Dragon Wizard

“Yes.”

  “To contact you—”

  “Yes, yes, I know.”

  “Once I had gathered us all in one place—Me, Lucille, and Elhared.”

  “What is your point? To restore your body? It doesn’t exist anymore . . .”

  “If I returned to you with all the principals, you promised to set things back to my liking. We have myself.” I gestured up to the orbiting red dragon. “Lucille.” I reached down and picked up the blackened Tear of Nâtlac. “And here is what remains of the Wizard Elhared.”

  He almost shied away from the blackened gem. “You expect this to suffice?”

  I hoped that our earlier assessment of Timoras’s motives were correct. He didn’t want this war, he just found it politically impossible to do otherwise. He gave his ultimatum looking for a way out; a way to keep the queen from having her pretext for war.

  The original ultimatum might have played out, but I hoped that the elf-king would see the straw I held and see just enough left to grab.

  “You bargained for that ring on the queen’s behalf,” I said. “Should she not be willing to abide by the terms you set for it?”

  “You are dealing with me,” he said. I notice the pointed absence of any denial of my assertion.

  “I have performed in good faith my side of the agreement, can you do less?”

  “And do what?” he snapped in annoyance. “Restore your body? As I said, there is no body.”

  “And ‘set things back to my liking,’” I responded.

  He froze for a moment, staring at me. Then a smile slowly broke across his face. He actually chuckled.

  Then he laughed.

  I sagged with relief.

  “I assume,” he said, “that it would be to your liking if this war did not happen.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  He clapped his hands and said, “Done! Never let it be said that the Winter Court shies from its obligations. The queen shall be displeased, but at least I have a dragon for her to vent her frustrations upon.”

  He turned and took a step out into empty air. He paused a moment, then looked back over his shoulder and said, “Thank you.”

  Then he vanished completely.

  The Tear of Nâtlac, still dangling from my hand, had ceased smoking. A slight wind rose up and carried away flecks of ash from the now flat black surface. In less than a second, the entire thing had lost cohesion and disintegrated into a stream of black motes that floated away in the direction of the distant mountain.

  I dropped the chain.

  “You did it!”

  I looked up and saw Princess Lucille the red were-dragon perched on the cliff above. I smiled and waved at her. “You beat up a dragon, I just negotiated a cease-fire.”

  “You’re wonderful!”

  “Ahh, isn’t that in my job description? Princess, diplomacy, negotiation?” Raising my voice caused me to cough again.

  “I don’t think you’re the princess anymore.”

  I nodded. “It’s all good! I’m a guy again!” I looked down at myself, and it sank in just what guy I was. I leaned against the cliff wall next to Robin and sighed. I felt every year of Elhared’s age in my joints.

  I heard a sad note in Lucille’s voice, dragon or not. “I’m so sorry, Frank.”

  I dismissed it with a wave and a shake of my head. “You know I’m into destructive self-pity, don’t encourage me!”

  “Oh, Frank.”

  I felt a hand on my shoulder, and I looked up to see Robin’s too-pretty face. I wanted to slug him. “Are you all right?” he asked.

  I blinked a few times because his face kept going out of focus. “Of course. Didn’t you just see? Won the day!” I coughed and my voice came out in a hoarse whisper. “I just had to be separated from the woman—the dragon—crap, the person I love.”

  “What?”

  “She’s right here, Frank,” he said.

  “And I’m right here.”

  Lucille flew down to the end of the ledge holding me and Robin. “What are you talking about?”

  “Lendowyn law,” I choked out. “We’re no longer married. Your marriage is to that—”

  “What does that matter? We’ll annul the marriage.”

  “Then what, marry me?”

  “Of course.”

  “Look at me! I’m a wreck. I don’t even have Elhared’s magic to compensate for it!” The excitement was getting to me and I started wheezing. “He was probably only alive because of some sort of magic.”

  “Stop it! I don’t care about some stupid law. You’re my wife!”

  “You deserve better.”

  “I deserve you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I love you!”

  “I love you, too. But that’s beside the point.” I staggered a little and slid against the cliff wall.

  “Gods, Frank, did you inherit Elhared’s senility?”

  “No,” I gasped and clutched at my chest. “But I think I inherited his heart.”

  “Frank?”

  I slid down to the ground and Robin’s face became even more blurred above me as I gasped for breath.

  “Frank!” The dragon screamed, so far away.

  I closed my eyes and the darkness chased the pain away.

  CHAPTER 33

  I stood in the banquet hall in the Northern Palace. The stained glass was intact and there was no sign of a dragon rampage or crash-landing princesses. So I gathered that it wasn’t really the banquet hall.

  I turned around and wasn’t surprised to see Robin Longfellow.

  “You’re not really Timoras’s nephew, are you?”

  “Lies and disguise are sort of my thing.”

  “And you aren’t speaking in questions?”

  “What kind of disguise would it be if a simple conversation could trip me up?” He was King Alfred again.

  “That wasn’t what tripped you up.”

  “Oh? You saw through me?”

