Mistress of Dragons Read online

  The unreality of it made what had befallen him all the more horrible. He hoped that Draconas knew what was going on and that Draconas was devising some means of dealing with the situation. Edward’s task for the moment was to remain conscious and endure the pounding ache in his head.

  He whispered a prayer to God to save him and he whispered to Draconas, “What do I do?”

  “Nothing, yet,” was the answer. “Be still and be silent!”

  Edward swallowed a bitter taste in his mouth and, despite Draconas’s warning, he risked turning his head ever so slightly so that he could see and hear what was happening.

  “I will do anything you ask, Mistress, but first, let’s move you to where you will be more comfortable—” the young woman was saying.

  Good idea! Edward urged her, grimly hopeful. Let them leave, both of them. Witches or demons or whatever they are. He gazed at her and though his vision was a little blurred, he could still see that she was very beautiful. Witches are not supposed to be beautiful, he thought in a dreamlike haze of pain. Nor are murderers. But she is very beautiful . . .

  “Do you defy me, Melisande?” asked the elderly woman.

  Melisande. What a lovely name, thought Edward. I wonder what it means. The name suits her. God, my head hurts! He closed his eyes to let a wave of nausea pass and slipped for a moment into the darkness and he missed some of what passed between the women.

  When he opened his eyes again, Melisande was standing at the stone altar. He saw her shoving on the stone top of the altar, heard the grinding sound of stone against stone as the lid moved. She looked inside and her face went livid, as white as if someone had emptied her of blood and life. She was terrified. She could barely stand. He saw her frightened gaze go to the elderly woman, who held dangling a golden locket in her hand.

  “I am you, Melisande,” said the old woman, and Edward recognized the voice.

  The sibilant voice, the voice in the cave. The voice of the murderer.

  Edward lifted his head. His hand slid to his sword. He tensed, ready to jump to his feet.

  A hand reached through the wall, closed over his wrist, its iron-band grip halting his movement.

  “Wait!” ordered Draconas.

  Edward jerked his arm to try to break Draconas’s hold and free his wrist, but the man’s grip was incredibly strong, crushing and bruising.

  “I will tell you when,” Draconas continued, his whisper chill and sharp. “You will save her life, but not yet. Move now, and you both die. Trust me in this, Edward.”

  Edward hesitated. He had no trust in Draconas, but he had less trust in himself, for his head hurt abominably and it was difficult to think.

  “If you want to save her, you must do what I tell you,” Draconas urged.

  “I want to save her,” said Edward, his gaze on Melisande.

  Draconas’s grip on him loosened, but Edward still felt the man’s warding hold on his wrist and he smiled ruefully. Draconas doesn’t trust me any more than I trust Draconas.

  Edward settled inch by cautious inch back down to the stone floor. His precaution was needless. Both women had forgotten him, one too frightened to remember and the other too intent on her victim.

  Edward waited, but he was determined not to wait long.

  “He’s not going to wait long,” Draconas said to himself. “Can I count on him? That’s the question. He’s done well so far. But this—what he must face next—I’m not sure he’s ready for it. I’m not sure I’m ready for it. We may all end up dead.

  “I should leave,” he reflected. “Once I see how Maristara manages to shift her form, I can make good my escape. It’s my duty to escape, for I should carry word of this to the Parliament. The humans will die, of course, Edward and the woman, and, in fact, it would be best if they did die, here and now, for if they live, they will see what they should not see. What no human is meant to see.”

  His argument was logical and he should certainly act on it, but he wouldn’t. He would stay and fight Maristara and save the humans for one reason—because he could not endure the thought of letting the dragon win.

  He readied himself, readied his magic.

  “Edward,” he called softly through the illusion, “when I say the word, run to the woman, grab hold of her, and run back here, into the cave. Then keep running, both of you, and don’t look behind. No matter what you hear, don’t look.”

  Melisande crouched behind the sarcophagus, her hands gripping the stone lid for support. Mesmerized, she stared at the hand that had transformed into a glistening scaled claw, its sharp talons reaching out for her.

