The Princess's Dragon (37 page)

This human child did not faint when he approached. Instead, the little creature glared defiantly at him. It had long black hair and fierce dark eyes, and it raised its tiny chin at him. He glared back at it, irritated to find yet another annoyance on his doorstep and reached out to snap the chains and carry the diminutive beastly thing away. The creature shrieked at his claw and kicked it with one delicate miniature foot, collapsing in pain at the contact.

Tolmac shook his head at the little one’s defiance. What was it so angry for? It was invading his territory! He snapped the chain and gathered the human up in one claw, its slight weight barely felt in his massive claw. The child shuddered in fear, but did not let loose a single whimper. He glanced at it again, surprised that this one appeared even younger than the rest; so small it would barely stand taller than a hatchling. He sent it the same magic he used on the others, lulling the child to sleep. He then launched into the air to deal with this problem as he had dealt with the ones before.

Cycles later another youth appeared on his doorstep; only this one wore no chains and stood at the entrance to his lair, summoning him forth in fierce defiance. This young human stood much taller than the other, but possessed the same wild, black hair and dark, flashing eyes as the tiny child he’d just disposed of.

Tolmac sighed and came forward, stopping just before he stomped on the newest, nuisance and glared down at it. This one spoke, loudly and clearly, before casting a weak fireball his way. Tolmac was more surprised by the youth’s words than by the pitiful fireball that his body hungrily absorbed.

“You monster, you will claim no more virgins for your foul appetites. I will end your reign of terror and take vengeance for the death of my sister!” The youth fired several more fireballs, which also skidded along his scales 222

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and sank into his hide, charging him with even more magic. The human continued to exhaust itself with the only spell it seemed to know while Tolmac sought to open a link with its mind to communicate. He was startled when the link came through immediately; the youth had a clever mind and did not balk at the telepathic communication.

“What foolishness do you speak, human? I have taken no human lives this migration. If you keep that up, you will expend your own life energy on magic that is so clearly not working.”

“You lie, monster. You demand sacrifice or you will flood the valley with the burning wave, the red nightmare that flows over all in its path and kills everything it touches. You have already flooded us numerous times, though the elders have offered the tribe’s most beautiful and purest daughters as sacrifice to you, including the last one, my own sister. She was only six rotas old!” The youth seemed unfazed by the method of communication; his words came through, accompanied by grief, pain, anger, and frustration.

Tolmac couldn’t believe what he saw in the boy’s mind. What incredible nonsense was this? Sure, his magic kept the volcano from erupting, which was probably why the pressure released every time he left for a long hunt. He didn’t see the need to maintain any spells on it, since he didn’t mind rebuilding his lair and tunnels each time, but he’d never asked for any sacrifice. He’d long since learned the folly of eating humans—they tasted terrible, adorned themselves with all manner of sticky bits, and inevitably caused indigestion. He hadn’t eaten a human in ages.

“Who fed you these lies, human? I have demanded no sacrifice, nor have I eaten the children left at my door.”

“The elders have been told by their vision quests that the only way to stop the flow of the fiery death was to sacrifice a virgin to the monster that lived in the mountain that thunders. They have done so and none of the sacrifices have returned, so it is you who lies!” The youth stopped casting fireballs and indeed suffered for the great expenditure of magic. He slumped heavily on his wooden stick, a hopeless grief enveloping his features.

“Ah, I see. I was supposed to eat those hapless little creatures.”

“You make light of such an atrocity. They were just children, my sister …” The youth nearly choked with his rage and grief.

“I make light of it, as you say, because I have wasted my time transporting

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the young humans to a sanctuary of Vivacel over the mountain, when I could have simply returned them to their tribe and avoided all of this nonsense.” The youth paused, shook his head as if he wasn’t sure what the dragon just said, and then his face lit up with tentative hope.

“Are you saying that they, that my sister … is still alive?” Tolmac shrugged, sending an image of the temple where he’d taken the girls. The aging nuns there had been pleased to receive new novices and looked upon his arrival as a blessing of the goddess Vivacel. They wished to pass on their knowledge of resurrection and advanced healing. The girls would live a life of comfort and knowledge and possess the sort of power most could only dream of.

