Master of Dragons (18 page)

The arrows struck
the dazzling, whirling, magical shields and bounced off. Swords hit the shields
and were either turned aside or the blades shattered in the hands of those who
wielded them. The leader called a halt to the exercise and congratulated his
troops and dismissed them.

“For,” said their
leader, his voice ringing through the chamber, “the days of conquest are near
at hand. The day we have worked for our entire lives will shortly be upon us.”

“When do we march?”
someone cried out.

“Soon,” was the
answer.

The troops
dispersed, laughing and talking.

The child looked
very grim.

“What are you
going to do?” Ven asked. “Warn Marcus? Go fight alongside him?”

“It’s not that
simple,” said Draconas, and the child’s eyes were dark and troubled. He glanced
at Ven. “For me or for you, Dragon’s Son.”

Draconas rose to
his feet. “Come with me. There’s something else you need to see.”

They wended their
way back down through the tunnels. Ven found that he had a sense of where he
was and that he could choose which branching corridor to take nine times out of
ten. He liked being here. He could walk tall and straight in these dark
corridors. He liked the feeling of isolation, the comfort of the silence. He
thought he would like to remain here, maybe forever.

They did not leave
the cavern, as Ven half expected them to do. Draca took him on a new route, one
that led deeper into the mountain’s heart, deeper underground. Now the silence
was heavy with the weight of the mountain pressing down upon them. Ven added
these new corridors to his mental map, and it was like a corkscrew, spiraling
ever downward.

They were far from
civilization. Far from the world. So far that, when Ven heard the sound of
human voices, he was severely disappointed.

“Hush!” The child
caught hold of his hand and squeezed it. Her words were little more than a
disturbance of the still air. “We are close.”

The child tugged
him gently forward down a tunnel that grew lighter with every footfall. The
voices were clearer now; Ven could distinguish words, and they were obviously
human.

“What is all this?”
he asked, mouthing the words.

The child shook
her head and urged him on.

The light was
quite bright now. It was not the light of sun. This light had a pure, white
quality to it that Ven recognized.

The white light
was his light, the light of the emptiness that hid him from the dragon.

The voices were
only a few feet away. The child stopped and looked up at him. He could see her
quite clearly. He could see the child and, in the stark, white light, he could
see the shadow of the red-gold dragon standing behind the child, wings spread
protectively.

“Go on ahead,”
said Draconas. He paused, then added, regarding Ven intensely, “If you want to
make yourself known, that is up to you. Grald will almost certainly be informed
that you were here, and I have no idea how he will react. You might be putting
yourself in danger. The choice is yours . . . Dragon’s Son.”

Ven glowered, not
liking the reference. He did not like all this skulking about and mystery,
either. He wanted to ask questions, but he felt that to do so would be to play
into Draconas’s game, of which Ven was growing weary. He would not give the
dragon the satisfaction. He’d go see whatever this was he was supposed to see
and then maybe they could discuss killing Grald.

With a final, grim
glance, Ven turned and left the child standing in the tunnel. He glided
forward, as quietly as his scraping claws would permit, to the tunnel’s
entrance.

He looked into a
brightly lit chamber, a largish chamber, in which about twenty people had
gathered to hear another person speak. Here was the source of the human voices.

But Ven had been
mistaken. The voices were not human. Not entirely.

Here were humans
who had dragon legs, like himself. Here were humans who had human legs and
dragon wings and dragon-scaled arms ending in clawed hands. There were males
and females. Some were more dragon than others. One young female—the
speaker—had a human head and breasts. The rest of her body was that of a
dragon, though molded in a softer, human form. Delicate wings hung from her
shoulders. A little boy standing beside her was almost completely human, except
for a glittering scaled tail that twitched and thumped the ground as he
listened.

The conversation
was lively. The other half-dragons were not at all shy about questioning or
challenging the speaker, who gave back as good as she got. Ven listened to them
talk, but he had no sense of what they were discussing. He was too shaken.

He sensed more,
then saw the child, Draca, come up to stand beside him.

