Dragon Wizard (17 page)

When evenly matched, skin to skin, even with their disorientation, the other Lucilles had Lucille and me hopelessly outnumbered. Twelve on one, eight on one, it didn't matter that they were as naked as we were.

Facing two of my armored handmaidens, members of the only warrior order of the Goddess Lysea, trainees of the mostly insane but scarily competent Sir Forsythe the Good . . . not so much. Even though Rabbit and Krys opted to use sword pommels, boots, and gauntleted fists rather than their blades, Dudley's princesses still took a cruel beating.

By the time Lucille got us upright, Krys and Rabbit had the Lucilles pushed back all the way to the temple. As we watched, Dudley managed to rally the remaining princess guard to close the entry door in Krys's face. I heard a thud as a bar fell into place on the other side of
the door. Rabbit pounded on the door a few times with her sword, but stopped when she saw how heavy it was.

Krys turned toward us, sparing a glance at the three unconscious and moaning Lucilles scattering the floor of the corridor between us. Most of the light came from the torch Lucille had been waving like a club, half out and guttering by our feet.

“This is not what I expected,” Krys said.

This is awkward,
I thought.

“So the obvious question is which one is the real princess,” Lucille said.

Krys looked down at the other Lucilles and nodded.

“Would it help to tell you that I'm Lucille, not Frank?”

Krys answered, “Maybe, but you were with them a while before we found you. They could have found out you're back in the princess's body.”

I felt Lucille's shoulders sag as she realized that Krys was right. Theoretically nothing she could tell Krys was beyond the ken of anyone with a hot poker, a strong stomach, and some time. Throw in magic, which was obviously at play here with the multiple Lucilles, and they had little reason to trust us. Especially since our first act had been to level an attack in their direction, one that—given our face-plant—could have been simply incompetent rather than quickly aborted.

Rabbit touched Krys's shoulder. She had sheathed her weapon and held her finger up in a wait-a-moment gesture. Then she rummaged in her belt pouch and pulled out a small bundle of leaves. I felt Lucille wince in sympathetic disgust as Rabbit plopped it in her tongueless mouth.

The sight made me queasy as well, I remembered
what that stuff had tasted like when it was diluted into some tea. I couldn't imagine chewing the raw leaves. Then again, Rabbit was probably used to it, and I realized that she probably couldn't taste it anyway.

Yeah, but she could still smell.
I recalled unpleasant memories of flatulent slime mold.

Frank?
Spoke a mental voice that still sounded much older than her years.

Yes!
I said.
Good thinking!

So it is you and Lucille, there at the end of the hall?

Yes, it's us.
I lifted the hand I still controlled and waved, still gripping Lothan's flask.

Good, just let me know one thing . . . What's my name?

I almost thought
Rabbit
at her. Then I stopped and realized that she had just combined a healthy, and justified, bit of paranoia with her quick thinking.

Rose,
I responded.

Rabbit smiled.

•   •   •

We found Lucille's clothes, along with the elf-king's pendant, in an antechamber along with a pair of Dudley's guardsmen. The guardsmen had received a surprise visit from Krys and Rabbit, and they weren't going to bother us, or anyone else in this world, ever again. At this point I thought it was unfair to be surprised at that. All my “handmaidens” had toughed it out on their own a long time before they fell in with me. Any one of them could be scary in a fight before, and now they had half a year of real training under their belts.

Besides, when the stabby end of a blade is plunging into you, it really doesn't make much difference if the
other end is held by a burly warrior or a mute teenage girl. If I wanted to intimidate someone, I'd bring Brock, who was a walking mountain. If I wanted to kill someone, I'd be much better off with Rabbit or Krys, even if they weren't the most martial of the Goddess's warrior order.

I got dressed as Rabbit and Krys shut the doors to the temple corridor. The heavy oak door had no built-in way to bar it from this side, but the two girls managed to quickly improvise a barricade, wedging the gaps between wood and stone with daggers from the dead guards' belts, and taking a free-standing iron candelabra and hooking it through a massive ring that would have been used to pull the door closed.

