Master of Dragons (26 page)

“Come with me,”
she said. “Be quiet. I don’t want to wake the others.”

Lucien did not ask
questions. He knew her, trusted that she had a good reason for this midnight
ramble.

As they walked
through the labyrinthine corridors of the dragon’s lair, Sorrow shared the
image of Ven’s human brother with Lucien. She shared his words, the pictures.
Lucien was so shocked at the vision flaring before his eyes that he almost
walked into a wall.

“I don’t believe
what he says about our father, Sorrow. The human lies.”

“I don’t believe
it either. That’s why we’re going there.”

“To the Abbey?”

Sorrow nodded. The
cave was dark, but not to her eyes or her brother’s. They moved swifdy through
the winding corridors of stone. They did not speak except with their thoughts,
which sometimes converged to form a river, then separated, forking off into individual
streams. The dragon’s children were not like dragons, who rarely give voice to
their thoughts. Nor were they like humans, who are forced to do so. They
blended speech and thought so that many times they had no idea where one began
and the other left off.

The corridor they
walked led from the Abbey to the palace beneath the mountain. The corridor was
used by the dragon, to travel from one place to another. Few humans knew of the
existence of this corridor. What went on beneath the mountain was secret and
was meant to stay that way. The children knew it from the mind of the dragon.

The walls of the
corridor were rimed with scales, marks of the dragon’s passage. The sight of
these led Lucien to exclaim suddenly and vehemently, “Our father would never
take the body of a human. It’s all a lie.”

“A lie,” Sorrow
agreed.

She walked
swiftly, confidently, certain of the outcome. The children of the dragon
entered the great hall to find it awash with blood.

In the center lay
their father, dead.

Sharp nails pierced
Ven’s human flesh, claws raked the skin of his forearm. The pain was acute and
dragged him up, struggling and fighting, from the deep.

His eyes flared
open. Sorrow bent over him.

“Why did you do
this!” she demanded, hissing in anger. “Why did you kill our father?”

She dug her nails
deeper in his arm, until the blood ran. Her fury flared through the darkness,
lighting her face, blazing in her eyes, and staving off death, just for a
moment.

“You wouldn’t
understand,” Ven said weakly. He closed his eyes, tried to sink back down
beneath the dark surface. “Just go away and leave me alone.”

“I think he’s
dying,” Lucien said in hushed tones.

“Oh, no, he’s not,”
said Sorrow. “Not until I know the truth.”

The hand that had
drawn his blood moved to his forehead. Another hand rested, palm down, on his
breast. His sister’s touch was healing; warmth poured through his body, thick
and viscous and sweet as honey. Ven’s heartbeat strengthened. His breathing
came easier. The darkness began to recede, and he was floating rapidly to
shore.

Ven sat up and
shoved her hands off him. His head ached and he felt sick to his stomach, but
he was alive.

“You will live,”
said Sorrow coolly. “How long you live depends on your answers. Lucien is
incredibly strong. He once tore a human apart limb by limb. He can do the same
to you.”

Ven didn’t look at
them, either of them. He stared at the carcass of the dragon. Scaled flesh,
clawed and mangled. Bones exposed. Blood running in rivulets into the chinks
and cracks of the stone floor. Ven’s body was sticky with the blood. His sister’s
hands had blood on them, from where she’d reverently touched the body.

“Why did you kill
our father?” she asked again, her voice breaking.

Ven looked at her,
really looked at her, for the first time. He saw that she was terrified.

Grald had kept his
children isolated, segregated. He kept them dependent on him. A good plan, for
the dragon had never imagined leaving them. Dragons live for centuries. Grald
would see his children age and die, see many generations of children die before
he did. But he was dead. His children were alone and they couldn’t cope.

Ven understood
Sorrow’s fear. He recognized it as his own. In that moment Ven, who had always
felt sorry only for himself, felt pity for another.

“Why?” Sorrow shrieked,
and she flung herself at him, striking him on the chest. “Why?”

He said nothing,
for there was nothing to say. She knew the reason; he’d seen the images in her
mind. Her terrible “why” had nothing to do with Grald’s death. It had more to
do with her own life, her own reason for being. She was asking herself for the
first time the question Ven had been asking all these years.

