“I’m sorry. I don’t seem to feel cold anymore.” She dropped the tree down on a bare patch of ground, gulped, and exhaled a small holocaust onto the unsuspecting log. I didn’t even need to move to feel the heat from the sudden conflagration.
“Thanks,” I said, stepping forward and turning around to melt the frost off my chilled backside.
“I should have thought of that earlier,” she said as quietly as a dragon could manage. After a pause, she added in a lighter tone, “but I did think of something ahead of time.”
“What—” I began to ask, but she had slipped away again.
I guessed I’d find out soon enough. I paced alongside the fire, allowing each part of my body turns at being warm again. Naked, lost, and misplaced I might be, but I was incredibly grateful to be alive.
Lucille the Dragon had managed to truly outclass me in the princess-saving department, and she didn’t even need a shady wizard to put her up to it. Even if it was her own skin she was saving, I still had to give her an order of magnitude more credit than I would’ve any other royal. “We’ll get you your body back,” I said to the fire. “At this point it’s the least anyone can do.”
I jumped as a massive bundle of something landed next to me, and the ground thudded as Lucille landed about ten yards away. I looked over at her and she had her head cocked inquisitively at me.
I turned to the bundle she’d dropped. It was a sheet of torn gray canvas showing signs of teeth and claw marks, tied into a rough sphere by a massive knot on top. “Okay,” I said, and started struggling with the knot.
After a minute or so of struggling, she said, “Here, let me.”
The ground shook at her approach, and then a large scaled forearm reached over me, and a pair of talons clamped onto a loose flap of canvas and tugged.
The bundle fell open, spilling its contents in front of me.
My eyes widened as a cascade of boots, underwear, cloaks, and all manner of clothing spilled out at my feet. The selection seemed random, and gathered in haste—I saw at least two boots that were obviously missing their mates—but it made me feel an uneasy mix of gratitude and inadequacy. Not only had she outclassed me today in the hero department, she was gaining ground in terms of thievery as well.
I turned to face her and asked, “How did you know they were going to strip me for a sacrifice?”
“I didn’t. I just saw you were dressing me like a whore.”
Oh, yeah, that. I resisted the urge to say that it hadn’t been my fault. Instead, I rummaged in the dragon’s haul to put together a practical traveling outfit. And, to my relief, the selection did not consist solely of long lacy dresses and shoes of doom.
• • •
As I got dressed I asked her what happened, and about the rumors I’d heard about the destruction of Ravensgate. She sighed, flopped on the ground with an earth-shaking thud, and rested her head on her folded forearms. The old me could have looked her in the eye, but in the new princess version I had to tilt my head up to see she wasn’t meeting my gaze.
She’d turned her massive head away from me, to stare out over the rise. I’d never thought of a dragon as a terribly expressive creature. From what I had seen, their faces were largely capable of only three expressions: sleep, disinterest, and bowel-melting rage. But seeing the Princess Lucille staring out at the horizon, head tilted away from me, double-lidded reptilian eyes half-closed and unfocused, I couldn’t help but see the giant lizard as horribly sad.
And guilty?
“You didn’t really . . .”
“It wasn’t my fault.” If anything, that booming voice sounded close to tears. “I was frightened. I didn’t know what had happened to me. I woke up and the first thing I heard was so many people screaming. I opened my eyes and I was falling toward the ground, and everyone was running away from something terrible.” Lucille shook her head slowly and closed her eyes. Next to me, her hand closed into a fist, causing her talons to dig into the earth, leaving a hole the size of a shallow grave. “I didn’t realize they were running from me.”
“I’m sorry.” I looked up at her and both my pounding heart and churning stomach hadn’t quite realized that I wasn’t facing the monster they thought I was. I ignored my panicked body—it wasn’t mine anyway—and stepped forward to place my hand on the back of her fist. I don’t know if she could feel my touch through her armored skin, but it probably wasn’t appropriate for me to hug royalty anyway, even if it had been physically possible.
She had crashed into the town center at Ravensgate, still terrified and disoriented. She destroyed a blacksmith and a bakery just by standing up, turning around, and trying to see what everyone was screaming at. When she saw what had frightened them, she had screamed herself—and accidentally discovered the ability to breathe fire. By then, yelling at the fleeing populace that she wasn’t really the dragon didn’t do much to assuage their fears.
Then, as she was desperately trying to stamp out the fires she had started, things got worse.
“Worse? How?”
She groaned and nodded as if her neck strained against the weight of the small mountain below us. “Ravensgate is a border town, a crossroads for mercenaries, adventurers, militias, and privateers. Of course they would mass to ‘defend’ the town against an invading monster.”
Like the dragon’s face, I’d never really thought of a dragon’s voice conveying much beyond contempt or stentorian anger, but I could hear her words—booming as they were—dripping with sarcasm.
“They attacked you?”
She laughed. Even though I never heard a dragon laugh before—and that is an unnerving experience to begin with—I could tell there was little humor in it. “They tried.”
