Master of Dragons Read online

  Armed with dragon-magic, the monks continued their search for Marcus and Ven. Marcus could not have left Dragonkeep, for the wall surrounding the city was designed so that no human— even one possessing the dragon-magic—could find his way through the hidden gate.

  Except that was exactly what happened, or so his monks reported back to Grald. Marcus had been cornered, trapped like the proverbial rat with his back against the wall. Exhausted and wounded, he could not even put up much of a fight. The human female with him had no magic and was no threat. Suddenly, without warning, Marcus walked straight through the solid rock wall and he took the girl with him.

  The monks were baffled. Grald was not.

  “This proves it. Draconas is responsible,” he said accusingly to Anora. “You bungled the job.”

  Disguised in their respective human forms—Grald in the body of a large, hulking human male, and Anora in the body of a holy sister—the two dragons surveyed the midst of the ruins left by the horrific blast that had wiped out an entire city block.

  “Then why haven’t we seen his colors?” Anora demanded, frustrated and baffled. “If his mind is alive and active and reaching out to help Melisande’s son, we would know it, for we have been watching for him. He could not hide from us.”

  “Someone reached out to aid Melisande’s son,” Grald muttered, kicking at a chunk of stone and sending it rolling. “Someone opened the gate for him. The prince could not do that by himself.”

  “What about your son? Ven?”

  “What about him?” Grald growled.

  “He was with his brother and that female. He could have opened the gate and helped them escape.”

  Grald snorted. “Ven hates his brother, and why not? His brother is handsome, rich, educated, and has two human legs, not two dragon ones. And Ven lusts after the girl who was with Marcus. Ven would not have permitted her to flee, especially in the company of a brother he detests. Besides, the monks theorize that Ven was injured. They think the blood was his. And, his mind remains closed to me.”

  “He is cagey, that one. Because he has not used the dragon-magic, his mind has no colors, like a barren field blanketed in heavy snow. Except the field is not as barren as we suppose. He has learned how to mask his thoughts from us. Where is he now? Do you know? If he’s wounded, he couldn’t have gone far.”

  “My monks continue to search for him.”

  “By my wings and tail, we seem to have lost everyone this morning!” Anora ground her teeth in frustration.

  “If you had struck Draconas from behind, slain him immediately, as I suggested, then we would not be in this mess. You had to treat yourself to your little fillip of victory Let him know who you were—”

  “Do not tell me how to fight my battles!” Anora snarled, rounding on Grald. “You have lived in that stolen body so long you do not remember what it is like to live in a body such as that inhabited by Draconas, a body created by a supreme illusion.”

  “And I say that you have not fought another dragon in so long that you do not remember what it is to do battle with one,” Grald returned, although in subdued tones. He could see the shadow of the elder dragon looming over him. “Draconas did with you what he did with me when I fought him—he cast a defensive spell that threw your magic back on itself, and then he turned tail and ran.”

  “He had seconds only,” argued Anora. “He could not have gone far.”

  “He apparently went far enough to help the son of Melisande escape through the magical gate,” Grald retorted.

  “Enough of this bantering,” Anora said, suddenly weary. “We go round and round, like a fledgling chasing its tail, and we get nowhere. Here comes one of your mad monks. Perhaps he has something to report.”

  The monk bowed obsequiously.

  “Honored One—” the monk began.

  “Yes, yes,” Grald interrupted impatiently. “Get on with it. What have you to report?”

  “Honored One,” the monk continued, cringing, “your son has been found.”

  “Ven? Where?” Grald demanded, tense, alert.

  “In the Abbey, Honored One. He made it that far before he collapsed.”

  “Collapsed?” Grald repeated. “Out with it, you ninny! What is wrong with him? Is he hurt?”

  “He was stabbed, Honored One,” replied the monk in grave tones. “We found him lying on the floor of his room in a pool of blood. We do not know if he will survive.”

  Grald cast a triumphant glance at Anora. “That rules out Ven having anything to do with Marcus’s flight!”

