Master of Dragons (41 page)

Cook liked to
gossip and she liked to embellish her stories. She liked being made to feel
important, and she liked Evelina. There was some truth to this story, but not
much. Marcus had asked after Evelina, but it was his mother he had asked, not
the Lady Izabelle. She knew nothing of Evelina—Queen Ermintrude had seen to
that.

Evelina believed
the tale because she wanted to believe it and also because, if she’d been the
Lady Izabelle, she would have done exactly the same thing herself.

She concluded it
was time for drastic measures.

It was time to go
shopping.

Being Ramone’s
daughter, Evelina had, from her first days in the palace, kept a watchful eye
out for small and easily transportable valuables that could be tucked into a
sleeve or dropped down one’s bosom or secreted in one’s purse. The hasty
departure of the ladies-in-waiting provided a treasure trove for Evelina, who
slipped into their abandoned rooms and helped herself to everything they had
left behind. Since the women had packed in a state of panic, Evelina made a
considerable haul, finding scattered pearls, bejeweled hair combs, silver
hairbrushes, dropped rings, and a fine pair of small silver candlesticks.

Evelina put her
cloak around her and cast her veil over her head and, acting in the guise of a
servant, she ventured out of the palace and walked down the hill into the city.
She went first to the pawnshop, and from there she went to another part of the
city, a darker, seamier part. Although Evelina had never been in or even heard
of Ramsgate-upon-the-Aston before now, she knew where to look for what she
sought and found it quite easily.

She was, after
all, Ramone’s daughter.

Evelina returned
to the palace with the object safely in her possession.

It was well that
she went on her shopping expedition when she did. From that night on, life
would change drastically.

Around midnight, a
messenger rode a lathered horse into the courtyard. Despite the lateness of the
hour, Gunderson was there to meet him; the old man was always on hand during
any crisis. He took one look at the messenger and called for men with torches
and sent a servant running in haste to bring the king.

The messenger was
covered with the dust of the road and so exhausted he fell from the saddle. He
was parched and could not speak for the dryness of his throat. Someone brought
him water and he drank thirstily and then gave his news.

“New Bramfells is
attacked!” he said hoarsely. “Demons came upon us three days ago, surrounded
the city.”

He took another
drink, then spit it out, coughing.

No one spoke. All
waited in grim silence.

“They brought with
them hellfire!” he gasped, when he could speak. “They called down the lightning
from the heavens. We could do nothing against them. The rocks our catapults
hurled at the demons burst apart in midair. A flight of arrows changed into a
flock of crows and flapped away. I am sane, Your Majesty!” the man cried
wildly. “I swear to God I saw it with my own eyes!”

“I do not doubt
you.” Edward took hold of the man’s shoulders, gripped him tightly. “Three
days, you say? Has the city fallen? Do you still hold?”

“Hold!” The
messenger laughed, brittle laughter that cracked. “There’s nothing left to
hold. The city is destroyed! We tried to fight the fires, but the flames were
everywhere and they spread too fast.”

All could now see,
as they stared at him in the flickering torchlight, that his eyebrows and the
hair on the front of his head had been singed off. Holes made by cinders
riddled his cloak, and one sleeve was burnt away, revealing an ugly burn on his
arm.

Every man there
could picture the disaster. Fire was the terror of every city. Buildings with
thatched roofs and wooden beams stood jammed up against each other in order to
conserve space. With no effective means of putting out a blaze, once fire
started, it could eat a city alive.

“Then there came a
dragon,” the man continued, not looking at anyone, talking feverishly to
himself. “A great red monster it was. We thought we were finished, but the
beast did not attack us. It flew at the demons and . . . and . . .”

The messenger
blinked and faltered.

“And what, man?”
Edward demanded. “What happened?”

“A whirlwind took
the dragon,” the man said, awed. “A whirlwind caught the beast and twisted it,
so that it nearly smashed into the city. The same wind fanned the flames of the
fire, causing it to spread that much faster.”

“The red dragon
could have been Draconas,” said Edward in a low voice, taking Gunderson aside. “He
must have changed his mind about killing humans. But it seems the warriors can
protect themselves against him. What do you suppose is left of the city?”

