“Don’t spook my horse,” he said instead. “And prepare yourself: I have need of you.”
-Am I polishing your armour or acting as a herald to your arrival?-
“Neither,” said the prince. “There’s a dragon I need you to kill.”
Through a curl of smoke and flame, Rafiq said: -What dragon? There are no dragons of note in Shinpo. Or is it a purge of the lesser beasts?-
“No purge,” Prince Akish said. There was a sharp smile on his face: bespeaking acquisition and not humour, if Rafiq wasn’t mistaken. “But you’re wrong about Shinpoan dragons of note. Even a lizard like you must have heard of the Enchanted Keep.”
Rafiq let a delicate stream of fire purr against the setting sun. He’d seen the vague suggestion of a tower from his position in the air, but he’d never heard of the Enchanted Keep. It was possible that the prince and his cronies had mentioned it, but since Rafiq tried to block out their back-slapping and shouts of laughter whenever he could, it was also possible that he’d ignored that too.
Against Rafiq’s silence, the prince said irritably: “The third Shinpoan princess was taken captive by the dragon of the Enchanted Keep five years ago. Her family already had their heir and their spare, so it wasn’t advertised, but I’ve recently had reports that the family aren’t as ruthless with their children as they’d like us to think. It could prove useful to have the girl as a bargaining chip. And if nothing comes of that it’s always useful to rescue a princess. People like it.”
Anyone who wasn’t the princess or her unfortunate family, thought Rafiq. Prince Akish was already trying to oust his own father from the throne of Illisr: it didn’t bear thinking about what he could do to the neighbouring Shinpo if he had a princess as hostage.
-That’s all?- he said. -We travelled to Shinpo to kill a single dragon?-
“No, we came to kill an Enchanted Keep,” said the prince. “It’s said that the Keep has the dragon in thrall. Whether or not that’s true, the dragon is only one challenge: there are seven circles of challenge to defeat before the princess can be rescued. She’s in the highest room of the tallest tower, sleeping an enchanted sleep until her rescuer braves all seven circles and overcomes them.”
Rafiq gave a fiery cough of laughter. How very human and complicated. -What are the circles?-
“No one knows,” said the prince, with a satisfied smile. “No one has yet made it past the dragon.”
The First Circle
There was no dragon in sight when the prince and Rafiq cautiously approached the Enchanted Keep. Rafiq, bearing in mind the prince’s information that the princess was kept captive in the highest room of the tallest tower, was sourly amused to see that the Keep only boasted one tower. It was built on a jagged outcrop of stone and dark green grass, rising white and slim against the blue sky from a white, paved courtyard; and it didn’t seem big enough to obscure a dragon from their sight. Or, if it came to that, hide the approach of one.
Rafiq began to feel slightly uneasy. He could sense the magic of the Keep spreading through the surrounding air like heat shimmer, warping and changing everything it touched. The very air around the tower was thick with magic, the breaching of which was like plunging into a thick fog.
“You’re Burdened,” Prince Akish said, thickening the air still further.
Rafiq snarled at the added weight. -What are your instructions?-
“Kill the dragon. Preserve my life. Complete the First Circle of Challenge.”
Short and sweet. Rafiq savoured a laughing curl of fire in his throat. Prince Akish had learned that it was safer to give Rafiq clear, simple commands without any other possible interpretation than the obvious one. In this case, the prince was being even more careful than usual.
Formally, he said: -I hear and obey- and took to the sky in a swirl of wing-spikes and grass blades.
The first few strokes of his wings were heavy and laborious, but once he was properly in the air there was a fresh, strong updraft that wouldn’t have been out of place by the sea. That made him uneasy, too. None of the surrounding countryside had led him to expect strong breezes here. Still, it made his ascent much easier. As he rose, the tower of the Enchanted Keep kept pace with him, a slender cylindrical edifice in pale bricks that turned out to be both much higher than it seemed, and much larger than it seemed. The closer he got, the clearer it was to Rafiq that the tower was not in fact built of a pale sandstone brick, but massive slabs of white marble that sat gravely one upon the other. From a distance the marble had looked like regularly sized bricks: closer to, Rafiq could see that each of the marble slabs was at least as big as he was.
