The Princess's Dragon

by JManess

  As Liliana helped her into her gown and arranged her hair around the filigreed silver headdress, she stole a look at her maid. The chatelaine often hired girls as young as eight rotas away from their homes for service in the castle, but few ever rose to the position of lady’s maid, especially to a princess.

  The child that arrived from the countryside rotas ago was the same age as Sondra, and when the lonely young princess spotted a new girl entering the servant’s quarters, she had demanded a meeting. Liliana soon became the youngest royal lady’s maid and the girls grew up together, but for the first time Sondra questioned Liliana’s loyalty. She wondered if the girl she considered her best friend would be one of the first to cast a stone. She wondered if the maid secretly feared her too. It didn’t seem likely as the other girl poked and prodded Sondra, regaling her in her drawling accent with servant’s gossip and funny anecdotes about life below stairs. Liliana appeared as she always had: friendly, talkative, and loyal. Deciding that she couldn’t question the allegiance

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  of everyone she knew without growing paranoid, Sondra focused instead on ignoring the pain of getting dressed and concentrated on not heaving up all over Liliana.

  Sondra managed to avoid any more stomach upheaval that cycle but she didn’t dare eat. She shifted the food about on her plate and flicked as much as she could to the floor, where the massive castle hounds waited to snap up any dropped morsels. The food and drink flowed freely and everyone overindulged.

  Her sister flirted genteelly with a baron old enough to be her father. Her brother laughed raucously with his friends between bites as he shoveled food into his mouth like a starving animal. Her mother and father sat at the center of the high table and conversed quietly, their parley inaudible amidst the noise of the crowd and the musicians playing in the galley. She couldn’t wait to break away from the table and the crowds.

  After the servants dished up the final course, the king and queen stood to retire to the sitting room; a huge chamber crowded with seating of all types and filled with musical instruments and games for the entertainment of the guests. They took their places in heavily upholstered chairs at the head of the room, while their guests made it a point to stop in and visit until dismissed to seek entertainment in that room or one of the other many public rooms of the castle.

  Normally, the princesses joined them and sometimes played the harp or the lute for their guests, but with a gathering this large bent on discussing one thing and one thing only, the queen released her children from their duties and gave them leave to mingle among the guests in the other rooms or the back garden, properly chaperoned. Sondra sighed in relief and made her escape determined to reach her chambers before collapsing in agony on her bed. She’d almost attained the steps to the royal residences when Derek intercepted her, his handsome features solemn, his eyes glittering with a strange excitement that sparked a different kind of disturbance in her stomach.

  “Your Highness, may I have a word with you, privately?” He glanced at the ladies-in-waiting that Sondra had already dismissed in her escape attempt.

  She nodded, struggling not to wince visibly when he gently took her arm, causing agony to shoot through her body at the contact. He led her out to the back garden, smoothly avoiding other couples and groups seeking private conversation or more scandalous entertainment.

  “Your Highness …”

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  “Don’t call me that when we’re in private. You know I hate all the formality we have to keep up between us. You used to pull my braids when we were growing up. You were the one who caught me trying to sneak out of the castle through the void hole in the retiring closet.”

  “Ugh, don’t remind me, it took days to get the stench out of my nostrils.” Derek smiled, recollecting the happy, always-smiling child constantly sneaking away from her tutors and nanny on ill-fated explorations. As a youth, Derek spent time with the princesses because the king allowed informality with his children. He spent much of that time engaged in pranks and mischief but he always felt a responsibility to look after the baby princess. He still blamed himself for the time she got lost in the Woods, which time he had spent flirting with a kitchen maid instead of watching out for his little princess.

  Sondra laughed, reminding him of the woman she’d grown into. The charming child had changed into a lovely, bright woman while he fought wars in foreign lands. “You were so furious as you were dragging me out of there I thought you were going to fall in yourself,” Sondra laughed, brightening the night around them.

  “As I recall it, you labored mightily to pull me into the void hole with you out of pique.”

  Sondra laughed harder. Derek halted their stroll under the tree. They stood alone at the very far end of the back garden. He seated her on a stone bench and sat beside her, careful not to crush her skirts. Her smile faded as he folded her hands in his and she met his gaze, her eyes glittering in the shadowy darkness.

  “Sondra, I wanted to tell you first, before the king announced it …” Derek paused.

  “Yes,” her voice sounded breathless, filled with nervous anticipation and a little fear. She didn’t know if she would hear what she suddenly realized she desperately hoped for.

  “Your father granted the title of Duke of Arivale to me. He will announce it officially before the close of this feast.” He waited for her reaction and she didn’t disappoint him.

  “That’s wonderful, Derek,” she cried, throwing her arms around him in happiness, her delight for him overriding her propriety. Derek enjoyed the feel of her arms around him, her soft body pressing against his hard chest. He remained still, not wanting movement to remind her that the embrace must

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  end. She finally pulled away, her face averted, the blush riding high on her cheeks visible in the lantern light.

  “Now that I am titled there is something I have always wanted to do but never could …” Derek released her hands and stood. Sondra watched him, waiting, holding her breath, her heart dancing with excitement as he bent his knee, bringing him face to face with her. He took her hands again and then stiffened when a voice called out to him.

