The Dragon triggered a hidden catch, and a door appeared in outline on the wall. The Librarian put his shoulder to it and swung it inward. Beyond was a vast cavern of a room, half-round in plan, big enough for a full-grown Dragon or two to move about and work in.
A vast, dust-covered drawing table stood under three filigreed windows on the south wall. Sunlight poured in, making sparkling diamonds in the dusty air.
On the west wall was an enormous, low bed with ornately carved posts and a sagging canopy of dull reddish material. The center of the room was devoted to an out-sized divan and normal-sized chairs, so that the Dragon and his guests could sit together in comfort, read from the scrolls and books piled on the floor everywhere, and talk.
The north wall was a partition of beams and plaster with several high archways cut through, leading to what seemed to be a kitchen, a bath, a smaller sitting room (if you could say anything made to Dragon scale was "small"). At the side opposite the service door was an open stone staircase leading up and down, common access for all the upper floors of the tower.
Next to the stairway, the western windows were set in wood, not stone. Double leaves could be swung inward, like huge doors. A Dragon could fly in and out this way, rather than squeeze up and down the stairs.
"You live here?" Tom asked as he looked about for a place to begin.
"Summers, once, when I was a kit. I was only seventy when Altruance burned outa-"
"Burned out!"
"That's the way we Dragons go, you know, when we get very ancient," replied Retruance solemnly. "Quick and painless, I'm told. A good way to die after a long life."
"Dragons live a very long time, then?"
"It varies. Altruance lived to be five hundred and fifty-one. My father lives still, as far as I know, at three hundred and four years. He disappeared almost a decade ago and hasn't been heard from since. My brother Purbetrance and I were off looking for some trace of him, in case he needed help, when Murdan's call came, a month back."
"And your mother?"
"Female Dragons live by themselves after their children grow to full size. Mama lives in the Far South. I visit her every year or two. She lives a very quiet, retired life, assist-ing the fisher folk from her island lair. In many ways I envy her."
"I've got to ask. I assume that you are a male Dragon, Retruance?"
"Oh, my, yes! Females are considerably smaller than we males, with much daintier scales and are usually pastel colored. I didn't realize you might be confused."
"I wasn't sure I should ask," Tom admitted. "Where is Great-Grandfather's storeroom?"
"There," said Retruance, pointing a claw at a heavy, iron-strapped door in the comer near the stairs. "It may take a while to open. Altruance used some strong locking spells on it. I think I can remember them, however."
"How long do you think we have? Will anyone come this way?"
"If the living quarters upstairs are being used, someone might come up or down at any moment. I don't think any-one's been here for years from the looks of it all, though. Certainly the Mercenary Knights haven't done any looting here, yet. However, someone has been using the stairs, I think, to judge by the lack of dust."
"I think we should go into the storeroom and close the door."
"Good idea!" agreed the Dragon. He went to the closed door and began to work what Tom realized were unlocking spells.
DRAGON COMPANION 27.
^4^ Middletower at Midnight WHILE the Dragon chanted softly to unlock Altruance's storeroom, Tom went to the south-facing windows and peeped out, careful not to be seen accidentally by anyone looking up at the tower.
He watched the final minutes of the diversion at the foregate, or what he could see of it that wasn't blocked by the bulk of Foretower. At least he had a good view of most of the battlements and the crowd of black-clad defenders gathered there, shooting and shouting at the orange attackers. It sent a shiver through him to see men, pierced with orange-shafted arrows, fling up their arms and collapse screaming among their fellows.
He had never seen war and killing before except on a television or movie screen. The distance from the scene rendered it more bearable, however, until he remembered that these men had been hurt or had been killed just to get him into the castle unseen.
"There!" grunted Retruance triumphantly, after four long minutes of intense unspelling.
"Get inside! The battle's over and the Mercenary Knights are returning to their normal duties," said the Librarian. The two went quickly through the open storeroom door and Tom swung it shut behind them, cutting off all illu-mination.
"Need a light?" asked the Dragon. Not waiting for a reply, he released a thin jet of yellow flame into the dusty, musty air.
"Whew!" Tom exclaimed. The cry was brought on by the sight of a room larger than most gymnasiums, packed from floor to ceiling and wall to wall with cabinets, crates, bundles, sacks, and barrels, all filled to overflowing with books, scrolls, and papers, yellowed and fragile.
26."Great-Grandfather saved every scrap, I'd say," said Retruance proudly.
"I'll say he did!" exclaimed Tom. He opened the first cabinet beside the door and peered at the top sheet of a stack on the highest shelf.
"Here's a lantern. I could keep my own light burning for hours, but it would cut down my usefulness," Retruance said, again suiting action to words.