The boy appeared amazed, awed by his sister’s good fortune. He cried, and Tolmac sighed again, turning away to leave him, when he demanded, “Take me to them! I must see it for myself. I must be certain this is not a trick!” Tolmac turned back to the boy, amazed at his arrogance in issuing orders to a dragon. Tolmac believed he’d been very patient and forgiving to the youth for bothering him, and now the human thought to give him orders. Still, if it would get the other humans off his back …

Tolmac did take the boy, whom he learned called himself Ulrick, to the nunnery. Ulrick was thrilled to see his sister and all of the other girls. None of them wished to return home, though his sister offered to if he could not bear to be without her. Since they’d both been orphaned soon after her birth, he’d raised her himself. Now seeing her happier than she’d ever been, he reluctantly left her there, finding himself suddenly alone in the world.

Tolmac thought he would be able to simply drop Ulrick off and be done with the whole mess, but he hadn’t counted on the boy’s audacity.

“Is there no way you can stop making the mountain spew forth death?” the youth asked, determined to at least return with answers for the elders.

“I do not make the mountain erupt. I can stop it, yes, but why should I bother?”

“Because if you don’t, more humans will come and bother you, but if you do … I can go back and tell them that you will no longer threaten them again, and they will never send another helpless child your way.”

“And what about a foolish boy who believes himself a wizard?” Ulrick grimaced, embarrassed by how poorly his one magic spell, incredibly valuable to his people had affected the great dragon. “I will make sure that no 224

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one will ever bother you again; I will post warnings around your lair that no human must pass. I will see to it that it becomes law that this land remains forever forbidden to human trespassers.”

“Very well; I will make certain that the volcano does not erupt again, as long as no human enters my territory. But if any one of your humans invades my home again, then your people shall feel my wrath.”

“It’s a deal, great dragon. I will see it done.” The boy scurried off, his tall, slender figure leaping and climbing gracefully down the mountainside.

It wasn’t the last time Tolmac would see Ulrick. Indeed, it was only the first of many times. The boy didn’t consider himself included in the “any one of your humans” category, and pestered Tolmac relentlessly until he finally taught the boy some real magic just to give him something else to do besides bother Tolmac. Of course, rotas later, Ulrick repaid the favor and saved his life after he nearly died from his battle with the frost dragon. That healing changed Ulrick forever, and Tolmac still suffered some guilt over the incident.

It had been a long time since Tolmac thought of Ulrick, though the procedure that saved his life linked the two of them until the day Tolmac himself died. They had bonded like brothers, similar to a clutch bond, but Tolmac discovered that the blood bond with a human proved much more powerful—not to mention more intrusive and potentially annoying.

It was a fireball spell that awoke him. This one held far more power than the first one Ulrick threw at him so many rotas ago. It was a spell Tolmac himself had perfected, and it melted the ice around him and warmed his blood enough that he came awake to glare angrily at the man before him.

“Wake up, you old grump! Have you come here just to lie down and die?” Ulrick looked different from when he was a boy. His face and head and most of his body were almost entirely covered by blinding white hair, the change in his glorious black mane a side effect of the immense power he wielded. His black eyes twinkled in the small portion of his face still visible past that ridiculous beard he accidentally enchanted to life during an unfortunate experimental mishap and now refused to shave off because he feared he would kill it.

Most humans noticed only the white hair and purposely stooped form, failing to see that no creases marred his skin, and he still possessed the lean, powerful body and incredible height he had when he was a man in his prime nearly a thousand rotas ago.

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He waited impatiently for Tolmac to respond and grunted in irritation when the massive dragon turned his head away to close his eyes again. Ulrick hit him with another fireball, the tip of his elegant wizard’s staff glowing an angry red to reflect his own temper.

“You listen here; you had no right taking off on that poor girl like that! I’ve never known you not to fight for something you wanted, and judging by the way you nearly tore up the entire valley, I have to assume you wanted that girl something fierce.”

