Dragon Wizard

  “He came. Into my kingdom. To make. Ultimatums.”

  “You’re right. Frank has been a bad influence on you.”

  Lucille followed Krys into a clearing where a pair of horses stood bridled and tied to a large fallen tree. One horse had a saddle and saddlebags ready. Nearby, a pile of extra bridles and saddlebags waited. Lucille stopped and dropped her saddle by the pile of extra equipment. “Where’s Rabbit?”

  “Getting a third horse, I presume.” Krys walked over and started positioning her saddle on the second horse.

  “We can’t wait long,” Lucille said, lifting the pendant to look into it. “Getting to Fell Green—even at full gallop—might take most of the time he gave us.”

  “And then we hand over Frank and Sir Forsythe?”

  Lucille shook her head. “I’m hoping that knowing what happened with the prince and his spell might show some way out of this.”

  “Do you really think Frank is out there attacking border towns?”

  “I don’t know—”

  Lucille was interrupted by a neigh and the sound of hoofbeats. Rabbit came into the clearing, leading horse number three. She looked at Lucille with an expression that conveyed awareness that something had gone very wrong.

  “Change of plan,” Krys said as she finished strapping the bags and saddle on the second horse. “We’re leaving now. Get that horse ready.”

  Rabbit looked from Krys to Lucille.

  “We have an ultimatum from the elf-king. And my father may be angry enough to send a team of guardsmen after us if he figures out where we’ve gone.”

  Rabbit’s eyes widened and she got to work putting a bridle on the new horse. Lucille looked over at Krys, who had finished with the second horse and was busy now with a knife, carving a series of cryptic symbols on the trunk of the dead tree.

  “What are you doing?” Lucille asked.

  Thieves in any given area, especially those who belong to a guild, all have a native code to pass messages back and forth. Most thieves are illiterate, but most learn a series of symbols that can communicate things like “guard dog” and “clients at this inn aren’t worth the trouble.” They aren’t as arcane or elaborate as the glyphs used by wizards, but they’re just as impenetrable to the uninitiated. Of course Lucille had no idea about any of that.

  Krys just explained, “I’m leaving a message for Laya and Thea that we went on ahead. So they can meet us at Fell Green.”

  Lucille shook her head. “No, don’t send them there without us. Going to Fell Green is dangerous enough when I don’t have to worry about my father sending guardsmen after us. And they’ll probably have two artifacts I don’t want falling into anyone else’s hands.”

  Krys stopped carving. “What then? They should go back to the castle?”

  “No. Tell them we’ll meet at the Northern Palace. It’s closer. We have to go back that way anyway, to go after the dragon.”

  Krys nodded and resumed carving her message.

  • • •

  We rode north largely in silence. Krys asked a question or two, but Lucille’s monosyllabic answers must have discouraged any further conversation. I knew the impossible time pressure ate at her, because every few minutes she would fondle the pendant around her neck. This left me with nothing to do, even as a spectator. As the same woods rolled by us for the third hour, I discovered that I didn’t need Lucille’s body to tell me to sleep.

  Apparently I could do that on my own.

  I realized that when I noticed I walked an overgrown path toward an overgrown temple, a temple I knew was on the wrong side of the Grünwald border. Behind me a woman’s voice asked, “Miss me yet?”

  I spun around and faced the Goddess Lysea.

  She wore a literally statuesque body, the same animated carving of personified sex and beauty that she had first greeted me with. This moving idol was normally a larger-than-life marble sculpture stationed behind the altar in the half-ruined temple on the hill behind me.

  Right now she towered over me, the perfect curves of divinely fleshy marble reminding me painfully that my dream-self wore my original male body. She reached down and trailed fingers too warm to be stone across my trembling cheek.

  Did I mention that all she wore was a carved garland of flowers in her hair?

  “Is this a dream?” I asked. “Or another vision?”

  She gave a dazzling smile and whispered in my ear, “Are you thinking of the consequences of acting on what you’re feeling right now?”

  “Uh—” Between the warring feelings of lust and fear I wasn’t able to find any coherent words.

  She placed her finger on my lips and whispered, “If what I say is important, does it matter what I am?”

  She lowered her finger and kissed me on the lips. I probably would have blacked out if I hadn’t already been unconscious.

  “You do know you aren’t mine to claim, don’t you?”

  I shook my head and looked around at the changed landscape. We stood on a ridge now, looking over a vast plain. An army gathered below us, thousands of men and horses preparing a tent city. I saw the banners of a dozen kingdoms.

  “Is this happening now?” I asked.

  “Is that the important question, Frank?”

  I looked toward the horizon and saw, in the distance, the new dragon-bearing banners of Lendowyn over a much, much smaller force. No, this wasn’t happening now, the logistics of massing a force this size required weeks . . .

  “But why?”

  “Are you understanding now?”

  This went far beyond the provocation caused by events at the banquet. I’m sure, in a few cases right now, angry kings, counts, and dukes were starting to organize their forces. But I knew the noble mind well enough to know that the death of one or two diplomats or members of the court would, in almost all cases, be a simple pretext for some campaign that had already been planned. An excuse to seize some land or treasure that had been coveted beforehand.