She wouldn’t like
the answer, but he couldn’t help that.

“Sorrow,” called
Lucien. He stood by the tomb, staring down into it. “Come look at this.” He
sounded shaken.

Sorrow glared at
Ven a moment longer, then, her back rigid, her legs stiff, she walked over to
the tomb. She cast one glance inside and then turned away.

Ven stood up,
slowly and painfully. He limped over to the dragon’s carcass and stared down at
it. Finding what he sought, wound around the dragon’s bloodstained talons, Ven
removed the golden locket and carried it over to the tomb. Opening it up, he
displayed the heart within. The heart had stopped beating. With the dragon’s
death, the enchantment was broken.

He thrust the
locket in Sorrow’s face.

Sorrow averted her
eyes. Lucien started to gag and was sick on the floor.

“You want the
truth. Then look at it,” Ven insisted.

Sorrow looked. She
looked at the shriveled heart and the maltreated corpse in the tomb. She looked
at Grald, the human, dead, and saw the expression of agony and horror frozen on
his face.

Ven could hear
outside the cave of his mind the beat of wings. He could feel the hot wind of
Maristara’s coming. He tossed the locket into the tomb and turned to leave.

“Where are you
going?” Sorrow demanded.

“Away,” said Ven.

“You can’t!”

“Fine.” Ven turned
around. “You brought me back to life. Now what are you going to do with me?
Wait here to see me die again? That’s all right with me. Just make up your
mind.”

Sorrow hesitated,
wavering and unsure. Lucien had finished being sick. Though he still looked
ill, he went over to her and the two conferred softly.

Ven stood waiting.
It truly did not matter to him, one way or the other.

Eventually the two
came to an agreement.

“You’re coming
with us,” said Sorrow.

Lucien took hold
of Ven by the arm, handling him roughly, scratching him with his claws.

Ven shrugged and
went along. He didn’t ask where they were going. He already knew. The dragon’s
children had only one place they could go, and that was back to the lair where
they’d been born, where they’d lived all their lives. He didn’t ask what they
were going to do with him, because he didn’t care.

Sorrow and Lucien
held Ven between them, both of them gripping him tightly, securely, though he
came along docilely enough. They talked to him and about him, but he paid scant
attention. He heard only the clicking of their claws on the stone floor—three
sets of claws, his claws and those of his sister and brother. They made quite a
racket, none of them in unison. He listened to the clickety-clack with a kind
of detached fascination.

“What are we going
to do with him?” Lucien asked, as they clattered down the corridor that led from
the Abbey back to the lair.

“We’ll hide him,”
said Sorrow. “With illusion magic.”

“They’ll come
looking for him—” Lucien began.

“Not in our
chambers,” said Sorrow. “They won’t suspect us. Why should they? They’ll
suppose he ran back to the humans. They’ll search the human city and beyond. We’re
the last they would suspect.”

Lucien accepted
her decision without question, and the three walked on.

“What do we tell
the other children?” Lucien asked, after a moment. “About Grald . . .”

“Nothing,” Sorrow
returned, quick and harsh. “We tell them nothing. It would be impossible to
explain to the little ones, anyway,” she added, a tremor in her voice.

“That’s true,”
Lucien said. “When we don’t even understand. Our father took a human form—”

“Don’t say that!”
Sorrow cried, glaring at him. “Don’t ever say that!”

Lucien fell
silent. He looked hurt, as though she’d struck him. After a moment, he said
softly, “What do we do now, Sorrow? You, me, the others?”

“We’ll be fine,”
Sorrow said. “No, Lucien, no more questions! I have to think—”

The two stopped,
freezing in place. Ven, preoccupied, kept on walking. Sorrow gave him a rough
jerk on the arm. Then he heard what they’d heard.

The sounds were
unmistakable—the tramping of heavy, clawed feet, shaking the floor; the movement
of a massive body; the stentorian breathing of a dragon. The sounds came from
behind them, from the Abbey.

“The dragon of
Seth!” Lucien’s thoughts whispered in Ven’s brain.

“I’m going back,”
Sorrow said abruptly.

“To hand him over
to the dragon?” Lucien asked.

He glanced
uncertainly at Ven, who stood there, unconcerned, as if they were talking about
someone else.

