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20

CHARLIE

T he morning after the Thimble Race, Rohree woke me, fed me, and bade me get dressed.

“And be quick about it,” she said. “The princess is waiting.”

My head throbbed for want of coffee and a cigarette, but I dressed as speedily as I could, grabbed the oilskin bag with my notebook inside, and followed the sprite.

One arm of the palace grounds extended toward the sea, and as I followed the sprite down the stone path, the manicured gardens grew more wild. Tangled brambles and vines replaced the roses and hydrangeas; rocks and boulders replaced the perfectly trimmed lawns. Off to my right rose the waterfall Essa and I had stood atop during our tour of the city. Its falling plumes filled the air with a pleasant mist and left a rainbow hanging against the sky.

The path ended in a building so ancient, at first I took it for a hill overlooking the sea. When I looked closer, however, I saw that it was in fact a hill-shaped stone building, four or five stories high and very broad, made of vast slabs of wine-colored granite, with windows the shape of a cat’s iris. Strange runes and carvings covered the walls, though most had been obscured by moss and lichen. I’d never known magick before, but just seeing the place sent a flicker of electricity down my spine that seemed unnatural—in a most exhilarating way. But that was nothing compared to the feeling that went through me when I saw Essaphine standing near the entrance, waiting for me.

She’d shed her leather armor in favor of a blue dress the color of forget-me-nots. In the morning sun, her changeable hair took on the color of hammered gold. She stood with the perfect posture of a dancer—or a royal— but her eyes were cast down in a way that made me think at once of the queen her mother was and the little girl the princess must once have been. The wind off the sea whipped her hair and her dress, giving her the look of a figure on the prow of a ship, or a car’s chrome hood ornament.

I didn’t realize I was staring until Rohree nudged me from behind.

“Go on, then.”

I approached Essaphine, one thumb tucked into the strap of the oilskin bag slung over my shoulder. I neared her, but her eyes remained trained on the ground. It allowed me another moment to stare at her. I found myself wanting to memorize the curve of her cheek, the shape of her nose, the bow of her lips.

So you can slap it later, right? I reminded myself. Because she is the enemy. And the minute you’re not useful, you can be damn sure she’ll feed you to that silver dragon of hers.

This voice of reason in my head sounded alarmingly like Kitty’s, which was a jarring reminder that I was, in fact, engaged. All this was a role I was playing. And at my earliest convenience, I would fly back to this place and bomb it to dust.

Still, for now, I had to play the part, and I approached her.

“What are you looking at, your majesty?” I asked.

She pointed and I following her gaze to the dirt. Ants were swarming from a hole in the ground, carrying pieces of leaves to and fro.

“The ants,” she said absently. “I envy them.”

“You’d like to have legs the size of an eyelash?” I teased—probably because I was looking at her eyelashes. God, they were so long.

She smiled. “I never imagined your people could be funny,” she mused. “With your bullets and your tanks and your olive-colored uniforms. You seem like a very unfunny people. But you’re funny.”

“Thank you?” I said.

She gestured to the ants. “What I mean is, the ants always complete their work. Always do their duty. Even if a foot is about to trample them, they won’t step out of line. They are perfect, even until the moment they are crushed. I have never felt perfect.”

Her hand went to the stump of her arm, hugged it to her body.

Several times I had wanted to ask her what happened to that arm. Was she born that way? Was it an accident? But she looked too vulnerable now. I was afraid if I asked her a question that personal, she’d clap shut like a book and I would lose this moment.

“Congratulations on the Thimble Race,” I said.

“Thank you,” she said. “But I’ll have to do better than that if I want to live…”

Her eyes found mine. Today they were a pale gray, like a rain cloud when the sun is trying to burst through.

“Come,” she said, brightening. “I have dragons to show you.”

* * *

The princess led me through a triangular hallway so narrow we had to walk single-file. Torches flickered on the walls on either side, rustled by an ever-present wind that made the hollow, eerie sound of a sea-shell pressed to one’s ear. Just when I’d begun to imagine we’d be walking through an endless series of tight spaces, we emerged into landing overlooking a vast hall, at least twice as large as the “A” hanger at the McNally Air Base. Dozens of dragons filled the space. Some were snuggled together, dozing. Others wrestled and snapped at one another like puppies, or prowled like jungle cats in the Ironberg zoo. A series of arches lining the far wall opened toward the sea, and dragons were constantly leaping out to take flight or swooping in to land.

“This is where the dragons come when they’re feeling social,” Essaphine explained. “Below us are seventeen stories of catacombs. Each dragon has their own chamber—a series of interconnected caves overlooking the sea. Supposedly, the place was constructed by the first riders and their dragons over ten thousand years ago.”

I gave a low whistle, my eyes ranging up to the ceiling, which was shaped like an inverted step-pyramid. I searched for words, but there was really nothing I could say. I was looking upon a wonder of the world.

The princess gave me a mocking smile. “What? You’re not jotting down any verses.”

“I’m a reporter,” I reminded her. “No verses, just facts. And at the moment, I’m a bit lost for words…”

A great, purple beast took flight and wheeled overhead. It gave forth a burst of flame, lighting up the whole room and sending a wave of heat washing over us.

