Dragon Wizard (11 page)

I couldn't keep from a mental chuckle.

I thought you were gone, really gone.

I gathered that. But I've been here since that debacle at the banquet.

Here?

I'm still in your head—my head—

Our head?

I don't think there was anywhere for me to go when you left the dragon.

I felt our head nod, and she froze a moment, hand halfway to her chin.
And I was planning to use the Tear—

Yeah, I'm pretty sure that would be a bad idea.

“Damn it!”
she said aloud and in my mind at the same time. Next to us, Krys winced as if she heard the dragon's voice speaking through Lucille.

I'm sorry; it made sense if you didn't know—

That was my backup plan. It was all I had in reserve. Damn!

It was the only way we knew to return her to the dragon. The nature of the artifact was to swap the wearer's identity to the nearest compatible body—for definitions of “compatible” forged within Nâtlac's evil jewel. However, we knew from experience that if Lucille wore it, she would end up in the dragon's skull. It made sense. If I had been in the dragon, however demented, it would return me to the princess's body. If it wasn't me, it would be easier to detain a hostile princess than a hostile dragon.

But, since I was in Lucille's skull, not the dragon's, there was no telling how the Tear of Nâtlac might react.

I understood how that must feel, having that one option close for her. I felt more than heard the tumble of random confused thoughts that followed her outburst, rage and guilt the primary emotions.

Oh Frank, I don't mean . . . I'm so happy you're . . . but . . .

You don't have to explain.

We need to get you a body.

Both of us.

And the elves . . .

We need to deal with the elves,
I agreed.

•   •   •

We talked, and I think the conversation—just being able to communicate—was as much a relief for her as it was for me. I also discovered something else.

I realized, as she sought some measure of approval from me, that she was scared, way more scared than I had given her credit for. I had been riding along and watching her as she took command of a horrible situation, as she faced the elf-king one-on-one as if he was just another Baron Weslyess . . .

And the fear she felt wasn't for her life and limb. Her life as a dragon among humans seemed to have dulled her sense of that to—it seemed to me—an unhealthy degree. Her fear was that she would make a mistake and more people would get hurt.

A year ago, had you suggested to me that an aristocrat, someone of allegedly noble blood, might care about something other than their own skin and their own grasp on power, I would have patted you on the head, made some condescending comment about your optimistic and trusting nature, and would have immediately begun planning how to use such an absurd belief to separate you from your purse, since you were obviously too weak-minded to be trusted with any gold.

A year of knowing Lucille—and to an extent I'm still not willing to admit, her father—had slowly forced me to
amend my belief that all aristocracy was inherently populated by parasitic narcissists who thought way too highly of themselves.

Not
all
aristocrats. Just
almost
all.

That was the kind of epiphany that had allowed me to remain the princess of Lendowyn this long without hating myself.

Or Lucille.

I knew that her near-misstep with the Tear of Nâtlac had rattled her, but I had no idea how much she had been second-guessing herself until she started asking my opinion on what was happening. I think she asked me about every decision she had made since I had lost consciousness at the banquet.

Especially about impersonating me.

I didn't know what to do.

No, you're right. You don't want your father having the dragon killed out of hand. Even if it's not me in there, it's your body—

It was another mistake. Like the Tear.

Lucille?

Look at the damage it's already done. The dragon's alive, attacking villages now—

You made a judgment call.

The wrong one.

Maybe. But you weren't in any position to attack the dragon anyway. Neither was your father.

Hmm.

What was in your power to do?

This is all just so frustrating.

Believe me, I know.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean—

I know what you meant.

Trying to figure out what to do . . . I should have just turned myself over to him. “Equivalent exchange” and all . . .

Three problems with that—

You're along for the ride, too. And I wouldn't turn Sir Forsythe over to him, even if he'd stayed around. And . . . what?

He actually specified the dragon.

Because he thinks the dragon is still royal.

Does he?

What do you mean?

His exact words, “You have a day to give me the dragon and whomever bears responsibility for my son's murder.”

Slip of the tongue?

How many elven agreements have you heard of where they were fuzzy and imprecise about language? That's how they manage to screw people over so effectively. They rely on their victims to make assumptions and misunderstand the wording. Is Timoras going to make that kind of mistake unintentionally?

And he said, “whomever bears responsibility for my son's murder . . .”

