The scripture teaches us that the greatest of the serpents is the dragon and that it deals death by its poisonous breath... It lies in wait for the elephant, the most chaste of animals… The Jews say that God made the great dragon which is called Leviathan, which is in the sea... And this beast, at one time called a dragon and at another Leviathan, is used in the Scripture symbolically. The dragon, the greatest of all serpents, is the devil, the king of all evil.
- Hugo de Folieto, c. 1110-72 CE, translated by Druce.
Behold now Behemoth, which I made with thee… He is chief of the ways of God…
Canst thou draw out Leviathan… ? Will he make many supplications unto thee? Will he speak soft words unto thee? Will he make a covenant with thee? Wilt thou take him for a servant for ever?
Out of his mouth go burning lamps, and sparks of fire leap out. Out of his nostrils goeth smoke... His breath kindleth coals, and a flame goeth out of his mouth. In his neck remaineth strength, and sorrow is turned to joy before him.
When he raiseth himself up, the mighty are afraid… The arrow cannot make him flee… he laugheth at the shaking of a spear.
Upon earth there is not his like, who is made without fear. He beholdeth all high things: he is a king over all the children of pride.
- Job, 40, 41.
If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal…
Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away.
- Corinthians, 1:13.
Up rose the dragon on outspread wings, and the shadow of her body upon the field was as the shadow of a skyborne fortress.
Merlin dismounted and sent his mare away, going upon his own two feet, his body bent and feeble with the weight of the illusion he wore. The grass was soft under his feet, so unlike the scorched and bloodied earth blighted by the dragon's breath.
All was silent as Dragonlord and Dragon Queen came together in the plain's centre. The dragon landed before Merlin and put up her wings, looking at him curiously. She broke the silence first, not with fire and fury, but with surprisingly gentle speech.
"So this is he," she said, "who presumes to call himself Lord of Dragons." Her voice was a deep rumble, like the purring of a titanic cat, mingled with the whispering of ocean waves before the storm. "What a small thing you are for such great presumption. Tell me, manling, how are you named?"
Merlin, who knew that it was a bad idea to give one's true name to a dragon, but also that lying to one directly was a worse idea, decided to reply in the manner of Kilgharrah: truthfully, but cryptically.
"You already know my name among the Druids," he said. "They call me Emrys, for they say I have lived for ages, and also Aurelianus, for gold is the king of metals. But you know this well, for you are also long-lived, and it seems gold is the hue of royalty among dragons, too, O Queen."
"Do not equate yourself to me," rumbled the dragon, though Merlin felt he had spoken wisely in mentioning her rank. Flattery must be a weakness of hers, as it was with all of her kind. For Lucifer the Morningstar, whose great sin was Pride, had taken the form of a Dragon when he was cast out of Paradise. He had once been first among the Angels, just as the dragons were first among all beasts on Earth.
"But tell me," the dragon continued pleasantly, "of your station in the kingdoms of mortal men. What is your parentage? One who aspires to rule over dragons must have some great title among his own kind."
Now that her flames had stopped, her breath smelt not of sulphur and poison, but of frankincense and the burning of sweet spices. Her fumes washed over Merlin like a hot, perfumed breeze, playing with his long hair and beard, even as the purring of her voice threatened to lull him into a stupor. Her eyes shone like distant moons, hypnotic and irresistible. Merlin remembered how the Crystal of Neahtid had compelled him to look into it against his will, and how, in the Crystal Cave, some power had drawn him to gaze into those mystic gems. It seemed to him that the dragon's eyes had the same power as those crystals, that she herself was a reservoir of magic, just as that cavern Taliesin had escorted him to.
Merlin said, "I was born a commoner, and yet I was born a nobleman."
"Indeed?" said the dragon. "So much for your hatching. And now?"
"Now I command dragons, yet I am servant to them."
