Dragon's Pet
a Dragon's Bait (author Vivian Vande Velde) fanfiction by Tripleguess
Genre: Fantasy/Drama
Rated PG-13+ for violence and violent references
November 2009
Summary: The female of the species is more deadly than the male. [Dragon's Bait fan fic]
Jump To...
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
It was a small castle, as castles went, and a little decrepit. Alys was glad of the fact. Small meant that the great hall wasn't impossible to heat in winter; decrepit meant that no one had been around for a long time, and thus the secret that had become her identity would go undetected.
She admired the fireplace even more now than when she had first seen it in the fall, when the nights were just starting to chill. It had been built long ago by engineers from the far north, and the stonework was arranged just so to reflect heat back into the room instead of funneling it straight up the chimney. After she'd managed to string a few of the old tapestries across this end of the room to keep the warm air in -- with help, of course, as the ceiling was yards above her head -- the fire needed only a few logs to keep the area a bearable temperature.
A great, low-pitched creaking signaled that the double wooden doors at the other end of the room had swung open. She didn't bother looking up from the fire when a cold breeze bowed the flame tips. She knew those heavy steps, knew the slight scrape-tap whispers of razor sharp clawtips, the drag of dead weight.
She threw another log on the fire and pulled the furs closer around her shoulders. They were nice furs; heavy bearskins, rimmed with wolverine fur to ward off frost. Winter was fast entrenched outside the doors, and she was no match for it in her own skin.
"Cold?"
She let the wolverine fur drop just an inch or so from her face to avoid eating the fine hairs, but she didn't turn around. Cold as it was, one would think he'd have found some furs himself before starting a conversation, but the chill didn't bother him. Just another reminder of how comparatively frail she was. "Oh, no. I'm quite roasty, thank you."
Silence. The hint of a sigh. Soft, light footsteps padded off, to return a few minutes later with the slap of leather sandals. "Will you talk to me now?"
She turned around willingly. In his peasant's outfit, he'd have fit right in at the village far below the old castle. Well, except for the fact that he looked more like a lord. "I can't believe you caught something in this weather."
He shrugged. The dead ox bleeding out beside him would have bothered her once, but she had learned to see only an absence of hunger in those piles of flesh and hide. There was a single, efficient slash across its jugular; the animal had died quickly, without pain. "I didn't. It's more like I... borrowed it."
"Selendrile!" She lunged to her feet, half tripping on the furs. "Don't tell me you stole that ox from some poor farmer!"
He was already laughing at her. She huffed and sat back down with her back to him. Pitifully, it was the worst she could do.
"If you consider three times a steer's worth in gold to be theft on my part..."
"Don't you have anyone else to bait?"
"The ox wasn't much of a talker." He went to the kitchen and returned with two knives. She accepted one and climbed up on the ox's still warm belly to begin the messy task of butchering. One boon of the frigid weather was that nothing hung in the pantry would spoil. They had to hack the stored meat with axes to get a piece off -- unless Selendrile was in his true form.
She wasn't sure why he chose to butcher meat with her as a human. Maybe because it gave him something to do for a few hours during the dark, boring days of deep winter. Maybe because they could talk as they worked, even if it was beneath a golden dragon to have conversations with a scrawny girl.
Well, not so scrawny, she acknowledged to herself as she shifted position to avoid crushing her bust against the ox's shoulder blade. But if her landlord had noticed her developing figure, he hadn't mentioned it. That was just fine with her. He was enough of a pain as it was.
"Is this enough for you?"
She squinted at the morsel he was dangling between his fingers. "Are you kidding? That's not enough for an alley cat."
He carved another piece, a ridiculously huge one this time, and held it up. "How about this?"
"That should keep me til March." She blew a stray lock out of her face. "Sel, how many meals have we eaten together?"
He shrugged, setting both portions aside. "A year's worth?"
"Do you really think my appetite varies that widely?"
"You never know."
She crossed her eyes and gave up. His playing-dumb moments were almost as annoying as his superiority-embodied airs. And, as she'd discovered over the months, the quickest way to stop his games was refusing to play.
Sometimes, though, she welcomed the chance to have an argument; anything to assuage the monotony of living hibernation. In her father's village there'd been indoor games, sleighing, storytelling, and hot community meals. Here, there was just the castle library and fighting with Sel. And so he kept picking at her, knowing that sooner or later she'd give him a rise.
But she didn't feel up to it tonight. After a few more leading comments, in response to which she buttoned her lips, he gave up and carried the butchered cuts downstairs. There they would hang on hooks and freeze solid until needed. You could break a walnut open with the frozen steaks. She'd taken a chip out of the antechamber's plastered walls once, throwing one at Selendrile. It had rebounded to the floor and shattered, and he had laughed at her for missing.
There were days when she felt like she would shatter too -- but with exasperation, not brittleness. Living with a dragon was harder than she'd anticipated. She remembered Goodwife Margaret saying that boys grew up slower than girls -- not outside, but inside. She believed it. Sel was far older than she, in dragon years at least, but he could be as arrogant and self-willed as any youth. She fetched buckets of ice water from the indoor kitchen well and splashed the blood away down the drainage grate.
She was curled up with a book by the time he'd come back, having braved the dash through two unheated halls and a flight of stairs to get it from the library. "What's this word, Sel?"
He leaned over her shoulder, his ponytail brushing her cheek. "Mo-nog-a-mous," he said, sounding the word out not for his benefit but hers. "It refers to the practice of having only one mate."
"Oh," she said, blushing. She sank further into her chair and wished she had picked a different book. Normally she would have referred to the dictionary -- a treasure unearthed from the very bottom of an obscure shelf -- but she dared not get it out in front of Selendrile. He'd taught her to read willingly enough, and he usually gave her accurate definitions for the words she didn't know, especially if those definitions would embarrass her. But he resented that dictionary. The first time she'd used it in his presence, he'd said nothing, but the thick book was gone from its place the next evening. She'd finally found it down in an oubliette under the dungeon, having guessed that he would hide it somewhere hideous where she'd be reluctant to poke around. He was unwilling to destroy the book, but it became the center of a silent tug-of-war, with first one and then the other finding and re-hiding it.
In a way, she supposed, it was just another game. But she enjoyed it more than the arguments. She just hoped he never got mad enough to end it for good. One hot breath, and he'd be in charge of her literacy once again. She savored having a measure of independence in one area at least, however insignificant it seemed compared to the matters of food and shelter.
"I want to go to the village tomorrow."
He threw himself down on the other couch and stretched. "What for?"
"I'm almost done with this book."
He grinned. "I thought it was your brother reading them."
She shook her head, hearing the echo of an old argument. "Well, you do read them, don't you?"
"Read them all already." He rolled over indifferently and reached for his carving knife, taking advantage of the litheness of his human form. A chunk of seasoned firewood was slowly taking graceful shape under his hands, growing more defined with each passing evening. "I still don't see why you couldn't tell the shopkeeper you wanted them."
She didn't believe him. Yes, he'd had several of her lifetimes in which to read, but one look at that shop had convinced her that no one could read all of those books. And the great cities, he'd told her, had book stalls and libraries far bigger than that, with thousands upon thousands of scrolls and parchments and illuminated manuscripts. Besides, she'd seen him paging through the books she favored when he thought she wasn't looking, as though to keep tabs on her thoughts. "Girls aren't encouraged to read in this country. You know that."
"So? You're not the only exception."
"Sel, I'm living with a dragon. That's weird enough. I don't want to attract unnecessary attention."
"But why your brother?"
"Because..." she groped for words. It did seem curious, even to her. "Because I don't feel so much like I'm lying when I say brother and I'm thinking about you."
He blew a fine shower of sawdust off his sculpture. "You could have said your father wanted them."
She winced. "I'm sorry, but there's no way I could say that with a straight face."
He looked at her. She returned the look evenly, then went back to her book. It didn't matter than he was centuries older. To her, he was still a young man, not nearly old enough to be her father. And her father was dead. She shivered.
She heard Selendrile get up. He padded off to the anteroom and returned to drape another bearskin around her shoulders. She felt buried in animal skins, but accepted the wordless gesture gratefully. It was as close to apologizing as Selendrile ever got.
Selendrile took her down the mountain in the morning. There among the foothills, near the only pass in this province that remained open during deep winter, a large village bordering on city prospered under the shadow of the castle that had once protected it. Alys wondered what the villagers would think if they knew what inhabited the castle now.
A thick coniferous forest clothed the hills around the village, contributing to its economy, supporting the lively sawmills along the river and energizing the trade vessels plying up and down between this and other cities. The forest also helped cover the dragon's comings and goings. They always stopped in the same clearing, one large enough for Selendrile to land but far enough from the village to be unobserved.
"Thanks for the lift."
Selendrile set her down on the snow. Alys took one step forward and disappeared. She came up sputtering; the snowdrifts masked a dip in the ground, and she'd walked right into it. She was sure Selendrile was laughing.
"Did you do that on purpose?"
He preened indifferently, stretching first one wing and then the other and running the edges delicately through his teeth.
Alys stifled the tirade kicking to come out and saluted him instead. "Nice one. Good trick."
She was rewarded with a glimmer of satisfaction when he stopped preening to fix one incredulous eye on her.
"You're not coming this time either, I take it?"
He went back to preening.
"I see." She pulled her cloak around her shoulders. It wasn't as cold down here as it was up by the castle, but it was still nippy. The late winter dawn had not fully awakened, and the village lights were still lit. "Well then, I'll be back soon."
She set off, leaving him there. The trees swallowed her and for a moment, everything looked the same. Despite the fact that it was morning, it was always dark under the pines. She would have lost her sense of direction without the twinkle of village lights through the tree trunks. She kept walking, thinking of Hansel and Gretel and their quest for a home that no longer wanted them.
Then the trees fell away and she was there, standing on the edge of the forest at the brink of St. Michael's. The gates were open, and bustling. Another river flowed daily in and out of St. Michael's besides its namesake; a river of people. Foot passengers, riders, and covered wagons streamed across the covered bridge and were swallowed among the trees as they followed the highway to the next major village. Some travelers would split off from the highway in just a mile or so to turn down narrow lanes that lead to homes or tiny villages that hardly warranted a name. Others would travel great distances, to the sea and beyond.
As far as she knew, she was the only one who came and went by dragon.
The river that gave the village its name was cold and dark now, speeding its way oceanward with chunks of ice on its back. She stepped carefully across the covered bridge, mindful of the ice patches that tended to form over the water, and passed through the great iron gates of St. Michael's. One of the guards, recognizing her, leaned over the battlements and waved. "Hey there, lass. More books for your scholar brother?"
"Right you are." She smiled and waved back at him. Since he was up there and on duty, it was safe to do so. Had he been down here, on the street, she would have ducked and run. Not all of the soldiers were monsters, but they did tend to read a lot into a smile.
This information she withheld from Selendrile. He might insist on coming with her or, worse yet, curtail her forays into the village. He wasn't bad company, as dragons went, but she craved the chance to get out of the castle and have a taste of normal life, to go shopping and make choices on her own. Selendrile, not surprisingly, wasn't big on shopping and didn't understand the draw all the little stalls held for Alys. He could have bought the village many times over.
She fingered the coppers in her pocket. He would have given her more, had she asked, but she liked to pretend that she was on a budget; that it mattered how much she bargained and how little she spent. What she didn't spend, she set aside for next time, and felt it more hers than the handfuls of gold available from Selendrile.
