“It didn’t?” she asked with feigned shock though she was secretly pleased by his honesty.
“I most objected to you laughing at me.”
“Poor Sir Hugh.”
“Do you wish to hear my uncle’s response?”
“Yes, please.”
“He said your father particularly requested that I accompany you and the boy to Bernada. Uncle decided that suited him, for it seemed a fit punishment for my little misdemeanor.”
“Little!” Then Samara’s thoughts flew to other suspicions. She pulled away, her thoughts churning. “Why would my father want you to accompany us? Why not any other knight? There were plenty at the castle.”
A warning shout pierced through Samara’s confusion.
Jack, yelling, pointed to something on land.
Chapter 6
On a nearby cliff top, sat the grey. Wings folded, from gleaming golden orbs, the dragon observed Samara, Sir Hugh and Jack in the lake.
With a firm hand about her waist, Sir Hugh hauled her toward shore. “Jack, head for land, over there,” he shouted.
“I can swim,” she sputtered, but by then he had her up onto the grassy shore. Jack scrambled and ran toward them and they all grabbed their half-dried clothes and scuttled to the safety of tree cover.
“You were right,” Sir Hugh said. “It wants something. I’ve never seen a dragon act so contrary. Difficult to gauge what it will do next, which makes it hard to know how to take it down.”
He seemed to be speaking more to himself than to either her or Jack. Samara ignored his muttering, and concentrated on getting herself dressed as quickly as she could. It also helped avoid being distracted by his well-formed shape as he slipped on his hose. The man was so perfectly designed.
Why couldn’t he be hairy or have an unsightly mole on his muscled behind? He would be so much easier to resist.
Focus, Samara. Dragon. Danger!
She turned her back to both of him and Jack and donned her kirtle over her wet shift – no easy task – and then firmly pulled at the strings to tie it up.
Jack donned his hose and tunic as he spoke. “Samara, can a duck talk to its ducklings? That mother duckling seemed to do so in the lake.”
“Of course. That’s how she teaches them about what safe and what’s dangerous.” Having finished dressing, she knelt to clean off his sandy feet and pull up his mid-calf leather boots. “Why do you ask?”
“Could another dragon talk to that grey?”
“The last thing we need is another dragon to show up,” Sir Hugh said. “That would complete this disaster.”
“Come along,” she said to Jack and followed the knight who led the way back to the path. When she didn’t hear the boy’s footsteps behind her, she turned to see what delayed him. Jack was running back toward the shoreline.
“Jack, come back here,” she called, panic streaking through her veins.
From the shore, he glanced at her and then up at the dragon. Then he began to change shape.
“Jack, no, you mustn’t!” she shouted, running up to him.
Sir Hugh came after them both. “What’s happening?”
She skidded to a stop as the boy’s arms evolved into wings, leathery ones that extended out. Then his feet grew thick and scaly, and his whole body expanded. In the space of a few moments, a dip formed on the shore where once there had been grass, bushes, and rocks. Within that dip, stood a small green dragon.
“How?” Sir Hugh asked. “Why?”
Samara shook her head. “My fault. I told him last night that if we knew what the dragon wanted; we might be able to stop it razing the villages. To find that out, he must have reasoned that he needed to be speak to it.”
“That’s why he asked if a duck can talk to its ducklings,” Sir Hugh said. “He wondered if he could talk to the dragon if he was one, too.”
With a flutter of wings, Jack rose into the air. He faltered and then gained altitude with each stroke. In midair, he seemed to lose control, and his wings, beating one after the other instead of in unison. He began to fall.
Luckily, the boy had moved over the lake. She quickly wove a spell on the water’s surface to catch him safely when he crashed. As Jack touched the water, the grey swooped to snatch him up in her claws.
“No!” Samara shouted.
The dragon, Jack held firmly in her grip, rose up to wing her way across the blue, cloudless sky.
Samara’s heart pounded in fright as she watched, too stunned to know how to get the boy back without the dragon’s claws injuring him.
