Dragon Thief (16 page)

She kissed me again, and this time it was no light peck on the lips. The world melted around me again. When she let me go I stumbled back against the door to her temple, back in the midst of the abandoned memorials. Lysea stood before me as the gigantic nude she had been when we had summoned her. For a moment I thought I had never left her temple, and that everything since had been an extended dream. But I saw myself and realized I was still hallucinating. I was no longer Lucille, I was back in my original body, just as I had been when I saw the Dark Lord Nâtlac.

“What is—”

She rested her fingers on my lips again. “Quiet, my love.”

Around us the war of the animals still raged through the city, even though we were in Grünwald now, not Lendowyn. And above the babbling of ravens and foxes and wolves and mice and badgers I heard something roar. A shadow crossed the sun. A familiar fifty-foot lizard descended from the skies, screeching. I tried to back away, but Lysea held me in place.

Fortunately, the dragon was not dropping to attack me.

Not exactly.

It didn't drop toward the temple where I stood, but as I watched, I saw another version of myself, just as I had emerged from the catacombs, covered in sewage, stumbling between the abandoned tombs of Lysea's garden. The dragon fell down on that version of me, and I shut my eyes to avoid watching the carnage.

I had seen my body die once before. This was too much.

“Seen enough?” Lysea whispered in my ear. “Time to go home.”

“What? Wait!” I opened my eyes and I was lying on the forest floor. I stared up into the eyes of a huge dragon. It spoke to me in Lucille's voice. “Frank? Are you awake? Frank?”

I blinked and the colors of my vision drained away into a pool of rainbow shimmers as the leathery skin melted off the dragon's face to reveal a human Princess Lucille looking down at me.

I blinked a couple more times before my brain rejoined the waking world. “The girls!” I sat bolt upright, sending my consciousness sloshing around my skull in a very vertigo-inducing manner. “Ulp,” I said as I covered my mouth.

“Everyone's fine,” Lucille said.

I shook my head slowly. “How long—”

“How long were you out?”

“Yes,” I said. I resisted the urge to nod because shaking my head had sent the whole world spinning on a second axis, and I didn't want to add a third.

“About three hours.”

“Three hour . . .” I tried to get up, and the universe tilted on that last axis and I just tumbled sideways in front of Lucille in a rather embarrassing manner. She took my shoulders and rolled me back onto the bedroll I'd been resting on.

“I said it's all right. Stay put. Brock says that it takes a while for the smoke to wear off.”

“Yeah.” I rubbed my temples and watched as rainbow auras shot across my vision. The one around Lucille was shaped like a dragon. “I think I need to talk to Brock about that.”

“Then talk to Brock.” Brock stepped into view, eclipsing the evening sky and most of the forest. The shimmering rainbows around him outlined a bearish silhouette. He held a battered tin cup that seemed tiny in his hands. He knelt next to Lucille and offered the cup to me. Steam wafted up from the dark liquid in it. “Brock made this for you,” he said.

I took the cup. The contents smelled like boiled moss. “What is it?”

“Boiled moss,” Brock said. “To help the spirit find the rest of the way home.”

“My spirit has been homeless for a long time,” I muttered before I drank.

All I can say is that I've tasted worse. After I was done, it felt as if the moss was growing on my tongue, but the world had stopped spinning, and the rainbow auras had faded.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Brock told you to hold your breath,” he said, taking the cup back.

Now that the world had stabilized, I could sit up without vertigo. “I seem to remember you hanging out with the village shaman, right?”

“Brock was shown many visions.”

“Did those visions happen to involve a packed leaf full of herbs tossed into a fire?”

“Yes.”

I sighed. “Did we just give an inn full of thieves prophetic visions?”

“No. Without a shaman to lead Brock, Brock would only see his totem animal.”

“Okay,” I said. “That explains all the woodland creatures spouting gibberish.”

“Brock doesn't understand.”

“That makes two of us.” I got unsteadily to my feet.

Lucille placed a steadying hand on my arm. “So you saw a totem animal?” She asked.

“Maybe everyone else's. Mine? No. Not unless the Goddess Lysea counts.”