She turned off the main street and entered the Mazes, a labyrinth of narrow streets and stalls and two, even three-story buildings bursting with goods and services. A tinsmith hailed her. "Hey there, lass. A tin set of dinnerware for the lass and her children? A tin kettle for tea for her man?"
It wasn't an untoward assumption. Most women her age had two or three children already. Unless, of course, they'd died in childbirth -- a common fate.
She stopped. She didn't have a family, but the tinware shone alluringly. The tinsmith smiled encouragingly as she picked up a kettle, inspecting the seams. She felt an affinity for tin. Not just because her father worked it, but... because it reminded her of herself. In nearby shops with glazed windows were kettles plated with silver and gold. They would be handled with care, because they were costly. Tinware was just thin, shiny plates of steel and didn't have the glow of precious metal, but it was honest. It was what it was, through and through.
"This is nice work," she said. "Yours?"
"My son's." The man beamed. "I've been teaching him how, this last year or two. He caught on right quick. He's a bright lad, he is -- takes after his mother," he added modestly.
A lump formed in her throat. "How much for the kettle?"
"For you? Six coppers, an' I'll throw in a cup for free."
"Oh, no," she protested. "That's your work."
"An' ye complimented my son, that makes it all worth it." He pressed the kettle and cup into her hands.
He wouldn't be moved, so she finally thanked him and slid the tinware into her pouch, making a note to stop by his stall again. Kindness found her in the most unexpected places. She had tried to take up tinworking again, when she and Selendrile had settled into the castle for the winter, but simply picking up a pair of pliers to draw wire made her dissolve into tears. She was grateful the dragon had been out hunting at the time. Maybe someday she'd be able to take up her father's craft again without thinking of his death. In the meantime, she found solace in reading.
She stopped by a garden stall next. There were teapots aplenty in the castle scullery, and she felt no desire to buy one, but the bunches of herbs hung next to them had gone stale long ago. St. Michael's boasted hothouses, amazing little gardens covered in glass that allowed greens to be grown year-round. She bought some fragrant chamomile and a parcel of green tea after a fierce spate of bargaining, which both she and the clerk thoroughly enjoyed. They parted with friendly insults, their way of saluting each other's verbal adeptness.
Selendrile, Alys thought, would have eaten the woman and helped himself to whatever he wanted. The only person he enjoyed arguing with was Alys.
Though, to be fair, she'd never seen him eat anyone. He mentioned it often enough, and she was sure he was capable of it... in certain situations. But even Atherton had said that Selendrile contended himself with goats and the occasional dog. Then again, Atherton had also accused her of being a witch, which suggested something about his credibility.
Alys wriggled through the busy market crowd to one of the grander three-story buildings dotting the Mazes and escaped up the steps into her last stop: the bookseller.
Often enough, she was the only one in the building. Books were much pricier than the goods sold in the stalls, and there weren't enough scholars or clergymen to populate the shop all the time. When there were other customers, they were invariably men.
Today, though, a blast of perfume assaulted her nostrils as soon as she opened the door.
Alys spotted the source immediately; tall, stylish, clad in beautiful crimson furs that could buy half the village. A nameless caution tugged at her heart, and she drifted in among the tall bookshelves farthest from the counter, hoping to avoid the notice of the lovely stranger.
The click of boots sounded across the board floor, coming in her direction. Heart in her throat, Alys darted to the stairs and pattered up them soundlessly. Her soft leather shoes barely whispered against the wooden steps.
The second story held parchments and books in Latin and foreign languages. No one was ever up here. She darted between the shelves and raced up another set of stairs, exiting on the third floor.
She wasn't supposed to be here. This was where the shopkeeper kept blank parchment and binding materials, where scribes mixed ink and laboriously copied old texts onto fresh pages and stitched them up into new books. Far away, in the great cities by the sea, it was rumored that a substance called paper and a strange machine called a printing press were making new books available to anyone with a few coppers. Here in St. Michael's, though, everything was still written out by hand.
So this wasn't her domain; it was only for people who were welcomed in by the shopkeeper. But he was downstairs, minding the counter, and she was more afraid of the strange woman than of being shouted at by a mere human.
A mere human. Why did she think that?
She crouched behind a tall shelf stuffed with parchments and waited, willing her breathing to slow. The minutes crawled by to the beat of her heart, stretching out longer and longer until she was sure that the woman had lost interest in whatever it was that had attracted her attention to Alys and gone home.
Yes, surely, she had left by now. But still, Alys went back down the steps as quietly as possible. Not just so the woman wouldn't hear her, but so the shopkeeper wouldn't suspect that a peasant girl had been poking around on the third floor.
All in vain. When she hit the bottom of the stairs, the stranger was standing there as if waiting. She was looking straight at Alys.
"Ahhh..." To Alys's surprise, the woman closed her eyes and inhaled. "To think, after all these centuries, I'd smell that scent again here..."
She open her eyes, hard green emeralds, and smiled warmly, but not at Alys. "It's on you, isn't it? You're drenched with it. You're Selly's little pet."
Alys felt as though her heart had turned into a frozen ox steak. She was afraid it would drop on the floor and shatter. She might have doubts about how Selendrile felt about her, but she rated a little higher than the steers did, surely. Hadn't she saved his life?
Who was this woman, and how did she know about Selendrile?
"Now, little girl. I know how Selly loves his books, so finish picking some out and let's go visit him. You and me."
Alys stiffened. The castle was hers -- hers and Selendrile's. There was no way she was leading this woman straight to it. "No."
Green Eyes closed the distance in a single stride, clamping an iron grip around Alys's throat. Alys's pouch thumped to the floor. She grabbed the woman's wrist to keep from choking and felt her heels leave the ground. There was no help for her; two or three tall shelves screened this area from the counter, and the books had a way of muffling sound. Besides, she had no doubt that this woman was armed and could easily kill the shopkeeper.
"Don't think for a minute that I can't find it myself," the woman hissed. She beckoned with her free hand, and a tall man with a bow slung over his shoulders stepped around the bookshelf and closed in on them. A cold, sharp prick grazed Alys's ribs, and she knew there was a dagger leveled at her guts. "Don't think I can't be there in just a few moments. My wings are as strong as any male's."
Wings. So she was a dragon. But Alys shook her head.
"You'll show me, or I'll have my own pet disembowel you." The prick turned into a sharp pain. Alys knew she was serious.
She also knew that she'd get disemboweled anyways, if she showed them the way. She could already see the thought in the woman's mind. Maybe because they were both female.
"Wouldn't that be ironic?" The dragon woman thought it was amusing. She smiled. "Selendrile's pet, gutted out by mine. Are you ready to talk?"
"I thought you said you could find it yourself." Alys wheezed, digging her nails into the flesh between the woman's knuckles.
The woman's expression hardened. "I can."
"Then why do you want me to take you there?"
A flicker of uncertainty crossed the stranger's face. It was gone in an instant, but being around Selendrile had taught Alys to read the minutest expressions. This woman wasn't nearly as pokerfaced as the golden dragon. "Why, because it would be rude to barge in unannounced."
"And dragons tend to eat uninvited guests," the tall man supplied wearily.
The woman dropped Alys to slap him. "Shut up!"
Alys scrambled to her feet, snatched her pouch and ran, expecting every second to feel those hard fingers grab the back of her neck. But nothing happened. She darted between the shelves at breakneck speed, drawing a confused look from the shopkeeper, and made it outside.
It was dark now, and it was snowing. She lost herself in the windings of the Mazes and flattened herself against the darkest wall of a nearby alley to catch her breath, thinking fast.
There was no way a dragon could be too slow to collar a scruffy little peasant. She was here because the dragon woman had let her go. It didn't take a genius to figure out why -- in fact, she'd already been told.
She wants me to lead her to Selendrile.
What to do now?
It could be that the dragon woman was a... friend... of Seledrile's, and there'd be no harm in showing her the way. Maybe threats and daggers was just how dragons talked to each other -- or, at least, to each other's pets. Alys winced at the term.
But was the dragon woman Selendrile's friend? Alys doubted it. There had been just a tad of desperation in her threats, and she didn't think a dragon would stoop to threatening a human if it had other options. It was not easy to read Selendrile, partly because he rarely seemed to want anything if not entertainment (hence their frequent arguments). But this woman wanted to find Selendrile, and wanted it badly enough to dirty her hands. It was hard to imagine a dragon doing that out of friendship.
Did dragons even have friends? In all her months with Selendrile, he'd never mentioned one. Unless Alys counted.
She shivered. Snowflakes were building up on her cloak sleeves, but they melted when a puff of wind nudged them into her face. This wasn't the time to be pondering whether or not she and Selendrile were truly friends. She had to decide what to do. Selendrile would be waiting for her at the clearing. If she went there, the dragon lady would surely follow her and find Selendrile. But if Alys didn't show up, Selendrile might come looking for her, which could be just as bad.
Or he might shrug and go back home to eat an ox. In dragon form this time. While the dragon woman's pet gutted Alys.
"Alys."
She jumped as a hand touched her shoulder, but it was Selendrile's voice, soft and husky.
"No!" She backed away frantically, though the damage was done. "Don't touch me! She'll find you."
"She?" He took her shoulder again and hauled her close, leaning down to inhale as though savoring perfume. Ah, of course; dragon woman's. "Who have you been talking to?"
But the question was rhetorical. If he couldn't smell as well as that green-eyed woman, Alys was an apple tart. "What are you doing here?" she parried.
"You were taking too long."
"Ah." Alys glanced nervously past him into the street. "I ran into a lady friend of yours." She waved a finger under his nose. "As you can smell."
"I don't have any lady friends."
"Right, I forgot." Alys smacked her forehead. "I don't count."
Selendrile was silent a moment. Digesting her sarcasm, or just gauging the weather? Who knew.
"It's getting late," he said at last. "Come on."
She trudged after him, following the trail he broke through the snow once they left town, and submitted readily to his claw-lift so she could get back home to a warm fire. She could feel bruises forming around her neck. If Selendrile wasn't worried, well then he wasn't worried. There was certainly nothing she could do to protect him from another dragon.
Back at the castle, he watched her empty her pouch. This ritual always interested him. Everything she brought back was a surprise.
"What's this?" He reached out to touch it.
"It's a tin kettle." Alys ran her hands over it lovingly. It was good work; the seams were tight and smooth. "You boil water in it to make tea and other hot things."
Selendrile puzzled over that. "There are kettles like this in the pantry, made from fancier metals. And others made of clay. Why did you want this one?"
He wasn't making fun of her choice, just satisfying his curiosity. "The clay ones are for brewing tea. Kettles are only for boiling the water." She patted the kettle, as though assuring it that it would be used properly.
"But there are other kettles."
"I like tin." Alys smiled. "It reminds me of my father."
Selendrile considered that. "Do you miss your father?"
"Of course I do. I loved him." Alys looked at him. "Do you miss yours?"
His mouth twisted. "My father got what he deserved."
"Ah." She let the subject drop. His expression said he didn't want to talk about it.
