She felt the dragon boy’s cold hand slide around her throat, felt the prick of unsheathing talons.
“Let her go, brother,” Aethelbald said, his voice low and menacing. “Fight me instead. I am weaponless, you see.”
“Unlike before, eh?” The yellow-eyed boy spat, and flame flashed by her face. “You think he will help you, little princess?”
She began trembling, with fear or rage she could not say.
“He offered to help me too, long ago. I was young and foolish then, frightened at first by the change worked in me by our Father. And he, my noble Prince, my master, set his servants upon my trail, and they tracked me down until I was too weary to flee. Then he came to me himself. He came to me, claiming that he wished to help me. Hounded down, exhausted, I agreed to accept his aid and made myself vulnerable before him, swallowed my flame. But you know what he did?”
He spat fire again, singeing her hair. She screamed and struggled, but his hand tightened on her throat. “Not a step closer, Aethelbald, or I’ll snap her neck in two!” the yellow-eyed boy cried. “You know what he did, little princess? He took out his sword and tried to run me through. I submitted to him, and he tried to kill me! I trusted him, and he betrayed me!”
Smoke and ash filled her mind, blinding her eyes.
“Diarmid,” Aethelbald said.
“Death-in-Life eat your eyes!” the yellow-eyed boy screamed, and hot cinders burned the girl’s neck. “That is no longer my name!”
“You should have trusted me, Diarmid,” Aethelbald said. “But trust is not found in you, I fear. Not so with her. She longs to trust.”
“He’ll force you into anything, little sister, as he tried to force me,” the yellow-eyed boy said. “He’s more manipulative than you can imagine! Don’t listen to him or – ” He cried out and fell from her back, struck in the head by a large stone. She scrambled free of him, and smoke poured from her nostrils.
Roaring, he leapt at her again, his face contorted. But Aethelbald caught him and knocked him into a sprawl. The two of them rolled in the sand, fire spilling from the boy’s mouth, catching Aethelbald’s cloak aflame. He snatched the cloak off and flung it over the boy’s head, then turned to find her.
She felt the transformation taking place. No. Not in front of him! she screamed inside, but the fire burst from her.
“Una! No!” Aethelbald caught her about the waist and pressed her to him so that she felt the beating of his heart against her cheek, and for a moment she thought the change would fade, would stop.
But, in a painful wrench, she pushed free from him, screaming, “Don’t look at me. Please! ”
Flames from the mouth of a yellow-eyed dragon struck her full in the face, and the heat of them completed the work of her own fire.
Mighty wings tore at the night air, and she raised her heavy body up onto two legs. Whirling with surprising agility for her size, she sent a burst of fire into the yellow eyes of the other dragon. It roared in laughter rather than pain and swung at her with its claws like a sparring cat. She gnashed her teeth at him and flamed again, then leapt into the sky, pushing and pulling with her wings, leaving the yellow-eyed dragon and the Prince far behind. Only a harsh voice followed her.
“Burn, sister, burn! Don’t let him quench your flame!”
33
The dragon landed heavily in the sand in a faint, and moments later it dwindled into the form of a pale girl.
Waves slowly licked up the shore, inching closer until they pulled at the girl’s hair and tried to draw it back with them. Still the girl remained motionless. If she didn’t move soon, she might drown; humans were such fragile beings.
Hands reached from the waves and took hold of the girl. Cradling her, they turned her so that her head rolled out of the water. The dragon maid moaned and her brow puckered, but she did not wake.
It didn’t matter. The hands were patient, as patient as the old sea. They held the girl’s head out of the water, and the owner of those hands thought many thoughts. Dragons were vicious creatures, or so it was supposed. Yet, looking down at that white face, one could not be afraid.
“Poor creature,” a delicate voice murmured. “Poor little thing.”
The voice began humming to itself. The humming turned into singing, gentle as the water lapping the shore.
“Twilit dimness surrounds me,
The veil slips over my eyes.
The riddle of us two together long ago
How fragile in my memory lies.”
The pale girl’s face softened, and her dragon hands relaxed. The sun sank behind the water, and the dragon girl’s shadow grew longer and longer behind her. At last she moaned, stirred, and her eyes blinked open. Her body tensed and her gaze darted about, but the next moment she calmed again. “Is someone there?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“I cannot see you.”
“No.”
“Are you real?”
“Very real.”
“But I cannot see you!”
“Not with those eyes.”
A long silence followed. The gentle hands stroked hair back from the dragon girl’s forehead, and the girl breathed deeply.
“You sang my song,” the girl said after a long silence.
“It was written on your face, in the scales on your hand.”
“Are you Faerie?”
“Some call me that.”
“You aren’t human,” the dragon girl said.
“Neither are you.”
The girl sighed. “Not anymore.” Her mouth trembled, but she composed herself. “Have you a name?”
“Yes.”
“May I know it?”
“You’ll not be able to pronounce it with your tongue.”
“May I hear it anyway?”
The voice sang a quick succession of notes, soft and fast as a thrush’s song, but more wild and wet and deep. Unlike a human voice, this voice sang multiple notes at once, sweet chords and harmonies as well as melodies.
