Master of Dragons

by Margaret Weis

  “I am sorry, my lady. What did you say?”

  “I said I think he is better, Your Majesty,” Anora repeated.

  “I don’t know,” said Ermintrude bleakly. “I don’t know.”

  Shaking her head, she added, “After this terrible news from New Bramfells, I have been thinking that you should return to your home, Lady Izabelle. I should never have permitted you to stay, and I would not have, if I had known the danger would be this great.”

  This plan did not suit Anora at all, and she was ready with her arguments.

  “Your Majesty,” she said, her eyes lowered modestly, “I cannot bear to leave His Highness. Perhaps I flatter myself—I am sure I do—but it seems to me that Prince Marcus has some small regard for me, and I fear my departure might cause some setback in his recovery.”

  Anora raised her eyes to meet the Queen’s. “I am not at all afraid so long as I am inside the safety of castle walls, ma’am. I would be terrified to leave.”

  “You would have an escort,” the Queen assured her.

  “And that would take brave men away from the fighting, should it come to that. My father would never forgive me.” Anora lowered her eyes again. “I will go if you command me, Your Majesty. But I would much rather stay.”

  Marcus roused at that juncture. “What is the matter?” he asked, noting the lady’s high color and his mother’s frown.

  “Your father and I decided that we should send the Lady Izabelle back to her home in Weinmauer,” said Ermintrude. “The lady, it seems, refuses to go.”

  Anora glided over to stand beside Marcus. Her skirts whispered around her ankles. She looked into his eyes. “Do you want me to leave, Your Highness? As you are soon to be my husband, I will be guided by your decision.”

  She could see in his mind the red of his struggle to escape her, and she caught hold of that color and wound it around and around the bobbin of her magic.

  Marcus mumbled something and sank back into his chair and closed his eyes.

  “He wishes me to stay, Your Majesty,” said Anora. “I love him. I do not want to leave him.”

  “So be it,” Ermintrude said. She touched the young woman on the cheek. “I will be proud to call you ‘daughter.’ “

  “Thank you, Your Majesty.” Anora curtsied.

  “I will sit with Marcus awhile,” the Queen continued. “You should go rest before dinner.”

  Anora curtsied again to the Queen and left her alone with her son. Anora’s thoughts were focused on her plans for the night, when, traversing a narrow spiral staircase, she was aware of someone coming up as she was going down.

  The two women met in the center and stood regarding each other in the flaring torchlight. Anora recognized the human—a female with blond hair named Evelina, who had tried to barge in to see the Prince. The Queen, Anora recalled, had been most upset. The female was of lower ranking than Izabelle, and she should be the one to stand aside so that the lady could pass. Evelina did so, after a moment’s pause. Anora gathered up her skirts and squeezed past the young woman. Evelina did not curtsy as she should have done. She stood upright and stared quite boldly at the lady. Happening to glance at Evelina as she went by, Anora saw the human’s mouth curl. The glint of baleful enmity in the eyes would have chilled any human to the bone. Anora had no care for humans, however, and she thought nothing of it, except to be annoyed at the inconvenience of having to deal with these hoops and the yards of silk, and a weak and fragile little human body.

  The Lady Izabelle had been fifteen years old when the dragon had waylaid her entourage in the wilderness, killed her escorts, and dragged the screaming and terrified young girl into a cave, there to tear out her heart and steal her body. Anora had left the girl, still horribly alive, sealed inside the cave, blocking the entrance with a heavy stone, so that none should find her. Anora placed the girl’s heart in the golden locket, hung the locket around her neck, and proceeded on the journey, creating her own knightly escorts out of illusion.

  The dragon’s intent had been to merely enter the castle and gain access to the royal family. Anora was pleased and astonished beyond measure to discover that the young woman, whose body she’d stolen because it suited her purpose, was actually to be betrothed to Prince Marcus. This opened up all sorts of possibilities. If dragons had held human beliefs, Anora would have said that this was a sign that God himself smiled on her. As it was, she seized the fortunate coincidence and made the most of it.

