The robed figures surrounding us knelt and genuflected, and I heard Dudley gasp, “M-My Lord?”
I felt something thud painfully into our left ankle and I glanced down and saw the black blade between our feet. It had fortunately struck hilt-first when Dudley dropped the thing. It was still close enough to my foot that, even as tight as the cords were on my leg, I was able to twist my heel to drag the hilt closer.
Dudley was preoccupied, watching the visitor approach with a dumbfounded expression.
“You expected someone else?” The Dark Lord’s voice dragged through our brain like the branches of a burning thorn tree infested with wasps.
“But the sacrifice? The ceremony?”
The Dark Lord stood next to the altar. If I hadn’t been bound, I could have reached out and touched the pained faces on his black leather cloak. The thought made me shudder.
The Dark Lord Nâtlac placed a gloved hand on the surface of the altar, fingers touching the blood that had come from my split lip, almost touching my face.
“Do you think that is all that may call me?”
I frantically moved my foot, trying to drag the cords binding it against the sharp blade of the knife. It seemed I cut as much of my own skin as my bonds. Dudley’s Dark Lord slowly walked toward him, fingers smearing a trail of my blood along the stone of the altar, parallel to my body.
“Uh . . .”
“What is it that you want?” he asked Dudley as my foot came free. I frantically pushed the knife over toward my other leg, my heel sliding along the stone in a slick of my own blood.
Fortunately Dudley and the Dark Lord were focused on each other, rather than me.
Dudley stepped down and knelt like his robed minions. “I wish your favor, My Lord. I wish to be anointed with your dark power and be given the strength to crush my enemies. I wish to give this virginal sacrifice to you, a gift of royal blood flowing from the heart of one who wronged you.”
“You wish my favor?”
My feet slid around so badly that I almost kicked the knife into the side of Dudley’s face. Not that I found that outcome particularly objectionable, but it would have been awkward, especially since it would have hit with much less than lethal force.
“Yes, My Lord.”
“And you believe that favor is bought with blood, like any other dark god?”
I was too focused on slicing more of my bonds than my own feet to focus on Dudley and his god. Besides, the Dark Lord Nâtlac was actually painful to listen to, and Dudley was terminally annoying. But as my other foot came free, I realized a few things . . .
Despite appearances, our visitor spoke nothing like the Dark Lord I had the misfortune to know. The voice burrowed in and laid its eggs in your mind like the Nâtlac I knew and loathed, but what he said? That wasn’t the Dark Lord.
But it was very like the false Nâtlac from my dream.
It also sank in that this temple was not dedicated to Nâtlac. The Dark Lord’s worshippers had a history of desecrating temples and rededicating them in his name. Dudley was arrogant enough—and stupid enough—to simply appropriate a space for his god and go ahead with his ceremony, regardless of whose temple he might be stealing.
I knew from experience that such acts didn’t take very well, and typically left a deity pissed off at you for wrecking their stuff. Given my last real meeting with the Dark Lord Nâtlac, this place would almost certainly not be consecrated in his name until the sacrifice was made. That technicality was the whole reason I didn’t eat Dudley’s half brother when I had the chance—but that’s another story.
This panicked chain of thought led to the faux-Nâtlac’s comment, favor is bought with blood, like any other dark god . . .
I stared at the stone by my head, where a pair of the fake Nâtlac’s fingers had dipped into the blood I had spit on the stone.
Oh crap.
I used my free legs to push my whole body, sliding back on the altar, away from Dudley and the unknown impersonator, adding slack to the cords binding my arms. I could feel the bindings loosen enough that I could yank my hand through them, abrading the skin on my wrist and nearly dislocating my thumb.
Of course, the arrival of their deity, however dubious, was not that much of a distraction. At my sudden movement, the hooded figures stood, drawing weapons. Dudley turned and looked at me, his expression turning from awe to anger. He grabbed the already blood-soaked dagger and shouted, “Now, My Lord, you will see our devotion!”
My other wrist tried to pull itself free without help from me, but seemed to lack the leverage and momentum. Not that it would have made much difference as a pair of Dudley’s minions grabbed us by the shoulders, holding us in place on the blood-streaked altar.
Dudley approached with the knife and said, “I am afraid we’ll skip right to the main event. I don’t wish to keep the Dark One waiting.”
Just like him to cut corners.
The minions held our arms straight out, aiming our naked chest at Dudley. I kicked and scrambled against the stone of the altar, but he easily walked around my thrashing legs.
I glanced at the bloody altar, then up at pseudo-Nâtlac.
What have I got to lose?
I looked at him and it felt as if molten sand tore into the flesh of my eyes.
I yelled at him.
“Do I have your favor?”
CHAPTER 17
That gave everyone pause. Even Dudley halted his approach to stare at me blankly, as if I has suddenly spouted a string of obscenities in a dead language.
Fake Nâtlac continued staring at me.
“Come on!” I shouted. “These guys come in and try and wreck the place, steal it from you. I gave you my own blood. I spilled it on your altar before these idiots could take it from you.”
