Master of Dragons

by Margaret Weis

Her hair was tangled and matted with bits of twigs and leaves. Her face was covered with dirt and streaked with tears. Her nose had swelled and her eyes were red as a rat’s.

  “No wonder he won’t have anything to do with me,” she said to herself, appalled.

  Not to mention those accursed red-brown splotches on her bodice and her skirt.

  She couldn’t do anything about her appearance now. When they stopped for the night, she’d take a bath (modestly provocative) and she would scrub those horrid spots out of her chemise and her skirt.

  Which would leave her clothes sopping wet. She couldn’t put them back on. She might catch her death of cold.

  Which meant that she and Marcus couldn’t very well continue their journey.

  Not with her having nothing whatsoever to wear . . .

  2

  STANDING WAIST DEEP IN THE WATER, WATCHING THE BOAT CARRYING Bellona’s body drift downstream, Ven turned to wade back to shore. Glancing down, he saw a thin trail of blood snaking out into the water and meandering downstream. The stab wound had reopened.

  Evelina had struck in haste. The knife had glanced off bone, avoiding any organs. He’d lost a lot of blood, however, and he’d lost more blood when he’d slipped out of the city of Dragonkeep to pay his last respects to the woman who had raised him and, in her own strange way, loved him. His dragon-blood had acted promptly to start the healing process, and the wound had already partially closed. He must have torn it open during his strenuous exertions—carrying Bellona’s body to the river, placing it in a boat, and casting the boat adrift, freeing her spirit to join the spirit of her life’s love, Melisande—Ven’s mother.

  The chill of the water had kept him from noticing. The dragon-magic seemed slower to heal the wound this time. Perhaps the magical power inside him was growing weaker as he grew weaker. He needed to return to Dragonkeep quickly, before he collapsed. It would never do for him to be found outside the city walls.

  Emerging from the water onto the slippery bank, he dug his claws into the mud to keep his footing and it was then he saw the footprints. Two sets, fresh: one set small, made by slippered feet; the other larger, wearing boots. He couldn’t spare the time to investigate—every moment he was away was a moment his absence might be discovered. Yet, he could not help but follow the footprints with his tracker’s eye to try to deduce where they had gone, the two he was risking his life to save—his half-brother, Marcus, and Evelina, the young woman who had stabbed him.

  Marcus had been back and forth to the water’s edge several times, dragging heavy objects along with him. Ven recalled the boats used by the monks stacked on the shore. There were none there now. He could picture Marcus dragging down one boat after another, shoving each out into the river to float away downstream. Marcus would, of course, have kept one of the boats for himself and Evelina.

  Ven looked back at the river, at the bright noon sun glittering on the water. He could imagine the two of them in the boat, Marcus rowing, fearful of pursuit. Evelina sitting in the stern, gazing at Marcus with adoration.

  Ven had seen the light of love burst into flame the first moment Evelina had set her blue eyes on Marcus. Well, maybe not love’s light. Knowing Evelina, it was most likely the light gleaming off Prince Marcus’s golden crown.

  Ven pressed his hand over the wound to try to stop the bleeding.

  That’s why she stabbed me, he reflected. She was afraid I would tell Marcus the truth about her, that she was not the poor, mistreated victim of my brutal advances. That she deliberately seduced me in order to trap me. That she sold me to a traveling circus to be exhibited to the gaping wonder of the crowd.

  She believes me to be dead—I made sure of that. Evelina will be sitting pretty now, thinking she’s safe and secure, able to snare Marcus in her web, bind him with her silken lies and sting him with the poison of her lips, paralyzing him into stillness so that she can suck him dry.

  Maybe. Maybe not.

  Ven wondered if Marcus had told her that he’d communicated with his brother, that Ven was alive.

  In his brother’s place, Ven would not have said anything to Evelina, and he doubted that Marcus would. Both brothers had learned at an early age to keep secrets. The truth was dangerous, might be disastrous, bringing peril to themselves and those they loved. Marcus would be slow to trust, reticent about speaking his thoughts aloud, naturally cautious and reserved.

