As dawn cracked the sky, Mave went into one more enactment, panting her desperate fulfillment. “Oh Sir Roan!” she gasped. “It will take me weeks to recover from the force of your plumbing, and years to stop dreaming of it!” Then she got up and limped away.
I loved Princess Rose, but now I also loved Mave. What a woman!
I dropped off to sleep at last, knowing the dragon strength was still growing. Mave had gotten it fairly started, and now it could continue on its own.
An hour before noon, I awoke. No one had disturbed me. Mave must have told them to stay clear, bless her again. I changed smoothly into dragon form, then back to human. I was ready.
I first went down and met with Dubi. Once finished, I went to the central courtyard. I had said aloud that I thought I would be protected because I would be evoked in a public place with many spectators. That was deliberately naïve. I knew the assassin would strike regardless, contemptuous of all except the weak nascent Dragon. A crowd had gathered for the event. Mave was there, looking slightly disheveled as if unable to recover completely from her sexual workout. Marvelous!
Wordlessly I stepped out with her, the princess, Dubi and a handful of heavily armed guards. On with the show!
Chapter Fifteen
It was a glorious day for an evocation, words that I never thought I would say. Or think. But here I was, with the sun shining high above, standing within a castle courtyard, a heaving, excited crowd waiting for me to transform into, of all things, a savior dragon.
Life is weird, I thought, as I looked out over the growing crowd. Word had gotten out that the Dragon King would be making his first public appearance. I likened this to be similar the Second Coming in my own world. Except, of course, I was no son of God.
Just a dragon, apparently. I shook my head at the craziness of it all. Last week I was following cheating spouses. Today I was the Dragon King.
Maybe, I thought. But I was still hired to do a job. To find the assassin. Yes, the king wasn’t dead. But my father was dead. And his death, I was certain, was linked to all of this.
They killed him, I suspected, because they thought he had been the Dragon King. They were wrong, of course. The dubious honor fell to me.
Undoubtedly, the assassin had realized his or her error. The Dragon King hadn’t been the king himself, nor my father—both of whom the assassin had killed, or so he or she thought in the case of the king.
Now, of course, the assassin was after me.
Yes, I thought, let the games begin.
I kept my mind closed from the telepathic dragon, just as I had commanded Mave to do. No one must know the plan. Rose was by my side, smiling. Dubi was nearby as well, hands behind his back, looking uncomfortable. Guards stood guard everywhere, keeping the rowdy crowd back. But it wasn’t the crowd I feared.
No. It was one lone assassin.
He—or she—was out there somewhere, biding their time, waiting to put an arrow in me.
Princess Rose reached out and squeezed my hand. I squeezed back. She smiled at me and frowned a little. I quickly released her hand, lest she become suspicious and blow my cover.
Now Mave reached up and put her hands on my head. My heart raced. For the first time, I felt nervous. What if I had miscalculated? What if the assassin wasn’t here?
He had to be. Or she had to be. My every instinct told me he or she would be. The assassin would stop the evocation at all costs. He or she would stop the Dragon King’s manifestation. Something would happen. Something would happen now, before the evocation. I was sure of it.
The crowd cheered, heaved, a sea of excited humanity. My heart raced, too. I felt Mave’s warm hands on my head. Time seemed to stop. I held my breath.
“Wait!” shouted a voice.
I turned my head at the voice. A familiar voice. It had come, of course, from Princess Rose herself. She was pointing a crossbow at my chest.
“Rose,” I said, but that’s as far as I got.
The bolt was loosed, plunging deep into my heart. The pain was intense, but mercifully brief, and I crumpled to the ground, one hand on the bolt, one hand reaching for the princess. I looked up for a moment or two. I looked deep into Rose’s eyes. She was not the Rose I knew and loved. She was hard, cold, bitter. Indeed, she nearly looked like another persona altogether.
And then my heart collapsed, and my eyes shut, and I breathed my last.
* * *
The courtyard was thrown into pandemonium.
