Authors: Margaret Weis
“I hurt you!” she cried remorsefully. “I didn’t mean to! I only wanted to
hurt him—”
“I know,” said Marcus, soothing her. “I know. Come with me. We have to leave
before Grald finds us.”
Evelina didn’t hear him.
“Evelina . . .” said Marcus gently, but urgently.
“It’s hopeless,” she said, watching Ven’s blood trickle out from beneath his
body. “We can’t leave. There’s no way out of this horrible city.”
“I know someone who can help us,” Marcus said. “Quickly—” He took hold of
her, tried to urge her to the door.
Still Evelina did not move.
“Is he dead?” she asked. “Did I kill him?”
“I don’t know,” Marcus said. “I think so.”
“I hope so!” Evelina cried fervently. “I hope so—”
Brilliant, dazzling, horrific light—heaven’s light—sizzled, arced, crackled
and boomed.
The blast hammered the stone house, burst open the
door, and rained down pain and darkness.
Marcus gasped for breath, choking and coughing. His head hurt. His wits
seemed scattered to the four winds. He put his hand to his scalp, felt a tender
lump rising. Blood trickled into his eyes. He wiped it away and peered through
the cloud of dust, wondering why everything had gone dark. For a moment, he
panicked, thinking that something was wrong with his vision. As his eyes grew accustomed
to the dimness and he began to make out objects, he realized that there was no
light because the windows were clogged with rubble. Shattered stone, pieces of
timber and other debris filled the room. Small shafts of dusty sunlight,
filtering through a few cracks in the pile, lit a scene of utter destruction.
“Evelina!” Marcus gasped, remembering. He found her lying beside him. She
was covered in dust, and she stared at him, eyes wide. “Are you hurt?”
“What happened?” she asked and began to cough.
“I don’t know.” Marcus sat up. The pain in his head made him dizzy for a
moment, but he held still and the dizziness passed. “Don’t move,” he cautioned
her.
“I’m all right.” She reached out her hands to him and he helped her sit up.
They huddled together on the floor, staring around in bewilderment.
“The door,” said Evelina dazedly. “It’s gone.”
The door had been blown inside the dwelling and lay partially buried under a
pile of broken stone.
“Stay here,” Marcus told her. Picking his way through the debris, he climbed
onto the pile and looked outside, into the street. Where there had once been
buildings, there were now mounds of rock in which nothing moved.
The air was gray with drifting dust and silence.
“Draconas!” Marcus went inside the little room and stood there with the door
open, gazing into the colors, listening for the voice to answer.
“Draconas!” he called again.
Draconas’s colors were gone. His voice was gone.
It was the dragon who found him. Claws reached out to seize him. . . .
Marcus’s first impulse was to run. He fought that impulse, stayed where he
was, and when the dragon reached for him, he dodged around him and slipped
inside the dragon’s mind. Marcus was taking a risk, but he was desperate for
information. The dragon’s colors were red-tinged and smoke-gray: fury and
doubt. The dragon didn’t know what had happened but, whatever it was, it
shouldn’t have.
Marcus ducked out hastily, slammed shut the door to his room, and flung
himself against it. The dragon raged outside, but he couldn’t find the way in.
The dragon’s entrance had been through Ven and Ven was dead.
Marcus knelt down beside his brother. The blue scales of the beast’s legs
were white with the settling dust, dark red with blood. Marcus tried to feel
for a pulse. His hands shook so that he couldn’t be sure if the heartbeat was
there or not. Ven looked dead. His skin was ashen, his lips gray. Marcus couldn’t
let himself think about Ven, about Draconas. Thinking would come later. Now was
for living and for staying alive.
“Well?” said Evelina, who had been watching him hopefully. “Can we get out?”
“Not that way,” Marcus answered.
“That’s the
only
way!” she cried. Her hands plucked nervously at her
skirts. She cast a wild glance around the hovel that was more cavelike than
ever. “This is a tomb.” Her voice rose, shrill and hysterical. “We’re sealed up
in here. Trapped.”
She began to choke, gasp. “I can’t breathe—”
“Stop it!” Marcus ordered sharply.
Evelina jumped, startled at his tone. She fell silent, but he could hear her
panting in the darkness.
