Authors: Margaret Weis
“Who is she?” Marcus looked up at Ven.
“Her name is Evelina.” Ven shut the door behind him then returned to the
room.
“You don’t seem surprised to see her.” Marcus remembered the noise he’d
heard outside the door; remembered Ven glancing that direction.
His brother smiled, faint, sardonic. “On the contrary. Evelina is full of
surprises. You might want to lay her down on that mattress.”
Marcus carried Evelina to the bed and started to gently lower her.
Her eyes opened. Her arms stole around his neck. Her lips whispered close to
his ear, “Are you truly a king’s son as he claimed, gentle sir?” Her words were
honeyed breath on his cheek. “Forgive me for doubting, but you are dressed like
one of those demon monks who brought me here against my will.”
“My name is Marcus,” he said. “My father is the king of Idlyswylde.”
“And is Ven truly your brother?” she asked, her voice low and tremulous. He
felt a shiver run through her soft body and his grip on her instinctively
tightened. “How can that be?”
“Half brother. We have the same mother.”
He laid her down on the mattress and started to rise. Her arms kept hold of
him, clasping him around his neck, hugging him close.
“Don’t leave me, Your Highness—” she pleaded, gulping on her tears.
“Marcus,” he corrected, flushing, conscious of Ven standing there, watching
and listening. “I won’t leave you. I’ll stay right here with you.”
“Oh, Marcus,” Evelina whispered, “I am so frightened. I am sorry to have to
tell you this, but your brother is a monster. Not just in looks, but in deed.
He killed my father and . . .”
A blush stained her cheeks. She lowered her eyes. “He ... he tried to ... to
have his way with me. I wouldn’t let him. I fought him, but he is so strong. He
would have succeeded in my ruin, but my father saved me. And for that, my dear
father paid with his life. Your brother hasn’t tried to rape me again, but I’m
afraid of him, so afraid. He came to my bedroom, just this morning. . . .”
Her tears were wet and cool on his skin. Her breasts pressed yieldingly, yet
so innocently, against his flesh. Her danger, her fear, her beauty, and her
tears wove a web of romance around Marcus. His skin tingled, his blood burned.
He found it hard to breathe for the scent of her.
“You believe me, don’t you?” she quavered.
Marcus couldn’t think clearly with her arms around him. He eased his way out
of her grasp and laid her—limp and unresisting— down on the mattress. He had a
sudden vision of lying down beside her, and he shook his head, to clear it of
such appalling thoughts.
“You should rest,” he said. “And don’t worry. I won’t let anyone harm you.”
Evelina caught hold of his hand and said hurriedly, “He’ll tell you lies
about me. Terrible lies. Don’t believe him. He’s trying to hide his own wickedness!”
She dug her nails into his palm. “You won’t listen to him, will you?”
“No, no, of course not,” Marcus murmured, confused, soothing.
“Thank you, Your Highness.” Evelina smiled at him and gave a sigh that
caused her breasts to quiver beneath the thin fabric of her chemise. “I put
myself in your hands.”
Marcus looked up at his brother, who had not left his place by the door.
“Do you know what she has been telling me?”
“I can guess,” Ven said dryly.
“She accuses you of murdering her father and of trying to rape her. Did you?”
“I did not murder her father,” said Ven. “The monks did that.” His eyes
shifted to her. The blue flame flickered. “As to the other, what can I say? I
wanted her.”
“How could you?” Marcus nearly choked on his outrage. “Your father raped our
mother and you were the result. How could you treat this innocent girl the
same, perhaps cause her to give birth to . . .” He bit off the word that had
been on his lips.
“A monster?” Ven looked at Marcus, blue eyes into hazel. “Like me?”
“Yes,” said Marcus, stung to anger. “If you did what she claims you have
done. Yes, you are a monster.”
“Like father, like son,” said Ven, and he turned his back and reached for
the door handle.
“Don’t let him go!” Evelina cried, half sitting up. “He knows the way out of
this terrible prison! That’s why I followed him! He knows where to find the
gate! Make him tell us!”
“Wait, Ven,” Marcus said desperately. “Listen to me!”
Ven waited, hand on the door. “Yes, Brother?”
