Collins cycled another calming breath, then opened his eyes. Korfius huddled in a dark corner of the cave, no longer a dog but a naked, shivering boy. A mop of blond hair fell around his heart-shaped, pale face; and he hugged his long, scrawny legs with arms equally so.
Aisa headed toward the boy, but Collins scrambled to get there first. No matter how inexperienced a comforter he was, he would be preferred. By skidding in front of Aisa, he did reach Korfius first, though the parrot/woman had to stumble backward to keep from running into him.
Collins put his arm around the sobbing boy, saying nothing, allowing the child to find his voice at his own pace. At length, Korfius shifted position, burying his tear-streaked face in Collins' grimy shirt, and managed to sob out muffled words. "Why-why-we're back in Barakhai, aren't we?"
"Yes." Collins pulled Korfius closer, sparking a dim memory of worrying about petting him in dog form because it might seem like child molestation. Though he now held a naked boy, he did not worry about a matter that now seemed silly and trivial. Korfius needed him, and he would support his best friend as well as he could. There was nothing sexual about comforting a loved one.
"Don't you" Korfius wheezed out. "Don't you want me anymore?"
"Want you?" Collins repeated. He squeezed Korfius. "We're a team, Korfy-pup." He used the pet name that had stuck after a woman in his housing complex had coined it. "Forever."
Korfius snuggled against Collins. "Forever?"
"Forever," Collins said emphatically, though he had no idea how long "forever" might last, given the risky assignment he had just accepted. At least until tomorrow.
"Then why…?" Korfius started but never finished. He seemed to struggle with words as he never had before, presumably because he had not used any for longer than a year and a half.
"Zylas and Falima asked me to come, and I did. I wasn't going to leave my forever pal behind." Feeling guilty for every second he had forgotten Korfius' origins and had treated him as just another dog, Collins listened intently and hoped he was getting through. "Besides, I wanted to talk to you."
Korfius sniffled, and the tears stopped. He looked up at Collins. "Tome?"
"To you," Collins confirmed.
"Why me?"
The answer seemed so obvious, Collins laughed but stopped the moment Korfius looked affronted. "I want to make sure you're happy living with me. That you don't need anything I'm not providing. That I'm feeding you okay."
Korfius wiped the tears from his eyes with a fist. "I like being a dog all the time. That's every lesariat's dream." He rubbed at the other eye. "And I like having you as my master."
Collins cringed. With Korfius in human form, it made him feel like a slaver. "You're sure?"
"No one forced me to come to your world," Korfius reminded.
"Well, no, but"
"And I could leave if I wanted to, right?"
Stunned, Collins only nodded. "I… never thought about that."
Korfius sat up, freeing himself from Collins' grip. The tears had completely stopped, and his words came more easily. "Sure. I know where stuff is. Just 'cause I'm a dog doesn't mean I'm dumb."
"No, it doesn't," Collins agreed, rocking back on his heels. Remembering the others, he looked around the cave. No one seemed to be paying any attention to them. Aisa and Zylas cleaned up the remains of breakfast without so much as a glance in their direction. Prinivere dozed in her corner. "Are you happy with your food?"
Korfius shrugged. "I like the stuff you eat the best," he admitted. "And that's mostly all I get from you. Some of the others give me that kibble junk. It's not as yummy, but I know it's better for me, and I've got plenty of things to just chew on. I'd like to have you with me all the time, but I know you have to go to class and stuff." His young face screwed into a sidelong knot. "I honestly think I'd miss my quiet nap if you stayed home every day."
Collins could scarcely believe that a dog who had spent part of his life as a boy could be content with the simple ways of an average American dog. It also surprised him to learn that others in his building were feeding his dog.
"In fact, I think you should go out more." Korfius managed a smile. "With a lady who really really likes dogs."
Collins laughed, feeling like a divorced father. "Likes to pet them all day long?"
"That would be nice."
Collins thought he would have a million questions-not many people got the opportunity to talk to their dogs-yet he found himself thinking hard to come up with even one. "Do you… understand me… when I talk to you when you're a dog?"
