Master of Dragons (44 page)

She would watch
the explosion from the clouds, remaining on hand to make certain nothing and no
one escaped annihilation.

“Centuries from
now, humans will come to look on this site and they will shudder in horror,”
she said to herself in satisfaction. “We dragons will see to that. No more will
any human dare to even think about creating such a destructive force!”

“Would you take
some wine, my lady?”

Anora turned to
see the yellow-haired female, Evelina, holding out a goblet.

Anora didn’t
particularly want anything to drink, but everyone else had a goblet, and she
didn’t want to draw attention to herself by refusing. She took the glass of
wine and put it to her lips and drank a silent toast to victory. When she had
drunk the wine, she would leave.

Anora then learned
just how unpredictable humans can be.

The pain began in
her gut—a sharp, stabbing pain unlike anything her human body had ever felt.
The pain was so intense that Anora gasped out loud and clutched at her stomach.
Another pain—worse than the first—doubled her over. A tremor shook the body of
Lady Izabelle. A horrible taste filled the mouth and foam bubbled from the
lips. The heart lurched, limbs convulsed. Writhing in agony, the body
collapsed. The yellow-haired girl who had served Anora the wine caught her in
her arms.

“My lady! What is
wrong?” Evelina cried.

Cradling the body
of Lady Izabelle, Evelina lowered her gently to the floor. Anora could not
speak. The throat burned and the tongue was swelling. She stared up into the
face of the girl holding her and, though the girl registered shock and horror
on her face, Evelina’s eyes smiled.

“You won’t have
him!” Evelina whispered, bending solicitously over the suffering young woman. “He’s
mine and he’s going to stay mine. Don’t worry, my lady. The poison acts very
swiftly. You won’t suffer long.”

Poisoned!
Anora’s mind reeled with the shock.
The human has poisoned me! The body is
dying!

When the body
died, the dragon would start to change back into her true form. There was no
way to stop the process. The body was already finding it hard to breathe. The
limbs were convulsing, the arms and legs jerking and twitching.

People gathered
around her, and all was confusion and mayhem. Some shouted for a physician.
Some cried to give her air. Some thought she’d been hit by an arrow and they
ran to the window to see who fired. Others ran away from the window to see what
was happening. In the midst of the chaos, Anora felt her dragon form start to
flee the dying body. In moments, claws would erupt from delicate little hands.
Scales would glisten in the place of smooth, fair skin. The simpering mouth
would elongate and fill with razor teeth. She could not stop it. She had to
accept it. She had to decide what to do and quickly, for she was in danger. It
would take time to shift from the human form into the dragon. During that time,
she would be vulnerable to attack.

The one weapon she
had was her magic, for she could cast spells in either the human form or
dragon, though the dragon was far more powerful. Yet, even using the magic
required her to wait until the dragon emerged more fully.

As for the humans,
she trusted they would be in such a state of shock and bewilderment at seeing
the demure and gentle Izabelle developing a snout and a tail that Anora doubted
they’d be able to think clearly enough to react. The only one who might pose a
threat was Marcus, and she still had him in her power.

Anora was thinking
all this through—the dragon mind working coolly and logically as the human mind
was fast spiraling into death—when she felt Evelina’s hand slip beneath
Izabelle’s long hair, that had come tumbling down in her thrashing. Concealing
her hand in the mass of chestnut hair. Evelina stripped off Izabelle’s emerald
earrings. Her hand than slid down to the back of Izabelle’s neck and took hold
of the chain of the golden necklace.

“Seems a pity to
waste your jewels by burying you in them, my lady,” Evelina whispered.

Anora realized,
too late, what the girl meant to do. Fear gripped the dragon, fear that almost
paralyzed her. She made a desperate effort to try to stop Evelina, but the
human body was in its death throes and useless to her. The dragon body was just
starting to emerge.

The chain of the
golden locket that held the human’s heart snapped and so did the magic, lashing
about like a snake with its head cut off, flopping and twisting, completely out
of Anora’s control.

The magic coiling
about inside her, Anora shifted back into her dragon form, but the alteration
wasn’t happening as it was supposed to. She had no control over it, and so some
parts of her body were changing and others were not. If she didn’t retrieve
that locket and soon, she could be trapped in this form—half human, half
dragon.