Marcus floundered. “I ... The dragon is coming to kill me. But you don’t
want her to die. Take the girl with you.”
Evelina gave a shrill cry of protest.
Ven cast her a disparaging glance. “Very gallant. What I would expect of a
prince. But don’t worry about Evelina. She won’t die. She is mine to do with as
I please. You see, Brother, she is my reward. My father gave her to me in
exchange for you.”
He started to open the door.
A rustle of skirts, a blur of gold curls, a flash of steel. Evelina ran past
Marcus.
He cried out, reached out, tried to stop her. She was too fast. She evaded
his grasp.
Hearing his brother’s shout, Ven half turned, raised his hands.
Snarling with fury, Evelina drove the knife into
his chest.
DRACONAS PAUSED IN HIS WORK TO GLARE ACROSS THE street at the stone
dwelling.
“What are they up to in there?” he muttered.
He’d seen Ven enter the house. It had been the sight of Ven, loping down the
street, that had forced Draconas to leave. Then, from his hiding place,
Draconas had seen the girl come along, apparently following Ven, for she’d put
her ear to the door to hear what was going on inside. Then Ven opened the door.
The girl ran inside. The door shut. Then the shrill, high-pitched scream of
rage, then a deep-voiced cry of pain and anger, and now there was a sound of a
scuffle.
Draconas didn’t dare leave his hiding place to find out what was going on.
Grald might come along at any moment and he must not see Draconas until
Draconas was ready to be seen.
He stood in the open doorway of the hovel across the street, staring
intently into the dwelling opposite. He couldn’t see anything through the
window. The room was shadowy to begin with and the shadows were made deeper by
the stark contrast of the early morning sun shining on gray walls.
The sounds of the scuffle continued for a moment, then suddenly ceased.
Draconas listened intently, with his dragon hearing. He could hear voices, but
could not understand what they were saying. At least, someone was still alive
in there.
Draconas could not afford to dwell on it. He had work to do and not much
time to do it. Putting the humans out of his mind, he turned his attention back
to his task of trimming the wood from the bottom of his staff.
As he whittled—the blade of his knife shaving off one curl of wood after the
other—he kept one eye on the street in front of him. He’d chosen the site of
his ambush with care. He stood in the doorway of a stone dwelling located
directly across the street from the house where he’d left Marcus—the bait. A
callous way of putting it, but accurate. This seemed his best, his only course
of action. As he’d told Marcus, there was much at stake—the future of humans,
the future of dragons.
“With any luck, we’ll all come out of this alive,” Draconas reflected. “All
except Grald, of course.”
He inspected the end of the staff. The butt had been worn smooth, pounded
down from years of walking the paths and lanes and highways of earth. Draconas
had used up many staffs in his time as a walker. This was the first one he’d
ever transformed into a weapon. He trusted it would be the last. In six hundred
years, he’d never killed a human. Until now.
The Parliament of Dragons had spent months crafting the spell that had
transformed Draconas—a red-gold dragon—into Draconas—a human. Among the
categories of dragon magic, the spell was known as a supreme illusion, one of
the most difficult and complex magicks a dragon could undertake. The spell was
so complex that more than one dragon was required to cast it. Humans who viewed
the illusion of Draconas must not only believe in their minds that he was
human, they had to believe it in their hearts and in their souls. He had to
smell human, feel human, bleed human blood. He had to be human in all ways,
manners, and degrees. The only way the illusion could be broken was by a single
human tear.
If a human tear touched Draconas’s illusory skin, the human who shed that
tear would have the power to see Draconas for what he was. The Parliament had
attached this “rider” to the spell not for the sake of the humans, but as a
warning to the walker-dragon. Draconas must never to allow himself to become
emotionally involved with humans. In other words, he must never permit a human
to cry on his shoulder.
Lacking the resources to cast a supreme illusion, Grald and Maristara had
been forced to steal the bodies of humans, usurp those bodies and, by means of
perverted magic, take the human bodies for their own. This had certain
advantages. A human— even one possessed of dragon magic—who looked at them
would see only another human. No sign of the dragon. The body-snatching had one
major disadvantage. The illusion spell used by Draconas allowed him to glide
easily from one human form into another, thus ensuring that in most
circumstances he could escape from a dangerous or compromising situation. Grald
and Maristara could leave their human bodies, but only to change back into
their dragon forms. As Draconas had himself witnessed, the process took a long
time to complete and left the dragon vulnerable, like a butterfly struggling to
escape from its cocoon; finally emerging, but with its wings wet and crumpled.
