After the King: Stories in Honor of J.R.R. Tolkien

The Dragon of Tollin Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

The emissary flew for many days until he at last came to a spot cool enough for his feet to touch the surface without harm. The High Queen should have sent an ifrit instead of one of the Sky-Fey, the emissary thought. Ifrits flew by magic and thus could be wherever they desired in the twinkling of an eye, whereas the Sky-Feys’ wings took them no further in each mote of time than those of a bird of comparable size. Of course, speed was the only advantage ifrits possessed as emissaries. Their chancy dispositions made them otherwise useless for that purpose. But on this mission, speed would have sufficed, for nowhere in all of these blasted lands had the emissary found a living spirit with whom to converse.

The first hint the emissary had seen of the ruination was that a pall of black and gray boiling smoke hung over the shoreline of the southernmost reaches of Northworld. Here and there the sky would crack open to reveal streaks of angry orange or the clouds would suddenly bloom with fiery color within. An appalling stink assailed the emissary’s nose, and all during the subsequent flight he had had to cover his nostrils with a piece of his robe to filter the air.

Where the bustling port cities had been, black ooze trickled into the sea, scoring with deep gullies of blistering and popping magma the mountainous rim that had protected these prosperous lands from invasion for so many years. Where sentinel castles had guarded the coast smoldered piles of fused rubble. No ship or even the wreck of a ship wallowed in the fouled harbors. No man, woman or creature of any race walked the earth. No sea being within miles of the shore lifted its body from the waves to greet him. The sea creatures were the ones who had brought word of the disaster. The trading ships that normally plied the seas between this side of the world and the emissary’s side of the world had not been seen for some months. Finally, a selkie left word with a fisherman that she was concerned for relatives who had not made their yearly migration from the Northworld seas to those in the south and the fisherman took word to his lord, who sent word to the King, whose responsibility it was to report such matters to the Queen. A caravan took the weekly report to the highest mountain pass in Southworld where the High Queen presided from her castle of ice (which was believed to impart to her cool judgment) over the disputes and concerns of the lands and peoples below her.

She dispatched the emissary. The emissary had traveled to Northworld once, as a youngling, with his father on matters of state. The coastline of this landmass beneath his wings now and its location told the emissary that it was indeed the continent known as Northworld, but as to other clues, they were all erased.

Where he remembered great seas of billowing green forest there were now jagged charred stumps sticking up like the ruined teeth from the skull of some long-dead crone. The emissary thought he might find some answers in Tollinlund, that greatest city of all Northworld, whose boundaries annexed what was once an entire independent country.

The emissary had thought to stop on the way to rest his wings, to have a bite to eat, to sleep perhaps, for it was necessary to cross the borders of six other countries and the Great Inland Sea, the Hungry Desert and the vast Ogrebones mountain range before reaching Bellgarten, the land of which Tollin was the capital city.

The inland seas heaved like a dying man with black sludge from shore to shore, and the mountains were mightily scored on the southernmost side, though less so on the northern side. The emissary began to have some hope as he saw that the Hungry Desert, aside from sporting a new collection of still partially-clad bleached bones, looked much as it ever had, although the once-sparse vegetation was now nonexistent. Beyond the desert, however, where the northern loop of the Ogrebones guarded the fertile fields and populous towns of Bellgarten, the changes, though more subtle, were nonetheless evident. Bellgarten, as was well known, was the guardian country of Northworld, as the High Queen guarded Southworld. Bellgarten had this distinction and its enviable prosperity because it possessed a dragon, whose favor made it mighty and powerful, as well as wealthy.

Now the corpses of Bellgart houses gaped through yawning doors and broken windows, the crops were torn from the fields as if by giant claws and no person or beast moved on the face of the land. Here the emissary could have rested for a spell, and he did check several of the houses for habitation but, finding none, flew on to the city, where the devastation, though not as dramatic as that in the outlying lands, nonetheless appeared to have been as fatal.