There was still no sign of the other dragon. Rafiq, bound to ensure Prince Akish’s safety as well as slay the other dragon, kept to his lazy, spiralling ascent, his gaze alternating between the prince and the scenery. The courtyard of the Keep made a small square beneath him, drawing in the velvet green countryside around it until the grass seemed to pucker by the force with which it was pulled. Rafiq found himself thinking that perhaps this time, Crown Prince Akish had bitten off more than he could chew.
The roof of the tower was light blue and gently conical, shingled in circular layers. Rafiq was inclined to admire the scale-like structure of it until it seemed to untwine itself dizzyingly from the top of the tower, and it occurred to him that the roof was moving. Only it wasn’t the roof, it was a dragon that had been coiled around the pale blue roof, now uncoiling itself.
No: herself. This lithe, blue and silver beauty sweeping her tail around the spire of the tower was a she-dragon. Rafiq thought that he hung in the air without moving, even to flap his wings; but the hot and steady thump in his ears was certainly his wings beating against the updraft as they held him aloft. He purred deep in his throat and arched his wings before he knew what he was doing, but—perhaps fortunately—the she-dragon didn’t respond in kind. Instead, her underscales irradiated with a rippling tide of burnt orange, bespeaking caution, and a slight edging of magenta that said she was curious. The growing rise of orange through her scales bought Rafiq forcibly to mind of his Burden, and the fire in his belly seemed to turn to ice. He tried to pull away and circle back to Prince Akish but the Burden clawed tight into his soul and sent him headlong at the she-dragon; a blunt, battering pass that she avoided with consummate ease.
His own unwilling clumsiness brought Rafiq to the unpleasant realisation that whether or not he wanted to, he would be forced to murder an innocent she-dragon. The only question was whether he would allow the Burden to do it for him in slow, clumsy, battering strokes, or whether he would do it himself in the quickest, most painless way possible.
The she-dragon danced on the updraft across the tower roof, light and quick, her scales now utterly black. Rafiq, with bitterness in his heart, clipped his wings tight to his sides and dove for her. The she-dragon fought like a shard of quicksilver, sharp and fast. She was faster, but Rafiq was stronger and his reach was longer: he was certain that once they came to grips the battle would be done. The problem, he discovered, as he twisted once more out of reach of her claws, was getting to grips with her. She was in and out with her slender claws before he had the chance to meet and close with her, leaving thin tears on his underscales. Fortunately his underscales were tougher than most and her claws didn’t penetrate deeply enough to do more than draw blood. The slight pulling discomfort was enough to distract him slightly, however, and having to watch out for the prince didn’t help his concentration.
Rafiq pulled himself tighter, protecting his underside, and the she-dragon went for his wings instead. He rumbled a fiery laugh and twisted, slicing hard and fast with his wing-spikes. She dodged, but he saw the spurt of red from one of her wings and the way she staggered in the air, and dove after her immediately. This time she wasn’t quick enough, and Rafiq, with a surge of mingled regret and exultation, closed with her at last. He bound her tail with his, her wings pinned to her sides by his claws, and with a clean slice of his wing-spikes he slit her thr
oat from one side of her jaw to the other shoulder. Then he held her close, warming her last moments with the fire that burned high and hot along his underside, and carried her gently to the courtyard below, blood bubbling over her scales and his.
***
In the smallest room of the Enchanted Keep a young woman in serving garb lay sleeping on a narrow cot. A scar, lit from within, spread on her neck from one ear to the other shoulder. As a dark, complicated shadow sank past the window her eyes flew open and she sat up, gasping.
“Oh no!” she said, scattering pillows in her haste to scramble from the bed. “Oh no, no, no!” She leapt for the door without stopping to find her shoes and sprinted down the hall, her bare feet slapping against cool marble. A shadow passed the window again as she ran, huge and rising fast; but she ignored it.
