Dragonskin Slippers (22 page)

“And the crown prince? He is with your father?”

“No.” Luka turned to the duke, his expression grim. “Miles and his escort started for the caves after you three left. But word came just as my father was entering the tunnels that he never reached the caves, and his guard was found dead in a side passage.”

“The Roulaini,” the duke breathed. “They’ve kidnapped Prince Milun?”

“So it appears,” Luka agreed bleakly. “I slipped away to find Tobin. I thought that we could do some scouting, since I have no stomach for sitting idle underground.” He wrapped the reins of his horse around a clenched fist, then loosened them when his fingers started to turn dark.

“I need to follow that dog,” I said, feeling frantic. Azarte was pacing back and forth, making little yips from time to time. I understood his impatience completely.

“From what the scouts say, it appears that all the dragons are controlled by the Roulaini,” Luka said, putting one hand out to stop me as I tried (not very gracefully) to mount his horse.

“I don’t think this one is,” I insisted. “I think he sent this message because he needs our help, or can help us. I have to go.”

“Then I’m coming with you,” said Luka, and boosted me into the saddle.

“Fine, fine,” I said, distracted. Azarte had started down the street again and was waiting at the corner for us to catch up.

Luka swung up behind me and Tobin mounted the
other horse. In the glow of burning buildings and the silver moonlight, the Duke and Duchess of Mordrel, Marta and Ulfrid bade us farewell, and we rode off after the leggy dog.

It was daybreak when we arrived at the outskirts of Rath Forest. Shardas’s cave was deeper within, and I did not know the way there. Nor did I know where Feniul lived, for I had only seen him in the enchanted pool.

But it was not long after we had followed the dog into the cool darkness of the forest that our tired horses began to whicker and baulk. The temperature rose, and a gust of wind brought the odour of sulphur to my nose.

“Feniul?” I slithered down from the saddle, looking around eagerly. Azarte was standing nearby, wagging his tail and looking pleased with himself. “It’s me, it’s Creel.”

“Azarte! Good boy!” Feniul’s voice boomed and crackled from behind a tight cluster of aspens, and Azarte gave a bark of delight while the horses whinnied and rolled their eyes. Then Feniul’s great horned head emerged from the trees, and the horses went berserk.

Tobin and Luka dismounted quickly, but there was
no way to calm the beasts. While Feniul dithered and apologised and Azarte romped and barked, the horses screamed and reared. Finally, Tobin and Luka simply let go of their reins, and the horses tore off in the direction of the King’s Seat.

“Really, I am so sorry,” Feniul said. “I didn’t mean to alarm your horses. I just wanted to talk to Creel.”

“Feniul!” I ran forward and laid a trembling hand on the end of his snout, ignoring Luka’s shout of warning. “I’m so glad you’re all right! I can’t believe that you aren’t under the slippers’ power, like Shardas …” My voice faded away. “I saw him, in the King’s Seat,” I forced myself to say.

“Yes, yes, it’s horrible!” Feniul’s head shook back and forth, and I noticed that he wore a strange sort of woven collar around his neck, just behind his head.

Luka came a little closer, but I could see that he was still tense, one hand on his sword hilt. Tobin held his naked sword in one hand, his eyes fixed on Feniul.

“How do we know this isn’t a Roulaini trick?” Luka asked with narrowed eyes.

“A trick? But I wouldn’t do that!” Feniul sounded genuinely shocked at the idea. “I’m not in league with the Roulaini! Oh, my, no!”

I could see that his eyes were clear of the dullness caused by the slippers’ coercion. His bearing, his speech, everything about him was unchanged. “How is it that you are not affected?” I asked.

“Well, for two days I felt very strange,” Feniul said,
his words tumbling over one another. “Like I
needed
to fly east, but why would I do such a thing? There are too many humans in that direction! I tried to bespeak Shardas, but he didn’t answer, so I resisted the urge to go east and went to Shardas’s cave instead. When I left my caves, I saw other dragons flying towards the human city in broad daylight. It was very strange.

“Shardas was gone, but he had left a message in his pool for me, something I didn’t understand, about that alchemist who used to live in his caves, and you, and your shoes or some such. I was so upset, I could hardly follow it.”

