Dragon Shadow

by Alicia Wolfe

  “Why…why…?”

  He couldn’t complete the sentence but listed sideways, toppling dead to the floor. Panting for breath, I looked up from his corpse to my savior. I expected it to be Davril, but no, it was Jessela, the female Fae Knight.

  “Jessela!” I started to step over Seafoam and hug her, but she was still standing there with her sword out. Blood dripped from it to the floor. She looked just as shocked as I felt.

  As if sensing my unease, she wiped off her blade and thrust it back through the sheath. Her eyes went once more to Seafoam.

  “I…I can’t believe it,” she said. “He was the traitor!”

  I nudged him with my foot, but he didn’t move. “One of them,” I said. “He hinted that there might be more.”

  “I heard the last part, when you asked him if he served the Shadow.” She sucked on her lower lip. “I wish he’d answered. I want to know what’s motivating these bastards.”

  “You and me both.”

  Her gaze met mine. “How are you doing, Jade? Did he hurt you?”

  “No, and I’d be better out of here, thanks. And so would you, too, I think. And Davril.”

  “What about Davril?”

  I made my voice steady. “He’s in danger, especially if there are more spies like Seafoam here. We all are—in danger, I mean.”

  “Explain.”

  “Davril and I meant to come here to investigate the Compendium, but he got sidetracked by being paranoid, and now we’re sitting ducks.”

  “I just came down to see how you were doing, Jade. I didn’t come to break you out. But after what just happened…”

  “Yes?”

  “That doesn’t mean I couldn’t.”

  I beamed. “Really?”

  “Really. But first, you have to tell me everything.”

  Breathlessly, I told her the situation. She interjected a question here or there, but mainly she listened, rapt and obviously believing me. Seafoam’s blood hardened on the floor as I spoke. When I had finished, she nodded once, curtly.

  “Come with me,” she said.

  “Just like that? What about the guards?”

  “When they see Seafoam’s body, they’ll understand I need to move you to a more secure location. Besides, I’m not going to let the Queen get hurt, am I? Davril being an ass can’t be allowed to have an impact on Her Highness.” She paused. “Although, I cannot say his actions were completely in the wrong.”

  I nodded guiltily. “I know.” I stepped out of the cell, and we moved up the hall.

  We spoke with the guards, and they swore when they discovered Seafoam’s body. Immediately, they agreed to give Jessela custody of me, and we left the dungeon for the brighter halls beyond. Despite the violence, or maybe because of it, my belly rumbled loudly as we moved up through the halls toward what I assumed was the Compendium, and Jessela glanced at me in concern.

  “They did feed you, didn’t they?”

  “Well…a piece of bread and water for lunch. That was it.”

  “Those cretins. I’ll have to speak to their captain about this. While you work in the Compendium, I’ll fetch you some food.”

  “That sounds like a plan and a half.”

  “You might be needing this.” She’d been holding something in her hand. It had been folded up. I hadn’t taken a close look at it, but now she held it up and let it dangle.

  I squealed in happiness. “My belt!” Davril had confiscated it when he’d arrested me. I hastily cinched it around my waist. If some asshole working for Mistress Angela—or whoever she worked for, if anyone—dared attack me now, I would have some defense. “Thank you so much.”

  “No problem.”

  Fae glanced at us curiously as we went, and I had to ask Jessela, “Won’t you get in trouble for this?”

  She glanced at me sidelong, seriousness in her face. “Not if you find something useful.”

  Damn, she’s putting a lot of faith in me. No pressure, Jade. If I didn’t find something, I’d be going back to the cell and she might occupy it with me. Or at least one right next door. I wondered if they’d feed her better than they had me.

  A question formed in my mind, and I hesitated to ask it. Now wasn’t really the time or the place, and we had much bigger things to worry about.

  “What is it?” Jessela asked, evidently seeing me chewing my lips in deliberation.

  I sighed. “It’s just…you and Davril. Were you…together?”