Korfius bobbed his head vigorously, and the yellow locks flew. "Mostly I do. More so the last few months. Overlap gets better the more time you spend in animal form."
Collins remembered hearing that before, which explained why Regulars usually gained overlap faster than Randoms. Usually, he added to himself, thinking of Zylas' near-perfect overlap. Other factors included practice, desire, natural ability, and level of distractions. On the other hand, it seemed wrong to refer to spending life in one form as overlap."
"So," Collins tried to summarize, "you're basically happy?"
Korfius smiled. "I'm happy," he confirmed. The grin wilted. "Or was. Until you brought me back here. Now I have to deal with switching again. And don't the royals want us dead?"
Thinking of a very touchy subject, Collins lowered his voice to make certain none of the others could overhear. He hoped Prinivere's mind reading did not carry this far or, if it did, that she had her attention turned elsewhere. "Does it bother you that your food contains meat?"
"It does?"
Though Korfius' tone did not contain the condemnation and horror Collins expected, he still grimaced. "I'm sorry. I eat it. And all dog food and treats have it." He suspected some protein-balanced organic kibble might exist in some vegan store, but he doubted he could afford to buy it.
Korfius stretched his limbs, a few dried tears on his cheeks the only remaining sign of his sadness. "I knew some of our shared food was, but that's okay. I know it's not a bad thing in your world." He added, as if Collins might have forgotten, "Eating meat. It's okay there." He lowered his voice to a guilty whisper. "I like it."
'Me, too," Collins whispered back. He had toyed with the idea of going vegetarian on his return from Barakhai, but the hospital food had not given him much of a chance and he had found the lure of fast food irresistible. He did deliberately avoid the pet foods that contained horsemeat as an ingredient. "Our dirty little secret, all right?"
Korfius nodded.
Collins felt as if he had taken little away from a conversation he had risked death to have. "So I should just treat you like a normal dog?"
Korfius jerked back, as if affronted. "Oh, no. You should treat me like a spoiled, pampered prince of a dog. Like on that show we saw."
Show? Collins did occasionally turn on his tiny television in the evenings for relaxation. He considered, remembered the Dateline special on people who baby their pets, and laughed. "Well, you can forget the steak every night. Their dogs don't live long enough to have to worry about cholesterol levels and heart attacks-"
"Choi-what?"
"-but I'll work on the full-sized bed of your own when I graduate and have a good job."
"No, thanks." Korfius yawned. "I'd rather sleep on yours."
"Great." Collins laid on the sarcasm, not nearly as bothered as he claimed by waking up several times a night with a dog head on his leg or belly. In winter, he appreciated the warm body beside him, and it allowed him to forget he always slept alone. Since his breakup with Marlys, he had not had a relationship serious enough to last longer than a couple of dates, and his last sexual encounter had been with Carrie Quinton. Not that he had not had the opportunity. The notoriety his mysterious brush with death had gained him, along with the improvements physical therapy had made to his skinny physique had brought him the first flirtations of his life. Since his trials in Barakhai, the college girls seemed flighty, obsessed with the insignificant: all game
s and looks and alcohol. None of the unattached postgrads suited him. Somewhere along the line, he had fallen prey to the romantic notion of that one perfect mate, and not one of the girls he had met in the last year came close to fulfilling it.
Collins wondered how much of that to attribute to the meltdown of his own family. His parents had divorced soon after he left the nest, and each had become thoroughly preoccupied with his or her own affairs. Collins had ended up in Barakhai the first time because he had had no family to visit over the Thanksgiving holiday. Despite all that had happened, despite his mother's dutiful visits as he recovered and his father's calls from his European vacation, Collins had found himself stuck in the laboratory again over the next year's four-day weekend. Like Korfius' lesariat parents, they had raised him and then purged him, and one another, from their lives. Korfius professed not to miss his parents or his seven same-age brothers and sisters, who, like him, had an overwhelming doggy side.
