Master of Dragons (43 page)

“Draconas summoned
the Parliament.”

“Did he?” Anora
found that interesting. “To try to convince the others to save the humans?”

“Of course.”

“With what result?”

“As you might
expect. Parliament could not agree. Some went one way, some another. Draconas
has a few of the noble houses on his side, but we have more on ours.”

“And how did it
end?”

“The Parliament of
Dragons is dissolved,” said Maristara with grim satisfaction. “Good riddance,
if you ask me.”

Anora heard the
news with shock and, oddly, regret. She thought fondly of the long debates, the
interminable discussions, the Speaker’s Rod being handed civilly back and forth
among them. She recalled the rustle of wings and the flicking of tails and the
heads turning their bright eyes on first one, then the other, as the rainbow of
their wisdom shone about them and bound them together. And now all that was
dissolved, as grains of salt disappearing in a glass of water, so that you
could never more see them or even tell what they had once been.

Fear emptied Anora
of color. For a terrible moment she was cold and hollow and dark inside. The
voices of her ancestors seemed to cry out against her, their dead eyes stared
at her accusingly. In an instant she had undone the work of centuries. And where
would it lead?

“To peace,” she
insisted stubbornly. “To stability. Once the humans are cowed and come under
our rule, the dragons who have been deluded into siding with the humans will
see reason. Parliament will be restored. All will be well again. Better than
before.”

So she reassured
herself, and though doubt remained burning in the pit of her gut, like an
unexpelled remnant of brimstone, she was able to ignore it and turn her
attention back to Maristara. And a good thing she did.

“What did you just
tell me?” Anora demanded, appalled.

“The dragon’s
children are in Seth,” Maristara repeated, her colors murky and sullen.

“How could you let
this happen?”

“I cannot be in
two places at once!” Maristara returned vehemently. “I cannot prosecute this
war from Dragonkeep as you insisted upon and, at the same time, chase after
Grald’s monstrous progeny!”

Anora caught hold
of a word. “Monstrous. Yes, that is what they will seem to the humans of Seth,
who have been taught all their lives to fear dragons. We have no need to worry.
The humans have undoubtley slaughtered them.”

“On the contrary,
they embraced them,” said Maristara, and it seemed she would have hidden these
thoughts, but Anora ferreted them out. “I have lost contact with the High
Priestess. The heart in the locket withered and turned to dust. They found the
body of Lucretta and they freed her from my spell. The body I had stolen is
dead. Fortunately, I was not in it at the time. I had abandoned it.”

“You have
abandoned your senses! One of two human kingdoms under our sway, and Seth has
been lost to us.”

“We will regain
it.” Maristara was confident.

Blindly
confident—the confidence of ignorance, Anora thought, seething. All contact
lost with Seth. The Mistress of Dragons unmasked. By all logic, the humans of
Seth should have killed the half-dragon monsters.

Humans are so
completely unpredictable!
Anora fumed. She had lived among humans,
disguised as the holy sister, off and on for years, and she still found them
baffling.

We must destroy
them,
Anora realized.
Destroy them all. Only then will we finally be at
peace.

“Is all going well
in Ramsgate?” Maristara was asking. “Our plan remains unchanged?”

“Yes,” Anora
replied. “The plan proceeds. The dragon army marches with the dawn. By sunset
tomorrow, this city will be a hole in the ground, and the world of humans will
have learned a bitter lesson.”

The conversation
between the two dragons ended, and Anora proceeded with her spellcasting. Her
plan was foolproof. It could not fail. Unpredictable though humans might be,
she saw no way they could escape their fate. The real army would cast an
illusion of itself. The illusionary army would attack the castle. The cannons
would misfire. The horrendous explosion would wipe out every living being
within a twenty-mile radius. Two major cities destroyed. What was left of the
kingdom of Idylswylde would sue for peace.

The dragon army
would then march on the neighboring kingdom of Weinmauer.

Terms: Surrender
or be destroyed.

Or maybe just be
destroyed.

Anora began to
work her magic.

