The Princess's Dragon (39 page)

Two wizard adepts in Academy robes stood before the princess and the man and chanted loudly and quickly, their own faces beaded with sweat as they appeared embroiled in an unseen battle. The prince stood off to the side, a half dozen of his own personal guards around him, their swords unsheathed. They all stood frozen, watching the spectacle.

Derek considered whom to attack first, when the prince spoke.

“You might as well come out and join us, Warlord. After all, you have traveled such a long way to be here.”

Derek froze, then gritted his teeth and moved out from behind the crates, his sword still unsheathed. The prince’s guards immediately surrounded him, but they didn’t attack. Derek soon learned why. The prince, like all arrogant fools, wanted someone to gloat at.

“Just look, Warlord, at your ‘guardians’ now. I have the pleasure of having not one of Ariva’s dragons in my control but both. Don’t you like my new pets?

My bone golems shall be as nothing, compared to the devastation wrought by two marvelous dragons. Sadly, you won’t be there to see the destruction; I must admit I find you far too dangerous to live. Such a pity after you fought so bravely to defend your pathetic little kingdom at Ulrick Pass.” Derek glanced again at the shadow man, noting the glowing red eyes. He recalled the massive black dragon that had very nearly roasted both him and Sondra. He looked up at Sondra, and she didn’t even glance at him, though she must know someone new had joined the fray. Her own eyes remained pinned on the man before her, her agony at his suffering plainly evident for all to see.

Derek suddenly realized why the shadow man had come here; for the same reason he had—for love. Derek wasn’t sure what to think about the revelation when the prince continued, unaware of the Warlord’s internal struggle.

“I understand the princess once belonged to you. Tell me, did you know she was a shape-shifting monster when you kissed her? I did.” The prince smirked at Derek, his leer ugly and mocking.

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Derek forgot about his concerns over the princess’s feelings for the shadow man; he forgot about his own danger. He completely forgot himself as rage consumed him. This filthy bastard had laid a hand on Sondra; he had dared touch her. How far had he gone—had he raped her? Derek didn’t know and didn’t wait to find out. The wave of fury engulfed his consciousness, and he welcomed the darkness that arose to swallow him.

Prince Onian demanded that Lord Derek drop his weapon, but he wasn’t honestly paying much attention to the man, more fascinated by the battle between his hired wizards and the very strong-willed dragon. He couldn’t believe his good fortune! Once the wizards finished subduing the male dragon, they could continue their work on the princess. The wizards had recognized the man immediately as a dragon, and the moment he recklessly stepped into the runes circle, they focused all of their effort on conquering and controlling him.

Prince Onian was thrilled. Finally, he would have an unstoppable force: two powerful slaves to his will. With both dragons, he needn’t stop with the destruction of Ariva; he could annihilate Barselor and that arrogant bitch that still demanded the secret to make her a lich, even after her defection from the battle. Then he could invade Bladen and oust King Arctuor and his heavy knights. He could continue on, conquering every kingdom in the southern lands. Soon, he would be the ruler of an empire large enough to rival the ancient Alverian Empire.

Onian was engaged in his musings and plans when an enraged cry split the air. The sound so unnerved the wizards that they stumbled in their chant and very nearly lost control over the black dragon, an error that would have proven instantly fatal as he struggled mentally against them to crush their minds.

Onian turned back to the man his guards should have been dispatching, only to witness a head fly past him as one of his own guards fell to his knees in a pool of blood. The guards tried to stab at the insane man within their circle of swords but they moved too slow, not anticipating his inhuman strength.

He slipped out of the circle over the dead guard and spun around to meet the remaining fighters, parrying the closest one’s blows with his sword and slamming his shield into the other man’s arm so hard that one of the spikes stabbed right through the guard’s gauntlet and deep into his forearm. He dropped the sword and looked up from his arm in time to see Derek’s sword slide into his forehead. He collapsed without another sound.

