Dragon Thief

  Grace said, “Great, now they’ve locked us in.”

  Sir Forsythe turned around with a somewhat unnerving grin. “No, My Lady. They’ve locked themselves out.”

  CHAPTER 16

  I have to admit that when it came to rescuing damsels in distress, Sir Forsythe was the professional. Despite a nonchalant attitude toward bloodshed that bordered on the psychotic, there had been a method in his unnerving madness.

  By forcing the defenders back, and convincing them the better part of valor was shutting the door on the crazy man with a sword, Sir Forsythe had insured that our exit from the dungeons would be relatively unimpeded.

  This did not translate into “pleasant.”

  Our secret passage out of the dungeons had to be accessed through a drainage tunnel that received all the excreta from the lowest dungeons. Reaching said egress was to be accomplished via the obvious method.

  “In there?” Mary echoed my own thoughts as Sir Forsythe led us to a stinking alcove set a distance from where the guards kept watch. The privy was a dark hole set in the stone floor, emitting a slightly foul breeze.

  “I apologize for the unwholesome venue,” Sir Forsythe said, “but we are escaping a dungeon.”

  “Eeew!” Thea said.

  I heard a grunt and someone pushed me aside from behind. Rabbit passed me and leaped up, straddling the hole, facing all of us. She looked down, wrinkling her nose. She held out her hand.

  After standing there a moment, staring into the foul-smelling abyss, she glanced up, turned to Mary, and made a “gimmie” gesture with her outstretched hand. Mary reached for the sword tied at her side and Rabbit furrowed her brow, frowning in a “you’re kidding me” expression. Mary froze a moment, one hand on her sword. Then she looked up at her other hand, which held a torch that she’d liberated from one of the wall sconces.

  “Oh,” she said meekly, and handed the torch over.

  Rabbit snatched the offered torch and held it over the hole and looked back down. She frowned and shook her head, then she gave Sir Forsythe a pained expression. She arched an eyebrow and cocked her head in a way that I could almost hear her say, “Really?”

  “A tunnel leads out of the cistern, we can crawl for fifty yards—”

  “Crawl?” someone, Krys I think, interrupted from behind me.

  “—before we reach the spot in the wall where we can push through.”

  Rabbit sucked in a breath, straightened herself, and jumped into the hole.

  “Rabbit!” Grace yelled, running to the edge of the hole just as I heard an unpleasant squishy noise from below. Grace covered her mouth and made a strangled gagging noise and I ran up next to her, fearing the worst.

  Fortunately, Rabbit was fine. Grace was gagging at the now torch-lit pile of filth that Rabbit stood shin-deep in. It glistened brown, black, and gray around her, while streams of greenish-yellow water slid in rivulets between the lumpy piles.

  I came perilously close to gagging myself.

  Rabbit took a few steps back from under the hole and waved us down.

  I couldn’t in good conscience let any more of the girls precede me. I at least still had my boots.

  It took me a little more effort than Rabbit, as Snake’s shoulders were almost too broad to slip through. I had to push myself back up twice before I could swing my left shoulder lower than my right and slide it below the lip of the hole first. I dangled from my right arm for a few seconds before I gathered the will to let go.

  I dropped the last two or three feet into the vile slurry below. I hit with a splash that sent a spray of filth in Rabbit’s direction, causing me to wince in sympathy. Then I realized that my boots were not as much an asset as I supposed. My feet sank into the semisolid mess below to a depth higher than the tops of my boots, and I felt the slick mass ooze inside until my toes squished.

  I stared at Rabbit, and despite her bravery taking the lead, I could now see a green cast to her face that was stark even in the flickering torchlight. I suspect I wore the same expression. The air down here oozed into my lungs the way the crap I stood in oozed into my boots, almost as viscous and just as foul.

  Holding down my bile, I slugged across the floor to stand in front of her to shield her from further splashing.

  Grace followed, then Mary, Krys, and Laya. Lastly, Sir Forsythe lowered Thea down into my arms. She sobbed and buried her face in my neck.

