Master of Dragons (4 page)

Ven had seen the
light of love burst into flame the first moment Evelina had set her blue eyes
on Marcus. Well, maybe not love’s light. Knowing Evelina, it was most likely
the light gleaming off Prince Marcus’s golden crown.

Ven pressed his
hand over the wound to try to stop the bleeding.

That’s why she
stabbed me,
he reflected.
She was afraid I would tell Marcus the truth
about her, that she was not the poor, mistreated victim of my brutal advances.
That she deliberately seduced me in order to trap me. That she sold me to a
traveling circus to be exhibited to the gaping wonder of the crowd.

She believes me
to be dead—I made sure of that. Evelina will be sitting pretty now, thinking
she’s safe and secure, able to snare Marcus in her web, bind him with her
silken lies and sting him with the poison of her lips, paralyzing him into
stillness so that she can suck him dry.

Maybe. Maybe
not.

Ven wondered if
Marcus had told her that he’d communicated with his brother, that Ven was
alive.

In his brother’s
place, Ven would not have said anything to Evelina, and he doubted that Marcus
would. Both brothers had learned at an early age to keep secrets. The truth was
dangerous, might be disastrous, bringing peril to themselves and those they
loved. Marcus would be slow to trust, reticent about speaking his thoughts
aloud, naturally cautious and reserved.

He would also be
extremely confused. Ven could not help but grin wryly. It served Marcus right.
He had been very quick to believe Evelina’s accusation that Ven was a vicious,
murdering monster. How astonished Marcus must have been when the murdering
monster saved their lives.

I could tell
Marcus my side of the story,
Ven considered, as he gazed lip river.
Marcus might even believe me.

Ven mulled it over
and decided not to. He wasn’t sure exactly why. Guilt was some of it. Evelina
had not entirely lied. He had meant to take her that night in the tall grass
and he would have, if she had not managed to fend him off and wriggle out from
beneath him. And he
was
responsible for the death of her father. She had
not made that up. Ven had not killed Ramone with his own hand—the monks had
done that. But they had murdered him because of Ven.

Part of his
decision not to tell was vindication. Ven felt a certain satisfaction in
thinking that the brother who had grown up pampered and happy and loved should
fall victim to a mercenary little vixen. Ven expected this feeling to be
stronger. Instead, it was uncomfortable. Ven couldn’t say that he loved Marcus,
but he liked his brother, and that was unexpected. Ven had looked forward to
hating Marcus, who’d been given everything in life, while Ven had been given
the back of life’s hand. Instead, Ven found someone who understood, someone who
shared his pain.

And, after all,
maybe his not telling Marcus came down to the simple fact that Ven disliked
interfering. He’d said what he’d needed to say to Marcus and to Evelina. Let
the two of them sort out their lives. He had his own problems.

He was thinking
all this as he stood on the bank, staring at the water, when his thoughts were
jolted back to earth. Voices, heading this direction.

Grald must have
finally lifted the illusion that hid the city gates of Dragonkeep from the
world outside. The monks were coming, somewhat late, to chase after Marcus.
This meant that Grald knew Marcus had escaped. Did the dragon know
how?

“Perhaps the monks
aren’t after Marcus,” Ven said to himself in alarm. “Perhaps they are after me.”

Ven had to retain
Grald’s trust. The only way to slay the dragon was to take him by surprise,
catch him off guard. Grald mustn’t suspect that Ven had anything to do with
Marcus’s escape.

Ven had been
careless—that’s what came of giving way to emotion. Prints of his clawed feet
were everywhere, leading in and out of the water. He cursed himself for not
having the foresight to cover his tracks—Bellona would have made him stand in
the corner for a week in punishment. Hastily, he raked his claws over the
telltale signs, rubbing out the traces that he’d been here.

He didn’t have
much time. The voices were growing louder, and he could hear the monks bumbling
through the woods. He ran lightly and easily on his clawed feet into the trees,
jumping from one grassy hillock to another, making certain that he left no more
tracks.

Once safely hidden
in the wilderness, he paused to consider his next move. His first thought was
to race back to the city, but then the idea came to him that he might learn the
answers to his questions by spying on the monks. He crouched among the foliage
and waited.

