Dragon Princess

  Of course, as Elhared pointed out to drunken me back in the tavern, the world of wizards is a small gossipy one. There’d be little question that wherever I sold this sword, word would get back to Elhared and I’d have a pissed-off wizard after me. And after the last debacle with the Grünwald court, I had promised myself that I would make a serious effort to reduce the number of powerful people who wanted me dead.

  Besides, there was a possibly innocent princess involved. Even if I’d half-convinced myself that she’d been either eaten, or saved already by one of the dozen knightly rescuers that preceded me, walking away from this would not help me sleep nights. Much as I might try, I wasn’t that much of a bastard.

  So I told myself about the dragon’s hoard and kept on the path as Elhared had instructed me.

  The day went quickly, and I came to a clearing in front of a rocky cliff face before I was ready for it. The sun had barely passed midday and shone down across the south-facing cliffs, letting massive overhangs cast deep shadows on crevasses into the hillside beneath them. The face of the hillside shrugged up above the trees in a rocky dome that probably rose five or six hundred feet. Not nearly a mountain, but as lairs go, it was probably as impressive as a dragon could find within the bounds of Lendowyn.

  If there was any doubt where the dragon might have been holing up, a couple of skulls glinting whitely on a ledge about halfway up provided a rather significant clue to what resided here. I stared up at the cliff face and froze in place where I stood at the wooded edge of the clearing. I kept my hand on the pommel of Dracheslayer, momentarily convinced that the dragon would descend upon me any moment.

  I waited.

  And waited.

  And waited some more.

  No attack came my way, and as I stood there, every nerve stretched taut, I thought I could hear a sound coming from somewhere above, up the rocky hillside.

  Snoring.

  • • •

  The ascent was nerve-racking but uneventful. Climbing up to inaccessible locations was part of my job description, even though I usually did so without a bunch of armor and a massive sword strapped to my ass. The climb was exhausting and I decided that Elhared had been right. Plate mail probably would have been a bad idea.

  After what seemed like hours, I had made my way to the opening by the skulls. I eased my weight on to the ledge, the rumbling snore so close now that it resonated in my chest.

  Before me, the crevasse into the hillside was much wider than it had appeared on the ground. The sun was now low enough in the sky that I could see about thirty feet in, across a slowly sloping floor, before the depths were cloaked in ink-black shadow. I didn’t see the dragon, but what I did see was enough to make me reconsider my Plan B and deal with the wrath of the Wizard Elhared.

  The skulls I had seen from the ground were not the only remains. The entrance to the lair was carpeted with them. Bones had been scattered across the floor, some polished white, some charred black, and some with gnaw marks and bits of flesh attached. I saw remains from cattle and horses for the most part, but I counted six human skulls, some next to piles of armor much nicer than what I wore.

  What did the wizard say?

  “You know where the dragon and the princess are?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “And these dozen knights?”

  “Oh, I’m sure one or two must have run into the dragon at some point. But they didn’t have Dracheslayer.”

  The sword wasn’t reassuring me.

  Think of the hoard, I thought. I’d taken bigger risks for smaller reward before.

  No I haven’t, went my contrary internal monologue.

  The cave resonated with the snoring from Elhared’s “small” dragon. I could feel sulfur-tainted breath brush my cheek as it exhaled. I couldn’t see it in the darkness within the cave, but I already knew that “small” would not be the word I’d use to describe this thing.

  Run, I thought, or do what you came to do.

  Standing around waiting for the lizard to wake up wasn’t really an option. I also thought it’d be a waste of my efforts if I ran away without actually seeing what I was running from, so I grabbed the pommel of Dracheslayer and slowly drew it from its scabbard as quietly as I could manage and eased forward into the lair of the beast.

  I trod carefully, watching so each step came down on stone rather than animal or human remains. And once I stepped out of the light, I stopped so my eyes could readjust to the dimness within the shadows. Now that I was out of the sun, and the light was all behind me, the shapes within the cave began to resolve themselves.

