Gerald hurriedly opened it to the contents and then turned to the section labeled Rights and Responsibilities of the Rescuees and began to read.
1) Rescuees have the RIGHT to select their Rescuers. While the approval of a Rescuee is not in and of itself sufficient—the Potential Rescuer must still defeat the Guardian and remove the Rescuee from their Tower—no Attempted Rescue may be undertaken without the express written or verbal consent of the Rescuee. Consent given under DURESS will not be recognized and an Appeal may be made to the Court of Arbitration in the event of a Rescue Under Duress.
2) Rescuees have the RESPONSIBILITY to clearly inform the Potential Rescuers of their approval or lack thereof for a Rescue Attempt and in the case of a refusal of the Potential Rescuer’s petition, a Clear and Valid Reason for the refusal must be provided either verbally or in writing.
2a) When a Rescue Attempt is Approved, the Rescuee has the RESPONSIBILITY to accurately inform the Potential Rescuer of the Hazards of the Attempt, including any pertinent information on Climate, Tower Structure, Wild Animals, and the like; in addition, the Rescuee has the RESPONSIBILITY to provide all pertinent information about the Guardian, including Strengths, Weaknesses, and Manners of Potential Defeat.
The list of rules and responsibilities went on for several more pages, but Gerald had found all the information he needed. He closed the guide feeling rather smug about how well everything was starting to come together—if he could only get the collar off the dragon!
I’ll keep looking through the library, and I’ll wait for a reply from Erick. But in the meantime, I know I can keep those five away. I can’t let anyone ruin this. It’s not only about me not wanting to get married anymore. It’s not fair to the guardians to treat them like that.
He looked at the interactive map again and saw all of the dots had stopped moving. It looked like everyone was making camp for the night. He picked up the Who’s Who guide again and started listing every royal awaiting rescue and their location. If we’re going to free all the guardians, we have to know how many there are and where they are. And we may as well do it logically. It won’t take long for word to get out. We’ll have to take advantage of the element of surprise while we have it.
Gerald kept taking notes and sketching plans until the room grew dark. He thought about lighting the lamps and continuing to work, but he was tired of squinting at line after line of text.
It’s not going anywhere, he thought. It will still be here in the morning. And until the collar comes off, I can’t put any of these plans into action, so there’s no rush.
But still, as he climbed into bed, the memory of the vivid wound on the dragon’s neck kept him from falling asleep immediately. It had gotten immeasurably better in the week since Gerald had arrived and begun applying poultices twice a day, but he knew it would never heal entirely with the metal band continually chafing at it. He knew there were dozens of other guardians enduring the same fate and with their wounds likely going untreated.
It made him want to jump up and return to the library immediately, but he knew he would be no help to any of them if he worked himself into exhaustion and a state of collapse. As callous as it felt even to think it, the fact that they had all survived so long with such mistreatment was a strong argument for their continued survival until Gerald was ready to act.
Eventually, he slept.
Chapter Five
THE NEXT MORNING was overcast. Gerald peered out his window at the clouds with great interest, as the previous seven days had all featured a cloudless sky and a blazing sun. It looked like the desert was about to receive one of its infrequent but brutal rainstorms.
“Hello!” he called to the dragon. “Are you awake?”
After a moment, the dragon lifted its head in response.
“It’s going to storm!” Gerald called. “Is there somewhere you can take shelter?”
The dragon shook its head slowly and then gave Gerald one of its sinuous shrugs. It didn’t seem too worried, but Gerald was annoyed on its behalf. “Bad enough you have to roast in the sun all day, for all that you’re adapted to it,” he grumbled. “I doubt you’re adapted to thunderstorms.”
