Master of Dragons (2 page)

She began to creep
up on him as he stood, unsuspecting, staring out the door. He was in his human
form, holding the spear he’d fashioned in his hand. Across the street, Anora
could hear the voices of the human males raised in argument, probably
squabbling over the human female. Ideal cover, for they were proving a
distraction to Draconas, who looked in that direction and frowned.

“Strike now!”
Grald ordered suddenly. “Strike him from behind, before he knows what’s hit
him!”

Concentrating on
Draconas, Anora had unwittingly left her mental processes open to Grald. She
slammed shut the door to her thoughts and refused to answer him. He couldn’t
understand her strategy anyway.

It is difficult to
take a dragon by surprise.

While a dragon is
conscious, he can easily defend himself. Dragons must sleep, however, and when
they sleep, they sleep deeply—for years at a time. There was the chance that
another dragon or some enterprising human might slay the slumbering dragon.
Thus, over the centuries, dragons had developed a means of self-protection. The
moment Anora launched a weapon at Draconas—magical or otherwise—his dragon
being would act to take defensive measures and fight back. Her plan was to
reveal herself to him, let him see that the human he’d known all these years as
the holy sister, was, in truth, the Head of Parliament, a venerable dragon he
had long respected and trusted. She calculated that the shock of seeing her, of
knowing—at the last moment—that she was going to be his doom, would suck all
the fight out of him, leave him breathless, winded, amazed. Then dead.

She was quite
close to Draconas now.

He was
preoccupied, tense for the kill. He didn’t hear a sound, didn’t sense her
presence.

“Draconas,” said
Anora gently, in her human voice.

He jumped,
startled, and looked over his shoulder.

“Get out of here,
Sister,” Draconas told her roughly. “This is none of your concern.”

“Ah, but it is,”
said Anora.

In that moment,
Draconas knew. She saw the knowledge in his eyes as she saw her own reflection,
the shadow of the dragon, rising up behind the holy sister, extending its wings
and its claws.

The colors of
Draconas’s mind came crashing down around him.

“I don’t
understand . . . ,” he gasped.

“I know, Draconas,”
said Anora softly, and her colors were gray ash. “The pity is—you never will.”

Lightning crackled
from her jaws . . .

MARCUS EXTENDED
HIS HAND, POINTED BEHIND HIMSELF TO THE buildings that stood at the entrance to
the alley. The magic rolled out of him, rumbled through the earth. Stone walls
shook and trembled, and with a roar like an avalanche, the two buildings
collapsed. Marcus heard screams and cries and guessed that at least some of his
pursuers had been caught in the cascade of rock and debris. He dashed out into
the alley, with Evelina at his side, and it was then he felt the weakness.

It came over
him suddenly, unexpectedly, a sensation of being exhausted, drained of energy.
He could not catch his breath. His legs and arms and hands tingled. He stumbled
and nearly fell.

Evelina caught
hold of him.

“
What’s the
matter? Are you hurt?
”

He couldn’t
answer. He had to use his breath for breathing. Talking required more strength
than he had, and he couldn’t explain to her what was happening anyway. Nothing
is free in this world. Everything has a price, including the magic.

Conjuring
pixies from dust motes had been a little fatiguing, but the magic had never
before sent him to his bed. Bringing down stone buildings and raising ice
storms was apparently different. He was so exhausted, he could scarcely move.

Behind him, he
could hear behind him the monks clawing their way through the rubble. He had to
run or give up and die.

“
Dearest
Marcus, sweet love, we have to keep going!
”
Evelina was saying, her
voice trembling with fear.
“
Please, fust a little ways and we are there,
my heart, my own.
”

She tugged at
him, pleaded with him. He nodded and continued on. But he could no longer run.
It took all his resolve just to walk.

“
It’s not far
now,
”
she said, sliding her arm around him, supporting him.

He wearily
raised his head to see that they had come farther than he’d hoped. The wall was
directly ahead of them. They had only to cross a street and they would be
standing in front of it. Fifty, a hundred steps.