I think realization dawned in Dudley’s eyes. I saw them widen.
Yeah, told you you’d screw this up, didn’t I?
Dudley screamed “No!” at the top of his lungs and lunged at me, plunging the dagger into my chest.
I know, because I watched him do it. I watched myself, black blade plunging into my heart, my naked body collapsing to the ground, Dudley kneeling on my hips as he used both hands to pull the blade down my sternum.
This was rather startling to me, since I still sat on the altar, one minion holding my arm, watching Dudley laugh as he sliced up Lucille’s naked body.
I glanced down at myself, and I still wore the same body I came here with. “What?”
I heard an echo of my own voice, and it wasn’t just someone else repeating my startled eloquence. It was someone using my voice.
Using Lucille’s voice.
Using our voice.
I turned and looked at the minion that had been holding my bound arm. He was no longer a huge Grünwald warrior in armor and a black cloak. Instead, gripping my arm was someone wearing the naked body of a Lendowyn princess. My twin still watched Dudley’s misplaced violence with an expression of shock. So I did the obvious.
I decked her.
I might have little hope overpowering a thug with a five stone weight advantage and a foot of height and reach over me. But a petite naked princess? I could take her with one arm tied behind my back.
Which was good, since that was literally my situation.
My fist hit her between her jaw and her temple. I’m no brawler, never was even before the whole princess thing, but I made up for it in pure terror and confusion. I hit hard enough to send shivers of pain up my arm, and I heard and felt something crack with the impact. The pain of the collision masked whether it was something breaking in my hand, or in my doppelgänger’s skull.
She dropped, and my arm struggled to free itself from the last binding. I reached over with my other hand, the one I controlled, and tried to help Lucille with fingers still numb with impact. Just as I helped fumble the last loop of c
ord off my wrist, I jumped myself.
I turned, just in time to see another naked me rush the altar and attempt a flying tackle. She must have intended to pin me to the altar, but she wasn’t wearing the same body as she had a moment ago. She fumbled her attack, failing to completely clear the altar. She struck me off center, rolling us both off the altar and onto the floor of the chamber.
We tumbled into a trio of other naked princesses, knocking them down.
Some strange, deviant part of me had the idle thought that this all would have been rather interesting if they weren’t all trying to kill me.
I swung for the face of the Lucille trying to strangle me, and the real Lucille must have had the same thought, as both my fists came up and struck both her cheekbones simultaneously. Her head snapped back and she tumbled off of me as two other princesses grabbed for me. I was badly outnumbered, but I had two advantages. First, aside from Dudley—whom I couldn’t see anymore, but whom I heard yelling obscenities past all the other Lucilles—all my opponents had been disarmed by assuming my naked likeness.
More important, I had spent a year getting used to moving in our body. These guys had less than twenty seconds. They didn’t know where their feet were, where their arms ended, or where their center of gravity was. They tried to dodge, and didn’t move their heads enough. They tried to block, and came up short. They reached for me and missed. Shove them a little, they overcompensated, wobbled, and fell on their unreasonably padded backsides. I punched one of them in the boob and she actually screamed, stumbling back, clutching a wounded nipple.
Dudley bellowed, “Back away from her! Back off so I can get her!”
Reasonable tactic.
They tried to disengage and I grabbed one of them by the arm and started turning, spinning us both on an axis round our clasped hands. Lucille reached up and grabbed our captive’s wrist as I spun us both round and round while the others backed away from us.
One thing I remember from my own body transitions. It left you with one whopper of a headache.
I let go and stumble-hopped back to the retreating circle of Lucilles, and my victim spun twice more, unaccompanied, before falling to her knees and retching.
“Ha!” Dudley shouted as the wall of naked Lucilles parted to let him see the one on her knees. He ran toward her, ignoring the raised hand and the half moaned, “Wait!”
A few of the other minions, who had seen and understood what happened, rushed to restrain him before he sacrificed another minion. A few turned in my direction, trying to discern which one of the four Lucilles in this end of the chamber was really me.
I had less than a second, so I decided to retain the initiative. I kicked sideways, taking my neighbor’s leg out from under her. I grabbed her shoulder and guided her fall into the two Lucilles slightly in front of me so all three of them collapsed on Dudley.
I now had a clear path, so I ran.
And slammed right into the chest of the Dark Lord Nâtlac.
I don’t care if he was the actual Dark Lord, or just an elaborate fraud, but touching him with my naked body felt like diving headfirst into a pit filled with salt, broken glass, and writhing maggots; one brush against that macabre leather cloak and I wanted to claw off my own skin.
I bounced off of him and looked up into a smile that had all the warmth of a shark biting a bloated shipwreck victim in half. I felt his hands touch my shoulders and the world went white.
I know things usually go black at this point, but this was white; a serious blinding white glare that burned my watering eyes and had me attempting to blink splotches of red out of my vision. A few more blinks and I realized that it was only the noonday sun, though it was a sun that seemed heavier and closer than I was used to. It hung in a painfully blue, cloudless sky almost directly above my head.