The pale girl closed her eyes and sighed. “That is a beautiful name.”
“And your name?”
The girl shook her head. “I’ve lost mine.”
“What was it, then?”
“Una, Princess of Parumvir. But that was before . . .” She held up her dragon hands, clenched them into fists.
“I am sorry.”
“No,” the dragon girl said. “No, it is just as well. This is what has been inside all along. It is just as well it came out. This way I can deceive no one. They all know what I am – even . . .”
“Yes?”
The pale girl sat up, and the gentle hands let her go. “Even the one who loves me. Even he has seen me for what I am.” Her voice was low and heavy but tearless. “He’ll not love me now.”
Another long silence fell between them. The dragon girl turned this way and that. “Are you still there?”
“Yes.”
The sun painted the clouds above vivid orange against a purpling sky. The dragon girl looked up and watched the colors change and listened to the silence and the water.
“Una?” the voice spoke at last.
“Yes?”
“Who is this one who loves you? Tell me more of him.”
The pale girl tucked her dragon hands under her wet robe. “He is a prince, a true prince,” she said. “Kinder than anyone I have ever met . . . merciful and kind.” She bowed her head, and her long, dripping hair covered her face. “Why am I speaking this way? Why am I saying any of this? It is foolishness. It is all foolishness now – so very late! If I had realized, if I’d had eyes to see, perhaps it would be different. I was such a fool. I thought I loved Leonard passionately; I thought I longed for his return.”
She put a hand to her eyes, wishing tears would come, though they would not. “But it was not Leonard’s voice I heard. All along, when the Dragon’s darkness was all around me, when I thought I would melt for the heat of my own flames, it wasn’t Leonard’s voice I heard. Not once. It wa
s the Prince of Farthestshore. It was for Aethelbald I waited. If I could have seen it just a little sooner, perhaps things could have been different, but now . . .”
She cursed bitterly between sharp teeth and pounded her fist in the sand. “It’s all just foolishness, and you are probably just some foolish dream of mine as well! Just as I dreamed Gervais cared for me, just as I dreamed my father could protect me, just as I dreamed Leonard would return, would be true – but it was all false!” She wrapped her arms over her head, pulling her hair with sharp claws.
“Una.”
The girl shook her head and squeezed her arms tighter.
“Una.”
“What?”
“I like the name. Your language is so harsh and sharp on my tongue that I rarely speak it. But Una is soft.”
The waves pulling back to the sea drew the voice away even as it asked, “Do you wish to be Una again?”
“Oh, it is too late,” the girl moaned. “I am trapped with this fire inside me. My heart is gone! It is too late for me now.”
The sea was pulling faster now. The voice came from a distance.
“The dragon must die,” it said.
The girl looked up, her eyes darting about. “What?” she called. “I cannot hear you. What did you say?”
“The dragon must die if you are to live. That is your only hope.”
The voice lingered above the water, then disappeared.
“Wait!” The girl leapt to her feet and rushed to the edge of the waves.
The sun reddened the water to lava, and the sky darkened like smoke.
“Wait, please!”
Sea gulls flew overhead, squalling with each other. The dragon girl stood alone on the beach, gazing out across vast stretches of dark water.
Then, from far below, deep under the sea, a voice, or perhaps a chorus of voices, weird and wild, rose and murmured among the waves.
“May my heart beat with courage
Before this torrent of shame,
May I find the warm sweetness of forgiveness
Between the ice and the flame.
“Beyond the final water falling,
The Songs of Spheres recalling,
When the senseless silence fills your weary mind,
Won’t you return to me?”
Strange and inhuman as those voices were, they brought the Prince of Farthestshore’s face vividly to mind. She bowed her head and wished again for tears, but they had long since burned away. When the moon rose high, the dark shape of a dragon lifted into the air, casting a hideous shadow on the sand far below.
–––––––
“Whatever you do,” Dame Imraldera had said just before Felix left the safety of the Wood Haven and returned across the Borders into his own world, “do not cross the Old Bridge. If you forget everything else I have told you, Prince Felix, do not cross the Old Bridge, neither coming nor going. Ford the stream instead. Do you hear me?”
He had heard her, so when at last he crossed from the Halflight Realm into the familiar Wood he had known all his life, he remembered what she had said. It was strange to feel the difference, crossing the Borders, for though the landscape about him did not alter, the air itself did, and he knew he was back in his own world once more.
A thrill rushed through him at being back where he belonged, and he hurried through the darkness of the Wood, hastening uphill as fast as he could go. He came upon the bridge and the stream, and realized that this was the first time he had ever been on the far side in all his years playing under these trees. But he remembered Imraldera’s words and did not cross the Old Bridge itself; instead he splashed through the icy water and tried not to flinch as water soaked down his boots and froze his feet.
He made his way up well-worn trails that he knew like the back of his hand; then the trees thinned around him and he neared the edge of the Wood where Oriana Palace’s gardens began. He slowed his pace, creeping more cautiously from shadow to shadow. His eyes searched each low-growing shrub and bramble, darted to inspect each tree trunk in case some Shippening sentry should be stationed near. But he saw and was seen by no one as he crept to the Wood’s edge and gazed from the safety of the trees up the garden path to his home on the crest of the hill.
