The palace gates lay in twisted ruins on the ground. She stepped through the melted and broken metal and gazed again on the scorched grounds of her home.
Men of Shippening filled the yard, marching down the burned steps from the front door into the courtyard. On their shoulders and in their arms were her father’s treasures. More treasure, gold and silver and jewels, lay scattered about like discarded rubble. Intent on their task, none of the men noticed her standing quiet as a shadow in the ruins of the great Westgate.
She felt fire rise like bile in her throat.
“Hello, my child.”
Slowly she turned to her right and faced the tall man with a face as white as leprosy and eyes as black as death. He stood leaning with his shoulder against the wall.
“Welcome home,” he said, revealing fangs in a smile.
–––––––
Late in the morning, after a sleepless night in hiding, Felix crept through the servants’ wing, Monster twining between his feet and purring but otherwise quiet. Felix tried to kick him away, but the cat returned each time. “Fine,” Felix whispered, glaring down at the cat. “But you’ve got to be quiet, understand?”
Monster flicked his plumy tail.
Felix put his ear to the door that led from the servants’ wing into the main hall of the palace. He could hear the tramp of feet coming and going, the voices of officers growling orders and soldiers responding.
“The duke has ordered it all cleared out by nightfall. Look lively. Watch where you’re stepping – do you want to break that? It’s worth five times your life, man!” This from a voice more distant, yet bellowing enough to carry down the hall through the door to Felix’s ears. Two more voices followed, muttering but near enough to be heard.
“Why do we need to empty the storehouse?” the first one said. “He’s taken the palace, hasn’t he? Practically taken the country. Why does he need to loot a treasure store that is already his?”
“Erh,” his companion snorted. “S’ain’t the duke’s orders we’re following. I’d stake my life it’s that . . . that other one’s doing. We’re looting for him, and he’ll take it all, and how will we or anyone stop him, I’d like to know? He’ll leave the duke a crown here all right, but a penniless crown in a penniless kingdom. And d’you think the folks of Parumvir will stand for our duke one moment more once himself has flown back to wherever he belongs?”
Their voices faded. Felix cursed and flexed his fingers over the hilt of his sword. Looting his father’s treasure store! He wanted to burst out upon them, sword flashing, knock them flat, strike them . . . But what good would that do?
He needed to find his father. That’s all that mattered now. They would worry about treasure later, but for now he must find a way to the king. But how could he slip down to the dungeons when the only stairway leading that way was currently trafficked by those Shippening thieves?
And with the palace halls crawling with his enemies, Felix dared not so much as open the door to the passage in which he hid.
He knelt down, and Monster jumped onto his knee. “What am I going to do, beast?” the boy whispered.
At that moment a new voice boomed through the hall. “Drop what you’re doing and go! Out to the courtyard at once, you dogs!”
Monster jumped from Felix’s knee, growling as the clatter of many priceless items dropping to the hard floor and the metallic whisk of many weapons being drawn echoed in the hall. Footsteps pounded and disappeared as the great front door boomed shut.
Cautiously, Felix cracked open the door and peered out from the servants’ passage. The hall was empty. Monster slipped between his feet and trotted forward, but stumbled across the treasures that he could not see littering the floor. He stopped and lowered his nose to sniff at a jewel box lying open at his feet. Felix stared up and down the hall. He had not even known that his father owned all these beautiful things. He looked toward the door, shut and silent. Faint noises sounded from the yard beyond, but he hardly cared for those.
When he looked back up the hall, it was empty too, as was the narrow staircase leading down to the treasure store and to Oriana’s old dungeons.
Clutching the hilt of his sword and taking courage in its familiar heft, Felix slipped from hiding and raced to the dark staircase.
The stairway was utterly black, save for the light of a few lanterns hung on the walls by Shippening soldiers. Felix swallowed hard, wishing his heart would settle back in his chest where it was supposed to be, and started his descent. Once, long ago, he had been taken to view the ancient dungeons. Memories of the heavy iron chains and the cave-like rooms still crept into his nightmares now and then. He hated the thought of his father in such a place but did not doubt that the duke would keep him there.