I looked away from the blazing sun and down to see an emerald green meadow at my feet.
And boots.
I wore boots, and they were farther away than they should have been.
No, that was wrong. Actually, they were exactly as far away as they should have been.
“What just happened?”
I spun around and saw a familiar scaly black form shimmering in the bright sunlight. The Dragon Lucille looked around, blinking her double lids, shaking her massive head and stretching her wings to the point they blotted out the sun from above me.
“I think someone brought us home to visit,” I said.
The ground vibrated as Lucille jumped back, startled, as if she didn’t know I was there. She probably hadn’t. I had spent a short stint in the dragon’s body, and one thing I remembered was that it was easy to overlook people-size objects when you were that large.
“Who are you?”
I almost felt hurt, but I realized that Lucille last saw the original me over a year ago, and then only briefly. The last time she saw me as a man, I was in a completely different body.
“It’s me,” I said, “Frank.”
She lowered her massive head to peer at me, her nostrils at eye level. Her breath was a moist brimstone-flavored breeze against my face. “That does sound like the voice in your head.”
“That’s probably just what it is.”
“But that body . . .”
“This is what I looked like before Elhared—”
Her eyes widened. “Oh.”
She drew her head back up, but her snout remained pointed at me. It was the kind of pose that would have been intimidating if I didn’t know her. “I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you at first.”
“It’s okay. The old me is just worm food anyway.”
“But you’re standing right there . . .”
I shook my head.
“. . . and I’m a dragon.” She sighed and flopped her head down on her forelimbs with a massive thud. “This isn’t happening, is it?”
“It’s happening,” I said. “But our appearance here has little to do with our current appearance in the mortal world.”
“Why are you talking like you know what’s going on here?”
“Because I think I do.” I walked up next to her head and placed my hand on her cheek. It was surprisingly warm for hide that looked so thick and armored. I found the touch surprisingly comforting. “I’ve run into the Dark Lord more than once. In his domain I don’t wear my physical body, whatever it is at the time. I look like this.” I gestured down at myself. “I suppose this is how my soul looks.”
She rolled her head slightly so one eye peered at me quizzically. “So my soul looks like a dragon?”
I laughed. “Did you doubt it?”
Her head rolled back and stared at the rolling meadow before us. “This doesn’t look like the Underworld.”
“It’s not.”
“You said the Dark Lord—”
“That wasn’t him.”
“It wasn’t?”
“No. And I’m beginning to have some idea who it actually was.”
“Who?”
From behind me a high-pitched voice asked, “Yes, who?” It repeated, “Who?” with a sound that was almost a yip. I spun around to face the newcomer, the ground rumbling as a startled Lucille did likewise.
A bright red fox perched on an old stump that I was sure had not been there a moment ago. Also, regardless of the stump’s status, the copse of trees behind the fox definitely had not been there the last time I looked in that direction.
“Who?” the fox yipped behind an impish grin.
“Like the Royal Court of Grünwald, the resident Thieves’ Guild has their own patron deity. Lord of deception and mischief, illusion and masks. Just the type to go about impersonating someone else’s god.”
The fox chuffed a few times, and I realized it was snickering. “Can you think of a better response to men attempting to desecrate your temple?”
“Probably not,” I sai
d.
“And did you forget change and transformation?” the fox said, twisting its head around until it was nearly upside down as it looked at us. I was quite sure a real fox’s neck couldn’t do that.
“No.” I shook my head. “I also remember the part where you’re supposed to speak only in riddles.”
“You prefer that to rhetorical questions?”
“No, that’s quite all right.”
The fox sighed, as if in relief, as it rotated its head back. “Do you have any idea how taxing it is to come up with appropriate riddles for such mundane communication?”
“I can imagine.”
“So are you going to introduce us, Frank?”
I looked back at Lucille, who stared down at the talking fox with her jaws slightly agape.
“Dragon Prince Lucille,” I said, gesturing toward the fox, “may I present Lothan, Father Fox, Patron of Thieves and Lord of Illusion.”
CHAPTER 18
Lothan the fox jumped off his stump and started walking in a circle around us. As he did, I noticed that the copse of woods had become a full-blown forest and the rolling meadow had become little more than a clearing in the trees. Lothan looked at Lucille with an amused canine smile and I realized that the red fox hair was now a shaggy gray, and his muzzle was larger, more blunted.
Lothan the wolf asked, “Prince or princess?”
Lucille looked down at herself, and it was Lucille’s body she looked down at, the original one. I didn’t see the change. One moment she was the Dragon Prince, the next she was the human princess. “What did you do?” she asked in the dragon’s voice, which felt very strange. I also noted that her eyes still resembled the dragon’s: yellow, slitted, and double-lidded.
“What makes you think I did anything?” asked the wolf.
Lucille looked at me in confusion. I smiled at her, reached over, and took her hand. “What we are here is what we see of ourselves. You became a dragon, but you didn’t abandon the princess completely.”