Heart of Light (37 page)

And, if it were so, Nassira's eyes had now been freed from scales, and she saw clearly for the very first time. She saw the Hyena Men for what they were: people motivated by anger and revenge, who would achieve nothing more for their land than to make it an imitation of the English land, with its all powerful queen, its strong noblemen, its dispossessed peasants and its despoiled countryside.

And she saw Kitwana as he truly was—a proud, heartless man, possessed of a desire for power that would make him the king of all of Africa, as powerful and unique in his magical ability as the legendary ancestor-king of European monarchies. Or the ruler of the whole world. He had ambition and pride enough for that. Cold, shocked, she shook her head. Why had she served this cause? Why had it ever seemed just? She, whom all of the Masai accounted untamable, had allowed herself to believe in an organization and to be tamed by it. An organization that was shadowy and obscure in its reach, and of which she knew no more than a half-dozen people. She, who'd always known her mind to be the equal of any man's, had allowed men to order her around.

It was as though another Nassira, one she loathed, had moved into her body and lived for her these last years. But no more. Nassira would again be as she'd always been: a strong, unbowed woman, the equal of every warrior, the protector of every helpless person. She was through with the Hyena Men, but she had nowhere to go. And before she left, she would save Nigel as she should have saved her Kume. She would not let this one die, a victim to other people's theories and illusions. Her decision made, Nassira scrambled away from dragon and men, and all the commotion, toward the tent in which Nigel slept.

He slept still—a witness either to his despair or to his sound conscience—a straggle of blond hair protruding from the blanket the only visible mark of his presence.

She shook him. No response.

She pulled the blanket away. He wore dark red silk pajamas, and as he sat up, blinking, confused, she noticed his monogram upon the pajamas pocket.
NAO
. Why? Was he afraid his pajamas would get confused with those of the tramping multitudes of Englishmen crossing his path?

The monogram was distorted by a lump in the pocket. He slept with the compass stone. So much the better. She had no intention of leaving it for the fools at the camp or letting Kitwana use it in his grab for glory.

“Wha—” he started.

She shook her head at him. “No time. You must come now.”

As she spoke she reached for his wrist and pulled him upright, then dragged him away.

Outside, he noticed the dragon, the commotion. He looked over his shoulder and said something that included the words
Peter
and
Emily
.

“They're fine,” Nassira said, and pulled harder, dragging him by the force of her despair. “They'll be fine without you. You must save yourself for once.”

He tried to resist, but she waved her lance under his nose. Then she grabbed his hand and started running, forcing him to run, too.

It wasn't until they were well away in the bush, running amid low-growing trees and thornbushes, that she realized she'd spoken to him in Masai. And yet he followed her. She looked over her shoulder and saw his eyes wild and intent.

And realized he thought he'd been kidnapped and dragged into the jungle by a crazy native.

DRAGON'S BLOOD

Everything happened too quickly. Much too quickly
for Emily's confused mind.

The dragon overhead was savage, dangerous—a creature of fire that thirsted for blood. But the dragon was also Peter, and she loved Peter. At least Emily thought so. And Kitwana, lifting his lance, would kill the dragon. Was he defending her?

She grabbed at Kitwana's arm, her hands clenched on his dark, smooth skin. She felt muscles spring beneath her hands as he lifted her off her feet, yet still the lance flew. Crooked.

“It is a beast,” he yelled at her, his words coming with a thick clanging accent she'd never heard before. “It will kill us.”

But Emily shook her head and held on to his arm as her gaze followed the path of the lance flying above, till it sank into the scaly dragon's breast, just beneath the neck, where the shoulder joint for the forelimb and wing hinged.

Something wet sprayed down. Blood. The dragon blinked, its mouth opened and trumpeted. A thin wisp of flame flew, parting the throng of carriers. The dragon keened, then fluttered, listed, struggled to regain altitude.

The dragon above trumpeted again, but its scream sounded less like a dragon now and more like a human in mortal pain. It looked down with fearful eyes on Kitwana, who was leveling yet another lance at its chest. The enormous teeth gleamed and snapped.

Emily sprang. “No!” she yelled. “It is defenseless. It would be cowardly.”

Through the corner of her eye, she saw the dragon losing altitude, tilting like an ill-balanced kite and then falling heavily from the sky. It fell to the dusty ground and writhed while twenty carriers, full of valor now that the creature was down, approached with powersticks and burning embers from the camping fire. This was why Kitwana had wanted to camp here, in this open space. So it would be easier to corner the dragon.

The dragon retained enough strength to snap and flame at its tormentors—a weak flame. It roared and grunted and moaned as sticks stabbed it and swords sliced it.

Emily's mind was a muddle of thoughts, questions and images she knew weren't real and yet that seemed more real than the image of the dragon plunging down. In her mind's eye she saw Peter—so handsome, so perfect, with his immense, dark green eyes, his mouth so disposed to smiling. And he had become this beast. Was Peter Farewell even within this creature?

Then she noticed Kitwana was not among the dragon's tormentors. Instead he stood nearby, holding his lance, a look of fierce concentration on his face. She ran to him barefoot, her white nightgown billowing in the warm night wind. “You must help Peter,” she pleaded. “You must.”

Kitwana glowered, and shook Emily away.