  I guess I smelled better than the wrong end of a latrine. Though, standing where I was, I wondered how long that would last.

  Sir Forsythe slid down last, somehow landing without throwing up waves of black foulness. He waved his own torch around as he circled, until he faced a stone wall with an opening that rose about three feet above the muck.

  “This way,” he said.

  Of course . . .

  Most of the girls were lucky, they were short enough that they could crouch and walk through the tunnel. Mary, Sir Forsythe, and I were not so lucky. We three had to go forward on our hands and knees. Sir Forsythe took the lead while Mary and I stayed to the rear. Thea stayed with me, on my back, because I couldn’t bring myself to put her down.

  That meant I had to crawl lower than the others, leaving my face a bare inch from the sludge in the bottom of the sewer.

  At least, if I throw up now, no one will even notice.

  Sir Forsythe had said we’d only go fifty yards in this, but it felt like we easily went a few miles. By the time we came to a halt, my elbows were trembling from the extra weight on my shoulders.

  “Here we are,” I heard Sir Forsythe call from ahead. I couldn’t really raise my head to see where he was, but I heard a couple of thuds, and the sound of crumbling stone. A moment later, I felt a breeze cooler than the steaming odor we’d been crawling through.

  The girls ahead started moving again, and I followed. Soon I reached a hole in the side of the sewer and someone lifted Thea off my back. I straightened my neck and saw that a portion of the sewer wall had been built without mortar, so Sir Forsythe had been able to just push the stones out into a larger chamber. I scrambled through the hole and into a room that, while having claustrophobically low ceilings, was just tall enough for me to stand upright.

  I turned around to look at the hole we had come through as Mary pulled herself out of the mire. Something sailed out from the edge of the torchlight at me and I caught it without thinking. “Good catch,” Krys said with a chuckle.

  I’d caught a human skull.

  “Gah,” I said, dropping the thing to clatter on the stones by my feet.

  My reaction brought a few more chuckles.

  “Okay, this is an improvement,” Grace said to Sir Forsythe, “but where are we?”

  “We have entered the lowest catacombs of the Royal Ossuary, My Lady. Here rest the bones of all the prior generations who gave themselves to the Dark Lord.”

  Rabbit, who still held a torch, stood up against one wall, and I could see niches of neatly stacked bones. It gave me a shudder, but didn’t seem to faze any of the girls aside from Laya, who had edged into the center of the chamber, far from the piles of stacked bones.

  Thea picked up a dusty old femur and started swinging it around like a wooden sword.

  The bones didn’t bother me so much as the thought that these were sacrifices to Nâtlac, and I was sure that those who “gave themselves” had not done so voluntarily. I bent down and picked up the skull I had dropped, and squinted until I saw a small pyramid of skulls missing its top member. I replaced it and asked Sir Forsythe, “Which way out?”

  • • •

  The ossuary gave way to more typical catacombs as we followed Sir Forsythe through tunnels bearing generations of Grünwald’s dead. We walked down a narrow tunnel that bore niches on either side where the dead were laid out. Unlike the ossuary, these niches held more than bone. The occupants here were laid out in shrouds, ful
ly clothed, to await their return to dust. Ahead of us, waves of rats scampered away from the approaching torchlight.

  Our path remained generally a straight line away from the sewers, so I was certain that we had long passed out from under the walls of the main keep. The catacombs probably spread out underneath most of the surrounding city.

  Sir Forsythe finally led us up a steep stone staircase that emerged behind a vine-covered iron gate. He pushed through the gate and we emerged out into the cold night air. It wasn’t until I stepped outside that I realized that we all smelled as if we’d been rolling in the aging vomit of a coprophagous ogre with hygiene issues. I took a few steps upwind so the only airborne contaminants I breathed came from my own sewage-saturated clothing.

  “Where are we?” I heard Grace ask.

  I didn’t need to hear Sir Forsythe’s answer. We were in a lonely wooded corner, but the night was clear and the moon was high and illuminated the ground beyond our torches. Beyond the cluster of trees that shielded us, ranks of memorials and tombs marched up toward a ruined temple on a small rise.

