The Dragons' Chosen (16 page)

“She’s not here. I’ll check the base of the mountain.”

Another responded, a baritone. “Not her, too proud and too clever. She hasn’t gone into a swoon. If I were her, I would have taken refuge in the caves.”

“I told you we should not do it this way,” another voice inserted.

A deep voice responded, “This is how it has always been done. They are always left here, at the carved stone post.”

“And what did Grandmama say about that? You know what was said about her mother.”

The deep voice growled, “We’re all aware of that story. There’s no need for you to bring it up again.”

“Well, I just thought maybe…”

“Enough.”

“At the very least, we should have brought your sister. Our princess might have been comforted seeing another lady.”

“It’s a little late to think about that. And our princess didn’t wait around long enough to be introduced, did she?”

A tenor spoke up. “Look, this is not an auspicious start. Now we’re going to have to track the princess down.”

“And how do you figure we do that?”

No one answered, and I felt a surge of hope. Maybe this was it. They would give up and go back to wherever they came from.

Another voice echoed up to us: “Poor little thing, probably somewhere in those caves, afraid and lost.”

The baritone spoke again with a surety that raised bumps on my arms. “Not this one. She’s no one’s fool. She’ll come out of her own accord. And, my brothers, when she does, we had better be prepared.”

I tried to place that voice, a voice I couldn’t possibly know, but did.

The voices trailed away. I knew that baritone. Where had I heard him before? I scrabbled over to Chris and looked at the border on her metal card. Even in the shadowed light, I could see those weren’t flying birds engraved into the background. They were dragons. And the pattern, it was the same as was on my knife, the one given to me by Trill, our sweet-voiced traveling bard. And—oh yes—the
nice
man who had rescued me from the wolves; his sword also had the same pattern engraved upon it. I dug my fingernails into the palm of my hand as the realization came to me. All the pieces tied together. I knew why he had barely spoken, why he kept his head down.

I would know him. They were one and the same.

What game was this that these men were playing? I was not here to be eaten by dragons, but for what? What possible explanation could there be for this deception?

My thoughts still spun from the potion and my head pounded. I needed rest and time to think this through. Then I would face the men
and
the dragons.

Chapter 22

It had been a long, unpleasant night. I spent too much time sobbing both from relief and from the fear of what was to come with the morning. I was stripped of my defenses, my barriers broken and demolished. My head pounded from the lingering effects of the potion.

Finally, we had fallen into a restless sleep with Chris curled next to me; both of us shivered with the cold, and I was still nauseated from the tonic I had been given.

The flurry of bat wings announced the morning, awakening us to the grim reality of cold stone. The men hadn’t returned.

“How did you find me?” I asked Chris. “Did the captain let you loose?”

Chris hissed, an almost sibilant sound. “You missed quite the little soap opera after you passed out. Tom had almost chortled when Markus paid him his nine pieces of gold. Then while Markus was busy guilt tripping you to drink the potion, Tom, that, that—” here her language became vulgar. I didn’t recognize all of the words but the ones I did were quite rude. She took a breath. “He took George aside and made him an offer. He’d give one of those gold pieces back, if he could have me thrown in. Just tie me up somewhere close and tell the good captain I escaped. He’d come back for me later.

“Or… they might find leaving the Fandrite mountains to be…difficult.”

I shivered at her words. “Oh, Chris.” I reached out and grabbed her hand.

Chris grinned then, a slightly feral smile. “It’s okay, nothing like a little stress to bring out the best in people. Once they rode off with you packaged like some bizarre birthday present, I pulled out my magic card and tried to leave. I couldn’t. George knew what I was trying to do. He walked over, winked and slapped me.” She wriggled her jaw as if remembering. “That did it, just as he knew it would. I was back in Berkeley with a reddened face.”

“Oh, my.”

Chris said, “Wished I could have seen the captain’s face when he returned.”

I nodded, stating the obvious, “George knew you would find me. He was giving you a chance, giving both of us a chance. Thank you. I owe you much. Upon my honor, I had no idea that you’d be at risk.”

Chris shrugged. “No big thing. You would have done the same for me if I were being attacked by dragons or pod people or blood-sucking creatures from Mars.”

I held out my hand as to an equal, and she grasped it. No matter how alien her words, no matter where she was from, Chris was my friend, my ally.

We both jumped at the sounds of scraping and thumping on a ledge of rock not far away. I made out a faint silhouette rimmed with a fiery glow as a rank odor reached my nose. Chris and I shrank back into a stone hollow until the noise shuffled off.

Chris whispered in my ear. “What was that?” We both listened.

I picked myself up, shuddering. “Please, no more dangers. Whatever it is, it stinks. I don’t wish to meet up with it in a cave. Quickly, we need to move in case it returns.”

We set off to explore the dark labyrinth-like caves, crouching over as we inched through a narrow corridor, never going too far for fear of getting lost. We stumbled around in the flickering light carrying a single torch, following the rushing sound of water until we found a glorious stream that pooled in a rock cleft. Chris pulled out a coarsely woven cloth bag embroidered with letters spelling out “Northface” and sat cross-legged beside me. From within the bag she drew forth supplies brought from her world of Berkeley: foodstuffs, more of her odd clothing and—blessedly—a hair brush. We drank and tidied ourselves up as best as we could, debating how to approach the situation. As I braided my hair into a single thick plait, Chris railed against the strictures of dragons and men and power, all that she guessed was tied up in this.