He reached the door leading to the dungeons and found it unlocked. He stepped first into the guardroom. Much to Felix’s relief, a lantern hung from the ceiling. He climbed onto a stool in order to take the lantern from its hook, then approached the tunnel that led deep into the rock of Goldstone Hill to the dungeon cells. His courage faltered as he gazed into the blackness.
“Father?”
Darkness swallowed his voice.
“Preeeow.” Monster rubbed against his calf. He reached down to stroke the cat’s back, but Monster slipped from beneath his hand and trotted into the tunnel.
Gulping, Felix followed the cat, calling every few steps, “Father?”
The third time he called, he heard a moan from a cell on his left. He held his lantern up to a tiny wooden door with bars near the floor, through which food could be passed. Monster crouched at the bars, his tail twitching. “Father, is that you?” Felix said.
“Felix?”
The voice was faint but unmistakable.
“Father!” Felix crouched down and looked through the bars, but the light from his lantern showed him nothing. “Father, it’s me. I’m here to rescue you.”
“Felix, you fool!” His father’s voice growled through the darkness. “Why did you come here?”
Felix blinked, hurt at his father’s tone. But he saw a thin white hand reach between the bars, and he took hold of it in both of his. “I had to come, Father.”
His father’s hand squeezed briefly, but his voice came harsh from the other side of the door. “Go away. Now! Get out before those men return.”
“I have to free you first,” Felix said. Then he stopped and sat up, letting go of his father’s hand. He had overlooked an important detail: the dungeon keys.
–––––––
A shout rang through the courtyard. The dragon girl turned, startled, and saw the Duke of Shippening at the top of the front steps, gesturing toward her and bellowing, “Quick, men! Surround her! All of you!”
The men at work hauling the treasures dropped their burdens, drew their weapons, and rushed toward her. She was surrounded in a moment, one pale girl in a forest of a hundred swords. She stood quietly with her head bowed and did not meet their eyes.
“Let me through!” the duke bellowed, and a ripple moved through the many-layered fence of soldiers as they made way for their overlord. He stood at last before her, his arms crossed, looking down on her.
“Your looks ain’t improved much, wench, and I’ll tell you that straight.” The duke puffed heavily through fat lips. “Well, ’tain’t no difference. He was right anyway. He said you’d come back if we captured your father.”
Her head jerked sharply, though she did not look up. “My father?”
“Wouldn’t let me kill him yet. Said it would be a waste of good bait.” The duke reached out and grabbed her chin roughly. “My, but you’re an ugly thing, like a lizard you are! But you’ll do, little princess. Now I’ll send your father to join your dead brother, and with you as my wife, no one will contest my claim to the throne!”
She raised her eyes to his face, and the duke found himself looking into bottomless depths of molten heat. He screamed as though burned and backed away into his circle of soldiers who
, frightened, also stepped back, raising their weapons higher.
The Dragon’s laugh rolled like heat lightning over their heads. The men of Shippening fell away, parting so that a path cleared between her and the Dragon. Their eyes locked across the distance.
“You are much too honest, my child,” the Dragon said, smiling so that she could see the fire between his teeth. “Look at you. Even now you look more dragon than human. Most of my children hide it better.
You will not be able to walk in man’s world like that.”
“I am not your child,” she growled.
He shook his head and strode with a catlike tread down the path between the soldiers until he stood over her. “Of course you are,” he said. “My own pretty child.”
“Dragon!” The Duke of Shippening’s voice quavered, but he coughed and spoke again. “Dragon, honor your promise now. Give her to me.”
“Honor my promise?” The Dragon turned a slow gaze upon the duke. “I don’t recall you honoring yours, Duke Shippening. Did you bring the king here? My memory seems a bit hazy on that score. I could have sworn that was my doing.”
