Dragon Wizard (3 page)

For the briefest moment I saw a ghost of a woman standing in place of Sir Forsythe. She stood eight feet tall, unbound hair flowing around her otherwise naked body. In both hands she held a golden sword engraved with the images of flowers in such detailed relief they appeared to sprout from the blade.

Then it was Sir Forsythe again, thrusting his own glowing blade. It cut through the air like a goddess laughing, penetrating the elf's black aura to bury itself into Daemonlas's torso.

For a moment the hall was silent except for the sound of stained glass tinkling to the ground.

Then I heard laughing; this time less like a goddess, and more like those glass fragments burrowing into my ears.

The elf lowered his arms and sagged onto the sword, the tattered scroll slipping through his fingers. Daemonlas shook his head and smiled. “Too late.”

Daemonlas slid off the sword to collapse on the ground at Sir Forsythe's feet. Sir Forsythe echoed my own thoughts, “Too late?”

A geyser of black and blue lightning erupted from the wound in Daemonlas's chest, throwing Sir Forsythe aside. The twisted spray of lightning shot at Lucille, splintering my throne. When it hit her, I felt it, as if something huge and invisible slammed inside my skull.

I spiraled into darkness as Lucille screamed again.

As I came to, my first coherent thought was,
Not fair . . . I didn't drink anything this time!

From somewhere, I heard someone yelling.

“What did you do?
What did you do?
”

For a few moments I thought the shouting was directed at me. Given my history, my own inclination was to blame myself for any disaster even though it was difficult to imagine exactly how I could be responsible for this one. As my mind emerged from the painful black fog, I tried to answer the angry person . . .

. . . and realized
I
was the one shouting.

Huh?

Sensation returned to me, and I could feel and hear myself shouting the words. The right side of my rib cage ached where Brock had tackled me, and the ache turned into a dagger in my side when I sucked in the breath to shout again. I smelled smoke and felt dirt in my eyes, and my eyes blinked all by themselves. I stood above the body of Prince Daemonlas, my hands balled into fists in his cape to either side of the bloodstained brooch. I had lifted him up to shout in his unmoving face, and I shook him to emphasize each word.

Fine, I just blacked out and went insane there for a moment.

I tried to remember what had pushed me over the edge like this, and suddenly everything in me screamed,
Lucille!

That was the cue for me to spin around and look for her and see what happened.

But I couldn't move.

That wasn't exactly right.

I still looked down at the dead elf, I still shook him, and I still demanded to know what it was he'd done.

And that
still
wasn't right.

It wasn't
me
doing any of these things, even though I stared into the elf's dead eyes, felt the blood-tacky fur of his cape sticking to my fists, and felt the hoarse tickle in the back of my throat as I screamed . . .

I had no control over
any
of it.

Worse, I smelled smoke and heard pained groans all around me. The dead Prince Daemonlas was the last thing I wanted to focus my attention on.

“He's dead, Your Highness.” I felt a gentle hand on my shoulder and someone else turned my head to look up at Mary, the first of my handmaids-slash-bodyguards to have attacked Daemonlas. She had her other arm in a makeshift sling, clutched against her scorched leather armor. Bruised swelling marred the left side of her face. Past her, in the peripheral vision of eyes that refused to move for me, I could see signs of chaos, broken tables, wounded diplomats, and the great windows open on a purple twilight sky . . .

And no sign of Lucille.

“Can we track the dragon?” I heard myself say.

“Sir Forsythe dived out the window after her—him—”

“Is Brock . . .”

The way I heard my voice trail off frightened me.
What happened to Brock?

“Bad, but looks worse than it is.”

Someone shook my head without me and my voice lowered to be near inaudible. “Why did he have to . . .”

“Your Highness?” Mary said, “If he didn't, you'd be dead right now.”

I watched as my hand rubbed my lowered face by its own volition. “How many people have to hurt themselves saving me?” I heard my voice whisper.

My own brain still spun, disoriented, recovering from the blackout. It sank in. I felt myself breathe, I could see and hear and smell . . .