“Come over here,” he ordered. “Stand behind me. Keep near me. Cover your
face with your hands.”
“What are you going to do?” she asked tremulously, as she pressed her body
close against his. “I’m going to get us out of here.”
He faced the back wall of the wrecked dwelling. He took hold of the magic,
molded it, shaped it, and then he threw it.
The magic exploded against the stone wall and blew out the back of the
dwelling. At the sound of another blast, Evelina screamed and buried her face
in the small of his back. He could feel her shivering and he put his arms
around her: “Don’t be afraid. We have a way out now.” She opened her eyes,
blinked, and stared at the gaping hole in amazement. She transferred the stare
to him. “How—” she started to ask.
“No time,” he said. “The dragon is still out there and he still wants us
dead.”
Evelina gulped and swallowed her questions and began to hike up her skirt
and her petticoat, kilting the fabric around her waist. She glanced at him as
she worked and she even managed a quavering jest.
“This really isn’t the time to admire my legs.” Marcus felt his face burn.
He hadn’t been admiring her legs. Or at least, he hadn’t meant to. He’d been
looking past her, out through the hole in the wall into what appeared to be an
alley. Across the alley were more stone dwellings, all built more or less
alike. A ditch ran down the center of the street. From the foul smell seeping
into the dusty room, the ditch was a gutter designed to carry away waste.
Screams and cries for help straggled inside with the sunlight, and Marcus
realized suddenly that there were more people in the city than just himself and
Evelina. He’d been so preoccupied •with his fear of the dragon that he’d
forgotten about the deadly monks.
“I’m ready,” said Evelina.
She had completed her task with deft efficiency. Her legs were bare to just
above the knee, her skirts bunched around her waist. Her ankles were trim and
slender, her calves shapely, her thighs smooth and white. He wrenched his gaze
away. He didn’t move. He listened to the voices.
“What are we waiting for?” Evelina threaded her hands through his arms,
tugged at him. “I want to leave this terrible place. Please, let’s go now!
Before someone comes!”
Still Marcus didn’t move. He continued to listen. The voices came from
somewhere behind the house, on the other side of the street, and they were
fading.
“We can leave now. Be careful,” he cautioned. “Let me go first.”
The piles of shattered stone shifted precariously beneath his feet and he
was forced to move slowly. Evelina climbed out behind him, her hand clutching
his hand. Each helped the other and then they were outside and the sun shone
and the air was fresh. Evelina lifted her face to the heavens, drew in a deep
breath.
“Thank God,” she breathed. She looked up the alley and down. “Where do we go
from here?”
A very good question. Marcus paused to think, to get his bearings. He had
been unconscious when Draconas had brought him here. He had no memory of the
journey, no idea where he was. He thought back to the early morning sun shining
through the front window of the dwelling. That meant the house faced east. He
was at the back of the house, now facing west. He next calculated the location
of the wall that surrounded the city and the gate through which they had
entered. On the trip downriver, the sun was at his back. They had sailed east.
The city was on his left-hand side. North. The gate, therefore, was located on
a south-facing wall.
Marcus knew now which direction to take. He didn’t leave immediately,
however. He turned to look back through the hole in the wall, trying to see
inside the ruins of the house.
“What is it?” asked Evelina impatiently. “What are you waiting for?”
He didn’t know. A call, a cry. A child’s hand reaching out to him from the
darkness.
“Nothing,” he said to Evelina. “I’m not waiting for anything.”
He took hold of her hand and they ran down the alley.
When he was certain his brother and Evelina were gone, Ven sat up. The
sudden movement brought pain and he sucked in his breath, and gritted his teeth
until it passed. Gingerly, he peeled away the fabric of his shirt, that was
sodden with blood, to examine the wound. The bleeding had stopped. The deep
gash was already closing.
Evelina had struck in haste and in panic. The blade had been stopped by a
rib, scraping along the bone. Fortunately for him, her blow had missed striking
any vital organs. Even dragon magic could not heal a pierced heart.
A pierced heart. . .
His father’s voice called to him.
Ven paid no heed. He crouched alone in the
darkness, protected by his emptiness.
