The Lost Dragons of Barakhai

by Mickey Zucker Reichert

  Now it was Zylas’ turn to freeze, clearly uncertain what was expected of them. Although he had surely passed through these gates before, he could only have done so in rat form, perhaps hidden on one of the rebel spies. Collins’ mind raced back to the last time he had stood in this position. Then, calming Falima in edgy horse form had taken priority. He recalled that two guards had met them here, having descended from the towers. He tried to remember their names, without success; but a light dawned. He and Zylas were guards and expected to perform whatever duties those others had in the past.

  Wishing he had not fought so hard to resist the movement, Collins turned. Though closed, the doors still required securing. Feigning casualness, he stepped toward them, seized the bolt, and tried not to look burdened as he wrestled the massive piece of wood into place on its iron mountings.

  Rather than assist, which might have looked cued, Zylas approached the opposite doors to wait for the bolt on the opposite side to lift. With an air of nonchalant patience, he waited for Collins to finish maneuvering, then eased open the doors on his side. The massive set of doors to the courtyard creaked open, and light once again flooded the gatehouse.

  “Thanks,” the blond grunted, withdrawing back into the tower with a shake of his head and a muttered, incomprehensible comment.

  “That close one,” Zylas whispered, again choosing English, though it turned his speech pidgin. “Very close one.”

  “True.” Collins concentrated on using English also, less practiced at deliberately dodging the translation spells. He recognized the limitations of the rebels’ intelligence work. Small details would lose out to more significant information and events, and clearly no one had posed as a castle guard before. “Let’s not compound that by standing here talking about it.”

  Nodding, Zylas headed into the outer courtyard, Collins at his heels. A jewel-green pasture stretched ahead of them, spotted with gardens and striped with pathways. Wooden buildings jutted from the crenellated wall behind them, and others pressed against the one separating the outer courtyard from the inner. Scattered horses, a mule, and several goats grazed, the latter plucking the less delectable thorns and broad-leafed plants from amid the fuzzy expanse of tender grasses. Gardens interrupted the span at intervals, well-tended beds of vegetables, tubers, and flowers.

  Collins took in the scene at a glance, trying not to stare. Last time, he had come masquerading as a city guard from one of Barakhai’s territories. Studying the castle scenery in wonder had fit the part. This time, it did not.

  Now aware that they should handle gates and latchings, Collins and Zylas breezed through the second gatehouse with only a few grunted greetings. The inner courtyard was as he remembered: less grass, more gardens and orchards, stables, kennels, and barracks with pathways linking all of them. Catwalks rimmed the inner walls, hidden behind the toothlike pattern of crenels and merlons. The guards pacing them gave up an occasional wave, though they seemed not to expect a response as they paced their way in proper step around the periphery.

  As before, the castle caught Collins’ eye, though not with the same stunning intensity. It blossomed from the center, sun rays gleaming from the construction as if to illuminate it in some glimmering heavenly glow. The four, square towers pointed, straight as spears, to the sky; and the rectangle between them seemed as staid and steady as eternity. The photographs of ancient European castles that Collins’ friends had brought home from various vacations told otherwise, crumbling ruins with only a hint at their previous grandeur. That train of thought brought back images of the World Trade Center towers collapsing like giant-squashed anthills. They, too, had seemed as solid as the ages.

  Collins walked with Zylas along a cobbled path to the stone-cut stairway leading into the open door of Opernes Castle. He saw the animals grazing the pasture, a random-seeming mixture of horses, sheep, and cows. He saw the goose, goat, and human gardeners weaving delicately through the crooked rows of crops. He saw dogs romping across walkways, grassways, and tended plots, playing rowdy games of tag or barking wildly at larger animals who chose not to join their play. Yet all of that registered only peripherally on his mind. Collins’ gaze was riveted on the portcullis that hung open over the entrance, and memory descended upon him. He remembered his desperate dive beneath the falling cross-hatching of metal and wood, the moment of excruciating pain that had exploded through his head, followed by a nothingness that ended in a locked cell in the dungeon.

