The Princess's Dragon (6 page)

The sound of shocked gasps trailed by leaden silence shook Sarai out of her frustrated anger. She realized that she towered over her sister, her finger in the other girl’s stricken face, and quickly covered her mouth as if she could push her hasty words back in.

Sondra slowly stood, the shine of tears darkening her eyes as her shoulders straightened with quiet dignity. She ignored the shaking hand Sarai stretched out to halt her retreat and turned her back on her sister.

“I’m sorry you feel that way, Sarai, but at least now that I know the truth, you won’t need to defend me anymore. In fact, I don’t want you around me at all unless the occasion dictates it. Good-bye, Sarai. Oh, and do keep an eye on my ladies-in-waiting. I have no more need of them this evening and I’d rather not have to watch my back tonight.” The last words quavered as Sondra strode 30

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to the door, jerked it open, and stormed out, her skirts barely clearing the doorway just as it swung shut behind her.

The sound of the closing door intruded on the awkward silence as the girls glanced nervously at each other, the frozen princess, and the pale young prince.

The spell broke when Sergen stood, stretched and ran his hand through his shaggy mop of hair, leaving behind a mess of spiky locks. He patted his sister uncertainly on her shoulder, uncomfortable with emotional girls, and eager to escape before one of the many women in the room started crying. “She’ll get over it. You know she will. She just got her feelings hurt, but sometimes people need to hear the truth, you know…”

“Sergen, please, don’t … ” Sarai turned to him, tears welling in her beautiful eyes, and Sergen swallowed, nodded, and beat a hasty retreat, racing from the room as if Morbidon’s own reapers snapped at his heels. He didn’t stop until he reached the sanctuary of his own chambers, raced inside, slammed the door, and leaned gratefully against it, safely away from the tears of both sisters—

tears he didn’t know how to deal with.

Sondra made it as far as the flight of steps leading to her own chambers before she crumpled against the cool wall and, sliding to her knees, shook with powerful and painful sobs that clawed at her throat and tore at her insides. She curled up in an effort to protect the gaping wound her sister’s careless words had carved in her heart.

She always knew people thought her strange but she never really concerned herself since people expected a certain level of eccentricity from royalty, didn’t they? Sarai’s words cut the most, not because of what other people thought of her, but because those she loved the most knew about it, suffered embarrassment for it, and never once told her. The thought that they would ever grow tired of defending her and supporting her in spite of what others might think made her question whether they even returned her love.

Suddenly she understood why her own mother always seemed so disappointed with her, or why her father couldn’t always stifle the embarrassed grimace when she started explaining logical studies to his councilors. Now she knew why her brother often avoided her while visiting with the few noble boys allowed in his company. Still, she never thought her sister Sarai felt burdened by her and her eccentricities. Elona, yes; she couldn’t stand her eldest sister and knew the feeling remained entirely mutual, but she always believed Sarai loved her as much as she loved Sarai. To find out differently left a gaping hole that

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steadily filled with the same feeling of betrayal that she experienced when her sisters sent her on a fool’s errand to catch a magical fairy so many years before.

“I bet they don’t care about me at all,” Sondra muttered, a spark of anger burning her stomach and igniting the well of betrayed feelings finding shelter there. “Fine, let’s see how they fare without me. I’ll run away. I’ll go to Thunder Mountain and prove there is no Dragon, and that they’ve all been duped, and I don’t care at all if they worry, but they probably won’t even look for me.” Sondra ignored the sting of acid tears burning her eyes and climbed the steps to her chambers. She quietly cracked the door open and peeked inside.

Liliana lay sprawled and snoring on a bench at the foot of Sondra’s massive bed, her maid’s bonnet long since fallen to the floor. Sondra smiled, pleased that her maid’s noisy slumber concealed her own furtive movements perfectly.

The glow of the half-moon had gilded the chamber silver by the time Sondra quietly and clumsily managed to untie her own laces and shrug out of the heavy court dress. She let the hated thing fall to the floor.