The dragon rumbled with amusement and Gerald pulled his head back inside and shut the window. “It’s a wonder they even bother to feed you, the way they treat you,” he muttered to himself. That had worried him as soon as it became clear the dragon couldn’t leave the immediate vicinity of the tower, not even to hunt. But there seemed to be a spell of some sort on the tower itself—another spell to make their lives easier—that attracted game, such as there was in a desert, and every few days a startled looking piece of livestock would materialize out of the air. Their shock never lasted more than a few breaths.
Gerald shook his head and climbed downstairs to the kitchen to scrounge up his own breakfast. He had never been so pleased to have taken those cooking lessons since coming to the tower. Back at the castle, Lila mocked him for it, since the royal family had the best chefs to serve them and she didn’t think it a skill fit for a prince. I bet she’s not laughing at me now, he thought. She’s probably stuck with journey bread. She doesn’t even have a kitchen to cook in, not that she would know how to if she did.
As he dug through the supplies—literally dug; his experiments on the first day had resulted in an excess of foodstuffs, which were now piled up haphazardly all over the small kitchen—the waxed canvas bags holding oats and grains caught his eye. They were waterproof… There aren’t enough to make a dragon-sized shelter, not unless I force the cupboards to give me a whole lot more. But then I’d be drowning in oats and I wouldn’t be able to sew anything that large before the storm starts anyway. But I bet I can cobble together something to keep its head dry, at least.
Gerald began shuffling supplies from container to container until he was able to empty a dozen of the waxed canvas bags. He used his pocket knife to pick apart the seams, drawing the thread out and spreading the deconstructed bags flat across what empty bits of floor he could find. Definitely enough for a hat, Gerald thought with satisfaction. He gathered up the threads he picked out and rummaged around in the miscellaneous storage drawers until he came up with an assortment of sewing supplies, a mix of tiny tools that had clearly been used for delicate embroideries and rougher ones that had likely been left behind from some rescuer’s field repair kits. He was a deft hand with a needle, having had a lot of practice sewing up wounds in various castle animals, both domestic and wild, and he had his (hopefully) waterproof creation ready to go just as the first crack of thunder shook the air.
He ran back up to his room and threw open the window. “Hello down there!” he yelled. “Present for you!”
The dragon lifted its head up and Gerald waved his canvas construction. “It’ll keep your head dry, at least!”
He folded it up and dropped it to the dragon, who used its front claws quite delicately to unfold and arrange it. It rumbled happily and Gerald smiled with pleasure.
“Now don’t get struck by lightning!” he warned as the skies opened up.
He hurriedly pulled his head back inside and shut and latched the window. The wind was picking up and the glass was rattling in its frame. The sky had darkened considerably, and Gerald hurried around the room lighting the lamps before it got too dark to see them. The only light coming from outside was the product of the branching lightning bolts that split the sky every few minutes. The thunder that followed was loud enough to make it feel like the tower was shaking.
Gerald swallowed. He didn’t usually mind storms, but this was a magnitude fiercer than any thunderstorm he’d ever been in.
He took a lamp and retreated into the tower, wanting both to get away from the windows and to get further away from the sky. The more stone he put between himself and the fury of the storm, the better.
He took refuge in the library and kept himself occupied searching the shelves once again for anything in a language he could read. He got caught up in it and when he finally r
aised his head, he realized he couldn’t remember the last time he had heard a clap of thunder.
Gerald started climbing back to his room, and he could see out the windows that the rain had stopped. The storm had died down as quickly as it had come, its fury spent. The sun had already come out and he could see waves of steam rising from the sand as the desert heat baked away the gallons of rain soaked into it.
He opened the window to check on the dragon, who rumbled up at him. The length of its body was steaming like the surrounding sand as the heat of the sun evaporated the water, but Gerald was pleased to note its head was completely dry. He gave the dragon a wave and ducked back inside.
He sat to continue working on his translation project when he noticed a new letter had appeared on his desk. This one wasn’t just folded but was tied with a piece of ribbon that had a yellow bead attached.
Gerald nearly tore the parchment in his hurry to get the ribbon off.