  As I began to see, I edged to the wall of the cave so my silhouette did not form such an obvious target against the daylight. Even as I did so, I realized that strategy was rendered moot because of the glowing sword in my hand. I silently sighed at the magical glowing target in my hand, but I wasn’t going into the dragon’s den without having Dracheslayer ready for action.

  I followed the wall farther in, leaning against it as it curved deeper into the cave, holding the glowing sword down so my body was between the glowing red runes and the rest of the cave. Even so, as the daylight lost itself behind me, Dracheslayer’s hellish glow gave enough light to see immediately around me. Fortunately not so much that it woke the slumbering dragon sprawled in front of me.

  The dragon snored and I was blasted with the smell of sulfur and devil farts.

  Small dragon my ass.

  Its head alone was as long as I was, half of that mouth, and three-quarters of that, teeth. The muscular jaws looked like they could bite a warhorse in half. It rested its head on its forelimbs, and its serpentine neck curved around to a huge body that merged into the darkness where Dracheslayer’s glow did not reach. I saw hints of vast demonic wings before I realized I had gone from assessing the situation to freezing in panic.

  It’s asleep, there’s its neck, here’s a dragon-slaying sword. . . .

  It was going about as well as it could possibly go, which meant I shouldn’t have been at all surprised when I took a step forward and heard a sharp intake of breath from above. A glance told me that Princess Lucille was alive, unhurt, and a bit shorter than her portrait would lead you to believe. She gaped at me in shock from a niche in the rock wall above me, bound hand and foot but, unfortunately, not gagged.

  I turned back toward the dragon before she said, “Look out!”

  I hoped she was talking to me.

  In front of me the snore had come to a choked conclusion, and a lid slowly drew up from a golden eye the size of my head. I was already committed. My slow stealthy advance had drawn me in too close for any quick withdrawal.

  When you can’t go back, go forward.

  I rushed, swinging Dracheslayer above my head, and brought the magic runesword down on the beast’s unprotected neck with a visceral scream of premature triumph.

  Every second thought I had been having, every suspicion, every sense that all was not right with Elhared’s proposal, all of that was confirmed as Dracheslayer, magic dragon-slaying sword forged by the blind dwarves of Grundar, hit the dragon’s neck with a bone-wrenching impact and crumbled like week-old cheese.

  Yeah, I was right, bad idea.

  The loss of the magic blade plunged the cavern back into darkness, and for a few moments I stood in shock, cradling in my hands the ornate hilt that was all that remained of the priceless magic sword Dracheslayer. The shock lasted until the darkness was obliterated by a gout of flame to my right. It provided enough light to show that I now faced a vertical wall of dragon-scale and muscle.

  I did the sane thing and ran off in the opposite direction. My retreat lasted all of three steps before a scaled hand with foot-long talons scooped me up to hold me ten feet off the cavern floor in front of an annoyed lizard. Steam curled from its nostrils as it stared at me with slitted golden eyes, and I braced myself for the inevitable.

  For a few moments I wondered what was preferable, being burned alive, or being chomped in half. By the ti
me I realized my vote was for chomping, I also realized that neither was happening.

  The light hadn’t faded, and I realized that the dragon hadn’t aimed its breath at me, but at a no-longer dormant campfire in the center of the chamber. The dragon held me up next to the fire, as if using the light to examine me.

  Above me, I heard the princess shout down at me, “What kind of rescue is this?”

  The kind your father can afford. I sighed, shook my head, and muttered to myself, “That could have gone better.”

  The dragon spoke in a voice that made my chest ache, “In fact, your attack was rather pathetic.”

  Great, they were both heckling me. I shook the remains of Dracheslayer. “I was cheated on this sword.”

  “That’s the least of it. You have no form, a weak swing, and you left yourself wide open for any counterattack. Are you sure you’re a knight?”

  “I . . .”

