Dragon Wizard (6 page)

Please, Lucille, this isn't a good idea.

She didn't listen to me.

Lucille walked toward the edge of the fog, quickly flanked by every armed guardsman stationed in the courtyard. I still yelled in her head not to step out into the open toward this—whatever it was. However, Lucille's time as a dragon had made her more assertive—even when it might not have been appropriate.

Fortunately, while something moved in the fog, we weren't about to face the evil hordes of the Dark Lord Nâtlac. Not unless the Dark Lord had recently suffered from the same budget constraints that had plagued Lendowyn's treasury since the kingdom's inception.

The fog swirled, wrapping a tunnel leading off to somewhere else. A single shadow slowly appeared through the mists, walking toward us from someplace beyond where the castle gates still stood. As the figure moved toward us, one of the guardsmen stepped in front of Lucille and called out, “Halt! Who approaches? What is your business?”

The figure stepped out of the fog, and as if cued, the fog itself broke apart and blew away into wisps of
nothing. He stood tall, a stride or two in front of the still-closed gate to Lendowyn Castle. He wore spiked armor of the coldest blue. The dawn light shone off it and through its rippling surface, like ice from the purest lake. The wind blew past him, carrying a chill that fogged our breath and burned the skin.

I knew him instantly. I don't think Lucille, or anyone else here, had ever seen him to recognize his face—though the armor made of ice should have been a big clue that he had stepped straight out of the Winter Court.

“I am Timoras, and I am here to speak with the Crown of Lendowyn.”

Given the elvish penchant for grand gestures, titles, and ceremony, I decided the elf-king's laconic introduction was not a good sign.

Lucille pushed the blocking guardsman aside and stepped out into the courtyard to face Timoras. “Speak then.”

Lucille? Maybe you should let your father handle this?

“My son is dead.” Timoras spoke, and the air itself appeared to freeze, his breath sending twirling crystals to glitter in the dawn light to drift down to the now frost-covered cobblestones.

“My condolences, Your Majesty, but—”

“Do
not
presume!” Timoras snapped. His anger was stripped of any remotely human element, as if an avalanche could speak. I decided that I'd rather see the dragon angry, or the Dark Lord Nâtlac for that matter.

“Prince Daemonlas attacked the court—”

“Silence!” Timoras snapped, waving his hand in a dismissive gesture.

“No!” Lucille snapped. “I will not be silent!”

Uh, Lucille, is this a good idea? Remember, all that diplomacy stuff we're supposed to pay attention to?

“You dare?” Timoras said, the words so cold the sound left frost in our ears.

Lucille strode forward and glared at the elf-king. “You dare? You stand inside
my
threshold, in
my
kingdom. You are not my king, and you have no leave to command here. Your prince came to our land to engage in an act of war, Timoras. If you are not here to answer for it, you'd best return under the hill.”

I felt our heart pounding in our chest, and sensed the copper taste of fear in our mouth. None of that made it into her words. I didn't know whether to be impressed or terrified.

Timoras stood unmoving, apparently struck dumb by her outburst.

“Have you no words, King Timoras?”

In response, the elf-king did something truly terrifying.

He smiled.

“Oh, Frank, you have come a long way. And you still remain . . .
interesting
.”

Wait a minute . . .

Lucille was impersonating me, but the fact Timoras called us “Frank” meant that he didn't know what the prince had done.

Or he was playing along with Lucille's deception. I wouldn't have put it past him.

“Why are you here?” Lucille asked.

The Elf-King Timoras smiled wider. “I am here to declare war on the world of men.”

“What?”

“Were my words unclear, Frank?”

“Make war on the world of men?”

“Was it not men who took the life from my son?”

“If you have a quarrel it is with the nation of Lendowyn,” Lucille said.

“I see,” said the elf-king in a breath of frost. “You admit to my quarrel, then?”

“Your son provoked—”

“Yes, yes.” He dismissed Lucille with a wave of his hand. “But your protests are
boring!
” At his shout, what seemed like a thousand ravens erupted, cawing, from trees beyond the castle walls.

I wondered if the elf-king brought them along strictly for the dramatic impact.

Lucille stepped forward despite my every effort to move our legs backward. “Are you
insane
?”

Please, Lucille, shut up!

“I am disappointed, Frank. You've argued with gods, yet all you offer
me
are base insults.” He waved his hand, and the fog reappeared, shrouding the elf-king.

