Master of Dragons

by Margaret Weis

  After supper, Anton rose and headed for the door.

  “Husband, where are you going?” Rosa asked in astonishment.

  “There will be moonlight tonight,” Anton returned. “Between that and the light of the forge, I can work a little longer.” He paused, then said heavily, “The Blessed were not pleased by my output. They expected more.”

  “You are exhausted!” Rosa protested. “You cannot work this night. Come, sit and rest. You will go to work with the first light tomorrow.”

  Anton smiled ruefully. “I will be doing that, as well. Probably for the next few days.”

  “Draca,” said Rosa casually, catching her husband’s eye. “We need more water. Would you run to the well for me?”

  Draca obediently picked up the bucket and went out the door. She ran to the well, which was close by, and then ran back. She did not enter, but leaned near the open window, looking and listening.

  “This war is being undertaken for our own good, Wife. Our own defense.”

  “Do the Blessed think we are going to be attacked?” Rosa asked, alarmed.

  “They hint as much, though they don’t say outright.”

  “But . . . who would attack us? And why? We’ve done nothing to anyone!”

  “I don’t know.” Anton shook his head. “There is no doubt that the Blessed are preparing for war.”

  “And who will fight? Will they? Will you? Our people? We know nothing about such things.” Rosa’s cheeks reddened, her eyes flashed. “Two hundred years, this city has been in existence, and all those years we’ve lived in peace. Why now? What has changed? We’ve seen no sign of any enemy—”

  “I can’t say, Wife.” Anton raised his hands defensively, retreating from the barrage.

  “I don’t like this. First there’s an explosion and people die and no one will say what blew up. Then people start disappearing. Dimitri has not returned to his home and his family has had no word of him. I tell you, Husband, I don’t like it!”

  “Don’t be angry at me, Wife. I am not the one responsible. You must ask the Blessed if you want answers. Or the dragon. Where is Draca?” he asked suddenly. “She’s been gone long enough to fetch five buckets of water.”

  “Sorry!” said Draca, bursting through the door. She was dripping wet. “I spilled the first bucket all over me.”

  “Sit by the fire and dry out,” Rosa said, fussing over her. “I’m going to the forge with Anton. I won’t be gone long.”

  Draca dragged her stool close to the fire, gave them both a grin, and waved.

  “I don’t want to scare her with talk of war,” Rosa said, shutting the door.

  Anton realized there was something more here. He thought he knew what it was and he braced himself.

  “Husband—” began Rosa,

  “Rosa,” he said gently, “we must take her back.”

  “Why?” Rosa demanded. “She is a help to me around the house. She brings a light to your eyes that I have not seen in years—”

  Just what Anton had been thinking to himself about his wife.

  She laid her hand on his arm. “What if there is a war? The girl will need a safe home. Please, Husband. No one has been asking around for her. I made inquiries when I was at the market. There are no reports of a child missing. The Blessed are not making the rounds, searching for her. Maybe you were wrong about her. Maybe she does not have the blood bane.”

  “I saw what I saw, Wife. Her magic saved her life,” said Anton. “That’s the only explanation.”

  “No, it’s not,” Rosa returned briskly. Her husband was weakening and she was quick to see it. “There are quirks of fate. Happy accidents. Coincidences.”

  “Wife, I am behind enough as it is. I must go to work. We will speak of this in the morning-—”

  “I will make a bargain with you,” Rosa continued, pretending not to hear. “If the Blessed announce publicly that they are looking for a lost girl, I will take her to them myself. If not, we will give her a home.”

  “We will speak in the morning,” Anton repeated, but he knew by the set of his wife’s shoulders, as she walked back into the house, that he had already lost the argument.

  Draconas finished the washing up, swept the floor, and laid the table ready for tomorrow’s breakfast. He gave no sign that his dragon ears had overheard every word between husband and wife. He stayed up to keep Rosa company until Anton returned. The smith came home early; the moonlight he’d expected had not materialized, for the sky clouded over and rain began to fall. All three went to bed.