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The guards moved to flank Derek, stepping over their fallen companion, and the right guard scored a hit on Derek’s side, burying his sword into Derek’s gut. The enraged warrior didn’t even falter; instead, he swung his sword so hard that the other man’s blade snapped before Derek punched him in his startled face, the metal studs on his gauntlet crushing the guard’s nose and spewing blood from his eyes and mouth. He fell to the floor choking on his own blood while Derek parried aside the other guard’s sword, kicked him back, and then thrust his sword into the man’s stomach as he recovered.

During the fight against the enraged Warlord, the wizards continued their struggle against the dragon. Sondra tore her eyes away from the strange man before her whom she had recognized immediately as her beloved dragon. His struggle with the wizards terrified her; she feared they might win and gain control over him, and she knew that becoming a slave would destroy Tolmac.

The shout of rage she’d heard moments ago finally registered, and she turned her head to see Derek, her noble Warlord, hacking the guards to pieces with blood-soaked abandon. He seemed different: larger, more fierce, his blue eyes hard as chips of ice, freezing his opponents as he chopped off limbs or bludgeoned skulls. His face twisted into a monstrous mask, no longer ruggedly handsome but terrifyingly harsh. In a way, as he pulverized the face of one of the guards who’d taken pleasure in beating her, she was horrified by the monster Derek had become, but in another way, she felt a strange shiver of excited desire at the ferocious look of him, a primal attraction to such violent strength that didn’t bear thinking about even while her true love struggled for his freedom at her feet. She felt helpless as she watched the two males she cared about fight for their lives, and she could only strain helplessly against the manacles that chained her to the wall.

Prince Onian drew his own sword and moved in to finish off the Warlord himself after his second guard fell beneath Derek’s blade. He yelled at his men to step aside as Derek continued to slaughter them without taking another hit.

The stomach wound bled sullenly. Onian knew it was a mortal wound that would kill the man eventually, but he couldn’t afford the cost of waiting for the Warlord to die on his own as he piled up the bodies of Onian’s men.

The remaining guards stood aside to let him fight, and Onian moved in like the skilled fighter he was, assessing the other man’s weakness even as he parried the heavy blows with his own sword and shield. He sliced at an opening in Derek’s defenses but found he only scored a shallow cut that barely parted 236

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the laces on Derek’s tunic, leaving behind a thin trickle of blood. Derek laughed maniacally and countered by smacking aside Onian’s sword and slamming his shield at Onian, who met it with his own. Derek managed to shove the smaller man back, his rage-enhanced strength nearly knocking Onian to the stone floor. While Onian recovered his footing, another guard attacked. Derek met his swing with his own sword, pulled the man past him, broke his sword free of the other man’s. and buried it to the hilt in the man’s exposed side. He spun just in time to meet Onian’s renewed attack and dodge a calculated swing that slid off his helmet rather than sliced through it.

Derek’s feral grin and wild laughter made Onian uneasy. He had fought and killed many skilled warriors in his time. He was the greatest warrior in Halidor, but he had never fought a man so unaffected by a mortal wound, so unconcerned with his own impending death, so apparently pleased to be in the midst of mortal combat—and outnumbered. He charged at Derek with a flurry of slices and slashes that he usually reserved for truly skilled warriors, but this time his speed had little effect. Derek batted aside the swings like bothersome gnats, moving with his own deceptive speed, his attitude mocking as he kicked out and missed Onian, who quickly side-stepped to charge at Derek obliquely.

Derek cut down the remaining two guards before they saw him coming when he unexpectedly turned his back on Onian and charged them. He batted aside their swords and buried his own into the neck of the first one, then ripped it free on a tide of blood, chopping at the throat of the other. He spun again to meet Onian’s sword as the last guard succumbed to his wounds.

Derek swung his sword with incredible force, and it scarred the entire front of Onian’s shield, burrowing through the metal and ricocheting through Onian’s arm so that he could barely lift it from the pain. While he struggled to bring up his defense, Derek brought down his sword in a second heavy arc, and only Onian’s raised blade kept the wound that began at the base of his neck and slashed across and down to his hip from cutting him in half. He broke away from Derek, backing up in shock as his own armor peeled away in sections, trailing rivulets of blood.

