Here?
Lucille echoed the word as I thought it, “Here?”
“Did being princess during the past war teach you nothing about strategy? What would be the first thing the elf-king would do in a war against the mortal world? What would any general do?”
“Protect his flanks,” Lucille whispered. “This place and anywhere like it. They’ll be the first to fall.”
“Ah, Francis, apparently you do make as credible a sovereign as I do a thief.”
The name stung me. For the moment I had forgotten that, to Robin, Lucille hadn’t ever been anyone else. In response, Lucille said something that, for reasons I couldn’t account for, I found horribly disturbing.
“Don’t call me Francis,” she said. “I hate that.”
CHAPTER 14
Lucille tasked Rabbit with babysitting the prisoner while she took Krys to accompany us to a wizard’s lair.
Once we were a few dozen paces away from The Talking Eye, Krys asked, “Your Highness?”
“Yes?” Lucille said in a preoccupied tone. Her gaze had been sweeping the streets and markets around us, apparently confirming what Robin had said. Not a single elf in evidence.
“Are you Lucille or Frank right now?”
Her gaze snapped back to Krys. “What?”
“Who am I talking to?”
“Me—I mean, Lucille.”
“Okay.” Krys nodded and kept walking.
“Wait, why did—What?”
“You just sounded like Frank back there,” Krys said.
“That’s ridiculous,” she responded.
Yeah, as if things weren’t confusing enough.
“As if things weren’t confusing enough,” Lucille continued.
My internal monologue was brought up short like a pixie colliding with a cast-iron frying pan. She hadn’t just repeated my thoughts, she had spoken them simultaneously.
What did that mean?
Whatever it was, I didn’t think I liked it.
I found myself clenching Lucille’s hand into a fist.
“Are we going to Crumley?” Krys asked.
Lucille nodded. The Wizard Crumley was not the most inviting of wizards—especially to anyone with mildew allergies—but he had been something of a help on our last trip here. He also had some knowledge of the Dark Lord Nâtlac and was willing to share it . . .
Willing to sell it, anyway.
“You think he can tell us who made that scroll?” Krys asked.
“At least what it was intended to do,” Lucille answered.
As they talked I thought I saw a familiar face in the crowd near the front of an inn much more lavish than The Talking Eye.
No, that can’t be who I think it is.
Lucille abruptly jerked her head around to stare in that direction.
“What is it?” Krys asked.
“I thought I saw . . .” she trailed off.
“What?”
Lucille shook her head as she studied the crowd. I didn’t see any sign of our mutual friend anymore. I don’t think she did either. She turned her head back to our path. “Nothing,” she said. “Probably just someone who looked like him.”
“Who?”
“King Dudley of Grünwald.”
“King Dudley? Why would he be here?”
“Exactly.” Lucille again echoed my thoughts precisely.
I knew that, as a prince, Dudley had frequented Fell Green quite often. I doubt that continued after I had relieved Grünwald of his mother, the queen. Since then his bastard half brother Bartholomew had sparked a multifront war that had decimated Grünwald militarily and—last I had heard—left the Grünwald court in a maelstrom of intrigue and conspiracy that would most likely capture Dudley’s complete attention.
Of course, I may have had a hand in the latter as well—having unintentionally swapped bodies with Bartholomew for a while. Though you could argue that the body swap was intentional on my part. It was the “with Bartholomew” part that had been unintentional. That, and the whole plunging all the neighboring kingdoms into war thing.
So, of course, it would be an evil coincidence that our perennial nemesis from Grünwald would be here in Fell Green, especially considering he was—like most of his mother’s family—a devotee of Nâtlac, and probably the high priest or something, now that the Dark Lord and I were on the outs.
It would be an impossibly evil coincidence.
If it was a coincidence.
If the evil scroll the elf-prince had read at the banquet was a spell from Nâtlac’s repertoire, where better for it to have come from? King Dudley had a long list of grievances with me and Frank . . .
Huh? Me and Lucille.
My thoughts tumbled and Lucille stopped walking and shook her head, seeming to echo my own confusion.
“Your Highness?” Krys said.
“I’m all right,” Lucille said. “I just had a strange sensation.”
“Lucille?” I felt Krys’s mailed hand on our arm.
“Give me a moment, I’ll be fine.”
• • •
The Wizard Crumley lived in an unpleasant quarter of Fell Green. Regardless of the weather elsewhere, Crumley’s neighborhood seemed perpetually covered by a blanket of air that was always too warm and too humid. The moisture saturated the air to the point that it tried to condense into something more steam than fog. The stones of the road and the surrounding buildings were slick with algae and moss, and on every building, any exposed timber appeared black and spongy with rot. Clouds of buzzing insects hovered over puddles in the road, puddles that had stood long enough to gain their own scum of algae.
The winding narrow lane that led to Crumley’s door zigzagged as it descended below the nominal surface of the Fell River even as it approached the city walls, though there was no way to visually confirm that from where we stood. Once we stopped before the green-streaked black door that led to the wizard’s lair, we found ourselves in a virtual canyon made from the surrounding buildings.
