Master of Dragons (11 page)

“That feels better
already,” he said, as she was carefully winding the cloth around and around his
blistered palms. “I’ll have my mother’s seamstresses make you a new chemise
when we reach my home. Made of the finest silk.” He had only a vague idea what
chemises were made of, but silk seemed safe. “With a hem of lace.”

“I would like
that, Marcus,” said Evelina, and her hand stroked his hand gently as she
finished her bandaging.

He was embarrassed
by the adoration in her eyes and he turned away. He wished she wouldn’t look at
him that way, when he didn’t know how he felt about her.

“We should get
started.”

“We’re going into
that cave,” said Evelina, and her voice was tight.

“It’s going to be
all right.” Marcus drew in a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “I’m going to
cast a magical spell on the boat, Evelina. I’m going to make it invisible. And
I’m going to make us invisible. Not to each other,” he added hastily. “You’ll
still be able to see me and to see the boat. But no one else will be able to
see us.”

He was making a
mess of this, but he’d never had to explain his magic to anyone before.

“I know you don’t
understand—” he began.

“Understand what?
That you are going to make us invisible? Of course, I understand.” Evelina
settled herself in the stern, pulled the blanket more closely around her
shoulders, and regarded him calmly. “Just tell me what I need to do.”

He found himself
almost loving her at that moment. “You must keep perfectly still. And not make
a sound. Not a sniffle, not a gasp, not a whisper. For though they cannot see
us, they can still hear us.”

“They can’t see
us, but they can hear us. I understand, Marcus,” she said.

In order to cast
the magic, he would have to enter his little room, a room in his mind similar
to the room where he had been locked up as a child. The danger was that
whenever he entered the room, the dragons were aware of him. They would try to
catch him, haul him out. And so he opened the door swiftly and ran inside and
slammed the door shut behind him. Almost immediately, he could hear claws
scraping and scratching outside, searching for weakness, searching for a chink,
a crack.

Marcus sat on the
small stool in the middle of the room, shut out the clawing, and considered
what he had to do. He’d never cast a spell of such magnitude before, not in
cold blood. He knew how to do it; Draconas had taught him, long ago, on the
bank of a river.

There are two
types of dragon-magic, Marcus. Like two types of strategy in a battle:
offensive and defensive. From what I have observed watching the monks, humans
can use either one or the other. The determining factor as to which they can
use appears to be sex. Females can use defensive magic, males offensive. You
are unique, in that you can use both.

Outside the door,
the dragon snorted in frustration. Marcus forced himself to concentrate, to
forget the dragon. He brought the image of the boat to mind, so that it was
like a wet painting on a canvas, and he began to scrub it with water, so that
the colors streamed and ran together and dribbled off the canvas in muddy
droplets. He scrubbed and scrubbed until the image of the boat vanished.
Looking at the painting, he saw the river and he saw the black net of tree
branches catching the stars in the sky. But no boat. No Marcus. No Evelina.

He sighed deeply.
He could tell by the contented warmth of pleasure that the magic had worked.
The weakness and the sick feeling would come later; hopefully much later, after
they’d managed to sneak through the cavern.

Marcus picked up
the oars and, wincing at the pain in his hands, began to row.

Evelina opened her
mouth.

Marcus shook his head,
reminding her she must be silent.

“Are we invisible
now?” she whispered.

Marcus nodded.

Evelina glanced
around at the boat, which was plainly visible, and at herself, and at him.

“Good job,” she
whispered solemnly. “I can’t see a thing.”

Marcus smiled,
thinking she was joking to relieve the tension. He continued to row and the
boat rounded the bend of the river.

“There it is!”
Evelina cried in a smothered voice that she remembered just in time to keep
soft. She pointed.

Marcus glanced
over his shoulder. The river flowed into a black maw. Chill, dank air washed
over them. Evelina shivered and cast him a pleading glance that said, quite
plainly, “It’s not too late to turn around and go back!”

He knew those
words because he was hearing them inside his head. He kept on rowing. The black
maw came nearer and nearer, spewing out the river, sucking them in.