  The anxiety Collins had struggled against since the mission began gripped him then, dragging him into a morass of fear and doubt. We couldn’t even figure out how to get through a gatehouse without arousing suspicions. How are we going to make it in the castle? His hands trembled, and he trapped them in his cloak pockets to hide their revealing display. He took some solace from the fact that Zylas seemed not to notice; if the man right next to him did not, hopefully others would not either.

  As before, the door opened on a spiral staircase that wound upward and downward. From memory, Collins climbed, passing the first landing and its two doors to stop at the second level. There, he paused in front of the right one, drawing a deep breath in preparation. He could hear voices floating freely from behind it, a steady hum punctuated by loud bursts at irregular intervals. He reached for the latch.

  At that moment, the door jerked open, and a guard in elite uniform nearly ran into them. Collins back-stepped and found himself staring at familiar female features, a guard he had met on his last journey here. To his delight, he remembered her name. “Lyra,” he said on the pent up breath racing from his lungs.

  The guard nodded briskly. “Orna.” She added, “Narladin.” She headed past them, then turned suddenly.

  Collins’ heart skipped a beat.

  “It’s harling stew,” she warned. “I know how much you despise that.”

  Uncertain which of them she addressed, Collins rolled his eyes and nodded knowingly.

  “Thanks for the warning,” Zylas said in his Narladin voice.

  Lyra continued down the staircase, soon lost from sight.

  “Harling?” Collins repeated, letting the door swing closed rather than entering.

  “Don’t worry,” Zylas said soothingly. “It’s a type of fish, not a bug.”

  “Good.” Collins again steeled himself to enter. “But do I hate it? Or do you?”

  “Don’t know,” Zylas admitted, reaching for the door ring. “We’ll have to fake it.”

  It seemed like an important detail to Collins; but, as the door swung open, this time at Zylas’ hand, he found himself preoccupied with more important things. As before, the king and his retinue occupied a dais at the farthest end of a dining hall that had changed little in the year and a half since Collins’ last incursion. If, in fact, time passes at the same rate here as at home. King Terrin looked the same, his crown nestled among wheaten ringlets and a full beard. Shrewd brown eyes looked out from a middle-aged face that seemed wise and weathered. At his right hand sat a scar-faced, homely man dressed in a satin robe trimmed with golden embroidery. It took Collins a moment to recognize him, a man who had once appeared to be, and probably was, the king’s brother. The scars that swirled and puckered his skin had almost certainly come from his brush with a fiery torch in Collins’ own hand.

  Hot pinpoints of guilt settled into Collins’ chest, quickly banished by the memory of swords flying at him. If the man and his companions had not attacked, Collins would not have had to defend himself in such a reckless manner. They had tried to kill him, would have if not for a hay wagon well-placed by Zylas’ friends, the renegades returning his broken body to Algary, and the miracle of modern medicine. Collins had only done what a desperate man had to do in self-defense. The king’s brother was lucky to be alive at all.

  To the king’s left sat a slender woman whose silver-fringed blue silk dress hugged spectacular curves. Gauzy veils covered her face, stirring in the breeze of the open door. Small, white-gloved hands, clutching a spoon, disappeared beneath the f
abric at intervals, carrying food to an unseen mouth. Others less familiar and unnamed sat amid the privileged, including the queen, stewards, princesses, a butler, and an adviser. Three trestle tables stretched from the doorway nearly to the perpendicular dais, packed with on and off duty guards as well as servants. A wide variety of dogs wound beneath the tables, accepting offered tidbits or foodstuffs that fell on the floor. Banners and tapestries hung from the walls, and minstrels in white-and-aqua plaid looked down on the diners from a balcony blocked by waist-high handrails and cathedral-cut windows.

  Collins absorbed all of this in the moments it took Zylas to usher him from the door to a seat at one of the long tables. “That’s Carriequinton,” Zylas whispered as they sat between a plump maid and a uniformed low-tier guardsman whose attention seemed focused on a dog just behind his place at the bench. Collins chose the seat closest to the maid, not wishing to attempt small talk with someone who, though an inferior, could get him into huge trouble if Collins flubbed his alter ego’s role.

  “What is . . . ?” Collins glanced around the room, taking inordinately long to spot the obvious. Finally, his attention settled on the veiled woman, and he responded with “Oh,” and then quickly looked away.