I watched all of this from above, as spirits are wont to do. The guards, confused, were ordered by Dubi to fetch the princess, which they dutifully did. Guards, princess, Mave, Dubi and my lifeless body were all swept into the castle throne room, where the massive doors were thrown shut and sealed.
I drifted into the court room, as well, high above, watching all.
Outside, the crowd was in a wild panic, and I didn’t blame them. Their Dragon King had been killed before their eyes. Undoubtedly they knew that an army was waiting in the north, an army that would now descend upon them, perhaps killing all.
Yes, I had surely flushed out the killer, but I had not expected it to be my sweet Rose, whose love spell still clung to my dead heart.
Princess Rose was dragged through the courtroom, where she was deposited unceremoniously at the feet of Dubi the magician, the king, her father. Thus far, only she and myself, and perhaps Matron, knew of Dubi’s disguise. Still, Dubi could not hide the disappointment and regret in his voice.
“Why, Rose?” he asked, his voice full of anguish. “Why did you do it?”
She said nothing, not at first. I watched from above, curious.
“What did you hope to gain, my daughter?” he asked, and at that he transformed into the king. The guards gasped. One or two stumbled back. The king held up his hands. “Be still, my guards. Yes, your king is alive and well. All will be explained soon enough. For now, we have a traitor of the Realm to contend with. My own daughter.”
Outside, the crowd still shouted. I might have smelled smoke. They were getting rowdy.
The king stood over his daughter, his face clouded with disappoint, confusion and shame. “So it was you? It was you who put an arrow in my heart. Have I not been good to you?”
Still, Rose did not speak. She was trembling now. A great shadow swept past the throne room’s window. Fiera. She was circling the castle, and would, I knew, do all she could to come to the princess’s aid. I watched as Mave slipped out of the room, and up a side flight of stairs. Good idea. Things were about to get very ugly, I suspected.
“What do you have to say for yourself, my daughter?” demanded the king.
“Do not be too hard on her, my old friend,” said a deep voice from the shadows.
Like everyone else in the throne room, I snapped my head around. It was Lord Mephisto, of course. Two of the guards, recognizing him, instantly loosed two bolts in his direction. Mephisto casually waved his hand, and the projectiles clattered harmlessly to the floor.
The flying dragon, I realized, hadn’t been so much as circling the castle, watching over her mistress, as depositing Lord Mephisto here, in the castle, thus bypassing the magical wards that kept the enemy away.
“And why shouldn’t I be hard on my traitor daughter?” asked the king. He strode carefully out into the throne room. Guards all trained their weapons on the intruder wizard, but all present knew such weapons would have little impact.
Mephisto now stood before the king in the center of the throne room. Princess Rose watched from the far end, still on her hands and knees. She was weeping. Most importantly, the coldness in her eyes was gone. The Rose I knew had returned.
From the rafter high above, I finally spoke. “Your daughter was under a spell, my liege. As she had been for some time. Perhaps ever since her father—her real father, Lord Mephisto—first visited her in the orphanage.”
All heads looked up, including Rose, who gasped. It was she who spoke first. “Sir Roan? You are not dead?”
The ki
ng grinned. He had been, of course, privy to my ruse, since it had been one of his magic dolls that had been cast into my likeness. And not just my likeness. With the king’s considerable magic I had been able to animate the doll from afar. I could feel what it felt. Hear what it heard. It was a remarkable feat of magic that had exhausted the king, and would only last a short time.
Lord Mephisto, no fool, caught on instantly. “A fake, of course. Very clever, my king.”
“Your plan to kill off the Dragon King has failed, Mephisto,” said the king. “Give up now or die.”
Rose’s real father grinned. The guards trained their weapons on him. The shadow of the dragon passed by the window again. It was circling the castle.
“You would like that, my liege,” said Lord Mephisto. “You would like having me give up so readily, when I have worked so hard to steal all that you love, just as you stole all that I loved.”