“They are the
dragon’s sons,” said Draconas softly. “And the dragon’s daughters.”

Ven was mute,
struck dumb. He stood motionless, paralyzed by shock. He could only stare, his
heart and his gut twisting together so that one was wrung and the other was
wrenched.

“They are your
siblings, Ven,” Draconas continued. “Your younger brothers and sisters.”

“They are
monsters,” Ven stated harshly. He felt his gorge rising. “Monsters like me. No
wonder they keep them hidden down here!”

The dragon’s
children had their own, exceptional hearing. Though Ven had spoken in a
whisper, they all heard and they all turned to stare.

“A spy!” hissed
one.

“Wait!” called out
the young woman. “Wait!” she called again, and this time she was speaking to
Ven. “Do not run off. Didn’t you hear us? We were talking about you.”

At this, a sigh
rippled through the other half-dragons. “The Dragon’s Son . . . the Dragon’s
Son . . .” The whisper went around and they moved forward, not threatening, but
eager and curious.

Ven had been about
to flee. He had his back turned, ready to run, ready to leave this horrible
image behind.

He told himself
that to flee would be cowardly. He braced himself and turned around, faced them
head-on. He swallowed the bitter bile in his mouth, felt it burn down his
throat into his stomach.

The young half-dragon
female advanced. Her human face was lovely. Her brown eyes were large and wide
open to the world. The bone structure of her face and body was delicate, yet
strong. Her long, glistening hair fell to the small of her back and stirred
about her like a shimmering curtain when she walked. She moved with grace and
elegance that was fluid and sinuous like a reptile and proud like a human, her
human shoulders back and squared. Her iridescent wings quivered. The hand she
held out to him was covered in scales that sparkled blue, like his own. Her
hand ended in five small talons.

She wore no
clothes, as did some of the half-dragons, those who were more human than
dragon. Her scales covered her body, which had a human torso and thighs and
slender dragon legs with clawed feet, like Ven’s. The scales ran up her stomach
to cup around her bare human breasts.

Ven saw all this
in a single, swift glance. Then he kept his eyes fixed on her face, because his
stomach turned when he looked at the rest of her. He tried to keep his face
rigid, to keep the disgust he felt from showing, but the young woman must have
seen it, for she stopped walking. The hand she held out to him dropped to her
side.

“I’m not a spy,”
he said, the only thing he could think of to say.

The young female’s
eyes softened. “No, of course you are not a spy. You are our brother. The
eldest among us. We were told you had arrived in the city, and we were hoping
that our father would introduce us. We were just discussing the ceremony we
were planning to welcome you. As it is”—she blushed slightly, smiling— “you
caught us unprepared. We apologize, Brother. We have looked forward to this
meeting for a long, long time. You are welcome among us. Very welcome.”

Twenty pairs of
eyes, of every color known to humankind, stared out from faces, some of which
were human, some dragon. They regarded him with admiration, with respect.

They don’t see
a monster,
Ven realized. Looking into the eyes of the young female
half-dragon, he saw pride, pride in herself.
I’m the only one who sees
monsters.

He was suddenly
ashamed, for she was seeing in his eyes what he saw in the eyes of other humans
when they looked at him: fear, disgust.

He couldn’t help
it. They were monsters—all of them. Ven felt sick at the sight of them. He
started to shake. His limbs trembled. His scaled legs grew too weak to support
him, and he fell to his knees on the stone floor. He wanted to say something,
but he couldn’t. His throat was thick with tears he refused to let himself
shed. He clasped his arms around himself and curled in on himself. He bowed his
head and bowed his back, bowed himself before his siblings with a moaning cry
that was not human.

They gathered
around him, surrounding him, supporting him. Arms that were strong and scaled
and cool clasped him and held him. His sister’s arms. His sister’s voice, soft
in his ear.

“You will not be
alone anymore, Brother. From now on, you will never be alone.”

THE CHILDREN OF
THE DRAGON THEY WERE CALLED, THE half-human/half-dragon creatures that were Ven’s
half brothers and sisters.

