The Dragon's Dagger (Spearwielder's Tale #2) 5

There came a measure of freedom for Gary Leger that late August eve, tooling home from work in his Mustang, the rag-top down and the wind snapping his straight black hair back and forth across the sides of his face. Rick had his report and the month was closed, and though the next week promised the hectic time of fine-tuning hundreds of numbers, twenty trips to the copier a day, and several dozen phone calls from District Office Managers, ranging from curious to irate, Gary didn't have to think about that now.

He had left the office a half-hour later than usual and much of the afternoon traffic was far ahead of him, leaving Route 2 west out of Concord clear enough for him to ease the reins on the powerful Mustang. He put his head back, pumped the volume up on the stereo, and cruised down the fast lane at an easy seventy-five, the 5.0 liter eight cylinder hardly working at all. Gary liked the drive home from work when the traffic wasn't too tight. Route 2 was wooded on both sides and wide open to the horizon, where the sun was dipping low, turning the lines of clouds a myriad of colors. Many times on this daily commute, Gary was able to daydream, and inevitably, those dreams took him back five years, to the journey he had taken to the magical land of Faerie.

He remembered Mickey - who could ever forget Mickey? - and Kelsey, and the chase through Ceridwen's castle and the battle with mighty Robert the dragon. He remembered running scared through the wood called Cowtangle, chased by a horde of goblins and feeling more alive than he had ever felt in this "real" world.

Everybody wants to rule the world, the radio blared, an old Tears for Fears song and one of Gary's all-time favorites. He started to sing along, gave a quick glance at his instruments, and noticed flashing headlights in his rear-view mirror. A closer look showed him a red Toyota so close to his ass-end that he couldn't see the thing's front bumper! Gary immediately looked to the slow lane, instinctively reacting to the flickering signal for him to let the car behind him pass. He noticed that the lane was absolutely clear - why the hell didn't the car behind him just go around on the right? - and noticed, too, that he was pushing eighty. "Jesus," he whispered, and he took a closer look in the rearview mirror, caught by the image of the young woman in the shiny Toyota, her face up close to the windshield as she issued a stream of curses Gary's way, and every now and then flipped him the finger. Her impatient headlights blinked on and off, her mouth flapped incessantly.

"Jesus," Gary muttered again, and he put the Mustang up to eighty-five. The Toyota paced him, couldn't have been more than a single car length off his rear bumper. Normally Gary, hardly ever in a real hurry, would have just pulled over and let the Toyota fly past.

A horn sounded to accompany the incessant headlights. The Toyota inched even closer, as though the woman meant to simply push Gary out of her way.

Gary backed off the accelerator, let the Mustang coast down to seventyfive, to seventy. The lips against the windshield of the Toyota flapped more frantically. Sixty.

Predictably, the Toyota swerved right, into the slow lane, and started by.

"Everybody wants to rule the world," Gary sang along, and as the Toyota's front bumper came halfway up the Mustang's side, he dropped the Mustang into third and gave the accelerator a slight tap. The eager engine roared in response and the car leaped ahead, easily pacing the Toyota.

Now he could hear the crabby woman, swearing at him at the top of her lungs.   Up went the volume on Gary's radio, up went the Mustang's speed, as Gary paced her at eighty-five, side by side.

"You son of a bitch!" she hollered.

Gary turned and offered a cat-got-the-canary smile, then eased the Mustang back into fourth as the speedometer needle flickered past ninety. The Toyota backed off, and Gary did, too, keeping side by side with her, keeping her in the slow lane, where he figured a nut like that belonged. Curses and a flipping middle finger flew from the Toyota's open driver's side window.

"Everybody wants to rule the ROAD," Gary sang to her, altering the last word and nodding ahead, indicating that they were fast coming up on a perfectly maintained old Aspen - and that could only mean a more conservative driver - cruising down the highway at a perfect fifty-five. Gary tucked the Toyota neatly in behind the Aspen and held pace for another half-mile, until a line of faster-moving cars came up on his bumper. Understanding that she had been had, the woman in the Toyota slammed her hands hard against her steering wheel several times in frustration and began flicking her headlights, as if the contented Aspen driver had anywhere to go to get out of her way.

"You son of a bitch!" she screamed again at Gary, and he blew a kiss her way, kicked the Mustang into third and blasted off, smiling as he looked back in his mirror, watching car after car zip by the frazzled driver in her Toyota and the contented driver of the Aspen.

Some pleasures in life just couldn't be anticipated.

Two hours later, Gary's Mustang was sitting quietly in the driveway of his parents' home in Lancashire, and Gary was sitting quietly in his bedroom unwinding from the long day and from the ride home. His radio played quietly in the background; outside the window, a mockingbird was kicking up its typical ruckus, probably complaining that the sun was going down and it hadn't found the opportunity to chase any cats that particular day.

Gary moved across the room to the stereo cabinet, opened the top drawer and removed his most precious possession, a worn copy of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. Gary ran his fingers slowly across the cover, feeling the illustration, feeling the magic of the book. He opened past the credits pages, the introduction by Peter S. Beagle, and the table of contents. Nothing unusual about these, but when Gary turned the next page, he found not the expected, standard typesetting, but a flowing script of arcane runes that he could not begin to identify. Mickey had done it, had waved his chubby hand over the book and changed the typesetting to a language that the leprechaun could understand.

Gary heard a knock on the door, looked out his window to see Diane's Jeep (Gary's old Jeep), parked on the street, in front of the bushes lining the front yard. He dropped the book back in the drawer and slammed it shut just as Diane cracked open the door.

"You in there?"