All of which, I noted, faced away from us, as if what happened in this alley was something that not even the denizens of this foul part of Fell Green had the stomach to witness.
Now there’s a pleasant thought.
Lucille stepped up and used the knocker. This time I noticed that, in addition to the knock being muffled by the damp wood, there was also an audible squish that made my skin crawl. I made an effort to keep my hand from scratching anything. I didn’t want to startle Lucille.
“I never liked this place,” Krys said.
I understood the sentiment.
Lucille reached up for the knocker again, but the door screeched open on its rusty hinges, leaving her hand hanging in empty space.
“You two again!?” rasped an elderly man’s voice. Lucille shifted her gaze slightly downward to look at the stooped form of the Wizard Crumley. His long white beard seemed even more green-streaked than last time, and I noticed some rough texture that might have been the start of a patch of moss in there.
“We’ve come to—” Lucille began. Crumley interrupted her by leaning close to us and taking a deep sniff. That was uncomfortable enough, but the sensation of his fishy exhale brushing against us made our skin crawl worse than the swampy insects and the too-warm mists.
He shook his head.
“To hire your services,” she finished.
“Of course you have. But you know the enchantment is gone. Don’t you, my fair dragon?”
Lucille nodded and I had a brief episode of confusion before I realized Crumley referred to our last visit. That had been my long-concluded, Nâtlac artifact–induced body swap with Bartholomew. That enchantment was long gone.
That must have been what he was referring to.
“I have a scroll. I need to know what it did, exactly, and where it might have c
ome from.”
Crumley sighed. “This is the Dark Lord again, isn’t it?”
“How do you know?” Krys asked.
Crumley turned toward her and wriggled his fingers. “Wizard!” he said. He took a step back and straightened. “Also, his magic is stinking up the place something fierce. You brought money?”
Lucille took out a pouch and handed it to the wizard. He hefted it and grimaced at it in his hand. He muttered, “Of course, too much to turn down.” The pouch disappeared into his robes and he waved us forward into the dim corridor beyond the door. “Come in, Madam Dragon, Sir Handmaiden, Princess Thief.”
We stepped in and Krys followed, sparing the Wizard Crumley an uncomfortable look.
“Wipe your feet and don’t touch anything,” Crumley said, slamming the door behind us.
• • •
We passed through the same damp corridors as last time, past the same disordered and crumbling bookshelves, down the same narrow algae-stained stairs that descended under the same mineral-crusted vaults.
We ended in the same workshop, deep under the bowels of Fell Green, and probably beneath the bottom of Fell River as well. The vast workshop spilled from the foot of the stone steps, out beyond where torchlight would reach. As before, several long wood tables waited for us, piled high with wizardly clutter; jars, bottles, ceramic crocks; rocks, crystals, and bones; bundles of feathers and others of dried leaves or twigs; and the books, of course. The closest volume was open to an illustration that seemed more recreational than ritualistic, the image of a well-endowed pair, one an elvish woman, the other a creature with a bull’s head and an expression that reminded me of Baron Weslyess. Thankfully, Crumley darted forward and slammed the volume shut before I noticed any more details.
“Leftover research,” he muttered as he shoved the book into a pile of arcane literature. He kept pushing books out of the way, to the point some slipped over the far edge of the table and thudded on the floor. Crumley didn’t seem to notice. He held out his hand and gestured without turning around. “Scroll,” he said.
Our hands fumbled with each other as Lucille reached for the evil scroll at the same time I did. We both held the parchment briefly before I let it go. Lucille snorted in frustration.
Crumley took the scroll and muttered almost absently, “Don’t worry, that part won’t last long.”
“What?” Again, Lucille’s words and my thoughts were identical.
Crumley didn’t elaborate as he pored over the scroll, flattening it on the table. He said “um” a few times, then nodded, “Yes, that explains it. Makes sense.”
“What makes sense?” Lucille asked. “What part won’t last long?”
“What kind of spell’s on that scroll?” Krys asked. For once she, rather than Lucille, echoed my thoughts.
Crumley pointed over to her with a gnarled finger. I noticed that even his nails were stained green. “That, my good fellow, is the question, isn’t it?”
He spun around to face Lucille. “Isn’t it, though? What spell was cast that caused such . . . inconvenience?”
“What spell?” Lucille asked, annoyance creeping into her voice.
“That’s just it. No spell. This is no enchantment, quite the opposite. It is an unmaking, a non-spell, a reversal.”
“A reversal of what?” Krys asked.
Lucille sucked in a breath. Quietly she said, “Oh.”
Crumley nodded. “Our dragon gets it.”
“Gets what?” Krys said.
“Elhared’s original spell, the one that made me the dragon, and made Frank the princess. This reversed it.”
“But Frank’s still—”
“Still in there.” Crumley tapped Lucille’s forehead with one of his green-stained nails. “No body for him to go back to.”
Lucille shook her head. “This isn’t . . . I . . .”
“Don’t worry,” Crumley said. “It won’t last.”
“What won’t last?”
