Chapter 14. The Magic Talisman

Without releasing Magda, the duke moved his dagger, so instead of pressing against the front of her throat, it was positioned across the back of her neck. “I will release your hands,” he hissed. “Do not make any sudden moves or let your dragon do anything, or I will cut through your spine. Move nice and easy, and give me that magic thing.”
“I will have to order the dragon  to sit still and not try to seize it as I hand it over to you,” Magda said. “At the moment when the talisman passes from one person to another, the dragon has a chance to seize it and become free of the magic that makes it obey the owner.” 
“Speak, then,” the duke answered curtly.

“Bookworm,” Magda spoke urgently in her native tongue, “I will try to convince him to let you fly away with me or else to take him somewhere.” The dragon bowed his head, as if receiving an order.

Magda pulled back the sleeve of her coat, exposing the golden dragon-shaped bracelet. Without losing his grip on the dagger, the duke yanked the bracelet off her arm and examined the finely wrought golden dragon and book. “You! Dragon! Bow to me!” he tried in his own language, but Bookworm feigned incomprehension. The duke cursed.

The duke, still pressing his dagger into Magda’s neck, slowly went out into the courtyard, pushing her in front of him. More guards had arrived to replace the injured ones and the deserters, so the yard and the gallery above it were once again ringed by armed men, although they had been careful to take more sheltered positions this time.

“You, witch!” the duke poked Magda harder with his dagger. Bookworm’s nostrils sent out narrow jets of blue flame, but he remained motionless. “How do you tell monster to bow?!” Magda translated the word "Bow" into her own language and repeated it slowly and distinctly. The duke, after a couple of attempts, pronounced the unfamiliar syllables fairly accurately. Bookworm, reigning in his fury, turned around to face the duke, bent his front paws and bowed his golden-crested head. There was a buzz of awe from the guards and some of the braver courtiers, who had in the meantime crept to the windows and were watching the proceedings in the courtyard.

The duke’s eyes flashed with excitement. “How do you make it breathe fire?” Magda taught him a word for fire. Soon he mastered this command as well. “Fire!” he yelled, pointing to a row of straw-stuffed archery targets that stood against the wall of the stable. Bookworm reduced the targets to ash with a single angry snort.

“How do you make it fly and carry you places?”
“It will take a while to teach you all that you need to know to steer the dragon,” Magda replied evenly. “I can explain to it that you wish it to take you for a ride and come back. I will teach you to say ‘Go!’ and ‘Back!’ so you can test this out.”
“How do I know you will not trick me?” the duke asked, uneasily.
“If you wish, you can give me the bracelet and I will show you that the commands mean exactly what I told you.”
“Nice try, witch. I am not going to let you slip out so easily.”
“In this case, you can give the talisman to one of your men and he will command the dragon. But it has to be someone of noble birth and decisive character. The dragon charm will not have power in the hands of a commoner.” The duke’s gaze swept around the courtyard and the gallery, but apparently he did not trust any of the highborn courtiers well enough to grant them possession of such powerful magic.

He yelled some commands to his guards. He then spoke to Sebastian, who translated to Magda that the duke ordered the guards to seize her and to burn her at the stake, if he did not return safe and sound within a half hour. This was to prevent the girl from playing some trick upon him when she instructed the dragon. Then, speaking in a frightened rush, Sebastian added a few words of his own: “Be careful! Once you teach him all he needs, he will kill you anyway!”
“I know,” Magda answered grimly.

Three guards, glancing uneasily at the dragon, walked out into the middle of the courtyard and took their positions around Magda, halberds pressed to her neck. “Speak to it,” commanded the duke. “I wish it to go up and circle all around the city, and then to bring me back here, to the courtyard. And do not try to play any tricks, or else!”
Magda taught the duke words for “Go” and “Back.” Then she addressed Bookworm. Of course, she did not actually need to translate anything for him. Bookworm, having eaten many books written in the local language, understood perfectly what the duke was saying; and knowing Latin, he also followed all the exchanges between Magda and Sebastian. So, Magda used this chance to say something completely different: “Once you have him, try to think of a way to make him order the guards to release me. If they let me go, I will head back to our camping place, by the river shallows.” Bookworm nodded.

“I told it what you wish. Once you tell it to go, it will take you by the shoulders and carry you,” Magda explained to the duke. “This is how it has been carrying me places. When you say ‘Back!’ it will bring you back here.” Clutching the bracelet tightly, the duke cried “Bow!” for he wished to test his control of the dragon one more time before going on a flight. Once again, the dragon bowed low.

“Go!”  The dragon pushed off from the ground, the beats of the huge leathery wings once again filled the courtyard with a cloud of dust. Seizing the duke by the shoulders, the dragon began to spiral up into the sky, the man clutched firmly in his paws.

Time crept forward with excruciating slowness. It seemed to Magda that she had been standing with the halberds at her neck for many hours. At last, the winged shape with the small human figure suspended beneath, reappeared in the sky. Magda waited breathlessly, as the dragon descended. He did not land in the courtyard. He circled above the upper stories of the palace. The duke’s voice drifted down faintly, but distinctly. “Let the girl go! She spoke truly,” he yelled. “Tell her I want to meet her at the dragon lair. Pay her triple for that map she made for me. Give her whatever else she needs for the journey. No one is to follow her. I will be back in a week. Sebastian, you take care of things in the meantime.” Then, the dragon banked sharply, going into rapid ascent. In a few wing strokes he was far away, looking like a bird of prey that carried a dangling mouse in its talons.

