Royal Rescue

by A. Alex Logan

  “But what other plans do you have?” Omar demanded, crossing his arms across his chest.

  “None involving you,” Gerald said. “I mean, unless you want to come along. But we weren’t planning on that.”

  Omar shook his head in disgust. “Are you always this dense?” he wanted to know. “You’re a royal.”

  “So are you,” Gerald snapped. “I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”

  “You were in a tower.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “So you’re supposed to be there, waiting for a spouse!”

  Gerald opened his mouth to make his usual retort and then it dawned on him what Omar was refusing to come out and say. “I didn’t change roles, if that’s what you’re asking. I have no intention of marrying you, or anyone else. If you want to leave, I’m not going to stop you—well, so long as you agree to two conditions.”

  “What conditions?” Omar asked. His arms were still crossed in a defensive posture.

  “First, that you wouldn’t tell anyone anything about me or the dragon—that you saw us, where we landed, where we’re going, anything.”

  “We’re in the middle of a desert,” Omar pointed out. “There’s not exactly anyone to tell.”

  Gerald continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “Second, that you wouldn’t try to make yourself sick again, or do anything else to hurt yourself.”

  That got no response at all. Gerald waited a few moments, but when Omar looked away, he decided not to press it. Instead he said, “I’m going to start setting up,” and walked over to the supplies, giving Omar some space.

  Gerald stretched the canvas sheet over the ground to keep out the dampness in the spring-fed soil, and then he laid some bedding out on top of it. He and the dragon had calculated how much of everything they would reasonably expect to need and had then doubled most of it—the dragon could easily carry all of that and more, and neither of them had wanted to be caught short of something vital in the case of unforeseen circumstances. That meant he had enough blankets to keep one person warm in the midst of a blizzard, which meant there were certainly enough to make up two carefully separated pallets on either end of the canvas.

  Even though it was still late afternoon, not nighttime, not even evening, Gerald eyed the bedding with no small degree of longing. Although most of the day had been spent sitting quietly on the dragon, he was deeply tired, an exhaustion borne of mental activity far more than physical activity. All the worry and exhilaration of planning and carrying out an escape, the fear and helplessness of tending to someone quite ill, even the conversation with Omar that had taken a serious turn, it all left him ready to lie down and relax, if not sleep.

  But the idea of collapsing on to the clean blankets in the filthy state he was in gave him pause. He wanted to wash away the dirt and sand and sweat of the day.

  Omar was still standing in the same spot Gerald had left him in, and he still had his arms crossed defensively across his chest, but he had turned to watch Gerald set things up.

  “There’s food in the knapsack if you’re hungry,” Gerald said. “You probably should eat something. Feed a fever, right? Or—I’m going to go for a swim. You might want to wash up as well.”

  Omar shook his head and Gerald shrugged. “Maybe later, then.”

  The oasis was a fairly small one—likely the reason it was not on any of the maps—but the pool in the center was still more than large enough for Gerald to splash around in, even if it was perhaps a bit too small for actual swimming. He took off his boots, stripped off his filthy shirt and socks, rolled up his pant legs and waded into the water.

  It was pleasantly warm, although still much cooler than the surrounding air, and for a few moments, he let himself enjoy it. He ducked his head under and let the water block out the sounds of the desert. The water was clear and empty—no fish or algae like in the ponds back in Andine—and for a brief moment he was able to pretend he was completely alone. But he had to breathe and to do that he had to surface and then he saw Omar again—still standing in the same spot, still silently watching Gerald—and his brief feeling of peacefulness popped like a bubble and evaporated.

  Why did he do it? Gerald wondered. Why did he make himself sick? Does he know how sick he was? If we hadn’t been there, he could have died. Did he want to die?

  Gerald didn’t know how to ask him any of those questions. He hoped Omar would choose to stay with him and the dragon if only because that would mean he wouldn’t need to ask those questions. If Omar didn’t want to travel with them, Gerald would have to be sure it would be safe to leave the Yevish prince behind.

