Master of Dragons

by Margaret Weis

  “He is only fretting that he cannot join his father,” she said to herself She was impressed with the Lady Izabelle, who could find the strength of character to work at embroidery at a time like this.

  Hearing the Queen enter, the lady covered her work with a cloth. Ermintrude had never laid eyes on the lady’s fancy work, and she was not of a mind to do so now.

  “We are all to move to the great hall,” she said. “The commander of my guard deems it will be safer for us there.”

  Marcus was established in a chair near the fire with the Lady Izabelle close at hand. He continued to stare at her, and Ermintrude thought to herself that she’d never seen a young man so much in love. She prayed that she and her beloved husband would live to see them married. At the thought, tears filled her eyes, and Ermintrude scolded herself, for she had determined in the night that she would keep such debilitating fears at bay. She had to be strong, for the sake of those around her.

  One other person joined the small group in the great hall. Mistress Evelina was in attendance. How or why she came to be here was a mystery to the Queen, who remembered ordering Evelina away a fortnight ago. Too late to remove her now. And, Ermintrude was forced to admit, the girl was behaving herself. She was meek and quiet and respectful. She looked often at Marcus but, Ermintrude was glad to see, he paid no attention to her. He had eyes only for Izabelle.

  “Your Majesty,” Evelina said with a deep curtsy. “Some wine might give us courage. I will be glad to pour, if you sanction it.”

  “Yes, a good idea, Mistress,” said the Queen, distracted, for, at that moment the call came that the dragon army was advancing. Ermintrude hastened back to her place by the window. She could see Edward, standing with his cannons, tall, unafraid, in command.

  She had never loved him more than at that moment—a blessed state in which to enter heaven, if death should take her.

  Anora, in the body of Lady Izabelle, watched Marcus, sitting weakly in the chair. He had his eyes fixed on her, hating her, knowing what she planned, knowing he was going to die in moments, knowing everyone he loved would be dead. Knowing there was nothing he could do to save them or himself.

  He would die, torn apart by the blast. All the humans would die, what small bits were left buried beneath tons of stone that had once been a castle, the rubble and ruin of a nation lying at the bottom of an immense crater. She waited impatiently for Maristara to give the signal.

  The illusory dragon army would launch its attack at the castle. The illusion was a mammoth work, created by Maristara, while the real army waited miles away, keeping a safe distance from the site of the blast. The illusory army could not do real damage, but it didn’t need to. No human would remain alive long enough to figure out he’d been duped.

  A few more seconds and Anora would make up some excuse to leave the hall. She’d established her escape route. Marcus had told the Lady Izabelle, as something that might interest her, that a passage led from the castle beneath the walls and opened into a pasture some distance away. (Draconas had taken Marcus out of the castle that way many years ago, though Anora did not know that . . . nor would she have cared.) Once outside the walls, she would slough off this frail human body and take on her own strong and powerful dragon form.

  She would watch the explosion from the clouds, remaining on hand to make certain nothing and no one escaped annihilation.

  “Centuries from now, humans will come to look on this site and they will shudder in horror,” she said to herself in satisfaction. “We dragons will see to that. No more will any human dare to even think about creating such a destructive force!”

  “Would you take some wine, my lady?”

  Anora turned to see the yellow-haired female, Evelina, holding out a goblet.

  Anora didn’t particularly want anything to drink, but everyone else had a goblet, and she didn’t want to draw attention to herself by refusing. She took the glass of wine and put it to her lips and drank a silent toast to victory. When she had drunk the wine, she would leave.

  Anora then learned just how unpredictable humans can be.

  The pain began in her gut—a sharp, stabbing pain unlike anything her human body had ever felt. The pain was so intense that Anora gasped out loud and clutched at her stomach. Another pain—worse than the first—doubled her over. A tremor shook the body of Lady Izabelle. A horrible taste filled the mouth and foam bubbled from the lips. The heart lurched, limbs convulsed. Writhing in agony, the body collapsed. The yellow-haired girl who had served Anora the wine caught her in her arms.