  Anora cast him a withering glance. “I should think you would be much more concerned about the fact that this precious body of yours is bleeding to death.”

  The dire reminder had the desired effect. Grald hastened off in alarm, leaving Anora alone. Once he was gone, she spoke to the third dragon of their triumvirate, Maristara, the dragon of Seth, who had started it all.

  “I have to face facts,” Anora said reluctantly. She hated admitting to her mistakes. “Draconas has escaped me.”

  “You know what he will do,” Maristara returned. “He will summon the Parliament and he will tell them everything. He will tell them about Dragonkeep, about the children. He will tell them about you, Anora, and how you have betrayed them.”

  “I’m not betraying them,” Anora retorted. “I’m trying to save them! If they could only see that!”

  “Now is the time for them to see. Pull the viper’s fangs.”

  Anora pondered, thoughtful. “You’re right. Once they know the truth, have seen what we have seen—”

  “—then Draconas is no longer a concern.”

  “And while Parliament is in an uproar, ranting and raving and flapping their wings—”

  “—we will prepare to strike. And once the first human kingdom is conquered and held firmly under our claws, our people will come to see that we are right. That our way is the only way.”

  “And what of Draconas?” Anora still wasn’t convinced.

  “It would be a shame if he were to fly into the side of a mountain and break his neck . . .” replied Maristara.

  4

  ANORA SHOULD HAVE BEEN PAYING MORE ATTENTION TO THE DESPISED humans. She would have found Draconas. He was carried out of the ruins right under her nose and she never noticed.

  Anora made the mistake of searching for Draconas in the human form he was most fond of adopting—that of a human male of undetermined years, strong and lean, with long black hair and dark eyes. It never occurred to either her or Grald that, as Draconas saw death crackling before him, he would use his last fleeing seconds to do two things: first, as Anora had postulated, Draconas cast a defensive spell that acted as a shield, causing Anora’s magic to bounce off him like a thrown spear bounces off steel. Second, as the lightning flared and sizzled around him, Draconas shifted form, choosing an illusion that he had found to be useful to him in the past.

  He had just managed to take on this form when the power of Anora’s magic clashed with Draconas’s magic, erupting in a blast that destroyed the building and brought it down on top of both of them.

  Anton Hammerfall and his wife, Rosa, were workers in the city of Dragonkeep. As his name implied, Anton was a blacksmith. His wife Rosa worked as a weaver. Despite the fact that they lived in the city that had been founded as a haven for children with dragon-magic in them, Anton had nary a drop. His was the third generation to grow up in Dragonkeep, and if the men in his family had ever had the magic, it had long since dwindled out of them. Anton gave secret thanks daily that such was the case. He felt nothing but pity for those wretched monks whose blood burned with the magical fire that drove them insane.

  Rosa had some dragon-magic in her, as did all the women of Dragonkeep, though not enough to make her valuable to the dragon, and thus she was a lowly weaver and not one of the holy sisters. The blood bane, as the magic was known, was not so bad in women as in men. It did not drive them insane. And thus Anton and Rosa had been proud to discover that their only
daughter, Magda, was strong in the dragon-magic. She had been summoned by the dragon to live in his palace, and though they missed her, they were pleased for her.

  Anton and Rosa resided in a small, one-room house in the city of Dragonkeep, not far from the site of the terrifying blast that had shaken the ground and knocked all the crockery off the shelves. The time was early morning. Anton had just fired up the forge when the blast hit. He had joined his neighbors in running to the scene, and he had proven to be invaluable in the search for survivors, for his strong smith’s arms were needed to lift the fallen stones and move heavy wooden beams. Rosa had gone with her husband, bringing with her bolts of new-made woolen cloth to be used as bandages for the living and shrouds for the dead.