"Sloppy," said the dragon. "That you serve the Pendragons was already plain. Your riddling grows lazy. Yet you speak well, for one whose race is still in its infancy. In the days when men were our slaves, I would have made you a pet to entertain our nestlings, just as your kind cages the songbird. But now my curiosity is sated."
The notes in her voice sharpened somewhat, and Merlin experienced a frisson of fear, recalling that she was as monstrous as she was beautiful.
"And mine is not," Merlin said. "I gave you three answers. I am owed something in return. Who are you? Why have you come here?"
The dragon's eyes glittered dangerously, but she said, "In your speech you may call me Nemesis, for I come to you as the avenger of wrongs unpunished, the recompense of crimes unforgiven. I am the daughter of a race so ancient we have forgotten more than Man will ever learn. We were not alone in the world, in my hatchling days. The Dragonkind were plentiful, and there were other old ones who warred against us. I remember the Giants, the Elves and the Merfolk… how empty the world seemed when I awoke. Your kind have driven all away.
"Was it truly meant to be thus? The Olympians rose up and cast down their elders, the Titans. The Aesir, too, drove back the Vanir and the Eotens. The Tuatha Dé Danann were banished from the Emerald Isle by mere men. I wonder, has Fate condemned the elder peoples to be ever slain by upstart newcomers? Is this why all things have retreated before the squalling, brutish, short-lived plague called Mankind?
"Long have I slept, lulled into repose by the songs of my sisters. But my dreams were soured by discordant notes in the dragonsong. I heard pain and fear in the harmonies of my kin. And then, for a time, there was naught but silence. Then I was awoken by a new voice, speaking with the authority of a Royal Dragon. It roused me into a world I could not recognise…"
The dragon regarded Merlin coldly. "Kilgharrah has told me much of you, none of it pleasing. He withheld as much from me as he could, even your true name, though it was no easy thing for him to resist me. I have waited for this day for some time... but you wear a glamour about you now. Cast it off."
Merlin hesitated. "I may not," he said.
"Because the men you fight for despise your talents, such as they are. So you hide from them even as you hide from me. What are you, manling, that you must skulk in shadows, wearing a mask before your own people even as you do before your foes? What a strange life you lead. Do you not bear a grudge against Uther Dragonsbane almost as great as mine?"
"I did bear him a grudge, Great Dragon! But I learnt to deal with it otherwise than by repaying him in kind. Meeting violence with violence only engenders more bloodshed."
"So this is your way of punishing the slayer of your kindred? By playing nursemaid to his son and defending his kingdom? Cast off that glamour! It were an ill thing that you came before me in a guise not your own, like a fox wearing a lion's skin. But I should expect such slyness from you, who are but an upstart ape soaring on the stolen wings of a Lord of Dragons! Are you ashamed of what you truly are, warlock? Men will never esteem you if you cannot esteem yourself. Shed that false skin you wear! Else I shall pluck it off for you, and I will not be gentle!"
Somehow, in this moment, speaking to a creature of magic as vast and ancient as the dragon, Merlin did not care very much about the consequences of revealing himself. If he couldn't stop the dragon, everyone present would burn anyway, whether at the stake or in her breath.
He released the glamour, and felt his true appearance return, straightening his back as youth and strength flowed into his limbs.
"Why," said the dragon, "I perceived you were young, but you are little more than a hatchling, even by man's reckoning. You lack even the chin-scales of your elders. I came south, hoping to find more of my kind. But for Kilgharrah, there were none of my people left. And the Dragonlord's Voice I sought comes from this tiny manling who has usurped the power of the Royal Blood. Surely the Fates have a sense of humour!"
Merlin replied, "You did find others of your kind. We are both creatures of the Old Religion, O Queen. We are kin."
The dragon made a violent noise, whether of amusement or anger, Merlin could not tell. "Old Religion. Is that how you name it now? What is old to you remains before my eyes yet. I see the meaning behind your words… Druids… High Priestesses… those who draw upon the primal forces. You speak of the Great Powers which spawned both your people and mine.