  “My lady! What is wrong?” Evelina cried.

  Cradling the body of Lady Izabelle, Evelina lowered her gently to the floor. Anora could not speak. The throat burned and the tongue was swelling. She stared up into the face of the girl holding her and, though the girl registered shock and horror on her face, Evelina’s eyes smiled.

  “You won’t have him!” Evelina whispered, bending solicitously over the suffering young woman. “He’s mine and he’s going to stay mine. Don’t worry, my lady. The poison acts very swiftly. You won’t suffer long.”

  Poisoned! Anora’s mind reeled with the shock. The human has poisoned me! The body is dying!

  When the body died, the dragon would start to change back into her true form. There was no way to stop the process. The body was already finding it hard to breathe. The limbs were convulsing, the arms and legs jerking and twitching.

  People gathered around her, and all was confusion and mayhem. Some shouted for a physician. Some cried to give her air. Some thought she’d been hit by an arrow and they ran to the window to see who fired. Others ran away from the window to see what was happening. In the midst of the chaos, Anora felt her dragon form start to flee the dying body. In moments, claws would erupt from delicate little hands. Scales would glisten in the place of smooth, fair skin. The simpering mouth would elongate and fill with razor teeth. She could not stop it. She had to accept it. She had to decide what to do and quickly, for she was in danger. It would take time to shift from the human form into the dragon. During that time, she would be vulnerable to attack.

  The one weapon she had was her magic, for she could cast spells in either the human form or dragon, though the dragon was far more powerful. Yet, even using the magic required her to wait until the dragon emerged more fully.

  As for the humans, she trusted they would be in such a state of shock and bewilderment at seeing the demure and gentle Izabelle developing a snout and a tail that Anora doubted they’d be able to think clearly enough to react. The only one who might pose a threat was Marcus, and she still had him in her power.

  Anora was thinking all this through—the dragon mind working coolly and logically as the human mind was fast spiraling into death—when she felt Evelina’s hand slip beneath Izabelle’s long hair, that had come tumbling down in her thrashing. Concealing her hand in the mass of chestnut hair. Evelina stripped off Izabelle’s emerald earrings. Her hand than slid down to the back of Izabelle’s neck and took hold of the chain of the golden necklace.

  “Seems a pity to waste your jewels by burying you in them, my lady,” Evelina whispered.

  Anora realized, too late, what the girl meant to do. Fear gripped the dragon, fear that almost paralyzed her. She made a desperate effort to try to stop Evelina, but the human body was in its death throes and useless to her. The dragon body was just starting to emerge.

  The chain of the golden locket that held the human’s heart snapped and so did the magic, lashing about like a snake with its head cut off, flopping and twisting, completely out of Anora’s control.

  The magic coiling about inside her, Anora shifted back into her dragon form, but the alteration wasn’t happening as it was supposed to. She had no control over it, and so some parts of her body were changing and others were not. If she didn’t retrieve that locket and soon, she could be trapped in this form—half human, half dragon.

  Like one of Grald’s monstrous children, she thought savagely. She had to retrieve
the locket, release the heart of the human girl, and free herself.

  Dragon jaws slavering, Anora lunged at the wretched human who had done this to her.

  Evelina had been about to drop the locket down her bosom when a gigantic claw, growing out of the hand of the Lady Izabelle, made a frantic swipe at her. A monster’s head, sprouting horribly from a human neck, tried to snap off her arm.

  Evelina screamed and sucked in a breath and screamed again. Still screaming, her mouth wide open, she stumbled backward, tripped over her long skirts, and fell.

  She was up again in an instant, half crawling, half scrambling, slipping and falling and still screaming. Yet, even while trying frantically to escape a terrible death, Evelina remained Ramone’s daughter.

  She clutched the golden locket fast in her hand.

  Anora had one dragon leg and one human, one dragon arm and one human. Her head was neither dragon nor human, but a grotesque combination of both. Dragon scales stuck out of human flesh, dragon teeth jutted out of a human mouth, dragon wings sprouted from a human back and dragged limply across the floor. Shambling and shuffling, Anora hurled herself at Evelina and grabbed hold of the hand holding the locket. Anora tried to wrest it from her.

