Dragon Wizard

  “Maybe four?”

  “This is not a precise timepiece, and the flow of time can vary. Is there anything else?”

  “Your Highness,” Krys said, “the tea?”

  “The tea?” Crumley asked with a puzzled expression.

  Lucille turned around and said, “Yes, the tea.”

  • • •

  At least we accomplished one of our goals at the Wizard Crumley’s lair. He was able to instantly identify the substantive ingredient in the tea that Brock had made for Rabbit. As expected, the weed had more than simple anesthetic properties. It went by a number of names. The only one Crumley rattled off that I remembered later was “shaman’s flower.”

  I tend to lean more to the descriptive than poetic.

  “It’s effective in tea, or when chewed. But breathing in the smoke as it burns is most efficient.”

  I couldn’t help but remember a particular den of thieves named The Headless Earl. I had incapacitated the inhabitants by tossing a bundle of herbs into a fire. A bundle that Brock had prepared for me. It had sent the whole population of the great room on an involuntary sprit journey.

  “Also, the unadulterated herb is more powerful than the dash that your barbarian herbalist mixed into the mute’s tea, so mind the side effects.”

  “Side effects?” Lucille asked.

  “Drowsiness, euphoria, impaired judgment, prophetic visions, dry mouth, and in your case,” he pointed to Lucille, “acceleration of the personality assimilation that is already happening.”

  “What?”

  “This herb tears down the walls between your self and reality . . . your self and other selves. That’s how you hear a soul that’s already half left the world. But those walls are what keep you a separate self.”

  “Great,” whispered Lucille.

  Crumley didn’t even charge us extra when he gave Krys a large bag of the stuff, adding, “You can buy more anywhere. But remember,” he warned as he ushered us out of his lab, “if you do see something, it also sees you.”

  Apparently he was very eager to get back to his studies.

  The door slammed behind us leaving us back in the fetid alley that was half city, half swamp.

  Krys hefted her bag of shaman’s flower and looked at us. “What do we do now?”

  Lucille lifted the pendant that hung around our neck. The sand might have been close to the two-thirds mark in the tiny hourglass. “Back to the inn,” Lucille said. “We’re running out of time. If Elhared authored that scroll, he isn’t the one we want. We need to find who could have found it and given it to the elf-prince.”

  “What about . . . you and Frank?”

  I felt Lucille bite her lip.

  “Your Highness?”

  “Our priority is stopping a few wars.”

  “But—”

  “No,” Lucille snapped. “One thing at a time.”

  • • •

  We made our way out of the damper part of Fell Green in silence. For all of Lucille’s protests about our priorities, I knew she must be dwelling on the same thing I was.

  We were both living on borrowed time. Sure, Crumley said that the author of the scroll could separate us. But the author of that scroll was stone cold dead. Elhared died at my hand, and I had made pretty sure of the fact at the time. Gone along with my old body.

  Then something occurred to me . . .

  Krys grabbed our arm and shook it, breaking me out of the hopeful thought. Lucille turned at Krys’s strained whisper, “Problem.”

  Krys looked down the path ahead. Lucille continued raising her head until we saw the half-dozen large men, all wearing the spiked, skull-embossed black armor of the elite Grünwald Royal Guard.

  “Never goes wrong in the way we expect,” Lucille muttered, appropriating my own personal motto.

  We ran.

  That was our only real advantage. The men outnumbered us three to one, outweighed us six to one, and, with their swords out, bested our reach by Lucille’s full height. But we could outrun them. Lucille darted directly away from them, Krys on our heels, and they broke into a lumbering run behind us. The surrounding crowd and few open-air merchants around us all melted away, leaving the street barren ahead of us. That was a good thing, since it made the other six Grünwald soldiers stand out as they rushed us from the other direction.

  Lucille took the only escape route we had, a narrow alley between an inn and a stable. The good news was that the alley would be too narrow for any of the overlarge pursuers to engage us at better than one-to-one odds.

  Bad news, they were obviously driving us in this direction and a trio of like-armored thugs blocked the opposite end of the alley, forcing us to draw up short. Lucille spun, but while our pursuit had been slower than us, they hadn’t been slow. That end of the alley was blocked now as well.

  Krys drew her sword and placed her back against ours. Lucille drew her own weapon, a dagger that would have seemed substantial if it wasn’t for the size of our potential opposition. I felt a sinking feeling when I realized she held it in her off hand since I still controlled the other one.

  Damn it.

  I felt her grit her teeth as our eyes darted all over, looking for some escape. Nothing obvious presented itself.

  “Well, well, well,” came a smarmy voice from the shadows to our right. Lucille spun around to face the speaker and I felt around her belt for some other weapon. I couldn’t find anything.

  “If it isn’t the Princess of Lendowyn,” continued the speaker as he walked out of a shadowed alcove about ten paces away from us. King Dudley had lost some weight. He was still short as one measured such things, but he appeared to have lost the doughy softness that defined the prince I remembered.

  “Dudley,” Lucille spat.

  Dudley smiled humorlessly. “And I’m afraid you have the advantage there, Princess. What should I call you? Who are you this fine day?”

