Master of Dragons (5 page)

With the maddening
perversity of humans, people rushed to the site of the blast instead of fleeing
it, which, as Anora told Grald, any creature with common sense would have done.
Before the dust had settled, humans clogged the streets and clambered over the
ruins, screeching and yelling, wailing and weeping, groaning and bleeding, and
none of them staying in one place, but all of them milling about in confusion.

Anora continued
her search, though without much hope, for she was convinced that it must have
been Draconas who had helped Marcus escape. Humans were everywhere underfoot.
They scrabbled frantically through the wreckage, calling for those who would
never answer. A middle-aged man hurried past carrying the bloody, broken body
of a child. A young woman crouched, moaning, over the corpse of a young man as
another woman was trying unsuccessfully to soothe her. The dragon paid scant
attention to any of this.

There were so many
humans in this world, their lives so short and fleeting, that the loss of a few
dozen was no great cause for concern, especially when the future of both
mankind and dragonkind was at stake.

Slowly, as the
reports of the monks began to come in, Grald and Anora were able to piece
together parts of the puzzle.

The monks entered
the building where Ven and Marcus and the girl, Evelina, had last been seen. No
one was there, although the monks did report finding a large pool of blood on
the floor. They did not know whose blood. There was no body. A hole blown out
the back of the building gave the monks some idea of how those inside had
escaped.

Armed with
dragon-magic, the monks continued their search for Marcus and Ven. Marcus could
not have left Dragonkeep, for the wall surrounding the city was designed so
that no human— even one possessing the dragon-magic—could find his way through
the hidden gate.

Except that was
exactly what happened, or so his monks reported back to Grald. Marcus had been
cornered, trapped like the proverbial rat with his back against the wall.
Exhausted and wounded, he could not even put up much of a fight. The human
female with him had no magic and was no threat. Suddenly, without warning,
Marcus walked straight through the solid rock wall and he took the girl with
him.

The monks were
baffled. Grald was not.

“This proves it.
Draconas is responsible,” he said accusingly to Anora. “You bungled the job.”

Disguised in their
respective human forms—Grald in the body of a large, hulking human male, and
Anora in the body of a holy sister—the two dragons surveyed the midst of the
ruins left by the horrific blast that had wiped out an entire city block.

“Then why haven’t
we seen his colors?” Anora demanded, frustrated and baffled. “If his mind is
alive and active and reaching out to help Melisande’s son, we would know it,
for we have been watching for him. He could not hide from us.”

“Someone reached
out to aid Melisande’s son,” Grald muttered, kicking at a chunk of stone and
sending it rolling. “Someone opened the gate for him. The prince could not do
that by himself.”

“What about your
son? Ven?”

“What about him?”
Grald growled.

“He was with his
brother and that female. He could have opened the gate and helped them escape.”

Grald snorted. “Ven
hates his brother, and why not? His brother is handsome, rich, educated, and
has two human legs, not two dragon ones. And Ven lusts after the girl who was
with Marcus. Ven would not have permitted her to flee, especially in the
company of a brother he detests. Besides, the monks theorize that Ven was
injured. They think the blood was his. And, his mind remains closed to me.”

“He is cagey, that
one. Because he has not used the dragon-magic, his mind has no colors, like a
barren field blanketed in heavy snow. Except the field is not as barren as we
suppose. He has learned how to mask his thoughts from us. Where is he now? Do
you know? If he’s wounded, he couldn’t have gone far.”

“My monks continue
to search for him.”

“By my wings and
tail, we seem to have lost everyone this morning!” Anora ground her teeth in
frustration.

“If you had struck
Draconas from behind, slain him immediately, as I suggested, then we would not
be in this mess. You had to treat yourself to your little fillip of victory Let
him know who you were—”

“Do not tell me
how to fight my battles!” Anora snarled, rounding on Grald. “You have lived in
that stolen body so long you do not remember what it is like to live in a body
such as that inhabited by Draconas, a body created by a supreme illusion.”

“And I say that
you have not fought another dragon in so long that you do not remember what it
is to do battle with one,” Grald returned, although in subdued tones. He could
see the shadow of the elder dragon looming over him. “Draconas did with you
what he did with me when I fought him—he cast a defensive spell that threw your
magic back on itself, and then he turned tail and ran.”