  The Mistress’s red-eyed gaze fixed on Melisande’s breast, on the folds of wet, black fabric that trembled and stirred with the wild and frantic beating of her heart. In her human hand, the Mistress held the locket, moved it slowly, hypnotically back and forth, back and forth.

  “Age has its advantages,” said the Mistress, stealing ever closer, using her soft voice to lull her victim. “I have ruled for fifty years in this body and it has served me well. But the body grows weak and therefore so do I. I need youth, life, new blood. Your blood, Melisande. Your beating, living heart. The Mistress dies. Long live the Mistress. Except that you won’t die, Melisande. You will live in that tomb, held suspended between death and life, as you live on in me. Or rather, to be more precise, I live on in you.”

  With a flick of her fingers, she opened the locket. There, encapsulated within was a beating heart, the heart of the elderly woman whose body lay imprisoned in the tomb. The heart was small, magically shrunken to fit inside the locket, yet it throbbed and quivered with life. Drawing near Melisande, who could not take her terror-stricken eyes from the clawed hand, the Mistress dropped the heart out of the locket, let it fall back into the bloody cavity from which it had been wrenched.

  The woman gasped in agony. She gave a shuddering sigh, a sigh of relief, a sigh that welcomed death. She cast one look at Melisande, a look of pity and despair, and then she stiffened. The clenched fists uncurled. Her eyes fixed in her head. The heart ceased to beat. She lay still.

  Staring, horrified, into the tomb, Melisande saw herself. She saw her own body lying there in unending torment and unbearable darkness, a prisoner year after year, aware of all around her, listening to the voices of her sisters, listening, perhaps, to Bellona’s beloved voice, unable to cry out to her, unable to touch, unable to make known the truth.

  The Mistress was dead and with her death died the body that the dragon had used for so many years. Maristara abandoned the useless carcass to take on her own shape and form.

  The memory of Bellona jolted Melisande out of her panicked lethargy.

  “If I must die,” she said to herself, “I will die so that Bellona is proud of me. I will not die like this, a prisoner. I will die a warrior.”

  Melisande lifted her gaze from the ravaged corpse of the Mistress to the old woman she had known as the Mistress.

  The old woman was changing, shifting form, shedding the body of a human, discarding human flesh as the cicada discards its dried and useless carapace. The old woman was becoming a dragon. The hands were taloned claws covered with gray-green scales. The neck elongated, stretched, writhed out of human shoulders. Wings slid out of the back and unfurled, their span filling the chamber with darkness, as their shadows blotted out the light of the naming brazier. The legs thickened, bent inward to lift and support the shifting, shimmering, hugely growing body. The tail coiled and uncoiled, thrashing back and forth in excitement. The face of the Mistress blurred to that of a beast. The eyes gleamed red in dark green sockets, the nose jutted outward, the teeth were fangs, dark and the tongue flickered.

  Melisande could not understand what was happening. Her mind refused to believe the truth of her eyes, but understanding didn’t matter.

  Before her was a dragon, her enemy, an enemy she had been trained to fight since she was a small girl in the nursery, studying the pictures of dragons painted on the frescoes around the monastery.

/>   The dragon was still not completely whole, still wriggling out of the body of the human in which she had been hiding. The red eyes, fixed on Melisande’s strong, young body, glistened with anticipation. The dragon lifted her taloned claw, stretched it out, reaching over the sarcophagus, over the corpse inside, intending to seize Melisande’s body, dig the talons into her breast, tear out the beating heart. The golden locket flashed in the firelight.

  Melisande gripped the stone lid of the tomb and with an effort born of fear and fury, she lifted up the lid and hurled it at the dragon. Then, she ran.

  “Now!” said Draconas.

  Edward jumped to his feet. He had been as shocked as Melisande to see the elderly woman transform herself into a dragon, but, like Melisande, understanding didn’t matter. Action mattered.

  The heavy stone lid crashed into the dragon’s grasping claw, crushing it. Cursing, Maristara snatched back her claw. She made a swipe at Melisande, fleeing the alcove, but missed her.

