Mistress of Dragons (22 page)

He
faced Maristara, watched her warily. Though he loathed what she had done, he
was forced to pay her grudging homage. The spell the dragons had used to change
him from dragon to human had taken days to cast. He could shift form easily
now, once the magic had been cast, but the initial transformation from dragon
form to human had been accomplished at the cost of intricate and powerful
magicks. Maristara had considerably shortened the process, reduced the cost.

What
a clever plan—steal a human’s heart, use that and magic to steal the human’s
body. Draconas wondered how many wretched women had died before Maristara had
managed to perfect the skill.

He’d
caught her at a disadvantageous moment, caught betwixt and between her shape as
a human and her true form. Draconas could sympathize. He’d been caught that way
himself on one unfortunate occasion. He likened it to a man being caught with
his pants down. The man is the same man as he is his with his pants up, but
certain important parts of him are exposed and vulnerable.

The
dragon’s head on its long sinuous neck swooped down, dipped low.

“So,”
Maristara said, speaking mind-to-mind, as dragons do, her red eyes probing and
prodding, “you are Draconas— the walker.”

He
saw the word “walker” green-tinged, sneering. “Walker” was a derogatory term
among dragons, meaning a dragon who walks like a human, a dragon who walks
among humans. Draconas could have returned the insult, but that would be to
play her game and he had his own game to play out. He had to be patient, wait
for the right moment, not act prematurely.

Maristara
had known him immediately, known him for what he was. Her eyes saw the human,
but her mind saw the shadow, the dragon. So all dragons saw him. What was
remarkable was that she had not cast her shadow on his mind in the same way. He
had not known she was a dragon until she began to transform herself. He had
seen the human, but not the shadow. That made her immensely dangerous, for it
meant that no dragon could detect her in her stolen human body.

He
sought her mind with his, feeling her out, as a fencer feels out an opponent.
She was a blur of color: the red-gold of expectation, and blazing orange with
fury and outrage, cooled by a cold undercurrent of ice-blue cunning.

He
could hear—over the dragon’s hissing breath—the footsteps of the two humans
fumbling their blind way through the pitch-dark tunnels, whipped by fear’s
lash. They were still too close. He had to stall for time.

Maristara
could hear them, too. She could hear her new body escaping her. She wasn’t
concerned. They could never find their way out of her tunnels. She would chase
them down, catch them at her leisure. Her concern now was Draconas. She was
trying to bait him, hoping to get a reaction in order to see how he reacted, to
see the colors of his mind.

Her
eyes sought his, but he took care to avoid the piercing lance of her gaze. When
dragons battle each other, the fight is as much mental as it is physical, each
trying to lock onto the other’s eyes and, from there, slice into the soul. “Fencing
with the rapier eye,” a dragon once termed it. Had Draconas been in dragon
form, he would have thought twice about eye-fencing with Maristara, for she was
ancient and adept. As it was, his puny human eyes were no match and so he sent
his gaze sliding around her like quicksilver, never looking at her directly,
but never taking his eyes off her.

“What
a very clever walker,” Maristara said.

The
shift from human body to the dragon was very nearly complete. Her bulky body
was too large for this chamber and that was further hampering her. She was
forced to hunch her long, curved neck. Her massive head hung low. Her mane
rasped against the high stone ceiling. Her wings twitched and quivered in
frustration, for it is a dragon’s instinct to use its vast wingspan to intimidate
prey, and she couldn’t do this, or risk injuring them against the rock walls of
the chamber. She had to wrap her bulky tail around her hind forelegs, for there
was no room for it to trail out behind her, and that further impeded her
movement.

She
was dragon in her outward appearance, but not yet complete. He could not smell
the brimstone, nor hear the flames rumble in her belly. The fire had to kindle,
the breath to cook. Yet, for all this, she was dangerous and deadly. Her teeth
could cleave him in twain. Her talons could rend limb from limb. A flick of the
wrist, a snap of the jaw and he’d be dead.

Her
head slid closer, still talking, seeking to distract him with a kaleidoscope of
whirling colors, seeking to dazzle him, make him forget himself, force him to
look directly at her.

