Master of Dragons (24 page)

As he had told
Ven, no one could hear him. No one could help him.

Except his
magic-wielding brother . . . and he was far away.

EVELINA CLUNG TO
HER LOVER. SHE HAD NEVER KNOWN PLEASURE like this and, even as they relaxed
after their love-making, she kissed his neck and bit at his earlobe, when a
shout cracked like thunder over them both.

Marcus stood naked
by the side of the bed. His torso and arms were still covered with fading red
blotches. His eyes were wide and wild, his face pale and blotchy and terrible.
He stared straight at Evelina and her lover.

Jorge shoved
Evelina off him and leapt to his feet in the same motion, dumping her onto the
floor. He grabbed at his trousers, which were down around his thighs. Yanking
them up, he hastily began to stuff himself and his shirt back into them.

“Fight!” Marcus
cried, his fists clenched. “You have to fight.”

“I’ll not fight
you, Your Highness!” Jorge gasped. “Oh, sweet blessed saints! You a prince! I’ll
be drawn and quartered and my head hung up on spikes!”

Turning to flee,
Jorge tripped over Evelina, who was huddled on her hands and knees, trying
frantically to figure some way out of this disaster. Jorge pitched headlong
over her and landed on the floor. Rolling onto his back, he began to crawl,
crabwise, toward the door.

Marcus advanced on
him. “Fight, Ven! Stand and fight him! The magic! Use the magic!”

Evelina’s head
jerked up. She stared intently at Marcus.

“I’ll not fight
you, Your Highness,” Jorge babbled. He was sweating and shivering and crawling
for all he was worth.

“Ven . . .”
Evelina murmured. “What is he talking about? Ven’s not here . . . Unless . . .”

She scrambled to
her feet. Running over to Jorge, she pulled him up and shoved him bodily toward
the door.

“Get out!” she
cried. “Get out! Hurry up!”

Jorge didn’t need
telling. He flung open the door and bolted out, holding his unlaced britches up
with one hand as he dashed into the night. Evelina slammed shut the door and
put her back to it and faced Marcus, who was staring straight at her and,
apparently, not seeing her.

Evelina waved her
hand in front of his face. His eyes darted back and forth, and his breath came
short and fast, as though watching some harrowing contest.

“Fight!” he cried
again, then he suddenly clutched at his head and reeled backward, staggering
halfway across the room.

“I was right. He’s
possessed. He’s fighting a demon!” Evelina breathed.

Evelina knew
something about demons. She’d been in a tavern once when one of her father’s
companions had been seized by a demon. The man had fallen to the floor, writhing
and twitching and foaming at the mouth. Someone had wanted to call a priest,
but his woman said that wasn’t necessary. Her man fought with demons on a
regular basis and he always came out the winner. She told all his friends to
pin him down, and she gave him a stick to bite on so that he wouldn’t choke to
death. He wrestled with the demon for a short time, then, victorious, he fell
asleep. When he came back to consciousness—and this Evelina remembered quite
clearly—he had no recollection of anything that had happened.

Marcus gave
another cry and made a swipe and a lunge at the air, as though he were holding
a sword, though his hand was empty. Evelina watched for her chance, and when he
moved near the mattress, she rushed at him and struck him hard in the chest,
knocking him down. Evelina pounced, straddling him and holding his arms. He did
not resist her, but lay there, staring up at whatever it was he was
seeing—which wasn’t her. His face contorted. His hands twitched and he gasped
or cried out. Fearing someone would hear him yelling like a madman and
interfere, she stuffed a rag into his mouth to stifle his shouts, and she
swaddled his arms against his sides with the blanket.

Now, it was up to
Marcus. Either he won or the demon did. At this point, Evelina was almost too
exhausted to care which.

She left Marcus to
his fight and went back to pour herself a cup of the strong red wine. She
gulped it down and poured out another cup, drank half of it, then carried it to
the bed and splashed a bit of wine onto the mattress. She examined the red
stain and was pleased. It resembled blood, if one didn’t look too closely.
Evelina finished the rest of the wine, then stripped off all her clothes and
lay down beside Marcus.

He stirred and
gave a muffled cry. His arms bulged against the bindings. His body twisted and
heaved.

