The Dragon of Despair (96 page)

HASAMEMORRI WAS
, of course, curious about the two visitors who transformed into her long-absent tenants, but she had learned that knowing less rather than more about her foreign guests was the best course of action if she wished to keep a happy and peaceful home.

Therefore, after exchanging a few pleasantries with Edlin—Peace in his role as Jalarios had never come under her inspection—she retired to her apartment. Her parting words were unsettling, nonetheless.

“I am sorry that the little boy, Rios, did not return with his father. A child is such a bright thing to have about the house.”

For Elise, Hasamemorri’s comment recalled Citrine as she had briefly been on their trip to Dragon’s Breath, closer to the bright-eyed girl Elise had known most of her life, laughing and playing, eager to help, that weird, fey streak nearly vanished. They had lost more than the child’s physical presence when Citrine had run away; they’d lost the progress they had made toward her healing.

And Elise couldn’t help wondering what—if anything—Citrine had now told Melina about the afternoon’s events and what repercussions that report might have for their household here. However, although they kept their usual guard shifts with more than usual alertness throughout the night, nothing untoward happened.

After breakfast the next morning their reunited household again gathered in the consulting room. Derian and Elise had hoped to start making plans for their next course of action the night before, but Doc had refused to have his patients disturbed.

“Edlin and Peace are getting the first decent sleep they’ve had in who knows how long. My talent can speed healing, but even it cannot work without sleep to help it along.”

Doc said this with a rather pointed glance at Firekeeper, but the wolf-woman did not respond. She seemed drawn inward on her own thoughts, and as soon as she learned there would be no further planning session that night she had retired to the stable yard—presumably to sleep.

The following morning, although both Edlin and Peace looked markedly improved, Firekeeper did not—dashing both Derian and Elise’s hopes that her sleeplessness would end with the return of the two men.

“Last night,” Elise said, “we rather glossed over why the Healed One agreed to help us.”

“Didn’t do it out of a sense of justice, what?” Edlin asked impudently.

“I didn’t say that,” Elise shot back. “But I must say that I trusted the Healed One’s goodwill toward us and our interests all the more because he wanted something from us in return.”

“Fair,” Edlin agreed. “And what was that?”

“Lady Archer would tell you,” Peace interrupted, “if you would only still your tongue.”

The words were a rebuke, but the tone so affectionate that Elise suppressed a smile. Yet despite the warmth of Peace’s tone, Edlin came to heel like one of his own chastened pups.

Elise resumed, “When we first dealt with Xarxius regarding the possibility of Citrine’s return, the Dragon’s Claw intimated that the Healed One would see his way to supporting our right of custody if we would do something for him. That thing was finding where Melina went at night.”

Elise thought again how odd a situation this was, and how even odder was the matter-of-fact way they all accepted it.

“I say,” Edlin exclaimed, “we know where Melina goes well enough now—and what she does there. Peace and I told the Healed One about Melina’s underground slave complex. Maybe the debt is paid and we’ll find Citrine gift-wrapped on the stoop later this afternoon.”

“Did the Healed One tell you about the Dragon of Despair?” Elise asked.

Edlin looked puzzled, but over Grateful Peace’s battered features there spread the beginnings of understanding.

“He did not,” Peace said, silencing Edlin with a gesture. “And I, of course, know the tale and have since my childhood. What part does such an old story play here?”

Elise tugged a lock of her hair straight as if by doing so she could straighten this entire mess.

“The Healed One thinks—for various reasons that made sense when he spelled them out for us—that Melina is seeking the place where this dragon was bound. He thinks that she plans to release it, hoping that it will give her even more power than she currently holds, power that won’t be tied to any alliances or to the fortunes of those she holds under her will.”

Peace nodded with grudging approval.

“Melina’s choice is wise. Of all the legends I studied in my early apprenticeship as an Illuminator, the tale of the Dragon of Despair seemed among those that held the most substance. It was a tale that belonged to the New World, you see, not, like so many of the others, to the Old World.”

Doc leaned forward, his posture holding the same tense alertness Elise had seen when he was working his way over a badly damaged limb seeking where to best apply his talent.

