Mistress of Dragons Read online

  Draconas ran with all his might, legs and arms and heart and adrenaline pumping, trying to outrace the cave-in. This had always been the weak point in his plan—that he might not escape his own solution.

  His dragon strength gave him incredible speed, and he raced down the corridor, a step and a half ahead of the crashing rocks. Bits of stone sharp as arrowheads sliced open his flesh, and rock dust choked off his breathing.

  And there ahead of him in the corridor were the humans, stopping, with true human idiocy, to stare behind them. Draconas barreled into them. Wrapping his strong arms around them, he took them down to the cavern floor, covering them with his body as the wave of debris and dust and rock broke over them.

  Draconas was on his feet immediately, before the dust had settled.

  “Get up!” he ordered.

  Edward sat up, coughing and choking.

  “Did you kill the dragon?” he gasped.

  “No,” said Draconas, shortly. “On your feet, both of you. We have to keep moving.”

  Spitting dust, Edward groped about in the darkness until he found the woman. He bent anxiously over her, took hold of her hand. She stirred, raised her head, then fell back. He lifted her gently, cradled her in his arms.

  “She can’t go on, Draconas. She’s too weak, hurt—”

  Flinging his staff to the floor, Draconas scooped up the woman’s flaccid body.

  “Be easy with her—” Edward said, hovering.

  Draconas didn’t have time to be easy. He slung the woman over his shoulder, positioned her so that he could grip her legs. Her head and arms dangled down behind.

  “Hand me my staff,” he ordered.

  “You can’t carry her like that.” Edward protested, picking up the staff. “She’s not—”

  “I can and she is,” said Draconas. He broke into a run. “Keep close. If you get lost, you’re on your own. I’m not corning back for you.”

  Behind him, he could hear the dragon clawing and scraping at the rubble that hopefully blocked the cavern’s entrance. He’d bought them time, but minutes only and these were precious few.

  “Let me carry her,” said Edward sternly.

  “You have all you can do to carry yourself,” Draconas retorted.

  And, as if to prove his point, Edward fell headlong over a rock in the darkness and went sprawling. Draconas slowed his pace, listening to make certain the king was all right. Hearing muttered cursing and scrabbling, Draconas moved on.

  Edward came stumbling up behind him. “When we get out of this,” he said, breathing heavily, “I’m going to knock you on your ass.”

  “I hope you get the chance,” Draconas returned. He was worried. He could no longer hear the dragon.

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  Silence meant calm. Silence meant thinking, plotting, planning.

  “Nothing good,” Draconas said grimly.

  They plunged deeper into the cavern, Edward keeping close, reaching out his hand to touch either Draconas or Melisande, reassuring himself that one was warm and breathing and that the other was near him in the stifling darkness. Draconas kept moving because he had no choice but to keep moving. It was either that or sit down and swear, which might be good for the soul but little help otherwise. He had no idea what the dragon was up to. Maristara couldn’t let them escape. They knew too much. She had to stop them. The one point in their favor was that they were in her lair.

  Had the humans been on their own, they would have immediately lost themselves and Maristara would have caught them. But the humans were with a dragon, who knew something about lairs, who knew that every dragon’s lair had more than one exit.

  Draconas moved rapidly, and Edward kept up with him, though Draconas could tell by the labored breathing, slurred speech, and faltering steps that the king could not go on much farther. When the tunnel down which they’d been running split, one branch going off to the right, the other continuing straight ahead, Draconas halted. Edward stumbled into him, steadied himself with a hand on Draconas’s shoulder.

  “What is it?” Edward said, with barely breath enough to ask the question. “What’s wrong?”

  To human eyes, both tunnels would look the same—dark and desolate. To dragon eyes and ears and nose, each was immensely different. The one that ran straight ahead was only dimly lit. Fetid air flowed from it. From the slant of the floor, it led downward, to the base of the mountain. The other tunnel had more light, there was a sniff of fresh air, and it ran straight and level.

  “We’re lost, aren’t we?”