Lucille yelled, “No” and took another step, and the fog shrouded us as well.

“No?” His voice came from behind us. Lucille spun, but we only saw gray-white mists. “You wish me not to raise an immortal army and cleave the world of men in two?”

She kept spinning, trying to find the source of his voice.

She only stopped when we felt an icy hand on our shoulder.

“Then give me something,” he whispered into our ear from behind.

“Give you what?”

He sighed and I felt the breath on the back of our neck. He muttered something that sounded like, “Sure, make me do all the work.”

“What do you want?” Lucille repeated.

“What else would I want? The person responsible for my son's death. And an equivalent exchange.”

Lucille turned around to face him, little more than a spectral shadow in the fog. “Exchange?”

He sighed again. “Lendowyn took my child. Give me Lendowyn's child.” He paused a moment. “Alfred, the king? His child. Remember?”

“Me?”

“Frank, you're starting to annoy me—you were better at this once. No, not
you
. I want the scaly one.” He let go of her shoulder.

“The dragon,” Lucille repeated.

“Yes, yes.” He tossed something at us, and Lucille reflexively grabbed it, a spherical pendant on a chain. “You have a day to give me the dragon, along with whomever bears responsibility for my son's murder. If you don't, we rain destruction on the world of men. Everything clear now? Good.”

The shadow that was the Elf-King Timoras spun on its heel and stomped briskly away through the space where the gates still stood, trailing the foggy shroud like a cloak
behind him. Before the shadow and fog vanished completely, I thought I heard his voice in the distance.

“Don't be so obtuse next time we meet.”

Lucille held up the chain so she could look at the pendant. Carved inside a crystal sphere were two teardrop-shaped champers connected by their narrow ends. Black sand filled one chamber, and as we watched, sand slowly leaked into the other.

In other words, exactly like an hourglass—except, at the moment, the sand fell sideways.

“That was not the smartest thing I could have done,” Lucille whispered to herself as she clutched Timoras's pendant in her fist.

Welcome to my world.

She spun at the sound of commotion by the front of the inner keep. “What is happening out there?” King Alfred's voice carried across the courtyard while someone else yelled, “Make way! Make way! Make way for the king!”

Lucille sidestepped until we were shadowed by a doorway next to the gates. As we backed into the shadows inside the outer wall, Lucille watched the keep's entrance. A crowd massed by the keep's wall and a trio of royal guardsmen sliced into its heart like an arrow through pudding. An obviously cranky and sleep-deprived King Alfred followed the guards. He reached out and grabbed the collar of one of the nearest guards who'd been on duty in the courtyard. Even though the man was twice his size, the king moved him easily, as if the difference in status actually translated into physical strength. Before the
guard's back faced us, I could see the white mask of fear slide over his face.

Never pleasant to be in proximity of an angry monarch.

King Alfred's voice sliced across the courtyard, silencing the crowd noise around us. “What happened here?”

The guard's voice stammered and wasn't really audible. I made out the words “elf” and “princess.”

King Alfred unleashed a string of profanity so vile that it might have made the Dark Lord Nâtlac blush. He released the guard and faced the courtyard. “Frank!” He called out. “I want you here right now!”

Lucille swallowed and backed away from the open doorway, deeper into the shadows. She shook her head. “No talking to him like this,” she whispered.

She gasped when she backed into someone.

“Your Highness?”

She half jumped and half spun to face another guardsman, one of the men who manned the main gates. “The king is requesting you.”

“Ah y-yes,” Lucille said with an uncharacteristic stammer. She clutched the pendant so tightly that it cut into our palm.

The guard reached for us. “Perhaps you should—”

Lucille recovered quickly. Looking directly in the guard's eyes, she said, “You did not see me. I was not here.”

His hand stopped. “But, Your Highness?”

Even though her volume had dropped to a whisper, her tone, and the hardness in her voice, dropped to
registers that could rival the dragon's. “Do you
really
want to step into a dispute between me and the king?”

The guard, being sane, did not. He took a step backward.

“Good,” Lucille said. “Go back to your post and forget you ever saw me.”

He nodded.

As Lucille slipped away, I couldn't help thinking that she was still—for all intents and purposes—standing in for me as far as everyone in Lendowyn was concerned. That meant the guard was backing down from a threat by Princess Frank.

I wasn't sure how I felt about that.