"Are we kin, sorcerer? We are both creatures of magic. An ant and a lion are both creatures of the forest, but should the ant roar with a lion's voice and name itself lord of the pride, would that not be effrontery? A minnow and a great whale both swim in the same element, but should the minnow call the whale his brother, would the whale submit to him?
"My true kin of this island are dead, bar one, whom you have made your slave. Can you see how distasteful you are to me? If I had murdered your people and usurped their place, would you welcome me into your household as an honoured guest? Well, perhaps you would, for Uther Dragonsbane has spilled your blood as well as mine, and you have thought it fitting to be his slave and his son's slave. But this is not how the Dragonkind repay our blood-debts. It is insult upon insult that you presume to command my kind, while remaining a grovelling serf to mere men..."
Merlin felt he was losing his grip on the conversation. He knew that whatever she might say, the dragon must still be curious about him, else she would not keep talking. "So this is the purpose of your coming here. To demand payment of a blood-debt from Camelot. Tell me, O Queen, what would satisfy you? A life for a life? How many dragons did Uther slay? Would you demand that many human lives in exchange?"
"If a single dragon's egg was weighed against every member of your miscreant species, I would hold the egg still dearer," said the dragon.
"So human lives have no value to you," said Merlin. "But that will be a point of contention between us, for they have value to me."
"And what does that matter?"
"It matters because I cannot allow you to have your retribution. I know Uther has wronged you, but indiscriminate slaughter will not bring back your kin. Can you not see that failure to value the lives of others is what brought Uther to his crimes? There comes a time when we must leaven justice with mercy."
"Mercy!" said the dragon, and fumes curled from her nostrils. "That any of your kind yet breathe is undeserved mercy from me!"
"Then let it be so!" said Merlin. "You boast that you live a hundred times longer than us, that you are a hundred times greater in strength and knowledge. You call us vermin, and say that you are the elder race. Then be the elder to us! Be vast not only in size and power, but in compassion and forgiveness! It is the duty of old age to endure the mistakes of youth, to show restraint to the headstrong. Is the greatness of the dragons only in the size of your jaws and your talons? Where is the greatness of your soul, your vaunted wisdom? Did you do nothing but slash and burn all those centuries, or was there room for self-reflection? The unexamined life is not worth living. How much more true for a life as long as yours..."
"Peace!" hissed the dragon. "Do you purpose to teach me ethics, insect?"
"Insect I may be!" shouted Merlin. "But even a tiny gadfly may sting a great horse into action. So let me be an insect, I will still prick your conscience until it bleeds! And you may swat me easily, but you will not find another like me, to goad you into a better course! You say you remember the Aesir? Do you remember how Loki came as a gadfly during the forging of Mjolnir and weakened even the weapon of the gods? Ignore insects at your own peril, Queen of Dragons! You are great, but history teaches that even the mighty can be hobbled by a fly's sting..."
The dragon drew back, a strange expression on her reptilian face. "That is twice you have quoted the words of the Philosopher! How is it that a little manling, earthbound, his life transient as the blowing lily's, echoes the teachings of the Athenians, and recalls the deeds of the dwellers in Asgard?"
"My mentor was a scholar," said Merlin. "He forced me to learn the Lore of the Ancients. Perhaps man's life is as the blinking of an eye to you. But though our days are fleeting, we spend them recording the deeds of the past. We exhaust the few hours we have on Earth fumbling to preserve the knowledge of our kind. We read, and tell stories, and through them we live many lives, and experience many ages, and make our memories last almost as long as your dragon-songs! Just as you, we are creatures of word, will and thought. We seek to discover truth, to hold the universe in the palm of our hands. Do you still deny that we are your kin, though younger and in the childhood of our race?
"We do not have your centuries in this world, or your might, or your magic. But blind and fragile as we are, some of us have achieved greatness of heart and generosity of spirit, even in the few days we are permitted before death takes us. Can you say the same for your kind? Is there nothing but vengeance and domination in you? Have all your centuries of life made you no more forgiving and peaceful of heart than the lowest human?"
