Master of Dragons Read online

  He did not call to Draconas again.

  Marcus reached out his hand, touched the wall, touched stone—solid and cold. He moved his hand to another part and then another, all the while telling himself that this was stupid, futile, a last desperate attempt to stave off the inevitable.

  “Marcus . . .”said Evelina urgently. “The monks ...”

  He saw them rounding the corner of the building, walking straight for him. Some held fire in their hands. Some held steel. All of it was death, so it didn’t much matter.

  “Tell me the truth, Marcus,” said Evelina quietly. “There’s no way out, is there?”

  “No,” he said. “There’s not. I had hoped . . .”He let hope hang, shook his head.

  “I’m afraid,” she said and put her arms around him.

  “So am I,” he said, and held her close.

  A hand thrust through the stone wall.

  Marcus stared at it. “I’m going mad,” he thought. “Like the wretched monks.”

  He blinked his eyes. The hand vanished and Ven stood in front of him, inside the little room.

  “This is the gate,” said Ven.

  His blue eyes were the only color in a vast expanse of white.

  “The way out!” Evelina cried. “I see it! Marcus, look!” She clutched at him. “There it is! Right in front of us! Hurry! Make haste!”

  The illusion was broken and, as always when we see the truth, he wondered that he had been so blind as not to penetrate the lie at once. The gate was crudely built, constructed of wood planks and held together by iron bands. The gate stood open. From the rusted look of the hinges, the gate had not been shut for centuries. Perhaps it had rusted in place.

  Beyond the gate was the forest and beyond that the river. No monks blocked the way. No dragon stood at the entrance.

  Marcus looked back to the little room.

  “Take care of her,” said Ven. He held out his hand.

  Marcus touched his brother’s hand.

  The gate vanished, dissolved into the wall.

  The wall vanished, dissolved into illusion.

  Dragonkeep was gone, and it might have never existed, but for the feel of his brother’s hand, firm and warm, in his own.

  Marcus guided the boat he and Evelina had stolen out into the river. Evelina sat rigid and upright in the stern opposite him, holding on to the gunwales with both hands. Her face was drawn and tense. She stared fearfully into the woods that were slowly, too slowly, sliding away. When the boat dipped slightly, as Marcus wrestled with the oars, Evelina grasped the gunwales tightly.

  “Sorry,” said Marcus. “I haven’t rowed a boat in a long time.”

  “I thought I saw something!” she gasped. “Oh.” She relaxed. “A deer.” Evelina looked at him and managed a smile. “I’m glad you’re with me. You won’t let anything happen to me.”

  Marcus smiled back at her, trying to be reassuring, but he didn’t make any promises. The shoreline was receding, though not as rapidly as he would have wished. Marcus expected to see the monks come swarming out of the forest to give chase. They would have a difficult time of it. After Evelina had plundered the boats for anything useful, Marcus had pushed each boat, one by one, out into the river, where the current caught them and carried them downstream.

  He would have liked to have destroyed the boats, perhaps set them ablaze, but he lacked the strength to use any more magic. He had tried staving in the bottom of one of the boats by kicking it with his foot, but the planks were too strong and wouldn’t give way. The current was slow here. The boats bobbed in the water, meandering lazily downstream. Any energetic monk could plunge in and recover them.

  Marcus waited for that to happen, but no monk—energetic or otherwise—appeared.

  The boat tent carrying him and Evelina rounded a bend in the river and he lost sight of the shoreline and the bobbing boats. The river was narrow at this point, the shore lined with trees, whose overhanging boughs, thickly intertwined, cut off the bright sun and made it seem as if he were rowing into a green and leafy cavern. Sparse patches of sunlight slid over his knees. The sun was directly overhead. Midday. Only noon. Presumably noon of the same day.

  So much had happened, it seemed as if it should be noon of some day next year.

  “I don’t like this.” Evelina hugged herself. “It’s like a cave. Anyone could be hiding in those trees.” An alarming thought occurred to her. “Speaking of caves, we’re not going back there, are we, Your Highness? Back to that horrible cave beneath the water? This is the way. I remember it. I don’t want to go back there. We should turn around. Travel downstream.”

