Mistress of Dragons Read online

  “I suggested that the soldiers should be seen, to give the idea that there might be an invasion. Instead the warriors saw the monks. The women are not fools. They have been asking questions. The Mistress had to pass them off as mere travelers.”

  “Besides, there is the enchantment,” Grald continued in sullen tones. “He tried once to cross and failed—”

  “And you think that failure would deter him? He is a dragon, Grald, not a human. I think you forget that sometimes.”

  “He is in human form,” Grald returned. “And that makes him vulnerable.”

  “Not so vulnerable but that your monk botched his job.”

  “We had no time. We had to move fast—”

  “And so do I. The old woman is frail and feeble and of no more use to me. The Mistress dies this night. Once you have started the others on their way, return in the morning to collect the body. Burn it as you did the others.”

  Edward dug his fingers into Draconas’s arm.

  I heard, damn it. Draconas jerked his arm away. Now what the devil do we do?

  Grald was not pleased. “I am opposed to this. The woman could live many more weeks, months even. More time is needed to prepare the new—”

  “The decision is mine to make,” said the lisping voice. There came the sound of an enormous bulk shifting its great weight, of claws scraping against rock floors and scales rubbing against rock walls. “You have what you came for. Take care of your business and let me take care of mine.”

  “Very well, Maristara. You know what you’re doing, I guess. I’ll be in touch,” said Grald.

  The shadow bowed low, then started to move.

  Draconas flattened himself against the wall. Beside him, he felt Edward stir, reaching for his sword. Draconas laid a restraining hand on the king’s arm.

  For a brief moment, Grald’s shadow blotted out the light, and then he emerged into the chamber in which they were hiding.

  Draconas stared. He felt Edward give a little start of amazement.

  Grald was a giant of a man. He stood at least seven feet tall, with massive shoulders and arms, a chest like an oaken barrel, and thighs that were thick and muscular. Draconas could have bathed in the cuirass the man wore over his upper torso. He wore a huge hammer strapped to his back. A broadsword clanged at his hip.

  Grald stalked past them without seeing them. He was blind angry, stomping his feet and cursing beneath his breath, and looking neither to the right nor the left. Edward and Draconas kept still until they heard his huge footfalls die away in the distance.

  The dragon made her departure, as well. Draconas recognized every sound, knew each for what it was—the scrape of a wing tip against the wall, the scrabble of her claws on the floor, the shuffling sound made by the long, sinuous tail dragging across stone.

  The image conjured up by these sounds was so clear to him that he could not imagine how Edward would fail to realize the truth. Draconas was going to be forced to explain the unfortunate fact that they’d discovered a dragon in a kingdom that was supposed to be free of dragons and he began to swiftly cobble together a mixture of truth, half-truths, and downright lies.

  Edward didn’t say anything. The king was strangely silent.

  Draconas plucked the king’s sleeve. “We’ll go out the same way we came—”

  “Go?” Edward turned to him, amazed. “We’re not going anywhere. We must save the Mistress.”

  “Keep your voice down,” Draconas warned. “These caves are echo chambers.”

  “We must save the Mistress,” Edward whispered. He pointed toward the chamber. “You heard what that Maristara woman said. She plans to slay her this night.”

  “Your Majesty, it’s far too danger—”

  “There you go again. Calling me ‘Your Majesty’ in that honey-coated voice. But it won’t work this time, Draconas.” Edward was grim and determined. “You were right when you said this quest was a holy one. God brought me here for a higher purpose than to save my kingdom from the dragon. God means me to save this woman from a terrible death.”

  Draconas could have told him that God had nothing to do with it. Edward had been brought here by a dragon on a ruse— a ruse that had failed, for Draconas had no intention of coming between the dragon and her prey. The Mistress was as good as dead, as far as Draconas was concerned. He would have to devise another plan. His task now was to save this hotheaded human from himself. Draconas was sorry he’d ever shown Edward that beautiful face in the topaz.

  The king drew his sword, heading for the chamber where the light had been left to burn itself out.