“Freak!” Evelina
muttered, shoving him over to make room for herself. “Just like his monster of
a brother. I’m glad Marcus isn’t going to be the father of my child. He’ll just
think he is. And he
will
marry me. Oh, yes, he will. I deserve nothing
less, after all I’ve put up with.”

Closing her eyes,
she gave a contented belch and let the wine fumes carry her pleasantly into
slumber.

Beside her, on the
bed, Marcus fought the dragon.

THE WORMWOOD EVELINA
HAD SLIPPED INTO MARCUS’S WINE ACTED as a key on the lock of the door of his
mental room, removing all fear of the dragon that lurked outside, removing all
his inhibitions. He left that little room and went stumbling about into the
minds of the dragons like a drunken man, weaving and laughing along a street of
swirling, shimmering dragon dreams that were beautiful and horrifying, bestial,
alien—like himself.

Marcus cavorted
inside the minds of dragons. He didn’t know how many dragons, but a lot,
seemingly, for the fantastically colored images flew at him from every
direction, fluttering around inside of him, like being bombarded by ribbons of
rainbow. Then suddenly lightning splintered the rainbow and a voice intruded,
shocked and dismayed.

“What are you
doing, Human? Please, stop! This is not wise.”

“My name is
Marcus. Who are you?” he cried merrily.

“I told you! I am
Lysira.” She sounded stern and thoroughly put out, like his old tutor. “And
this is not proper behavior!”

Marcus had never
liked his tutor, and so he ignored her. Like a drunken reveler—or an escaped
prisoner, drunk on freedom— Marcus capered into and out of the minds of the
dragons. Naked, shouting his defiance, shouting his adoration, he wrapped his
nakedness in the colors of their amazement and danced from dragon to dragon. He
glided into their minds with the elegance of a dancer, doing a turn, singing a
song with the colors of his own mind, then gliding swiftly out. He played tag
with them, hide-and-go-seek, dodging and darting, evading and avoiding, all the
while laughing wildly at the sheer joy of it all.

Marcus was a child
again, a lunatic child, and his soul remembered what his brain worked hard to
try to forget—the beautiful, dazzling, alien world of wondrous, magical beasts,
whose thoughts wove silken tapestries, using the stars for needles and the
sunbeams for thread. This was the reason that, long ago, he had traded madness
for sanity, traded the lonely, isolated, shut-off, locked-up-tight gray world
of humans for the dreams of dragons.

The dragons soon
got over their shock that a human had actually managed to invade their minds.
They were horrified and angry, just like his parents had been. He knew how that
worked. It made him powerful.

Some of the
dragons tried to catch him. Another dragon, a young female, sought to protect
him. They all ended up in a bitter argument, and Marcus was forgotten or shoved
aside. The flames of their passion roiled around him, but could not touch him.

Marcus kept it up,
made himself a nuisance.

The young female
fluttered about after him. “Listen to me, Human! You must come to your senses.
Draconas sent me to warn you—”

“Draconas!” Marcus
called. “Where are you, you old fart? Still alive? I should have known it. I
escaped, by the way. No thanks to you.”

He laughed and
stumbled about in a dazzling, brilliant fog.

And then the fog
shredded, torn apart by a dragon’s claw.

The eyes that had
found him in the cave found him again.

Marcus had
stumbled into the mind of Grald.

No pretty colors
here. Steel blue bars slammed down around Marcus, trapping him. He hurled
himself against Grald’s mind, trying to free himself, but the dragon held him
fast.

“As long as you
are here, Prince Marcus,” the dragon said, “you can see what I see, feel what I
feel. When next you meet your brother, you’ll be meeting me.”

Ven stood in a
dark room. In back of him was a tomb—Ven’s tomb. Marcus could hear Ven’s heart
beating, and it was a thrilling sound to the dragon, for that beating heart was
the key to the magical spell that would allow him to take over Ven’s body and
make it his own.

Grald opened the
tomb, and there inside lay the human Grald, a look of horror on his face, his
mouth gaping wide in screams of agony that had long gone unheard. The dragon
held a golden locket in his hand. He opened the lock, dumped the heart into the
bloody cavity of the human’s chest. When the heart fell, the human gave a last,
shuddering cry and died. The body lay in the tomb, eyes wide, mouth still open.