The tin cup emerged from the pouch next. She set it beside the kettle and drew out the bunches of herbs, shaking off pouch dust before laying them aside. She'd dry them by the fire and hang them in the scullery in place of the old stale ones. The pouch emptied, she got up and hung it on its usual peg in the wall. The tin cup went on the card table beside her sofa with her other odds-and-ends purchases -- a string of mussel shells from the sea, rough and dark on the outside and rainbow-webbed white on the inside; a small sewing kit for mending tears in her clothes; the tinsmithing tools that she couldn't bear to use, and a wooden cross on a leather string, because it had reminded her of Father Joseph.
This last had puzzled Selendrile to no end. "Why do people favor this symbol?"
Alys had struggled to explain. "It's... it's a symbol of love," was the best way she'd found to summarize it.
"I thought a crucifix was a method of execution." For all Alys knew, Selendrile had witnessed crucifixions.
"It is, but --" Alys searched her memories for scraps of Father Joseph's words. "Someone important once died by crucifixion in place of those he loved, and ever since then, for us --" she meant her village and the people in it and other villagers elsewhere who had teachers like Father Joseph -- "it's been a symbol of love. Love that doesn't stop loving even when there's pain."
Selendrile had eyed the simple wooden object. "I see," he'd said, in a tone that meant he didn't and that the problem was not intellectual.
"Don't dragons understand love?" she'd asked.
He hadn't liked that question. "We have no use for it," he'd said shortly.
"That's it?"
She was yanked back to the present by the dragon's voice. Selendrile had missed nothing. "Where are the books?"
"I didn't get any. Your lady friend, remember?"
"I told you she wasn't my friend." Selendrile frowned and reached for her throat. "What's this?"
She flinched, but he only brushed his fingertips across the purple blotches marring her skin. "You're hurt."
"Did I mention that she really, really wanted to know where you live?"
Selendrile sat back. "Did she."
"Oh yes."
Selendrile stared into the fire, expressionless. Alys couldn't tell if he was happy or sad or neither.
He was silent the rest of the evening. Alys, lacking anything new from the book shop, made a run to the castle library and got a book on tinsmithing. She read until the words blurred together in front of her eyes, then curled up under the bearskins and went to sleep.
When she woke, the dictionary was missing.
Selendrile was gone, out hunting. It was safe to look at the dictionary, to consult it for the meanings of dangerous-looking words she'd come across in her readings. But Selendrile, once again, had detected and moved it. She'd glanced in the direction of its hiding place too often last night -- but she'd have sworn that he was occupied with whatever thoughts kept him looking at the fire.
Obviously, she'd been wrong. She hunted under the sofa, behind the firewood. No luck. She grimaced and bundled up, then lit a candle, grabbed the longest fire hook on the hearth and padded down three flights of stairs to check the oubliette.
The oubliette was inside the dungeon, naturally; a dark, airless chamber that didn't smell too good in summer. Right now, winter had frozen the odors. Half a dozen oak-plank cell doors opened off of the main chamber, but the oubliette was tucked in the farthest corner from the door, next to a trio of wall chains. So doomed prisoners could contemplate their likely fate, perhaps.
The trap door was still unbolted from the last time she'd been here. It lifted reluctantly under her hand. She put the candle down so she could yank with both hands and winced as the hinges squealed. The oubliette yawned beneath her, dark and rank. If she fell in, she wouldn't be able to climb out again, so she was very careful about how far over she leaned.
There it was... or, at least, there was something dark and lumpy down there. Selendrile had wrapped the dictionary in oilskin the last time he ditched it here, so she wasn't discouraged by the mystery object's roundish shape. She got a good grip on a wall chain and fished for the lumpy thing with the fire hook. It snagged on the second attempt. She dragged it up into the candlelight.
It was a human skull. She grimaced again and rocked back on her heels, considering the mottled cranium, the broken teeth. It seemed disrespectful to throw it back in, but keeping it up here away from the rest of its body didn't seem right either.
"And who were you?" she asked softly. "Were you someone's pet too? Did they get tired of you and leave you here to die?"
The skull didn't answer. Somewhere in the darkness beyond her candle, a bat squeaked.
Alys shrugged to herself. There were broken windows down on this level, and the little mammals had found that the chilly interior of the castle was still warmer than the snowy crags outside, so they wintered here. Her candle must have disturbed one. She eased the skull gently back down into the oubliette. A lifetime ago, she'd been staked out for a dragon and almost burned alive by her fellow villagers. Bones and bats didn't bother her anymore, but she was getting cold.
The bat squeaked again, closer this time. She picked up her candle and reached for the trapdoor handle.
And suddenly there was a bundle of fur and claws in her face, squeaking indignantly. Alys hung grimly on to the candle, but it guttered out in one gust from the bat's wing. It was a big bat; that much she glimpsed before the flame went out and she was in darkness, teetering on the edge of the oubliette.
A hand struck her collarbone, and she felt the sickening sensation of falling. She swung the fire hook wildly; it struck something firm, and she had the satisfaction of hearing a muffled yelp.
It didn't last long. Alys slammed into the floor of the oubliette, her fall broken by her fur wraps and the dry bones of previous victims.
"Oh, dear. Looks like you won't be going anywhere soon." The voice was melodic, feminine and spiteful. If the fire hook had hit anything important, dragon woman wasn't telling. "You really ought to watch your step down here."
Alys, flat on her back, said nothing. Her head had struck the wall as she fell, and she wasn't sure she could move. The afterglow of the candle swam into red and purple blotches across the darkness before her eyes.
"This is lovely. Really. Oubliettes are much slower than disembowelment."
The trapdoor's hinges squeaked. Then it banged shut with a force that made her eardrums hurt. Alys heard the bolt slam home.
That's ridiculous, she thought through a haze of pain. I can't even reach the top, let alone push the trap door open. She didn't know whether to be grateful or sorry that the fire hook hadn't skewered her.
She tried to sit up, but the least movement of her neck caused a rush of nausea. She retched helplessly, which caused even more pain, but finally managed to wipe her face with her sleeve. Nothing like drowning in your own vomit.
Then she lay still, feeling human bones against her back, the wooden fire hook handle in her palm, the bite of the frigid air around her. She was grateful for the furs. Too bad she hadn't thought to pack a lunch, too. And a ladder. Oh, and a saw, too, assuming she could keep her balance on anything after smacking her head into granite.
"Selendrile," she whispered.
She wasn't worried about what the dragon woman might do to him. If that female wanted to fight Selendrile, Alys felt sorry for her. Well, Alys might have felt sorry for her if she hadn't just tipped Alys into an oubliette.
But Selendrile was her only alternative to dying down here, adding her body to all the other forgotten bones. Would he come looking when she didn't show up for dinner? Or would he shrug and go back to carving his block of firewood?
X X X
The hours crawled by. She measured time by the throbbing in her skull. It had bled; she didn't know how much. She considered feeling the back of her head, but decided against it. Instead she gingerly rolled her shoulder-length hair up into a ball and tucked it between the wall and the painful swelling, hoping it would slow the bleeding. Of course, if Selendrile didn't find her before she froze, blood loss wouldn't be an issue.
Would he even come back from hunting? Maybe he wouldn't catch anything tonight and would make his bed out in the wild to try again tomorrow. She didn't know if she would last until then. Or maybe, with a toss of his head, he'd decide that he'd have enough of being saddled with a frail human and take off southward, forgetting even her name, leaving her in this frigid castle to die and decompose.
In her heart, she didn't believe that. Selendrile wouldn't leave her behind. He'd had chances to do it before, and he hadn't. But maybe her heart wasn't being quite honest with her. She remembered girls from her village, girls dead certain this or that boy loved them, only to have their hopes dashed when he was caught behind a haystack with someone else. Hope could be a mighty influencer of belief. She badly hoped he would come find her, that she wouldn't have to die alone. And so she believed.
Selendrile's pet.
With nothing else to do, she set her feelings aside and considered the statement objectively. Being a pet wasn't so bad, was it? Lots of people were worse off. True, she was pretty much at the mercy of her... benefactor... but weren't plenty of other women in the same situation? At least Selendrile, for all his teasing, never asked for anything more than entertaining verbal sparring. Married women in this country had to put up with whatever their husbands dished out, and they didn't always have a say in choosing their partner. Maidservants in fine houses had it worse, if the men of the house had a lecherous bent. There were slave women and beggar women and women working trades Alys and her peers weren't supposed to know about. They suffered abuse and suffered childbirth and often enough died of it. She had bearskins and reading lessons and books and meat every day.
So it wasn't so bad, being a dragon's pet. Although she ached to be on equal footing with Selendrile, to have him acknowledge out loud that she had some worth to him, realistically... even if he didn't, she was better off than most women. If she could just get out of this hole in the ground, that was.
Towards the end of the day, according to her inner clock -- which was not to be trusted by now -- she began to fade in and out of consciousness. Dreams of St. Toby's and her father, of long-dead Risa and even her mother mixed with the sound of her ragged breathing. Sunlight on meadows in summers gone by dappled her mind; small festivals, humble meals, friendly calls back and forth as the men came in from their work in the fields and women and children ran out to meet them in slanting evening light. Alys felt a spreading warmth over her body and realized that she was starting to freeze. Freeze like the ice frozen thick on the rivers, freeze like the ice that cracked underfoot in the spring and vanished downstream, past daisies bobbing under wreaths of morning frost...
"Alys."
"Father?" Alys reached out feebly. "Father, is it you?"
"Alys." A shape came into slow focus; Selendrile, with a lantern, crouched up by the rim of the oubliette. How she'd missed the trapdoor opening, she didn't know. She must be worse off than she thought. "What are you doing down here?"
Alys fumbled for words, fumbled in the dirty straw beside her and came up with a skull. The same or another, she didn't know. "I found a diagram of a skeleton in a book." She wiggled the skull at him. "I wanted to know if it was accurate."
He knew she'd come down here looking for the dictionary. But that was all part of the game; never call the other player's bluff.
"You're bleeding," he said instead. "Are you hurt?"
"Oh, just a tad." She tried to sit up, whimpered, and gave up. "I can't get out. You might as well just close that and leave me here. I can't move."
He set the lantern down and dropped in beside her, bones and straw crunching under his boots. "She pushed you in, didn't she? I can smell her."
"I already told you," Alys said crossly, fiction and reality blurring in her cold-addled mind. "I jumped in myself looking for skeletons." She patted at the stuff beneath her. "And I found all these other pets. Pet skeletons."
"Pets are animals. These were human."
"I thought humans were beasts to dragons." She coughed. "I'm human. So I'm a beast to you. Aren't I? I'll freeze into a maiden steak and you can eat me for dinner."
Selendrile shook his head and picked her up gingerly. Pain flared and she panicked.
"No! No! Let go, I'm going to --"
She broke off and vomited all over his jerkin. Humiliation flushed a little warmth into her. She'd been sick once during the summer when she'd eaten some dubious mushrooms, and Selendrile (with interest) had seen her vomit, but she'd never been so sick that she couldn't clean up her own waste.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, hiding her face against a dry patch of his shoulder. "Great heavens, I'm so sorry."
To her everlasting gratitude, consciousness receded, hovering round the edge of her mind. Vaguely she felt Selendrile propel them both out of the oubliette, landing so smoothly that only a ripple of pain resulted. Eventually, the rhythm of his stride stopped. She felt herself being settled into thick blankets, with the hard edges of hot bricks from the fire barely discernable through the furs, and then the ground fell away and she heard the wind beyond her warm cocoon, and she thought she must be flying, only she wasn't, so it must be that Selendrile was taking her somewhere.
She slept.