  Draconas bounded after him.

  “Didn’t you hear those sounds? This cavern is guarded, Edward, and the guard is no ordinary one.”

  “Some great beast, you mean?” Edward glanced at him with cold disdain. “A mastiff, perhaps? A wolf? A lion or a bear? Do you think I’m afraid of any of these? I must find her, Draconas. Find her and rescue her. God brought me here for this purpose. God is with me.”

  He better be, because I’m not, Draconas thought to himself in exasperation. Aloud he said, “How will you find her? You have no idea where you are, much less where she is.”

  Edward paused, looked upward. “You said yourself we were inside Sentinel Mountain. The monastery must be directly above us. She will be there and I will find her. God will see to it.” He rested his hand on Draconas’s shoulder. “You have had everything your way thus far, my friend. But not now. I must do this and nothing will stop me save death itself. If I do not return, take word to my beloved wife that I died on a holy quest.”

  “Oh, for the love—”

  Edward clapped him on the shoulder and advanced into the chamber. He appropriated the torch that Grald had left burning, for Draconas could see the light waver, then move. He could hear the king’s footfalls moving with it.

  Calling down imprecations on the human’s head, Draconas ran after Edward. He caught up with him just as he was exiting the second chamber and entering a third. Dragons always chamber their lairs, a defensive measure that allows them to seal off some chambers in case of attack, keep others open. Edward held the torch high, looking all around him, moving slowly. He was at least proceeding with caution, not rushing heedlessly into danger.

  Coming up from behind, Draconas let himself be heard, so as not to startle him. Edward turned to regard Draconas with a warm smile.

  “I knew you would come. I knew you would not fail me.”

  “You knew more than I did then,” Draconas muttered. “Here, give me the torch if you’re insistent upon this.”

  “I am,” said Edward. “I have seen no sign of your wild beast, Draconas.”

  “You heard the sounds, same as I did,” said Draconas. “I heard them,” said Edward, “but I don’t hear them now, do you?”

  “No,” Draconas admitted.

  Despite their immense girth, dragons are adept at silent movement. Their weight is not commensurate with their size. Dragons weigh far less than they look. Their bones are hollow, so that they can fly. Their hide is thin, which is why it is protected by scales. Because they do not have much mass, they can squeeze their bodies into impossibly small spaces and thus they build their lairs with narrow tunnels and small alcoves and cul-de-sacs.

  Dragons do not appreciate being roused to action and much prefer to draw an enemy into an ambush, where the dragon may deal with him swiftly and surely. They lure any foe foolish enough to attack them deeper and deeper into their lairs, lure them to their doom.

  Maristara could be doing that very thing. She might be lulling them into complacency, waiting for them to lose themselves in the labyrinth, waiting for them to come to her.

  The chambers in this part of her lair were large, the tunnel easy to follow, for they were near the opening. Soon, however, as Draconas had foreseen, the chambers narrowed. The main tunnel split and branched off into other tunnels. They had entered the dragon’s defensive maze and this was where she might choose to fight them, lying in w
ait in an alcove or curled up at the end of a cul-de-sac.

  Draconas claimed the lead. He would come upon the dragon first or so he reasoned. He would allow Maristara to see him in his dragon form. Hopefully the unexpected sight of another dragon sneaking into her lair would disrupt her own plan of attack long enough to give Draconas the advantage.

  Fighting humans is, for dragons, pitiably easy. One blast of fiery breath, one swipe of a mighty paw, one crunch of the powerful jaws and it is over. Fighting another dragon, however, requires thought and guile, strength and cunning. Expecting an easy time against a human, Maristara would find herself up against a much more formidable foe. In the split second of her confusion, Draconas could cast a spell that would incapacitate her and then both he and Edward would have a chance to flee. He would use the dragon’s maze against her, for she could not maneuver swiftly through the narrow tunnels and they could. Draconas never lost his way underground. He would be able to guide them to safety—if all went according to plan.

  Which, he realized suddenly, had not happened once since they’d started on this ill-fated venture.