  Blood from the broken talon spattered over the floor and the walls. Melisande evaded the dragon, ran for the door.

  “You can’t escape, Melisande,” said the dragon. Her massive body almost filled the chamber. Her wings brushed the ceiling, her tail dragged across the Eye on the floor, shutting it. “The door is spell-locked.”

  Melisande flung herself at the door with a wild cry. She pulled at the handle, beat on it with her fists, but the door held fast. Turning, putting her back to the door, she saw, with amazement and wonder, Edward running toward her.

  “This way!” he cried.

  He reached out his hand to her and his hand held life.

  Melisande grasped his hand and together they ran toward the wall and the place where his glove lay on the floor.

  The dragon whipped around, snatched at Edward with her uninjured claw, prepared to grab the intruder and crush him to death.

  Edward fell back. Shoving Melisande safely behind him, he slashed at the dragon’s claw with his sword.

  “Run!” Draconas cried, leaping out from the wall.

  Edward sheathed his sword. Turning to Melisande, he swept her up into his arms and lunged forward. The wall loomed ahead of them. Melisande cried out, as it seemed that they must dash themselves to pieces on the sharp rock. He had no time to think or argue with his brain or his eyes or with Melisande, who flung her arm up in front of her face. He ran headlong into the stone wall, carrying Melisande with him.

  The two swept through the illusion, plunging from light and noise and confusion into sudden, blinding darkness. Unable to see, fearful of smashing into a real rock wall, Edward tried desperately to slow his breakneck dash. Momentum carried him forward. He tripped on his own feet and he tumbled to the ground, Melisande beneath him. She cried out and he rolled hurriedly off her, fearful that he had crushed her.

  “I am sorry, so sorry,” he babbled, not knowing what he was saying. He reached out to touch her. He could not see her in the darkness, but he could feel her beside him, feel her trembling. “Are you hurt? I am so sorry ...”

  “Run!” thundered Draconas.

  “I pledge you my life,” said Edward softly. “I will see that no harm comes to you. Ever.”

  He took gentle hold of Melisande, who hesitated a moment, then clasped her arms spasmodically around his neck. He lifted her up, and the two stood together in the darkness, pressing close, body to body. They clung to each other tightly, glad for shared warmth, glad for the feel of flesh and bone and heart beating against heart.

  Holding fast to life and to each other, they fled into the labyrinthine darkness.

  15

  DRACONAS JUMPED THROUGH THE ILLUSION, THEN came to a halt, keeping his back to the wall, a completely useless gesture since it wasn’t a wall, but it made him feel more secure. His weapons were his staff, his magic, and his wits. The staff would be useless against the dragon’s might. His magic was child’s magic, compared to hers. He was counting on his wits to save him.

  He faced Maristara, watched her warily. Though he loathed what she had done, he was forced to pay her grudging homage. The spell the dragons had used to change him from dragon to human had taken days to cast. He could shift form easily now, once the magic had been cast, but the initial transformation from dragon form to human had been accomplished at the cost of intricate and powerful magicks. Maristara had considerably shortened the process, reduced the cost.

  What a clever plan—steal a human’s heart, use that and magic to steal the human’s body. Draconas wondered how many wretched women had died before Maristara had managed to perfect the skill.

  He’d caught her at a disadvantageous moment, caught betwixt and between her shape as a human and her true form. Draconas could sympathize. He’d been caught that way himself on one unfortunate occasion. He likened it to a man being caught with his pants down. The man is the same man as he is his with his pants up, but certain important parts of him are exposed and vulnerable.

  The dragon’s head on its long sinuous neck swooped down, dipped low.

  “So,” Maristara said, speaking mind-to-mind, as dragons do, her red eyes probing and prodding, “you are Draconas— the walker.”

  He saw the word “walker” green-tinged, sneering. “Walker” was a derogatory term among dragons, meaning a dragon who walks like a human, a dragon who walks among humans. Draconas could have returned the insult, but that would be to play her game and he had his own game to play out. He had to be patient, wait for the right moment, not act prematurely.

