"And a baby golden dragon crawled out?" Lisa clasped her hands in delight. "Oh, I bet he was cute."
Caleb gave her a withering glance. "He was a little pain in the ass. When dragons first hatch, they're tiny and fairly helpless. What they do is climb inside the female's mouth and she carries them around, behind her teeth, until they're big enough to fend for themselves. So imagine me, staring at this tiny thing the size of one of your lizards, when it pops open its eyes, looks excited, and scuttles up the side of my face. He buried his little body behind my teeth and wouldn't come out for anything."
Lisa put her hand over her mouth. "I wish I'd seen that."
"I tried to explain to the little monster that I wasn't his mother, but he didn't care. I tried to spit him out, but I couldn't dislodge him, and I couldn't swallow my own son, so I let him stay. Didn't have much choice, did I? After a couple of years, he was big enough and finally crawled out."
Lisa blinked. "Did you say a couple of years?"
"Dragons grow slowly. By that time, he was as big as my hand, and able to fly around the cave. Unfortunately, about that time, he started to talk. And I mean, talk. He never shut up."
Lisa grinned. "I bet you made a great dad."
"I didn't kill him anyway." Caleb growled. "I taught him to hunt and find jewels and how to navigate Dragonspace. I named him Severin. He didn't like the name, but I told him to deal with it."
He spoke in his grumpy tones, but Lisa knew him well enough now to know that he'd cared deeply for this son.
"He lived with me for a hundred years," Caleb went on, his voice softening. "Dragons like solitude, and I could never decide why I let him stay, but being without him seemed impossible somehow."
"He must have wanted to stay with you, too."
Caleb shrugged, muscles rippling under his shirt. "I think he liked having someone to talk to." His look turned ironic. "And that little dragon could talk. He asked questions about everything under the sun, and if he couldn't think of something to ask about, he'd describe in minute detail all the pretty rocks he'd found in the stream bed that day. Maybe that's why the female threw out his egg in the first place—she heard him in there, his little voice already gearing up."
Lisa hid a smile. "He sounds funny."
Caleb's expression relaxed. "He could make me laugh. He was so eager to learn everything about life and everything about being dragon." He closed his eyes, pain shading his face. "And then, a witches' coven summoned me."
"You don't have to tell me, Caleb. Not if it hurts you."
He opened his eyes and gazed for a moment at the deep blue sky over the green trees of the preserve. "I want you to know. These witches took me with them to a tribe of humans who worked a primitive kind of magic that was very powerful. The people were simple, because magic gave them all they needed, and they'd never developed much beyond basic necessities. Well, these witches decided they wanted to tap into that primitive magic. The witches tried going to the people and learning from them and asking for the magic, but the people either couldn't or wouldn't give up their magic to the witches. So the witches decided to take it."
"Like the witch who made the dragon orb," Lisa mused.
"She couldn't stand the thought of not being able to have whatever magic she wanted."
Caleb didn't answer. His eyes were bleak as he continued. "The head witch wanted me to appear to these people and pretend to be a god. They knew nothing about dragons and I terrified them, but then when I didn't hurt them, they started to worship me. They built shrines, prayed for me to do things for them—I hated it, by the way. I was a charlatan, and I knew it, but it was mostly harmless. I thought this was all the head witch wanted me to do, I thought she would use their new religion to trick them into giving her their magic, but no.
"One day she told she wanted me to lure them back to Dragonspace, promising them eternal life and heaven. There she and her coven would drain them of their magic and kill them. She offered to let me eat them when she was done."
Lisa's lips parted in horror. "That's terrible."
"I refused," Caleb said. "Pretending to be a god is one thing. Murdering an entire race so a witch can siphon their power is something else, and I wouldn't do it. She and her coven tortured me, using my true name, but I resisted. It hurt me like nothing has ever hurt me since, but I did it. Eventually they had to stop because their spells on me were wearing them out. I still wouldn't obey, and they had to release me. I thought that would be the end of it, but they were furious, and to take their revenge they summoned a horde of demons, hundreds of them, who ripped Severin apart." His eyes grew dim with distant sorrow. "I couldn't fight them all. I was too exhausted from fighting the witches. The demons killed him and ate his flesh."