  I guess I could tell him about what we’re doing…about how the dragon was being treated, and how we’re going to rescue the rest of the guardians. If I tell him something, maybe he’ll tell me something. And maybe he’ll want to help us.

  Gerald scooped up a handful of sand from the bottom of the pool and scrubbed himself clean. After a few rinses, he waded over to the edge and climbed out, gathering up his discarded clothes. By the time he dug clean clothing out of the supplies, the dry desert air had sucked the moisture off his skin, and he could dress without getting his clean shirt wet. Even his pants were already nothing more than damp, so he didn’t bother changing into a new pair.

  Omar was still leaning against one of the date palms.

  “I’m not going to bite,” Gerald called. “You can come sit down, you know. You must be hungry, you haven’t had anything to eat all day.”

  He shrugged.

  “You’re not trying to starve yourself, are you?” Gerald asked.

  “No,” Omar snapped.

  “Then come sit and eat something.”

  Gerald pulled apples and journey bread out of his knapsack without waiting to see if Omar had listened. He started slicing up one of the apples with his pocketknife. He hid a smile when Omar sat across from him with a rustle of canvas. Gerald wordlessly handed him a slice and the two princes sat quietly for a quarter of an hour, sharing bread, apples, and water.

  When they finished eating, it was Omar who broke the silence. “If I go with you…what will that mean, exactly?”

  “A lot of traveling,” Gerald said. “We’re heading for the Burning Swamp right now, but that’s only our first stop. I don’t know how closely you looked at the dragon, but you might’ve noticed a scar around its neck? No? Well, there’s a big scar all the way around its neck, from where it was collared. A too-small collar dug right through its scales into its skin and left an infected wound, and that left a scar that will never go away. The collar was also full of spells. Spells to keep the dragon from flying, from using its own magic, even from talking. Spells so it could be located and assigned to guard duty, spells to keep it shackled to that job.”

  Gerald, realizing he was starting to rant, stopped and took a breath. “Sorry. I guess you’ve gotten the picture. It was treated very badly, very cruelly, and that’s the same way all the other guardians are treated. I don’t think all this rescue nonsense is the best way to get us all married off in the first place, and the fact that it’s being used to create a need for this kind of cruelty is flat-out wrong. My cousin was able to show me how to cancel out the spells so I could get the dragon’s collar off, and he also figured out how to disable our tracking spells—the ones on him and me, I mean, the ones that make us show up on the interactive map. The dragon used its own magic to amplify the disabling spell, so everyone who was anywhere near the tower—including you, by the way—had theirs canceled as well.

  “And now we’re going to do the same for the rest of the guardians. And we’ll cancel the spells on any of the rescuers we see and on the rescuees when we free their guardians. So if you came, I guess you’d be helping with all that.”

  “Sounds like a revolution,” Omar commented. “That could be interesting. It will throw the whole system into chaos, you know.”

  “Like I said, I don’t think it’s a very good system in the first place,” Gerald replied.
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br />   “What were you doing in that tower, then?”

  “I wasn’t there by choice. My parents forced me.”

  “Forced you how?” Omar wanted to know. “You could have said no.”

  “I did,” Gerald said angrily. “Several times. I told them I wanted no part of it, in no uncertain terms. And then my eighteenth birthday came, and I woke up in that tower. They spelled me there while I was asleep.”

  Omar whistled. “All right. You win. That’s pretty cold.”

  “They seemed sure it was for my own good,” Gerald said, suddenly feeling the need to defend them. He wasn’t sure where that feeling had come from and he wasn’t sure he liked it. “But what about you?” he asked.

  Omar looked away.

  “You don’t have to tell me,” Gerald said hastily, but Omar shrugged.

  “I guess you won’t judge, considering your own circumstance. I didn’t want to participate either. I don’t know if my parents would have gone so far as yours—I don’t think so, not really—but I didn’t want to risk it, I guess. I said I’d go questing, but I didn’t—don’t—have any intention of rescuing anyone.”

  “You don’t want to get married?”