“Although a place like this might inspire me to write some poetry…” I said.

Could a well-placed bomb on the roof of this building collapse the whole thing? Bury the dragons? End the war? That was the sort of note I was really considering jotting down.

“Come. I’ll show you Othura’s chamber,” Essaphine said.

I followed Essa down a broad staircase to the floor of the hall. The smell of dragon hung in the air, a bouquet with notes of ammonia, vanilla and wood smoke that was peculiar but not entirely unpleasant. More worrisome were the beasts frolicking and lumbering all around us. Most were so large that a misstep could easily have hurt or even killed us. We made our way to the center of the room without incident, although two or three dragons did turn their huge eyes on me in a way that made me decidedly nervous. A round hole in the floor loomed ahead, and as we reached it, I saw a spiral staircase leading downward. It was so small in the scope of the entire room that I hadn’t noticed it from above, but it was wide enough that the princess and I were able to descend side-by-side.

I thought I’d be relieved leaving the ruckus and chaos of the dragon social hall behind, but the hike down this dark stair made me more nervous still. I was in a dragon lair. The princess could lead me into any chamber, ask a dragon to devour me, and I’d be gone in a heartbeat.

The temperature dropped as we descended, and the roars and shrieks were replaced with a ponderous silence underscored by the constant howling of wind and a breathless hush that made my hackles rise.

“I thought I might get my surprise today,” the princess said. “The one you and Clua are preparing?”

I hadn’t heard back from the dwarf yet. I could only hope she was truly working on the gifts we’d planned for Essa…

“It’s not quite ready yet,” I said. “Soon…”

“That’s too bad,” she said. “You’ve piqued my curiosity. What gift could you give me that would be worth risking your life?”

“You’ll see.” I cleared my throat, ready to change the subject. “So, you and that fellow Braimar are allies, then?”

Judging from the ferocious look the princess gave me, it was the wrong thing to say. “What makes you say that?”

“Well, the two of you came over the finish line together. And...”

“And Ollie said something, didn’t he?” she shook of her head. “Braimar and I were sweethearts once. Some men think what was once theirs is theirs always.”

“But you don’t… feel that way about him anymore?”

Essaphine wrinkled her nose. “If you outgrow a shoe, do you keep wearing it, or do you throw it away?”

I smiled. “So he’s an old shoe, eh?”

“Not at all,” she said. “Old shoes smell better.”

We both laughed and the sound seemed to wash away the foreboding I’d felt a moment before.

We continued our descent, the staircase opening up periodically to reveal huge hallways running off to either side. At the third such opening, we exited the stairwell and proceeded left, down the hall. On our right, we passed a series of doorways, each of which revealed a huge chamber that was open on the far side, overlooking the sea, so that if it were viewed from the other side, I imagined the place must look like a vast honeycomb.

Some of the dens we passed were empty. In others, dragons slept, the sounds of their snoring at times enough to vibrate the stone underfoot. A few of the dragons we passed sat on their haunches like dogs, gazing out of their caverns at the sea.

“So this is where dragons live…” I wondered aloud.

“When they’re not knocking your country’s planes from the sky or torching your soldiers on the battlefield—yes,” she said. “Have you ever seen a dragon’s egg?”

She gestured to one of the chambers. Covering its floor was an array of oblong eggs, each about the size of a large cantaloupe. There were many different colors and textures, some speckled, some striped with swirled patterns like a snail’s shell, others as plain as a common chicken egg. A narrow aisle with piles of eggs on either side went down the center of the room, and Essaphine led me down it.

“You could make a hell of an omelet,” I said, taking it all in.

Essaphine gave me a look, but I didn’t miss the curl of a smile at the edge of her lips. “Female dragons usually lay one egg per day,” she said. “And there are a lot of dragons here.”

“How many?” I asked, knowing this was a question the military brass would surely ask me.

“A hundred and fifty, at least,” she said. “Although only a hundred are bonded to riders.”

I heard a grunt, and saw two men clad in gray robes working at the end of the chamber, where it opened up to the sea. As I watched, they each picked up an egg and tossed it out, off the cliff. A second later, I heard the eggs crack on the rocks below. The men stooped, picked up another egg each, and chucked those off as well.

“What are they doing?” I asked.

“Making the omelets,” Essaphine teased, then knelt over one of the eggs, beckoning me down, too.

“See?” she scraped a thumb nail over the shell. A dark substance sloughed off, building up on her thumb nail and leaving the egg shell bare.

“It’s Egg Blight. A fungus,” she said. “It infects all the eggs laid here and kills the baby dragons within. The tainted eggs must all be destroyed to keep the infection from spreading.”

I looked up to the men toiling at the edge of the room again, frowning as they hurled another pair of eggs onto the rocks below.

“That’s why the hatching grounds at Rograd Point are so important,” she went on. “There are only two places in the world where dragons roost and lay their eggs. Here and there. And only the ones hatched there survive.”

