by Jack Heckel
Volthraxus glared at the wolf, who responded by crouching lower to the ground in supplication. “No games, Beo, I wish to hear all the news.”
“Yes, I understand. It is just an expression meant to prepare you for bad—”
“I do not have any desire to banter with you,” Volthraxus managed to put enough anger in his belly so that a trickle of steam escaped his nostrils. “Tell me all you know, or your life is forfeit. My patience is at an end.”
Eyes rolling with fear, Beo began to tell his story in a rapid-fire fashion. “The King and his betrothed are both in the castle preparing for the upcoming wedding. However”—and here the wolf paused and gave a meaningful glance—“as I warned, visiting Prosper was not advisable. Tales have been spreading through the realm that a dragon had been seen in the skies over the South Valley.”
“It was necessary,” Volthraxus said, then asked nonchalantly, “What is the reaction among the people?” Oddly, he realized, he was hoping for the worst—total bedlam.
“Most believe it to be just village hysteria,” Beo began, but at an angry snarl from Volthraxus, quickly added, “but a growing number clamor for King William to seek you out and slay you.”
“I see,” said Volthraxus sourly, not fooled by the wolf’s hasty improvisation. “Well, if he did seek me out, it would make things easier.”
The sight of me in all my glory didn’t cause a kingdom-wide panic? Of course, they were used to Magdela, and she always was more bloodthirsty. Nevertheless, it was annoying. He absentmindedly began to scratch the outline of Castle White in the stone of the cave floor with one of his claws, adding flames here and there for ghastly artistic effect.
Warming to the topic, Beo began to speak at great length about all the preparations the King was making at the castle in case the rumors proved true. “The King sent a large contingent of troops south to investigate, and he doubled the standing guard on the castle . . .”
That he was being “handled” by a creature no better than a common dog only added insult to Volthraxus’s feeling of injury, so he paid little attention as Beo continued to add ever more elaborately to the King’s defenses against him.
“ . . . and I have heard rumors that he has made a plea for dragon hunters or even someone called the Dracomancer to attend him.”
Volthraxus held up a taloned claw. “The Dracomancer?”
“Y—yes.”
“I know this Dracomancer. I questioned him about Magdela and the fairy at one point. He is a vain and foolish man. If he is the best advisor the King can manage, then my victory is assured, and if this is all the news you can gather, your use to me may well be at an end.”
“There is one more thing . . .”
Volthraxus looked up from his drawing and fixed his attention on the wolf. “Well?”
Beo squirmed. “I . . . I may have discovered where Lady Rapunzel is staying in the castle, but . . .”
Volthraxus was on his feet. “Tell me. I go tonight.”
“This is what I was afraid of, Volthraxus.” the wolf whined. “Do not be so hasty. With a double guard, there will be dozens of archers on the walls. On a clear, moonlit night like tonight, they will see you coming. We should only attack at the new moon. There is no need to—”
“Need? NEED?” Volthraxus roared, flame licking across his teeth in answer to his rage. “There is every need. The dragonslayer must feel the pain of my loss, and it must be tonight.” He did not add that another reason it had to be tonight, or at least soon, was that he could feel his fire ebbing. Soon, the sadness of Magdela’s loss would drown the last of his anger, and he would sleep again, and there in the bosom of dream try to escape his sorrow. His revenge could not wait.
“I don’t understand the rush,” Beo said.
“You do not need to understand,” Volthraxus spit. “Your job is to serve me and hope that I continue to spare your life.” He pulled the wolf closer with his tail and gestured down at the crude, talon-drawn sketch of Castle White. “Show me where she is.”
Beo hesitantly pointed at a large tower in the center of the castle with his paw. “There,” he said. “Halfway up on the east side is a large balcony. A trellis of jasmine grows about the window. That is her room.”
Volthraxus fixed the point in his mind’s eye and, sweeping the wolf aside, made for the cave entrance.
“I think you should reconsider, Vengeful . . . I mean, Volthraxus. This is a needless risk.”
Volthraxus paused outside the cave and turned his eyes, twin flames burning with the passion of his hunt, on the wolf. “Look to your food, Beo, and leave this to me. When I return, it shall be with Lady Rapunzel as my prisoner. Then I too shall have a reason to feast.”
With that, he tore through the trees to the edge of the mountain cliff and flung himself into the sky.
Beo watched the dragon fly away with a curiously disappointed expression. Pity, he thought. I have never eaten so well.
Beo, like most wolves, was an eminently practical creature. He could not understand any act that was not rooted in fulfilling either a carnal or digestive need. It baffled him every time a knight, surrounded by fair maidens and fine food, left the comfort of his castle to risk his life jousting other knights or traveling to far-flung bridges to fight smelly trolls. It was an enduring mystery. The wolf stared after the dragon until it was a speck on the horizon, then shrugged his bony shoulders and turned back to his food.