  He would also be extremely confused. Ven could not help but grin wryly. It served Marcus right. He had been very quick to believe Evelina’s accusation that Ven was a vicious, murdering monster. How astonished Marcus must have been when the murdering monster saved their lives.

  I could tell Marcus my side of the story, Ven considered, as he gazed lip river. Marcus might even believe me.

  Ven mulled it over and decided not to. He wasn’t sure exactly why. Guilt was some of it. Evelina had not entirely lied. He had meant to take her that night in the tall grass and he would have, if she had not managed to fend him off and wriggle out from beneath him. And he was responsible for the death of her father. She had not made that up. Ven had not killed Ramone with his own hand—the monks had done that. But they had murdered him because of Ven.

  Part of his decision not to tell was vindication. Ven felt a certain satisfaction in thinking that the brother who had grown up pampered and happy and loved should fall victim to a mercenary little vixen. Ven expected this feeling to be stronger. Instead, it was uncomfortable. Ven couldn’t say that he loved Marcus, but he liked his brother, and that was unexpected. Ven had looked forward to hating Marcus, who’d been given everything in life, while Ven had been given the back of life’s hand. Instead, Ven found someone who understood, someone who shared his pain.

  And, after all, maybe his not telling Marcus came down to the simple fact that Ven disliked interfering. He’d said what he’d needed to say to Marcus and to Evelina. Let the two of them sort out their lives. He had his own problems.

  He was thinking all this as he stood on the bank, staring at the water, when his thoughts were jolted back to earth. Voices, heading this direction.

  Grald must have finally lifted the illusion that hid the city gates of Dragonkeep from the world outside. The monks were coming, somewhat late, to chase after Marcus. This meant that Grald knew Marcus had escaped. Did the dragon know how?

  “Perhaps the monks aren’t after Marcus,” Ven said to himself in alarm. “Perhaps they are after me.”

  Ven had to retain Grald’s trust. The only way to slay the dragon was to take him by surprise, catch him off guard. Grald mustn’t suspect that Ven had anything to do with Marcus’s escape.

  Ven had been careless—that’s what came of giving way to emotion. Prints of his clawed feet were everywhere, leading in and out of the water. He cursed himself for not having the foresight to cover his tracks—Bellona would have made him stand in the corner for a week in punishment. Hastily, he raked his claws over the telltale signs, rubbing out the traces that he’d been here.

  He didn’t have much time. The voices were growing louder, and he could hear the monks bumbling through the woods. He ran lightly and easily on his clawed feet into the trees, jumping from one grassy hillock to another, making certain that he left no more tracks.

  Once safely hidden in the wilderness, he paused to consider his next move. His first thought was to race back to the city, but then the idea came to him that he might learn the answers to his questions by spying on the monks. He crouched among the foliage and waited.

  Blood trickled down his side, tickling him. His wound was still bleeding. He pressed his hand over it and willed it to stop.

  Three monks in their ankle-length brown robes came blundering out of the forest. They were hot and sweaty and scared, and they peered and poked about. Their eyes, with that strange half-mad glint, went from ground to water and even sky, as if somewhere in their confused brains they imagined that their prey might have grown wings and taken flight.

  “They’re not here,” sa
id one, bewildered.

  “What did you expect?” another asked. He seemed more sane than the rest. His searching had been more methodical. He’d stared a long time at the footprints. “That they’d wait around for you?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe.” The other two continued to search, not with hope of finding anything, but because they didn’t know what else to do.

  “The boats are gone,” one pointed out.

  “They used the boat to escape,” said the lucid monk.

  “But all the boats are gone,” the first reiterated.

  “They set the rest adrift.”

  “Ah!” The monk seemed to consider this an act of genius, for he stared, wide-eyed, at the sluggishly flowing water. “I’ll go find them.”

  He plunged into the river, splashing and floundering, his arms flailing. The lucid monk, shaking his head, waded in to grab hold of his companion and drag him back to land.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” the monk asked sternly. “You can’t swim. You’ll only end up drowning yourself.”

