Mickey Reichert - The beasts of Barakhai

"What came before." Prinivere sank back into her sitting position. Though Zylas remained standing, Collins found himself far more comfortable. "That they had prior lives, ones without the transformation curse. So stories of that time do not trickle down to those alive today. It takes someone like me, someone who was there, to tell it."

Collins realized what had to come next. "What happened to the dragons?"

"Our magic saved us from the effects of the first spell, but we could only temper the second. Suddenly, we found ourselves involuntarily human for part of every day, and that made us furious. A horde of dragons descended upon the castle. We killed the king and the half-breeds who should never have existed, but we could not reverse the evil they had inflicted without the magnifying crystal. We never found it. The crowned prince declared war against us, and the slaughter began."

Prinivere's eyes grew even more watery, and a tear dragged down her wrinkled cheek. "Armies and bounties-a man could become rich in a day simply by proving he had killed one of us. Our magic helped, but it has its limits. They wore us down and, one by one, they killed us." As she spoke, she sank lower and lower so that she had to glance up to meet Collins' eyes. Clearly, she believed herself finished, but he had to know one more thing.

"Some of you survived."

"One," Zylas said, his voice seeming out of place after his long silence. "Only one."

"They knew our exact number." Prinivere now sounded as feeble as she looked. "We had given them that, the means of our own extermination."

"How?" Collins asked hesitantly. He wanted to know, though it would surely force Prinivere to relive the worst of her memories. "How did you survive?"

"I-" She choked, and Collins closed his eyes, suffering stabbing pangs of guilt for even having asked. He would never have dared press Joel Goldbaum's grandfather for details of the concentration camp he had narrowly escaped.

Collins said hastily, "Never mind," but Prinivere seemed not to hear him.

' 'One day, my mate staggered to our cave, mortally wounded.'' The tears flowed freely now, thickening her voice. "All my magic couldn't save him; we both knew it. And they had trailed him to the cave. We said our good-byes. Quickly, I cleaned up those wounds that the people could see, gave him as much strength as I could, and he charged from the cave with all the vengeful agony of an aggrieved cave-mate. They killed him- twice. By the time they managed to climb to the cave, I had made myself appear dead as well. They mistook me for their first kill, crawled off to die, and him for the second. They claimed our tail tips, as the bounty required, and left us both for dead."

A heavy silence followed Prinivere's story. Collins could think of nothing better to say. "I'm sorry. Very very sorry."

Zylas crouched, forestalling the obvious question. "She dared not leave the cave often, barely kept herself alive. She waited until long after the old-age death of the crowned prince and his successor before showing even her human self. She found a good man who claimed he would love her no matter what her switch-form, but she never let him see it. She did bear him twins, then left him to raise them, checking in when she could in human form. Once they had safely grown, becoming acceptable animals at coming-of-age, she mostly disappeared from their lives, watching only from a distance."

Though it sounded harsh, Collins believed he understood the reason. "She aged much more slowly than they did, and she would soon look younger than her own children."

Zylas nodded, "And they might figure out what she was, endangering all of them. But she oversaw their descendants, including, distantly, me. My wife, too, carried Prinivere's bloodline, which explains why our daughter…" His tone became as strained as Prinivere's.

Collins lowered a head that felt heavy with the mass of details laid upon him by people he had alternately considered friends and betrayers. He had so much to contemplate: to consider, internalize, or discard.

Zylas studied Collins. As if reading his mind, the albino said softly, "I'm going to lay one more thing on you before we leave you to your thoughts."

Collins met the pale gaze and nodded soberly.

"The king's newest law states that Random unions can no longer occur. Couple that with the previous edicts forbidding certain creatures from breeding as Regulars, and many lines will end. Where you come from, it may not seem like such a bad thing to eliminate rats and mice, snakes and opossums, and other animals you consider vermin. But to us, it's… it's…"

Collins filled in the word, "Genocide." He sat up straight and tall. "It's genocide, pure and simple. And it's very, very wrong." He could not come up with words strong enough to fit the outrage now rushing through him.

Zylas gave him a weak smile. "I'm glad you see it our way."

THEY left Collins on his own for nearly an hour while the information they had given him swirled through his mind. Despite the quantity, it all came together with a strange and surprising ease. Zylas and the others had a desperate need and an honest battle that they could not fight without Prinivere's magic enhanced by the missing crystal, and the dragon's great age and frailness made time very short indeed. His education since elementary school had stressed the inherent fairness and validity of democracy. Kingdoms and dictatorships did not fit into his view of justice without the moderating influence of parliaments, congresses, and houses. America had been built by rebels; and though the system did not always work smoothly, as the most recent presidential election could attest, he still strongly believed in the underlying tenets of its governmental system.

Running footsteps seized Collins' attention. Worried about security, he lurched to his feet just as Korfius came skidding into the room. He charged Collins with the exuberance of a puppy, then stopped suddenly, as if uncertain what to do next. Wheaten hair fell across his forehead in an untended tousle, and his dark eyes glimmered with excitement.

Collins caught the boy into an embrace, struck by the thinness of his limbs. For an instant, Korfius stiffened. Then, his arms cinched around Collins' waist, and he buried his face in the royal tunic.

Falima came striding in after the boy. "Korfius, you were supposed to-" She broke off as her gaze fell on Collins, and she went utterly silent. She looked at the boy and man enwrapped together, and a smile softened her otherwise pinched features.

Korfius released Collins and took two steps backward. "You're back, Your Majesty."

Collins winced at the lie, finding it suddenly intolerable. "Look, Korfius. I'm not really-"

The boy did not let him finish. "I know. But I still think of you as my prince."

Now knowing what the king of Barakhai had decreed, what at least this portion of the populace thought of him, Collins did not take the words as a compliment.

Falima shifted nervously from foot to foot. Collins almost expected her to whicker before she finally spoke. "I'm sorry, Ben. I… should have trusted you sooner. Treated you better." Collins was not sure he agreed. "I understand why you didn't." "Still-"

"Still nothing." Collins felt embarrassed by Falima's apology. It would have taken him at least as long to force himself to associate with someone he considered a cannibal, let alone to treat him courteously. "I understand. You're a good woman in a bad situation. I know you've had to make a lot of hard choices. Giving up a life usually reserved for high-ranking Regulars to help a criminal stranger who seemed incompetent couldn't have been easy. I'm sorry I put you in that position." He extended his arms.

Falima moved around Korfius to take her place in Collins' embrace. He folded his grip around her, enjoying the warm softness of her. After the scrawny boy, she felt so substantial, so real. A rush of joy overpowered him momentarily, and the world narrowed to the two of them.