Dragonslayer's Return

The tour guide was full of good cheer, all in all a remarkably entertaining old Scottish gent, complete with a button-top cap and a plaid quilt. Even Gary, not thrilled that he had to tag along with a group of tourists, couldn't hide his chuckles at the man's continuing stream of humor as they moved past the outer walls towards the castle proper.

"Pay no attention to these doors," the guide ordered in his thick brogue as they passed between two massive open portals, iron-bound wooden doors with an iron portcullis hanging overhead, each of its imposing pegs as thick as Diane's arm.

"They're not old," the Scotsman went on."They were made when I was a boy, just two hundred years ago!"

The wide-eyed people of the tour group were so intrigued by the sight of the portals, and of the castle that lay beyond them, that it took every one of them many long seconds to even figure out the joke.

And Gary, transfixed as he stared at the lower courtyard of the castle, of Robert's castle, missed it altogether. Diane, laughing, looked to him, but her mirth was quickly washed away by his firm-set features, that same determined and wide-eyed look that had led them to England, then to Scotland, in the first place.

"Two hundred years ago," she echoed, grabbing Gary's strong arm.

"What?" he asked, turning to regard her.

Diane let it drop, with only one final sigh of surrender. She took Gary's arm in tow and halfheartedly followed the group around the lower courtyard, its stone wall overlooking the city of Edinburgh. Antique cannons, preserved museum pieces showing the twilight of the years of castles, sat at regular intervals along the walls. The guide was speaking of them, but Gary didn't bother to listen. He thought it curious that cannons lined the castle wall, yet it was the cannon that made the castle an obsolete defense. More than curious, though, Gary thought it terribly wrong to see cannons in this place. There had been no cannons in Robert's castle, of course, no guns at all. Gary preferred things that way.

"They don't belong," he whispered.

"The cannons?" Diane asked.

Gary looked at her curiously. He hadn't been speaking to her, hadn't been speaking to anyone. "The cannons don't belong - especially that one," he said, pointing to the farthest edge of the curving wall, to a modern Howitzer standing silent vigil in a roped-off area that indicated it was not for show, and certainly not a piece for children to climb upon.

"I think it's neat," Diane argued. "You can see how this castle evolved through the ages. They've got a chapel up there that's from the fifth century! You can see how this place was built, and expanded, and modernized to adapt to the changes in the world around it." She was growing noticeably excited, reveling in the fun of it all - until she looked again at Gary, and that determined smirk of his.

"What?" she asked sternly.

"I'd like to show you this place before the cannons," he said. "When the only sentries were lava newts and..."

"Are you going to start that again?" asked a flustered Diane. She turned away, and noticed that the tour group was ascending a flight of exposed stairs up to the higher level, the inner bailey.

"Are you coming?"

"I can tell you everything that's up there," Gary boasted, following her lead. "Except for the newer changes." "You're starting to get on my nerves."

"You've been saying that for a week," Gary pointed out.

Diane spun about, halfway up the stairs, and glared down at him. He fully realized that his obsession was ruining her vacation, but he simply could not let go of it. Gary needed to get back to Faerie, but if the Howitzer was any indication, those tentative bridges between the worlds were crumbling faster than he had expected.

Still, he realized that it wasn't fair for him to play out his frustrations on poor Diane, and he apologized sincerely.

By the time they got to the courtyard atop the stairs, the tour group was moving through a door to a tall tower. "We'll go there later," Gary explained as he grabbed Diane's hand and rushed off diagonally across the courtyard, to an open door at the far end of a long and lower building.

Diane went along without complaint, sensing the urgency in her husband. They rushed through the door, into a dimly lit short corridor. Just a few steps in, they turned to the left, into a massive hall.

This was the place where Gary had first met Robert. It seemed very much the same, with spears and other weapons arranged on the walls, empty suits of armor standing guard in pretty much the same positions as Robert's lava newt sentries had been.

"This is it," Gary breathed.

"Come on, Gary," Diane said quietly. "Tell me what's going on."

He could tell by her tones that his cryptic words and actions had gone beyond simple annoyance. He was beginning to frighten her.

"This was Robert's hall," he explained. "Just like this. It looks the same - it feels the same. Even the gigantic interlocking beams of the ceiling."

Diane looked up along with Gary to that fabulous ceiling - more wondrous still when the two took a moment to realize how high it actually was, and thus, the true width of those supporting beams.

"Incredible," Diane mouthed.

"And I've seen it before," Gary assured her. She looked to him as he turned away, moving out from the wall. Diane didn't reply, just followed Gary as he crossed the great hall, turning with every step to take in the view and the feel of the place. Suddenly he stopped, as if his gaze had fallen on a new and brighter treasure. Diane followed the line of that stare to an immense sword, leaning from a pedestal base against the far wall. "Robert's?" she asked, following the logic.

Gary tentatively moved up to it. Without even bothering to look around, he grabbed the weapon's massive hilt in his two hands and tilted it against his chest.

"Mickey," he called. "You have to hear me now, Mickey." By Gary's reasoning, this sword had to be deeply connected with Faerie. It had to be.

"You're not supposed to touch it," Diane whispered, glancing about nervously, expecting a host of police to run up and arrest them on the spot for disturbing a national treasure.

"Mickey," Gary called again, loudly, defiantly.

"Robert," a voice corrected, and for an instant Gary thought he had made an otherworldly connection. Then a hand crossed in front of him and gently eased the sword back to its original place. "The sword of Robert," the guard explained.

Gary's mind swirled at the possibilities that name evoked. He realized that he was still in his own world, but in that case, how could this modern-day man know of Robert?