  Edward slumped to the floor, leaned back with his head against the wall, and shut his eyes. He was nearing that dangerous stage of pain and exhaustion where he no longer cared if he lived or died.

  Draconas flung the woman off his shoulder, deposited her in Edward’s lap.

  “I think I’ve found a way out. I’m going to go take a look. Try to warm her,” Draconas admonished. “Put your arms around her. Hold her close.”

  That should restore him to life, Draconas reflected.

  Melisande stirred, moaned, drew in a deep breath. She nestled nearer Edward in an instinctual need for warmth. Edward started to put his arms around her, hesitated. He didn’t seem to know where to put his hands. He’d been raised a gentleman, fed on stories of knightly, chivalrous love; love that looked upon beauty from afar and did not touch; love that remained chaste and pure unto death.

  “She’s probably in shock,” said Draconas. “What with those wet clothes and the fright she had, she might die of the cold.”

  “You’re going to be all right, Melisande,” said Edward softly, embracing her. “I’m here and I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  As Draconas watched the two, an idea formed in his mind. The idea was strange and it was desperate, and he didn’t like it. He immediately abandoned it, was sorry he’d thought of it. Yet, like an annoying song, it wouldn’t go away.

  “Wait here,” he said unnecessarily, for neither human had strength left to go anywhere. Turning toward the light and the fresh air, he left them.

  Draconas moved cautiously and warily. He could not find any sign that the dragon had been here. She’d probably not entered this tunnel since she’d built this exit hundreds of years before. Yet, she had built it, using both claws and magic. He could see the gouge marks, the scrapings on the walls, and the places where she had used her magic to blast her way through the granite, places where the rock had melted, turned glassy.

  The mountain must have rumbled with her magic, Draconas thought. Shock waves would have spread throughout the valley of Seth and surrounding lands. The humans would have dismissed them as natural phenomenon—earthquakes and the like. He bet that if he looked into their histories, he would find them recorded as such.

  He was close to an opening. Even the nearly useless noses of humans would have been able to smell the fresh air. The tunnel ran straight and smooth. Draconas moved silently, stealthily, listening, watchful.

  And there was the opening.

  The rain had stopped, but the night was wild and windblown. He could hear the spattering of drops shaken from the branches of the pine trees whenever a gust hit them. The moon shone. Clouds scudded over it, hiding the moon from sight, then flitting away to uncover it once more. By its light, he could see trees and he was relieved. He’d been afraid that the opening might have been bored into the side of the mountain, which meant a thousand-foot drop for those who did not have wings.

  Trees meant solid ground, a ledge, a way off the mountain.

  Draconas hoped to find a shallow cave or a thick stand of trees—someplace where he could safely stash the two humans, allow them to rest and recuperate before continuing their trek down the mountainside. A cave would be preferable, for he could heat it with his magic. He didn’t mind camping on Maristara’s mountain, so long as they weren’t inside her lair. In her dragon form, she would have been able to search the mountainside and find them, but she couldn’t use her dragon form. She had
to continue to hide her true nature from those she had fooled for so many, many years.

  She’d foiled herself.

  With a feeling of well-earned satisfaction, Draconas walked out the opening.

  A wall of flame erupted around him. The heat was intense and seared his skin. He flung up his arm, and then his brain took over.

  The fire vanished, as did the heat.

  Illusion, all illusion.

  The flames might have stopped humans, though probably not for long, not if they were intelligent enough to see what Draconas had seen—that the crackling fire was feeding off rock. Maristara was slipping. She should have at least added some illusionary fuel.

  Draconas started to step through the illusion, then came to a sudden halt.

  A man, shapeless in black robes, stepped out from the shadows of the trees. He stared intently into the flames that flared in his dark, wild eyes. Moonlight glinted off a tonsured head.

  Draconas sucked in his breath, let it out in a whistling sigh. He had once again underestimated Maristara. The illusory fire was not meant to repel. It was meant to alert.

  “I know you are in there, foul hell-spawn,” cried the monk. “And so does God!”

