Dragon Wizard (7 page)

She had grown too much to be called boyish.

At the moment the only thing that detracted from her appearance as a handsome young man was the shiny smears on her cheeks.

“Krys?”

Her hand went up to wipe her eyes and she turned half away from us. “I'm fine.”

“What's the—”

“I'm not crying.”

Lucille sat up. “Krys, it's all right to be upset.”

“I'm not upset!”

“Krys?”

“I'm angry!”

“I understand.”

Krys sniffed into her hand and nodded. “I know you do.”

“We'll find out what this scroll was meant to do and where it came from. Then we will find Frank.”

“He's gone,” Krys whispered.

I'm right here!

“Sir Forsythe may have caught up with him by now.”

Krys turned her head to glare at Lucille. “You
know
that wasn't Frank.”

“No, we don't—”

“Yes, we do.” Krys snapped. “You really think it's Frank out there torching villages?”

Lucille opened her mouth and closed it. She shook her head. As she blinked I felt a wet heat in the corners of her eyes.

No, please, I'm still around! Lucille! Can't you hear me?

“Yes,” Lucille whispered.

“I'm sorry, but you know that couldn't have been him.”

“It has to be, otherwise . . .”

“He's gone,” Krys said, her tone so flat and final it left Lucille speechless.

Krys's voice softened a little. “I know hope. I know how much we seem to need it. I felt it when they took my dad. I hoped for nearly ten years, before I gave up. And the thing is, the longer you hold on to it, the worse it gets when you have to let go.”

Lucille!

Lucille cried silently as she nodded. “And we don't have that kind of time.”

“But we'll find out what happened,” Krys said quietly.

They were quiet for a long time before Krys asked, “Why?”

“What?”

“Why would the prince do this?”

That's a damn good question.

Lucille closed her eyes and sighed. “I don't know.”

“Get some sleep,” Krys said.

We're in the same skull! Why don't you hear me?

Lucille didn't respond to my cries. She just lay down.
Before she shut her eyes again, I thought I saw Rabbit standing and staring at us, but it happened too quickly for me to be certain what we saw.

After several minutes it was clear that Lucille was sound asleep. After a while in darkness, I joined her.

Lucille woke up before dawn, sometime before I did. I came to awareness realizing that she was holding up the elven pendant, staring into its depths. The sky above was dark and overcast, and the light came mostly from a fire that the girls must have made while we slept. I saw it dimly refracted in the depths of the pendant. The fire was weak, but enough to see the very slight movement of sand within the hourglass.

I wondered what Lucille was thinking.

Probably wondering how to meet Timoras's demands, as impossible as they are . . .

What?

If I could move, I would have jumped out of my skin at the unfamiliar voice. It didn't sound so much a whisper as someone—a woman's voice—very far away.

Who?

I wanted to turn my neck and look, but Lucille kept her attention annoyingly on the very boring hourglass.

Is there someone there?

Frank?

Lucille was lucky that she was in control of all our bodily functions, or we would have had to clean some
sheer terror out of our leather. I had no voice, but somehow I was talking to someone . . .

More to the point, they were talking back.

This did not bode well for my sanity.

Who's there? Who's talking?

I'm not imagining . . .

The tiny voice faded into inaudibility.

Lucille?
I screamed in my mental voice.
Can you hear me? Is that you?

. . . no, it's me . . .

Who?

The tiny voice was gone.

“Me” who? Please, answer me.

Something caught Lucille's eye and she lowered the pendant. She turned her head to look next to us. Krys and Rabbit had traded positions during the night, and Rabbit had been sleeping on her own bedroll next to us.

She wasn't sleeping now.

Rabbit had turned to face us, eyes wide and mouth half open. She appeared to pale in the dying firelight.

“Is something wrong?”

. . . Frank? . . .

The sound was a very distant mental scream. But I saw Rabbit's lips move very slightly as I heard it.

Rabbit? You can hear me? You can hear me?!
I tried to imagine the dragon screaming the words.

In response Rabbit raised a hand to her mouth and nodded.

That was all the confirmation I needed.

I tried yelling at her to let them know I was still alive, trapped in here with Lucille. But I didn't hear any response. The tiny voice was gone, and I might have believed it was my imagination if it wasn't for the frustrated expression on Rabbit's face.

