Mephisto made a gesture of indifference. “We all have somewhat clouded claims. We may be natural rivals.”
He was arguing the other case? What was his game? “If the assassin is none of us,” I continued doggedly, “we need to make common cause to discover him, and deal with him.”
“Why do you assume the assassin is male?” he asked. “It may have been a female who took out your father.”
If he was trying to set us back, he was succeeding. Rose quickly stood up as if discovering a tack in her chair, and I felt a clutch in my gut that wasn’t from the food. “What do you know of this?”
“I have a certain interest,” Mephisto said. “Because I am also a target. My retainers were against admitting the two of you to my presence, but I felt it was best to be direct. I have researched each and every assassination, including that of your father. I do not know whom the assassin may be, but merely point out that the evidence is inconclusive. That person was clearly trying to frame the princess herself.”
“Me!” Rose exclaimed, stepping close to him.
Mephisto eyed her speculatively. “I gather you were not informed about that detail, my dear. The woman who took out mister Quigley looked very much like you, and so you also are a suspect.”
“Me!” she repeated, reddening in anger.
“We spoke of candor,” he reminded her.
She dived at him. It was not an attack, exactly. Instead she kissed him fast and hard. I would have cautioned her, but it had not occurred to me that she would do this at this stage. Now the fat was in the fire, maybe. She had delivered the love-slave kiss.
Rose drew back. “And what do you say now?” she asked.
Mephisto smiled. Then he reached out, caught her about the middle, drew her down so that she was across his knees, and spanked her smartly on the bottom. “Bad girl,” he said.
My jaw literally dropped. Bemused, I could only watch as she scrambled back to her feet, glaring at Lord Mephisto. “How dare you! I am the princess!”
He laughed. “As you can see, your magic did not affect me. It couldn’t.”
“That’s impossible,” she spluttered. “How could you resist it?”
Then I caught on. “Because he is your father,” I said.
She was astonished. “You can’t be!”
“Perhaps you should assume your natural form now,” I told Mephisto.
“Perhaps I should,” he agreed. He shimmered, and became a lean man with piercing blue eyes and a long beard.
“Uncle!” she exclaimed.
“Father,” he corrected. “Now that the secret is out.” He glanced at me. “You are sharper than I anticipated. I had not meant to reveal that aspect.”
“It’s my business,” I said gruffly. Then, to Rose: “You can’t enchant him with magic he taught you, and even if you could, it would make no difference, because he is already your love slave—a very different kind of love, a father’s love—and has been since your birth. He is not the assassin.”
Evidently bemused, she focused on a detail. “Then what are you apologetic about?” she asked him. “You come to me in my dreams.”
Mephisto looked away briefly. “I prefer to avoid that particular issue.”
“No!” she said furiously. “You have humiliated me and I demand satisfaction.”
“It’s a fair case,” I said, almost amused.
He sighed. “So it is. It is because your mother was the queen. You are a bastard, and I can never forgive myself for inflicting that status on you.”
“The queen,” she echoed, stunned. “Bastard?”
“There is more illicit sex than royalty likes to admit,” Mephisto said. “The king had affairs, and so did the queen. With me, in fact...and perhaps others. We generally don’t talk about such things, but we do keep track of the royal lines.”
“My father was the child of the king’s mistress,” I added. “Sent to Earth for his supposed safety.” I looked at Mephisto. “You are of his generation; why did you stay here?”
“I was not threatened at the time.”
“Until the assassin caught on that you were the king’s son by yet another mistress,” I said, taking a calculated guess.
He nodded. “True. But by then I was able to protect myself.”
“But then you had an affair with the king’s young second wife. Your father’s young second wife, in fact.”
He looked away. “It was more complicated than that. She was my girlfriend first; I wanted to marry her. But the king had an eye for her, and she was flattered and went to him. Then it turned out she was already pregnant, and she died in childbirth soon after becoming queen. The baby was spirited away, to avoid embarrassment—Princess Rose, in fact—and I did what I could to help my daughter, unable to admit my true relationship to my little girl. Later the king got lonely and adopted her, knowing her origin, and of course I did not protest. She had a better life than I could give her. But I always loved her and sought to protect her in what indirect ways I could.”
Rose resumed her seat. “My father,” she whispered to herself, “was, in fact, my grandfather. I...I never knew.”
“We all felt it best that you remain innocent,” Mephisto said.
“All?” I asked alertly. “How many people were in on the secret?”
“Four. The king and I, Dubi, and Matron. All dedicated to the welfare of Princess Rose, the most likely heir to the throne.” He glanced at me. “I do not want the throne. I want my daughter to have it. You will not find the assassin among us.”
“What of the princess herself?” I asked. It was cruel, but I had to clear this. I wanted to believe in her innocence, but that business with my father had to be cleaned up.
“Never!” Rose snapped.
“You were not there with my father?” I asked her directly.
“I was not!” she said.
“Will you look me in the eye and repeat that?”
She was at a loss. “If I do that—”
“I will have power over you,” I said. “But I will know.”
She came to a decision. “I will do it. Then I will kiss you. Then we will have power over each other.”
