“I said . . .” Lucille’s voice was hoarse and raspy as she pulled herself up over the ledge. Even at this distance, I heard the skin sizzle as it touched the still-hot stone. She was nearly bald now, her blonde hair little more than sooty streaks across a blistered scalp—a scalp that healed and regained its normal color as I watched. “. . . you have to do better than that.”
Lucille stood facing the dragon again. Her upper body had been burned, and badly. She didn’t heal as quickly from that, but those wounds still faded as I watched. She stood now, her clothes charred rags, looking up at Sebastian with a scary smile.
“No. You can’t . . . That’s just not possible . . .”
It wasn’t, I thought. But she hadn’t borne the brunt of the dragon fire. She must have jumped and dangled from the ledge as Sebastian attacked.
“You’re also a cad,” she continued as if she hadn’t been interrupted.
“W-What?” Sebastian’s voice was filled with complete confusion now.
“Your ‘harem’? Green and Blue fruitlessly searching for my friends right now? Do they know why you abandoned them?”
“I did not abandon—”
“You left them to become Elhared’s princess.”
Sebastian let loose with the fire again, but now I saw Lucille move. It took close to a second for Sebastian to aim, open his mouth, and let loose, but Lucille had been watching him, and seemed to know when the flame was coming before Sebastian did.
She rolled and dodged, and only got splashed by the edge of the fire. The dragon, in theory, could have swept the fire to follow her, but she had rolled right into a blind spot where Sebastian couldn’t see her through his own flame.
I couldn’t believe it.
No, actually, it made perfect sense. She had been this dragon. She knew what it was to belch fire, and what she could see when she did. Lucille had had over a year to grow familiar with how the dragon moved and reacted. In that same year I’d been doing what I could to train her old body so it was probably in better shape now than when I had first gotten it. The healing provided by Lothan’s gift was an edge, but it might not have been the decisive one.
She dodged and tumbled away from the dragon’s flame a couple more times, yelling taunts and insults to keep him focused.
She’s stalling.
I looked at the deep purple sky. The moon should be here any moment. She was tiring him, making him use up his reserves of flame before she changed again. She was right. She made a much better dragon than he did.
Come on, I urged her. You just keep it going for a little longer and then—
I heard a horrible screech from above. I looked up and saw a giant green lizard diving out of the twilit sky.
CHAPTER 31
It all seemed to slow down as I watched.
The green dragon fell on the battle between Lucille and Sebastian. She opened her mouth to add her fire to Sebastian’s.
Lucille saw her coming and dove underneath Sebastian, between his legs.
The entire ledge blossomed with fire.
As the green dragon cleared the top of the cliff above us, I saw a glint of metal and heard a cry.
Sir Forsythe.
The knight—my knight—leaped from the top of the cliff above us as the green dragon dove past his position. He arced into the air holding the black sword Dracheslayer in both hands, point aimed downward. The runes etched in its blade glowed like hot coals as he landed on the green dragon’s neck. Dracheslayer plunged in, just behind the base of her skull before the dragon knew what hit her.
The green dragon slammed into Sebastian’s ledge face-first, shattering the heat-weakened stone and continuing downward in a shower of gravel, leaving Sebastian perched on a rocky outcrop barely big enough to hold him.
At some point in the descent, Sir Forsythe had leaped aside and landed on the upper ledge where Rabbit and Laya had been. He still held Dracheslayer. He pointed the weapon at the black dragon.
“As I said to my liege, ‘One at a time.’”
Sebastian howled in fury and sprayed fire up at Sir Forsythe. I wasn’t worried much. Now that Sir Forsythe held the sword Dracheslayer, dragon fire could do nothing to harm him. Sebastian made a furious effort, producing a massive jet that splashed up toward the ledge Sir Forsythe stood upon. For the space of nearly a minute, Sebastian’s flame turned night into day.
The fire subsided and Sir Forsythe stood astride his rock. Everywhere around him the cliffside was stained jet black with soot, except for a sharp circle centered on Sir Forsythe and Dracheslayer that remained free of any sign of damage.
“Now foul beast,” Sir Forsythe said, “Prepare to face the wrath of—”
Sir Forsythe’s words were cut off as a giant foot with blue scales and talons the length of my forearm scooped him off the ledge. Dracheslayer tumbled from the knight’s hands as the other dragon lifted him off into the sky. I yelled something in frustration as the blade tumbled and struck the side of the mountain.
To my horror the glowing blade broke as it hit five hundred feet below. The halves of the blade flared red, then went dull as they tumbled the rest of the way to disappear into the cloud of dust that was just settling around the green dragon’s body.
Sebastian howled. It was a sound to make my ears bleed and tear the bowels free from my body. Gravel tumbled down the cliffside as his wail shook the stones loose. Looking up, I saw the beast spasming, muscles locking. He leaped upward, frantically beating his wings. As he lifted off the stone in a panic, I saw Lucille crouched between his legs, all her hair and clothes burned away, showing some wounds that were still struggling to heal.
Not all her clothes. I saw the end of her belt in her hands. The other end of the belt I couldn’t see, but it rose with Sebastian. She held on to the belt, and her arms rose with it to give a final jerk, tightening it around something as it dangled from beneath Sebastian.