“You have no use for her,” the duke said. “Give her to me, as we agreed!”
The Dragon turned his slow smile back down upon the girl. “Your last brave suitor is most ardent. At least one of them still wants you, little princess.”
She did not break the Dragon’s gaze as she spoke. “Duke Shippening, leave my father’s house immediately.” Her voice hissed with fire.
“Wh-what?” the duke cried.
She turned to him, and her stare could have melted his eyes had he stood closer. “Leave my father’s house.”
The duke paled and stepped back, his hands before him. One by one his men had slipped away, loath to remain so near the Dragon and the strange girl, and now the duke found himself horribly alone. He sought his one ally. “Dragon?”
The Dragon laughed again, turned on his heel, and started toward the sagging front doors of the royal house. “Come with me, daughter. I would have you bear treasures back to my Hoard. I have been considering how I should best transfer them. Your coming is fortunate. There is much more inside, down in the vaults to which you so kindly led me. Once you have borne them to the Village, you will await there my return.”
“Stop,” she said.
The Dragon paused on the threshold and looked back over his shoulder.
She raised her chin. “You will not enter my father’s house again, nor – ” She choked on the flames in her throat. “Nor will you touch his goods with your dirty hands.”
An evil laugh filled the courtyard as the Dragon threw back his head, shoulders heaving. “Foolish child.” He showed every tooth in an awful smile. “I am your Father and this is my house now, remember? So of course I shall enter and take what belongs to me. And you will help me. Come, girl, before I lose my sense of humor.”
Within three paces she lost all human semblance and was in full flame, fire bursting from deep inside her, hotter than she had ever before burned, so hot that the stone steps of the palace began to melt, and she focused all on the spot where the Dragon stood. The black figure disappeared in the onslaught of blue and red fire. Screams from dozens of soldiers were soon drowned out in the awful roar of her fire. The world was nothing but flame; nothing but heat filled every sense.
At last she stopped and staggered back, poisonous smoke filling her eyes. But even as she stood blinded she heard the Dragon’s laugh again, fuller and deeper than before.
“Was that all you had inside?” With a sweep of his arm he cleared the smoke, revealing himself unsinged upon the melting steps. “I misjudged you. I thought your flame far greater than that!” He opened his mouth, his jaw dropping grotesquely to his chest, and his own flame billowed forth, sweeping over her.
She stumbled back as though struck with a mace, turning her massive head away. At first her dragon hide absorbed the heat. But soon she felt a change. The fire became so hot, it penetrated under her scales to her soft flesh, and the scales themselves burned and melted.
She screamed. A high, inhuman, hideous scream that shattered glass, then rose in intensity and horror. As she screamed she struggled to escape, but the inferno surrounded her no matter where she turned. She thought she could bear no more, but it went on and she did not die.
When the Dragon swallowed his flame, he towered over her, black and monstrous, his crest upraised like a kingly crown, his wings arched behind him.
“Foolish sister!” he roared, snarling down on her smoldering frame. “You thought to kill your king, your Father? I gave you your fire! Do you think you can use my own flame against me?”
He smacked her, his claws tearing into her burnt flesh. She screamed again and crawled away, her torn wings beating feebly on the ground.
“Try it again, dragon!” He struck her a second time and a third. “Burn me! Let your flame build up and smolder inside as you smolder outside. Come on, dragon!”
Where the strength came from she could not say, but with all that was in her she pushed herself to her feet, sucked in a great gulp of air, and took to the sky. The Dragon King laughed at her flight, sending more flames after her, but he did not follow.
“Go!” he shouted. “Finish yourself off! I’ll find you later and gnaw your bones, my child! I’ll gnaw and burn your bones!”
35
She could not fly far, for her wings were shredded and disintegrating like burned leaves. The young dragon fell from the sky no more than a mile from the city and lay where she had fallen on the sand by the sea. Her breath came in uneven gasps, and each one caused searing pain through her whole body. She closed her eyes and slipped into darkness, knowing that she was dying.