“You didn’t . . .” I had the brief mental image of the draconic princess finally snapping and slaughtering the town’s defenders in a demonic fury.
She whipped her head in my direction, making me flinch. “No! You don’t think—I wouldn’t . . .”
I was suddenly more terrified of making her cry. “Of course you wouldn’t. Tell me what happened.”
From what Lucille could tell in the ensuing chaos, there had been three main groups of defenders—organized parties of more than ten people. The smallest of the three groups, in numbers and stature, were the mercenary fighting dwarves of the Graybeard Mountains. The next most populous group bearing arms against the reptilian invasion were the dozen or so members of the Greencoat Raiders, a ratty group of oceangoing privateers. Lastly, and most numerous, were over twenty members of the Lendowyn Militia.
“Lendowyn can afford a militia?”
“They’re volunteers that fight for the king in exchange for whatever goods they can liberate from the battlefield.”
“I see no way that could go badly.”
Those were the three main forces. To that was added at least seven smaller groups of two to three armed adventurers. All converged to save Ravensgate from the invading dragon.
From the way she said “save,” I began to understand exactly what must have happened. She confirmed my thoughts when she explained that, from all appearances, the dwarves had been drinking for most of the prior evening, and possibly the three nights prior to that.
“Their judgment was not in the best of shape. Not to mention their aim.”
“Their aim? They missed . . .” I trailed off, because what I was about to say would have been terribly unflattering to a normal princess—even though, at the moment, Lucille was literally the size of several of the proverbial barn doors.
“First blood I saw was a small throwing axe embedding itself in the backside of the captain of the Greencoats.”
“That . . . couldn’t have been good.”
It wasn’t.
The Greencoat Raiders, being little more than officially sanctioned pirates, had pretty clear views on how to deal with that kind of insult, and engaged the dwarves in a counterattack that was not quite as badly impaired as the dwarves’. Lucille suspected they had only been dri
nking about half as long as the dwarves prior to battle.
Of course, once the dwarves and the Raiders engaged in open warfare in the streets of town, the Lendowyn Militia had to make all efforts to suppress the fighting, pushing the two forces into the merchant areas where the battle could be more profitable.
“They forgot me completely. By the time I flew away, half the town was on fire.” She sniffed. “I should have tried to stop them, but I was so scared . . .” She buried her face in her arms and her whole body began shaking.
I walked around in front of her and strained to reach up and touch her on the side of her face I could reach over her scaled forearm. “It’s not your fault.”
“I should have tried to stop them.” Even a sobbed whisper into her folded arms had a booming quality I felt in my chest.
“How, exactly? They wouldn’t have responded to reason—and would it have been better to stick around to claw them or set them on fire?”
She paused, and after a few long moments said, “No.”
I don’t know how she managed to sound small and frightened, but she managed it.
“Leaving the situation was the best thing you could have done.”
She lay there, still and silent, for a long time. Then, her eye opened and she blinked at me. I looked back at her dinner-plate–size reptilian eye, dwarfing the hand I’d placed on her cheek, and I realized that my heart wasn’t racing anymore.
“Thank you, Francis.”
“It’s the truth. You did the best you could with a bad situation.”
“It’s awful.”
“And call me Frank, please.”
“Frank.” She inhaled and raised her head from her arms, pulling away from my hand gently so I didn’t have to scramble back. She moved with more grace than you’d expect of someone who’d just become a multiton lizard. “I don’t want to be a dragon.”
“I understand. I don’t really want to be a princess either.”
CHAPTER 12
Her head snaked around and faced me. “Why not?”
“I’m sure it’s wonderful and all, but I’m a guy.”
She sniffed and turned away, her nostrils loosing small curls of steam. “I’m sorry, it’s just . . . you’re still human.”
“Uh—” I stopped short because she was right. Princess Lucille had really gotten the worst of this deal. By comparison, I was suffering a minor inconvenience. “I want to fix this too.”
“I know.”
I walked around in front of her until we were facing each other again. “So let’s talk about how we do that.”
She tilted her head in a nod, and lowered it until her chin touched the ground near my feet. White steam still curled from her nostrils, and I caught the slight scent of brimstone. I wasn’t nearly as frightened as I should have been. “How? The book wasn’t there.”
“I know. But I was planning—before the court of Grünwald sidetracked me—to return to your father. Do you think he could help us?”
“Do you really think it’s a good idea to travel to my father’s castle together when every would-be prince in a hundred miles is looking to save you from me?”
I sighed myself. “It seemed more plausible when I assumed that you were running around in my body.”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
“I don’t like the way that sounds.”
“Do you know anything about the Lendowyn legal system?”
“I’ve been in this kingdom for less than a week.”
“Well, there was a royal proclamation offering my hand in marriage?”
“Yes, to whoever brought you back, along with the head of the dragon that took you.”
“Of course.”
“Well, if we get to your father and explain—”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Why not?”