“Goddess . . .” Brock said.

“Goddess?” Lucille repeated.

“Yeah, Goddess. I sort of inadvertently made an offering to her after we escaped from the dungeons—long story.” I shook my head and laughed, still feeling a bit light-headed. “Long story, that's a good one. The offering's a long story.” The chuckling got worse.

“A goddess came to you?” Brock asked.

“It was a pretty elaborate hallucination.”

“What did you see?”

“All sorts of things,” I said. Brock stared at me with an uncomfortable intensity—especially uncomfortable on a man the size of a middling-large bear. “Is there a problem?”

He shook his head. “No. Brock shouldn't pry. Vision is between you and the Goddess.”

“Wait a minute. Vision? Go ahead, pry.”

Brock shook his head. “Every shaman sees their own world when the spirit walks. Brock could not tell you what it meant.”

“Shaman? What shaman?”

“You, Frank.”

“Me, what? I'm no shaman.”

“Most see their animal when the spirit walks. A shaman sees gods.”

“No, I'm no shaman.” I turned to Lucille for support, and she was grinning as if she was enjoying this. “I'm not?”

“Why?” Lucille asked. “You're already the Dark Queen, High Priestess of Nâtlac.”

“That's different.”

“How?”

“It . . . it just is.”

Brock placed a hand on my shoulder. “The Goddess touched you, spoke to you, and only you can say what she meant.”

“Great,” I whispered. “It was bad enough as a hallucination. As a prophetic vision it's worse.”

“What did you see, Frank?” Lucille asked.

“I saw Lendowyn Castle fall,” I said, “and I saw a dragon kill me.”

 • • • 

We left that subject to lie there, but it tracked us like a pack of wolves, just out of sight, waiting for someone to separate from the group.

Sometimes my own metaphors make me uncomfortable.

The good news was that our raid on The Headless Earl was an unqualified success aside from my unscheduled detour into a love goddess's apocalyptic visions. Brock's shaman weed packets had completely incapacitated the majority of the inn's inhabitants. The few who tried to escape from their spirit-walking companions had run into the waiting arms of Brock and Sir Forsythe and were very quickly subdued. Now we had horses, camping gear, weapons, and the girls had fully equipped themselves for the weather. Most important, we had liberated enough gold to pay the toll into Fell Green, pay for lodging there, and have enough left to afford some wizard who knew what they were doing to help straighten out the mess we found ourselves in.

Our group had only stopped briefly, just long enough for Brock to revive me and everyone to sort out the new horses and equipment. Within the hour, we were moving again, toward the Fell River. However well things had gone, we had added a group of twenty-some thieves and highwaymen to the list of people who were probably after us. With any luck they were several hours behind. More if they hadn't been able to retrieve the horses that we hadn't taken; Rabbit had stripped all their tack and sent them off into the woods. By the time our new horses needed to rest, twilight had turned full dark and we had reached the point where the Fell River met the Lendowyn border. We found a place to camp in a clearing in sight of the river. It gave us a wide space both for the horses to graze on what spots of grass poked through the snow, and for us to see any unwanted approach.

Just like Sir Forsythe's men, right before they were barbecued.

I took the first opportunity to walk off by myself and sit on a rock to watch the river. The cloudy, dark, moonless sky perfectly matched my mood. Below me, the river boiled, too violent to ice over.

Yeah, things went perfectly.

I couldn't even blame the knots in my stomach on Brock's moss drink. It had worn off hours ago. It had been bad enough when I was contemplating what my mistakes had already done. Thinking of what they might lead to wasn't pleasant. Snake had outmaneuvered me even before I'd known who he was. Even the most drastic solution that Sir Forsythe had mentioned, death breaking the enchantment, now seemed out of reach. Death of one body causing a swap back was straightforward enough when it was just us two. But Snake had moved on.

What did that mean? Would it cause a swap with the dragon? A swap with Lucille? Nothing?

This is why we're going to hire a wizard.