  I nodded, walked across the Lendowyn king’s throne room. The chest was right where we had left it. I closed the lid so I could sit down. My old bones ached. “I guessed, anyway. You disappeared from the inn just in time to appear to Dudley and his minions. You reappeared just as conveniently. Good thing I was right.”

  “How so?”

  “Leading the escape, returning with Timoras. Asking that of you was a long shot—since I doubted a real estranged half-elf nephew would have returned with him. And if you had walked under the hill to get him, you would have taken days or months. You had to be moving between the mortal realm and here.” I waved a hand at the world around me, which had become a wooded glen again.

  Lothan stood on a fallen log, again a large and very regal-looking fox. “So you planned for me?”

  “I improvise with what I have.”

  “Do you now?”

  “And those dreams were all you?”

  “Who else?”

  “Why?”

  “Do you know what the classical definition of a ‘hero’ is?”

  “I—”

  The fox held up a paw and sighed. Robin lowered his hand and used his hat to brush the dust from a stone that had fallen from the abandoned temple that now stood next to us. He sat down in front of me. “Forgive me, I tend to fall into the question thing. Force of habit. What was I saying?”

  He slapped himself with his hat and said, “Stop it!”

  He took in a breath and the wood creaked as the ship beneath us crested a wave. Salt spray glistened on his hair, which was longer and grayer, contrasting with the eyepatch he wore now.

  “See, Frank, you are a ‘hero’ now.” I could hear the emphasis on the word. “The gods have touched you, chosen you, and have pretty much used you as their plaything. Me included.”

  “But—”
/>
  “No buts,” he said, replacing a broad-brimmed hat on his frizzy red hair. He leaned conspiratorially over the campfire between us and whispered, barely audible over the chirping insects. “You’re mortal. We’re gods. You just have to deal with it.”

  “Why me?”

  He laughed, breath fogging in the winter air. Ice crystals danced in the air between us, catching the sunlight. “Don’t get maudlin. You’ve just been caught on the edges of a battle between Nâtlac and Lysea. It didn’t begin with doomed elven love, and it won’t end with your own happily ever after. Me? I just took a liking to you.”

  I opened my mouth and Lothan pointed across the table with a tankard of ale. “You’re going to ask why. I’m the patron of thieves, deception, and transformation, don’t you dare ask why.”

  I shut my mouth and glanced at the hearth. We sat inside The Headless Earl, and Lothan now looked the part of one of its scruffier denizens. “Following you about was just as much fun as I’d hoped.”

  “I’m glad I could amuse you.”

  The depth of my sincerity must have shown, because blacksmith Lothan set down his tongs, walked around the anvil, and said, “No self-pity, remember?”

  “I said that to Lucille.”

  Lothan nodded. “So you did.”

  “What now?”

  “You have a choice. Your story can end now and you pass on beyond to where all heroes eventually go.”

  “Die, you mean.”

  The gravedigger gave me a gap-toothed smile as he leaned on his shovel. “Or you can offer me something in return for another boon.”

  “What do I have left to give?”

  Ex-King Dudley twirled the ceremonial dagger in his fingers, casting complex shadows across the altar I sat on. “What does any god ever want?”

  The realization hit me. And, of course, if Lothan granted me the boon I wanted, I’d be in a position to grant it.

  I gave him a promise.

  In response he touched my shoulder and I fell against the grass. When he looked down at me, it was with Lucille’s face. I closed my eyes. “No, that’s just creepy.”

  “But you must receive your boon.” Lothan kissed me with Lucille’s lips.

  “Ahh!” I screamed, batting him away. God or not, some things are just too much. I sat up spitting. “Blagh. Ack!”

  “Frank?”

  I shook my head and blinked. Lucille knelt on the grass next to me, wearing only a too-loose chemise.

  “No. That’s going too far. Mortal or not! God or not!”

  “Frank?” she repeated and grabbed my shoulders. “Are you all right?”

  “No!” I spat again. “You make yourself into—then you—what . . .” I trailed off because Lucille stayed Lucille, and the grassy hillside remained the grassy hillside.

  After a few long moments, I said, “Lucille?”

  She looked at me as if she was going to repeat the question about Elhared’s senility.

  “Wait,” I said. “Last I saw, you were a dragon.”

  She pointed up at the dawn sun.

  “Were-dragon,” we said simultaneously.

  I rubbed my head. “I was unconscious?”

  “All night long.”

  I nodded, and realized my hands were tangled in actual hair, not the wisps that covered Elhared’s bald pate. I pulled my hands away and stared at them. They weren’t old and wrinkled, they weren’t dainty and feminine, and they were still familiar.

  “I-I’m me?”

  Lucille smiled, “You’re you.”

  I sprang to my feet and spun around. “This is some sort of vision again. Where is he? Where’s the Dark Lord?”

  Lucille got to her feet next to me. “Frank—”

  I spun to face her and jabbed a finger in her direction. “You’re Lothan!” I furrowed my brow. “Or Lysea? You’re mad I sent Evelyn packing?”

  “It’s really me, Frank.”

  “No. Look. You have hair!”

