Master of Dragons

by Margaret Weis

  “Sorrow,” called Lucien. He stood by the tomb, staring down into it. “Come look at this.” He sounded shaken.

  Sorrow glared at Ven a moment longer, then, her back rigid, her legs stiff, she walked over to the tomb. She cast one glance inside and then turned away.

  Ven stood up, slowly and painfully. He limped over to the dragon’s carcass and stared down at it. Finding what he sought, wound around the dragon’s bloodstained talons, Ven removed the golden locket and carried it over to the tomb. Opening it up, he displayed the heart within. The heart had stopped beating. With the dragon’s death, the enchantment was broken.

  He thrust the locket in Sorrow’s face.

  Sorrow averted her eyes. Lucien started to gag and was sick on the floor.

  “You want the truth. Then look at it,” Ven insisted.

  Sorrow looked. She looked at the shriveled heart and the maltreated corpse in the tomb. She looked at Grald, the human, dead, and saw the expression of agony and horror frozen on his face.

  Ven could hear outside the cave of his mind the beat of wings. He could feel the hot wind of Maristara’s coming. He tossed the locket into the tomb and turned to leave.

  “Where are you going?” Sorrow demanded.

  “Away,” said Ven.

  “You can’t!”

  “Fine.” Ven turned around. “You brought me back to life. Now what are you going to do with me? Wait here to see me die again? That’s all right with me. Just make up your mind.”

  Sorrow hesitated, wavering and unsure. Lucien had finished being sick. Though he still looked ill, he went over to her and the two conferred softly.

  Ven stood waiting. It truly did not matter to him, one way or the other.

  Eventually the two came to an agreement.

  “You’re coming with us,” said Sorrow.

  Lucien took hold of Ven by the arm, handling him roughly, scratching him with his claws.

  Ven shrugged and went along. He didn’t ask where they were going. He already knew. The dragon’s children had only one place they could go, and that was back to the lair where they’d been born, where they’d lived all their lives. He didn’t ask what they were going to do with him, because he didn’t care.

  Sorrow and Lucien held Ven between them, both of them gripping him tightly, securely, though he came along docilely enough. They talked to him and about him, but he paid scant attention. He heard only the clicking of their claws on the stone floor—three sets of claws, his claws and those of his sister and brother. They made quite a racket, none of them in unison. He listened to the clickety-clack with a kind of detached fascination.

  “What are we going to do with him?” Lucien asked, as they clattered down the corridor that led from the Abbey back to the lair.

  “We’ll hide him,” said Sorrow. “With illusion magic.”

  “They’ll come looking for him—” Lucien began.

  “Not in our chambers,” said Sorrow. “They won’t suspect us. Why should they? They’ll suppose he ran back to the humans. They’ll search the human city and beyond. We’re the last they would suspect.”

  Lucien accepted her decision without question, and the three walked on.

  “What do we tell the other children?” Lucien asked, after a moment. “About Grald . . .”

  “Nothing,” Sorrow returned, quick and harsh. “We tell them nothing. It would be impossible to explain to the little ones, anyway,” she added, a tremor in her voice.

  “That’s true,” Lucien said. “When we don’t even understand. Our father took a human form—”

  “Don’t say that!” Sorrow cried, glaring at him. “Don’t ever say that!”

  Lucien fell silent. He looked hurt, as though she’d struck him. After a moment, he said softly, “What do we do now, Sorrow? You, me, the others?”

  “We’ll be fine,” Sorrow said. “No, Lucien, no more questions! I have to think—”

  The two stopped, freezing in place. Ven, preoccupied, kept on walking. Sorrow gave him a rough jerk on the arm. Then he heard what they’d heard.

  The sounds were unmistakable—the tramping of heavy, clawed feet, shaking the floor; the movement of a massive body; the stentorian breathing of a dragon. The sounds came from behind them, from the Abbey.

  “The dragon of Seth!” Lucien’s thoughts whispered in Ven’s brain.

  “I’m going back,” Sorrow said abruptly.

  “To hand him over to the dragon?” Lucien asked.

  He glanced uncertainly at Ven, who stood there, unconcerned, as if they were talking about someone else.

