Dragon Princess (22 page)

Once I was dressed, I left the palace chamber and my elvish escort led me back to the arena where Lucille and Elhared the Fake were still caged. Lucille took one look at me descending the wide steps back down to the arena floor and turned her massive lizard skull away from me. At least as far away from me as she could manage in the tight confines of the golden cage.

“I’m not talking to some lowly thief.”

I took it as a good sign that she wasn’t crying or breathing fire in my direction. “I came back to free you.”

She grunted.
“I’ve heard that before.”

“Hey!” yelled Elhared the ex-dragon from his own cell, “what about me?”

“Really, I am.” I told her.

“
And it worked so well the first time.
”

The bailiff met us at the foot of the stairs and bellowed at the now-empty arena,
“By proclamation of King Timoras, most high lord of all realms under the hill—”

“I went through a lot to get the elf-king to do this.”

“So now you’re making deals with the elves?”

“
—
release all claims, debts, and liens upon the prisoner
—
”

“I think some gratitude is in order.”

“
—
irrevocably and in perpetuity, under the hill and in mortal lands
—
”

“I’m sure you think following the last dragon’s example is a great idea.”

“I wasn’t gambling for you. I got the king something he wanted—”

“
Stolen, no doubt.
”

“—immediately without let or hindrance. So says the king!
”

The bailiff brought his staff down with a thunderous impact that shook the arena floor and vibrated Lucille’s cage into nonexistence.

“Come with us.”

“I’m not going with you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m taking you back home.”

“Home? I’m a dragon! What home do I have?”

“We’re going to get our bodies back.”

“What if I want to stay a dragon?”

I walked around so I stood in front of her face. I resisted the urge to slap her nose in frustration. Instead, I sucked in a breath and said, “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?”

“I’m sorry I lied to you, even if it was a lie of omission. I didn’t mean to. Yes, I’m a thief, a somewhat accomplished one in fact. But, once I got to know you, I just couldn’t bring myself to say so . . . I cared for you and I didn’t want you to think less of me.”

“Hiding who you are wasn’t the way to do that.”

I shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you. It was kind of nice for someone to think of me as heroic, even if it wasn’t really true. I can understand if you want to part ways. But you probably should come back with me so you aren’t stuck in elf land.”

She lifted her head on her serpentine neck. She looked down at me, then turned to look around at the bailiff and the elf guards.
“What did you give the elf-king?”

“A ring. Something he lost in a wager with Queen Fiona.”

She whipped her head around to stare at me with shocked reptilian eyes.
“You stole from the Queen of Grünwald?”

“Right off her hand. I don’t think she was happy about it.”

“They want to
kill
you.”

“They can only kill you so much. I just gave them another reason.”

She sighed with a belch of brimstone. I didn’t think it was possible for a dragon, but she muttered something inaudible.

“What?”

“I’m sorry,”
she said.

“You’re sorry?”

“
I shouldn’t be mad at you. I am, but I shouldn’t be.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Let’s just get out of here.”

“Yes.”
She stood up and stretched, almost like a cat. Her joints popped like a spastic ogre cracking a bullwhip.

“Look,” came a pathetic plea from the remaining cell. “I’m sorry too. We’re all sorry. Can you please get me out of here now?”

We ignored him as the elves led us up the arena steps.

“I’m sorry I vowed revenge—” I heard the crack of the bailiff’s staff and didn’t hear any more from Imitation Elhared.

“Thank you,”
Lucille said as we left the arena.

“You’re very welcome.”

“And you
are
heroic.”

“No, I’m a huge bundle of questionable motivations. But thank you anyway.”

 • • • 

Our elven escort led us to a completely different enchanted glade for our exit. We didn’t even have to close our eyes. Instead, as we walked down a wide path, a silvery mist came to envelop us, obscuring everything but the shadows of the elves accompanying us.

“I still think dealing with elves is a bad idea. It never ends well.
”
She tried to whisper, but there’s no question our escort could hear every word.

“Princess, could you be just a little less bigoted?”

Our guides brought us to a stop within the mist, and the lead elf said, “We have arrived.”

The mists had begun clearing and I saw a normal full moon above us, in a normal sky. “See,” I told Lucille. “Back safe and sound.”

The elves retreated, and the lead one touched my arm. “The king offers his apologies.”

“For what?”

“Keeping his promises.”

The mist withdrew, revealing ranks of armed soldiers surrounding us. The mist kept retreating, exposing a whole army underneath the moon’s glare.

In front of us, flanked by two figures in plate armor, was Queen Fiona herself.

“See,”
Lucille said.
“Back safe and sound. Still think dealing with elves is a good idea?”

