"That's all right. I'll go sit on the balcony." Saba made her way through the kitchen to the balcony door, intending to give Lisa the privacy to emerge from her bedroom without embarrassment. She tried to signal Malcolm to do the same, but the black dragon remained behind, looking around the apartment like a wolf who didn't like that another wolf lingered nearby.
Saba loved Lisa's apartment. Ever since their adventures last summer Saba had been a frequent guest here. Li Na, Lisa's grandmother, had decorated the apartment in shades of red, a lucky color, and punctuated it with antiques brought over from China. There was always a serene hush about the place that was neither dull nor too quiet, more like the peaceful sound of a quiet stream, the air tinkling from the wind chimes in the corner.
Saba stepped alone onto the balcony, drinking in the crisp, clear air and enjoying the view across rooftops to the green trees of the Presidio, the historic army post that was now a park. Saba thought of this balcony as an aerie, a safe place of contemplation both protected and private. Lisa's grandmother and Lisa herself had worked to make the entire apartment a restful haven.
She could also sense the woven strands of Lisa's and Caleb's magic over the entire apartment and even out onto the balcony. She loved feeling their combined magic, but she knew it must be driving Malcolm crazy.
The door opened behind her. She sensed without turning that it was Malcolm even before his strong arms came around her.
"I always feel protected here," Saba said.
His lips warmed her hair. "You do not feel protected in our apartment?"
Our apartment? "Of course I do. I know I'm safe there. But here, I'm at peace."
"At peace. I see."
She couldn't explain that she felt much safety but no restfulness in their—in her apartment. Too much of Malcolm was imprinted on it, she supposed. Malcolm meant heady excitement, worry, and exasperation, not peace. Never peace.
"Why are we here?" she asked.
"I need to show you something."
She didn't get the chance to ask what. The wind chimes inside the apartment jingled and a faint music preceded the presence that was Lisa Singleton.
As always, Saba's witch-sight perceived the shimmering magical field that surrounded Lisa, although Lisa herself seemed unaware of it. Her silver dragon aura was multihued, iridescent colors that wove around her body in a loving dance. She was also eight months pregnant, her abdomen distended, her face round, fingers puffy, but her smile was radiant as ever.
Lisa had dark red hair, courtesy of her Scottish father, and dark brown eyes from her Chinese heritage. A white streak she'd inherited from her grandmother wove through the auburn of her hair. She wrapped Saba in her arms, her hug holding strength and joy.
"It is so good to see you, Saba. Everything's all right, isn't it?" She shot Malcolm a look that told him everything had better be all right.
"I have done Saba no harm," Malcolm answered. "That is not my intention."
"When you demanded to come through two nights ago, you were in a big hurry to see her."
Malcolm inclined his head. "Because of the white dragon, who is proving to be as dangerous as I suspected."
Lisa released Saba, but held her in the protective circle i of her arm. "Do you know why the white dragon is here? Or what he wants?"
"Not yet."
"It's a white dragon," Caleb said behind his wife. "He i wants death and destruction. That's all they ever want."
"I am not so certain," Malcolm mused. "If that were true, he would have acted by now. He's killed one witch and tried to take Saba. He has something in mind, and he obviously needs a witch to help him. The question now is, who?"
"You mean, which witch?" Caleb put in.
Malcolm ignored him. "He'll need someone strong, but one who is not strong enough to fight him off. He made a mistake underestimating my Saba."
Malcolm's endearment wove around Saba and warmed her. "I had to scream for help, remember?" she pointed out. "I had to use the dragon's tears."
"But you successfully avoided his mark," Malcolm said. "Only a very strong witch could do that. He will look for one who cannot avoid his mark but who can work powerful magic nonetheless." He turned to Lisa. "I need you to open the way to Dragonspace for me."
"Again?" Caleb frowned. "Say please."
Malcolm shot him an annoyed look. "Please."
"Why?" Lisa asked.