•   •   •

“Only a day,” she muttered as she reached the stables on the other side of the castle wall. “The dragon? The person who killed the prince? Does he think I'll just give him Sir Forsythe?”

She paused by the entrance.

“As if I
have
him. Or Fr—the dragon.”

After a moment catching her breath, she whispered, “He didn't say ‘killed,' did he?”

She echoed my own thoughts. Timoras had said,
“You have a day to give me the dragon, along with whomever bears responsibility for my son's murder.”

“Is this some sort of game to him?”

Of course it is.

She slipped inside the stables, and almost immediately collided with Krys, who'd stepped out into our path just as we entered. Lucille fell one way down the aisle, the saddle the other.

“Your Highness!”

“Ack,” Lucille responded in the closest imitation of myself she had managed up till now.

“What are you doing here? You're at least an hour before—”

“Change of plans. We need to leave now!”

“But Rabbit hasn't had time—”

“How many horses?”

“Two, maybe three?”

“That will have to do. Saddles, tack?”

“Enough bridles, and provisions, but I only have one saddle—”

“Including that one?” Lucile pointed as she dusted herself off.

“Two, then,” Krys said.

Lucille threw the pendant's chain over her neck to free her hands. She gestured toward the door Krys had emerged from. “The saddles are in there?”

“Yes, what are you—”

Lucille ran into the dim storeroom and pulled a saddle off of the rack closest to the doorway. She grunted with the effort. “Just in case Rabbit had time to free that third horse. Let's move!”

She pushed past Krys and turned left at the end of the aisleway.

“No,” Krys called, “Other direction!”

Lucille spun around and ended up following Krys past a series of empty stalls. Rushing with our loads meant we had no pretense at stealth, but the stable hands who glanced up from their chores to look at us
saw our clothing and quickly looked back down at their work.

One of the many perks of nobility. Look the part and none of the folks shoveling manure will see fit to challenge you, even if you run full tilt into a pasture with a saddle and no horse.

Lucille ran with Krys toward the woods at the edge of the royal pastures. Between gasps for breath, Lucille brought Krys up to date on the situation.

“You said
what
to the elf-king?” Krys shouted over her shoulder.

“He came. Into my kingdom. To make. Ultimatums.”

“You're right. Frank has been a bad influence on you.”

Lucille followed Krys into a clearing where a pair of horses stood bridled and tied to a large fallen tree. One horse had a saddle and saddlebags ready. Nearby, a pile of extra bridles and saddlebags waited. Lucille stopped and dropped her saddle by the pile of extra equipment. “Where's Rabbit?”

“Getting a third horse, I presume.” Krys walked over and started positioning her saddle on the second horse.

“We can't wait long,” Lucille said, lifting the pendant to look into it. “Getting to Fell Green—even at full gallop—might take most of the time he gave us.”

“And then we hand over Frank and Sir Forsythe?”

Lucille shook her head. “I'm hoping that knowing what happened with the prince and his spell might show some way out of this.”

“Do you really think Frank is out there attacking border towns?”

“I don't know—”

Lucille was interrupted by a neigh and the sound of hoofbeats. Rabbit came into the clearing, leading horse number three. She looked at Lucille with an expression that conveyed awareness that something had gone very wrong.

“Change of plan,” Krys said as she finished strapping the bags and saddle on the second horse. “We're leaving now. Get that horse ready.”

Rabbit looked from Krys to Lucille.

“We have an ultimatum from the elf-king. And my father may be angry enough to send a team of guardsmen after us if he figures out where we've gone.”

Rabbit's eyes widened and she got to work putting a bridle on the new horse. Lucille looked over at Krys, who had finished with the second horse and was busy now with a knife, carving a series of cryptic symbols on the trunk of the dead tree.

“What are you doing?” Lucille asked.

Thieves in any given area, especially those who belong to a guild, all have a native code to pass messages back and forth. Most thieves are illiterate, but most learn a series of symbols that can communicate things like “guard dog” and “clients at this inn aren't worth the trouble.” They aren't as arcane or elaborate as the glyphs used by wizards, but they're just as impenetrable to the uninitiated. Of course Lucille had no idea about any of that.

Krys just explained, “I'm leaving a message for Laya and Thea that we went on ahead. So they can meet us at Fell Green.”