  10

  DRACONAS HAD CONFIDENTLY ASSUMED HE’D TAKEN everything into account when making his plans to deal with the dragon, but, apparently, he’d missed one. A major one.

  No dragon.

  Draconas was not lost in the labyrinthine tunnels. He was more at home in dragon mazes than he was in the streets of crowded cities. He kept to those tunnels used by the dragon, which were easy to distinguish, for she had left her mark upon the stone walls—places worn smooth by centuries of her bulky body scraping against the rock, shedding scales that glittered in the torchlight. No refuse, dragons kept their dwellings neat. He wondered absently what she did with it. Draconas carefully avoided those passages that gave no sign of her comings and goings. Those were probably laid with traps.

  He listened hard to try to detect some trace of her and at first he did think he could hear the scrape of a claw or the dragging thump of her tail. The sounds were faint, however, and he couldn’t be certain. He couldn’t tell if the dragon was ahead of him or behind. This last hour, he’d heard nothing except the skittering of rats. He assumed the worst—Maristara had chosen her battleground and was waiting for them.

  He crept grimly, stealthily on, but nothing happened. He came to several places that he himself would have deemed ideal for an ambush and he tensed, ready to meet the dragon’s attack, only to encounter nothing more frightening than his own shadow, bobbing up to meet him as he rounded the corner.

  “What a fearful, smothering sort of place,” Edward remarked in hushed tones. “These tunnels don’t seem natural to me. It looks as if they’ve been engineered. Are you sure you know where you’re going?”

  Since that was the fifth time Edward had asked that question, Draconas saw no need to answer.

  He did not relax his guard. He continued to move slowly and deliberately, ignoring Edward’s urgings to press forward with haste. Once, annoyed at Draconas’s slow and deliberate pace, Edward had tried to surge ahead. Draconas pulled him back. The dragon was here somewhere. She had to be. There was nowhere else for her to go. Draconas began to consider the possibility that she did not know they were here. Either that, or she had made other arrangements for their disposal.

  “We must be near the tunnel’s end,” Edward said suddenly. “I know this sounds odd, but I smell perfume.”

  “Not perfume,” said Draconas, and he came to a halt. “Incense.”

  Incense and something more—humans. The scent of humans in a dragon’s lair was something he had never before experienced. He’d noted the scent of the baby-traffickers immediately on entering, but the soldiers and the false nuns had not passed beyond the first chamber. The giant human, Grald, had advanced into the second chamber, but no farther. Draconas had not smelled humans in the labyrinthine lair until now.

  The human scent was strong and all-pervasive and it came from somewhere up ahead. Humans frequented this place they were about to enter. They came here often and of their own free will.

  For this was not the stench of slave pens. The smell of human flesh mingled with fragrant flowers and incense and perfumed oils.

  And no sign of the dragon. Draconas realized with a tightening of his gut that he hadn’t seen a dragon scale in the last one hundred yards or so.

  “Why are you stopping?” Edward demanded. “If that’s incense you smell, then we must have reached our destination. We have to hurry if we are to save the Mistress from that assassin!”

  “What the hell,” Draconas muttered in reckless agreement. “We’ve come farther than I ever thought possible.”

  He broke into a run, with Edward pounding along behind. Rounding a bend in the tunnel, they came close to bashing their brains against a stone wall.

  “A dead end!” exclaimed Edward in tones of bitter frustration.

  “In more ways than one,” Draconas said grimly.

  This was the ambush. She’d caught them in a cul-de-sac. He was surprised he couldn’t hear the dragon creeping up on them, but then she was old and powerful and she was cunning. Grasping his staff in two hands, he whipped about to face . . .

  Nothing.

  Nothing but darkness and silence.

  “Damn!” said Draconas. Nerves taut, he lashed out at nothing.

  Edward ran his hand along the wall. “You know what’s crazy? I still smell perfume.”

  Draconas colored his mind gray, the same color as the rock wall that blocked their way. His mind as gray as the stone, he thrust his staff into the wall.