The dragon roared, flapping her wings and thrashing her tail. She paced from side to side.
"Father Charybdis!" she roared. "Have the Druids placed the souls of their prophets in this hatchling's body? Do they call him Emrys that he has lived countless lives, recalling the memories of past ages? For surely no Man has dared speak to me thus since the days when greybeards disputed in the marketplace of Athens!
"Or is he a skald, a wordsmith whose lips have touched the mead-cup of Asgard? How else does he weave skeins of speech to snare me, as Artemis spreads a net for a hart? It is well that the Druids call him Aurelanius, for he has a golden tongue… "
The dragon seemed to calm herself, and she looked at Merlin with a curious expression. "In bygone days there were such men. Though they had the fragile forms of your kind, though they crawled on the ground like toads, they had high souls, and they dared to wrestle dragons and war with gods. Is this why Kilgharrah honours you and your father? Well, he goes too far, but I will deign to speak with you, though you may mislike my words."
A wave of relief came over Merlin, though his body was still tight as an overwound harp string. Had he calmed the dragon merely by speaking to her, without even using magic or the powers of a Dragonlord? She had gone from calling him an insect to showing willingness to converse with him. Could he keep her talking indefinitely?
The Dragon Queen now raised her head and inhaled deeply. "It is a strange thing," she said. "This whole land smells wrong. It has been so since I arrived, and it is not merely the absence of my kind. Kilgharrah tells me that Uther scattered the Druid clans who once tended the land. But where are the witches of the Isle of the Blessed? It were strange no seeress among them anticipated my coming. I had thought to see Nimueh opposing me, for she knew me of old."
"Nimueh is dead," said Merlin.
"I hear no deceit in your speech," said Nemesis. "Yet this cannot be. Killing her was beyond any human king's power."
"It was no king who killed her," said Merlin. "It was I."
The dragon was silent for a moment. Then she said, "Kilgharrah said none had trained you in the Elder Mysteries, but for a Druid woman of late."
"That is so."
"Do you know what you say, warlock? Nimueh had lived for centuries. She had undergone the Priestess' Rite, and drunk from the Cup of Life, and feasted on the apples of the Blessed Isle. No ordinary sorcerer, much less one untrained, could have killed her… For what purpose did you take her life?"
"She tried to take the lives of those closest to me."
"Then you should have let her do so! The High Priestesses were old in learning. They defied even my people's strength in the wars between men and dragons. They were long-lived, and like the Druids, they had learnt the dragons' skill of passing their memories down through the ages.
"It is an evil thing for your kind should the Isle of Avalon now stand empty. The seasons will become misplaced. The land will sicken, and the wards around your world will grow thin. There are Watchers beyond this realm who will sense that your country is defenceless. Crueller things than dragons will return to this world, all due to your folly. An ill wind blows, and in its currents all beings may be buffeted... "
"Right now," said Merlin, "it is the dragons that concern me, and no nameless others."
"So be it," said the dragon. "You wished to know what would satisfy me. Give me my bloodgeld and my dominion and I will depart."
"What do you ask?"
"I will be merciful, as you have counselled. Though Uther spared but one of my people, I will take merely a tenth of his. A decimation, in the fashion of an old Palatine legion, for your kind deserted their duty to the dragons. Send one in ten men, women and children of Camelot to me to die, and I will not vex the other kingdoms. And the dragons shall take dominion over the sky and all things under it, and there shall be peace between our peoples."
"This cannot be," said Merlin. "I cannot condemn a tenth of my people to death."
"Then we are at an impasse."
"Dragon," said Merlin, "you said that in your estimation, a single dragon's egg would outweigh all the lives of Men, is that not so?"
"I did."
"So if I had given you back the life of but a single one of your people, it would be equivalent to saving the lives of all Mankind. Is my logic sound?"