  Dinner that night was a glum affair. The food was not very good, nor was there very much, for Cook was rationing what she served them. There was no music. The musicians had been sent away. The king was not present. He had gone to inspect the city’s fortifications and supervise the evacuation of the populace. The few who were present at the table did not linger over the mutton stew, and the meal ended quickly. After dinner, Anora played at draughts with the Prince until she was able to plead fatigue and take her leave of them for the night. She carried Marcus’s soul off in her work basket.

  When the church bells in the city rang twice, Anora wrapped herself in a cloak of illusion, and stole out of her room. She glided down the stairs, through silent, deserted halls, out into the courtyard. From there, wrapped in the night, she made her way to the castle wall, where stood the cannons.

  Soldiers were at their posts, manning the towers, keeping watch, walking their rounds. Every man was watchful and alert, for each had heard the fate of New Bramfells. Anora listened to them talk in tense, low voices as she stole past them, unseen and unsuspected.

  The moon was waning from the full, yet still shed enough bright white light for Anora to see almost as clearly as by day. She welcomed the light. Her dragon eyes could see living beings in the dark—humans glowed a warm red in her vision. But the cannons had no life. They squatted black and ugly and repulsive in the moonlight.

  Six grotesque monsters, with misshapen arms that they used to haul themselves around, and trundling legs. Anora regarded them with loathing. She hated them, hated the smell of the iron that reminded her of blood, hated the stink of sulfur and saltpeter, hated the all-pervasive stench of humans that bound iron and death together.

  Anora walked around the cannons, not touching them, for she detested the feel of them. She knew how they worked. Prince Marcus had most kindly explained it all to her, and she’d seen them in action from a distance, hearing the appalling roar that shook the ground, and watching them belch fire and burp up stone balls. She thought back to a time when dragons had witnessed humans picking up sticks to use as weapons, and she knew from dragon lore how the dragons had laughed, amused by the sight. The dragons had laughed and had then gone back to their dreams.

  “We should have known,” Anora said sadly to herself. “We should have seen then that these cunning little beasts would one day be capable of producing weapons that threaten our very existence. We should have done then what we do now. We should have shown them that we are the true rulers of this world, taught them to fear us and respect us. Still, better late than never, as the little beasts say.”

  Soldiers walked past the dragon, so close she could have plucked their cloaks. They did not see her, though one stared straight at her. Anora kept still until they had gone. The illusion effectively concealed her from human eyes, but it could not dampen sound. While she waited for them to continue on their way, she decided she should contact Maristara.

  Maristara was waiting for her, impatiently it seemed.

  “Where have you been?”

  “About our business,” Anora returned.

  “You have not heard the news.”

  “What news? Just tell me. Do not be so dramatic,” Anora said. Maristara could be such a dullard sometimes.

  “Draconas summoned the Parliament.”

  “Did he?” Anora found that interesting. “To try to convince the others to save the humans?”

  “Of course.”

  “With what result?”

  “As you might expect. Parliament could not agr
ee. Some went one way, some another. Draconas has a few of the noble houses on his side, but we have more on ours.”

  “And how did it end?”

  “The Parliament of Dragons is dissolved,” said Maristara with grim satisfaction. “Good riddance, if you ask me.”

  Anora heard the news with shock and, oddly, regret. She thought fondly of the long debates, the interminable discussions, the Speaker’s Rod being handed civilly back and forth among them. She recalled the rustle of wings and the flicking of tails and the heads turning their bright eyes on first one, then the other, as the rainbow of their wisdom shone about them and bound them together. And now all that was dissolved, as grains of salt disappearing in a glass of water, so that you could never more see them or even tell what they had once been.

  Fear emptied Anora of color. For a terrible moment she was cold and hollow and dark inside. The voices of her ancestors seemed to cry out against her, their dead eyes stared at her accusingly. In an instant she had undone the work of centuries. And where would it lead?

