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 swordsmen 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 op
en 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.
Knowing he had found the princesses' room, Collins took some solace in the realization that even royal children had to share. An only child, he had not had to endure that discomfort, a fact that had endeared him to his friends and eased the pain of having no siblings. Retreating from the room, he closed the door, then escaped back to the landing.
Half done. The realization brought a smile to Collins' lips. For the first time, he allowed himself to believe he might actually succeed. It's going to work. It's really going to work. Collins headed up the stairs, this time not surprised to find no one 011 the landing. Thus far, his luck appeared to be holding.
Collins had gone through both of the fifth-floor doors in the past. The left one, he knew, led to the guestroom where he had spent a peaceful night as the king's visitor while they very nearly swayed him to their side. One door from that room opened onto another garderobe. Two others led to the shared bedchambers of the king's male relatives. The right door from the landing led to Carrie Quinton's bedroom.
Collins' blood ran cold at the thought of entering that room again, so he turned his attention to the other one. In no time at all, he had established that the guest and male royal quarters had no dragons in them. Forced to confront Quinton's room, he sucked in a deep, calming breath, releasing it slowly from his pursed lips. Memories descended upon him again, of the exquisite hour they had spent alone together here. He could picture her beautiful, high-cheeked face looking up at him, the baby blue eyes filled with desire, the dark blonde curls falling around the sweet curve of her neck. It had been an hour of perfection floating free from the day of terror surrounding it. The most stunningly attractive woman in the world had given herself to scrawny, average-looking Benton Collins. In moments, though, that joy had shattered into pain. She had fashioned a vast future for them in Barakhai. He had tried to convince her to hand over the crystal she wore as a necklace and escape back to their own world. When she refused, he had tried to steal it, and she had called in a mass of hidden protectors. Images rolled through Collins' mind in an instant, bittersweet, rife with an excitement that spanned both ecstasy and terror.
Steeling himself, Collins tripped the latch, and the door swung open to reveal the bedchamber of the Other-world adviser to the king. Unlike the rest of the castle, this room had changed a lot. The tapestries full of cavorting animals, cheerful forests, and happy people had been replaced with more somber images. Only one remained the same, an enormous portrait of a ginger tabby cat luxuriating on a bed similar to the one that took up most of the rest of the room. One depicted sad-eyed children plucking flowers in a desolate field, another a dull still life of stunted vegetables and flowers. The last was the most animated, but also the creepiest. Carnivores dominated the otherwise muted colors. In the foreground, a sable wolf crouched menacingly in front of a roaring tiger, and a lion flew toward a rearing leopard or jaguar. In the background, a mass of surging claws, teeth, fur, and feathers blended into a bloody, riotous war of color. Once painted to resemble a night sky in their own world, Quinton's ceiling now held only fiat, blue paint. Curtains lay draped around the bed, missing the golden tassels that had tied them hack. A new chandelier hung in the center of the ceiling, and the wall brackets that had once held the torches he had used as weapons were gone. Only the carved wardrobe and matching chest remained unchanged.
A shiver racked Collins as he crossed the room to peek into the garderobe and the royal women's quarters, where he found no dragons. He closed those doors and prepared to leave; but, once again, the wardrobe grabbed his attention. It seemed unlikely that he might find the dragons there, yet foolish not to check every possible place while he was here. One unturned stone meant eternal doubt that could only be quenched by another foray here. Catching the clasps, he wrenched open both doors.
A figure inside sent Collins leaping backward with a gasp, heart galloping dangerously fast. He glanced wildly around him, awaiting the inevitable scream. When it did not come, he dared to peek into the wardrobe again. His own eyes looked back at him from behind the dangling clothing. A mirror. Warped and scratched, it reflected Collins in imperfect detail, yet he could still make out the familiar features and the distinctly unfamiliar garb. He looked silly in a dress. Then, he remembered the purpose for it, and terror froze him. He focused in on his face as ice streamed through his veins. That's my face, not Orna's. The spell has worn off! Stock-still, he tried to think of a solution to his dilemma, without success. A myriad of options ran through his mind, all immediately discarded. He could not remake the features himself, and he had no time to return to Prinivere, even should he make it from the castle alive. He certainly could not stay here.
Zylas! Thoughts of his companion spurred Collins to action. If his wears off, he's dead. Desperate to capture the leader of the renegades, the king would spare no man to do so, would show no mercy once he did. I've got to get Zylas out of here. Snatching up one of many veils hanging in the closet, Collins sprinted from room to landing, pausing only to shut the door.
To Collins' relief, he met no one in the stairwell. He charged downward, feet thundering on the steps, pulling the veil over his face as he ran. Momentarily blinded, he misgauged the uneven stairs. His foot slammed on wood higher than he expected, and he stumbled. The sole of his cloth shoe skidded down the edge of several stairs, and he scrabbled wildly for balance. For an instant, he hovered between recovery and collapse, arms pitching, body weight hopelessly committed. A flash of heat surged through him, then he regained his equilibrium and continued his headlong rush. He still had not encountered anyone else as he adjusted the veil in front of the dining room door.
Only then, logic finally caught up with Collins, worming through the panic. Most likely, the magic of the warded doors had stripped his face of Prinivere's magic, which meant Zylas still looked like Narladin. Hidden behind the veil, he would have to quietly inform his companion of the problem, and they could both slip safely beyond the castle walls.
At that moment, a dog-guard burst through the dining hall door, dancing sideways with a surprised gasp to keep from colliding with Collins. Several heads jerked toward the pair in the entryway, as the guard eased around Collins with a gruff epithet. Revealed, Collins caught the door, scanning the interior for Zylas. On first inspection, he did not find the albino. He adjusted his search f
or the man of Prinivere's illusion and, this time, found him sitting among the guards and servants. Zylas stared at Collins with the same incredulity as some of the others, but his strange features contained a trace of fear.
Forcing himself to keep his composure, Collins glided across the room to Zylas, trying to give his movements a bit of femininity.
Zylas met Collins halfway, then hissed into his ear, "What the hell are you doing?"
"The spell's worn off. It's worn off!" Collins struggled to keep his voice at a whisper. "We've got to get out of here."
Zylas peeked beneath the veil. "What are you talking about, you moron?" He spoke directly into Collins' face. "You look fine."
Quinton's voice wafted over the gentle music. "Hey! That's mine. How did you get my-?"
Zylas whipped off Collins' veil. The breeze of its movement chilled his exposed cheeks, and a shiver spiraled through him. He shielded his face with his hands. "What are you doing?"
A serving dish crashed to the floor, splashing stew and bunks of bread over the nearest diners. Instead of attending to the mess, the servant who had carried it rounded on Zylas and Collins, arms flailing. "It cost me a week's wages to get you that food. I don't care if you did come all the way to pick it up yourselves. You're still paying."
Confused and growing frantic again, Collins backed away. "Wh-what?"
Zylas tried to salvage the situation. He took Collins' arm, dropping the veil. "Sorry. Day off. Too much to drink." He addressed the servant. "You'll get your money, don't worry."
But the servant stopped gesticulating, arms falling to his sides. He studied the pair in front of him with eyes dropping to wary slits. "There's no way you could have got here so fast. You were in the middle of a dice game when I-"
The lost Dragons of Barakhai bob-2 Page 10