“So you think there really is a dragon?”

Peace gave a shrug that, despite its stiffness, held some of his former cosmopolitan insouciance.

“Who knows? But whether what Melina seeks is a dragon or merely an artifact with power enough to raise mountains and level cities, does that matter? We cannot have Melina find this thing and gain control of it.”

Wendee cleared her throat.

“I remember the story, both from your telling it to us on the road and from allusions to it in various plays. Wasn’t there a tremendous cost for using the dragon? Didn’t it kill Kelvin and haunt the Star Wizard?”

Peace nodded.

“That is what our tales tell, but either Melina does not believe that this cost exists or she believes what she would gain would be worth paying the price.”

“Or,” Derian added with all the cynicism of a merchant’s son late come to politics, “she thinks she’s found a way to defer paying.”

“There is that, too,” Peace agreed. “Now, based on Melina’s treatment of Edlin and myself, I think Melina believes she has some indication of where the dragon is hidden.”

“The hot springs!” Edlin interjected. “That’s where we were directed to do much of our mapping these last few nights.”

“Correct,” Peace said. “However, now that Lady Elise has told us what Melina is seeking, I believe that Melina is misdirected.”

Elise hardly dared hope.

“You mean she’s on the wrong track?”

“I think so,” Peace said. “You see, any legends—especially in the older texts Melina must have been perusing—would say that the dragon is trapped beneath the Earth Spires. What Melina may have overlooked—indeed her actions seem to prove that she has overlooked—is that the Earth Spires is the old name for the entire city. It was only after the Restorer’s time that the lower city came to be called Dragon’s Breath…”

“For this very legend!” Wendee inserted triumphantly.

“True,” Peace said, “for this very legend. If Melina has been misled, then she is searching beneath the wrong part of the city. She thinks much of personal privilege. It would be antithetical to her nature for her to believe that such a valuable thing might have been imprisoned where any commoner might get to it.”

Elise’s hope was turning into creeping horror.

“You mean out here?”

“Yes,” Peace replied, “very near to here. I think that Aswatano, the Fountain Court where we go to market, is adorned with that remarkable statue for a reason. I think it may have been placed to commemorate where the Dragon of Despair was brought to earth, and where, so some say, the Star Wizard and his allies bound it.”

Elise suspected that her own expression was mirrored on the faces of her companions. Glancing from one to another, she saw fear, shock, and something like disgust. Why, they’d even drunk water from that fountain!

“I guess,” Wendee said, obviously trying to lighten the mood, “there was good reason for me to dislike that statue.”

Grateful Peace shrugged.

“Or not. After all, if the dragon is imprisoned there, the statue marks a prison that has been secure for several hundred years.”

Elise’s mind was already racing to the next step.

“Very well, if the dragon is there, what can we do? We can’t go poking around in broad daylight and the streets have become less than safe for us in any case.”

“We may need to risk the ire of the populace,” Peace said. “Melina is a persistent woman. How long will she leave you abroad now that you have made your intentions toward Citrine so plain? Surely as soon as Xarxius’s trial is ended she will find an excuse to demand your banishment.”

“I say,” Edlin added, “I seem to recall that Melina was pushing a bit, said something about time being important. Maybe that’s just because her hold on Apheros is threatened, but what if there’s some other reason, something to do with when the dragon can be freed.”

Grateful Peace nodded thoughtfully.

“I had forgotten that, Lord Kestrel. Melina’s need did seem rather urgent. However, whether that urgency had its heart in an ancient spell or in modern politics is immaterial. She is moving as swiftly as she may. Therefore, so must we.”

Firekeeper, silent to this point, cleared her throat. It was such an unaccustomed gesture—normally she spoke out bluntly without asking leave—that all fell silent.

“I think I know some things,” Firekeeper said stiffly, “and, yes, we must go for the dragon, and soon.”

Elise looked over to where the wolf-woman sat bolt upright and tense, eschewing even her usual arm about Blind Seer.

“Have you been holding out on us, Firekeeper?”

Firekeeper shook her head.

“No. Nightmares were all I thought. I have them forever, though I not remember them. These I thought were more of that, but now, after what Peace says, after what Doc did, I think I know something.”