  “To peace,” she insisted stubbornly. “To stability. Once the humans are cowed and come under our rule, the dragons who have been deluded into siding with the humans will see reason. Parliament will be restored. All will be well again. Better than before.”

  So she reassured herself, and though doubt remained burning in the pit of her gut, like an unexpelled remnant of brimstone, she was able to ignore it and turn her attention back to Maristara. And a good thing she did.

  “What did you just tell me?” Anora demanded, appalled.

  “The dragon’s children are in Seth,” Maristara repeated, her colors murky and sullen.

  “How could you let this happen?”

  “I cannot be in two places at once!” Maristara returned vehemently. “I cannot prosecute this war from Dragonkeep as you insisted upon and, at the same time, chase after Grald’s monstrous progeny!”

  Anora caught hold of a word. “Monstrous. Yes, that is what they will seem to the humans of Seth, who have been taught all their lives to fear dragons. We have no need to worry. The humans have undoubtley slaughtered them.”

  “On the contrary, they embraced them,” said Maristara, and it seemed she would have hidden these thoughts, but Anora ferreted them out. “I have lost contact with the High Priestess. The heart in the locket withered and turned to dust. They found the body of Lucretta and they freed her from my spell. The body I had stolen is dead. Fortunately, I was not in it at the time. I had abandoned it.”

  “You have abandoned your senses! One of two human kingdoms under our sway, and Seth has been lost to us.”

  “We will regain it.” Maristara was confident.

  Blindly confident—the confidence of ignorance, Anora thought, seething. All contact lost with Seth. The Mistress of Dragons unmasked. By all logic, the humans of Seth should have killed the half-dragon monsters.

  Humans are so completely unpredictable! Anora fumed. She had lived among humans, disguised as the holy sister, off and on for years, and she still found them baffling.

  We must destroy them, Anora realized. Destroy them all. Only then will we finally be at peace.

  “Is all going well in Ramsgate?” Maristara was asking. “Our plan remains unchanged?”

  “Yes,” Anora replied. “The plan proceeds. The dragon army marches with the dawn. By sunset tomorrow, this city will be a hole in the ground, and the world of humans will have learned a bitter lesson.”

  The conversation between the two dragons ended, and Anora proceeded with her spellcasting. Her plan was foolproof. It could not fail. Unpredictable though humans might be, she saw no way they could escape their fate. The real army would cast an illusion of itself. The illusionary army would attack the castle. The cannons would misfire. The horrendous explosion would wipe out every living being within a twenty-mile radius. Two major cities destroyed. What was left of the kingdom of Idylswylde would sue for peace.

  The dragon army would then march on the neighboring kingdom of Weinmauer.

  Terms: Surrender or be destroyed.

  Or maybe just be destroyed.

  Anora began to work her magic.

  41

  THE NEXT MORNING, AS DAWN BROKE, SCOUTS BROUGHT WORD that the enemy army was on the march, heading for the capital. The enemy was, as yet, some miles distant, moving slowly, in no hurry. The flash of the sun off their armor could be seen for miles, according to one report. So, too, could the smoke billowing into the air, for they set fire to field and farmhouse as they passed. The warriors summoned lightning from out of blue skies, starting fires where the bolts struck, so that it seemed to the victims that God himself hurled His wrath against them. Some began to cry that these warriors were not demons but avenging angels, sent to punish them for their transgressions.

  “The end of the world is coming,” they wailed, and so it was, but in a way they could not fathom.

  After hearing the terrible death toll in New Bramfells, King Edward had ordered the evacuation of the civilian population of Ramsgate-upon-the-Aston. Monasteries and abbeys in outlying districts took in many of the refugees. Merchants closed their shops, packed up their merchandise, and left via the river or overland. Once the city was emptied of civilians, the king pulled the troops off the city walls and brought them in to defend the castle.