  Evelina fought like a cornered cat, spitting and hissing, howling and kicking and biting the monstrous thing that had hold of her.

  Anora squeezed, attempting to break off the girl’s hand, if she had to. Evelina cried out and Anora seized hold of the locket. She started to wrest it away, when bitter pain tore through her body She looked down to see the point of a sword emerge from her gut. The sword’s point was stained with her own blood.

  In her desperate need to retrieve the locket, Anora had let go of everything.

  She had let go of Marcus.

  Marcus yanked the sword from out of the back of the dragon. He saw the monster fall, but he did not know if he had killed it or not. He didn’t have time to find out.

  “Finish it!” he shouted to the knights, who had been staring at the apparition, too stunned to react. Hurling the bloody sword back to its owner, Marcus ran for the enormous double doors and slammed them against the wall with a boom. He ran down the marble stairs and into the courtyard.

  “Don’t fire!” he bellowed up at the walls. “Father! Don’t fire!”

  Startled faces stared at him. Mouths gaped. Men tried to grab hold of him. Marcus knocked them aside, paid them no attention. He kept running, kept shouting.

  “Don’t fire! For God’s sake, Father, don’t fire!”

  His tone was so dire that several men joined him, crying out, “Don’t fire! Don’t fire!” though they had no idea why.

  Marcus dashed up the stairs leading to the top of the wall where the cannons stood in a row, facing the enemy. Men fell back to get out of his way. Marcus shoved aside those who didn’t move fast enough. Finding the sling around his injured arm impeded his progress, he tore it off. Fear and adrenaline ate up his pain. He could see at a glance that the dragon warriors were in range. The order to fire would be given at any moment.

  Edward stood some distance from him, but Marcus could see clearly his father’s lip moving, starting to form the word that would cause the gunners to touch the match to the portfire. He could see the gunners starting to react, anticipating the command.

  And he could see, as well, the image in the dragon’s mind. He saw the tendrils of magic wound like rope around the bases of the cannons. Stretched from one to the other, the magic wrapped around the muzzles, draped over the wheels, extended along the floor to the stone bunker where the gunpowder was stored. Marcus saw the flame leap from the cannon to the tendrils that snaked past it. The tendrils blazed with a dazzling blue-white light that arced from one cannon to the next until the entire, magical web flamed in Marcus’s vision.

  Then the blast, white-hot as the sun, the magic of the dragon strengthening the explosion until it was hundreds of times more powerful than a spark setting off a thousand kegs of gunpowder. Cannons, people, stone walls vaporized. Not a trace of them left. The blast expanded outward, blowing apart the castle walls, lifting gigantic blocks of granite high into the air, boring deep into the earth, spreading to the city where buildings crumbled and walls shattered.

  Time slowed for Marcus, though it seemed to have speeded up for everyone around him. He could hear nothing for the roaring of blood in his ears. He could not even hear his own voice.

  The stairs he climbed seemed to grow in number, so that he would never reach the end, and then, suddenly, with a great bound, he was at his father’s side, clutching him and gasping, breathless, “Don’t fire the cannons!”

  Edward stared at his son, speechless.

  “If you do”—Marcus sucked in a huge breath—”we’ll all die!”

  “Hold, there!” Edward shouted.

  “Hold!” cried the captains and most of the men obeyed.

  One, however, heard the king’s voice, but not the king’s words. This gunner had listened many times over to the terrifying tales of the demon warriors—how they could burn a man alive with a single look from their fiery red eyes. He’d been watching the enemy’s inexorable advance with growing terror, and he was so panicked that he lowered the lighted portfire to the vent.

  Marcus jumped at the man and socked him in the jaw. The man flew back against the cannon and then slid to the ground in a groggy heap. Those standing nearby watched the prince in stupefaction that was starting to harden into anger.

  Marcus gasped for breath.

  “I have ... to show you something.”