The king said nothing, only regarded the tall man before him sadly. Rose was now on her feet. She was looking up at me. I saw the pain in her eyes, the sorrow. I winked at her. Mave appeared on the upstairs rafters, panting slightly, and looking beautiful. Yes, she had definitely stolen some of my heart last night.
“There is an army amassing in the north,” said Mephisto. “An army that I have painstakingly aligned with—”
“The Shadow Stealers,” said the king, nodding. Both men were now circling each other. “You sold your soul and kingdom. For what? Petty revenge?”
“Much more than that, my liege,” said Mephisto, and with that a great crack of lightning erupted from the man’s hand. “They have taught me the dark arts, as you can see. They only asked for one thing in return.”
“Destroy the Dragon King,” said the king.
Mephisto grinned wickedly and looked up at me. “And I see that I have failed, which is a problem.”
“Because you have already informed the Shadow Stealers that the Dragon King is dead.”
“You are smarter than you look, my liege. Now, I must finish the job!”
And as he spoke these words, something exploded through the Throne Room’s stained-glass windows. It was the dragon, Fiera, and she was coming straight for me.
It was then that I realized the dragon had never been fully free of Mephisto’s command. I had been fooled.
I turned to Mave. “Invoke the dragon. Hurry!”
Chapter Sixteen
Mave reached precariously for me on the rafter, ready to put on the show. She knew I was already the Dragon King and didn’t need her help at this point, but she was adept at playing the role I had assigned her.
Too late. Fiera reached me first, her jaws opening wide to take me in. Trapped on the rafter, I could not escape her. She would hold me with her teeth, and breathe out just enough fire to roast me without further harming the castle furnishings. Obviously Mephisto did not want the castle damaged more than necessary, as he expected to govern it, with Rose as his puppet princess.
I did not even try. I let the dragon’s teeth close on my flesh. There they halted, encountering my invulnerable skin. She could not hurt me. Her eyes widened in amazement.
You have the power already! she thought.
“Indeed,” I answered her verbally. “You are in my power. If you doubt it, try to open your mouth.”
She tried, but it was locked in place. She had been trapped by her own eagerness to dispatch me. I am caught, she confessed.
“Now yield to me.”
I serve another, she thought with regret.
I drew my gun. “Now I could plug you through the brain,” I said conversationally. “But you have been helpful to me in the past, and I’d like to have your loyalty in the future. Yield to me now, quietly, and I will spare you.”
I cannot. Now she was hurting, and aspects of her pain were leaking out telepathically. The geis on her was too great. She was magically bound by a power beyond that of any ordinary dragon.
I considered briefly. I didn’t want to kill her; Rose would be saddened. “Then I must do it the hard way,” I said with my own regret. And without pause I blasted her with my Dragon King powered telepathy, which was a magnitude greater than hers. It bashed away her mental defense like straw and ripped open her mind. In seconds she would die if I did not ease off.
Then I paused. Her mind was laid out before me like the entrails of a split-open carcass and I saw something that amazed me. I grasped it instantly, though it covered years.
The attack on my father had not been by a person emulating Princess Rose. It had been by Rose herself, under the same spell that had just caused her to shoot my doll emulation. She was in the thrall not merely of Lord Mephisto, but of the sinister mind of the ruler of the Shadow Stealers that governed him. The deal Mephisto had made with the Shadow King was no recent thing; it dated back decades, and now at last was coming to its dreadful fruition.
But it was more than that. The princess, posing as a distressed client, took my father’s own gun from the desk drawer and fired it at him. He had never anticipated such a thing from a seemingly innocent and lovely young woman. Her aim was imperfect (that would change thereafter) and the bullet did not kill him; it lodged in his ribcage. But the wound was enough to fell him, and he dropped to the floor, bleeding copiously. Her job done, the princess quickly departed, with no memory of the event.