No spires or towers stood to mark the skyline he remembered from his childhood. Where the markets had roared with animals and vehicles of all descriptions, the clink of coins, the brilliance of lines full of freshly dyed yarns draped between buildings, the patchwork of laundry spread on the rooftops to dry, the pleasant smell of well-washed, well-fed people who had discovered the magic of a well-engineered sewage system, now there was nothing. Or rather, there were many things but so thoroughly digested by whatever great calamity had overtaken Northworld that it was impossible to say what was cloth and what was wood or metal or what any item or being had been. The pleasant smell had been succeeded by the stench of death and rot and over all, the choking miasma of smoke that darkened the skies and blotted out the sun.

Wind whipped the rubble around the emissary’s feet as he landed on the stonework of what must have once been the palace. He folded his wings and sat upon the remnants of a wall, and wept himself to sleep.

He awoke, shivering, later, to a sound distinguished from the wind by its rhythm, a little jiggling, rattling sound that seemed to be coming from debris trembling beneath his feet.

Though his hands were cold and his pin feathers fluffed with the chill of the sun-bereft land, he dug into the debris. Maybe he would find a survivor someone, anyone, to explain what had befallen half of the world.

The warmth reached him first; warmth, vibration, and, as he cleared away more layers of filth, light. A soft, golden light humming with a heat like beach sand in summer.

As he uncovered its opalescent top, the object vibrated more strongly, working its way up from the ashes and filth toward him, a flower opening to the day.

The object was smooth, rounded, golden in hue but fired with flashes of red, blue and green and swirled with pearl. He thought it must be a rare treasure from the King’s hoard. He thought it must be the priceless offering of some great artisan. He thought it must be—an egg. A very large egg, as large as a buckler, nesting in the ruins around it, vibrating expectantly.

An egg, of course. The dragon’s egg. The dragon had died defending it from—what? Some monstrous attack? The dragon and the city and all of these lands had perished in the battle and only this egg remained.

The emissary laid his cheek against the glowing shell and said softly, “I understand, little orphan. Never fear. I will carry you back with me to the High Queen and there you will be cared for so that you may warm and protect our lands as once you protected—”

“H-hold,” croaked a voice as rusty as unoiled chain. The emissary looked up from the egg, though he did not unhand it, and saw that the rubble a few feet away, where the debris had slid down the opening blasted in the wall, also stirred. Perhaps there was more than one survivor after all.

The emissary steadied the egg and scrambled down the welter of cloth and metal, bone and splintered wood, to where the mess moved, and again began to dig his way to what lay below.

His hand was grasped suddenly by what seemed to be a clawed band of iron and the whole mountain of debris slipped further down as a section of rubble an arm’s length from him rose and faced him, a hole opening in it to plead, “Drink?”

From the top of the pile the vibrating grew louder and the egg teetered. The emissary fluttered his wings and swooped under the egg just as it started to roll, then carried it to the bottom of the pile. He set the egg down carefully before returning to the creature still unearthing itself. The warmth of the egg at his back comforted him as he unstrapped his pack and drew forth his flask to slake the creature’s thirst.

“Easy, friend,” he said as the survivor gulped half his flask. “This must last us until we find an unsullied atoll with fresh water and that may be days from here.”

The survivor shook its head and rasped, “Can’t leave. Egg. Must find the egg.”

“Don’t worry, my friend. It’s safe,” the emissary assured him and felt the egg purr at his back.

“Ah,” the survivor said and wiped its mouth with its wrist. It had only one wrist on one very long arm, the emissary saw, and its legs were quite short. A dwarf then? “The—others?”

“I’m sorry. There don’t seem to be any others. I am Dolhal, Emissary of the High Queen of Southworld. I must rest for a time, and then if you will ride between my wings, I can carry the egg and thus bear us both back to Her Majesty.”

“Southworld?” asked the halfling.