A few miles west and a few thousand feet down, in a wonderful, high room in the Royal Tower of Castle White, Lady Rapunzel, dressed in a lovely nightgown, sat on her bed, trying to make her way through an exceedingly dull book on court etiquette. Normally, she loved to read, but she found this particular topic tedious to begin with, and the author of Brummell’s Guide to the Courtly Arts had not made it any easier by filling his “authoritative” tome with personal anecdotes that mostly involved extremely detailed descriptions of what everyone was wearing. However, the fact that fashion was so central to Brummell’s text did explain why the Royal Librarian had referred to it as “Charming’s Handbook.”
Yawning, she stuck a finger between the pages of the volume to mark her place—Chapter 3: “The Essential Elements of the Backhanded Compliment”—and closed the book, letting her gaze drift across the room, where it settled on the other reason she was finding it so hard to concentrate tonight. On a mannequin in the corner by her dressing table, in all its white-laced splendor, was her wedding dress. The tailor had delivered it this morning and, as foolish as she knew she was being, just looking at it made her happy. It didn’t seem possible that in a little less than a month, she and Will were going to be married. It was too fairy-tale. But, looking at the dress made it real.
It had only been a month past a year since they had returned to Castle White from Liz and Charming’s wedding—such a short time—but her old life seemed to be, well, a lifetime ago. She remembered only vaguely the strange madwoman that had made herself a social pariah by attacking Prince Charming in the middle of a Royal Ball. Elle no longer recognized herself in the needy, insecure girl she had been and cringed at the memories of those days. It seemed the kingdom had also forgotten her past. She was on everyone’s invitation list, and every day she saw more and more of the women of the court mimicking her down to the way she wore her hair. Initially, of course, she had intended to grow it out, but each time the hairdresser came, she asked for the same style. Besides, Will really did seem to like it short.
Stop that, she lectured herself. Liz would tell you that the point is not how he likes your hair but how you like your hair.
Like all of Liz’s advice, this admonition was much easier taken than followed. She let her eyes wander from the dress to a mirror set on the wall behind the dressing table. She cocked her head from one side to the other and watched her hair swish and fall across her face. No, this seemed right. Besides, t
he style had become so associated with her at this point that some part of her felt that to abandon it would be to abandon a part of her own personality.
No! You are NOT your hair. She refused ever again to be known simply for her hair—long or short.
“And, that is why I will become the best queen this kingdom has ever known, which means reading bloody Brummell!”
With that, she threw herself back into her studies. But, a few pages later, her eyes crossed, the book slipped from her hand, and her head began to drop to her breast.
It was in this half-asleep state that Elle heard the castle watchman in the East Tower shout the alarm. Her thoughts had grown so languorous that the echoed cries from guards in towers across the castle and the sudden flare of watch fires being lit outside her window blended naturally into a dream she was having where she and Will were being married in a carnival tent with the lords and ladies of the court all around as spectators. A ringmaster was shouting at them to jump through a hoop of fire. Elle started to argue with the man that it simply wasn’t possible for her to do such a thing without catching the skirt of her dress ablaze, when a sound like an avalanche stopped her. She and the ringmaster turned at the source of the noise, which seemed to be coming from outside the tent. The cloth walls began to tremble and ripple, then tear.
Elle came awake with a sudden start beneath a shower of glass and wood and stone. She threw up her hands instinctively and felt dozens of stings as the debris cut into her face and palms. She looked between her fingers in confusion and saw that the glass-paned doors to her balcony had shattered inward, taking part of the stone wall with them, and there, amid the ruins of white trellis and jasmine, was a nightmare.
The dragon, for that is undoubtedly what the beast was, was perched on her balcony, trying to force its bulk through the opening and into her room. It was armored in silver-and-gray plates, and seemed to be all sharp edges and angles. Hundreds of teeth like knife blades jutted from its mouth, and a pair of horns curved sinisterly out of the top of its head, but it was the eyes that were its most striking feature. Set beneath jutting brows, the golden orbs seemed terrible and hard, and flames, deep red dancing flames, burnt where the pupils should have been. It stared at her from across the room and renewed its assault, battering its body several times against the castle. She flinched at each jolting impact, but the walls of the tower did not yield any further, and it was simply too large to fit through the door. It beat its wings in frustration, and a hurricane wind ripped across the room, extinguishing her lamps and plunging everything into a darkness that was relieved only by the ruddy glow of the fire that still burnt in her grate.
Later, Elle would be embarrassed to remember that in that first moment of panic, her thoughts did not initially turn to her own safety or the safety of the castle, but rather to whether her dress had survived, and despite herself, she looked to the corner of the room, where the headless mannequin bride still stood untouched by the dragon’s attack. Then the dragon withdrew slightly and leaned down, thrusting its head and long, sinuous neck through the remains of the door.
Elle screamed and scrambled backwards off the bed. She pressed against the wall farthest from the balcony, but she couldn’t run any farther away.
The dragon opened its jaws and roared—an earsplitting sound that brought Elle to her knees in sobs of terror. As the hot, sulfurous breath of the dragon surrounded her, Elle closed her eyes, whispered a goodbye to Will, and prepared herself for death.
Nothing happened.
