The Dragon Griaule

Mauldry turned to her, his eyes giving back gleams of the golden light, his face looking in its vacuous glee akin to those of the Feelys, and holding out his hands to her, his tone manifesting the bland sincerity of a priest, he said, ‘Welcome home.’

Three

 Catherine was housed in two rooms halfway up the chamber wall, an apartment that adjoined Mauldry’s quarters and was furnished with a rich carpeting of silks and furs and embroidered pillows; on the walls, also draped in these materials, hung a mirror with a gem-studded frame and two oil paintings – this bounty, said Mauldry, all part of Griaule’s hoard, the bulk of which lay in a cave west of the valley, its location known only to the Feelys. One of the rooms contained a large basin for bathing, but since water was at a premium – being collected from points at which it seeped in through the scales – she was permitted one bath a week and no more. Still, the apartment and the general living conditions were on a par with those in Hangtown, and had it not been for the Feelys, Catherine might have felt at home. But except in the case of the woman Leitha, who served her meals and cleaned, she could not overcome her revulsion at their inbred appearance and demented manner. They seemed to be responding to stimuli that she could not perceive, stopping now and then to cock an ear to an inaudible call or to stare at some invisible disturbance in the air. They scurried up and down the ropes to no apparent purpose, laughing and chattering, and they engaged in mass copulations at the bottom of the chamber. They spoke a mongrel dialect that she could barely understand, and they would hang on ropes outside her apartment, arguing, offering criticism of one another’s dress and behavior, picking at the most insignificant of flaws and judging them according to an intricate code whose niceties Catherine was unable to master. They would follow her wherever she went, never sharing the same basket, but descending or ascending alongside her, staring, shrinking away if she turned her gaze upon them. With their foppish rags, their jewels, their childish pettiness and jealousies, they both irritated and frightened her; there was a tremendous tension in the way they looked at her, and she had the idea that at any moment they might lose their awe of her and attack.

She kept to her rooms those first weeks, brooding, trying to invent some means of escape, her solitude broken only by Leitha’s ministrations and Mauldry’s visits. He came twice daily and would sit among the pillows, declaiming upon Griaule’s majesty, his truth. She did not enjoy the visits. The righteous quaver in his voice aroused her loathing, reminding her of the mendicant priests who passed now and then through Hangtown, leaving bastards and empty purses in their wake. She found his conversation for the most part boring, and when it did not bore, she found it disturbing in its constant references to her time of trial at the dragon’s heart. She had no doubt that Griaule was at work in her life. The longer she remained in the colony, the more vivid her dreams became and the more certain she grew that his purpose was somehow aligned with her presence there. But the pathetic condition of the Feelys shed a wan light on her old fantasies of a destiny entwined with the dragon’s, and she began to see herself in that wan light, to experience a revulsion at her fecklessness equal to that she felt toward those around her.

‘You are our salvation,’ Mauldry told her one day as she sat sewing herself a new pair of trousers – she refused to dress in the gilt and satin rags preferred by the Feelys. ‘Only you can know the mystery of the dragon’s heart, only you can inform us of his deepest wish for us. We’ve known this for years.’

Seated amid the barbaric disorder of silks and furs, Catherine looked out through a gap in the curtains, watching the waning of the golden light. ‘You hold me prisoner,’ she said. ‘Why should I help you?’

‘Would you leave us, then?’ Mauldry asked. ‘What of the Willens?’

‘I doubt they’re still waiting for me. Even if they are, it’s only a matter of which death I prefer, a lingering one here or a swift one at their hands.’

Mauldry fingered the gold knob of his cane. ‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘The Willens are no longer a menace.’

She glanced up at him.

‘They died the moment you went down out of Griaule’s mouth,’ he said. ‘He sent his creatures to deal with them, knowing you were his at long last.’

Catherine remembered the shouts she’d heard while walking down the incline of the throat. ‘What creatures?’

‘That’s of no importance,’ said Mauldry. ‘What is important is that you apprehend the subtlety of his power, his absolute mastery and control over your thoughts, your being.’

‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Why is that important?’ He seemed to be struggling to explain himself, and she laughed. ‘Lost touch with your god, Mauldry? Won’t he supply the appropriate cant?’