  The butt end of the staff vanished, slid through solid rock.

  “Holy Mother and all the saints of heaven preserve us!” Edward whispered, falling back a pace.

  “An illusion,” said Draconas, triumphant.

  “I don’t understand,” said Edward, clearly shaken. He put out his hand tentatively. His fingers brushed cold stone. Quickly he snatched back his hand, stared at Draconas. “How do you do that?”

  “You were right. We have reached the monastery.” Draconas gestured at the wall. “Beyond us is a chamber filled with light. Incense-laden peat burns in an iron brazier. A marble altar stands at the far end of the room. Directly across from where we stand, another door leads out of the chamber. The symbol of an Eye is carved in the rock upon the floor.”

  “You are mad,” said Edward, eying him askance. “I see cold, hard rock.”

  “You seel Don’t see,” said Draconas. “Don’t listen to your eyes. They have been fooled. Listen to your other senses. You smell incense.”

  Edward stared at the wall, then shook his head. “I can’t help myself. I know what I see and what I feel. I see and feel solid rock.”

  Draconas retrieved his staff. He took another glance at the altar room, then shrugged and turned away. “I guess this ends it. We might as well go back.”

  “But there must be another entrance—” Edward began.

  Draconas whipped around, swinging his staff. He socked the king on the jaw, sent His Majesty tumbling through the illusory rock wall.

  Lying on his back on the stone floor, Edward lay blinking at the blazing light burning in a brazier on an iron stand near the altar at the far end of the room. He stared at the blazing light, then, rubbing his bruised jaw, he sat up.

  “Are you all right, Your Majesty?” came a voice.

  “Draconas?” Edward asked, looking about. “Where are you?”

  “On the other side of the illusion. I’ll keep watch at this end. You go find the Mistress and bring her back here.”

  Edward stared intently at the wall. He could hear Draconas’s voice quite clearly, as if he were only arm’s length away. Edward had fallen through a wall wasn’t a wall and he did his best to convince himself of the illusion. But he could see the firelight gleaming off stone and if he put out his hand, he’d be able to feel the rock.

  “You were the one in a hurry,” Draconas reminded him impatiently. “You’d better mark the plac
e where you entered the illusion. The opening is not very big and it is surrounded by solid rock. I can’t have you bashing in your head. Here, take this with you.”

  A blazing torch sailed through the solid rock wall, landed on the floor in front of Edward.

  “This is not possible,” said Edward. “By all the laws of science, this is not possible. I’d think I was going mad, but my jaw hurts like hell.”

  He gave his aching jaw another rub, then removed one of his gloves and placed it at the base of the wall, near the torch.

  “Can you see that?” he asked doubtfully. “Is that in the right place?”

  “Your glove? I can see it. Good idea. If you need help, give a shout. Otherwise, I’ll be here waiting for you.”

  “Why don’t you come with me?” Edward asked, picking up the flaring torch.

  “This is our only way out,” Draconas returned. “I think it would be wise if one of us stayed to guard it.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Edward. “Of course.” But he didn’t believe him.

  Edward wanted to trust Draconas, for he liked and admired the man. He couldn’t, however. A king who wants to be a good king should be a keen observer of his fellow men, learning to read them as a sailor reads the subtle signs of sea and sky, to know when storms are brewing or when the wind will rise or switch direction or if there are shoals on which he might run aground. Draconas’s waters were calm and placid, but Edward saw secrets hidden in their depths.

  All men have secrets including Edward, but he had the feeling that the the secrets of Draconas were not the ordinary secrets of ordinary men. Draconas knew that Edward didn’t trust him and, oddly, Edward understood that in some strange way, he had risen in his companion’s estimation because of it.

  Clapping his hand over his sword to make certain he’d not lost it in the fall, Edward walked across the room, heading for the open door that stood directly across from him. He couldn’t make out what lay beyond that door, but he assumed it must be another room or a corridor. He moved rapidly, for he had wasted time back there at the wall, casting a curious glance around the room as he passed through it.