He found a second lantern still half-filled with fragrant oil, and lighted it also. The light was clear and steady, making it easier to read the sprawling, decorative script of an elderly gentleman Dragon with no reason to think anyone other than himself would ever need to read it.
But such holographs were food and drink to a professional Librarian, and once he'd studied the hand (claw?) for a few minutes, Tom found he could decipher it fairly easily.
At least it's more or less in English, or whatever they call the language here, he thought. Seem to be some French and German words here and there, but mostly it's good old English.
With a faint clap of wings, Retruance made himself somewhat largera-not full-sized by any means, but large enough to reach the mountains of papers all about them.
"We're looking for anything about the building of Overhall," Tom reminded him. "Your ancestor seems to have been an orderly person. What is at the top of the stack is probably what was filed last, with older documents toward the bottom."
"Look at this!" exclaimed Retruance excitedly.
Tom dropped the document he was reading and went to stand beside the Dragon.
"His holiday shopping list!" exclaimed Retruance. "Here's my brother's namea-and here's my name, too! Let's see, he scratched out the half ton of coal and overwrote *a mere bootful will do for the lad.' Humph! Wonder what I did to make him cut my present to a bootful?"
Tom laughed despite himself.
"Not much to do with the building of Overhall," he reminded gently, seeing his friend was moved almost to tears by the intimate glimpse of the departed ancestor. "You 28 Don Callander DRAGON COMPANION.
29.can read them all to your heart's content, once we've run the knights out."
"Right you are," Retruance gulped. "Business before pleasure, Great-Grandfather would have said."
An hour passed and then a second while they read and read and read, beginning at the wall cabinets to the right of the door and proceeding systematically around the room. Occasionally they stopped to rest their eyes and move the lamps into better positionsa-and to listen carefully for any sounds of life outside the storeroom.
Sometimes they heard faint footsteps or the call of the sentries on the walls, but for the most part this tower seemed deserted. A child cried, far off, then stopped. Horses' hooves clopped on the cobbled courtyards. Dogs barked.
Hope they don't come up here, thought Retruance, who had great respect for dogs, and especially their abilities to observe and smell. He went on picking up papers, studying them briefly, and putting them back in another neat stack when he had decided they contained nothing about Gugglerun.
"We'd better speed this up," he said when they reached the first comer of the room. "At the rate we're going, we'll be in here a week."
"I do believe old Altruance was neatly efficient," Tom said, pausing also. "Made a good Librarian, he would have. That's a compliment, Retruance."
"I took it as such."
"If we read the top sheet of each stack and don't bother to look at all the pieces underneath, we'll perhaps come on his notes and papers on Gugglerun much faster. Unfortunately, he didn't seem to alphabetize his subjects. Probably arranged them in order of their importance to himself."
"In that case, the proper papers are probably buried at the bottom of the furthest pile," Retruance said grump-ily.
"You're probably right! He'd have little cause to refer to them regularly, once construction was completed. Try those old crates at the far comer, then. I'll work my way down this wall, as I said, as rapidly as possible."
The wooden cases in question undoubtedly contained the oldest files in the lot. Someone had almost illegibly scrawled on one, "XVI yr Alix R."
"What do you think this means?" asked the Dragon.
Tom examined the inscription. "Clearly, the sixteenth year of your Queen Alix Amanda. You mentioned her name, yesterday."
"Yes, she was queen of Carolna when Altruance came to build Murdan's Overhall!"
He ripped the top off the crate but slowed his claws immediately when the top sheets inside crumbled to yellow scraps.
"Blast me!" he exclaimed. "Hope they weren't important a"
He read silently as Tom plowed through three more stacks, reading as rapidly as possible. It must be past dusk outside, by now, he thought.
"This is it!" hissed the Dragon. He carefully carried a sheaf of ancient papers, some sort of drawings, to the best light.
"Let me see," said the Librarian eagerly. "Careful, now!"
The first sheets were a description of the stone underlay beneath the triple ring walls of Overhall and the next bundles were detailed drawings of their construction: twenty feet high and fifteen feet thick at the bottom.
"By George, we're getting close!" Tom said. "Go to the next crate, now. If Great-Grandfather follows his usual pattern, the deeper the stack, the older the bottom papers are. To plan and build Gugglerun, he must have done it early in the job, don't you think?"
"That I would agree," replied the Dragon. "Say, you were right! This Librarian stuff can be exciting!"
They worked furiously but carefully for another two hours and stopped only when Retruance's stomach began to make protesting growls. They turned off one lamp to conserve the dwindling fuel and ate bread and sharp cheese they had brought along.
"If we don't get out of here tonight, we may have to wait until tomorrow night," observed Tom, dolefully. "Murdan will be beside himself when we don't show up in the morning."
"I have been thinking of our escape," Retruance said around the last mouthful of cheese and a gulp of warm apple cider. "I forgot Altruance's big flight door in the west wall. Did you notice it?"