Silent tears slid down his cheeks, and his strong hands closed hard on the arms of the chair.
Lisa moved from her seat and knelt in front of him. "Oh, Caleb. I'm so sorry."
"It was a long time ago."
"That doesn't matter. It was evil." Her eyes filled. "And I wasn't there to stop it. I wish I had been there to stop it."
She laid her head in his lap and felt his tears drop to her cheek, his hand on her hair. "Thank you, Lisa-ling. But it is done."
She could sense how terrible his grief had been. It had cut him deeply, and the wound had not healed even after all this time. No wonder he could barely contain his fury and disgust when he talked of Donna with her demons, no wonder he'd brought Lisa diamonds from his hoard in effort to protect her. She'd left the diadem in his lair, dropping it when she'd became the silver dragon. She sensed that the silver dragon was far more powerful than demons now in any case.
Finding the egg and raising the baby dragon had taught Caleb about love and about sacrifice for a child. To take that from him had been cruelty in its purist form. The silver dragon had learned to love two millennia ago, and she'd also learned to rage against injustice.
Lisa lifted her head, her body sparkling with silver dragon fire.
"Lisa," Caleb said in alarm.
Lisa got slowly to her feet. The sight of tears on Caleb's strong face brought a knife-sharp pain to her heart. She had not been there to use her silver dragon powers to stop the demons from taking his son. At that time, the silver dragon had been in this world, in China with her family, watching over the humans as best she could. But back then Caleb had needed her help most of all.
Lisa leaned down, kissed him hard on the lips, and strode to the door. She heard Caleb jump from the chair. "Lisa, what are you doing?"
Inside, Malcolm and Saba, pale but otherwise unharmed, were at the table, bent over a new, unburned map of San Francisco. They looked up in surprise as Lisa crossed to the spare bedroom door. She lifted her hand and the door opened, revealing not the plain room but the chill of Dragonspace beyond.
"Lisa, no," Caleb shouted behind her.
Lisa sent him a smile. She turned and leapt into the dark and into a place he could not follow—the spaces between time.
"Shit," Caleb said, pounding a fist on the doorframe. He felt Malcolm hulking behind him and the smaller, lighter presence of Saba. The silver dragon was gone, the smile on Lisa's face before she'd departed telling him she knew damn well he couldn't follow her.
"What just happened?" Malcolm demanded.
"She's going back through time." Caleb leaned his cheek on the door frame, still wrung with emotion. It had been difficult to tell her the story of Severin, but he'd wanted her to know it. "She's going back to try to put things right for me."
"She can do that?" Saba asked in wonder.
"She can't," Malcolm stated flatly. Black dragon anger seeped from him. "Silver dragons can move through time but not change things. Changing something would violate all kinds of temporal physics laws that humans haven't discovered yet. It isn't possible."
"That's what Ming Ue told her," Caleb said. "But I don't think she cares."
"Well, it was a foolish idea," Malcolm snapped. "Because now there is no silver drago
n and its protective magic on this plane and in this time, and the dragon orb is, as humans say, a sitting duck."
Lisa knew in her heart that Ming Ue was right, that she could not alter events that had already happened or bring the dead to life. But her silver anger streamed behind her as she slid easily through centuries, needing to be appeased. She needed to do something.
Caleb's dragon grief pulled her toward the clearing at the base of a mountain, his sorrow cutting the air like a sword. She found him lying in the grass, stretched out like a dead thing, his dragon head resting limply on the ground.
His eyes were half-closed, the bright blue of them dull. Nearby lay the carcass of what once had been a young dragon, maybe twenty-five feet in length. It had been ripped to shreds. Kind rain was falling now, washing the blood and grime down the hill into a raging stream at the bottom.
Lisa knew Caleb would not see her. She was nothing but a stream of light through time, undetectable to him. She touched his forehead, stroking his warm, shimmering scales, and pressed a kiss between his eyes. "Find comfort," she breathed. "Rest."