As she approached the grand stairs that swept down into the receiving hall, a booming gong sounded through the Keep. The girl took the stairs three at a time with the practised ease of one who has done so many times before, fairly flying across the red-marbled hall below until at last she was by the grand doors, her breath quick and short. There she took a moment to straighten her head-dress and neck-scarf, unwrapping it completely only to wrap it again more carefully around the new scar. At last she took a slow, careful breath in, released it just as carefully, and hauled open one of the massive front doors.
The First Circle is ended
The Second Circle
Rafiq flew high and sank again. It was no use trying to run, but the furious energy in him demanded to be spent, and it wasn’t until he’d expended it that he returned to Prince Akish in the courtyard below.
The prince threw him an impatient look when he landed. “Are you finished sulking?”
Rafiq spat a molten piece of fire and said: -Yes-
“Good. I’ll have need of you once I’m in the Keep.”
-I won’t fit-
“You’re Burdened,” said the prince. “Be a man.”
Rafiq snarled an even bigger ball of fire but there was nothing he could do. Burdened he had been, and Burdened he was to Change. His wings dwindled and disappeared into his shoulder blades, sparking the faint sense of panic that changing to human always induced in him, and the courtyard around him seemed to spring up, growing at ridiculous speed. When it was done he found himself crouched on the flagstones, chilled and small, with one stupidly delicate human hand flat against marble where it made a brown blot against the white. Somehow, whether from familiarity with Prince Akish’s physiognomy or because of his own dusky scales, Rafiq always found himself as a vaguely earth-coloured human when he changed. It made him fit in with the general Illisran population, and if he’d assumed anything so specific, Rafiq would have assumed that he would take on the lighter caramel skin tone of the Shinpoan people when Changing in Shinpo.
He climbed rather unsteadily to his feet, aware that Prince Akish was waiting by the Keep’s massive front doors with impatient black eyes, his fingers tapping an irregular tattoo on the grand marble balustrade beside him. There was a similarly large and ornate bell pull within easy reach of the prince– not that he’d bestir himself to pull it, thought Rafiq, with an unfamiliar human grin tugging at the corners of his mouth.
He managed to climb the stairs on his second attempt, precariously off-balance by the loss of his two forward legs, and set a resounding gong bellowing on the other side of the doors by a vigorous pull at the bell-chain. Beside Rafiq, the prince straightened his chain-mail and adjusted his sword to a more convenient angle: preparing for either female welcome or male attack.
Someone must have been watching for them, because the ringing tone of the gong had scarcely faded when one of the heavy double-doors groaned inward, spilling bloody light on the red marbled floor of the Keep’s grand hall. Rafiq saw bare feet first, one of them white-scarred in a line that vanished beneath a fluttering hem of light pink. It was a girl– a serving girl, if Prince Akish’s: “You there! Where is the princess?” was to be trusted.
The serving girl gave them a Shinpoan bow with her bare arms outstretched gracefully, displaying the top of her beaded head-dress for a respectful moment. She drew herself upright again in a single, liquid movement, and said in careful Illisran: “Your mightinesses are well-come and apologies are offered.”
“Never mind that,” said the Prince, in impatient and effortlessly colloquial Shinpoan: “I don’t want your apologies, I want the princess. Bring her to me.”
“Well, that’s what I was trying to apologise about,” said the serving girl. Rafiq thought she looked relieved to be speaking her native tongue. “You can’t get to the princess. You’ve passed one Circle of Challenge, but there are six more to go. In fact, as soon as you step across the threshold the second Circle will begin, so you really might like to think about it before you– oh...”
Her voice trailed away as Prince Akish said to Rafiq: “Remove her,” and Rafiq seized her by the elbows, lifting her bodily out of the way. He’d always thought his human form was ridiculously small, but it occurred to him for the first time that it was only so in relation to his dragon self. The serving girl’s head only came to his shoulder, and now that he came to think of it, Rafiq found that he could see over Prince Akish’s head without rising on the pads of his feet.