In the courtyard, silence was followed by a hubbub. Some of the guards found the duke’s commands suspicious and were debating whether to believe them or throw Magda into the dungeon until the situation clarified. But Sebastian seized the initiative. “You heard what his Highness said,” he called out, in an uncharacteristically firm voice. “I am to take care of things until his Highness returns. We shall obey and do as he ordered.” Hearing someone take charge, the guards obeyed. The halberds were withdrawn, and Magda followed Sebastian inside. “Take what you need and go quickly, he told her in a low voice. “The duke’s men will soon begin to doubt again whether the duke’s commands were genuine. His Highness is a man who shed much blood, but his guards admire him. They hated to see you negotiate with him instead of crawling at his feet, and they believe that you are a witch. They may decide to keep you as a hostage after all. They would rather burn you than see you go free.”
“But what about you, Sebastian? What will happen to you?”
“I am merely following the duke’s own orders. Now, quickly, tell me what you need.” Magda nodded.

Sebastian took her to the treasury and filled several leather sacks with coins and golden ingots. Magda requested some food for herself — grain, dried fruit, cheese. To Sebastian's astonishment, she also asked for books. What a time to worry about building a library! However, Sebastian did not waste time on asking. He took her to a large room where books and archives were kept and helped her pack a large number of volumes. Magda was uncomfortable raiding someone else’s property, but she realized that after all that had happened she would not be able to get back into the map-making business or even show up in any towns of nearby lands to purchase food for herself and Bookworm.

In the meantime, Sebastian had the guards retrieve Acorn and Bobtail from the stable. On Sebastian’s advice, she also requested that one of the duke’s riding horses be saddled and prepared to go with her, to make it look more like she really was going to meet the duke somewhere in the wilderness.

Accompanied by Sebastian and a few guards who kept giving her dark looks, Magda rode out of the gates of the palace. Apparently, the news about the witch who had summoned the dragon had already spread throughout the town. She rode through deserted streets past houses with closed shutters. The town seemed to have squeezed its eyes shut in fear of her.   At the city gates, Sebastian and the guards stopped. "Sebastian, how can I thank you? May the Lord bless you and keep you,” Magda whispered to the stooped man.
"I could not have lived if I knew I had led you into a trap. May the angels keep you always,"  Sebastian answered, his smile filled with quiet kindness. Poor Sebastian! Magda did not realize that the hours he had spent in her company had been the brightest joy of his life, and that he was willing to sacrifice himself for her sake.

Magda led the horses over the wooden drawbridge across the moat and, mounting Acorn, took the northbound road that led in the direction of the dragon lair. She made camp in the woods. Alone, save for the company of the horses, she was suddenly overcome with the terror of the last day. The girl spent a sleepless night, huddled next to her small campfire, unable to make herself warm.

At dawn, she changed her direction sharply to the east, striking for the base camp where she and Bookworm had spent the last few weeks, making maps. By late afternoon she found the spot. She was disappointed not to find the dragon there, but even so she felt calmer there, for it was familiar and bore evidence of her and Bookworm’s recent presence; the lean-to that they had constructed out of saplings and tarp to give them a dry spot for map making was still there. Magda watered the horses at the nearby river and hobbled the duke’s steed. Acorn and Bobtail could be trusted to stay around without restraints. She started a small fire and was just getting ready to cook porridge for herself when she heard the familiar rush of dragon wings in the darkening sky.

When Bookworm landed next to her, the girl rushed to the dragon and embraced the scaly neck. She felt safe at last! They stayed up late that night, each telling his or her part of the story of the last two days to the other. Now that she was safe in the forest with Bookworm, Magda could look back at her encounter with Rudolph the Magnificent with pride; she had kept her head in a terrifying situation. To Magda’s satisfaction, Bookworm did not stint with detail when he described how shocked and furious the duke was when he realized that Magda and Bookworm had tricked him and that he did not have the power to command the dragon. “I know his language pretty well,” commented Bookworm, “but I could not understand half of what he said once he figured out what has happened. Must have been the kinds of words they don’t put into the books.”

“So, how did you make him say what he said when you brought him back?”
“Well, he is pretty smart, for vermin. He quickly realized that he was in no position to try to burn you and instead had to worry about saving his own hide from being charred. So, we had some simple negotiations. I told him what I wanted him to do. In return, I gave him my word of honor not to shred or burn him if he said all the right things when we flew over the castle. Too bad! My nose just itched to turn him into a piece of charcoal. But I had to content myself with dropping him off in a nice thorn thicket out in the forest. I would like to think that he will meet a really hungry bear. But this may be too much to hope for. Most likely he will make it back to his castle in a couple of weeks.” Bookworm cast a baleful look in the direction from which he had arrived. “By the way, did you get some gold from them?”

Magda showed him the sacks with the coins and with the other supplies. Bookworm was greatly pleased and praised Magda's planning. “This should be enough to give a nice present to that dragon and to last us for much of the journey home. We can sell this fancy stallion once we get far enough from here. Speaking of gold, here is your magic bracelet. Just don’t make me bow again – I get a crick in my neck.”

THE BOOK OF BOOKWORM WILL BE CONTINUED IN THE NEXT CHAPTER