Oblivious to the turn of Collins' thoughts, Korfius continued, "I like tug-of-war, and you don't have to worry that it'll make me vicious, despite what Maia says." He referred to one of Collins' neighbors, a long-legged redhead who considered herself the dorm authority on animal training. "I like the big biscuits, the brown ones-not the little multicolored ones. I'm not the one who took Bernice's shoe; it got kicked under the common room couch. I like Tom, but I wish he'd quit ruffling my back fur the wrong way. Dan's got the perfect touch on car scratching." Korfius rolled his gaze directly onto Collins. "You could learn from him. I would never poop or pee inside, so tell Nita to stop worrying. Nick smells too much like a cat not to be hiding one. And, by the way, you have huge roaches; and they're delicious."
Collins laughed. "Slow down. I don't have anything to write this down with."
Korfius continued in the same tone, as if he did not hear. "Now, if you don't mind, I need a nap." Without further ado, he paced a circle, curled into a ball, and closed his eyes.
Collins rose from his haunches and took a scat on one of the chests, trying to remember all of Korfius' revelations. He now knew that his long-lived dog was intelligent and not color-blind but, nonetheless, a dog and Korfius had no desire to become human again. It seemed strange to Collins who, if given the option of reincarnation would definitely choose to, once again, be a man. Though he might enjoy trying out an animal form for a short time, he had no desire to become one for a lifetime, quick-witted or otherwise.
Zylas came up beside Collins. "Did you find out what you wanted to know?"
Collins bobbed his head noncommittally. "I suppose."
"Not what you expected?" Zylas guessed.
Collins' wishy-washy gesture morphed into a clear shrug. "I don't know what I expected. Korfius is happy with his life, which is all I really needed to hear."
Zylas studied Collins through his pale blue eyes. "You're not happy?"
"I'm… happy, I guess. I just… " Collins paused, uncertain what he wanted to say. "Talking about Korfius' life got me thinking about my own."
Zylas gestured for Collins to continue.
But Collins shook his head. "It's silly, really. My world has so much compared to yours. And yet… " He shook his head again. "Don't mind me. I'm a fool."
Zylas slapped his forehead in mock horror. "Great.
Now I've got my life depending on a fool." He looked stern. "I picked you for a reason, Ben. And it wasn't because you're a fool."
Collins laughed, his somber mood lifted by Zylas' even more serious one. "I didn't mean I'm a permanent fool. I just meant I was being foolish about this."
"Ah." Zylas' cheeks turned pink.
"But that was pretty good. Save that motivational speech for later. I might need it."
Zylas glanced at Prinivere, who was lumbering into a deeper, darker portion of the cave. "Riches come in many forms, Ben. They can buy a lot of happinesses, but they can't fill the empty places in your soul."
This time, Zylas hit the problem directly, but Collins no longer wanted to talk about it. "Did she go to… change?"
Zylas followed the direction of Collins' stare. "Yes. Prinivere went to find privacy while she takes switch form."
Takes switch-form? Collins considered, then remembered that Prinivere had started as a dragon, then had the human-time inflicted upon her. Over the centuries, she had narrowed her switch time. By Collins' reckoning, she took human form from three to seven P.M., which reminded him to set his watch the moment Prinivere revealed herself as human. "And then what?"
"We let her eat. Which might take a while." Zylas pursed his lips and looked toward the chest where they had taken lunch and now Aisa busied herself setting out a feast for Prinivere.
"Then we discuss the details of tomorrow's castle break in?"
"Right," Zylas confirmed. "Mostly how to convincingly take on the personalities of the guards we're imitating. The rest we'll have to play somewhat by ear."
Though Collins would have preferred an airtight plan, he was not dumb enough to expect one. Only so much of the kingdom was predictable, and no renegade but Collins had ever set foot in the rooms on the upper floors of the castle. His thoughts betrayed him. No renegade but me. I'm here a few hours, and I already consider myself one of them. Oddly, the realization seemed more comforting than shocking, and he could not find it in him to laugh. It reminded him of the night he had dreamed that his Great Aunt Irene, ten years dead, had called and requested he repair the porch of an elderly couple on a fixed income because an elephant's foot had broken through the steps. In the dream, it had all seemed natural and plausible, and he had only questioned why the couple had chosen to paint the wood olive green. He had felt useful and needed, the one his wise old aunt turned to in a crisis. He looked from Zylas to the massive space Prinivere no longer occupied, to Aisa shooing Ijidan from the feast. The squirrel chittered angrily in the parrot/woman's direction, and Collins wondered dully whether he would survive what his desire to feel wanted and appreciated had gotten him into this time.