THE NEXT MORNING,
AS DAWN BROKE, SCOUTS BROUGHT WORD that the enemy army was on the march,
heading for the capital. The enemy was, as yet, some miles distant, moving
slowly, in no hurry. The flash of the sun off their armor could be seen for
miles, according to one report. So, too, could the smoke billowing into the
air, for they set fire to field and farmhouse as they passed. The warriors
summoned lightning from out of blue skies, starting fires where the bolts
struck, so that it seemed to the victims that God himself hurled His wrath
against them. Some began to cry that these warriors were not demons but
avenging angels, sent to punish them for their transgressions.

“The end of the
world is coming,” they wailed, and so it was, but in a way they could not
fathom.

After hearing the
terrible death toll in New Bramfells, King Edward had ordered the evacuation of
the civilian population of Ramsgate-upon-the-Aston. Monasteries and abbeys in
outlying districts took in many of the refugees. Merchants closed their shops,
packed up their merchandise, and left via the river or overland. Once the city
was emptied of civilians, the king pulled the troops off the city walls and
brought them in to defend the castle.

Edward sought to
convince his soldiers that these warriors were neither demons nor angels. They
were ordinary men with extraordinary abilities. Few believed him. The king
might have pointed out that his very own son could wield the same magic, and
Edward sometimes wondered, in the sleepless hours of the night, if being open
and honest about Marcus and the magic would have been the better course of
action. He decided eventually it would have made no difference at all. The
ignorant and superstitious would have thought Marcus a demon, too.

The cannons were
readied for action. The gunners were in position. The gunpowder, usually stored
in a bunker that had been dug into the ground some distance from the castle
proper and its outbuildings, was hauled from the bunker to the castle. Edward
had ordered construction of a small bunker near the guns, and this was stocked
with powder barrels. Buckets of water stood by the guns and by the bunker in
order to douse any spark.

Edward’s cannons
were different from most cannons being built by other nations. His were designed
to fight not only men on the ground but also dragons in the air, and thus his
cannons could be cranked up to fire into the sky. Mounted on a revolving table,
they could also be swiveled about in order to follow a moving target. This day,
the cannons faced the ground. He considered his most formidable foe the dragon
warriors. If a dragon appeared, the cannons could always be realigned.

The sun climbed
toward noon. Everything was in readiness. Archers and men-at-arms lined the
walls. The gunners stood by their cannons with their ramrods, six men to a gun,
each man assigned a different task from placing the charge to ramming home the
cannonball to sighting the gun in on its target.

“Here they come!”
one eagle-eyed youngster cried from his perch in the top of the tallest tower. “Marching
across the fields!”

The enemy rippled
over the land, their scaled armor glittering like the river that flowed past
the castle. The dragon army marched directly on the castle itself, bypassing
the city walls, flowing down into the valleys and up the hills. The warriors
took their time, not yet attacking. The hands of the warriors were empty, but
this time no man laughed. Some had been present at the ill-fated Battle of
Aston and had seen for themselves that the empty hands of the “demon” warriors
carried death. Those who had not been present had heard the stories. All
watched in grim silence as the army advanced, silence broken only by the
nervous jingle and rattle of armor, the hissing and sputtering of the torches,
and, here and there, muttered prayers.

The army was not
yet within range of the cannons. The King himself would give the order to fire.

“Stand ready,”
said the cannon’s commander.

Inside the palace,
the few people who had chosen to remain were gathered together in the great
hall where the knights could protect them, in case the walls were breached.
Queen Ermintrude was among them. Edward had argued and pleaded with his wife to
flee to her father’s castle in Weinmauer. The Queen had most indignantly
refused.

“How would that
look, me running home to Papa, crying that my husband cannot protect me?”

“He can’t protect
you,” Edward had replied glumly.

“Nonsense.”
Ermintrude had clasped his hand and pressed it to her bosom. “We have the
cannons and brave men.”

She had sighed,
then said softly, “We’ve seen bad times before, Edward, my love, and we’ve come
through them together. We’ll come through this one just the same.”

“I hope you are
right, my own true heart.” Edward had kissed her on the cheek and she had
smiled at him. He had been glad to see her dimples flash again. He had
something else to say, however. “If anything should happen to me, the people
will look to you as their queen for guidance.”

