Dragon Princess

by S. Andrew Swann

  “Where’s Elhared? And the book?”

  “I don’t know!”

  I raised my hand to slap him. From behind me came a sickeningly smooth voice. “Isn’t this a sight?”

  The speaker could have been referring to himself. When I turned my head, I saw an elf with slicked-back hair and a garish outfit that was all pastels, ruffles, and lace. His makeup was designed to enhance the androgyny of his already indeterminate features. Flanking him were two more elves in similarly outlandish garb, all swirls and points and engraved floral motifs, though since their outfits were constructed of leather, studs, and chain mail, they were much more practically dressed. Those two also got points for crossbows of ivory-inlaid ebony and engraved brass. The weapons may have looked over the top, but they appeared functional—especially since they were pointed in my direction.

  Elhared the Fake redoubled his efforts to throw me off of him, muttering inarticulate grunts that may have been an attempt at producing native draconic obscenities with a human larynx. Both efforts were about as successful as his attempt to breathe fire.

  “Please,” said the lead flouncy elf. “I would appreciate calm. I do not like to inconvenience my customers. It is bad for business. However, your abrupt departure from my establishment in the midst of an ongoing game resulted in a balance due to the house. We cannot allow even the appearance of someone avoiding a debt to us.” The elf’s smile was bloodless and much too wide for his face.

  “Look,” my phony wizard pleaded, “You know I’m good for it.”

  “Yes,” the elf hissed. “That is the other thing. I’ve heard a bit of your dialogue with the young miss here, and it seems to raise questions about the stake the house has provided to the presumptive court wizard of Lendowyn.”

  Discretion is the better part of keeping one’s skin in one piece. I raised my hands off of faux-Elhared and slowly got to my feet. “I’m sure we can discuss things in a civilized manner and get this all sorted out. Why don’t we just lower the crossbows before something happens that everyone here will regret.”

  My glance upward was involuntary, but the elf noticed it.

  “I presume you are looking for your traveling companion?” I didn’t think it was physically possible, but the damn elf’s smile got wider. “A separate issue, but the dragon is currently indisposed.”

  Pretend-Elhared was in the midst of getting to his feet himself, and he froze. “Dragon?”

  “Damn it all,” I whispered. Dudley must be really pissing his pants in amusement now.

  “We take our debts very seriously,” the elf told him.

  I looked at our imitation wizard and said, “How idiotic can you be, coming back to the same guys you already owe money to?”

  “I was on a streak, damn it.”

  The elf clapped his hands and the back alley vanished around us.

  CHAPTER 17

  Fell Green might have been a wizard town, but there was more than sorcery keeping it from prying eyes. It wasn’t completely in the world of men. Just as its visible manifestation straddled the river between Lendowyn and Dermonica, its essence straddled the mists that separate our world from the fae realms.

  At least that was our elven host’s explanation why they really didn’t give a crap who was royalty and who wasn’t.

  Human authorities didn’t have any jurisdiction with the world of elves; no diplomatic relations, no extradition treaties, no cultural exchanges. Changelings were the primary trade goods, and any tourism was generally one-way. Fell Green was about as close as anyone wanted to get, and as our recent experience showed, even at that remove, dealing with the fae rarely had a positive outcome.

  The elf and his guards pulled us through the mists, to a place as far from Lendowyn court intrigue as was the moon. In fact, we could have stood on the moon for all I knew. The ground was made of silver sand that glowed a milky white. Above, a different sky simultaneously held its own sun and moon that stared down on us like a pair of accusing eyes. We followed a road made of gold that led toward a vast city that could have been made of spun sugar and spiderwebs, towers reaching as tall as the city was wide.

  “Look, don’t you see,” Elhared the Lesser groveled. “I’m the court wizard. I have money. The entire Lendowyn treasury—”

  That should have confirmed any suspicions about this Elhared’s true identity. The real wizard would have had more sense than to brag about access to an empty vault.