Chapter 4
THREE hours later, Benton Collins perched on a boulder outside the hidden cave, watching the sun dip toward the horizon he considered west and wishing he had brought a compass. He wondered if magnetic north would even exist here as a concept and realized it did not matter. He could just as arbitrarily call it magnetic southeast. If it made him feel comfortable to consider the sun's passage east to west, like home, it made little sense not to do so.
Gaze fixed on brilliant blue sky, broken only by white puffs of cloud, Collins enjoyed the fresh scent of damp greenery and natural pine, untainted by the greasy odor of rotting garbage or the bitter tinge of carbon monoxide.
He knew from experience that the sunsets here dwarfed anything he had seen back home, the colors vivid and alive, undiminished by artificial lights or by plane trails. Everything seemed brighter here, as if an omnipotent haze grayed every part of his world and it took seeing Barakhai to bring the realization. The cliff tops pointed sharply upward, treelined and spreading as far as he could see by eye or with the binoculars. Zylas had said they would leave for the castle from a much closer hiding place than this. Clearly, Prinivere would have to carry them there again. Even if a climb were possible, it would take weeks to get to the lowlands.
Without fondness, Collins remembered the stomach-churning flight that had brought them here. He appreciated that Prinivere had brought him to a truly safe haven where the king's men could never reach them. Nevertheless, the idea of what had to follow seemed raw agony: whizzing through the air without the body of an airplane cocooning him or even a safety harness to keep him in place against gusts or sudden movement. He had enjoyed some of the roller coasters on his senior class trip to Busch Gardens, but no one would consider him an adrenaline junkie. Still, he planned to take part in an excursion only a stuntman could relish.
"Don't you think you should give Falima some privacy for her switch time?"
The voice, so near Collins' ear, startled him. He loosed a noisy breath and skitte
red sideways, banging his shin against an outcropping. He glared at Zylas. "What did you do that for?"
Hunkered on a rock, cloth bundled under his arm, Zylas blinked, expression genuinely bewildered. "What did I do this time?"
Collins put a hand over his pounding heart. "Snuck up on me."
"I'm in man form. I figured you'd heard me." Zylas looked at his shoes, composed of thin wood and string.
"I'll practice making more noise when I walk from now on, okay?"
Collins suspected walking lightly came naturally to an outlaw, let alone a rat, with good cause. He believed Zylas, attributing most of his startlement to his own deep concentration, "Don't go stomping around on my account." He considered. A touch would surprise him at least as much as talking, maybe even result in someone getting hurt if his mind registered it as an attack. "Maybe you could just start speaking from a little farther away."
"Deal," Zylas said. "Anyway, what about that privacy for Falima?"
Collins looked at the horse grazing placidly, black mane striping the golden fur like spilled ink. "She doesn't look too upset."
"Agreed. But remember the other time you came to Barakhai and saw her human form naked?"
An image rose in Collins' mind of Falima's magnificent, muscular curves that complimented her high cheekbones, spare lips, and even her generous nose. "Yeah," he said dreamily. Thirteen or fourteen hours ago, she had emerged, unclothed, from the portal; but he had barely noticed, more concerned about their survival. Finally, he recalled Falima's previous discomfort. Accustomed to nakedness, the denizens of Barakhai seemed not to notice one another or to feel conspicuously vulnerable in a state of undress. Collins' lustful stare, however, had bothered Falima. She had seen it as hungry.
Apparently unimpressed by Collins' answer, Zylas pressed, "And remember how you paid for it?"
Collins' cheeks turned fiery. They had made him disrobe in front of everyone, worried about how he would stack up compared to the other men, mostly stallions, in Falima's life. "Let's go inside," he suggested coolly.
The lost Dragons of Barakhai bob-2 Page 6