Damsel Knight (40 page)

She struggles with herself, then manages to find the resolve to keep on moving. The only way they're getting out of this is if they stop the golden dragon, and she knows where to go.

Chapter 42

Boone runs back down the marble steps with the bundle held tightly to her chest.

A thin blue crack widens beneath her foot. The glowing blue light coming from it burns at her skin through the leather boot. She hops on her other foot and darts away, hissing under her breath. It's only afterwards that she realises it wasn't hot. It was cold. Cold enough to suck every bit of heat out of her and leave her frozen solid.

Women and children hurry through the front entrance of the palace, out onto the burnt grass. A thick flood of people that forces her to stop. Once outside they glance nervously at the sky and scurry off to find shelter.

There won't be much shelter to find. The barracks and stables are burnt. The palace was supposed to be the ultimate shelter.

Boone cranes her neck, searching the crowd until she finds her. "Mrs Moore!"

It's a little strange addressing her so formally after all they'd been through, but addressing her casually feels even more so. She's a woman deserving of respect. So until she's given a title worthy of that respect, Boone will do her best.

The woman stops her ushering of people to look her way. Somehow she manages to wade her way through the crowd. "This place is going to cave in any moment."

Worse than that. It's going to collapse and feed off anyone trapped inside. The cold coming from those blue cracks tells her that much. "That dress Neven gave you to find my mother. Do you have it?"

Mrs Moore raises her eyebrows on her weather worn face, but she digs into the satchel hanging from her side and comes up with a bundle of fabric. She turns to herd out the rest of the people, the crowd thinning now. "I've got this. Go!"

Boone doesn't argue. She runs out between two women. The burnt grass crackles under her feet. More soldiers man these walls, a few of them women. Some gather around clumsy wooden catapults. Others stand along the wall, arrows notched and ready. She can't tell from here if they're scared, but they must be. Arrows are about as annoying as flies to something that size.

Three of the catapults lurch backward at the same time, their wooden arms swinging their loads high into the air. An explosion makes her look up. Fire and smoke engulf the golden dragon’s huge head, poking over the top of the palace. These flames are regular reds and yellows, the only blue tingeing the edges at the fires hottest. No magic. Neven’s work.

The dragon jerks back, letting out a piercing scream that seems to make the whole world vibrate. The movement fans the flames, prompting the animal to shake its head from side to side in an effort to get rid of them. The right side of the palace disappears, crumbling into rubble.

The golden head buries itself in the broken shards of palace. By the entrance, the section of marble still standing breaks apart along the bright blue cracks. People run screaming from the front of the palace, children in their arms. She looks, but can’t see the coloured wool of Mrs Moore’s clothing among the other similarly clothed women. She hopes she made it out.

The dragon wipes out the rest of the palace with its snout, leaving a trench of dirt and heaped pile of rubble. The whole palace, cellars and everything gone in one movement like scrubbing out a mark in the dirt. A hiss of steam rises from the animals face, and the remains of blue in the dirt wink out.

Boone clutches the bundle closer to her chest. If it had taken her longer to join the dots, it would’ve disappeared along with everything else in that palace.

In the chaos she hears shouting in the distance. The men on the wall must be preparing another shot. Taking in a lungful of air, she turns away from the disaster and toward the wall. As she runs, she tries to pretend she didn’t see a large red form still lying prone behind where the palace had stood.

The golden road is dulled in places, the illusion not standing up to dragon fire. Her boots slap, loud against it, all thought of grace thrown away for speed. The back of her neck prickles. The men are huddled on or by the wall. The women and children have scurried to hide. She’s the only one out in the open. One blast of that blinding white fire and she’ll be gone. The bundle with her.

Behind her the dragon takes a step. It rocks the ground, making her stumble before she finds her feet. Another forty meters. That’s all. Then she’ll be at the wall.

Another step. Something final about this one. Like it’s planting itself, readying for an attack.

When she’s thirty-five meters away she spots the tiny figure running toward her. His little legs don’t quite meet the ground. Timon reaches her, wide eyed and scared. He leans over, panting, despite not needing the air. “Ness says you’re crazy.”

Boone doesn’t stop, passing him. He struggles to keep up.

A curious sensation stops her forward motion, pulling at her. Her boots slip backward a few feet. Her heart drops. She’s experienced this before, with Gelert taking a deep breath right before breathing fire. Only that was tiny compared to this. A gale storm compared to a sharp breeze.

A pinging sound, and three dark objects fly overhead. The explosion is louder this time. Closer. The heat of it stings the back of her head. But that wind stops for only a second before it starts again.

They were wrong. They thought the bombs were hurting it, but if they are, it’s only enough to make it angry.

Timon stands at her side, unaffected by the wind. His coal black eyes are set with determination. He’s eight years old, older than he’s been since his mother died. “What you said about me to the King. That I’m the best of you. Say it again.”

Without hesitation she does.

“And I have friends.” There’s something tentative in his voice. “You’re my friend?”

What was the word she had described him as when she met him? Monster? It seems so ludicrous now. “Of course.”

He grows, not quite to fifteen, but to a heavy set boy of thirteen or fourteen. Taller than her. His dark eyes keep their impossibly long lashes, and his lips seem to hold a permanent soft smile. His dark brown skin seems to glow with warmth. It might not be a handsome face in the circle or the north, but it’s a friendly one, and she decides she likes that better.

The force tugging her backward stops. She stumbles forward, but knows from the blast of heat behind her that it’s too late for that. If only she had insisted on getting a shield before leaving with her mother. That would’ve given her at least some protection.