Smoke hung in the air, rising from somewhere in the courtyard. The whole garden reeked of dragon smoke, and Felix gagged at the smell.
Quick as thought, he darted up the seven tiers of the garden, slipping from statue to shrub, still watching for those who might alert the Dragon or the duke to his presence. But no warning shout rattled his ears, no arresting cry. He came at last to the topmost tier, where once flowers had bloomed, up near the palace itself.
From this position he could hear the sounds of men in the courtyard, which was just out of his view. He could see lights in some of the upper rooms of the palace and knew that the duke and his men must have taken up residence inside. His father, he guessed, would be down in the basements – perhaps even locked away in the ancient, long-unused dungeons. Felix shuddered at the thought, and his hand slipped down to feel the hilt of the sword at his side, his own weapon returned to him when he had left the Haven and stepped out of Faerie.
Crouching in the shadows under an enormous burned shrub, Felix considered his options. He daren’t stay in the garden overnight, not with the Dragon walking the grounds. But the Shippening men had taken over the palace. How likely was it that they would be using the servants’ quarters in the south wing? He could slip in there and hide until he discovered where they kept his father. But how could he get in when all the doors were undoubtedly locked?
“Meaaa?”
Felix startled and bit his tongue hard. “Ow!” he growled and glared at the little form crouched beside him. “Monster, you dragon-eaten beast, bother you and all your next of kin!”
The cat raised its sightless face and rubbed a cheek against Felix’s ear, purring madly. Felix pulled his head away from the tickle of whiskers. “How did you get all the way back up here, animal? Did you come looking for Una?”
The cat continued to purr.
“Useless creature,” Felix muttered, turning back to survey the palace. “Wish you could show me a way inside.”
The cat slipped out from under the juniper bush and trotted to the palace. Felix watched his slinky golden form jump to a windowsill and slip through the windowpane like magic. Felix blinked, surprised. He scrambled up and ran from the safety of his bush across the yard to the window. When he reached it, he found that one of the panes was broken. Monster sat on the other side, smiling a smug cat smile. Felix put his hand between the shards of broken glass and found that he could just reach the latch inside. He undid it, and the window swung open.
The next moment he was in the kitchen, crouched beside the big fireplace, breathing in sharp relief while Monster rubbed across his knees.
The Dragon watched the kitchen window click shut. He turned and trod on silent feet deep into the night shadows. Why alert the duke? He would find the boy in good time, and in the meanwhile, why not let the young prince hope? Hope is such a beautiful dream that dies such a hideous death.
“Death-in-Life,” the Dragon whispered to himself – and smiled.
–––––––
Dame Imraldera sat in the white room before the window, the silver sword held across her knees. She waited, watching the moon rise over the vast stretches of the Wood. She sat without blinking, still as a statue.
“He’s here! He’s come!”
Little voices whirled about her head and tiny hands touched her face and motioned behind her. Imraldera rose and turned. “My Prince?”
“I am here.” Aethelbald stepped into the room. His clothing was worn and burned, his face lined with care. “I have come for my sword.”
34
The dragon princess landed on the beach, well outside the city. Smoke billowed as thick as thunderclouds overhead, turning the ocean a stormy black. Her once beautiful city was a mass of rubble and fire, made all
the more terrible by the memory of what it had been. She found herself thankful once more that she had no heart, for it would have broken in two at the sight.
On reluctant feet she crawled along the seaside up to the road, hardly noticing the difference when her body lost its grand proportions and again became that of a girl. Only when a foul-smelling wind blew, threatening to knock her off balance, did she realize and look down at herself. Her shape was human, but her hands and feet were scale covered, and she could feel scales on her neck and chest. Her fire flared cruelly at the sight of her own ugly limbs.
“No. I don’t want it anymore,” she hissed between sharp teeth.
But something inside her hissed back, How will you live without it now? What do you want instead? Food? Water? Such weakness!
The dragon girl felt the heat boiling up inside her and knew she could not stop it. It was her life now, the very foundation of her existence.
“Very well,” she murmured, and fire danced on her tongue. “Very well, but only a little more. I won’t need it soon. But for today I will burn.”
The fire grew as she neared the ruins of her city. Many of the buildings still stood, but they were darkened with ash, standing like lost orphans amid the wreckage. The destruction here was much greater than she had seen in Southlands. She felt she’d burst with fury at the injustice.
Good, the voice inside her murmured. You need your fire hot for this.
She picked her way down the smoldering streets, her dragon feet impervious to the heat and jagged edges of broken stone. She fixed her gaze on the hill above the city, where the walls of the palace still stood, and she could see the high gables and windows of her former home, ghostly gray against the smoke-darkened sky. The road up Goldstone Hill was long and deserted. Bit by bit, she picked her way to the palace gates, breathing in great gulps of dragon fumes. Each breath fed her own fire, which was by now a raging furnace in her chest.
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