Grald discarded
the human body he had worn, crawling out of it, leaving it on the floor like a
snake leaves its shed skin. The dragon advanced on the new body he had chosen.

“Fight!” Marcus
cried. “You have to fight!”

Ven turned to
flee, but the dragon seized hold of him.

“Fight, Ven!”
Marcus shouted. “Stand and fight him! The magic! Use the magic!”

Ven struggled
valiantly, but he had never learned how to use the magic, and he was no match
for the dragon. Grald dug his claws into Ven’s breast, ripping through skin and
flesh and tissue, cracking ribs. Ven screamed in agony and Marcus shuddered and
tried frantically to break free of the bars of the dragon’s mind. The dragon
forced Marcus to watch.

“You wanted to see
our dreams,” said Grald. “Now you see them.”

A clawed hand
tossed aside broken fragments of Ven’s ribcage, as he writhed in excruciating
torment in the dragon’s grip. The dragon wound Ven up in strands of magic,
enchantment that bound his life to the dragon’s and the dragon’s life to Ven’s.
Then the dragon seized hold of the beating heart and tore it from Ven’s chest,
leaving behind a gaping, bloody hole in the shattered breast.

Grald held the
heart in his hand and bent his will upon it, and the heart began to shrink
until it was a doll’s heart or that of a bird, rapidly beating. Grald tucked
the heart carefully inside the golden locket that he held suspended by a golden
chain on a single claw.

Then the dragon
carried Ven into the sarcophagus and dumped him into stone-bound darkness.
Grald lifted up the heavy lid and slid it in place, sealing Ven—bound by
enchantment to a horrible life—inside the tomb.

The last image
Marcus saw was his brother’s face as he came to realize that he would be
trapped in darkness and unceasing pain, with no escape but death, and that
would come only when the human body the dragon had taken over had aged past the
point of usefulness.

Grald turned to
face Marcus. The dragon opened the locket he held in his claw.

“Here’s a dream
for you, little prince.”

An army of humans
wearing armor that sparkled in the sun like the glittering scales of the dragon
marched triumphantly through the gates of his father’s castle.

Leading the army
was Ven.

Slit eyes glared
at Marcus. Jaws opened wide. Slashing fangs dripped saliva. Claws, stained in
blood, curled over him. The massive tail lashed and twitched.

Marcus grabbed for
his sword, but ... he had no sword. He was naked and soft and fragile, and he
couldn’t escape . . .

A hand—his brother’s
hand—thrust through the darkness. The hand was that of the little child who had
reached out to Marcus so many years ago. The hand was the hand that had shown
him the way through the walls of Dragonkeep. His heart aching, his thoughts
floundering in confusion, Marcus grasped at the hand.

Ven clasped him
firmly, and the bars of Grald’s mind vanished.

Marcus stood in a
vast dark hall, standing beside an empty tomb. Ven lay on the floor. Grald
loomed over him. The dragon was a grotesque monstrosity—half-in and half-out of
the human body. He clutched Ven’s ankle with a single claw, keeping fast hold
of him, preventing him from escaping while the dragon continued to shift form.

The dragon head
was emerging from the human’s stooped and fleshy shoulders, the human neck
elongating into that of the dragon. The human legs shifted, stretched, bent
into the powerful hind legs of the dragon. Dragon wings sprouted from human
shoulders.

“Help me, Marcus,”
Ven cried, his voice grating across Marcus’s mind. “I can’t fight him alone.”

“You’re dead,”
said Marcus. “I saw him kill you.”

Even as he spoke,
he understood.
You wanted to see our dreams . . .

Marcus looked from
his brother to Grald, and Marcus realized suddenly that he had seen what the
dragon dreamed, not what he had done. The battle was not over. It was just
beginning.

“Use the magic!”
Marcus told his brother. “He’s weak now!”

“I can’t use the
magic,” Ven cried, struggling to free himself from the dragon’s grip. “It isn’t
in me!”

“It is,” said
Marcus. “It is a part of you. Admit it.”

Ven continued to
fight, twisting. Trying to break the dragon’s grip on his ankle, he kicked at
Grald’s scale-covered arm with his own clawed foot. Ven was strong and
powerful, but the dragon was stronger, and every second that passed, Grald was
growing stronger still. Already, there was very little left of him that was
human.

Grald dragged Ven
closer and stretched out the other clawed hand.