She had lost my voice, too.

•   •   •

I felt badly for Rabbit. She was mute, but she had always been good at communicating with her peers. At least that was how it had always seemed to me. Now as I saw her pacing and gesturing at Lucille and Krys, I realized that the apparent ease of her communication was due almost entirely to the self-imposed limits she had placed on what she attempted to communicate.

In other words, “I'm hungry” is a lot easier to get across nonverbally than, “Frank's alive and I can hear his disembodied voice.”

Worse, I wasn't exactly sure she knew I was alive. Remembering odd glances from her, here and there, I suspected she had heard me a few times now, but from her point of view I might just be a ghost.

But I wasn't a ghost.

I was alive.

Wasn't I?

Trapped behind Lucille's eyes, I began to worry that it was a distinction without a difference.

Rabbit paced around the remains of the fire between Krys and Lucille, shaking her head.

“What's the matter?” Lucille asked for what might have been the dozenth time.

Rabbit sighed and pointed at Lucille's forehead, then at her own ear.

“You hear me?”

Rabbit made a gesture of grabbing something and not quite catching it.

“No, but close,” Kris said.

Rabbit nodded.

“I said something?” Lucille asked.

Rabbit frowned and stomped her foot.

“You want me to say something?”

Rabbit pointed at herself, then at her ears. Then she pointed at Lucille and covered her ears.

“I said something you didn't want to hear?”

Rabbit gave a frustrated look at the heavens, spun around facing Krys, and repeated the sequence; pointing at herself, then at her ears, then pointing at Krys and covering her ears.

“Krys said something—”

Lucille was interrupted by a frustrated grunt from Rabbit.

“I'm sorry,” Lucille said. “I'm trying. Why don't you just write it down?”

Rabbit turned and glared at us.

“What?” Lucille said.

“Your Highness,” Krys said, “we never had much chance for tutoring.”

“What do—oh.”

Rabbit gave Lucille a withering stare that I thought was a little unfair. Yes, it was a bit much to assume that a homeless teenage girl, an outlaw who had spent at least
one year living a feral life in the woods, might have picked up some skills in reading and writing. But in all fairness, it was a bit much to assume a pampered aristocrat had any idea what such a life might be like.

But then Rabbit's eyes widened and she smiled.

She pulled out her dagger and cleared a space on the ground. Literate or not, she still knew the same thieves' symbols that Krys had used earlier. It might be a limited vocabulary, but it would probably be better getting the idea across.

That's what I thought, anyway.

Rabbit sketched a circle with a dot followed by a pair of triangles joined at the tip.

“Ah,” Krys said.

“What does that mean?” Lucille asked.

“A friend was here before?” Krys said.

Rabbit underlined the triangles.

“A short time before?”

Rabbit underlined the triangles again.

“Very short time before?”

Underlined violently.

“Now?”

Rabbit dropped the knife and clapped her hands.

“A friend is here now?” Krys asked.

“What does this have to do with what I said?” Lucille asked.

Rabbit pointed at herself and her own ears again. Then she got up and pointed at Lucille, her finger poking the hollow between our breasts just above the hanging pendant. Then she reached over and covered our ears with her cupped hands.

“I don't—”

Krys interrupted, “You're hearing something we don't!”

Rabbit spun around and clapped her hands again.

“What are you hearing?” Lucille asked.

Rabbit turned and pointed at Lucille.

“You're hearing me?”

Rabbit sighed and put her face in her hands.

“You're not making sense.”

Rabbit glared at us, then pointed at her ear and slowly again at our chest.

“But not me?” Lucille asked, puzzled.

Rabbit slowly nodded.

“I got it!” Lucille said.

“What?” Krys asked.

Lucille grabbed the elf-pendant that had been hanging from her neck. She held it up in triumph. “You're hearing this thing!”

Rabbit stared at the thing, then stared at Lucille.

“No,” Lucille said, “that's the only thing that makes any sense.” She dropped the pendant. “Why are you pointing at me when you don't mean
me
?”

Rabbit spread her hands in a gesture that said, “And?” Her face looked expectant.

“How can it be me and not me?”

Come on, Lucille, what else could she mean?