Not, “the person who killed him.”

He thinks his son was set up?

Suspects it, at least. If your elvish boyfriend back there's right, Timoras has to threaten war because he can't point at who did it—

My elvish what?

—and he has to retaliate somehow or his rivals will
move against him, no matter who was behind the original attack.

What did you mean by that?

You're awfully interested in Robin Half-Elf.

Are you kidding?

I honestly thought I had been. But I realized that something about our mental connection made it harder to mask certain things. I realized that my tone had cut a bit deeper than good-natured teasing warranted.

I'm sorry, forget it.

You think I was . . . Are you insane? Some bastard highwayman?

Not that far from what I was when we first met.
I hadn't intended to think that. I really didn't want to think that at her, but it leaked out before I could stop it.

I don't believe you. All that's happening, and you're jealous?

It's not the right time for this—

You're the one who brought it up.

I wasn't thinking.

Isn't that all we're doing here?

You know what I mean.

No, Frank, I don't.

I froze, guarding my tumbling thoughts from more embarrassing leakage. What
did
I mean? Why did I have to throw in that dig at Robin? It had slipped out before I even thought about it, so to speak. I know that I didn't trust him. He seemed a little too convenient. And a little too handsome . . .

What in Nâtlac's Hell?

I
was
jealous.

I steeled myself and thought at Lucille,
I'm sorry. Sometimes I just get stupid.

She didn't respond, and I could almost sense her fuming.

I can't help but envy the man who monopolized your attention like that. It doesn't make a lot of sense, especially given the nature of our relationship . . .

I trailed off because I felt as if I was venturing into dangerous territory again.

You see, I never told you how I've regretted—the one time that we were both human again—I didn't . . .

She should have interrupted me again.

Lucille? I'm floundering here.

Nothing.

Lucille? Are you there? Did the tea wear off?

Still nothing.

“
Lucille?
”

Krys spun and turned to face us in response to my last call. I met her gaze before I fully understood what had happened.

“Your Highness?” she asked in a concerned tone.

“I think we have another problem,” I whispered with Lucille's mouth.

I stumbled over to a tree and glanced back over Lucille's shoulder to check on Robin Elf-Boy and Rabbit. Neither seemed to be paying any attention to me.

Good, things were complicated enough.

Krys stepped up and placed a hand on Lucille's arm. “What's the matter?”

“Give me a moment.” The sound and feel of my own thoughts emerging from Lucille's throat felt surreal and disorienting.

Lucille? Can you hear me?

Lucille?

No response.

I felt very alone.

“Are you all right?” Krys asked.

I shook my head. “She's gone,” I whispered.

“She's . . .
Frank?
”

“Yeah.” I leaned my back against a tree and rubbed my temples, closing my eyes. My head didn't throb, not like the agony that had accompanied my prior bouts of body shifting. However, every fiber in my being still expected the pain trolls to come with their pickaxes to mine the ore from the back of my eyeballs.

“Frank? How . . .”

I shook my head slowly. “Brock's tea,” I said. “It must have had a more intense effect on us. I didn't think this through.” I sighed. “What else is new?”

“What are you talking about?”

“If that stuff is powerful enough to let you hear my thoughts when you're over there,” I gestured at Krys. “I should have considered what it would do to someone I shared a skull with.”

“Is Lucille . . . ?” She couldn't finish the thought.

“I think she's still here, just like I was.”

Krys nodded and took a step back toward the campfire. “We just need to make some more—”

I grabbed her arm and she jerked her head back toward me.

“No.”

“No? What?”

“Two problems. First, we only have two of those packets left.”

“We'll get more.”

I nodded. “At Fell Green. But that's why we should wait. There we can have an expert tell us what's happening to me and Lucille. What if there's more going on? Other side effects?”

“But Lucille . . .”

“If we just swapped, she'll be okay. I survived it. But if I have learned anything by diving in and using magic without bothering to find out the consequences, it's that it doesn't end well.”

“Uh . . .” Krys had personal experience with my bad decisions. My drunken use of the Tear of Nâtlac literally triggered a war involving most of the major powers on
the continent. It was my own bad example that had kept Krys from making a similar mistake the short time she had possession of the Tear. She stepped back and looked at me. “You're right . . . Are you sure Lucille's all right?”