"Come on in," Gary replied, hand still holding the drawer shut. He watched Diane's every move as she crossed the room to give him a little kiss, watched her dirty blond hair bouncing carelessly about her shoulders, her wistful green eyes, so like his own, and that mischievous smile she always flashed when she first saw him, that I-got-you-GaryLeger smile. And it was true.

"What'cha doing?"

Gary shrugged. "Just hanging out, listening to some music." He poked his head under the bottom of the open window, putting his mouth near to the screen, and called loudly, "Whenever that stupid mockingbird shuts up long enough so that I can hear the music!"

"You want to go get an ice cream?'" Diane asked when he turned back to her. Again came that mischievous smile, telling Gary that she had more on her mind than ice cream.

It seemed so perfectly natural to Gary Leger, the way things were supposed to be for a guy in his early twenties. He had a decent job paying more money than he needed, the security of home, and a great girlfriend. He had his health (he worked out every day), his minor glories on the softball field, and a car that could trap jackasses in the slow lane on the highway.

So why wasn't he happy?

He was contented, not frazzled like the woman in the Toyota, or like so many of his coworkers who had families to support in a struggling economy, who had to keep looking over their shoulders to see if they still had a job. But Gary couldn't honestly say that he was happy, certainly not thrilled with the everyday tasks and pleasures that life offered to him.

The answer, Gary knew beyond doubt, lay in that cabinet drawer, in the flowing script of a leprechaun he wanted to speak with again, in the memories of a world he wanted to see again.

Gary tapped the drawer and shrugged. He and Diane went for their ice cream.

High and far, the M&M ball flew, through low-hanging clouds, through a "V" of very surprised geese, and past the high doors of the holes of mountain trolls, the not-too-smart creatures scratching their scraggly hair and staring dumbfoundedly as the missile fast disappeared from sight.

Tucked in tight and surrounded by pressing foam, Ger-bil couldn't see out of the delivery ball. If he could, the gnome might have died of fright as he neared the end of his descent, came soaring up on the lip of the field north of Drochit. The load was indeed heavy - too heavy - and the ball angled in a bit low, diving for the rocky ridge bordering the top of the field. Good luck alone saved Gerbil, for the ball struck the turf between two stones, narrowly missing each, and skittered through, spinning into the air again, then landing in a roll down the descending slope of the long field. The ball had two shells, separated by independent bearings designed to keep the inner area somewhat stable.

No gnomish technology could greatly soften this bouncing and tumbling ride, though, and Gerbil bit his own lips many times, despite the tightfitting mouthpiece, as he blabbered out a hundred different equations, trying to figure his chances for survival.

Gerbil heard the splat, and he was yanked to a sudden stop and turned upside-down as the ball bogged down in a muddy puddle.

"Oh, I hope, I hope, that I do not sink!" the gnome mumbled around the edges of his mouthpiece. The next few minutes, waiting for the timers to release the locks, seemed like an hour to the trapped (and increasingly claustrophobic) gnome. As soon as he heard the telltale clicks, Gerbil heaved and straightened with his legs, popping the ball in half, only to tumble over backwards and splat rump-first into the mud.

He was up in an instant, fumbling with the many compartments of the halfsubmerged ball, trying to salvage all the pieces of the contraption he had brought along. Again, luck was with him, for just a few moments later, he saw a group of Drochit villagers riding down the road on a wagon, coming to retrieve the gnomish delivery.

"Didn't know ye was sending anything," one farmer, the oldest man of the group of six, said when he noticed Gerbil.

"Hey, how'd you get here?" another man asked.

"He filed in the ball!" a third reasoned.

Poor Gerbil had to answer a hundred inane questions concerning his trip over the next few minutes, all the while coaxing the men to help him in his salvage operations. Soon the dry ground near to the puddle was covered with metal tubing, springs, gears, and a box of tools, and Gerbil had to slap curious hands away repeatedly and firmly scold the inquisitive humans.

"Robert the dragon is loose and in a fury!" the flustered gnome said at last. Gerbil had meant to keep that news private until he could meet with Drochit's leaders, but that meeting seemed longer away indeed if these simple men did not leave his equipment alone and let him get on with his assembling.

Six faces blanched, six mouths fell open.

"You," Gerbil said to the oldest, and apparently most intelligent, of the group. "Hand me items as I call for them - promptly, for we have not a moment to lose!"

The farmers were more orderly then, and Gerbil's work progressed excellently, with all the parts fitting neatly together. There came one moment of terror for the gnome, though, until he reached into the bulging pocket of a young man and took out his missing sprocket.

"Thought it'd be good for hitting birds," the young farmer apologized, drawing a slap on the back of his head from the oldest of the group. "What is it?" Gerbil heard the question fifty times as the contraption neared completion. He figured that it would be easier to show this group than to try to explain, so he waited until he was done, then climbed into the back-leaning seat, tooted the small horn on the four-wheeled thing's steering bars, and began pumping his legs.

For a few moments, he did not move. One wheel had snagged on a halfburied rock and was spinning in the mud. Just as the farmers, scratching their heads like not-too-intelligent mountain trolls, moved near to figure out what the gnome might be trying to do, the wheel cleared the obstruction with a jerk and Gerbil rolled off slowly across the thick grass.

"Well, I'll be a pretty goblin," one man said.

"You wouldn't be pretty if ye was a goblin," answered another.   The first slapped him on the back of the head, and they would have started an all-out fight right then and there, except that Gerbil then turned onto the road, little legs pumping furiously, and the quadricycle sped away.

"Well, I'll be a pretty goblin," they both said together, and the whole group ran off for their wagon. They turned the cart about and shook the reins, spurring the horse into a gallop. But the burdened beast was no match for precise gnomish gearing and well-oiled axles, and Gerbil continued to outdistance them all the way to Drochit.