X X X
When her eyelids fluttered open, it was to show her an unfamiliar room.
She stared through half-open eyelids, uncomprehending. The room was small, for one thing, and the walls were made of brick instead of granite blocks. The furniture, what there was of it, was sparse and austere; a plain washbasin, jug, no mirror. One chamberpot, purely functional, without the usual decoration to mask its purpose. The bed she occupied was hard and narrow, and the sheets were scratchy. Living under Selendrile's roof had spoiled her. At least there was a fire.
There was only one window, a small round one high up in the wall. By the light, she couldn't tell if it was early morning or afternoon. Or maybe it was overcast and clouds were smothering the noonday sun. She had no way of knowing.
She got cautiously up on one elbow and gauged the distance to the chamberpot. Her bladder was screaming, but she wasn't sure her head could handle being upright. She eased her legs over the side of the bed, evaluating. Her head still throbbed, but the pain was bearable. A brief exploration told her fingers that her head had been bandaged. Also that the area around the injury had been shaved.
"Not again," she grumbled. She'd let Selendrile cut her hair once, for disguise. Now she'd have to comb her hair sideways to hide the shorn spot.
No more grumbling, she decided. She was lucky to be alive.
She made it to the chamberpot, laid a fresh log on the fire, and tottered back to bed. Just in time; no sooner had she rearranged the blankets and settled down than the door swung open.
"Oh..." It was a nun, young and fresh-faced. Her wimple was crooked, and Alys could see that her head was shaved in the manner of nuns. "Oh! Sister Tabitha, she's awake!"
The novice darted off, leaving the door open. Cold air spilled in.
So, Sel had taken her to a nunnery. She wondered if he'd done it because he thought Alys would be more comfortable with women treating her, or because he'd known he could charm the nuns into putting both of them up. Her bet was on the latter.
An older nun swept in; Sister Tabitha, no doubt. The novice hovered like a nervous sparrow.
"You're awake, young daughter." Sister Tabitha sat on the side of the bed, evaluating Alys. "It looks like you're on the mend. You had us worried for a few days."
"Days?" Alys squeaked.
The novice nodded, eyes wide. "You slept for two days. It happens sometimes, with head wounds... some people never wake up."
"I see," Alys said. Comforting, that. "Thank you for taking care of me."
"Your brother has already thanked us," Sister Tabitha said, her eyebrows twitching significantly. "In gold, I might add. You are fortunate to have such a weal-- ehh, I mean generous guardian."
She didn't know the half of it, Alys thought sourly. "Where is my, um, my brother? Is he --"
"I'm here." Selendrile had entered the room without anyone noticing. The nuns fluttered and withdrew to give them privacy, but not before he knelt down and took Alys's hands solicitously. "How are you, dear sister?"
She wanted to roll her eyes, but decided to give him tit for tat. "I'm feeling much better, dearest brother." She patted his hands with a syrupy smile. "I don't deserve to be loved so much."
His benign expression wavered, and she hid a smirk. Score one for Alys. "Run down and fetch me breakfast, won't you? There's a sweetheart."
He touched her forehead. "Are you still running a fever?"
His hand was cool against her skin. She gulped. "No. No, I'm not. Stop touching me."
It was his turn to smirk, but there was relief as well as humor in his eyes. "For a minute I thought your brains had been addled."
"Who says they aren't?" she groused. "But I really am hungry."
"All right." He padded off.
He came back with a tray from the kitchen, shadowed by a few curious novices. "Here's your breakfast," he announced, handing it over with a smile at the gawking girls. They all blushed and vanished.
"Quickest way to get rid of them," he said more quietly.
"That looks wonderful." Alys accepted the plain bread and lentils gratefully. "Thank you. What time is it?"
"About noon. This is lunch. You're a late sleeper," he added.
"Oh."
"I'll be back later," he said, and headed for the door. "Try not to fall again."
"Selendrile."
He paused, one foot on the threshold.
"I'm sorry I hurled on you."
He considered that. "It's all right. Unless you did it on purpose." He looked at her. "Did you do it on purpose?"
"No, I did not."
"Good."
"Selendrile... um..."
He gave her a longsuffering look.
"Thank you for finding me."
He cocked his head, nodded, and took off. She didn't see him again until evening.
X X X
Alys felt so much stronger the next day that she asked Selendrile to take them home. The nuns were very kind, but she'd noticed some of them shooting questioning looks between her and her supposed brother. She didn't want them to start guessing as to why Selendrile's hair was light and Alys's a muddy blonde, or why he had chiseled features and she had soft peasant eyes and a turned-up nose. That she was a bastard child of some lord and Selendrile his true heir was the safest conclusion they could come to.
The she-dragon was waiting for Selendrile, standing brazenly in the shadow of the castle gates.
"Hello, there." She waved coyly as Selendrile landed in the courtyard. "My name is Stelera. It's been a while..."
Selendrile set Alys aside. Stelera's eyes sharpened as she spotted the peasant girl. She had not been expecting to see her, and was none too pleased at the sight.
"What?" Stelera put her hands on her hips; Alys wondered if she'd chosen to wear human guise so she could take advantage of that pose. Thankfully, the woman had her clothes on. Alys had had enough of naked dragons. "I thought you would have forgotten about her by now. Is your toy so important to you that you went looking for her?"
Selendrile stepped in front of Alys, who was happy to fade into the background. He let out a hiss that Alys had no trouble hearing as "She's none of your business." She'd had a fair amount of practice at translating his draconian sounds and dirty looks over the past few months.
"She's a she," Stelera hissed, enraged by the scent of another female. "That makes her my business."
Selendrile's next vocalization was icy. "Enter my territory again, and I'll kill you," as Alys understood it.
The accuracy of her translation was borne out when Selendrile reared, golden wings spread high above his shoulders as he threw back his head and hissed. Alys recognized it as a threat display. He'd done it before, when they'd bedded down in the wild and wolves or bears threatened their campsite. It always worked.
This time was no exception. Stelera flinched and backed away, transforming as she did. It was the first time Alys had seen the older female in dragon form. Her scales were a dark steely gray, her mane jet black. She was bigger than Selendrile, but lacked his ferocity. Alys remembered what the tall man had said, about dragons eating unexpected guests, and an old story told in her village that hinted at a dragon's favorite food: other dragons. She didn't doubt it.
Selendrile kept his wings extended as the grey dragon flapped away. Only when she was out of sight did he revert to human form. He was shaking his head.
"She's such a coward. I don't understand her."
"Duh, Sel." Alys looked away, not interested in learning any more about male anatomy than she already knew. Maybe Selendrile's inscrutability came from his gender more than his species, because Alys could read Stelera loud and clear. "She's crazy about you."
Bare feet crunched across dead leaves. "She's not the only female under the sun."
"Maybe not, but she's a dragon." Alys heard her voice catch. "And she's beautiful."
Gentle fingers touched her jawline, moved up into her hair. Alys held still as Selendrile explored the soft, shaved patch around her wound. Then he tipped her chin up so she would look at him.
"Beauty," he said, "isn't the only consideration when selecting a mate."
"Oh, for heaven's sake." She looked away again. "Get some clothes on."
Spring was coming. Slowly, hesitantly; but it was coming. Alys saw little signs of it when she ventured out of the castle. Snowdrops were pushing through the whiteness on the south side of the castle, splashing the drifts with their cheerful purples and yellows. Hibernating rodents ventured out of their burrows. The number of birds visible or audible at any given time tripled, and V-lines of migrating geese began to cross the sky, heading north.
She wandered outside one day when the air was still and the sun had had time to warm the courtyard. Birdsong drew her to the castle gate, and she stood there looking at the view.
The castle was situated on a rocky spur of the mountain. The spur plunged steeply down into dizzying valleys on every side except in front, where a spine of rock connected the spur to the rest of the mountain. Other mountains folded into the sky nearby, mountains that would be green with pines when the snow covering them finally melted.
A causeway stretched away in front of her. Once, it had offered a way across the tributary that wound around three sides of the castle; now, it was collapsed, cutting the ruin off from the path that led down the mountainside and eventually to St. Michael's. Only the birds and Selendrile could come here now.
There was a whisper of sound behind her.
"Sel."
"Mmm?"
Alys smiled to herself. She hadn't been sure he was there, but she might as well follow up with a real question. "I thought only gold dragons had magic. But Stelera can transform."
There was a long enough pause that she thought Selendrile wasn't going to answer. "Stelera doesn't come by her powers honestly."
"Meaning...?"
"It's not a pleasant subject."
Human sacrifices, maidens tied to stakes, dark rituals involving blood and torture -- all kinds of scary ideas flashed through Alys's mind. She was sure that Stelera would be comfortable with all of them. She let the subject drop.
They watched a pair of scarlet cardinals chase each other around the ruined support pillars of the causeway. With the warmth of spring only a hint in the air, the animals were already getting frisky.
"What did she say to you?"
"What?" Alys, distracted by the birds, had to backtrack mentally to realize what he meant. "Oh, like that's a pleasant subject."
Selendrile waited. Alys blew out a reluctant breath. It wasn't a nice thing to think about. "She said -- she said --"
She broke off, trying to remember. It had been dark, and her head had been killing her, and she wasn't sure she'd heard everything Stelera'd said. Though Alys doubted she'd missed anything important. "Umm... it was just unimaginative gloating, really." She changed her voice, mimicking Stelera's melodic tones. "That I should watch my step, and that ou-oubliettes were much slower than disembowelment." She stumbled over the big word. Selendrile had said it was from another language, which was why it looked completely different than it sounded. The statements didn't sound sinister at all, coming from Alys.
Selendrile raised a brow. "She threatened to disembowel you?"
"Not that time." Alys crooked a finger backward, into the past. "At the bookshop."
He snorted. "She must be desperate for my power, to dirty her hands on a human..."
Alys fingered her throat. The bruises had faded, but the memory of Stelera's iron grip remained. "Is it that bad, conversing with humans?"
Selendrile shrugged. "It is for a dragon."
"Oh." Her insides withered. Does that include me, Sel? "What about the man with her? Is he a dragon too?"
Selendrile looked at her sharply. "If there were another dragon around, I would have smelled him."
"Well, she had a tall man with her, and if he's not a dragon then he must be human. She called him her pet."
Selendrile looked back at the cardinals. "I see."
Another long silence passed. Alys pushed her hurt into a deep corner of herself and admired the blueness of the sky, the clean puffiness of the clouds passing overhead. It was so nice to be able to see the sun.
"Were you frightened?"
"In the oubliette?" Alys shivered. "Yes."
He stepped close. Alys tensed as his arms encircled her, but didn't pull away.
She did close her eyes. "Please, Selendrile. What am I to you?"
He didn't answer right away. "I don't know what you mean."
She elbowed him lightly in the ribs, and he let her shake him off. "You'd better, if you're going to touch me like that," she said, and stomped back into the courtyard.
X X X
With the air warming up, Alys began exploring the no longer frigid castle. It was fun, and a little scary.
She got to know the library, for one thing. During the winter she'd been limited to quick searches for books; generally, ten minutes was all she could spare before her extremities went numb and she had to retreat downstairs to thaw them out by the fire.
Now, though, she could browse to her heart's content. Selendrile got cranky if she cloistered herself in the library while he was home, but she spent hours among the shelves while he was out hunting. It was a long room on the third story with a barrel vault ceiling and many high windows; these were still glazed, protecting the many books from damp. White plaster, a little discolored to be sure, still covered most of the walls, reflecting the sunlight and making the room pleasantly bright during the day. During the evenings she had to bring a candle. She was careful to keep this last away from the books.