  “I am a representative of the Royal Court of Lendowyn,” Lucille said, the dragon leaking into her voice. “If you value what is left of your kingdom, you will stand down and retreat with your dogs.”

  Dudley laughed.

  I did not like that at all.

  “My kingdom?” he finally said, choking off his laughter before it became something hysterical. “My kingdom, you say?” He wiped tears from his eyes. He stared at us, and I could see the amusement drain away leaving nothing in his eyes but a smoldering hate. “Oh,” he whispered. “You don’t even know.”

  “Know what?” Krys said from behind us.

  “You brought all of this down upon me and mine,” Dudley continued to whisper, voice hardening. “And you don’t even know what you’ve wrought.”

  “I’m warning you, Dudley,” Lucille said, “let us go or—”

  “Or what!?” Dudley screamed at us with such force that it gave even Lucille the Dragon pause. “Or your armies again march across Grünwald? Is that it? Is that your threat?” He walked in front of us, stepping in a wide circle around us. He made a couple of gestures with his hand and out of the corner of Lucille’s eye I saw black armored men swapping their swords for crossbows.

  Not good.

  “Why do you think I care?” Dudley asked us. He gestured palm down, and the crossbowmen knelt and braced.

  “You’d sacrifice your kingdom for vengeance?”

  He had circled until he faced us, his back to the opposite wall. “Thanks to you,” he whispered, “I have no kingdom.”

  His hand dropped, and the crossbows fired.

  CHAPTER 16

  We should have died there.

  However, Dudley was nothing if not predictable. He had this tiresome habit of capturing me with the intent of using me as a sacrifice to his Dark Lord. So I knew what was coming as soon as the first bolt slammed into our midsection, and I saw the tip was blunted. I had only a fra
ction of a second to contemplate that, before something slammed into the side of our head and we fell forward into blackness.

  As awareness leaked back into our senses, I wasn’t surprised at the cords binding our wrists or the cold stone of an altar under our naked back. We had been through this twice before.

  This was becoming an unhealthy obsession. Dudley needed a hobby.

  I blinked and turned my head and realized that I was blinking and turning my head.

  We were bound spread-eagled across the stone, each limb tightly tied to each corner. The altar formed the focus of some sort of old, disused temple. Long ago it had been some large ceremonial space. Since then, any adornment had long ago decayed and anything of value had been stolen. The stone floor was half hidden under unidentifiable debris, the walls bare stone except for a few traces of crumbling plaster where old frescoes would have overlooked the space. All that remained was carved stone showing worn mottoes in unknown languages, and a pair of crumbling stone statues flanking the entrance.

  I could not make out details on the statues because the only light in the room came from a small bonfire occupying the floor between us and the exit.

  I groaned and whispered, “Lucille?”

  In response, I felt my left hand clench against its bonds by its own volition.

  Guess the knock on the head swapped us again.

  I felt a strange ominous echo in my thoughts. I also felt a strange sense of my vision doubling without blurring.

  None of that boded well.

  Something shimmered, past the bonfire, beyond the entrance to the old temple. I squinted in that direction.

  I heard a woman’s voice, distant and cold. “This is what you found?”

  I heard Dudley respond. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  That pricked my ears. Aside from his mother, the late Queen Fiona, I couldn’t picture any female royalty earning that kind of deference from ex-King, ex-Prince Dudley. I supposed that Dudley might have learned some humility since I’d seen him last, but I thought it unlikely.

  Then I saw the royal in question step into view, and I understood. She stood taller than any woman I’d ever seen, aside from the Goddess Lysea when she possessed statuary. She was clad in leather so elaborately tooled with branches and leaves that she seemed to be a moving section of forest. Her face was unquestionably elven, though her skin was as dark as most elves were pale. Flowing green hair spilled down, past her hips, held in place by a circlet made of twisting vines, still green.

  The elf-queen herself was talking with Dudley.

  “What” was the only word available to me that adequately encapsulated the enormity of seeing her here.

  She unrolled a scroll and studied its contents. I knew the scroll. Even if I hadn’t recognized the disturbing glyphs that marred its surface, or the stain of black melted sealing wax, there was really only one scroll she’d be looking at that would make sense in this context. She nodded. “This is what my son bore upon his murder?”

  “I am certain, Your Majesty.”

  “Daemonlas, you hot-headed fool,” she whispered, crushing the scroll in her hands. After a moment she turned to Dudley. “You’ve done well.”

  “You have what you need, Your Majesty?”

  The elf-queen nodded. “Having this to point the finger, we’ll have no need to contemplate my husband’s soft-hearted offers of clemency.”

  “Then our agreement—”

  “After we burn this world, Grünwald is yours.” She glanced up and saw us. Our eyes met and she said, “And do what you wish to that troublesome mortal.”

  She gestured, took a step, and, somehow, she was gone in a brief haze of shimmering air.

  Having this to point the finger . . .

  I didn’t have a chance to ponder her words. Dudley strode across the room to bend over us. His sneering face suddenly filled our field of vision. I cringed and suddenly felt the horrible bruises where the blunted bolts had slammed into our body.

  “Ha!” Dudley spat in our face. “Wakey wakey!”

