She swung a taloned hand in front of her face, and I could see the elf-king’s pendant dangling from one finger. She squinted, but in the moonlight we couldn’t quite make out the state of the sand in the tiny hourglass. She sighed.
I guess the part about being naked makes sense now.
I felt her shudder. “In armor? That would have been painful.”
At least. And if that thing would have been around our neck—
“Ack!” She made a choking sound and clutched her throat with a free hand.
Now I guess we need to find—
“Is that you, Your Highness?”
Lucille swung her head on its whiplike neck so fast that I felt as if I sloshed all the way to one side of her skull. I wasn’t the only one taken aback. Krys scrambled backward from the sudden attention so quickly that she stumbled halfway back toward the woods and sprawled on her backside.
“Krys!” As a dragon, Lucille had managed, over time, to learn to modulate her voice. After several months of work, those who knew her were able to distinguish the difference in tone between, for instance, a hearty greeting and bowel-melting anger. I realized that this skill must have been due to her familiarizing herself with that one particular draconic incarnation.
Especially when Krys whispered, “Please don’t eat me.”
This body had a different voice, but it was no less intimidating. It also didn’t carry the same nuance that Lucille managed in her mental discourse.
“No! Krys? I’m back to normal!”
Krys got unsteadily to her feet. “Normal?”
Lucille ignored that. “Where’s Rabbit . . . And Elhared?”
Krys frowned. “Where’s Frank?”
“What? Ah.” She reached up and tapped her skull with a talon. “Still in here.”
“Still in there, huh?” Krys backed away, circling at a distance, facing us and edging away from the woods at the same time.
“What’s the matter?”
Krys gaped. “What’s the matter? What’s the matter? How can you— What do you— Do you— And Frank—” Whatever she tried to say accelerated to the point that only a word in three could make a sputtering escape from her mouth.
“Please, calm down.”
“Calm down?” Krys repeated, the force of the words breaking the jumble of language that had snarled in her mouth. “Calm down!? You’re a dragon!”
“Yes—”
“Where did a dragon come from!?” Krys yelled up at her. “There was just an extra dragon lying around somewhere?”
“I—I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“The tea was wearing off, the elves saw us. We drank Lothan’s potion.”
“Uh-huh. It was supposed to solve things for you and Frank.”
“Yes—”
“And, again, where’s Frank?”
Lucille sank back on her haunches. Her head retreated, and something shuddered inside her.
“How do I even know who you are? You don’t look like the dragon I know.”
“It’s me. We drank, and we . . . changed.”
I figured Lothan was busy laughing at us now, though I didn’t know the extent of the joke yet.
“So the trickster’s potion turned you both into a dragon.”
“Yes.”
Krys didn’t look convinced.
“How can I persuade you?”
“I don’t know. This is weird, even for you.”
“Wait, here.” Lucille reached out toward Krys. Krys stumbled back as Lucille opened the taloned hand that still held the pendant. “Take it. It’s too small for me to see the hourglass clearly.”
Krys edged up to Lucille’s hand and gingerly took the pendant, as if she was afraid a too-sudden move might cause Lucille to clench the hand shut on her.
“How much is left?”
Krys backed away and held the pendant up in front of the full moon. After a moment, she said, “Maybe an eighth left? Less.”
“All that time with the elves . . . Elhared better be worth it.”
Krys stared at us incredulously.
“You still don’t believe me?”
“Do you blame me?” Krys asked.
“But—”
Lucille? I whispered in her head, interrupting her.
“What?”
“‘What,’ what?”
Lucille held up a finger. “Shh.”
Lucille listened and nodded as I gave her my suggestion.
“What?” Krys repeated.
“Frank says to tell Rose that she’s the one adept at detecting the real Lucille.”
• • •
That managed to convince Krys of who we were. Not that I blamed her for the paranoia. Given the events of the past year, and the habit of half the people around me to alter their identities at inconvenient times, I’d take the sudden appearance of a strange dragon claiming to be someone I knew with just a little bit of suspicion.
Lucille might have been a little annoyed, but she understood as well as I did. I think she’d only been taken aback because she hadn’t yet realized that she was a different dragon. She had just been caught up with being a dragon again.
I understood how she felt. The last time I’d been a guy, I had taken over a body that wasn’t my own. I had spent a few hours reveling in being male again before I started worrying about the other little details, like who the body had belonged to.
Fortunately I didn’t think that would be an issue with Lucille’s new body. Nâtlac’s forte seemed to be the shipping of souls back and forth; Lothan seemed more at ease with changing the physical body. Disguise, transformation, and metamorphosis were among his spheres. So it only made sense that he had created this new dragon from the body of the princess.
Which was par for the course because, after a year, I had become resigned to thinking of it as my body.
Oh well, easy come, easy go.
Still, I couldn’t be too angry about the loss. I was in no worse position than I’d been after the debacle at the banquet, and Lucille had been given something I didn’t think was possible. She now wore her own body, in most of the senses I could think mattered. She had taken to the original dragon, but never quite perfectly, I thought now.