  “I don’t know,” Sorrow said, biting her lip. “Maybe. Take him to the cave, Lucien. Hide him in that place where we used to hide when the teaching humans came to us.”

  “Sorrow . . .” Lucien began.

  She cast him an exasperated glance. “What now?”

  “Just ... be careful,” he said.

  She rested her hand gently on his arm. “Everything will be all right, Lucien. Now, go. Quickly”

  Lucien went, tugging Ven along with him. Ven might have tackled the youngster and made good his escape, but that required effort, and he had none to give. He didn’t want to hurt the boy, who’d been hurt enough already this night.

  Ven walked on, his gaze on the ground, staring at his feet, listening to the sound of his claws and those of his brother’s scraping and clicking on the cold stone floor of the mountain.

  26

  WHILE VEN WAS FIGHTING FOR HIS LIFE AND MARCUS WAS SLEEPING off the effects of his dragon dream, Draconas sat placidly on a stool in Anton and Rosa’s dwelling and darned socks. He hoped, as he did so, that poor Anton would never have to wear these socks. He would surely get blisters, for Draconas was neither particularly skilled at darning, nor was he able to hold his mind on his work, for his mind was divided—part of it in the room, keeping watch on the monk, and part of it with Melisande’s sons. The socks suffered as a result, turning out all lumpy and misshapen.

  Draconas’s enforced nap had lasted only an hour or so, then the monk brought the little girl out of the enchantment.

  “There, now,” said Brother Leopold. “Don’t you feel better after a little rest? Come and join us by the fire.”

  Draconas dragged his stool over by the fire, where Anton and Rosa and the monk sat; the couple bewildered and frightened, the monk completely at his ease. The monk asked Anton questions about his work, asked Rosa questions about her weaving, asked Draca about her friends and what games they liked to play.

  Rosa and Anton gave short and sometimes incoherent answers to the monk’s questions. Both sat on the edge of their chairs, as though waiting for something to jump out of the shadows at them. After a while, however, when nothing did jump out at them and Brother Leopold seemed truly interested in hearing what they had to say, they both started tentatively to relax. They had no idea what was going on, but, reason told them, if the monk was going to do anything dire, he would have done it by now. He wouldn’t have been sitting by the fire watching Rosa and Draca mending clothes and darning socks.

  Eventually, bewilderment and tension gave way to exhaustion. Anton endeavored to stifle his yawns, but he’d been up with the sun and worked past sunset, and he cast longing glances at his bed. Rosa actually nodded off over her mending, waking with a jerk when the monk spoke her name.

  “I’m sorry, Brother Leopold,” she said, blushing deeply. “I didn’t mean to be rude. I’m sitting too close to the fire, I believe. It makes me doze off.” She moved her chair back from the dying blaze.

  The monk said something polite and continued to talk. Eventually Rosa’s head lowered, her chin sank to her chest, and her work fell from her hands. Anton had already gone to sleep in his chair. He snored and mumbled in his sleep as he always did. His hands twitched.

  Brother Leopold didn’t move. The bell rang for curfew, and still he stayed. He no longer talked, however. He seemed to be waiting for something.

  Draconas kept darning. The sock in his hands l
ooked like no sock in the known universe, but, fortunately, the monk wasn’t paying attention. He began to grow restless. He stood up, walked to the window and peered out, his gaze going in the direction of the Abbey. Brother Leopold walked back, resumed his seat, and stared hard at Draconas.

  Draconas plied his needle, his eyes on his work. The monk wanted to ask him if he knew what had happened, but he didn’t dare. That would show weakness. As for Draconas, all the while he’d been darning, he’d been watching Ven work his magic, watching Marcus defend his brother. He’d watched the dragon, Grald, crash down dead on the bloodstained floor.

  And now Maristara was coming. He saw her, and she saw him. She knew he was in Dragonkeep. He couldn’t help that. He’d been forced to open himself up to her and the other dragons when he reached out to Lysira and asked her to help, when he’d reached out to Ven.

  She had come searching for him, and she wouldn’t be as squeamish as Grald about destroying a few hundred humans to get at him.

