Mistress of Dragons (21 page)

The
Mistress held in her hand a golden locket. One of Melisande’s earliest memories
was wanting to touch and fondle that beautiful locket.

“You
are wondering what I did with her heart. Her heart is in here, Melisande,” said
the Mistress, moving closer. “When I open the locket, she will die.”

“What
are you?” Melisande cried, clinging to the tomb, life clinging to death. “Who
are you?”

“I
am you, Melisande,” said the Mistress softly. Her hand reached out to her, to
her beating heart. “Or I soon will be.”

The
hand of flesh withered away, became a claw—a claw glistening with scales, its
talons sharp and shining.

A
dragon’s claw.

EDWARD
STIRRED AND GROANED. HIS HANDS twitched. From the other side of his illusion,
Draconas whispered harshly, “Keep still!”

His
head aching and his wits befuddled, Edward readily obeyed the command. He
pressed his cheek against the cold stone, closed his eyes to the flaring light,
and willed the dizziness and nausea to pass. He listened to the two women speak
casually, callously of his death. He was in danger, but he did not have the
vaguest notion how or why.

He
had a hazy recollection of what had happened to him, though none of it made
sense. Slender, delicate fingers, from which burst forth arcing streams of
radiant light that burned his flesh and clothes, sent tingling jolts through
his bloodstream. He might not have believed it, but he could feel the burns on
his skin.

The
unreality of it made what had befallen him all the more horrible. He hoped that
Draconas knew what was going on and that Draconas was devising some means of
dealing with the situation. Edward’s task for the moment was to remain
conscious and endure the pounding ache in his head.

He
whispered a prayer to God to save him and he whispered to Draconas, “What do I
do?”

“Nothing,
yet,” was the answer. “Be still and be silent!”

Edward
swallowed a bitter taste in his mouth and, despite Draconas’s warning, he
risked turning his head ever so slightly so that he could see and hear what was
happening.

“I
will do anything you ask, Mistress, but first, let’s move you to where you will
be more comfortable—” the young woman was saying.

Good
idea! Edward urged her, grimly hopeful. Let them leave, both of them. Witches
or demons or whatever they are. He gazed at her and though his vision was a
little blurred, he could still see that she was very beautiful. Witches are not
supposed to be beautiful, he thought in a dreamlike haze of pain. Nor are
murderers. But she is very beautiful . . .

“Do
you defy me, Melisande?” asked the elderly woman.

Melisande.
What a lovely name, thought Edward. I wonder what it means. The name suits her.
God, my head hurts! He closed his eyes to let a wave of nausea pass and slipped
for a moment into the darkness and he missed some of what passed between the
women.

When
he opened his eyes again, Melisande was standing at the stone altar. He saw her
shoving on the stone top of the altar, heard the grinding sound of stone
against stone as the lid moved. She looked inside and her face went livid, as
white as if someone had emptied her of blood and life. She was terrified. She
could barely stand. He saw her frightened gaze go to the elderly woman, who
held dangling a golden locket in her hand.

“I
am you, Melisande,” said the old woman, and Edward recognized the voice.

The
sibilant voice, the voice in the cave. The voice of the murderer.

Edward
lifted his head. His hand slid to his sword. He tensed, ready to jump to his
feet.

A
hand reached through the wall, closed over his wrist, its iron-band grip
halting his movement.

“Wait!”
ordered Draconas.

Edward
jerked his arm to try to break Draconas’s hold and free his wrist, but the man’s
grip was incredibly strong, crushing and bruising.

“I
will tell you when,” Draconas continued, his whisper chill and sharp. “You will
save her life, but not yet. Move now, and you both die. Trust me in this,
Edward.”

Edward
hesitated. He had no trust in Draconas, but he had less trust in himself, for
his head hurt abominably and it was difficult to think.

“If
you want to save her, you must do what I tell you,” Draconas urged.

“I
want to save her,” said Edward, his gaze on Melisande.

Draconas’s
grip on him loosened, but Edward still felt the man’s warding hold on his wrist
and he smiled ruefully. Draconas doesn’t trust me any more than I trust
Draconas.