  I trailed off because the dragon had turned its massive head away from me, not waiting for an answer. It looked deeper into the cavern and called out, “Is this a joke, Elhared?”

  Both Lucille and I had the simultaneous reaction, “What?!”

  Emerging from the deeper shadows in the cave, Elhared the Unwise strode out, carrying a large book wrapped in tooled leather of unfortunate origin; the kind of evil tome of wizardry that makes the death rolls of the Dark Lord Nâtlac look like a compilation of love poetry.

  He looked up at the dragon and said, “I chose the thieving sot for his looks, not his fighting prowess. Now don’t mess up his face.”

  CHAPTER 4

  I don’t think I can adequately convey the rush of conflicting emotions I felt at that moment. The fear goes without saying, the kind of bladder-freezing fear I don’t think anyone can understand who hasn’t been restrained four feet away from something with both the inclination and the capability of eating you. Then we have the embarrassment at being so obviously conned, worse for someone like myself who often prides himself on being the one doing the conning.

  I blame the Mermaid’s Milk.

  Then there was the dull shock from the fact that in all the scenarios I had seen this particular bad idea get the best of me, I hadn’t seen it go awry in quite this way. And, I am ashamed to say, underneath everything else, I felt a small surge of self-congratulatory vanity as the wizard complimented my looks. Though I wondered what my appearance had to do with facing down a dragon.

  Elhared gestured to the dragon, and it moved to hold me before the wizard, who gave me an appraising look that would have been more appropriate on someone haggling over pumpkins with a street vendor.

  Above us, I heard Princess Lucille call down, “Elhared? You old coot, what are you doing here?”

  Elhared chuckled to himself as he opened the evil tome he carried. “I’m saving you from the dragon, my princess.” From where the dragon held me suspended I could see more of the pages than I cared to. The sight of the written language in that book had something of the same effect as looking very closely at a worm-infested wound on a none-too fresh corpse. It didn’t help that Elhared had marked his place in the tome with a pixie that had been flattened and dried in the midst of some obscene act.

  I looked up from that unpleasant display and tried to look the wizard in the eye, but his head was bowed to pore over the open pages. Still, I cleared my throat and said, “So, Elhared, isn’t this where you amaze us with the description of your intricately crafted plans?”

  He just grunted in response.

  “Seriously, if you wanted to win her hand in marriage yourself, why recruit me?” Even as I said it, I got an uneasy feeling about his comment about my looks.

  Above us I heard the princess say something about how she appreciated Elhared’s efforts, she really did. And she liked him well enough, just not that way.

  I tried again. “No boasts? No gloating? No regaling us with your genius?”

  By now I think he was just making a point of ignoring both me and the princess. I turned my head until I could just catch sight of the dragon holding me. It cradled its head with its other forelimb, and while its face wasn’t particularly expressive, its body language radiated boredom.

  “What about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “Shouldn’t you be rampaging across the countryside? Why are you hooked up with this guy?”

  “He agreed to cover my marker.”

  “What?”

  “I didn’t beat the spread on the last three-kingdom jousting tournament.”

  “You’re working with a diabolical wizard because of a gambling debt?”

  “I’m temporarily short of funds at the moment.”

  “But dragons . . .” I trailed off as I realized that, now that it was well lit, I could see a distinct lack of a dragon’s hoard in this cave. “You’re broke? You’re really broke?”

  “Just a dry spell. I’m due for a big payoff any day now.”

  Elhared finally looked up. “Will you all stop babbling!” he snapped at us. “This spell requires perfect concentration!”

  “What spell?” I asked.

  Elhared leveled a bony finger at the dragon. “You, cover his mouth! Just don’t mess up the face.”

  I sucked in a breath to say something more, but one of the dragon’s fingers wrapped around my face and it was suddenly all I could do to tilt my head back enough to breathe. I could just barely see Elhared over the dragon’s knuckle. He bent his head down to return to his spell, and winced as above us Lucille said, “Honestly, Elhared, you’re older than my father.”