But it wasn't my body anymore.

I felt my foot kick something that felt suspiciously like an elf corpse. My mouth snapped, “Why?”

Then I spun around, looking at the wreckage of the banquet,
our
banquet, and understood what had happened.

Lucille was home.

Then what am
I
doing here?

I heard my voice ask Mary, “Why would Frank do this?”

Why would I . . .

“It wasn't Frank, your Highness.” Mary pointed at the ex-elf. “It was this guy. Wasn't it?”

“Yes, yes.” My head turned to look at the wreckage
and my arm swung out in a gesture encompassing the broken and charred tables and a distressing number of bodies. “His spell pushed me out of my body. But the dragon did all this.”

“You don't know
that
was Frank.”

No, you don't,
I thought.

“Who was it then? And, more importantly, if it wasn't him, where is he?” Lucille turned our body away from Mary and started shouting orders at the ambulatory servants.

I realized I might be in a bit of trouble.

•   •   •

I had to catch up on what had happened based only on snippets of conversation and glimpses of the aftermath as Lucille tried to take control of the situation.

Right after Prince Daemonlas had died, and I'd blacked out, whoever resided in the dragon's body attempted to reprise the boar-roasting scene from earlier with Lucille as the main course; the Lucille resident in my—her—
our
body. Fortunately for us, Brock's combat effectiveness was increased fivefold whenever protecting his princess was involved. Unfortunately for Brock, that still didn't amount to much. He shielded us from a blast of dragon fire using an overturned table. He just didn't manage to do so while on the same side of the table as we were.

He had survived only because he hadn't been the focus of the dragon's fury, and because Sir Forsythe intervened to grab the dragon's attention.

Brock had been bandaged and left seated at the edge of the wreckage. Between the tears in our eyes and
Lucille's tendency to avoid looking directly at him, I didn't get a good look at the extent of his injuries.

She took his unbandaged hand and I heard Brock groan. “Who's there?”

“It's me. It's Lucille.”

He groaned again and I don't know if he heard her. “Did Brock save the princess?”

Lucille sniffed and nodded. “Yes. Brock saved the princess.” She wiped our eyes and bent over to kiss Brock on the forehead. When I caught a glimpse of his face I wanted to cry myself. The side of his head was scorched and he was missing a good part of his left ear. He looked past us, staring out at nothing. Someone had stripped the armor from his upper body and had bound his left arm completely in bandages that were already becoming discolored.

“Brock is tired.”

“The battle's over,” she whispered to him. “The princess is safe.”

“Brock saved the princess.”

“Yes, he did. Rest now.”

“Brock needs to rest now.”

His groans subsided and his breathing became more regular as he closed his eyes.

Lucille stood and yelled commands at the nearest servants. “You! You! And you! Get this man to a room with a bed. No one leaves him alone!”

A quartet of men responded with “Yes, Your Highness!” and carried Brock off the battlefield.

Oaths may be cheap for someone who had lost the ability to affect the physical world, but as I watched them
carry Brock away, I vowed that whoever or whatever bore responsibility for this would suffer dearly for it.

•   •   •

As the nightmare progressed I couldn't imagine feeling more powerless. And it was no consolation to realize Lucille didn't feel any better.

I could only imagine what she was going through, being left solely in charge of this diplomatic disaster. In fact, “diplomatic disaster” understated exactly how badly things had gone. Prince Daemonlas may have triggered the catastrophe, but as far as the attendees knew, Lucille the Dragon had been the one to terrorize the ceremony.

Despite everything, Lucille took command of the situation better than I could have.

She ran around organizing our small staff of retainers to bring some semblance of order to the disaster our anniversary had become. In the space of an hour the wounded were all being tended to and the unhurt ushered into guest rooms far away from the great hall.

Unfortunately, by the time things seemed under control, there were already several delegations that had slipped away to spread the bad news to their home kingdoms. Given the number of dead still littering the hall where they had fallen, this was a very bad thing.