The queen took a step toward us. “I did not expect that prancing clown of a king to abide by his agreements. Not after that unfortunate display on the tournament field. I must say I am pleasantly surprised.”

I looked from Queen Fiona, and to the retreating elves. I asked through clenched teeth, “What agreements?”

The queen laughed. “That trifle you stole for him, it was a token of fealty. To me. I had a pledge from him to deliver you to me, should it ever be within his power to do so.”

“Wait a minute. I took that ring, and broke whatever bond you had over him. You could still coerce him to do this? What was the point?”

“Mistress,” said the last elf, “you are correct, but the agreement Queen Fiona speaks of predates your meeting with our king.”

“Wait. Crap. He was in league with you before I—Then he convinced me to—That bastard set me up!”

The queen folded her arms. “I’m sure he found it amusing to ‘return’ you to me just to steal his token.”

“Again, the king gives his apologies, but he does fulfill his oaths. You are back in the mortal realm, free to go as you see fit. Any further hindrance is not the responsibility of the fae.” With that, the elf guides disappeared as one, leaving us “free to go” surrounded by the Grünwald army.

“Lucille,” I said, “fly, get out of here!”

“Not without you!”
She scooped me up with a forelimb and spread her massive wings.

Queen Fiona was unimpressed. “There are three hundred archers trained on you. Put the princess down if you care for her to continue living.” She walked up to us, flanked by her metal-plated knights. While their faces were hidden under full helms I recognized the device on the right-hand knight as belonging to Sir Forsythe.

Unfortunately, I also recognized the sword carried by the left-hand knight.

Lucille froze in place, wings still spread.
“I can roast them.”
She almost managed a whisper.

“Archers,” I whispered back. “And you see that sword?” The left-hand knight carried a twin of the ill-fated
Dracheslayer
.

She snorted,
“That worked so well last time.”

“I think Grünwald might be able to buy a better sword than a freelancing wizard financed by a skim of an already bankrupt treasury.”

She slowly placed me back on the ground. I stumbled slightly, kicking up some dust and what looked like a fragment of bone.
No, someone has to be kidding.

I looked around, and saw the carved standing stones, and the altar, and how most of the queen’s army seemed to be standing outside the lines of a rather distinct circle marked on the black, blasted ground. I looked up again, and the moon was nearly overhead.

Let me guess, a midnight sacrifice? And I wonder who it’s supposed to be?

“Now, Francis Blackthorne, you have something I want back.” The queen stopped in front of us. “Return it and the dragon might live.”

“
Don’t give that bitch anything.”

The queen looked up at Lucille and said, “And I might just leave something standing when we march on Lendowyn.”

I could feel Lucille tense, and I was about to warn her not to do something stupid, but she looked back and forth and stayed put. Next to me, her claws dug deep into the ground.

I fell back on a long history of being backed into corners.

When in doubt, stall.

I stepped between the Lucille and the queen and held up my hands. “Sorry, you’ll have to take this up with the elf-king, I’ve already given it—”

“Not some stupid engagement ring! At this point the fae bastard can choke on it for all I care! You know the ring I’m talking about.”

As it was, I knew exactly the ring she was talking about. I reached into the pouch matching my fresh elven ensemble and felt the two rings I had left. One was a heavy signet ring with the royal seal on it, the other a plain gold band. The gold band felt warmer than it should have, and the elf-king had pointedly wanted nothing to do with it.

I squinted at the queen as I pulled a ring out of the pouch.
Ring of power maybe?

Next to me, Lucille tried to whisper,
“We can’t let them invade. The militia can’t take on an army.”

The queen had no problem hearing her. “Especially since Prince Dudley has already hired them away,” she responded.

Well, that explains why the twit had been in Lendowyn.

“The ring, Francis. It will be so much less messy than searching your corpse.”

No, something else is holding you back, because that would have been your Plan A.

Was it the site? Some ritual requirement that they hold off on cutting out my heart until the appointed hour?

“You need it,” I whispered, hefting the ring in my hand.

“Give it to me!” she shrieked.

“Do you need it to kill us, or do you need it to kill us
right
?”

“I’ll slaughter both of you and raze Lendowyn to the ground. Every man, woman, child. Burn every building, salt every field, erase it completely from existence. If. You. Don’t. Return. It.
Now!
”

Next to her, the knight with
Dracheslayer
spoke in a disturbingly familiar voice, “Your Majesty, that was not the agreement.”

“Archers!” she screamed.
“Ready!”

So much for stalling.

I hefted the ring in my hand and tossed it. “You win. Catch!”

“Frank, no!”

There was something deeply satisfying watching Queen Fiona abandon all pretense at dignity and dive after the glittering ring. She sprawled on the ground with an outstretched hand to catch the tumbling bauble. It landed on her palm, and she started cackling.