"Robert the Bruce," the guard clarified, pointing to a plaque on the wall. "And ye should'no' be touchin' it." Gary fell back, nodding, and Diane caught his arm in her own. Robert the Bruce was one of Scotland's legendary heroes, a man of Gary's world and certainly no dragon in Faerie. Still, Gary was sure there was some connection between this sword and the sword Robert the dragon had used when in his human form, the same sword that Gary had stolen to lead the dragon into a trap.

And it was connected to Faerie; Gary had felt that keenly when he touched it. But he had heard no answer to his call to the leprechaun, and whatever magic had been in this place was gone now, stolen by the mere appearance of the guard.

Gary and Diane didn't finish that castle tour.  

"What do you hear?" an observant raven-haired elf asked Mickey, seeing the leprechaun's faraway look. Mickey glanced over at Kelsey, who was sitting across the campfire, talking with some friends and smoothing the burrs from the edge of his crafted sword.

As if he had felt that gaze, Kelsey stopped his talk and his work, and stared hard at Mickey.

"It was not a thing," the leprechaun answered the elf standing beside him, though he was still looking across the fire to Kelsey. "Just a song on the wind, is all. A bird or a nymph." The other elf seemed satisfied with that, and he took no notice as Mickey walked away from the fire and into the thick brush. Kelsey caught up to the leprechaun twenty yards away, the elf's stern golden-eyed expression demanding a better explanation.

"Not a thing," Mickey said and started to walk by. Kelsey grabbed the leprechaun's shoulder and held him in place.

"What're ye doing now?" Mickey asked, pulling free.

"It was no bird, nor Leshiye the nymph," Kelsey said. "What did your clever ears hear?"

"I telled ye it was nothing," Mickey replied.

"And I asked you again," Kelsey retorted and again grabbed a firm hold on the elusive sprite's shoulder. Mickey started to argue once more, but stopped, figuring the better of it. They were in besieged Tir na n'Og, Kelsey's precious home, with Kinnemore's army forcefully knocking on the door. Kelsey would grab at any hope, at any hint, and he would not be dismissed by avoiding answers.

"It was the lad," Mickey admitted. "I heared a call from the lad."

Kelsey nodded. This time, the call must have been closer, for the leprechaun was visibly disturbed.

"Gary Leger wants to return," Kelsey reasoned.

"Only because he doesn't know," Mickey quickly added, shaking his head. "We were all thinking that things'd be better with Robert gone and Pwyll named as hero. Ye seen it yerself - when the lad left, he left with a smile."

The leprechaun paused and closed his eyes, and it seemed to Kelsey that he was hearing that distant call once more.

"No, Gary Leger," Mickey whispered. "Ye're not wanting to come here. Not now." Kelsey let go of Mickey, and let the leprechaun walk off alone into the dark forest night. He didn't dismiss what Mickey had revealed, though, and he wasn't so sure that Mickey's answer to that call was correct.

Kelsey and a handful of stealthy elfish companions left Tir na n'Og later that night, after the moon had set. The quiet elfish band had little trouble slipping through the Connacht lines and making its way to Dilnamarra Keep.

Gary leaned his head against the window of the tour bus, watching the countless sheep as the rolling fields of the Scottish Highlands drifted by. He had planned to stay in Edinburgh, so he could return to the castle and to the sword as often as possible, seeking that tentative link to Mickey.

Diane had other ideas. As soon as they had returned to their hotel, she had secretly booked a three-day bus tour of Scotland. Gary, of course, had resisted, but Diane, so patient with him all these weeks, had heard enough. He was going with her, she said, or he would be alone for the rest of the vacation. She hadn't said anything more outright, but Gary believed that if he didn't go on this tour, he might find himself alone longer than that.

Diane sat in the seat next to him, very close to him, chatting with a Brazilian couple across the aisle. Music played over the bus's intercom, pipers and accordions, mostly happy and upbeat, but every so often a mournful tune.

They were the perfect tourists, riding along the winding roads in the majestic and melancholy Scottish scenery. All Gary saw were the sheep.

His mood brightened, to Diane's sincere relief, as the day wound on and the bus approached their first stop, Inverness. Gary was thinking of Faerie again, of Loch Devenshere, nestled in the Crahgs, where he had seen a sea monster. Perhaps Loch Ness would show him the bridge.

They didn't get to the legendary loch until the next day, and Gary was in for a disappointment. He saw a monster, a plaster replica of Nessie, sitting in a small pond (a large puddle) next to the Drumnadrochit Monster Exhibit, but despite the dark waters of the cold loch across the highway, and the stunning view of the mountains across the long lake, there was little magic here, little sensation that Mickey would hear his call. "Two more days," he said as the bus rolled west, towards the next stop, the Isle of Skye.

"Then we're going to Brighton," Diane announced.

"Brighton?"

"South coast of England, near Sussex," she explained. "It will take us about six hours from Edinburgh. We'll go right from the bus drop to the train station."

Gary's first instinct was to protest. He had gone along with the bus four, but planned to spend some time back in Edinburgh after the three days. He bit back his retort now, though, seeing no compromise in Diane's green eyes.

When he spent a moment to consider that determined look, Gary found that he couldn't really blame Diane. She had been wonderful about his obsession with Faerie over the years, listening to him without complaint or ridicule as he repeated his wild stories at least a hundred times. Before this trip, Diane had allowed him his many nights sitting in the woods out in back of his mother's house, had even gone and sat by his side on several occasions.

And Diane really didn't believe in Faerie, he knew. How could she? How could anyone who had not gone there? Diane had compromised - even the first half of their vacation. Now it was Gary's turn to compromise. "Brighton," he agreed, and he settled back in his seat and tried very hard to enjoy the highland scenery.