“How was it that you managed to avoid the call?” Luka’s hand was on the hilt of his sword, but he had not yet drawn, as Tobin had.

“I almost didn’t,” the dragon admitted. “But I never fly in the daylight any more, it’s much too dangerous,” he told the prince with a self-deprecating expression. “I suppose my fear was even greater than the power of the slippers. I would be embarrassed, but I am too relieved. The message also said for me to put on this collar.” He blew smoke fretfully through his nostrils and a claw came forward to indicate the woven band around his neck. “Once I put it on, I didn’t feel the urge to fly east any more. So I sent Azarte to the King’s Seat to find Creel. That was in the message, too.”

“Let me see the collar,” I said, and Feniul obligingly lowered his head.

It was similar to the collar Azarte wore, only on a
much larger scale. The threads of red and blue and grey and green had been clumsily knotted and woven: there were many mistakes in the pattern, dropped stitches and knots. But there was a beauty to it, all the same. The threads felt sticky, and when I raised my hand to my nose I caught the odour of sage and thyme, and other sharper things I could not name.

“What is it?” Luka came up beside me, still uncertain of the dragon, but close enough that he could see the collar, too.

“I don’t know. I think it’s some sort of alchemy. A charm to counteract the slippers, maybe.”

“Are there more of these collars?” Luka, his expression intense, looked from me to Feniul and back.

“No, I didn’t see any others,” rumbled the dragon. “But then, Shardas’s cave is rather a mess.”

“What? Shardas is neat as a pin,” I said, startled.

“I know, but …” Feniul trailed away, his tail curling around a young tree in a nervous movement. “Something happened. The windows …”

I felt my heart stutter in my chest. “The windows?” I whispered. “Were some of them … broken?”

“This collar was carefully hidden,” Feniul said, avoiding my gaze. “And there’s a message for you in the pool. I’ll show you.”

“Feniul –”

“I should just … just show you.”

I steeled myself. “All right.” I grabbed hold of the collar, using it to pull myself up on to Feniul’s neck. He
was not as big as Shardas, but still much larger than a horse, and the spines running along his neck were sharp. I heard one of them catch my satin underskirts and tear them. All the work I had put into making this hideous dress presentable and it was ruined after only one night. I heaved a sigh.

“Er, Creel, is that a good idea?” Luka’s hand was still on the hilt of his sword. Both Feniul and I looked at him, my expression determined, Feniul’s … draconic. Luka swallowed. “I’d like to come as well,” Luka said tentatively. He was looking at Feniul as though there were nothing he would like
less
, but his jaw was set.

Tobin sheathed his sword and stepped up, pounding his fist to his chest in a gesture that clearly said: if my prince goes, I’m going, too. Feniul exhaled a breath that rattled the leaves on the trees, and both Tobin and Luka jumped back, making me snicker.

“All three of you may ride,” Feniul said with great dignity. Then he leaned down to Azarte. “Run to Shardas’s cave, boy! Run! Run to Uncle Shardas’s cave!”

Laughing aloud, I helped Luka up behind me, and Tobin hopped up after him as though he’d been riding dragons all his life. Azarte took off, racing through the trees with his tongue hanging out of the side of his long muzzle.

Feniul leaped into the sky, his great wings fanning out once he had cleared the treetops. I held on to the woven collar, my head thrown back, looking up at the early morning sky in delight. Behind me, I heard Luka swear by the Boiling Sea.

Seeing the brightness of the sun, now that we were no longer in the shadow of the forest, sobered me. Feniul, dear, fearful Feniul, so paranoid about the human migration to the King’s Seat, able to resist the pull of the slippers only because his phobia of being seen was so great, was now flying in broad daylight. We were on the very fringes of Rath Forest, where countless tinkers and bandits lived, and where travellers on the road would spot us if they only looked up. These were dire times indeed, for Feniul to risk such a thing.

The sun was rising high when we reached Shardas’s hollow hill. Feniul landed and we slithered off his back and clambered down the grassy side of the hill to the entrance to the caves.

“So this is a dragon’s cave,” Luka mused as we stepped inside. “Not very tidy, was he?”

The floor of the first cavern was covered in mud, twigs and leaves. There were loose scales and what looked like a broken sword. I almost couldn’t believe that it was the same cavern.