Dear Meathead,
It’s a good thing you wrote me when you did. I was about to disable the tracking spell they’ve got on me. I’ll wait until you get this to do so, though, just in case. You said you had some questions and it sounded urgent, so I thought I’d break out the two-way parchment for you.
Erick
P.S. I saw your page appear in my Who’s Who guide. I guess your intention to sit this whole thing out didn’t exactly go according to plan, huh? Need me to swing by and rescue you? I’m only about two weeks away.
Gerald smiled as he read the postscript and then he penned his reply underneath Erick’s note.
I’m actually planning to rescue myself, but thank you for the offer. I do need your help to do it, though, because I’m taking my guardian dragon with me. If I copy over the symbols from its collar, can you tell me what spell(s) they’re from? I thought if I knew all of what the spells were doing I could try to unravel them. But it’s hard to apply theory when I don’t know all the components of the spell.
He sat back and waited, but he didn’t have to wait long before the paper chimed. He dripped ink on it and waited for Erick’s words to climb out of the blotches.
Breaking the rules? I’m in! Show me the symbols and I’ll see what I can do.
He carefully traced over the symbols he had sketched into his notes and as soon as he was done Erick replied.
Wow, those are some nasty spells. Deity. It binds the guardian to its location, within a pretty narrow radius, too; it takes away the guardian’s voice, if it’s a species that can speak to humans; it binds it to the inhabitant of the location, and prevents it from harming that person at all—it does so coercively, I mean, and the same with those who come on rescue attempts—although it can hurt them, it can’t maim or kill them. It also contains a tracking spell.
What’s the point of a tracking spell if it can’t leave? Gerald wrote.
The collars go on before they get bound to a location. There are adjustable parameters surrounding that part of the spell. The tracking spell is to find them so the rest of the spells can be activated and the guardian bound to the chosen location.
I should have guessed. You should see the collar, Erick. It’s about three sizes too small. It was clearly put on a long time ago and never adjusted as the dragon grew. The wounds from it were horrific, and they’re not going to heal the whole way until I can get the collar off.
I think you can do that with a few modifications to the symbols. Do you have any metalworking tools?
I’m locked in a tower in the middle of a desert. Why wouldn’t I have metalworking tools?
All right, all right. Cut the sarcasm. I’ll send you some, and a diagram of which symbols you need to modify. The good thing about these spells being pre-set is they need to be adaptable, so they—the Council, I guess—can add in the location and whatnot. So that means it should be easy to at least take out the location, and then the dragon will be able to leave.
That won’t do us much good if the tracking spell is still active, though. And I guess I have one too, don’t I?
Yeah. Well, that part is easy, I’ve figured out how to disable mine. You should be able to do the same with yours.
Hey—are there any spells on the collar for its preservation? To make it hard to damage or anything?
Not in any of the symbols you sent me, no. But there must be if the collar’s as old as you think. It would have rusted off by now, surely. Why?
Well, if you send me the right tools, maybe I can cut the collar off. And then it won’t matter what spells are still on it, because it will stay here while we leave.
Yeah, that’s a thought. It could work. I’ll send you as many tools as I can, I’ll send you my whole kit. You’ll have to send it back when you’re done though. Are you sure you don’t want me to come over and help?
Let me try to do it myself first. If we get in trouble, then maybe. But you have better things to do, don’t you? Have you made any progress in finding a spouse?
Don’t get me started. And I know you don’t care about that, Meathead.
I don’t care about it for myself. You want to get married. I don’t have a problem with anyone else getting married. If it makes you happy, then I’m happy.
Yeah, well. I’ll send the tools over and some more parchment. I’m going to disable my tracking spell, so you won’t be able to reach me the way you did yesterday. But I’ll stay in touch. Good luck.
Thanks. You too.
Gerald smiled as he pushed away from the desk. He opened the window again and called, “Hey! Can I come down?”