Blood trickled
down his side, tickling him. His wound was still bleeding. He pressed his hand
over it and willed it to stop.

Three monks in
their ankle-length brown robes came blundering out of the forest. They were hot
and sweaty and scared, and they peered and poked about. Their eyes, with that
strange half-mad glint, went from ground to water and even sky, as if somewhere
in their confused brains they imagined that their prey might have grown wings
and taken flight.

“They’re not here,”
said one, bewildered.

“What did you
expect?” another asked. He seemed more sane than the rest. His searching had
been more methodical. He’d stared a long time at the footprints. “That they’d
wait around for you?”

“I don’t know.
Maybe.” The other two continued to search, not with hope of finding anything,
but because they didn’t know what else to do.

“The boats are
gone,” one pointed out.

“They used the
boat to escape,” said the lucid monk.

“But
all
the boats are gone,” the first reiterated.

“They set the rest
adrift.”

“Ah!” The monk
seemed to consider this an act of genius, for he stared, wide-eyed, at the
sluggishly flowing water. “I’ll go find them.”

He plunged into
the river, splashing and floundering, his arms flailing. The lucid monk,
shaking his head, waded in to grab hold of his companion and drag him back to
land.

“What do you think
you’re doing?” the monk asked sternly. “You can’t swim. You’ll only end up
drowning yourself.”

The monk shook
free. He cast a look back at the water—a look that was bleak and wistful—and
then he turned away. Ven shivered in the cool shadows and was sorry he’d
stayed.

“What do we do?”
asked the sopping wet monk plaintively. “We can’t go after them. We have no
boats.”

“We go back to
Dragonkeep.”

“What do we tell
Grald?” The monk sounded nervous.

“That we couldn’t
find them. And that there were no boats.”

“Grald will be
angry.”

“Grald is always
angry,” said the leader, and he shrugged.

The three did not
leave immediately, however, as Ven had hoped. The leader stared intently up the
river, as though he were reaching out, searching with his mind. The other two
continued to poke about in a desultory manner.

Ven cursed them
silently and willed them to depart. The mysterious explosion had thrown the
city into confusion and turmoil, but he was afraid that now his absence would
be noticed. He was just thinking he would have to risk slipping off into
wilderness, when the lead monk announced that they should be returning.

“Grald will be
eager for our report.”

“He didn’t seem eager,”
one of the monks muttered. “Otherwise he would have opened the gate when we
first reported that the two escaped.”

“Grald has his
reasons.”

The monk who had
jumped into the river spoke up. “I heard that the dragon did not open the gate
because he feared that the man we’ve been told to find—the one Grald calls ‘Draconas’—
would be lost to him.”

Ven’s ears
pricked. He wanted to hear more. Unfortunately, the monks now began walking
back toward the city. Ven cursed them a second time. His dragon-blood gave him
the ability to hear better than humans, and he stretched his ears to the limit.

“Grald finally did
open the gate,” another monk argued. “So this Draconas must have been caught.”

“He wasn’t,” said
the leader. “We have been told to keep searching for this man. Either for him
or for his corpse. It seems that it was this Draconas who caused the terrible
blast. They still don’t know how many are dead.”

“Why would he do
that?” The monk sounded shocked.

“Because he is our
enemy. Sent to destroy us.”

“Who sent him?”
The other two monks were eager listeners now, avid for news.

“The human king
who has long been a threat to us. Edward, the king of a nation known as
Idylswylde. You mark my words. This means war.”

War against
Idylswylde. War against Marcus and his father. Ven tried to picture an army of
mad monks, and it was so ludicrous that he snorted in derision.

He was much more
interested in finding out what had happened to Draconas.

Ven remembered the
horrific blast. It had reduced the house in which he and Marcus and Evelina had
been to rubble and allowed Marcus and Evelina to escape. Draconas had caused
the blast and Grald was hunting for him. Which meant Draconas must still be
alive.

Once the monks
were well out of earshot, Ven made his way back to the city, hoping to reach it
before anyone noticed that he’d been gone.