The dragon's eyes narrowed. "So far as your premises stand, yes."
"Well, Dragon, you should know that I spared Kilgharrah's life when it was well within both my power and my right to kill him. Not only that… " Merlin hesitated, for he had wished to conceal Aithusa's existence from the Dragon Queen for many reasons. Yet an atmosphere of inevitable doom was pressing down on him now, and he had learnt to ignore his instincts at peril. There was something in the dragon's manner which told him that her violence was barely contained, like a dormant volcano, and that she could not divert herself from her warlike course even if her serpentine heart was softening towards him. In desperation, Merlin invoked the white dragon he wished he could forget. "Not only that, but I rescued a dragon's egg from evil men who sought to misuse it for profit. I protected the egg from those who would smash it. And… I named the little one within, calling it forth into the world, for I wished this land to resound with the voices of your kin once more…
"Therefore, it is by my actions that two of your people yet live on this island. And by your own words - which are binding among your kind - a single dragon is worth all of the human race. And so I have ransomed the lives of all humanity twice over! By this ransom I redeem the people of Camelot from the sentence you have laid against them, O Queen! I ask for one tenth of a kingdom, and in exchange I pay a blood-geld worth twice of all mankind, so consider yourself well requited in this bargain!"
There was a silence as Merlin's words hung in the air, the audacity of his argument sounding flat and feeble in his ears. Then the dragon replied.
"Art thou a barrister, manling?"
"No, Great Queen."
"Should you ever tire of polishing men's boots, a fine career among the lawgivers of your tribe awaits you... take advice from one by far thine elder, and turn thy golden tongue into golden ingots. Do you fancy yourself a saviour like unto the God of the Nazarins, that you would bargain to save all the human souls in your care? But soft, for when you bargain with death, you may be called upon to sacrifice even your own life... And unlike Orpheus, or Old One-Eye, or the Redeemer of the Nazarins, you may not be so confident of returning from the dead. For you are no god, but a man. Though you did slay a High Priestess of the Isle of Avalon, who possessed the power over life and death, so who knows what forces slumber in you, manling?"
The dragon stared at Merlin again, and it struck him with a sudden forceful irony that, as bewitching and alluring as her fiery eyes and magics were, the great beast seemed to be almost more hypnotised by Merlin than he was by her.
"What did you name the hatchling, manling?"
Merlin swallowed. "I will whisper it, for I would not summon him, and entangle him in this affair. I called him Aithusa, which in the Dragontongue means 'light of the day.'"
"Tell me not what it means!" said the Dragon Queen. And she looked at Merlin, and he heard a whisper in his mind.
Pale beams of light steal into caves, warm the soil, penetrate the frost, calling them out of the Long Sleep. Thin, membrane-webbed wings open, and they take flight. The kiss of Helios is as warm on their scales as mother's breath on a hatchling. Higher and higher they soar, up where his Fire burns so strong it seems to rival their own breath. Far, far below them, the small furred creatures crawl from their burrows and run and play in his rays: a bounty for the winged hunters. Even the humans come out of their stone nests and send smoke up from their temples, aping the dragonsmoke. For they repent that they are earthbound, and can only worship the gods and the Day-Bringer from afar…
The visions faded, leaving Merlin blinking.
"Who chose his name?" asked Nemesis.
"I did," said Merlin. "Kilgharrah said it was fitting, for a white dragon was a rare thing. He said the hatching betokened a new dawn both for his race, and for all the peoples of Albion."
"How interesting," said the Dragon Queen. "And you named him, you say, after sunlight? Well, well. Perhaps Kilgharrah thinks the winter of Albion's discontent will be made glorious summer by the rising of your own Sun, Emrys Goldentongue. But where is the hatchling now?"
Merlin tensed. "The witch Morgana, sister to Arthur Pendragon, has made the dragon her familiar."
