“I can’t believe they did this to you,” he kept saying. An awful thought struck him then. “That’s not—do they do this to all of you? All the guardians?”
The dragon blinked an agreement and Gerald closed his eyes. “And they’re still convinced this is such a perfect system. Forcing kids into a role they might not even want. Marrying us all off as soon as we’re of age. Telling us suffering together will bring us closer, help us find True Love. And to do it they torture you as well. Dragons and manticores and sea serpents and all the other guardians.”
The dragon nudged him gently, but the size disparity meant even a gentle nudge saw Gerald stumble back several feet.
“Right. You know, I think I’ve decided what to do next. After we get out of here, I mean. We should set the rest of the guardians free.”
The dragon made it quite clear it was in agreement.
There was no obvious way to unlock the collar and Gerald’s heart sank when he saw the rows of symbols carved along the edges. “It’s bespelled. I should have guessed. Otherwise what good would a collar be without a chain?” He sighed. “I don’t have magical talent. I’m not going to be able to just…improvise something.” Once again, he wished he could get in touch with Erick. “But I’ll work on it,” he promised. “There must be something in the library I can read. And some of these symbols look familiar… If I can work out the spell structure, I might be able to work out how to unlock it.”
He smiled in spite of himself and added, “It’s not like I have a lot of other commitments right now.”
The dragon snorted and pulled its head back out through the window. Its neck glistened with the juice from the juniper berries, and the crushed garlic cloves provided an interesting complement to the dragon’s natural smoky odor. Gerald had smeared the mixture thickly over the wounds and the collar itself, hoping it would provide a little bit of lubrication to keep the metal from digging in so deeply.
The dragon looked around and, apparently seeing nothing amiss, settled back down at the base of the tower, wrapped around it and once again looked like little more than a pile of boulders from Gerald’s perspective. He suspected the camouflage would work as well from ground level. Any would-be rescuer would get quite a shock when they climbed onto a pile of rocks that suddenly came to life.
I don’t need anyone to rescue me, Gerald thought fiercely. I’m going to rescue myself.
Chapter Four
A WEEK LATER, Gerald was no longer quite so confident. He managed to dig up a few books that looked relevant among the handful that were in a language he could read, but the more he read, the more out of his depth he felt. I wish Erick were here, was a constant refrain as he stumbled over magical terminology he failed to learn, followed closely by the realization that, even if he understood the theory, there was likely to be little he could do with it without talent of his own.
On the bright side, the dragon’s neck was beginning to look slightly better after a week of poultices, although the odor of garlic now clung to its scales day and night. The smell didn’t seem to bother the dragon any, and Gerald felt it would tolerate a lot worse in exchange for a lessening of the pain it had suffered for who knows how long. The wounds were deep enough Gerald knew it had been collared long before Gerald had been spirited away to the tower. He suspected the collar fit when it was put on, but no one had bothered to adjust or replace it as the dragon grew. And like most long-lived creatures, dragons grew slowly.
The dragon had obviously worn the collar for many years.
Gerald stopped feeling sorry for himself. All of his emotions were tied up in the dragon, and he wanted to free the dragon much more than he wanted to free himself. He had a sinking feeling any escape he made would be temporary. Although Queen Danya’s face hadn’t appeared in the window again, he knew she wouldn’t necessarily adhere to the prohibitions against checking in on him.
He looked up from the book he was working through—A Royal’s Guide to Rescue—and rubbed his sore eyes. He snapped the book shut with a frustrated sigh, and the breeze it stirred up blew the scattered pieces of parchment across the desk. He picked up the loose papers and saw his note to Erick, which was still unanswered.
“I wish he had told me how his two-way spell worked,” Gerald mused aloud. “If I could get in touch with him, I bet he would help me figure out the dragon’s collar.”
Aside from his mother’s brief and unwelcome appearance in his window, no one had been in touch with him. There was so much parchment in the desk he was sure he was meant to be corresponding with someone—probably attempting to entice an appealing royal to come fetch him from the tower—but he couldn’t figure out how he was meant to post any messages he might write.
“I can’t figure anything out,” he grumbled. He stalked across the room and threw the window open, even though it was nearly noon and the sun was brutal. As soon as the window was open, the seal on the room broke, and the climate-control spell failed and the blistering desert heat crawled inside.
“Can I come out?” he yelled down to the dragon, and after a moment it slowly unwound itself from the base of the tower and reared up to the upper window.
It gave him a look when it reached the open window, one Gerald had no trouble interpreting as it asking, “You do realize how hot it is out here, right?”
“I’m sick of looking at these books and the walls,” Gerald sighed. “Let’s look at the sand for a while.”
The dragon maneuvered itself up against the windowsill and Gerald climbed out on to its neck, taking care to avoid the collar and the sores around it. The dragon waited until Gerald took a firm grip with knees and arms and said, “All secure!”
Then it slowly sank back to the ground.
It was even hotter at the base of the tower. The sand held all the heat from the sun, but once Gerald broke through the upper crust, the sand underneath was cool. He settled into the depression with a sigh and leaned back against the dragon’s bulk.