ANORA FOUGHT
THROUGH A MIASMA OF BLACK ANGER AND Grald’s raging mixed with her own pain and
blank confusion. She was flat on the floor, lying amidst a heap of cracked
stones and splintered, smoldering timbers. Clouds of dust and smoke obscured
her vision. She coughed and shook her head to clear it of the throbbing and
Grald’s yammering.

“What have you
done?” He was howling, furious. His colors reverberated inside her aching
skull. “You have destroyed half the city and nearly killed me in the process!
And my son? What has become of my son?”

Anora ignored him.
She tried to remember. Draconas! What had become of Draconas? She leapt to her
feet and glanced swiftly about the wreckage of the building. His body must be
here somewhere. He could not have escaped her. He should be dead— human bones
and flesh burned beyond recognition.

A walker had never
yet died while in human form, but the dragons had prepared for that
eventuality. The illusion of the human body remained even in death. Otherwise,
humans might come to know that dragons were spying on them. The dragons would
recover the corpse in secret and then use spells to lift the illusion, so that
the dead could be laid to rest in the bottom of the sea, the traditional dragon
burial site, where all life began and to which all life must eventually return.

What with Grald
yelling at her and shrieking humans swarming about the place and her head
throbbing, Anora found it difficult to concentrate. She grit her teeth and shut
them all out. Draconas was not here and he must be here.

Her illusory body
possessed dragon strength, and the humans watching were amazed to see the pudgy
holy sister lifting up enormous boulders and flinging them aside, heaving huge timbers
out of her way, kicking and clawing at the rubble. They assumed she was
searching for survivors, and they regarded her with awe and admiration.

“Shut up,” she
finally ordered Grald. “Where are you? I need your help!”

“Then you shouldn’t
have dropped a goddam building on top of me!” returned Grald, who tended to use
regrettable human expressions even in his dragon thinking. “It’s a good thing
this human body has a thick skull, otherwise . . .” He paused, seething, then
roared, “What the hell happened? You were supposed to kill Draconas, not level
my city!”

Anora was silent,
her colors smoldering.

“What?” Grald
thundered. “Isn’t he dead?”

“He must be,”
Anora returned coldly. “It’s just ... I can’t seem to find his body.”

“Perhaps it was
blown to bits,” Grald suggested.

“If that were the
case, there would be blood, bone, hunks of flesh. There is nothing. You must
help me search for him.”

“I would like to,”
Grald stated caustically “But at the moment I am buried under a half-ton of
rubble. My magic protected me from harm, but I can’t free myself. The monks are
digging me out, but it’s going to take some time. What about my son? What
happened to Ven? The monks can’t find him and neither can I.”

“Ven was always
adept at keeping his mind hidden from us.” Anora stood in the middle of the
debris, angry and frustrated. “What about his brother? The human prince? He
should be easy enough to locate, and if you have one, you have the other.”

“Not necessarily,”
said Grald. “The human managed to escape.”

“He escaped the
explosion?”

“The city.” Now it
was Grald who was on the defensive.

“How is that
possible?” Anora demanded in disbelief. “The human is strong in dragon-magic,
but not strong enough to penetrate the illusion of the wall. Only another
dragon could do that ...” Her voice trailed off.

“So Draconas
did
escape you,” said Grald grimly. “You destroy half my city for nothing.”

“I did not destroy
the city,” Anora returned crossly. Looking around the ruin in which she was
standing, she was starting to realize what must have happened. “Draconas cast a
counter-spell that caused his magic to clash with mine. It’s a wonder any of us
survived. You must order your monks to search for the Walker,” she added, her
colors sullen. “I believe he is alive after all.”

“Told you so!”
Grald sneered.

The monks were
ordered to search for two humans: the Walker, who wore the guise of a human
male in his thirties, and a human male named Marcus last seen wearing the robes
of a monk. The monks were also told to look for Ven, the dragon’s son, whom
they all knew by sight. Unfortunately, their search for both humans and the
dragon disguised as a human was hampered by the fact that the entire population
of Dragonkeep had been thrown into a state of panic by the blast.