“Rubble and ashes,
Sire. And the dead,” said Gunderson.

Edward turned back
to the messenger. “Others must have escaped, as you did. Do you know how many?”

“A handful maybe,
Your Majesty. Most were too afraid of the demons to leave the city. Better to
lose your life than your immortal soul.”

“They’re not
demons!” Edward said sharply. “Stop saying that. They’re men, same as us—”

The messenger
stared at him.

“No use, sire,”
Gunderson advised. “He won’t believe you. No one will. The dragons are playing
on every nightmare and superstitious fear we’ve ever harbored.”

“Thousands of
people in that city . . . children . . . burning to death.” Edward closed his
eyes and covered his face with his hand. “God help them!”

“One thing more,”
Gunderson asked the messenger, who was on the verge of collapse. “How did you
escape?”

“God’s grace
maybe, sir,” the man replied weakly. “I don’t know. I didn’t expect to.”

Gunderson watched
as his men bore the messenger away to be fed and doctored.

“The warriors let
him go,” Edward said. “They let that man pass safely through their lines. ‘Always
leave one survivor to tell the tale.’“

Gunderson pondered
this, then said, “Aye, sire, I fear you’re right. They knew he would ‘tell the tale.’
They want us to hear it. Because we’re next.”

“At least we have
the cannons,” said Edward. “I’ll wager the dragon warriors won’t be turning
cannonballs into crows—”

“Father! . . .”

Feeling a hand
clutch at his arm, the king turned. “Marcus! What are you doing out in the
night air? You’ll catch your death!”

“Father!” Marcus
said desperately. “You must not—Must not—

“Must not what?”
Edward asked, for that was as far as his son went.

“I don’t know,”
Marcus said, puzzled and anguished. He plucked at his hair with trembling
hands. “I can’t catch it. It’s all unraveling.”

“He’s out of his
head with fever!” Edward exclaimed, concerned. “Where is his servant? You,
sirrah,” he said angrily as the man came puffing up. “What do you mean allowing
your master out of his bed at this time of night?”

“I am sorry, Sire,”
the man gasped. “He heard the commotion and was up and gone before I knew it.”

“Take him to his
bed and summon the physician.” Edward put his arm around his son’s shoulder. He
could feel Marcus’s shivering. “There’s nothing you can do, my son. What’s done
is done. Go back to your bed.”

The servant had
brought a blanket with him. He wrapped it around Marcus’s shoulders and, in
wheedling tones, he tried to persuade the prince to come back inside.

Marcus resisted.
He stared into the night sky at the stars, which sparkled so sharply it seemed
to Edward he would cut himself if he touched them.

“It’s too late,
Father,” Marcus said and his voice was calm. “Death has caught us.”

Death had not
caught Draconas. At least, not yet. He had searched unsuccessfully for the army
of dragon warriors for a fortnight, and he had almost begun to think that
perhaps Maristara had called off” the fight and gone home to think things over
when word came from Lysira that the dragon army had reappeared. They surrounded
a human city.

Draconas warned
Lysira to keep well away. He then tried several times to contact Marcus, to
warn him that New Bramfells was under siege and that the king should
immediately send reinforcements.

As it turned out,
Maristara had no thought of besieging the walled city. She had given her troops
orders to destroy it, and they did so, burning out a city of five thousand
people in less than a day. Even if Draconas had managed to speak to Marcus—and
he was never in his little room these days—Edward’s force could not have
reached the city in time.

The law of
dragonkind. Kill no human.

Draconas had
upheld that law and defended it for hundreds of years, as had other dragons
before him. He tried to save the city without killing any of the dragon
warriors. He swooped down on them with no intent to kill them—though they didn’t
know that. He hoped to frighten them, scatter them, cause them to break and
run. His hope was a meager one, for he guessed that Grald had trained them for
just such an attack.

Sighting Draconas,
the male warriors continued their assault against the humans, leaving the
female warriors to defend against the dragon. With incredible speed, the women
summoned a cyclone of magic and sent it after Draconas. He had no choice but to
pull out of his dive and retreat or risk being caught up in the whirling,
whipping winds.