Lucille shook her head. “No, don't send them there without us. Going to Fell Green is dangerous enough when I don't have to worry about my father sending guardsmen after us. And they'll probably have two artifacts I don't want falling into anyone else's hands.”

Krys stopped carving. “What then? They should go back to the castle?”

“No. Tell them we'll meet at the Northern Palace. It's closer. We have to go back that way anyway, to go after the dragon.”

Krys nodded and resumed carving her message.

•   •   •

We rode north largely in silence. Krys asked a question or two, but Lucille's monosyllabic answers must have discouraged any further conversation. I knew the impossible time pressure ate at her, because every few minutes she would fondle the pendant around her neck. This left me with nothing to do, even as a spectator. As the same woods rolled by us for the third hour, I discovered that I didn't need Lucille's body to tell me to sleep.

Apparently I could do that on my own.

I realized that when I noticed I walked an overgrown path toward an overgrown temple, a temple I knew was on the wrong side of the Grünwald border. Behind me a woman's voice asked, “Miss me yet?”

I spun around and faced the Goddess Lysea.

She wore a literally statuesque body, the same animated carving of personified sex and beauty that she had
first greeted me with. This moving idol was normally a larger-than-life marble sculpture stationed behind the altar in the half-ruined temple on the hill behind me.

Right now she towered over me, the perfect curves of divinely fleshy marble reminding me painfully that my dream-self wore my original male body. She reached down and trailed fingers too warm to be stone across my trembling cheek.

Did I mention that all she wore was a carved garland of flowers in her hair?

“Is this a dream?” I asked. “Or another vision?”

She gave a dazzling smile and whispered in my ear, “Are you thinking of the consequences of acting on what you're feeling right now?”

“Uh—” Between the warring feelings of lust and fear I wasn't able to find any coherent words.

She placed her finger on my lips and whispered, “If what I say is important, does it matter what I am?”

She lowered her finger and kissed me on the lips. I probably would have blacked out if I hadn't already been unconscious.

“You do know you aren't mine to claim, don't you?”

I shook my head and looked around at the changed landscape. We stood on a ridge now, looking over a vast plain. An army gathered below us, thousands of men and horses preparing a tent city. I saw the banners of a dozen kingdoms.

“Is this happening now?” I asked.

“Is that the important question, Frank?”

I looked toward the horizon and saw, in the distance, the new dragon-bearing banners of Lendowyn over a
much, much smaller force. No, this wasn't happening now, the logistics of massing a force this size required weeks . . .

“But why?”

“Are you understanding now?”

This went far beyond the provocation caused by events at the banquet. I'm sure, in a few cases right now, angry kings, counts, and dukes were starting to organize their forces. But I knew the noble mind well enough to know that the death of one or two diplomats or members of the court would, in almost all cases, be a simple pretext for some campaign that had already been planned. An excuse to seize some land or treasure that had been coveted beforehand.

That's not what Lysea showed me. Below us was a response to a genuine military threat.

“The dragon,” I whispered. “He's attacking our neighbors, and it's a direct attack by the Lendowyn Crown.” I looked down and studied all the banners and saw colors from the north, west, and east. “But how could one creature . . .”

“Do you understand what you presume?”

“It's not the dragon?”

She took my hands. When I looked away from her I saw another army moving through a city of spun-sugar spires. When I turned away from the tall forms in too-elaborate, too-shiny armor to see where they were going, I saw darker siblings wearing leather armor, weaving through the gnarled trunks of an ancient wood.

“Oh crap,” I whispered, as two armies' worth of elves converged on the hillside that demarked the border between the bright city and the dark woods.

“What is more dangerous than a love denied?” Lysea asked.

“Is this happening now?”

“Does time mean what you think it does here?”

“Why are you—” I was about to ask why she insisted on answering my questions with more questions, when I realized what she meant. Time traveled slower in elf-land, under the hill. The time I'd been there, weeks had sped by for the mortal world while I had only been there for a few hours.

The hourglass
.

“We may just have time!” I shouted as I turned to Lysea. “And that would suit the elf-king's sense of humor, wouldn't it?”

She smiled at me and I realized things had gotten way too cold. I looked around, and we stood on a ledge on a barren mountainside. “Where is this?”

“Don't you see?”

In dim twilight I saw a crumpled, broken body half hidden in a niche in the rocks. I turned away.

“You know now?”

I nodded, because I knew with the certainty of dreams that the corpse I looked at was my own. “How do I stop this?”

