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“He is by water,” she said. “A stream. And—oh, he is standing. Smoke! He sees smoke!”
“There.” Sir Tristan pointed. “Where the trees are thickest. That is where the stream will be.” It was around a curving hill. When they got closer, Guinevere looked up and she, too, saw the smoke. Though only with her left eye. Her right eye she had to keep closed against the blinding aftereffects of the magic.
“Wait here,” she said.
“My queen.” Sir Tristan drew his sword, staring at the smoke. “I can do no such thing.”
“I am your queen, and I command you both to wait here. I will be perfectly safe.” Guinevere turned, having delivered her lie with enough cold confidence that she hoped they believed it. Then she hurried her horse in the direction of the smoke. A maiden desperately hoping to run into a dragon—that had to be a first.
She did not have long to search. The sounds of battle between man and beast were terrible. Guinevere jumped from her spooked horse, tied it to a tree, then ran over to a low ridge.
Down in the stream valley, Sir Bors had the dragon cornered against a boulder and a thick stand of trees. The dragon’s wing had been sliced open, so it could not fly away. It blew fire, but Sir Bors ducked behind a shield lashed to his bad arm. The fire was weak, barely flickering where it hit the shield. The dragon drew another breath. Sir Bors lifted his great sword to strike.
Guinevere decided to do something tremendously stupid.
She threw down a scrap of cloth so that it landed on Sir Bors’s head—and immediately dropped him into sleep. He fell hard to the ground, brought down by the sleep knots Brangien had made while showing Guinevere how to tie them.
The dragon, already braced for a killing blow, froze. It tilted its head.
Guinevere slid down the embankment and scrambled to get between the dragon and Sir Bors. The dragon swung its huge head, following her. It was the color of mossy rocks, with two great, curling horns and fur like whiskers drooping over its mouth.
Its eyelids, too, drooped low, making it look as sleepy and cross as…Sir Bors. Actually, now that she thought about it, the dragon looked like nothing so much as Sir Bors in beast form. It even had one leg it held against its body, curled and withered from an old, poorly healed wound. Its tail was stunted, its right wing split open, and several spears protruded like spikes from lumpy, scarred tissue along its back.
Guinevere stumbled, her depth perception off with one eye closed. “Please.” She held out her hands to show she had no weapons. “I have a question. Can you understand me?”
Dragons were rumored to be terribly clever, capable of understanding human speech. But that was the myth. She did not know the reality. It leaned its head close to her—so close she could see the fine detail of its scales, the faint hint of pearlescence. It took a deep breath, smelling her.
And then it tilted its head. A huff of air like that from opening a stove blew over her, and then the dragon stuck out its long, elegant purple tongue…and licked her face.
She had miscalculated terribly. She was going to be eaten.
But the dragon sat back on its haunches, lowering its head so they remained eye-level. It nudged her once, gently. She reached out to balance and put her hand on top of its head, and then—
“Oh,” she whispered.
The freedom of night, of sky. No up or down, no ground, only flight. The wind caressing, buffeting, helping and hindering. Looping lazy circles for the sheer joy of it, surrounded by mother, sister, brother.
The sharp thrill of pleasure catching sheep between claws, the promising weight of them, the satisfaction of hot blood and torn meat.
Burrowing beneath the earth, deep, deep, sleeping away the cold months with the heat of mother, brother, sister, curled around each other.
And then—
Arrows in the sky. Spears. Sharp points of terrible pain, teeth no animal as small as man should have. Mother. Gone.
Brother.
Gone.
Sister.
Gone.
Wandering, lonely. Flight lost to the threat of arrows. Crawling on its belly, looking, searching, finding…nothing. No one. Curling around itself, alone.
The sky lost. The family lost. The joy and power of existing. Lost.
Guinevere’s throat burned. Tears streamed down her face. “I am sorry,” she whispered. She looked for darkness, for influence of angry magic, for any connection to Rhoslyn, and found only sorrow and loss and unbearable weariness. This beast was not under any spell.