On the second story were several bedchambers. Furniture in the chambers that had broken windows had not held up well to the damp. These looked like ghost rooms; decomposing tapestries hung in tatters on the walls, curtains leprous with moss and rot holes draped over bedposts bedecked with wood mushrooms, and lichens grew merrily on the chamberpots. After one glance into these, Alys left them alone.
Two of the bedchambers were still in good shape. Alys gasped on first beholding their splendor. To her peasant eyes, the simple four-post beds with linen curtains and goosedown pillows were luxury incarnate. Timbered ceilings relieved the harshness of granite walls, and the fireplaces were still in working order. She thought about moving her things into one of them, but Selendrile would object to having her out of sight and, more importantly, out of range of his verbal games. Worse yet, he might offer to come with her. With a straight face, of course.
Besides, nice as the beds were, she could see that rats had nested in the mattresses. The castle rats were huge, grown fat from shelter and the absence of cats, and they might carry plague. She felt safer sleeping close to the dragon.
The kitchen she already knew. A huge hearth, wide enough to roast an ox, dominated the east side of the room. It shared a heat-retaining iron plate with the hearth in the great hall. From the top of the hearth hung a chain on which to hook pots. Alys herself had appropriated the huge pot for bathing. She'd found that after boiling a few inches of water in the bottom, she could take the pot off the hook and dump in well water to get a very nice batch of warm water. Dirty water could be thrown down a grate in the floor that connected to a rain drain, which exited outside the castle.
The north side of the kitchen boasted four glazed windows and a stone sink in the deep recess created by the windows. The indoor well was nested beside the sink. Selendrile had said indoor wells were rare in castles of this age, but Alys had found it very handy. Various pots and pans clustered on a set of shelves on the west wall, next to the arched opening leading to the great hall.
On the west side of the kitchen were more cooking utensils, hooks for meat and other consumables, and a narrow door leading to equally narrow stairs which terminated in the pantry downstairs. The pantry was always cooler than the kitchen. It was also plagued with rats. Alys stayed out of it unless she absolutely needed more soap. Selendrile hung the meat they didn't eat right away up high, out of reach of the vermin, which also meant that he had to be the one to get it down.
The south side of the kitchen was occupied by trestle tables, some dusty wooden stools, cupboards for dishes, and a polished granite counter for cutting up food.
The great hall was familiar enough, but Alys enjoyed walking around the three-quarters of the room outside the heat-trapping tapestries. It wasn't hard to visualize the banquets that Selendrile had said great halls were used for. The west wall held the hearth and Alys's tapestry-boundaried 'hearthroom,' along with the sofas and tables she and Sel used every day. To the south were the iron-reinforced double doors leading into the entrance hall with its murder holes in the ceiling and the gate that opened to the courtyard. The guardhouse was above the entrance hall and could be reached via a flight of steps from the southeast corner of the great hall. The courtyard held a tumbled-down barracks of modest size and a chapel that had seen better days.
The north side of the great hall had a slightly raised platform, where the lord of the castle and his family and guests had once dined while the serfs ate on trestle tables that were dismantled between meals. When she'd asked Selendrile about the curious holes in the wall -- holes set above the height of her own head -- he'd said that they'd been used to hold support beams for curtained wooden platforms where minstrels played during special events.
A door in the east side of the hall opened onto a spiral staircase. The bedchambers were up on the second floor, the library on the third. To reach the dungeons, one went down.
The dungeon she explored not out of desire, but because the dictionary had gone missing again. The dungeon had precious few windows, since it was mostly underground, and due to being nestled in the rocky ground it was always colder than the rest of the castle.
She didn't look in the oubliette. If Selendrile had been cruel enough to hide the dictionary there, she would live without it. She checked the various cells one by one, finally coming to the last cell in the northeastern corner. This was slightly larger than the rest and sported a hanging cage on a chain.
She rolled up her sleeves to grapple with the rusty chain and unhooked the heavy links from their wall mount, taking care to first wrap the slack around the studded wheel set in the wall. Even with leverage on her side, the weight of the descending cage almost yanked her off her feet. She jumped back as the iron cage crashed into the stone flooring.
She waited like that, hands over her ears, for a few minutes. The crash echoed up the stairs and back down, and she thought all the rats and bats in the province must be scrambling for safety. But the ceiling didn't come down, and Selendrile didn't appear demanding to know what on earth she was doing. And her persistence had been rewarded; there was the dictionary, wrapped in oilskin in the bottom of the cage.
She pried at the rusty locks with the equally rusty keys and eventually got the contraption open. She pondered whether or not she should try hoisting the cage back up, but decided that it wasn't worth the trouble simply to hide her activities from Selendrile. She put the heavy dictionary down by her feet so she could lock the cage closed again, lest some future (and incredibly stupid) explorer somehow make it here and get himself stuck inside the device. She could name three boys from her own village who would have wedged themselves in in a trice, with no thought as to how they'd get back out again.
The scraping noise behind her was masked by the scraping and grumbling noises she made herself as she tried to get the locks to cooperate. When she finished and turned around, she almost fell down the hole that had opened in the floor behind her.
She gasped and stumbled backwards into the cage. It creaked and jangled as she caught her breath, one hand over her heart. Yes, there really was a dark square opening in the floor. No, she had definitely never seen it before. She crouched by the edge and lifted her candle high. A flight of steps spiraled down out of sight, beckoning.
She sat back on her heels, considering. Secret passages within a castle should be no surprise; whoever owned the place doubtless wanted a bolthole in case a siege went south. Her concerns were more immediate. If she went down there, there was no guarantee that she could get out again. She wasn't the heir of the lord; she didn't know if there were traps or dead ends.
Then it ocurred to her that Selendrile might not know about the secret passage, and that if he did he hadn't told her about it. The thrill of knowing something Selendrile didn't -- or at least, of discovering one of his secrets without his leave -- was her undoing.
She had enough presence of mind to dash upstairs and fill her pockets with candles, three bits of chalk, and a chunk of bread. Part of her warned that what she was doing was dangerous, but it was evening; she didn't have much time before Selendrile came back, and she didn't want to wait another day to act on her discovery.
When she came back down, the opening was gone.
Puzzled, she lifted the dictionary and laid it back down. To her relief, the passage door cooperated and slid open again.
Curious, Alys marked the flagstone the dictionary was laying on with chalk. Then she lifted the dictionary. As she'd expected, the opening slid shut with a faint grinding noise. She put the dictionary down; it slid open again. Pleased with herself, she left the dictionary in place and went down the stairs, candle in hand.
She'd only made it a few steps when the opening slid shut above her head. She smothered a rush of panic and went back up the stairs to prod at the slab of faux flagstones.
The mechanism must be on a timed release of sorts, she realized, so residents fleeing down the passage could punch the trigger and run without worrying about closing the secret entrance behind them so pursuers couldn't follow. That was why it had closed while she was upstairs getting candles. If she hadn't been so excited about one-upping Selendrile, she would have realized that.
Sweat trickled down her brow as she considered her options. She could stay here and push at every stone within reach, hoping one was the magic trigger to open the passage door above her head. There was no guarantee that there was one, though; the passage had probably been built for exiting, not for entering, and she could waste valuable time and candle length looking for a trigger stone that wasn't there.
Or she could continue downwards. If it was a secret passage that led out of the castle, why then it must lead out of the castle at some point. Hopefully nothing had collapsed and blocked the passage. If something had, she was really stuck, the more so if Selendrile did not in fact know about the secret passage.
She compromised and tried a dozen likely-looking stones, marking a chalk X on each when it proved unresponsive. When none worked, she wrote her name on the slab. Then she turned around and began descending into the darkness.
It was a long way down. She counted her steps, as much to keep herself calm as to keep track of how far she'd come. When she reached one hundred, she stooped and wrote her name on the steps again, along with the number 100.
Two hundred steps. Alys, 200. Three hundred steps.
By four hundred steps, her candle was low. She lit a new one, not wanting the flame to go out, and put the old stub in her pocket in the event that she got desperate later.
Five hundred steps. Six hundred steps. Her legs ached. She wondered where Selendrile was, and whether having secrets from him was worth the trouble this lark was turning out to be. She was thirsty. She hadn't thought to bring water.
Seven hundred steps.
At eight hundred steps, she saw light.
She forgot to count. Her steps quickened as the stairs leveled out and became straight tunnel. Soon she was running.
Her haste was rewarded as she burst out into the sunlight. She laughed with relief, twirling round and round, not caring that she extinguished her candle. Then she flopped on her back in the grass, breathing hard, and savored success. I made it. I got out.
She was in a meadow -- a beautiful, brilliantly lit meadow. She'd never seen anything as lovely as this green grass under the blue sky. All she could see of the castle from here was one of the curtain walls, hundreds of feet above the meadow. Trees ringed the flower-studded grass, and she wondered if getaway horses had ever been tied here, waiting under the moonlight while battle raged around the castle.
Her romantic visions were interrupted by a melodic voice.
"Well, well, well. What have we here."
X X X
Alys sprang to her feet, as though it made any difference whether she faced a hostile dragon standing up or lying down. "Selendrile said he'd kill you if you came back here."
"He can't kill me if he doesn't know I'm here." The dragon woman smiled and put her hands on her hips. She really did love that pose. And her crimson furs, too, if she was wearing them on a warm spring day. "And if you don't tell him, who will?"
"He can smell you too, you know."
"Oh, I'm counting on that." Stelera's smile turned into something more primal. Alys blushed as she realized what it was. "Once you're out of the picture, he won't be able to resist me any longer."
"I wouldn't count on that." Selendrile had displayed zero interest in Stelera thus far. Alys didn't think that would change because a peasant girl he'd never shown physical interest in was out of the picture.
"You're wrong," Stelera argued, too loudly.
Alys rolled her eyes. Really, in a great big queenly dragon, that kind of desperation was just sad.
Stelera didn't like that expression. She frowned and switched topics. "Go on, now. Beg. Better yet, run for your life."
Alys felt the brush of death, cool against her heart. "If you're going to kill me, just do it."
Stelera stepped close. Alys knew that at any instant, she would become a huge gray dragon with many, many teeth. "Foolish girl. Run, and I might kill you quickly."
Alys shook her head. "You won't."
Stelera's eyes snapped. "Who are you trying to impress? Selendrile? He's not even here to watch you die."
Selendrile.
Alys said nothing. There was no point in explaining herself to Stelera. She knew, somehow, that to run would be to surrender her dignity. And after Selendrile, Stelera wasn't nearly so scary.
"Selendrile doesn't care about you!" Stelera hissed. "You're a toy, a pet, a plaything! Humans are insects to him. You know that. Stop pretending you mean something to him!"
Alys's lips parted, but the hurt shooting through her was too deep for words. It wasn't Stelera's tirade that was hurting her; it was hearing her own deepest fears, out loud.
Those she couldn't face. She turned and ran. Not away from Stelera, but away from herself.
"Now," Stelera said, her voice rich with satisfaction.
Alys didn't have time to wonder what she meant before a bolt of pain struck her heart. She caught herself on her hands as she fell, gasping, and stared at the cruel arrowhead protruding from her tunic.