  Edward sought to convince his soldiers that these warriors were neither demons nor angels. They were ordinary men with extraordinary abilities. Few believed him. The king might have pointed out that his very own son could wield the same magic, and Edward sometimes wondered, in the sleepless hours of the night, if being open and honest about Marcus and the magic would have been the better course of action. He decided eventually it would have made no difference at all. The ignorant and superstitious would have thought Marcus a demon, too.

  The cannons were readied for action. The gunners were in position. The gunpowder, usually stored in a bunker that had been dug into the ground some distance from the castle proper and its outbuildings, was hauled from the bunker to the castle. Edward had ordered construction of a small bunker near the guns, and this was stocked with powder barrels. Buckets of water stood by the guns and by the bunker in order to douse any spark.

  Edward’s cannons were different from most cannons being built by other nations. His were designed to fight not only men on the ground but also dragons in the air, and thus his cannons could be cranked up to fire into the sky. Mounted on a revolving table, they could also be swiveled about in order to follow a moving target. This day, the cannons faced the ground. He considered his most formidable foe the dragon warriors. If a dragon appeared, the cannons could always be realigned.

  The sun climbed toward noon. Everything was in readiness. Archers and men-at-arms lined the walls. The gunners stood by their cannons with their ramrods, six men to a gun, each man assigned a different task from placing the charge to ramming home the cannonball to sighting the gun in on its target.

  “Here they come!” one eagle-eyed youngster cried from his perch in the top of the tallest tower. “Marching across the fields!”

  The enemy rippled over the land, their scaled armor glittering like the river that flowed past the castle. The dragon army marched directly on the castle itself, bypassing the city walls, flowing down into the valleys and up the hills. The warriors took their time, not yet attacking. The hands of the warriors were empty, but this time no man laughed. Some had been present at the ill-fated Battle of Aston and had seen for themselves that the empty hands of the “demon” warriors carried death. Those who had not been present had heard the stories. All watched in grim silence as the army advanced, silence broken only by the nervous jingle and rattle of armor, the hissing and sputtering of the torches, and, here and there, muttered prayers.

  The army was not yet within range of the cannons. The King himself would give the order to fire.

  “Stand ready,” said the cannon’s commander.

  Inside the palace, the few people who had chosen to re
main were gathered together in the great hall where the knights could protect them, in case the walls were breached. Queen Ermintrude was among them. Edward had argued and pleaded with his wife to flee to her father’s castle in Weinmauer. The Queen had most indignantly refused.

  “How would that look, me running home to Papa, crying that my husband cannot protect me?”

  “He can’t protect you,” Edward had replied glumly.

  “Nonsense.” Ermintrude had clasped his hand and pressed it to her bosom. “We have the cannons and brave men.”

  She had sighed, then said softly, “We’ve seen bad times before, Edward, my love, and we’ve come through them together. We’ll come through this one just the same.”

  “I hope you are right, my own true heart.” Edward had kissed her on the cheek and she had smiled at him. He had been glad to see her dimples flash again. He had something else to say, however. “If anything should happen to me, the people will look to you as their queen for guidance.”

  “I know.” Ermintrude had spoken calmly, though the dimples had once again disappeared. “Just don’t let anything happen to yourself, Edward.”

  The Queen stood by a window peering out, watching Edward, who was everywhere at once. Her guards begged her repeatedly to come back into the center of the room, away from the window, but Ermintrude ignored them. She chafed at being cooped up inside the castle, unable to see what was going on. She would have been out on the walls herself if she could have managed it. Edward would have had a fit, and, more important, she could not leave Marcus.

  Ermintrude shifted her worried gaze from her husband to her son. Marcus had insisted on going out onto the walls himself, though his left arm was still in a sling and he was running a low-grade fever, according to the Lady Izabelle. Marcus had ordered that his armor be brought to him in his room, but he lacked the strength to put it on.

  When Ermintrude went to see him, she found him sitting in a chair by the fire, watching the Lady Izabelle work on her embroidery. Ermintrude noted an odd look in her son’s eyes, like those of an animal trapped, caged. The look was so very odd that she was startled and uneasy.