That didn't make me feel much better. The logic was inescapable—which was why we were headed there—but that didn't mean I liked it. I'd never been too fond of those in the wizarding profession even before one had banished me from my original body so he could steal it. I also couldn't say that Fell Green was anywhere near the top of my list of fine tourist destinations.

“Hey, want something to eat?”

I turned at the voice briefly expecting—
hoping
—for Lucille.

It was Mary. I couldn't help think about the last time she had tried to bring me dinner . . .

“Sure,” I said. I turned back to the river. She set down a tin plate on the rock next to me. On it steamed a couple of sausages that must have come from the pantry of The Headless Earl. “Thank you,” I said, uncertain about what else to say.

She didn't go away. I wasn't surprised. Whatever frustration or anger the girls had with me, half of it seemed focused through her. I could feel the swelling of an epic tirade behind me, and I braced myself for it. But when it finally came, nothing really could have prepared me for the gut-punch.

“Do you love her?” she asked.

I spun around and gaped at her.

She waited a moment, then asked, “Frank?”

“What?”

“Do you love her?”

“Who?”

“Who you think?”

“I know. I'm stalling.”

She walked around and crouched in front of my rock and shook her head. Now that she had donned stolen leather and a furred cloak, she looked more herself. Less lost child, more young warrior goddess. Her face was too shadowed in the nighttime darkness to reveal her expression.

“Why don't you answer the question?” she asked.

“It's complicated.”

“Is it?”

“Why are you asking?”

“Why you stalling?”

I sighed. “You heard my story, didn't you?”

“The true one or the bushel of lies you introduced yourself with?”

“That's just my point.”

“You have a point?”

“My point is—you had the right idea about me all along. I'm not a hero. I'm not even a particularly good thief. I'm reckless, impulsive, and the people around me get hurt even when I'm not being a self-serving bastard. One of my best skills is lying to people, right after lying to myself. I only even know Lucille because of a series of accidents that were either out of my control, or a result of my own bad decisions. Every woman who's had the bad sense to get attached to me has had her heart broken . . .” I couldn't help thinking of Evelyn. It may not have been a real romance, but she had come all the way from Grünwald only to be frightened to death by an angry dragon—

An angry dragon.

“Oh crap,”
I whispered. I rubbed my forehead as I began realizing the
real
reason Lucille had been so angry. Of course she was. If she had felt anything remotely like what I . . .

And she found me with someone else . . .

“Frank?”

“Sometimes I don't realize the full stupidity of my actions until long after the fact. But I've already hurt her, a lot—”

“Frank?”

“What?”

“You're not answering the question.”

“I told you—”

“Everything but whether or not you love her.”

“I—”

“But I think I know.” She stood up and started walking away.

“Wait.”

She stopped.

“Why are you asking?” I asked her.

“Because there's one thing I never saw those dangerous smooth-talking men ever do,” she said without turning around. She walked away before I could ask her anything more.

It was nearly a full day's ride before we reached the bridge across the Fell River. Because we followed the river, we rode through a more heavily populated area than the border with Grünwald. It made for a few tense moments, but every group that seemed like it might have made trouble for us had less than half our number, and when you're facing armed riders in leather armor, it matters more that there are ten of them than the fact that most are teenage girls. Everyone gave us a wide berth.

We reached the bridge around sunset. I dismounted and led my horse to the front of the bridge and waited. Behind me I heard Grace say, “Where is this place? Across the river?”

“Just wait,” I called back.

At the moment, the stone bridge arced over the boiling waters, the setting sun glinting off the icy stones in an unbroken arch from the Lendowyn shore across to Dermonica. Despite being the only crossing for miles in either direction, the immediate surroundings were the emptiest stretch of the river coastline we'd come across. For a few moments the only sound was the rushing of the river and the distant cawing of a raven somewhere.

Behind me, Grace spoke up again. “What are we waiting—Where'd he come from?”

A familiar bald man with ancient clouded eyes staggered down the bridge toward us, leaning heavily on his staff and holding out a wooden bowl. “Alms—” he began. Then he stopped short about ten feet away from me. His posture got straighter and his blind expression turned into an annoyed frown. “You again?”