  The sunken cave. Marcus remembered gliding through it silently, careful not to make a sound, lest Grald and the monks should hear him and Bellona. He didn’t much like the idea of going back through that cave himself.

  Perhaps that’s why the monks didn’t follow us to the shore. Perhaps they’re waiting for me there. Maybe I should turn around and travel downriver, as Evelina says.

  Marcus kept rowing upriver, pulling steadily for the sunken cavern.

  “They’re not chasing us, are they, Your Highness?” Evelina asked, peering over her shoulder. “They’d be here by now, don’t you think?”

  “Yes,” Marcus replied. No use frightening her with his dark conjectures. “You must call me Marcus.” He smiled at her. “We’ve been through too much for formalities.”

  Evelina flushed with pleasure. “Marcus—I like that. And you will call me ‘Evelina.’ “ She sighed and let go of the gunwale. Wrapping her hands around her knees, she leaned forward and turned her attention to him. “You look tired.”

  “I’m all right,” Marcus said. He was tired, although he’d recovered his strength somewhat after exhaustion had nearly overwhelmed him at the wall. He guessed that the exhaustion had been partly due to despair—a despair that had lifted from him when he’d felt the touch of his brother’s hand.

  Marcus didn’t understand anything that had happened. He didn’t understand why Ven had helped him escape the dragon after betraying him to the dragon. He didn’t understand how Ven even came to be alive. The last he’d seen of his brother, Ven was lying in a pool of blood, a knife wound in his chest.

  I don’t need to understand. Not now. Now I have to concentrate on only one thing.

  “You’d find the rowing to be easier, traveling downstream,” Evelina pointed out for the third time.

  Marcus shook his head. “Easier, but the wrong way.”

  “Where are we going then?”

  “Home,” said Marcus. His objective. His only objective.

  “Your home?” asked Evelina, and she sounded troubled.

  “My home.”

  His home, his kingdom of Idylswylde. That was why he was risking the monks in the sunken cavern. He might even find the dragon there, for that was where he had first seen Grald, the hulking human form the dragon had appropriated. Marcus was ready to risk even that to return to his home.

  He could not explain this longing, but the memory came to him of another time, a time he had been away from his home for months, trapped in a world of insanity from which Draconas had saved him. When the little boy, Marcus, had seen the towers of his father’s castle shining in the sunlight, he had felt the ache of longing in his heart swell so that the towers were drowned in his tears. The man, Marcus, remembered and wanted to see those sunlit towers again.

  “Watch it!” Evelina cried.

  Marcus jerked his head around, saw that he was steering them perilously close to a tangle of grass and dead tree branches. He gave the oars a twitch and they cleared the hazard, though with only inches to spare.

  “You’re so very tired,” said Evelina. She reached out her hand to him, bending forward still more. Her chemise slipped a little, revealing an enticing expanse of curves and shadows. “You would not even need to row if we went downstream. The river would carry us—”

  “I told you back at the landing, Evelina,” said Marcus, and his tone, though gentl
e, left no room for argument. “I have to go home.”

  Seated opposite Marcus in the boat, Evelina pouted. She was accustomed to having her own way.

  “At least you have a home,” she returned, sitting up straight. By leaning forward, she had just provided him with an enticing view of her breasts, and it all been for nothing. He’d barely glanced at her. Therefore, she would punish him. “Your brother took my home away from me.”

  This jab, meant to wound him with guilt, missed its mark. At the mention of his brother’s name, Marcus’s gaze went from Evelina’s face to her blood-spattered clothes. His eyes darkened. His lips compressed. He looked out at the trees and continued to row.

  Evelina’s cheeks burned. So that was it. The blood was Ven’s, the prince’s monstrous half-brother. And she’d been the one to draw that blood. The last she’d seen of Ven, he was lying on the floor dying, or so she hoped. She had saved their lives. Marcus had told her that. He’d been grateful. Now he couldn’t look at her.