Below, dragon bugles bounced from floor to cavern ceilings, causing rocks to ravel down unexpectedly. They were here with us inside the dark bowels of this mountain. We had to face this: find the dragons, the men with them and unveil the secrets that brought us here.

With those few hours of sleep and no longer nauseous, I felt more in control.

Chris and I stumbled out onto a ledge where we could hear the dragons lumbering below us, trumpeting. Still the men hadn’t returned. It wasn’t comforting. I believed they weren’t here to harm me, but what if I was wrong? Each time I prepared to descend, the deep rock-shattering noises of the dragons shook my resolve.

Earlier that day Chris had agreed with me, saying, “Making a bad decision is better than making no decision at all. We can’t stay here forever.” But now that we were closer, hearing the dragons, feeling the reverberations through the rock as they stomped below, and smelling the sulfur fumes from their breath, she reconsidered. “Except when it comes with the possibility of being eaten by large fire-breathing monsters that should be imaginary.” She closed her eyes, reopening them rapidly as a loud trumpeting call seemed to scale the walls.

My gaze rested on a flight of steps carved into the stone that led down to what looked like an open cavern, part of the ceiling broken out to sky. Two torches, now beginning to sputter and smoke, lit the way. Chris shook her head at my look. “Don’t go down the stairs. You know, like in the movies when the heroine hears all the weird noises in the basement and she opens the basement door and starts down. Then the scary music starts.” Chris grinned at me, “Okay, maybe you don’t know, but trust me, no one in
my
world would go down there.”

“I’m not of your world. I want answers and that’s where they are. You heard the dragons. I’ll not return home and have these creatures terrorizing the countryside. And where are the men we heard?” For all my brave words, my heart was pounding, thumping against my bodice as I spoke. Each dragon’s call that I heard and felt through the rocks made my heart clench in fear.

From somewhere below, the dragons’ bugling slammed again against the cave walls. Their fire blasted across the cave, scorching the walls and spraying them with red and orange flames. We both cringed and shrank back.

I whispered, “They’re right below us. Right down these stairs.”

Chris grabbed my arm, whispering, “Look, we can turn back. I’ll create a diversion and you can be gone.”

“Be gone where?” I objected, whispering back.

“Away, anywhere away. You know, like not here, surrounded by dark and stone with lizards crawling around below us. Very large flying lizards,” she amended, “that are annoyed and hunting us.”

“They don’t know where we are.” I waved my hand at the lowly lit cavern. “These caves seem enormous, probably larger then my family’s whole castle, with tunnels spilling out everywhere. Noise is hard to locate and we’re quiet.” The dragons called out again, spewing flames. “They sound so agitated.”

“Maybe they’re hungry. After all, they missed a meal,” Chris said.

At my shocked expression, she retracted her words. “Sorry, bad joke.”

I started to bite my lip and then quickly caught myself. “Perhaps we
should
wait for those men to return. Once outside of the caves we’d be like rabbits to a hawk. I’m not leaving until I understand what this is about. We heard men last night, and now they are gone. I’m certain they will return.”

Chris peered out into the cacophony of noise. “Maybe the dragons are like horses, trained to be ridden, like in that Anne McCaffrey book. Maybe that’s why the men were here.”

I nodded, swallowing a catch in my throat as I tried to hide my fear. “Perhaps.” I rubbed my forehead with my thumbs. “I’m not eager to rush down among those animals either. But I need to understand what awaits me.”

My stomach rumbled and I was momentarily distracted. “Do you have any more of those little round sweet things?”

Chris rummaged through her pocket, pulling out an assortment of coins and crinkled papers. “I think we ate all the M&M’s last night.”

We sat companionably in the low light, pretending that all was well.

Below us, the dragons bellowed and trumpeted. Chris crept to the edge of the wall and flattened herself on the cave floor, trying to get a better view into the cavern below. I sat nearby, unwilling to prostrate myself. We peered between the rocks again. The noise got louder with the banging, stomping and the whooshing sound of huge wings. They moved into view, first one and then more. Huge monsters, the same as I had seen in the sky but a few weeks before. But so much closer.

One shifted, snaking his head upward and unfurling his wings in the huge cavern below. Another turned, reaching high to rake his claws upon the stone wall. As I watched stones ravel down and closed my eyes against the sight. I felt my heart pound against my ribcage.

Chris shook her head. “I’m definitely not going down there.”

...

Evening came. Chris and I shivered as we watched from our hiding place. Below us, the air spun about the dragons, shiny specks of light amidst a massive swirl of colors. Scales obscured, their dragon bodies hidden within a cloak of colored dust. As the air resolved itself, five men appeared, their skin shimmering with the change. Five men with the glow of scales and the sparkle of light surrounding them as the dust settled beneath their feet. Five naked men who stretched and shrugged in their changed bodies as they donned leather tunics and breeches. I drew in a breath, unable to comprehend what I had just seen; trying to make sense of the broad expanses of chest and muscled legs that seemed to appear and disappear within the dust and light. Humans: men who could change into dragons and back again. I was afraid to blink, or to turn my head, that they might vanish before me. Here I was, staring while naked men dressed, and I was too startled to be embarrassed.