  Draconas’s usefulness in Dragonkeep had ended.

  “Ven is on his own,” he said to himself. “I can do nothing more for him. Ven will either swim or the dark waters will close over his head. Grald is dead. The sons of Melisande avenged their mother. I’ve made life difficult for Maristara and Anora, but I haven’t stopped them. I have delayed the hour they will attack Idylswylde, but I haven’t stopped that either. Perhaps I’ve made matters worse. Maybe I’ve pushed them to desperation. Whatever the case, I have to leave Dragonkeep and I have to leave now, before Maristara arrives.”

  The monk was a problem. He could still hurt Rosa and Anton, and Draconas owed them too much to bring more harm to them than he already had.

  Draconas dropped the maltreated sock. The little girl stood up and went up to stand next to the monk. Brother Leopold eyed her warily.

  “I’ll tell you a story, Brother,” Draconas said. “Shall I?”

  “Very well,” he said, his expression grim.

  “Once upon a time, a dragon had a son—half-dragon, half-human. The dragon’s son grew up to be a fine, strong young man, and the dragon was well pleased, for he had decided that he would steal this son’s strong young body and use it for his own. After the dragon had taken over his son’s body, the dragon—in the guise of the son—would catch his foe all unsuspecting and slay him. And the dragon would live happily ever after.”

  Brother Leopold listened, his face set in stone.

  Draconas shook his head. “That’s how the story is supposed to end. But it doesn’t.”

  “Oh?” said the monk sarcastically. “How do you think it ends?”

  “Most unhappily for the dragon. He’s dead.”

  Brother Leopold gave a tight smile. “I don’t believe you. This is a trick.”

  “Grald was supposed to send for you when he had his new body. And he hasn’t, has he?”

  The monk had no answer. He walked over to the door and stared, frowning, into the night.

  “Go to the Abbey Go see for yourself,” said Draconas, coming over to stand beside him.

  The monk glanced around. “And what do you do then?” he asked mockingly.

  “I let you live,” Draconas answered.

  The monk stared down at the child in front of him and his mouth twisted in disbelief.

  He must know that I am a dragon. Grald would have certainly told him when he sent him to see to it that I did not interfere with Grald’s plans for Ven.

  But it is one thing to be told and another to see for oneself.

  Draconas shifted the illusion. The shadow of the dragon, kept hidden from human eyes, took the place of the little girl.

  Brother Leopold found himself staring at a huge clawed foot. His gaze shifted to a scale-encrusted belly that seemed to have engorged a house, for it held within it floor, room, fireplace, table, chairs, and the slumbering humans.

  The monk fell back a step. His gaze lifted from the belly and the clawed feet to the arched neck and the lowering head of the dragon, whose scales gleamed burnished red and whose eyes sparked blaze orange. The dragon lifted a front foreclaw and held it suspended over the monk’s head.

  Leopold was a soldier, one of the elite of the dragon army. He’d been trained to fight from the day he was old enough to understand how to kill a man with his magic. He’d been trained to fight men, not dragons—or so Draconas reasoned.

  Leopold was no coward. He did not turn tail and run. He turned his back deliberately on the monster that loomed over him. His hand steady, he opened the door and walked out into the empty and silent street.

  Pausing, Leopold looked back at the dragon.

  “Grald told me about you—the one they call the Walker. He told me you would side with the humans. It won’t matter, you know—even if Grald is dead. The humans cannot stop us. And neither can you.”

  Leopold departed, heading in the direction of the Abbey.

  Draconas abandoned the illusion and collapsed back down into that of the little girl. He stared gloomily after the monk’s retreating figure. He thought it quite likely that the monk was right. He couldn’t stop them.

  He looked back at Anton and Rosa, asleep in their chairs. They would sleep until dawn, when they would wake to find the child they had taken into their homes and their hearts gone. They would think the monk had taken her. They would seek her, ask discreet questions, but they would never find out what had become of her and they would grieve her loss. Once again, Draconas had been forced to use humans. Once again, he’d been forced to hurt them.