Caleb's eyes flickered, as though he heard something but did not understand it. His eyes slid closed, and he breathed a long dragon sigh.
Lisa darted away, her anger giving her speed. She could smell the demons who did this, overlaid with the odor of the decadent witches. She followed the scent through another portal, arriving in her own world again but five hundred years before her own time.
She was not certain where she was. A flat plain of gorse led to stark mountains, which climbed to meet a leaden sky. Cold wind bit her, and icy rain sheeted from the clouds.
Lisa skimmed across the land, tracking the scent to a fold of hills in which a village nestled. The cottages were made of gray stone with thatch for roofs—a remote area of England or Scotland perhaps.
She found the witches inside a tavern, which was little more than a room with benches and hole in the roof for the fire. The family who owned the tavern huddled against a far wall, casting fearful glances at them. No other guests or villagers were in sight.
The witches were able to see her. Three of them, young women wearing costly velvets and jewels from this century, stared at her in abject terror. The fourth, their leader, who had ordered the killing of Caleb's son, was more contemptuous.
Lisa let herself manifest in half-human, half-light form in front of the startled witches, bathing them in silver radiance. "I am not happy with you," she said severely.
The head witch's lip curled. "You cannot change what has happened."
"No, but I can make you very sorry for it."
The head witch spat. Lisa got a good look at her eyes, and realized several things. One, that the witch who faced her looked much like Donna but with subtle differences. Second, that the tavern keeper planned to rush out and fetch his friends to drive out the witches, and the four women would not last the night.
The head witch faced Lisa, hands on hips, a smirk on her face. "A silver dragon. My favorite. And if, I'm not mistaken, the same silver dragon my ancestor, a great witch, hunted long ago. She died fleeing back to this world from Dragonspace. Your doing."
"Her own doing," the silver dragon said. "She wasted her magics in an impossible task and it drained her."
The witch's eyes narrowed. "I will be happy to kill you to avenge her."
Lisa pushed slightly with her power and the woman flinched. "I don't even exist in this time," Lisa said. "I've met a witch who looks like you. Her name is Donna."
The witch looked startled. "How do you know my sister?"
"She is your sister? I met her five hundred years into the future. How could she live so long?"
The witch smiled. "Our family is very strong. The strongest you will ever encounter. Maybe even too strong for you, silver dragon."
"She feeds on other magics," Lisa mused. "Like demons and dragons. Draining other creatures dry so you can survive, like vampires, sucking magic instead of blood."
"Dragons and demons are weak. They think they are strong, but they are not."
"Silver dragons are not weak," Lisa said softly. "And this one is very angry at you for what you did to Caleb."
Donna's sister looked at her in slight alarm. "He would not obey. It is dangerous to let them not obey."
"So you murdered an innocent, a child."
"A dragon," the witch scoffed.
"Caleb's child. His son. He loved his son and you took that from him."
"Dragons don't love. They don't know how."
"Oh, yes they do." Lisa turned to the family watching and solidified enough for them to see her. "Go," she said. "Hurry."
They didn't wait to ask questions. The tavern keeper grabbed his two children by the hands and sprinted for the door, his wife following, clutching his coat.
Lisa let the silver dragon take over. For the first time since she'd discovered the truth of who she was, she felt no bewilderment or fear. Strength filled her along with sharp joy as she raised her hands, silver power radiating from her.
The three witches in the corner screamed. They started for the door, fighting one another to get through it into the rain. The head witch faced Lisa, tendrils of darkness swirling around her. "You will not win," she hissed. She flung a cloud of blackness at Lisa which blotted out all light.
Lisa let go her silver magic. She had no idea what it would do, and as it left her fingers it took on a mind of its own. Silver threads, music shimmering from them, wrapped themselves around the witch. The witch countered with dark tendrils, and the silver threads flared to meet them. Shrill notes filled the tavern, sweet and loud like the finest church bells.