“The symptoms will fade as the spirits merge. It will be a little disorienting, but you should be normal after—”
Lucille grabbed Crumley by his robe and yanked him forward. “What do you mean ‘merge’?”
“Please,” he said. “Unhand me if you want the benefit of my expertise.”
She let him go. “Explain,” she demanded through clenched teeth.
Crumley sighed. “You are in an unstable situation. Outside of some lycanthropic infections that I only know about theoretically, two souls cannot coexist in the same body for a protracted period. Eventually the identities will merge into a new consciousness.”
But I don’t want to merge into a new consciousness.
I like my consciousness the way it is.
I think one of those thoughts was mine, and one was Lucille’s, but I couldn’t tell which one. Crumley kept on talking, but it had turned into an indistinct drone at the edge of my awareness. He had just said Lucille and I both, for all practical purposes, would die. Eventually someone would inhabit this body, but it wouldn’t be us.
I guess in some sense it might be our child, but it wouldn’t be me. Worse, it wouldn’t be Lucille. I might accept giving up what little grip on existence I had left if there was no other choice, I couldn’t accept that happening to Lucille.
I couldn’t even muster up a comforting denial. I saw the signs of it already even as I was dimly aware of Crumley listing them. The leaking of thoughts and words between us, the body being controlled by both of us now. We probably had a couple of days, at most.
I wasn’t surprised that, when Lucille demanded some solution from the wizard, he shrugged in a what-can-I-do gesture. He wasn’t able to solve the mess made by the Tear of Nâtlac, why would this problem be any different?
“Any real solution needs to get you or Frank in another body,” Crumley told us. “Frank would be easier, since he’s the interloper.”
“But you can’t do it.”
“I understand the Dark Lord’s magic. Enough to know I’m not going to ever practice it.”
Krys spoke up. “Whoever wrote the scroll,” she said, “could they do it?”
Crumley chuckled. “Of course they could. Isn’t that obvious?”
“Why obvious?” Lucille asked.
“Because,” Crumley informed us, “the author of this scroll is the same hand that cast the original spell.”
Lucille stared at Crumley blankly.
He had just told us that the author of the scroll the elf-prince used, the source of the magic that had brought us to the brink of war with the elves, the “person responsible” in the elf-king’s words, was the late, unlamented Elhared the Unwise.
CHAPTER 15
“Elhared is dead!” Lucille snapped.
Crumley shrugged.
She shook her head and paced in front of the wizard. “No. This can’t be Elhared’s doing . . .”
“You paid for the expertise of the Wizard Crumley. If you find my insight distressing, maybe you need to hire another student of the dark arts. My best wishes in finding a student of Nâtlac who won’t use your own entrails to divine the answer to your questions.”
Lucille shook her head. “No, I don’t doubt your expertise.”
“Good. Lendowyn can ill afford peers so foolish with their own coin.”
“So you’re saying that this scroll was Elhared’s work?”
“I’m saying the author was one who cast the original spell.”
Wait a minute, I thought. The spell he cast on us came from a book. “Why is this a scroll?” I didn’t know when my question made the transition from my thoughts to Lucille’s words. I think the shudder came from both of us.
Eventually the identities will merge into a new consciousness.
Our identities.
Already those “couple of days” looked wildly optimistic.
A couple of hours seemed more likely.
Crumley shook his head. “You both need to learn to listen. I said the hand that cast the reversed spell, not the one who wrote the original spell.”
“Huh?”
Crumley sighed. “This scroll isn’t an original work. The author copied passages, inverted them to create an undoing. Based on the additions—in a completely different style—it was written by someone who had experience casting the original spell.”
“It could have been Elhared. Damn!”
“Your Highness?” Krys asked. “What’s wrong?”
“Elhared’s still dead!” Lucille snapped. “He probably wrote this scroll a year ago, when he was planning his coup. Or maybe after he took Frank’s body and realized his plans had fallen apart.”
“Why didn’t he use it back then?” Krys asked.
Lucille sighed. “Maybe he liked Frank’s body. He was a pretty decrepit old bastard to start with.”
“Yes, yes. Is there anything else?” Crumley rolled up the scroll and slapped it into my hand. Then he started shooing us back to the stairs out of the workshop. “I need to get back to my studies.”
Yeah right, we thought, imagining the volume with the inappropriate illustrations. She reached up and took the pendant off of her neck. “Can you tell me anything about this?”
Crumley looked at it briefly and snorted. “It’s an hourglass—really a day-glass.”
“But the sand—”
“Runs slower because it’s fae sand. It tracks time under the hill. Nothing particularly strange or magical about that.”
“Can we slow it down?”
Crumley shrugged. “I can cast a stasis spell and freeze its movement entirely.”
“Yes—”
“But that won’t do anything about the elf-king’s ultimatum,” Crumley said. “Clocks may stop, but time marches on.”
“You know about—”
“Of course I do. What of it?”
She looked at the pendant and sighed. “How much time do we have left?”
He looked at the sand and said. “Under the hill, perhaps eight hours. Here in Fell Green, a little less than twenty. In the mortal realm, three days perhaps. Maybe four.”
Dragon Wizard Page 12