I suddenly understood why the Skrathan had fought so ferociously over that rocky peninsula on the northern shores the Isle of Dorhane. Maybe the brass already knew about the hatching grounds there—but if they did, I hadn’t heard about it.

Take Rograd Point, destroy the eggs there, and the dragons will go extinct, I thought. The intelligence I was gathering right now was top notch. I could almost feel the general pinning a medal on my chest.

“Sad to think of all these dragons dying,” I said, nodding toward the gray brothers chucking the dragon eggs. Part of me even meant it. As much as I hated the creatures, their majesty was undeniable. And there was something about Essa’s dragon, Othura, that I liked. “Isn’t there some way to wash the fungus off?”

The princess gasped. “You know, in the ninety years we’ve been dealing with this problem, we’ve never thought of that. Thank the Star Father you came here to share your incredible wisdom with us simple people!”

“Okay. You’re being sarcastic...” I muttered.

The princess smiled, nudging me with her shoulder, “Well, at least you understand sarcasm. It’s more than I can say for my mother, the queen. Come, poet,” she breezed past me, back toward the hall. “There’s more to see.”

* * *

I followed the princess into a chamber that was smaller than some of the other’s we’d passed, but also cozier. It was the only room we’d passed that had human décor. Rugs lay upon the floor and art on the walls. One painting depicted fancily dressed courtiers at a ball, another of a pair of dragons soaring together into a sunset sky. Another was a whimsical portrait of three cute puppies.

At the center of the space Othura lay, her long body curled upon herself like a coiled serpent, her chest expanding and diminishing with slow breaths. She seemed to be sleeping, but when I looked again I saw her orange eyes on us. As we entered, she lifted her head and gave us a look filled with every bit as much intelligence as a human’s.

“I’ve missed you too, my love,” Essaphine approached Othura’s gray head and stroked her between her huge orange eyes. In all my life, I doubted I’d ever get used to seeing someone acting affectionate with these killing machines. As if she heard my thoughts, the dragon looked to me. Her eyes narrowed.

“Well, why not bring him here?” Essaphine said. “I’m supposed to show him all the most impressive places in the kingdom. This place is awfully grand, don’t you think?”

The dragon huffed.

“Is she really talking to you?” I asked.

The dragon’s tail had reached up and idly wrapped itself around the princess’ arm, the way two girlfriends might hold hands.

“Of course,” she said. “And she can hear my thoughts, too. I was just speaking aloud for your benefit, to be polite. But dragons don’t speak words in the same way you and I do. It comes through as feelings, at least at first. But the more time a dragon and their rider spend together, the more precisely you’re able to interpret each other’s communication, so in the end, the communication feels like speech, and it’s just as accurate. More accurate, really.”

I rubbed my chin. “More accurate than speech? How?”

The princess shrugged. “Well, speech often does a poor job conveying emotion. Imagine seeing someone beautiful across the room. You feel drawn to them. You want to speak with them. You feel suddenly like you’ll die if you don’t make the leap and talk to them. And yet along with that sense of longing is an equal feeling of dread that they’ll dismiss you. This commingling of emotions ignites a feeling of excitement that seems as if it will set your insides on fire. It takes a lot of human words to convey a feeling like that. But a dragon can convey such a feeling to their rider in an instant.”

I nodded. “It must be an incredible sort of intimacy to share a mind with another being like that.”

“It is,” Essa said. “And that’s one of the reasons your country will never defeat ours. Your aces may be skilled. They may even love their planes. But a machine can never love its operator. It is written, the living will always defeat the dead. That’s why our dragons will defeat your war machines in the end.”

Tell that to my Sackman Comet when I’m strafing these catacombs with my machine guns, I thought.

The dragon’s orange eyes narrowed again. She gave a low growl.

Involuntarily, I shuffled back a step.

“What is it?” I asked.

The princess stroked the dragon’s tail, watching me just as intently as her beast was.

“Othura says you are unconvinced. And you’re hiding something.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but could find no clever words. What use was there lying to a creature that could catch glimpses of my thoughts? I wondered if real spies—like Kitty—were warned not to keep company with dragons for just this reason.

“Don’t worry,” the princess went on. “Dragons are very intuitive, but she can’t read your thoughts the same way she can mine. Your secrets are safe.”

“I have no secrets,” I lied, giving a wan smile. “Just an overwhelming desire to not be eaten.”

“No secrets at all?” Essa tsked. “That’s disappointing. Anyway, I wouldn’t worry. For some reason, she’s taken a liking to you.”

“What about you?” I asked.

For a second, she looked startled by the question. Then she cocked her head, a ghost of a smile on her lips. “I haven’t made my mind up yet.”

Just then I heard the sound of a low bell ringing in the distance. Then, a horn sounded, this one deeper than the one that had played during the challenges at the Cauldron.

“The Theyrune horn.” The princess’ brown furrowed.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

But she was already running up Othura’s tail and leaping onto the dragon’s back. “We are called to battle. Return to your room. I’ll find you later. Go back up the way we came.”

Before I could answer, Othura leapt out of the cave and into the air. With a flap of her wings, they were gone, leaving me alone.