  He heard wings beating. The shadow of Maristara grew large in his mind. The little girl went over to Rosa and kissed her careworn cheek and placed the darned socks in her hands. Draca kissed Anton and, bringing a blanket, draped it around his shoulders.

  Then Draconas left the house. He walked out into the street, reached up to the stars, and launched himself into the night.

  27

  SORROW CREPT THROUGH THE CORRIDOR ON THE BALLS OF HER feet, moving as silently as possible. She had not yet made up her mind whether to confront the dragon, Maristara, or not. She wanted to see and hear before she was heard and seen. She planned to verify Ven’s story, find out if he was telling the truth. If that involved speaking with the dragon, Sorrow would do so. She wanted this to be her decision, however. Not the dragon’s.

  As is customary with dragon lairs, Grald had constructed several different corridors that led into and out of the main hall. Some, such as the one Sorrow walked, led to the hall from the mountain “palace.” Others led to the hall from outside the mountain, with no need to pass through the part of the lair where the soldiers of the dragon army lived and worked. Some of the corridors were small, made for the dragon in his human form; others enormous, meant for the dragon in his true form. Maristara entered through one of the large corridors. Sorrow came in by one of the small ones.

  She stood in the doorway, in the shadows. No illusion spell could hide her from the dragon’s eyes, so she didn’t bother. She kept still, kept the colors of her mind subdued. Not that it was likely the dragon would seek her out. She was just one of Grald’s children. The dragon had other, far more important matters to consider.

  Maristara was old, far older than Grald. The dragon’s scales were so dark that they were almost black. Her head was slightly stooped, her shoulders hunched, with her wings folded at her side.

  Tendons creaked and bones cracked as she moved. For all her great age, Maristara was not feeble. The huge body advanced ponderously into the hall and stalked over to Grald. Maristara sniffed at the charred, maimed carcass, and her head jerked involuntarily at the stench of death.

  A low growl of ire rumbled in the dragon’s chest. Maristara searched around, seeking the perpetrator. Her piercing gaze roved the hall methodically and sifted through the shadows. Sorrow glided behind a pillar. The dragon’s glint-eyes raked the alcove and passed over her, then their gaze shifted, along with the massive head, to the door—the human entrance to the hall. Sorrow could hear the ap
proaching footfalls as well as the dragon—a single person, running swiftly.

  The dragon lifted a claw, and there was a glint of gold. Maristara held a locket such as Grald had worn; a locket containing a human heart. The dragon’s magic took shape and form in her mind, and such was the power of the magic that Sorrow, standing close to it, could see the blending, merging, dazzling colors flicker on the horizon of her own mind.

  The dragon began to shift form in a process that reminded Sorrow of watching humans stuff sausage. The dragon seemed to shrink and compress and stuff her own massive body into the body of a human female. The procedure took time, and Maristara had barely completed her transformation before the door burst open, banging against the wall, and a monk ran inside.

  The monk came up short, his horrified gaze going first to the grisly carcass, then to the strange woman standing over it. The woman was middle-aged, with gray hair; a taut, bony face and a lank, bony body.

  “Who are you and what are you doing here?” the monk demanded.

  Sorrow recognized him as Leopold, one of the commanders of the dragon’s army, and she wondered what he was doing walking about the city (where the soldiers were not supposed to venture) in monk’s garb. He was not rattled, but composed, advancing into the room with his hands raised.

  “I am Lucretta, the Mistress of Dragons,” the woman answered, haughty and intimidating. She drew forth the locket that hung around her human neck and held it to the light.

  Leopold relaxed. Bowing low, he murmured, “Mistress,” in respectful tones.

  “What do you know of this murder?” Maristara gestured to the carcass. “Was it the Walker?”

  “No, Mistress. I was with the Walker the entire time. The Dragon’s Son killed Grald.”

  “Impossible!” exclaimed Maristara.

  “There can be no other explanation, Mistress. Grald chose this night to take over Ven’s body for his own . . .”

  Sorrow’s blood tingled. A chill rippled through her and her clawed hands clenched.

  “... I sent the Dragon’s Son to him and then I left, as he ordered me, to find the Walker and make certain that he did not interfere. Draconas never left my sight the entire night. Unless some other dragon intervened . . .”