Sebastian’s wail of pain rose so many octaves it became inaudible despite its volume.
I winced. Dragon or not, there are some places you never want a tourniquet.
Sebastian cried and tumbled in the air, tearing at himself with his talons so desperately that I winced again. He almost fell down next to the green dragon before he threw a broken strip of leather away so hard that it cracked like a whip. He wheezed as he beat his wings to bring him back up to Lucille’s level.
“I. Will. Kill. You.” He panted as he hung between the cliffside and the distant mountain.
Lucille stood on the broken shelf of rock, naked, unarmed, nowhere left to dodge. She stood straight and looked Sebastian in the eye. “No,” she said with a silver glint in her own eye. “You won’t.”
Sebastian tried to immolate her, but his breath came out in a cough and little more than a roil of smoke. He had exhausted his flames.
“I can still crush you to a pulp!” he screamed as he dove at her.
Lucille smiled.
I realized that the mountain behind Sebastian was to our east, because the silver glint in Lucille’s eye was a reflection from the bright sliver of moon peeking just over the mountain’s shoulder.
If I didn’t know what was coming, I would have thought Lucille had started to cower just before Sebastian’s hand slammed her into the cliffside, pinning her with such force that the remaining ledge crumbled away.
But I knew that what I’d seen hadn’t been her ducking her head and raising her arms.
Her back and shoulders had been growing.
Sebastian didn’t notice—or just ignored—the second set of arm-like growths springing from her back, or the lengthening limbs and torso. In his fury he just forced his own head over hers and snapped his jaws shut.
Or tried to.
His jaws didn’t close completely. His teeth bit into the flesh of Lucille’s neck, flesh that was red, scaled, and rippling with muscle. That neck
kept growing as her torso swelled, pushing Sebastian’s hand away from the cliffside.
I stared in horrid fascination as the black dragon’s monstrous jaws were slowly pushed apart by the growth of Lucille’s own skull. Then a white-hot glow erupted inside Sebastian’s mouth, so bright I saw the light through the skin of his cheeks. Flame shot through his nostrils and his head popped off of Lucille like a cork flying off of some overfermented wine. He fell off her, hand going to his face.
“My noth! My noth!”
Lucille pushed gracefully off the cliff, launching herself into the air almost as if she was swimming. As she did, she spat out a leathery flap of flesh. “Hurts when the backwash hits the sinuses?”
Sebastian shook his head. “Thith ithn’t happening!”
She dove suddenly, striking quicker than I could follow. A blur, then she swam through the air on the other side of the dragon and Sebastian bled from a half dozen parallel slashes across his face and neck. He didn’t seem to notice. He flew upward, away from her, “You’re not the printheth!”
“I AM PRINCESS LUCILLE OF LENDOWYN!” she screamed, in a fury that would make the Dark Lord Nâtlac shy away. She looped, became a blur again, streaking toward him. She slammed him into the cliff above me, raking another series of gashes along his back. He tried to push off, but Lucille fell on his back and her head dove at his shoulders like a giant snake snapping at a rat in a hole. In this case the rat was the joint where Sebastian’s right wing met his shoulder.
He screamed as her jaw clamped on the base of his wing and twisted.
He tried to turn his head to bite at her, but he was too slow and she sprang off into the air and his jaws clamped on nothing. She spiraled around above us, looking down.
She was a magnificent sight, red and lithe and graceful. Sebastian, for all his size, seemed pathetic now. One broken wing draped itself, twitching, across his back. His wounds bled freely, spilling down the cliff, some pooling on my ledge now. One eye was swollen shut, and a third of the teeth in those massive jaws were broken and missing.
Lucille called down, “Frank?”
I waved up at her and called out, “I’m fine!” The shout made me cough and wheeze. I wasn’t fine. I was half past ancient. But if I had to choose between decrepit and dead, I wasn’t going to choose dead.
Sebastian’s skull turned toward me. “Francith? You’re Franthith now?”
“Funny how things work out,” I said.
“Why I thould—”
I held up a hand and pointed at the sky, “You really want my husb—my wife to keep killing you?”
He glanced up at the orbiting Lucille and stopped moving.
Serves you right, I thought.
I sucked in a breath and called up, “Do you see what happened to Sir Forsythe or that blue dragon?”
“No sign of them.”
I was about to call her down to grab me so we could look for them. Sebastian wasn’t going anywhere. My thought was interrupted by a sound on the ledge behind me.
I spun around to face the Elf-King Timoras bringing his hands together in slow and deliberate applause. “I will say, Francis Blackthorne, you are never boring.”
CHAPTER 32
Timoras clapped, and I saw the half-elf Robin Longfellow leaning against the rock wall a few steps away.
“I wouldn’t worry overmuch about your knight,” Robin said with a cryptic half-smile.
I collected myself. This was the plan. There was an incipient war to deal with, and I had told him to try to bring someone from the Winter Court back.
That he did.
I gave the elf-king a bow and said, “I prefer Frank, Your Majesty.”