“Uh, not exactly . . .”

“And you have the dragon with you.”

“Again, not exactly.”

The man gave an exasperated sigh and held out the bowl. I threw in a gold crown for each of us. Behind me, I heard Grace say, “And where did
that
come from?”

Once the toll was paid, the bridge became much shorter, and the river itself much wider, as a dagger-shaped island came into existence between the two shorelines. The space where the bridge had been became a broad avenue that cut across the island roughly in the middle. On one side was a forest that was a little too lush, too green, too dense—especially for this time of year.

On the other side was a walled city that filled that whole half of the island. Towers reached up from within the walls to pierce a sky that felt as wrong as the forest.

“Come on,” I told everyone as I led my horse up across the bridge.

Lucille rode up next to me. “This looks so different.”

“I imagine it does.”

“Things shouldn't feel this wrong,” she whispered.

“Things
are
wrong,” I said.

“This is the body I was born in.” Her voice was barely audible. She looked behind us, at the rest of our party, then looked down at me. “How did that man know you?”

I shook my head. “He may look blind, but I suspect that being gatekeeper for this town requires types of sight most people don't have.”

“He could
see
who you were?”

“I guess so.”

“He said you still had the dragon with you.”

I smiled at her. “I do.”

She shook her head.

“I should tell you something.”

“What?” she asked.

“When I was waking up from Brock's herbs, I was still—I—uh—saw something.”

“Yes?”

“Auras I think, outlines of your soul or spirit or something.”

“My soul?”

“Maybe. But what I saw, it was the shape of a dragon.”

“It . . . you're mocking me.”

“No I'm—”

“Just stop it! I know how you feel about me. You're right, but you don't need to be so cruel about it.”

“Lucille, I didn't—” I had to jump back because she spun her horse around and rode away. For a moment I was afraid she was going to abandon us and gallop back into Lendowyn, but she just rode back to the rear of our group, next to Brock.

What did I say?

I hate it when I screw up without even knowing what I had done.

 • • • 

We unloaded ourselves into an inn called The Talking Eye. It might have served customers as sketchy as those of The Headless Earl, but at least it was a completely different flavor of sketchy—much more hooded robes and arcane symbols than leather and battle scars. The innkeep didn't look twice at my party of teenage Amazon warriors, and gladly took our ill-gotten gold for a pair of neighboring rooms.

Lucille didn't look at me as I let the girls into their room, though I think I saw her smile weakly as she watched Rabbit run and throw herself on the bed with a joyful grunt. The other girls walked in, looking around the room as if they'd just walked into the elf-king's palace. There was a small iron stove in the corner, with a fire already burning inside. Laya and Krys walked over and crouched next to it, shedding their gauntlets and rubbing their hands.

Behind me, Sir Forsythe said, “The young master should stay with us.”

Everyone turned to face him. “What ‘young master'?” Lucille asked.

“The young boy by the stove,” he said. “It would be improper for him to stay—why are they laughing?”

Krys wasn't laughing. She stood up and appeared a little embarrassed. “I'm afraid I'm a girl too, Sir Knight.”

“But—”

I patted Sir Forsythe on the arm and said, “It's okay. You've been with me long enough I can understand how you'd be confused. Let them get settled.”

He stepped back and said, “Yes, My Liege.”

At first it seemed unfair that Lucille was wedged into a room with a half-dozen people, but once Brock, Sir Forsythe, and I entered the neighboring room, I envied her. I think just by mass alone, Brock counted as a half-dozen people, and through sheer height and length of limb, Sir Forsythe took up the remaining space.

The less said about the snoring, the better.

 • • • 

The next day I greased several palms to find someone who was expert in the lore surrounding the Dark Lord Nâtlac.

The Wizard Crumley resided in one of the least pleasant areas of Fell Green, and that's saying something. It wasn't winter here, and apparently never was. It felt too warm and too humid, uncomfortably midsummer. Every flat surface seemed to grow sickly moss, and even in midday the alleys and doorways were cloaked in impenetrable shadow. Just standing on the street gave you a feeling that your skin was in danger of being infected by some damp rot. The small patches of open ground resembled swamp, complete with a menagerie of buzzing insects.