Once he was on the ground with the dragon, he began excitedly babbling about everything he had learned and everything Erick had said, until he got himself completely tongue-tied from trying to talk too fast.
The dragon looked at him with that “I’d be raising my eyebrows right now if I had any” expression and Gerald smiled sheepishly before starting again from the top.
“I got in touch with my cousin Erick, and he thinks I should be able to get the collar off you. At the very least I can disable the spells that are keeping you here. And if we get out of here, we can definitely find some way to get it off if the tools he’s sending don’t work.”
The dragon lowered its head and nudged Gerald gently. It still couldn’t talk, but Gerald understood it loud and clear.
“And then we can free all the rest.”
THE DRAGON LET him stay out there longer than usual, having arranged the canvas cover into a sunshade for him. But he still started to turn pink in the end, and the dragon lifted him back to the window.
There were more new letters on the desk, as well as a package wrapped in oilcloth.
“That must be from Erick! Stay up here, will you?”
Gerald unrolled the oilcloth and an array of hammers, chisels, and miscellaneous metal-working tools gleamed up at him. He picked up the letter emblazoned “READ ME FIRST” and he opened it to find step-by-step diagrams of which symbols to modify and how to modify them.
He turned back to the dragon and asked, “Do you want me to disable these spells first? Or should I go straight to trying to break open the collar?”
The dragon shook its head fiercely, but Gerald wasn’t sure which question it was responding to.
“Sorry, the first option or the second?”
The dragon blinked once.
“The spells, then?”
Another blink.
“All right. Let’s do this!”
The dragon snaked its head in through the window and rested its chin on Gerald’s bed. The prince climbed over and around the dragon’s neck as he carefully examined all the symbols again. He used a piece of white wax to mark out the symbols Erick wanted him to alter, and then he double-checked all of them.
When he was satisfied he knew exactly what he was doing—Erick had even organized the list by which symbols he needed to start with—he picked up the chisels and took a deep breath. “Here we go,” he said, and he carefully scored a new line across the first outlined symbol. He worked
slowly and carefully but was pleased to note the metal was fairly malleable. There was no great difficulty in carving in new lines, which made sense based on what Erick had said about the Council needing to be able to adapt the spells themselves. It also made Gerald think it wouldn’t be too hard to break the collar open once the spells were disabled.
Finally, what felt like hours later, with his fingers cramping and a headache forming behind his eyes from squinting at the symbols, the chisels, and Erick’s diagrams, Gerald scored the last line across the last symbol.
Before his eyes, the tarnished metal began to rust and flake. He reversed the chisel in his grip and gave the weakening collar a sharp rap. It split open and fell to the ground, where it continued to rust away.
Gerald dropped his tools and raised his hands to the wound on the dragon’s neck. “It worked,” he breathed.
“It did,” the dragon repeated, in a hoarse voice cracked with disuse. “It worked. And I cannot thank you enough.” The feeling in its voice came across clearly despite its roughness.
“It was Erick who figured it out,” Gerald demurred.
“Because you asked him to,” the dragon said. “You are not the first royal I’ve guarded, Gerald. But you are the first one who has ever taken the time to do anything for me.”
“I couldn’t just let you suffer!”
“And for that, I cannot thank you enough,” the dragon repeated.
Gerald rubbed at his nose, embarrassed. “I didn’t do it to be thanked.”
“I know,” it said.
“Now that you can talk,” Gerald said, “can I ask what your name is? I don’t want to keep calling you ‘the dragon’.”
“Why not?” it asked. “That’s what I am.”
“Well, it seems rude, you know. I mean, I wouldn’t like it if you called me ‘the human’. I have a name, I like people to use it.”
“I have no objection to being called Dragon,” it assured him. “It fits and it’s not rude to me. Dragons are fairly solitary creatures; we don’t have a great deal of need for names. And when we do use them, well, they’re very draconic. You wouldn’t be able to pronounce what other dragons call me.”
Royal Rescue Page 5