  “Oh,” Zylas repeated.

  “How bad is it?” Collins kept his voice below the regular murmur of the diners.

  “Bad enough she keeps it covered.”

  That being self-evident, Collins only nodded. He turned his attention to the food, then wished he had not. Communal bowls held a brownish-gray soup filled with unidentifiable lumps. A servant whisked up behind them, dropping a stale slice of brown bread in front of each of them.

  Zylas watched his neighbor glop a handful of the slightly steaming concoction from the serving bowl onto his makeshift plate. “Harling stew?” he said, as if guessing.

  “Yup,” the dog guard replied, glancing across Zylas to Collins and back. “Guess your partner won’t be eating much.”

  Oh, thank God, it’s Orna who hates it. Though the stew smelled surprisingly appetizing, the idea of sharing food that had had a dozen filthy hands dunked into it made Collins’ stomach lurch in protest. These primitives probably did not even know to wash their hands after wiping their butts. It’s a wonder they haven’t all sickened and died. Collins wondered if the switch protected them, allowing their human forms to drink from the same worm-infested mud puddles as their animal forms. Or maybe early exposure to every germ in creation makes their immune systems stronger than the bacteria-phobic, antiseptic-loving people of my world. He banished the thought, seizing the moment. “Not eating much, huh? I wouldn’t pollute my mouth with a bite of this swill.” With that, he shot up from his seat and stormed from the room, leaving Zylas to apologize for and explain his rude behavior.

  Once through the door, Collins forced himself to appear casual. He yawned and stretched on the landing, studying the area as he did so. He could hear voices below him, but the winding staircase hid the speakers from view. They can’t see me either. Yet. Without waiting another moment, he quietly padded up the stairs to the third landing.

  A boy of about ten, dressed in servants’ aqua linen and sporting a bowl haircut, exited from one of the doors that Collins knew led to the servants’ sleeping chambers. The boy stiffened at the sight of him, and Collins froze. His mind raced, seeking words to explain his presence in some innocent and logical fashion.

  The boy bowed, head low and hands trembling.

  Realizing it would look far more suspicious for an elite guard to stammer out excuses to a young servant, Collins steeled himself and tried to look haughty. “Carry on,” he said, gesturing regally for the boy to descend.

  The boy did so in a relieved scramble.

  Collins continued upward, hyperalert, heart pounding. The last time he had come here, the innocent stroking of a calico cat had given him away. Now, he worried that a chance encounter on a servants’ landing might do the same. Stop it, Ben. It’s all right. Guards go up here all the time to get to the upper palisade and towers. Unlike the cat, the boy had not seen him enter a restricted area, yet he could not help feeling desperately afraid. You’re a guard, he reminded himself. And a woman, can’t forget that. An elite woman guard of Castle Opernes.

  Collins hurried up the stairs and paused on the next landing, avoiding the huge arched window opening onto the courtyard below. Last time, the cat had perched on its ledge, looking irresistibly like his childhood pet. Now, he saw no humans or animals of any kind. Forcing out a breath held too long, Collins reached for the door ring.

  Warded against switchers, the door would never have yielded to the touch of any of the renegades, and they would have triggered a magical alarm had they made the attempt. But it opened easily, and mercifully silently, for Collins. The magic baffled him; he had given up worrying about its operation. All that mattered was that it worked for him. Cautiously, he peeked into a room he had searched once before, though far more thoroughly than it required now. He did not need to open drawers, chests, and cupboards to find something as large as a dragon. The hunt for the crystal had seemed like impossible folly. This struck him as far more reasonable: a glance into each room, and he could leave with no one the wiser.

  Despite these reassurances, Collins glanced nervously around the room before daring to enter and shut the door behind him. It looked much the same as it had on his last inspection. A curtained bed took up most of the middle of the room, its frame more like a squat dresser with multiple drawers and shelves. A chest pressed up against the foot of the bed; and, overhead, a wrought iron chandelier held a dozen unlit candles. A massive tapestry, faded and irreparably dusty, depicted a hunt scene from a past when animals and humans had existed independently, a past only Prinivere was old enough to remember. Blurry mounted men harried a huge animal with spears. Last time, Collins could not discern the object of the hunt. This time, armed with a greater knowledge of Barakhai’s history, he made out the frayed outline of a dragon.