“So
you know my secret. What do you think of it, Draconas? How many days of
spell-casting did it take the Parliament to grant you human form? How many
minutes
does it take
me
to do the same? And so, how can you stop me? You can’t,
Draconas. For hundreds of years, I have been building my defenses, while you
and the Parliament slumbered. Now I am too strong. You cannot defeat me. What
will you do? Nothing, of course, because there is nothing to be done.”

Draconas
caught a whiff of brimstone. He could barely hear the footsteps of the humans.

“Your
thoughts scurry around like centipedes, Draconas,” Maristara continued. Her
head oscillated, dipped, and swerved. Her eyes tried to catch his, but his were
swift to avoid her. She was desperate to reach into his mind, as she would have
reached into that woman’s breast; rip out his thoughts as she had planned to
rip out the heart.

She
lunged, her movement so swift and unforeseen that the slashing claws sliced
through Draconas’s leather jerkin. A convulsive, backward leap saved him from
her grasp. He landed, soft-kneed, and then, jumping into the air, he struck the
cavern’s stone ceiling with the butt end of his staff, sent his magic rippling
through it.

The
rock split and cracked. Large fissures formed. Chunks of stone shook loose and
tumbled down.

Draconas
turned and fled. He heard a curse from the dragon and a shattering crash, as
the ceiling gave way. A tidal wave of stone, dust, dirt, and sharp fragments of
rock roiled down the corridor, flooding into the hall.

Draconas
ran with all his might, legs and arms and heart and adrenaline pumping, trying
to outrace the cave-in. This had always been the weak point in his plan—that he
might not escape his own solution.

His
dragon strength gave him incredible speed, and he raced down the corridor, a
step and a half ahead of the crashing rocks. Bits of stone sharp as arrowheads
sliced open his flesh, and rock dust choked off his breathing.

And
there ahead of him in the corridor were the humans, stopping, with true human
idiocy, to stare behind them. Draconas barreled into them. Wrapping his strong
arms around them, he took them down to the cavern floor, covering them with his
body as the wave of debris and dust and rock broke over them.

Draconas
was on his feet immediately, before the dust had settled.

“Get
up!” he ordered.

Edward
sat up, coughing and choking.

“Did
you kill the dragon?” he gasped.

“No,”
said Draconas, shortly. “On your feet, both of you. We have to keep moving.”

Spitting
dust, Edward groped about in the darkness until he found the woman. He bent
anxiously over her, took hold of her hand. She stirred, raised her head, then
fell back. He lifted her gently, cradled her in his arms.

“She
can’t go on, Draconas. She’s too weak, hurt—”

Flinging
his staff to the floor, Draconas scooped up the woman’s flaccid body.

“Be
easy with her—” Edward said, hovering.

Draconas
didn’t have time to be easy. He slung the woman over his shoulder, positioned
her so that he could grip her legs. Her head and arms dangled down behind.

“Hand
me my staff,” he ordered.

“You
can’t carry her like that.” Edward protested, picking up the staff. “She’s not—”

“I
can and she is,” said Draconas. He broke into a run. “Keep close. If you get
lost, you’re on your own. I’m not corning back for you.”

Behind
him, he could hear the dragon clawing and scraping at the rubble that hopefully
blocked the cavern’s entrance. He’d bought them time, but minutes only and
these were precious few.

“Let
me carry her,” said Edward sternly.

“You
have all you can do to carry yourself,” Draconas retorted.

And,
as if to prove his point, Edward fell headlong over a rock in the darkness and
went sprawling. Draconas slowed his pace, listening to make certain the king
was all right. Hearing muttered cursing and scrabbling, Draconas moved on.

Edward
came stumbling up behind him. “When we get out of this,” he said, breathing
heavily, “I’m going to knock you on your ass.”

“I
hope you get the chance,” Draconas returned. He was worried. He could no longer
hear the dragon.

“What
is that supposed to mean?”

Silence
meant calm. Silence meant thinking, plotting, planning.

“Nothing
good,” Draconas said grimly.