"I need to find out more about this white dragon, and that answer lies in Dragonspace. Besides which, I need to show Saba something."
Saba started. "You want me to go to Dragonspace with you?"
"You are a witch, you may travel to Dragonspace if you please, and you have gone there before."
"In a limited capacity, when I was roped into keeping an eye on Caleb last year."
"Even so." Malcolm turned away, finished with the argument.
He liked to do that, make a statement that sounded supremely logical and then stop talking. If a person wanted to make a point with him, he forced them to run behind and flag him down.
Malcolm had already entered the living room and started stripping off his clothes by the time the other three caught up to him, as though everything had been decided. Folding jeans and shirt carefully on the end of Lisa's sofa he flexed his arms and stretched them over his head, loosening his beautiful body.
Lisa, used to seeing naked dragons come and go, looked at him without blush or interest. "How long are you likely to be?" she asked.
"Give us twenty-four hours," Malcolm said. "That should be enough time for me to find out about this dragon and what he's likely to do."
Lisa nodded silently, and he walked to the spare bedroom door, behind which lay a gateway to Dragonspace. Most of the time the door simply opened into Lisa's spare bedroom, unless she spread her silver dragon power over it to create a portal.
"Ready?" she asked him.
Malcolm held out his hand for Saba. When she came to him, he gathered her against him, folding both arms around her.
"Ready," he said.
Lisa opened the door. She neither chanted nor gestured or even cut a slit in the air with her finger. The gateway to Dragonspace just was, responding to her merest thought. A dry, dust-scented breeze stirred Saba's hair as she looked across a sharp outcropping to a black sky. They stood on a ledge, beyond which lay nothing but shadows and night.
"What do you want me to—" Saba began, then Malcolm propelled himself forward, the momentum taking them both off the edge of the cliff.
Saba screamed as they plummeted downward, then there was a huge draft and whump of wings, and Malcolm the dragon carried them skyward. She found herself cradled in a sleek claw against a dragon chest, Malcolm's scales like black silk.
From the ledge behind them she heard Caleb's receding voice. "Knock before you come back. We might be busy…"
His words cut off as the ground fell away and Malcolm was lifted on an updraft into the starry night.
Malcolm glided over Dragonspace, glorying in the wind once more caressing his wings, his body stretched out with the joy of flying. In his palm was a point of warmth, Saba, his witch, who glowed like an ember of power. He couldn't explain how much he needed her, not only to help him find out what was wrong with him but because of a deep longing in his heart to be with her.
She thought he'd teased her when he'd played the game with the pendulum last night, claiming she was his true mate. It hadn't been entirely a joke. A black dragon did need a mate, and Malcolm needed Saba. Taking her last night and this morning had been damn good, but it still hadn't relieved him. He wanted her, his entire body hummed with it, and being in dragon form didn't make the wanting cease.
His dragon memory was sharply honed, and the scent and taste and feel of her was imprinted on his mind for life. She already belonged to him whether she understood that or not.
He angled himself toward his home territory and to the huge basalt cliffs that housed the dragon archive. Most dragons didn't care about records anymo
re—not even the other great dragons, like goldens or frosts. Black dragons were the archivists, preserving precious history and lore from times long past. When dragons had ruled and could move freely from Dragonspace to the human world whenever they liked, they'd copied and collected all kinds of knowledge—from ancient Chinese libraries, the library in Alexandria, Sumerian archives, and much more through the ages.
After the age of "enlightenment" for humans, when dragons were consigned to legend and lost the magic to open portals by themselves, it became harder for dragons to obtain documents and books, but the black dragons managed it. They recruited human witches and other beings who could travel back and forth, sometimes using even demons, provided they were heavily controlled.
The dragon archive was a place of incredible beauty and ruthless efficiency, appreciated now only by black dragons. Every thousand years, one of their number was recruited to be guardian of the archive, and Malcolm had recently been privileged to be chosen.