“Whoa!” Derian got down on the floor next to Firekeeper and put a comforting arm around her. “Steady, Firekeeper. What did Doc do?”

“He made me sleep,” she replied accusingly, “and Blind Seer let him.”

The wolf did not look in the least abashed, though Elise was certain he understood Firekeeper’s accusation, but then neither did Doc. Both of them apparently felt that they had known better than Firekeeper did herself what was good for her.

“Go slowly,” Derian said to Firekeeper, his tone level and reassuring, full of a patience Elise suspected he did not feel. “Tell us exactly what happened.”

Firekeeper sat still and silent for a moment, then nodded.

“I have dreams since a long time,” she began, “but after I go into tunnels and get so hurt, then I start having other dreams—different dreams. In these dreams, I am talked to by the comet.”

The comet?
Elise longed to ask, but she saw the slight warning shake of Derian’s head and held her tongue.

“Comet tell me things I am troubled by,” Firekeeper went on, “things about freedom and stillness and captivity. I am very confused, for I think that comet want me to free it, but it promises terrible things to who frees it.

“Dreams grow worse,” Firekeeper continued, looking directly at Doc, “and are why I not sleep. When I sleep comet talks to me and I wake more tired. If I stay awake I am tired but I not have to listen to comet.”

Doc nodded, “I see.”

“But you want to make me sleep,” Firekeeper said, “and because I am tired my nose does not tell me what you give me and Blind Seer—who like you thinks I must sleep—he does not tell me either. So I sleep and am pushed down into sleeping and cannot wake.

“And because I cannot wake comet flies into my dreams and talk and talk and I cannot wake. Maybe because I cannot run this time I surrender to listening and looking. Before I am always trying to get away, but now I am as trapped as comet.”

Fleetingly, she looked sad.

“Maybe because of what the Healed One tell us, but this time I see comet is something other. This time I see that comet is a…dragon.”

Perhaps they looked disbelieving or perhaps the wolf-woman didn’t quite believe herself, but she hurried to justify this statement.

“I have seen what dragons look like, what people think they look like. Queen Elexa showed me pictures and there was inn along the road.”

Firekeeper’s posture remained defiant and Elise hastened to reassure her.

“I believe you, Firekeeper. Why shouldn’t you dream of a dragon after everything you’ve seen and heard? It makes sense, really.”

But Firekeeper was having nothing of easy reassurances.

“I did not dream of a dragon because of these things,” she said. “It came to me. It wants to be free, but it does not want to be freed.”

There was a confused silence which Grateful Peace broke.

“I think I understand you, Firekeeper, maybe better than you do yourself. The dragon is held and wants to be free, but it does not want to be freed—that is, it does not want Melina to break the spell that holds it. Am I correct?”

The tension that had been infusing every line of Firekeeper’s body fled so suddenly that Elise only became aware how extreme it had been in its departure.

“I think so,” the wolf-woman answered. “Comet tells me things like this, but I do not understand. I think maybe it is my own mind and heart talking to me.”

She looked deeply ashamed.

“I have feeled so trapped since spring came and Derian and I go to my pack’s hunting grounds only to find humans already there. I have feeled—felt—that the Beasts need me for this thing, humans need me for that thing. All I want to do is run free and have no one need me!”

Her voice rose to a shrill wail that reminded Elise for the first time in a long time that Firekeeper was probably several years younger than herself—that in human ways and the complexities of human needs she was barely a year and a half old.

Elise knew how her own new awareness of her position as heir to a barony and the responsibilities that role brought had weighed her down and shaped her, but that was nothing to Firekeeper’s weird position as the only person who could understand—and perhaps even love—two worlds so different that neither quite believed in the existence of the other.

But Firekeeper had never been much for pity—much less self-pity—and she shook herself as if to shed the emotion like so much water.

“But when Doc make me to sleep and sleep,” she said, and this time her glance toward Sir Jared held no resentment, “I realize that these dreams are not from my unhappy heart. Somehow, someways, this dragon is real and is talking to me. When I accept this, it can tell me things.”