They
plunged deeper into the cavern, Edward keeping close, reaching out his hand to
touch either Draconas or Melisande, reassuring himself that one was warm and
breathing and that the other was near him in the stifling darkness. Draconas
kept moving because he had no choice but to keep moving. It was either that or
sit down and swear, which might be good for the soul but little help otherwise.
He had no idea what the dragon was up to. Maristara couldn’t let them escape.
They knew too much. She had to stop them. The one point in their favor was that
they were in her lair.

Had
the humans been on their own, they would have immediately lost themselves and
Maristara would have caught them. But the humans were with a dragon, who knew
something about lairs, who knew that every dragon’s lair had more than one exit.

Draconas
moved rapidly, and Edward kept up with him, though Draconas could tell by the
labored breathing, slurred speech, and faltering steps that the king could not
go on much farther. When the tunnel down which they’d been running split, one
branch going off to the right, the other continuing straight ahead, Draconas
halted. Edward stumbled into him, steadied himself with a hand on Draconas’s
shoulder.

“What
is it?” Edward said, with barely breath enough to ask the question. “What’s
wrong?”

To
human eyes, both tunnels would look the same—dark and desolate. To dragon eyes
and ears and nose, each was immensely different. The one that ran straight
ahead was only dimly lit. Fetid air flowed from it. From the slant of the
floor, it led downward, to the base of the mountain. The other tunnel had more
light, there was a sniff of fresh air, and it ran straight and level.

“We’re
lost, aren’t we?”

Edward
slumped to the floor, leaned back with his head against the wall, and shut his
eyes. He was nearing that dangerous stage of pain and exhaustion where he no
longer cared if he lived or died.

Draconas
flung the woman off his shoulder, deposited her in Edward’s lap.

“I
think I’ve found a way out. I’m going to go take a look. Try to warm her,”
Draconas admonished. “Put your arms around her. Hold her close.”

That
should restore him to life, Draconas reflected.

Melisande
stirred, moaned, drew in a deep breath. She nestled nearer Edward in an
instinctual need for warmth. Edward started to put his arms around her,
hesitated. He didn’t seem to know where to put his hands. He’d been raised a
gentleman, fed on stories of knightly, chivalrous love; love that looked upon
beauty from afar and did not touch; love that remained chaste and pure unto
death.

“She’s
probably in shock,” said Draconas. “What with those wet clothes and the fright
she had, she might die of the cold.”

“You’re
going to be all right, Melisande,” said Edward softly, embracing her.
“I’m
here
and I won’t let anything happen to you.”

As
Draconas watched the two, an idea formed in his mind. The idea was strange and
it was desperate, and he didn’t like it. He immediately abandoned it, was sorry
he’d thought of it. Yet, like an annoying song, it wouldn’t go away.

“Wait
here,” he said unnecessarily, for neither human had strength left to go
anywhere. Turning toward the light and the fresh air, he left them.

Draconas
moved cautiously and warily. He could not find any sign that the dragon had
been here. She’d probably not entered this tunnel since she’d built this exit
hundreds of years before. Yet, she had built it, using both claws and magic. He
could see the gouge marks, the scrapings on the walls, and the places where she
had used her magic to blast her way through the granite, places where the rock
had melted, turned glassy.

The
mountain must have rumbled with her magic, Draconas thought. Shock waves would
have spread throughout the valley of Seth and surrounding lands. The humans
would have dismissed them as natural phenomenon—earthquakes and the like. He
bet that if he looked into their histories, he would find them recorded as
such.

He
was close to an opening. Even the nearly useless noses of humans would have
been able to smell the fresh air. The tunnel ran straight and smooth. Draconas
moved silently, stealthily, listening, watchful.

And
there was the opening.

The
rain had stopped, but the night was wild and windblown. He could hear the
spattering of drops shaken from the branches of the pine trees whenever a gust
hit them. The moon shone. Clouds scudded over it, hiding the moon from sight,
then flitting away to uncover it once more. By its light, he could see trees
and he was relieved. He’d been afraid that the opening might have been bored
into the side of the mountain, which meant a thousand-foot drop for those who
did not have wings.