They had reached quite an understanding over the course of the week, and the fact that they had no common language was not nearly the hindrance it could have been. The circumstances were enough of a common denominator to make speech all but unnecessary to understanding.
I guess Mum was right, Gerald thought, remembering Queen Mixte’s attempt to convince him the system worked. Going through this together really does form bonds. Of course, I don’t think she expected me to bond with the guardian dragon… But at least they’re not going to make me marry it!
“It would be nice to talk to you, though,” he said aloud to the dragon. It snorted and Gerald amended, “I mean, have a conversation. With both of us speaking a language we both understand.”
The dragon lifted a foreleg and tapped a claw against its collar.
“Don’t tell me it makes you mute, too!”
The dragon blinked and nodded, and Gerald groaned. “Who put that damn thing on you, anyway? And can I kill them?”
The dragon made a rumbling noise in its chest and Gerald was once again reminded of the castle cats. It sounded like the dragon was purring, and he relaxed back against its side. The thrumming of its chest was comforting, and he sighed. “If it weren’t for the heat…and the being locked up part…I’d be quite happy to stay here with you.”
The purring intensified and Gerald smiled. He understood that much. The dragon was in agreement.
“I will figure out how to get that collar off,” he said with feeling. “I think I’m on the right track. I wish there were more books of magic in the library, but that’s never been an approved topic for us royals. I suppose they don’t want whoever’s locked up here to get any ideas…although it seems like I’m the only one who has ever objected to the system in the first place.”
Gerald and the dragon stayed like that, curled up in the meager shade at the base of the tower, enjoying each other’s company, for close to an hour. Then the prince’s stomach began to rumble, and the dragon peered at him critically and shifted so Gerald coul
d climb back on to its neck for the trip up to the window.
“Sunburned again, am I?” Gerald asked with a sigh. “Well, there’s aloe in the kitchen now.” He smiled then and added, “You know, I always resented my looks—taking after my father, whoever he is, instead of the Queen, so I didn’t look anything like her or her first child. But if I had her skin, I’d be burned to a crisp right now!”
WHEN GERALD CLIMBED back into his room, he was distracted from his sunburn and the search for aloe by the pile of papers on the desk. It caught his eye because it had not been there when he climbed out the window an hour ago—he distinctly remembered tucking the loose papers he had picked up into a drawer.
He scrambled across the room and started flipping through the pile. There was a thick packet and several thinner missives, all with “Prince Gerald” written on the envelopes in various hands, none of which looked familiar.
So there is some way to receive messages… That surely must mean there’s a way to send them as well?
He opened the packet first and groaned. The Who’s Who of Rescue Quests, he read with disgust. There were dozens of pages inside, each profiling a different royal, and there was also an interactive map. Well, that at least might be useful, he thought. He spread the map across the desk and dipped a quill to fill in the blank space labeled “YOUR LOCATION HERE.” As soon as he had written “Yevin Desert”, the surface of the map shimmered and cleared to reveal his tower and the surrounding area. There were five circles on the map as well, three blue and two red, and his brow furrowed as he considered what they could mean. One of them moved and Gerald hesitantly tapped it with the tip of his quill. A tiny drop of ink sunk into the fibers of the parchment and turned into a label: Prince Lukas.
He turned back to the Who’s Who and hurriedly flipped through the pages—and sure enough, he found a page labeled with the same name.
So there are five would-be rescuers in the vicinity. He tapped each circle and waited for the names to form. The idle thought struck him that the map was much like Erick’s two-way parchment, and he wondered if Erick had adapted his enchantment from the one on the maps. Then he wondered how the maps knew where the questers were. Erick’s parchment only worked for the writers when the spell was keyed to them. How was the map keyed to the rescuers?
He pushed that thought aside—he had enough magical theory to think about with the dragon’s collar—and instead he pulled the five matching pages out of the Who’s Who guide to look at in detail.
Not, he reminded himself, that he wanted to be rescued by any of them. But it seemed important to know who was out there.
But before he read their profiles, he turned to the individual letters. He had a suspicion they were from the nearby rescuers.
He opened the first and immediately looked for the signature at the end. As he had thought, the name there matched one of the ones on his map.
Dear Prince Gerald,
I received your page in my Who’s Who guide a few days ago, and as I happened to be in the area, I thought I would strike up a correspondence and see if a rescue could be mutually beneficial to us. I encourage you to read my page and respond at your earliest convenience.
Yours,
Prince Lukas
Gerald blinked at it. Well, that’s certainly romantic, he thought. It’s a good thing I’m not sitting here waiting for a heartfelt offer of marriage. Mutually beneficial rescue, huh? I somehow don’t think so.
The next letter was much more the sort of thing he had been expecting.
My dear Prince Gerald,
I read your Who’s Who page with great interest as it seems we have a good deal in common. I too have a twinling and two older siblings, and my kingdom, Areia, is of a similar size and climate to yours. I also have a fondness for animals and my horse, Linny, is quite dear to me.
I was also quite taken with your portrait. I hope you may find mine equally pleasing, and I wonder if our common experiences might serve as the basis for a good friendship and perhaps something more?
