Now You See It... (19 page)

I heard Brave Heart howl, and it sounded as though he'd taken off, so that was a good sign. If they got the chance, he and Tiffanie would get the two elves separated and lost.

The third elf lingered at the cave entrance until his companions disappeared over the sand dune, then turned back into the cave.

At the same moment, I slipped in around the edge of the entry so that, if anyone noticed, they would assume I was his shadow.

I was in the cave.

So far, so good.

Except...

Why is there always an
except?

As I slid into the cave, keeping my back to the wall, I saw that Larry's descriptions had been mostly accurate. Glowing globes that looked like frozen snowballs were scattered liberally about the cave, and gave a good deal of light but also cast a lot of shadows: Think Christmas midnight Mass. The cave itself was about as big as a good-sized classroom, and I glimpsed, in the back, trying hard
not
to see it and let myself become overwhelmed, a large form that had to be the dragon, lying on the floor like someone's pet brontosaurus. It raised its head the instant I crossed the threshold. I told myself that was just coincidence.

I even glimpsed, near where the dragon's eyes were tracking me, the glint of bars—the cage Larry had said Julian was being kept in.

But I didn't bother looking any closer.
Larry, you blue fool,
I thought, for I saw Julian sitting at the table with an older elf who had to be Vediss. Vediss had what looked like a permanent scowl—an expression like his underwear was too loose while simultaneously his pants were too tight. Julian was cool and unperturbed, wearing a pair of familiar-looking shades.

And Vediss was telling him, "Good, good. You'll take those fools totally by surprise."

You traitor,
I thought.
We're risking our lives to rescue you from Vediss, and here you are working with him all along.

But that didn't make any sense.

Vediss and Berrech wanted Julian out of the way of the kingship. If Julian didn't want to succeed his father, all he had to do was step aside for Berrech; he didn't need to plot with him. And where was Berrech, anyway? I'd heard his voice, but he wasn't here at the table with his father, nor at the other table where the last of his henchmen was sitting down to finish his meal.

The dragon got to its feet, rattling the short but
thick chains that looped from some massive bolts in the cave wall to the heavy collar tight around its neck, so that the creature had room to sit or stand but little other movement. It could definitely see me, I could tell, even though it pretended to be just stretching.

He tried to make wren fricassee out of me,
I remembered Larry saying. Wren fricassee or human-girl-disguised-as-shadow fricassee: Gee, if I were a dragon, which would I prefer?

His fire breath can't reach this far,
I told myself,
or he could have had elf fricassee.

I heard Berrech's voice call to the dragon, "No trouble out of you, now."

Berrech's voice, coming from Julian's mouth.

The dragon yawned, then lay down again, capturing my attention, making me see him, and—beyond him—the cage Larry had described. The cage in which Julian was held prisoner. Though the dragon had seen me, Julian had not. He was leaning against the back set of bars, looking desolate, looking—truth be told—a bit sorry for himself.

The Julian at the table said, in Berrech's voice, "These things hurt my ears." He took the glasses off and didn't look anything like Julian anymore. How could I have been mistaken? Berrech was bigger than
Julian in every way—taller, wider, broader features—and his hair was darker and longer.

Vediss chose a small pair of pliers from among the tools on the table, and he made an adjustment to the frames. "Put them back on," he said. "You have to get used to leaving them on, even when you enter an ill-lit room. Even though they look as though they're made to block out light, you can wear them in the dark."

Berrech put the glasses back on, and his features once more resumed the shape of Julian's in Julian's human-boy mode.

I finally caught on. These glasses were not a replacement pair for the ones that had ended up on my front lawn, which had let the wearer see things as they actually were; but they were a whole new magic, where it was those on the other side of the lenses who were affected.

The dragon began licking its forelegs, cleaning itself or perhaps smoothing down its scales, like a cross between a house cat and an armored tank. It glanced up at me as though to say,
See, I'm domesticated. I'm friendly.

