves.
Lady Inez took another, longer look at the Elf. He was as fair and youthful as any of his kind, his skin smooth and his black hair untouched by grey, but a touch of agelessness clung to him that hinted at a very great age indeed.
She didn’t recognise him, though. And his eyes were dark for a Noldo or a Sinda.
“What are you,” she said, “some wild Avar? Meddling because you feel like it?”
The Elf smirked at her. “Pretty much,” he said. “What, were you expecting someone more interesting? That can be arranged.”
All her careful plans upset by the whims of a couple of insignificant Dark Elves!
Lady Inez was altogether too angry to respond. She tightened her hands behind her back and concentrated on her complexion. It was too late for her hair. She could feel it seething in serpentine coils over her shoulders, the tresses reaching hungrily in the direction of the nearest Dwarf.
“Mili,” she said carefully, when she could speak again. “Since this gentleman is determined to be unhelpful, kindly convey him to the Machine. As the first test subject, he may at the very least further the cause of Science through an interesting and unusual death.”
Onwards to Inez and the Machine
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