  Our hosts remained unmoved by his pleas as they marched us off the main road and up over a hill on the outskirts of the great city. When we crested the hill we came into view of a massive arena buried in a bowl scooped into the ground below us. We descended a broad staircase to the circular floor, and faced a series of golden cages that ranged from the tiny to the humungous.

  One of the latter held Lucille.

  As the elven escort shoved me into a human-size cage, Lucille said, “Oh, Frank, they got you too!”

  “Looks that way,” I muttered more to myself than to her. The door locked itself behind me with a sound more like a crystal chime than the shutting of a prison cell.

  “And Elhared . . . Oh. That isn’t, is he?”

  The counterfeit wizard fought his elvish captors as they tossed him in another cage. He yelled, “I am Elhared! Court wizard of Lendowyn! That is the Princess Lucille! The king shall hear of—”

  The chief elf made a lazy gesture and suddenly the ranting went silent. I saw the wizard’s face contorting, and his lips moving, but no sound came from the cage.

  The elf sighed. “My, that person is tiring.”

  “What’s going on?” I asked him. “What are you doing with us?”

  He strode up to my cage, drawing a lace handkerchief from his sleeve. The primary purpose for it seemed to be to provide him with something to gesture with. “See?” He addressed the silently screaming ex-dragon Elhared, “It is possible to ask impertinent questions in a civil tone.”

  “Impertinent?”

  He turned to face me. “Questioning your betters. Speaking out of turn. Working among mortals has made me more than typically munificent in the face of such crass behavior.” He whispered to me in a conspiratorial tone. “Be grateful that I’m not the judge.”

  “Judge? What’s going on here?”

  “You are on trial, of course.”

  “Trial—” I paced around the inside of the cage. “Look, there’s been a misunderstanding.”

  “There is always a misunderstanding. No one ever intends to steal the food from our table. Somehow it just happens.” The elf unfolded his palms and blew across them, making his handkerchief flutter. “It has been my experience that mortals properly understand very little—”

  “No. I mean we aren’t who you think we are.”

  “Is anyone? If you have a defense, I would reserve it for the judge.” The elf leaned over to whisper again, as if sharing some great secrets of the universe. “And a word of advice, do not interrupt him. I find you amusing, but that capricious old fart would just as soon slit you open to water his garden.” He straightened up and smiled. “Not that it wouldn’t be amusing in its own right.”

  The elf turned and waved his armsmen to follow as he left the arena, leaving us caged and alone. Whatever the elf had done to silence Elhared the False, he hadn’t bothered to dispel. The dragon in the old wizard’s body was shouting after the elf, gripping the bars and trying to shake them.

  I wondered if he knew no one could hear him.

  “What’s happening?”

  I turned away from the furious silence of the fake wizard and toward Lucille. She was in the largest cage available, and still she was hunched over and curled up, barely fitting in the space. The bars looked wire-thin and inadequate for containing her, but gouges in the ground and scorch marks told me that she hadn’t left her cage untested.

  “Some sort of elvish court.”

  “Why? What did we do?”

  I hooked a thumb back at the pretender Elhared. “Not us, him.”


  “Elhared?”

  “No, the dragon. Did you know about the dragon’s gambling problem?”

  “Tell me you’re kidding.”

  “Before the spell went haywire, the dragon said that Elhared had bought his service with a promise to cover his gambling debts.”

  “And?”

  “These are the folks he owed money to.”

  She shook her head, as much as she could in the too-small cage. “Then they should have me, or him, right? Why are you here?”

  “Our draconic genius here was trying to use Elhared’s line of credit as a court wizard to win back his prior losses. I’m here because when he saw me, he ran out on one of their games—”

  “He was gambling with them again?”

  “Like I said. He has a problem.”

  “Wonderful.”

  “Silence!” The word was punctuated by a loud crack that resonated through the ground and the bars of my cage. Shouting at us was a huge elf. He stood at the top of the entry stairs clad in a garish uniform dominated by an embroidered midnight-blue cape held on by brooches the size of dinner plates. In his right hand he held an intricately carved, silver-tipped ebony staff nearly twice his own height and the diameter of a small tree. He shouted, “Silence!” again, and slammed the tip of his staff against the stone stairs, generating a flower of sparks and another resonant crack that echoed through the arena.