  Maristara had known him immediately, known him for what he was. Her eyes saw the human, but her mind saw the shadow, the dragon. So all dragons saw him. What was remarkable was that she had not cast her shadow on his mind in the same way. He had not known she was a dragon until she began to transform herself. He had seen the human, but not the shadow. That made her immensely dangerous, for it meant that no dragon could detect her in her stolen human body.

  He sought her mind with his, feeling her out, as a fencer feels out an opponent. She was a blur of color: the red-gold of expectation, and blazing orange with fury and outrage, cooled by a cold undercurrent of ice-blue cunning.

  He could hear—over the dragon’s hissing breath—the footsteps of the two humans fumbling their blind way through the pitch-dark tunnels, whipped by fear’s lash. They were still too close. He had to stall for time.

  Maristara could hear them, too. She could hear her new body escaping her. She wasn’t concerned. They could never find their way out of her tunnels. She would chase them down, catch them at her leisure. Her concern now was Draconas. She was trying to bait him, hoping to get a reaction in order to see how he reacted, to see the colors of his mind.

  Her eyes sought his, but he took care to avoid the piercing lance of her gaze. When dragons battle each other, the fight is as much mental as it is physical, each trying to lock onto the other’s eyes and, from there, slice into the soul. “Fencing with the rapier eye,” a dragon once termed it. Had Draconas been in dragon form, he would have thought twice about eye-fencing with Maristara, for she was ancient and adept. As it was, his puny human eyes were no match and so he sent his gaze sliding around her like quicksilver, never looking at her directly, but never taking his eyes off her.

  “What a very clever walker,” Maristara said.

  The shift from human body to the dragon was very nearly complete. Her bulky body was too large for this chamber and that was further hampering her. She was forced to hunch her long, curved neck. Her massive head hung low. Her mane rasped against the high stone ceiling. Her wings twitched and quivered in frustration, for it is a dragon’s instinct to use its vast wingspan to intimidate prey, and she couldn’t do this, or risk injuring them against the rock walls of the chamber. She had to wrap her bulky tail around her hind forelegs, for there was no room for it to trail out behind her, and that further impeded her movement.

  She was dragon in her outward appearance, but not yet complete. He could not smell the brimstone, nor hear the flames rum
ble in her belly. The fire had to kindle, the breath to cook. Yet, for all this, she was dangerous and deadly. Her teeth could cleave him in twain. Her talons could rend limb from limb. A flick of the wrist, a snap of the jaw and he’d be dead.

  Her head slid closer, still talking, seeking to distract him with a kaleidoscope of whirling colors, seeking to dazzle him, make him forget himself, force him to look directly at her.

  “So you know my secret. What do you think of it, Draconas? How many days of spell-casting did it take the Parliament to grant you human form? How many minutes does it take me to do the same? And so, how can you stop me? You can’t, Draconas. For hundreds of years, I have been building my defenses, while you and the Parliament slumbered. Now I am too strong. You cannot defeat me. What will you do? Nothing, of course, because there is nothing to be done.”

  Draconas caught a whiff of brimstone. He could barely hear the footsteps of the humans.

  “Your thoughts scurry around like centipedes, Draconas,” Maristara continued. Her head oscillated, dipped, and swerved. Her eyes tried to catch his, but his were swift to avoid her. She was desperate to reach into his mind, as she would have reached into that woman’s breast; rip out his thoughts as she had planned to rip out the heart.

  She lunged, her movement so swift and unforeseen that the slashing claws sliced through Draconas’s leather jerkin. A convulsive, backward leap saved him from her grasp. He landed, soft-kneed, and then, jumping into the air, he struck the cavern’s stone ceiling with the butt end of his staff, sent his magic rippling through it.

  The rock split and cracked. Large fissures formed. Chunks of stone shook loose and tumbled down.

  Draconas turned and fled. He heard a curse from the dragon and a shattering crash, as the ceiling gave way. A tidal wave of stone, dust, dirt, and sharp fragments of rock roiled down the corridor, flooding into the hall.