  She almost laughed. We turned a corner and kept going, the halls getting higher and brighter around us. Hopefully, she knew where we were going, because I was lost.

  “We did, ah, date,” she said.

  A thousand questions jumbled for prominence in my mind. “For how long? When did you stop? Did you stop?”

  Now Jessela did laugh. “I can tell someone is interested in him.”

  There’s a lot to be interested in, I thought, remembering him half-naked in the light of the setting sun.

  “Anyway, we did date,” she went on. “I won’t get into all the details—at least not here. But I could sense a restlessness, a sadness, in him.”

  “I’ve noticed that, too.”

  “After awhile of being with him, I realized he wasn’t happy—with me, with us. But it wasn’t just us. I realized that he could never let himself be happy.”

  “Why?”

  Jessela slowed as we approached a certain door of darkly gleaming oak, and I slowed with her. “I think it’s because of what happened,” she said. “In the Fae Lands. Did he…did he tell you about Vorkoth…and his brother?”

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  She paused outside the door. “Davril feels a terrible guilt about what happened that day. That’s what I figured out at last. He never talks about it, about his feelings, but I could tell. He holds himself responsible for the downfall of the Fae.”

  “My God…”

  “Of course, it was really his brother. Davril’s only mistake was in trusting Nevos, but then, who doesn’t trust their siblings?”

  I thought of the bond between Ruby and me. I would trust her with my life and then some. “Not me,” I said.

  Wistfully, Jessela said, “When I realized that he would never let himself be happy because he was punishing himself for the Fae having to leave our homeworld, I knew our relationship was doomed. How could I be with someone who couldn’t be happy with me? Who wouldn’t let himself be happy with me?”

  “So you’re the one who broke it off?”

  She nodded. I could tell the decision still made her sad to think about. “I felt I had to.” She paused, and one corner of her mouth quirked up. “However, I would never begrudge another woman her chance at him.”

  I sniffed. “Never! He’s thrown me in jail twice!”

  “Then why are you asking about him?”

  “Because…because…uh…”

  Still wearing that infuriating half-smile, she opened the door and ushered me into a medium-sized, murky room filled with shadows. Fog stirred against the floor, wreathing my feet and lower legs in mist, and in the center of the room squatted a great, moss-covered boulder flecked with age in the middle of a basin of water carved into the stone floor. The boulder came up to my hips. Vaguely, I could hear the flow of water. With the mist and darkness and water noises, it was all strangely relaxing and peaceful.

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “Aren’t we going to the Compendium?”

  For a wild moment, I thought she’d lured me into a trap. Maybe Jessela was another traitor.

  Still looking amused, she moved to the boulder and placed her palm against it. “This is Jade McClaren,” she said, and I realized she was speaking to the boulder. What the hell? “Help her with her queries.” Lifting her hand, she turned back to me. Hitching her head at the boulder, she said, “That’s the Compendium.”

  “But…I guess I was expecting a library or something.”

  “Oh, the Queen’s library is amazing, but that’s not what this is. The Compendium is j
ust a place to store knowledge. Magical knowledge. It had become so vast that sorting through it all started to take more time than we all thought prudent, so it was reconfigured. All the knowledge was channeled into this stone, and a friendly entity put in charge of it. Well, sometimes friendly, anyway. I’ve just given it permission to help you, so now you’re an authorized user of the Compendium. Just put your hand on it. The rest is all mental, or psychic, or whatever you’d like to call it.”

  “Magic.”

  “Exactly. I’ll go get you some food. Hopefully by the time I get back, you’ll have made some progress. We’ll go to the Queen, get this sorted out, Davril will understand what an ass he was, we’ll go after the parties responsible for all this—”

  “Save my sister.”

  “—save your sister, restore peace to the realm, and all will be made well.”

  “That’s a plan I can get behind.” I looked forward to Davril’s apology. Not that I expected him to give one, being as proud as he was. But still, he might acknowledge I wasn’t an enemy of the Fae. I mean, cripes!