  Sir Forsythe stepped up next to me and said, “These are the Gardens of Lysea.”

  I heard the sound of a dozen feet crunching the snow as they approached behind me. Mary asked, “The Goddess Lysea?”

  I said, “That seems a bit out of character for Grünwald.” Even if Nâtlac worship was confined to the aristocracy, the Goddess Lysea was a patron of love, beauty, poetry, and a half-dozen other things that wouldn’t help you in a bar fight. In other words, not nearly martial enough for the Grünwald hoi polloi.

  “This is an old graveyard,” Sir Forsythe said.

  That was obvious. Many of the memorials were visible only because the vegetation covering them had withered away for the winter. Many were half ruined, and as I looked closer I could see some of the statues and religious symbols had been broken deliberately.

  Thea walked past me still carrying her femur. She hugged herself and said, “I’m cold,” in a puff of fog.

  Of the girls, outside a few hastily scavenged bits of armor, no one was properly dressed for the winter cold. No one even had shoes. I pointed up to the ruined temple. “We can take shelter up there.”

  Grace glared at me and I realized she resented me taking the initiative again. Not that I could blame her.

  “Unless you have a better idea,” I said.

  She stomped off in the direction of the temple, so I suppose she didn’t. The others followed her single file between the ranks of broken tombs in an unpleasantly spectral procession. Sir Forsythe stood next to me, holding his torch, staring after them.

  I followed the girls, and after a few steps I realized that Sir Forsythe wasn’t with me. I turned around and asked him, “You coming?”

  He blinked and said, “Of course, My Liege.” Something about the way he said that was way more tentative than anything that had a right to come out of Sir Forsythe’s mouth. The word “tentative,” didn’t even belong in the same paragraph as Sir Forsythe the Good. I considered asking him what was the matter, but I had a suspicion that I didn’t really want to know.

  • • •

  The temple’s damage had been confined mostly to the front. Again, statues and pillars had been deliberately toppled, frescos defaced by more than age and neglect. We climbed broken steps into an entryway whose roof had caved in, but beyond a pair of heavy bronze doors, the inner sanctum remained intact and sheltered from the elements. Whoever had wrecked the outside apparently had never come in here.

  We entered an octagonal room with an elaborate mosaic floor. More frescos on the interior walls depicted artists and lovers engaged in the various activities generally ascribed to artists and lovers. Opposite the doors sat an elaborate marble altar set before a statue of a smiling nude woman.

  Flanking the altar were a pair of low copper braziers heaped with wood and coal, as if just waiting for someone to arrive. Grace, who still carried a torch, touched the flame to one of the braziers, and the contents almost exploded as they erupted into a rolling fire that sent sparks up into the domed ceiling.

  The sudden heat was very welcome, even though the ancient wood was so heavily scented with herbs and perfume that the room suddenly smelled like a burning whorehouse. The heat also made me aware of a chill draft coming from behind me. I turned around and saw Sir Forsythe standing in the doorway.

  “Would you close the door?” Mary asked him before I could.

  He shut the door as Grace set the other brazier alight. If it was me, I would have saved that one for later. The fuel was so old and dry that I suspected it would burn down rather quickly. But I held my tongue. There was wood outside, and I didn’t need to do any more to alienate her.

  Everyone gathered around the fires as I examined the larger-than-life statue above the altar. I had some nostalgic thoughts about Evelyn the tavern wench. I was sorry we hadn’t gone much further with the awkward assignation before we had been interrupted. Then, since I was indulging in impossible thoughts, I felt regret that I hadn’t gotten the chance to know Lucille back when we were more . . . compatible.

  Where’d that come from?

  “Now,” Grace said behind me, interrupting a half-formed thought.

  I turned to face her as she spoke, and I realized that I was surrounded with my back to the altar. I glanced from her to Sir Forsythe, who was still across the room by the doorway.

  “Now?” I repeated.

  “Care to explain ‘Frank Blackthorne, Princess of Lendowyn, and the rightful Dark Queen of Nâtlac?’”

