Robert Hughes: The Prophet of Lamath

THERE WAS a saying in the land as old as the dust that stood ten inches deep in the back of his cavern, as old as the diamonds that he loved to toss from mouth to mouth. “Two heads are better than one,” Vicia-Heinox would hear a passerby say, and he would nod with both of his in sage agreement, then eat the traveler whole. Vicia-Heinox was a two-headed dragon, the only one there had ever been—the only one which has ever been.

To say that Vicia-Heinox was the most powerful living creature anyone could remember is to understate the case. A one-headed dragon is a national emergency. A two-headed dragon, sitting astride the only truly usable pass on the north-south trade route, is a world problem. Vicia-Heinox was an environmental feature. He not only altered cultures, he was a factor in producing them. Three ancient nations feuded and skirmished around him, for he sat on the only frontier the three realms held in common. He had been actively involved in the history of each, and all held him in awe.

One could say that the dragon helped preserve the peace, for he refused to let armies march through his pass. On the other hand, one could say his presence constantly argued for war, for he strangled economic interchange between the giant powers. The only merchants he allowed to pass were very rich merchants. They had to be very rich, in order to pay his incredibly high toll in goods and slaves and still make a profit. They were also very wise merchants, who knew how to show honor and respect to the dragon who insured their financial well-being. No wisecracking merchant ever made his way through Dragonsgate. A misplaced remark about two heads, dropped thoughtlessly amid the bargaining with the beast, had been the bane of many a family fortune. Over a period of centuries this process of unnatural selection resulted in a very small company of sour, mean-tempered, closemouthed merchants controlling all of the inter-empire traffic.

This provided the primary cause of friction between the nations. Everyone knew that it was the merchants who controlled their economy. And because the merchants kept to themselves, each family holding a number of private estates scattered through each one of the kingdoms, the people of every land viewed the merchant families as foreigners. Because they hated merchants, the public hated foreigners. Because they hated foreigners, they warred on their neighbors.

But Vicia-Heinox straddled Dragonsgate, and armies couldn’t march. The three lands waged no hot, quick wars on sunny days, moving in colorful array across great remembered battlefields. Instead, the three realms wrestled in one slow, dark war, a night war, fought in black and white. Skirmishes and raids replaced marches and charges. Generals were made by intrigue, not excellence. Cruelty was valued over bravery. The greathearted leaders of memory had long since been replaced by thieves. It was not a good world in which to live.

Except for Vicia-Heinox, who felt it couldn’t be better. There were rulers of lands, but he ruled the rulers. The merchants controlled the countryside, but he controlled the merchants. And he ate well.

Every week a caravan or two would labor up one of the steep approaches to his pass. Some came up the short, sharp northeastern defile, carrying farm goods, rough textiles, and good sturdy tools from Lamath. Others toiled up the long, narrow southern route from golden Chaomonous, patron of the arts. Finely crafted luxury items and exotic objects from foreign lands came with these southerly caravans, for the people of Chaomonous were seafaring men, who prided themselves on their travels. But it was the western entrance to Dragonsgate that the beast watched most carefully, for two reasons. Ngandib-Mar was a mountainous empire, and caravans from this region did not have to climb so far to reach the pass. One very tricky, very quick trading captain had managed to sneak in and past the dragon while he was napping once, but that had been many years before. Any captain so foolish as to try to repeat the trick Vicia-Heinox took great pleasure in charbroiling, for it was from the mines of Ngandib-Mar that the dragon obtained his wealth.

Chaomonous was indeed called golden, but in fact most of its gold passed through Dragonsgate first—and the dragon always got his share. The jewels of Ngandib-Mar, though, were the objects of his passion. He demanded and received the finest Ngandib-Mar could send him: great, white gems the size of a giant’s skull, and multifaceted, multicolored stones that dazzled even in the moonlight. These were the beast’s playthings, in the idle hours between meals-caravans. Vicia, the dragon’s left head, would grip a giant stone between his lips and toss it high into the air, then would move out of the way of Heinox, the right head, who would try to catch it. It pleased the dragon to watch the sparkling light dance through the gem as it twisted in the sky. The game was to see how many times a stone could be tossed and caught before one of the dragon’s heads misjudged and it was swallowed instead. Vicia-Heinox swallowed a lot of diamonds this way. He was in constant need of a fresh supply.

And, naturally, he was also in constant need of food. Now, some dragons preferred to eat cattle. Others liked the sport of catching flocks of birds on the wing, though this was indeed a seasonal type of meal. Some dragons, mostly of the island-dweller varieties, really preferred seafood, and could move through the waterways as easily as they could soar through the air. But Vicia-Heinox was a perverse sort of dragon, the kind that gave all dragons a bad name.

Vicia-Heinox took pleasure in talking to his dinner before he ate it. How the hideous beast came by this disgusting proclivity for dinner conversation cannot be dealt with here. It must simply be said that this was an old habit, one not easy for the dragon to break, even had he been so inclined. And this had resulted in a rebirth of the long-dead institution of slavery.

Before the dragon straddled Dragonsgate—before it became Dragonsgate—slavery was viewed by civilized man as an aberration of primitives, to be stamped out wherever possible. But that was long ago. When the dragon first came, he didn’t rest in the pass when he got hungry. He simply took to the wing, swallowing everything in his path. After the entire populations of several cities disappeared into the dragon’s belly, the rulers of the world agreed that something had to be done. Royal armies, clothed in the brilliant livery of long-forgotten empires, marched on the beast from all fronts. It was the last great march for many storied kingdoms.

It wasn’t that Vicia-Heinox breathed fire. That is a popular misconception. Though few lived who ever witnessed the beast’s power displayed, those who did never mentioned any flames. Rather, the two-headed monster in some unknown way generated heat-waves of burning heat—and, focusing on an object with all four eyes, would char it out of existence. So went the combined arms of empires. So had gone every army raised against him since.

Now, Vicia-Heinox knew nothing about slavery. In fact, there were a great many things the dragon knew nothing about, for he was not a very curious beast, nor was he particularly bright. But the merchants knew of it, and to them it seemed the perfect solution to the otherwise insoluble problem of a dragon on their trade route. Hideous as he was, Vicia-Heinox did not bear full responsibility for the evil system that kept him fed. But it did keep him fed. He therefore preserved it.

On a day like most other days, the dragon lay on his back, playing with his baubles. He was not hungry, for only the day before a large caravan from Lamath had passed his home. The Lamathian warriors were generally not as cagey as the men of Chaomonous, but they were stalwart and level-headed. Some days before, a large troop of Lamathians had ambushed a Chaon slave-raiding party as it made its way toward the Spinal Range and safety. It was a truism known to all that “those who slave-raid are often slaves made,” and most of the captured Chaons had served to subdue the dragon’s appetite. He rested now, digesting, playing with his jewels and talking to himself.