  Jessela left, closing the door behind her, and I turned back to the stone. It squatted there in its watery pool, pregnant with magic and possibilities. Being alone with it, I felt a strange sense of serenity about it, almost of sacredness. This is the hidden knowledge of the Fae, I thought. Gathered over many years.

  I sucked in a breath. Then, slowly, I reached out my hand toward the boulder and placed my palm against it. The stone was somehow both rough and smooth at the same time, and cool under my skin.

  As soon as I touched the stone, a new world opened around me. My eyes were still closed, but somehow I could see that I stood in a glade swirling with purple fog. Moonlight glimmered down on me through skeletal branches above, and I could smell grass and loam. It was very natural and very magical at the same time. Magic was natural in this place.

  “Whoa, toots, get a loada you,” said an unmistakably male voice in my ear.

  I whirled around.

  “Who’s there?” I said, my voice quavering.

  “Only me, Federico, your humble guide to the Compendium. And you are most welcome here.”

  “Er…thanks?”

  “I mean, you are one tall drink of water. Well, actually, babes, you’re kinda a short drink of water, if you follow, but for a short drink, you are pretty tall, if you know what I mean.”

  “Er, again, thank you, I think.” I squinted into the gloom around me. “Where are you and why do you talk like a 1930’s gangster from an Al Capone movie?”

  “Hold the phone, toots. Who says they didn’t talk like me?”

  The voice was right behind me. I turned around again to see a short red demon—almost black by moonlight—with bat-like wings and cloven hooves standing atop a boulder that looked an awful lot like the one I was touching in the real world. Assuming I was still touching it, and I thought I probably was. To an outsider, I probably looked like I was in some sort of trance.

  I stared in shock at the demon, and he gave me a lascivious smile. He only wore a loincloth, and it was bulging.

  “I’m happy to see ya,” he said, and gave me a naughty wink.

  “What are you?”

  “I’m an imp,” he said, affronted. “Haven’t you ever seen an imp before?”

  “No.”

  He snorted, then jumped off the rock and approached me. I hadn’t noticed before, but in one hand he carried a lit cigar, and he pointed it at me for emphasis. “What sort of person walks into a place like this and has never seen an imp? I mean, just what sorta ignoramus are you, toots?” He stuck the cigar back in his mouth and leaned back, folding his arms across his scrawny chest, as if daring me to answer him.

  “The human kind, I guess,” I said. I shook myself. This was weird, but was it weirder than anything else I’d seen over the last couple of days? At least Federico wasn’t anything like the much scarier Lord Mortock. “But I don’t get it. I mean, imps are demons, right?”

  “Duh.”

  “Well…but aren’t demons evil? Like, you know, hellspawn?”

  He tilted his head, staring at me from beneath his eyebrows. “Whatcher point?”

  “Well, I mean, the Fae are good…”

  “Ah!” He clapped his hands. “That! Well, see, I ran into ‘em in the Fae Lands some years ago. Came to do an honest bit of mischief. All in a day’s work for an imp, y’know. Well, Queen Calista didn’t exactly appreciate me enchanting her hairbrush to make her hair stand up in devil-horns—although it was pretty funny, I have to tell you—so she bound me in stasis. She decided I was too dangerous to let go, since I could just come and go from her bedchambers at will, and I obviously served what she thought of as the dark powers, but she didn’t want to kill me, either.”

  “That was nice.”

  “You say so. Anyway, she kinda liked me and wanted to keep me around, and the Fae needed someone to keep track of their newly reorganized Compendium, so here I am. It’s not a bad gig, really, and this place keeps me hoppin’, I can tell you that. Beats the Sulfur Pits seven days a week!”

  “Well…good,” I said, not sure how to get back on track. “Um, I came here looking for answers.”

  Federico smiled and patted his crotch, and I forced myself to keep my eyes on his eyes, nowhere else. He looked disappointed. “I’ve got everything you need, doll,” he said. “And then some, believe me.”

  “I believe you.”