A low, terrifying growl sounded in the throat of Nemesis. "This is what comes of leaving a Naming in the clumsy fingers of an ape. It is no surprise that a dragon named by one with such a slavish nature should itself become a slave to your race.
"And yet, much of what you say speaks well of you. It is no easy thing to hatch a dragon, even for one with far more seasons than you, and with the benefit of the inborn dragon-nature."
The dragon looked at Merlin full in the eyes, and it seemed there was sorrow in her countenance. "You have done well, and far more than Kilgharrah could have expected of you. But my people's blood is crying out to me from the ground, and there must be a judgement. This I cannot avert, not for all your eloquence and cunning arguments - and they were well-formed indeed. If you have set yourself up as your people's guardian, as I am to my own, there can be no course left open to us but conflict."
"Great Dragon," began Merlin, but the beast cut him off.
"Enough," said Nemesis. "The true wordsmith is the one who knows when speech has reached its limit. Your race lives for but the blink of an eye. Do not squander any more of your breaths on idle conversation. For when I say the time for speech is over, my ears are stopped even against tongues of gold, just as my scales are proof against tempered steel. And yet you have shown yourself no mere ox of the field, to be hunted like other men. Your tongue is forked, even as a dragon's - and it is not, as men say, that our double tongue makes us deceitful, in that each of our words has two meanings, but rather that each word we speak has twice the weight. Therefore I will treat with you more honorably than your birth merits.
"No more blood of your kind will I spill, until I have settled with you. Name your time and place, bring what champions you will, and we shall decide in the old manner, in fire and fury, how this affair shall be ended."
"If you will have it no other way," said Merlin. "What is the longest time you will allot me?"
"The moon is now dark," said the dragon. "By the time Diana shows half her white face again, you must confront me atop yonder hills, else our truce is broken."
"And the terms?"
"Bring whatever armies or allies you will, it makes no difference to me. Only be warned that I will not stay my breath against them. Any who choose to fight by your side will forfeit their lives in the trial."
"And what will you feed on til then?"
"Out of consideration to you, I will refrain from taking men, or the livestock in your wooden nests, until our trial is settled. Until then I will hunt only in the wild forest. And if any of the barons would dispute with me over the rights to the forest, let them come to me and try to enforce their rule."
The dragon opened her wings. "Until our next meeting, little warlock. Your form is tiny and misshapen, but your heart is valiant, and it courses with courage not alien to the dragons. I have only said this to one other member of your race. I wish I could have known thee better, Goldentongue. Fare thee well."
"Wait," called Merlin into the rising wind, as the dragon's wingbeats began to buffet his body, forcing him backwards. "Who was the other?"
"Some dead man," said the dragon, as she soared into the sky and flew away.
A/N:
In Anglo-Saxon, ealdor can mean "noble." Thus, when speaking Saxon to the dragon, Merlin can truthfully say he was born a commoner and an ealdorman at the same time. Since ealdorman can mean both "nobleman" and "man from Ealdor," Merlin hasn't technically lied.
As Tolkien informs us, dragons love riddles and hate direct lying, so this type of punning is essential to those who wish to speak to dragons without revealing too much information.
(It is also interesting that the dragon makes much of being a member of an "elder" race here. Despite his youth, Merlin takes on the role of an "elder" to the dragon, rebuking her for want of maturity. At times, Merlin also ages his body, making his outward form correspond to the maturity of his wisdom. But here, it's after the dragon makes Merlin shed his physical glamour and show his youth, that he actually also reveals the depth of his wisdom. I like that ealdor also means "elder," because Merlin often plays the role of a mature counsellor to people and beings who should be much wiser than him. He also seems to have the power to challenge members of the Elder races, i.e. magical creatures and gods. He often has a foot in both worlds, human and magical, hence it is interesting that he uses two primary forms [maybe the dragon would say Merlin grew a doubled tongue because he lives so many double-lives, and has shed so many skins, like the dragons themselves]).