  The monk raised his scrawny arms to heaven. “I call upon Him to smite—”

  Draconas flung aside his staff and barreled into the monk, driving his shoulder into the man’s solar plexus.

  Draconas had hoped simply to disrupt the monk’s spell-casting by taking the man off his feet and knocking the breath from his body. To his astonishment, the monk crumpled at the blow. Bones cracked and snapped. Draconas felt as if he’d smashed into a bundle of dry kindling.

  Repulsed, Draconas scrambled to his feet.

  The monk’s breath whistled oddly. Blood flowed out of his mouth. He began to writhe, his body jerked in spasms. The monk gave a gargle and died.

  Draconas was sickened. He could still feel the bones snap, hear the agonized gasp as the monk’s shattered ribs sliced into vital organs. Wiping a bad taste from his mouth, Draconas bent down to examine the body. The monk’s bones were thin as larch needles. His head could have been that of a cadaver, it had so little flesh.

  Hearing footsteps behind him, Draconas jumped to his feet, whipped around, and almost ran down Edward, who stood swaying on unsteady feet, his sword in his hand.

  “Another one?” he said, staring at the dead monk.

  “Where’s the woman?” Draconas demanded.

  Edward looked back to the cavern as if it held every treasure ever dreamt of by mankind. “In there,” he said, his voice softening.

  “You shouldn’t have left her.” Draconas shoved him aside, heading back toward the cavern.

  “I heard voices and I saw the flames,” Edward returned. “I thought you might need help.”

  “Well, I didn’t,” said Draconas, with a glance of disgust for the monk. “The woman is your responsibility. You wait here. I’ll go fetch her—”

  He felt a tap on his shoulder. Turning, he met Edward’s fist, smashing into his jaw. The blow sent Draconas staggering, though it didn’t knock him on his ass, as the king had promised.

  “She has a name. Her name is Melisande,” said Edward.

  Sheathing his sword, Edward stalked back into the cavern.

  Draconas waited outside, massaging his aching jaw, and thinking how much he was starting to like Edward.

  It was all a damn shame, really.

  16

  MARISTARA WAS SHOCKED AT THE SUDDEN LOSS OF her new body, more shocked than angry, at first. Events had come crashing down on her, literally. One moment she was going to rip out a human’s heart and the next the ceiling collapsed.

  Draconas, the walker. The meddlesome walker.

  And that youngling Braun.

  They were both in this together. The son should have died along with the father. Well, all in good time.

  Maristara was calm now. She had been so incensed, so infuriated at the disruption of her plans that she had almost lost her head, let rage consume her.

  She had come within a snarling word of using her magic to blast apart the rock slide that blocked the cavern, going in after them, hunting them down like vermin, breathing her fire down the tunnels, poisoning them with the fumes, incinerating their miserable flesh.

  She had stopped herself, just in time.

  The blast would be heard and felt by everyone in the monastery and half the people in the kingdom of Seth. The sisters would be in turmoil, weeping and wailing and demanding answers, demanding leadership, crying to the Mistress for help . . . and there would be no Mistress. Only the corpse of a desiccated old woman with a gaping hole in her chest. And a dragon.

  Maristara turned away from the pile of rubble, twisting and maneuvering her body in the small, cramped Sanctuary, and mulled things over.

  “Let them go for the time being, the humans and the walker.” She rolled the term with hatred on her tongue. “They will not get far. I will see to that. First, there must be a new Mistress of Dragons. Whom shall I choose?”

  Her mind ranged over the sisters, studying, selecting, rejecting. And then the one.

  “Melisande’s rival, of course,” said Maristara. “Imminently suitable. Jealousy and desire cloud her vision. She will not think to question ...”

  The dragon snuffed out the fire burning in the brazier. Hunkering down in the darkness, grasping the locket in a fore claw, she fixed her eyes upon the door and, in the weak and dying voice of the former Mistress, the dragon called out softly, “Lucretta. Come to me, Lucretta. I have need of you.”

  Bellona woke at the sound of footsteps outside her door. When the knock came, she was halfway out of bed.