  “What’s the matter, Marcus?” Evelina demanded. She clutched at the blood-stained bodice and tried, ineffectually, to rearrange it so that the brownish red spots did not show. “Why do you look at me like that?”

  Marcus flushed. “Like what?” He tried to sound innocent and thereby clinched his guilt.

  “Like I was something ugly and disgusting that you’d like to squash beneath your boot. You said you understood why I stabbed that beast of a brother, and now you hate me!”

  Evelina burst into tears that were not feigned—at least not much. She buried her head in her arms and sobbed stormily, lifting her head once to cry, “Your brother tried to rape me! He admitted it! And he killed my father!” Then she gave herself up to the luxury of hysterics. She felt she’d earned it.

  As she wept, Evelina expected confidently that Marcus would stop rowing the boat, take her in his arms, and comfort her. He didn’t. He continued to row. Admittedly, they were fleeing mad monks and a dragon, but still Evelina felt slighted. Another man— a true man—would have thrown caution to the winds in order to soothe her and pet her and try to steal a kiss or slip his hand down her chemise.

  Marcus just kept rowing.

  Evelina was at a loss. Hysterics were wearing, and she couldn’t keep this up forever. The prince obviously wasn’t going to be of any help to her. She’d have to recover on her own. She let her sobs quiet and risked a furtive glance from under her tear-soaked arms to see how he was taking it.

  He was rowing steadily, his eyes fixed on her. He looked uncomfortable. Maybe he was just shy, unused to women.

  I wonder how long it will take to reach this home of his? Days, maybe. Days and nights.

  Nights. Alone. Together. Evelina’s pulse quickened and her breath came fast at the thought. She would have to be careful with her seduction of her prince, for he believed her to be a maiden pure, as well as a maiden fair. He must be made to think that he was the one who had seduced her. Evelina’s dream—dreamt from the moment she’d first met him this very morning—was to be Her Royal Highness, Princess Evelina, wife of His Royal Highness, Prince Marcus.

  She knew that marriage was long odds, however. The royal mistress. She would settle for that.

  Evelina had already discounted the idea of trying to convince Marcus that she was a baron’s daughter, kidnapped by Ven, who carried her, fainting, from her father’s castle. She was pragmatic enough to know that she could never pass for noble-born. She could neither read nor write. She could not embroider or play the lute. Her hands were not the smooth, fair hands of one who has never had to dress herself, never had to wash her own hair or scrub out her own chamber pot. Princes married farmers’ daughters only in the minstrels’ tales. In real life, the princes took the farmers’ daughters to be their mistresses. They set them up in fine houses in the city and gave them jewels and clothes and educated their bastard sons and made them abbots.

  Evelina resolved to have the house, the jewels, the bastard son. Maybe not in that order. House and jewels often came as a result of the bastard son. Her primary goal in all this was, therefore, to get herself seduced. That was the reason she’d been urging him to travel downstream, away from his home. The more time she spent with him, the better. He would not go downstream, so she would have to act fast.

  Her sobs calmed to hiccups and she timidly raised her head.

  Her tears made her eyes shimmer, even if the lids were red. The boat slid along the surface of the sun-dappled water.

  “Marcus,” Evelina said, her voice quavering. “I know I am not like the well-born, accomplished women you are used to being around. My father was a merchant in the city of Fairefield. Dear man. He was respectable, kind, and gentle. Just not very practical. My mother died when I was little, and father and I were everything to each other. I’m sorry I stabbed your brother. I’m a good person. I really am. Father and I went to church every week. It’s just . . . when I saw Ven ... I saw my poor father’s body, all crumpled and twisted . . .”

  “Don’t cry, Evelina. I understand,” said Marcus. “You will have a home to go to. My home. You saved my life. My parents will welcome you for that.”

  Again, that cool polite tone. He looked away, searching the bank for any signs of pursuit. Evelina glowered at him, annoyed.