  “I have . . .” Her fingers brushed her unbound blonde tresses. They were a frizzy mess shimmering in the early morning light. “Oh, it came back this morning. When I changed back.”

  “And where’d that chemise come from?”

  She rolled her eyes. “I had to take it. Poor Sir Forsythe would have died of embarrassment otherwise.”

  “Sir Forsythe?”

  “My Liege! You’ve awakened!”

  I spun at the new speaker, and saw . . . Well, I guessed it was Sir Forsythe. I’d never seen him so . . . unkempt.

  His long blond hair had not grown back, either on his head or his face. He was naked from the waist up, and it was hard to tell where the streaks of soot ended on his torso and where the bruises began. His breeches had been torn in several places, burned in others. One boot seemed to have split open and was being held together by an improvised leather strap.

  He stood up from the midst of a pile of dirty, dented armor. He had a rag in one hand, and a gauntlet in the other. Half of the small armor piece was dull and soot-covered, the other half gleamed.

  “How are you still alive?” I blurted. “I saw that dragon carry you off.”

  “I have slain many monsters, My Liege. It’s what I do.”

  “I saw you lose Dracheslayer.”

  “Lulling the beast into overconfidence,” he said.

  I shook my head.

  “Believe him,” Lucille said. “He would have finished me off, too.” There was a hint of amusement in her voice.

  Sir Forsythe’s gaze dropped and his skin reddened. “Mistaken identity,” he said quietly. “I did not know Your Highness was yet another dragon.”

  “Fortunately we worked things out. You should have seen the poor man’s face when the moon set.”

  “This isn’t a dream,” I whispered.

  “Frank?”

  I patted my face, and my body, then my hands together. “I haven’t been pulled into some vision quest. This is real.” My voice rose. “It is real.” I ran up and grabbed Sir Forsythe by his considerable biceps. “You’re real!”

  “My Liege?”

  I ran back and grabbed Lucille’s hands. “You’re real. That dirty chemise is real.”

  “Yes.”

  I shook my head, openmouthed. After a moment I said, “How?”

  “You were there for most of it.”

  “No,” I said, “How am I . . .”

  Lucille’s eyes were shiny as she said. “I thought you died. I think you did.”

  “Died?”

  “You said something about Elhared’s heart and clutched your chest.”

  I nodded. “I remember that. Things went dark.”

  “You collapsed and stopped moving. Robin even closed your eyes. I may have gotten a little hysterical.”

  I think I was glad I missed that.

  “But Robin said he owed you something. He picked up your body—I mean Elhared’s body—and disappeared. I think I died a little myself, I screamed at the world from that cliff most of the night.”

  “That made Your Highness easy enough to find,” Sir Forsythe interjected.

  She nodded at the knight. “If it wasn’t for him snapping me out of it, I might not have stopped.”

  I looked down at myself, and the hillside. “Then when . . .”

  “After that unfortunate confusion,” Sir Forsythe said, “it was my duty to accompany Her Highness out of the mountains and back to her kingdom.”

  “At least until I can fly again.” Lucille shrugged and the neck of the oversize chemise slid off one shoulder. I reached up and put it back.

  “Just make sure you land before dawn,” I said.

  “Robin returned with you an hour or so ago.” She smiled and shook her head. “I’m afraid I did all my screaming and jumping and hugging while you were still unco
nscious.”

  “I feel cheated.”

  “I’ll make it up to you.” She threw her arms around me and squeezed.

  I hugged her back.

  “It was Lothan,” she whispered in my ear.

  “Yeah.”

  “He remade you like all those guards he made copies of me.”

  “God of transformation,” I replied.

  “Then,” she whispered, “just tell me her name.”

  I froze for a minute, caught off-guard by the question. Then it struck me. After everything she had no assurance that I was actually me. There had been so much body hopping and transformation in our short time together, how could she be certain I was who I said I was?

  “Rose,” I whispered back to her.

  She kissed me and we tumbled back on the grassy hillside. I kissed her back and we rolled, hugging each other so hard that it seemed as if we were trying to inhabit the same body again.

  Eventually we came back up for air, her on top of me, head resting on my chest. I noted from the corner of my eye that Sir Forsythe had returned to deliberately polishing the remains of his armor.

  “You’re you,” she said.

  “And you’re you.”

  She nodded. “That I am.”

  “Are you okay?”

  She lifted her head and looked down at me. “What?”

  “This,” I patted my thigh. “It’s what I wanted all along. I was never comfortable being the princess.”

  “You have no idea how happy I am for you, Frank.”

  “But this,” I patted her thigh and she squirmed a little. “You were so much happier as a dragon.”

  “You’re sweet.”

  “Can you even be the princess again?”

  She smiled evilly. “Frank, now I’m the princess and the dragon.”

  “Were-dragon. You only get to be the dragon a few times—”

  She silenced me by placing her finger on my lips. “I might only get to fly and breathe fire a few times a month now.” She leaned forward to whisper into my ear. “But I’m always going to be the dragon.”

  “I love you,” I told her.

  “Took long enough for you to say it.”

  “That’s not how you’re supposed to respond.”

  “As if you didn’t know I love you.”