  Draconas lay awake, listening for Rosa and Anton to fall into slumber, which both did very shortly, for the day had been long and hard for both of them. Creeping out of his bed, he went to stand over the couple, who slept in each other’s arms.

  The house was dark, but his dragon eyes could see the lines of care and fatigue etched on each face, and he thought how he—the little girl—helped ease those lines, at least for a little while. Someday—maybe someday soon—he would sneak away and not come back. And they would never know why.

  He would leave them as he had left other humans in his past. Others who had cared about him, cared about him deeply. Others who had never known why he had walked into their lives, only to walk right back out.

  He tried to avoid saying goodbye. That always called for explanations. Easier on all parties if he just simply disappeared. As he cast the enchantment over Anton and Rosa that would insure that they sleep throughout the night, he told himself that if he could bring them news of their daughter, such news would help ease the pain of his disappearance.

  It was a nice thought to carry with him.

  The night was dark, for the sky was cloud-covered and drizzling. The streets were empty. The Blessed imposed a curfew on all citizens and the monks walked the streets at night, their fell presence presumably warding off whatever temptation anyone might feel to break the law.

  The monks roamed the streets wherever whim or madness took them. Draconas would sometimes travel for blocks and never see one and then run into groups of them skulking about in an alley. Avoiding them proved easy, for they carried lanterns and he could see them coming long before they could see him. Sighting other shadows flitting past in the night, he guessed that he wasn’t the only person in Dragonkeep out on some furtive mission. Two such shadows stood in a doorway, locked in an embrace.

  Draconas had dropped the image of Draca the minute he left the house and shifted his illusory form to become one of the monks, borrowing the features of a monk who had attacked Marcus when he first entered the city. If Draconas did run into one of the Blessed, they would find his face familiar.

  At the sight of the cowled figure of Draconas, the two shadows in the doorway fled.

  Draconas retraced his steps of the morning. He walked past the Abbey, wondering which room belonged to Ven. Perhaps the single room on the second floor where the light burned bright. Draconas stared hard at the light, as if it could answer his many questions concerning Ven, not the least of which was why he had lured Marcus here to be given as a present to the dragon, then turned around and helped his brother to escape?

  The rain came down harder. Draconas pulled his cowl over his head. The only way to answer that question and others was to talk to Ven, either face to face or mind to mind. Both those options were dangerous. The monks guarded Ven’s body. Grald guarded Ven’s mind.

  Draconas passed other monks on the street. None spoke to him. Some gave him brief nods. Others went by without even noticing him, walking with a shuffling gait, muttering to themselves. Draconas tried to imagine an army made up of these wretched creatures and failed. The dragons were smarter than that. They must have something else planned. Which was why Draconas was on his way to the palace.

  Reaching the bridge, he halted in the shadows and settled down to watch. He wanted to see monks cross the bridge, wanted to see if they were accosted by the guard and, if so, what they said and did.

  The number of the Blessed on duty at the br
idge was considerably reduced by night. Only three were posted on the city side of the bridge, and there were still no guards on the palace side. Draconas pondered what this might mean, but could arrive at no satisfactory answer. The only obvious one was that there was no one in the palace to guard—a grim thought, especially for the daughter of Anton and Rosa.

  He waited and waited, but no one made any attempt to cross. After almost an hour, Draconas began to realize that no one was going to try to cross. When they said no one entered the palace, they meant it.

  The Blessed roved about aimlessly, occasionally coming together to talk, then wandering off. Draconas considered using his magic to make himself invisible. The illusion would work with ordinary humans, but he could not count on that with these monks. Whereas another of their own trying to cross the bridge . . .

  Draconas made up his mind. He set forth, walking briskly, as with purpose.

  The monks guarding the bridge were apparently not accustomed to dealing with interlopers in the night, for they were startled beyond measure when Draconas materialized out of the darkness. Indeed, he was almost on top of them before they even noticed him, and then all three stared at him in such amazement that they seemed to wonder if he was real or an apparition.