30 Don Callander DRAGON COMPANION 31 "Yes, I saw it. He used it to get in and out without climbing the stairs?"
"Of course! He was wider by a half than I am, and it would be a tight fit around comers if I tried to climb the stairs. What we'll do when we're finished, daylight or nighttime, is throw open the doors, clap the old wings, and fly out to the forest camp in no time. So quietly, I would think, that the knights won't even know we've been here. Or if they do see us, they can't know what we're here to find."
Bolstered by this new plan for escapea-neither cherished the idea of creeping out of the castle afoota-the two returned to the ancient documents.
It was midnight when Tom picked up a slim sheaf of papers tied together with a silken cord in the bottom of the fourth large crate.
"Gugglerun!" he read. "Hey! This should tell us something!"
"At last!" sighed Retruance. "Any more than that?"
"It was the last of the lot in this crate and the last of the same kind of crates, so I assume they go together, pretty much. Try the top stuff in the next cabinet over, just in case."
But the cabinet contained material regarding the construction of the great towers. Across the bottom of the last drawing, labeled "Elevator," Altruance in his flowing hand had written: "Power insufficient to lift useful weight beyond second level. Setting this aside, further study. XVIII yr. Ed IX."
"Too bad he didn't finish the project. Imagine living in a castle like this with a machine to lift you to the top of a tower without having to climb a stair!" said Tom.
"Doesn't bother me much," said Retruance. "Trouble with towers is they have such small windows."
"Bit short of time for looking at everything here. I think we should take a chance that we've got all we need and get out of here."
At Retruance's suggestion they searched the apartment until they found a large leather folder still intact enough to protect the fragile documents. Tom padded it generously with other papers, to keep them from flopping about, then stood by, ready to open the wide flight doors.
The Dragon gave himself plenty of wing room, so as not to crush the Librarian, knock over furniture, or make a lot of noise, and indicated his readiness.
Tom nodded, grasped the flight door handles, and pulled them inward. The ancient hinges shrieked in rusty protest.
The Dragon clapped his wings and expanded to full size with a loud pop!
A very pretty girl with piled-up blond hair, wearing a high-necked, floor-length nightgown of heavy blue-green silk and carrying a guttering candle, appeared on the wide stairs, staring in surprise at the intruders. When the Dragon suddenly became full-size, she had dropped her candle with a startled scream that seemed to echo all over sleeping Overhall.
"Who are you?" she cried into the sudden gloom. "How did you get here? Whatever are you doing?"
"Lady, you picked a very bad time to ask good questions," said Retruance.
He reached out his right forepaw, scooped up the girl, reached out his left paw and gathered in the stunned Librarian and flung all three of them through the open flight door into the black and empty air.
^5^ The Gugglerun Papers THE cool night wind whipped past them as the Dragon plummeted unchecked toward the rocks below the castle walls. There was hardly time for his passengers to know fear, however, before his great leathery wings snapped open and Retruance fought to pull out of the nosedive.
The girl and the Librarian screamed together and clung to the Dragon's claws. With a terrible ripping sound the Dragon's trailing edges vibrated wildly with the force of the recovery. Gravity threatened to snatch the girl and Tom from the beast's strong but gentle grasp.
32.DRAGON COMPANION 33.
Don Callander Retruance strained outward and then upward as he plunged past the base of Middletower, past the top of the ridge on which Overhall perched. He at last leveled out, shooting at tremendous speed out over the grassy lowlands west of the castle.
"We're okay now," Tom called to the girl. "He's really a very good flier."
The other passenger stared at him wordlessly, wide eyed and openmouthed. Even so, he was struck by her beauty and self-possession in a terrifying situation.
Retruance's speed took him miles out over the meadows, but he allowed himself to decelerate slowly until it was safe to make a wide, gently banked curve and head back toward the Historian's camp.
"Are you all right?" Tom asked the girl. She'd been staring at him with evident curiosity but now looked quickly away. "What's the matter, miss?"
The Dragon chuckled deep in his fiery chest, sending spheres of varicolored flame far ahead of them, like balls from a great Roman candle.
"She's a properly bred lady, is the matter. She hasn't been introduced to you yet, so cannot bespeak you. However, as I happen to be her godfathera"
"Retruance Constable!" cried the young lady. "You rescued me, Retruance Constable!"
"What are godfathers for, if not an occasional rescue? And introducing you to young gentlemen. The gentleman you share my paws with, my dear, is Tom the Librarian, sur-named Whitehead, an employee of your Uncle Murdan's. Now you can speak to him."
"Oh, thank goodness!" exclaimed the girl, smiling brilliantly at Tom. She nodded her heada-curtseying being impossiblea-and said, "Pleased to make your acquaintance, Master Librarian."