The rock cliff
loomed above them, blotting out the stars. He listened, but heard only the soft
gurgle of the river water, roiling around the base of the stone walls. Grald
might be in there, crouched in the darkness, waiting. Or perhaps a cadre of
monks, their hands tipped with fire, deadly bolts ready.

Whatever eyes were
watching would not be able to see him. He reminded himself of that and
continued to row. The maw came closer. He was rowing as quietly as he could,
but the oars made plashing noises as they entered the water, and there was
nothing he could do to muffle them. The river’s flow was not very strong here,
and he hoped that one mighty pull would give the boat momentum enough to coast
through the cavern, so that he would not have to put the oars into the water
once they were inside.

The entrance was
coming up fast upon them. He had forgotten it was so low. Evelina took one
frightened look, then hunched down and threw the blanket over her head.

“I can’t watch!”
she gasped.

Marcus gave a
final pull at the oars, and then shipped them and ducked his head.

The boat skimmed
over the surface and slid into the maw. He was awash in darkness so deep that
it made the lambent light of stars and river seem bright by contrast. He could
see nothing, and he recalled how the monks had lit lanterns on their boats when
they had sailed into the cavern.

Marcus stared hard
in the direction of the shoreline. He could not see it. He could see nothing in
the pitch dark of the cave. He couldn’t hear anything either and he began to
think that the cavern was empty, that they were going to slip through
unchallenged.

He did not give
thanks yet. The boat was starting to lose its forward momentum. He would have
to row. His heart in his mouth, he picked up the oars, moving slowly and
carefully to keep them from squeaking, and slowly and carefully lowered them
into the water. They made a gentle splash, and he cringed as he pulled on the oars.
He feared losing his way in the darkness, and he was relieved beyond measure to
see the exit—a much wider aperture than the entrance—come into view. The
starlit river glimmered in the opening, and he steered the boat toward it.

The opening came
nearer and nearer. Marcus was starting to think that they were going to escape
after all, his heart was starting to lift, when a glimmer of light caught his
attention.

The light came not
from the shore, but from the dark water.

Marcus stared down
into the river’s depths. The light grew in brilliance, and then there were two
lights—red-gold in color, widening and expanding and drawing closer.

Marcus ceased to
row. His hands clenched on the oars. Two eyes—red-gold, with black, reptilian,
slit pupils—gazed up at him.

The dragon was in
the water beneath them.

Terrified, Marcus
stared into the eyes that followed him, unblinking, as the boat slid over the
surface. The boat moved of its own volition, for Marcus’s hands had gone numb,
his arms had lost their strength. He sat in his small chair in his little room
and quaked at the sight of the unblinking eyes and the dragon’s thoughts that
clawed with sharp colors at his soul.

“Come out,” Grald
urged. “I’ve your doom to show you.”

Marcus stayed
where he was, kept the door bolted.

“I will give you a
glimpse,” said Grald.

Ranks of
soldiers—human soldiers, clad in armor that sparkled in the moonlight like the
scales of the dragon—marched toward Marcus. The soldiers marched faster and
faster, rushing up at him. Water surged around the boat, and he envisioned it
capsizing, throwing him into the river, where the dragon would seize him and
drag him under.

Marcus grabbed the
oars and drove them deep into the water, propelling the boat toward the exit.
Determinedly he rowed and kept rowing, grunting at the stinging pain in his
bandaged palms.

“What is it? I can’t
look!” Evelina lifted her head out of the folds of the blanket, she stared,
terror-stricken, around her.

Marcus didn’t
answer her. He lacked the breath. The boat shot out of the cave. The soldiers
vanished. The dragon’s eyes watched Marcus row, plunging the oars into the
water, pulling, lifting, plunging, again and again, until the eyes were far
behind him. Sweat poured off him.

“What’s wrong?”
Evelina cried.

“Didn’t you see the
dragon?”

Evelina glanced
timidly over her shoulder, then looked back at Marcus.

“No,” she said. “I
didn’t see anything.”

“It was there,
watching us.”

Or was it?

Illusion. An
illusion created by the dragon. An illusion meant to show Marcus that his puny magicks,
of which he was so proud, were the mewling of a babe compared to the magic of
the dragon.