Her mind filled with images and sounds crowding together and vying for dominance. The images were all from her life – from her very earliest memories of playing with Felix down by the Old Bridge, to much-hated lessons with her tired-eyed tutor, to Nurse’s funny old face. Over the visions and collage of colors, she could hear voices, such familiar voices.
“Trust is knowing a man’s character, knowing truth, and relying on that character and truth even when the odds seem against you.”
“Oh, my love is like a white, white dove, soaring in the sky above!”
“I can only pray he will prove worthy.”
“Oh, my love is like a fine, fine wine . . .”
“I cannot bear to watch these suitors of yours, knowing I have no right to . . . to pursue you myself.”
“ . . . If only she’d be mine!”
“Will you trust me?”
“ . . . a sweet, sweet song . . .”
“Una, trust me.”
“Oh, my love . . .”
“I will trust him till I die!”
At the sound of her own voice shouting those last words, fire blazed up in her mind. Such a lie! Her trust had broken, shattered along with her heart. All that was left inside burned and burned, destroying the images in evil flames, destroying the voices of her loved ones.
The Dragon’s eyes, like liquid fire, swallowed her, and she choked and drowned in flames. This was death, then; this was the end of all dreams.
A wood thrush sang like a silver bell, high and sweet.
I love you, Una.
She opened her eyes unwillingly. The murmur of waves on the shore filled her ears, and gentle rain fell upon her burning skin, at once painful and soothing. Tears mingled with the rain, and those drops hurt most of all, yet she did not flinch away.
She gazed up into Aethelbald’s face. He held her scorched body tenderly in his arms.
“Why do you love me?” she asked, her voice rasping in her burnt throat.
He put a hand gently to her face and wiped a hair from across her eyes. She could feel rain on her bald scalp and knew that she had little hair left. “Because I choose to,” he said. When he blinked, two tears fell on her cheeks, painful yet blessed. “I chose to long ago, long before we met. When my father sent me to win y
ou, I loved you already.”
“You’ve made a poor choice, you see,” she said. How harsh and horrible her voice sounded in her own ears. “Nothing but a dragon.”
“I knew that from the beginning.” All the sorrow in the world was in his face. “I have watched many dear to me fall prey to the Dragon’s fire before. So yes, I knew already, Una. Yet you are my chosen love, the only one for me.”
She turned her face away. “Others have told me as much. Their words were empty.”
“Look at me, Una.”
She would not.
“Una!”
Slowly, though the sight of his tearstained face burned more than fire, she raised reddened eyes to his.
“My words are not empty.”
A sob caught in her throat, and she gasped at the pain of it, then gasped again when she realized that tears filled her eyes. They gathered and spilled, trailing excruciating paths down her blackened cheeks, yet the relief of tears was greater than the pain. She felt his arms tighten about her, and he pressed his cheek against the top of her bald head, letting her cry softly.
“My Prince,” she said at last, her voice catching. “You know I cannot love you.”
Aethelbald leaned back and brushed a tear away with a gentle hand. “Let me enable you to.”
“No, I cannot!” she said, shaking her head. “I cannot love you. I have no heart . . . none.”
“Then let me give you mine,” he said.
“It would burn away inside of me!” She wanted to cover her face with her hands but found she could not move her arms, could not even feel them anymore. “Everything inside me burns now. Everything is fire and ash.”
“As long as you are a dragon, yes.”
“I cannot help what I am,” she whispered. “I would if I could. I tried to kill the Dragon as I was told. I know he must die before I can be free. But I could not kill him. And now I am . . . now I am dying.” She closed her eyes. “It is too late for us, my Prince.”
His voice came mellow and soothing to her ears. “As long as you are a dragon yourself, you cannot hope to defeat the King of Dragons. The fire in you must die first.”