“What did you do?”

The queen got to her knees and stared down into her palm, and the laughter ceased.

“I improvised.”

She turned toward me, holding the signet ring, face contorted with fury.
“This is the wrong ring!”

“I know,” I whispered as I reached into the pouch and slipped the too-warm gold band onto my own finger.

 • • • 

You might wonder exactly what your humble narrator must have been thinking at that point. After all, I had an obvious magical artifact, one that gave the
elf-king
pause, one that had belonged to the Queen of Grünwald and High Priestess of the Cult of the Dark Lord Nâtlac. A ring she was, to understate things a bit, rather anxious to retrieve.

Dark magical rings that inspire that kind of avarice do not have a great reputation for making things go well for their wearers.

To top it off, I stood upon a site that was most probably consecrated to Lord Nâtlac, and I probably still counted as a virgin sacrifice, if only on a technicality.

So, admittedly, putting that ring on,
there
, counts as the least intelligent thing I have done in this narrative. And that’s after setting a rather high mark for self-destructive idiocy.

So, what was I thinking?

I wasn’t.

I was running on pure instinct. We were in a corner, evil had triumphed and was about to grind us into the ground. What
else
was I going to do?

 • • • 

Everything changed when I put that ring on.

I don’t just mean the fact that the entire Grünwald army disappeared, along with Lucille, the stone circle, the moon and the sky. I meant that when I blinked I was on my hands and knees on a cobblestone floor staring at a pair of large but sensitive hands that did not belong on a princess.

For one ecstatic moment I realized that I was me again. I wore my own body, and I had on the same clothes I wore when I had first wandered into that nameless dockside tavern. Between the buzzing and disorientation I managed to convince myself for nearly half a minute that everything was back to normal, and everything I remembered happening was just some adverse hallucination caused by the Mermaid’s Milk.

Then I realized the buzzing wasn’t in my head. Something like a mass of insects was making the sound from just beyond my peripheral vision. It started making the skin itch along my spine. I was suddenly very reluctant to lift my head to see beyond the patch of cobblestones below me.

Then one of the cobblestones blinked.

My vision had been a bit blurred because something in the air was making my eyes water. I pulled my hands off the stones and wiped them off on my shirt.

“Oh, crap.”

The cobblestones weren’t stones. The texture was hard and uneven, but every stone had some feature of a face or body, as if some humanoid creature had been compressed to this shape and had been set in place. The stones still lived. I could see limited movement, blinking eyes, lips baring teeth, a wriggling finger . . .

I pushed myself stumbling to my feet so I wasn’t touching those things anymore. I couldn’t tell exactly where I was. The rusty light was enough to see by, but everything beyond my immediate surroundings disappeared into impenetrable darkness. All I saw was the living floor, and a pair of pillars—or trees, or stalagmites, irregular and ropy with veins—disappearing into the darkness above. As I stepped back, a long tongue emerged from a mouth in the floor and began to lick my boot.

“Crap. Crap. Crap.”

My eyes didn’t just water anymore, they burned. The air was heavy with the stench of things burning, rotting—a smell like aged dragon vomit. I covered my mouth.

“Well, you aren’t Queen Fiona.”

I spun around to face the speaker.

The speaker had the form of a tall man, flawlessly perfect in face and body. He was pretty much an eidolon of masculine beauty—at least until you realized exactly how he was dressed. He wore robes of black leather whose dark color couldn’t quite hide the shape of human faces whose mouths and eyelids had been sewn shut. That was bad enough, until I realized I could see eye movements behind the sewn eyelids. He reclined in a throne made of skulls bound together by strips of flesh and sinew.

“I’ve wondered what became of her the past few weeks.”

“Who are you?”

“Frank. Frank. Frank. You know who I am.” He laughed, and in the sound I could hear the screams of a million tortured souls.

He was right. I already had a pretty good idea.

“I am the Dark Lord Nâtlac, Prince of the Lower Depths, Father of a Thousand Sorrows, Keeper of the Blasphemous Rite of the Elder Gods Who Are Not Named . . . do I really need to go on?”

“I guess not.”

He stood and stepped down off of the throne to slowly circle around me, as if he were sizing me up. With every step, the floor under his feet cried a little. The buzzing became louder as he approached me and I realized that the face he wore right now probably bore no resemblance to exactly what he was.

He raised a finger and traced it across my face, and his touch made my skin feel as if it had been flayed, burned, the flesh eaten away by carrion ants and replaced by ground glass. “You are a pleasant surprise. The queen has become too
pedestrian.
Temporal power. So obvious.”

The ground glass under his touch turned into a million black spiders that scattered around the inside of my skin.

“So, Frank Blackthorne, what do you want in return for this virgin soul of yours?”