Elle was still alive. She opened her eyes and saw that the dragon had withdrawn to the balcony. It perched there, talons gripping the stone, seemingly relaxed, despite the sound of arrows plinking off its scales. The monster was absently scratching something into the balcony stone. Elle was reminded of a cat playing with its food.
Nonetheless, she took this respite to examine her situation. She was alive—that was certainly a plus. She was mostly uninjured, with nothing but a few cuts, scratches, and bruises—again definitely a good thing. It appeared that the dragon could not actually reach her, which she realized might account for her first two observations, or that she was still observing at all. And then Elle remembered the most important thing of all—the door was on her side of the room and only about twenty feet away. If she could make it there . . .
“Have you worked it out yet?” the dragon asked in a deep voice that was tinged with an oddly archaic but certainly cultured accent.
“Wh—what?” Elle choked, her mind still trying to grasp that she was now talking with a dragon.
“Have you worked out that I cannot reach you and that your escape lies but a few feet away?” He (for she decided that anything with a voice like that must be a he) said with an arch of his plated brow and accompanied by what she could only describe as a wry smile.
“Ummm,” Elle intoned noncommittally. She refused to acknowledge that this had been her exact thought because she was not sure whether the admission would lead to her immediate and fiery death. The dragon could probably incinerate her and everything else in the room—including her dress—anytime he wanted.
“I see,” the dragon said with a sigh. “You have already reached the next stage of understanding, namely that I could burn you to a cinder if you tried to escape. We seem to be at a bit of an impasse. What are we to do?”
Elle bit back the snarky answer she wanted to give, which was that this was his show, and asking her for a solution was not particularly good form. Instead, she said, “We could call it a draw and go our separate ways?”
The dragon shook its impressive head. “No, I’m sorry, I must leave here with you—preferably alive.”
“Why?” she asked, realizing that if she was talking with the dragon, that meant she wasn’t being eaten or burnt up by said dragon.
“I don’t have enough time to give you a full answer. I am afraid your betrothed and . . .” The dragon cocked its head to one side as though listening “ . . . at least a score of his knights are mere moments away from reaching your door.”
As if on cue, Elle heard the sound of dozens of feet pounding in the courtyard outside. Hope bloomed. Will would save her. He would lead his knights up the tower to her and drive the dragon away. All she had to do was keep the beast from doing something hasty and nasty for a few minutes more. She glanced at the door and saw that she had latched the bolt the night before—something she had done to keep Will from walking in and seeing her dress before their wedding day.
“Damn,” she hissed, then silently added several more colorful curses about stupid wedding traditions.
“Yes, I noticed that the door was bolted myself,” the dragon said dryly. “Unusual for a lady of your position, as it makes it difficult for the lady’s maid to attend. However, if it makes you feel any better, I don’t think that door, as heavy as it is, will keep the King or his men from attempting your rescue. It may delay them for a minute or two, but no more.”
Elle was exhausted by terror and confused by the dragon’s calm. The combination made her momentarily reckless, and she said, “Since none of this seems to matter to you, it seems a shame to put them through the trouble. Why don’t I just unbolt it?”
She had actually taken several steps toward the door and extended her hand to the latch when the dragon, its voice ominously low, said, “I wouldn’t.”
Elle almost responded, “I know you wouldn’t,” but the threat implicit in the dragon’s voice froze the words in her throat. She turned back to the dragon, her fingers hovering just above the door’s handle. “Why?”
“Because I am living death. Within me burn the infernal fires, and I will consume any man that enters that door in a hellish fiery doom. And, because we both know that your future husband, the dragonslayer, King William, will be the very first man through that door.”
That he made these statements as fact lent them greater weight. But even
more terrible to Elle was the raw anger in the dragon’s voice when he gave Will’s title. She knew now that this was not about her. The dragon was here for her fiancé.
In answer to this thought, she heard the sound of men running along the corridor outside, then a hammering at the door. “Elle!” Will’s voice thundered. “Elle, are you alright?”
Her heart skipped at the sound of his voice, but she dared not answer. Her earlier hope at his coming had turned to a deep dread. Shaking, she pulled her hand back away from the latch.
She squared her shoulders and stared back across the room at the dragon. The flickering light of the fire cast the dragon’s face in shifting shadows of orange and black, so that it was hard to read his expression, but those flaming eyes—half-lidded now—danced menacingly in silent confirmation that the creature’s threat was not idle. If Will came through that door, he would die.
Elle knew what she had to do.
She heard Will just outside the door. He was only a few feet from her. “It’s bolted. Back! Stand back, damn you!”
She heard him strike the door with a tremendous blow, but though it shuddered, the door held.
Will’s actions steeled her own resolve. “Wh . . . what are your terms, dragon?” she asked, finally finding her voice.
The dragon grinned toothily and nodded. “Practical and to the point, I like that. If you will come with me, I will leave and, for the moment, spare King William his doom.”
Elle hesitated. A thousand doubts flooded her mind, but in the end only one question mattered—could she trust the dragon to spare Will? She would willingly sacrifice herself if it meant that Will would be safe.
There was another resounding crash, and the wood of the door trembled but did not yield. She heard Will yell, “Elle! I’m coming!”