I grimaced. “No, I'm not. But if this did some harm to her, I'm not confident that more of the same wouldn't just make things worse.”

“So we find an expert.”

“Yeah.”

She pointed at Robin. “What about him?”

What about him?

I sighed. “I don't trust him, but I'd trust him less out of sight. And Lucille already told him we were Princess Frank. That simplifies things.”

Actually it didn't simplify anything.

“So we're taking him?”

“We're taking him.” I winced at my own words, thinking about the last exchange before I lost contact with Lucille. Why was it I always seemed to find ways to make a bad situation worse? Nope, good old Frank Blackthorne couldn't just leave Lucille happy that he wasn't dead or playing crazy dragon . . .

I reached between my breasts, lifted the elf-king's pendant, and stared at it.

Who
was
the dragon?

It was a question that I'd been a bit too preoccupied to consider. We had all been too preoccupied to consider. Lucille had thought—hoped, really—that it had been
me
inside the dragon skin. I'd known better, but I think my focus had been distorted by being little more than a rider following Lucille around. She had been
avoiding the subject, so I'd only paid attention to the problems she had been addressing. There were enough of those to keep anyone busy.

But it was the obvious question. I think the only reason Lucille, Krys, or Rabbit had yet to bring it up is they were distracted by the fact I was still alive. As touching as that was, it overlooked a major issue.

Once the prince's spell fired, Lucille was no longer in residence. So someone or something else had replaced her in the dragon's head. Knowing who or what would probably be a big clue to who was behind all this.

“Are you sure you're all right?” Krys asked.

I dropped the pendant and looked up at her. “No.”

•   •   •

Again we slept on bedrolls around the remains of the fire. Even with his hands still tied, Robin didn't seem particularly perturbed and fell asleep immediately.

Of course he snored.

Almost as bad as Rabbit.

Despite my royal status, I insisted on taking at least part of the watch so Rabbit and Krys could get some rest. They objected, but for better or worse, I was in charge regardless of who was driving my skull at the moment. Besides, there was little chance of me sleeping now.

Also, I knew myself well enough to know that I wanted some time alone to brood. I wasn't done wallowing in self-pity.

“Ah,” I whispered to myself, “and I bet you didn't pack any alcohol.”

I shook my head and stared into the fire.

“Lucille, I'm sorry.”

Of course no one responded.

“You know sometimes I talk without thinking. I didn't mean . . .”

I shook my head.

“I don't know what I meant. I know I didn't want this—” I placed my hand on my face, her hand on her face. “Not at your expense. I'm really hoping you're still there, watching like I was. We're going to figure out something. There'll be someone at Fell Green . . .”

My voice trailed off as I watched the embers flicker. I tried to sense Lucille, but, if anything, my skull felt emptier than usual.

Our skull.

I kept flexing my hands in a half-conscious confirmation that I was still in control of Lucille's body. For about the tenth time I second-guessed my decision not to accept Krys's suggestion that I quaff another draught of the evil herb tea. The uncertainty of Lucille's presence ate at me.

So did my sudden responsibility.

Say what you wanted about my period of limbo behind the princess's eyes, it had relieved me of my apparently unlimited potential to make things worse.

“Did I do the right thing?” I asked Lucille. “I don't know. I want to take that tea. I want you back. But that has all the hallmarks of the hasty decisions that have worked so well for me in the past.”

The night surrounded me in suffocating silence. Even the snores of Robin and Rabbit seemed muted.

“It just seems a bad idea before consulting someone who knows better. I don't want to make things worse again.”

I stared at the embers until their red light seemed to be the only thing left in the universe. The forest around me retreated into impenetrable darkness. Slowly the silence became complete.

I was proud of myself for realizing something was wrong before I began hearing the distant screams of millions of tormented souls. My head snapped up as I jumped to my feet. Around me, the trees had been replaced by fleshy pillars, ropy with veins, that climbed out of the ruddy light to vanish into complete blackness above. The forest floor was now made from an infinite plain of irregularly shaped flagstones that all bore some remnants of the beings who had been shaped to form them; eyes, noses, teeth, fingers, tongues. The flagstones pulsed and breathed, eyes looking at me, fingers making weak gestures, tongues licking their lips.

“Oh no,” I whispered. “You're kidding me.”