  I realized now that the arena wasn’t empty. The seating for spectators was in shadow, so I had to squint to see the audience from our brightly lit spot on the arena floor. Still, I wondered how I could have missed the crowd on my way in.

  “The court of the most high Timoras, lord of all realms under the hill, is in session. The Grand Inquisitor of the Winter Court shall preside and pass judgment.”

  Much as I tried, there was no way I could interpret that statement as something positive.

  “All rise for the Grand Inquisitor.”

  I almost expected a trumpet fanfare. What we got was five more cracks of the bailiff’s staff on the steps, slamming like cannon fire.

  After the bailiff’s showmanship, the Grand Inquisitor himself was a bit of a letdown. He was the least flashy dresser so far, clad in black robes, the only color in his ensemble a tricornered cap in deep crimson. Short and wide for an elf, he was also the first elf I had ever seen who showed any signs of age, to the point where he wore a pair of spectacles that drew attention to the slight creases that framed his stormy gray eyes. He strode in without much ceremony and stood in front of pseudo-Elhared’s cage.

  “Speak to the court—” he started to tell the fake wizard. I saw a lot of mouth movement, but I couldn’t hear a thing.

  The Grand Inquisitor sighed and made a gesture with his left hand.

  “—so it’s all a big misunderstanding.”

  “It is always a misunderstanding,” the Inquisitor said quietly to himself. In a louder voice he said, “Speak to the court. Identify yourself and justify your actions. Bind yourself to the truth or face censure.”

  “Yes. Yes. Of course,” Imitation Elhared said to the Grand Inquisitor. I could see perspiration beading on his brow, and he cast several furtive and not well-hidden sidelong glances in my direction. “You see, I am the Wizard Elhared of the Royal Court of Lendowyn, of course. I have a generous stipend from the crown, so there should be no issue in paying the small debts I’ve incurred.” He stroked his beard with such nervous enthusiasm that at any moment I expected him to start wringing the flop-sweat from it. “Now you’re wondering why I ran from the Princess Lucille here.” He gestured in my direction. “There’s a simple explanation for that, really . . .”

  Yeah, the explanation is you’re stalling.

  “You see . . . uh . . . the princess had been kidnapped by an evil dragon. I was as surprised as anyone to see her walk into your establishment. Shocked really. And the first thing I thought of was, I had to rush to notify the king.”

  The Grand Inquisitor nodded. “I see.”

  “She wasn’t chasing me, you see. She recognized me, of course, and knew I would be able to lead her back to Lendowyn Castle and her rightful place in the royal court.”

  As he said that, he looked right at me in a way that made me feel dirty. I knew instantly what he was getting at. If I backed him up with his asinine excuse for a story, he’d back up my own claim for the Lendowyn throne. All I had to do was stand by while Lucille the Dragon took the fall for the old dragon’s debts. I don’t know what pissed me off more, the thought that Elhared the Make-Believe thought I would be the kind of ass that would cut a helpless woman loose just to save my own skin, or the fact that I spent several seconds weighing the costs and benefits of the idea before rejecting it out of hand.

  He kept spinning his ever more elaborate fabrications to the point Lucille couldn’t take anymore.

  “Lies!” she screamed with a rage that turned my spine to butter. I could smell the brimstone from my cage. I was suddenly concerned for the safety of everyone present. “Nothing but lies! He’s—”

  Her shouts were cut short by the thunderclap of the bailiff’s staff. The Inquisitor made a slight gesture and quietly said, “Contempt.”

  Lucille froze in mid-rage. Even the smoke curling from her nostrils had ceased movement and hung stationary in midair. I glanced from her frozen effigy, back to our pretend Elhared, and I caught the barest hint of a smile.

  Oh, you bastard.

  While it had appeared that he’d been spinning a gratuitously implausible tale, I suddenly realized the old dragon had dealt with elves before. Probably had dealt with the elvish judicial system before. He might have been spinning a web of lies that could challenge the work of the demon-spiders of Hsilb, but he was also trying to bait a reaction from Lucille—pushing her to react, just so the Inquisitor would shut her down.