“Onlyworld, perhaps I should say,” Dolhal answered him. “I fear the north is all dead.”

The halfling nodded and, crawling forward on his knees and one elbow, found the egg and curled against it and slept. Perhaps he had more right, Dolhal thought, but he, Dolhal, had found the egg first and he experienced an unaccustomed spasm of revulsion at the idea of lying in the muck next to such a foul-visaged creature. But there was the egg, beautiful and warm despite its burial and disinterment, despite the filth below it and around it, promising, somehow, safety and comfort if only Dolhal would cherish it and keep it whole until it hatched.

He noticed before he slept that the halfling’s stump seemed to have been cauterized, and that a flat red scar covered it and one side of the creature’s face so that the ear, neck and jaw were all one line and the coarse black hair burned away.

Dolhal awoke suddenly, immediately alert, as if a shock had gone through him. He rose to see the halfling drop a large rock. Surely the creature couldn’t have meant to harm him? His wings were the only escape from this place.

The halfling grimaced painfully from the whole side of his face and laid his hand palm up on his knee. He looked somewhat cleaner and stronger than he had when they fell asleep. Dolhal, who felt completely refreshed himself, said aloud, “I feel much improved and you look it. Are you well enough to travel while our supplies last?”

A melodious voice welled up from that ruined face like fresh water from rock. “Soon. Give the dragon magic a little more time and we’ll both feel ready to dance all night.”

“I think not,” said Dolhal, feeling the cold wind billow from the roiling clouds. “I think after seeing this I will never feel like dancing again.”

“Ah, well. I suppose it could take a body like that, if you hadn’t time to get used to it. But from my viewpoint, it makes me feel like dancing just to be able to see this, you understand.”

“Who are you and how did you survive?” asked Dolhal.

“Someone had to be last,” the halfling answered, grimacing again. “And since I was first, in a manner of speaking, it’s fitting I suppose that I’m the last. Except for the egg, of course. I was called Sulinin the Halfling Harper until I found the first egg and thereafter I was Sulinin Dragonkeeper. I brought my discovery to the King shortly after the egg hatched into the dragonet and began to display its powers. The King was not so grateful for my loyalty in presenting him with the dragonet as to step down or give me his daughter and half his lands, you understand. That happens only in my stories. But he made my position permanent and I never had to wander again and saved my songs to cheer the dragon or to lull it to sleep as it grew.”

“My condolences,” the emissary said. “For everything.”

“Very sensitive of you, I’m sure,” said Sulinin.

“When the egg hatches its new dragon, perhaps the High Queen will grant that you retain your old position,” Dolhal suggested, though he hoped not. He, Dolhal, had rescued the egg, after all.

“Do you think she would?” asked Sulinin. “That would be—convenient. I do think we’d better start soon, don’t you? If the egg hatches here, we’ll have to delay until the dragonet’s wings grow strong enough to support its body and by that time—by that time it will have bonded with this place and will not leave it.”

Dolhal sensed a lie in that explanation somewhere but he was too unfamiliar with this being and with dragonets to know where the lie might lay. “Then the mother—the dragon—is dead? You’re certain?”

“Certain,” Sulinin said. “I—you might say as how I was personally involved when she exploded.”

“How painful for you.”

“Friend,” said Sulinin, “you don’t know the half of it.” This time Dolhal knew that the halfling spoke the truth, for the grim humor twisted from his mouth and his eyes teared up with anguish.

“Perhaps it would help if you would care to talk about it,” Dolhal suggested. Emissaries were trained to be excellent listeners, and were trained to read the nuances of meaning behind what was said. He no longer felt tired or hungry or thirsty but he also felt disinclined to leave this spot for the moment. The egg, he felt, would be happier nesting here too. “I heard when I was very young about the Dragon of Tollin. They say it was like no other dragon in the history of the world and that it was the reason for the prosperity of Bellgarten and because of it, Bellgarten gained its hegemony over Northworld.”