THE ALLEY WAS STILL MOSTLY IN SHADOW. THE SUN’S light had yet to reach it.
Perhaps full sunlight never reached back here, for the buildings crowded close
to the alley, their ill-fitting upper stories leaning over it at precarious
angles. Marcus and Evelina hugged the shadows, avoiding the small patches of
sunlight that had managed to accidentally wander in. The alley wound and
twisted among the stone walls, so that they could not see where it was taking
them. Marcus worried that they might be going in the wrong direction, but
whenever he found a place where the sun shone, he saw it on his left side. He
looked behind them continually for some sign of pursuit, but saw no one.
The dragon had left off clawing at the door of his mind. Marcus didn’t know
whether that was good or bad. Good if it meant the dragon was distracted,
preoccupied. Bad if it meant the dragon knew that it was only a matter of time
before Marcus fell into his grasp.
Marcus decided to risk opening the door to the magic a crack. “Draconas!” he
called, and waited, breathless.
No response.
“Draconas,” said Marcus, the colors of his mind blazing orange with urgency,
“I need your help to escape! Draconas!”
Nothing. His colors were gone, wiped clean, as if they had never been.
Marcus gave up and kept going. He didn’t have a choice.
The alley took a turn to the west, doubled back on itself, and came to
abrupt end, opening into a city street, from which rose the hubbub of voices,
echoing among the alley’s canyon-like walls. Marcus’s steps slowed. Reaching
the end of the alley, he pulled Evelina to a stop.
The street ahead was thronged with people—the inhabitants of Dragonkeep, and
they were not all brown-robed, magic-wielding monks. Marcus might have been
looking on market day at Ramsgate-upon-the-Aston. Most of the people were
dressed more or less alike, in plain and serviceable homespun clothing. Some
wore leather aprons that denoted a craftsman, perhaps cobbler or tailor. Others
had the sleek look of shopkeepers or the weathered look of those who farm the
land.
“This is a city like any other,” he said to himself, and then he saw it wasn’t.
Here and there among the crowd were those who wore the brown robes of the
monks.
“What are we waiting for
now?”
Evelina demanded.
“The monks,” he said, and pointed. “I think they’re looking for us.”
Evelina shivered and shrank back against him.
Most of the ordinary citizens were roaming about in aimless confusion,
shouting to each other in an effort to find out what had caused the explosion
that had rocked the entire city. By contrast, the monks moved with grim
purpose, shoving their way through the crowd, their cowled heads turning this
way and that, staring searchingly into every face.
Evelina’s grip on his hand tightened. “How far away is the wall?”
“It is on the other side of those buildings. Look, you can see it above the
rooftops.”
Evelina stood on tiptoe to try to see, but she was too short.
“What do we do?”
“We can’t stay here,” said Marcus. He didn’t like the fact that the monks
were in the very street that they needed to cross. Almost as if they knew. He
pulled his cowl over his face.
“We’ll blend in with the crowd.” He paused, then said quietly, “You have
blood on your clothes.”
Evelina looked down at her bodice, saw it spattered with blood—Yen’s blood.
She flushed, lowered her eyes. She felt guilty and ashamed and she didn’t know
why.
Ven deserved to die. He was a monster. She’d stab him again without
hesitation. But she wished she didn’t have his blood on her. Hastily she shook
down her skirts, smoothed them, and pulled her cloak close around her
blood-spattered bodice. She drew the hood up over her head.
“Can you still see it?” she asked, her voice breaking.
“Evelina.” Marcus pushed back the hood to see her face. “I don’t blame you
for what you did to Ven. I understand. I wish ... I wish I could make amends
for what he did to you.”
She risked looking up at him and found him looking at her with an expression
in the hazel eyes that wrenched her heart— sympathy mingled with pain,
understanding mingled with desire. No man had ever looked at her that way
before.
In that moment, Evelina fell into love, plunged into it, leapt into love’s
chasm with all her heart and soul.
“Evelina,” Marcus continued, pressing her hand. His hand was so warm and
strong! “If anything happens to us, I want you to know that I admire you as I
have never admired any other woman. No other woman I know would have been as
brave, as courageous as you have been.” He paused, then said in an altered
voice, “I think my mother must have been like you.”