  He turned back to the cannons and raised his hands and let the magic that he’d never before been allowed to use—the magic that they had tried so hard to suppress—flow out of his fingers and his arms, flow out of his mouth and his nose, a part of him, as the air he drew into his body.

  His magic fell like raindrops on the tendrils of enchantment that wrapped around the cannons and caused the rain-bejeweled tendrils to glitter in the bright noontime sun. Men sprang back, out of the way, blessing themselves, so that eventually the glittering cannons stood isolated, surrounded by a ring of frightened and bewildered men.

  Marcus walked over to one of the glittering tendrils and touched it with his hand, and the glittering rain-droplets of magic froze and changed to ice that sparkled briefly in the sun. The tendril, weighed down by the ice, broke and shattered, like ice-rimed tree limbs. The magic fell to the stone flagons and melted away.

  “Sire! Look!” Gunderson pointed.

  Those who could wrench their gaze from the enchanted cannons looked out over the walls to the hills and fields beyond.

  The enemy was gone.

  “God has saved us from the demons!” cried a priest, finding this a much easier explanation than what he’d just witnessed. “It is a miracle.”

  Men began to cheer. They flung down their weapons and started to dance on the walls, embracing each other, yelling with all their might.

  “Where did they go?” Gunderson asked, dazed.

  “No miracle, I’m afraid. It was an illusion,” Marcus said. He was just thinking that this was the happy ending, when Draconas burst into his mind.

  “Marcus! Where have you been?”

  Draconas appeared to him not as the Walker, but in his dragon form, all teeth and eyes and gleaming red scales.

  “Draconas!” Marcus was glad to see him and he was even gladder to tell his tale. “The dragon—”

  “Never mind!” Draconas snapped. “You think you’ve won this battle, but it’s not over yet. You’ve jumped out of the kettle, only to land smack in the fire. The real dragon army is on its way and so are the dragons.”

  42

  THE DRAGON ARMY MASSED ON THE TOPS OF THE HILLS SURROUNDING the castle. At some unheard signal, the warriors began to flow rapidly to the attack. Soldiers watching from the castle walls blinked and rubbed their eyes. They had seen this army once and then it had vanished, and now it had reappeared. Even the stalwart were shaken. Men cursed or trem
bled. Some fell to their knees. The priest who had called out that God had saved them looked accusingly into the heavens, as though suspecting some sort of cruel joke.

  Leaving Gunderson in command, Edward took time to return to the great hall with Marcus, to see for himself what had occurred. He stared in horror and loathing at the carcass of the dead monstrosity that lay on the floor. Following Marcus’s initial strike at the dragon, the knights who’d been paralyzed with shock had come to themselves and obeyed his command to “Finish it.”

  They had attacked the monster with sword and knife and spear, stabbing it over and over in their grim determination to slay it. The carcass, riddled with wounds, lay in a vast pool of blood. The eyes still held the fury of the dying dragon. The jaws gaped in a hate-filled grimace. Tragically, some parts of the Lady Izabelle were still visible, and it seemed to Edward that the dragon and the pretty young girl were locked in a lethal embrace.

  “Cover it with a sheet or something,” the king ordered, sickened.

  “Poor girl,” the Queen murmured softly, weeping. “Poor child.”

  “At least she is at peace now,” said Edward. He put his arm around his distraught wife. “Come away.”

  “I didn’t know she was . . . was that. . . that evil thing!” Ermintrude cried, sobbing into her husband’s breast.

  “None of us knew, Mother,” said Marcus, trying to comfort her. “Don’t blame yourself. Not even another dragon could have seen through the facade. She allowed me to see the truth, but only when she was certain she had a firm hold on me. Then she tortured me with the knowledge of what she planned.”

  A squire appeared in the doorway, seeking the king. Edward looked about for someone else to help his wife, who was shivering and sobbing.

  “I’ll stay with the Queen, Sire,” Evelina offered in meek tones.

  No one had paid any attention to her before this, and she’d taken care to keep well in the background. Now she came hesitantly forward.