  “Like I said, it’s a long story.”

  “We seem to have the time now.”

  I guess we did.

  I backed up and sat on the altar, facing everyone.

  “Well . . . My name is Frank Blackthorne, and I’m going to tell you a story.”

  • • •

  Frank Blackthorne, Princess of Lendowyn, and the rightful Dark Queen of Nâtlac . . . also add, somewhat mediocre thief.

  I found it an immense relief to finally admit to who I was. I felt no small gratification in taking Snake Bartholomew’s identity and metaphorically crumpling it up and tossing it into one of the hotly burning braziers. I unloaded my whole sorry story starting with my accidental liberation of a virgin sacrifice to the Dark Lord Nâtlac, to the somewhat less than epic battle between Weasel and the assassins. No one interrupted me, not even Sir Forsythe who probably could have offered some alternate explanations of his behavior before Queen Fiona’s demise.

  When I finished, Grace muttered, “Of all the idiot—”

  “You were royalty and you gave that up?” Mary snapped, echoing what Grace must have been thinking. “What kind of fool—”

  “The kind of fool who gets drunk and wears evil enchanted jewelry,” Laya finished.

  “And you just let us think you were the legendary Snake,” Grace said, “dragging us all the way down here. Nearly getting us all killed.”

  Thea peered up at me. “You were really a girl?”

  Mary turned to Sir Forsythe, who still hung by the doors. “So is this all true? This twit killed off your Dark Queen Fiona?”

  I shook my head. The girls were arguing to themselves, venting. That didn’t really require any response from me. I sighed and waited for things to subside. As I did, I noticed three things.

  First, Krys didn’t contribute anything to the conversation. She looked at me in a way that, unlike everyone else, wasn’t tainted by anger or contempt—sad, more than anything else.

  Second, Rabbit wasn’t paying attention to any of the others. She was looking in my direction, but seemed to be staring through me with widening eyes. She grabbed the edge of Grace’s befouled shirt and was yanking it, and her mouth opened to emit a sharp, almost barking sound for attention.

  Third, Mary was still shouting at Sir Forsythe and Sir Forsythe quietly w
hispered, “My Lady,” and fell to one knee, looking not at Mary, but toward me.

  Actually, like Rabbit, past me.

  I turned around, sliding off the altar at the same time, to stand in front, facing the statue behind it. A statue that had changed from a marble nude to a flesh-and-blood woman, a woman with the same epic proportion as the statue, half again as tall as Sir Forsythe, clad only with a flowered garland in her hair. She smiled and rolled her head, and I could hear the vertebrae cracking as she yawned and stretched her arms, touching the ceiling above us.

  “You’re kidding me,” I whispered.

  CHAPTER 17

  “Well no one’s been here for a while,” she said when she was done stretching. She walked out from behind the altar, tracing the tops of the frescos with one hand. The girls fell silent as they all realized we had a visitor. She towered over all of them, offering a bemused smile. She stopped a few paces from where Sir Forsythe was genuflecting.

  “Oh dear,” she said. “Are you afraid of me?” She reached down and lifted his chin with her hand. Her hand was delicate and beautiful, but large enough to wrap halfway around Sir Forsythe’s face. “You aren’t afraid of anything.”

  “My Lady, I—I—”

  This was a first. I had never seen Sir Forsythe at a loss for words before. She stopped his stammering by placing a finger against his lips and clucking a tongue at him.

  “Don’t embarrass yourself, Sir Forsythe. You have a reputation to uphold.” She brushed an errant hair from his forehead. “Why would I harm you? Just because you pledge yourself to a rival deity whose followers desecrated my temples and enslaved my priestesses?” She reached and grabbed hold of the hair on the top of his head and yanked his head back. “Just because your Dark Lord raped my church?”

  “Stop it,” I called out. I think I’ve mentioned that I am more impulsive than is generally wise. So the words came out before I had time to realize that interrupting an annoyed deity was not the best course of action. Especially since, by some lights, I was higher in the Nâtlac hierarchy than Sir Forsythe—Dark Queen and all that.