Draconas was
forced to watch New Bramfells burn, watch the smoke billow into the air, watch
it rain ashes and hot cinders back down onto the ground. He heard the screams
of the slaughtered and smelled the burnt flesh, and he saw, as he dove at them,
the faces of the dragon warriors looking up at him, cold and calm and
unfeeling, as they went about their business of killing.

“They can defend
against one dragon or perhaps even two or three,” Draconas muttered to himself.
“But what about hundreds? I think that might give them pause.”

A day later, the
city still burned. Draconas again searched for Marcus, but the little room was
empty. The dragon warriors vanished inside their illusion. This time, Draconas
knew where they were headed, and he had the feeling that they would not wait
two weeks to attack the castle. Frustrated, unable to think of a way to stop
them, he watched the smoke of New Bramfells snake up into the heavens as the
few survivors, tiny as mice from this height, wandered among the rubble,
searching for a life they had once known and would never find again.

Draconas made a
decision.

“For once, our
kind is going to have to take a stand, and we’re going to have to do it fast.
No time for arguing or dithering, no tabling of motions or referrals to
committee.”

Draconas opened
himself up to the minds of all dragons everywhere, letting them see into his
mind, letting them see all that he had seen—the fall of the human city.

“As specified in
our laws,” Draconas said to the dragons, his colors red with flame and blood, “in
time of dire emergency, any member may call a meeting of Parliament. It is such
a time and I summon you to attend.”

He closed his mind
swiftly, before the flood of questions overwhelmed him, and flew to the meeting
site.

BECAUSE HE HAD
ALWAYS FELT COMPELLED TO VIEW HIMSELF AS AN advocate for the humans among whom
he walked, Draconas had previously appeared before the Parliament of Dragons in
his human, “walker” form. This day, he came before them as an equal, a dragon,
one of their own. He was the first to arrive, and he did that for a reason. He
wanted to greet every single dragon, look each in the eye.

The dragons
entered, one by one. Some, like Lysira and, astonishingly, the old irascible
Malfiesto, greeted Draconas warmly, their crisp, sharp colors flowing beneath
his wings and lifting him with their support. Others, such as Litard and Arat,
barely glanced at him as they entered, and they kept their colors wrapped close
to themselves, sharing nothing with him, yet all the while trying to bore
inside his skull.

Notable in absence
was Anora. The speaker’s rod lay on the floor where she had last laid it down.
No one stood in her place. No one picked up the rod.

The mood was
electric. Tension sparked and cracked among the dragons, who eyed each other
suspiciously.

Draconas had to do
the impossible. He had to try to bring them together.

“I have summoned
you here—”

“Such a summons
may be issued only by the Minister,” stated Mantas, a young and hot-headed
male.

“In an emergency,
any dragon may call a meeting,” Draconas returned, keeping his colors even and
level. He knew he was being deliberately goaded. “In any event, you answered
it.”

He and Mantas had
a brief eye-rapier fencing battle. Mantas broke contact, glanced away. The
younger dragon rolled his eyes, indicating that he ended the confrontation
merely to save time, not because he was in any way intimidated. Draconas gave
an inward sigh and plunged ahead.

“Our first order
of business is to elect a new minister.”

“There is no need.
“We have a Minister,” Reyal, one of the female dragons, stated in colors of
ice-blue. “Anora is our Minister.”

“She has betrayed
us!” Nionan, a female who had always liked humans, struck in. “Anora has
forfeited her right to rule over us.”

“She did
not
betray us,” Litard retorted. “She is trying to save us. Draconas is the
traitor. He has betrayed his own kind to side with the humans who would destroy
us—”

Nionan’s colors
flared orange. Litard snarled and a brawl of minds broke out in the Hall.
Colors swirled and clashed in the center of the cavern. Dragons shifted
positions, leaving their accustomed places to form factions. Lysira and Nionan
hastened to Draconas’s side. So did the elderly Malfiesto, who, unfortunately,
took this opportunity to start lecturing the young hot-heads on their sins.