But it did not end there. Mephisto appeared, carrying what I recognized as one of the king’s life sized voodoo dolls. It was made in the image of my father, except that it bore no bullet wound; it looked as if it had been mysteriously poisoned, or perhaps even had died naturally. Mephisto lifted my father’s body telekinetically, making it float, and laid the doll in its place as the blood evaporated. Then he and the body vanished.
Still it did not end. Fiera knew, and therefore so did I, now, that my father was transported to the Northern Kingdom of the Realm, where he was magically healed. He was told that the princess was on the way to usurping the throne of the Middle Kingdom (no relation to any ancient Chinese empire on Earth) and would in due course murder her adopted father and take over. Roan Quigley Senior, my father, had been targeted because he was the bastard son of the king, in line to inherit the throne if no fully legitimate heir was available. Now he was needed to take back the Middle Kingdom when the evil princess finally made her move. To that end he trained as a leader, and came to command a great northern army. He could not strike as long as the legitimate king was in place, but when the treacherous adopted princess took over, it would be time. That was projected to be about a month from now.
To ensure victory, Mephisto had enlisted the aid of the Shadow Stealers. These were largely invisible, unknowable entities who dwelt in an alternate dimension. They had no physical presence, but could take over the bodies of physical folk by first inhabiting their shadows, then gradually infiltrating the body. This took time, and was not done indiscriminately, because if the subject caught on too soon he could readily banish the intruder with a simple exorcism spell. Princess Rose’s shadow had been occupied when she was but a child. She was a creature of the Shadow Stealers, but did not know it, and normally they left her to her own devices. So she was herself except when there was an emergency; then she was a foreign agent with deadly intentions, who could, I realized, heartlessly utilize torture or brutally kill. Contrary to what my father was told, the real Rose was not a schemer and not the enemy, and she had not killed anyone of her own volition. She, like Fiera, was governed as convenient by the Shadow Stealers.
Mephisto intended to put Rose in power, as the puppet. But Mephisto himself was a puppet of his supposed allies, the Shadow Stealers. It was a devious, decades-long project. Fiera knew all about it, but could not tell anyone, though she had her misgivings. Her job was to protect the physical princess, not the mental one, and at times that really griped her.
Then the king, suspecting something, had made a genius ploy and faked his own death. That had prompted immediate action, and the princess had come to collect the next likely he
ir, me. Because my father had turned out not to be the Dragon King, I was, by default, the best remaining prospect. The true target being the Dragon King, as I had surmised, because nothing less could stop the Shadow King from taking over, now that his time had come.
All this I read in an instant, while the ongoing action seemed to freeze around us. Now it was time to act. I banished the Shadow presence from Fiera’s mind with a flick of my will, and put her back together. “Now you serve me,” I told her with certainty. “Go guard the princess.”
But she remains in thrall to the Shadow.
“Don’t tell her you know.” I could banish her Shadow, but at the moment I had a more dangerous enemy to deal with, and delay might be costly.
She reoriented and glided down to join Princess Rose. I saw that Boffo Bandit had made his way to her also. She would be well protected.
Mave had paused. “They know you’re the Dragon King already,” she said. She had a certain sense about such things, unsurprisingly.
“That’s right. No need to continue our act. I do appreciate your readiness, however. Our deal remains: First Concubine, Royal Bastard. Climb back down to the floor.”
She looked down. “I’m not sure I can.” I knew her problem: she had climbed up in a fit of urgency to help me. Climbing down was another matter.
I smiled. “I will help you. Relax.” I reached out and lifted her with my mind, floating her gently down to the floor. I saw several men looking up, admiring her shapely legs under the flaring skirt as she descended.
“Thank you, sir,” Mave called as she landed. Then she glared around at the peeking men who had taken advantage of her situation.
Meanwhile, I oriented on Mephisto. I took hold of his mind and banished the Shadow presence there, as I had with Fiera. In the process I saw that he had in effect framed himself, planting the clues we had followed to identify him as a leading suspect. He had wanted to be suspected, then vindicated as I saw the shallowness of the evidence. Nice counter-intelligence, really.