I would be most honored to be chosen as a potential rescuer for you. Please let me know if you have an interest in further correspondence.
With affection,
Princess Kinda
Although the other three letters were closer in tone to Kinda’s than Lukas’s, none of them particularly made him want to meet their writers, let alone marry them. But he endeavored to respond anyway, as the fact that they had all requested responses surely meant they expected to receive them, and if he could figure out how to reply to them, surely he could figure out how to get a message to Erick…
He quickly drafted a noncommittal, boilerplate response for the rescuers, thanking them for their letter and listing the difficulties of trying to rescue him in a way he hoped would discourage them without being too obvious about it—he didn’t want to rouse any suspicions. Once the ink dried, he folded each piece of parchment in half and then began to address them. Prince Lukas, he wrote on the first one and then he dropped his quill in surprise as the paper vanished from his desk with a soft whooshing noise.
More magic, he noted. Interesting how we’re all discouraged from actually practicing it, but no one seems to mind using other people’s spells so long as it’s convenient…
He hastily scribbled a note to Erick—
Seeing if the magic message system works for you too. Write me back as soon as you can, I need to talk to you. G.
—and then folded it and addressed it exactly the same way. When it disappeared with the same soft whoosh Gerald jumped up and danced around the room in excitement. He was about to open the window and shout the news to the dragon when he decided he’d better wait and see if he would get a response. He didn’t want to raise any false hopes.
In the meantime…he wanted to discourage the rest of the would-be rescuers. Not only did he not want to be forced to marry any of them, but he didn’t want to leave the dragon behind.
One by one the letters vanished as he addressed them. His stomach was grumbling in earnest now and he realized he had spent more than an hour going through the mail.
He left the letters and profiles out to study more later, and then he made a beeline for the kitchen, taking the spiral stairs two at a time.
When he returned to his room with his stomach sated and a mug of tea in hand, he shuffled through the papers on his desk, looking hopefully for a reply from Erick. There wasn’t one.
He sighed and began to read the profiles instead.
There were three princesses and two princes on his list. The dots on the map, he realized, were color-coded: blue for princesses and red for princes. He wondered idly if he should have told Queen Danya to put one or the other on his signpost. At least it would have cut down on the competition. Too late now, though, he thought. I’ll have to make the best of it.
The profiles were all set up the same way and he laid all five across the desk to make it easier to compare: Prince Lukas and Prince Yerson; Princess Kinda, Princess Olivia, and Princess Meiji. He noted Lukas was the oldest, at twenty; he’d been out questing for two years and still had nothing to show for it. Gerald recalled his terse, business-like letter and wasn’t much surprised. For most of his royal cohort, these marriage quests were fraught with Romance and Destiny and the hope of finding True Love. He doubted Lukas’s idea of “mutually beneficial rescue” would appeal to most of those awaiting a prince or princess charming. The other four were closer to his own age, and Princess Olivia had only started her own rescue quest two weeks ago. That made Gerald a bit nervous: he might be the first rescuee she had come across, and she might be determined to make a good impression, perhaps even going so far as to fight the dragon.
He knew the collar would prevent the dragon from injuring the rescuers. But they had no such restrictions to keep them from hurting the dragon.
I might have to write a more strongly worded letter.
Aside from the portraits in the upper corner of each profile, there was little to distinguish them. The
y were, essentially, fact sheets. Name, age, kingdom, family, hobbies and interests. Even there they were all nearly the same. All five had written they enjoyed horseback riding and swordplay—no surprise, given their choice of going questing. Princess Kinda’s did also indicate she was fond of animals, so she had told the truth in her letter, then, it wasn’t a ploy to get Gerald to like her. Even so, that wasn’t enough to get Gerald’s interest. She’s been questing for eight months, he noted. She’s surely come across at least two guardians. She says she likes animals, but she has no compunctions about the guardians being magically enslaved to their tasks? No. Even if I were interested in general…I wouldn’t be interested in her.
He set the profiles aside and turned back to the library books. Now there were actual potential rescuers on the horizon, he wanted to be completely sure he understood his rights regarding them.
If any of them do come this far, can I turn them away before they challenge the dragon? If they refuse to leave and challenge the dragon anyway, do I have to go with them if they win? These marriage agreements are supposed to be made mutually, aren’t they? The rescuee is supposed to have a say in it, I’m almost certain. Or is it still like the old days, where whoever defeated the guardian automatically won the rescuee’s hand?
Not for the first time, Gerald wished the library had more books in a language he could actually read. After picking through another chapter of A Royal’s Guide to Rescue, he was no closer to finding an answer to his questions—it had clearly been written for a rescuer, rather than a rescuee—and he still hadn’t received a reply from Erick.
He picked up the Who’s Who packet again, thinking if he could find Erick’s profile page maybe he could at least find out where his cousin was, and that’s when he noticed a little booklet buried under the loose bundle of profiles.
He picked it up and laughed out loud when he saw it was exactly what he had been trying to find in the library.
Royal Rescues: Rules, Regulations, and Procedures was emblazoned across the front of the booklet in a large, bold hand.
Royal Rescue Page 4