Like one of
Grald’s monstrous children,
she thought savagely. She had to retrieve the
locket, release the heart of the human girl, and free herself.

Dragon jaws
slavering, Anora lunged at the wretched human who had done this to her.

Evelina had been
about to drop the locket down her bosom when a gigantic claw, growing out of
the hand of the Lady Izabelle, made a frantic swipe at her. A monster’s head,
sprouting horribly from a human neck, tried to snap off her arm.

Evelina screamed
and sucked in a breath and screamed again. Still screaming, her mouth wide
open, she stumbled backward, tripped over her long skirts, and fell.

She was up again
in an instant, half crawling, half scrambling, slipping and falling and still
screaming. Yet, even while trying frantically to escape a terrible death,
Evelina remained Ramone’s daughter.

She clutched the
golden locket fast in her hand.

Anora had one
dragon leg and one human, one dragon arm and one human. Her head was neither
dragon nor human, but a grotesque combination of both. Dragon scales stuck out
of human flesh, dragon teeth jutted out of a human mouth, dragon wings sprouted
from a human back and dragged limply across the floor. Shambling and shuffling,
Anora hurled herself at Evelina and grabbed hold of the hand holding the
locket. Anora tried to wrest it from her.

Evelina fought
like a cornered cat, spitting and hissing, howling and kicking and biting the
monstrous thing that had hold of her.

Anora squeezed,
attempting to break off the girl’s hand, if she had to. Evelina cried out and
Anora seized hold of the locket. She started to wrest it away, when bitter pain
tore through her body She looked down to see the point of a sword emerge from
her gut. The sword’s point was stained with her own blood.

In her desperate
need to retrieve the locket, Anora had let go of everything.

She had let go of
Marcus.

Marcus yanked the
sword from out of the back of the dragon. He saw the monster fall, but he did
not know if he had killed it or not. He didn’t have time to find out.

“Finish it!” he
shouted to the knights, who had been staring at the apparition, too stunned to
react. Hurling the bloody sword back to its owner, Marcus ran for the enormous
double doors and slammed them against the wall with a boom. He ran down the
marble stairs and into the courtyard.

“Don’t fire!” he
bellowed up at the walls. “Father! Don’t fire!”

Startled faces
stared at him. Mouths gaped. Men tried to grab hold of him. Marcus knocked them
aside, paid them no attention. He kept running, kept shouting.

“Don’t fire! For
God’s sake, Father, don’t fire!”

His tone was so
dire that several men joined him, crying out, “Don’t fire! Don’t fire!” though
they had no idea why.

Marcus dashed up
the stairs leading to the top of the wall where the cannons stood in a row,
facing the enemy. Men fell back to get out of his way. Marcus shoved aside
those who didn’t move fast enough. Finding the sling around his injured arm
impeded his progress, he tore it off. Fear and adrenaline ate up his pain. He
could see at a glance that the dragon warriors were in range. The order to fire
would be given at any moment.

Edward stood some
distance from him, but Marcus could see clearly his father’s lip moving,
starting to form the word that would cause the gunners to touch the match to
the portfire. He could see the gunners starting to react, anticipating the
command.

And he could see,
as well, the image in the dragon’s mind. He saw the tendrils of magic wound
like rope around the bases of the cannons. Stretched from one to the other, the
magic wrapped around the muzzles, draped over the wheels, extended along the
floor to the stone bunker where the gunpowder was stored. Marcus saw the flame
leap from the cannon to the tendrils that snaked past it. The tendrils blazed
with a dazzling blue-white light that arced from one cannon to the next until
the entire, magical web flamed in Marcus’s vision.

Then the blast,
white-hot as the sun, the magic of the dragon strengthening the explosion until
it was hundreds of times more powerful than a spark setting off a thousand kegs
of gunpowder. Cannons, people, stone walls vaporized. Not a trace of them left.
The blast expanded outward, blowing apart the castle walls, lifting gigantic
blocks of granite high into the air, boring deep into the earth, spreading to
the city where buildings crumbled and walls shattered.

Time slowed for
Marcus, though it seemed to have speeded up for everyone around him. He could
hear nothing for the roaring of blood in his ears. He could not even hear his
own voice.