“Because proclamations like that are enchanted and magically binding, to prevent the parties—my father, King Alfred in this case—from reneging. The only way it can be voided is by the hand of the wizard who drafted it for the court.”
“Elhared?”
“Elhared.”
“That does complicate things.”
“There’s more.”
Of course there was.
It was bad enough that while Lucille was in the dragon’s body, her own father had a price on her head, an offer that Elhared would have made difficult, if not impossible, for the king to rescind. The old coot seemed too smart to allow the king to muck up his plans that way.
No, the worst part was the structure of the Lendowyn legal system in regard to the nature of spells of the type Elhared had employed against us.
Some legal scholar in the mists of Lendowyn prehistory had made the observation that it opened too many cans of worms to provide a separate status to someone or something possessing the body of a Lendowyn citizen. Should someone be able to opt out of their taxes because they happened to suffer demonic possession? What would one do when the twelfth son shows up claiming all the inheritance because Dad decided to take up residence in his body? Then all manner of crimes could happen and the perpetrator could just claim that something or other was using his body when he set fire to his neighbor’s sheep.
It was easier for everyone just to ignore the whole soul thing.
That meant, despite any evidence to the contrary, Princess Lucille had no real legal status at all except as an enemy of the state. For all intents and purposes, I was currently the princess and heir to the throne of Lendowyn.
She stared at me as she told me about that legal wrinkle, and watched as the implications of it sank in.
I wasn’t just wearing her body. I was her in every important respect. If I walked into the Lendowyn court and was entirely truthful with them about what happened and who I was—they would still have to treat me as Princess Lucille. Legally, even though I stood here in front of the real princess, I was the one who was a member of the Royal Court of Lendowyn.
I patted the tip of her nose. “I need a moment.”
I took a few steps away, and half-sat and half-collapsed on the ground.
“Are you all right?”
I raised a hand. “A moment.”
She had told me just how easy it could be for me to escape most of my problems. If I was willing to stick with the changes in my body—and Lucille was right in that it was nowhere near as bad as it could have been—all I needed to do was present myself to the Lendowyn court to get most of what Elhared had promised me. I would have just as much protection from the ritual angst of the Nâtlac cultists of Grünwald as the princess as I would have if I’d been married to her. Then there were all the perks of being royalty, even in a bankrupt kingdom.
All I had to do was abandon the princess to her fate.
A deep, shameful part of my brain whispered to me, “She’s a big girl. She can handle herself.”
“Frank?”
I couldn’t look at her. I hugged myself and stared at the ground, my stomach churning with a toxic mix of self-loathing and self-pity.
“I don’t blame you.”
“What?” I turned my head to face her, suddenly terrified I had said something out loud.
“This isn’t your fault. Don’t blame yourself.”
“What?”
“You didn’t know what Elhared was planning.”
“I should have.”
“You risked your life to save me.”
“Well, after pulling me off of that altar, I think we’re even on that score.”
“Frank, you faced a dragon for me. You’re still my knight.”
“Uh . . . There’s one thing . . .”
I wanted to tell her the truth. I really did. But when I looked into her face, and saw the gratitude peeking from behind her reptilian features, the words disintegrated in my mouth. I couldn’t tell her that her knight was just another fraud in this whole fraudulent mess.
“What one thing?”
I stood up and tried to compose myself. “
I don’t care what the law says. You’re still the Princess Lucille.” I bowed to hide how ashamed I felt.
“Thank you.”
The way she said it made me feel worse.
• • •
Later on in the evening, the topic of conversation had thankfully traveled far away from myself and exactly how much of this debacle I had been responsible for. She had flown off to find us a meal, which gave me enough time to berate myself in private so I could devote my thoughts toward planning something potentially more productive than self-recrimination.
As we ate, I told her what I had come up with.
She lifted her nose from the roasted flank of her second wild boar and looked at me. “So we don’t go back to Father?”
I shook my head. “No, not right now.” I took what was left of the boar’s leg she had given me and tossed it back to her. It must have been dragon reflex, but her head jerked and her jaws snapped shut on it way faster than something that size should have been able to move. I jerked back in shock.
She swallowed, bones and all, then turned her head to face me. “I’m sorry, were you done with that?”
“Y-yes.”
“You were saying?”
I was still not quite sure about how to read her expression most of the time, otherwise I would swear she looked amused.
“To get this reversed we need the book, and we need to find my body.”
“I suppose I can’t have my body back until you have somewhere to go.”
“Right, and it seems that if we find Elhared, we’ll find both.”
“Elhared? Didn’t he blow up?”
“I thought so too. But someone came and took the book from the cave. Someone who wore the same size boots I used to. And hijacking my body was more or less what the old coot intended when he cast the spell of doom.”
“You think it was him?”
“Yes, and I think he ran afoul of the same emissaries of the Grünwald court as I had.” I explained the things I’d overheard when I was being taken for the sacrifice, especially the reaction of everyone when they heard that I was Frank Blackthorne.
“That explains the other one.”
Of course, she asked the inevitable question.