“He had seconds
only,” argued Anora. “He could not have gone far.”

“He apparently
went far enough to help the son of Melisande escape through the magical gate,”
Grald retorted.

“Enough of this
bantering,” Anora said, suddenly weary. “We go round and round, like a
fledgling chasing its tail, and we get nowhere. Here comes one of your mad
monks. Perhaps he has something to report.”

The monk bowed
obsequiously.

“Honored One—” the
monk began.

“Yes, yes,” Grald
interrupted impatiently. “Get on with it. What have you to report?”

“Honored One,” the
monk continued, cringing, “your son has been found.”

“Ven? Where?”
Grald demanded, tense, alert.

“In the Abbey,
Honored One. He made it that far before he collapsed.”

“Collapsed?” Grald
repeated. “Out with it, you ninny! What is wrong with him? Is he hurt?”

“He was stabbed,
Honored One,” replied the monk in grave tones. “We found him lying on the floor
of his room in a pool of blood. We do not know if he will survive.”

Grald cast a
triumphant glance at Anora. “That rules out Ven having anything to do with
Marcus’s flight!”

Anora cast him a
withering glance. “I should think you would be much more concerned about the
fact that this precious body of yours is bleeding to death.”

The dire reminder
had the desired effect. Grald hastened off in alarm, leaving Anora alone. Once
he was gone, she spoke to the third dragon of their triumvirate, Maristara, the
dragon of Seth, who had started it all.

“I have to face
facts,” Anora said reluctantly. She hated admitting to her mistakes. “Draconas
has escaped me.”

“You know what he
will do,” Maristara returned. “He will summon the Parliament and he will tell
them everything. He will tell them about Dragonkeep, about the children. He
will tell them about you, Anora, and how you have betrayed them.”

“I’m not betraying
them,” Anora retorted. “I’m trying to save them! If they could only see that!”

“Now is the time
for them to see. Pull the viper’s fangs.”

Anora pondered,
thoughtful. “You’re right. Once they know the truth, have seen what we have
seen—”

“—then Draconas is
no longer a concern.”

“And while
Parliament is in an uproar, ranting and raving and flapping their wings—”

“—we will prepare
to strike. And once the first human kingdom is conquered and held firmly under
our claws, our people will come to see that we are right. That our way is the
only way.”

“And what of
Draconas?” Anora still wasn’t convinced.

“It would be a
shame if he were to fly into the side of a mountain and break his neck . . .”
replied Maristara.

ANORA SHOULD HAVE
BEEN PAYING MORE ATTENTION TO THE DESPISED humans. She would have found
Draconas. He was carried out of the ruins right under her nose and she never
noticed.

Anora made the
mistake of searching for Draconas in the human form he was most fond of
adopting—that of a human male of undetermined years, strong and lean, with long
black hair and dark eyes. It never occurred to either her or Grald that, as
Draconas saw death crackling before him, he would use his last fleeing seconds
to do two things: first, as Anora had postulated, Draconas cast a defensive
spell that acted as a shield, causing Anora’s magic to bounce off him like a
thrown spear bounces off steel. Second, as the lightning flared and sizzled around
him, Draconas shifted form, choosing an illusion that he had found to be useful
to him in the past.

He had just
managed to take on this form when the power of Anora’s magic clashed with
Draconas’s magic, erupting in a blast that destroyed the building and brought
it down on top of both of them.

Anton Hammerfall
and his wife, Rosa, were workers in the city of Dragonkeep. As his name
implied, Anton was a blacksmith. His wife Rosa worked as a weaver. Despite the
fact that they lived in the city that had been founded as a haven for children
with dragon-magic in them, Anton had nary a drop. His was the third generation
to grow up in Dragonkeep, and if the men in his family had ever had the magic,
it had long since dwindled out of them. Anton gave secret thanks daily that
such was the case. He felt nothing but pity for those wretched monks whose
blood burned with the magical fire that drove them insane.