“You’ll refrain from getting in our way,” said the prince, crossing the threshold in Rafiq’s wake.
The serving girl, flicking a look from Prince Akish to Rafiq, said: “I’m sure you’re right. There’s a Door Out if you need it, your highnesses. Don’t hesitate to call if you should require me: I’ll be in the next room.”
She left them in a flutter of pink silk, the long end of her neck-scarf wafting lightly behind her. To Rafiq, it seemed as though she was decidedly cross. That was intriguing, because he’d always found female humans particularly hard to read. The moods and features of the prince and other Illisran males he had come to read tolerably well, but he hadn’t had much of an opportunity to study the female of the species.
“Leave the serving girl alone,” said Prince Akish, following Rafiq’s eyes. “We don’t need her. The princess is said to be in the highest room of this accursed tower: we’ll ascend the main stairs and find our way from there. Be alert. Take the lead.”
They weren’t styled as Commands, but Rafiq felt the burden settle on him nevertheless. He crossed the hall in swift steps, his eyes darting into the bloody shadows that flanked it. It was hard to tell exactly how big the hall was, though it was clear that it was vast: the smudging of shadows far away were akin to an old oil painting. In fact, it didn’t seem as though the hall ended so much as became two dimensional. Rafiq felt his eyes slide away from the far end in discomfort and started up the stairs. His human legs were beginning to feel more able, and he took the stairs two at a time with one ear to the prince’s footfalls behind him. The curving balustrade framed the hall below, cool white against red, and rounded into a smooth bowl at the upper landing, from whence the front doors could be seen in the same kind of flat reality as the distant hall below. Rafiq grunted at that, missing the familiar heat of fire in the back of his throat, and passed ahead of the prince into the grand room that led on from the landing.
It was paved in the same red marble as the hall below. Rafiq grimaced in distaste, but the expression froze on his face as his eyes met the grand staircase at the end of the chamber– no, hall! He took several swift steps into the room and turned in a slow circle, his chin oscillating up and down in his study of the hall.
“It’s the same as the one below,” said Prince Akish. “It’s exactly the same as the hall below.”
Rafiq, who had been systematically scanning the hall, said: “It is the hall below. We’re back where we started.”
The prince said flatly: “That’s impossible.”
“Yes,” agreed Rafiq, but he saw the prince’s eyes flickering wildly around the hall.
“Confusing, isn’t it?” said the serving girl’s voice. She was in the doorway
of the next room: the same one that she had entered in the hall below.
“How did you get there?” demanded Prince Akish.
Rafiq managed to restrain himself from sighing, though one of his brows rose, and when he chanced to meet the serving girl’s eyes she was looking distinctly amused.
“I was here all along,” she said. “I told you: there are another six Circles of Challenge. This is the second. It’s a circular paradigm of two rooms and a staircase from which there are no exits except the way forward and the Door Out.”
“She must have sneaked up the staircase behind us,” said Prince Akish stiffly to Rafiq.
“She didn’t,” said the serving girl. “But don’t take my word for it. Climb the stairs again. I’ll wait for you.”
“Climb the stairs again,” said Prince Akish to Rafiq.
Rafiq’s instinct was to bare his teeth in a snarl but his human face didn’t know how to make the right shapes, so he grimly ascended the stairs without speaking. Trust Akish to do anything he could do to avoid being made a fool of! This time he kept Prince Akish and the serving girl in sight as he climbed, guiding himself by the balustrade. As it curved out into the familiar bowl shape of the landing once again, Rafiq took one last look at the others and strode into the room. The serving girl and the prince stood there before him.
“Here we are again,” said the serving girl pleasantly. Rafiq gazed at her silently, then wheeled back to the stairs behind him. When he leant over the balustrade of the landing, the serving girl’s eyes were on him from her place in the hall below. She gave him an elegant half-shrug.
Shards of a Broken Sword Page 14