“Having a happy anniversary, Frank?” The voice burrowed into my ears like a hornet attempting to lay its eggs in my brain.

I spun around to face the Dark Lord Nâtlac.

In the long list of entities I never wanted to see or hear from again, the Dark Lord was at the head of it by a large margin. As deities go, he was probably the one most likely to drive his worshippers into gibbering insanity. Even if he granted you a favor, you could count on it causing countless deaths, destroying empires, and bringing the recipient to the brink of hopeless despair—not like I'm talking from direct experience or anything.

Worse, we had not parted on good terms. There's nothing quite as corrosive to one's optimistic view of the
future as the realization that one of the seven nastiest lords of the Underworld is annoyed with you.

The Dark Lord Nâtlac looked much as I remembered him. He appeared as a tall, handsome man wearing a long robe of black leather formed from the remnants of tanned faces—human and otherwise. If you looked too closely at it you might see the expressions on them grimace, eyes move under stitched eyelids, and tongues press against sewn lips.

I looked too closely and thought I recognized one of the faces as the late Queen Fiona.

“What are you doing here?” I blurted without thinking. It probably wasn't the most diplomatic greeting.

“What do you think?” His voice burrowed in, laid its eggs, hatched, and burrowed out the other side.

“Gloating?”

“Do I need to gloat?” He walked up to me and glided a finger down the side of Lucille's face. His touch felt as if it left a sticky trail from some half-rotten fruit, to be consumed by a trail of tiny carnivorous ants.

“I . . . uh . . .” Strangely enough, confronting the evil lord of absolute darkness left me a few syllables shy of my normal eloquence.

“Did you doubt me?”

I sputtered and tried to shrink away from his corrosive touch. “W—Wh—Wh—”

“Why am I here? What do I want?” He stepped away from me and I exhaled in relief. He spun to look up into the unfathomable upper reaches of his realm. “Frank, do you truly seek answers to questions you already have the answers to?”

I had a brief flash of memory, the dream-vision of the Goddess Lysea.
Above all else, what does any god want?

I looked at his profile, staring up into the darkness, and something felt . . . off.

It's hard to articulate what exactly it was. After all, it was the nature of the Dark Lord Nâtlac to be either subtly or grandly
wrong
along every possible axis one might measure “right.” His conversational tone sounded normal while still having a chitinous undertone that burrowed into my brain. His profile appeared like a handsome man while still suggesting that, just around the corner on the side I couldn't see, writhed an abomination that might make the gaping abyss of absolute madness appear perfectly reasonable. Just his touch on Lucille's cheek had left behind a sense of slivers of glass wriggling very slightly under the surface of our skin.

Every time he'd ever shown up, things had been “off.”

But what I felt now wasn't that.

“You caused this?”

“Was there any doubt?”

I realized that I still stood in Lucille's body. Maybe that was it? I decided that it was probably a good sign. The times I had actually been “in” the Dark Lord's realm, I had worn my original body, the one that had been worm food for over a year now. Whatever I saw of the environment around me, the fact that I wore Lucille's body meant that I hadn't gone to him, he had come to me.

Wait a minute. Why is that a
good
sign?

“What do you want?” I asked.

“So that is the question you want to ask me?” The
Dark Lord gave a smile that reminded me of maggots swarming carrion.

I realized what was wrong—aside from everything else.

I took a deep, steadying breath and straightened my spine, and I stared directly at the Dark Lord Nâtlac despite the effort making my eyes want to rebel and crawl back into my skull to escape.

“Up to now,” I said quietly, “you've been a lot more direct.”

“You think you know me?”

“Yes,” I whispered. “I don't want to. But I do.” I glanced around at the pulsing, ruddy landscape and added, “Or, I should say, I know the Dark Lord Nâtlac.”

I looked back at the disturbing eidolon before me and said, “You? Not so much.”

He laughed and it was like a thousand undead kittens digging gangrenous needle-claws into the flesh of my ears. “You don't know me?”

“Who are you?”

The agonizing laugh continued.

“
What
are you?”

He wheezed and shook his head. “You believe who or what I am matters at the moment? You think that is the question?”

“What's the right question?”

“Don't you already know?”

I shook my head in frustration. “What's the point of this if you don't tell me anything?”

“Why don't you tell me? Isn't this
your
conversation?”

“You came to me.”