  That’s not what Lysea showed me. Below us was a response to a genuine military threat.

  “The dragon,” I whispered. “He’s attacking our neighbors, and it’s a direct attack by the Lendowyn Crown.” I looked down and studied all the banners and saw colors from the north, west, and east. “But how could one creature . . .”

  “Do you understand what you presume?”

  “It’s not the dragon?”

  She took my hands. When I looked away from her I saw another army moving through a city of spun-sugar spires. When I turned away from the tall forms in too-elaborate, too-shiny armor to see where they were going, I saw darker siblings wearing leather armor, weaving through the gnarled trunks of an ancient wood.

  “Oh crap,” I whispered, as two armies’ worth of elves converged on the hillside that demarked the border between the bright city and the dark woods.

  “What is more dangerous than a love denied?” Lysea asked.

  “Is this happening now?”

  “Does time mean what you think it does here?”

  “Why are you—” I was about to ask why she insisted on answering my questions with more questions, when I realized what she meant. Time traveled slower in elf-land, under the hill. The time I’d been there, weeks had sped by for the mortal world while I had only been there for a few hours.

  The hourglass.

  “We may just have time!” I shouted as I turned to Lysea. “And that would suit the elf-king’s sense of humor, wouldn’t it?”

  She smiled at me and I realized things had gotten way too cold. I looked around, and we stood on a ledge on a barren mountainside. “Where is this?”

  “Don’t you see?”

  In dim twilight I saw a crumpled, broken body half hidden in a niche in the rocks. I turned away.

  “You know now?”

  I nodded, because I knew with the certa
inty of dreams that the corpse I looked at was my own. “How do I stop this?”

  She reached down and lifted my chin so I looked up into her face.

  “Above all else, what does any god want?”

  • • •

  I woke and for a moment, a mane of black hair dominated my vision.

  Lucille jerked upright and I saw that was a literal mane, belonging to the horse she rode upon. Lucille shook her head and blinked as if she had just snapped awake herself.

  A shout cut through my sleep-induced disorientation.

  “Your Highness!” Krys’s voice came from somewhere to our right.

  “I’m fine,” Lucille snapped without looking in her direction.

  “No, you’re not.” Krys rode up so that she was even with us. I saw her just out of the corner of Lucille’s eye. “You almost fell off.”

  “You’re exaggerating.”

  “Look down. Your right foot isn’t even in the stirrup anymore. And where are your reins?”

  Lucille blinked and looked down at her empty hands. “What?”

  Krys walked her horse in front of ours and I realized that we weren’t moving. Lucille looked down and we saw Rabbit standing next to our horse, holding the dropped reins and patting the animal on the neck. She looked up at us with a half-smile and shook her head.

  Krys sighed. “You’re lucky he’s well trained.”

  “Yeah . . .”

  “We have to make camp. You’re in no condition to continue.”

  “We can’t stop. Running out of time.”

  Look at the pendant, I thought at her. If my dream-vision meant anything straightforward, it would be that.

  “I know, we only have a day,” Krys said. “But you still need rest.” She yawned. “We all do.”

  Lucille lifted the elf-king’s pendant up from where it hung around her neck. Yes. She squinted at the small hourglass and said, “By this we only have . . .” She trailed off, staring at the slow-moving sand.

  “Your Highness?”

  “That elf bastard!” she snapped so viciously that Rabbit winced.

  The implications of my dream were right. The black sand had barely begun to coat the bottom of the empty chamber, only very slightly more than had been there when she had first looked at it. Judging by the angle of the sun it was evening, nearly a half day gone since the elf-king’s appearance at dawn . . .

  A half day in the mortal realm.

  Time flowed a bit more leisurely under the hill, where Timoras held court. A day in the Winter Court could be a week, a fortnight, a month . . .

  The elf-king had declined to specify whose day his ultimatum entailed.

  Typical.

  Lucille leaped off her horse.

  “If it wasn’t an act of war I’d strangle that smug inhuman ass.”

  “What is it?”

  Lucille yanked the pendant over her head and threw it, chain and all, at Krys. Krys caught it out of the air.

  “We have time. He’s having a joke at our expense.”

  Krys peered into the pendant. “It’s falling up?”

  Lucille shook her head and rubbed her eyes. “No, it’s just falling under the hill.”

  “Huh?”

  “His day. Not ours.” Lucille sighed. “Let’s make camp. I’m about to drop.”

  • • •

  After tying the horses at the edge of a clearing where they could graze, Lucille spread her bedroll under a sheltering tree and flopped down. She hadn’t so much as removed her boots, but just the act of lying down made our muscles melt as if we had returned to my featherbed at the castle. She let out a long sigh.

  A grunt came from a few feet away, and Lucille turned our head so we could see what it was.

  Krys had slid down to sit, leaning her head back against the same tree. Despite her closed eyes, she noticed Lucille’s attention. “Rabbit has the first watch, Your Highness.”