  “Warlord!”

  A page searched the shadows around the castle, calling softly for Derek.

  Derek released Sondra’s hands and sighed.

  “I must see what this is about. Don’t move, Sondra, I need to ask you something. I will return.” Casting one last heated glance her way, he rose and strode briskly to the page. They disappeared into the castle and Sondra fanned herself, suddenly feeling overheated.

  It took only seconds for her to realize that the warmth she felt didn’t arise from excitement, and it was steadily growing more painful. Her skin felt like it burned in a fire and, glancing at her arm, she nearly shrieked in fear. The skin along her arm had melted, and beneath it laid glittering, glistening, horrifying scales. She jumped up, dropping the fan as if that would stop the horrible things happening to her. Her heart pounded and she dared a glance at her other arm where the same sight choked off her screams.

  Her entire body blistered; the ache in her joints increased to incredible proportions. She suddenly heard snapping and creaking as though they labored under great strain and without warning her skeleton broke apart, twisting and deforming her body, moving beneath her melting skin and provoking an agony so great she nearly fainted. A sound must have escaped her swollen lips because she heard concerned voices moving toward her. She panicked and, seeking an escape, scrabbled clumsily up the wall, throwing a leg hampered by skirts and even now twisting from the inside out over the wall and dropping to the other side. She landed on one of the pikes ranged along the wall to deter unauthorized entrance into the back garden. It impaled her hip and she bit her tongue, striving not to scream as tears of fear and pain steamed off her blazing cheeks.

  Shouts of alarm and Derek’s
familiar voice calling her name galvanized her and she pulled herself from the pike with an unnatural strength. She limped 44

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  toward the meadows and the Woods, the only thought in her mind, “get to the wizard!”

  By the time she reached the Woods, traveling at an impossible speed, she barely resembled her former self. Horny spikes tore through the melting skin over her spine and she felt a warm liquid running down her back. The huge, flaring nostrils forming over her face even as she ran scented the blood on her body soaking into her clothes. She sensed the blood from her rapidly healing hip and the blood shed by a layer of skin that didn’t melt away fast enough for what replaced it. Spikes pierced her elbows as she loped along, falling to all fours to accommodate the deformed bones reshaping in her limbs. She nearly screamed again as her neck popped and snapped, her orientation changing and her head suddenly slamming to the ground, hideously twisted and heavy.

  The two horns that now curved from her flaring nostrils to the top of her skull embedded themselves in the soft, rotting soil of a secluded glade in the Woods.

  She couldn’t move any farther; the agony of the change forced her to stop, shuddering, heaving, and writhing in pain. The screaming in her head sounded far different from the guttural, animalistic grunts and growls emanating from her dripping jaws. Something moved beneath her back and the skin there bulged and strained to contain what slithered beneath until finally it gave way, tearing apart as a set of massive leathery wings shot into the night sky, unfurling to their full length, entangling the branches of the trees.

  The last remnants of her bloody clothing fell away, shedding bits of her own skin with it, though Sondra remained too consumed by her pain to notice. Trapped within the horror of her changing body, she noticed nothing.

  She crouched on all fours; eyes clenched closed, unwilling to witness the abomination she’d become. She didn’t notice when her bones stopped twisting or when the burning ceased or when the horrible ache deep within her head and face faded away. She didn’t hear the soft song that whispered through the Woods or feel the breeze that caressed her scales. The sound that shook her from her mental shelter was a voice calling her name, a voice familiar to her, one she loved—the voice of the man she intended to marry. She snapped her eyes open just in time to see him enter the clearing, his sword drawn, his eyes searching. She saw his gaze stop on the ground beneath her, the remnants of the blood-stained gown, the gruesome bits of skin, the curving golden claws that impaled the silken fabric, each nearly as long as the blade of his sword. She

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  watched his eyes as they slid slowly up her monstrous body. She jerked at the look in them when they reached her face. A countenance of pure hatred and rage that she had never seen before transformed him from the man she loved to a deadly killer.

  “You monster!” he screamed, his voice ringing with the anguish and grief of terrible loss as he raised his sword and charged blindly at the dragon that killed his princess.

  Sondra stretched a clawed forelimb out to him as though to explain or to halt him. She acted with a purely human gesture, but he only recognized a threat and the bloody rags that dangled from one golden tip. He struck the dragon, the strength of his charge pushing Sondra off balance and sending pain racing through her new body, but the edge of the blade bounced harmlessly off her scales, ringing in the still night air. He charged again, consumed by his fury, and Sondra backed away, still trying desperately to communicate with him.

  The only sounds that emitted from her throat sounded like low growls and piercing shrieks that frightened even her.