  The monk shook free. He cast a look back at the water—a look that was bleak and wistful—and then he turned away. Ven shivered in the cool shadows and was sorry he’d stayed.

  “What do we do?” asked the sopping wet monk plaintively. “We can’t go after them. We have no boats.”

  “We go back to Dragonkeep.”

  “What do we tell Grald?” The monk sounded nervous.

  “That we couldn’t find them. And that there were no boats.”

  “Grald will be angry.”

  “Grald is always angry,” said the leader, and he shrugged.

  The three did not leave immediately, however, as Ven had hoped. The leader stared intently up the river, as though he were reaching out, searching with his mind. The other two continued to poke about in a desultory manner.

  Ven cursed them silently and willed them to depart. The mysterious explosion had thrown the city into confusion and turmoil, but he was afraid that now his absence would be noticed. He was just thinking he would have to risk slipping off into wilderness, when the lead monk announced that they should be returning.

  “Grald will be eager for our report.”

  “He didn’t seem eager,” one of the monks muttered. “Otherwise he would have opened the gate when we first reported that the two escaped.”

  “Grald has his reasons.”

  The monk who had jumped into the river spoke up. “I heard that the dragon did not open the gate because he feared that the man we’ve been told to find—the one Grald calls ‘Draconas’— would be lost to him.”

  Ven’s ears pricked. He wanted to hear more. Unfortunately, the monks now began walking back toward the city. Ven cursed them a second time. His dragon-blood gave him the ability to hear better than humans, and he stretched his ears to the limit.

  “Grald finally did open the gate,” another monk argued. “So this Draconas must have been caught.”

  “He wasn’t,” said the leader. “We have been told to keep searching for this man. Either for him or for his corpse. It seems that it was this Draconas who caused the terrible blast. They still don’t know how many are dead.”

  “Why would he do that?” The monk sounded shocked.

  “Because he is our enemy. Sent to destroy us.”

  “Who sent him?” The other two monks were eager listeners now, avid for news.

  “The human king who has long been a threat to us. Edward, the king of a nation known as Idylswylde. You mark my words. This means war.”

  War against Idylswylde. War against Marcus and his father. Ven tried to picture an army of mad monks, and it was so ludicrous that he snorted in derision.

  He was much more interested in finding out what had happened to Draconas.

  Ven remembered the horrific blast. It had reduced the house in which he and Marcus and Evelina had been to rubble and allowed Marcus and Evelina to escape. Draconas had caused the blast and Grald was hunting for him. Which meant Draconas must still be alive.

  Once the monks were well out of earshot, Ven made his way back to the city, hoping to reach it before anyone noticed that he’d been gone.

  3

  ANORA FOUGHT THROUGH A MIASMA OF BLACK ANGER AND Grald’s raging mixed with her own pain and blank confusion. She was flat on the floor, lying amidst a heap of cracked stones and splintered, smoldering timbers. Clouds of dust and smoke obscured her vision. She coughed and shook her head to clear it of the throbbing and Grald’s yammering.

  “What have you done?” He was howling, furious. His colors reverberated inside her aching skull. “You have destroyed half the city and nearly killed me in the process! And my son? What has become of my son?”

  Anora ignored him. She tried to remember. Draconas! What had become of Draconas? She leapt to her feet and glanced swiftly about the wreckage of the building. His body must be here somewhere. He could not have escaped her. He should be dead— human bones and flesh burned beyond recognition.

  A walker had never yet died while in human form, but the dragons had prepared for that eventuality. The illusion of the human body remained even in death. Otherwise, humans might come to know that dragons were spying on them. The dragons would recover the corpse in secret and then use spells to lift the illusion, so that the dead could be laid to rest in the bottom of the sea, the traditional dragon burial site, where all life began and to which all life must eventually return.

  What with Grald yelling at her and shrieking humans swarming about the place and her head throbbing, Anora found it difficult to concentrate. She grit her teeth and shut them all out. Draconas was not here and he must be here.