  Both Rosa and Anton worked throughout the morning and into the late afternoon, doing what they could to help. There had been a great deal of confusion at first, as the people of Dragonkeep flocked to the site, either to help or to gawk or to conduct frantic searches for friends and relatives. Anton gave the Blessed credit for swiftly restoring order. The Blessed (as the monks were known) served as the dragon’s eyes and ears and enforcers of the law. This, and the fact that some of the Blessed were quite mad, caused the ordinary, “unblessed” citizens of Dragonkeep to go in healthy fear of the monks and to be quick to obey their commands.

  The Blessed ordered the majority of the citizens home, keeping only those who had proven to be useful. Anton and Rosa were among these, comforting, bandaging, lifting and hauling, rejoicing when survivors were discovered, grieving when they came upon bodies of the dead. By sundown, both were exhausted. The Blessed concluded that there was not much more to be done, especially now that night was falling. Rosa went home to “have a good cry,” as she said, and to give thanks to the dragon that their dear daughter was safe from harm inside the palace beneath the mountain. One of the dead Rosa had so gently covered with a blanket had been a young woman near her daughter’s age.

  Anton was also weary; his arms and his back and his heart ached. He could not bring himself to leave, however, not when there was the chance of finding someone still alive. He continued to search through the rubble and the last gleam of failing sunlight gave him a reward—he saw a child’s dusty hand protruding from beneath a pile of stones.

  At first, Anton feared he’d found another corpse. He knelt down and touched the child’s hand and, to his astonishment, found it warm, with a weak but steady pulse. Hope and elation burned away his weariness. Experience cautioned him not to immediately try to free the victim, much as he longed to pull her out from under the mound of rock. He first took a careful look at the debris pile. Shifting the wrong stone might cause the rocks to slide and bury the child deeper.

  “Damn, this is odd,” he muttered to himself, eyeing the strange way the stones and beams had settled. But then, he’d noted a lot about this disaster that was very odd.

  He thought at first of calling for help. He thought then that he wouldn’t. He could manage by himself. Considering the oddity of the situation, that might be best. And it would save precious time. He dug the child out of the debris using his bare hands and, within moments, had freed her.

  She was unconscious. She had a head wound. Blood gummed her hair and covered her face and her clothes so that it was hard for him tell where else she might be hurt. Her breathing was easy, not labored or shallow. He felt her limbs to see if they were broken. Arms and legs appeared to be intact. He could not see the wound on her head for all the blood and did not want to start probing, fearing his clumsy touch might make her injuries worse. The girl was about twelve years old. She was dressed in a woolen shift and that was all—no stockings, no shoes.

  The building was empty. No furniture, no sign that people lived here. The girl was alone in an abandoned dwelling. Odder and odder still.

  Anton took no more time to speculate. Questions would be answered if and when the girl survived. He lifted her gently in his arms and carried her from the building. On his way out, he spotted Grald, the man who ruled Dragonkeep in the name of the dragon, talking with one of the holy sisters. Anton ducked his head, so as to escape their notice, and hurried past them as swiftly as possible. He was glad, now, he had not called for help.

  He considered what to do with the child. He could take her to the healers in the Abbey, but the Abbey was a long way off and he was too tired to walk such a distance. Besides, the Houses of the Healers would be filled to overflowing. His own home was nearby. He would take the child there first, make her comfortable, and let his wife examine her injuries. Then together, he and Rosa could decide what to do with her.

  Anton’s home was larger than the single-room dwellings generally found in Dragonkeep. This was not because he was wealthier than the rest of the people. There were no such distinctions in the city of the dragon. Dwelling places were doled out by the Blessed based on certain considerations—number of inhabitants in the home, the type of work done by the inhabitants, etc. Rosa had her loom at home and Anton’s smithy shop was attached to the dwelling, so the dwelling had to be large enough to accommodate tools and equipment for both of them.

  Anton opened the door, which was never locked, with his shoulder and backed inside the house, taking care not to hit the girl’s head on the door frame. Rosa was slumped over the dinner table, having her cry.

  “Give me a hand here, Wife,” he said, closing the door with his foot as he indicated the child in his arms. “She’s hurt bad, I think, but she’s alive.”