Rosa had some
dragon-magic in her, as did all the women of Dragonkeep, though not enough to
make her valuable to the dragon, and thus she was a lowly weaver and not one of
the holy sisters. The blood bane, as the magic was known, was not so bad in
women as in men. It did not drive them insane. And thus Anton and Rosa had been
proud to discover that their only daughter, Magda, was strong in the
dragon-magic. She had been summoned by the dragon to live in his palace, and
though they missed her, they were pleased for her.

Anton and Rosa
resided in a small, one-room house in the city of Dragonkeep, not far from the
site of the terrifying blast that had shaken the ground and knocked all the
crockery off the shelves. The time was early morning. Anton had just fired up
the forge when the blast hit. He had joined his neighbors in running to the
scene, and he had proven to be invaluable in the search for survivors, for his
strong smith’s arms were needed to lift the fallen stones and move heavy wooden
beams. Rosa had gone with her husband, bringing with her bolts of new-made
woolen cloth to be used as bandages for the living and shrouds for the dead.

Both Rosa and
Anton worked throughout the morning and into the late afternoon, doing what
they could to help. There had been a great deal of confusion at first, as the
people of Dragonkeep flocked to the site, either to help or to gawk or to
conduct frantic searches for friends and relatives. Anton gave the Blessed
credit for swiftly restoring order. The Blessed (as the monks were known)
served as the dragon’s eyes and ears and enforcers of the law. This, and the
fact that some of the Blessed were quite mad, caused the ordinary, “unblessed”
citizens of Dragonkeep to go in healthy fear of the monks and to be quick to
obey their commands.

The Blessed
ordered the majority of the citizens home, keeping only those who had proven to
be useful. Anton and Rosa were among these, comforting, bandaging, lifting and
hauling, rejoicing when survivors were discovered, grieving when they came upon
bodies of the dead. By sundown, both were exhausted. The Blessed concluded that
there was not much more to be done, especially now that night was falling. Rosa
went home to “have a good cry,” as she said, and to give thanks to the dragon
that their dear daughter was safe from harm inside the palace beneath the
mountain. One of the dead Rosa had so gently covered with a blanket had been a
young woman near her daughter’s age.

Anton was also
weary; his arms and his back and his heart ached. He could not bring himself to
leave, however, not when there was the chance of finding someone still alive.
He continued to search through the rubble and the last gleam of failing
sunlight gave him a reward—he saw a child’s dusty hand protruding from beneath
a pile of stones.

At first, Anton
feared he’d found another corpse. He knelt down and touched the child’s hand
and, to his astonishment, found it warm, with a weak but steady pulse. Hope and
elation burned away his weariness. Experience cautioned him not to immediately
try to free the victim, much as he longed to pull her out from under the mound
of rock. He first took a careful look at the debris pile. Shifting the wrong
stone might cause the rocks to slide and bury the child deeper.

“Damn, this is
odd,” he muttered to himself, eyeing the strange way the stones and beams had
settled. But then, he’d noted a lot about this disaster that was very odd.

He thought at
first of calling for help. He thought then that he wouldn’t. He could manage by
himself. Considering the oddity of the situation, that might be best. And it
would save precious time. He dug the child out of the debris using his bare
hands and, within moments, had freed her.

She was
unconscious. She had a head wound. Blood gummed her hair and covered her face
and her clothes so that it was hard for him tell where else she might be hurt.
Her breathing was easy, not labored or shallow. He felt her limbs to see if
they were broken. Arms and legs appeared to be intact. He could not see the
wound on her head for all the blood and did not want to start probing, fearing
his clumsy touch might make her injuries worse. The girl was about twelve years
old. She was dressed in a woolen shift and that was all—no stockings, no shoes.

The building was
empty. No furniture, no sign that people lived here. The girl was alone in an
abandoned dwelling. Odder and odder still.

Anton took no more
time to speculate. Questions would be answered if and when the girl survived.
He lifted her gently in his arms and carried her from the building. On his way
out, he spotted Grald, the man who ruled Dragonkeep in the name of the dragon,
talking with one of the holy sisters. Anton ducked his head, so as to escape
their notice, and hurried past them as swiftly as possible. He was glad, now,
he had not called for help.