Throwing open the wardrobe doors in her dressing chamber, she selected the darkest and simplest of her coatdresses, a plain burgundy wool adorned only with hand-carved obsidia buttons. She shrugged into the fitted sleeves, pulled the coatdress around her, and buttoned up before sliding on her black leather riding boots. The pale cream underskirt of her simple showed through from the waist where the row of buttons ended but she didn’t have the time to change completely, nor did she possess a dark-colored simple. Rather then a jaunty hat or bonnet, she pulled a wool cloak from the back of the wardrobe.

The summer night air hardly called for such a heavy garment, so she wouldn’t wear it for long; she just needed the concealment of the hood to escape the castle unrecognized. The simple dark cloak concealed the fine cut and material of the dress she wore and she prayed that anyone who saw her would mistake her for one of the servants trekking into the city for supplies or returning to their homes for the night. Fortunately, the castle portcullis never closed and people traveled in and out of the gates all evening long on various errands, especially just after sundown when the demands on the servants lessened greatly.

She tiptoed into Liliana’s tiny chamber just off her own dressing room and guiltily searched the sparse quarters, finding what she sought tucked beneath the hard cot. A poorly woven basket covered by a cheap, printed flaxweed material sat tucked neatly under Liliana’s bed. It looked exactly like hundreds of others that the servants used to carry their goods and money to and from 32

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the castle. She stole the basket, promising herself that she would repay Liliana a hundredfold for it when she returned with her proof. She would start by ordering the girl a new bed, one that didn’t resemble a slab of stone.

She stuffed some of her less expensive jewelry into the basket with vague ideas of selling the items for money. She then added a brush, some ribbons, her toothstick and powder, a jar of soapstone powder and a woolen washsquare, and hurried to the door. She caught a glimpse of herself in the polished silver before she left the room. She mentally shook her head at her near mistake and snatched the tiara out of her hair, wincing as the pins pulled free along with several long strands. She cast the tiara on the bed, threw her hood over her unbound hair, and snuck from the room, holding the door to keep it from slamming shut behind her.

The journey through the silent castle and down the servants’ steps would cause Sondra nightmares for many nights to come. Every servant glanced her way, though none stopped her as she proceeded through the tight, dimly lit corridors. Most of the other occupants shoved rudely past her, rushing to complete some errand or another in the never-sleeping castle.

She couldn’t believe her luck when she threw open the servant’s entrance door after slipping past the bustling kitchen. She’d made it, and she supposed she could thank the upcoming grand feast for everyone’s preoccupation.

Especially when she entered the courtyard from the kitchen gardens to find it filled with people, carts, horses, and the wildly dancing shadows cast by the torches of harried guardsmen. No one noticed one more servant girl in a dark, hooded cloak slipping through the shadows and joining the traffic flowing out of the castle grounds.

She proceeded through the portcullis and out the gates to the city below.

No shout of alarm went up as the cloaked figure broke away from the path leading to town and followed a less-used path to the countryside. The path traveled through the meadows, the dreaded Woods, and beyond that, Thunder Mountain. Sondra spared one last glance back at the ghostly central tower before continuing her journey.

She reached the meadows by centernight. The great bell in the castle tolled the hours just as she left the path and crossed the moonlit meadow. She set her sights on the crouching Woods beyond. She reminded herself over and over that she felt no fear and that every myth and legend that emerged from the Woods possessed a purely logical explanation—precisely like those horrible

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fairylights, several of which now lay forever pinned to the insect box in her study chamber. If she approached the Woods without fear, she might unravel its mysteries and see that there remained nothing but natural phenomena.

Besides, the old hermit lived deep within the Woods and that batty old man managed to survive the so-called horrors of the haunted forest.

As if her memory of the hermit conjured him up, he appeared at the border of the Woods, apparently from thin air. She reminded herself that she hadn’t watched that area moments earlier and he no doubt merely stepped from the shadows. That explained it. Not magic.

“Don’t believe in magic, eh?”

“I beg your pardon?” Sondra jumped a little at the sound of his voice and quickly tilted her head, casting her features into shadow beneath the bright moon. “I mean, excuse me. I must be going.” She tried to affect a less-cultured accent, mimicking Liliana’s country drawl as she sidled around the old man.