Edward
settled inch by cautious inch back down to the stone floor. His precaution was
needless. Both women had forgotten him, one too frightened to remember and the
other too intent on her victim.

Edward
waited, but he was determined not to wait long.

“He’s
not going to wait long,” Draconas said to himself. “Can I count on him? That’s
the question. He’s done well so far. But this—what he must face next—I’m not
sure he’s ready for it. I’m not sure I’m ready for it. We may all end up dead.

“I
should leave,” he reflected. “Once I see how Maristara manages to shift her
form, I can make good my escape. It’s my duty to escape, for I should carry
word of this to the Parliament. The humans will die, of course, Edward and the
woman, and, in fact, it would be best if they did die, here and now, for if
they live, they will see what they should not see. What no human is meant to
see.”

His
argument was logical and he should certainly act on it, but he wouldn’t. He
would stay and fight Maristara and save the humans for one reason—because he could
not endure the thought of letting the dragon win.

He
readied himself, readied his magic.

“Edward,”
he called softly through the illusion, “when I say the word, run to the woman,
grab hold of her, and run back here, into the cave. Then keep running, both of
you, and don’t look behind. No matter what you hear, don’t look.”

Melisande
crouched behind the sarcophagus, her hands gripping the stone lid for support.
Mesmerized, she stared at the hand that had transformed into a glistening
scaled claw, its sharp talons reaching out for her.

The
Mistress’s red-eyed gaze fixed on Melisande’s breast, on the folds of wet,
black fabric that trembled and stirred with the wild and frantic beating of her
heart. In her human hand, the Mistress held the locket, moved it slowly,
hypnotically back and forth, back and forth.

“Age
has its advantages,” said the Mistress, stealing ever closer, using her soft
voice to lull her victim. “I have ruled for fifty years in this body and it has
served me well. But the body grows weak and therefore so do I. I need youth,
life, new blood. Your blood, Melisande. Your beating, living heart. The
Mistress dies. Long live the Mistress. Except that you won’t die, Melisande.
You will live in that tomb, held suspended between death and life, as you live
on in me. Or rather, to be more precise, I live on in you.”

With
a flick of her fingers, she opened the locket. There, encapsulated within was a
beating heart, the heart of the elderly woman whose body lay imprisoned in the
tomb. The heart was small, magically shrunken to fit inside the locket, yet it
throbbed and quivered with life. Drawing near Melisande, who could not take her
terror-stricken eyes from the clawed hand, the Mistress dropped the heart out
of the locket, let it fall back into the bloody cavity from which it had been
wrenched.

The
woman gasped in agony. She gave a shuddering sigh, a sigh of relief, a sigh
that welcomed death. She cast one look at Melisande, a look of pity and
despair, and then she stiffened. The clenched fists uncurled. Her eyes fixed in
her head. The heart ceased to beat. She lay still.

Staring,
horrified, into the tomb, Melisande saw herself. She saw her own body lying
there in unending torment and unbearable darkness, a prisoner year after year,
aware of all around her, listening to the voices of her sisters, listening,
perhaps, to Bellona’s beloved voice, unable to cry out to her, unable to touch,
unable to make known the truth.

The
Mistress was dead and with her death died the body that the dragon had used for
so many years. Maristara abandoned the useless carcass to take on her own shape
and form.

The
memory of Bellona jolted Melisande out of her panicked lethargy.

“If
I must die,” she said to herself, “I will die so that Bellona is proud of me. I
will not die like this, a prisoner. I will die a warrior.”

Melisande
lifted her gaze from the ravaged corpse of the Mistress to the old woman she
had known as the Mistress.

The
old woman was changing, shifting form, shedding the body of a human, discarding
human flesh as the cicada discards its dried and useless carapace. The old
woman was becoming a dragon. The hands were taloned claws covered with
gray-green scales. The neck elongated, stretched, writhed out of human
shoulders. Wings slid out of the back and unfurled, their span filling the
chamber with darkness, as their shadows blotted out the light of the naming
brazier. The legs thickened, bent inward to lift and support the shifting,
shimmering, hugely growing body. The tail coiled and uncoiled, thrashing back
and forth in excitement. The face of the Mistress blurred to that of a beast.
The eyes gleamed red in dark green sockets, the nose jutted outward, the teeth
were fangs, dark and the tongue flickered.