Because he'd been exiled in the human world before he became guardian, he'd been able to acquire more documents and books, stockpiling them to send to the archive when he could, even though he could not enter Dragonspace himself during that time. Malcolm had haunted the archives before his exile and knew them well, and he had spent the last months getting reacquainted with them.
The cliffs loomed large, easily dwarfing seventy feet of dragon. Malcolm squeezed through a round opening high in the cliff, spread his wings, and glided down to the smooth cavern floor, He opened his claw and deposited Saba safely on the ground.
Even their difference in size and the fact that he could not mate with her in this form didn't change his wanting her. Malcolm's dragon blood, free from the concerns of humans, beat even hotter, his desire for her almost uncontrollable. The urges puzzled and troubled him, and he did not like to be puzzled.
Saba scrambled to her feet, dusting off her jeans, and peered into the darkness of the cavern. "Why are we here?" she asked. "Where are we?"
For answer, Malcolm called up his magic and let it spill from him into the hundreds of globes that were set floor to ceiling in the cavern. Sudden bluish white light flared from the globes and illuminated the cavern, which rose three thousand feet from its floor. Passages honeycombed out from the cavern at all angles, up, down, right, left, and all points in between, easy for creatures who relied on flying to navigate.
In niches placed around the cavern and in the thousand passages that fed into the main room, books and papers and ledgers nested, carefully preserved behind panes of crystal and diamond, sealed away from the ravages of time, dryness, dampness, temperature, and dust.
Saba looked around in wonder, her face bathed in the soft glow of the globes. "What is this place?" Her voice echoed back from the arch of rock high above.
"The dragon archives. You were curious about them."
"Good Goddess." She turned in a slow circle, head tilting to take in the passages, niches, and the lit tunnel openings high above them that glittered like stars. "How big is it?"
Malcolm considered. "It has never been measured, at least not in the terms of humans. A hundred dragons can work together here and not see each other for days. Not that many do anymore. Most of the time it's just me."
"Because you're the keeper of the archives."
"Yes." Malcolm cast his glance into a corridor at his eye level. Something felt not quite right…
Saba stared up at him, hands on hips. She might be small, but her aura nearly filled the cavern, the power of a great witch. "If you're the archive's keeper, and you're worried about someone spelling you, why did you leave for two days? Who looks after the place when you're gone?"
"I have an assistant. He knows how to guard the archive when I am not here."
"Really?" She looked around again. "I've never seen anything so huge. I hope you pay him well."
"Metz has been assistant here for a thousand years. He knows the archives better than anyone."
Malcolm raised his head to peer down a passage high above the floor. A thousand manuscripts lay inside, protected by magic, nothing out of place. And yet…
"He must be a patient man—I mean, dragon," Saba remarked at his feet.
"Metz is not a dragon," Malcolm said absently.
"What is he then? A knight in shining armor?"
Malcolm rumbled in amusement. "No."
Saba looked around with a witch's appreciation for knowledge and books. "What have you got stored here? It's amazing."
"Every written word from the dawn of dragonkind up to the latest mathematical treatise written yesterday."
"Is everything here like that?" she asked. "Mathematical treatises?"
"No." Malcolm warmed to his subject. "Dragon knowledge encompasses poetry and philosophy, history, mathematics, science. Stories from your world, like your thousand-year-old saga of Beowulf, who defeated a dragon when he was an old man. It could rest side by side with a study of the weight and mass of dark matter. Whatever a dragon writes down or knowledge he finds, a copy goes into the archives."
Saba gestured with one hand, taking in the circuit of the . cavern. "Do you have a card catalog for all this?"
"A dragon remembers the exact placement of each record with precision. However, we do have a system for my assistant, who is not as quick of mind."
"The poor guy." Saba's hands were back on her hips. She gave him that look she got when trying to indicate that his words didn't make sense to her. This confused Malcolm, because his words always made sense. "You need a database and a server," she said.
"A database? But we have that."