“True, all true,” the former harper said. “The dragons in tales of old are ugly and fearsome, greedy and foul—”

“Nothing like that could ever come from this egg,” said Dolhal, stroking the shell.

“Yes—hmm, well, I felt much the same when I first beheld the egg. I found it in the Ogrebones the summer Doomspewer erupted. Do you have volcanoes in the south?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Then you’ll know that when they spew, not only the mountain changes but the landscape all around—lakes are filled in with ash and refill themselves miles away, rivers change their courses. I had never seen such change for myself and traveled to the Ogrebones with my harp to make songs of the eruption and the people who lived through it and who died in it. It seemed at the time to herald the ruin of Bellgarten, for the heat had seared the crops and the ash, as it does now, blotted out the sun so that winter came early and people sickened and died from breathing the thick air. I was a young, healthy fellow then, however, and hungry for novelty, which is part of why I took up the harp and followed the minstrel’s road. I confess I had grown heartily weary of it by that time, however. I hoped with these songs to winter somewhere comfortable, where my voice, my fortune, would be safe from sickness and my belly would be full.

“The road ended long before it reached the place where it once led to the easiest pass through the mountains. I set out upon land as different as if it had been reborn then. As different as—as different as this land is from the Bellgarten of my youth. As different as this land was from the face of the moon. I thought in my ignorance that I would simply find the Bellgard River and follow its parallel course to the range until I reached its mouth. When I reached the place where the river had once been, however, I was amazed to see that that mighty flood, so wide and deep in some places that it had seemed to be the sea, had completely disappeared. Molten rock cooled in the dry bed and to my surprise, I saw stonework, cut and formed into what looked like the tops of towers, and in one place, the ruins of a great door. I sat right down to write a song about the lost city beneath the Bellgard but as I was debating between ‘giver’ and ‘liver’ as a rhyme for ‘river,’ I became aware that a third rhyme—‘quiver’—was even more appropriate, for that was what the ground near my feet was doing.”

“The egg worked its way to the surface for you too, then?” Dolhal said. “What an extraordinary creature to be so intelligent even in the shell!”

“Quite,” said the halfling, biting off the end of the word with his ruined teeth.

“And was the mother’s shell as beautiful as this one?” Sulinin asked.

“Yes, and I was as smitten with it as you are with this one. When the shell cracked, I thought my heart would break, but then the dragonet bumped her jewel-like head through the shell and into the air, her pudgy baby features and legs as engaging as those of any youngling. I had to carry her in my arms most of the way to Tollin since her wings were still too weak to hold her and she wobbled when she walked. Furthermore, she was hungrier than anything I had ever seen before when she was born and I hunted for her time and again before she was full enough to allow us to proceed. This, of course, made her staggeringly heavy but her appetite, once slaked, needed only a little maintenance for most of the rest of the journey and she charmed me by contenting herself with grass and flower buds.

“More charming still, wherever we traveled, her breath warmed the fields around us so that they grew fertile once more. I barely noted this at the time, so enchanted was I with my new companion, but we always slept warm and dry whatever the weather and I thought my music was better. I was—comfortable.”

“Yes, yes I see. That’s how I feel too. Mind you this is a long way from the High Queen’s court and yet the egg is, as you say, comforting.” Dolhal shuddered to the tips of his wings. “What a terrible tragedy for you to lose her,” he added, wondering why he felt so much more truly the tragedy of losing the dragon than the tragedy of losing a continent and all of its other creatures.

“Her appetite grew as we traveled until she could eat the produce of whole fields and was looking longingly at the sheep and cows and I realized that I would not be able to keep her fed by my own efforts. That forced me to the difficult decision of presenting her to King Horhay. He was charmed, even when she ate the entire fifty-course banquet he had prepared for his daughter’s ninth birthday. He was a wealthy man so he merely ordered another banquet prepared. The dragon seemed a bit ashamed of her appetite, and hunted and cooked to perfection all of the animals she had gobbled before and then, by order of the king, we were given our quarters in the royal zoo and I sang her to sleep, while she hummed in her soothing way.