Of course; the tall man. The tall man and his bow.
And after all this, Alys thought, she's made it look like I was killed by another human.
The cries of two dragons and the rushing of wings were the last things she heard before darkness took her.
X X X
"You can turn and pursue me," Stelera taunted, and transformed. Her wings pumped, lifting her clear of the ground. "But if you do, your pet will die."
Selendrile's head snapped round as he spotted Alys's crumpled form. He ignored Stelera, nosediving to the grass.
Stelera flew away as fast as she could, mindful of the golden dragon's rage despite her triumph. And she laughed as she flew, knowing that the little she-human was already dead. The fresh powers she craved were almost within reach.
Consciousness returned slowly. She had time to notice sensations before it occurred to her to even try opening her eyes.
The first thing she noticed was warmth; warmth cradling her, warmth all around. Also a pleasant smell, like a damp forest after spring rains; but the scent didn't so much register on her consciousness as slip beneath it, nestling in its own familiar place.
The second thing she noticed was breathing. Large, deep, even breaths, driven by lungs much bigger than hers.
The third thing she noticed was an absence of pain. Her eyes flew open. She felt stiff, as though she'd been asleep in one position for too long, but there was no stabbing pain in her chest. Her hand wandered up to feel above her left breast; she felt a knot of scar tissue, but it didn't hurt.
She stared at the radiant crisscross pattern swimming before her eyes, unable to make sense of it. "Am I in heaven?" she whispered.
The warmth around her stirred. A golden head rose up from somewhere below her line of sight; amethyst eyes regarded her from inches away. She was nestled against the dragon's chest, encircled by his forelegs, and now she had his attention.
"Selendrile?" She rubbed her eyes. "Are we both dead?"
He blinked at her, but didn't answer.
"If this were real," she reasoned, "and I touched Selendrile's nose, he would bite my head off." Figuring she had nothing to lose, Alys reached out and stroked the golden muzzle.
All at once, she found herself clutched to the chest of the dragon youth. His eyes were blazing. She yelped.
"Alys," he said ominously... and sneezed.
"Oh, yuck." Alys scrubbed her face with her hands. "Give me time to duck, will you?" She paused. "Well, I guess you did, huh? A dragon sneeze at this range would probably flay me."
At first she thought her logic had dazzled him, but he only sneezed again. She couldn't help it; she giggled. Then her eyes fell on the dark stains on his chest. "Sel! You're hurt!"
"It's yours," he said quickly, and put her down. "You... you bled a lot."
Grass squeaked beneath her feet. They were still in the meadow where she'd run into Stelera. She could see the entrance to the secret passage behind Selendrile. It was screened from sight by a cluster of trees, but she knew what to look for.
She put a hand to her heart. "So there really was an arrow?"
She looked away as he stooped and felt around in the grass; as usual after transforming, he was wearing nothing. To occupy her gaze, she pried her tunic away from her chest to inspect her new scar, and winced. A web of purple-black tissue spread from the exit point, creating an eerie pattern the size of her palm. But beneath it, she could feel her heart beating steadily. No, miraculously.
Selendrile took her hand and laid two halves of an arrow in her palm. She stared at the gore-stained head, a triangular wedge of metal as wide as her palm. "There's no way I survived that."
"You almost didn't."
Twin cries echoed in her memory. "Stelera... when you came, Stelera..."
His lips compressed. "She left."
The break in the arrow shaft was clean, as if it'd been sliced in two by a razor-sharp knife. Alys knew the mark of Selendrile's claw. Somehow, he'd gotten the arrow out without killing her. She looked up at him. "You used magic on me. Didn't you."
He looked away. "I might have."
"I... I don't know how you saved my life, but thank you. I'm sure I would have died if you hadn't come."
"Yes, you would have," he said bitterly. "What were you doing so far from the castle? You knew Stelera might still be around."
Stelera. Everything the she-dragon had said came rushing back, filling her newly healed heart with pain.
He'd been watching her expression. "Say it. Say it out loud."
She clenched her fists. "Selendrile," she hissed, "sometimes I don't like you very much."
"Is that all?" he prodded.
"No!" she shouted, the real reason for her eagerness to explore the secret passage boiling to the surface. "I don't want to spend my life leeching off someone who doesn't want me around. That's why I left! I --"
She broke off and walked rapidly away, but there was nowhere to go.
"You're not making any sense," he said quietly. "Why would I have asked you to stay if I didn't want you around?"
"You tell me, dragon." She turned on him. "Maybe you wanted a nice fresh snack, like Stelera said. Or was I supposed to make her jealous? When it comes to you, I have to find everything out the hard way. Heaven forbid I ever get the whole story the first time--"
She broke off. He was laughing.
"Selendrile." Was it that ludicrous, the idea of her making Stelera jealous?
"Yes...?"
She threw a candle at him. He sidestepped easily, still laughing.
"I hate you." She stomped to the spot that allowed her to be as far away from him as possible but not actually in the wolf-infested forest and thumped down, fighting tears. This wasn't fair. None of this was fair. Why did she have to care? If he could treat it as a joke, why couldn't she?
The grass behind her rustled. "You'll catch cold."
She was already shivering. "Go to hell."
The rustling paused. "Alys, I don't think you mean that."
"Well then, I wish I did!" To be as indifferent, as superior as Stelera; to be more than the hopeless underdog in this situation; that seemed very desirable indeed. Alys glared at him. "You think it's so funny. Don't you have a heart?"
Selendrile turned white and backed away as though she'd struck him. Seconds later, a golden dragon hurtled into the sky.
"Coward!" she yelled after him, too mad to care about the consequences.
Only after her temper cooled did she realize what she'd seen, and that she'd never witnessed it before. Selendrile had fled an argument.
X X X
She was sneezing by the time he came back. The only way out of the meadow that wasn't wolf-forest was back up the dark passage, and she wasn't desperate enough to try that yet. She wasn't even sure she wanted to go back to the castle. If a sally into the trees didn't turn her into wolf lunch, it would surely end in a broken neck once she hit one of the many chasms in the area.
She found a spot where some of the meadow rocks had absorbed the warmth of the noonday sun and settled there, gathered her cloak close and curled into a ball to fight the cold. She didn't want to think about food, but it kept her mind off Selendrile, so she allowed hunger to distract her from more unpleasant meditations. The chunk of bread in her pocket was too small and dry to be much help, but she ate it anyways.
She turned her face to the rocks when his wings blotted out the sky. Honestly, she was surprised he'd returned. Stelera's words were still pounding in her head, mixed with all the lies and half-truths Sel had ever told her, and she was ready to believe that she meant no more to him than a stray coin from his hoard and had been discarded as such.
"Alys."
She ignored him. Let him think she was asleep. Let him think whatever. She tried to squelch the stab of joy his reappearance had triggered; she'd rather die than admit to it.
Then she sneezed again. "Ah... confound it..."
Selendrile chuckled. Alys had to summon every bit of her willpower to remain silent.
The silence stretched out. And out.
Finally, Selendrile tried again. "Alys."
When she wouldn't respond, he sighed and laid a hand on her head. The shorn spot from her head injury still hadn't grown all the way out; the hairs there stuck up, defying gravity. He ran a thumb over the wayward lock. "Alys, don't be mad."
"You're still Selendrile, aren't you?"
He smiled despite himself. "Guilty as charged."
She crossed her arms and tossed her head, shaking his hand off. Sullen silence.
"Alys, I..." He stopped, felt about for words, and stumbled on. This was different from their perpetual word games. The stakes were higher. The logical part of him was ranting that he would regret saving her life. But a still, small voice insisted that he didn't regret a thing -- except, possibly, making her so angry that she wouldn't face him. "I want you to come back."
"Get someone else."
He gritted his teeth. "I don't want someone else."
Her shoulders drooped. "How can I trust you?"
"I swear on the stake you were tied to," he said solemnly.
She glared at him; mentally, he gave himself a score.
"This is ridiculous. You have to take an oath before I can even start listening to you." She got up and paced. "You say you're hundreds of years old, but you act like a pissy thirteen-year-old. By the time you grow up, I'll be dead."
He decided to let that pass. "I'll make you dinner," he offered instead.
She started to object that he couldn't cook, then realized that she didn't know whether he could or not. For all she knew, he might be a superb chef. He'd just never cooked in front of her. Her stomach growled, to her annoyance. "No. No, no and no. No more arrangements; no more bargains. If your ego always has to be number one no matter what, I want out."
He looked uncomfortable. "You're asking a lot."
She sniffed. "No more than I'm willing to give." Then she narrowed her eyes. "Shouldn't you be telling me that I'm more trouble than I'm worth about now?"
"You are!"
She turned her back on him. "Then take me to the nearest village and go away. Dragon. I'll find a nice peasant boy and get on with my life."
"You will not."
She raised her eyebrows. Selendrile closed his eyes. His chest hurt. His pain; her pain.
"I take it back," he managed. "You're... worth... the trouble. Come back, Alys."
To his surprise, her eyes filled with tears. "Don't say it if you don't mean it."
"I mean it." He reached out and ruffled her hair. "Without the trouble, it'd be boring."
She pushed his hand away. "That's not a compliment."
X X X
After he'd coaxed her back to the castle, life resettled into its familiar routine -- with a few exceptions.
The dictionary was perched in plain sight by her couch. "I'll leave it there, on one condition," Selendrile said. "Talk to me. It's boring when you read and read and ignore me."
"I wasn't ignoring you." It was more like she read to stay sane.
He shrugged. "That's how it felt."
Alys felt a twinge of guilt. All right, so maybe sometimes she had been using her books as ways to not pay attention to him and his games. But it was his own fault for being so annoying. "Fine. I'll try."
Selendrile's second unexpected gift was another change. She'd been reading as usual one evening when he returned from a late excursion with a sopping wet burlap bag. She squealed when he dumped it in her lap, holding the precious book away from the water.
"What was that for?"
In answer, he poked at the bag. "I found it in the river, down by the village."
Frightened mewlings emerged from the burlap. Alys gasped and extricated three squirming kittens. They hissed and cried alternately, sucked at her fingertips and growled at each other.
"Oh. Oh, they're hungry. What'll I feed them?" She dumped the wet bag on the floor and tried to dry the balls of fur with her sleeves. "I don't have any milk..."
"You don't have milk?" Selendrile eyed her. "Aren't you female?"
"It's not that simple," she retorted, coloring. "But they look old enough to have solid food. Oh -- maybe some ox liver --"
Selendrile disappeared and came back with a chunk of liver that hadn't yet frozen solid. When it was chopped, the kittens had no trouble getting it down. Half an hour later, they were curled up together in a basket by the hearth, tummies bulging.
"I'll need a basket of dirt later," Alys told herself, stroking the smallest kitten behind the ears. "Don't want them making this place smell like a chamberpot..."
"Spring is coming," Selendrile observed. "The rats are breeding in the pantry. Some cats would help."
"Well, these cats had better stay out of the pantry until they grow. Those rats are big."
"You like the kittens." Selendrile was back on his sofa now, rubbing at his carving with a piece of sandcloth.
"I do. Thank you." She gave the runt a final pat and got up for a closer look at Selendrile's work. "Are you almost done?"
He held it out for her inspection. She put her hands behind her back and squatted down to admire it properly.
Flames. She saw flames in the curves of the wood, tongues of fire arcing and flickering like a graceful bonfire frozen in time.