"Really?" He felt her spark of interest. "Where?"
Malcolm pointed to a lower passage high and wide enough for a dragon's body. Globes of quartz crystal hung on the walls next to those of emerald and ruby and sapphire, light glowing white with spangles of rainbow colors.
Saba walked in wonder down this tunnel, examining the niches filled with hand-copied, illuminated manuscripts. The natural rock of the cavern glittered with quartz and, here and there, with thin seams of gold.
"It's all so beautiful," she said softly, touching a gossamer strand of gold.
"Words are treasures," Malcolm answered. "Why would we not transform their resting place into a palace?"
"I have the feeling I've seen this place before," she said. "And it's not a happy memory. But that can't be right."
"You have never been here," Malcolm said. "If you had, there would be a record of it, and I know one does not exist."
She glanced sideways at him. "You really do read everything."
"What use is all this knowledge if no one reads it?" he rumbled.
Despite the comfort he took in being here and the pleasure of showing Saba the archive, he couldn't shake the sense that something was wrong. The weight of the place seemed different, not profoundly different, but a subtle alteration that changed the quality and weight of the air.
A faint hum came from ahead, and Saba quickened her pace. "Is that it?"
"It is. But not, I think, what you are used to."
The tunnel sloped downward and ended at an opening that dropped about six feet to the room beyond. Malcolm glided in then reached up and carried Saba safely to the floor.
Sheets of crystal spread themselves across the cave, glowing globes of light glittering on its expanse. Lattices of crystal snaked up the walls, twining with gold and silver, colors dancing and alive.
"It's beautiful," Saba breathed. "What is it?"
"The card catalog, as you call it. Our database."
"Holy Goddess." Saba walked across the crystal floor, which pulsed and glowed beneath her. She reached toward a faceted ruby that protruded from a cluster of crystals, each gem humming with energy.
There was a sharp crack and a buzzing sound above them, and an annoyed voice shouted, "Don't touch that!"
* * *
Chapter 9
Saba jumped and scrambled away as something boulder-like dropped toward her
at high speed. At the last minute she saw that it was human shaped, a small creature suspended from black batlike wings.
"Metz," Malcolm rumbled. "It's all right. She is a database programmer and a witch of extraordinary talent."
Another strange crack sounded, and the flying thing halted a foot from Saba. It was a man, or at least a being in man shape, though he was only three feet from head to toe.. But this was no beautiful fairy or Tolkienesque elf. His face was the ugliest Saba had ever seen, with a beetling brow, bulbous nose, and craggy mouth, mitigated only by black eyes that shone like pieces of polished onyx. He scowled at her as his wings slapped together, which explained the cracking noise she'd heard.
"This is Metz," Malcolm said. "My assistant."
Metz switched his glare to Malcolm. "You said nowt about bringing a guest, 'specially not a witch," he growled in an accent reminiscent of northern England. "You never know about witches."
"She wanted to see the database."
"Well, now you've seen it," Metz snapped at Saba. "So clear off."
"Lovely to meet you, too," Saba said.
"Is she one of them witches what sent you to exile?" Metz rose a few feet, wings buzzing like a wasp's. "She come to take you again?"
Malcolm lowered his head, his eyes as enigmatic as they were when he was in human form. "On the contrary, she is the witch who helped me while in exile. And she is helping me now."
Metz peered at Saba over his ugly nose. His black eyes were intelligent, and somewhere in them she caught a glimpse of the creature Malcolm trusted, but he wasn't showing his softer side to Saba.
Metz threw Malcolm a look of disgust. "Well, you know your own bloody mind, I suppose."
"Malcolm told me he might be under a curse," Saba said crisply. "I don't suppose you could stop snarling long enough to find out what it is? You must be able to reference thousands of texts here."
"Millions and millions, wench." Metz slapped his wings together, then jerked as what she said struck him. "That true? You said nowt about it to me. Not that you ever confide in me, poor hard-working sprite."
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