And then what?
He remembered entering Dragonkeep, remembered looking back at the wall through
which he’d just passed and seeing no gate, no entrance, only solid stone. On
and on the wall ran, without end. Around and around the city. No break. No way
out. A dragon eating its own tail . . .

“
Marcus!
”
Evelina cried sharply, frightened.

He jerked his
head up, shook his head to clear it, kept moving, kept walking. He concentrated
on picking up his feet and putting them down, picking them up, putting them
down.

The wall came
closer. Solid stone. Fused with fire.

Marcus called
again, one last time.
“
Draconas . . .
”

The name echoed
in the darkness of his little room. Echoed back to him.

One by one, the
echoes died.

The street that
ran along the wall was empty. He’d expected to find a river of brown robes. If
the monks were coming, they had not yet arrived.

“
Yet why should
they hurry?
”
Marcus asked himself.
“
I’m not going anywhere and
neither is Evelina.
”

He stood in
front of the guard wall, staring at it, pouring his whole being into that
stare, wishing it, willing it to give him some hint, some clue of the way out.
He risked leaving his little room, risked roaming up and down the length of the
wall, as far as he could see, risked using his magic to search for a crack, a
chink in the endless stone. He stared at the wall so long that the stones began
to shift and glide and he wrenched his gaze away.

He did not call
to Draconas again.

Marcus reached
out his hand, touched the wall, touched stone—solid and cold. He moved his hand
to another part and then another, all the while telling himself that this was
stupid, futile, a last desperate attempt to stave off the inevitable.

“
Marcus . . .
”
said
Evelina urgently.
“
The monks ...
”

He saw them
rounding the corner of the building, walking straight for him. Some held fire
in their hands. Some held steel. All of it was death, so it didn’t much matter.

“
Tell me the
truth, Marcus,
”
said Evelina quietly.
“
There’s no way out, is
there?
”

“
No,
”
he
said.
“
There’s not. I had hoped . . .
”
He let hope hang, shook his
head.

“
I’m afraid,
”
she said and put her arms around him.

“
So am I,
”
he said, and held her close.

A hand thrust
through the stone wall.

Marcus stared
at it.
“
I’m going mad,
”
he thought.
“
Like the wretched monks.
”

He blinked his
eyes. The hand vanished and Ven stood in front of him, inside the little room.

“
This is the
gate,
”
said Ven.

His blue eyes
were the only color in a vast expanse of white.

“
The way out!
”
Evelina cried.
“
I see it! Marcus, look!
”
She clutched at him.
“
There
it is! Right in front of us! Hurry! Make haste!
”

The illusion
was broken and, as always when we see the truth, he wondered that he had been
so blind as not to penetrate the lie at once. The gate was crudely built,
constructed of wood planks and held together by iron bands. The gate stood
open. From the rusted look of the hinges, the gate had not been shut for
centuries. Perhaps it had rusted in place.

Beyond the gate
was the forest and beyond that the river. No monks blocked the way. No dragon
stood at the entrance.

Marcus looked
back to the little room.

“
Take care of
her,
”
said Ven. He held out his hand.

Marcus touched
his brother’s hand.

The gate
vanished, dissolved into the wall.

The wall
vanished, dissolved into illusion.

Dragonkeep was
gone, and it might have never existed, but for the feel of his brother’s hand,
firm and warm, in his own.

Marcus guided the
boat he and Evelina had stolen out into the river. Evelina sat rigid and
upright in the stern opposite him, holding on to the gunwales with both hands.
Her face was drawn and tense. She stared fearfully into the woods that were
slowly, too slowly, sliding away. When the boat dipped slightly, as Marcus
wrestled with the oars, Evelina grasped the gunwales tightly.

“Sorry,” said
Marcus. “I haven’t rowed a boat in a long time.”

“I thought I saw
something!” she gasped. “Oh.” She relaxed. “A deer.” Evelina looked at him and
managed a smile. “I’m glad you’re with me. You won’t let anything happen to me.”