Given that Dudley and his princesses would have to pull the door open from the other side, they would be working to escape for a long time. Once we were dressed and the door barred, Lucille asked, “How did you find us?”

I felt inordinately gratified by her use of the plural pronoun. When I was trapped behind her eyes, it was nice to have the recognition I still existed.

I didn't need to listen to the answer. As we dressed I had been “talking” to Rabbit.

How did you find us?
I'd asked, about five minutes before Lucille had.

Krys faked being knocked out. She'd wanted to jump them by surprise wherever they were taking you . . .

And they didn't bother taking her.

No.
That came with a mental snicker.
That pissed her off something good. Though that was for the best—I don't think she has the best grip of tactics. What exactly was she going to do if they'd taken her too? Conscious or not?

She followed us?

As much as she could.

Krys had followed the rather obvious group of armored thugs through the streets of Fell Green into a district filled with temples, churches, and other structures dedicated to various gods. She lost them when Dudley's group went underground. That was when she returned for Rabbit, who had much better tracking skills than anyone else I had ever seen.

Rabbit was somewhat dismissive of her contribution.
A dozen large men tramping through a little-used underground corridor? I could have followed that trail if I was blind as well as mute. I don't know how Krys couldn't just follow the smell of their sweat.

She asked me why there were a dozen copies of Lucille running around, and I told her. Her laugh that time had been more than mental, and drew stares from Lucille and Krys. She'd responded with a shrug that said, “If I could, I'd tell you.”

Rabbit had the same thought about changing my mis-gendered body that Lucille had, and I had to explain the more urgent issue that faced us. She had responded with appropriate horror, and affirmed my decision to use Lothan's boon to try and fix it. Especially since Elhared wasn't around to reverse the problem.

Maybe. Maybe not.
I thought as I picked up the dangling thought I had right before Dudley's attack.

What do you mean, “Maybe not”?

I think Crumley explained everything, and if I'm right, we have to do something about the elf-queen.

The elf-queen? What does she—

I'm going to need to talk to our half-elf guest.

Uh . . .

Rabbit?

Yeah, Robin . . .

Is there a problem?

About him . . .

Given the embarrassment dripping from her words, I knew that the dashing Robin Longfellow had managed to escape several paragraphs before she actually got around to stating it.

All he did was talk!
Rabbit thought at me in frustration.
I watched him, and he talked. That was it! Then Krys was there, he was gone, and I had no idea what happened!

I'm sorry.
I felt for her.

Krys thinks I fell asleep.

Did you?

No!
her mental voice snapped. Then, after a moment she added, meekly,
I don't know.

You don't know?

One moment I was looking at him, the next Krys was shaking my shoulders. I still stood where I remembered, but he was gone.

I don't think it was your fault.

I didn't.

Robin had been a suspicious character since the moment we had picked him up. He'd been much too sanguine about being captured and restrained, as if he had wanted to come to Fell Green with us. The bastard—again literal, I thought idly—was admittedly at least half elvish. That meant he probably had twice as many tricks up his sleeve as a human con artist.

Blame Rabbit or not, the missing Robin pissed me off. The captive elf had been our best guide into the realm under the hill, and I had questions about the Summer Queen and what she might want with her late prince's scroll.

Worse, if my thoughts about the late Elhared the Unwise were close to accurate, we would need to pay the elves a visit.

•   •   •

“So what do we do now?” Krys asked when we returned to our rooms at The Talking Eye. Lucille spared a glare at the empty chair where Robin Longfellow had been tied. Then she took the metal flask that held our gift from Lothan from the belt pouch where I had placed it.

Inscribed in the metal were the words, “Consume while naked, standing at a crossroads, under the light of the moon.”

It was early evening, edging toward suppertime. At least a few hours before moonlight entered the picture. I wondered if Lucille intended to strip here in town. Fell Green probably had a higher tolerance for oddity than most places, but a naked princess would probably still draw some unwanted attention.