The stairs he
climbed seemed to grow in number, so that he would never reach the end, and
then, suddenly, with a great bound, he was at his father’s side, clutching him
and gasping, breathless, “Don’t fire the cannons!”

Edward stared at
his son, speechless.

“If you do”—Marcus
sucked in a huge breath—”we’ll all die!”

“Hold, there!”
Edward shouted.

“Hold!” cried the
captains and most of the men obeyed.

One, however,
heard the king’s voice, but not the king’s words. This gunner had listened many
times over to the terrifying tales of the demon warriors—how they could burn a
man alive with a single look from their fiery red eyes. He’d been watching the
enemy’s inexorable advance with growing terror, and he was so panicked that he
lowered the lighted portfire to the vent.

Marcus jumped at
the man and socked him in the jaw. The man flew back against the cannon and
then slid to the ground in a groggy heap. Those standing nearby watched the
prince in stupefaction that was starting to harden into anger.

Marcus gasped for
breath.

“I have ... to
show you something.”

He turned back to
the cannons and raised his hands and let the magic that he’d never before been
allowed to use—the magic that they had tried so hard to suppress—flow out of
his fingers and his arms, flow out of his mouth and his nose, a part of him, as
the air he drew into his body.

His magic fell
like raindrops on the tendrils of enchantment that wrapped around the cannons
and caused the rain-bejeweled tendrils to glitter in the bright noontime sun.
Men sprang back, out of the way, blessing themselves, so that eventually the
glittering cannons stood isolated, surrounded by a ring of frightened and
bewildered men.

Marcus walked over
to one of the glittering tendrils and touched it with his hand, and the
glittering rain-droplets of magic froze and changed to ice that sparkled
briefly in the sun. The tendril, weighed down by the ice, broke and shattered,
like ice-rimed tree limbs. The magic fell to the stone flagons and melted away.

“Sire! Look!”
Gunderson pointed.

Those who could
wrench their gaze from the enchanted cannons looked out over the walls to the
hills and fields beyond.

The enemy was
gone.

“God has saved us
from the demons!” cried a priest, finding this a much easier explanation than
what he’d just witnessed. “It is a miracle.”

Men began to
cheer. They flung down their weapons and started to dance on the walls,
embracing each other, yelling with all their might.

“Where did they
go?” Gunderson asked, dazed.

“No miracle, I’m
afraid. It was an illusion,” Marcus said. He was just thinking that this was
the happy ending, when Draconas burst into his mind.

“Marcus! Where
have you been?”

Draconas appeared
to him not as the Walker, but in his dragon form, all teeth and eyes and
gleaming red scales.

“Draconas!” Marcus
was glad to see him and he was even gladder to tell his tale. “The dragon—”

“Never mind!”
Draconas snapped. “You think you’ve won this battle, but it’s not over yet. You’ve
jumped out of the kettle, only to land smack in the fire. The real dragon army
is on its way and so are the dragons.”

THE DRAGON ARMY
MASSED ON THE TOPS OF THE HILLS SURROUNDING the castle. At some unheard signal,
the warriors began to flow rapidly to the attack. Soldiers watching from the
castle walls blinked and rubbed their eyes. They had seen this army once and
then it had vanished, and now it had reappeared. Even the stalwart were shaken.
Men cursed or trembled. Some fell to their knees. The priest who had called out
that God had saved them looked accusingly into the heavens, as though
suspecting some sort of cruel joke.

Leaving Gunderson
in command, Edward took time to return to the great hall with Marcus, to see
for himself what had occurred. He stared in horror and loathing at the carcass
of the dead monstrosity that lay on the floor. Following Marcus’s initial
strike at the dragon, the knights who’d been paralyzed with shock had come to
themselves and obeyed his command to “Finish it.”

They had attacked
the monster with sword and knife and spear, stabbing it over and over in their
grim determination to slay it. The carcass, riddled with wounds, lay in a vast
pool of blood. The eyes still held the fury of the dying dragon. The jaws gaped
in a hate-filled grimace. Tragically, some parts of the Lady Izabelle were
still visible, and it seemed to Edward that the dragon and the pretty young
girl were locked in a lethal embrace.