Marcus smiled back
at her, trying to be reassuring, but he didn’t make any promises. The shoreline
was receding, though not as rapidly as he would have wished. Marcus expected to
see the monks come swarming out of the forest to give chase. They would have a
difficult time of it. After Evelina had plundered the boats for anything
useful, Marcus had pushed each boat, one by one, out into the river, where the
current caught them and carried them downstream.

He would have
liked to have destroyed the boats, perhaps set them ablaze, but he lacked the
strength to use any more magic. He had tried staving in the bottom of one of
the boats by kicking it with his foot, but the planks were too strong and
wouldn’t give way. The current was slow here. The boats bobbed in the water,
meandering lazily downstream. Any energetic monk could plunge in and recover
them.

Marcus waited for
that to happen, but no monk—energetic or otherwise—appeared.

The boat tent
carrying him and Evelina rounded a bend in the river and he lost sight of the
shoreline and the bobbing boats. The river was narrow at this point, the shore
lined with trees, whose overhanging boughs, thickly intertwined, cut off the
bright sun and made it seem as if he were rowing into a green and leafy cavern.
Sparse patches of sunlight slid over his knees. The sun was directly overhead.
Midday. Only noon. Presumably noon of the same day.

So much had
happened, it seemed as if it should be noon of some day next year.

“I don’t like
this.” Evelina hugged herself. “It’s like a cave. Anyone could be hiding in
those trees.” An alarming thought occurred to her. “Speaking of caves, we’re
not going back there, are we, Your Highness? Back to that horrible cave beneath
the water? This is the way. I remember it. I don’t want to go back there. We
should turn around. Travel downstream.”

The sunken cave.
Marcus remembered gliding through it silently, careful not to make a sound,
lest Grald and the monks should hear him and Bellona. He didn’t much like the
idea of going back through that cave himself.

Perhaps that’s
why the monks didn’t follow us to the shore. Perhaps they’re waiting for me
there. Maybe I should turn around and travel downriver, as Evelina says.

Marcus kept rowing
upriver, pulling steadily for the sunken cavern.

“They’re not
chasing us, are they, Your Highness?” Evelina asked, peering over her shoulder.
“They’d be here by now, don’t you think?”

“Yes,” Marcus
replied. No use frightening her with his dark conjectures. “You must call me
Marcus.” He smiled at her. “We’ve been through too much for formalities.”

Evelina flushed
with pleasure. “Marcus—I like that. And you will call me ‘Evelina.’ “ She
sighed and let go of the gunwale. Wrapping her hands around her knees, she
leaned forward and turned her attention to him. “You look tired.”

“I’m all right,”
Marcus said. He was tired, although he’d recovered his strength somewhat after
exhaustion had nearly overwhelmed him at the wall. He guessed that the
exhaustion had been partly due to despair—a despair that had lifted from him
when he’d felt the touch of his brother’s hand.

Marcus didn’t
understand anything that had happened. He didn’t understand why Ven had helped
him escape the dragon after betraying him to the dragon. He didn’t understand
how Ven even came to be alive. The last he’d seen of his brother, Ven was lying
in a pool of blood, a knife wound in his chest.

I don’t need to
understand. Not now. Now I have to concentrate on only one thing.

“You’d find the
rowing to be easier, traveling downstream,” Evelina pointed out for the third
time.

Marcus shook his
head. “Easier, but the wrong way.”

“Where are we
going then?”

“Home,” said
Marcus. His objective. His only objective.

“Your home?” asked
Evelina, and she sounded troubled.

“My home.”

His home, his
kingdom of Idylswylde. That was why he was risking the monks in the sunken
cavern. He might even find the dragon there, for that was where he had first
seen Grald, the hulking human form the dragon had appropriated. Marcus was
ready to risk even that to return to his home.

He could not
explain this longing, but the memory came to him of another time, a time he had
been away from his home for months, trapped in a world of insanity from which
Draconas had saved him. When the little boy, Marcus, had seen the towers of his
father’s castle shining in the sunlight, he had felt the ache of longing in his
heart swell so that the towers were drowned in his tears. The man, Marcus,
remembered and wanted to see those sunlit towers again.