  Lucille glanced back toward the clearing. Rabbit sat on a fallen log, honing a knife with a whetstone. I don’t know how Lucille saw her, but I thought her time with the court over the past few months had done her some good. She was still wiry, but it seemed more muscle than bone. Her black hair had filled out and now hung in a single thick braid between her shoulder blades. Her almond eyes sparkled in an impish face that no longer seemed gaunt. The only things marring her appearance were the small ugly scars on the corners of her mouth, left there by the thugs who had taken her tongue.

  Lucille leaned back and closed her eyes.

  Someone sniffled next to us. Lucille turned to look at Krys again. Krys had changed, too, over the past few months. Like Rabbit, she had lost the gaunt look all the girls had suffered from in midwinter. Also, she was at least a year older than Rabbit, and a decent food supply had fueled a growth spurt that had gained her at least a couple of inches in height. That meant she was taller than Lucille now, though that didn’t say much. She had allowed her hair to grow in, and now wore it in a style reminiscent of the Lendowyn guard—still very short in front, and no longer than a couple fingers’ width around the rest of her head. That, combined with the armor she chose to wear, made her appear much more the young squire than royal handmaid. Not that she ever looked the part of handmaid, or played the part, for that matter.

  She had grown too much to be called boyish.

  At the moment the only thing that detracted from her appearance as a handsome young man was the shiny smears on her cheeks.

  “Krys?”

  Her hand went up to wipe her eyes and she turned half away from us. “I’m fine.”

  “What’s the—”

  “I’m not crying.”

  Lucille sat up. “Krys, it’s all right to be upset.”

  “I’m not upset!”

  “Krys?”

  “I’m angry!”

  “I understand.”

  Krys sniffed into her hand and nodded. “I know you do.”

  “We’ll find out what this scroll was meant to do and where it came from. Then we will find Frank.”

  “He’s gone,” Krys whispered.

  I’m right here!

  “Sir Forsythe may have caught up with him by now.”

  Krys turned her head to glare at Lucille. “You know that wasn’t Frank.”

  “No, we don’t—”

  “Yes, we do.” Krys snapped. “You really think it’s Frank out there torching villages?”

  Lucille opened her mouth and closed it. She shook her head. As she blinked I felt a wet heat in the corners of her eyes.

  No, please, I’m still around! Lucille! Can’t you hear me?

  “Yes,” Lucille whispered.

  “I’m sorry, but you know that couldn’t have been him.”

  “It has to be, otherwise . . .”

  “He’s gone,” Krys said, her tone so flat and final it left Lucille speechless.

  Krys’s voice softened a little. “I know hope. I know how much we seem to need it. I felt it when they took my dad. I hoped for nearly ten years, before I gave up. And the thing is, the longer you hold on to it, the worse it gets when you have to let go.”

  Lucille!

  Lucille cried silently as she nodded. “And we don’t have that kind of time.”

  “But we’ll find out what happened,” Krys said quietly.

  They were quiet for a long time before Krys asked, “Why?”

  “What?”

  “Why would the prince do this?”

  That’s a damn good question.

  Lucille closed her eyes and sighed. “I don’t know.”

  “Get some sleep,” Krys said.

  We’re in the same skull! Why don’t you hear me?

  Lucille didn’t respond to my cries. She just lay down. Before she shut her eyes again, I thought I saw Rabbit standing a
nd staring at us, but it happened too quickly for me to be certain what we saw.

  After several minutes it was clear that Lucille was sound asleep. After a while in darkness, I joined her.

  CHAPTER 8

  Lucille woke up before dawn, sometime before I did. I came to awareness realizing that she was holding up the elven pendant, staring into its depths. The sky above was dark and overcast, and the light came mostly from a fire that the girls must have made while we slept. I saw it dimly refracted in the depths of the pendant. The fire was weak, but enough to see the very slight movement of sand within the hourglass.

  I wondered what Lucille was thinking.

  Probably wondering how to meet Timoras’s demands, as impossible as they are . . .

  What?

  If I could move, I would have jumped out of my skin at the unfamiliar voice. It didn’t sound so much a whisper as someone—a woman’s voice—very far away.

  Who?

  I wanted to turn my neck and look, but Lucille kept her attention annoyingly on the very boring hourglass.

  Is there someone there?

  Frank?

  Lucille was lucky that she was in control of all our bodily functions, or we would have had to clean some sheer terror out of our leather. I had no voice, but somehow I was talking to someone . . .

  More to the point, they were talking back.

  This did not bode well for my sanity.

  Who’s there? Who’s talking?

  I’m not imagining . . .

  The tiny voice faded into inaudibility.

  Lucille? I screamed in my mental voice. Can you hear me? Is that you?

  . . . no, it’s me . . .

  Who?

  The tiny voice was gone.

  “Me” who? Please, answer me.

  Something caught Lucille’s eye and she lowered the pendant. She turned her head to look next to us. Krys and Rabbit had traded positions during the night, and Rabbit had been sleeping on her own bedroll next to us.

  She wasn’t sleeping now.

  Rabbit had turned to face us, eyes wide and mouth half open. She appeared to pale in the dying firelight.

  “Is something wrong?”

  . . . Frank? . . .

  The sound was a very distant mental scream. But I saw Rabbit’s lips move very slightly as I heard it.