  “Commander.”

  “Yes, what is it?” Bellona spoke softly, so as not to disturb Melisande.

  “A summons from the Mistress’s chambers. You are wanted. The matter is urgent.”

  Dawn was near. Pale, gray light illuminated the room. Bellona glanced over to see if Melisande was awake, only to find her side of the bed empty.

  Bellona reached out her hand and smoothed the pillow which still had the impression of the beloved head. “So it has happened,” she said to herself softly. “Poor Mistress. Yet she has lived a long life. May she join the blessed ranks of the goddesses who watch over and protect us.”

  “Commander ...”

  “I’m coming,” Bellona called, rising and reaching for the soft tunic she wore beneath her armor.

  “You have leave to enter. There’s no trouble with the men, is there?” she asked sharply.

  A young warrior thrust open the door, walked into the room. “No, Commander. The summons came from the Mistress’s guard.”

  Bellona nodded and sighed. She remembered that she’d been going to ride out to the pass, to investigate those strange intruders. She would put that off, of course. Melisande would have need of her here.

  The Mistress is dead.

  Bellona had known this time was coming. She had thought herself prepared, but now that it was here, she found she was deeply and profoundly saddened. She had known no other Mistress in her lifetime. This Mistress had presided over Bellona’s birth, had watched her grow from a harum-scarum girl-child, always getting into scrapes, into a soldier noted for her skill and bravery. This Mistress had promoted her to her present rank. Melisande would be Mistress, and Bellona was glad for her lover. But, for now, there were tears for the dead.

  “It is hard, isn’t it, Commander,” said the young warrior softly.

  “Yes, very hard.” Bellona roused herself. There was much work to be done this day, starting with escorting the men out of the compound. They mustn’t guess that anything was amiss. “Help me on with my armor.”

  As the warrior buckled the ornate breastplate over the tunic, Bellona wondered that she had slept through Melisande’s departure. Bellona was a deep sleeper, but she had trained herself to rouse at the slightest sound. There must have been the urgent knock at the door, whispered conversations, Mel
isande dressing.

  “And I slept through it all,” Bellona marveled, annoyed at herself. “I should have been there for Melisande, supporting her with my prayers and my love, if nothing else.”

  Emerging from the barracks, Bellona came upon a group of soldiers clustered together in front of the barracks, talking in low voices. Their faces troubled, they looked immediately to Bellona. Seeing her dressed in her formal armor, they exchanged glances. Some shook their heads. Others hastily averted their faces. One brushed her hand over her eyes.

  “There is no news yet,” Bellona told them. “Go to your beds, get some sleep. You will need your rest.”

  The soldiers did as ordered, trailing off into the barracks. Usually they were jovial, rowdy as they came off duty, looking forward to a hearty meal and then sleep. This day, they were quiet, subdued.

  “You will let us know, Commander?” one called after her.

  Bellona waved her hand, not trusting herself to speak, and walked on.

  The detail assigned to escort the men out of the monastery was already forming under Nzangia’s leadership. Bellona received her salute, then beckoned her over.

  “I must leave the men to you. I am summoned to the Mistress,” said Bellona in an undertone.

  “I know. I was there when the summons came from the Mistress’s guards. Do you think ...”

  “I fear the worst,” Bellona answered grimly. “Melisande was called for during the night. See to it that the men are removed from here quickly. Let no one speak to them and tell your troops to wipe those mournful looks off their faces. I do not want the men to catch any hint that anything is wrong. If they do, the news will be all over the city by midmorning. We must have time to prepare.”

  Nzangia nodded, fully understanding. She and her detail marched off and soon Bellona could hear them calling out in peremptory voices for the men to wake and get dressed. It was time to leave.

  Bellona cast a swift glance up at the walls, to see that her soldiers were on duty and that, outwardly, all appeared normal. She noted only one infraction—two soldiers stopping to talk when they should have been attending to business. She made a mental note to reprimand them both, then hastened to the Mistress’s quarters.