by E. A. James
The road wound between farms and fields into the unbroken country beyond the village. The crowd kept up its exuberant music and song. Everyone ignored the mountain looming black and foreboding overhead. A single blackened post stuck out of its top. Margila kept her eyes down. She couldn’t look up the mountain without losing her nerve.
The road circled the mountain and rose into the heights. The gaiety and joy increased the closer they came to the summit. Margila’s heart beat faster, and her mother tightened her grip on her arm. Her father laid his other hand on her arm to steady her. She swallowed a lump in her throat, but she had no choice but to keep walking. The maidens’ ethereal dancing mesmerized her, and tambourine beat gave rhythm to her steps.
She put one foot in front of the other, but the air on top of the mountain got so thin she couldn’t breathe. She panted through parted lips and leaned on her parents for support.
All at once, the crowd turned a corner and the post came into view. The vast countryside, for hundreds of miles in every direction, lay spread out in a complete circle all around her. There was nowhere else to go, and nothing separated her from that post.
All the gaiety and merrymaking stopped in a heartbeat. Nothing remained but the raw truth. She would die up here, and nothing could save her. Raw instinct took over her mind. She struggled to break free and run away, but her own parents laid hold of her and held her back.
Her desperation gave her superhuman strength, and she fought with all her might to break away. She kicked and scratched. She screamed insults and threats, but the young men lent a hand and dragged her to the post. She begged her parents to help her, but they turned a deaf ear to her entreaties. Her father clenched his lips together while they tied her arms above her head and her ankles, one to the other.
Margila tugged at her bonds. “Please, Father, don’t do this to me. Untie me. I’ll do anything you say. I promise. Just let me go.”
Her father stood before her. Margila couldn’t remember such pain in his eyes. “Goodbye, my lovely. Believe me, your sacrifice shall not be made in vain.”
The other men surrounded him, and he vanished out of her life. Her mother came forward with tears streaming down her cheeks. She kissed Margila. “Never forget, I love you more than my own life. I would happily take your place if I could.”
She, too, vanished into the crowd. The sea of bodies closed around them and swept them away, down the mountain.
The young maidens came forward now, and Amara took her place in front of Margila. She took off Margila’s crown and removed the flower garlands from her wrists. She took off the cloak and the gossamer gown. She left Margila dressed in nothing but a plain cotton shirt.
Margila blinked at the woman who used to be her friend. “Amara? How can you do this to me?”
Amara gave her a gentle smile. “If I was in your place, it’s you who would be doing the same thing to me. You’re not the Harvest Princess anymore. You belong to the Raveniss now. Good-bye.”
Amara walked away. Margila yanked at the ropes holding her wrists. “Amara!” No one answered her, and the last maidens disappeared around the corner. “Amara!”
A deadly silence fell over the mountain. The wind howled through the rocks. Was Marcus hidden somewhere in those rocks? For the first time since she left him at the festival, her heart leaped at the prospect of seeing him again. She would gladly run away with him and condemn her whole village to death if he would only slay the dragon and free her.
She twisted one way and then the other, but the ropes cut into her hands. She whimpered in desperate terror. A cry hung on her lips, but she couldn’t muster the courage to call out or scream. No one would answer her, anyway.
The sun set blood red over the mountains. The wind swung around cold from the south and bit through her thin shirt. What would become of her? She hung helpless from the post. Her shoulders started to ache, and the ropes cut into her skin. She closed her eyes and longed for death to put an end to her suffering.
Shafts of sunset light touched her face when a shadow covered the sun. Out of the west, a huge shape blacked out the sun. It covered the whole mountain. Margila’s eyes snapped open just in time to see a massive dragon sail over the mountaintop. Its enormous wings glistened iridescent green and purple with the light shining through their skin. The dragon swept down and landed right in front of Margila.
She turned her face aside to hide, but the dragon strode toward her with acrid smoke billowing from its nostrils. Its head bobbed and weaved on its long neck, and its tail lashed the air with the whistle of a cracking whip. It lowered its head to peer into her face, and it sniffed at her dress.
Margila tried to cringe away. She crossed her legs under her dress, but the thing pressed its nostrils against her hips and inhaled a long breath. It exhaled with a low rumble deep in its chest. She sobbed under her breath. It would open those disgusting jaws and end her life here and now.
At that moment, a broken yell pierced the silence. Marcus leaped out from behind a nearby rock with his father’s ancient sword brandished in his hand. Margila’s spirits soared, but at the same time, she flinched in fear. That sword couldn’t cut a thick strand of rope, let alone the dragon’s scaly hide.
Marcus charged forward. He bared his teeth, and sweat flew from his disheveled hair. He must have been hiding on this mountain since last night, where he knew no one in the Festival procession would see him.