  “I don’t want to be forced to get married,” Omar corrected. “I don’t mind the idea, you know, eventually. But not right now. I’m the youngest son; I’m not the heir. There’s no reason for me to have to rush. I like the travel, seeing other kingdoms, all of that. I just don’t like the reason for it. But with the Who’s Who nonsense and the tracking spells, I have to at least make a token effort at it, so it’s not obvious I’m avoiding all the eligible royalty. That’s why I was near your tower.”

  “Oh,” Gerald said. “That explains why I didn’t get any letters from you. I got one from everyone else who was nearby.” He tried to hide his disappointment that Omar was opposed to the rescue system but not to the idea of marriage. Well, why would you think there was anyone else in the Thousand Kingdoms as strange as you? he chided himself.

  “Yeah. I only got in range of the map a day or so ago, anyway. I probably would have sent you a note to keep up appearances, but…” he trailed off, apparently not wanting to bring up the touchy topic of his self-induced sun fever. He cleared his throat and said, “So, you know, I guess I’m game for disrupting the system.”

  “You’ll come along, then?” Gerald asked.

  “Sure. It’s not like I want to go back to ‘trying’ to rescue a spouse. And I’ll get a lot more traveling done on dragonback. Plus we’ll get to sow some chaos… So as long as the guardians aren’t going to want to marry us when we rescue them, I’m sold.”

  Gerald smirked. “The dragon probably has more to worry about on that front than we do.”

  “Then I’m in.”

  Chapter Seven

  GERALD CLUTCHED AT the harness as the dragon launched into the air with its usual enthusiasm. He squeezed his eyes shut and waited for the dizzying climb to stop and flatten out and allow his stomach to catch back up. Meanwhile, Omar let out a whoop of enthusiasm loud enough that Gerald cracked an eyelid to check on Omar. He was looking much recovered after a pair of meals and a swim, with the flush gone from his face. The food and a loan of clean clothes and the easy way Gerald and the dragon interacted had also seemed to reassure him of their intent; the standoffish wariness had gone.

  At the moment he looked much more relaxed than Gerald, who was feeling a little green. Omar had thrown his head back into the wind and lifted his arms into the air, and the sight of him only tenuously attached to the dragon was enough for Gerald’s stomach to do another flip.

  “Please hold on!” Gerald implored and Omar smirked.

  “I’m not going to fall! That’s what all these ropes are for, right?” But he relented and took hold of the harness in front of them until the dragon leveled out.

  “Nervous flier, huh?” Omar asked. “Interesting choice of transportation, considering.”

  “How was I supposed to know I was afraid of flying until I tried it?” Gerald asked rhetorically. “In any case, it wasn’t like I had a lot of options. It was get a ride with the dragon or try to walk across the desert on foot…” And we all know how well that works, don’t we? he thought but restrained himself from saying aloud. He knew he should ask what Omar had been thinking to inflict sun fever on himself and what he had been trying to accomplish, but he was unwilling to broach the topic while flying at a considerable altitude. I don’t want him to decide that his next drastic act will be to jump off the dragon.

  But Omar made a face, apparently guessing what he was thinking. “It’s perfectly safe to walk across the desert so long as you’re prepared. Like you said yesterday, most people don’t set out to get sun fever.”

  “So why did you?” Gerald asked. “I mean, is that the sort of thing you normally do? Because if I need to watch out for you trying to throw yourself off the dragon or anything, I’d like some warning.”

  “I’m not suicidal,” Omar said flatly. “And if I were, there are easier ways than sun fever.” He pushed his sleeves up to show a pair of knives in wrist sheaths before revealing another pair at his ankles and a longer knife against his back. While Gerald gaped at the arsenal, Omar added, in a lighter tone, “Anyway, if I jumped off the dragon I’d miss out on this whole adventure. Plus I imagine the landing would hurt a bit.”

  “So why did you make yourself sick?” Gerald persisted. “You were in really bad shape, you know. The dragon nearly had to cast a healing spell.”

  Omar looked down at his hands. “I didn’t mean to get that ill. I wanted to get sick enough that I could stop trying to rescue anyone for a while. You know, I was back in Yevin, I figured I could go home and relax for a few weeks. I wasn’t trying to get deathly ill.”

