“Father would disagree.”
“Really? You’ve been ravaging the countryside? You flew off to a cave to nest on your hoard? I hadn’t noticed.”
“Frank, I’m not going to abandon my kingdom, or my father, or you, just because I’m a dragon.”
I lifted her chin because for once the height difference between us was in my favor. I looked into her golden dragon eyes. “No, you aren’t, because the most important part of you is still the princess I tried to save a year ago.”
She leaned in toward me. “Frank?” she whispered, and her breath was warm on my cheek, still carrying a hint of brimstone. I didn’t care.
“That’s the part of you I fell in—”
“Can we move it along, please?” interrupted an annoyed-looking elk.
I spun around burning with anger that I only restrained by reminding myself that pissing off yet another deity was probably not in our best interest.
The elk cocked its massive antlered head, framed by the mountainous horizon. Those mountains weren’t there before.
Lucille spun on the elk and was suddenly the dragon again. “Move what along?”
The elk nodded its head at me. “What is it you want?”
“What?” Lucille asked.
“Oh,” I said in growing realization.
Her massive head turned toward me. “‘Oh,’ what?”
“I summoned Lothan,” I said. “He accepted my sacrifice. He’s waiting for me to request a boon of him.”
“More than saving us from Dudley the Inept?”
“Actually, that was a boon I granted him. Dudley was about to claim Lothan’s ritual space in Nâtlac’s name. Judging by the Goddess Lysea’s reaction to more or less the same thing, I suspect Lothan was happy for the opportunity to disrupt Dudley’s efforts.”
“Just because you spilled blood on the altar before Dudley did?”
“If it wasn’t for happy accidents, I don’t think any of my plans would ever pan out.”
“You had a plan?”
“Still working on it.”
“Was it an accident?” Lothan asked. He was now a bear wading through a rushing stream whose rocky shore ended near Dragon Lucille’s forelimbs.
Was it? The questions were getting on my nerves. Before I could pursue the thought any further, Lucille—the human one—grabbed my shoulders and shook me.
“Frank! You know what this means!” She looked at me with an expression of what I could only call ecstatic realization.
“What?” I asked. For a moment I thought she must have figured out how to stop the impending war with the elves.
“You can have your body back!”
“Yes, if we do that we can stop—Wait, what?”
“Your body, Frank! You saw what he did to all of Dudley’s guards. Their bodies changed! He can change you!”
“Uh, yeah. I guess he could.” I hadn’t even thought about that. She was right. Lothan’s domain wasn’t just illusion, deception, and chaos. As he had made a point to mention, he also dealt with transformation. You’d just have to ask the screech owl who stared at us impatiently from a dead tree that leaned a little to the left of where the bear had been wading.
“Did you think otherwise?” the owl contributed. “Can we speed this up?”
“Frank? What’s the matter?”
I took a step out of her arms and turned away from her. “Thank you,” I said. “That . . . it means a lot that you said that.”
“Frank?”
“But you know we can’t do that now.”
“What do you mean? You deserve this. If we can—”
“But we can’t, Lucille.” I kicked a rock so it skipped across the sandy desert that surrounded us. “Sure I could ask that, and Lothan would be happy to grant me that one boon. But it’s not just my body now, it’s ours. And that’s the problem.”
“I don’t mind having a—”
“And you’ve forgotten the part where our souls cease to exist?”
“That’s not what Crumley said.”
“No, but that’s what it amounts to.”
She bit her lip and looked down. “Maybe it would be easier.”
“What? Are you seriously thinking . . .” I trailed off, because I knew she was. And I think I knew why.
“If I didn’t want to be—need to be—the dragon . . . If you weren’t in a body you were never intended to be in . . . We’d both get to start over at the same time. We could fit.”
“Or we’d end up twice as screwed up.”
“I’ve felt it. So have you. Would it be so bad? Gradually thinking the same thoughts until there weren’t any others?”
“We wouldn’t be us anymore.”
“But we’d be together.”
Lucille was crying, and I took her into my arms.
“No,” I whispered into her ear as I embraced her. “That isn’t going to happen. I’m not abandoning you.”
“You realize you can’t abandon me right now?”
“You know what I mean.”
It wasn’t the dragon’s voice that answered. “Yes, I do.”
“You realize I’m still here?” A mule asked us as it scratched its rear against an old stone wall that bordered some farmer’s fields.
We broke apart and faced Lothan.
“Can you prevent this? Split us back into our own bodies?”
The beaver set down his branch and asked me, “You would like both your separate spirits to own your own body, to control as they will?”
“Yes, that’s the idea.”
King Alfred the Strident, my father-in-law, straightened his crown and arched a shaggy white brow while wearing a half-grin that was alien to his normally dour face. He stepped off his throne, smoothing his robes, and walked across the throne room, toward a chest in one corner by the fresh timbers waiting their role in the castle reconstruction.
I swallowed, because I was reminded of the damage to the castle, and to the Northern Palace, and the dead and injured left in my wake. I wondered if I had made the right decision. Was this just me being selfish again?
I looked over at Lucille who stared, gaping as her father rummaged in the chest.