She turns to look, heart shuddering. The white light builds in its giant throat too quickly to think of a plan. Not that there could be one out here in the open, nothing but a sword to hand, a bundle that would burn with her, and burnt grass on either side of a fake golden road.

“Get down!” The larger Timon shouts.

She does. There’s nothing else to do. No Gelert to come roaring out of the sky. She crouches in the middle of the golden road, curling up as tight as she can. Timon curls around her, not quite touching, but close enough to make her whole body cold. She clutches the bundle and dress to her stomach.

The light blinds her, even through her closed eyelids and with Timon’s shirt blocking most of her view. The air around her battles between searing heat and freezing cold. The hair near the nape of her neck seems to shrivel and burn, but the breaths she takes in stuttered gasps feel like blocks of ice in her throat.

Around her, the air screams.

The force of the exhale tries to push her backwards, away from Timon’s protective embrace. Gritting her teeth, she ducks as close to the smooth gold stones as she can, hiding from the wind. The fingernails of her good hand dig into the small crack between one gold stone and the next. She can tell from the swirling winds of cold and hot that to slip backward even a few feet would kill her.

After too long, the light dies to normal daylight. The wind stops screaming. She blinks her eyes open cautiously, Timon already pulling away. Everywhere but a few inches around her the golden road has turned to dull stone. The grass is not so much burnt grass, as no grass at all. Nothing but misshapen clods of blackened earth.

They don’t have long. She needs to act now.

She turns to Timon, the boy still hovering in his early teens. He’s looking at his hands fascinated. Somehow he looks more solid than before, more solid than the world around him, as if everything else was the ghost and he were flesh and blood. “Timon. You need to tell them to hold their fire.”

He looks up startled, dropping a year, and filling out his cheeks with baby fat. “I can’t leave you here.”

“There’s something I need to do.” Gods, she hopes this works. It has to. There has to be a solution to this other than fighting. “And I can’t do it if they’re going to keep shooting at her. Trust me please. Go and tell them, and hurry.”

For a moment he looks like he might refuse, then he runs off in the direction of the wall. Good faithful Timon. He really is the best of them.

Boone settles the bundle on the small patch of gold road with the dress. She draws her sword. The dragon twitches, a low disgruntled sound escaping her throat that might not be heard if she were much smaller. Swords may be of little danger to the dragon now, but sometime long ago someone taught the animal they were things to fear.

That’s not what Boone wants.

She lays the sword slowly on the ground, fixing the dress onto the tip. It’s hard to do without ripping the fabric enough to make it fall off. She doesn’t have Neven’s skill, but she manages a weak hold that will last at least a few minutes.

A step from the dragon topples her from a crouch to sitting on the ground. The bundle wobbles and makes to roll away. She stops it with her boot.

Another step and a giant golden foot lands close enough for her to reach out and tap a curved bronze claw with the tip of her sword. It lands with a ground shaking force that rattles all the teeth in her head. Craning her head up she can’t see the dragon’s face, but it seems it’s forgotten her for the moment. Neven with his catapults is a slightly less significant target.

Holding the bundle between her feet, she stands, stretching out her arm to wave the sword as high as she can. “Hey! Down here!”

Gods, Neven better not fire now. The last thing she needs is to make the dragon angry.

The dragon twitches. The voice might not reach her, but the smell would. The ground shakes again as the dragon backs up, gentler this time. A giant mountain drops to hover in the air in front of her, tilted so it can better look at her with its snake-like eye that’s easily as big as she is.

The ground shakes. Boone’s teeth clatter. It’s purring, just as Gelert had.

Boone tries not to shiver. There’s an intensity to that amber eye that speaks of desperation. This has to go right. If it doesn’t, she knows by now that desperate people can do terrible things.

Moving slowly, she puts down the sword and the dress the barbarians had used to lure the dragon here, and to all those villages along the way. Her good hand unwraps the bundle of silk the object had been seated on when it belonged to the King’s display. Taking several steps back she gestures to it. “It’s what you were looking for. I’m sorry they took it.”

That giant eye widens as it takes in the object. The dragon egg is small compared to its mother. It’s about the size of Boone’s head, and the animal inside would be only the size of a kitten. Its pebbled surface is the same polished bronze as its mother’s claws.

That eye flicks over to her, and Boone freezes. It’s one thing to be reunited with your child, it’s another to forgive the creatures that took it. Then the eye settles down to a content half-mast, and the ground rumbles with purring.

‘Thank you,’ that look says. ‘Thank you.’

Boone nods feeling flustered. Whatever she'd expected, it hadn't been gratitude. Acceptance perhaps, or a grudging look and quick exit with what she came for. But there's not a trace of the anger that led the dragon to burn all those villages and kill thousands.

She takes several more steps backward, away from the dragon and her egg. Those adoring looks are not deserved by someone like her.

Thankfully the dragon turns her attention back to the egg, lowering her vast head to scoop it up with surprising gentleness for someone her size. A large chunk of the road goes with it.

Someone runs past her from behind, knocking her dead shoulder.

She's just processing the fact that the figure is Ness, when he bends to grab the sword she left in the road and drives it up through the bottom of the animal's jaw.

The dragon snorts with annoyance and shakes her head in the same rapid fashion you might use to get rid of a fly. Then egg safely in her mouth, she launches herself into the air with her muscled legs and creating a gale with her wings, flies away.

Boone gasps for air, shielding her eyes from the wind. It buffets her madly, pinning her to the ground like one of the bugs the twins had played with in their crueller moments. As soon as she's free she pushes herself to her watery legs, looking for Ness.

He's several dozen meters away on the edge of the courtyard where grass becomes cobblestone, and he's not moving.