  The woven picture bombarded Collins with the terrible images of Prinivere’s story. Once, Collins knew, dragons and humans had made peace sealed by a crossbreeding that was agreed to reluctantly on the dragons’ part. A dragon ensorcelled to man shape and the king’s daughter created a set of male twins. Though nature intended the miscarriage of those boys, the fetuses kept themselves alive, with magic, at the expense of their mother’s life. The dragons saw evil in a phenomenon the humans viewed only as unfortunate tragedy. Shunned by their father’s side, feared and despised by most of their mother’s, the boys grew up bitter, robbed of the magical training they saw as their legacy. Ultimately, the intensity and focus of their resentment had resulted in the Curse, twisted by the inherent wrongness of their very conception. One wanted to forget and the other to spend half his life in the dragon form he believed his birthright. Each got his wish for everyone but himself. One caused the populace to become ignorant of its own past, and the other made all but the royal family half-time animals. Too late, the dragons destroyed the twins, provoking the war that had, ultimately, resulted in their extinction.

  Reminded of his purpose, Collins headed for the other two doors he knew led from this room. The one he had exited through before led into a garderobe or primitive bathroom. The memory of diving into that room to escape four swords-men and bashing his head on the overhanging lip of the seat remained painfully vivid, and he shivered. No one could have squeezed even one dragon into such a small space, so he ignored that door and discarded the remembrance. He had never passed through the other door, but he guessed it opened onto another bedroom, solely on his own instincts. Zylas’ descriptions of the upper two floors necessarily ended at the landings.

  Collins put an ear against the door, hearing nothing. The gesture seemed futile. Danger would more likely come at him through the door he had entered from the landing, since the only outside access to this room would have to be a window. Steeling his muscles nearly to the point of pain, Collins tripped the latch and shoved.

/>   A rush of flowery perfume struck Collins’ nose. His gaze played over the furniture, registering nothing but the absence of any movement. Reassured, he stepped inside, not quite ready to shut the door behind him. Pushed against the far wall, the bed in this room sported gauzy, flowered curtains. They fluttered in a slight breeze that managed to ooze through the slits the cathedral windows gradually tapered into as they approached the interior. Collins suspected he had found the queen’s chamber. Like the previous one, it had drawers and shelves built into the frame of the bed, obviating the need for dressers. Pretty knickknacks in the shape of tiny bottles, birds, and horses decorated the open surfaces. A large chest held a gold-handled brush, comb, and hand mirror.

  Seeing no dragons, Collins withdrew back into the first room. Leaving that one, too, he found himself back on the landing, facing the opposite door. One down. Three to go. Sucking in a deep breath, he opened the door onto another familiar room. Here, he had met with Carrie Quinton to discuss the renegades and the kingdom. She had revealed Zylas’ deceit: bringing both of them to Barakhai with lies and trickery, and Collins had come dangerously close to defecting.

  Apparently a private sitting room or library, this room held a shelf of books, three padded chairs, and a table. An eight-armed candelabrum rested in the middle of the table on a lacy oval of cloth, a pitcher beside it. Two windows like the ones in the queen’s bedchamber lit the room, revealing no dragons but two other doors. Choosing the left one at random, Collins opened it onto a garderobe. Shutting that door, he selected the other and found a third bedroom, less orderly than the first two. Two beds lay flush against opposite far corners. The first had neatly tied curtains and matching linens of blue and gold, as vivid as Aisa’s plumage. The second was trimmed in rainbow hues, rumpled, and covered with a pile of stuffed animals. Balls, blocks, and dolls lay scattered across a dog-shaped rug in the room’s center. Spanning the entire far wall except for where the beds stood, an ornately carved dresser held two sets of grooming supplies. Silver-handled and matched, the first sat in an orderly line on an embroidered square. The set near the unmade bed lay in wild disarray, the brush dangling between the dresser top and wall, the mirror facedown on the floor, and the comb tossed sideways on the bare wood. Between these, a large bowl held two toppled pitchers and a layer of brackish water.