As much as she had filled the lumbering black monster Elhared had recruited, it had still been a stolen skin. It fit her better than the one she had left to me, but she grew herself to fit it and not vice versa.
This dragon was Lucille.
I had seen it as we’d descended toward the Fell River, and I still felt it in every serpentine movement. Her new red body was smaller, almost as long, but with far less bulk, and much more agile than its black-scaled predecessor. As she followed Krys into the woods, she moved with a lithe grace as if she had lived her whole life in this skin.
Also, I don’t know if she had realized it quite yet, but unlike her prior dragon skin, this one was female. I wondered if that mattered to her. Given how much Lothan’s work seemed to have captured Lucille’s inner self, I suspected it probably did.
Good for you.
Frank?
Nothing, just thinking out loud.
Don’t worry. We’ll get you your own body again.
Yeah.
We have Elhared now . . .
I know. There was still something amiss about Lucille’s perfect transformation. Hadn’t Lothan promised us both our own bodies? He might be the deity of lies and deception along with everything else, but that didn’t feel quite right. I realized I was missing something. About that, don’t you think it’s odd—
I didn’t get to finish the thought because we broke through into a clearing where Rabbit and a still-bound Elhared sat by a campfire. The old wizard looked up, startled, and said, “Where’d you get another dragon?”
Lucille ignored him, focusing her attention on the third figure seated by the campfire.
“What is he doing here?”
“Good evening, Your Highness,” answered Robin Longfellow, half-elf and sometime highwayman.
CHAPTER 23
“What is he doing here?” Lucille repeated.
Rabbit stared up at Lucille goggle-eyed until Krys ran up and told her who she was. Elhared shook his head as he watched the two girls. He didn’t need to say anything. The expression he wore, one halfway between arrogant contempt and the sour disgust of a man who had just found half a worm in his apple, told me that the man in this skin was the same ass who had tried to kill Lucille a year ago.
Robin stood and dusted off his legs with some idle swipes from the backs of his hands. Unlike Rabbit, he didn’t show any surprise at Lucille’s transformation. I would have expected a little more concern facing an annoyed dragon’s query. In his place I would have at least taken a step back at Lucille’s tone, and I was married to her.
Though, with all the body swapping, I wondered if that was still the case. Technically, under Lendowyn law, whoever was in the body of the princess was married to whoever was in the skin of the dragon—the other dragon. What happened when the princess’s body was gone?
Robin, verbose as usual, had been talking while my mind vanished down its own tangent. “I came to render what aid I could to the opponents of my less than beloved uncle.”
“You escaped from the inn.”
Robin shrugged. “Forgive my wandering soul. The young lady is a fine listener, but for conversation she has her faults. Boredom and I have never been boon companions. I decided to visit my uncle’s realm, to see how sooth was your tale of imminent doom. Perhaps learn something of interest to my new companions.”
“Really? You expect me to believe that?”
“Why should you not? Here I sit with all of you, unbound and of my own free will. And after assisting your squire and handmaid to rescue this grumpy sot.”
“Watch your tongue, half-breed.” Elhared snapped.
“Is this true?” Lucille asked Krys.
“Yes,” Krys said. “We got to the cage, but there was no way to open it. Couldn’t bend the bars or find a door. We drank two or three rounds of the tea—and it felt like we struggled for an hour before Robin showed up. I still don’t know how he opened it.”
“The doors to such a prison cannot be opened by mortal blood,” Robin explained.
“But you weren’t slowed down like the elves?”
“One advantage of my heritage. With one foot in the mortal realm, and one foot under the hill, I can traipse the edge between those worlds as I will. I could walk back there now with a single step. I stay simply because I hope you see me as an ally.”
“Why?”
“To inconvenience my uncle, of course.”
Lucille settled back on all fours and stretched to fill nearly two-thirds of the clearing. She twisted her long neck so that her head was more or less level with Robin’s body. Her new skull may have been smaller than the last dragon’s, but her teeth were no less sharp, and I sensed her jaws still had the strength to bite a man in half. “Then answer me this, Robin Longfellow. How did you know to address me as ‘Your Highness’?”
Everything fell silent. I think the half-elf would have suffered some unfortunate violence had he hesitated even a moment in answering Lucille’s question. He didn’t. He prattled on as if there wasn’t any potential threat in giving a wrong answer. “Well, of course you’re the Dragon Prince of Lendowyn, you’re known far and wide, aren’t you? Princess Frank told me some of what evil befell you, I assume that she found some magics in that musty wizard town to free you from what evil ensorcelment caused the death of Prince Daemonlas. Where is the princess? Back at the inn, I suppose?”
That actually made sense.
We had never let on to Robin that we’d been anything other than Princess Frank. Of course that meant he’d assume the Dragon Prince was still at large. If Krys led a dragon to meet him, who else would it be? It wasn’t as if he had ever met Lucille in the other dragon’s skin. He’d have no idea how different she looked now.