“Shardas is very tidy,” I informed Luka, looking around with concern. “He isn’t responsible for this.”

“I think that the human who has the slippers came here. With armed men,” Feniul said, clicking his fangs together nervously. “They probably thought they would find gold.”

“They didn’t?” Luka looked surprised.

“Of course they didn’t,” I snapped, upset at the destruction of my friend’s home. “Shardas doesn’t collect gold. I told you: he likes glass.”

Which made me very afraid to look in the next cavern.

“Oh, Shardas,” I breathed, when I stepped through the doorway. Tears welled up in my eyes and spilled down my cheeks. “Oh, my dear Shardas, I am so sorry.”

It wasn’t one or two windows that had been broken, it was all of them. The floor was covered in literally thousands of pieces of brightly coloured glass, chunks of wooden frames and brittle segments of leading. Wires hung askew from the ceiling, the windows they had borne now lying in ruins beneath our feet. The mirrors that redirected the sunlight to shine through the windows had been smashed or knocked over so that the cavern was only dimly lit. A mercy, considering the terrible, sick waste that surrounded us.

The sheen of something that was not glass caught my eye and I turned to look at one of the broken frames. A scrap of ribbon had caught on the jagged wood. A scarlet ribbon of the finest silk.

“Amalia did this,” I said with conviction, plucking the scrap of ribbon free and crumpling it in my hand. “And when I get my hands on her, I. Will. Make. Her. Pay.” I pounded my fist into the opposite palm. It was worse than the way I had felt when Larkin admitted to giving my shoes to the princess. Seven hundred years of collecting beauty in the form of glass windows, and Shardas’s treasure was destroyed in a matter of what? An hour?

“All right,” Luka said. He seemed a little alarmed at
my vehemence, but I could see by the stunned expression on his face that he understood some of what had been lost here.

Tobin reverently picked up a large piece of glass that still carried the delicately shaped face of a woman, and set it out of the way where it would not be stepped on. When he saw me watching him, he gave me a look of deep sympathy, and nodded.

“Show me the message, Feniul,” I said, my voice coming out strangled.

“Over here, in the pool.”

I went and stood beside him, looking down at our reflections in the still circle of water. At Feniul’s instruction, I bent and touched my finger to the surface. The ripples that spread from my fingertip spread across the pool and then Shardas’s face appeared.

“My dear Creel,” he said.

“If you have received this, then some horrible fate has befallen me. I should have told you when you were here with me, or at least tried to make you leave those slippers behind. Your blue slippers are made from the hide of Velika, the last queen of the dragons. She befriended Milun the First, and he repaid her friendship by slaughtering her and using her skin to make those slippers. Through them Milun controlled my people, using them to fight his war and spreading the lie that she supported him freely – that all the dragons sided with him. My alchemist friend kept me safe from manipulation by the use of his arts. When the turmoil was over and I had returned
to my senses, I helped Jerontin sneak into the palace and take the slippers.

“I could not bear to destroy them – they were all we had left of our beauteous queen – so I gave them to Theoradus, hoping to hide them in plain sight among his many shoes. Thus they came into your possession. I do not know how you lost them, I can only hope that you were not harmed.

“I have tried to re-create the charm Jerontin used to protect me, and have left it for Feniul. I trust that you will be able to make more, and I beg you to help free my people from this horror. May your gods protect you.”

“Feniul,” I said, tears coursing down my cheeks. “I don’t understand. Why couldn’t he destroy the slippers, for all your sakes?”

“Ah.” Feniul’s tail whipped through the broken glass on the floor. “He … ah … took the betrayal of our queen very hard. His … allegiance to her was great and he was … quite grief-stricken.” His agitated tail swept the shards against a wall, breaking them into smaller pieces.

“Oh.” I swallowed, feeling guilty that Shardas thought the slippers had been taken from me by force, when really I had just been tricked by a spoiled princess and her spy. “And I don’t see why he didn’t wear the collar himself.”

“In my message he said that he felt strong enough to resist the compulsion, that it was there but it only
nagged in his head. He thought that it would be better if there were two of us free instead of just one,” Feniul explained, distressed. “The messages were only in case he couldn’t fight it off. He was going to come to my cave with the collar, but then I suppose
she
arrived before he could. Up close, the strength of the slippers was too much, I think.”