  He pivoted, strutted back to his stone, as if to give me a good view of his admittedly muscular backside, then hopped up on the boulder and took a seat. Turning back to face me, he gestured with his cigar. It left red tracers in the purple gloom. His eyes reflected the red in eerie little pools, glittering mysteriously.

  “Whatcha got for Federico?” he said.

  “I need to know what use the horn of a certain demon could be to a powerful witch with ill intentions toward Queen Calista.”

  His eyes widened. “Queen Calista? Sheesh! That’s big, doll, that’s real big. Almost as big as me.” Once more, he seemed disappointed that I kept my eyes on his. “Well,” he said testily. “Show me. Just imagine the item yer talkin’ about, and I’ll pull it up.”

  I closed my eyes (again—they were still closed in the real world) and pictured Mortock hovering in the air over his mausoleum, a fireball gathering on his palm. Then I mentally zoomed in and concentrated on his horns, one of which had been cut off, leaving only an obsidian stump.

  When I opened my eyes, I could see a curling red horn floating in the air above Federico. The imp had stood up on his boulder and was frowning at the horn, obviously deep in thought. I thought he might be communing with it in some way, trying to divine its nature and possible uses.

  At last, he snapped his fingers and the horn blinked out of existence.

  “Well?” I said anxiously. “Do you know what it might be used for?”

  He leveled his gaze at me, and I could see only grimness there. “You might not think this, but I like Queen Calista. I might not appreciate being bound to her service, but I like her service, and I like the Fae. Good blokes, most of ‘em, even if they are a bit stiff, and they’re a damn sight better’n most of my fellow ‘spawn in the Down Below. So when I tell ya this is bad, toots, you best believe it.”

  I made myself stand straight. “What is it?”

  “That horn can be made into a weapon—one that can penetrate Queen Calista’s defensive shields.”

  I blinked. “You mean…?”

  He nodded gravely. “If some powerful magic-user got hold of that thing, they could fashion a weapon that could kill the Queen.”

  Chapter 17

  I swallowed down my fear. “I’ve got to warn Queen Calista,” I said. “Even now, Mistress Angela could be coming for her.”

  “You’d best hurry, hon,” Federico said. “With power like that in her corner, I doubt this Angela broad will wait long.”

  “She’ll come herself?”

  “She’ll need to. Only a p
owerfully magical person can wield that horn.”

  I expected him to make some crack about wielding horns, but evidently he took this threat so seriously that it overrode even bad jokes. That told me how dire the situation was.

  I nerved myself up, then made myself smile at Federico. He might be a little stinker, but he had really helped me out. Maybe all of us out. “Thank you,” I told him sincerely.

  He touched his cigar to one of his horns, offering me a salute. Then he grinned and said, “Come back anytime, toots. I think an angel and a devil could have a lot of fun together. Just sayin’.”

  With that, he rippled out of existence, leaving only his smile, just like the Cheshire cat…oh, and his groin. That stayed, too. It faded out of existence just a few seconds after his smile did. Little stinker.

  The world of the Compendium dissolved, and I found myself once more standing over the stone in the small room of the palace. Just as I took my hand off it, I heard the door open. Turning, I saw Jessela entering with a silver platter bearing food—breakfast, even though it was night: eggs, bread, and some brightly colored fruit I couldn’t identify. It was probably grown right here.

  She stopped dead in the doorway at seeing my expression. “What is it?”

  “No time,” I told her. “We have to hurry to see the Queen.” I snatched the tray and began wolfing down its contents as I passed her, starting down the halls of the palace once again. For a moment, I was turned around, having forgotten where the Throne Room was, but then I oriented myself and started in that direction. The weird red fruit was awesome, sweet and juicy.

  “W-what’s going on?” Jessela asked, scurrying at my side.

  “It’s Mistress Angela,” I said. “I think she means to kill Queen Calista.”

  “Well, we do know that she sent her goons into the palace to—”

  “No, no, this time she’s coming herself. And she’ll have a weapon that can penetrate Calista’s protective wards.” Briefly I told her what Federico had discovered, and Jessela’s face grew pale.