“As she grew, her appetite increased but I persuaded the king that he should give over to her her own fields and her own livestock for her nurturing. In order to do this, he levied a small tax on the people, and in return we made flights together and she warmed the fields so that they yielded more than ever and blew away the ash. In the winter, she kept the palace warm and eventually conduits were sent from her den to burrow under all of the houses in the town so that she might warm them. Later, it was found that her breath could be confined in clay stoves that heated without wood for days at a time. But though she more than earned her keep, as her appetite increased, the people grew fearful. Some remembered the stories of dragons of old, who devoured virgins regularly, although our dragon had shown no signs of desiring any such fare.

“There were those, in fact, who wanted her to be put to death so that they would no longer have to. pay for her maintenance. The invasion of Bellgarten by the armies of Orbdon stopped that talk.”

“What happened?”

“What do you think happened? My beauty drove their troops back to their own borders and with one short raid on their nearest town, a roar and a single blast of fire, the enemy was decimated, destroyed, and thereafter followed our ways and paid tribute to our king. He wisely used much of it for the maintenance of the dragon, who seemed to take pity on the Orbdonese and, using her great strength and fire judiciously, rebuilt their city and helped them prosper as we had.”

“What a marvelous creature!” Dolhal said and thought that the High Queen’s reign would be much easier if she had such assistance—firm but benign, expensive but in part paying its own fee—to aid her.

“Yes,” said Sulinin, “and only half grown!”

“What wonders she must have worked when she reached maturity,” Dolhal mused softly.

“And what an appetite she had,” Sulinin said. “The people loved her, of course, and they loved me and they loved the king for her sake, for she brought them comfort and good crops—her warming of the ground made three plantings feasible and her scat was the most wonderful fertilizer imaginable. Then too, she brought prosperity to the kingdom. For fear of her, all the neighboring kingdoms paid tribute to Bellgarten and we in exchange settled their disputes. This worked very well until the dragon grew so large and her appetite so prodigious that all of the food stores and livestock in the neighboring kingdoms were reduced to starvation rations. The king was reluctant to tax our people further, though in time he had to. Rather than becoming angry at the dragon, people grew angry at the king and there was a rebellion, aided and abetted by subject kingdoms. Of course, my girl and I rapidly put it down and that was when the king decided, why pay an executioner? You understand that I did not like seeing my girl eating human beings—whole, mind you. She ate them whole. But the king was in no mood to listen to suggestions and might have found some other way to slay me.”

“You could have then turned the dragon onto the king,” the emissary suggested, surprised that Sulinin, who had been at court at least as long as the emissary, had failed to think of it himself.

Sulinin looked down at his clawed hand. “I might have but she knew the king nearly as well as she knew me and besides, he was the king and a man and if I asked her to murder him in order to save her from murdering those who had legally wronged the king, what would the point have been? The outcome would have been the same for the dragon. So I kept my peace. It was a mistake. News of the executions brought more insurrections and more border wars among the tribute countries and more executions. When full-scale war broke out, the king did not field soldiers. He simply sent the dragon out to do their job, thinking of the salaries he would save, no doubt.

“It didn’t quite work out that way. As she flew her missions of destruction, she fed and as she fed she grew larger and needed even more feeding to enable her to fly. Soon all of the crops and livestock in Bellgarten were gone and then began—the draft.”

Sulinin grew quiet. The egg was vibrating at greater speed and Dolhal thought he could hear a heartbeat through the shell, which shimmered expectantly.

“Go on,” he told Sulinin, though he had begun to guess the end of the story—indeed, he had seen the end of the story and it was extremely disheartening. What a tragic waste of power and resources.

