Royal Rescue

by A. Alex Logan

  “So you’re not going to respect my decision. You’re going to choose for me.”

  “You may go, I said,” Queen Danya repeated, her tone as cold as her expression.

  Gerald glanced at Queen Mixte, hoping for a reprieve. She smiled at him but gave a tiny shake of her head. There would be no help from her.

  Gerald turned and left the hall without another word, and without giving either monarch a bow.

  It took him a long time to fall asleep that night. He was caught up in an endless loop of thoughts, tracing and retracing the same mental pathways as he tried to come up with a last-minute way to convince his mother he didn’t need to get married.

  Nothing came to him.

  Worst of all, he didn’t even know what she had planned for him. I should have just decided, he thought bitterly. I knew they would never actually listen to me. I could have gone with Erick. So what if it would only be a short-term solution? It would have given me time to think of something better. Now…I don’t know. Maybe they’ll tie me to Lila’s horse and make her cart me around. She probably wouldn’t even mind; it would give her so many opportunities to make me miserable.

  He finally dropped off to sleep out of sheer exhaustion as the sky outside his window began to lighten.

  When he woke up, he was no longer in his room.

  Chapter Three

  THE LIGHT COMING in through the window, the brightness that had woken him up, was falling full across his face: the window was in the wrong place.

  He sat up quickly and tried to get his bearings. He was wearing the same clothes he had dropped off to sleep in, and the bed was his familiar four-poster one. But nothing else was the same.

  The room was nicely furnished, with wall hangings, a thick rug underfoot, a plush upholstered chair and a sturdily constructed wooden desk.

  But it wasn’t his room. It wasn’t his furniture. The decorations weren’t to his taste. All of his personal items were gone, and there were no cats curled up on his blankets.

  That’s when he noticed the strangest thing about the room. It was round.

  “They stuck me in a tower,” he said aloud. “Oxa, oxa, oxa.”

  Gerald got up and went to the window. The view was of sand. Unending sand. There were no trees or streams or roads or mountains or anything at all to break up the monotony of the view. It was sand, sand, and more sand, as far as the eye could see.

  “They stuck me in a tower in the middle of a desert.”

  He closed his eyes, squeezed them shut, and thought, Maybe I’m still dreaming. But when he opened them, he was still there. In the tower in the desert. Alone.

  Gerald briefly considered throwing himself out the window, but it was only a fleeting thought, a passing fancy. I can always do that later…let’s wait until I’ve got the whole picture.

  He turned away from the window and began taking a more thorough inventory of the room. There was a chest at the foot of the bed, and he opened it to see piles of clothes and even a pair of boots. Not that I’m not going to be able to go outside… His heart clenched and he pushed that thought away and kept exploring. The desk drawers were stocked with paper, quills, and ink, although he wasn’t sure how he was supposed to send any letters he might write. He shifted the rug and found a trapdoor in the floor, and he heaved it up with a grunt. His grip slipped as he tried to set it down and the heavy wood crashed against the stone floor with a resounding thump. He froze instinctively, but nothing happened. There was no reaction to the noise. Because I’m alone, he reminded himself.

  He peered into the gap in the floor and saw a spiral staircase, lit like his room with the early morning sun. He slowly worked his way down the tower, exploring each new room as he came to it. There weren’t many. A tiny bathroom, a small kitchen, and a library.

  The library caught Gerald’s attention until he saw that, rather than Andinian or Common, most of the books were in Yevish, which—of course—he didn’t speak. That tells me where this tower is, though. It must be right in the middle of the Yevin Desert. No one lives out here…if Mother wanted to punish me, this was a good choice.

  He left the library with a sigh and kept going, but there was nothing more to find. Just the stairs and the stone walls of the tower. He went by about a dozen windows, small ones, large enough to let in the light at regular intervals. But they stopped abruptly once he got about halfway down. I guess this means I’m low enough to survive a jump from here. They can’t have me escaping.