He dashed across space toward the dragon. With one powerful sweep of his arm, he slashed the dragon with his sword. He must have sharpened it, because it gashed the dragon’s shoulder, and black blood oozed from the wound.
In a rage, the dragon whipped around to face him. It roared in his face, and the rocks shivered from the noise. Its mouth gaped at him, and the blast of air from its beating wings knocked Marcus backward.
To Margila’s surprise, however, the dragon didn’t spit a jet of fire at him to kill him on the spot. It whipped its tail around and struck him hard across the chest. Marcus flew back and slammed into a big rock. The sword fell from his hand, and he slumped to the ground. His head lolled sideways, his eyes closed, and he moved no more.
The dragon bent its long neck and licked its wounded shoulder. It growled under its breath. Then it turned its attention back to its helpless prey. That hideous head hovered inches from Margila’s face. It took several deeps sniffs of her.
For some reason she couldn’t understand, its behavior caused a curious reaction in the depths of her being. Maybe the extreme fear of standing helplessly at its mercy confused her. Maybe being tied to that post excited her more than she realized. The dragon’s presence sent a quiver of electric energy through her nubile young body. It ignited all her passions, and her flesh came to life.
A trickle of wet warmed her tissues between her legs. She closed her eyes and moaned. The dragon sent out its forked red tongue and licked its scaly lips. The thing nudged at her legs. She uncrossed them, and her bare thighs rubbed against each other.
She couldn’t stand this maddening sensation any longer. She needed something down there to satisfy her deepest longing. Not even Marcus’s expert hands could bring her the fulfillment she so desperately craved.
The dragon’s head darted back faster than mortal eye could follow. Its tail lashed, and with a calculated flick, its sharp spikes severed the ropes holding Margila’s wrists to the post. They remained bound together, as did her ankles, but her body slumped forward.
The dragon caught her before she hit the ground. She draped across its neck, and with a powerful downbeat of its wings, it took off into the air. It banked west and flew away into the dying sun.
CHAPTER FOUR
Margila came to her senses and sat up. The first thing she noticed was the post wasn’t there anymore. The rocks looked different. She wasn’t on the mountain where the village people left her. She was somewhere else.
The sun climbed overhead. She must have slept all night long. How far had the dragon taken her? How far away was
she from her home?
She lay on a flat rock. A bowl of towering boulders surrounded her on all sides so she couldn’t see beyond them. Only in one direction, several mountain peaks jutted against the sky. She must be on another mountain.
Heat radiated up through the rock on which she lay. The boulders protected her from biting wind howling among the crags. She flattened herself on the rock to keep warm when she saw the dragon slither out from across the bowl.
Its red eyes burned, and its nostrils smoked. It dragged its huge body over the ground toward her. The ropes still tied her wrists and ankles together so she couldn’t run away. She cowered lower, but she couldn’t get away.
Its head bobbed one way and then the other. Its tongue flickered in and out of its mouth. She closed her eyes. Her end would surely come now.
Her eyes popped open when a distinctly male voice spoke to her. “You have nothing to fear from me. You are perfectly safe here.”
She stared at the dragon. The voice couldn’t have come from anywhere else.
“What is your name?”
She swallowed hard. Could he really be speaking to her? “My name is Margila.”
“I am Tanak. How do you do?”
She didn’t answer.
“Are you comfortable enough, Margila? Is the rock warm enough for you?”
She couldn’t speak. She could only nod.
“You must be hungry and thirsty. I will bring you food and water later, but first I want to talk to you and get to know you. Tell me about yourself. What sort of people do you come from?”
She looked all around her in search of something to explain this incredible turn of events, but nothing came to her aid. Looking at him and listening to that voice posed an incomprehensible puzzle she couldn’t solve. He was a giant lizard. How could he talk to her? She stared at the ground.
“I’m just a village girl, like all the others. My father is Alderman. Other than that, I’m nothing special. You must have eaten hundreds of others just like me.”
“I do not eat girls, Margila. I told you, you’re perfectly safe on this mountaintop. I brought you here so you would be comfortable and I could look after you until you choose to leave.”
Her head shot up. “Until I choose to leave? Do you mean I can choose to leave whenever I want? But we hold the lottery every year to select a virgin maiden to sacrifice to the dragon. That’s what I’m here for—at least, that’s what I was on the other mountain for.”
“You do all that to sacrifice a virgin maiden to the Raveniss, but our people do not eat human beings. We take the virgin sacrifice to live with us in our stronghold to the north.”
She blinked. What in the world was he saying? “That’s impossible. Everybody knows the sacrifice dies.”
“The sacrifice dies—to the rest of the village. After the people leave her on the mountain, one of our people comes to get her, and she starts a new life with us. The same thing will happen to you.”
She started to sit up. “Then let’s go. I choose to leave right now.”