  Her illusory body possessed dragon strength, and the humans watching were amazed to see the pudgy holy sister lifting up enormous boulders and flinging them aside, heaving huge timbers out of her way, kicking and clawing at the rubble. They assumed she was searching for survivors, and they regarded her with awe and admiration.

  “Shut up,” she finally ordered Grald. “Where are you? I need your help!”

  “Then you shouldn’t have dropped a goddam building on top of me!” returned Grald, who tended to use regrettable human expressions even in his dragon thinking. “It’s a good thing this human body has a thick skull, otherwise . . .” He paused, seething, then roared, “What the hell happened? You were supposed to kill Draconas, not level my city!”

  Anora was silent, her colors smoldering.

  “What?” Grald thundered. “Isn’t he dead?”

  “He must be,” Anora returned coldly. “It’s just ... I can’t seem to find his body.”

  “Perhaps it was blown to bits,” Grald suggested.

  “If that were the case, there would be blood, bone, hunks of flesh. There is nothing. You must help me search for him.”

  “I would like to,” Grald stated caustically “But at the moment I am buried under a half-ton of rubble. My magic protected me from harm, but I can’t free myself. The monks are digging me out, but it’s going to take some time. What about my son? What happened to Ven? The monks can’t find him and neither can I.”

  “Ven was always adept at keeping his mind hidden from us.” Anora stood in the middle of the debris, angry and frustrated. “What about his brother? The human prince? He should be easy enough to locate, and if you have one, you have the other.”

  “Not necessarily,” said Grald. “The human managed to escape.”

  “He escaped the explosion?”

  “The city.” Now it was Grald who was on the defensive.

  “How is that possible?” Anora demanded in disbelief. “The human is strong in dragon-magic, but not strong enough to penetrate the illusion of the wall. Only another dragon could do that ...” Her voice trailed off.

  “So Draconas did escape you,” said Grald grimly. “You destroy half my city for nothing.”

  “I did not destroy the city,” Anora returned crossly. Looking around the ruin in which she was standing, she was starting to realize wha
t must have happened. “Draconas cast a counter-spell that caused his magic to clash with mine. It’s a wonder any of us survived. You must order your monks to search for the Walker,” she added, her colors sullen. “I believe he is alive after all.”

  “Told you so!” Grald sneered.

  The monks were ordered to search for two humans: the Walker, who wore the guise of a human male in his thirties, and a human male named Marcus last seen wearing the robes of a monk. The monks were also told to look for Ven, the dragon’s son, whom they all knew by sight. Unfortunately, their search for both humans and the dragon disguised as a human was hampered by the fact that the entire population of Dragonkeep had been thrown into a state of panic by the blast.

  With the maddening perversity of humans, people rushed to the site of the blast instead of fleeing it, which, as Anora told Grald, any creature with common sense would have done. Before the dust had settled, humans clogged the streets and clambered over the ruins, screeching and yelling, wailing and weeping, groaning and bleeding, and none of them staying in one place, but all of them milling about in confusion.

  Anora continued her search, though without much hope, for she was convinced that it must have been Draconas who had helped Marcus escape. Humans were everywhere underfoot. They scrabbled frantically through the wreckage, calling for those who would never answer. A middle-aged man hurried past carrying the bloody, broken body of a child. A young woman crouched, moaning, over the corpse of a young man as another woman was trying unsuccessfully to soothe her. The dragon paid scant attention to any of this.

  There were so many humans in this world, their lives so short and fleeting, that the loss of a few dozen was no great cause for concern, especially when the future of both mankind and dragonkind was at stake.

  Slowly, as the reports of the monks began to come in, Grald and Anora were able to piece together parts of the puzzle.

  The monks entered the building where Ven and Marcus and the girl, Evelina, had last been seen. No one was there, although the monks did report finding a large pool of blood on the floor. They did not know whose blood. There was no body. A hole blown out the back of the building gave the monks some idea of how those inside had escaped.