  “Greetings, Brethren,” said Draconas pleasantly. Sweeping past them, his robes flapping around his ankles, he glanced skyward. “At least it has stopped raining for the moment. I trust I will be finished with my business and back safely in my bed before another storm breaks.”

  He kept walking as he spoke, as if crossing the bridge in the night was an everyday occurrence. None of the monks said a word or made a move, and he thought he was going to make it. He took another step, then one of them glided sideways to take up a position directly in front of Draconas.

  “None may pass,” said the monk. He was polite, not threatening, merely stating a fact. The monk’s eyes were neither unfocused nor wandering. His eyes looked quite sane. All too sane.

  “I have the dragon’s sanction.” Draconas affected surprise. “I was told to inspect the shipment of weapons that was brought into the palace this day. It seems that the dragon is concerned about their quality. He may decide to take the smith to task on the morrow.”

  “You need not concern yourself with this, Brother. The matter will be dealt with by those within,” said the monk calmly.

  “But I was told to handle this myself,” protested Draconas.

  “Then whoever told you that was mistaken.”

  The monk was calm, imperturbable, and immovable as the mountain. Less movable, maybe, for an earthquake might shake the mountain, but it seemed that nothing would shift this monk. Draconas glanced past the man to the other end of the bridge. He could always make a run for it and, with his dragon strength and speed, he could easily outdistance the human. He was turning back to the monk when his eye caught a faint shimmer of light like a fine spray of water sparkling in the sunshine—except that there was no water and no sun. He looked hard at the end of bridge and the shimmer vanished. When he looked away, the shimmer reappeared.

  Draconas was thwarted. He’d been in enough dragon lairs to recognize a magical barrier when he saw it; a barrier that was undoubtedly so sensitive it would detect a rat’s whisker. Draconas could use his magic against the monk and then against the barrier, but he had the feeling—looking into those all too sane eyes—that this monk knew a few magic tricks of his own, and the last thing Draconas wanted was the eruption of a magical firestorm in front of Grald’s living quarters.

  Draconas could think of no other persuasive arguments. Muttering that he was going to get into trouble with his superiors, he stomped angrily off the bridge and retreated up the street. Halting in an alleyway, he eyed the bridge and the stanchionlike guardian and the unseen barrier.

  “ ‘No one may pass,’ “ he repeated. “Except by invitation, and only those women who are strong in the dragon-magic. No one else is admitted, not even the Blessed. What is in that palace that no one is meant to see?”

  No one may pass. At least not across the bridge, and that was the only way inside the mountain.

  The only way for humans . . . Not for dragons.

  Draconas glanced up in frustration at the buildings that towered over him and pressed in around him. He thought of the Abbey and the broad, open expanses of grassy meadows that surrounded it, and he headed in that direction at a run.

  Ven rose from his sickbed shortly after supper, and over the protests of the monks, he announced his intention of going for a walk in the cool night air. He needed to get out, to walk off his trouble, as Bellona termed it. The mind worked better when the body was active. Ven needed exercise, needed fresh air, not the stale, monk-breathed air of the sick room.

  He started for the door, but at this the monks did more than protest. They told him firmly that he was not to venture out— Grald’s orders.

  Ven argued and even threatened. The monks were careful to keep their distance, for they feared him, but they apparently feared Grald more, for Ven was not able to shake their resolve. When he saw sparks dance on their fingertips and heard the crackle and sizzle of magic in the air, he was forced to back down.

  “It is not personal to you, Dragon’s Son,” one of the monks told him in tones meant to be mollifying. “No one walks the streets of Dragonkeep after the Slumber Hour. Take your rest this night and I will ask Grald if you may be permitted to go forth on the morrow.”

  Ven was left with nothing more than the small satisfaction of ordering the monks out of his room.

  Alone, he paced and paced, his claws clicking loudly on the wood floor, back and forth, back and forth—an irritating sound that he hoped was annoying the hell out of the monks.