  Rosa lifted her tear-stained face. She was in her mid-fifties, with the deft, callused hands of one who has been sitting at the loom most of her life. Slender and small-boned, she barely came to her husband’s chest. Anton was not very tall, but he was big-shouldered and massive, with powerful arms and legs. Rosa had a way of tilting her head to one side whenever she was considering anything, and Anton had a lumbering good nature about him, so that their friends nicknamed them affectionately Bird and Bear. Her amazed stare gave way to motherly compassion.

  “Lay her on our Magda’s bed,” Rosa told her husband. “Then go fetch more water.”

  She had questions, Anton could see that, but she would not ask them until the child was warm and made comfortable. When he returned from the well, he found the girl tucked in bed, her face washed clean of blood and dirt, and a wet cloth on her forehead.

  “How is she?” he asked anxiously, pouring the water into the kettle and then stirring up the fire beneath it.

  “She’ll do for the time being,” Rosa answered cautiously. “Once I cleaned the wound, I found that it wasn’t as bad as I’d feared. She’s lost a lot of blood, though.”

  “Will she come around?”

  “One never knows with a head wound, but I think she should be fine. Her sleep seems to be a healing one, not the bad sort from which you never wake.”

  Anton went to look at the girl. He regarded her thoughtfully, as Rosa waited for the water to heat so she could continue cleaning and dressing the wound. The girl had long black hair that straggled, unkempt and uncombed, over her shoulders. She lay quite still, did not groan or toss or twitch. She did, indeed, appear to be slumbering peacefully. Anton shook his head and his frown deepened.

  “Where did you find her, Husband? Where are her parents? Not . . . dead?” Rosa asked, suddenly fearful.

  “She was alone in an abandoned building,” said Anton, seating himself with a sigh at the table. He rubbed his shoulders and stretched his aching back muscles. “No sign that anyone else lived there. The building was close to what must have been the heart of the blast.”

  “Truly?” Rosa was amazed. She glanced back the child. “She is lucky to have escaped with such minor wounds.”

  “Lucky,” Anton repeated with meaningful emphasis. “I think it was more than luck.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She lay in the middle of a heap of debris. Heavy beams fell around her. None fell on top of her.”

  “You think she is one of the Blessed, then?” R
osa asked gravely.

  “That would explain it. She used her magic to shield herself. She must be quite powerful.”

  “One of the Blessed.” Rose reached down to caress the child’s hand. “In an abandoned house all by herself . . .” She sighed deeply. “A runaway.”

  “I think so. So what do we do? By law, we’re supposed to turn her over to the monks.”

  “Not until she is well,” said Rosa firmly. “And not until we’ve had a chance to hear her story and talk to her. We’ll tell her about our Magda, how happy she is. We’ll show her some of Magda’s letters from the palace.”

  “But do you think you can talk her into going back to the sisterhood?”

  “Of course,” Rosa said briskly. “The child’s just confused, that’s all. Girls at that age don’t know their own minds. Our Magda wanted to be a blacksmith, like you, when she was twelve. Remember? What a time we had convincing her that such was not her calling!”

  Anton smiled at the memory. Ten years had passed since his dearly loved daughter had left home at age twenty. She was one of the Blessed, unusually strong in the dragon-magic, and chosen by the dragon to live in the palace beneath the mountain. They had not seen Magda in all that time, but they still heard from her. Twice a year, she sent them a letter telling them that she was well and happy in her service to the dragon and describing the riches and wonders of palace life.

  Being a servant of the dragon was a great honor, to be sure, but Anton often envied the men his age who had ordinary daughters, who bore ordinary grandchildren.

  “If we can convince this girl to go back on her own, the holy sisters won’t be hard on her,” Rosa was saying. “Not like the monks.”

  “Keep your voice down.” Anton rose stiffly to his feet and went over to peer out the window.

  Although night had fallen, a few of their neighbors were still standing in the street, discussing the explosion in animated tones. No one else was around. Satisfied that they had not been overheard speaking in disparaging terms about the Blessed, Anton returned to the table.