“And I can’t tell if you’ve become more or less insolent.” He folded his arms and cocked his head. “And I have a war to manage, so make your parley quick.”
I pointed up at the cliff wall, at Sebastian. “You wanted the dragon? Take him.”
“Oh thit, wait a—”
The elf-king waved a hand and the dragon froze in place. Even his blood stopped dripping. “Thank you. I will.”
“So we can stop this war now?”
“You know what else I asked?”
I sighed.
“Since you did not give me what I asked—”
“You have the one responsible already!” I snapped.
“What?”
“I’ll start with a question for you. Did it ever occur to you, or Queen Theora, that the prince was acting on his own initiative?”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Another question,” I asked him. “You remember that ring I stole for you?”
“Yes? What does that have to do with—”
“Was that your engagement ring?”
“Of course not,” he snapped. “It was . . .” He trailed off.
“Prince Daemonlas gave it to Queen Fiona, didn’t he?”
The elf-king stared at me. From the corner of my eye I saw Robin smile slightly. Yes, I remembered what you said about the prince and mortal women.
“You didn’t approve, did you?” I asked. “And when I say you, I mean you and your queen.”
And when I said “you and your queen” I meant “your queen.”
“The woman was a power-hungry harlot who cared for little but her own twisted needs. Besides, she was human. Ending that engagement is the one thing the queen and I have agreed on this past century.”
And I was ready to bet it bore no small part in the queen’s hostility to the mortal realm. “And let me guess, you couldn’t just order him to break it off.”
“That ring was an inviolate pledge as long as she wore it—”
“You couldn’t grab it, but I could.” I shook my head. “It didn’t occur to you that this might just piss him off?”
“Why? The game is ever played thus. Agreements are followed to the letter, are they not?” I caught something in his eyes, regret maybe?
“Yeah. I get that’s a big thing with the elves, especially elf royalty. Did you or the queen ever think that the poor sot fell in love with that evil bitch?”
“Explain.” He cocked his head slightly, urging me to elaborate. I had the feeling that our audience might consist of more than Robin, Lucille, and the frozen Sebastian.
“Love,” I said. “Pledging yourself heart and soul to another. Give them your life, the stars, the moon. Roses, sonnets, L-O-V-E, love!”
Timoras shook his head. “I honestly don’t think that ever occurred to the queen.”
And I bet she’s watching right now.
“The prince himself is the one responsible,” I said. “You had me steal that ring and break the engagement. Then you dropped me off right in front of Queen Fiona and her army so I’d end up killing her.”
“I’m still unsure exactly how you managed to do that.”
“Which means that the prince was more than a little annoyed with both of us. You connived to break his engagement and helped me to murder his beloved.”
“Now I didn’t plan for you to kill her, did I?”
“I think it made little difference to Prince Daemonlas. He wanted to embarrass you and the Winter Court, and he wanted to punish me. He was an easy target for Sebastian here,” I waved up at the frozen dragon. “He had a scroll to reverse the spell that had swapped us all originally. If the prince cast that spell at the banquet, he’d loose Sebastian the dragon to do all manner of havoc—ignite a war between Lendowyn and everyone else, probably killing me in the process. I don’t think the prince required much convincing to go along.”
Timoras nodded slowly. I think I was making his own arguments to the unseen Queen Theora. Just like an elf, make sure you convince someone else to do all the heavy lifting for you, and have them thank you for the privilege.
I looked up at Sebastian. “Unfortunately, Prince Daemon
las was too blinded by anger and vengeance to see that Sebastian never intended him to survive.”
Timoras followed my gaze. “So this creature plotted the death of my son?”
“And the war you’re about to start.”
“I see.”
“So there you have both the dragon and the one responsible for your son’s death. Just as you demanded.”
The elf-king sighed and seemed to deflate. “Thank you for telling me this.” Sill looking at the dragon he said, “We will find some suitable punishment.”
The tone of his voice chilled me so much that I almost felt sorry for Sebastian. Then he clenched his fists, and the Dragon Sebastian disappeared.
“If there is nothing else, Frank Blackthorne, I will make my leave.”
“So you’ll call off the war,” I asked with some measure of relief.
“Of course not.” His voice sounded weary.
“What?”
“The agreement was the dragon, and the one responsible, in the time allotted you. You are too late.” He turned and I knew if he took a step he’d disappear. I grabbed his shoulder.
“You dare touch me!?”
“There’s another agreement you have to honor.”
He slapped my hand from his shoulder. “I am done with you. There is no agreement.” His hand went to his side as he began to draw his sword.
“The one you made for the ring I gave you.”
His hand stopped.
“What do you speak of? That pledge is fulfilled.”
“Not quite,” I said.
“How do you mean?” His voice was low. I had his attention now.
Again I acted on a series of tenuous assumptions, but I didn’t have much left. I thought of the shattered mirror from my dream. “You remember, when I left you with Lucille, you gave me a mirror?”
“Of course. A mirror you saw fit to break before ever using it.”
Because you dropped me in the middle of an enemy army, I thought. Magic hand mirrors are generally not battlefield equipment. “Do you remember why you gave it to me?”