She reached down and lifted my chin so I looked up into her face.

“Above all else, what does any god want?”

•   •   •

I woke and for a moment, a mane of black hair dominated my vision.

Lucille jerked upright and I saw that was a literal mane,
belonging to the horse she rode upon. Lucille shook her head and blinked as if she had just snapped awake herself.

A shout cut through my sleep-induced disorientation.

“Your Highness!” Krys's voice came from somewhere to our right.

“I'm fine,” Lucille snapped without looking in her direction.

“No, you're not.” Krys rode up so that she was even with us. I saw her just out of the corner of Lucille's eye. “You almost fell off.”

“You're exaggerating.”

“Look down. Your right foot isn't even in the stirrup anymore. And where are your reins?”

Lucille blinked and looked down at her empty hands. “What?”

Krys walked her horse in front of ours and I realized that we weren't moving. Lucille looked down and we saw Rabbit standing next to our horse, holding the dropped reins and patting the animal on the neck. She looked up at us with a half-smile and shook her head.

Krys sighed. “You're lucky he's well trained.”

“Yeah . . .”

“We have to make camp. You're in no condition to continue.”

“We can't stop. Running out of time.”

Look at the pendant,
I thought at her. If my dream-vision meant anything straightforward, it would be that.

“I know, we only have a day,” Krys said. “But you still need rest.” She yawned. “We all do.”

Lucille lifted the elf-king's pendant up from where it hung around her neck.
Yes.
She squinted at the small
hourglass and said, “By this we only have . . .” She trailed off, staring at the slow-moving sand.

“Your Highness?”

“That elf bastard!” she snapped so viciously that Rabbit winced.

The implications of my dream were right. The black sand had barely begun to coat the bottom of the empty chamber, only very slightly more than had been there when she had first looked at it. Judging by the angle of the sun it was evening, nearly a half day gone since the elf-king's appearance at dawn . . .

A half day in the mortal realm.

Time flowed a bit more leisurely under the hill, where Timoras held court. A day in the Winter Court could be a week, a fortnight, a month . . .

The elf-king had declined to specify
whose
day his ultimatum entailed.

Typical.

Lucille leaped off her horse.

“If it wasn't an act of war I'd strangle that smug inhuman ass.”

“What is it?”

Lucille yanked the pendant over her head and threw it, chain and all, at Krys. Krys caught it out of the air.

“We have time. He's having a joke at our expense.”

Krys peered into the pendant. “It's falling up?”

Lucille shook her head and rubbed her eyes. “No, it's just falling under the hill.”

“Huh?”

“His day. Not ours.” Lucille sighed. “Let's make camp. I'm about to drop.”

•   •   •

After tying the horses at the edge of a clearing where they could graze, Lucille spread her bedroll under a sheltering tree and flopped down. She hadn't so much as removed her boots, but just the act of lying down made our muscles melt as if we had returned to my featherbed at the castle. She let out a long sigh.

A grunt came from a few feet away, and Lucille turned our head so we could see what it was.

Krys had slid down to sit, leaning her head back against the same tree. Despite her closed eyes, she noticed Lucille's attention. “Rabbit has the first watch, Your Highness.”

Lucille glanced back toward the clearing. Rabbit sat on a fallen log, honing a knife with a whetstone. I don't know how Lucille saw her, but I thought her time with the court over the past few months had done her some good. She was still wiry, but it seemed more muscle than bone. Her black hair had filled out and now hung in a single thick braid between her shoulder blades. Her almond eyes sparkled in an impish face that no longer seemed gaunt. The only things marring her appearance were the small ugly scars on the corners of her mouth, left there by the thugs who had taken her tongue.

Lucille leaned back and closed her eyes.

Someone sniffled next to us. Lucille turned to look at Krys again. Krys had changed, too, over the past few months. Like Rabbit, she had lost the gaunt look all the girls had suffered from in midwinter. Also, she was at least a year older than Rabbit, and a decent food supply had fueled a growth spurt that had gained her at least a
couple of inches in height. That meant she was taller than Lucille now, though that didn't say much. She had allowed her hair to grow in, and now wore it in a style reminiscent of the Lendowyn guard—still very short in front, and no longer than a couple fingers' width around the rest of her head. That, combined with the armor she chose to wear, made her appear much more the young squire than royal handmaid. Not that she ever looked the part of handmaid, or played the part, for that matter.