  “Should I cover her mouth as well?”

  “Everybody shut up!”

  “Can’t you just let the young knight save me?”

  He looked up at her and shouted. “Damn it woman! He is going to save you!” He returned to peruse his tome, muttering under his breath, “Just after a little soul transference spell.”

  That did not sound good.

  The princess didn’t quit while she was ahead. “Well, he is—”

  The wizard slammed the book on the flattened pixie and told the dragon, “Yes, cover her mouth too!”

  Elhared stood impatiently as the dragon stretched to reach the struggling princess with its free forelimb. She started screaming and kicking, both of which came to a halt as the dragon wrapped its fingers around her. All that remained visible of her was her head above the bridge of her nose, dominated by a pair of blue eyes glaring icy murder at the wizard.

  The dragon held us both up in front of Elhared and the wizard stood a moment in contemplation, as if waiting for another interruption. I might have heard something muffled and very un-princesslike coming from my left, but then it might have been the dragon suppressing a belch. Without any more interruptions, Elhared opened his book again and resumed reading.

  After a moment, I saw his lips start moving. It could have been a symptom of advancing senility, but that was a little too much to hope for. Especially when the text on the page he read began to glow with a light ominously akin to what I’d seen on the doomed Dracheslayer.

  My right arm, hand still gripping the heavy hilt of that bogus sword, jutted out between two of the dragon’s fingers. I had just enough freedom of movement to throw the hilt at Elhared.

  I put all the effort I could manage into the swing, and I imagined the hilt striking the wizard square in the forehead and knocking him cold, if not killing him outright. Unfortunately, my aim wasn’t quite that good, and given my restricted movement and my clumsy underhand toss, the force of the missile wasn’t anywhere near disabling. The hilt tumbled lazily through the air to bounce harmlessly off of Elhared’s chest, landing on the open book, knocking the flattened pixie off to flutter slowly to the ground.

  Elhared’s reaction was a startled glance toward me and a puzzled, “Huh?”

  Someone, I am sure, has written a standard primer for those with an interest in pursuing the wizardly arts. Somewhere in there, in with the recommended beard length and the best materials
to use for one’s robe, I am certain there exists the following sentence: “When casting complicated spells of nefarious origin, uttering a random monosyllable three-quarters of the way in does not yield optimal results.”

  In response to the interruption, the glow from the text exploded into a burst of light fountaining up from the pages of the book. Elhared fell back as if the expanding light dealt him a physical blow, and I lost sight of him in the glare. The book fell to the floor of the cave and rolling smoke began filling the cavern. I felt a prickly heat from the pillar of red-blue light that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. To all appearances, Elhared had vaporized in a flash of light and smoke.

  The expanding light still grew toward us, and the dragon jerked backward. The pillar of light curved and rippled toward the dragon, as if attracted to it. The dragon made a startled sound that was almost a yelp, and threw me at the pillar of magic fire as if my flailing body could beat it into submission.

  I hit the light, felt a burning tingle, and blacked out.

  • • •

  And I had thought the hangover from the Mermaid’s Milk had been bad.

  My first conscious thought after hitting that light was that I had been so very wrong. I would have embraced the return of the eyeball-gnawing skull-troll if it meant the eviction of the goblin army that had now taken up residence. Thoughts of more than one syllable caused me physical pain, so when I inhaled and started coughing up wizard soot I almost blacked out again.

  The coughing fit subsided. I dropped my head back with an agonized moan. My head hit a tree root, and I gasped. I tried to reach to push myself upright, and I realized my wrists were bound.

  Not good.

  More troublesome sensations began filtering through the pain of the goblin orgy doing violence to my brain. I tried to move my legs, and they were bound as well. And things just didn’t feel right, beyond the throbbing in my head. My body felt wrong, arms and legs shorter, my hair catching in ways it shouldn’t underneath my neck, my torso—