And in truth it had already proven its friendliness by not drawing the elves' attention to me, by—in fact—drawing my attention to Julian.

Intelligent,
I reminded myself. What had Tiffanie said? Able to plan. Able to hold grudges.

It didn't need me to explain that we'd rescue it if it helped us. It was volunteering.

I weighed the options of once again crawling on the floor versus remaining upright and hugging the irregular walls of the cave. The advantage of crawling was that it made me a smaller target; the advantage of being upright was that I could keep a better eye out for Vediss or Berrech glancing in my direction so I could freeze at a moment's notice. The other factor I had to throw into the equation was the question of how long I could move around the cave in either position before I knocked into something.

And thinking about time reminded me that I didn't have long before Eleni would get moving into her role in this plan—which was striking me as more and more lame by the minute. How many minutes had I dawdled in here already?

I opted for impersonating the shadow of the Hunchback of Notre Dame—standing, though crookedly, so that my shape merged as much as possible into the real shadows thrown by the crates and equipment and buckets of sand that Vediss had in here for his glassmaking experiments.

To anyone watching—which, hopefully, was just
the dragon—I would have looked like a spastic Quasimodo. Once I passed the tables where the elves sat, I kept glancing forward in the direction I was heading, to lessen the probability of tripping over something. Then I would quickly glance back to make sure Vediss and Berrech were still occupied, then twitch my head to the side to make sure the other elf wasn't looking, then forward again. Whiplash was a real possibility.

Still, my precautions were worthwhile, for I caught the moment when Berrech's head jerked up. Luckily, he was facing the entrance, so in the time it took for his head to swivel in my direction, I'd crouched and frozen.

Had I made a noise?

"What?" his father asked.

Berrech stood, and turned his eyes toward my end of the cave. But at least he didn't go for his sword. Nor come any closer. For the time being.

His father repeated, "What?"

"Don't know," Berrech said. "The lights flickered. Or at least one of them."

Now all three elves were looking in my basic direction. The henchman elf started toward me.

Stupid, stupid,
I chided myself. I'd stepped between them and one of the globes of light as though I were as insubstantial as I was supposed to look.

The dragon flicked its tail, which it hadn't done before, aiming it so that it passed in front of one of the witchlights, and this time I noticed the slight flicker. The creature wore a smug expression as if trying to keep from grinning outright, like it was pleased that it had done something which had caused the elves to jump. Then, as though suddenly realizing that they were watching, it tucked its tail beneath itself. Speaking in a voice that somehow reminded me of lava bubbling out from a volcano (not, of course, that I've ever personally
heard
lava bubbling out from a volcano), the dragon suggested, "Perhaps one of you passed gas that caused a momentary dimming of the lights?"

Vediss wasn't the only one who could scowl like his shorts were caught somewhere they shouldn't be. Berrech said: "You may be about to outlive your usefulness, worm."

Worm?
I thought.
Geez, he doesn't like anybody besides other elves—and he doesn't like half of them, either.

"If you're going to kill me anyway," the dragon said, still slow and steady, like a geologic force, "then what will I lose by incinerating you now?" Suddenly, gracefully—despite all that mass and those short chains—it was on its feet, and it shot a blow-torchlike flame out of its mouth, between the advancing hench-elf and where Berrech and Vediss
stood. On the table where the elves had been eating, what was left of their meal went up like flaming cherries jubilee.

The two thoughts that collided in my head were:

(1) Larry's pathetic little spreenie-trying-to-make-a-dragon-
whoosh
sounded just about nothing like the real thing; and

(2) Very precise aim!

The hench-elf put his little elf butt into reverse. A moment later he went and fetched a pail of sand that he threw onto the table to smother the flames before the table as well as the food started burning, but we all knew that hadn't been the first thought to cross his mind.

Vediss was trying to make peace. "Now, now, dragon. No reason to talk like that. Of course we aren't planning to kill you. I gave my word we would let you go when we finished, and we will. My son was only speaking in hasty irritation. Bear in mind that the situation is as it ever was since I captured you: If you kill us, with no one knowing you're here, you'll have starved to death by the time the other dragons find you next laying season. Starving is such a long death."