  He slowly made the long climb back to his room. Nothing to read. Nothing to do. Nothing even to look at. I have got to get out of here or else I’ll go crazy.

  He caught sight of the open desk drawer, with the paper spilling out and he suddenly remembered Erick’s spell. A quick check of his pockets revealed he still had the yellow bead from his last letter from Erick. He wasn’t sure if he could use it to key the two-way message spell without the original paper, but what did he have to lose? If it didn’t work, he wouldn’t be any worse off.

  He tapped the bead against a sheet of parchment experimentally and began writing.

  Erick? Is your spell still active? I hope so. I’ve been stuck away in a tower in the Yevin Desert. I don’t suppose you want to come rescue me before you go off looking for a spouse?

  He let a large drop of ink fall on the paper under his few lines and waited, but there was no bright chiming noise and the ink didn’t start spreading out into letters and words.

  With a sigh, Gerald turned away from the desk. And screamed.

  There was a face in the window.

  “Honestly, Gerald,” it said. “Control yourself.”

  “Mother,” he said flatly, trying to match her own icy tone. It wasn’t hard this time. “I thought scrying us was forbidden. Of course, so is using magic on someone without their consent. How did you get me here, anyway?”

  “A sleeping draught and a simple transportation spell. Don’t act so put upon. You’re the one who chose not to play by the rules. Don’t even start complaining about your location. There wasn’t much available on such short notice.”

  “What do you want, Mother? Or are you here to gloat?”

  “I assume you would like to get out of that tower at some point, Gerald.”

  “Obviously.”

  “To do that, you must be rescued. And to be rescued, the rescuers have to know where you are. You did not fill out a portfolio. No one made a signpost for you. Will you cooperate now?”

  “What choice are you giving me?” he asked bitterly. “I’m surprised at you, Mother. I would have thought you would have filled everything out yourself.”

  “I admit, I did try to get everything sorted out ahead of time when it became clear you were going to stubbornly stick to your ridiculous attempt to opt out of a nonoptional event. However, it seems I don’t know you as well as I perhaps thought I did.”

  Gerald snorted. “You’ve never known me, Mother.”

  “Perhaps that’s true. After all, it turned out I didn’t even know the most pertinent information to put on your signpost. Who do you want to be rescued by, Gerald? A prince or a princess?”

  Gerald put his face in his hands. “I don’t know,” he said softly. “Neither.”

  “Either?” she said.

  Gerald wasn’t sure if she had actually misheard him or was deliberately changing his words, but he shrugged. What does it matter? The one is just as unsuitable as the other. “Either,” he echoed.

  “Well, that should speed things along, I imagine. I’ll get everything circulating. And remember: this is for your own good. I really do want you to find a suitable match, Gerald. And this is the way it’s done.”

  The window went white and then cleared again to show the desert beyond. There was no sign of Queen Danya or any indication a spell had been cast there.

  Gerald flopped on the bed and sighed.

  “I don’t want to be married!” he shouted at the wall. “I don’t want to fall in love! I don’t want to sleep with anyone! Why is
that such a problem for everyone?!”

  There was no answer.

  He hurled his pillow against the wall in frustration and then laughed at himself. “Honestly, Gerald,” he said, mimicking Queen Danya. “Control yourself.” He was not prone to tantrums. He’d always been overshadowed by his siblings, and as a result, he wasn’t nearly as spoiled as other royals he could name. Throwing pillows and shouting at the wall wasn’t really his style. Once he got a grip on his temper, he snatched up another piece of paper and began planning.

  First… I need to get out of the tower.

  Then… I need to get out of the desert.

  Then… I need to get out of this culture.

  He smirked. I have the feeling the first two are going to be much easier than the last… But first things first. Getting out of the tower.

  He turned back to the window, bracing himself this time in case anyone was looking back at him. But the only face in the glass was his own: a reflection. He walked over and tried to open it, but it wouldn’t budge. He ran his hands around the window frame, looking for catches or clasps, knowing there had to be a way for the rescuer to get into the tower—and get him out.