“How can he . . .” She spoke as if she hadn’t noticed Lothan’s many forms up to now. I guess her father was different.
“Illusion and transformation,” I said, reaching over and squeezing her hand, because I could.
I decided that I wasn’t completely selfish.
King Alfred found what he had been rummaging for and lifted it up out of the chest. Only now he was King Dudley and we all stood in a wrecked temple lit by the remains of a dying bonfire. Dudley handed Lucille a metal flask, and I reached out and took it with her hand. Our hand. I stared at the dull gray metal flask, stoppered by an elaborate black wax seal. I looked up and we both said in Lucille’s voice. “What do we do with this?”
Lothan/Dudley winked at us and said, “Why don’t you read the instructions?”
We glanced down and there were engraved words on the metal surface. Unfortunately, the light was too dim in here for us to make out what it said.
Not that we’d get more chances to read it, since we stood, naked again, in Dudley’s commandeered temple. It appeared that no more than a few seconds had passed since our departure. Dudley stood inside a ring of Lucille doppelgängers. Four of them, victims of Dudley’s confusion or my brief fight, sprawled on the floor dead or unconscious. That left eight angry naked princesses, at least half of whom had managed to find some improvised weapon.
Maybe I should have asked for a discreet exit from this situation.
We gripped the flask and ran.
Lucille dove out the door, Lucilles in pursuit. We ran down a damp stone hallway partly lit by a few sconces holding burning torches. I realized now that she had
wrested control of our body again. I hadn’t actually realized it until she stopped just long enough at one of the rusty sconces to pull the torch from it. The torch was fresh, probably brought by Dudley’s men.
I wanted to shout, “Stopping? Bad idea!” at her. However, one of those men, trapped in the body of a young princess, made the argument more eloquently for me.
He—she—swung at us with a long dagger.
Unclothed fighting is never a great idea in the best circumstances. However, if it is unavoidable, there are some weapons that you still just never, ever, want to face with naked skin. Near the top of those would be a burning torch wielded like a club.
Lucille was considerably more brutal with her twin than I would have been. And I felt relieved when our dagger-wielding opponent retreated, broiled but still living. However, the short confrontation gave Dudley’s princess brigade a chance to catch up with us. They were too close for us to turn and run now; we were forced to back away, swinging the torch to keep the other Lucilles at bay.
It was a standoff in the relatively narrow corridor, but not one that could last. We were outnumbered, and all they needed was one lucky shot.
The corridor made a sharp turn behind us, and from that direction I heard running feet. My heart sank as I thought that Dudley’s people had found a way to circle behind us.
I realized that the feet in question were clearly booted, and my heart sank further. Dudley must have left some guards at the entrance to this place, guards unaffected by Lothan’s transformations, and we had just reached the point where they had heard the commotion.
We had to hope that the multiple Lucilles might confuse them enough to give us one shot with the torch. However, I heard two sets of boots. Any hesitation wasn’t going to be enough. Lucille might disable one of the armored guards with a lucky surprise blow with the flaming torch. It was unlikely, but conceivable. Doing it twice in whatever window of surprise we had? That wouldn’t happen.
But I felt Lucille’s muscles tense on the arm that held the torch. Hopeless, but she would try anyway. I hefted the flask. I still had control of that arm. The metal might make a decent missile. If she went at one guy with the torch, I could throw the flask.
Still hopeless, but I could tilt the odds just slightly away from the completely impossible. Besides, if we died here, we weren’t going to need Lothan’s boon anyway.
We reached the bend in the corridor as the booted feet converged on us. Lucille spun, raising the torch as I lifted the heavy flask. We were going to need a miracle.
We got one.
Rounding the corner came Rabbit and Krys, fully armored, swords drawn.
Somehow, tense as we were, Lucille managed to keep the torch from slamming into Krys’s face. My arm followed through on the throw, but I kept the presence of mind not to let the flask go. Where I had aimed, it probably would have sailed over Rabbit’s head anyway.
Lucille hadn’t expected my aborted throw. Her stance had already been thrown off balance by the sudden halt of her own swing. As my swing continued into the follow-through, we toppled forward at Krys’s feet and the torch tumbled into the corridor behind all of us. Before our face planted at Krys’s boots, I saw the wide-eyed expression of confusion on her face.
Of course, she had been looking past us toward all the other Lucilles.
Everyone hesitated several moments to take stock of the situation. Then, as Lucille lifted our face from the floor, we saw Krys’s boot stepping over us. As Lucille pushed ourselves up, with my help, Rabbit leaped over our legs to join the battle.
Battle was a kind word.
When evenly matched, skin to skin, even with their disorientation, the other Lucilles had Lucille and me hopelessly outnumbered. Twelve on one, eight on one, it didn’t matter that they were as naked as we were.
Facing two of my armored handmaidens, members of the only warrior order of the Goddess Lysea, trainees of the mostly insane but scarily competent Sir Forsythe the Good . . . not so much. Even though Rabbit and Krys opted to use sword pommels, boots, and gauntleted fists rather than their blades, Dudley’s princesses still took a cruel beating.