  The sounds of more raised voices calling out and the ring of approaching armed men forced her to flee. She didn’t think, just turned and crashed through the Woods, heading unerringly toward Thunder Mountain, where the pursuing humans wouldn’t follow. The forbidden zone beckoned as the one place where she could find solitude and safety to regroup. Then she would return and find the wizard and beg him to reverse the spell. She didn’t notice that the trees parted before her and closed in behind her. She didn’t notice that the sounds of pursuit faded away as the men grew disoriented and were lost, chasing flashes of light and shadowy movements through the undergrowth. Nor did she notice the white-haired man standing straight and tall, his unlined face obscured by his long, flowing beard, his black eyes regretful as he watched her go, and his strong calloused hand gripping a carved staff of such beauty and complexity that no ordinary craftsman could dream of creating its equal. He spoke quietly to the empty night. “Did I do the right thing, Ethelda?” A soft breeze that ruffled his hair provided his only answer.

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  CHAPTER 6

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  It took eight cycles to reach the foot of Th under Mountain.

  Because of the heated pursuit and her unfamiliarity with her new body, Sondra avoided the roadways; not because she feared the people chasing her, but because she feared her own strength and what would happen if she must defend herself against a mob of people. She traveled well within the tree line until she reached Aquiis Sluice. Forging the wide, freezing waters of the largest river in the valley proved less diffi cult than she feared

  because of her new form. Th

  ough the cold chilled her and made her slightly ill, the racing current broke over her sleek scales and passed around her body without suffi

  cient strength to drag her under. She found that her clawed feet dug into the silt and yet her head, chest, and a good portion of her body still rose well above the waterline at a depth that would fl ood a rider on horseback.

  Th

  is additional reminder of her size and strength chilled her more than the temperature of the water, and she quickly scrambled to the other bank. Droplets of water steamed off her scales as her body temperature rose once again.

  Once she successfully crossed the river and skirted the northernmost farming town of Clemdale and all the outlying villages that huddled around the ducal holding, she relaxed, knowing that she neared the forbidden zone and that no human ever traveled this far north out of fear of the dragon.

  The irony did not escape her. She had finally managed to travel to Thunder Mountain, not to prove that the Dragon didn’t exist but because she needed a place suitable for a dragon to hide.

  The sun set on the eighth cycle after her transformation as Sondra clumped past the stone pylons covered with carvings of strange symbols that 46

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  marked the forbidden zone—the seals and runes that supposedly imprisoned the mythical black dragon everyone feared. They didn’t seem to have any effect on the smallish violet and gold dragon with serious identity issues, and she barely spared the stones a glance as she dragged her tail past the forbidden zone and up to the foot of Thunder Mountain.

  Sondra looked up, and up, and up. Even to her weary dragon-enhanced multidimensional vision— which incidentally gave her massive headaches—

  the mountain towered beyond what she had ever imagined by her view from the castle. Despite the deepening night and the omnipresent shadow of the massive mountain, the air around her felt warm. Sondra experienced a trembling beneath her sensitive claws just before steam spouted from vents in the earth surrounding the base of the mountain. The heat felt incredibly good, and Sondra rested her travel-weary body next to the vent, nearly sighing with pleasure when the superheated steam rolled over her, engulfing her in a pungent fog.

  She relaxed into the steam as her massive head rolled back on her long, serpentine neck, her slit eyes closed, and her long, forked tongue lolled over gold-tipped teeth and past pearly, violet-blue scales. She lay on her back, front claws in the air, wings flopped inelegantly to the sides, and sharply defined serpentine head pillowed on a chunk of stone, snoring and drooling acidic saliva all over herself. For the first time since this nightmare began, Sondra fully rela
xed and slept deeply and dreamlessly.

  The rising sun nudged her awake and she came around reluctantly. “Leave me be, Liliana, just ‘til the centerday bell. I had a long night,” she mumbled.

  Instead of a sleepy voice she heard a muttering growl and her eyes shot open in fear. “Oh, damn, that’s right,” she muttered, holding her claws in front of her and sighing puffs of smoke from her flared nostrils.

  Sondra had never realized her own vanity about her looks until some horrible wizard replaced her smooth skin with scales, her waist-length hair with jagged spines, and her shapely rear with a long snaky tail. Ugh. She didn’t entirely hate her nails, though. She had always disliked her short, stubby hands but the blade-length golden claws she used to absently scratch her armored stomach looked somewhat pretty, in a strange, beastly sort of way. Sondra wondered if there existed a dragon version of Liliana out there that could give her a manicure, maybe trim them up and round them out a little. Then she shook her head. What was she thinking; she didn’t believe in dragons, did she? Her 48

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  current situation—which she firmly blamed on the wizard—notwithstanding, still didn’t mean that real dragons existed. Did it? Sondra glanced nervously at the mountain, noticing a cave entrance she had missed the prior evening, and hoped that her theories about the Dragon in Thunder Mountain proved more accurate than her theory about the wizard in the Woods.

  Well, she’d come all this way and wouldn’t likely get this chance again. “Nor would I want it,” she thought. She might as well march into that mountain cave and confirm, to herself at least, that nothing lurked within the depths of Thunder Mountain. After all, she possessed the strength of a dragon; it wasn’t like she couldn’t defend herself against anything she might find in there. She climbed up to the cave entrance, discovering that it sat much higher on the mountain face than she originally thought, and a sheer cliff jutted out from beneath it. Due to her new, longer body and her dragon agility, she managed to reach it without flying. She had no idea how to fly and didn’t believe she would even attempt it before she found the wizard and regained her own shape.