Patricia Briggs: Masques

She laughed then, though it could have been a sob, and clasped the staff tighter. “He may have been right, and it was too late when he sent me back.”

Myr didn’t say anything, but he put a comforting hand on her shoulder. A cold wind swept down the mountainside, and Aralorn shivered with impatience as much as chill. Even though she was watching intently, she didn’t see the dragon until it was overhead. Silver and green and as graceful as a hummingbird, the great reptile landed and eyed them with interest—or perhaps hunger.

“I need you to get me to the ae’Magi’s castle as fast as possible.” Aralorn knew she was being too abrupt, but she was desperate and couldn’t find courtesy when she needed it. The dragon tilted its head back in offense.

Myr’s grip tightened warningly on Aralorn’s shoulder, as he said, “Dragon, the only one of us who stands a chance of facing down the ae’Magi is hurt and fighting alone at the castle. We need to get there to help him, or the ae’Magi has won. You are our only chance of doing so in time.”

Aralorn started at the “we,” but decided not to protest as it was likely to offend the dragon even more.

The dragon hesitated a minute, then asked, “Speed is important?”

“Very, sir,” Aralorn said carefully, keeping a respectful tone.

It nodded, once. “I can travel much faster than flying, but it means that because of your safeguards against magic, I cannot take you, King Myr. The shapeshifter half-breed I can take.”

Myr looked unhappy, but he nodded his acceptance. When the dragon lowered its belly to the ground and folded its wings, Myr helped Aralorn up as she was hampered by the necessity of keeping the sharp claws at the end of Wolf’s staff away from the dragon.

The scales on the dragon’s back were slick, but otherwise it was no worse than riding a horse bareback—until he began moving. The wings beat steadily until they caught an updraft, then flattened and spread wide—letting the wind pull them south.

Abruptly, the dragon lurched forward, and Aralorn felt a familiar dizziness seize her and clutched the fist-sized scales reflexively. He’d transported them the same way Wolf had sent her back to his library. When she was able to focus her eyes again, the castle of the ae’Magi lay just below.

Shouting, so that the dragon could hear her past the sound of the wind, Aralorn said, “Land wherever you can find a safe place, Lord. I can find my way in.” She still had that little follow-me spell on Wolf’s boot. He’d changed his clothes preparing to face his father, but not his boots.

In acknowledgment of her words, the dragon changed its angle of flight until it was losing altitude fast. Aralorn’s ears popped painfully, and she tightened her grip on the dragon’s scales until they cut into her hand. When the dragon landed, the jolt loosened Aralorn’s grip, and she landed with a thud next to an impressively armed forepaw.

She rolled to her feet with more speed than grace. She turned to face the dragon and bowed respectfully. “My thanks, sir, and apologies for my clumsiness.” Without waiting for a reply, she shifted quickly into a goose and flew as fast as she could to the castle.

The moat didn’t smell any better than it had before, and it took her some time to find an intact pipe that was not plugged with grime. Once she found one, maybe the same one she’d used before, she balanced precariously on it until she could turn into a mouse. Even in mouse form, she had trouble negotiating the tricky business of crawling into the pipe from the top, but she managed. All the while, part of her wailed that she was being too slow.

The corridor she entered was only dimly lit by wall sconces, and from what she could see, it was not one that she’d been in before. She considered staying a mouse but decided that she would have a better chance of recognizing something familiar if she were in human form since she’d been in human form while she was following Wolf.

When she took her own shape again, the staff appeared beside her (she hadn’t been sure that it would). She wondered if it had changed with her, like the sword and her clothes, or if it was following her on its own. She remembered how Wolf would just reach out and it would be there, under his hand. She’d thought it was something Wolf had done. The idea that it had been the staff all along caused her to pick it up gingerly as she started down the hallway.

There were still Uriah posted in the halls. As before, they allowed her to pass without bothering her though they followed her progress with their eyes. She kept a steady, rapid pace, hoping that she would find a clue to where she was soon enough to be of some help to Wolf. The spell on Wolf’s boot was harder to follow in the ae’Magi’s castle than it had been in the caves. She could feel it, but it was a faint whisper instead of a call.

The castle was eerily silent, so that when she heard sounds coming from inside a room, she stopped impulsively and opened the door. Kisrah looked up, startled, from where he’d been eating breakfast in bed with a giggling young beauty.

“Lord Kisrah, you wouldn’t be interested in showing me the way to the dungeons, I suppose?” asked Aralorn. She wondered if she should draw her sword or knife. She didn’t have a chance to act. Something flashed at her out of Lord Kisrah’s hands. Instinctively, because it was already in her grip, she moved to block it with the staff. When the flash hit the dark, oiled wood, the crystals on one end of the staff, which up to this point had been dull and lifeless, flared brightly, and Lord Kisrah’s magic dissipated without a sound.

Unwilling to let him get another spell off, Aralorn attacked with the staff. Lord Kisrah, unarmed, not to mention unclothed, didn’t have much of a chance against Aralorn, who was wielding her favorite type of weapon. Her first blow broke his arm and her second knocked him unconscious on the floor next to the bed.

Aralorn turned to his bedmate with apologies on her lips, but something about the girl made her tighten her grip on the staff instead. Focused intently on the unconscious man, the red-haired woman slithered out of the bedclothes, knocking the bed table with their food onto the floor.

Remembering the harpy that she and Wolf had met earlier, Aralorn tapped the girl’s shoulder gingerly with the clawed end of the staff. She hadn’t realized how sharp the claws were until they drew blood. She felt bad about it until the girl turned and Aralorn got a good look at her.

The girl snarled, and Aralorn jumped back and seriously considered leaving Lord Kisrah to his fate. As the girl moved, her shape altered rapidly into something vaguely reptilian, with a large spiked tail and impressive fangs, not the same as the silk-merchant girl, though maybe they were at different stages.

The thing, whatever it was, was fast and strong: When its tail hit the post of the bed, the wood cracked. It was also, thankfully, stupid—very stupid. It jumped at Aralorn with a shrill cry and impaled itself on the claws of Wolf’s staff.

Dying, it changed back into its former beauty and the woman blinked her green eyes—shapeshifter eyes—and said softly, “Please . . .” before she was unable to say anything.

“Plague it,” said Aralorn in an unsteady voice as she retrieved the staff in shaky hands. She backed into the corridor and had started down it when she noticed the hungry gaze of one of the Uriah focused on the bloody end of the staff. She thought of Lord Kisrah lying like an appetizer beside his bedmate’s corpse; she went back and shut the door to the bedroom and locked it with a simple spell that Lord Kisrah would have little trouble breaking when he woke up.

Just as she was about to give up hope, Aralorn rounded a corner and found herself in the great hall. From there it was a simple matter to find her way to the dungeon, and the closer she came, the stronger her follow-me spell summoned her. She was concentrating so hard on doing so that the whisper took her by surprise.