“Not just yet. There is one piece of business we have to attend to first before I can take you away.”
“What is that? I’ll do anything.”
“Don’t promise that until you hear what it is.” He curled himself up into a ball, but he still towered over her. “Our people have inhabited this planet long before humans. We have not always been at war with humans, but now the humans have decided to wipe the Raveniss out of existence. I suppose you know all about that.”
“I know the Raveniss devastate our crops and wipe out our villages. That’s why we had to instigate the sacrifices. That’s the only way we could keep the peace with the dragons.”
“Humans started the war between us. They hunted us almost to extinction. We only attacked their villages to defend ourselves. That’s why we need females, to increase our population. As long as we had females with whom we could mate, our population survived. The knights of old killed too many Raveniss females, so we had to take human ones.”
Margila shook her head. “That’s impossible.”
“I’m afraid it’s all tragically true. You’ve heard the stories in your village from the time you were a young child—all about the brave knights hunting the dragons. After several generations of that, we didn’t have enough females to stay alive. We laid waste to a few villages. After that, we sent our proposal to the Aldermen. We would leave the humans in peace in exchange for a virgin maiden each year at the Harvest Festival. The Aldermen agreed. That is how you come to be here.”
“So what are you saying?”
“Dear Margila, I can see you’re a strong and smart young woman. You must mate with me. Then I will take you to our stronghold, where you’ll dwell with me and my people.”
Margila tried to struggle to her feet, but with her ankles tied together, she fell back down on the rock. “Mate with you! Never! I could never think of mating with a monster like you. I would rather die.”
He didn’t flare up in anger. He only regarded her from his place. “Then that is what you will do.”
“How could I mate with you? Our bodies don’t even fit together. You would kill me if you tried.” She succumbed to hysterical laughter. “You’re out of your mind for even suggesting it.”
“Do you really think you would be doing anything differently from all the other young women who’ve come here before you?”
Margila caught her breath. “What about them? Have you mated with all of them, too?”
“Not me. A different dragon earns the privilege to come each year. I’ve waited many years for my chance to take a mate, and I won’t turn back until I succeed. You will stay here, on this mountaintop, and you will never see another living face until you agree to mate with me and bear my offspring. Only then will I take you to our stronghold in the north, where the Raveniss live with their human consorts and our hybrid children.”
Margila slumped down on the rock in despair. “Please don’t do this to me. Please, can’t you just let me go?”
“I cannot do that. Anyway, you have nowhere left to go. You cannot return to your village, and you would die in these mountains without me to take care of you. This bowl is the only volcanic caldera of its kind. Underground lava heats the rocks. If you went outside this bowl, you would freeze to death before nightfall. I couldn’t let that happen to you.”
“Don’t try to be nice to me. I’m your prisoner, and you want to coerce me into mating with you. You’re disgusting to me, and you always will be. You might starve me or force yourself on me, you might even starve me of company until I submit to you, but I will never give myself to you of my own free will. I can promise you that. I will hate you for the rest of my life.”
His wicked head hovered on the end of his serpent’s neck. “I have no plans to starve you or force myself on you, Margila. The Raveniss are a benevolent people, despite what you may have heard. We do not mistreat the humans who come to live with us. We treat them well, and they come to love their Raveniss mates as much as if they had chosen them themselves. They fight for the Raveniss and support our people’s cause.”
“Well, I won’t. You’ll never turn me against my own people. Do you think I could ever forget the way you killed my fiance back there on the mountain? You’re a vicious killer. Don’t deny it.”
He purred under his breath. “So that gangly creature was your fiance? How quaint! Did he think he could harm me with that toothpick of his?”
“He made you bleed, didn’t he?”
Tanak got to his feet and lumbered around in a complete circle. “Take a look for yourself.”
He turned his shoulder toward her, but Margila could see no sign of a wound or even a scar. From what she could see, the skin had sealed itself up and completely healed.
He curled himself up again. “I did not kill that man, whatever you may think. I only knocked him down so I could take you away. He’s still very much alive.”
“How can I take your word for that, afte
r what you did?”
“Because I heard his heart beating. The Raveniss have increased senses. I heard his heart and his breathing, and there was nothing wrong with him.”
Margila bent her head into her hands and groaned in despair. She couldn’t get the image of Marcus, lying helpless and unconscious on the rocks, out of her head. He could have been killed for love of her, and now she would never see him again.
Tanak watched her. “Why do you grieve over such a trifling little man? Our people used to roam freely over this planet. We used to hunt our food in the forests and dive into the oceans to fish. Then the humans came, and they slaughtered us by the thousands. Can you imagine mothers with babies and even old people too old to fly anymore, cut down by men exactly like your beloved fiance? Then the villagers invented stories to tell their children about how deadly and evil the Raveniss were for trying to defend themselves.”