  He had much to think about, not the least of which was how he would fulfill the promise of his name—Vengeance. He had sworn an oath to the spirit of Bellona that he would avenge his mother’s death. How he was to fight a dragon, when he couldn’t even stand up to a half-starved, half-mad monk, was more than Ven could fathom.

  He thought again of trying to learn the magic and rejected the idea. He wanted no part of the dragon within him. The human part of him would kill the father who had made him. And it was then, in his pacing and his thinking, that Ven realized a truth about himself.

  He was not just avenging his mother’s death. He was avenging his own accursed birth.

  He dreamed about the battle with his father in all its bloody glory, but that was all it was—a dream. In reality, the only blood likely to be spilled was Ven’s. He could wield a sword—Bellona had seen to that. But he did not possess a sword, and with the blasted monks dogging his footsteps, there seemed no way to acquire one.

  Add to that the fact that he’d have to kill Grald twice. First he’d have to slay the huge and hulking human body—a task that might daunt even the most skilled human warrior, something Ven was not. Then, he’d have to kill the dragon.

  Growing increasingly frustrated, Ven paced and kept on pacing. His route took him near the small hole that passed for a window in the crudely constructed building. He looked out this window every time he passed, longing for the freedom of the grassy sward that lay beyond it, and he vowed that tomorrow he was getting out of this room, even if he had to tear down the walls to do it.

  On his hundred and umpteenth time past the window, Ven looked outside and caught sight of movement. Even a deer bounding across the hillside would be a welcome distraction to his own dismal ponderings, and he halted his pacing to stare out into the field, his dragon eyesight easily penetrating the rain-drenched darkness.

  He saw a man standing on the hillside lift up his arms, and the arms became enormous wings. A huge reptilian head gazed up into the night. Powerful hind legs and a massive tail drove into the ground, propelling the body upward. The dragon’s claws grabbed at the clouds and caught them, seeming to drag them down to earth, as the wings carried the massive body into heaven.

  Ven was a child again, watching with vivid clarity
a man take wing, take flight, soar into the sky, leaving behind a grief-stricken half-human, half-dragon, who wanted to be all human, no dragon.

  Ven sprang at the window with a bound, sprang at it as though he might spring out of it. Gripping the ledge with his hands, he stared into the night and sucked in a breath and let it out in a hiss that was also a name.

  “Draconas!”

  He watched the dragon wheel in the sky. Draconas was fleeing Dragonkeep, escaping. Leaving Ven behind.

  Ven was tempted to call out to Draconas, to splatter the white emptiness of his cave with the red-gold stain of Draconas’s name. Ven stopped himself, however. He had only once in his life cried out for help, a cry that had been answered by Grald. He would not beg for help ever again.

  The dragon flew into a cloud bank and Ven lost sight of him.

  He continued to watch, his gaze roving rapidly over every portion of the sky. He was frustrated in his search, for the clouds gathered thickly overhead. Spatters of rain started to fall. He leaned precariously out the window, twisting his body to peer upward, but saw nothing. The rain fell harder, drops plashing on his bare head. He pulled himself back inside and continued to watch.

  His patience was rewarded. A gap opened in the clouds and Ven had a clear view of the dragon.

  The creature spiraled down from the sky to land on a rock ledge at a point about halfway up the mountainside. The dragon was there an instant and then disappeared from view as the clouds caught the mountain in their grasp and smothered it.

  Ven drew back from the window. He no longer paced. He had worn himself out. He had a lot to think about, but he could think in his bed.

  The last Ven had seen of Draconas, the dragon stood silhouetted against a lightning flash. Ducking his head and folding his wings close to his body, Draconas had entered the mountain.

  14

  DRACONAS HAD NO DIFFICULTY FINDING THE BACK DOOR INTO THE dragon’s lair. He spotted the gaping gash in the cliffs on the southern side of the mountain the moment he flew over it. No effort had been made to disguise the opening or conceal it. Grald was either a very lazy dragon or a very arrogant one.