That made me think of Dudley and his entourage.

I chuckled.

Lucille
chuckled.

We froze for a moment, and I realized that she had not been thinking of anything remotely funny. To her, the small laugh came out of nowhere. I felt her hand tighten its grip on the flask. I reached up with her other hand and touched it gently in what I hoped was a reassuring
gesture. She flinched a little in surprise, but didn't pull her hand away.

I felt her bite our lip and watched as her vision of the flask blurred. “I hope this works,” she whispered.

Me too.

She nodded as if she heard me.

“Your Highness?” Krys asked, a note of concern in her voice.

Lucille closed her eyes and said, “Get a fire going in the stove.”

“A fire?” I heard the incredulity in her voice. I understood. It was summer, and it was anything but cold.

“A small one.” Lucille elaborated.

“Oh . . .” I heard the realization in her voice.

Lucille nodded. “Brew up some tea from Crumley's herbs. You'll have to pass Frank's words on to me.” She looked at the pendant. “We don't have much time.”

•   •   •

Evening light streamed into our room in The Talking Eye as we formed our war council. The shaman's flower tea was powerful enough that Krys and Rabbit only had to sip from a shared cup. From the smell, I think the essence of the slimy fungus nature of Brock's tea must have come from other ingredients; possibly
actual
slime and fungus.

We sat on the chair that had held our one-time prisoner and Krys and Rabbit shared space on the bed. Krys spoke for everyone when she asked, “What do we do now?”

Lucille hefted Lothan's flask in her hand. “We have a solution to our body issues . . . at least according to a
trickster deity known for illusion and deception. We have to wait for moonrise though.”

“What about Timoras?” Krys asked.

Lucille raised the pendant and looked at the sand. She shook her head. “I was hoping knowing the origin of the scroll might . . .” She shook her head. “This whole trip has been useless.”

“No,” Krys said. “You found Frank and we're going to get him back now.”

Lucille glanced at the flask as if she didn't quite believe it. “What does Frank think?”

Frank?
asked the voice of a young man in my head.

Elhared,
I thought, my mind almost gagging on the name.

“Elhared?” Krys said aloud.

“What do we want with a dead wizard?” Lucille asked.

He's not dead,
I thought.

“What?” Krys snapped, echoed by Rabbit's voice in my head.

“‘What,' what?” Lucille repeated.

Krys relayed my assertion.

“What does he mean ‘not dead'?” Lucille asked.

Krys repeated me, point by point. However, everything she said boiled down to a single chain of logic: the dragon had been resident in Elhared's body ever since the original spell misfired; the scroll, according to Crumley, had been authored by Elhared in order to reverse the original spell; if the scroll had reversed the effects of the spell—placing Lucille in her original body, the dragon in his original body, and only skipping me
because my original body was gone—it left a single very relevant question.

Who now inhabited Elhared's body?

Lucille argued, and I argued back with Krys as a proxy. She asked why didn't the dragon's absence just leave Elhared's body a dead empty shell without any animating spirit? I doubted it. Given the logic this particular brand of magic seemed to follow, if nothing had claimed Elhared's body I'd have expected my displaced persona to take up residence. I strongly suspected that the scroll did its job, as much as possible, returning the original spirits to the original bodies.

Yes, Elhared might be dead, but that probably didn't mean that he was out of reach of the spell, since he was probably suffering eternal torment in Nâtlac's realm of the dead, and the spell was an invocation of Nâtlac's power.

Eventually Lucille ran out of objections.

“Not that we need Elhared. As long as Lothan's cure works out.” Lucille hefted the flask and looked out the unshuttered window at the evening light. Rabbit followed her gaze.

“Actually we do,” Krys relayed for me.

“Why? Even if he's rotting in elvish captivity instead of the dragon now—I still feel no desire to rescue him.”

“The queen,” Krys passed on for me.