“I don’t know,”
Sorrow said, biting her lip. “Maybe. Take him to the cave, Lucien. Hide him in
that place where we used to hide when the teaching humans came to us.”

“Sorrow . . .”
Lucien began.

She cast him an
exasperated glance. “What now?”

“Just ... be
careful,” he said.

She rested her
hand gently on his arm. “Everything will be all right, Lucien. Now, go. Quickly”

Lucien went,
tugging Ven along with him. Ven might have tackled the youngster and made good
his escape, but that required effort, and he had none to give. He didn’t want
to hurt the boy, who’d been hurt enough already this night.

Ven walked on, his
gaze on the ground, staring at his feet, listening to the sound of his claws
and those of his brother’s scraping and clicking on the cold stone floor of the
mountain.

WHILE VEN WAS
FIGHTING FOR HIS LIFE AND MARCUS WAS SLEEPING off the effects of his dragon
dream, Draconas sat placidly on a stool in Anton and Rosa’s dwelling and darned
socks. He hoped, as he did so, that poor Anton would never have to wear these
socks. He would surely get blisters, for Draconas was neither particularly
skilled at darning, nor was he able to hold his mind on his work, for his mind
was divided—part of it in the room, keeping watch on the monk, and part of it
with Melisande’s sons. The socks suffered as a result, turning out all lumpy
and misshapen.

Draconas’s
enforced nap had lasted only an hour or so, then the monk brought the little
girl out of the enchantment.

“There, now,” said
Brother Leopold. “Don’t you feel better after a little rest? Come and join us
by the fire.”

Draconas dragged
his stool over by the fire, where Anton and Rosa and the monk sat; the couple
bewildered and frightened, the monk completely at his ease. The monk asked
Anton questions about his work, asked Rosa questions about her weaving, asked
Draca about her friends and what games they liked to play.

Rosa and Anton
gave short and sometimes incoherent answers to the monk’s questions. Both sat
on the edge of their chairs, as though waiting for something to jump out of the
shadows at them. After a while, however, when nothing did jump out at them and
Brother Leopold seemed truly interested in hearing what they had to say, they
both started tentatively to relax. They had no idea what was going on, but,
reason told them, if the monk was going to do anything dire, he would have done
it by now. He wouldn’t have been sitting by the fire watching Rosa and Draca
mending clothes and darning socks.

Eventually,
bewilderment and tension gave way to exhaustion. Anton endeavored to stifle his
yawns, but he’d been up with the sun and worked past sunset, and he cast
longing glances at his bed. Rosa actually nodded off over her mending, waking
with a jerk when the monk spoke her name.

“I’m sorry,
Brother Leopold,” she said, blushing deeply. “I didn’t mean to be rude. I’m
sitting too close to the fire, I believe. It makes me doze off.” She moved her
chair back from the dying blaze.

The monk said
something polite and continued to talk. Eventually Rosa’s head lowered, her
chin sank to her chest, and her work fell from her hands. Anton had already
gone to sleep in his chair. He snored and mumbled in his sleep as he always
did. His hands twitched.

Brother Leopold
didn’t move. The bell rang for curfew, and still he stayed. He no longer
talked, however. He seemed to be waiting for something.

Draconas kept
darning. The sock in his hands looked like no sock in the known universe, but,
fortunately, the monk wasn’t paying attention. He began to grow restless. He
stood up, walked to the window and peered out, his gaze going in the direction
of the Abbey. Brother Leopold walked back, resumed his seat, and stared hard at
Draconas.

Draconas plied his
needle, his eyes on his work. The monk wanted to ask him if he knew what had
happened, but he didn’t dare. That would show weakness. As for Draconas, all
the while he’d been darning, he’d been watching Ven work his magic, watching
Marcus defend his brother. He’d watched the dragon, Grald, crash down dead on
the bloodstained floor.

And now Maristara
was coming. He saw her, and she saw him. She knew he was in Dragonkeep. He
couldn’t help that. He’d been forced to open himself up to her and the other
dragons when he reached out to Lysira and asked her to help, when he’d reached
out to Ven.

She had come
searching for him, and she wouldn’t be as squeamish as Grald about destroying a
few hundred humans to get at him.