“We must follow,” she said, trying to think past the sluggish soup of her thoughts. “We mustn’t lose him. My father would never forgive me.”
“How can we follow a winged creature?” Sir Hugh asked.
“By using another one,” she responded and ran to the edge of the lake until the water lapped about her feet.
She closed her eyes and imagined a hawk, only one a hundred times the size of a normal bird. She’d never cast such a spell before, but hawks she knew well. She’d grown up with many that were her father’s pets.
Her weight lightened and she fluttered her wings. Yes! She turned to call to the knight. “Come.”
The word came out as a loud screech.
She wobbled onto land and knelt before him, extending her right wing. He shook his head as if in disbelief, then with a laugh, ran around the wing and jumped onto her back. With a firm grip on her neck feathers, he gestured for her to take off.
It took Samara a few running steps to gain the momentum to rise into the air. Once up, she straightened her feet to lie flat against her body as her father’s hawks did while in flight. She extended her tail feathers and flapped her wings until she caught the wind. She soared, tilting to catch the draft and allowed it to lift her higher.
Over her shoulder, Sir Hugh extended his arm, pointing. Her eyes followed that direction to the silhouette of the grey winging its way to a clifftop. The dragon was listing on her wounded side and Samara prayed the grey wouldn’t drop Jack.
Thankfully, she soon landed on the cliff and ran into a cave entrance with the boy now held in her mouth.
Samara followed, trying to gain height.
How could she have been so careless? If the dragon killed Jack, how would she explain it to her father? Would he believe her if she said she had meant the boy no harm? The day before she left, she’d said she wanted to throttle the child.
She beat her wings furiously, pushing herself to the last vestiges of her strength. Her sides ached from Sir Hugh’s weight. Her wing beats began to lag, and her breaths became labored.
“You’re tiring,” Sir Hugh called out. “If you go near a landing spot, I can jump off and climb the rest of the way up.”
Her wings faltered, and she beat harder.
“Just a little further,” Sir Hugh shouted. “There, that ledge, you’re almost there. Don’t give up, Samara. You can do this!”
With heartfelt relief, her hind claws scrabbled on the precipice, but her grip slipped. She tried to grab with her wings, but they were not hands, and weak at that. Feathers stripped off and fluttered into the air, blinding her. She slid downward. Sir Hugh leapt off her back.
“No!” she cried, a squawk of terror as she envisioned him crashing to the ground hundreds of feet below.
She fell, losing control, twirling in midair.
“Don’t give up!” the shout came, and she looked up to see Sir Hugh hanging onto the side of the cliff. He wasn’t dead. He hadn’t fallen.
Relief coursed through her and her thoughts stopped whirling, and her pulse calmed. He was alive. The relief of that knowledge overwhelmed her and showed her how much she’d come to care for him as well as Jack on this extraordinary journey.
In an instant, her thoughts cleared and she knew how to regain her balance.
With a light heart, instead of fighting her fall, she gave herself into it. She spread her wings wide until an updraft caught and lifted her, turning her
right side up with little effort, as if she were no more than a feather swirling in the breeze.
She circled in front of the cliff, coasting more than flying until she regained her strength. Without her passenger’s weight pulling her down, she made it to that ledge without trouble, and changed back to her normal self.
The transformation released a wash of lake water that poured down the cliff face. Past that deluge, Sir Hugh, looking thoroughly drenched, climbed over the ledge.
“Sorry,” she muttered, offering a hand to help him up.
“Are you alright?” he asked, once on his feet. His hands gripped her arms to the point of pain.
“Yes, yes, I’m all right.”
He continued to hold her, looking doubtful.
“I was just weary,” she said. “That was all. It became hard to hold on to such a foreign form. I’ve never changed into a bird before.”
“That was all?” He watched her with continued unease, but his grip eased. “I thought you had given up.” He released her but only so he could use a forefinger to tilt her chin up. “Samara, you must never give up like that. Not ever. Promise me!”