No wonder the poor creature was willing to work for them, on the off chance that they might let it live.

The dragon whipped its tail around itself and once more settled down with its chin on its paws. Waiting. We could all tell it was waiting.

Me, too: I waited for the elves to settle down, to stop stealing glances in the dragon's direction and, therefore, in mine.

My knees were beginning to stiffen. If I didn't move soon, my legs were apt to fall asleep and be unsteady. I eased myself up the wall, bending to follow the contours eroded eons ago by the sea when the tides had come in higher up the shore.

From outside the cave came a bloodcurdling scream.

I gasped, remembering—even as I did—that it was part of the plan.

Fortunately, everyone else gasped at the same time—minus the imperturbable dragon, of course—so no one noticed me.

"Wolf!" Though she was outside, Eleni's voice reverberated in the cave. "Wolf! Wolf! Somebody please help me!" This was followed by a scream so frightened and tormented it sounded as though she was even now having major body parts torn off.

Too late.

Or too early.

Depending on if you meant me or Eleni. I was supposed to have talked to the dragon and/or Julian by now. I was supposed to have found a key to unlock the iron collar and/or the cage. I was supposed to use this distraction to quickly unlock
something or other.

Vediss, Berrech, and the remaining elf scrambled for their weapons.

The dragon, in a whisper so intense it smoked, hissed at me, "The shelf."

Shelf?

It nodded its massive head at a piece of board, on the far side of the cave from me, balanced on two crates.

Keys. A ring with two keys.

There was no time for skulking about. The elves were as distracted as the plan called for them to be. I dashed across the open floor to the shelf and snatched up the ring.

But old habits die hard.

I glanced back to make sure nobody was watching. The hench-elf and Vediss were not in sight, presumably having already made it outside to investigate what was making Eleni continue to scream. Berrech had his back to me and was just about to step through the cave entryway when Larry swooped in.

Larry didn't see Berrech.

Or, rather, Larry didn't see Berrech as Berrech—since he was still wearing those form-confusing glasses. He appeared, to anyone who didn't know better, to be Julian.

In the chaos of someone being attacked, Berrech probably wouldn't have noticed a little wren.

Except that the wren hovered, very unwrenlike, in his face and spoke.

With all of Eleni's screaming, I couldn't hear what Larry said, but it must have been something like:
Julian, we're here to rescue you.

Berrech skidded to a stop. Gaped at the wren. Then swiveled around to check out Julian, who had gotten to his feet at the sound of all that disturbance and was standing clutching the bars of the cave, watching him.

The next place Berrech's gaze landed was on me.

My brain seemed to be working at something like the speed of light, but my motor control didn't seem to be working at all.

Berrech pulled out a knife and flung it at me. It was heading straight for my face with me knowing there was no way I could drop to the ground in time to avoid it.

Which is no reason for you to stand there like a bulls-eye waiting for it,
I told myself.

But as the knife sped toward me, I couldn't even close my eyes.

Which was okay, because then I would have
missed the moment when the dragon incinerated it midair.

The dragon must have been able to sniff out my real species; either that or something about my shadow shape labeled me as human, not elf or any of the other choices possible in this world. In any case, in the moment it took Berrech to realize his weapon had not killed me but was settling to the ground in a fine ash, the dragon called to me, "Human girl, will you be more or less inclined to unlock these chains if I cremate that elf?"

"No!" Julian cried. "Don't!" Then squinting in my direction he guessed, "Wendy?" and explained, "He's my kinsman."

The dragon wasn't interested in Julian's opinion and was watching me. From my position on the floor, where I'd finally dropped to make myself a smaller target, I figured,
C'mon, Julian, he's your cousin, but besides using me for target practice, he's been threatening to cut you into pieces.
All in all, the kind of guy who gives relatives a bad name.