“Whenever you’re ready,” I said evenly, though I knew this was a crisis point. Yet that woman with my father...yes, I had to be sure.
She came to stand before me. She gazed into my face. I gave her the love stare. Or tried to. I still wasn’t entirely sure how to do it, exactly. She blanched. Then she leaned down and kissed me on the mouth, and I felt our lips fairly crackle with magic energy. She was giving it her all, and it was potent as heaven and hell.
“There are other matters,” Lord Mephisto said, and I realized that I had briefly lost consciousness. Rose was now sitting on my lap, her arm around my neck. We were both hopelessly in the thrall of love. But now I knew one thing: she was not the assassin. I had seen into her core and fathomed her innocence. She had seen into mine similarly. Love might have been a heavy price to pay, except that we had been heading there anyway.
“Other matters?” Rose asked, lifting her head.
“Three, in fact,” Mephisto said. “First, as we know, we need to get serious about discovering the real identity of the assassin. Second, there is the dragon, Fiera.”
“What about her?” Rose asked.
“Did you think she came from nowhere? That she’s a natural dragon? She is a transformed sorceress the king arranged to protect you. She surely knows far more than she has told you, and it is time to learn what it is, because your life may depend on it.”
Rose was silent, taken aback.
“And the third thing?” I asked.
“I have a certain magic sense.” He smiled briefly. “It does run in the family. I know, to an extent, when a given person is alive or dead, particularly a friend or relative, even if I am not with him at the moment.”
He had interpersonal magic, not a kiss or a stare, but an awareness. I could believe it. “Who is alive or dead?” I asked.
He
paused briefly, then said, “The king. I should have felt it when he died; he is, after all, my father. I have not felt it. I suspect that he is still alive.”
Rose and I stared at him. “But I saw his body,” she said.
“You saw a body. Remember, he is the master of the dolls. It could have been a life-sized doll in his image. Those things can be made accurate even to internal organs. Dubi would have kept the secret. So would Matron.”
“But why?” she asked.
“I think I can answer that,” I said. “The king had—has—the same priorities we do. Mainly, to find the assassin. If in two generations the assassin remains active, it is obvious that more needs to be done. So maybe the king arranged to seem to die, thus removing himself from the picture and putting the issue of the inheritance of the throne at the forefront. The assassin has to act quickly now, or he will forfeit the throne by default. This should smoke him out. It is one bold play.”
Mephisto nodded. “That is the way I see it. But I still have no idea who the assassin is.”
“And you think Fiera the dragon might know?” I asked.
“She is thoroughly telepathic, and absolutely devoted to Rose,” Mephisto said. “She knows the king and his situation. She might have been one of his mistresses before transforming. She might have information that she herself is unaware of, that we could interpret to identify the assassin. It’s a weak path, but perhaps the best we have at the moment.”
“It’s a lead,” I agreed. “And it’s time to get on it, before the assassin strikes again.”
“It is time,” Rose agreed grimly. Then she glanced smokily at me and half smiled. “Dear.”
And that was another situation that needed to be worked out, one way or another. Love was one thing, but as she had said, there’s a lot more to royalty than that. For one thing, what good was love, if one or both of us died?
Chapter Eleven
Mephisto had a portal similar to Dubi.
“There are a few such portals in the Realm,” he explained, as he led us to a room in a turret high above. Or maybe it was a castle keep. What the hell did I know? I was just a private dick from Los Angeles.
Anyway, there was another such archway—similar to the one in Dubi’s potion room. Also in this room were paintings, and these were of Mephisto himself, many of them showing his hunting prowess. In one, he was standing over what might have been a bear, an arrow projecting from its heart region. There was also another painting of the great dragon, what Rose had described as the Dragon King. In this image, the great dragon was laying waste to a great army. Dragon King indeed.
The room also appeared to be another potion room, of sorts. Although not as profuse as Dubi’s, it was clear that Mephisto was no slouch. The man must certainly practice his share of magic, whatever that meant, since I wasn’t exactly sure how magic worked.
“Many of the castles and fortresses are built over the portals,” added Mephisto. “It makes transportation easier for royals and nobility alike, not to mention escape when and if the castle is under attack.”
With that, the once-solid wall beyond the archway dissolved into an open grass field. Beyond, I recognized what was the princess’s less foreboding castle.
Princess Rose gave her father a final, curious look. Curious, at least to me. Was that regret in her eyes? Sadness? Or a silent signal?
Either way, both nodded subtly, and together we slipped through the portal.
We might as well have walked through a normal doorway—and not a magical one. With a simple step we were through the portal and standing in the field. I turned quickly, but saw only an endless expanse of gently blowing grass...and a quickly descending dragon from above. I gasped.
It’s just me, human, thought Fiera.
Indeed, Princess Rose clapped once and rose up on her tip-toes, holding her hands out to the rapidly descending dragon. They shared a private exchange, and I was reminded again of how much my world had been changed, when I watched a woman I cared for—heck, loved—nestle with a flying serpent.
I’m not in Kansas anymore, I thought. Or Los Angeles.
Once girl and dragon had been re-united, and greetings warmly expressed, I asked Fiera if we could ask her a few questions. The dragon looked at me sharply, snapping its triangular head up from where it had been nuzzling the princess, reminding me very much of a horse and her girl.