Elhared had made some comment about it, but Robin had probably missed it.
“Frank will be along later.”
“Come on,” Elhared snapped. “Can we dispense with the games?”
Lucille whipped her head around to look at Elhared.
“Trust me, my princess, you are not nearly as accomplished a liar as that black-clad fop.”
“Are you accusing me of—”
“Forgive me, Your Highness. Being dead for over a year has frayed my diplomatic skills.”
“You never had any,” Lucille said.
“Perhaps. But it is very clear to me what has happened here.”
“Care to enlighten us?”
“Care to release my bonds?” Elhared raised his wrists.
“We could give you back to the elves,” Krys said.
Elhared tilted his head in Krys’s direction and said, “The children are new. Is that what the Lendowyn treasury can afford now?”
“It’s in your interest to talk to us.”
He leaned back and said, “I know. And I know that it is not in your interest to return me to the elves, whatever ultimatum Timoras has given you.”
Oh crap. He knows.
Shh. Let me deal with it.
“Elhared, I am losing patience with you.” Lucille growled deep in her throat, and steam rolled from her nostrils. I felt a burning pressure building deep in her throat. Robin and Rabbit edged away from Elhared.
“You’d go to all this trouble to retrieve me, just to roast me in a fit of pique? That’s not very good management of your limited resources. And what would you present the elf-king with?”
“Why would I free you?”
“You need my cooperation.”
“We do?”
“If all you want is to appease Timoras, you can just hand me over now and worry about the other half of his demands yourself.”
Sounds good to me.
“But who else is going to free Frank Blackthorne from that pretty skull of yours?”
Everyone was silent for the space of a half-dozen heartbeats. To my chagrin, Lucille seemed to actually consider it.
“Why would you help us?”
Lucille, this is not a good idea.
“I need you as well. The Summer Queen has cast me as the penultimate villain in her son’s demise, despite the fact I was otherwise occupied at the time.”
“That was apparent,” Krys said.
“If we cooperate, and you deliver the dragon to Timoras, you can testify who is truly responsible for the prince’s bad actions.”
“Who?”
Elhared raised his bound wrists again.
“What will keep you from trying to escape?”
Elhared snorted. “The same thing keeping me from doing so now. The fae’s misplaced desire for my blood.”
I felt Lucille swallow a ball of fire. “Fine.”
Don’t trust this guy.
I know, Frank.
“Rabbit, free his wrists. Krys, ready your sword.”
Elhared snorted and rubbed his wrists once Rabbit cut free his bonds. “You think a squire’s blade is more intimidating than a motivated dragon?”
“Now, tell us what you know about what is happening.”
Elhared nodded and looked up at the Dragon Lucille. “First, shall we consider the scales balanced at this point?”
“Are you kidding?”
“You and Frank killed me. I would think that was adequate payment for my political machinations. Given my rescue from elvish executioners, whatever your motive, I’m willing to forgive the dagger through the throat.”
“Do you have any idea of the
chaos you’ve caused?”
“How much of that can you lay at my feet? You certainly managed to survive the price on your head, and retain a peerage. Given your current state—one I imagine was an effort to attain—I can’t imagine you find your status as a dragon that unpleasant.”
“That’s beside the point.”
“Call the slate clean, and I’ll be more than willing to reprise my role as Lendowyn court wizard, Your Highness.”
I can’t believe he—
“You think the elves can be convinced you aren’t the one responsible for the prince’s demise?”
“No question, once they understand the circumstances.”
Wait? What? You’re going along with— After what he did to us?
The man is a loathsome opportunist. But he’s right.
What?
We need his cooperation.
That badly?
I want your body back, Frank.
I grumbled mentally as Lucille whipped out a taloned hand so that the point of one finger stopped just touching Elhared’s chest below the Adam’s apple. I couldn’t help but be gratified to see him wince.
“Wizard Elhared, the Crown of Lendowyn accepts your renewed pledge of service.” Lucille snaked her neck so that her face was less than a foot away from Elhared’s. Close enough that his wispy white hair fluttered in the brimstone breeze of her words. “Do not disappoint us.”
• • •
If one knew only about the catastrophic results of the last master plan of Elhared the Unwise, it would be excusable to believe that the man was a fool and an idiot. That would be unfair, as the man was not an idiot. He had figured out most of the existing situation before anyone had talked to him. He had known that his year-old spell had been reversed the moment he was no longer dead. He had written that spell based on the one he had studied to do the initial damage. It had been an emergency measure, in case the spell went wrong. He knew the touch of his own magic instantly.
He also knew what that would have done to the surviving people affected. The original dragon would return to his own body, and Lucille would return to hers, and Frank wouldn’t go anywhere, since his body had died along with Elhared.
“I’m impressed at the solution,” Elhared said. “You obviously found life as a dragon gratifying. At some point you must give me the details on how you managed—”