Tolmac turned his head, pinning the wizard with one red eye, his own flames stoked with rising anger. “It was your fault! You did this, all of it! You transformed her, didn’t you?”

Ulrick was unfazed; he’d witnessed many displays of anger over the centrotations. Tolmac would never actually strike out at him; the big dragon was full of fiery bluster but held a nobler heart than any hero in a bard’s tale.

“I did; I admit it, though I did not entirely plan what happened next.

Honestly, I was just hoping to teach the girl a lesson. She had the most unfortunate ideas, most distressing in one with her talent. I knew you wouldn’t harm her when she encountered you, but I didn’t anticipate what would happen next…” Ulrick paused at the glare Tolmac cast him. “Well, I didn’t. How could I predict that? What do I know of that sort of thing? Anyway, it all worked out in the end, except for your part, you overgrown swamp lizard! You have to get up and go back now!”

“Worked out? Worked out!” Tolmac had risen to his feet by now and towered over the wizard; the wind from his shifting wings blowing back Ulrick’s hair and beard, the heat from his anger melting the ice around him. “It did not work out, in case you hadn’t noticed! Sondra is a human!”

“Bah! Only on the outside. I know you wouldn’t have been fooled if she hadn’t possessed the spirit of a dragon, and a beautiful one at that. You saw it yourself; if she’d just been any old human you would have spotted her right away and you wouldn’t be lying here moping around now. And falling prey to that insidious water goddess, mind you. Besides, Sondra’s a princess. That should be good enough even for you.”

“Princess? Good enough—are you mad, wizard? Has the weight of the rotas warped your mind? She is human and I am a dragon! You cannot change that.”

“What? Of course I can! I’m a wizard. So can you, and you know it. You’ve 226

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done it before. By Morbidon’s bony jaw, you taught me to do it. I’ll just change her back into a dragon and all will be well. Once we have her back.”

“You forget about her human lover. Why would she want a dragon when she already loves a human? Wait—what did you mean by—”

“Ah, yes, Lord Derek—a fine man that one. That’s a tough one, but honestly, I still believe she prefers you to him. In fact, though I haven’t had a chance to ask her personally, I do think that she may very well enjoy being a dragon and it shouldn’t …”

“Wizard!” Tolmac’s roar cut into Ulrick’s monologue. The wizard stopped talking and looked up at the towering dragon.

“Hmm … yes?”

With a heavy sigh, Tolmac asked, “What did you mean when you said ‘once we have her back’?”

“Oh, yes, that’s why I came to find you, of course. Crazy bit of bad luck, that. Seems that she’s been stolen away. Don’t know where to, but since you have a bond with her, I suppose you could find her. That is, if you really want to …”

“Stolen away?” Tolmac felt as if the icy chill around him coalesced and stabbed right through his heart, freezing him from the inside out. “When, where, who dares take her?” he roared.

“I’m not entirely certain, but if you are going, I suggest you travel in a less conspicuous form. Ahem, I’m afraid that those who took her might be interested in the whole dragon thing. They may have wizards that know a thing or two about draconic wards and such.”

“I don’t fear those weak wards.”

“Yes, but, um—they may decide to use her as leverage to get to you once the wizards see what you are. Oh, yes, and you should hurry before Aquea returns.”

“Worried, wizard?” Tolmac grinned, a smile of glittering fangs.

“Ahem, no, of course not, it’s just that she has a nasty temper.” Tolmac grunted in agreement. He thought about what Ulrick wanted him to do and despised the idea but admitted to himself that it would be best to travel inconspicuously. Sondra was in danger and every minute he delayed could mean her death. Suddenly, it didn’t matter anymore whether she wanted him and life as a dragon. All he needed was to know that she was safe. He had to save her, even if it meant doing something he really hated.

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“Fine! But don’t get too used to this form; it’s gone as soon as she is safe!” The air around Tolmac swirled, the fires within his body blazed to an inferno that engulfed him, his wings folded around his body, and he melted, his shape shifting into a smaller, slighter form. When the lights of the fire faded away, Ulrick stood over a shorter, but by no means less deadly, man.