Rabbit waved her hands, “Go on.”

“Me and not me,” Lucille repeated.

Rabbit turned and pointed down at the symbols she'd written in the dirt.
A friend is here now.

Krys clapped her hands. “I got it! She's talking about
Frank!
”

Rabbit grinned, made a joyous grunt and ran to embrace Krys so hard that she lifted the taller girl's feet off the ground.

“Frank?” Lucille whispered.

Rabbit turned around and nodded. The goofy grin on her face froze the moment she locked eyes with Lucille.

“Frank?” Lucille's voice sounded low and hoarse, clawing its way through muscles that were taut enough to strangle them. I felt her clenched fists, and felt her pulse throb in our neck. “You heard
Frank
?”

Rabbit nodded slowly, her smile boiling away like a snowdrift before an angry dragon.

Krys's face showed a growing alarm. I didn't blame her. Lucille's anger was not to be trifled with, and that was only partly because she recently played the role of a dragon. Krys took a half step forward and said, “Your Highness—”

Lucille silenced her by raising one hand and glancing in her direction. She didn't even move her head.

Why doesn't that ever work for me?

“You're telling me that you've heard my wife . . . husband . . . Frank?”

Rabbit nodded.

“How?” Lucille said.

Rabbit stared a couple of moments before slowly shaking her head and giving the barest of shrugs.

“You don't know how.”

Rabbit spread her hands helplessly. I felt sorry for her.

“You don't—” Lucille bit off her own words. “When?
When
did you hear him?”

Rabbit immediately pointed up, and then lowered her arm to point below the horizon.

“What in the Seven Hells does that mean?” Lucille snapped.

“Your Highness—”

Lucille spun around to Krys. “What!”

“She's pointing at the sun . . .”

“And that . . . oh.”

“She's saying that she heard him about the time you both woke up. Sun just below the horizon, through the trees there.”

Rabbit nodded at Krys.

“When we woke . . .” Lucille sighed, and I felt all the tension drain from our body. I suddenly realized where her thoughts were leading her.

No! Lucille! I'm really here!

“I'm sorry I yelled at you,” Lucille said to Rabbit. “This wasn't your fault.”

Rabbit cocked her head and furrowed her brow in confusion.

“We're all under a lot of stress,” Lucille said. “But we should get back on the road to Fell Green. Time's still slipping away.”

As she turned away from them to gather her horse, I caught Krys and Rabbit exchanging a confused glance out of the corner of our eye.

“Lucille?”

She looked back over her shoulder at Krys.

“What about Frank?”

Yes. What about me?

“Krys? You know.”

“No. I don't.”

Lucille turned back around to face Rabbit and spoke in a voice that was little above a whisper. “You don't hear him now, do you?”

You hear me!
I mentally screamed at her.
Here I am! You hear me! Of course you hear me!

Rabbit shook her head “no.”

“No,” Krys said. “No. You're wrong. He's still here.” She grabbed Rabbit's shoulders and said, “He's still here!”

“It was a dream, Krys,” Lucille said. “She just dreamed what she wanted to hear. What we all wanted to hear.”

Rabbit! Tell her she's wrong!

Instead Rabbit reached up and hugged Krys. She shook her own head, but I could tell that she was just as convinced as Lucille was.

I'm here damn it!

But if I was, why couldn't Rabbit hear me now?

•   •   •

Lucille's trio rode on most of the morning in silence, leaving me alone with my thoughts. I didn't
feel
dead. Not that I would have any clue what that would feel like. I had just assumed that death was such a disruptive change that you couldn't help but realize when it happened.

I don't know why I had expected it to conform to my expectations, no other aspect of my existence ever had.

Still, despite my inability to act or move under my own volition, I wasn't some disembodied spirit. I was very bodied. I could feel Lucille's armor chafing the inside of our thighs as we rode. I felt the fancy braided hairdo, left over
from the banquet, tugging against our scalp. I felt trails of sweat dripping down the center of our chest, spreading to make the underside of our boobs itch.

I felt us breathe. I felt us sigh. I felt the corners of our eyes burn as we blinked our tears away.

I found the atmosphere so depressing that I almost felt relieved when an arrow shaft sprouted from the path ahead of us.