  The ugly suspicion was confirmed when the Inquisitor concluded his interview with him, and announced that the dragon had forfeited the right to testify. It was my turn.

  The Grand Inquisitor walked before my cage and stared at me over his spectacles. “Do you corroborate the wizard’s testimony? Shall we release you both back to Lendowyn?” While the Inquisitor’s back was turned, the ex-dragon wizard looked at me and made a “get-on-with-it” gesture.

  I silently asked the universe to stop handing me prime opportunities to betray the princess. “Yes, about that testimony . . . The ‘wizard’ is absolutely right in that there exists a kingdom called Lendowyn, whose royal court does include a wizard by the name of Elhared, and a princess by the name of Lucille. I’m afraid everything else he said is a very intricately imagined pile of crap.”

  The counterfeit wizard winced as if I’d struck him. He grabbed the bars and pleaded with me. “Princess, these elves do not recognize Lendowyn law. Do not say something that threatens your royal immunity.”

  Another thunderclap from the bailiff and another contempt gesture from the Inquisitor, and he was frozen just like Lucille.

  “Go on,” the Inquisitor told me.

  I hesitated a moment. The message had been as clear as it was brief. If I revealed the truth, I’d abandon any favor my princessness might give me. The elves would treat me just like they would the thief Frank Blackthorne.

  Of course, I could spin another lie to compete with the ex-dragon’s. But, even though that was my forte, I couldn’t really class that one in the category of good ideas.

  So I did the opposite. I told the whole, naked, unvarnished truth. I’m not sure exactly why I needed to, but it came pouring out of me, from the moment Elhared conned me in a dockside bar, to the point where I tackled his body outside an even less reputable establishment.

  I might have just been really sick of the ex-dragon. It also might have been that I didn’t want to see Lucille condemned because of a lie. It might also be because this was an elven elder on his home turf, someone with enough power to freeze a dragon in mid-rampage, and it seemed to be the epitome of poor judgment to lie to the guy.


  It may just have been that I had never stopped to explain myself or who I really was to Lucille, and at the very least she deserved to know the truth. When I was finished, I was looking into her frozen eyes, not the Inquisitor’s.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered to her.

  A thunderclap echoed though the arena as the bailiff continued in his effort to beat the ground into submission. My two fellow defendants unfroze. The current Elhared shook his bars and spat at me. “You stupid bastard. We could have walked out of here. You’ll pay for this. I’ll find you—”

  I was more concerned with Lucille, who had obviously heard and understood everything as well. She stared at me, and I realized that she had begun sobbing. “You lied to me.”

  Damn it. I didn’t lie, I just hadn’t gotten to the part where I wasn’t really a knight in shining armor. And really, to be fair, given that Sir Forsythe was the best example of the genre locally, she should have been grateful.

  The Grand Inquisitor spun around and addressed the spectators. “Testimony has concluded. Judgment will now be rendered.”

  CHAPTER 18

  I had expected elven justice to be inscrutable. I didn’t realize how inscrutable.

  The Grand Inquisitor pointed a finger at the ex-dragon who was still shouting invective at me. “You have lied to the court and have defrauded the blood of the fae. Your debts shall be paid in the service of your person to the Winter Court for a term of one year for each golden sovereign so owed; should you expire this sentence will pass to your descendants by blood.”

  The newly sentenced Elhared the Fake did not take the news well. He howled at the Inquisitor, “You can’t do this. Let me go. I’m in a position where I can pay you back. I just need to get back to the castle. You understand, while I’m in this body I am Elhared, as far as the law’s concerned. Just let me go . . .”

  The Inquisitor wasn’t listening to him. Instead, he pointed a finger at Lucille, who at the moment made the most dejected picture of a dragon possible. “You have been determined to possess property that belongs to the fae by right. You shall suffer no additional punishment, and may leave as you will at the termination of the original terms of service.”