Derek glanced contemptuously at him as Onian dropped his sword and clasped his bleeding wound; then he turned and advanced on the wizards.

Onian, only now feeling the burning agony of the wound, backed away, took one last longing look at the dragons, glanced at his dead guards and the gore surrounding him, and limped away while the madman’s back was turned,

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making haste for the upper levels of the building, determined that none of them would escape the manor alive.

The wizards sensed Derek coming but couldn’t ease their concentration on the black dragon to deal with him. They didn’t stand a chance, and Derek hacked them apart in seconds. He turned on the shadow man and the chained princess and roared. Maddened beyond rational thought by his rage, he made to raise his sword to strike down the princess and the crouching shadow man, when the Derek who lay beneath the fury fought back, remembering his vow never to raise his sword to Sondra again. The enraged beast dropped his sword arm as Derek regained control, the intelligence sharpened in his eyes, and the insane expression faded. He looked at Sondra in apology, crushed by the fear he saw in her eyes, the fear of him. He opened his mouth to speak but fell forward instead, crumpling on the ground in a pool of blood.

Sondra cried out in grief, struggling against her manacles. Tolmac jumped from his crouch, his mind returning from the mental battle, and raced to Sondra. He snapped her manacles with almost no effort, retaining some of his dragon strength even in this form. She pulled away from him and limped painfully over to the fallen Warlord, collapsing beside him as her sobs shook her body. Tolmac left her to her grief as he swept away the chalk rune circle with his foot, eliminating the wards that chained his magic abilities.

Sondra felt the shallow breathing in Derek’s body. He wasn’t dead yet, just unconscious, but she’d seen the wound. Even the high priestess of Vivacel couldn’t heal such a mortal blow. Nothing but a miracle could stop Morbidon’s reapers.

Then Sondra lifted her head, remembering something so important she couldn’t believe she’d forgotten about it. She ran her tongue along the inside of her cheek and slumped with relief when she felt the tiny lumps there. She worked one free of the skin pouch that somehow had made the transformation with her from dragon to human, and pulled the tiny crystal teardrop from her mouth. The dragon’s tear had shrunk along with her, but it still glowed with a beautiful, silvery light.

“Tolmac,” she cried. He turned and rushed over to her. He saw the tear in her hand and immediately guessed her question.

“Place it in his mouth, it will do the rest.” He watched her lift Derek’s head and open his lips, placing the glittering tear between them. As soon as his mouth closed, a silver light burst through his 238

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body, pouring down to the wound in his side and knitting the flesh closed. The light glowed for several moments, blinding in the shadowy basement, and then it died out, and Derek stirred, opening his eyes. He pulled himself from her lap and glanced around in surprise, climbing to his feet. He looked at Sondra where she remained on the ground and at Tolmac standing beside her.

“You have a lot of explaining to do,” he addressed them both, then touched the bloody fabric and scarred armor over his unmarked stomach in wonder.

Tolmac snapped his head around at some sound unheard by the other two, and then turned back to them.

“Explanations must wait, we have to leave now!” He helped Sondra to her feet, accepting her weight as she favored her broken leg. She groaned softly from the pain in her ribs. He wanted to tell her to use her dragon tears but there was no time; they had to leave this basement.

Derek responded to Tolmac’s statement with the alert senses of a warrior.

His eyes swept the room and what he saw there had him shouting to the other man, “Don’t let her see. Whatever you do don’t let her witness this atrocity, by the gods.” He moved himself in front of the princess and the dragon, blocking her view.

Tolmac nodded in agreement, even as Sondra demanded, “See what?

What’s happening?”

He tried to cover her eyes but she spotted movement to the side and pulled her head away. When she got a closer look she started screaming. She couldn’t help it. After all she’d been through she thought there was nothing she couldn’t handle, but the sight of the mutilated corpses of Onian’s guards pulling themselves off the stone floor of the basement shook her to her core, and she simply couldn’t deal with it anymore. She passed out.

“Great job on not letting her see them,” Derek yelled back, raising his sword to the zombies.

“You try stopping her when she decides to do something,” Tolmac replied, easily supporting Sondra’s unconscious form.