Melisande
could not understand what was happening. Her mind refused to believe the truth
of her eyes, but understanding didn’t matter.

Before
her was a dragon, her enemy, an enemy she had been trained to fight since she
was a small girl in the nursery, studying the pictures of dragons painted on
the frescoes around the monastery.

The
dragon was still not completely whole, still wriggling out of the body of the
human in which she had been hiding. The red eyes, fixed on Melisande’s strong,
young body, glistened with anticipation. The dragon lifted her taloned claw, stretched
it out, reaching over the sarcophagus, over the corpse inside, intending to
seize Melisande’s body, dig the talons into her breast, tear out the beating
heart. The golden locket flashed in the firelight.

Melisande
gripped the stone lid of the tomb and with an effort born of fear and fury, she
lifted up the lid and hurled it at the dragon. Then, she ran.

“Now!”
said Draconas.

Edward
jumped to his feet. He had been as shocked as Melisande to see the elderly
woman transform herself into a dragon, but, like Melisande, understanding didn’t
matter. Action mattered.

The
heavy stone lid crashed into the dragon’s grasping claw, crushing it. Cursing,
Maristara snatched back her claw. She made a swipe at Melisande, fleeing the
alcove, but missed her.

Blood
from the broken talon spattered over the floor and the walls. Melisande evaded
the dragon, ran for the door.

“You
can’t escape, Melisande,” said the dragon. Her massive body almost filled the
chamber. Her wings brushed the ceiling, her tail dragged across the Eye on the
floor, shutting it. “The door is spell-locked.”

Melisande
flung herself at the door with a wild cry. She pulled at the handle, beat on it
with her fists, but the door held fast. Turning, putting her back to the door,
she saw, with amazement and wonder, Edward running toward her.

“This
way!” he cried.

He
reached out his hand to her and his hand held life.

Melisande
grasped his hand and together they ran toward the wall and the place where his
glove lay on the floor.

The
dragon whipped around, snatched at Edward with her uninjured claw, prepared to
grab the intruder and crush him to death.

Edward
fell back. Shoving Melisande safely behind him, he slashed at the dragon’s claw
with his sword.

“Run!”
Draconas cried, leaping out from the wall.

Edward
sheathed his sword. Turning to Melisande, he swept her up into his arms and
lunged forward. The wall loomed ahead of them. Melisande cried out, as it
seemed that they must dash themselves to pieces on the sharp rock. He had no
time to think or argue with his brain or his eyes or with Melisande, who flung
her arm up in front of her face. He ran headlong into the stone wall, carrying
Melisande with him.

The
two swept through the illusion, plunging from light and noise and confusion
into sudden, blinding darkness. Unable to see, fearful of smashing into a real
rock wall, Edward tried desperately to slow his breakneck dash. Momentum
carried him forward. He tripped on his own feet and he tumbled to the ground,
Melisande beneath him. She cried out and he rolled hurriedly off her, fearful
that he had crushed her.

“I
am sorry, so sorry,” he babbled, not knowing what he was saying. He reached out
to touch her. He could not see her in the darkness, but he could feel her
beside him, feel her trembling. “Are you hurt? I am so sorry ...”

“Run!”
thundered Draconas.

“I
pledge you my life,” said Edward softly. “I will see that no harm comes to you.
Ever.”

He
took gentle hold of Melisande, who hesitated a moment, then clasped her arms
spasmodically around his neck. He lifted her up, and the two stood together in
the darkness, pressing close, body to body. They clung to each other tightly,
glad for shared warmth, glad for the feel of flesh and bone and heart beating
against heart.

Holding
fast to life and to each other, they fled into the labyrinthine darkness.

DRACONAS
JUMPED THROUGH THE ILLUSION, THEN came to a halt, keeping his back to the wall,
a completely useless gesture since it wasn’t a wall, but it made him feel more
secure. His weapons were his staff, his magic, and his wits. The staff would be
useless against the dragon’s might. His magic was child’s magic, compared to
hers. He was counting on his wits to save him.