  He slapped our face on the side that had been clubbed by a blunted crossbow bolt. It was enough to send the room spinning.

  He edged around us, his expression half sneer, half manic smile. In his left hand he held a black obsidian ceremonial dagger. I struggled with our bonds, but I think I might have mentioned sometime before that my skills were more of the picking pockets than the escape artist variety. Not to mention I seemed to be operating with only one hand under my control, and the cords pulled our arms too taut for any sort of maneuvering beyond twisting our hands at the end of our wrists.

  Dudley slapped us again, and I spit some blood from a busted lip. It dribbled along my cheek to drip on the altar beneath my head. I focused blurry eyes on our captor.

  “Yes,” he hissed through clenched teeth. “Look at me.”

  “Where’s Krys?” I muttered.

  “What does the boy matter? He bleeds where he fell.” He leaned toward us. “This is what’s important.” He pointed the dagger so it pricked our exposed breast. “You”—he gestured back at himself with the hilt—“and me.”

  If Krys wasn’t any worse off than I was, and Dudley just left her in the alley, she might be able to make it back to The Talking Eye herself. I felt relieved that we didn’t have to worry about her. Our imminent sacrifice was enough to concern us.

  “I appreciate your interest,” I said. “But I don’t think we make a good couple. Besides, I’m married to a dragon—”

  “A dragon that will not save you this time,” Dudley said.

  It was hard to argue that point.

  From beyond the bonfire, I caught sight of black-robed figures entering the chamber, alternately filing to the left and right. From their size I guessed that these were all the armored footmen that had captured us. I counted a dozen in all.

  Even if I could free my arms, we’d have a bit of a problem getting out of this room intact.

  “I am going to enjoy this,” Dudley said.

  “No, you aren’t.” I’m not sure why I said that, other than just a knee-jerk contrary impulse.

  “What?”

  “We’ve been through this before. How do you think this ends?”

  His hand shook, gripping the obsidian knife until his knuckles whitened and cracked. “You took my mother, you took my church, you upended my kingdom so my own people drove me into the wilderness. You are marked by the Dark Lord and I am about to render your soul unto him. With the power he grants, and an ally in the Summer Queen Theora, I will sweep my vengeance across this land—”

  I shook my head weakly. “Ain’t going to happen.”

  “How dare you!”

  “I don’t know if it’s fate or your own incompetence, but you’ll screw this up like you always do. You’ll make some arrogant bone-stupid mistake that—”

  “DIE!” he screamed and plunged the dagger down toward the hollow between our breasts. I tensed and stopped breathing, but his thrust stopped with the tip of the blade half a finger’s breadth through the skin over our sternum.

  Silence filled the chamber for nearly a minute while blood welled up around the tip of Dudley’s blade. I glanced up at his snarling face and wide eyes.

  He laughed.

  No mere chuckle, but a guffaw, a belly laugh that left him gasping for breath and trembling so badly that I worried that the blade might finish its mortal plunge by accident. It was a laugh that wheezed and strained against the prison of sanity and I was, for several moments, wondering if he was trying to force his way out of that prison, or break back in.

  Dudley took several deep breaths, calmed himself, and took the knife away.

  “Well played,” he said.

  Huh?

  “But you aren’t going to goad me into killing you out of turn. The forms of the Dark Lord will be followed. You will
not deny me this prize on a technicality.”

  To be honest, I had just been a smartass.

  Dudley set the blade down between our legs, raised his arms, and started chanting. Knives and chanting, never a good combination.

  Four of the robed men came up and stripped Dudley’s armor, anointed him with foul-smelling oils, and draped his naked form with a hooded black robe.

  I spat another glob of blood onto the altar and said, “You don’t want to do this. It’s a bad idea.” Everything related to the Dark Lord Nâtlac was a bad idea.

  No one listened to me.

  The other figures withdrew, leaving the oily form of Dudley at our feet, still chanting, clad only in a black robe that hung distressingly open. He picked up the knife from between our legs and held it up toward the ceiling, still chanting. The stone on which we were tied was not high enough to spare us the sight of the fact that Dudley was enjoying himself way too much.

  Our left hand struggled against our bonds by itself, and I joined in with the other. Not that we did much good.

  I spat in Dudley’s direction, but while I managed a surprisingly robust arc, our angle was not great and the glob of bloody phlegm splatted between our bound feet. Dudley had his eyes closed in some sort of spiritual ecstasy and didn’t seem to notice.

  His words reached a crescendo with our struggles and his grip shifted on the black knife. He approached the altar and rose upon an unseen step in line with our feet. He towered over us, arms and robe spread wide, and I turned away because that was not the last thing I wanted to see.

  I stared into the flames of the central fire as Dudley completed his chant to the Dark Lord.

  In the moment that followed, a sound from the fire broke the silence. As I watched a shadow twist into the flames from somewhere else, I realized what I heard.

  Clapping.

  The shadow resolved into a familiar figure draped in a grotesque leather cloak. A sense of dread preceded him, as if every step he took rasped something unpleasant on my exposed skin. When he stepped completely out of the fire, the flames shrank behind him as if he dragged darkness along with him.