The dark magic was strong. Lisa felt it wrap her, trying to squeeze the life from her. She struck back with silver magic fighting blindly, and somewhere inside her the silver dragon laughed.
Suddenly the music ceased and Lisa could see again. The silver light brightened the room like the brightest summer day, chasing shadows from the place.
The witch lay at Lisa's feet, stunned, not dead. "No," she said hoarsely. "No, don't let them."
The Earth rumbled beneath her like a San Francisco tremor, and the witch's colorless eyes went wide. "No," she screamed.
Lisa leapt backward as dragon claws erupted through the Earth floor, black, golden, red, blue, brilliant white. Dragon heads followed, not solid but translucent, perhaps the ghosts of dragons whose magic she'd stolen.
Dragon talons closed around the witch, dragging her down. One of the black dragons looked at Lisa with silver eyes much like Malcolm's. He bowed his head as though doing homage then joined his fellows in dragging the screaming witch through the floor. The earth closed up behind her and the witch was gone.
Lisa drew a breath, feeling shaky and sick. She folded her arms over her chest, breathing hard, shocked, but inside her, the silver dragon did a little dance of pleasure.
"Stop that," she said hoarsely.
As she tried to comprehend what had just happened, she saw a line of lanterns approaching the tavern through the gathering darkness, the villagers coming to drive out the rest of the witches. Lisa drew a long breath, then layered some lucky silver magic over the tavern before she departed.
The silver dragon skimmed back through the portal into Dragonspace, flying unerringly to the place where Caleb still lay. He was deep in slumber, his scales glistening softly in a pool of moonlight.
Lisa's heart ached for him. He would hurt for so long, and some part of him would never stop hurting. She remembered his voice cracking when he'd whispered, "Love you," as they made love in the kitchen. That love was so alien to him, given from a heart reluctant to embrace human emotions.
Lisa knew she could not bring Severin back or remove Caleb's grief, but she could at least relieve him of the task of having to deal with Severin's corpse. Using a small flicker of magic, she pointed at the remains of the dragon Severin and burned his flesh and bone quickly to ash.
Two gold dragon scales glittered in the grass b
eside the charred place. Lisa picked them up, marveling at the supple gold, so beautiful in the moonlight. She placed one between Caleb's front talons and tucked the other into her pocket.
"Are you pleased with yourself?"
Lisa whirled and found herself facing a young woman with long black hair dressed in a tightly wrapped robe of blue silk with gold embroidery. A white streak burned in her hair at her brow.
Lisa approached her, careful to walk softly. "You're me," she said in wonder. "Or at least, the ancestor of me."
* * *
Chapter Twenty-One
"Yes." The silver dragon of the past said, her mouth creased in mirth. "But you should not have come here. Entering Dragonspace for a short while in your own era is one thing, but leaving your entire time unprotected may do more harm than your vengeance was worth."
Tears filled Lisa's eyes. "I wanted to help Caleb. I felt so ineffectual sitting there while he told me his story, knowing I couldn't stop his pain."
Silk rustled as the silver dragon put a kind hand on Lisa's shoulder. "You love him very much."
"Yes."
"The ability to love is greater than any magic. That is the secret the silver dragon discovered and passed to us, and why we are still strong when lesser dragons would have withered and died. We understand love and its power."
Lisa wiped her eyes. "I wish it didn't hurt so much."
"That is its price." The woman-dragon touched the silver streak in Lisa's hair. "We love and we ache, but once we have learned to love, that can never be taken from us."
Lisa tried to smile. "Were all the women in my family wiser in the past? It's taken me forever to figure out I'm in love with a pesky golden dragon."
The silver dragon laughed, a sound like the wind chimes in Lisa's apartment. "We come to wisdom in our own time. I fell in love early in my life and so learned of it quickly. And when you have your children, you'll learn how to love even more deeply. It will happen." She wrinkled her nose, her face young and even cute. Lisa knew that Chinese women of the past had been expected to be quiet and subservient, and she imagined the silver dragon busily turning those expectations upside down.
Dragon Heat Page 24