"You can touch it."
She checked his face to make sure he meant it before stroking the carving with a cautious finger. "So smooth."
He reached out and touched her cheek. "Like your skin."
"Um." She blushed. "It's pretty. N-nice work. I didn't know you could carve so well."
"Do you like it?"
She nodded.
"Do you want it?"
She shot him a suspicious look. "What's the catch?"
He smiled cunningly. "Oh, it's nothing big..."
She backed away. "No thank you."
He was laughing now. "There's no catch, Alys. You can have it."
"That's all right," she said hastily. "You worked so hard. You keep it."
She escaped the hall on the pretext of getting dirt for the kittens, but Selendrile's laughter followed her out. Stupid dragon.
X X X
The arrow wound had healed, but she was still wobbly from loss of blood. A few days after returning to the castle, as she came down from the library with her arms full of books, her foot slipped on a damp spot. She skidded down several steps and landed hard on her bottom, books raining everywhere.
She clenched her teeth as a burning in her right shin made itself known; she'd scraped it against the wall. Collecting scars seemed to be her unofficial hobby, she thought sarcastically, hand over her heart as the rest of her body complained about the jostling.
Selendrile looked up as she limped into the hearthroom. "What happened?"
"I slipped." She let the books slide into a pile by her favorite sofa. "It's nothing."
She turned toward the kitchen to get some rags and a bucket of ice water from the indoor well, intending to sponge off the blood and bring the swelling down. Selendrile blocked her way.
"Do you mean nothing as in, nothing serious, or nothing as in, you want me to leave you alone, or nothing as in, you didn't truly injure yourself and I'm seeing things?" He knelt to inspect the scrape, fingertips hovering just over the broken skin. "I don't understand you sometimes."
She blinked, surprised and humbled by the admission. Sometimes she got so used to playing verbal games, that...
"I guess I meant, it's nothing serious, and I didn't think you wanted me to bother you about it."
He shot her a dirty look. "Don't presume to know what's on my mind."
"Well, sorry," she huffed. "I didn't think a great dragon wanted to stoop to being a nursemaid. Forgive my crazy assumptions." She tried to limp around him, but he took her shoulders instead and pushed her back towards her seat.
"Sit down."
"Hey." She did, not because she wanted to but because there was no resisting his strength. "I need --"
"Yes. Tell me."
She stared at him. He sighed.
"Tell me," he said patiently, "what you need. I will get it for you."
There was a long silence while she absorbed that. She reached out and touched his forehead. "Are you feeling well?"
He pushed her hand away. "Just tell me," he growled.
"Soap and a bucket of water," she said in a small voice. "And some clean rags, if you can find any."
He nodded curtly and went to the kitchen. A few minutes later she was looking at a bucket of frigid well water and a scoop of lye soap perched on three sparkling linen cloths. She picked one cloth up reverently. It was very high-quality.
"These are too nice to use on me..."
"Use them. There's plenty more."
She swallowed and dipped the expensive cloth in the bucket. Selendrile had a hoard, yes, and claimed ownership to everything in this castle according to the rather loose rules of right by occupancy, but he wasn't overly attached to any one thing he owned. He readily spent gold or silver on her -- or anything that might grant some amusement to himself, for that matter, like that whole revenge lark.
Or maybe he really was attached to his hoard and it just seemed to her like he wasn't because he had such a big one and a few sacks of gold coins weren't worth even mentioning.
"Do you need medicine?"
Again, she stared at him in surprise.
He ignored the look. "There's an apothecary in the other wing of the castle. It's still well stocked."
She shook her head, but at her own ignorance, not his suggestion. Beyond what to do with chamomile and plantain... "I don't know anything about herbs or powders. I'm just as likely to poison myself as help anything."
"Ah." He considered that. "Maybe you should get some books about it."
She took the suggestion at face value, as it was intended. For once. "I will, then. But for now, this should be all right... I washed it pretty thoroughly."
She set the bloody cloth aside, patted her leg dry with the second, and wrapped the wound with the third. "Thank you for getting these for me."
Selendrile looked away.
"You're welcome," he said after a minute.
It wasn't long after that that Selendrile suggested an outing.
Alys put her book down in surprise. "You want me to come hunting with you?"
"Not hunting." Selendrile was standing with his back to her, stretching sinuously as he looked out the great hall's open doors. The entrance hall gate was open too, letting fresh air flow into the hall. Alys could see the alluring spring sky beyond. "Just to get out. You've been cooped up here all winter."
She narrowed her eyes. There had to be more to it than that. "What are you up to?"
He turned and regarded her innocently. With his amethyst eyes, long blonde ponytail, and handsome face, he looked like an Arthurian legend come true. Alys knew better. "Nothing. Nothing at all."
"Fine. You go. Have fun. See you tomorrow." Alys went back to her book.
The book lifted out of her fingers. Alys squeaked on realizing that she was nose to nose with the dragon youth.
"Come. Or else..." His gaze dipped suggestively, and he ran a finger slowly over her lips.
"Fine, fine, I'm coming!" Alys scrambled out of her chair to get away from him. "But we have to be back in time to feed the kittens!"
He laughed.
X X X
Not that she would ever admit it to Selendrile, but Alys was glad to get out of the castle. His flight path took them through chilly air, soared high over jagged peaks, and terminated in a mountain valley barely visible from the sky. Alys wondered when he'd found it.
She thought, sometimes, that she saw a speck hovering near the edge of her vision. But when she turned her head, it was always gone.
The meadow grew larger and larger as the gold dragon touched down, and Alys realized that she'd been fooled by the clarity of the mountain air. A waterfall that had looked miniscule from the sky now thundered mightily down the mountainside, feeding a stream that wandered through an eye-burning profusion of rare blooms.
"Oh, Sel!" She staggered a little as he set her down, her legs made clumsy not by cold but by astonishment. "It's so beautiful!"
He rumbled contentedly and transformed. She gave him time to pull his clothes on before turning around. "What now?"
"Come on." He took her hand and led off, to a spot where two folds of the hills around the meadow terminated in a grassy notch on the edge, where the ground sloped upward and trees took over. "You'll be..." He broke off. "That is, you'll like it here."
She did like it. Tender ferns shot higher than Selendrile; rare mushrooms glimmered in their shadows, and shade flowers hid from the sun. The notch was walled in by trees. It felt very secret.
"Don't eat the mushrooms."
She made a face at him.
"I don't see why not."
Alys froze. It was Stelera's voice.
The woman stepped out from behind a patch of ferns. "After all, the girl won't live past sundown anyway."
Alys glared at Selendrile. "You were up to something."
He gave her a tight smile and patted her on the head, as though she were a slow student and had finally come to the correct conclusion. "Of course I was."
"And you used me as bait."
"Yep."
"Ahem." The dragon woman cleared her throat, annoyed at being ignored. Annoyed at the familiar way Selendrile was touching that vermin. "If you knew Selendrile, you'd know," Stelera purred. "He's always up to something."
Then Alys's scent hit Stelera, and the she-dragon gasped.
Stelera closed her eyes and inhaled sharply, then again and again, unable to believe her senses. She looked at Selendrile wildly. "You -- you didn't! Tell me you didn't! How could you? How could you taint yourself like that?"
"I do as I please," Selendrile retorted.
"Don't you realize what you've done to yourself?" Stelera screamed, coiling. "Get rid of it, now!"
She leaped at Alys, transforming mid-arc. Her steely gray scales winked, dazzling Alys, who saw it all happen in slow motion. Saw the black claws extending, the green eyes flushed red with malice, the gaping jaws brimming with needle-point teeth.
Saw the golden blur that was Selendrile, barreling into the attacking she-dragon and knocking her off course.
The dragons slammed to earth a few yards away, crushing several trees and kicking up a hurricane of fronds and damp earth. The impact made Alys lose her footing. She watched from the ground, magnetized, as the writhing creatures parted, hissing, and launched into the sky. The gray dragon's wingspan was larger than Selendrile's, Alys saw with dismay. Either Stelera was older, or female dragons grew bigger than males did. Quite possibly both.
"They'll be a while now," someone sighed.
Alys jumped. It was the tall man, Stelera's pet, who stepped out from the trees.
He came close enough to offer Alys a hand up. She eyed him suspiciously, but detected no danger in his face.
"How do you know?" she asked as he helped her to a sitting position and settled beside her. "And why aren't you trying to shoot me?"
"With this?" He touched the bow slung across his shoulders. "That was Stelera's idea. Not mine. I have to do what she says, or she'll eat me. Nothing personal, you understand," he added, glancing anxiously at Alys. "You seem like a nice girl. I got nothing against you."
"I see," Alys said. And she did, somewhat. Had Selendrile taken the same strong-armed approach with her, she supposed she'd have had no choice but to do what he said. Or be lunch. "Have you seen Stelera fight before?"
"Oh, sure. She's always chasing some male or other, hoping to boost her rank by laying a gold clutch." He paused, counted on his fingers, then nodded. "She's eaten three males so far."
"WHAT?" Alys shot to her feet. "She wants to eat Selendrile?"
"Well, that part usually comes afterwards. After the... you know." He cleared his throat delicately. "It's pretty common among dragons. Especially dark dragons. There's been bad blood between the two kinds for centuries."
Alys tried to absorb all of that. Selendrile's actions made more sense now. He'd known all along that he was Stelera's real target. Alys had just been an annoyance, an affront to Stelera's... well, femininity. Such as it was.
"But your Selendrile didn't warm to her. That made her mad. I think she decided to go straight to mealtime."
So that was what Selendrile had meant, about Stelera getting her powers dishonestly. They weren't hers; she absorbed them by eating golden dragons. Alys shuddered and peered into the sky, shielding her eyes from the sun with her hand. No use; the dragons were out of sight now. "How do you know so much about dragons?"
"Stelera's a talker, that's how." The man shrugged. "I can't ask her to be quiet, now can I? Or she'd eat me."
So, Stelera was the exact opposite of Selendrile. The gold dragon never gave away a thing if he could help it. Alys glanced at the man, feeling like she was noticing Stelera's pet for the first time. "I don't know your name."
"I'm Stefen," he said, pleased to be asked. He extended a hand. "And you're Alys."
"I am." They shook. Alys sat back down, resigned to the fact that she couldn't spot Selendrile anywhere in the vast, cerulean sky. "So, um... have you met many other dragon's, er... pets?"
"Here and there. They don't last too long, usually. I know only..." Stefen counted on his fingers again. "Only one. The one Stelera had before me, he's the only one as lasted more than a few months."
Alys shuddered. "I see."
"But I've never seen a dragon's pet like you."
"What do you mean?"
Stefen pointed. She'd gotten ready in a hurry this morning, and her tumble on the ground had made the laces on the V-neck of her blouse come undone. The scar from the arrow wound over her heart was visible, the purple-black pattern peeking over the left side of the loosened collar. "I've never seen a pet who had a piece of her dragon's heart."
She stared in shock. "I don't... no, that's impossible. What are you talking about?"
"That arrow. It went straight through your heart. I shot it, remember?" Stefen patted his bow, then withdrew an arrow from his quiver and handed it to her. It had a large, wickedly sharp triangular head. "Those arrowheads can kill a horse," Stefan said. "And I never miss. Nothing personal," he hastened to add.
"Nothing personal," she echoed faintly.