Marcus slumped
over the oars, his strength gone. His hands burned. His arm muscles jumped and
twitched.

A hint of your
doom. Come inside and see the rest! See the dancing girls take off their veils!
All for the price of . . . your soul.

Marcus was
tempted. He would open the door just a crack . . .

“Don’t be a fool,”
said a female voice, quite clearly.

“You’re right.”
Marcus smiled wearily at Evelina. “That would be foolish.”

“Maybe it would,”
said Evelina, regarding him strangely. “But I didn’t say anything.”

THE MOON HAD RISEN
AND, THOUGH PAST THE FULL, THE NIGHT had shaved off only a sliver, so that its
light was bright in a cloudless sky. Marcus and Evelina continued traveling the
broad expanse of the river, keeping away from the shore. Not even Evelina
wanted to stop for the night so near the horrible cave. She was rowing the boat
now. It was either row or linger in the place that had driven her prince mad.

Marcus dozed
fitfully in the bow of the boat. At least when he was asleep, he wasn’t talking
crazy, talking about what he’d seen in the cave or hearing the voices of
dragons in his head. There had been nothing in the cave. Evelina had hidden her
head in the blanket so she wouldn’t see anything horrible, but, consumed by a
dreadful fascination, she’d peeped out from between the folds. She’d watched
the cavern slide by, dark and empty. And no one was talking to him, either.

“You’re tired and
hungry,” she had told Marcus in soothing tones. “And your poor hands! They
could be hanging in a butcher’s stall, they’re so red and raw. Let me row, at
least for a little while.”

He argued, of
course, but in the end—rather to her surprise-he gave the oars to her, shifting
position with her in the boat. Evelina didn’t do a bad job of rowing, once she
got the hang of it. She could do most things she set her mind to; a
characteristic that had carried her stubbornly through life.

Fortunately, she
didn’t have far to go before she steered them out of the tributary that flowed
past the cave and entered the main body of the river, Aston. Here, she was
rowing with the current, not against it, since the river flowed south, carrying
them in the direction they wanted to go.

“We should find a
place to stop,” Marcus had told her before he’d fallen asleep. “It’s dangerous
traveling the river in the dark.”

Evelina was in
hearty agreement. She had no intention of spoiling her hands the way Marcus had
spoiled his, and she could feel them starting to blister. Her back and
shoulders ached, as did her buttocks, from the hard seat. When she saw lights
ahead, bobbing up and down in the darkness, Evelina would have thanked God, had
she known Him well enough to take the liberty.

The lights belonged
to fishermen setting out from their small village for some night fishing. They
used lantern light to lure the fish to their nets, and it was these lights that
Evelina saw. She woke Marcus with a kick of her foot.

The fishermen were
naturally quite astonished when a young woman rowed a boat into their midst and
more astonished yet to find that she had a monk with bandaged hands for a
passenger. Their confusion was cleared up when Marcus explained who he was. He
didn’t expect them to believe him, for he had no way to prove his identity. To
his astonishment, he was greeted with smiles and good cheer and enthusiasm. The
king’s men, it seemed, had been here only two days before, telling the people
that the prince had been lost on the river during a fishing expedition and
asking them to keep a watch out for him. Not only were his people pleased to
see their prince, there was a handsome reward being offered for his safe
return.

“Yer Majesty,”
said one of the fishermen, clapping Marcus on the shoulder. “Yer the best catch
we’ve made all year. Beggin’ Yer Majesty’s pardon.”

The fact that he
was wearing monk’s robes was quickly explained by a hastily made-up tale of
falling into the river and being rescued by a passing monk, who gave him dry
clothes. Marcus was more vague concerning Evelina, saying confusedly something
to the effect that she had found him and nursed him. The fishermen received
this information with straight faces. He was, after all, their prince.

They were quick to
abandon their fishing to help the two lost travelers, and within moments Marcus
and Evelina were on dry land with half the village surrounding them. One of the
fishermen sent his boy off at a run to inform the village patriarch of their
good fortune. The patriarch met the boy on the way, for he’d heard the
commotion and was heading down to see what was going on. He greeted the prince
and the lady Marcus introduced as “Mistress Evelina” with calm dignity and
offered them his house for the night.