By the time Lucille got us upright, Krys and Rabbit had the Lucilles pushed back all the way to the temple. As we watched, Dudley managed to rally the remaining princess guard to close the entry door in Krys’s face. I heard a thud as a bar fell into place on the other side of the door. Rabbit pounded on the door a few times with her sword, but stopped when she saw how heavy it was.
Krys turned toward us, sparing a glance at the three unconscious and moaning Lucilles scattering the floor of the corridor between us. Most of the light came from the torch Lucille had been waving like a club, half out and guttering by our feet.
“This is not what I expected,” Krys said.
This is awkward, I thought.
CHAPTER 19
“So the obvious question is which one is the real princess,” Lucille said.
Krys looked down at the other Lucilles and nodded.
“Would it help to tell you that I’m Lucille, not Frank?”
Krys answered, “Maybe, but you were with them a while before we found you. They could have found out you’re back in the princess’s body.”
I felt Lucille’s shoulders sag as she realized that Krys was right. Theoretically nothing she could tell Krys was beyond the ken of anyone with a hot poker, a strong stomach, and some time. Throw in magic, which was obviously at play here with the multiple Lucilles, and they had little reason to trust us. Especially since our first act had been to level an attack in their direction, one that—given our face-plant—could have been simply incompetent rather than quickly aborted.
Rabbit touched Krys’s shoulder. She had sheathed her weapon and held her finger up in a wait-a-moment gesture. Then she rummaged in her belt pouch and pulled out a small bundle of leaves. I felt Lucille wince in sympathetic disgust as Rabbit plopped it in her tongueless mouth.
The sight made me queasy as well, I remembered what that stuff had tasted like when it was diluted into some tea. I couldn’t imagine chewing the raw leaves. Then again, Rabbit was probably used to it, and I realized that she probably couldn’t taste it anyway.
Yeah, but she could still smell. I recalled unpleasant memories of flatulent slime mold.
Frank? Spoke a mental voice that still sounded much older than her years.
Yes! I said. Good thinking!
So it is you and Lucille, there at the end of the hall?
Yes, it’s us. I lifted the hand I still controlled and waved, still gripping Lothan’s flask.
Good, just let me know one thing . . . What’s my name?
I almost thought Rabbit at her. Then I stopped and realized that she had just combined a healthy, and justified, bit of paranoia with her quick thinking.
Rose, I responded.
Rabbit smiled.
• • •
We found Lucille’s clothes, along with the elf-king’s pendant, in an antechamber along with a pair of Dudley’s guardsmen. The guardsmen had received a surprise visit from Krys and Rabbit, and they weren’t going to bother us, or anyone else in this world, ever again. At this point I thought it was unfair to be surprised at that. All my “handmaidens” had toughed it out on their own a long time before they fell in with me. Any one of them could be scary in a fight before, and now they had half a year of real training under their belts.
Besides, when the stabby end of a blade is plunging into you, it really doesn’t make much difference if the other end is held by a burly warrior or a mute teenage girl. If I wanted to intimidate someone, I’d bring Brock, who was a walking mountain. If I wanted to kill someone, I’d be much better off with Rabbit or Krys, even if they weren’t the most martial of the Goddess’s warrior order.
I got dressed as Rabbit and Krys shut the doors to the temple corridor. The heavy oak door had no built-i
n way to bar it from this side, but the two girls managed to quickly improvise a barricade, wedging the gaps between wood and stone with daggers from the dead guards’ belts, and taking a free-standing iron candelabra and hooking it through a massive ring that would have been used to pull the door closed.
Given that Dudley and his princesses would have to pull the door open from the other side, they would be working to escape for a long time. Once we were dressed and the door barred, Lucille asked, “How did you find us?”
I felt inordinately gratified by her use of the plural pronoun. When I was trapped behind her eyes, it was nice to have the recognition I still existed.
I didn’t need to listen to the answer. As we dressed I had been “talking” to Rabbit.
How did you find us? I’d asked, about five minutes before Lucille had.
Krys faked being knocked out. She’d wanted to jump them by surprise wherever they were taking you . . .
And they didn’t bother taking her.
No. That came with a mental snicker. That pissed her off something good. Though that was for the best—I don’t think she has the best grip of tactics. What exactly was she going to do if they’d taken her too? Conscious or not?
She followed us?
As much as she could.
Krys had followed the rather obvious group of armored thugs through the streets of Fell Green into a district filled with temples, churches, and other structures dedicated to various gods. She lost them when Dudley’s group went underground. That was when she returned for Rabbit, who had much better tracking skills than anyone else I had ever seen.
Rabbit was somewhat dismissive of her contribution. A dozen large men tramping through a little-used underground corridor? I could have followed that trail if I was blind as well as mute. I don’t know how Krys couldn’t just follow the smell of their sweat.
She asked me why there were a dozen copies of Lucille running around, and I told her. Her laugh that time had been more than mental, and drew stares from Lucille and Krys. She’d responded with a shrug that said, “If I could, I’d tell you.”
Rabbit had the same thought about changing my mis-gendered body that Lucille had, and I had to explain the more urgent issue that faced us. She had responded with appropriate horror, and affirmed my decision to use Lothan’s boon to try and fix it. Especially since Elhared wasn’t around to reverse the problem.
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