"You should've died. But you lived. I thought you was just lucky, at first. Had a strong constitution, like. But that mark means you've got a piece of dragon heart in there, keeping yours together."
Alys stared at the scar, remembering. Her miraculous recovery. Sel's bloodstained chest when she'd regained consciousness, the evasive answers she'd taken for just more of his usual. The way he'd begun to ask searching questions of her, as if they were occurring to him for the first time.
No wonder Stelera had been upset.
"It's a rare practice, then?" Alys ventured. "For a dragon to do that to his... to a human?"
"Rare?" Stefen snorted. "It's forbidden. Dragons see it as beneath them. They only do it for their mates."
Tears stung the corners of her eyes. She blinked, willing them back. "I see," she whispered.
Far above her head, out of sight among the cirrus, a gold dragon fought for his life with a ferocity that went beyond self-preservation. He knew that if he died, so would a peasant girl with muddy blond hair and dark eyes. And he realized that, just maybe, he understood what Alys had once told him about love.
X X X
Selendrile came to earth hours later. Alys cried out on catching sight of him. Purple-black blood oozed from rips in his wings; gashes showed dark in his golden flanks, and his head and neck were covered with gore.
But he was alive.
"Selendrile!"
He landed heavily, braking awkwardly with his injured wings. Alys.
"I'm coming." She was already running. "Selendrile, I'm coming. Is it bad? Will you be all right?"
Alys.
He lowered his head to her level and she threw her arms around it, heedless of the blood and stink. "Sel!"
He rumbled contentedly.
"Stelera's dead, then," Stefan said matter-of-factly.
Alys twisted around to glance at him, provoking a growl from Selendrile. "How do you know?"
"Dragon fights always end with one dead." Stefan shouldered his pack and stood up. "If not two. If she's dead, then I'm free to go."
Selendrile hissed. Stefan quickly sat back down. "With your permission, of course, that is," Stefan stammered.
Selendrile laid the point of one claw delicately against Alys's heart, glaring at Stefan all the while with narrowed eyes. Then he advanced on the tall man with slow, purposeful steps.
Alys ran between them, arms spread. "Please, don't! He only did it because she made him. Don't hurt him!"
The great forepaw closed around her waist, clawtips tickling her back. Selendrile picked her up in the gentlest manner possible and set her aside. He was obviously determined to kill Stefan.
"Wait!" Alys shouted, darting back into his path. "Stelera would have killed him if she lived. Are you going to do what she wanted? Are you going to kill her pet for her? That would make her happy, if she knew!"
Selendrile halted, considering that. Some of the bloodlust drained from his eyes.
"Go," Alys hissed. "Go now. You're drenched in Stelera's scent. He can't stand it."
Stefan nodded and fled, making a beeline for the nearest trees. She heard him splash noisily across the river a few minutes later.
She turned back to find herself nose to nose with the dragon. She could see her own reflection in his eyes. Maybe he was still crazy with bloodlust and would kill her instead, now that Stefan was gone. She swallowed.
"Thank you," she whispered. "I don't want anyone else to die because of me."
He stared at her another long minute. Then he picked her up by the waist and spread his wings.
"Are you in any shape to fly?" Alys cried.
In answer, he flapped once, putting the ground far beneath them. She squealed as her stomach tried to catch up.
X X X
He may have been able to fly, but he wasn't in good shape. He almost crash landed in the courtyard, claws scrabbling for purchase across the cobblestones as he held Alys away from danger. Then he transformed and both of them collapsed, Selendrile because he couldn't keep his balance and Alys because his arm was still around her waist.
"Sel!" She scrambled to her knees and got an arm under his shoulders. "Please don't die!"
He coughed blood. "I'm not going to die."
She bit her lip. "If you're lying, I'll kill you."
A smile flickered across his lips. "Fair enough."
They made it into the hearthroom somehow, Selendrile's arm flung across her shoulders for support. She got him settled on a low couch, threw a bearskin over him, and ran into the kitchen for water and linen.
"I don't need it," he protested when she came back with the bucket and a dripping cloth.
Tears welled in her eyes. "Please, Selendrile. Let me help."
He sighed and let her clean the blood off his face and hands.
Then, before he realized what she was up to, she dabbed at the skin of his chest, where a hand-sized web of purple-black radiated from above his heart.
"Oh. This isn't blood. It's a scar."
She sat back and watched him turn pale.
She cocked her head at him with a lazy smile. "You're got a scar, Selendrile," she repeated. "Just like mine. Isn't that strange?"
"Yes," he muttered, not meeting her eyes. "Very strange."
She sighed, put her cloth down and tipped his chin up, making him look at her. "Thank you for giving me a piece of heart. You saved my life. Again."
He started. "How did --"
She smirked.
"Stelera's human," he growled. "I should've killed him."
"You'll do no such thing." She snapped her cloth out and blotted at a stubborn crust of blood on his forearm. "Unless you're too much of a coward to have anyone know that you care about me."
He looked at the fire. Then at her. He raised one bloodstained hand and laid it gently on her mark. "I didn't want you to die."
Tears ambushed her for the umpteenth time that day. She smeared her hands across her cheeks, but they wouldn't stop this time. Finally she dropped the cloth, perched on the edge of the couch and slid her arms around Selendrile.
"Sel," she choked, but that was all she could manage.
He'd tensed as she embraced him, as though expecting her to bite. But when she kept crying, he patted her gingerly on the back. "It's all right. Alys, it's all right. I'm alive. Stelera's dead. You're safe. Why are you crying?"
"I-I d-don't knoooow," she sobbed.
Some flicker of human instinct must have made it across their tenuous new connection. Slowly, he slid his arms around her and held her close, one hand rubbing her shoulder soothingly. He held her until she ran out of tears.
X X X
When she woke, there was a kitten curled in the crook of her neck, purring away.
It was dawn. She could tell by the faint sliver of sky visible through the room's high, narrow windows. She sat up and rubbed her face, feeling sore all over. Yesterday had been rough.
The events tumbled through her mind in a blur, mixed with half-remembered dreams and the smell of blood. She barely remembered crying herself out on Selendrile's shoulder the night before. He'd put up with it until she calmed down, then tucked her in for the night on her favorite sofa and went back to his.
Selendrile. Had he gone out hunting already? He'd healed from his encounter with an iron bracelet in one day, but maybe wounds from another dragon were injuries of a different magnitude.
She peered across the room and froze in horror. Selendrile was still asleep. He'd netted two kittens, two furry lumps barely distinguishable from the bearskins, but that wasn't what sent ice through her veins.
He was still in human form.
"Sel!" She shot off the sofa, scattering bearskins and the indignant kitten. "Sel, wake up! It's dawn!"
He roused and caught her arms as she tackled him, leading her to wonder if he'd really been asleep. His kittens were no more pleased at being disturbed than hers had been; they hopped down, complaining, and made for the comparative safety of the hearth. "Calm down. What's wrong?"
"You're still human!" She tried to pull him off the couch and shove him towards the entrance; to no avail. He wasn't budging. "And the sun's coming up!"
He followed her shaking finger to the windows. "So it is," he observed. "That's nice."
She dragged on his arm, growing desperate. He wasn't making any sense. "Won't you die if you're not in dragon form? Or --" She stopped pulling as a terrible thought struck her. "Or was that a lie too?"
"It wasn't a lie." He stretched leisurely as she danced with impatience, revealing that he'd had time to bathe and get dressed before she woke up. "It was true."
"Then why the hell are you still laying there?"
He caught her arm and touched her tunic just below her left shoulder. "Dragons who share a heart with a human may remain in human form past dawn."
The explanation was so simple that she was embarrassed for not having realized it herself. "Oh," she whispered sheepishly.
"I can also read your mind."
She turned crimson. "You cannot!"
He laughed and flexed his arms experimentally. The long gouges from Stelera's claws were almost gone, replaced by glowing new skin. Soon they would be fully healed. "You were worried about me."
She tried to shrug nonchalantly. "Maybe a little."
He stood up and pulled her close in one fluid movement. She yelped as he enveloped her in a crushing bearhug.
"Liar," he whispered in her ear.
She closed her eyes, letting herself enjoy the embrace. It felt good to have his arms around her. When he loosened his grip and slid two fingers under her chin, a kiss seemed like the most natural thing in the world.
"Sel," she whispered, when he released her.
He slid his fingers through her hair, over the short, stubborn locks still growing out from her head injury. "Hmm?"
She slid her arms around his neck. "Um... again?"
X X X
The clearing by St. Michael's was an entirely different place when the snow melted. There were no snowdrifts to hide the dips, but that didn't help her when Selendrile tried to put her down in a puddle.
"Hey! Hey! Knock it off!" She pulled her knees up, refusing to touch the ground. "Put me down on a dry spot!"
He swung her teasingly over the mud a couple more times, then set her on the grass and transformed. Not surprisingly, he was laughing.
She turned her back on him. "Why don't you stay in dragon form and laugh? I still get it."
There was a whisper of cloth as he pulled on his outfit. "I'm coming with you."
"What?" Surprise replaced annoyance. "You are?"
"I don't want you bringing home another dragon."
"Don't you dare blame that on me!"
"I'm not blaming you." He took her arm and pulled her in the direction of the town. "I think it just comes naturally. Come on."
Foot passengers, carriages, laughing children, and brightly clad women passed to and fro over the covered bridge of St. Michael's. Underneath, barges stacked with freshly cut trees drifted by, heading for the sawmills that helped the village thrive. Polemen shouted to each other and waved to the landbound traffic.
They made it through that chokepoint with no more notice than a few admiring glances thrown Seledrile's way.
"Aye, lassie!" At the gate, a friendly soldier leaned on his spear and waved greetings. "You brought your scholar brother this time!"
Alys smiled at him. Normally it would not have been safe -- the soldiers tended to read a lot into a smile -- but she knew nothing would happen with Selendrile giving the soldier one of his cold, evaluating stares. "No, not this time. This is my sweetheart."
The soldier looked deflated. "Not another one! Mag came through earlier, and she had a beau too." He elbowed one of his fellows. "Hey, look, there's another girl out of circulation. We got to be quicker!"
They cleared the gate and entered the Mazes. Narrow streets disgorged chattering housewives with their arms full of fresh spring produce. A familiar tinsmith waved at Alys, and she made a note to buy something from him.
"Did you mean that?"
"Hmm?" She looked up from the mound of green onions she'd been inspecting. "Mean what?"
"What you said." He touched her cheek. "About your sweetheart."
She batted her eyelids at him. "Maybe."
His lips thinned, just fractionally, but being around him had trained her to read the faintest of expressions. "I see."
"Oh, Sel. I'm teasing." She threw her arms around his neck, not caring who saw. "Of course I mean it."
He closed his eyes and put his arms around her waist. "You'd better stay with me then."
She laughed into the hollow of his shoulder. "I will."
-The End
DISCLAIMER: Nod your head yes, or Selendrile will eat you: this story not created, acknowledged or endorsed by Vivian Vande Velde, to whom all relevant characters and trademarks belong. No infringement is intended and absolutely no profit was or ever will be made. Dragon's Pet itself is fan domain and may be freely recopied and archived. Reader reactions are appreciated, as always.
A/N: The castle is loosely inspired by Schloss Oberstein and Burg Eltz in Germany. Meaning, I looked at pictures of both castles and interior shots of others. (Thank you Googlesearch!)
Thanks to Shadowshock for proofreading.