  “I don’t want your parents to welcome me for saving your life,” she told him beneath her breath. “I want them to welcome me as the mother of their first grandson. And whether they do that with open arms or cold shoulders doesn’t really matter. I’ll have you, my love, and I’ll have your baby, and there won’t be a damn thing your parents can do about either.”

  The thought cheered her. She had plenty of time to coax him into loving her. She had never failed yet, with any man.

  “Thank you, Your Highness,” Evelina said softly. “I mean . . . Marcus.”

  Sunlight flickered through the over-arching boughs, forming ripples of gold that shone in Evelina’s hair. She was dabbing her eyes with cold water. She had the loveliest face Marcus had ever seen. His gaze went from her face to the splotches of blood on her bodice and on her skirt and her chemise and the white skin of her neck. The splotches had been fresh not many hours before. They had since smeared and dried to an ugly reddish brown. Blood spots. Ven’s blood.

  Evelina hadn’t killed him, though she had meant to. Of that Marcus had no doubt. Despite that, Ven had risked the dragon’s ire to free them. He had urged Marcus to take care of her. Maybe he had acted out of guilt. He had admitted to Marcus that he’d tried to rape Evelina. Without Ven, they would be both dead now, or at least back in the clutches of Grald.

  Marcus wondered how he felt about Evelina. He thought perhaps he loved her. He remembered with aching clarity the sight of her shapely legs when she’d kilted her skirts to flee the monks. As he looked at her now, seated across from him, sometimes he saw his brother’s blood and other times he saw the shadow that fell enticingly between her full breasts.

  Evelina looked at him as no other woman had ever before looked at him—adoring, loving, admiring. Evelina had seen him work his magic and she had not been shocked or terrified. And she had seen him work far more powerful magicks than changing dust motes into fairies. He imagined his lips touching her soft lips, his hand cupping her soft and heavy breasts, and he was filled with such burning desire that he had to firmly banish such thoughts in order to keep his mind on their peril.

  Yet . . . yet . . . even as he kissed her lips in his imaginings, he saw those lips twist into a snarl of fury. He saw the hand that caressed him drive the knife into his brother’s body. He saw the blood splatter onto her clothes and he saw her yank the knife free and try to stab Ven again . . .

  Marcus came to a sudden, stark understanding. There was something secret and unspoken between Ven and Evelina, a truth that neither of them had shared with him. He’d heard her side of the story He wanted, very much, to hear Ven’s. His brother had tried to tell him. Marcus had jumped to conclusions and rebuffed him.

  And now
it was too late. Whatever had happened, Evelina wouldn’t tell him and Ven couldn’t, at least not now. Perhaps, in time, Marcus would be able to contact his brother, speak mind-to-mind, touch hand-to-hand, as they had done when they were little. Now he didn’t dare go into the room inside his mind, the room where he could eavesdrop on dragons’ thoughts and dreams. The room where he had first met his brother long, long ago.

  The dragon was waiting for him in that little room.

  And probably in the cavern, as well.

  “I told you,” Evelina was saying sharply, “I don’t want to end up in that horrible cave.”

  Marcus gave a start. She had plucked the thoughts out of his head and spoken them aloud. “I saw him there, that man they called Grald. I didn’t like the way he looked at me. Please turn around, Marcus! Go the other way! I don’t want him to find me.”

  “I don’t think that Grald will be in the cave. That explosion we heard—”

  “You don’t know for certain he won’t be there,” Evelina pointed out, and her lower lip quivered. “If we traveled south, we could spend a few days resting at a fine inn . . .”

  “We’re not going south.”

  Marcus smiled at her, to take the sting out of his refusal, and shook his head, and kept rowing, though he was aching and hurting and almost sick with fatigue.

  And there it was—the argument come around to where it began. Evelina heaved a disappointed sigh, loud enough for him to hear.

  If he did, he didn’t let on, and Evelina ground her teeth in frustration. She needed to hide her ire from him, however, and so she bent over the side of the boat and cupped her hand for a drink of water. She caught a glimpse of her reflection. Evelina drew back, horrified. She looked a fright!