The other men ignored her as well. Though they didn't hurt her, they also didn't obey her. She might as well have been invisible. They crowded around the dragon with their lances. Points thudded into flesh, the dragon keened. Fine sprays of blood stained Emily's nightgown.

She heard Kitwana mutter something that sounded like a spell. She looked at his moving lips and realized that he had a power so large and so strange that she'd never fully recognized it as magic before. She now understood Peter Farewell's comments.

So Kitwana was a great magician. But why was he here? Then she realized he was performing magic, setting a killing spell on the lance.

“No!” she yelled.

He ignored her. His lips moved. She couldn't reach his uplifted arm to pull the spear out of his hand. Spreading her arms out to make herself as large a barrier as possible and placing herself between the men the dragon, Emily yelled at the carriers and at Kitwana beyond them. “You cannot kill him without killing me also!”

Kitwana looked shocked, his eyes widened as he stared at her. Some part of her that retained the proper mind and manners of an English gentlewoman protested that she was acting like a madwoman, but she did not care. She danced backward, upon rock and sand, to stand so close to the dragon that she could feel its breath upon her legs—like a deep wind saturated with that slightly spicy smell that Peter always exuded.

Was it the smell of a dragon? Should she have known? Or was it Peter's smell, subsisting in this creature, like the trace of a trapped human soul?

Then Kitwana's look changed, anger replacing surprise. He pushed through the crowd toward Emily, his face pulsating with fury.

“Are you insane?” he yelled, and followed with a succession of ever-louder words that Emily could not understand.

His eyes narrowed, his features contorted. He looked for the first time like the savages depicted in the woodcuts that ornamented accounts of African exploration. He raised his hand and screamed at her again—a torrent of incomprehensible sounds that reverberated like drums in her ears.

Then something within Emily snapped—grown from her sense of betrayal by everyone she'd trusted, transmuting her grief into anger. The way her father had treated her, the way her husband had treated her, even the way that Peter and Kitwana had treated her. She was tired of being bullied by men who told her they knew better. She was through with being ordered and lied to and told she was just a frail woman with a childish mind. They were all childish, all of them, to think they could order her around.

“No,” she told Kitwana. “I do not care if he is the enemy. He is injured. Do you not have rules of quarter and rules of proper fight? We do not attack injured creatures that cannot defend themselves. Not creatures that can think. Not creatures that are human in any way. At any time.”

Her words seemed to mean more to Kitwana than they meant to her. He frowned, and held his lance half-raised, but he could not command the look of anger he'd shown before. He put his arm down, took a deep breath.

“Lady,” he said, sounding like sweet reason itself, “get out of the way. It's a man killer. It
eats
men. Do you understand that? We must kill the killer before it kills again.”

Emily heard the words. She even understood them. She could see this beast behind her, this creature of dark beauty and chilling menace, pursuing unfortunates in the underbrush. She was sure this had happened before. But all that could not change the fact that this creature was, in some way, Peter Farewell.

The carriers resumed harrying the beast. Emily felt the rush of warm air as the dragon panted at her back.

Oh, what did it matter what he had done? He could be changed. She was sure of it. There was much good in Peter, such an understanding mind behind his gaze, such kindness in his words. Surely he could be reformed. “Stop. I don't care what he's done! This is a human being.”

“There is no human mind in there,” Kitwana said. “Weres aren't human once the beast takes over.” He gestured with his lance toward the dragon. “That is not your friend. It's not anybody's friend. It does not even remember its human life when the hunger takes it.”

Emily took a deep breath. “He's not attacking me.”

And, turning, she looked into the huge muzzle of the creature she'd seen from the carpetship. She remembered it then, that vision of beauty and menance gliding silently through the skies above the watery abyss, while its magic made the carpet tremble beneath Emily's feet.

Even then, she'd been scared. Now she stood less than a handsbreadth from the creature and could feel its breath. She could see the light glint from sword-long teeth, whose ivory shone red with the blood of carriers it had wounded defending itself.

She had to touch the dragon. Only that would convince Kitwana of the creature's intentions. But she feared the ferocious glint in its eyes, the half-narrowed, reptilian eyelids. Yet the deep sea-green eyes could have been Peter's.

She stretched out her hand. The space between her hand and that muzzle seemed an endless distance.

The creature didn't move, but the cuscurations of light that ran along its huge, awkwardly-folded wings increased in tempo, the pinpoints of light chasing each other faster to the rhythm of the beast's great unseen heart.

Kitwana's lance remained lodged just above that heart, and blood gushed around the embedded wood, pouring onto the ground. A pellicle, like a milky-white veil, blinked in front of the dragon's eyes once, and then again. It was bleeding too much, too fast. It would die without help. Emily was sure of it, as she was sure that she must help.

She extended her hand, trembling, feeling sweat roll down her forehead and sting her eyes. Her fingers touched the tip of muzzle, warm and pulsing, and the dragon made a low rumble in its throat.

“Leave him alone,” Emily yelled at the carriers. “You can see he is human. He knows me. We have no right to take his life.”

Kitwana yelled, too, something rapid and alien. The carriers responded with a rumble of protest.

Kitwana raised his lance. “This is a spelled lance—spelled by me, with my own power—to take the dragon's life.” He stood apart from the carriers and his lance threatened them all. “Who opposes me and risks the lance taking his life?”