As the depth of the situation sank in, she pulled together my personal retainers. I guess they were
her
personal retainers now. I felt a great wave of relief when I saw that no one else had been injured as severely as Brock.

Although the verdict was still out on Sir Forsythe. No one had seen him after he'd leaped out the great windows after the dragon.

Lucille gathered them all around the splintered throne as the night air blew in through the shattered grand windows, a half-dozen handmaid-warriors; Grace, Mary, Laya, Thea, Krys, and Rabbit. Lucille looked out the window at the horizon, as if she was searching for the dragon.

For me.

The wind bit our face as she said, “You're here because, after Brock and Sir Forsythe, you're the people Frank trusts most.”

“Your Highness?” I heard Krys's voice from behind us. “Why are you talking like Brock?”

Lucille sighed, and Mary said, “It isn't Princess Frank anymore.”

“
What?
” said several voices at once.

Lucille turned around to face Mary. “You didn't tell them?”

“Too much to explain,” Mary said. “And people could have overheard.”

Lucille nodded.

Grace, the nominal leader of the six, stepped forward hobbling as she leaned on a crutch that was made for someone about two inches taller. “What happened here?”

“Beyond what you saw?” Lucille gestured at the corpse of Prince Daemonlas, which still lay where it had fallen nearly two hours ago. “The spell he cast threw me out of my body and back into this one.”

Grace waved at the remains of the great hall and said, “So you didn't do all this?”

“No.”

“Then who did?” Laya asked.

Lucille hesitated and Mary filled the silence by quietly saying, “You don't
know
.”

“Don't know what?” Grace asked.

“Frank,” Lucille whispered.

Most everyone else responded by saying,
“What?”
except Mary, who looked disappointed, and Rabbit who made up for being mute by providing a you-must-be-crazy expression.

“It's the only thing that makes sense. We swapped bodies. Again.”

Krys shook her head. “No, it doesn't make sense. That would mean he tried to kill you, that he almost killed Brock.”

“That's better than the alternative.”

“What alternative?” Grace said.

“That he's gone.”

The only sound in the hall was the wind blowing from outside and the distant sound of chirping insects. I saw the girls' faces through Lucille's eyes and realized they all thought I was dead.

“No! I'm here! I haven't gone anywhere!”
I tried to shout through whatever barrier separated me and Lucille. We were in the same skull, she
had
to sense I was here on some level.

Or not.

For all my mental screaming, Lucille went on talking to the girls as if I wasn't there. So much that it became hard for
me
to believe I was still there.

“I'm going to need your help,” Lucille said to them.

Grace nodded. “If we can help Frank—”

“Whatever happened to him,” Krys interjected.

“We're at your service, Your Highness,” Grace finished.

“Good. Thank you.”

“What do you need from us?” Grace said.

“First I need all of you sworn to secrecy. No one outside this room is to know Frank is missing.”

I am not missing! I'm still here!

The response was three “What”s, two “Why”s, and a puzzled expression from Rabbit.

Lucille sighed, and she explained, “First off, we don't know if the spell misfired when Sir Forsythe killed the elf. If this was an attack directed at me specifically, and the body-swapping is unintentional, we don't want the attacker to know what happened. It could invite another attack.”

“With all due respect, Your Highness,” Grace said, “that seems kind of weak.”

“Uh,” Krys added, “and I think the attacker's dead.” She waved at the unmoving elf-corpse.

“That spell the prince used,” Lucille said, “I don't think it came from the Winter Court. Until we know why Prince Daemonlas did this, and where the spell came from, we can't just assume he was on his own here.” Lucille sighed and turned around to look back out at the night sky. “And there's a more important reason.”

“Which is?”

“If my father thinks I'm still in the dragon's body, he is much less likely to order something irrevocable.”

She turned away from the night and started explaining her plans in earnest, and gave me even more cause
for objections. “I will need to go back to Lendowyn Castle with news of what has happened, and to retrieve
Dracheslayer
and the Tear of Nâtlac.”