“I know.”
Ermintrude had spoken calmly, though the dimples had once again disappeared. “Just
don’t let anything happen to yourself, Edward.”

The Queen stood by
a window peering out, watching Edward, who was everywhere at once. Her guards
begged her repeatedly to come back into the center of the room, away from the
window, but Ermintrude ignored them. She chafed at being cooped up inside the
castle, unable to see what was going on. She would have been out on the walls
herself if she could have managed it. Edward would have had a fit, and, more
important, she could not leave Marcus.

Ermintrude shifted
her worried gaze from her husband to her son. Marcus had insisted on going out
onto the walls himself, though his left arm was still in a sling and he was
running a low-grade fever, according to the Lady Izabelle. Marcus had ordered
that his armor be brought to him in his room, but he lacked the strength to put
it on.

When Ermintrude
went to see him, she found him sitting in a chair by the fire, watching the
Lady Izabelle work on her embroidery. Ermintrude noted an odd look in her son’s
eyes, like those of an animal trapped, caged. The look was so very odd that she
was startled and uneasy.

“He is only
fretting that he cannot join his father,” she said to herself She was impressed
with the Lady Izabelle, who could find the strength of character to work at
embroidery at a time like this.

Hearing the Queen
enter, the lady covered her work with a cloth. Ermintrude had never laid eyes
on the lady’s fancy work, and she was not of a mind to do so now.

“We are all to
move to the great hall,” she said. “The commander of my guard deems it will be
safer for us there.”

Marcus was
established in a chair near the fire with the Lady Izabelle close at hand. He
continued to stare at her, and Ermintrude thought to herself that she’d never
seen a young man so much in love. She prayed that she and her beloved husband
would live to see them married. At the thought, tears filled her eyes, and
Ermintrude scolded herself, for she had determined in the night that she would
keep such debilitating fears at bay. She had to be strong, for the sake of
those around her.

One other person
joined the small group in the great hall. Mistress Evelina was in attendance.
How or why she came to be here was a mystery to the Queen, who remembered
ordering Evelina away a fortnight ago. Too late to remove her now. And,
Ermintrude was forced to admit, the girl was behaving herself. She was meek and
quiet and respectful. She looked often at Marcus but, Ermintrude was glad to
see, he paid no attention to her. He had eyes only for Izabelle.

“Your Majesty,”
Evelina said with a deep curtsy. “Some wine might give us courage. I will be
glad to pour, if you sanction it.”

“Yes, a good idea,
Mistress,” said the Queen, distracted, for, at that moment the call came that
the dragon army was advancing. Ermintrude hastened back to her place by the
window. She could see Edward, standing with his cannons, tall, unafraid, in
command.

She had never
loved him more than at that moment—a blessed state in which to enter heaven, if
death should take her.

Anora, in the body
of Lady Izabelle, watched Marcus, sitting weakly in the chair. He had his eyes
fixed on her, hating her, knowing what she planned, knowing he was going to die
in moments, knowing everyone he loved would be dead. Knowing there was nothing
he could do to save them or himself.

He would die, torn
apart by the blast. All the humans would die, what small bits were left buried
beneath tons of stone that had once been a castle, the rubble and ruin of a
nation lying at the bottom of an immense crater. She waited impatiently for
Maristara to give the signal.

The illusory
dragon army would launch its attack at the castle. The illusion was a mammoth
work, created by Maristara, while the real army waited miles away, keeping a
safe distance from the site of the blast. The illusory army could not do real
damage, but it didn’t need to. No human would remain alive long enough to
figure out he’d been duped.

A few more seconds
and Anora would make up some excuse to leave the hall. She’d established her
escape route. Marcus had told the Lady Izabelle, as something that might
interest her, that a passage led from the castle beneath the walls and opened
into a pasture some distance away. (Draconas had taken Marcus out of the castle
that way many years ago, though Anora did not know that . . . nor would she
have cared.) Once outside the walls, she would slough off this frail human body
and take on her own strong and powerful dragon form.