The vehemence behind that odd order surprised her and then touched her deeply, bringing tears. She looked away before he guessed how much his faith in her, and his deep concern, mattered.
She cared for him, but surely, she couldn’t have fallen in love with this knight? A man who admitted that he loved women as freely as he chose sweets?
She pulled away and hurried to a cave entrance. “We must find the boy. I cannot return home otherwise.”
“Cannot, or will not?” Sir Hugh asked.
She would have gone into the cave, but he moved her aside, insisting on entering first, his sword drawn.
The corridor was wide and tall, suitable for a dragon to swiftly move through. At one point, the passageway split in two and Samara suggested they follow the one that had bones piled along the edges. Halfway down that corridor, Sir Hugh stopped, drawing in a harsh breath.
“What is it?” she asked.
He pointed, tumbling some bones aside with his booted foot. Beneath, Samara saw a bent and dented shield with the King of Glinnia’s emblem on it.
“Your friend’s?” she asked in a gentle voice, remembering the knight that this dragon was reputed to have killed.
“It had better not have harmed Jack,” Sir Hugh ground out. “Or I will take great pleasure in tearing it apart limb by limb.”
“Her,” Samara corrected, absently.
He continued forward as if he hadn’t heard, his shoulders bunched and fists clenched.
Samara shivered at the stark fury in his posture and hoped her strength had returned enough to protect him as best she could if, nay, when, a full out battle between dragon and knight ensued.
The sound of grunts and snarls from further on suggested they had chosen the right pathway to follow. The route led to a wider opening, one filled with more bones, some old and broken, others with flesh still clinging to them. The foul stench was as revolting as the sight. Samara tried not to picture the bones as belonging people who had been alive not so long ago. It could be from animal carcasses. Some of those bones looked like antlers.
In the center of this cave, the grey dragon paced its length, scattering bones across the floor with each swish of its tail, while a younger dragon, Jack, thank the stars he still breathed, sat. The boy let out a series of grunts and snarls aimed at the grey.
“He’s alive!” she whispered to Sir Hugh.
“Stay back,” he cautioned her, and inched his way toward the smaller green dragon.
Catching wind of his movement, the grey swung around with an angry cry. It lifted its neck as if readying to spew fire, but Jack ran to place himself between the grey and them. He then called out something to the other dragon.
Samara watched in amazement as the grey hesitated and then lowered her head. She was listening to Jack!
Only then did Jack turn to face Sir Hugh and Samara.
He spread his wings wide. As they watched, he shrank and transformed until he stood before them as a boy again, a pile of sand and grass and twigs gathered about his feet.
“Don’t hurt her,” he said. “She’s been wounded enough.”
“Stand aside, Jack,” Sir Hugh said, murderous intent in his eyes.
“No!” Jack held his arms wide. “Don’t hurt her.”
“She killed Sir Oliver,” Sir Hugh spat. “Today, she will pay the price for that mistake.”
“He killed her mate,” Jack said, stepping sideways to match Sir Hugh’s movements, keeping himself between knight and dragon. “She was angry and grieving. She didn’t know what she was doing.”
“It is a marauding dragon, boy, who has had a taste of human flesh. Do as I say and let me finish her. It.”
“She needs our help, Sir Hugh,” Jack said. “You mustn’t kill her. Samara, please, talk to him.”
“Jack, Sir Hugh is right,” Samara said. “That is a dangerous creature. Now come here by me.”
“No. Her name is Salashisha and she is a mother. Someone’s stolen her egg.” He looked at Samara with a pleading expression. “After Sir Oliver killed her mate, she went after the knight. While she was out, she thinks someone stole in here and took her egg. She doesn’t mean anyone harm anymore. She’s sorry she killed him. She was heartbroken and lashed out without thinking. Now she just wants to find her egg.”
Samara listened to the boy’s tale in wonder. “Is that why she searches every place she attacks?”