  After a few fumbling moments, he found the latch, undid it, and pushed the window open. It was a large window and it swung wide, letting a wave of hot air rush in, so different from the cool autumn air he had gone to sleep with, and so dry it felt like it was sucking every last drop of moisture out of his skin. He swallowed reflexively, already feeling thirsty, and he leaned over the sill to get a better look at his prison.

  The ground was a long, long way away, and a pile of boulders at the foot of the tower promised a painful landing if he tried to get out that way. He squinted at the boulders—where did all those rocks come from in the middle of the desert?—and then he blinked several times and squinted again. Did they move?

  While he was trying to convince himself it was heat haze making it look like the boulders had shifted, they suddenly reared up—and up—and up—and he finally realized they weren’t boulders at all.

  They weren’t even a they.

  It was a dragon.

  And it had decided to stand up.

  Gerald stumbled back from the window just in time for the dragon’s head to take his place.

  “Good dragon,” he said nervously. “Nice dragon.”

  The dragon snorted and Gerald jumped back, half expecting flames to come shooting out its nostrils with the air it had exhaled. But there were none, and he felt silly for reacting like he did. It’s supposed to guard me, not hurt me!

  He took a cautious step toward it and the dragon pulled its head away. With its bulk no longer blocking the light, Gerald could actually get a good look at it.

  Its skin was pebbled and rough looking, mottled in dozens of shades of tan, beige, and rust. It seemed to be made of sand. It was the desert come alive, the desert personified.

  And it looked…curious. It was studying Gerald with the same care with which Gerald was studying it.

  The air sacs on its cheeks inflated and deflated as it let out a soft puff of air; the breeze it created rustled through Gerald's hair. Then it rested its chin on the windowsill and blinked at him slowly.

  “I guess you’re not going to roast me, then,” Gerald said, and the dragon snorted again. It felt so much like a response to his words that he hurriedly added, “Sorry. I’ve, uh, never seen a dragon before. In person, I mean.”

  The dragon snorted again, as if to say, “Well, why would you have?”

  Gerald hesitated and then said, “You—you do understand me, don’t you?”

  A long, slow, two-stage blink answered him, as the dragon closed and then opened both sets of eyelids.

  “Is that a yes, then?”

  Another blink.

  “Well. Either way, I suppose I’d rather talk to you than myself. I’m Gerald, by the way.” A sudden thought struck him. “You know, I didn’t see—I didn’t see any oases or anything, before. Do you have water down there? I suppose you’re adapted to the heat, but even so… And food! Do you go hunting, even though you’re supposed to be guarding me? Or does food appear for you the way it’s supposed to pop into the kitchen for me?”

  The dragon made no response for a long moment, perhaps waiting to see if Gerald was actually done talking. Then it snorted and its neck rippled in a manner oddly reminiscent of a shrug, if one could shrug without shoulders.

  As it did, Gerald caught sight of something shiny around its throat. “What is that?” he asked, moving closer. “Is that a necklace or…a collar,” he finished as it lifted its head. “Oh, dear.”

  The collar was only shiny in the center. It was tarnished all around the edges, where it had dug into the dragon’s neck. The flesh around the metal ring was swollen and looked painful.

  “It doesn’t even fit! Does it hurt a lot?” he asked, and he knew the answer even before the dragon gave him one of its long, slow blinks.

  “I’m sorry,” Gerald murmured, reaching a hand out to gently touch the dragon’s muzzle. “You’re as trapped as I am, aren’t you?”

  The dragon leaned into his touch, acting like the castle cats. Despite the rough appearance of its scales, they were actually quite soft and smooth, almost slick—except around the collar, where they were cracked and dry. Gerald thought of Vani telling him about the new training methods, the ones that were meant to ensure the guardians didn’t mortally wound any of the would-be rescuers. He hadn’t realized the new methods involved collars and chains and pain.