She noticed he looked much the same as her youthful memories had drawn him. Tall, but stooped and wearing a dusty robe, he still carried an unadorned twisted branch taller then himself. His blazing white hair concealed most of his features, and only his twinkling black eyes and sharp nose remained visible beneath the copious locks. When she’d seen him as a child she had experienced profound disappointment because the mysterious wizard of the Woods turned out to be nothing more then a kindly, if absent-minded, old man. That final insult to her childish fantasies of magic convinced her that actual magic was a fraud, a joke, and a trick, just like the one her sisters played on her. She found him no more impressive now, though he still struck her as exceedingly tall—

even stooped over he topped her own height by head and shoulders. She gave him a wide berth and headed for the wood line, keeping her face averted.

“I say … I said, I say …”

The old man scratched his head with one gnarled hand. Sondra moved a bit faster.

“I say … girl … I remember … so many memories I forgot …” Sondra nearly reached the wood line when the old man turned to face her squarely. He seemed to grow huge; his black eyes pinning her like a light bug in her insect box so she couldn’t escape. Suddenly he stood before her, though he’d been a cart length’s distance away only moments before.

“I remember you, child, lost and alone. You left something behind in the 34

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Woods and even now she keeps it safe for you. You need only to ask for it back.”

“Wh—what? I don’t know what you’re talking about. I really must be going.” Still, Sondra remained immobilized by the old man’s gaze—sharp, unforgiving, and intelligent.

“You don’t believe in magic, child, because you cut it away to excise the pain of betrayal. You cut away belief! She holds your belief for you, but you must ask for it back and accept it. Only then will you be whole again.”

“There is no such thing as magic!” Sondra felt the scream in her head, the denial, but only a shallow whisper escaped her nearly frozen lips.

The old man shook his head, but his eyes never moved, and Sondra’s own gaze crossed from the momentary double vision.

“You will never ask for it back like this. You must be made to see.” The old man seemed to consider her, almost as if his gaze pierced her flesh and perused her soul. “Ahh, do you know of the dragon that lives in Thunder Mountain?” He seemed to hear her internal snort of disbelief, he seemed to read the flash of thought about molten rock, heat vents, and vague ideas about black glass.

“Very well, child, you don’t believe in dragons. Let us see how you fare when you become one.”

At these words the old man smiled beautifully, revealing perfect white teeth even brighter than his hair. Dazed by the beauty of his smile, Sondra didn’t hear the chanting that emanated from all around her until he stepped back and she could move again. The chanting faded and she shook off a vague feeling of disorientation that chased tingles up her spine.

The man stood, stooped and feeble again, his black eyes glazed with confusion. He stared off into the distance, seemingly unaware of her presence.

Sondra waited for a few moments, mentally querying her body and cataloging her memories of what just transpired. She realized that she felt no different.

She certainly wasn’t bearing wings and scales. She wondered if she hadn’t dreamed up the entire episode in a moment of weakness brought about by her nerve-racking flight from the castle.

“Well, I feel no differently. I suppose that is all the proof I needed that magic doesn’t exist. You are a charlatan, old man, and you should be ashamed of yourself for playing tricks on people.”

“Eh … who’s that? Ethelda, where’d you get off to now?” The old man held a gnarled hand to his ear as though listening to some far-off sound. His gaze

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passed blindly over her as he searched the meadow, before he turned away and headed back toward the Woods. The hermit stumbled on his trailing beard.

“Datgurnnit, Hasselfloss, I told you to stop tripping me up. Why, I’ll chop you off and throw you in the fire once and for all if you do it again.” He shook his fist at the offending hair and continued on, stumbling again, mumbling, and shaking his fist. His shambling gait carried him into the Woods and he disappeared into the gloom within moments.

“Humph! It must have been a dream. That poor, elderly man is obviously too befuddled to intentionally perpetrate such a fraud on people. Perhaps those who encounter him allow their own expectations to overtake them when they meet him and trick themselves by conjuring up a fantasy like I just did. That is the only logical explanation. The mind can certainly play tricks on people. It is not as though anything really happened back there. That poor man, he must be lonely. I should talk to Mother about sending some food and supplies to him.