“Do not tell me you are softening toward this monster,” Sir Hugh said. “Help me get the boy away so I can stop her from ever killing again.”
“Is there any way we can find the egg?” Jack ignored Sir Hugh, his attention focused solely on Samara. The stubborn boy still kept shuffling to keep himself between the knight and his prey.
Though the grey dragon watched the interplay with keen interest, it did nothing more. How odd.
“Sir Hugh,” she said, “perhaps we should listen to Jack. If the dragon truly wished to kill, we should all surely be dead by now, especially Jack. Why has it not attacked? The boy could be speaking true.”
“It killed my friend,” Sir Hugh repeated, looking at her with obvious frustration.
“He apparently killed her mate,” Samara finished in a gentle voice. “If someone were to harm me, would you not seek retribution?”
“She’s very sad,” Jack added, despondently.
Sir Hugh hesitated, looking with uncertainty from Samara to Jack.
“As sad as I was to leave my parents,” Jack continued, “only I know that one day I can go home. Her mate is dead. She can never see him again. She just wants her egg back. She has no family left.”
Samara looked at Sir Hugh who shook his head. Then his shoulders dropped. Resigned, he lowered his sword to his side and stood for a long moment looking at the grey, then at Jack, and finally at Samara. The fury and fight had left him
He nodded to both of them, and Samara breathed a sigh of utter relief, gazing at him with surprise. This was not the knight who had thirsted after killing dragons not two nights ago. Who so badly wanted to avenge his friend’s killing. Who had railed at his uncle for sending him on this child-minding chore instead of going on the dragon hunt. Now, he was ready to allow the grey to go unharmed merely on Samara and Jack’s word?
The man amazed her at every turn.
As if understanding her confusion, he shrugged. “If the boy’s right, and if the grey’s a female, then it’s against the code of a knight to harm a lady.”
Samara laughed at that preposterous logic. Sir Hugh, though he would never admit it, was bowing to Jack and Samara’s sentimental judgment on this matter. Her heart warmed to him for that concession.
The dragon lowered her head, and Samara realized that as tense as she and Jack might have been with Sir Hugh’s adamant insistence on killing the grey, the dragon, too, had been waiting to hear the knight’s verdict. The loweri
ng of his sword had soothed her fears, too.
Jack moved closer to Samara, still keeping his attention on Sir Hugh as if unsure the knight had truly given up the fight.
“Will she allow us all to leave, Jack?” Samara asked. “Including you?”
“We’re not leaving the boy here,” Sir Hugh said in a hard voice. “You can tell her that.”
“She will let us go,” Jack said, “but first, Samara, would you please do her a favor?”
Samara glanced from the boy to the dragon, wondering how she could possibly assist a dragon. Whatever it was, she would gladly do it, not only because Jack asked, but in honor of her mother’s love of dragons.
“What does she need from me?”
Chapter 7
“Would you cast that spell you did when you came to the castle?” Jack asked. “You remember, the green sparkles to find me? I tried to, but I couldn’t make it work properly. It kept flying around the room and lighting on the bones.”
What a clever boy to have thought of that. She focused on the dragon, and with a wave of her hand, cast the seek out spell. Instead of leading Samara outside, her magical light swooped to a corner of the cave stacked high with bones, glowed green.
“See, that’s what my spell did, too,” Jack said.
Samara chuckled, for she knew her magic better than Jack, who was very new to the craft. Unlike the boy, she understood exactly what her magic was telling her. Walking over to the stack of bones, she shoved them aside.
The grey looked at her a moment and then reached out with her snout to assist Samara. The heap of bones scattered and clattered as they fell away. At the bottom, was a golden egg.
The grey crooned in delight and rolled the egg forward with reverence. She checked it over, every inch, ensuring it was intact. Then, she glanced toward them.
Samara grinned at the dragon’s sheepish expression.
Jack laughed.
Dragons and Mages: A Limited Edition Anthology Page 151