This was Draconas’s plan. In order to force the dragon to reveal himself,
Draconas must slay the human body. He had to kill Grald and kill him quickly,
before the dragon could act to defend the body. When the human body ceased to
function, the dragon would have no choice but to abandon it and, in so doing,
return to his dragon form.
Draconas had no intention of fighting the dragon. To do so, he would have to
change into his dragon form. A battle between dragons would destroy half this
city and kill hundreds of humans. All Draconas wanted to do was to discover the
dragon’s true identity. Once he knew him, Draconas would report immediately to
Parliament. After that, his job was done. The Parliament could decide how to
proceed against the outlaw dragon and his cohort, Maristara. Draconas would
then be free to rescue Marcus and return him to his father.
Draconas gave the staff that he was carving into a spear a critical
once-over. The weapon was rough and crude, but it would serve his purpose.
Grald should be along any moment now. He wouldn’t see Draconas, standing in the
doorway, hidden in the shadows. Grald would go to the door of the hovel. His
back—that broad-shouldered, hulking expanse of back—would be the target.
Draconas clasped hold of his spear, readied himself. His aim had to be true,
his throw swift and powerful. The kill must be quick and clean. He could not
wound Grald, give the dragon a chance to think, perhaps even to recover.
Shock, the element of surprise, was crucial.
“Draconas.”
The woman’s voice, coming from behind him, startled Draconas so that he very
nearly jumped out of skin that wasn’t real to begin with. He felt a gentle hand
touch his arm, felt a presence at his side. He glanced over his shoulder.
The holy sister stood beside him. He didn’t recall where he’d seen her at
first, and then he remembered. He’d seen her with Ven, when he was little and
he’d hurt his leg.
“Get out of here, Sister,” Draconas told her roughly. “This is none of your
concern.”
“Ah, but it is,” said the nun.
In that moment, Draconas knew. He knew before he saw the shadow rising up
behind the holy sister, extending its wings.
The colors of his mind splintered, shattered, crashed down around him.
“I don’t understand. ...”
“I know, Draconas,” said Anora softly, and her colors were gray ash. “The
pity is—you never will.”
Lightning crackled from her jaws.
VEN PRESSED HIS HAND OVER THE WOUND IN HIS chest. Blood welled out from
beneath his fingers, soaking the front of his shirt. He took a step, staggered,
and sagged back against the wall.
“Let go of me! He’s not dead yet!” Evelina raved, as Marcus seized hold of
her.
She was frenzied, mad with rage and bloodlust. When Marcus tried to wrest
the knife from her, she turned on him, stabbing and cutting. In desperation,
Marcus seized hold of her wrist and gave it a twist and a wrench. The knife
clanged on the floor.
Ven took a step toward them, his hand outstretched.
Marcus lunged for his brother, either to keep Ven from grabbing the knife or
to help him. In his confusion, he didn’t know which he meant, perhaps both at
once. Before he could reach Ven, he slumped to the floor.
Ven struggled to rise, tried to push himself up. He was too weak. He
collapsed and lay still, unmoving. Blood seeped from beneath him, darkening the
dirt floor.
Evelina gave a cry of triumph and made a dart for the knife. Marcus
intercepted her.
“Listen to me,” he said, giving her a shake, forcing her to look at him. “He’s
not a danger to you now. You’ve hurt him, maybe killed him. The dragon is the
danger—Ven’s father. Ven told his father where to find me, and when Grald sees
what has happened to his son, he will kill us both. We have to get out of here.
Now! Do you understand?”
He gave her another shake to emphasize his words.
“Yes,” said Evelina in a dazed voice. She stood over Ven, staring down at
him. “I understand. We have to get out. Get away.”
She didn’t move, however, didn’t seem able to move. Marcus reached out to
her and she saw the bloody slash marks on his arms and chest.