Ven spent a long
time among them that day and listened and watched and wondered. He thought he
should be pleased to know that, as his sister assured him, he was not alone in
the world, that there were others of his kind. He wasn’t. He was repulsed
whenever he looked at the grotesque monstrosities—bits and parts of human and
dragon bodies joined together without rhyme or reason.

He tried not to
stare at them, for he hated it when people stared .it him, yet he couldn’t help
himself. He tried averting his eyes, but that was worse, for he, too, knew how
terrible that felt. When a little boy came running up—his dragon’s claws
scraping the ground and his dragon’s tail thumping the floor behind him—Ven
felt his stomach heave, and he had to look away or retch.

Fortunately, the
child didn’t notice. He sniffed at Ven, much as a dog sniffs, and said
cheerfully, “Pew! You stink!”

“It’s the human
smell,” said his sister as she might have said,
It’s the garbage.
“Their
stench clings to everything.”

The little boy ran
off to play with other children of the dragon—some older, some younger, some
with tails, some with wings and tails, some with clawed hands and no tails.

If I held up a
looking glass, I would see the same expression of shock and revulsion in my
eyes that I saw in the eyes of my own brother, Marcus, when Marcus first looked
on me. I despised Marcus for that look, but the truth is, I understood how he
felt. I feel the same way when I look at myself.

What is
strange, what I can’t understand, is that they don’t feel that way about
themselves. They are proud of what they are. They are not ashamed.

He simply couldn’t
fathom it.

He might have
supposed it was because they had not been exposed to ordinary humans, but he
was disabused of that notion when his sister, whose name was Sorrow, took him
on a tour of their lair.

“My mother named
me,” Sorrow explained, seeing Ven’s startled look when she told him. “Before
she died. They say that our father, the dragon, was angry when he heard what my
mother called me, for I was the first-born—after you, of course—and he was
vastly pleased with me. But my name was the last word my mother spoke, and the
silly human who was my wet nurse was very superstitious and said my mother’s
unhappy spirit would linger with me if my name was changed, and she refused to
nurse me unless my mother’s wishes were honored. Our father said I was to keep
the name, ‘Sorrow,’ but he added to it so that now it is ‘Bringer of Sorrow.’
And so I will be known to those humans we conquer. You’ve seen our human army?”

Ven could only
nod. He didn’t know what to say, feared saying too much, and did what he was
naturally inclined to do: kept silent.

“You’ve seen other
human armies in the part of Dragonvarld in which you grew up. How does ours compare?”
Sorrow asked eagerly.

“What did you call
it?” Ven interrupted.

“Call what?”
Sorrow’s thoughts were on the army.

“The world. You
had a name for it.”

“Dragonvarld.
Dragon World, in the human language. Have you never heard that? It is what the
dragons have called this world for centuries. I understand that the humans have
some other name for it. They term it ‘Dirt’ or something like that. But, then,
they don’t know the truth, at least not yet, so I don’t suppose we can really
blame them.”

“What truth?”

“That the dragons
are the true rulers of this world and always have been. Our father tells us
that the humans fancy themselves the rulers.” Sorrow laughed, rippling laughter
that caused the scales on her torso to glitter and sparkle in the patches of
dusty sunlight filtering down through the air shafts. “All that will soon
change.”

Ven could have
asked more. He could have found out all about the army and when they were going
to attack and where, but he didn’t want to know It was easier not knowing. He
didn’t want to think about it for that would require him to make decisions.
Sorrow wanted to talk about it, however. She persisted in her questions.

“So, we were
speaking of our army and comparing them to the armies of other humans. Tell me
what you think.”

“There is no
comparison,” said Ven flatly, hoping to end the conversation. “Human armies do
not have magic. They will think they are being attacked by demons from hell.
They will run like rabbits. Or die of sheer terror.”

“That is what our
father says.” Sorrow was pleased to have her information confirmed. “Our humans
do very well—for humans. Of course, they have dragon-blood in them, so that is
what accounts for it.”