  Gerald shook his head. “I can sympathize with not wanting to participate in this nonsense, but really? That’s how you decided to get out of it?”

  Omar shrugged self-consciously. “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  “You didn’t think it would be at all suspicious for a native of Yevin, who surely would know better than anyone how to safely travel through the desert, to suddenly forget basic safety and get struck down by sun fever?”

  “I didn’t think it through, okay? It was an impulse, it went wrong, I learned my lesson and I won’t do it again. So you can stop with the lecture,” Omar snapped.

  “You were in really bad shape,” Gerald said quietly. “I was worried. That’s all. I won’t mention it again.”

  He looked away and his stomach dropped as he caught sight of all the empty air around him. At Omar’s request, he had rigged the canvas above them in a simple canopy instead of around them like yesterday’s cave, and the view was making him regret it. He took a deep breath and concentrated on the comfortingly solid feel of the dragon under him and the harness holding him safely in place. After a moment the view even began to impress him, as long as he kept his gaze focused on the horizon and resisted the urge to look straight down.

  After a few moments of silence, Omar nudged him. “Hey. I’m sorry for snapping. Truce?”

  “Truce,” Gerald agreed readily.

  By the time the dragon drifted down to land for a short break, they had relaxed into a comfortable comradery.

  “I like this one,” the dragon confided to Gerald in one of its loud whispers. “And I like your cousin. They’re really turning out a better breed of royal these days, I think.”

  “Well, if that’s true, it should make our quest a bit easier,” Gerald said. “Hopefully everyone we come across will be as sympathetic.”

  “Speaking of,” Omar said as he returned from behind a nearby dune, “I know where we’re going but not who we’re going to. Who’s stuck in the swamp?”

  “A Princess Elinore,” Gerald replied. “And get this—stuck is right. She’s been there for three years!”

  “Three years in the Burning Swamp?” Omar asked incredulously. “Are you sure she hasn’t gone mad?”

&n
bsp; “Pretty sure. I mean, the towers are designed to be quite nice on the inside.” Except mine, he added silently, but that was supposed to be a punishment. “And they’re safe,” he continued. “She won’t have been bothered by anything living in the swamp.”

  “Regardless,” the dragon broke in with a rumble. “We’re there for the guardian, not for the princess. The princess agreed to be put in the swamp. The guardian did not.”

  “The princess may have agreed to be put in the swamp,” Gerald said quietly. “I didn’t agree to be put into my tower, remember.”

  “And you got yourself out of it in what, two weeks? She’s been there for three years. She’s clearly not too bothered by it.”

  “Or she didn’t have access to a cousin who’s half a magician, so she couldn’t break her tracking spell or the spell on her guardian, so she couldn’t get herself out,” Gerald countered.

  The dragon sniffed noisily but conceded the point by not continuing the argument. After a moment, it said, somewhat snarkily, “If you’re quite finished playing devil’s advocate, I would like to continue.”

  Gerald hid a smile and he and Omar climbed back up and buckled themselves in. Gerald squeezed his eyes shut in preparation for the dragon’s launch, and this time he kept them firmly closed even when Omar started whooping with delight. Don’t look at him, don’t look at him, you’re holding on, you’re both tied down, it doesn’t matter what he’s doing, he’s not going to fall.

  When the dragon leveled out at cruising altitude, Gerald opened his eyes with a sigh of relief. “No snide remarks!” he said, seeing the grin on Omar’s face. “Let’s do some planning instead.”

  Gerald explained everything they had had to do to disable the spells on the dragon’s collar, and finished by saying, “I don’t know if the swamp guardian is going to let us do that. I mean, first of all, it has to trust we’re really there to do what we say and not to add some more restrictions. How is it going to know what marks I’m adding and what they do?”

  “Don’t you think the dragon will help with all that?” Omar wanted to know. “I mean, the fact that we’re flying around on the back of an uncollared dragon is kind of a big hint you’re telling the truth.”