The dragon paused and I knew it was scanning my thoughts rapidly. I kept them open for now.
Its great head seemed to nod once. I guess the cat is out of the bag, she said, and I nearly smiled at the use of the popular American idiom, recognizing that it was Dubi’s translation magic at work.
You were once human, I said.
It nodded again, a very human gesture, then lowered its long neck. “Climb aboard, and I will tell you about it on the flight back.”
“Climb aboard?” I asked, but Princess Rose was already throwing a leg over the dragon’s narrow neck.
“Sit behind me, love,” she said, patting the spot directly behind her.
I worked up some nerve, reminded myself that I was a fearless detective, and swung a leg over the dragon’s slender neck. Slender, yes, but incredibly strong. I felt it tense beneath me as the creature lifted its head.
“Hang on!” shouted Princess Rose, and I did, wrapping my arms tightly around her narrow waist—and trying to ignore just how perfect her body felt—even as she curled her own arms around the dragon’s scaly neck.
With that, the great beast ran forward on lumbering, slightly awkward legs, then beat its wings once, twice, and soon we were air born. But not by much. We flew low to the ground at first, brushing the tall grass, as Fiera, I suspected, adjusted to the added weight. Then with the flapping of her mighty wings we gained altitude. A good thing, too, as the surrounding forest was rapidly approaching.
I instinctively raised my legs as we just clipped the tallest trees and soon we were racing into the sky. The nearly-hysterical laughter I heard was my own, as this was thrilling beyond anything I could have ever imagined. I was flying, flying. Just a few days ago—or was it earlier today—worried about my alimony payment, and now...
Now I was flying.
And holding tightly to a woman that I now loved more than I had ever loved another woman. Yes, it was the enchantment at work, certainly, but the feeling was already there. The enchantment only flamed it to life.
Below, the ground sped by. Vibrant green forests, open meadows, rolling hills. A river snaked below, and also a winding road that cut through the countryside...all leading to the castle which rose up before us, far ahead.
I was a sorceress once, said Fiera, her words appearing in my head. She had waited, I suspected, for my own thoughts to calm down from the rush of flying. They surely hadn’t calmed by much, but certainly enough to listen to her.
When? I asked. I suspected Fiera was relaying my own thoughts to Princess Rose, so that we could listen in to the telepathic conversation.
Just prior to Rose’s birth. Lord Mephisto was right in one sense, but wrong in another. I was a mistress, yes, but not of the king.
Who then? I asked, feeling as if I were prying. Then again, that’s exactly what private eyes do: they pry, asking the uncomfortable questions. But I knew the answer just as I asked it. Lord Mephisto, I said.
Very good, Detective Roan of Earth.
I was confused. He thought you were most likely the mistress to the king.
He thought wrong.
Then why would he suggest such a thing if, in fact, you had once been his mistress?
A good question to ask Lord Mephisto.
Surely he knows we would learn the truth, that you were, in fact, his mistress...and not the king.
Not necessarily, said Fiera.
She flapped her wings hard and we shot up through a low hanging cloud and burst above it. The dragon’s wings flapped calmly, smoothly, powerfully. Below, the Realm disappeared beneath a sea of foamy clouds.
Help me underst
and, I said, wondering what Princess Rose was making of this.
I’m as confused as you, came Rose’s reply.
Apparently, Fiera’s open line of communication was working on many levels.
Let me explain, the dragon responded. Yes, I was Mephisto’s lover. One of his many lovers, in fact. I taught him the magic that he uses to this day. I loved him, but he did not love me. He had love for only one other.
The queen, I thought.
The dragon nodded. Indeed. She wasn’t yet queen yet. She was a royalty, yes, the equivalent of your duchesses. She wasn’t the queen until the king married her.
When the king stole her from Lord Mephisto, I thought.
Indeed. The king was not aware, of course, that his prized young queen was already with child.
With Princess Rose, I thought.
Correct. He was, of course, furious when she showed early signs, proof that the young babe was not his. He banished her from the kingdom...and that proved fatal to our young queen.
I heard Princess Rose gasp, for we were, after all, speaking of her mother...her deceased mother. I squeezed her comfortingly.
The young queen was beyond the care of the realm’s finest physicians—and even Dubi could not reach her in time. When her birth came, unexpectedly early, she perished. The babe lived, of course.
The babe had grown into a beautiful woman, I knew. A woman presently in my arms. Rose was silent, and I respected that.
Lord Mephisto’s anger knew no bounds. His hatred for the king was nearly overwhelming, and that’s when he enchanted me, to not only watch over the babe, but to watch over the king himself. And the Realm.
And report back to him, I added.
Indeed, Detective Roan.
Which is why he felt confident that you would give us any information he wanted you to relay to us, thinking you worked for him.
He was confident of this, yes.
I didn’t know much about magic, but I was getting the hang of this. I thought: Lord Mephisto is unaware that you have broken the spell.
Recently broken, Fiera corrected. Lord Mephisto had hoped to mislead you.
Why? I asked, but suddenly knew the answer. I nodded. Because he killed the king.