Crumley resided at the end of a crooked lane that aimed generally toward the city wall, descending as it did so, until I was certain that we had traveled below the level of the Fell River. The door to Crumley's lair was black oak streaked with green, held together by rusty iron bands. When I used the heavy iron knocker, the sound was muffled by the dampness of the wood.

“Are you sure this is the right place?” Lucille asked me.

“The dwarf was rather specific.”

“Before or after you paid him?”

Behind me, Mary said, “Seems rather soggy for a mage.”

“Brock's socks are wet.”

“I told you,” I said. “This is our best chance for a local expert. Most of the people who study the Dark Lord aren't very approachable.”

I reached up and tried the knocker again.

“Maybe he isn't home?” I think I heard a hopeful note in Laya's voice. “Maybe you can come back and try later?”

Lucille leaned over and whispered to me, “Why don't you send the girls back to the inn with Brock? Do they need to be here?”

I shook my head. “They can handle themselves fine, and I don't want us to split up.”

“Why not?”

“What happened the last time we split up in this town?”

“Oh—”

She was interrupted by the screech of rusty hinges as the door opened inward into a dim passage.

“What?” called a raspy voice. It took a moment before I identified the source. I peered into the darkness and a voice called up from somewhere around the level of my belt, “You just going to stand there, or you going to say something?”

I looked down and saw a stooped old man shorter than Lucille. He had long white hair and beard, both stained with streaks of green. “We're looking for Wizard Crumley.”

“Why else would you come down here?” He peered at me through narrow eyes and leaned forward to start sniffing me. The man smelled so strongly of fish and seaweed I had no idea how he could smell anything else. “What do you want?”

“Advice on an enchantment,” I said. “Help undoing it.”

The man waddled over to Lucille, leaning on a bone-white cane that seemed made of driftwood. He smelled her as well, causing her to back up a step. He licked his lips and turned toward me. “Enchantment, eh? No help for the lovelorn?”

“Huh? No?”

He shrugged. “You're dripping with the Goddess's touch, boy. But your choice.” He leaned forward and said in a fish-scented stage whisper, “But watch out for this one, lots of fire there, if you get my drift.”

“Are
you
the wizard?” Lucille interrupted.

“See?” The old man winked at me. He spun around and bowed at all of us. “Of course, I am Wizard Crumley the Boundless, the Exceptional, the Knowledgeable—”

“The long-winded,” I heard Mary mutter from behind me.

“Can you help us with the Dark Lord Nâtlac?” I asked.

Wizard Crumley sighed and brought his staff down on the stones with a weak crack. “Of course it would be him. Are you sure it isn't the Goddess? She's much more fun.”

“We were told you know about the Dark Lord,” Lucille said.

“Such knowledge costs, Madam Dragon.”

“What—” Lucille gaped at him.

“We brought payment,” I said, hefting our pouch of ill-gotten gold.

“Of course you did.” He sounded almost disappointed at the prospect. “Come on in then.”

“Wait,” Lucille said, “why did you say ‘Madam Dragon'?”

“Really?” Wizard Crumley waved his hand at her dismissively. “You stink of the lizard, almost as badly as the tall one stinks of the Dark Lord himself. You come for my expertise and you think I cannot sense these things? Maybe you should go elsewhere.”

I hefted my purse. “Now you don't want our gold?”

“And be insulted?”

I leaned forward. “If I hadn't heard otherwise about your expertise in the lore of the Dark One, I'd almost suspect you're trying to avoid being hired.”

“Are you questioning my expertise?”

“Of course not,” I said. “But anyone who had no idea of the vast store of knowledge hoarded by the Wizard Crumley might come to the wrong conclusion, wouldn't they?”

“Don't test me.”

“Why would I, when I can hire you?” I held out the pouch. “I can hire you, can't I?”

He glanced from me, to Lucille, to the rest of our party behind us. He reached up and snatched the purse from my hand and said, “Come in, wipe your feet, and don't touch anything.”