  “Poor old fellow,” he said, not unkindly. “Let me see if I can find any salve for that.” Gerald had a lot of experience tending injured animals—lame horses and ones that had thrown a shoe; cats with shredded ears or infected rat bites; hunting dogs that hadn’t quite gotten the better of their prey. But he’d never dealt with a dragon before. He wasn’t sure what would work on dragon skin. It was supposed to be impervious to quite a number of things. But because of that, he didn’t think he could make it any worse.

  He heaved the trapdoor open again—I should leave it open, he thought. I think I can manage not to fall through it—and trotted down the stairs to the kitchen to search out the cooking items he’d used medicinally in the past: garlic, honey, marshmallow root, and juniper berries.

  There were a lot of long-lasting foodstuffs in the cupboard—journey bread, flour, oats—but not very much that looked likely to be useful. He started pulling out bags and bins and jars, trying to see if anything was hiding behind them. Even some herbs might work if I can’t find anything better. But when the cupboard was bare, he still hadn’t found anything he thought would be useful. With a sigh, he turned to pick up the nearest bag to put it back, when a clap of displaced air drew his attention back to the cupboard.

  It had filled up again.

  I guess that’s what triggers the spell to send more food. I have to use what’s here first.

  Then a thought struck him. He opened up the barrel of water in the corner and began emptying it carefully into an empty basin. And when he scooped the last bit out of the barrel, it too filled back up with a clap of displaced air and then a gentle sloshing.

  He hurriedly pulled everything else out of the rest of the cupboards and drawers, and again and again, they filled up after him. There was no apparent limit or oversight—the spell didn’t realize he couldn’t possibly have used all his supplies in so short a time. A grin split his face as Gerald grabbed the few items he thought might help the dragon—he had stumbled across garlic and juniper berries in the end—and charged back up the stairs.

  “I have a fantastic idea,” he told the dragon, who was still resting its chin on the windowsill. “If I can get that collar off you—if I can set you free—will you transport me out of the desert? I can stockpile as much food and water as you can carry if you’ll bring me with you when you leave.”

  The dragon lifted its huge head and cocked it to the side, bringing one of its eyes around to focus on Gerald’s face. He had
a feeling if the dragon had eyebrows, it would be lifting them right now.

  “The kitchen refills itself,” Gerald said. “When I took things out of the cupboards, the cupboards filled up again. The same with the water barrel. But I wouldn’t be able to carry enough water myself to get out of here, and I don’t have a horse…or a camel. I don’t have a map and I don’t know if I could make it to an oasis. But with you…we could both get out of here.”

  The dragon did its long, slow blink again.

  “You will?”

  It blinked again and then nodded emphatically so there could be no mistaking its answer. Gerald had the sudden urge to throw his arms around the creature’s neck—which reminded him of its predicament.

  “All right, well, let’s take a look at that collar, then. And I brought some stuff to make a poultice. It should help with the infection, although I don’t think there’s too much I can do unless I can get the collar off. Until I can get it off,” he corrected himself. “It’s too tight, it’s going to keep rubbing your scales away.”

  The dragon obediently snaked its head through the window—it was a tight fit, but after a bit of wiggling it managed—so Gerald could get at the collar.

  The wounds looked quite a bit worse up close and Gerald swallowed hard, torn between nausea and rage that someone had treated a living creature so badly. And done it because of Gerald, to control Gerald, to make him fall into line.

  “Er…this is probably going to hurt,” Gerald said hesitantly. “So don’t, you know, bite me or anything. Please.”

  The dragon snorted, a noise Gerald was starting to realize meant it thought he was being ridiculous. “Right. Not that I really thought you would, but you know, it never hurts to make sure everyone’s on the same page,” he said under his breath.

  Very gently, Gerald began to dab at the crust of blood and pus around the edges of the too-tight collar. The dragon rumbled deep in its throat, but it held still and made no move to snap at him. By the time the dragon’s neck and collar were clean, the bowl of water Gerald had carried up from the kitchen was stained a muddy red and his hands were shaking with anger.