“As you may guess, the draft was not for soldiers for the field. Draftees were brought to the castle and fed through a doorway that led straight into my girl’s enormous gullet. By now she was so big that a curious thing happened, however. Not all of the people who passed through her were digested or died. Some merely lost limbs or were somewhat scored or otherwise injured but came through her bowel whole and alive save for that. Others, the ones she ate just before sleeping, might emerge whole but completely mad from the process of passing through the dragon’s stomach. But the majority, those who were fed to her before she flew into battle, were totally devoured and no one ever saw them again. I helped those who emerged from her belly alive escape back out into the city, but in time all of them were rounded up again, as were first the old people, then the women and children. By this time, there was no one left in all of the other lands for her to blast but still she kept feeding and still the king gave her the flesh and bones of his people.

“I suppose he had gone quite mad by then. Otherwise, how could he have shoved his own daughter into the dragon’s maw? I heard the princess scream for her father and recognized her voice, for when she was a child she had often come to hear me sing the dragon to sleep. The dragon snapped her jaws shut but I pried them open and tried to wrest the princess from her. My girl never would have hurt me ordinarily, but she was still in her feeding frenzy and she was irritated with me so she let her jaws snap shut and a small flicker of her flame warn me away—which is how I came by these injuries you see.” He touched his face and the stump of his arm. “I stumbled through the door with the roar of the dragon and the princess’s screams echoing in my ears with the screams of all the other victims.”

“I’m surprised the king didn’t feed you to the dragon too.”

“He tried. That’s how he met his end. Even though by now the dragon was far too bulky to fly and there was nothing left for her to eat, she was hungry. She began thrashing about, and broke down the castle in her frenzy. She destroyed Tollin with her writhing and the flames she let forth as she bellowed in frustration and, I realized later, pain.”

“Poor thing!” the emissary said. “I suppose she was starting to lay her egg then. I had no idea dragons had such a difficult time of it.”

“Nor did I. All I knew was that there was nothing more for her to feed on save myself and that when I was gone she would starve to death so I made for her a loaf of explosives, hid, and when she came to feed at my call, lit the fuse. The lighted end was between her teeth before I saw the egg.”

The emissary fixed him with a cold look but said, “I suppose you had to save yourself.”

“Moreover, I didn’t wish her to starve to death. I saw her explode and then—then I remember nothing until you found me.”

The egg stretched and a tiny crack appeared at the top. “Did you not say I must take the egg away before it hatches if I wish it to adapt elsewhere?” Dolhal asked anxiously, stroking the shell and crooning to it.

“Better to let me crack it for you and slay the dragonet while it is still small enough to kill,” Sulinin said, lifting in his one powerful hand the rock he had dropped earlier.

“Never! You’ve betrayed and slain the mother already. I will not let you have this little one.”

“Did you hear none of what I said? The dragon becomes voracious as she grows and nothing can survive—”

“You allowed her to be corrupted. In a good and just land she will be an instrument for goodness and justice.” Dolhal lifted the egg to his chest, shushing it as if hoping that his shushing would calm it and delay its hatching. Then, before the former dragonkeeper could rise to his feet, the emissary was airborne, the dragon egg cradled in his arms.

“Wait—you can’t leave me here,” Sulinin called to him. “Take me on your back as you promised.”

“I must get the dragonet to the High Queen before it can fly,” Dolhal called down to him. “Perhaps we’ll return for you later. Perhaps.” And with three great flaps of his wings he soared further aloft, disappearing from sight as he flew toward the Ogrebones.

Sulinin sighed and burrowed beneath the rubble again for warmth, to restore his strength with rest. Tomorrow he would pack up the rest of the rancid dragon meat and follow on foot in the direction the emissary had flown. Poor Dolhal. The emissary would find nowhere in all of this lifeless land the birds Sulinin’s dragonet had so voluminously devoured upon hatching. Sulinin would travel as far as he could, looking for sign of the emissary and his burden—bits of shell and, the former dragonkeeper fervently hoped for the sake of the High Queen and all of Southworld, a few stray feathers.